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Broder makes an important point.

Broder makes an important point. We only remember the truly great of the past while discounting the competence of most we see today. Those who screw-up get our attention, but all of those who are quietly compentent don’t get the attention.

“Unfashionable though it may be, I am here to assert that the quality of candidates at all levels, but especially for governor, is rising — not falling. As the barriers to women and minorities are reduced, the level of expected competence continues to improve.”

Amen.

From Talking Points Memo is

From Talking Points Memo is a hysterical story on the radio ads played in Kansas City comparing Social Security to reverse reparations.

In cases of low-rent sleaze like these it’s hard to know whether to fix on to the dishonesty, the crassness, the ugly caricature of gullible blacks the ad is intended to appeal to, or just the pitiful dorks themselves who hatched the idea.

You can just imagine the brainstorming session with the CSE-baseball-cap-clad goofball ‘wingers who came up with the ad. “Hey, you know how blacks are all into reparations? Well, Social Security is terrible for blacks. We’ll say it’s like reverse reparations! You’re giving your money to the white man! They’ll eat that stuff up. By the way, you hear about how that fat rapper killed Tupac Shakur? Dangit!”

Ahhhh … an idea is born.

Hicks are really gullible. Go

Hicks are really gullible. Go figure. Apparently law enforcement is considering calling this a terroristic threat. Let’s see, the witness can’t identify what they were going to do, she wasn’t even sure if it was a real threat or a joke, and she was listening in on a conversation. Ummmm…no jury is going to bother convicting someone for that.

Repeat after me, Shoney’s isn’t a hotbed of terrorists on their way to blow up Miami. Hell, Shoney’s doesn’t even have hot food. The only thing anyone is really guilty of is having the bad taste of eating at Shoneys.

Even better is this:

According to police sources, all three men at first were uncooperative – denying consent to search the car.

”It was probably not the right time for them to be copping an attitude with police,” said one federal law enforcement source who was up all night monitoring the investigation. “But that’s exactly what happened.”

Let me add a little something to this discussion.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It is called the 4th amendment. Forcing the police to do their job is not copping an attitude.

This comes via Instapundit. Great

This comes via Instapundit. Great analysis of a non-event. What is amazing is that they didn’t even accept the possibility this was a crank. Along with a bunch of self-righteous garbage about “how they won’t do that again.” Besides being an inane old white guy cliche, it doesn’t really address the problem of why these guys pulled the joke in the first place. A nosy busybody got all nervous because some ferinors walked in a Shoneys.

What is even more odd is the strange sense of wanting it to happen to a place near them. It reminds me of the coverage in St. Louis after 9-11. The newscasters just couldn’t handle that something so important didn’t happen to St. Louis and seemed to almost regret it.

Then again, maybe she thought they should have better sense on where to eat…

As a note, if I

As a note, if I ever use the term fisking non-derisively, slap me. The ridiculous practice has taken off and even now been showcased by Sullivan in Salon. I’m not sure if it is more annoying than the overuse of the term ‘indeed’ or the annoying habit of many bloggers to use the term ‘interesting’ as something like a knowing nod only the cool kids are in on.

The problem with fisking is it takes a very articulate person like Sullivan, well when he wants to be, and reduces them to make snarky commentator on an arguments’ side notes much of the time. Seldom does fisking result in a refutation of the central argument or even the evidence. Usually it centers on some side note or pithy comment used for getting attention. A perfect example above is his mention of the 100 Years War. That is relevant to modern warfare how? (was that a fisking–oy).

It might be helpful to remember paragraphs are meant to explain a point. Breaking down those paragraphs loses that point often and thus fails to refute the actual argument. A far more productive strategy would be to outline an argument, state its premises, its evidence and its logic and then attack those. However, for much of the blogosphere that takes too much time. Instead insinuating those who disagree with you are unpatriotic or a hack (oh the irony there) is much more fun.

One of the most fisked authors is Paul Krugman. I’m not sure what it is about him that brings out so much anger, but I have seen few substantive rebuttals in those fiskings. However, I have seen problems with some of his arguments, but fisking never seems to get at those problems. Why not? Because it is designed to produce pithy remarks and not a substantive critique.

Finally, fisking seems to promote an inane comparisons to appeasement in 1938 a. If anyone noticed, we already drove the guy out of the figurative Sudentland. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look to overthrow him, but let’s try some original thought and not a reliance on a bad analogy. Whenever an alternative to immediate action it is claimed to be some sort of appeasement. That isn’t appeasement, it is setting priorities.

Via Scott Rosenberg (somehow I

Via Scott Rosenberg (somehow I missed this at Delong’s site), an excellent discussion from Semi-Daily Journal on copyright extension. The ending is a killer:

“It will mean, “We’re not going to tell you where the line is exactly–that would be dicta, and we hate dicta, except when we don’t–but we are telling you that if you move to extend copyright again, you first need to ask yourselves the Clint Eastwood question: ‘Do you feel lucky?'””

Copyright powers weren’t meant to enforce rights forever–only long enough to promote creativity. Disney’s shareholders don’t have much to do with creativity.