Well-known scientist and blogger PZ Myers, a frequent commenter on the cultural clash between science and religion, is an atheist.

Therefore I think that he, and other atheists, should be held responsible for the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, Stalin's purges of the Russian Orthodox Church, and this guy in Philadelphia who raped a 77-year-old woman and told her there was no God. (It's not clear if he believed that before he lived in Philadelphia.) Myers' advocacy of atheism normalizes the midset that leads to such behavior.

Oh, OK. Not really. Believing that would be nutty. It would be surrendering my capacity for reason to my rage and hate against people who think differently than I do. It would be treating people and complex situations like cartoons, rejecting nuance, and presuming cause and effect and post hoc ergo propter hoc.

It would be, in short, acting like PZ Myers.

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In its day, the Douglas AD Skyraider was a deadly aircraft, among the last propeller driven ground attack bombers employed by the United States Navy.

These days of course, the few remaining Skyraiders are valuable antiques of no military value.  Unfortunately for Claude Hendrickson, who owns one of the last flightworthy Skyraiders, the Transportation Security Administration lacks an appreciation for aviation history.

The Department of Homeland Security recently notified a pilot, an EAA Warbirds of America (WOA) member and owner of a Douglas AD-4N Skyraider, that it intended to confiscate his recently imported aircraft.  The Department alleges that necessary forms were improperly filed.  Last week federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized and threatened to destroy this rare piece of our nation’s aviation heritage.  The airplane remains in a secured hangar at the member’s home airport.

According to other sources, Mr. Hendrickson cleared customs and was told his paperwork checked out when he brought the plane home from France last year.  The Skyraider was registered with the FAA, which issued permits and a flight number to Hendrickson.

Assuming that Hendrickson is really a collector of antique warplanes who's guilty of improper filing of a form, and not a terrorist, impounding and threatening to destroy his unique bird does seem rather excessive.  One assumes most legitimate pilots would be given a deficiency notice and told to correct their filings.  But in the battle between TSA bureaucrats and world terror, the notion of excess often goes out the window.

There may well be more to the story, and perhaps a perfectly innocent explanation for TSA's seizure and threatened destruction of Claude Hendrickson's piece of military history.  But since the TSA isn't talking and Hendrickson is, he gets to tell the story. So far, it isn't a pretty one.

You can read more at Hendrickson's weblog, which is devoted to the Skyraider and his efforts to recover it.

Today Patterico has a fun post discussing the egg-faced Sacramento Bee, which accidentally posted a draft editorial online and therefore revealed its editorial contempt for voters who soundly rejected California's slate of shell-game try-to-pretend-we-are-balancing-the-budget initiatives that were on the ballot this past Tuesday. (Ezra discussed the initiatives here.)

The Sac Bee — which Patterico, in which I can only assume is an act of satire, calls "Big Media" — lays into those dumb rubes who JUST DON'T GET IT that we must find ways to keep spending all the money we've been spending:

Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system?

Patterico details how the Bee then beat an ignominious retreat by posting a different draft that attacks politicians instead. I'd respect them more if they kept the original up. They'd be pseudo-elitist twaddle-pushing socialists, but at least they'd have grown a pair about it.

Today the Los Angeles Times sounded a similar note of resentful how-dare-you-not-follow-our-advice hysterical recrimination, printing a front page that listed the educational budget cuts that will have to be made in roughly the same font they used to announce 9/11. This is odd. The Los Angeles Times recently had the stones to point out the pervasive problems caused by teachers' unions. Among other things, those unions have succeeded in making California teachers the best paid in the country, earning an average of $64k, or 25% more than the national average. The L.A. Times doesn't seem to connect the dots.

What's the consistent theme between the Bee and the Times? It's journalistic outrage at the notion that government should only offer the services that it can afford with actual, real-world revenue.

[Edit: I note that a number of commentators are suggesting that the Bee is lying when it says that the editorial was posted in error as a draft, and that the Bee actually just changed it when it drew unfavorable reactions. I'm not convinced of that one way or the other.]

I survived Day One. Now, my quick impressions of Day Two of training the employees — including police officers — of a small city about avoiding sexual harassment:

1. The training was held in a city-owned community hall in a charming kid's park. Just as I started my morning presentation, I glanced out the window out of the corner of my eye and saw a large, predatory-looking beast moving towards several children. I recoiled. On a closer look, the predatory beast proved to be the silhouette of a goat painted on the wall next to the swing set.

I think my credibility took just a little hit there.

2. Before training supervisory employees today, I talked to one of the high officials in the city and mentioned that yesterday's training had yielded stories suggesting that supervisors had reacted very poorly to getting reports of sexual harassment in the city. The city official told me he wanted me to be tough on the supervisors today.

Official: So when you do this training, I want you to be hard on them. Take no prisoners. Make it clear when they have done stupid things.
Me: Absolutely.
Official: Can you really read them the riot act? Tell them what you really think?
Me: Yes. Yes. Oh, yes.
Official: You're . . . trembling.
Me: I'm just so happy.

3. Discovery: When confronted with examples of how they have actually reacted to harassment reports, with their own language quoted back to them, supervisors can visibly shrink in their seats. I have not recently had that much fun standing up.

I trained cops in the afternoon. Some observations:

4. Cops don't like it when you tell them it is potentially problematical for them to post porn all over their locker rooms.

5. They especially don't like it when you ask them if they'd be cool with lots of gay porn all over their locker room.

6. Some cops think that civilization as we know if will end, and the life of the mind will die, if they can't greet each other by shouting "HEY YOU FAGGOT HOW YOU DOING TODAY," or explain to each other how drinking decaf makes it likely that you are a bottom.

7. Cops don't like it if, in the course of discussing #6 above, you ask if they would be cool with me calling their mother a big dyke, should I ever meet their mothers, and even assuming that their mothers are not, technically, big dykes.

8. Sarcasm by flabby pasty Dockers-wearing lawyers makes cops twitchy.

I love my job.

Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds":

Screen International's critic had reservations, however, summarising the film as "a series of long-running vignettes strung together by a slender story thread".

"With some of the scenes running up to half an hour each, the thread of the drama is left disjointed and the focus ever-changing," writes reviewer Mike Goodridge.

Which sounds like a description of Pulp Fiction ("various lowlifes are drawn together as a result of a fixed boxing match and a bad blind date") and Kill Bill ("woman assassinates martial artists around the world, connected only by their acquaintance with Caine from Kung Fu and a lovers' quarrel gone wrong").

And that's the harshest criticism. I now expect to love this movie as much as The Big Lebowski ("warmed over Raymond Chandler rehash as told by mid-90s Los Angeles losers, with musical dance numbers a la Busby Berkeley").

Popcorn!

It is an undeniable fact that litigation to cure attacks on one's reputation can be a counterproductive affair.  Consider the case of Michael Patrick Leahy, the self-proclaimed "top conservative on twitter."  Mr. Leahy, who styles himself a leader of the anti-tax "Tea Party" movement, was stung by leftwing blogger Stephanie Grasmick's revelation that Leahy, when not acting as the "top conservative on twitter," allegedly has a sideline gig as an "insane douchenozzle," a "member of an insane race of lizard people," and a "major tax fraud."

So he's suing Ms. Grasmick for libel and invasion of privacy.

You may view Ms. Grasmick's post, which as of this date includes a Nexis judgment search indicating that someone named Michael Patrick Leahy appears to have tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid federal tax liens against his name, by clicking here. Unfortunately all of the sites at which copies of the suit itself were available were filthy hotlinkers, linking directly to Mr. Leahy's site rather than reposting it on their own sites, and Leahy has removed his copy, so I can't comment directly on the suit.

But others have reprinted some of the allegations.  And a curious mess it is.  Mr. Leahy, who fancies himself a leading conservative, appears not to realize that this makes him open to the charge that he is a public figure, who must prove that Ms. Grasmick, in calling him an insane douchenozzle, a lizard person, and a major tax fraud, did so with actual malice, knowing her statements were false, and that her statements were not "fair comment".

That's going to be very difficult to prove.  Fair comment takes care of the first two statements (assuming that being called a douchenozzle and a lizard person are defamatory where Leahy lives).  As for "major tax fraud" well, I suppose that's a question of degree.  Perhaps the argument will go that, in top conservative tea-party circles, it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid tax liens, rather than mere tens of thousands of dollars, to make one a "major" tax fraud.  Assuming that Leahy is correctly identified as the party who owes these liens, he's merely a "minor" tax fraud.

That would be an interesting argument indeed, but I question whether it will carry much water in a court, before a judge or jurors, who in my experience are unsympathetic even to minor tax frauds, to say nothing of allegedly insane douchenozzles and alien lizard people.

As for the invasion of privacy, well, it's another unfortunate fact that judgments and tax liens are public records.  Indeed, that's one of the very points of obtaining a judgment or a lien: to warn those considering property transactions or secured loans with the defendant that a superior claim exists to the defendant's property.

Of course, some plaintiffs file lawsuits for goals other than the vindication of rights.  If the point of Mr. Leahy's suit was simply to retaliate against Ms. Grasmick, even in the absence of a good cause of action, that's a good argument for fee-shifting statutes and court sanctions.  Punishing frivolous litigation is a goal any "top conservative" would support.

If the point of the suit was simply to attract public attention to Mr. Leahy himself, even if it's the attention the public accords to insane douchenozzles, members of alien races of lizard people, and major tax frauds, I'd say he's accomplished that goal in spades.

Update:  A well-meaning person steered me to a copy of Mr. Leahy's (pro se) complaint, which I've reposted here: leahy-v-grasmick-complaint I'll have more thoughts on the complaint later today, in comments.  For now, I'll just post a link to an article on the meaning of the term "pro se" and allow readers to draw their own conclusions from that.

I feel free to say that I view chiropractors as either deluded or dishonest practitioners of unscientific mumbo-jumbo, peddling a pseudo-medical ritualistic "treatment" modalities without a basis in modern science, shot through with odd connections to even more bizarre beliefs, and preying upon both reasonable and paranoid fears about science-based medicine.

I feel free to say that because I am in America, not in Britain. Were I in Britain, I would be much more circumspect. That's because Britain's libel law is, to American tastes, a playground for thin-skinned thugs and suppressors of dissent, and hostile to critics thereof. That's why the British legal system is the preferred venue for Holocaust deniers, bagmen for terrorism, and other libel tourists.

Case in point, courtesy of Overlawyered: Simon Singh, a British scientist who had the temerity to suggest that what chiropractors do is "bogus," particularly in connection with claims that chiropractors can treat childhood ailments by "adjusting" little spines:

"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."

This being Britain, and the British Chiropractic Association being a swarm of politically powerful thugs protective of their income and furious that anyone would reveal them as the pack of gibbering stick-shaking shaman that they are, sued for libel. They found a sympathetic ear and accommodating gavel in presiding judge sir David Eady, who recently ruled not only that Singh must carry the burden of proving the truth of what he asserted, but that he must prove that the British Chiropractic Association is spreading lies knowingly, because Sir David interprets the term "bogus" to be both an assertion of fact rather than an assertion of opinion and interprets it to mean that the misinformation is knowing and deliberate. This, of course, is in sharp contrast to the American legal system, where people seeking to use the legal system to suppress speech and extract money would have the burden of proving that what was said about them was a false statement of fact, not opinion or hyperbole. Whatever else we do wrong — and my God, there's plenty — we do that right.

One hopes that the decency and common sense of the British jury — an ancient institution for which America owes a debt of cultural gratitude — will prevail here over this appalling legal norm, as it did in the Holocaust denial case linked above. But if it doesn't, Singh may take some comfort on his way to bankruptcy and court-sanctioned censorship that Britain's libel law is well on its way to being a pariah, both as a matter of opinion and as a matter of law, in other countries. If the current trend persists, a thuggish litigant like the British Chiropractic Association will be unable to enforce British libel judgments elsewhere in the world, and such judgments will be met with roughly the same esteem and legal effect as a writ from East Fuckistan demanding that the courts of another country forcibly genitally mutilate an escaped tribeswoman.

Edit: I had comments turned off for some reason. They are back on now.

Hats off to U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who wins my dipshit-of-the-week award for opposing a bill that would authorize about $5 million a year to protect rare cats and dogs (like snow leopards) in other countries.

Is he a dipshit because I think we should protect exotic kitty-cats? No. I'm not sure we should be spending money on that right now — if ever. (Of course, as something to keep Congress busy, it's probably relatively cheap on a minute-by-minute basis.)

No, Louie Gohmert is a dipshit because he thinks we should not authorize the funds because those fucking Chinamen would just eat the cats.

There is no assurance that if we did that we wouldn't end up with moo goo dog pan or moo goo cat pan.

Here's the video. Gohmert sounds like Gomer Pyle after being kicked in the head a few too many times.

I've now completed the first day of training the employees of a local city to avoid sexual harassment, having made roughly 2 hour presentations to two groups of about 20 each.

Impressions:

1. Never try to explain the confluence of federal and state law to government employees before noon.

2. Apparently everyone in this city likes to go "GIRL, you're looking FINE, SHOW me!", and then the other employee turns around in place, and the first one goes "WOOOOOO!" It is probably impossible to break them of this, at least with the amount of time and the tools and use-of-force limits I am presented with.

3. After I prepared this presentation and reviewed the available summaries and caselaw for interesting examples and cautionary tales, I thought I would be impossible to shock. Boy, was I wrong. Midway through the morning an employee described an incident so completely cringingly inappropriate that Andrew Dice Clay would be going "hey man, not cool, not cool," and then described how supervisors laughed it off. I have my work cut out for me.

4. I train supervisors in the morning tomorrow, and police in the afternoon. I am going to drop the hammer on the supervisors. Hard. Then we'll see how it goes with the cops. I may be stereotyping, but I suspect I'm going to get some push-back from them.

5. So far, in response to my leading questions designed to create the illusion of audience participation, only one person has suggested that yeah, it would be cool to have team-building in a strip club.

6. Audiences will start participating by asking more questions if you threaten to make them role-play scenarios.

Edited to add:

7. When you've scripted vignettes for your staff to record on video and then play to make the whole sexual-harassment-presentation more audio-visual intense and attention-grabbing, have someone read through your scripts and make sure than the inappropriate conduct depicted isn't too funny. Inappropriate laughter is death to the right tone at a training session. (The problematical line in question: "She has a name?")

Today we had a birthday party for a co-worker, and around pie the talk turned to the new Star Trek film. The consensus was that we all enjoyed it. Our Executive Director had a problem with the film however. "Spock was making out with someone. He can't do that."

Without thinking, I interjected "what about the Ponn Farr ritual?" She looked at me with the blank, discomforted stare most San Franciscans save for homeless people on the streets. Blinked twice, and then just went on talking with others.

I'm telling you, I just have a way with Executive Directors..

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in a neck and neck race to see who can say more silly things with Joe Biden, and don't give up on Steele. Yesterday, he gave a speech where he declared "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done…"

Does this work for me? Can I tell my boss that it's time we turned the page on that email I sent out to 2000 people with all the wrong information? I don't think we get to decide when we are done making amends for everything we messed up. Especially when it was 8 years in the messing, and 5 months in the amending.

Record low turnout is expected for tomorrow's elections in California. The main items on the bill are a coterie of linked budget proposals that are supported by almost no one except the Governator & Legislature. This is a confusing election for me, because I don't like any of the Propositions, but the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is also against them, and I default to doing the opposite of their recommendations. It's like Kirk trying to destroy a super computer… So, let's take a look at the items on the ballot and see if I can talk myself into any of them, shall we?

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This morning there was an earnest young lady handing out brochures downtown. Turns out it was the latest missive from the LaRouchies, and I just can't resist the craziness. And, as always LaRouche does not disappoint. He successfully gets over the loss of his arch-nemesis Lynne "The Beast" Cheney by first arguing that man did not come from apes (because "apes and humans are completely different." This leads in a direct segueway into the need for nuclear power (because the defining characteristic of man is using fire. Apparently, there is no fire in burning coal..) and labeling environmentalism "Satanic!"

In fact, that paragraph is so great that I am going to reprint it here: "What is this admininstration doing? It's bought into environmentalism, which is Satanic! In its effect. (sic) That's the effect: The United States will disappear, if we don't change this policy very soon! If Obama continues this policy, for another couple years, the United States is finished! And maybe most of the planet is finished, too." (note all emphasis and punctuation is LaRouches. I had not really noticed how bizarre his writing is until transcribing it.

You know, I could go on about all the beautiful insanity in this book, but I think I'll just leave you with the bullet points for his next webcast. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do (and once again, all puctuation and emphasis is original):

• Obama Health-Care Reform – That's Called Facism, Isn't It?
• Hasting Center's Nazi Doctors Set Orszag's Agenda to Kill Useless Eaters
• White House Health Care "Reform" is Nazi Medicine Made in Britain
• Orszag's Emmanuel Ponders Suicide as Health Care Reform
• Final Baucus Hearing Puts Nail In The Coffin
• You're Bailing Out the Fascist Bastards That Are Killing You!
• Kill the HMOs, Save Lives! Resume the Hill-Burton Hospital Program, Save the Nation!

This week I'm giving sexual harassment prevention training to employees of a small city, then training supervisors on how to respond to and investigate complaints. Then I'm doing the same for the city's entire police force.

The police force has few women, and by some accounts treats them badly. Some officers have been heard to say that women shouldn't be police officers. I expect to field some hostile questions. I was planning to bring a quarter, so I could hand them a quarter and say "Here, call the year 1964 and tell them you're pissed that they undermined your manhood." But that strikes me as a bit hostile. I'm working on toning it down.

Most people educated in the last three decades could hear my presentation and think that they had heard it all before. Most people not raised by feral crack abusers could hear my list of suggestions about how not to act and think "well obviously I'd never act like that at work."

But it's nevertheless necessary and useful. Here's the breakdown: 80% of my audience knows this stuff already, or even if they don't, would never act in a way that could violate sexual harassment law because they were raised to act decently. 10% of my audience lacks common sense about how to act and has forgotten their prior training, and requires the training to remind them how not to act, but will do fine after the training.

The other 10% is unable to retain simple instructions and lacks the inclination or capacity to act decently even when someone explains to them what "decently" looks like. They will do bad stuff, or not, depending on opportunity, boredom level, and happenstance. They will do so whether or not I train them.

That 10% pays my mortgage.

Americans believe firmly in many things — God, country, democracy, the ShamWow, that Coors is drinkable, etc. But few propositions are as universally and uncritically embraced as the notion that college is awesome and everyone should go and when they do it will be transformitive. That's why so many families go broke or into debt thinking that when junior finishes his comp lit major he'll naturally be a successful and productive member of society.

This leads to all sorts of magic thinking. Case in point: the notion that if a young person is going to college, or about to go to college, it would be more unfair and unfeeling to derail their life just because they committed a crime

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