Not posting much, I know. Just not up to it. Sorry.

Here's a borderline case from the neoclassical ballistics file: drug warriors revive ancient customs by deploying the noble trebuchet.

When people are doing things that are detrimental to their own well being, then government should step in.

—New York State Senator Karl Kruger, discussing proposed legislation that would ban using phones or ipods or stuff while walking or when crossing the street.

The world should celebrate the peaceful overthrow of the mafia family, headed by dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, that ran Tunisia this week.  Peaceful on one end, anyway.  Many Tunisian protesters were shot by their government's security forces.

At the end (of course) only France stood by the dictator.

Before Ben Ali fled the country on Jan. 14, French Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie made statements about “the savoir-faire, recognized throughout the world, of [French] security forces able to settle security situations of this type.” This week, Socialist parliamentarians called for her resignation. (A cargo cache of riot gear for the Tunisian dictator was halted at Charles de Gaulle airport last Friday.)

Mr. Sarkozy had thwarted talk of despotism in Tunisia, saying Ben Ali was developing “openness and tolerance.” Mr. Mitterrand said that to describe the former Tunisian president as a dictator was “completely exaggerated.”

Of course America isn't covered in glory from this.  Despite what Hillary Clinon says, we've long supported Ben Ali as a proxy against an imaginary Al Qaeda opposition.  It will take a many more revolutions to put an end to the never-stated, implicit notion of western elites that only non-Slavic white people long for freedom from tyranny, but this is a good step.

Here's to Tunisia: Now the really hard part begins.

In late 1973 or early 1974, my Nana took me to the Eagle Rock Plaza, near her house, to see Disney's Robin Hood. I was four. It was a rainy day, and I was wearing a damp rain slicker. As we were waiting outside the movie theater, I was dorking around on the side of the plaza's fountain. I slipped and fell into the fountain, thanks to a combination of wearing a slippery raincoat and being, even then, a clumsy twit. A kind gentleman lifted me out, and my Nana returned we, wet and embarrassed and angry about missing Robin Hood, to her house. Nobody in particular noticed, and I did not require medical attention.

Why the hell didn't we think to threaten to sue the Eagle Rock Plaza?

Well, because it was my own damn fault, and I knew it. And because Nana wasn't a leech on society, and neither were my parents. And because I was four years old and not allowed to litigate on my own.

Also, we didn't think to do it because we're just not as creative as Cathy Cruz Marreo or her lawyer, James M. Polyak of Redding, Pennsylvania.

See, Ms. Marreo was walking through the Berkshire Mall one day, intently texting on her cell, when she ran right into the rim of the mall's fountain and tumbled in. The Berkshire Mall had left a fountain right in the middle of the place, right where you might fall in if you were walking without paying any attention whatsoever to where you were going.

Someone in mall security saw this and leaked the security footage, which showed up all over the place. The tape is too grainy to recognize a face, though Ms. Marreo claims that a friend could recognize her walk. No, really.

Anyway, when something like this happens in modern America, someone must pay, and it won't be the person who was walking without looking where they were going. It's going to someone else. Someone else must, through creative thinking, foot the bill — for hurt feelings, if there is no actual injury.

Her attorney, James M. Polyak of Reading, said he plans to conduct an investigation into what happened.

"We are troubled by the fact that anyone at the Berkshire Mall responsible for releasing this video would find humor in an employee injured on the premises," Polyak said. "We intend to hold the appropriate persons responsible.

"No one from that security office came to her aid in a timely manner."

Yep. Ms. Morreo doesn't claim that she was injured, let alone seriously injured. She says she has a bruise. But the point is that she could have been. She could have been injured, and security didn't rush down to see if she was okay (never mind that the footage shows her walking away immediately). So if she had been injured, and needed help, she wouldn't have gotten it from security, and that's just awful, and someone has to pay. And everyone knows that in America, if you could have been injured, even if you weren't, you should have your hand out.

We could all be Cathy Morreo — to a certain point. We could all make an ass of ourselves in public through carelessness, and some of us do.

But most of us don't hire a lawyer. Most of us don't have our hand out. Some of us do. Those people suck. They're the reason that our courts are clogged, our insurance is high, and that lawyers are omnipresent.

If Ms. Morreo were to sue the mall because its employees widely distributed a security video of her making a fool of herself in public, it might present a few mildly interesting issues, though it would still be bogus.

But if she sues because no one rushed to check on her to assist with an injury she did not have, and her feelings were bruised as a result, well — I have to ask, Cathy, why can't be at least as mature as a four-year-old?

In the wake of the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration, there's been much quoting about torch-passing and burden-bearing and asking-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you.

Cato offers a Milton Friedman quote to please those of us with some libertarian sensibilities:

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Read the whole extended quote.

That's how the Pennsylvania Board of Medical Examiners described Dr. Kermit Gosnell's baby-murdering clinic and opium den a year ago, after a raid by federal agents found blood on the floor.

Today the Philadelphia District Attorney described it as a "baby charnel house". Gosnell kept parts of fetuses in jars all over the office. He performed "abortions" on breathing babies by severing their spinal cords after delivery.  According to one report, the place was run as much by Gosnell as by an unlicensed graduate of the medical school we fought to liberate in the Grenada invasion, who doubled as a drug pusher. Gosnell was sued for malpractice 46 times.  Women were butchered by the unlicensed staff, and left to moan in pain all day, until Gosnell arrived late at night with his morphine.

In the understatement of the year, Gosnell's defense attorney described the charges against his client as "very, very serious," and urged people not to rush to judgment. Of course, I agree. I'll presume his innocence right up until the jury pronounces him guilty of the monstrous crimes of which he's as guilty as Judas.

Yet Gosnell's clinic, before it was raided by federal agents in 2010, hadn't been inspected in sixteen years.  Evidently cheesesteak joints are held to a higher standard in Philadelphia than doctors.

The worst part is, the city and state medical authorities knew the place was a filthy malpractice trap, even if they didn't know it was a murder factory.  They did nothing to shut it down.

The temptation, when horror stories like this come to light, is to say "We need more government to prevent this sort of thing," or perhaps, "We have all this government and this is what we get?  We need less government."  That isn't the lesson I take from Gosnell's house of horrors, for which you can read the full grand jury report in all its monstrous detail here.

This is a story about bad government.  The city and state knew, but didn't do a damned thing. Gosnell was enabled by the people paid to watch him.  He was enabled by the attorneys who sued him and advised their clients to sign confidentiality agreements.  He was enabled by the malpractice insurance companies who kept his practice afloat in return for premiums.  Heads should roll all over Pennsylvania.

Or if there's justice, they should be snipped off and placed in formaldehyde jars.

Last week, Patrick and I had a polite disagreement about when cries of "censorship!" should be seen as metaphorical rather than literal. This is entangled with the issue of whether, and when, criticism of speech can reasonably be read as advocating censorship of speech.

Obviously criticism of speech is not in and of itself censorship. But I understand the point that I think that Patrick and commenter bw were trying to make: sometimes criticism of speech implies that speech ought to be censored by the government.

Let's look at two examples in the wake of the Tucson shootings.

First, deep legal thoughts from Shakespeare's Sister:

Free speech isn't about the actual words you use; it's about the ideas that you convey. There are many ways to express the same idea.

The only idea that must be conveyed using violent rhetoric and imagery is violence.

The unapologetic nerd in me flashes to the opening scene of Serenity with the teacher saying "We don't want to teach them what to think — we want to teach them how." I think this can reasonably be interpreted as implying that it's permissible to censor rhetoric so long as you don't censor the underlying "idea."

Second, consider this reaction to news that anti-abortion activist Randal Terry will challenge President Obama in the 2012 presidential election. The author is worried about Terry's rhetoric like "child killing" and "slaughter of the unborn," which she refers to as "hate speech":

Fighting words. Fire in a crowded room. Was there no lesson learned from the assassination of Dr. Tiller?

"Fighting words" is a reference to a First Amendment doctrine of questionable continued viability, which is applicable to face-to-face encounters and not to political rhetoric. "Fire in a crowded room" is a mis-quoted reference to a Supreme Court decision later conclusively overturned and rejected by the Court. It's clear that the author drops both terms, however ineptly, to suggest that Terry's anti-abortion rhetoric is within the sphere of speech that may be censored by the government.

Neither case explicitly advocates censorship. The second quote comes closer. We ought to respond to both by calling out the implication and refuting it. But, I maintain, our criticism should keep clear the distinction between criticism of speech – and even calls for censorship — and censorship itself.

Anyone who thinks that six-year-old girls can't make convincingly feral wolves has never had a six-year-old girl.

In words before great council fire, I, Paul Mirengoff, fighter for Akin Gump tribe, speak with fiery tongue about Yaqui Indian prayer to Great Spirit for scalped white sister Gabrielle Giffords and others killed at village of Tucson.

I, Paul Mirengoff, did not mean to hurt Yaqui Indian brothers and sisters, I swear before moon and stars.  I am warrior and brave. My words are few and plain. All know wounds I have for Akin Gump tribe, in battles before Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.

I carry off many horses, and squaws, to serve clients at Akin Gump pow wow of war against plaintiffs' employment discrimination bar! I write conservative blog Power Line, often linked by Great Instapundit and others, bringing fame to Akin Gump tribe.

But for Indian brothers and sisters I, Paul Mirengoff, carry only firewater and beads, never war medicine!  Especially Indians who, I now hear at big ghost dance in Akin Gump main lodge near House of Great White Father, are lucrative casino gaming clients of mighty Akin Gump tribe! All know that I, Paul Mirengoff, am great medicine talker and truth teller, so it hurt my feelings to learn that Indians, especially casino gaming clients, so easily offended. Do not take Paul Mirengoff as white man who speak with forked tongue, noble savages, but sit with Paul Mirengoff at table, like Tonto and Squanto and great warriors of old, and smoke pipes of peace.

Honest Injun!

. . . and my rhetoric is not "how the fuck do you pronounce that?"

It's "why can't you mind your own damn business, you nasty, officious, grasping little nanny-state twit?"

See, Brian Schoenjahn wants to jump on the moronic anti-Four-Loko-panic bandwagon and pass a law that would make it a misdemeanor in Iowa for any business with a liquor license to sell nearly any drink that includes both caffeine and alcohol. Irish coffee? Illegal. Kahlua? Illegal. Black Russian? Illegal. Pour one, and your Iowan bartender is looking at up to 30 days in jail.

Available press reports do not make it clear whether Brian Schoenjahn (1) only wanted to ban caffeine-enhanced canned drinks marketed to younger people like Four Loko, but was too stupid to draft a bill tailored to that end without outlawing a vast swath of traditional alcoholic beverages and cocktails, or (2) genuinely believes that it's the rightful place of state government to ban Irish Coffee and Kahlua because Iowans are too stupid to drink it responsibly.

Meanwhile, please remember that thoughtful and important people want you to know that libertarianism is a fringe belief and that legislators are just regular folks whose service ought to be respected.

Your recruiter just sent me an unsolicited email saying that a "global" law firm is seeking a "White Collar Crime & Investigation" partner to head up their West Coast practice, because the global law firm has no West Coast "White Collar Crime & Investigation" partner, and the work is being serviced by the East Coast partners, and they have to fly here all the time, and their arms are getting tired, or something. Apparently if I responded I can be the head of the West Coast practice and soon have a gold-plated house.

1. If you knew your recruiter was going to send this out, how did you get to be a global law firm if you think that the way to recruit a partner to be the coastal head of a practice group in a highly specialized area is to send out a mass generic unsolicited email?

2. If you didn't know, how did you get to be a global firm without supervising how your recruiters were going to look for people?

3. Can I see the gold-plated house first?

Some things need to be said over and over again, apparently.

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Tucson, there's been a lot of talk about whether people who engage in intemperate, incendiary, or hyperbolic rhetoric bore some sort of responsibility for the tragedy. Never mind that it's clear that madness was the seed of the shooting, cultivated and grown in the soil of irrational views we can't fully grasp. There is no reliable indication whatsoever that intemperate political rhetoric contributed to the shooting. Yet folks use tragedy as a jumping-off point to discuss whatever talking points they want to discuss, and this week's talking point is incendiary rhetoric, and how terrible it is.

A lot of the incendiary rhetoric people are complaining about is brutish, stupid, and regrettable.

And now the counter-talking-points begin. One of them is that those who have engaged in "robust" rhetoric are now victims of an unfair smear campaign. This may be right as a matter of logic — there's no connection between the rhetoric and the shooting, and the attacks on the rhetoric are opportunistic — but I am not particularly moved when people who trade in bomb-throwing wind up on the business end of a bomb.

A more stupid and objectionable argument is that the criticism of the rhetorical bomb-throwers is itself a form of censorship. Take the latest from our ole pal Andrea Peyser:

From the mouths of flailing, leftist pundits to the bipolar pages of The New York Times, a gang mugging has broken out over the massacre in Tucson. A concerted effort is now underway to lay blame on the ascendant Tea Party, Sarah Palin or anyone without sufficient liberal cred for the senseless shootings carried out by Jared Lee Loughner — a guy described by one former classmate as a "lefty pothead." This is worse than a concerted attack on our democratic principles.

It's fascistic censorship.

Because that's how the fascists rolled. They put up op-eds.

No, you stupid, stupid woman, it is not. Speech is not tyranny. Criticism — even unfair and intemperate criticism — is not censorship. I don't care who tells you it is. It is more speech, the thing we use instead of censorship. The entire premise of our approach to freedom of expression is that we do not censor speech that some find to be hateful, harmful, and wrong because those people can stand up and call it hateful, harmful, and wrong. Cry "censorship" when your speech gets you sued or locked up. Cry "that's a call for censorship" when someone says your speech ought to get you sued or locked up. But when your speech gets you vilified, mocked, condemned, and called out as morally responsible for awful things — however unjustly — that's not censorship, and if you say it is, you're a whiny twit with contempt for the principles underlying the Constitution of the United States. That's a feature, not a bug, of the First Amendment. The marketplace of ideas gets rough. Wear a cup.

Do cats prefer the odor of one cat litter over another? Is it knowable what cats like or want? I suspect it is unknowable. Cats may like something one day and another thing another day. They may be pretending to like or not like something for their own reasons, one of which is to thwart us.

Of course, in advertisements, people, cats, and inanimate objects are portrayed as clearly preferrring one product over another all of the time. Most consumers of advertising understand this is sales rhetoric and disregard it. Cars don't really smile over Techron. Cats don't really become agitated if they can't locate their litter box by smell.

But Arm & Hammer's lawyers are not like most consumers of advertising. So they have filed a federal lawsuit against Clorox over a commercial's suggestion that cats prefer Fresh Step over Super Scoop.

"But cats do not talk, and it is widely understood in the scientific community that cat perception of malodor is materially different than human perception," the company argues. "It is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance."

Arm & Hammer's lawyers can bring this sort of suit chiefly because lawyers, like cats, have no sense or proportion, personal responsibility, or shame.

Hit & Run has a link to the video of an interview with Roxanna and John Green, parents of Christina Green, the 9-year-old slain in the Tucson shooting this weekend. Their grace and dignity is heartbreaking and deeply humbling.

In their shoes, I would be railing against guns, against mental health laws, against politicians, against God, against anyone I could blame in any way, whatever my closely held beliefs before the tragedy. But John Green is a better man. He says:

This shouldn't happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.

He sees it. Bless him for it; I don't know if I could.

It is in the wake of a tragedy that we must be most vigilant against people in power using our emotions to justify restraints on liberty.