Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 1:32pm

Various & Sundry, 5/11/15

– The Republican field is filled with conservative candidates who have a wide-range of executive and legislative experience, and who generally speak eloquently and articulately on the issues.

Then there’s Ben Carson.

Carson, in his first speech in the state as a candidate, was asked by a voter about the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the federal mandate that fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into their gasoline and diesel supplies.

“I don’t particularly like the idea of government subsidies for anything because it interferes with the natural free market,” Carson said, according to The Des Moines Register.

Not bad. Subsidies in general are detrimental. If he’d only stopped there. But sadly, he didn’t.

Therefore, I would probably be in favor of taking that $4 billion a year we spend on oil subsidies and using that in new fueling stations” for 30 percent ethanol blends, he added.

For a candidate whose main selling point is he made a good speech one time, he sure sticks his foot in his mouth quite often.

– Speaking of bad candidates in a good field, Mike Huckabee doesn’t seem too concerned about his snake oil salesmanship gone awry.

– I am linking to Think Progress, and not to mock them. Why? Because even they thought Mark Halperin’s interview with Ted Cruz was cringe-worthy.

Late last month, Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin conducted a cringe-worthy interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The interview meandered from questions about how Cruz plans to appeal to Latino voters to what appeared to be a series of requests that Cruz, who is Cuban American, prove that he is really, truly, authentically Cuban. By the end of the interview, when Halperin asks Cruz to say a few words “en Español,” one can’t help but think that Cruz had unwittingly wandered into a minstrel show, with Halperin demanding that Cruz perform for an audience.

Though Halperin begins the interview by raising a legitimate topic — a speech Cruz gave to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce — his conversation with Cruz quickly goes off the rails. “Your last name is Cruz and you’re from Texas,” Halperin asks Cruz. “Just based on that, should you have appeal to Hispanic voters?”

Halperin’s suggestion that Hispanic voters may base their vote solely on the ethnicity of a particular candidate is actually a relative high point of the interview. The next question begins with Halperin telling Cruz that “people are really interested in you and your identity,” before Halperin asks whether Cruz listed himself as “Hispanic” when he applied to college and law school. Over the course of the next five minutes, Halperin demands that Cruz identify his “favorite Cuban food” and his “favorite “Cuban singer.”

Looking forward to Halperin’s interview with Bobby Jindal where he dares the Louisiana Governor to prepare “some of that curry stuff” on live television.

– Londonites riot over the UK election results. Someone might take away a barely noticeable portion of their government cheese. Can’t have that.

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Art Deco
Monday, May 11, AD 2015 6:51pm

Re Huckabee:
==
1. Do we have the transcript of the ‘infomercial’ or no? And if not, how do we adjudicate between Huckabee’s contention that he was hawking a booklet of diet and exercise advice to which these herbal supplements were appended and Hot Air‘s contention that he was hawking herbal supplements as a cure for diabetes?
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2. Why is Hot Air’s contention about ‘cures for cancer’ unsourced?
==
3. Why does a search for “Doc Huckabee’s Magic Linament” turn up precisely one reference, a post on Hot Air?
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4. Why does he link to an article by a man named Fournier that reads like the sort of journalistic piece which gets published because libel laws are weak?
==
I do not know the truth of these matters, but this has the odour of ‘toss stuff at him and see if something sticks”.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, May 11, AD 2015 7:30pm

“I don’t particularly like the idea of government subsidies for anything because it interferes with the natural free market,” Carson said, according to The Des Moines Register.
Not bad. Subsidies in general are detrimental. If he’d only stopped there. But sadly, he didn’t.
“Therefore, I would probably be in favor of taking that $4 billion a year we spend on oil subsidies and using that in new fueling stations” for 30 percent ethanol blends, he added.

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That’s not a half-bad answer,
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if you want to win Iowa.
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Joke of the Day
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Book of the Day
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Fr. Peter Mitchell’s book The Coup at Catholic University: The 1968 Revolution in American Catholic Education, recently published by Ignatius Press, is a detailed studied of revolutionary events that took place in the late Sixties at Catholic University of America. The revolution was led by Fr. Charles Curran, professor of Theology at CUA, who with more than 500 theologians signed a “Statement of Dissent” declaring that Catholics were not bound in conscience to follow the Church’s teaching in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae.
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The battle at Catholic University was focused on the nature, purpose, and limits of academic freedom. Curran and other dissenting theologians insisted they should be free to teach as they wished, without direction or oversight from the authority of the bishops. The bishops, in turn, said that the American tradition of religious freedom guaranteed the right of religiously-affiliated schools to require professors to teach in accord with the authority of their church. Fr. Mitchell used never-before published material from the personal papers of the key players to tell the inside story of the conflict at CUA; his account begins with the 1967 faculty-led strike in support of Curran.

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Not a fan of Huckabee, myself. Partly because he paroled a man who later went on to murder a police officer, but mostly because he played the stalking horse for McCain in ’08.

Art Deco
Monday, May 11, AD 2015 8:55pm

Not a fan of Huckabee, myself. Partly because he paroled a man who later went on to murder a police officer, but mostly because

The man he paroled had been convicted of robbery and been given an indeterminate sentence with a maximum of 108 years; Huckabee commuted the sentence, reducing it by 60%. If you fancy people should be kept in prison for life for robbery, you really should explain that to us.

he played the stalking horse for McCain in ’08.
==
And your evidence for that is what? Which other candidates do you fancy were shills? Fred Thompson?

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, May 11, AD 2015 9:36pm

I think Huckabee ought to explain why he didn’t leave it to the parole board. Career criminals ought to be locked up

My evidence is the way Huckabee ran his campaign. He went after Romney and he didn’t go after McCain. At least not that I can recall. Also, he stayed in past the point where he had a reasonable expectation of winning either the nomination or enough delegates to influence the convention. Sure, that’s his right. But I have the right to write him off of my list of supportable candidates for it.
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And then there was the whole just askin’ questions thing.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 2:27am

Art Deco wrote, “If you fancy people should be kept in prison for life for robbery, you really should explain that to us.”
The crime for which an offender is convicted is only one factor in determining sentence and, often, the least significant. In cases of alcohol or drug dependency, treatment programmes in secure residential units may be enough to prevent further offending; some offenders with severe personality disorders should be detained in the State Hospital and only released, as an act of compassion, when age or sickness means they no longer pose a threat to the public. Obviously, most cases fall between the two extremes.
I recall one very experienced Sheriff (the Sheriff is a judge in Scotland) telling me that he attached more importance to an offender’s employment history and family circumstances than to his criminal record and I am sure that is right.

Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 7:12am

The crime for which an offender is convicted is only one factor in determining sentence and, often, the least significant.

Perhaps in the idiot-world of British jurisprudence; we’re not so far gone over here and are less far gone than was the case forty years ago. Judges who confuse punishment ands social work are a danger. C.S. Lewis addressed this question in That Hideous Strength.
==

Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 7:17am

I think Huckabee ought to explain why he didn’t leave it to the parole board.

Who are appointees, not election officials. The utility of delegation is that you husband your time and attention. It’s practical, not moral or ethical.

Career criminals ought to be locked up

Can you define that term with a specificity necessary for the administration of justice? Was the offender in question a ‘career criminal’ or merely an offender? The man in question was 17 years old at the time of his sentencing.

Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 7:19am

My evidence is the way Huckabee ran his campaign. He went after Romney and he didn’t go after McCain.

That’s not what is meant by ‘evidence’.

Donald R. McClarey
Reply to  Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 7:36am

He had eight felony convictions by the time that Huckabee granted his clemency application.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Clemmons

It is hard to predict the future and I do not fault the Huckster for guessing wrong. If he had been an attorney with a criminal law background he would have realized that judges giving a teenager 108 years is highly unusual. That means either the judges erred or they recognized a very dangerous criminal when they saw one.

Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 8:02am

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/a-path-to-murder-the-story-of-maurice-clemmons/

He was convicted of a robbery, a burglary, a common assault, and weapons possession committed during his 17th and 18th year. He committed a string of disciplinary infractions during his 1st years in prison.
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What’s not been mentioned here is that he was returned to prison in 2001 and not released on parole until 2004. The murders took place nine years after he was granted clemency.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 8:07am

In 1990, Clemmons, then 18, was sentenced in Arkansas to 60 years in prison for burglary and theft of property, according to a news account in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Newspaper stories describe a series of disturbing incidents involving Clemmons while he was being tried in Arkansas on various charges.

When Clemmons received the 60-year sentence, he was already serving 48 years on five felony convictions and facing up to 95 more years on charges of robbery, theft of property and possessing a handgun on school property. Records from Clemmons’ sentencing described him as 5-foot-7 and 108 pounds. The crimes were committed when he was 17.

Clemmons served 11 years before being released.

He almost immediately violated parole with yet another robbery.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/maurice-clemmons-man-wanted-for-questioning-has-troubling-criminal-history/

That is not just “robbery” by any stretch of the imagination– they mentioned that he was a habitual criminal. He was also so obviously insane that a Washington judge ordered him to get a mental evaluation, and our judiciary is horrible about that.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 8:53am
Art Deco
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 10:41am

Foxfier, you’re confounding his 1989 conviction with a mess of later charges, most of them in Washington state.
==
The commutation of his sentence in 2000 (a cut in its length by 60%) made possible his parole. That’s not a parole decision itself and the article in the Times makes no reference to any gubernatorial intervention in his 2004 parole. Also, his release on bail in 2009 by Washington State authorities had nothing to do with any decision-maker in Arkansas.

There are roughly 650 multi-victim homicides a year in the U.S. You’re not going to anticipate a convict released from a burglary/robbery rap is going to do that because there simply are not many of these in a year in an ordinary size jurisdiction. Multi-victim homicides with more than three victims are exceedingly unusual and the number bounces around two-dozen a year in this country. Killing four cops is exceedingly rare.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, May 12, AD 2015 1:24pm

No, Art, I am not; you mischaracterized the series of trials in Arkansas as “his 1989 conviction” and claimed he was in jail for “robbery,” and apparently are ignorant of the fact that the reason we know about the ones from when he was 17 is because he was so consistently violent that he was charged as an adult.
He attempted to attack people during his trials multiple times, and at one point hit his own mother with a lock he was attempting to hit an officer with.

What he was in jail for before Huckabee decided to show some cheap mercy:
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2009/11/30/maurice-clemmons-record-update
* Sentenced to 5 years for robbery in Pulaski County, Aug. 3, 1989.

* Sentenced to 8 years for burglary, theft and probation revocation in Pulaski County, Sept. 9, 1989

* Sentenced to an indeterminate amount for aggravated robbery and theft in Pulaski County, Nov. 15, 1989

* Sentenced to 20 years each for burglary and theft of property in Pulaski County, Feb. 23, 1990.

* Sentenced to 6 years for firearm possession in Pulaski County, Nov. 19, 1990.

Tyler said some sentences were concurrent and some consecutive. But the total effect of all these sentences was a sentence of 108 years.

The commutation to *exactly* what was needed to parole him that day was done over the objections of his victims, and the guy was so obviously insane that– as I stated– even a Washington State judge noticed. The last crime he was hit for was when he broke into a state patrolman’s home and stole thousands of dollars worth of stuff– and his gun.
A guy whose first crime was getting caught with a pistol, at school, which he openly stated he intended to use on people.
Who did at least one brute force robbery where he pretended to have a gun, although he only beat the woman over the head to steal her purse when she called his bluff.
Who repeatedly and stupidly threatened or attempted physical violence against those who weren’t giving him what he wanted.
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He was supposed to be in jail.
He had a long record of violence.
You don’t have to go “he will go slaughter four cops who actually care enough about doing their job properly that they meet for coffee before their shift starts to figure out effective tactics for the day” to figure out he was a violent career criminal who’d thrown away every prior chance he’d been given and even responded with greater violence.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, May 13, AD 2015 1:31am

Art Deco asks, “Career criminals ought to be locked up

Can you define that term with a specificity necessary for the administration of justice? Was the offender in question a ‘career criminal’ or merely an offender?”
I believe so. In Scotland, a repute that a party is a common thief, that is, gets his livelihood or supplements it by thieving, is an aggravation of theft. In other words, that he is known as a thief, as someone else is known as a joiner or a plumber. The traditional formula is “and you are habit and repute a thief” and juries do not find this a difficult concept to grasp.

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