May 2005 Archives

May's Harper's Magazine examines the Evangelical movement in Colorado Springs, with an article by Jeff Sharlet titled Soldiers of Christ -
Inside America's most powerful megachurch

Certainly the Evangelical movement and its presence in The Springs is a topic worthy of attention, and people everywhere should have a good understanding of it. This article, however, might do more to hinder understanding than help.

Let's take a look at some bits:

They are drawn as if by magnetic forces; they speak of Colorado Springs, home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history, both as a last stand and as a kind of utopia in the making. They say it is new and unique and precious, embattled by enemies, and also that it is “traditional,” a blueprint for what everybody wants, and envied by enemies. The city itself is unspectacular, a grid of wide western avenues lined with squat, gray and beige box buildings, only a handful of them taller than a dozen stories. Local cynics point out that if you put Colorado Springs on a truck and carted it to Nebraska, it would make Omaha look lovely. But the architecture is not what draws Christians looking for clean living. The mountains help, but there are other mountain towns. What Colorado Springs offers, ultimately, is a story.
[...]
Crime, of course, looms over this story. Not the actual facts of it—the burglary rate in and around Colorado Springs exceeds that in New York City and Los Angeles—but the idea of crime: a faith in the absence of it. And of politics, too: Colorado Springs’ evangelicals believe they live without it, in a carved-out space for civility and for like-minded dedication to common-sense principles. Even pollution plays a part: Christian conservatives there believe that they breathe cleaner air, live on ground untainted by the satanic fires of nineteenth-century industry—despite the smog that collects against the foothills of the Rockies and the cyanide, from a century of mining, that is leaching into the aquifers and mountain streams.

That description may bear no resemblance to the Colorado Springs you will see if you visit. The Springs has wide, pedestrian friendly boulevards in the downtown area, grand views of Pike's Peak from every part of town, new residential neighborhoods of the sort that many Americans aspire to move into, and architecture that you would expect in a city of that size.

But what really caught my eye was the part about pollution. Cyanide is used in gold extraction, and the Springs was never much of a gold mining town. A quick search reveals that, sure enough, the locals are baffled by Sharlet's claim. Also, air in The Springs is some of the cleanest in the nation. The citation of burglary statistics is vexing, too. Violent crime rates there are low.

But wait, there's more:

The cover image of Our City, God’s Word is a surreal photo collage in which the Air Force Academy chapel—a row of silver, daggerlike structures that is probably the cruelest-looking church in America[...]

Here's the Chapel -

The results on your cruel-o-meter may vary.

The bulk of the article deals with the nutzo fundies around The Springs, scary stuff, and I'd rather they kept religion out of politics, but my impression is that Jeff Sharlet isn't a reliable source. He's got a thing about religion, it seems, and perhaps he's just playing to the prejudices of Harper's readers. You can find a website he runs here.

Here are a series of spectacular images from yesterday's eruption.

Enjoy.

The erosion of Fourth Amendment rights, illustrated in real life:

A middle school in Pennsylvania was placed in "lockdown" at 2PM on Tuesday:

Students were kept in their classrooms while three dogs searched the building, looking for marijuana, cocaine, crack, amphetamines, heroin and ecstasy.

The dogs were claimed to have "alerted" on 31 lockers -- this school might be the very fulcrum of the global trade in illegal drugs. So the authorities padlocked the highly suspicious lockers (along with neighboring ones), then went about securing a search warrant.
[...]
Oh yeah, no drugs were found. Zero-for-thirty-one. Better days ahead, drug sniffing pooches.

Of course these dog 'alerts' are cause to search your home, your person, or your car, because if we're going to win this war on drug there's no room for antiquated ideas like those in the Constitution.

Virginia Postrel, in today's New York Times:

But what exactly makes a story a lemon? Beyond getting the facts straight, good journalism is not as easy to define as a car's accident or repair rate.

Some people say they want "just the facts," and fault reporters for introducing too much analysis. Others complain that stories do just the opposite, treating all sides in a conflict as equally valid. The news-buying public seems to want contradictory things.

But one person's contradiction is another's market niche. Those differences help answer an economic puzzle: if bias is a product flaw, why does it not behave like auto repair rates, declining under competitive pressure?
[...]
In a competitive news market, [...] producers can use bias to differentiate their products and stave off price competition. Bias increases consumer loyalty.

Reporters who firmly believe themselves to be disinterested observers may further this strategy if they share their audience's assumptions about how the world works and, hence, how to interpret particular facts.
[...]
But all the information is out there. Indeed, a wide-ranging reader would learn more from the two differently biased reports than from the raw unemployment figures.

I don't read news for the facts alone, I'm looking for analysis. It's impossible to analyze the events of the world without injecting personal biases. I would like to know the perspective and philosophy of the person reporting, and I want to hear the news from a variety of perspectives. As Postrel notes, I'll be better informed for it.

What I don't want is a monolith, even with the best of intentions.

Have you seen this lake?

via The Modulator.

Headline: Colombia Announces Record Cocaine Seizure.

Leftist guerrillas, a far-right paramilitary group and a drug trafficking organization all had a stake in 15 tons of cocaine seized in southwest Colombia, the largest haul ever in this South American country, police said Saturday.

The $400-million (U.S.) worth of cocaine was discovered by authorities Thursday hidden in a wood-lined underground chamber near the Pacific coast.

This seems like the perfect time to declare victory and end the drug war.

Radley Balko wrote an op-ed on the DEA's prosecution of pain management doctors. DEA administrator Karen Tandy responded.

Balko's answer to the Tandy's article will tell you some things you need to know: Why you might have trouble getting adequate pain medication if you're ever seriously ill, and why (to borrow Samizdata's catchphrase) the DEA is not your friend.

Bill Johnson has a good column in today's Rocky:

It has to be one of the dumbest laws, ever. And I don't even own or like pit bulls. It's nothing personal, only that I'd never keep any animal that eats as much or more than I do.

Still, I can weep for the pit bulls of Denver, particularly for the puppies that never did anything other than get born into the breed.
[...]
It has been eight years since I last had a dog, God rest him. And the one thing I truly know is I would have never given him over to the dogcatcher to be killed simply because he was a beagle.

I would hardly care if a judge in the city where I lived said it was the rule and the law. Yet this has been happening since Monday in Denver, when a state law prohibiting bans of "breed-specific" dogs was overturned and the city's moratorium on pit bull confiscation and killing was lifted.

And no one much is saying a thing.

It is why we need to speak with William Suro. He is a veterinarian of 45 years, who in 1988 started the MaxFund, a nonprofit that provides medical care for injured animals with no known owners, which seeks new homes for them.

It is a shelter that has never killed a single dog.
[...]
Yes, I tell him, but aren't pit bulls actually the human flesh-ripping monsters they are portrayed to be?

Bill Suro snickers at my naivete.

"I've been a veterinarian for 45 years, and I've never once been attacked or bitten by a pit bull. There are other breeds where I have gone into an examination room and really been on my guard. I will not tell you which, but they scare me."

Cities like Denver, he says, whip up pit bull hysteria. And that is all it is, he said. People now all believe every pit bull "is a coiled and snarling attacker. It's nonsense."
[...]
"It should know there have been fatal attacks in the U.S. by Pomeranians, that half a dozen attacks that caused death or serious injuries were by cocker spaniels."

And then he raises an issue I had not contemplated, and which I do not lend much credence to. But I will give him his say because it matches what has happened the last two days in the city:

"There appears a racial end of this," Bill Suro says.

"Look at the dogs that have been impounded, and the surnames of their owners. . . . They aren't killing dogs from Cherry Creek. They pick on the easiest people to pick on, the ones who give up easiest," he said, adding that he has forwarded this claim to the American Civil Liberties Union.

What happens, I ask, when all of the Denver pit bulls have been rounded up and put down?

He would not want to be a Malamute, he said.

A male Malamute attacked and killed a 7-year-old girl in Fruita last Saturday night.

"It is not the breed," an unsmiling Bill Suro said.

When reached for comment, Edgar, my 11+ year old Malamute, wagged his tail and laid back down to continue his nap.

Stephen Green is joining the Front Range Libertarian Bloggers With Little Babies Club.

There are at least three of us now.

Natalia Dmytruk's story is too good to not pass along.

Dmytruk, 48, made sign language her vocation and today interprets for Ukraine's state-run television. Her face and hands appear in a little box at the bottom of the screen as she sends out the news on the mid-morning and early afternoon telecasts to the hearing-impaired.
[...]
Election monitors had reported widespread vote-rigging immediately after the runoff between Yushchenko and the Russian-backed prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych . With Yanukovych leading by a slim margin, the opposition urged Ukrainians to gather in Independence Square in front of the parliament building to protest the results.

Each time Dmytruk went to Independence Square with her 20-year-old son and teenage daughter and saw the thousands of protesters, she felt herself transformed .

"I was impressed by the expression on my children's faces. I was so fired up by other people I observed passionately voicing their discontent," she said in an interview this week. "It was that special spirit and energy of people coming together, uneasily at first, but looking in the same direction."

Dmytruk would then return to work and broadcast the state's version of events.

"I was observing it from both sides, and I had a very negative feeling," she said. "After every broadcast I had to render in sign language, I felt dirty. I wanted to wash my hands."
[...]
On Nov. 25, she walked into her studio for the 11 a.m. broadcast. "I was sure I would tell people the truth that day," she said. "I just felt this was the moment to do it."

Under her long silk sleeve, she had tied an orange ribbon to her wrist, the color of the opposition and a powerful symbol in what would become known as the Orange Revolution. She knew that when she raised her arm, the ribbon would show.

The newscaster was reading the officially scripted text about the results of the election, and Dmytruk was signing along. But then, "I was not listening anymore," she said.

In her own daring protest, she signed: "I am addressing everybody who is deaf in the Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies. . . . And I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe you will see me again -- " she concluded, hinting at what fate might await her. She then continued signing the rest of officially scripted news.

"My legs became so heavy. I was terribly scared," she said.

Dmytruk's live silent signal helped spread the news, and more people began spilling into the streets to contest the vote.

H/T to Randall McElroy at Catallarchy.

Unlike Matt Welch, Bruce Springsteen's politics didn't drive me away.

It was The Boss's insipid music. I don't think I'm alone on that.

Baby we were born to run... agghhh.

Ya know, he would have been a fine country artist. At least as good a Clay Aiken.

This is a true story. All names have been changed, except mine, because it's a little late for that.

The bar I tended in South Texas had more than its share of characters, which sounds quaint and Cheers-ish, but in reality it was just a pain, and sometimes a little scary.

(Telling question; 'Is that a bullet hole in the ceiling?')

One of our more annoying regulars was old Bill. Bill was in his sixties, I think. Stringy white hair, missing teeth. He looked and smelled as though he slept outdoors, and for all I know he might have. He would come into the bar in early afternoon and start ordering Old Charter, and continue ordering until he had no money left. Frequently he would keep ordering after he had no money, and we would ban him from the place until he found some cash to settle the tab. That might be when the next month's pension check came in.

Another regular customer, David, surprised us all one day by hiring old Bill as a handyman. David was in construction or some such business, I was never sure exactly what. He was always neatly dressed, polite, and seemed reasonably intelligent. I saw his act of hiring Bill as pure charity, because Bill was often in no mental state to contribute much effort into anything. I knew David was taking a risk.

Pretty soon the risk became clearly visible. David told old Bill to change a tire on a trailer, and when he was done David hooked it up to a truck and took off down US Highway 83 toward Harlingen. About halfway there the wheel on the trailer gained its independence and bounced down the road.

David pulled the truck and trailer off the highway and set off to retrieve the wheel. It had come to rest a few hundred yards behind him, and he was going to have to roll or carry it up to the truck. He was relieved when a pickup stopped at the wheel, the driver put it in the back of his truck, and drove it up to where David was. David started to wave in gratitude...and the pickup kept on going down the highway, David's wheel still in the back. The good Samaritan turned out to be a rather brazen thief.

When David finally made it back to his garage he found the lug nuts right where the trailer had been parked. Old Bill had simply forgotten to put them back on when he replaced the wheel.

David was in the bar a night later telling all about how old Bill had caused the whole mess. I was amazed that he kept Bill in his employ after that but it seemed David's charity knew no bounds.

In fact, it wasn't long after that incident that David gave old Bill a task requiring more responsibility, driving the truck and trailer up to Corpus Christi to deliver supplies for a project.

As noted in part I of this series, the highways leading North out of the Valley are crawling with law enforcement. Sure enough, old Bill was pulled over while en route. I doubt he could drive a straight line even while sober. That being a a major drug smuggling route the officers asked Bill if they could look in the trailer.

Why not? It was just construction supplies.

No one was caught more off guard than old Bill when the officer hit the jackpot. The trailer was loaded with dope, and Bill soon found himself behind bars.

Old Bill was back out of jail just a few weeks later. That's pretty fast considering the size of the haul, but I'm sure he told the cops everything he knew, and they had to figure he wasn't anything more than the driver. As for David, I never saw him again, and last I knew he was never caught. He had picked a perfect mule, since old Bill was too addled to make a very good witness.

Charity isn't always what it seems.

Catallarchy is again commemorating May Day with a series of posts concerning the past century of democide by socialism. It's not to be missed.