The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Indiana's law requiring voters to show photo identification. In short, the court held that the law did not impose an unreasonable burden on potential voters and that the state's interest in limiting voter fraud is legitimate.

Interestingly, the court did not speak through a clear majority opinion. Rather, the 6 justices voting to uphold the law split into two groups of 3 writing separate opinions. One opinion was written by Justice Stevens and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy. The other was written by Justice Scalia and joined by Justices Thomas and Alito. The court's liberals (minus Stevens) voted in dissent.

Maybe if I'm motivated, I'll read the opinions and type up a post on the legal reasoning.

The National Review has now added their opinion against the use of corn-based ethanol for fuel, joining a growing chorus.

Their main argument against corn-based ethanol is its impact on the price of food.

The writing is on the wall. This alternative fuel's days are numbered. It's not a question of if it will be abandoned, but how long it takes our government to move beyond the influence of the corn farmers lobbying efforts. Having Iowa so early in the primary season doesn't help matters.

You may be surprised to learn that it's the founder of Greenpeace.

His reason is based on combatting global warming. Also interesting is his conclusion that there is insufficient proof that humans are causing global warming. He, however, does feel there is a large enough probability that we are the cause that we should take steps to avoid the gamble.

I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people...

Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element.

[Emphasis mine. Read the article here]

So let's get get this straight, shall we Barack? In the same sentence you both criticize negative "Washington"-style politics, and then practice those very politics against Hillary Clinton. The hypocrisy seems blatant.

Local city councils in England have cancelled their celebration of St. George's Day, stating fear of Muslim riots as the reason. According to the article, local officials feared a repeat of the riots that struck in 2001 that left 300 people injured.

In this story we see a perfect microcosm of the challenge that faces the civilized world.

St. George is the patron saint of England (as well as many other nations and peoples), and now many there will not be able to celebrate his feast day because of a gutless surrender to the tyranny of radical Islam.

As is characteristic of radical Islam, the opposition to St. George is based on ignorance. As this article points out, St. George is not a crusader as some people believe. They are mistaking him with another George. Finally, St. George actually is celebrated by numerous Muslims in Lebanon, where he grew up.

But since when did truth and reason influence the radicals and their apologists?

The future of domestic ethanol production is cellulose not corn. Unfortunately, Indiana and many other states will continue to push corn-based ethanol until the bottom of it falls out.

See the full text of his address before the UN today...

In today's address, Pope Benedict analogizes the community of nations--embodied in the UN--to a family. He says that the Church follows with interest and believes the UN's mission reflects humanity's propensity towards good. Yet again the Pope brings us back to his vision of freedom:

In the context of international relations, it is necessary to recognize the higher role played by rules and structures that are intrinsically ordered to promote the common good, and therefore to safeguard human freedom. These regulations do not limit freedom. On the contrary, they promote it when they prohibit behaviour and actions which work against the common good, curb its effective exercise and hence compromise the dignity of every human person.

In the name of freedom, there has to be a correlation between rights and duties, by which every person is called to assume responsibility for his or her choices, made as a consequence of entering into relations with others.

The Pope focused on 3 roles the UN plays: emphasizing the responsibility of nations to protect their citizens, creating rules and guidelines to protect the environment, and finally creating guidelines to protect human dignity. He expands on the matter of human dignity:

Now, as then, this principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom. The founding of the United Nations, as we know, coincided with the profound upheavals that humanity experienced when reference to the meaning of transcendence and natural reason was abandoned, and in consequence, freedom and human dignity were grossly violated.

Generally Benedict spoke favorably of the UN's actions in regards to human dignity, but he also presented a challenge that faces the UN (could be interpreted as a criticism in a different light):

[Human rights] are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks. This great variety of viewpoints must not be allowed to obscure the fact that not only rights are universal, but so too is the human person, the subject of those rights....

Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal.

Thus Pope Benedict affirms that rights spring from natural law and not from the mere enactment of men. This, I believe, he says is to be considered as a cautionary principle to individual nations and to the United Nations itself.

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake, with epicenter in southeastern Illinois, struck this morning. It was the first earthquake I've ever felt. Not a big deal, but it was disorienting to be awoken by it. While 5.2 isn't a big magnitude, quake energy travels more efficiently through midwestern soil, so it can be felt more intensely over a much larger distance. This quake, small by California standards, was felt in 7 states and even caused structural damage to a building in Louisville.



So now for a little bit of midwestern earthquake trivia... The midwest does not include any plate boundaries like the west coast, so seismic zones here are a result from older buried faults (in a sense, this is how I've seen it explained). This earthquake was in a region called the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, which is related to but not part of the more famous New Madrid Fault. The New Madrid Fault lies at the borders of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois, and it southeast of the Wabash zone.

Earthquakes have occurred several times before in the Wabash zone, with 5.4 being the biggest recorded. The New Madrid, on the other hand, was responsible for some of the nation's most famous and destructive earthquakes. Click here for more information on the geology and history of the New Madrid Fault and associated earthquakes.

Hahaha it's so true though:



And of course, this unaired pilot of "24" in 1994 reminds us how fragile the internet was in its youth:

I watched on TV the papal Mass at the Nationals ballpark in Washington, DC today. In the Pope's homily he stressed a different theme than the one he touched on in his address at the White House yesterday.

Today one of the Pope's major topics was the nature of Christian faith as a constant conversion to Christ--a conversion, of which, the Church is an integral guiding hand:

As we have heard throughout this Easter season, the Church was born of the Spirit's gift of repentance and faith in the risen Lord. In every age she is impelled by the same Spirit to bring to men and women of every race, language and people (cf. Rev 5:9) the good news of our reconciliation with God in Christ....

Christ established his Church on the foundation of the Apostles (cf. Rev 21:14) as a visible, structured community which is at the same time a spiritual communion, a mystical body enlivened by the Spirit's manifold gifts, and the sacrament of salvation for all humanity (cf. Lumen Gentium, 8). In every time and place, the Church is called to grow in unity through constant conversion to Christ, whose saving work is proclaimed by the Successors of the Apostles and celebrated in the sacraments. This unity, in turn, gives rise to an unceasing missionary outreach, as the Spirit spurs believers to proclaim "the great works of God" and to invite all people to enter the community of those saved by the blood of Christ and granted new life in his Spirit.

The world needs this witness! Who can deny that the present moment is a crossroads, not only for the Church in America but also for society as a whole? It is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of God. The Church, too, sees signs of immense promise in her many strong parishes and vital movements, in the enthusiasm for the faith shown by so many young people, in the number of those who each year embrace the Catholic faith, and in a greater interest in prayer and catechesis. At the same time she senses, often painfully, the presence of division and polarization in her midst, as well as the troubling realization that many of the baptized, rather than acting as a spiritual leaven in the world, are inclined to embrace attitudes contrary to the truth of the Gospel....

We have heard Saint Paul tell us that all creation is even now "groaning" in expectation of that true freedom which is God's gift to his children (Rom 8:21-22), a freedom which enables us to live in conformity to his will. Today let us pray fervently that the Church in America will be renewed in that same Spirit, and sustained in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel to a world that longs for genuine freedom (cf. Jn 8:32), authentic happiness, and the fulfillment of its deepest aspirations!

Note also the reference to "true freedom" that Benedict includes in the final paragraph.

Pope Benedict met with President Bush and visited the White House today. Click here for the full text of his remarks.

The following paragraph stood out to me as a powerful and succinct display of the Pope's philosophy on freedom:

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience -- almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24). Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation", and a democracy without values can lose its very soul (cf. Centesimus Annus, 46). Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.

This echoes a theme that Pope Benedict has expounded before, including in his now famous homily at funeral of Pope John Paul II. In that homily he spoke of the tyranny of the ego. Essentially he says that since we live in a society, a community, if we define freedom as the ability to do whatever we want, then that in essence we no longer have freedom at all. In truth, freedom must be much more than that; it must include responsibility and respect for humankind.

Back on March 10 I called on the U.S. and other nations to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing. I wrote that before the protests and government response in Tibet called the world's attention to the issue.

My main reason in calling for the boycott was China's forcible relocation of poor people from vast sectors of the city and the destruction of their property. While I was concerned with China's overall human rights record, I believed the world could not condone through their attendance China's bullying as part of their Olympics preparation.

While we do not know the extent of the Chinese response in Tibet, and whether they used inappropriate violence, we do know that the Chinese have long oppressed the Tibetan people and that they continue to do so through mandatory "political education" classes that call on them to renounce the Dalai Lama. We also know that the Chinese government stifled the media in Tibet, which is why we cannot know the details of the events there.

The world also sees China's actions in "guarding" the Olympic torch as it has made its way around the globe. Chinese paramilitary guards in jumpsuits accompany the torch everywhere it goes and they forced both a French and an American torchbearer to not wear items bearing Tibetan flags. The Japanese, thankfully, have refused to allow the Chinese guards to accompany the torch on its way through their country.

Finally, the spineless and corrupt International Olympic Committee has become complicit in the Chinese communists' thuggish attempts to silence criticism of their policies and abuses. The IOC has stated that athletes who display a Tibetan flag anywhere on Olympics premises--even in their own rooms--will be expelled from the games.

Now more than ever it is obvious that if we don't boycott, the Olympics will become a symbol of oppression, not of unity and harmony.

While the polls seem to be in flux in Indiana and Pennsylvania, the general consensus suggests that Barack Obama's momentum continues unabated. An LA Times/Bloomberg poll has him down only 5 points in Pennsylvania and now in the lead in Indiana.

I'm not surprised to see him leading here. Based on our demographics and on the demographics of the states he's been winning, I suggested to friends over a month back that the Hoosier state would go to Obama.

This brings me to the media's characterization of Indiana. The LA Times deemed Indiana "...another Rust Belt state that should play to her [Clinton's] strengths among blue-collar voters."

I understand why outsiders would be inclined to lump Indiana into the category of Rust Belt states, but that placement is incomplete. Certainly Indiana has towns and regions that resemble Ohio and Pennsylvania economically: mostly the northern and eastern portions of the state. But we also resemble states that have gone for Obama: Illinois, Iowa, etc. Further, Indianapolis is a city that has broken out of its rust belt doldrums. While still very industrial, the city has compensated with insurance, government, life sciences, and service jobs.

Finally the most industrial portion of the state of Indiana is the steel-producing northwest. But this area is in the backyard of Obama's Chicago base. Thus I would not be surprised if this region's support of Hillary Clinton ends up being less than the support she gained in Youngstown, Ohio and Pittsburgh.

Today (at 11:59 p.m.) is the due date for Federal individual tax returns. I had mine done a couple months ago, so no worries in that department. But this day does give me an idea.

Why have national tax day on April 15? That's about as far away from Election Day as possible--which, I'm sure was the point in choosing April 15.

I say, move tax day to to the Monday before Election Day. Lincoln stated that one of the great threats to the American experiment in democracy would come when the government could buy the support of the people using their money. It is an easy urge to expect government to do this or that, or to fund this or that. Let's put tax day in a place where people are reminded that they are the ones financing it all.

If I hadn't become so accustomed to government abuses, I'd be surprised by this story on Slashdot. According to the story, six U.S. cities have been caught reducing the length of their yellow stop lights in order to catch more people running lights and thus increasing the revenue brought in by their red-light cameras.

Unbelievable.

Last Friday I discussed the battle between cable and telecom providers in providing bandwidth to the home. Now I'll discuss the battle between content providers, the companies who want to beam us the television, movies, and music we so desire.

Music

Apple Inc. is now the undisputed music delivery leader in the world. iTunes sales have overtaken even Walmart's music sales. CD sales are flat, while the download market continues to grow.


Television & Movies

Obviously the cable companies are still dominant in providing pay-television. But that dominance is now under full assault. Satellite-providers have provided competition for quite some time, but now there are 2 newcomers to the fight: the telecom companies and internet/computer companies.

On the telecom side, as I already discussed, AT&T and Verizon are both getting in the business. On the internet/computer side, the competition is directed at the cable companies' on-demand services. Apple has sold TV shows on iTunes for a couple years, and now they're selling and renting movies as well. With their AppleTV settop box, they have a direct player in the living room.

But Apple is hardly alone. Microsoft sells and rents movies via its XBox Live service, leveraging its massive preexisting presence in the home. Amazon has established a successful music and video download service. And now Blockbuster is making a serious play: they're planning a box like the AppleTV, and they are likely to buy Circuit City.

This battle is more interesting than the bandwidth providers battle, because it is not just about numbers or what you plug your devices into. This battle is about how you access the media. Are we going to be glued to televisions in a passive way like we have been for the past 50 years, or will television be tied into the internet into an interactive and flexible manner?

If you care about the interests of the Democrat Party and of the nation as a whole, you'll consider a vote for Hillary Clinton in Indiana's Democratic primary on May 6. Click the image to join the Facebook group I created to that effect:



These remarks by Barack Obama were part of my motivation to create this group.

Back to one my favorite topics... the battle for delivering media to the house.

The battle is actually two-fold: over who controls the "pipes" that deliver the media, and over who distributes the actual content.

To the first end, the pipes, the battle is basically between cable companies, the telecom companies, and satellite providers. While satellite may always have a niche in rural areas, it is not reliable enough to dominate. So that leaves cable versus telecom for the vast majority of consumers.

Telecom has the decided upper hand. They are quickly evolving their networks to be fiber optic-rich, and even putting in fiber to the home in many cases. Cable, on the other hand, is stuck on coaxial copper. Both AT&T and Verizon are spreading into the television market, with UVerse and FIOS respectively.

Ultimately, the fiber gives them a bandwidth advantage over cable. While this may not be realized right now, as bandwidth demands rise (which they certainly will with the widespread adoption of HDTV and rich media web), the advantage will be realized from a business perspective.

Recently Comcast announced a tweak to their network that allows for 50 MB/sec downloads, at a hefty price, in some parts of the country. This easily exceeds DSL, as does the regular 10 MB/sec cable speed, and it also exceeds Verizon's current fiber residential bandwidth. But don't be deceived. Fiber is capable of a much much higher bandwidth than copper, and Verizon and AT&T's fiber networks will quickly outpace cable.

So, in conclusion, I wouldn't invest in Comcast or other cable companies as a long-term play. My prediction is that in a decade, they will either have had to remake themselves or they will be gobbled up by the telecoms (old or new). I also wouldn't be surprised to see a third major telecom arise to challenge AT&T and Verizon. Indiana is a good case-study. Through deregulation, Indiana has had several regional telecoms grow rapidly. As other states adopt Indiana's progressive approach, these smaller telecoms will become more powerful and will merge to challenge the big boys.

...

I'll talk about the content side of the media battle in a future installment.

I was in full agreement with Wired Magazine when, in their alternative energies article, called for increased use of nuclear power. I also supported their argument that there will be no one magic bullet to produce energy and that we should thus pursue multiple options that may be more appropriate in some areas than others.

Case-in-point: Texas. A study in the Lonestar State suggests that wind power will be a cheaper and more efficient way to increase the power on their electrical grid than conventional power plants.

Okay so unless you live in a cave, you've heard of the so-called superdelegates and the role they play in the Democratic Party's presidential nomination process. But did you know that not all superdelegates are equal?

According to DNC rules, each state party chairman (they are among the superdelegates) may appoint a certain number of additional superdelegates, roughly according to the Democratic population of their state. Thus a given chairman will nominate others who are likely or committed to voting the same way as himself. Say goodbye to 'one man, one vote.'

The most extreme example is the chairman of the California Democratic Party who gets to appoint 5 additional superdelegates to the national convention. This effectively gives him 6 votes.

...

I predict that when the general election is over, the DNC will try to quietly change its nomination procedures and rules. The process is exposing the party to scorn and charges of being undemocratic. These changes will be made, I believe, whether or not their national convention goes smoothly.

Back on February 26, I called the Democratic race for Barak Obama. As opposed to the lackluster performance of my several election-related predictions this season, this one appears to be holding up.

The same delegate math that worked against Hillary Clinton then, still works against her now even more so. According to Real Clear Politics' count, Obama has a 137 advantage in total delegates (pledged delegates + super delegates who have indicated commitment to a particular candidate). Hillary didn't gain much ground at all, despite all the media's talk of momentum, after Ohio and Texas. She failed to achieve a double-digit win in Ohio and she actually got fewer delegates out of Texas than Obama once that state's caucuses were complete.

The only remaining Democratic primaries are Pennsylvania (April 22, 187 delegates), Indiana (May 6, 85 delegates), North Carolina (May 6, 134 delegates), West Virginia (May 13, 39 delegates), Kentucky (May 20, 60 delegates), Oregon (May 20, 65 delegates), Montana (June 3, 25 delegates), and South Dakota (June 3, 23 delegates).

Hillary's lead has completely collapsed in Pennsylvania, with some polls even showing Obama up there. She'll probably pick up a win there, but the margin will only be enough to give her a handful of delegates. She has a modest lead in Indiana and could pick up a few more delegates here (though I think Obama will erase that lead by the primary time). However, any gains she's made at this point will be erased in North Carolina where Obama has a double-digit and growing lead.

Kentucky and West Virginia will give her a few more delegates, but Obama's strength in the remaining states could easily erase that advantage. At best, therefore, Hillary's delegate deficit will be 100 at the end of primary season. At best.

The remaining superdelegates would then have to vote in an extreme majority in favor of Clinton at the convention to hand her the nomination.

Andrew Walden has an article detailing what he concludes is a significant trend of conversions from Islam to Christianity. He quotes an al-Jazeera article that focused on diminishing numbers of Muslims in Africa.

To me the trend is still speculative. I'd like to see more concrete data. However, this could be a positive force in the world, if individuals come to see the light of Christianity, either through conversion or through internal reform of Islam away from violence and oppression.

Ah, it's always great when crazy spouses join forces. Heinz' ridiculous statements during her husband's candidacy certainly hurt Kerry's chances then, and Michelle Obama looks poised to follow in her footsteps this election.

From the interviews and speeches including Michelle Obama, my observation is that she--like her husband--is highly intelligent. But she also said that until this campaign, she hadn't been proud of America. That speaks volumes about her attitude towards this country and is the reason I give her the "crazy" label.

If she doesn't repeat such statements in the general election run against McCain, I think the damage to her husband will be minimal. But if she repeats similar sentiments, I guarantee Republicans will run with it aggressively, and rightfully so.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has criticized the media's coverage of the Court's decisions and opinions. The AP paraphrased Scalia's remarks this way:

The media often make it appear as though the court is reaching policy judgments on its own rather than basing its decisions on the text of the law at issue in a case, Scalia said.

In some instances, said Scalia, the news media leave the impression that no ruling based on the text of a law "is even possible."

For conservatives such as myself, this misconstruction of the Court's role by the media is quite unsurprising. Many of the Court's own members mistakenly construe its role as reaching policy judgments, even if they would not openly portray their jurisprudence in this light.

Another problem in the media's coverage of the Court is oversimplification, sometimes extreme enough to amount to misinformation. A prominent recent example is the coverage of the D.C. gun case before the Court. While most of the justices seemed sympathetic to the challenger of the law in oral arguments, many headlines implied that the Court had already decided the matter, delivering 1st Amendment proponents a decisive victory.

In reality, when the justices do publish their opinions, the scope of 1st Amendment rights (and the corresponding range of allowable limitations on those rights) will likely remain an open question.