Debunking "A Tale of Two Cities"

You know, now that the holidays are over, I can spend a little time clearing out my email. And what do I find? A message from my dad! Let's see what he has to say!

Aw, it's cute. It really is. I love it when unsubstantiated facts and statistical anomalies are stirred together and turn into fertilizer. And this one has tables and everything! In fact, it looks something like this.

A Tale of Two Cities

	Chicago, IL	Houston, TX
Population	2.7 million	2.15 million
Median HH Income	$38,600	$37,000
% African-American	38.9%	24%
% Hispanic	29.9%	44%
% Asian	5.5%	6%
% Non-Hispanic White	28.7%	26%

Pretty similar until you compare the following:

	Chicago, IL	Houston, TX
Concealed Carry gun law	no	yes
# of Gun Stores	0	184 - Dedicated gun stores plus 1500 - legal places to buy guns- Walmart, K-mart, sporting goods, etc.
Homicides, 2012	1,806	207
Homicides per 100K	38.4	9.6
Avg. January high temperature (F)	31	63

Conclusion: Cold weather causes murder

Now, my dad is a reasonably smart person, so I can't assume that this is evidence of incipient Alzheimer's or anything. In fact, mostly, it looks like he just forwarded somebody else's data, without bothering to fact-check it (I'm sure most of us have relatives who do that). But since it's sitting there stinking up my inbox, I guess it deserves an answer.

First off, let's start with the fact that any time the NRA tries to claim that Chicago's "unreasonable gun laws" don't do any good, it ignores the fact that Chicago is surrounded by unreasonably loose gun laws, and anybody who wants a gun just needs to drive an hour to get someplace where they can buy one without a problem. So, you know, that part's crap - Chicago's laws have minimal effect because those laws have been nullified. Or, if you really want to look at how it works:

More than a quarter of the firearms seized on the streets here by the Chicago Police Department over the past five years were bought just outside city limits in Cook County suburbs, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Others came from stores around Illinois and from other states, like Indiana, less than an hour’s drive away. Since 2008, more than 1,300 of the confiscated guns, the analysis showed, were bought from just one store, Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale, Ill., within a few miles of Chicago’s city limits.

Now, let's look at the statistics as presented. Assuming they're accurate (and we'll get to that in a second), remember the phrase "pretty similar until you compare the following." Because, just taking them at face value, you have a 15% difference in African American populations, and a 14% difference in Hispanic populations. Anybody who thinks those numbers are "pretty similar" either failed statistics, or never graduated high school.

But you can just feel free to pull out your Klan membership card and claim that the higher number of blacks explain the difference in the murder rate. (Trust me, the argument has been made.) Of course, you'd then also have to explain how the lower percentage of Hispanics has affected these statistics, and I'd LOVE to hear you try to argue around that corner.

But then, just for fun, let's consider the REAL facts. (You remember "facts," right? Those things Fox News has no time for?) First of all, this link here goes to a Cost of Living calculator. Now, I want you to do a little homework (calm down, it isn't difficult). Compare the costs of living between Houston and Chicago.

Done? Did you notice that tricky little 22% percent (average) difference in the cost of living? So that a person making $78,000 in Houston would need to earn $100,000 to live in the same style in Chicago? Hmmm... I wonder if that has any effect?

But, you know, those numbers in the chart still seem a little off. And statistical analysis is probably a real pain when you're working with incorrect data, isn't it?

So I went looking, and it seems that there's this thing the census bureau does, and it's called the American Community Survey. But those are all these tables, filled with numbers and stuff, and I don't want to make anybody's head hurt worse than it probably does. So I found a website that extracts numbers from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and you know, it's funny. There seems to be a discrepancy here. Just a slight one.

Because, as it turns out, the median household income for the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet Illinois metro area was $59,261 in 2012. Not $38,600, as claimed. Wow, that's a little bit of a difference, isn't it?

And look here: the median household income for the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Texas metro area was $55,910 in 2012. Not $37,000. That's kind of interesting, too.

But, you know what else? I seem to remember just a couple of months ago, when it was big news that Chicago was the "murder capital of the USA." But, funny thing. The number of homicides wasn't 1,806, like that cute little table claimed. Seems like it was more like 500 or so. Isn't that odd?

But let's check that, shall we? How about we look at the FBI's official data? And we poke around for a while, and we see that, sure enough, the number under "Murder and non-negligent manslaughter" for Chicago was exactly 500. Kind of a round number - you know, the kind of number that might stick in your head if you had any interest in actual facts, instead of... well, I don't want to call it "fecal matter," because that would be rude. But still...

So they were... well, maybe they were off by a little bit. Roughly 1306 homicides off, to be exact: they were wrong by almost three times the actual figure! I wonder how they did with the number of homicides in Houston? Well, right there, they were MUCH closer! Houston had 217 homicides, instead of the 207 in the table! That's so much closer! I mean, it's still wrong, but it's so much better than they've been doing!

But still, it seems like a lot more people have been killed in Chicago than in Houston, doesn't it? That's just weird. Is there some sort of difference between the Chicago mobster and the Texas cowboy that could account for these numbers? I wonder if anybody has looked into this problem?

Efforts to compare the strictness of gun laws and the level of violence across major American cities are fraught with contradiction and complication, not least because of varying degrees of coordination between local and state laws and differing levels of enforcement. In New York City, where homicides and shootings have decreased, the gun laws are generally seen as at least as strict as Chicago's, and the state laws in New York and many of its neighboring states are viewed as still tougher than those in and around Illinois. Philadelphia, like cities in many states, is limited in writing gun measures that go beyond those set by Pennsylvania law. Some city officials there have chafed under what they see as relatively lax state controls...

"The way the laws are structured facilitates the flow of those guns to hit our streets," Garry F. McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, said in an interview, later adding, "Chicago may have comprehensive gun laws, but they are not strict because the sanctions don't exist."

So, really, even if you used accurate numbers and factored in socioeconomic data, the numbers wouldn't really mean a thing, would they? It's almost as if this email was comparing two completely unrelated things, isn't it?

I wonder if whoever put together the original chart knew that when he wrote it?

A Quiet Revolution

Gay marriage seems to have come to New Mexico. Under the radar, and buoyed by a force no stronger than a simple reading of the law.

In July, State Attorney General Gary King noticed something that state Republicans would have preferred to keep hidden away. New Mexico law does not prohibit gay marriage. Of course, it doesn't specifically authorize it, either, but up until now, nobody has banned it. And any attempts to do so appear to be unconstitutional.

The Associated Press reports that King made the argument after the court asked him to weigh in on a lawsuit filed by a gay Santa Fe couple who were denied a marriage license. In his filing, King urged the court to approve more broadly of gay marriage rights in a ruling in favor of the men.

"New Mexico’s guarantee of equal protection to its citizens demands that same-sex couples be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage in the same way and to the same extent as other New Mexico citizens," King said in the filing.

On the strength of that, on Wednesday, Dona Ana County clerk Lynn Ellins, began issuing marriage certificates to gay couples in Las Cruces, NM. Nobody told him that he could - he simply noted that nobody could tell him that he couldn't.

And today, in Albuquerque, a judge ordered the county clerk of the most populous county in New Mexico to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, stating that any seeming prohibitions in New Mexico statutes against same-sex marriage "are unconstitutional and unenforceable."

In his ruling, Judge Alan Malott quoted Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico State Constitution, which is pretty straight-forward (so to speak).

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any person be denied equal protection of the laws. Equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person.

So now, with roughly a hundred same-sex couples legally married in the state of New Mexico, any action by the state government (or our Republican governor Susana Martinez) will be met with an almost-unwinnable lawsuit.

So it would appear that gay marriage is here to stay in New Mexico. Not through what the GOP will undoubtedly be calling "judicial activism," but simply through strict adherence to the law.

That's gonna leave a mark - a big, rainbow-colored one.

No Stars for the Lone Star State

Andrew Jackson was no intellectual. Sporadically educated but still a war hero and lawyer (and occasionally a slave owner and land speculator), he was unlike the well-spoken, educated and cultured men who'd been elected before him. And, much like in France after the Revolution, his election led to an unusual movement: education wasn't merely considered unimportant, it was actively spurned. The people began a celebration of the "common man," the "salt of the earth." You know, morons.

One result of this: in all but three states, the licensing requirements for doctors were repealed, to allow any man the ability to practice medicine. In 1850, in a survey for the Massachusetts legislature, Lemuel Shattuck reported that ""Any one, male or female, learned or ignorant, an honest man or a knave, can assume the name of physician, and 'practice' upon any one, to cure or to kill, as either may happen, without accountability. It's a free country!" (This also led to an astounding rise in the "patent medicine" (or "snake oil") trade, and America's long history of the "travelin' medicine show.)

(In case you were wondering about the etymology of that particular term: at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Clark Stanley, dressed as a cowboy, strangled dozens of rattlesnakes on stage and wrung the bodies out over a bowl. He called the resulting liquid "snake oil" and claimed that a bottle would cure anything.)

That uniquely American attitude is with us today; or to be more accurate, it never left - it just shrunk for a while. But the innate distrust of book-learnin' has been a facet of the American culture ever since Jackson's time, and its most vocal adherents are found in today's Republican party in general, and the Tea Party specifically.

Oh, and Texas. A whole lot of stupid keeps coming from the state where I was born. (And yes, I'm not immune to that charge on my own, but at least I base my stupidity on facts, as opposed to strange conspiracy theories.)

The adopted state of George W. Bush and the home state of Rick Perry, the gene pool in Texas seems to have been badly polluted somewhere along the way, to the point where their main exports these days are shrieking and sweat.

The Governor of the once-great state, Rick Perry, who thought he could be elected despite being unable to name more than two government agencies at a time, is now spending Texas tax money to sign into law a bill which would protect every Texan's right to wish people a "Merry Christmas." (Perhaps he's doing it in May to get ahead of the rest of the "War on Christmas" crowd.)

Texas can also be proud of native son Louie Gohmert, a distended rectum of a man, who recently told a woman that even fetuses with no brain function should remain in the womb (since otherwise he wouldn't be here to stain the memory of intelligent Texans everywhere). He recently had a meltdown when the US Attorney General explained that ignorance wasn't a the best foundation for an argument. As someone wiser than I explained it:

Then (Gohmert) moved on to his main issue: that he thinks the FBI is a bunch of fuck-ups who "blew the opportunity" to stop Tamerlan Tsarnaev from bombing Boston because the FBI didn't fully investigate the information Russia was giving it. Holder demurred on much of what he was asked because it is an ongoing investigation. Gohmert insisted that he knew all about the FBI's refusal to go after Tsarnaev and then he played to his base of evangelical dumb fucks when he said to Holder, "Look, the FBI got a heads-up from Russia that you have a radicalized terrorist on your hands. They should not have had to give anything else whatsoever. That should have been enough. But because of political correctness, there was not a thorough enough examination of Tamerlan to determine this kid had been radicalized. And that is the concern I have. On the one hand, we go after Christian groups like Billy Graham's group. We go after Franklin Graham's group. But then we're hands off when it comes to possibly offending someone who has been radicalized as a terrorist." Having tickled Franklin Graham's prostate but good, Gohmert's time expired.

Holder started to speak to say that Gohmert was wrong when, his blood all het up by gettin' backsassed by a Negro, Gohmert jumped in, "You point out one thing that I pointed -- that I said that was not true." Gohmert had to have his cross-burning ass smacked down by committee chair Bob Goodlatte (which is just the most awesome name for a Republican), who told Gohmert to shut the fuck up and let Holder answer.

And then Holder pantsed Gohmert in front of everyone and pointed out what a tiny little dick and balls the Texan has: "The only observation I was going to make is that you state as a matter of fact what the FBI did and did not do. And unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don't have access to the FBI files. You don't know what the FBI did. You don't know what the FBI's interaction was with the Russians. You don't know what questions were put to the Russians, whether those questions were responded to. You simply do not know that. And you have characterized the FBI as being not thorough or taking exception to my characterization of them as being thorough. I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That's all."

What followed can best be described as Gohmert going into an insulted idiot rage, screaming and slapping himself, crying that the Negro had gotten so uppity as to tell him he's wrong, while the other Republicans, including Issa, realized they had let him out of the cellar for too long and tried desperately to shut him up and get him back into the basement to sit in his rocker next to the radio that plays Rush Limbaugh's show. Holder's look of barely contained amusement is pretty fuckin' sweet. It climaxed with Gohmert saying, and this is as clear as can be in the video, "The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus." No, really. And so, his asparagus defended, he was done.

Which brings us to Ted Cruz, a rising star in Texas politics (which is a similar title, these days, to "pees his pants the least"). This is the fine human being who said that sending money to victims of Hurricane Sandy was "wasteful" and Federal aid is "pork."

Or, at least it was. Until it was Federal aid for victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Then, suddenly, he was "working to ensure that all available resources are marshaled to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that we've seen."

Of course, this is the same Ted Cruz who recently tried to denigrate John Kerry and Chuck Hagel as being "less than ardent fans of the U.S. military," implying that they wouldn't keep America safe from foreign attacks.

Now, it's important to remember here that Cruz is talking about two decorated war heroes. One Democrat, one Republican. While the only uniform Cruz has ever worn is that Reichsmarschall uniform he keeps in his basement.

And the stupidity isn't confined to the upper echelons of Texas politics, either. Let's consider the judge in McKinney, Texas, who decided to insert a clause in the divorce papers to keep a lesbian from living with her partner, or lose custody of her two children to a convicted felon who rarely bothers to see the children. Because the judge didn't approve of the wife's "lifestyle."

There are stupid people everywhere. But somehow, they seem to grow 'em bigger in Texas.

Is it something in the water?

You know, when I think of Indiana, a little neon sign in my head never immediately started blinking "small-minded idiots" before now.

I mean, yeah, despite the name of your state, you fucked over the Native Americans living there, with various groups of Europeans alternately arming rival tribes so that they could pretty much wipe each other out before you pushed them off their land. But we were doing that all over the country, right?

Indiana has big chunks of the history we learned in school (well, you know, those of us who learned things in school, anyway): splitting off from the Northwest Territory, Tecumseh, the War of 1812, George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison - you can't avoid Indiana if you're studying the history of this country.

But it's weird. You, as a state, have this weird love of taking control of people's bodies away from them. It's like some kind of weird compulsion: "You are cattle! You will breed when and where we tell you! Und Indiana vill grow strong!!"

I mean, crap! What the hell is wrong with you people?

In 1907, Governor Frank Hanly, a good Republican, made Indiana the first state to practice eugenics when he signed the Compulsory Sterilization Law “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”

The next governor, who was apparently less of a fan of fascism, stopped it two years later, and the law was found unconstitutional when it finally made it to the Indiana Supreme Court 14 years later! (the wheels of "justice" don't exactly spin quickly in the Hoosier state).

This flourishing of freedom and American values apparently made the people of Indiana cranky, because six years later, they pushed through an almost identical bill, which applied to "inmates of state institutions, who are insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded, and epileptic, and who by the laws of heredity are the probable potential parents of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted." A law which stayed in effect in Indiana until 1974.

Despite their efforts to breed die Herrenrasse clear up to the Disco Era, Dan Quayle was still born in Indianapolis. Which tells you just how effective these policies actually are.

And now they're at it again. Republicans in Indiana have introduced a bill to make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. And when state Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Of Course) introduced an amendment to exempt "women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm," it was voted down 42 to 54.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your baby is going to kill you? Tough shit. Hope you got a will." Interesting definition of Right to Life.

Apparently, according to state Rep. Eric Turner (R-Fuck You), this amendment would give women a "giant loophole" and they would just lie about getting raped. Or, presumably, dying.

(So, Eric Turner is a big supporter of incestuous families - I wonder what that says about his home life?)

I mean, there's really no excuse for this. Indiana ranks as the thirteenth smartest state, which... you know... top third, right? Good solid B average. And you've got Notre Dame... OK, admittedly a bad choice, being a Catholic university and all. But there's still Purdue! You've got education in your state! Why are you trying to go back to the dark ages?

But more than that, why is it that crazy people tend to rise to the top in Indiana? I mean, Michael Jackson, who single-handedly set out to destroy pop music forever, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana.

John Dillinger, gangster, bank robber, and legendary cocksman, was born in Indianapolis. Ten years later and 50 miles southwest, Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, and we still don't know where that fucker ended up.

There's just something about Indiana that makes crazy people end up getting into positions of power.

Like Carlos F. Lam, the Indiana prosecutor who ended up resigning after his advice to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became public: Lam suggested Walker should fake an attack on himself to "discredit the unions." (To his credit, how was he to know that Walker had already discarded that idea because it might have backfired on him?)

And then, just because Indiana lawmakers hadn't embarrassed themselves enough, we get to find out about Ms. Bei Bei Shuai.

The facts of this case are heartbreaking. On December 23, 2010, Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a major depressive disorder, attempted to take her own life. Friends found her in time and persuaded her to get help. Six days later, Shuai underwent cesarean surgery and delivered a premature newborn girl who, tragically, died four days later.

On March 14, 2011, Shuai was arrested, jailed, and charged with murder and attempted feticide...

The state is misconstruing the criminal laws in this case in such a way that any pregnant woman could be prosecuted for doing (or attempting) anything that may put her health at risk, regardless of the outcome of her pregnancy.

That's right: according to the ways the laws are being applied here, the state of Indiana believes that any pregnant woman who smokes or lives with a smoker, who works long hours on her feet, who is overweight, who doesn't exercise, or who fails to get regular prenatal care, is a felon.

We need a new word for this crime. I'd like to suggest "Indianacide."

So, we're opposed to big government. Unless we're allowed to use it to monitor every action of every pregnant woman in the state? Is that how this works?

But hey, say what you want about Indiana, at least the trains run on time, right?

Ihre Papieren, bitte!

Once again, we have been given evidence to prove that Arizona is where bigots go to die.

I mean, let’s be honest. This is a state where, every summer, 90% of the population spends their days sitting in the shade panting and watching their dashboards melt. This isn’t someplace you go without first suffering severe brain trauma.

So, to prove that they can be just as prejudiced as South Carolina, Arizona decided to pass a law which would allow the police to pull over anybody swarthier than Karl Rove and ask to see their paperwork. Of course, the police are just checking their documents to make sure they’re here legally, right? (Not to get all Godwinny here, but isn’t that exactly the same reasoning used by the police in 1930s Germany?)

So what we have here is a law that is opposed by police and churches. The top lawman in Pima County, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said that the law is "racist," "disgusting," and "unnecessary," and he’s not going to enforce it.

Even Tom Ridge, Bush’s former head of Homeland Security, is uncomfortable with the law, saying it allows the police to question people without probable cause. So why is it going into effect?

Well, Grampa McCain was on Fox News to say that we needed it because of “the drivers of cars with illegals in it (sic) that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway."

Of course, while McCain has had issues with things like honesty for some time now, this statement is kind of fascinating. I mean, he’s talking about an actual crime:

This particular scam is called the "swoop and squat." (The first car "swoops" in while the second car "squats" in front of you.) After the "accident," everyone in the car you rear-ended—usually crammed full of passengers—will file bogus injury claims with your insurance company. Each will complain of whiplash or other soft-tissue injuries—things difficult for doctors to confirm. They may even go to crooked physical therapists, chiropractors, lawyers, or auto repair technicians to further exaggerate their claims.

But think about it for just a second. It would be kind of stupid for an illegal immigrant to intentionally draw attention to himself when the police are on their way, and they’ll be getting driver's licenses and suchlike documentation from everybody, isn't it? This scam is strictly for the criminals with legal, documented identities.

Representative Brian Bilbray is trying to claim that the law won’t involve racial profiling, because the police can spot them by their clothes and shoes.



Jeff Palast has an interesting point:

What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.

In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.

Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.

That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.

So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?

No, not one.

Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?

The answer was provided by a federal prosecutor who was sent on a crazy hunt all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. "We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case."

At least three Arizona cities are considering taking legal action to block the law, and lawsuits have already been filed by police officers and Latino groups.

And Governor Jan Brewer better hope that one of those lawsuits overturns this law before another American citizen is detained for not carrying his birth certificate.

I mean, admittedly, the evidence over the last decade shows that Republicans don't want to actually read the Constitution, but does the following statement sound familiar to anybody?

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

It’s a shame that I’m so damned white. Because Arizona is right next door, and if I looked in any way Hispanic, I would be driving their highways (at the speed limit), with a video camera operator in the passenger seat. And the first words out of my mouth, every time I got pulled over, would be "why are you stopping me, officer?"

Because you want to sue early. This law is going away soon, but I predict that it won't go away before Arizona writes somebody a fairly sizable check for having their Constitutional rights violated.
__________

Update (5/1/10): Well, Governor Brewer went on Fox "News" to whinge to spokesbarbie Megyn Kelly about the unfair treatment she's been receiving.



She complained, for one thing, about the comparisons to Nazi Germany. Well, OK then. I guess that all Nazi comparisons might currently be under GOP copyright, so perhaps we should compare this legislation to laws in other countries where citizens were required to carry identity papers. That's only fair, right?



My favorite part of this long loving massage that Kelly gave the governor would have to be this quote, though.

You know Arizona has been under terrorist attacks, if you will, with all of this illegal immigration that has been taking place on our very porous border.

Really? Because according to statistics from the Bureau of Justice, crime in Arizona has been steadily dropping since 2005, thanks to policies put in place by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, the current US Secretary of Homeland Security.

In fact, study after study shows that the immigrant community commits less crime than native-born populations.

To be honest, a 2007 study by the University of Munich noted that Arizona "historically has not had a terrorist attack," although if you go back 15 years, the Arizona Viper Militia had been stockpiling weapons and planning on blowing up a federal building in Phoenix, but were arrested before they could do anything.

So, that argument is really a non-starter. And the governor is either an idiot, a liar, or simply paranoid.

I'm not sure which.

Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain

It appears that Oklahoma doesn't believe that South Carolina should take the top spot in my heart. So they decided to pass the stupidest, most partisan piece of legislature that they could come up with.

What they've decided to do is to pass a law stating that any woman getting an abortion in Oklahoma will have her personal information posted on line. (The earliest reports were that this website was going to be named ShameOnYouWhore.com - that name has since been abandoned.) The Center for Reproductive Rights has already mounted the first legal challenge.

This law will go into effect on the first of November - ironically, on the same date as the founding of the first medical school for women in America.

Now, the people of Oklahoma have proven themselves to either be idiots or inhuman already; they've reelected business spokesweasel James Inhofe to one branch of Congress or another in every election since 1987.

This is a man who supports the torture of prisoners: he was only one of nine Senators to vote against the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and when talking about prisoner abuse at Guantanamo, he famously said that he was "more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment."

He is, of course, opposed to the concept of climate change, and likes to refer to environmentalists as the Gestapo (because the GOP is almost entirely devoid of imagination, and so they have to refer to anybody who disagrees with them as Nazis - they can't help themselves). He also seems to believe that global warming is a conspiracy started by the Weather Channel to gain viewers. (After all, they're such a powerful force in the media...)

Fascinatingly enough, Inhofe is on record saying that the EPA should just be an outlet for the president's environmental beliefs:

It is my view that, regardless of Administration, the President acting through the entire executive branch is fully entitled to express his policy judgments to the EPA Administrator, and to expect his subordinate to carry out the judgment of what the law requires and permits. It can be argued that the "unitary Executive concept" promotes more effective rulemaking by bringing a broader perspective to bear on important regulatory decisions...

Therefore, I consider this debate over censorship within the Administration to be a nonissue.

Unless, of course, that president happens to be a Democrat, in which case the EPA's "process of determining endangerment appears to be marred by bias and, to some extent, political manipulation." (To be fair, it is always possible that the Senator is more upset about the President of the United States being black than he is about Obama's political leanings - it's hard to tell with Inhofe.)

This is the man who's been the face of Oklahoma politics for the past 30 years.

This latest assault on a woman's right to privacy, coming just two months after a state court struck down their last attempt to limit abortions, will cost $281,285 to put into place, and $256,285 each subsequent year, plus, of course, the cost of enforcing of the law. Certainly an excellent use of Oklahoma's money in a recession.

Among other information that will be posted on the internet, the first eight questions that are required by Oklahoma law to be disclosed are:

1. The date of the abortion
2. The county in which the abortion was performed
3. The age of the mother
4. Her marital status (married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. The race of mother
6. How much education she's had ("specify highest year completed")
7. The state or "foreign country of residence" of the mother
8. The total number of previous pregnancies (including live births, miscarriages and other abortions)

Now, the average city or town in Oklahoma has less than 4,500 victims residents. However, a quarter of the population of Oklahoma (838 thousand people out of 3.5 million Oakies) live in rural areas or unincorporated communities which usually have a population of a hundred or less. So this law doesn't make it particularly difficult to narrow down the whore in question, does it?

On the other hand, maybe this law is just another type of economic stimulus program. After all, the first time a woman gets identified because of the information on the website, she'll be able to sue the state for millions of dollars in damages.

Then again, it's a strange use of state funds, because if she's smart, she'll use the money to move the hell out of Oklahoma.

Something could be finer...

One of my three regular readers recently asked what evidence I have that South Carolina is a particularly inbred state. And it's a fair question.

First, to be entirely honest, there's no real way to tell. The government really doesn't track that kind of thing, and even if they did, their data would probably be inaccurate, as this particular problem is widely under-reported, according to most experts (and we won't even touch on the problem of false memory syndrome and how it might skew the results).

The argument can still be made, of course. There are a number of fascinating medical anomalies in South Carolina, any or all of which could be genetic, and thus reinforced by inbreeding: South Carolina leads the country in stroke deaths, and has the third highest rate of infant mortality in the United States; epilepsy, which affects between 0.4% and 1% of the rest of the country (lifetime prevalence rate), affects 2.2% of South Carolinians.

Interestingly, they also have one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the country, but that probably isn't related. (Not directly related, anyway...)

Having said that, though, we are still left with one question: what the hell is wrong with South Carolina?

South Carolina has a long history of racism - they were so in love with their plantations and ability to chain up fellow human beings that they were the first state to secede from the Union; and Edmund Ruffin was the South Carolinian (technically, a transplated Virginian) who claimed to have fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, kicking that whole mess off. (Also, upon hearing that General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, Ruffin penned a letter stating his hatred for "the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race," and shot himself in the head, which many say gave him the dubious honor of firing both the first shot and the last shot of the Civil War.)

South Carolinian John C. Calhoun (7th Vice President of the United States) even gave a speech on the Senate floor where he explained that slavery was a "positive good" - he also spearheaded a gag rule that automatically tabled any discussion of slavery in the Senate.

"But, oh, Nameless One," you're probably saying, "that's the past. What about the present?" But is it truly the past? I'm not so sure, because when Mike Huckabee, while talking about the Confederate "stars and bars", can say to a group of South Carolinians, "You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," the audience just cheers, and nobody feels constrained to say, "Uh, Mike, that isn't our flag any more."

Regardless of that, though, South Carolina is well known for having more than their share of citizens who are frequently described as "colorful" - Sheriff Leon Lott, who purchased an armored personnel carrier for his police force, and famously broke down a door based on a picture of gold-medalist Michael Phelps holding a bong; Mayor Sallie Peake, who banned the police from chasing suspects on foot in Wellford, SC; noted hunter Nathan Dickson; Joshua Glidewell, a Fred Phelps wannabe who's suing the city of Greenville for not allowing him to harass passersby.

They're the only state in the nation who elects their National Guard adjutant; one candidate for that office, Republican Dean Allen, recently raffled off an AK-47 at a fundraiser. (You'd think that one of his opponents would point out that Mr Allen not only couldn't even be counted on to buy American, but felt it was appropriate to raffle off a weapon from the former Soviet Union.)

South Carolina also has a long-standing militia movement - people deluded enough to believe that a hundred hillbillies with hunting rifles can overthrow the entire US government.

You should probably also remember Caitlin Upton, the Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina, who gave this fascinatingly incoherent response when asked why 20% of Americans can't locate the US on a world map:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our (children).

And she was an honor student in high school. (Admittedly, a South Carolina high school, so the bar is pretty low.)

And their politicians are notoriously unstable. As far back as 1856, Representative Preston Brooks used his walking stick to beat another congressman, Charles Sumner, so badly that Sumner couldn't return to his congressional duties for three years. (Brooks actually had a long history of violent behavior - he never finished law school because he was expelled for threatening the police with a gun. However, his violent impulses apparently only extended to attacking without provocation - after being denounced for his actions by a third Congressman, Anson Burlingame, he challenged Burlingame to a duel, but chickened out when Burlingame accepted.)

Strom Thurmond was an evil old racist from South Carolina, who kept his Senate seat for 49 years following 2 years as governor. One of his many notable remarks was that "there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." And he still holds the record for the longest filibuster in Senate history; he talked for 24 hours and 18 minutes opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. (Of course, this didn't prevent him from having a daughter out of wedlock with his black maid. Go figure.)

More recently, we had South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, who felt that shouting "You lie!" at the President of the United States was an appropriate way to uphold the dignity of his office. (Wilson was also a strong supporter of Strom Thurmond, and an advocate for the aforementioned Confederate flag, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that it's a symbol of slavery and repression.)

And lest we forget, Governor Mark Sanford, recently in the news for his habit of taking publically-funded junkets to chase Argentinian tail to meet his soul mate.

All of which brings us back to our original question: What the hell is wrong with South Carolina?

I can't answer that question, but until I'm given evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe it's inbreeding.

If Texas Secedes, Can They Take Bush With Them?

I was born in Texas, and many of my relatives are still there, so I like to think that I can speak for the culture, even though I'd much rather be castrated with a hammer than ever move back. There's a very ugly, small-minded fringe element that's taken entirely too much power in that god-forsaken state.

The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry (christened by the great philosopher M. Ivins as "Governor Goodhair") whipped a crowd of teabaggers into a frenzy last week by saying that Texas should secede. (And Chuck Norris, who's apparently starting to believe all the jokes, said that he may run for President of Texas.)

We should probably ignore the fact that talk like this feeds into the insane mindset of certain fringe elements of the population (apparently "fringe elements" everywhere but in Texas, anyway). And when I say "fringe elements," I'm referring to groups like the Republic of Texas, a bunch of armed extremists known for kidnapping random strangers and hosting armed standoffs with the police (you know, cheese and crackers, boxed wine, and the occasional exchange of hostages).

However, what Perry was talking about with his secession speech is a long-standing myth down there: that Texas has always had the right to secede, ever since we joined the country (not "we were annexed" or "we asked to join," but "we did it under our own volition, and they couldn't have stopped us if they'd tried").

The whole thing feeds into the myth of self-determination, that Walker-Texas-Ranger/Lone-Wolf-McQuade thing that Texas tries to propagate about themselves. Self-important idiots, really, swaggering around in their carefully-shined cowboy boots and crisp, clean white hats. Screw 'em.

(And incidentally, if Texas is such a cornerstone of self-righteous individualism, then why did Governor Perry, upon being told that Mexico might have a swine flu problem, demand that the CDC send Texas 37,430 doses of Tamiflu? I mean, if Texas doesn't need the rest of the United States, shouldn't they be willing to deal with this problem on their own?)

The alternative myth to Tex-cession is "Texas has the right to split into five states," a myth which at least has the advantage of being closer to reality. (It's still bullshit, but at least it'll make flowers grow, right?)

So let's look at these myths. First of all, the "secession" argument usually goes like this:

Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. If there was a right of secession before that war, it should be just as valid now. It wasn't negated because Northern munitions factories were more efficient than Southern ones.

Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" - by force, if necessary - a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming independence.

The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government.

Which sounds great. Of course, that whole argument ignores the fact that the writer is referencing the Articles of Confederation, which were replaced by the Constitution, because the founders realized that they needed a Federation, not a Confederation.

As for the "five states" question, that feeds into the myth of self-determination, too. But the truth is Texas can be carved into five states.

The way it works is, in the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, which was approved by Congress on March 1, 1845, it stated :

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution...

Now, to add to that, you have Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, where it says:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Texans love that crap. They think it proves something. Of course, it ignores the fact that the whole thing is a joint process, not something Texas can force on everybody else: "no new states shall be formed or erected... without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."

Also, did you notice those ellipses at the end of the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas? That's because it goes into something that they don't want to talk about. Not only could Texas get split up if it proved to big and unwieldy to govern itself, but there was a second reason for the subdivision of the Lone Star State.

and such states as may be formed out of the territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each State, asking admission shall desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory, north of said Missouri Compromise Line, slavery, or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.

Yes, the right of Texans to keep slaves was part of the reason that they wanted to be able to split themselves into a cluster of smaller small-minded states. Oh, and by the way, if you look at a map, very little (possibly nothing) of what currently makes up Texas was due to be a free state.

(It's not clear whether "Fuck Texas" is the unofficial battle cry of the Oklahoma Sooners, but it's the only thing I've seen to recommend the Dustbowl State, for that matter.)

If Texans were to get truly up in arms, and the fringe elements were to try to secede, I think it would be a fascinating experiment, for the year or two it would last before they completely collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity. Admittedly, it would suck to be gay or non-white in the "Republic of Texas," and I'm not sure that the mis-educated kids would ever recover, but at least the rest of America could get to see the nightmare that unfettered far-right fringe elements would lead us to.

In fact, overall, it would suck to be a Texan (even more than it does now). But it would be a fascinating experiment.