Gosh, it was so anticlimactic when it finally happened, I almost forgot to note the event:

Janice Rogers Brown Confirmed By Senate

(CNSNews.com) – In a vote of 56 to 43, the Senate Wednesday confirmed judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, making her the second black woman to sit on the court.

Hooray, hooray!

Why am I cheering? Check my earlier posts about Brown here and here.

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Go right now and read Michelle Malkin’s column about the World Trade Center Memorial. Better yet, read Debra Burlingame’s Wall Street Journal column that Malkin references. Read about how the left is hijacking the Ground Zero memorial to promote anti-Americanism and left-wing activism and to focus attention away from what happened at that site (emphasis added):

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. … Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. …

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend — people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country’s efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.
… 
In fact, the IFC’s list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who’s Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."
 
• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.
 
• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner’s statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC’s location at the World Trade Center site itself.
 
• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

Think about this: Future visitors to Ground Zero, who come to remember the fallen and honor the heroes of 9/11/01, will have difficulty finding any remembrances of that day. Instead, they’ll find exhibits, lectures, and symposia promoting internationalism, multiculturalism, and moral relativism, painting America as the locus of evil in the world, and recruiting people into left-wing activist organizations.

If that disturbs you, visit the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Memorial Comments page and tell them what you think.

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Over at Catallarchy, Jonathan Wilde has elaborated further on his contention that poverty is unnatural. A very interesting argument leading to:

The thrust of my argument is that, given the current state of human civilization, the body of knowledge acquired through the rise and fall of various societies, the empirical data collected by scientists and philosophers, the ideas that percolate via the spirit of the times, and the ever growing economic sophistication acquired during the last century, it is poverty, not wealth, that is unnatural.

I think his case comes down to this, and I’m inclined to agree: In the absence of artificial constraints (such as those imposed by governments), the sum total of knowledge and ideas — and therefore resources and wealth — will naturally increase over time. At the beginning of the 21st century, humanity has had so much time to accumulate knowledge, ideas, resources, and wealth in a relatively unfettered fashion that it’s the remaining poverty in the world that’s anomalous and in need of explanation.

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Glenn Reynolds quotes Howard Kurtz, who can’t believe how AI-USA’s Schultz justified AI’s misuse of the term "gulag" (emphasis in original):

"Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it’s okay to unleash words like ‘gulag,’ even if it’s not an ‘exact or literal analogy,’ because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball?"

Well, yes. This is indeed the new standard, and it has been for some time. This is the standard of post-modernism, which maintains that there is no truth or reality, there are only alternative "narratives," each of which is valid (to the extent that "valid" has any meaning) to those who hold it. Edward Younkins’ article, "The Plague of Postmodernism," provides a good overview:

Postmodernism tends to revolve around the following themes:  (1) the attainment of universal truth is impossible; (2) no ideas or truths are transcendent; (3) all ideas are culturally or socially constructed; (4) historical facts are unimportant and irrelevant; and (5) ideas are true only if they benefit the oppressed. Postmodernists generally use Marxist rationale and concepts (e.g., oppression, inequality, revolution, and imperialism) to attack and discredit American culture.

To the sophisticates who embrace postmodernism, it’s meaningless to ask whether the term "gulag" accurately describes US detention facilities or whether Bush really is guilty of war crimes. These claims are part of someone’s "narrative" and are thus as valid as any alternative "narrative." Besides, getting Schultz on Fox News or Hardball benefits the oppressed and discredits American culture, so this particular "narrative" is better than others — in this bizarro world where all beliefs are equally valid, but some are more equal than others.

Postmodernism is the rejection of reason and the Enlightenment, and all their concomitants and consequences, which can be summed up as "modernity." In an excellent essay, "The Party of Modernity," David Kelley says:

"Modernity" is the term that historians use to describe this individualist and rationalist culture. Modernity accompanied the growth of science, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of capitalism and constitutional democracy. As a culture, however, it was an intellectual, not a material or political, phenomenon. It was the underlying constellation of beliefs, values, aspirations, and demands that led people in the West to alter their way of life profoundly.

Kelley notes that it’s modernity that the Islamofascists are bent on destroying:

It was obvious to virtually everyone that the World Trade Center was targeted because it represented freedom, secularism, tolerance, innovation, commercial enterprise, and the pursuit of happiness in this life. Our modernist values were thrown into sharp relief by the hatred they provoked in our enemies.

And this shared hatred for modernity explains, I believe, why so many leftists are sympathetic to or supportive of radical Islamists with whom, on the surface, they would seem to have little in common. Differences over burqas and bans on alcohol are trivial compared to all the more fundamental values that Islam’s advocates of 8th century life have in common with the anti-capitalist, anti-technology, socialist eco-freaks of the West.

Kelley argues that modernity also has many enemies on the right — the pre-modernists and cultural conservatives. But they’re a topic for another day.

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A WorldNetDaily report on the growth of Islam in Latin America paints a chilling picture of Islamofascist terrorist group activities in the region:

Indeed, with Islamic "charities" under increasing international pressure and scrutiny to cut ties with terrorists, al-Qaida and other allied organizations are expanding operations throughout Latin America, establishing both legitimate and criminal enterprises to fund future operations.

According to U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro, almost every extremist terror group is now represented in Latin America.

Anti-terrorism experts say extremist cells tied to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida network are operating in Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. …

It came as a surprise to me that Latin America is home to tens of millions of mostly Arabic Muslims. Apparently, the extremist Islamist ideologies have been making significant inroads among this population:

In the so-called Muslim triangle, where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, a growing number of Arab-owned businesses are being forced to identify with the Palestinian cause.

In the business town of Punte Arnes, the home of many Palestinians in touch with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, stores carry names of Palestinian communities and are decorated with the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Bus companies owned by Islamic militants are also painting vehicles with the colors of Palestine, giving the vehicles Arabic names, which leave no doubt as to their ownership.

It’s all an indication of the growing power and spread of Islamist ideology in Latin America.

And, the Islamists have been successfully converting more and more non-Muslims to Islam:

The recruitment of new followers is especially active in southern Mexico and among the indigenous Mayans who are converting by the hundreds, according to a report in Der Spiegel. …

… The government even suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida.

The long-run implications are certainly cause for some concern, but there are more immediate dangers as well. In March, FBI Director Robert Muller testified to Congress that the FBI knows of people with Middle Eastern names who assumed Hispanic names and entered the US from Mexico:

Mueller said one route takes Middle Easterners to Brazil, where they assume false identities before entering Mexico and then crossing into the U.S. Bush administration officials have previously said al-Qaida could try to infiltrate the United States through the Mexican border.

Mueller stopped short of confirming that terrorists had entered illegally via Mexico, but said it’s believed people from countries where al-Qaida is active have done so.

Even more disturbing — Venezuela’s rabidly anti-American Socialist president may have ties to the Islamofascists:

The terrorists even get some official support in Latin America, according to sources. As WorldNetDaily reported, a Venezuelan military defector claims President Hugo Chavez developed ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida – even providing it with $1 million in cash after Sept. 11, 2001.

Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez’s pilot, told WorldNetDaily through an interpreter that "the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours’ flight from the United States."

Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

If Diaz Castillo’s claims are true, then Chavez could be turning Venezuela into a state sponsor and sanctuary for the Islamofascists in Latin America.

So many liberals and libertarians still believe that if the US stopped "meddling" in the Middle East and quit supporting Israel, we wouldn’t be a target anymore and would have nothing to fear. They need to wake up and recognize the nature of our enemy.

Islamofascism is as much a political ideology as it is a religion. In fact, it insists that the two are one and the same. Its goal is world domination. While the anti-war crowd laughs at or shrugs off that statement, the Islamofascists are converting more and more Latin Americans to their cause.

When will the critics of US policy take Islamofascism seriously as a world-wide threat? Perhaps when this activity bears fruit:

Egyptian intelligence experts … aware of the role of Egyptian militants in the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban, said in 2003 that Islamic terrorists shifted their interest from training pilots in the U.S. to schools in South America, where they can study and train practically without any security agencies on their heels.

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I liked Radley Balko’s comments on Raich yesterday. Today, he skewers the contemptible reaction (and non-reaction) on the left:

I found it interesting that high-profile leftist blogs like Daily Kos and Eschaton were silent on Raich yesterday. How to explain that the four liberal justices voted with Ashcroft-Gonzalez to give the imprimatur to federal agents raiding nursing homes and rifling through medicine cabinets? …

Well, Matthew Yglesias does explain, and frankly, he paints an ugly picture of what liberalism has become. After citing Andrew Sullivan, Yglesias writes:

Well, no, he’s wrong in that he thinks this is a bad thing, but he’s right that the important issue here was the federalism one, not the medical marijuana one. Sympathetic as one might be to the defendants in this case, a victory for their side could have led to very bad consequences down the road. Advocates of marijuana law reform are welcome to press their point of view in congress [sic].

And there it is. The prominent writer for the "moderately liberal" American Prospect would rather let sick people suffer and die and side with giving ever more power to the Bush administration than give an inch toward letting states of localities govern themselves. …

This is what liberalism has devolved to. … Its values? Getting power, and wielding power. Letting a few Very Smart People run your life. They may feign at principles like compassion, racial equality, and civil liberties, but should any of those principles hamper the getting of the power, or weaken the wielding of the power once it’s gotten, they’re readily discarded.

I’m a bit surprised, however, that Balko seems surprised. This isn’t a recent "devolvement" of liberalism or leftism. The desire to expand the powers of government, and especially of the federal government, has been the heart and soul of "liberalism" ever since the left hijacked that word from the advocates of liberty, markets, and limited government more than half a century ago. The left is being entirely consistent and predictable here.

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In a nutshell, the Raich (medical marijuana) ruling means that Lopez was an abberation and that Wickard is alive and well. Damn it. It also means we have exactly one Supreme Court justice who can be counted on to stand by the Constitution — Clarence Thomas.

If you want to read what lots of legal scholars, most enamored of stare decisis, have to say about Raich, check out SCOTUSblog. Frankly, I got bored after a while. Legal positivism and endless hair-splitting do that to me. But I found Radley Balko’s posts much more agreeable. Specifically, I agree with his assessment of Scalia’s concurring opinion:

It’s slimy. I never thought I’d see an avowed federalist justice favorably cite Wickard vs. Filburn, but Scalia does, and essentially argues an "ends justifies the means" approach to the Commerce Clause.
… 
Conservatives have long railed against Wicker, which held that a farmer who grows his own grain on his own land is subject to federal regulation via the Commerce Clause. Scalia just affirmed it.

Like Balko, I don’t see how Scalia’s argument in this case doesn’t invalidate his position in Lopez (which held that gun-free schools couldn’t be justified as a legitimate federal concern under the interstate commerce clause).  

Thomas’ dissenting opinion is outstanding, as Balko illustrates with choice quotes. Here’s the whole post, with some emphasis added by me:

Thomas…

…was dead-on, and proves to be the only principled federalist with an orginalist view of the Commerce Clause. Nut:

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

[…]

Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that "commerce" included the mere possession of a good or some purely personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.

Thomas also takes shots at Scalia’s concurring "ends justifies the means" opinion (discussed below):

To act under the Necessary and Proper Clause, then, Congress must select a means that is "appropriate" and "plainly adapted" to executing an enumerated power; the means cannot be otherwise "prohibited" by the Constitution; and the means cannot be inconsistent with "the letter and spirit of the [C]onstitution."

The CSA, as applied to respondents’ conduct, is not a valid exercise of Congress’ power under the Necessary and Proper Clause.

He then explains why the CSA as applied to Angel Raich fails the Necessary and Proper test set out in 1819 in McCulloch v. Maryland, every step of the way.

Thomas then addresses Scalia’s position so directly, he may as well have called him out by name:

In Lopez, I argued that allowing Congress to regulate intrastate, noncommercial activity under the Commerce Clause would confer on Congress a general "police power" over the Nation. This is no less the case if Congress ties its power to the Necessary and Proper Clause rather than the Commerce Clause. When agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided Monson’s home, they seized six cannabis plants. If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress’ Article I powers–as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause–have no meaningful limits. Whether Congress aims at the possession of drugs, guns, or any number of other items, it may continue to appropria[te] state police powers under the guise of "regulating commerce."

Let it no longer be said that Thomas carries water for Scalia.

He’s easily the most principled and consistent defender of federalism on the court.

Bravo, Justice Thomas.

I hope we get Janice Rogers Brown onto the D.C. Circuit Court this week, and I most fervently hope that, before this administration is over, she is elevated to the Supreme Court. Then, Thomas will have at least one reliable ally.

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Amnesty International USA Executive Director William Schultz was on Fox News Sunday this morning. Host Chris Wallace pressed him pretty hard. Here’s one exchange, as I remember it:

Wallace: You said Rumsfeld and Gonzales are the architects of torture. Do you have any evidence that Rumsfeld authorized beating, starving, or other things we normally think of as torture?

Schultz: "It would be fascinating to find out…"

Wallace interrupts incredulously — you don’t have any evidence? But you made the accusation!

Schultz: Well, we know Rumsfeld authorized the use of stress positions and dogs to intimidate prisoners, and those by themselves are violations of the torture convention.

Let’s look at what the 1987 Convention Against Torture actually says:

Article I

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as… It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

So Schultz maintains that frightening someone with a dog or making someone stand in an uncomfortable position for hours involves severe pain or suffering. That’s at the very least debatable. I think it’s absurd, and it’s a slap in the face of those who’ve undergone real torture, of which there are plenty in Iraq.

Regarding the claim by AI Secretary General Irene Khan that US detention centers are "the gulag of our times," Schultz acknowledged that there are differences between places like Gitmo and the Soviet gulag. The differences, he said, are in the numbers of people involved and the longer period of time that the Soviet gulag existed.

Let’s compare briefly:

Gitmo — The US provides prayer mats, caps, Korans, religiously correct meals, a library of Jihadist literature (!), broadcast calls to prayer, medical facilities, an exercise yard, etc. The International Red Cross has permanent observers there. Out of 28,000 interrogations, investigators have confirmed something like 10 cases of abuse and half of those have been abuse of a book.

Soviet gulag — Forced labor camps characterized by routine beatings, torture, appalling living conditions, no health care, starvation rations, and mass executions. Millions died.

But, to AI, the only differences are the numbers of people and the time period. Words fail me.

There has been mistreatment of prisoners, more so at Baghram and Abu Ghraib than Gitmo. We know this because the military has investigated it, released its findings, and disciplined or prosecuted those responsible. There may be additional instances that we don’t know about because someone has covered them up. If so, I hope they come to light and those responsible are punished, but I neither expect nor demand perfect justice.

AI and the MSM do demand perfection from our side, and they view every minor failing as morally equivalent to the Soviet gulag or to Beslan. This is absurd.

They distrust every utterance by US government officials and military personnel, while accepting as true every claim made by murderous jihadists trained to lie about being tortured and abused. This is contemptible.

They want us to treat captured jihadists as suspects to be arrested and tried instead of as enemy combatants to be held for the duration of the war; they want to return to the pre-9/11 Clinton policy of viewing the Islamofascists as a criminal justice problem. This is insane.

Go read Friday’s column by Charles Krauthammer (WaPo; use BugMeNot). And Austin Bay. Michelle Malkin has some fine comments, plus excerpts from Gen. Hood’s report. And don’t miss Capt. Ed’s thoughts here, here, and here. My own earlier AI posts are here and here.

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I jotted this down about a month ago and just now ran across it. Jay Leno, commenting on Pat O’Brien’s "confession" interview with Dr. Phil, observed:

People who live their lives correctly the whole time never get as much credit as people who fix it in 30 days.

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This item at Samizdata.net provided the best laugh I’ve had in a while:

An attempt by two men from northern Minnesota to cross the Arctic Ocean to call attention to global warming ended this morning because of poor weather conditions.

Lonnie Dupre, 43, and Eric Larsen, 33, were forced to abandon their planned 100-day, 1,200-mile trek after encountering unexpectedly heavy snow storms, strong winds and unusual ice conditions, according to Jane Kochersperger, a media officer with the environmental group Greenpeace, which co-sponsored the trip.

Some things just speak for themselves.

You can’t make up a story better than that.

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Things don’t look good in Europe right now. Voters in France and the Netherlands have rejected the EU constitution. Unemployment is high, growth stagnant. The mood of the public, at least in old Europe, isn’t good. The Euro has already fallen about 10% against the dollar this year, and the anti-Euro rumors and grumblings are accelerating:

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who holds the European Union presidency, warned on Friday that failure to agree on a new long-term EU budget this month would turn a political problem into a full-blown crisis.

Juncker, who also chairs euro zone finance ministers, said the single currency shared by 12 EU countries had been weakened by the "No" votes to the European constitution in France and the Netherlands but was still overvalued compared to the dollar.

TOKYO (Reuters) – The euro fell sharply against the dollar on Friday after reports that an Italian minister said Italy should consider quitting the euro and returning to the lira.

 BERLIN – The president of Germany’s central Bundesbank on Wednesday rejected as "absurd" a report saying he had taken part in a meeting at which the possible collapse of the euro was discussed.
…
Stern magazine based the story on what it says are secret minutes it obtained of a meeting last week between Eichel and Weber. 
…
 An opinion poll conducted for Stern showed 56 percent of Germans want to ditch the euro and bring back the D-mark.

So what’s the real problem? David Brooks says (NY Times link; log in with BugMeNot) the Europeans are reaping the consequences of adopting the policies that American liberals point to as evidence of European superiority and urge us to adopt:

Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.

Brooks notes that Europe’s economic malaise has been going on for some time now. Since 1991, unemployment in continental Europe has remained in the 8-11% range, and growth has been below 3% in 13 of those 14 years. Their standard of living is a third lower than ours, and the gap is growing. Their output per capita is lower than 46 US states, about equal to Arkansas’. And people are right to be pessimistic because it’s likely to get much worse:

Once it was plausible to argue that the European quality of life made up for the economic underperformance, but those arguments look more and more strained, in part because demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe’s population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, the European median age will be around 50. Nearly a third of the population will be over 65. Public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending Europe into a vicious spiral of higher taxes and less growth.

But Brooks thinks Europe’s problems go beyond economics (emphasis added):

Over the last few decades, American liberals have lauded the German model or the Swedish model or the European model. But these models are not flexible enough for the modern world. They encourage people to cling fiercely to entitlements their nation cannot afford. And far from breeding a confident, progressive outlook, they breed a reactionary fear of the future that comes in left- and right-wing varieties – a defensiveness, a tendency to lash out ferociously at anybody who proposes fundamental reform or at any group, like immigrants, that alters the fabric of life.

This is the chief problem with the welfare state, which has nothing to do with the success or efficiency of any individual program. The liberal project of the postwar era has bred a stultifying conservatism, a fear of dynamic flexibility, a greater concern for guarding what exists than for creating what doesn’t.

Brooks sounds like he’s been reading Virgina Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies. As should you.

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From the sidebar at the Conservative Cat blog:

The Thoughts of Chairman Meow

Libertarians believe that no one has the right to tell somebody else how to live.

Conservatives believe that only God has the right to tell somebody else how to live.

Liberals believe that only liberals have the right to tell somebody else how to live.

Populists believe that everybody has the right to tell somebody else how to live.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

UPDATE: Ferdy was kind enough to point me to the archive from which the sidebar items are randomly selected. The item above is here.

UPDATE 2: And if you go poking around Ferdy’s archive, don’t miss the single best sentence ever uttered by a cat, which ought to be carved in marble somewhere:

Socialism is an idea; capitalism is a law of nature.

The accompanying Flash "movie" is well worth watching, if you’re able to. It may be just my browser and resolution combination, but the right side of the yellow box — the side that has the button you click to advance to the next "frame" — was cut off for me. I figured out I could advance to the next "frame" by right-clicking the yellow box and selecting Forward or Play. Honestly, it’s worth the hassle.

If you’re a true Econ geek (I have a degree in Econ), read all the comments, too. There’s some pretty good give and take between Ferdy and a pretty bright critic named Stephen Newton — I think Ferdy ends up winning, but then I’m partial to cats.

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One of my vast army of loyal readers has passed along a news item that may impact you, if you take generic prescription drugs:

WASHINGTON – On May 23, Able Laboratories, a big manufacturer of generic drugs, suddenly ordered one of the largest drug recalls in history — all of its products, probably affecting millions of people.

Four days later, on the 27th, the FDA put out a press release announcing the recall. That was at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, so almost no one noticed.

The recall affects 46 different drugs, including widely-used pain killers and anti-inflammatories. So, if you’re taking any prescription drugs, go to your medicine cabinet and see if any of them are Able Laboratories drugs… Oh, wait. You can’t tell, can you?

Here’s one of the trade-offs of the whole generic drug paradigm. If Goodyear recalls some of its tires, you go check the car and see if the tires say "Goodyear" on the side. If you hear on the news that some DiGiorno frozen pizzas may be contaminated, you smile and relax, knowing you have Freschetta pizzas in your freezer because they were on sale.

But when a generic drug manufacturer issues a recall, how do you know if you’ve got some of that manufacturer’s drugs?

Fortunately for you, there are tiny numbers on the pills or capsules, or maybe on the label, and if you can find the right ones, the FDA has a page where you can look them up:

Pills were recalled according to the number imprinted on the drug itself; liquid drugs were recalled by lot number listed on the packaging.  Click here to view the full list on the FDA’s Web site.

That’s a pretty long list, isn’t it? I hope you didn’t find any of your prescriptions on it. I mean I hope none of yours are on the list, not that you screwed up and didn’t find them. My one prescription’s not on the list.

You know, I love saving money, and I understand the logic behind generic drugs. But somehow, when problems like this come up (and they always will), I can’t help but feel a little better when there’s a well-known name brand company — with a reputation it wants to protect and its stock value at stake — promising to make things right.

As opposed to some generic manufacturer I’ve never heard of.

[sigh] Of course, I go for the generic whenever it’s available — it saves me money, and it’s just as good, right? Right?

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At Volokh Conspiracy, Todd Zywicki has some thoughts about Vermont’s apparent tree glut:

My colleague Alex Tabarrok notes that since the 1870s, forestation in Vermont has risen from 20% to 85%. He correctly notes that part of this is tremendous increases in agricultural productivity, reducing the need for farm land.

Don’t forget, however, the effect of the invention of cars, which dramatically reduced demand for horses–and the need to clear open pastures for horse grazing, thereby permitting reforestation. In addition, wood used to be a primary source of fuel, so the turn toward fossil fuels and away from wood reduced the demand for chopping down trees to burn them. Of course, the discovery that petroleum could be used to produce energy also saved the whales from extinction and eliminated the rivers of manure that used to flow through American cities.

Zywicki’s observations reinforce some points that Investor’s Business Daily made on the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. In a post entitled Happy Earth Day! Now go thank a capitalist!, I summarized as follows:

First, the environment today is far cleaner than 35 years ago and a long list of threatened resources are on the increase.
…
Second, the environmentalists won’t let that progress stop them from predicting doom and gloom, attacking our wasteful lifestyle, and demanding that we produce and consume less and "live more simply."
…
Third, environmentalism is a luxury good made possible by the success of capitalism in creating wealth. The eco-freaks who want us to emulate the third world economically for the benefit of the environment need to go visit that third world and see just how totally off-base they are.

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Glenn Reynolds is surprised that a vote-buying story posted at Gateway Pundit isn’t getting more attention. I’m not. First of all, the defendants are minority Democrats, so most MSM reporters aren’t exactly salivating to go after them. Second, since when is inner-city vote buying big news? This is dog bites man. They’re on trial only because they were more brazen and less circumspect than most.

Here in Denver during election season, black community leaders suggest that campaigns need to budget a certain amount of "walking around money" to the community.

One thing about the story jumped out at me:

Some East St. Louis Democratic Party workers told Mark Kern days before he was elected St. Clair County Board chairman that voters would have to be paid to support him, the first witness in a federal vote fraud trial testified today.
… 
Ellis, party chairman Charles Powell Jr. and three others are on trial in federal court at East St. Louis. Neither Youngblood nor Kern, the former mayor of Belleville, was charged. Youngblood turned out to be an FBI informer. Kern did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment about her testimony…

…On Oct. 30, the St. Clair County Democratic Party provided $67,000 to Ellis and other East St. Louis Democrats to get out the vote. No county party officials are charged in the case.

So, the ESL party officials who demanded money for buying votes are on trial, but the county party officials who bought the votes aren’t. Wonder why? Here’s a possible clue:

She [Youngblood] said Ellis, a party stalwart and then director of regulatory affairs, told Kern he was perceived in the predominantly-black community as a "racist’ and might need to spend $10 per vote to get support.

Pictures of Ellis and Youngblood, two of the ESL party leaders, make it clear that they’re black. Kern, the county-wide candidate, is perceived to be a racist — want to guess his ethnic heritage?

Anyone care to speculate on how the average pigmentation level of the county party officials who actually paid for the votes, but weren’t charged, compares to the pigmentation level of the middlemen in ESL who are on trial?

Of course, I could be wrong, it could have nothing to do with race. It could just be the same corrupt, lazy law enforcement attitude of going after the easy cases that leads cops to bust mainly low-level drug dealers instead of the big fish.

In fact, that’s probably the case. I’m sure there’s some variant of Occam’s razor that says you shouldn’t assume complex, evil motives when sheer laziness is enough to explain the behavior.

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