It is my sincerest hope that this heading doesn’t offend any Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, pagans, Taoists, Buddhists, or members of any other faith (or lack thereof) that doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day. I assure you no slight was intended. Feel free to wish me a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Ramadan, a dark and dreary winter solstice, or anything else except Kwanzaa. I’m a fairly open-minded person, but goofy made-up holidays invented by brutal, racist thugs are where I draw the line. Unfortunately, both our President and the U.S. Postal Service appear to disagree.

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We’ve all heard the line before: “I oppose racial preferences, but I support affirmative action.” I’ve long written that distinction off as some sort of lawyerly, quasi-Clintonian (or Bushian, for that matter, see “affirmative access”) sophistry. I figured, hey, a rule that just says “don’t discriminate” isn’t calling on you to do any affirmative act; thus, it is better described as “negative,”not “affirmative” action. Clearly, anything worthy of the adjective “affirmative” must involve something that goes above and beyond a simple policy of not discrminating. Right?

Wrong. John Rosenberg points out that “affirmative action,” as originally prescribed by Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order No. 11246, required that federal contractors be colorblind, not that they “affirmatively” embark on any new compensatory discriminations of their own. The key language from Section 202(1) of that order read as follows:

Except in contracts exempted in accordance with Section 204 of this Order, all Government contracting agencies shall include in every Government contract hereafter entered into the following provisions:
“During the performance of this contract, the contractor agrees as follows:
The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship. The contractor agrees to post in conspicuous places, available to employees and applicants for employment, notices to be provided by the contracting officer setting forth the provisions of this nondiscrimination clause.

In other words, the “affirmative act” required of employers was not that they reverse-discriminate (which would in fact violate the order), but rather, that they be proactive in ensuring that none of their subordinates discriminate by race, creed, color or national origin. The difference between this kind of “affirmative action” and a simple rule of “negative action” (don’t discriminate) is that the latter may have left too much room for a see-no-evil, “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me, you can’t prove anything” approach.

Not content with the bad publicity it got during election season, the State of New Jersey has just earned itself the dubious honor of becoming the first state to prohibit all handguns that do not contain “smart-gun” technology. Here’s what Governor James McGreevey has to say for this turkey:

“This is common-sense legislation. There are safety regulations on cars, on toys. It’s clearly time we have safety regulations on handguns,” Gov. James E. McGreevey said at Monday’s bill signing ceremony

“Common sense?” If the perceived need for “smart” guns were all that common, one might think that maybe at least one other state (or country, for that matter) might have enacted it already. If it were “sense,” they might have wanted to hold off on the vote until the technology were ready for prime time. In addition, Peter Saharko’s piece casually ignores the fact that unlike those “common sense” safety regulations applicable to cars and toys, the proposed law contains a built-in exemption for police officers. Why the police exemption, Sahako might have asked (but didn’t)? In principle, that makes no more sense than a police exemption for car safety regulations. We don’t want cops carrying unsafe guns any more than we want them driving unsafe cars, so what exactly is New Jersey trying to exempt its cops from?

This issue has never really been about safer guns; it’s about using citizens as guinea pigs to test a technology that may or may not end up doing what it is supposed to do. Cops don’t trust that technology at this stage, and neither should you.

We already knew that silicon and its derivatives are good for three things: (1) making computer chips, (2) enhancing women’s… well, you know, and (3) making plaintiff lawyers filthy rich. Meanwhile, for all the controversy there is still no hard evidence that silicone breast implants have ever harmed anyone. Now it’s time to add a fourth category. According to Ananova, silicone breast implants recently saved a woman’s life. According to the report:

A Brazilian woman, shot in crossfire between police and drug dealers, was saved by her silicone breast implants. Doctors said the silicone had slowed the bullet up enough to prevent it from causing her a serious injury.

Aside from the fact that it caters to certain women’s vanity, what exactly is it about silicone that certain people don’t like? Thanks to Drudge for the link.

UPDATE: Speaking of maligned products, it looks like even the N.Y. Times has finally figured out that DDT isn’t all bad.

SECOND UPDATE/CORRECTION: One of the side effects of being instapunditted is that people start actually reading the stuff you casually assumed no one would read. One such (I presume) reader has rightly taken me to task for glossing over the distinction between silicon and silicone. I made matters worse by carelessly referring to both “silicone” computer chips and “silicon” breast implants (for androids?). I’ve cleaned up the typos, but upon further reflection it occurred to me that apart from a few Luddites, no one has ever objected to the use of silicon for anything. While it might be fair to lump silicone with silicone (since you can’t make silicone without silicon), it does not make sense to lump silicon together with silicone (as you can have silicon without making silicone). Thus, computer chips probably should not be counted in the above trade-off, and the final score has been adjusted to 3-0.

Mark Kleiman accuses Bill Frist of “playing the race card,” noting a 1994 speech in which Frist accused his opponent of “transplanting Tennesseans’ wallets to Washington, home of Marion Barry. Kleiman replies:

Perhaps someone can come up with an innocent (i.e., non-racist) meaning for that speech. But I can’t. Sasser wasn’t backing extra payments to the DC municipal government. Presumably, by “transplanting Tennesseans’ wallets to Washington,” Frist meant supporting federal programs generically. (Tennessee, like most of the red states, is of course a huge net gainer from the Federal fisc, but let that pass.) So what did Marion Barry have to do with the price of fish?

The same thing the statement had to do with racism, i.e., nothing. It’s not as though Marion “Bitch Set Me Up” Barry was such an exemplary character that only a racist could hate him.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus takes this argument one step farther, suggesting that at the time Frist made the comment, a good chunk of our tax dollars did end up subsidizing D.C. Kaus calls it a “race bonus” issue, i.e., a legitimate issue not based on racism, but which will have an added appeal to racists. Willie Horton probably belongs in that category, too. But what to do about it? Are we to stifle legitimate debates on legitimate topics solely because someone else with an illegitimate motive might also find the argument appealing? Once we start down that road, there’s no telling where we’ll end up.

UPDATE x 2: Then again, maybe Mark (and, more prominently Josh “I was right about Lott so I must be right all the time” Marshall) were on to something after all.

ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY THE LAST UPDATE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, I THINK: Marshall and Kleiman’s error is one linguists sometimes refer to as “perseveration.” In fairness to Mark and Josh (and countless others whose blogs I missed), this is a mistake that we all make from time to time. I did it myself in 1992 when running as a Libertarian candidate for the California State Assembly. In a candidate forum, I tried to use the zinger “do the crime, do the time, pay the victim,” but ended up saying “do the crime, do the time, do the victim.”

According to the popular urban legend web site Snopes, if you gradually heat a pot of water with a frog in it, eventually the water will get too hot for the frog to survive, at which point the frog will … jump out. Now that we know the analogy is literally untrue, perhaps we should rethink its figurative applications as well?

UPDATE: This just in – it doesn’t really “rain cats and dogs,” either.

Eugene Volokh takes the Language Police to task for their “prescriptivist” objection to splitting “infinitives” (i.e.,verb constructions consisting of to + verb). One of the best known examples of a split “infinitive” is Captain Kirk’s famous statement “to boldly go,” hence the title for this entry. Eugene writes:

I split the infinitive without thinking about it, precisely because normal, educated English speakers and writers split the infinitive without thinking about it.

Sports Illustrated reports that the Tribune Company, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, is suing neighboring bar owners for allowing patrons to watch Cubs games from their rooftops. The Tribune Company maintains that this constitutes a “copyright” infringement. I don’t get it. If the Cubs win, can I sue my neighbor for looking out of his own window and into my yard?

Thanks to The Stella Awards for the tip.

First the good news: not only is David DuKKKe an obnoxious, racist ex-Klansman S.O.B., he’s also a convicted felon now. Now, the bad news: if DuKKKe ever runs for office again, it will probably be in Louisiana, where felony convictions seem to improve candidates’ chances of winning elections.