Bill O’Reilly thinks it’s a “pretty extreme position” that the Bill of Rights remains in force when it snows in wintertime:

The next night he non-explained his position by noting that President Lincoln (and many others, but who’s counting) suspended habeas corpus. Never mind that habeas has nothing to do with the Bill of Rights, or that the part of the Constitution that does protect habeas, which is Article I, Section 9, clause 2 of the original Constitution, expressly provides that habeas may be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” while no comparable limiting language appears anywhere in the Bill of Rights. The mainstream view of the Constitution is whatever Bill O’Reilly tells you it is. Actually reading the damned thing is an extremist position.

Time to play “spot the disconnect.” Sam Isaac Edwards (‘hat tip: Uncle) argues that since he himself is a dumbass who got liquored up and shot his fridge, no stone cold sober individual should ever be allowed to carry a weapon in any location where others might consume alcohol.

Coming next: a ban on driving cars while others on the road may be intoxicated.

Via Anwyn, a new study shows that laws prohibiting drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones, but not hands-free devices, have not reduced auto accidents in the four jurisdictions studied. On a wholly unrelated note, another study concluded that laws forbidding drivers to drive under the influence of scotch, but not bourbon, have failed to reduce the number of drunk driving accidents appreciably.

So sayeth the Los Angeles Times. Dumbasses … er … I mean, “bless their hearts.”

Never mind guilt vs. shame; if you watch Avatar, you will die.

Jonah Goldberg is right, any head of the Department of Homeland (In-)Security who can cite Northwest Flight 253 as an example of the system having “worked” should be fired immediately, as should also be the case of the idiot who appointed her to that position in the first place. Lest anyone accuse me of taking Napolitano’s statement out of context, here is the context:

Q: So, uh, just to finish up on … on the question, I do want to talk to you about security measures but do you think that … has there been any evidence of the al Qaeda ties … uh … that this suspect has been claiming?

A: Um, right now that is … that’s part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing, and … um .. I think it would … uh … be inappropriate to speculate … uh … as to whether or not he he has such ties. Uh, what we’re focused on is making sure that … uh … the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel, and uh, one thing I’d like to point is that … is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The … the passengers and crew of the flight … uh … took appropriate action. Uh .. within …uh …. literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures … uh … in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. Uh … we instituted new measure on the ground and at … at screening areas both here in the United States and in Europe … uh … uh … where this flight originated, so .. uh … the … the … the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively, went very smoothly.

In other words, issuing a suspected terrorist a visa and putting him on the terrorist “watch” list but not the no-fly list was not a failure of the system. After all, not all terrorists are meant to be stopped; some, like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, were merely meant to be watched. Nor was it a failure of the system that allowed Abdulmutallab to smuggle in explosives. All the system was supposed to do is to keep him from smuggling them in his shoes or a 4 ounce bottle, which he didn’t do. Nor was The System supposed to provide Jasper Schuringa with a safe flight from Point A to Point B; no, paying customers like Schuringa are unpaid volunteers of The System! As is Abdulmutallab himself, whose own idiocy was yet another example of The System working.

The one objective success, such as it is, that Napolitano identifies on the part of the federal government was the fact that all flights in the air were notified of the incident within 90 minutes of the attack. In other words, Napolitano’s DHS, a.k.a., The System, worked just as well on Friday as it did on September 11, 2001, when it did not exist.

Call me a conspiracy nut, but no one is that stupid. My money says Napolitano’s crazy talk is designed not to reassure the public that flying is safe, but to cut greenhouse gases by scaring the crap out of the traveling public so no one will fly. Cap and trade having failed, this is Plan B. If I’m right, Napolitano’s statements will go largely unchallenged. If I am wrong, and Napolitano really is as dumb as she sounds, then within two weeks’ time she’ll either get the “heckuva job” treatment from the Administration or have all the would-be “fact” checkers from Snopes, Annenberg Political (comically known as “Fact Check”) and Politifact on down will be furiously explaining away the “myth” slash “lie” that she said what she said. Stay tuned.

More here, here, here, here, here and too many other places to count.

UPDATE: I don’t know much. I don’t know too much. But I know this: stuff is messed up.

Wasn’t sure what to use as a subject line but the default post heading seemed oddly appropriate. Which is crazier?

1. An Anglican priest who thinks the Eighth Commandment says “thou shalt steal” or
2. A North Carolina statute under which homeowners can be charged criminally for “trespassing” on their own land?

The government of formerly great Britain is satisfied that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi did not breach the terms of his compassionate release by still being alive a month after he was supposed to die moving without telling them. ‘Cuz they, like, talked to him on the phone, and he assured them he hadn’t. Good to know.

OK, so the Salahis are attention-grabbing jerks. I get that. But last time I checked, attention-grabbing jerkery was not a criminal offense. Their real “offense,” as I see it, was exposing how embarrassingly weak our security was, while posing no threat themselves to anyone. Now that the Salamis made it through and embarrassed the hell out of Secret Service, we can all rest assured that security in the future will be as tight as we naively assumed it was before, and the next Salahis – whose intent may not be as benign as the original ones – will be rightly turned away. For that the Salamis deserve a medal, not the threat of criminal prosecution. Imagine that on June 11, 2001, Ashton Kutcher and a dozen of his punksters in arms had smuggled box cutters onto four U.S. airliners on a single day just to prove that they could. Would there have been a huge outrage and threats of criminal prosecution? Of course. But what, if anything, would have happened three months later?

Last week, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force brought Sarah Palin’s death panels into the fore by recommending women in their 40s stop having regular mammograms. No, they didn’t make this tin-eared recommendation for purposes of saving money (primarily), but regardless of their motive the timing could scarcely have been worse (or, depending on your perspective, better). Today on that show that used to be good when Tim Russert was around, that bimbo Nancy Snyderman would not shut up about how this panel’s recommendations were “science” and everyone else’s objections were “politics.” The “science?” That would be a finding that:

For every 1,000 women screened beginning at age 40, the modeling suggested that just about 0.7 deaths from breast cancer would be prevented, while about 470 additional women would receive a false-positive result and about 33 more would undergo unnecessary biopsies.

Most of us silly, unedumacated non-scientists have a hard time picturing anyone other than Keith Richards undergoing 0.7 deaths, so let’s adjust the figures to account for the odds of one whole person dying instead:

For every 1,429 women screened beginning at age 40, the modeling suggested that only one death from breast cancer would be prevented, while about 671 additional women would receive a false-positive result and about 47 more would undergo unnecessary biopsies.

Depending on whether you trust the modeling (and there’s no way to tell whether you should) those numbers arguably science but the panel’s conclusions are not. A scientists is no more (or less) qualified than anyone else to decide whether it’s better to undergo a simple procedure that is 1,429 times more likely to waste your time than kill you. Unless of course you’re one those scientifically illiterate crazies who actually take some comfort in knowing you don’t have breast cancer, in which case it has a 53% chance of telling you that right off the bat, a 44% chance of briefly spooking you only to put your mind at ease after further tests, and a 3.3% of leading to an unnecessary biopsy and a 0.7% chance of saving your life? Rather than make broad pronouncements as to who should or should not get screened, why not just tell women what the odds are and let them choose^* for themselves? By going the next step and telling us what we should do with these numbers, the panel (along with its apparatchiks like Snyderman) shows itself to suffer from the same know-it-all syndrome that plagues all those non-climatologists who eagerly sign as “scientists” the various and sundry petitions for and against global warming or the medical doctors who eagerly dispense “medical” opinions on everything from guns to crime, and even monster trucks.

Also suspect is the panel’s conclusion that waiting until age 50 would cut in half the number of false positives. Without further explanation, I’m inclined to call bullshit not only on the conclusion but also on the alleged science itself. What on earth trait does the average healthy 40 year old woman have that she won’t have 10 years from now, that will somehow trigger a false positive on a mammogram now but not then? And if we know what that is (assuming “it” even exists), why can’t we test separately for that and eliminate the problem of false positives altogether? If, as I suspect, the answer is “because the modeling says so,” then that tells you everything you need to know about the model – and damned near nothing else. But don’t listen to me, I’m not, like, a scientist.

UPDATE: Jody calls bullshit on that last bit of bullshit-calling. Apparently, women in their 40s really do have harder tissue that can more easily register a false positive. This doesn’t affect my main point, of course.

^*Yes, I know, it technically doesn’t count as a “choice” because we’re talking about a patient’s choice to obtain a medical procedure rather than an abortion. Nevertheless, I think there is something to be said for extending this quaint concept of “choice” to other venues.