Maggie's Farm

Now that the Brits have decided to dismantle the Royal Navy, I suppose any questions about it are moot. Still, I do not understand why, during the apparent ambush of the Brit inflatables by several Iranian gunboats, the Iranians were not picked up on the Cornwall's radar.

I understand that the Cornwall was ordered not to defend with fire, but surely the closer presence of the Cornwall, plus recalling her helo, could have been discouraging to the Iranians and driven them away.

(Of course, the notion that a warship could be forbidden to defend their ship and crew verges on insanity.)

Iran today: "Brits must admit trespass." It's the mullahs playing the same games with the Brits that they do inside the UK. Will the Brits ever learn that the Moslems play according to different rules than the West? The next demand will be that Blair himself come to Tehran and bend over his backside to Al Khameini.

I have arranged today to be a mental health day for myself from the old firm. I am going to walk around the place in the foot of snow we still have (no globalistical warmening here), and make a to-do checklist for myself and my slaves. I know I have some trees down at the edge of the horse field, and an Ash tree has crushed the fence, but our foolish horses haven't noticed. But I know there are plenty more projects to begin when the snow finally melts here in central CT. I also know I will need to clean out the Bluebird houses (I have about 20), but our Wood Duck houses are all set for arrival. Have not seen one yet, though, on the stream.

Speaking of mental health, one thing is as clear as day to me: I predict war. With control of Congress, the Dems are going to slam and smear and create an atmosphere of disarray and chaos in DC until the next election. Everything that moves is going to be a Big Scandal, and they will try to handcuff the administration with accusations and hearings, with "perjury traps" laid everywhere.

As they say in DC: "If you throw enough sh-t at the wall, some of it will stick."

This will be hardball, it will be mean and nasty, it will be slash-and-burn, it will be ridiculous and dishonest, it will further degrade the always-dubious reputation of the federal government - and it will be relentless. Doubt it? See today's Hillary says "Get Rove." Are such people America's best? Of course not. America's best people have real jobs.

Just one little problem: These Dem folks were elected to govern. They do not fully realize that yet. They are so eager to attack and destroy that they cannot bother to present positive, fresh, interesting plans for governance. It is partly strategic, but partly emotional, and it could come back and bite them in the end. It's neither healthy nor mature nor responsible - but what do we expect from most politicians?

But "the government is endogenous," isn't it?

Image: An Eastern Bluebird house from our favorite vendor, Best Nests. If you have a few acres of open meadow, "If you build it, they will come." I prefer those snake-proof metal posts.

Regular readers know that I was an ambivalent Dem until Reagan. Then I began to put it all together. Vote-buying is their MO. Period. Freebies with Other People's Money. They need a new idea.

And they even use that one idea to accumulate votes in Congress. Look at what they have had to promise - of our hard-earned money - to try to get votes for their Defeat In Iraq Program: Gateway.

Totally pathetic.

The Museum of the City of New York has decided to perpetuate the leftist myths - the Communist Party of the USA propaganda - of the "Lincoln Brigade," which was no brigade, which mainly came from NYC, and which fought (only for a few months) under the control of the Russians and never for the army of the Spanish Republic in their civil war against Franco.

Heroes, or "useful idiots"? The facts would seem to support the latter. Report in the New York Sun.

Here's a succinct description of the Prisoner's Dilemma, from this site:

In this hypothetical situation, two accomplices to a crime are imprisoned, and they forge a pact to not betray one another and not confess to the crime. The severity of the punishment that each receives is determined not only by his or her behavior, but also by the behavior of his or her accomplice. The two prisoners are separated and cannot communicate with each other. Each is told that there are four possible outcomes:

- If one confesses to the crime and turns in the accomplice (defecting from a pact with the accomplice), his sentence will be reduced.

- If one confesses while the accomplice does not (i.e. the accomplice cooperates with the pact to not betray each other), the first can strike a deal with the police, and will be set free. But the information he provides will be used to incriminate his accomplice, who will receive the maximum sentence.

- If both prisoners confess to the crime (i.e. both defect from their pact), then each receives a reduced sentence, but neither is set free.

It's fun for two people to play this game repetitively, and see who wins over time.

My idea was to write up something about that Prisoner's Dilemma game, but then I got lured away by the topic of the Tragedy of the Commons. Game Theory ties these subjects together, and so those subjects may need to wait a bit.

My calculus is not what it used to be but, as an attorney, I still find that Game Theory has its appeal for me.

Appeal, if not too much practical utility, because Game Theory tends to assume some degree of rationality, and humans are only rational on occasion.  Indeed, one reason for hiring an attorney is to apply some degree of objective rationality to a situation. Still, I believe that formal Game Theory - as opposed to normal legal strategizing - can inform legal practice. Here's a nice summary of the book Game Theory and the Law, which has some good references at the bottom.

People are often gaming things, aren't they? There's a survival instinct to make the most of a situation to best achieve your own goals. Only conscience, character, tradition, care for others, and the desire for the respect and trust of others stand in the way of humanity's being a pure gaming, calculating, scheming, strategic machine. We consider people who operate that way all the time as sociopathic.

When I studied calculus in college, the teachers were all into game theory. Their heros were von Neumann, Morgenstern, and of course the great John Nash, who elaborated the Nash Equilibrium - and who can still be seen wandering around Princeton - about whom Sylvia Nasar wrote the fascinating book, and then Ron Howard produced the wonderful "Best Picture" Beautiful Mind.

The spiritual home of Game Theory is the RAND Corporation, where very smart people work on interesting economic, military, and policy problems. I was interested to find that they have a graduate program. That would be one cool place to hang out for a while, in Santa Monica.

OK, this is already long enough and, as usual with my occasional rambles, I arrived both nowhere and somewhere. I will do the Tragedy of the Commons - more accurately termed The Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons (since, historically, all commoners (those with the right of commons) were of necessity highly regulated either by tradition or by law) - sometime soon. And eventually work my way back into the Prisoner's Dilemma.

In Yankeeland, we are getting towards the end of the time for dormant pruning of fruit trees and grape vines - and anything else that appreciates dormant pruning. I was busy this afternoon, trying to catch up before it's too late. You have to do it yourself nowadays to do it right, because the Mexicans don't have a clue.

Forget fertilizer. Assertive pruning is the best thing that can be done for deciduous flowering shrubs and fruit-bearing plants.

When you finish, the thing looks terrible, but it will thank you later with its production and vigor.

I follow these guidelines, pretty much.

For healthy, happy shrubs, I prune out, from the bottom, about a quarter to a third of the oldest growth every year. I prune or shape only ornamentals from the top. Deciduous shrubs, when pruned from the top, make you look like a gardening idiot, unless it's a hedge-type thing.

(And hey, Dylanologist: That huge splendid Crepe Myrtle in your front yard - I'd thin the heck out of it about now - from the bottom. Too many small shoots. I'd leave only 6-10 of the big ones. Just my opinion, and unsolicited at that.)

If I could erase the stupid anti-war things I did in college, I would. I was a bit of a skeptic, but followed the local fashion like a conformist. Now, I feel only shame about it. The past just isn't what it used to be.

Now, I would like to join the Gathering of Eagles in DC next Saturday, and take a stand against the moonbats who are trying to relive the past: the youth want to be part of something they read about, and the grey hairs just never grew up and thought more.

When the President of the wonderful and venerable small university where Jefferson was educated decided that a cross in William and Mary's chapel was "offensive to some" - or whatever gibberish ACLU types typically use to erase signs of faith from daily life - I felt two things: sickened and angry.

Also, confused. What person, of any religion or lack thereof, would be offended by a symbol of God's sacrificial love for mankind? That is an odd concept by which to be offended but, in general, the notion of desecrating another person's place of worship would never even occur to me.

And I wondered why it affected me so strongly, when I usually take such nonsense in stride.

It didn't make me feel badly for Christ: He and His followers have encountered hostility and persecution since he began His ministry, and He does not need my comfort or pity.

It didn't make me feel too badly for other Christians, especially those at W&M, because Christians have become accustomed to, if not resigned to, living with intolerance from the Left - and to resisting that intolerance when they can.

I think I felt angry that an agenda-driven person would try to erase a piece of the College's history. It doesn't matter what the excuse is; it's still the same thing that the Commies did in Russia. It's like a lie. Nothing to do with religion, really. As a pattern, the dismissal of tradition is a foolish and dangerous thing with unknowable consequences.

And I think I felt ill that a college president - presumably but not necessarily a high-minded person - would have the hubris to strike down a symbol of God's presence. We do not need a chapel in which to pray, nor do we need a cross to focus on Christ's sacrificial love, but these material things are tools, aids, to reverence and prayer, and as such are sacred - if anything is sacred anymore.

Yes, that is what made me feel ill; it is a personal violation, like the time I was mugged with a gun in my stomach in NYC many years ago. Civilized folks do not do that to each other. It is that indifference to others - including to me - that sickens me and always takes me by surprise. (Hostility disguised as "tolerance"? That isn't very subtle.)

Now the deal is that the Wren Cross will reside in a glass case with a plaque, like a museum artifact, or like Lenin in his glass coffin. Like a dead cross, buried in a tomb. But Easter is coming, when the glory of the Resurrection and the offer of salvation will no doubt touch even a college president in some small way. A glory that will shine forth through any attempted entombment or confinement to illuminate the world, and light a little lamp in any soul which is receptive to that light.

No human can extinguish that Easter light. My pastor would advise us to pray for the president of W&M - to pray that his heart be softened. My friends would say "Stand up for Jesus" - and pray for the W&M prez too.

Other thoughts: Protein Wisdom, Powerline, and Powerline again.

Image: Botticelli's Mystic Crucifixion

The VA hospital system is, except for the small Indian Health Service, our homegrown example of federal government-owned and -run medical care. How is the VA doing? Coyote. I don't understand why they don't shut down the VA system, and just insure vets for regular hospitals.

Of course the Brit NHS is in chronic crisis, with hospital lightbulbs being removed to save money. But look at what they will pay for: Moonbattery. When medical care gets politicized, it becomes as stupid as everything else govt does.

The uninsured. Tell me how single-payer insurance would have saved this kid. Singleton.

Bruce Kesler asks this question, about the idea of of revamping the American system, in response to a piece by Reed in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Reed is dogged in revealing the empty rhetoric driving most other newspapers, as they lament the “uninsured.” The poor already receive health care, through Medicaid and similar programs for working poor, and even illegals are guaranteed emergency care. Most of the uninsured are, actually, the young and foolish, and most others can afford at least catastrophic insurance if they didn’t prioritize lattes and other luxuries over self-responsibility. Here and here, Reed names the newspapers glibly citing that there are 47-million uninsured, when up to 12-million are actually illegal aliens.

The mantra that we must upend the health care arrangements and economics of the 85% of us with insurance, polls usually showing 80% satisfaction, in order to subsidize the inflated, undeserving and irresponsible bulk of the uninsured 15% is public policy insanity, driven by the Left’s obsession with enlarging government and bureaucrats’ power over us via a government-run, nationalized health care system

Some of our readers enjoyed my trip to the Flower District a week ago, so I thought I might show some of the outcomes of the big flower show. After many years of helping out, us husbands learn to appreciate the artistry and thought that the wives put into their work.

The Garden Club of America has no male members, nor will it ever have any. A bunch of radical, flower-growing feminists for sure. Have no fear: I'd hate to see the Lefty gals try to take over the GCA. They would all end up with flower clippers embedded in their unlovely bodies by the hands of these steel magnolias.

I have winning samples from several of the competition classes. Forgive my poor photography - I will never get past the snapshot level. This creation is 8' tall.

 This one is also 8':

 This one is about 30'':

 and this one is about 36":

 and here's another of the giant red ones. The gent obscures the red tropical flowers spilling out of the paint can:

A Christian urologist responds to an entitlement-minded guy who complains about the fee for an elective surgical procedure - a vasectomy reversal. Price, Value and Grace, at The Doctor is In. Wow. A sample:

I greatly appreciate your note, and understand well your frustration at the high cost of reversal surgery. To you these fees seem unreasonably high, an insurmountable barrier to the deepest need and desire of your heart.

By any objective standard, my fees for this procedure are reasonable. My current expertise in this area has been acquired through a long and arduous education and training experience, augmented by nearly 30 years of experience in performing this microsurgical procedure, which is extremely demanding — perhaps one of the most difficult procedures in all of surgery, regardless of specialty. There are perhaps no more than a few dozen surgeons in the world who bring this kind of experience to the restoration of fertility after vasectomy — yet many surgeons with far less experience, using cruder and often unsuccessful surgical techniques, are charging as much or more than this for the procedure. Top specialists in this field — which you know if you have researched these costs — not uncommonly charge two, three, sometimes four or more times as much as the fees I have quoted. Do I believe that many of these charge far too much? Most definitely — but most have earned that right through rigorous training, long hours, and hard work. They most certainly have the right to charge what they will — as you have the right to have this procedure, or not.

So I make no apologies for my fees. You say I do not live in your world, which is most certainly true; you also do not live in mine. Could you sustain the $40,000 a month which it costs to keep the doors of my small, efficient, one-doctor practice open? Do you believe these fees go merely to line my pockets, to keep me in Porsches and luxury yachts? Believe what you will, of course — but as the apostle Paul says in 1st Timothy (5:18), “The laborer deserves his wages.” The God who judges you also judges me — and before Him I am confident that these fees are just and not extortionary.

How many people do you know who complain about the price of medical care, but not about the price of a new car, or a new large-screen TV, or a new boat, or their estate-planning lawyer? Read the whole piece.

People who would rather suppress ideas than discuss and debate ideas - once they have learned something - do not belong in any university in the Western world. Oxford Prof. Coleman strikes back at the student brownshirts. View from the Right.

He wants to expell those who work to suppress his ideas and speech. Profs are not known for having cojones. This fellow has a pair, and is our hero.

We need more Prof. Colemans in the US.

Although I suspect that "climate change" is of no significance, and represents just little blips on an ever-changing graph, I have a question for everyone who discusses the subject: Why does it matter whether warming or cooling is made-made or not?

Isn't there an assumption in that question that if, say, periods of warming correlate with solar radiation, that is somehow better or different or less scary - like organic spinach or something?

Why should it matter? Warmth is warmth.

Besides everybody going out to plant a palm tree to make them feel better, I propose an international effort to send fleets of fire-engine rocket ships to the sun to cool it off a tad. Not so much as to put the fire out, though. This would be a good project for the UN.

Well, gotta run. Need to complete the documents for my new  carbon-offset company so I can cash in before the fad goes the way of the hula-hoop.

(Image: Palm trees in Chatham, MA)

It's Friday, and early Spring in lovely Hartford, CT. How do I know? I hear the spring song of the Song Sparrow and of the Cardinal, and they are telling to me to think about planting some Sugar Snap peas soon. And soon our local Box Turtles will be clomping out of their cosy winter dens in the leaf and mulch piles, in their Wellies, looking for slugs and early shoots in the garden and hoping I will toss them a rotten tomato from the kitchen.

What to do on a dark rainy day like this, besides work? Well, we can reminisce about Fridays of old at Sippican Cottage, while waiting for Dust My Broom's Friday Blues and Beer series.

And we can reminisce about the 20th anniversary of Plato and Shakespeare scholar Allan Blooms' The Closing of the American Mind with R.R. Reno at First Things (h/t, View from 1776). An important book, and a best-seller, somehow. A few quotes from the Reno piece:

Bloom’s book was a real sensation and a surprise bestseller. Looking back, I can see why. The Closing was more than a highbrow attack on contemporary academic careerism (a la Jacques Barzun), a middlebrow defense of great books (a la E. D. Hirsch), or a populist exposé of tenured radicals and puerile campus ideologues (a la David Horowitz). The gist of Bloom’s polemic—and the book was nothing if not a long, erudite, and hyperbolic polemic—was a brief against the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He said out loud what liberal elite culture could only regard as heresy: The supposed idealism of the 1960s was, in fact, a new barbarism. Whatever moral and spiritual seriousness the long tradition of American pragmatism had left intact in university life, the anti-culture of the left destroyed.

The result? Higher education has become, argued Bloom, the professional training of clever and sybaritic animals, who drink, vomit, and fornicate in the dorms by night while they posture critically and ironically by day. Bloom identified moral relativism as dogma that blessed what he called “the civilized reanimalization of man.” He saw a troubling, dangerous, and soulless apathy that pleasured itself prudently with passing satisfactions (“Always use condoms!” says the sign by the dispenser in the bathroom) but was moved by no desire to know good or evil, truth or falsehood, beauty or ugliness.

I remember reading Bloom in 1987, feeling as though he was describing what I was experiencing as a young graduate teaching assistant. Bright, energetic, ambitious Yale students could master material with amazing speed. They could discuss brilliantly. They could write effective, well-researched papers. But they possessed an amazing ability to understand without being moved, to experience without judging, to self-consciously put forward their own convictions as mere opinions. On the whole, they seemed to have interior lives of Jell-O.

She demands no mention of unpleasant subjects. Mickey Kaus:

Enforcing taboos doesn't work like it used to, back when all you had to do was muzzle a few gatekeepers.** Today, if people have things to say they're going to say them. If the candidates don't say them, and the MSM doesn't say them, that doesn't mean they won't get said.** Note to Hillary: Your husband cheated on you and was fined $90,000 for lying about it to a federal judge. Everybody thinks he's still cheating on you. Your fellow Democrats are tolerant, but they wonder what the deal is. That isn't the "politics of personal destruction." It's due diligence. Attempting to repress this discussion only assures that it will quickly come to the surface.

My question: Why do people call it "cheating" when it is so obvious that it's just part of their deal? It's not cheating until it makes the newspapers, and she can play the role of the hurt little wifie. They should quit the charade.

West 28th street in Manhattan has been the flower district for 100 years. I have always enjoyed the way NYC retailers and wholesalers have clumped together for the convenience of their customers and for the convenience of the trucks that deliver to them. The Diamond District, the Fulton Fish Market, the Hunts Point vegetable market, and so on. Heck, there is even a Financial District. Who knew?

Such districts have not been created by fiat or by planners, but have grown organically with the relentless logic of market capitalism.

You can find any flower or plant material you want in the Flower District, in almost any reasonable volume. 300 Bell Song tulips? No problem. As the second largest flower market in the world (after Amsterdam), the market serves retailers from MA, NJ, CT, NYS - and further. The vans arrive to load up on their day's purchases at 5 AM.

At 6 AM, you will also see a smattering of garden club ladies hunting out stuff for their next creation, which is what brought me and Mrs. Barrister and her pal down to the district from central CT in snow and sleet at o-dark-thirty this morning. I was chauffeur, but I do get a kick out of looking at all of the strange stuff. Some look like science fiction creations, especially some of the strange Protea which, it seems, have been all the rage in recent years. There is one Proteus that looks like eyeballs on a stem. The Greek sea-god was a shape-changer.

Her friend wanted these and these, and found them. And some other stuff like the winter Buckeye branches Mrs. B was looking for, plus a ton of pussy willows just for home.

As the city changes, the flower district is slowly fading, from over 60 establishments 20 years ago to around 40 right now. But it remains a bustling, thriving place in the early morning.

Now I will get out the old plow and do the driveway and the front of the barn so we can let the horses out. Snow day! I'll "work from home" this afternoon by the fire with a few warming glasses of something nice. 

She now says she wants an Iraq troop draw-down in 90 days. Thus she joins the "Victory Team" of Pelosi, Murtha, Schumer, Kerry, Kennedy, et al.

I believe that this is both unwise for the country and unwise politically. There are still people around who recall the final Vietnam debacle as a sort of political victory, and long to relive it. I do not believe that this attitude will fly today.

What is it all about? Politically, the Dems require a defeat in Iraq, and will do anything in their power to achieve it. A bloodbath in Iraq would be a Victory - a ticket to the White House.

And worry about Jihad later, comfortable in the knowledge that the press would go very gentle on any Dem war against Jihadist moves against the US. I can just see the NYT headlines now: "Dem International Muscularity Redefines the Party."

I have been truant with our Fallacies for a while, but I figure I do them as much for myself as for our readers.

By posing, or implying, a false dilemma, you put the other guy off balance for a moment. Like most fallacies, it works because we, in the Western World, tend to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt and to assume his logical integrity. Wrong! He just might be working an agenda.

Always watch out for "either A or B" arguments. Examples:

1. A classic: "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit." Why? Aren't there other considerations? What if they weren't the same gloves? What if they shrunk from the blood? What if he didn't care whether they were a nice fit or not?  He got the jury going, though - and the rhyme helped.

2. "You believe in choice? What are you, some sort of baby-killer?" You see how false dilemmas give the illusion of a sharply-divided reality. What can you say? "No, wait - I never killed a baby..." and you are on the defensive right away.

3. A famous Christian one: "Either Christ was the son of God, or he was a con-man or a loony." I worship Him, but not because of this false dilemma.

4. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." This false dilemma tugs at one's guilt a little, until you see the trick that is being pulled. After all, what if there is nothing meaningful I can do about it? Or what if I don't care? Or what if I think it's a minor problem? Or what if managing my own life is all I can handle? Or what if saving the world just isn't my bag?

Image: The late, great defence lawyer Johnny Cochran.

A quote from a Duke prof about what he learned from the so-called rape case (from an excellent summary piece at Durham in Wonderland):

America, and the world, is sick with white supremacy and racism; heterosexism and homophobia; patriarchy, sexism, and transphobia; and poverty and capitalist excess. These systems all interact to create a culture of violence that must be changed. We teach our children the lessons of these systems, and they grow up to reinforce them. We must dismantle these systems if we hope to end the onslaught of violence . . . Survivors will create the path forward. In resisting violence, homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and capitalism, survivors of oppression generate the vision for the rest of us to follow.

That profound, nuanced, deeply historically-informed cultural critique must have been xeroxed from the Cultural Marxism Handbook for grades K-2. Hmmm. That ain't what I learned from the story.

What I learned is that there are more psychotic, deluded, ignorant, propaganda-ist, hateful, arrogant, and embittered paranoid-psychotic folks teaching at our expensive universities than I had ever imagined. I always thought that colleges, these days, were evolving into kindergartens, but I did not realize that they were voluntary asylums where wackos have their delusions reinforced by an equally insane community, and get paid for it (probably to keep them off the streets).

Thanks, Duke, for clearing that issue up for me. Now, o wise prof, explain to me what "transphobia" is? Fear of trains and planes, or what?

Image: An oasis of sanity at Duke.

A great blog post - as opposed to a "check this out" post - is succinct, non-rambling, fact-filled, gracefully-written, minimally self-referential, and pulls together disparate themes and unusual facts to shed fresh light on a subject, or to make a random subject interesting. That is to say, a great blog post is a good brief essay, ideally well-salted with links. When I post, I rarely have take the time that is required to be brief.

Here's a good example of a fine blog post by Never Yet Melted about deer coursing in Scotland.

As I have said before, the "war" in Iraq has evolved into a large-scale police action with the goal of supporting the establishment of a humane, civil society which does not support Moslem terrorists. I see no reason why anyone would oppose such a benign effort in a part of the world which is not only strategically important to America, but has also been a source of terrorist attacks. It's called "draining the swamp." It might be successful, and it might fail. But why oppose it?

Why? Purely for political reasons. But it's a big gamble for the Dems: Now they need to cross their fingers and pray that we fail, and they need to do whatever they can to cause us to fail, for their political strategy to succeed. If the past is any guide, they will give this kind of "victory" all of their energy, and will ignore the real issues in the world. All about power and '08.

It is painful to watch this sort of thing happening in my country. Bush must feel like Lincoln, dealing with the Copperhead Dems who never quit opposing "Lincoln's war."

Also, need I mention that I believe that the reason for the opposition to the "surge" is that it might be successful?

Good old Moonbattery informed us about HR 254, sponsored by the esteemed Shirley Jackson-Lee. HR 254 proposes to create federal "hate crimes."

HR 254 is creepy. The bill fits right in with the Cultural Marxism piece posted yesterday.

What makes it worse to assault someone for their sexual proclivities than to assault someone just because you hate their guts? The proposed bill, as Moonbattery points out, could be extended to "hate speech" laws, such as they endure in Europe.

For the record, we hate this bill, and we hate the perennially enraged Shirley for having the horrible, oppressive, and idiotic idea. Furthermore, we will hate anything and anybody we feel like, and we will happily say so until someone hauls us off for regrooving.

It's OK. The court says so. And where are you going to meet appropriate people anyway - at Guido's Pizza and Lounge? From Meyerson at WaPo. A perfect Valentine's Day item:

In August 2005, I wrote a column about a recent National Labor Relations Board (Republican majority thereof) ruling that upheld the legality of a company's banning its employees from fraternizing off the job, citing as a woozy precedent a previous ruling that had banned hotel employees from fraternizing with guests. Earlier this month, the D.C Court of Appeals overturned that 2005 ruling -- reaffirming, broadly speaking, that the employer-employee relationship isn't that of a lord to a serf, and, more narrowly, that happy hour with your co-workers is your true-blue American right.

Rudy Giuliani rose to prominence as a US Attorney going after white collar, mainly high-visibility Wall Street "crime". No doubt this was part of his political plan (nothing wrong with that), EXCEPT that his famous prosecutions which won him the Mayoralty of NYC (which is a bigger and sharper-elbowed organization than many state governments in the US) ended in reversals after years of appeal - after ruining countless lives and careers and marriages, including some folks I knew.

His career was built on fear. When the US Attorney decides to target you, good legal advice is to get down on your knees and pray, because once they have invested some time and money in you, they will be highly motivated to find some way hurt you, no matter what.

Thus, around NY, he is viewed as dangerously ruthless and calculating. Maybe fight fire with fire, and run him against the ruthlessly calculating Hillary. Nice people.

His case against Michael Milken was the most famous of many. People forget that Milken never broke any existing known laws other than the law against getting rich. No, new theories, versions and extensions of law were invented for Rudy's prosecutions. Milken, a financial genius and, in my opinion, probably an honest man, spent two years in jail for nothing. And now his invention, Junk Bonds, are a major capital market, fueling all sorts of growth in our economy.

Rudy is a likeable, charismatic fellow, a true conservative, and he did us all the favor of rescuing NYC from the mess it was in long before the WTC. At the time, the newspapers had been saying that NYC was ungovernable. I would vote for him against any Dem, but I do not respect him. I suspect that he has the heart of a Brooklyn thug. I still feel upset about the lives he destroyed. Maybe that's just politics, life in the big city, etc., but I'd rather not think so.

He of course also deserves credit for his handling the attack on New York, but I swould have expected nothing less of him and would never imagine him going Nagin. Still, his real achievement was bringing Democratic NYC back from decay and anarchy via conservative principles, firmness, persistence, and good cheer.

If you haven't been to NYC recently - go, and see what Rudy - and now Bloomberg - have accomplished.

For the whole story of his Wall Street prosecution days, the Journal of Libertarian Studies has an excellent summary. (I forget how to quote from PDF files.)