Insanity of Zero Tolerance Rules:10-Year-Old Girl Arrested, Handcuffed for Taking Scissors to School

"My daughter cried and cried," said her mother, Rose Jackson. "She had no idea what she did was wrong. I think that was way too harsh." Police officers decided the girl hadn't committed a crime and let her go. However, school officials suspended her for five days. Administrators will decide at a hearing whether she may return to class, or be expelled to a special disciplinary school. The scissors were discovered while students' belongings were being searched for property missing from a teacher's desk.

More Letters in NY Post Respond to Op-ed on Steroids and Baseball.

The New York Post has several more letters responding to the op-ed that Sonya Jones and I had earlier in the week.

Well, people feel pretty strongly about this issue. Again one of the letters brings up in a very general way the point that I have heard over the week: if some players use steroids, everyone else will also be forced to use them and that you may only have a few who are really willing to use them. It doesn't really seem to me that there is a free-riding problem here because the league and the union internalize the costs and benefits. If the net benefits to the fan from this higher quality play exceeds the costs imposed on the players, the league has an incentive to let players use the drugs. If not, they won't. The responses to the other letters seem straightforward. I am not sure why we don't recognize that people make informed decisions about risk every day or that in all sorts of ways people take risks to improve performance in life. Football injuries are just one example. Do we really need to have the government regulate everything?

One take on Mary Francis Berry's term ending on the US Commission on Civil Rights

As this article notes, I have had my own run ins with Berry. Anyway, I think that Mona Charen captures many people's reaction to Berry finally leaving: "Berry ruled the Civil Rights Commission like a dictator, bullying her allies and undermining her foes through means fair and foul. When President Bush appointed Kirsanow, Berry refused to seat him until a court ordered her to do so. She stood for the principle that no fact should stand in the way of her moral posturing. She got away with it for way too long."

Saddam Hussein's trial in limbo

"the UN ordered serving staff- including experienced lawyers from the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal - not to take part because of concerns about . . . the tribunal's willingness to impose the death penalty"

Because of this "Iraqi judges and prosecutors chosen to try Saddam Hussein are 'nowhere near ready', according to western officials who saw them at a secret training session in London."

Letters in NY Post Respond to Op-ed on Steroids and Baseball

The New York Post has several letters responding to the op-ed that Sonya Jones and I had earlier in the week. One of the letters brings up in a very general way the point that I have heard over the week: if some players use steroids, everyone else will also be forced to use them and that you may only have a few who are really willing to use them. It doesn't really seem to me that there is a free-riding problem here because the league and the union internalize the costs and benefits. If the net benefits to the fan from this higher quality play exceeds the costs imposed on the players, the league has an incentive to let players use the drugs. If not, they won't.

Four victims shot dead in ''No-guns'' Ohio nightclub

Report at Foxnews.com

Ohioans For Concealed Carry Statement:
This incident reinforces the fact that disarmament zones only disarm honest, law-abiding citizens; not the criminals who prey upon them.

This mass killer broke scores of firearms, liquor and criminal laws in committing this rampage. These same laws did nothing to protect the law-abiding citizens at this event.

Under current Ohio law, bearing handguns for self-defense in establishments which serve drinks under a Class D liquor license is illegal, even for employees. In fact, Ohio's law would prevent SECURITY at this nightclub from carrying a handgun, even if the club owner had wanted them to do so.

When the Ohio House or Representatives passed Sub. House Bill 12 in 2003, specific exemptions were contained to allow bar owners to protect themselves and their patrons. This provision was stripped from the final bill by the state Senate.

Many other states allow concealed handgun license-holders to enter into liquor establishments, and even to consume alcohol, so long as they do not drink to the point of impairment.

Ohio's complete ban on self-defense in liquor establishments has proven time and again to be a complete failure. It is time for Ohio to join the other state's who have recognized there is nothing to fear from law-abiding citizens who choose to defend themselves.

Academics making inaccurate claims about confirmation rates of judges

Michael Gerhardt at William & Mary Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky at Duke Law School had an amazine piece in the Los Angeles Times where they claim among other things that President George W. Bush has "the highest success rate ever for a president's judicial nominations." An e-mail that I received from Gerhardt noted that despite the claims made in the op-ed they calculated the confirmation rate "by looking at the number confirmed of those reaching the Senate floor." Thus by dropping out the nominees who had problems (from filibusters to nominations that never made it through committee when the Democrats controlled the Senate), there are apparently few problems. Even with this carefully selected data, they ignore recent administrations such as for Carter or Reagan's first term.

So What's Wrong with Players on Steroids?

Sonya Jones and I have an op-ed at the New York Post today. It starts out:

SO athletes use steroids to perform better. Wall Street traders take Ritalin and everyone uses caffeinated drinks during work to stay alert. News anchors get face lifts and actors take Botox so more people watch them. What's different about athletes?

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh discussed our op-ed during the first and second hours of his radio show today. FreeRepublic.com also has a long thread discussing the op-ed. It also was reprinted on Foxnews.com and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

An interesting op-ed on Bernard Kerik, the new head of Homeland Security

The son of a prostitute who was "tortured, beaten, brutalized and used," abandoned by his father when he was 2 years old, raised by a violent stepfather with a criminal past, Bernard Kerik began stealing and dropped out of high school. . . . What saved Mr. Kerik from a life of crime was a passion for the martial arts . . .

More on bias in academia

The WSJ writes on some new studies on academic bias. Among the other interesting points:

For instance, nearly half said that their professors "frequently comment on politics in class even though it has nothing to do with the course" or use the classroom to present their personal political views. In answers to other questions, the majority acknowledged that liberal views predominate. Most troubling, however, were the responses to the survey item "On my campus, there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with the professor's political or social views in order to get a good grade"--29% agreed.

An interesting perspective on the UN

David Kopel has an interesting take on why the UN scandal deserves more newscoverage:

Suppose that a big corporation headquartered in New York City were the center of the largest embezzlement scheme in world history ($21 billion), which enriched big oil companies, foreign dictators, terrorists, and its own employees. Further, suppose that the corporation's own union had declared its lack of confidence in the corporation's management, because of endemic corruption, and because of senior management's lax attitude towards sexual abuse, including coercive sex with underage girls.

Also suppose that the son of the company president was getting paid by another business that profited from the embezzlement scheme, and the company president had claimed that his son's affiliation ended in 1999, but actually the son continued with the business until 2004. And suppose that the company president and his staff were obstructing government investigations into their own corruption. Oh, and let's also suppose that the corporate president and his underlings had attempted to influence the recent U.S. presidential election.