Patterico's Pontifications

10/8/2015

How About Justin Amash for Speaker?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:04 pm



A week ago, The Week ran a piece titled: This 35-year-old Republican congressman could revolutionize the House. He should be speaker. The congressman in question is Patterico favorite Justin Amash. The author offers (and elaborates on) five reasons, which I will cite in bare bones form, and refer you to the piece itself for the meat:

1. Amash is a stickler for House rules who has never missed a vote.

2. Amash personally explains every vote he casts on his Facebook page.

3. He’d make time for lawmakers to actually read the bills they pass.

4. Amash represents a new generation of Republicans — literally.

5. John Boehner does not like him.

Amash had an op-ed about Boehner this past Sunday that is worth reading in full. Quotable:

Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders have repeatedly favored a “govern by crisis” approach that abandons the regular order of the House. Despite having months to act before legislative deadlines, leaders routinely wait until the last moment to plot a course of action, publicly concede in advance major negotiating points, insist that Republicans have no alternatives, refuse to allow amendments and then criticize colleagues for not voting to avert the crisis leadership caused.

This approach produces constant frustration among representatives in both parties and promotes the partisan finger-pointing that angers Americans at home. Instead of making bipartisan compromises to address long-term issues, Congress constructs desperate, last-minute political deals to obtain the requisite votes simply to clear the immediate impasse.

We could do a lot worse than someone with this sort of clarity.

P.S. Why are you not following me on the Facebook? Fix that now.

Kevin McCarthy Withdraws from Speaker Race

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:22 pm



It’s chaos. Paul Ryan says it won’t be him. People are actually floating Mitt Romney’s name. Interesting times.

Eugene Volokh: No Correlation Between State Homicide Rate and State Gun Laws

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:45 am



A unique and sensible way of looking at the statistics.

[C]orrelation obviously doesn’t equal causation; there may be lots of other factors that are the true causes of both of the things that are being measured. But if we do look for now at correlation, it seems to me that the key question should focus on state total homicide rates, or perhaps (for reasons I describe below) total intentional homicide plus accidental gun death rates. And it turns out that there is essentially zero correlation between these numbers and state gun laws.

Read it all.

After Several Days of Careful Consideration, Man Issues Apology for Mass Killing of Innocents

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:33 am



A man responsible for a mass killing has decided, after several days of reflection, to issue an apology to the survivors of the completely innocent people he killed, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Little is known about the victims, other than many of them were not only innocent, but among the most selfless and brave members of the human race. But a survivor described the attack as “absolutely terrifying,” describing seeing one victim “covered in blood, with wounds all over his body.” The witness added: “There are no words for how terrible it was.” She said:

Tome of my colleagues were in too much shock, crying and crying. I tried to encourage some of the staff to help, to give them something to concentrate on, to take their minds off the horror. But some were just too shocked to do anything. Seeing adult men, your friends, crying uncontrollably—that is not easy.

. . . .

These are people who had been working hard for months, non-stop for the past week. They had not gone home, they had not seen their families, they had just been working in the hospital to help people… and now they are dead. These people are friends, close friends. I have no words to express this. It is unspeakable.

The organization whose people were killed has said that the killings were unnecessary, as they had repeatedly warned the man, through his subordinates, of their location so that they would not be killed.

The Times reported that the decision to apologize for killing anywhere from 22 to 46 completely innocent people represented a “difficult and sensitive decision” that took “several days” to reach. The man’s last apology was for the burning of “several copies of the Quran,” according to the paper of record, and it was initially determined that the killing of several dozen innocent people did not quite rise to the same level. Accordingly, the man initially extended his “deepest condolences” to families of the innocent victims, calling it a “tragic incident.” After several days of reflection, however, the killer determined that it was “appropriate for him to offer an apology.”

Critics criticized the killing, noting that the killer, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, had killed other Nobel Peace Prize winners. The critics attempted to label this unprecedented, until someone reminded them about Yasser Arafat.

Today the man plans to travel to Roseburg, Oregon, to meet with families of people killed by someone besides himself. At least one of the families of a survivor from that attack has declined to attend, calling the trip “exploitative.” As of today, this blogger can find no mention of any plans by the man to meet with family members of those he is responsible for killing himself.


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0719 secs.