Popping Skulls

"Crushing dissent" is one of the nonsensical catch-phrases the angry left slings around rather freely these days when discussing the Bush administration. Attempting rational conversation with anyone who says such things is a rather futile pursuit and so I generally ignore them. Occasionally, though, it's good to highlight just how foolish and ignorant of the world such folks really are. The New York Sun runs a terribly sad story today which accomplishes precisely that. In 1996 North Korean soldiers building another empty highway for Kim Il Sung discovered a Bible and a list of 25 names while demolishing an empty house. Those on the list were identified as the members and leaders of a secret Christian church, which perhaps met in the house. Everyone on the list was immediately arrested at their workplaces and imprisoned. Several weeks later the parishoners were brought to the road construction site where their church had been discovered. An audience of spectators "arranged in neat rows" awaited them. Five of the Christians were identified as church leaders: one pastor, two assistant pastors, and two elders. These five were bound hand and foot and made to lie in front of an asphalt roller. As the 20 church members and other spectators watched, the five leaders were accused of being Christian spies, and ordered to deny their faith and pledge to serve only Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The five said nothing. "Some of the fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller."

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Open trackback links from: The Political Teen, Stop the ACLU, Mudville Gazette, Basils Blog.

Rockefeller the Weasel

Senator Jay Rockefeller has been roundly ridiculed this week for his comments during an interview with Chris Wallace last Sunday.

Most of the mockery has focused on two answers, one where Rockefeller says he warned the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria in early 2002 of President Bush's already-made decision to invade; and the other where he half-heartedly denies responsibility for his vote to authorize force against Iraq.

But there's another particularly weaselly aspect to his comments that I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. Rockefeller says he warned the Arab governments of Bush's intent to invade in January of 2002:

I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

A bit later in the interview he's challenged to take responsibility for the vote he cast in October of 2002 and says:

I'm responsible for my vote, but I'd appreciate it if you'd get serious about this subject, with all due respect. We authorized him to continue working with the United Nations, and then if that failed, authorized him to use force to enforce the sanctions.

His first answer fits nicely with the left's line that Bush decided to invade Iraq early on and then manufactured intelligience to support his aims. The second answer is the same excuse John Kerry used in the presidential debates last year: That he voted for the war resolution only to give Bush negotiating leverage with the UN and Iraq.

But Rockefeller says he knew nine months before his vote that Bush had made up his mind to invade! Like I said, weaselly.

Gruden Goes For Two: Foolish Folly or Genius Gamble?

Washington's painful one-point loss to Tampa Bay yesterday was about as gut-wrenching a seesaw battle as I've seen in a while, with huge momentum-changing plays every few minutes, four critical instant-replay reviews, and one unreviewable blown call.*

The most interesting sequence of the game came after the Bucs' final touchdown. With the score 35-34 in Washington's favor Tampa Bay opted to kick the extra point and tie the game. Washington's Shawn Springs and Walt Harris timed the snap and flew around the left and right ends to block the kick (Harris was credited). But wait: They both jumped offsides giving the the Bucs another chance from the 1.

Rather than kicking again Gruden deployed his heavy set and Mike Alstott plowed in for the score and the 36-35 lead. Or did he? Replays seemed to show Alstott's elbow down short of the goal line, and the replay official ducked under the hood to sort it out. Deciding there wasn't conclusive evidence to convict, er, overturn the line judge who called the score, he let the conversion stand. The Redskins received the kickoff, gained one first down to near midfield, and then ran four plays gaining zero yards, handing the ball and the game to the Bucs.

So was Gruden's call for two the best choice? The announcers certainly thought so, comparing his decision favorably with Dick Vermeil's touchdown call to win the game in last week's Kansas City vs Oakland matchup. I wasn't so sure.

In that instance the Chiefs elected to go for the win with five seconds on the clock, meaning Oakland had no chance to get the ball back and score. As Gregg Easterbrook pointed out last week in his NFL.com column, the Chiefs had probably an 80-90 percent chance or better of scoring from inside Oakland's 1, while kicking to send the game into overtime offered no better than a 50 percent shot at victory. In Sunday's game, however, the Redskins would get the ball back and only needed a field goal to recapture the lead. Gruden's call increased the Skins' chances of winning outright if Alstott failed, and didn't prevent the Skins from winning even if Alstott scored. On further review, it turns out that not only was Gruden's call probabilistically the right one, but he should have gone for two points and the win even before the Skins' offsides penalty moved the ball a yard closer. To calculate this I coarsely modeled the likeliest outcome paths with back-of-the-envelope estimates of the probabilities involved at each step.

One path, for example, was Bucs Go For 2/Bucs Score/Bucs Stop Wash. This is the path that actually occurred, and it happens be the single likeliest path out of the 16 paths I modeled.

Some other likely paths were Bucs Kick XP/Bucs Make Kick/Wash 50 Yd Dr/Wash 42 Yd FG and Bucs Kick XP/Bucs Make Kick/Bucs Stop Wash/Bucs OT Win or Wash OT Win. The least likely path was Bucs Kick XP/Bucs Miss/Bucs Onside Rec/Bucs 30 Yd Dr/Bucs Miss FG.

According to my model, the Bucs chances of winning were just 32 percent had they opted to kick the extra point and 55 percent by going for two (assuming an 80 percent chance of converting). If there had been no Skins penalty and you drop the Bucs chances of converting from the 2-yard line to 70 percent, that's still the better option with a 48 percent chance of ultimate victory!

The key is that by going for two the Bucs eliminate the outcomes where the Redskins have two opportunities to win. In other words, if the Bucs kick for the tie, Washington gets a chance to win in regulation (33 percent) and another chance of winning in overtime (50 percent). When the Bucs go for two they lose outright nearly 20 percent of the time but the other 80 percent of the time Washington just gets one 33 percent chance of victory. (Actually the Bucs lose outright 19 percent of the time--the other one percent they recover their onside kick, drive 30 yards with no timeouts, and kick a 42 yard field goal!)

UPDATE: I read today that NFL teams make just over 50 percent of two-point conversions from the 2-yard line. I'm not sure whether that number is accurate--it wasn't from an authoritative source. If it is, the sample size may be fairly small. I'd prefer to look at the percentage of all plays from the 2 which scored. But even assuming the worst-case 50 percent odds of success, going for two is still the slightly better option in this scenario, offering a 35 percent chance of winning vs a 32 percent chance of winning when teams kick the extra point!

One interesting side note on my probability estimates: I guestimated the average kicker's chance of hitting a 42 yard field goal at 65 percent. Ned Macey at FootballOutsiders happened to mention today that NFL kickers hit 62 percent of all 46-yard field goals. That was a pretty darn good guestimate! NFL.com stats so far this season show kickers hitting 69 percent of 40-49-yard field goals.

UPDATE II: More actual probabilities: On fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line over the past four seasons teams score 67 percent of the time overall and 74 percent of the time when they run.

UPDATE III: I was asleep at the switch on this one (not paying much attention to the blog over Thanksgiving weekend) but thanks to Gregg Easterbrook for the link from his NFL.com column!

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Current Washington Post Redskins stories: Skins Blame Selves, Wilbon, Wise, Kornheiser, Gruden: Easy Choice, Gibbs Gouges Refs, Skins Peek at Giants, Turner Still Stinks.

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* Joey Galloway's out-of-bounds catch at Washingon's 3 in the first quarter was unreviewable because the official said Galloway was forced out of bounds by the defender.

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Model Details

(Click for larger Image.) Each step includes outcome descriptions, the probability of each outcome, and the number of outcome occurences. The orange rows indicate an ultimate Bucs win, the red indicate an ultimate Skins win. For example, here are the steps in the topmost path which starts when the Bucs Go For 2:

1. Bucs score 80 percent of the time (16 of 20 outcomes on branch)

2. Wash drives 50 yards 50 percent of the time (80 of 160 outcomes on branch)

3. Wash kicks a 42 yard field goal 65 percent of the time (1040 of 1600 outcomes on branch)

4. No more decisions on this path so Wash wins 100 percent of the time (20,800 of 20,800 outcomes on branch).

Thank You John Edwards And Ilk

My wife's Ob-Gyn, Dr. Linda M. Brownlee, notified us today that she's shuttering her practice in Roswell, Georgia, and taking a job with Kaiser Permanente. Despite having never been sued for malpractice her insurance premiums increased 50 percent this year to $105,000. She'll earn a stable salary from Kaiser without worrying about huge premium increases cutting into her income every year.

Kaiser apparently self-insures its doctors to keep their costs down. I'm sure they also have a full stable of lawyers ready to fight malpractice suits to the bitter end. Ironically, many of the same liberals who hate Wal-Mart also oppose tort reform. Their efforts will likely speed the walmartization of health care as the industry consolidates into fewer and fewer large corporations for just these reasons. (Not that I'm anti-Wal-Mart by any means.)

Georgia finally limited pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice suits to $250,000 in February of this year. But premiums had already risen rapidly for years (though Georgia's increases are far from the worst in the country). It seems unlikely that the just-passed law would apply to existing malpractice cases so we may not see much effect for a few years.

The trial-lawyers' stock answer to rising insurance rates is that they're caused by underperforming insurance company investments (low interest rates + stagnant stock market). Sure, maybe that accounts for a portion of the rise (along with catch-ups from supposedly lower than normal rates in past years). But please! The insurance companies didn't base their old rates on Dow 100,000 -type performance! And despite its losses since 2000, the S&P 500 has still gained an average of 10 percent per annum since 1980 (from 115 to 1225), not including dividends.

No, I think the trial lawyers knew they were losing the battle for public opinion. Too many people have felt the personal pinch, in one way or another, of rising health and malpractice insurance premiums. Their association flacks cast around for a story with which to deflect blame and astutely latched on to the flat stock market and low interest rate line which, true or not, everyone can understand.

Really, the argument over responsibility for insurance premium increases is a distraction. We know there are lots of frivolous or unscientifically based lawsuits and ridiculously large damage awards (though these are often reduced on appeal). They range from big class action jobs like the silicone breast implant cases that sent Dow Chemical into bankrupty; to asbestos cases that continue to multiply and bankrupt dozens of companies only remotely associated with the stuff; to the building stream of Vioxx suits against Pfizer; to hundreds of suits blaming individual Ob-Gyns for cerebral palsy and the like. Off the top of my head I can name several friends and relatives that have been directly harmed or undeservedly helped by frivolous suits:

• My aunt who's a family practioner in Houston works part-time at a free health care clinic. She doesn't want to work full-time and high malpractice premiums make it very difficult for her to join a normal private practice part-time (I believe the premiums for her work at the clinic are paid out of government or charitable funds). CLARIFICATION: My aunt does pay her malpractice premiums but out of pre-tax income. She has stopped delivering babies so her costs aren't nearly as high as those of an obstetrician, but they have still increased by over 600 percent over the past eight years.

• My uncle (her husband) is an anesthesiologist who's been sued at least once or twice. In the case I'm familiar with a woman with some type of chronic condition (perhaps diabetes) failed to take her medicine and was rushed to the hospital on the verge of death. She needed a rapid IV infusion to live so he used much larger needles than normal, which resulted in some nerve damage in her arms. His thanks for saving her life was a malpractice lawsuit over the nerve damage.

• A friend of my wife received $60,000 from the silicone breast implant lawsuit against Dow. Not that she had any health problems or that there was ever any evidence that the implants in general caused problems. She was just automatically signed up as a member of the plaintiff class by virtue of being a Dow customer.

• A coworker who once worked as a contractor for Microsoft will soon receive nearly $100,000 in damages from the temp worker lawsuit filed against Microsoft several years ago. Again, he was simply added to the class action suit, though he was wronged in no way by Microsoft (nor were any other of the plaintiffs--they simply didn't like an employment arrangement that kept their hands out of the stock option pie). Indeed, as a result of the case, current contractors at Microsoft receive fewer benefits than in the old days to ensure they have no grounds for claiming de facto permanent employment.

• A college acquaintaince won $150,000 by smashing his hand while in high school. Essentially, he hit the lottery by screwing around with his buddies in shop class.

Right now there's a class-action suit ramping up over scratched iPod Nano screens. How much longer will we let these legal leeches and their thieving symbiant plaintiffs bleed us?

Keeping Cool

Today in Washington people who've spent their lives doing useful, productive things are being publicly berated by preening camera hogs who mostly waste other people's time and money. At times like this I simply remind myself that politician damage control is the core strength of our constitutional republic and let it go...

The Fumble Beat

Since Redskins fumble recoveries are my storyline of the month I simply must respond to Thomas Boswell's column. Boswell hinges his column on the premise that Washington beat the Eagles on lucky fumble recoveries. Huh?! I guess he hasn't kept up with my work on the subject. ;)

The Skins were a bit luckier than usual Sunday night. In a close and sloppy game they were just lucky enough to win, but they still recovered less than 50% of the game's fumbles--just 2 of 5. If they'd recovered at their normal rate this season they would almost certainly have lost as each fumble was a potential game turner. Let's review.

The Eagles fumbled out of bounds twice, once each inside their 30 and 20 yard lines. That's an almost guaranteed 3 points if Washingon recovers either one.

The Redskins fumbled three times, once each inside the Eagles 30 and 20 yard lines, and once inside their own 40. They recovered two of these. The first recovery was inside their own 40 and prevented a probable Eagles field goal. After the second recovery they scored an immediate touchdown. The one that got away prevented a probable Washington field goal.

On those five fumbles hinged (conservatively) 19 points. If Washington recovers them all they win by 16 points instead of 7. On the other hand, had the Skins lost all five as they did in New York a week ago, Philly ekes out a 3-6 point win.

The game wasn't pretty. I'd like to see improvement in a few areas--like the 2.7 yard-per-carry rushing average. But in context the season is going well. Halfway through Washington has played just one team with a losing record and a handful of division leaders and runners up. Despite this and the poor fumble luck they're a solid 5-3.

The road ahead doesn't look much easier with just two more sub-.500 opponents on the calendar. But after so many years as the NFC East doormat, it's certainly nice to be in the thick of things again!

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Other Washington Post Redskins stories: Beating the Bully. Credit to the H-backs. Not Half Bad.

On the Ground In Thailand

My brother Kevin, a third-year resident at St. Vincent's Hospital in Jacksonville, and his wife arrived safely in Thailand yesterday for a two-week medical missions trip. They'll be providing primary care in some fairly wild and remote areas of Thailand so I expect it will be an interesting and eye-opening experience. I've invited him to write about it here when he returns so stay tuned...

Skins Fumbling Season?

Two weeks ago I pointed out that the Washington Redskins' negative turnover differential was mostly caused by extremely poor luck at recovering fumbles. At that point the team had recovered just 3 of 18 fumbles on offense and defense, and I expected those numbers to improve significantly.

Instead, over the past two weeks (including a 52-17 blow-out victory at San Francisco and a 36-0 whipping by the New York Giants) their recovery rate has worsened to 4 of 26 (15%). Since both teams have an even chance of recovering any given fumble, that's like flipping a coin 26 times and getting only four heads. The chances of this happening are just 1 in 3,333--about the same as the chances of tossing 12 heads or tails in a row! Ai-yi-yi!

The NFC East-leading Giants, on the other hand, lead the NFL with a fumble recovery rate of 71%. The second place Dallas Cowoys are also well ahead of the curve with a recovery rate of 62%, while the Philadelphia Eagles are dead average at exactly 50%.

So how much difference did fumbles make last Sunday? The Redskins fumbled three times, and New York recovered inside Washington's 30-yard line each time, leading directly to 17 points. The Giants fumbled twice (inside Washington's 10 and on their own 42) and recovered both times, allowing them to kick a field goal in the first instance and preventing a probable Washington field goal in the second. That's a 23-point swing in a 36-point Giants' victory--not inconsequential by any means. Yet New York so thoroughly dominated Washington on Sunday they'd almost certainly have won even without the fumble advantage.

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Current Washington Post Redskins stories: Arrington Working. Patten Frustrated. Redskins Right Side Wrong. Defensive Line Weakened. Arrington May Start.

Eyewitness to Saddam's Evil

Saddam Hussein goes on trial today for 143 of his hundreds of thousands of murders. Take a few minutes to read this eyewitness account of his crime from an Iraqi doctor who, as a bewildered seven-year-old, lost 35 relatives that day in 1982. Read what he says of Saddam's prisons, including Abu-Ghraib where his grandfather and aunt died, and consider how contemptible is Massachusetts' Ted "Hogshead" Kennedy who in 2004 declaimed that Saddam's torture chambers had reopened under U.S. managment. Omar Ali of Iraq the Model met this man at a copy shop in 2003 where he was duplicating photos of his lost and murdered relatives in hopes of finding their remains. For many Americans the most haunting image of 9/11 was of the thousands of photographs posted in downtown Manhattan by relatives of the dead and missing. Multiply by a hundred cities, 30 years, and over 300,000 dead and you begin to comprehend post-Saddam Iraq.

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Open post trackbacks from: Stop The ACLU, The Political Teen, Mudville Gazette.

Not Exactly An Ozzie and Harriett Crime Rate

Newspapers around the country reported yesterday that 2004's murder rate was the lowest since 1965. Major violent and property crimes also fell a little over 2% last year. So are we back to the good old days before exploding illegitimacy rates and a deteriorating culture sent violent crimes skyrocketing? Not exactly.

One-hundred years ago the homicide rate was less than 25% of the 2004 rate of 5.5 per 100,000 people. The murder rate climbed steeply to nearly 10 per 100,000 in the mid-1930s and then fell below 5 for most of the 50s and early 60s. But that doesn't tell the whole story.

As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman pointed out in his book On Killing, the aggravated assault rate serves as a close proxy statistic for attempted murders. And the aggravated assault rate has increased dramatically since the 1950s even if the murder rate has not. Criminologist Anthony Harris estimates today's homicide rate would triple if medical and rescue technologies had not improved since the 50s.

Grossman was kind enough to email me an excerpt from his new book On Combat when I asked him for more detailed source citations for his writing on this topic. He argues that in comparing today's homicide rate with the 1930s and before we ought to multiple today's rate by ten for a true comparison:

Since 1957, the U.S. per capita aggravated assault rate (which is, essentially, the rate of attempted murder) has gone up nearly five-fold, while the per capita murder rate has less than doubled. The reason for this disparity is the vast progress in medical technology since 1957, to include everything from mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, to the national 911 emergency telephone system, to medical technology advances. Otherwise, murder would be going up at the same rate as attempted murder.

In 2002, Anthony Harris and a team of scholars from the University of Massachusetts and Harvard, published a landmark study in the journal, Homicide Studies, which concluded that medical technology advances since 1970 have prevented approximately three out of four murders. That is, if we had 1970s level medical technology, the murder rate would be three or four times higher than it is today.

Furthermore, it has been noted that a hypothetical wound that nine out of ten times would have killed a soldier in World War II, would have been survived nine out of ten times by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. This is due to the great leaps in battlefield evacuation and medical care technology between 1940 and 1970--and we have made even greater progress in the years since. Thus, it is probably a conservative statement to say that if today we had 1930s level evacuation notification and medical technology (no automobiles and telephones for most people, and no antibiotics), then we would have ten times the murder rate we currently do. That is, attempts to inflict bodily harm upon one another would result in death ten times more often.

Consider, for instance, some of the quantum leaps in medical technology across the years. Just a century ago, any puncture of the abdomen, skull or lungs created a high probability of death, as did any significant loss of blood (no transfusions) or most large wounds (no antibiotics or antiseptics), or most wounds requiring significant surgery (no anesthetics, resulting in death from surgery shock). Also, consider the increasing impact of police methodology and technology--fingerprints, communications, DNA matching, video surveillance, and others--in apprehending killers, preventing second offenses, and deterring crime.

Each of these technological developments, in their place and time, should have negated the effects of weapons evolution and saved the lives of victims of violence. When assessing violent crime across any length of time, we should ask what proportion of trauma patients survive today, and what proportion of those would have died if they had 1940-level technology (no penicillin), 1930-level technology (no antibiotics), 1870-level technology (no antiseptics), 1840-level technology (no anesthetics), or 1600-level technology (no doctors, no anatomy).

The medical technology continues to move forward, saving ever more lives every year. In an article entitled “New Battlefield techniques,” NY Times reporter Gina Kolata interviewed Dr. Paul K. Carlton Jr., the recently retired surgeon general of the Air Force. He told of field surgeons who carry everything needed in a backpack, including “sonogram machines the size of cassette recorders, and devices the size of a PDA that can do a complete laboratory analysis on a drop of blood.”
Dr. Carlton used the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as an example of what is now possible.

Of 250 seriously injured patients, only one died. "It was the lowest died-of-wounds rate in the history of war," he said. One man suffered a catastrophic wound to his rectum, prostate, anus and bladder. The ghastly injury plunged him into shock immediately, but one of the backpack surgical teams got to him right away and did a damage control surgery. Then, he was put on an airplane equipped as a critical care unit and flown a few thousand miles to another hospital for another surgery to stabilize him. Then he was flown to Germany for reconstructive surgery. "He's home with his family now," Dr. Carlton said. In any other war, he added, "he would have been dead."

A little over a year later, in the invasion of Iraq, new bandages with a powerful clotting agent that can stop arterial bleeding were introduced, providing yet another major leap forward in lifesaving medical technology. That same technology is also holding down the murder rate back home.

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Landmarks in the Evolution of Medical Lifesaving

• c.1690: French army institutes first scientific, systematic approach to surgery
• c.1840: Introduction of anesthesia overcomes surgical shock
• c.1840: Introduction in Hungary of washing hands and instruments in chlorinated lime solution reduces mortality due to “childbed fever” from 9.9% to .85%
• c.1860: Introduction by Lister of carbolic acid as germicide reduced mortality rate after major operations from 45% to 15%
• c.1880: Widespread acceptance and adaptation of germicides
• c.1930: Sulfa drugs
• c.1940: Penicillin discovered
• c.1945: Penicillin in general use, and ever-increasing explosion of antibiotics thereafter
• c.1960: Penicillin synthesized on a large scale
• c.1970: CPR introduced on wide scale
• c.1990: 911 centralized emergency response systems introduced in U.S. on wide scale
• c.2002: Harris, et al., landmark study by U.Mass and Harvard, published in the journal Homicide Studies concludes that med tech advances since 1970 have prevented approximately three-out-of-four murders

Fumble Averages Favor Skins

Turnovers are the big story of the Redskins' season thus far. Last week I noted the team's dramatic offensive improvements over last season, and mentioned that a poor turnover differential was likely keeping points down. The turnover differential worsened against the Chiefs on Sunday and now stands at -8 for the season (30th in the league). For comparison the differential for all of last season was just -1--meaning they took the ball from their opponents about as frequently as they gave it back through all 16 games.

Here's the good news: The law of averages should correct most of the Redskins' turnover problem as the season continues. Let me explain. When an offensive player fumbles the ball we would expect the defense to gain possession about 50% of the time because the same number of players on each team are fighting for a ball that is bouncing randomly around the field. You could argue that offensive players tend to have better hands and thus have the advantage, or that defensive players have the advantage because they face the ballcarrier while offensive players are turned away blocking. But the real-world split seems close enough to 50-50 that variances can be explained by statistical noise. For example, during the 2003 NFL season the defensive team recovered 54% of all fumbles. In 2004 defense was again favored with a 52% recovery rate, but so far this year the offense has a slight 51% advantage.

The good news for the Redskins is that they've been horribly unlucky at recovering both offensive and defensive fumbles this season. How unlucky? The Redskins' offense has recovered just 22% of its own fumbles (2 of 9). The defense has fared even worse, recovering just 11% of opponent fumbles (1 of 9). The probability that the team would recover 3 or fewer of 18 fumbles is just 1 in 250. A "normal" fumble recovery rate of 50% would bring their turnover differential to a much less worrisome -2.

In case you're wondering whether the Redskins simply have a team loaded with spectacularly bad fumble recoverers, last season their offense and defense combined for a 49% recovery rate. Around the league in 2004, the New Orleans Saints bested all with a 61% recovery rate and the Philadelphia Eagles trailed the pack at 37%.

The real areas of concern are interceptions and sacks, of which the defense has just one and five, respectively. For comparison, at least 30 NFL players have two or more interceptions, and 12 players have five or more sacks.

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Current Washington Post Redskins articles: Turnovers offset positives. Portis feeling better. Gibbs fined for thought crimes. Turnovers change game plan.

New York Muggers Safe Again

New York muggers are safe again thanks to Eliot Spitzer, who's coordinated with (read threatened) Ebay to ban the sale of stun-guns to New Yorkers.

"You wouldn't want these used in either illegal activities or horseplay," Spitzer spokesman Paul Larrabee said. "Dangerous devices should not be in the hands of those unable to properly use them and you certainly don't want them used in any criminal activity."

Then again, the thugs of New York might prefer stun-guns be legal after all.

Skins Better Off Good Than Lucky

The Washington Redskins' luck turned in a big way the first three games of this NFL season as they defeated Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle by a total of six points. But luck is a shaky foundation for rebuilding a football dynasty. The sputtering offense, retooled in the offseason by Joe Gibbs and his staff, produced a total of just 43 points in the first three games--nine less than Green Bay dropped on soggy New Orleans last Sunday. Worse, last year's sterling defensive unit looked a bit tarnished after losing several key starters in the offseason and giving up big yardage to Dallas and Seattle.

I expected the bubble to burst resoundingly at Mile-High stadium last Sunday, especially after watching Denver shred Kansas City two weeks ago on Monday night. The Broncos repeatedly gashed the Chiefs' defense for big gains on the ground, and the Chiefs once-great offensive line barely slowed the Broncos' pass rush as Denver cruised to a 30-10 win. So as hard as it was to watch the Redskins' last-second rally fail on a missed two-point conversion (I didn't actually watch it thanks to the NFL's byzantine TV market rules*), I'm feeling better about their chances for a playoff berth after the 21-19 defeat.

The game was one that leaves you scratching your head in disbelief after comparing the stat sheet and the score. The Redskins outgained the Broncos by nearly 200 yards, had 25 more plays, a seven minute time-of-possession advantage, nearly three times as many first downs, gave up no sacks, had just one turnover and still lost (Denver had a slight edge in penalties and rushing yards). The Redskins' luck did run out in Denver as they had a safety overturned on an arguably invalid invocation of the infamous "Tuck Rule"; a 54-yard field goal wiped off the board by a false start penalty (special teamers around the league seem especially fond of the yellow hankies this year); a 38-yard field goal blocked; and a two-point conversion pass to a wide-open receiver tipped away near the line of scrimmage. Any one of those plays could have turned the game into a win.

Here's the encouraging part: They've just been through a second four-game preseason with Mark Brunell as the starting quarterback and the offense has improved each week. The Redskins have two new receivers, a reworked offensive line, and are still tweaking their offseason improvements. Because Patrick Ramsey was the starting quarterback through the entire preseason, Brunell had very few game-condition reps with the starting offense. But the offense has already improved dramatically over last season, even though the points have been slow coming.

Despite playing the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 18th ranked defensive teams the Redskins offense has improved in the following areas from 2004 to 2005 (league rankings in parentheses):

• Yards per game - from 275 to 367 (30th to 8th)
• Yards per play - from 4.3 to 5.1 (31st to 18th)
• 3rd down conversion rate - from 32% to 47% (28th to 2nd!)
• Rushing yards per carry - from 3.7 to 4.1 (29th to 11th)

So far this has led to just a half-point improvement in scoring per game from 15 to 15.5, perhaps due to a turnover differential that's slighly worse this year. Blame the defense for that--the unit has forced just two turnovers in four games. The defense has also allowed more yards than last year, but is still ranked 5th in the league. A postseason appearance seems very likely!

(Aren't fan delusions sad?)

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* I can best sum up the NFL's TV market rules like this: If the local team is playing at home, any other game you're interested in won't be on TV. I believe I once briefly grasped the formula completely, but immediately fell unconscious for 30 minutes and woke up confused again. In this instance, those of us in the Atlanta market were treated by FOX to every excruciating minute of the Philadelphia Eagles' 33-10 disassembly by the Dallas Cowboys. To. The. Very. End.

Here's how ridiculous it got at one point (remember, the local affiliates can show highlights of the banned games, but no live action): The Eagles-Cowboys game is winding down just as the Redskins begin driving for their final score. Surely they'll switch to the game now! I'm rushing back and forth from the TV to the computer to refresh the NFL.com live game stats. The Eagles-Cowboys game ends and FOX returns to the studio where James Brown drones on-and-on and shows highlights of the blowout that just ended! Back to NFL.com: Oh, my gosh! The Redskins just scored to pull within a two-point conversion of tying the game! Back to FOX: Brown's still blathering. Wait! They're switching to the game! Nope, they're showing a highlight of the Redskins' touchdown and refusing to cut to the game even for the two-point conversion try! Back to NFL.com: Oh, no! The conversion failed! Back to FOX: Still in studio. Going to a commercial. Ok, now they're showing a highlight of the failed conversion. Sheesh!

And don't tell me to buy DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket. I've tried that twice since we moved to Atlanta and both times the Redskins stunk and appeared on regular TV something like eight or nine times to boot!

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Current Washington Post stories on the Redskins: The Broncos game. Skins need turnovers. Sally Jenkins. Tony Kornheiser. Kornheiser on Lavar. Michael Wilbon. Arrington in the doghouse.

John Fund Turns On Miers

John Fund changes his mind about Harriet Miers in a big way. He first took a wait-and-see approach, but after interviewing "dozens of her friends and colleagues" he says

I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.

Fund then recites a litany of assurances just like those we're hearing now for Miers originally given in support of Earl Warren, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Conner, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Read the whole thing. It's extremely important.

UPDATE: Paul Mirengoff disagrees:

In the case of Harriet Miers, though, we are not even talking about someone in the O'Connor mold--we are talking about someone who might be another O'Connor but is just as likely to vote with Scalia in the vast majority of big cases. In this situation, it seems imprudent to blow up the confirmation process---and possibly the Bush presidency and the Republican party--to block her nomination. Thus, conservative senators should be prepared, barring new and damning information, to vote in favor of Miers.

But earlier in his piece Mirengoff cut to the heart of the criticisms of the Miers nomination:

In any case, conservatives justifiably feel disappointed that they should have to rely solely on the president's legal and psychological acumen as they try to become comfortable with his nominee. There were at least two dozen candidates, including women, African-Americans, and Hispanics, whose conservative bona fides would have been apparent to the naked eye. Bush's rejection of these candidates in favor of Miers feels like cronyism or political weakness.

That's exactly right. Bush went to the mat for a dozen(?) Federal appeals court nominees who were proven strict constructionists. When it comes to the most important judicial nominations of all why won't he do the same? I haven't yet heard a satisfactory answer, and I do think this issue is worth blowing up the Republican Party.

That would be the same party that's forgotten what small government means. The same party that wasted political capital creating a massive new Federal entitlement when they should have been fixing the old ones. The same party that forgot about term limits and non-partisan redistricting as soon as they were comfortably ensconced as the majority. The same party that restricted political speech with another campaign finance reform bill. The same president who signed that bill into law after saying it was unconstitutional during his campaign. The same president who's done little but pander on illegal immigration.

And we were supposed to grit our teeth and bear the foolishness because it was all leading up to this: The opportunity (again) to replace 2-4 Supreme Court justices and change the direction of the court for a generation. Sorry, but I'm finished with forbearance. Time to pay the bill.

Sekulow for Supreme Court

Like many conservatives I was stunned by President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The only plausible point in Bush's favor is that he believes Miers to be a reliable conservative who can be confirmed with a minimal expense of political capital, giving him time to flog languishing legislation on social security and a host of other issues early in his term. But he may have underestimated conservatives' deep desire for a political battle royal over judicial nominations and constitutional interpretation.

Frankly, I'm tired of supposedly conservative office-holders who shy from defending the eminently defensible view that constitutional interpretation should be based on what the Constitution actually says. The central function of the Constitution is to serve as a buffer against vicissitudinous political opinion--a function which directly conflicts with the constitutional origami of leftist judges. That's not a difficult point to make. But rather than proudly defending that point when, for example, a nominee like John Roberts comes under fire for his Federalist Society membership, Republican leaders instead downplayed his involvement.

Here's some perspective on just how cowed are conservatism's Republican representatives: Consider that those who oppose abortion in all circumstances (21% according to this 2005 Harris poll) outnumber U.S residents who are black (13%), hispanic (14%), or liberal (18%). They are statistically tied with the 23% who would allow abortion in all circumstances. Consider that abortion is consistently one of the single most important issues among Republican voters. And consider that majorities of both conservative and liberal constitutional scholars believe that Roe v. Wade was a horribly reasoned case.

And yet, while Democratic senators candidly make support for Roe the sine qua non of judicial mainstreamism, bork-wary Republicans scrape and scrounge for nominees who are closet-conservatives at best. Despite controlling Congress and the Presidency for several years Republicans have failed to end partial-birth abortion--which is opposed by a huge majority of Americans. Nor have they seriously made the case for blaming their failure on Roe or linked it to Democratic obstruction of judicial confirmations.

So when will conservatism have won in America? When a Republican president unashamedly nominates Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ultra-conservative American Center for Law and Justice, to the Supreme Court. I'm not joking. And the fact that you think I'm joking shows how firmly the left still controls political debate in America.

Sekulow has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court bench. He's been named one of National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential Lawyers" and one of The American Lawyer's top 45 public-sector lawyers. His post-academic credentials are nearly as impressive as those of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the last Democratic nominee to the court, and the justice who is most nearly Sekulow's polar opposite.

Ginsberg, confirmed with a 96-3 Senate vote, was a director of and general counsel for the ACLU before becoming a Federal judge. National Review's Edward Whelan summarized Ginsburg's pre-confirmation opinions thusly:

Let’s assume, for example, that this nominee had expressed strong sympathy for the position that there is a constitutional right to prostitution as well as a constitutional right to polygamy.

Let’s say, further, that he had attacked the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as organizations that perpetuate stereotyped sex roles and that he had proposed abolishing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replacing them with a single androgynous Parent’s Day.

And, to get really absurd, let’s add that he had called for an end to single-sex prisons on the theory that if male prisoners are going to return to a community in which men and women function as equal partners, prison is just the place for them to get prepared to deal with women.

Let’s further posit that this nominee had opined that a manifest imbalance in the racial composition of an employer’s work force justified court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the part of the employer. But then, lo and behold, to make this nominee even more of a parody of an out-of-touch leftist, let’s say it was discovered that while operating his own office for over a decade in a city that was majority-black, this nominee had never had a single black person among his more than 50 hires.

...

The hypothetical nominee I have just described is, in every particular except his sex, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.

When a Republican president nominates a judge who is as open and unabashedly conservative (or even libertarian) as Ginsburg is liberal, with virtual certainty of his confirmation, we'll know conservatism controls the battlefield of political debate. But for now our elected leaders are still afraid to join the fray.

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Current Washington Post articles on Miers nomination: Miers Profile, Colbert King's Miers schaudenfreud, Miers life in Dallas, Bush refuses to withdraw Miers.