Quick Roundup 33

Gutting the Defense Budget

Bubblehead has an interesting post up on thr proposal by a group called "Business Leaders For Sensible Priorities" to divert much of the defense budget into welfare programs.

I've been having a good E-mail debate with someone about this "proposal", which, as near as I can tell, seeks to wipe out the high-tech advantage the U.S. currently enjoys over potential adversaries. They don't put it that way, of course; they just proposes stopping spending on new weapons systems for the next 15 years to save $60B. What they don't say (or don't recognize) is that to save this money, we couldn't buy any new airframes or ships; by building no new units, while the old ones continue to get older, we'd end up with almost no modern weapons at the end of the 15 year moratorium.

Logical Fallacies

In the process of researching a post, I found this very nice page on logic and logical fallacies.

Pretty Pertinent Post

Mike N., apparently in an alliterative mood, has a post on Russ Feingold called "Feingold's Five Feints". Stop by and take a look if you don't know much about Russ Feingold. Especially if you hail from Wisconsin.

Anyone who helps McCain in his crusade against free political speech deserves to be booted from office.

New Orleans Needs More than Just Levees

At City Journal is a good piece on something that hasn't gotten nearly enough coverage after Katrina: The need for New Orleans to reform its failed criminal justice system.

New Orleans must assure Congress and the president that it has the resources it needs -- financial and political -- to clear its criminal-court docket in a manner that assures public safety, both for returning New Orleanians and for the rest of the country. New Orleans's attitude seems to be: hope that federal taxpayers don't notice that the city is importing money from the rest of the nation even as it exports freed criminals.

We're certainly noticing it in Houston....

-- CAV