There are only two policy options with empirically observed impact on crime rates:

1) More police on the streets.
2) Longer sentences for criminals.

All other policy options are faith-based crime control, just as surely as the old Natural Law Party's proposed policy of transcendental meditation as a method of reducing crime.

ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and the rest of them don't give a damn whether the gasoline and diesel they sell you is derived from coal or petroleum, as long as they're making money on it. If they can make it from coal for less than the cost of making it from oil, they'll switch — and that price is somewhere short of $40 a barrel. The reason they haven't is that it requires a long-term capital investment, and they expect the oil bubble to burst and oil to drop back under $30 a barrel in the relatively short term.

Now, maybe all the decision-makers at all the big oil companies are fundamentally wrong on what's happening with oil, and we're not going to see a massive decline in oil prices in the reasonably near future. But if that's true, well, one of them is bound to figure it out eventually, and then the coal-to-liquids plants will get going.

And then the world's three largest coal producers — the U.S., India, and China — will be the world's major producers of gasoline and diesel.

Since we're discussing where Penguicon is, I'll note that next year it's going to be held in Romulus. (Which, as the community immediately surrounding Detroit Metro Airport, will be much more convenient for people flying in.)

No, the U.S. refuses to extradite accused terrorist José Posada Carilles to Venezuela to face a second trial on a charge for which the Venezuelans already acquitted him.

Now, it is true that a prohibition on double jeopardy is not part of Venezuelan law, but it is considered a fundamental violation of human rights under U.S. law. So apparently your complaint is that George W. Bush is refusing to undermine American human rights standards by turning a suspected terrorist over to another country. Tell me, how do you feel about extraordinary rendition?

Oh, right. Principles don't matter; the only thing that matters is attacking the United States, and any excuse that comes to hand is to be used for that purpose, regardless of logic or fairness. Death to America!

As far as the "#1" question there, the bank reported the transfers to the IRS because they constituted structuring. Structuring is when you deliberately manipulate deposits and withdrawals to avoid the $10,000 currency transfer reporting requirement, and is a reliable indicator that the person doing the structuring is engaged in illegal activity (usually money laundering or tax evasion). This is an utterly, perfectly routine referral by the bank to the IRS. It is especially routine in this case because the person engaged in structuring was a public official, and structuring by public officials normally is evidence of public corruption.

By the way, one of the two major candidates in the 2004 election wrote the enhanced financial reporting rules that were enacted as part of the Patriot Act, and ran in 2004 with a promise to make them even more strict. Which one? The one who served in Vietnam, not the one who skipped out on finishing his National Guard duty.

With this revelation, we finally know the truth; there is no art on the Moon.

Thalrion, it doesn't have anything to do with prudes for bosses, it has everything to do with companies that don't want to get bankrupted. Modern "hostile environment" law, as created by the prudish ideologues of anti-sex feminism, holds that allowing nude pictures of women in the workplace is sexual harassment.

Takuan, I fully agree that the anti-sex feminists who decided that the "hostile environment" standard included nude pictures are sexual deviants. If you have any practical, constructive suggestions about how to remove their ideology from American law, I'd be happy to hear them.

So, what's the crime that the impeachment is being advocated for? I mean, regime change in Iraq was made U.S. policy under a law enacted by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1998, so it's pretty damn hard to see how discussing methods of regime change in Iraq could be a crime.

Similarly, the actual invasion of Iraq was in accordance with the Authorization to Use Military Force, another duly passed law. Sure, we could argue that it violated the UN Charter. But the standard rules of legal construction established by the U.S. judiciary treat treaties as having no more force than ordinary laws, and specific authorizations as overriding blanket prohibitions. So the war, while possibly illegal under "international law", was completely legal as far as the Constitution and laws of the United States are concerned.

Back when Bill Clinton was being impeached, I heard a lot of criticism of the right for treating political differences as grounds for impeachment. But at least the Republicans focused on an actual felony committed by Clinton when making their impeachment arguments.

If you want Cheney impeached for something else, some actual crime, sure, go ahead. But the Iraq War was not a criminal offense, and even ironclad proof that Cheney was plotting war in May 2001 is not grounds for impeachment.

Oil companies are directing their capital investments and estimating reserves on the assumption that oil will have a long-term price of less than $50 a barrel. Tell me what you know about the oil supply that the oil companies don't, and I'll listen to claims that oil prices are an artifact of something more permanent than a bubble.

The Strait of Hormuz constitutes "straits used for international navigation" under international law, which allows free to the passage of ships of all nations, including warships, in a designated sea lane.

So, that sea lane is not, technically, international waters (the Strait is too narrow at its narrowest point), but neither is it, properly speaking, territorial waters. It's a designated area for transit passage, with its own set of rules different than those for either international waters or territorial waters.

The whole "Apple is teh 3vil SUXXORS" chant was silly in the first place -- as if Apple really wants to spend engineering resources to protect the RIAA's crummy business model -- and I hope this gets them out of the DRM arms race.

Apple didn't want to protect RIAA's business model, it wanted to protect its own. FairPlay existed to lock iPod users into iTMS as the only legal download service. Apple, after all, didn't just refuse to license FairPlay — they actively threatened Real with the DMCA over Harmony.

Sure, after Apple was approached by EMI through business channels about setting up DRM-free downloads, after it was clear that the closed Apple ecosystem was going to be ended by a label, Jobs came out and made his announcement about how he hated the DRM that gave him a piece of every legal download for the iPod. And because people for some reason like to believe whatever Steve Jobs is saying, they bought bullshit that they wouldn't have taken from any other CEO of any other company.

OK, but it clearly did violate British law, and kidnapping isn't one of those slap-on-the-wrist offences. I presume there's a fairly broad extradition treaty between the US and UK. What would happen if the UK gov't filed charges, and formally sought extradition?

Under the intended meaning of the extradition treaty, yes, the persons who participated in the kidnapping are subject to extradition to Britain and trial there. (Which won't stop the guy who was kidnapped from facing his trial in the U.S.)

The tricky clause of the treaty is:

"Notwithstanding the terms of paragraph 2 of this Article, extradition shall not be granted if the competent authority of the Requested State determines that the request was politically motivated. In the United States, the executive branch is the competent authority for the purposes of this Article."

Which amounts to permission to refuse extradition for any reason at all; what action of a government could not be construed as politically motivated?

So, given the general context of US-UK relations, a compromise would probably be worked out in a back room between both sides. Britain might request extradition, or it might not. If Britain does, the U.S. agents might wind up extradited, or they might not. If not, there might be some sort of sanction against the U.S.; such sanction might possibly be a symbolic act negotiated in secret with a show of phony anger, or it might be real and made in true anger by the British government. If phony, the general public might learn that it was such someday, or the general public might never be told.

Yes, this in Britain, but the Constitution applies to the government, and I notice it says "people", not citizen there

Because actions occurring in Britain are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. If the U.S. requests and is granted extradition through normal procedures, for example, it does not matter if the extraditing country ignores the provisions of the U.S. Constitution when arresting the suspect, even though the extraditing country's officials could be characterized as acting as agents of the United States in such circumstances.

It's claiming that if the kidnappers bring the victim into a U.S. court, the U.S. court does not have the authority to free the kidnap victim. Think about that: they're not just claiming that government officials can violate foreign law with impunity, but that other government officials cannot intervene to help the victims.

The powers of a U.S. court are limited to the court's jurisdiction; the seizure of the suspect happened outside the jurisdiction of the court; therefore the entire question of whether the suspect was legally seized is outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. court. U.S. courts lack plenary powers to right wrongs.

Right. A kidnapping committed in Britain does not violate U.S. law, because the jurisdiction of U.S. law does not extend to Britain. Since U.S. courts are Constitutionally limited in jurisdiction to cases involving U.S. law, that a crime was committed under British law in Britain isn't an issue the U.S. court has the authority to address.

I mean, we could try the other approach, which is to assume that the laws of the United States apply in the United Kingdom. Where should we send the summons to Elizabeth Windsor for the hearing on tax evasion? She seems to have utterly failed to file a 1040 at any point in her life . . .