Opinions Nobody Asked For

Dispatch from Beckistan

2011-02-23T10:30:00.002-05:00

Oh, Glenn. You're just so adorable. Like a toddler who throws a fit upon being asked to come to the table for dinner, you can't take legitimate criticism without flipping out. I think you need to sit in time-out for a little bit, and then you need a hug.

Some rabbis from across the Jewish spectrum got mad at Beck - legitimately - for using anti-Semitic tropes in his criticism of George Soros. In response, Beck did this:

“When you talk about rabbis, understand that most -- most people who are not Jewish don't understand that there are the Orthodox rabbis, and then there are the reformed rabbis. Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just -- radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the reform Judaism, it is more about politics.”

He then added: "It's not about terror or anything else, it's about politics, and so it becomes more about politics than it does about faith. Orthodox rabbis -- that is about faith. There's not a single Orthodox rabbi on this list. This is all reformed rabbis that were -- that made this list.”

Let's put aside the fact that he's wrong about there not being Orthodox rabbis on that list - rabbis from all four major branches of Judaism signed that letter. He just compared Jews who are unhappy about the way he addresses Judaism on his show to radical Muslims who like to blow shit up. I don't care why you make that comparison, that's just insane.

But let's even put that aside for a minute and look at the substance of his claim: that Reform Judaism - the largest branch of Judaism in America - is a political movement and not a religious one. The claim is absurd on its face, but so is the idea that political beliefs can't emanate from religious ones. Connecticut-based rabbi Rachel Gurevitz explains this:

What Judaism and Islam both have in common as faith traditions is that their codes of law and practices were never confined to ritual practice and belief. Both were conceived of, in their origins, as entire social systems. Jewish law from the earliest centuries speak of the obligations of a community providing a particular minimum of teacher/student ratio in the classroom. It speaks of the obligation of a communal pot to ensure that doctors are paid for their medical services even when an individual cannot themselves afford the medical care they need to keep them alive. It speaks of ethical business practices, ethical ways of collecting charitable funds, and how to figure out ways of distributing those funds when the community's need is greater than the contents of the fund.

While, as American Jews, we live in a country where there is a constitutional separation of church and State, Judaism as a faith tradition was not originally conceived with such a separation as part of the cultural context in which it operated. This means that when Jews talk about practicing Judaism, they might be talking about their Sabbath observance or their Passover Seder, but they might just as equally be talking about their social activism on behalf of the needy.

What's interesting, though, is that Christianity is often discussed in those very same terms, so much so that there's an eHow page on how to live the Christian lifestyle. There is no religion in the world that does not carry an ethical system with it, and those ethics always influence one's political system. Beck, who routinely uses Christian language and theology to illustrate his political views on his show, ought to know that better than anyone. So why don't Judaism and Islam look like "religions" to him?

The less charitable answer is that he just doesn't like Jews and Muslims (the latter of these, of course, is demonstrably true). But there's an alternative reason, and it's best illustrated by a story. When my father was converting to Judaism, he told the rabbi that, while he loved the Jewish traditions and system of ethics, he didn't really think that he believed in God.

"Well," the rabbi said, "do you believe in Jesus?"

"No," my father replied.

"You'll be fine," said the rabbi.

To a Jew, faith is secondary. When we talk about what it means to be Jewish, we talk about doing Jewish things, not believing Jewish things. Certainly for me, I'd probably go a good ten minutes listing things about Judaism before I got to faith in God - and I might not even list that. But in Christianity, faith is one of the most central - if not the most central - defining characteristic of the religion. So if you, like Beck, are used to the idea that having religion means having faith, Judaism and Islam, with their emphasis on ethical systems and traditions and accompanying lack of emphasis on faith, can be confusing. So when Beck says that Judaism doesn't look like a religion to him, it's because he has failed to expand his conceptualization of religion beyond Christianity.

Raising Concern Trolling To An Art Form

2011-02-21T12:17:00.004-05:00

So there I am, minding my own business, idly checking my Twitter feed, when I should see this article pop into it:

Where Have The Good Men Gone?
Kay S. Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adolescence.

Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I can hardly wait. Please, Ms. Hymowitz, tell me what is wrong with my gender.

So it begins:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.

Okay, so men - like women - are settling down with a family later as their career choices firm up. But pray tell, why does this not "bring out the best in men"? Do you have any evidence to back that assertion up?

"We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"

So your proof for your assertion that men who don't get married straight out of college are generally jerks is... a few guys that a snooty comedian dated once? I think SMBC has a few words for you. And also, why the Playstation, "Star Wars," and vacation hate? So you dated men who - GASP - liked things that you don't like? Oh God, sound the alarm, some men don't have Julie Klausner's exact array of interests! They may - my God, how can you stand even reading this - like video games! And science fiction! And you know who invented video games and sci-fi? THE DEVIL, that's who.

Anyway, maybe this gets better. Let's see. After citing the obvious about demographic trends, Hymowitz goes here:

Still, for these women, one key question won't go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie "Knocked Up." The story's hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup.

Yeah, that Ben Stone seems like a real immature douche. Fortunately, he's... what's the word I'm looking for... oh, yeah, FICTIONAL. So in sum, Hymowitz's proof that 20-something single men are immature losers is a) a bunch of men a friend of hers dated and b) a man who doesn't, technically, exist.

Then she talks about career mobility, the time and money required to get the necessary education for said career, and how that affects life decisions - all interesting points. But that's not what she's trying to argue. She's trying to argue that our society has turned men in their 20s into immature jerks. So she takes a crack at pop culture:

In his disregard for domestic life, the [early 20th century era] playboy was prologue for today's pre-adult male. Unlike the playboy with his jazz and art-filled pad, however, our boy rebel is a creature of the animal house. In the 1990s, Maxim, the rude, lewd and hugely popular "lad" magazine arrived from England. Its philosophy and tone were so juvenile, so entirely undomesticated, that it made Playboy look like Camus.

At the same time, young men were tuning in to cable channels like Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network and Spike, whose shows reflected the adolescent male preferences of its targeted male audiences. They watched movies with overgrown boy actors like Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Seth Rogen, cheering their awesome car crashes, fart jokes, breast and crotch shots, beer pong competitions and other frat-boy pranks.

Entertainment filled with dick jokes? Fart jokes? Sex jokes? Drinking and fighting? This is supposedly new? Dude, have you ever read Chaucer? Or Aristophanes? You can't honestly tell me that the latest Will Ferrell movie is any more licentious than "The Miller's Tale" or "Lysistrata." We've found sex, drinking, and bodily functions highly entertaining for, like, the entirety of human history.

And then there's the obvious problem of trying to demonstrate the actual experience of young men from a bunch of art about young men. See, art is quite often allegorical, fantastical, or both. Comedies, especially, are exaggerated beyond any resemblance with reality. So, sorry, not buying this argument either. From there it's on to the conclusion, leaving us with the uncomfortable truth that we just read an article that purported to be about society creating immature men but utterly failing to prove that these immature men even exist in great numbers.

And there, of course, lie the problems with this article. One is the reductionism. Perhaps there are men out there who, like Rogen's character in "Knocked Up," prefer to live out their adolescent fantasies instead of growing up and taking responsibility for their own lives. But Hymowitz assumes that if you're over 25, male, and unmarried, you're "aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers." If you're a responsible young man who just hasn't met the right person yet, or who would rather focus on a career than a family, you don't exist. Hymowitz may have just rendered invisible the vast majority of young, single men. We can't know, since she didn't bother to prove anything.

The second problem is the loose definition of "immaturity." Let's look at some of those pejoratives Hymowitz uses here. "Aging frat boys, maladroit geeks, grubby slackers." What defines any of these categories? Are aging frat boys "immature" because they like to drink beer, hang out at bars, and hit on women? What makes that immature? And what about the geeks - are social awkwardness and technical knowledge signs of immaturity now? I'll concede the slackers - active avoidance of responsibility is a hallmark of immaturity - but even that's a stretch (to quote Michael Stipe quoting "Richard": "withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy").

Hymowitz's friend Julie Krausner's definition is even worse: "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends." So she doesn't like sci-fi, video games, or Vegas? Fine. But why is all of that stuff immature? Is there a reason why you're labeling it as such, or is it just that you don't find it appealing? Hymowitz and Krausner use "immature," it seems, as a shorthand for "people who do things the author doesn't like." Guess what - society isn't going to fall apart because some men have a different idea of fun than Kay Hymowitz and Julie Krausner. So can we quit with the self-absorbed concern trolling now?

Update: Also read Jill Filipovic's take, which goes more in-depth about social trends and points out a few things about Hymowitz's history as a conservative traditionalist that I didn't know.

Halftime: Plebes 21, Pharaohs 14

2011-02-08T10:22:00.002-05:00

This season, my local Division 2 soccer team, the Carolina Railhawks, started out awful at home. I think we lost or tied five out of our first seven home games. Of course, the only two games that we won were the games I didn't go to. This, naturally, got me paranoid. Maybe I was the cause of the Hawks' home troubles? Maybe if I stayed away from the games, the Hawks would win? This is, of course, absurd. I had no more an effect on the outcome of the game than I did on the weather - the game was decided by the players on the field (and occasionally the $#@*!% referee). But I wanted the team to win, so I searched for anything at all that I could do to help out, refusing to accept that I was incapable of helping beyond the standard soccer fan's role of shouting obscenities in the opposing goalkeeper's ears.

And in such superstitious tendencies I am not alone. Baseball is famous for the superstitions of its fans and its players alike - one baseball manager, the story goes, refused to move even a millimeter while his team was getting hits (this caused quite the problem when his team got a hit while he was reaching down to pick up a hot dog - and then got eight more in a row). Witness Bill Simmons after Super Bowl XLII blaming his jersey, his pre-game column, and other assorted things for the Patriots' loss to the Giants. We want control. We crave control. But we don't have it.

For the past two weeks, we've been watching something far, far more consequential than a sporting event on television. We've been watching Egyptians rise up against their repressive dictator, Hosni Mubarak, who has been running the place since I was born (almost to the day). We watched as the protestors took over the main square in Cairo calling for Mubarak to resign and democracy to take hold. We watched as Mubarak struck back with goons on horses and camels carrying Molotov cocktails. We watched as the army intervened, keeping the protestors and the pro-Mubarak goons apart. We watched as the goons tried desperately to keep the media at bay, intimidating and attacking reporters. We watched Anderson Cooper get punched in the face. And now, we watch as the protestors set up camp in Tahrir Square while Mubarak tries desperately to cling to power for himself and his family. We feel for the oppressed Egyptians, and wish that they could enjoy the freedom we cherish here in America.

And we ask ourselves what we can do, what America can do. We wonder if Obama can put pressure on Mubarak, or if Hillary Clinton can talk him down. We wonder if we can withdraw aid, as if the thirty years worth of foreign aid we've given Mubarak already would just disappear overnight if we withdrew future gifts. Some on the right fret about the result of giving Egyptians democracy.

But at the end of the day, watching and wishing is all we can do. Because this isn't about us, this is about Egyptians wanting freedom, and Mubarak really not wanting to give it to them. This is a struggle between the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and the only thing we'd be capable of doing is getting in the way.

It's not every day that we can see a revolution unfold in real time, and most of us who were raised on the principle that everyone deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness want to see it succeed. Moreover, we want to be a part of history as it unfolds before our eyes. But all our cheering and banner waving does nothing from this side of the Atlantic. So we have to be content with simply watching Egyptians write their own chapter in our history books. Meanwhile, we'll hope that when the final whistle blows on this revolution, Team Freedom will have won a famous victory.

A Little Rant About City Planning

2011-01-18T14:11:00.002-05:00

I'll be moving to a new apartment in April, and I've started the search now. One of the criteria I'm judging apartments on is their walkability - that is, how easy it is to walk to a grocery store, convenience store, restaurants, bars, parks, playgrounds, etc. I am hardly alone on this: according to a WSJ article, 88% of people in my age group want a walkable, urban setting.

Unfortunately, I live in Raleigh, where such things do not exist.

Come March 15, I will start work in the sprawling, low-density planning disaster known as Research Triangle Park, which is conveniently located some 15 miles from anything that could be reasonably called an "urban center." If I wanted true walkability - meaning I could walk to work every morning - I'd be screwed; the closest housing to my office, as far as I can tell, is located some two miles away. Not horrible - but there's nothing else anywhere near it. The reason for this is that RTP is set up as a collection of large corporate campuses - the closest one could put housing is on the edges of the Park. It'd be nice if RTP picked up and moved itself to either downtown Raleigh or downtown Durham, but that's not gonna happen. So if you want to live close to work, you have to live on the edge of the Park.

One development on the edge of the Park is called Brier Creek, located on the northeast edge of the Park and part of the city of Raleigh, and this is one of the neighborhoods I'm looking at. It is laid out along a two-mile stretch of Brier Creek Parkway. Apartments are at the south and north ends of Brier Creek Pkwy as well as along the west side; shopping is located east of the parkway. The neighborhood is split into three pieces by Glenwood Avenue and Lumley Road. There are two grocery stores, a standard Lowes Foods in the middle part and an Earth Fare in the southern third. There is a weirdly upscale Indian restaurant, a cool pizza place, and another entry in the Triangle's weird obsession with combining sushi and Thai restaurants* in the middle part. There's a great Irish pub and another Indian joint in the south part, and a sports bar in the more-useless northern part. There's an elementary school and a park at the extreme south end (complete with playground). In theory, this should be a fairly walkable neighborhood.

But as I noted earlier, residential areas are either south, north, or west of the main shopping area, meaning that to get to the central part of Brier Creek you have to cross a road. Which would be great, if the city of Raleigh had put so much as a crosswalk across either Glenwood or Lumley. It's not like these are roads you can just dart across, either - Glenwood is a six-lane highway, and Lumley is a four-lane freeway feeder. Crosswalks across the four-lane, relatively high-speed Brier Creek Parkway, for those who live on the west side, are also few and far-between.

So what kind of sadistic fuck puts together a reasonably walkable neighborhood, distance-wise, and then makes walking around it as inconvenient as possible? The only conclusion I can come to is that Raleigh's city planners, to paraphrase Kanye West, don't care about walking people.

It'd be one thing if this were limited to Brier Creek... but it's not. With the exception of Cameron Village, located just west of downtown, there's something about most Raleigh neighborhoods that prevents them from being completely walkable. Downtown Raleigh would be great, except that, for some unknown reason, there isn't a grocery store. North Hills is similarly split into three pieces, and while Lassiter Mill is easy to cross, Six Forks Road, which separates the grocery store and some residential areas from the rest of the neighborhood, isn't (it's a major four-lane road that's in the process of feeding onto the freeway at that point). Crabtree Valley has a big shopping mall, but not much in the way of residential, and there's no park. I'm also looking at Lynnwood, which has a nice neighborhood bar, a jazz club, and a locally managed movie theater, as well as a nearby park and grocery store... but the road to the grocery store is narrow and lacks a sidewalk, while the path to the park is a muddy, gooey mess.

Not all of this is the city's fault. The fact that a significant portion of the city's jobs are located on the city's outskirts immediately eliminates the feasibility of a high-density urban core around which everything is based. A multi-centric "Atlanta on steroids" model is probably inevitable at this point. Indeed, considering the location of the Park on the city's western edge, a higher-density, walkable "suburban downtown" in Brier Creek would be ideal from both a sustainability and convenience standpoint. (I've found that the two often go hand-in-hand.)

As such, though, Raleigh is doing a horrible job making outlying centers like Brier Creek look anything like compact, walkable neighborhoods that will attract young and mobile people to the area. I don't know of any plans for making pedestrian travel across Glenwood, Lumley, or Brier Creek Parkway any easier, for example. The rail plans on the city's comprehensive plan website completely ignores Crabtree Valley and Brier Creek, even though the Glenwood Avenue corridor seems like it would be an ideal one for rail transit. The city is to be commended for its work on downtown - however, if the city thinks that it can just keep developing downtown while ignoring density and convenience issues in the rest of the city, they're going to be stuck with sprawl and traffic-choked streets. As I mentioned earlier, the very existence of the Park makes a single-center model impossible.

Pedestrian bridges in Brier Creek, for example, would be ideal and would contribute to continued high-density growth in the neighborhood. Developing a park in Crabtree - there's some open space there - and expanding an existent greenway system in the area would help that neighborhood. Transit that hit all the main growth areas - the Glenwood corridor, the Capital Boulevard corridor, and West Raleigh - as well as the employment centers in the Park would also be great. (The current bus system has one bus line that ends in Brier Creek and peters out at Crabtree, only halfway to downtown. The city doesn't bus people into the Park, and the multi-city Triangle Transit Authority buses ignore Brier Creek altogether.)

But Raleigh seems stuck in the idea that everyone who doesn't live and work downtown is okay with driving everywhere. That's a shame. Many of the 88% of us who want high-density walkable neighborhoods are forced by circumstance to work - and thus, if we don't want twenty-minute drives every day, to live - in suburbia. It'd be nice if Raleigh would at least acknowledge our existence... and build some damn crosswalks and sidewalks for a change.

*Seriously, what the hell is up with that? Sushi and Thai food are not even remotely related, except that they both occasionally feature rice. The flavors and main ingredients are completely different. And yet the combination of the two is everywhere around here. I actually live across the street, right now, from a restaurant called Sushi-Thai. It's like going to Tokyo and finding a Cajun place that serves tacos.

In Which Astrology Fails Hilariously

2011-01-14T22:18:00.002-05:00

So in the wake of the earth-shattering and Twitter-amusing news that the zodiac signs have changed in the 3000 years since astrology was invented, I figured I'd muck around with in the astrological world and see what I could find.

Incidentally, I went from being a Libra to being a Virgo. So I went from being diplomatic and graceful (har) to being analytical and observant. Wasn't aware those were mutually exclusive. Also, it cracks me up that Virgo's first weakness is being "skeptical." I guess that's a bad thing to astrologers.

(There's a group of people I do pity right now - those who believe in this stuff and suddenly find themselves in Ophiuchius. Ever seen a reading for Ophiuchius? Me neither. Fun to say though.)

Anyway, I decided I'd check on the January lunar astrology calendar and see what I could find. Here's what it says about January 3, 2011:

All traditions agree that this is an inauspicious day.

Well, if "all traditions agree," it can't be wrong!

So let's see, what happened on January 3, 2011... I went to work, came home, went to dinner with friends... what else... oh yeah, and I successfully defended my thesis and officially became a PhD. You know, definitely in the top 5 as far as days of my life are concerned.

D'oh.

Well, maybe other horoscopes were closer. Let's see what the specific sign readings say. Here's Libra:

Fear and indecision will cause you to shut down. The New Year starts you at a crossroads and you do not know which way to go. Indecision, confusion, and uncertainty are all catchwords for you this week. Things will not change much, nothing exciting will come your way.

Strike two.

Ok, wait, my sign isn't Libra anymore because of the Great Sign Shift, so let's look at Virgo:

This will be a very upsetting week for you. Unfortunately, disaster may have caught up to you. Be very careful during this week, do not take any foolish chances. Folly, misfortune, catastrophe are all very significant words for your week.

Crash. And. Burn.

But don't worry, stars. Sure, you suck at predicting things... but you're still really pretty to look at.

(Of course, the blind mouse does sometimes find the cheese: here's a Libra horoscope for February 2008 that says "I feel you will enjoy this month especially if your looking for love or want to have a child." My daughter was born on the 28th of that month... though I must note, grammatical expertise is clearly not a required skill for astrologers.)

Invisibility Cloak Activated

2011-01-12T11:16:00.003-05:00

I don't blog about Sarah Palin much here, mainly because I don't find her pronouncements all that interesting. But she let one go today that was very revealing about the way our culture views Jews - or doesn't, as the case may be. Here's the interesting part:

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

She is referencing, of course, the admittedly unfair criticism directed at her and other right-wingers blaming their rhetoric for contributing to the environment that allowed the attack to occur. In what has to be the definitive proof of the Blind Mouse/Cheese Principle, Palin is finally, for once, right to play the victim here.

But, um... blood libel? You do know what that actually means, right?

The term "blood libel" refers to the macabre and frighteningly common (at least in the Middle Ages) myth that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matzah. Jews were killed by the dozens because of this myth - it even contributed to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 (they weren't allowed back until 1655). Needless to say, unwarranted criticism of harsh political rhetoric doesn't really compare.

Truth be told, though, Sarah Palin probably doesn't know this. She's probably just got the term from Glenn Reynolds, who in turn probably isn't entirely certain about its meaning because it has been used erroneously before. The comparison of criticism of right-wingers to destructive lies about Jews is offensive to Jews, of course, as are ridiculous Holocaust comparisons. But what are the chances that Palin and Reynolds actually know this? There are few Jews in Alaska, and not a whole lot of Jews in Knoxville, either. Jewish history just isn't likely to come up in conversation for either of them.

This incident is a reminder that Jews are still a small minority in a country dominated by Christian culture. Jewish culture is visible only in the sense that we're funny, we like bagels, and we celebrate some weird holiday with candles around Christmastime. Some people know that we often wear tiny hats, that some of us have lots of facial hair, and that we celebrate the Sabbath a day early. Also we have rabbis, which are kinda like preachers or priests. Some scroll might be involved. And really, that's it, unless you're friends with Jewish people and you talk to them a lot about their religion and culture.

But part of being a small minority is that people don't think about you when they're saying or doing things on an everyday basis. For example, people don't understand that crosses don't work as a memorial for non-Christian soldiers. And that's okay; I don't expect everyone to know everything about Judaism or understand the specific sensitivities of Jewish culture. I expect that, living in a Christian-dominated culture, I'm going to be wearing a cloak of invisibility most of the time. This isn't an admonition, just an observation.

So we accept that Christians will inevitably say things that get on Jews' nerves without really realizing it. (The inverse is probably true too.) But we should still point those things out when they happen. What I wonder, though, is if people like Palin and Reynolds would be willing to understand their error when it is pointed out to them. Their history suggests otherwise.

Bang and Blame

2011-01-10T10:36:00.002-05:00

Let the recriminations begin.

In the wake of the tragic assassination attempt and mass shooting in Tucson, everyone seems to want to play the blame game. We've blamed Sarah Palin. We've blamed violent rhetoric in general. We've blamed liberals and conservatives. We've blamed the state of Arizona. We've blamed anxious masculinity. We've even blamed pot.

So what was the real motive behind the shooter? Why did he start shooting people? If you ask him, he'll say... grammar. Or maybe getting blown off after asking a stupid question at a political rally.

Screw Sarah Palin. Let's all go blame Strunk and White. There was also something about dreaming and reality in there, so we should probably also blame Christopher Nolan.

There is something within us that does not like to accept senselessness. We want to think that there's something we could have done, something we could do, to stop things like this from happening. We don't want to turn over control of the universe to the fates, so we pretend that we have control over something. If only we were more civil. If only we got rid of drugs. If only, if only, if only.

But the truth is that we don't have that kind of power. All the civility in the world from the Glenn Becks and Keith Olbermanns of the world wouldn't have prevented this tragedy, and deep down we know it. One person - and one person only - had the power to stop this from happening: the killer himself.

The question the killer asked Rep. Giffords at the rally that one time was about how words have no meaning. It's an idiotic question to ask a politician. But it's ironic that the killers actions have set off a frantic search for meaning in an event that is inherently meaningless. Humans don't like meaninglessness or chaos - we seek to ascribe a meaning to everything. But the meaning of this event is not in what led up to it, since we will never fully understand what led to this shooting. We are constructing the meaning of this event now, as we speak. And that's what's going on with this blame game. We all know, deep down, that the shooter alone is to blame. But we want to use the event for something positive, because otherwise it's meaningless, and we can't handle that.

So if we're going to use this tragedy for something, let's figure out what the best thing to use it for would be. I think Friedersdorf is the closest right now - it doesn't make sense to get rid of anger and overwrought rhetoric, but we should make sure our political debate is based on actual facts. Birthers, "creeping Sharia" nutters, death-panel cranks: we're looking at you. A little toning down wouldn't hurt - things like Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies" crack should never, ever, ever occur - but basing things on facts would, I think, make our debate a lot more civil by definition.

It'd be stupid to blame falsehood in politics for this tragedy. It's not our responsibility to place blame. But if the meaning we ascribe to this tragedy is that it was an impetus for returning rationality to our political debates, I don't think that's a bad meaning at all.

Oh, and if you want a heartwarming story of a community pulling together after a similar senseless tragedy, go here.

The Persistence of Memory

2010-12-20T22:37:00.002-05:00

A few years ago I was traveling around a small pig-farming town in Bavaria. It was a weekend and the town was strangely deserted - there was a festival in the nearby town of Rothenburg (centered, awesomely, around the legendary chugging of a very large mug of beer), and I suspect that most of the small town's 1000 or so residents were over there. Anyway, this small town had a small memorial tucked away on one of its picturesque lanes. It was a plaque, about as tall as me, with a list of names. I don't read German, but I could tell that it was commemorating the German dead in both world wars. Which made me, as a Jew, feel... well, sort of uncomfortable. I don't begrudge the German regulars their courage in death, but I had to remember that these names were of people who were fighting, essentially, to maintain their country's right to kill people like me. How much respect could I pay such a memorial? And what should I think about people who remember fondly those who would, if alive, want to see me gassed to death?

Back home in Raleigh, there's a memorial at the end of Hillsborough Street where it dead-ends into Salisbury Street at the State Capitol. It is a tall, thin structure with a soldier on top, and in large letters, plainly visible to the cars across Salisbury waiting to turn, is written the following inscription: "To Our Confederate Dead." And now, each time I pass that memorial, I wonder if Raleigh's African-American population feels the way I felt at that memorial in Germany.

150 years ago, the Civil War began. On December 20, 1860, the state of South Carolina passed its secession declaration. Four days later, the denizens of the Palmetto State explained their reasons for doing so:

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

It is difficult for a serious student of history to deny that the direct cause of the Civil War was slavery, and the threat of its dissolution by the nascent Republican Party and its leader, Abraham Lincoln. You can claim that it was "states' rights," but it was the states' rights to allow slavery that was in question. You can claim that it was about economics, but the South's economy was based on slavery. There's just no way around it. You can claim - correctly - that the average Confederate soldier didn't give a rat's ass about slavery (only 25% of those who fought for the South came from slaveholding families), but they were led and encouraged by plantation owners and defenders of slavery.

Which puts the modern white Southerner in a tight spot. White Southerners, by and large, abhor racism and are disgusted by the idea of slavery, but have to deal with the fact that their ancestors fought and died for that very cause. Even folks like me who had nary an ancestor in the US during the Civil War but who grew up south of the Potomac have to deal with the fact that we call home a region of the country that once fought a war to keep the black man in chains, and then spent 100 years trying to reforge those chains out of laws and intimidation. And the decision that faces us is this: do we confront our history or try to rewrite it, ignore it, and hope it'll go away?

Unfortunately, anyone who has spent a lot of time down here knows which option we chose.

Southern food is famous for recipes born of necessity. Dishes like jambalaya and fried chicken arose out of the need to create good-tasting food out of whatever there was lying around, creating beauty from the unlikely, inconvenient situation of poverty. Cuisine, however, is not the only field where the Southern ability to make the best out of a bad situation surfaces. Today, of all days, a story broke which demonstrates this. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour got caught trying to sugarcoat the White Citizens' Councils that sprung up across the South in response to integration. Barbour credits the Citizens' Council of his hometown of Yazoo City for - of all things - ensuring that school integration was done peacefully. Never mind that this integration occurred in - wait for it - 1970, no doubt having been delayed by the actions of those very Citizens' Councils.

Barbour responded via a spokesperson, who claimed in an interview with TPM's Eric Kleefeld that Barbour isn't a racist. And you know what? I believe him. I'm sure that Barbour is as non-racist as possible. But like an old-time Cajun cook, Barbour is trying to make something delicious out of a less-than-desirable list of ingredients.

And Barbour is hardly alone - witness the South Carolinians holding a "Secession Ball" this evening, complete with period costumes and a re-enactment of the signing of the Ordinance of Secession. (No word on if black attendants would be required to wear shackles.) And if you aren't familiar with the "Lost Cause" mythology, the ability of Southerners to talk about the Civil War without once mentioning slavery - well, you just don't know enough Southerners.

The question, though, is why dp this? Why do we Southerners feel the need to turn the negative parts of our history into something good? My guess is that it's a pride thing - we don't want to admit that those who came before us did something wrong, that the region of the country that we love so much might be responsible for something so unequivocally awful. So we whitewash it. We pretend it wasn't that bad. Like Barbour, we tell stories of mixed-race crowds idly listening to Martin Luther King in small Southern towns, conveniently ignoring the tensions of the era.

The truly sad part is that we don't need to do this. Because racism isn't contained completely in the South, and it never has been. Malcolm X's autobiography is filled with awful instances of racial violence; Malcolm X grew up in Michigan. The swimming pool crowd who reacted to a group of black kids like they were diseased called Pennsylvania home. The region of the country most famous now for crazy white separatists isn't the South - it's North Idaho. And the state legislator who made national headlines for comparing a bill he didn't like to a black baby wasn't Southern - he was from Utah.

And the truth is that we don't need the Civil War and the mythology of the noble rebel to feel Southern pride. We don't need to ignore the things our grandfathers did during the civil rights era. The South is the region that gave the world the blues, jazz, and rock 'n' roll; jambalaya, gumbo, barbecue (with vinegar-based sauce, thank you very much), fried chicken, and collard greens; William Faulkner and Alice Walker; Jerry Rice and Bobby Jones; Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, and Robert Johnson; Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Martin Luther King; and an extremely useful second-person plural pronoun that is sorely lacking in mainstream English. And that's just scratching the surface. No other region has had anywhere near as much influence on American culture as the South. To all those non-Southerners who look at Southerners as a bunch of ignorant rednecks - until your region of the country produces a nowhere-near-exhaustive list like that, y'all can shut the hell up.

The difference between the two memorials, the one in Bavaria and the one in Raleigh, is that the Bavarians don't pretend like their fight was the good fight. They have learned how to honor their dead without honoring their cause. We can do the same. We can memorialize our Confederate dead without justifying their rebellion. We don't need to pretend like the stance of Southern state governments during secession and segregation was benign concern for "states' rights." Rather, we can stand up on all of our region's other contributions to America, and be justifiably proud.

150 years ago today, the Confederate States of America was born. It is long past time to put it to bed.

I'm Wishing That He'll Go Away

2010-12-20T14:01:00.002-05:00

The only thing that can be said about this:

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

is this:

The Lester Bangs Caucus

2010-12-13T12:56:00.005-05:00

There's a new political group out there now called No Labels. They refer to themselves as putting aside hyper-partisanship in order to move the country forward. Nothing wrong with that. Compromise is a good thing. Take the tax cut package, for example. As much as I don't like the idea of extending the Bush tax cuts on the upper tax bracket, if we have to give that to get a bunch of other stuff Republicans don't want, I'll go along with it. In a country of 300 million people, you'll never get all of what you want. As long as the compromise isn't worse than the opposition's original position (and it isn't, mainly because the deficit problem requires long-term solutions that are unaffected by this short-term deal) and it's fairly even (and it is - unemployment benefit extension and a boost in other low-income tax credits offset the extension of the tax cuts for the rich), take it.

So compromise is how things get done, and a group that supports that is OK with me. Also, blind partisanship is bad news - a lot of bad policy and bad ideas are propagated out of an unwillingness to go against anyone perceived as being on the same "team." So if you want to put aside labels and have a policy discussion, cool.

And yet. Uneasiness remains.

See, the problem with being "non-ideological" is that it's impossible. We all have ideologies. No Labels, for instance, is actually rather ideological. Their statement of purpose describes what they find important:

Americans are entitled to a government and a political system that works – driven by shared purpose and common sense.
Americans deserve a government that makes the necessary choices to rein in runaway deficits, secure Social Security and Medicare, and put our country on a viable, sound path going forward. Americans support a government that works to spur employment and economic opportunity by encouraging free and open markets, tempered by sensible regulation.
Americans want a government that empowers people with the tools for success – from a world-class education to affordable healthcare – provided that it does so in a fiscally prudent way.
America should be free from discrimination and should embrace the principle of equal opportunity.
America must be strong and safe, ready and able to protect itself in a world of multiple dangers and uncertainties.

But what if you believe, like many libertarians, that Social Security and Medicare are bad programs, and that no regulation is "sensible"? What if you believe, like many leftists, that free and open markets are an invitation for corporate exploitation? What if you believe that government has no role in education or health care, or that it's more important to protect civil liberties than it is for America to be "strong and safe"? I guess "No Labels" has no use for such silliness.

No Labels is short-circuiting our political process by assuming a consensus on our nation's direction that may or may not exist. In the name of civility and compromise, No Labels is actually treating the dissenters to their presumed consensus in the most uncivil way possible - pretending that they don't exist.

Look, civility is great, and it should be practiced wherever possible. But this belies the fact that political issues deeply affect our lives, and as such they produce an outpouring of emotion that makes civility almost counterproductive. In the name of "civility," we ignore the passionate extremes who might have a good idea every now and then, and we temper our own impulses for fear of being ridiculed as "uncivil." And what purpose does that serve? How can we impress on someone the importance that we affix to, say, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or the use of the criminal justice system to try terror suspects if we're so concerned about being "civil"?

Put differently, which is more important: being civil? Or being truthful?

The big problem with our discourse is not that it is "uncivil." American discourse has always been kind of "uncivil," stretching all the way back to the days of Jefferson and Adams. Rather, it is that we allow lies to propagate unchecked. We have a significant portion of the population that thinks that Obama raised taxes on the middle class when, in fact, the opposite is true. And if someone attempts to call the liars on their lies, the center simply sniggers and calls the bullshit-callers "uncivil."

So is there a better way of promoting policy debate that moves our country forward? Yes, and fellow devotees of the movie Almost Famous already know it. It's from the end of this scene:

"Honest and unmerciful." Call me a member of the Lester Bangs caucus. Let's be passionate. Let's call the other guys out when we think they're wrong. Let's let people know when we think others want to take America in the wrong direction. Let's pursue justice tenaciously, and speak out against injustice convincingly. But let's make damn sure we're honest - both intellectually and factually - when we do so. Passion and emotion need to be backed up by facts and truth. And let's not address those who manipulate our emotions with lies and half-truths with kid gloves in the name of civility. Open, honest, no-holds-barred debate is what moves this country forward. It weeds out the weak ideas and policies based on false premises. It forms the basis of those compromises that No Labels fetishizes. If we want to be true friends to America, we need to be honest and unmerciful.

It's About Respect, People

2010-12-07T10:20:00.002-05:00

2010 has a lot of entries into the "Douche of the Year" contest, but Robert Stacy "The Other" McCain is making a late charge with this incredible column.

Let's set the scene. For those of you who don't know, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being charged in Sweden with two counts of some sexual assault-like crime. In the first case, Assange and a woman were having sex, and the condom Assange was wearing broke; when the woman asked Assange to stop, he kept going. In the second case, Assange didn't bother to wear a condom at all despite the fact that the woman expressly asked for one. Jill Filipovic of Feministe, in response, makes what should be a relatively non-controversial point:

If you consent to having sex with someone and part of the way through you say to stop and the person you’re having sex with continues to have sex with you against your wishes, that’s rape.

No shit, right? Kinda obvious... but apparently not to Mr. Other McCain:

In an era when some 40% of U.S. births are to unmarried women, in a culture where “Girls Gone Wild” and “hook-ups” are normative, where threesomes, bisexual experimentation and amateur video-porn orgies have become a virtual rite of passage for many young Americans, where chlamydia and herpes are pandemic — in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto?

Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride.

-snip-

If you tumble into a random hook-up with no prior knowledge of the guy’s reputation and he turns out to be a selfish brute whose standard modus operandi is repulsive, dangerous or painful, in what sense are you a victim of anything except your own stupidity?

Oy.

Mr. McCain and Assange are two sides of the same coin. Both feel very little need to respect the decisions of women regarding their own bodies. Assange went ahead with whatever he wanted to do without paying any attention to what the women wanted; McCain thinks that women don't have a right to make decisions beyond a certain point. These are equally disgusting viewpoints. Assange's disrespect is likely a figment of his narcissism, so we can expect that. I'm at a loss to explain McCain, though. I have a hard time believing that, in this day and age, anyone can believe that there's a point where women lose the right to consent to sex. And I'm even more baffled that there are people out there like Mr. McCain that enjoy explicitly blaming women for their own rape.

So it's a little startling that McCain, when he finally comes down from his victim-blaming high-horse, attempts to make something resembling a legitimate point in an update to his post:

I am not endorsing, advocating or defending Julian Assange’s behavior. He is a bad person, what he did was clearly wrong, and whatever harm befalls him, he most certainly deserves. But Assange’s wrongs were perpetrated in an environment of casual promiscuity. It is in just such an environment that lowlifes like Assange thrive and flourish, and if we refuse to criticize promiscuity — if we never point out to women that, in sleeping around, they are playing a game in which they are vulnerable to exploitation — then we are not-so-innocent bystanders.

Let's ignore the insulting paternalism here for a moment and address what might be the kernel of an actual reasonable thought. Perhaps McCain isn't really blaming Assange's victims here, but is rather blaming a culture of promiscuity for rape. This is an idea worth addressing, though I still think it's a wrongheaded idea.

If we imagine a society where sex is reserved only for the most meaningful relationships, we can understand how sexual assault cases like this would be all but non-existent, since strangers wouldn't be having sex. But we cannot assume that this would eliminate sexual assault; partner rape is depressingly common. Furthermore, one could also easily imagine a culture where casual sex is the norm and where all sex is consensual and mutually wanted; one-night stands are quite often mutually wanted. So a "culture of promiscuity" clearly isn't responsible for sexual assault.

So what is? McCain backs into the answer by using the crap "but they can't help it" defense: "in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto?" The answer, of course, is absolutely yes. I've dealt with previously. Despite all the sexual messages in our society, I somehow avoid going around raping people, and so do most of the men I know. This is because I was raised to respect women, and so were my friends.

And that's the key. The prevalence of sexual assault against women is not correlated to the sexualization of our society; rather, it is correlated to the respect our society has for women. The lesson that Assange and McCain refuse to learn is that a woman's choice to not have sex or to stop having sex is one that must be respected if we are to consider ourselves moral beings. Furthermore, this respect cannot be conditional. If one partner doesn't want to continue having sex, the other partner should respect that and stop (regardless of whether or not he/she likes it). It really doesn't matter what happened before.

You'd think this would be easy to grasp. Respecting the wishes of others isn't that hard. Right?

Bombin' Around the Christmas Tree

2010-11-30T10:22:00.002-05:00

So we've all heard about the Portland plot by now. Some crazy dude tried to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. And, of course, being a cynic, my first thought wasn't "thank heaven this plot was stopped," but rather, "this was totally a set-up by the FBI." That, in fact, is what defense attorneys are saying. And if we remember from a few years ago, the Rolling Stone reported that the FBI consistently invented terror plots in order to jail angry young Muslims.

And there are a lot of things about this story that don't really pass the smell test, as Greenwald notes.

It's clear that Mr. Mohamed isn't a particularly sympathetic character. Entrapment or not, if someone asks you to participate in a terror plot the answer should always be "fuck no." But was he really just going to haul off and blow stuff up if the FBI hadn't gotten involved? I mean, could a 19-year-old high-school graduate whose aspirations included a fishing job in Alaska hatch an elaborate bomb plot all on his lonesome? It requires money and know-how, two things that I doubt Mr. Mohamed really possessed.

So it's interesting that this case formed the news backdrop when I read this Wilkinson piece over at the Economist's Democracy in America blog. Wilkinson notes that terrorism, for all our bluster about it, is exceedingly rare in this country. Indeed, a quick Wikipedia search finds that there have been 49 terror attacks or attempted attacks in the U.S. in my lifetime. And that counts each Unabomber and Eric Rudolph attack separately, it counts non-politically motivated attacks like the Beltway sniper, and it counts domestic crazy people with guns like Jim Adkisson (though interestingly, Wikipedia didn't include school shootings, which I guess it classifies separately). If we talk about terrorism the way we generally think of it - complex, politically motivated attack plots - we're talking maybe ten. And of those ten, only two - Oklahoma City and Sept. 11 - had large amounts of fatalities.

If there were only two successful large-scale terrorist plots in the past 29 years, we can safely say that large-scale terrorism isn't particularly common in this country... but that allowing any terrorist plot to succeed is traumatic and unacceptable. So terrorism is something of an awkward law enforcement issue. It's cataclysmic but rare - so you need significant resources, but if you're just investigating already existing plots, those resources are probably lying dormant for years at a time. Leaving those resources just kinda sitting there isn't really viable politically - politicians like to see results. Which means that it's in the FBI's interest to not just pursue existing terrorists but potential terrorists as well.

Which leads me back to the Portland case. What the FBI did with Mohamed was that they found an angry young Muslim man who they thought might turn into a terrorist one day, turned him into an active terrorist, then arrested him. The problem with this is that we don't know if Mohamed would have become a terrorist had the FBI not been involved. Sure, maybe he becomes the next Faisal Shahzad (the incompetent Times Square bomber). But maybe he grows out of it, like many angry young men, and becomes a productive member of society. Now we'll never know.

So we're caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we want terrorism to be investigated and thwarted. On the other hand, it's a bad idea to turn people into terrorists when they weren't terrorists already. So how do you walk that line? My answer would be to keep track of the "potential" terrorists, but not do anything until they actually show signs of wanting to start a plot. That's when you move in and arrest them. But I'm not comfortable having the FBI play the part of the precogs in "Minority Report."

Some Post-Prop 19 Prohibition Thoughts

2010-11-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

Recently I've been reading Last Call, Daniel Okrent's excellent look at Prohibition, and the one thing that has struck me is how similar the alcohol prohibition movement is to the marijuana (and other drug) prohibition movement today. For example, both used official fake pseudoscience to make their case - the modern DARE program can be compared easily with Scientific Temperance Instruction, a pack of bullshit fed to pre-Prohibition schools that told of alcohol's many horrors in the same way the DARE program teaches kids a lot of half-truths about drug usage today. (Also, racism against blacks and Germans played a large part in Prohibition's passage, just as racism against Hispanics played a healthy role in the illegality of marijuana and racism against blacks produced the sentencing disparity between cocaine and crack.)

What's most salient throughout the book, though, is the sheer impossibility of prohibiting the use of alcohol. In order to get Prohibition passed in the first place, Congress had to make exceptions for homemade hard ciders and wines. People were allowed to keep and consume liquor bought before January 17, 1920. Many members of Congress who voted for Prohibition were drinkers themselves. And, of course, criminal syndicates (the analogs of today's drug cartels) distributed liquor within the US rather easily. (For example, the Bronfman family of Canada, owners of the Seagram's empire, had a very profitable arrangement with mobster Meyer Lansky.) The result? If you wanted to drink, you could - in the same way that almost half of Americans have used illegal drugs.

And if you think about it, prohibition of private behavior, especially a popular one, is a hell of a task. Government puts tons of money and effort into preventing something, only to see half of America engage in it anyway. Prohibition was beset by corrupt enforcement agencies and a general lack of concern with enforcement at the highest levels. But even with the huge enforcement apparatus set up today to combat illegal drugs - even with the erosion of civil liberties and legalized theft and activity approaching state-sponsored murder, half of Americans have used drugs.

Laws, it is said, are a reflection of our morality. If this is so, our prohibition laws are a reflection of a very mixed morality that, in some ways, is uniquely American.

We aspire to live lives free of vice. We idealize the rejection of intoxicants like marijuana, cocaine, even alcohol. We talk about how horrible drug use is. And so when the opportunity comes to pass laws against it, we register our disapproval with that private behavior by voting for prohibition. Yet we also understand that we live our lives in a liberal democracy, and we cherish our liberties handed down to us in the form of the Constitution and its myriad protections against government intrusion. We like our government distant, not ubiquitous - but ubiquity is necessary to truly enforce prohibition.

So we pass these laws knowing full well that they are, for the most part, unenforceable. We give up some of our civil liberties, but never so much that the laws become viable. We look the other way as those with power and resources manipulate the system so that they get out of paying the full price for violating prohibition, allowing our laws to turn into a system of oppression against the underclasses. We have taken comfort in having our morality affirmed by laws only enforceable by oppression. Prohibition is a blanket, if you will, for our aspirational morality, protecting our vision of what a good society should look like from the harsh, cold reality of a world that never lives up to its lofty ideals.

Eventually, we will understand that a blanket composed of SWAT teams and drug cartels and thievery and racism provides no true comfort, and we will have the courage to shed it. Medical marijuana laws were the first attempts, Prop 19 is the latest but it will not be the last. And when we do, we will realize that the harsh, cold reality isn't really as harsh and cold as it seems. The truth is that our aspirational morality will survive whether or not it is protected by the force of law. And when we come to that realization, we can give the American ideal of personal liberty the full embrace that it so richly deserves.

Update: Jacob Sullum deals well with a similar argument.

Five Stages of Election Wednesday

2010-11-03T11:24:00.002-04:00

Denial.

No. No no no no no. No way could Feingold lose his Senate seat. Not to this schmuck. No way. Not happening. Didn't happen. Can't happen.

Anger.

FUCK YOU, WISCONSIN. Seriously, let's kick these bastards out of the union. You heard me, cheeseheads. Get out. Go join Canada or something. This country doesn't need you. Milwaukee's beer sucks now anyway. Go away. I'm ripping a star off our flag as we speak.

Bargaining.

OK, how about this. I'll give you Dino Rossi and Carly Fiorina if we can put Feingold back in the Senate. That'll get you to 50-50 assuming Colorado goes to Buck. Hell, ask nicely enough and I might even give you Sharron Angle. Please? Just give me this, okay?

Depression.

Man. Congress is worthless without Feingold. Who the hell's gonna stand up for civil liberties? Now the government can just keep imprisoning people without trial and kill off our legal system in the name of a terrorism freak-out and no one's gonna stand in their way. Fuck it, there's no hope. Let's just shred the Constitution now.

Acceptance.

OK, so no Feingold anymore. That's okay, I guess. Maybe Leahy will grow a spine on civil liberties - he just won another six years. Maybe he'll go on the pundit circuit. They could use some good civil libertarians out there. I can't imagine he'd just disappear, right? Hey, and maybe Herb Kohl will retire rather than run for re-election in 2012, and Feingold could win his seat!

Of course, we'd have to let Wisconsin back in the union by then. I'll think about it.

Jesse Walker has more over at Reason (and it's odd enough that Reason is eulogizing a Democratic Senator). There are three other results I wanted to touch on briefly:

Prop 19's failure. That's two straight high-profile propositions you've fucked up now, California. You'll be out of the union with Wisconsin if you keep this up. Anyway, congratulations to the murderous drug cartels, who now get to keep making crazy money off Californians. You don't have to compete with legal distribution channels now. Good job.

Oh, and to Californians who voted against Prop 19? They're the big winners in this whole thing. Hope that's what you wanted.

Iowa votes down their judges. Iowans have apparently decided that they know how to interpret their state's constitution better than people who have studied the law and their state's constitution for most of their professional careers, because blah blah blah GAY PEOPLE. Hey Hawkeyes - if your ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, fucking deal with it. The more you treat it like the end of the world, the dumber you look.

And your state borders Wisconsin. Just sayin'.

Oklahoma passes proposition banning Sharia law. Rumor has it they are also expected to pass a proposition banning faster-than-light travel. Sadly, the question requiring water molecules to have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom did not gather enough signatures to make it onto the ballot.

Oooooklahoma, where the paranoia comes sweeping down the plains. This song goes out to you, the 70% of Oklahomans that saw fit to protect yourself against a threat that exists only in the dark corners of your amygdala:

Wait, They Can Do That?

2010-10-18T14:06:00.003-04:00

Mother Jones' Mac McClelland, who has been on top of the oil spill story from Day One, tweeted about this article detailing the possibility that BP might refuse to pay damage claims beyond $75 million. Apparently this is due to something called the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which limits damages that can be awarded due to an oil spill to that amount plus cleanup costs.

This law is an obviously hideous idea - why anyone would want to protect someone who spilled shit-tons of oil from having to pay people whose property they fucked up is beyond me. It's like passing a law saying that if I burn down your house, I only have to pay you $50 plus whatever it costs to shovel the ashes off your lot. You say you lost $800,000 worth of assets in that fire? Sorry, dude, you get $50. Good luck with that other $799,950, though.

But beyond the stupidity and cravenness required to pass such a law in the first place, I'd just like to ask this question: how the hell can such a law possibly be constitutional?

Think about it this way. Say BP has been found liable for damage that results from the oil spill (not a horrible assumption here). The first ten people to sue each have $7.5 million of damage to their property. You're the 11th. Surprise - now you have no right to sue BP for destroying your property! No money left under the cap, see.

The right to a lawsuit is never enumerated - were I a judge I would presume it to exist under the Ninth Amendment, but there lies shaky ground - but thanks to the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, you can't grant some group of wronged property owners the right to sue BP and not grant another group of wronged property owners the right to sue BP. If you're going to let some people collect damages from BP, you can't disallow others with legitimate claims from doing the same. So restricting the 11th person from suing when you let the first 10 sue strikes me as a violation of equal protection, and I see no compelling state interest (or rational basis even, though y'all know how I feel about that standard) in protecting a private corporation from their full liability under the common law.

So, legal eagles, how is that law justified under the Constitution?

A Question on Judicial Elections

2010-10-15T14:03:00.002-04:00

Here's an interesting nugget for you. The Iowa Supreme Court is appointed, but Iowans vote every two years on whether or not they should remain in their seats. In the wake of its groundbreaking decision that the ban on same-sex marriage in that state violated its Constitution, several judges are in danger of losing that vote, which has basically never happened before.

That's interesting to me because I grew up in a state (Virginia) where judges are appointed (and never voted on) and currently live in a state where all judges are voted on (and never appointed). The process of electing/voting on judges really strikes me as bizarre, for reasons apparent in the Iowa vote - difficult, unpopular decisions to uphold the Constitution are often disadvantaged in favor of politically expedient decisions that may not follow the Constitution as faithfully. But appointments have their drawbacks too - it's remarkably difficult to get a runaway judge off the bench.

I mention this because there's a difficult appellate court election here in NC this year. Incumbent judge Ann Marie Calabria has done nothing particularly wrong - she's competent, reasonable, and not corrupt - but she's also a strident conservative and a judicial passivist. She is running against Jane Gray, who would make an good judge as well but whose judicial philosophy seems more in line with mine. In a sense, it's the mirror image of the choice facing Iowa voters.

So I have a question for you, dear readers. When is it appropriate for voters to fire an incumbent judge? When they make a decision you don't agree with? When they have a judicial philosophy you don't agree with? Or only in the case of misconduct or corruption? Or is there another standard?

Have at it.

Another Failed Anti-Gay Marriage Argument

2010-10-12T13:03:00.002-04:00

Out of all the controversial and difficult political issues out there, there's only one position I am absolutely unable to understand: opposition to gay marriage. I've mentioned before that I have yet to hear an argument that makes sense to me. Matt Novak has come closest, but his argument - that male-female relationships are different because they can produce children, and thus deserve special recognition - is still incomplete (there's a "why" missing there). But I'm open to reading new arguments. You're up, Katherine Kersten from Minneapolis, MN:

On Nov. 2, the family -- and marriage as we know it -- will be on the ballot in Minnesota.

Aw, Christ. Two sentences in and the rhetoric's already so overheated it could fry an egg.

Next year, Democrats will likely try to steamroll same-sex marriage through. If Dayton or Horner is elected, the governor will be on board -- perhaps even leading the charge.

Tom Emmer takes a different stance. He's the only gubernatorial candidate who supports marriage as the union of one man and one woman, as it has existed in Western civilization for 2,000 years.

Still overheated, but at least her facts aren't as specious as the "never before in human history" crap. Of course, marriage as an institution today would be all but unrecognizable to people from 2000 years ago.

But that's kinda ticky-tack, so I'll let it go. Continue:

Notice: Neither Dayton nor Horner mentions the stakeholders who have the most to win or lose in the marriage battle -- children.

Oh, this isn't gonna be pretty.

Though Dayton and Horner may be loath to admit it, marriage has been a male/female institution -- across the globe and throughout history -- for a simple reason, rooted in biology. Sex between men and women creates babies. It's the only kind of sex that does.

OK, wait. You're gonna get us all panicked about the demise of Western civilization and the certain torture of children just to make Novak's argument? Granted, she's the only person other than Novak that I've heard make this argument. Maybe it's a Minnesota thing.

Anyway, seems like a waste of a good outrage to get all worked up and then make a rather mundane argument. At least it's not crazy or idiotic, though.

Oh, hey, wait, there's another page:

Marriage is a "conjugal" concept, based on the sexual complementarity of men and women. It channels the powerful male/female sex drive to positive ends, to ensure that children will -- whenever possible -- have the love, support and guidance of both their mother and father. By linking fathers to their children, marriage strengthens an otherwise tenuous bond that is vital for both children's and society's well-being.

Aaaaaaand we're off the rails.

Hey, yo, Katherine. Single dad here. There's not a goddamn thing "tenuous" about the bond between me and my kid. I give my kid love, support, and guidance because I love her, not because of my marital status vis-a-vis her mom. And guess what? Her mother feels the same way. And there are parents of both genders who are married who could care less about their kids. The idea that the only reason men take care of kids is because they get to fuck the kids' mommy is colossally, unbelievably, and incredibly stupid.

Oh, and do you really think it's better for a kid to have a father who doesn't love them tied to the family by marriage? Seems to me that'd create a lot more problems than it'd solve.

But continue. Let's see how deep this rabbit hole runs.

First, they portray the purpose of marriage as being simply to encourage, and publicly affirm, adults' "love and commitment" -- Dayton's words. If we grant this premise, it becomes a denial of "equal rights" to withhold marriage from two men or two women who care for each other. "How will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?" gay-marriage supporters ask. They expect the answer to be "not at all."

But marriage is not primarily about affirming "love and commitment." Otherwise, government would regulate friendships as well as marriages. At its core, marriage is a social institution, whose public purpose is to structure male/female sexual relationships in a way that maximizes the next generation's well-being.

Well, actually, marriage is about two people agreeing to certain property-sharing, child custody, and mutual care arrangements through a legally binding ceremony. The reasons two people get married range from "we're meant for each other" to "we want to have a family together" to "really, we're just young and impulsive." But yeah, you just go ahead and tell us what it's all about.

But most traditional-marriage supporters don't "fear" or "hate" homosexuals. On the contrary, they invite gays to live as they please. They simply believe that every child needs and deserves a mother and a father. And they suspect that the radical redefinition of marriage will have damaging, unpredictable long-term consequences for all of society.

I'll wait for all the sociologists and anthropologists to stop laughing.

Still waiting.

OK, I think we're good. Other cultures survive despite the fact that their concept of the family is radically different from just "mother, father, kids." Hell, that was only true in our culture starting about 1950 or so. Kids need a strong, loving support structure, and it really doesn't matter whether the people providing that donated a sperm or an ovum to the process or not. Two men and two women can provide just as much support to a child as an opposite-sex couple. So can a mother and grandmother, for that matter. Or a father and grandfather. Or a father and uncle. Or a mother and uncle. Or two friends.

And as for the "damaging, unpredictable long-term consequences"? Munroe's Law.

I've got questions for Dayton and Horner:

This'll be good.

If we abandon the conjugal idea of marriage -- and redefine marriage as appropriate for any two caring adults -- on what grounds can we continue to limit the institution to two people? If love and commitment are sufficient for two, why not three or more? "How does my polygamous marriage hurt your marriage?" Same-sex marriage supporters have no logical answer.

Because you're not discriminating against anyone if you just say "this legal contract deals with property sharing between two people." There's a difference between telling some people "you can't have this contract" and limiting the number of parties that can take part in a contract, and if you don't get that difference... I can't help you.

And how can we logically limit marriage to people in a sexual relationship? If marriage is simply about caring adults, why shouldn't a grandmother and daughter raising a child together have its benefits? Going forward, on what grounds can we discriminate against people simply because they don't have sex together?

We don't discriminate against couples who don't have sex together now. You do realize that that's, like, 20 percent of married couples already, right? What would you prefer, a system where couples had to report each time they had sex to the government, and if it wasn't enough, their marriage would be dissolved?

Kids, this is proof that when your teacher says there are no such things as stupid questions, they're lying.

OK, what's the next question?

...

Really? That's it? That's all you got? Kinda thought there'd be more there.

So sorry, Ms. Kersten, you fail at arguing. Try again later, I'm sure you have it in you.

The Real Connection Between Glenn Beck and Islam

2010-10-11T13:56:00.004-04:00

Some weeks ago a nutter-butter right-winger named Byron Williams shot up a freeway in Oakland, California while ranting about wanting to destroy the ACLU and the nonprofit liberal-leaning Tides Foundation. He was likely influenced by conservative conspiracy theorists and had the altogether nutty idea that Obama and George Soros blew up the Deepwater Horizon oil rig intentionally so they could either make money or get cap-and-trade passed, or something. I dunno, it's tough to wade through that line of thought.

Sadly, the predictable attempts to turn this whole thing against Glenn Beck followed, most notably from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. Milbank writes:

In August, I wrote that while it's not fair to blame Beck for violence committted by his fans, he would do well to stop encouraging extremists. Now, Williams has granted a pair of jailhouse interviews, one with the conservative Examiner.com and one to be published soon by the liberal group Media Matters. These recorded exchanges, which I have reviewed, show precisely why Beck is dangerous: because his is the one voice in the mass media that validates conspiracy theories held by the unstable.

Translation: I'm not blaming Beck, but really... I'm blaming Beck.

But something else occurs to me. Let's give Milbank's paragraph a little rewrite, eh?

In August, I wrote that while it's not fair to blame Islam for violence committed by its fans, Muslims would do well to stop encouraging extremists... These recorded exchanges, which I have reviewed, show precisely why Islam is dangerous: because it is the one religion in the mass culture that validates conspiracy theories held by the unstable.

I could have pulled that straight from Pam Geller's website.

Hey, this is fun! Let's see what Media Matters' Eric Boehlert has to say:

And thankfully, Williams wasn't able to take his place alongside a growing list of domestic, anti-government terrorists, such as the recent Pentagon shooter, the Holocaust Museum gunman, the kamikaze pilot who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, and the Pittsburgh cop-killer who set up an ambush because he was convinced Obama was going to take away his guns the Fort Hood shooter, the underpants bomber, and the Times Square bomber.

All the vigilante attacks appear to have been fueled by an almost pathological hatred for the U.S. government -- the same open hatred that ~~right-wing bloggers, AM talk radio hosts, and Fox News' lineup of anti-government prophets~~ Muslims have been frantically fueling for the last year, pushing doomsday warnings of America's ~~democratic demise under President Obama~~ attacks on Islam.

And the sad truth is we're going to see more like Byron Williams. We're going to see more attempts at vigilante violence during the Age of Obama simply because ~~the right-wing media, lead by Beck,~~Muslims continue to gleefully (albeit irresponsibly) stoke dangerous fires with the kind of relentlessly incendiary rhetoric that has no match in terms of modern day, mainstream use in American politics or media.

Try it yourself, it's really quite entertaining.

And that is what I think we ought to remember. Blaming Beck and company (and by extension the entire populist right wing) for right-wing terrorism* is the same as blaming Islam or American Muslims for extremist Islamic terror attacks. In both cases, people seek to delegitimize an entire group because of the craziest actions of its craziest adherents. And both approaches are equally intellectually bankrupt.

My fellow lefties don't reach the same fever pitch as the conservatives do when they rant about Muslims - we're not going to be whining that Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's campaign signs should be kept off that stretch of I-580 anytime soon, after all. But the line of reasoning is the same, and just as disgusting wherever it comes from or whoever it's aimed at.

*Let's be honest here, by any meaningful definition of the term Byron Williams is a terrorist, and a more successful one than either Faisal Shahzad or Captain Underpants since he actually did injure people.

Of Surveys and Religious Minorities

2010-10-01T15:46:00.003-04:00

I'll get to the commentary, but first, a story.

A few years ago I was working for a state legislature campaign, and I was assigned to canvassing. My canvassing partner one day was a young woman from the Swift Creek neighborhood, which is a (proudly) unincorporated area just south of Raleigh. It was near one of the High Holidays, and so the fact came up that I was Jewish. The young woman was surprised - she had never actually met a Jew before, and knew absolutely nothing about my religion. She proceeded to ask a few questions ranging from simple theology (you don't believe in Jesus, right?) to the vaguely stereotypical (so are you all really tight with money?). But the point is: this young woman wasn't from East Bumblefuck - she had grown up in spitting distance of one of the most highly educated cities in America, and she knew nothing about Judaism.

Hold that thought.

Recently, the Pew Forum put out a survey of Americans' religious knowledge, and the result - that atheists and agnostics scored higher on it than anyone else - has led to predictable crowing from the atheist set. A sample, from Amanda Marcotte:

Turns out knowing more about the actual details of religion correlates more to rejecting. Religion reminds me of those insects that have showy, beautiful colorings. It seems really beautiful, but if you examine it up close, it’s actually a big, gross insect with hairy legs and overall creepy-crawliness.

It's a fascinating narrative, but it's not supported by the actual facts. First, the numbers - Pew reports that while atheists do have the highest score overall, at 20.9 out of 32 questions correct, Jews and Mormons are right there within statistical significance at 20.5 and 20.3, respectively. Non-LDS Christians all come in between 17.6 and 11.6, depending on the branch. Furthermore, Pew - in an epic example of "burying the lede," reports later that

[d]ata from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less. Having taken a religion course in college is also strongly associated with higher religious knowledge.

The more educated you are, the more knowledge you have about religions. That's so obvious that it's damn near tautological.

But I think there's something else at work here that separates atheists, Jews, and Mormons from the mainstream Christians. The three groups listed are the only three religious minorities surveyed by Pew (they missed Muslims for some reason). Out of 26 questions that Pew classified, 12 were on Christianity and the Bible, 11 were on other religions, and 4 were on religion's role in government. A test set up thus is going to be easier for minorities to succeed on, and here's why.

Recall my story. It's possible for a Christian in a fairly urbane area of the country to know absolutely nothing about Judaism, which is the "world religion" most known among Americans. But if you're Jewish and growing up in Raleigh, do you think there's any chance you'd grow up ignorant of the basic tenets of Christianity? Of course not. We live in a relatively Christianized culture (regardless of what blowhards like Bill O'Reilly would have you believe) where basic Christian beliefs are referenced almost daily. We basically learn about the belief in Jesus as the son of God, the story of his crucifixion, and the meaning of Christmas and Easter by osmosis by the time we reach adulthood. There's no way anyone living in America and participating fully in society would not know the basics of Christianity. Furthermore, being a religious minority makes you acutely aware of your religious identity. While most Christians have the luxury of not really thinking about religion as a differentiating tool (in the same way as white people can avoid thinking about race), Jews and atheists - and to some extent Mormons, who are Christian but often looked upon suspiciously by mainstream Christians - do not have that luxury. We're reminded that we're religious minorities every single day. As such, we're generally more keen to learn about religion since religious identity is such a huge part of the way other Americans see us.

The numbers demonstrate both of these trends. Pew reports that of the Christian questions, Mormons and white Evangelicals performed best (7.9 and 7.3 out of 11, respectively), but Jews and atheists knew as much as the average Christian. Jews got 6.3 and atheists got 6.7, and the average among all Christians was 6.2. However, on the world religion section, Jews and atheists outperformed everyone by a landslide - 7.9 and 7.5 out of 11, respectively, compared to a Christian average of 4.7. Ouch. Mormons lagged a bit, but were still the third-highest scorers on that section - they answered 5.6 correct. That's well enough to put them in the upper echelon when combined with their superior knowledge of Christianity.

In sum: Jews and atheists, forced every day to think about religions not their own, do better on questions about other religions. They do just as well as Christians on questions about Christianity because our culture is Christian and they learn it by default. Meanwhile, Christians, who have the luxury of being members of the dominant culture, don't do well when asked questions about religions they never have to think about unless they so desire. And this is surprising... how?

More Scalia "Originalist" Hackery

2010-09-22T10:51:00.002-04:00

Ben's old law school buddy Ian Millhiser reports on a special new piece of insanity from "Justice" Antonin Scalia:

Scalia also said he doesn't believe the Constitution bans sex discrimination.

The 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War in 1868, guarantees due process and equal protection and in recent years has been interpreted by courts to prohibit sex discrimination as well as racial discrimination.

But Scalia said he believes the amendment doesn't apply to discrimination against women because that use of the measure was not intended in 1868.

Hmm. Let's check the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Nope, nothing about "this doesn't apply to women" in there. I call hackery.

To his credit, Scalia said this in the context of saying that "a lot of stupid stuff is constitutional," so we can't say he's pro-sex discrimination. Rather, I think he's using his "originalism" doctrine - which says that the Constitution's meaning should be filtered through the opinions of those who approved it - to basically make stuff up in order to avoid having to address the 14th Amendment implications of a case that will likely be coming before him soon: Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the gay marriage case.

I've written this a million times on this blog in the past few months, but you can't make the Constitution say shit it doesn't say. If the people writing the 14th Amendment wanted to exclude women, they should have written that in there. They didn't. We have to follow the plain meaning of the Amendment as written.

Not that Scalia's the only hack who ignores the full implications of equal protection. It seems like a fairly sizable chunk of the legal profession does as well. The rational basis test is basically an excuse used by jurists to avoid having to address the fact that "equal protection" and "due process" might actually mean "equal protection" and "due process." I'm looking at the text I just quoted, and there's nothing in there that says "this shit doesn't apply if the government can come up with a good reason for why it shouldn't apply."

But Scalia's hackery is more reprehensible. At least the "rational basis" hackery is something of a neutral legal tradition and occasionally works to protect people's due process/equal protection rights. Scalia can basically interpret the Constitution however he wants by imagining that he's in the head of some dead guy 150 years ago. This reasoning has its place, especially when there's some ambiguity in the wording of the document, but one can't directly contradict the plain meaning of the text by invoking the imagined opinions of the text's writers. That's a right that Scalia is claiming for himself here, and that's why he's a genuine problem on the Court.

Speaking of hacks:

The Military's Precious Little Snowflakes

2010-09-21T15:06:00.002-04:00

There was a fascinatingly stupid article on FanHouse last week about Kiss Cams at baseball games - you know, the annoying mid-inning JumboTron stunt where ballpark operators show people they suspect to be couples on the big screen and expect them to kiss, which they do most of the time - and how gay people shouldn't be on them. His rationale wasn't that we should stigmatize gay relationships, just that he didn't want to have to deal with explaining same-sex relationships to his kid. Jon Bois over at SB Nation gives this article the epic beatdown it deserves, and I won't rehash it here except to cite a line towards the end:

Anyway, I have this thing about spiders. They creep me out. When I have a kid, I'm going to make sure that my kid never learns that spiders exist until he or she is, say, twelve. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to pull this off.

The point being, of course, that gay people exist, seeing them is part of life in 21st-century America, and parents need to deal with it. In short, we can't infantilize our children by shielding them from things that might make us or them uncomfortable.

Ironic, then, that I should read Bois' article on the same day that the Senate rejected a bid to end the military's inexcusable "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevents gay and lesbian soldiers from serving openly in the military. Ironic because a Web-based sportswriter just demonstrated that he is more mature than 42* U.S. Senators.

There are, of course, the hardcore bigots who will oppose allowing gays to go anywhere, and there's only one real response to them. But the majority of the Senators that voted against this bill aren't haters. They're nervous little nellies, eager to infantilize our troops because they, like our FanHouse friend, don't want to confront the uncomfortable-for-them reality that homosexuality exists.

News flash: our troops aren't fragile little snowflakes who need to be protected from anything that might disturb them. Our troops are adults who are perfectly capable of doing their job and serving their country next to someone whose personal conduct meets with their disapproval. Teetotaler Baptists serve next to people who drink like fish. The pious serve next to those who curse God's name every day. If Bois' points against avoiding difficult topics make sense for our children, they absolutely make sense for people we're preparing to send into the most uncomfortable and disturbing environment imaginable: warfare.

*43 senators voted against the bill, but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), a supporter of the effort to repeal the policy, voted no for procedural reasons.

L'shana tovah.

2010-09-09T13:48:00.000-04:00

May 5771 be your year.

A Nasty "Do While" Loop

2010-09-08T11:13:00.004-04:00

There is a cycle in politics. It goes something like this.

1. People get really, REALLY upset over something, often at the urging of power-hungry politicians but often rightfully so.

2. Politicians talk about the Urgent Need to Do Something about this Horrible Problem.

3. Politicians find a symbolic scapegoat, and tell the people that they alone are responsible for Everything You're Worried About.

4. After the thing politicians have fingered as being To Blame gets theirs, they congratulate themselves on a Job Well Done, since they've Struck a Blow against Evil.

5. Three years later, people realize that the symbolic scapegoating didn't, actually, get rid of the problem, and may have in fact made it worse.

6. Repeat.

There are so many examples of this cycle it could fill books, but the one that jumps out at me most is the recent censorship-by-threat of Craigslist's "adult services" section. So let's break it down in terms of the cycle.

People got - rightfully - upset about sex trafficking and exploitation that occur under the guise of prostitution. The solution to this problem, of course, is extremely complex, and may involve some counterintuitive measures (more on that later). But when politicians get talking about how we have to Do Something, it's easy to overlook sober analysis of facts and screw up royally.

Enter Craigslist, our scapegoat of the day. They've played this role before, of course, so that makes them an easy target. Politicians took aim, as we can see with the letter above, blaming Craigslist for the exploitation and victimization taking place on their site. Even non-profits such as the normally good Polaris Project got into the act. Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, who is running for Chris Dodd's old Senate seat, congratulated himself on the results, calling it a "good first step."

Of course, the fly in all this ointment is Step 5, where we come to the slower-than-necessary realization that all this grandstanding against Craigslist actually made enforcement of human trafficking laws more difficult. Anti-trafficking and violence activist Danah Boyd explains it all:

It makes me scream when I think of how many resources have been used attempting to censor Craigslist instead of leveraging it as a space for effective law enforcement. During the height of the moral panic over sexual predators on MySpace, I had the fortune of spending a lot of time with a few FBI folks and talking to a whole lot of local law enforcement. I learned a scary reality about criminal activity online. Folks in law enforcement know about a lot more criminal activity than they have the time to pursue. Sure, they focus on the Big players, going after the massive collectors of child pornography who are most likely to be sex offenders than spending time on the small-time abusers. But it was the medium-time criminals that gnawed at them. They were desperate for more resources so that they could train more law enforcers, pursue more cases, and help more victims. The Internet had made it a lot easier for them to find criminals, but that didn’t make their jobs any easier because they were now aware of how many more victims they were unable to help. Most law enforcement in this area are really there because they want to help people and it kills them when they can’t help everyone.

Oops.

Boyd discusses the importance of visibility in fighting human trafficking, and that's something that I think a lot of politicians would just as soon avoid. If you increase the visibility of human trafficking, it does a lot of real-world good, because now law enforcement can find it and stop it a lot more easily. But that also lays bare to a lot of people the reality of human trafficking that's already there. But the emotional reaction to visibility is something along the lines of "GAAAAH GET RID OF IT!!!!" So politicians react by suppressing visibility - after all, that makes the problem appear to go away immediately. As a result, they successfully shut down an arena that could have been used by law enforcement to help trafficked and abused women in the sex trade. It's a sweeping-the-dust-under-the-rug solution, instead of the real solution Boyd proposes:

Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it’ll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it’ll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.

If you want to end human trafficking, if you want to combat nonconsensual prostitution, if you care about the victims of the sex-power industry, don’t cheer Craigslist’s censorship. This did nothing to combat the cycle of abuse. What we desperately need are more resources for law enforcement to leverage the visibility of the Internet to go after the scumbags who abuse. What we desperately need are for sites like Craigslist to be encouraged to work with law enforcement and help create channels to actually help victims. What we need are innovative citizens who leverage new opportunities to devise new ways of countering abusive industries. We need to take this moment of visibility and embrace it, leverage it to create change, leverage it to help those who are victimized and lack the infrastructure to get help. What you see online should haunt you. But it should drive you to address the core problem by finding and helping victims, not looking for new ways to blindfold yourself. Please, I beg you, don’t close your eyes. We need you.

I can't say it any better than that.

There's a saying that talks about how emotion is the engine for politics, and rationality is the steering wheel. The political solution to this issue was all engine and no steering wheel, and now our fight against human trafficking is wrapped around a tree and needs a tow truck.

The sad part of all this is that our political process was set up expressly to value rationality over emotionality in decision-making. The slowness of our legislative process and our justice system serve the purpose of allowing people to inspect their initial emotional response for its actual meaning, and act rationally to solve the problem that created that response. It appears, though, that we routinely elect people without the political will to act rationally. Which means, of course, that unless we listen to sober voices like Boyd's, a couple of years from now we'll be reading another story about how there's so much human trafficking online and we have to shut down so-and-so platform in order to stop it.

Also read: Lori at Feministing's take.

OK, A Soccer Post

2010-09-01T15:12:00.002-04:00

When former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue was realigning the divisions in 2002 to accommodate the new team in Houston and to make the divisions make geographic sense (until that point, Atlanta was in the NFC West and Arizona in the NFC East), he made one decision that, from a geographical standpoint, was a little questionable. See, Dallas has no business being in the NFC East from a geographical standpoint. Look at a map - it's nowhere near Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. Carolina, located in Charlotte, would have been the logical choice here, and Dallas would have been moved to the new NFC South in its stead. So why didn't this happen?

Well, could you imagine the size of the riots that Dallas and Washington fans would have staged if they had separated those two teams? I'm a lifelong Redskins fan, and the best part of being a Redskins fan is the two times a year we get to play our arch-rival Cowboys. The entire fan base goes nuts, players on both sides get pumped, and as a result, those two games are some of the most relentlessly entertaining sporting events you'll ever be a part of if you're a fan of one of the teams. If Dallas and Washington had been split up, they would have played each other about once every three years. Tagliabue would have been a moron if he had tried to pull that. So despite the geographical incongruity, Dallas remained in the East, and both fan bases got to continue their rivalry.

Why do I bring this up? Because CONCACAF, the federation that manages World Cup qualifying for North America and the Caribbean, is about to do what Tagliabue was wise enough to avoid doing - break up its two biggest rivals by instituting a new qualifying format.

CONCACAF is a unique region in qualifying for two reasons. One, it is dominated almost exclusively by two teams - the USA and Mexico - who have a fierce rivalry. Two, its final qualifying round was a single-group affair that placed six teams in a round-robin for three World Cup places. This meant that the US and Mexico got to face each other twice (home and away) each cycle. Which leads to pumped fan bases, players pushing themselves, and an atmosphere so special and intense that there's nothing like it almost anywhere. Read this Simmons column for an idea of how intense this rivalry is in Mexico.

What CONCACAF wants to do is to split this final qualifying round up into two groups of four. Now everywhere else in the world, where qualifying is done by groups, the teams are seeded. Europe doesn't want Italy, France, and England all being in the same group with only one team advancing, so they separate their big powers out into different groups. There's no reason to believe CONCACAF wouldn't do the same.

Which means Mexico and the US are all but guaranteed to be in different groups.

Which means Mexico and the US have virtually no chance of playing each other during qualifying.

Which really, really, really sucks for the fans.

The CONCACAF qualifying process may have been quirky and idiosyncratic, but it was a barrel of fun for the fans. We got two games to showcase our hate against our biggest rival in an extremely meaningful game. Think Dallas-Washington in the NFC Championship - only multiply it by 10. The only place we'll get that kind of atmosphere now is in the Gold Cup, and that's only if both teams make the final of the first post-World Cup tournament. (You'll remember no one cared about the 2009 Gold Cup, since it didn't carry a berth to the Confederations Cup with it.) We didn't get that in 2007 - Panama took out Mexico in the semifinals.

Now? We have to play a bunch of the second-tier teams, and then... that's it. No chance for glory in Azteca. No defending our home turf in Columbus. I'm sorry, but I just can't get that worked up about Costa Rica.

What's more, rivalry games have a way of making both teams better. The effort and training that we put into big games against Mexico have been a huge boon to us as a soccer power - we've been forced to raise our game far beyond where just playing Costa Rica and Honduras could take us. That's not something you can replicate in the inevitable friendlies between the two teams.

Is there hope? Of course. We could play Mexico in the finals of the Gold Cup next year. We could play friendlies, except add a trophy or something to make it a little more meaningful, and hope that that tradition catches on the way, say, Paul Bunyan's Axe caught on for Minnesota and Wisconsin college football fans. But it just won't be the same.

Our soccer world just became a little bit darker, thanks to CONCACAF. Cheer us on to our rivals, indeed.

A Little Subtle Anti-Semitism For Your Wednesday

2010-09-01T13:53:00.002-04:00

One of the most obnoxious habits adopted by the Christian right is the use of the term "Judeo-Christian values." It's a shout-out to the social unacceptability of Christian supremacism, at least with respect to the Jews. It's often obnoxiously linked to the blather about how the US is a "Christian nation," which by definition excludes us Jews - it's as if they're saying "it's okay, you can come too, as long as you hew to the imagined form of Jewish morals that we have laid out for you." The fact that Jewish morality and Christian morality are starkly different once you inspect them is unimportant to them - what's important is the veneer of tolerance. And occasionally, that veneer slips.

Let's go to Hawaii, then, and check in on the culture-war shenanigans occurring in their race for Governor. Their current governor, the insanely popular Republican Linda Lingle, is term-limited. The lieutenant governor, Duke Aiona, and Democrat Mufi Hannemann are running to replace her. The head of the Republican GOP recently sent out an e-mail encouraging pastors to block Hannemann from campaigning in their churches. That's odd enough, but what's really revealing is this little tidbit:

Aiona's campaign is "Christ's opportunity," and his election would give Hawaii the first "righteous leader" since Queen Liliuokalani, who died in 1917," Kaauwai wrote.

That long string of "unrighteous leaders" would presumably include his own partisan Lingle. While she's nominally pro-choice, she supports a whole host of restrictions on abortion that are generally favored by pro-lifers, and since the illegality of abortion isn't going to come before a legislature anytime soon, she's functionally with the conservatives on that one. And Lingle recently vetoed a bill that would have given Hawaiian same-sex couples civil unions - not even marriage equality, mind you, but civil unions, a position so moderate that even the former governor of Utah supports it. You'd think that'd put her in the religious Right's good graces, yes? What, exactly, makes her an "unrighteous" leader?

I'm sure you, dear astute readers, have figured out the punchline by now: Lingle is Jewish.

It doesn't matter how much a Jew sides with conservative Christians on the issues. Jewish Republicans and conservatives will still be lumped in with the enemy when the Christian right folks talk amongst themselves. When it comes right down to it, they could give two shits about Jews. We're not "righteous," no matter how hard we try. So let's not be fooled. No matter how loudly they proclaim "Judeo-Christian" values, deep down they still don't like us. Folks like Eric Cantor and Norm Coleman would be wise to take note.

In Which I Prove Glenn Beck Is Satan

2010-08-29T15:45:00.002-04:00

I have proof, ladies and gentlemen. (Dramatic pause, wiping tear from eye) Proof that head Tea Partier Glenn Beck is, in fact, the Devil Himself!

"What proof could you possibly have," you ask? Well, check THIS out. Here are some important numbers:

912, 828 - numbers pertaining to his most famous events, both rallies in Washington, D.C.
46 - Beck's age
12 - the number of letters in Glenn Lee Beck, his full name
10 - the number of books Wikipedia says he has written, in part or in full
1 - the number of divorces he's been through.

And (912+828)*46/(12*10) - 1 = 666!

Presumably, this means Beck will stop being Satan when he reaches his 47th birthday, since then this will add up to 679.5. But maybe that's what Satan Beck WANTS us to think.

What? I was bored while Selah was napping. Sue me.

"Feel" This

2010-08-19T13:23:00.005-04:00

Everything that can been written about the Park51 community center controversy has already been written, so I'll keep this short. I'm most interested not in the empty shouts of offense by the right - I've dealt with that in this space before and will not do so again. What's interesting to me is how otherwise reasonable people like Howard Dean could oppose the community center, as Greenwald notes. Greenwald received a letter from Dean in which he says the following:

My argument is simple. This Center may be intended as a bridge or a healing gesture but it will not be perceived that way unless a dialogue with a real attempt to understand each other happens. That means the builders have to be willing to go beyond what is their right and be willing to talk about feelings whether the feelings are "justified" or not.

And my response is this - why should we give a damn about someone's feelings if their feelings are wrong? Or as the more eloquent Greenwald puts it:

The central question raised by this controversy is the same one raised by countless similar controversies throughout American history: whether the irrational fears and prejudices of the majority should be honored and validated or emphatically confronted.

I described the bigotry of Park51's opponents as understandable in my previous column on the subject, but understandable bigotry is still bigotry and still wrong.

It's time that we stopped worshipping at the altar of "feelings," as if the fact that someone feels something makes their point of view legitimate. I don't care what people feel - if their feelings are not backed up by rational observations and conclusions, they're meaningless. When the feeling in question is based on a premise that is patently untrue - in this case, the idea that Muslims, as a group, attacked the U.S. on 9/11 - I see no reason why I should respect those feelings. Mosque opponents are wrong, and they should get over it on their own damn time and not make the rest of the sane world bow to their almighty "feelings."

What's truly odd is that conservatives are usually the ones making that argument. They're the ones usually saying, for example, that someone who "feels" racism is wrong because the statements in question are not intended as racist. (It's a misuse of the argument because the feeling in question is based on a real premise - that is, minorities are subjected to some pretty racist shit. And there are frequently some elements of ostensibly "non-racist" statements that have been used as racist statements in the past. So it's usually a lot more reasonable. But this is all beside the point, thus the parentheses.) Since when did conservatives start believing that people's feelings are sacrosanct and that we should all fall over backwards not to hurt anyone else's?

Oh, that's right - when they can tell someone else to inconvenience themselves at the service of their own feelings.

Truth is, feelings don't matter. The facts matter. We've been reversing this for too long.

In other news:

- The last combat troops pulled out of Iraq today. Not sure if that really changes a whole lot, but it's a milestone to be happy about.

- Interesting church-state case out of the 10th Circuit today - memorial crosses along the side of the road are unconstitutional if erected by the government, in this case the Utah State Highway Patrol. I'm usually a die-hard separationist, but I'm not sure I agree with the court here. Seems to me like a memorial cross serves a legitimate secular purpose as required by the Lemon test - that purpose being memorializing a passed trooper. If there was a trooper who wasn't Christian who was memorialized in such a manner, those challenging the crosses might have a point though - at that point, the cross becomes primarily a religious symbol since it'd be a ridiculously inappropriate memorial.

- In case you haven't heard, Pakistan is drowning. Here are some ways to help the victims. Though some Pakistanis aren't donating because the government sucks and is corrupt. ~~Oh, and shame on the URJ for not having any links on its site. They did well for the Haiti disaster - why go silent now?~~Update: The URJ spokesperson sent me a nice e-mail today - they replied promptly - and noted that they weren't doing direct aid because they didn't have the resources to get directly involved in Pakistan. They are, however, collecting money for distribution to aid orgs that they trust. That's for the best - no sense in wasting money creating infrastructure when you could use someone else's existing infrastructure to spend that money helping people. It's more efficient that way.

- There are so many reasons to love this TMBG appearance on Letterman from 1990. Is it how Letterman refers to their album as "The" Flood? Or how gloriously nerdy Flansburgh looks next to the relatively hip Linnell? Or... well, it's awesome either way.

The Constitution's There For A Reason

2010-08-04T21:07:00.003-04:00

OK, let me clear something up for y'all in the wake of the smackdown Judge Vaughn Walker dealt to California's Proposition 8 restricting gay marriage. Walker based his ruling on the obvious 14th Amendment grounds - the denial of marriage rights to gay couples was a violation of both equal protection and due process. The equal protection argument seems so blindingly obvious to me that I'm surprised a judge hasn't used that one yet against gay marriage bans (though it was used against the federal DOMA by a MA judge last month, though that ruling also - awesomely - referenced the conservatives' favorite amendment, Number 10). But hold this thought for a second.

Across the country, Virginia AG/demagogue Ken Cuccinelli is clearing hurdles for his lawsuit against the individual mandate to purchase health care that was a centerpiece of the recent health care system reform bill passed back in March. I don't know about whether this case will succeed or not - my gut tells me it won't, mainly because the courts have had an insanely expansive view of the Commerce Clause over the last few decades - but the judge's ruling allowing the suit to proceed is consistent with the unique nature of a federal law requiring individuals to participate in interstate commerce.

The point I'm trying to make is this: critics of both rulings, while hailing from opposite political poles, will make essentially the same argument. You shouldn't overturn legislative acts, they'll say. A majority of citizens or their duly elected representatives voted for it, they'll say. They'll whine about activist judges and say runaway courts are trying to ruin America.

And they'll all be wrong.

See, it doesn't matter if 52% of a state's citizens voted for a law. It doesn't matter if 221 Representatives and 56 Senators approved it. It doesn't matter how well it polls or how much good it does. If it violates the Constitution, it is a judge's solemn duty to invalidate the law. And this applies equally to the gay marriage bans, the federal DOMA, and the individual health care mandate.

Whining about "activist judges" ignores one important principle - we don't live in a pure democracy. We live in a constitutional democracy, and in a constitutional democracy the majority doesn't always get its way. Those words in that constitution have to mean something. It doesn't matter how popular censorship is, say: the Constitution says you can't do it. It doesn't matter how popular gay marriage bans are, and it doesn't matter how much good can be done by an individual health care mandate. If it's unconstitutional, you can't do it.

And guess what? Judges are better positioned to make those calls than we are. That's why we have a system that gives knowledgeable, sharp legal minds the power to compare laws to the Constitution. And if we disagree with the results of a ruling - whether it's the gay marriage ruling, the health care ruling, Citizens United, whatever - we can't be so quick to dismiss it as illegitimate. Judicial review - unfriendly folks call it "activism" - is a well-respected and perfectly legitimate power granted to judges. Rather, let's debate these rulings on the grounds they ought to be debated on - is the judge's interpretation of the Constitution correct?

In the case of gay marriage, I think the judge is correct. You're free to disagree in the comments. But if anyone whines about "activist judges," or thinks that the outcome is less legitimate because it came from a judge instead of a vote, I'm ignoring them and so should you.

Immune Me, Please

2010-07-26T13:38:00.002-04:00

One of the best things about America is that absolutely anybody - and I mean anybody - can run for office. Including this dude. Hot Air posted a video of this guy's promo clip which sounds like someone fed a TelePrompTer word salad. But the website is even more awesome, for gems like:

VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE!

And:

Using the Civil Right Act of 1966 for the first time in history to find out two things:

1. why Democracy invaded the U.S. State on July 16 1866

2stop Constitutional Right violations in our state at all cost I will tell you all this

And:

I would like to update the monitory car insurance to match the federal insurance act where they say if you do not know the name and address of the person who will get the check when you pay you money to your agent it is gaming and we can not gamble in Tenn, right now we are gaming

There's only one thing to say after reading this website... God bless America.

Wait For It... Wait For It...

2010-07-26T10:19:00.004-04:00

I've been in Arkansas for the weekend, so I've been in kind of a news bubble. Instead of doing the work to find out what's actually going on, I figured I'd just barf up some stuff on Shirley Sherrod and call it a post.

I'm of two minds about this whole thing. Part of me wants to blame this whole thing on Breitbart and his fact-free smear on a low-level USDA employee, but that feels strangely insufficient. Because I also feel like this whole incident is mainly the fault of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the Obama administration lackeys who took Breitbart at his word and fired her.

And you know what? The more I think about it, the less I blame Breitbart. After all, why should we blame him? Because he's a sensationalist with an agenda? I hate to tell you this, you innocent reader you, but that's part of a proud journalistic tradition going back to Pulitzer and Hearst. And it's continued today not just by Breitbart but by Olbermann and O'Reilly, Hannity and Maddow. Should we blame him because he got the facts wrong? Well, even the best journalists do that - 30 years of faithful news reporting didn't prevent Dan Rather from botching a report on George W. Bush's national guard service. Viewed in isolation, this incident is little different from that one from a journalistic perspective.

So what's the problem with Breitbart? Two things, both related:

1) He's really, really, really bad at his job.

2) Decision-makers and news consumers give him far more trust than he deserves.

See, I have no problem with journalism that has an agenda. That's frequently the best kind of reporting, because it's not constrained by some imagined duty to be "even-handed." But dammit, if you're gonna be a sensationalist with an agenda, at least get your facts straight! Breitbart is now 0 for 2 on his big stories. The ACORN videos he posted have been demonstrated to be falsified by everyone from the GAO to the CA attorney general's office, and the Sherrod video was demonstrated - within hours - to be edited to give a false impression. The thing is, a talented agenda journalist would never have stooped to that level. There were plenty of skeletons in ACORN's closet that begged to be excavated, especially regarding their inner financial dealings. You didn't need the frat party pimps-'n'-hoes routine to do a good hatchet job on them. And if you're trying to make the point that the NAACP hates white people, there's gotta be a better way to do it than to smear a low-level functionary, right?

That's what differentiates Breitbart from the people I listed earlier. They at least understand how to present existing facts in such a way that it tells the story the journalist wants to tell. Breitbart's so damn lazy that he just makes up his own facts. Which leads me to the really dangerous part, which is #2.

Folks, Breitbart is what he is. He's not going to change. So why should anyone give him more credit than they give other sources? In this Sherrod incident, the point isn't that Breitbart falsely edited a video. He's gonna do that. The point is that otherwise respectable journalists fell all over themselves reporting this story, and otherwise respectable leaders fell all over themselves reacting to it, without bothering to consider the source of the story and giving it the double-checking it deserves. Fortunately for us, some enterprising journalists remembered the ACORN debacle and stopped the story before it got too out of hand, but by then the damage was done.

Which is why the biggest blame has to fall on the NAACP and Vilsack for their reactions to this whole thing. Expecting Breitbart to be honest and competent is foolish. Expecting Fox News to not run with something that makes liberals look bad is also foolish. That's why the best thing to do when faced with a story as sensational as the Sherrod story is to wait on it. Withhold judgment until the story has played itself out. Had the NAACP waited twelve hours to make its statement, this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

So the next time Breitbart says something, we should all just take a deep breath, digest the whole thing, search for context, and keep an eye out for double-checking to come in from the other side - or do it ourselves, if we have the resources. And really, the same should go for any news reports, whether they're from an incompetent like Breitbart, a respected agenda journalist like Maddow or O'Reilly, or a mainstream source like the Washington Post. (Did we learn nothing from the "Gee Dead" incident, people?)

Good journalism starts a conversation. And who makes a decision on an issue when the conversation on it is just starting?

Couldn't find the Blues Traveler song I wanted to post, so here's an awesome live version of my favorite song of theirs.

Mixed Bag on Free Speech

2010-07-16T13:27:00.002-04:00

A federal appeals court for the New York-based Second Circuit ruled that the FCC's fleeting expletive rules are unconstitutional and should be struck down. Any time the FCC takes it on the chin, I celebrate, and so I love this decision. In the words of Bono, it's fucking brilliant. What's weird, though, is that the Supreme Court upheld those very same rules in a case decided just a year ago. I don't know whether the Second Circuit has the ability to challenge the Supreme Court so soon after the latter's decision, but that's highly unusual, right? The explanation I can think of is that the Supremes upheld the FCC's right to censor expletives but that the Second Circuit found that the specific way in which they were doing so was unconstitutional. I'll be looking forward to seeing how this all ends, though considering the free-speech inclination of this Court I'm not optimistic.

Speaking of things I'm not optimistic about, there's a huge danger to free speech percolating in the federal courts: The feds are trying Buttman. (Thanks to Jacob for the link.) Buttman is an extraordinarily successful pornographer whose oeuvre apparently includes milk enemas. (I'll take Amanda Hess' word for that one.) Now while I do think Buttman - real name John Stagliano - should face a lifetime in prison for improper wasting of delicious, delicious chocolate milk, the decision to put him - or anyone, for that matter - on trial for obscenity is extremely worrisome.

Let's pause for a second while we read Martin Sheen making my argument for me because I can't find the damn video:

John Van Dyke: If our children can buy pornography on any street corner for five dollars, isn't that too high a price to pay for free speech?
President Josiah Bartlet: No.
John Van Dyke: Really?
President Josiah Bartlet: On the other hand, I think that five dollars is too high a price to pay for pornography.

Folks, when the First Amendment says "no law," it damn well means it. No "oh but maybe it'll offend my delicate sensibilities" exceptions allowed. And no "think of the children!" exceptions either. FCC chair Julius Genachowski opines in that first link:

We’re reviewing the court’s decision in light of our commitment to protect children, empower parents, and uphold the First Amendment.

First thing. If you think kids are going to be sheltered from expletives by the FCC, you're a fucking idiot. My two-year-old doesn't watch TV outside of the Backyardigans and some sporting events, and she'll still learn to cuss. You know why? Because she's around me half the time, and occasionally, Daddy has to put something together while she watches, and that leads to some expletives that are frequently more than fleeting. You think giving Bono a fine for dropping an F-bomb is gonna stop your kids from swearing? Fuck no. Guess what? Even if you're Mr./Ms. Perfect Daddy or Mommy who never swears, your kid's gonna have friends and they're gonna be able to swear. Chances are your kid will know four cuss words before they even know who Bono is.

Second, it's not a big deal. What do you think happens when a kid learns a cuss word? An angel's wings shrivel up? Part of her soul dies? Fuck that. I fail to see what the big deal around cuss words is. A kid who yells "fuck" because he stubbed his toe isn't hurting anyone. And a kid can be plenty hurtful while speaking the Queen's perfect English - just ask anyone who went through elementary and middle school. You want to protect kids? Teach them not to be bullying assholes.

Third, if obscenity in porn is "damaging" to kids, I have to ask... exactly how are kids getting a hold of explicit pornography anyway? Do you just leave your Buttman videos on the goddamn coffee table? Oh, sorry honey, I thought I was showing you "Thomas and the Really Brave Engine" but instead you're watching "Anal Angels 18: Junk in the Trunk." My bad. It really doesn't seem like it's that hard to keep from showing your kids porn, and by the time they're old enough to take the initiative to find porn themselves it's probably not so "damaging" or whatever, now is it? It's not the government's fucking job to raise your kids. It's yours. Hide your porn stash, turn the TV off anything you find objectionable, and buy one of those channel blockers if you must. For example, I don't let my kid watch "The 700 Club," because fuck that shit. That's obscenity right there. But you can choose your own path. If you don't want your kid exposed to awards shows where THERE MIGHT BE CUSSING, don't let your kid watch them. Don't try to take it away from those of us mature adults who are perfectly capable of enjoying (or not enjoying) porn and cussing for what it is.

And finally, which would you rather have your kid learn?

1) Adults say some funny sounding words and do some really freaky disgusting stuff naked.

2) Words written on a page 220 years ago are utterly meaningless.

Think about your priorities, people. I'm okay with my daughter accidentally learning 1) as long as she never, ever, thinks 2) is okay.

Yeah, I said it. A kid learning about weird sex isn't a big deal. Proper parenting can put that into context for kids. Chances are if you talk openly and honestly about what they've seen accidentally then they'll be okay - just don't overreact. A kid learning that the right to free speech can be violated at will, however, is a tragedy. And by prosecuting pornographers and punishing swearers on TV, that's exactly what we're teaching them. Munroe's Law applies here - consenting adults selling videos of their weird sex to other consenting adults isn't a danger to society. Kids accidentally seeing those videos isn't a danger to our society. Rendering the Constitution meaningless because we find the actions of other consenting adults "icky" and because we need to Protect Our Children? That's fuckin' danger.

Your Daily Timesuck

2010-07-14T14:55:00.003-04:00

This site is a good way to procrastinate for a little while. It theoretically analyzes your writing to see what famous author you write like, but I think it just spits out random names. My last few posts got Dan Brown (really? I suck that much?), Chuck Palahniuk, James Fenimore Cooper, Douglas Adams (seriously the highlight of my day), Stephen King, P.G. Wodehouse, H.P. Lovecraft, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I had some fun feeding this thing actual quotes from authors. Adams came back as Adams, but Palahniuk consistently came back as King, and Asimov came back as Jane Austen.

Culture wars and "forced liberation"

2010-07-14T13:57:00.004-04:00

So. The Burqopocalypse is upon us in France. Their lower house, the National Assembly, passed a sweeping ban on Muslim face veils by the absurd margin of 335 to 1. Considering how rarely 335 French people ever agree on anything, I'd say this shows how popular the ban on such clothing is in France.

And not just in France either; Egyptian Mona Eltahawy loves the idea:

I support banning the burqa because I believe it equates piety with the disappearance of women. The closer you are to God, the less I see of you -- and I find that idea extremely dangerous. It comes from an ideology that basically wants to hide women away. What really strikes me is that a lot of people say that they support a woman's right to choose to wear a burqa because it's her natural right. But I often tell them that what they're doing is supporting an ideology that does not believe in a woman's right to do anything. We're talking about women who cannot travel alone, cannot drive, cannot even go into a hospital without a man with them. And yet there is basically one right that we are fighting for these women to have, and that is the right to cover their faces.

But this law is only incidentally a positive blow for women's rights. It's really a more sinister campaign against Muslims and for "French values," as Eltahawy herself admits:

But what really disturbs me about the European context is that the ban is driven almost solely by xenophobic right wingers who I know very well don't give a toss about women's rights. What they're doing is they're hijacking an issue that they know is very emotive and very easy to sell to Europeans who are scared about immigration, Europeans who are scared about the economy, Europeans who don't understand people who look and sound different than them.

First, let's be honest about the burqa. It's a misogynistic tradition that is only tangentially related to Islam. The Qur'an's dress code says nothing about forcing women to cover themselves head to toe - hell, the traditional headscarf (hijab) isn't even required by the Qur'an! The burqa is an imposition of the unsavory heavily woman-hating aspects of Arab culture and not of Islam itself. Which brings us to culture, the real reason for the burqa ban, as voiced by the parliamentary report that led to it:

"The wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable," the report on Tuesday said. "We must condemn this excess."

The law is not about women's rights per se - it's about defining what is and is not "French." Living your life in a certain approved way is important to the health of the republic. And here you see a couple of things: first, why this CNN article reports that majorities in Western Europe favor a burqa ban while two-thirds of Americans do not, and second, the similarities Eurosnobs have with right-wing Americans.

We Americans, by and large, view our country less as a culture and more as a collection of high-minded ideals - free speech, freedom of religion, equality before the law, etc. The only people who talk about "culture" as a requirement to be American are right-wing windbags who prattle on about what it means to be a "real American," and how that usually involves not living like a liberal. This is because American culture is far from static - we've been spending 230 years being influenced by everyone from the native Americans and the English colonists to the Irish and Italians to the Mexicans and Indians. We eat eggs and sausage for breakfast, tacos for lunch, and chicken tikka masala for dinner and think absolutely nothing of it. By contrast, Western Europe has a lot narrower range of influences and is thus a lot more culturally homogeneous. (So what's interesting is that our right-wing culture warriors have more in common with Western Europeans than they'd care to admit - you listen to Sarkozy or any other French politician talk about the burqa ban, and you could just as easily be listening to Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney.)

And that, in a nutshell, is why I prefer America to its European allies and would even if I hadn't been born here. In America, our natural inclination is to provide everyone with the freedom to define their own lives, to accept or reject elements of our culture on their own terms. Instead of forcing women to drop the burqa, which smacks of the cultural imperialism of a colonial power exerted upon foreigners at home, we present a burqa-free life as an option to be accepted or rejected on an individual basis. The liberation that comes from dumping misogyny on your own terms is more difficult to reach, yes, but far more valuable than the forced liberation the French offer.

Forced liberation is, after all, a paradox, one that will be seen in Muslim immigrants' minds as more forced and less liberation. The French, by attempting to enforce "culture," have managed to make equality seem like oppression, while simply allowing women to wear the burqa if they choose but confronting them with options would make equality seem like an appealing, liberating choice (to the women, at least). And that's the tragedy of the European model... and the beauty of the American one.

Beware the AVOCADO OF DOOM.

2010-07-13T14:39:00.003-04:00

I'll post on the French Burqopocalypse tomorrow once I've had time to digest it. But for now, the Wall Street Journal wants you to know that your favorite Mexican-inspired dips MIGHT BE OUT TO KILL YOU DEAD:

Hot or mild, the salsa and guacamole Americans love to order in restaurants may be packing an unexpected kick, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The dishes were blamed for one in 25 identified outbreaks of food poisoning at restaurants between 1998 and 2008—more than twice the rate of the previous decade, the CDC said. Often, the outbreaks were traced to raw hot peppers, tomatoes and cilantro—common ingredients in salsa and guacamole.

Uncooked foods, such as salsa and guacamole, are risky because there is no heat to wipe out bad bacteria, says Lisa McBeth, who supervises food safety for the Qdoba Mexican Grill chain, based in Wheat Ridge, Colo.

Nothing like a little scare journalism to liven up a slow July news day, eh?

So how long do you think it'll take before some dumbshit elected official reads this article and decides he/she has to Do Something, and proposes a stupid law? I'm thinking that it'll either a) require that all salsa and guacamole be pasteurized, which really doesn't make any sense but that never stopped someone who wanted to Do Something before; b) require all salsa and guac be spiked with penicillin; c) outlaw the free salsa given out at Mexican restaurants because THEY'RE FEEDING YOU POISON; or d) outlaw Mexican food altogether (though I hear Arizona's trying that one for completely different reasons). I'm setting the over/under at three weeks.

And oh yeah. Funny how salsa and guac get called out for being uncooked foods but good ol' American salads don't. Just sayin'.

Read The Damn First Amendment, Fool

2010-07-12T11:32:00.002-04:00

It honestly surprises me how ham-handed some people in positions of power can be with regard to Constitutional rights, especially the First Amendment, and especially in schools. The First Amendment, for all its bluntness, comes with a healthy dollop of nuance when it comes to religion. The state may not support religion, but it may not prevent others from freely exercising theirs. When people are told that, say, teachers can't support religion while they're teaching, they take that as meaning that no one can express religious belief in a classroom, ever. That, of course, is wrong - free exercise and no establishment are a both/and proposition. You can't honor one and not honor the other if you want to remain on the Constitution's good side.

So it is with this case from Plano, TX. A teacher decided that she had to prevent her kids from distributing Jesus literature in her classroom and is getting sued for it. The case is right now on a mundane legality - is the teacher subject to qualified immunity for her actions? - but it's a fairly straightforward Constitutional case. Most of us who care about the First Amendment can see that an elementary school student has the right to free exercise and free speech when it comes to her religion.

This sort of thing is what shows the conservative "they're trying to take God out of our schools" talking point to be a bald-faced lie. The Establishment Clause does not require the scrubbing of mentions of religion from all public places - in fact, the Free Exercise Clause guarantees that such a scrubbing will not occur. So next time someone whines about "taking God out of the public sphere," please direct them to the Constitution immediately.

The Daily D'Oh

2010-07-08T15:19:00.003-04:00

Like many of you, dear readers, I watch The Daily Show regularly (or used to, before going to bed at 11:30 every night meant sleep deprivation at the hands of a two-year-old who insists on getting up at 6 AM). And so, like many of you, I had a somewhat knee-jerk reaction when I heard about Jezebel's Irin Carmon (who, come to think of it, made an appearance in another recent blog post of mine, so congratulations Ms. Carmon, you're now important enough to appear on this blog read by, like, six people) accusing The Daily Show of sexism.

"Hey, that's not right," I thought. "The Daily Show is liberal. They're the good, tolerant, love-everyone people who make fun of sexists. They're not sexists themselves, right? That's impossible."

Then I bothered to, you know, read the damn article. And it's not just one possibly disgruntled employee - Carmon exhaustively catalogs complaints by numerous people who left the show, enough to conclusively demonstrate that there's probably a pattern going on here. Among the accusations: they hire predominately male correspondents and writers, their environment isn't really woman friendly, and so on. The article cites the hiring of the decidedly mediocre Olivia Munn over several presumably funnier women (whom Matt criticized in a recent comment) as proof that the producers weren't interested in hiring funny women, just in hiring women who look good catering to men.

The women who do work there - 40% of the total staff, actually - weren't necessarily impressed, and so offered this rebuke. Furthermore, Carmon cites longtime correspondent and noted female Samantha Bee as saying her gender has been "no impediment." Women aren't systematically kept down - the show hires completely on merit.

So who's right? Let's start with Carmon's quote of Madeleine Smithberg, the co-creator of the show who had a falling-out with Stewart in 2003:

"I don't think Jon is sexist," she says. "I don't think that there is a double standard at the Daily Show. I do think that by the time it gets to the Daily Show it's already been through the horrible sexist double standard of the universe. You're not hiring someone right out of school. By the time they get to the candidates of the Daily Show, the herd has been thinned by the larger societal forces." Of the greater talent pool of comedians, she said, "All that's left are white men and Aziz Ansari."

"The planet is sexist," Smithberg adds. "At least in comedy we don't have genital mutilation. That we know of."

So maybe The Daily Show does believe that it hires on merit. I find this highly likely, in fact. The entertainment industry is oddly dominated by people who think that entertainment has to cater almost exclusively to men. Take a gander at this amazing article by former screenwriter Jennifer Kesler about why two women aren't allowed to talk to each other in a movie unless it's about a man. (Think about it. Find me some movies that pass this test. I'll wait.) That whole site is dedicated to the sexism of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, so a little other reading there and you'll begin to understand the environment in which The Daily Show operates.

Amanda Hess has a great take on this controversy that chalks this whole controversy up to ignorance. Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show's producers operate unaware of the larger forces of sexism that drive their hiring practices. They honestly believe that they're hiring the best people for the job, and that these people mostly happen to be male, not knowing that women are systematically kept out of the running by the way the entertainment industry operates.

Since we're talking entertainment industry, let's use a tortured movie analogy to explain what's going on here:

Jon Stewart, in this case, is Neo, operating blindly within a sexist system that he, for whatever reason, can't see. He believes himself to be doing good, but doesn't know what's really going on so can't fight against it. Carmon, then, would be Morpheus, showing Stewart the harsh reality of his world and offering him the chance to change it. Of course Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show's producers, actors, and fans are going to react badly, just as Neo originally wouldn't hear of Morpheus' "you're controlled by computers" bullshit. But eventually, just as Neo had to choose between remaining part of the system or trying to change it (in pill form), Stewart and his fans will have to choose between continuing to operate as if institutional sexism didn't exist and understanding that reality and going out of our way to change it.

I can choose the red pill, but I have no power over this kind of stuff and so it wouldn't do a damn bit of good. Let's hope Stewart does the same.

The Security State in Action

2010-07-01T14:59:00.004-04:00

It's really a sad state of affairs when I hear that there's a bomb scare on I-40 and immediately know, without hearing anything else, that it's fake, and that probably something fell off a car somewhere and people freaked the fuck out. Of course, I was right. Cynicism pays, people.

Oh, apparently a deputy shot himself in the arm responding to the foam thingy too. I don't know why I'm laughing at this. I just am.

On Soccer and Attractive People

2010-07-01T12:46:00.006-04:00

Anyone who follows straight female soccer fans on Twitter has seen at least a few tweets about the hotness/notness of several of the players. (Cristiano Ronaldo, Landon Donovan, and, oddly, Yoann Gourcuff seem to be the ones most mentioned among my tweeps.) I, personally, like it - I'm not used to seeing men drooled over in the same way we straight men drool over women. It's a refreshing step towards equality. But the question still arises: is this:

different from this:

(That's Brandi Chastain, for those of you who don't remember the '99 Women's World Cup at which she scored the winning PK in the shootout final against China.)

My thought is no, of course not. But Irin at Jezebel explains why there's some doubt:

In our current universe, men do not have trouble being taken seriously based on their looks or perceived sexiness, nor is their worth in society primarily judged by them. Our drooling over Benny Feilhaber isn't just a drop in the bucket — it also won't contribute to the overall oppression of men, soccer playing or otherwise. They will not be told their primary value is based on whether women want to fuck them. They will not be paid less on the dollar or subject to violence in representation or acts. They will not be treated like meat or chattel. Period.

(Benny Feilhaber? Really?)

Good points, all, and I understand that women are judged based on their looks at a far higher rate than are men (although men are also judged on their height and amount of hair loss). And I'll accept that women's sports are taken less seriously than men's - I've had to remind several fellow soccer fans that the Women's World Cup is next year, and that we have a shot at winning. But do those of us who pay attention to women's athletics really have trouble taking female athletes seriously? And can we really be worried that straight male fans of the sport are objectifying the athletes?

Irin goes on to discuss the reasons why she enjoys ogling male soccer players, and among them is this rather telling one:

4) They're having fun doing what they love.

This needs little explanation. No sexyface, no corpse-like poses, just spontaneous shirt-shedding and teammate grabbing.

We can go farther and say this - she recognizes that these men have value beyond their appearance. They're talented soccer players who are known for doing something besides putting on a show for women. And so when they do put on a show, as they do on the Vanity Fair cover I posted earlier, the world recognizes that they're soccer players who also happen to be hot. I'd point out that the same should be said for Chastain, a talented defender who also just happens to be hot. And that's the same way I and my fellow US women's team fans look at the women who play on that team. Sure, Hope Solo's hot, but what matters is that she keeps the ball from going in the net. (And that she doesn't talk smack about Brianna Scurry. Let's keep the USWNT a no-jackass zone please.) These women enjoy playing soccer, they're good at it, and yes, many of them look very, very good doing so. So what's the problem with me enjoying their looks as well as their talent?

The worry, I suppose, is that men would dismiss a female athlete who they don't find attractive. I'm not sure I agree. I'm not particularly attracted to Abby Wambach, but damn, can she find the back of the net. She's a gifted goal scorer and that's what matters. (And considering the problems our men's team has with strikers, this is no small issue. I honestly wonder who's going to step up and score goals if Wambach has to be out. Can I trust Heather O'Reilly? Or Lauren Cheney? Wait, I'm getting sidetracked.)

I understand that the assumption is always going to be that a man who comments on a woman's attractiveness is dismissive of other aspects of her personality. This tends to not be true of my group of friends, but I also recognize that most women have experienced this sort of disparagement before. So I don't begrudge women the right to make that assumption. Hell, if I were in their shoes I'd make the same assumption, no doubt. But is that going to stop me from talking about how hot Cat Whitehill is? No. I know that I respect her as a defender (for both the USWNT and the Washington Freedom) and I'll just have to hope that my female friends will trust me when I say that I do.

More Supreme Court Hackery

2010-06-29T10:18:00.003-04:00

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, recently decided to decimate the First Amendment in order to give a big fat present to the terror fearmongers. The case in question was whether the government's "material support" law, which forbids Americans from giving money, "training," or "expert advice and assistance" to organizations that are deemed to be "terrorist organizations" by the federal government, is Constitutional. Stevens joined the Court's right-wingers in saying they were - Breyer dissented, joined by Ginsburg and Sotomayor. The case is Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.

To his credit, Roberts' opinion does say that advocating for said groups was Constitutionally protected, but that the law doesn't forbid that. Even if we take him at his word, though, the decision is still odious. The main reason, of course, is that the decision to designate some group as a "terrorist group" has little to no check on it. The Law.com article I linked claims that the Tamil Tigers and the Kurdistan Workers' Party were designated as terrorist groups "by Madeleine Albright," who - it must be noted - was not elected by anyone. I don't know whether representatives of the Tigers or the KKP were allowed to challenge such a designation, but such an extralegal process doesn't seem like it has an appeals process. And keep in mind that the abuse of such a list is not far-fetched; the African National Congress (the party of Nelson Mandela and current ruling party in South Africa) was up until very recently on the list. Which would mean that, had the ANC not been removed from the list in 2008, the US men's soccer team could have been arrested for participating in the World Cup (which aids the South African government).

Absurd, right? But even if we trust the State Department to choose the right organizations to list as "terrorist groups," and even if we think providing aid to their violent activities is wrong, we still have a problem, and the problem is this - most terrorist groups aren't solely violent. Many, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, have significant humanitarian components that operate separately from their blow-shit-up components. The law, and the ruling upholding the law, hinges on the idea that aiding the legal activities of these organizations is also to aid their illegal, vile activities.

You'll recognize in here the same conservative argument about abortion funding that came up during the health care debate. Opponents of abortion criticized federal subsidies for health insurance on the grounds that giving a woman a subsidy for non-abortion-inclusive health coverage and allowing her to buy her own abortion coverage separately would be essentially the same as giving a direct subsidy for abortion coverage. The idea is that aid is fungible - you give money but you can't control where it goes. Aid to one part of an organization frees up money for use in another.

And here's where I call "hack" on the Court's conservatives (or at least three of them), because they ruled the exact opposite in the 1997 case Agostini v. Felton. Agostini allowed government employees to teach in religious schools as long as they were involved solely in secular instruction. (The opinion is here). Agostini is also generally read to approve funding for religious organizations that use the money for non-religious, secular purposes. And that's where the hackery comes in - according to Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, aid is not fungible when it is going to fund part of a religious organization, but it is fungible when it is going to fund part of a terrorist organization. And if they truly believe what they ruled in Agostini, they would have to allow funding and assistance to the humanitarian portions of a terrorist organization, because that aid isn't going toward illegal activity.

The only way to square that circle is to determine that "material support" isn't constitutionally protected speech or free association, and so government can put whatever restrictions it wants on it. But here, again, the conservatives have undermined themselves rather recently. The Citizens United decision, among other things, upheld the idea that monetary donations are protected under the First Amendment free speech clause, and on the winning side of that decision were Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy (along with Roberts and Alito, who did not participate in Agostini and so escape the "hack" label for now).

So when Jeff Sessions rants about "judges who use their power to redefine the meaning of the words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing the judge’s preferred social policies for the country," it's fair to ask who he's really describing here.

One final Supreme Court note - the Court issued a decision in the Christian Legal Society v. Hastings case, where a student group ran afoul of a public university's non-discrimination policy and was thus denied funding. They themselves sued the university on the grounds that they were being discriminated against on the basis of a religion. An unsuprising 5-4 majority ruled that the group was not owed funding and recognition by the university (though clearly they could continue to exist as a group). I discussed this case briefly in a previous post and sided with the student group; it's a complex, difficult case, though, and I'm not too upset about the decision going one way or the other.

Get Rid Of Slimy huckabeeS

2010-06-21T12:03:00.002-04:00

When I made the assertion that opposition to gay marriage comes from people saying "eww, icky," I got a lot of opposition from Matt. Well, Matt, here's well-known gay marriage opponent Mike Huckabee basically saying his opposition to gay marriage is because it's icky.

World Cup Time!

2010-06-10T12:20:00.003-04:00

The World Cup starts tomorrow, and with that I figured I'd put in my two cents worth as to who's going to get out of their groups and who's going to win. I'll get back to politics later.

Group A: South Africa, France, Mexico, Uruguay

Flip a coin. Seriously, any one of these teams could advance or crash and burn. South Africa isn't good, but they're about where we were in 1994 when we hosted the Cup - and we advanced. They have a true world-class star in Everton's Steven Pienaar and, oh yeah, home field advantage. They won't be driven nuts by those beehive-sounding vuvuzelas at least. Thierry Henry, er, handed France their qualification, but they still have a pretty talented team (and a crazy coach who uses astrology to choose his team. You think I'm kidding). Uruguay's an odd team - Nate Silver ranks them ninth while FIFA puts them at 16th. Diego Forlan can score, and they have a solid defense. Mexico's fun to watch, and fun to hate, and also kinda young (Cuauhtemoc Blanco notwithstanding). They had some hiccups in qualifying but went on a tear towards the end. I'll pick Uruguay and South Africa for the hell of it, but I really have no idea.

Group B: Argentina, Greece, Nigeria, South Korea

I don't think the madness of Maradona is enough to keep a completely loaded Argentina team from reaching the knockout stages, especially against this motley group of contenders, so they're in. As far as the others are concerned? You can never count out Greece, but I don't think you're getting out of this group unless you score some goals and Greece just doesn't like doing that. South Korea is Greece's polar opposite - 10 men in front of the ball? - but you have to play defense too and they're just too vulnerable on the counter. So that leaves gloriously inconsistent Nigeria as my second choice.

Group C: England, USA, Slovenia, Algeria

You're not going to find a group more clear-cut than this one. England and USA both have legitimate teams, while Slovenia and Algeria are both deeply flawed. That having been said, both the US and England have histories of crapping the bed when it matters most, so if one of them goes wonky Slovenia could make some waves. But I'll be safe and pick the obvious advancers here: USA and England.

Group D: Germany, Australia, Ghana, Serbia

Ah, another flip-a-coin group. Serbia's got a hell of a back line, but I have no idea who's going to be scoring the goals. Ghana just lost Michael Essien, which is a huge loss for them and puts a giant hole in their midfield. The Socceroos don't have a lot of scoring threats either outside of Tim Cahill, so they'll need to defend well - and the Americans just tore huge holes in their defense in a friendly. So that leaves a questionable but talented Germany team as the likely leader, but who goes after? I'll go with the surprise here: Australia gets just enough from Cahill to advance from an offensively challenged group.

Group E: Cameroon, Denmark, Netherlands, Japan

Even without Arjen Robben, the Dutch have enough firepower to run roughshod over this group. Remember, they don't usually crap out until the knockout stages. By then the mutual loathing between Wesley Sneijder and Robin van Persie will boil over, and if there's any karma in the world leg-breaking fucker Nigel de Jong will be laid up in a Johannesburg hospital. While I shouldn't count out Nicklas Bendtner and the Danes, I think the tear Samuel Eto'o has been on the last few years will give Cameroon just enough to advance. (Don't discount Alexander Song's contribution either.) I doubt Japan will do much here.

Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

I would have picked the creaking, offense-challenged Italian grass-diving squad to lose in a first-round upset if I could find a team in their group that could beat them. Sadly, they're up against offense-challenged Paraguay, the weakest team in the tournament in New Zealand (who I half expect to say "fuck it" halfway through Match 2 and pick up the ball and start playing rugby), and the half of the former Czechoslovakia that no one knows anything about. Paraguay performed well enough in South American qualifying to make me a believer, but look for a surprise showing from Slovakia who qualified well in Europe.

Group G: Brazil, Ivory Coast, Portugal, North Korea

Poor North Korea. Ok, no, not really. But you really do have to wonder how their national media are gonna spin getting stuck with teams ranked first (Brazil), seventh (Portugal), and 14th (Cote d'Ivoire), and likely getting their asses kicked in all three matches. Brazil doesn't play the joga bonito anymore, opting for a rough counterattacking style, but they're still really good and have enough going forward between Kaka and Luis Fabiano to beat anyone. Portugal and Ivory Coast are both dealing with injuries - Portugal to midfielder Nani, Ivory Coast to striker and national savior Didier Drogba. Drogba's going to try to be a badass and come back from his injury in time to play, so I'll pick Ivory Coast in a surprise over Portugal. If Drogba doesn't come back - or comes back and is ineffective - forget I wrote this.

Group H: Spain, Chile, Honduras, Switzerland

This group is pretty clear cut. ~~Barcelona Plus Fernando Torres~~ Spain is too stacked not to win this group - soon-to-be-former Arsenal superstar Cesc Fabregas doesn't even start, that's how stacked Spain is. Zonal Marking tabs Chile as the most tactically interesting team here, and that's enough for me. Switzerland and Honduras both lost key players to injury - Frei for the Swiss, Palacios and Costly for the Catrachos - and I just don't see enough depth behind them to beat out the Chileans for that second spot.

So that's all I got. I'll be back after group play to predict a winner.

Just for fun, an oldie but goodie:

BP Spills Coffee

2010-06-10T10:41:00.002-04:00

Here's a hilarious video about what happens when BP spills coffee. Vanderbilt people will recognize former Tonguencheek/Patron Saints member Zhubin Parang about halfway through.

Mosque of Amontillado

2010-06-09T09:17:00.002-04:00

Is there any reason for anyone to oppose the proposed Islamic center in downtown Manhattan besides naked bigotry?

The shenanigans over the mural in Prescott, AZ have gotten all of the bigotry headlines, perhaps because it's so obvious as to be just painful. But I think the business going on in New York right now is more important and more disturbing.

Look at these protests again. They're occurring not in some backwater but in the most cosmopolitan city in America. It's not like New Yorkers have never seen a Muslim before. They probably pass hundreds of Muslims on the way to work every day. And yet, here are some of the things people say against this project:

I don't think that they would build a German cultural center right near Auschwitz. Just because you're looking at what happened to the people that died there. That's all that should be focused on.

How is this not bigotry? This buffoon is basically blaming all Muslims for what happened on 9/11 - it's stereotyping and hatred of the outsider at its very worst.

Claiming that a mosque shouldn't be built close to the site of the 9/11 attacks is bigotry, pure and simple. You're taking the responsibility for the attack off the 20 or so dumbshits who hijacked those planes and putting it on all Muslims, and that's just not right.

But.

That having been said, I want to add this. Being a bigot doesn't necessarily make you a bad person - just a flawed one. And we're all flawed. We may not recognize what we feel as bigotry even when it is. The best we can do is recognize that implicit hatred for an outsider group is wrong and rectify it once that feeling is identified within us. The sort of bigotry on display here doesn't remind me of the Klan or the Aryan Nations or something - rather, it reminds me of Bob Hoskins' character in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? A cartoon killed his brother, so he misguidedly directs his rage at all cartoons. But "cartoons" didn't kill his brother, a single cartoon did. He's not a bad person (clearly) but he is a bigot. And that's okay - we don't hate or even dislike Eddie Valiant, we just wish he didn't hate cartoons so much because it's clearly irrational. So it is with these New Yorkers who oppose this mosque. We don't dislike these guys - we just wish they didn't hate Muslims so much. "Muslims" in general didn't blow up the WTC - 20 idiot Muslims did.

And that's perhaps what makes this story more important than the hateful bigotry on display in Prescott. While we have trouble identifying with racists like Steve Blair, the New Yorker protestors display the kind of bigotry we could easily imagine falling into ourselves under the right circumstances. We may never turn into Steve Blair, but tragedy and a healthy dose of very human irrationality could easily turn us into the people protesting this mosque. Throw in a group of people that exists outside the mainstream and makes an easy target, and presto. We need to discuss events like the mosque protests - and call them out for what they are - because we know we're susceptible to the same urges. The only thing preventing us from becoming bigots ourselves is consistently telling ourselves that such bigotry is wrong.

Glad You Could Join Us

2010-06-07T15:02:00.005-04:00

I haven't posted on the Gaza flotilla mess yet because I'm kind of still processing it. There are so many different competing descriptions of what happened that I needed some time to settle on a narrative that I think makes sense. So here's my thoughts.

- There weren't weapons or rockets or anything of the sort on those boats. Those were aid boats. After all, don't you think Israel would have crowed about it to high heaven if there had been terrorist supplies on board? Israel's silence as to what they found on those vessels speaks volumes. Those were aid boats, Israel knows they screwed up in attacking them, and now they're trying some CYA maneuvers that aren't working anywhere outside here.

- As such, the video showing people on board the ships attacking Israeli commandos has to be taken with a grain of salt. This kinda reminds me of a Cory Maye-type situation here. If you had a bunch of military-looking people descending on you and a piece of rubber hose happened to be nearby, don't you just start hacking away?

- That having been said, the justified attacks on Israel's conduct in the raid have been laced with a ton of overwrought language. And yes, it reeks of anti-Semitism (ahem, Helen Thomas). Michael Chabon has the best response yet, pointing out that Israel, like every other nation, acts stupidly and irresponsibly from time to time, so it's stupid to hold them to a higher standard. I think this misses a little - if Israel wishes to be considered a Jewish state, it should conduct itself with Jewish morality, which most certainly doesn't include treating others as second-class citizens no matter what. But it also points out a lot of the hypocrisy at work here. Gazans aren't poor pathetic blameless victims. Turkey pisses and moans, but it's not like Turkey doesn't have a skeleton or two in its closet. So while we criticize Israel, let's all be careful not to try to claim moral superiority for ourselves or our nations. Hell, I'm writing this on a computer made from materials that fund child rape in the Congo and I'm going to call myself morally superior to Bibi Netanyahu? Come on. We can criticize one another's unjust actions as equals, without the tortured "I'm-better-than-you" posturing.

This event, more than anything, is actually a hopeful signal - perhaps the Palestinian independence movement has finally decided to join us here in the modern era. In the modern era, you don't win a fight against an extremely powerful enemy by using violence, even if you have legitimate gripes (and the Palestinians certainly do). All violence does is piss the other guy off and harden his resolve. It's like punching a professional cage fighter in the stomach - sure, it feels good, but the whole thing is just gonna end with your head getting stomped on.

(A blogger from the Economist disagrees, but I don't think he makes his point particularly well. If anything, he's saying that "just enough" violence is effective, but I don't think so. The use of the makeshift weaponry just gave Israel and its blind defenders in America a chance to write the protest off as the same-old-same-old work of terrorists - and strategically speaking, the posturing of the rest of the world is all but meaningless if America bunkers in with the Israelis. The decision of the passengers to pick up weapons was the lone blemish on an otherwise brilliantly conceived confrontation. They're new at this - they'll learn.)

No, battles such as the one the Palestinians are fighting are won by non-violent direct action. Some right-wing moron said that the flotilla was just an attempt to provoke an Israeli response. To that I say - no shit, Sherlock. Of course that's what the flotilla was trying to do! The whole point of non-violent direct action is to make the other guy look bad by forcing the world to see the basic inhumanity of their actions. That's done by provoking such actions in an organized and predictable fashion. The flotilla people knew they would be boarded and probably attacked by the Israelis in the same way that voting rights marchers knew that Bull Connor would turn the fire hoses on them.

The positive PR that Palestinian activists have received from this single incident has dwarfed any positive press they've gotten in the West since 1967 - combined. If they get rid of Hamas' dippy, violent charter and dedicate themselves to peaceful non-violent confrontation, they can shine a light on a lot of other injustices that they face because of their statelessness. If the flotilla crisis is a harbinger of a new Palestinian strategy of non-violence, then that is a wonderful development indeed.

One note, though. I really hope the Palestinians don't get impatient and turn back towards violence again. They have to realize they've been idiots for the past 43 years - it's going to take some time before the rest of the world trusts that they've really given up the execrable "blow shit up" strategy and starts to listen to them.

Citibank Mullahs

2010-06-02T14:23:00.003-04:00

Iran's mullahs are cracking down on women's clothes again. They've been arresting women for wearing their veils wrong, having too short a skirt, being too tan, or really whatever goes against their own form of "modesty." What's striking to me is their reason for doing so (besides the mistaken* notion that such dress is non-Islamic):

Iranian women are obliged by law to cover their hair and wear long coats in public. The Islamic veil protects the purity of women, preventing men from viewing them as sex symbols, clerics here say.

So the Iranian government purportedly believes that Iranian men are so horrible that even seeing a woman's hair will drive them mad with sexual desire. How odd.

Well, I'm glad we enlightened Westerners don't think the same way...

Debrahlee Lorenzana is filing a lawsuit against Citibank because they fired her, she says, for the strangest reason: she's too hot.

Her bosses told her that "as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly 'too distracting' for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear," she says.

Well.

Let's step back and appreciate the symmetry here. Both Iran and Citibank are enforcing their modesty codes by telling women that they have to dress modestly because men can't control their own urges. The Citibank employee's lawyer summarizes:

"It's like saying that we can't think anymore 'cause our penises are standing up—and we cannot think about you except in a sexual manner—and we can't look at you without wanting to have sexual intercourse with you. And it's up to you, gorgeous woman, to lessen your appeal so that we can focus!"

Notice how women never suffer from this supposed lack of control, even though in a corporate environment they may be surrounded by attractive men in well-tailored suits.

The logic is so backwards it barely warrants a rebuttal. If I (a straight dude) am an employee, it's my responsibility to get my job done, whether the person sitting next to me is a middle-aged balding guy or Keri Russell wearing a string bikini. If I don't get my job done it's my responsibility, not Keri Russell's for being so damn hot.

You want more? Rape apologists use the same damn excuses, saying that some women are raped because of the way they're dressed. I don't know, but I've never been to a beach where there are a lot of scantily clad women and felt the urge to just go around raping people. I might be wrong though.

Look, the "men can't control themselves" line may seem like a dig at men, but it's really an excuse to control women's actions and force them to meet with powerful men's expectations. So can we put this myth to bed already? Most people - men and women - enjoy provoking sexual desire, myself included. (Not that I'm any good at it. That reminds me, I need a haircut. And a new suit.) If we're overtaken by that desire, it's our fault, not the hottie's.

*I say "mistaken" because the dress code honored by most Muslims appears nowhere in the Qu'ran. The Qu'ran merely asks women to dress modestly and cover their breasts. The hijab and burqa are mentioned nowhere.

Richard Cohen Didn't Think This One Through

2010-06-01T10:40:00.003-04:00

Richard Cohen from the Washington Post may have just set a new record for wackiness:

This is a good news, bad news column. The good news is that crime is again down across the nation -- in big cities, small cities, flourishing cities and cities that are not for the timid. Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty -- my view at one time -- have some strenuous rethinking to do. It could be, as conservatives have insisted all along, that crime is committed by criminals. For liberals, this is bad news indeed.

Is Cohen seriously doubting that poverty and criminality are linked? No one's saying it's the only factor, sure, but it's definitely a factor. The correlation between the two has been pretty well documented.

But anyway, let's see what Cohen's calling "bad news for liberals" here:

Probably the most surprising numbers come from Phoenix, which thought of itself as sinking in a sea of supposedly immoral and rapacious immigrants, all of them illegal and all waiting for nightfall and the chance for a nifty burglary or home invasion. If so, the crime reporting system has virtually collapsed. To the surprise no doubt of local TV news anchors, violent crime was down almost 17 percent. Back at 11.

Wait, so absolute incontrovertible proof that illegal immigrants don't bring crime with them is somehow bad news for liberals? Hell, this is such bad news I'm almost dancing a freaking jig right now. Most of the people ranting about how scary illegal immigration is are conservatives, and most of them whine about crime and mayhem illegals cause. If the numbers prove otherwise, it kind of destroys the conservative argument, doesn't it? And that's bad for liberals?

OK, so let's move on:

Whatever the reasons, it now seems fairly clear that something akin to culture and not economics is the root cause of crime. By and large everyday people do not go into a life of crime because they have been laid off or their home is worth less than their mortgage. They do something else, but whatever it is, it does not generally entail packing heat. Once this becomes an accepted truth, criminals will lose what status they still retain as victims.

First off, no one - not even those horrible, evil liberals Cohen's ranting about* - considers criminals to be "victims." Criminality as a whole may be linked with socioeconomic conditions, but individual criminals themselves? I think I speak for most liberals when I say "fuck 'em."

But let's think a little more deeply about what Cohen's saying here: culture causes criminality. Or to put it as he does at the end of his column:

But the latest crime statistics strongly suggest that bad times do not necessarily make bad people. Bad character does.

Let's accept for a moment that character and moral upbringing is at least a part of what causes people to become criminals. Crime rates are decreasing, though, right? That must mean our "culture" is becoming more moral! Our collective "character" must be getting stronger. And isn't it conservatives who are always worried about how gay people and secularity and evolution and female sexuality yadda yadda yadda are destroying America's moral values? The right-wing AFA's statement on their website, for example, rants about "the increasing ungodliness and depravity assaulting our nation." Some increasing depravity - violent crime went down!

Let's be clear. If Cohen's right - that the decline in crime rates in a recession is indicative of a link between crime and moral character - then that means our nation's increasing secularity and increasing tolerance of homosexuality are certainly not causing a decline in our moral character, and may in fact be improving it. Declining crime rates over the past 20 years are proof that things such as violent video games, gangsta rap and explicit music, increased access to pornography via the Internet, and other things conservatives love to hate are not all that bad and, in fact, might be good. Cohen's conjecture implies that the conservatives who are always concerned about moral decline are wrong (and that Munroe's Law is right). And Cohen thinks this is bad news for liberals! It's bad news for the get-off-my-lawn social conservatives (and maybe Dexter Holland), if anything.

*And considers himself one of, as well.

Yer Memorial Day Post

2010-05-31T13:15:00.001-04:00

While you're at your picnics or cookouts drinking beer or whatever, pour some out for the people who have died in the service of our nation...

Ready to Throw Stuff at the Screen?

2010-05-27T10:31:00.002-04:00

This is infuriating:

Buried in the depths of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2011 (H.R. 5136) is the latest salvo in the war on lawyers. In particular, section 1037 of the Act [page 403 of the PDF], titled "Inspector General Investigation of the Conduct and Practices of Lawyers Representing Individuals Detained at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," instructs the Department of Defense IG to "conduct an investigation of the conduct and practices of lawyers" who represent clients at Guantánamo and report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees within 90 days.

So who is getting the warm visage of Big Brother looking over their shoulder?

As set forth in the bill, the lawyers subject to such an investigation are military or civilian lawyers for whom there is “reasonable suspicion” to believe that they have:

(A) interfered with the operations of the Department of Defense at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, relating to [non-citizens detained at Guantánamo];

(B) violated any applicable policy of the Department;

(C) violated any law within the exclusive investigative jurisdiction of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense; or

(D) generated any material risk to a member of the Armed Forces of the United States

Keep in mind that on Planet Wingnut, everyone who so much looks at a suspected terrorist without torturing them is guilty of (D).

I have little to say that Vladeck and Greenwald haven't said already. This provision hasn't become law yet, but according to Greenwald it has made it out of committee unanimously. It wasn't Democrats who came up with the idea - that's the fault of Pensacola, FL Rep. Jeff Miller (R), who in proposing the idea is really doing his best to sound like Joe McCarthy. But Democrats are too chickenshit to stop it from becoming law, and Obama's not going to veto a defense appropriations bill, so our only hope is that it gets quietly euthanized in the Senate or in conference. I give it a 60/40 chance of becoming law, and if it does, it's another nail in the coffin of my association with the Democratic Party. If we can't stop odious provisions like this from becoming law, what the hell's the point of putting Democrats in power?

I furthermore want to point out that this comes on the heels of conservative efforts to force textbooks to include the notion that Joe McCarthy was vindicated by the Venona cables. The article I linked describes why that idea is poisonous, and I won't go into further detail here. But the revival of McCarthyism in conservative history parallels the revival of McCarthyism in real life. On top of Miller's disgusting call for investigations, there's a long-form rant being taken seriously in some conservative circles (Limbaugh and Malkin have both praised it) that implies that liberals are guilty of treason. Sane conservative Conor Friersdorf rips it to pieces here.

Friersdorf cites Limbaugh's endorsement of the book as saying "Our freedom is under assault as never before." Yeah, from you assholes. You and your conservative comrades are accusing whole chunks of Americans of treason and suggesting bringing investigations upon any lawyers who challenge your favored policies. I'm sorry, that disqualifies you from invoking "freedom" in any argument you make.

Oh, and the writer that's leading the "TREASON!" charge? Andy McCarthy. Same as it ever was, indeed.

The Switters Memorial Spitting Award

2010-05-26T09:59:00.003-04:00

In Tom Robbins' excellent novel "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates," the main character spits every time he says the name of former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (which for some reason comes up several times in the book). I've been looking for a person to do this with for a while now. Dick Cheney was too obvious - the entire humor behind spitting at Dulles is that no one knows who he is but that he roundly deserves the expectoration. And I don't mention Ron Margiotta enough to warrant the joke (besides, doing so wouldn't make sense to anyone outside Wake County).

But now I've found the perfect candidate. Step right up, Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce (ptui) - what do you have for us today?

A Phoenix news station (KPHO) is reporting that the state Senator behind Arizona’s new immigration law, Russell Pierce (R) [sic], does not intend on stopping at SB-1070. In e-mails obtained by the local CBS affiliate, Pearce said he intends to push for an “anchor baby” bill that would essentially overturn the 14th amendment by no longer granting citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil.

Really? You're going to propose overturning a significant chunk of the second most important Constitutional amendment because you're scared of Hispanic people? Talk about a solution in need of a problem. Someone please get Russell Pearce (ptui) some Valium or something. I think he's freaking out.

OK, I'm using overwrought language there. The law would be an explicit challenge to two Court cases: U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case that ruled that children born to non-citizens in the U.S. were citizens, and Plyler v. Doe, a 1982 case affirming that there is no difference between legal and illegal immigrants when it comes to the Fourteenth Amendment's "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause. It's far from clear that Pearce's (ptui) law would repeal birthright citizenship as a whole.

But that having been said, doing so appears to be the intention of Pearce's (ptui) proposal. George Will unintentionally touches on that in his column suggesting the idea that Pearce (ptui) is now attempting to execute. Will states that the original meaning of the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause excluded those subject to a foreign power - but that would include all immigrants, not just the illegal ones. Will never explicitly advocates taking birthright citizenship away from the children of legal immigrants, but that's kind of the unavoidable result of his logic. Will's is the exact argument rejected by the Court in both of the cases I cited above, especially Wong Kim Ark, which dealt with the child of a legal citizen.

So what's the point of depriving the children of immigrants - legal or illegal - the full rights of citizenship? Beats me. Maybe they're making a point about the rule of law. Maybe they're interested in some futile attempt to "preserve American culture," whatever the hell that means. Whatever it is, it strikes me as unbelievably mean-spirited. And that earns Pearce (ptui) a nice warm bucket of spit.

Road to Nowhere, Indeed

2010-05-25T13:32:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to the Talking Heads' David Byrne, who now joins Heart, the Foo Fighters, and Bruce Springsteen on the list of artists who got pissed when a Republican used their song without permission in their campaign.

The song that got former Republican and now independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist into trouble was "Road to Nowhere." Which inevitably leads to the question: what the ever-loving hell was he trying to do with that song? Imply that his candidacy was going nowhere? Disparage his own term as governor of Florida? Seriously, how on earth could you use that song in a campaign? At least with "Barracuda," "Times Like These," and "Born in the U.S.A" you could see the strategy behind using the song (even if the choice of "Born in the U.S.A." was jam-packed with unintentional comedy). I have no idea what Crist was going for here. Maybe our Florida correspondent can help us out.

You Want Racist Douchitude?

2010-05-21T12:16:00.003-04:00

Bomani Jones has found us some racist douchitude. Fill-in radio host Chris Myers attempted to contrast the response of victims of the Tennessee floods to the response of the victims of Katrina by calling the victims of Katrina - people who were stranded on top of their houses without food or potable water, people who had their entire neighborhoods destroyed, people who were being shot at by police - "whiners."

So to recap. White people who get flooded and need help: community pulling together. Black people who get flooded and need help: whiners. Glad we could clear that up. It's subconscious racism - I doubt Myers goes around calling black people lazy whiners for fun - so it's not, like, KKK/David Duke shit. But I'm comfortable dropping the R-bomb on Myers... which oughta be saying something.

Oh, and I've spent a week-plus down there each of the past two years doing volunteer rebuilding work in Holy Cross, and I haven't heard a whine yet. I kinda wish they'd whine more - might make people who can do something take notice more.

So yeah, fuck you, Chris Myers.

A Few Updates

2010-05-21T11:03:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I posted on the fallout from Rand Paul's comments on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The post didn't generate much discussion here, but it did lead to an interesting discussion on Twitter with two of my mutual followers. So I figured I'd revisit a few of the issues in the post and add some thoughts.

First, after I wrote that post and defended it to Marc and Alison, I came across this Think Progress post that describes how Paul even defends earmarks that benefit him directly. I had doubts about Paul's libertarian credentials from the beginning, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt in saying that maybe he's principled enough to be taking this stand on libertarian first principles alone. But in light of this I don't know how we can possibly allow him to claim that he's a principled small-government activist. Principled libertarians would oppose government overreaches that benefit them in the name of limiting government - the younger Paul clearly does not, and so can't cry "libertarian" when opposing laws banning discrimination in private business. What does that mean? It means that Paul is using small-government principles when convenient as a means of preserving his place in the current social order. He's playing libertarians for fools, and he played me and everyone who thought he was principled for fools.

(Libertarians: if you want a candidate to support, look west - his stance on immigration notwithstanding, Tom Campbell's got far more libertarian cred than Paul could ever hope to have.)

I'm not willing to whip out the R-word on Paul, though, and that leads me to my second point. Part of the discussion with Marc and Alison focused on whether it was better to call someone racist or ignorant. I had called Paul the latter; they insisted on the former. My point, though, was this: you can fix ignorance really easily. Show someone (say, Paul) that their supposedly principled stand actually reinforces racism and erodes liberty, and they might come around. Racism? Not so much. Deeply ingrained prejudice takes a long time to go away, if it ever does. Furthermore, racism is a hell of a charge in today's political environment. "Racist" is just about the worst thing you can call someone in polite company. Calling someone ignorant when they're actually racist is a danger, I'll admit. But if you're coming upon someone who's merely ignorant and you call them a racist, you've burned that bridge for good. Those who support policies with racist effects for reasons other than racism are potential allies. Call them racist, and you've alienated them for good. What you lose by calling a non-racist a racist is far more important than what you lose by calling a racist something else. So I think it's a good idea to wait until you're damn sure before you drop the R-bomb.

And finally, I've seen a few honestly principled libertarians defend the desire to eliminate the public accommodation section of the Civil Rights Act, and the arguments are non-racist and interesting... but I can't for the life of me figure out why they'd want to make them. Thing is, the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act increased overall individual liberty - the new freedom of black people to shop and work where they wanted far outweighed the freedom to discriminate in business lost by white people*. So it's a forest-trees thing - in their zeal to construct a framework for a government that respects individual liberty, they take a position that is ideologically consistent but counter to their stated goal of maximizing personal freedom. Indeed, looked at this way, defending the Civil Rights Act doesn't even mean defending other libertarian bugaboos such as the ADA, OSHA, or other federal regulations since they place a far higher burden on businesses than the exceedingly minor burden introduced by the Civil Rights Act (which, as far as I can tell, costs businesses nothing to implement).

So the punch line of the previous post remains: the argument over the Civil Rights Act displays the limitations of small-government theory. Sometimes government action actually increases the individual liberty of the overall population. So in cases like this when the two collide, libertarians must ask themselves which is more important - personal freedom, or opposing government expansion?

I won't go through the tortured logic I went through to pick this video. Just enjoy it.

As a bonus, the greatest song ever written about curling:

Rand Paul and Civil Rights

2010-05-20T12:34:00.003-04:00

Big hullaballoo about an interview today between Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul in which the newly minted Republican nominee appeared to favor discrimination by private enterprises.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Amanda Marcotte notes: "Well, I suppose that’s the end of the friendly relationship Rachel Maddow has with the Paul family." I don't agree - if son is anything like father, he thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to raise a controversial issue and be a general contrarian. Marcotte predictably blames libertarianism, which I find a bit odd for no other reason than that calling the anti-gay, anti-civil liberties, anti-immigrant Rand Paul a libertarian is kinda like calling a collection of Garfield comics a novel. It looks kinda like it might work as one, but in the end there's only a passing similarity. Furthermore, I think if you listen to the interview Paul makes it quite clear that he isn't a racist, and that desegregation even in private enterprise is an overall good thing. So it's a more than a little absurd to call Rand Paul a racist on the basis of this interview or the quotes Maddow cites at the beginning of the show. In fairness to Maddow, she never makes that accusation or even implies it.

Rather, I think Paul gets lost in the woods a bit. He attempts to invoke free speech when that particular Constitutional issue is at best tangential to the issue at hand. To someone who opposes federal regulations such as non-discrimination laws on a Constitutional basis, this is an issue of free association and the Commerce Clause, which was used as justification for federal regulations on privately-owned businesses (it's also used for minimum wage, ADA, OSHA requirements, and others). Paul lets himself be tarred as a racist simply because he didn't make the obvious argument that he was no doubt trying to make - in his opinion, the Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to force non-discrimination on private business, no matter how desirable that outcome might be. He hints at this with his guns in restaurants story, but doesn't make his point (that under the liberal view of the Commerce Clause used by these regulations, the federal government could pass a law requiring all businesses to allow weapons in their businesses) clearly at all.

The Supreme Court, of course, has spent the last 50 years agreeing with the liberals on the Commerce Clause issue. Even I think the Commerce Clause goes too far at some points - for example, allowing the federal government to regulate activity that doesn't even involve interstate commerce because it looks like it might, maybe, possibly, at some point, affect a price somewhere. (Raich v. Gonzales, anyone?) But technically speaking, if a business participates in interstate commerce, it's open to federal regulation, and nowadays most businesses do. That's what the Constitution says. Paul's hypothetical on guns would, in fact, be legitimate if ill-advised. I think Paul understands this and, for the most part, accepts the Civil Rights Act as constitutional.

Which leads us to the weaker ground Paul was standing on. He effectively conceded that the government has the power under the Constitution to desegregate businesses but claims that it would have been ill-advised on small-government grounds. But that's a tough argument to make to people who have seen images of the violence and vitriol that went with segregation. If the government has the power to eliminate an injustice, most people are going to say that it should do so.

It reminds me somewhat (bear with the historical geek here) of Grover Cleveland's veto of the Texas Seed Bill in 1887. The bill was a reaction to a drought that killed massive amounts of crops in Texas; Cleveland cited Constitutional limitations in vetoing it. Texans appeared to understand - they voted for him again in 1888 - but it contributed to an unpopularity that would push him out of office (barely) that year. The Constitutional argument is unconvincing in Cleveland's case, and most people would agree that if people are suffering and the Constitution gives the government the right to do something, it probably should.

Cleveland, and now Rand Paul, ran up against the inherent limits of the small-government theory. Grave injustices don't correct themselves. Constitutional limits are there for a reason and should not be broken, but if there is no Constitutional limit on the federal government's limiting suffering or stamping out injustice, then why should it not do so?

(A final footnote. One could certainly make the argument that market-based methods for limiting suffering are more effective - indeed, I am generally sympathetic to such arguments. But suggesting that the government should do nothing when, by doing something, it would improve the situation overall isn't going to fly well with most people, myself included.)

You Go, Girl

2010-05-18T10:17:00.002-04:00

I think we can all agree that this is badass:

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

Considering the harassment faced by women at the hands of these creeps, this was more than justified.

"Quit Crying About It."

2010-05-18T09:42:00.002-04:00

I find this to be wholly unsurprising:

This emerging divide has appeared in a handful of surveys taken since the measure was signed into law, including a New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was “about right” (as opposed to “going too far” or “not far enough”). Boomers were also more likely to say that “no newcomers” should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a “welcome all” approach.

Actual numbers at the link.

Illegal immigration is a bizarre issue because it's often talked about in terms of its least salient effect - crime. It's one of those cases of anecdata superseding actual data; while there are no data that suggest a link between illegal immigration and crime, everyone has a story about some sort of crime committed against someone they know by someone who they think is illegal. The shooting of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, which led to the frenzy that generated Arizona's odious law, is one such case - the frenzy over this shooting and its supposed connection to illegal immigration not only ignores the dearth of data supporting the notion that illegal immigrants kill at a higher rate than native-born citizens, but it also ignores the fact that an illegal alien may not have actually committed the crime.

In one sense, young people benefit from a lack of experience here. Old people, just by virtue of having been alive longer, are more likely to have been the victim of a crime committed by an illegal alien at some point in their lives (or to be friends with someone who has). This experience can cause someone to ignore actual evidence suggesting that illegal immigrants do not bring a rise in crime. Young people, freed from the burden of bad experiences, are more free to examine the statistics and make the level-headed determination that illegal immigration poses no public safety risk. (An example of this: my mother is scared of El Paso, Texas because of her previous experience there despite the fact that El Paso is one of the safest large cities in America.)

But the talk about crime is often a substitute for a general fear of cultural change, another trait generally possessed by the old. That's what the New York Times article discusses. From the article:

“My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,” Ms. Vespia said, referring to the common instruction on customer-service lines. “It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it. Press the button.”

"It's not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it." Congratulations, Ms. Vespia, You've just offered the best possible response to pretty much all grousing about cultural change.

Anyway, here's a children's version of Three Little Birds.

Spineless

2010-05-10T14:58:00.003-04:00

Matt Taibbi takes a break from ripping on Goldman Sachs to point out that Eric Holder has suggested new limits on Miranda rights for terrorists. Because if something ain't broke, you gotta fix it, right?

It's clear to everyone with a brain that treating terrorists as criminals works. No high-profile arrestee has failed to provide useful information after having been arrested - in fact, the opposite is generally the case. We lose nothing by sacrificing Miranda rights for anyone arrested here - in fact, current law allows us to interrogate a suspect pre-Miranda as long as we never use that information in court and as long as there's a credible public safety threat.

The only reason I can think of why Holder is even suggesting something like this is political. Holder and Obama don't want to have to deal with stupid-but-effective Republican attacks painting them as "soft" on terrorism. To which I say: Obama and Holder need to grow a pair. These schmucks like McCain and Steve King and Lieberman that rant and rave about Miranda rights for terror suspects are bullies. Stand up to them and Americans will respect you.

It seems to me that no one in Washington has a spine anymore. McCain and King and Lieberman and his "strip their citizenship" posse are cowards who are willing to throw our legal system out the window because they're so scared of the big evil terrorist monsters under the bed. Obama and Holder are cowards because they're willing to let these idiots make unnecessary changes to the legal system because they're scared of the political consequences of doing the right thing. I just don't understand what's so hard about standing up for a system that has served us relatively well over the course of the past 230 years...

No need to watch the video. Just listen to the song this time.

Criminal Approach to Terrorism Vindicated, Part III

2010-05-05T09:36:00.002-04:00

The first thing I thought when I heard that Faisal Shahzad, the suspected (now admitted, which I'll get to later) Times Square car bomber, attended a Pakistani terrorist training camp is that there are some serious quality control issues at these camps. I wonder if Shahzad and Captain Underpants went to the same school, because if so, that school doesn't exactly do a good job, do they? They've gotta be in danger of losing their al-Qaeda accreditation. Seriously, these guys need a No Violent Asshole Left Behind program or something. We talk about how our schools are failing... those schools are failing, epically.

The second thing I thought is that this was the perfect opportunity for some asshole to sound off about how we shouldn't give this guy his legal rights and put him on trial yadda yadda yadda (this despite the fact that not only was he arrested here, he's a U.S. citizen). I was right about that, of course - I just didn't expect the asshole to be John McCain. Nor did I suspect that the voice of reason on the right would be - of all people - Glenn friggin' Beck. "We don't shred the Constitution when it's popular, we do the right thing," Beck said, to the confusion of... well, everybody.

The third thing I thought is that Shahzad was almost certainly going to give up lots of valuable information despite his lawful arrest. Sure enough, the information Shahzad has been sharing has led to the arrests of seven Pakistanis. Standard prosecutorial tricks - offering lesser charges for cooperation, threatening lots of charges for being incooperative - work well with crimes like this because the case is so open-and-shut. A good lawyer would probably advise Shahzad to cooperate fully in the hopes of getting a lesser charge. (Furthermore, as far as I know an intel agency can interrogate without a lawyer as long as that info never sees the courtroom.)

The system works, y'all. No need to change it... which is why this bill from Joe Lieberman suggesting that we strip those accused of "terrorism" of their citizenship and send them to Gitmo is so unbelievably stupid that it barely merits a response. Not only does it open the door for unbelievable abuses of power, but also it's completely unnecessary! Of course, why would any politician let the actual ramifications of a bill get in the way of a good opportunity to grandstand.

You Know You've Crossed The Line When...

2010-04-26T15:33:00.001-04:00

...even Tom Tancredo thinks your new anti-immigration law went too far.

This Week in the First Amendment

2010-04-26T12:35:00.003-04:00

Lots of free speech/religious freedom-related stories in the past few days. I'll try to give you a run-down, but this post will probably go long so bear with me.

The first, and most famous, story is that South Park had a censored image of Muhammad shown as part of their 200th episode celebration. Trey Parker and Matt Stone (who appears to have lost his 'fro) claim that Comedy Central censored them against their will after they received death threats from some nebulous New York-based group called "Revolution Muslim". Jon Stewart gives Revolution Muslim the treatment they deserve:

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We can certainly all agree with Stewart that anyone who threatens death for a little offense deserves to be hauled before the "Go Fuck Yourselves" choir. But I'm not too concerned with Revolution Muslim - chances are, "Revolution Muslim" is some lazy twenty-something living in his parents' basement in Queens who jacks off while playing the terrorists in Counter Strike. (Update: Apparently the "group's" founder is a former Jewish settler in Gaza who converted to Islam and apparently lost none of the fanaticism required to be a settler. He's a 40-year-old cab driver, so I got that wrong. I still stand by my jacking-off-to-being-a-computer-terrorist conjecture though.) And "Revolution Muslim" is far from the only nutter-butter out there - Greenwald points out that Fort Worth's Artes de la Rosa theater rejected a play with a gay Jesus character after being threatened by e-mail, and that the original producers of the same play received similar threats in New York in 1998.

What's more concerning here is the cowardly, inexcusable actions of Comedy Central. It was clear from the start that Parker and Stone could give a fuck about whether someone threatened them. Hell, they probably receive a death threat or two a month as it is. But by censoring Parker and Stone, Comedy Central and parent company Viacom did more damage than any idiot with a website and an e-mail account could ever hope to do. They've sent a clear message - threats work, no matter how obviously idle. (Same goes for you, Artes de la Rosa Theater.) As Art Aleksakis might say, they can't hurt you unless you let them. Comedy Central's despicable actions just let them hurt us.

Our second issue has to do with a fascinating Supreme Court case called U.S. v. Stevens. In it, the Court, by an 8-1 margin (Alito was the lone dissenter), struck down as overly broad a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty. The material intended to be outlawed was that in which a woman's high-heel shoes crushes an animal for sexual pleasure. Or something equally disturbing and bizarre. The problem with the law wasn't the outlawing of such videos per se, but that the law was so broad that it potentially banned hunting shows - Stevens, in fact, was convicted of distributing a video portraying a dog fight.

My first thought is that this only goes to prove Rule 34: if you can imagine it, there is porn of it on the Internet. My second thought is that this is a weird First Amendment case. We're perfectly okay with laws banning depictions of completely disturbing acts such as child pornography, but we know that we can't ban everything that disturbs us. So where's the line? Solicitor General (and hopefully-not-future-associate-justice) Elena Kagan argued that free speech rights should be balanced against the social cost of such rights. Civil libertarians and anyone who cares about the Constitution are rightly repulsed by that argument, but why? Don't we already do that to some extent?

I'd argue, though, that the point of child porn laws is not to outlaw the depiction but the act itself, which would not exist beyond the depiction. The video distributer is ultimately responsible for the illegal act occurring, and so should be prosecuted. A constitutional law banning depictions of animal cruelty, then, would punish video distributers for animal cruelty that occurred solely because of the video - that is, an act of cruelty staged for the camera. Someone filming a dogfight and then selling the video couldn't be prosecuted unless they themselves staged the fight with the intent of making money off the video. But even that standard can easily go too far - we'd be disturbed by the idea that teenagers who make a video of themselves vandalizing mailboxes should have that video banned.

Anyway, it's a fascinating issue, and I'd like the input of some of the lawyers who read this blog.

A little bit more cut-and-dry, however, is the recent decision by Judge Barbara Crabb declaring the federal statute establishing a National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. For this ruling, Crabb is taking crap from everyone from Tony Perkins to Barack Obama - this despite the fact that Crabb is very obviously correct. If you looked up "an establishment of religion" in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of a law declaring a National Day of Prayer beside the definition. The law is blatantly establishing religion. Which is unconstitutional. It really is that simple. There's absolutely no way to get around that. It doesn't matter how much of a tradition it is, it doesn't matter who endorsed the idea, and I could give a damn whether it's a good idea or not. It's unconstitutional and it needs to go, end of story. The boundaries aren't there to be ignored at will, people. The ruling from Crabb was 66 pages - it didn't need 66 words.

Of course, the usual suspects have launched their unhinged opposition to the ruling. The head of the "National Day of Prayer Task Force," Shirley Dobson (originally named as a defendant in the suit but dropped - the suit is now against Obama) reacted with predictable hyperbole:

This is a concerted effort by a small but determined number of people who have tried to prohibit all references to the Creator in the public square, whether it be the Ten Commandments, the Pledge of Allegiance, or the simple act of corporate prayer -- this is unconscionable for a free society.

snip

Long term, this type of opinion, if not corrected on appeal, will continue the erosion of our religious heritage and freedom.

Prohibiting references to God in the public square? Eroding religious freedom? Mrs. Dobson, I believe you deserve the Mandy Patinkin treatment:

Let's be clear. This court ruling does not preclude Americans from setting aside a day - or a week, or a month, or a year - to pray. It does not prevent the President or members of Congress from announcing during a speech that they're holding a National Day of Prayer. It does not stop the President or Congresscritters or anyone with the spirit in them from getting up on the floor of the house and screaming "GOD GOD GOD" at the top of their lungs. No one will be forced to stop praying because of this court case. No one will be forced to stop praying loudly because of this court case. To claim that preventing the government from declaring a national day of prayer erodes religious liberty is to display massive ignorance about the Constitution and about the idea of religious liberty.

Arizon-ugh

2010-04-25T15:37:00.003-04:00

Oh well. At least there are still 49 states where it's legal to not have your passport on you when you leave the house. Of course, I don't look Hispanic, so I'm not going to get stopped, but still.

Dear Congress: Take up immigration reform. NOW.

(Oh, and when you do, please try to simplify things, okay? Our system is already Byzantine and capricious enough.)

(Also this: Hispanics in Arizona have been generally more Republican than the national average. Wonder how that's going to change...)

This song seemed appropriate...

Out in the Cole

2010-04-17T11:57:00.002-04:00

A couple of years ago I ranted about Arkansas' awful Act 1, which forbade gay and straight unmarried couples, as well as single people, from adopting children. I argued that it was a hollow gay-bashing measure that would lead to more kids ending up in foster care with no discernible benefit to anyone except moralizers without souls.

A Circuit Court judge apparently had a similar reaction to the law. Think Progress reports that it was struck down in court today. The Arkansas News has more. The case is Cole v. Arkansas, and I'll post the decision once I find it online. Should it go to the full 8th Circuit, it'll be Arkansas v. Cole.

The judge ruled that the law ran afoul of two Constitutional principles. One, it violated the right to privacy of the adopting couples by placing an undue burden on the private relationship between two individuals. Two, it violated the couples' right to equal protection by denying them a right to adopt children that is granted freely to other couples. The law, on its face, only prevents couples who do not possess a certain legal status (marriage) from adopting, but because some couples (same-sex ones) are not allowed to possess that legal status, the right to adopt is essentially permanently denied same-sex couples while opposite-sex couples will be allowed to adopt should they choose to do so. The right to adopt, then, has been denied to certain couples while granted to other couples, and on a basis wholly unrelated to the welfare of the child. It's pretty easy to see how that's an equal protection violation.

First off, in the wake of Heller and Citizens United, and in light of the health care reform lawsuits being staged by thirteen-plus states, I don't want to hear any whining from conservatives about "judicial activism" or "overturning the will of the people." The Constitution says what it says, and the majority doesn't have the right to ignore the Constitution if they find its wording inconvenient. I don't give a damn how popular a law is, if it violates the Constitution then it ought to be thrown out. Anyone who doesn't understand this basic principle should have their registration revoked because they're too damn stupid to vote.

Second, Arkansas, should this case stand (which I doubt it will, honestly) has a couple of possible courses of action here. One, they can allow same-sex couples to marry. That gets around the equal-protection issues by offering adoption to all couples predicated upon reaching a certain legal status that is open to all. Two, they can re-instate the right to adopt to all couples, regardless of marital status.

But think for a moment of the logic here. You can't deny a state benefit to a couple if you grant that benefit to other couples, and the nature of one's private relationship is not a reason to deny that benefit. In this case, the benefit is the ability to adopt a child, but there are tons of other benefits that Arkansas and other states bestow exclusively on married couples. Of all these benefits, adoption is probably the most restrictable because it involves a third party (the child) whose welfare is paramount. Other benefits, such as the right to file taxes jointly and the right to survivor benefits, do not involve a third party. So if we rule that the right to adoption must be bestowed equally on all couples, that implies that pretty much every other benefit offered to married couples must be offered to all couples. Thus, either the legal status of marriage must be open to all couples, or all these benefits must be the result of obtaining a separate legal status that is open to all couples (such as a civil union).

That's why you'll be hearing lots more about this case in the coming months. Essentially, should it stand, all states will be Constitutionally required to offer same-sex civil unions with all the benefits of marriage. That Constitution can be a bitch sometimes, can't it, wingnuts?

(One final note - it's far from clear to me that Arkansas will appeal this decision. The current governor, Mike Beebe, is none too fond of Act 1, so he might just quit enforcement and ask the law to be changed.)

You, On The Wagon, Now

2010-04-16T13:22:00.005-04:00

This is news to me: seems like the U.K. government has taken for itself the right to ban someone from going into any bar in the country for two years.

Bizarre punishments are nothing new, of course, but here's the part that gets my goat: the punishment appears to be handed out for specious reasons:

So what exactly did Hall do? The report doesn't specify, saying only that she has been convicted of "a series of public order offenses," and had flouted bans from individual bars and clubs in her hometown.

So basically, the British government can issue this ban essentially on the grounds of "we just kinda feel like it." The BBC article on the new legislation allowing courts to mete out this punishment is not comforting:

People in England and Wales who commit crimes or behave anti-socially while drunk could now face a Drinking Banning Order - or "booze Asbo".

Under powers coming into force on Monday, police and councils can seek an order on anyone aged 16 and over.

"Behave anti-socially?" What the fuck does that even mean? I guess it means something different in England than it does here, because here it means hiding from everyone. People who Americans consider "anti-social" wouldn't need to be banned from bars - they wouldn't be in bars in the first place, because they wouldn't ever leave home. So considering that the phrase "anti-social" has a somewhat fungible meaning, that's basically a license for government officials to control your going-out behavior for whatever reason they see fit. That's a power that'll never be abused, of course.

So yeah, I'm not moving to England anytime soon.

Update: Meanwhile, back here at home, Congress is trying to prevent an "epidemic of alcohol" from descending upon you by... limiting direct sales of wine from wineries. Because if I wanted to binge-drink, the first thing I'd think of doing is ordering specialty wine through the fucking mail.

(Of course, it's not government's business if I did want to binge drink. Just saying. Hat tip: Jacob's Twitter feed.)

Get Your Share

2010-04-12T13:19:00.004-04:00

I'm not a big believer in karma, but if you happen to be one, you sure had a good couple of weeks. Here are a couple good karma stories for you.

We'll start with David Frum. The blogosphere has been alight over David Frum's recent defenestration from the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Frum was fired for making a few comments disparaging Republican tactics on health care reform - specifically, the decision by Republicans to simply oppose the legislation rather than to try to remake it in a conservative image. Frum thinks, with good reason, that the Republicans not only missed an opportunity to get some pieces of conservative health care reform enacted but also that Republicans took a big PR hit as a result of their obstructionism.

While I'm sympathetic to Frum's plight - seems like the absolute last thing a think-tank should do is fire someone for putting out a contrarian viewpoint - there's some poetic justice here. Seems like Frum, back when he was fresh off his job as Bush II's speechwriter, put out this article condemning Republicans and conservatives who disagreed with Bush's approach to the "War on Terror." He ends the article, "Now we turn our backs on them."

Seems to me that Bush's terrorism policy was the beginning of movement conservatives seeing the world in an "us vs. them" light, where if you don't hew to the orthodox position you're with the enemy and thus should be exiled. Frum was right there at the forefront kicking out dissenting voices, and now the monster he helped create has turned on him. Karma.

The other victim of karma this week? Pope Benedict.

Seems His Eminence, back when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was personally involved in a cover-up of a child abuse scandal in California in 1985. He refused to allow the diocese of Oakland to fire the priest even though he had previously been convicted of child sexual abuse by American courts. There are several other cases where the future Pope's office tried to cover up sexually abusive priests, but none have Ratzinger/Benedict's fingerprints on it in quite the way that this does. In the letter linked to by the BBC story, Ratzinger says that the offending priest should not be fired quite yet because "the good of the universal Church" wasn't served by doing so.

Now there's no doubt in my mind that the erstwhile Cardinal and current Pope are horrified by priests sexually abusing children. Nor do I believe that he didn't take such allegations seriously - I mean, how could you not, especially when they concern someone who is supposed to be a direct conduit between a lay Catholic and God? Rather, Ratzinger's crime was hubris - he thought he could keep this whole thing under wraps and not have the Church take a PR hit for hiring someone who ended up being an abuser. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that an organization with a billion or so members in hundreds of countries worldwide isn't going to be able to cover something of this magnitude up for long, but Ratzinger thought so. And now it's blowing up in his face - bloggers I respect are calling for his arrest, for fuck's sake. We haven't seen a Pope in this much hot water since Alexander VI. And all because he, as a Cardinal, thought that he could keep the whole situation under wraps.

The sad irony here is that the Church would have been much better off had their leadership come clean from the very beginning. Indeed, had the Church leadership just fired the guy and cooperated with other investigations, they might have come out of this whole mess as the good guys who helped get the bad apples out of the bunch. After all, with the sheer amount of priests in the world, some of them are bound to be bad ones, right? You can't hold having bad priests against the Church. But defending such priests after the point of defensibility has long passed? Yeah, you can hold that one against them.

So maybe poetic justice is still alive and well. I'm not holding my breath though.

Update: Apparently the Pope's second-in-command is blaming the whole scandal on gayness. File this under "some people never learn."

Update II: I suppose it was only a matter of time before this happened too: an Italian bishop is now blaming the Jews for the Church's troubles. Some people sure love their whipping boys, eh? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Stress Test

2010-04-09T15:53:00.003-04:00

Here's a fun list for you. The Daily Beast ranked colleges by how stressful they are. My alma mater comes in 7th, ahead of Caltech and Cornell, so the list is clearly bullshit... but it's fun to play around with.

Smackdown of the Century

2010-04-09T12:14:00.004-04:00

This article, about former adult film star Stormy Daniels' (real name: Stephanie Clifford) possible run for Senate in (where else) Louisiana, is full of win. Especially the part where she notes that she was a lifelong Democrat, but switched to the Republican party after some Republican higher-ups were caught using RNC funds in a bondage-themed strip club last week. She would be challenging the incumbent Republican Sen. David Vitter (though in LA's bizarre election system, Clifford would appear on the November ballot with both Melancon and Vitter, and a runoff would be held in December if none get a majority). Vitter, of course, has recently been involved in a prostitution scandal.

But the best line of the article is the last, and it's a response from presumptive Democratic nominee Charlie Melancon's campaign to accusations from Republicans that it's all a publicity stunt:

"If the Louisiana Republican Party is uncomfortable with a Republican challenger who has a history of selling sex, I would suggest they reconsider standing by an incumbent with a history of paying for it," Franck said in an e-mailed statement.

Zing.

This Was Not Well Thought Out

2010-04-09T10:15:00.004-04:00

OK, let me give it to you straight. You want to start a pharmacy based on Catholic values? Cool. Don't want to sell contraceptives or cigarettes or dirty magazines? Go for it. Contraceptives make up 10% of an average pharmacy's revenues, but you can make that up with a good business model.

But for heaven's sake, don't open your business in a young, relatively socially liberal area within a stone's throw of a bunch of other national-chain pharmacies, or you're gonna go broke.

I grew up about a mile from this store's Chantilly, VA location, and I'll vouch for a couple of things. Northern Virginia may be pretty heavily Christian, but it's not the Bible Belt either. People there don't care about these conservative-Christian issues the way people in more conservative bits of the country do. Hell, even the devout Christians at my high school tended to hate on the Falwell-Robertson crowd as much as I did. My point is that NoVans aren't gonna sacrifice convenience to patronize a Christian-themed business - they're just gonna swing by the CVS on the way back from the kids' soccer practice. So you have to rely on visibility and drop-in business, not just word of mouth. And with that in mind, the location is shit. It's tucked in a shopping center well out of view of both Route 50 and Centerville Road (the two main roads in that area). Unless you're going to the K-Mart next door, you're not going to just run into it... and what's more, there's a CVS with a much better location in that same shopping center, not to mention the other CVS about a mile up Centerville.

So if anyone wants to whine about how the failure of this business is proof of some liberal plot against Christians, or if anyone wants to gloat about how this proves Christian-themed pharmacies are doomed to fail, just keep in mind that this particular case isn't well-suited to drawing conclusions about the larger business model. You can't locate your business in an invisible location in a demographically unsuitable area and expect it to succeed. Somewhere else, such a pharmacy might succeed.

Your Bizarre Tax of the Day

2010-03-28T13:16:00.005-04:00

If there are two things most Americans love, they're a) sports and b) whining about taxes. So fuck it, why not combine the two?

Brian Rafalski of the Detroit Red Wings was pretty vocal this week about a so-called 'privilege tax' in effect in the State of Tennessee. Essentially, it forces visiting players from teams such as the Wings to pay $2,500 when their teams play the Nashville Predators.

As Dirk Hoag of On the Forecheck pointed out when the tax was put into place last year, it effects opponents of the Preds and the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies, but not those who play the NFL's Tennessee Titans, despite the fact that football players generally make more money then their hockey and basketball counterparts.

It applies to both teams - the Preds and Grizzlies and their opponents - and can be assessed for up to three games, or $7500 a head total.

Highly-paid players like Rafalski probably aren't hit badly by it, nor are superstars like LeBron James in the NBA - but what of fourth-liners and benchwarmers making the league minimums in the NBA and NHL? Or what about temporary minor-league callups to the Preds and Grizzlies, or other called-up players that just happen to be with their pro teams when they go to Tennessee? Turns out they actually have to pay to go to work that day.

Oh, and why do the Titans and their 8 home opponents not have to deal with the tax? According to SB Nation, the NFL would have punished Tennessee had they taxed Titans players. Translated - the NFL has enough power to where it can say to Tennessee something along the lines of "if you implement this tax we'll fuck you up" and have that threat be credible. The NHL and NBA are apparently less powerful, and thus their franchises* are now subject to a tax. Somewhere, Mancur Olson is laughing his ass off.

Minor-league baseballers are also exempt - good thing, too, because asking someone who plays for the AA West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx at $25000 a year to pay $7500 on top of normal income taxes just because they had the misfortune to be drafted by the Mariners would be a disaster.

So why's the tax there? Beats the shit outta me. Tennessee's official website about the tax is here - I couldn't find a justification for it at all.

Yeah, it's tough to cry for NHL and NBA players getting paid a "piddling" $500000 a year. Just remember - pro sports aren't the only thing on which an asinine "privilege tax" can be assessed.

*I say that the franchises are assessed this tax because now, in order to keep players, the Preds and Grizzlies are going to have to shell out an extra $7500 per player just to compete on an even playing field with players on teams who play in a different division.

Why Statistics Annoy

2010-03-22T18:34:00.005-04:00

Via Greenwald, here's a CNN poll that claims that 39% of America supports the health care bill while 59% oppose it. Strong numbers, right? That's what the Republicans are talking about when they're saying Democrats ignored Americans on this, right?

Well, not so much. See, 13% of Americans opposed the bill because it's not liberal enough. Which means that 52% of Americans - a majority - either want this bill or want a bill that went further than this bill. So when Republicans say Democrats didn't listen to Americans, it's bullshit - only 43% of Americans wanted to kill the bill because it went too far.

Like it or not, health care reform was one of the main things Democrats were elected to do, and a majority of Americans apparently still want it. Conservatives who are thinking of going all-in with this "OMG HEALTH CARE REFORM WILL DESTROY AMERICA" rhetoric might want to keep this fact in mind.

Also worth noting from the poll: when it comes to who they trust on health care, Obama beats Congressional GOP 51-39, and Dems win 45-39.

Don't Look Back In Anger

2010-03-22T09:43:00.003-04:00

Back from New Orleans and ready to blog again. If you want to see what I was doing while I wasn't blogging/researching, go here.

This space has been pretty quiet on healthcare for most of the course of its meandering trip through Congress. That's because I have a lot of mixed feelings about this bill - there were good things about it, but it was clear from the beginning that Congress was never going to deliver the kind of structural reform that our health care system needs, so I kind of checked out of the process and watched with amusement as liberals made bullshit claims about how this bill was the greatest thing since sliced bread and conservatives made even bullshittier claims about how this bill would DESTROY AMERICA ZOMFG !!!!111!!1!1!!. Now that the long health care fight is almost over, and some sort of incremental reform has reached President Obama's desk, I guess I should comment on the bill, what we've learned from the debate process, and what that means for a battle I care a lot more about - the looming fight over immigration reform...

First, the substance of the thing. The way I see it, there are two main problems with our current health care system. One is the employer-based insurance delivery system. Currently, government subsidies encourage employer purchasing of health care over individual purchases. The main problem with this is that employers aren't going to buy a policy that suits individual employees. Thus, there's no way an individual can force companies to compete for his/her specific business. The second problem is the reliance on insurance for routine care. Imagine a car insurance policy that paid out every time you filled up your gas tank or got an oil change. Pretty ridiculous, right? But that's exactly the kind of health insurance policy we expect to have currently. This leads to cost distortions so bizarre that a fancy 4-D ultrasound actually costs less than a routine OB/GYN visit during pregnancy - but since the insurance is paying for the latter, you don't know that.

The bill's centerpiece is an individual mandate and subsidy similar to that proposed by Republicans in the early 1990s and more recently implemented by the Romney administration in Massachusetts. This isn't a horrible idea in that it starts to chip away at the employer-based system. Removing the subsidy for employer-based health benefits - which I believe was a proposal from McCain during the 2008 campaign - would have done more to move us towards a consumer-centered system, but politically that's too much of an upheaval to expect all at once. I'm uncomfortable about the mandate, but the individual subsidy is a very good idea. However, the bill charges employers if the government subsidizes its employees' care - which is an absolutely awful idea.

While the bill does take shots at the employer-based system, however, it utterly fails to address the problem of overinsurance. The excise tax on super-inclusive plans is a good idea, but I think it's out in the reconciliation package. A better plan would have been to encourage people via subsidies to buy catastrophic health insurance, either from the government or from private insurers, which would pay out under unforeseen circumstances like serious illness or accidents. You know, like how insurance is supposed to work. Instead, if I remember correctly, the mandate actually includes lower limits on the benefits your plan can provide, which only perpetuates the overreliance on insurance that is distorting costs in our health-care system.

There are also a series of minor tweaks to Medicare and Medicaid, and a whole bunch of regulations on insurance coverage. All of these things are important, but none are particularly huge. All in all, we got an incremental reform where deep structural changes were needed. It's hardly the historic reform bill Democrats are touting today. Of course, it's a far, far cry from the socialistic government takeover of health care that Republicans are whining about.

Which brings us to what we can learn from the debate over health care. The most important thing Democrats can learn is this:

Don't muffle the fringes.

If you're not familiar with the concept of the Overton window, let me digress a second to describe it to you. The Overton window describes a range of policies that are acceptable to most people. The idea here is that these Overton windows can be "moved" - that is, people can be led to accept previously unthinkable policy ideas - by advocating ideas so far out of the mainstream that ideas just a little bit out of the mainstream seem acceptable by comparison. While Overton himself never did so, it's clear to me that this concept applies to rhetoric as well.

Policy-wise, this means the Democratic desire to take single-payer off the table early was a big mistake. We were never getting single-payer health care, but having people like Weiner and Dingell out there advocating it would have moved the Overton window towards the left a little bit, making liberal ideas like the public option seem a lot less radical by comparison. As it happened, though, the public option became the left fringe idea, and was thus sacrificed.

And furthermore, Republican attacks followed the rhetorical Overton window model. So many on the far right were spouting such obviously ridiculous rhetoric - death panels! IRS conspiracies! - that telling tamer-sounding lies like "government takeover" became a "reasonable" argument. What's more, Democrats allowed this to happen by not responding to right-wing demagoguery until it was too late. When absurd statements like the death panel thing go unanswered by facts, they can grow a life of their own, and when that happens, Republicans can go pretty far out into the right-wing thicket and still be thought of as reasonable. Democrats, meanwhile, seemed to keep a lid on their far-left allies, which gave them no cover to support the bill and still sound reasonable doing so.

This is especially important now because next on the table for Democrats is an issue that's almost trivially easy to demagogue - immigration. Democrats need to do three things better on this issue. One is to allow liberal think-tanks and left-wing members of Congress to propose a sweeping liberalization of immigration laws, possibly involving complete amnesty for illegal immigrants and a radical restructuring of the quota system (and perhaps its abolition altogether). This will give congressional Dems cover for a better immigration reform proposal. Two, Democrats should not muzzle the far left. Allow ultra-liberal members of Congress and left-wing pundits to sound off, because this makes mainstream Democrats look good when they take a position to the right of their peers. Three, Democrats need to anticipate Republican demagoguery and answer it with facts. I can tell you what the Republican talking points will be right now: immigrants bring crime, they take jobs away from Americans, they'll change our culture, they won't speak English. Democrats would be wise to point out a few things immediately. One, that immigrants (even illegal ones) commit crime at lower rates than native populations, and that high-immigration cities like New York and El Paso are among the safest in the country. Two, almost every economist worth listening to generally links immigration to economic growth, which will benefit even blue-collar workers. Three, even among modern Hispanic populations over 90% of third-generation immigrants speak English as their first language, a rate which compares favorably with previous non-Anglophone immigrant groups. And yeah, they'll change the culture somewhat, but if you like spaghetti and drink green beer on St. Patrick's Day then you can just shut the hell up.

Immigration will be a hell of a fight, and this close to an election it'll make the health care battle look quaint. Here's hoping Obama and the Democrats are ready.

Oh, you thought I was going to post an Oasis vid here, didn't you? Sucker...

A long, strange trip indeed.

Why The Arctic Fart Matters

2010-03-05T12:32:00.002-05:00

Apparently a whole hell of a lot of methane that was frozen under the East Siberian Shelf of the Arctic Ocean just unfroze, and is now being released into the atmosphere. In other words, the Arctic Ocean just let a massive fart. Mother Jones' Blue Marble blog explains why it matters, and what consequences it might have for our climate. Hint: invest in air-conditioning companies.

Criminal Approach to Terror Vindicated... So Why Abandon It?

2010-03-05T09:56:00.002-05:00

Apologies for the blogging hiatus, which will only get worse as the month rolls on - I'll be leaving for New Orleans on Sunday and not returning until after St. Patrick's Day. Probably no blogging while I'm down there.

Anyway, as I've reported in previous posts, the Obama administration's treatment of Najibullah Zazi and Captain Underpants Umar Abdulmutallab has, like the case of Richard Reid before them, vindicated the idea of treating terrorism as a crime. Both suspects were put through the legal system with little to no problems; both are cooperative and are giving good intelligence. Furthermore, as the judge who put away Reid pointed out, treating terrorists as criminals delegitimizes them, while treating them as soldiers gives them more legitimacy than they deserve. Oh, and it also proves to the rest of the world that the American system of government is so robust that even the most heinous acts of violence can't shake it.

To sum, the criminal approach to terrorism a) leads to useful intelligence, b) delegitimizes terrorists, c) makes us look good, and d) works. So the Obama administration is reacting to the overwhelming good news about the criminal approach by... abandoning it?

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

OK, first, I don't see how giving a military tribunal to someone who is not even remotely related to military activity makes a lick of sense. Second, you know you've made a bad move when even the people in the military commissions office are ripping into you:

Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, acting chief defense counsel at the Defense Department's Office of Military Commissions, said it would be a "sad day for the rule of law" if Obama decides not to proceed with a federal trial. "I thought the decision where to put people on trial -- whether federal court or military commissions -- was based on what was right, not what is politically advantageous," Colwell said.

Third, how on earth is America helped by not putting KSM and his cronies on trial? What risk is there to doing so? What do we gain by using a military tribunal when the criminal justice system is more than adequate? It makes absolutely no sense to me. There's no legitimate reason why KSM can't be tried in a criminal court (and spare me the tired "but we're at war" rhetoric, it has no place here). This seems like nothing more than a craven move to score political points by Obama - but in reality, it's just caving in to conservative concern trolling. The playground bullies on the right just stuffed Obama in a locker, kids. Let's all point and laugh... and wonder why the hell we ever elected someone so spineless as our president.

In other news...

It's difficult to believe that sentient beings wrote and produced this video:

The stupidity here is absurd. Let's start with the cartoonishly vapid name of the organization, "Keep America Safe." Makes "Americans for Puppies and Apple Pie" seem deep and meaningful. Moving on, let's address the meaning of the video, which is that someone who represents Gitmo detainees in court is a terrorist sympathizer. The entire idea falls apart under the most cursory inspection - first, not all Gitmo detainees are terrorists, and second, lawyers don't have to sympathize with someone to take their case. I half expect the next ad from this group to accuse Ted Bundy's lawyers of being serial killer sympathizers. Or John Adams of being a Redcoat sympathizer.

Moving on...

"Mr Wilders has called Islam a backward religion, wants a ban on headscarves in public life and has compared the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf." Ladies and gentlemen, your frontrunner for Dutch prime minister! One wonders how the British will handle state visits from the Dutch should Wilders win, seeing as how he's banned from entering the UK.

Oh, and Dutch? You play dirty football too.

Well, if all these stories prove anything, it's that this song continues to be relevant:

I'm So Confused

2010-02-24T12:58:00.003-05:00

Here's what I don't get about the jobs bill.

The idea behind the jobs bill is simple - suspend payroll taxes on new employees and give tax breaks to companies that make new hires before December. But there's a contradiction in here for both sides of the political aisle, and it is this: Liberals have long argued that higher taxes don't affect employment much, yet are touting a break from taxes as a big job-creator. Conservatives have argued that lower taxes create jobs, but are arguing against a tax break for new hires on the grounds that it will not do anything.

What. The. Hell?

Oh, and here's a fun fact - the cloture motion on the jobs bill passed 62-30. The bill itself passed 70-28. Doesn't the vote usually go the other way - people are willing to let the Senate vote on it but want to vote against it themselves? What's the rationale behind trying to block a bill but then voting for it?

Criminal Approach to Terror Vindicated Yet Again

2010-02-22T21:54:00.002-05:00

Remember that guy who was going to blow up the New York subway system last year? Well, despite the fact that conservatives would definitely claim that we will all die horrible deaths at the hands of brown bearded people since we didn't throw him in Gitmo immediately, he was arrested, Mirandized, given a lawyer, and has now pled guilty to terrorism-related charges.

But of course, there's no way to get terrorists to cooperate with the government without ~~torture~~ enhanced interrogation, right? Ummm...

The terms of the plea deal were sealed. A government source told CNN that the threat of legal action against Zazi's associates and family played a role in his decision to cooperate with the government.

Oh, so the legal system actually helped get him to plead guilty? OK, but I bet there's no way we could get useful information out of him without shredding the Constitution...

"This attempted attack on our homeland was real," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference praising the criminal justice system in foiling the plot. "It was in motion, and it would have been deadly."

He said "there is no doubt that American lives were saved" as a result of the investigation, adding that the case is "further evidence that al Qaeda continues to plan attacks on the United States."

Federal officials have said the conspiracy involving Zazi represents the most serious terrorism plot since 9/11, and the investigation is intense and ongoing.

Since Zazi's arrest last year, two of his acquaintances have been indicted in the case, as well as Zazi's father and uncle.
Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, initially was charged with lying to investigators, but in January a federal grand jury in New York charged him with conspiracy to obstruct justice by helping to discard bomb-making chemicals when he learned of the government's investigation.

Najibullah Zazi's uncle, Naqib Jaji, was indicted on a single felony charge and was arraigned in a sealed proceeding in Brooklyn, New York, in January. The charge wasn't specified, but a source said the uncle participated in the attempt to dispose of evidence.

So our prosecution of Zazi led to other terrorists being discovered and arrested? Hmmm... got anything to say, Nelson?

Ask A Stupid Question...

2010-02-19T13:07:00.002-05:00

In the wake of an incident where pranksters signed Adolf Hitler's name on the conservative Five Miles Away From Mount Vernon Statement, the Christian Science Monitor asks:

Is the Internet too free?

They actually wrote that.

Yes, CSM, the Internet is too free. Let's just go full-China and censor everything you don't like because a few pranksters got a hold of an online petition and you're fucking embarrassed for the petitioners. Schmucks.

Bonus: the article contains this clunker of a line:

One hopes that in 1789, when anonymity was a little harder to come by in a live constitutional assembly, Americans were more polite to one another – or at least, more respectful.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... gasping for air... can't breathe... laughing too hard... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Seriously, has whoever wrote this POS article ever read the kinds of shit the founders said about each other? Or hell, has she (I'm assuming "Tracy Samuelson" is a woman here) ever heard of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton?

Well, for Ms. Samuelson's benefit, I'll post this:

Ackerman on Austin

2010-02-19T12:54:00.002-05:00

I have little or nothing to say about the attack in Austin, other than that I have no idea why the crazies have all come out to play recently. There are lots of responses on the Internet. Go read those.

But make sure you read Spencer Ackerman's brilliant take:

We can’t just play defense in this fight. What Yglesias fails to understand is that the ideology Stack subscribed to is the problem. All across the country are sleeper cells preaching hatred of the tax code, gathering in public to denounce the results of a democratic election and sow the seeds of sectarian violence. They even have a major television network sympathetic to their sick agenda. The threat is there for all to see.

The proper response is to go on offense. Intelligence is crucial to anticipatory self-defense, so we must authorize the use of enhanced interrogation methods to break their determined resistance. Similarly, we need to authorize lawful methods of widespread data collection, known as the Teabagger Surveillance Program, to enable us to gather the dots necessary for putting together the puzzles of future attacks. Working with our partner intelligence agencies overseas, we will rely on humane but tough methods employed by our partner agencies in more appropriate legal environments. The gloves are off.

And it gets better.

You Keep Using That Word

2010-02-18T13:05:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, the comedy writes itself. For this edition of Amateur Hour, we'll turn it over to former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell:

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christian programmatic pogrom. What is a “pogrom” it’s the word [sic] that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now.

Because not bowing to the Christian theocratic agenda is the equivalent of slaughtering thousands of innocent Jews and driving the rest from their homes. What amuses me is that he actually gives a nod to the historical context of his word even while making a ridiculous comparison to a completely dissimilar event.

And the things that constitute the "anti-Christian programmatic pogrom"? Why, the nominations of Dawn Johnsen and Chai Feldblum to the OLC and EEOC respectively, of course! Fun twist on this story: Feldblum is Jewish. So not only is Blackwell completely abusing the word "pogrom," he's doing so while accusing a Jew as being part of its perpetration.

The Strippermobile?

2010-02-16T15:34:00.002-05:00

Life in Tampa just got a little more interesting.

Your Local News

2010-02-16T12:40:00.003-05:00

From just down Highway 1 in Apex comes this bizarre story about a teacher who is now threatened with firing after complaining about and mocking her students on Facebook. The idea that this is a firing offense is ridiculous on its face - she's surely not the first middle-school teacher to complain about or make fun of her students. While doing so publicly is probably worthy of reprimand, expecting a teacher not to do so on pain of unemployment in this day and age is pure foolishness.

But what makes the story truly interesting is why she was complaining:

Parents said the situation escalated after a student put a postcard of Jesus on Hussain's desk that the teacher threw in the trash. Parents also said [the teacher, Melissa] Hussain sent to the office students who, during a lesson about evolution, asked about the role of God in creation.

On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing "Jesus Loves Me." She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.

(snip)

The flash point for the comments came after the Bible was left on Hussain's desk in December. The Bible was accompanied by an anonymous card, which, according to Hussain, said "Merry Christmas" with Christ underlined and bolded. She said there was no love shown in giving her the Bible.

"I can't believe the cruelty and ignorance of people sometimes," Hussain wrote on her Facebook page.

Hussain also said she wouldn't let the Bible incident "go unpunished."

It appears that the students were proselytizing Ms. Hussain, and that she reacted badly to it. There are a few questions here:

1) Is it appropriate for students to attempt to proselytize their teacher?

2) Where is the line between proselytizing and harassment?

The former is the easier question to answer, though it's hardly clear-cut. I've written previously about the centrality of "going and making disciples" to Christianity as regards Brit Hume's attempts to convert Tiger Woods via newscast. Clearly a teacher proselytizing students would be inappropriate due to the power differential, and clearly a school administrator trying to proselytize a teacher would be unacceptable for the same reason. Since parents have influence over school administration and thus have some perceived authority over teachers, parents proselytizing teachers would make me uncomfortable. But students? Unless the students complained to the administrators about their witnessing efforts being rebuffed, and unless the students complained to their parents who in turn brought it up with administrators, I don't think intimidation by power differential is really in play here. I have no reason to believe that parents or administrators participated in pressuring the teacher to accept Christianity - rather, it seems that students were clearly taking the lead here. So while trying to convert your teacher might be unwise (of course, who expected wisdom out of middle schoolers?), it's hardly inappropriate, and I can't get too mad about it in principle.

The second question is a tough one. Did the students' behavior cross the line from proselytizing - which I believe is acceptable in principle - to harassment? I believe that it did, for a couple of reasons. First, the students conducted their activities in an oblique, anonymous manner. They made no attempt to engage Ms. Hussain directly - rather, they left little "you should convert" hints. Such anonymous hints are not witnessing because they do not make people engage and confront Christianity - rather, their intent is to make someone feel shame for not being Christian, which is harassment. Second, instead of respecting Ms. Hussain's desire not to be witnessed to, they instead escalated the situation and redoubled their efforts. That's clearly harassment. Third, we have to take Ms. Hussain's claims that the students were spreading malicious "Jesus-hater" rumors seriously - if this was, indeed, occurring, it reveals that the students were not trying to save Ms. Hussain's soul but rather to enforce conformity upon a non-conforming member of the community, and were thus harassing and not proselytizing.

Had the students in question merely approached Ms. Hussain and proselytized her respectfully and directly, her reactions would be an extreme overreaction, and she would indeed deserve disciplinary action for that. But that's not what's going on here - Ms. Hussain reacted like one would expect a young, relatively inexperienced teacher to react when faced with harassment by her middle-school charges.

Tangentially related song that I just wanted to post because it's awesome:

Criminal Approach to Terror Vindicated

2010-02-15T14:21:00.002-05:00

Remember all those breathless accusations that Obama was endangering Americans by giving Captain Underpants a criminal trial? That we were sacrificing valuable intelligence by letting him "lawyer up," as conservatives so enjoy saying?

Well, a report by Eli Lake, quoted here by Steve Benen, demonstrates that it's all bullshit.

As it turns out, the fact that we're putting Captain Underpants through the judicial system encouraged his family to get involved, and they've helped get useful information out of Abdulmutallab that can be use to fight terrorist networks overseas. And if Abdulmutallab had been labeled an "enemy combatant" and thrown in "indefinite detention," none of that would have happened.

I'll allow the Hives to do my gloating for me.

The Un-Wisdom of Crowds

2010-02-15T11:55:00.002-05:00

Polls demonstrating the stupidity of most people aren't anything new, but sometimes you see a poll that just makes you question whether this whole "democracy" thing is all it's cracked up to be. This British poll showing that a majority of women believe that women should take responsibility for being raped is one such poll.

Now there are huge issues with this poll. One, it's an online survey, so it's probably somewhat unscientific. Two, the BBC article didn't give full crosstabs, so we're left with their interpretation of the numbers and have little way of finding out the actual questions. But even accounting for those factors, it's still disturbing that a large percentage of women would believe that it's the rape victim's fault that they were raped. In other words, a significant portion of the online population believes that a woman loses her right to say no when she either a) gets into bed with someone or b) dresses provocatively.

It ought to go without saying that a woman has the right to say no whenever she wants to, whether she's (mostly) fully clothed or in bed with someone or making out with someone or whatever... but apparently it doesn't for some people.

In other news...

Via Yorkshire at CSPT, there's an interesting new study out questioning the accuracy of weather stations' temperature readings as they pertain to global warming. The idea is that the weather stations can be subject to urban heat island effects that would distort the numbers. (Or they could have just plain been moved in order to get more desirable data - I seem to recall that this was the case in San Francisco, which moved its weather station to the warm Mission District so as to minimize the number of days when SF was forced to report "60 and foggy" in the middle of summer. That's an extreme case that owes its existence to SF's bizarre geography, but you get the idea.)

The evidence for global warming goes well beyond temperature readings, of course - the ice caps are still melting, most glaciers are still retreating, and sea levels are still rising. Even this year's weird winter weather has been caused by an exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean surface temperatures that may even dwarf past El Ninos (El Nino, recall, is the term given the warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean every few years, which causes a shift in winter weather to the south - explaining why Mississippi is getting snowed on while Vancouver is not). The study merely points out that temperature records alone aren't a reliable indicator of global climate change. To me, it calls into question the projection of the severity of the warming effect, not necessarily the existence of the effect itself. Will the earth really warm by 5 degrees C in the next few decades?

None of this makes the pursuit of alternative energy sources a bad idea - the reasons for alternative energy go well beyond global warming.

Treason, Five Dollars

2010-02-10T10:30:00.002-05:00

So, are you seeking to rebel against the United States Government? Want to take the place over? Better head to Columbia, SC and fill out a registration form first:

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

By "subversive organization," the law means "every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."

This would be hilarious if it didn't sound so McCarthyish. What, exactly, does "controlling" the government of the United States entail? Isn't that what political parties do? I understand the law's intent, but one wonders how easily it might be misinterpreted.

(Via Brayton)

Why are conservatives so insufferably whiny?

2010-02-09T10:45:00.002-05:00

Someone should call up Gerard Alexander and ask if he wants a little cheese with his whine. The poor dear, he doesn't like it when liberals act like they're right and conservatives are wrong. Gosh, you kinda feel sorry for him, always being wrong all the time and then getting called on it.

This is me being condescending, by the way. Just in case your tiny conservative brain didn't process that.

One wonders if Mr. Alexander has ever listened to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. They've done pretty much anything he accuses liberals of doing, but apparently, Mr. Alexander thinks that they're right and therefore not "condescending" at all. Anyway, let's look at Mr. Alexander's "critique" of liberal condescension and see what we can see:

But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Wait, wait, wait, you're saying that liberals think that they're using logic to reach a conclusion, and that people who don't reach that conclusion must be using faulty logic? Good heavens, what would happen if we all tried to use logic to come to conclusions? Why, the world would end! I assume, by Alexander's association of logic and reason with "condescension," that he thinks conservatives don't use logic then?

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Pardon me, but is any of this false? Right-wing politics in the '50s and '60s did, in fact, make political hay out of paranoia and intolerance, or do I really need to remind you of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society? To a right-winger, the world really was made up of a Manichean "good" and "evil" - and still is, really, as anyone who follows modern conservative thought could tell you. Conservatives shouldn't be insulted by factual portrayals of their positions. Rather, if conservatives think that the world is split into clear "good" and "evil" camps, they ought to own it rather than call such a description condescending. And if conservatives don't believe that, they should tell us why that's wrong, but remember - being wrong isn't the same as being condescending.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

Of course, when liberals win elections, it's because ACORN stole it for them. Or because Obama voters are illiterate.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution.

OK, this is a good point. Frank's book doesn't take social issues seriously, and so it is kind of condescending. Dean's comment isn't, though - it's acknowledging a fact. Southern white voters tend to care more about social issues than about asking the government to help them out. But it's the Democrats' job to convince these voters that Democratic policies can help them, and that liberal social policies won't hurt them at all. Doing this isn't condescending - it's good politics, just like Republicans trying to convince the same voters of the opposite. In fact, it's the entire friggin' point of politics.

In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Again, is there anything here that's false? Nixon and other Republicans did use racism to win elections - no less a conservative leader than former RNC chair Ken Mehlman has said as much. And anyone familiar with Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad can say that racial politics survived at least into the '90s. Of course, it's a little rich to say that liberals are condescending when they say conservatives used to be racist when conservatives are accusing Obama of the same damn thing.

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs -- including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are "divorced from reality" and that the results show why "it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country." His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, "Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?"

I have my own issues about that poll. But let's put ourselves in Markos' shoes and take the poll at its word here. You're criticizing him for saying that a good number of Republicans are divorced from reality when he's discussing a poll that shows that significant numbers of Republicans think he wasn't born in the US, that ACORN stole the 2008 election, and that he wants the terrorists to win? Those positions are objectively and demonstrably false. The act of holding beliefs that are objectively untrue is the very definition of being divorced from reality. Criticize the poll, but don't call it condescending. Call it a poorly constructed poll.

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant -- they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

This is, perhaps, the most telling part of Alexander's column. According to him, it's condescending to tell someone they're wrong. Does Alexander think that all criticism is condescension? Well, it's not. It's criticism. I don't accuse you of condescension when you tell me my beliefs are wrong. Disagreement and criticism is healthy in a political debate - hell, that's what makes it a debate!

Alexander goes on to criticize Jon Stewart, which is equally telling. Stewart serves two roles - calling bullshit, and making fun of people. Is making fun of people condescending? Perhaps, but it's hardly toxic to our political debate. Indeed, when Stewart makes fun of conservative viewpoints he's generally good about including in those jokes why, exactly, Stewart finds those positions worthy of derision. One wonders why conservatives, instead of complaining, don't try to give as good as they get. And conservatives call us humorless? Puh-leez.

Alexander goes on to talk about how previously marginalized conservative ideas turned out to be good ideas, to which I might add previously marginalized liberal ideas like racial equality and a 40-hour work week. But see, we liberals criticize ideas because we think that they're wrong. Conservatives do the same thing, too. It's called the political debate. Sometimes it gets a little unsubstantive, and sometimes - yes - it starts to seem condescending. But we condescend because we think you're wrong. Guess what, Mr. Alexander? So do you. What you call "condescension" is really criticism, and when you blame liberals, you really ought to be blaming yourself for having such a thin skin.

Anyway. If it's real, honest-to-God pointless condescension you seek, Mr. Alexander, just read the first two paragraphs of this post. Otherwise, allow for the fact that people are allowed to tell you that you're wrong and make fun of you, and that this is okay and natural and part of a healthy society. And that when you accuse liberals of something, chances are conservatives are just as guilty of it.

Do It for the Children

2010-02-03T13:53:00.003-05:00

Those of you who know me know that I've been involved for the past year or so with a group called Historic Green, which does some historic preservation/green building work to help restore the Lower 9th Ward area of New Orleans post-Katrina. This year we're doing a lot of interesting projects, but the one I'm working on is some playground restoration. We're repairing some of the play structure and hoping to add ground cover and solar-powered lighting to the playground this year. We're eligible for a $5000 grant from the Brighter Planet foundation, but we need your votes to get it.

So click here, register and vote. You can vote three times. As they say in Chicago, vote early and often!

Something Smells Funny

2010-02-03T12:37:00.003-05:00

A lot has been made on the blogosphere and Twitterverse recently about a Research 2000 poll commissioned by Big Orange that polls registered, self-identified Republicans and finds that they're, well, batshit insane. Some of the poll highlights:

39% believe Obama should be impeached; 29% are not sure.

Only 42% believe Obama was born in the U.S.

21% believe ACORN stole the 2008 election; a whopping 55% are "not sure."

Only 8% - that's eight percent - believe that gay and lesbian people should be allowed to teach in the public schools. 19% were not sure; 73% said no.

That's some serious crazy... but color me skeptical. Let's take a look at the "don't ask, don't tell" question, since that's in the news nowadays. The R2K poll has Republican support for allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military at a mere 26%, with 19% not sure and 55% opposed. Problem is, there's a Gallup poll from June that asks the exact same question. The result? Support for allowing openly gay soldiers is at 58% - 32 points higher than in the R2K poll. Even if we account for the fact that Gallup pushes fence-sitters, and we place all those fence-sitters in with the open-service supporters, we get 45% support - 13 points less than Gallup's number, still nothing to sneeze at. What's more, the questions asked were semantically equivalent. Something, somewhere, is horribly wrong.

There are a couple of options. One is that support for gays in the military has tanked between June and now. I find that highly unlikely - the Gallup poll had a trend among Republicans of +6 over the past four years, and even during the recent debate on the subject top military brass - who carry a lot of weight with Republicans - have been almost unanimous in supporting repeal of the DADT policy.

Another is that R2K's poll oversampled cranky old people, which it did - 37% of R2K's sample were over 65. R2K gave us crosstabs by age group, though, and the 18-29-year-olds sampled by R2K gave their support at 31% with 22% fence-sitting - that's 53% maximum support for open service. That 53% number is still below Gallup's number for all Republicans, and 18-29s are among the most likely groups to support allowing LGBT folk to serve openly.

One intriguing option, though, is that questions asked previously by R2K could have triggered a more conservative frame of mind in many respondents. R2K asked their question after they asked several other questions about radical conservative beliefs, including the ACORN question, whether Obama is a socialist or a U.S. citizen, etc. After being asked all these questions, it's easy to imagine that someone would start automatically giving the "conservative" position whether or not they actually agree with that opinion independently. They're not thinking "what do I think" anymore - on a subconscious level, they're thinking, "I'm a conservative, what do conservatives think?" It's a cognitive shortcut that's easy to trigger, and it might explain the discrepancy between the two polls.

Give These People Hugs

2010-02-03T08:40:00.004-05:00

Aww, poor little Richypoo Cohen needs a hug:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

While we're at it, let's give little Susie Collins a hug too. She looks very, very frightened. Maybe she wants a cookie and some ice cream.

And while we're giving hugs, let's not leave out sweet little Mitchie McConnell:

“This is really dangerous nonsense,” McConnell said of the Obama administration’s policies regarding treatment of alleged terrorists. “We have a way to do it, John,” McConnell told CNN’s John King. “Interrogate them. Detain them and try them in military commissions offshore at Guantanamo from which no one has ever escaped.”

Aww, the poor dears! They're so scared of a relatively minor threat that they're whining about the Constitution applying to everyone! Let's give them all cookies and milk and maybe they'll calm down. There, there, little boys and girls, it's gonna be okay.

Goddamn, I wish my country's leaders would quit acting like they have the emotional maturity of a toddler. The Constitution is what it is. You can't make it optional just because you're a little scared. Grow up, people.

Update: Little Susiepoo is so so so scared that we're not going to get good intelligence out of Captain Underpants since he's in the criminal justice system. There there, little Susiepoo, have a cupcake and some reassurance from the WaPo that we're gathering useful intel. Sleep well!

Couple of Quick Notes

2010-01-28T13:51:00.003-05:00

- Lest you think Mike Bloomberg is a pioneer in banning incredibly stupid things, New York - as well as much of the country - once banned pinball. Yes, pinball. In fact, pinball was illegal in much of the country through the '70s, and it was (technically) illegal for kids in Nashville, TN to play pinball until 2004. Kinda makes you look at Tommy a hell of a lot differently, huh?

- Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, whose First Amendment credentials are generally beyond reproach, criticizes the Citizens United decision. His argument is that the case compares to Rust v. Sullivan, the 1991 case that allowed the government to restrict doctors who receive government funds from discussing abortion. Corporations receive a government benefit in reduced legal liability for shareholders - therefore they are subject to government regulations on speech. And remember my post on the comparison between Morse and Citizens United? Lessig also points out the hypocrisy between the decisions in Rust and Citizens United, noting that Court conservatives were okay with restricting speech they didn't like and allowing speech they considered benign.

That might be worth noting for conservatives - if you support Citizens United, it's awful tough to continue to support either Rust or Morse without trying to claim that corporations actually have more free speech rights than individuals...

- I'm in the process of re-uploading the images for the last two posts. Stay tuned. Anyone know how to save an Excel chart as a JPG?

At Dave's Request

2010-01-27T15:11:00.002-05:00

In the comments of the last post, Dave wanted me to crunch some numbers on a proxy for social conservatism. I chose two measures - percentage of a state's residents that attend church, and percentage of a state's vote for McCain in 2008. Neither have much of an effect:

Both correlations are positive, but both trendlines are almost horizontal and both correlation factors are extremely low, especially the McCain one. So I doubt that a state's social conservatism/liberalism has much of an effect on teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy Rate Kerfuffle

2010-01-27T11:32:00.005-05:00

Seems the latest Guttmacher Institute report on teen pregnancy has gotten the pundit world in a bit of a tizzy. Teen pregnancies showed an increase in 2006 after a solid decade and a half decline, and the finger pointing is beginning. As this article points out, much of the battle rages over abstinence-only education, and whether federal funding for it is a good idea. Opponents say that abstinence-only education leaves teenagers unprepared for sex, which leads to pregnancies when it inevitably happens. Supporters say that the data support an increase in abstinence-only education to get teenagers to stop having sex (and thus stop getting pregnant).

What I didn't see was anyone who actually looked at the data to see if there was any correlation. So I did. I compared Guttmacher's numbers for pregnancy among 15-19-year-olds to SIECUS' numbers for abstinence-only education funding, divided by the number of pupils in each state's public school system. I threw out DC's outlier numbers. The results (standard correlation-causation caveats apply):

The data show a slight - very slight - positive correlation between abstinence-only funding per pupil and teen pregnancy rate. That would seem to support the case of abstinence-only opponents. It's hard to read much out of such a low correlation number, but let's compare a state's teen pregnancy rate to its median income level - poverty is often cited as a cause of teen pregnancy - and see what we get:

That's the negative correlation we would expect, but it's an even worse correlation.

So what can we conclude? First, we can discard the idea of poverty leading to teen pregnancy, at least as a primary factor. Abstinence-only education is more of a factor, though the low correlation number would suggest that there are either a) other things that are more of a factor or b) a whole host of things that affect teen-pregnancy rates that I didn't graph.

Here's a few more fun tidbits of data:

- The national average for abstinence-only education funding per pupil is $3.73. Only two states in the bottom 15 of teen pregnancy rates - Nebraska (9th lowest) and South Dakota (11th lowest) - spend more than this on abstinence-only education.

- The five states with the lowest rates - New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, and North Dakota - all spend less than a dollar per pupil on abstinence-only.

- Seven states - Vermont, Minnesota, Idaho (!), Montana, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Delaware - spend no money on abstinence-only education. The first four states on that list are all in the bottom 15. Delaware has the 6th highest rate - Rhode Island and Wyoming are firmly middle-of-the-pack.

- The state that spends the most on abstinence-only, South Dakota, has the 11th lowest teen pregnancy rate. The state that spends the second-most, Mississippi, has the 5th highest.

What's truly weird is that culture doesn't appear to play any role in teen pregnancy either. Generally socially conservative states appear on both sides of the teen pregnancy spectrum, as do generally socially liberal states. (Southern states do appear to concentrate near the top though - Virginia has the lowest rate among Southern states, and it's 20th lowest.)

If there's a conclusion to be drawn here, it's that abstinence-only education has been a factor - but hardly the only factor, or even the most important one - in increasing teen pregnancy rates. Comprehensive sex education can decrease teen pregnancy rates somewhat, but it isn't the cure-all for pregnancy rates that supporters often portray it as. But most importantly, teen pregnancy is a phenomenon whose many causes are not well understood - well, except for the direct cause, of course.

The other option, of course, is that the two are so lightly correlated that there can be no causative link, and that the two are independent phenomena. From looking at these data, there's a good argument to be made that the level of sex education doesn't really affect whether or not teens get pregnant. Either way, though, abstinence-only advocates like to push their programs as a cure for teen pregnancy. We can conclude that that's clearly not the case - as our data show, there's no possibility that abstinence-only education funding could decrease teen pregnancy rates.

A Bad Excuse for Murder

2010-01-27T08:44:00.003-05:00

Ben, didn't you write a paper about this back in law school?

Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

The danger here, as I see it, is that we're not dealing with an actual defined "enemy" here. We're dealing with people who could just as easily be tried in the U.S. for actual crimes. We're too busy thinking about al-Qaeda nutbags as "soldiers" when in reality they're just standard-issue thugs that we ought to treat as such. I've argued before that the difference between al-Qaeda and the Mafia is merely one of degree (though the Mafia tends to be far more well-organized). I don't get why we need to create a whole new legal framework that involves presidentially-ordered killings and indefinite detention when the trial-by-jury one we already have works just fine.

And in fact, creating this new legal framework has only served to confuse the issue of terrorism and the issue of POWs from Afghanistan and Iraq (people who were caught while engaging in hostilities against American troops). A legal framework already exists to deal with both situations - the criminal justice system for terrorists and the Geneva Conventions for POWs. I can think of no person detained by the U.S. that could not be placed in either. Why did we need to create a new one and lump terrorists and POWs all together?

Tweedledee and Tweedledum Meet the Constitution

2010-01-23T11:43:00.003-05:00

The Supreme Court was recently asked to decide a free speech case. The speech in question was corrupting and often misleading. If it overturned the government's law and allowed the speech, many people could be led astray by similar speech. It would have a corrupting effect on our culture and our government.

I'm referring to the Citizens United v. FEC case that recently overturned the McCain-Feingold restrictions on corporate and union political contributions, of course. But I could just as easily have been referring to Morse v. Frederick, the 2006 case where the Court allowed an Alaska school to suspend a student for unfurling a "Bong Hits for Jesus" banner at a non-school-related event.

As someone who believes in the First Amendment, I support the former decision and oppose the latter. I do not believe the "compelling state interest" doctrine has any place in determining whether the government should respect enumerated rights. (There is a place for "compelling state interest" in unenumerated rights, but even there it should be restricted heavily. And don't get me started on the intellectually bankrupt "rational basis" test.) The "compelling state interest" argument essentially gives the right to restrict speech, imprison people without cause, and otherwise violate Constitutional rights to any government official with a slick lawyer capable of convincing five justices that their "interest" is "compelling." It's what leads to the Fourth Amendment being eroded in the age of terrorism. It's why Morse v. Frederick exists in the "war on drugs" era.

In his defense of Citizens United, Greenwald (not exactly a corporatist conservative) writes:

The "rule of law," however, means that if the Constitution or other laws bar X, then X is not allowed regardless of how many good outcomes can be achieved by X. That was true for the "crisis" of Terrorism, and it's just as true for the crisis of corporate influence over our political process. Whatever solutions are to be found for either problem, they cannot be ones that the Constitution explicitly prohibits. That's what "the rule of law" means.

The famous quotes from Voltaire ("I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it") and Mencken (the whole "defense of scoundrels" thing) also apply. But what's clear to me is that most people - both liberal and conservative - will gladly abandon constitutionalism when they're scared of something. Conservatives are afraid of terrorism, so they'll support lawless detention policies that are clearly unconstitutional. Conservatives and some liberals are afraid of drugs, so we get Morse. Liberals and moderates are afraid of corporate influence in elections, so we got, for a time, McCain-Feingold (though liberals are also free-speech fans, so as it turns out the Citizens United decision has the support of 62% of Democrats - it's independents that are lukewarm about the decision).

The idea that a desired legislative outcome is constitutional (and an undesirable one is unconstitutional) is situational constitutionalism, and while common citizens only passingly versed in constitutional law would be expected to confuse the two, one would expect experienced jurists like the Supreme Court justices to resist that temptation. But as it turns out, that's not the case. Of the eight justices who ruled in both Morse and Citizens United, seven switched sides - this, despite the fact that the two cases ruled on essentially the same constitutional question*. The eighth, Stephen Breyer, was with the bad guys on both cases (though his concurrence in Morse was partial). The conservatives hate drugs and like corporations, and voted like it. The liberals are okay with drugs and hate corporations, and voted like it. It's pretty clear to me that the constitutional justification for their rulings came after their minds had been made up.

Also worth a read: Brayton discusses why Citizens United doesn't really change anything.

*Scalia, Kennedy, and Stevens also ruled in 1989's Texas v. Johnson, which overturned a Texas law against flag-burning and is thus addressing this same question. The former two sided with free speech, while the latter opposed it.

Banditos Theorem Proven Yet Again

2010-01-21T13:32:00.002-05:00

From Balko's Twitter feed comes this fun little item, where Oregon Democrats attempted to sneak this little gem into a tax law that was likely going to be defeated by the voters:

A measure referred to the people by referendum petition may not be adopted unless it receives an affirmative majority of the total votes cast on the measure rejecting the measure. For purposes of this subsection, a measure is considered adopted if it is rejected by the people.

The perfect confluence of cynicism and stupidity. Although really, I just wanted an excuse to post this song, linked because I can't embed.

Never Been One to Take My Chances

2010-01-21T11:35:00.003-05:00

Of all the varying analyses of the Massachusetts special election that ended in victory for Republican Scott Brown, Conor Friersdorf's is by far the best:

It is particularly amusing to see folks call the outcome stunning in one breath and aver in the next that they can explain why it happened mere hours after the fact, without any new data save the result. This is especially grating when it’s so obvious that the election turned on all the issues that were most important to me, that the outcome so clearly vindicates my world view, and that the wisest course in light of the results is for both parties to do exactly what I’ve been advocating for all along.

Only a partisan hack could deny that all aspects of this election bolstering my analysis happened to be most significant, whereas factors that cut against my thesis were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome. Let this be a lesson to my political and ideological opponents in future contested elections — insofar as it is advantages my policy preferences, what happened in Massachusetts is a harbinger of things to come in the 2010 midterms, and even in 2012. Meanwhile all precedents seemingly at odds with my national political proclivities were unique, and should be ignored.

Commenter ken b. responded:

What an ignorant post. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that my views were vindicated, while yours were completely demolished.

Funny, but there's a point here. Elections are capricious things that turn on any number of issues, big and small, local and national. Governing majorities aren't going to last forever, especially not with an electorate as split down the middle as ours. Treating a majority as if it had any permanence is stupid - remember that "permanent Republican majority" of DeLay's? - and that makes selling yourself out to hold on to power absolutely foolish, because your time out of power will come whether you want it to or not, and whatever machinations you might see fit to pull will eventually be for naught. Furthermore, once you're on top there's only one place to go. Procrastinating on your legislative agenda in order to gain political advantage just doesn't work.

One party in Washington understands this. The Republicans have been admirable in sticking to their guns even when it cost them elections. The Democrats have been selling themselves out in a futile attempt to hold on to power, and the liberal wing of the party has basically let itself be swamped. We haven't seen accountability and the rule of law restored to our terrorism policy, the health care bill basically turned into corporate welfare once the public option was dropped, and there has been no movement on civil rights for LGBT folks at all. Instead, the Democrats have lived in fear of Republican attacks that they think might take away their power.

And you know what? They're right. Those Republican attacks might well succeed. But guess what? That's politics for you. On top one year, on the bottom the next. If you can't stand up to attacks from the other side and do what you want to do, why the hell are you in this business? If there's one thing to be learned from the Massachusetts special election, it's that there's no reward in changing who you are. You'll win some, you'll lose some, so if you're going to go down anyway you might as well go down swinging.

One final thing. A lot of conservadems and Republicans are saying that "the Left" is somehow responsible for this election defeat. Riiiight. I can think of no occasion during this presidency when "the Left" has gotten something significant that it wanted. Obama has ignored or antagonized "the Left" on terrorism policy, the war in Afghanistan, economic policy, gay rights, and health care. Sullivan writes:

But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on.

Grouse about "the Left" all you want, but not only can I not think of a significant leftist victory under Obama, I can't think a significant leftist victory during my lifetime (I was born in 1981). If you think "the Left" has any power in Washington, you're plain nuts.

Anyway, the tenor of this post reminded me of this song. There are literally no good videos for it (odd considering it's not all that obscure), so here it is set to some random trippy movie scenes:

Posts on Citizens United and the Gitmo murders to come. Stay tuned.

Earthquake Donations

2010-01-13T12:54:00.005-05:00

For those of you who want to help Haitians deal with the horrifying earthquake that happened there yesterday, and whose death toll is estimated by some to be in the hundreds of thousands, here's a few links:

UNICEF

Doctors Without Borders

Red Cross - though apparently you can donate via text message by texting HAITI to 90999.

That'll get a list started. Comment if you know of any other reputable organizations helping the relief efforts down there.

Update: Partners in Health's relief efforts.

Also try Hope for Haiti

Update II Beth points out that Raleighites can drop items at Beleza in Cameron Village - they'll channel their aid through the United Methodist Church, which apparently has a pretty good operation going.

Also, the Union for Reform Judaism has a donation site here. It claims to be overhead-free, which is a plus, though I don't think URJ has much of an established operation there right now.

Bad Law! Bad!

2010-01-12T14:24:00.003-05:00

There are some stupid laws out there. Most of them are of the "it's illegal to carry an open umbrella in Hot Springs" or "it's illegal to have sex with your socks on in Virginia" variety - ridiculous, but generally harmless. After all, who's going to enforce those laws?

Then there are laws like this. Apparently in DC, New York, and San Francisco, if you're a woman and you're carrying three or more condoms, you'll be thrown in jail for prostitution.

Now forget whether or not you think prostitution should be illegal. Most people do, and that's fine. Even so, the stupidity involved here is all but impossible to fathom. Do they think that only prostitutes go out thinking they might get laid that night? Three condoms is a pretty good number to have on you, and while one would expect most men to have condoms on them when they go out, it's generally foolish to rely on others for that sort of thing. Most women who carry condoms on them when they go out aren't prostitutes - they're responsible adults.

So what are the effects of this law? One is to hassle sexually active young women and reinforce goofy gender norms - one can't help but note that men can presumably carry an entire case of condoms around and not be arrested for solicitation. The second is to encourage unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs - after all, you're not going to stop people from having sex (paid or unpaid) just by outlawing excessive condom carrying. Third is that the burden of the DC law at least is going to fall mostly on poor women. The DC law can only be enforced within "Prostitution Free Zones," which are delineated by the DC police. The last one was in Near Northeast, which, while gentrifying, is mostly a working-class neighborhood. Any chance one of these gets declared in Georgetown or Cleveland Park? No. So while middle-class and wealthy women can go out responsibly in Georgetown with no fear of police harassment, working-class women in an arbitrarily defined "Prostitution-Free Zone" in a poor neighborhood cannot.

Anyway, it's stupid, and proof that people who make laws often do so out of panic. There's no way this policy was well-thought-out before it was passed.

Update: Apparently New York City, despite their anti-condom law, passes out free official condoms. The foolishness of lawmakers never ceases to amaze.

Nostalgia and Munroe's Law

2010-01-08T11:10:00.002-05:00

The Daily Show's incomparable John Oliver explores some of the nostalgia coming from conservatives:

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Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Even I find myself nostalgic for the '90s sometimes (which I associate with my youth more than the '80s, despite having been born in 1981). In the back of my mind I realize that tolerance for gay people has increased since then, violent crime was much higher then, and barriers for women and minorities that existed then are being steadily eroded, not to mention the fact that the Internet has opened up countless entertainment and communication possibilities and has made being an informed citizen easier than ever before... but dude, Nirvana is way better than this Nickelback shit.

I'm not gonna go around like Candide and say that we live in the best of all possible worlds here, of course. I liked politics without all the senseless fearmongering over terrorism. I liked the fact that we weren't involved in two major wars. I liked the balanced budget.

Nostalgia, like all drugs, isn't necessarily bad if used properly. Returning to happy childhood memories can have a great calming effect. But in the end, as I mentioned a few posts ago, when we force government to indulge our childish fantasies we're bound to have a problem. In a way, the Beck clip Oliver shows at the beginning of his segment has a point: when we ask government to return us to some nebulous state that may have existed only in our own imaginations, we're causing more problems than we solve. Sadly, Beck pays no mind to his own warning - by agitating for a larger role for the executive in terrorism issues and government control over private decisions, he's consistently doing exactly what he warns against.

Munroe's Law, based on this comic, states that "more harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did." This is because the idea of societal decline is tied in heavily with nostalgia. If we have some sugar-coated view of the era of our childhood, of course any change from that era is going to look like decline whether or not it's actually bad... so we often oppose beneficial change because, under the influence of nostalgia, we view it as decline. And we often support harmful or interventionist reactionary policies because we view them as reversing decline.

The lesson here, I guess, is to grapple with change on its own terms, and to do that requires us to stop idealizing our childhood eras and applying this idealization to politics. When we accept that some things about the era we grew up in weren't so great, we can start to look at the actual effects of changes and embrace or fight them based on that.

Anyway, I guess this is a long, drawn-out way of saying that I'm nostalgic for the 2006 college football championship game. Why, when I was that age, Mack Brown didn't call a timeout so he could call an ill-conceived shovel pass before halftime...