cut on the bias

A spanking good commentary

I couldn't agree more.

I don't, however, recommend belts.

Israel Kills Suspected Hamas Leader

It's a good start:

An Israeli tank shelled a house in the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, killing a suspected Hamas bombmaker whose work is blamed for the deaths of at least 100 Israelis in suicide bombings.

Now, go kill the rest of them.

Wide-eyed discovery

Denis MacShane, a journalist-turned-British Labour MP, has suddenly discovered what he calls “advocacy journalism”:

Traditionally, we have reporters on news pages and commentators on the op-ed pages. Now we can turn to a news page in many of our papers and find opinion-laden articles that tell us what the journalist thinks, rather than facts and quotes attributed to a named source.

...we now have, in addition to reporting journalists and comment journalists, a new third category – advocacy journalists. They are out not to find truth, but to destroy opponents. The complex nuances of grown-up government are too boring for them. They cannot be bothered to report Commons debates or get on-the-record quotes.

He actually admits it’s not really new, dating back at least to 1997:

We enjoyed advocacy journalism when it hurt John Major.

But, you see, it’s biting back and so he’s aghast:

The advocacy journalists – right and left – are hostile to a Labour government, old or new. Advocacy journalism now predominates in our tabloids and increasingly in our broadsheets...

The application of "spin" has turned back to gouge holes in its Labour creators. But when Alastair Campbell was writing as an advocacy journalist, at least the Conservatives had a phalanx of loyal Tory papers to rely on. Now the once- Labour papers, such as the Daily Mirror, use advocacy journalism to play in the same anti-Labour team as the Mail and Telegraph.

It’s pretty funny that he’s up in arms now that it’s “devouring” Labour. And what’s his solution? Why, a stronger Conservative opposition party:

A moderate, post-Thatcherite Conservative Party would give Labour a political run for its money by filling the news pages with argument and policy...

Does he want this because it’s better for the country to have these debates? Because maybe Conservatives have something to say? No, it’s to draw some of the fire away from Labour. He thinks Conservatives are no threat:

Unlike the broad pro-Euro centrism of the parties of the right in France, Spain and Germany, the hard-right policies of the British Tories render them unelectable.

It’s nice to know his primary interest is getting important issues out on the table. I credit him with as much concern about truth and accuracy as I do the one he says sounds the alarm – David Brock.

Nice to know that Denis doesn’t fall victim to advocacy journalism himself.

I'm not saying that advocacy journalism doesn't exist, or that it's a good thing. You know I think media carries its biases into its reporting, the question is only to what degree. "Slice 'n dice" journalism under the guise of straight reporting is always inappropriate, whether it's from the right or left slant. But this kind of vacuous discovery and whining on the part of a former journalist and current politician is just, well, hysterically funny.

That's my silence!

You have to wonder if people sit up nights just thinking up this kind of thing. On the other hand, I know a number of musicians I wish would cover these "songs".

In case you're not sure, mocking is in order.

[Link via Ipse Dixit]

UPDATE: CG Hill claims on Dustbury that all silence is not created equal. He seems to know more about this than me. But then, my involvements with silence are uneasy and rarely of long duration.

Of birds and bees and corn and thee

Fred First at Fragments from Floyd (Virginia) shucks the whole ear about procreation and the corn patch.

Now I'm gonna be hinky about eating baby corn.

Bare facts about candidate’s early exposure

From the cut on the bias Cincinnati, OH, bureau chief Dave Menke comes this link about the naked truth behind the early career of a Republican candidate for Kentucky governor.

A personal report

Meryl Yourish had dinner with me last night. Here's the scoop.

(And she's not just joking about the stats.)

Quote of the day

Supreme Court Chief Justice (then Justice) William Rehnquist, dissenting, in Furman vs. Georgia, 1974.

Rehnquist...emphasized the need for judicial self-restraint, and stated that the most expansive reading of the leading constitutional cases did not remotely suggest that the Supreme Court had been granted a roving commission, either by the Founding Fathers or by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, to strike down laws which were based upon notions of policy or morality suddenly found unacceptable by a majority of the Supreme Court.

(Joined by Burger, Ch. J., Blackmun, J., and Powell, J. Furman vs. Georgia is the ruling that struck down the death penalty in 1974.)

Van Houten conclusions

Yesterday I posted a question about whether Leslie Van Houten should be released from prison. I received excellent comments (thank you); obviously on the strength of this jury, Ms. Van Houten would be long dead.

I like to look at this kind of case because it highlights a basic question about our criminal justice system – what is its goal? The judge clearly thought rehabilitation was the point, as did Van Houten’s attorney (of course). The prosecutor (again, of course) thought the point was justice, which in our society typically indicates an eye for an eye mentality, thus resulting in a view that she should stay in prison because of the severity of her crime.

In my judgment, the answer is that, yes, she should stay in prison. It’s true that rehabilitation, in her case, likely succeeded. She probably wouldn’t be a threat to society once she was released; she committed her crimes under the influence of drugs, a compelling personality and (I think) a generalized societal shift in the younger population toward, basically, a teenage angst gone mad. But some crimes are so egregious that no mitigating circumstances (beyond a M’Naughten-like insanity proof) can truly bring the intent-to-harm ratio down sufficiently for release to be appropriate.

That exposes my own belief about the criminal justice system’s correctional goal – it should be focused first on retribution, then on reducing recidivism, then on rehabilitation. Retribution is, I think, a cleaner term for what many call “justice” – society has not just a right but a responsibility to act in the place of victims and relatives to exact payment for a wrong, however imperfectly that system operates in the United States. I think our system operates best, though, when the continuum starts with recidivism reduction/rehabilitation as the goal on the low end of crime – to protect citizens while enriching society with “reformed” people whose positive contributions will likely offset the original harm - with an increasingly retributive goal as the harm of the crime increases. Thus, for “petty” crimes – like marijuana use, shoplifting, vandalism, bar fights where no one is seriously hurt –treatment and various intensities of probation supervision will accomplish society’s goal best. As harm increases – in physical damage to humans, or to property – the level of retribution should increase too, although rehabilitation opportunities should always be available and encouraged. Ultimately, however, I think there is a point where harm is so great that the goal becomes pure retribution. In those cases, the only true right sentence is death.

As Dodd notes, the "legal anomaly” that resulted in Van Houten’s stay of execution has allowed the release of people who have gone on to kill again. The judge quoted – Krug – would likely see this as an acceptable risk in the interests of upholding the law. While I agree with him that generally someone given Van Houten’s current penalty is released a few decades into the sentence (the term is usually “25 to life”, meaning eligibility for parole first occurs 25 years into the sentence), this was not her original penalty and thus I don’t think it goes against the spirit of the law to not just allow but advocate an anomalous parole consideration process. I think keeping her in for the rest of her life does not in any way diminish the fairness of the law – if anything, it supports it.

In an aside, I also think the Christian concept of forgiveness is inappropriately invoked when the death penalty is discussed. Forgiveness is about the hereafter; consequences are about the here and now. Sometimes forgiveness can result in a staying or lessening of consequences, but the two are separate decisions, albeit with forgiveness having a role in decisions about consequences. It is neither unchristian nor immoral to find that society’s responsibility lies with taking the life of someone who has deliberately caused great harm. In fact, I think it is immoral not to.

Why, beyond Van Houten’s case, is this important to discuss? Because we are faced with other youths, repeatedly, who engage in versions of her type of crime – John Walker Lindh and the killers of Susanne and Half Zantop, the two New Hampshire professors, come to mind. The justifications that should keep Van Houten behind bars are the same ones that should send those men to the execution chamber.

Startling morning realization

When someone turns the hot water on in the kitchen, the shower becomes very very cold.

Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Should Leslie Van Houten be released on parole?

In 1969, as the love-children of the 60s lurched their drug-hazed way into the discoed 70s, a group of misfits under the guidance of an evil man with a Messiah complex slaughtered seven people over the course of two balmy California nights. Charles Manson and his band of killers were later sentenced to die for the crimes, which came to be known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. All the sentences were commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in the early 1970s.

Leslie Van Houten was 19 then, and the youngest of those sentenced to die. She is now in her early 50s and was this week denied parole for the 14th time. During the course of her incarceration, she has been a model of rehabilitation – she expresses remorse for the killings, she has earned a college degree, she has been very active in helping other women through various drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. Her psychiatric evaluations, according to a judge, “clearly indicate that she is not a present danger to society and should be found suitable for parole."

Van Houten's lawyer, Christie Webb, says:

…she has shown remorse and has been rehabilitated…

"She was the youngest. She was vulnerable and she was controlled by drugs and clever manipulation," Webb said. "All that LSD changed the chemistry of her brain."

California Superior Court Judge Bob N. Krug:

…strongly admonished the board for flatly turning Van Houten down every time based solely on the crime. Such decisions, he said, ignore Van Houten's accomplishments in prison and turn her life sentence into life without parole, in violation of the law.

But Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay believes it is precisely the right thing:

"This is not a garden-variety murder case and it should not be treated as such," he said before the hearing. "I commend her for her good acts in prison and she appears to be a model prisoner. I think she should spend the rest of her life being a model prisoner. I feel because of what she did, she is not entitled to parole."

So what should happen? She is alive because of a legal anomaly, but the law in California did not then allow for life without parole so her sentence does in truth allow for parole – and in many cases, people with her sentence do eventually get out. If our system is predicated on following laws even when the results are not to our liking, then emotion should not be a factor – there should be some objective measures of “rehabilitated”, which indeed it would appear Van Houten meets. She was not a ringleader, she was very young and under the influence of drugs and a very powerful personality – Manson – which likely limited even what judgment she had. If she is released, it won’t be like you or me – she has a life sentence, which means that even if she’s back in society she will always be answerable to a parole officer for her behavior and movements.

So what do you think? Should she or shouldn’t she be let go? And why or why not?
Naturally, I have my own views. Tell me what you think first, then I’ll tell you what I think, and why, later.

Who has loser legs?

Coulter, or Couric?

Dawson speaks.

Newspapers, NEA biased against school vouchers

Not, of course, that we are surprised. Tony Woodlief does his usual beautiful job of dismantling WaPo and USA Today's bias against school vouchers, and points out the shady tactics of the National Education Association (NEA). Along the way, he explains how - again, we're so surprised - they lie with statistics, or rather the promise of them.

My favorite Woodlief section:

Of course the polling debate is a misleading frame; this is an issue of parental rights. The question is simple: should parents have the right to choose where and by whom their children are educated? It's amazing how liberals who get bent out of shape over the denial of choice in any other sphere of life suddenly forget what the word means when the conversation turns to schools.

Yes, there again is the major source of media and advocacy bias: selective framing. Read Woodlief; always worth your time.

UPDATE: More things to consider: history of the movement (NRO), why it’s good for minorities (NRO), victories and problems (NRO), concerns about government control of the private schools (Ipse Dixit), and the issue of supply and demand (Planet Swank).

NPR link rules change; bloggers had role

NPR has posted new link rules, less restrictive but still not quite on the page with many Internet users, according to Wired - who also has a quote crediting the change in part to bloggers:

In response to furious criticism of its online linking policy, National Public Radio will no longer require webmasters to ask permission to link to NPR.org.

But there are still limits on linking to the nonprofit radio network's site. Links to NPR's site "should not (a) suggest that NPR promotes or endorses any third party's causes, ideas, websites, products or services, or (b) use NPR content for inappropriate commercial purposes," according to a new policy posted on Thursday...

"The blogger community brought it to our attention that this (permission form) was sitting out there," she said, "so thanks to our friends in that group for that." Also, NPR realized that having people ask for permission "was not really in step with reality."

Under these new guidelines, "99.9 percent of the linking that goes on we're acknowledging is OK," Lawhorn said.

But she added that NPR still believes that there can be "inappropriate links" to its site, and that "if our legal department found an incident of linking that was inappropriate to the point of being harmful," NPR would ask them to remove the links.

Examples of such "inappropriate: links include "certain kinds of commercial linking," she said.

Quote of the day

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."

- Hubert Humphrey in a speech before the National Student Association, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 23 August 1965

New research indicates men are jerks; some skeptical

A new study released by The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University includes a special essay on reasons why unmarried men seem intent on staying that way. The basic answer is: Why buy the cow when the milk is free?

The ten reasons why men won’t commit are:

1. They can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past

2. They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying

3. They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks

4. They want to wait until they are older to have children

5. They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises

6. They are waiting for the perfect soul mate and she hasn’t yet appeared

7. They face few social pressures to marry

8. They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children

9. They want to own a house before they get a wife

10. They want to enjoy single life as long as they can

My first reaction was, "Um, duh!" I certainly have my own views about sex, marriage, and the whole man-woman thing, so don't mistake my commentary for approval of the situation. But where's the big news here? And what assumptions underlie that this is a bad thing, in the implied sense that it's an unfair use of women? If a man doesn't lie to or mislead a woman to have sex with her, and it's consensual, then he's not taken advantage. I think sex-as-just-entertainment is a morally bad choice, but it's a bit harsh to be critical of men for buying into it when their partners are right there too. And if a woman moves in with a man and promptly takes on all the household duties of a wife, without commitment, I'm not impressed with him but not very sympathetic to her either. She's being pretty dumb, unless she just likes scrubbing commodes, washing his dirty shorts and fixing his meals as, you know, a pleasurable hobby. What a deal for the man! He's getting sex, clean shorts, good meals and no threats to his money or long-term freedom. At least with a long-term legal contract, you know the other person is likely willing to compromise to make the relationship work. (And yes, the affection and respect should be enough alone. But where's the respect if you're using each other already?)

And the other eight of the top ten reasons are as valid for women postponing marriage as men (well, really, the first one is too).

I'm actually suspicious of the methodology for choosing the men for the focus groups from which this information came; I think the conclusions are too bleak and not reflective of a lot of really good men who do behave more responsibly. When they describe the methodology, it sounds all fancy, but consider:

...we conducted focus group discussions among not-yet-married heterosexual men in four major metropolitan areas: northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The participants, sixty men in all, came from a variety of religious, ethnic and family backgrounds.

These men range in age from 25-33. The majority are employed full-time, with reported annual incomes between $21-$35,000 and above. Most have had some college or hold a baccalaureate degree or better. No one reports ever being married. Three of the men have a child.

What we don't have is a knowledge of how the men were found. Was it a random sample? Was it an ad in the newspaper? Or a snowball sample? A snowball sample is when you tell some people what kind of research subjects you want, and they tell you who they know, and then those people connect you to more people of that type... thus, snowballing. It's a necessary method for some types of research, but comes with inherent biases in the data because you're limited by the people you know and those they know - i.e. you're not likely to get a really representative sample. I suspect - and there's no way to know from their report one way or the other - that this was a snowball sample.

There's a lot of analysis about women, and marriage in general, in the study, much of it in my judgment unsupported conclusions based on data collected for other purposes. As you might suspect by now, I am not impressed. Another example: The authors conclude that because fewer married people say they are "happy" now than those questioned 25 years ago, the authors say marriages are unhappier. Well, no, not necessarily. Maybe the definition of "happy" has changed. We're more likely to equate "happy" with some type of ongoing euphoria than our grandparents were; their happiness was, I think, more a contentedness and acceptance of the mundane with the exciting than an expectation that every breathing moment would be packed with gratification. I'd have to see how the question was framed to be sure, but again I think I'm likely right.

I may go off on this again when I have more time. It's worth reading just for the pleasure of mocking it - Tapped, where I got the link, certainly laid into them. Join the fun.

Expressed bias and fair coverage

Howard Kurtz today has the fascinating story of a Florida journalist who made her biases about a political candidate and about her approach to campaign coverage explicit in an email to a reader, which eventually resulted in her resignation from the newspaper. The politician in question is Republican Katherine Harris, who was one of the major players in Bush’s win of Florida’s electoral college in 2000. Here’s the setup:

The Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune recently ran a 4,400-word, 2 1/2-page spread on Republican congressional candidate Katherine Harris. And when one reader complained that Democratic candidates were getting short shrift, Managing Editor Rosemary Armao responded with a remarkably candid e-mail -- one that wound up costing her her job.

"Katherine Harris is an international figure, like her or not," Armao wrote of the woman who became a central player in the presidential recount in Florida. "She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not. . . . I have no intentions of covering each of the Democratic candidates to the same extent."

Armao added: "I do not intend to vote for Harris. . . . I blame the Democrats for not finding a better candidate . . . and I blame our culture for craving as its public figures, women like Katherine who are very pretty, hard-working and without original ideas that I can find."

...Executive Editor Janet Weaver said...Armao should not have offered a reader her opinion of Harris or predicted the outcome of the race.

"It compromised our impartiality and cast questions on our ability to cover that race," Weaver said. "As journalists, I don't believe we reveal our personal views...”

But Armao defended her choice (partially – she also says she sees the newspaper’s point) with a viewpoint that frequent readers here will recognize as something I agree with in principle:

In the past, Armao said, she has argued in print that it is "ridiculous" to pretend that journalists don't have opinions. "The whole idea is, you have opinions but you do responsible reporting regardless," she said.

So that raises the question – can journalists reveal their biases and still do a fair job?

I think the answer is yes, but I think Armao’s manner of doing so was inappropriate – and so was her decision-making about covering the race. I think the latter decision was much more problematic than her expression of bias because it was clear that she had a commercial bias as well as a partisan bias.

These days my model of expressed bias and fair reporting is actually someone who is not a journalist, but an attorney, and a radical communist at that – Ron Kuby. Those of you not in the New York City area likely have not heard of him, but he is half of talk radio WABC 770’s morning program with Curtis Sliwa (of Guardian Angel fame). He’s an extreme example but I think it makes the point. Kuby is very liberal, economically and socially, and he is not shy about telling the audience precisely what he thinks about any issue. But he also has a sharp legal mind. Whenever a topic arises that involves a legal issue, Kuby will shift gears and give neutral, comprehensive explanations about the facts of the case, the legal machinations involved and the probable legal implications. He usually slips back into the liberal commentary that makes me want to throttle him half the time, but in three years of listening to him regularly I have developed a great respect for his fairness in setting up the cases. And that is what the model would be – journalists and their newspapers having to build a reputation for fairness, with their biases explicit so that readers have an easier time of distinguishing when the bias is coloring the coverage. Readers are smarter and more sophisticated than newspapers often give them credit for, and if this model is commonly used readers would become more conscious consumers of information – a very desirable goal. But that model is threatening to journalists and their preferred mode as “unbiased” or “impartial”, which is on the face of it nearly impossible and in practice rare. Unbiased journalism as a rule is the emperor’s new clothes - everybody claims it exists despite ample proof that it does not.

What about Armao’s situation? Why was it inappropriate? She admitted her bias, isn’t that what I want?

Well, not the way she did it. Apparently her personal views of Harris did not have a negative impact on the evenness of coverage for Harris, although it sounds like Harris has good handlers, so to that extent her opinion doesn’t bother me. The problem I have with Armao is her defense of the quantity of coverage of Harris based on issues external to the situation at hand – Harris is an international figure, so that justifies her receiving a lot more coverage than her opponents, in Armao’s reasoning. What does that say about Armao’s goal? It’s not fair coverage of a race for a political position, because if so she would have been careful to have similar amounts of coverage for other candidates. Her goal is increased readership – selling papers – and thus, her decision was made on a financial basis rather than journalistic fairness. Her venom about Harris is unfortunate – I do think non-columnist journalists need to be more circumspect professionally even in admitting bias – but her open admission that she is giving more coverage to one candidate because the candidate is famous (thus will sell papers) and because she thinks the candidate will win, are worthy of whatever disgust is meted out.

As an aside, this glimpse inside the decision-making process of a newspaper is also illustrative of why campaign finance reform as it is currently structured gives unwarranted and unfair advantage to famous front-runners. Newspapers are not neutral in their coverage; rather, they operate with a bottom line that makes them vulnerable to pandering to readers rather than making fair journalistic decisions. Informed readership makes this more difficult to support.

Armao should have left her job, not because she exposed her political bias but because she used the wrong decision path for choosing how to cover the race. Bias is part of the human condition, and contrary to some views many journalists are in fact human. Acknowledging bias and doing the hard work of developing a reputation for fairness should be the future of journalism – not this protectionist attitude about a lie.

[Link found via Eschaton blog]

Pledge ruling put on hold

The judge who ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional has put his ruling on hold - so it won't be enforced - until the court decides whether to reconsider it.

I like a judge who makes a tough decision and sticks by it. Somehow this is almost worse; however, it does highlight that the 9th Circuit must be basically stupid, which is what I've been seeing around the blogosphere for the last 24 hours.

UPDATE: SatireWire explores early reaction to the original Pledge decision, and may offer insight into today's wussing out.

[Link via furtive explorations]

UPDATE: Spoons says, no story here, move along

Attorney Christopher Kanis (that's Spoons to you) said this in comments, which I wanted to pull out because I think it's important:

Nah, this story is getting misreported. Even if the judge hadn't done anything, it wouldn't have gone into effect for 45 days.

Also, because the government has announced its intention to either file a petition for writ of cert to the USSC, or to seek rehearing en banc from the whole 9th circuit, AND because this is a ruling that would effect hundreds (thousands?) of schools, it is perfectly ordinary and proper for the judge to enter a stay of his order to allow the government to appeal.

This is standard operating procedure, and it would be irresponsible of the judge to have done otherwise. This is not a story.

He even posted this on his own site, so we know it was Chris and not just someone playing him in Comments.

Bill of Ideals

John Hudock at Common Sense and Wonder scores our adherence to the Bill of Rights. He isn't impressed.

Coulter vs Couric - the blogosphere debate

No, not the one you think - the one that really matters:

From Media Minded:

Katie looks 1,000 times better in a short skirt than Ann does.

From Dustbury:

...Ann Coulter — to me, she's simply the flip side of Katie Couric, albeit with nicer legs

Please cast your votes in comments by noon tomorrow; I'll see if I can persuade Dawson to judge (although I can't say he'll be impartial).

Next week: Who looks hotter jogging - George W. Bush or Bill Clinton?

(Will add photo of Clinton jogging when I can find one)

UPDATE: Dawson sends these photos, to help the undecided decide.

UPDATE:

There appeared to be some dissent in the Comments section, as well as significant drooling (I had to put a bucket under my computer before I opened the comments each time), and several people added names to the list (no dice, guys). However, the voting leaned toward Ann Coulter, and that objective judge, Dawson of Dawson Speaks, has made the final determination with annotations:

And the winner is....

Look. I swear that I am being objective here. I'm not going to claim that either of these women have the greatest gams on earth, but my fellow citizens! There really is no contest here, it's all rather simple! On the left (I refer only to the photo positioning, my friends. Politics have played absolutely no role in this court's decision) we have the short, androgynous, Mary Lou Rettonesque Katie Colon, I mean Couric, who, like Yasser Arafat, always appears to need a good hot shower. (It is the lighting? The makeup? What is the deal with that perpetual filmy sheen on Ms Couric?) And on the right, a bonafide sex-goddess who has caught the eye of men as diverse as JFK Jr. and Bob Guccione Jr. among others. Including me. Ann's legs are a mile long, but not all bulked up, like a gymnast or a weight lifter, as are Katie's. Ann's legs are well-developed, yet feminine, long and yet graceful. Not to get fowl, but Katie is a duck, and Ann is a Great Blue Heron. So. It's Ann by a long shot. Katie isn't as bad as most liberals (oops!) mind you. She is all over Barbara, Diane, Connie, et. al. and hey, perhaps Ann is not as fine limbed as, say, Amy Holmes, but in this contest, Ann wins by a long shot. I think Laurence and our man in the field Ray book end the issue nicely. She appeals to us all, Texan Jews, Northern Gays, Southern Rednecks, heck, even liberals such as Alan Colmes are smitten! So there you have it. Ann Coulter has better legs than does the Mouseketeer. Sheesh.

Please direct all hatemail to Dawson. I am merely a researcher observing modern male behavior.

Pretty scary, actually.

I'll have something in a classic style, please

Tony Woodlief says the Pledge of Allegiance issue is all about the framing.

In other news: Saudis support "every available means" to help Palestinians

The Saudi foreign minister thinks Arab countries need to increase their efforts to help Palestinians:

Saudi Arabia yesterday called upon Islamic countries to set aside their differences and stand united in order to defend common causes, especially the Palestinian issue...

Prince Saud denounced the ongoing Israeli military campaign against unarmed Palestinian civilians. "The Israeli practices will not shake the determination of Arab and Islamic countries to continue their efforts for peace in the region," he said.

"We have to make every effort using every available means to promote the Arab peace plan and mobilize international support to implement it," he said about the Saudi-inspired peace initiative which was endorsed by the Arab summit held in Beirut last March.

This doesn't seem ominous on its face - after all, they are saying they want to implement a peace plan - but that "every means available" makes me nervous.

He also reaffirmed Saudi Arabia's goal to unify Arab countries toward domination:

"We should gain strength through unity to ensure that our Muslim nation will not be reduced to the sidelines of history, thus leaving the helm of affairs in the hands of other nations," Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told an OIC conference here.

On the significance of Islamic unity, the prince said: "If we achieve it, we’ll pave the way for our nation to restore its prestige and glory."

He called for serious efforts to settle differences and end conflicts among Muslim countries. "Islamic solidarity is not a high-sounding slogan or a political call, but it is an eternal principle of Islam," he stated.

"Saudi Arabia considers Islamic solidarity as one of the central factors of its policy," Prince Saud said.

I'm not sure what "prestige and glory" they're restoring to, because the last time they had it high technology was a metal buckle on a camel saddle.

The best part of the article is this:

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told an OIC conference here...

Prince Saud urged...

Prince Saud denounced...

Prince Saud called upon...

Prince Saud said...

Prince Saud called...

In his wide-ranging speech, Prince Saud pledged...

However, he wasn't even there:

Ismail Shouri, deputy foreign minister for political affairs, delivered Prince Saud’s speech on his behalf.

I bet he didn't write it either.

Pledging allegiance

This is going to be all over the blogosphere today, but I recommend that you read Professor Volokh's discussion before you start your opinion rounds. He's got about three posts thus far, so start with the linked one and scroll up as you finish. And generally, I agree with Ernie the Attorney:

The issue presented in this case is a pure legal question, not a moral/social question.

I'm having a difficult time getting worked up over this, at least from the standpoint of taking "God" out of the Pledge. I think it's dumb, but to me this country will be no less a gift from God just because some people got their shorts in a wad about what the Pledge says.

I agree with Glenn Reynolds:

...like a lot of these kind of challenges, it seems like much ado about nearly nothing to me.

Dodd Harris:

...it's an awfully silly thing on which to spend a bunch of one's time and money (not to mention the time of the judges and all of the taxpayer dollars involved).

And Megan McArdle:

...what the hell is wrong with our country that this kind of stupid liberal hissy fit gets raised to a constitutional case?

...I think we should all dedicate a tiny portion of the rest of our lives to making fun of the idiot who brought this suit until he's ashamed to show his face in decent company.

And it may even make legislative hay - Tim Peck thinks it's a victory for conservatives and will move forward the issues of judicial appointments and school vouchers on the Congressional agenda, which would be a nice side benefit. [Link via Ben Domenech's comments.]

So where does this come together for me?

I think it's a shame that we're removing piece by piece the connection to spirituality and diety that, in my judgment, were a lot of what made this country great. It's a purging of public expression of a certain aspect of society just when other types of "diversity" are vigorously advocated by the very people supporting this purging - but then we know that many liberals want to construct society in the image of their youthful college conversations about How Things Should Be. They're willing to trample on any view of the country that is different from their's, while seeing no hypocrisy in their preferential treatment for other views. If I want to say "under God", and they and theirs have the right not to say it, why do they have to force their views on me?

That said, I repeat Ernie the Attorney's view - it's a legal matter. Of course legal matters shape social discourse, and have great moral implications. But interpretation of the Constitution is continually evolving, and as new issues arise new legal concerns have to be decided. Whenever a discussion arises about the presence of religion in secular life in some formal way, I mentally replace Christianity with some other religion - for example, the "God" in the Pledge with "Allah". Then I ask the question - how would I feel if my child were required to say "under Allah"? It tends to clarify things for me.

We have a Judeo-Christian heritage, and I think we're diminished by drawing away from it. At the same time, intense efforts to force display of the Ten Commandments in public spaces and public prayer in school are poor conceptions of what religion in this country means. You have to pick your battles, and you have to understand what the role of religion is in this country.

I hope that the Supremes find with the dissenting opinion, which Volokh summarizes in his post:

At the same time, Judge Fernandez's dissent makes a sensible argument that the endorsement and coercion tests should not apply to all references to God. America has a long tradition, as he points out, of "ceremonial Deism" -- the use of general and relatively nondenominational references to God (though of course all references to God do prefer some religious beliefs over others) to solemnize various occasions or sentiments. We see it in the Declaration of Independence, in the Star-Spangled Banner, in various other patriotic songs, in nearly all the preambles to state Constitutions, and in other contexts.

These sorts of references, Judge Fernandez argues...should not be seen as unconstitutional, because they are such a firm part of American constitutional traditions.

That decision recognizes the importance of spirituality generally, and our Judeo-Christian heritage specifically, without finding that every reference to "God" is by definition "establishing" Christianity as the "national religion". That's my preference. But, if the words "under God" come out of the Pledge, I can add them myself just as easily as the atheist can leave them out. I want the judiciary to stick to the Constitution, because while it may result in some shifts in public religious expression that I dislike, ultimately it will protect my ability to practice my religion as I see fit.

It's a stupid lawsuit. The decision appears to be a legitimate interpretation of the Constitution, which may have unintended consequences - the atheistic plaintiff may find the cure worse than the disease as the public (and thus Congress) get up in arms. I'll be interested to see how the Supremes come down on this, because I think that's where it's going to wind up.

And...

God bless America.

Needing a Constitutional

The Constitution is not for mention
Especially with your intention
I don’t want it guiding right
when what I want is to win this fight

You will not mention it in voir dire
You will not mention it, even for hire
You will not mention it in opening remarks
You will not mention it as the jury parks

You will not let the jury know
That your cause is true – even though
Your behavior wasn’t what was best
I’m warning you now – give it a rest

You will not mention it in the City of Denver
You will not mention it in my courtroom, remember
You will not mention it no matter the need
You will not mention our history’s creed

You will not mention the Constitutional Congress said
Keep your guns, or you might be dead!
You will not let the jury know
That your cause is true – they might let you go.

(with many profuse apologies to Dr. Seuss)

[Link via Instapundit]

British voices on Bush

Two British newspapers give opposite views of the content and potential for effectiveness of Bush's speech yesterday about the Israeli/Palestinian situation. Unsurprisingly, The Telegraph's Patrick Bishop thinks it's a tough but necessary line:

President Bush has told the Palestinians that, if they stick with Arafat, they condemn themselves to more suffering and that the pain will bring no reward. It is a bleak prospect for even the most zealous nationalist...

Bush has left them with a stark choice. For Palestine to live, Arafat's leadership must perish, and the great survivor's career be brought to an end by his own people.

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland is a bit less supportive:

That was a fantastic speech. Quite literally, fantastic. George Bush's address on the Middle East, delivered outside the White House on Monday evening, consisted, from beginning to end, of fantasy.

It bore so little relation to reality that diplomats around the world spent yesterday shaking their heads in disbelief, before sinking into gloom and despair...

Yasser Arafat must go, he says, though without naming him. It may be refreshing to hear a US president come clean in his conviction that he has the right to pick other nations' leaders, but this demand exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's thinking...

So this new plan of Bush's is a flight of errant, irresponsible fancy that can only fail, bringing more bloodshed and ruin to the peoples of the Middle East who are desperate for something better.

But it will reverberate far beyond. It will damage the international standing of the US president and America along with it. Muslim and Arab nations will be antagonised by this plan of inaction, while chancelleries from London to Moscow will realise they are dealing with a leader who pays no lip-service to them - or to basic reality.

Worth reading.

Paternalism the Arab way

The paternalists in our society have cleaned out Big Tobacco and are moving on to Big Snack Food. Better keep this Arab News article out of their hands, or Big ISP may be next:

The Internet phenomenon is becoming more common in Saudi Arabia with each passing day, as are its negative effects on family and personal life in the Kingdom.

Parents here are concerned with the time their children are spending surfing the Net. Once we were concerned mainly about what our children were exposed to online, like pornography; but now even the most innocent of online games are becoming an obsession...

The obsessive effect of online games and surfing should not be taken lightly.

People should be made aware of this and strategies, awareness workshops, help groups should be devised to combat this growing Internet disease. Those who devise these Internet games should provide a warning on the instructions about how they can be addictive, as they would on cigarette packets.

There should be a legal policy devised by our governments to ensure a log-off, automatic setting to stop games after an agreed safe limit for 24 hours; or a limited use of online time on home computers where the connection would disconnect after a certain period of time, like a legal speed limit for driving.

Some may argue that this represses individual freedom. If so, any legal policy protecting the welfare of people would be considered an infringement on individual freedom. The fact remains that it is for the better.

The negative impact of any technological advancement must be monitored before it gets thrown into society by those seeking solely to profit from it. Software companies and Internet providers have a responsibility to make sure they are not damaging the health of their customers.

I think the Saudi government should provide free Internet in every Arab home. Better playing war games than holding a real war, right?

Sometimes...

Have you ever been so angry at what somebody has done to someone that you love that you want to do serious damage? Have you played in your mind the scenarios where you would take care of the problem - the person – in so complete a way he would never fully recover? I’m not talking physical harm here, although the thought can be tempting, but a public humiliation that would show the person for what he is.

Have you ever been a razor’s edge away from hate for not just that person, but everyone who is similar to him in almost any way?

Have you ever felt that your strength means nothing when using it would cause more harm than good?

Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing of all to do.

Unremitting Warren

Will Warren is just amazing. Go read his latest, about the 70 "prominent Americans" memorialized by a petition discussed here.

Expect to feel like making Warren poet laureate of the nation by acclamation.

Meet the Bloggers

We've made the bigtime!

Er, middle time.

Well, actually, it looks pretty small time to me, but then, I'm just a blogger, what do I know?

(If it's not at that link, look at the other options on the page. I think they move to the right over time.)

[Link via Mary Madigan at What Are They Saying?]

Reporting to the court

Brandt Goldstein has a good, short explanation of a reporter's responsibilities under law to divulge information to a court or law enforcement officer. It's in the context of the case involving former Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal, giving links to articles about the situation.

First, make sure you have ammunition...

Guess who's going to be writing a column - including advice on dating - for her local Long Island newspaper?

Amy Fisher, who spent seven years in jail for shooting her lover's wife in the head, has been hired by a Long Island newspaper to write a biweekly column.

"She's a natural writer," said Robbie Woliver, editor-in-chief of The New Island Ear, which will publish Fisher's first column on July 3. "If she wasn't able to write, we wouldn't have her do this column. We were very, very surprised. The Amy Fisher we found was a little different than the 16-year-old girl that we remember."

...Her column, simply called "Amy Fisher," will cover a wide range of topics -- from cyberdating to celebrity interviews...

I can hardly wait.

[Link via The Last Page.]

RESEARCH NOTE: Do Americans support the War on Drugs?

I’ve heard mutterings here and there on the blogosphere and elsewhere that the US war on drugs is a failed effort. It’s certainly a position held by many academics and, in an unusual agreement with the academy, many libertarians as well. But what do most Americans think?

According to a study (using data from a 1998 survey) in the July 2002 issue of Crime & Delinquency (article not available online), the three main approaches used in the war on drugs – treatment of addicts, prevention taught in schools and through the media, and aggressive law enforcement and correctional responses – were all supported by well over half the respondents. But when asked about whether they supported maintaining or increasing funding in each category, there was a sharp difference in percentages – 91.7% were for prevention, 83.7% for treatment and 61.3% for aggressive criminal justice responses – resulting in a significantly greater support for prevention and treatment as opposed to criminal justice responses. And when asked whether these various approaches were useful or very useful, the numbers came in similarly – 87.8% for prevention, 75.2% for treatment, and 63.6% for penalties. Of course, it’s logical for a belief that an approach works to track with a support for funding for that approach – although that didn’t always happen in the study.

The study also divides up the respondents along a variety of characteristics – sex, race, age, income level, education level, party identification and political ideology – the last two being similar but not necessarily fully overlapping. (See the notes at the end of this post for question samples.) The study authors note that:

between-groups (e.g., Blacks vs. Whites, …etc.) differences in support for each policy approach were extremely modest

thus while many of the differences were statistically significant, they weren’t hugely so. The number of respondents was different between the two parts of the survey – 1,188 participated in the funding questions, and 1,329 in the usefulness questions.

While there’s too much data to present completely, here’s a few snapshots. (Please note that the study does not look at objective value/effectiveness of the funding or types of responses, just Americans’ opinions about them):

· Across all demographics (sex, age, race, education, income, politics) prevention both received the greatest support for funding and the highest confidence in usefulness, followed by treatment and then criminal justice responses. However, in no instance did the support for criminal justice responses fall below 55%.

· Blacks found all three approaches useful more often than did whites, with the strongest difference in support for penalties – 74.1% of blacks thought them useful or very useful, while only 62.6% of whites did. However, while blacks generally supported maintaining or increasing funding for prevention (94.1%) and treatment (87.5%), only 61.1% supported the same or higher funding for criminal justice responses, compared to 61.6% for whites – the only category where whites showed more support for funding than did blacks.

· Women generally supported funding for all three approaches more than did men; women even supported funding criminal justice responses at a higher percentage than did men, but the difference was not significant. On the other hand, women (70%) did find criminal justice responses significantly more useful than did men (56.7%).

· Lower income respondents supported criminal justice responses more than did upper income respondents, although both supported prevention and treatment at a much higher rate.

· College graduates supported funding for treatment and prevention more than did non-college graduates, but non-college graduates supported funding criminal justice responses more than college graduates. Both groups tracked closely in their assessment of the usefulness of treatment and prevention, but non-college graduates (69.1%) found penalties useful at a much higher rate than did college graduates (55.5%).

· Interestingly, Democrats and Republicans not only tracked pretty closely on usefulness of treatment (Democrats slightly higher) and prevention (Republicans slightly higher), but on penalties (cj response) as well – 68.3% of Republicans found it useful, while 64.4% of Democrats did. They tracked more closely together in support for funding criminal justice responses (D – 63.3%, R – 62.1%) than for prevention (D – 94.8%, R – 89.1%) or treatment (D – 90.6%, R – 80.6%). It’s important to note that not all respondents participated in these questions – 62% of 1,188 (funding) and of 1,329 (usefulness).

· Political ideology – liberal vs conservative – made a bigger difference in attitude than did political party, showing one of the strongest differences in the study: 72% of conservatives found penalties (cj responses) useful, while only 55.8% of liberals did; they tracked fairly closely on usefulness of prevention, while 79.9% of liberals found treatment useful vs. 69% of conservatives. Again, this is a self-identified group with only 53% of the total respondents participating.

The study authors note that:

If these findings are an accurate reflection of public sentiment at the time of survey, they signal significant erosion in support for current American drug control policy. It is impossible, however, to definitively ascertain the direction of public support for current drug policy on the basis of a survey done at a single point in time. Nonetheless, recent research offers some support for the claim that the public’s faith in a criminal justice-led approach to drug policy is flagging. In a recent study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press (2000), 74% of the respondents suggested “America is losing the drug war”. In addition, treatment was rated a more effective way to control drugs than arresting users (79% to 64%), although a large majority (82%) still views arresting sellers as effective (Pew Center for the People and the Press, 2000). Finally, significantly more respondents (52% to 36%) view drug addiction now as a disease rather than a crime. (Page 393)

Budgetary notes: The authors give an interesting history of the funding for the war on drugs, which is just too much to go into here. However, this excerpt is, I think, useful for context:

The ONDCP…has tracked federal expenditures on drug control since 1981. A review of the budget during this time period reveals two major findings. First, the domestic drug control budget as a whole has undergone massive growth in the past two decades. From 1981 to 2000 the total domestic drug control budget increased from almost $2 billion to nearly $15 billion, representing a real increase of 773%. Second, although growth has occurred in every part of the budget, it has been concentrated primarily in the area of criminal justice, which has captured 62.2% of the growth in the domestic budget over the past 20 years. By comparison, treatment and prevention account for 17.7% and 14.6% of the domestic increase, respectively. (page 382)

Methodology notes: As most of you know, the way a study is conducted is very important in determining whether the results are dependable. Without going into close detail (for that you can read the article), it is apparent that the data was collected in a sound, randomized fashion; the question samples given in the article were neutral and thus free of ideological spin; and the statistical analysis is straightforward and fully detailed in the article. The data from the study came:

from the first wave of the Multi-City Study of Attitudes about Addiction (MCSAA), a two-wave panel survey designed to assess the impact of viewing a nationally broadcast, five-episode television program about drug addiction on public attitudes about addiction, treatment and public policy. (Page 386)

Here are two sample questions:

Funding

I'm going to name some of these addiction-related cost areas and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether you think the government is spending too much money on it, too little money or about the right amount?

Usefulness

Please tell me whether you think each of the following is very useful, not very useful, or not useful at all in reducing addiction.

Bibliography:

Lock, E., Timberlake, J., & Rasinski, K. (2002). Battle Fatigue: Is Public Support Waning for “War”-Centered Drug Control Strategies? Crime & Delinquency, 48 (3), 380-398.

Pew Center for the People and the Press. (2000). Drug report: Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.people-press.org/questionnaires/drugs01que.htm. (Note: this is the citation in the article, but I couldn’t find it on the Pew site.)

Like a fish needs a bicycle...

Just heard about this website on the radio - Man Not Included. It's a website in Great Britain where lesbian couples wanting to be parents can be matched with sperm donors.

I think we're headed for a world where kids are his, hers, mine, ours, their's, the guy down the street's, and somebody's across town who needed a few bucks to get his car detailed. Scary.

My question - with all this mix 'n match genetics, who's keeping track of who's related to whom? The spectre of half-siblings marrying accidentally (ok, no hillbilly jokes) seems less implausible.

We're so focused on who can scrape out, bear or "own" kids, yet so unfocused on what it means to parent. Sad.

Just random thoughts, triggered by the radio news brief. Oh, and the last quote in the segment was from a British physician, who said, "It's sort of an American type development."

I don't think he meant it as a compliment.

Racism or lazy Slate?

Professor Volokh has in the space of one day earned a place in my heart and on my link list. Not that he cares what I think, but I'm impressed with his insight into both poor statistical analysis and media bias. His post on the death penalty ruling (linked below) was preceded by an excellent catch of a headline disaster over at Slate. He rips them for lazy or biased headline writing that accuses conservatives of racist behavior toward Cornel West, when the text of the article doesn't support the implication. He also touches on framing, which I think is one of the major ways that bias is expressed in the media. Worth a read.

Davy Crockett's nemesis

This is why I won't live in Tennessee.

I have enough stress.

Supremes rule only juries can impose death penalty

I heard the ruling this morning, but was waiting for a lawyer type to dig into it before I commented. Professor Volokh did just that, and beautifully (of course).

I'm going to have to go read the decision now, though, because apparently Justice Breyer made his case on what Volokh identifies as poor statistics (i.e. right up my alley):

...this statistical argument just doesn't work. Justice Breyer observes that (1) many counties don't impose the death penalty, and therefore concludes that (2) many communities have taken this view because they accept arguments against the death penalty -- but omits the possible explanation that (3) many of these counties might simply have very few murders.

Volokh goes on to explain in detail how the justice's statistical interpretation doesn't hold up - a nice little mini-primer in what is really pretty simple statistical analysis - then adds that the constitutional conclusion might nonetheless be appropriate. Take the time to read it - you'll be smarter for it.

Just give it up now

The scariest description I've seen of a politician in a while:

...like Jimmy Carter but in a reptilian sort of way

Ouch. I'd just give it up now, were I that politician.

On a brighter note, it does bode well for his future stock of Cuban cigars. (Oh, man, that just begs for a Clinton/Carter joke.)

Amish farmers – the future of agriculture?

Steven Stoll, an assistant professor of history at Yale University, thinks that farming the Amish way is the wave of the future:

They are not dead-end holdouts left over from the agrarian 19th century; rather, their system of food production represents the future of American agriculture.

Stoll’s article explains the Amish approach to farming, which emphasizes community and, as much as possible, a lack of modern technology to produce products for their own use and for sale. His host speaks disparagingly of modern techniques – as does Stoll – and advocates a return to the land:

In the few days I spent with the Klines, I saw how their cultivation anchors their material lives…The Amish hold these values above all others: Anything that undermines their ability to cohere as a community of neighbors and linked families, anything that isolates them in their work or places production for profit ahead of the collective process, is prohibited. David adds a corollary: No practice will be allowed to denigrate the wholeness of the land and its capacity to sustain wild as well as domesticated animals…

David Kline's manure-centered husbandry…represents an alternative -- a progressive occupancy of land for the 21st century. No matter how unlikely the prospect that people the world over will take up small farms as they once did, that is no reason to reject the Amish as unfit for the future. On the contrary, there could be no land management better suited for a small and crowded planet…

Bucking every trend of contemporary American society, [Kline] says, as though calling out over the hills, "We need more people on the land!"

Interspersed throughout the article is a romantic view of man-of-the-land, and how Kline and his fellow Amish are actually beating the huge agronomist companies at their own game. It’s a lovely tale, but doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny. An example:

Each year [Kline] grosses $2,000 per cow, compared with the $200-to-$300 profit common on industrial farms.

Did you catch that shift? Kline’s production is expressed as gross, compared to the profit of industrial farms – neatly sidestepping the issue of cost-to-produce. And that is considerable:

By choice, they have no electric power in their home and own no automobiles. They buy few consumer goods, distrust centralized authority, and dress plainly…

The Klines need every available family member to pull in the timothy grass (seven people that day, eight counting me), and they like it that way…

Yet for all that, income, no matter how high or low, is not the best indicator of the success of the Amish, because they have eliminated the need to shell out cash for all sorts of things... They pay little or nothing for insurance, fuel, or child care… Community provides the only real insurance the Amish have, and it carries no price.

So while the Amish way may be land-nurturing, to be successful it also requires that the practitioners eschew most worldly goods and all work farmer’s hours on the farm. If you want to look at the economics of it, you have to factor in the cost of all that labor at today’s market prices, as well as the cost of not having insurance should tragedy strike. It’s a nice socialist view of things, but not precisely the lifestyle that most Americans – or the populations of other industrialized countries – are going to be willing to adopt. And one question that came immediately to my mind was – what happens when one of the members of the community becomes deathly ill, or the whole community is wiped out by a storm? Yes, they can rebuild, and maybe the community can support the cost of one member needing very costly medical care, but that’s not a model sustainable on a broad scale. In addition, the Amish community is in some fashion predicated on the modern society – the cloth they use for clothes, the tools they use to farm with, the military and police who protect them, all products of the society they distance themselves from, as is the Yale ideologue who gushingly extols their virtues.

I do agree with Stoll that there is a place for the Amish way, and that nurturing the concept of families farming is a good thing. However, I don’t know that the survival of the commercial family farm is necessary to our nation’s health, Wendell Berry notwithstanding. I think a model is evolving – around farmer’s markets, and a general awareness of the goodness of farmer-to-consumer produce – that will sustain a few well-run family farms. I personally would make an effort to purchase locally produced goods at a somewhat higher cost to encourage local community sustainability. But Stoll’s argument that the Amish way is possibly now the “postmodern” way makes neither logical or economic sense – it is, rather, romantic ideology skewing facts in an effort at self-perpetuation.

Just can't win

The US has been criticized for not helping to restore Afghanistan, but now that it is actively working in that direction, they're being criticized again.

I'm sure you'll be surprised at who is doing the criticizing.

The soldiers in the northern city of Kunduz are on the front lines of a different kind of war, one fought not with guns or bombs, but plaster, nails and cold, hard American cash.

Along with seven other civil affairs teams across Afghanistan, they have been working with local officials and warlords to reconstruct schools, hospitals, roads and water systems ruined by two decades of war, some by American bombs last fall...

The teams are not spending lavishly — about $8 million this year for the entire country — and have had to turn down many of the large-scale projects Afghan officials are begging for, like major road and bridge repairs. But in six months the teams have completed nearly two dozen smaller projects, many in remote regions where banditry or bad roads have limited the work of private relief groups...

But the work of the civil affairs teams has not received universal acclaim, receving the cold shoulder from some international aid organizations with which the teams hoped to collaborate. Those aid groups say the civil affairs teams have blurred the lines separating private from military programs, placing civilians at risk from Afghans angry with American soldiers.

That's correct - the humanitarian aid people are upset because the soldiers aren't out soldiering and giving the aid money to the organizations. And the Times isn't much inclined to give them credit.

Some Afghan officials and Western analysts have also asserted that the civil affairs teams work too closely with local warlords, fostering the perception that regional commanders, not the central government in Kabul, are the major dispensers of patronage and power in Afghanistan.

Who precisely might those analysts be? I'm sure it's not the Times' coffee klatsch. But we don't know, do we? They aren't identified, and certainly we have no opportunity to assess their qualifications for making those judgments. This, however, is my favorite part of the article:

The soldiers have barely scratched the surface of Kunduz's needs. The electricity supply is erratic, the central water system is not functioning, the airport is surrounded by land mines and the main road south is so rutted that it is barely passable.

Such projects, expensive and difficult, will be the true test of whether the the outside world can help rebuild Afghanistan. Chances are that most will be started by civilian aid groups or the United Nations long after the civil affairs teams have moved on to the next battle zone.

So there, US military! You come in there with your money and your effectiveness and you make people like you because you actually get things done, but we know that in the long run, the true heroes will be international aid organizations and the UN!

I just have one question - where will the bulk of the money for any work in Afghanistan come from - the US, or the EU and UN members other than the US?

Smarter Harper's

Each month, Harper's Magazine lists what they call "eyebrow-raising statistics" about virtually anything. Each month, Smarter Harper's takes them down. Well, some of them. It's fun reading.

This month, Smarter Harper's hits on the gap in nuclear weapons between Israel and the Arab countries; Japanese vs US patents; status of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; and FDA recalls or relabeling of presciption drugs. Enlightening.

Getting the word out

I've given permission to a Second Amendment advocacy group to distribute copies of my post on the VPC statistical inaccuracies free at their gun shows. The same post has been linked by several gun rights advocacy groups online. All that made me think a little about copyright issues.

Everything on this site is either written by me or quoted with an attributed source. I want to know if someone distributes any material from it in a form different from linking to this site. Naturally this does not include every instance of quoting from it on another website, according to fair use rules.

I'm not a copyright attorney, so I can't give specific guidelines. And I really can't control whether people copy, paste and distribute, if they aren't selling it - and especially if they don't tell me. But I want to make it clear that I expect to be asked if someone wants to use the information. Then, if a group uses it that I don't agree with, I can say, truthfully, that I didn't give permission and it should have been clear to them that I meant for them to ask.

I've made a Word document of this particular post, which is available for distribution. Just ask.

If you have Hotmail...

I have noticed recently that my hotmail account has been receiving a whole lot more spam than usual, especially in the Inbox, despite a high spam-catching setting. I found out why on John Ellis's blog - Microsoft has added new opt-out options that have been feeding my email address to spammers because I didn't know to go and change them. Go here to find out how to fix it - I already did.

Spreading the traffic jam

I just stumbled across a website explaining how to adjust your driving to ease traffic jams - spread out the spaces so everyone moves faster. Cool, with animations. Some of you may have seen it - it's been up since 1998 - but for those of you who haven't, and who drive in heavy traffic, you'll like it.

Boredom led me to fantasize about the traffic being like a flowing liquid, with cars acting as giant water molecules. Over many months I slowly realized that this was not just a fantasy. Why had I never noticed all the "traffic fluid dynamics" out there? Once my brain became sensitized to it, I started seeing quite a variety of interesting things occurring. Eventually I started using my car to poke at the flowing traffic. Observation eventually leads to experimentation, no? There are amazing things you can do as an "amateur traffic dynamicist." You can drive like an "anti-rubbernecker" and erase slowdowns created by other drivers...

The author of it, William Beaty, freely admits to his lack of traffic engineering experience, but I was amazed - and impressed - with his approach to figuring it all out. If someone had done that kind of figuring out before building the Charlotte traffic circle in Jersey City, my morning commute would be a much happier thing.

Soccer and Steyn

For all you World Cup fans (I'm sure at least two of you read this blog), here's the definitive take - Mark Steyn's:

I refer, of course, to the United States team, the first in World Cup history with more players than fans. Across America yesterday, all nine of them gathered in bars to watch the big match, only to find that the other patrons preferred to see the Golden Girls re-run dubbed into Spanish on Channel 173 or the last half of Bud Answers Your Plastering Queries on the Sheetrock Channel. Twiddling my own dial in New Hampshire, I couldn't find the game on anywhere except a French-language station from Quebec...

Americans like their international competitions to be international in the sense of the current "international coalition against terror" at Kandahar airbase - that's to say, overwhelmingly American but with a few token Canadians. The World Series extends to the Toronto Blue Jays, but that's it.

Just how did he get from soccer to Afghanistan? That man has talent.

Tammy Faye Bakker - icon for gay men

In the Who'd ever believe this? department:

Tammy Faye Bakker, once the teary-eyed darling of the "electric church," has been born again -- but in a way that her former Christian broadcasting colleagues probably never anticipated...

She now calls herself Tammy Faye Messner -- taking her new husband's name -- and she's been appearing at gay pride events across the nation. Despite some doubts about her credibility, Tammy Faye has become an unlikely icon for the gay community...

Kate Clinton, a comedian and gay rights activist, says the gay community's embrace of Messner may reflect a deeper shift in cultural attitudes. "Maybe this is the beginning of a voice," Clinton tells Ulaby. "Wilder things have happened."

But others remain unconvinced. Randy Shulman, publisher of a gay newsweekly in Washington, D.C., says Messner falls neatly into a tradition of divas in distress who aggressively market themselves to gay men. "She was in search of a group to possibly adore her.... She found one and she clung to it."

Don't miss the photo - that hairdo looks like a big wind hit her from behind just before the shutter clicked.

And if you must know more about how Ms. Messner is coping with life, including her thoughts on 9/11, go here.

News flash: Many US college student lack brains, guts

James Lileks unpacks the awful truth.

(Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.)

This just in: WaPo writer needs vacation or better editor; readers hurling

In an article about a man who has jogged home from every stop on DC's Metro:

In the watermelon light of a summer evening...

What? Was it pinkish red? Wet? Sweet and fragrant? Encased in green rind? All of the above? Or, as I suspect, a consequence of someone waxing eloquent when she should stick to waxing only floors?

This, on the other hand, I can imagine in a variety of contexts:

He tried again last Monday, this time stapling packets of carbohydrate paste to his shorts.

There's just nothing to add to that.

British grammar crisis - is it real, or is I missing something?

Headline from an article on England's World Cup soccer loss to Brazil in The Guardian:

This time we wasn't robbed

Quote in the story:

"The overall feeling among the English is that we were not robbed...

Other notable excerpts (not ungrammatical, just amusing):

"They were the better team," said Richard Taylor, a 29-year-old accountant, emerging from the pub, blinking back tears and looking for a Brazilian to unburden himself to. "I just want to find one so I can say well done. It would make me feel better."

...A hardcore of flag-wavers in Trafalgar Square jumped in the fountains and splashed ineffectually about, while American tourists filmed them and asked, "are they the soccer hooligans?"

In Charing Cross Road, location of a popular salsa bar, police barricades were erected to separate England and Brazil fans, although there was not much appetite for violence. Brazil fans blew whistles and bopped around while, across the police line, England fans in St George's flag boxer shorts lolled sulkily about, hurled the occasional insult and turned pink in the sun. "Look fellas," said a young policeman to a group of moody fans, "why can't you just be happy for them?" The dumbfounded silence was broken, eventually, as an England fan summoned his most deadly insult. "What are you," he spat, "German?"

Up next: The EU sends the International Red Cross in to investigate hardline grammar oppressors in anglo-centric language cells throughout England. This proves to be beyond their skill level.

Paging all parents! Get a clue!

The Last Page (you know, that girl's on a permanent wave of brilliance) skewers parents who let television babysit. I think she should be made Parent of the Year. Except she's not. A parent, that is.

Les mensonges, condamner des mensonges et Thierry Meyssan les mensonges français

Frenchman Thierry Meyssan's conspiracy theory book claiming that the US damaged the Pentagon itself as a part of a right-wing plot has become a best-seller in France. Those of us who watch French politics and culture with great admiration and veneration from here in the States are not surprised; The Last Page, just this spring, gave the definitive response, and an addendum. But the quote of the day comes from our very own government:

A Pentagon spokesman said, "There was no official reaction because we figured it was so stupid."

(The headline translates to Lies, damn lies and Thierry Meyssan's French lies. Cut on the bias: able to annoy you in two or more languages, with the help of a free online translation website.)

Life is good

I just got home from the mall with a new hair style, new clothes, new books and a weekend ahead of me. In just a few minutes I'm going to curl up on the couch with my crocheting and watch Law & Order. Life is very good.

Something struck me again while I was at the mall in Jersey City tonight that occurred to me when I went home to Kentucky a few weeks ago - here in New Jersey, I'm more often than not the minority. This is not a bad thing, you understand. But I don't realize how accustomed I get to it, how basically I don't even think about it, until I'm somewhere that the ethnic mix is more homogeneous. It happened when I lived here before, and returned to Louisville for visits - Oxmoor Mall on the affluent east end of town was 180 degrees the other way. When I was in Bluegrass Airport in Lexington recently, the same thing was true.

In Jersey City, more than 100 languages are spoken in households throughout the city - and they are native speakers of those languages, most first or second generation immigrants. Saris, dreads and little business suits are equally likely attire. About 75% of the members where I go to church are black, many of them having immigrated from the Caribbean. At work, many of my colleagues are Hispanic or black. And in the town where I live, I'm more likely to see people of Portuguese, South American or Asian descent as European. (It's particularly noticeable to me because at 5'8" I tend to tower over everyone, male and female, from those areas.)

It's one of the things I like about New Jersey, and one of the things I'll miss when I go back home. But don't worry - I'm collecting recipes. And I think I'll buy a sari before I go.

Dip in

The Spoons Experience has slipped into his new Sekimori designer blog. First rate - check it out.

Rule the world!

Or, at least, tell War Now! your plan for how you'd do it.

I'm already plotting.

Eat up and get out

It's not just the portion sizes that shrink as the prices go up at restaurants across the country. Be prepared to fight the busboy for your plate in some of these places.

[Link via reader Alan Cornett (yes, my brother), who notes that he never feels rushed at Schlotzkey's.]

UPDATE: Jonathan Gewirtz at ChicagoBoyz offers a solution.

Word vs Woodlief

Tony Woodlief is not happy with the fancy new features of MS Word's latest incarnation.

NPR deep linking update

Appended to the original post on it here.

Voices in (and about) the Middle East

Jerusalem Post:

At least one terrorist infiltrated the settlement of Itamar near Nablus last night, killing a mother and three of her eight children and the head of the community's emergency response team. .

The New York Times:

A medic on the scene said the shooting was so intense it was impossible to evacuate the wounded.

The Arab News:

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 21 June — Israel started mobilizing reserve soldiers yesterday and expanded its brutal military operations on the West Bank in the wake of two Palestinian bombings that killed 26 Israelis and left US peace efforts in limbo. The latest round of tit for tat violence forced US President George W. Bush to delay his much-anticipated announcement of a new Middle East strategy for fear his words would fall on deaf ears.

Ha'aretz:

The United States said Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's written statement on Thursday demanding an end to attacks by his people on Israeli citizens was not enough to end the violence...

Israeli leaders have dismissed the PA leader's condemnations of attacks as lip-service, insisting he is not lifting a finger to quell terror attacks.

Jerusalem Post:

An anonymous caller told Reuters that an armed offshoot of the PFLP, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, carried out the attack, calling it "a reaction to Israeli fence-building... and to challenge the repeated Israeli incursions into Palestinian territories."

Jerusalem Post:

One of the murdered children was trapped in the family's house after it caught fire during the attack.

The (UK) Telegraph:

Ismail Abu-Shanab, spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, said: "If we have an effective weapon in our hands and the whole world is trying to take it off us, this shows it must be the most effective way."

...Hundreds of Palestinians held a "hunger march" yesterday behind a banner declaring themselves "victims of occupation and negligence".

FoxNews:

The attack on the Itamar settlement late Thursday brought to 33 the number of Israelis killed in Palestinian shootings and bombings this week.

Suppression of free speech

Glenn Reynolds has the latest on Paul Trummel.

Serious concern, odd headline

A short article in today's WaPo sounds an alarm (but not a new one):

The Internet's potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium's long-standing culture of openness, some leading Internet thinkers warned.

The headline says:

Web Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash

Not reflective of the story. Odd, and probably a result of space constraints and just too many headlines written on one shift.

Peggy Noonan through a Brit's eyes

Mary Wakefield writes about Peggy Noonan in The Spectator, and while it's interesting it's not particularly flattering:

Peggy Noonan, one of America’s most revered Republican writers and former speechwriter for the Reagan White House, looks up from her chicken salad with an expression of baffled determination. ‘It is obvious to me, Mary, that we live in a time of extraordinary peril. But you will learn as you grow older that people just don’t listen!’

...I have become something of a doomsayer, but,’ she tosses back her hair, ‘what the heck!’

I don't think Wakefield meant to be funny, but this article turns out to be a caricature of Noonan that is as reflective of the writer as of the subject.

By now I am positive that she thinks I am one of the soft-thinking, leftist elite who stand to one side pontificating while things blow up all around. I do not dare look at her, but focus firmly on the improbably large, orange Polish sausage that I ordered by mistake. It attracts attention from other diners. ‘I only got the egg salad,’ complains an old Jewish lady to my left. ‘I want the sausage.’

I want to know if Wakefield asked the old lady if she was Jewish, or just assumed.

And Wakefield also gives us a descriptive passage that is, I believe, supposed to evoke horror in her readers - she's obviously not writing for a conservative American audience:

I would like to live inside Peggy Noonan’s mind for a while. It would be a calming, well-ordered sort of place, with rooms full of good things like home cooking, churchgoing and plain-speaking. A dank basement, with a door marked ‘To Be Nuked’ would contain many writhing evil things in turbans. An iron maiden would be set aside especially for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

I've always been fond of Iron Maidens. As a horror story staple, of course.

And no, neither of us mean the heavy metal band.

Belo, ProJo, guilds and media influence

The Providence Journal is owned by Belo, the same “no deep linking” media company that owns The Dallas Morning News. Yesterday, ProJo’s journalists staged a “no byline strike” to call attention to a labor dispute with Belo – which has not successfully renegotiated a contract with its reporter types since their previous contract ran out in 1999. Belo has owned ProJo since 1997, so basically they’ve never negotiated one.

As anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows, I’m no fan of unions – be they attached to private industry or public entities (civil service, tenure). I think in their modern manifestations, they are a form of legalized extortion and protection for deadwood in a company. But unions originated in this country in response to truly egregious exploitation by employers, and every time I’m on the verge of saying, “Okay, out with unions, they’ve outlasted their usefulness and plunged wholly into corruption”, a situation arises that shows that’s not always true.

In this instance, Belo has three marks against it:

1) They are arrogant and dictatorial about use of their websites (the deep linking thing);
2) They apparently have partially blocked coverage of the fatal shooting by one of their production plant employees, limiting reporters’ ability to explore the situation fully, as well as not allowing coverage of their own labor dispute with ProJo employees; and
3) They remain unwilling to negotiate with their employees.

It is the first two that make the last problematic and likely, in my mind, to be another form of corporate arrogance.

Fairness and honesty should be the hallmark of a newspaper (I know, an elusive ideal), and it’s more likely to be the case if the corporation that owns it not only accepts but actively seeks that. It’s a difficult stance, because corporations by their nature are going to seek damage control in relation to negative coverage of their business. I’m concerned that this refusal to agree to a contract is a form of control of coverage as much as a business decision; at the least, the accompanying shutdown of coverage in their own paper shows a lack of commitment on Belo’s part to both fairness and honesty.

It’s a tough call. I tend to be pro-business. But with more and more professional media outlets owned by increasingly consolidated media mega-corporations, the extent to which media corporations control coverage is an issue that needs to be addressed – ideological skewing is easier to identify and mentally adjust for than limits on coverage and quality imposed by the imperative of the corporate bottom line. Pro-business doesn’t mean blind to genuine problems with corporate behavior. I suggest you check out the Providence Newspaper Guild website, as well as ProJo blogger Sheila Lennon’s coverage and the article by Ian Donnis at the Providence Phoenix website, and make your own conclusions.

Perhaps that’s another reason to be happy about blogging – it is by its nature resistant to control.

Death penalty ban

Several people have asked me what I thought of the Supremes’ decision today to ban the execution of convicted murderers who are retarded. Actually, one of my bosses said, “So what will you do with your Saturday nights now?” – meaning, of course, now that I won’t have executions to watch. Capital punishment is an issue we’ve discussed several times, until he finally basically asked me not to mention it again so he could still think well of me (he was nearly heartbroken to learn how conservative I am – he made the frequent liberal mistake of assuming that if someone seems rational and likeable, she is of course also liberal in her politics. Wrong.)

My field of study is criminal justice, and I have a personal interest in theology, so my focus has always been the moral appropriateness of the death penalty as a sentence, and to a lesser degree the nuances of its application – but not its Constitutional underpinnings. So, I went to the experts. I started with Dodd Harris at Ipse Dixit, who is a lawyer of libertarian bent. Next I cruised over to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh’s site, which added little but directed me to a good article at National Review Online. That path was a good choice – Dodd hits the high points of the actual ruling (and debunks them), then lawyer Richard Garnett – who is against the death penalty on moral grounds – explains why he thinks it was a bad decision too. A couple of quotes from the latter are a good summary:

...today's decision is not so much constitutional law as it is — in Justice Scalia's words — a breathtakingly arrogant assumption of power.

...I am afraid, in the end, that Justice Scalia is correct: "Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members."

It makes me wonder which issue they'll use this logic on next time - and that's a scary thought.

This is excellent

I'm the Website of the Day at Right Wing News.

So why don't people tell me these things??

(It's at the bottom of the right sidebar.)

How to build confidence in your dictionary

Have Luddites revise it.

[Link via furtive explorations]

Ooooppssss!

You knew it had to happen.

UPDATE: Geezzz... I should have known it was too funny to be true. [Thanks to Kevin (in comments)]

Campaign finance unmasked

You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? Dodd Harris has the goods on John McCain and His Amazing Never-Say-Die-Until-It's-All-Public-Funding Campaign Finance Mission.

It's almost enough to make me write out a check to the Republican Party. (And I would, if they'd stop sending me those obnoxious mailings.)

NPR and the online kiss of death

Gregory Harris of Planet Swank is concerned but somewhat forgiving of NPR’s policy of allowing deep-linking only with permission. Those of you who read the comments here know Gregory is newly among my favorite liberal readers – cogent and willing to tackle questions directly, even though often misguided. But not always - he does a nice job on the NPR thing, and has it almost right. Dodd, on the other hand, has it all the way right.

If I had time, I’d deep link NPR myself. Without permission.

I’m such a rebel.

UPDATE (11 a.m. 6/21): Well, there's been a lot of movement on the NPR thing, which isn't surprising. Ernie the Attorney commented, which led me to Cory Doctorow at bOingbOing with additional good commentary, and that in turn took me to David Rothman's Teleread, which seems to be the center of bloggish NPR deep-link reporting. A quote from NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin (this from Ernie's site, quoting Rothman's site):

Asked if a link from someone's noncommercial homepage would bother the company, Dvorkin said: "It depends on your homepage -- what if you're an advocate for left-handed socialist diabetics? We wouldn't want to give support to advocacy groups."

Pretty amazing, how he manages to infuriate liberals, conservatives and libertarians in one easy statement. Good job, Dvorkin!

Rothman says NPR is reconsidering their policy, and his latest post explains how. I'll be keeping an eye on Rothman's site, which is updating the issue as it unfolds.

Kopel on media bias

Dave