Month: August 2005

I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

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by von DAVID FRUM, writing in today’s National Review Online on the subject of illegal immigration: It is most emphatically not unrealistic to believe that immigration laws can be enforced. Of course they cannot be enforced perfectly. Of course the border cannot be sealed. But law enforcement is not a NASA mission. It can succeed … Read more

A Very Different Story

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by Edward

After all the gigabytes folks consumed arguing that Jean Charles de Menezes, the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, who was shot eight times last month on the London Underground, deserved what he got for essentially looking suspicious, I hope an equal number of gigabytes of outrage will be forthcoming from the same folks now that it turns out the story the British Police offered seems to be very, very different from what actually happened that day:

A Brazilian shot to death a day after botched bombings in London had walked casually onto a train before being gunned down by undercover officers, according to leaked footage that appeared to contradict earlier police reports that said the man disobeyed police orders.

Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, was shot eight times last month in front of terrified commuters on a subway train, after undercover police tailed him from a house under surveillance.

Police first said the shooting was related to the failed bombings on the London transit system July 21 — two weeks after four suspected suicide bombers blew themselves up in three Underground stations and aboard one double-decker bus.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, called the death regrettable, but said it appeared "the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."

Citing security footage, a British television station reported Tuesday that Menezes entered the Stockwell subway station at a normal walking pace, stopping to pick up a newspaper before boarding a train and taking a seat.

The ITV News broadcast, citing an investigation report into the shooting, also said Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket when he was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder. Witness reports described a terrifying scene of the man — wearing a bulky jacket on a warm July day — running through the train station, being tackled by a group of undercover police officers, then being shot several times at close range.

Now here’s the thing. In the US we’re constantly pooh-poohed when we question the PATRIOT ACT and other measures that strengthen the law enforcement efforts to stop terrorism. "If you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about from these laws," is the conventional wisdom. Of course, though, that only applies if you can implicitly trust the authorities.

If this report turns out to reveal what it looks like it reveals, I cannot imagine the London Police will be able to re-build their credibility for ages. At the very least, Ian Blair owes the public (not to mention Menezes’ family) one huge apology.

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Able Danger in the New York Times

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by Charles

Now it’s been confirmed by the New York Times, and one of the unnamed sources is now named:

A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

Possibly vital intelligence information was blocked by lawyers.  Why?  Because of The Wall, an interpretation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which prohibited the sharing of intelligence between foreign and domestic agencies.  Who put that policy in writing?  Jamie Gorelick, member of the 9/11 Commission, did so in 1995.  Even Gorelick acknowledged that the memo went well beyond the letter of the 1978 law.  Deborah Orin:

Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White’s stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them.

The commission’s report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White’s passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine.

So it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White’s memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick.

The commission members dismissed the work of Project Able Danger, even though the intelligence they gathered could have been critical to preventing 9/11.  Why?  On what planet could 9/11 Commission members plausibly state that the operation "did not turn out to be historically significant"?  More:

Colonel Shaffer said that he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving.

What the eff is going on?  Seems like there’s also a Wall between the 9/11 Commission and the members of Project Able Danger.  The 9/11 Commission missed this big time, either because they weren’t diligent enough or because the Pentagon failed to pass on the relevant information, or for some other reason.  This is a matter that begs further investigation.

[Update below the fold]

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Just Want to Head Off a Misunderstanding

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At washingtonmonthly, Kevin Drum writes: As a Reagan White House attorney in 1984, John G. Roberts criticized three Republican congresswomen for supporting the "radical" idea of "comparable worth" to create pay equality between men and women. ….The memo was among 5,393 pages of records released yesterday….The records showed heavy screening by the White House, with … Read more

Defeatism

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by hilzoy

In a recent comment, Charles has said:

“Noted, that the lefties in this thread and in my most recent post think Iraq is a lost cause. In my view, it’s only lost if we lose our political will to prevail. That should’ve been a prime lesson learned from Vietnam. Sadly, it looks like that lesson didn’t take here.”

He has also referred to “the troubling liberal-left “can’t do” attitude that I’m seeing more and more of”, and repeated the claim that Iraq is “only a lost cause if enough people like you believe it is.”

I will leave aside the fantastical idea that liberal defeatism, or for that matter liberal anything, could be responsible if we suffer a defeat in Iraq. I want instead to think about ‘defeatism’. When I read Charles’ comments, I was reminded of the time when the shelter I was working at got a new executive director. We were all happy to have her, and we all gave her the benefit of the doubt at first, even when she did things that struck us as odd. Then, about six weeks into her job, she had a retreat, where most of us got to see her in action for the first time. At one point, she was talking about the need to bring more volunteers into the organization, and in the discussion said that it would be interesting to think about having them take over some of the shifts, alone. One of the people whose job it was to do things like negotiate our insurance said: unfortunately, it’s written into our insurance policy that we have to have a paid staffer present at all times. And our new executive director said: “You see, I think that’s just the kind of negative thinking we need to do away with around here.” The person who had pointed out the insurance problem said: I’m not trying to be negative; it’s just that if we did that, we would, in fact, lose our insurance.

Now: our new executive director had, until her arrival at our shelter, lived in Alberta. She had no knowledge of US federal, state, or local laws, funding organizations, or, well, insurance regulations. But she went off on this tear about how all she was hearing was negativity; no willingness to try fresh new thoughts; just a kind of hidebound throwing up of obstacles. I couldn’t see what she was talking about: nothing in the previous discussion had struck me that way at all, nor were my co-workers an inflexible, defeatist bunch. It was just that, in this specific case, what she wanted to try was not, in fact, possible, and someone had tried to say so.

Which is all a long way of saying: when someone says that something can’t be done, it could be defeatist, or it could be a recognition of reality. And when someone else responds that the first person is defeatist, it could be right, or it could be a way of denying reality by attacking those who try to describe the features the second person doesn’t want to hear about.

Before I’m willing to accept the charge that people on the left are defeatist, I want to hear some actual reasons for thinking (a) that we can, in fact, achieve our goals in Iraq, and (b) that we can do so while being led by George W. Bush, a man who has driven such Bush-hating, latte-drinking, Michael Moore-embracing, Islamofascist-coddling members of the loony left as von to ask: “What the Hell does a guy have to do to get fired in this town?” For the record, this does not seem to me to be an adequate response:

“The fact remains that we are the most powerful country in human history, and our main opposition are groups of paramilitary thugs and mostly non-Iraqi terrorists. They will lose, provided we have the sticktuitiveness to overcome.”

Our army can defeat any other army. It can prevent any insurgency from defeating it. It cannot defeat an insurgency with enough popular support to be able to replace its fighters, explosives, and so forth. It especially cannot do so when the force we have deployed is too small to secure Iraq’s borders. The most it can be sure of doing militarily is maintaining a presence there indefinitely, without yet having been defeated. It cannot be assured of actually defeating the insurgency. Still less can an army, by itself, achieve political or social goals. And our primary goals in Iraq have never been military goals like holding a town; they have been goals like: creating a stable country at peace with us and its neighbors. No army on earth can achieve that through force of arms alone.

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My Last Word On Sheehan

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Smearing the mother of a killed soldier is not only awful, it is also counterproductive.  You can look at what she says–it discredits her without anything else needed: MATTHEWS:  All right.  If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling? SHEEHAN:  I don’t think so, Chris, because I believe that … Read more

Turn the Worm

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by von I’VE BEEN QUITE pessimistic on our chances in Iraq of late.  There are things that we’ve done which cannot be undone; there are errors of execution and judgment that can never be taken back.  But we needn’t lose Iraq. Or, better put, we need not continue to do the things that make losing … Read more

It’s The Energy Anti-Plan!

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by hilzoy Check out this story from the NYT: “The Bush administration is expected to abandon a proposal to extend fuel economy regulations to include Hummer H2’s and other huge sport utility vehicles, auto industry and other officials say. The proposal was among a number of potential strategies outlined by the administration in 2003 to … Read more

Unconvincing Monologue

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by hilzoy Honestly, I did not set out to write a series of vagina posts today. But I was looking at the kittens post and saw a trackback with this intriguing text: “Can you’re mind withstand the cuteness of Left-Wing Kittens? Can you resist the pull to the dark side?!?” Obviously, I had to check … Read more

The Second Time As Farce

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by von MAKE NO MISTAKE; we are losing Iraq.  In this, I echo William Kristol, Greg Djerejian, and our own Charles Bird:  The blame lies squarely at the feet of Rumsfeld.  Rumsfeld famously remarked that we go to war with the army that we have rather than the army that we want and then — … Read more

Bill Kristol is Right

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by Charles

I’m not the biggest fan of Bill Kristol but you have to give him his due.  As it is right now, Bush can’t be fired for the poor job of rebuilding Iraq, but one of the chief architects can, especially when the messages from Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department conflict with the president’s.  Forgive me quoting at length, but Bill Kristol writes:

And Iraq is, as the president said Wednesday, "the latest battlefield in the war on terror." It is also the central battlefield in that war. And so, the president added, "I hear all the time, ‘Well, when are you bringing the troops home?’ And my answer to you: ‘As soon as possible, but not before the mission is complete.’" As the president said Thursday, "We will stay the course. We will complete the job in Iraq."

Or will we? The president seems determined to complete the job. Is his defense secretary? In addition to trying to abandon the term "war on terror," Rumsfeld and some of his subordinates have spent an awful lot of time in recent weeks talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq–and before the job is complete.

Until a few months ago, Bush administration officials refused to speculate on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. They criticized those who did talk about withdrawing, arguing that such talk would encourage the terrorists, discourage our friends, and make it harder to win over waverers who wanted to be assured that we would be there to help. The administration’s line was simply that we were going to stay the course in Iraq, do what it takes, and win.

The president still tends to say this. But not Defense Department civilian officials, who have recently been willing to indicate a desire to get out, and sooner rather than later. After all, Rumsfeld has said, insurgencies allegedly take a decade or so to defeat. What’s more, our presence gives those darned Iraqi allies of ours excuses not to step up to the plate. So let’s get a government elected under the new Iraqi constitution, and accelerate our plans to get the troops home. As Rumsfeld said Thursday, "once Iraq is safely in the hands of the Iraqi people and a government that they elect under a new constitution that they are now fashioning, and which should be completed by August 15, our troops will be able to, as the capability of the Iraqi security forces evolve, pass over responsibility to them and then come home." The key "metric" is finding enough Iraqis to whom we can turn over the responsibility for fighting–not defeating the terrorists.

As Newsweek reported last week: "Now the conditions for U.S. withdrawal no longer include a defeated insurgency, Pentagon sources say. The new administration mantra is that the insurgency can be beaten only politically, by the success of Iraq’s new government. Indeed, Washington is now less concerned about the insurgents than the unwillingness of Iraq’s politicians to make compromises for the sake of national unity. Pentagon planners want to send a spine-stiffening message: the Americans won’t be there forever."

Donald Rumsfeld appears to be caving in to defeatism, a trait that Secretaries of Defense should not have.  There is only one real measure for success in Iraq:  a free, peaceful, non-theocratic representative republic.  Delivery of this entity spells doom for the terrorists and the Sunni/Baathist paramilitary gangs.  If Rumsfeld is unwilling to achieve this goal, he should be gone, and in this I am in full agreement with Joe Biden.  More Kristol:

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Bad Idea

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Via Majikthise, something awful this way comes: “Women from around the world flock to David Matlock’s marble waiting room carrying purses stuffed with porn. The magazines are revealed only in the privacy of his office, where doctor and patient debate the finer points of each glossy photo. The enterprising gynecologist sees countless images of naked … Read more

There are two kinds of people:

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Those who divide people into categories, and those who do so obsessively. Open thread, but feel free to discuss any and all upsides/downsides to obsessive categorization.  Frankly, there was far too much there to even begin considering, especially after a mere four hours of sleep.

Nickel And Dimed To Death

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by hilzoy

From the NYTimes:

“For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents. The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon’s procurement system. The effort to replace the armor began in May 2004, just months after the Pentagon finished supplying troops with the original plates – a process also plagued by delays. The officials disclosed the new armor effort Wednesday after questioning by The New York Times, and acknowledged that it would take several more months or longer to complete. (…)”

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On Cindy Sheehan

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by von I’ve read the comments to my post on Ms. Sheehan; here are a couple quick thoughts in response: 1.  Erick Erickson of RedState did not call Ms. Sheehan a "whore"; he called her a "media whore."  There’s a difference, and it’s not a small one.  And the insane harrassment that’s currently plaguing him … Read more

Left And Right (Literally)

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by hilzoy It’s a hateful day here in Maryland. Both the temperature and the humidity are at nearly 100, and as a result I and my cats are flopping around, nearly braindead. So I thought I’d write about something truly pointless, namely: my troubles with left and right. I cannot, for love or money, get … Read more

Great. Just Great.

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by hilzoy From the NYTimes: “Senior Pentagon officials have opposed the release of photographs and videotapes of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, arguing that they would incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk, according to documents unsealed in federal … Read more

‘We Were Stabbed In The Back’

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by hilzoy Publius at Legal Fiction has a good post about Christopher Hitchens’ hateful article ‘Losing the Iraq War: Can the left really want us to?’ He makes this point: “As the scope of our failure and colossal misjudgment becomes more clear, I expect that bitter pro-war advocates will place an increasing amount of the … Read more

Slime Patrol: Let’s Play ‘Guilt By Association’!

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by hilzoy

I don’t know Cindy Sheehan. I have no idea what kind of person she is. She could be wonderful; she could be awful; I have no idea. Nothing I have seen to date seems to me inconsistent with her being a normal, angry, grieving mother, but for all I know, appearances could be deceiving.

I do know that I hate seeing people slimed. That’s why I decided to look more closely at this story from the New York Sun:

“But as sad as Ms. Sheehan’s loss is – and we don’t belittle it – she has put herself in league with some extreme groups and individuals.

For starters, Ms. Sheehan has been posting on Michael Moore’s Web site, writing, “We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House. I talked with John Conyers today and he wrote a letter to George signed by about 18 other Congress members to request that he meet with me. I also talked to Maxine Waters tonight and she is probably going to be here tomorrow.”

It turns out that the Crawford Peace House Web site includes a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as “Palestine,” and it carries a link to a report that when Prime Minister Sharon visited Crawford, the “peace house” greeted him with an “800-foot-long banner containing all of the United Nations resolutions that Israel is in violation of.” The Crawford Peace House site also features a photo of Eugene Bird, who has suggested that Israeli intelligence was responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA. UPJ organized the march during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, at which a New York Sun poll of 253 of the protesters found that fully 67% of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” In other words, Ms. Sheehan’s “coalition” includes a lot of people who think the persons who killed her son were justified.”

This story has been cited on a bunch of right-wing blogs — notably, this post by Mark in Mexico, entitled “Communists, traitors, mentally ill flock to Cindy Sheehan.” (“Her grief and desire for retribution have caused her to allow herself to be exploited by some of the worst that America has to offer.”) Even the (fortunately) inimitable Jeff Gannon has cited it. So let’s deconstruct it.

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Behold the ObWi Hive Mind Turn Against Itself

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Although there’s a lot I agree with in Hilzoy’s post on Cindy Sheehan (e.g., Michelle Malkin = jerk), having lost a son in Iraq does not give Ms. Sheehan’s words any greater emphasis or render her immune from criticism.  Frankly, I think that her proposals are idiotic and her decision to wait out President Bush … Read more

Why I Love The Cunning Realist

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by hilzoy Because of this (about the smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan): “There are so many side issues of shamelessness and crass opportunism in this story it makes my head spin. Think about the gall of a political and media machine “accusing” a private citizen of changing her mind (imagine that!) about an elected and … Read more

Fair Weather Patriots

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By Edward Here’s a story making the rounds. Via Atrios: Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents. It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the … Read more

A Bad Day For Corruption; A Good Day For The Country

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by hilzoy I despise people who corrupt our democracy as much as I love our democracy itself. Therefore, I am singing glad hosannas at the following pieces of news: First: “Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday as part of a wide-ranging fraud case stemming from the purchase of a … Read more

Two Heroes

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By Edward

I realize there are those in certain quarters who will cry "what took so long?" as if there were no cultural, practical, or personal (including personal safety) obstacles, but two moderate Muslims are now clearly leading the way toward a brighter future for the followers of Islam who live in the West.

The first has been at it a while actually (and I don’t mind pointing out to those who feel homosexuals harm rather than help society, that it took a lesbian to find the courage to stand up the world and say what’s right here). Irshad Manji (whose book The Trouble with Islam Today sits on my nightstand for quick reference) voiced an opinion that I’ve long held regarding foreign-born Muslims who preach hate in adopted Western countries: they should be deported swiftly:

For a European leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has done something daring. He has given notice not just to the theocrats of Islam, but also to the theocracy of tolerance.

"Staying here carries with it a duty," Mr. Blair said in referring to foreign-born Muslim clerics who glorify terror on British soil. "That duty is to share and support the values that sustain the British way of life. Those who break that duty and try to incite hatred or engage in violence against our country and its people have no place here."

With that, his government proposed new laws to deport extremist religious leaders, to shut down the mosques that house them and to ban groups with a history of supporting terrorism. The reaction was swift: a prominent human rights advocate described Mr. Blair’s measures as "neo-McCarthyite hectoring," warning that they would make the British "less distinguishable from the violent, hateful and unforgiving theocrats, our democracy undermined from within in ways that the suicide bombers could only have dreamed of."

Of course, there’s the danger that some folks will misconstrue what Blair said, and Manji applauds, and conclude "tolerance" in and of itself is a bad thing, so it bears pointing out that they’re clearly limiting their statements to a tolerance for for tolerance’s sake that forgives violence here. Any citizen of any nation can work, within the system, for change, but no one has the right to intentionally harm others in that quest. I’ve noted frequently (and long before the July 7th bombing) that the laws that permitted hate-mongering foreign-born Imams to remain in England were foolish. You don’t have to love it or leave it, but you damn well better let it live in peace or leave it. Muslims are obligated, like everyone else, to protect their nation, whether immigrants or born there.

My second hero is new to me, but precisely what the UK needs. Meet Shahid Malik:

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More Bad News (Special Isfahan Edition)

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by hilzoy

From the NYTimes:

“Iran removed United Nations seals on uranium processing equipment at its Isfahan nuclear site on Wednesday, making the plant fully operational, as envoys to the United Nations nuclear agency in Vienna continued to pursue consensus on the wording of a resolution calling for the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program. The removal of the seals took place under the supervision of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, after the agency had installed surveillance cameras intended to ensure that no uranium would be diverted.

The Iranians’ move was criticized by the United States, which with Britain, France and Germany is pressing Iran to resume its voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment. The nuclear agency, based in Vienna, confirmed that Iran had removed the seals at the Isfahan plant, where a first phase of uranium conversion had begun on Monday. (…)

Signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have the right to process and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The European Union and the United States say they are suspicious of Iran’s nuclear activities because Iran hid its nuclear program for 18 years, in violation of international law. Its existence was disclosed by an Iranian opposition group in 2002. Since then, Iran has remained in compliance with the treaty and has worked in full cooperation with United Nations inspectors, who have installed cameras in its nuclear plants and make regular visits and reports.

But the nuclear agency’s board adopted a resolution in September 2004 saying that it “considers it necessary to promote confidence that Iran immediately suspend all enrichment related activities.” The removal of the United Nations seals allows Iran to resume the second phase of the uranium conversion process, which Iran says it is pursuing for its civilian nuclear program. Production remains suspended on the more sensitive part of its nuclear fuel program, the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. (…)

The removal of the seals was part of Iran’s tough stance on its nuclear program under the conservative new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office this week. The daily newspaper Keyhan warned Wednesday in its lead editorial that Iran would withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty if its case was sent to the United Nations Security Council. The newspaper is close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. European leaders have threatened to take Iran to the Security Council, but such a move is not on the table at the Vienna talks. Mr. Ahmadinejad has defended the resumption of work but said Iran wanted to maintain its negotiations with Europe. He also said his government would make its own proposal to end the standoff.”

Great. First North Korea, now Iran. And at this very moment, the Bush administration has notified Congress that it plans to eliminate most State Department arms control offices. Maybe they’re just thinking ahead: if things keep going the way they’re going now, by the time Bush leaves office, dozens of countries will have nuclear weapons, and we’ll be left with the much more tractable task of keeping them out of the hands of Sierra Leone.

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Ban Interstate Traffic In Nonhuman Primates

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by hilzoy

If you’re like me (oh, stop laughing) (and stop sighing with relief, too), you sometimes find yourself thinking: Gee, there must be a bunch of really good bills in Congress, bills that (if passed) would really do some good, but which are doomed to fail because the problem they address isn’t at the top of anyone’s priority list. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would tell me about them, so that I could support them? And wouldn’t it be nice to support something that wasn’t at the center of a political fight, too? Luckily, I have found such a worthy bill, so I’m going to take advantage of my position of awesome media power and ask both of the the millions of readers who hang on my every word to support it. (If any other bloggers want to use their awesome linking powers to help, feel free. This one might die of neglect.)

H.R. 1329 and S. 1509, both known as ‘The Captive Primate Safety Act’, would make it illegal to transport primates across state lines to be kept as pets. (More exactly: it would add non-human primates to a list of “prohibited wildlife species” which it is illegal to “import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce“, except under certain circumstances that don’t include pet ownership. Click the link and look for subsection e if you’re curious.) This is a very, very good idea, on several counts.

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Election Reform In Ohio

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by hilzoy The NYT reports on an effort to reform the elections and redistricting in Ohio: “Critics of the Republican grip on Ohio politics filed petitions on Tuesday that seek a statewide vote on three constitutional amendments that would overturn the way elections are run and strip elected officials of their power to draw legislative … Read more

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

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by hilzoy The Seattle Times has run a series of stories (the main one is here, the rest are accessible from the sidebar) on doctors being paid by Wall Street analysts to talk about ongoing drug trials: “Doctors testing new drugs are sworn to keep their research secret until drug companies announce the final results. … Read more

Crazies

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by von Randy Balko has an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post on the (increasingly common) "zero tolerance" approach to parents who supply kids with alcohol.  (Via Michael Totten, blogging at Instapundit.) It reminded me of a couple things and since — egad! — this is a blog, I’ll share them: First, despite the fact … Read more

Krauthammer On Stem Cells

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by hilzoy

A few days ago, Katherine wrote and asked me what I thought of this piece about stem cells by Charles Krauthammer. When Katherine asks, I always try to answer; but what with one thing and another, I am only now getting around to it. I’m going to start with some minor quibbles with Krauthammer’s editorial before getting to the central issue.

Krauthammer’s basic point is this:

“Congress’s current vehicle for expanding this research, the Castle-DeGette bill, is extremely dangerous. It expands the reach for a morally problematic area of research — without drawing any serious moral lines.”

What moral line in particular does Krauthammer think should be drawn? One that would rule out this:

“The real threat to our humanity is the creation of new human life willfully for the sole purpose of making it the means to someone else’s end — dissecting it for its parts the way we would dissect something with no more moral standing than a mollusk or paramecium. The real Brave New World looming before us is the rise of the industry of human manufacture, where human embryos are created not to produce children — the purpose of IVF clinics — but for spare body parts.”

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Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?

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By Edward You’ve probably seen this on Fafblog already, but just in case, be sure not to miss these helpful hints for determining whether your pre-pubescent son is turning queer before your very eyes, compliments of Dr. Dobson and those thoughtful folks at Focus on the Family. Do any of these behaviors describe your 5 … Read more

NARAL Attack Ad

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NARAL has come out with the first attack ad against the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court.  The transcript of the ad is: Narrator: Seven years ago, a bomb destroyed a women’s health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Emily Lyons: “The bomb ripped through my clinic and I almost lost my life. I will never be … Read more

Random Acts Of Kindness

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by hilzoy

BitchPhD, who is always worth reading, has a great post called: “Open letter to the woman working at the K-Mart snack bar”:

“Thank you so much for your kindness. I was having a sh*tty day. First I had to pour my entire change jar into the CoinStar so I would have enough money to buy gas to get home. Then I was feeling incredibly stressed and anxious, no good reason, just the depression coming on again after a couple of days of exerting myself to be social and good company. So the fact that I was having to do an eight hour drive with a little kid and no money was feeling really scary to me, and when Pseudonymous Kid fell asleep I spent two hours sobbing while I drove. Then he woke up and I stopped, and then the car overheated, which is why I pulled off the road and ended up at your K-Mart.

So thanks for seeing me pulling out the $3 I had left in my pocket in order to buy Pseudonymous Kid, who was hungry after his nap, and hot, because our car doesn’t have a/c, something to eat. And thanks for undercharging us so that I could afford to buy him a hot dog AND an icee. And thanks for telling us “not to rush” when I realized that you were ready to close up and we were still sitting in the snack area. And thanks for sitting at the next table and engaging PK in conversation and offering to get him some more ketchup so he could finish his hot dog. And thanks for telling me where a phone and a gas station were, and for asking kindly how much further we had to drive, and for wishing us luck and expressing sympathy when I said that the car had overheated. Thanks for pretending to believe me when I pretended for PK’s sake that this was no big deal and it would be fine and I wasn’t worried about it at all.

I know you couldn’t have had any idea what was going on behind all of that (…) You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. And I’ll never see you again. But you really helped me out today. Thanks.”

It’s so easy to be nice to total strangers when it looks as though they need it, and also so easy to forget and just not bother. Why don’t we do this all the time? I have no idea. However:

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