Policy and Politics
tfk | February 2, 2010Ben Stein, for those of you who have forgotten, played a bit role in the classic '80s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He played the annoying economics teacher, a role he was uniquely qualified for by being boring and having been bored by his father, an accomplished economist. Stein parlayed his fame into a few books on financial planning and a regular column for the New York Times which was canceled when he became a spokesman for a scammy credit check service. Along the way he made what many regard as "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a long time." In making Expelled, Stein…
tfk | February 1, 2010Bruce Chapman, head of the Discover Institute, has a problem. He objects to Richard Dawkins calling out Pat Robertson as a gigantic blowhard. And also doesn't think Dawkins should do things to help the Haitian people (as evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that Chapman and Disco. have taken no obvious steps to encourage aid to Haiti). After excusing Robertson's remarks, Chapman writes that Dawkins thinks:
Robertson must pay. So by amazing extension must Christianity in general, never mind the extent to which the massive outpouring of aid to Haiti is coming from Christian sources. Even the Red…
tfk | January 31, 2010Scott Roeder found guilty of first-degree murder in death of George Tiller:
A jury took less than 40 minutes Friday to find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of abortion provider George Tiller in a [Wichita] church [â¦] last May. [â¦]
The murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, though under Kansas law, parole is possible. Mr. Roeder, 51 years old, will be sentenced in March. [â¦]
Defense attorney Mark Rudy acknowledged in his closing statement Friday that there was no question his client had killed Dr. Tiller and had been planning to do so…
tfk | January 28, 2010As the Times puts it: Former Justice OâConnor Sees Ill in Election Finance Ruling:
âGosh,â she said, âI step away for a couple of years and thereâs no telling whatâs going to happen.â
Justice OâConnor criticized the recent decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, only obliquely, reminding the audience that she had been among the authors of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, the 2003 decision that was overruled in large part on Thursday. â¦
She has become increasingly vocal in recent years about doing away with judicial elections. Most states elect at least some of…
tfk | January 26, 2010Courtesy of the San Mateo County Times: Police find cache of weapons, alligators and suspected explosives in South San Francisco home:
Lazaro Ismael Leon Jr., who is allegedly a Norteno gang member, entered his [not guilty] plea Monday in San Mateo County Superior Court and Commissioner Stephanie Garratt set the man's bail at $1.2 million, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.
This is only slightly better than the headline a couple weeks ago in the Contra Costa Times: Man shot over mouth jewelry in Richmond. Yes, according to police the young man's grill got jacked, and he…
tfk | January 26, 2010Darwin biopic Creation premiered in seven movie theaters across the country last weekend, earning $53,073, an average of $7,582. That's not a lot of money, but at roughly $10/ticket, this works out to 760 viewers per theater, a solid showing. I know the theater I saw it at was full for their 7 pm showing.
Compare that to creationist schlockumentary Expelled: No Intelligenceâ¦, released two springs ago. Part of its promotional strategy was a big opening weekend; coordinating with the owners of Regal movie theaters, they opened in 1,052 theaters, earning $2,970,848, or $2,824 per theater (…
tfk | January 25, 2010I've had my disagreements with Martin Cothran over the years. He's a bigoted man, proud of teaching logic at a private school, yet utterly dependent on logical fallacies in his actual argumentation. He wants creationism taught in public schools. He dislikes gay people and anyone else who challenges his notions of how sex and gender should work. He enjoys quoting Holocaust-denying racists like Pat Buchanan and cross-burning racists like Charles Murray. He celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by listing the blog posts from 2009 he's most proud of. Sometimes he's basically…
tfk | January 22, 2010Having blown an easy win in the Massachusetts Senate race, DC Democrats seem intent on blowing the dreams of millions of Americans, and the best chance of reforming the health insurance industry to make it more equitable â a policy long held up as a major reason to vote Democratic. The Times reports on the search for consensus on how to move forward:
Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi affirmed her commitment to pass far-reaching health care legislation this year, members of Congress and health policy experts began Thursday to deal with the reality that a smaller bill would have a better chance.…
tfk | January 21, 2010I've never been more ashamed of the Democratic party than I am right now, watching the idiots in Congress piss away the opportunity to expand insurance coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans, to protect the insurance coverage of people who have preexisting conditions, to save Medicare by reducing the rate of medical inflation, and to lay the groundwork for a greater expansion of progressive policies down the road.
The election of Scott Brown changes nothing in the House, and very little in the Senate. House and Senate negotiators were working on merging the different health care bills,…
tfk | January 19, 2010Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Scott Brown will be a U.S. Senator until 2012.
Seriously. Ted Kennedy's seat went to a teabagging healthcare opponent who voted against 9/11 rescue personnel.
On the bright side, Joe Lieberman is no longer the 60th vote for anything interesting, so Senate Dems can take him to the woodshed.
tfk | January 18, 2010There's much that needs to be done to assist the recovery in Haiti, but the consensus of those on the ground is that what's needed now is money. Don't mail blankets or whatever, just let the aid agencies buy what they need and ship it in. The airports and seaports are clogged and there's minimal capacity to offload supplies, so let the aid groups make decisions about what's needed and when.
The Intersection has a good roundup of the top aid groups. Personally, I've always been happy with Oxfam. They have a longstanding presence in Haiti, and I know that they'll be working not just on the…
tfk | January 18, 2010In his proclamation honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, President Obama reminds us of the value of service, and of the value of education. "Education can unlock a child's potential and remains our strongest weapon against injustice and inequality," the President writes.
Education was at the center of the civil rights movement, and equal access to education was a critical part of the fight to make African Americans truly equal. In his speech to the Vermont Baptist Church on Sunday, President Obama reflected on an early speech in King's career, "The Challenge of a New Age," in which…
tfk | January 14, 2010NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott has been awarded the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the most prestigious award from the most prominent scientific honor society in the nation (at least). Care to guess the reaction at Billy Dembski's place?:
Iâm heartened to see our tax dollars working to such good effect.
The NAS is a publicly chartered nonprofit, not a government agency. The award's past winners include Clinton science advisor Neal Lane (whose names are anagrams of one another), Herbert Hoover (for work done before his presidency), and J. Edgar Hoover (for actions taken while…
tfk | January 14, 2010Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Race to the Top Education Grants:
Funding public schools doesn't make any sense.
Actual Rick Perry: "We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our childrenâs future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington."
Better, I suppose, to place their future in the hands of goofballs like Stephen Meyer and David Barton, handpicked by members of a body which has brought consistent dishonor to the state of Texas.
tfk | January 13, 2010I stopped reading the New York Times op-ed page after they put it behind a paywall. It turned out that I could get smart economic commentary from Brad Delong without having to pay the fee to get Paul Krugman. I could get a diverse range of voices by reading other blogs, and never had to contend with Maureen Dowd's asinine gossipy commentary, David Brooks' simplistic conservatism, or the rotating cast of losers brought in to fill the void left by William Safire (Kristol and Douthat).
So it's been interesting to note the enthusiasm for a piece in Monday's Times, an essay by Thomas Geoghegan…
tfk | January 8, 2010Jan 8, 2010: Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute: Warming's Alarm-Ringer Stilled by U.K. Chill:
Prime Minister Brown is one of the world's most outspoken alarmists on global warming. He presently is one of the quieter spokesmen on the subject of his freezing country.
Leading to Marginally Shorter Bruce Chapman:
People with fevers don't have cold toes and winter is never cold.
And more importantly to a flashbackâ¦
May 8, 2005, Jonathan Leake, Science Editor of The Times: Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows:
CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of…
tfk | January 7, 2010The Governator has some thoughts on how to fix our state's broken fiscal situation:
In a state of the state speech, the governor said creating jobs was the top priority for his last year in office and proposed spending $500 million in worker training funded by part of the budget which is in surplus.[â¦]
Schwarzenegger put the budget hole at $19.9 billion over 18 months, about a billion less than a recent report from the state's budget watchdog.[â¦]
Schwarzenegger called for overhauls including changing the state's tax and pension systems and allowing for private prisons, red flags to powerful…
tfk | January 6, 2010So the failure of an underpants bomb on an airplane has led to a massive rethinking of our entire approach to airline security, as well as our intelligence analysis. Conservatives think it should also prompt us to rethink closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and keep terrorism trials out of federal courts.
And yet, today we are reminded that the nation was far less galvanized by a more successful act of recent terrorism. Because today:
James W. von Brunn, who was accused of fatally shooting a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in June, died on…
tfk | January 3, 2010To celebrate the 4th anniversary of ID creationism's defeat in Dover, PA, the Disco. 'Tute is making things up. Having, it seems, nothing new to say on the subject, they've reposted an ill-argued and factually inaccurate essay by philosopher of the mind Thomas Nagel, prefacing it by claiming:
Editor's Note: Dec. 20 was the 4th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision banning the mention of intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania classrooms.
Except no. The Kitzmiller decision didn't ban the mention of ID in Dover's schools. It blocks the school board from requiring science teachers…
tfk | January 3, 2010In an excellent article about the response to the swine flu pandemic, we have these penultimate paragraphs:
Dr. Frieden said he thought a victory over the antivaccine movement had been scored. Nearly 60 million people have been vaccinated, including many pregnant women and children, with no surge in side effects.
John P. Moore, an AIDS researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College, was less sure. Dr. Moore, who spent years fighting AIDS denialism, has called skepticism about flu vaccine âan unholy alliance of the left and rightâ because it joined the liberal natural-medicine proponents with…