Policy and Politics
tfk | May 15, 2008California is set to join Massachusetts as a hotbed for equality:
Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court’s 4-to-3 decision striking down state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman makes California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to play a role in the presidential campaign.
“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief…
tfk | May 15, 2008Rolling Stone chronicles The Fear Factory, the self-justifyingly excessive response of the FBI and local law enforcement to the war on terror:
The two officers tell me about a close call at the Taste of Chicago food festival last year. Millions attend the annual street feast, with Chicago-style sausage and pizza and tamales on sale in booths along the lakefront. As with all major public events, the JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] helped plan the security profile. A JHAT —a Joint Hazardous Assessment Team —set up at the festival, dotting the area with devices that detect signs of a chemical…
tfk | May 14, 2008NARAL and John Edwards endorse Barack Obama. Obama currently has the most pledged delegates, the most superdelegates, and Democrats are unifying around him.
As someone (hilzoy?) pointed out a few days ago, this is a remarkable event: for the first time in my political life, my favored candidate in the primaries actually seems to have won the nomination. Take that, Bill Bradley!
tfk | May 14, 2008The Department of the Interior explains:
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today announced that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened…
tfk | May 14, 2008Buswell fends off quokka rumours | The Australian:
WEST Australian Opposition leader Troy Buswell has admitted to chair-sniffing in the past but today he denied having done anything untoward to a quokka.
Mr Buswell, who has also admitted to snapping the bra of a Labor staffer, faced question at Parliament House after sacked frontbencher Paul Omodei had said “more stories” would emerge about Mr Buswell and that his leadership would “die the death of a thousand cuts”.
Asked if he had done anything inappropriate to a quokka, Mr Buswell replied: “No”.
Asked if he was aware of any rumours about…
tfk | May 12, 2008Hilzoy quotes Steve Benen, quoting Roll Call:
After months working behind the scenes, House Republican leaders this week will finally start rolling out their rebranding effort aimed at rallying the party around a comprehensive policy and message agenda.
Titled “Reasons to Believe,” the plan is meant to provide House Republicans with a sales pitch to voters by focusing on four issue areas: the economy, energy, health care and security.
And already we've got a list of 8 myths about it.
Yes, the Republican party has named its brilliant new plan after a crackpot creationist group, but at least…
tfk | May 9, 2008In Kansas, it was a party line vote:
Nay KS-1 Moran, Jerry [R]
Aye KS-2 Boyda, Nancy [D]
Aye KS-3 Moore, Dennis [D]
Nay KS-4 Tiahrt, Todd [R]
The bill, HR 1113, is a nonbinding resolution "celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day." The vote was on a motion to send the bill back for reconsideration and revision in committee.
Tiahrt rose in protest, demanding first the vote on his motion to recommit, and requesting that the votes be recorded, because "because I’m sure every member wants their mother to know that they have…
tfk | May 5, 2008Hillary has lost it.
First, she signs on with John McCain's idiotic plan to eliminate gas taxes for a while. This is stupid, because it won't actually cut prices (the price of a good like gasoline is dominated by how much customers are willing to pay, and fiddling with the tax won't change demand, just how much money oil companies get and how much goes to the government). It's also stupid because it will starve the government of funds it uses to maintain roads, and infrastructure maintenance is always good, and is especially important as a form of counter-cyclical spending in a recession.…
tfk | May 2, 2008I'm used to creationists. Every day, I get up, check my email, and get questions straight from the Index of Creationist Claims. Drawings of dinosaurs that prove people lived with dinosaurs, the young sun would have been too cold, the ocean has too much salt, etc. It's fun. I point people toward resources to clarify their scientific claims, then start digging into the real issue: their misunderstanding of the relation between science and religion. "No," I explain, "you don't have to give up your religious faith in order to accept the scientific evidence." And that sometimes leads to…
tfk | May 1, 2008
And so, 5 years after President Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq are over," the 4,374th coalition soldier has died in Iraq. The evidence continues to support my contention that the surge hasn't done much or anything to stem the tide of violence, and that the lull in violence our troops are seeing depends largely on the political maneuverings of Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and Iran-sympathizers in Iraq. What mission can we say we've accomplished there, other than the entirely unhoped-for, and widely-predicted, deaths of many soldiers, and the woundings of many, many more.
The…
tfk | May 1, 2008Governor Schwarzenegger addresses insider trading tycoon Michael Milken and a few of their richest friends:
"…I always encourage the legislators in Sacramento, because some of them come from those little towns," Schwarzenegger said. "You know what I'm saying? They come from those little towns, and they don't have that vision yet of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes. Or of putting a highway on top of a highway. They look at you and say, 'Well, we don't have that in my town, what are you talking about?' So they are kind of shocked when you say certain things."
I anticipate…
tfk | April 30, 2008As former Kansas congressman Jim Slattery kicks off his campaign to replace Senator Pat "Memory Pills" Roberts, Roberts is already having trouble keeping his facts straight. Sean Tevis explains:
I heard that Senator Pat Roberts, who is seeking his third Senate term, issued an ad criticizing Slattery for his work as a lobbyist in Washington. “He stopped working for Kansas 14 years ago and made millions for himself,” the ad says.
But I can tell you first-hand that’s not true.
The company I work for, based in Overland Park, contacted Jim Slattery three years ago to help us. We designed a…
tfk | April 29, 2008It's not just the science groups who are upset with Expelled's misuse of the Holocaust for petty political advantage. The venerable Anti-Defamation League says that the anti-evolution film misappropriates the Holocaust:
New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design…
tfk | April 24, 2008Orac doesn't think Expelled's Nazi claims are a form of Holocaust denial. I disagree.
Orac has some good points, and "denial" may be a strong word. Orac gives the basic criteria of Holocaust denial as rejecting at least one of these statements:
1. The Holocaust was the intentional murder of European Jews by the Nazi government of Germany during World War II as a matter of state policy
2. This mass murder employed gas chambers, among other methods, as a method of killing
3. The death toll of European Jews by the end of World War II was roughly 6 million.
Expelled is either silent on or in…
tfk | April 23, 2008The video at ExpelledExposed.com highlighting Chris Comer's story was one of last week's most viewed and most discussed on YouTube. In a week, it basically tied the YouTube trailer for Expelled, and exceeded the viewership of the Dick-to-the-Dawk viral video put out by the producers of Expelled.
We don't know if the next three videos we're rolling out over the next few weeks will get the same response, but I'm very fond of the one we're highlighting this week:
tfk | April 22, 2008Hilzoy compares three candidate comments on the alleged autism/vaccine link:
Last month I wrote about John McCain's statement claimed that there is "strong evidence" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. I expect better from Democrats, and while saying that we don't know whether vaccines cause autism is better than saying that they do (or did, while thimerosal was still used), it's not better enough. And both Democratic candidates have said this. Obama:
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The…
tfk | April 22, 2008I'm still digging out of the post-Expelled craziness. Our video about Chris Comer has gotten more views than the Expelled trailer on Youtube or the rapping Dawkins video, and traffic keeps streaming in to ExpelledExposed.com.
If you haven't done so already, there's still time to locate a stupid statement by Ben Stein (from anywhere, not the movie) and refute it as part of NCSE's "Set Ben Straight" contest. Fabulous prizes!
Now get out there and enjoy this amazing planet of ours.
tfk | April 16, 2008Sir Charles has a Question for the Class:
Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the "Keating Five," had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with…
tfk | April 9, 2008The braintrust at conservative blog RedState is fed up with people complaining about John McCain's enthusiasm for a century more of our awesome Iraqi adventure. Sure, when McCain was asked if he minded 50 more years in Iraq, he responded "make it 100," and sure that'd mean 20 times the devastation to that nation and to our military. But RedState sees it through a different lens:
Clearly McCain was talking about a peace time standing presence ... Someone should ask the Democrats if they think we're still at war with the confederacy, the Germans, and the Japanese given all the standing…
tfk | April 2, 2008I've been skipping the framing wars lately. I think Matt Nisbet was wrong to criticize PZ Myers for talking up his expulsion from the Expelled showing in Minneapolis. I think PZ is wrong to blithely dismiss framing. I think both of those parties, and a number of other players in this persistent spat, have lost perspective, and let this turn into an extended grudge match that no one cares about.
In brief, the Expelled Expulsion undercut the Expelled framing. If the movie is all about freedom, etc., then it's inconsistent to be censoring critics with NDAs and arbitrary expulsion of their…