Policy and Politics
tfk | October 18, 2007Thanks to all your efforts, Senator Vitter asked that the $100,000 he earmarked for the creationist Lousiana Family Forum be given to someone else.
Thank you for your calls and emails to your Senators. If you have time, you might want to call your congresscritters back and offer your heartfelt thanks for helping do the right thing. Folks on the Hill don't get a lot of happy phone call, and would appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Vitter's remarks are below the fold.
Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a project I sponsored in the fiscal year 2008 Labor, Health, Human Services…
tfk | October 15, 2007Last month, papers in Louisiana spotted an interesting earmark tacked onto the Senate version of the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, HHS, and Education. Senator David Vitter (R-LA brothels) had allocated $100,000 for a Dobson-derived group – Lousiana Family Forum. The money was meant to let them "promote better science education."
Who could oppose better science education? It all depends on what, exactly, you mean by "better" and "science." LFF has a long history of pushing creationism in public schools, including drafting a controversial policy in the Ouachita school…
tfk | October 4, 2007The situation in Myanmar (the once and future Burma) is horrific. A beautiful country has been slowly gutted by thugs, and the world has silently watched its descent into madness. The democratically elected leader of the nation has been under house arrest for decades, and couldn't even get her Nobel Peace Prize in person.
The violence on the streets of major cities has reminded the world of the crisis under way in Burma, and there is some hope that the pressure will finally force some changes. Slacktivist has a suggestion for letters to the Foreign Minister; I've written many letters like…
tfk | September 20, 2007Salon observes:
Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts have written a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs urging full funding for a new cemetery at Fort Riley in Kansas.
The reason: With an influx of casualties from Iraq, the existing cemetery at Fort Riley is now full. Well, not entirely full: A spokesman for the facility tells Reuters that bodies can be buried on top of other bodies if family members want to share plots.
Thank heavens we have such stalwart men looking out for our troops. It would be horrific to force families to have to share their grieving space with other people.…
tfk | September 19, 2007The National Review writes an analysis of the impact of the internet on the 2008 election, but focuses entirely on the impact of Googlebombing in one race, Jim Ryun's loss to Nancy Boyda. My guess is that the reporter and Drew Ryun met at a party, and started talking about the evils of the internets. A few days later, this emerged:
Obviously, the 2006 midterms went very well for Democrats, though there's no way to quantify the contribution of Google bombing to the Democrats' electoral success, especially amidst all the G.O.P. scandal and other national developments heading up to that…
tfk | September 11, 2007It was all supposed to be different after 9/11. Everyone agreed that everything had changed. For a while, Democrats lay down with Republicans, France and America agreed on things, and non-New Yorkers didn't think so poorly of the Big Apple.
It's a shame everyone didn't get together and figure out what, exactly, had changed about everything. The President seems to think that the Constitution changed, that it suddenly became a document granting tremendous power to the President, and virtually none to the other branches of government. The other branches seem still to wonder whether he was…
tfk | September 10, 2007Fred Thompson's pro-life credentials may be harmed because he hasn't shed enough blood:
Rick Scarborough, a Southern Baptist preacher and president of Texas-based Vision America, said that while he is encouraged by Thompson's strong voting record in the Senate against abortion, he questioned the candidate's commitment to social issues.
"The problem I'm having is that I don't see any blood trail," Scarborough said. "When you really take a stand on issues dear to the heart of social conservatives, you're going to shed some blood in the process."
tfk | August 27, 2007Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns - washingtonpost.com:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced his resignation today, ending a controversial cabinet tenure that included clashes with Congress over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and over the use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terror.
… Gonzales will step down on Sept. 17. In a brief statement, he called his 13 years in public service a "remarkable journey," but he gave no explanation about why he chose to resign now after resisting months of pressure to quit.
However, persistent reports over the last several months…
tfk | August 13, 2007
Kansas State GOP Chairman Kris Kobach is a busy man. He's running around the country, trying to keep children some who've graduated from public high schools in a given state from getting in-state tuition at public universities. He's also been working hard to make sure the state Party spends more than it takes in, doesn't pay its staff, and, in his spare time, created a Loyalty Committee, dedicated to rooting out sedition within the state Party. This committee is charged with carrying out Chairman Kobach's fatwa against any Republican officeholder helping any Democrat getting elected.…
tfk | August 3, 2007Reposted from the old TfK.
Cass Sunstein finds that Cost of Iraq War > Cost of Kyoto Protocol:
The cost of the Iraq war, to the United States alone, is about to exceed the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol (designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), to the United States alone. As of this writing, both figures are around $325 billion.
To the world, the cost of the Iraq war now exceeds the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol by a large margin (probably by more than $100 billion).
Elsewhere, Matt Yglesias points out that:
the UN has announced that it will be cutting food rations…
tfk | August 2, 2007Reposted from the old blog because it's still true over a year later.
There's nothing I hate more than people who are too stupid to realize that Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men was the bad guy. He declared himself a law unto himself, and that's not what America wants, it's not what we should want, and it damn sure isn't what we need.
The movie does consist of more than Nicholson testifying. It begins with someone being killed in a homophobic hazing ritual, and ends with his killers and their commanding officers being convicted, and with Tom Cruise's character realizing that the…
tfk | July 23, 2007A pound of flesh is only ~0.5% of the average person. Would you prefer to pay a pound of (your own) flesh, or your income tax assessment as conventionally calculated.
Show your math.
Extra credit: Discuss why the pound of flesh should or should not be adjusted for inflation.
tfk | July 20, 2007The blogosphere is shocked (shocked!) that the Politico would obsess over petty crap like how much Mitt Romney would spend on makeup ($300).
After breaking the story that John Edwards pays non-trivial amounts of money for haircuts, and then beating that story 'til more people knew that fact than could correctly identify how much WMD Saddam Hussein possessed when we invaded (none), no depths of crap journalism are too low for the Politico.
Or, one supposes, Esquire magazine, whose editor was told "Showing Richard Nixon as a flaming queen is outrageous. If he becomes president Esquire had…
tfk | July 18, 2007Secretary of State, and former National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice explains:
I'm a terrible long-term planner.
In late 2000, National Security Advisor-designate Rice published an article describing the many ways in which US foreign policy would have to deal with China in the new administration. Richard Clarke then the counterterrorism czar, had trouble scheduling meetings with her and her staff to describe the threat posed by al Qaeda and related terrorist groups.
She was a big booster of the Iraq war, and was considered a potential successor to George W. Bush. Whether that is…
tfk | July 18, 2007The KC Star explains:
“In the interests of harmony I decided we’ll just take it off,” said Kline spokesman Brian Burgess, who maintains the taxpayer-funded site for the district attorney’s office. “But I won’t rule out putting something there again.
“Going forward,” Burgess said, “I will try to be a little more sensitive to differing points of view. I’m going to try and focus on more news-related stuff.”
Some, including three county commissioners, raised concerns about the use of a government Web site to distribute what could be viewed as political material.
It would probably be better if…
tfk | July 18, 2007
Via Cosmic Variance, we learn of the complex statistical analysis presented here, originally from the Wall Street Journal and based on work from the American Enterprise Institute.
The curve labeled the "Laffer curve" is not meant to make you "laff," it is actually an example of the psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia. More famous examples include the ability to see Jesus in burnt tortillas, or the name of Allah in the swirls of an ice cream cone. In this case, the AEI has discovered their own mythical ideal in the data on tax revenue and tax rates.
The Laffer curve is the…
tfk | July 11, 2007In my reaction to Bora's interview with Senator Edwards, I focussed on the importance of institutional safeguards for government scientists and presidential science advisors. In particular, I cited the way that President Bush misrepresents the scientific support for his stem cell policies from scientists in his administration and in the community of scientists at large.
Yesterday's testimony by former surgeon general Carmona emphasizes the importance of establishing institutional safeguards for government science advisors. The LA Times explains that Carmona told the House Government Reform…
tfk | July 10, 2007Pollster.com's Professor Franklin's latest update on Presidential approval is pretty astounding. Since some time in late April, approval has been in freefall, and where it will land, no one can know.
The lowest approval ever recorded was 23%, seven months before President Nixon resigned in a scandal over illegal wiretapping, a lost war, improperly fired federal prosecutors, and the abuse of executive privilege to cover it all up.
There's been a lot of talk about the wisdom of pursuing impeachment against Bush and Cheney, and the parallel with the eminently impeachable Nixon certainly seems…
tfk | July 10, 2007Chad points out how the war on water has led airport security astray:
In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints.
The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb.
Of course, the screeners missed weapons that weren't accompanied by deadly, deadly water, so maybe it wouldn't matter. On the other hand, the imminent paper jihad is sure to keep…
tfk | July 9, 2007Bora got to ask presidential candidate John Edwards 8 questions about science. As with most communications from candidates, a lot that can only be understood by reading between the lines, and by examining what isn't there. For instance, Edwards wants to win the Iowa caucuses, so ethanol is played up, without any mention that existing ethanol technology probably has a negligible effect on greenhouse gas emissions, and promotes unsustainable agricultural practices. On the other hand, he properly puts it in the context of farm subsidies, and mostly includes it in the broader category of…