Politics
pharyngula | January 19, 2006I was challenged to address a moral dilemma brought up by Kevin Drum.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.
Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal…
pharyngula | January 19, 2006Maybe the right wingers will be interested in expanding this UCLA program to pay student Quislings.
A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.
The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its "Exposing UCLA's Radical Professors" initiative takes aim at faculty "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic." Although the group says…
stcynic | January 18, 2006A group of very prominent conservatives, including Bob Barr, Grover Nordquist and Paul Weyrich, have formed a group called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances and are demanding a Congressional investigation into the NSA wiretapping issue. David Keene of the American Conservative Union had this to say:
"The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully…
pharyngula | January 18, 2006Open Thread
I'm doing some traveling and touristy things with grrlscientist today, on top of somehow coping with the first week of classes (physiology and our freshman seminar in biological principles), and attending Drinking Liberally at the 331 Club tonight. I also have to get tickets to the Prairie Home Companion show that will be taped here at UMM on 11 February…it all adds up to me being a little scattered and distracted and otherwise occupied for much of today. You all are just going to have to fend for yourselves for a bit.
Here is a short list of things I should write about, but won't…
pharyngula | January 16, 2006Hey, Norbizness is supposed to be a funny guy. So what's he doing posting an excellent excerpt from a Martin Luther King letter?
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who…
pharyngula | January 16, 2006Chris Clarke sees that we're Abandoning NOLA in Orion:
"[W]hile encouraging city residents to return home and declaring for the media audience that "we will do whatever it takes" to save the city, the President... formally refused the one thing New Orleans simply cannot live without: A restored network of barrier islands and coastal wetlands."
Leiter reports on the human catastrophe and the same shortsightedness:
The Army Corps of Engineers is still not doing anything on stopping the loss of the coastal littoral. Before Katrina, Louisiana lost some 40 miles of coastline over the last three…
pharyngula | January 16, 2006Give Up Blog posts a fascinating map of charitable giving by state, to shoot down a fatuous WSJ op-ed that tries to claim greater charity as a Red State virtue. I certainly don't see a positive correlation there, do you?
That claim brings to mind another common misconception, that religion is the driving force behind charity. Here's another map, of the distribution of the ungodly (not just atheists, but agnostics and other people who are not affiliated with any organized religion.)
Again, any correlation between these two maps looks like it would be fairly weak, and isn't going to support…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2006
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has provided protection to our most threatened and endangered plants and animals for over 30 years. As new legislation makes its way through Congress that would weaken the ESA, undermine its scientific foundation, and cripple federal efforts to protect and preserve wildlife and their habitats, scientists' voices are critical. A strong, unified statement will help ensure that the science in the ESA remains strong.
Several organizations have written a letter and are seeking signatures from scientists. To sign this letter, go to the electronic form provided by…
pharyngula | January 13, 2006Man, you can shoot the pope and still get a job in this administration.
pharyngula | January 12, 2006An exploding aardvark whispered in my ear that we have a new candidate for governor here in Minnesota: Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey.
Honesty is very seldom heard nowadays, especially from a politician. So, I am not going to break from political tradition. My name is Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, Ph.D., L.D.D.D. I am a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch. My Magikal Path name is: Lord Ares.
The first two sentences taken together are a little amusing, but I'm sill not planning to vote for the guy. He's a former Republican (surprise!), but has now founded his own…
pharyngula | January 12, 2006Pat Robertson's remarks about Sharon—once again blaming human suffering on divine retribution—have put a crimp in his pocketbook. He's been leading a consortium to open a Christian theme park in Israel, and finally the Israelis have noticed that Robertson is a tasteless bigot and dishonest con-man. A spokesman for the tourism minister says he's out now.
Mr Hartuv left the door open to continuing the project but only with evangelists who disown Mr Robertson's statements.
"The contract is still open - just not with Mr Robertson. If there are other Christian leaders, they are most welcome to…
stcynic | January 10, 2006I came across this item on Clayton Cramer's blog and, while I typically disagree with him on political matters, I fully agree with some of what he says here. In discussing the Jack Abramoff scandal, he says:
Almost all bribery is related to government regulation of the economy or manipulation of the tax code. Yes, you do occasionally find people doing corrupt things for idealistic causes, but not often enough for me to worry about. People risk jail because they want to get rich.
The economist Thomas Sowell made the the point some years ago that, "When legislatures control buying and selling,…
stcynic | January 3, 2006Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who has spread a lot of money around Washington buying favors, has plead guilty to several Federal counts today and is turning state's evidence. I guarantee you there are many legislators on the Hill right now quaking in their boots. Expect several major indictments of Congressmen in the next few months for accepting bribes and selling influence. Duke Cunningham wasn't the first and he won't be the last. Many more will go down in flames.
Update: For a really thorough overview of all of the folks who have been subponaed, indicted, or received large donations (more…
stcynic | January 3, 2006Sandefur posted an unusually important bit of information about the NSA wiretapping scandal at Positive Liberty the other day. Quoting Robert Levy, a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute, he established that the FISA law explicitly said that warrantless wiretaps were only allowed during the first 15 days after war was declared:
Second, in FISA, §1811, Congress expressly contemplated warrantless wiretaps during wartime, and limited them to the first 15 days after war is declared. The statute reads: "Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may…
stcynic | December 26, 2005The Bush administration genuinely appears to think that as long as it claims it needs the authority to do something in order to fight terrorism, there are no limits whatsoever on its power. This has reached the point where even the administration's defenders are having a difficult time finding a rationale for their increasingly imperial behavior. Some of us saw this coming 3 years ago when they began to assert the authority to suspend habeas corpus in specific situations and hold US citizens indefinitely without charging them or giving them an opportunity to challenge their imprisonment, but…
tlambert | December 2, 2005Hello! And welcome to SMAI: Stupidest Man Alive Idol. Here's how it works: our contestants perform for you, the audience. And then you, the audience, judge them and you can be as unfair as you like in your comments. Our contestants today are Donald Luskin and Tim Blair. Luskin goes first, with Brad DeLong providing the commentry:
A correspondent asks me if it isn't time to surf on over again to Donald Luskin's "Poor and Stupid" website, find some egregious offense against intelligent thought, and lay down another marker saying that Luskin is indeed the Stupidest Man Alive™, just in case…
stcynic | November 25, 2005Here's a great example of why I consider Paul Musgrave to be one of the very best writers in the blogosphere. He tackles the difference between a partisan and an ideologue, two terms often used interchangeably that are actually near-opposites.
stcynic | November 17, 2005Conservative columnist George Will has a rather blistering column up about where his fellow conservatives have gone wrong recently. He begins with a blistering statement about the dangers of embracing anti-evolution nonsense:
The storm-tossed and rudderless Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking re-election were defeated. This expressed the community's wholesome exasperation with the board's campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of "intelligent design'' theory, into high school biology classes,…
stcynic | November 7, 2005Politics is, by and large, the art of taking seemingly contradictory positions and pretending to take both of them on the basis of principle. That's true of both parties most of the time. But rarely have I seen an example so blatant and brazen as the Bush administration's position on torture. "We do not torture," declared the President in Panama. In the meantime, the Vice President is lobbying Congress to stop them from passing a law forbidding American agents from using torture to extract information. And his argument is that if they're not allowed to use torture - the very thing they claim…
emjohnson | November 1, 2005Reprinted from Wildlife Conservation Magazine
"Behind Enemy Lines"
November/December 2005
By Eric Michael Johnson
December 2002 -- After four days traveling upriver in a dugout canoe, Belgian primatologist Jef Dupain became the first researcher in five years to return to the war-torn Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). As he surveyed the overgrown field station that had once been his home, a boy soldier wielding an AK-47 stepped into view from a concealing tangle of vines. Fortunately the boy was only one of the rebel fighters who had escorted Dupain…