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March 31, 2005

Why Tilt? II

Studies about the leftward tilt in academia, such as the recent one Josh noted below, are nothing new. Conservatives often try to make this case (the Hoosier Review made modest efforts twice at Indiana University, here and here), but it doesn't seem that anyone much cares besides conservatives.

The dominant issue seems to be explaining the causes of this tilt, with David Horowitz and his Students for Academic Freedom assuming that it is discrimination in hiring and promotion. Paul brought us this fine article which does much to debunk this. And now Mr. Klein, to whom we have responded twice, suggests that well informed people, such as academics, are more likely to turn to the left for "internal coherency and intellectual rigor." I'd have to admit that, yes, it is tiresome to be a thoughtful partisan, and that some of my professors, who are immersed in public affairs, might well have been more sympathetic to the GOP were the party not so ridiculous. But three critiques of this position: First, the data set in question comes from 1999, and other studies on academic leftism predate this admin also. Second, Will Wilkinson establishes that leftism is not an empirical ideology (no ideology is), so mere consumption of data is not sufficient to turn professors liberal. Third, consumption of news is likely to include a good amount of that odious conservative bogeyman, the "liberal media," and so would amount to a feedback loop. So we are still in want of the causes of academic liberalism.

Both Josh and Paul make speculations reminiscent of a theory Robert Nozick laid out in his essay, "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?" This piece could be more appropriately titled to explain that academics, among other intellectuals (so-called "wordsmiths," which would include the above-mentioned journalists), hold some sort of resentment or animus to the free market. In other words, why are intellectuals economically leftist?

The crux of Nozick's argument is that academics are imbued with certain norms from childhood on in the dominant extra-familial arena: school. These norms include notions that academic achievement is highly valued in society and that bookish skills are the most important. To some extent this is true, but the free market also has other values perhaps not inherent in intelligence, and when the market fails to bestow the highest rewards on over-achievers, they get pissed. Nozick is a bit more nuanced and circumspect (as they say, read the whole thing), but this may have enough truth to be useful in explaining why academia is so left-wing.

Consider an honors student newly shipped off to college, where perhaps he just begins to become aware that his smarts will not automatically translate into money in the real world. Is it implausible to suppose that he would be more attracted to tracts and professors who resent, either overtly or implicitly, the free market? And upon earning a degree in some non-lucrative field, perhaps the humanities, why not chose graduate school over the work force? And afterward, why not stay in that highly-structured environment where rewards are assured and regular? It's a temptation I think every intelligent student must face, but leftward-tilting students, who perhaps resent the market for placing extra demands on them, might be more willing to succumb to it. As Nozick says, this may be the predisposition that results in liberal academia.

But so long as the cause is not necessarily institutional, as Horowitz et alia suspect, I'm much more concerned with the consequences. Do universities turn students liberal? Every College Republican has anecdotal evidence of professors forcing their views upon undergraduates. Even some of my friends, who arrived at college with not-too-particularly-sophisticated views on politics, have come out of classes with some minor reprogramming. But ultimately, I think this points to a larger problem of the failure of higher learning to teach critical thinking skills (or the failure of college students to possess them).

Posted by Zach Wendling at 03:01 PM | Comments (9)

Radio recommendation

I've been listening to the Citizen Journalist Report, a new radio show hosted by bloggers Bill Ardolino and Jeff Goldstein. It's hilarious, smart, and creative. They're hosted by RightTalk Radio, which is a bit of a public access network.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Judicial Rhetoric

In his written decision yesterday to deny a rehearing for Terri Schiavo's parents, federal judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. of the 11th Circuit Court of appeals "went out of his way to castigate Bush and congressional Republicans for acting 'in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for governance of a free people - our Constitution,'" according to this news report.

According to the article, Birch went on to complain that Congress had tried to "rob" federal courts of their jurisdiction in the Schiavo case. (I thought it was Congress' action which actually made it a federal case, but I digress.) Although I agree with Birch that Congress' action was wrong--though I believe the majority of members of Congress voting for the Schiavo bill were well-intentioned and may have even believed that failing to act would be a moral failing--I was rather surprised that he included such a strident statement in his decision. The statement does not even seem directly related to the decision he was called upon to make, i.e. he was not reviewing the Constitutionality of the law that Congress passed.

I suspect that Josh and other people more aware of the law than I will confirm that such fairly extraneous statements are commonplace in judicial decisions. But they would seem to undermine the status of the judiciary as being a branch of government independent from politics. Judges should not turn their lifetime appointments into careers in punditry. Am I wrong?

Posted by Eric Seymour at 01:00 PM | Comments (4)

What we (don't) know

The White House meekly links to a WMD Commission report on its front page today without much fanfare. That's probably because the "scathing report" says the spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most WMD judgments and that we know "disturbingly little" about threats posed to us. How comforting.

Update: Even more comforting, the commission recommends a massive bureaucracy called the national counter-proliferation center to help prevent it from happening again.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:18 AM | Comments (4)

Tag team back again

ITA friend and neighbor Brad DeLong has teamed up with Paul Krugman and Dean Baker to present a paper today to the Brookings Institution on some failings of Social Security reform. About midway through this article in the NY Times Edmund Andrews reports on the presentation. It appears to be a more academic version of Krugman's February 1st New York Times column where Krugman notes the inconsistency between the economic growth assumptions of the Social Security actuaries and their assumptions for stock market returns.

In a paper to be presented on Thursday at the Brookings Institution, three economists who are longtime critics of Mr. Bush argue that stock returns are likely to be about 4.5 percent if economic growth slows as much as the administration predicts.

"We find it arithmetically very difficult to construct scenarios in which asset returns are at their historic average values and real G.D.P. growth is markedly slowed," wrote the economists. . .

Many advocates of Social Security reform will note that since 1926, the annual real total return for the S&P 500 is 7.2%, and that Social Security actuaries predict only 6.5%, a relatively conservative estimate in historical context. But the Times claims a "growing number of economists" believe stocks will perform much more poorly, with Goldman Sachs estimating around 5%. I'm neither qualified nor prepared to wade into that debate - a debate which seems to have countless advocates with compelling evidence on either side.

But I will note that under most Social Security reform proposals a participant would only have to overcome a 3% rate of return if he voluntarily elected to use a personal account. 3% is the supposed rate of the benefit offset that you would have to beat for higher growth in a personal account. The Times calls this "automatic cuts in traditional Social Security benefits," but that seems awfully misleading. To begin with, it only kicks in if you voluntarily personalize - you're free to remain under the current system. Second, the reforms require 3% of returns because that is the amount Social Security would keep if it weren't personalized. In other words, if you can beat what the government would've got on its return, you keep that amount over and above the 3%. (Imagine the returns if the government weren't involved at all!)

(Ed.: This post's title uses "Whoomp! (There It Is)" lyrics in a lame attempt to make a boring topic at least mildly ammusing.)

Others blogging the paper: Roland Patrick, Scrivener.net, and Daniel Shaviro.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:26 AM | Comments (12)

Saving the world from ourselves

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment project hit the news yesterday with a lot of fanfare. Scores of media outlets featured the report on the front pages and plenty of blogs got in on the act as well. It reports that up to 60 percent of the world's ecosystems are crumbling and much of it may be gone forever unless something is done. As a conservationist the report, if true, disturbs me. We didn't really need to be reminded that humans burden ecosystems, but the degree is striking.

What many outlets covering the report miss, though, is what the report recommends we do to solve the problem. In a rush to trumpet gloom and doom very few seem to have caught the most surprising part. The UN-based Millennium Ecosystem Assessment advocates a free market approach so that the demand of natural resources must account for the limited supply, something often avoided through subsidies. It also suggests that environmental degradation would be best reduced by more trade and more economic growth.

Specifically, the study notes that "Because many ecosystem services are not traded in markets, markets fail to provide appropriate signals that might otherwise contribute to the efficient allocation and sustainable use of the services." A market-based approach, similar to those advocated by many conservatives in the US, would be promising, but only if the "supporting institutions are in place." In other words, a responsible and effective government is still needed to ensure it's enforced.

Once those are established - and they are clearly in Europe, America, and most of Asia - a market for ecosystem services "can both increase the incentives for their conservation and increase the economic efficiency of their allocation if supporting legal and economic institutions are in place." 1,360 scientists from 95 nations have come together at the UN and advocated a market-based approach to limited resources. That's news indeed; why did the MSM choose not to cover it?

Others blogging the report: Connexions, the Urban Country, Jeremy D. Posadas, AlwaysRight.org, Stumbling and Mumbling, Crumb Trail, GOP Bloggers, and The Hypocritical Observer.

Update: Zach points to this post at Cafe Kayek declaring "science has already died."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 07:42 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2005

Kurtz wades in

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has taken up the memogate affair in an article titled "Doubts Raised On Schaivo Memo." Power Line rips into it and leaves tattering shreds behind. Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey weigh in as well. John Hinderaker's Weekly Standard piece still offers the best sumary of events (and thanks go to Hinderaker's hat tip on Laura Ingraham's radio show). I'm also told by producers the developments may be discussed on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast today.

Update: The Washington Times throws its hat in (requires registration).

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:56 AM | Comments (11)

The House of Hanover And Its Discontents

So, should the Church of England bless Prince Charles's marriage? Some say no. I, however, find it remarkable that the Church of England is considered a font of moral teaching on the matter of royal divorce, adultery, and remarriage. (Aside from the most obvious precedent, where was the Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of, say, George IV?)

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 05:05 AM | Comments (6)

Why Intellectuals Prize the Intellect

Ezra Klein takes a swipe at this site for a recent post that pondered, again, why university professors are so uniformly leftist or liberal. Writes Klein:

So in places where intelligent, informed people work, many of them turn out to be liberal. At the places the most intelligent and informed people work, even more of them turn out to be liberal. And so we scratch our heads and wonder about bias? Why?

In its simplism, this statement is truly awe-inspiring. It is a Gothic cathedral of arrogance.

Klein's argument rests upon the premise that there is some ideal vantage point from which observers can claim a hold on Truth--and that university professors just happen to be in this happy position. Later, he makes a different argument: That the incompetence and unforced errors he and others see in this Administration are responsible for the poor image of conservatism and Republicanism generally. (Brad DeLong makes a much better, and far more convincing, stab at this argument here.)

I think my readers are sophisticated enough to understand why the "vantage point" argument is simply untenable. Professors are not separate from the world, they are bound up in it, and have their own beliefs and interests separate from their intellectual work that influence how they see the political world. In particular, professors as a class tend to lack managerial experience and perform according to expectations and norms that are radically different from the outside world. Posner is only the most distinguished commenter to point out that academia is full of social misfits. More to the point, professors are rewarded less for results and more for arcane matters. A gas station manager may not know Kant, but he does know how to meet payroll; a professor will probably be in the reverse position. Which skill should be more highly valued by society? So Klein's assertion that professors are liberals because they're smarter is wrong and unfair.

But the DeLong Hypothesis that intellectuals are afraid to admit to being Republican because the administration and the House leadership are either mendacious or uninformed about major policy issues is harder to dispute, especially after the events last week in the Terri Schiavo matter. The spectacle of people arguing that just because someone's brain is liquid doesn't mean they're not alive, or that just because the family had had fifteen years of appeals didn't mean that due process had been served, was ridiculous, a Scopes Trial for our time. And if identifying with the GOP means that people assume you agree with Randall Terry clique, then it's understandable why intellectuals would be hesitant to do so.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:31 AM | Comments (16)

Why Tilt?

Ezra Klein responds to my post linking to a study on college faculty and their alleged liberal bias. Klein argues that "as you climb up the rungs of academia, where internal coherency and intellectual rigor become values to live and die by, you find fewer Republicans." In other words, according to Klein, conservatives are stupid. After all, "At the places the most intelligent and informed people work, even more of them turn out to be liberal." To his credit, Klein is open and honest about his disdain for conversative smarts; not everyone is.

It may come as no surprise that I reject this notion. To begin with, it assumes academia houses "the most intelligent and informed people." In fact many of the most intelligent and informed people accept lucrative positions in the private sector, high level government positions, or elsewhere. It is often said that "those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I don't believe that's a universal aphorism, but there's certainly some truth to it. Many of the best economists are on Wall Street, not in the ivory tower, and many of the best writers publish regularly for a salary rather than grade student work.

It's naive and shortsighted to assume academia houses "smarter" people, especially when it offers a lower salary compared to private sector positions. Professors forgo the capitalist dream of achieving wealth through the marketplace and instead rely upon the government and private contributions for support. A party and ideology that espouses to minimize that support isn't all that appealing. After all, the marketplace doesn't have much room for "peace studies."

Interestingly, when the Left sees under-representation of minorities and women in the workforce, it cries discrimination and bigotry. But for some reason under-representation of conservatives is perfectly acceptable in academia. Which is it - does representation reflect skill and worth, or bigotry? I don't believe quotas are an answer to the problem of liberal bias and imbalace in colleges, just as they are not the best answer to overcoming private sector bias and discrimination. Too often consistency takes a hike.

Update: Klein offers an update: "I should clarify that I don't believe liberals are necessarily smarter than conservatives -- I've met some morons and geniuses among both breeds. What I do believe, or am at least considering, is that the heavy consumption of information tilts consumers towards the liberal end of things." I still disagree, for reasons above, and reasons Musgrave articulated even better. Aside from this post, though, Klein's blog appears to be a good one worth bookmarking.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:27 AM | Comments (6)

March 29, 2005

"Peace" and the American Way

The Indianapolis Star reports today on the vandalism of a beautiful Medal of Honor Memorial in downtown Indianapolis, sitting on the canal just a few blocks away from my residence. The names of 3,410 Medal of Honor winners were etched on glass panels. The violent "peace protesters" shattered the glass and spray-painted "obscene words about America, President Bush and Gov. Mitch Daniels, as well as peace symbols and other signs."

Of the many memorials in Indianapolis, this may have been my favorite. As the canal bends at the state government center, it heads south with a beautiful array of flowers, ducks, and architecture. The state museum sits elegantly on the left with the Medal of Honor Memorial serenely built into a grassy knoll on the right. Along with names of recipients etched into the glass panes, the memorial had displays and audio programs to educate visitors.

Now, thanks to anarchists advocating "peace," the memorial features spray-paint and broken glass. Perhaps city officials should leave the destruction as a monument to all that the "peace protesters" hold dear. Then rebuild the memorial nearby exactly as it was originally and let visitors see the competing ideologies side by side. In the end, the anarchists will have done much more educating than they bargained for.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:31 PM | Comments (8)

Accidental?

Hat tip to Prof. Reynolds for pointing to this page featuring a Reuters photo with an interesting caption.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:15 PM | Comments (6)

Ends, Means, and Sex Education

Over at my regular blog, I have posted regularly about the failures of abstinence-only sex education and the need for a more comprehensive sex education program in the US that includes, at the very least, free and anonymous availability of birth control. I've made this argument purely on empirical grounds - such programs work in country after country where the rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases are far lower than in the US. Some of my readers have suggested that for many social conservatives, they simply don't care about the practicality of what works and what doesn't, that they would rather preach moral purity and watch teen pregnancy and STDs go up than to take the practical step. Now here comes Joe Carter, a prominent evangelical blogger, to confirm that suggestion. In a post responding to several questions, here is Joe's answer to this one:

4. If it could be demonstrated that comprehensive sex education and actively encouraging contraceptive use measurably decreased the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions, would you throw your support behind these options? (Put another way, what's more important to you: cutting the number of abortions, or cutting sexual activity?)

In other words, do the ends justify the means? I don't think they do nor do I think many people are truly that Machiavellian. After all, sterilization would also measurably decrease the number of teen pregnancies and abortions. The problem with "comprehensive" (i.e., nonjudgemental) sex education and the encouragement of contraceptives is that it treats teenagers as if they were simply statistics. If the overall reduction in social ills is reduced then it was worth the individual cost, right?

I certainly don't see it that way. Teens look to adults for guidance on how they should live. But much, if not most, of the time they will simply ignore what they are told. That doesn't mean we should stop telling them the truth or give up on encouraging virtuous behavior. We should treat them as morally accountable persons.

The primary reason I don't take a utilitarian approach to reducing sexual activity is because it ignores the effects on the individual level. I truly believe - and have seen it confirmed hundreds of times - that teens who have sex outside a lifelong monogamous relationship are bound to have some degree of emotional, physical, and psychological damage. That is why I can't support such unethical policies. What's important to me is the person, not just the negative consequences of bad choices.

The first part of his answer strikes me as nonsensical. The question, "Does the end justify the means?", is a nonsense question unless you spell out what the ends and means are in this particular situation. Everyone believes that some ends justify some means, including Joe Carter, and that doesn't make them "Machiavellian". More importantly, the question could as easily be turned around and asked in the other direction: does the end of moral purity for a small percentage justify the means of withholding accurate information about and access to birth control methods that would help the larger group avoid potentially life-altering consequences should they choose to have sex?

Study after study has shown that comprehensive sex education, including access to condoms and other forms of birth control, reduces the rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and STDs enormously. Studies also show that abstinence-only sex education, while it may delay the onset of sexual activity by a few months on average (though more than 90% of those who make virginity pledges do not honor them), significantly decreases the use of condoms and other forms of birth control when kids do become sexually active, resulting in a spike in all three negative consequences. This is hardly a surprise given that the rules on receiving funding for abstinence-only sex ed require that the programs do not even mention contraception other than to point out their failure rates. Meanwhile, our European neighbors are having far greater success with programs of comprehensive sex education, including free and anonymous access to birth control and sexual health services, including pregnancy and STD testing. They also have mass media campaigns encouraging safe sex on television.

The result? The rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and STDs are all far higher in the US than in any European nation, and I mean far higher. No other nation has per capita rates even half that of the US, and in the case of the Netherlands, generally considered the best sex education in the world, the numbers are staggering. Despite widespread perception that the Netherlands is a land of inquity and sexual permissiveness, the US rates of pregnancy and abortion are a full seven times higher than the Netherlands. Dutch teenagers also have fewer partners on average than American teenagers, and start having sex almost two years later on average. The notion that comprehensive sex education will lead to rampant teen sexual activity is clearly false, as the US has much higher rates of such activity than any other Western nation as well.

The effects of abstinence-only sex education have been predictable. Since Congress began funding such programs, the number of schools that make birth control information available in sex education classes has dropped enormously. Fewer than half of our public schools now provide information on how to obtain birth control. Our children need accurate and comprehensive information about sex education. They should of course be taught that the only 100% sure way to avoid pregnancy and disease is abstinence. But they also must have accurate information about not only how to obtain birth control but how to use it correctly, and on the importance of using it every single time and in redundant ways. Anything less than that is writing off the lives of our children and dooming far too many of them to often irreversible damage.

Posted by at 12:38 PM | Comments (22)

Postmodern Churches

Robert Heinlein's magnificent counter-culture classic Stranger in a Strange Land featured a variety of interesting religious practices, all of them as far from my Catholic upbringing as Mass is from a Zoroastrian worship. Among the theological innovations in Heinlein's America of the future: Casinos and showgirls in church.

We are not there yet. But some day some enterprising youth pastor is going to put down the third-rate dreck that passes for 'literature' in contemporary Christian bookstores (it is telling that Left Behind has sold innumerably more copies than, say, That Hideous Strength) and that youth pastor will pick up a copy of Heinlein and the missionary to adolescents will declare that showgirls are what the church has needed all along.

Certainly that is the message I take from this Detroit News article about churches that are more than nontraditional in their presentation--they are what an older generation would have frankly and flatly condemned as blasphemous. The fuzziness, selfishness, incoherence and lack of focus in these churches' appropriation of pop cult references mirrors perfectly the state of their theology. Nancy Nall, perceptive and quick-witted, writes "Radical Islam is easier for me to understand than the idea of attending a church called Scum of the Earth."

Religions, to the outside observer, do not come in pure forms, but instead they change from generation to generation, even in significant ways. As there is no "true" representative of, say, canis familiaris in the contemporary world, neither is there any objectively and undebateably true doctrine of any branch of any major religion. But some of these religions are starting to act like something else.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:12 AM | Comments (19)

The Ivory Tower

Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post that "[c]ollege faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined." 72 percent of college faculty describe themselves as "liberal," with only 15 percent labeling themself "conservative." 50 percent identified themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans. Disparity at so-called "elite" schools, it seems, is even more pronounced. The report offers percentage views on specific issues as well. The study was conducted by professors at the University of Toronto based on a survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools. It was funded by the Randolph Foundation, a right-leaning group.

Update: Musgrave addressed a related subject in December in "Academic Freedom And Its Opponents."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:15 AM | Comments (6)

The Right Splitting on Social Security?

The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman claims this in a large headline today: "Conservatives Splitting on Social Security."

President Bush's proposal to add private investment accounts to Social Security is beginning to create controversy within the one group that has most forcefully embraced the idea in theory: the conservative intelligentsia.

As evidence Weisman cites an American Enterprise Institute thinker and a handful of professors, including blogger Prof. Tyler Cowen. "Cowen and others" apparently are enough to support the notion that there are wide misgivings among "conservative intelligentsia." And all of this division is growing over a plan that hasn't even been outlined in specifics.

Central to Weisman's claim is Harvard economist Robert Barro. But Barro's Business Week piece faults the President's plan because, in his view, it enlarges the Social Security program, and in the end people are just as reliant on government. That is the essence to Barro's criticism and that is apparently the position Prof. Cowen was endorsing as well. Weisman may ultimately be correct that conservative intellectuals are increasingly not happy with Bush's proposal but his article citing only a few offers little proof of it.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:48 AM | Comments (2)

Best blog post title

"Burger King Gives Atkins The Finger, While Wendy's Gives It To Customers."
-- TruePravda

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:40 AM | Comments (3)

Bush and international law

Last year the International Court of Justice (ICJ) "ordered the United States" to provide 51 Mexcan nationals on death row "effective review" of each case under the Vienna Convention. Texas never notified Medellin that Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (to which the U.S. is a party) entitled him to legal assistance from the Mexican consul, and the Mexican consular authorities were not made aware of his arrest, trial, or sentence until six weeks after his death sentence was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The state of Texas, where the defendants were held, disagreed, largely because of the defendants' failure to invoke the defense until four years of trial had passed.

The Fifth Circuit was unpersuaded by the ICJ as well because the Vienna Convention concerned relations between governments, and did not create an "individually enforceable right" for criminal defendants. Although Bush initially agreed with the Fifth Circuit's conclusion in its brief earlier this month, he nevertheless changed course and decided to comply with the ICJ's decision "as an exercise of his 'constitutionally based foreign affairs power,' by directing the state courts to give the new hearings that the ruling required."

Bush told Texas to give the Mexican nationals new hearings and told the Supreme Court to butt out. Then, right after agreeing to abide by the ICJ, Bush withdrew the US from its jurisdiction. Therefore Bush has turned federalism on its head by hoisting international law over both federal and state courts, then simultaneously preventing it from ever happening again by shunning international jurisdiction. In essence he pulled off a hat trick that's destined to upset officials at each level. Here are briefs for the case currently before the Supreme Court in Medellin v. Dretke, No. 04-5928.

Now You Know writes, "If only Terri Schiavo were an illegal alien criminal." Others covering the story include: Ex Post, The Urban Grind, and the always-necessary SCOTUSblog.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)

March 28, 2005

Memogate II items

John Hinderaker has a piece in the Weekly Standard titled, "Fake but Accurate Again?" The subtitled reads, "The 'GOP talking points memo' on Terri Schiavo has all the signs of a political dirty trick. Where is the mainstream media?" Hinderaker offers both a great summary and analysis. The current edition of the Weekly Standard also offers a Fred Barnes piece titled, "The ABCs of Media Bias."

I remain in contact with staffers in D.C. to try to get someone on record with a source. In the meantime, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz will take part in a "live" chat here at noon ET. Kurtz might use the opportunity to address the subject. As I note here, I spoke with David Kirkpatrick, the NYT reporter that originally reported Democratic aides passed out the memo to the media. He declined as a matter of policy to elaborate beyond what went to print. But I think it's worth noting that the NYT appears to have had access to the same memo and sources as the Washington Post, but did not suggest, as the Post did, that it originated from Republican leadership. Clearly the two reporters interpreted its significance in different ways. Will the Post explain why?

Update: The "chat" ends with not one answer to a memo-related question, in spite of numerous submissions. However he did answer a challenge I posed to him concerning DeLay comparisons, which I respond to in an update here.
Update 2: John Hinderaker will be on Laura Ingraham's radio show at around 9:15 or 9:20 a.m. central time discussing the memo. You can listen live at her website.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:16 AM | Comments (9)

Campaign finance and causal fallacies

The front page of Sunday's Washington Post carried this headline: "Business Sees Gain In GOP Takeover." The subtitle explained, "Political Allies Push Corporate Agenda." Here's the opening charge from author Jim VandeHei:

Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.

Articles about campaign finance inevitably lead to causal fallacies. This one suggests that the GOP has been sold to the highest bidder, but never asks if large corporations give more to the GOP because it already shares their interests. VandeHei doesn't ask if Democrats were bought by unions or minority lobbies when their legislative record accompanies similar donations.

To be clear, the information in the article is important and donations can in fact influence nuances in policies and laws. But it is rare and unlikely for donations to influence broad, general ideology. For instance, conservatives have long had an aversion to frivilous class-action suits, and Wal-Mart's donations to the Bush campaign do not mean that Republicans are passing protections from class-action suits because of Wal-Mart's support in the campaign.

For argument's sake let's assume that the GOP passed class-action protection because of Wal-Mart's campaign contributions. Why didn't VandeHei also ask if trial lawyer contributions to Democrats caused their opposition? If the GOP pushes for oil drilling in Alaska because of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s campaign contributions, do Democrats oppose it because of environmental lobby contributions? I think the answer depends, with corporations often donating simply because of shared interests, even though the contributions may help tailor nuances in the laws in certain circumstances. Either way campaign finance stories will always have another side to the coin, and Jim VandeHei failed miserably in presenting it in this front page Post piece. There's no place for this false meme in responsible, objective journalism.

Bloggers repeating the meme: Charles Todd, Thurston Howell IV, and Myth Taken Politics.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:04 AM | Comments (16)

Blogging across the pond

According to the Times Online, Britian's conservative party is taking a page out of the American right by incorporating bloggers.

Only weeks away from the general election, senior Conservatives will open a new front today in the battle for ideas by creating a website advocating "social conservatism". It will invite people to bypass the media and put forward their own views on how the party should evolve. . .

The website combines the concepts of a think-tank and online newspaper and its aim is to provide a forum for the revival of Conservative thinking and policies.

You can access the new project at ConservativeHome.com. In many ways the site is less of an attempt to influence voters and more of an invitation for voters to influence the party. Assuming this remains the focus, an internet based approach could be useful. But if the Tories plan to use the blogosphere to influence others with a top-down approach, rather than the spontaneous grassroots atmosphere found in the States, the project may ultimately be a failure. Official campaign blogs are generally awful and the Tories will want to avoid them.

Others covering the story: Tim Worstall, Cross-border Blogger, and Prestopundit.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:03 AM | Comments (2)

March Gladness

March has been a tough month for Hoosiers like myself who have had to suffer through yet another year of no NCAA tournament play. In a state where basketball is the second religion, the question is not whether Indiana University will make the Big Dance, but how far it will go. Not so under Mike Davis.

Luckily this month has provided one source of satisfaction. The sports pundit establishment criticized the Big Ten as having an "off year," but the conference's tournament performance has forced most to eat their words. Two of the final four teams in the tourney are from the Big Ten. Only the Big Ten placed three teams among the final eight, and the Big Ten easily boasts the top winning percentage and most wins in the tournament. I'm sure Dick Vitale is squealing in sadness.

Does this mean the Big Ten is the nation's strongest conference? Not necessarily. But it does mean the constant derision was likely unjustified. Oh yeah, and Duke sucks.

Update: One of the Big Ten's most common critics is Michael Wilbon and he'll be taking questions in a "live" chat on the Washington Post webpage here at 1:15pm ET.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:02 AM | Comments (6)

March 27, 2005

Hack Job

This morning the Los Angeles Times engaged in "gotcha journalism" as it tried to paint Rep. Tom DeLay as a hypocrite over the Terri Schiavo case by exposing the circumstances surrounding his father's death. The "story" is half reporting, half editorializing:

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly re-elected to a third term in the House, DeLay waited all but helpless for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to champion political intervention the Schaivo case. He pushed emergency legislation through congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And he is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

But try as I might, I struggle to find comparisons between the two. DeLay's father's had a brain hemorrhage and broken ribs; he needed a tracheotomy and ventilator to assist his breathing; and his body was full of infections. Terri Schiavo's vital functions are working perfectly well; she simply needs a feeding tube because she cannot swallow on her own. Michelle Malkin notes even more significant differences:

Unlike Terri Schiavo, he was in a state of steady deterioration and at death's imminent doorstep within days of his accident.

Unlike the Schiavo case, there was a family consensus among the DeLays and no dispute over what the father would have wanted. Moreover, DeLay was not the primary decision-maker in the family's choice to withhold heroic treatment. That role fell to his mother and another brother and sister.

The LA Times fails to really note the differences and works hard to compare the two. The reporter's conclusion is that DeLay wants it a private affair when it's his family, but uses government intervention when it's another. But his family had no legal dispute, and the biological circumstances were vastly different. This is shady journalism that lacks necessary balance. DeLay's rhetoric in the Schiavo matter, and in his general governance, is fertile grounds for criticism. But his father's death is irrelevant, and this journalist's sloppy suggestion of hypocricy says much more about the LA Times than it does about DeLay.

Update: In an online "chat" Howard Kurtz made the same comparison, which I challenged by sending in much of this post. He responded to my question this way:

Similar in this respect: The family had to make a decision on whether to end the life of a seriously ill person with no realistic hope of recovery. Obviously the medical details of every case are different, and in some cases family members are in agreement and in others they're not. But the question, which the Schiavo case has underscored, is whether family members, in consultation with doctors, get to make the decision, or whether government gets to intervene.

With all due respect to the intelligent Kurtz, the government intervened from the moment both sides petitioned the court. The court system is in fact an arm of the government, and since both sides had a dispute, the courts (government) intervened. Whether another branch of the government should also get involved is a legitimate debate, but the government was already involved years ago.

Here we find a significant difference between DeLay's family and Schiavo. There was no dispute in DeLay's situation, and therefore the government was not already involved, as it was with Schiavo. The differences are striking and important, and underscore the irrelevance of DeLay's father in the matter.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:02 AM | Comments (18)

The Resurrection

"Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.
He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." (Matthew 28:5-6)

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:50 AM | Comments (3)

March 26, 2005

Commandment decision

Yesterday the Seventh Circuit held a display of the framed text of the King James version of the Ten Commandments in a county building was constitutional. It was one of nine historical pieces that make up a "Foundations of American Law and Government Display" in the County Administration Building in Elkhart County, Indiana. You can access a pdf version of the ruling here. The Goshen News offers some background in an earlier article titled "Ten Commandments ordered removed from county display." An earlier Ten Commandments monument in Elkhart County met a different fate in the Seventh Circuit in late 2000.

It will be interesting to see if this case squares with two forthcoming Supreme Court decisions that will address the issue. Click here for my preview of Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:35 AM | Comments (5)

Combating Voter Fraud

Indiana may be the first State to take the most reasonable step in combating voter fraud. Senate Bill 483, passed by both houses with some minor changes in the House, would require a government-issued photo ID at the polls to verify the identity of the voter. I've been a poll watcher for the last two election cycles, and it's remarkable how many Hoosier voters are ready to present their DL as they step up to get signed in--and how incredulous they are that it isn't already required.

As John Fund pointed out in his excellent book Stealing Elections (my review here), the subject of voter fraud is perceived differently by the two broad ideological camps in America. The Right value honest and fair elections over the Left's priorities of total enfranchisement and high participation. Insofar as requiring photo ID threatens liberal core values, some opposition is to be expected. The behaviour of the House Democrats, however, who walked out of the General Assembly in opposition to this bill earlier this month, leads me to believe that opponents are actually hysterical.

As I said, I understand that steps to ensure the fairness of election do not align with the normative priorities of the Left, but one would think that their opposition would rise in proportion to how much those priorities are threatened. The overwrought rhetoric of Democrats is astounding, as this bill places a trivial burden on Hoosier voters to correct a real and prevalent problem around the country.

I could be extremely uncharitable to the Democratic politicians who are opposed to this bill, i.e., all of them, by suggesting they desire or even require voter fraud to maintain their power base. Fund even found some pols willing to excuse and laud voter fraud. But in the absence of proof, we can take their sentiments as being reflections of their constituents. The Indianapolis Star has a piece today about those black voters who oppose the bill. Their comments are mind-boggling.

Robert Harvey, a 46-year-old pastor, agreed. He believes the Republican-led effort is aimed at convincing black voters like him that hassles could accompany a trip to the polls. "Asking them to go through an extra step in order to vote is just asking for people not to vote," he said.

I think I'll join the chorus of other conservative commentators who'd like opponents to name just one person who will be disenfranchised by the bill.

Regardless of their opinion on the issue, most said having to show a photo ID wouldn't keep them from the polls. Ethel Mills, however, said it would. "No, I wouldn't vote -- on moral grounds," said the frequent voter while waiting for a friend at the City-County Building.

Well, I stand corrected, though I can't say that such logic reflects well on the opponents.

Ted Patterson, who works at the Old-Fashioned Shoe Shine stand at the City Market, says he doesn't think it's needed because he can't imagine people bothering to vote twice. "You need to worry more about the politicians rather than the common man," he said.

Again, impeccable reasoning: there is no voter fraud by evidence of incredulity.

Thankfully, there are also comments by black voters who apparently aren't very upset.

T'Nelle Edwards, 28, Anderson, works in Indianapolis: "It's not very hard to get a photo ID. They require an ID for everything else in this world. I think it would prevent the voting from being fraudulent."

Marian Pullins, 64, Indianapolis: "No, it wouldn't bother me, and I'm low-income. You're supposed to have ID on you anyway. You have to show your ID to cash a check."

The bill is expected to land on the Governor's desk, who has said he will sign it. This will be a big step forward for combating a growing problem in the country, and I'd be proud if Indiana can lead by example. Of course, there are also other steps that are drastically needed to severely curb fraud, particularly with absentee ballots. But if other measures face the same irrational opposition as this bill, we're in for a long fight.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 10:35 AM | Comments (22)

March 25, 2005

Critique of "Intelligent Design" at IU

Josh asked me to write something up about an upcoming lecture on Intelligent Design (ID) at Indiana University. It seems we both have a connection to the event. His friend Anthony Perez-Miller, a grad student in history and philosophy of science at Indiana, will be the featured speaker. At least a portion of his talk will draw upon the work of the Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State, which provides my connection to the event. No, it's not merely that I went to MSU back in the middle devonian period; it's also that my good friend and fellow MCFS board member Rob Pennock is part of the faculty of the Digital Evolution Lab. You can find one of their key research projects, published in Nature in 2003, here. Perez-Miller's position on ID, which is the subject of his doctoral thesis, is stated on his website in an introduction to his thesis:

Here's the short version of my conclusion.

As a philosophical program, intelligent design is at best highly problematic. Moreover, hopes for a design-based scientific research problem are little more than wishful thinking. The many conservatives who see in the intelligent design project a means of religious or cultural resurgence are betting on a losing horse.

Fighting words? Oh, yes. So let me clear up some potential misunderstandings at the outset. I remain both a Christian, and a conservative. And I do have a certain sympathy for the apologetic aims of the ID movement. But I am also a philosopher of science, and cannot stand idly by as my co-religionists and other fellow travellers promote what I have (somewhat reluctantly) concluded is a gross error.

To many, this will undoubtedly seem like a contradiction, but Perez-Miller is far from alone among conservative Christians in rejecting the validity of ID. In the same corner one can find Ken Miller, a Catholic cell biologist from Brown and the author of Finding Darwin's God (see final chapter here); Keith Miller, a geologist from Kansas State and editor of Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (see excerpts here); and perhaps most prominently, another colleague of mine from the MCFS board, Howard Van Till, a retired physicist from Calvin College who has written extensive critiques of ID, particularly of Dembski's claims concerning complex specified information (see one example here).

I am, of course, also a critic of ID and I am neither Christian nor conservative. But it is important, I think, not to accept the simplistic dichotomies that are, ironically, foisted on us by both the Discovery Institute ID advocates and evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins. Both sides continually attempt to frame the issue as a battle between atheism and Christianity. And while the ID advocates are almost 100% Christian, and view themselves as bravely doing battle against the forces of atheism, there are a great many Christian scientists working in evolutionary biology and other fields who find their claims both false and unnecessary. Perez-Miller's words about the false hope that ID advocates who "see in the intelligent design project a means of religious or cultural resurgence" bring to mind the words of Bruce Gordon, a former Discovery Institute Fellow, who wrote in 2001 that ID had been "hijacked as part of a larger cultural and political movement" and had become "an exercise in Christian 'cultural renewal,' the weight of which it cannot bear."

Here are the details on Perez-Miller's speech:

Wednesday, 30 March 2005
Woodburn Hall 004
Indiana University
7:30-9:00 pm

I wish I could attend the talk myself. Perhaps any ITA readers who attend could send us a report on the speech, or perhaps even Perez-Miller himself will stop by to discuss it with us.

Posted by at 01:15 PM | Comments (26)

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

Note: I started writing this post on Wednesday and did not know that Josh was going to write something very similar. Either great minds think alike, or God works in mysterious ways.

One of the most dramatic moments during the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark:

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"-which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" --Matthew 27:46 (see also Mark 15:34)

Traditional Christian teaching holds that at this moment God the Father turned his back on God the Son (Christ). The sins of the world had been imputed to Jesus and instead of the intimate fellowship these two members of the trinity had shared from eternity past, the Father's wrath against sin fell upon Christ---the ultimate sin offering--and Jesus experienced stark alienation from the Father.

Likewise, most Christians experience what seems to be the absence of God at some point in their lives. It is the subject of the well-known poem "Footprints in the Sand," and was even written about poignantly by C.S. Lewis after his wife's death--in his journal later published as A Grief Observed:

When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be--or so it feels--welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.

But if we have experienced such loneliness, we have a Savior who knows what it is like because He has experienced it more deeply than we will ever have to. He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15) and will bring us through them successfully (Romans 8:37-39).

Posted by Eric Seymour at 11:59 AM | Comments (5)

FEC Intrusion II

As per the FEC crackdown of free speech on the Internet, Glenn Reynolds offers this stinging suggestion: "Somebody needs to catalog the tricks the Chinese bloggers are using -- if the F.E.C. gets its way, we may need some of them over here . . . ."

Posted by Zach Wendling at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

A Black Letter Day

Unlike Christmas, I'm happy to say that I quite enjoy Easter. First, it is the holiest day of the Church Year, much more significant than the birth of Christ. Second, it's not nearly so commercialized, though I could do without the Easter Bunny and his associated, latent pagan imagery. But I think Easter's commercialism imitates Christmas' in one significant way: it eclipses the preceding part of the Church Calendar. I doubt many Christians are able to recognize the significance of the Advent season, seeing as how the Twelve Days of Christmas start for them the day after Thanksgiving. Likewise, Lent has already trailed off into a Roman vagueness by now, and we hear wishes of a "Happy Easter" before the Festival of the Resurrection (and I doubt we shall hear it after, during the Easter Season).

To some extent, this is understandable, since adherence to the Church Calendar may be a bit too much to ask of contemporary worshippers, who aren't known for their appreciation of the liturgical heritage of the Church. I would contend, however, that today especially, all Christians should take note that it is not yet Easter. Today is Good Friday.

Before Jesus could overcome sin and death by his glorious resurrection on Sunday, he had to endure that sin and death today. What we will celebrate in two (three?) days is predicated by what happened today, and so it behooves us to mark this day as different. To ignore Good Friday and skip straight to Easter may even have theologically troubling implications. Pride makes us want to ignore our sin and skip straight to the Gospel message of salvation and joy, and appropriately, Easter is a celebration of that salvation. Good Friday, on the other hand, is a stark reminder of why we need Christ, why he died, and how he died.

There are inferior ways to mark it, perhaps through meditation or watching the Passion of the Christ, which Josh ably describes below. Much better to read the Gospel account, particularly Luke 22-23. My favourite way is a practice I only discovered in college, the Good Friday service, which I would highly recommend to our readers, not out of piety or obligation but out of the profundity of the experience. How can one ignore the haunting chant of the cantor as he sings the reproaches, starting with:

O, My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me!

But in our hearts we are convicted that we have no answer and that Christ suffered for our offenses.

The service may end in various ways, with the covering of the cross, the removal of the cross, of the extinguishing or removal of the Paschal candle, each signifying that the Christ was removed from this world. In my church, the pastor would drop a large weight to signify the sealing of the tomb. In total darkness, the act is chilling. The feelings of loss and horror are palpable, and the worshippers leave with a profound longing for Christ's resurrection. Imagine how glorious the Festival of the Resurrection becomes after such a service (even more so after the Great Vigil on Holy Saturday). I think many Christians would be edified by observing this very special day in the Church Year.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Holy Week - Good Friday

Since it's Good Friday I think it's an appropriate time to re-post my thoughts after watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The entry has less to do with the movie and much more to do with the sacrifice this day commemorates.

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" - which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

That was Christ's call of loneliness, the most gut-wrenching in history, as He hung on the cross. Moments later He cried out again and gave up His spirit. It's odd, but those words remained seared in my mind more than any other. Perhaps it's because they've always drawn my attention since I first picked up a Bible. There's so much hurt; so much loneliness. How could this be coming from God Himself?

I remember reading those words for the first time years ago. It was the first time God's humanity struck home with me. It's the most vivid example of a uniquely Christian theological concept - the trinity. The trinity, of course, is the notion that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are a separate yet singular entity. But at that moment Jesus, who had been with God for eternity, was now alone. The Christ, God incarnate, abandoned.

Jesus could take the beatings, and as a viewer of The Passion, I could stand to watch it. Sure, I cringed and winced each time he was hit and spat on. But I was prepared for it all. Indeed, it was just as I had imagined. And although the wail, "My God!" was also as I had imagined, I still couldn't stand to watch it. At that moment Jesus was once again alone, just as He was in the garden, but this time the weight of all of humanity's sin was on his shoulders....alone. He was separated from God spiritually and physically. I hesitate to even type that out; it doesn't really do the notion justice. Out of this silent loneliness - an unfathomable loneliness - He cries, "Why? Why did you foresake me?"

It's hard for me to watch, and it's even harder for me to understand it. Why would Jesus say such things? The reason that most theologians will give, and correctly give, is that He's quoting Psalm 22. He was both fulfilling prophecy and expressing the anguish - yes, God has emotion - of being separated from the Father. These are all true answers and will please the academics among us.

But that answer is incomplete for me. There's something very human about His cry. It's a constant reminder to me that God did not just take on human flesh for 33 years. Rather, Jesus was fully human, separated from the trinity and experiencing pain alone, abandoned. At some point we all cry out "Why God?" The answers will not always come when we want them, we may still hurt, we may still thirst. But Christ was also alone, and He too cried out. We are not alone. God understands.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:10 AM | Comments (2)

FEC Intrusion

As ITA works to unearth the truth surrounding alleged "GOP" talking points, my friend Mike Krempasky is leading an even more significant investigation into the Federal Election Commission's proposed rules for internet activity. ITA offered a summary of recent events yesterday at this post, and CNET offers an even better summary here. But today at his group weblog RedState.Org, Krempasky outlines shocking proposals from the FEC's first draft obtained exclusively by RedState. These documents preceed what became public yesterday, and reveal insight into the FEC's mindset.

The proposed rules would apply to all internet activity except that with "limited distribution" or with password-protected sites. Emails to more than 500 people in 30 days would also trigger FEC regulation. Krempasky rightly called it a "regulatory minefield" for bloggers. The final draft is a bit tamer, but still horribly intrusive. Worse, the whole charade demonstrates the extent to which McCain-Feingold legislation permits the FEC to go. Even if their rules this round aren't all that burdensome, the potential remains. Freedom-loving citizens have cause for alarm, and now is the time to protest.

Others covering the FEC regulation: Captain Ed, Patterico, Professor Bainbridge, Polipundit, Wizbang, and La Shawn Barber.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

A Smart Merger

"HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (AP) -- Shareholders signed off Thursday on Kmart Holding Corp.'s $12.3 billion acquisition of Sears, Roebuck and Co., clearing the way for the two struggling rivals to combine into the nation's third-biggest retailer."

What I haven't found so far is the name of the new stores, but as I've said before, they would be foolish not to take the name "S-Mart." The biggest advantage I can see is that they will be the frontrunner for releasing the upcoming Evil Dead IV when it comes out on DVD.

"Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart!"

Posted by Zach Wendling at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

Overlooked Good News

While most of the mainstream media's attention yesterday was on the Terri Schiavo case and bloggers focused on that or the related "Memogate II" mystery, a remarkable event in Iraq went mostly overlooked. Acting on tips from Iraqi civilians, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided an apparent terrorist training camp in central Iraq, reportedly killing 85 terrorists. This is significant both because it may be indicative of citizens increasingly siding with their new government, rather than with the terrorists, and because it is the highest number of casualties suffered by the terrorists since the assault on Fallujah. In fact, if Iraqi and US officials' reports are verified, 128 terrorists have been eliminated in the past 3 days.

On a related note, Instapundit links to a column by Austin Bay arguing that we are winning the war against the insurgency, despite the press playing into the terrorists' hands. (For the record, I do not think the MSM as a whole is cheering for the insurgency--they are trying to sell their product, and coverage of relatively isolated successful terrorist strikes gets people's attention very effectively.)

Update: Balta points out a [cough] French* news report (ironically enough by the agency that is suing Google) that questions the casualty figures and claims that fighters had returned to the site. To this I have two responses: 1) I'd be disappointed but not shocked if the Iraqi military sources overstated the number of casualties in the immediate aftermath of the raid. 2) If the terrorists were dumb enough to return to the camp, that makes it all the easier to pick off even more of them.

*Not to just reflexively bash the French, but they're not big fans of US foreign policy, are they?

Posted by Eric Seymour at 09:00 AM | Comments (4)

Alternative splicing

Modern science deals with an array of phenomena, from pulsars to neurons, that operate according to arcane rules far removed from our daily lives. Metaphor is, therefore, an essential tool for connecting abstract theory with more familiar experience. For example, most popular physics books at some point compare the motion of an object through curved space-time to a ball rolling along the side of a bowl.

Unfortunately, as the biologist J.B.S. Haldane once observed, "...scientific men as a class are devoid of any perception of literary form." The result is that often readers of popular science and science journalism are forced to slog through the same few woefully inadequate analogies over and over again: the brain is compared to a switchboard, for example, or the atom to a miniature solar system. However, the most heinous literary crimes are surely perpetrated in popular writing about genetics, in which the genome--the seat of life, the backbone of human nature--is compared to either a cookbook or a blueprint.

There is something to be said for both comparisons. The genome does, in a sense, contain a series of instructions for the assembly of an organism. Both metaphors, though, leave out the most troublesome part of the entire business: where is the cook, or, alternatively, the architect? If you put a blueprint in a forest or a cookbook in a refrigerator and come back in nine months, you will not find that a house or a delicious soup have assembled themselves. To phrase the question a little more clearly, each cell in your body (leaving aside the sperm and egg) contains (barring mutations) the exact same information. How is it that in the course of development a single cell can give rise to heart cells, skin cells, neurons, and the delicate machinery of the eye?

The physician and writer Lewis Thomas claimed in his book of essays "Lives of a Cell" that, if the mystery of biological development was ever solved, he would hire a fleet of skywriting planes to carve giant exclamation points in the sky until his money ran out. Luckily for Thomas, perhaps, the mystery remains unsolved, but progress has been made since 1974 in elucidating exactly how an organism's dividing cells begin to be partitioned into ear cells and stomach cells and heart cells. You may remember from high-school biology that your genome consists of coiled DNA that acts as a recipe of sorts (see, even I'm doing it!) for different proteins. First, DNA is transcribed into a single-strand copy of RNA. We now know that this RNA contains, mysteriously, segments called "introns" that do not contain useful information. These segments are snipped out and thrown away and the remaining segments, called "extrons", are joined together to form mRNA. This mRNA is then translated into a protein by the cell.

Different genes are "activated", that is, will be expressed and create proteins, depending on the chemical milieu in which a given cell is immersed. Moreover, certain genes called "homeobox genes" are able to switch on or off sets of other genes. For example, one particularly prominent set of homeobox genes, called the Hox genes, determine the position of various segments of the body in a developing fetus or larva.

So far I have assumed that each gene encodes for a simple protein, the classical view of how genes are expressed. It turns out, however, that many genes can actually be translated into a number of different proteins. (The information in the remainder of this post comes from the article "The Alternative Genome", by Gil Ast, in April's Scientific American. It's well worth reading in full.) This phenomenon was first discovered in the 1980's by Randolph Wall at the University of California at Los Angeles and Tom Maniatis and colleagues at Harvard Unviersity, who discovered that the genetic machinery can, if it desires, include introns in the mRNA and exclude entrons from the mRNA. This effect, called "alternative splicing", allows a single protein to encode any of a number of different proteins. Originally, alternative splicing was thought to be relatively uncommon, but recent research has suggested it takes place much more often, especially in more complex organisms: as many as three quarters of human genes may undergo alternative splicing, and on average each of our genes can be spliced into mRNA in about three different ways.

The completed sequencing of the human genome has revealed that humans have only 25,000 genes--15,000 less than corn, a relatively humble organism. This is, to be sure, a small cookbook, and not much of a blueprint. However, if you view the genome as a computational device rather than a list of proteins, this tiny number begins to make more sense--the human genome has simply learned to more efficiently store information by allowing each gene to encode a number of different proteins. All of these recent revelations point towards a need for a new metaphor or set of metaphors for the Cookbook of Life, which is an exercise that I'm leaving for the reader.

Posted by Adam Tierney at 03:33 AM | Comments (4)

FEC Draft Rule

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has now released its proposed changes to its rules regarding internet activity during a campaign and is seeking feedback from interested parties. ITA has received a copy of the text, but RedState.org offers it online here. As a brief recap of what brought us to this point, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in September 2004 that the FEC's exemption of internet activity from the McCain-Feingold legislation was contrary to congressional intent, forcing the FEC to amend its rules. FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith then gave an interview to CNET that touched off a firestorm over concerns of how far the FEC would go. Other FEC commissioners, as well as U.S. Senators, got in on the act and worked to allay fears. Now all of the forecasting can end and the dirty work of reviewing the actual proposals can begin.

As a general rule, if no compensation is involved, the FEC won't consider the activity (writing, emailing) to be an expenditure under their jurisdiction. Communication about candidates via blogs or emails will not be considered a "public communication," and so will not be considered an in-kind contribution to that candidate. One problem arises with the use of corporate facilities or property, such as computers, which might constitute "public communication." The proposed rules allows "occasional, isolated, or incidental" use without regulation, but not more. Prof. Volokh questions this point a little more, as does the Democracy Project. This portion of the draft stuck out in my mind:

Can on-line blogs be treated as "periodical publications" within the meaning of the exemption? See 2 U.S.C. 431(9)(B)(i). If not, why not? Is the media exemption to be limited to traditional business models, meaning entities that finance operations with subscriptions or advertising revenue?

The federal law its citing allows an exemption from FEC regulation to a "broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication." Why on earth wouldn't blogs be included in this definition of periodical publication? After reading the proposals, bits and pieces irked me, but nothing was necessarily infuriating except for the fact I had to read it at all. Winfield Myers summed it up well:

It's sad that we're having this conversation at all. Each individual encroachment by the government to regulate the Internet strips away a bit more of its unique and special character as the world's greatest laboratory for freedom of expression. While many of the exclusions included in the proposed FEC rules are broad enough to capture individual bloggers, what about incorporated blogs such as Red State, Andrew Sullivan, Kos, or Wonkette? According to the proposed rules, whether their activities constitute "public communication" will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Worse, even if you conclude the FEC does not overreach in this draft, no one disputes that current campaign finance laws allow them to go much further (and may even require it). These added regulations may not occur this year, or even in ten years, but the structure for their enactment remains for future bureaucrats. In the short term, these draft rules are just that - a draft. In nearly every paragraph the FEC asks for feedback and suggestions, so if you read the proposals don't hesitate to offer your opinion. Address all comments to Mr. Brad C. Deutsch, Assistant General Counsel, at internet@fec.gov. If you wish to testify at the hearing on this rulemaking send a copy of your comments to internettestify@fec.gov. All comments must include the full name and postal service address of the commenter.

Others covering the draft rules: Seth Cooper, Command Post, Wizbang, AlphaPatriot, Spartac.us, and PunditGuy.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)

Google and fair use

The French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) is suing Google for its popular news search engine and the way it pulls news information together. You can access online their complaint filed in the U.S District Court in Washington, D.C. AFP claims copyright infringement from Google's reproduction of information from AFP's subscribers and seeks at least $17.5 million in damages. France's leader Jacques Chirac fanned the flames recently, making Google out to be an Anglo-American cultural threat of sorts, urging Europe to launch its own version of Google Scholar. Google has promised to remove the offending items, which may allow the court to skirt key issues. It's possible the suit may impact how bloggers cull news reports. Law professor Eric Goldman provides a useful analysis here.

Others covering the suit: Mary Schwimmer, Ron Coleman, and Munir Umrani.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:17 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

How laws are really made

For your edification, Eric Smith explains how the legislative sausage is really made, and it ain't pretty. Shouldn't this be included in government class?

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:08 PM | Comments (1)

The return of Nye

Remember Bill Nye the Science Guy? According to Wired magazine, he's coming out with a new show called The Eyes of Nye where he tackles some more serious issues like "addiction, sex, cloning, and climate change."

Others covering Bill Nye: Dana Blankenhorn and CrazyJohn.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 05:22 AM | Comments (9)

Memogate, again

Update Here

Sen. Frist's office wishes to stick with this statement made on the 20th: "I have never seen the memo, I did not authorize the memo, and I condemn the content of the memo and reaffirm that the interest in this case by myself, and the many members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle, is to assure that Mrs. Schiavo has another chance at life." Who wrote it?

Update: All additional updates to the story can be found in this post.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 04:55 AM | Comments (0)

Addendum

I don't want to go overboard with the number of posts about the Terri Schiavo affair, but there are still a few interesting links worth noting. As significant developments in the case unfold I'll likely add links here so that there is minimal posts on it today.

I've been able to track down most of the relevant legal documents online of the case. Here is the most recent 2-1 decision denying reinsertion of Terri's feeding tube. Interestingly, the fact that Congress originally included a provision authorizing a stay for the removal in the original version of the bill, only to remove it before passage, seems to have influenced the circuit court's decision. Here's the amended complaint filed by the parents in the Florida district court. Here's a copy of the brief filed on Michael Schiavo's behalf. Here's the trial court ruling which denied the parents' request for a temporary restraining order. Here's the original motion for a temporary restraining order that Terri Schiavo's parents filed (and in this order the judge faulted them for failing to attach a memorandum of law in that original motion).

As a recap of ITA coverage, I examine the constitutionality of the "Terri's bill" here and try to restore perspective in this post.

Sen. Tom Harkin is considering a bill that would give federal jurisdiction to all cases like Terri's.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 04:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2005

BotW update

Yesterday we noted that James Taranto at Best of the Web erred in summarizing the Terri Schiavo saga. Today he runs a correction and, in his footnotes, thanks me. Kudos to Taranto for running the correction on top, unlike most mainstream and blogging outlets.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

Anatomical Gifts

My professor for Health Care Organizations, Robert A. Katz, sits on the drafting committee to revise the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. In class today he posed an interesting question that the committee is debating. If two married parents lose a child to death, and one parent wants to donate the child's organs and the other does not, which parent's wishes should govern? The general default rule sides with the parent opposed to donation, but should that rule remain? Should it change? Why or why not?

Others covering anatomical gifts: the Market Place of Ideas and Cube Life.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:39 PM | Comments (12)

Not looting, but systematic?

Rekindling the fire, that ol' favorite topic of weapons of mass destruction is back with a vengeance, this time thanks to the New York Times and liberal war advocate Christopher Hitchens. Writing in Slate, Hitchens cites a New York Times piece headlined "Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Iraqi Says." According to the NYT and Hitchens' analysis, "Saddam's Iraq was a fairly highly-evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery." That concealment, according to the NYT source, took place in four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003. But unless verifiable proof of the weaponry can be found, the presumption of no weapons will remain.

Others discussing this topic: Balta, Bunker Buster Bunnies and BitsBlog.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:45 AM | Comments (4)

Restoring perspective

What if a hospital discontinued the breathing tube of a young black boy and no one noticed? Wanda Hudson can tell you, because earlier this month Texas Children's Hospital did just that to her 6-month-old boy, Sun Hudson, against her wishes. Was Sun's story ignored because he was an infant, because he was black, or because unlike Terri, no one was willing to fight his legal battles? Texas offers yet another case. This one involves a 68-year-old man in a "chronic vegetative state" whose family is fighting to keep his ventilator kept on and his feeding tube kept in. Will Congress also pass a bill for Spiro Nikolouzos? Will bloggers rush to his defense? I wouldn't count on it.

Previously I've explained my ambivalence about Terri's case, and stories like these help explain why. Tragedies happen all the time and few people notice. But Terri, for a combination of reasons, was able to whip Congress in line and awake a sleeping President. The same can be said of murder cases, such as the Scott Peterson trial, which attract an abnormal amount attention. His, like Terri's, may be due to several factors, but the uneven attention paid to them can be unfair to others in similar situations who are ignored, often completely. Nevertheless, the press that these suburban tragedies garner can be used for good if they spur action that can help prevent them from occurring in all cases. Let us hope that will be the case with Terri.

Others on this topic: Mark Kleiman, MsGeek, big bloo sky, and Sierra Faith.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:11 AM | Comments (11)

Holy Week - Tuesday

On this day of the Holy Week, Tuesday, a number of events took place. First, Jesus' authority was challenged in the temple (Mark 11:27-33). This, and the general rejection by Hebrews, fulfilled the ancient prophecy that He would be rejected by his own people (Isiah 53:1,3; Psalm 41:19).

Second, Jesus taught in stories and confronted the Jewish leaders (Matthew 21:28-23:36). Then, after the Greeks asked to see Jesus (John 12:20-26), He delivered the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24).

Finally, a big moment came - Judas agreed to betray Jesus (Matthew 26:14-16):

Then one of the Twelve - the one called Judas Iscariot - went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

Matthew is the only one to record the amount Judas was offered. Some pastors will point to the 30 silver coins and note that it was the price of a slave (Exodus 21:32). But at the time of the New Testament (1200 years after Exodus) you couldn't have bought a healthy a slave for that little, especially considering by tradition Judas was from a wealthy family. The 30 coins is significant because by Jewish law it had to be paid before the information from the informant could be used. Later, when Judas did in fact betray him, he would fulfill yet another ancient prophecy, this one found in Psalm 41:9.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2005

Celebrities in Politics

Not always a bad thing:

MOSCOW - Garry Kasparov, the world's top chess player for two decades and considered by many the greatest player in history, has announced his retirement from professional chess in an ambitious gambit and vowed to devote his energy to battling what he called the "dictatorship" of President Vladimir Putin.

Kasparov, 41, a former world champion who has been No. 1 in the rankings since 1984, made his announcement Thursday in Spain after winning the annual Linares chess tournament, one of the game's most prestigious events . . .

Inasmuch as Putin is illiberal in his handling of the Russian Federation, liberals everywhere surely will wish Kasparov the best of luck, if he can stick with it:

Political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said he thought Kasparov would not remain in politics for long, given his previous forays into the political arena.

"With the exception of chess, he has never proven himself capable of committing fully to any project," Pribylovsky said. "He will do something very well for one month, and then he'll take a trip abroad and disappear completely." . . .

Internet chess journalist Mig Greengard, a close friend and associate of Kasparov's, said the fact that he was giving up the game that made him famous was the best indicator of his intentions . . .

"He could have continued using his chess success to bring publicity to his political cause. If there were any questions about how serious he is [about politics], his retirement should answer them."

Posted by Zach Wendling at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

The Wrong Kind of Dynasty

Dammit.

Update: "In an interview on Sporting News Radio over the weekend, Knight said he would have fired Davis if he had been at Indiana for another season . . . 'They created that for themselves,' Knight said, referring to Indiana's hiring of Davis. 'The guy that's coaching there is a guy that I told Pat (Knight's son) we were going to replace at the end of the season. There's no way that I would have kept the guy any longer than that. That's their problem.'" Link. (Hat tip: Josh).

Posted by Zach Wendling at 03:55 PM | Comments (21)

Political mags

The Bush administration is boosting sales of political magazines of all stripes. According to this NYT biz piece, The Nation enjoyed "a huge spike in orders beginning the day after the election" and doubled subscription to 184,000 (according to the mag). Progressive reports that paid circulation is up 72 percent at 64,000 subs since Bush came to Washington and The American Prospect reports a 27 percent increase since last year, to 60,189.

On the conservative side, the American Spectator is up 18 percent (it would not share total numers), The Weekly Standard has gone from 61,542 paid subs in 2003 to 73,710 last year, and National Review increased its readership by 20 percent in 2004, to 173,815. Assuming the magazines are reporting their numbers honestly, The Nation is now the largest political publication, with National Review remaining on top of the conservative competition.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:55 PM | Comments (3)

Alert the Media - Ed Agrees with the Religious Right

This is probably going to come as a shock to my regular readers, but I'm going to agree with Pat Buchanan and the Worldnutdaily. In Pat's most recent column, he endorses a bill in front of Congress called the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005. The bill would change the Internal Revenue Code to allow ministers and other church officials to endorse candidates and take positions on partisan political issues without risking their tax exempt status. I agree with this and think the bill should pass, for several reasons.

First, the rules as written currently are so vague that they are prone to abuse. What precisely is prohibited and what precisely is allowed for charitable organizations to do is very much a matter of interpretation. As the organization pushing this bill say in their FAQ:

For purposes of IRC Section 501(c)(3), legislative activities and political activities are two different things, and are subject to two different sets of rules. The latter is an absolute bar. An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. But if the forum or debate shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, it becomes a prohibited activity. The motivation of an organization is not relevant in determining whether the political campaign prohibition has been violated. Activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate, even on the basis of non-partisan criteria, violate the political campaign prohibition of IRC Section 501(c)(3).

Political candidates of all stripes give speeches at churches all the time, especially during a campaign. Is that prohibited? What if the church only allows those of one party to speak and not another? That happens all the time too.

Second, it would end the fiction that churches are not endorsing candidates. Churches and ministers do endorse candidates currently, they just do it while painstakingly holding to the letter of the law to protect themselves. Democrats typically speak in front of liberal churches, while Republicans typically speak in front of conservative churches. Is giving a forum to only one candidate an endorsement? It seems obvious that it ought to be viewed as one, but it's generally not seen as one. So why not end this fiction? Let churches endorse candidates if they choose because everyone knows that they're doing it anyway, just with the dishonest pretense of not doing it.

Third, the law as currently written provides too much entanglement between church and state. It requires that the IRS analyze sermons and pastoral communications to insure that they don't include some technical violation of a very subjective set of rules. Do we really want that kind of oversight? Do we really want the government monitoring speech in churches to parse subjective statements of a political nature? I don't think we do.

Fourth, I don't believe the restrictions are constitutional, at least not strictly so. We place a very high priority on protecting speech, especially political speech and especially speech in churches. In order to justify a law that sets restrictions on what may or may not be said in a sermon, the law must meet the highest and most strict level of scrutiny we can apply. And I simply do not believe there is a compelling state interest that comes close to justifying such limitations in this case. If you can think of any interest that would meet such strict scrutiny, I'd like to hear it. But since, as I said before, the rules are subjective enough as it is to allow churches to give de facto endorsements, there can't possibly be enough of a harm associated with de jure endorsements to justify giving government the power to punish churches for the explicitly political speech of ministers.

Posted by at 01:09 PM | Comments (8)

The inaccurate blogosphere

Several bloggers are erroneously reporting that Congress has passed a bill to reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But as you can see from reading the bill that the President just signed, Congress has merely created a cause of action in federal courts and given it jurisdiction over the case. I examine the constitutionality of the bill here. The federal courts may ultimately decide the same outcome as the Florida state courts. Below is a list of media outlets and blogs that are misrepresenting the bill. I will continually update the post, and feel free to point to sloppy bloggers/reporters in the comments.

• Best of the Web: "In an extraordinary midnight session, the House voted 203-58 to approve a bill to restore her feeding tube--removed last week by order of a Florida judge--and grant the federal courts jurisdiction over her case."
• Notes from Dick: "The 'value' driven politicians in congress passed an emergency bill last night requesting the feeding resume for Terri Schiavo."
• BlogsforTerri: After the President signed the bill, this blog headlined its post, "Terri's feeding tube will be reinserted." Maybe, but that's up to the judge, not Congress.
• corrente: This blog incorrectly calls the bill an unconstitutional "bill of attainder" and suggests Congress cannot intervene in state courts, even though that happens relatively frequently.
• The Modern American: "They have given themselves the power to determine life or death over any individual they so choose." Not exactly. They have given themselves the power to determine jurisdiction, a power they had already had.
• RockPaperScissors: Erroneously re-posts the Best of the Web summary.
• Two or Three: This blog also re-posts the Best of the Web summary.
• KarensKorner: "Judge Greer is in contempt of Congress.He told the hospice to remove terri's feeding tube and to leave it out until Terri is dead! This after Congress ruled otherwise." Congress didn't rule anything of the sort.
• damnum absque injuria: This blogger actually accuses Michael Schiavo of previously attempting to strangle Terri without any evidence whatsoever.

In an unrelated note, here's the complaint filed by Terri Schiavo's parents.

Update: Best of the Web runs a correction.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:18 PM | Comments (15)

Poetry!

If you haven't yet figured this out, it's a very slow news cycle. CNN is even talking up a turtle shell with the supposed image of satan. What has cable news come to? But we here at ITA are much more resourceful and creative than that. We know that it's also World Poetry Day, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. You can access the the World Poetry Directory here, which brings you lists of