I wrote a couple of month ago about Ashcroft’s anti-porn campaign. At the time, I wrote that states had the power to proscribe any material that had no higher purpose and that a jury found “patently offensive.” But it appears that I may be wrong.
In analyzing today’s decision in Ashcroft v. ACLU, Volokh points out the following:
I still don’t think the government has any business deciding what is normal sexuality. But it’s nice to know that at least non-fetish porn has some constitutional protection.
AP writer Jim Krane spits out this utter piece of asininity:
Because, of course, a sensationalistic, celebrity-crazed tabloid murder trial is roughly comparable to the judicial settling of accounts with a dictatorship that tyrannized a whole country for nearly three decades.
A blot on our nation has been erased. The Supreme Court held today that anyone–US citizen or not–detained by the Federal Government as an “enemy combatant” has the right to challenge their detention in court.
A resounding cheer for the Supreme Court!
Well on the one hand, I’m glad that Bush is putting his money where his mouth is (so to speak). But it’s also frustrating to think that something so simple, obvious, and commonsensical can still be controversial.
Then again, only ten years ago, a member of the U.S. Cabinet was forced out of office for pointing out that it’s normal for teenagers to masturbate.
It’s amazing how much sexual repression we still manage to cram into this supposedly depraved and libertine society of ours.
Interesting NYT article about the R-card, a service offered by the GKC theater chain. Parents can get these cards for their teenagers to allow them to buy tickets to R-rated movies. It’s such an obvious idea I can’t believe no one thought of it before. Of course, Blockbuster has had something similar for a long time.
But the reaction of some ratings proponents is pretty disturbing:
“You have not only the opportunity but the responsibility to be able to teach and guide your children according to your own values,” he said. By giving a teenager an R-card, “you’ve decided, `I’m not going to do that,’” said Mr. Gustafson, whose column appears in 60 newspapers in the United States and Canada.”
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Mr. Gustafson that some parents’ values may include trusting their teenagers to make good decisions, or perhaps recognizing the fact that as kids get older, they deserve a measure of freedom.
But of course, Gustafson and his ilk aren’t really interested in parental choice; they’re interested in promoting their own (usually religion-based) values. And when not all parents share them, it undermines their claim to the moral high ground.
Phil Carter, of the indispensable Intel Dump, has just revealed that his grandparents’ family name was actually Cohn. I guess that explains why he’s such a wonk (and a liberal) despite being an Army guy. (Just kidding, Phil!)
The revelation comes amidst an impassioned plea for more open immigration. I don’t think about it much; but my parents, whom I’ve always known as Joe and Dalia, were born as Yuri and Danuta. It’s crazy to think that if not for American immigration policies, I might have grown up in Poland or the Ukraine. (Well, actually, I probably wouldn’t have been born at all, since my parents met in the U.S. But let’s not go there.) So I’ll just quote what Phil has to say:
Amen, Mr. Cohn.
I just wanted to say that I am sick and tired of the coverage of Cheney’s use of the f-bomb on the Senate floor. Yes, it was uncivil and inappropriate under the circumstances. And it was hypocritical from a member of an administration that’s made such a stink over broadcast decency.
But it’s just one word. It’s no big deal. I use it all the time, and you probably do too.
So let’s just fucking drop it already.
Lessig posts about the Induce Act, a bill proposed by Orrin Hatch, and co-sponsered by Leahy, Frist, Daschle, Graham, and Boxer. The bill would criminalize any product or service that “intentionally aids [or] abets” copyright infringement. The floor statement introducing it makes clear that it’s primarily aimed at P2P networks, but the text of the law could equally well be applied against MP3 players, CD burners, even VCRs. Remember that the VCR was almost outlawed 20 years ago; and the Supreme Court precedent that protected it was based on statute, not constitutional law. That means that an act of Congress could–intentionally or not–overrule that decision.
My feeling is that with that sort of sponsorship, it would almost take an Act of God to kill the bill. But we can’t give up without a fight. Here’s the EFF Action Center for the bill. And here’s the letter I sent to my senators (loosely based on the EFF’s sample). Both of Idaho’s Senators are Republicans, so I tried to focus on the liberty and economic angles, rather than the ’stinky big corporations’ angle.
While undoubtedly well-intentioned, the Act would be a radical extension of copyright law, threatening the legality of popular and successful technologies such as the Apple iPod, the CD burner, and even the VCR.
Our nation leads the global marketplace in large part because of our relative freedom from government regulation, which allows for innovative new technologies and ideas to flourish. But if the Induce Act is passed, the inventors of the next iPod or VCR will not be able to market their invention without the approval of every major media company in the country. This sort of chilling effect would be disastrous to personal freedom and to our economy, which relies heavily on the technology sector.
The constitution allows for copyright protection “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” The Induce Act would do exactly the opposite. I urge you to fight it.
Thank you for your time.
Andrew Sullivan quotes a study that attempts to determine media bias through an objective statistic: think tank citations.
Whether or not citations are a conclusive metric–and I don’t think they are–the results are interesting, and well worth reviewing.
But one claim, quoted by Sullivan, is definitely misleading:
Anyone who crunches numbers to suggest that the NYT is more liberal than Berkeley is likely to face a lot of skepticism, and with good reason.
The problem with the Berkeley comparison is that there’s a lot less difference between moderates of both parties than between the moderates and extremists of the same party. The NYT reporters may almost all have voted for Gore; but you’ll find few if any of them swallowing Michael Moore’s tripe, or comparing Israel’s occupation of Palestine to the Holocaust. Compared to your average left-wing student, the NYT is not by any means liberal.
Most of the paper’s analysis is more rigorous than that. But it’s sad that the authors decided to spice up an academic work with such disingenous remarks. It definitely suggests a political motivation in their own research.
Why is the US so religious? Tyler Cowen summarizes the preliminary findings of research on religion and economic growth, and one of his bullet points provides a possible answer:
In other words, our free enterprise, competitive approach to religion has met consumer demand much more effectively than the hidebound, statist national churches of Europe.
When you put it that way, it almost sounds like a good thing.
Followup to the post below: Amidst all my googling for amounts of welfare benefits, I discovered this handy little tool: the State TANF Income Calculator (requires free registration). For a family in West Virginia with two children, it return the following numbers:
Welfare: $303 TANF + $335 food stamps = $638 a month
Minimum wage work: $886 earnings + $176 food stamps - $68 FICA + $318 EIC = $1,312 a month
So even if he only makes minimum wage, Mr. Olmstead nets twice as much a month working as he would on welfare. And that’s assuming he has kids; if he has no kids, his welfare and EIC would decrease, but of couse his wages wouldn’t.
William Saletan has a running series in Slate exploring the swing states, and there’s an interesting tidbit buried in his latest dispatch from West Virginia:
My family was on welfare in the early 90’s, and I can assure Eric that he is mistaken, unless he’s making less than minimum wage. The numbers bear this out.
In 1999, the last year for which data is available on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website, West Virginia’s average monthly expenditure on TANF was $2,568,822, which was disbursed to an average of 11,322 families. That is an average of only $226.89 a month.
WV’s average monthly household benefit for food stamps for the same period was $168.49.
That’s only $395.38 a month. Even if we add a rent allowance (which I can’t find any evidence of West Virginia providing) and perhaps extra assistance if Mr Olmstead has a large family, that would at most–counting very liberally–bring him up to minimum wage ($800/mo).
OTOH, if Olmstead is working, then he is already making at least minimum wage. Plus, if that is all he’s making (unlikely for a mechanic, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt), he’s eligible for EIC, food stamps, and possibly Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as Section 8 ) as well.
So where did Olmstead get the idea that he’d be better off on welfare? Most likely, he heard it on Hannity or Limbaugh.
So the moral of the story is: propaganda works. And our nation is poorer in compassion because of it.
As part of a $4-million, 15-year sponsorship deal, the Boise State University Pavilion (home of the University’s basketball team) has changed its name to Taco Bell Arena. The basketball coach chose his words very carefully, I think:
Of course, you can’t really expect any better from an institution that goes by the initials BSU.
Via Sullivan, an excellent TNR article by Paul Berman. (Normally requires subscription, but Sullivan has provided a subscription-free link.) A few choice excerpts:
A truly large and powerful protest movement took to the streets all over the Western world only in February 2003–and this was not to denounce the terrible dictatorship, but to prevent an invasion from overthrowing the terrible dictatorship. Those were the largest mass protests in the history of the world.
The people I have encountered around the world who root for liberal victories in Iraq tend to be the very people who dragged their various countries into the Kosovo war. The White House might pause to reflect that reconstructing the alliance of 1999 ought to be a lot easier to do than reconstructing the alliances that defeated fascism in 1945 or formed to combat communism in 1949.
I have found that, in most places, the best way to call for solidarity is to begin by deploring the policies, character, rhetoric, culture, political tradition, and diplomacy of America’s president. People become surprisingly open-minded if you begin this way.
The U.S. failure in Somalia led to a different kind of U.S. failure in Rwanda. There will surely be Rwandas in the future–there is one right now in Darfur, Sudan (where the ethnic cleansers come out of the same mix of radical Islamism and Arab nationalism that has caused so much suffering in many other places, including our own places). Who in his right mind is going to call for U.S. intervention?
Here is the challenge: to rage at Saddam and other enemies, and, at the same time, to rage in a somewhat different register at Bush, and to keep those two responses in proper proportion to one another. That can be a difficult thing to do, requiring emotional balance, maturity, and analytic clarity–a huge effort.
Whether or not you agree with Berman about the war, the article is a must-read for anyone who is seeking the middle ground between imperialist thuggery and head-in-the-sand pacifism.
Not too long ago, the Conservative blogosphere was abuzz over a report that terrorist activity had declined to its lowest level in decades. It was taken as proof positive that Bush’s strategy was working.
Now Powell has retracted the report:
“He says it wasn’t politically motivated so I will accept that,” Waxman said after their conversation. Still, the lawmaker said, “We are still left with the fact that this report is useless until it is corrected.”
The interesting subtext here is that Powell didn’t try to spin this at all. He flat-out said: “we were wrong.” It sounds like he’s tired of providing political cover for Bush, and is simply not going to play that game any more.
This should be interesting.
From an AP article on violence against Westerners in Saudi Arabia:
Coming up soon:
- Bush campaign officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that they are optimistic about the Preisdent’s re-election prospects.
- Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that the work of the legislative branch is important.
- Local school district staff, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that children are the future.
It’s good to know that Saudi officials are able to speak to the press freely!
Kevin Drum points out the lunacy that is the Texas GOP Platform. The usual conservative suspects are there: criminalization of gay sex, anti-abortion amendment to the constitution, etc.
But it goes farther than that. They want to repeal the minimum wage, abolish the federal income tax, return to the gold standard, and take back the Panama Canal. I kid you not.
In a nutshell, they quite literally want to take the United States back 100 years.
And this is the state party that gave us our current President.
Having been too young to follow politics during the Reagan years, it’s been interesting for me to read the widely varying takes on Reagan in the blogosphere over the last few days. But I don’t think I’ve read anything as patently ridiculous as this feat of genuflection by guest blogger Mike Rappaport at Volokh:
So financing the creation of the Taliban, supporting Saddam Hussein while he was gassing the Kurds, presiding over the worst federal scandal since Watergate, and ballooning the budget deficit don’t qualify as “significant failures”?
But it gets worse:
I have never heard this suggested before, even by the most die-hard conservatives. Fifteen years after Reagan left office, SDI still doesn’t work. And Rappaport has the gall to claim that it played “no small part” in the end of the Cold War.
All I can say is that Rappaport does a disservice to the conservative cause and to the memory of Reagan. It seems he wants to turn both into a laughingstock.
Phil Carter, in an excellent analysis, discusses the pickle the government has put itself in by its handling of the Padilla case:
Makes me wonder if the government is actually pursuing a “facts on the ground” strategy. By deliberately flouting the rules, and creating a cadre of unprosecutable terrorists, they are forcing the Supreme Court to choose between either endorsing their tactics or releasing terrorists. When faced with such a stark choice between ideals and pragmatism, the court has tended to choose pragmatism, and the administration may be betting on that.
The danger of homonyms, as demonstrated by this Bushism:
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This is not the site of journalist and author Daniel Glick. His website is at danielglick.net
Sick Transit: A directionless train of thought. Sic transit cogitationes Danis.