There’s a fairly good blog I’ve been reading for a while, and added to the link bar today. It’s Drug WarRant by Pete Guither. I was moved to add it by this post, which ends with the site’s new tagline:
I suspect some number of this site’s readers do support prohibition, and I apologize if I am stepping on toes. There’s a lot of pathos on both sides; drug addiction has destroyed many lives, and people understandably recoil from decriminalizing something that can be so dangerous. (I do not include pot in that category; I doubt that there would still be a nationwide ban on marijuana in this country if not for heavy government-financed lobbying.) Still, I believe that the prohibition on drugs will ultimately prove to be as unsustainable as the prohibition on alcohol, and has done far more damage than the Eighteenth Amendment.
If that view seems extreme to you, but you’re open to finding out more about it, Drug WarRant and its collection of links are a good place to start.
Yglesias and other bloggers have been talking recently about why there is little concern for unions among most urban/professional liberals. I think that globalization is one fairly important reason; in the fat 90’s, free trade was the deity of urban professionals, although its status has declined this decade as more white-collar jobs have been outsourced. But Kevin Drum hits on what–for me personally, at least–is the most important reason. He quotes from the Washington Post:
….”They are encouraging a management of coercion and intimidation,” said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. He added: “This is not a modern system. This is a step backward.”
Kevin comments:
I wanted to post something like this a few days ago, in response to Ygleasias; but I held back, because I didn’t want to seem like I was stereotyping union workers. In this case, however, the union leader is providing the stereotype for us. Being subject to reviews by your supervisor is not called “coercion” or “intimidation.” It’s real life.
Some of the comments and trackbacks on Kevin’s post argue that 1) this is a return to the 19th-century patronage system, 2) the threat of bad performance reviews will be used to stifle dissent, and 3) therefore, this will make us less safe. All three objections are easy to respond to.
1. We’re not talking about a complete elimination of civil service regulations; this is merely a relaxing of rules that have gone too far.
2. Most jobs in a large bureacracy–even DHS–do not involve policymaking, policy analysis, or the like. But these non-policy jobs are still crucial to the sucess of the department.
3. The perpetuation and promotion of incompetent or lazy people is a far greater risk to our safety.
I’m sure that everyone would be happiest if there were some magical, objective method of performance evaluation that was not liable to subjectivity or politicization. But there is no such thing; and in the real world, managerial appraisals have to be an important part of promotion and compensation decisions.
A rather unfortunate name for a man trying to establish a new futures market: Robert Shiller
Via Andrew, the NYT has as anonymously sourced article claiming that Homeland Security nominee Michael Chertoff, the administration’s Boy Scout, approved some forms of torture.
The press surrounding Chertoff suggests that he’s widely considered a straight arrow, with a strongly pro-government leaning on law enforcement issues (as one would expect from a former prosecutor). What this tells me is that Chertoff–and probably many others within the Bush administration–believe, as a matter of principle, that the generally accepted restrictions on treatment of detainees are too strict.
But we have this ridiculous charade where they have to deny their opinions in public, most of the country knows the denials are BS, but most of the country doesn’t care because they don’t really give a damn if terrorists get tortured. (And as for all the innocents swept up in the net, well, no one likes to think about them.)
Chertoff’s confirmation hearing may be our best chance to change this. The Democrats need to say straight out to him: “We know you’re a principled and honest man, Judge Chertoff. So if this is what you and the administration really believe in, just come out and say so.” Then maybe we can finally get an honest debate going.
And yeah, I’m being hopelessly idealistic; but what’s the point of blogging if you can’t be pie-eyed on occasion?
Sometimes you’ve just got to wonder if people are for real. From Reuters Oddly Enough:
I’m just waiting for the defendant to file counter-charges against the complainants for being peeping toms.
The Interior Department will be removing the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse (no, I hadn’t heard of it either) from the Endangered Species List after a peer review board narrowly approved (8-6) a study concluding that it was genetically identical to another, non-endangered species.
Whether or not the two species are identical, here’s the part that really gets me:
I agree that maintaining biodiversity is an important goal. But more important than ending a drought?
I suppose environmentalists would argue that it’s actually the fault of poor planning, or of people living in habitats that are not naturally able to support them. But considering that the population of the United States is still growing steadily, that’s an unsustainable position for anyone who accepts that the interests of humans are more important than the interests of animals.
You’ve got to grant it to Andrew Sullivan; he may be a buffoon, but he’s not a hypocrite. He’s radically changed his tune on Iraq without ever offering a substantive justification or even really admitting a change (as demonstrated by Publius in this post and numerous others). But this same uncritical perspective that he applies to himself, he also applies to politicians.
The latest example is his review of Hillary Clinton’s speech on abortion in TNR. He writes:
Now to just anyone else, this would be a pretty obvious attempt by Clinton to position herself as a moderate, and overcome the Feminazi label she’s been stuck with. Sullivan, however, treats this revealed new position as gospel.
It’s amusing to find a man as posturingly idealistic–or cynically uncynical–as Andrew. I think he should run for office. He’s obviously a natural.
Jenna Jameson is moving her multimedia empire into another niche: cell phone ringtones:
Unfortuantely, corporate America (now featuring a Baby Bell mother-fuck, or matrophagy if you prefer) seems hesitant to jump on the bandwagon:
I’m not sure why the carriers need to be involved, since I thought most newer phones can use any wav or mp3 as a ringtone. But you’d think the Baby Bells would realize that sex sells, and get with the program! Gotta target that 18-27 male market segment.
Kevin Drum links to an op-ed by Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister, who has just undertaken a review of psychological studies on the subject of self-esteem. His approach exemplifies the fundamental problems with quantitative and symptom-focused psychology.
Baumeister’s conclusion, in a nutshell, is that self-esteem does not produce any measurable improvement in performance, relationships, or social behavior. The problem with his review is clear from this paragraph:
The flaw here is glaring: a person with genuine self-esteem does not have a “defensive or know-it-all attitude”, and there is no conflict between self-esteem and humility. In fact, a person who truly ‘accepts and loves’ themselves (to borrow Baumeister’s phrase) is not ashamed of their own limitations or afraid to own up to them.
But there’s no way to measure true self-acceptance in a survey. Instead, researchers ask respondents to rate their own attributes and abilities. But if, as popular wisdom holds, people with low self-esteem are the most given to exaggerating their own accomplishments, this will clearly produce skewed results.
It’s troubling that Baumeister doesn’t even acknowledge this pitfall. It shows two major blind spots: 1) the over-simplification that comes from reducing a psychological attribute to a quantifiable survey, and 2) unwillingness to recognize the power of repression.
On the positive side, Baumeister does show the fallacy of shallow attempts at raising self-esteem, e.g. grade inflation. Meaningless praise and lack of consequences may raise surface self-regard, but they do nothing for fundamental self-acceptance.
Unfortunately, Baumeister’s review makes no such subtle distinctions, concluding instead that the solution is to focus on “self-control and self-discipline” instead of self-esteem. In other words, to replace one form of surface control with another, without ever addressing the underlying psychological issues. It’s sad that this sort of naive, symptom-focused reasoning represents the mainstream in psychiatry 100 years after Freud.
Update: Article 19 has a good (and far pithier) take-down of Baumeister as well.
It seems that the Parents’ Television Council has about as clear a notion of indecency as a kindergartener who thinks that ’sex’ is a bad word. From Buzzmachine’s summary of their recent complaints (mercifully, all were denied):
So the use of the word ‘vagina’ in a purely medical context is indecent?
A few of the other worst ones:
o. “One Tree Hill,” November 18, 2003, 9 p.m. EST: in a school hallway, a male character tells a female character, “I’ve got something for you,” and she replies, “I know you do, gorgeous.” He then gives her a book, telling her she might want to “check it out,” and she replies, “Oh, I definitely want to check it out. I suppose I could read the book, too.”
m. “Will & Grace,” November 6, 2003, 9 p.m. EST: a male character with a very strong attachment to his mother describes the greatest tragedy of his life as “the day they yanked me from the breast of that saint.”
I don’t even want to think about how screwed up someone has to be to consider a reference to breast-feeding indecent.
When Bernard Kerik was nominated for Secretary of Homeland Security, it was pretty obvious–or at least assumed by many people, myself included–that he was actually a seat-warmer for Rudy Giuliani.
The replacement nominee, Michael Chertoff, is a different story: Harvard and Harvard Law, acclaimed DA and federal judge, Assistant AG. (I wonder how he feels about being understudy to a corrupt NYC cop?) But Underneath Their Robes notes something interesting: Chertoff worked for Giuliani at the US Attorney’s office in NY in the 80’s.
So the final pick was still someone with a Giuliani connection. Probably a pure coincidence, of course. But just enough of a chance of meaning something to be worth noting for future reference.
Count me out of the reams of secular/liberal types responding with jubilation to today’s ruling in Selman v. Cobb, the ‘evolution sticker’ case. As glad as I am to see the ridiculous stickers gone, this is exactly the sort of judicial activism that has come back to bite us in the past.
The District Judge’s decision was based on an Establishment Clause endorsement test. This is the same reasoning by which a high school, for example, cannot invite a rabbi to give a prayer at a graduation ceremony because that would imply that the school district was endorsing religion. (Lee v. Weisman)
The judge’s reasoning in reaching that conclusion, however, is pernicious in the extreme. A few quotes from the published opinion make that clear:
The same can be said of any political decision. Is a state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional because it marks secularist supports of gay rights as ‘outisders’? Conversely, is a law safeguarding the right to an abortion unconstitutional because it turns religious opponents of abortion into outsiders? The Establishment Clause forbids endorsing irreligion just as much as it forbids endorsing religion.
This is stretching the notion of ‘endorsement’ beyond any reasonable definition. The notion that the school district could maintain a deliberate–and politically expedient–agnosticism on the question does not even seem to have entered the Court’s mind. Especially given that the origins portion of the school’s science curriculum deals exclusively with evolution, how could this one sticker change the program into an endorsement of creationism?
This is the most pernicious argument of all. The reasoning is that the statement, while not unconstitutional in itself, is unconstitutional because it is promoted by people whose views, if fully enacted, would be unconstitutional. Quite simply, this goes against everything our democracy stands for.
The foundational principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought is that no one is prohibited from participating in the public sphere because of their opinions. If their proposal cannot pass democratic or constitutional muster, then they have every right to come up with a new proposal and try again.
Instead, this court is saying to the creationists: you’re out of the game. Because you want to teach creation, which is unconstitutional, any lesser measure you propose is automatically unconstitutional just because you proposed it. In other words, complete disenfranchisement.
If I haven’t convinced you yet that this is a bad path to go down, imagine the same line of reasoning applied in the opposite direction:
- Eliminating prayer in the public schools would send a message that atheists are political insiders, and religious people are political outsiders. Therefore it would be unconstitutional.
- The people most strongly pushing for evolution (or sex education, or gay tolerance) to be taught in schools often have an animosity to traditional religious beliefs; therefore, government acceptance of their proposals would be an endorsement of animosity to religion, and hence unconstitutional.
Think it can’t happen? The last 10 years have been a lesson to all progressives in the law of unintended consequences. The increase in Federal power that liberals pushed for to ensure economic justice and racial equality is now being used to prevent the states from allowing gay marriage, liberalizing drug laws, and enforcing environmental regulations. If we allow allow legal principles like the ones in Selman v. Cobb to take root in the legal system, they will be turned and used against us.
Kevin Drum writes:
Instapundit, for example, has written a seemingly endless stream of contemptuous posts about the media over the past year, but when I click the links and read the stories in question, there’s usually nothing there except trivia.
In the comments, some people point out that liberal blogs have been guilty of the same thing. But Kevin and the commenters equally miss the point behind the ‘wisdom of crowds’ theory: the value of the blogosphere is not in what any individual produces, but in the process of filtering that occurs as people choose which stories to pass on and to link to. PowerLine posts media criticism all the time; but in the case of the 60 Minutes memo, it had an effect because other blogs realized that this was important, and they passed the story around.
So let Glenn (and his counterparts throughout the political spectrum) continue to bloviate. Every once in a while they’ll hit on a gem, and when they do the blogosphere will distribute it far and wide. That is the value of blogs.
Michael Newdow, the lawyer who brought the court case about the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, is now suing over prayers and the placing of the hand on the Bible at the Presidential Inauguration.
I agree with Jan Haugland (from whom I got the link) that irrespective of the merits, this is a horrible idea politically, and gives more fuel to the religious right at a time when they are already riding high on ‘cultural issues’.
As to the merits, the article says:
The argument in favor of prayer at the inauguration is based on the establishment of chaplains in Congress at its inception, before the Bill of Rights was passed prohibiting any “law respecting an establishment of religion.”
When the presence of chaplains in the Nebraska state legislature was legally challenged in 1983 by Ernest Chambers, a Nebraska lawmaker, the Supreme Court ruled against him, saying the practice had a “special nook” because it was a long-standing practice to have government-paid chaplains.
…
However, Mr. Newdow makes a distinction between prayer in government chambers and prayer at a presidential inauguration.
Personally, I don’t see how Marsh v. Chambers can be reconciled with the rest of the Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence, which shows little regard for history. But given that it is on the books, the legal question comes down to: is a Presidential Inauguration more like an opening of Congress or a high school graduation? I think that any reasonable person would have to choose the former. Which means that Newdow doesn’t have a leg to stand on, legally.
It’s a commonplace that the policies of the Christian-dominated Republican party bear little resemblance to the message of Jesus of Nazareth, but this flash is a rather amusing demonstration of that.
After much grunting and groaning, I have finally left the Stone Age and made the upgrade to Wordpress. I have also re-enabled comments, and I’m hoping that Wordpress will help me keep the spam under control. I’m just using a keyword list for now, but I’ll try some of the available spam control plugins tomorrow.
The new URL is http://www.danielglick.com/wp/, but all old URLs–including for RSS feeds–should still work.
If anything seems broken–including the CSS, since I had to redo the template–please drop me an e-mail at dan at this domain.
But you see, Matt, Gonzales is a moderate, because he protected abortion rights in Texas.
On the one hand, I agree that confirming Gonzales would be a disgrace (although I have to admit that I was initally snookered by ‘moderate’ line, too). On the other hand, I have to wonder what monstrosity the White House would nominate if the Democrats did manage to sink Gonzales. Maybe it’s time for out-and-out partisan warfare and obstructionism? Gridlock in Washington sounds like a pretty good alternative to implementing Bush’s agenda.
Kevin Drum thought exactly the same thing I did when I heard about Arnold’s redistricting proposal: of course he wants redistricting to be nonpartisan, he lives in a Democratic state.
Everyone loves the ref when they’re the one being fouled.
Money is power, and hence it follows, as Yglesias points out, that American military hegemony cannot continue if East Asia grows economically as we hope it will.
In the comments, Green Dem also makes a good point:
To date, it has been largely possible to have our cake and eat it too, even if for the last couple of decades that has meant no longer being a creditor nation, but a debtor nation.
The United States was the 20th century’s “sceptred isle.” We surpassed the Great Powers of Europe primarily because we were too geographically isolated to be desolated by the World Wars. Now that the world has gone sixty years without manmade global catastrophe, our advantage is steadily diminishing, as we outsource both our jobs and our national treasury.
I’m not saying this to be a doomsayer. As Yglesias points out, this could actually be a positive change. It ultimately depends on what global arrangement replaces the unipolar world.
Terrorism is ultimately about publicity. So perhaps this quote from NYT magazine about the Arab channel al-Arabiya shouldn’t surprising:
So apparently the Iraqi insurgents are well-organized enough to have a rapid media response team.
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Sick Transit: A directionless train of thought. Sic transit cogitationes Danis.