On the Developing Implosion Controversy over the Rolling Stone UVA-Rape Story

UPDATED to reflect controversy/rather than implicate falseness of the statements. The points of the post are relevant whether the allegations are true or not.

Journalism is hard.

I've never been a reporter, so I'll leave the professionals and media critics to talk about the ethical and professional lapses at Rolling Stone that led to what appears to be exaggerated, if not flat-out false gang rape allegations publishing a piece that shook the University of Virginia.

But I do know about rape victims. I've been trusted by several of my female friends with the information that they have been raped at some point in their lives. I can't explain how it feels to hear that someone you care about has been raped. As far as I know, only one of my friends ever went to the police about it.

I never judge the woman for making the decision not to press charges, because going through that process can be a trauma on top of the trauma of being raped. Some people think it's an ethical duty to keep that person from raping again, but I'm always much more concerned with the immediacy of my friend's emotional well-being. Granted, it was usually well after the fact that I was told, but it is nevertheless something I do not feel qualified to pass judgment on.

And yes, this is something that has occurred enough times in my life that I can use the term "usually." This sickening fact is why I have no patience for people who claim that "rape culture" doesn't exist.

I have also had the unfortunate experience of hearing false rape claims.

Years ago, two friends and I were standing outside of a bar in Chinatown here in DC. We hear a woman yelling, mostly indistinct. She sounds angry, but it's nighttime in Chinatown, it's not particularly unusual. Then she yells "RAPE!"

One of my friends, J--who takes his role as a responsible citizen more seriously than most people I know--immediately runs to her aid. My other friend, G, and I look at each other, utter some obscenities, take a deep breath, and run after our friend because we have his back.

We get to this screaming woman yelling rape as she's a passenger in a parked car. Someone has already called 911, a bystander, if I recall correctly.

J tries to calm her down, G and I confront the guy in the drivers seat and ask him what the hell was going on. He tries to run away, but we corner him. 

He explains to us that he was breaking up with her and she was upset and wouldn't get out of the car. We were hostile and skeptical at first, but he was pretty convincing. (After all, once we started running, we had to prepare for the prospect of violence, so this wasn't the most cordial introduction.)

Moreover, he says works for a prominent [then-]US senator and can't be dealing with police. We tell him that A) he needs to stick around, if for no other reason than they have his car it'll look awful to flee and B) this woman needs to come clean about what happened.

We go back to ask her what happened, and she admitted that she just wanted to put pressure on him because she loved him.  G asked her why she made that up. She then starts cussing him out and calling him "nigger" and I pull him away.

Then the police show up. Like a dozen of them.

We give our statements and say that she yelled rape and we came running (thanks to J) and that she admitted to making it up because she was upset, in addition to the verbal abuse of G. We were talking to a male officer about what happened and the look on his face was like "Oh great, another one." Two female officers a few feet away but within earshot looked very angry, as well they should have been.

We were all angry. And I'm angry now.

For every case like that awful woman in Chinatown, there are countless women who don't say anything for fear of ruining their own lives--risking so much without any guarantee of a conviction. This UVA case, if it falls apart as the some reports indicate is possible, could be another Tawana Brawley or Duke lacrosse case--unverified stories that opportunists (or perhaps in the case of this writer, someone too trusting) exploited for their own careers. These few instances of false claims will likely dissuade more victims from coming forward and undermine the legitimate efforts to curb rape and bring its perpetrators to justice.

If innocent, the men accused at UVA ought to be fully and publicly exonerated, full stop. But it is important to believe women if and when they tell you they've been raped. The overwhelming majority of women don't make that stuff up, and they need support if they ask for it.

It is almost a mathematical certainty that you know a woman that has been raped. It may have happened before they met you, or since you've known them. That you may not know speaks not only to what they suffered, but the stigma, guilt, and shame that accompanies such an intimate and scarring violation.

Rape is far too common in this country, and it is an acute problem on college campuses. Collectively, we need to take it more seriously, and as individuals, we need to believe and support the women who come forward.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Justice Sotomayor on Racism in the Criminal Justice System

Thousands of cases are denied certiorari (hearing) in the Supreme Court every year. These denials, as well as other Court business, are released on Orders Lists on a fairly regular basis while the Supreme Court is in session. At the end of today's list, however, was a comment on a cert denial that I wanted to bring attention to.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Breyer, took time to address the repugnant behavior that prompted the case, even though they concurred that it wasn't a reversible error and denied cert petition. I've excerpted the relevant pieces below, taking out the legal reasoning for why cert was denied.

I write to dispel any doubt whether the Court’s denial of certiorari should be understood to signal our tolerance of a federal prosecutor’s racially charged remark. It should not.
... 

 The issue of [Petitioner] Calhoun’s intent came to a head when the prosecutor cross-examined him. Calhoun related that the night before the arrest, he had detached himself from the group when his friend arrived at their hotel room with a bag of money. He stated that he “didn’t know” what was happening, and that it “made me think . . . [t]hat I didn’t want to be there.” Tr. 125–126 (Mar. 8, 2011). (Calhoun had previously testified that he rejoined the group the next morning because he thought they were finally returning home. Id., at 109.) The prosecutor pressed Calhoun repeatedly to explain why he did not want to be in the hotel room. Eventually, the District Judge told the prosecutor to move on. That is when the prosecutor asked, “You’ve got African-Americans, you’ve got Hispanics, you’ve got a bag full of money. Does that tell you—a light bulb doesn’t go off in your head and say, This is a drug deal?”

...

Calhoun, who is African-American, claims that the prosecutor’s racially charged question violated his constitutional rights. Inexplicably, however, Calhoun’s counsel did not object to the question at trial.
...

Given[...]the unusual way in which this case has been, litigated, I do not disagree with the Court’s decision to deny the petition.

There is no doubt, however, that the prosecutor’s question never should have been posed. “The Constitution prohibits racially biased prosecutorial arguments.” McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279, 309, n. 30 (1987). Such argumentation is an affront to the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. And by threatening to cultivate bias in the jury, it equally offends the defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Judge Frank put the point well: “If government counsel in a criminal suit is allowed to inflame the jurors by irrelevantly arousing their deepest prejudices, the jury may become in his hands a lethal weapon directed against defendants who may be innocent. He should not be permitted to summon that thirteenth juror, prejudice.” United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co., 155 F. 2d 631, 659 (CA2 1946) (dissenting opinion) (footnote omitted). Thus it is a settled professional standard that a “prosecutor should not make arguments calculated to appeal to the prejudices of the jury.” ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Prosecution Function and Defense Function, Standard 3–5.8(c), p. 106 (3d ed.1993).

By suggesting that race should play a role in establishing a defendant’s criminal intent, the prosecutor here tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our Nation. There was a time when appeals to race were not uncommon, when a prosecutor might direct a jury to “‘consider the fact that Mary Sue Rowe is a young white woman and that this defendant is a black man for the purpose of determining his intent at the time he entered Mrs. Rowe’s home,’” Holland v. State, 247 Ala. 53, 22 So. 2d 519, 520 (1945), or assure a jury that “‘I am well enough acquainted with this class of niggers to know that they have got it in for the [white] race in their heart,’” Taylor v. State, 50 Tex. Crim. 560, 561, 100 S. W. 393 (1907). The prosecutor’s comment here was surely less extreme. But it too was pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotype for evidence, and racial prejudice for reason.

It is deeply disappointing to see a representative of the United States resort to this base tactic more than a decade into the 21st century. Such conduct diminishes the dignity of our criminal justice system and undermines respect for the rule of law. We expect the Government to seek justice, not to fan the flames of fear and prejudice. In discharging the duties of his office in this case, the Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas missed the mark.

Also troubling are the Government’s actions on appeal. Before the Fifth Circuit, the Government failed to recognize the wrongfulness of the prosecutor’s question, instead calling it only “impolitic” and arguing that “even assuming the question crossed the line,” it did not prejudice the outcome. Brief for United States in No. 11–50605, pp. 19, 20. This prompted Judge Haynes to “clear up any confusion—the question crossed the line.” 478 Fed. Appx. 193, 196 (CA5 2012) (concurring opinion). In this Court, the Solicitor General has more appropriately conceded that the “prosecutor’s racial remark was unquestionably improper.” Brief in Opposition 7–8. Yet this belated acknowledgment came only after the Solicitor General waived the Government’s response to the petition at first,leaving the Court to direct a response.

I hope never to see a case like this again. (emphases added)

I will not agree with much of Justice Sotomayor's jurisprudence, but kudos to her (and Justice Breyer) for admonishing the prosecutor and his federal apologists.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

UPDATE: Ken at Popehat brings up a good point: Why hadn't anyone called him out by name? (He is AUSA Sam L. Ponder.) I still think it's noteworthy that Sotomayor wrote what she did, but I leave to actual lawyers like Ken to complain whether or not namedropping him would be appropriate in the context of a legal opinion.

That said, Ken did what CNN, Chicago Tribune, other media (and I) failed to do: a casename search on PACER. Regardless of the reasons Justice Sotomayor didn't use Ponder's name, the media have a professional duty to find truth and should have done a simple search to find out. Thanks, Ken.

What part of "unprecedented" was unclear?

I tried to comment on a Salon.com piece by Andrew Koppelman on the supposed lies by the opposition to Obamacare. I signed up, linked the account with facebook, but it says only social media-linked accounts can post comments. [shrug] Since it won't publish it there, I'll put it up here.

This is what I wrote, starting with the author's quote in italics:

I have not been able to find even a hint of the constitutional objection before Obama’s election, even though mandates have been proposed, mainly by Republicans, since the early 1990s.

"Such a mandate was, of course, a significant infringement on individual choice and liberty. As the Congressional Budget Office noted, the mandate was "unprecedented," and represented the first time that a state has required that an individual, simply because they live in a state and for no other reason, must purchase a specific government- designated product." Mike Tanner, Cato Institute, January 2008.

Now, this doesn't specifically mention "constitution," but that a federal government body called the mandate "unprecedented" in Romneycare might be a key reason literature challenging its legitimacy isn't bountiful. Indeed, states generally have wider berth in this area thanks to their general police power (as well as the Tenth Amendment.) That some Republicans used to back an unconstitutional measure on the federal level should be no surprise and is hardly an argument that it must have been constitutional then. An abstract concept that becomes policy that is immediately challenged seems the natural order of things. The dearth of law review articles that address a non-existent federal law shouldn't be at all surprising.

Granted, I work at Cato, but it took all of two minutes for me to find that quote. If this is the quality of his research, his book should have all the depth and nuance of a DNC press release.


bellum medicamenti delenda est

Shoot the Messenger

Jim Moran is my congressman. I am not a big fan, and--if I were in a better frame of mind--I'd probably think he goes over the line of acceptable things old white guys can say here, but that's not why I'm writing. I'm writing not as his constituent, a black man, or a libertarian. I'm writing this as a copy editor. Indeed, my beef isn't with Moran--it's with whomever wrote this travesty of a transcription:

"He just seems clueless not that he has climbed abroad ship. He's climbed this latter of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors' sweat, sacrifice, blood, you know they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he's climbed abroad ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the latter, he wants to push it off. 'I'm up here. If you're not with me, too bad.' And President Obama, fortunately, is the kind of guy that says 'I was very fortunate to get where I am and I'm going to spend my life trying to steady that latter of opportunity by reducing college tuition and training our workers, trying to get a decent job for everybody. Making sure that while I'm African-American, it really doesn't matter. What matters is my commitment to public service, my love for this country and I'm going to leave a constructive legacy,'" he said. (italics mine)

TWO "abroad" ships? THREE "latters" of opportunity? This copy is so bad I can't even get mad at Moran. I need some aspirin. (click to embiggen)

HOUSEKEEPING: For those of you looking for something more substantive from me, I'm in the editing process of an essay I wrote about libertarians and the Confederacy. I hope to get it up at Libertarianism.org late this week or early next week. -jpb


bellum medicamenti delenda est

Jeff Toobin's History: Scarcely Related to Reality

Jeffery Toobin’s new piece on Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni leaves one wanting. I was waiting for a “gotcha” moment or perhaps a revelation about the couple that I hadn’t previously known or, at least, anything of interest that would warrant a few thousand words in the New Yorker.

[sad trombone]

Instead, what I read was a bunch of intimation about the Thomases traveling in conservative social circles, the revelation that Justice Thomas is an originalist (!!!), and a smattering of information about his life on the High Court.

One could have gotten as much useful information off of the justice’s Wiki page.

But what got me about the article wasn’t its complete lack of substance—an appalling lack, though it was, given the outlet and the author’s credentials as an astute Court watcher—but its blatant whitewashing of 14^th Amendment history. Toobin writes:

In his jurisprudence, Thomas may be best known for his belief in a “color-blind Constitution”; that is, one that forbids any form of racial preference or affirmative action. But color blind, for Thomas, is not blind to race. Thomas finds a racial angle on a broad array of issues, including those which appear to be scarcely related to traditional civil rights, like campaign finance or gun control.* In Thomas’s view, the Constitution imposes an ideal of racial self-sufficiency, an extreme version of the philosophy associated with Booker T. Washington, whose portrait hangs in his chambers. (This personal gallery also includes Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher.) *emphasis mine

I don't want to get into the campaign finance argument, but the gun rights comment was just too patently ignorant to let go.

Apparently looking to emulate his CNN colleague Wolf Blitzer and become the witless wonder of legal journalism, Toobin exhibits no respect for the substance of either the Heller or McDonald amicus briefs or decisions. Beyond that, Toobin should have a reasonable enough grasp of history—and by reasonable, I mean a basic, non-sanitized history understood by grown-ups—to be familiar with the stripping of blacks' legal protections that came in the post-Reconstruction era and continued up through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. When marauding bands of hooded murderers ride the nights on horseback, the ability to protect one's family from them is very much a civil right—and the systematic removal of those rights doesn't require a special “angle” of jurisprudence to understand. 

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler penned a piece for the September issue of the Atlantic called “The Secret History of Guns.” Professor Winkler spent nearly 2400 words (of roughly 4700) detailing the explicitly race-based nature of various gun control actions—from Andrew Johnson unsuccessfully vetoing the gun rights of Freedmen (the legislative precursors to the 14^th Amendment) to then-Governor Ronald Reagan capitalizing on the spectre of armed Black Panthers at the California capitol. A snippet:

Indisputably, for much of American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn’t served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a “new birth of freedom,” but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, “I would say to every colored soldier, ‘Bring your gun home.’”

After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn’t do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper’s Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan.

In response to the Black Codes and the mounting atrocities against blacks in the former Confederacy, the North sought to reaffirm the freedmen’s constitutional rights, including their right to possess guns. General Daniel E. Sickles, the commanding Union officer enforcing Reconstruction in South Carolina, ordered in January 1866 that “the constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed.” When South Carolinians ignored Sickles’s order and others like it, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of July 1866, which assured ex-slaves the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty … including the constitutional right to bear arms.”

That same year, Congress passed the nation’s first Civil Rights Act, which defined the freedmen as United States citizens and made it a federal offense to deprive them of their rights on the basis of race. Senator James Nye, a supporter of both laws, told his colleagues that the freedmen now had an “equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms for self-defense.” President Andrew Johnson vetoed both laws. Congress overrode the vetoes and eventually made Johnson the first president to be impeached.

Fittingly, as DC readies itself to officially open the memorial to America's most beloved and famously peaceful civil rights leader, Winkler goes on to note that Martin Luther King Jr. applied for—and was denied—a concealed carry permit for a handgun after his home was bombed.

Apparently Dr. King also subscribed to this “extreme” and peculiar “angle” of civil rights.

It's not that I think Toobin wrote this as a hit piece. (It was, if anything, a miss piece.) But by writing this as he did, he mischaracterized an important and well-documented aspect of traditional civil rights in America that—at the very least—any responsible Court watcher would instantly recognize from recent cases, whether or not he agreed with the policy outcomes. Toobin goes further to imply Thomas relies on a revisionist history that is perceived through his putatively unorthodox originalism and colored by his race. That is simply bullshit. 

Gun rights and self-defense have gone hand-in-hand with civil rights for blacks since the very first Civil Rights Act in our nation's history. It seems Mr. Toobin is the one with a questionable understanding of traditional American civil rights. 

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Quote of the Day

While cover [sic] for the receptionist at my work, I have seen a lot. The blacks come in not even dressed to work, they list felony's [sic] on the applications and some do not look like they really want to work. The hispanics - come in with tatoos [sic] all ...exposed, scary, do not speak english, have a rap sheet, and even put they just got out of jail on application [sic]. I do feel bad for them because they do not realize that their past will haunt them forever and the way they present themselves has a lot to do with it. I have some black and hispanic co-workers who have family's [sic] and care about their jobs. But some you just cannot help.

Cindy Taylor, facebook commenter on this Daily Caller post on black unemployment, entitled "Black unemployment: racism or personal responsibilty?" [sic]



I wonder if simplistic views on race are correlated with bad grammar. I kid, of course, but the piece itself reads like a high school sociology project and is as illuminating as a flashlight is to a blind man.

UPDATE: The Daily Caller has removed the facebook thread I linked to. (sad face.) If reading I-know-a-black-guy expert opinions from people who prefer to remain anonymous is your thing, you can follow the story comments here. So far, the post has 127 facebook likes. SMH

Quick Comment on Juan Williams Fiasco

I don't listen to NPR. I don't watch FoxNews. As far as I can tell, Juan got canned by one organization of stunning hypocrites to work for another organization full of stunning hypocrites. Meanwhile, hypocrites unaffiliated with either NPR or FoxNews are being stunningly hypocritical when discussing the matter.

Admittedly, if I watched as much FoxNews as Juan presumably does, I'd probably be irrationally afraid of Muslims too.

Burying the Lede

So I'm doing my usual morning news round-up for work, checking out the major papers' headlines and features, and when I get to the LA Times, I come across, "L.A. County sheriff says budget cuts have slowed agency's analysis of drug evidence."

Now, for those who don't share my opinions regarding legalization may read this and just think that Los Angeles needs to get its budgetary house in order (which, of course, it does). But at the end of the story, where many people never manage to reach (such is the fate of most news stories), are these troubling revelations (my emphasis):

Sheriff's officials say cost-saving measures have put them on track to meet their budget-reduction goals — but not without sacrifice. Restrictions on overtime, for example, were shown last month to have significantly slowed fingerprint collection and analysis, often resulting in the destruction of potentially vital evidence.

The lag has delayed dozens of homicide investigations. It's also forced burglary victims to wait longer to have their homes or cars fingerprinted. In May, more than 120 burglary victims decided they couldn't continue preserving the crime scene, calling the Sheriff's Department to cancel fingerprinting altogether.

Cuts have also affected air support, according to Baca's report, with more than 150 requests from patrol units on the ground going unanswered during a two-week span in June.

Clearly, it's more important to spend so much time and resources on consensual exchange and personal drug use than it is to allocate basic services to victims of robbery and murder.

To be fair, some of the drug charges are probably tied to other more serious crimes, but that is not apparent in the thrust of the story, nor would most of those crimes ever be committed if it weren't for drug prohibition enforcement in the first place. What gets me about this story is not simply the police department's priorities, but that the implicit acceptance of those priorities, resulting in the 'oh by the way, murder and burglary cases are growing cold too.' If it was your house that was robbed--and your sense of security shattered--or your loved one dead at the hands of another human being, how would you feel about your case being discarded or delayed to pursue unrelated, non-violent drug busts?

In Defense of Dave Weigel

Full Disclosure: Dave Weigel and I are friendly former colleagues. I don't know about "friends," per se--but I helped him move once, with Matt Yglesias (!!) inter alia, and we usually exchange a few words when we see each other out. So, while this may be biased, I'd say much the same thing about journos I don't know at all or as well, like Ezra Klein, Spencer Ackerman or even, gasp, Yglesias.

So, there is an off-the-record listserv known as Journolist--not surprisingly, made up of journalists. Now, if there is a group of people outside of the government who better understand what "off the record" means, it's friggin' journalists. Yet, someone on the list has decided to leak an off the record rant of Dave's to a gossip site.

I think anyone who cares about their job--which would be a majority of the people I know in this town--is going to be upset from time to time with the work they do and the reactions to it. We are passionate people who moved to this city to, if you'll pardon the cliche, make a difference. Dave is a serious and dedicated journalist who is good at what he does--and is attacked by all sides for it. Beyond my personal affection for him, I respect the hell out of what he does and how he does it.

God forbid if any of the many off-the-record conversations I've been party to in this town were ever to become public. People share emotional responses to stressful stuff all the time. Some vents are rational, others are hyperbolic overreactions to a set of circumstances, often well-beyond the subject of a particular rant. Sometimes you're just so pissed you let loose a stream of verbal bile that would offend most people out of context--but is understood (or at least, forgiven) among your own. This is what, I imagine, Dave felt Journolist was good for.

He was obviously wrong to trust them, and shame on them for it.

Predictably, WaPo commenters are having a field day at Dave's expense--and I would bet in no small part because there are thousands of people who have "Paultard" in their Google Alerts just so they can pounce on any (virtual) utterance defaming the great and powerful Ron. Sigh.

The point is, we need more journalists like Dave and much less of the gossipy nonsense he's fallen victim to.

You can't be serious...

Teaser from Washington Post.com:

After Gores, is there hope for us?
Al and Tipper's split doesn't just make us sad. It means that maybe we can't succeed in marriage.

I refuse to click through and read it, mainly because I'm not a ridiculous naïf who looks to professional prudes and liars to give my life meaning.

Gimme a f'n break.

Consider Me 'Especially Unchastened'

I don't know who Charles Lane is or how he landed a job at the Post--and regardless of your personal thoughts on medical marijuana--this is just insipid nonsense:

The death of John Patrick Bedell, the 36-year-old man shot and killed by Pentagon police officers after he opened fire on them March 4, is a tragedy. It might have been avoided if Bedell had received timely and effective treatment for his obviously serious mental illness. The fact that he did not is a cause for soul-searching by all of us. Advocates of “medical marijuana” should be especially chastened.

I, for one, am not one bit chastened by my open advocacy for the legalization of drugs, especially medical cannabis. That Bedell's alleged bi-polar disorder went un- or mistreated has absolutely no bearing whatever that he self-medicated with marijuana. His family was apparently well aware of his mental health issues and he did not receive adequate treatment for it hardly makes medical cannabis blameworthy in this.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to delve into Bedell's medical and personal history, but even if we take Mr. Lane's story at face value--that Bedell sought treatment for insomnia in 2006 where his doctor may or may not have properly searched for the underlying cause for that insomnia--blaming a medicine is intellectually derelict.

If some doctor treated a broken leg with Vicodin and no other remedy--such as to properly set the broken bone--the fault lies not with the Vicodin, but with the inadequate treatment on behalf of the physician. Likewise, if a doctor doesn't properly diagnose a severe mental disorder that would be evident through routine examination, the doctor--and not the prescribed inadequate remedy--is to blame.

But Lane continues on this irresponsible crusade against medical cannabis:

Let’s debate legalizing marijuana as a recreational drug. If smoking pot makes terminally ill AIDS and cancer patients feel better, give it to them.

But, for the most part, “medical marijuana” is a pseudo-scientific myth, and a dangerous one at that.

Parsing this a bit: "if it makes terminally ill AIDS and cancer patients feel better" belies the reason many of those patience actually use cannabis: It isn't to escape the pain or feel kinda groovy--which, admittedly, is a side-effect--it allows many of them to eat without vomiting from the chemotherapy and other chemical cocktails they are taking. There are plenty of pain medicines that get you high--"opiates" or "opioids" are among the strongest and derived from the same plant you get opium and heroin. No one doubts their efficacy or propriety just because they--and alternate forms of the drug--are often used recreationally or abused.

Mr. Lane appears to be operating on a fallacious assumption: that because a medicine doesn't come with a stamp from Eli Lilly or Merck that it has no legitimate medicinal purpose. But medicines are just chemicals that interact with the body for an intended effect. If cannabis alleviates nausea and increases appetite in sick people--which it most certainly does--it has a legitimate medicinal effect and should therefore be considered a legitimate treatment. That some doctors may neglect their patients' underlying problems should not be put at the feet of medical cannabis availability--that is medical malpractice.

I mean to make no insinuations about Bedell's prescribing physician, particularly. I don't know what happened and I don't pretend to--although Mr. Lane seems perfectly fine with insinuating malpractice, but that's between him and his editors. Nevertheless, it is blatantly irresponsible of Mr. Lane to assign blame to the medical cannabis activist community because one man with severe mental issues smoked marijuana under medical pretenses for one month during an unknown period of time of already "excessive" marijuana use.

Bedell was a troubled man and it's a shame that whatever help he sought/was given was insufficient. It is certainly plausible that other people culpable in all of this, (i.e., how did a mentally disturbed man acquire two handguns?), but people who want to improve the life of very sick people are not among them.

You don't have to believe that medical cannabis is legitimate treatment to realize that this piece was half-assed scapegoating. Charles Lane and the Washington Post should be ashamed of themselves.

Please Give

I never really said anything about the ads and donate button I put on my blog because, well, I hate asking for money. I figure: it's there, you know what it's there for, if you want to give, you will. (If, like me, you're reading this and almost all blogs in an rss feed: fyi--there's a donate button and Amazon.com ads on my blog. You know what it's there for.)

Anyway, I'm writing this not to ask you to give money to me...well, directly* anyway. I want you to give to my former colleagues over at reason some cash. They are great people and great writers. Surviving in today's media market is hard enough, let alone as a non-profit outfit.

Their pitch is hilarious, by the way. I invite you to read it here. And, as Radley points out, you can be funny as you want to be when you give.

*Not only will you be supporting reason staffers, but writers like me unable crank out pieces for a living who can find a libertarian outlet to publish in when the conservatives and liberals pass on our work. And you can give money to them as a way to incentivize me to write more for them and rationalize to yourself why you're not giving money to me directly.

White House's Over-the-Top Message Control

At first, I dismissed the importance and relevance of Robert Gibbs's remark about Fox News Channel. I figured it was a one-time jab and that would be the end of it. Then, as members of the "real" media followed-up and Gibbs still didn't back down, I began to think they were approaching a very fine line to "chill" Fox's First Amendment protection, which is very dangerous ground to tread.

And now there's this:

At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.

This news is brought to you not by Fox News, National Review, or the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, but the Los Angeles Times.

So, let me get this right. Not only is Fox News just an arm of the Republican party to attack all things Obama, but now the administration has decided to tell it's own supporters that they shouldn't appear on Fox to give their views--in essence, enforcing the one-sidedness of their channel?

Look, nobody with a brain thinks Fox doesn't cater to the Right. But this doesn't automatically disqualify them from being a news organization any more than MSNBC's leftward tilt disqualifies it. Fox is the highest rated cable news network, which means that the White House's efforts are aimed at depriving the largest single cable news audience of certain points of view and information. Why on Earth would the White House do this?

As I've said before, I abhor most television news. It's shallow, vapid, and more style than substance. That said, this continued assault on Fox begins to look less like a petty vendetta than it does programmatic message control. I'm not going Godwin again, I'm just saying that nothing good can come out of stifling discussions and threatening your own partisans for appearing on a network that caters to a wide audience.

I have no particular affinity for FNC--indeed, I find some of their programming repugnant. But these efforts are moving beyond spin control and are moving ever-closer to illegal and immoral governmental disruption of activities explicitly protected by the First Amendment.

This needs to stop now.

Perhaps the Most Preposterous Thought Ever Printed in the New York Times

And that is saying something.

But, without further ado, I present to you the unfathomable Thomas Friedman:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China's leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down...Our one-party democracy is worse.

For some reason, when I think of China and green automobiles, I think of this:


'Benevolent' dictatorship/autocracy beats the deliberative process of democratic republics because, dammit, those people can get things done!

Just don't look at the man behind the curtain jailing, censoring, beating, and executing untold numbers of dissenters, choking-off less desirable political content on the internet, forcing abortions on families, and only allowing markets to flourish in certain geographic locations while so many people still live in the countryside without basic amenities those contemptible and inefficient free nations have had for, oh, about 100 years.

There aren't words in our language strong enough to describe the abject imbecility of this column.

H/T: John Tabin and Matt Welch

more on this by Will Wilkinson and Kenneth Anderson.

Unfortunate Update

I hate it when I can see something like this coming:

I'm glad that a story of a (presumably) squeaky-clean white baptist minister is out to bring light to abusive officers--if we assume it's true. (There is no confirmation on the story I can find yet) I just hope he's got no terrible skeletons in his closet (e.g., militia organizations/fringe Minutemen, racist, etc.) because, if he does, the officers' lawyers will eat him for lunch--in spite of what appears to be a detailed and legitimate complaint.

Because our friend Rev. Stephen Anderson is back in the news...(::smacks forehead::)

Pastor Steven Anderson has used his position at Faithful World Baptist Church, in Tempe, Arizona to bring just a little more hate into the world. Pastor Anderson is praying for the death of President Obama and an eternity in hell.

“Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that’s what I’m going to pray. And you say, ‘Are you just saying that?’ No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.”

Reminds me of this classic from the Onion:

We're not all "Jesus Freaks" who run around screaming about how everyone should "Judge not lest ye be judged," whine "Blessed are the meek" all the time, or drone on and on about how we're all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God's love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

I am not insane. I am not racist. I do not hate the president. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not think Obama is the devil incarnate. I do not speak in a language that makes it sound as if "government" is just another word for "evil cabal hell-bent on taking away the god-given birthrights of affluent and middle-class white Americans." But, unfortunately, so many of the people who grab headlines with legitimate accusations of state overreactions and outright intrusions upon liberties indeed fit one or more of these descriptions.

Think about it this way: what if everything you believed was most popularly represented by screaming Code Pink yahoos (I've seen them up-close and personal...scary folks.) They are anti-war, among other things, but not everyone anti-war is like this. But, of course, libertarians are anti-'security state', inasmuch as it intrudes upon our constitutional rights.( N.B. This is not to say I am anti security of the state. Big difference.) But it seems the only people standing up to the injustice of overzealous cops and invasive and illegal searches are criminals, half-wits, and/or crazy bastards. And, of those who grab headlines, they tend to be white, middle class, with a touch of Southern 'States Rights' animosity that is thinly veiled, if veiled at all, racism. (I tend to refer to myself as a Federalist.)

To paraphrase William F. Buckley, speaking about Sen. Joseph McCarthy who led the infamous committees to uncover communists in the government--which, incidentally, had indeed infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government--"just because he's crazy, doesn't mean he's wrong." So too are embarrassments to liberty like Rev. Anderson.

But, alas, many mock our position on this, and health care, and anything else that has been shouted loudly by less-than-informed people on half-assed assumptions by good ol' boys and religious nuts and militia members and...well, the list goes on.

You'll notice that at the American Prospect, they're even mocking those of us who still believe the Constitution is the law of the land by comparing us to Orly Taitz and the "Birthers" by calling us "Tenthers"--we, so naive to support the anachronistic 10th Amendment to the Constitution. What crazy fucks we must be for taking the Constitution at face value.

*I am not accusing Anderson of racism, by the way. He may be, he may not be. It's irrelevant to my overall point because if it's not him, it's someone else.

How to Treat Kennedy's Death

My friend Elizabeth Nolan Brown had this to say about the way the American chattering and political classes are handling Ted Kennedy's death:

Maybe I’m just being falsely nostalgic, like when I wish ladies still wore hats and pretty stockings even though I can hardly be bothered to comb my hair and apply mascara on a daily basis; maybe it’s just, as the[LA Times] article goes on to point out, the “more elemental … difference between knowing someone as an individual rather than a political caricature” … but maybe it really is a sad, sad [indictment] of our current political culture and the kind of respect and diplomacy that’s been lost …

I found myself vacillating on how to treat Teddy in death because of my contempt for him while he was alive. Save one rather nasty tweet I wrote while somewhat intoxicated--that I subsequently deleted--I have been quite reserved in my public criticisms. The respect and diplomacy of which ENB writes I think is--like nearly any 'good ol' days'--indeed a 'false nostalgia' for things that never really were. But, nevertheless, I decided to hold my contempt for Teddy at bay, for the most part.

Most of my venom, instead, has been directed at the glowing obituaries that mention his most tragic act as nothing more than a political misstep for him--likening the death of a young woman to Gary Hart's pictures that cost him the nomination in 1984. That, I think, has been the most reckless part of this Kennedy media overdose.

But as this two-decade old profile in GQ illustrates, the man of the people wasn't really one of the people. Like the aristocratic politicians that counted plebes as their patrons in ancient Rome, the Kennedys' modern day Julio-Claudian mythology belies their personal, decadent, self-involved natures. The legendary personal "foibles"--as many are wont to use so-milquetoast of term--of the lot of the Kennedy men were stunts of such depraved indifference to other people that only those immune to laws of government and the judgment of society could survive politically. Yet, they are widely held to be "America's Royal Family," known for their empathy toward the downtrodden and helpless that could never approach them in their personal lives, lest they be molested on a restaurant table or hit in the face with a flying drink.

Obits like this one, penned by another friend of mine, J.P. Freire (who is, by the way, an unapologetic conservative), project a fragile humanity onto the man that,--while J.P.'s article was moving to read--I don't think was really there. Matt Yglesias, a proud "progressive", responding to some "right-of-center" rebukes this week for being confounded by modern politicians' motivations, wrote:

The formal model of the self-interested legislator is very easy to understand. What I’m saying is hard to understand is the actual psychology of this kind of behavior. I think I now have a much better grasp than I once did of what’s going on inside the heads of people who have ideological beliefs I disagree with. But I find it very difficult to extend my powers of moral imagination to the kind of people who hold high political office in the United States.

...

Instead, we’re fated to be ruled by the sort of people who are really desperate to cling to power. But it still strikes me as a very odd mentality.

If prostitution is the oldest profession, then man maneuvering to rule/control his fellow man is a close second. (Of course, the line between the two is hardly clear.) Governing politics embodies ideas so old and basic they've made it into the religious canon, and suffice it to say one doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure them out. What I want to know is how, after we have known how corrupting power is for--quite literally--thousands of years, intelligent people, especially those of us who live and work near the locus of political power, could ever be so naive as to happily grant the governing authority more power over our money and individual liberty, whatever the politicians use for their stated motivation.

Some may state that comparing today's politicians to Rome is not fair, given the great societal changes of the past two millenia. But I ask, has human nature changed in that time? Have the Seven Deadly Sins been erased from the human heart? And more concretely, have these things changed since the days of Mark Twain?H.L. Mencken? Sinclair Lewis? Will Rogers? Woodward & Bernstein? How politicians grab and cling to power is far less mystifying to me than someone as intelligent as Yglesias looking at the bloated bureaucracy of government, the dog-eat-dog fights that we call "election cycles," the cloakroom logrolling deals "to get things done"and then attempt to rationalize and assign any moral commitment to the people whose ability to lie to your face is a career necessity. (And while a perhaps noble gesture on J.P.'s part, I also have a hard time imagining the quiet torture of life as Ted Kennedy, especially after reading and hearing this).

I'd like to think that Yglesias's overall point is what he said it was in the follow-up post: that he just can't get into the mind of a politician. However, it still seems to me that there is a dramatic cognitive dissonance between what he--and, extending it further to most well-meaning "progressives"-- feels politically and what he painfully admits to knowing about politicians when he writes sentences like this about the departed senior senator from Massachusetts (who indeed was excellent on trucking and airline deregulation in the 1970s):

The moral of the story isn’t that “regulation is bad” but that progressive politics at its best isn’t about bigger government but about attacking privilege and power.

Thus, to his way of thinking, one must give more privilege and power to the privileged and powerful to take away privilege and power from others, who happened to be the government who you gave the privilege and power to in the first place. Like the man it praises, this aim of Matt's sentence is undercut by the means to achieve its stated goal.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a deeply flawed man, of flawed moral and political character. He was bred for power, he attained it through legacy, and he used it to ends that suited him, for good and ill. With more Bushes, Clintons, and Kennedys still on the political horizon, I don't think we've seen the last of the political dynasties. But I sincerely hope that we have seen the end of the likes of Ted Kennedy.

Edward M. Kennedy, R.I.P.

Liar, Liar...

Joseph Califano's lies in this video are so horrendous that, for a moment, I thought he was trying to self-immolate:



The fact that Atlantic put this interview on their "Ideas" blog is an insult to anyone who has ever had a cogent thought.

I'll break down the things that made my head hurt the most so I can go about the business of enjoying my weekend without wanting to scream:

First, Califano begins by conflating causation and correlation--perhaps the laziest of all argumentative fallacies. Because a criminal uses drugs does not mean he is a criminal because of drugs, nor is his criminal behavior necessarily influenced by whatever drug he's on. Furthermore, teen pregnancy comes from teen sex. They don't have sex because they are high, they have sex because they are teenagers. And the homeless bit is so farcical it barely merits address, but the pervasive problem with the homeless--and if you've spent any time in DC, you'd notice this--is mental health issues. (If I was crazy and homeless, I'd get high too.)

Second, we can't legalize "for the kids" cliché is not only tired, it's a lie. In high school, it was easier for me to get the prohibited substance--marijuana--than it was for me to get the legal but age-restricted regulated drugs--cigarettes and alcohol. It was for several reasons I chose pot over alcohol at the time, and the ready availability of pot was chief among them. If you really care about the kids, (assuming that any 16 year old getting high is a terrible thing) legalize it and regulate it.

Third, the title of the video, "Not your father's marijuana," and Califano's argument about potency is misleading and much ado about nothing. As my former colleague Jacob Sullum wrote in his (very good) book, "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use":

[C]ommonly heard assertions that marijuana is ten to forty times as powerful as it used to be are based on spurious comparisons with small samples of low-grade Mexican marijuana seized in the early seventies. These samples were not representative of the marijuana available at the time, and it appears that they decayed before they were tested.* Since 1980 or so, when the federal government began testing broader samples and using better storage methods, the average THC content of confiscated marijuana has gone up and down within a range from around 2 percent to 4 percent.*

[*citations in original, omitted here]

As Jacob notes also: even if it is stronger, who cares? It's no more dangerous to be stoned on better weed than it is on shitty weed--and the danger of occasional marijuana use in and of itself is non-existent.

Fourth, marijuana is not physically addictive--despite what NIDA says.** Developing a marijuana habit--even an unhealthy one--is not addiction. It's just a bad habit and, ultimately, a poor lifestyle choice. I've known hundreds of pot smokers in my life--and still do--and only a few have ever developed what I would consider to be a bad marijuana habit. Two in particular come to mind: one is one of my closest friends who lost a lot of memories of our childhood; the other is a former girlfriend with other chemical dependence issues. Their drug use took a toll on our respective relationships and it pained me greatly to see them retreat into their green baggies all the time, with at least one of them high nearly every moment they were conscious. Califano's point about memory loss and the oft-run ads about lethargy and low motivation are, indeed, true--among problem users. The vast majority of marijuana users, however, never have nor ever will fall into this category. Because of these experiences, I know better than to say that marijuana is harmless. But Califano's (et al.) use of worst-case scenarios to demonize a comparatively safe drug is infuriating self-serving propaganda.

I'm not going to directly address his economics numbers, but given the abuses already listed, I find many of them very suspect--to be polite.

My anger is not about Califano's position, per se. I believe strongly in debate and wouldn't reflexively stifle the pro-drug war message from a forum such as this. But this was not a debate, and outside of the fact that the interview took place at the Ideas Festival, there was nothing resembling an new or even rational "idea." It was, frankly, a bunch of lies. You can be pro-drug war without resorting to lies, and if you're going to give the interview, then at least challenge the subject or delve into the issue. Not every interview given deserves to be shown, and softballing questioners letting some political hack spew such patently false garbage to hock his book is not journalism. The blog editors at the Atlantic should be ashamed of themselves for even hinting this nonsense as an "idea" worth merit by giving it space on their site. I was shocked to watch something so out-of-touch with reality and so blatantly awful from one of my favorite publications.

On a personal note: if thinking as sloppy as Califano's is your brain on sobriety, I'll take the drugs, thanks.

**UPDATE: NIDA says "In 2004, more than 298,317 people entering drug treatment programs reported marijuana as their primary drug of abuse, showing they needed help to stop using." No, it shows that almost 300,000 people went to a program, it doesn't say if they went there voluntarily or asking for help. I couldn't imagine that a kid put there by his freaked out parents, or convict, or someone trying not to get fired for a positive drug test would possibly go to treatment center. What could make NIDA exaggerate a problem? What would make Califano exaggerate drug problems?(Hint: scroll down to where it says "government funding.")

For what it's worth, Bob Saget doesn't seem to think it's addictive either. (Link NSFW)

How Far Can the Grey Lady Fall?

I mean, damn.

via @MikeRiggs

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Nuclear Warfare

So, the new trope the Right is trotting out to defend torture is carpet bombing of Germany and Japan in WWII:

On the night of March 9, 1945, [General Curtis] LeMay sent 346 huge B-29 bombers loaded with napalm from the Mariana Islands (Guam, Saipan and Tinian) to Tokyo. The first planes dropped their incendiaries on the front and back of the target area -- like lighting up both ends of a football field at night. The rest of the planes filled in the middle. More than 16 square miles of Japan's capital city were gutted, two million people were left homeless, and 100,000 were dead.

It didn't end there. Washington gave LeMay the green light as his bombers burned 64 more cities. He used the World Almanac and just went down the list by population. Altogether, an estimated 350,000 people lost their lives. Anyone hearing this for the first time in 2009 would be hard pressed to defend such an action.

The author is right: anyone hearing this for the first time in 2009 would be hard pressed to defend such an action...due to the stunning accuracy of American weaponry today. If the American military were to engage in action like this in modern combat, I assure you the commanders responsible for such a campaign would be condemned the world over--in addition to being run out of the service and probably court martialed. Does the advancement of weapon technology excuse LeMay's actions? Not necessarily, but neither are all horrible actions during wartime viewed ex post facto in the same league, ballpark, or sport. Furthermore, in the case of torture, we're not even discussing war: we're discussing humane treatment of unarmed individuals in American custody. In particular, we're dealing with international criminals; murderers of a special sort that nevertheless have unalienable rights--such is the very definition of unalienable--which should not be crossed UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

The logic of Mr. Kozak's argument is thus: Japan was bad. We were at war with Japan. We did bad things to Japan to win in a just cause, thus that action was justified--or at the very least, exusable--even if somewhat barbaric.

Certainly, setting hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians ablaze is more morally condemnable than going to extreme measures for information against a known terrorist responsible for murders, yes? On its face, this argument seems to work, but again--we're comparing unlike actions to one another as if they could ever be on the same moral plane. I intend to show that they are not, for moral and consequentialist reasons.

The Right's new-fangled argument rests on two premises: 1) that LeMay's actions were, indeed, justifiable militarily and politically and 2) that they were integral in the decision of the Japanese to surrender, thus bringing a(n assumed) just conclusion to a horrific war. (I will stipulate that, from a matter of justice, ultimately it was more just for the Allies to have won WWII. I don't think this is much of a concession.)

I will grant the bulk of #2 straight off for the simple reason that I haven't studied the battles of the Pacific that closely, nor the internal politics of 1940s Japan, well enough to know whether these strikes were actually effective in bringing about a swifter end to the war. I think the numbers of U.S. casualties is nothing but loosely-based conjecture and not worth addressing on a substantive level. For the sake of argument, however, I am prepared to stipulate that the carpet bombing with incendiary bombs (a tactic already used in the European theatre, by the way, lessening the strength of the race angle insinuated by the article) helped break the will of the Japanese people, thus paving the way for a quicker and less costly (to the U.S.) end to the war in the Pacific. The numbers of American dead, then, will be assumed to be much less in the pro-LeMay scenario.

The first assumption, however, I know to be based on contestable claims--at the very least. The article bases the military motives almost entirely on the fact that American lives would be spared. As I write above, I will assume this to be true, absent any decent evidence to the contrary. However, this is hardly the only--and some would argue, not the primary--geo-political reason for such aggressive action on the part of the American military against the Japanese mainland.

As the fighting in Europe ended, the spoils were being divided by the Great Powers; spheres of influence were established between the Soviets and the West as a conglomerate. The threat of communism was not unknown to either Great Britain or the United States, and thus the looming confrontation with the USSR was not one of great surprise. While it certainly hadn't reached the Berlin Airlift stage of crisis, the situation developing in Berlin, the rest of Germany, and Eastern Europe was undeniably a tenuous one. There is reason to believe that the Western powers wanted Japan to be free--or free from Soviet influence, at any rate. Thus, a prevailing sentiment among some Russian and WWII scholars is that the use of Fat Man and Little Boy against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a last ditch effort to get the Japanese to surrender before Autumn--the time when the Soviets had indicated they would be ready for an invasion of Japan from the North.

Without delving into the immorality of communism, would LeMay's actions be as acceptable if made from this more geo-political motive? Is the threat of communism enough to burn hundreds of thousands of people alive--either to benefit U.S. political influence or, conceivably, to protect the surviving Japanese people from the threat of Soviet domination? These, I believe, are not questions easily answered. But they are questions that we, today, can debate and have reasonable disagreements about. I would, however, be hard-pressed to ever compare these very contoured and complex questions about war planning to anything outside of that particular time period, due to its special circumstances.

The evolution of warfare makes comparisons almost laughable--can you really compare carpet bombing to the pillaging hordes of the Mongols or the Vikings? Where, exactly, should we stand on the conquest of North America, including the use of germ warfare, that made it possible for me to be raised in the Ohio Valley? Can you compare the use of flame-throwers on D-Day to the battle of Antioch (Holy Hand Grenade notwithstanding)? In all seriousness, the point of this is that it's nearly impossible to compare, let alone excuse, even conventional warfare. Yes, there are established rules, but the rules which governed battle on open fields in 1776 hardly apply to house-to-house fighting in Mosul in 2009.

How on Earth Mr. Kozak can make honest sense of a comparison between the dumb, blunt force of millions of tons of explosives dropped from 1000s of feet in the air in the 1940s to the up-close and personal psychological violence inflicted by torture--both currently and historically quite ineffectively--fully against the rules of war (if we are to suspend disbelief for a moment that the previous administration intended to give our prisoners the basic protections of war combatants) is well-beyond my capacity of rational thought.

From a practical and military perspective, in order to collect actionable intelligence, guilt or innocence is effectively irrelevant. Thus, comparing the guilt of Khalid Sheik Mohammad versus the innocence of Japanese (or German) families killed in incendiary bombing campaigns misses the point entirely. Unalienable means unalienable, especially while in the full custody of the U.S. government, and the blunt use of force at the military's disposal of the military in the first half of the 20th century is in no way comparable to the centuries-old custom and knowledge that torture leads to false confessions--and that dismissing tried and true interrogation techniques in favor of such unreliable torture is an act of gross negligence that, in my opinion, rises to the point of criminal.

The interrogation professionals shunned the euphemistically-named "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" for traditional methods (and, until I get evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume that these people wanted the best and most reliable intelligence to be collected as efficiently as possible and aren't part of some ultra-Left cabal bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves and sissifying our military and intelligence operations). The most vital information thus far made public was provided by these traditional methods and--if the interrogators are to be believed--hampered by the implementation of torture.

The level heads and trained professionals of our intelligence-gathering agencies who, like the rest of us, experienced the horror of 9/11, still argued against the use of torture--even against those most responsible for it. Mr. Kozak's invocation of the reflexive pain and anger of 9/11 serves only to remind us of how emotional--not rational--we were after that day. Those charged with finding the truth of those events, and of subsequent dangers, managed to set aside their quite righteous emotional sentiments against the guilty and lust for vengeance that many--if not most of us--felt. Furthermore, Mr. Kozak's citation of public opinion viz. war with Japan and Germany pre- and post-Pearl Harbor could just as easily be used to justify Japanese internment and the blatantly racist Korematsu decision. The emotional state of the masses is hardly a sound base for foreign, domestic, or intelligence policy.

In the end, Mr. Kozak makes a fragmented and irrational case for the use of torture against our enemies. His submission is based on selected facts that really should not be compared with one another for temporal, technological, and practical reasons. Yes, bad things happen--and they often happen in the name of national defense or security. It does not follow, however, that questionable military decisions from the 1940s are in any way related to, or could possibly excuse, counterproductive and plainly cruel interrogation tactics of today.

There Are Dodges...

And then there are dodges. Check this AP Reuters headline:

Obama aide: "Hard to know" if 2009 recovery certain

My sources say no.

Seriously. Is it certain? If the answer is "not sure," then the answer is "NO, IT IS NOT CERTAIN."

I blame the headline writer, because the AP Stylebook is perhaps the single most ridiculous and nonsensical book ever written and anyone forced to use it is invariably dumber for ever having consulted it. (I have looked at it twice and my IQ dropped by 12 points.)

UPDATE: It seems my AP consultation has bitten me in the ass. Turns out, the story is from Reuters. That said, I stand by my position on the AP Stylebook and my implication that this headline is absurd and an abuse of language.