The Dish

Here’s a just-released but gripping video showing one of the Woolwich religious maniacs rushing pell-pell toward the police as if he were on PCP or something. There was something truly unhinged about this disturbing incident.

A reader writes:

If only Americans appreciated how hard this was to do, given the institutional resistance, and how singularly the President himself, within the government, actually understands this in its broader context.  I was there at the speech, and moved to tears.  Even the interruption by the Code Pink woman turned out to be a blessing in disguise — instead of the usual bromides about the virtues of free speech, after a full minute or two of interruption, in one of the most important speeches of his tenure, he responded:  “the voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.”  Can you imagine any other chief of state extemporizing with that line in those circumstances? — acknowledging the power of her concerns and honoring them?

And then at the end, it occurred to him to incorporate the incident again, once more because he realized it helped make his point:

Now, we need a strategy – and a politics –that reflects this resilient spirit. Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony on a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground. Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a veteran starting a business; a bustling city street; a citizen shouting her concerns to her President.

Wow.

I’m with my reader who was there. We remain lucky to have him, as we long have been.

Researchers have finally discovered the precise pathogen that caused the Great Famine. Why it matters:

The study is the first time that the genetics of a plant pathogen have been analyzed by extracting DNA from dried plant samples, opening up the possibility that researchers can study other plant diseases based on the historical collections of botanical gardens and herbaria around the world. Better understanding the evolution of plant diseases over time, the team says, could be instrumental in figuring out ways to breed more robust plant varieties that are resistant to the pathogens that infect plants today.

(Photo of the Dublin memorial to the Irish Potato Famine by Tim Sackton)

Room For Debate tackles the question. Garrett Peck ponders marijuana taxes:

The nation’s powerful alcohol lobbies have managed to rebuff any federal alcohol excise tax increase, last raised in 1991. States should be on the lookout for what will inevitably happen: the marijuana industry will go along with taxation as part of the grand bargain for legalization – just as the alcohol industry did in the 1930s – and then over time change its position to be anti-tax. They will claim that taxes are bad for business and bad for consumers, neither of which is true, given that products like alcohol, gasoline, marijuana and tobacco have a fairly inelastic demand. Here’s a bit of advice to states: index marijuana taxes to inflation, and you will avoid a lot of big debates over raising taxes.

Among other suggestions, Kleiman recommends a strict advertising rules:

Don’t allow marketing. The legal marijuana industry, like the alcohol, tobacco and gambling industries, will have a financial interest directly opposite to the public interest. Responsible use is the goal, but dependent use generates sales volume. A public monopoly would probably work best; short of that, tight limits on advertising (the Supreme Court permitting) and keeping the industry fragmented to minimize its lobbying power might limit some of the damage.

Former US Representative Anthony Weiner speaks to voters in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City on May 23, 2013 after he announced he is running for New York City Mayor. By Timothy Clary/AFP/Getty Images.

John McWhorter joins the debate:

[L]anguage can express a concept from various angles, positively or negatively, or with a noun or a verb. For example, a journalist once marveled that an obscure language of India has a verb referring to how a baby is fat and treats this as evidence of a unique “way of seeing the world”—neglecting that our term baby fat refers to exactly the same concept, just with a different part of speech.

In the same way, if Americans use the word decency less than before, since the sixties we have marked our awareness of exactly that concept with none other than asshole. As Geoff Nunberg’s clever book taught us last year, the word refers precisely to someone who transgresses rules in cognizance of doing so, such as cutting people off in traffic. The asshole transgresses decency, in which we are interested as the Victorians. We just happen to refer to it with a noun, and a negative one, and also with a certain pungency, because the sixties happened and changed how we process profanity.

As we discover more details about the DOJ’s investigation of Fox News journalist James Rosen, former FBI agent David Gomez compiles a list of best practices for journalists:

Take a lesson from the Mafia and never use phones for anything other than the most innocuous conversations — i.e., “Meet me at our usual spot” or “We need to talk.” Better yet, “I’m going out for pizza, so I won’t be around to meet you today ” — the last part being previously arranged code for “Meet me at our usual spot.” …

Like the phone, the Internet is a sieve, and a goldmine for lawful and unlawful penetration through technical means by law enforcement. Never use the Internet or email for any kind of contact with a source if your beat is national security because it creates too many electronic trails, all of which are traceable and usually recoverable by even the newest rookie FBI cyber-agent. Social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook are the worst because they are public, and even though you may direct message your source or delete a contact tweet, it can be recorded by any number of interested followers, including the FBI, and preserved for all time on Google.

The Boy Scouts of America will accept openly gay Scouts but not gay adult Scout Leaders. Because who wants kids to grow up to be leaders?

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) May 23, 2013

Dogbeards – that’s more like it:

Catbeards here.

(Photo by Laura Blanc)

Jane Mayer narrates the struggle of two documentary filmmakers to produce their documentary Citizen Koch and get it aired on public TV. A sample:

The messages from [Independent Television Service] ITVS officials grew confusing. [Vice-president of programming] Aguilar again praised the film as “great,” and said, “I think you’ve preserved the anger of the film, which I love.” Other officials, though, kept urging the filmmakers to change the title, add negative material about Democrats, and delete an opening sequence that showed Sarah Palin speaking at a rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ main advocacy group. Several times, [filmmakers] Lessin and Deal asked ITVS officials if Koch’s trusteeship at WNET was a factor. During the phone meeting on December 7th, Vossen said, “I can absolutely assure you that ITVS does not want your film to be buried.” She said of the title, “I think you understand why it’s problematic. . . . We live in a world where we have to be aware that people with power have power.”

Alyssa questions the limits of true independence in public broadcasting:

Disputes like this one highlight the extent to which making PBS reliant on private charity calls into question the meaning of “public” television. A state of affairs in which television content is determined by the government is obviously undesirable and subjects programming to a partisan agenda in a way that would serve members of both parties ill by turns, and the public poorly at all times, given how timid the content choices would likely be. But a “public” television regime that’s established to give extremely wealthy people another way to buy programming power other than by purchasing affiliate stations is “public” only in a business sense, rather than serving a broadly-defined public interest.

She really wants that song dammit:

Maybe not:

It’s tempting to assume that climate change is responsible for an increase in the number devastating tornadoes, like those that ravaged Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in February. But if these tragedies are indeed becoming more common, it’s mainly because of population growth. Sixty years ago, yesterday’s tornado might not have killed anyone at all: Moore had a population of 942 in 1950, but today has more than 56,000 residents.

There has been an increase in the number of reported tornadoes: Since 1950 (or even over just the last two decades), the U.S. has added Doppler radars capable of detecting tornadoes, and population growth has increased the number of on-the-ground observations. But it’s unclear whether tornadoes have become more frequent, let alone because of climate change.

Enten has more on the subject.

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Reports from China indicate plans to pilot a carbon trading program next month in the southern city of Shenzen, as part of a regional rollout in 2014 and a potential countrywide cap in 2016. Katie Valentine calls the announcement a “bombshell”:

If the cap is adopted, it would be a major step for the world’s top CO2 emitter, which desperately needs to slow its carbon production. China is experiencing the world’s fastest growth in energy production and CO2 emissions, while production and emissions in the U.S. and Europe are flat-lining or decreasing. China uses 47 percent of the world’s coal, a number that’s only going up: in 2011, China’s coal consumption grew by 9 percent, accounting for 87 percent of the world’s 374 million ton increase in coal consumption that year. …

The possibility of a carbon cap in China has been hailed as “potentially transformative” in the fight against climate change, as other major emitters such as the U.S. have historically cited China’s inaction on climate change as reason to avoid implementing meaningful greenhouse gas regulations. Previously, China has shied away from cuts in emissions, saying its main priority was the growth of its economy. In November 2012, the state-owned Xinhua quoted Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief negotiator to the UN climate change talks, as saying it was “unfair and unreasonable to hold China to absolute cuts in emissions at the present stage, when its per capita GDP stands at just 5,000 U.S. dollars.”

Claire Thompson agrees that the move “seriously weaken[s] one of the U.S.’s go-to excuses for climate inaction”:

Like sparring siblings, China and the United States — the world’s two biggest carbon dioxide emitters — keep passing the climate-action buck back and forth: “Why should I cut emissions if they don’t have to?” Well, China is either the more mature of the pair, or just majorly sucking up to Mama Earth.