Month: January 2009

Al-Qaeda Plagued, Ctd.

by Patrick Appel
WMD blogger Armchair Generalist isn’t buying the al Qaeda bubonic plague story:

Are we to believe that there is a lab set up in the Pakistani FATA where infected individuals are being cultured to carry pnuemonic plague into European or American cities? You’d want pnuemonic plague, not bubonic plague, since the former can be spread by air and the latter can not be spread by air. And then one terrorist of them got out, before they could all be released on Europe in mass to spread the Black Death again? This is what Bruce Schneier would call a movie-plot threat scenario… Bottom line, mark this one as "fraudulent and overzealous exaggeration of rumors."

God And Doctors

by Patrick Appel
Saletan asks: "Should parents go to jail for believing so devoutly in faith healing that they don’t seek lifesaving medical treatment for their children?" His answer:

…the more important thing to communicate to parents is that this is bad religion. Science is a way of grappling with what we can know empirically. Religion is a way of grappling with what we can’t. Each of these disciplines must recognize its limits and defer, beyond that, to its counterpart. Properly understood, there’s nothing unscientific about religion, and there’s nothing irreligious about science.

I’m not saying the distinction is perfectly clean. It isn’t. Sometimes religion and science have to work together. But it’s crucial to ask which kind of question you’re facing. Healing is a physical phenomenon. Can faith influence it? Yes. Look at the latest study on acupuncture: It sometimes works, apparently because patients believe in it. But what happens when people pray for your recovery without you knowing about it? Answer: Nothing. Belief, not God, is the medically salient factor.

That’s how science, at its best, works with religion. It doesn’t claim to disprove God’s existence. It can’t. It addresses only empirically testable ideas, including faith healing. And it reports whatever its methods find. Instead of laughing at acupuncture, it looks at the evidence, admits that acupuncture sometimes works, and tries to figure out why.

Religion, at its best, needs the same humility.

Change

by Patrick Appel
The most important story of the morning:

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said…the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

Italics mine.

The New Secretary Of State

By Patrick Appel
Only two senators voted against Clinton’s confirmation. David Vitter (R-La.) was one of them. Chris Cillizza explains why Vitter voted the way he did:

The freshman Senator is preparing to run for re-election in 2010 despite revelations last year that his name turned up in the records of the "D.C. Madam". Given those problems and talk of a primary challenge from his ideological right, Vitter’s vote against Clinton is a clear signal to conservatives in the state: "I am still one of you."

Will it work? Maybe. Vitter has made LOTS of enemies during his rapid rise from the state House to the U.S. Senate, and politicians have a keen sense for when blood is in the water. The vote against Clinton isn’t likely to dissuade these ambitious pols from considering a run against Vitter.

Hate Speech

by Patrick Appel
Yglesias disagrees with prosecuting Dutch politician Geert Wilders for making anti-Islamic comments:

Wilders is a boor and a bit of an idiot, but while I understand that this sort of thing happens on the continent it invariably strikes me as incredibly stupid. This isn’t going to end anti-Muslim sentiment in the Netherlands, and it’s not going to help Dutch Muslims assimilate into European society. What’s more, this actually fuels the notion that the existence of a substantial Muslim population in your country is an intolerable threat to liberty. There are a lot of dimensions of social policy along which I think we can learn a lot from northern Europe, but the robust tradition of free speech in the United States is something we can and should be very proud of.

On The Wrong Side Of History

by Patrick Appel

Kirchick urges Republicans to stop fighting gay rights:

Recovering from an otherwise devastating election, some conservatives believe they have found a silver lining amidst the rubble: the continuing salience of “culture war” issues in general, and the subject of gay rights in particular. At a National Review post-election symposium seeking to answer the question, “Whither Conservatism?” social conservatives Maggie Gallagher, Jeffrey Bell and Ed Whelan all encouraged conservatives to stress gay issues even more in the future, and most everyone in the audience nodded in agreement.

Much of that crowd is hopeless, I’m afraid. It’s going to take a generation’s worth of electoral defeats before they wake up. Jamie continues:

Rich Lowry, the editor of that magazine, recently wrote a column declaring “No way, no how,” to those calling for a détente in the battle over gay marriage and abortion. And last month, Richard Cizik, the former chief lobbyist of the National Association of Evangelicals, was fired after he expressed support for gay civil unions, a foreboding sign that the country’s politically active evangelicals do not intend to abandon their hard-line stance against any legal recognition of gay relationships.

At first glance, social conservatives have reason for optimism. In November, Arkansas voters overwhelmingly passed a law banning gay adoption and anti-gay marriage amendments succeeded in Florida, Arizona and, California, the latter victory giving conservatives the most hope seeing that it occurred in the country’s most populous (and one of its most liberal) states. Some conservatives have grown drunk off the wine of this triumph, citing the 70% support among African-Americans to ban gay marriage as a sign that a significant portion of this most reliable of Democratic voting blocs could potentially be poached if the GOP stresses its anti-gay bona fides even more. While these victories at the polls may be heartening to the base of the Republican Party, the continued propagation of policies opposed to the advancement of the gay rights agenda will doom the GOP for a generation.

Running On Torture

By Patrick Appel
Jim Geraghty says that Republicans should fight against closing Gitmo:

A few days ago, Gallup asked, "Do you think the United States should — or should not — close the prison at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba?" The respondents split 35 percent "yes," 45 percent "no," 20 percent "no opinion." […]

Republicans don’t have a ton of issues in which public opinion is on their side; they should press the argument that American policy on detainees in the War on Terror ought to consider the objections of Americans in places like Kansas, California, and South Carolina as much as it considers the objections of the editorial boards of Le Monde, Der Spiegel and the Guardian.

How about an open debate then, eh? And just how certain are you the public is on your side? Hmmm?