Month: September 2009

A Matter Of Trust

by Patrick Appel

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa makes the utilitarian argument against torture:

[G]etting people to flip is primarily a psychological game rather than a material one. After all, the FBI is asking its targets to commit the ultimate act of disloyalty to their country—treason. Few people are willing to make this leap quickly, even in exchange for the most lucrative or attractive offer. It's an FBI agent's job to slowly win the target's trust and help him rationalize his decision to switch his allegiance. In my experience as a former FBI agent who both participated in and observed successful recruitments, it's much easier to do this when a target has, at some level, a sense of admiration and respect for the United States. A nugget of goodwill toward America offers an agent the chance to step in, gain the target's confidence, and convince him that playing for Team USA is worth the risk.

Policies like the use of torture make it more difficult for the FBI to develop relationships based on trust. Even when torture is used on a few people and in another country, and by a different agency, it casts doubts on the U.S. government's overall willingness to act in good faith. Targets often project the skepticism about the United States that torture fosters onto individual FBI agents, who are often the only face of the government they see. In short, torture is fundamentally at odds with the image of the United States as a country that will play by the rules, and that is how the FBI must be perceived in order to do its job.

How Will Palin Respond This Time?

by Chris Bodenner

Andrew's take on the latest dish from Levi is here. Mudflats also nails it:

One can imagine “Mrs. Palin” in some undisclosed location furiously unloading into a recording device for her ghost writer, adding an extra chapter in her book called “Levi Johnston is a Liar Again.” That comes right after the other chapters entitled, “Levi Johnston is a Liar,”  “Those Ethics Complaint Filers are Liars,” “That Ex-Public Safety Commissioner is a Liar,”  “Those McCain Staffers are Liars,” “That Former Wasilla Mayor is a Liar,” “That Police Chief is a Liar,” “Republican Event Coordinators Everywhere are Liars,” “The Alaska State Legislature Lies,” and my personal favorite, “Those Bloggers are Liars…and Pathetic Also.”

Creepy Ad Watch

by Patrick Appel

WWF is denying that this spot is theirs but have admitted that WWF in Brazil authorized a similar print ad and have apologized, saying that the “the inexperience of some professionals" at both WWF and the advertising firm is at fault and that the ad was not meant in "bad faith or disrespect toward American suffering." I'm inclined to agree with Allahpundit that the denial of the video doesn't make a lot of sense:

Really? So some wily amateur video producer out there happened to stumble across a print ad that only ran once in South America and was so taken with it that he churned out a slick animated version on his own dime?

The Not So Rotten Core?

by Patrick Appel

Tom Schaller whips out some data to counter Greenwald:

I can't speak to the state of nepotism in the media; so far as I know, beyond anecdotal evidence, no statistics have ever been compiled to track this phenomenon. But when Greenwald cites U.S. senators–and as he wrote in a related, earlier post that, "Family succession is hardly unheard of in U.S. political history, but what was once quite rare has now become pervasive"–he's simply not right, or at least as concerns the U.S. Senate. The fact is that nepotism in the Senate is today at historical lows in American history.


More On Annulments

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I am an ordained Roman Catholic deacon in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Regarding the response of the psychologist who consulted on annulments, you took issue with one of his points in a summary of typical reasons for an annulment: 5) Lack of appreciation for the full implications of marriage as a life-long, faithful, loving commitment with priority given to spouse and children. You said that was just a euphemism for "I don't want to be married anymore." But if you read it carefully and realize this involves what was happening at the time of the marriage, not now, you'll see that's not what it means.

I was aware of the distinction, but the rule still sounds so vague and subjective that it seems one could easily apply it retroactively. As in, how can an annulment official contradict someone insisting he or she had a "lack of appreciation" in the past? As if on cue, another reader wrote:

Proof of a "lack of appreciation" basically comes down to how strict or expansive the Tribunal in the particular diocese chooses to be.  Does the word of one of the spouses (i.e.: "boy, I had no idea this was going to be 'for life'") suffice?  Or does there need to be some conduct that evinces the "lack of appreciation" (i.e.: early and consistent adultery, refusal to forego birth control, etc.). This is where you'll find the more right-wing diocese cracking down.

Another reader has a harsh but understandable take on the whole issue:

The difference between an annulment and a divorce is that a divorce affirms to the world, and at least any children, that a marriage did exist at one time. It tells them that you (the children) were produced by a couple who loved each other at one time, but that may have changed. An annulment, on the other hand, says ‘no marriage ever existed’, Daddy and Mommy had a “3,000 night stand”, and you are the bastard offspring of something that God did not ever bless. What God has joined together, the Church can pretend never ever happened.

(This says the Church doesn't consider such children illegitimate.) The Catholic deacon reader also broke down some the vagueness of the #5 rule:

"Full implications": Can be someone who has an immature understanding of marriage, and is therefore really unable to responsibly enter into it

"Life-long": If someone enters into marriage with the idea that they'll just try it for a while, that is grounds for annulment.

"Faithful": If one was involved in an affair at the time of the marriage, or open to the idea, or even seeking one, that is grounds for an annulment.

"Loving": Those who see a marriage as an advantageous business or family contract, or who who marries to improve their station in life, or who has an erroneous idea of what a marriage relationship is (e.g., "I'm the husband and she can just do whatever I say"), that marriage could be subject to an annulment.

I respect the good-faith efforts of annulment officials trying to gauge such criteria in the often distant past. But shouldn't the exact same scrutiny be applied to Catholic couples before they tie the knot? Perhaps that is the case, though the answer wasn't obvious after my brief research. Here is the exhaustive list of formal "impediments" compiled on Wikipedia. And here are some FAQs on Catholic marriage.

A Basic Right to… Ineffective Drugs?

by Julian Sanchez

This Ezra Klein post is making my brain hurt. In response to a New York Times piece which discusses how pharma is able to charge astronomical prices for cancer drugs of dubious benefit, he writes:

In other words, we can't say "no." Even a drug that probably won't work is worth mortgaging the house. Your spouse's life, after all, is priceless. But this ends with us in a fairly troubling place: The ranks of pricey new drugs that might work — particularly if "might" doesn't have to refer to a high probability — is advancing a whole lot faster than GDP, or wages.

This might not matter if we didn't believe that every American had some basic right to these treatments, at least after they turn 65. But we do. And for those who think we should just dismantle Medicare, keep in mind that a lot of this innovation is predicated on people being able to buy these drugs with government subsidies. Take away those subsidies, and those customers, and you lose a lot of this innovation, arguably. My stopgap, second-best answer is to pump a lot of money into research that ascertains both effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and to allow the government to bargain down the best deals and act as a countervailing force against the pharmaceutical industry's realization that people will pay any price for these drugs because they feel like they have no choice.

Do we believe that? That every American has basic right to extremely expensive drugs that provide very little benefit? It's one thing to say there's a shared obligation not to let people suffer or die when we know how they could live many years longer, or in much less pain. I find it a whole lot less compelling to suggest that people are entitled to public provision of, say, Tacerva—which the Times article says was approved to treat pancreatic cancers because it improves survival time by a whopping 12 days at a monthly cost of $3,500. Another is good for an additional month and a half on average, at a per-patient cost of $50,000. Is it only people who favor dismantling Medicare who might think that this goes beyond what people must have as a matter of basic justice?

The "innovation" argument also rings oddly. On the one hand, it's apparently very important that we continue signaling to pharmaceutical companies that this is a good way to allocate their R&D budgets. But the government also needs to bargain down drug prices… which also has the effect of reducing these innovation-fueling subsidies. I'm not sure how those fit together, but as an oncologist quoted in the Times piece notes, there's a risk of displacing more useful potential innovation:

As long as the marketplace does not distinguish between modestly effective drugs and dramatically effective drugs, there won’t be an incentive to shift resources to a greater emphasis on a larger benefit.

In any event, it doesn't sound like the primary problem here is that we need a lot more research on cost effectiveness, but that we don't eschew the treatments we know aren't very effective. One thing that's not really clear from the article is how much the market failure here is a function of third-party payments, and how much it's a psychological phenomenon that would persist under alternative arrangements. But judging by the panic over "death panels," my suspicion is that we shouldn't expect too much political will for saying "no" to expensive longshots.

Miniature American Flags for Others…

by Julian Sanchez

In case you needed something to be outraged about today, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggests that there should be "uproar" over the redesign of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. website, which no longer features a prominent American flag image at the top. This makes us less patriotic than the French, and is presumably a prelude to mandatory Esperanto lessons and black helicopters and stuff. I, for one, am incensed.