Month: May 2010

Rob Tisinai summarizes the view of The Family Research Council et al:

There’s no discrimination against homosexuals because there are no homosexuals. Just homosexual conduct. Homosexuality isn’t a state of being — it’s merely a set of actions…This thinking is important when it comes to the “immutability” argument in Constitutional law. Is homosexuality a choice? Our opponents answer by pointing out that the decision to engage in homosexual acts is a choice. People can stop being gay just by stopping themselves from having gay sex. That only makes sense, though, if homosexuality is nothing more than same-sex sex. Obviously, though, it’s a great deal more — I was gay before I ever had sex, I’m gay when I’m not having sex, I’m gay right now as I type this (and there’s no man in sight).

Kent Sepkowitz reviews Tara Parker-Pope's new book. He whacks her for basing a chapter on a "fidelity gene" found in the prairie vole:

The real scientific world decodes reality at the rate of a few millimeters per century. But the alternative world that gene studies and books like this one inhabit moves at the speed of light from a vole gene to a kissing gene to a cheating gene. Parker-Pope is trying to move Oprah World into the bright light of science. But she'd be better off leaving well enough alone. You just can't marry the self-help book, which forever has been free of information, to the field of genes. It's the intricate place where the real dreamers live.

Today on the Dish, Andrew gave a qualified defense of Rand Paul and his controversial comments on the Civil Rights Act. Weigel joined him, TNC wasn't as forgiving (and praised Maddow's approach), Ezra grilled the GOP nominee, a reader piled on, and Paul started to panic. Friedersdorf still thought he'd make a good addition to the Senate. Andrew Gelman downplayed Tuesday's elections.

In other coverage, the new British government showed signs of democratic reform, Nate Silver checked in on the California's governor race, Derek Thompson and Ross Douthat toyed with budget cuts, Norm Geras and Shikha Dalmia bashed Hitchens on the burqa ban, Douglas Adams and Maureen Tkacik talked authoritah on the internets, and Goldblog grilled Josh Green over his gay groupies. Andrew and Greenwald continued to bang their heads against the wall of secrecy of sexual orientation.

In other commentary, readers tore into another reader over the drug war, others teared up over the bus driver's birthday, another responded to the Cannabis Closet, and yet another gawked at Beinart's support for denying rights to Arab Israelis. Bible study here and here. We also read the spiritual reflections of a hospice nurse. David Simon joined readers in slamming NYC and Friedersdorf started in on DC.

Brain orgy here – something Nicolas Cage would have no appetite for.

— C.B.

Jessica Crispin is trying to suck the marrow out of life:

I gravitate to books with titles like Meaning in Life, the latest being Susan Wolf's. These books are mostly nice antidotes to those insufferableables who once dabbled in Wicca and now really love Rumi and tell college graduates to "Follow Your Bliss!" (look, they hand silk-screened it onto a handy little t-shirt so you won't forget!). Wolf thinks following your bliss is useless. People are passionate about a lot of stupid things. It's not a great mantra. Meaning, I think, comes from doing a full accounting of your limitations and assets, your passions and your weaknesses, your belief system and your fears, and then rubbing up against the things that cause you to panic, like an allergy skin scratch test, and find out what your reactions are.

Once you figure out how you can contribute to the greater good, once you're able even to define that, you take that information and pour yourself into one direction. Regardless of discomfort or regrets or what-ifs. (And then doing that over and over again, until death.) That does not fit on a T-shirt.

A reader writes:

Out of all the talk of the constitutional challenges to the individual mandate, I really don't think I've heard it put quite like this:

The federal government, for the first time ever, is mandating that individuals purchase a product.

So, what we have is a so-called conservative libertarian saying that it is well within a person's right to be a freeloader.  It is our right to get sick and go to any public hospital and not ever pay a dime for care.  Getting charged a few hundred bucks by the IRS due to no insurance for this privilege is just too much government.

It's like the conservative's crusade to reform welfare meets the Twilight Zone.

Benjamin Sarlin spotlights the ad that put Specter's blunt cynicism on display :

Specter blasted the ad, claiming his quote had been taken out of context. But reporters such as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent quickly pointed out that longer videos of his interview did not significantly change its meaning; Specter had also offered similar comments in other media appearances, saying on Meet the Press that "It became apparent to me that my chances to be elected on the Republican ticket were bleak" in discussing his switch.

Chait judges Specter's loss a net positive for the Democrats. His caveat:

[T]he White House does lose some credibility here in its ability to woo GOP defectors — which it may well need in upcoming years as the party moves rightward and strands the remaining moderates.

Ezra Klein has a few:

Can the federal government set the private sector's minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not "area politician believes kooky but harmless thing." It's "area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly."

Having already said his piece on NYC, Friedersdorf takes aim at a new target:

The overlap between colleagues and friends, already more pronounced in Washington, D.C. than any other city I've observed, is intensified by the fact that standards of loyalty are complicated. It is expected, if lamentable, that ideological movements label fellow travelers to be betrayers of the cause, or useful idiots, on certain occasions when they engage in honestly held disagreement. Even more insidious, however, is the notion that by criticizing someone's book, or questioning the findings of their research, or calling out their employer, one is betraying a friend, or even an entire circle of friends.

So much about Washington, D.C. incubates that fraught culture: its smallness, a social calendar organized around events with ideological affiliations, the combination of high rents, staffers right out of college, and free food provided by think tanks at lunchtime round tables, group house living, happy hour networking, the fuzzy line that separates journalism and activism, the people who cross back and forth without lengthening their commute, etc.

Shikha Dalmia, an atheist raised Hindu in India, smacks Hitchens around:

Despite years of sectarian bloodletting [between Muslims and Hindus], if Indians…take a benign view of the burqa, it is hardly because they are inherently more rational. It is because their secularism has been shaped by India's dominant religion–Hinduism–whose non-monotheistic ethos allows the space for multiple faiths. In this sense, Hinduism is perhaps more profoundly in sync with liberal tolerance than monotheistic faiths.

More crucially, however, there is nothing in Hinduism that makes an individual's spiritual salvation anyone's business except the individual herself. By contrast, Hitchens, et al, who have been raised in the cradle of a Christian civilization, have imbibed a certain comfort level with the crusading notion that people can–and ought to–be saved even against their will. Hence, it does not matter if Muslim women don't regard the burqa as oppressive. They have to be given sartorial liberation in the same way that the heathens need to be given spiritual liberation.