Month: May 2010

This is what now consists of sanity on the right:

"He is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens. If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution. We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular. We do the right thing," – Glenn Beck, on "Fox and Friends."

The appalling behavior of John McCain and Joe Lieberman this past week underlines what a bullet this country missed by electing Barack Obama president. This, remember, was McCain's original dream-ticket – before a forty hour Google search unleashed brain-dead boobage across the land. Look at their instincts: find a citizen terror suspect and tear up the constitution to … do what exactly? McCain won't say. Or: strip the guy of citizenship immediately and then get to work on him.

Megan has a simple question:

Can someone explain to me–hopefully using graphs, and small words–why Joe Lieberman is willing to share the precious blessing of American citizenship with Charles Manson, Gary Ridgeway, and David Berkowitz, but wants citizenship stripped from a guy who strapped some firecrackers to a bag of non-explosive fertilizer?

Now recall that McCain and Lieberman were celebrated in Washington for their alleged maturity, wisdom, and elder statesmen experience. They are in fact adolescent hysterics, whose terrorized Manichean view of the world sees nothing but an existential struggle and the imperative to win it. We would have been electing Cheney to a third term. And we barely knew it.

Slate inquires with video. Sigh. I'm not that old but I can remember a time when there was nothing but suspicious activity in Times Square. And that's why it was such a glorious, hideous, amazing place – and not the Disney shopping mall it is today.

I am told that Colbert is going to give me a whole lot of shit for my late-tsar (Just For Men enhanced) beard this Thursday night. So take this as a preliminary shot across the bow.

a bear film from kris anka on Vimeo.

Hard to beat Goldblog's assessment:

There are more than five million Muslims in America; a tiny handful of them have committed, or have tried to commit, terror attacks in recent years. Many more Muslims serve faithfully in the United States military than serve jihadist ideology. Still, ignoring the infiltration by jihadist ideologues of certain marginal circles in Muslim America serves no purpose, either, except to advance the argument that the Tea Party is worse than al Qaeda, which, I fear, is what some on the left actually believe. Blaming Islam, or the mass of law-abiding American Muslims, for the acts of men like Faisal Shahzad will only lead to segregation, prejudice, and radicalization; ignoring the problem entirely will lead to more terror attacks.

I am relieved by the incompetence of the attempt and the flawed but still successful work of law enforcement to get him. The potential for real intelligence is also enormous – since the bomb did not go off and the suspect is captured and is not being tortured. 

For me, the case offers several mysteries: why haven't there been far more of these attempts these past few years? How half-assed are these Taliban training camps? Does this act suggest that the aggressive war in Pakistan and Afghanistan might actually increase terrorism at home and in the region – or does it imply we should keep up the military pressure in Afghanistan?

I suspect at this point that so many of these things are inter-locking and figuring out what caused what is close to pointless. This is what war does. In the end, it sustains itself.

Jacob Sullum looks at the revisions to Arizona's immigration law:

The law recognizes a driver's license from another state as proof that one is not "an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States," but only if that state "requires proof of legal residence in the United States before issuance." According to this fairly recent summary, about half a dozen states don't. So Latino drivers from, say, Michigan could be in for a real hassle if they happen to be pulled over in Arizona, even if they are native-born U.S. citizens. Considering that a perfectly legal visitor from Mexico was nabbed by Arpaio's deputies and detained for almost nine hours even though he presented several forms of ID, including a valid visa, Latinos from states that don't meet Arizona's criteria probably should carry a passport. Or just avoid Arizona.

Full article here.

Over the weekend Gary Wolf looked at how we might use machines to inform our lives:

Millions of us track ourselves all the time. We step on a scale and record our weight. We balance a checkbook. We count calories. But when the familiar pen-and-paper methods of self-analysis are enhanced by sensors that monitor our behavior automatically, the process of self-tracking becomes both more alluring and more meaningful. Automated sensors do more than give us facts; they also remind us that our ordinary behavior contains obscure quantitative signals that can be used to inform our behavior, once we learn to read them.

Jonah Lehrer pokes some holes in this research.

Not who you'd expect:

Overall, 38 percent of Americans view “libertarian” favorably to 37 who view it unfavorably. Democrats (39-37) and independents (44-32) view the term most favorably, while Republicans view it negatively by a 13-point (31-44) margin.

(Hat tip: Wilkinson)

Saletan has some tips on how to avoid epistemic closure. Number ten:

Overcome your urges. Hogan [a Redstate.com blogger] refuses to analyze opposing arguments in detail, arguing that he lacks "the desire" to do so. Perhaps he should brush up on the tradition he purports to represent. Real conservatives understand that desire is a lousy way to run a society. You don't feel like working? Work. You don't feel like supporting the kids you fathered? Support them. You don't feel like challenging your biases? Challenge them. We're all vain and lazy. In the electronic echo chamber, it's easier than ever to shut out what you don't want to hear. Nobody will make you open the door and venture out. You'll have to do that yourself.

What not to do here.

(Image by Peter Chin. More photos here.)

Thoreau has a proposal.

Anna Lappé challenges Robert Paarlberg's defense of industrial farming:

For a start, Paarlberg doesn't get what it means to be organic. "Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals," he writes, "so their food is de facto organic." In contrast, industrial agriculture, as he sees it, is "science-intensive." But as Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists explains, "modern organic practices are defined by much more than just the absence of synthetic chemicals"; it's knowledge-intensive farming. Organic farmers improve output, less by applying purchased products and more by tapping a sophisticated understanding of biological systems to build soil fertility and manage pests and weeds through techniques that include double-dug beds, intercropping, composting, manures, cover crops, crop sequencing, and natural pest control.