Month: March 2011

Deborah Pearlstein analyzes yesterday's executive order. She largely blames Congress:

In 2008, efforts by Congress even to conduct hearings into detention-related matters were still met with the criticism by some that Congress was interfering in matters properly left to the executive branch. Since then, Congress has become engaged up to its eyeballs in micromanaging the executive’s handling of a handful of detainees, and is otherwise devoting its Guantanamo-related energy to preventing the President from bringing criminal charges in our own courts against men who the President and Congress believe have committed crimes. 

Greenwald doesn't buy this excuse: 

It is true that Congress — with the overwhelming support of both parties — has enacted several measures making it much more difficult, indeed impossible, to transfer Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. But long before that ever happened, Obama made clear that he wanted to continue the twin defining pillars of the Bush detention regime: namely, (1) indefinite, charge-free detention and (2) military commissions (for those lucky enough to be charged with something). Obama never had a plan for "closing Guantanamo" in any meaningful sense; the most he sought to do was to move it a few thousand miles north to Illinois, where its defining injustices would endure.

Issandr El Amrani reviews Egypt's Gaza policy:

In some sense, it already has changed. Palestinian officials from Hamas have been allowed to travel from Rafah. The border crossing has also been re-opened after a month-long shutdown following January 25, although it is still only taking 300 people a day. But fundamentally, the official position is the same for now. It's based on a legal reality that the siege of Gaza is Israel's responsibility, since it is the occupying power, as well as more convoluted legalism that the border cannot fully be reopened until Gaza is part of an independent Palestinian state. The real reasons for Egypt's participation in the blockade were a mixture of anti-Hamas sentiment, legitimate concern that Egypt could be held responsible for Hamas' actions by Israel, American and Israeli pressure on Cairo, and a fear that the Israelis were maneuvering to dump the Gaza problem onto Egypt's lap.

He encourages Egypt to "set up a system for orderly passage of people at Rafah, and provide the water and electricity Gazans need."

From Colorado:

I kind of got a libertarian streak and I don’t think we should be in the business of legislating religion and morality.

State polling shows 40 percent in favor of full marriage rights and 32 percent in favor of them under a different name. Only 25 percent are opposed to any marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Alex Knapp is depressed by the Obama administration’s treatment of Bradley Manning – and America’s behavior in general since the September 11 terrorist attacks:

We have gone from being the first country that established the principle that prisoners of war should be treated respectfully to a country that operates black sites and sends prisoners to other countries to be tortured–when we don’t torture them ourselves. In the American Revolution, the number one cause of death for American soldiers was maltreatment and disease in British POW camps. In the Civil War, Andersonville was a cause of national outrage. In the early 20th century, the United States emphatically supported the adoption of the Geneva Conventions. In World War II, German soldiers happily surrendered to Americans in the West, knowing they’d be well treated. But in the East, they fought the Russians to the last man because they knew they wouldn’t be.

Now, in the 21st century, we send robot planes to bomb civilians in a country that’s ostensibly an ally. We have prisons where people are routinely denied basic essentials, denied due process, are maltreated and tortured. We reverse decades of tradition and not only have legalized assassination, but have legalized assassination of United States citizens. And there’s no outrage on Main Street. There’s no outrage in Washington. There’s only outrage on the internet. And half the internet rage is coming not from the acts themselves but rather partisan bullshit surrounding them. (“You only hate torture when Bush does it!” “You only hate it when we do it to white people!” “Nuh-uh!” “Uh-huh!”)

He goes on to recall that the first time he voted in a presidential election, “no part of my consideration of any of the candidates had to do with whether they wished to torture people or assassinate American citizens. It didn’t have to be, because it wouldn’t cross anybody’s mind to have a position on it.”

Via Alan Jacobs, a thought-provoking passage from Andrew Ferguson's new book, Crazy U (long excerpt here):

“In a way you had more human diversity in the old Harvard,” a friend once told me, after a lifetime of doing business with Harvard graduates. His attitude was more analytic than bitter, however. “It used to be the only thing an incoming class shared was blue blood. But bloodlines are a pretty negligible thing. It allows for an amazing variety in human types. You had real jocks and serious dopes, a few geniuses, a few drunks, a few ne’er-do-wells, and a very high percentage of people with completely average intelligence. Harvard really did reflect the country in that way back then.

“You still have a lot of blue bloods getting in, multigeneration Harvard families. But now a majority of kids coming into Harvard all share traits that are much more important than blood, race, or class. On a deeper level, in the essentials, they’re very much alike. They’ve all got that same need to achieve, focus, strive, succeed, compete, be the best—or at least be declared the best by someone in authority. And they’ve all figured out how to please important people.” Harvard grads disagree with this, of course. They like to say that the new Harvard represents the triumph of meritocracy. No, my friend said. “It’s the triumph of a certain kind of person.”

An interesting companion piece is this old Malcolm Gladwell essay on "the social logic of the Ivy League."

Alexis captions:

In 2003, writer Shelley Jackson asked 2,000 volunteers to get a single word tattooed on their bodies. Together, they formed the story "Skin," but its full text was never published. The pieces of it wandered the earth, occasionally finding each other (two got married) and undoubtedly drunkenly telling new stories about their participation at bars. One died.

This year, she asked the participants (who she calls "words") to upload a short video of themselves reading their words aloud. Then, she cut the 200 words who did so into a new story, which has now launched at Berkeley and online. It's embedded above.  

A reader writes:

I appreciate what your first reader writes with regard to the way that additional partners made him more happy in marriage by virtue of limiting regret. That being said, I am not so convinced. Take a look at how a grocery store like Trader Joe's has applied the research on choice in social psychology:

Customers may think they want variety, but in reality too many options can lead to shopping paralysis. "People are worried they'll regret the choice they made," says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of The Paradox of Choice. "People don't want to feel they made a mistake." Studies have found that buyers enjoy purchases more if they know the pool of options isn't quite so large. Trader Joe's organic creamy unsalted peanut butter will be more satisfying if there are only nine other peanut butters a shopper might have purchased instead of 39. Having a wide selection may help get customers in the store, but it won't increase the chances they'll buy.

While sleeping with more women beforehand might make me less likely to regret not sleeping with more women, it is also likely to increase another type or regret: that I didn't choose someone better.

A great opener for a piece of Sully bait:

I’m in San Francisco today, where it is foggy and cool, and I’m irrationally expecting an earthquake at any minute. So the Virginian Pilot didn’t arrive on my doorstep for me to read at 5:30am, as it usually does. Instead I woke up at 10am Norfolk time and wandered out to drink Peet’s coffee and look at wealthy hippies.

One thing you notice: there are a lot of beards here. These guys are all beard-proud. I’ll get to the stories from the Pilot (which I did read online, eventually), but first, since I’m so far away, I’ll tell the story of How the Republicans Saved My Beard.

Frum has second thoughts about T-Paw:

[P]redicting Pawlenty feels like reaching the wrong answer on a math exam. You do the calculation and you arrive at the answer, Pawlenty. You think: that can’t be right. You check the formulas. Yes, you have written them down correctly. You repeat the calculation. Same answer. And it still does not feel right.

Pawlenty was a fine governor, and I’m sure he would be a fine president. Yet I have never met anybody who is enthusiastic about him, and I’ve met quite a few of the people who work for him.

(Photo: Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty talks to reporters after signing copies of his new book, 'Courage to Stand,' at the Family Christian Book Store January 30, 2011 in Ankeny, Iowa. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, called an Ezra Klein post praising cities "a slam on rural America." Vilsack and Klein talked it out. Joyner scores the debate:

Essentially, Vilsack justifies subsiding farmers on the basis that rural America is the storehouse of our values, for which he has no evidence. And he’s befuddled when confronted with someone who doesn’t take his homilies as obvious facts.

Avent glances at the bigger picture:

[T]he idea that economically virtuous actors deserve to be rewarded not simply with economic success but with subsidies is remarkably common in America (and elsewhere) and is not by any means a characteristic limited to rural people. I also find it strange how upset Mr Vilsack is by the fact that he "ha[s] a hard time finding journalists who will speak for them". Agricultural interests are represented by some of the most effective lobbyists in the country, but their feelings are hurt by the fact that journalists aren't saying how great they are? This reminds me of the argument that business leaders aren't investing because they're put off by the president's populist rhetoric. When did people become so sensitive? When did hurt feelings become a sufficient justification for untold government subsidies?