Month: April 2011

Al Jazeera has the latest on the spiraling situation:

Syrian security forces have arrested at least 500 pro-democracy activists, a rights group said, as the government continues a violent crackdown on anti-government protests across the country. The arrests followed the deployment of Syrian troops backed by tanks and heavy armour on the streets of two southern towns, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah said on Tuesday. The group said it had received reports that at least 20 people were killed in the city of Deraa in the aftermath of the raid by troops loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Monday. But communications have been cut in the city, making it difficult to confirm the information.

The Lede looks at reaction abroad:

The violence has drawn growing international concern and condemnation. Western nations are considering sanctions against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and the Obama administration is urging Americans to leave Syria immediately “while commercial transportation is readily available.”

Enduring America captions the above footage from Daraa:

This video shows people chanting "the army is with us." Moments later, however, the army opens fire on the people who were chanting.

More updates at AJE's live-blog.

I fully understand why Kate and Wills (I throw up in my mouth a little just saying those words) would rather not have Gordon-Life-Of-The-Party-Brown at their wedding, or even the perky self-aggrandizing Tony Blair, whose massive overspending helped bring the UK economy to its knees. But either is surely preferable to the Crown Prince Of Fricking Bahrain. Saif Qaddafi was unavailable?

Will Ferrell throws down the gauntlet:

Hang in, Conan. Hang in.

I understand that there’s a noxious clause in the King and Spalding contract that instituted a gag order on everyone else in the firm not even to write about DOMA. I can see why that radical part of the contract, illegal in some states, might have caused the firm to reassess. But I remain deeply troubled by statements like this from my friend Richard Socarides:

“Mr. Clement’s statement misses the point entirely. While it is sometimes appropriate for lawyers to represent unpopular clients when a important principle is at issue, here the only principle he wishes to defend is discrimination and second-class citizenship for gay Americans.”

This is an offensive attack on liberal democracy. There is no “appropriate” or “inappropriate” principle in defending even the most unpopular laws or vile individuals. It is precisely unpopular or despised laws and individuals that deserve legal defense, unfettered by political constraints.

To put pressure on lawyers defending clients or laws because lobby groups don’t like them is deeply illiberal. It remains disgusting, for example, that rightwing groups targeted lawyers defending terror suspects and Gitmo prisoners. When the far right did this, it was despicable. Now that the left is doing it, it remains just as despicable.

Memo to the gay rights leadership: the ends do not justify the means. Let DOMA have the most robust defense it can possibly muster and let us argue just as passionately for its unconstitutionality. When civil rights groups bully, they lose the moral high-ground. When you have men like David Brock leading the charge – and there are no means he has ever eschewed to achieve his ends – the danger is that we prove the far right’s point. We must be better than them.

Alyssa Rosenberg recommends Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles as the best guide to the upcoming royal wedding:

Brown does a great job of teasing out how emotionally awful it was to be a member of the royal family: this is a group of people who doesn’t understand that someone who’s had three strokes might not be able to make it to formal meals on time; or postpartum depression; or the idea that it might not be super-sensitive to keep your mistress when you’re trying to build an emotionally meaningful marriage. Yes, the Royal Family is insanely privileged, but Brown builds a fairly persuasive case that the money and status might not be particularly worth it. 

Anne Clark, creator of the "Kate Middleton For The Win" tumblr, is less sympathetic.

A reader writes:

I was involved in producing a recent white paper that comes at this point from a slightly different angle that might help to flesh out the argument around a gas tax a little bit. Manzi and Drum rightly focus on consumption and efficiency, but those are only half of the equation when it comes to gas taxes. For a lot of advocates, gas taxes and carbon prices are also important for generating technology substitutes, i.e. super-efficient vehicles, or electric vehicles, or some other wholly new technology, in addition to inducing behavior change and effecting demand.

The problem is that just as price changes have to be severe to manifest any impacts on gas consumption, price changes on their own also tend not to do much to inspire the development of radical new tech solutions, unless prices are through the roof. This is mainly due to the high levels of risk and uncertainty that come with new tech: private firms would generally rather seek out low-risk, low-cost alternatives (i.e. more efficient internal processes or capital goods) than to invest time and effort into developing high-risk, initially-high cost alternatives (i.e. hydrogen fuel cells). It takes a real, permanent shock to get any real effects, and suffice to say the American political system is unlikely to ever pass a gas tax high enough to drive these kinds of changes.

Europe is a great example: they have high gas prices, but they don't drive electric cars much more than we do. They drive diesels, and they drive a bit less, but they're still dealing in petrol. So as much as I hate to say it, anyone who is advocating for a gas tax has to deal with the double-whammy of low elasticity of demand AND low upside for induced innovation.

This is not to say we shouldn't have a gas tax, as we should, if for no other reason than to price the associated externalities (environmental and national security alike). It just means it's somewhat limited as a solution to fuel emissions and fossil dependence.

Paul Campos questions law school jobs numbers:

Many law schools all but explicitly promise that, within a few months of graduation, practically all their graduates will obtain jobs as lawyers, by trumpeting employment figures of 95 percent, 97 percent, and even 99.8 percent. The truth is that less than half will.

A reader writes:

While the site you featured is mostly funny, it is often unfair and inaccurate. For example, "boil the ocean" is actually a good and expressive phrase, and it does not mean "waste time", but rather "solve an impossibly hard problem" – typically in an unsuccessful or predictably futile attempt. (Note, however, that not all "boil the ocean" attempts fail; there's value to trying to do the seemingly impossible). Similarly, "actionable", which does grate on my ears as jargon, does not mean just "doable or achievable", but it distinguishes vague decisions or recommendations from ones that provide a path to completion with specific tasks. And "above the fold' is perfectly defensible as a metaphor.

There's a difference between jargon that just functions as a with-it-sounding substitute for perfectly acceptable words ("ask" for "request", "spend" for "expenditure", "impact" for "affect", "incentivize" for "encourage", "utilize" for "use", "action items" for to-dos), and jargon which, um, boils down (usually metaphorically) a more complex concept – the distinction typically being that the latter needs a much longer definition, which suggests it adds value to the language by giving a name to a complex concept. "Unsuck It" conflates the two, and is thus basically glib, empty snark.

Another writes:

An "action item" is not a "goal". An action item is literally an item on which action can and will be taken.  A goal is something you want.   You should understand this clearly with Libya. The U.S. and allies have the goal of Gadaffi leaving power but they do not have action items to get him to leave.

Stephen L. Carter wonders why we allow state-run lotteries:

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the state can provide gambling services better than the private sector does. This is not a situation in which the government will return more value to consumers than the private market will: a claim often made, for example, by critics of for-profit health insurers. As a matter of fact, state-run lotteries return around 50 percent of revenues to winners; in other words, the expected value from a $1 bet is 50 cents. No casino could stay in business offering odds this poor, but the government manages it by prohibiting competition.

Well, duh. But look at the revenues:

Now, it is true that we live in an era when the states need revenue, desperately. But are lotteries really the best way to raise them? The regressive effect of the lottery has been documented so often that the argument has become ubiquitous, simply part of the background: poor consumers spend a far higher proportion of their income on lottery tickets than wealthy consumers do. In other words, the states are raising revenue by tempting the worst off of their citizens to hand over their scarce dollars playing a game with a ridiculously low return.

I don’t think we have the luxury of being this squeamish – or condescending. No one is forced to play the lottery. My own view is that we should also set up a federal lottery and designate the revenues, as the Brits do, to government spending on health, sports, the arts and what they call heritage.

Conor Friedersdorf is disturbed by an unusual dating site. According to Conor, "the typical user is a man who cruises profiles, selects a woman, and bids on a date" and she then "can accept, decline, or make a counteroffer":

The irony is that commodifying companionship is arguably more destructive to human dignity and society than is selling sex, even if you're someone who takes a dim view of traditional prostitution. Some people seem to be worried that WhatsYourPrice.com is a scam to profit off escorts.

I'm more worried that it isn't.