Month: May 2011

You may recall that one of the nuttier arguments made by the opponents of marriage equality in years gone by is that it would directly lead to the decline of marriage as an institution. Stanley Kurtz, a once-sane conservative scholar who is now busy trying to prove that Barack Obama is actually a cross between Malcolm X and Yasir Arafat, was first out of the gate. He argued (against the bulk of the evidence) that this had been the pattern in Europe.

Well, it's still early but we do have some data on divorce and marriage rates since the debate over same-sex marriage began in the early 1990s, and expanded since:

Roughly 75 percent of those who have married since 1990 reported they had reached their 10-year anniversary. That's up about 3 percentage points for both men and women who married a decade earlier in the 1980s, when divorce rates in the U.S. had peaked, according to census figures released Wednesday.

Or this summary in the conservative Deseret News:

Six months after Time magazine asked "Who Needs Marriage" on its cover, the U.S. Census Bureau has released new statistics that seem to show marriage making a comeback. "Marriage is actually becoming more stable in America and the divorce is becoming less common," Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia told ABC News. The Census Bureau reported that while Americans are waiting longer to marry, the divorce rate has dropped and the average duration of marriages is rising.

Now I don't believe for a second that marriage equality caused this increase in marriage longevity in the US, although it would be nice to think so. But the case that it would hurt opposite-sex marriage must surely be abandoned by those with intellectual integrity. How about it, Stanley?

They're both crucial states for 2012. And the GOP must feel confident after winning the governorships in both states last November. Oh, wait … !

Here is one part of it, it seems:

"[The president] has also violated a first principle of American foreign policy, which is to stand firm by our friends."

Let's see which of our friends supports a two-state solution based on 1967 lines with land-swaps: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, to name six that spring to mind. So, in fact, Obama has not violated this principle. He has vindicated it.

The latest from Syria:

[Human rights researcher] Razan Zeitouna said activists had listed names of 23 protesters shot by security forces in Friday's crackdown, adding that a further two victims were yet to be fully identified. … The dead included two boys named Aiham al-Ahmad, 11, and 16-year-old Ahmad Bakr. They were shot when police officers opened fire on Friday, after their vehicle crashed into a wall and was attacked by protesters, according to a witness. … After hitting several protesters with the vehicles, one of the cars crashed into a wall, prompting the officers to jump out and open fire.

More brutal details:

[A]n eyewitness [in Damascus] has told Al Jazeera that pro-regime thugs with iron bars have attacked a group of 500 to 700 worshippers as they left the Dahabiyye Mosque in Bab Sriejeh, in the Old City, after Friday prayers. Protesters had planned a demonstration to start after the prayers but the imam had warned against protests starting from his mosque. The thugs were waiting outside the mosque, said the eyewitness, suggesting they knew a protest was planned.

Check AJE's live-blog for updates. Regarding the above footage:

YouTube video appears to show protestors in Berze, a suburb north-east of Damascus, using back alleys to protest, which activists said was a new strategy to avoid protestors coming under fire from snipers, which have been used to kill protestors on previous Fridays.

The protesters in the video can be heard calling for more people to join them in the streets chanting “Feza'a,” a traditional Arabic expression for SOS. They also chant: “We are victorious, we are all lions and tigers.” Their signs read: “We don't want anyone who kills our family and children” and “Go away we don't love you”.

"Netanyahu could not have asked for more," – Aluf Benn in Haaretz.

"Strauss-Kahn’s religion has proven relevant, really, to only two types of people: Neo Nazis and Ann Coulter, (though this might be a distinction without a difference)," – Eric Alterman.

"I think my problem is that I do have the fire in my belly," – Sarah Palin, asked about her 2012 intentions. (She repeats "fire in the belly" two more times.) I do not think this presages another pregnancy, but with Palin's pregnancies, you never know. They have been known to coincide with election seasons.

Geraghty notes how Huntsman is no leftist, just a pragmatic conservative:

So, to summarize Huntsman’s positions in this interview, he wants to pass and enact the Ryan plan, wanted a bigger stimulus more heavily weighted towards tax cuts, wants to forget cap&trade until the Chinese and Indians agree to reduce their emissions (which is to say, never), pass a Balanced Budget Amendment, and repeal Obamacare.

I see him as one of real conservatism's best shots at engaging the middle – a reverse Obama, and easily his most formidable foe. Ezra Klein believes that Huntsman's 2012 strategy is to "agree with the GOP on policy, but be moderate in argument."

[H]e doesn’t oppose cap-and-trade because global warming is a hoax, or the science is unsettled. He opposes it because a) any solution will have to be international and b) we need to be worried about the economy right now. He’s not against stimulus in theory, but he thought the specific stimulus Obama passed was poorly designed. He doesn’t defend the specifics of Ryan’s changes to Medicare, but supports them because the mounting national debt has forced us to consider “proposals that would’ve been laughed out of the room” at another time.

That's a defensible middle position. And a highly contextual one. Much of what Huntsman says in this interview is premised on an observation of what is actually happening the world, rather than a recitation of ideology or partisan talking points. It's still not clear to me how this conservative approach will work with the GOP as it now is. But next time around if the nominee crashes and burns next year? Josh Green reports on Huntsman's first New Hampshire speech:

While Huntsman didn't make any Newt Gingrich-like gaffes, neither did he do much to convince his conservative audience that he has a real shot at winning. Several people told me that they had a hard time envisioning a path to the nomination for Huntsman. Melanie Wilcox, a Dartmouth sophomore and vice president of the College Republicans, did see a path for him, though presumably not the one Huntsman is seeking. "I think he'll be a good candidate in 2016," she said.

Jesse Bering revisits two historical papers on the history of neuroscience, which found that "that the human brain was once described as comprising its very own vulva, penis, testicles, buttocks, and even an anus":

René Descartes may have celebrated the pineal gland as the "seat of the soul," but for the less metaphysically minded van Diemerbroeck, as well as one of Descartes' contemporaries, the Danish physician Thomas Bartholin, that structure was more like a penis. This metaphor may have its roots, explain Olry and Haines, in the position of the gland above and between the brain's colliculi, which had already been compared with testicles (as, perhaps, the original "hanging brain").

America's finest news source parodies a political orientation:

I believe roads should be privatized—as should fire departments, law enforcement, and basic water and sewer infrastructure. But I also believe the traditional "nuclear" family is an inadequate social safety net, and that every baby born should be raised by at least 14 people, including at least four gay men and/or lesbians.