Month: June 2011

Al-Sayed al-Essawy vowed to fight a lion.  J. Hammond reports on the event:

Far from being “King of the Jungle” the lion seemed confused, dehydrated and possibly drugged as it stayed in one corner of the ring. The lion gave one feeble roar but largely ignored his opponent. The lion’s body showed open wounds above its right eye, on the tail and around the anus. An online petition to stop the fight attracted nearly 5,000 signatories and was aimed at the “President of the Arab Republic of Egypt.".  On Twitter some animal rights activists called on NATO to launch airstrikes against those in attendance.

Bends towards justice:

Jim Burroway charted our slow but steady progress:

In 1960, homosexuality was a criminal act in every state and territory in the union. By 2000, when Vermont enacted civil unions, more than a third of the U.S. population lived in states where gay people were still legally criminals. All that changed of course with the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision. Gay people were no longer criminals, but they weren’t recognized in any other way either. The past decade has been a very slow march toward correcting that.

Sociologist Christian Smith mulls personhood:

The standard, received doctrines of scientism tell us that to conduct good science we need to strip ourselves of much of our human particularities, that we need to become “objective,” to set aside our personal ways of knowing, to somehow transcend the human condition of historical and cultural conditioning, of being situated, of being subjective knowers with interests and commitments, to discount ordinary ways of understanding. In fact, quite the opposite is true…

The best of science relies precisely on human personal knowledge, on personal commitments to truth over, say, career success, on a deeply personal entering into investigations, of tacit or intuitive insights, creativity that cannot be systematized, on an appreciation for the beauty and patterning of reality. Good science never fully brackets persons or personhood as threatening to “objectivity” or “universalism.” Good science is always rooted in and grows out of profoundly personal engagements with, knowledge of, and love for the world and for truth.

Alba Hochmann, dressed as a bride, looks on during the Gay Pride parade on June 26, 2011 in New York City. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.

Chait believes it's because political donors lean fiscally conservative and socially liberal:

[F]or Democrats, the donor class means you can't be too economically liberal, but donors do reward social liberalism. … The gay marriage vote is a reminder that the disproportionate influence of donors may be offense as a matter of principle, and its impact may very often be illiberal, but sometimes it has a positive effect, too. If Michelle Bachmann wins the 2012 election, the power of Republican donors will help restrain her rampant theocratic impulses.

John Sides provides other rationales.

I wrote that if "no American Jew can conceive of a situation in which they would walk away from Israel, then there is no leverage at all to persuade Israel to act responsibly to save Zionism’s soul, or to behave as a constructive ally of the United States." J.L. Wall, for one, refuses to walk away:

Israel is both a nation-state and a segment of the Jewish people. I can conceive of many situations in which I could and would cease to support the policies of Israel’s government (there are already those which I do); I can conceive of situations in which I would feel I had no choice but to actively oppose the actions or policies of Israel’s government; I can even conceive of situations in which I would feel that Israel’s government had lost its legitimacy.  But I can no more conceive of walking away from Israel itself—all of it, its people included—than I can conceive of walking away from my own family.

TNR is reprinting the original cover-story from 22 years ago. The content is here.

His argument for changing his mind is a classically conservative one:

Most conservatives have reacted with calm — if not outright approval — to New York's dramatic decision. Why? The short answer is that the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.

A helpful review from Chris Geidner.

Yes the irony of the title of her forthcoming hagiographic documentary has been noted before. But it is not an irony, of course. It is a total lie, disproven by mounds of empirical evidence. Joe McGinniss counts the ways this is untrue:

She was defeated, most famously, in her run for vice president in 2008.

Prior to that, she was defeated in her run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.

She was defeated in the Miss Alaska pageant.

She was defeated in four different attempts to graduate from college before she finally managed it at University of Idaho.

She was defeated in her attempt to get a creationist majority elected to the Wasilla School Board in the early 1990?s.

She was defeated in her attempt to have abortion banned at the Mat-Su Valley hospital.

Before her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated when she applied for a position as dispatcher with the Palmer, Alaska, police department and was not hired.

After her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to appoint Alaska Independence Party and John Birch Society member Steve Stoll to the city council.

As mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons in 1997, a move that nearly led to her recall.

As mayor, she was also defeated in the courts when she tried to build a new sports arena on land the city did not own—a defeat for which Wasilla is still paying.

There's more!