Month: June 2012

I guess it's one way to calm them down. The video Mr Blow discusses went rightly viral. It's a reminder that there is no evil like that of children in groups.

Not really:

While Romney has not yet consolidated voters who do not approve of Obama’s performance, his failure to do so at this early stage is unsurprising. Even Obama, a popular candidate running in an exceptionally conducive political environment, did not reach 50 percent of the vote until October, and instead spent most of the summer mired in the mid-40s. With Obama's approval rating just short of 50 percent, and a decent number of voters sure to remain undecided in June, there is not very much room for a better GOP candidate to improve on Romney's current standing.

As Horton recently wrote:

One of the lasting challenges to America’s federal judiciary will be addressing American complicity in the tortures and disappearances of the past ten years. Two recent appeals-court decisions show us how judicial panels are tackling these issues: by shielding federal officials and their contractors from liability, and even by glorifying the fruits of their dark arts. In the process, legal prohibitions on torture are being destroyed through secrecy and legal sleight of hand, and our justice system is being distorted and undermined.

[In early May], the Ninth Circuit reversed a district-court decision allowing a suit against torture-memo author John Yoo to go forward. The suit had been brought on behalf of José Padilla by his mother, who argued that Padilla was tortured while in U.S. custody as a result of Yoo’s advice—a claim that seems pretty much unassailable, and that had to be accepted as true for purposes of the preliminary rulings. In a decision that has left international-law scholars dumbstruck, the Ninth Circuit granted Yoo immunity, concluding that the law surrounding torture was so muddled when he dispensed his advice that he should be given the benefit of the doubt. The best authority the judges could muster for this outlandish perspective was a European Court of Human Rights decision from 1978, which found that a series of grim techniques used by Britain against Irish internees was not torture—rather it was “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Scott Horton is a contributing editor of Harper’s who blogs about civil liberties at No Comment. If you haven’t yet read his award-winning piece “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides‘”, you should definitely do so. Here is my long take on the report.

Finally, finally … some modicum of accountability for the cover-up of child rape in the Roman Catholic church. A senior cleric in Philadelphia, Monsignor William J Lynn, acquitted of conspiracy and a second count of endangerment, was nonetheless found guilty by a jury of covering up child-rape in such a manner that the rapist was able to strike again. After the Sandusky verdict, we seem to have turned a corner in toleration of this kind of abuse of power:

Monsignor Lynn’s defense hinged on his claim that he had tried to curb abuses, but that only the cardinal had the authority to remove priests. One crucial piece of evidence was a list drawn up in 1994 by Monsignor Lynn of some three dozen active priests who had been credibly accused of sex abuses. Before the trial began, a lawyer for the archdiocese turned over to the court a frayed folder including a copy of the list, saying it had been found in a locked safe.

Prosecutors called it a smoking gun.

One of those named in 1994 as “guilty of sexual misconduct with minors” was the former Rev. Edward V. Avery, whose continued tenure in ministry was at the heart of Monsignor Lynn’s trial. Mr. Avery, now 69, spent six months in a church psychiatric center in 1993 after an abuse episode, and doctors said he should be kept away from children. But Monsignor Lynn allowed him to live in a parish rectory.

In 1999, Mr. Avery undressed with a 10-year-old altar boy, told him that God loved him and had him engage in oral sex. Mr. Avery pleaded guilty to the assault just before the trial began and was sentenced to prison.

I might add that this precise chain of events – in which a child-rapist priest was reported as a criminal to the church authorities, then sent to therapy, then reassigned only to rape again – is exactly what Joseph Ratzinger did in Munich in the 1980s. How does an institution allow a lower priest to go to jail for such an act, while allowing the chief pontiff to carry on as if nothing had happened, as if children had not been raped because of his direct complicity in protecting the rapist?

“It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It’s not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber. I don’t know that I would’ve said that out loud pre-my announcement that I was going to be leaving. [Laughter] But I think that’s true. I mean everything has changed. The media has changed. We now give broadcast licenses to philosophies instead of people. People get confused and think there is no difference between news and entertainment. People who project themselves as journalists on television don’t know the first thing about journalism. They are just there stirring up a hockey game,” – Gary Ackerman a retiring 30 year veteran of Congress, responding to the question “Can you define comity as it existed when you arrived versus how it exists now?”

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Walter Russell Mead notes that Asians are now the fastest-growing immigrant group: 

Perhaps the most important factor in this shift is the collapse of the American construction industry, which has traditionally welcomed low-skilled workers. As construction work dries up, many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin, and others are deciding not to leave in the first place. Asian migrants, meanwhile, more frequently qualify for the higher paying, higher skilled jobs that are still relatively plentiful. The immigration shift is also driven by demographic changes in Latin America, and especially in Mexico, where birthrates have fallen dramatically and the number of new workers entering the labor force will soon begin to fall, even as economic growth is creating more and better jobs. Mexicans who twenty years ago would have moved to America in search of opportunity now like their chances at home.

Jacqueline Leo sees only a limited opportunity for the Romney campaign: 

In 2008, 9.7 million Hispanics voted – before the Great Recession forced many back to their native lands as jobs in construction and other industries dried up – and Obama won 67 percent of that vote. That same year, 3.4 million Asians voted, and once again, Obama grabbed more than two-thirds of that vote against McCain. In 2010, there were 50.5 million Latinos in the U.S. according to the Census but just 6.6 million voted. In 2008, 48 percent of Asians turned out to vote — up 4 percentage points from 2004. If the same numbers turn out this year, Romney’s best shot at leveling part of the ethnic playing field is capturing 37 percent of the Hispanic vote and a whopping 65 percent of the Asian vote. … 

Capturing those votes may be another big hurdle for Romney in the wake of Obama’s new immigration policy. The number of illegal Chinese immigrants coming through Arizona – yes, Arizona — increased 10-fold in 2009 according to The New York Times. For them, and thousands like them, self-deportation is a deal breaker.

The RNC, of course, is trying to kill two birds with one outreach website.

Veronique de Rugy demolishes it:

Our national obsession with small businesses misses the point. It’s not micro-firms that drive our new, entrepreneurial economy. Young firms—the startups that will grow to be the next Facebook—do tend to be small. But their newness is the relevant factor, not their size.

A 2010 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by University of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger and researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau found there was no consistent link between net job growth rates and the size of a business. Instead, the researchers found that firms younger than 10 years, particularly startups, are the real sources of job growth.

The healthcare decision will be announced on Thursday.

John Corvino celebrates the intellectual journey of David Blankenhorn:

What’s changed? Blankenhorn’s overriding concern has always been children’s welfare, and in particular, their right “to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world.” That has not changed. Despite what right-wing critics will say, he is not suddenly subordinating children’s welfare to adult interests. Rather, he has come to recognize that opposing same-sex marriage doesn’t help children and in fact hurts them.

The Greece-German soccer game sure beats another actual war:

“Without Angie, you wouldn’t be here,” bellowed the German fans, referring to the multibillion-dollar bailouts Greece has received from European partners, first and foremost Germany. “We’ll never pay you back,” countered the Greeks. “We’ll never pay you back.”

This is priceless:

Outside the stadium after the game, which Greece lost handily to heavily favored Germany, a group of Greek men dressed as Olympians of myth clapped and sang, while one danced in the aisle. “We Greeks don’t have money, but we have a big heart,” said Christos Mistridis, 33. The dancer shushed him and said, as if sharing a secret, “Angela Merkel thinks we’re at work.”

The penalty kick that gave Greece its consolation goal near the end of the game was “a little present on top of the money we gave them,” said Hendrik Grote, who wore a German soccer jersey and lederhosen. “That’s enough now though.”

(Photo: German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrates next to UEFA president Michel Platiniafter Philip Lahm scored against Greece during the Euro 2012 football championships quarter-final match Germany vs Greece on June 22, 2012 at the Gdansk Arena. By Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty.)