Month: December 2012

Earlier today the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously in favor of Khaled el-Masri, a German man abducted in Macededonia and tortured by the CIA.

It’s a very big deal. From a press release from the UN Rapporteur on Torture: 

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson today welcomed the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the Al-Masri case as “a key milestone in the long struggle to secure accountability of public officials implicated in human rights violations committed by the Bush administration CIA in its policy of secret detention, rendition and torture”. The Court upheld the complaint of Khaled Al-Masri, a German citizen, that he had been illegally seized and abused by Macedonian authorities in 2004, and handed over to the CIA, who had mistakenly identified him as a member of Al Qaida.

The Court held that he had been arbitrarily detained and subjected to so-called “capture shock” techniques by the CIA which amounted to “torture”. The Court found that he was then flown by the CIA to Afghanistan, where he was unlawfully detained and abused, physically and mentally, by US officials for several months, before being flown on a clandestine flight to Albania where he was dumped by the side of a road by US officials… Mr. Emmerson announced that he would be making a detailed report about the case, and other attempts to secure accountability for crimes committed by the CIA and its proxies, to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March 2013.

By this ruling, Macedonia is required to compensate al-Masri and re-open the case. But Macedonia, of course, was just a puppet of the US in this act of illegal inhumanity, and it’s the US that is ultimately responsible.

More to the point, some of the techniques ruled illegal by the European Court include the CIA’s preparation for rendition tactics, some of which are still embraced and used by the US Justice Department. At some point, the US’s actions as a rogue, torture state under Bush and Cheney would have to emerge as counter to the law of our closest allies, and to Western jurisprudence and civilization in general. So now, we will see how complicit our current president wants to be in perpetuating and legitimizing war crimes, in defiance of the Geneva Conventions:

The A.C.L.U. is representing Mr. Masri in a case against the United States now before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The petition was filed in 2008 and the United States government has yet to respond.

But the major point here is that the European Court of Human Rights – representing countless key allies – has named the US as a country that has practiced torture, in violation of its Treaty obligations, and international and domestic law. War crimes were permitted and committed and a country that allows war crimes to go unpunished has essentially abandoned the rule of law. When will Obama reinstate that rule of law? He has constantly said he wants to look forward, not back. But the US and the West cannot move forward until we have looked back, and repaired the breach in civilization and law that president George W. Bush created.

What should the legal limit be for marijuana? Jacob Sullum examines the state of affairs:

While a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or more is treated as equivalent to DUI, there is no such per se standard for marijuana. Previous efforts to set a limit at five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood—the same as the standard established by Washington's marijuana legalization initiative, effective last Thursday—have failed due to objections from critics who said it would unfairly penalize regular consumers, especially people using marijuana for medical purposes, who might exceed the ceiling even when they are not impaired. Now the Post reports that supporters of a five-nanogram rule are offering a compromise that has won over some critics: Instead of being automatically guilty of DUI, drivers who test above the limit could present evidence that they were in fact OK to drive.

Read Michael’s writing for the Beast here. Above he defends the first annual Draw Mohammad Day, which he wrote about at Reason in 2010:

Via Dan Savage’s blog at The Stranger, some clever chappie (I don’t know who) has declared May 20, 2010 “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day,” in support of Matt Stone and Trey Parker and in opposition to religious thuggery. Why May 20? I haven’t a clue, though it could have something to do with Otto ascending the throne of Greece. Or, more likely, King Sancho IV of Castile’s founding of the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

I will be employing my tremendous skill as an illustrator, of course, and expect that my colleagues will do the same. If they refuse, they will be declared weak-kneed, namby-pamby, quisling infidels and will be shamed on this blog (Though such idle threats rarely work these days; perhaps I could threaten them with a painful death, which seems to do the trick).

Watch Michael’s previous videos here, here and here.

There are some intriguing developments in our so-far long failure to understand the origins of homosexual emotional and sexual orientation. Evolutionary scientists William Rice and Urban Friberg believe that they may have "solved the evolutionary riddle of homosexuality" by tracing homosexuality not to genes, but instead to the molecular coding that influences how genes are expressed. George Dvorsky breaks down in more detail what this coding, known as "epi-marks," does:

Epigenetic mechanisms can be seen as an added layer of information that clings to our DNA. Epi-marks regulate the expression of genes according to the strength of external cues. Genes are basically the instruction book, while epi-marks direct how those instructions get carried out. For example, they can determine when, where, and how much of a gene gets expressed.

Elizabeth Norton explains what the researchers were studying:

According to the hypothesis, homosexuality may be a carry-over from one's parents' own prenatal resistance to the hormones of the opposite sex. The "epi-marks" that adjusted parental genes to resist excess testosterone, for example, may alter gene activation in areas of the child's brain involved in sexual attraction and preference. "These epigenetic changes protect mom and dad during their own early development," Rice says. The initial benefit to the parents may explain why the trait of homosexuality persists throughout evolution, he says.

Still, the theory has so far been confined to a mathematical model, as one of the researchers emphasizes to Jason Koebler:

"We've found a story that looks really good," [Rice] says. "There's more verification needed, but we point out how we can easily do epigenetic profiles genome-wide. We predict where the epi-marks occur, we just need other studies to look at it empirically. This can be tested and proven within six months. It's easy to test. If it's a bad idea, we can throw it away in short order."

Ezra Klein details where the president draws the line:

The Obama administration is utterly steadfast on this point: They will not suffer a repeat of 2011, when they conducted negotiations over whether the United States should default. If Republicans go over the cliff and try to open up talks for raising the debt ceiling, the White House will not hold a meeting, they will not return a phone call, they will not look at the e-mails. They will move to an entirely public strategy, rallying voters and the business community against the GOP’s repeated brinksmanship.

There are two procedural issues on which, it seems to me, true conservatives should be outraged at Republicans. The first is the massive, unprecedented, destructive and radical use of a non-filibuster filibuster to make the Senate unable to pass anything significant without 60 votes, rather than 51 (or 50 with the veep). This is not conservative. It's a blatant attack on tradition in defense of pure partisanship.

I think the president should at some point personally take this on. Most Americans aren't fully aware that a filibuster today doesn't need even a few minutes of what we always thought of as filibustering. The filibusterers barely have to speak at all. They just have to signal their intent to, and the entire legislative process grinds to a halt. This gives a minority party a near-veto that should be solely the preserve of the president. That's an attack on our Constitution. Expose them, Mr President, as the revolutionaries they are. Mock them. Expose their laziness and obstructionism at a time when a huge majority wants compromise; and the country and the world need it.

The second is the outrageous ploy to threaten to destroy the country's credit rating every time there is a conflict over debt. This is a form of legislative terrorism. It is an attack on the entire country in defense of a single fanatical faction. It's perhaps best summarized by the highly emotional torture fanatic, Marc Thiessen. Just read these extraordinary words:

Right now, it seems as if they are seeking the least painful way to surrender. It’s time to stand and fight instead. Republicans can still shoot their way out of their current predicament. It won’t be pretty and they will have to fight ugly — but they can still win … In the short term, Americans may blame you. You can recover from that. What you will never recover from is surrendering your principles and giving up your brand as the party of low taxes and limited government.

There is no mention of the last election, and what it was fought on. There is no mention of the American people or the global economy. There is merely an insular ideological determination to wreck the country if necessary in order to maintain a purer "brand" for a faction. This is what the Founders warned us of when describing the toxicity of factionalism in a democracy.

And we should be clear what using the debt ceiling as blackmail really is; it is not an attempt to cut spending, which is accomplished through budget legislation. It is a refusal to make good on the very decisions the Congress has already made on spending and taxation. It is the equivalent of not paying your rent as a way to protest the price you already signed up for. It's grotesquely irresponsible, and after the last election, reflects a near delusional amnesia and contempt for the voters. Frum paraphrases it correctly:

"Mr. President, give us what we want or we'll blow up the government. In return for your concessions, we'll … refrain from blowing up the government."

Thiessen is an anti-conservative. He saw the rule of law as something to be gotten around so he could enable the torture of prisoners of war, using Nazi techniques. He sees the very credit of the country he allegedly loves as a mere instrument for partisan brinksmanship.

When you see a political party that openly flaunts these attacks on the American constitutional balance and the country's credit for purely partisan reasons, you begin to see how deep the rot has gone. This is not a party worthy of any role in government. It's a destructive, self-interested faction, threatening the stability of this country's constitution and economy. Obama is absolutely right not to yield on this. This anti-conservative radicalism is anti-American, uncivil and unpatriotic.

It must not be appeased. It has to be ended.

(Photo: Getty Images.)

Balko notes that "private police groups and the FBI keep close statistics on the number of cops killed and assaulted while on the job" but there is no national data on "the number of citizens killed by police":

The net result of all of this is a one-way flow of information that probably colors the way we think about the relationship between police and the communities they serve. When we get comprehensive data each year about the cops who were killed and assaulted in the line of duty over the last 12 months, but no data on how many people were killed and assaulted by police–justifiably or not–over the same period, it bends the debate toward more support for giving cops more power, more weapons, and more authority.

“Right-to-work laws have become another weapon in the pointless, costly and ultimately zero-sum competition among states to attract new businesses. No factory moves to a new state without the factory’s owners blackmailing the state for a package of benefits that typically includes right-to-work status along with various financing arrangements misusing the states’ power to issue federal-tax-free bonds. For the federal government to be subsidizing all sides of this ultimately futile competition is insane. But studies show, naturally, that states with right-to-work laws attract more new business than states without them. No doubt. That’s not the same as proving that the favors and privileges offered to business by states make economic sense,” – Mike Kinsley, in a classic counter-intuitive take on why conservatives should support right-to-work laws.

Next year SCOTUS is scheduled to tackle the two issues. Orin Kerr finds parallels:

In both contexts, the debate boils down to the scope of the equality principles found in the Equal Protection Clause. In both contexts, the challengers to the status quo argue that the state can’t treat people differently in the area of fundamental rights. It’s that simple: This is about marriage/racial equality. In both contexts, the defenders defend their institutional practices as allowable and sensible societal responses to difficult social problems. And in both contexts, public opinion is split nearly 50/50, with very passionate opinions on both sides. The similarities are particularly interesting because few people have the same instinctive reaction to both cases.

But I'm one of them. I support marriage equality as passionately as I oppose affirmative action. I believe in formal civic equality of opportunity, not actual equality of results. Ilya Somin also points out that "people who oppose racial preferences in college admissions (the issue the Court will consider in Fisher v. University of Texas), while supporting gay marriage are far from unusual":

Recent polls show that about 50% of Americans support gay marriage, while many surveys indicate that some 60 to 70 percent of the public oppose racial preferences in college admissions (e.g. here and here). Even if we assume that some 80 to 90% of the 50% who do not support gay marriage also oppose affirmative action in admissions, that still means that about 15 to 20 percent of the public simultaneously opposes racial preferences and supports gay marriage.

For years, that position – the core underpinning of my book Virtually Normal – was regarded as eccentric. But the logic of equal opportunity is as solid for one as for the other. Eventually, people will see that. Some already are.

Jonathan Caulkins and Michael Lee explain:

[I]nefficiency stems from having to operate covertly. The precautions required to evade detection make the production of drugs very labor intensive. Grocery-store cashiers, for instance, are more than 100 times as productive as retail drug sellers in terms of items sold per labor hour. Similarly, hired hands working for crack dealers can fill about 100 vials per hour, whereas even older-model sugar-packing machines can fill between 500 and 1,000 sugar packets per minute. This labor intensity of drug production, combined with the high wages demanded for that labor, are what drive up the costs of drugs; by comparison, materials and supplies — glassine bags, gram balances, and even guns — are relatively cheap.

Humphreys adds:

Caulkins and Lee provide a useful comparison point to appreciate the impact of illegality on price: If cigarettes suffered the same legal disadvantage as cocaine and heroin, they would cost about $2,000 a pack. This is a stark illustration of how taxes on a legal drug could never even remotely raise prices as high as does illegality.

(Photo: A man shows a flower of the cannabis sativa plant in Montevideo on December 7, 2012. Lawmakers in Uruguay are studying a bill to legalize the cultivation of marijuana and allow limited personal consumption of it – which if passed, will have authorities controlling its quality and the amount used. With the bill, which is supported by President Jose Mujica, the government wants to end drug-related violent crime which in recent years has emerged for the first time in this sleepy nation sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil. ABy Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images)