Year: 2013

They demurred on prosecuting war criminals (hey, they’re all government buddies and what’s a few prisoners tortured to death among friends?), but they sure as hell hounded Aaron Swartz to his death. It really speaks to how justice is so often these days a weapon of the powerful, not a defense for the powerless. The petition to hold Carmen Ortiz accountable for her bullying has now reached 38,000. Pleasesign it – and let the Obama administration know that this attack on dissemination of academic information is not acceptable. The best piece I’ve read so far on this isClive Crook’s at the Atlantic. Money quote:

As a foreigner, I’m surprised that Americans aren’t more alarmed by the workings of their criminal justice system. I don’t know what ought to scare me more about living in the United States–that I might be the victim of a crime (which happens), or that this ferocious prosecutorial system might one day turn its wrath on me. I’d rather be mugged than threatened with years in jail for something I didn’t even know was a crime. Is this justice system actually on my side? I’m by no means sure–an astounding state of affairs.

At a conference I attended recently, I vented my preoccupation with rogue prosecutors, an ever-proliferating criminal law and the vanishing rights of the accused on a fellow attendee–a lawyer and former prosecutor. When I’d said my piece she said, “But you have to remember that nearly all of the people who are prosecuted are guilty.” For half a second I thought she was joking and I started to laugh. But she wasn’t joking.

Neither was Carmen Ortiz. But she got her victim in the end, hanging from a ceiling. We cannot bring Swartz back to life, but a California legislator plans to introduce a bill in the next Congress:

In a bill called “Aaron’s Law,” Zoe Lofgren aims to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which Massachusetts prosecutors used to charge Swartz with over 30 years in prison. Swartz’s family has accused the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office with hounding the young activist over what they call a “victimless crime.” Specifically, Lofrgen’s bill would amend the existing law to distinguish between a terms of service violation and a federal data theft crime. “Lofgren’s bill is a good start,” Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig told TIME in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

Lessig eulogized Swartz at the funeral Tuesday. Like many of Swartz’s friends, Lessig hopes that something positive will come out of the young programmer’s passing, he said. “The CFAA was the hook for the government’s bullying,” Lessig wrote on Reddit, the hugely popular Internet activist hub that Swartz helped launch. “This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract. Let’s get this done for Aaron — now.” (Read Lofgren’s billhere.)

And let your representative and Senator know how you feel. You’re one of the more powerful collective voices on the web. Let them hear from you – for Aaron, his loved ones, his Reddit followers, and all who can and will follow his example.

(Photo: Family and friends watch as the casket of Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder and Internet activist, is moved into a waiting hearse during his funeral Tuesday, January 15, 2013, at North Suburban Lubavitch Chabad Central Avenue Synagogue in Chicago, Illinois. By Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/MCT via Getty Images.)

Stacy Lambe compiles “the 12 sexiest beards of Canada” from Toronto’s FAB magazine. My personal fave after the jump:

 

Almost as hot as my hubby’s.

Pew found a majority of Americans under thirty don’t know that Roe v. Wade was about abortion:

E.J. Graff puts these numbers in perspective:

The young’uns may not know Roe v. Wade by name—but they know that their bodies are their own. If it comes to a new battle, they’ll fight for it again. They might not have to, given the widening available of medical abortion (as opposed to surgical abortion—in other words, terminating a pregnancy by taking abortifacient medicines rather than having it scraped out of the body).

They won’t be fighting over the term “choice,” however. The movement is undertaking a rebranding, shifting to the idea that none of us should decide for anyone until we have walked in her shoes—reminding us that these aren’t casual decisions but profound decisions made in an incredible array of circumstances. The term “choice” has gotten contaminated with the idea that it’s as easy to decide whether to have a child as, say, whether to have a salad. (To my shock, Katie Roiphe has an excellent riff on this over at Slate, suggesting that we take up the slogan “pro-freedom.” I kinda love the Ayn Randianness of it.)

Bouie expects that the abortion debate will always be with us:

For as much as the public has moved on same-sex marriage and marijuana, it remains static on abortion, even as it grows more tolerant and secular. It’s not hard to understand why. Fundamental issues are at stake in the abortion debate: The autonomy of women, the value of life, and what to do when the two conflict. There’s no way to resolve these disputes in a diverse, pluralistic society, and as such, odds are good that we’ll always have political conflict over abortion.

I agree. I think we may become more acutely aware of the moral gravity of abortion as technology advances. And yet I cannot see in the end our increasingly libertarian culture allowing the government power over women’s bodies. I struggle with this a lot, even though I’m the last person on earth ever to have to deal with this personally. But I do believe that the pro-life movement would b more successful if it focused not on using the law to coerce, but the culture to persuade. And I think the Catholic hierarchy will fail to win over anyone until they abandon their absurd opposition to contraception in the modern world.

A reader writes:

The NRA’s advertisement seems to rile up the base by suggesting that Obama thinks his children are more important than others, and thus he guards them.  Well, setting aside that Obama didn’t set up those armed guards for the moment, I think it’s worth noting that Sasha and Malia ARE more important than other children … and not because they are the daughters of a rich person, but rather because they are the daughters of an influential person.

For much the same reason as, say, a director of a spy agency shouldn’t have a secret affair because if that kind of information fell into the wrongs hands, such a spy agency director might put his personal life before national security, the daughters of a President have to be protected because a) they will be targets, and b) it’s of national interest that the President keep his focus on the national good and not his family. If some “bad guy” were to get his hands on the Obama daughters, Obama’s interests might not be aligned with the nations, and by the fact that the bad guy has the power to change the course of the nation.

Or as another puts it, “While I love my child with all of my heart, I am not hated by 40+% of the country, so my child has a lower point of risk if some wacko wants to hurt him in order to hurt me.” Another:

Your readers who defend the NRA ad by pointing out that wealthy private schools (including Sidwell Friends) have armed guards [a claimdebunked by a reader] are missing the point. Yes, those schools are much more secure than most, and have been long before this tragedy, but that is to be expected for students who are more likely to be targeted for their influential parents. More importantly, it is the parents, not taxpayers, paying for that security. This is capitalism, not elitism.

Another reader specifies that “tuition at Sidwell is between $33,268 and $34,268, depending on grade level, while the public school system pays on average $10,694per student.” Another:

If the NRA were proposing to establish an endowment to support putting a “Special Police Officer” in each of the nearly 100,000 public schools in the US (at a cost on approximately 10 billion dollars), objections to their ad would not be nearly as strong.  But the reality is that either taxpayers will pay more (if NRA ally Grover Noquist allows it) or other programs will get cut, or educators will be asked to double as guards.  Someone pays for the costs of protecting children against the misuse of guns, but it’s not gun owners, or gun manufacturers.

On that note:

The NRA is on to something. Let’s use Sidwell Friends School as a model for the nation. All children should have access to the same security and quality education the elitist give their children. Pay for it by taxing ammunition.

Party identification since September 2012:

This is the kind of reader email that says more than any professional writer could ever hope to express. Yes, it’s on gun control. But it’s also about the human soul and the damage that tens of thousands of deaths can do – far beyond the actual victims.

Joseph Stromberg showcases a new method of detecting bacterial infections in the lungs:

[Researchers from the University of Vermont] focused on analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in mouse breath to distinguish between different strains of bacteria that were infecting the animals’ lungs. They hypothesized that these bacteria produce VOCs not normally present in the lungs, thus allowing their test to differentiate between a healthy animal and a sick one … Their test was a success: There was a significant difference between the chemical signatures of healthy and infected mouse breath, and their test was even able to indicate which type of bacteria were the source of the infection.

Obama’s approval/disapproval numbers since last September.

Theda Skocpol took an extremely close look (pdf) at what went wrong during efforts to develop cap-and-trade legislation in 2009 and 2010. Philip Bump summarizes:

Skocpol’s thesis for why cap-and-trade failed can be simplified to a few points: failed organizing efforts by advocates for the policy, an attempt to craft legislation behind closed doors at a moment that demanded transparency, and (of course) massive shifts in public opinion due to the concerted efforts of opponents of action.

David Roberts chimes in:

I couldn’t help smiling when, after sifting through various post-mortems on the cap-and-trade battle, Skocpol concluded that “each player tended to blame others and conclude that whatever approach he/she/it favored all along would be the best one to double-down on moving forward.”

So true. That’s a perpetual danger in these kinds of retrospectives (a danger to which Skocpol is as vulnerable as anyone). The cap-and-trade battle is like the fabled elephant and the blind men. Everyone came to it from a different perspective, saw different things, and learned different lessons. The way it looked to a Waxman staffer is very different from how it looked to an oil executive or an enviro leader. Looking back, it’s easy to project whatever you want to see onto it. Many people have.

James Wolcott connected himself to an array of self-tracking gear, including one that coaches you through the stress of modern life:

Along with my digital wristbands, I am packing an emWave2 pocket-size Personal Stress Reliever, which, through an earlobe attachment or thumb sensor, measures heart-rate variability (H.R.V.) and doubles as a biofeedback meditation assistant. By breathing in unison with a climbing and descending column of illuminated beads and thinking happy thoughts of ballerinas, I seek to raise my coherence level from red (low) to blue (medium) to green (high), achieving a steady-state flow of relaxed awareness that will undulate through the day, until somebody annoying calls. It’s like a mood ring for the heart. I practice with the emWave2 five minutes at a stretch, because any longer than that and its beeps begin to bug me and drop me into the red zone, which defeats the purpose.