Hard to put it better than the above image, via Greenwald, from the ACLU’s Kade Crockford. Yes, today is the anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s signing of the UN Convention Against Torture. The Obama administration’s refusal to investigate or prosecute anyone in the US government for war crimes is a violation of that Convention.
What Obama and Holder have done (or rather not done) is illegal.
I just searched for any mention of the nonpartisan Constitution Project Report which found categorical proof of a systematic torture program under Bush and Cheney – without reservation. The authors included a rock-ribbed Republican like Asa Hutchinson. I searched National Review, the Weekly Standard and all of AEI, an organization that calls itself conservative while employing a key architect and defender of the torture program, Marc Thiessen.
Nothing. If any reader can find a conservative media outlet tackling the report, please let me know if I have missed anything.
You can see more still photos of the actual suspects in the Boston bombings here.
“While Ms. Giffords certainly has my sympathy for the violence she suffered, it should be noted that being shot in the head by a lunatic does not give one any special grace to pronounce upon public-policy questions, nor does it give one moral license to call people “cowards” for holding public-policy views at variance with one’s own. Her childish display in the New York Times is an embarrassment,” – Kevin Williamson, NRO.
Was this childish?
Adam Kirsch marvels at the just-published diary of the concentration camp survivor, Helga Weiss. Kirsch writes that some “of the most heartbreaking writing in the book comes in Helga’s description of the slow decimation of her class, as first one Jewish child and then another gets selected for transportation”:
No one knows where they are going, or whether they will ever return: As each family is called, friends and relatives help them pack their belongings and cook food for a journey whose end none of them know. Helga’s best friend Eva is preoccupied with deciding which of her dolls to take with her: “Eva will carry the dolls themselves in the pocket of her coat, in their own sleeping bags and clothing with transport numbers. What if the handbag were to get lost? Then at least the dolls would be saved.”
@joshtpm Reddit found a picture of suspect 2: i.imgur.com/NFPlOCI.jpg (Turning the corner on Fairfield)
— Ryan Hurst (@captainhurst) April 18, 2013
A reader writes:
I’m watching the FBI briefing with the photos of the two bombing suspects and it struck me that this is a job for the VFYW contest devotees. The black hat on the one suspect seems very distinctive. Can you put your readers to work to identify that hat and pass it on to the proper authorities?
The Reuters obit has been online for XX minutes now. reuters.com/article/2013/0…
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) April 18, 2013
Reinhart and Rogoff provide a detailed response in WSJ, acknowledging the Excel mistake but downplaying the other criticisms. Justin Fox identifies a deeper problem with macroeconomics in general:
This is watching the sausage of macroeconomics being made. It’s not appetizing. Seemingly small choices in how to handle the data deliver dramatically different results. And it’s not hard to see why: The Reinhart-Rogoff data set, according to Herndon-Ash-Pollin’s analysis, contained just 110 “country-years” of debt/GDP over 90%, and 63 of those come from just three countries: Belgium, Greece, and the UK.
This is a problem inherent to macroeconomics. It’s not like an experiment that one can run multiple times, or observations that can be compared across millions of individuals or even hundreds of corporations. In the words attributed to economist Paul Samuelson, “We have but one sample of history.” And it’s just not a very big sample.
Free Exchange weighs in:
The latest dust-up does nothing to answer the question of causation. Slower GDP growth could be the cause of a rising debt load rather than the result. Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff acknowledge in their academic work that this conundrum “has not been fully resolved”, but have sometimes been less careful in media articles. This is perhaps their biggest mistake. The relationship between debt and growth is a politically charged issue. It is in these areas that economists must keep the most rigorous standards.
On that point, Yglesias unpacks Arindrajit Dube’s analysis, which argues that low growth causes debt more than debt causes low growth. Previous Dish on the R&R paper here and here.
Alyssa Rosenberg and Travis Waldron discuss 42, the new film about Jackie Robinson. Both were disappointed by the movie, but Alyssa praises the film for spotlighting “the economics of bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues”:
Rickey (Harrison Ford, overacting so dramatically I’m amazed he isn’t sponsored by the ham council) tells his assistant Harold at the beginning of the movie. “Dollars aren’t black and white. They’re green.”
When a gas station attendant refuses Robinson access to the toilet when his Negro League team is on the Deep South, Robinson blackmails him into desegregating it by suggesting the team can buy its gas elsewhere. “Jack, is this about politics?” a white reporter asks him at his first spring training. “It’s about getting paid,” Jackie (Chadwick Boseman, who might have had a star turn with a better script) tells him. “I’m in the baseball business,” Rickey tells Robinson at a later point. “With you and the other black players I hope to bring up next year, I can build a team that can win the World Series. And a World Series means money.”
Dodgers manager Leo Durocher (a fantastic Christopher Meloni) lectures his players, some of whom oppose the idea of playing with Robinson, “I’ll play an elephant if it’ll help us win…We’re playing for money, here. Winning is the only thing that matters.” Durocher himself is suspended from baseball when the Catholic Youth Organization threatens to boycott the league over his affair with a married actress. Even the racist manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Ben Chapman (a very strong Alan Tudyk) recognizes the economic imperatives, taunting Robinson at the plate “You’re here to get the nigger dollars for Rickey at the gate.”
That economic imperative story is interesting, and it’s important—and it’s a critical reminder that the decision to desegregate baseball wasn’t simply done out of the goodness of Branch Rickey’s heart.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Salinas v. Texas this week, in which Genovevo Salinas’ refusal to answer a question during interrogation was used as evidence of his guilt during trial. Dominic Perella explains the ramifications:
The jury convicted Salinas, and the question now is whether the prosecution went too far. The answer turns on what the Fifth Amendment means. That amendment–the basis for the famous Miranda warnings–says that “[n]o person… shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” But what does it mean to be “compelled”? … [P]rosecutors can’t tell the jury that it suggests guilt when a defendant decides not to testify at trial. That would be “compelling” the defendant to give evidence against himself, the court has explained, because the defendant is being punished for remaining silent.
That is the basis for Salinas’ appeal. This case is no different from silence at trial, his lawyers say, because Salinas was punished for exercising his right not to incriminate himself, and that kind of punishment compels defendants to talk. And, his lawyers have pointed out in court filings, a ruling against Salinas could change police practices nationwide. If what the police did in Salinas’ case is constitutional, they wrote, then police in all investigations “will have an incentive” to convince suspects to talk by telling them “that any silence could be used against them at trial.”
Lyle Denniston tries to read the tea leaves:
If the sentiment that seems to run high in a Supreme Court hearing dictated how a case would come out, the Justices might well be on their way to declaring that the Constitution forbids prosecutors from telling juries that a suspect’s silence when talking to police in any criminal investigation means he is guilty. The argument Wednesday in Salinas v. Texas (12-246) showed the appeal of treating silence in response to police questions as too ambiguous to be allowed as proof of guilt.
But some hesitancy set in here and there, because several of the Justices were puzzled about how to write a new Fifth Amendment opinion that actually would work to protect the right against self-incrimination when a suspect meets with police, without being arrested or further detained and before “Miranda warnings” are required or given.
Robin Hagan Cain worries that upholding Salinas’ conviction will make interrogations more difficult:
If a majority finds a suspect’s pre-arrest silence can be offered against him, wouldn’t the ruling ultimately backfire on law enforcement officers? Wouldn’t people hauled before the police refuse to answer all questions, rather than refusing to answer only certain questions? Granted, there would be more convictions initially as news of the ruling trickled through the Interwebs, but suspects would start to catch on after a few seasons of Law & Order perps parroting “Am I under arrest? Am I free to go?”
The Dish 