Author: Andrew Sullivan

The Red Tape Around Abortion

Elizabeth Nolan Brown discusses the significance of a 72-hour waiting period for abortion:

In effect, waiting-period rules like the one Missouri Republicans are pushing just make it logistically harder for women to exercise their right to an abortion. Yesterday I wrote about a Pennsylvania woman who ordered the abortion pill illegally online because the nearest clinic was more than 70 miles away. Some on social media scoffed at the idea that 70 miles was too far to travel—but because of mandatory waiting periods and other bureaucratic nonsense, what could be a one- or two-visit procedure actually requires three or four separate visits.

This is why it’s such bullshit when anti-abortion types talk about how it’s just an extra day or two wait; it’s just a requirement that only a physician can physically hand a woman the abortion pill; it’s just one or two clinics that will close down due to hospitals refusing admitting-privileges to abortion doctors… Taken individually, none of the restrictions may seem that nefarious. But these restrictions don’t exist in a vacuum. And the cumulative effect is absolutely to create a climate where the time and capital required to terminate a pregnancy becomes prohibitive for large numbers of women.

Emily Shire, meanwhile, is uncomfortable with differentiating between “good” and “bad” abortions:

When female politicians like Davis describe their abortions, they generally fit this narrative: a tortured, loving mother acting out of almost pure medical necessity. After Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) revealed on the House floor that she’d had an abortion, she made it abundantly clear that it was due to the fact the fetus “could not survive.” Her candor was a purposeful rebuke to Republican accusations that abortion is “a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly, or done without any thought,” she said. Her speech was powerful—and it also conveyed the attitude that abortion wasn’t a real choice for her. In fact, following her speech, Speier released a press statement to dispel any accusations that she wanted to have an abortion: “Today some news reports are implying that I wanted my pregnancy to end, but that is simply not true. I lost my baby.”

It is this kind of abortion narrative that is easiest for people to digest, and there are many cases like this. They are as emotionally-wrought and heartbreaking as Davis describes. But there are also many reasons for having abortions that generate far more judgment and stigma.

Recent Dish on Wendy Davis’ abortion revelation here.

Face Of The Day

IRAQ-US-DIPLOMACY-KERRY

US Secretary of State John Kerry waits in a helicopter in Baghdad on September 10, 2014. Kerry flew into Iraq today for talks with its new leaders on their role in a long-awaited new strategy against Islamic State jihadists to be unveiled by President Barack Obama tonight. By Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

Only Thinking About Their Bottom Lines

The NYT recently reported that several think tanks have “received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities”:

The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.

Tom Medvetz asks, “How can journalists report on think tanks without becoming complicit in this system?”

First, they could approach the commonsense distinction between “policy advice” and lobbying with a bit less credulity. Why should any tax-exempt organization that doesn’t voluntarily disclose its own financial records be described as a source of “independent policy advice”? Reporters could also stop lending credence to the dubious metaphor that portrays think tanks as founts of “academic scholarship.” (Again, the Times article is a case in point: Even as the authors paint a vivid picture of a constitutively impure system, they insist on calling think tanks’ staff members “scholars.”) I don’t mean to suggest that actually existing scholars are somehow immune to market or political forces. They are not, and they should be subject to the same kinds of scrutiny as think tanks. But we should remember that scholarship refers in principle to a system marked by relative transparency and self-regulation through peer review, and that its results are not meant to be for sale.

John B. Judis remembers the good ol’ days:

Some history is in order for those who think it has always been that way. The first policy groups, which originated early in the last century and only later became called “think tanks,” included the Brookings Institution (which was formed out of three other policy groups), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation). They were products of the Progressive Era idea of using social science to produce policy research that, in the words of Robert Brookings, would be “free from any political or pecuniary interest.”

Andrew Carnegie gave his think tank an endowment of $10 million in order to free it from having to raise money. Brookings, who had retired from business to devote himself to philanthropy, generously funded his. The scholars at these groups had definite ideas, but the groups resisted attempts by outside group to shape their conclusions.

Inside The Mind Of A “Jihadi Tourist”

https://twitter.com/LifeofMujahid/statuses/485452312228675585

Michael Muhammad Knight almost became one in Chechnya. He describes what motivated him to go and what ultimately held him back:

For me, wanting to go to Chechnya wasn’t reducible to my “Muslim rage” or “hatred for the West.” This may be hard to believe, but I thought about the war in terms of compassion. Like so many Americans moved by their love of country to serve in the armed forces, I yearned to fight oppression and protect the safety and dignity of others. I believed that this world was in bad shape. I placed my faith in somewhat magical solutions claiming that the world could be fixed by a renewal of authentic Islam and a truly Islamic system of government. But I also believed that working toward justice was more valuable than my own life.

Eventually, I decided to stay in Islamabad. And the people who eventually convinced me not to fight weren’t the kinds of Muslims propped up in the media as liberal, West-friendly reformers. They were deeply conservative; some would call them “intolerant.” In the same learning environment in which I was told that my non-Muslim mother would burn in eternal hellfire, I was also told that I could achieve more good in the world as a scholar than as a soldier, and that I should strive to be more than a body in a ditch. These traditionalists reminded me of Muhammad’s statement that the ink of scholars was holier than the blood of martyrs.

The Trail Of Tear Gas

Yiannis Baboulias looks at the market for tear gas:

‘Non-lethal technologies’ are in demand, and governments are spoilt for choice. If you have been gassed in Egypt, Palestine or America, it was most likely with Combined Systems products made in the US. The Bahrainis use French tear gas. The Greek police is supplied by five different companies from all over the world; the canisters I have seen in use were made by Condor in Brazil. Tear gas is the perfect tool for governments increasingly inclined to look on the public as a potential source of disturbance, rather than the source of their democratic mandate. An independent study earlier this year estimated that the market is currently worth $1.6 billion.

He describes his own experience of the chemicals:

As soon as a canister explodes in your vicinity, your skin starts burning. It becomes hard to breathe because you’re producing so much mucus, your eyes shut involuntarily and it feels as if your head is about to melt. The canister itself is dangerous. It gets hot as the CS [2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, the most common type of tear gas], solid in the unopened canister, is turned into an aerosol; touch it without heavy-duty gloves, and it can burn. Prolonged exposure causes severe respiratory problems and heart attacks; it can cause pregnant women to miscarry and can kill people who suffer from asthma and other bronchial problems.

In Rush To War, No Time For The Law, Ctd

Allahpundit despairs at how many members of Congress are eager to sidestep a vote on a war with ISIS. If they don’t exert some control over this process now, he warns, they’re not any more likely to do so if and when our military commitment starts to snowball:

What’s important is keeping Congress as politically comfortable as possible, and the less power they retain, the easier that becomes. Some members justify their deference to O in terms of the assets he plans to use: Bernie Sanders told the NYT he’s okay with letting Obama bomb who he wants as long as ground troops aren’t sent in, the key distinction being … I don’t know. I guess the president has inherent authority to put airmen’s lives at risk but not infantry’s? Does that make any sense? … They’re not going to cut the money off once men are in harm’s way. And they’re certainly not going to vote on an AUMF later, as Sanders’s airstrikes-yes-infantry-no formulation seems to imagine. Once they’ve allowed Obama to wage war unilaterally from the air, it’s the easiest thing in the world to let him wage war unilaterally on the ground too. If anything, Congress will be even more eager to have its fingerprints off of ground operations.

Cody Poplin compares the several proposed AUMFs currently being circulated on Capitol Hill. But their authors might just be wasting paper, as Obama is signaling that he already has all the permission he needs. Matt Welch cuts him no slack for flouting the Constitution:

In last year’s run-up to what once seemed like inevitable war against Syria, the president made what can be interpreted as an incoherent claim: that he had enough legal cover to start bombing Syria, but that he would nonetheless seek congressional approval. When that approval was not forthcoming, the president decided on a diplomatic solution instead. But note how he treated the congressional-authorization question one year ago today:

[E]ven though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress. I believe our democracy is stronger when the President acts with the support of Congress. And I believe that America acts more effectively abroad when we stand together.

So either the president no longer believes these things, or he finds such beliefs to be an untenable hindrance in the waging of his latest war. At any rate, as in his more blatant nose-thumbing of Congress over U.S.-led regime change in Libya, Obama’s position on the constitutionality of war is essentially the opposite of what it was when he first sought the presidency.

But of course, as Steven Mihm points out, the American tradition of presidents going to war without explicit Congressional authorization goes all the way back to George Washington:

Washington sought “buy in” to go after the Indian tribes that began attacking white settlers on the western frontier in the late 1780s. Like the Islamic State today, they posed a threat that was at once amorphous, hard to reach, and even harder to combat. The Miami and Shawnee tribes of the Ohio River Valley had scalped and murdered settlers, stolen livestock and taken civilians captive. In 1789, Washington dutifully went to Congress, and warned lawmakers that it might be necessary to “punish aggressors” on the western frontier. Congress, preoccupied by other matters, declared that it wouldn’t “hesitate to concur in such further measures” that Washington had in mind. No formal vote authorizing war was held.

Meanwhile, Josh Rogin and Tim Mak note that the $5 billion Counterterrorism Partnership Fund Obama first proposed in May is back in play:

Several top Democratic and Republican senators told The Daily Beast on Friday that the administration has given Congress zero details about the proposed fund and consultations have been next to nonexistent. But Democrats said that was perfectly fine with them. “I support doing what we need to do to defeat ISIS,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez told The Daily Beast when asked about the fund. Senate appropriators are already preparing to hand Obama the $5 billion. The draft of the defense appropriations bill would give the Pentagon $4 billion of the funds. The draft of the State Department and foreign operations appropriations bill contains the other $1 billion. All the money would be classified as war funding in the overseas contingency operations part of the defense budget.

The Premium Slowdown Continues

Premiums

This is welcome news:

On Wednesday, the Kaiser Family Foundation published its annual survey on the health plans that employers are offering their workers. It’s large and comprehensive and generally regarded as the most reliable measure of what’s happening in the employer market.

The big finding is that the growth in health insurance premiums was only 3 percent between 2013 and 2014. That’s tied for the lowest rate of increase since Kaiser started measuring (this is the 16th year of the survey).

Cohn unpacks the survey:

Critics of the Affordable Care Act insisted it would cause employers to jack up premiums. There’s no evidence of that happening.

And of course this data is consistent with all the other recent data we’ve gotten on health care spending under Obamacare. National health care spending, the amount of money we spend as a country, is rising at historically low rates. Premiums inside the new Obamacare exchanges, where people buy insurance on their own, are generally rising at moderate rates and in some cases declining, which is highly unusual.

It’s hard to say exactly how much Obamacare has to do with these changes. But it makes the critics’ arguments look awfully shaky.

Drum chips in his two cents:

How long will this slowdown in health care inflation last? My guess is that it’s more or less permanent. It will vary a bit from year to year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit 3-4 points above the general inflation rate in some years. But the downward trend has been in place for three decades now, and that’s long enough to suggest that it was the double-digit increases of the 80s and early 90s that were the outliers. Aside from those spikes, the current smaller increases are roughly similar to health care spending increases over the past half century.

Kliff explains “why, even with premiums rising slowly, it might not feel to workers they’re actually getting a better deal”:

Deductibles have grown 47 percent since 2009; 34 percent of workers are now enrolled in health insurance plans that have a deductible of $2,000 or higher. While premiums grow slowly, workers are essentially asked to spend money in other places with these rising deductibles.

Jason Millman also focuses on those increasing deductibles:

High-deductible plans are attractive to employers because they get to bear less of the insurance cost. Many economists also like the plans, because they’re supposed to make people spend more wisely on their health care.

The big question is whether employees are prepared to handle potentially big medical bills before they hit their deductible. As the The Upshot noted last week, people in employer insurance recently said they’re pretty happy with the services their health plans cover, but they’re much less satisfied with what they’re paying out of their own pockets.

The End Of Britain? Ctd

A reader responds to my take:

Well you may be indifferent to the Scots gaining independence, but in our family it’s Gilbert Johnstone Jr. pistolsabsolutely thrilling!  We were Jacobites who participated in the 1690, 1715 and 1745 rebellions.  We were at Culloden and the entire family had to flee to the Cape Fear River region in North Carolina after the battle.  They hid out at Brompton Plantation, which was owned by the Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston, a brother to my sixth great grandfather.  During the Revolution they were officers in the NC Militia, and then after the Tories burnt their home to the ground, they moved to South Carolina, where they fought a guerilla campaign with General Francis Marion (aka the Swamp Fox) against the English.  I have the pistols my gggggg-grandfather carried at Culloden and during the American Revolution next to my bed (photo attached).  To finally win independence and get from under the thumb of the English would be bloody brilliant and a long time coming!

Another takes a step back:

I am an agnostic on Scottish independence. I get the impulse; I get your possible acceptance. But how can anyone looking at our current world situation not be anything but appalled by the possible positive vote? If it passes, won’t every active independence movement – Quebec, Catalan Spain right away – get a boost? Doesn’t it give an easy way for Putin to insist that eastern Ukraine vote for the same? Wouldn’t it give a boost to parts of the U.S., particularly if Dems some time in the near future gain control of all levels of the federal government, that might start talking secession? As a true conservative (not tea-partier or corporatist), shouldn’t you be worried about the larger impact of a positive vote?

Yes, I can see those concerns. And that’s why I hope in my rational mind that they don’t secede. But given the existence of a separate nation, and given the peaceful, democratic manner in which this divorce could take place, I don’t see much of an analogy except for Catalonia. A reader notes:

More than 500,000 have actually signed up to participate in the V for Vote demonstration for Catalonia’s independence, with their IDs. And many, many more will come.

Another drills down into the Scottish question:

I wonder if the Scots might not end up shooting themselves in the foot? There’s a triumvirate of failures they are setting themselves up with:

1) I’m with the Betfair people. It’s easy to say “yes” to a pollster with no consequences, but much harder in a ballot box. I suspect a “no” vote is much the more likely.

2) If they do lose, they can’t come whining back to the table for a good 15 or 20 years.

3) They have, without thinking too much about it, aroused English nationalism, as you detected on your recent visits. I have always been mildly ticked off by the “West Lothian question”, as it used to be known: Scottish MPs voting on wholly English matters. However, since devolution and now with this independence debate, I am convinced that it is an injustice of titanic proportions on me and 53 million other English men and women who put up with Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs (the latter two to a lesser extent) having a say on matters that have no impact upon the people they represent. They can vote without personal consequence. The reverse would never be allowed.

As a natural Labour supporter, I can see that me and mine need the Scottish Labour vote to drive a left-of-centre agenda, but frankly, and you hit the nail on its head, all this self-serving “we want to be independent, but thanks England, we need you to bank-roll us,” has made me agree: “fuck ‘em”. I’m not sure I want them anymore. My public services are on their arse because of Tory cuts, yet Scotland’s flourish, not because of extraordinary financial management on the part of the Scots, but because my English pounds get spent disproportionately across the border. The Treasury reports that it spends £10,152 for every Scot. It spends £8,529 for every English man or woman. Here in the East Midlands where I live, it spends a miserly £8,118. It spends 25% more on a Scot than it spends on me. (See this linked pdf.)

What on earth is Scotland going to do without my money? I am completely convinced that if they do go their own way, Westminster will cave in and agree to bankroll them for years to come.

Whatever comes of this independence movement, one thing seems certain, and that is that they will lose a substantial amount of influence, either by becoming independent, or by the certainty that Scottish MPs must – must – be prevented from voting on wholly English matters. I might have to suffer a lifetime of damned old-Etonian, Oxbridge power and influence, but at least it’ll be English power and influence.

A final aside. I travel to the US a lot. About 20 years ago, when I first starting going to North America, I would take great pains to tell people I was British, or from the UK. Not anymore. I realised that in the last few years, I am English when asked. No conscious decision to change; I just did. I am more and more English and less and less British everyday.

All Dish coverage of Scottish independence here.

Genes And IQ: An Update

There’s not a huge debate about the heritability of IQ, but a huge amount of debate about how much intelligence can be tied to genes and how much to the environment. Alas, the science of this looks to be facing a very steep struggle to get anywhere – largely because so many genes may play a role and you need vast studies of human DNA to isolate or discover any of them. A new study of more than 126,000 people has made some incremental progress. Money quote from the authors:

Previously, using a genome-wide study in a sample of 18,000 individuals, we could not identify a single genetic variant associated with cognitive performance. Using the new proxy strategy, though, we identified three genetic variants associated with cognitive performance. As expected from the calculation, the effects of these variants on cognitive performance are tiny. A copy of each variant accounts for only 0.3 points on a standard IQ test (with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15). A person who inherits all six copies (note: one genetic variant has two copies) of increasing variants differs by 1.8 points compared to individual who inherits none. That’s a small difference.

What to make of this with respect to our cultural and political debate about genes and intelligence? For me, some relief that the area is so complex, and varied, and hard to decipher that we may have more time ahead before these things become more knowable, and thereby may avoid any of the worst social implications for longer than some of us feared. Also: we’re bound to come up with surprises that take us in different directions. So, in this study, they found that

a combination of genetic effect calculated from 60 education attainment-associated variants is correlated with memory and absence of dementia in an independent sample of almost 9,000 individuals. While it is premature to suggest the biological function of the genes identified, our additional analysis suggests that the genes are related to synaptic plasticity – the main mechanism in the brain for learning and memory.