Author: Andrew Sullivan

E.D. Kain seconds Timothy Lee:

If there was ever an item so ripe for liberal-libertarian cooperation, this is it. Really, this strikes me as a human concern, and one which members of whatever political stripe should be up in arms over. Whether there is much that can be done to repair the damage already wrought on American cities is another question.

Haifa, Israel, 10 am

A reader writes:

I completely agree with you on the importance of this issue and the discredit that the lack of inquiry places on the journalistic profession. However, I cannot agree with your recent suggestion (not the first time) that the story may boil down to a simple exaggeration of the facts of the "wild ride."

While it is certain that her tale is not credible, it is not just the wild ride aspect of the story that raises eyebrows; this has to be taken in the context of all the other things that don't add up about her story. The lack of a pregnant physique, and then the impossibly-morphing body shapes. The fact that no one knew. The timing of the announcement. The odd story of the too-early amniocentesis. The disappearance of Bristol, her pregnant appearance and substantiated claims that she was pregnant in 2007. The lack of any documentation whatsoever of the birth. The changing details. The fact that neither the doctor, nor the hospital, were qualified and certified to perform this high-risk delivery, known to have at least 6 high-risk factors — and neither ever verified the birth story. The odd discrepancies in the letter released by the McCain-Palin campaign late on election eve. The inability of ADN to disprove the rumors, despite trying. Sarah's long history of lying. Heather Bruce's confirmation that Bristol lived with her while pregnant, which had to be earlier than the pregnancy with Tripp.

And this is not all! This is a preponderance of credible evidence that the story is a lie. As the would-be whistleblower on Bernie Madoff said (paraphrasing), "there was no smoking gun, but too many things just didn't add up." That is the hallmark of a hoax.

I think this series of facts is telling. It's what has dragged me back into this again and again. But without any hard evidence, I do think we have reached an impasse here. I am glad to have aired all this in ways others haven't. But the task is now up to reporters, not bloggers like me. All I can do is not hide my own skepticism.

And one thing about "reputation", "ethics", etc. I have not written a column on this in the Atlantic or the Sunday Times, because I don't have the facts to back up any substantive alternative theory to Palin's story-line. But on a blog, I take the responsibility seriously not to bullshit my readers, not to adopt a professional persona that obscures my real-time thoughts. I think a blog exists to air things you cannot nail down in a more formal journalistic context. And I think many of my critics do not get or simply disagree with this understanding of the relationship of blogging to journalism.

All I can say is that this is my understanding of the place of blogging – a conversation where nothing is forbidden, a zone of truly free speech, exercized responsibly, but open to any and all views and theories and questions. I don't think I'm partisan on this. Elena Kagan can testify to that.

I don't believe Palin's current story. But since I don't have the facts and sources to construct an alternative, my task is now over. I will stay vigilant for any and all new facts that we may get; and I sure won't let this go if more comes to light. But we're going around in circles now.

Lori Fradkin explains it:

The job has its perks—an accumulation of random knowledge, for instance—but it also has its side effects when you unintentionally drink the copy Kool-Aid. Once you train yourself to spot errors, you can’t not spot them. You can’t simply shut off the careful reading when you leave the office. You notice typos in novels, missing words in other magazines, incorrect punctuation on billboards. You have nightmares that your oversight turned Mayor Bloomberg into a "pubic" figure. You walk by a beauty salon the morning after you had sex for the first time with a guy you’ve been seeing and point out that there’s no such thing as “lazer” hair removal, realizing that this may not be the best way to get to have sex with him again.

Texas In Africa is on the verge of pulling out her hair.

A reader writes:

The two cases from Israeli law discussed in this Haaretz article look like this: A man said he was a neurosurgeon.  Woman slept with him based on that. He wasn't.  Conviction. A man said he was a housing ministry official and would help them get better apartments.  He wasn't, and he didn't.  Conviction.  Both men were Israeli Jews. 

I'd say that lying about your job is basically on par with lying about your race or religion. While I don't doubt that there was a race/religion component to the prosecution, and while I very much think this kind of law is (practically speaking) a bad idea, Israeli courts first applied this theory of law to Jews who lied about their jobs.  It's consistent with the law as stated, which is simply that if the misrepresentation is material to the decision to have sex with someone, then it constitutes rape-by-fraud.  (For what it's worth, I don't think it was reflexive antipathy on your part, just a lack of information.)

Another writes:

Your dissenting reader is mistaken.  Nowhere in this BBC article does the complaint filed by the claimant indicate that the alleged perpetrator said he was Jewish.  He had a name that was consonant with a Jewish name.  Nowhere in the claim does the defendant indicate that she asked his religious status and he told her a lie. Quite simply, this woman assumed the man was Jewish, never asked, and he assumed it wasn't a problem because at no time had she indicated to him that being of Arab descent would be a problem.

This might actually be rape by deception if deception had occurred.  But none did. 

I am a feminist and am among the most vociferous when it comes to attacking real rape, and real cases of deception in order to obtain uninformed consent.  But, by all available accounts, nothing of the sort occurred.  Should new information surface, I'd change my mind.  But at the present state of affairs, the only information available indicates that a man and a woman engaged in sexual relations under all the required conditions of consent, and only later, when the woman discovered she had failed to ask the right questions, she decided to use the force of Israeli law to punish the man.

Another:

Do you think the Israeli court would have ruled the same way if the man lied to the woman by telling her that he was in love with her and the woman relied on that affirmation of love? What if he said he had a job and the woman had a policy against sleeping with jobless men? Men say and do things to deceive women into sleeping with them all the time.

I'm Jewish. I have family members who don't date non-Jews, let alone sleep with them. Nevertheless, jail time strikes me as being an extreme punishment for a common offense – lying one's way into a woman's pants.

A reader writes:

Just thought I'd share a little story about the View From Your Window contest I thought you'd enjoy. My friends and I have turned it into a league similar to a fantasy baseball – a Fantasy VFYW league of sorts.  We ran it as a four week season starting with the week you posted a Honolulu window view.  Each week, we have to guess the location and we've kept track of who is the cumulative closest or farthest.  The trash talking has been intense!

What prompted me to write was that this last window view was as dramatic as a Final Four. 

Let me paint a picture: going into the week, in our seven person league, my friend was in the lead at 7,986 miles with Mazatlan (Honolulu), St. Petersburg (Tromso), and Colombo, Sri Lanka (Dar Es Salaam).  I was second at 10,627 with Tunis, Tunisia (Honolulu), Tromso (Tromso), and N'Djamena, Chad (Dar Es Salaam).  I picked Dili, East Timor on the last one, which would have meant I nailed 2 out of 4.  But my friend picked Phnom Penh, Cambodia, close enough to East Timor (1,986 miles) to make it geographically impossible for me to win (a move hereafter referred to as being "price is righted").  So yesterday, I changed my pick to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to give myself a chance.  This morning, my inbox exploded after Dili was the actual.  It has been pointed out that at 11,044 away I am within 1000 miles of being at the polar opposite point of the globe from East Timor.  Ridiculous.

Keep them coming – season two of the league starts up next week!

Next one up at noon.

A new service: Rent A Friend.

Brendan Koerner delivers the sad news:

Despite all we've learned about human psychology over the past several decades, we seem unable to make much of a dent in America's overall suicide rate, which has remained remarkably stable over the past half-century. In fact, the rate of suicide attempts seems to have gone up over that time period; the rate of successful attempts has most likely held steady due to advances in emergency-room medicine. (Sparsely populated states such as Montana often have high suicide rates because people live so far from ERs.)