Category: The Dish

Always Believe The Accuser?

Zerlina Maxwell makes the dubious argument that alleged rapists should be presumed guilty until proven innocent, at least in the court of public opinion:

We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation. This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system.

The accused would have a rough period. He might be suspended from his job; friends might defriend him on Facebook. In the case of Bill Cosby, we might have to stop watching his shows, consuming his books or buying tickets to his traveling stand-up routine. But false accusations are exceedingly rare, and errors can be undone by an investigation that clears the accused, especially if it is done quickly.

Freddie is aghast at Maxwell’s belief that public opinion is entirely separate from the judicial system and that such an attitude won’t lead to serious miscarriages of justice:

I find it particularly disturbing that, in a country with a long legacy of using spurious claims of sexual aggression as a weapon against black men, many of those who consider themselves the most committed opponents of racism are endorsing a deeply simplistic and idealistic notion of how the pursuit of justice actually happens in the non-ideal real world we live in. A brief consideration of American history will show you some examples of rape claims that were automatically believed, and the consequences are a terrible stain on our country.

When we talk about carceral feminism, this is what we mean:

allowing the great moral duty to oppose rape to allow us to develop credulous attitudes towards the police state. People keep insisting to me that this doesn’t happen, but how can Maxwell’s assumption of a necessarily impartial judicial system, unmoved by public opinion, represent anything else? We’re living through righteous, mass protests of an unchecked, deeply racist police system. That so many are failing to apply that analysis consistently and thoroughly is deeply discouraging. We owe support and attention to the victims of rape. Developing a false credulity to the notion of judicial impartiality does neither them nor the rest of us any favors.

McArdle piles on, adding that Maxwell’s “always believe” approach would actually result in making all rape victims less believable:

One cost of minimizing false negatives is to the false positives who get hurt. But another cost is to the credibility of all rape reports. People who responded to the problems with the Rolling Stone story by saying that this didn’t have anything to do with the real problem — the culture of rape on college campuses — were missing something important. Actually, two important things.

First, that deciding what to do in the face of these trade-offs between false positives and false negatives is actually a vital matter of public debate in all areas of policy, and this story cast important light on how those trade-offs may have been made outside of the public eye.

And second, that by declaring that this story, which just a week before was a grave matter demanding the urgent attention of the nation, somehow became trivial and irrelevant when it started to look as if it might be false, writers and activists were suggesting that they simply didn’t care about false positives. Which undercuts the very public trust they need to advance their cause.

Brendan O’Neill sees an emerging culture of credulity gone haywire:

If Erdely nodded along to Jackie’s story while robotically thinking “I believe,” she isn’t alone. Automatically and uncritically believing allegations of rape is all the rage today. Where for most of the Age of Enlightenment it was considered civilized to believe that those accused of a crime were innocent until proven guilty, now it appears the way to show that you are a good and caring person is to do pretty much the opposite. You should believe instantly the alleged victim’s every word, and by extension to believe instantly that the accused is guilty as hell.

So when Dylan Farrow claimed she was sexually abused as a child by Woody Allen, the meme “I Believe Dylan” spread like a pox across the internet. #IBelieveDylan trended on Twitter. At Indiewire, Melissa Silverstein said “There are a few fundamental beliefs that I hold, and one of them is that I believe women.” All women? All the time? Including, say, Condoleezza Rice when she said Saddam had loads of weapons of mass destruction?

This is silly. Women are just as capable as men of making stuff up.

But Maya Dusenbery, a former fact-checker, argues that it was the biases of journalism, not feminism or advocacy, that led Rolling Stone to do Jackie the tremendous disservice of not fact-checking her story:

One of the main purposes of fact-checking is to correct journalism’s bias toward a “good story” above all else. … [I]f Rolling Stone was so eager to keep Jackie’s story in the piece that they were ready to run it against her will, that suggests their willingness to bend their fact-checking standards may have had less to do with some feminist “sensitivity” to a survivor’s request and more to do with not wanting to risk losing a particularly shocking tale of a gang rape that would help their article go viral in the way it ultimately did.

I do not know if that’s the case — perhaps Rolling Stone genuinely, if very mistakenly, believed they were doing the right thing for the right reason — but I think it’s plausible, and I’d like to see all the journalists rushing to pontificate about how to do “good reporting” on sexual violence acknowledge the possibility that it was journalism’s bias towards a good story that’s to blame here. That in chasing the “perfect victim,” Rolling Stone pressured a traumatized rape survivor to tell her story, ditched their fact-checking standards, and then threw her under the bus when the account — totally predictably — was challenged.

But, of course, the one thing that journalism refuses to question is its own ability to reveal the truth. It clings fast to its central conceit: that it has no biases of its own, and if followed correctly, its standards and conventions are enough to magically correct our cultural biases and lead us to some “objective” truth — or at least get us closer than anything else will.

Quote For The Day II

“You can be for torture, but you can’t be for torture and then claim that it’s somehow inappropriately barbaric for ISIS to crucify the innocent. This report clearly shows that the CIA basically broke people’s feet and made them stand on them for days, repeatedly drowned/revived people, froze people to death, anally raped them, threatened to kill women and children, and did everything they could to break them; the report also makes it clear that they did this past the point where even the CIA felt they had any useful information. It was so bad that trained CIA operatives got choked up and cried when they saw it. These weren’t kale-loving hippies; these were CIA and special forces operatives and it was so intense they started crying. Many of these people were completely innocent; even the CIA admits they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The report makes all this very, very clear.

So like I said, you can be for torture. But if you are then you lose the right to call crucifixions barbarism. Because a thousand times out of a thousand, I’d rather be crucified than what the CIA did to dozens, possibly hundreds of people. Compared to the pain those people suffered, being crucified and getting to die after a few days would be a mercy,” – a Dish reader on a reddit discussion with someone who supports the use of torture.

The CIA’s Vicious Cycle

Henry Farrell fears it will only get worse:

[T]he CIA relies on relationships with a variety of people, and in particular with academics and people with semi-academic skills in a broader ecosystem of information. Many of these relationships are likely to be badly damaged by yesterday’s revelations. Academics will be less likely to want to talk to, or work with the CIA than before. Smart and idealistic young people will be less likely to sacrifice other opportunities to work for what is at best likely to seem a flawed and problematic organization.  …

[T]he CIA — like many organizations in difficult times — is likely to face social pressures that tend to reinforce its insularity. The parts of the organization that are most distant from the abuses, and most reliant on relationships with the outside world, are exactly the parts of the organization that are most likely to suffer, as they find that external actors (on whom they have previously relied) are unwilling to work with them any more. For similar reasons, the recruitment pool for the CIA (which has notoriously been far from diverse) is likely to shrink and become even less intellectually diverse than it is today.

Uber Comes Under Fire Abroad

Vlad Savov sums up this week’s bad news for the ride-share company:

In Madrid, a judge has ruled that Uber should cease all activities in Spain because its drivers are unregistered and thus act as unfair competition to existing taxi services. … Authorities in Thailand have reached a similar conclusion, deeming Uber’s operation of unlicensed and uninsured taxi services to be unlawful, and have also asked the company to cease business — at least until it starts using properly accredited drivers rather than private cars.

India has already instituted a ban on Uber in Delhi following the rape of a female passenger, but now the country is broadening its prohibition and advising all its state governments to enforce it. It specifically bans the use of web-based taxi-hailing apps, meaning the ban will have an impact on others beyond Uber, but the focus on the California company is intensifying with the Delhi Police “also exploring the issue of possible legal liability of the taxi service Uber in the crime committed,” according to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

To Jason Koebler, the incident in New Delhi demonstrates that Uber doesn’t care about riders’ safety:

Uber’s entry into in India show that the corporation’s sensibilities and values—that is, to crush existing taxi services and its tech savvy competitors like Lyft—haven’t changed a bit, even if some high-profile cases (like the​ time it called a several-hour abduction of a woman an “inefficient route”) in the US have forced the company to take a modicum of responsibility for its drivers. Now, we get at least a basic background check and nonsense like the “Safe Rides Fee” (which only exists in Canada and the​ US, according to the company).

But in developing countries, Uber is making the same mistakes with rider safety that it made in the United States. It’s treating these countries like the Wild West until it’s forced to change: “If [Uber] can bully its way in the US, and not care about law and regulations there, then it has absolutely nothing to worry about in India,” wrote o​ne internet commenter who claimed to have experience with the company there. “The law enforcement is weak, to say the least.”

But Danny Vinik blames the Indian authorities, not Uber:

Uber offers a new transportation option that offers users at least some ability to hold their drivers accountable for their actions. That doesn’t mean it’s a cure-all. In many cases, Uber’s ability to ensure the safety of its user will rely on the infrastructure already in place. Ultimately, improving that infrastructure is up to the local communities and officials, not Uber. That doesn’t mean Uber is blameless, but their cars offer one of the safest traveling experiences in India. At least the company has a background check system to speak of, and users have the ability to rate their drivers. With other transportation options—rickshaws or local taxis, for instance—that isn’t necessarily the case. Uber’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement. This brutal incident doesn’t change that.

And as Amanda Taub points out, Indian cities are often unsafe for women to get around in, whatever mode of transportation they choose:

I saw this effect firsthand during trips to India in the past year. Everyone had different advice for me about how to stay safe, which meant that in the aggregate I was warned against using every possible form of transportation. (Only use radio taxis, they’re safer, never use local taxis. Don’t use radio taxis, you don’t know who they’ll send, better to rely on these local taxi drivers, we know them. Don’t take autos during the nighttime. Don’t take autos during the daytime. Come with us in the auto, it’s safer than going on your own. Don’t walk, take a bicycle rickshaw from the train station. Don’t take bicycle rickshaws. Don’t take the train.)

Given the choice between taking all of that advice and never leaving my apartment, versus selectively ignoring it and getting on with my day, I chose the latter. But finding safe and reliable transportation where and when I needed it was still always a challenge. That challenge is of course far more significant for Indian women, who have to face it every day, usually without the resources that I had at my disposal.

That was the problem that Uber needed to solve. But the facts surrounding this alleged assault suggest that they have failed to do so.

Mallika Dutt expects the Uber ban to make that problem worse, not better:

The quick decision to ban Uber is important in that it sends a message to all companies operating in this space that they need to follow regulations with seriousness. However, it is already unsafe for women to get around in Delhi. The metro has separate compartments for women—but what do they do when they step off the train? That’s partly why Uber and other private cab companies are in demand in the first place. Decreasing access to multiple modes of alternative transportation for women is a short-term and limited solution. Rather than further limiting the options available to women, how about increasing women’s safety not only by enforcing regulations and providing safer modes of operation, but by also increasing the number of men who hold themselves and others accountable for their behavior and actions?

The way Leonid Bershidsky sees it, the incident “highlights one of the web-based car service’s biggest problems: In some places, there is little to distinguish it from the anarchic system it seeks to replace”:

Those who live in the U.S. and other rich countries find it hard to understand the near-irrelevance of Uber’s ride-sharing model in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Many countries in these regions have time-honored unregulated gypsy cab traditions. In Argentina and Uruguay, people call or text for a trucho. In Russian cities, if you raise your arm by the roadside, a car — almost never a licensed taxi — typically pulls up within minutes, unless it’s the dead of night.

His bottom line:

In emerging economies with shaky taxi regulation, Uber can’t be disruptive if it is as lax as the incumbents. Its offering can only be of value if it tries to be more like a traditional Western taxi service, obeying strict rules and convincingly projecting an image of safety and reliability. That is something it isn’t equipped to do now.

Remember When They Opposed War In Iraq?

What a difference a decade makes. As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday finally began debating an authorization for the ongoing war against ISIS, the secretary of state urged them to grant the White House a much wider berth than the draft bill would:

Specifically, Kerry asked his former colleagues not to limit the use of military force to those two countries where Obama already has launched airstrikes, nor to bar the president from deploying combat troops on the ground, despite his repeated assurances that he will not do so. “In our view, it would be a mistake to advertise to ISIL that there are safe havens for them outside of Iraq and Syria,” Kerry said. On the use of ground troops, the secretary reiterated Obama’s policy that “U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”

But he doesn’t want Congress to put that in writing [in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)]. “That does not mean,” Kerry said, “we should pre-emptively bind the hands of the commander-in-chief—or our commanders in the field—in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.” As examples, he said the administration needed flexibility to execute hostage rescues or respond if ISIS acquired chemical weapons outside the region.

And while Kerry was very clear on what the administration didn’t want in the AUMF, he had nothing to say about what powers they actually did want. The White House, after all, still refuses to put forth its own draft AUMF, so we still have no idea what constraints, if any, the administration envisions for this war. Jack Goldsmith analyzes Kerry’s testimony:

What the administration appears to be seeking is an open-ended IS AUMF akin to the one that Congress gave the President for al Qaeda and affiliates in the 2001 AUMF. In addition to the features noted above, the administration would like an “associated forces” extender but (apparently) not a reporting requirement about covered groups or places.  This would replicate the problem under the 2001 AUMF of Congress (and the American people) not necessarily knowing who we are fighting against, or where. …

Pretty amazing coming from an administration whose Chief Executive said in his NDU speech 18 months ago (i) “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may . . . continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states,” (ii) that he “look[ed] forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the [2001] AUMF’s mandate,” and (iii) that he “will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”  I view Kerry’s testimony as the final repudiation of this element of the NDU speech, and as an acknowledgment that the “Forever War” is not close to over.

Morrissey is even less charitable:

Obama got elected by promising to end the war in Iraq, and then got re-elected by bragging that he’d done so by pulling out. All he did was set the stage for the war to expand exponentially, and with it the threat to the region and the West. Now Obama wants to avoid the political consequences of the failure of his policy by trying to get Congress to step in front of him while Obama prepares to re-enter the war he left behind. Republicans aren’t going to take the bait no matter how much they see the need for a forward strategy against ISIS, and neither are Obama’s Democratic allies.

The defining characteristic of this administration’s foreign policy has always been a failure to lead. It’s just becoming a lot more obvious these days.

Karl Vick rolls his eyes at yesterday’s proceedings:

The entire exercise, in a Lame Duck session, was academic at worst, and at best a dress rehearsal for the new year, when the Republicans will take control and — given the hawkish tenor of the GOP members — likely give Obama all the freedom he asks. Except for Paul, who scolded the administration on strict constructionist grounds, the harshest words were from Sen. John McCain, who called the hearing “kind of a charade.” The Arizona Republican stormed out after refusing to concede Kerry’s suggestion that more moderate Syrian rebels the administration has promised to arm are not, in fact, being left to die — owing, Kerry hinted, to secret measures that could not be discussed in a public setting. “More is being done, and more is being done than I can talk about in this hearing,” he said.

Can Southern Democrats Still Compete?

Tomasky encourages liberals to write the South off – and he starts off in Moore Award territory:

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be. I’ll save that for another column.

Until that day comes, the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.

Harry Enten disagrees:

Democrats are arguably doing their best in at least 20 years in three of the five most populous southern states.

President Obama won Florida two consecutive times. In 2008, Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Even as Obama lost the Tar Heel State in 2012, Democratic House candidates there won a majority of the vote. Not only was Obama the first Democrat to win Virginia since 1964, but the state has two Democratic senators for the first time since 1973, and Terry McAuliffe was the first gubernatorial candidate of either party to win the governorship when his party held the presidency since 1973.

So maybe people really mean Democrats are hopeless in the Deep South? That’s a bit harder to rebut. Then again, you’re also talking about just a handful of states.

Jonathan Bernstein is on the same page:

Trying to shift the entire Democratic Party so its center of opinion is equal to that in South Carolina or Mississippi would be a bad idea. But accepting a diversity of candidates, with national Democrats willing to support centrists or mild conservatives in conservative states, is good politics that costs the rest of the party little. Those moderate candidates won’t be favorites to win in Alabama or Oklahoma in normal times. But they give the party a chance to capitalize when circumstances allow it.

And Cassidy finds evidence that the South is still in play:

[Demographer William] Frey notes flatly that “there has been a surge of new minorities to the South.” And he points out that it is combining with another monumental shift. The historic northward migration of African-Americans has now reversed course, turning into “a wholesale evacuation from the North—to largely prosperous southern locales,” such as the suburbs of Atlanta and Charlotte. According to Frey, this shift “encompasses all blacks, but it is most prominent among the young, the well-educated, and retirees. The greatest growth surges are occurring in economically prosperous areas of the South … and all signs point to a continuation of the trend.”

In brief, the longterm outlook doesn’t look hopeless for Democrats. By appealing to minorities new and old, plus Southern white liberals (yes, they still exist) and white moderates, particularly women, who feel alienated by the G.O.P., the Democratic Party can still put together a viable electoral coalition and, in years more favorable than 2014, hope to make some headway. Despite the recent shift toward the Republicans, the Democrats have demonstrated that they can succeed in places like Kentucky, which still has a Democratic governor, as well as in North Carolina and Florida.

Congress: Dopelessly Devoted To Disenfranchising DC

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/542370055099789313

The “cromnibus” spending bill currently making its way through the Congressional duodenum contains some discouraging news for the 70 percent of DC residents who voted to end prohibition in the capital last month:

The sweeping omnibus appropriations bill includes a provision that appears to prohibit the District of Columbia from spending any taxpayer funds to carry out marijuana legalization. It does not, however, affect a separate decriminalization measure passed by the City Council this spring, and leaves the city’s medical-marijuana infrastructure intact. The exact meaning of the language, which Republicans and Democrats appeared to be interpreting differently, will be more clear when the House and Senate Appropriations Committees issue full reports explaining the legislation’s implications.

House Republicans had been pushing for language in the bill that would have upended legalization, decriminalization, and medical marijuana. But negotiators whittled the language down to target only the most recently passed initiative, which has yet to be implemented. The omnibus spending bill must be passed by Dec. 12 to avoid a government shutdown, so even those opposed to the measure are unlikely to scuttle the bill’s passage because of the high stakes involved if the omnibus fails.

Still, there may be a loophole allowing the initiative to proceed:

 The text of the bill says no funds “may be used to enact any law, rule, or regulation to legalize or otherwise reduce penalties associated” with recreational use of drugs illegal under federal law. “Some advocates I’ve spoken with aren’t so sure” the bill blocks legalization, Marijuana Majority chairman Tom Angell told The Huffington Post. “It all hinges on the definition of the word ‘enact.'” Angell explained that the question is whether Initiative 71, which voters approved in November legalizing recreational marijuana, should be considered “enacted” on Election Day, or whether “enacting” means the District Council transmitting the initiative to Congress for review, which has not yet occurred.

“I’ve heard good arguments on either side,” Angell said, “and I think it’s up in the air now, especially since press reports from earlier on Tuesday quoted unnamed congressional staffers as saying the bill would allow D.C. to move forward with legalization. Ultimately, it may take a court case to decide what ‘enact’ means.”

Tim Lynch fumes:

As a constitutional matter, the Congress can set policies for the District of Columbia, but this is an awful move.  No vote on marijuana reform, just override the voter-approved measure by inserting language into a gigantic spending bill. Isn’t it interesting that such tactics never seem to be used to downsize the federal government and reduce its powers?  Why not zero out the budget for the DEA or the Export-Import Bank?

“How’s that going to play politically?” Allahpundit asks:

Well, per last month’s exit polls, a majority of voters nationally favor legalizing marijuana — but that majority has dropped seven points, from 58 percent to 51 percent, since last year. Maybe the 2013 number is an outlier or maybe, as more states vote to legalize, voters think the shift is happening too fast. Only 31 percent of self-identified conservatives support legalization, so the GOP should be fine with its older, more right-wing base, even if that means irritating libertarians and younger adults. As for Washingtonians, they can still enjoy the drug publicly for now provided they can get their hands on it, which, if you’re unwilling to buy from a gang member, isn’t easy to do: If I’m not mistaken, the nearest state where sales are legal is Colorado, some 1,500 miles away.

Advocates are planning to march from the Justice Department to Capitol Hill tonight in protest. Not all of the news is bad, though: the bill also blocks the DoJ from meddling in states that have legalized medical marijuana. Phillip Smith notes the potential consequences of this provision:

If the omnibus budget bill is approved, the spending curb could well halt several pending federal criminal cases, including the case of the Kettle Falls Five, who are being prosecuted in Washington, a state where not only medical but recreational marijuana is legal, for growing medical marijuana within state guidelines. It would also severely cramp the style of the DEA, which has conducted hundreds of over-the-top aggressive raids in medical marijuana states. And it could mark an end to numerous civil asset forfeiture cases brought by US Attorneys in California against dispensaries in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Orange County.

It’s also smart politics, unlike the baffling move to overturn the will of Capital residents. Chris Ingraham flags a new poll showing widespread public support for the federal government butting out of this issue and leaving it for the states to decide:

That’s one of the conclusions of a survey on marijuana legalization recently commissioned by Third Way, a centrist think tank. Similar to other recent polling, the survey found Americans split on the question of full legalization, with 50 percent supporting versus 47 percent opposed. But the poll found that six in ten respondents said that states, and not the federal government, should decide whether to legalize marijuana. And 67 percent of Americans said Congress should go further and specifically carve out an exemption to federal marijuana laws for states that legalize, so long as they have a strong regulatory system in place.

In short, there’s a lot of nuance here. “Even 21% of those opposed to legalization for recreational use still agreed Congress should pass” a waiver policy for the legalization states, according to the report. The waiver approach isn’t without precedent: Congress issues waivers to states all the time.