The Dish

The president is commuting sentences for eight victims of unfair crack sentencing laws:

Obama said he was granting clemency to the eight inmates and commuting their sentences, and that he would also give pardons to 13 convicts who have already been released. He said he would retroactively apply new sentencing guidelines and drug laws to the eight convicted felons who are still serving time, and six will be released by April 17. Under current law, Obama said, “many of them would have already served their time and paid their debt to society.”

Sullum applauds Obama for using his clemency power and hopes that he will exercise it more often in the future:

Families Against Mandatory Minimums estimates that 8,800 federal crack offenders are serving prison terms that could be shorter if they had been sentenced under current law. As of today, Obama has used his clemency power to help 0.1 percent of them.

Obama nevertheless deserves credit for acting, albeit belatedly and timidly, on his avowed belief that thousands of people in federal prison do not belong there. In addition to issuing these commutations, he has endorsed the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bill co-sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) that would allow some crack offenders convicted before 2009 to seek shorter sentences. But as Obama demonstrated today, he does not have to wait for congressional action. It is completely within his power to free any federal prisoner whose sentence he deems unjust. If he exercises that power a little more, he will not be in danger of going down in history as the least merciful president ever.

Josh Levin profiles Linda Taylor, the real-life Chicago “welfare queen” who inspired Ronald Reagan’s infamous invective:

It’s impossible to define the exact scope of welfare fraud in America then or now. A 1983 publication sponsored by the Department of Justice, for example, estimated annual Aid to Families With Dependent Children overpayments at between $376 million and $3.2 billion—not exactly a precise range. What’s clear, though, is that Linda Taylor’s larger-than-life example created an indelible, inaccurate impression of public aid recipients.

The plural of anecdote is not data. The plural of the craziest anecdote you’ve ever heard is definitely not data. And yet, the story of the welfare queen instantly infected the policy debate over welfare reform. Sociologist Richard M. Coughlin notes that in 1979, AFDC families had a median of just 2.1 children and a very low standard of living compared to the average American. In 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics data continue to bear out the stark economic gap between families on public assistance and those who are not. Linda Taylor showed that it was possible for a dedicated criminal to steal a healthy chunk of welfare money. Her case did not prove that, as a group, public aid recipients were fur-laden thieves bleeding the American economy dry.

Lyle Denniston unpacks it:

Because the ruling is based on state law, not the federal Constitution, the decision is the final word for that state unless a constitutional ban were to be adopted.  With this ruling, New Mexico becomes the seventeenth state to assure marriage equality for same-sex couples. …

Just as the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that same-sex couples have a free-standing constitutional right to get married, the New Mexico court said it would not attempt to answer that question in this case.  Instead, it relied upon the state constitution’s promise that state laws would treat people the same if they are similar in their characteristics and capacities.

Timothy Kincaid updates the marriage equality map:

It’s been a good year for marriage. In 2013, the number doubled from 8 states plus the District of Columbia to the new total: 17 states plus DC.

Doug Mataconis expects the pace to slow:

The number of remaining states where a legislative or popular vote approval of same-sex marriage is realistic at this point is quite small, with Oregon and Colorado considered by most people to be the most likely states where either the state legislature or a referendum approving same-sex marriage is likely to be approved in the next couple years. In other states, we’re going to have to wait for this issue to be fought out in Court over the coming years. In that regard, there are lawsuits pending in a number of states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, and North Carolina. All those cases are in Federal Court, though, and still at the District Court level so there is still a lot of time that will need to elapse before we get a final word in any of those matters.

Dana Smith gets excited about a study suggesting that fear memories may be heritable through little-understood epigenetic processes:

In the study, mice were trained to be afraid of acetophenone, a fruity smell that’s used in cherry, jasmine, honey-suckle and almond flavorings. The researchers paired this fragrance with a foot shock so that it soon became a warning signal to the mice, instilling fear and alerting them to an impending attack. The mice’s noses and brains also adapted accordingly, generating additional M71 neurons—cells receptive to this particular scent—so that they would be extra sensitive to the smell. So far, this is all basic Pavlovian conditioning and neural adaptation, nothing special yet.

However, the crazy part is that the offspring of these mice, who had never before been exposed to that smell, also showed increased fear and startle responses to the scent. This suggests that the learned association, connecting the smell with danger, was passed down from one generation to the next. And this second group’s offspring also showed heightened sensitivity to the odor. Thus, three generations of mice were affected by the conditioning, even though only one of them had actually experienced it. Behind these behavioral effects were similar changes in the noses of each of these offspring groups, with larger M71 receptors present and an increase in the number of M71 neurons available.

Joe Hanson rains on her parade:

It’s possible that there was an epigenetic change passed down. But it’s not for sure. Beyond that, the way that statistics are applied to mouse behavior studies make it possible that the differences they see are just due to sample sizes, or not including certain controls, or some other random factor like that the humidity on a particular day happened to make the mice very jumpy. There’s also the fact that there is no known way for nerve cell changes or chemical responses within the olfactory bulb to be communicated to the testes, where sperm are made (there’s literally a blood-testis barrier to prevent that kind of thing). … “More work needed” as they say!

Virginia Hughes provided a more in-depth look at the study earlier this month:

There are still some unanswered questions, [MIT research fellow Tomás] Ryan notes. For example, the researchers didn’t do a control experiment where the F0 animals are exposed to the fruity odor without the shock. So it’s unclear whether the “memory” they’re transmitting to their offspring is a fear memory, per se, or rather an increased sensitivity to an odor. This is an important distinction, because the brain uses many brain circuits outside of the olfactory bulb to encode fear memories. It’s difficult to imagine how that kind of complicated brain imprint might get passed down to the next generation. Ressler and Dias agree, and for that reason were careful not to refer to the transmitted information as a fear memory. “I don’t know if it’s a memory,” Dias says. “It’s a sensitivity, for now.”

A reader in India joins the debate over whether yoga should belong in public schools in that country:

I am an atheist. Of my parents, one is a Hindu but not terribly ritualistic, while the other comes from a Hindu tradition but more Buddhist than Hindu in outlook. My wife, I think, would call herself “spiritual but not religious.” Not quite atheist, but uncomfortable with Hinduism as well as with other religions.

We take our son to a yoga class once a week, where parents practice too, and we are both quite comfortable with that. The class begins and ends with a prayer (“sloka”), but that is about the only religious component. The prayer and a translation are here and, other than its being addressed to an unspecified supernatural being (arguably Hinduism is monotheistic and it is addressed to that being, but it would take too long to get into that), seem entirely secular to me. I regard the rest of the yoga as a sort of time-tested exercise system (in fact, one version of the “surya namaskara” or prostration to the sun being taught to us is quite similar to the American “burpee”).

When I took my parents to the Notre Dame de Paris and other churches there, my mother made a point of lighting a candle. Many Hindus (and, I think, many followers of Eastern religions) don’t regard religions as mutually exclusive – none of the “thou shalt have no other gods before me” stuff. Presumably many Western practitioners of yoga don’t, either.

However, there is no denying that many yoga schools and practices in India are much more overtly religious than the one I take my son to. So I think India’s Supreme Court has a tough job ruling on this one.

Another notes a similar case unfolding in the US:

I’m sure you will receive many emails about this, but a school district in southern California recently put a yoga exercise program into place, and a local family sued claiming it violated their religious rights. A trial court judge disagreed and found for the school district, saying that the program was just calisthenics that had been separated from any religious content, and now the case is on appeal.

Meanwhile, another reader rolls his eyes at Dreher, who wrote, “I don’t see how it is possible to separate yoga from religious practice – and as a practicing Christian, I would not participate in it”:

To my ears this sounds a lot like those fundamentalist nutjobs who won’t let their kids read Harry Potter. What is it he thinks will happen when he assumes a Downward Facing Dog over at L.A Fitness in the room next to the spinning class? What supernatural, mind-altering spirit is he resisting here? If Christians can utterly co-opt innumerable pagan traditions and worship practices (Yule logs, Winter Solstice, Vernal Equinox, Saturnalia) then what is the problem with the neutered practices of western Yoga?

Another reader:

“Yoga is in Religion. Religion is not in Yoga.” This is from some of the best commentary on the Yoga Sutras available. As a yoga teacher (not teaching currently), I am interested in the spiritual aspects of meditation. Many famous yogis experimented with religion. It is considered that the practice of a religion rather than the specific path is the more important aspect.

Another makes an important distinction:

Please! Call it hatha yoga. Yoga of itself refers generically to union with God and comes from the same root as yoke. But there are many kinds of yoga: hatha, rajah, bhakti, kundalini, tantra, and on and on. There are even many kinds of hatha yoga and the way they are practiced can vary from positional exercises to high spirituality. It is as if you were to refer to and criticize the practice of snake-handling evangelistic Christianity as the way all Christianity was practiced or claim that the Pope must speak for all Christians, since they are all the same. Strictly speaking, it can be taken even further than that: yoga can be thought of as really any form of religious or spiritual practice. And in the realm of the means becoming the end, it’s hard to distinguish between the ecstatic chanting in bhakti yoga, monastic singing, and the like.

Lastly, another yoga teacher offers some history:

I find the debate over what “counts” as yoga and can it be divorced from Hinduism very interesting. In short I have decided if something labeled as “yoga” unifies the body, breath, and mind it is yoga. Here is the longer version:

1. Yoga developed in parallel with Hinduism. There have always been Hindus who practice yoga as well as those who did/do not. Ancient Buddhists also practiced yoga. It is not the exclusive domain of the Hindu religion and never was, although it draws on many of the same traditions and stories

2. Yoga, for centuries, was focused on breathing/mediation and philosophical constructs be they from the eight limbs of yoga, Tantra, or Vedenta. The physical practice (Asana) as it we know it today is relatively new, dating back to the late 1800s. B.K.S. Iyengar, who turned 95 Saturday, is one of the men who greatly influenced the adoption of yoga as a physical practice in the US and Europe.

3. As practiced in the US, yoga is more spiritual then religious. Hindu texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, can provide spiritual inspiration and a way to think about and discuss morality independent of one’s religion or lack thereof.

4. Whichever philosophical tradition you draw on, yoga can be used to deepen spirituality and religion of any stripe. I have had many devout Christians tell me they find yoga asana and breathing (pranayama) to be useful preparation for Christian prayer and meditation and as a tool for living their Christ-centered truth. I also have had atheists tell me it helps them create a context for living a moral life without believing in God. Personally, I grew up with one Catholic and one Presbyterian parent and hold no allegiance to one religion or another, so what I enjoy is seeing how concepts in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity (apologies to Muslins but Islam is not a religion I know enough about to speak to) can relate to each other in the context of yoga.

5. Yoga has been evolving for thousands of years, it seems only natural that Americans would put our own spin on it too. I understand that is offensive to many Hindus but perhaps they can take some solace in knowing their religion spawned such a useful tool for living. The growth of yoga will not damage the rich traditions of the Hindu religion, nor will it turn Dreher’s kids into practicing Hindus. If you start practicing yoga and find it challenging your belief system, you probably didn’t believe what you claimed to believe to begin with. It will strengthen you where you are strong, and challenge you where you are weak. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Ultimately it would be tragic to limit such a useful tool to a single religion. Much pain and suffering in the world could be reduced if everyone had a tool to be more aware of their breathe, mindful of their thoughts, and loving in their actions.