The Dish

Approving patents for barely new innovations, or repackaged old ones, is an extremely costly business:

Under plausible assumptions, we find that the economic losses resulting from the grant of substandard patents can reach $21 billion per year by deterring valid research with an additional deadweight loss from litigation and administrative costs of $4.5 billion annually. This brings the total deadweight loss created by our “dented” patent system to be at least $25.5 billion annually. These estimates may be viewed as conservative because they do not take into account other economic costs from our existing patent system, such as the consumer welfare losses from granting monopoly rents to patent holders that have not, in the end, invented a novel product, or the full social value of the innovations lost.

An interesting study on the price some people are prepared to pay to live alongside people like them:

Specifically, while all households prefer to live in higher-income neighborhoods, college-educated households are willing to pay $58 more per month than those without a college degree to live in a neighborhood that has 10 percent more college-educated households. In fact, the researchers find that households without a college degree would actually need compensating to live in a neighborhood with 10 percent more college-educated neighbors.

Similarly, blacks are willing to pay $98 more per month to live in a neighborhood that has 10 percent more black households, compared to a negative willingness to pay on the part of white households to live in a similar neighborhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, increases in household income and education also lead to a greater willingness to pay for better schools.

A reader writes:

I’m as pro-choice as they come but even I can spot the flaw in your reader’s email on "pro-life absolutism."

The reader argues that the pro-lifer’s position is shown to be false by reflection on the fact that it would be immoral to save a tray of embryos instead of a baby in a case where one can save only one or the other. But all the pro-lifer needs to think is that, like babies, embryos have an inviolable right to life. This belief is compatible with its being wrong to save the embryo instead of the baby.

Compare: both my wife and your husband have an inviolable right to life;  nevertheless, it would be wrong for me to save your husband instead of my wife in a situation in which I can only save one – she’s my wife and I don’t know your husband! For the careful pro-lifer, the burning embryo clinic case is like this one. The baby has more moral status than the embryo since the baby has actually experienced consciousness; but they’ve both got an inviolable right to life.

I wonder if this argument leads one to believe that morning-after cntraception is less morally troubling than second trimester abortion? Or can a baby experience consciousness in the womb? Another reader comments:

While I agree with the reader’s general point (that pro-lifers’ absolutism makes the possibility of a rational discourse on abortion very difficult) it is also important to remember that the feminists’ absolutism ("my body my right to choose") which ignores all the social ramifications of abortion is also a contributing factor to the lack of compromise and rationality.

But what really struck me from the email you posted is the following. Isn’t the gedanken’s question the reader uses to morally justify abortion (if you believe an embryo is a person, would you save a tray full of embryos or a living child) similar in its absurdity to the "ticking bomb" scenario used to morally justify torture?

A stuning new Buddhist art-exhibit in Los Angeles – made entirely of old newspapers, magazines, books and phone-books.

Why did the president choose to ignore – and hide from others – insider intelligence that Saddam had no WMDs before the war? Sid has a follow-up to previous stories about the information given by Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister. Tenet has confirmed hearing from him. Sid claims that two CIA officers claim that Bush was personally given the information by Tenet. Money quote:

On the eve of Sabri’s appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam’s case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a "cutout" who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was "excited" about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri’s information was at odds with "our best source." That source was code-named "Curveball," later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer.

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. "Tenet told me he briefed the president personally," said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information "the same old thing." Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. "The president had no interest in the intelligence," said the CIA officer. The other officer said, "Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

I don’t think, if this is all true, that Bush therefore lied about WMDs. He was just guilty of professional negligence and criminal blindness on the most important decision a president can ever make. That goes for the conduct of the occupation as well, of course. But we had a chance to fire him in 2004; and we didn’t.

A reader writes:

Riverbend blogged:

"I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives."

In Syria????

"How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?"

Does anybody else see the irony here? She is talking about Syria! George W Bush gave the Iraqis freedom to die in a multitude of ways (remember: "Freedom is messy"). We got rid of one bloodthirsty dictator, and now they run to another, just for the chance to live.

The Iraq war has made those repressive police states in the rest of the region seem almost bearable, hasn’t it?

"’You’re the observer,’ he said as he worked the cheese in his mouth. ‘I’m not. I really do not feel comfortable in the role of analyzing myself. I’ll try …" ‘You’ve gotta think, think BIG. The Iranian issue,’ he said as bread crumbs tumbled out of his mouth and onto his chin, ‘is the strategic threat right now facing a generation of Americans, because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion. Iran’s a destabilizing force. And instability in that part of the world has deeply adverse consequences, like energy falling in the hands of extremist people that would use it to blackmail the West. And to couple all of that with a nuclear weapon, then you’ve got a dangerous situation. …

That’s what I mean by strategic thought. I don’t know how you learn that. I don’t think there’s a moment where that happened to me. I really don’t. I know you’re searching for it. I know it’s difficult. I do know  — y’know, how do you decide, how do you learn to decide things? When you make up your mind, and you stick by it — I don’t know that there’s a moment, Robert. I really — You either know how to do it or you don’t. I think part of this is it: I ran for reasons. Principled reasons. There were principles by which I will stand on. And when I leave this office I’ll stand on them. And therefore you can’t get driven by polls. Polls aren’t driven by principles. They’re driven by the moment. By the nanosecond,’" – president George W. Bush, currently "deciding" to remain in Iraq and possibly launch a pre-emptive war against Iran, in Robert Draper’s terrifying new book.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)

Alan Keyes may run for president.

A useful myth? A dangerous reality? Even on this most basic issue, the divide is deep. Stanley Kurtz insists that the distinction between al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents is an unhelpful one. So why does the president keep making it? And how is it that the one actual success we appear to have had in Anbar rests precisly on this distinction? I have no doubt that al Qaeda is present in Iraq and a menace there as everywhere. But I also deeply distrust this president and his war-propaganda. That Jihadists would want to exploit the sectarianism and anarchy the invasion unleashed is a no-brainer. That they are somehow autonomous from the internal Iraq conflict, and the same people who attacked on 9/11, is flim-flam, designed to delude and corral.

The good news is that Fred Thompson has a strong federalist streak, supports a flat tax and seems, for a modern Republican at least, fiscally sane. But no one should mistake him for an anti-pork candidate. From the Club for Growth:

As impressive as the above list is, Thompson was fiercely protective when it came to his own earmarks. His congressional website boasts of the federal dollars he was able to "snag" for his Tennessee constituents, including $25 billion in highway funds; $70 million for the Tennessee Valley Authority; $2 million for the Tennessee River; and $23 million for the Spallation Neutron Source project. Thompson felt so strongly about preserving funding for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he fought to exempt funds for the TVA from the balanced budget constitutional amendment in 1995, carving out a new category of "constitutional pork." And though Thompson supported and voted for the presidential line-item veto, he fought vehemently to undo President Clinton’s veto of two Tennessee projects.