USA Today
August 31, 2010
With the economic recovery faltering and midterm elections approaching, simmering anger against illegal immigrants seems to be reaching a new boiling point.
Polls show most Americans back Arizona's controversial new law aimed at arresting undocumented immigrants, and now support is growing for an even more drastic move to deny citizenship to babies born in the U.S. unless their parents are here legally. Several leading Republican lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell, have called for hearings into the issue.
Any effort to repeal what's known as "birthright citizenship" faces a big obstacle: the 14th Amendment. Ever since the amendment was ratified in 1868, the Constitution has repeatedly been held to confer automatic American citizenship on anyone born in the USA.
The repealers' argument — logical and enticing — is that an amendment written to ensure that the children of slaves received citizenship rights is obsolete in a modern era of illegal immigration, jetliner travel and international tourism. As a solution to the nation's illegal immigration problem, though, it is at best an unworkable distraction, one so fraught with practical difficulties as to make the effort impractical and unwise.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010
U.S. citizens who say they were tortured get their day in court
Washington Post
Editorial
August 31, 2010
The allegations are sadly familiar by now: The men were picked up by U.S. military forces, locked in tiny cells, deprived of sleep, and subjected to extreme temperatures and loud music.
What makes these allegations extraordinary is that the men in question, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, are U.S. citizens who were working in 2006 for an Iraqi security firm, Shield Group Security. According to court documents, Mr. Vance warned Iraqi-based U.S. officials about possible corruption at the firm, including the funneling of weapons to insurgents. After getting the brushoff, Mr. Vance contacted Chicago agents with the FBI on his next visit home. Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel began passing information to the FBI once they were back in Iraq. That ended when the firm became suspicious and took the men hostage; Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were able to call their FBI contacts, who then alerted the military, which sent soldiers to rescue the men.
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Editorial
August 31, 2010
The allegations are sadly familiar by now: The men were picked up by U.S. military forces, locked in tiny cells, deprived of sleep, and subjected to extreme temperatures and loud music.
What makes these allegations extraordinary is that the men in question, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, are U.S. citizens who were working in 2006 for an Iraqi security firm, Shield Group Security. According to court documents, Mr. Vance warned Iraqi-based U.S. officials about possible corruption at the firm, including the funneling of weapons to insurgents. After getting the brushoff, Mr. Vance contacted Chicago agents with the FBI on his next visit home. Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel began passing information to the FBI once they were back in Iraq. That ended when the firm became suspicious and took the men hostage; Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were able to call their FBI contacts, who then alerted the military, which sent soldiers to rescue the men.
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The Iraq war leaves a fog of ambiguity
Washington Post
August 31, 2010
Now that the Iraq war is over -- for U.S. combat troops, at least -- only one thing is clear about the outcome: We didn't win.
We didn't lose, either, in the sense of being defeated. But wars no longer end with surrender ceremonies and ticker-tape parades. They end in a fog of ambiguity, and it's easier to discern what's been sacrificed than what's been gained. So it is after seven years of fighting in Iraq, and so it will be after at least 10 years -- probably more, before we're done -- in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush elected to send U.S. forces to invade and occupy Iraq, even though there was no urgent reason to do so. I won't rehash all the arguments about what was suspected, reported or "confirmed" about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that provided the Bush administration's justification for war. But even if Bush and his aides believed in their hearts that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, they had no reason to believe that the United States or its allies faced an imminent or even proximate threat.
They saw the opportunity not just to depose a heinous despot but to reshape the Middle East by implanting a pro-Western democracy at its heart. They succeeded at the former but not the latter.
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Who Else Will Speak Up?
New York Times
Editorial
August 30, 2010
The hate-filled signs carried recently by protesters trying to halt plans to build an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan were chilling. We were cheered to see people willing to challenge their taunts and champion tolerance and the First Amendment. But opportunistic politicians are continuing to foment this noxious anger. It is a dangerous pursuit.
Already New Yorkers have seen a troubled young man slash a Muslim taxi driver with a knife. A zealot in Florida is threatening to burn a stack of Korans on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Where does this end?
The country needs strong and sane voices to push back against the hatred and irrational fears. President Obama made a passionate defense of the mosque, but only once. Most Democratic politicians are ducking. So far, the leader with the courage to make the case repeatedly is Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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Editorial
August 30, 2010
The hate-filled signs carried recently by protesters trying to halt plans to build an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan were chilling. We were cheered to see people willing to challenge their taunts and champion tolerance and the First Amendment. But opportunistic politicians are continuing to foment this noxious anger. It is a dangerous pursuit.
Already New Yorkers have seen a troubled young man slash a Muslim taxi driver with a knife. A zealot in Florida is threatening to burn a stack of Korans on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Where does this end?
The country needs strong and sane voices to push back against the hatred and irrational fears. President Obama made a passionate defense of the mosque, but only once. Most Democratic politicians are ducking. So far, the leader with the courage to make the case repeatedly is Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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Incidents at Mosque in Tennessee Spread Fear
New York Times
August 30, 2010
After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.
Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.
The Islamic center has attracted national attention recently because its planned expansion into a larger building in some ways parallels a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.
More
August 30, 2010
After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.
Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.
The Islamic center has attracted national attention recently because its planned expansion into a larger building in some ways parallels a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.
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Miranda Doesn't Need Fixing
Townhall.com
August 27, 2010
The attempted attacks by would-be airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad opened a debate over the wisdom of reading a terrorism suspect his rights to remain silent and to an attorney under Miranda v. Arizona. Now U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has proposed legislation that “allows unwarned interrogation of terrorism suspects for as long as is necessary to protect the public from pending or planned attacks.”
There are two serious problems with this proposal, one constitutional and one practical.
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Immigrants Make U.S. Workers Richer
August 30, 2010
The San Francisco Fed is wading into the contentious debate over whether immigrants help or hurt employment for American citizens, in a paper that asserts new entrants to the nation help make almost everybody wealthier.
The report, published Monday, was written by Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis. He is currently a visiting scholar at the bank. The report counters those who believe immigrants to the U.S. take away the jobs of citizens and depress wages.
“There is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run,” Peri writes. Instead, the evidence suggests “the economy absorbs immigrants by expanding job opportunities rather than by displacing workers born in the United States.”
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Read the full report
Human Rights and Economic Liberalization
by Art Carden & Robert A. Lawson
Business & Politics
vol.12, is.2, art.2
Abstract. Using several case studies and data from the Economic Freedom of the World annual report and from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, we estimate the effect of human rights abuses on economic liberalization. The data suggest that human rights abuses reduce rather than accelerate the pace of economic liberalization.
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Business & Politics
vol.12, is.2, art.2
Abstract. Using several case studies and data from the Economic Freedom of the World annual report and from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, we estimate the effect of human rights abuses on economic liberalization. The data suggest that human rights abuses reduce rather than accelerate the pace of economic liberalization.
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Protest at military funeral ignites a test of free speech
August 30, 2010
Albert Snyder tears up, then turns angry as he recalls burying his Marine son while members of the anti-gay fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church picketed nearby.
"I can remember being presented the flag at the graveyard. I can remember saluting the coffin," Snyder says of the unusually balmy day in March 2006 when the family memorialized Matthew, a lance corporal killed in Iraq.
Yet, Snyder says, he can't separate such moments from the memory that his only son's funeral was picketed by fundamentalist pastor Fred Phelps and his followers with an inflammatory message that had nothing to do with Matthew.
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China's economic model isn't the answer for the U.S.
Washington Post
August 30, 2010
Forget the "Ground Zero mosque," Michelle Obama's Spanish holiday and even the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. When future historians look back to the summer of 2010, the event they are most likely to focus on is China's emergence as the world's second-largest economy.
Mostly, this is a very good thing. The rise of China, and the related, albeit slightly slower, emergence of India, is the story of hundreds of millions of very poor people joining the global economy and getting a little richer. Gross domestic product per capita in those two countries was basically stagnant from 1820 to 1950. Then, it increased 68 percent from 1950 to 1973, and a whopping 245 percent from 1973 to 2002.
But we need to be careful not to draw the wrong lessons from China's resurrection. The most dangerous one is that authoritarianism works.
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Fatal Conceit
by Justin Logan & Christopher Preble
National Review
August 30, 2010
Americans used to have a wise skepticism about nation building. As recently as the 1990s, conservatives, especially, opposed the Clinton administration's social-engineering projects in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans: They doubted that the U.S. military should, or could, become a tool for creating modern states where none existed. After 9/11, however, as the U.S. military drifted into nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, even previously skeptical observers found themselves endorsing the expanded missions. Today, support for Barack Obama's nation-building project in Afghanistan is widespread, even among conservatives.
Despite this new consensus, nation building remains expensive, unnecessary, and unwise. In a literal sense, nations, unlike cars or computers, aren't built: They develop organically. As Charles Tilly observed in his 1990 book Coercion, Capital, and European States, when the foundation of the modern nation-state was laid in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a natural outgrowth of changes in military technology and resulted from the economic requirements of fielding a national army. It was the farthest thing imaginable from what goes today by the name of "nation building" — i.e., an external effort (usually by the United States) to create a viable national government where one does not currently exist. In general, such efforts have been undertaken amid political violence, as in the case of the Clinton administration's endeavors in the Balkans and today's efforts in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.
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National Review
August 30, 2010
Americans used to have a wise skepticism about nation building. As recently as the 1990s, conservatives, especially, opposed the Clinton administration's social-engineering projects in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans: They doubted that the U.S. military should, or could, become a tool for creating modern states where none existed. After 9/11, however, as the U.S. military drifted into nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, even previously skeptical observers found themselves endorsing the expanded missions. Today, support for Barack Obama's nation-building project in Afghanistan is widespread, even among conservatives.
Despite this new consensus, nation building remains expensive, unnecessary, and unwise. In a literal sense, nations, unlike cars or computers, aren't built: They develop organically. As Charles Tilly observed in his 1990 book Coercion, Capital, and European States, when the foundation of the modern nation-state was laid in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a natural outgrowth of changes in military technology and resulted from the economic requirements of fielding a national army. It was the farthest thing imaginable from what goes today by the name of "nation building" — i.e., an external effort (usually by the United States) to create a viable national government where one does not currently exist. In general, such efforts have been undertaken amid political violence, as in the case of the Clinton administration's endeavors in the Balkans and today's efforts in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.
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A tolerance of rape
Washington Post
Editorial
August 30, 2010
"This is something that I think needs to be done, not tomorrow, but yesterday."
Those were the words of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March to a House subcommittee on the subject of preventing sexual abuse in prison. Five months have passed since then, and two have passed since the June 23 deadline for Mr. Holder to approve the guidelines set forth by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. His "yesterday" is long past.
A report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the situation remains grim. The bureau estimates that at least 88,500 adults were sexually abused in U.S. prisons and jails in the past year. This number represents 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of those in jail but fails to include assaults on minors, which a January survey suggested was more than 12 percent -- one in eight. And the statistics fail to portray the human toll of each day that standards are not enacted to prevent sexual assault behind bars.
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Editorial
August 30, 2010
"This is something that I think needs to be done, not tomorrow, but yesterday."
Those were the words of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March to a House subcommittee on the subject of preventing sexual abuse in prison. Five months have passed since then, and two have passed since the June 23 deadline for Mr. Holder to approve the guidelines set forth by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. His "yesterday" is long past.
A report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the situation remains grim. The bureau estimates that at least 88,500 adults were sexually abused in U.S. prisons and jails in the past year. This number represents 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of those in jail but fails to include assaults on minors, which a January survey suggested was more than 12 percent -- one in eight. And the statistics fail to portray the human toll of each day that standards are not enacted to prevent sexual assault behind bars.
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Plato’s Pop Culture Problem, and Ours
New York Times
August 29, 2010
This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.
The case in question is the 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a California law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005, that imposed fines on stores that sell video games featuring “sexual and heinous violence” to minors. The issue is an old one: one side argues that video games shouldn’t receive First Amendment protection since exposure to violence in the media is likely to cause increased aggression or violence in real life. The other side counters that the evidence shows nothing more than a correlation between the games and actual violence. In their book Grand Theft Childhood, the authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson of Harvard Medical School argue that this causal claim is only the result of “bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports,.”
The issue, which at first glance seems so contemporary, actually predates the pixel by more than two millennia. In fact, an earlier version of the dispute may be found in The Republic, in which Plato shockingly excludes Homer and the great tragic dramatists from the ideal society he describes in that work.
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Sunday, August 29, 2010
Unpacking the Global Human Egg Trade
September 1, 2010
Modern fertility technology has made parenthood a possibility for thousands more people, but it has also created a lucrative -- and ethically questionable -- global trade in human genetic material.
Krinos Trokoudes knows this much about women: "If you pay something," he says with a smile, "you get lots of girls." Coming from a silver-haired man in a white lab coat, the remark sounds a little unseemly, but he does not mean it the way you may think.
Trokoudes is an embryologist. His business is harvesting human eggs, and every year, hundreds of women are impregnated at his Pedeios IVF Treatment Centre in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia. In 1992, he made the Guinness Book of World Records after a 49-year-54-day-old patient he had impregnated via in vitro fertilization delivered a healthy baby girl; at the time, the mother was the oldest person ever to have given birth after IVF. Trokoudes's record has since been shattered (two years ago, a 70-year-old Indian woman birthed IVF-conceived twins), but his achievement helped establish Cyprus's reputation as a home of doctors who are willing to push the frontiers of the fertility industry.
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Evolution, Ethics, and the Market
Big Questions
August 27, 2010
Given the economic roller-coaster ride of the past two years, the idea that capitalism promotes morality might seem like an oxymoron. The imperfections of the market system, the wild swings of the boom-and-bust cycle, and the "animal spirits" of irrational investors have revealed the gulf between economic theory and financial reality — and have put the advocates of capitalism on the defensive.
But let's not get carried away. As every economist knows, the market system, based on the free exchange of goods, is the greatest prosperity-generating machine ever invented. Nor are markets just a necessary evil that we must regretfully tolerate. To the contrary, trade itself leads directly and measurably to greater virtue — to higher levels of generosity, fairness, and trust. But don't take my word for it. There is plenty of experimental evidence to back me up, and it points to the deep evolutionary foundations of the market's moral effects.
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Bishkek Blunder
by Gregory FeiferSlate
August 28, 2010
Smiling in a conference room of her aging Soviet-era office suite, Roza Otunbayeva appeared confident—possibly for the first time in her short presidency. It was only two weeks after June 10, when ethnic violence had begun engulfing the south of her country, but Kyrgyzstan's diminutive leader, a bespectacled former diplomat with a bob cut and the good-natured manner of a high-school principal, announced that the bloodshed had failed to discourage people from participating in a nationwide referendum. Its single yes-or-no question asked voters to keep her in office until the end of next year and to approve a new constitution that would make Kyrgyzstan a parliamentary republic. Otunbayeva said it would transform the country from a corrupt autocracy into a prospering democracy.
Otunbayeva, who has been in power only since April, when street protests forced her predecessor from power, called it an historic moment. But she lacked a crucial piece of information: how many people had actually voted for the measure. That number hadn’t been tallied. So Otunbayeva offered her own informal survey instead, prodding journalists in the room who had voted in favor to raise their hands. "See," she concluded, wrinkling her nose as hands went up, "let's just say it was a positive result."
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
In Iran, shackling the Bahai torchbearers
Washington Post
August 28, 2010
For several weeks last year, I shared a cell in Tehran's notorious Evin prison with Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, two leaders of Iran's minority Bahai faith. I came to see them as my sisters, women whose only crimes were to peacefully practice their religion and resist pressure from their captors to compromise their principles. For this, apparently, they and five male colleagues were sentenced this month to 20 years in prison.
I had heard about Mahvash and Fariba before I met them. Other prisoners spoke of the two middle-aged mothers whose high spirits lifted the morale of fellow inmates.
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A Very Long Engagement
Wall Street Journal
August 28, 2010
In 1953, after the armistice ending the Korean War, South Korea lay in ruins. President Eisenhower was eager to put an end to hostilities that had left his predecessor deeply unpopular, and the war ended in an uneasy stalemate. But the United States had a strong interest in regional stability, and some worrisome enemies to keep in check. So Eisenhower decided to leave tens of thousands of troops behind, and signed a treaty with the U.S.-backed government to formalize their presence. Thirty-five years later, South Korea emerged as a stable democracy.
The situation in Iraq today bears some intriguing similarities. The reduction of American forces in Iraq to 50,000 is thus good news—but not because it is a step closer to complete withdrawal. In the coming year, the Iraqi government (once it is formed) is likely to ask the U.S. to keep some significant number of troops in the country after the pullout date of summer 2011. If so, President Obama may well agree, because it is just about the only way to avoid a resurgence of civil war and continue Iraq's tenuous progress toward consolidating democracy. As in South Korea—where nearly 30,000 U.S. troops remain today, almost 60 years after the war ended—patience may pay off. Then there is the ethical side of the issue: If the elected Iraqi government asks for help, the U.S. owes it to them to continue its commitment.
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Islamism Is Not Islam
by Maajid NawazWall Street Journal
August 28, 2010
If Islamism came to conquer New York and built an emperor's palace at Ground Zero, I would be worried. But Islamism is not Islam.
Islam is a faith. Like all other faiths it has a vibrant array of progressives, conservatives and everything in between fighting over which interpretation suits current times. In this regard, Islam is nothing exceptional.
Islamism, on the other hand, is the desire to impose any one of these interpretations over everyone else through state law.
Many commentators confuse traditionalist Muslims with Islamists. Like the Amish, Muslim traditionalists usually have few political ambitions. Their real cause is debating theology with their adversary, the Muslim modernist. Islamists, however, are not interested in the raging feud between traditionalists and modernists.
Hence, Islam is the religion and Islamism the ideological project using this religion to justify total state power. It was only after losing the fight for total state power against democracies and dictatorships alike in the Middle East that Islamists launched their war against the West. And it is Islamism, not the pluralistic faith of Islam, that struck at the twin towers.
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Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes
August 28, 2010
Peter J. Boettke, shuffling around in a maroon velour track suit or faux-leather rubber shoes he calls "dress Crocs," hardly seems like the type to lead a revolution.
But the 50-year-old professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis. Mr. Boettke, whose latest research explores people's ability to self-regulate, also is minting a new generation of disciples who are spreading the Austrian approach throughout academia, where it had long been left for dead.
To these free-market economists, government intrusion ultimately sows the seeds of the next crisis. It hampers what one famous Austrian, Joseph Schumpeter, called the process of "creative destruction."
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Greek Church Gets Backing
August 28, 2010
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday he was confident that St. Nicholas Church, the only place of worship destroyed in the 9-11 attacks, would be rebuilt.
In his weekly conversation with radio host John Gambling, the mayor suggested a deal for the church's rebuilding was imminent.
"Oh, there's no question about that," Mr. Bloomberg said on the radio program. "The archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church lives across the street from me, and if you think I want him coming across with his staff and beating on my door and saying, 'Come on, Mike!' I'm not going to let that happen."
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Leaving Iraq
New York Times
Editorial
August 27, 2010
On Tuesday the American combat mission in Iraq — a war that should never have been fought — officially ends. President Obama deserves credit for promising the withdrawal and for sticking to it. But America’s responsibilities in Iraq will not end now.
Even with the departure of combat forces, 50,000 troops will remain as advisers through 2011. And American officials have plenty of work ahead — helping and goading Iraqi politicians to get on with building a reasonably democratic and stable country.
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Editorial
August 27, 2010
On Tuesday the American combat mission in Iraq — a war that should never have been fought — officially ends. President Obama deserves credit for promising the withdrawal and for sticking to it. But America’s responsibilities in Iraq will not end now.
Even with the departure of combat forces, 50,000 troops will remain as advisers through 2011. And American officials have plenty of work ahead — helping and goading Iraqi politicians to get on with building a reasonably democratic and stable country.
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United States Gives Itself High Marks on Human Rights, but What Comes Next?/
Brookings Institution
August 27, 2010
This month, the United States submitted an assessment of its human rights record to the UN Human Rights Council as part of the UN’s newest human rights mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Unsurprisingly, its report immediately caught flak from the right and the left. Nationalists and conservatives at the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation complained we should not bother to subject ourselves to scrutiny by states with lesser human rights records and that by doing so we give ammunition to autocrats who can mock our shortcomings. Progressives applauded the administration for participating seriously in a multilateral process but lamented the failure to address a host of human rights deficits.
In our view, the administration’s report perhaps tries too hard to please everyone and in doing so falls short of what it could have achieved if it had taken a more critical and honest approach to some of the more troublesome elements on the human rights agenda. It deserves praise for engaging in serious consultations around the country with critics and victims alike to prepare its findings. Its political instincts, though, were apparently to mute self-criticism in order to forestall attacks from the U.S.-can-do-no-wrong crowd while simultaneously highlighting progress since 2009 as a way to remind voters at home and constituencies abroad that it is different from the Bush administration.
The real test, however, is how this administration will address such ongoing and thorny issues around detention policy, impunity for torture, immigration and protection of civilians caught in conflict. On these matters, the report offers very little.
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A Distinction Without Deference
Slate
August 27, 2010
Remember when conservatives were against judicial activism? It seems like just a few weeks ago. In fact, it was a few weeks ago. A federal judge had just struck down California's ban on gay marriage. National Review, among others, called it a "raw exercise of judicial imperiousness" by a judge who "smuggled in his own moral sentiments."
Ah, but that was then. This is now. A different judge has ruled that the federal government can no longer fund embryonic stem-cell research. He bases his ruling on the annual Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which forbids federal funding of "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed."
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Taking Economic Liberty Seriously
by Damon W. Root
Reason
August 26, 2010
On March 5, 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court declared New York shopkeeper Leo Nebbia to be a criminal because he sold two quarts of milk and a 5 cent loaf of bread for the combined low price of 18 cents. As Justice Owen Roberts explained in his 5-4 majority opinion in Nebbia v. New York, the state’s Milk Control Board had fixed the minimum price of milk at 9 cents a quart to eliminate the “evils” of price-cutting.
As for the constitutionality of this action, which raised the price of milk during the lean years of the Great Depression in an effort to boost the profits of New York dairy farmers, while doing absolutely nothing to improve the health or safety of the milk-drinking public, Roberts simply shrugged. “A state is free to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed to promote public welfare, and to enforce that policy by legislation adapted to its purpose." Furthermore, “If the laws passed are seen to have a reasonable relation to a proper legislative purpose, and are neither arbitrary nor discriminatory, the requirements of due process are satisfied.” In other words, when it came to economic regulations, the courts needed only to rubber stamp whatever the lawmakers deemed “reasonable.”
Today, we call this highly deferential approach the “rational basis test,” and as Timothy Sandefur explains in his superb new book The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom and the Law, the results have been disastrous for the judicial protection of economic rights. “Modern government is at liberty to violate a citizen’s right to earn a living almost at will,” Sandefur observes, pointing to a depressing array of occupational licensing schemes, state-sanctioned monopolies, price controls, regulatory takings, eminent domain abuse, and other government misdeeds that receive almost no meaningful scrutiny from the courts.
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Reason
August 26, 2010
On March 5, 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court declared New York shopkeeper Leo Nebbia to be a criminal because he sold two quarts of milk and a 5 cent loaf of bread for the combined low price of 18 cents. As Justice Owen Roberts explained in his 5-4 majority opinion in Nebbia v. New York, the state’s Milk Control Board had fixed the minimum price of milk at 9 cents a quart to eliminate the “evils” of price-cutting.
As for the constitutionality of this action, which raised the price of milk during the lean years of the Great Depression in an effort to boost the profits of New York dairy farmers, while doing absolutely nothing to improve the health or safety of the milk-drinking public, Roberts simply shrugged. “A state is free to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed to promote public welfare, and to enforce that policy by legislation adapted to its purpose." Furthermore, “If the laws passed are seen to have a reasonable relation to a proper legislative purpose, and are neither arbitrary nor discriminatory, the requirements of due process are satisfied.” In other words, when it came to economic regulations, the courts needed only to rubber stamp whatever the lawmakers deemed “reasonable.”
Today, we call this highly deferential approach the “rational basis test,” and as Timothy Sandefur explains in his superb new book The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom and the Law, the results have been disastrous for the judicial protection of economic rights. “Modern government is at liberty to violate a citizen’s right to earn a living almost at will,” Sandefur observes, pointing to a depressing array of occupational licensing schemes, state-sanctioned monopolies, price controls, regulatory takings, eminent domain abuse, and other government misdeeds that receive almost no meaningful scrutiny from the courts.
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Legacy of Torture
New York Times
Editorial
August 26, 2010
The Bush administration insisted that “enhanced interrogation techniques” — torture — were necessary to extract information from prisoners and keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Never mind that it was immoral, did huge damage to this country’s global standing and produced little important intelligence. Now, as we had feared, it is also making it much harder to try and convict accused terrorists.
Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.
A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated. In some cases the physical coercion was applied by foreign agents working at the behest of the United States; in other cases it was by United States agents.
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Editorial
August 26, 2010
The Bush administration insisted that “enhanced interrogation techniques” — torture — were necessary to extract information from prisoners and keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Never mind that it was immoral, did huge damage to this country’s global standing and produced little important intelligence. Now, as we had feared, it is also making it much harder to try and convict accused terrorists.
Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.
A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated. In some cases the physical coercion was applied by foreign agents working at the behest of the United States; in other cases it was by United States agents.
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Iowa foes of same-sex marriage seek to oust judges who legalized it
Washington Post
August 27, 2010
Politics is as much a mainstay of the Iowa State Fair as the deep-fried food and the cows sculpted out of butter. But the crowds searching for a remote corner under the grandstand this week were not headed for one of the presidential hopefuls who routinely drop by. They were interested in a normally low-key judicial election that has suddenly taken center stage in the national fight over same-sex marriage.
Conservative activists are trying to oust three judges on the state Supreme Court whose unanimous ruling last year legalized same-sex unions. Their decision stunned opponents nationwide and delighted advocates who were eager for a victory in the heartland.
Now, conservatives are staging an unusual campaign that aims to defeat the judges in November.
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August 27, 2010
Politics is as much a mainstay of the Iowa State Fair as the deep-fried food and the cows sculpted out of butter. But the crowds searching for a remote corner under the grandstand this week were not headed for one of the presidential hopefuls who routinely drop by. They were interested in a normally low-key judicial election that has suddenly taken center stage in the national fight over same-sex marriage.
Conservative activists are trying to oust three judges on the state Supreme Court whose unanimous ruling last year legalized same-sex unions. Their decision stunned opponents nationwide and delighted advocates who were eager for a victory in the heartland.
Now, conservatives are staging an unusual campaign that aims to defeat the judges in November.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Five myths about mosques in America
by Edward E. Curtis IV
Washington Post
August 29, 2010
In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.
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Washington Post
August 29, 2010
In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.
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Nine Justices and Ten Commandments
New York Times
August 26, 2010
While the politically manipulated controversy over the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan will eventually end, there is one dispute over religious symbolism and identity that remains, apparently, endless. I’m referring to the continuing effort by state and local governments to post the Ten Commandments in public places.
Believe it or not, a familiar Ten Commandments case is now heading back to the Supreme Court. The court has spent years making a nearly complete hash out of the public display of religious symbols, and the prospect of watching lawyers and justices engage in still more contorted efforts to attach supposedly secular meaning to obviously sectarian objects and texts is not a pleasant one. But the case could provide a window on how committed the Roberts court is to the project that some justices have clearly embraced, that of carving out more space for religion in the public square.
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A Challenge for WTC Mosque Opponents
Wall Street Journal
August 27, 2010
We hear a lot these days about how this famous conservative, or that one over there, has nothing against Islam.
We hear that the opponents of Cordoba House, a Muslim community center planned for a site two blocks from Ground Zero, don't question the right of American Muslims to worship where they choose—that, in fact, the Newt Gingriches and Sarah Palins of this country are all about tolerance and the Constitution. They're just asking for compassion for those grieving the losses of 9/11.
Well, I'm reminded of a passage with which both Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Palin should be familiar: "You shall know them by their fruits."
In the New Testament, Jesus warns against false prophets, explaining how to judge truth-tellers from snake oil salesmen: How do they act? What are the fruits of their labors? "Do people pick grapes from thornbushes," Jesus asks, "or figs from thistles?"
If Mr. Gingrich, Ms. Palin, or any who claim their problem with the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is not one of religion but location want to prove themselves, I have a simple suggestion: Come with me to Tennessee. Or California. Or Wisconsin.
Because there are mosque projects on hold in all those places, too—held back by hate, pure and simple.
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The reckoning (Iraq's uncertain future)
August 26, 2010
The last American combat soldiers in Iraq shuffle through a half-empty base as they prepare for the one-way journey to the Kuwaiti border. Some recall their exploits during many tours of duty over the past seven years, charting their fortunes with language that has become common currency on television back home. The shock and awe of the invasion was eclipsed by insurgents using IEDs. Backed by contractors who erected blast walls around a green zone, the soldiers eventually inspired an awakening among Iraqi tribes that, aided by a surge of extra troops, in time brought something like order. In the soldiers’ telling, the names of places that were little known before the war have acquired the resonance of history: Najaf, Sadr City, Abu Ghraib.
Some 50,000 American troops will stay on in a support role, to “advise and assist” the Iraqi forces that are now supposed to be in charge of the country’s security. Nonetheless, August 31st marks the official end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the combat mission that began with the invasion in March 2003. As a sign of America’s changing role in the country, the State Department will now assume some of the responsibilities that were previously undertaken by the Pentagon. Chief among them is the training of Iraqi policemen, a key to keeping the peace. Consular offices will be opened across the country to replace military bases. Since the State Department does not have its own forces, it is hiring private gunmen. They will fly armed helicopters and drive armoured personnel carriers on the orders of the secretary of state long after the last American soldier has gone home.
For their part, the people of Iraq never learned to trust, let alone like, the Americans. Yet public opinion has shifted remarkably in recent weeks. After countless American warnings of their imminent departure, all met with stubborn Iraqi insistence that the “occupiers” would never leave, the penny has suddenly dropped. They really are on their way out. But instead of feeling joy, Iraqis have begun to worry. “We’re not ready to go it alone,” says Wesam, a junior army officer. He, like many others, fears a return of sectarian war. That points to the fragility of much of what the American army can claim to have achieved since 2003.
On the positive side, they conclusively ended the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. Only his deputy, Izzat al-Douri, escaped capture and punishment in a war-crimes trial. American soldiers were flexible enough to change tactics in order to defeat an insurgency that threatened to overwhelm them; their emphasis on recruiting local allies proved superior to the unadulterated fire power they had used at first. They avoided all-out civil war and cut short the brutal reign of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born jihadist, who was hunted down and killed.
Furthermore, a more open society has taken shape in urban Iraq. Safia Souhail, a member of parliament, holds regular salons where discourse is free and often contrarian. On the streets too, politics is discussed openly, even among strangers. Iraqis are no longer afraid to say what they think. Where once there were only whispers, a cacophony of shouted curses now assaults political leaders. The press is nominally free, though highly partisan and often harassed by officials. Religious freedom is generally accepted, even if some minorities still complain of discrimination. Alcohol cannot be sold at certain times, in deference to Islamic hardliners, but is available nevertheless.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Revisit Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Mises Daily
August 26, 2010
Ray Bradbury celebrated his 90th birthday this past Sunday. He was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, a medium-sized town of around 20,000 people about midway between Chicago and Milwaukee on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Bradbury has depicted Waukegan fondly, even idyllically, in his fiction, most notably in his 1957 novel Dandelion Wine — even though the Waukegan conjured up in that book, which is set in 1928, is a bit larger than the Waukegan Bradbury was born into in 1920. The town's population grew by more than 50 percent during the '20s. By the beginning of the Great Depression, there were more than 33,000 people who called Waukegan home. The Bradbury family was not to be among these people for much longer, however.
They had already spent a year in Tucson, Arizona in the '20s, for reasons having to do with Ray's father's employment. Tucson was where Ray attended first grade. And in school year 1932/33, when Ray was 12, they were back in Tucson again. Then, after a few months cleaning up loose ends in Waukegan, not long before Ray's 14th birthday, they moved to Los Angeles, where they remained. Ray Bradbury himself is there to this day. It was in Los Angeles that he went through high school and in Los Angeles that he launched his extremely successful career as a fiction writer.
It is common to hear Ray Bradbury described as a "science-fiction writer," but this is misleading at best. Only a minority of Bradbury's total production is science fiction by any normal standard, and at least half of it is straightforward realistic fiction like Dandelion Wine. The fact is, however, that Bradbury's second, third, and fourth books, his first three books to come to widespread attention — The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) — were works of science fiction, or, at least, were widely believed to be. Bradbury was typecast early, you might say. He came to fame as a "science-fiction writer," and a "science-fiction writer" he will therefore forever remain.
For our purposes here, on the other hand, Bradbury's most important book is undeniably the third of those titles I just listed: Fahrenheit 451, his short novel about censorship, one of the most influential libertarian novels of the 20th century, first published nearly 60 years ago. And of all Ray Bradbury's books, Fahrenheit 451 is probably the one most entitled to be called "science fiction."
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The Possible Prosecution of WikiLeaks6
Independent Institute
August 25, 2010
The U.S. Justice Department is apparently considering prosecuting Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which is a Web site that publishes classified documents from governments, under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. Such a prosecution would have adverse effects on the American people’s right to know what their government is doing in a republic that is supposed to be run by them.
Ironically, the U.S. government may have leaked the threat of prosecution to coerce Assange into giving back 76,000 classified documents on the war in Afghanistan and deleting them from his Web site, which the Pentagon has demanded. More important, this threat may be meant to intimidate Assange from making public another 15,000 documents that he says will be even juicier than the previous release.
The Espionage Act, originally passed during World War I, was designed to prosecute spies from foreign powers. Yet Assange, who is Australian and spends most of his time in Belgium, Iceland, and Sweden, is hardly a foreign spy. While spies operate in the shadows and try to help foreign governments against the United States, Assange gets documents employees of various governments willingly give him and publishes them widely so citizens can see what their governments are up to.
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Fear and innuendo drive opposition to NYC 'mosque'
Editorial
August 26, 2010
For a brief moment last week, it appeared that a smattering of reason might be interrupting the hysterical clamor over the Unfunded Half-Mosque That Isn't at Ground Zero. You know the one. It's two long city blocks distant from the former World Trade Center— out of sight and sound, located in the same general neighborhood as bars, an off-track betting parlor, a couple of strip joints and a sex shop.
As planned, so far without financing, it's less a mosque than something akin to a YMCA. It would house a pool, a gym, art studios and a library, among other things, and planners say it would be open to all faiths. It would also have Muslim worship facilities, but that's no change. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is heading the project, already conducts services at the site.
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A judge blocks federal funding for stem cell research
Washington Post
Editorial
August 26, 2010
This week, a D.C. federal trial judge put a temporary halt to federally funded research on embryonic stem cells, concluding that current law prohibits the use of such money for work in which an embryo is damaged or destroyed. The decision is unnecessarily disruptive, creating uncertainty about the future of one of the most promising lines of research in recent memory. It also points out the need for Congress to clarify the rules that govern this scientifically important and morally delicate endeavor.
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Editorial
August 26, 2010
This week, a D.C. federal trial judge put a temporary halt to federally funded research on embryonic stem cells, concluding that current law prohibits the use of such money for work in which an embryo is damaged or destroyed. The decision is unnecessarily disruptive, creating uncertainty about the future of one of the most promising lines of research in recent memory. It also points out the need for Congress to clarify the rules that govern this scientifically important and morally delicate endeavor.
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A Muslim Reformer on the Mosque
Wall Street Journal
August 26, 2010
Debates across America over Islamic centers and mosques won't soon be resolved. But this summer's hysteria is giving the upper hand to one nefarious force: the culture of offense.
Election-year politics, ratings-hungry media and deep personal fear foment raw emotion. In such an environment, "I'm offended" takes on the stature of a substantive argument. Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.
That's true not just among antimosque crusaders, but also among warriors for tolerance. Consider Bob, who feels so offended by antimosque activists in his state of Tennessee that these feelings alone drive him to support more mosques—without prior thought to what, exactly, he's supporting. "I found local citizens to be intolerant and un-American," Bob tells me over email. "So as a gesture of tolerance and Americanism, I donated to the mosque building fund."
Before pledging a penny, Bob should have asked the imam: "Where will the men's side of this mosque be?" It's a discreet way of discerning whether the project will replicate segregation, and thus whether the mosque will wind up bolstering the intolerant behavior that Bob can't abide.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Islam is a religion, not a terror ideology
CNN
August 24, 2010
Opponents of an Islamic community center and mosque planned to be built near ground zero say it would desecrate hallowed ground. But suspicion has greeted proposed mosque projects in places less hallowed than ground zero -- in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Temecula, California; and elsewhere.
This suggests that opposition to mosques is not driven only by sensitivity to the memory of terrorism victims, but also by a growing unease toward Islam, fueled by security fears.
Opposition to Islamic centers and mosques in the United States shows remarkable similarities to anti-Islamic movements in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, where people also have sought to prohibit new mosques. Last December in Switzerland, citizens voted in a referendum to prohibit new minarets.
Another trait shared by anti-Islamic movements on both sides of the Atlantic is that they increasingly justify their opposition by arguing that Islam is not a religion.
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Did trade liberalisation benefit women? The case of Mexico in the 1990s
by Ernesto Aguayo-Téllez, Jim Airola and Chinhui Juhn
VOX
August 24, 2010
Promoting gender equality is a Millennium Development Goal. This column explores the effects of trade liberalisation in Mexico during the 1990s on the country’s gender gap. It finds that trade benefitted sectors of the economy that employ more women, such as textiles and clothing, thereby helping to raise women’s earnings and relative social status.
Promoting gender equality is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations (UN 2009). The potential paths to achieving this goal are many. An oft-cited path is to raise global awareness of the issue and to directly campaign for change. Another possibility may be to integrate poorer and less-developed economies into world markets by encouraging trade liberalisation.
This latter route merits further exploration. A large body of research documents the effect of trade liberalisation on skill premiums (see for example Robbins 1996, Wood 1997, Behrman et al. 2000)1. Among studies that examine gender outcomes, Oostendorp (2009) presents a cross-country analysis of the responsiveness of the gender gap to measures of trade and FDI. He finds that trade and FDI inflows reduce the gender gap among low-skilled occupations, while results are mixed for high-skilled occupations (see also Bussolo and De Hoyos 2009).
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VOX
August 24, 2010
Promoting gender equality is a Millennium Development Goal. This column explores the effects of trade liberalisation in Mexico during the 1990s on the country’s gender gap. It finds that trade benefitted sectors of the economy that employ more women, such as textiles and clothing, thereby helping to raise women’s earnings and relative social status.
Promoting gender equality is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations (UN 2009). The potential paths to achieving this goal are many. An oft-cited path is to raise global awareness of the issue and to directly campaign for change. Another possibility may be to integrate poorer and less-developed economies into world markets by encouraging trade liberalisation.
This latter route merits further exploration. A large body of research documents the effect of trade liberalisation on skill premiums (see for example Robbins 1996, Wood 1997, Behrman et al. 2000)1. Among studies that examine gender outcomes, Oostendorp (2009) presents a cross-country analysis of the responsiveness of the gender gap to measures of trade and FDI. He finds that trade and FDI inflows reduce the gender gap among low-skilled occupations, while results are mixed for high-skilled occupations (see also Bussolo and De Hoyos 2009).
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Mayor Defends Mosque
August 25, 2010
Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered an impassioned speech on religious freedom at a Ramadan dinner at Gracie Mansion Tuesday night, declaring there's "nowhere in the five boroughs of New York City that is off limits to any religion."
Mr. Bloomberg, speaking at an annual Iftar dinner, said he understood the impulse to find an alternative location for the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. But this kind of "compromise," as Gov. David Paterson and others have suggested, will not the end the debate, he said.
"The question will then become, how big should the 'no-mosque zone' be around the World Trade Center site? There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it be moved?" the mayor said. "This is a test of our commitment to American values. We have to have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy."
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Read the full speech
Wireless in Gaza
Wall Street Journal
August 25, 2010
I am in a van crossing into Ramallah with executives from America's largest Internet company. As we speed through the gate leading from Israel to the West Bank, we see the following message splashed in graffiti across the looming wall dividing the two areas: CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
It will take more than a couple of key strokes to reset the agenda for one of the world's most enduring conflicts. But when I accompanied some Google executives on a trip to Gaza and the West Bank this summer, I saw how the Web can have a positive impact there. Internet use is increasingly linking young Palestinians to economic opportunities and information, transcending borders and blockades.
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A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage
New York Times
August 24, 2010
LOOKING back on the adoption of the 19th Amendment 90 years ago Thursday — the largest act of enfranchisement in our history — it can be hard to see what the fuss was about. We’re inclined to assume that the passage of women’s suffrage (even the term is old-fashioned) was inevitable, a change whose time had come. After all, voting is now business as usual for women. And although women are still poorly represented in Congress, there are influential female senators and representatives, and prominent women occupy governors’ and mayors’ offices and legislative seats in every part of the United States.
Yet entrenched opposition nationwide sidelined the suffrage movement for decades in the 19th century. By 1920, antagonism remained in the South, and was strong enough to come close to blocking ratification.
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Cracks in the Iranian Monolith
Wall Street Journal
August 24, 2010
The Iranian regime loves to boast of its military strength, international clout and hold on domestic power. Much of this is accepted by outside experts, but in fact the regime is in trouble. Iran's leaders have lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, are unable to manage the country's many problems, face a growing opposition, and are openly fighting with one another.
A few weeks ago, according to official and private reports, the Iranian air force shot down three drones near the southwestern city of Bushehr, where a Russian-supplied nuclear reactor has just started up. When the Revolutionary Guards inspected the debris, they expected to find proof of high-altitude spying. Instead, the Guards had to report to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that the air force had blasted Iran's own unmanned aircraft out of the sky.
Apparently, according to official Iranian press accounts, the Iranian military had created a special unit to deploy the drones—some for surveillance and others, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged on Sunday, to carry bombs—but hadn't informed the air force.
These incidents have taken place against a general backdrop of internal conflict within the regime. In late July, Mohammad Ali Jaffari, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's Praetorian Guard, admitted publicly that many top officers were supporters of the opposition Green Movement. Shortly thereafter, according to official government announcements, some 250 officers suddenly resigned. In the past weeks, several journalists from the Guards' FARS news agency have defected, some to France and others to the United States.
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Wrong Direction on Stem Cells
New York Times
Editorial
August 24, 2010
In a huge overreach, a federal judge has decided that the legal interpretation that has governed federal support of embryonic stem cell research for more than a decade is invalid. If the ruling stands, it will be a serious blow to medical research.
The ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth would block President Obama’s expansion of federally funded research to include scores of new stem cell lines. It also appears to bar funding for research on the handful of lines that were approved by President George W. Bush in 2001. The Department of Justice has rightly announced that it will appeal.
Scientists hold high hopes that this research will lead to cures for devastating ailments like diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries. The stem cells are also useful for screening drugs to treat such diseases. Researchers who already have federal money in hand could likely continue their work. But those who need new funding for proposed or continuing research would have to find private sources or shut their experiments down.
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Editorial
August 24, 2010
In a huge overreach, a federal judge has decided that the legal interpretation that has governed federal support of embryonic stem cell research for more than a decade is invalid. If the ruling stands, it will be a serious blow to medical research.
The ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth would block President Obama’s expansion of federally funded research to include scores of new stem cell lines. It also appears to bar funding for research on the handful of lines that were approved by President George W. Bush in 2001. The Department of Justice has rightly announced that it will appeal.
Scientists hold high hopes that this research will lead to cures for devastating ailments like diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries. The stem cells are also useful for screening drugs to treat such diseases. Researchers who already have federal money in hand could likely continue their work. But those who need new funding for proposed or continuing research would have to find private sources or shut their experiments down.
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U.S. to Freeze New Grants After Stem-Cell Decision
August 24, 2010
Blindsided by a court ruling blocking federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells, the U.S. government plans to freeze all new grants for scientists and impose other restrictions on this burgeoning area of science.
The National Institutes of Health said it has abandoned its planned review of 50 new grant applications, and will not proceed with a second-level review of about a dozen applications valued at $15 million to $20 million. Also frozen is a planned review in September of another 22 grant applications totaling $54 million.
The preliminary injunction against federal funding for the research was issued on Monday by Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The judge said that federal funding violated a 1996 law prohibiting federal money for research in which an embryo was destroyed.
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The right-wing, blinded by its own hysteria
Washington Post
August 24, 2010
When did the loudmouths of the American right become such a bunch of fraidy-cats and professional victims? Or is it all just an act?
The hysteria over plans for an innocuous Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan -- two blocks from Ground Zero, amid an urban hodgepodge of office buildings, eateries and strip clubs -- is wildly out of proportion. It would be laughable if it didn't threaten to do great harm to the global campaign against Islamic terrorism.
It is by now firmly established that the project, dubbed Park51, is promoted by a peacenik Muslim cleric whose sermons often sound a bit like the musings of new-age guru Deepak Chopra. It is also undisputed fact that the imam in question, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is such a moderate that the U.S. government regularly sends him as an emissary to Muslim countries to preach peace, coexistence and dialogue.
Yet right-wing commentators and politicians have twisted themselves in knots to portray the Park51 project as a grievous assault -- and "the American people" as victims. Victims of what? Rauf's sinister plot to despoil the city with a fitness center, a swimming pool and -- shudder -- a space for the performing arts?
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NIH cannot fund embryonic stem cell research, judge rules
Washington Post
August 24, 2010
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Obama administration from funding human embryonic stem cell research, ruling that the support violates a federal law barring the use of taxpayer money for experiments that destroy human embryos.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration's new guidelines, citing an appeals court's ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing to pursue their lawsuit.
The decision, a setback for one of the administration's most high-profile scientific policies, was praised by opponents of the research.
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August 24, 2010
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Obama administration from funding human embryonic stem cell research, ruling that the support violates a federal law barring the use of taxpayer money for experiments that destroy human embryos.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration's new guidelines, citing an appeals court's ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing to pursue their lawsuit.
The decision, a setback for one of the administration's most high-profile scientific policies, was praised by opponents of the research.
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Are 'Sext' Messages a Teenage Felony or Folly?
Wall Street Journal
August 25, 2010
State lawmakers around the U.S. are struggling to decide if teenage "sexting"—the practice of sending nude or sexually suggestive photos by cellphone—is a serious crime, or juvenile folly run amok.
About 20 states have enacted or proposed measures that deal with teenage sexters. Generally, the legislation is aimed at treating minors in a more lenient fashion than if they were prosecuted under existing child-pornography or child-exploitation laws, which include the possibility of prison time and sex-offender status.
Since May, states including Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana and Illinois have enacted laws that impose relatively modest penalties against minors who sext, while maintaining harsher penalties for adult offenders.
While many of the new rules make sexting punishable by small fines and short stints in a juvenile-detention facility, there is still little agreement on what the appropriate penalty is—or whether prosecutors should be involved at all.
Some attorneys view sexting by teenagers as a comparatively tame activity that is best handled by parents and teachers. Others disagree, stressing the extreme and lasting humiliation that young victims of sexting are likely to experience.
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August 25, 2010
State lawmakers around the U.S. are struggling to decide if teenage "sexting"—the practice of sending nude or sexually suggestive photos by cellphone—is a serious crime, or juvenile folly run amok.
About 20 states have enacted or proposed measures that deal with teenage sexters. Generally, the legislation is aimed at treating minors in a more lenient fashion than if they were prosecuted under existing child-pornography or child-exploitation laws, which include the possibility of prison time and sex-offender status.
Since May, states including Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana and Illinois have enacted laws that impose relatively modest penalties against minors who sext, while maintaining harsher penalties for adult offenders.
While many of the new rules make sexting punishable by small fines and short stints in a juvenile-detention facility, there is still little agreement on what the appropriate penalty is—or whether prosecutors should be involved at all.
Some attorneys view sexting by teenagers as a comparatively tame activity that is best handled by parents and teachers. Others disagree, stressing the extreme and lasting humiliation that young victims of sexting are likely to experience.
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U.S. human rights report hails Obama practices
August 24, 2010
A new State Department report on America's human rights record praises many of President Obama's domestic reforms in making the case to the world body for U.S. progress on human rights.
The 29-page report is the first to be submitted by the United States this week to the U.N. Human Rights Council and will be the basis of a human rights audit that U.S. representatives will take part in later this year.
The human rights audit, also known as the universal periodic review, is required of all U.N. member states. China, Iran and North Korea have already submitted their human rights records to the review.
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WikiLeaks to release CIA paper on Wednesday
August 25, 2010
WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that infuriated the Pentagon when it published thousands of classified military reports, said it will release a fresh set of documents Wednesday.
The group posted on its Twitter page Tuesday: "WikiLeaks to release CIA paper tomorrow." It did not specify a time.
The website set off a firestorm recently when it posted some 76,000 U.S. documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The group has said it has another 15,000 documents, which it plans to release soon.
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Why Obama sticks with civil unions
August 24, 2010
WITH regard to gay marriage, I think I may occupy an even narrower and perhaps more absurd slice of intellectual terrain than Barack Obama does (in Richard Just's characterisation). I think the social institutions in which people carry out reproductive and sexual activity are pretty historically fluid, and have an often ambiguous relationship to ideas about justice. I can imagine a just, tolerant, unprejudiced and sexually-liberated society that has separate legal institutions categorising committed homosexual and heterosexual relationships. When a democratic nation in Europe or South America decides to establish domestic partnerships with full civil rights for gay couples, rather than calling them "marriages", I don't necessarily think that country is less fully egalitarian than one that allows gays to marry; I simply think that's the way they do it over there. Within Europe, I think gay marriage was institutionalised first in the Netherlands, while Scandinavian countries stuck with civil unions for a while, in large measure because the Netherlands is more conservative, and large segments of Dutch society still accord a semi-sacralised premium to the word "marriage" which doesn't obtain so strongly in Scandinavia. In America, too, I think the reason gay marriage displaced civil unions as a progressive political goal is partly down to the conservatism of American society. I think the reasons why we're pushing for gay marriage rather than civil unions are not unrelated to the reasons why our money is still all-green and we can't seem to get rid of the penny or get a dollar coin circulating.
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Our view on medical research: Embryonic stem cell ruling puts the onus on Congress
August 25, 2010
For people suffering from diabetes, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other afflictions that resist traditional therapies, Monday's legal decision barring federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is deeply disappointing.
Disappointing, but likely legally correct. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth cited an amendment Congress passed in 1996 that bars any research using cells that come from the destruction of human embryos. That law, Lamberth ruled, trumps an executive order President Obama issued last year aimed at jump-starting research.
The government said Tuesday it would appeal the ruling, but the best and fastest way to ensure that federal funding continues is for Congress to approve it without delay.
The politics and ethics would, of course, be easier if the cells could be harvested without destroying embryos, or if adult stem cells could be used instead, a subject of aggressive research. But for now, the embryos are the only source of the stem cells scientists consider so enormously promising.
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No compromise on religious freedom
August 24, 2010
When it comes to the mosque that's neither too close to Ground Zero for its proponents nor far enough away for its opponents, the disturbing word "compromise" is now being tossed around. It has been suggested by New York Gov. David Paterson, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and, in Sunday's Post, Karen Hughes, once an important adviser to George W. Bush. These are all well-meaning people, but they do not understand that in this case, the difference between compromise and defeat is nonexistent.
This is not a complicated matter. If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Porn offers window into Iraq's chaotic politics
Associated Press
August 24, 2010
The nude women on the DVD cover in a Baghdad street stall say it all: Change, whether you like it or not, is afoot in Iraq.
Hundreds of porn DVDs are stacked elbow-deep on a wooden table in Jassim Hanoun's ramshackle stall on a downtown sidewalk. His other tables have Hollywood blockbusters, like "King Kong." But not surprisingly, it's the sex that sells best.
"I've got everything," Hanoun says of his sex selection, flashing the kind of impish grin only a 22-year-old in tight jeans and slicked-back hair can pull off with any real conviction. "What do you want? I've got foreign films, Arab, Iraqi, Indian, celebrities — whatever you like."
The porn, in an odd way, has told the story of Iraq's security and political situation since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. It emerged in the anything-goes atmosphere that erupted in the vacuum immediately following the U.S. invasion — then went back into hiding amid the anarchy when armed militias roamed the capital through 2008, targeting those they saw as immoral.
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August 24, 2010
The nude women on the DVD cover in a Baghdad street stall say it all: Change, whether you like it or not, is afoot in Iraq.
Hundreds of porn DVDs are stacked elbow-deep on a wooden table in Jassim Hanoun's ramshackle stall on a downtown sidewalk. His other tables have Hollywood blockbusters, like "King Kong." But not surprisingly, it's the sex that sells best.
"I've got everything," Hanoun says of his sex selection, flashing the kind of impish grin only a 22-year-old in tight jeans and slicked-back hair can pull off with any real conviction. "What do you want? I've got foreign films, Arab, Iraqi, Indian, celebrities — whatever you like."
The porn, in an odd way, has told the story of Iraq's security and political situation since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. It emerged in the anything-goes atmosphere that erupted in the vacuum immediately following the U.S. invasion — then went back into hiding amid the anarchy when armed militias roamed the capital through 2008, targeting those they saw as immoral.
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Judge stops federal funding of embryonic stem cell research
August 23, 2010
A U.S. district judge granted a preliminary injunction Monday to stop federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that he said destroys embryos, ruling it went against the will of Congress.
The ruling by Judge Royce C. Lamberth was a blow to the Obama administration, which last year issued guidelines to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Lamberth's ruling said all embryonic stem cell research involves destroying embryos, which violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment included in federal spending bills.
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America, Home of the Free -- Except for Muslims?
The Huffington Post
August 23, 2010
Religion stirs our deepest passions. That helps explain the furor over the planned construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. Why else would Americans, who normally glory in their right to practice their chosen faiths, be debating whether people can build a house of worship in the nation's most populous city?
It is a disturbing discussion. The tone is ugly; the charges are vicious. And no Christian, Jew, or other religious person can feel safe if angry mobs -- even if only virtual -- are able to stop the activities of an unpopular faith.
There is no legal barrier to building the mosque and Muslim community center, called Cordoba House, in New York City. If the First Amendment means anything, the government cannot single out a particular religion for constructing a worship facility. The Free Exercise Clause would mean little if politicians could willy-nilly close down mosques -- or churches, synagogues, temples, and other religious sites.
Any attempt to block Cordoba House also would run into the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Passed by voice vote in the Republican Congress of 2000, the law targets state and local governments attempting to inhibit religious exercise through land use regulation. Senate sponsor Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) explained: "At the core of religious freedom is the ability for assemblies to gather and worship together."
Nevertheless, should the mosque not be built, at least at the planned site? The moral outrage generated over the proposed construction is real. But it appears to reflect the dubious claim of collective Muslim responsibility for 9/11.
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Saudi Arabia urged not to paralyze man as retribution punishment
CNN
August 23, 2010
Amnesty International on Friday urged Saudi Arabian authorities not to paralyze a man as punishment for his having paralyzed someone else, allegedly during a fight.
The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that the judge in the case had sent letters to several hospitals in Saudi Arabia asking if they could sever a man's spinal cord, as the man he allegedly stabbed had requested and, under sharia law, was his right to seek.
But such a punishment would amount "to nothing less than torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations."
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August 23, 2010
Amnesty International on Friday urged Saudi Arabian authorities not to paralyze a man as punishment for his having paralyzed someone else, allegedly during a fight.
The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that the judge in the case had sent letters to several hospitals in Saudi Arabia asking if they could sever a man's spinal cord, as the man he allegedly stabbed had requested and, under sharia law, was his right to seek.
But such a punishment would amount "to nothing less than torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations."
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Mosque Planner Says Opposition Goes 'Beyond Islamophobia'
August 23, 2010
A leader of a planned Muslim community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero compared opposition to the project to the persecution of Jews, in comments that could add to the controversy over the center's proposed site.
"We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized antisemitism," said Daisy Khan, who is spearheading the project with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. "It's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims."
Ms. Khan, appearing on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday, vowed to push ahead with plans to build a 15-story complex two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, saying there was "too much at stake."
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Far from Ground Zero, other plans for mosques run into vehement opposition
Washington Post
August 23, 2010
For more than 30 years, the Muslim community in this Nashville suburb has worshipped quietly in a variety of makeshift spaces -- a one-bedroom apartment, an office behind a Lube Express -- attracting little notice even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But when the community's leaders proposed a 52,900-square-foot Islamic center with a school and a swimming pool this year, the vehement backlash from their neighbors caught them by surprise. Opponents crowded county meetings and held a noisy protest in the town square that drew hundreds, some carrying signs such as "Keep Tennessee Terror Free."
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August 23, 2010
For more than 30 years, the Muslim community in this Nashville suburb has worshipped quietly in a variety of makeshift spaces -- a one-bedroom apartment, an office behind a Lube Express -- attracting little notice even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But when the community's leaders proposed a 52,900-square-foot Islamic center with a school and a swimming pool this year, the vehement backlash from their neighbors caught them by surprise. Opponents crowded county meetings and held a noisy protest in the town square that drew hundreds, some carrying signs such as "Keep Tennessee Terror Free."
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Disgrace
New Republic
August 23, 2010
In the fall of 1912, as his campaign for president entered its final stage, Woodrow Wilson was speaking in Brooklyn when he was asked for his opinion on women’s suffrage. The issue was very much in the political ether, but Wilson had declined to take a stand on it. According to John Milton Cooper’s excellent biography of the twenty-eighth president, he responded by insisting that it was “not a question that is dealt with by the national government at all.” The woman who had asked the question was apparently displeased by this blatant dodge. “I am speaking to you as an American, Mr. Wilson,” she retorted.
I am speaking to you as an American: It was a wonderful rebuke, one that anticipated the rhetoric of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who would not rail against America but instead demand to be fully part of it. Wilson, however, was unmoved. And his slippery treatment of women’s suffrage—like his slippery approach on matters of race—did not end once he was in the White House. Running for reelection four years later, he was still playing the same exasperating game. That year, the Democrats did not endorse a constitutional amendment providing for women’s suffrage but, instead, called on the states to extend voting rights to women. Such a half-measure looks cowardly in retrospect, of course; but it also looked cowardly at the time. In November 1916, The New Republic excoriated Wilson for his weak stand on the issue. During his reelection campaign, TNR wrote, Wilson had told a group of suffragists that “[h]e was with them,” even as “he confessed to a ‘little impatience’ as to their anxiety about method.” From this, the magazine concluded that the president had “at best a vague, benign feeling about [the issue], and no conviction whatever that woman suffrage was creating a national situation which called for thorough sincerity, nerve and will.”
An evasive stance on a controversial civil rights issue from a liberal president; an insistence that the issue is primarily local, rather than national, in character; a complete failure of sincerity, nerve, and will: If these things sound familiar in 2010, it is because Barack Obama is taking exactly the same approach on gay marriage.
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Sensitive Conservatism
Slate
August 23, 2010
One by one, the arguments against the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero have collapsed. A "13-story mosque"? No such plan. "At Ground Zero"? Wrong again. The imam's radical politics? A myth. His shadowy jihadist financiers? Imagined. His failure to denounce terrorism? Debunked. The "angry battle" he's "stoking"? Please. The guy isn't even returning phone calls. The anger and stoking have come from the other side.
So the mosque's opponents have fallen back on one last argument: sensitivity.
"This is an insensitive move," says Sarah Palin. "The question here is a question of sensitivity, people's feelings," says Rudy Giuliani. It's "not just insensitive but provocative," argues Charles Krauthammer. "Those who want to block the mosque are demanding a truly meaningful gesture in 'special sensitivity,' " writes Rich Lowry. Bill Kristol says the proposed location fails to show proper "respect" to the dead. Jonah Goldberg invokes "appropriateness." Karen Hughes, the former Bush aide, says the mosque should be moved because most Americans "don't believe it's respectful, given what happened there."
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Protests, Rhetoric Feed Jihadists' Fire
Wall Street Journal
August 23, 2010
Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.
One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.
"By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it," says one such posting. "By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames."
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Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.
One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.
"By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it," says one such posting. "By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames."
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India, the Rent-a-Womb Capital of the World
Slate
August 23, 2010
You can outsource just about any work to India these days, including making babies. Reproductive tourism in India is now a half-a-billion-dollar-a-year industry, with surrogacy services offered in 350 clinics across the country since it was legalized in 2002. The primary appeal of India is that it is cheap, hardly regulated, and relatively safe. Surrogacy can cost up to $100,000 in the United States, while many Indian clinics charge $22,000 or less. Very few questions are asked. Same-sex couples, single parents and even busy women who just don't have time to give birth are welcomed by doctors. As a bonus, many Indians speak English and Indian surrogate mothers are less likely to use illegal drugs. Plus medical standards in private hospitals are very high (not all good Indian doctors left in the brain drain).
Some describe this as a win-win situation. The doctors get clients, the childless get children and the surrogates get much-needed money. But some media horror stories have challenged this happy vision. In 2007 the Japanese couple Ikufumi and Yuki Yamada came to visit India's "Surrogacy Queen," Dr. Nayna Patel, founder of the Akanksha Infertility Clinic. A donor egg and surrogate mother was found and the embryo was implanted in the surrogate's womb. Before the child was born, however, the Yamadas divorced and Mrs. Yamada no longer wanted the child, which was not biologically hers. Mr. Yamada wanted the baby but could not adopt it due to an Indian colonial-era law that forbids single men from adopting girls. The absence of regulation meant that Baby Manji became India's first "surrogate orphan" until the father was finally able to adopt her several months, after the Supreme Court intervened. Other cases like the Japanese one have followed, involving Israeli, French, and German citizens.
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