Strange Love

by Jacob Sullum

Reason
November 2010

In August a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage, violates the 14th Amendment’s command that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker concluded that the ban’s justification was so weak that it failed even the “rational basis” test, the highly deferential standard used in equal protection cases that do not involve a fundamental right or a “suspect class” such as race (although he also argued that gay marriage bans implicate both).

In addition to social conservatives, critics of the decision included supporters of gay marriage who worry about the damage done by result-oriented jurisprudence. While I share their concerns, this objection to the equal protection argument for gay marriage no longer seems decisive to me.

For one thing, I’m not sure it’s possible to prevent a judge’s policy preferences from influencing his application of the law in a case like this. No doubt a judge who was more alarmed at the prospect of gay marriage would have reached a conclusion different from Walker’s. But wouldn’t that judge also be guilty of letting his social views shape his legal analysis?

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Η βία και οι συμβολισμοί...

του Πάσχου Μανδραβέλη

Καθημερινή
26 Οκτωβρίου 2010

Είναι ευτύχημα που αυτή τη φορά χρησιμοποιήθηκαν γιαούρτια κατά του κ. Αλέκου Αλαβάνου και αυγά κατά της κ. Ελένης Πορτάλιου. Την προηγούμενη φορά που «κάτοικοι» μιας περιοχής εκδήλωσαν την αγανάκτησή τους κατά ενός πολιτικού χρησιμοποίησαν τρίκυκλο και στειλιάρια. Μπορεί να υπήρχαν διαφορετικές αφετηρίες και (ευτυχώς!) διαφορετικά αποτελέσματα, αλλά ο πυρήνας των επιθέσεων είναι ακριβώς ο ίδιος. Ο ενοχλητικός λόγος, που απαντάται με πράξεις φυσικής βίας, άλλοτε θανατηφόρας και άλλοτε «συμβολικής».

Η αλήθεια είναι ότι μπορεί να εξοργιστεί κάποιος με τα λεγόμενα του κ. Αλαβάνου και άλλων τόσων της αλλοπρόσαλλης προόδου. Μπορεί επίσης και να γελάσει με προτάσεις περί «αποΔΝΤποιημένης ζώνης» που υποσχέθηκε να κάνει την Αττική. Από την άλλη όμως, δεν υπάρχει άποψη που να μη θεωρηθεί από κάποιους εξοργιστική. Μέχρι και το «αγαπάτε αλλήλους» ερμηνεύτηκε ως ευθεία προσβολή στον μωσαϊκό νόμο, με αποτέλεσμα να έχουμε φυσική βία κατά εκείνου που το εκστόμισε. Αλλά στα 2.000 χρόνια που πέρασαν, οι δυτικές κοινωνίες έμαθαν πολλά. Πρώτα απ’ όλα να ξεχωρίζουν τον λόγο από τη βία.

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Iran restricts social sciences seen as 'Western'

Associated Press
October 24, 2010

Iran has imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be based on Western schools of thought and therefore incompatible with Islamic teachings, state radio reported Sunday.

The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran's conservative leadership - women's studies and human rights.

"The content of the current courses in the 12 subjects is not in harmony with religious fundamentals and they are based on Western schools of thought," senior education official Abolfazl Hassani told state radio.

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Name That Freedom

New York Times
October 23, 2010

So now we know that Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for senator in Delaware, isn’t a constitutional scholar.

On Tuesday, during a debate, Ms. O’Donnell asked her opponent, Chris Coons, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” The question drew gasps and laughter from the law school audience.

When Mr. Coons pointed out that the first words of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” are the foundation of the concept, she replied, “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

She was, she later said, attempting to point out that the actual words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the text of the Constitution. This is true in the strictest sense, and has become a popular argument among religious conservatives who believe that courts have gone too far.

Still, the moment has been held up as a flub of the first order.

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Afghan detainees claim US abuse

Al Jazeera
October 15, 2010

Former US military prisoners in Afghanistan have said that they were abused in a secret prison on Bagram airbase as recently as this year, raising fears that detainee mistreatment has continued despite an overhaul of US detention operations in the country.

The abuse - which includes exposure to extreme temperatures, lack of adequate food and bedding, lack of natural light and interference with religious duties - is alleged to have occurred at a secret "screening" facility on the military base north of Kabul.

The existence of the site, known amongst Afghans as the "Tor Jail", has never been admitted by US authorities, although it does acknowledge it runs a number of field sites in which prisoners are held immediately after being captured.

Prisoners are kept at the field sites before either being handed to Afghan authorities, released, or transferred to the main US detention facility at Parwan, on the edge of Bagram airbase.

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Hitler Exhibit Explores a Wider Circle of Guilt

New York Times
October 15, 2010

As artifacts go, they are mere trinkets — an old purse, playing cards, a lantern. Even the display that caused the crowds to stop and stare is a simple embroidered tapestry, stitched by village women.

But the exhibits that opened Friday at the German Historical Museum are intentionally prosaic: they emphasize the everyday way that ordinary Germans once accepted, and often celebrated, Hitler.

The household items had Nazi logos and colors. The tapestry, a tribute to the union of church, state and party, was woven by a church congregation at the behest of their priest.

“This is what we call self-mobilization of society,” said Hans-Ulrich Thamer, one of three curators to assemble the exhibit at the German Historical Museum. “As a person, Hitler was a very ordinary man. He was nothing without the people.”

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See also the Wall Street Journal article.

The New Wave of Extreme State Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) Legislation: Why It's Dangerous

by Marci A. Hamilton

FindLaw
October 14, 2010

Despite the nation's unhappy and unfortunate experience with the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and its progeny, there is a new movement pushing for a new kind of state RFRA -- which is much more extreme than we've seen in the past.

In this column, I'll explain why the enactment of extreme-RFRA statutes or ballot initiatives would be a grievous mistake, and describe some of the movement, on the state level, regarding this issue.


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History and its woes: How Stalin and Hitler enabled each other’s crimes

Economist
October 14, 2010

In the middle of the 20th century Europe’s two totalitarian empires, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, killed 14m non-combatants, in peacetime and in war. The who, why, when, where and how of these mass murders is the subject of a gripping and comprehensive new book by Timothy Snyder of Yale University.

The term coined in the book’s title encapsulates the thesis. The “bloodlands” are the stretch of territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea where Europe’s most murderous regimes did their most murderous work. The bloodlands were caught between two fiendish projects: Adolf Hitler’s ideas of racial supremacy and eastern expansion, and the Soviet Union’s desire to remake society according to the communist template. That meant shooting, starving and gassing those who didn’t fit in. Just as Stalin blamed the peasants for the failure of collectivisation, Hitler blamed the Jews for his military failures in the east. As Mr Snyder argues, “Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative Utopia, a group to be blamed when its realisation proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory.”

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Sense about sharia

Economist
October 14, 2010

Sharia, the Islamic code of behaviour and law, has become an electric term in the language of politics. A Republican candidate for the US Senate has claimed bizarrely that two American districts are already living under it. Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, reckons America needs a federal law to establish that sharia may not be recognised by any court. Such legislation would only be prudent, his supporters suggest, when Islamic law is trying to infiltrate every corner of American life. Elena Kagan, a new Supreme Court judge, has been accused of crypto-sharia tendencies because her alma mater, Harvard Law School, has an Islamic finance project.

The term is bandied about in Europe, too. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently felt it necessary to assure her fellow Christian Democrats that, whatever steps might be needed to help immigrants, “it’s the constitution that applies, not sharia.” From the other side, the word elicits knee-jerk protectiveness among Muslims. When 40% of Muslim Britons told a pollster they liked the idea of sharia being applied in parts of Britain, that was not a demand for Saudi-style beheading, but a gut defence of a faith they see as under threat.

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A hard stone in the wilderness

Economist
October 14, 2010

Persecution can have strange effects. Over the past quarter-century, it has helped to turn Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese jailbird who is the new Nobel peace-prize laureate, into an optimist. In the 1980s he was known for his gloomy “nihilism”. Yet in a statement in December 2009, when he was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment for “inciting sedition”, he was “full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future”. With the Chinese government decrying his Nobel award as a “desecration” and intensifying repression to make its point, such hopefulness seems perverse. But Mr Liu, a worthy award-winner, may yet prove as prescient as he is heroic.

His “crime” was to have been closely involved in the drafting and circulation of Charter 08, a manifesto for political reform issued in December 2008 and since signed by several thousand Chinese citizens. Far from being a rallying-call for revolution, the charter is a moderate appeal for incremental reform—much of it in directions promised by China’s constitution. It demands freedom of expression, association and religion; guarantees of human rights and the protection of private property; the election of public officials; the abolition of the hukou system of residence permits that disadvantages those born in the countryside; and recognition that “freedom, equality and human rights are universal values of humankind”. That puts the charter, Mr Liu and now the Nobel committee at the heart of a crucial debate about China’s future.

It was not just the charter’s ideas that impelled the party to take vindictive revenge. It was, as the indictment made clear, the subsequent attempt to rally support for them via the internet. Ever since the Tiananmen protests of 1989, the Communist Party has been haunted by fears that the million mutinies it faces daily could again coalesce into a broad-based opposition movement.

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North Korean Iconography: A Kimjongunia would smell as sweet

Economist
October 14, 2010

Sometimes there are Kimilsungia exhibitions. Sometimes there are Kimjongilia ones. Citizens of Pyongyang are also treated to combined Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia shows. One such got underway at the beginning of this month, at the Kimilsungia-Kimjongilia Exhibition House: innumerable pots filled with the same two kinds of plant, a monotony alleviated only by a guide’s prediction that North Korea will one day get a third variety.

Kim Jong Il has resisted his late father Kim Il Sung’s predilection for studding North Korea with statues of himself (Pyongyang’s first of Kim Jong Il was reportedly unveiled earlier this year, 16 years after he succeeded his father as North Korea’s leader). Instead, Kim Jong Il says it with flowers. Foreign correspondents invited in for celebrations of the ruling party’s 65th birthday on October 10th saw them everywhere: on billboards, on huge digital screens erected for the festivities on Kim Il Sung Square, in a cascading display in the hotel lobby and in endless profusion at the exhibition (along with huge portraits of the two Kims).

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Stuart Carlson (October 13, 2010)

Relatively Open Borders -- Not Harsh Immigration Restrictions -- Follow the True American Tradition

by Aziz Rana

FindLaw
October 12, 2010

Among the great ironies of the present moment is that "Tea Party" calls for restrictive immigration claim to follow in the footsteps of the country's founders. But rather than mimicking early Americans, Tea Partiers explicitly reject one of the classic features of American exceptionalism: relatively open borders. Even more troubling, they disavow the truly revolutionary aspect of our past -- the idea that an ever-expanding range of people can be incorporated into a shared political and economic project. What remains are those racially exclusionary accounts of membership that have long marred national life.

American settlers, before and after independence, self-consciously broke from what they considered to be European judgments about migration and naturalization. The English crown from which the United States gained its independence took for granted that there should be a fundamental divide between subjects and aliens -- something that current Tea Partiers would find congenial. Under European monarchies, suspicion of foreigners went hand in hand with laws that limited landholding, inheritance, and meaningful political rights (like voting) solely to subjects of the crown.

By contrast, the U.S. developed remarkably flexible immigration policies that made the border more a port of entry than a meaningful barrier for new arrivals. These policies included practices that today would be quite surprising, such as noncitizen voting and noncitizen access to federal land out west. In the years after the Civil War more than a dozen states enacted laws that allowed immigrants to vote before naturalization. In doing so, they followed a tried and true path laid out by the founders' congressional approach to frontier territories as well as by early state measures in Vermont, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Michigan, and elsewhere.

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Judge Orders U.S. Military to Stop ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

New York Times
October 12, 2010

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States military to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction banning enforcement of the law and ordered the military to immediately “suspend and discontinue” any investigations or proceedings to dismiss service members.

In language much like that in her Sept. 9 ruling declaring the law unconstitutional, Judge Phillips wrote that the 17-year-old policy “infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members” and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech.

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Tony Auth (October 12, 2010)

Agnostic about gay marriage

Economist
October 11, 2010

The debate over gay marriage is at the heart of many races in America's mid-term elections. On Sunday October 10th Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, said that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable and that he would veto any gay-marriage bill. But that view places him in a minority. For the first time since the Pew Research Centre began conducting polls on the subject in 1995, fewer than half of Americans (48%) are opposed to gay marriage, while 42% are in favour. All religious groups are more accepting than they were in polls taken between 2008 and 2009. The most notable shift has been among white mainstream Protestants and Catholics, 49% of whom are now in favour, and that figure was even higher for those who attend church less than once a week.

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All hail the boy emperor

Economist
October 10, 2010

North Korea, a past master of pageantry, has staged a spectacular coming-out ceremony for its leader-in-waiting, Kim Jong Un, while making it clear that his ailing father Kim Jong Il, remains very much in command. The two men reviewed a parade of tanks, missiles and goose-stepping solders which cut through the centre of Pyongyang, providing citizens with a striking demonstration of the Kim dynasty’s power and its plans to keep it in the family.

Extraordinarily for a country that likes to keep the foreign media at bay, North Korean officials suddenly let it be known a couple of days before the event that Western correspondents would be allowed to attend. Journalists were told they could fly to Pyongyang on October 9th to attend a military parade the following day marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party. It was only after we arrived (some 80 astonished Western journalists in all) that officials made it clear that the two Kims would be there too. North Korea, it seemed, wanted Western eyes to confirm the dynastic succession strategy that the party approved about two weeks earlier at a rare conclave. It was to be the first sighting by foreign journalists of Kim Jong Un, who is the third son of Kim Jong Il and still in his late 20s.


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«Η κυρία δεν γυρίζει»

του Πάσχου Μανδραβέλη

Καθημερινή
10 Οκτωβρίου 2010

Το φθινόπωρο του 1980 μία λέξη κυριαρχούσε στα πρωτοσέλιδα των βρετανικών εφημερίδων: «U-turn». Η οικονομία τής Γηραιάς Αλβιώνος βρισκόταν επί πολλά έτη στη χειρότερη μεταπολεμική ύφεση, αλλά οι πρώτες τομές τής νέας κυβέρνησης υπό τη Μάργκαρετ Θάτσερ, είχαν ως αποτέλεσμα και την αύξηση της ανεργίας. Ετσι λοιπόν, όλοι περίμεναν την επανάληψη της ιστορίας. Οι δημοσιογράφοι θύμιζαν τη στροφή των 180 μοιρών που έκανε ο προκάτοχός της συντηρητικός πρωθυπουργός Εντουαρντ Χιθ, όταν το 1972 -υπό την πίεση των συνδικάτων και την αύξηση της ανεργίας- αναγκάστηκε να εγκαταλείψει το μετριοπαθές μεταρρυθμιστικό του πρόγραμμα.

Το πρόγραμμα φιλελευθεροποίησης της οικονομίας, ως απάντηση στη βαθιά ύφεση της οικονομίας, είχε συνταχθεί προεκλογικά το 1970 από τη σκιώδη κυβέρνηση του Εντουαρτ Χιθ στο ξενοδοχείο Σέλσντον. Παρά το γεγονός ότι πολεμήθηκε σκληρά (ο τότε Εργατικός πρωθυπουργός Χάρολντ Γουίλσον το χαρακτήρισε «αντιδραστικό»), οι Συντηρητικοί κέρδισαν τις εκλογές του 1970. Μέχρι το 1972 όμως το «πρόγραμμα Σέλσντον» ήταν νεκρό, και στην ταφόπλακά του ο Τύπος έγραψε τη λέξη «U-turn».

Ολοι, λοιπόν, περίμεναν ότι στις 10 Οκτωβρίου του 1980, που γινόταν το συνέδριο των Συντηρητικών στο Μπράιτον, η Μάργκαρετ Θάτσερ θα επαναλάμβανε την ιστορία. Εξω από το συνεδριακό κέντρο βρίσκονταν χιλιάδες διαδηλωτές φωνάζοντας συνθήματα για το «δικαίωμα στη δουλειά». Αρκετά στελέχη του συντηρητικού κόμματος ήθελαν να δουν την «κυριούλα με την τσάντα» να τρώει τα μούτρα της? το συνέδριο του Μπράιτον ήταν κι ένας χώρος ξεκαθαρίσματος των λογαριασμών μεταξύ της συντηρητικής πτέρυγας των Τόρις που δεν ήθελαν να αλλάξει τίποτε και των νεοφιλελεύθερων που είχαν πάρει το όνομα «ομάδα Σέλσντον». Η Μάργκαρετ Θάτσερ φορώντας το κλασικό μπλε ταγιεράκι ανέβηκε στο βήμα και ξεκαθάρισε τα πράγματα. «Γι’ αυτούς που περιμένουν με κομμένη την ανάσα για το αγαπημένο κλισέ των ΜΜΕ, το U-turn, ένα έχω να πω: You turn if you want. (Γυρίστε εσείς αν θέλετε). Η κυρία δεν γυρίζει».

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Φόβος και προκατάληψη

της Δήμητρας Κογκίδου

Το Βήμα
10 Οκτωβρίου 2010

Νομίζω ότι είναι αναγκαία η άμεση συμπερίληψη των ομόφυλων ζευγαριών στο σύμφωνο συμβίωσης. Η αναγνώριση συναντά εμπόδια διαφόρων ειδών που προέρχονται από την ομοφυλοφοβία, την ύπαρξη προκαταλήψεων και την “έλλειψη” ανάλογων θετικών παραδειγμάτων. Η μη αναγνώρισή τους δεν τους επιτρέπει να απολαμβάνουν δικαιώματα όπως φορολογικές απαλλαγές, προστασία της οικογενειακής στέγης, ασφαλιστικά κτλ. και κατά συνέπεια υφίστανται αρνητικές διακρίσεις σε πολλά επίπεδα. Η προσήλωση στον δήθεν σεβασμό των “πατροπαράδοτων οικογενειακών ηθών” είναι μια πολιτική επιλογή που εξαναγκάζει πολλούς ανθρώπους να ζουν σε συνθήκες κοινωνικού αποκλεισμού.

Η κυρία Δήμητρα Κογκίδου είναι καθηγήτρια και κοσμήτωρ στην Παιδαγωγική Σχολή του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης.

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China's Liu Xiaobo wins Nobel Peace Prize

New York Times
October 8, 2010

Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is currently serving an 11-year term on subversion charges.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the news, calling it a “blasphemy” to the Peace Prize and saying it would harm Norwegian-Chinese relations. “Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law,” it said in a statement.

Mr. Liu is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize and one of three laureates to have received it while in prison.

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See also articles in Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize.

The laureate behind bars

Economist
October 8, 2010

The Nobel peace prize committee’s announcement on October 8th that they are giving the award to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, will infuriate Chinese leaders. It may well give extra ammunition to hardliners in China who argue that the West is bent on undermining Communist Party rule. This is the same faction that argues the party should take advantage of the West’s economic malaise to assert its own interests more robustly.

China reacted with outrage in 1989 when the Nobel peace prize was awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader in exile, to all appearances as a rebuke to the government for having crushed the Tiananmen Square protests earlier that year. Though China regards Tibet as an integral part of the nation, Mr Liu stands apart as an ethnic Han Chinese who has devoted himself to addressing the politics of China proper.

Mr Liu is precisely the kind of dissident that the party regards as most threatening. He is a seasoned campaigner, a veteran of the Tiananmen protests who has shown no sign of succumbing to the party’s intimidation in spite of three periods of incarceration over the past two decades (more than five years in total). He is a mildly spoken literary critic who has created the sort of consensus that is unusual to forge among China’s infighting intellectuals. Mr Liu’s Charter 08, a document that calls for democracy, was signed initially by more than 300 liberal thinkers (and then by thousands of others online). It struck a reasoned tone to which radicals and moderates alike could subscribe. The debate over “universal values” that it helped to fuel still rages within the party today.

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How Much Does the Market Organization of Economic Life Matter?

Grasping Reality with Both Hands
The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist J. Bradford DeLong
October 7, 2010

How much does the use of markets as a decentralized social planning mechanism for economic life matter? How much richer are we because we live in a market economy rather than in a command-and-control bureaucratic economy?

We are fortunate--if that is the word--to be able to answer this question because the twentieth century provided us with a natural experiment in the form of High Stalinist central planning. Karl Marx, you see, completely missed the utility of markets as devices for providing decision makers with proper incentives and for achieving allocative efficiency. (Why he missed this is, I think, a result of his crazy metaphysics of value, but I won't go there today.) He saw markets only as surplus extraction devices--ways to quickly and fully separate the powerless from the value that they had created and that ought to have been theirs.

So when the Communists took over, they followed Marx and said: "we don't want no stinking markets in our economies." This naturally raised the question of how they were then to coordinate economic activity. And they hit on the clever plan of attempting to reproduce the Rathenau-Ludendorff Imperial German war economy of World War I. And they did so.

In 1989, the Iron Curtain came down, and we could see what a difference it made as we could examine levels of material well-being on both sides of the Curtain. This is as close to a perfect natural experiment as anyone could wish: the Iron Curtain's location was determined by where Stalin's and Mao's and Giap's armies marched--which is as exogenous to other determinants of economic well-being as anyone could wish.

Here are the results:

Material Well-Being in 1991: Matched Countries on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain

Eschewing markets robs you of between 80% and 90% of your potential economic productivity.

Now you can argue that the difference in human well-being is less than this gap in material wealth. Cuba, after all, has a high life expectancy and a low level of inequality.

Or you can argue that the difference in human well-being is much, much greater than this gap in material wealth:

Put me down on the much, much greater side of the argument.

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A false prophet: Why Geert Wilders is a problem, not a solution

Economist
October 7, 2010

His big bleach-blond mane was unmistakable, but this time his mouth, the biggest in Dutch politics, stayed shut. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigrant Freedom Party, is on trial for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims. But when he appeared before judges in Amsterdam on October 4th, this champion of free speech declined to speak.

The court heard some of Mr Wilders’s greatest hits: “the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion that intends to eliminate others” (2007); “Islam wants to control, subdue and is out for the destruction of our Western civilisation” (2008); a Koran stripped of its hateful verses, “should actually have the format of a Donald Duck [comic book]” (2007, again). The judges’ questions were comically innocent. Did Mr Wilders really say such things? Was it in the heat of the moment? Had he received legal advice? Did he really need to refer to Donald Duck? Stubborn silence.

Maybe the state should not be in the business of prosecuting politicians for their offensive views. But these are highly charged times in the Netherlands. The threat of murder hangs over the traditionally tolerant country. In 2002 Pim Fortuyn, an earlier anti-immigrant politician, was killed. Two years later so was Theo van Gogh, an anti-Islamist film-maker. Mr Wilders now moves only with a posse of bodyguards, and lives at a secret location.

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Pot Prohibitionist Prevarications

by Jacob Sullum

Reason
October 6, 2010

With a month to go before California voters decide whether to legalize marijuana, Proposition 19's opponents have pinned their hopes on desperate arguments that illustrate the intellectual bankruptcy of the prohibitionist position. Unable to offer a persuasive moral justification for continuing to treat marijuana users and suppliers like criminals, the No on 19 crowd has tried to distract voters' attention with several bright red herrings. Here are five of the smelliest.

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Assassinations Done Wrong

by David Harsanyi

Reason
October 6, 2010

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I just wonder: If a president—any president—has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without oversight, what exactly can't a president do?

Now, as a matter of foreign policy, I am quite comfortable when Islamic extremists, militants, and terrorists meet their atomized ends through the work of unmanned flying contraptions operated remotely by the U.S. government.

Then again, I can also unequivocally state that the thought of an American citizen's being placed on one of these terrorist hit lists without due process of law or any oversight is one that I find disconcerting.

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Sun Co-Founder Uses Capitalism to Help Poor

New York Times
October 5, 2010

Vinod Khosla, the billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was already among the world’s richest men when he invested a few years ago in SKS Microfinance, a lender to poor women in India.

But the roaring success of SKS’s recent initial public stock offering in Mumbai has made him richer by about $117 million — money he says he plans to plow back into other ventures that aim to fight poverty while also trying to turn a profit.

And he says he wants to challenge other rich Indians to do more to help their country’s poor.

An Indian transplant to Silicon Valley, Mr. Khosla plans to start a venture capital fund to invest in companies that focus on the poor in India, Africa and elsewhere by providing services like health, energy and education.

By backing businesses that provide education loans or distribute solar panels in villages, he says, he wants to show that commercial entities can better help people in poverty than most nonprofit charitable organizations.

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California Pot Legalization Wouldn't Trump Federal Law

Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2010

Even if Californians vote next month to legalize marijuana, possession of the drug will still be a criminal offense under federal law, which trumps state law almost every time under the U.S. Constitution.

But crackdowns on users and small-scale growers could decrease if Californians pass Proposition 19, the ballot measure proposing to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesman said it was "premature to speculate on what steps we would take" in the event California passes the measure, but that it will continue "to focus its enforcement resources on significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, in all states."

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Innocent on Death Row

by John Hollway

Slate
October 5, 2010

On April 19, 1999, Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney traveled from Philadelphia to Louisiana's death row at the State Penitentiary at Angola to meet with their client, John Thompson. Banks and Cooney had represented Thompson since 1988, and his appeal for capital murder was rapidly reaching an inexorable conclusion. Despite the lawyers' best efforts, they had failed. The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected their final petition. Thompson's eighth—and final—death warrant had been signed by the judge. John Thompson was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on May 20, 1999.

Banks and Cooney had a brief and emotionally wrenching meeting with Thompson, made worse by the fact that Thompson was more concerned about them than he was about himself. Exhausted and demoralized, they began the long drive back to New Orleans, where they would have to tell Thompson's mother that they had been unable to save her son's life. During the drive, Cooney checked his voice mail. What he found was a message from a private investigator with surprising new evidence in the case—the first pull on a thread that would take John Thompson off death row, then out of prison entirely, and this week to the United States Supreme Court.

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Cubans Dip a Toe in Capitalist Waters

Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2010

A package of capitalist reforms from President Raúl Castro is creating something new for many Cubans: uncertainty.

Since 1959, when Fidel Castro rode into Havana atop a tank, the Cuban state has promised its people the certainty of a job, food, education and health care. No one expected to get rich under the arrangement; the old joke here is that people pretend to work, and the government pretends to pay them.

That may change with Mr. Castro's moves to get rid of half a million government jobs in the next six months, trimming a bloated government payroll that accounts for 85% of Cuba's labor force of roughly 5.1 million.

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Civil Justice, Military Injustice

New York Times
Editorial
October 5, 2010

Supporters of the tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who insist military justice, not the federal courts, is the best way to deal with terrorists, should pay close attention to Tuesday’s events in a United States District Court in Manhattan. Faisal Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment, five months and four days after he tried to blow up his car in Times Square.

When Mr. Shahzad was arrested, and later given a Miranda warning, the “tough on terrorists” crowd screamed about coddling and endangering the country’s security. They didn’t stop complaining, even after Mr. Shahzad cooperated with investigators and entered a guilty plea with a mandatory life sentence. All of this happened without the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department breaking laws or violating Constitutional protections.

Now let’s check in on Guantánamo Bay, where President George W. Bush opened an illegal detention camp, authorized torture and abuse, and then set up military tribunals engineered to produce guilty verdicts no matter how thin or tainted the evidence. When the courts declared the system illegal, Congress made it slightly better. President Obama improved it a bit more. But it is still not up to American standards, or to its task.

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The Ass Man Cometh: Experimentation, orgasms, and the rise of anal sex

by William Saletan

Slate
October 5, 2010

A new national sex survey is out. Published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, it reveals who's doing what, with whom, and how. It clarifies the prevalence of gay sex, teenage intercourse, and oral gratification. But the big story is the increase in anal sex reported by women—and its possible connection to female orgasms.

Let's start with the foreplay: a few other trends worth noting.

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Truth in the Time of Putinism

Wall Street Journal
October 5, 2010

Four years ago this week, the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered execution-style in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. The truth is an increasingly scarce commodity in Vladimir Putin's Russia, and Politkovskaya's murder showed that for those courageous enough to pursue it, the consequences can be deadly.

That lesson has been reinforced many times, including in the 2009 murder of Natalia Estemirova, an activist who had worked with Politkovskaya to document human rights abuses in Chechnya and other restive Russian regions. (In 2007, Estemirova was the first recipient of an award named in Politkovskaya's honor.)

Now the Russian authorities' campaign to silence critics has extended to Oleg Orlov, the leader of the human rights group, Memorial, for which Estemirova worked. Mr. Orlov faces serious criminal slander charges—and three years imprisonment if convicted—for implicating Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov in Estemirova's murder. While Mr. Kadyrov claims he had no ties to the killing, Mr. Orlov has said that he bears direct responsibility as the head of the republic. For that statement Mr. Orlov has already paid damages in civil court.

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The 2010 Nobel prizes: Medicine

Economist
October 4, 2010

Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. Substitute “fame” for “greatness” and you have an updated version of Shakespeare’s quip that applies nicely to this year’s Nobel prize for medicine, which was awarded for the development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The born-famous was Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby. The achiever of fame, celebrated at the time in newspapers and on television, was Patrick Steptoe, the gynecologist who created Ms Brown in his laboratory in 1978. And the man who has had fame thrust upon him, a mere 32 years after the event, is Robert Edwards, who spent more than two decades developing the science that IVF relies on. Dr Edwards was honoured for this work by the Karolinska Institute, on October 4th (though the prize will not actually be handed over until December). Steptoe died in 1988, and prizes are not awarded posthumously, so Dr Edwards scoops the whole pool of SKr10m ($1.5m).

Dr Edwards began his work on mice, before moving to people. He gradually worked out how human eggs mature to the point where they can be fertilised, but had little success getting such fertilised eggs to develop into embryos that could be implanted into women, in order that they could grow into children.

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"Μαύρισε ο τόπος"

του Αριστείδη Χατζή

Newstime
10 Φεβρουαρίου 2010

Τότε ἐρεῖ καὶ τοῖς ἐξ εὐωνύμων· πορεύεσθε ἀπ' ἐμοῦ οἱ κατηραμένοι εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον τὸ ἡτοιμασμένον τῷ διαβόλῳ καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις αὐτοῦ· ἐπείνασα γὰρ καὶ οὐκ ἐδώκατέ μοι φαγεῖν, ἐδίψησα καὶ οὐκ ἐποτίσατέ με, ξένος ἤμην καὶ οὐ συνηγάγετέ με, γυμνὸς καὶ οὐ περιεβάλετέ με.

Κατά Ματθαίον Ευαγγέλιον 25.41

Πάντα με μπέρδευε αυτή η περικοπή. Ενώ ο ίδιος ο Ιησούς είναι σαφέστατος και προειδοποιεί και τους καλούς και τους κακούς πού θα καταλήξουν ανάλογα με τον τρόπο που θα συμπεριφερθούν στους συνανθρώπους τους, ταυτόχρονα προβλέπει ότι την ημέρα της κρίσης όλοι θα τον κοιτάνε με απορία. Ούτε οι δίκαιοι θα καταλαβαίνουν γιατί τους έχει εκ δεξιών ούτε οι «καταραμένοι» γιατί τους περιμένει το «πυρ το αιώνιον». Αλλά μετά τις δηλώσεις του Άνθιμου Θεσσαλονίκης δεν έχω πλέον καμία απορία. Απλά την περιέργεια να δω τον κ. Άνθιμο την ημέρα της κρίσης να εξηγεί στον Ιησού τι εννοούσε όταν έλεγε πως μαύρισε η Ομόνοια.

Δεν ξέρω πόσο απασχολεί τον Αντώνη Σαμαρά η Ημέρα της Κρίσεως. Όχι και τόσο, αν κρίνω από την παρακάτω περικοπή από την επιστολή του στον Υπουργό Εσωτερικών: «Είναι ένα νομοσχέδιο που διευκολύνει την είσοδο μεταναστών παράνομα, ώστε να κάνουν παιδιά στην Ελλάδα, στη συνέχεια να παίρνουν τα παιδιά τους αυτόματα ιθαγένεια και να νομιμοποιούνται έτσι αναγκαστικά και οι γονείς τους». Δεν νομίζω να πείσει τον Ιησού αυτό το επιχείρημα, είμαι όμως σίγουρος με ποιον τρόπο θα το αντιμετωπίσουν οι μετανάστες, με ελληνική πλέον υπηκοότητα, όταν θα ακούνε τον Αντώνη Σαμαρά να προσπαθεί να τους εξηγήσει τι εννοούσε πριν την «ημέρα της κρίσεως» των εκλογών. Μπορώ επίσης να υποθέσω τι θα σκέφτεται ο ίδιος ο Αντώνης Σαμαράς, όταν μετά από πολλά χρόνια, συνταξιούχος πολιτικός πλέον, θα γράφει τα απομνημονεύματά του και θα προσπαθεί να δικαιολογήσει γιατί το 2010 πόνταρε κι αυτός στον φόβο, την άγνοια και την προκατάληψη.

Ο φόβος για οτιδήποτε δεν μας μοιάζει, η προκατάληψη έναντι όλων όσων δεν γνωρίζουμε και είναι δύσκολο να καταλάβουμε, η άγνοια για το τι συμβαίνει πραγματικά γύρω μας και ποιες είναι οι συνέπειες των λόγων και των έργων μας – αυτά θα έπρεπε να θλίβουν τον κ. Άνθιμο και αυτά θα έπρεπε να φοβάται ο κ. Σαμαράς.

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Jack Ohman (September 30, 2010)