Make sure to read this excellent article by Stanley Fish, Law Professor and New York Times opinion contributor. This gist of his observation is this:

“If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.”

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My wife has been on a “what does it mean to be feminist” kick lately, and so I would like to dedicate this post to her.

The New York Times website has been running a series of “conversations” about current news topics, usually between columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks. This week Stacy Schiff, author of a recently released book on Cleopatra, is filling in for Brooks, and the topic of conversation is feminism and Sarah Palin.
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The Anti-Defamation League (the ADL; an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism) has participated and encouraged closed-minded and offensive behavior. They ought to know better, and I think they (and many other people in this instance) owe an apology to every person of faith.

Alright, now that I have your attention I should take a few steps back and explain what I’m talking about.
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Both of the top Republicans in the House and Senate have now expressed support for rewriting the 14th Amendment. Their goal? To prevent the children of illegal immigrants from becoming American citizens. Thankfully, it will never happen, for reasons that I’ll get to in a bit. I say “thankfully” because it’s a dumb idea that would have disastrous consequences for the United States. It also happens to be really bad politics, and if the GOP actually does push this policy they might as well just disband at let some other conservative party come to the forefront.
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As you’ve probably heard, a federal judge ruled yesterday that California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in California, is in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The case was peculiar on many levels. The California State Attorney General’s office refused to defend the law, which left the defense up to a group of Prop 8 proponents. Those people should have hired better lawyers. The defense called exactly two witnesses, both of whom tried to put forward the notion that gay couples made for worse parents and that therefore gay marriage was detrimental to society. Let us just say that the judge found neither witness to be credible.

Now, going forward, I don’t expect the decision to survive. I just don’t think that the federal judiciary is ready to step in and nullify every “marriage is only between a man and woman” law in the country, even though I think that the pro-gay marriage crowd has the stronger legal case.

But even so, I think it’s important to realize what the decision means–and what it doesn’t mean. For instance, The New York Times editorial on the matter is entitled “Marriage Is A Constitutional Right“. Even though the editorial goes on to give an accurate (as far as I can tell) description of the ruling, the headline is woefully misleading.
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I heard an interesting argument the other day. Many states have laws that prohibit people in prison from voting. And the percentage of African Americans in prison is much higher than the percentage of Caucasians in prison. The argument was that denying prisoners voting rights constituted a form of Jim Crow laws and should be outlawed under the 14th amendment.

I find this interesting, because there is some truth in the argument that this does disproportionately impact one racial group in terms of voting. That said, there are two solid arguments against this position, one legal, and one theoretical.
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I’d like to point out a series of odd coincidences, that I haven’t observed anybody else commenting on. In the past few months:

1) As everybody is aware, there was an explosion at an oil rig and catastrophic oil leak at a BP platform, causing great damage to the gulf of Mexico.

2) A ruptured pipeline causes a massive oil spill in a river that leads to lake Michigan, causing environmental damage, and (unless contained) will cause serious problems to one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes.

3) A pipeline explosion in China causes the largest oil spill in history for that country (larger than Exxon Valdez), creating tremendous environmental damage to China’s already polluted water.

4) An oil rig sinks in Nigeria dumping oil into Nigerian waters and killing millions of fish.

5) A Japanese oil tanker is the subject of a mysterious explosion - no other ships, subs or missiles are detected, nobody can explain what happened, and had it been a little bigger, there would have been another massive spill.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen more than 1 major oil spill in a given year before. So, what explains the sudden prevalence? Read the rest of this entry »

How much money should a person make?

For most people, it’s a moot concept. For most white collar workers, the free market (in some loose sense) determines how much we get paid, perhaps marked up or down somewhat depending on a person’s negotiation skills. For most blue collar workers, their wages are determined by collectively bargained contracts. For the working poor, their wages are determined by the federal or state imposed minimum wage, or perhaps in some case by a minimum payment necessary to keep the employee fed and motivated.

But there are a lucky few people out there who get to set their own salaries, who don’t have to worry about the vagaries of the free market or collective bargaining. In particular, there are two news stories today that prompted the question I began with.
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Baskin Robbins has decided to discontinue the classic flavor French Vanilla.

Dear friend, you were the source of so much joy in rootbeer floats, hot fudge sundaes, and just on your own (although I tended for mint chip when just getting a single scoop). Know that you will live on in our memories, and that we will honor your memory by continuing to eat copious amounts of ice cream even in your absence. You were a legend, and a classic, and we are honored to have known you.

(P.S. Yes, Leftfielder has an obituary for French Vanilla Ice Cream, but didn’t have one for Senator Byrd. Blame Mike - that sort of thing is clearly his responsibility).

There is an interesting opinion piece today by Timothy Egan on nytimes.com about mutually assured destruction (MAD). MAD is a Cold War era policy that says essentially “if you nuke our cities, we promise to nuke your cities”.

Egan assumes, like many people do, that MAD kept us safe during the Cold War. But he criticizes the Pentagon for continuing to rely on MAD in an era where the greatest threats to United States security are terrorist organizations:
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