The Power Of Pink, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I haven't read the whole thread, but so far I haven't seen a mention of my personal hot poker in the eye: the sticker with "Save the ta-tas" across a pink ribbon.  There's something so dismissive and demeaning about that. I actually have a pretty good sense of humor, but that sticker makes me want to bash out the windows of the car to which it attached and give the driver a vigorous titty twister. What's next? "Save them big old titties!" I've known a number of people who have had various forms of cancer, including breast cancer, and it hasn't been cute or funny yet.

Another writes:

Your reader's comments on the futility of "pink ribbon day" at work brought to mind this article from the Onion, which, as usual, has the best commentary on the subject of pink ribbon-mania.  It's entitled "6,000 Runners Fail To Discover Cure For Breast Cancer."

(Photo by Jim Farmer. Screenshot from an online store.)

Malkin Award Nominee

by Chris Bodenner

"[The France Revolution] was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of each other. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you," - Rick Santorum, running with his guillotine talk this week.

Ad War Update

by Maisie Allison

The Romney campaign previews its latest line of attack against Santorum (from a Thursday press release): 

Via Jonathan Last, who snarks: 

Yup. The Romney campaign is portraying Rick Santorum as a guy chasing $100 bills.

For some reason Romney's PAC is dwelling on the Reagan wars: 

The Democratic PAC American Bridge puts out a pretty good "Shit Mitt Says" video (though Zeke Miller pleads,"Does this mean the meme is really dead?"): 

Read On »

The Daily Wrap

by Zack Beauchamp

Today on the Dish, Patrick slammed Maggie Gallagher's closemindedness on marriage equality and defended his position against criticism while Chris deepened our understand of Gallagher here and here. I kept up the the God debate and criticized the idea that ridiculous levels of defense spending were necessary to stop genocide. We discovered Romney could very well fall short of the winning delegate total, found the roots of his "flexibility" in his business background, saw him on thin ice in the culture war debate. Santorum created real problems for the GOP and Ron Paul snuck away a fair number of delegates. A third party candidacy was not viable, the longer primary was damaging the Republicans, and marriage equality and Obama's legacy were at serious issue in the campaign.

We surveyed the ongoing debate on the contraception mandate (which might not be the best issue for the GOP), discovered an extraordinary speech (above) on marriage equality from the Washington fight, wound up the "Power of Pink" thread, noticed that the Constitution was going out of style, and declared it "Best CPAC Ever!" A new film smelled like propaganda for the Navy SEALs, analysts debated arming Syrians against the regime, and a fatwa got sent over Twitter. "Europe" had similar income distribution to the US, the profit incentive hurt the financial sector, privatization had risks, an adorable child explained logos, and the Prius fallacy/rebound effect got scrutinized. Being a patient was traumatic, good pain doctors were in short supply, power explained male violence, and waking up was scientifically fascinating. AAA here, Yglesias Nominee here, VFYW here, MHB here, and (an awesome) FOTD here.

(Photo: Tea Party activist William Temple, wearing a Herman Cain button, waits for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to deliver a speech titled, "Is America Still an Exceptional Nation?" during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 9, 2012 in Washington, DC. Thousands of conservative activists are expected to attend the annual gathering in the nation's capital. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Obama's Legacy

by Patrick Appel

Jim Fallows believes that Obama's loss or win this November will help define it:

If a year from now Obama is settling in for a second term, a halo effect will extend back to everything he did during his first four years. His programs will be more effective in reality, since he will get that many more years to cement them in with follow-up measures, supportive appointments to federal agencies and the courts, and possible vetoes of any attempts at repeal. And, through the lens of history, they will seem more effective, since whatever he did in his first term will appear to have been part of an overall plan that was ratified through reelection.

Yet if a year from now a just-beaten former President Obama is thinking about his memoirs and watching his former appointees blame one another, and him, for the loss, the very same combination of missteps and achievements will be viewed as a narrative leading inexorably to defeat.

Read On »

Personalizing The Political, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

Last year Jamie McGonnigal, a gay writer, spoke with Maggie Gallagher's son:

Patrick is now a young adult, writing musicals in New York City. He identifies as straight, and given his chosen occupation, he spends a great deal of time with LGBT people. We offered Patrick the opportunity to tell his side of things, but given the obvious personal conflict he feels about the situation, he declined. Though Patrick doesn’t want to comment directly, it has become clear that his views differ from his mother’s. According to Patrick, Maggie has been very supportive of his career and has not obstructed her son’s goals and dreams – like a mother should. One thing Patrick did say, which I don’t think he’d mind sharing is "Maybe one day I’ll write a hell of a musical about this." Patrick’s a good guy who doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of this – but we feel that his and Maggie’s story is an important one that demonstrates the strength of a "non-traditional" family.

Read On »

Why Contraception?

by Patrick Appel

David Frum fears that Republicans are fighting a losing battle:

How Do You Argue With Someone Immune To Evidence? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Maggie Gallagher says that her opposition to marriage equality cannot be changed. Rod Dreher, who also opposes gay marriage, compares me to Gallagher:

I wonder what evidence would convince Patrick, or his boss, to change their minds about same-sex marriage. I’m confident that there is none, that they are as committed to their position in favor of it as Gallagher is against it. This is not to say that the positions are equally rational, but only that at bottom, each side reasons from first principles about the way the world works — principles that are not ultimately derived from reason, but that reflect a religious, or quasi-religious, interpretation of the world. Karl Popper said that in matters of empirical observation — which is to say, in science — a claim has to be in principle falsifiable. That is, it has to be able to be proven wrong, in theory. If there is no way to demonstrate empirically that the hypothesis is wrong, then the claim becomes something other than science. 

If there were real evidence that marriage equality made gay couples unhappy, if the children of gay parents were severely damaged due to their upbringings, and if same-sex marriage truly were a grave threat to straight marriage, I'd reconsider my views.

Read On »

Yglesias Award Nominee

by Maisie Allison

"Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is still open, so Republicans can hardly say that Obama has implemented dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism. Obama says that, even with his proposed cuts, the defense budget would increase at about the rate of inflation through the next decade. Republicans who think America is being endangered by “appeasement” and military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough," - George Will, Washington Post. As one reader puts it, "The whole column is one big YAN."

Face Of The Day

A photo that screams "Screw you guys, I'm going home":

by Chris Bodenner

The story:

[On Monday] Reddit user AThirdFoot posted a random photo of a guy sitting on Chicago’s green line reading a book and wearing a red shirt and a yellow hat. He titled the post "Cartman" to poke fun at the rider who resembled the portly South Park character that wears an identical outfit. Little did AThirdFoot know that the subway rider, 21-year-old Chris Kutill, a student at Columbia College Chicago, was in on the joke.

Read On »

Why Romney Shape Shifts

by Patrick Appel

Peter Suderman traces Romney's ideological flexibility to his business career:

Consultants don’t have ideology; they have strategy. Their job is to take their current client’s side, whatever it is, and put a good polish on it while restoring whatever’s underneath. ... Those who have worked with Romney cite his flexibility as a virtue. “He’s spent his entire life in a world that’s constantly changing, where he has had to modify his thinking in order to address problems,” says Scott Meadow, his friend and former business partner. “I think it demonstrates something that I’ve always seen: an ability to adapt and change, and a willingness to accept that his thinking evolves. And not being afraid to change his mind and go in a different direction because that seems like the appropriate thing to do.” Meadow says Romney is “loyal to success,” whatever form it takes. “He’s flexible because he’s had to be,” Meadow says. 

Profits Against Capitalism

by Zack Beauchamp

Justin Fox sees a conflict within financial markets:

The profit motive is generally a good thing. It drives hard work, innovation, and the success of the capitalist system. But in financial markets, it's problematic. That's partly because of the zero-sum nature of most financial intermediation: Every penny in fees is that much less in investor returns. It's also the fact that most investors are incapable of judging whether their money manager or broker is doing right by them. And then there's the issue of risk, as illustrated by the recent financial crisis. ... The untempered pursuit of profit, then, is almost never good for the customers of the financial sector. Over the long run, it may not be good for the financial sector, either.

Will Women Become Just As Violent As Men?

by Zack Beauchamp

Jesse Prinz thinks history, not biology or psychology, best explains why men do more violence than women:

Social history explains [the discrepency in violence] by proposing that men have taken power by their greater strength, leading to violent competition and the abuse of women. This approach correctly predicts cross-cultural variation in gender differences. As women gain economic power, they cease being treated as male property, age differences between romantic partners shrink, and violence against women diminishes. On the flipside, women who gain power, like Margaret Thatcher and Condalisa [sic] Rice, are often hawkish, suggesting that power, not gender, determines belligerence. Women in the judiciary dole out harsher penalties than men. And woman are committing more acts of domestic violence that previously recorded.

(Chart by Steven Pinker)

The Long Primary

by Patrick Appel

Noah Millman unpacks the new Republican nomination system:

There is logic to wanting a more drawn-out primary process, rather than rushing to anoint a front-runner (as, for example, the Democrats did in 2004). The primaries become a proving ground, testing the candidates to see whether they measure up to their own hyped virtues as vote-getters. But, as the Democrats learned in 1984 and 1988, when you have a weak front-runner or no obvious front-runner, all the long campaign does is reveal that weakness (in the first case), and reveal the divisions in the party coalition (in the second case). The GOP is getting some of both this time.

Bottom line: for a long primary process to reveal diamonds in the rough, the diamonds actually have to be there in the rough for the revealing.

Would Arming The Syrians Even Help?

by Zack Beauchamp

Dan Drezner nods:

[T]he Syrian population wants regime change. What’s going on inside of Syria is a civil war, and the government is clearly receiving ample support from both Russia and Iran. Arming the opposition at least evens the odds on the battlefield. The sad truth is that there is no good outcome, only different shades of terrible. Arming the Syrian resolution won’t bring a speedy, peaceful resolution, but it will make it harder for Assad’s military to systematically annihilate the opposition. In the short term, that appears to be the best one can hope for inside of Syria’s borders.

Marc Lynch is appalled:

Read On »

The War On Pain Pills, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

In part two of his series, Radley Balko largely blames unethical pain management on the government's crackdown:

[T]he reason so few painkillers are prescribed by pain specialists is likely that after a decade of policies targeting doctors with costly investigations and criminal charges, there simply aren't many conscientious pain specialists left.

Read On »

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

The Beastie Boys and Aliens get remixed:

The Trauma Of Patienthood

by Zack Beauchamp

Doctor Harvey Max Chochinov explores the psychology of medical treatment:

Think of even your most trivial recent health care encounter. Having your call put on hold; being kept waiting for an appointment; having to disrobe or expose private information; any of these might lead you to bemoan that you felt “just like a patient” — without a doubt, the most common critique of any health-care encounter. Feeling “like a patient” means feeling defined based on a problem or diagnosis. Personhood thrives on the expression of individual identity and being able to exercise freedom and choice. Patienthood is based on diagnostic specificity; it demands adherence to certain clinical or institutional conformities and routines, in return for which it provides organ or disease specific, evidence-based options.

The Prius Fallacy, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

In the above video, David Owen visualizes the rebound effect. A reader pushes back against the notion:

I don’t drive a Prius, but I do drive a Ford Fusion Hybrid, which I bought a little over a year ago.  One thing I have noticed about driving it is that it has made me more sensitive to my energy usage.  Hybrids don’t automatically give you better mileage; electric mode only works at 45 mph and lower, it doesn’t kick in if the gas engine is cold, acceleration usually requires gas (I curse every red light), etc.  Maximizing mileage in a hybrid takes work and close attention - attention that anyone who invests in this still-expensive technology is going to give simply in order to feel he’s getting his money’s worth.  Thus I pay more attention to the length of my trips; I try to combine trips whenever possible in order to keep the engine warm; I cast longing eyes on plug-in hybrids, since my driving is sharply divided between ultra-short city driving and long trips.  Driving a hybrid has actually educated me on my driving habits and my personal contribution to energy depletion, pollution, and greenhouse gases; it does not make me feel I have permission to burn more energy.

And perhaps that consciousness spills over into other living habits, such as keeping one's thermostat in check or remembering to turn off the lights. Another reader:

Read On »

Could A Third-Party Candidate Win?

by Patrick Appel

Nope:

Over time, the parties have been moving apart. But both Democrats and Republicans are now closer to their own party and farther from the opposition party than at any time in the past four decades. Democrats on average place the Democratic Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Republican Party very far to the right of where they place themselves. And Republicans on average place the Republican Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Democratic Party very far to the left of where they place themselves. As a result, very few supporters of either party are likely to be tempted to vote for a centrist third party.

Is America More Unequal Than Europe?

by Patrick Appel

Jim Manzi compares America to the entire European continent:

I took the data on income by quintile for each country in the EU, and ordered them from poorest to richest for Europe as a whole. If you start with the 1.5 million people who are the lowest quintile in any country of the EU (it turns out to be the lowest quintile in Bulgaria), then add the 0.5 million who are the lowest quintile in Latvia, and keep going until you have about 100 million people, you have an estimate for the lowest quintile for Europe as a whole.  This bottom quintile includes, for example, a majority of the population of Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania, and the bottom quintiles of the UK, Ireland, Italy and France. You can then build each of the quintiles this way. ...It turns out that America and Europe as a whole have extremely similar levels of economic inequality — Europe’s is just chunked by country

Is 2012 A Marriage Equality Election?

by Patrick Appel

Adam Winkler worries that a Republican president would get to replace Ginsburg, a Justice likely to rule in favor of equality, with a social conservative:

Read On »

The GOP's Santorum Problem

by Maisie Allison

Larison revisits Santorum's hyper-aggressive, amnestic foreign policy: 

According to Santorum, Bush’s record was mostly all right, except that he thinks it wasn’t aggressive or bold enough. According to Santorum, Bush had a foreign policy that was too humble, and he aims to correct that. ... [H]e thinks that his disastrous 2006 campaign in which he harped on “Islamic fascism” and the Venezuelan menace was a profile in political courage. It’s true that Romney and his advisers still think that Obama is vulnerable on foreign policy, which proves they aren’t paying much attention to public opinion, but Santorum would run a national campaign even more tone-deaf than Romney’s on these issues. If Obama is trouncing Romney on trustworthiness to handle international affairs, just imagine what he would do to Santorum.

John Samples pictures a Santorum-Obama match-up: 

Read On »

"I Don't Miss The Sex"

by Chris Bodenner

A candid and incredibly moving speech from Maureen Walsh, one of two Republicans to help pass the marriage equality bill in the Washington State House yesterday:

Walsh can be contacted here. The bill passed the state senate last week and Governor Gregoire has promised to sign it, so victory is in sight. Washington will be the seventh state (plus DC) to enact marriage equality.

Is Paul's Plan Working? Ctd

by Maisie Allison

Alex Altman remains unconvinced. Weigel shows that Paul's quiet strategy to control the delegate process is "actually doable": 

Paul's people believe that they understand the delegate process, and that the media does not. There is truth here: The delegate process is confusing, and I assume that Paul supporters have used their four years of organizing and studying in a fruitful manner. In an e-mail to supporters, they try to get granular about what's occuring.

As an example of our campaign’s delegate strength, take a look at what has occurred in Colorado:  In one precinct in Larimer County, the straw poll vote was 23 for Santorum, 13 for Paul, 5 for Romney, 2 for Gingrich.  There were 13 delegate slots, and Ron Paul got ALL 13. ... We are also seeing the same trends in Minnesota, Nevada, and Iowa, and in Missouri as well.

More on Paul's plan here.

The Best CPAC Ever?

by Maisie Allison

Lachlan Markay reports that Occupy DC will be paying a visit to CPAC this weekend: 

The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity. “Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. 

Weigel adds: 

One media manager for a few candidates told me she was warning clients to wear the sort of shoes they'd be comfortable sprinting away from danger in. ... This is a new CPAC phenomenon: Fear of violent disruption.

Naturally, Robert Stacy McCain is invigorated by the possibility. Dan Amira speculates about the presidential politics at play:

Read On »

Personalizing The Political

by Chris Bodenner

Zack Ford pithily sums up the Oppenheimer piece on Maggie Gallagher: "[I]t is hard not to read the profile without feeling that when she says, 'Every child deserves a mother and a father,' what she really means is 'My child deserved a father.'" Yet such deeply personal roots for her fight against marriage equality contrasts sharply with the impersonal way she views marriage:

Oppenheimer notes Gallagher’s claim that gay marriage is, for her, wholly detached from the happiness of individuals and that, according to Gallagher, marriage equality is an issue only insofar as it broadens her very narrow definition of what constitutes a marriage. This is why Gallagher is able to airily wave away the implications of her crusade, shrugging off suggestions that otherizing LGBT people contributes to the staggeringly high rate of LGBT teen suicide, violence against the LGBT community, etc., as so much collateral damage.

By the way, this sentence from the profile popped out:

[Her son] Patrick, now 31, a New York University graduate and aspiring musical-theater librettist, would not be interviewed.

The Great Contraception Battle Of 2012

by Patrick Appel

Chart above from Sarah Kliff. TNC captions:

The difference numbers for Catholics and White evangelicals are really interesting. It's almost as if the issue for Republicans, isn't so much a hard pitch to Catholics, as it is a hard pitch to white Evangelicals, with the hope of clipping off some conservative Catholics along the way.

Eleanor Clift wonders whether the Obama administration provoked the controversy intentionally:

The election won’t turn on these kinds of cultural issues, but they can generate emotion and passion. Obama’s job approval is just above 50 percent among younger voters, a group that gave him 66 percent of their vote in 2008. “They’ve got to get young people jazzed up, and there are very few issues that get young women more jazzed up than contraception,” says Cook. Indeed, the Obama campaign website highlights the issue of contraception, along with the fact that it will be free once the Affordable Care Act is implemented.

David Link points out that the vast majority of Catholics use birth control:

Read On »

Could Mitt Fall Short Of 1,144?

by Maisie Allison

Philip Klein does some preliminary delegate math: 

It is conceivable to craft the following general scenario: Romney wins states in the west and northeast, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum combine to dominate the south, Midwest and Appalachia, and Ron Paul siphons off a chunk of delegates. If such a scenario plays out, it’s possible to see how Romney could have problems getting over the top, even if analysts are broadly correct that his money and organization give him the edge. Just to provide a sense of how this could happen, I spent some time playing around with CNN’s delegate calculator feature and divided the states up two categories. ... [I]f Romney were to win all of the delegates in all of the states that I identified as solid or lean states, it would only get him to 1,008 delegates, according to the CNN calculator -- still short of the required 1,144.

Even if Romney were to fall short, Alex Massie believes that Super Delegates would give Romney the win.

Ask Me Anything: What About SOPA And PIPA?

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.

Has The Constitution Gone Out Of Style?

by Patrick Appel

New research indicates that other countries have become less likely to model their own systems on the the US Constitution. Hendrik Hertzberg dismisses the study:

The problem is that the study focusses almost exclusively on rights—the individual and civil rights that are specified in written constitutions. But it almost totally ignores structures—the mundane mechanisms of governing, the nuts and bolts, which is mainly what constitutions, written and unwritten, are about, and which determine not only whether rights are truly guaranteed but also whether a government can truly function in accordance with democratic norms. Or function at all with any semblance of efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability.

The Power Of Pink, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

The popular thread winds to a close:

I've long since passed the point where the pink ribbons get anything but derision from me. I think it was after my company's fourth "Breast Cancer Awareness Day" in a year. Where everyone was encouraged to wear pink, yet again.  Now I look great in pink, and have plenty of it, so I wasn't opposed.  But we were never asked to chip in any money, no profits were ever allocated, no walkathon scheduled.  Pink pencils were handed out, pink balloons were placed around the office, HR e-mails about wearing pink went out.  But nothing was ever accomplished.

I just want to scream "YES! I am aware of breast cancer!" because that's all the pink ribbons are.  They're just for awareness. They're not for a cure, not for research, not for anything productive.  Every time I see one of the odd pink ribbon products I tell my wife "I'd completely forgotten about cancer, but now that I've seen that pink thing I'm once again aware.  Surely, now that I'm aware of it, we're that much closer to a cure!"

Enough already.  Fund research or don't.  Fund prevention, or don't.  But stop pretending to do something about cancer when you're really just selling pink crap.

Another reader maintains his sense of humor:

I had anal cancer. I tried to wear a brown ribbon, but I was shouted down because it was, I was told, offensive.

Another:

Your discussion of all things pink brought to mind Barbara Ehrenreich's discussion of her experience with being "grouped" by breast cancer victims in her book Bright Sided:

Read On »

The View From Your Window

London, England, 12.51 am

Why Does Stopping Genocide Require Bloated Defense Budgets?

by Zack Beauchamp

Robert E. Kelley argues that there's an essential conflict between ending American military overreach and preventing mass atrocities:

It is awfully tempting to think that just a little bit more exertion, a little more defense spending, a little more covert assistance could help push through desperately needed change in places like Syria or Zimbabwe…

But that’s exactly the ‘utopian’ attitude toward force that realists from Morgenthau to Walt would disparage, right? One small step leads to another to another, and pretty soon you’ve got US empire to handmaiden democracy everywhere all the time, with all the militarization, killing and other unintended consequences such a project must inevitably entail. 

Read On »

Is Act Of Valor An Act Of Propaganda?

by Zack Beauchamp

James Gerrond is troubled by Act Of Valor, a new film that used active duty Navy SEALs to act out scenes from war:

While propaganda seems like too strong a word, what do you call it when the military commissions a movie specifically to designed to alter perception amongst the population it is pledged to defend?  This isn’t some comically over-the-top recruiting commercial with a lava monster or a transforming C-17.  This is a feature length movie that utilizes active duty SEALS, with actual equipment and tactics, and explicitly promotes itself on its ‘realness.’

Jeff Emanuel defends the flick:

Read On »

"Culture Warrior Mitt"

by Maisie Allison

As Santorum basks in the resurgence of the culture wars, Steve Benen marks the sudden return of "Culture Warrior Mitt." Alec MacGillis points out that this is treacherous ground for Romney: 

[D]oes Romney really want to spend much of the months ahead pounding the lectern on religious liberty? That's Santorum's wheelhouse. But for Romney, it cannot help but remind voters that he hails from a religion that, not so long ago, was invoking religious liberty to defend practices that are now deemed utterly unacceptable -- polygamy, a century ago, (his own great-grandfather led the way in establishing a Mormon outpost in Mexico to avoid a federal crackdown on polygamy) and more recently the banning of African-Americans from positions of leadership.

Read On »

Arguments Against God, Ctd

by Zack Beauchamp

The reader response to this post (at least from atheists) has been overwhelming, for which I'm extremely grateful. Most of my fellow atheists appear pretty willing to accept my characterization of their beliefs. A representative email on that front:

I'd say that you and Kenan Malik have more or less captured what I, as an atheist, believe about the question of God's existence.  In fact, I'd go a step further - I think you have more or less captured the view of virtually every atheist I have known and talked to about the subject.  Obviously, that's a small sample size with a considerable demographic skew, but I think it captures something that gets repeatedly lost in discussions of "new atheism:" plenty of people are atheists for the simple reason that they try not to believe in things without good reason, and they see no good reason to believe God exists.

Another:

In general, we can expect atheists and theists to agree on the usefulness of empirical evidence, but theists seem much more sympathetic to broadening the sorts of beliefs that we can count as justified or warranted. So I think that indeed, much of the divide here is on a sort of "meta" level: What sorts of evidence actually count as evidence and actually justify beliefs?

A third can't understand why anything other than logic or science could ever give a good reason to believe in something:

Jack says that two plus two is four, while John says that two plus two is five (or any number other than four). No problem. We have a mechanism, arithmetic, that allows us to determine which one of them is telling the truth. We also have a way of detecting whether, possibly, they are both wrong.

Now try this in religion.

Read On »

Fatwa Via Twitter

by Chris Bodenner

To commemorate the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday last week, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer, tweeted some unorthodox compliments about the prophet. Cue shitstorm:

Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque.

Then the Saudi government stepped in - to target Kashgari as well. Mike Giglio's piece is worth reading in full.

How A Child Sees Logos

by Patrick Appel

A five-year-old shares her thoughts:

How Do You Argue With Someone Immune To Evidence?

by Patrick Appel

Mark Oppenheimer profiles Maggie Gallagher, marriage equality's most notorious foe. Of interest:

In her forthcoming book, she writes that “including same-sex unions in the legal category of ‘marriage’ will necessarily change the public meaning of marriage for the entire society in ways that must make it harder for marriage to perform its core civil functions over time.” How do we know? We just do.

And even if somehow the evidence showed, conclusively, that same-sex marriage were good for children? Gallagher would still be dissatisfied: “Nothing could make me call a same-sex couple a marriage, because that’s not what I believe a marriage is.”

Gallagher's declaration that her mind cannot be changed is the statement of a fundamentalist. There is no greater sin against open debate than to preemptively seal oneself off from evidence. Will Wilkinson, on the other hand, considers what it would take for him to change his mind about various issues, marriage equality among them.

The Dangers Of Privatization

by Zack Beauchamp

Mike Konczal wants to halt the outsourcing of government jobs to the private sector:

A regime of privatization shifts the debate away from the functions of government towards the allocation of those functions. For all the talk about innovation by outside contractors, what privatization largely does is preserve the scope of government services while looking for efficiency gains. And since the scope of what the government does is held constant, the real gains come from minimizing costs.

Take prisons, for example. With the addition of privately run prisons, the debate narrowly focuses on how much to spend on prisoners. Minimizing costs here will often be the result of simply providing less of a good at a worse quality, and the debate will focus on the optimal extent of these privatization contracts. Meanwhile, the greater question of when the state should imprison people fades to the background.

Yglesias complicates the case. On Tuesday, Patrick laid out the horrifying consequences of our ever-expanding prison system.

(Chart by the Prison Policy Initiative)

The Science Of Waking Up

by Zoë Pollock

Aaron Blaisdell explains while reviewing Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind:

As we awaken from sleep, our consciousness undergoes a radical transformation composed of dramatic adjustments in neural processes. Some neural circuits go quiet while others come online. The entire orchestration of the symphony of mind unfolds like changes in a music score, and while there is no single, master conductor, Damasio posits that the decentralized process does have hot spots of top-down modulation linked by connections built over evolutionary time. These “command centers,” for lack of a more accurate but succinct term, do one thing really well: They create our sense of self, our sense of being a protagonist in a continuously unfolding nonlinear narrative through which we can travel again and again in our memories and plan possible and even impossible futures.

The Daily Wrap

by Zack Beauchamp

Today on the Dish, I threw my hat into the ring on the birth control debate and Patrick explained why the Birthers aren't going after non-white Republicans. We compiled reax to Santorum's hat trick, insta-explained the impact on the race, tried to see if Romney could spin this (probably not),  wondered if Mitt was losing his narrative, saw the aura of inevitability waning, and thought that regaining it might cost him the general. Santorum started to be taken seriously by some while Pawlenty was pitied. The enthusiasm gap reversed, the "Obama independents" became a thing, and there's a new Ad War Update here. 

Sympathetic liberals opposed an intervention in Syria, Egypt's junta waged war on NGOs, and American novelists shirked from war. We found more Prop 8 reax, secular marriage sustained assault, and the Komen discussion continued. America's mobility problems were spotlighted, shifting from communism was hard, energy efficiency wasn't solving sustainability issues, and self-driving cars were a ways away. Opponents of pot legalization hallucinated and readers pushed back on the defense of doping. Your childhood made you fat, human attachment to reality got dissected, auteur theory was (debateably) bunkum, and a gorilla played the recorder. View from your Airplane Window here, Hewitt Nominee here, Yglesias Nominee here, Hathos Alert here, Chart of the Day here, AAA here, FOTD here, VFYW here, and MHB here.

Controlling Birth Control, Controlling Liberty

 

by Zack Beauchamp

2012's great birth control debate is far from over. The Catholic Church is threatening all-out war against the Obama Administration until it caves on the decision to require contraceptives without co-pays. One popular framing of the debate is religious liberty versus women's health, but that's not quite right. The Administration's requirement isn't a threat to liberty, religious or otherwise. It's a sally in an ongoing debate about the character of liberal rights - and one on the right side, to boot.

We usually think of religious liberty as an individual believer's right to worship and practice freely. That's of course not at issue here - the feds aren't marching into Catholic bedrooms and making everyone take Plan B on Sunday morning or requiring Catholic hospital administrators to pass out free birth control in the lobby. The regulations instead require they indirectly subsidize birth control use, which several faiths believe means being forced to participate in evil. But opponents worry about a much broader problem than religious freedom. Check this from Ross Douthat last week:

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Romney's Death Trap

by Zack Beauchamp

Scott Galupo thinks winning the primary will cost Mitt the general:

There's good reason to believe Romney's relentlessly negative campaigning against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—and, prospectively, Santorum—is driving up his unfavorables and killing his standing with independents...The more time and money that Romney is forced to spend fending off attacks on his right flank, the longer he will have to wait to repair his brand in the general-election fight against President Obama. Equally obviously, Romney can't openly make this plea. He can't say to conservatives, "Hey, stop attacking me now, because I need to start looking moderate soon!" 

Romney is in a sort of self-circling death trap: The more mud he's forced to sling at his conservative opponents, the more muddy he looks to the low-information middle. In effect, Romney grows weaker by acting stronger. 

"Everything Was Out Of Control"

by Maisie Allison

Chris Jones reconstructs the events surrounding last fall's Zanesville Zoo "incident," when dozens of exotic animals were killed after being released by their owner, Terry Thompson. Thompson killed himself after letting the animals loose: 

When [Sargeant Steve Blake] began pushing open doors, his shotgun at the ready, he was suddenly filled with the fear that Thompson had booby-trapped his house with something other than animals: a dead man's line tied to a door knob, explosives wired to a light switch. The screaming of the monkeys followed Blake everywhere, breaking his concentration. "Those monkeys, raising hell," he says, shaking his head. "It was just unreal." Room by room he and [volunteer caretaker John] Moore searched the rest of the house. They came up empty. They returned to the car and Blake once again headed down the driveway. "Stop!" Moore shouted from the backseat, looking out the window to his right. "I think Terry's down there."

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Face Of The Day

A Bosnian worker shovels snow in an effort to clear the path around life-size figures of dinosaurs at Sarajevo ZOO on February 8, 2012. Helicopters ferried food and medicine to iced-in villagers on Wednesday as Europe's 12-day-old cold snap tightened its frigid grip on the continent, where more than 400 have died as a direct result. By Elvis Barukcic/AFP/Getty Images.

-- C.B.

How Seriously Should We Take Santorum?

by Patrick Appel

John Cassidy asks:

Is Santorum plausible enough, likable enough, and durable enough to become a serious Presidential contender? I have my doubts, and so do many members of the Republican establishment, Karl Rove included. In the next couple of weeks, the Romney campaign will doubtless coördinate an attack on Santorum’s record, which includes lucrative spells as a corporate lobbyist and consultant, aiming at doing to him what it did to Gingrich in Florida. The manner in which Santorum handles these attacks, and how he fares in Michigan, will determine his fate. Still, one thing is already clear. He’s no longer a fringe candidate.

Douthat suspects that the race could drag on if Gingrich's supporters abandon him:

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Chart Of The Day

by Patrick Appel

After reviewing marriage statistics, Derek Thompson concludes that marriage trends are "really, really complicated":

The graph above is a deceptively simple picture that says a lot about how the institution of marriage has changed in the last 130 years. First, it shows how unusually early twentysomethings married around 1960. This suggests that comparisons to that generation imply an exaggerated collapse. Second it shows that, at every age up to 60, today's Americans are less likely to be hitched than any generation before them. Third, it suggests that seniors are marrying close to their age. The shrinking gap between the ages of husbands and wives that helps to explain why couples are more likely to sort within their income group. Finally, it implies that even with rising divorces, the market for re-marriages is strong. 

Is Romney Still Inevitable?

by Patrick Appel

Jonathan Bernstein nods:

Mitt Romney will (almost certainly) head to Super Tuesday with a commanding grip on the nomination. He'll have many advantages on that day. If he sweeps the day or close, it will be plain to everyone that the nomination is decided. If he has an OK day, he'll still have a commanding lead. And if he has a bad day...then he's still a clear leader for the nomination, but he enters the 1984 Mondale territory that Nate Silver sees likely. 

Frank Rich differs:

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