Policy and Politics
tfk | July 4, 2007
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that…
tfk | July 2, 2007President Bush commuted the 30 month jail sentence given to "Scooter" Libby shortly after Libby's last appeal was denied. Libby was convicted of lying to federal prosecutors investigating the leak of a covert CIA agent's identity. It is believed he lied to obfuscate Vice-President Cheney's involvement in the leak; Libby was Cheney's chief-of-staff at the time. Previously he was the author of a novel involving bestiality, rape, necrophilia and sex behind bars.
Bush's clemency statement explains that he feels the sentence doled out by the judge was excessive. Judge Reggie Walton, a Bush…
tfk | July 2, 2007Brad surveys the nation (at least the flying public), and writes:
If anything, my point is that it’s sad that we, as a nation, seem to have lost our sense of patriotism — and there could possibly be an inverse relationship of the degree that one is vocal about it and one’s IQ.
I think this sentence is revealing. I agree with the second half, and disagree with the first. I would argue that patriotism is not fundamentally about wearing shirts or pins with flags. It isn't about that frayed flag limply drooping on your porch during a rainstorm, or the magnetic yellow ribbon on your SUV.…
tfk | June 28, 2007I'm conflicted over Tyson Foods's decision to sell antibiotic-free chickens. On one hand, anything that increases supply and reduces the costs of chicken that aren't pumped full of antibiotics is good. Antibiotic-laced chicken farms are breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, bacteria which can enter the food supply or transfer those resistance genes to other populations through anything from dirt on trucks from the farm, or fertilizer produced from the chicken droppings.
On the other hand, Tyson Foods has a horrific labor record. It provides cheap chicken by using every trick…
tfk | June 26, 2007The UK's military chief of staff is concerned:
Climate change poses a challenge for the military in adapting operations and helping to deal with the consequences of migration and increased tensions as people compete for resources, the head of the U.K. armed forces said.
Rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are likely to increase desertification, putting pressure on food and water supplies in parts of the world such as Darfur in Sudan and other parts of Africa, Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup, chief of defense staff, told delegates yesterday at a two-day conference at Chatham…
tfk | June 25, 2007Emily Yoffe's muddled explanation of why she's willing to pretend global warming won't happen is deeply confused. Consider this statement (a version of which is a common part of the denialist toolkit):
I refuse to trust a weather prediction for August 2080, when no one can offer me one for August 2008 (or 2007 for that matter).
Of course we can. In northern temperate zones, August 2008 will be hot. In the Midwest, there will be massive thunderstorms bubbling up, dropping sheets of rain, and the clouds will plant mighty roots of lighting into the prairie soil. In New York, it will be muggy…
tfk | June 22, 2007Farhad Manjoo points to:
Ed Felten and Randy Picker [who] point to an interesting ruling from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals: Because people have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they communicate over e-mail, the court ruled that the government must obtain a search warrant to get your e-mail from your ISP.
The logic of the ruling is the same as the logic behind requiring a warrant for a wiretap or to search a mailed letter or package. Some legal scholars think the ruling is likely to be overturned for technical reasons, but I for one hope the legal reasoning ultimately prevails.
tfk | June 22, 2007The Senate sent an energy bill to the House which includes strong fuel economy standards but doesn't include provisions that would have promoted renewable fuel use. Detroit had hoped for weaker fuel economy standards, and environmental groups had hoped to see a requirement that electric utilities generate at least 15% of their power from renewable fuels. The groups also lost a battle to boost taxes on oil companies and use the proceeds to subsidize production of renewable power from wind, solar energy and biomass.
Environmental groups scored a victory earlier in the debate when the Senate…
tfk | June 20, 2007A theme of Season 4 of The Wire is the way that we create programs that work, and then let those programs fall apart for lack of political will. (I suppose that's the lesson of "Hamsterdam" in season 3, as well.) Mr. Presbo took a student under his wing, helped him clean up his life, brought him out of the shadows, and then (spoiler alert) he got moved from Mr. Presbo's 8th grade to 9th grade in a different school. Without his support network, including his friends and teacher, he gets lost again, and winds up slinging on street corners. Mr. Colvin's pilot program socializes a few kids,…
tfk | June 16, 2007One hundred forty eight Republicans voted against the bill funding Homeland Security operations. Speaker Pelosi explained:
The bill funds the hiring of 3,000 new border patrol agents, rejects the cuts President Bush sought in the training and equipping of first responders, and improves aviation and port security. It also includes strong accountability measures to make certain that taxpayer dollars are being well-spent, including requiring that contracts be competitively bid.
The President plans to veto the bill, which also requires DHS and its contractors to pay the locally prevailing wages…
tfk | June 15, 2007In an encouraging ruling, a judge in Washington ruled that salmon raised in hatcheries cannot be considered as if they were equivalent to the wild populations:
His decision flatly rejects the idea that if enough salmon can be produced in hatcheries, there is little need to protect wild stocks. It also strikes down what environmentalists widely viewed as a Bush administration policy to appease building and agriculture interests.
The Endangered Species Act has a "central purpose of preserving and promoting self-sustaining natural populations," the judge ruled.
"Species are to be protected in…
tfk | June 14, 2007In the 1950s, General Motors and their allies bought up and killed off streetcars in cities across the country. Whether or not you attribute that to conspiracy, it certainly reflects the shift the nation went through at the time. Cars and roads took over as suburbs grew and America sprawled out from the cities.
For almost as long as that sprawl has been happening, it has had opponents. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, published in 1961, criticized the obsession with expressways and separating residential areas from commercial neighborhoods. That separation…
tfk | June 13, 2007One of the reforms introduced by the new Congress was a requirement that funding requested by a specific member of Congress identify that member. Apparently, this year's list will not be completed until the appropriations bills get into the House-Senate conference committee. Congresswoman Boyda doesn't want to wait that long.
She has listed all the projects she's hoping to see funded. The list totals to about $200 million, though only a few of the 64 projects will ultimately be funded. A look at the list reveals a focus on local community improvements. Road projects, sewer improvements…
tfk | June 12, 2007In a suit brought by the Western Watersheds alliance, a federal judge blocked the Bureau of Land Management's new grazing rules:
The BLM violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled.
Winmill's 52-page ruling said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on millions of acres of public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing…
tfk | June 7, 2007The April 5, 2004 edition of the New Yorker had a fascinating article about height. (Incidentally, I highly recommend The Complete New Yorker.) It centers on a researcher named John Komlos, an anthropometric economist at the University of Munich, and work he's done to trace heights of different populations over time. In considering the effects of immigrants on a society and vice versa, it's worth considering what we really ought to consider intrinsic. As the author of the article notes, "height, like skin color, seems to vary with geography: we think of squat Peruvians, slender Masai,…
tfk | June 6, 2007From last night's debate:
FAHEY: (inaudible) do not believe in evolution. You're an ordained minister. What do you believe? Is it the story of creation, as it is reported in the Bible or described in the Bible?
[Governor] HUCKABEE [of Arkansas]: It's interesting that that question would even be asked of somebody running for president. I'm not planning on writing the curriculum for an 8th-grade science book. I'm asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States.
Stop. Pastor Huckabee (to borrow McCain's phrase) thinks you need to be less knowledgeable to be president than to…
tfk | June 5, 2007There's very little agreement on the immigration issue, and unlike so many issues, it is not a purely partisan issue. One area where everyone seems to agree is that illegal immigrant labor drives down wages in at least some industries.
I should point out that the evidence of economy-wide effects of immigrants seems to be neutral. We all benefit from cheaper food, so the effects on wages among fruitpickers balances out when you consider the whole economy.
People who argue that immigrants are just taking jobs that Americans won't accept are, after all, basically claiming that Americans…
tfk | June 4, 2007The Representative who hid money in a freezer is likely to be sent to the cooler himself. He is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but I don't have too many doubts about the outcome of this, give the evidence that's already leaked out.
Democratic leadership took heat from the Congressional Black Caucus for demoting the Representative from sensitive leadership positions, but I think history will bear out that choice.
tfk | June 4, 2007Why are basic scientific facts controversial in the public realm? What can scientists and their friends do to engage the public and move them past those misunderstandings?
Those are the questions motivating fellow ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet as they tour the country giving a talk called "Speaking Science." They kicked the tour off here in Kansas City, and they'll be in New York tonight and on to places unknown after that. The talk is rooted in their controversial paper in Science and a subsequent op-ed in the Washington Post, both on the topic of framing science –…
tfk | June 3, 2007I've been having an email correspondence with someone who took issue with my suggestion a few days ago that all the talk in the immigration debate about our American Heritage may just be xenophobic blather.
My suspicion that xenophobia contributes a nontrivial chunk of that rhetoric is strengthened by Bill O'Reilly's explanation of what "the New York Times wants and the far-left want" as far as immigration:
They want to breakdown the white Christian male power structure of which you [John McCain] are a part, and so am I. And they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically…