Just for my own amusement, I'm going to post a brief summary of the Birther conspiracy theory positing that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. There are ample records showing that Obama's parents were both students at the University of Hawaii during the year before their marriage and his birth, that a birth certificate was issued in Hawaii for his birth, and that the Department of Health made birth announcements for the future president in two local Honolulu newspapers.
As I understand it, the story goes like this: A young Kenyan student named Barack Hussein Obama decided in the late 1950s that he wanted to destroy the United States from within. His plan was as follows: Earn a scholarship to study in the United States, go to the University of Hawaii and enroll as the first black student there. Set up contacts in the state's Department of Health in order to fabricate documents, then marry a white woman and have a child. Shortly before the child's birth, fly away to Kenya and deliver the baby there. Then get your contacts with the Department of Health to produce not only a false birth certificate, to establish your son (or daughter) as a natural born citizen and therefore elligible to be president, but also to publish a number false birth announcements in local papers. Pay off airline officials so that they ignore regulations barring newborns from flying on international flights, and return to the United States. Continue your studies at the university, but eventually abandon the child and rely on him or her to become the first African American president, and possibly also the first female president. Also rely on him or her, through no influence of your own, to become a radical Marxist who shares your goal of destroying the United States from within.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Projects
I decided today to engage myself with two long-term projects. I plan to run the Philadelphia Marathon Nov. 22, which will take a lot of training over the next 24 weeks. Since no one reads this blog anyway, it doesn't matter, but I'm going to post occasionally on my progress as a form of motivation. Hopefully.
My other project is to read the Koran. I've read some of Sura 2 in the past, and I didn't enjoy it. But I'm starting over. Here goes.
Sura 1 is a short devotional statement known as Al-Fatiha. This sura is only seven verses long, and says some nice things about God:
"Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Benificent, the Merciful, Thee alone we worship, Thee alone we ask for help." (1:3-5)
It finishes up by expressing the hope that those who recite the prayer will not be led astray. As we'll see in the next Sura, the Koran doesn't waste any time in condemning non-believers. This little doxology here doesn't mean much to me. I hope that I never become a Muslim just as strongly as any Muslim hopes not to someday become an apostate.
It should be noted that Bismillah is the first word of the Koran.
My other project is to read the Koran. I've read some of Sura 2 in the past, and I didn't enjoy it. But I'm starting over. Here goes.
Sura 1 is a short devotional statement known as Al-Fatiha. This sura is only seven verses long, and says some nice things about God:
"Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Benificent, the Merciful, Thee alone we worship, Thee alone we ask for help." (1:3-5)
It finishes up by expressing the hope that those who recite the prayer will not be led astray. As we'll see in the next Sura, the Koran doesn't waste any time in condemning non-believers. This little doxology here doesn't mean much to me. I hope that I never become a Muslim just as strongly as any Muslim hopes not to someday become an apostate.
It should be noted that Bismillah is the first word of the Koran.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Mexico City on the Supreme Court?
In the discussion of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, commentators have pointed out that there is no strong evidence on her stance on abortion, which is generally speaking the litmus test issue for Supreme Court nominees. People who are concerned about the ideological composition of the Court are primarily worried about the possibility that a change in the Court's lineup will result in the overturn of 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, which struck down abortion bans across the country.
Many people on the far left, people who are not fans of the Democratic Party, pointed out last year that Barack Obama would be likely to appoint very different Supreme Court justices than his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain pledged to appoint judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, President George Bush's two appointees to the Court. It was clear at that time that this president would make at least two nominations to the Court, and the left wanted those justices to be pro-choice as much as the Republican base wanted additional pro-life justices sitting on the Court.
There is an unspoken premise here that the Court will treat abortion the same way the executive branch does. The model here is the Mexico City Policy, which was enunciated by Ronald Reagan in 1984. It has been upheld by Republican presidents and revoked by Democrats since that time. The policy barred federal agencies from giving funding to foreign organizations that advocate or fund abortions. Court-watchers usually assume that justices will treat abortion in the same way politicians do. As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion to the 1992 abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey (and no doubt on countless other occasions), the Supreme Court is not supposed to be motivated by policy preferences. The Court deals with matters of law, and is tasked with making rulings based on what the Constitution does or does not say.
We usually assume not only that presidents will enforce their preferences on abortion through their Supreme Court nominations, but that that is a desirable way for politics to operate. I find that troubling, and I won't endorse that as I make my point about Sotomayor and the effect she'll have on the issue.
The Court directly addressed the precedent of Roe in the aforementioned Casey decision. There have been four changes in the composition of the Court since that time.
Since Obama is considered a strong supporter of abortion rights, and since conservatives decried Sotomayor as an activist even before it was known whom Obama would support, one would expect Sotomayor to be a stauch supporter of the Roe decision, but we have no evidence to support that as yet. There are a handful of cases dealing tangentially with abortion that have come before her on the 2nd Circuit Court, but none have dealt with the fundamental issues involved in Roe.
In a 2002 case, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy vs. Bush, the 2nd Circuit upheld the Mexico City Policy against a challenge from a pro-abortion right group. The group claimed the policy violated their rights to free speech, due process and equal protection. Sotomayor and the 2nd Circuit denied all three claims on various grounds and in keeping with a nearly identical case before the same court some years earlier.
When Sotomayor comes before the Senate for confirmation, no doubt this question will be watched carefully.
Many people on the far left, people who are not fans of the Democratic Party, pointed out last year that Barack Obama would be likely to appoint very different Supreme Court justices than his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain pledged to appoint judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, President George Bush's two appointees to the Court. It was clear at that time that this president would make at least two nominations to the Court, and the left wanted those justices to be pro-choice as much as the Republican base wanted additional pro-life justices sitting on the Court.
There is an unspoken premise here that the Court will treat abortion the same way the executive branch does. The model here is the Mexico City Policy, which was enunciated by Ronald Reagan in 1984. It has been upheld by Republican presidents and revoked by Democrats since that time. The policy barred federal agencies from giving funding to foreign organizations that advocate or fund abortions. Court-watchers usually assume that justices will treat abortion in the same way politicians do. As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion to the 1992 abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey (and no doubt on countless other occasions), the Supreme Court is not supposed to be motivated by policy preferences. The Court deals with matters of law, and is tasked with making rulings based on what the Constitution does or does not say.
We usually assume not only that presidents will enforce their preferences on abortion through their Supreme Court nominations, but that that is a desirable way for politics to operate. I find that troubling, and I won't endorse that as I make my point about Sotomayor and the effect she'll have on the issue.
The Court directly addressed the precedent of Roe in the aforementioned Casey decision. There have been four changes in the composition of the Court since that time.
- Byron White, who voted to overturn Roe in 1992, was shortly replaced by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a supporter of abortion rights and presumably a justice who would vote to uphold Roe if it was challenged. Ginsburg voted to strike down laws against partial-birth abortion in 2000's Stenberg v. Carhart.
- Harry Blackmun, the author of the Roe decision, was replaced by Steven Breyer. Breyer is consistently liberal and wrote for the majority in Carhart. This is presumably not a change in the Court's ideological composition.
- The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist was replaced by John G. Roberts in 2005. Rehnquist voted to overturn Roe, and Roberts would likely do the same.
- Sandra Day O'Connor, the author of the Casey decision, retired in 2005 and was replaced by Samuel A. Alito, who was promoted from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Alito had been the dissenting vote on Casey at the appellate level, meaning that he voted to uphold the abortion restrictions eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. Alito would most likely vote to strike down Roe.
- Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both of whom voted to overturn Roe, remain on the Court, as do Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, who voted to uphold it.
Since Obama is considered a strong supporter of abortion rights, and since conservatives decried Sotomayor as an activist even before it was known whom Obama would support, one would expect Sotomayor to be a stauch supporter of the Roe decision, but we have no evidence to support that as yet. There are a handful of cases dealing tangentially with abortion that have come before her on the 2nd Circuit Court, but none have dealt with the fundamental issues involved in Roe.
In a 2002 case, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy vs. Bush, the 2nd Circuit upheld the Mexico City Policy against a challenge from a pro-abortion right group. The group claimed the policy violated their rights to free speech, due process and equal protection. Sotomayor and the 2nd Circuit denied all three claims on various grounds and in keeping with a nearly identical case before the same court some years earlier.
When Sotomayor comes before the Senate for confirmation, no doubt this question will be watched carefully.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Richard Dawkins is wrong
I've been reading Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, and I've come across a passage that betrays a very common misconception in microeconomics. Chapter 8, "Battle of the Generations," talks about the evolutionary pressures promoting kin altruism, or behaviors that lead animals to aid others that are likely to carry the same genes as they do (i.e. their kin.) Dawkins talks about favoritism, or a genetic tendency which leads an animal to favor one of its offspring over another. He has just pointed out that some animals neglect or kill runts in order to devote more resources to other members of a litter. There are situations in which sacrificing one offspring will ultimately lead to more surviving grandchildren, which is in a sense the ultimate goal of reproduction. After bringing up the case of runts, Dawkins continues:
The whole discussion relies on talk of what a mother "should" do, which is a shorthand for describing which behavior will lead to more of her genes living on in the bodies of her offspring. There is, of course, no moral judgment made anywhere in this discussion. It is merely a description of the mechanism of natural selection.
The problem with Dawkins's explanation lies within the last two sentences: "This is because she stands to lose a higher proportion of her life's parental investment if he dies than if his little brother dies. Perhaps a better way to put this is that if she saves the little brother she will still have to invest some costly resources in him just to get him up to the age of the big brother." These two statements are not equivalent, and the first one is flatly incorrect.
The amount of P.I. previously invested is what economists refer to as "sunk costs." There is nothing a mother animal can do to retrieve the calories, nutrients, time and other resources she has expended in raising her children up the day on which we find her. In making investment decisions, people often consider the investments they have already made in the past, which is irrational.
If you've already invested $100,000 in a factory, but no level of output from that factory will allow you to meet your break-even point, you are best served by shutting down the factory. You surely want to recoup your investment on the factory, but if you will lose money by producing things at there, then opening the factory is not the way to go about it. Dawkins is talking about genes, which are perfectly rational in the sense that they do not make conscious decisions. Genes exist in the population based on how their expression affected the reproduction of previous generations. Therefore past investment is not a factor in the "decision" made by the genes in his scenario. The tableau constructed in the quoted paragraph presents two "choices":
A.) Save the older child, leading to the death of the younger.
B.) Save the younger child, leading to the death of the older.
The prior levels of investment of P.I. have absolutely no bearing on whether a gene happens to promote option A or option B. Therefore past investment is not a consideration. To illustrate this further, let's instead assume that the older child is not the offspring of the animal in question but instead its sibling, which also shares 50 percent of its genes with the decision-maker. Let's assume, though, that that sibling has entailed zero previous investment by the decision-maker, but that it will be under the care of the decision-maker from now on. In this case, it is still the right choice, genetically speaking, to save the older child, for the reason Dawkins explained in the final sentence of the paragraph.
What matters is the future investment necessary to see the child pass on its genes, half of which are the same genes as those in the adult decision-maker's body. The decision that leads to that outcome with the least expenditure from the decision-maker going forward is the one which will be adaptive, all else equal.Under my scenario, saving your brother is more adaptive than saving one's son, if the brother is significantly older than the son.
UPDATE: Having read further in Dawkins, he points out precisely this fallacy in the next chapter. He continues to make statements about the waste of past investment, but he does say explicitly that, strictly speaking, past investment doesn't effect future decisions. In fact, he published a paper on this theme in response to the work by R.L. Trivers, who did the pioneering work on this subject and apparently made this mistake.
It should be noted that "Parental Investment" or P.I. is a hypothetical resource used in abstract discussions of of the behavior of parent animals. It refers to all the resources an animal has at its disposal to aid the survival of a member of it species, be it a child, another relative, or itself.
"We can make some more general predictions about how a mother's tendency to invest in a child might be affected by his age. If she has a straight choice between saving the life of one child or saving the life of another, and if the one she does not save is bound to die, she should prefer the older one. This is because she stands to lose a higher proportion of her life's parental investment if he dies than if his little brother dies. Perhaps a better way to put this is that if she saves the little brother she will still have to invest some costly resources in him just to get him up to the age of the big brother." -- The Selfish Gene, p. 125
The whole discussion relies on talk of what a mother "should" do, which is a shorthand for describing which behavior will lead to more of her genes living on in the bodies of her offspring. There is, of course, no moral judgment made anywhere in this discussion. It is merely a description of the mechanism of natural selection.
The problem with Dawkins's explanation lies within the last two sentences: "This is because she stands to lose a higher proportion of her life's parental investment if he dies than if his little brother dies. Perhaps a better way to put this is that if she saves the little brother she will still have to invest some costly resources in him just to get him up to the age of the big brother." These two statements are not equivalent, and the first one is flatly incorrect.
The amount of P.I. previously invested is what economists refer to as "sunk costs." There is nothing a mother animal can do to retrieve the calories, nutrients, time and other resources she has expended in raising her children up the day on which we find her. In making investment decisions, people often consider the investments they have already made in the past, which is irrational.
If you've already invested $100,000 in a factory, but no level of output from that factory will allow you to meet your break-even point, you are best served by shutting down the factory. You surely want to recoup your investment on the factory, but if you will lose money by producing things at there, then opening the factory is not the way to go about it. Dawkins is talking about genes, which are perfectly rational in the sense that they do not make conscious decisions. Genes exist in the population based on how their expression affected the reproduction of previous generations. Therefore past investment is not a factor in the "decision" made by the genes in his scenario. The tableau constructed in the quoted paragraph presents two "choices":
A.) Save the older child, leading to the death of the younger.
B.) Save the younger child, leading to the death of the older.
The prior levels of investment of P.I. have absolutely no bearing on whether a gene happens to promote option A or option B. Therefore past investment is not a consideration. To illustrate this further, let's instead assume that the older child is not the offspring of the animal in question but instead its sibling, which also shares 50 percent of its genes with the decision-maker. Let's assume, though, that that sibling has entailed zero previous investment by the decision-maker, but that it will be under the care of the decision-maker from now on. In this case, it is still the right choice, genetically speaking, to save the older child, for the reason Dawkins explained in the final sentence of the paragraph.
What matters is the future investment necessary to see the child pass on its genes, half of which are the same genes as those in the adult decision-maker's body. The decision that leads to that outcome with the least expenditure from the decision-maker going forward is the one which will be adaptive, all else equal.Under my scenario, saving your brother is more adaptive than saving one's son, if the brother is significantly older than the son.
UPDATE: Having read further in Dawkins, he points out precisely this fallacy in the next chapter. He continues to make statements about the waste of past investment, but he does say explicitly that, strictly speaking, past investment doesn't effect future decisions. In fact, he published a paper on this theme in response to the work by R.L. Trivers, who did the pioneering work on this subject and apparently made this mistake.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Back in the day...
Before I record my thoughts on the presidential inauguration here, which I will do shortly, I want to express my appreciation for President John Q. Adams, the sixth man to hold that office. He chose not to be sworn in on a bible but instead on a federal law book. He was a devout Unitarian, a very rare bird in today's world. But he thought that it was inappropriate to use the bible when he took his oath because that would constitute a violation of the separation of church and state.
He was, after all, pledging to defend and uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land, not the bible. The episode also demonstrates that the early presidents did have an appreciation of the importance of a secular government. Obama mentions non-believers in his inaugural address today, and that might bode well for his treatment of church-state issues. Maybe not, though. I'll keep my eyes open.
He was, after all, pledging to defend and uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land, not the bible. The episode also demonstrates that the early presidents did have an appreciation of the importance of a secular government. Obama mentions non-believers in his inaugural address today, and that might bode well for his treatment of church-state issues. Maybe not, though. I'll keep my eyes open.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Well, in that case...
William Kristol's reliably horrible column in today's New York Times offers a retrospective of Bush's presidency and a reflection on what we can expect from Barack Obama. Besides praising Bush's unwavering support for Israel, Kristol insists that George Bush won the Iraq War for us, yet again declining to define victory. The most painful thing to read in the entire column is Kristol's commentary on the costs of our two recent wars. This is his attempt to feel for the humanity of George W.:
Kristol warns the incoming president about the burdens and costs incumbent on a war president, but he doesn't convey that all of those hardships befall Obama solely because of his predecessor's ineptitude. Despite the efforts of Kristol and a team of other revisionists, I can't imagine that history will be anything other than spectacularly harsh to President Bush.
Last Wednesday afternoon, in the midst of all the other activities of the final week of an administration, Bush had 40 or so families of fallen soldiers to the White House. The staff had set aside up to two hours. Bush, a man who normally keeps to schedule, spent over four hours meeting in small groups with the family members of those who had fallen in battle.Poor President Bush is so busy packing his bags to get the fuck out, but he still found the time to spend two extra hours with the grieving parents and widows of the Iraq War. Is this supposed to be some modicum of atonement for all the death and suffering caused in this unnecessary war? Is this visit supposed to convince us all that we're actually better off for having gone into Iraq? If so, it is woefully inadequate.
Kristol warns the incoming president about the burdens and costs incumbent on a war president, but he doesn't convey that all of those hardships befall Obama solely because of his predecessor's ineptitude. Despite the efforts of Kristol and a team of other revisionists, I can't imagine that history will be anything other than spectacularly harsh to President Bush.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
We need a special prosecutor
Barack Obama's cabinet choices have begun confirmation hearings before the Senate, and aside from their personal qualifications, there is a lot of well-deserved attention being paid to how they plan to solve the myriad problems they are poised to inherit from the current administration. The main cabinet official I'm concerned about is Attorney General-designate Eric Holder. I'm concerned about what happens at the State Department, the Treasury, the Pentagon, and so forth, but Justice in on top of my list. I take that position because the Justice Department has the greatest potential, in my mind, to demonstrate that the United States has repudiated the Bush administration and its criminal modus operandi. Tim Geithner, Obama's appointee for Treasury Secretary, is the protégé of President Clinton's highly business-friendly Treasury Secretaries; Hillary Clinton is more hawkish than I'd like our diplomats to be; Robert Gates is being kept of as Secretary of Defense from the Bush administration. All three of those appointees are somewhat disappointing insofar as they are less-than-total breaks from the current administration's methods. There's no question that Eric Holder will be a drastic departure from the John Ashcroft/Alberto Gonzalez scheme at Justice. What I am less sure about is whether Holder will be aggressive in pressing criminal charges against former Bush administration members. There has been discussion of an extensive examination of President Bush's signing statements, in which he explains how he will interpret and sometimes blatantly contradict laws passed by Congress, as well as the dubious legal theories practiced by the Gonzalez and Ashcroft Justice Departments. I get the sense that Obama's Justice Department will overturn many of the Bush/Ashcroft/Gonzalez abuses of power, but decline to press criminal charges against any of the officials involved in unlawful behavior.
Signing statements represent the most widespread dereliction of duty by the Bush administration, but there are some specific abuses that also merit investigation. No-bid contracts and other sweetheart deals for contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a multi-billion-dollar swindle of American taxpayers' dollars. The most prominent war profiteers have been Halliburton and Bechtel; they and anyone else who have been involved in ripping off the public need to be reviewed for criminal liability.
More specific to the Bush administration, the Justice Department should examine Vice President Cheney's involvement in selling the Iraq War to the public. There have been numerous reports that Cheney exerted undue influence on intelligence agents to manufacture the case he wanted for going to war. Whether or not he can be prosecuted for this activity, it deserves to be brought to light and entered into official records. Additionally, Cheney admitted in an interview last month that he personally approved the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, a terrorist mastermind. Since waterboarding has long been prosecuted as a war crime, this admission seems to build a rock-solid case against Cheney. This cries out for prosecution.
President-elect Obama has downplayed the possibility of such prosecutions, telling ABC "my orientation’s going to be to move forward" rather than to focus on the past. There is no doubt that the new administration has a variety of crises to deal with, and Obama's attention will necessarily be divided between them. But I don't want Obama's time or energy to be devoted to prosecuting the previous administration. He is a partisan, and these prosecutions must be non-political. The politicization of Justice Department business is one of the more obviously criminal abuses of the Bush administration, in fact. But we need a special prosecutor, a non-political appointee who will conduct a legitimate criminal investigation rather than a partisan witch-hunt.
I'm looking forward here as well. I'm worried about the precedents we are setting for posterity. If no effort is made to hold the Bush administration accountable for its crimes, we will be subject to more lawless behavior in the future. A blatantly partisan investigation, even if it produced convictions, would only protect future wrongdoing by creating a negative perception of such prosecutions.
To my knowledge, such an effort is unprecedented. I have never read of any attempt by one administration to investigate crimes committed by an earlier administration. There have been contemporary investigations and impeachments by Congress, but I am fairly sure no president has ever done what I'm calling for here. I think it is incumbent upon us at this point to call for investigations because the level of criminal behavior under the Bush administration has been unprecedented. We need to show that we have a low tolerance for criminal behavior, preferably a lower tolerance than Americans in years past. We only get one chance to do this right, and we owe it to future Americans to try our hardest. That would be change we can believe in; anything less would be a betrayal of the spirit of Obama's campaign.
Signing statements represent the most widespread dereliction of duty by the Bush administration, but there are some specific abuses that also merit investigation. No-bid contracts and other sweetheart deals for contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a multi-billion-dollar swindle of American taxpayers' dollars. The most prominent war profiteers have been Halliburton and Bechtel; they and anyone else who have been involved in ripping off the public need to be reviewed for criminal liability.
More specific to the Bush administration, the Justice Department should examine Vice President Cheney's involvement in selling the Iraq War to the public. There have been numerous reports that Cheney exerted undue influence on intelligence agents to manufacture the case he wanted for going to war. Whether or not he can be prosecuted for this activity, it deserves to be brought to light and entered into official records. Additionally, Cheney admitted in an interview last month that he personally approved the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, a terrorist mastermind. Since waterboarding has long been prosecuted as a war crime, this admission seems to build a rock-solid case against Cheney. This cries out for prosecution.
President-elect Obama has downplayed the possibility of such prosecutions, telling ABC "my orientation’s going to be to move forward" rather than to focus on the past. There is no doubt that the new administration has a variety of crises to deal with, and Obama's attention will necessarily be divided between them. But I don't want Obama's time or energy to be devoted to prosecuting the previous administration. He is a partisan, and these prosecutions must be non-political. The politicization of Justice Department business is one of the more obviously criminal abuses of the Bush administration, in fact. But we need a special prosecutor, a non-political appointee who will conduct a legitimate criminal investigation rather than a partisan witch-hunt.
I'm looking forward here as well. I'm worried about the precedents we are setting for posterity. If no effort is made to hold the Bush administration accountable for its crimes, we will be subject to more lawless behavior in the future. A blatantly partisan investigation, even if it produced convictions, would only protect future wrongdoing by creating a negative perception of such prosecutions.
To my knowledge, such an effort is unprecedented. I have never read of any attempt by one administration to investigate crimes committed by an earlier administration. There have been contemporary investigations and impeachments by Congress, but I am fairly sure no president has ever done what I'm calling for here. I think it is incumbent upon us at this point to call for investigations because the level of criminal behavior under the Bush administration has been unprecedented. We need to show that we have a low tolerance for criminal behavior, preferably a lower tolerance than Americans in years past. We only get one chance to do this right, and we owe it to future Americans to try our hardest. That would be change we can believe in; anything less would be a betrayal of the spirit of Obama's campaign.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
