Excellent Article on VP Cheney

'A Different Understanding With The President'

Firstborns Get Dibs on Everything -- Even IQs

Research Finds Firstborns Gain the Higher I.Q. (NY Times)

Oh, the things I love about this article:

4. The way the article seems tailor-made to depress everyone who's not the eldest of their sibs. Can't you just hear a younger sib, now? F--- me, even my damn IQ is a hand-me-down!.
3. The "golly, we bet the results are the same for women, even though we only analyzed male subjects."
2. That adult attention as an infant is theorized as a factor, yet that doesn't explain men who become the eldest sib, and apparently smarter, to boot. Instead -- and this is my out-of-thin-air theory, thanks -- maybe being pushed to do, to sink or swim, in a pressure cooker that younger sibs don't get to the same degree, has a significant effect on IQ. Push comes to shove, you find yourself developing all sorts of necessary skills.
1. The fact that we measure intelligence w/such rough devices to begin with. I mean, honestly, how many kids' answers change to these dippy IQ questions, that have nothing to do with how smart they might actually be? (Something to bear in mind when asking yourself if these results really would be the same for men and women, given the patriarchy.) Look at the whole section in there on once-a-decade advancements v. genuinely revolutionary ideas:

Charles Darwin, author of the revolutionary “Origin of Species,” was the fifth of six children. Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish-born astronomer who determined that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the planetary system, grew up the youngest of four. The mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, the youngest of three, was a key figure in the scientific revolution that began in the 16th century.

Firstborns have won more Nobel Prizes in science than younger siblings, but often by advancing current understanding, rather than overturning it.

“It’s the difference between every-year or every-decade creativity and every-century creativity,” Dr. Sulloway said, “between innovation and radical innovation.”

This is deeply unsettling and disappointing

Scalia asks, ‘Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?’

Remember, in some legal circles, Scalia is considered one of the giants in conservative intellectual thought.

It’s likely that Scalia was using a cultural reference to prove a broader point about torture and the rule of law, but I’m not entirely sure what that point is. It seems to have something to do with Scalia’s apparent belief that those U.S. officials who commit torture deserve legal amnesty, just so long as the ends justify the means.

Just think, having this guy sitting on the Supreme Court was disconcerting before he started using fiction to rationalize torture.

I’ll spare you the tirade on why torture is morally indefensible, and why torture doesn’t provide useful information anyway, and why relying on fictional characters to justify real-life crimes is patently ridiculous, but will instead focus on two points.

First, Bauer-like scenarios don’t happen.

[snip]

Second, Bauer-like scenarios offer the wrong lessons.

Ultimate Flip-Flop

Bishop Romney's Sadistic Anti-Abortion Counseling If you're too busy to read it: eyewitness testimony that Mitt Romney claimed to be pro-choice for political reasons only, when running for office in Mass. He lied, flat out, to get elected.

It's a great article for other reasons:

Suzan Mazur: How do you think Mitt Romney will do ultimately in the presidential race?

[Prof.] Judy Dushku: He’s got so much money. He’s publicly appealing and charming – more charming than McCain. And I think the Republicans will not tolerate a Guliani, so he has a very good chance. It depends on whether the Democrats can get their act together and present someone better.

Suzan Mazur: And he’s a good business man. But don’t you think the business model has gone as far as it can go in presidential politics? Isn’t it time for a switch to leadership that cares about more than business moguls and generals?

Judy Dushku: You’re talking to a Social Democrat who reads Paul Krugman and CounterPunch and thinks that it has all been downhill since the New Deal restraints on business and legal protections of unions and peoples’ rights. As a professor of government for over 40 years, I believe that we’ve never been in such terrible shape since the robber barons. The control of corporate money on America is a disaster and has led to the decline and fall of democracy.

Remember Abu Ghraib

Sy Hersh's story on General Taguba.

This is Appalling

Some group of Christian fundamentalists intend to honor their 'martyr', Paul Hill, by
reenacting his murder of Dr John Britton and James Barrett at an abortion clinic.

They're going to celebrate the murder of two human beings. By reenacting it.

These people are sick.

I'm In The News

2007 Graduate Appointed As Fellow.

C'est moi!

Guiliani: Bush III, Only Worse

Definitely an article to read: Giuliani: Worse Than Bush He's cashing in on 9/11, working with Karl Rove's henchmen and in cahoots with a Swift Boat-style attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani be Bush III? . At RollingStone.com.

Busting the "Pottery Barn Rule" Applied to Iraq

You Did Not Buy It When You Broke It

I did not even realize until now how this you-break-it-you-buy-it "We have to fix Iraq, since we caused so much damage" epitomizes the America-as-world-cop concept.

Yes, we broke Iraq. We invaded a sovereign nation, toppled its government, killed and still are killing its citizens.

I believe it is moral to respond that we must undo the harm we inflicted. Do wrong, try to make it better.

But my reply to that assertion has always been that we can't, in this case. We're simply not equipped. I realized after reading this entry at Big Brass Blog that what I'm really saying is that the conclusion that we must undo the harm we've inflicted is a poisonous one, as it's rooted in the same world-cop, white-man's-burden, what have you, concept that let us think we could blithely invade another country in the first place.

So here is my conclusion: we broke Iraq. That makes us -- America -- the one people who can't fix it. Some other organization or country might be able to, I don't know. But we'll never know, especially if we don't get out.

Greedy Little Shits -- Now Showing

This really pisses me off. The WGA (Writer's Guild of America) is keeping money from members and non-members alike.

Don't call me "bitch"

It's Bitch, Esquire, now. Class of '07.

I've also accepted a fellowship at my alma mater.

Save the American White Male Oppressor Class

Bill O'Reilly Defends the American Christian Patriarchy.

In a discussion of "the immigration problem"[*] with John McCain, who never had my vote for anything and never will,

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

[*] the "immigration problem" most people have is that they've been trained to think that only white people from Europe should have been allowed to come here. America! The Self-Righteous, Racist Nation!

Look at what O'Reilly is saying. First, he says "they" want to break down a white, Christian, male, system that's oppressing everyone who isn't white, Christian, and male. Well, I'm a member of that "they", and you bet your ass that's what I want. And if it makes you nervous because a brown woman from Ethiopia might be representing you in court some day, too damn bad. You can suck it up and deal.

Second, look at his next statement. O'Reilly panders to the fear of the Other, by asserting that "they" want to bring in "millions" of foreigners -- trans., non-white, non-Christian, non-male people -- to destroy the fabric of America.

This is asinine. First off, you don't have to import "millions of foreigners" to break down a social structure and destroy America, these radicals who've taken over the government have been doing it just fine, and they're all white, male, and self-identify as Christian. But that's not my real point. My real point is that O'Reilly is first accusing 'leftists' of wanting to destroy America, which is not true, and in the next breath asserts that they want to do so by sending in lots of people-who-don't-look-like-you-oh-how-scary to live here.

His thesis is that non-white, non-Christian, non-male people coming to America, and striving for the American Dream, is antithetical to the structure of this country, which was founded on that same American Dream. Hard work leading to prosperity isn't the American Dream, apparently, if it's a brown person from another country dreaming it.

These men make me sick.

Way to Go, John Edwards!

Edwards slams war on terrorism as "bumper sticker"

"The war on terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe. It's a bumper sticker, not a plan," Edwards said. "It has damaged our alliances and weakened our standing in the world."

"By framing this as a 'war,' we have walked straight into the trap that the terrorists have set -- that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war against Islam," said the former senator from North Carolina.

Finally, someone who gets it.

On Muslim Religous Language

Really interesting two pieces over at Small Wars Journal on Religion and Insurgency, and More on Religion and Insurgency, particularly the latter.

They're not jihadists, they're irhabis and mifsuduun. Fascinating. We need to stop shying away from the religious and linguistic cues, and begin using them.

Comey Testimony

My god, this is an astounding betrayal.

Mr. Comey's Tale: A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales (WaPo).

Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal, by Glenn Greenwald (Salon).

This is the testimony (summary, PDF transcript, YouTube), which A.G. Gonzales didn't want to have happen (article at Salon), since, among other things, Comey might just tell folks that the President broke the law via warrantless eavesdropping.