Obsidian Wings

Jimmy Nada Is A Dead Man

by von

MICKEY KAUS, taking an unexpected turn:

Bush's Domestic Iraq, cont.: In today's WSJ, Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman defend the Senate immigration bill [$] in part on the grounds that it will enable Republicans to capture the Latino vote. This is largely a fantasy, as Heather Mac Donald argues. Anyway, if the GOP has to move left in Western states to compete accommodate a Dem-tending Latino vote (as it almost certainly will, whatever happens) is that such a bad thing? If you move the GOP left you might get a more appealing GOP--the GOP of Gov. Schwarzenegger, for example. ...

P.S.: There's something obnoxiously managerial and thuggish in declaring, as Bush and Mehlman do, that

"Doing nothing is not an option."

Yes it is. It usually is. The whole structure of our Constitution--which makes it very difficult to pass new laws--is based on the premise that doing nothing is not only an option but often the best option. ...

Yet, most brazen and effective form of amnesty is the status quo.  No one is being deported; laws aren't being enforced; and the border wall is little more than a bad joke, which everyone loves to talk about but no one will pay for.

The whole point of comprehensive reform is to replace the current lawlessness -- anarchy in some places -- with laws that can be enforced:  laws that reflect economic reality and our common humanity.  Indeed, enforcement isn't really a priority for most enforcement-first folks, who confuse tough talk with tough action.  They want laws, but don't explain how the laws will pass Congress -- or work in the real world.  If you doubt this, ask them where they will get the votes to pass their bill du jour or appropriate the money to make their tough talk more than hot air.  Ask them too how they think the mass deportations will go.

But maybe this explains Kaus' grudging acceptance of the current failed system. If you can't have the laws that you'll ignore tomorrow, why not settle for the laws that you ignore today?

(In fairness to Kaus, he's suggesting that Weisberg's view of incremental reform may be a better model than the current morass of competing laws.  If we're being fair, one might concede that he has a point.  But why be fair?)

Junk Science: DDT

by hilzoy

Yesterday, John Quiggin had a post on Crooked Timber that was very interesting. It concerns an idea I had been rather vaguely aware of, but hadn't really focussed in on: that Rachel Carson and the environmentalist movement were responsible for the deaths of thousands, maybe millions, even "tens of millions" from malaria. This is completely untrue (I'll say why below the fold), not that that has stopped people from saying that it is in places like the WSJ, the National Review Online, and even the US Senate.

As Quiggin notes, there's a mystery about this, namely: where did it come from? It has all the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign -- editorials placed in prominent newspapers, all citing the same dubious examples, for instance, and its very own website -- but it's not clear why anyone would undertake such a campaign.

"One of the great puzzles of the DDT myth has been that it appeared to arise from pure ideological animus against Carson and the environmental movement – DDT is not patented so there were no profits to be obtained from pushing it."

So what's up?

Well: I had started to try to piece the story together when I discovered that Tim Lambert had done it for me. So I'll just quote him (though you should read the whole thing):

"So how did the "Rachel killed millions" claim get from lunatic fringe to mainstream?

Well, in 1998, the new Director-General of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland established the Tobacco Free Initiative to reduce death and disease caused by tobacco use. Since it would also reduce tobacco company profits, they used one of their favourite tactics: When an agency plans to take actions against smoking, tobacco companies pay third parties to attack the agency for addressing tobacco instead of some other issue. For example, when the FDA proposed to regulate nicotine, Philip Morris organized and paid for an expensive anti-FDA campaign of radio, television and print ads from think tanks such as the CEI.

So Philip Morris hired Roger Bate to set up a new astroturf group Africa Fighting Malaria and criticize the WHO for not doing enough to fight malaria. The key elements of AFM's strategy:

"Simplify our arguments. Pick issues on which we can divide our opponents and win. Make our case on our terms, not on the terms of our opponents - malaria prevention is a good example. ... this will create tensions between LDCs and OECD countries and between public health and environment."

The simple argument they used to drive a wedge between public health and environment was that we had to choose between birds and people. That by banning DDT to protect birds, environmentalists caused many people to die from malaria."

So, in a nutshell: the WHO was about to undertake an initiative that would have harmed the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies, in turn, hired shills to attack the WHO. They presumably hired some to attack the WHO's tobacco initiative, but they also hired people to attack other things the WHO was doing in order to discredit it more generally. Thus, the attack on Rachel Carson.

***

Malaria prevention is incredibly important. For that matter, so is the WHO and its anti-tobacco initiative. This story shows the tobacco industry funding people to spread misinformation, not because they themselves have any interest in malaria and DDT, but just to sow confusion and skepticism about the WHO at a time when it was a threat to their interests.

This is a story of intellectual corruption. And it has real public costs. People need to be able to trust experts: the alternative is everyone having to develop his or her own expertise in everything. When people who should know better allow themselves to be paid to shill for industry, they undermine that trust. And that makes us all worse off.

What's worse than shutting down a TV network?

by Charles

Threatening another TV network that dares to confront a socialist dictator, which is exactly what Hugo Chavez has done.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called opposition news channel Globovision an enemy of the state and said he would do what was needed to stop it from inciting violence, only days after he shut another opposition broadcaster.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in Caracas in a fourth consecutive day of protests over Chavez's closure of the RCTV network - a move which has sparked international criticism that the leftist leader's reforms are undermining democracy.

State television showed hundreds of government supporters marching in downtown Caracas celebrating Chavez's decision.

"Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovision. Greetings gentlemen of Globovision, you should watch where you are going," Chavez said in a broadcast all channels had to show.

"I recommend you take a tranquilizer and get into gear, because if not, I am going to do what is necessary."

More below the fold.

You Won't Believe This

by hilzoy

UPDATE: I have substantially retracted this post here. END UPDATE

Just when I think I've heard it all, this administration manages to surprise me again. From the AP (h/t Rick Perlstein):

"The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. (...) The ruling was scheduled to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal, effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge has played out."

There is an actual reason for doing something like this, in some cases. False positives can have very real costs, and if they are likely enough, and what you're testing for is rare enough, the predictable costs of testing can outweigh the benefits. The likelihood of a false positive depends on the number of tests done; the likelihood of a real positive depends on the prevalence of what you're testing for, so when what you're testing for is very rare, testing can do more harm than good. This is one reason why tests for some diseases are recommended only for people over a certain age: it's only in people over that age that the disease is prevalent enough that testing for it isn't counterproductive.

However, in order to make this sort of argument, you really need to know the prevalence of the disease you're testing for. I don't know of any reason to think that we know enough about the prevalence of mad cow in American herds to make this kind of argument rigorously. Moreover, since the costs of false positives are financial, while the cost of not catching mad cow disease is that people will get an incurable disease in which their brains are slowly eaten away until they die, I'd think that it would be best to err on the side of testing.

Moreover, I fail to see what the government is doing in this case to start with. Rick Perlstein (note: Perlstein uses 'E. coli conservative' to refer to conservatives whose commitment to small government extends to things like food safety):

"First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they're even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to - voluntarily! - hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease."

As I said above, I can see a theoretical case against widespread testing for some things, if they're rare enough and the costs of missing cases of those things are low. But the way to do that, I would have thought, is not for the government to ban testing; it's for firms to get together and adopt some sort of common policy. It is not the government's job to protect companies' profits, especially not by preventing them from testing for a fatal, incurable neurodegenerative disease.

Sheesh.

Summa-Assuma

by von

I'VE DISSENTED FROM Hilzoy's post (and the Newsweek colum) declaring that Plame has been found to be a "covert agent" under the law:  Perhaps she was, but a Court gets to decide that -- not the executive branch (here represented by Patrick Fitzgerald and the General Counsel of the CIA).  Moreover, we haven't yet seen the defense filing.

But this debate over whether Plame meets the peculiar definition of "covert agent" within 50 USC 426(4) is well beside the point.  Plame could be perfectly covert in the ordinary sense of the term, and therefore valuable to the US, without meeting Section 426(4)'s standard.  Indeed, the evidence thus far suggests that she was covert under the dictionary definition -- even if some knew about her status as a CIA agent, it certainly was "secret or hidden; not openly practiced".  It's also clear that outing Plame was not helpful from a national security standpoint regardless of whether the law was violated -- although how "not helpful" it was will remain, quite properly, classified.

So it takes a special kind of blindness to take the absence of evidence on this matter as evidence of absence, as displayed by Glenn Reynolds' insta-comment:  "I'd just like to see this kind of outrage generated on behalf of leaks that actually hurt the war effort."*

In fact, we'll never know what, where, or how it hurt.  Just as we don't know whether revelations regarding enhanced interrogation techniques, Abu Ghraib, the NSA eavesdropping program, and the rest ultimately help or hurt the war effort.  Indeed, a needless and ineffective policy aggressively pursued is a outrageous waste, and policies that strike close to our national values demeans what we are fighting for.  (See Hilzoy's post here, for instance, which I endorse.)  Better for the press to play the bad music so the tune can be changed; sometimes at least. 

*Again, less "insta" and more "reflecta" please.

UPDATE:  In which our readership loses it.  Here is Gary Farber's comment, which is picked up by others:

Von, unless you can quote the words Hilzoy used with which she allegedly "declar[ed]" that Plame has been "found to be a 'covert agent' under the law," you might want to consider how well you can support that claim, and whether you might wish to consider stepping back from it.

This is absolute nonsense. The premise for Hilzoy's post was a filing by Patrick Fitzerald that Plame met the legal definition of being a covert agent. To see this, all you must do is: 

Read her first sentence.

-And-

Click through the supporting link. 

What is the support for her assertion that "Well, Knock Me Over With A Feather!  Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent all along"?  A legal filing by Patrick Fitzgerald asserting that Ms. Plame met the legal definition of "covert agent" provided in the relevant statute.  So, I will thank Mr. Farber for his concern but respectfully decline his invitation to go down the path of primrose stupidity.

Now.  If you actually read Hilzoy's piece, you see in that in the second paragraph she states that the law doesn't necessarily matter here.  (A thought that would be quite out of place, of course, if her first paragraph hadn't been about the law.)  I directly echo that sentiment -- Hilzoy's sentiment -- in my post above.

That is, Hilzoy and I are in nearly complete agreement regarding Plame.  I dissent only from her assertion -- and, yes, it was her assertion, by both direct statement and adoption -- that Plame met the definition of covert agent under the law.  I make a point of my dissent because I sense a double standard being applied by lefty bloggers:  An allegation by a member of the executive branch (Fitzgerald) is accepted uncritically as fact because it serves a particular political agenda. 

It shouldn't be so.  Or the system will, inevitably, break down.  See, e.g., Duke, Group of 88.

By the way, I'm certain that it's not intentional on Hilzoy's part, but that doesn't make it any less worthy of pointing out.

UPDATE 2: Incidentally, the folks who will most benefit from such healthy skepticism will not ordinarily be crusty old (or privileged young) white dudes, but folks who are decidedly less advantaged.  But if you apply your skepticism selectively, you cede the moral high ground.

Well, Knock Me Over With A Feather!

by hilzoy

Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent all along:

"An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003. (...)

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.""

Personally, I never thought that whether Valerie Plame was covert on the day she was outed was really the point, outside of a court of law. She had been a covert agent in the past, and was entitled to assume that the government in whose service she had put herself at risk would not repay her by revealing her identity, especially not to score some cheap political point. Moreover, outing her exposed her, anyone she had had contact with, and any assets or organizations that had been used in creating her cover. It also gave other covert agents, and people they were trying to recruit, grounds to wonder whether our own government would decide to blow their covers if it thought there was something to be gained politically. Outing her was both wrong and profoundly stupid, whether she met the definition of 'covert' under the IIPA.

For some reason, though, other people seemed to think it did matter outside the courts, and went on and on about how if Plame was not actually undercover deep in the wilds of Tajikistan at the very moment she was outed, everything was somehow fine and dandy. Whatever.

The reactions on the right have been interesting. Ed Morrissey, to his credit, accepts that Plame was covert, but claims this just shows how incompetent the CIA was. As far as I can tell, PowerLine, the frontpagers at RedState, Malkin, and Hewitt have yet to mention it. Tom Maguire says this:

"Newsweek has an interesting view of the law, and the usual suspects amongst the lefty bloggers are falling in line behind it - when a prosecutor expresses an opinion in a sentencing memorandum, that is dispositive - case closed, no further questions, move on. (...)

Fitzgerald has "finally resolved" the question simply by stating his opinion! No defense brief has been filed, no judge has ruled, but Fitzgerald has spoken so it is time to move on. (...)

So, is Ms. Plame covert? We now have the belated and uncontested opinion of a prosecutor who was unwilling to argue this point previously to add to the stack of unpersuasive opinions. My official editorial position remains unchanged - we don't know, the legal work to be establish this has not been done, and we are not likely to find out."

I don't know why he says this, since Newsweek and Fitzgerald cite the declassified CIA summary (pdf) of Plame's employment status. It's not just Fitzgerald's opinion.

And then there are the true believers., like Macsmind (spelling mistakes in original):

"What you see her is a complete broadside fabrication from the rogues and nothing more. It might fool the fools of the MSM, but for those who were there and known, it’s crap pure and simple. Fitzgerald is showing more and more the partisen that he is, a poltical hack of the first order. Fact is that if this document had any authenticity to it Fitzgerald could have charged Libby under IIPA. It didn’t and he knew it."

Right.

The only reason I mention this entirely unsurprising development is to note two points. First, publius and I have recently been asked why we regard Fox News as biassed. In my case, the answer was: I click it on every now and again, and almost every time I hear something presented as fact that either isn't so, or isn't clear at all, or lacks some relevant context that would affect what people made of it. Somehow, though, the idea of slogging through a lot of Fox transcripts to try to make this case didn't really seem all that appealing, so I let it drop. Now, however, Glenn Greenwald, who is plainly made of stronger stuff, has slogged through Fox's discussions of Plame. His conclusion:

"If Fox were your principal source of news, you would believe that the proposition that Valerie Plame was not considered "covert" by the CIA was a fact so established that nobody really questioned it (...)

Imagine having risked your life to go undercover for your country as a CIA operative and then having to listen to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes and company belittle your work by falsely insulting you as a "desk jockey" and acting as though you were nothing but a worthless file clerk, all in order to protect the Leader and assure his followers that they did nothing wrong. "

Second, Christy at FDL notes how often Victoria Toensing et al appeared on various news shows, in print, and before Congress asserting that Plame was not covert. (Sample, from Toensing's op ed in the WaPo: "On Dec. 30, 2003, the day Fitzgerald was appointed special counsel, he should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert, knowledge that should have stopped the investigation right there.") Christy asks:

"And so today, I'm calling for more honest bobbleheads. I don't think it is too much to ask that if people are going to sling information around like it is so much hash, that at the least they have some rudimentary knowledge of the veracity of its component ingredients. Otherwise, they could just be serving the general public a dish of crap, couldn't they? And, frankly, bobbleheads ought to be held to account as to whether or not the acid that comes dripping so blithely off their overly-whitened fangs is true or false."

She's right. People who get up on TV and say things that just aren't so should forfeit their credibility. TV stations, newspapers, and other media outlets should refuse to use them: the media's job, after all, is to present the facts, not to present the spin offered by all sides regardless of its veracity. If someone can be shown to have said things that were just not so, and that she ought to have known were at least open to question, she can no longer be trusted to convey facts accurately, and the media should have done with her. And we should notice which media outlets do this, since any that continue to invite someone like Victoria Toensing to comment on current events are by that fact showing us that they are not interested in whether or not the people they give a platform to are telling the truth.

Torture

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices. (...)

But in meetings with intelligence officials and in a 325-page initial report completed in December, the researchers have pressed a more practical critique: there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence."

One of the things that has always perplexed me about the debate about torture is this: I would have thought that anyone who was thinking about endorsing torture would first stop and think very, very carefully about whether it is actually effective. Torture is presumptively immoral and abhorrent. If you care about morality at all, the question of using torture will not so much as arise unless you truly have no good alternative at all. Even then, I think it's just wrong. But if it is not the most effective way of getting information, then debating whether or not we should use it is just stupid: of course we shouldn't engage in torture if some other technique is just as good, or better. Arguing about torture without asking this question is like arguing about whether you must, absolutely must, eat your children to keep yourself from starving to death without first checking to see whether you have any other food available.

When I read arguments written by people who support torture, many of them seem to think that being opposed to it just shows that you aren't really serious about the war on terror. If you were, they say, you wouldn't want to fight it with one hand tied behind your back. You'd want to use every means available. This isn't true: you can be completely serious about all kinds of things without being willing to do literally anything to advance them. (Quick: would you be willing to rape children to win the heart of your true love? No? Then I guess you don't really love him or her, do you?? -- That's the same specious argument.) More to the point, though, you can tell who is serious and who is not by noticing who actually stops to think about whether torture is effective. People who don't bother to ask that question are not serious about winning; they're in love with a fantasy of themselves as the person who is tough enough to do all those dirty things that have to be done while other people just wring their hands and whimper.

If you're serious about war, you should ask yourself, at every juncture, what will best achieve your objectives, rather than embracing some sort of Rambo fantasy. That would require asking very serious questions about the effectiveness of torture, and also about the effect it is likely to have on our long-term objectives, and the possibility that by forfeiting our moral authority, we lose much more in the long term than we could gain even if torture did work. If you're serious about loving your country, you should never be willing to degrade it, or to embrace in its name the kinds of techniques that made us rightly despise Stalin. And if you're serious about morality, you should know that there are lines you cross only at the risk of losing your soul. It's bad enough to lose your soul because you had to choose between two great evils, and you chose wrong. But there's no excuse for letting your soul slip through your fingers because you're too busy striking a stern and heroic attitude to notice.

Memorial Day, Again

by hilzoy

One of the things about being profoundly out of sympathy with our present administration is that it has made me much more vividly aware than I ever was before of how extraordinary civilian control of the military is. Think about it: so many people are willing to risk their lives for their country without requiring, in return, any control over when they will be asked to risk their lives, and why. If we were governed by people of immense wisdom and judiciousness, or for that matter by people who were just basically decent and thoughtful, this might be less striking. But to be willing to risk your life whoever governs you -- that's an act of staggering generosity, which, as far as I'm concerned, we can never repay.

The closest we can come, I think, is to try to be the best citizens we can possibly be. For starters, we need not just to try our best to vote for people we think will not abuse the generosity of the people who serve in our armed forces, but to try to do whatever we can to ensure that the people we encounter do as well. (I don't mean trying to convince everyone that my views are right; I mean trying to help other people inform themselves and think their way to their own views.) And we need to never, never let debate over the possibility of going to war be shut down again, as it was before the war in Iraq. It is much too important to get it right.

We also need to make sure that our elected officials give the men and women in our armed forces the more specific things that, as far as I'm concerned, we owe them. That any soldier, sailor, airman, marine, or veteran does not get adequate health care, for instance, should shame us. To the extent that our government tries to nickel-and-dime them, questioning whether what looks like PTSD might be some preexisting psychological condition, or whether some cognitive problem is really the result of the head injury a soldier got when his vehicle was blown up by an IED, is a disgrace. As is this:

"PAUL SOLMAN: But for the one million or so American families who are fighting the war, there's often no sidestepping, like Army Reservist Brad Heun, maimed in Iraq in 2003, vertebrae crushed in a truck accident. Heun has fused discs, a steel bar in his back, and constant, excruciating pain in hip and leg.

FORMER SGT. BRAD HEUN, U.S. Army: Literally, it feels like somebody just took a baseball bat and blindsided you across your back.

PAUL SOLMAN: How bad has it been at its worst?

SGT. BRAD HEUN: At its worst, I have been on an emergency room gurney, curled up, and not even be able to concentrate on simple questions.

PAUL SOLMAN: The Veterans Administration has declared Heun 100 percent disabled.

SGT. BRAD HEUN: Basically, I'm going to get worse. It's a matter of time.

PAUL SOLMAN: You're going to get worse?

SGT. BRAD HEUN: Yes, sir. They told me, if I ain't careful, I might end up in a wheelchair.

PAUL SOLMAN: The Army, however, discharged him with only a 20 percent disability. Anything under 30 percent means no benefits.

Wait a second. You don't have health insurance from the Army?

SGT. BRAD HEUN: No, sir.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, Heun gets his own medical care from the VA, plus $2,500 a month to support his family of five, but no health insurance at all for them.

SGT. BRAD HEUN: So I'm trying to pay for a COBRA policy to try to keep my kids with insurance.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, that must be what, $800 a month?

SGT. BRAD HEUN: We couldn't afford that, sir. We got -- our policy is $400 a month, and it's got extremely high deductibles.

BEVERLY HEUN, Wife of Injured Veteran: At $1,500.

SGT. BRAD HEUN: Per person.

BEVERLY HEUN: Per person.

PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile, Beverly Heun has had back surgery of her own, from a car accident. And their 2-year-old daughter needs surgery, but they've had to put it off.

BEVERLY HEUN: We don't want to do it at the expense of her not having a home to live in. I think it's a disgrace to this country for me to even be sitting her trying to tell you this.

PAUL SOLMAN: Heun is appealing, but...

SGT. BRAD HEUN: Well, that's another lawyer's fee. And so that's just -- you know, why is a soldier having to pay for all these lawyers to do these appeals?"

Why indeed. We need to elect people who are committed to making sure that this just does not happen. We are a better country than this.

In the meantime, any day is a good day to donate to the Wounded Warrior Project. They also have an advocacy email list that sends out alerts on topics related to the care of wounded veterans. I only just discovered the list; if anyone knows of similar lists that can keep us informed of veterans' issues, or good charities, feel free to post them in comments.

We owe them.

A Quick Programming Note

by publius

I try to avoid blogging about my own personal biz, but I thought it would be appropriate to do so now in light of conflicts of interests, etc. But I will keep it short. I've hinted around, but in exactly 72 hours, I will no longer be employed by a DC law firm and will instead be teaching. I've been in and out of DC for a month, but have continued working up through this week. That's why my blogging has been so erratic. And I won't be settled in my new location until later this week, so it will continue to be erratic for another week or so.

Anyway, the point is that I can now blog freely about telecom/FCC issues (which will be my academic focus) without worrying about conflicts of interest -- so consider this my blanket disclaimer. I worked for clients that were pro-net neutrality and have been working on the upcoming spectrum auction (on the side of the angels and not the big dogs). I expect to blog a lot more about both in the future.

I also toyed around with "coming out," but I'm not sure whether I will in light of tenure, etc. Any thoughts from tenured or non-tenured people would be appreciated (you can email me at [email protected]). That's it.

Hilzoy - time to post. Stop slacking. I'm really tired of having to write all the posts around here.

This Week In WTF?

by hilzoy

For some reason, I've seen a lot of stories recently that I found just plain bizarre, mostly not in a good way. So I thought I'd round them up. First (h/t TalkLeft): I am against the death penalty myself, partly on principle, and partly because I think we cannot go on executing people until we manage to do a better job of not convicting the innocent. But if we have to do it, can we at least manage to be competent and humane about it?

"Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.

The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.

He died at 11:53 a.m., nearly two hours after the scheduled start of his execution at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The process typically takes about 20 minutes. (...)

It took so long that the staff paused to allow Newton a bathroom break."

Second:

"The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists. (...)

Howard Bayliss, chairman of the gay and lesbian advocacy group Equality Alabama, said he doesn't understand why gay rights advocates would be on the list.

"Our group has only had peaceful demonstrations. I'm deeply concerned we've been profiled in this discriminatory matter," Bayliss said.

The site included the groups under a description of what it called "single-issue" terrorists. That group includes people who feel they are trying to create a better world, the Web site said. It said that in some communities, law enforcement officers consider certain single issue groups to be a threat.

"Single-issue extremists often focus on issues that are important to all of us. However, they have no problem crossing the line between legal protest and ... illegal acts, to include even murder, to succeed in their goals," it read."

Dear Alabama Department of Homeland Security: I have been known, on occasion, to do things in the hope that they will make the world a better place in some small way. Sometimes, for instance, I pick up trash in parks, or try to register people to vote. Please do not interpret these actions as evidence that I have no problem crossing the line between legal and illegal acts, or that I would resort to murder. Sincerely,

hilzoy

ps: I wouldn't kill people even if I had teh gay.

Third, the reductio ad absurdum of the war on drugs:

"While going through his mail, Kelly Anderson of Salt Lake City recently discovered the personalized license plate on his 1978 Jeep for seven years was being recalled by the state Division of Motor Vehicles.

Why? The license plate bears just one letter: "X." The DMV says that violates a state rule against plates "with combinations of letters associated with illicit drugs." Tax Commission spokesman Charlie Roberts says the license was revoked because the letter X is commonly used as a street name for the illegal drug ecstasy.

But Anderson says he is appealing the revocation because someone has to stand up for the rights of the letter "X" as a reputable member of the alphabet community.

"If indeed the single letter 'X' is hopelessly intertwined and bound together with drug use," Anderson wrote, "I would ask the rhetorical question, why does the state of Utah continue to subject innocent children throughout our public school system to that evil letter [when teaching the alphabet]?""

Fourth: I really, really hope this isn't true:

"Prosecutors in Nassau County are on a fact finding mission -- this after several air traffic controllers from TRACON say they were forced to work despite being overcome by dangerous carbon monoxide fumes.

They claim the fumes not only put their lives at risk, but also the lives of thousands of airline passengers. (...)

Ray Maldonado was one of half-a-dozen controllers who became physically ill after a test of the facility's backup generator sent exhaust fumes into the ventilation system.

"I remember being just extremely fatigues ... very tired ... very sleepy and it took a lot to stay awake," Maldonado said.

Yet as Eyewitness News first reported last week, they were forced to continue directing planes for up to four hours after TRACON managers refused to call 911 and threatened to bar fire responders from entering the facility if anyone else called."

Fifth, via Effect Measure: Good news! Coca-Cola has settled a lawsuit concerning the presence of benzene in its products, and has reformulated the drinks in question. (Benzene is a carcinogen; there are limits to how much of it can be in tap water, but none on how much of it can be in drinks.) Bad news: there are a lot of other sodas and drinks that contain alarming levels of benzene. 'Alarming' means: up to 138 ppb, when the maximum allowed in tap water is 5 ppb. That's a lot of benzene. Worse news: "Three of the remaining defendants make drinks marketed directly to children -- Sunny Delight, Shasta and Rockstar Energy Drinks."

Benzene exists in drinks and sodas because two common ingredients -- ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and sodium or potassium benzoate -- can react to form it. They are more likely to do so when exposed to light or heat; as a result, benzene levels in drinks of the same brand can vary widely, depending on the conditions in which they were stored. The FDA found out about this in 1990, but decided, for reasons best known to itself, to let soft drink companies deal with the problem voluntarily. Moreover, the FDA "has set no maximum limit for benzene in soft drinks and only re-opened its investigation of the issue after a concerned industry whistleblower had paid for independent testing." That's why there's still benzene in our sodas.

Here's a quote from Beverage Daily, a periodical I didn't know existed until about a week ago:

""What are we to tell consumers? 'Product contains cancer-causing substance, drink immediately, do not store in a warm environment or near sunlight?' Preferably benzoate should not be used in combination with vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or added juice," said the scientist involved in industry testing for benzene 15 years ago."

Revere at Effect Measure adds: "If I had to choose between melamine and benzene, I think I'd take melamine."

Finally, speaking of melamine:

"Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry."

Unsurprisingly, this administration does not have a stellar record on food safety. Food safety was recently added to the GAO's list of high-risk areas of federal government activities, and wrote: "The current fragmented federal system has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources. GAO has recommended that Congress consider a fundamental re-examination of the system and other improvements to help ensure the rapid detection of and response to any accidental or deliberate contamination of food before public health and safety is compromised."

Let's hope it doesn't take a genuine catastrophe to get this administration to deal with this problem, the way it did with FEMA.