NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: President who vowed to end war, now seeks sweeping power to expand it. The reliance on Bush’s 2001 AUMF is delicious.
Archive for 2014
December 10, 2014
TIM CARNEY: Democrats Lost The South Via Culture War And Elitism. Yeah, calling people ignorant, racist, incestuous rednecks doesn’t make them want to vote for you. Go figure.
THIS CALLS HIS JUDGMENT INTO QUESTION ALREADY: Martin O’Malley: The Man Who Would Be Vice President.
TRYING TO CRUSH THE TEA PARTY: DoJ Implicated In IRS Scandal; Met with Lerner months before 2010 elections.
SHOCKER: Revolving door lets USAID officials get jobs with major N.C. contractor.
A North Carolina nonprofit awarded billions of tax dollars over the years by the U.S. Agency for International Development keeps a revolving door swinging for former government officials while spending heavily to lobby Congress to keep the federal money pouring into its corporate treasury.
RTI International’s development work has been criticized in a litany of inspector general reports over the past decade, but the Raleigh-based organization continues getting high-profile USAID contracts and hiring former top officials from USAID.
Nearly $208 million was awarded to RTI by USAID just in 2012, so it’s no surprise that federal funding has accounted for more than three quarters of the nonprofit’s revenue between 2009 and 2011, according to financial disclosure documents.
The nonprofit spent $377,825 on lobbying in 2012, according to its tax filings, relying heavily on Cornerstone Government Affairs for lobbying services in Washington. RTI paid Cornerstone $240,000 in 2012, putting the nonprofit among Fortune 500 firms that are also Cornerstone clients, including Microsoft, Boeing and GlaxoSmithKline.
. . .Despite the nonprofit’s near-complete failure to comply with contract regulations requiring officials to turn over regular progress and expenditure reports, USAID handed RTI three consecutive contracts between 2003 and 2011, totaling more than $400 million dollars.
“There’s obviously a lack of oversight in administration of the funds USAID is awarding,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Examiner.
That may be a result of the fact that former USAID officials populate the ranks of RTI, with some running programs for the nonprofit that they oversaw at the agency. The issue raises questions about the agency’s impartiality when it comes to procurement.
Yet another argument for my revolving-door surtax!
THAT WOULD BE NICE: Bank of America sees $50 oil as Opec dies. Thanks, frackers!
Related: Iran: Fall in oil prices is ‘treachery.’
Last year when I was in NYC, I had dinner with a former student whose husband is heavily involved in fracking. “You’re saving western civilization,” I told him, and I meant it.
CLAIRE MCCASKILL AND KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND getting some flak for their stands on campus sexual assault. Has Gillibrand said anything about the Erdely fiasco, given that she used it to justify her bill, and that she’s relied on Erdely’s military-rape story — now presumably also suspect — to support her initiative on military rape?
STONE OF SISYPHUS: Dems push to revive failed gun control legislation. It’s been no Saturday in the park, but the gun-rights movement is feeling stronger every day.
KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS! Illinois General Assembly Wants To Revive Ban On Recording Police. “The bill not only passed, but did so overwhelmingly with votes of 106-7 in the House on and 46-4-1 in the Senate.”
It’s unconstitutional of course. Not only on First Amendment grounds, but also because you have a due process right to record the police.
RICK WILSON: Fault Lines. “These fault lines aren’t about the usual left-right or elite-populist divides. They’re not solely about race or gender. They’re more fundamental — and more dangerous to the nation.”
THE REAL REASON IS THAT IT WOULD HURT ENROLLMENT, AND THEY’VE GOT ENOUGH TROUBLE WITH THAT ALREADY: Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Binge Drinking. “Drinking is so central to students’ expectations of college that they will fight for what they see as a basic right.”
When you try to distract people from the poor economic return on your product by selling “the college experience,” well . . . for a lot of people, the “college experience” involves a lot of heavy drinking.
SAM BOWMAN: The Innocence Principle.
JONAH GOLDBERG: USING ALLEGATIONS OF RAPE IN A GRAB FOR POWER:
Nine males were accused of being part of a heinous rape. The alleged injustice fomented a mob mentality. An enraged community wanted to skip any talk of a serious investigation, never mind a trial, and go straight to the punishment.
I’m not talking about the now-discredited allegations against fraternity members at the University of Virginia, but of the legendary case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. Despite testimony from one of the women that she had made up the whole thing, the Scottsboro Boys were convicted in trial after trial. All served time either in jail or prison.
Scottsboro is a landmark case in the history of the civil rights movement and the American justice system. Sadly, it was hardly an outlier. There’s a long, tragic history of African American men being wrongly accused and convicted of rape. The most notorious recent example is the 1989 case of the Central Park Five in which four African American teens and one Latino were wrongly accused and convicted of brutally raping a white woman in New York.
Clearly, the injustices involved in these cases are far greater than what transpired at UVA. No one at the Psi Kappa Phi fraternity faced the death penalty or went to jail. But the lessons learned and principles involved are timeless and universal; everyone deserves the presumption of innocence.
Apparently, Zerlina Maxwell disagrees. She writes in the Washington Post: “We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.”
The Scottsboro Boys case has gone from cautionary tale, to model.
December 9, 2014
DAVID FRENCH: Modern Feminism: Appalling Stupidity Backed by Hysterical Rage. “Modern feminism is getting embarrassing. There’s a reason why so few women identify as feminists: It’s less a true ‘women’s movement’ than the public face of hysterical leftist intolerance — combined, of course, with utterly bizarre (and bizarrely stupid) ideas.”
Yes, I think a lot of people have given them a pass on the presumption that they at least mean well. They don’t.
EUGENE VOLOKH: A TIME.com article discusses the Breitbart investigation of Lena Dunham — and seems to miss the basics of how factual claims are investigated. Yeah, they don’t care about that. They just don’t want people challenging the narrative of a Designated Voice Of Her Generation.
More from Eugene:
It thus seems that the TIME.com account isn’t quite fair to Nolte and Breitbart.com here. But my concern is much broader than that: The dig at Breitbart seems to me to reflect a dangerous attitude towards journalism. The implication, as I read the first quoted paragraph, is that an investigation of a story is hopeless — and thus pointless and even suspicious — as long as all one can prove is that some parts of the story are false. So long as Dunham might have been sexually assaulted (and she certainly might have been), something that of course can’t be proved or disproved at this point absent someone’s confession, what’s the point of checking into whether particular factual allegations are accurate? Details, details.
But it seems to me that a basic tenet of journalism is that details matter. First, they matter to people’s reputations. Maybe the fact that Dunham’s alleged rapist wasn’t named “Barry” is irrelevant to those who care about “sexual assault on college campuses.” But they matter to a particular man named Barry, whose reputation was jeopardized by Dunham’s labeling the alleged rapist Barry without stating that this was just a pseudonym. Likewise, while there’s no legal cause of action for libeling a political group, if it turns out that Dunham’s alleged rapist also wasn’t a campus conservative — the Breitbart story casts some doubt on that detail, though it doesn’t conclusively disprove it — then this little detail isn’t really fair, either.
Second, the inaccuracy of some details that a person gives does cast doubt on the accuracy of other details.
Yes, but they lie a lot, so they don’t really want people looking into things too closely. That’s basically all it’s about.
UPDATE: I’m watching Tamara Holder on Fox calling Nolte “creepy” and charging him with “destroying women” for investigating this and yammering on about how 60% of rapes go unreported, while igoring that a real person has been libeled. It’s a really embarrassing performance.
WITH THEIR NO-SEX-AFTER-ALCOHOL RULES, UNIVERSITIES ARE OPPRESSING A SEXUAL MINORITY. No, really. Many women enjoy sex more after drinking.
Millions of women drink alcohol before having sex. Some women never had sexual intercourse sober, and about 14 per cent refuse to get into bed with their partner without being high on alcohol. Why is this?
Trying to establish the link between alcohol drinking and sexual habits, British researchers surveyed about 3000 women. They found that 75 per cent of women preferred to drink one or two glasses of wine before getting into bed with their husband or boyfriend. 6 per cent never had sex sober. Women explained that alcohol helped them shake off their complexes and feel more uninhibited.
So here we have a sexual practice enjoyed by many, and practiced exclusively by a significant number — 14% is huge compared to the 2-3% who are gay, or the even smaller percentage who are transsexual, both sexual minorities whose practices are now legally and socially protected — being shut down by universities essentially out of prudery. These women — Dionysexuals, let’s call them — are told they’re too weak to make decisions for themselves, and must avoid their preferred sexual practice “for their own good.”
I’m not a Dionysexual myself, but I’m proud to be an “Ally.” Stephen Green, call your office!
AMAZON THREATENS U.S. GOVERNMENT over drone testing. “Amazon has warned America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that it will move its drone research programme outside the US if the company is stopped from testing its unmanned aircraft. The e-commerce giant is currently trying out its dones in the UK, and recently placed job adverts for pilots, as the company steps up plans to deliver products using aerial machines.” You know, “threatens” seems a bit strong, since the threat is just to move research abroad.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Large, Open Protein Cages Designed And Built.