I finished reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer last night.  Great combination-- Tillman's story is truly fascinating and Krakauer is a terrific writer (Into Thin Air remains my favorite non-fiction book ever).  I had remembered that Tillman was actually killed by friendly fire and that there was somewhat of a cover-up, but I had no idea of the depth of the bad faith and malfeasance with which the US Army acted to cover this up, rather than ruin the great political story of Tillman going down fighting as a hero.  That's actually only the last 1/3 or so of the book, the major portion of the book is really just the amazing story of Tillman's life until then.  I knew he was an incredible fellow, but had no idea he managed to carry a 3.8 GPA while starring for a major Division I football team.  I also had no idea that he was quite the liberal free-thinker and strongly opposed to the Iraq war.  Krakauer also does a good job giving a sense of the context in Afghanistan without bogging down the narrative.  Still, the extraordinary senselessness of the friendly fire incident that led to Tillman's death and the Army cover-up are the highlight of the book.  Dexter Filkins' somewhat ambivalent review summarizes this wonderfully, so I'll copy:

While most of the facts have been re­ported before, Krakauer performs a valuable service by bringing them all together — particularly those about the cover-up. The details, even five years later, are nauseating to read: After Tillman’s death, Army commanders, aided and abetted by members of the Bush administration, violated many of their own rules, not to mention elementary standards of decency, to turn the killing into a propaganda coup for the American side. Tillman’s clothing and notebooks were burned — a flouting of Army regulations — and he was fast-tracked for a posthumous Silver Star, which, as Krakauer shows, was a fraud. Members of his unit were ordered to stay silent about the manner of his death. Even part of Tillman’s body disappeared. Most important, Army commanders went to great lengths to keep the facts of Tillman’s death a secret and allowed the story that he died at the hands of the Taliban to flourish. The low point came at his memorial service, where he was lionized before television cameras, while officials who knew the truth stayed quiet.

Anyway, wellI worth reading.  And feel free to ask to borrow my copy after I use it for an upcoming book discussion.

I got in a little debate at lunch yesterday about the origins of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Model of a Modern Major General."  I was willing to bet Bill Boettcher $100 that it was from HMS Pinafore, which I recall my dad dragging me to a bunch of times, whereas Bill was quite convinced it was from Pirates of Penzance (which to his discredit, he did not think was G&S).  Fortunately, Bill backed down from the bet in the face of my certainty.  Here's a clip of it from the Pirates of Penzance (notice Kevin Kline)

I was especially abashed as just yesterday I had been having a conversation with David about how I never insist on something unless I am truly certain (after assuring my whole family that surely the bike race coming through Geneva, Switzerland during our 1990 visit could not be the Tour de France, as we were in Switzerland-- little did I know then it regularly ventures outside of France).  So, the amateur cognitive scientist in me was really curious as to how I could have been so wrong.  Anyway, I realized that the G&S song I know so well from HMS Pinafore is "He is an Englishman," but since I think "Modern Major General" has more cultural penetration, when I thought "famous G&S song I know really well," that's what stuck in my brain despite my being 100% wrong that it was from Penzance.  Anyway, I will now redouble my efforts to not speak with certainty unless I truly am certain.  We'll have to see how that works.

When I wrote my angry rant yesterday, I had been hoping that Slate's Dahlia Lithwick would have written something about the case involving prosecutors and absolute immunity.  Now she has.  I'll just give you her takeaway line:

The question for the court today is whether it is ultimately more worried about chilling prosecutors who want to introduce possibly fabricated evidence or giving them good reason—and the absolute freedom—to do so.

Meanwhile, also in Slate, Tim Noah takes up the issue of pro-life House Democrats trying to derail health reform.  I like this part:

Granted, money is fungible. Federal money that a private health insurance plan doesn't spend on abortions frees up nonfederal money that it does. But as Time's Amy Sullivan recently noted, not even Focus on Family meets Stupak's exacting standard. Principal, the health insurer for the Christian-right group's employees, covers abortions. "Even if the specific plan Focus uses for its employees doesn't include abortion coverage—and I'm assuming it doesn't—the organization and its employees still pay premiums to a company that funds abortions," Sullivan wrote. "If health reform proposals have a fungibility problem, then Focus does as well."

Paul Krugman has been making the case (quite effectively, in my opinion) for some time that we need more economic stimulus. In Salon, Robert Reich has a nice column discussing the political imperative of this on the Blue Dogs, who are always whining about budget deficits in totally nonsensical ways (of course, all else being equal you'd prefer a deficit to a surplus, but right now, all else is definitely not equal).  It is their own re-elections most imperiled by a lack of a stimulus.  Only question is if they are smart enough to realize that (I suspect not).  Anyway, Reich nicely lays out the case:

 

Let's be clear about this. The national rate of unemployment will almost surely hit 10 percent; we'll know Friday whether it already has. This is more a psychological and political threshold than an economic one (it doesn't include everyone who's too discouraged to look for work, or working part time who'd rather be working full time, or working fewer hours in an ostensible full-time job, or otherwise fully employed but being paid less; the Bureau of Labor Statistics' payroll survey, also due Friday, provides a more accurate picture). But it nonetheless represents a degree of hardship this country hasn't seen in decades.

Public approval of Obama’s handling of the economy has slipped to 46 percent in an Oct. 30-Nov. 1 CNN poll, from 59 percent in March. Remember, Obama was elected in part because the public didn't have confidence in McCain's ability to manage the economy. In exit polls last November, almost two-thirds of voters listed the economy as the nation's top issue. If the job numbers don't start moving in the right direction, not only will Obama's poll ratings continue to drop but congressional Dems will all be in trouble.

That should be Obama's selling point to the Blue Dogs. He should tell them the economy needs a bigger stimulus in order to show improved job numbers by the mid-term elections. And he should make sure they understand that they're more politically endangered next November if the the job numbers aren't moving in the right direction by then than if they vote for a larger stimulus now.

That's the case.  Let's see if Obama makes it and the Blue Dogs listen.

Apparently one in which government officials can torture totally innocent people with impunity if they think the person might be a terrorist and one in which prosecutors are granted complete immunity to frame someone for murder.  Hyperbole?  Sadly, no-- just today's news.  Truly, truly depressing.  Each of these totally deserves their own post, but I thought I'd combine because it truly says something about the sad state of our democracy.  

First, the torture bit.  The facts, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald:

  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing...

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing...

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense...

So, what did the American 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decide?  Sorry, despite the fact that Canada published two phone books worth of material on this case, Arar could not sue the U.S Government in order to protect "state secrets."  Sorry, it is no secret how craven and dismissive of liberty our government has become.  Like the constitutional scholar he is, Greenwald sums it up brilliantly:

In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.  (emphasis mine)

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

If you are not disgusted, you don't deserve your rights.  On a similarly, though not quite as depressing note, the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in a case in which prosecutors knowingly framed two innocent men and sent them to jail for life, but they argue, and the Obama administration joins them, that prosecutors have absolute immunity in such matters.  Hey, maybe we just need to let prosecutors loose on terrorists.  They can waterboard them, threaten family members, all sorts of good stuff.  That would surely bring in lots of credible and valuable confessions!  Anyway, NPR had a a agreat story on the matter today.  You can listen or read it at the link.  Please do.  Really.

The bright side on this one, is that maybe, just maybe, the US Supreme Court will rule that prosecutors are not actually a law unto themselves.  I'm not holding my breath on that, though.  Sigh.

Generally speaking, I quite like the auto-complete feature on google.  Here's a fun article in Slate that's a bit of amateur sociology, e.g., the different suggestions you get typing in "how 2" versus "how do I" etc.  Pretty interesting.  A sample

vs.

One of my former colleagues and current facebook friends asked for my "trenchant election analysis."  Here goes...

1) There's too damn much election analysis going on!  We are talking about governor's races in 2 states.  Yes, there are some suggestive ideas from this, but to draw broad, meaningful conclusions is folly.  That said...

2) Bad time to be an incumbent, especially a Democratic one.  Let's face it, the economy is still pretty weak and people have not seen the Democrats do all that much for them (most people don't really appreciate that we narrowly escaped a genuine economic catastrophe). Corzine was a really unpopular incumbent in a bad economy-- this is no great Republican victory.

3) McDonnell won Virginia handily by running as a can-do pragmatic moderate Republican.  His record suggests he is, in fact, a fire-breathing, social issues conservative.  I didn't follow the election enough to see how he pulled that off successfully, but hey, nice work.  The most interesting commentary I read on the VA race was TNR's Jason Zengerle who suggested that the rural VA Deeds was never a comfortable fit for Northern Virginians and Dems win Virginia state-wide races by running up huge margins in NoVa.  No matter how much gun-loving, good ol' boy Deeds was, he was never going to pick up a ton of Dem votes south of Fredericksburg and he didn't play particularly well where the Dem votes are.

4) Republicans are angry and energized.  Democrats are complacent.  No surprise that Republicans turned out in dramatically better numbers.  Republicans should also fare better in 2010 as many of the 2008 Obama supporters remain home, but we should not make too much out of this year, because, ultimately, it all depends on...

5) It's the economy stupid.  What yesterday's elections tell us is that if the economy is in roughly the same shape in a year, the Democrats are in for a world of hurt.  Of course, there's more reason than not to expect it to be substantially better.  Regardless, what happens in 2010 will be much more reflective of the economy next Fall than any political undercurrents that the 2009 VA and NJ governor's races reveal.

6) Nate Silver takes a nice statistical approach to it all.

So, recently, I wrote about the Supreme Court hearing a case about whether it was Constitutional for a 13 year-old to receive a life sentence without parole for a crime short of murder.  Turns out there's lots of reasonable doubt as to whether this 13 year old is actually guilty of anything more than burglary, but he was horribly treated by the justice system of Florida-- starting with a pathetic excuse for a lawyer who has been suspended from practicing in Florida.  The whole sorry is pretty shameful.  Questionable witnesses with strong ulterior motives, a victim who thinks the voice her assailant "could very well be his," and a judge who seems somewhat clueless.  Slate's Amy Bach summarizes the travesty.

Love this post from Ezra.  I'm just going to borrow it:

"About 40 percent of all private-sector workers do not receive paid sick days," reports the New York Times, "and as a result many of them cannot afford to stay home when they are ill. Even some companies that provide paid sick days have policies that make it difficult to call in sick, like giving demerits each time someone misses a day."

This isn't just inhumane policy. It's stupid policy. We're facing a new strain of flu that most have zero resistance against. Workers who fall ill but nevertheless have to ride the bus in to work and stock shelves and talk to co-workers and ride the bus home aren't just workers having a bad day, or workers at risk of getting really sick. They're contagious. They're spreading the flu to other workers, who will in turn be contagious, even to richer workers who do get sick days.

The downside is not simply that lots of people get the flu. It's that the flu has more opportunities to mutate into something more lethal, or more contagious. The reason public health officials urge people to stay home is to deny the illness opportunities to mutate, but the warnings of public health officials are nothing compared with the pressures of an employer that doesn't tolerate sick days. This, incidentally, is not a problem other countries will face. As this Center for Economic and Policy Research report explains, the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee its workers paid sick days.

Interesting article in Science Times today on creationism and evolution in the Muslim world.  Apparently, most Muslims except pretty much all of evolutionary theory except that humans are descended from apes.  That, they cannot take.  This was my favorite part of the article: 

For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.

Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.

Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”

I'll leave aside for the moment the fact that in Pakistan the response to an academic speaker you disagree with is apparently to riot. I'd have to wear body armor to class.

I am actually quite sympathetic to pro-life Democrats, but their latest efforts to try and sabotage health care reform are rather infuriating:

While House leaders are moving toward a vote on health-care legislation by the end of the week, enough Democrats are threatening to oppose the measure over the issue of abortion to create a question about its passage.

House leaders were still negotiating Monday with the bloc of Democrats concerned about abortion provisions in the legislation, saying that they could lead to public funding of the procedure. After an evening meeting of top House Democrats,  Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) said, "We are making progress," but added that they had not reached an agreement.

The outcome of those talks could be crucial in deciding the fate of the health-care bill. Democrats need the vast majority of their caucus to back the bill, since nearly all congressional Republicans have said they will oppose the legislation.

"I will continue whipping my colleagues to oppose bringing the bill to the floor for a vote until a clean vote against public funding for abortion is allowed,"  Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Monday in a statement. He said last week that 40 Democrats could vote with him to oppose the legislation -- enough to derail the bill.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, cast Stupak as "attempting to ban abortion coverage in the private insurance market." 

In this case, Keenan is exactly right.  This is not pro-choice hyperbole.  A major aspect of reform is getting private plans to compete in health exchanges.  Low-income Americans will be able to buy insurance through these exchanges with finanical help from the government to afford a health plan.  Stupak and the like are basically demanding that either: 1) these private insurance companies selling on the exchange not be allowed to offer abortion, or, 2) we don't subsidize citizens in paying for insurance.  It's all well and good to oppose abortion, but it is a legal medical procedure and there does not seem much justification for telling a private insurance company they cannot cover it.  As for #2, that's pretty much the biggest point of health reform-- expanding coverage. 

Very helpful article from Farhad Manjoo about preserving battery life in modern electronic devices.  It starts out somewhat depressing though:

Buchman also runs Battery University, a very helpful Web site for battery enthusiasts and engineers. I asked Buchmann how we can make sure that our batteries last a long time. "There is not too much to discuss," he began, and then launched into a conversation exploring the numerous frailties of batteries. The upshot is this happy factoid: No matter what you do, your battery will become a useless piece of junk—one day it will reach a point where it can no longer be charged, and then you'll have to recycle it. It will die if you use it often. It will die if you hardly ever use it. It will die if you charge it too much. It will die if you charge it too little. You can pull the battery out of your camera, stuff it under your mattress, and come back for it in five years. Guess what? Your battery will be dead. And when I say dead, I mean dead—not that it's run out of juice, but that it can no longer hold a charge.

That said, the great sin of battery life is over-charging.  Don't do it.  I've been guilty and I'm going to stop.

Ideally, Buchmann says, you should try to keep your battery charged from 20 percent to 80 percent. Keep in mind that these are guidelines for ideal use—it's generally inconvenient to unplug your machine before it goes all the way to 100. But even if you're not on constant guard, be mindful of charging your machine constantly, well past when you know it's full. You also should be conscious of letting your battery run all the way to zero.

Try to keep your laptop as cool as possible. The best technique here is to charge up your battery when the computer is turned off.

Pretty handy.  The basic rule seems to be the 20-80 and keep things from getting hot.  Words to live by in our gadget-filled age.

The Supreme Court heard two cases this past week on the issue of whether giving life sentences to juveniles for crimes other than murder violates the Constitution's 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  One of the cases involves a defendant who was 13 when he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Apparently, this is very much a Florida issue:

 Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

Had quite a good discussion of this going on my on-line class discussion for Public Policy.  Firstly, on a practical level, this policy is just incredibly stupid.  Do you really want to make a determination that someone is hopelessly beyond redemption from actions they took when they are 13?  Seriously-- that is just moronic.  What a waste of state resources locking someone up forever because of something they did when they were a young teenager.  As for the Constitutional issue, I'm definitely going with cruel and unusual.  As readers of this blog presumably know, I'm a believer that brain science should matter in these things (of course, the name of the blog reflects this).  Juvenile brains are quite simply physically immature (not fully myelinated in the prefrontal cortex) in the part that is responsible for judgment.  In a sense, they are impaired.  When somebody's brain is impaired we don't hold them fully legally responsible for their actions.  Punished? yes; life in prison with no parole? no.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a huge fan of bacteriological trivia (i.e., the cells in your body are outnumbered 10-1 by bacterial cells) and that I'm a big fan of "good" bacteria.  In fact, ever since I read Good Germs, Bad Germs (great book, by the way) I've been taking Lactobacillus Rhamnosus GG every day and am pretty sure I'm the healthier for it.  (There's double-blind placebo controlled studies about is efficacy-- I don't go for snake oil).  Kim, who is prone to stomach upset, has definitely noticed an improvement.   Anyway, interesting article in today's Post about scientists working on a new "good bacteria" that kills salmonella on the surface of fruits.  Apparently, in the lab, it even works against the nasty E. Coli.

"This is highly efficient weaponry, right here," said Brown, pointing to pipettes filled with the "good" bacteria suspended in a saline solution that will be dripped onto the contaminated tomatoes. He presented the initial findings of his research at an international salmonella conference this month in France. "The beauty is that we take something alive and organic and put it back into the field, and by itself, it will kill other bacteria. We're right on the edge of this."

It's a variation on the "enemy of my enemy" philosophy, with scientists like Brown cultivating hostile relatives of harmful bacteria to perform a sort of microscopic fratricide before the bugs can harm humans.

 While Brown's findings haven't been applied outside the laboratory yet, in his experiments the microorganisms obliterate not only salmonella on tomatoes but also several other pathogens blamed for food-borne illnesses, including listeria and E. coli O15:H7. So far, only vibrio, the bacterium found in warm seawater that can contaminate oysters and other seafood, has stood its ground against Brown's bacteria

Obviously, if this works well at a commercial level, this would be a huge advance for public health. For now, just more "good" bacteria trivia to bore my friends with.

So, yesterday was the Halloween at Evan's preschool: St. Andrew's Catholic Church Early Childhood Center in Apex, NC.  He made a great Yoda.

Anyway, Kim pointed out to me the incredibly high number of fathers attending this event, at about 10am.  Probably about 2/3 to 3/4 of the kids had their dads as well as moms there.  Basically, this struck me as quite a symbol of the amazing advantages all these kids will have in life.  First, as if living in Apex alone didn't tell you, that fact that all these dads were there means that they were likely upper-middle class professionals in control of their own schedule.  They don't let you leave your job at the factory for your kid's Halloween parade.  Secondly, it shows that these are involved dads.  That's a couple of very important legs up on life for these kids.  Personally, I appreciate this fact, which is one of the reasons I'm a liberal.  I was thinking cynically about how many of these kids some day will go on to graduate from a good college land a good job, credit it all to their own ingenuity and hard work, and get angry at all those poor, lazy people wasting all of their hard-earned and well-deserved tax dollars. 

So, the same day I'm thinking all of this, Matt Yglesias had a nice post on inequality.  We have nowhere near the social mobility in this country that most people think we do:

 

Pete Davis mentions a new book that sounds interesting. He observes that we like to think of the United States as a land of opportunity, “but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise.”

That’s what we like to think, but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise. They took a close look at intergenerational mobility and found that 42% of American men with fathers in the bottom income quintile remain there as compared to: Denmark, 25%; Sweden, 26%; Finland, 28%; Norway, 28%; and the United Kingdom, 30%. They present a wealth of new and old research evidence to support the conclusion that if you’re born poor in America, you’re likely to remain poor.

In fact, non college graduates of the richest fifth of Americans end up doing better than college graduates whose families come from the poorest fifth.  How's that for a meritocracy.  I'm lucky and so are my kids for having huge advantages early in life.  I'm also lucky because I appreciate that fact.