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I'm not holding my breath waiting for Universities to divest themselves from this source of funding

Perhaps a forward thinking approach to university evaluations by magazines like U.S. News and World Report would include a requirement that the universities provide transparency in disclosing the sources and amounts of all financial gifts, grants, endowments, etc., and universities should also have an office that has complete records, freely available for review online by those who may be interested, that details all correspondence, notes to the file, and program evaluations for the various projects that are funded by these gifts, grants and endowments so that the “buying public” knows exactly what kind of environment their high school graduate may expect when they get to campus.

What prompts such a sweeping suggestion of reform and full disclosure from our higher education system?  Here’s the background from The Australian (h/t Instapundit):


THE cheque from the Saudi Government for $360,000 was enclosed in an envelope.
It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney's Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. More than 35 years after Sydney cleric Khalil Shami received the cheque, he insists it came with no strings attached. But while the cheque had no tangible conditions in the form of written instructions or binding contracts, the cleric received a message from his donors several months after depositing it.

"They said: 'Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what's happened to them in your sermon?"' Shami tells Inquirer. "Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn't see a negative in their request."

The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients, whether the money is bankrolling a religious centre, a clerical allowance or Queensland's Griffith University, which was exposed by The Australian last month for seeking a $1.37million Saudi grant, of which $100,000 was received, and offering to keep elements of the deal a secret.

The Saudi Government - largely through its embassy - is believed to have funnelled at least $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to propagate hardline Islam, bankroll radical clerics and build mosques, schools and charitable organisations.

But the Saudi cash that has flowed into Australia, that also allegedly has paid the allowance of hardline Canberra cleric Mohammed Swaiti, who has publicly praised jihadists, is dwarfed by the $90 billion Riyadh is believed to have pumped into promoting Islamic fundamentalism internationally.


Ninety.  Billion.  Dollars.  So how much have American universities received?  What has been funded by it?  Who are the professors and staffers who have applied for and received grants from the Saudis?  What kind of academic work have those people done with that money?  Just a few of the many, many questions that need to be asked and answered.

I’m not sure I follow Daniel Pipes’ argument here:


US-based Middle East expert and author Daniel Pipes says it is wrong to presume that all academics would follow their donor's line merely to keep the stream of funds rolling.

"Academics have a distinct point of view and are not about to be bought and change their point of view for any sum of money," he tells Inquirer. "But they are willing to shape their work and their views. So you can't buy them but you can rent them. So someone who might have been inclined to ask tough questions will do something else. It's subtle. It's not like the Saudis come to town to buy up academics who grovel before them, as was the case with Griffith University."

Last month, Britain's MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans reportedly told his Government that the Saudi Government's multimillion-dollar donations to universities, along with other funds from Muslim organisations in countries such as Pakistan, had led to a "dangerous increase in the spread of extremism in leading university campuses".

You can’t buy them but you can rent them?  They won’t change their point of view, but they will stop asking tough questions?  Sounds to me like it, contra Mr. Pipes, it is in fact entirely correct to presume that academics who are receiving significant funding from the Saudis are in fact following the Saudis’ line in order to keep the funds rolling.  I understand that Pipes has probably forgotten more about terrorism than I may ever know, but if he is somehow trying to argue that we should still trust American academics who are getting funding from the Saudis, I think he’s about as wrong as can be, and he’ll need to expand significantly on these comments to convince me otherwise.
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As Emily Litella would say, "Never mind...."

About that urgent need for $775 million for the UN to help with the impending food crisis, here's the latest from Fox News:

 Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

H/T Instapundit.

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When worlds collide...

I'm waiting for a return phone call on a document review project that was supposed to come at 12:30 (we'll see), the kids and I just finished lunch, so I figure I'll turn on a kid show to get them settled for a few minutes.

Turning on the tv and cable box, the default channel on startup is channel 8, which I think is a Comcast produced channel.

It's apparently time for "Daily Cafe," which must be some kind of interview show.

As the tv warms up and I get the picture, who do I see on the program?   Col. Oliver North being interviewed on his new book.

And who is the host of this show doing the interview?

Fred "Gopher" Grandy.

If someone in 1987 had mused on the possibility of an interview 20 years in the future conducted by "The Love Boat's" Gopher, after his time in Congress of course, and Iran Contra celeb Oliver North, they would have been laughed out of the room.

Perhaps I should look at the up-side.  As the Chinese wish for us, we live in interesting times.

Tags: Media   culture  
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Mixed messages at the school library?

I have been doing some substitute teaching lately, and many of the assignments the past few weeks have been in our local middle school.  During planning periods I often spend time in the school library catching up on news and other things.  Near the bank of computers in the library are a set of posters designed to appeal to teenagers and let them know the wide variety of things they can find and/or learn in the library.

The posters build on the fundamental idea of using the "Five W's."  Thus, we have:


Say Who?  Find Biographies Here!
Say What?  Find It Here!
Say When?  Find History Here!
Say Where?  Find Your Way Here!
Say Why?  Find Answers Here!
Say How?  Find Out Here!


And centered in the display area is a poster reading:

Teens Say READ!

I'm certainly in favor of improving kids' literacy and research skills.  So I was a little disappointed to see the tagline at the bottom of each of these posters:

The Library is WHERE IT'S AT.

I understand that may be very common phraseology.  But shouldn't we do students a favor and try to use proper grammar?

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UN wants to help with global food crisis?

Via Urgent Agenda, here’s the intro to a story on the developing "food crisis":

VIENNA, Austria - A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday.

Ban said the U.N. and all members of the international community were very concerned and immediate action was needed.


And since the UN has done such a bang up job of solving every other problem it has deemed worthy of immediate action, we should definitely look to them in the event of a global food crisis.  Which reminds me, there’s been talk of starting a communal garden in our yard for our family, the neighbors, and my wife’s sister’s family.  Smart money says any garden we may plant has a better shot at helping address any hunger than the UN.

Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t a ray of hope buried within the article:


He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties.

Just off the top of my head, I’d suggest they could have saved themselves the cost of traveling to Austria, and all the contributions to the “climate change crisis” such international flights may have made, and skipped the face-to-face meeting on how to force closer ties and just take the following approach:  relocate the UN to the European Union.  Brussels would be a perfect location for them.  Then when the Islamists complete their demographic transformation of Europe, we can finally be rid of the UN once and for all.

Finally, we get the unsurprising news that the UN wants money:


"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

Perhaps if the UN opens its books for a full audit, including the Oil for Food scam it ran for Saddam Hussein, and actually helps do something about the billions of dollars it has laundered in such operations I would be more sympathetic to their appeal.  There must be hundreds of honest international aid operations that would be better targets for such funding that could do more to help those who need food rather than filtering it through the UN.
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Origin of the droopy pants fashion statement?

The current fashion of wearing baggy pants that hang down below the waist, exposing the wearer's boxers, butt crack, or worse, has been the subject municipalities trying, and now states, trying to enact legislation to subject such "fashion outlaws" to fines.  The latest attempt, in Louisiana, has apparently failed.  From Breitbart.com comes this AP report, but what is confusing me is the explanation given at the end of the story for the origin of the fashion trend:

The style is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates are issued ill-fitting jumpsuits but no belts to prevent hangings and beatings. The look was popularized in gangster rap videos.

I have seen this explanation of prison as the origin for baggy pants before, but in reading this explanation and thinking about it, it makes no sense.  If inmates are issued jumpsuits, that means they are not getting pants.  Sure, they aren't getting belts that can be used as weapons or for hangings, but they also are not getting separate, ill-fitting pants and shirts.

So how do we get from a jumpsuit to avoid having to wear belts to inmates preferring baggy pants?  How can the layers upon layers of editors and fact checkers at AP not have thought this through and explained the incongruity?

On a related note, I have also seen stories online about law enforcement actually liking the baggy pants look, because it is sometimes an added bonus for them in chasing suspects who wind up being tripped by their own pants.  I don't entirely believe this, but I suppose it's at least theoretically possible. Perhaps someone with law enforcement experience or connections can confirm or debunk it.

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How rational are child rapists?

Ann Woolner's most recent column on Bloomberg.com discusses an appeal before the Supreme Court involving Louisiana’s death penalty statute.  Under Louisiana law, a criminal convicted of raping a child can be sentenced to death, even if the victim was not killed during the commission of the rape.

Woolner provides the basic facts of the particular case involved in the Supreme Court appeal, and acknowledges that on an emotional and visceral level, the death sentence is a satisfying and enticing option.  But she then goes on to argue that the death penalty should not be imposed in such cases, citing various arguments to support her position.

Interestingly, there is apparently a friend of the court brief on file in the case from the National Association of Social Workers and other similar organizations that argues the imposition of the death penalty is more harmful to the child victims than not imposing the death penalty.  A key argument they make is that the possibility of the death penalty means there is an incentive for the child rapist to kill the victim so that there is no surviving witness.  And even if the child is not killed, the social workers’ brief argues that there is greater potential for future harm and trauma to the child victim as they have to participate in greater pre- and post-trial hearings, appeals, etc., reliving the trauma more than they would have without the death penalty.

It’s an interesting argument, and a logically presented one.  But it doesn’t seem to answer a lot of questions for me.

Such as, should we really be assuming that child rapists are rational actors who assess their options vis a vis whether to kill their victim based on whether or not they may get the death penalty?  I understand that Ann Woolner and the National Association of Social Workers are rational people who can figure out the role of incentives and consequences in arriving at a decision.

But are child rapists that rational and calculating?  I doubt it.  Even in the example Woolner provides in outlining the facts of the case involved in the appeal, we get pretty clear evidence of what you hear from law enforcement and defense lawyers all the time - criminals generally do stupid things.  So in the case at issue, the rapist stepfather’s first act following the commission of his brutal crime (which apparently resulted in his step-daughter needing emergency surgery) was to call his boss to say he would be in late, and to ask how to get blood stains out of white carpet.

The rapist's next move?  He called a carpet cleaning company to schedule an emergency cleanup.

Over an hour an a half after making these phone calls, the guy finally calls 911 to report his stepdaughter’s rape.

Do we expect a monstrous child rapist who is so incompetent that he left this trail of evidence to be sharp enough to think about potential sentencing ramifications?  I just don’t see it.

And while the issue of greater pre-trial publicity and hearings in a death penalty case may be a consideration, I am not so sure the extended appeals argument is quite as strong as Woolner makes out.  Typically, the appellate courts are not re-hearing the entire trial, so there is no need for a rape victim, or any other crime victim, to keep having to tell their story repeatedly as the appeals keep making their way through the system.  The appeals usually involve procedural and, as in this case, constitutional arguments that would limit or negate the long-term involvement of the child victim.

Another nagging issue for me was the lack of any kind of quantification that would support the argument Woolner and the social workers are making.  If there are some states that have the death penalty for child rapists, and others that do not, there should be comparative data available that either confirms or discredits the argument.  It may in fact be true that in Louisiana, a child rapist is more likely to kill his victim than in another state where there is no death penalty.  But Woolner cites no such data, which makes me believe that the social workers similarly have not provided any such data.  So if it is simply a theoretical argument based on logic, I am still skeptical.

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Who are the people still reading printed newspapers?

Much has been written about the changing marketplace for information and the migration of readers from newspapers and magazines in hard copy, printed form to electronic, online form.  My first job was delivering my hometown newspaper, an "evening" paper in those days.  Every day after school I would take my bundle of papers, fold and tuck them into a throwable form, and stack them, standing up, in the oversized baskets on the back of my Schwinn Heavy Duty affectionately known as The Black Streak.

My sister and I originally shared a route, covering most of a neighborhood near our house and surrounding the local hospital.  Later, when she moved on to junior high (remember when it was still called that?), I took a smaller route in an adjoining neighborhood.  It was essentially a circular route, there was only one road into and out of the neighborhood.  But I believe I delivered the paper to every one of the approximately 30 houses in that area.

Now, some 25 years later, I haven't had a daily newspaper delivered to the house in years.  We do get a weekly paper for our township that comes in the mail, and I have read it more frequently in the past couple of months.

But today I was surprised when we went to the grand opening of a new nature center in our township just a few minutes down the road.  There were lots of environmental organizations with displays and information, little activities for the kids, and even a "wild animal show" inside the nature center - a charming old brick house that has been restored and refurbished.  The woman with the animals had several birds and a couple of bats, and gave a very nice presentation and discussion with the children and adults.

One of the birds she had was a broad winged hawk.  In explaining that hawks use their very keen eyesight to hunt food, as opposed to owls that use their excellent hearing, she noted that hawks can see approximately 10 times better than humans.  To give people a better understanding of just what that meant, she gave a concrete example that was interesting, and also surprised me.

"How many of you still read the newspaper," she asked.  But it wasn't just the words she spoke, but the tone and body language that accompanied it that caught my attention.  She clearly asked with the expectation that no one in the group would actually still be reading a printed newspaper.  I figured if there was a target demographic for the Trenton Times, the local paper for our area, that the people at this kind of event would be it.  But no one seemed to acknowledge reading the paper.

As she went on to explain that if you put a newspaper at one end of a football field, then walked to the other end and went up into the bleachers and read it from your seat in the end zone, that would be the equivalent of a hawk's eyesight for a human.

But all I kept wondering was who in the world is still reading the Trenton Times if even the nature center staff and its grand opening visitors have given it up?

Tags: Media  
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Danny Federici, RIP

I saw the news a few days ago, and hadn’t read any of the stories.  I knew the basics of Federici’s passing.  Here's the intro:

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboardist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band whose talents were showcased in some of the rocker's best-loved songs, has died.  He was 58.

Federici’s piano and keyboard work on many early Springsteen and the E Street Band songs really sticks in my mind.  I grew up with older cousins who listened to a lot of Springsteen.  Not that much older, but enough so that they were into Springsteen around the time Born to Run came out, whereas I was only 10 at the time.  So I wound up acquiring a taste for some of the same music just a little later.

An interesting tidbit from the story:


Federici came back for a final appearance with the band last month in Indianapolis, playing on eight songs including “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” a Springsteen classic that spotlighted Federici's accordion playing, the Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, reported.

`Natural Musician'

The newspaper's official Springsteen blogger, Stan Goldstein, wrote today:  “To many of us E Street Band fans, it's like losing a member of our own family.”


It’s an amazing and interesting world where a newspaper can have an official blogger for a particular musician.  There was probably a lot of competition to get that spot, too.

One thing that, unfortunately, touches on a bit of a sore spot with some Springsteen fans is buried in this part of the story:


During his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, Springsteen called Federici “the most instinctive and natural musician I ever met, and the only member of the band that can reduce me to a shouting mess. I love you, Danny. Your organ and accordion playing brought the boardwalks of Central and South Jersey alive in my music. Thank you.”

It’s subtle, but reading the first sentence carefully and recalling the “controversy” at the time you see that Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.  For whatever reason, the E Street Band was NOT inducted into the R&RHoF with him.  A lot of Springsteen fans were unhappy with that fact at the time, and likely still are.  Given the stuff they put out as a group, and Springsteen’s efforts to portray himself as a regular guy, I’m a bit surprised that Springsteen didn’t either refuse the honor without the band, or use his standing in the world of rock and popular music to twist some arms to get an all inclusive induction for the entire band.

In any event, Federici’s contributions to the E Street Band sound will be remembered, and he will be missed.

Tags: Media   Music  
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When advertising layouts matter

Over some eggs and bacon this morning, I took a few minutes to do a preview flip-through of the most recent Money magazine that came in the mail recently.  I wasn't very far into the magazine when I laughed out loud at one of the ads.  Not because the ad itself was intentionally funny.  But because of an unintended consequence of the effect of the ad from the previous page on the ad I was looking at.

A few pages after the table of contents and index information, T. Rowe Price had a two page spread advertising its mutual funds.  Included with the ad was a tear-out postcard to fill out and send in if you want further information.  Pretty standard magazine stuff, right?

Of course, the tear-out postcard is made from heavier stock than the pages of the magazine, and was attached to a small strip of heavy stock from which it is to be separated.  The effect of this is to leave a small, heavy piece of paper stock in the binding of the magazine, which means the magazine page itself doesn't open quite as far as it would without the heavy stock blocking at least a portion of the page.

Big deal, how much can that really matter, right?

Not a whole lot.  But on the subsequent right hand page was an ad for another investment firm.  And because of the way their ad was laid out, when the page was turned with the card stock in place, there was one letter that disappeared from the ad unless you pried the magazine open to see the complete headline.  Here's the headline they wanted the reader to see:

JANUS RESEARCH MEANS GETTING MORE THAN YOUR HANDS DIRTY

Guess which letter couldn't be seen due to the card stock?

I wonder if the folks at Janus will get any kind of discount on future ads, or perhaps make sure that their ads are placed differently to avoid the humorous blip in Money.


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Much like Michael Corleone....

... every time I think I have turned my back for good on German automobiles, they try to suck me back in!!!  The write-up from autoblog.com is intriguing, as there is apparently the possibility of "up to" 80 mpg.  Could have a diesel, which may boost their fuel efficiency for the potential micro-van version.  Unfortunately, I am still trying to figure out how to post images or photos on this blog, so if you want to see the micro-van concept, you'll have to click here.

While I have been very satisfied with my Subaru Outback wagon, in a few years when I start to consider a replacement, I could see myself test-driving vehicles like the current Mazda5, Mazda3, Scion xB, Honda Fit, Honda Element and Mini Clubman, as well as the Outback and Forester.  As long as my lovely wife has a larger vehicle that is a guaranteed family hauler when we have need of such capabilities, I probably will try to stick with something relatively basic but capable of reasonable family accommodation.  And if the up! micro-van is on the market, it will be hard for me to completely ignore it.

We'll see if it really comes to pass.  As I noted a while back, VW was trumpeting the re-birth of its Micro Bus shortly after the New Beetle came out and achieved success.  After delays and problems with various issues, the updated Micro Bus was shelved and VW announced that it will be slapping VW logos on Canadian Dodge/Chrysler minivans as an alternative.

I guess a worst case scenario is that VW announces late in 2010 that it will be introducing a Chinese-made micro-van instead of what they are now considering.  That will make it easy for me to continue to drive non-German cars.


Tags: cars   VW  
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If social issues are the opiate of the elites...

...then I may have an alternative take on this interesting contrarian opinion column by Larry Bartels.  In the wake of Barack Obama's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser about small town residents being driven to God and guns as a result of despair over their position in the economic order, many commentators have focused on this slap in the face of the average Americans to whom they believe Obama seeks to appeal in order to win both the Democrat presidential nomination and the general election.

Mr. Bartels has a slightly different take on the episode, arguing that the relevant data show the reality of how small-town voters behave is exactly the opposite of what Obama told his millionaire campaign donors on Billionaire Row in San Fransisco.  To wit, Bartels notes:


Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion.  In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

Bartels then goes on to cite various statistics from a 2004 National Election Study to buttress his argument that it is the liberal elites who are primarily influenced by social issues in voting rather than small-town, average Americans.  He then goes on to compare Obama's likely election returns as opposed to John Kerry in 2004, and John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960 and 1968, respectively:

Mr. Obama should do as well or better among [small-town, working-class] voters if he is the Democratic candidate in November.  If he doesn't, it won't be because he has offended the tender sensibilities of small-town Americans.  It will be because he has embraced a misleading stereotype of who they are and what they care about.

In thinking this through, however, I am not so sure Bartels' explanation for Obama's possible failure to garner the votes of small-town Americans is accurate.  Certainly it's one possible explanation.  But in reading the entire piece, and applying some common sense, I can think of at least one other possible explanation in the event Obama fails to get as many small-town votes as John Kerry.

First, given the information Bartels is citing is from a study conducted by the University of Michigan, I have to conclude that Obama's campaign has access to the same information, and is smart enough to be able to read it as well as Bartels.

Which leads me to conclude that Obama's smear of small-town voters was not voiced out of his embracing "a misleading stereotype of who they are and what they care about."  Rather, I expect it is a cynical use of that misleading stereotype, which is most likely shared by Obama's millionaire donors, as a way of appealing to Obama's base of "cosmopolitan" voters, as Bartels defines them.  Thus, I don't think Obama and his campaign are so dumb and/or misinformed that they believe what Obama said about small-town voters.  I think they are smart enough to know that their San Francisco donors believe almost exactly what Obama said, and used that as a way to appeal to them and motivate them to contribute and network for the Obama campaign.

Moreover, my understanding is that Obama didn't expect his comments on small-town voters to be "on the record."  Many commentators have cited this as further evidence that his remarks were more candid and revealing as he believed them to be private.

Perhaps.  But again I have a nagging suspicion that Obama simply said these things in an attempt to appeal to his millionaire liberal pals.  What was the saying, making them feel comfortable with their prejudices?

This conclusion doesn't make me think any more highly of Obama and his campaign, in any event.  When the two most logical choices in this matter are that he and his campaign are so inept that they don't have any clue what motivates small-town voters, or they are so cynical that they would use knowingly false stereotypes to whip up support amongst their voter base, I don't see much to make me think there is anything new or transformative to this candidate
.

As for another explanation in the event Obama fares poorly with small-town voters, it could be chalked up to the possibility that such voters know a phony when they see one, and aren't much inclined to vote for one.  Unfortunately, Bartels' does not provide any indication of how Bill Clinton fared in 1992 or 1996 with his defined voters groups, so it is a difficult hypothesis to test.
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Lessons in obfuscation and clarity in death penalty decision story

This story from Breitbart.com on the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the viability of a three-drug system of lethal injection in administering the death penalty is a bit confusing.  It starts out as follows:

U.S. executions are all but sure to resume soon after a nationwide halt, cleared Wednesday by a splintered Supreme Court that approved the most widely used method of lethal injection.
    ....

 Voting 7-2, the conservative [sic] court led by Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed the latest assault on capital punishment, this time by foes focusing on methods rather than on the legality of the death penalty itself. Justice John Paul Stevens voted with the majority on the question of lethal injections but said for the first time that he now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional.


First, 7-2 doesn’t exactly sound very splintered to me.  Reading further into the second paragraph above, however, I start getting confused.  I expected Justice Stevens to be one of the 2 who are in the minority of a 7-2 vote.  Clearly he was not.

But somehow, Justice Stevens managed to perform the kind of legal jujitsu that only a hyper-liberal Supreme Court Justice could hope to achieve or understand, voting that the method of execution at issue is constitutional, but the death penalty itself is somehow unconstitutional.  I’m sure that makes sense to someone, and maybe even to Stevens, but it leaves me completely bewildered.  Especially in light of the reference in the story to the fact that the legality of the death penalty itself was not at issue in the case.

So Stevens answered a question that wasn’t asked, in a way that would seem to preclude the approval of lethal injections, and then goes on record in the only vote that really counts in the matter with the majority of votes saying lethal injections are just fine.

As the story explicitly notes further on:


 The case decided Wednesday was not about the constitutionality of the death penalty generally or even lethal injection. Instead, two Kentucky death row inmates contended that their executions could be carried out more humanely, with less risk of pain.

I hope those two Kentucky death row inmates sleep well at night knowing that Justice Stevens thinks their sentence is unconstitutional, but if the state wants to inject them with a three drug cocktail that results in their death, that is perfectly constitutional.

The story goes on to bring in some essentially irrelevant information on the current visit by the Pope:


 Wednesday's decision was announced with Pope Benedict XVI, a prominent death penalty critic, in Washington and the court's five Catholic justices—Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—headed to the White House for a dinner in his honor. All five supported the lethal injection procedures.

I wasn’t aware that Supreme Court decisions and state visits were in any way related, but apparently I was wrong.  In any event, I suppose we should be grateful for the example set by President Kennedy when he promised in 1960 that he would not be a papal puppet in his role as President.  Clearly, the Catholic Justices named were able to do exactly as they promised in their Senate confirmation hearings and decide the case before them on the applicable rule of law, and not on the preferences of whoever may occupy the Vatican at the time the case comes before them.

If I were a news editor, I think I would shake things up bit and put the last two paragraphs of this story on the Supreme Court’s decision right up front, and have the reporter expand it to provide a little more information on the actual victims in these cases.  From the end of the story:


 Wednesday's case involved two inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by juries in Kentucky. Baze killed a sheriff and a deputy who were attempting to arrest him. Bowling shot and killed a couple and wounded their 2-year-old son outside their dry-cleaning business.

Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney Ray Larson, who prosecuted Bowling in 1992, said after the ruling: "Fact of the matter is, this lethal injection process is about as far from cruel and unusual as anything you can imagine. This is just another one of those things the anti-death penalty gang is throwing against the wall to see what sticks."


Mr. Larson’s no-nonsense, common sense approach most likely means he will never be appointed to sit on the Supreme Court.  More’s the pity.

Finally, I saw the excerpt below from Justice Scalia’s opinion in a post by Jonah Goldberg at The Corner at National Review Online, and can not pass up the opportunity to include it here.  Scalia’s opinions were often the highlights of our law school readings, as he mercilessly skewered the (in our view) shaky logic and ridiculous conclusions of the other Justices, typically Justices Stevens and Blackmun.  Enjoy:


    But actually none of this really matters. As JUSTICE
    STEVENS explains, " 'objective evidence, though of great
    importance, [does] not wholly determine the controversy,
    for the Constitution contemplates that in the end our own
    judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the
    acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth
    Amendment.' " Ante, at 14 (quoting Atkins v. Virginia, 536
    U. S. 304, 312 (2002); emphasis added; some internal
    quotation marks omitted). "I have relied on my own experience
    in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of
    the death penalty" is unconstitutional. Ante, at 17 (emphasis
    added).
    
    Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule
    by judicial fiat. In the face of JUSTICE STEVENS' experience,
    the experience of all others is, it appears, of little
    consequence. The experience of the state legislatures and
    the Congress—who retain the death penalty as a form of
    punishment—is dismissed as "the product of habit and
    inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process."
    Ante, at 8. The experience of social scientists whose
    studies indicate that the death penalty deters crime is
    relegated to a footnote. Ante, at 10, n. 13. The experience
    of fellow citizens who support the death penalty is described,
    with only the most thinly veiled condemnation, as
    stemming from a "thirst for vengeance." Ante, at 11. It is
    JUSTICE STEVENS' experience that reigns over all.

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Inigo Montoya does not think this story means what the author thinks it means

Scott Soshnick is a columnist with Bloomberg.com.  He writes sports opinion pieces, and his latest work is on the issue of whether a boycott of the Peiping Olympics makes sense.  Soshnick clearly does not think a boycott is a good idea, and recites a lengthy story about Olympic hopeful Craig Beardsley to make his case.  From the article:

Sports fans should know what the Beardsley family sacrificed for a chance to represent the U.S.

Beardsley at age 4 learned to swim at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He attended the United Nations International School, where one of his classmates was an Afghani prince.


Apparently Mr. Beardsley sacrificed by coming from a wealthy and powerful family, as the 92nd Street Y and the UN International School are not the types of places that the hoi polloi get into.  Reading on, we see:

Diplomacy runs in the Beardsley family. His grandfather was consul-general for the Republic of China to Peru in the 1950s.  His mother fled Shanghai during the Communist takeover of 1949.

“One of the last boats out,” he says.

Beardsley's grade-school days began with a 45-minute commute (90 minutes with traffic) from home in Harrington Park, New Jersey, to Manhattan, where his father worked.  First learning.  Then swimming.  Then back to dad's office.  Then home by 6 p.m.  Maybe.  Then more swimming.  Friends were scarce.

“No time,” Beardsley says.

Mom and dad forced Beardsley to join the local swim team.  There, his first coach, a former U.S. Marine, affixed some sort of bands around Craig's ankles to keep his feet together.  By age 11 Beardsley was being recruited by area swim clubs.


Yep.  Dad’s a political bigshot with connections.  That explains the Y and the school.  But more telling is the simple reference to the parents having FORCED Beardsley to join the swim team, and dragging him 50 miles a day round trip into New York and back as a grade schooler.

I thought this story was about what the family sacrificed for young Craig to represent the U.S.

Moving on:


Serious training started at age 12.  All-swimming, all-the- time.  No basketball.  Not anymore.

Beardsley remembers his father waking him up at 4:15 a.m. for morning workouts.  At 14, Craig, an accomplished cellist (his mother was a concert pianist), was accepted to the Manhattan School of Music.  A wasted application.

“I was spending all of my time in the pool,” he says.


Soshnick may be right that a boycott isn’t the right thing to do to the athletes.  But more than anything, what I take from his tale of Craig Beardsley is that at least some Olympic athletes and their families may be crazy and have their priorities completely out of whack.

Apparently Soshnick doesn’t see it that way:


Think about Craig Beardsley the next time some politician or activist uses the word boycott. Think about the 4-year-old's commute. Think about bloody hands and up-river swims.

A 4-year-old’s commute?!  This in some way makes sense to anyone as an argument about the greatness and worth of the Olympics?!

How about I meet Soshnick half-way.  I’ll think about Craig Beardsley the next time someone tells me how great the Olympics are.  And if Craig Beardsley’s story is in any way representative of the background of even 10 percent of U.S. Olympic athletes, I will be completely on board with shutting down our Olympic programs and letting the kids who are being forced into insane athletic training regimens try to get some kind of balance and normalcy in their lives.


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Maybe Harvard could relocate to a remote area of New Mexico

So there will be sufficient space for female students to exercise with proper male supervision.  The excellent blog, Urgent Agenda, has a post on this article from the Washington Post.  Here’s the snippet that caught my eye:

Powerful religious clerics also ban sports for girls in public schools, deeming it un-Islamic, and recently canceled two rare all-women's events, a soccer match and a marathon. Gyms for women were closed in the early 1990s and have been allowed to reopen, but only when affiliated with hospitals.

Further in we find:

Banning the opening of these sports centers is not a ban on sports. A woman can practice sports at home, and there are many ways to do that, or she can race her husband in a deserted area, like the prophet Muhammad ... who raced with his wife Aisha twice.

So what will Harvard do when their Islamic overlords in Saudi Arabia, who have most likely donated millions of dollars to fund various things at Harvard, point out that they don’t want women using gymnasiums?  Will the whole separate but equal system for Harvard’s recreational facilities collapse?  Will there be a re-thinking of Title IX as culturally insensitive to the wealthy donors who call the shots at Ivy League universities?

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