"Abortion" is not a fruitful search.

If you can't overturn Roe v. Wade, why not just put out an all encompassing health services search engine that simply pretends abortion doesn't exist? Again, if you don't know it's there, you can't even think of doing it.

I think we need something like the Washington Post fact checker's Pinocchio rating, but rather an Orwell rating to grade each event's relation to our slow slide into 1984. This would maybe be a Orwell rating of 2 (out of four, since I'm using the Pinocchio scale). Not sure what exactly this rating means - perhaps I need to flesh it out more. But 2 sounds about right.

UPDATE: They apparently reversed the censorship the same day. At least someone had some common sense.

Michigan Preiew Weekend

At Michigan's Preview Weekend now. Strangely not too many people here right out of college - most seem to have worked two years or so. And lots of people also want to do good things in the world, for many independent and interesting reasons, too.

I've already begun to establish my reputation as a gregarious, loud, and fairly opinionated person, who's hopefully at least entertaining amidst the many rants. Though I suppose it's a good sign that within a few hours I had someone tell me they'd vote for me if I run for office. Anyway, I have a mock torts class tomorrow and a real Con Law class, so hopefully I'll have a good idea for a blog from it - I'm already a couple ideas behind. I should quit my job or something... Oh wait.

Interesting Post on Prisoners' Rights

The Debate Link discusses voting rights for prisoners. I recently had a similar discussion about Justice in the context of whether, even given Bush's war crimes, he should, or in fact must, be given the death penalty if convicted.

The main justification for the death penalty in this case is that no one person has committed crimes the level of his in the history of the USA, and since we are willing to put some people to death, how can we justify not doing so to a war criminal? Though the death penalty is an extreme and irreversible punishment, and exercising mercy in a capital case would not necessarily undermine our entire system of justice, especially if length of time in jail is the standard metric, as David suggests.

Schools Training Americans to be Subservient

We all know school is as much about training kids to respect authority and function in a hierarchical society as it is about math, science, social studies, and language arts. But lately we've seen a few cases where school teaches us that authority is absolute and can do whatever it wants with regard to students' rights. We've seen unauthorized locker searches be justified, but strip searches of 13 year old girls? With no real cause?

When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.

Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."

Does anyone still wonder why no one is in a major uproar about wiretapping and an authoritarian state? We're being taught that this is how it's supposed to be at the earliest levels. Or am I mixing up cause and effect - are they teaching it because it's become the norm in society? I hope so - at least that might be more quickly correctable.

Anti-Intellectualism II

Jessica Hagy makes my point in the equivalent of 1000 words.

Fixing the MSM

Yesterday I blogged about the Responsible Plan to End the War, and to me the most striking part of it is that they do take the media to task for not doing their job. However, the Plan is fairly limited in suggestions for how to fix the MSM, and so I wanted to reprint an idea I had that was buried in my longest post ever.

The real difficulty in disseminating truth lies in the reality that most people out there do not read blogs. Television news and print journalism are not going to go away for a long time, if ever. A great many people like their news fed to them passively, so I don't think the blogging community will overtake the MSM completely any time soon. Also, there are a great many blogs with no editors - some will be heard, some say truly inane things, and some will just be lost in the shuffle. Only our readers' willingness to fact-check gives us credibility. If the MSM were somehow just replaced by blogs everyone would go deaf with the noise. We need some sort of hybrid of the two.

Here's an idea: The government could establish a national Ombudsman department, under either the FCC or DOJ, with subpoena power. Hopefully they could be independent, just as we hope in the future the DOJ will also be. The department's first task would obviously be checking on the government's behind the scenes connections to the media and finding ways to sever them. More generally, they'd be checking that national media outlets were living up to some journalistic standard, and would perhaps air a 30 or 60 second report on each news program with their most current accuracy rating and breakdowns of how their news reporting time is spent. Maybe the report could include a "breakthrough score" to indicate how well the station does on investigative journalism - to bring that back into style.

With enough media outlets to choose from, this could actually be a sort of free-market, competition-based media solution. The news stations would stop telling us what we want to see, and instead, we choose to watch the stations that we want to watch, complete with ratings and reminders about how accurate and relevant they are. The stations will be forced to tailor their content to compete. Right now, there is not enough competition in the media to make this work, and people are forced to watch or read something. But that's where the blogs come in. Television and internet are converging, and soon the playing field between the MSM and the blogs may be leveled. To help that goal, along with the creation of the national Ombudsman, if it is possible to lower the barrier to entry further to allow blogs to catch up to the MSM in production capability, that will foster the competition needed to hold the news accountable. Maybe, for example, the government could create low-interest loans to start a new national news station, and limit what the distributors could charge for a good news station (remember, there are ratings now). I'm sure this is not the perfect solution, but maybe between the Ombudsman and competition, or some other method, we can fix the MSM, and make sure that we are not lied into an unnecessary war again.

The Responsible Plan talks about FCC regulation of media ownership. It seems the idea of killing off the oligopoly is the one they want to take. But they are talking about new ownership, not dismantling the current model like Bell Telephone. I think if we could find a way to break the current national media oligopoly, it is another alternative. Though we can't do it based on region like Bell. We have local news already, and it serves a different purpose. Anyway, I'm guessing that reducing barrier to entry further will create the same effect if not give better results, and may be inevitable given technology, but I'd be willing to explore either option.

War Criminals

Is John Yoo a bigger war criminal than Bush or Cheney? He certainly gave them the license to torture.

A New Contract with America

The Responsible Plan to End the War. It's got a nice ring to it, no? It's purpose: to take us back to the most fundamental, perfectly idealist view of how a Republic should work, using a purely progressive agenda as a platform. It's a thing of beauty. Honestly, in order to really appreciate this, two things need to happen. One, you just need to read the document. Two you need to see how many Congressional candidates have signed on. Hell, even the Washington Post picked it up.

First the document itself: In 22 pages, the Responsible Plan calls for the following items: End U.S. military action in Iraq, using U.S. diplomatic power, addressing humanitarian concerns, restoring our Constitution, restoring our military, restoring independence to the media, creating a new, U.S.-centered energy policy. The first three deal with fixing what we created in Iraq. The gist of it is that it is nation-building we need, not military occupation. We need to build up their infrastructure and economy or their government will not be worth much, and may collapse. "The Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and Treasury must be directly engaged in creating this solution," the document says, as well as asking for a higher level of international cooperation. I agree completely with the sentiment, and they go further in demanding this not be a leverage point for oil, but that we focus solely on the stability and health of the country.

I am even more excited by the second half of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs". The biggest problem with this whole debacle is not that the Bush Administration made a mistake, or even that they lied once. It's that, as a nation, we were not prepared for the possibility of an out-of-control executive and thus could not handle it. Our Constitution, our checks and balances, and our media failed us and as nobody stood up, it only got worse. Right now, it addition to fixing the mess we're in now, we must reinforce our safeguards so that this can never happen again. When the ship is sinking, you must both bail the water and fix the leak. This is what the second half of the Responsible Plan demands - fixing our government's leak. If ratified by election of the supporting candidates, it is a formal mea culpa from the people of the United States for our complacency, and a resulting acknowledgement that all we can do now is ensure that it can never happen again. This is the only way the ideal of America can survive.

The second point that makes Darcy Burner's creation so amazing is that getting candidates (in addition to Gen. Eaton, Brig. Gen. Johns, Dr. Korb and Cpt. Seaquist - some orignal endorsers) to sign on creates a direct mandate from the American people. If we manage to vote these people into office, they will all clearly be required to advocate this plan, and since so far 42 candidates (38 House and 4 Senate) have signed on, they will have the power to do so. That is nearly a tenth of Congress, and seeing the effectiveness, more sitting senators and representatives will surely sign on. The progressives are angry, and we're taking back our country by using the very ideal our government set forth. We're writing a new Contract with America, and this time, America actually gets a say first.

American Anti-Intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism is the root of all evil. Or at least the root of all willful stupidity and ignorance. Anyone got suggestions on how to correct this? Will it self correct? Do we have to get to the point where America falls behind the rest of the world before we remember that trying to be the smartest is what got us on top in the first place?

From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).

Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue — as Al Gore did about climate change — then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.

Maybe when we elect Obama, it will signify the end of it - he is a Harvard-educated policy wonk. Though he'll likely be elected in spite of that. As long certain talk show hosts feed the hatred of the educated, intelligent, and informed liberal, I'm not sure how to fix anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure there is a way. This might be the one issue I'm really not optimistic about. It's going to take more than an ad campaign. It might take a realization that evolution-doubting, UFO seeing, "elitist"-hating America has suddenly become a second citizen in the world. By the time we stop being anti-intellectual, the world may be so fundamentally changed that the best we can hope to climb back to is not dictating world affairs, but being a good world citizen. Hell, maybe that's a good thing for all of us.

When did "elite" stop meaning something to strive for, and begin meaning something to despise?

Feel Good Story of the Day

I wish I saw more stories like this in the news.

Clinton skipped right over "too far" and has now switched sides.

There's so much here to hate. But this is no longer about which candidate you prefer. This is about the fact that she has completely switched sides:

Drudge. Limbaugh. The American Spectator. Richard Mellon Scaife. What exactly is it going to take before Clinton campaign staffers recognize that they are, in essence, now working for the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?

What the hell is this? You can position her absurd arguments for the delegates as desperation - even trying to convince superdelegates to vote based on the big states popular vote electoral college or telling us the pledged delegates should be fair game. I might even be tempted to excuse her big donors' extortion attempts and vote-buying attempts, since they were just her donors, not her campaign. But this is really just too far. She's switched parties. She's even taken to calling Obama a "liberal" as if it were a dirty word. This is absolutely absurd - it no longer matters if you favor her policies. If you're a Democrat, how can you be ok with these tactics and associations? She's really no longer running as a Democrat at all!

Oh, and in today's column, Nicholas Kristof hits on something I've been thinking for a few days. Clinton, may in the end, be remembered with the same fondness as Nader. Nader did lots of great things for this country before delivering Bush. No reputation is safe from this kind of backlash.

Man, I miss the days when she was just trying to cheat by seating MI and FL after the fact. They seem like so long ago.

UPDATE: I should point out that the extortion of Pelosi does have other, disastrous effects, so it's not as easily shrugged off as I suggest. However, I seriously doubt they would follow through on that, so I can ignore it as a bluff for now.

New Goal For the Blog

Become big enough so Billo calls me a fascist.

How do we fix the horribly broken Media?

This Glenn Greenwald post is long, but one of the most important points I've heard anyone make about our society as a whole right now, and really needs to be read/watched (And here's the earlier post on the subject):

The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media's discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation -- views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts -- ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: "virtually never."

I wish I could scream this from the rooftops, but posting in this blog is the closest thing I can do right now. The reason our country has taken so long to realize the disaster of this war is because the media is only airing one side of the debate. The reason I hear some of my coworkers talk about defending ourselves from the terrorists as justification for the war, and saying so confidently, is because the media is only airing one side of the debate. The reason that we were able to be lied to in order to go in, that no Presidential candidates will discuss impeachment, that Pelosi took it off the table, that we can't seem to remember the simple tenets of the Fourth Amendment on FISA and Real ID, and that we accept NSA monitoring and a Surveillance State and no-knock warrants is because the media is only airing one side of the debate.

Political dissent was the point of the Fourth Amendment. That is really what the dangers of warrantless wiretapping are. But I would argue that as previous suppressive regimes have proven, it is much easier to suppress the will to dissent and get away with it, and the easiest way to do that is by controlling what the public hears and reads. In China, they are not subtle about this - they censor what can be seen and political dissent is punished. We, in America, rightfully would rail against such obvious tactics. However, when the media presents one side of an issue with minor differences, but presents it as a real debate about the issue, we can be satisfied that we have heard all sides before figuring out our answer. Our dissent-welcoming American minds are kept fat and happy when fed this junk food debate, the cake being fed to us by the Marie Antoinettes behind the corporate-controlled media because they cannot afford the political ramifications of giving us the bread.

It is ideological Newspeak. If we have the "right" and "left" set for us, then no position outside that narrow gap can even be thought. And you know what? It works. A presidential candidate like Dennis Kucinich, whose distinctly non-radical views (gay marriage, impeachment, single-payer health care, etc.) more closely fit with the progressives than any other candidate, is dismissed by both the right and left and a fringe candidate. Conservatives didn't bother attacking him, just dismissing him as the "loony left" with a wave of their hands, comfortable in the knowledge that Democrats and the press would do it for them. And we did. Not that, given this environment, it was wrong - I supported Obama back in July because I thought his leadership and coalition-building would actually do more good for the progressive agenda overall, but I agreed in principle more closely with Kucinich. I just thought he'd never be able to accomplish what he said anyway, because it was outside the incredibly narrow allowed range of views in this country's public discourse.

The problems of the media are not restricted to only airing one side of the debate. But rather, through lack of independence, and a desire for power that has completely reversed the traditional adversarial roles and killed investigative journalism, they shape the election to benefit a candidate that will be good to them. In his March 10th post, Greenwald writes that Tucker Carlson accidentally revealed the role of the American media:

A journalist should never do anything that "hurts" the powerful, otherwise the powerful won't give access to the press any longer. Presumably, the press should only do things that please the powerful so that the powerful keep talking to the press, so that the press in turn can keep pleasing the powerful, in an endless, symbiotic, mutually beneficial cycle.

Between that sick media desire for power, and a desire for ratings, we have all our election coverage. The reason that most people seem to think that primary election is close is because the media is telling them that. The reason that most people now believe the general election should be close is that the media is telling them that. No one in the MSM questions the expertise John McCain has "in the bank", even though they know they give McCain a free ride.

This is not new. We all know we have significant problems with voting security - electronic voting and Diebold, for example (another debate that is lacking in the MSM). Bush was handed the Presidency in 2000, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio. There were whisperings about a stolen election in Ohio immediately after the election. The thing is, none of that matters if the media moves the vote to get their candidate! Kerry conceded very early, and the reason he did so was pretty clear - Bush had won the popular vote! Much as they are doing with this election, the media shaped the last two by repeating the good things about the Republican's image (cowboy, guy you could have a beer with), and smears about Gore (boring, "invented the internet" - something he never said) and Kerry (flip-flopper, Swift Boat lies - which I still hear repeated by some people to this day). The media shaped that election and gave us four more years of Bush. They certainly gave Bush the popular vote in 2004, and in so doing, lost us the ability to challenge the outcome.

A couple days ago, I saw this piece by Howell Raines, (via Andrew Sullivan) on the potential future of the New York Times. Soon after, I started really worrying about our society's access to uncorrupted information. Raines says:

As a reader, I believe a Murdoch takeover of our last independent national newspaper would be a disaster for the trustworthy reporting on which our civic life depends.

The destruction of the New York Times' credibility has two problems associated with it. For one, as Raines discusses, it is the most widely circulated paper in the country, and the last news source with a national subscriber base and no corporate control. It is independent, and it has a very trustworthy reputation. To lose that would be a dagger in the heart of the journalism institution. We would have no hold left in the fight against propaganda, and the job of disseminating the truth would all rest on the thousands of tiny shoulders of the blogosphere. The second, related problem is perhaps more devastating. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country will not realize. Oh, they'll read about the sale of the New York Times, and I'm sure CNN would report it, but what are the chances the Times or CNN also talks about the lasting effect on the credibility that its sale to a hedge fund or say, Time Warner, or even Murdoch himself has?

As Greenwald's evidence that I referenced in the beginning of this post makes clear, this would really be only the last straw in a media that is already so corrupt that it still cannot afford us a true debate on something that has already killed 4,000 Americans and at the very least 89,000 Iraqis (a study in 2006 said over 655,000). We already have a media hijacked for propaganda. So what can we do about it? What will prevent us from thinking we were always at war with Eastasia? Well, blogs, Google, and YouTube. Citizen journalism. We already have the tools to find out what's really happening. As this election is making clear, the MSM is trailing behind the blogs in getting information, but eventually they do. YouTube has very much changed what we're willing to swallow wholesale.

The real difficulty in disseminating truth lies in the reality that most people out there do not read blogs. Television news and print journalism are not going to go away for a long time, if ever. A great many people like their news fed to them passively, so I don't think the blogging community will overtake the MSM completely any time soon. Also, there are a great many blogs with no editors - some will be heard, some say truly inane things, and some will just be lost in the shuffle. Only our readers' willingness to fact-check gives us credibility. If the MSM were somehow just replaced by blogs everyone would go deaf with the noise. We need some sort of hybrid of the two.

Here's an idea: The government could establish a national Ombudsman department, under either the FCC or DOJ, with subpoena power. Hopefully they could be independent, just as we hope in the future the DOJ will also be. The department's first task would obviously be checking on the government's behind the scenes connections to the media and finding ways to sever them. More generally, they'd be checking that national media outlets were living up to some journalistic standard, and would perhaps air a 30 or 60 second report on each news program with their most current accuracy rating and breakdowns of how their news reporting time is spent. Maybe the report could include a "breakthrough score" to indicate how well the station does on investigative journalism - to bring that back into style.

With enough media outlets to choose from, this could actually be a sort of free-market, competition-based media solution. The news stations would stop telling us what we want to see, and instead, we choose to watch the stations that we want to watch, complete with ratings and reminders about how accurate and relevant they are. The stations will be forced to tailor their content to compete. Right now, there is not enough competition in the media to make this work, and people are forced to watch or read something. But that's where the blogs come in. Television and internet are converging, and soon the playing field between the MSM and the blogs may be leveled. To help that goal, along with the creation of the national Ombudsman, if it is possible to lower the barrier to entry further to allow blogs to catch up to the MSM in production capability, that will foster the competition needed to hold the news accountable. Maybe, for example, the government could create low-interest loans to start a new national news station, and limit what the distributors could charge for a good news station (remember, there are ratings now). I'm sure this is not the perfect solution, but maybe between the Ombudsman and competition, or some other method, we can fix the MSM, and make sure that we are not lied into an unnecessary war again.

Global Warming

Not that anyone reading this is a global warming denier, but here's the latest.

Resumé embellishment is so last election cycle.

This is really the year of the YouTube campaign. Key insight:

What makes this a YouTube campaign moment isn't that someone caught Hillary Clinton in an unguarded or reckless moment and posted the video on YouTube for all to see. No, what makes this a YouTube campaign moment is that the video from 12 years ago has ended up on YouTube to show that Clinton is completely wrong in almost every one of her assertions about that visit to Tuzla.

Maybe we'd move into New Politics even without Barack Obama. Maybe it was the times and political environment that demanded a new kind of politican. Transparency, thy name is YouTube.

World Court rulings are now not binding on States

Interesting case:

It seems to be a case where Bush actually wanted to comply with international law, but because we haven't ratified it, the Supreme Court stopped him. But then there's the question of whether World Court ruling is binding by international law, which we agreed to be bound when ratifying the UN Charter. I dunno the answer - maybe this is why I'm going to law school. Interesting stuff.

CNN Fun!

CNN Fun:

Sen. Hillary Clinton said she "misspoke" last week when she gave a dramatic description of her arrival in Bosnia 12 years ago, recounting a landing under sniper fire.

and

Clinton has mentioned the sniper fire at least twice earlier in the campaign, including in December in Dubuque, Iowa, before the caucuses in that state.

The word "lie" or any variant thereof, is never mentioned in the article, yet "misspoke" is prominently featured in the headline. I suppose this isn't CNN's fault, but just the attitude of the MSM. However, if anyone still thinks Obama is getting unfair treatment in the media, here's another instance of the other way around. And 25 more... A summary from that post:

Even when Obama's coverage is more positive than Hillary's it can still be biased against him. If Obama earns an A, the media give him a B -. If Hillary earns a D, the media give her a C+. No matter what McCain does, he gets an A++++.

But the media goes and says, "Gee, we gave Obama a B- and we gave Hillary a C+, let's now wring our hands about how awful we are to Hillary." But grading on a curve, or false equivalency, or "even-steven-itis" is profoundly biased against a candidate like Obama who has been beating tremendous odds and run a nearly flawless campaign. Even if Obama sometimes gets better coverage than Hillary does, his coverage is consistently more negative than his actual performance and Hillary and McCain's are consistently more positive than their actual performances.

Mostly, I'm just really really tired of the media blithely repeating the Clinton talking points, especially the one about him getting unfair coverage. Maybe with the Wright thing, they'll stop saying it, but I am still not hearing calls for her tax returns from anyone in the MSM.

The Elegant Universe - Online!

When I was in high school, I read a book that steered me to what I was certain would be my profession - theoretical physics, specifically string theory. The book was The Elegant Unvierse, by Brian Greene. Now of course, my interests have changed somewhat, so by sophomore year of college I had abandoned that career path, but I still cannot recommend this book enough.

Brian Greene has the amazing ability to break down string theory, one of the most complicated and difficult to understand physics theories there is, to the lay man, in a way not seen since Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. You do need a very rudimentary understanding of physics to appreciate it, but again, I read it in high school.

I could write about string theory, tell you what the book's basically about, but I'll let the author do it himself , since he's better at it. On the title, he says:

Physicists often use the term elegant to describe a solution to a problem that is as powerful as it is simple. It's a solution which cuts to the heart of an important problem with such clarity that it almost leaves no doubt that the solution is either right or at least on the right track. And string theory is just that kind of solution. It provides the first way of putting quantum mechanics and general relativity together -- that is, merging the laws of the small and the laws of the large -- and it does it in such a sleek manner that it is quite breathtaking. And the term elegant really describes that kind of solution.

Anyway, NOVA turned it into a three hour mini-series back in 2003, and now it's online. So if you're too lazy to read the book, at least watch this. Seriously, it changed my life.

RIP, Gary Gygax.

I love my school. The nerd-factor cannot be topped.

A Mosaic: 4,000 Americans Dead

Wow. You just have to see it.