Mark Krikorian, the Census and the American race

National Review’s Mark Krikorian is mad about the Census:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business.

One-quarter of the questions are about race and ethnicity? Why is the government so obsessed with race? Why oh why oh…

Oh. Wait. There’s only 10 questions on the census form? Only two of them deal with race? That’s not even “fully a quarter” is it?

Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics … Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes.

And, in fact, there’s a new Facebook page with 750 members pledging to do exactly what Krikorian describes.

What’s weird about this is that Krikorian is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a “kick out all the illegals” think tank that relies rather extensively on Census Bureau findings on race in order to make its case to Congress and the public. The census findings on race go a long way toward helping Krikorian and thousands of other researchers and scholars – not to mention our own government – understand what our country looks like and how it’s changing.

I have no idea what’s going on in Krikorian’s head. All I can guess at is the Census Bureau’s own description of how the government uses information about race:

State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts. Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.

Ah. So that race information isn’t really used to divvy up Americans who would otherwise live in rainbow solidarity if that pernicious government didn’t insist on calling attention. Instead, it’s used to help the government ensure that minority rights and health are protected.

If you think disclosing your race to the government is somehow racist, by all means let the government know. But there’s something profoundly anti-knowledge and anti-fact about Krikorian’s little campaign. And it doesn’t appear at all likely to result in minorities taking their seat at the table of “real” America.

Another reason to root for health reform: Rush Limbaugh will flee to Costa Rica. (Will Jonah Goldberg call him an un-American fool?)

Via Think Progress, Rush Limbaugh threatens to leave America if health reform passes:

CALLER: If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is, what would happen to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program, or could they opt out of it?[...]

LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. And once they’ve opted, they can’t see anybody Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer and it’ll be a very small practice. I don’t know if that’s been outlawed in the Senate bill. I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

I know, I know: Just a bit of hyperbole on Rush’s part. We shouldn’t take it that seriously.

But, uh, remember when Alec Baldwin threatened to leave the United States if George W. Bush was elected president? Remember the fits that conservatives threw about that? Conservatives like Jonah Goldberg?

My dictionary says that a moralist is someone who is particularly concerned with teaching moral lessons. If Alec Baldwin leaves because George W. Bush wins he will be the furthest thing in the world from that. He will instead be teaching people that in a democracy, when your side loses, those who can afford to take their money and their passports and bug out in a hissy fit. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word un-American before with any seriousness. But, if he thinks that’s the moral lesson for Americans, Alec Baldwin isn’t just a fool. He’s an un-American fool.

I’m very much looking forward to Jonah Goldberg lecturing his fellow conservative on this matter.

Salon: Bush-era waterboarding really was torture

Some hawkish conservatives have made the case that terrorist waterboarding wasn’t really torture — despite a long history of jurisprudence indicating otherwise — because it was done by the CIA in a carefully controlled way designed not to be torture. And that furthermore it’s not torture because American soldiers undergo it during training.

That’s wildly incorrect, according to a new story from Salon:

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

This is torture, period. “Inhaling water” doesn’t just create the sensation of drowning, it is drowning … even if done under barely controlled conditions.

Oh, and the idea that it’s OK because we do it to our own soldiers? We don’t.

These memos show the CIA went much further than that with terror suspects, using huge and dangerous quantities of liquid over long periods of time. The CIA’s waterboarding was “different” from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month. “The difference was in the manner in which the detainee’s breathing was obstructed,” the document notes. In soldier training, “The interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier’s face) in a controlled manner,” DOJ wrote. “By contrast, the agency interrogator … continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose.”

Let’s remind ourselves of the legal definition of torture under American law:

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;

The memos discovered by Salon easily clear this definition. You should read the whole article.

At this point, waterboard-defending hawks cannot plausibly say that the technique was not torture. They forfeit any claim to credibility if they do so. I suppose they can claim that national security concerns outweighed the law — that the need to protect American lives forced them to commit war crimes against Al Qaeda terrorists. I suspect it likely that many Americans will agree with them. But let’s not lie to ourselves about what actually happened. The Bush Administration committed torture.

The Brady Campaign vs. Starbucks’ gun-totin’ customers

I’m no Second Amendment zealot — I’ve said before that I think the right to bear arms probably isn’t such a hot idea in cities plagued by gun violence. Still, I think there’s a bit of disingenuousness in today’s LA Times op-ed piece by Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — a call for Starbucks to ban from the premises any customers who lawfully enter the store with a gun on their person.

Here’s the laugh-out-loud untruth:

We are not asking Starbucks to take a position on America’s gun debate. We are asking it to establish a policy to protect its customers — including gun owners and employees — against the possibility that misused firearms carried into the stores by those The Times describes as “postmodern cowboy wannabes” could cause great harm. We are not pressuring Starbucks to take a position against anyone’s beliefs.

Oh, bullcrap.

I suppose this is narrowly true in the sense that the Brady Campaign isn’t asking Starbucks to send lobbyists far and wide to campaign for restrictive gun laws. But the Brady Campaign is clearly asking Starbucks to send a rather clear message about the state of gun laws in California and America — that they’re not restrictive enough to protect public safety, and that further steps must be taken by private businesses to do the job if politicians in Sacramento and D.C. won’t.

That’s clearly a political act, clearly the taking a position on America’s gun debate. And it is, in fact, a legitimate position for both the Brady Campaign and Starbucks — should it ever choose to do so — to take. But it is a not-very-good lie, an unnecessary lie, to pretend that such a position is somehow apolitical. The Brady Campaign should own its beliefs and positions instead of this pretense. Truth matters.

Fred Phelps is an evil man – who deserves First Amendment protections

As noted before, the best policy when dealing with homophobic Kansas pastor Fred Phelps would be to ignore him. But the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear a case challenging the right of Phelps and his church/family to set up their “God Hates Fags” protests outside the funerals of soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And as much as it pains me to say it, Fred Phelps should win this case.

Don’t get me wrong: What Phelps has to say, and the way he chooses to say it, reveal him and his church/family to be evil. Parents mourning the loss of a child shouldn’t have to put up with the additional grief the Phelps crew bring to a funeral.

But the First Amendment isn’t made to protect popular speech. It’s not even made to protect nice speech, or respectful speech, or non-offensive speech. There has to be an overriding public interest to restrict speech: Public safety, generally. But “not feeling bad” is not an overriding public interest — and rules designed to keep Fred Phelps at bay are mainly intended to keep people from feeling bad.

Fred Phelps offends our sense of propriety. He expresses loathsome ideas in repugnant fashion. But as an American, that is his right. The First Amendment was made for Fred Phelps, too.

CNN, Wolf Blitzer and the “Department of Jihad” smear

Adam Serwer points out that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has apologized for a segment last week that focused on the odorous “Keep America Safe” ads that charge Department of Justice lawyers with being in cahoots with Al Qaeda terrorists. The segment included a grapic — “Department of Jihad?” that drew some angry reactions.

Here’s the apology:

On Friday, Wolf Blitzer apologized on behalf of CNN for the graphic, saying that “CNN had no intention of suggesting the Justice Department supported terrorism, lawyers at the Justice Department are patriotic Americans and we certainly reject any confusion that may have been caused by our graphic.”

It’s nice that CNN is willing to apologize for the graphic, but the apology suggests that a deeper problem was at play: The segment itself, which featured a debate-style point-counterpoint discussion of the “Keep America Safe” ads. If CNN could straightforwardly answer the questions posed by the ads — and it can, judging by its “lawyers at the Justice Department are patriotic Americans” apology — why didn’t it simply do so instead of opening the issue up to debate on its airwaves?

The answer to that is easy: Because CNN’s job isn’t to resolve questions one way or another; it’s to keep the questions alive for the sake of drawing an audience. That’s not really journalism, is it? The graphic wasn’t really the problem; it was the symptom of the problem.

Does Glenn Beck think Mennonites are Nazis? (Or: Of liberal churches and freedom of religion)

The Mennonites I grew up among had a consistent “pro-life” ethic that didn’t place them easily in the service of either major political party: Most of the folks I knew were very much against abortion — but they were also anti-war, anti-death penalty and for helping the poor. A number of them didn’t like to pay taxes, but not for any Ayn Rand-inspired reason; they just didn’t want their money used to pay for America’s wars. A lot of the church’s missions abroad have been done under the umbrella of the Mennonite Central Committee, which has — sometimes controversially within the churches — focused more on helping people and less on evangelizing.

Over the years, there was a phrase I heard used to describe this overall approach to the world: “Social justice.” And until this week, I had no idea that it meant that the Mennonites are secretly in league with the Nazis. Thank goodness we have Glenn Beck to set us straight.

On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that “social justice,” the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a “code word” for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

Later, Beck held up cards, one with a hammer and sickle and other with a swastika. “Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That’s what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: ’social justice.’ They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy.”

I’ll let Mennonites and other Christians decide if they really want to take theological advice from Beck, a Mormon whose adopted theology many mainstream Christians consider heretical, at best. I’m certainly not going to try to argue theology with the likes of Beck. And in any case, I doubt many adherents of churches that espouse “social justice” are taking their cues from Fox News, anyway.

Suffice it to say, though, I doubt that the answer to “WWJD?” would ever be to “Go Galt.”

What’s more disconcerting, though, is Beck’s framing device. He’s not merely asserting that left-leaning churches are wrong — that’s his right, though I think he’s mistaken. He’s suggesting that Americans, broadly, are about to see their freedom of religion come under assault. What’s his basis for this? He doesn’t have one, as far as I can tell. Is there some Bible-censoring program underway that I don’t know about?

Probably not.

And that’s what bugs me about Beck. It’s not that he has spectacularly wrongheaded opinions – it’s that he proceeds from spectacularly incorrect facts. And that he disseminates those spectacularly wrong facts from one of the highest-profile slots on television. It’s a real disservice to his audience, and to the country that has to put up with a debate influenced by so many of his acolytes.

Some of my conservative friends tell me they think Glenn Beck is full of crap. Obviously he is. But he’s influencing a large swatch of the conservative movement. And he’s doing so in a way that wrongly sows panic and fear among his audience, not thoughtfulness and vigorous debate. Glenn Beck, not churches who believe that pursuing “social justice” is the calling of Christ, is the real danger to our country.

Tom DeLay responds to recession and unemployment with a boldly imaginative new program: “Get a job, deadbeat.” (A continuing series.)

Steve Benen calls attention to the latest GOP talking point: More people would be working if only they weren’t so lazy!

Yesterday, for example, disgraced former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) argued that unemployment benefits are a bad idea, because, as he sees it, they discourage people from entering the work force.

“You know,” DeLay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs.” When CNN’s Candy Crowley described his argument as “a hard sell” to the public, DeLay replied, “It’s the truth.”

Crowley followed up, asking, “People are unemployed because they want to be?” DeLay again said, “Well, it is the truth.”

Benen offers a few examples to demonstrate the sentiment isn’t limited to DeLay. Which, I guess, would make a great deal of sense if the United States didn’t have six job seekers for every job opening. Lots of folks might be inclined to get a job if only there were jobs for them to get!

But this is typical. Republicans have never been particularly good at understanding that you need bootstraps to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. That they still think this is a winning line of argument when unemployment is hovering around 10 percent shows — at the very least — how tone-deaf they are.

They’ll take my gun when they pry it from the cold, dead fingers of my hand that’s not carrying a Starbucks soy latté

With all the fights that have gone on around the nation in recent decades about “concealed carry” laws, I’ve often wondered: Why wouldn’t gun owners go the Dodge City route and strap a holster to their hip? If carrying a gun is about personal safety, wouldn’t having a gun openly displayed work really well as deterrence? Why force a mugger to guess if they’ll get shot?

Turns out that there are a number of gun-rights advocates who feel the same way: They’ve started entering coffee shops across the nation with guns openly displayed, a sort of Second Amendment lunch counter protest — with the option of vanilla or cinnamon sprinkles — to make gun discrimination more vivid to the general public. They’ve been tossed out of Peet’s and California Pizza Kitchen, but they’re apparently welcome at Starbucks.

But not all gun advocates are fans:

“I’m all for open-carry laws,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights advocacy organization in Washington State. “But I don’t think flaunting it is very productive for our cause. It just scares people.”

All due respect to Mr. Gottlieb, but isn’t scaring people part of the reason for gun ownership? If you’re buying a pistol for self-defense, aren’t you wanting to make sure  you can outmuscle any assailants? And if you can assure them that they’ll be outmuscled before they even assail  you, haven’t you won? Where’s the problem here?

Seems like some gun owners want it both ways. They want the right to pump a bad guy full of lead — but they don’t want to have to face the social discomfort that comes with having an armed man in your midst. I think they should own it! It’s OK to be a tough guy, gun owners! Head on down to Starbucks and show  your Second Amendment pride with a smile on your face, a .357 on your hip and a frappucino in your hands.

Pennsylvania’s beer police might turn me into a small-government libertarian

Holy cow is this ever stupid:

More than a dozen armed State Police officers conducted simultaneous raids last week on three popular Philadelphia bars known for their wide beer selections. The cops confiscated hundreds of bottles of expensive ales and lagers, now in State Police custody at an undisclosed location.

The alleged offense: Although the bar owners had bought the beer legally from licensed Pennsylvania distributors and had paid all the necessary taxes, the police claimed that nobody had registered the precise names of the beers with the state Liquor Control Board – a process that requires the brewers or their importers to pay a $75 registration fee for each product they want to sell in Pennsylvania.

I’ve lived in Philly a little under two years now, and like other newcomers to Pennsylvania, I’m sometimes dumbfounded and outraged at the state’s alcohol control laws. I originally thought the whole benighted system a remnant of Prohibition-era rectitude, but I’ve recently come to realize that the status quo stays that way because a number of people — people who can afford to hire lobbyists in Harrisburg — are making a few bucks off the system as presently constituted.

And it’s in situations like these that I realize conservatives have a point when they speak of government bureaucracies having tyrannical tendencies. If you step back and think about it, it’s kinda weird that brewers would have to register each and every single variety of beer they produce — no matter how small the batch — if they want to sell it in Pennsylvania. And it’s even weirder that the state’s public safety resources are devoted in any measure to confiscating beer that might’ve been improperly registered. Good lord: Don’t we have more than enough car accidents and homicides to track and solve?

In fact, the State Police raid appears to have been the result of a clerical error — one that the police say might take months to resolve. It’s enough to turn you into a libertarian.

The most striking piece of information in the Daily News piece comes in the very last paragraph. Turns out it’s only small-time brewers and small-time pubs that earn the scrutiny of the State Police.