A brief splash of honesty

I feel like giving brief kudos to columnist David Carr, who in a sudden attack of disclosure came clean about how he found the sources for two “person on the street” quotations in one of his columns:

Mr. Finesurrey, a sophomore and an Obama supporter at the University of Wisconsin whom I found in the process of researching this column (translation: he’s a friend of my daughter).

And:

When Sara Verkuilen, 22, a senior at Edgewood College in Madison (translation: my daughter’s roommate) is looking for political news, she goes with CNN, but not because of the gadgetry.

I don’t read Mr. Carr regularly, so maybe he is always this scrupulous. Regardless, kudos to him for being transparent about one of the more misleading traditions in journalism: Using people from within one’s own social circle to comment on a trend or current event.

It would be nice to see his colleagues follow suit more often.

The question I most want to ask

To the Presidential candidates:

What executive powers will you relinquish on your first day in office? And how, precisely, will you go about relinquishing them?

The abandonment of habeas corpus and related rights is to me one of the most horrific and shameful developments in American history. Restoring those critical rights may be the single most important issue for our new president. That’s why I was heartened to see this endorsement from Habeas Lawyers for Obama:

When others stood back, Senator Obama helped lead the fight in the Senate against the Administration’s efforts in the Fall of 2006 to strip the courts of jurisdiction, and when we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration’s bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us. Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo.

It’s not perfect, and who knows whether Obama will even be the nominee, much less our next president. But that’s the kind of executive power I’d like to see.

Next time you go to a hotel…

…remember that the folks who pick up after you are making about $8/hour, working as fast as they can in a physically brutal and demanding job. And leave a tip.

I can’t say it any better than Dr. B:

Now that travel season is in full force, this news from Salon’s Broadsheet is especially relevant.

the Jewish Funds for Justice, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and the Jewish Labor Committee [has] collaborated to launch the Travel Justly campaign. The effort is designed to call attention to — and perhaps even improve — the relatively crappy working conditions of many hotel housekeepers. Ninety percent of these workers are women.

You can support their campaign by reading and agreeing to a pledge that you will:

- avoid hotels where workers are on strike;

- support union hotels (the site, unfortunately, requires you to enter the name of a specific hotel in a specific town; it would be a lot nicer if you could just search by city, assuming a full list would be too long to effectively navigate).

- TIP YOUR MAID $2-$5/day*

- be considerate by putting trash in trash cans, leaving dirty towels on the counter or racks so the housekeeper doesn’t have to bend over to pick them up; and stripping your own bedsheets;

- leave complimentary comment cards if you are happy with your maid service;

- keep a copy of the pledge in your suicase to remind you of it when you travel.

After you sign the pledge, you can buy a luggage tag to remind you of the pledge, plus make your luggage identifiable. 75% of the cost of the tag is tax-deductible. And maybe, if you’re lucky, occasionally give you an opportunity to talk to other travelers about the campaign.

*I always try to tip $1-2, but I often forget, and apparently I’ve been being a cheapskate. I’ll do better in the future. I find a lot of people don’t know that you should tip the maid, and I’ll always remember the woman who cried and hugged Mr. B. because, after cleaning the rooms of Mr. B.’s entire class of Air Force Weapons School guys for an entire summer, he was apparently one of the very few people who tipped her–$100. For three months of maid service.

Is it legal to purposely drive someone crazy?

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained…but he does now.

That’s it in a nutshell, folks. The smartest and best scientists we have confirm that our country’s policies are literally driving people crazy. Warren Richey has a tremendous three-part series spelling it out. (Part 2 here, Part 3 here.)

If this were a movie, we’d call it Gaslight. But in the final act, someone would come in and save the heroine.

For Jose Padilla, there is no final act. His family and friends can hardly bear to see him; his lawyers are focused on keeping him alive. And our government is busy arguing that extreme solitary confinement and other elaborate, prolonged tortures are somehow going to save us.

They’re not.

The moral dimensions of baseball

Imagine you’re a poor kid from a poor country. At 15 you quit school so you can concentrate full-time on baseball. It’s a huge gamble; the odds are low that you will ever be a big-league American star. So does the major-league U.S. team that’s encouraging you have a responsibility to provide a Plan B? Like, say, a basic education?

That’s the provocative argument buried in the final paragraphs of Kate Kilpatrick’s excellent analysis of baseball in the Dominican Republic.

And before you say no, recall that without the talented-but-not-superstar players to make up the remainder of the practice teams and junior leagues, MLB player-development programs would never be able to pick out the stars.

(Note to alert readers: I am hoping to sneak this baseball post past our gracious host, not otherwise known for his charity toward this noble sport. It’s really about ethics, anyway.)

Do the right thing

What do we owe the Iraqis who have risked their lives serving as interpreters for the U.S. military?

Here’s Sebastian Holsclaw at Obsidian Wings:

When we withdraw, it seems there are no plans to give asylum to the Iraqis who have helped us. [...] It would be an incredibly stupid policy to just let those people loose to be the first hunted down and killed by both sides of the likely civil war aftermath. Even if for some reason we didn’t feel some sort of moral responsibility to them (which to be clear we should) it makes good practical sense. We’ve done all sorts of damage to any reputation for military competence, but that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to show that if you directly help us, we are likely to abandon you to an ugly death when we leave.

And the British perspective from Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber:

Iraqi interpreters used by the British Army and CPA South have already been hunted down by death squads. [...] There really is no way of keeping these people safe while they are in Iraq, and they need to be kept safe. Quite apart from what one would call a “debt of honour” (the phrase is somewhat pompous, but accurately describes the situation), it never makes sense to get a reputation for abandoning one’s friends. Therefore, the Iraqi staff used by the British in Iraq need to be given asylum in the UK, along with their families.

This is not the current policy of the UK. The Home Office has simply suggested that Iraqis put at risk by their work for the British “register with the appropriate UN refugee agency”, joining the mountain of 2 million-plus refugees….

The title of this post is taken from the Spike Lee film of the same name. It’s often hard to figure out the right thing to do, and good intentions don’t protect you from unintended consequences. But evidence is overwhelming that Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. are and will continue to be singled out and slaughtered.

The U.S. has admitted a bare 133 Iraqi refugees so far this year. That’s not even close to the 7,000 that our government already promised to admit, let alone the thousands more who have worked for us. While there are no good reasons for the delay, one thing is guaranteed to end it: Public pressure. Talk to your friends, write to your local paper, and call your Congressperson.

(If you think this is premature, take a look at Gary Farber’s timeline of how fast the situation deteriorated in the last three and a half weeks of the Vietnam War. And while you’re at it, read his most recent post on this topic.)

“He’s my president, and I hope he does a good job”

Transcript and video of Keith Olbermann’s sharp and righteous July 4th commentary on the pardon of Scooter Libby.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Mr. Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously:

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

But in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law. Of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood — that he was the law.

Not the Constitution.

Not the Congress.

Not the Courts.

Just him.

Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.

Brings to mind the unmatchable Representative Barbara Jordan during the Watergate hearings:

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, “We, the people.” It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”

Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Transcript. It’s even better if you listen to her uniquely majestic voice.

Important stuff said by other people

First, and most significantly, the U.S. government is disappearing people. (Report.) As if this slide towards totalitarianism wasn’t disturbing enough, two of them appear to be children:

In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Extensive citation at Obsidian Wings, along with this analysis:

The evidence that our government held Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s sons is not conclusive, and I do not mean to suggest that it is. Still, if you had told me, six years ago, that I would find myself seriously entertaining the possibility that my own government had detained children [...] I would have thought you were insane. Disappearing people of any age, without charges or trial or anything, is what two-bit dictators do; not what we do. But disappearing children, not seventeen year olds about whom one might have interesting debates about when exactly childhood ends but seven- and nine-year olds — that’s so far across the line that it would have been unimaginable to me. And the fact, if it is one, that they are supposedly “handled with kid gloves” and “given the best of care” does not begin to make up for this. Detention is not “the best of care” for anyone. It is certainly not “the best of care” for a young child.

Second, from Pandagon, a fantasy response on an explosive issue. I’d be very interested in any politican brave enough to say something like this:

“Abortion is not fun for any woman, which is why we’d like to keep them rare. I would also like to keep heart surgery rare, if I can help it. But just as we’ll never wipe out heart disease completely, we will never wipe out unplanned pregnancy completely, because women are human and sometimes they have circumstances outside of their direct control. I support prevention in health care. We can reduce the number of abortions and number of heart surgeries by helping Americans have better access to prevention. In the case of abortion, the best prevention is contraception and comprehensive sex education. I’d like to empower women to have the fullest range of options available so they can make the best decision for themselves.”

And finally, a rare example of a judge losing his temper in a stinging footnote to a ruling in the Lewis Libby case. What is most interesting to me is who the judge thought his audience was. I don’t read legal cases as a rule. Do judges write these sorts of insults as a shout-out to their clerks or buddies?

Do they do it as a wink and nod to say “Yeah, I have to rule this way on procedural grounds, but don’t worry, I’m not buying their baloney”? Or is there a more substantive purpose, a way of putting yourself on the record so that there is no later misunderstanding about your allegiances?

(Yes, it’s an annoying PDF, but it’s one paragraph. Click through and read it already.)

Via How Appealing.

(Folks, as most of you have probably figured out, I’m not Nicholas. He’s kindly given me posting privileges, and I’m going to do my best to avoid becoming the kudzu of his blog.)

Say it again

I’ve done more thinking about torture in the last six years than I ever imagined would be necessary. One of the few consolations of today’s awful landscape is hearing a respected person use clear, simple words to show how wrong it is.

This is from hilzoy.

I would have thought that anyone who was thinking about endorsing torture would first stop and think very, very carefully about whether it is actually effective. […]

Arguing about torture without asking this question is like arguing about whether you must, absolutely must, eat your children to keep yourself from starving to death without first checking to see whether you have any other food available.

It’s the best 532 words you’ll read this week.

When incentives collide

Today I am wondering how to change the academic world so that researchers are rewarded for actively telling people about their work. Or, to be grumpy about it, so that they are punished if they do not share their research results more broadly.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work for two people who care very much about adding to the world’s store of knowledge. This means that they say “Yes” when asked to participate in research projects.

Having these folks as models is good for me, because most of my personal experience of researchers is negative, and left to my own devices I would probably be politely unavailable.

As it is, I try to accommodate the requests I get. There aren’t too many, and they’re not very onerous, so I’m not making a big sacrifice.

Recently it was a public health student. We met in a coffee shop, where I gave him a sixty-minute monologue. He scribbled while I worried about whether the noisy backdrop of rock music and coffee machines would interfere with good notetaking.

A few months later I got an invitation to the presentation of his thesis. This was remarkable on two counts: first, he’d apparently finished something, and second, he was bothering to tell his research subjects. I was slightly impressed.

There were seven people at the presentation, along with two unopened boxes of donuts. I sat through 40 PowerPoint slides with a better-than-usual narrative flow. It helped that the researcher was personable, and that the topic is relevant to my work.

Afterwards I asked about his plans for disseminating the results. Had he translated it into another language (this being a major point in both his research and his final recommendations)? Well – sheepish grin – no. Had he made arrangements to speak with the school district, local elected officials, or other policymakers (all governing some aspect that was addressed in his research)? Well, no. He had invited a few here today, but….

Was he going to speak with any community members, through mosques or churches as he himself had recommended? Well…it was better to leave that to community leaders who command more authority and respect.

I figured that was it, but then a man got up and introduced himself as the student’s advisor. He asked the student to leave the room, and then asked the audience to evaluate his work. Apparently our comments were to inform the advisory committee’s grading of his thesis.

Most people said nice, slightly generic things. I began by noting how scrupulous he had been in his interview process. Then I said if it were up to me to grade this project, I wouldn’t give it a grade until an effort had been made to share its results more broadly. I gave a few specific suggestions-masquerading-as-examples.

The student was summoned back and a condensed version of the comments read to him. I was moderately surprised that the general point about dissemination was mentioned.

I walked away feeling somewhat cynical that anything much would happen. It seemed that the advisors had to submit a grade quite quickly (it already being late May) in order for the student to graduate.

Moreover, there was a distinct lack of energy among both student and advisors about the ideas proposed. Visit a church to present your data? Meet with community members in someone’s living room? Approach the school board? Give a background briefing to legislative staff? I might as well have asked him to sew his own graduation robe – he quite clearly saw it as not his task.^[1]

At first I was angry, as much at the sheer wastefulness as on moral grounds. Then I started to think about why this response might be natural given the way the academic system is set up. Read the rest of this entry »