On: Constitutional confusion

Claiming complete comprehension of America’s constitution is akin to claiming complete comprehension of quantum mechanics: If you think you understand it, you probably don’t.

Which isn’t to insult the reader; our Constitution is a document founded upon -- and meant to articulate -- a paradox.

Today, that paradox might roughly be described thusly:

There are times when America is a conglomeration of states, each with characteristics so diverse they necessitate local governance.

There are other times, though, when America is one country and its citizenry one people; times when we are not Texans, Californians, Floridians or Hawaiians, but Americans, who collectively have a national need best handled by a central government.

Such conflicting philosophies explain why our constitution might generously be called perplexing, and might less generously be called contradictory.

There is the Tenth Amendment, that bastion of conservatism, which says that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” 

This prohibition carries great weight given James Madison’s proclamation in Federalist 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments, are numerous and indefinite.” (Emphasis added.)

But there are bastions for progressivism as well -- three, actually. The Constitution has the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Commerce Clause, and the Sixteenth Amendment. The last grants Congress power to “lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived”.

And where conservatives have James Madison, liberals have Alexander Hamilton. He wrote in Federalist 30 that taxation was such an “indispensable ingredient” to governance, America required a “complete power” to “procure a regular and adequate supply of revenue as far as the resources of the community will permit”.

That hardly describes a government whose powers are few and defined.

But so it goes, two philosophies, always in tension, always fueling debate. The question central to that debate:  Where is the line between necessary government power and tyranny?

Enter the Supreme Court, which has been tasked with the unenviable duty of sorting through the mess, law after law, year after year.

Last week, in two superb decisions, SCOTUS reaffirmed the federal government’s role in American jurisprudence. When it comes to immigration policy, America is not 50 states, but one country. With regard to the Affordable Care Act, government has not overstepped its boundaries, but acted appropriately.

Said the conservative dominated body, it is the sole responsibility of Washington to determine the nation’s immigration policy, as well as within its purview to effectively compel Americans to purchase health insurance using a tax.

Effectively compel, because the mandate is not a legal compulsion. According to Chief Justice Roberts, though the mandate is clearly “intended to induce the purchase of health insurance” it “need not be read to declare that failing to do so is unlawful” because “[n]either the Affordable Care Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring payment to the IRS.” Such payment is, of course, “a tax on those who go without insurance.”

If Madison is turning over in his grave, Hamilton is pleasantly amused.

Conservative spin
Conservative onlookers have labeled the administration’s success Pyrrhic. Most notably, George Will, the nation’s leading conservative columnist, has insisted that “[c]onservatives won a substantial victory Thursday” because the court “embrace[d] emphatic language rejecting the Commerce Clause rationale for penalizing the inactivity of not buying insurance”.

True, the court did embrace such language, but Will’s distinction is one of convenience. If, as was decided, what government can’t do under the auspices of the Commerce Clause -- or the Necessary and Proper Clause -- government can do using a broader and more legitimate ability to tax the public, liberals have gained (not lost) a plausible card to play when arguing constitutional legitimacy.

Pay no attention to the ground noise: What we have seen is the culmination of years -- if not decades -- of effort. SCOTUS has reaffirmed the federal government’s authority on immigration policy, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is now the law of the land.

It’s been a big week for big government. Here’s to November, which may give us a bigger week still.

On: The FCIC

This much is clear: Despite the flurry of topics which too-often steal our attention, November’s outcome lies predominately with the economy.  That known, this much is opaque: By what criteria will the electorate make their judgment? Conventional wisdom holds that Americans, with one eye on unemployment and another on their pocketbooks, will ponder Ronald Reagan’s hopelessly ill-nuanced and misleading question, Am I better off today than I was four years ago? This is a fiction.

American’s won’t judge President Obama on that proposal alone. They’ll also ask other, equally pertinent questions such as: “how bad was the financial crisis,” “what would Mitt Romney have done,” and “how much accountability can we realistically ascribe to the president?”

Before parsing these questions unaided, readers should download a free copy of the Financial Crisis InquiryCommission’s (FCIC’s) report on the economic meltdown – it is an unparalleled guide through the convoluted and complicated world in which these quandaries exist. At 622 pages (the approximate length of the sixth Harry Potter novel, yet with denser material), it is a nigh-comprehensive analysis of the financial crisis, and an oasis of clarity in a society burdened with conflicting information.

After reviewing millions of documents, interviewing 700 witnesses and sitting through 19 days of public hearings, what has resulted is a compendious document which confirms much of what we already knew – and disabuses us still more.

Wish to compare President Obama to President Reagan? Don’t bother; our current system “bears little resemblance to that of our parents’ generation.” The markets are vastly more complicated, technology has added both breadth and depth to financial instruments and the financial sector’s preeminence in our economy has grown steadily. In 2007, the sector contributed 27 percent of all corporate profits. In Reagan’s era, it was just 15.

But the report’s most valuable contribution is this: it refutes the claim (most often peddled by conservatives) that the downturn was a typically disastrous ramification of a naïve and distended government. Learn, dear reader, about the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a bête noire of many conservatives, who wrongly attribute America’s failings to programs like these. Said the authors of Reckless Endangerment, one of the many nonfiction books attempting to make sense of the financial crisis: The CRA is “a story of what happens when Washington decides, in its infinite wisdom, that every living, breathing citizen should own a home.”

This view is wrong for two reasons. First, the CRA was written to prohibit “redlining,” a practice in which banks deny credit to entities because of the neighborhoods in which they exist, and give no thought to their creditworthiness.

Contrary to conservative belief, we on the left prefer to immanentize the eschaton in more minute ways than giving “every living, breathing citizen” a home.

Second, in their report, the commission wrote in unequivocal and convincing language that “the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates only 6% of high-cost loans—a proxy for subprime loans—had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law.”

Nearly every time the report does mention our government’s relation to the market, however, it refers to “more than 30 years of deregulation.”

Such derelictions set the stage for 2007, in which the five major investment banks had $40 of assets for every one dollar of equity. If the value of their assets fell by only three percent, the report tells, these firms would be in ruins.

Household debt ballooned as well, rising 63 percent from 2001 to 2007; nearly a tenth of all mortgage borrowers used “option Adjustable Rate Mortgages” - loans in which borrowers could “make payments so low that their mortgage balances rose every month.” When the economy collapsed, much like the banks, there was little if any cushion on which these borrowers could fall.

J.K. Galbraith

The coming election
“Economic forecasting,” said J.K. Galbraith, exists “to make astrology look respectable.” Quite right, which is why this writer will spare the reader the pain of enduring predictions on how the economy will look in slightly more than five months. But the FCIC makes use of proverbially 20-20 hindsight. Its revelations shouldn’t be put aside.

During 2007 and 2008, the fundamentals of the American economy simply stopped working. The FCIC report tells us what we did wrong, what we did right, and what can be done to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Undecided voters should take note before revisiting the economy.

Drone Documents: Why The Government Won't Release Them

by Cora Currier ProPublica, June 25, 2012, 9:15 a.m.

The covert U.S. effort to strike terrorist leaders using drones has moved further out of the shadows this year 2014 targeted killing has been mentioned by President Obama and defended in speeches by Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan. The White House recently declassified the fact that it is conducting military operations in Yemen and Somalia.

But for all the talk, the administration says it hasn't officially confirmed particular strikes or the CIA's involvement.

Over the past year, the American Civil Liberties Union and reporters at The New York Times have filed several requests under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about the CIA's drone program and the legal justification for attacks that killed terrorists and U.S. citizens. The government answered with a Glomar response 2014 neither verifying nor denying that it has such documents.

So both the Times and the ACLU sued, claiming that there is widespread acknowledgement by government officials of drones and targeted killing, as well as the CIA's involvement.

Last week, the Justice Department submitted a motion in a federal court in New York seeking to dismiss the lawsuits. The government's argument, it turns out, mostly reiterates its Glomar response.

Any public statements by the administration, the motion states, were carefully phrased to avoid discussing specific operations and don't constitute official acknowledgement of targeted killing or the drone program. This includes Obama's statements on the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Al Awlaki 2014 "the President plainly did not acknowledge whether the United States was responsible for his death" 2014 and Holder and Brennan's speeches this spring, which, according to the motion, address only the "potential targeting" of U.S. citizens, but not specific operations.

However, the motion says the CIA can now acknowledge that it has some documents related to "the use of targeted lethal force" against U.S. citizens 2014 including, namely, the public speeches given by Holder and Brennan this spring:

The motion cites some existing legal analysis related to targeted killing and those public speeches:

But it says the government can't reveal more about the documents 2014 neither their names nor how many there are:

Because whether or not the U.S. was involved in specific targeted killings, or whether the CIA is involved in targeted killing 2014 at all 2014 remains classified:

Similarly, the motion says that to acknowledge any number of records on drones would reveal whether the CIA possesses drones:

Finally, the government's brief adds that a few of the documents sought by the FOIA requests could be identified but are protected under executive privilege 2014 because they involve internal deliberations in the Office of Legal Counsel, or are related to preparations for public statements by administration officials or meetings with the president.

The ACLU's deputy legal director said that the organization is preparing its opposition brief. A federal appeals court will hear arguments in September in another of the ACLU's FOIA lawsuits over the CIA's drone program.

On: Alan Turing

by: Joshua Howell

Sherborne School
Like most geniuses of his stature, the young Alan Turing was confined to a school useless for his fomentation. 

Which isn’t to criticize Sherborne, Alan’s alma mater; it was at the forefront of 20^th century education. It existed both to instruct England’s brightest and to introduce them to the complexities of life. But out of necessity, it was also a place where the hard sciences were lowly and the soft sciences were supreme. For the mathematically minded Alan, it was hell.

A teacher once called Alan’s work “slipshod,”  “dirty” and “inconsistent,” which could all be forgiven if not for the “stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament.”

But, lest there be some mistake, Alan was hard at work. Disregarding his assignments, and with that exuberance only found in the young, the burgeoning intellectual instead satiated his mind by calculating pi to thirty-six places, rediscovering the series for the inverse tangent function and giving expert derivations of The Law of Geodesic Motion.

And add to Alan’s obstacles this: as he progressed through puberty, he found himself attracted to those of the same sex.

The young Alan Turing

So when Alan met Christopher Morcom, a student one year older than he, the boy was smitten. Christopher was a perfect storm of attractiveness: unabashedly suave, well spoken and, most keenly to Alan, of a similar scientific mentality. Had Sherborne admitted women, Christopher would have been the stuff of every girl’s dreams. Serendipitously, he was the stuff of Alan’s.

Like a modern-day high school student, haplessly swept away by that striking face, Alan rearranged his class schedule so they could more often be together, and frequently joined Christopher in the library for revision.

Christopher Morcom

By the hand, Christopher was guiding Alan through the labyrinth of their institution. Whereas Alan felt Sherborne was tying him down, as if he were a sailor fixed to a sinking ship, Christopher navigated the institution successfully, securing a plethora of scholarships and awards. His self-confidence and gift of speech allowed the older to say things from which the younger would shy away. 

There was a place for Alan at Sherborne, it seemed, and it was wherever Christopher happened to be.

And so, when Christopher died suddenly in February of 1930, three years after the two had met, one needn’t describe Alan’s grief. In a letter to his mother, Alan, waxing sentimental, wrote:

“I feel sure that I shall meet Morcom again somewhere and that there will be some work for us to do together, as I believed there was for us to do here. Now that I am left to do it alone I must not let him down but put as much energy into it, if not as much interest as if he were still here. If I succeed, I shall be more fit to enjoy his company than I am now.”

Alan, per Sherborne’s mission, had been introduced to the complexities of life.

King’s College
Unlike his public school, King’s College was conducive to Turing’s brand of unfettered thought. Said John Maynard Keynes, who had provided an endowment for the University: “We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom, experience and self-control to do so successfully.” It was the school’s most “dangerous characteristic.”

Turing at King's College

In the same decade Keynes transformed modern economic thought, Turing transformed ideas on computability. It took him a terse 17 words: “It is possible,” he wrote, “to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence.”

 “Turing Machines,” as they were termed, are the conceptual equivalent of modern day computers. Imagine a small device which is fed a narrow strip of paper. The paper is subdivided into “squares” and within each square is printed a small symbol. One at a time, the machine reads each symbol, interprets some predefined instruction, and performs it. Such an instruction might change the machine’s configuration, command the machine to skip forward or backward, or write new instructions.

Today, we might understand the device as a computer, the symbols as a program, and the paper as a compact disk on which said program is stored.

But what elevated Turing from mere genius to the level of Einstein was his ability to define both the reaches and limits of “computability.”

Any Turing Machine, he found, no matter how simple, could simulate the process of any other Turing Machine, no matter how complex, so long as it had sufficient memory. The implication: unimaginably complex tasks could be performed on the simplest of machines.

And yet there remained a  bold line pass which no computer could go. It is known as the ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM (or the “halting problem”), and is still taught in modern computer science courses.

Consider three strips of paper. On the first is stored Program One, on the second, Program Two, and on the third, the input needed for Program Two to run. Program Two can do some arbitrary task, but Program’s One’s job is to determine whether Program Two will ever finish running -- or “halt” -- on the given input.

Turing proved that, due to a contradiction in the underlying logic of  computability, it was impossible for Program One to exist.

It’s one of the more intriguing findings in computer science: In the same paper, Turing not only expanded the idea of computability, he  simultaneously confirmed that no program could ascertain whether another was doing its job correctly.

Life’s paradoxes are always the most perplexing.

His later years
Reading through his personal documents and biographies, there’s little evidence to suggest that many were aware of Turing’s homosexuality. It is unclear whether Christopher Morcom knew, and Joan Clarke, a close friend and one-time fiancé of his, had most likely deduced it before Turing informed her and called off the engagement.

Such secrecy was borne out of necessity. For nearly 100 years homosexual acts had been illegal in England. Under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, men could be imprisoned for up to two years for “gross indecency” with another man either “in public or in private.” Like most laws, “gross indecency” was comparatively ambiguous, with one exception: it could not be construed to include sodomy. That, the law made clear, was a separate and more heinous crime.

Therefore, any thoughts as to why, after years of secrecy, Turing felt compelled to risk his livelihood can only remain speculation.

It was 1952 when, like a spool of thread, his life became unwound. Outside a movie theater in Manchester, Turing met Arnold Murray, a man some years younger than he. The two would later go on a lunch date and Murray would twice visit Turing’s home -- the second time spending the night.

It was not a romance meant to last. Some time afterward, Murray broke into Turing’s house while he was away. During questioning by the police,  Turing admitted to the nature of his relationship with Murray.

It is entirely possible that he feared Murray would tell the police if he didn’t. Just as plausible is that Turing, less than six months removed from 40, simply found himself incapable of continuing his heterosexual charade.

Regardless, he was given two options, either he would be imprisoned or forced into a hormonal treatment of synthetic estrogen, the equivalent of chemical castration. He chose the latter.

Two years later, on June 7^th 1954, a month shy of his 42^nd birthday, Turing committed suicide via cyanide poisoning. He was discovered by his housekeeper the next day.

100 years on
Today, a century to the date of Mr. Turing’s birthday, homosexuality is now permissible in England, and Prime Minister David Cameron is on record in support of same-sex marriage. His remarks deserves to be reprinted in full, sans interruption.

“I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn't matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we're consulting on legalizing gay marriage.

“And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it's about equality, but it's also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.”

Wherever they are, whatever they’re working on, Christopher and Alan are surely glad, the latter more than fit to enjoy the former’s company.

Yesterday, The Washington Post published an article describing the role of Bain Capital in the contentious issue of outsourcing. Says, the article "Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India." Such specialization occurred during Mr.

Romney's tenure at Bain. Read more from The Washington Post

Obama Administration's Drone Death Figures Don't Add Up

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, June 18, 2012, 4:12 p.m.

Last month, a "senior administration official" said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the "single digits." But last year "U.S. officials" said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.

Both claims can't be true.

A centerpiece of President Obama's national security strategy, drones strikes in Pakistan are credited by the administration with crippling Al Qaeda but criticized by human rights groups and others for being conducted in secret and killing civilians. The underlying facts are often in dispute and claims about how many people died and who they were vary widely.

So we decided to narrow it down to just one issue: have the administration's own claims been consistent?

We collected claims by the administration about deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and compared each one not to local reports but rather to other administration claims. The numbers sometimes do not add up. (Check out our interactive graphic to explore the claims.)

Even setting aside the discrepancy between official and outside estimates of civilian deaths, our analysis shows that the administration's own figures quoted over the years raise questions about their credibility.

There have been 307 American drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a New America Foundation count. Just 44 occurred during the Bush administration. President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones to attack suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other groups in Pakistan's remote northwest region.

Obama officials generally do not comment by name on the drone strikes in Pakistan, but they frequently talk about it to reporters (including us) on condition of anonymity. Often those anonymously sourced comments have come in response to outside tallies of civilian deaths from drone attacks, which are generally much higher than the administration's own figures.

The outright contradiction we noted above comes from two claims made about a year apart:

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* May 29, 2012 The New York Times reports that, according to a senior Obama administration official, the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under president Obama is in the "single digits."

As we also show in our interactive graphic, other anonymous administration claims about civilian deaths are possible but imply conclusions that seem improbable.

Consider:

* April 26, 2010 The Washington Post quotes an "internal CIA accounting" saying that "just over 20 civilians" have been killed by drones in Pakistan since January 2009.

* Aug. 11, 2011 The New York Times reports that CIA officers claim zero civilians were killed since May 2010

* Aug. 12, 2011 CNN quoted a U.S. official saying there were 50 civilians killed over the years in drone strikes in Pakistan.

If this set of claims is assumed to be accurate, it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration 2014 when the drone program was still in its infancy. As we've noted, in the entire Bush administration, there were 44 strikes. In the Obama administration through Aug. 12, 2011, there were 222. So according to this set of claims more civilians died in just 44 strikes under Bush than did in 222 strikes under Obama. (Again, the graphic is helpful to assess the administration assertions.)

Consider also these three claims, which imply two lengthy periods when zero or almost zero civilians were killed in drone strikes:

* September 10, 2010 Newsweek quotes a government estimate that "about 30" civilians were killed since the beginning of 2008.

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* July 15, 2011 Reuters quotes a source familiar with the drone program as saying "about 30" civilians were killed since July 2008.

It's possible that all these claims are true. But if they are, it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.

The administration has rejected in the strongest terms outside claims of a high civilian toll from the drone attacks.

Those outside estimates also vary widely. A count by Bill Roggio, editor of the website the Long War Journal, which bases its estimates on news reports, puts the number of civilian killed in Pakistan at 138. The New America Foundation estimates that, based on press reports, between 293 and 471 civilians have been killed in the attacks. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which draws on a wider array of sources including researchers and lawyers in Pakistan, puts the number of civilians killed at between 482 and 832. The authors of the various estimates all emphasize that their counts are imperfect.

There are likely multiple reasons for the varying counts of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan. The attacks are executed remotely in often inaccessible regions. And there's the question of who U.S. officials are counting as civilians. A story last month in the New York Times reported that President Obama adopted a policy that "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants."

There are also ongoing debates in the humanitarian law community about who the U.S. may legitimately target with drone strikes and how the CIA is applying the principle of proportionality 2014 which holds that attacks that might cause civilian deaths must be proportional to the level of military advantage anticipated.

In a rare public comment on drone strikes, President Obama told an online town hall in January that the drones had not caused "a huge number of civilian casualties."

When giving their own figures on civilian deaths, administration officials are often countering local reports. In March 2011, for example, Pakistanis including the country's army chief accused a U.S. drone strike of hitting a peaceful meeting of tribal elders, killing around 40 people. An unnamed U.S. official rejected the accusations, telling the AP: "There's every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands."

Unnamed U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times last year that "they are confident they know who has been killed because they watch each strike on video and gather intelligence in the aftermath, observing funerals for the dead and eavesdropping on conversations about the strikes."

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said during a visit to Pakistan this month that there should be investigation of killings of civilians by drones and that victims should be compensated. The U.S. has given compensation to victims of airstrikes in Afghanistan but there are no reports of victims of drone strikes in Pakistan being compensated.

Since the various administration statements over the years were almost all quoted anonymously, it's impossible to go back to the officials in question to ask them about contradictions.

Asked about the apparent contradictions, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told ProPublica: "[W]e simply do not comment on alleged drone strikes."

Additional reporting by Cora Currier.

On: Radical feminism -- The girls who cried wolf

by: Joshua Howell

Since its genesis and beyond, the predominant complaint of feminism has been a matter of reductionism. A female teacher needlessly snaps at a male student? A girlfriend says something illogical? Forget professionalism and maturity; think nothing of miscommunication and frustrated vagaries. No, they’re women, emotional and unhinged. This is to be expected.  

But while such instances exemplify extant sexism, pervasive and subtle, worrying that these qualities lead to intellectual laziness is not frivolous but imperative. Increasingly, feminists seem radicalized, reducing the complexity of male and female interaction to patriarchal social constructs that often don’t mirror reality. With an accelerating frequency, we see the aggrandizement of the hazardous belief that anytime any man does anything to make any woman feel in any way uncomfortable, we needn’t consider a lack of professionalism or maturity, there was no miscommunication or frustrated vagary. It was sexism, pervasive and subtle. It is to be expected.

Life, of course, is not so simple, and feminists, attuned to such reductionism from centuries of persecution, should rediscover the need to find it in themselves.

Consider, as a small example, the recent mandate which would have forced religious institutions to provide birth control to women as part of their healthcare plans. Was the reaction against such a mandate, as many feminists have suggested, an instance of sexism, a repeal of women’s rights?

Hardly. This was little more than the latest rehashing of a question which, nearly alone, has been the bread and butter of political philosophy: If governments exist, in part, to compel the citizenry to do things it isn't otherwise inclined to do, is there some limiting principle? Where is the line between necessity and tyranny?

Feminists didn’t respond by answering these legitimate fears of government overreach – nor was a coherent, sensible rebuttal particularly difficult to find. Instead, having no sensitivity for those being compelled to do something they found morally unconscionable, feminists declared there was a War on Women. Most of the country promptly, and justifiably, tuned out.

As another example of feminist distraction, take Jack Welch. At a Women in the Economy forum earlier this year, Mr. Welch commented: “Surely there are [sexist] attitudes out there, and a company has a job to foster an atmosphere. But let’s just talk about what happens in some of this atmosphere. We started, at work, a women’s forum. We got up to 500 people in the women’s forum. The best of the women would come to me and say: ‘I don’t want to be in this forum! I don’t want to be in a special group! I’m not in the victim’s unit! I am a star! I want to be compared with the best of your best! I don’t want to be over here!’ Great women,” he passionately concluded, “get upset about going into the victim’s unit!”

Mr. Welch then went on to speak about the necessity of role models and celebrations – especially for women and minorities.

Fervid feminists were (predictably) outraged. Other women were (predictably) in agreement with Mr. Welch. The latter sensibly recognized that Mr. Welch wasn’t saying that women don’t deserve higher roles in business, nor was he arguing that these forums weren’t necessary (the fact his company has them is testament to that fact). No, what Mr. Welch was articulating, from a plethora of personal and business experience, was the tendency for the best women in his company to not take part in women’s forums.

This is controversial? This is ignominy?  

This is not sexism; this is funny.

Feminists once focused their attention on matters of educational disparities, domestic violence and pay equity. But now that women earn more Bachelor degrees, Masters degrees and Ph.Ds than men; now that they have been frustrated by a legal system with no inherent bias against women, but an inherent bias for defendants; now that the lack of pay equity is more an issue of women choosing to have children rather than patriarchy, feminists seem set on easier prey:

In essay form, they cavil (and expect others to cavil) about the concept of the “friendzone,” its quiet misogyny, its clear implication of entitlement.

And if you disagree? If you feel compelled to resist reductionism and note that situations involving “friendzoning” are often matters best understood in terms of professionalism, maturity, miscommunications and frustrated vagaries? If (heaven forefend!) you’re a women and you disagree?

Well, that only shows how pervasive and subtle sexism really is.

Small wonder only 29 percent of women classify themselves as feminists. Alas, it is to be expected.

On: The American uninsured

A new report from Gallup tells of a small decrease in the number of uninsured 18- to 25-year-olds during the past three years. At the time of President Obama's inauguration, the figure stood at 27.5 percent. Now it rests at 23 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of uninsured 26- to 64-year-olds has increased  from 17.8 percent to 19.6 percent over the same time frame.

Read more from Gallup.

On: Gay Marriage and Free Speech in England

England, a much more progressive country than the United States, seems set to take the final plunge and legalize gay marriage. Said Prime Minister David Cameron, " I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative."

Read more from the Economist -- Gay Marriage in England: http://www.economist.com/node/21556253

And yet despite their progressiveness, England also seems much more restrictive on freedom of speech.
Once more, from the Economist -- Diversity and Speech: http://www.economist.com/node/21556292

On: First world problems -- Concerning the public conduct and character of American discourse

by: Joshua Howell

Mayor Booker on Meet the Press

Two weeks ago, galvanized by what he perceived as a lack of focus on important issues, Newark Mayor Cory Booker took to Meet Press to bemoan the state of American discourse. Said the popular Democrat, “This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues.”

Ho hum. Mr. Booker is but one in a string of recent commentators to criticize the supposed increasing toxicity of American debate. The Obama surrogate would rather talk about tax cuts, discretionary spending and other facets of President Obama’s record.

Of course, after realizing his political faux pas, Mr. Booker quickly (and nauseatingly?) reversed his position: “Let me be clear,” he said, “Mitt Romney has made his business record a center piece of his campaign. He’s talked about himself as a job creator, and therefore, it is reasonable -- and in fact I encourage it -- for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it. I have no problem with that. In fact, I believe that Mitt Romney, in many ways, is not being completely honest with his role and his record, even while a business person, and is shaping it to serve his political interest, not necessarily including all the facts of his time [at Bain].”

(Question: Is it humorous, hypocritical or both for Mr. Booker to flip-flop as if he were a tossed coin? First questioning Mitt Romney’s role at Bain goes too far and now the former governor is dishonest? Pick a gear and stay in it.)

Sure American discourse occasionally crosses the line -- both Rush Limbaugh labeling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and Democrats declaring a GOP “War on Women” come to mind -- but mourning this overabundance of political commentary seems equivalent to criticizing Chick-fil-a for being closed on Sundays. Yes it’s bothersome, but ultimately it’s a first world problem only the privileged have time to decry. All told, what would Chen Guangcheng have sacrificed to obtain such decadence in his native China?

American discourse isn’t becoming increasingly toxic; while no less energetic, it’s increasingly more politically correct and tuned out. It’s as if it were a bombastic John Williams’ score with the volume turned down.

Consider America’s first reelection campaign between incumbent John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson. In a widely circulated pamphlet titled “Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States,” Alexander Hamilton lambasted President Adams by calling him “far less able in the practice, than in the theory of politics.”

Mr. Hamilton claimed President Adams had an “extreme egotism of the temper;” was sick with “imagination sublimated and eccentric;” and “propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment, nor to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct.” These defects were to be compounded with President Adams’ “unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every object.”

Is a steel-worker calling Governor Romney a "vampire" an equitable form of character assassination?

The KKK featured in an LBJ ad.

Fast-forward to the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson election. Compare Mr. Obama’s “inappropriate” One Chance video to Johnson’s now (in)famous ad in which a young, innocent little girl is killed via nuclear explosion. Contrast the Democrats’ attempt to tie Donald Trump like an albatross around the neck of Mitt Romney, to the LBJ campaign ad which said: “‘We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism and all the isms of the whole world,’ so said Robert Creel of the  Alabama Ku Klux Klan. He also said: ‘I like Barry Goldwater, he needs our help!’”

When Lady Bird Johnson campaigned in the South for her husband, she frequently had to delay her speeches while she waited for chants of “Lyndon Johnson is a communist, Johnson is a Nigger-lover!” to die down. Would Michelle Obama be treated similarly?

Fellow journalists, commentators and columnists, America is perfectly fine. Until such time as President Obama releases a video in which a little girl is destroyed by some weapon of mass destruction, until such time as he is deemed a “f*gg*t lover” because of his support for same-sex marriage, cease and desist with the moralizing.

It is, in a word, nauseating. 

The Best Watchdog Journalism on Obama's National Security Policies

by Blair Hickman and Cora Currier ProPublica, June 1, 2012, 3:45 p.m.

Inspired by The New York Times' expose on Obama's "secret 2018kill list,'" we collected some of the best pieces of watchdog journalism on Obama's national security policies. For a good introduction, and to see how they've evolved since Bush, see our timeline.

One of our resident national security experts, Dafna Linzer, helped curate this list. If we missed any, please let us know by emailing MuckReads@ProPublica.org.

ON OBAMA'S WAR ON TERROR

Getting Bin Laden, New Yorker, August 2011

Twenty-three Navy SEALs, one Pakistani-American translator and a dog named Cairo: Nicholas Schmidle's gripping narrative brings to life the night they killed Bin Laden, as well as the hunt that led to the end of the man Obama had dubbed a top national security priority. ProPublica reporter Dafna Linzer also recommended this Time article (paywalled) as a seminal piece on the hunt for Bin Laden.

Secret 2018Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will, New York Times, May 2012

Obama's hands-on counterterrorism record means that he, in effect, is "personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda." But some officials criticize his tactics 2013 like a formula for counting civilian deaths that may significantly lower the actual numbers.

ON DRONES

Inside the Killing Machine, Newsweek, February 2011

In 2011, at the time of this article's writing, the American public knew the military used drones to kill suspected terrorists. But the formal process of deciding who should be hunted and killed had never been reported 2013 until Tara Mckelvey snagged an exclusive interview with a man at the CIA who approved these "lethal operations."

The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret, Rolling Stone, April 2012In war, soldiers used to have to point a gun at the enemy to kill. Today, they simply have to push a button from a station on their base, what some say is like playing a video games. This piece is one of the most in-depth looks we found on the rise of the U.S. drone program, and how it's changed the way we fight. And for everything else you ever wanted to know about drones, see our guide.

CIA Shifts Focus to Killing Targets, The Washington Post, August 2011

The number of employees at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center has ballooned from 300 in 2001 to about 2,000 in 2011, representing a fundamental shift in the agency's focus: from gathering intelligence to operations meant to locate, target and capture or kill.

ON CYBERSECURITY:

Cyber-Intruder Sparks Massive Federal Response--And Debate Over Dealing With Threats, Washington Post, December 2011

The military discovered in 2008 that malware, borne on somebody's thumb-drive, had infiltrated their classified network. The resulting investigation set off a battle over the rules of engagement for cyber warfare, finally restricting the military to defending its own networks and not crossing into civilian or other federal agencies' turf.

ON INTELLIGENCE:

Top Secret America: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control, Washington Post, July 2010

Since September 11th, the United States' intelligence operations have ballooned. An estimated 854,000 people hold top-security clearances, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington D.C., and comprise part of a network so sprawling that it's sometimes hard for top officials to keep track of it all.

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say), Wired, March 2012

The National Security Agency's under-construction data center in Utah (dubbed, aptly, the Utah Data Center) will cost $2 billion and sprawl over 1 million square feet, more than five times the size of the U.S. Capitol. When it's done, slated for September 2013, it will be "the country's biggest spy center." And part of its duties may be to monitor your personal data.

ON PROSECUTING LEAKS:

The Secret Sharer, New Yorker, May 2011

Though Obama trumpeted the value of whistle-blowers when he entered office, he's also launched an aggressive crackdown on government leaks. The case of Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, is a prime example of the tension between whistle-blowers who reveal wrongdoing and leaks that jeopardize national security.

Sealing Loose Lips: Obama's Crackdown on Leaks, ProPublica, March 2012

Our timeline of leak prosecutions under the Espionage Act 2013 and how they've picked up steam under Obama.

ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFGHANISTAN

In Yemen, U.S. Airstrikes Breed Anger, and Sympathy for Al Qaeda, Washington Post, May 2012

The Obama administration has escalated airstrikes in Yemen against high-ranking al Qaeda leaders, but is it an effective military strategy in the long run? This article describes the backlash in Yemen against civilian deaths and what's seen as an incursion on their sovereignty.

U.S. Not Reporting All Afghan Attacks, The Associated Press, April 2012

An A.P. exclusive found the military doesn't report non-fatal attacks on coalition troops by Afghan policemen and soldiers, even though the incidents are an important indication of the level of mistrust between Afghan and coalition troops. A military spokesman says this is due to differences in policy between coalition governments on reporting attacks.

2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate, New York Times, June 2011

Obama rejected the views of top Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers when he decided to continue America's role in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization 2013 a legal, but "extraordinarily rare" move. According to Dafna, this is one of the most significant national security stories of Obama's presidency, having "more to do with war power and executive authority than anything else."

Congratulations, you finished! Now test your knowledge by taking our quiz: Obama vs. Bush on National Security.