Couldn't have said it better myself

From the Corner

He seemed off his game somewhat, and was perhaps trapped by a desire to seem reasonable on the issue, which Kerry exploited to the full.

Simply put, reason and conservative ideology don't mix.

More from the NYTimes

What's wrong with this picture?

The John Hughes school of International Relations

I simply don't understand this administration's theory of dealing with bad actors on the international stage. Negotiations, as they seem to see them, are a reward for good behavior. Leaving aside the question of what negotiations are required among allies (and 'good' actors), it seems to reflect a theory of International Relations drawn from high school popularity hierarchies. It's as if the US is the head cheerleader and Syria is the souzaphone player in the marching band and simply paying attention to him should make his heart go all a-flutter.

That said, there are situations in which opening negotiations with a party does validate that party's status. Such situations, however, are more along the lines of choosing sides between parties to a contestation over legitimate internal authority, or the recognition of sovereignty. Bashar Assad's regime may be illegitimate by liberal democratic standards, but I doubt anyone would erneastly contest the sovereignty of the nation of Syria, nor Assad's control over vital state resources such as its military.

It's an old saw, really, but you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.

Editing the NYTimes

President Leaky Pants

So, it turns out the prez may himself be a leaker of classified information. The pitch he'll make is as obvious as a high-arcing chicago-style softball: it wasn't classified once I leaked it because I have authority to de-classify material without review, without challenge. That may be so, but classification and de-classification are official acts, and as such require documentation. So, did the administration file the de-classification docs on the material the prez leaked? It's a simple question. If they didn't, it's still classified, and he broke the law. On a matter of war.

The Youngblood Rule of Politics

Big fat kudos to Russ Feingold for standing on the right side of an issue that scares the stones out of most politicians.

Personally, I couldn't think of an easier decision to make than, as a citizen, to support gay marriage. I do see the political downside (ie, America has lots of people who don't want to lose that warm fuzzy feeling of superiority they get from being in a miserable loveless marriage). However, Atrios gets it right when he says we're already the party of the gays, so we might as well start acting like it. I call it the Youngblood Rule of Politics: if you're going to be perceived as supporting a just cause, you might as well actually support it. The terms comes from a really terrible 80s movie starring Rob Lowe as a minor league hockey-player. The love story in a nutshell:

• Hockey Player meets Girl


• Girl turns out to be Coach's Daughter


• Hockey Player decides to keep it in his pants to avoid pissing off coach


• Coach sees HP talking to girl


• Coach benches HP


• Hockey Player decides that since he's being punished for it anyway, he might as well get some.

A Lobbyist is Born

Delay makes his move.

Easy Answers

George Will, ever willing to show a little conservative leg now and then, asks this surprisingly easily answered question:

Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest -- must be bad?

This is meant to seem like a tricky question, inspiring all sorts of trade-off considerations about longer summers and shorter winters and such. In fact, the answer is that climate change would be a catastrophic human tragedy, not because we prefer warmer or cooler climates, but because world population patterns are based largely on regional weather patterns. Any substantial shift in these patterns will disrupt whatever balance exists between climate and population, causing widespread human suffering.

Taking No for an Answer

This is probably the most unsurprising news I've read in a while. But despite the fact that this study upholds rational logic over superstition, the supporters of remote prayer won't be discouraged. That's, after all, a central tenet of faith: one must continue to believe in spite of the evidence. This quote demonstrates what happens when scientific processes are placed in the hands of people with non-scientific agendas:

The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

This is bullshit, pure and simple. If one assumes that the anonymous prayer cohort has an effect on the study, one must recognize that such prayers affect all subjects equally, thus washing itself out of the analysis. The prayer of family and friends should amount to a small margin of additional prayer for a given individual, compared with the numbers accumulated through participating congregations. Unless these objections are based on the presumption that the prayer of loved-ones is somehow worth more than the prayer of strangers, this uncontrolled independent variable should affect the data as nothing more than a bit of statistical noise. If one does assume that friends and family prayers are weighted more heavily, there's no reason to believe that the pattern of family prayer matches the pattern of remote prayer, which is demonstrated not to correlate with dependent outcome disparities, except to cause additional anxiety.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that nobody mentioned one of the more common "proofs" of divine intervention: God works in mysterious ways. Mightn't He answer prayer with further suffering, offering His subject greater opportunity to demonstrate his grace? Just ask Job.

Eventually, I predict, the remote prayer argument will devolve into something along the lines of the following standard religion as mock science logic:

Assumption: God works in mysterious ways
Hypothesis: Thing A will occur in situation B
Observation: Thing A does not happen
Conclusion: Since A did not happen, we have a mystery, thus proving the existence and intervention of God.

Um, guys?

Are Kurtz and Kaus really this ignorant? They're asking why polling organizations only compare their new polls to their own old polls, I think. But it's hard to be sure because it's such brain-dead basic reason: polls differ in their methodology. Therefore, two polls by different organizations that span the same time period may yield different results for reasons other than natural fluctuation within the margin of error. They really will reach for every last inch of lift to put under Dear Leader's shoes.