Author Archives: CathleeWRR

Senate’s Iran Bill Probably Not a Bad Idea After All

by CathleeWRR Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama has said that he’s willing to sign the latest Senate version of a bill that gives Congress a say in any nuclear deal with Iran. I’m glad to hear to that because, oddly enough, I’m pretty much in favor of the current bill. Here’s why:

Congress should be involved in major arms treaties, regardless of whether my preferred party happens to control Congress.
The current bill requires Congress to vote on a final deal within 30 days. No one expects a treaty to get implemented any sooner than that anyway, so it’s not much of a roadblock.
If Congress disapproves the deal, the president can issue a veto. It would then take two-thirds of the Senate to override the veto and kill the treaty.

I don’t see much of a downside to this. If Obama can’t get even one-third of the Senate to go along with his Iran deal, then it probably doesn’t deserve to be approved. And the threat of a suspicious and recalcitrant Congress going over the treaty language word by word might actually motivate Iran to agree to more straightforward language in the final document. It certainly shouldn’t doom the negotiations or anything like that.

A lot of this is political theater, and a lot of it is pure Israel-lobby muscle at work. Still, I suspect it does little harm and might even do a little good. And setting out the parameters of the Senate vote beforehand is probably all for the good. This isn’t a bad bill.

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Senate’s Iran Bill Probably Not a Bad Idea After All

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The Problem With the Ferguson, Ray Rice, and UVA Rape Stories

by CathleeWRR Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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What do these three recent stories have in common?

Ferguson
Ray Rice
The University of Virginia gang rape

One thing they have in common is that I’ve written little or nothing about them. But they share two other attributes as well. Here they are:

  1. All three have spotlighted problems that are critically important and absolutely deserving of broader attention. Ferguson is all about racial disparities, police killings of unarmed civilians, the militarization of law enforcement, and other equally deserving issues. Ray Rice was about the scourge of domestic violence and its tacit acceptance within the culture of professional sports. The UVA rape story was about sexual assault on university campuses, fueled by alcohol, fraternities, and official lack of concern.
  2. However, the specific incidents in all three cases are, to say the least, less than ideal as poster children for these issues. We will never know for sure what happened to Michael Brown, but as evidence has dribbled out, the simple liberal narrative of a gentle teenager being gunned down while trying to surrender has seemed less and less credible. In the Ray Rice case, it’s clear that Rice did something terrible—but as it turns out, the evidence suggests that the criminal justice system treated him fairly reasonably and that the NFL’s actions were mostly a craven reaction to public opinion. Finally, in the UVA rape scandal, a number of credible questions have been raised about whether Rolling Stone‘s account of what happened was fair—or, in the worst case, even true.

If you’re curious about why I’ve been relatively quiet about these stories, that’s why. All of them spotlight issues that I think are well worth spotlighting, and I don’t really relish the thought of doing or writing anything that might dilute their power. These are all things that I want people to pay more attention to, not less, and if you want the world to change you have to be willing to exploit the events you have, not the events you wish you had.

And yet, the specific fact patterns of each specific case are genuinely problematic. To pretend otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest.

I’ve dealt with this by not saying much. That’s not exactly an act of moral courage, is it? And yet, with the facts as hazy as they are, I’m just not sure what else to do. Perhaps the answer is to stop worrying about it: Just accept that we live in a messy world and sometimes the events that have the most impact aren’t clear cut. But you use the events anyway in an effort to grab public attention and improve the world a bit, even if that sometimes means a few individuals end up being treated unfairly in some way. Perhaps.

I don’t know—though I’m struck that three such similar events have occurred in just the past few months. But I’m still not sure whether I should have reacted differently. I just don’t know.

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The Problem With the Ferguson, Ray Rice, and UVA Rape Stories

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