Tag Archives: church

Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

by Jeff Peterson Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Earlier this year, CIA Director John Brennan accused staffers from the Senate Intelligence Committee of removing classified material from the CIA office where they were researching a report on the agency’s use of torture during the Bush administration. This turned out to be very poor tradecraft on Brennan’s part, since it implicitly revealed the fact that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers even though it wasn’t supposed to. Brennan tried to mount a suitably aggressive counterattack to Senate outrage over this, but today it all came crashing down:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program, an internal CIA investigation has determined.

….The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed Feinstein and the committee’s vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, on the CIA inspector general’s findings and apologized to them during a meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boyd said.

I find that my reaction remains one of schadenfreude. Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Intelligence Committee seem to be mostly unconcerned with the omnipresent surveillance apparatus constructed by the US intelligence committee, so it’s hard to feel very sorry for them when they learn that this apparatus is also sometimes directed at Senate staffers. If this affair had persuaded a few senators that maybe our intelligence chiefs are less than totally honest about what they do, it might have done some good. But it doesn’t seem to have done that. With only a few exceptions, they’re outraged when the CIA spies on them, but that’s about it.

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Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

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Quote of the Day: Vulture Fund Suing Argentina Is Just a Lonely Defender of the Free Market

by RodgerLundie Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here is fellow hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb defending Paul Singer, the billionaire owner of the vulture fund that successfully forced Argentina into default because it was insisting on full payment for old Argentine bonds:

He doesn’t get into fights for the sake of fighting. He believes deeply in the rule of law and that free markets and free societies depend on enforcing it.

You betcha. Anytime a Wall Street tycoon is supposedly fighting for deep principles, hold onto your wallet. They don’t become billionaires because of their deep commitment to fair play and the unfettered operation of capital markets. However, there’s also this:

The big question, however, is whether Argentina will ever pay Elliott what it wants. If the firm fails to collect, that would underscore the limits of its legal strategy. There is no international bankruptcy court for sovereign debt that can help resolve the matter. Argentina may use the next few months to try to devise ways to evade the New York court. Debt market experts, however, do not see how any such schemes could avoid using global firms that would not want to fall afoul of Judge Griesa’s ruling.

This is an interesting point. Normally, Argentina would just continue to pay the holders of its “exchange” bonds and refuse to pay the vulture funds that refused to go along with the terms of its bankruptcy and restructuring a decade ago. Elliott and the other vultures would be out of luck. The problem is that Argentina’s payments are funneled through a US bank, and the judge in the case has forced US banks to halt payments.

But in all the articles I’ve read about this, I’ve never really seen an adequate explanation of why it’s so impossible to avoid funneling payments through the US. I get that Argentina can no longer use an American US bank. Also, I assume, they can’t use a big global bank that does business in the US. But surely there are mid-size banks that do no business in the US that could act as payment agents? If dollars were the issue, they could pay off in euros instead. I don’t know what it would take legally for Argentina to switch either payment agents or the denominations of its bonds, but it doesn’t sound impossible. And yet apparently it is. Why?

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Quote of the Day: Vulture Fund Suing Argentina Is Just a Lonely Defender of the Free Market

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Lucy and the Great 10% Myth

by KelleePulido Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Andrew Sullivan reminds me of something I was curious about the other day. He quotes Jeffrey Kluger, who writes in Time that he’s annoyed with the movie Lucy because it perpetuates the ridiculous myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains. I sympathize. I was sort of annoyed just by seeing that in the trailer. But it did make me wonder: where did this urban legend come from, anyway? Wikipedia to the rescue:

One possible origin is the reserve energy theories by Harvard psychologists William James and Boris Sidis…William James told audiences that people only meet a fraction of their full mental potential….In 1936, American writer Lowell Thomas summarized this idea….”Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability.”

In the 1970s, psychologist and educator Georgi Lozanov, proposed the teaching method of suggestopedia believing “that we might be using only five to ten percent of our mental capacity.”….According to a related origin story, the 10% myth most likely arose from a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of neurological research in the late 19th century or early 20th century. For example, the functions of many brain regions (especially in the cerebral cortex) are complex enough that the effects of damage are subtle, leading early neurologists to wonder what these regions did.

Huh. So we don’t really know for sure. That’s disappointing but not surprising. It’s remarkable how often we don’t know where stuff like this comes from.

As for its continuing popular resonance, I have a theory of my own. There are an awful lot of people out there with remarkable—and apparently innate—mental abilities. They can multiply enormous numbers in their heads. They can remember every day of their lives. That kind of thing. And yet, they operate normally in other regards. The fact that they’ve stored, say, distinct memories of the past 15,000 days of their lives doesn’t seem to take up any cerebral space or energy that they needed for anything else. So surely all that storage and retrieval capacity is just sitting around unused in the rest of us?

No, it’s not. But the idea resonates because freakish mental skills seem to be so much further out on the bell curve than freakish physical skills. It makes the whole 10 percent thing seem pretty plausible. And that’s why it sticks around.

POSTSCRIPT: Or does it? I mean, has anyone tried to find out how many people still believe this myth? For all I know, everyone has long been aware that it’s not true. We need a poll!

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Lucy and the Great 10% Myth

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An Awful Lot of People Think Obama Is Bored With Being President

by JanisDitter Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

You have to give the Fox News polling operation credit for mixing things up in an interesting way sometimes. At first glance, their latest poll is just a collection of all the usual leading questions about Obama busting up the Constitution, Obama being a loser compared to Vladimir Putin, Obama being incompetent, etc. etc. This is mostly yawn-worthy stuff intended as fodder for their anchors. All that’s missing is a question about whether Obama plays too much golf. But then there’s this:

Who else would think to ask a question like that? But it’s kind of fascinating, really. And what’s most fascinating is that it’s barely partisan at all. In virtually every group, something like 40 percent of the respondents think Obama is bored with the whole presidenting thing. That goes for Democrats as well as Republicans; for blacks as well as whites; for the rich as well as the poor; and for liberals as well as conservatives. It’s not quite a majority in any group—though it’s pretty close among Hispanics and senior citizens—but an awful lot of people sure are convinced that Obama has already checked out of the Oval Office. He might want to do something about that.

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An Awful Lot of People Think Obama Is Bored With Being President

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The Forgotten Murder Trial of the NRA’s Top Lawyer

by Joleen4622 Posted on July 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Robert J. Dowlut is the NRA’s top lawyer, a “human encyclopedia” on the subject of state gun laws and the man responsible for much of the gun lobby’s success in a series of court cases that have steadily eroded restrictions on gun ownership in the United States. “He is a really reliable and exhaustive source for legal input on the issue,” says one admirer.

But 50 years ago, according to a pile of court documents MoJo’s Dave Gilson uncovered for “The NRA’s Murder Mystery,” a teenage Dowlut had a rather different relationship with guns:

Shortly before dark on the evening of April 17, 1963, Robert J. Dowlut went looking for a gun inside the city cemetery in South Bend, Indiana. Making his way through the headstones, he stopped in front of the abandoned Studebaker family mausoleum. He knelt by the front right corner of the blocky gray monument and lifted a stone from the damp ground. Then, as one of the two police detectives accompanying him later testified, the 17-year-old “used his hands and did some digging.” He unearthed a revolver and ammunition. As Dowlut would later tell a judge, the detectives then took the gun, “jammed it in my hand,” and photographed him. “They were real happy.”

Two days earlier, a woman named Anna Marie Yocum had been murdered in her South Bend home. An autopsy determined she had been shot three times, once through the chest and twice in the back, likely at close range as she’d either fled or fallen down the stairs from her apartment. Two .45-caliber bullets had pierced her heart.

….The following morning, Dowlut was charged with first-degree murder. A year and a half later, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. Before the judge handed down a life sentence, he asked the defendant if there was any reason why he shouldn’t be put away. Dowlut replied, “I am not guilty.” A day later, the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City registered Dowlut, now 19, as prisoner number 33848.

Less than six years later, Robert Dowlut would be a free man—his murder conviction thrown out by the Indiana Supreme Court because of a flawed police investigation. The court ordered a new trial, but one never took place. Dowlut would return to the Army and go on to earn college and law degrees. Then he would embark on a career that put him at the epicenter of the movement to transform America’s gun laws.

Click the link to read the whole story.

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The Forgotten Murder Trial of the NRA’s Top Lawyer

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Quote of the Day: "The Press Loves to Cover Her Hard"

by RozellaOFarrell Posted on July 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Dave Weigel notes that the media is still obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s comment about being “dead broke” when she and Bill left the White House:

They’ve got to be sick of this by now. Maggie Haberman had it nailed three weeks ago: Hillary Clinton was “still raw over the partisan wars that hindered her husband’s legacy and left the couple with millions of dollars in legal debt.” Her answer, as she told Ramos, was accurate, and it’s baffling to her that this became a “gaffe.” As she continued her tour, HarperCollins was printing up copies of Clinton, Inc., a tell-all by the Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper. On Page 18, Halper recalls that in 2001 “the Clintons were broke, owing a fortune in legal fees from the many investigations into their personal lives,” and that they had to be loaned $1.3 by Terry McAuliffe. Until just a month ago, that was how even conservatives remembered the Clintons’ departure from the White House.

What’s the deal with this? Sure, Hillary could have responded to questions about her wealth a little better. She’s not the natural politician Bill is. But really, there’s not much else here. So why does it continue to be news a full month later? Uber-insider Mark Halperin explains:

She has a lot of positive attributes that are currently just being overwhelmed by all this negative coverage. And it’s going to keep going. The momentum—there’s, there’s— The press loves to cover her hard.

This comes courtesy of Bob Somerby, who’s been following this ever since the initial flood-the-zone coverage of Hillary’s “gaffe” in the Washington Post. Somerby tells the rest of the story:

Multimillionaire TV stars asked if voters would support a person as wealthy as Clinton. In response to Clinton’s answers, some of the nation’s most famous pundits launched their famous “gaffe culture.”

The Washington Post even launched a front-page jihad concerning the size of Clinton’s speaking fees. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd assailed Clinton for her “rapacious” behavior and her “wanton acquisitiveness,” which she was said to be passing along to her daughter.

….Halperin made a starting suggestion—he suggested the press corps’ coverage of a major candidate could determine the outcome of our next White House campaign.

Plainly, that’s what happened in Campaign 2000, when a twenty-month war against Candidate Gore let George Bush reach the White House. In the main, that war was conducted by the mainstream press corps, not by the RNC.

The press corps’ poisonous war against Gore let Bush reach the White House. But it’s a basic law of the guild: Major journalists never suggest that the behavior of their own guild could have such startling effects.

The media’s preoccupation with the Clintons’ wealth won’t last forever. Even for the Washington press corps, it’s too transparently silly to pretend that it’s somehow surprising that a presidential candidate is wealthy. But Somerby and Halperin are right: it’s a sign of things to come. The press has never liked Hillary, and she’s never liked them, and that’s that. If she decides to run for president, this is going to be one of her biggest problems—or maybe her biggest, period. She’s just never going to catch a break.

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Quote of the Day: "The Press Loves to Cover Her Hard"

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Should Doctors Ask You About Your Guns?

by MargareKorth Posted on July 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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In Florida, it’s illegal for a physician to ask you if you own a gun. Pediatrician Aaron Carroll thinks this is ridiculous:

When pediatricians ask you about using car seats, they’re trying to prevent injuries. When they ask you about how your baby sleeps, they’re trying to prevent injuries. When they ask you about using bike helmets, they’re trying to prevent injuries. And when they ask you about guns, they’re trying to prevent injuries, too.

….When I ask patients and parents whether they own guns, if they tell me they do, I immediately follow up with questions about how they are stored. I want to make sure they’re kept apart from ammunition. I want to make sure they’re in a locked box, preferably in a place out of reach of children. Doing so minimizes the risks to children. That’s my goal.

When we, as physicians, ask you if you drink or smoke, it’s not so that we can judge you. It’s so we can discuss health risks with you. When we ask you about domestic violence, it’s not to act like police detectives. It’s so that we can help you make better choices for your health. When we ask you about what you eat or whether you exercise, it’s so we can help you live better and longer. We’re doctors; it’s our job.

I don’t often disagree with Carroll, but I think I might here. Not about Florida’s law: that really is ridiculous. The state may have an interest in making sure doctors don’t give demonstrably bad advice, but it certainly doesn’t have a legitimate interest in preventing them from asking simple, fact-oriented question. This represents prior restraint on non-commercial speech, and as such it’s beyond the pale.

That said, should physicians ask about gun ownership? I’m not so sure. Carroll says he only wants to discuss “health risks,” and that’s appropriate. Doctors have expertise in the area of human health: that is, the biology and physiology of the human body. But that’s not the same thing as the safety of the human body.

Not only do doctors have no special professional expertise in this area, but it’s simply too wide open. Does your car have air bags? Do you ever jaywalk? Have you checked your electrical outlets lately? Is your house built to withstand an earthquake? Do you know how to work safely on your roof? Do you make sure to watch your kids in the pool? Are you planning any trips to eastern Ukraine?

I could go on forever in this vein. These are things unrelated to human physiology. If you define them all as health risks, you’re simply defining every aspect of life as a health risk, and therefore your doctor’s concern. That goes too far, and I don’t blame people for sometimes reacting badly to it. There are certainly gray areas here, but generally speaking, if I want advice about my health, I’ll see a doctor. If I want advice about gun safety, I’ll talk to a gun pro. I think it might be best to leave it this way.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My view is almost certainly colored by the fact that I’m all but phobic about doctors. I hate visiting them, I hate talking to them, and I hate the fact that they never seem to really, truly respond to what I tell them. I would be very annoyed if a doctor suddenly veered off and started quizzing me about general safety issues.

I’m keenly aware that this is an obvious overreaction on my part, and I do my best to restrain it when I’m actually talking to a doctor. Nonetheless, it’s there.

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Should Doctors Ask You About Your Guns?

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Color Me Skeptical About a Guaranteed Income for All

by HumbertKvy Posted on July 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Should we have a guaranteed minimum income in the United States? Something nice and simple that would replace nearly our entire current alphabet soup of means-tested welfare programs?1 Dylan Matthews posts about this frequently, and others chime in occasionally as well. It even has some support among conservatives.

I am not so sure, myself. Keith Humphreys makes a couple of good points here, but I want to step back a bit. At a bare minimum, I need answers to four questions:

  1. How big would it be?
  2. Is it a family benefit or a personal benefit?
  3. Is it for adults only, or would children also qualify for a benefit?
  4. How would it phase out with income?

There are many more details to work out, all of them important, but I don’t think you can even begin to talk about this without answers to these four basic questions.

I’m skeptical about the whole thing because I don’t think you can make the details work out. Nor do I think that it’s politically feasible either now or in the future.2 What’s more, I’m always skeptical of ideas like this that haven’t been adopted by any other country, even the ones with far more liberal welfare states than ours. I figure there must be a reason for this.

But I’m happy to be proven wrong. Just give me a policy skeleton to work with. What exactly are we talking about here?

1Proponents usually (but not always) make exceptions for education and health care, which are too variable and too expensive to be handled by a simple minimum income.

2Perhaps it’s feasible in our far-distant robot future. Maybe even necessary. For now, though, let’s stick to the medium-term future.

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Color Me Skeptical About a Guaranteed Income for All

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Friday Cat Blogging – 25 July 2014

by RobertaRosenbau Posted on July 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Say hello to Mozart, the latest addition to the Drum family menagerie. One of my mother’s neighbors found him wandering around, so naturally he ended up at my mother’s house. He’s a very sociable cat and appears to be very pleased with his choice of home. To celebrate his appearance, today you get two catblogging photos: one that shows his whole body and one that’s a close-up of his face. Enjoy.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 25 July 2014

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Doctors Aren’t Really Very Smart About Buying Generics

by MapleValle Posted on July 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Sarah Kliff takes a look today at our use of generic drugs. Long story short, it’s surprising how few of us save money by buying generic pain medicine instead of name brands (Advil, Tylenol, Bayer, etc.). Why? In most cases, I suppose it’s just ignorance: people don’t realize that the “store brand” is genuinely identical to the name brand. In other cases it might be something else. I buy generic ibuprofen, and it usually comes in the form of small brown pills. One day, however, I went to to a different drug store to stock up, and it turned out that their generic ibuprofen came in the form of small orange pills. Marian used these for a while, but really hated them. Eventually she cracked, and insisted on buying a new bottle from our usual drug store. Sometimes little things can make all the difference.

Anyway. The main point of Kliff’s post is that generics are good, and as evidence of this she puts up a chart showing what doctors themselves buy. Here’s an excerpt from the chart:

It’s true that doctors mostly favor generics when it comes to basic pain relievers. But frankly, what’s amazing to me is how little they prefer them. For chrissake, they prefer generic aspirin by only ten percentage points. That means they buy the name brand about 45 percent of the time. Why would a doctor do this? Granted, the extra few dollars is probably no big deal to them, but why waste it anyway? Certainly not because of ignorance. Are their spouses doing the buying? Or what?

And why the active preference for name-brand rubbing alcohol, of all things? It’s hard to think of anything more generic than that. What’s the deal here?

As for Alka-Seltzer, the dislike of generics is so huge that there just has to be some real difference here. But what?

In any case, I suspect this might have some real importance beyond the question of doctors spending a few dollars they don’t have to. If physicians aren’t really sold on generics in their own personal lives, does this mean they’re not really sold on them in their professional lives too? Do they tend to prescribe name brands when they shouldn’t? And how much does this cost all of us?

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Doctors Aren’t Really Very Smart About Buying Generics

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