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FISA Judge Reggie Walton Is Skeptical that NSA’s Phone Record Program Has Much Value

by 7GrittonMaine146 Posted on September 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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As we all know, the NSA collects records of every telephone call made in the United States. Even if the rules governing the use of this information are highly restrictive, this still represents an enormous intrusion on the privacy rights of American citizens—something that FISA judge Reggie Walton acknowledged in a court opinion written in 2009. No court would ordinarily allow such bulk collection, he wrote, but the program had nonetheless been authorized due to the government’s insistence that it was “vital to the security of the United States.”

But is it? Plenty of people have wondered about this, especially since the NSA has never provided any public confirmation of a terrorism case in which the call record database played a key role. In fact, in a statement earlier this year, NSA director Keith Alexander was only willing to say that NSA’s surveillance programs had made a “contribution” to “our understanding” of 50 terrorist plots over the past dozen years. That’s pretty cagey, and it’s cagier still when you realize that he’s referring to multiple programs. He didn’t address the value of the phone record program by itself at all.

So what about it? Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, who have seen classified briefings of all 50 plots, said in June that the call record program appeared to have “played little or no role” in most of these cases. Today, with the release of Judge Walton’s 2009 opinion, we learn that he has plenty of doubts too:

This was written in 2009, and as of that point the government could point to virtually nothing positive that had come out of the phone record program. The best it could point to was three (!) preliminary (!) investigations opened by the FBI.

It’s crazy that we permit this. The phone record program is (a) expensive, (b) prone to abuse, (3) a massive intrusion on privacy rights, and (d) not very successful. And that’s not all. It’s also the program that would be the easiest to shut down with virtually no ill effects. All we have to do is require phone companies to keep their call data for five years and require the NSA to get an individual warrant whenever they want to do a search of the database.

Would this be less convenient for the NSA? Sure. But for far less than we’re spending on the current program, NSA and the phone companies could almost certainly put together procedures and staffing that would provide close to the same level of service NSA gets now. We’d once again have true oversight, and since FISA judges are available 24 hours a day, even in an emergency there would be little risk of losing time simply because a warrant is required.

It’s a mystery to me why this hasn’t at least gotten serious discussion. Of all the NSA programs at the heart of the current controversies, this seems like the easiest call to make.

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FISA Judge Reggie Walton Is Skeptical that NSA’s Phone Record Program Has Much Value

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Japan played down nuclear troubles as it fought for Olympic hosting rights

by hucmzfbl Posted on September 9, 2013

Japan played down nuclear troubles as it fought for Olympic hosting rights

By

François Péladeau

A country struggling to cope with an ongoing nuclear disaster might not seem the obvious choice to host the Olympics.

But Japan on Sunday was awarded the right to host the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

How did Japan’s leaders win the support of the notoriously corrupt International Olympic Committee? In part by playing down the seriousness of the Fukushima disaster’s lingering effects. From The Guardian on Friday:

Hiroshi Hase, an MP and former Olympic wrestler, told reporters in the Argentinian capital that contamination from Fukushima was “not even an issue” for the health of people in Tokyo, located 150 miles south of Fukushima Daiichi.

With the IOC decision imminent, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s nuclear regulation authority, criticised Tepco for inflating fears around the world by releasing misleading data about the water leaks. …

Tanaka said reports that the water leaks represented another catastrophe at the plant had been overblown, adding that the quantity of radiation leaking into the Pacific Ocean would have “no meaningful effect” on the environment.

From wire reports published in The Japan Times on Saturday:

Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose, at his final news conference before the selection of the host city for the 2020 Summer Olympics, blasted media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear crisis and said people should not believe scare stories. …

“So much rumor has been conveyed by the media.” …

The government whitewashing was not appreciated by Japanese citizens whose lives have been upturned by the nuclear meltdown and ensuing troubles:

Residents in Fukushima Prefecture have reacted angrily to remarks by Tokyo’s Olympic bid chief in the city’s final pitch to host the 2020 Games, saying he made light of their plight.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Congress to the Rescue on Syria? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

by abram Posted on September 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Sometimes history happens at the moment when no one is looking. On weekends in late August, the president of the United States ought to be playing golf or loafing at Camp David, not making headlines. Yet Barack Obama chose Labor Day weekend to unveil arguably the most consequential foreign policy shift of his presidency.

In an announcement that surprised virtually everyone, the president told his countrymen and the world that he was putting on hold the much anticipated US attack against Syria. Obama hadn’t, he assured us, changed his mind about the need and justification for punishing the Syrian government for its probable use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. In fact, only days before administration officials had been claiming that, if necessary, the US would “go it alone” in punishing Bashar al-Assad’s regime for its bad behavior. Now, however, Obama announced that, as the chief executive of “the world’s oldest constitutional democracy,” he had decided to seek Congressional authorization before proceeding.

Obama thereby brought to a screeching halt a process extending back over six decades in which successive inhabitants of the Oval Office had arrogated to themselves (or had thrust upon them) ever wider prerogatives in deciding when and against whom the United States should wage war. Here was one point on which every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush had agreed: on matters related to national security, the authority of the commander-in-chief has no fixed limits. When it comes to keeping the country safe and securing its vital interests, presidents can do pretty much whatever they see fit.

Here, by no means incidentally, lies the ultimate the source of the stature and prestige that defines the imperial presidency and thereby shapes (or distorts) the American political system. Sure, the quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are classy, but what really endowed the postwar war presidency with its singular aura were the missiles, bombers, and carrier battle groups that responded to the commands of one man alone. What’s the bully pulpit in comparison to having the 82nd Airborne and SEAL Team Six at your beck and call?

Now, in effect, Obama was saying to Congress: I’m keen to launch a war of choice. But first I want you guys to okay it. In politics, where voluntarily forfeiting power is an unnatural act, Obama’s invitation qualifies as beyond unusual. Whatever the calculations behind his move, its effect rates somewhere between unprecedented and positively bizarre—the heir to imperial prerogatives acting, well, decidedly unimperial.

Obama is a constitutional lawyer, of course, and it’s pleasant to imagine that he acted out of due regard for what Article 1, Section 8, of that document plainly states, namely that “the Congress shall have power… to declare war.” Take his explanation at face value and the president’s decision ought to earn plaudits from strict constructionists across the land. The Federalist Society should offer Obama an honorary lifetime membership.

Of course, seasoned political observers, understandably steeped in cynicism, dismissed the president’s professed rationale out of hand and immediately began speculating about his actual motivation. The most popular explanation was this: having painted himself into a corner, Obama was trying to lure members of the legislative branch into joining him there. Rather than a belated conversion experience, the president’s literal reading of the Constitution actually amounted to a sneaky political ruse.

After all, the president had gotten himself into a pickle by declaring back in August 2012 that any use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad would cross a supposedly game-changing “red line.” When the Syrians (apparently) called his bluff, Obama found himself facing uniformly unattractive military options that ranged from the patently risky—joining forces with the militants intent on toppling Assad—to the patently pointless—firing a “shot across the bow” of the Syrian ship of state.

Meanwhile, the broader American public, awakening from its summertime snooze, was demonstrating remarkably little enthusiasm for yet another armed intervention in the Middle East. Making matters worse still, US military leaders and many members of Congress, Republican and Democratic alike, were expressing serious reservations or actual opposition. Press reports even cited leaks by unnamed officials who characterized the intelligence linking Assad to the chemical attacks as no “slam dunk,” a painful reminder of how bogus information had paved the way for the disastrous and unnecessary Iraq War. For the White House, even a hint that Obama in 2013 might be replaying the Bush scenario of 2003 was anathema.

The president also discovered that recruiting allies to join him in this venture was proving a hard sell. It wasn’t just the Arab League’s refusal to give an administration strike against Syria its seal of approval, although that was bad enough. Jordan’s King Abdullah, America’s “closest ally in the Arab world,” publicly announced that he favored talking to Syria rather than bombing it. As for Iraq, that previous beneficiary of American liberation, its government was refusing even to allow US forces access to its airspace. Ingrates!

For Obama, the last straw may have come when America’s most reliable (not to say subservient) European partner refused to enlist in yet another crusade to advance the cause of peace, freedom, and human rights in the Middle East. With memories of Tony and George W. apparently eclipsing those of Winston and Franklin, the British Parliament rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to position the United Kingdom alongside the United States. Parliament’s vote dashed Obama’s hopes of forging a coalition of two and so investing a war of choice against Syria with at least a modicum of legitimacy.

When it comes to actual military action, only France still entertains the possibility of making common cause with the United States. Yet the number of Americans taking assurance from this prospect approximates the number who know that Bernard-Henri Lévy isn’t a celebrity chef.

John F. Kennedy once remarked that defeat is an orphan. Here was a war bereft of parents even before it had begun.

Whether or Not to Approve the War for the Greater Middle East

Still, whether high-minded constitutional considerations or diabolically clever political machinations motivated the president may matter less than what happens next. Obama lobbed the ball into Congress’s end of the court. What remains to be seen is how the House and the Senate, just now coming back into session, will respond.

At least two possibilities exist, one with implications that could prove profound and the second holding the promise of being vastly entertaining.

On the one hand, Obama has implicitly opened the door for a Great Debate regarding the trajectory of US policy in the Middle East. Although a week or ten days from now the Senate and House of Representatives will likely be voting to approve or reject some version of an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), at stake is much more than the question of what to do about Syria. The real issue—Americans should hope that the forthcoming congressional debate makes this explicit—concerns the advisability of continuing to rely on military might as the preferred means of advancing US interests in this part of the world.

Appreciating the actual stakes requires putting the present crisis in a broader context. Herewith an abbreviated history lesson.

Back in 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would employ any means necessary to prevent a hostile power from gaining control of the Persian Gulf. In retrospect, it’s clear enough that the promulgation of the so-called Carter Doctrine amounted to a de facto presidential “declaration” of war (even if Carter himself did not consciously intend to commit the United States to perpetual armed conflict in the region). Certainly, what followed was a never-ending sequence of wars and war-like episodes. Although the Congress never formally endorsed Carter’s declaration, it tacitly acceded to all that his commitment subsequently entailed.

Relatively modest in its initial formulation, the Carter Doctrine quickly metastasized. Geographically, it grew far beyond the bounds of the Persian Gulf, eventually encompassing virtually all of the Islamic world. Washington’s own ambitions in the region also soared. Rather than merely preventing a hostile power from achieving dominance in the Gulf, the United States was soon seeking to achieve dominance itself. Dominance—that is, shaping the course of events to Washington’s liking—was said to hold the key to maintaining stability, ensuring access to the world’s most important energy reserves, checking the spread of Islamic radicalism, combating terrorism, fostering Israel’s security, and promoting American values. Through the adroit use of military might, dominance actually seemed plausible. (So at least Washington persuaded itself.)

What this meant in practice was the wholesale militarization of US policy toward the Greater Middle East in a period in which Washington’s infatuation with military power was reaching its zenith. As the Cold War wound down, the national security apparatus shifted its focus from defending Germany’s Fulda Gap to projecting military power throughout the Islamic world. In practical terms, this shift found expression in the creation of Central Command (CENTCOM), reconfigured forces, and an eternal round of contingency planning, war plans, and military exercises in the region. To lay the basis for the actual commitment of troops, the Pentagon established military bases, stockpiled material in forward locations, and negotiated transit rights. It also courted and armed proxies. In essence, the Carter Doctrine provided the Pentagon (along with various US intelligence agencies) with a rationale for honing and then exercising new capabilities.

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Congress to the Rescue on Syria? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

by Olesiacei Posted on September 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Among artists who defy totalitarian regimes, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is both magnificently and horrifically situated to convey how art can be used to confront oppression.

Since serving a one-year prison sentence in 2010 for attempting to make a film in support of the pro-reform Green movement, the 40-year-old has lived a paradoxical existence. On the one hand, he is a renowned director, the recipient of two top prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and a Hamburg fellowship that allowed him and his family to escape the country. On the other hand, he is “a man whose head is chopped off from his body,” as he put it recently at the 40th Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

“My body may have been in Hamburg for the last few years,” said Rasoulof, “but my mind and heart—everything I think and want to feel—are in Iran. One thing I’m really afraid of is to be disconnected in that way for a long time. It’s the most fearful prospect I can think of.”

Rasoulof was in Telluride for the US premiere of his clandestinely made “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” his fifth feature. It could easily land him back Tehran’s notorious Evin prison if he were to return home. The film is based on the 1988-1998 Chain Murders, when a series (or chain) of more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens were killed by government operatives for criticizing the Islamic Republic.

Mohammad Rasoulof

“Manuscripts Don’t Burn” is Rasoulof’s most realistic and directly political film so far, a significant departure from more allegorical and metaphorical movies like “Iron Island” (2005) and “The White Meadows” (2009). The story centers on a poet and novelist in Tehran who, in their quest to publish a book about one grizzly incident of the Chain Murders, are terrorized by a fellow intellectual turned state security henchman. The story is also about the working class purveyors of government terror, particularly a blank-faced man named Khosrow, whose day job as a murderer of dissident artists allows him to pay his ailing son’s hospital bills.

Rasoulof explains that the character of Khosrow was inspired by an experience in prison. Rasoulof’s habit is to get up every morning and drink a cool glass of water. That ritual ceased in prison. But one day, he woke and found his burning hot cell intolerable. Rasoulof rang the bell for the guard, asked for water, and was rebuked. When the next guard came on shift, he tried again. Not only did the second guard bring him a glass of water, he did so every time he arrived for work at the prison.

“I came to see that those working as the prison guards and executioners in this system are human, too,” Rasoulof said. “They don’t have horns. They aren’t animals. There must be some reason why they do what they do.”

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

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Fracking fights spread to Europe

by kk0qhbx Posted on September 4, 2013

Fracking fights spread to Europe

By

Sheila

Fracking protestors in Balcombe, England.

European leaders have been peering across the pond at the American fracking boom with envy, watching as the U.S. gives itself a powerful economic edge by trashing its environment to extract natural gas and oil. Now politicians and business leaders from England, Germany, and Holland to Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria have started to push “us too” energy policies.

But many European citizens are not so frack-happy. Some are taking to the streets in rage.

In England, furor has been centered in the bucolic West Sussex village of Balcombe, population 2,000, where a single drilling rig tapping an exploratory well has attracted an encampment of anti-fracking protestors. Dozens have been arrested, including a member of Parliament representing the Green Party. From The Washington Post:

The worries have not only rattled Balcombe’s many well-heeled residents, who have expressed their concerns with characteristic restraint — over tea, at parish council meetings and with knit-ins — but also brought out a louder army of environmental activists. They recently descended on this bucolic retreat wearing the mask of Guy Fawkes, the Briton who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605, shouting slogans and telling horror stories about the United States, where they believe fracking has caused earthquakes, water pollution and the rapid industrialization of areas that were formerly pristine. …

“It’s normally such a quiet road,” said Paula Magee, a 49-year-old from Balcombe who has stopped drinking local water for fear of the impact of drilling on the water supply. Nearly every day, she makes the half-mile trek from the village, down the normally quiet road, past the long line of police vans here to keep the peace, across the sea of colorful-if-tatty tents to the entrance of a 72-foot-tall drilling rig.

Not all Britons are opposed to fracking, but support seems as tepid as a forgotten cup of tea. The Post cites a YouGov poll that found 41 percent thought their country should frack its gas reserves, but only 25 percent thought it would be a good idea to frack in their own areas.

From The New York Times:

[Prime Minister David Cameron’s] vision of bountiful energy supplies from subterranean shale rock plays into the delicate politics of persuading his Conservative followers in the well-padded southeast of the country to accept his argument that, as he put it, “the huge benefits of shale gas outweigh any very minor changes to the landscape.”

And his advocacy of the new technology, which opponents say risks poisoning groundwater and damaging the environment in other ways, has provoked a collision of faith and economics. Clerics in the northwest — seen as an abundant source of shale gas — have called on congregants to answer to their God and “engage in biblical and theological discussion about their responsibility as stewards of the earth.”

German brewers, meanwhile, are warning that fracking could threaten the nation’s treasured libations. From a May story by Reuters:

Under the “Reinheitsgebot”, or German purity law, brewers have to produce beer using only malt, hops, yeast and water.

“The water has to be pure and more than half Germany’s brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government’s current planned legislation on fracking,” said a Brauer-Bund [beer association] spokesman.

“You cannot be sure that the water won’t be polluted by chemicals so we have urged the government to carry out more research before it goes ahead with a fracking law,” he added.

Protests appear to have have been more muted in Eastern Europe, although some farmers have threatened to use Molotov cocktails against an Exxon operation. It might not be public opposition that kills fracking there, though — doubts are growing over whether the region can produce as much gas from its shale as had been promised, and oil companies are unhappy about red tape. From a July Bloomberg story:

[T]he prospect of a European shale revolution is in doubt before it has begun. Exxon said in June 2012 it was pulling out of Poland after its first wells produced disappointing results, which was followed by Talisman [Energy Inc.]. On May 7, Marathon Oil Corp. said it was quitting after failing to find commercially viable resources and it would seek to dispose of its 11 licenses. …

Deposits in Poland have turned out to be deeper and harder to exploit than those in the U.S. due to geology and poor roads to remote eastern regions. Estimated reserves in the European country were cut to 9 trillion cubic feet last year by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, from 44 trillion in 2011.

“Big companies like Shell and Chevron could become afraid to invest,” said Volodymyr Omelchenko, head of energy analysis at the Razumkov research group in Kiev and former director of shipments at Ukraine’s NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. “Ukraine has an enormous potential but realization will be difficult because the legal system is governed by old Soviet traditions.”

Last week, one test well in Poland was reported to be producing a promising amount of natural gas, though still not enough for a commercial operation, Reuters reports.

France, in contrast, has said “non, merci” to fracking. “We have to have our eyes wide open about what is going on in the U.S.,” said French Environmental and Energy Minister Delphine Batho earlier this year. “The reality is that the cost of producing gas doesn’t take into account considerable environmental damage.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Fracking fights spread to Europe

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Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math

by Roger Frost Posted on September 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Everybody knows that our political views can sometimes get in the way of thinking clearly. But perhaps we don’t realize how bad the problem actually is. According to a new psychology paper, our political passions can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills. More specifically, the study finds that people who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.

The study, by Yale law professor Dan Kahan and his colleagues, has an ingenious design. At the outset, 1,111 study participants were asked about their political views and also asked a series of questions designed to gauge their “numeracy,” that is, their mathematical reasoning ability. Participants were then asked to solve a fairly difficult problem that involved interpreting the results of a (fake) scientific study. But here was the trick: While the fake study data that they were supposed to assess remained the same, sometimes the study was described as measuring the effectiveness of a “new cream for treating skin rashes.” But in other cases, the study was described as involving the effectiveness of “a law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public.”

The result? Survey respondents performed wildly differently on what was in essence the same basic problem, simply depending upon whether they had been told that it involved guns or whether they had been told that it involved a new skin cream. What’s more, it turns out that highly numerate liberals and conservatives were even more—not less—susceptible to letting politics skew their reasoning than were those with less mathematical ability.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves—to fully grasp the Enlightenment-destroying nature of these results, we first need to explore the tricky problem that the study presented in a little bit more detail.

Let’s start with the “skin cream” version of this brain twister. You can peruse the image below to see exactly what research subjects read (and try out your own skill at solving it), or skip on for a brief explanation:

Full text of one version of the study’s “skin cream” problem. (Click here to enlarge.) Dan Kahan

As you can see above, the survey respondents were presented with a fictive study purporting to assess the effectiveness of a new skin cream, and informed at the outset that “new treatments often work but sometimes make rashes worse,” and that “even when treatments don’t work, skin rashes sometimes get better and sometimes get worse on their own.” They were then presented with a table of experimental results, and asked whether the data showed that the new skin cream “is likely to make the skin condition better or worse.”

So do the data suggest that the skin cream works? The correct answer in the scenario above is actually that patients who used the skin cream were “more likely to get worse than those who didn’t.” That’s because the ratio of those who saw their rash improve to those whose rash got worse is roughly 3:1 in the “skin cream” group, but roughly 5:1 in the control group—which means that if you want your rash to get better, you are better off not using the skin cream at all. (For half of study subjects asked to solve the skin cream problem, the data were reversed and presented in such a way that they did actually suggest that the skin cream works.)

This is no easy problem for most people to solve: Across all conditions of the study, 59 percent of respondents got the answer wrong. That is, in significant part, because trying to intuit the right answer by quickly comparing two numbers will lead you astray; you have to take the time to compute the ratios.

Not surprisingly, Kahan’s study found that the more numerate you are, the more likely you are to get the answer to this “skin cream” problem right. Moreover, it found no substantial difference between highly numerate Democrats and highly numerate Republicans in this regard. The better members of both political groups were at math, the better they were at solving the skin cream problem.

But now take the same basic study design and data, and simply label it differently. Rather than reading about a skin cream study, half of Kahan’s research subjects were asked to determine the effectiveness of laws “banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public.” Accordingly, these respondents were presented not with data about rashes and whether they got better or worse, but rather with data about cities that had or hadn’t passed concealed carry bans, and whether crime in these cities had or had not decreased.

Overall, then, study respondents were presented with one of four possible scenarios, depicted below with the correct answer in bold:

The four problem scenarios from the study (each respondent received just one of these). Dan Kahan

So how did people fare on the handgun version of the problem? They performed quite differently than on the skin cream version, and strong political patterns emerged in the results—especially among people who are good at mathematical reasoning. Most strikingly, highly numerate liberal Democrats did almost perfectly when the right answer was that the concealed weapons ban does indeed work to decrease crime (version C of the experiment)—an outcome that favors their pro-gun-control predilections. But they did much worse when the correct answer was that crime increases in cities that enact the ban (version D of the experiment).

The opposite was true for highly numerate conservative Republicans: They did just great when the right answer was that the ban didn’t work (version D), but poorly when the right answer was that it did (version C).

Here are the results overall, comparing subjects’ performances on the “skin cream” versions of the problem (above) and the “gun ban” versions of the problem (below), and relating this performance to their political affiliations and numeracy scores:

Full study results comparing subjects’ performance on the skin cream problem with their performance on the gun ban problem. Vertical axes plot response accuracy Horizontal axes show mathematical reasoning ability. Dan Kahan

For study author Kahan, these results are a fairly strong refutation of what is called the “deficit model” in the field of science and technology studies—the idea that if people just had more knowledge, or more reasoning ability, then they would be better able to come to consensus with scientists and experts on issues like climate change, evolution, the safety of vaccines, and pretty much anything else involving science or data (for instance, whether concealed weapons bans work). Kahan’s data suggest the opposite—that political biases skew our reasoning abilities, and this problem seems to be worse for people with advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy. “If the people who have the greatest capacities are the ones most prone to this, that’s reason to believe that the problem isn’t some kind of deficit in comprehension,” Kahan explained in an interview.

So what are smart, numerate liberals and conservatives actually doing in the gun control version of the study, leading them to give such disparate answers? It’s kind of tricky, but here’s what Kahan thinks is happening.

Our first instinct, in all versions of the study, is to leap instinctively to the wrong conclusion. If you just compare which number is bigger in the first column, for instance, you’ll be quickly led astray. But more numerate people, when they sense an apparently wrong answer that offends their political sensibilities, are both motivated and equipped to dig deeper, think harder, and even start performing some calculations—which in this case would have led to a more accurate response.

“If the wrong answer is contrary to their ideological positions, we hypothesize that that is going to create the incentive to scrutinize that information and figure out another way to understand it,” says Kahan. In other words, more numerate people perform better when identifying study results that support their views—but may have a big blind spot when it comes to identifying results that undermine those views.

What’s happening when highly numerate liberals and conservatives actually get it wrong? Either they’re intuiting an incorrect answer that is politically convenient and feels right to them, leading them to inquire no further—or else they’re stopping to calculate the correct answer, but then refusing to accept it and coming up with some elaborate reason why 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2 in this particular instance. (Kahan suspects it’s mostly the former, rather than the latter.)

The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume famously described reason as a “slave of the passions.” Today’s political scientists and political psychologists, like Kahan, are now affirming Hume’s statement with reams of new data. This new study is just one out of many in this respect; but it provides perhaps the most striking demonstration yet of just how motivated, just how biased, reasoning can be—especially about politics.

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Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math

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Immigration Reform: Dead or Alive?

by rakill23 Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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When Congress reconvenes in September, the immigration debate will pick up where it left off—that is, at a complete impasse. There is still broad, bipartisan support for comprehensive reform, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has refused to allow the bill passed by the Senate earlier this summer to come up for debate; instead, members of his caucus are pursuing piecemeal legislation that focuses primarily on border security. Meanwhile, the clock is running out. With a debt ceiling showdown looming this fall and the midterm elections fast approaching after that, it’s unclear whether the congressional calendar will allow enough time for any immigration legislation to advance before the current session of Congress expires.

Immigration reform advocates are publicly optimistic, but there’s plenty of cynicism among political observers. Last week, Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall declared reform dead and its proponents in denial that House Republicans will change their tune. Reformers should “forget the heroic measures to revive it,” he argued, and “get about telling the public who killed it and holding them accountable for their actions” in the midterm elections.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), has repeatedly said nothing will happen unless Boehner allows a vote on a broad path to citizenship for most of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. Reform advocates are looking to October, when the bipartisan Gang of Seven plans to unveil its long-delayed comprehensive reform bill in House. The introduction of the bill will force House members to go on the record supporting or opposing the comprehensive, Senate-style reform bill and may eventually lead Boehner to bow to pressure on a path to citizenship.

“There’s this sort of beltway conventional wisdom that we’re dead, but we’re optimistic,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, who responded to Marshall’s cynical take with an open letter touting the resolve of the immigration reform movement. “The Republicans have to do something or risk going out of business as a viable national party.”

Daniel Garza, a former Bush White House official who heads the Libre Initiative, an immigration reform group that approaches the topic from free-market perspective, doesn’t see a path to citizenship as an all-or-nothing proposition. “At minimum, what we want is legality,” he says. As a possible compromise with Democrats, some House Republicans have suggested a path to legalization that would allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country, but would not lead to citizenship. “We feel that at minimum, that provides certainty to the folks who are coming here unauthorized that they won’t be deported tomorrow, and we think that is significant enough to get behind what they’re going to be proposing in the House.”

“Republicans are for immigration reform, they’re just not for what the Democrats are proposing,” says Garza, who believes a path to citizenship will be limited to the something like the KIDS Act, which would only affect individuals brought to the country illegally when they were children. “Democrats have defined immigration reform as a path to citizenship,” he adds, but while “publicly they won’t tell you they would settle for legalization, I think secretly they would.”

Sharry dismisses that as “wishful thinking,” arguing that giving undocumented immigrants the ability to become permanent residents but not citizens would relegate them to a “permanent underclass.” This is a proposition, he says, Democrats will reject out of hand.

Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, is more cautious. “I think it’s a big assumption on both sides to say that under no circumstances would Democrats support, in the 11th hour, a program that didn’t include a direct path to citizenship,” she says. “But it’s also hard to imagine there would be much of a political win for Republicans if they’re supporting a second-class citizenship.”

For now, it’s a waiting game. “Republicans are going to have to make some really tough decisions, but ultimately they realize the demographic cliff they’re falling off of is only getting higher and their fall is only getter harder,” Kelley says.

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Immigration Reform: Dead or Alive?

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Internal Documents Reveal How the FBI Blew Fort Hood

by cuppyteen Posted on August 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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Our Yearlong Investigation Into the Program to Spy on America’s Muslim Communities


How the Bureau Enlists Foreign Regimes to Detain and Interrogate US Citizens


When Did Lefty Darling Brandon Darby Turn Government Informant?


Charts from Our Terror Trial Database


Watch an FBI Surveillance Video


Documents: FBI Spies and Suspects, in Their Own Words

Last Thursday, as the jury in the trial of Nidal Hasan was deliberating, outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared on CBS News and discussed a string of emails between the Fort Hood shooter and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Islamic cleric with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. The FBI had intercepted the messages starting almost a year before Hasan’s 2009 shooting rampage, and Mueller was asked whether “the bureau dropped the ball” by failing to act on this information. He didn’t flinch: “No, I think, given the context of the discussions and the situation that the agents and the analysts were looking at, they took appropriate steps.”

In the wake of the Fort Hood attacks, the exchanges between Awlaki and Hasan—who was convicted of murder on Friday—were the subject of intense speculation. But the public was given little information about these messages. While officials claimed that they were “fairly benign,” the FBI blocked then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s efforts to make them public as part of a two-year congressional investigation into Fort Hood. The military judge in the Hasan case also barred the prosecutor from presenting them, saying they would cause “unfair prejudice” and “undue delay.”

As it turns out, the FBI quietly released the emails in an unclassified report on the shooting, which was produced by an investigative commission headed by former FBI director William H. Webster last year. And, far from being “benign,” they offer a chilling glimpse into the psyche of an Islamic radical. The report also shows how badly the FBI bungled its Hasan investigation and suggests that the Army psychiatrist’s deadly rampage could have been prevented.

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Internal Documents Reveal How the FBI Blew Fort Hood

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Ask a FISA Court Judge!

by Margherit Posted on August 23, 2013

Mother Jones

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The FISA Court was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to oversee top-secret surveillance programs. Its opinions are classified, although the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released a rare, heavily redacted 2011 ruling striking down an NSA program that collected email data from American citizens and foreign nationals.

It also offers relationship advice.

Dear FISA Court Judge,

A coworker gave me and my husband a $25 certificate to the Cheesecake Factory as a wedding gift. It cost us $400 to feed her and her guest at our reception. Should I send it back and tell her she’s rude and cheap? Help, FISA Court Judge! —Dismayed in Des Moines.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Dismayed,

!!

Dear FISA Court Judge,

My husband and I have been married for 20 years but recently we hit a bit of a rough patch. I had an affair with my boss, and my husband missed the birth of our daughter to deliver a $3 million shipment of methamphetamine to a guy he knows from Chile. Also he’s dying of cancer. What should I do, FISA Court Judge? —Nervous in New Mexico.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Nervous,

I literally .

Dear FISA Court Judge,

Is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try to avoid a definition of insanity or derangement—I don’t mean he or she is Lenin or Napoleon Bonaparte—but could they just go crazy because they’ve had enough of their colony? You’re my only hope, FISA Court Judge! –Musing in Munich.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Musing,

puffins ; I hope that answers your question!

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Ask a FISA Court Judge!

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Ubiquitous Surveillance, Police Edition

by graptorm Posted on August 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the city of Rialto, about 50 miles from where I live, every police officer is now equipped with full-time videotape capability. The New York Times reports:

It is a warning that is transforming many encounters between residents and police in this sunbaked Southern California city: “You’re being videotaped.”….In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.

….“When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better,” Chief Farrar said. “And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.”

….William J. Bratton, who has led the police departments in New York and Los Angeles, said that if he were still a police chief, he would want cameras on his officers. “So much of what goes on in the field is ‘he-said-she-said,’ and the camera offers an objective perspective,” Mr. Bratton said. “Officers not familiar with the technology may see it as something harmful. But the irony is, officers actually tend to benefit. Very often, the officer’s version of events is the accurate version.”

I imagine that in the fairly near future, convictions will be all but impossible without videotape evidence. Likewise, complaints of police brutality will become almost prima facia credible if videotape of the incident mysteriously goes “missing.” All in all, this is probably a good thing. But I wonder if courts will eventually rule that all police videotape, like all 911 calls, are public record?

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Ubiquitous Surveillance, Police Edition

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