Saturday’s New York Times article, Anti-Abortion Billboards on Race Split Atlanta, takes an interesting approach to refereeing claims made in a dispute over the fact that African-Americans have a disproportionate share of all abortions performed. It begins:

Anti-abortion groups have erected scores of billboards here with an alarming message: “Black children are an endangered species.”

The groups responsible insist that they are not exaggerating, despite contrary federal data.

Later on, it refers to a website asserting that

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to reduce the population of blacks, an assertion that Planned Parenthood has disputed.

Well, Planned Parenthood would be apt to dispute that, wouldn’t it? Why not report on what Sanger actually wanted, instead of what PP says she wanted? It’s not hard to find sites like this one full of Sanger quotes.** If it turns out that Sanger did, as many claim, encourage abortion for the sake of racial eugenics, then a consistent level of scrutiny would make the article read:

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to reduce the population of blacks, an assertion that Planned Parenthood has disputed despite contrary evidence. . . .

_______
** You can fact-check the quotes through Project Gutenberg. E.g., in The Pivot of Civilization, I find no reference to human weeds or reckless breeders, but the quote about “human beings who never should have been born” is there:

The actual dangers can only be fully realized when we have acquired definite information concerning the financial and cultural cost of these classes to the community, when we become fully cognizant of the burden of the imbecile upon the whole human race; when we see the funds that should be available for human development, for scientific, artistic and philosophic research, being diverted annually, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to the care and segregation of men, women, and children who never should have been born. . . .

[snip]

We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.

And Sanger does seem to have a certain racial fixation. E.g.:

Dr. Austin Freeman has recently pointed out (3) some of the physiological, psychological, and racial effects of machinery upon the proletariat, the breeders of the world. Speaking for Great Britain, Dr. Freeman suggests that the omnipresence of machinery tends toward the production of large but inferior populations. Evidences of biological and racial degeneracy are apparent to this observer. . . . .

To be fair, she doesn’t specify WHICH populations’ inferiority is apparent to her. Maybe she meant upper-class white folk!

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman lays it out:

A couple of dozen countries already allow gays in uniform — including allies that have fought alongside our troops, such as Britain, Canada and Australia. Just as there is plenty of opposition in the U.S. ranks, there was plenty of opposition when they changed their policy.

In Canada, 45 percent of service members said they would not work with gay colleagues, and a majority of British soldiers and sailors rejected the idea. There were warnings that hordes of military personnel would quit and promising youngsters would refuse to enlist.

But when the new day arrived, it turned out to be a big, fat non-event. The Canadian government reported “no effect.“ The British government observed “a marked lack of reaction.“ An Australian veterans group that opposed admitting gays later admitted that the services “have not had a lot of difficulty in this area.“

Israel, being small, surrounded by hostile powers and obsessed with security, can’t afford to jeopardize its military strength for the sake of prissy ventures in political correctness. But its military not only accepts gays, it provides benefits to their same-sex partners, as it does with spouses. Has that policy sapped Israel’s military might? Its enemies don’t seem eager to test the proposition.

I think David Sirota has a minor point here but runs too far with it when he argues that modern technology will make movies from the 80s and 90s seem too dated:

do you really believe a Google-addicted kid in 2032 won’t find it absurd that Ray and Egon have to spend lots of time going to libraries to physically dig through old books to find out the history of Gozer the Gozerian? And despite Phil Connors reminiscing about drunk sex on a Caribbean beach, will that same kid in 2032 not laugh out loud when he realizes the entire plot of “Groundhog Day” relies on Phil not having access to Mapquest or GPS and therefore not being able to plot an alternate route out of Punxsutawney, Pa? . . .

Likewise, Vincent Gambini would have been thrown out of court in the first five minutes of “My Cousin Vinny” had the court been able to use today’s instant Internet databases (and not a phone call to a slow bureaucracy) to discover that he wasn’t a licensed lawyer.

But this is silly. Just because we have cell phones doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the painful missed meeting of “An Affair to Remember.“ Just because we’ve seen footage of modern warfare doesn’t mean we can’t understand why the ships’ captains in “Master and Commander” don’t fire Exocet missiles at
the enemy. Movies from the 80s and 90s are going to seem horribly dated by 2032, but not because of any advances in technology.

P.S. — There’s also the issue of selective willing suspension of disbelief. Once you accept the premise of a movie, you have to go all-in. You can’t watch a film like “Men in Black” and accept for the fun of it the premise of aliens living among us in the U.S., super-gee-whizmo ray guns, etc.—but then complain that the scene where Will Smith takes his entrance exam is unrealistic because it wouldn’t have involved the use of pencils. . . .

(Or to use his example, you can’t accept the premise of “Ghostbusters,“ Stay-Puft Marshmallow man and all, but then complain that the library scene is too far-fetched. . . .)

I find old movies dated by the dialogue and the social mores, not the rotary-dial phones. . .

The case for making health care more like phone service.

A nice point from Julian Sanchez about Citizens United: Critics of the court ruling, who believe they are on the side of democracy, which they consider glorious (at least when it produces Democratic presidents), believe that members of the public are such bovine idiots that a few corporate ads will brainwash the lot of them. But if that’s the case, then what’s so great about democratic elections?

From the comments:

Or as Robin Hanson put it, most of the arguments against giving corporations the right to political speech work even better as arguments against giving dumb people the right to vote.

Conservatives are fond of pointing out social decay in hotbeds of liberalism. Now David Sirota has turned the tables:

When the Tea Party movement’s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like the Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice - and the view isn’t pretty.

Thanks to the city’s rejection of tax increases - and, thus, depleted municipal revenues - the Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead ... recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools (and) museums will close for good; buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; (and) the city won’t pay for any street paving.“ Meanwhile, even with the Colorado Springs Gazette uncovering tent ghettos of newly homeless residents, the city’s social services are being reduced - all as fat cats aim to punish what remains of a middle class. This is what Reaganites have always meant when they’ve talked of a “shining city on a hill.“ They envision a dystopia whose anti-tax fires incinerate social fabric - a place like Colorado Springs that is starting to reek of economic death.

That’s a perspective Virginia’s General Assembly, which is trying to close a $4-billion budget gap, needs to hear. (And, to be fair, which it has heard already at some length.) There’s certainly a case against raising taxes, which now constitute the single biggest expense for a lot of households. But there’s also a case to be made for not cutting them too far.

Note to Drudge: The snowstorm smacking into these parts might turn out to be a monster, and could cause a lot of misery in places unused to such a pileup. But Virginia’s declaration of emergency is about as banner-worthy as the DNC chairman saying President Obama gave a good speech. It doesn’t matter if the speech was objectively good or not. And it doesn’t matter if the snowstorm is a foot of heavy wet stuff or a few random flakes. Virginia declares a state of emergency over a bad case of dandruff. . .

National Journal’s Stuart Taylor has some good thoughts on the treatment of accused enemy combatants:

[C]hampions of military commissions gloss over the fact that the panels have so far been something of an embarrassment, managing to convict only three men, two of whom have since been freed, in the eight years since Bush announced them.

Obama’s critics are also wrong to imply that suspects can be subjected to prolonged interrogation without Miranda warnings only if they are detained by the military.

But if Obama wants to fend off the soft-on-terrorism label, he will have to think less like a law professor and more like a war leader.

In fairness, Obama has already shown toughness as a war leader—and has enraged his friends on the left—by adopting and sometimes improving upon key Bush policies. These include prolonged detention of some suspected terrorists without trial, using military commissions to prosecute others, “rendition” of still others to allied countries, targeted Predator drone killings of suspected Taliban fighters, wide-ranging wiretaps, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the military buildup in Afghanistan.

But as the Abdulmutallab case shows, the Obama administration has sometimes so fetishized the law enforcement approach to terrorism as to seem almost indifferent to the need to extract information from captured terrorists, whose crimes are acts of war.

It’s time to end “Dont’ Ask Don’t Tell,“ says today’s column:

Discharges topped out at nearly 1,300 in 2001. But after 9/11, the number of gays and lesbians sent packing dropped, to 428 last year. Unit cohesion, recruitment quotas, and the warrior esprit of the war-fighter do not seem to have declined in tandem. . . .

Serving alongside a homosexual isn’t going to kill anybody. But codifying rank prejudice against homosexuals in federal statute is, like racial segregation, an affront to the guarantee of equal protection under law. It threatens the ideals embodied in the Constitution. If America’s men and women in uniform are willing to die for those ideals, then they can put up with a homosexual in the next bunk for the sake of them, too.

Danny Bloom, the gent who coined the term “crash blossoms,“ writes and calls to share the idea that “snailpapers” would make a good term for the print version of newspapers. He’s even penned a manifesto:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that while the Digital Age is upon us fast and furious, the print newspaper—hereafter dubbed the “snailpaper”—shall persevere as a good daily read, a fascinating look at the world around us and a valuable tool for understanding oped pundits and above the fold headlines. Sure, the dear snailpaper will also be seen as a useful tool for wrapping fish at the Fulton Fish Market or lining the bird cage in the den, but all kidding aside—har! har!—the daily snailpaper can hold its head high and be certain of its place in the culture.

While news migrates in pixels and bytes to the Internet at an exponential rate, piling breaking story upon breaking story and turning everyone and his mother into a 24/7 news freak and RSS aggregator, the plodding snailpaper will nevertheless remain the bedrock of analysis and insight, from sea to shining sea, delivered at a snail’s pace, yes, read at a snail’s pace, yes, and absorbed, word for word—on glorius printed paper! white newsprint reflecting inked letters!—at a snail’s pace, yes, as long as the Republic of Letters shall live.“

A lot of people are beginning to wonder if Washington’s pressure on Toyota isn’t some kind of vendetta against a business rival. What with the federal government’s vested interest in GM and the powerful political interest of the UAW and all.

Seems kind of paranoid. But even paranoids have enemies. . . .

Up in Northern Virginia, heavily populated by federal employees, voting for bills opposing the expansion of power is probably on par with rooting against the Redskins. Maybe that’s why

Every state senator from Fairfax County voted against a successful bill aimed at protecting Virginia residents from any future federal requirement to purchase health insurance or to pay a fine for opting out of a health care plan. (link)

Finally, a piece of nomenclature to designate ambiguous headlines: Crash blossoms. The term applies to headlines such as

Hurt Primary Opponent Drops $500K

(How badly hurt was he?)

and

Swiss Tax Play Lures Business.

To paraphrase James Taranto—whose Best of the Web routinely highlights the day’s crash blossoms— what are play lures?

The gags turn on the ability to interpret the headlines two ways, sort of the way the woman in the image above seems to be rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending on how your mind reads the image at the moment.

“Crash blossoms” comes from an article about the career of a violinist whose father was killed in an airplane crash. It was headlined, “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms” and prompted the question, “What’s a crash blossom?”

Bad idea. But one wonders if the latest figures about college graduates will be enough to make some conservatives change their minds on the subj.:

at age 22, there are 185.5 women holding a bachelor’s degree (or more) for every 100 men who have graduated from college, a ratio approaching two to one.

The issue cuts both ways, of course, since it makes life more difficult for progressives who want to argue that simple numerical disparity proves discrimination. . . .

. . . people listen. But it’s hard to say which is sillier—the fact that Vegas boosters don’t like him using Vegas metaphors, or the fact that some groups actually cancelled trips to Vegas after Obama used a Vegas metaphor.

Wait, no it isn’t hard to say. The second is definitely sillier.

Theosis, streaming religious choral works.

(Main site here.)

It’s Transportation Day here at Barticles (apparently!). Here’s some impressive art made out of old tires. Beats burning them. . .

Regarding the proposal to raise Virginia’s speed limit:

Virginia faces a $4 billion shortfall, yet this legislation will mean all those speed limit signs will have to be changed. That sounds very expensive.

What would the cost be? Is it worth another 5 mph? Especially when the change might have no effect on driver behavior?:

The results of the study indicated that lowering posted speed limits by as much as 20 mi/h (32 km/h), or raising speed limits by as much as 15 mi/h (24 km/h) had little effect on motorist’ speed. The majority of motorist did not drive 5 mi/h (8 km/h) above the posted speed limits when speed limits were raised, nor did they reduce their speed by 5 or 10 mi/h (8 or 16 km/h) when speed limits are lowered.

Proving the adage that to the man with only a hammer, every problem is a nail, Apple’s Steve Wozniak says Toyota’s problem has been misdiagnosed:

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak suggested Tuesday in media interviews that Toyota’s troubles may have to do with software, after his Prius sped up while in cruise-control.

“Since my foot never touches the pedal,“ Wozniak told ABC News, the problem “cannot be a sticky accelerator pedal. . . . There might be some bad software in there.“

Is there any chance — any chance at all — that Wozniak’s car might be having problems of its own unrelated to the problems shared by lots of other Toyota customers?

Maybe he was only kidding. . . .

Here’s another take on an old theme — “tax expenditures”:

“Tax expenditure” is the technical name for spending programs run through the tax system—all of those tax breaks that politicians of both parties love to dole out like Christmas presents. The mortgage interest tax deduction and the exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance are among the most well-known such items.

At the same time the president promised restraint on a sliver of the federal budget, he proposed new tax breaks for child care, retirement savings and small-business capital gains. This is a perverse kind of gift: Many of the goodies the political Santas leave under our trees will be paid for, with interest, by our kids.

On the one hand, there’s a decent case that government shouldn’t use the tax system to engage in social engineering. But the terminology is devilish, since the implicit assumption behind calling a tax break an “expenditure” is that it assumes all money belongs to Uncle Sam to begin with, and he doles it out either through appropriations or by refraining from taking some of what is rightfully his. If he lets you keep a little more of your own money, that’s a “Christmas present”!

Taken to its logical conclusion, the term “tax expenditure” implies that, if taxes were 100 percent, Washington would not really be spending anything at all.

To which there is only one appropriate response.

Some state lawmakers seem to think they should be able to write the rules for homeowners’ associations. Today’s column suggests otherwise.