Isn't It Time To Change How We Do Primaries? Or Isn't It Time For The Republicans Who Have Some Sense To Stand Up To Their Base?

The reality of the House is that sometimes a majority of House Republicans want a bill to pass even if they don't want to vote for it.

Thanks to Ezra Klein for clearing this up.

Bits and Pieces - June 13, 2013

Godwin's Law or not - the idea that few pregnancies result from rape really does come from the Nazis. And Emily Bazelon raises a good question in that article: why do those male Republican legislators feel it so necessary to keep repeating that?

If you're going to Europe, bring lots of cash. Your credit card probably won't work. Kevin Drum seems to be the only financial columnist that finds this stupid and backward on the part of the US banking industry.

What did Thomas Kuhn really mean by "scientific paradigms"?

Is Edward Snowden trying to make a case for sanctuary in China, or is he trying to sow further distrust between China and the US?

I've been writing about the Snowden affair over at Nuclear Diner. I've contemplated what makes a whistleblower, what Snowden has told us so far (not much), and constructed a timeline for his life and recent actions, which I'm updating as more information comes out.

Snowden's interview with the South China News.

If journalists covered the US the way US journalists cover the world.

Academic freedom and indentured students.

Why right-wing wannabe terrorists use ricin.

Still More Questions Than Answers on Nerve Gas in Syria. One of the better articles on the subject. But it's not gas...

NSA, Reporters, Whistleblowers, and Classified Material

I was working on a much longer post having to do with the press, whistleblowers, and classified information when the business about the FBI’s and NSA’s data collection broke. So I will continue to work on that longer piece over the weekend.

Meanwhile, here is some other material.

Some background:

Time: 7 Things to Know About the Government’s Secret Database of Telephone Data

ProPublica: No Warrant, No Problem: How The Government Can Still Get Your Digital Data

I am finding that on this issue, I have a large area of agreement with Joshua Foust, which is not always the case. You can follow him on Twitter @joshuafoust.

Nine Dashed-Off Points on the NSA “Scandal”

We Are To Blame

Stephen Walt has some wise things to say here and here.

I’m thinking that the press is overdoing their insistence on their “right” to access classified information. Information isn’t newsworthy just because it’s classified, and some of what reporters are saying sounds like they want easy disclosures rather than working on hard stories. Whistleblowers are not unambiguously figures of virtue. Some do it for motives like office politics or fame. But does a disclosure that helps the public make those motives purer? And yes, far too much material is classified.

Now to flesh that out.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

Woman's Place in Iran and Protests in Turkey

Saeed Jalili sounded like Stokely Carmichael the other day:

Based on the interpretations of the supreme leader, the presence of women in society must be combatant and revolutionary in the various fields, and the most important act of cultural resistance for a woman takes place at the home.

Carmichael was a bit cruder on women's place in revolution:

The only place for women in the movement is prone.

And here are a great many photos from the protests in Istanbul.

Bits and Pieces - May 29, 2013

I know, I know, not much posting lately. I've been traveling. Here's a photo of an elephant seal near Cambria, California, to prove it.

I've known a few charming men in my life, but not a lot. Maybe two, in fact. This article considers what charm consists of in men and why men don't want to be charming. The world would be better if they were. And I'm thinking now that some men I know (the word "guys" doesn't fit there) indulge in some elements of charm, sometimes.

Conor Friedersdorf just says it right out: Establishing a no-fly zone in Syria would be an act of war. That phrase rolls so easily off the lips, no need to think about what is needed. If you're in the mood for thinking, though, consider that the no-fly zone was established in Iraq after a major war had destroyed Iraq's military. That's what it takes.

An Act of Congress has made it impossible to sell helium from the US's plentiful reserves once the cost of stockpiling helium is paid off. The act was part of the mid-nineties privatization. I'm wondering if this was just a dumb mistake or if it was another Republican sabotage. The latter doesn't make much sense, but that probably wouldn't be required.

Syria’s chemical weapons pose a decade-long problem for the world

That's the title of another op-ed from me and Aaron Stein at the Globe and Mail.

Bits and Pieces - April 29, 2013

Too much stuff happening.

Jared Bernstein is collecting news stories about the damage being done by the sequester. Here's this week's collection.

Why didn't 2,400 tons of ammonium nitrate at West plant raise concerns?

The blunt logic of Russian power.

Forgiveness and reconciliation need to factor into many more international situations.

Richard Haass: How to build a second American century.

Bits and Pieces - April 28, 2013

Bush and the West explosion: the untold story of deregulating chemical plants

Charlie Stross changes his mind on nuclear disarmament.

What we need to know about Syrian chemical weapons (by me)

Bits and Pieces - April 17, 2013

This is pretty interesting.



Global Military Spending Falls For First Time Since 1998. Except in the United States. Check out this chart showing relative spending by country.

Every war must end.

Just Wondering...Polls on Spending Priorities

I suppose that the pollsters, wanting to think that they are doing something scientific, just want to measure what people think. But time and again, the results they give us are that Americans want to reduce foreign aid, believing that it is something like a quarter of the budget, whereas it is under one percent, reduce taxes, and increase spending on pretty much everything else.

Okay, so we know that.

How about asking questions that begin, "Given that the budget is finite," and go on to pose a choice: defense spending or education. Social Security or defense. Foreign aid or defense. (Sorry, I'm getting repetitive.) Housing aid or education. Scientific research or education. (That's starting to get harder.)

The objection will be, I suspect, that the pairing of the alternatives will influence the answers. Well, that might be interesting. If you set up the pairs correctly, you might get some priorities out of it. Or you might find that the American public prefers spending on education to spending on research to spending on defense to spending on education, a circular and again illogical set of preferences.

But wouldn't it be more helpful to see answers like that?

Inspired by this article.

Bits and Pieces - April 2, 2013

Nature's drone, pretty and deadly. Dragonflies. Not really drones, they know what they're doing. Some very nice videos.

When we loved Form 1040. When it was possible to fill it out without computer aid. Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.

Is this a pandemic being born? I've been wondering that about those dead pigs in China.

Michael Eisen and Richard van Noorden on the future of scholarly publishing.

Update: Today is International Autism Awareness Day.

Same-Sex Marriage in the Supreme Court

Today and tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear arguments for and against California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

This Court is famously conservative. But the Court is not totally isolated from public opinion. Its decision could be on broad or narrow grounds; previous decisions have tended to be broader than expected.

The concern trolls are comparing this decision to Roe v. Wade, the abortion decision. Too broad a decision, they say, would result in a backlash. So they hope for an incremental decision of some kind, so as not to épater les bigots.

bmaz argues against the concern trolls. I'll agree with him, and add one more reason, although not the kind that usually sways the Supreme Court: the country needs a big decision of some kind, and this might as well be it; some clear statement that allowing people their own loves and domestic arrangements is the right thing. We've had a lot of incrementalism in such matters for what seems like a very long time. There is a time for incrementalism, and I've often argued for it. But too much feels like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain, or being bitten to death by ducks.

Sarah Kliff presents a load of nice graphics that say that if the Supremes get it wrong this time, they'll simply be ignored. I'm pleased with New Mexico's unique color in that map of the United States; it's possible same-sex marriage has been legal here all along. The lawyers are working that out now.

So I'm feeling good about this. John Roberts has shown that he has enough respect for the Court and his position on it not to follow his personal reactionary instincts. And hey! there just might be a backlash if the Court does decide to go with those instincts. I'm willing to concern troll that side of things.

Bits and Pieces - March 24, 2013

Ronald Dworkin on what makes a religion.

Bringing development and sustainability goals together.

The most important thing that has been written in the past few years on cancer care.

How the "job creators" think about themselves.

A treaty to regulate trade in conventional arms.

Crappy security on the internet.

Looking at the future of energy with BP and Exxon Mobil.

Bits and Pieces - March 21, 2013

Once I started talking to the guards at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, I found that they are very interesting and committed people.

Wondering about the K's and W's of commercial radio stations in the US?

Photos of the 1970s in New York City.

But it's not the ancestor of today's birds.

What I Got Right And Wrong About The Iraq War

Ten years ago, I was not yet blogging. But I had an opinion about the accusations against Iraq. Bits and pieces of it might still be excavated from dead or dying discussion forums. I’ll expand here. I have to start by going back further than that.

The 1991 Iraq war had served up a big surprise for those of us following nuclear issues: Saddam Hussein’s electromagnetic separation project. Who’d have thought that would be the technology in today’s world? Which, of course, was a good reason for the Iraqis to go for it. After all, it helped enrich the uranium for the Little Boy bomb exploded over Hiroshima.

But after that program was dismantled and the equipment destroyed, the sanctions and overflights imposed on Iraq seemed to preclude a restart of any nuclear weapons projects. Biological and chemical agent programs might have continued at a low level, but the country was in dismal straits.

And then came the United Nations inspections. The request for volunteers went out to the national laboratories, and I thought about it for a while, but decided that my life was exciting enough.

A place like the Los Alamos National Laboratory has its own kind of grapevine. Some information filtered into the grapevine from the UN inspectors.The common wisdom, based on that and other information, was that Hussein might have some small and residual bio or chem weapon capability, but nuclear? No way.

So when the war drums began to beat after 9/11, I dismissed them. I looked at the supporting evidence.

The aluminum tubes seemed to me unlikely to be used for centrifuges, but I am not fully informed on centrifuge specs. Reports from sources I considered to be knowledgeable were that they were for rockets, and that sounded about right. I had met people from Oak Ridge who were experts in centrifuge design, and I knew that they contributed to intelligence assessments.

Then came Judy Miller and the New York Times: intelligence assessments say that the aluminum tubes are for centrifuges. I read the articles carefully, looking for mentions of assessments from the Department of Energy. I never saw them. But, I guessed, the multiagency assessments must have included them, and the Oak Ridge guys knew what they were doing. So maybe---???

Even if that maybe came down on the side of centrifuges, I thought, it would be some time before Iraq could have a nuclear weapon, so issuing ultimatums and pulling the inspectors out so that the US could bomb Iraq seemed unwarranted.

I was also dubious about the claim that once Saddam Hussein was gone, the people of Iraq would naturally form a democratic government with no problems. Some of what was said by people by Paul Wolfowitz used the Baltic States after the Soviet Union as an analogy. But I had spent some time learning how Estonia left the Soviet Union. I interviewed people who had participated in the process, including then-President Arnold Rüütel, in the hopes of writing a book.

[I never wrote the book; the story is well told by the film “The Singing Revolution,” and parts of it are treated in several book chapters, but I think a book is still needed.]

The transition depended upon an informed populace who had some experience of democratic rule. It ran over several years, from street protests allowed by perestroika to forming political parties that couldn’t call themselves that, to the Supreme Soviet’s declaring sovereignty (not independence!) and renaming itself the Parliament of Estonia and then to independence quickly declared as the coup unfolded against Gorbachev. As people participated in those actions, they learned more about governing. It wasn’t a matter of waking up one day and finding the government gone, much less was it done during a war.

I cringed every time the comparison was made. How could people so allegedly smart not be able to see the enormous historical differences?

Then there was Colin Powell’s presentation. I had some experience working with aerial photos when I managed environmental restorations. I thought the evidence was thin – closed trucks may be carrying anything – but, again, was not an expert in the area.

Perhaps there was something I was missing – something classified – that made the case more persuasive. So I wasn’t too vocal about my misgivings, although I would offer them up when given a chance. And I didn’t have a blog for a platform.

Some time after the war was started, several years, it became obvious why Miller and the New York Times didn’t mention the Oak Ridge or DOE intelligence assessments. They said that the tubes were unsuitable for centrifuges. In fact, that was in the original National Intelligence Estimate. The public didn’t know that until much later.

And we have seen that democracy is indeed not so easily achieved. There were, of course, no WMDs beyond a few buried chemical shells, rotting in the sand.

So I had been right. I have become more wary of what the government says, particularly in regard to matters that could lead to war. I look for confirmation outside the government.

I couldn’t have stopped the march to war all by myself, but if all those who felt as I did had spoken up, maybe it could have been slowed, might have been stopped. So now I am more vocal, particularly in areas that I know something about and that could lead to war. Or other damage to my country.

Here’s some ten-year commentary from others. The neocons are unrepentant, and I link only one summary of their comments because we’ve heard them before. Whatever went wrong wasn’t their fault.

Others who supported the war have been more forthcoming.

David Ignatius says he owes “readers an apology for being wrong on the overriding question of whether the war made sense” and calls the war “one of the biggest strategic errors in modern American history.”

Ezra Klein:

But at the core of my support for the war was an analytical failure I think about often: Rather than looking at the war that was actually being sold, I’d invented my own Iraq war to support -- an Iraq war with different aims, promoted by different people, conceptualized in a different way and bearing little resemblance to the project proposed by the Bush administration.

Relevant documents, including the National Intelligence Estimate, from The National Security Archive.

Others who didn’t believe Iraq had WMDs.

What it was like to oppose the war.

The Lowy Institute Interpreter (I love the header photo!) has a symposium on many aspects of the war.

Numerous articles at Duck of Minerva.

Addendum (3/22/13): Short reactions from several people who were for or against the war. What I find shocking is that three of them refer to the large numbers of people (presumably the people they mostly talked to) who believed that Hussein did indeed have WMD (ill-defined, but apparently sometimes implying nuclear weapons).

Anne-Marie Slaughter: Looking back, it is hard to remember just how convinced many of us were that weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Leon Weiseltier: Those of us who supported the Iraq war ten years ago because we believed that Saddam Hussein—who had already used chemical weapons—possessed weapons of mass destruction must forever ponder the fact that he did not possess them. That we joined, or helped to establish, a near-universal consensus does not exonerate us from the unpleasant truth that President Bush took the United States into a major war on fraudulent grounds.

James P. Rubin: At the time no one really doubted the intelligence reports showing Iraq with substantial stocks of deadly viruses, germs and toxins (By contrast, the nuclear threat, “the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud,” was irresponsible scare-mongering by the Bush team).

Convinced. Consensus. No one really doubted. Wow.

These are policy people, who probably are unashamed of their lack of knowledge of scientific and technical aspects of those claims. But they might be expected to know that the Department of Energy analyzes quite a bit of intelligence from precisely those aspects. They might have wondered, as I did, what the DOE analysis said about the WMD claims.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

Bits and Pieces - March 16, 2013

So Richard Nixon talked the South Vietnamese into leaving the negotiations so he'd have an issue to work against Lyndon Johnson. And today we have the Republicans refusing to do their jobs in Congress because we have a black president.

And here's what we can be proud of as a result of all those taxes we don't have to pay.

The VIDA survey of the gender of authors of articles and reviewed books in literary magazines. Not pretty.