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clairemann

Keep the Filibuster, There Are Better Ways to Reform | Time - 0 views

time.com/...libuster-better-ways-to-reform

world knowledge education bias

shared by clairemann on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • After passing an immense $1.9 trillion COVID aid package that was one of the most expensive and significant pieces of social legislation in a generation, the Biden administration realizes that much of the rest of its agenda—election reform, gun control, and civil rights—is dead on arrival in the Senate, a Senate that Democrats only narrowly control.
  • The reason, of course, is the filibuster, the procedural maneuver that allows 41 senators to block multiple forms of substantive legislation.
  • This would be a serious mistake that would enhance partisan polarization and increase political instability. There are better ways to achieve policy reform. There are better ways to lower the temperature of American politics.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • I discovered that thoughtful progressives and thoughtful conservatives each suffered from different, deep fears about our political future. Progressives feared minoritarian rule. Conservatives feared majoritarian domination. Ending the filibuster, perversely enough, makes both fears more real.
  • The Republican Party has won exactly one popular vote for president since 1988, George W. Bush’s narrow 2.4 percent edge over John Kerry in 2004. Yet it won three presidential elections in that span of time
  • Republicans not only have a present electoral college advantage over Democrats, they also have inherent advantages in both the House and the Senate.
  • Do away with the filibuster, and it’s entirely possible that the next Republican government could enjoy immense legislative power without a majority of the popular vote. In fact, they could lose voters by margins numbering in the millions, yet still exercise decisive control over the government.
  • The GOP, for example, is currently in the grips of a Trumpist base that prioritizes angry opposition over compromise. The party largely lacks a positive agenda, so (with some notable exceptions) its priority is clear: No compromise, even when compromise might be prudent. Stop the Democrats. Some Republicans have gone further, descending into a fantasy world of dark conspiracies.
  • The Democratic Party is seeking to pass laws that would introduce dramatic changes in American elections, transform free speech doctrine, and potentially limit religious liberty.
  • Yes, through decentralization, de-escalation, and strategic moderation.
  • That means most Americans live in jurisdictions where, for example, election rules, civil rights laws, gun laws, and a wide variety of economic and social policies are within their partisan control.
  • Gridlock in Washington does not have to mean gridlock in government,
  • Research demonstrates that a majority of Americans are exhausted by partisan politics. Motivated minorities drive most American polarization.
  • A combination of redistricting reform and voting reforms like ranked-choice voting can limit the powers of partisan extremists. Ranked-choice voting—which allows voters to list candidates in order of preference—most notably can reduce the chances of highly-partisan pluralities dominating political primaries.
  • The answer to polarization and gridlock is not partisan escalation. Ending the filibuster would only ramp up partisan acrimony and increase the level of fear and anxiety around American elections. There are better paths through American division. We should try those before we enable drastic measures like majoritarian dominance or minoritarian control.
anonymous

Opinion | 'This Is Jim Crow in New Clothes' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ing-rights-resonstruction.html

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • ‘This Is Jim Crow in New Clothes’
  • Senator Raphael Warnock’s first speech on the Senate floor brought the past into the present.
  • “We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era,”
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • “This is Jim Crow in new clothes
  • I submit that it is the job of each citizen to stand up for the voting rights of every citizen. And it is the job of this body to do all that it can to defend the viability of our democracy.
  • The bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was first introduced in January 1870 by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a Radical Republican and ardent opponent of slavery and race discrimination.
  • as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore pre-clearance to the Voting Rights Act, forcing covered jurisdictions to submit new voting plans for federal approval.
  • arnock is the first African-American to represent Georgia in the Senate and only the second elected from the South since Reconstruction.
  • His presence on the Senate floor is historic just on its own.
  • It represents progress — and yet it is also evocative of the past.
  • A Black lawmaker from the South, urging his mostly white colleagues to defend the voting rights of millions of Americans is, to my mind, an occasion to revisit one particular episode in the history of American democracy: the fight, in Congress, over the Civil Rights Act of 1875
  • The first Black members of the House of Representatives, some of them former slaves, were prominent in this battle
  • They saw the bill as vital in the fight against discrimination and race hierarchy.
  • Warnock argued, the Senate should pass the For the People Act, which would establish automatic voter registration nationally, provide for at least two weeks of early voting and preserve mail-in balloting,
  • “no citizen of the United States shall, by reason of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, be excepted or excluded from full and equal enjoyment” of “common schools and public institutions of learning, the same being supported by moneys derived from general taxation or authorized by law.”
  • “viewed school desegregation as a necessary component of achieving a truly colorblind nation.”
  • Their opponents saw school desegregation as collapsing a distinction between public rights and social rights that would allow the government to
  • “invade all provinces of an individual’s life.”
  • And as their fellow Republicans struggled to pass the civil rights bill, these lawmakers used the debate to devise what Francois calls a “counter narrative to white supremacy” that repudiated Black inferiority in favor of a “vision of human equality.”
  • “It is not social rights we desire,” Representative John R. Lynch of Mississippi, a former slave, said. “What we ask is protection in the enjoyment of public rights.
  • I want to say we do not come here begging for our rights. We come here clothed in the garb of American citizenship. We come demanding our rights in the name of justice.
  • The civil rights bill passed Congress in February 1875, nearly a year after Sumner’s death. It did so without the schools clause.
  • By the end of the century, Jim Crow was in place throughout most of the former Confederacy.
  • It would be over 70 years before the South would send another Black American to Washington.
  • His speech is also part and parcel of a Black tradition of calling on the government to fulfill the nation’s professed values
  • The question, as always, is whether Congress will actually act to secure democracy for all of its citizens and whether we’ll withstand the inevitable backlash if it does.
katherineharron

Lindsey Graham encourages senior judges to step aside ahead of election - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 29 May 20 - No Cached
  • Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday encouraged senior federal judges to step aside so his committee can approve conservatives who President Donald Trump would nominate to replace them ahead of the November election.
  • "This is an historic opportunity," Graham said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "If (Trump) can get four more years, I mean, it would change the judiciary for several generations. So if you're a circuit judge in your mid-60s, late 60s, you can take senior status, now would be a good time to do that if you want to make sure the judiciary is right of center."
  • The unusual plea was prompted by Hewitt and reflects a recognition from Senate Republicans they may not control the chamber next session and therefore won't be in a position to push through confirmations of Trump's judges should he win reelection.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Federal judges who have reached age 65 are eligible to take "senior status" depending on their number of years on the bench. That allows them to maintain a reduced caseload, while creating a vacancy on the court
  • Should Trump lose his reelection bid to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, any future vacancies could potentially be filled by liberal judges. If Trump remains in office but Democrats take control of the Senate, his nominations could be blocked by the new majority.
  • "Obviously, the senior judges need to let the White House know in advance of the actual date so that we can be prepared to move the new nominee. As I said, my motto for the year is leave no vacancy behind, and that's exactly what I mean," the Kentucky Republican told Hewitt in an interview in February.
  • Speaking late last year to Hewitt, McConnell remarked that "one of every four of the US circuit judges in the country have been put on the bench" during Trump's tenure.
Javier E

Beyond Billboards - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - 0 views

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...beyond-billboards.html

Christianity Christmas myth sin

shared by Javier E on 12 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Sunday, December 12, 2010Sunday, December 12, 2010 Go Follow the Atlantic » atlanticPrintlayoutnavigation()Politics Presented ByBack to the Gold Standard? Joshua GreenSenate Dems Lose Vote on 'Don't Ask' RepealMegan Scully & Dan FriedmanA Primary Challenge to Obama? Marc Ambinder Business Presented byif (typeof window.dartOrd == 'undefined') {window.dartOrd = ('000000000' + Math.ceil(Math.random()*1000000000).toString()).slice(-9);}jsProperties = 'TheAtlanticOnline/channel_business;pos=navlogo;sz=88x31,215x64;tile=1';document.write('');if( $(".adNavlogo").html().search("grey.gif") != -1 ){$(".adNavlogo").hide();}Will the Economy Get Jobs for Christmas?Daniel Indiviglio27 Key Facts About US ExportsDerek ThompsonThe Last StimulusDerek Thompson Culture Presented ByThe 10 Biggest Sports Stories of 2010Eleanor Barkhorn and Kevin Fallon al
  • at the force behind all that exists actually intervened in the consciousness of humankind in the form of a man so saturated in godliness that merely being near him healed people of the weight of the world's sins.
Javier E

Did Republicans Pressure CRS to Withdraw Taxes Report? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/...ideology-over-reality

censorship partisan taxes ineq

shared by Javier E on 03 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • In a brazen example of putting ideology ahead of reality, Senate Republicans seem to have pressured the Congressional Research Service to withdraw a report debunking conservative economic orthodoxy. Cutting tax rates at the top appears “to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie,” the report said. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.” So charging the rich lower tax rates doesn’t promote economic growth; it merely increases economic inequality.
  • The CRS is a highly respected, independent agency that prepares reports for members of Congress and routinely issues findings that disappoint or even irritate their clients, who usually just grin and bear it, or at least bear it. But Congressional Republicans seem to think that the CRS should function like Pravda.
  • Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said Mr. McConnell and other senators “raised concerns about the methodology and other flaws” in the CRS report. Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, said the panel had relayed its objections to the CRS. “We had a good discussion,” she said, “Then it was pulled.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In case you don’t speak fluent bureaucratese, “good discussion” means that the Republicans made it clear the report had to go. And “it was pulled” means the CRS obeyed. The Times quoted a person with knowledge of the deliberations as saying the decision on Sept. 28 to withdraw the report was “made against the advice of the research service’s economics division” and that the author, Thomas Hungerford, stood by its findings.
Duncan H

Can Santorum Win in November? - NYTimes.com - 1 views

campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/...can-santorum-win-in-november

bias language

shared by Duncan H on 29 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • If one were to invent a Republican politician whose background and beliefs were ideally suited to a general-election campaign against Barack Obama, that dream candidate would share a number of qualities with Rick Santorum.
  • He would hail from the Midwest – a region filled with recession-battered swing states where the president’s support is weaker than in the country as a whole. He would be a Catholic rather than an Evangelical or a Mormon, because the Catholic vote swings back and forth between the two parties in ways that other religious demographics don’t. He would have a strong personal and biographical connection to blue-collar whites, a bloc of voters whose support President Obama has always had difficulty winning. His record would be conservative enough to excite the Republican Party’s base, but leavened with enough moderation and even populism on economic issues to reassure anxious middle-income voters that the Republican Party doesn’t just exist to serve Wall Street and the rich.
  • Santorum checks all of these boxes, while Mitt Romney – his Michigan ties and attempts to play the tribune of the middle class notwithstanding – decidedly does not. Which is why, as Romney flails and Santorum rises, a few pundits have found themselves tiptoeing toward what seems like the most counterintuitive of all possible conclusions: The possibility that the long-shot former senator from Pennsylvania, not his supposedly more electable rival, might stand a better chance of winning in November.
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  • This idea seems laughable if you assume that most swing voters are fiscal conservatives and social moderates, allergic to culture-war appeals and pining for a dream ticket of Michael Bloomberg and Olympia Snowe. But as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has explained, there’s more than one kind of “moderate” in American politics:
  • There are, very roughly speaking, two kinds of swing voters. One kind is economically conservative, socially liberal swing voters. This is the kind of voter you usually read about, because it’s the kind most familiar to political reporters – affluent and college educated. But there’s a second kind of voter at least as numerous – economically populist and socially conservative. Think of disaffected blue-collar workers, downscale white men who love guns, hate welfare, oppose free trade, and want higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Romney appeals to the former, but Santorum more to the latter
  • That’s because the former senator has the instincts of an activist, rather than of a president or statesman.
  • a Rust Belt background would be a potential advantage for a Republican presidential candidate. But a Rust Belt background that includes an 17-point repudiation from the Pennsylvania electorate that knew Santorum best looks more like a liability instead.
  • both Catholicism and social conservatism are potential assets in a campaign against a president who has spoken condescendingly about Middle Americans who “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion.” But a Catholic conservatism that manifests itself in campaign-trail critiques of contraception promises to alienate many more voters (female voters, especially) than it attracts.
  • All things being equal, a populist style that’s at odds with the Acela corridor’s attitudes and values can often play well in the heartland. But no presidential candidate can succeed without a modicum of favorable media coverage, and so a successful populist needs to be able to disarm elite journalists (as Huckabee so expertly did, schmoozing on The Daily Show and elsewhere) as often as he alienates them. And nobody has ever used the word “disarming” to describe Rick Santorum’s approach to politics.
  • his political persona is worlds away from the Washington-New York definitions of “middle-of-the-road.” But a mix of social conservatism and economic populism has a great deal of general-election potential – especially in a contest against a president whose style of liberalism can seem professorial, condescending and aloof.
  • Whether the topic is social issues or foreign policy, his zeal exceeds his prudence, and as a result his career is littered with debating society provocations (referencing “man-on-dog” sex in an argument about gay marriage, using his doomed 2006 Senate bid to educate Pennsylvanians on the evils of Hugo Chavez, etc.) that have won him far more enemies than friends. His passion for ideas and argument often does him credit, but in a national campaign it would probably do him in.
  • Duncan H on 29 Feb 12
     
    Interesting article on Santorum's chances in the general election.
oliviaodon

Climate Science Skeptic Testifies for 40 Minutes Before State Senate Environment Commit... - 0 views

www.seattleweekly.com/...n-senate-environment-committee

bias science social media

shared by oliviaodon on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Climate Science Skeptic Testifies for 40 Minutes Before State Senate Environment Committee He was invited by Sen. Doug Ericksen, who is now part of President Trump’s EPA transition team.
  • A prominent skeptic of mainstream climate science today provided an unusually lengthy testimony before a Washington Senate committee at the invitation of Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale. In his statements, Tony Heller, an independent scientist who also blogs under the name Steve Goddard and tweets as @SteveSGoddard, claimed that several employees of two federal agencies doctored data, misleading climate scientists. The veracity of the statement remains in question. Committee time is precious in Olympia. Normally, people get two to three minutes to testify before they are cut off. A panel of a few experts can get 30 minutes on some occasions. Heller was allotted 40 minutes.
  • Heller is not a part of any organization, but he sometimes participates in work groups held by Myron Ebell, who leads efforts at the Liberatian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute to deny the findings of climate scientists. Ebell also led Trump’s transition team at the EPA for a couple of months.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In the days prior to his appearance, Heller—an active Twitter user, who also believes Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that the New York Times is “fake news”—tweeted photos of the Puget Sound area’s recent snow as arguments against global warming. Also on Monday and Tuesday, he tweeted:
dpittenger

Senate Approves Bill to Rein In N.S.A. Surveillance - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hurdle-but-showdown-looms.html

senate

shared by dpittenger on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Senate voted on Tuesday to curtail the federal government’s sweeping surveillance of American phone records
  • take one more tool away from those who defend our country every day.
  • dpittenger on 02 Jun 15
     
    The measures of the Patriot Act are being reduced. Did it really help with national security in the first place?
ilanaprincilus06

Argentina Legalizes Abortion In Historic Senate Vote : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ortion-in-historic-senate-vote

abortion women's rights Argentina

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Argentina's Senate voted early Wednesday to legalize elective abortion, marking a historic shift in the heavily Catholic country that is the homeland of Pope Francis
  • the Senate passed the bill 38-29 with one abstention just over two weeks after the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Argentina's Congress, narrowly approved the measure.
  • "Today we took a huge step and we are getting closer to the Argentina we dream of. We are writing our destiny, we are making history."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Argentina joins a small group of Latin American and Caribbean countries that have legalized elective abortion, including Uruguay, Cuba and Guyana.
  • in mid-November. Fernández, who was elected in late 2019, has been vocal about legalizing abortion during his presidency and says he will sign the measure.
  • "Today we are a better society that expands rights to women and guarantees public health," Fernández wrote after the legislation passed.
  • In 2018 and 2020, people backing the legalization have sported green clothing and often held or worn green bandannas — a visual that has become linked with the movement.
  • Despite being largely illegal throughout the region, about 5.4 million abortions occurred annually in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2015 and 2019, the Guttmacher Institute reported.
katherineharron

Sanders rips GOP senators for voting for tax cuts but objecting to increased unemployme... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday lambasted Republican senators who had objected to provisions in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package that they said would incentivize unemployment, accusing them of fixating on minor perks for workers amid a crisis.
  • "Here we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn perhaps since the Great Depression, tens of millions of people are worried to death about how they're going to feed their families, pay their rent, prevent a foreclosure," Sanders added. "And these guys are just staying up nights worrying about low-income workers getting a few bucks more."
  • "You have all kinds of people here who voted, including Sen. Graham and the others, they voted for a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% and large corporations and now they're really worried that a low-income worker might receive extended unemployment plus $600 a week," Sanders said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "I just wanted to make it clear that I will not sit back, nor should anybody sit back and allow these guys to attack the needs of low-income workers, especially at a time when in this particular bill there are $500 billion available to the President for all kinds of corporate welfare and chicanery," he added. "They don't object to that, they worry about people getting a few bucks more."
peterconnelly

House Democrats look to pass gun control legislation by early June - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...legislation-by-early-june.html

gun control legislation

shared by peterconnelly on 04 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • House Democrats will try to advance a raft of gun control bills on Thursday in the wake of two high-profile mass shootings that rocked the nation earlier this month.
  • The Democratic-led package will likely fail in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate. However, Democrats have acknowledged a hope — however slim — that bipartisan talks among senators can lead to lawmakers passing a more limited bill with support from both parties.
  • The Raise the Age Act would lift the purchasing age for semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21, while the Keep Americans Safe Act would outlaw the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of a large-capacity magazine.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Senate Republicans have for years blocked progress on any gun safety legislation. They opposed efforts to tighten gun regulations both when they held the majority, and even now when they can threaten an indefinite filibuster if Democrats can’t come up with the 60 votes required to circumvent the stalling tactic.
  • “It’s much easier to scream about guns than it is to demand answer about where our culture is failing,” Cruz added in a separate social media post on Saturday.
  • Disapproval from Cruz and other Senate Republicans will likely doom any legislation Nadler and other House Democrats manage to pass.
  • Democrats dispute the claim that lawmakers need to target mental illness more so than the availability of guns to reduce shooting violence in the U.S. They say that similar rates of mental illness in other developed nations across the globe prove that mental illness alone cannot fully explain the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S.
sgardner35

Unions Subdued, Scott Walker Turns to Tenure at Wisconsin Colleges - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ure-at-wisconsin-colleges.html

shared by sgardner35 on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • CHICAGO — Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who began building a national profile four years ago by sharply cutting collective bargaining rights for most government workers, has turned his sights to a different element of the public sector: state universities.
  • As a new and unknown governor in 2011, Mr. Walker quickly drew national attention by announcing legislation to limit collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions and require workers to pay more for their health care and pensions.
  • “It’ll be impossible for us to attract and retain people if we’re the only one that has such a weak protection of tenure,” said Donald Moynihan, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has been at the institution for 10 years and was among hundreds of faculty members in recent days to sign a letter opposing the changes.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “The reality is that we are not eliminating tenure,” said Senator Sheila Harsdorf, a Republican, adding that she believed the effort had been misunderstood as a broad condemnation of tenure.
  • All of the changes still require a vote by the state’s full Senate and House. The proposal is expected to come to the full chambers later this month as part of the state’s budget for the next two years.
  • Mr. Walker has called for still more sweeping changes to the state university system. As part of his budget proposal in February, the governor said he wanted to shift the entire university system out from under direct state oversight. He called for the creation of a “quasi-governmental” authority that could act on its own on issues of personnel, purchasing, capital projects and tuition. He also wanted to cut state spending on the system by about $300 million, or 13 percent, as part of his answer to an anticipated budget shortfall.
  • Wisconsin has hardly been the only place where public universities have struggled in relationships with their states, and leaders elsewhere have been closely watching the events unfold in Wisconsin. As state funding for higher education has dwindled in recent years, public universities in several states have been involved in discussions over cutting, or loosening, their ties with state government, so they would not have to comply with state regulations governing areas like purchasing and construction.
  • “We are as a board and always have been and always will be supportive of tenure,” Regina Millner, the regents’ vice president, said in an interview. “Our commitment to tenure, our commitment to academic freedom, our commitment to a strong faculty with secure support for the work they do, it’s absolute.
  • “Increasingly, the excuse of financial difficulty has been used as a reason to overpower the faculty, with a lot of people in administration saying we need to be flexible,” said Henry Reichman, vice president of the American Association of University Professors. “If you just took the Wisconsin language on eliminating tenure, and moved it from the statute into board policy, you could argue that there would be no problem. But the shared governance change seems to undermine the whole structure.”
johnsonma23

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on Why Women Stay Quiet at Work - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...speaking-while-female.html

bias science research psychology education

shared by johnsonma23 on 14 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Almost every time they started to speak, they were interrupted or shot down before finishing their pitch. When one had a good idea, a male writer would jump in and run with it before she could complete her thought.
  • When a woman speaks in a professional setting, she walks a tightrope. Either she’s barely heard or she’s judged as too aggressive.
  • male senators with more power (as measured by tenure, leadership positions and track record of legislation passed) spoke more on the Senate floor than their junior colleagues. But for female senators, power was not linked to significantly more speaking time.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Suspecting that powerful women stayed quiet because they feared a backlash, Professor Brescoll looked deeper.
  • Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence.
  • female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings.
  • But female employees who spoke up with equally valuable ideas did not improve their managers’ perception of their performance.
  • But when women spoke up more, there was no increase in their perceived helpfulness.
  • businesses need to find ways to interrupt this gender bias.
  • increase women’s contributions by adopting practices that focus less on the speaker and more on the idea
  • SINCE most work cannot be done anonymously, leaders must also take steps to encourage women to speak and be heard
Javier E

The Triumph of Obama's Long Game - 0 views

nymag.com/...iumph-of-obamas-long-game.html

politics US policy foreign policy israel gender obama health care strategy conservative

shared by Javier E on 23 Jul 17 - No Cached
  • Speaking of ideology versus reality, there is, it seems to me, a parallel on the left. That is the current attempt to deny the profound natural differences between men and women, and to assert, with a straight and usually angry face, that gender is in no way rooted in sex, and that sex is in no way rooted in biology.
  • This unscientific product of misandrist feminism and confused transgenderism is striding through the culture, and close to no one in the elite is prepared to resist it.
  • And so we have the establishment of gender-neutral birth certificates in Canada; and, in England, that lovely old phrase, “Ladies and Gentlemen,” is being removed from announcements on the Tube
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • We have dozens of new pronouns in colleges (for all those genders that have suddenly sprung into existence), and biological males competing in all-female high-school athletic teams (guess who wins at track).
  • Worse, we have constant admonitions against those who actually conform, as most human beings always have, to the general gender rule.
  • We have gone from rightly defending the minority to wrongly problematizing the majority. It should surprise no one that, at some point, the majority will find all of this, as Josh Barro recently explained, “annoying.”
  • I say this as someone happily in the minority — and who believes strongly in the right to subvert or adapt traditional gender roles.
  • But you can’t subvert something that you simultaneously argue doesn’t exist.
  • the core contradiction of ideological transgenderism. By severing the link between sex and gender completely, it abolishes the core natural framework without which the transgender experience makes no sense at all.
  • It’s also a subtle, if unintentional, attack on homosexuality. Most homosexuals are strongly attached to their own gender and attracted to traditional, natural expressions of it. That’s what makes us gay, for heaven’s sake. And that’s one reason the entire notion of a common “LGBT” identity is so misleading. How can a single identity comprise both the abolition of gender and at the same time its celebration?
  • Exceptions, in other words, need a rule to exist. Abolish gender’s roots in biology and sex — and you abolish gay people and transgender people as well.
  • Yes, there’s a range of gender expression among those of the same sex. But it’s still tethered among most to the forces of chromosomes and hormones that make us irreducibly male and female. Nature can be interpreted; it can even be played with; but it cannot be abolished. After all, how can you be “queer” if there is no such thing as “normal”?
  • Transgender people exist and should be treated with absolutely the same human respect, decency, and civil equality as anyone else. But they don’t disprove traditional notions of gender as such — which have existed in all times, places, and cultures in human history and prehistory, and are rooted deeply in evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy.
  • Intersex people exist and, in my view, should not be genitally altered or “fixed” without their adult consent. But they do not somehow negate the overwhelming majority who have no such gender or sexual ambiguity.
  • the entire society does not need to be overhauled in order to make gay or trans experience central to it. Inclusion, yes. Revolution, no.
  • The added problem with this war on nature is the backlash it inevitably incurs. There’s a reason so many working-class men find it hard to vote for Democrats any more. And there’s a reason why a majority of white women last year voted for a man who boasted of sexual assault if the alternative was a triumph for contemporary left-feminism.
  • You can’t assault the core identity of most people’s lives and then expect them to vote for you. As a Trump supporter in Colorado just told a reporter from The New Yorker: “I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life. The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.”
  • One of the features you most associate with creeping authoritarianism is the criminalization of certain political positions. Is anything more anathema to a liberal democracy? If Trump were to suggest it, can you imagine the reaction?
  • And yet it’s apparently fine with a hefty plurality of the Senate and House. I’m referring to the remarkable bill introduced into the Congress earlier this year — with 237 sponsors and co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate — which the ACLU and the Intercept have just brought to light. It’s a remarkably bipartisan effort, backed by Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz, among many solid Trump-resisting Democrats and hard-line Republicans.
  • it would actually impose civil and criminal penalties on American citizens for backing or joining any international boycott of Israel because of its settlement activities. There are even penalties for simply inquiring about such a boycott. And they’re not messing around. The minimum civil penalty would be $250,000 and the maximum criminal penalty $1 million and 20 years in prison. Up to 20 years in prison for opposing the policies of a foreign government and doing something about it!
  • I’m not in favor of boycotting Israel when we don’t boycott, say, Saudi Arabia. But seriously: making it illegal?
  • Every now and again, you just have to sit back and admire the extraordinary skills of the Greater Israel lobby. You’ve never heard of this bill, and I hadn’t either. But that is partly the point. AIPAC doesn’t want the attention — writers who notice this attempted assault on a free society will be tarred as anti-Semites (go ahead, it wouldn’t be the first time) and politicians who resist it will see their careers suddenly stalled.
  • pointing out this special interest’s distortion of democracy is not the equivalent of bigotry. It’s simply a defense of our democratic way of life.
maxwellokolo

Senators ask FBI for evidence of Trump wiretap claim - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/39210869

shared by maxwellokolo on 08 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • maxwellokolo on 08 Mar 17
     
    Two US senators have written to US law enforcement to inquire if there is any evidence to support President Donald Trump's claim that he was wiretapped. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican Lindsey Graham sent the letter to the FBI on Wednesday. They requested "any warrant applications and court orders...
oliviaodon

How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...an-leaders-climate-change.html

climate

shared by oliviaodon on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • President Trump, has called global warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced that he would take the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planet’s warming.
  • The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation.
  • entire climate change debate has now been caught up in the broader polarization of American politics.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Yet when Mr. Trump pulled the United States from the Paris accord, the Senate majority leader, the speaker of the House and every member of the elected Republican leadership were united in their praise.
  • Republican leadership has also been dominated by lawmakers whose constituents were genuinely threatened by policies that would raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, especially coal. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, always sensitive to the coal fields in his state, rose through the ranks to become majority leader. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming also climbed into leadership, then the chairmanship of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, as a champion of his coal state.
  • oliviaodon on 10 Jun 17
     
    This article delves into the motivations behind policies in favor of helping the environment and also the political side of climate change.
clairemann

Mitt Romney Receives JFK Profile In Courage Award For Trump Impeachment Vote | HuffPost - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...ard_n_605de639c5b66d30c743e79f

brain science bias social media education knowledge trump

shared by clairemann on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Friday was named the recipient of the 2021 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his “courageous” vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for abuse of power. 
  • During Trump’s first impeachment trial last year, Romney became the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from his own party. 
  • “Senator Romney’s commitment to our Constitution makes him a worthy successor to the senators who inspired my father to write ‘Profiles in Courage,’”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “What I’ve found throughout life is doing those things which you know are right, which respond to the promptings of your conscience, allows you to have a greater degree of happiness and satisfaction than if you just do things to try and get ahead,”
Javier E

Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html

climate change science research motivated reasoning bias

shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
  • One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming.
  • He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.
  • “The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”
  • Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.
  • “What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.
  • Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.
  • Though often described on conservative news programs as a “Harvard astrophysicist,” Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.
  • Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.
  • As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.
  • Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,” Dr. Schmidt said.
  • Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.
  • Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.
oliviaodon

Of bears and biases: scientific judgment and the fate of Yellowstone's grizzlies | The ... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...d-biases-scien_b_10594408.html

science bias knowledge

shared by oliviaodon on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • In March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced its intent to remove protections afforded by the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) to grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
  • However, conservation organizations oppose “delisting” GYE grizzlies. They cite persistent threats to grizzlies, public opposition to delisting and ongoing scientific uncertainty regarding the population’s viability. Indeed, scientific uncertainty, especially threats posed by a changing climate, is one reason a federal court reversed a similar decision back in 2009, returning federal protections to GYE grizzlies.
  • According to the ESA, decisions about the listing of species are to be made “solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Numerous environmental statutes mandate that government agencies consider “the best available science” when making decisions. And agencies routinely consult with scientific experts to fullfill such mandates.
  • Such provisions work reasonably well when science offers clear and simple, black-and-white answers. But when there is uncertainty, is the expectation of scientific objectivity realistic?
  • To gain insight into what role bias may play in listing decisions, we surveyed a group of grizzly bear researchers. We found that experts’ judgments were associated with a number of factors outside the “best commercial and scientific data,” including their professional affiliations and social norms. Furthermore, we found that while there is no consensus in the scientific community regarding the threats to grizzly bears, the majority of scientists support continued listing.
haubertbr

Sessions met with top Russian official twice - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by haubertbr on 02 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • haubertbr on 02 Mar 17
     
    The Justice Department disclosed the meetings and said Sessions didn't mislead senators during his confirmation earlier this year when he said he knew of no contacts between Trump surrogates and Russians. Sessions, then a senator, was an early Trump backer and regular surrogate for him as a candidate.
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