I have written three Insider pieces this week, one on David Price and Chris Young, one on Zack Greinke and John Lackey, and one on Jordan Zimmermann and J.A. Happ. I also held my weekly Klawchat on Thursday.
Top Chef recaps began this week with episode one and episode two.
And now, the links…
- Anyone else remember Sideshow Bob running for Mayor as a Republican in a 1994 Simpsons episode? The Daily Beast points out some similarities to a current Presidential candidate.
- Quietly underlying the multiple rape accusations against porn actor James Deen is the pervasiveness of the idea that any sex worker – porn actress, prostitute, whatever – has less of a right of consent than any other woman.
- Of course, if I’m linking to the Daily Beast twice, I should also include this takedown of their embarrassing journalistic fails in identifying the wrong Syed Farook in the San Bernardino attack, including photos and the wrong home address.
- Speaking of San Bernardino, a day later “every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives,” per the New York Times. How this is a partisan issue is beyond my limited cognitive capabilities. The paper followed up today with their first front-page editorial since 1920, calling on an end to the gun epidemic in the U.S.
- The New Yorker weighed in too, along the same lines: The average person does not need these guns.
- Those crap viral sites that steal other people’s content grabbed this one in the last week or two, so here’s the original: The Battle, a fantastic comic on having depression and anxiety.
- Charles Pierce drops some fire in an op ed for Esquire subtitled “nowhere is Idiot America more at work than in the Climate Change ‘debate.’ This is yet another topic where we are likely to have one Presidential candidate actively denying settled science. I can vote a lot of ways on the various issues that matter to me, but I can’t vote for someone who thinks science is a matter of who yells loudest.
- In case you were concerned, no, the universe is not merely a 3-D hologram. I don’t think any reasonable scientists thought it was, though.
- Earth – you know, this one – has one-third of its arable land in the last four decades. You know what they say: you can feed all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but you can’t feed all of the people all of the time.
- The Useless Department of Agriculture said something right, for a change, with a brief post on alternatives to antibiotic use in livestock. Of course, they could just ban such use as a major public health threat, but, you know, why be so drastic?
- Oh, maybe because of the rise in carbapanem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, the “phantom menace” bacterium that can transfer its resistance to nearby bacteria.
- This story’s a few weeks old, but it seems to be getting relatively little mainstream coverage: The singer known as Kesha (or Ke$ha) has alleged that her producer Dr. Luke sexually abused her, and is now suing Sony for the right to record music without him. While I understand the allegations are unproven, why would Sony appear to ignore the allegations, and potentially force an abuse victim into continued contact with her abuser?
- Mars’ larger moon, Phobos, has been a key part of many works of fiction that explore colonizing the red planet, and appears as a territory in the game Mission: Red Planet, but it’s slowly falling toward the planet and will fall apart in 20-40 million years, becoming a ring around the god of war. So we’d better get there fast.
- The Hollywood Reporter talks about the process behind its annual actors/actresses roundtables and the pre-Oscar nominations machine in explaining why its actress roundtable has no women of color this year. It’s an ugly reason.
Like you, I lament that the reaction to San Bernardino has been so partisan. You and I may disagree about how to describe the attack and what should be done about it, however, so the only way to resolve this situation is for one of us to change our views. I suggest that you concede your position, since it’s obvious there’s not sufficient congressional support for it. Why continue the partisan acrimony for a measure that will never be enacted?
Actually, whatever the merits of our respective positions, I wish we would just debate them instead of suggesting there’s only one reasonable position and anyone who disagrees with that position is not acting in good faith.
I suggest that you concede your position, since it’s obvious there’s not sufficient congressional support for it.
Well, as there seems to be sufficient popular support for it – various polls, including a Gallup poll from October, show a majority of respondents support tougher gun control – perhaps you should concede yours?
In a more serious vein, gun control is not a binary issue. There are many positions in between “ban all guns” and “anything goes,” such as, for example, increasing background checks, or banning the sale of guns to specific subgroups like felons, suspected terrorists, or people with serious mental illnesses. (I recognize that, as someone with a diagnosed anxiety disorder, the last group might include me.) You can say “yes” to some of those and “no” to others, and there are often reasonable arguments on both sides. However, on the subject of banning the sale of guns to people with suspected ties to terrorist groups, to the point that they’re on the no-fly list, for example, I don’t see what the reasonable counterargument is.
How’d you like to have Dave representing you in a court of law?
I’m not an NRA member or a gun nut, but I think the watch list argument is a red herring.
“According to the technology website TechDirt.com, 40 percent of those on the FBI’s watch list — 280,000 people — are considered to have no affiliation with recognized terrorist groups. All it takes is for the government to declare is has “reasonable suspicion” that someone could be a terrorist. There is no hard evidence required, and the standard is notoriously vague and elastic. Last year The Huffington Post listed “7 Ways That You (Yes, You) Could End Up On A Terrorist Watch List” (tinyurl.com/ktmppgy). They include being nominated by someone else. In 2013 alone, HuffPo notes, 468,749 watch-list nominations were submitted to the National Counterterrorism Center. It rejected only 1 percent of them.” (source: http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20151130/opinion/151139997) I also recall reading another piece (can’t find it atm) that said 72 people on the terrorist watch list have top secret clearances and work for DHS.
So basically, if your neighbor thinks you’re a jerk, s/he could nominate you for the terrorist watch list, and there’s apparently a 99% chance of it being successful.
I definitely like the IDEA of people on the terrorist watch list being unable to buy guns. However, the watch list itself is such a debacle that I don’t think it’s a very good idea.
BRB, nominating you for the watchlist.
thank you for the link to “The Battle”- we have a situation with-in our family in which this illustration is very useful.
Be well.
Tom hits the nail on the head — these lists are unwieldy and inexact. And the bill was almost certainly unconstitutional; it allowed people to go to court to contest being on the list, but the government would only have to support its reasonable suspicion by a preponderance of the evidence — a low bar for deprivation of a constitutional right. Finally, these people in California, as far as I know, weren’t on any list, so to the extent the idea is this would have prevented the attack, it seems unlikely.
I’m fine with additional gun control measures, so long as I think they will be effective and lawful. (Btw, I’m not a gun owner, have only shot a gun twice, not that it matters) I also don’t have all the answers, but I just think it’s worth admitting this is a complicated issue, with lots to consider, and if you disagree it’s not necessarily that you’re a tool of the NRA or not interested in facts, etc. The debate as a whole has way too much of that, imo.
Keith, have you read Sam Harris’ take on guns? It’s good/interesting: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun
Would be curious to hear your thoughts…
That was absolutely superb, especially since he backs up his assertions with some evidence. I’ll include it next Saturday. Thank you for sending it.
This was an interesting read, particularly the point he makes about pro-gun control articles written by people who do not seem to know anything about firearms. It is irritating when an hour spent researching your topic would yield enough basic information to write more informed content.
A counterpoint to Harris, also backed with evidence, albeit without the focus on mass shootings.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/25/guns-protection-national-rifle-association
That piece debunks a claim someone made above – that the correlation between gun proliferation and a decline in gun-related deaths indicates causation.
And the various terrorist watch lists disproportionately target Arab and Persian Americans (and “Muslim-looking” people) in general. I’m for stringent laws surrounding buying/selling/owning guns but not legislation that is built off of and adds to racial profiling.
Regarding the senate vote on preventing those from purchasing guns because they’re on the FBI’s watchlist, I can only assume Keith’s limited cognitive capabilities prevent him from understanding due process.
Well, as such a statute would not deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property without appropriate procedure of law, I think my understanding of due process is beside the point.
No, it’s entirely germane to the issue. Your argument is that free citizens should be denied a right without any sort of evidentiary hearing having taken place. No warrant, no formal charges, nothing.
These same “free citizens” are denied the right to board a plane. (The list in question in Sen. Feinstein’s proposed amendment was the no-fly list, not the much larger and more problematic “watchlist,” which is an agglomeration of several other lists.) It seems that your issue is with these lists in general: that citizens should not be on them without said evidentiary hearing. I don’t think I disagree with that, especially since people on the no-fly list typically don’t know they’re on it until they try to fly. For a U.S. citizen, that seems like a violation of due process – the violation in question here.
But I also think you’re affirming the consequent here: Is it every citizen’s right to buy or own a gun? I don’t think it is. We do have background checks, and occasionally someone fails and isn’t allowed to purchase a weapon legally.
According to WaPo Feinstein’s proposal would have used the terror watch list, not the no fly list. See here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/12/03/senate-democrats-to-force-gun-control-votes-in-the-wake-of-the-san-bernardino-shooting/
Regarding background checks, those are used to confirm eligibility based on whether an individual has a criminal record or other such formal convictions or violations as part of the criminal justice system, not whether someone in the federal government thinks you’re a bad person who might be up to no good.
The majority of the coverage I’ve seen says it would have used the no-fly list. I really don’t know which is accurate any more – but I do think your point about the lists themselves being problematic would still be valid if it’s the no-fly list. The FBI was accused of using it as a threat to coerce a Muslim person to cooperate with them in a lawsuit last year (I don’t know what the outcome was).
Good thoughts from the NYT about the pitfalls of the terror watch lists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/terror-watch-lists-run-amok.html?_r=0&referer=