Sommers: Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

http://www.aei.org/article/100695

Zorza also informs readers that "between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic violence." Studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, indicate that the figure is closer to 1 percent.

...

My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism. They do not get corrected. The authors are passionately committed to the proposition that American women are oppressed and under siege. The scholars seize and hold on for dear life to any piece of data that appears to corroborate their dire worldview. At the same time, any critic who attempts to correct the false assumptions is dismissed as a backlasher and an anti-feminist crank.

Kinsley - Rationing Health Care Is Our Choice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062503360.html

Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing.

Here's my test to see if Congress and the President are being honest about their health care reforms plans:  Are congressmen and their families required to use the least expensive (to the government) health plans?  If they get a special option, or get all of it paid for by the taxpayers, then the rest of us are getting taken.

Ledeen: Refusing to See Evil Clearly in Iran

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWZkMDhmMDAzNWNkMjExNzQ0M2I3YTA2YWM0NTEzODk=

The brutality in Iran today foreshadows what the mullahs intend for us. It is what the world will look like if they prevail. Iran's Middle East neighbors know this, and dread it (with the exception of Syria, which is playing Mussolini's Italy to Khamenei's Nazi Germany). Yet every American president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama has convinced himself that we can reach a workable, long-term modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic. They refused to see the mullahs' Iran for what it is: a ruthless and determined enemy, at war with the United States.

It is an old story. Franklin Roosevelt and most Western European countries refused to see that Hitler's treatment of the German Jews and other minorities foreshadowed his global intentions, just as we deliberately blinded ourselves to the fact that Stalin's mass murders of his own people, whether landowners or Ukrainians, showed what Soviet expansion would bring to the captive nations after the Second World War.  Indeed, America has almost always refused to see evil clearly, recognize that it would inevitably be directed against us, and act early enough to prevent an even greater disaster.

To our great shame, we were unprepared for the uprising of the Iranian people, which had become highly likely in the runup to the "election," and which, we should have been aiding for years with better communications, strike funds for workers, open calls for freedom, and insistence that political prisoners be freed. Worse yet, in the first days following the explosion, our leaders seemed annoyed that the Iranian people had interrupted efforts to strike a bargain. The president first took credit for the "robust debate," then suggested there was no real difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, warned that it would be counterproductive for him to be seen "meddling," and then, when the dimensions of the street massacres were too large to ignore, criticized the repression and finally spoke warmly of Mousavi.

Kudlow: Madoff Sentenced, but He Didn’t Sing

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzhiOWNmZWMxMWMyNjAxNDgzNWZkN2VjMjZiNzgwNTM=

The point is, it's been six months since Madoff was first arrested, and the actual case against him has progressed very little from his own self-confession right at the start. Neither his wife nor his two sons have been deposed. Nor have these other characters who probabl[y] looted the funds.

The thing about a Ponzi scheme is others besides Ponzi can get rich. And there are names in circulation of people who may also have gotten rich. But where's the money? When will these people be brought in to testify under oath? The thousands of other smaller investors and charities who were totally ripped off by Madoff could recover a lot more if these big shots are finally hammered.

Madoff will die in jail. And he deserves it. But the justice system has much more work to do following today's sentencing.

Honduras Defends Its Democracy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623220955866301.html

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Castro and Chavez want their buddy back in charge of Honduras.  Obama and Hillary agree.  That makes it pretty easy to side with the Honduran Supreme Court and military.

Cap and Trade, not Read and Debate

There's no use denying that the bill exists just because it's not on paper yet.  Our models predict that a disastrous bill will emerge in the near future due to unregulated Congressional emissions.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/wheres-the-bill-49208987.html

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: "Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)..." How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill?

Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can't even wait until members of Congress know what they're voting on.

Polar bear expert barred by global warmists

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html

But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

15 Reasons to Oppose Climate Bill

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2009/06/15_reasons_to_oppose_climate_b.php

Stifling Science to 'Fight Warming'

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06262009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/stifling_science_to_fight_warming_176156.htm

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington has obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus."

In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health "endangerment finding" covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut.

On March 12, Carlin's director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having "any direct communication" with anyone outside his office about his study. "There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."

Scrappleface: EPA to monitor eBay sales of personal carbon emissions

Satire (mostly):

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/EPA-to-monitor-eBay-sales-of-personal-carbon-emissions-7882682-49117952.html

"Once the carbon dioxide emissions cap is in place," said the EPA official, "then those citizens whose exertions, or sheer immensity, generate outputs above federally-permitted levels, must purchase offsets from less hazardous citizens. Craigslist and eBay provide the ideal platform for this exchange, since most carbon-offset sellers already spend most of their time online."

"This could be a real goldmine for shallow breathers, you know, couch potatoes," the EPA source said. "And for those who over-exert, spewing out earth-threatening gas at an alarming rate, the penalty of paying for these offsets may induce them to reconsider the cost to humanity of all of that breathing."

The strange, heartless glee at Sanford's downfall

http://www.slate.com/id/2221255/

What Mark Sanford seemed to be trying to say is that he screwed up, in the biggest possible way, because he lost his bearings. He lost his self-control. He was indulgent. He forgot that there were other humans in the world. Yet in the constant flow of abuse, joke-making, and grand conclusions about his failings, it seemed everyone having a good time pointing at his self-indulgence was also engaging in a form of it.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yjc2MDgwYmE1N2ViOGQ2N2E3ODg3ZjI5NDJmMjUxZDY=

Governor Sanford has done a bad thing and he's going to pay dearly for it. But I'm not writing him off because of it. If we end up learning that it's part of a pattern or that he systematically used the privileges of his office to obstruct legitimate inquiry into his conduct, that's another story. But I doubt it's going to happen. I think we're going to end up with a reasonably good human being who made some bad mistakes and caused his family a lot of pain.

I expect that Sanford will resign.  He clearly doesn't care about his political future.  If he spends a couple of years working in a think tank, he'll have a chance of a comeback, like Newt.  If he needs money, he can write a book.

Goldberg: Et Tu, Big Business?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTdjODk3ZDE1MDdiNWQ1ZTc0NWQ4NTU3ZWIwZjJhNjI=

Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition. On health care, insurance companies and others repeat the mantra that they want to be "at the table rather than on the menu," all the better to be positioned as a tax collector of the welfare state. General Motors and Chrysler have gone from being pimped-out prostitutes of the state to outright chattel more akin to the leather-bound gimp in Pulp Fiction, eager to do the bidding of the president and the UAW.

Once-proud companies like GE have become seduced by global-warming schemes because they recognize that there's more money to be made selling white elephants to Uncle Sam than there is selling competitive products consumers want. Indeed, cap-and-trade taxes promise to deliver precisely the protectionist industrial policies the Left has dreamed of for decades, only under a "progressive" label.

Robert Kagan - Obama's Conundrum: Shunning Iran's Opposition

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061601753.html

Obama's policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what "realism" is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square.

Why is it that Democrats prefer to deal with bosses rather than support individual liberty?  It's as if "making the deal" is more important than freedom.

Letterman apologizes

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/06/letterman-readdresses-palin.html

Letterman quote:

It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke.  ... Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault that it was misunderstood. ... So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.

It took a while, but Dave did the right thing to apologize.

Steyn: Retreat into Apathy

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWVkNTBjM2M1NzFhZmY0ZWNjODc5ZWY3YWIwYzE0ZWQ=

More important, there is a cost to governmentalizing every responsibility of adulthood — and it is, in Lord Whitelaw's phrase, the stirring up of apathy. If you wander round Liverpool or Antwerp, Hamburg or Lyons, the fatalism is palpable. In Britain, once the crucible of freedom, civic life is all but dead: In Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, some three-quarters of the economy is government spending; a malign alliance between state bureaucrats and state dependents has corroded democracy, perhaps irreparably. In England, the ground ceded to the worst sociopathic pathologies advances every day — and the latest report on "the seven evils" afflicting an ever more unlovely land blames "poverty" and "individualism," failing to understand that if you remove the burdens of individual responsibility while loosening all restraint on individual hedonism the vaporization of the public space is all but inevitable.

Derbyshire: End of an Extravaganza (The Space Shuttle program)

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzc2NTYxMzVjNWRkMzc0YzQ0Y2VhNGI1ZGRkMTc2N2I=

Today, after 126 shuttle flights across 28 years and an expenditure of several hundred billion dollars, not one American in ten could give you an answer, and the occasional exception would be unable to explain why the work might not have been done as well by robots at one-tenth the cost. Probably most people who had any clue at all would mention servicing the International Space Station, or, with last month's mission in mind, keeping the Hubble Space Telescope in operation. But then, your respondent could not tell you the point of the station, or give you a comparative-cost analysis of servicing Hubble with shuttles at half a billion per mission versus just sending up a replacement Hubble on an unmanned launcher. Still less could he explain why any of this was government business.

In fact, the main purpose of the International Space Station is to give the shuttle something to do. So far as Hubble is concerned, most of the construction costs were in planning, design, and development. We could have built half a dozen copies for little more than it cost to build the first, and put a replacement in orbit on an unmanned rocket whenever one conked out, saving ourselves billions in shuttle costs.

Bolton: Obama continues Bush's 2nd term -- badly

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/10/obama-administration-continuation-of-second-bush-t/

Conservative foreign policy is unabashedly pro-American, unashamed of American exceptionalism, unwilling to bend its knee to international organizations, and unapologetic about the need for the fullest range of dominant military capabilities. Its diplomacy is neither unilateralist nor multilateralist, but chooses its strategies, tactics, means and methods based on a hard-headed assessment of U.S. national interests, not on theologies about process. Most especially, conservatives understand that allies are different from adversaries, and that each should be treated accordingly.

These sentiments bear repeating because the fundamental principles underlying conservative foreign and national-security policy have never been stronger, and the consequences of deviating from them have rarely been so clear. The Obama administration's first few months already provide compelling evidence of the enormous costs of embracing the alternative worldview of the European and American left. Of course, that was equally true when the Bush administration all-too-frequently deviated from conservative precepts, especially in its failure-ridden second-term. In many ways, unfortunately, the Obama administration is a continuation of the second Bush term, only worse.

Krauthammer - Barack Obama Surveys the World

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061103129.html

For all of his philosophy, the philosopher-king protests too much. Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He's showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.

Distorting history is not truth-telling but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

Malone: The Obama Surprise

http://pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/2009/06/12/the-obama-surprise/

But President Obama has instead appeared to be almost exclusively interested in Big Business as the key to economy recovery.

By comparison, almost every move the new Administration has made regarding entrepreneurship seems to be targeting at destroying it in this country. It has left Sarbanes-Oxley intact, added ever-greater burdens on small business owners, called for increasing capital gains taxes, and is now preparing to pile on cap-and-trade, double taxation on offshore earnings, and a host of other new costs. Even Obamacare seems likely to land unfairly on small companies.

Entrepreneurship has been the single most important contributor to the economic health of this country for at least a century now - and if you were going to systematically destroy that vitality, you couldn't come up with a better strategy than the one Washington has put in place over the last six months.

What's behind Obama's sudden attempt to fire the AmeriCorps inspector general?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Whats-behind-Obamas-sudden-firing-of-the-AmeriCorps-inspector-general-47877797.html

This afternoon, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who is something of a guardian angel for inspectors general, fired off a letter to the White House about the affair.  

"I was troubled to learn that last night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated," Grassley wrote.  "As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions.  Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure.  This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny."

The White House is going ahead with firing Walpin.  The firing apparently stems from Walpin's investigation of a non-profit group, St. HOPE Academy, run by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California (and a big Obama supporter).  "[Walpin] found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car," the AP reports.  In April, the U.S. attorney declined to file any criminal charges in the matter and criticized Walpin's investigation.  But at the same time Johnson and St. HOPE agreed to repay about half of the $850,000 it had received from AmeriCorps.

Bottom line: The AmeriCorps IG accuses prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money.  Prominent Obama supporter has to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money.  Obama fires AmeriCorps IG.

What's the point of winning an election if you can't take care of your friends?  It's the Chicago way, baby.