Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 15

Face Of The Day

Lisa Laidley places a rose on the casket of her son, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Ramon Morris, during his burial service at Arlington National Cemetery on January 23, 2015. Morris died on December 12, 2014 from injuries caused by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. By Win McNamee/Getty Images.

There Are Legitimate Arguments Against Gay Marriage

And then there are unapologetic, unvarnished, raving bigots … like the recently lionized, late Straussian, Harry Jaffa.

Replacing Obamacare Would Be Tough

Dougherty urges the GOP to come up with a real Obamacare alternative:

If Republicans want to avoid the fate of other center-right parties in Europe that become mere budget-fixers on national health systems, they have to be much more united on their strategy than they are now. A gigantic GOP-led reform could lead to the same electoral disasters that befell Democrats after they passed the ACA, and fear of losing power could easily translate into a drift towards single-payer. ObamaCare required the incredible courage of President Obama, as well as many of his more awkward and embarrassing legislative buyouts, like the Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase. Republicans are going to need a president and legislative leadership with at least as much mettle as he had.

But Ezra doesn’t think Republicans are up for it:

[U]pheaval in the health-care system typically makes for terrible politics. Democrats learned that the hard way with the Affordable Care Act. Republicans would likely learn it double if they made a serious effort to repeal, replace, or overhaul Obamacare. This is the central problem for conservative health reformers: because Republicans don’t care that much about health reform and because so much of what health reform demands offends conservative sensibilities or constituencies, the party doesn’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to unite behind an alternative to Obamacare, much less actually pass and implement it.

Someone Wants Some More Attention

Yep: one former half-term governor is interested in running “with a servant’s heart” in 2016.

To Screen But Not To See

Iraq veteran Brian Turner, author of the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country, has an insightful take on American Sniper and how the film reflects our flawed understanding of the conflict:

This isn’t the defining film of the Iraq War. After nearly a quarter century of war and occupation in Iraq, we still haven’t seen that film. I’m beginning to think we’re incapable as a nation of producing a film of that magnitude, one that would explore the civilian experience of war, one that might begin to approach so vast and profound a repository of knowledge. I’m more and more certain that, if such a film film ever arrives, it’ll be made by Iraqi filmmakers a decade or more from now, and it’ll be little known or viewed, if at all, on our shores. The children of Iraq have far more to teach me about the war I fought in than any film I’ve yet seen — and I hope some of those children have the courage and opportunity to share their lessons onscreen. If this film I can only vaguely imagine is ever made, it certainly won’t gross $100 million on its opening weekend.

The biggest problem I have with American Sniper is also a problem I have with myself.

It’s a problem I sometimes find in my own work, and it’s an American problem: We don’t see, or even try to see, actual Iraqi people. We lack the empathy necessary to see them as fully human. In American Sniper, Iraqi men, women, and children are known and defined only in relation to combat and the potential threat they pose. Their bodies are the site and source of violence. In both the film and our collective imagination, their humanity is reduced in ways that, ultimately, define our own narrow humanity. In American Sniper, Iraqis are called “savages,” and the “streets are crawling” with them. Eastwood and his screenwriter Jason Hall give Iraqis no memorable lines. Their interior lives are a blank canvas, with no access points to let us in. I get why that is: If Iraqis are seen in any other light, if their humanity is recognized, then the construct of our imagination, the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-a-white-horse story we tell ourselves to push forward, falls apart.

If we saw Iraqis as humans, we’d have to learn how to live in a world far, far more complicated and painful than the difficult, painful one we currently live in.

Get High, Lower Rape?

Annie Lowrey floats the idea:

According to government research, every year, 97,000 students are “victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape,” with alcohol consumption having a profound effect on perpetrators’ behavior. … [T]here is some evidence that young people tend to substitute pot for alcohol. They either burn one down or chug one down; more pot means less beer. And there’s also evidence that increasing the price of beer nudges young people to switch to pot — with some significant effects, including lower rates of violent crime. “Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship,” according to one paper in the journal Addictive Behaviors. “Cannabis reduces likelihood of violence during intoxication.”

Robby Soave applauds Lowrey, calling her approach “reverse reefer madness.”

A Mini Military-Industrial-Complex, Ctd

Ronald Bailey flags a disquieting item:

Some 50 police agencies including U.S. marshals and the FBI have been using for two years Range-R doppler radar devices that can see 50 feet through walls, including brick and concrete ones, to detect the location of people inside their houses. And in some cases law enforcement officers are using with them without search warrants. As USA Today reports:

The radars were first designed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. They represent the latest example of battlefield technology finding its way home to civilian policing and bringing complex legal questions with it….

Previous Dish on that trend here. Maria Santos notes regarding the radar device:

One appeals court case tackled the technology in December after police used the radar to arrest a man violating his parole. The court ultimately upheld law enforcement’s actions, but judges remarked that “the government’s warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions.” Justice Department officials are now reviewing the case.

Faces Of The Day

People demonstrate in front of the National Congress in Buenos Aires against the death of Argentine public prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found shot dead this weekend, just days after accusing President Cristina Kirchner of obstructing a probe into a 1994 Jewish center bombing. Nisman, 51, who was just hours away from testifying at a congressional hearing, was found dead overnight on Sunday in his apartment in the trendy Puerto Madero neighbourhood. “I can confirm that a .22-caliber handgun was found beside the body,” prosecutor Viviana Fein said. The nation’s top security official said Nisman appears to have committed suicide. By Alejandro Pagni/AFP/Getty Images. The latest:

Confronted with a deepening scandal, the president of Argentina abruptly reversed herself on Thursday, saying that the death of the lead prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center was not a suicide as she and other government officials had suggested. The president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, instead suggested that the prosecutor’s death was part of what she hinted was a sinister plot to defame and destroy her. … Mrs. Kirchner has not appeared in public since Mr. Nisman’s death, and her vice-president has been visiting Bolivia. She posted a link to her latest remarks on Twitter. When she first wrote about Mr. Nisman on Tuesday, it was on her Facebook page, leading Mr. de Narváez to call her leadership “adolescent.”

What’s Killing The Bees? Ctd

The crisis could be spreading:

Wild bees are at risk of catching diseases from their struggling domesticated brethren, according to a recent study published in The Journal of Applied Ecology.

The study, led by evolutionary geneticist Lena Wilfert of the University of Exeter, adds a new layer to the crisis known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has precipitated an alarming drop in honeybee populations worldwide. … [T]he use of pesticides isn’t the only anthropogenic driver behind the transmission of pathogens into the wild. Wilfert’s team also found that many commercial beekeepers are creating ideal conditions for virulent diseases to emerge. “High densities within breeding facilities and in commercial pollination operations increase the contact rate between infected and uninfected conspecifics, thereby lowering the threshold for disease emergence,” the authors explain.

Helen Briggs reports from across the Pond:

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers of the charity, Buglife, said the results of the study showed an urgent need for changes in how the government regulates the importation of bees. “Wild honey bees can no longer be found in England or Wales, thought to have been wiped out by disease,” she told BBC News. “Now these studies show how diseases can be transmitted between managed honey bees and commercial bumble bees, and could have potentially drastic impacts on the rest of our wild pollinators.”

A study last year on a sample of commercial bumble bee hives imported into the UK found 77% were contaminated with up to five different parasites, with a further three being found in the pollen that was brought in with them, she added.

More Dish on the bee problem here and here.

How Can We Beef Up Cyber Security?

Adam Segal sees new cyber laws as a real possibility:

Could this finally be the year when the Congress passes cyber legislation? I think yes. Public awareness of the threat is at an all-time high. The Sony attack has created pressure for Congress to act (though it is not clear that any of the legislation would have prevented the North Korean hackers from breaching the company). Moreover, there is bipartisan support for cybersecurity legislation. … [W]hile disparaging most of the President’s agenda, prominent Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have pointed to cybersecurity as an area where “we can get some agreement.” As in the past, privacy concerns will make or break the legislation, but we should expect to see real signs of progress.

Katie Benner examines the cyber proposals in Obama’s SOTU:

The Obama ideas with the most potential to bolster corporate security are his threat-sharing measure and the corporate disclosure rule.

As I’ve written before, collaboration is considered to be one of the best defenses against cybercrime, but a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that only 25 percent of businesses currently share information about attacks. Obama wants to encourage companies to share threat data with the government in order to get liability protection. … The disclosure rule isn’t useful because it increases security per se, but because it gives companies an incentive to pre-emptively beef up their defenses.

However, Timothy Edgar declares that no “proposal in Obama’s State of the Union address would truly hold companies accountable for cyber insecurity”:

If you are looking for effective ideas on this score, you would do better to listen to students here at Brown University where I’ve lately been teaching.

One student’s idea was to build on existing “bug bounty” programs in which software companies pay researchers money for uncovering security flaws by turning the federal hacking law on its head. Today, all intrusions—even “white hat” penetrations for security research—are illegal unless the system owner consents. A company with lousy security may threaten a security researcher with a lawsuit or jail time for pointing out a gaping hole in its defenses. What if Congress reversed this perverse law, requiring companies to pay ethical hackers for demonstrating vulnerabilities?