Climate science cranks: Wrong in small things, wrong in all things?

January 23, 2011

Earlier we discussed the political jabs lacking scientific merit at the blogs that have sprung up to harry and heckle climate scientists, especially a relatively new one called, inaptly, “haunting the library.”

The author and commenters have taken to calling Dr. James Hansen “Beijing Jim,” thinking it a cleverly insulting nickname.

What?

James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org

Portrait of James Hansen for James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org

I almost regret asking.  Why “Beijing Jim?”

They started it when Hansen wrote an opposite-editorial page piece for the South China Post, urging China to act against global warming anyway, despite the U.S.’s failure to take aggressive-enough action yet.

haunting the library tries to spin the piece as Hansen moving over to China’s side in all issues, a position they seem to think is somehow unpatriotic (and therefore, insulting to Hansen).

Actually, in the article, Hansen doesn’t let China off the hook at all.  It’s a patient, well-aimed call to China to do the right things.  Only by misreporting and misrepresenting what Hansen said can climate science cranks spin it.

James Hansen takes the honorable high road, calling on the world’s most-polluting nations to take action now to save our children’s and grandchildren’s future.  haunting the library issues schoolyard, childish and churlish taunts.

Oh, but Dear Reader, you’re already guessing at the particular intellectual clumsiness I’m getting to, aren’t you?  It’s about that taunting name, “Beijing Jim.”  It’s unfair and undeserved because Hansen represented America well, and honorably.  “Free Enterprise Jim” would be closer to the facts.

It’s also geographically wrong.  South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong newspaper, not Beijing.  Hong Kong is the Chinese outpost of rampant free enterprise, as you know and the rest of the world knows.  Hong Kong is not Beijing.

The climate science cranks at haunting the library don’t know climate science, don’t know newspaper publishing, and flail at geography, too. They’re cranky, too.  Cranky cranks.  Poetic, almost.

More:

_____________

January 24, 2011:  Others are watching, too.  Tim Lambert at Deltoid makes gentle correction of an Andrew Bolt column relying on misinformation from hauntingthelibrary.  Good discussion there.

7 Comments | Blogs, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, denialism, History, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Eugene Robinson: “The GOP’s rude awakening on health-care repeal”

January 23, 2011

Eugene Robinson stuck to the facts, and noted that by a careful count, 62 percent of Americans oppose the Republican vote to repeal the new health care law:

What actually happened, though, is that the Republican majority managed to win the votes of just three Democrats – all of them Blue Dogs who have been consistent opponents of the reform package anyway. In terms of actual defectors, meaning Democrats who changed sides on the issue, there were none. This is momentum?

The unimpressive vote came at a moment when “the will of the people” on health care is coming into sharper focus. Most polls that offer a simple binary choice – do you like the “Obamacare” law or not – show that the reforms remain narrowly unpopular. Yet a significant fraction of those who are unhappy complain not that the reform law went too far but that it didn’t go far enough. I think of these people as the “public option” crowd.

Eugene Robinson, op-ed writer, Washington Post
Washington Post header for Eugene Robinson’s columns                                                                      .

The numbers:

A recent Associated Press poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed opposed the reform law and 40 percent supported it. But when asked what Congress should do, 43 percent said the law should be modified so that it does more to change the health-care system. Another 19 percent said it should be left as it is.

More troubling for the GOP, the AP poll found that just 26 percent of respondents wanted Congress to repeal the reform law completely. A recent Washington Post poll found support for outright repeal at 18 percent; a Marist poll pegged it at 30 percent.

In other words, what House Republicans just voted to do may be the will of the Tea Party, but it’s not “the will of the people.”

[My math:  43% +19%=62%.]

The facts:

The CBO, which “scores” the impact of proposed legislation, calculated that the health-reform law will reduce federal deficits by at least $143 billion through 2019. Confronted with the fact that repeal would deepen the nation’s fiscal woes, Republicans simply claimed the CBO estimate to be rubbish. Who cares what the CBO says, anyway?

Er, um, Republicans care, at least when it’s convenient. Delving into the CBO’s analysis, they unearthed a finding that they proclaimed as definitive: The reform law would eliminate 650,000 jobs. Hence “Job-Killing” in the repeal bill’s title.

One problem, though: The CBO analysis contains no such figure. It’s an extrapolation of a rough estimate of an anticipated effect that no reasonable person would describe as “job-killing.” What the budget office actually said is that there are people who would like to withdraw from the workforce – sometimes because of a chronic medical condition – but who feel compelled to continue working so they can keep their health insurance. Once the reforms take effect, these individuals will have new options. That’s where the “lost” jobs supposedly come from.

So, in other words, Republicans voted to keep people slaves to jobs that provide health care benefits.  The party of  Abraham Lincoln has fallen so far not even Abraham Lincoln at his most charitable moment would recognize it any longer.

6 Comments | Health care, Legislation, Politics, Polling and Public Opinion, President Obama, U.S. House of Representatives | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bull baiting bill not appearing ready, Utah legislator proposes for killing horses instead

January 20, 2011

You couldn’t make this stuff up, and if you did, you should see a therapist.

As the Utah 2011 legislative session gets underway, state Rep. Curt Oda wasted no time in introducing a bill that reflects his legislative priority. He is not using his position as a legislator, however, to try to create jobs, improve schools, or protect children, for example. Instead, his bill, H.B. 210,  encourages the torture and killing of animals.

Oda wants to amend the state’s animal cruelty law, Section 76-9-301, to exempt “pests” and “feral” animals from the definition of animal. This means that to the extent they were protected, these animals would no longer be protected by the state’s animal cruelty law. Oda is reported to have told a local newspaper that “feral” animals and “pests” could be shot with a bow and arrow, for example, decapitated or clubbed to death.

Why kill horses with such brutality?  Dog fighting and cock fighting clearly wouldn’t fly?  Bear baiting won’t work — not enough bears?  Surely there are more humane ways to deal with “pest” animals.

2 Comments | Law, Legislation, Legislatures, Politics, Wildlife | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas Democrats mobilize against Foolish Five Budget Cuts

January 20, 2011

I get e-mail, some of it that offers hope.  This one came from Boyd Richie, chair of the Texas Democratic Party:

Dear fellow Democrat,

Earlier this week, the State House version of the budget proposal was set out in black and white.  The cost of ten years of Republican rule: a $27 billion budget deficit.

Governor Rick Perry wants Texans to believe the massive budget shortfall is simply the result of the recession – but this is not true.  The tax package the Republican-controlled legislature passed in 2006 created a permanent structural deficit that led to the budget crisis facing our state, and now they refuse to take responsibility.

Texas Democrats stand up for the interests of our working families.  We demand a quality education for our children because we know this is the key to their ability to compete for the good jobs of tomorrow.  However, these budget cuts place public education and other issues critical to Texas’ future economic security under attack.  They are short-sighted, hostile to our state’s children and elderly and bound to weaken employment and economic growth:

“The Foolish Five” Proposed Cuts

Jobs:

  • 9,600 state jobs eliminated that could cause the loss of 14,400 more jobs.  Economist Ray Perryman explained that every lost public sector job creates a “multiplier effect”, resulting in an additional 1.5 jobs lost.

 

  • $1.15 BILLION reduction in Closing the Gap programs, designed to attract students to study in fields that help Texas’ economy. These cuts will negate over one million new jobs and $122 billion in personal income that economist Perryman calculated these programs would create by 2030.

Children:

  • $9.8 BILLION in cuts from our public schools
  • Elimination of Pre-K Early Start and Early Childhood School Ready program funding, meaning that nearly 200,000 kids will be kicked off these important school-readiness programs.

Elderly:

  • $1.57 BILLION cut in nursing home payments

As Democrats, our numbers are down but we are not out – and we will fight these cuts every day on behalf of our working families.

 

Boyd L. Richie
Boyd L. Richie
Chairman
Texas Democratic Party

P.S. Don’t forget to join the Party Insider email list to receive the latest talking points on issues like the budget and other important priorities. Sign-up is quick and easy on the TDP website: http://www.txdemocrats.org/party-insider-sign-up/

3 Comments | Government, Politics, Texas, Texas Lege | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Repeal ObamaCare, drive American families into bankruptcy

January 19, 2011

Getting everybody insured is the first step toward controlling health care costs — and the bill we have makes significant savings even without being so strong as it should be.  Watch and listen to White House adviser Stephanie Cutler’s explanation.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Mary Almanza.

1 Comment | Health care, Politics, Taxes | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

But the Earth still warms

January 18, 2011

Political activists who oppose working to stop or slow greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming find themselves in awkward positions recently.

Before, during and after the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 they predicted that warming had stopped, and that we are entering a period of global cooling.  Alas for their claim, the planet refuses to cool.  The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest in human history; 2010 itself turned out to be one of the warmest years in history, worldwide.

NOAA graphic: Indicators of global warming: “Seven of these indicators would be expected to increase in a warming world, and observations show that they are, in fact, increasing. Three would be expected to decrease and they are, in fact, decreasing.”

Somebody stole hundreds of e-mails from one of the climate research clusters in England, and the anti-action activists claimed that the messages would reveal wrong-doing on the part of scientists, perhaps even criminal action.  Instead, five separate investigations discovered no wrong-doing on the parts of scientists, but a lot of hard work gone for too little action because of the anti-science shenanigans of the anti-action crew.  The science showing global warming remains untouched, with no significant body of research showing contrary.

One of the loudest voices against claims of global warming, Christopher Monckton, was unmasked as a blowhard and a fraud.    Scientists organized to refute the hoax claims of the anti-action activists.

So, the anti-action activists are sore.  They don’t take criticism well, and they especially don’t like anyone who points out their errors.

Sadly, they didn’t learn from the their past hoaxes.  So if even a lowly high school teacher should point out an error of history, they resort to making false claims and censorship against the teacher.  They have no data to back their case, nothing but invective to rebut with.

And so it was that a rather new site, hauntingthelibrary, took my comment noting where they could find the data to disabuse their wild claims, stripped it out, and substituted words I did not and would not write.

Fraud again, this time from hauntingthelibrary.  Hoax.  Fraud even in small things.

The movement against the science of global warming is rotten to its core.  (Seriously — most sites would be happy to note the pingback from this blog; the blogger had to act to block the pingback from showing up.  What are they so afraid of?)

Legend says that Galileo, backing out of the audience with the Pope in which he was put under house arrest after having “recanted” any claim that the Earth orbits the Sun, said quietly, “Still, it moves.”  Even the Pope’s powers through the Inquisition could not stop the Earth orbiting the Sun.  No matter how powerful the denial propaganda machines, no matter how many anti-science bloggers they recruit, the Earth keeps on stubbornly warming up.

Or, as Galileo might have said, “Eppure, lei si scalda!”

_____________

Update: Then there is Anti-Gore Effect Sillies Syndrome — claiming Gore erred, when he didn’t.  It’s demonstrated with the infection fully affecting the judgment of its victims at this odd place, XD Talk Forums.

 

More:

Earlier at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane - Pine bark beetle damage in Teton National Forest

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane – NPR caption: “Many dead trees appear gray and red on the high-mountain slopes of Union Pass Bridger in Teton National Forest in Wyoming”

14 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Dirty Tricks, Entomology, Forestry, History, Hoaxes, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why conservative talk makes more money than liberal talk: No thinking (is it true?)

January 15, 2011

Some say the success of conservative radio can be traced to 1987 when the Reagan administration put an end to the Fairness Doctrine, making it easier for broadcasters to be one-sided. Others cite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which led to mega-chains of stations and the widespread duplication of successful formats – including conservative talk radio – which gradually took over the stronger radio outlets in most markets.

Peter Funt, of Candid Camera

Peter Funt, of Candid Camera

But such arguments really overlook the simpler truths of the matter: conservative broadcasters serve an audience that is often angry and easily stirred, that wants to be reinforced more than challenged, and that doesn’t always feel compelled to slavishly adhere to the facts of a matter.

More importantly, conservative broadcasters across the dial are vastly more entertaining than their liberal counterparts. Limbaugh and Beck are polished performers, with enough shtick in the tank to keep truckers engrossed over the long haul, or to rouse tired shift workers on the drive to and from home. Indeed, the daring diatribe of the right is so compelling that it often seems as if the most dedicated listeners of conservative broadcasters are their progressive competitors.

Peter Funt of Candid Camera, at the Cagle Post (Cagle Cartoons)

1 Comment | Journalism, Politics, Radio | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s policy machine and crystal ball

January 15, 2011

Daniel Patrick Moynihan at his typewriter - photo from the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Daniel Patrick Moynihan at his typewriter – photo from the American Academy of Political and Social Science

This photo adorns the page announcing and asking for nominations to the annual Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, at the site of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Moynihan was the always-opinionated, rarely un-informed social scientist who caused a firestorm of criticism to rain down on Richard Nixon when Moynihan, working for Nixon, suggested that civil rights might benefit from a period of  “benign neglect” by the President.  Later he caused another firestorm, and along period of reflection, when he worried in a paper about the potential bad effects of social welfare programs that would ease suffering, but fail to achieve all of their loftier goals — the workers compensation program that could not restore a worker to full service, the program to provide food and shelter to the children of out-of-work parents if the parents could not find new jobs, etc.  He worried about the ‘culture of poverty.’

He raised hell as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Time Magazine cover of UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Time Magazine cover of UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I knew him as the U.S. Senator from the State of New York, where he would shock his staff by showing up early on a Saturday morning to knock out a few letters to the editor, and op-ed pieces on his typewriter, without the bother of an in-session Senate to slow him down.  Later I worked for Checker Finn, who had worked with Moynihan when Moynihan was U.S. Ambassador to India.  Finn adopted many of his scholarly habits from Moynihan.  While working for Finn, nearly 25 years ago at the Department of Education, I got a taste of the world to come when Finn aggressively adopted e-mail messaging for himself and anyone of any executive influence under him, at the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).  Aggressive adoption of new technologies can greatly improve organizations and organizational effectiveness.

Almost always with a bow tie.  Usually heavily editing his speeches, or writing his own op-ed pieces while other officials paid ghosts to do it for them.  Thinking thoughts Republicans would come to love, while a Democrat, but years before Republicans would come to love them.  Thinking thoughts Democrats would learn to love, but much later.

Few topics evaded his attention and careful thought.  He talked at length with David Gergen about the problem of Wikileaks, a dozen years before Wikileaks came to public attention (and years before Wikileaks even existed.)  He wrote books about international affairs, and education at home.  He pushed environmental laws to be better. Moynihan worried about the health of American families while James Dobson was still learning what a microphone and a family were.  In 1970, Moynihan warned the U.S. president that global warming is a problem.

Moynihan often appeared as the man who went everywhere, and did everything — after leaving Tulsa.  Moynihan studied everywhere.  He worked under New York Gov. Averell Harriman, and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, before serving a quarter century in the U.S. Senate (Is there some magic in that seat?  His predecessor was James Buckley; his successor was Hilary Rodham Clinton).   Here’s his brief Congressional biography:

MOYNIHAN, Daniel Patrick, a Senator from New York; born in Tulsa, Tulsa County, Okla., March 16, 1927; attended the public and parochial schools of New York City; attended City College of New York 1943; graduated, Tufts University, Medford, Mass., 1948; received graduate and law degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1949, 1961, 1968; studied as a Fulbright fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science 1950-1951; served in the United States Navy 1944-1947; Navy reserve 1947-1966; assistant and secretary to New York Governor W. Averell Harriman 1955-1958; member, New York State Tenure Commission 1959-1960; director, Syracuse University’s New York State Government Research Project 1959-1961; director, Joint Center for Urban Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University 1966-1969; author; held cabinet or sub-cabinet positions under Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford 1961-1976; Ambassador to India 1973-1975; United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations 1975-1976; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1976; reelected in 1982, 1988, and 1994 and served from January 3, 1977, to January 3, 2001; was not a candidate for reelection in 2000; chairman, Committee on the Environment and Public Works (One Hundred Second and One Hundred Third Congresses); Committee on Finance (One Hundred Third Congress); awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 9, 2000; professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School 2001; senior scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2001-2003; died of complications from a ruptured appendix on March 26, 2003; interment at Arlington National Cemetery.

Moynihan was a man ahead of his time.

In this photo, he’s making use of the technology of his time:  A typewriter (I think it’s an old Royal).  How much different would the world be had there been personal computers, and the internet, for Moynihan to toy with?

Moynihan was a writer, and the typewriter the chief tool of his trade.  How important was writing?  He gets his own page at Amazon.com.   Hendrik Hertzberg, in The New Yorker, last year:

Nevertheless, Pat Moynihan was, first, last, and always, a writer. “When I was five years old, I asked my mother, what does Dad do?” his daughter, Maura, recalls in a charming afterword to a splendid new book. “She replied, he’s a writer. And he was: he wrote every day—even at Christmas—articles, books, speeches, and, in great abundance, letters.” You might say he wrote his way to power. Without the writing, no foot-in-the-door job in John F. Kennedy’s Labor Department (and no influence once he was there), no high domestic-policy post in Richard Nixon’s White House, no ambassadorships to India and the United Nations, no twenty-four years in the Senate—and no Moynihan Station.

More, Resources:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and typewriter, Harvard University

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and typewriter (Smith-Corona, I think) in his office at Harvard University – 1971. George Tames/The New York Times.

Leave a Comment » | History, Politics, Technology, Typewriters, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Millard Fillmore’s 211th

January 7, 2011

Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800. Had he lived, Millard Fillmore would be 211 years old today, very cranky, and looking for a good book to read.

Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida - Free! Click image to go to USF site.

Would you blame him for being cranky? He opened Japan to trade. He got from Mexico the land necessary to make Los Angeles a great world city and the Southern Pacific a great railroad, without firing a shot. Fillmore promoted economic development of the Mississippi River. He managed to keep a fractious nation together despite itself for another three years. Fillmore let end the practice of presidents using slaves to staff the White House, then called “the President’s Mansion,” eight years before the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Then in 1852 his own party refused to nominate him for a full term, making him the last Whig to be president. And to add insult to ignominy, H. L. Mencken falsely accused him of being known only for adding a bathtub to the White House, something he didn’t do.

As Antony said of Caesar, the good was interred with his bones — but Millard Fillmore doesn’t even get credit for whatever evil he might have done: Fillmore is remembered most for being the butt of a hoax gone awry, committed years after his death. Or worse, he’s misremembered for what the hoax alleged he did.

Even beneficiaries of his help promoting the Mississippi River have taken his name off their annual celebration of the event. Fillmore has been eclipsed, even in mediocrity (is there still a Millard Fillmore Society in Washington?).

Happy birthday, Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore was a man of great civic spirit, a man who answered the call to serve even when most others couldn’t hear it at all. He was a successful lawyer, despite having had only six months of formal education (a tribute to non-high school graduates and lifelong learning). Unable to save the Union, he established the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.  During the Civil War, he led the local militia in support of the war effort, many rungs down from his role of Commander-in-Chief.  And, it is said of him that Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she had ever met.

A guy like that deserves a toast, don’t you think?

Resources:

Leave a Comment » | Civil War, H. L. Mencken, History, Japan, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Just how broken is the U.S. Senate?

January 3, 2011

Important question.

George Packer asked in back in August, in an article he wrote for The New Yorker, “The Empty Chamber.”

Illustration of U.S. Senators for New Yorker, August 2010

Illustration from The New Yorker. Caption from the magazine: “Sit and watch us for seven days,” one senator says of the deadlocked chamber. “You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing.” (Is there any Republican portrayed in this illustration?)

It’s troubling to me that back in August Packer could note a list of subjects critical to our nation that the Senate had been blocked from considering, and even after a “record setting” lame-duck session, all but one of those issues remain untouched.

Packer wrote:

On July 21st, President Obama signed the completed bill. The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances—a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis—that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. Already, you can feel the Senate slipping back into stagnant waters.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer#ixzz19wpuFk4q

Only food safety got done, though a few judicial appointments squeaked through (less than two dozen).

5 Comments | Government, Health care, History, Politics, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How to find “separation of church and state” in the Constitution

December 27, 2010

It’s been at least 20 years since I first heard the old canard of an argument that “there’s no separation of church and state in the Constitution.”  I think I first heard it attributed to David Barton, which would make sense, since he doesn’t understand the Constitution, but neither does he fear sharing his misunderstandings.

It was an incorrect statement then, and it’s been incorrect since September 1787.  Separation of state and church is woven throughout the Constitution, part of the warp and woof.

Recently, latter-day Constitution ignorami repeat the old canard.

Toles cartoon on dangers of marrying church and state

Toles cartoon on dangers of marrying church and state

I was surprised to discover I’ve not posted this before on this blog.  So here’s a slightly-edited version of a response I gave many months ago to someone who made that silly claim, a basic description that I developed years ago to explain the issue, in speeches by members of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution:

Separation of church and state: It’s in the Constitution.

I don’t play a constitutional lawyer on television, I am one*, but it seems to me anyone can read the Constitution and see. One can see especially if one understands that the Constitution sets up a limited government, as Madison described, one that can do only what is delegated to it. The Constitution is a short document.

Where should you look to find separation of church and state in the Constitution?

First, look in the Preamble.  It is made clear that the document is a compact between citizens: “We the people . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution . . .” The usual role of God ordaining (in some western nations) is altered, intentionally. It is not God who establishes this government, but you and I, together. From the first words of the Constitution, there is separation of church and state.  The power of our government grows out of a secular compact between you and me, and 308 million other residents of the nation.   We have a government created by consent of the governed, as the Declaration of Independence said a just government should be.  It is not a government created by the will of God directly (though some, including the Mormons, argue it is divinely inspired).  We have no divine right kings or other monarchs under the Constitution.  The government is not the grantor of rights from God, but is instead the protector of the rights of citizens, whatever the source of the rights and whatever the rights.

Second, look in the key parts of the document itself.  Start with Article 1.  The legislative branch is given no role in religion; neither is any religion given any role in the legislature. In Article 2, the executive branch gets no role in religion, and religion gets no role in the executive branch. In Article 3, the judicial branch gets no role in religion, and religion gets no role in the judicial branch. In Article 4, the people get a guarantee of a republican form of government in the states, but the states get no role in religion, and religion gets no role in state government. This is, by design of the founders, a perfect separation of church and state.

Third, in Article 6, the convention wrote the hard and fast rule that no religious test can be used for any office in government, federal, state or local, means that no official will have a formal, governmental role in religion, and no religion can insist on a role in any official’s duties.

Fourth, Amendment 1 closes the door to weasling around it: Congress is prohibited from even considering any legislation that might grant a new bureaucracy or a new power to get around the other bans on state and church marriage, plus the peoples’ rights in religion are enumerated.

Fifth: In 1801 the Baptists (!) in Danbury, Connecticut, grew concerned that Connecticut would act to infringe on their church services, or teachings, or right to exist. So they wrote to President Jefferson. Jefferson responded with an official declaration of government policy on what the First Amendment and Constitution mean in such cases. Jefferson carefully constructed the form of the device as well as the content with his Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, to be sure that it would state what the law was. This “letter” is the proclamation. It’s an official statement of the U.S. government, collected in the president’s official papers and not in his personal papers. Make no mistake: Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists was an official act, an official statement of the law of the United States. Jefferson intended it to assuage the Baptists in Danbury, to inform and warn the Connecticut legislatures, and to be a touchstone to which future Americans could turn for information. It was only fitting and proper for the Supreme Court to use the letter in this capacity as it has done several times.

Sixth: The phrase, “separation of church and state” dates back another 100 years and more, to the founding of Rhode Island. It is the religion/state facet of the idea of government by consent of the governed without interference from religious entities, expressed so well in the Mayflower Compact, in the first paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, and carried through in the Constitution (see especially the Preamble, above).

No, the phrase “separation of church and state” never appears in the Constitution. The principles of separation of church and state are part of the warp and woof, and history, of the document, however. The law is clear, the law was clear, the law has always been clear, and denying the Constitution says what it says, won’t change it or make it go away.  You could just as easily point out that the word “democracy” or “democratic” never appears in the document, though we rely on democratic mechanisms and institutions to make it work.  You could point out that nowhere does it say that our national government is a republic, though it is.  The Constitution doesn’t say “checks and balances,” nor does it say “federalism.”  The Constitution doesn’t mention political parties.  The Constitution was written before the advent of broadcasting, and makes no mention of radio nor television, nor of the internet — but the First Amendment freedoms apply there anyway.  The Constitution doesn’t say “privacy,” though it protects your right to privacy.

You won’t find “separation of church and state” as a phrase in the Constitution.  If you read it, you’ll find that the concept of the separation of state and church can’t be taken out of the document, either — it’s a fundamental principle of our government.

More, and Resources:

__________

*  A non-practicing one.  We have way more than 50,000 lawyers in Texas.  That’s enough trouble for one lifetime.  Someone has to look out for the welfare of the world.

110 Comments | History, Law, Politics, Religious Freedom, Separation of church and state, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lens incompetence: Watts Up looks through the wrong end of the telescope

December 27, 2010

The wags and denialists over at Anthony Watts’ joint are up to their old tricks, accusing others of their own errors.  Today it’s a guest post by Bernie Lewin, in which he claims that climate warming was all psychological, a “scare”:

Yet we can find precedents to this science-base scare in many health scares of recent decades, and also in environmental scares since the DDT cancer scare triggered by Silent Spring, politicised by the EDF and legalized by the newly formed EPA. (See Scared to Death which finds a repeating pattern to these science-based scares.)

Woman looking through the wrong end of a telescope

This woman might be corrected; global warming denialists will staunchly insist she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t need YOUR advice.

He fails to even think that Rachel Carson was right.  Lewin demonstrates incompetence at history, law and science, and the first point of the Scout Law, all in one sentence.

So much error.  So little time to correct.

  1. Carson didn’t claim DDT caused cancer. She noted that we create thousands of chemicals that may cause cancer, that cancers were rising in frequency, and that there was no testing of the new substances prior to their marketing.   Was there a DDT/cancer scare?  Lewin doesn’t offer any evidence.  (We had to correct Matt Ridley on this a couple of weeks ago — see his post here.)
  2. EDF (Environmental Defense Fund, now known as Environmental Defense) was on DDT without Carson — suing to stop DDT spraying (for no good reason) on Long Island in 1968.  EDF relied on science that was courtroom ready.  (I had misremembered the year of EDF’s suit in an earlier version of this post; my apologies to the two or three who may have read it.)  EDF’s suits established, on the basis of science, that DDT is an uncontrollable poison in the wild.  Lewin ignores science and law in his off-hand indictment of Carson’s book and ED.
  3. EPA didn’t act against DDT until 1972.  EPA banned DDT use on agricultural crops in the U.S. because DDT kills non-target species and, basically, entire ecosystems.  EPA was specific:  The ban had nothing to do with cancer.  Once again, Lewin ignores history, science and law.

So, in Lewin’s guest post, we see the pattern that continues at Watts’s place — unfair and wrong indictments of science, ignorance of history, little understanding of law.

All while trying to mock scientists:  ‘Of course scientists are almost always wrong,’ Watts’s blog argues, once again.

Watts won’t let me correct his errors there, even though he’s still coddling those who misdescribe Rachel Carson as a mass murderer, while denying he does it himself.  Consequently his readers won’t be alerted to this post because Watts or his minions will edit out the automatic ping his blog gets that this post is here.  Propaganda promoting falsehood can’t stand the sunlight of fact and truth.

Just because there’s a scare doesn’t mean there’s not a reason to be scared.  DDT is a deadly toxin, so long-lived that it almost cannot ever be eradicated from the environment.  It kills everything small, quickly, unless so much of it is used that the small things evolve quickly to be resistant and immune to it.

So, if we are to assume, as Lewin wrote, that the anti-warming bunch is to warming what the campaign against Rachel Carson by the DDT manufacturers was to DDT’s harms, we get a hint of what’s really up at Watts Up:  Any anti-warming claim is a hoax.  Why put it so cryptically, if that’s what they meant to say?

When Lewin looks at the history of DDT and Rachel Carson, he’s looking at the false history, and he draws the wrong conclusions.  Should we trust a guy so sloppy with the facts to be right on anything else?

9 Comments | DDT, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Hoaxes, Law, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Nuclear weapons: History and policy, in a poster

December 23, 2010

Wish I knew who created this poster, and how.  Some minor inaccuracies — can you find them?  Could you prevail on the Big Format Printer person at your school to print one of these full size for your U.S. history, world history or government class?

Nuclear Weapons, a poster

Nuclear Weapons, a poster

How about a similar poster for the Cold War?  Vietnam War?  Civil Rights Movement?  Gilded Age?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kenny, cold in Pinggu.

2 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Education, History, History images, Nuclear Nonproliferation, Nuclear weapons, Politics, Presentations, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A president who knows what he’s doing

December 23, 2010

Barack Obama, photo collage by Charis Tsevis, copyright 2008

Barack Obama, photo collage by Charis Tsevis, copyright 2008

Gail Collins, in the New York Times:

Good work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Unlike your hapless predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you’ve had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game. Unemployment compensation! Gay rights! Food safety! Judicial appointments! Arms control! Health care for 9/11 responders!

But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.

If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.

It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.

Merry Christmas!  Ho! Ho! Ho!

What a difference a few weeks makes.

9 Comments | 2010 Elections, Politics, President Obama, U.S. Congress | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

60-second climate skeptic: A 20-second refutation (in about a minute)

December 22, 2010

Back in the life as a corporate consultant and occasional (too-seldom) lecturer, Perry W. Buffington and I got some good mileage out of our observation that, were you in need of delicate brain surgery, you’d probably cross off your list of potential surgeons the guy who had a copy of The One-Minute Brain Surgeon on his desk.  You wouldn’t trust your future to anyone who displayed The One-Minute Financial Planner.

Why in the world would you be ecstatic when your boss read a copy of The One-Minute Manager?”

My recollection is that the first time I actually heard Buff use the line, he got an immediate standing ovation from the very large assembly of workers and middle managers (hey, he’s good — audiences really like his stuff). Someone whose study of their profession is limited to one-minute bon mots, should be regarded with great skepticism, or perhaps be ignored completely,  no matter how bon the mots.  One-Minute [insert your profession here] makes a catchy title, and may even carry some good value in new ideas and good ideas reduced to readable length.  Ken Blanchard, the lead author of the One-Minute Manager series, did not intend his book to be the only text anyone used on a path to an MBA.  It’s frosting, it’s not the cake.  It’s quip, not quote, not prose.  Remember that.

One-minute experts do not exist.  (Some experts may refresh themselves with one-minute reviews of material — but you won’t take pharmaceuticals from the “One-Minute Pharmacist,” if you’re wise.)

Now comes Coyote Blog with a post, “The 60-second Climate Skeptic.”

One minute climate expert?  No.  That dog won’t hunt.

And here’s why, in 20 seconds:  Our concern for global warming is not produced by charts that show rising temperatures, but by two centuries of observations that natural plants and animals, and ice and weather, show effects from climate warming, and the thermometer measurements confirm that the planet is warming.  The Earth still warms, regardless what any chart says.

Here’s the 60 second explanation for the 20-second rebuttal.  Coyote blog makes eight statements or observations, all of them based on the science of carbon dioxide, a science which the author himself appears not to have mastered (he argues that additional carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere are immune from absorbing energy, if there are a lot of carbon dioxide molecules already present, apparently due to some magic mechanism he never mentions)

For 200 years scientists have measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — since at least 1960, with special concern for getting the measurements done accurately and right, because our industrial cultures dump a lot of CO2 waste into the air and any scientist understands that wastes cannot be absorbed without effect forever.  (Newton, Coyote.  You’ve heard of Newton?)  These measurements show increasing CO2.

Separately, botanists, zoologists, other biologists and especially those practicing ecology observed that plants and animals migrate north in the Northern Hemisphere, and south in the Southern Hemisphere, plus up mountain slopes where mountains exist, as if climate were warming, and it this warming were changing their climates, and hence, their habitat.

Beginning about 1965, atmospheric scientists have discussed what might be causing this warming.  At great length, after having eliminated every other known explanation (in true science and Sherlock Holmes fashion), CO2 is left as the likely culprit, the one changing thing that best explains the rise in global temperatures well past the time that paleoclimatologists rather expected a turn toward the cooler.

In short, the charts are used to try to explain the actual observations and measurements, and no matter how badly those charts may have been botched, the plants and animals have really moved, and the measured temperatures have really risen.

Coyote Blog tries to explain away reality as a figment of a scientist’s imagination.  But the Earth is still here.  As Galileo is reputed to have observed, regardless your religious views on heliocentricity, the Earth, she still moves.  Similarly, regardless one’s views on the dastardliness of scientists who carp in e-mails about unfair attacks on them, regardless how  badly one misunderstands CO2 chemistry, regardless any errors in creating charts for a UN agency, the Earth, she still warms.

Coyote Blog fails to discuss any of the effects or observations which lead to the charts on CO2.

“One-minute climate skeptics” can make a great contribution to science:  They are models of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and may be studied to understand that science.

 

Christopher Monckton out of focus

A dictionary could save space, using the same photo for definitions of "climate warming skeptic" and "Dunning-Kruger Effect." In the photo, Monckton is not quite so out-of-focus as usual.

19 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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