Ted

Many more here. Much swearing and inappropriate humor.

Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.

“I don’t look at it as censorship,” says State Representative Gerald Allen. “I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.”

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can’t define what a classic is. Also exempted now Alabama’s public and college libraries…

“It’s not healthy for America, it doesn’t fit what we stand for,” says Allen. “And they will do whatever it takes to reach their goal.”

Hi, I’m the bloody corpse of satire. Rep. Gerald Allen, you have defeated me in mortal combat.

I’ve got some long quotes about the decision of the Army inspector general to clear all but one of the top officers involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal of all charges under the fold.

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John Cloud, author of the Time cover story on Ann Coulter (via Atrios):

David Brock, who knew Ann Coulter from years ago, goes to a book that’s years old, and prints some mistakes from that book, and of course [there are] mistakes. And a lot of them are corrected. If you go out and you buy a copy of Slander now, you won’t find those mistakes in it, because the publisher has corrected them.

I know that Ann Coulter had admitted to one mistake, but I didn’t realize how absurdly dishonest her “correction” was. From the Daily Howler:
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Zoe Williams has an interesting article in the Guardian about howThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is now a nostalgia item. In the US, the Hitchhiker’s Guide was more nerd samizdat than cultural phenomenon. However, I’m attracted to the idea that my generation is seeing the nostalgia media complex turn the 80s into something that we don’t recognize.

Of course, people whose formative decade was the 60s say exactly the same thing. When Tony Blair made his ill-considered attack on that decade’s legislative liberalism some months ago, I asked my mother what the 60s were like, and she said: “They really were a lot like the 50s.” The historian Dominic Sandbrook, writing in the Sunday Times last weekend, gave us the killer fact about this era: “There were almost 60 million people in Britain and, at most, only 1 million bought the best-selling single of the week. In comparison, 20 million regularly tuned in to watch The Black and White Minstrel Show.” It wasn’t liberal, and it wasn’t cool. It’s news like that that turns your world upside down. Next we’re going to find out that there wasn’t really a war on in the 40s.

I’m one of the bloggers who got to see the Enron¹ documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room.” (It’s remarkable the extent to which this Onion review stole my thunder. I soldier on.)

There are so many ways that the filmmakers could have gone wrong. It could have been a dull parade of talking heads, or an airy exploration of the “culture of greed” with minimal specifics about Enron. It could have been a thin, unsatisfying hit piece like Bush’s Brain. It could have been incomprehensible to viewers without an accounting degree.

Instead, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a well-structured business book like Liar’s Poker. A film which spends about as much time talking about the Dabhol power plant in India as it does talking about strippers² is taking its subject matter seriously. There’s an admirable depth and scope; I had the feeling that the filmmakers knew a lot more than they could fit in. It does an especially good job at explaining some of the big issues: how the institutions which should have blown the whistle (banks, lawyers, accountants, and analysts) had perverse incentives to keep Enron going, and how the pressure to beat expectations led to escalating fraud every quarter. The section on California is particularly infuriating to folks who remember how concerns about market manipulation were treated with blithe condescension.

Like many historical documentaries, the film tells the story of events that didn’t happen on camera, so it succeeds or fails on the strength of its editors. Luckily, the editing does a skillful job of mixing “real” footage (largely Congressional hearings), stock footage with voiceovers, and interview clips. The quick pacing and chapter-like structure help make the movie feel shorter than it is. It looks great, like someone took their time.

I have a few quibbles. It’s a touch light on the details of Enron’s financial chicanery. (I’d really like to know what “Death Star” meant, for example.) At points when I disagreed with the angle that the filmmakers were taking, I realized that there wasn’t much effort spent representing opposing views³.

But it’s an admirable, intelligent documentary about complex subject that captures many of the pleasures of a good nonfiction book. Well worth the time.

¹ Full disclosure, as it were: I worked as an analyst at Enron in the London office for about six months in 2001, almost to the end. I’m not bitter; I didn’t get burned on stock and learned quite a lot.

² Albeit with some pretty gratuitous visuals.

³ For example, some people had most or all of their retirement accounts invested in Enron stock. That’s an important part of the story. It would also have been appropriate to show someone, anyone, pointing out that these people had made a horrible, foolish decision on their own. UPDATE: Atrios notes that Enron’s 401k matching contributions were paid in Enron stock, which I didn’t realize.

I had to share this detail from the Family Research Council’s webpage for their book Getting It Straight:What the Research Shows About Homosexuality:

Chapter 6: Is There a Link between Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse?

· A study of 229 convicted child molesters in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” (emphasis added)

(W. D. Erickson, “Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 17 (1988): 83.)

I’m reminded of Kieran’s classic question, “Why are so many of the closets I open full of my clothes?”

Dwight Merideth, “The GOP Is Robbing Us Of Our Christian Heritage”:

Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 211 Judges to the Circuit Courts. Democrats have appointed 122. Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 813 trial Judges to the District Court bench while Democrats have made 508 such appointments.

If the Federal Judiciary is comprised of a bunch of liberal activists, it is the GOP who put them there.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, “When Reality Outstrips Irony …”

“It is unfortunate in our electoral system, exacerbated by our adversarial media culture, that political discourse has to get so overheated that it’s not just arguments, but motives are questioned,” Tom DeLay, 4/16/05

“The Democrats’ hateful, moronic comments are beyond the pale, and the Democrats know it, but they don’t care because they have nothing to offer the public debate but rage, resentment and quackery.” Tom DeLay, 12/16/03

Fred Clark, “And have not charity”:

Elimination of the estate tax would result in a decrease in charitable giving of up to 12 percent… For many vital nonprofit agencies on the front lines, a 12-percent drop in charitable giving will mean they have to close their doors.

On the other hand …

There is no other hand.

tbogg, “Ride the wild Bolton Mobius strip….”

John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

Matthew Yglesias, “New Depths Discovered”

According to Landay’s sources, the administration only wants reports showing that terrorism is going down, and if the State Departments methods don’t produce that result, then there report just won’t be done. Lovely.

via Pandagon, Inquiry Finds White House Role in Contract

A White House aide was told about potential problems with the Education Department paying a conservative commentator to promote an administration policy but did not prevent the contract from being renewed, according to a new government report.

Via Andrew Sullivan, former Reagan and Nixon speechwriter Jeffrey Hart:

The Bush presidency often is called conservative. That is a mistake. It is populist and radical, and its principal energies have roots in American history, and these roots are not conservative.

Brad DeLong, “Why Oh Why Can’t We Have a Better Press Corps? (I’ve Got to Stop Saying “National Review Has Reached Its Nadir” Department)”

But the point isn’t to provide or critique economic analysis, is it? The point isn’t to inform the readers of National Review, is it? The point is that Paul Volcker–chosen by Republican Richard Nixon’s staff to be Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, chosen by Republican Arthur Burns to be President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, chosen by Republican Ronald Reagan’s staff to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board–has written something inconvenient for the Bushies inside the White House. And so National Review undertakes the mission of trying to murk the waters with clouds of ink.

And in this squid-like task, actual knowledge of the economy or of economics is a positive hindrance. The less the writer knows, the better.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, “No surprise”

And how is this for a laugh?

Reducing agricultural spending by $5.4 billion is [was? AT] a key part of the administration’s plan to cut the federal defict in half. So far, however, the the Senate Budget Committee has agree to cuts amounting to just $2.8 billion.

The Federal deficit is currently over 400 billion.

The Onion had a fun pair of articles recently, singling out bad scenes in great movies and great scenes in bad movies. We can play, too. My picks:

Great Scene, Bad Movie:

A Guy Thing

It’s a deeply mediocre romantic comedy with an extremely dodgy premise: Jason Lee takes home a dancer from his bachelor party (Julia Stiles) who turns out to be the cousin of his fiancee (Selma Blair). Hijinks ensue. When a movie begins with the hero attempting to cheat on his fiancee, and ends (SPOILER ALERT, LIKE YOU COULDN’T GUESS) with the hero leaving her at the altar, I didn’t find it nearly charming enough to overcome the ill-will it generated.

However, it does have a very funny scene in the middle. Through the magic of the internet, I don’t have to describe it; you can watch almost the whole scene here, by watching both clips 4 and 5.

Bad Scene, Great Movie:

It’s A Wonderful Life

I love It’s A Wonderful Life. But what’s up with the scene in which we learn that, if George Bailey had never been born, his wife would have been a spinster! With glasses! Who works at the library! Oh, the humanity!

Your picks?

Kash on the comparative waits for health care services in Western democracies.

Washington Monthly’s piece about VHA hospitals.

The New Yorker’s excellent medical writer Atul Gawande on how a doctor is paid.

I’m going to be writing about what deregulation of health care might mean¹, but I think that I’ll end up coming back to how an American doctor gets paid by insurance companies². This is not the best way, or the only possible way, but it’s where we’re starting from. From the New Yorker article:

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Joe Scarborough:

Whether the debate centers around a Presidential election, the right to die movement, the gay agenda, prayer in school, or simply letting our children recite the Pledge of Alligence, the teachings of Jesus Christ always seems to thwart the agenda of America’s left wing elites.

Forget what you heard in the 1960s.

God is not dead.

In fact, he is very much alive and beating liberal elites on one political issue after another.

Maybe that is why so many of them hate the Prince of Peace.

via Andrew Sullivan, who wonders, as I do, which of Jesus’s teachings related to homosexuals or Bush vs. Kerry. Perhaps if I didn’t hate the Prince of Peace I’d know.

In 580 words, Scarborough uses the words “elite” or “elites” 6 times. This kind of class resentment is understandable from a “regular Joe” (his term) like Scarborough, but it’s hard to put your finger on when it developed. He might have picked it up during his hardscrabble days as a partner in a Florida law firm. He might have learned to resent the elites that he hired and fired as a newspaper owner. It could have come from his days as a hard-working blue-collar Congressman. (As Tom DeLay has attested, it’s very difficult making ends meet on a Congressional salary.)

Or maybe it’s more recent. Like most millionaire television pundits, Regular Joe can probably really commiserate with the concerns that working folks have about shitty service from the incompetent idiots that our employers hire to style our hair and apply our makeup.

Meanwhile, the House is about to vote for the permanent repeal of the estate tax. Joe will probably get right on that.

P.S. Did you notice that one of the “liberal elites” named ‘n’ shamed is Christopher Hitchens? What a coincidence.

I am not letting this performance be the sole CT contribution to the noble cause of book-related vanity-stroking blog memes.

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When the world was young, I wrote a long post about single-payer health care. As it’s the new hot topic, I’ve reposted it under the fold. Enjoy, or don’t.

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I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for this Reason party. Matt Welch:

What I still can’t understand, is how anyone — seriously, anyone — can think a system where it is extremely difficult for a perfectly healthy young person untethered to an insurance-providing job to obtain health insurance without lying, or without giving up the possibility of having childbirth covered, is a good system…

What I understand even less is how some of these same people will tell you with a straight face how terrible French health care is. Last Thursday-thru-Saturday, we spent a really wonderful time at “Reason Weekend,” which is what my employer does in lieu of a celebrity booze cruise. It’s a great event, filled with smart donors to the Reason Foundation, various trustees, and a few people from the magazine. Great speakers, panels, walks on the beach, etc. Anyway, we had some small discussion group about De Tocqueville, and someone (naturally) brought up France’s high taxes and thick welfare state. “Well, the thing is,” Emmanuelle said (quotes are inexact), “some of the things the French state provides are pretty good. For instance health care.”

“Wait a minute wait a minute,” one guy said. “If you were sick — I mean, really sick — where would you rather be? France or the U.S.?”

“Um, France,” we both said.

Various sputtering ensued. What about the terrible waiting lists? (There really aren’t any.) The shoddy quality? (It’s actually quite good.) Finally, to deflect the conversation away, I said “Look, if we made twice as much money, we’d probably prefer American health care for a severe crisis. But we don’t, so we don’t.”