Matthew LaClair op-ed in Los Angeles Times

Matthew LaClair has an op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times in which he talks about his evangelizing history teacher and the biased textbook used in his class.

James Q. Wilson defends his textbook in a companion L.A. Times op-ed; the bulk of his defense is that the later edition of his book fixes the problems LaClair complains about.

UPDATE (June 29, 2008): The July/August 2008 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer comments on this controversy. It seems that the later edition of the book is not yet available for schools and contains most, if not all, of the same misrepresentations and problems that LaClair complained about. Wilson, through his dishonest op-ed, has thrown away his credibility.

Bush: 4th Amendment doesn't apply to domestic military operations

A 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States" stated that the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism. The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

On Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo.

The March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. That memo asserts that the President has the right to authorize torture in violation of criminal law:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. ... In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

The fact that Bush wasn't impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list--I've not been reading TPM lately.)

Depends on what the meaning of "saw" is

Mitt Romney said on national television several times this year (including at least twice this month) that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1978, he claimed to the Boston Herald that he and his father both marched with King.

Susan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, did some research and found that while Gov. George Romney (Michigan) issued a proclamation in support of King in June 1963 for a March in Detroit, he declined to attend, saying that he did not attend political events on Sundays. He participated in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe a few days later, but King did not attend that march.

Now, after defending the claim repeatedly, Romney has admitted yesterday that neither he nor his father marched with King--but not that he has said anything false. Instead, he says that he "saw" his father march with King in a figurative sense: "If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described. ... It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

How to avoid advancing the gay agenda

Ed Brayton has an excellent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, from which I've borrowed the title of this post, in which he points out that anti-gay bigots like the American Family Association who want to boycott corporations that have gay-friendly policies have their work cut out for them now. The Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index has been released, and the number of companies scoring a perfect 100 has gone up from 138 companies last year (and a mere 13 in 2002) to 195 this year. Where Donald Wildmon's AFA protested against Ford Motor Company, a perfect scorer on the index, for its advertising its cars in gay magazines, they now have 194 other such companies to boycott.

Ed writes that, if you want to avoid advancing the gay agenda, you have to avoid nearly every major airline and automobile manufacturer, major retailers, most consumer products, major financial institutions, major health insurance providers, most pharmaceuticals, and even most American beer brands. As commenters point out, even some of the exceptions he lists as possible candidates don't work (e.g., Volvo is currently owned by Ford, and K-Mart is owned by Sears, and both Ford and Sears scored 100 on the index). Commenters also point out that the major technology companies that make the Internet possible are high scorers, and that the most common piece of software on mail servers, sendmail, was developed by a gay man.

Read Ed's piece for his list, and don't miss the comments.

Trent Franks defends Egyptian blogger

Although I'm not generally a fan of Arizona's U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-District 2), I have to give him compliments for his stance on this issue. He's one of only two Congressmen who has reached out to the Egyptian ambassador to the United States on behalf of Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman (also known as Kareem Amer), who was arrested, beaten, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing his government in his blog. As the other Congressman is Massachusetts' Rep. Barney Frank (D-District 4), this is about as bipartisan as it gets.

Kudos to Franks and Frank.

(Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

Global state of gay marriage

From the December 2, 2006 issue of The Economist (subscription required for full article):

Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. (Massachusetts).

Gays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont).

Gays have civil unions or partnerships with lesser rights than heterosexual marriage in Argentina (1 state), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3 states), Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United States (Hawaii, Maine).

UPDATE (December 18, 2006): Stephen Frug has pointed out that even in U.S. states which have legal gay marriage or legal gay civil unions, they are still not equivalent to marriage, in part because of the U.S. federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of a provision in this law, the spouse of former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay federal lawmaker, has been denied his pension benefits.

UPDATE (December 19, 2006): The December 9 issue of The Economist (p. 66) points out that the inclusion of Hong Kong on the list of countries with gay civil unions is a mistake. Hong Kong "is reviewing its laws in this area," but doesn't currently allow them.