Do Barbie Prices Make Walmart Racist?

News and Analysis…

Walmart has taken heat from racism critics after a photo surfaced on the web showing two Barbie Dolls side by side, one black doll selling for three dollars and one white doll selling for six dollars.  Advocates, such as Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, have critiqued the decision of Walmart due to the potential psychological effect on children seeing that a white Barbie costs twice that of a black Barbie.  Her comments have received a backlash from others who see Walmart’s actions as either inconsequential or reflective of a societal problem, not a corporate one.

The Powers That Be | Instead of coming to a basic understanding of human behavior and economics simultaneously — which is that white kids are more likely to buy white dolls and black kids are more likely to buy black dolls, and this particular Wal-Mart more than likely has more white shoppers buying the white dolls — this is becoming yet another race issue.

Econ 101 says that when a product isn’t moving, the price goes down until it sells, but some minority leaders might want to think twice before setting a bad precedent by intimidating stores into increasing the price of products targeted to minorities.

Jezebel | Sociological Images co-author Gwen Sharp suggests that maybe black Ballerina Theresas don’t sell well because they just look like re-painted Barbies: “Maybe for both parents and kids, it seems more real and less symbolic of a change to have a doll that actually presents a range of attractive features rather than ‘Oh we’ve changed the skin tone slightly.’” And Mattel says its “So In Style” line — dolls “designed to better resemble black women’s facial features” — has received a “great response.” Still, just as Barbie dolls continue to reflect institutional sexism with their unrealistic representation of the female body (a baby-face-plus-big-boobs representation that’s become especially popular in an age that incongruously demands both extreme youth and sexual availability), so too the relative “values” placed on black dolls reflect the ways black women are often devalued.

Rod Dreher – Beliefnet| Seriously, it’s heartbreaking that any black child would think that the whiteness of a person’s or a doll’s skin makes them more beautiful or worthy. That is a problem we have to work on as a society. But forcing Walmart, or any retailer, to ignore what their customers are telling them in order to preserve a moralistic fiction is not the way to go. Faulting Walmart’s discounting policy here is a good way to convince retailers not to stock any black dolls at all, for fear that they won’t be able to treat those products like any other and discount them if they don’t sell, on pain of being called racially insensitive.

On the Web…

Consuming Pop Culture While Feminist: Disney’s The Little Mermaid | Feministing

The Little Mermaid is, quite simply, a feminist’s worst nightmare. This movie is about, as a very wise friend of mine once put it, a young woman who gives up her voice to get a pair of legs so that she can snare a man. It’s about the triumph of “good” women – young, slender, silent and lovesick – over “bad” women – old, voluptuous, outspoken and sexual. It’s about a young woman forced to choose between her father’s world and her husband’s world, and there is nothing in between. And there’s the unsettling fact that the song “Kiss the Girl” tells us that the “one way to ask” if a woman wants you to kiss her, is to just kiss her.

Surviving Without a Safety Net | Truthdig

Obama has made concessions to the right, which wants to destroy him. The left has written him off. With a good sense of what this country is about, he continues to steer a perilous course between them. His efforts to pass an economic stimulus, health care reform, a modest jobs bill and extensions of unemployment and COBRA benefits have left him weakened. In the end, he may leave the arena bloody and exhausted, but I believe he will succeed. The president is edging forward under a backbreaking load that was heaped upon his shoulders when he entered office. As Irv Feldman told Walter Thomas, the old Tuskegee airman, “Thank you for your service, sir.”

When Bishops Play Politics| Newsweek

They see themselves as crusaders for human rights—protectors of the innocent, the voiceless, and the powerless. After years of enduring the slings and arrows of opposition, these activists are finally in the power seat. They are among the most important voices on a crucial political question: will abortion finally scuttle health-care reform?

They are America’s Roman Catholic bishops.

Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women | NYT Nicholas Kristof

First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the formal economy and society. It’s not a panacea, of course. Lebanon and Sri Lanka were leaders in girls’ education, and both ended up torn apart by conflict. In India, the state of Kerala has done a fine job in girls’ education, but its state economy is still a mess and dependent on remittances. But overall, educating girls probably has a greater transformative effect on a country than anything else one can do.

Women’s Day and Oklahoma

News and analysis…

March is dedicated as Women’s History Month, starting off with International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010. In honor of that occasion, below are some of the recent stories focusing on the status of women in Oklahoma…

Oklahoma House of Representatives | OKLAHOMA CITY (March 2, 2010) — Legislation creating a pilot program that seeks to establish reentry and diversion programs to allow nonviolent offender mothers to receive community-based services in lieu of incarceration unanimously passed the House today.

House Bill 2998, by Rep. Kris Steele, would encourage re-entry and diversion programs as opposed to jail time for nonviolent female offenders in allow them to receive rehabilitative services while maintaining contact with their children.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state in the nation. Its incarceration rate for women is 131 per 100,000 residents, almost twice the national average of 69 per 100,000.

Most women prison inmates, 68 percent, are in prison for nonviolent offenses.

“This bill will give women convicted of nonviolent crimes access to community-based rehabilitative services that have proven effective,” said Steele, R-Shawnee. “As policy-makers, we can be both tough and smart on crime. The average prison stay for nonviolent women is less than a year, but the impact on their children is lifelong and devastating. In-home rehabilitative services will keep these families together and allow Oklahoma women to receive the help they desperately need.”

The bill passed the House with a vote of 92-0 and will next be considered by the Senate.

Henry G. Bennett Memorial Library | The month of March is Women’s History Month. Between the years of 1907 and 2008 only 77 women have been elected to the Oklahoma Legislature. As of February 2009, 46 of these remarkable women have shared their stories as part of the Women of the Oklahoma Legislature Oral History Project.

Since 2006, Associate Professor/Oral History Librarian Tanya Finchum of Oklahoma State University embarked on a project to capture and record information about women who have served or are currently serving in the Oklahoma Legislature. Within the Oklahoma State University Library website, a website was launched in February 2009. The website is a culmination of her work and includes transcripts, audio excerpts, and memorabilia collected as a result of interview efforts. The web address is http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/wotol/.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence | Domestic Violence in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma Law enforcement agencies answer an average of 15, 000 domestic violence calls each year….

Oklahoma currently ranks 10th nationally for the number of women murdered by males. Among cases where the relationship between the victim and offender was known, 91% of perpetrators were known by the victim.

According to a study conducted by the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of  Battered Women, nearly 3/4 of women incarcerated in Oklahoman state prisons reported being physically abused at some point in their lifetime.

Nearly 20 percent of Oklahoma high school students have reported being hit, slapped, or physically hurt by their boyfriend or girlfriend; this is compared to the 9 percent of all students nation wide.

The rate of dating violence for Oklahoma ninth graders is more than three times the national average, at the rate of 26 percent for Oklahoma freshmen, compared to 8 percent nationwide.

New OK | Budget problems have caused cutbacks statewide in services to women who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, officials say.

“It hurts my heart,” said Marcia Smith, executive director of the state Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “Demand for help is up, but budget problems are forcing some services to go away.”

About 29 state-supported programs offer help to domestic violence and sexual assault victims, Smith said. All of them have experienced a 10 percent cut in funds for the past two months, on top of 5 percent funding cuts every month since July.

“It’s too much for them to absorb,” Smith said.

Huffington Post | Anti-choice legislators in Oklahoma are experts on at least two things: waste and distraction. After repeatedly introducing laws – and having them overturned by the courts for being unconsitutional – that do nothing more than force government intrusion into the professional lives of physicians and the personal lives of women seeking reproductive health care, they continue to waste taxpayer time and money by ignoring constitutional rules.

Yesterday, a bill that may be unconstitutional sailed through the OK House and is on its way to the Senate. It would force physicians performing abortions to narrate an ultrasound description to the pregnant woman on whom the ultrasound is being performed. This was one week after an Oklahoma district court ruled unconstitutional a 2009 law that created a public web site where doctors would be forced to publish personal information on women who have had abortions (including their names and the reason for their abortions). And now the Oklahoma Supreme Court confirmed the ruling of a lower court that mandatory viewing of ultrasounds is unconstitutional putting to rest a 2008 law that would have forced women to view the ultrasound of their pregnancy prior to receiving an abortion…

Astoundingly, the bill passed the OK House without a question or a discussion, despite this history of wasting taxpayer time and money by passing unconstitutional laws and then having them overturned.

Best of the web…

Senators: Lift Ban on Gays Donating Blood  |  365 Gay News

The senators said that while hospitals and emergency rooms are in urgent need of blood products, “healthy blood donors are turned away every day due to an antiquated policy and our blood supply is not necessarily any safer for it.”

Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign,the nation’s largest gay rights group, said they are hopeful that the policy, last reviewed in 2006, will change under President Barack Obama, “who is interested in looking at all the policies that have a discriminatory effect.” The goal, he said, is “to have policies in place that are based on the science” rather than “any discriminatory idea about our community.”

One in three killed by US drone strikes is a civilian  |  The Raw Story

The US military has used drones to attack suspected terrorists in Pakistan since at least 2004. Proponents of the small, unmanned planes say they are capable of “surgical strikes” that reduce civilian casualties and effectively combat terrorism.

Is that true? Well, not really, according to a new report from the New America Foundation, a non-profit research institute.

The percentage of civilians killed by drones in Pakistan is at about 32 percent, or one out of three, the report states, and the strikes themselves have little effect in deterring terrorist activities in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Researchers do not believe any of the reported strikes targeted Osama bin Laden.

Ford’s First EV Isn’t Sexy, But It’s Smart  |  Wired

Ford’s first mass-market electric vehicle isn’t a sexy sports car. It isn’t a sleek sedan. And it isn’t cool compact. It’s a van. A delivery van, to be exact, designed specifically for fleet use. It isn’t the sexiest way to break into the electric arena, but it’s a smart move for Ford and a logical place for EVs.

Ford rolled into San Francisco with one of the Transit Connect Electric vans that goes on sale at the end of the year. It isn’t much to look at — a big box on wheels with a definite European flair — but it offers 80 miles of range and charges in as little as six hours. Ford is offering it only its big fleet customers for now but opens the order book next year for anyone who wants one.

A Ringing Critique.

News and analysis…

Now that the glamor of the 2010 Olympics is over it is interesting to observe the various social questions left in its wake. Some issues which were shelved to make room for international harmony and sportsmanship include gender identity, sexism, racism, homelessness, indigenous rights, etc. Here are some such stories which have been largely overlooked in the rush to count medals and support national pride…

Global Comment |Taraneh Ghajar Jerven’s recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, “2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony: What about Vancouver’s homeless?” highlights the injustices perpetrated in the run-up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.(1) Jerven discusses the expensive development costs associated with the 2010 Olympic Games, where the original budget of $660 million was revised to over $5 billion.(2)

The astronomical increase in costs for the Vancouver Olympics is especially egregious when considering that the city’s homeless population has doubled since 2003 – the same year that the city secured its Olympic bid. This rise in homelessness leaves one wondering: how can an international event that claims to celebrate peace, unity and global harmony so callously ignore the needs of the most vulnerable populations? What kind of priorities is the international community embracing in such an outright rejection of the human right to housing?

Violations of the human right to housing are not specific to the 2010 Vancouver Games, and are unfortunately indicative of a growing trend in these types of mega-sporting events. One key example is the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where violations of the human right to housing displaced approximately 1.5 million residents. This trend can be followed to other host cities, such as Seoul, where 720,000 people were displaced to make way for the 1988 Olympic Games. Additionally here in the United States, in the run-up to the 1996 Atlanta Games, 30,000 people were displaced and 2,000 units of public housing were destroyed.(3)

Womanist Musings | In an interview with Salon, three time world medal champion Elvis Stojko, made clear that the greatest danger to figure skating is the feminization of male skaters.

It basically started about one year ago, when Skate Canada said that they weren’t getting enough young boys enrolling in skating. People tiptoe around the topic, and I was like, “You know, I’m just going to say it: Effeminate men’s skating is not my style of skating. In men’s skating I like to see power and strength.”

Effeminate men’s skating is the issue with male figure skating. WOW…Of course Elvis believes that it is only right for people to get upset if they are called gay.

“Some guys get into the sport because it’s difficult — the spins, the speed — and they like to showcase that within the music. When you’re not appreciated for that, it takes its toll. And then when people call them effeminate, they get pissed. People call them gay, and some people don’t like to be called that.”

If you want to open up figure skating to another audience, you need to create something that’s going to allow everyone to watch. If you have a male masculine person watching it, they need something to relate to. Other guys relate to Johnny Weir’s thing. You need to have guys doing jumps, so a person who also watches NASCAR can identify with it and say, “Hey that’s awesome — how many rotations is that?” or “How fast did he spin?” instead of, “How pretty was that guy?”

Being called gay can only be a bad thing if you have a problem with homosexuality to begin with. Why should it be considered threatening to anyone’s masculinity? He makes it sound as though gay men are destroying the sport by not being suitably butch. Don’t even bother to get upset about his commentary because gay people need to just accept their second class status, according to Elvis.

Global Comment | Native leaders like Fontaine have been very vocal about the opportunities that the Olympics offers First Nations citizens. However, there are many within the aboriginal community that raise the concern that the Olympics amount to further exploitation of Native peoples.

“The Four Host Nations is a corporate body made up primarily of government-funded Indian Act band council chiefs, not hereditary chieftainships,” says Seislom, a Lil’wat Elder. “An overwhelming number of Indigenous people in these territories and in the interior are opposed to the Olympics because of the long-term impact including destruction of the land, commodification of Native art and culture, and the creation of long-term poverty once the few token jobs are gone.”

According to the Olympic resistance network, during the Olympic Torch relay, protesters in over thirty cities, towns, and Indigenous communities successfully disrupted the Torch Relay, forcing delays and route cancellations, with at least thirteen arrests. Much of the Canadian coverage regarding the protests does not seek to discuss why the protesters are attempting to disrupt the games. The protesters are seen as rabble rousers who are destroying our chance to showcase Canadian wonders.

Even as the torch was carried along the Highway of Tears (a stretch of highway 12 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C., where numerous women who are largely Indigenous have gone missing) many Canadians are unaware of their government’s failure to bring a halt to the violence. It is unimaginable that disappearances of White women would have been met with such apathy.

Leader-Post |The IOC held a symposium in Miami in January to “attempt to identify the most up-to-date medical/biological science with regard to the gender issue that may be of relevance to sport and that will help sports bodies to deal with potential cases.”

“Gender issue” can mean just about anything, which is why the IOC uses the phrase. Scientists at the Florida International University met with the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in conjunction with the 2nd World Conference on Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders. The IOC is most worried about a condition referred to as “Disorders of Sexual Development.”

In the eyes of the IOC, and obviously those in the medical world who dream up names for conditions that place people outside conventional sexuality, not being biologically absolutely a man or absolutely a woman is seen as a disorder. IOC officials say their concern is about fairness, as women who have one of the DSDs (once called intersexed, which makes more sense) may have a biological advantage over women who don’t have DSD characteristics.

This is indeed a murky area as all athletes at the Olympic level have genetic advantages of different kinds. All Olympic athletes train very hard, and are committed to their dream, whatever that may be, but to make a national team certain “gifts” have to be in place biologically. Endurance athletes will go nowhere without very high “MaxVO2s” and anaerobic thresholds. You can increase both through training to some extent, but if you are not born with the genetic information that allows your body to deliver great amounts of oxygen per kilogram of weight and then allows your body to “work” for long periods of time at a level that is not far below your maximum heartrate, you aren’t going to the Olympics in the endurance events. The only sprinters who make it to the 100-metre final have a different profile, but they too need to be genetically gifted as do gymnasts, as do tennis players, and so on.

In this highly gendered world one person’s genetic gift is another person’s disorder. Where is the line in the sand for what an athlete brings to the startline courtesy of Mother Nature? The IOC does not recommend to Kenyan long-distance runners or Norwegian cross-country skiers that they get an operation to reduce their super-high MaxVO2s because they have an unfair advantage, but this is what they tell intersexed or DSD athletes to do about their sexuality.

Mother Jones | There are two reasons why Alissa Johnson, a 22-year-old Park City, Utah, native, knows she should be in Vancouver today. First, to support her brother Anders, who is ski jumping for the US Olympic team. And second, to strap on her 8-foot-long skis and compete herself. She’s one of the US’s top five female ski jumpers. If there were a women’s team, she’d be on it.

But there isn’t. So, because ski jumping is the last remaining sport of the Olympics that bars women from competing, Johnson is going as a sister and a friend. And that’s it.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the women’s exclusion isn’t discrimination. President Jacques Rogge has insisted that the decision “was made strictly on a technical basis, and absolutely not on gender grounds.” But female would-be Olympic competitors say they don’t understand what that “technical basis” is. Their abilities? They point to American Lindsey Van, who holds the world record for the single longest jump by anyone, male or female. (Ironically, she broke the record flying from a jump built at Whistler for the Vancouver Olympics). Their numbers? When the IOC voted in 2006 not to add women’s ski jumping, 83 competitors from 14 nations jumped at the top level, less universality than required to add a new event. But in the same year, women’s skier cross claimed just 30 skiers from 11 nations. The committee added it. (There are also too few male ski jumpers to qualify, but as one of the original 16 Winter Olympic events, their event isn’t subjected to the same rules.)

Best of the web…

Iraq Holds Early Voting Amid Blasts  |  Aljazeera English

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said the vote is seen as a pivotal moment in Iraq as the US prepares to withdraw large numbers of troops by 2011.

“This is a very significant vote; it is the closest to a truly representative process since the US-led invasion [in 2003],” he said.

More than 6,000 candidates will be competing for 325 seats in the election.

Travel around the country has been restricted and the authorities have cancelled all leave for security services.

The election winners will oversee the withdrawal of US forces from the country and help determine whether Iraq will be able to move past the deep Sunni-Shia divisions that almost destroyed it.

Five years ago, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs boycotted the legislative election,allowing Shia and Kurdish parties to take control of parliament, but Sunnis are now expected to take part in large numbers.

Lesbians in South Africa Being Raped to ‘Cure’ Them of Sexual Orientation  |  Alternet

The group ActionAid released a report about the shocking rise in homophobic attacks and murders in South Africa, especially Johannesburg and Cape Town where lesbian women are being raped as a “corrective” punishment for being gay.

They report:

Rape is fast becoming the most widespread hate crime targeted against gay women in townships across South Africa. One lesbian and gay support group says it is dealing with 10 new cases of lesbian women being targeted for ‘corrective’ rape every week in Cape Town alone.

‘Terrifying’ Saudi Novel Wins Arabic Booker  |  CNN

Saudi novelist Abdo Khal, who won the Arabic Booker prize for his novel depicting the ravaging effects of unlimited wealth, says he writes about the “double standards in our life.”

Khal won the prestigious $60,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel, “Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles.”

The book, whose title is a Koranic reference to hell, chronicles the seductive powers of an ultra-wealthy palace, telling “the agonising story of those who have become enslaved by it, drawn by its promise of glamour,” said the organizers of the prize.

Iran Document: Women Activists Write Mousavi & Karroubi  |  Enduring America

A letter from Iran’s women activists to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, written last week, published by Rah-e-Sabz, and passed on by Mission Free Iran:

As you know, during the 10th presidential campaign, you made promises about the obvious rights of Iranian women, which, during the course of the past 30 years have been totally ignored. Although these promises comprise only a small part of Iranian women’s just demands, during the post-election events, even those little promises disappeared from your announcements and interviews regarding your intention to pursue peoples’ rightful demands. This has happened while women and girls of this land have had a distinguished role in the green movement in pursuing the plundered rights of the Iranian people, have been in the front line of the green movement equal to men, and even have paid and are paying a higher price.

In Alice, Burton Delivers

News and Analysis…

Tomorrow is the release date for the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton.  But, you probably knew that since the film has been advertised almost to market saturation.  At least in Los Angeles, it is hard to leave the house without seeing Johnny Depp’s dazed Mad Hatter starting back at you.  Reviews state that although the film is not perfect, it will not disappoint the millions of anxiously awaiting fans.  One of the most common critiques is of the use of 3D.  After Avatar raised the bar for the 3D experience, Alice failed to meet it.  Perhaps skip the shades on this one and see it in the 2D world.  The movie is expected to dominate the box office this weekend.

Huffington Post | And marrying one of my favorite mythos with one of my favorite filmmakers was a no-brainer. The movie began and I was transfixed. Sure, I thought the overt use of symbolism from Wonderland was a bit overt, but I swallowed it down wanting to love the movie and it worked. And when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, I had the chills.

I was incredibly concerned about what would happen once we got into Tim Burton’s Wonderland. Wonderland has always been an incredibly silly place and I was worried that when it was married to Tim Burton’s style it would be a little too much, but it never was. He restrained as much of himself as was necessary and provided an excellent live action take on Wonderland. But from the get go, we can tell that something is different in this Wonderland.

Screen Rant | Ultimately, the 3D fails to impress in Alice in Wonderland and certain 3D parts of the film, such as Alice falling down the rabbit hole, are completely unwatchable. The digital effects guys throw so much debris towards the audience and Burton films the scene so close up that everything blurs together in a mass of unintelligible imagery. I hope that other studios are taking note of this and realize that if they must make a 3D film, then it needs to be done during the shooting process and not done as an afterthought.

Tech Land | The delightfully giddy, silly, delirious movie. The movie where it seemed like Tim Burton wasn’t being “Tim Burton” but was just having fun again, scrambling up the expected pieces into a puzzle so new and bizarre that it blindsides you with its sentiment.

Living in Cinema | Narrative isn’t historically a Burton strong suit. Sometimes the style makes up for it (Sleepy Hollow…yes I kind of like Sleepy Hollow) and sometimes it doesn’t (Planet of the Apes). Which way will Alice go? I don’t know, but the rest of the cast including Mia Wasikowska as a 21-year-old Alice, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Stephen Fry, Crispin Glover, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall make it worth finding out.

Cinetology | Overall Burton gets the elements about right bar a couple of missteps. The final battle scene in which Alice faces off against a dragon while reciting her list of six impossible things is unfortunately generic, the sort of wham-slam-bam! battle montage we’ve seen countless times before, though the sheer Burton-lathered look of it – weird beasts, a boofhead Red Queen, creepily skewed backdrops etcetera – separates it somewhat from garden variety large scale action scenes.

On the Web…

Race, Those Billboards and Abortion as Genocide| Feministe

Last month, Renee wrote about the “Black children are an endangered species” billboards. Now the New York Times has picked it up, in a story about how the anti-abortion movement is using race and accusations of genocide as a way to “court” supporters of color to a traditionally white, long-racist movement. The anti-choice strategy has been to hire a handful of women of color to travel around the country telling African-Americans that abortion is part of a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.

AVictory For Online Journalism | Alternet

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has finally done the right – and democratic – thing in reversing a previous boneheaded decision by the New York Police Department to deny official ‘working press’ passes to reporters at online or nontraditional news outlets – such as this one!

The turnabout came as a result of a lawsuit filed by three such reporters — Rafael Martinez Alequin, Ralph E. Smith and David Wallis. There was never any real doubt that all were “legitimate” reporters.

Make Non-White People Feel Marginalized in Their Own Countries | stuff white people do

This fawning and seemingly complimentary commentary about our hair is just another way to other black people. It’s as though she sees her hair as being “regular” hair, and our hair is some weird, exotic, abnormal characteristic. But when you’re in a country where the vast majority of its inhabitants possess (naturally, although a ridiculous percentage of women are relaxing their hair) a certain phenotype and you don’t, you’re actually the one with the “weird” hair, not us.

What Does a Congressional Whip Actually Do? | Slate

They count votes. The principle task of a party whip, formally known as “assistant party leader,” is to keep track of the number of votes for and against a piece of legislation. They’re also responsible, along with the party’s leader, for “whipping up” support for a particular position. Not every vote gets whipped. If the party leadership knows that a bill is going to pass easily, they won’t go to the trouble of counting every last vote. But when the vote is close—say the Senate leadership has 45 guaranteed “yes” votes and 10 “maybes”—whipping is necessary to get a more accurate head count.

Catholics Less Than Charitable on Gay Marriage

News and Analysis…

Today, gay marriage licenses will be issued for the first time in Washington D.C.  In order to prevent providing benefits to gay couples, Catholic Charities preempted the possibility by changing its personnel policy to exclude spousal benefits to any couples who are not already included.  In the lead up to legalizing same-sex marriage, Catholic Charities had threatened to terminate its city contracts if the law passed.  Excluding benefits for gay partners is the latest measure the Church is taking to show its displeasure with the law.  On the blogosphere, some bloggers are outraged.  Others expected something like this from the Church after their previous threats.

The Sexist In short: If you and your spouse are already enrolled in Catholic Charities health coverage, your spouse will be grandfathered in. Starting tomorrow, however, new employees (or newly married employees, hint hint) will not be allowed to add spouses to the plan. So: Longtime employees will receive the spousal benefits they’ve always had; Catholic Charities will get to keep its pool of covered spouses gay-free; only fresh employees and gays will feel the sting on this one.

Alternet | I don’t get it. Why do they care? If Fauntory does not believe in gay marriage then I suggest he shouldn’t marry a man. And excuse me, but I went to catholic school, and any Catholic organization should be the last group complaining about gay folks. If it weren’t for gays, the Catholic church would likely lose a quarter of its nuns and priests.

More importantly, why do they care? Why would anyone care who a stranger chooses to marry?

Change.org | That’s right, the Church that loves to call itself pro-family is giving a huge middle finger to family values by taking away benefits for everyone. Or, to perhaps put it another way, the Catholic Church would rather take benefits away from straight couples than give them to gay ones.

Shows you just how much the Catholic Church values its employees, right? Here’s hoping they at least let the bus slow down before they threw everyone underneath it.

Feministing | These moves are despicable. And attempts by the Archdiocese to blame the new same sex marriage law are ridiculous. The law didn’t force the Archdiocese to abandon children in foster care or screw over their employee’s families. The blame sits squarely on the shoulders of church leadership that’s decided to prioritize a commitment to discrimination over valuable social services work.

Get Religion | As opposed to what, by golly? I’m not Catholic but I would hope that any church leadership worth their salt would encourage everyone in the church to follow both the letter and the spirit of God’s law. Some of us even think that what the church has to say is just as or possibly even more important as what my city council thinks at a given moment. Maybe some people think that “everyone who flies the Catholic brand flag” should just bend their practices to whatever winds blow their way, but that’s not really the way the traditional church has operated over the years.

Best on the Web…

Speed Trap: George Lopez to Play Speedy Gonzalez | Racilicious

The thing is, it’s not just about Speedy, but about the universe he inhabited. If this new film strays from the original Andale! Andale! schtick, critics will decry that the character was neutered by “the PC Patrol.” If it doesn’t, the couple has resurrected a very problematic cartoon character (two, if Slowpoke Rodriguez is also brought back.)

Are the Winter Olympics Getting More Diverse | Foreign Passport

At the time, I wondered how globalization has impacted the winter games — are more countries participating? Winning medals?

The answer is to both question is yes, as you can see above. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of countries participating in the Winter Olympics has skyrocketed — with the number of medal winners increasing in turn. (It’s a bit hard to see on the graph, but the percentage of countries winning medals has held at around 30 percent since 1988.)

That said, the Winter Olympics are just keeping pace with the Summer Olympics, as you can see on the chart below. Since 1988, the number of countries sending athletes to the summer games has increased around 46 percent, and around 44 percent for the winter games.

With Travel Expenses, Some in Congress Keep the Change | ProPublica

Congressmen like to travel — in the past two years alone, members of the House and the Senate ran up 5,300 travel days, according to the Wall Street Journal — and when they’re abroad on official business, they get a chunk of spending money each day to cover basic costs. In Paris, for example, it’s $178, in Tokyo it’s $214, and in Kabul it’s $28. When the trip ends, any unspent funds are supposed to be returned to the taxpayer, but as the Journal reports [1] today, this doesn’t always happen.

Instead, “lawmakers use the excess cash for shopping or to defray spouses’ travel expenses,” the Journal writes. “Sometimes they give it away; sometimes they pocket it. Many lawmakers said they didn’t know the rules demand repayment.”

Putting Conservation Back Into Conservatism | The Next Right

The Right needs to go further. Falling back on small government and low tax rhetoric, too, simply won’t fill the bill – the average American doesn’t take our high polemic seriously anymore (beyond sharing our disdain for the sitting Democratic government – we should recognize that this could only be temporary). Republicans have plenty of momentum in their favor, and, like Rep. Paul Ryan, can seize this opportunity before sliding backward into campaign mode this year. Here’s the good news: it’s entirely possible to be green and pro-business all at once.

Still No Sunset for Patriot Act Measures

News and analysis…

Once again the US Patriot Act has entered the fray between security and freedom of speech. Within the last month there have been two separate debates circling the act. First is the issue of freedom of speech in relation to the Patriot Act’s prohibition on “material support” of terrorists groups, (a broadly defined term that includes everything from supplying weapons to teaching “terrorist” leaders how resolve disputes peacefully). Second is the recent extension of the Patriot Act without any increased restriction to protect privacy rights of citizens. These are fascinating debates to follow because it so clearly expresses how our government deals with issues of dialogue, privacy, and justice for those groups it declares suspect, and how the ideals of freedom of speech, privacy, and “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are balanced against national security.

For an extensive background on the current debates surrounding the Patriot Act I recommend this article featured on Truthout.

The Huffington Post |  Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed – by voice vote without debate – a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

The House was prepared to approve the extension Thursday, dropping even more extensive privacy protections approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Democratic retreat is a political victory for Republicans, who gained new ammunition for their election theme that the GOP can better protect America. The outcome is a major disappointment for Democrats and their liberal allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who believe the Patriot Act fails to protect Americans’ privacy and gives the government too much authority to spy on Americans and seize their property.

Foreign Policy  | Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions, R-AL, confirmed to The Cable that the current thinking was to extend the Patriot Act provisions in their current form, ignoring the changes his own committee approved.

“The Patriot Act has worked and the last thing we should do is weaken it. So I think it’s a good development that we are going to continue it as is,” said Sessions. “That’s the right direction.”

Here’s the scope of the three provisions that will be extended, according to Congressional Quarterly:

One of the expiring provisions allows the government to seek orders from a special federal court for “any tangible thing” that it says is related to a terrorism investigation. Another allows the government to seek court orders for roving wiretaps on terrorism suspects who shift their modes of communication. The third provision allows the government to apply to the special court for surveillance orders involving suspected “lone wolf” terrorists who do not necessarily have ties to a larger organization.”

Alter Net | The specter of McCarthyism is again hanging over America, but this time it has found a new name. Next week, the Court will hear Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, a case that calls into question broad restrictions on speech. The lawsuit challenges parts of the Patriot Act that prohibit American citizens from speaking with groups said to be terrorists. The government argues that speaking with or on behalf of these groups can be seen as “material support.” This is an eerily similar argument to the one made against Adrian during the Red Scare. I have heard family stories of screenwriters labeled communists for bringing food to a canned food drive loosely connected with the Communist Party. This kind of guilt by association is poison for a free society.

The Patriot Act’s provisions go even further than the Hollywood blacklists that ended careers and forced an entire generation of talented artists, intellectuals, and activists into the ranks of the unemployed and exiled abroad. Now, speaking with the wrong group can get you fifteen years in federal prison.

The upcoming suit is brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Ralph Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and president of the Humanitarian Law Project, a nonprofit group that has a long history of mediating international conflicts. His organization hopes to do human rights trainings around the world to promote nonviolent conflict resolution — but if he does so, he may be thrown in jail under the Patriot Act. It is a tragic irony that under the current law promoting nonviolence could get an American citizen imprisoned as a supporter of terrorism. Throwing Americans in jail for trying to convince terrorist groups to lay down their arms doesn’t make us safer. It weakens our democracy.

NPR | Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated as a terrorist group by the secretary of state. But the definition of material support includes not just providing weapons, money or bomb-making skills; it includes providing any sort of expert advice, training or personnel — including advice on how to resolve disputes peaceably or training on how to make human rights claims before the United Nations.

The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision.

“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of the organization. “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”

The federal government, he maintains, cannot constitutionally make it a crime to help others advocate lawful, peaceful solutions to international conflicts. In particular, Fertig and his organization have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act, that all stopped, and the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.

The government, arguing that the PKK had engaged in terrorist activities that have cost some 22,000 lives, said it was justified in making the organization a pariah. Thus, the government contended, even filing a legal brief on behalf of the PKK in an American court would be a crime.

Best of the web…

Sudan Parties Sign Darfur Ceasefire  |  Al Jazeera

The conflict in Darfur, which has pitched ethnic African tribesmen against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, has raged far the last seven years.

While numerous ceasefires agreements in the past have been short-lived, analysts say that the forthcoming elections in Sudan and increased international pressure could give this initiative a better chance of survival.

But officials warned a March 15 deadline for a final peace deal was overly ambitious.

“After the agreement is signed, the rest will come through more negotiations,” said Adrees Mahmoud, a Europe-based Jem representative, who was in Qatar for the signing.

El Sadig el-Faqih, a former adviser to Sudan’s president, who was also in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the move was a “framework to start discussing the details” and a peace deal could only go ahead when all parties were involved.

Twitter Reaches His Holiness, Now Online @DalaiLama  |  The Raw Story

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has joined micro-blogging service Twitter, attracting over 55,000 followers in just two days.

The Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed — @DalaiLama — was launched on Monday, a day after he met in Los Angeles with Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders.

“Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed,” Williams “tweeted” following the meeting.

The next day, however, the Tibetan spiritual leader had an account and received a “Welcome @DalaiLama” message from Twitter’s new spokesman, Sean Garrett.

Drug-resistance Malaria ‘Growing’ on Cambodia  |  BBC News

Parasites are developing resistance to one of the most important anti-malaria drugs, according to experts.

Artimisinin has been highly effective, particularly in places where resistance to other drugs has developed.

But now some patients along Cambodia’s border with Thailand are taking longer to respond to the treatment.

Experts on the disease are meeting village health workers in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to discuss ways to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading.

Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage  |  RH Reality Check

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.

Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

“This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder,” says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, “there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident.”

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

Gay Marriage Advocates Hail Maryland

News and Analysis…

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler issued an opinion Wednesday to inform the state’s policy toward recognize gay marriages performed in other states.  His conclusion is that the state should do so and will begin recognizing out-of-state gay unions starting yesterday.  This opinion comes nine months after it was requested and only days before gay marriages are set to begin in Washington D.C.  The opinion is tentative and could be overturned in court.   To read the decision, go here.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force | This opinion by Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler affirms the dignity of marriages of same-sex couples performed in other jurisdictions. While the opinion doesn’t change current Maryland law, it states that same-sex marriages performed out-of-state may be honored at home by various Maryland state agencies. We thank the attorney general for his important opinion and urge state agencies to take steps immediately to honor the legal marriages of these same-sex couples.

Queerty | Any marriage that is “valid in the jurisdiction in which it was contracted” may be recognized by Maryland, he says.

But could doesn’t mean will: “Such marriages may be recognized in several ways. First, legislation enacted by the General Assembly could provide for recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages generally, or for particular purposes. Second, in the absence of legislation, the Court of Appeals, applying common law choice-of-law principles, could decide that such marriages will be recognized in Maryland, either generally or in particular circumstances. Finally, a state agency may also address the recognition of out-of-state marriages on particular matters within that agency’s jurisdiction, so long as the agency’s action is consistent with any relevant statutes and court decisions, including federal laws that may govern the agency’s activities.”

Change.org | His opinion doesn’t lock Maryland into recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages. But it certainly offers a solid hope that action will be taken, either legislatively or perhaps more expectedly from the Maryland State Supreme Court, to make out-of-state marriages valid in the State.

Expect this to drive some conservative Maryland legislators into fits of rage. Earlier this month, two legislators tried to move forward pieces of legislation that would have blocked Maryland from recognizing out-of-state gay marriage, or in one radical case, would have impeached Attorney General Gansler preemptively for writing an opinion favorable to gay marriage. Those pieces of legislation died, thankfully.

On the Web…

White Girls Can Use Microscopes If They’re Pink | Womanist Musings

Isn’t it wonderful everyone?  Now girls can be into science too and we know this because everything is a wonderful shade of pink. Yep, pink just screams girl.  I suppose I should see this as a leap forward because these sorts of toys are usually aimed at boys, but it irritates me that the creators felt that simply having girls on the package was enough to signify femininity.

I would remiss if I did not point out that though these two little girls are cute, they are White and blonde.  It seems that it is okay to encourage girls to succeed, only if they fall within certain criteria.  White women are oppressed due to sexism but their race privilege often opens doors that are closed to little girls of colour.  No matter how much we claim to value children, socially not all children are equal.

When Rapists Graduate and Victims Drop Out | The Sexist

According to a a new report from the Center for Public Integrity, many U.S. colleges fail to adhere to federal laws that dictate the school’s response after sexual assaults are reported on its campus. “Under Title IX, schools must meet three requirements if they find a sexual assault has occurred: end a so-called “hostile environment”; prevent its future occurrence; and restore victims’ lives,” writes CPI reporter Kristen Lombardi.

In many cases, however, students found responsible for sexual assault through the college judicial process are administered little more than a slap on the wrist, leaving victims to continue pursuing their education in close proximity to their assailants—or drop out.

“Compton Cookout” Party at UCSD Ignites Racial Firestorm | Racialicious

The University of California at San Diego is still feeling the aftermath of an off-campus party organized by students dubbed the “Compton Cookout” in which racial stereotypes of blacks were used in flyers and a Facebook invitation. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the invitation included references to ‘dat Purple Drank,’ an apparent mix of ’sugar, water, and the color purple, chicken, coolade, and of course Watermelon.’ Party organizers aimed to have a “ghetto” theme Feb. 15 poking fun of Compton, a community near Los Angeles made famous by rappers and films about urban blacks.

Dove: Redefining Male Beauty | Adios Barbie

Is male beauty found in ripped abs and bulging biceps? Is a man deemed attractive by the car he drives? Or by how much money he earns? If you look at commercials geared toward men as an indicator, you would have to deduce that square jawlines, snazzy sport cars, and a thick wallet equate with masculine attractiveness. But one commercial that aired for the first time during Super Bowl XLIV presented a refreshing alternative.

Dove’s marketing team, Unilever didn’t use a buff model to promote its new skin care line, Men+Care. Instead, the spot (dubbed The Journey to Comfort), features a man that some male consumers can identify with: A thirty-something family guy who has successfully navigated gender-specific milestones to arrive at “being comfortable in his own skin.”

Health Care…FINALLY?

News and Analysis…

On Tuesday, President Obama announced his support for a health care reform  (HCR) bill before Congress.  The announcement, as well as an invitation for Republicans to join in a forum, is being taken as the Obama administration’s inability to let health care reform die after failing to pass for the better part of the year.  Both conservatives and progressives are critical of the President’s bill, for opposing reasons.  Conservatives claim the bill contains too much spending.  Progressives insist the bill is not enough change to be substantive.  It seems that no one supports Obama’s efforts.

Washington Post | Democrats have already paid a political price for tackling health reform at a time when voters are hurting from the recession, anxious about the economy and wary of new government initiatives. There is no way they can avoid facing this line of attack in the fall. The question, at this point, is whether Republicans will be able to toss in allegations of gutlessness and incompetence: The Democrats controlled the White House and all of Congress, and still couldn’t get it done.

Daily Kos | An new Kaiser Tracking poll shows the country evenly split on the current HCR plan–43/43, but it also finds that “majorities of Americans of all political leanings support several provisions in the health reform proposals in Congress and most attribute delays in passing the legislation to political gamesmanship rather than policy disagreements.”

American Spectator | President Obama on Monday removed speculation about whether he would scale back his health care ambitions in the current political environment, releasing a plan that increases taxes, spending, and regulation even more than the Senate health care bill that has been overwhelmingly rejected by the public.

The brazen move, coming just days before a scheduled health care summit, was accompanied by a renewed willingness to use the reconciliation procedure to ram a health care bill through the Senate with just 51 votes. Taken together, some commentators see a growing momentum for finishing the health care legislation that was put on life support after Sen. Scott Brown’s surprise victory in Massachusetts.

Slate | If you are afraid of President Obama and congressional Democrats, then you will see this final push for health care reform as a scheme to bankrupt the country and ruin your current health care and as proof of a government-knows-best approach that will slowly erode personal freedoms. If you are afraid of the insurance industry, you’ll see the Republican obstructionism in the face of rising premiums and inflation as an unconscionable abandonment of those who can’t afford coverage now and those middle-class families who soon won’t be able to.

The Hill | Now Harry Reid is promising to pass a health care bill through the Senate in sixty days. President Obama is continuing to arrogantly push this radical legislation in the hope of creating a new entitlement program that will continue to nurture America’s dependency on Big Government. When America’s leadership has become so disconnected from Americans’ interests, the American people must stand up boldly in defense of their livelihoods and their liberties.

On the Web…

Why “African American” IS the Most Accurate Term | Racialicious

Yet McWhorter’s argument does not rest on personal predilection, but rather it is an attempt to reason and eventually settle on the most exact designation for black people native-born to the U.S.  As such, the first concern is one of history.  (And McWhorter recognizes this, as his title suggests: “Did ‘African American’ History Really Happen in Atlanta, Cleveland, Philly, and Detroit?  Listening to the Census.”)  That most black Americans have not been to Africa, do not speak an indigenous African language, and/or cannot trace their ancestral line to a particular tribe or region is beside the point.  The “African” in African American is not that grounded; it is does not signify the particularities of Africa.  Instead, the “African” in African America refers to a very distinct historical process of acculturation, trauma, and community building.

The Environmental Effect of Pet Food | Slate

You’re right that the carnivorous diets of cats and dogs are likely to be worse for the environment than those of, say, birds and guinea pigs. But the meat we feed to our pets isn’t quite the same as the stuff we eat ourselves. Most commercial dog and cat food is made from the parts we humans don’t eat, like organs, scraps, and rendered bones and tissues.

Looked at one way, then, pet food is a kind of recycling operation: It takes waste products and finds a use for them. From an economic perspective, these less-than-palatable parts aren’t that big of a deal. Clark Williams-Derry, blogging for the Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, notes that byproducts account for at most 15 percent of a livestock animal’s value. Thus, he argues, the pet food industry contributes relatively little to the total environmental impact of a meat-producing cow, chicken, or pig. We grow and slaughter those animals to feed our yen for meat—not to make the scraps that go into pet food. So 100 calories of byproduct meat should be credited with a lower impact than 100 calories of human-grade meat.

Is Genetically Engineering Animals Not to Feel Pain Really the Solution to Factory Farming? | TreeHugger

Last week the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by PhD-to-be philosopher-neuroscientist-psychologist Adam Shriver, from Washington University in St Louis, that really cuts to the heart of one of the deepest issues in the green movement: How does humanity best relate to the other animals on the planet? Shriver starts the assumption that, like it or not factory farming is here to stay in the United States. Therefore, we ought to minimize the pain animals feel in the slaughterhouse… by genetically engineering them to not feel it:

No one is actually doing this yet, but Shriver points to research done into how mammals sense pain and speculates, because of the similarities between all mammals neural systems that one day that this could be applied to pigs and cows.

Proposed Florida Bill Would Charge Abortion Providers with First-Degree Felonies | Change.org

What I find particularly interesting about this anti-choice bill is that it punishes the abortion providers, not the patients. If this bill becomes law, then a person performing abortions would be charged with a first-degree felony, punishable by up to life in prison. As Jessica over at Feministing suggests, this “punish the provider, not the patient” philosophy seems to stem from the popular anti-choice sentiment that women are victims of abortions, not well-informed, active participants in the process. In that scenario, abortion providers are like the Big Bad Wolf preying on innocent Little Red Riding Hood, which is insulting to women on many levels.

Going “Nuclear” Again?

News and analysis…

It is amazing how history repeats itself… Especially in Washington D.C. where it seems to run in a four year cycle. This phenomena is readily apparent in the most recent argument on Capital Hill–namely filibuster reform. Back in 2005 Republicans tried to introduce an option, (the so called ‘nuclear option’), to kill the filibuster in retaliation to the threats of an uncooperative Democrat minority. Fast forward to the present and we now see Democrats trying the exact same thing in response to a stubborn Republican minority. While is seems unlikely to get anywhere, filibuster reform certainly illustrates the problems of excessive bipartisan ship and why it is so difficult for anything to be accomplished in Congress.

The Hill | Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) intends to introduce legislation that would take away the minority’s power to filibuster legislation.

Speaking to The Hill, Harkin said use of the filibuster has ground the legislative process to a halt.

“While there are reasons to slow bills down and get the public aware of what’s happening, there’s no excuse for having a few people just stop everything with a filibuster,” he said.

Several liberal activists as well as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) this week have called for filibuster reform to make it easier for legislation to pass.

In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) this week introduced a resolution urging the Senate to lower the filibuster threshold, adding in a statement that the legislative tactic “has begun to erode the integrity of our Democratic process.”

Under Harkin’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), 60 votes would still be necessary to cut off debate on an initial procedural motion. If senators failed to reach 60 votes, a second vote would be possible two days later that would require only 57 votes to cut off debate. If that also failed, a third vote two days after that would require 54 votes to end debate. A fourth vote after two more days would require just 51 votes.

NPR  | As he [Evan Bayh] has said all week, one of his main reasons for deciding to leave the Senate is that, with 60 votes seemingly needed to pass anything these days, nothing is getting done. Demanding the magic number of 60 is a tactic “abused” by the Senate minority, Bayh said. He said he would support lowering the threshold from 60 to 55 — the “right way to go,” he thought — reminding us that when his father, Birch Bayh, was in the Senate (1963-80), lawmakers lowered the magic number from 67.

He also got a bit wistful about the filibuster itself; make ‘em do what Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, if they want to hold up legislation. If the Republicans feel that strongly about stopping this or that, Bayh said, “make them go to the floor” and actually filibuster, rather than simply threaten it, as is the custom today.

Daily Kos | What we’ve come to know as the modern filibuster these days rarely involves anything even remotely resembling marathon speeches on the floor. All of the “action” is abstract. Objecting Senators indicate their willingness to refuse assent to any unanimous consent agreements to bring a measure to the floor for debate, and that resolve is either tested by filing a motion for cloture and holding a vote (with the well-known threshold 3/5 of Senators chosen and sworn — 60 in a full Senate — required to end debate), or else the point is conceded, temporarily or otherwise, that a cloture vote would fail for lack of support.

But that’s not the end of the story, and most of the advocates for “forcing” a filibuster are more interested in what happens next, though in modern practice, what happens next is: nothing. That is, a failed cloture vote or declining to even take a cloture vote because it’s expected to fail usually results in pulling the bill from the floor or otherwise indefinitely delaying its consideration. To be a little clearer about it, then, those who want to see a filibuster forced are interested in what happens if the Senate leadership refuses to give up on a bill that’s being blocked and can’t currently get 60 votes for cloture.

Can’t Harry Reid just leave the bill on the floor for debate, they ask, and keep trying for cloture over and over until someone breaks? Or is a cloture motion even really necessary? If you’re willing to tough it out on cloture votes over and over again, why not simply let the obstructionists talk themselves into a coma instead?

This is all theoretically possible, but none of it would happen in a vacuum. Remember that at any given time, there are hundreds of measures which could and should be moving through a properly functioning Senate. If one measure is stuck on the floor for some indeterminate length of time, that means none of the others are moving. And some of those other measures can by themselves cause enormous problems when they don’t move on time.

TMPDC | The problem is political. ”It’s a brute force move that basically blatantly ignores the existing rules,” said Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It would be the equivalent of in a Super Bowl game, a team basically tackles all the referees, ties ‘em up and throws them onto the sidelines and declares that a penalty is invalid.”

Reforms by ruling have occurred in the Senate in the past — but mostly for much smaller things, Binder said, like jump-starting debate on a nominee. To use the “nuclear option” on something much bigger — like filibuster reform — Binder believes the majority would have to be absolutely “convinced that what they’re doing is going to be popular.”

Not to mention the fact that Democrats almost certainly won’t have a Senate majority forever. So whatever watering down of the filibuster they push now might end up hobbling them when they become the minority again one day.

“As long as senators think like that, they’re gonna think twice about giving up their own parliamentary rights,” Binder said.

Ornstein notes that the “nuclear option” wouldn’t be quite so nuclear if it came at the beginning of a new Congress. In that case, the presiding officer’s ruling would be a little different — essentially, that the Senate isn’t a continuing body, and has the right to rewrite its rules when new members join, rather than that the Constitution gives the Senate the right to write its own rules carte blanche.

Washington Post | Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, saying the chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.

Minutes before a pair of colleagues formally unveiled their proposal to eliminate filibusters, Reid told reporters he adhered to the long-standing Senate rule that only a two-thirds majority could change the chamber’s rules. This high hurdle — established decades ago in an effort to prevent a party with a simple majority from ruling the chamber with an iron fist — would require eight Republicans to join the 59 members of the Democratic caucus to alter the rules, something Reid said is not going to happen.

“I’m totally familiar with his idea,” Reid said of the latest filibuster-reform resolution, from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “It takes 67 votes, and that, kind of, answers the question.”

Best of the Web…

Absolutely Normal Home Schoolers  |  GetReligion.org

This brings us to a perfectly normal news report in the Washington Post about homeschooling. Actually, that is not quite right. This story treats home schoolers with complete and total respect, which is not always the case in the mainstream press.
The news hook, of course, is the fact that the story centers on the choices made by Muslim families — here in the United States. Here is the top of the story by Tara Bahrampour:

Saudi to Grant Women Court Access  | Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia could soon allow women lawyers to appear in court to argue cases for the first time.

Mohammed al-Issa, the justice minister, said the government is drafting a new law to permit female lawyers to argue family-related cases, including divorce and child custody.

Filipino Group Helps Women Find Life Outside of Trafficking  |  CNN World

Funded by individual donations, as well as grants from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Renew offers shelter-based programs, housing, food, legal representation and education courses, all of which aim to help women return to their families or reintegrate into the community.

Renew also has a keen interest in helping child victims of the sex trade; an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, according to Minette Rimando, a spokeswoman for theU.N.‘S International Labour Organization’s Manila office.

No Girls Allowed  |  Daily Kos

It’s always something.

Time and again, phony concern for women has been used to justify their exclusion from countless Boys Only clubs. And this year, it’s on display again at the Winter Olympics, where ski jumping is the one sport in which only men are allowed to compete.

It didn’t matter that the International Ski Federation voted 114-1 to let women jump. And the Supreme Court of British Columbia — the Canadian province where Vancouver is located — ruled that the International Olympic Committee was clearly committing gender discrimination. No matter: the IOC could not be shamed. As IOC President Jacques Rogge “explained”:

What is Terrorism?

Analysis …

Last week, software engineer Joseph Stack flew a small airplane into a building in Austin, Texas, that contained offices for the Internal Revenue Service. Authorities say Stack, who according to an online letter he published before he crashed the plane into the building, had a grudge against the IRS. The deadly attack has prompted discussion over whether Stack’s act was an act of terrorism or that of a single, enraged individual, whether the reluctance to call the attack terrorism may be related to the ways in which we divide the world between Us and Them, and how we define “Them.”

Crooks and Liars |  “Fox News’ anchors seemed eager to assure viewers today that the plane-crash attack on IRS offices in Austin this morning was not an act of domestic terrorism. … this is true only if the conventional understanding of the word “terrorism” has now been narrowed down to mean only international terrorism and to preclude domestic terrorism altogether. Since when, after all, is attempting to blow up a federal office as a protest against federal policies NOT an act of domestic terrorism?”

Glenn Greenwald @Salon |  “All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon.  The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.  It has really come to mean:  “a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies.”  That’s why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist:  he’s not a Muslim and isn’t acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the “definition.”  One might concede that perhaps there’s some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized:  it’s not “terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way.”  We all know who commits terrorism in “that capital T way,” and it’s not people named Joseph Stack.”

Racism Review |  “In my view, this is a good time for much careful reflection and action about the underlying, stressful, oppressive class, racial, gender conditions of this society. For example, the society’s structural conditions, mentioned in the suicide note, that sometimes play a role in driving people of any background to such extreme violence are also rarely examined in the mainstream media. One can and should examine these contextual conditions of suicide attackers closely without excusing such violence. They often tell us something about our societies. Clearly, the economic depression we are now in is likely part of his story. So, it seems to me, is the violent rhetoric of many in the “tea bag” movement and on white supremacist websites. This extremely violent talk and discussion probably makes violence seem “normal” to people like this suicide attacker. Why is there no mainstream media discussion of the broader racial and class and gender implications of this story, and the biased ways it is being handled?”

Matthew Yglesias @Think Progress |  “Stack’s stated purpose for undertaking the attack was to try to prompt a counterproductive overreaction: “I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.” It’s smart, then, that as a country we’re responding to his terrorism by trying to avoid counterproductive overreactions. But of course this is also Osama bin Laden’s goal and it’s also appropriate to respond to Islamist political violence in a similar spirit. We shouldn’t be indifferent to the risk of death by Islamist terrorism any more than we should be indifferent to America’s unusually high rate of non-political homicides or to America’s alarmingly high infant mortality rate or its large number of deaths in car crashes. But it’s important to try to think about all these problems in a rational spirit, and adopt reasonable policy responses.”

The New Yorker |  “Does a foreign passport make you a terrorist? That might mean that there was no such thing as domestic terrorism. What about an American working for Al Qaeda, or a foreigner who has a problem with the I.R.S., or with the Pentagon, or with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Capture abroad? What if Osama bin Laden, as unlikely as it sounds, were apprehended in New York? Conversely, what about all the criminals who are apprehended in other countries, and then extradited here? And what about so-called home-grown jihadis? If a plane is flown deliberately into a building and you don’t know what the pilot was thinking or what nationality he had, did a crime or a terrorist act take place?”

Best of the Web …

The Best Journalism of 2009  |  TrueSlant

Throughout 2009, I kept a running list of the best journalism I encountered. Although I endeavored to remain as impartial as possible, note that I’ve been an employee of The Atlantic, that I’d eagerly write for numerous publications that received awards, that I have too many friends/acquaintances/professional contacts in journalism to disclose them all, and that the number of pieces I miss every year far exceeds the number I’m able to read.

In other words, this isn’t an infallible account of journalism’s best, but I aim to make it the best roundup that any one person can offer, one of these years I intend to do better than the committees who pick the Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards (the pressure’s on, especially since you guys charge entry fees), and if nothing else my effort encompasses writing that is well worth your time.

Sanaa, Yemen to Become World’s First Capital City to Run Out of Water  |  AlterNet

A Yemeni water trader profiled in a recent Reuters investigation explains that even though his well is 1,300 ft deep, he’s hardly extracting any water at all. The same goes for wells that are 2,000 and even 3,000 ft deep–in Yemen’s mountainous capital city Sanaa, more water is being consumed than produced. Families have reported going without getting access to water for weeks. Sanaa is home to 2 million people, and is growing fast–but experts say that if trends continue, it could be a ghost town in 20 years.

Kevin Smith & Southwest: The Tip of the Fat-Shaming Iceberg  |  Global Comment

Overall, though, fat-shaming is everywhere we turn. It happens in the erasure of fat bodies from the media. Women who are average weight are routinely photo-shopped to appear slimmer. Fat people earn less than skinny people, even though there is no substantial evidence that they are less competent. Doctors routinely ignore the medical complaints of fat people and assume that every illness or complaint is weight-related, even when the patient and medical evidence indicate otherwise.

We have been socialized to believe that fat is always the problem. If you cannot get a boyfriend, the answer is to lose weight. If you want to be successful in life, lose weight. The answer is always “lose weight.”

How to Expose the Corrupt  |  TEDTalks

Some of the world’s most baffling social problems, says Peter Eigen, can be traced to systematic, pervasive government corruption, hand-in-glove with global companies. At TEDxBerlin, Eigen describes the thrilling counter-attack led by his organization Transparency International.

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