2007 March 20 | Hanlon's Razor

Link between religion and cultural advancement?

By Hanlon, on March 20th, 2007 at 10:46 PM

I know I previously mentioned my distaste for debating whether or not religion is a good thing or a bad thing, and I still stand by my assertion that it all comes down to whether or not it’s true. That said, as I obviously personally believe that all supernatural-based religion is false, I am that much more motivated to wipe it out of humanity.

This motivation is heavily bolstered, of course, by things such as a study coming out that thoroughly examines the relationship between religion and general advancements in society. That’s a study that’s dang worth looking at, no matter which direction it goes in. Now, we all know about the wars and whatnot, the blunting of scientific advancements, but the study brings about a conclusion I honestly didn’t predict.

There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).

The trend seems to be that the more religious the region is, the more violent, the less sexually responsible, and the less stable they seem to be. Which makes little to no sense given the “godless anti-values San Francisco!” rhetoric that the likes of Hannity likes to yammer on about. Sam Harris in his “Letter to a Christian Nation” found a related list of facts, showing that red states have a disproportionately high rate of violent crime, among other things.

Take a look at these graphs, as well.

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The two sections of each graph I want you all to look at are the “absolutely believe in God” and the “agnostics and atheists” specifically (though the graphs as a whole are worth examining). Realize there is a significant and clear relationship between the religiosity of a nation and the rates of murders, youth pregnancy, and abortions.

Intriguingly, that relationship is quite opposite from what the religious right would like you to believe. Take from it what you will.

Bush will fight subpoenas, offers pointless interviews and unhelpful documents instead

By Hanlon, on March 20th, 2007 at 06:20 PM

So the president had his little speech earlier today, which really hardly needs touched upon. It was a good 10 minutes or so of the man telling us that subpoenas are a part of a “partisan fishing expedition” and that he thinks it’s plenty to offer a handful of interviews with Rove et al. But the interviews come with a few caveats.

The White House offered to arrange interviews with Rove, Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy to White House political director Sara Taylor, who works for Rove.

“Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony, or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas,” [White House counsel Fred] Fielding said in a letter to the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees.

I want you to read that a few times and let it really sink in. Just absorb the overwhelming stupidity of it.

What we’re hearing is that Rove and the others can be interviewed, but the contents can neither be revealed nor written down, they can’t be talked to again, they can’t go to court, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll tell the truth. You can imagine just how trustworthy such “interviews” would be. I’d love to come up with a witty zinger about it, but I’m failing miserably. Try to think how well it would work if this was applied to anyone else in the country.

“Mr Hanlon, did you or did you not murder that man?”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll talk to you in an interview as long as there’s no record of it, I’m not under oath, and you can’t follow up on it.”

I’m sure that would work smashingly well.

Another point that keeps coming up in this debate is this one:

In his letter, Fielding said the White House was willing to provide lawmakers with wide access.

“These documents, together with the interviews to be provided by department officials, will provide extensive background on the decisions in question, including an account of communications between the department and senior White House officials,” he wrote. “Congress, in short, is receiving a virtually unprecedented window into personnel decision-making within the executive branch.”

Right, right, the letters. There’s just one problem with those letters: they don’t actually explain the firings. The article itself is a little hazy, so read through it twice. Here’s a little piece, though:

In the letter, which Sampson says was “cleared” by the White House, the Justice Department says: “At no time has the Administration sought to avoid the Senate confirmation process by appointing an interim United States Attorney and then refusing to move forward, in consultation with home-state Senators, on the selection, nomination and confirmation of a new United States Attorney. Not once.”

But in a Dec. 19, 2006, e-mail, released earlier, Sampson says of efforts by Arkansas’ two Democratic senators to pick a permanent replacement for Cummins: “I think we should gum this to death…. All this should be done in ‘good faith’ of course.”

One thing that pops out at me from what little I’ve gotten so far is that the whole thing is fairly ambiguous. Naturally the documents are going to have critical things to say on little spreadsheets concerning the ousted attorneys. But it doesn’t get nearly far enough into the how’s and why’s of the issue. Not to mention it’s, predictably, sliced apart.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) complained about redactions in the documents, and said: “One of the many things I want to look at in Appropriations is how much they’re spending on white out, because they’re certainly not spending much on print. We’re not getting a full answer.”

I understand the need for secrecy, but this is blatant abuse of said need simply to keep their red hands hidden. The government should not, should not, be secret from itself. Secret from the public? All right. CIA activities? I’ll grant that. But there is no good reason that Congress should not be allowed to see every single shred of existing communication concerning those booted attorneys.

“If the White House is forced to be accountable for its actions, then the terrorists win!!!”

Clinton didn’t do it, and it was probably illegal

By Hanlon, on March 20th, 2007 at 03:18 PM

I’m not sure anyone really needed this one pointed out, but here it is anyway. As is par for the course, the right’s immediate response to the furor over the abrupt attorney dismissals was to say that Clinton did it too. It’s a knee jerk reaction, I swear. So the good people over at ThinkProgress decided to take a look and as it turns out, that assertion is disastrously false.

– Of the 468 confirmations made by the Senate over the 25-year period, only 10 left office involuntarily for reasons other than a change in administration prior to the firings that took place in December.

– In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of “questionable conduct.” For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.

That’s 10 over the course of a quarter of a decade, versus 8 that all got purged last December. It seems like when Bush goes, he goes big. Other presidents ask for a few wiretaps, he asks for tens of thousands (or more). His dad does a little invasion into Iraq, Dubya goes full-scale. Other presidents use a few signing statements, Bush Deux goes for around 800. When attorneys get fired at a rate of one every two and a half years, Bush shoves out a whole group of them all at once.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle. If it turns out that any of these attorneys were fired due to a lack of cooperation with the White House, there’s a good chance that their termination was downright illegal.

In law schools, it is common to give an exam called the “issue spotter,” in which students are given a set of facts and asked to identify all the legal issues and possible crimes. The facts about the purge are still emerging. But based on what is known — and with some help from Congressional staff members and Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University — it was not hard to spot that White House and Justice Department officials, and members of Congress, may have violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1520, the federal obstruction of justice statute.

And you can look through the individual issues at your leisure.

What worries me the most, though, is that we’ll end up with a Rumsfeld-type situation where Alberto Gonzales will get ousted and the issue will simply fall away. There’s a lot of discussion concerning Berty’s potential dismissal, but how is that any kind of resolution? It isn’t, it’s a token gesture and it will likely change very little, certainly not rectifying the problem.

Congress had better remember where their balls are, because I’m getting sick and tired of waiting for them to do what they were voted in to do. We didn’t campaign and rally and do all this work so they could sit on their asses and reflect on how great it is to finally be in power. We want to see results and the high has worn off after the first 100 hours. It’s time for the big guns.