While leading the way to the Christmas tree that my family had tagged a month before, I was amused by the searching look from the young man with the saw when he alluded to some volunteer work that he’d recently done with Rock the Vote and I said nothing. The other day, a solicitor for a charity called and, in attempting to find a way around my “just can’t this year,” started making jokes about how President Bush will be inaugurated but wasn’t “reelected.”
Spending time with a new acquaintance, today, I smiled inwardly at our Dance of the Issues, whereby two people gradually unveil their views on particular topics — the more closely bounded, the better — in lieu of the kind of shorthand that suffices when one is confident of holding the majority opinion. Go to church? Yes. Michael Moore? Fool. Iraq? Media bias. Second Amendment? “Bear” means “carry.”
These various anecdotes bring to mind a recent Ben Stein piece:
The man at the Christmas tree tent in Malibu kept winking at me and nodding when no one else was looking. I smiled and kept looking at the trees. (In Malibu, we Jews have Christmas trees.) Finally, he motioned to me to come over to is table. He cupped his hand over his mouth and took my hand. “We won,” he said. “We won.” …
This is the way it is here. We meet in smoky places. We give the high sign, we nod knowingly. We are like members of the Maquis in Occupied France. Or early Christians emerging from the catacombs in Caligula’s Rome. We are the GOP in Hollywood, and on the West Side of L.A. The culture here is so dominantly left-wing, PC, vegan, hate-America that many of us feel we have to behave as if we were underground.
My experiences here in Rhode Island aren’t to the level of Stein’s, but then again, I’m not a public figure.
(Via Blog from the Core)
The Los Angeles Times, is “folding its daily national edition”. Will the next tier of papers down the news chain (in scope, not quality, necessarily) take a cue from this?
As a news consumer, I would have increased interest in the Projo if it devoted less space to reprinting wire-service stories — which I can get in a more timely fashion from other places on the web — and devoted more space to actual local news, where the range of sources for information is much more limited.
Jump ahead of the curve, and give us more local news Projo!!!!
Just in case anybody’s interested, I thought it worth mentioning, over here, that I’ve decided to serialize a second edition of my novel, A Whispering Through the Branches, on my personal blog, Dust in the Light. I’ve written a partial explanation of my decision in an “Author’s Note for Blog Serialization.” Beginning (appropriately) with the Preface today, I intend to publish a section each Sunday.
For those unfamiliar with Dust in the Light, I should note that you can change the layout to a potentially more-readable design by clicking “Turn Light On” at the top of the left-hand column. Alternately, given the length of the serialized posts, you may find it easier to read, either on screen or in print, the printer friendly versions that are available via the individual entries.
For us separation-of-powers enthusiasts, there is an important distinction between the Plame-Wilson case and the Taricani case. In the Plame-Wilson affair, journalists are being asked to tell what they know about the violation of an actual law. It is illegal — according to a law passed by Congress, signed by the President — to leak the identity of a covert operative.
In the Taricani case, on the other hand, there was no law broken. There is only a violation of an ad-hoc rule created by a judge.
An NRO article by Andrew C. McCarthy on the subject of international law got me thinking about a Neil Boortz column I read a few months ago. About 50 years ago, a U.S. Senator named John Bricker also worried about the nature international law. Senator Bricker proposed a Constitutional amendment which read…
Section 1. A provision of a treaty which conflicts with this Constitution shall not be of any force or effect.I have the same question Boortz does. Is there any reason not to support adding the above amendment to our Constitution? [Open full post]
Section 2. A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of treaty.
Section 3. Congress shall have power to regulate all executive and other agreements with any foreign power or international organization. All such agreements shall be subject to the limitations imposed on treaties by this article.
Section 4. The congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
As the Providence Journal editorial board recently put it, when it comes to the Taricani affair, “there are no heroes here.” Perhaps this is a glass-half-empty assessment, but the entire controversy has a feel more of competing negative claims than of balancing strong arguments.
Writing of the significantly different, but inherently related, Plame affair, Jonah Goldberg expresses one side thus:
But in all of this debate, what people seem to be overlooking is that journalists aren’t always analogous to witnesses to crimes. Sometimes they’re accomplices. Imagine that a vindictive government official wants to embarrass an opponent by leaking his tax returns. He steals them from confidential files and meets a reporter from the Times in a back alley. The reporter publishes them. It seems to me the reporter isn’t a witness, he’s an accessory. If it makes it easier to understand the point, imagine instead of tax returns it’s plans for a cheap nuclear weapon al Qaeda could make.
On the other side, consider Mark Tapscott:
The Taricani and Miller cases signify a disturbing trend of government officials’ resorting to subpoenas and criminal prosecutions to silence confidential sources, who would otherwise provide journalists with documents proving fraud, negligence or outright criminality in government.
Whether we see the line that we must walk as between important rights that we wish not to trample or between slippery-sloping pitfalls that we wish to avoid, the solution by which we tread must cover a variety of circumstances. In the case of Plame-Wilson, the journalists stand between the allegedly wronged couple and the executive branch (in one aspect or another). In the pre-Bevilacqua phase of the Taricani case, the journalist potentially stood between the executive branch and the judiciary itself. How do we balance the various claims of all involved branches (which will always include the judiciary), the journalists, and any other interested parties?
As a preliminary suggestion, intended to be honed through debate, I’d suggest that the law force the involvement of at least two branches of government. In some way or another (perhaps through the representation of the prosecutor), the executive would have to approve of court orders for revealed sources, and the judiciary would have to issue the orders. Perhaps there should be recourse to the legislature if either branch believes the other to be acting in bad faith.
As to who should be eligible to be counted as a journalist, I’m biased, of course, but I’d suggest that the answer be “anybody.” The protection ought to flow through the action, not through some ostensibly unique status of the actor. If a person receives information for the purpose of publicizing it — and subsequently behaves accordingly — then it oughtn’t matter whether the medium for doing so is given, bought, pursued, or constructed.
You’ve probably heard it elsewhere by now, but Jim Taricani has been sentenced to six months of home confinement.
[Open full post]I became more interested in bias in academia when I re-entered “the academy” to pursue an MA in History (at Providence College). Thankfully, I have not personally felt any real “quashing of dissent.” Although I have heard a few pithy political asides in the course of unrelated lectures, my experience at Providence College has been thoroughly enjoyable, a function, I believe, of the professionalism of the faculty and the more traditional, and Catholic, approach the school takes towards education. Thus, my “investigations” have, thankfully, not been first person.
I recently posted at the Ocean State Blogger about the efforts of David Horowitz (no stranger to Brown University) and Students for Academic Freedom to rectify the intellectual bias in our colleges and universities. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has written on the topic recently, as has Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge and the Economist. These come after the release of a few scholarly studies on academic bias, especially a report by Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern of the National Association of Scholars entitled “How Politically Diverse Are the Social Sciences and Humanities?: Survey Evidence from Six Fields” (PDF).
While many, such as Horowitz and SFAF, are pushing for an Academic Bill of Rights to impose on schools, Bainbridge finds this impractical. Instead of an overt bias against conservatives, Bainbridge sees the problem as that of the lack of a conservative networking apparatus within academia. In essence, because colleges and universities are dominated by a liberal “old boys network” that filters out conservatives, none of the decision makers within the liberal echo chamber of the academy actually know any conservatives. This is bolstered by the insightful, and to my mind essential, article that delves into the culture of liberal academia entitled “Liberal Groupthink is Anti-Intellectual,” by Mark Bauerlein. (I have already posted some extensive commentary here, just scroll down a bit).
In addition to Horowitz, the Students for Academic Freedom and the work being done by the National Association of Scholars, there are other examples of people standing up against bias. For instance, students at Columbia have decided to fight against anti-Israeli polemics. Also, the new underground newspaper on Ivy League campuses are being published by conservatives, even at Brown. So in answer to Don’s question, there is moral outrage, but it is only just beginning to get a toehold at the base of the Ivory Tower.
ADDENDUM: In my post above, I forgot to mention the website AcademicBias.com and their short film Brainwashing 101, which can be purchased on DVD or downloaded (or streamed) via the aforementioned website. I have not seen the movie yet, but have downloaded it and will do so when I get a chance and will get back with a review.
[Open full post]In a move that is surprisingly redolent of politics as usual, the Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee of the University of Rhode Island Student Senate threw a controversial proposal into the agenda of the senate’s final meeting that delayed the re-recognition of student groups until next semester, according to The Good 5¢ Cigar:
A controversial proposal from Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee Chairman Evan Duggan-Lever would change the way groups are recognized and funded by the senate.
“The old system is old and busted,” Duggan-Lever said. “It doesn’t contain any guidelines or contain anything that allows the [SOARC] committee to decide what should be recognized.”
The proposed changes would bring the recognition process in line with Rhode Island laws and recent court rulings, Duggan-Lever said.
Some among the senators wondered whether the delay would be unnecessarily disruptive for student groups. Not to worry:
“All of the groups stand to benefit [from the proposed changes],” Duggan-Lever said. “The only groups that don’t stand to benefit are groups that are illegal.”
That’s curious: what sort of group that was previously recognized could possibly be illegal? Well, I can’t find any further information, online, but another piece in the latest Cigar might give some indication:
Several student groups currently recognized by the University of Rhode Island Student Senate are being asked to change their bylaws because they do not comply with procedures and standards set forth by the senate.
One such group is the Intervarsity Christian Association, Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee Chairman Evan Duggan-Lever said. It is recognized as a Level III group currently, he said, which is the lowest level and allows the group to ask the Memorial Union for meeting space and also ask the senate for contingency funds.
Apart from a minor issue — already addressed — having to do with regulations for electing official leadership, the far greater affront is one that readers might have guessed from the group’s name:
Another bylaw problem was an “article of faith” which required members to show their religious principles to join the group. This, Duggan-Lever said, is not allowed by senate regulations and as such was required by SOARC to be removed.
The group, however, still intends to continue the practice, Secretary Hope Aswell said.
“For our leadership, we want them to hold Christian values,” Aswell said, “because it is a Christian group.”
Hope Aswell — with her magnificent name — doesn’t apparently understand the game. In the America that is currently germinating on the country’s campuses, it’s fine for believers to, well, believe — if only because, as Duggan-Lever puts it, “We can’t determine what is in someone’s head.” However, as a constitutional matter, they have to effectively deny those beliefs, or at least make those beliefs subordinate to the doctrine of tolerance.
Former group president Jillian Burger looks for reason for optimism in the likelihood that only people meeting the unspeakable criterion would manage to become nominated. And that’s probably true… as long as the group remains quiet and innocuous enough that those who would take advantage of the universal right to join and lead it don’t think a coup worth the effort.
