+ Scott Horton reports on an amazing turn of events in SF: The American Bar Associaton just delivered a stinging rebuke to the White House, declaring the President's Executive Order on the use of torture illegal. With only one dissenting vote out of more than 500, the body that represents the legal profession in this country has now declared it will openly oppose the administration in the courts and in Congress. And as if that weren't enough, it looks like The American Psychological Association is set to follow them this coming weekend.
+ HDNet, the subscription service run by uber-entrepreneur Mark Cuban, aired an amazing story last night on problems with voting technology here in the US. However bad you think the problems are, they're actually worse. There are two separate story lines worth paying attention to here. The first involves the use of sweatshops to produce faulty equipment, and the second looks at the problems of hanging chads in Florida during the 2000 election. Apparently not only did Sequoia Voting Systems know there were going to be problems with their punch cards, they may have actually hoped to profit from it.
+ Joshua Green has an incredibly timely profile on Karl Rove in this month's Atlantic. Given its focus on Rove's misreading of realignment theory, I've been hoping to dig into it in detail here. Sadly, it looks like I won't have time, so I'll pass it along for you to consider on your own instead.
+ And while you're reading about both Rove and the 2000 election, you might as well go back and cover some ground from 9.11. You thought My Pet Goat was bad? Take a look at this.
+ Eyal Press has an amazing article in the latest American Prospect on the power of new form of social networks - block clubs - and the role they are playing in transforming our understanding of poverty. Sometimes I wonder why I'm bothering to do all the work necessary to get a social science PhD - the amount of worthless research that gets published is mind-numbing - and then I read something like this and my doubts disappear.
+ If you feel like terrifying yourself with what may be coming around the economic bend, go read the latest from Nouriel Roubini. In fact, even if you hate the thought of being terrified, go read it anyway. Because if he is right, when it hits the fan, you'll want to be prepared. Because it may happen sooner rather than later. Or maybe it is already happening as you read this.
+ First we learn that NBA refs are biased. Then we learned they are also corrupt. And now? Now its baseball umpires. But even if you're not interested in the sport, you need to reading the findings anyway. Because it may have serious implications for how we measure and understand the economic effects of discrimination.
+ And last but not least, I'm not sure this is what Jesus intended as his legacy:
Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The request was in response to the liberal group's urging the IRS on Tuesday to investigate Drake's church's nonprofit status because Drake endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president on church letterhead and during a church-affiliated Internet radio show.Drake said Wednesday he was "simply doing what God told me to do" by targeting Americans United officials Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming, whom he calls the "enemies of God."
"God says to pray imprecatory prayer against people who attack God's church," he said. "The Bible says that if anybody attacks God's people, David said this is what will happen to them. . . . Children will become orphans and wives will become widows."
Imprecatory prayers are alternately defined as praying for someone's misfortune, or an appeal to God for justice.
"Let his days be few; and let another take his office," the prayer reads. "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
Subscribe to this blog's feed
