Breaking News

Massive Manhunt in Boston

259
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in

suspectstogetherincrowd_620x350Yes­ter­day evening, two young men, sus­pected for com­mit­ting the bomb­ings at the Boston Marathon, robbed a 7–11 and car­jacked an SUV. After a gun­fight at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy in which a police offi­cer was killed, one of the two sus­pects, a 26-​​year-​​old man, was shot and killed. The other is at large. Boston is now com­pletely shut down as police search for his 19-​​year-​​old brother.

This thread is is for com­ment and dis­cus­sion. More as we learn more. (more…)

Explosions at Boston Marathon

69
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in

explosionThere were at least two explo­sions at the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon this after­noon. Details are still sketchy. There were dozens of peo­ple injured.

At this writ­ing, there is no reli­able infor­ma­tion as to whether the explo­sions were inten­tional or acci­den­tal (a gas main, etc.).

At leat two peo­ple died, and at least nine­teen have been admit­ted to hos­pi­tals as of 4:00 PM East­ern time.

This thread is a holder for news and con­ver­sa­tion about the event. More as more comes in. (more…)

Shooting the Moon

96
5 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

nra protestThe National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA) announced that it will break a self-​​imposed one week silence on the events sur­round­ing the mas­sacre of 26 at New­town, Connecticut.

A “major” news con­fer­ence will be held Fri­day, Decem­ber 21, accord­ing to the NRA. The 100-​​word state­ment, in full:

The National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica is made up of four mil­lion moms and dads, sons and daugh­ters – and we were shocked, sad­dened and heart­bro­ken by the news of the hor­rific and sense­less mur­ders in New­town. Out of respect for the fam­i­lies, and as a mat­ter of com­mon decency, we have given time for mourn­ing, prayer and a full inves­ti­ga­tion of the facts before commenting.

The NRA is pre­pared to offer mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions to help make sure this never hap­pens again. The NRA is plan­ning to hold a major news con­fer­ence in the Wash­ing­ton, DC area on Fri­day, Decem­ber 21.

What do you think is the most likely pro­posal that the NRA will put forward?

In the spirit of Nate Silver’s book The Sig­nal and the Noise, it’s also time for a Bayesian prediction.

What are the chances that the NRA’s pro­posal, unveiled Fri­day, will be adopted essen­tially unmod­i­fied by the 113th Con­gress? Give your prior prob­a­bil­ity, either as a per­cent­age or a num­ber between 0.0 and 1.0.

And then, imag­ine you’re the chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer for the NRA, and you don’t care if you get fired or not. What should you say?

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Beyond the Water’s Edge

146
8 months ago
by Monotreme in

Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Arthur H. Vandenberg

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle was orig­i­nally sched­uled to run on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 13. Because of the increased inter­est in the topic, its pub­li­ca­tion has been moved for­ward to the evening of Sep­tem­ber 12. As a result, we will not be run­ning our usual Thurs­day morn­ing article.

Pol­i­tics stops at the water’s edge.
— Sen­a­tor Arthur Hen­drick Vandenberg

Arthur Van­den­berg was the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor from Michi­gan from 1935 until his death in 1951. Sen­a­tor Van­den­berg was the chair of the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee and worked with Pres­i­dent Harry S Tru­man to cre­ate the United Nations. After World War II, when Van­den­berg pub­licly changed his stance from iso­la­tion­ism to inter­na­tion­al­ism, he coined the famous maxim above.

Mitt Rom­ney was born in Detroit in 1947 to a Michi­gan Repub­li­can polit­i­cal fam­ily. Romney’s father was the Gov­er­nor of Michi­gan from 1963 to 1969 and his mother made a failed run at the Class 1 Sen­ate seat once held by Van­den­berg and now held by Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow.

Repub­li­cans used to actively par­tic­i­pate in a mus­cu­lar for­eign pol­icy in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dents and Con­gress­men. There were giants in the earth in those days. In a time before small-​​minded Repub­li­cans trum­peted small-​​minded ideas like the Agenda 21 con­spir­acy the­ory or the sup­posed impo­si­tion of Sharia law on U.S. com­mu­ni­ties, Repub­li­cans actu­ally worked side-​​by-​​side with Democ­rats to bring to life Vandenberg’s maxim. What­ever dif­fer­ences we might have across the aisle in the halls of Con­gress were set aside so the United States could present a united for­eign pol­icy front.

No more. (more…)

Threading the Needle

500
10 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Ever since the Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, “Oba­macare”) indi­vid­ual man­date, pun­dits have been pre­dict­ing that the man­date is dead. The remain­ing ques­tion would then be: will the Supreme Court find the law sev­er­able, that is, can the man­date be ruled uncon­sti­tu­tional but the rest of the law stands? Or does the whole thing go down because of an unac­cept­able mandate?

The Supreme Court finally answered today. By a five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Breyer, Gins­burg, Kagan, and Sotomayor dis­sent­ing), the indi­vid­ual man­date was tech­ni­cally struck down as a vio­la­tion of the Com­merce Clause, but by a dif­fer­ent five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas dis­sent­ing) the fine for being unin­sured was not. In that regard, the Court threaded the nee­dle, object­ing to the “ille­gal­ity” of being unin­sured, while leav­ing the rel­e­vant penalty in the Act unchanged.

This deci­sion is cer­tainly a huge win for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion at first blush. But it may prove to be less of a win for Obama himself.

(more…)

Smarter ALEC?

5
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Today, the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC) announced that it’s shut­ter­ing the group work­ing on pro-​​gun and voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws (“Pub­lic Safety and Elec­tions Task Force”). This comes in response to sev­eral com­pa­nies ter­mi­nat­ing their rela­tion­ships with ALEC, after the Trayvon Mar­tin killing, when atten­tion was called to the organization’s back­ing of “stand your ground” laws.

Here’s the irony: the task force was already mostly dead. They hadn’t met since the end of Feb­ru­ary, and have been a rel­a­tively minor part of ALEC’s efforts this year. In keep­ing with the pri­mary Repub­li­can goal of oust­ing Pres­i­dent Obama, ALEC’s leg­isla­tive focus in 2012 is eco­nomic pol­icy, such as bust­ing the Wisconsin’s pub­lic employee union.

So ALEC gets to tell the com­pa­nies that it’s being respon­sive — albeit after hav­ing told them that they shouldn’t be try­ing to influ­ence them in the first place. And, by doing so, they’re able to pro­tect their rev­enue stream, which over­whelm­ingly con­sists of cor­po­rate donations.

After all, let’s face it — what cor­po­ra­tion is going to deny fund­ing to an orga­ni­za­tion devoted to reduc­ing union influence?

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