Yesterday on his Fox Business News show, Neil Cavuto stated:
But Frank, if she has tried that to little avail in the campaign thus far and she’s trying to run away from this tough, kind of bitchy image that her critics claim that she has, wouldn’t that reinforce that image and actually help Barack Obama? In other words, isn’t she between kind of like a rock and a hard place?
Media Matters has more on the media’s repeated use of this slur.
It’s not a red state, and it’s not a caucus, so it might count. But it’s an open primary, so it’s suspect. Basically that means that if Obama wins it doesn’t count, but if Clinton wins it counts double. My prediction: Surprise Clinton win as complacent Obama supporters don’t bother to turn out in the cold. This will pave the way to the ultimate vindication of my “Clinton will win” prediction of a week or so ago.
Today, Florida’s Board of Education voted 4-3 to change standards for teaching science in Florida’s public schools. The Miami Herald reports:
For the first time ever, evolution is to be taught clearly and explicitly in Florida classrooms now that the Florida Board of Education Tuesday approved a batch of new science standards that says the ”E” word.
But there’s a catch: Evolution will be taught as “the Scientific Theory of Evolution.”
Previously, Florida’s science standards referred to evolution as “biological changes over time.” The shift to evolution was widely embraced by Florida’s scientists, school teachers, and university professors.
Yet a successful lobbying campaign by a coalition of conservative groups, such as the Christian Coalition of Florida and the Florida Family Policy Council, managed to convince the board to insert the caveat. They said they were “vigorously opposed” to the evolution language because it “clashes with their religious convictions or their personal beliefs that evolution has not been proved.”
Unfortunately, however, the right’s tactics seemed to be mostly driven by ignorance. At a public hearing, one Florida Panhandle resident held up two oranges and mockingly said that “after reading all the material” on evolution, he has a “conviction” that one of the oranges “is the first cousin of somebody’s pet cat” and the other, “the parent of somebody’s pet dog.” Watch it:
Years of evolution-less education have biased Florida residents. A recent St. Petersburg Times poll of Florida residents found that “only 22 percent want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum, while 50 percent want only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design.” A 2005 national review gave Florida’s science standards a failing grade because of its “superficiality of the treatment of evolutionary biology.”
The AP reports that according to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Casey, “soldiers heading to war this summer are likely to see their tours shortened from 15 months to 12 months”:
Gen. George Casey says that while his forces are strained by nearly seven years at war, the Army can maintain 15 combat brigades in battle for at least a couple of months after July while military commanders assess the situation in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, have both said they favor a suspension in troop cuts after July to assess security gains before more forces leave the country.
AP reports:
The exit poll for The Associated Press and television networks Tuesday also finds Wisconsin Democrats are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the nation’s economy. At least half said the nation’s economy is not good and nearly all the rest said it is poor.
Wisconsin Republican primary voters feel a bit better about the economy, but still, a majority think it’s not good or poor.
Ryan Avent makes a pretty persuasive case that cities ought to either “directly subsidize neighborhood-serving retail” like grocery stores or else “they should foster the creation of neighborhood organizations empowered to do the same thing on a local level.” In a more free markety vein, though, I would note that the particular city in which Ryan and I live erects an enormous quantity of regulatory barriers to the opening of retail establishments. It’s almost as if people were always walking around town saying to each other “you know what I don’t like about this city — there are just way too many opportunities to buy goods and services in a convenient manner at a reasonable price.”
When you see a slice of retail-friendly zoning like the “Arts / C-3-A” zone on 14th street from Rhode Island Avenue to U Street then — like magic — there are stores to shop in. But most places aren’t zoned for retail, and even streets like 9th and 11th where there are some patches of retail permitted also have these odd zoning-mandated dead zones that prevent them from developing into real retail corridors. This is nice for people who own the privileged patches of real estate, but obviously has the effect of making rents for retail space in non-depressed parts of the city substantially higher than they might otherwise be. That, in turn, gives us fewer grocery stores (and, indeed, other kinds of stores) than we might otherwise have.
In general, I think relaxing the regulatory restrictions around what kinds of things you’re allowed to build and what kinds of business you’re allowed to run in America’s urban areas has a ton of potential to make life in this country much, much better.
In the New York Times this morning, Christopher Buckley — the son of National Review founder William F. Buckley — defends Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from what he calls the “Torquemadas of the right” who are challenging his conservative credentials. After running down the list of McCain’s heresies, Buckley claims that McCain’s position on torture is out of the conservative mainstream:
And — true, again — Mr. McCain is a bit of a girlie-man when it comes to waterboarding high-value detainees; but that’s a tricky one, even for macho, red-meat conservative chest-thumpers. You get a pass on that one if you’ve spent five-and-a-half years being bastinadoed by North Vietnamese.
Buckley’s description of McCain as a “girlie-man” reveals a couple of things. The first is Buckley’s belief that one’s “manliness” can be deduced from his support for torture. The second, and more important, is that the state of American conservatism is such that McCain requires “forgiveness” for opposing torture.
The truth is, however, that despite McCain’s statements against waterboarding, he has consistently supported legislative language that protects the Bush administration’s prerogatives to use it.
McCain did this again last week, when he voted against an amendment that would have required the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as the Army Field Manual, something which he previously claimed to support. As Steve Benen wrote:
When push came to shove, and the nation looked to the senator take a stand on principle, McCain balked.
Despite his reputation as a maverick, McCain appears to be changing his position a lot lately in order to appease the right wing.
Today, Connecticut State Rep. Jason Bartlett (D) publicly announced that he is gay, becoming the “first and only openly LGBT African American state legislator.”
UPDATE: Gordon Fox, the Majority Leader in the Rhode Island State House of Representatives and “son of an Irish father and a Cape Verdean mother,” is also openly gay and “calls himself black.”
Well, looks like Jason Kidd is getting traded to Dallas after all. The deal that eventually wound up getting made is worse for Mark Cuban’s pocketbook, but better for the Mavericks, in that it winds up depriving Dallas of less depth than did the original conception of the trade. I still don’t like this deal very much for Dallas, but merits aside it’s worth considering the impact on Dallas’ style of play.
The team still has, to some extent, the reputation it acquired during the Don Nelson / Steve Nash years of being an up-tempo run-and-gun team. In reality, under Avery Johnson the Mavs have become a sluggish, isolation-dependent team. This year they’re 26th in the league in pace and 19th in terms of the proportion of baskets that come from assists. Last year’s version of the team was 28th in pace. The year before they were 26th. These kinds of numbers are normally associated with an offense being “bad” since slow pace isn’t amenable to high point totals and slow, isolation-oriented offenses can get kind of boring to watch. But Dallas has consistently put together a very effective offense using this style of play.
It’s not, however, the kind of style you normally associate with Kidd, who’s a poor shooter but an excellent passer. His Nets teams have always run a middling pace and featured many assisted baskets. Is Johnson going to try to fit Kidd into his style, and count on him mostly to provide defense and rebounding while running plays for Dallas’ other scorers, or is he going to try to put together a dynamic offense more focused on Kidd’s passing skills?
In October 2006, President Bush authorized the construction of a 700-mile border fence between the United States and Mexico. Now, however, the Department of Homeland Security’s construction plans are facing opposition from Texans who object to the fence cutting through their property. The Washington Post reports on the hard line the Bush administration is taking with these protesting landowners:
In December, officials sent warning letters to 135 private landowners, municipalities, universities, public utility companies and conservation societies along the border that had turned away surveyors. Landowners were given 30 days to change their minds or face legal action. More than 100 of them — 71 in Texas — let the deadline pass.
Over the past several weeks, U.S. attorneys acting on behalf of the Homeland Security Department have been filing lawsuits against the holdouts.
DHS has no problem pursuing elderly and struggling homeowners. In the small town of Granjeno (pop. 313), however, the border fence would, conveniently, “abruptly end” at the property owned by Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt.
It’s not surprising that the administration would be hesitant to upset Hunt, who was a Bush-Cheney campaign “Pioneer” in 2000. More recently, Hunt “donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library.” In 2001, Bush appointed Hunt to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, granting him “a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.”
Hunt, one of the wealthiest oilmen in the world, previously served on the board of Halliburton and was National Petroleum Council chairman between 1991 and 1994.
Daniel Garza, a 76-year old man who might lose his home to the border fence’s intrusion, noted, “I don’t see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there.” Pointing across the street to Hunt’s land, he added, “How will that stop illegal immigration?”
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