The Yin Blog

Sharktopus?

"Sharktopus" was on the SyFy channel last night.  As you might guess from the title, it's about some kind of horrible half-shark, half-octopus creature.  Here's an appropriately cheesy trailer, which just about captures everything about the movie.  I mean, it's got the head/mouth of a shark and the body of an octopus, and the military engineered it as an aquatic weapon.  What could possibly go wrong?

I caught the last 40 minutes or so of this after the end of the Oregon-Arizona State football game. I remember having been burned once by stupid SyFy movies, so I did not have high expectations for this.

Everything you might suspect was true -- the sharktopus looked ridiculous, like a giant version of those mylar balloons at the supermarket.  The acting was horrendous, with Eric Roberts having completed his descent from once brilliant gifted thespian to self-parody.  The dialogue was atrocious, and the blood and gore was over the top; lots of heads exploded. 

Despite all that, it was curiously watchable for a late Saturday night with nothing else on.  I think I now have a sense of what the original audience for "Plan 9 From Outer Space" felt like.

A tale of two football conferences

Hmm . . . three Pac-10 teams are playing non-conference games today:

Stanford (#16)  at Notre Dame

UCLA at Texas (#7)

Oregon State (#24) at Boise State (#3)

Two top-10 opponents and a historically dominant team (though one that's been mediocre recently), all on the road.  Meanwhile, here's the Big-10's non-conference schedule:

Wisconsin (#11) vs. Austin Peay (who???)

Purdue vs. Toledo

Northwestern vs. Central Michigan

Michigan State (#25) vs. Northern Colorado

Michigan vs. Bowling Green

Iowa (#18) vs. Ball State

Penn State (#23) vs. Temple

Ohio State (#2) vs. Eastern Michigan

Indiana vs. Akron

Minnesota vs. Northern Illinois

Zero ranked opponents, all games at home, and all against weak opponents. . . .

You might notice that there are only three Pac-10 non-conference games.  What's the rest of the conference doing?  Well, Washington has a bye week, but the rest of the teams are playing conference games.  You see, the Pac-10 plays a full round robin conference schedule.  No dodging any conference team.  With 10 teams in the conference, that means 9 conference games, not 8.  Oddly, the Big-10, which has 11 teams, plays only 8 conference games.  For some reason, the Big-10 would prefer to schedule a week like today rather than play an extra round of conference games.

I submit this as another example of why the Pac-10 is better than the Big-10.

Why lies by politicians matter, Portland edition

Although it's been more than a dozen years since the infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" lie (and countless other related lies) by President Clinton, the underlying significance of lies by a politician about personal matters continues to divide people.  In one camp are those who believe that personal matters are just that -- personal -- and hence the lies are irrelevant to one's public life.  In another camp are those who draw negative character inferences from such lies.

(The Clinton example is actually not the best example to use, since he was in fact lying under oath, a fact that often seems to escape his defenders.)

I am, I should note, separating the lie about the personal matter from the personal matter itself.  That is, whether Clinton had sexual relations with women other than Hillary Clinton is generally a matter between the two of them.  It's not my business if she's okay with it; and if she's not okay with it, then she can do what Jenny Sandford did.

Anyway, here in Portland we have our own version of this sort of thing.  Our mayor, Sam Adams, apparently falsely denied during his mayoral campaign that he had had an affair with a very young legislative intern -- so young that when Adams eventually admitted the affair, he emphasized that he waited until the intern was 18.

Now, whether Adams had an affair with an 18-year-old when he was himself in his early 40s may raise eyebrows, but from my perspective, it's purely his personal, private business.  Had I been in Portland at the time of the election, I would have thought it appropriate if he had responded to questions about the affair with "none of your business."  Given the potential implication of unlawful sexual intercourse (i.e., statutory rape), I suppose an additional comment of "I follow the law" might have made sense.

But Adams chose to lie, supposedly because he did not think anyone would believe his assertion that he waited until the intern was 18.

Well, here's the problem with that.  He was motivated to lie about a personal matter, but the motivation was public -- he wanted to win the election.  So if you are willing to lie about something like that in order to achieve what you see as a greater political goal, why wouldn't you lie about public matters to achieve a political goal?

Take for instance the dispute between Multnomah County and the city of Portland over negotiations to pay for replacing the Sellwood Bridge.  This is an old bridge that we hope does not collapse like the one in Minnesota a few years ago.  The County Chair went public yesterday, blasting the mayor for continuing to make new demands and for reneging on an agreement.  The Mayor's chief of staff responded that the County was to blame.

Who am I to believe in this "he said, he said" dispute?  Well, I don't know much about the County Chair, Jeff Cogen, but the things that he says Adams demanded (accommodations for a potential streetcar to cross the replacement bridge, more money for sidewalks) are consistent with Adams' general approach of steering money toward his pet projects, like taking sewer fee money to build bike lanes. . . .  In addition, the fact that Adams publicly lied before for the sole purpose of making it easier for him to win the election makes me give the benefit of the doubt to Cogen.  I mean, it's certainly possible that Cogen is the one who's lying, but unless there's good evidence to the contrary, I'm not going to assume that.

So personal matters are personal, but public lies about them are relevant to one's public office, in my view.  (Of course, these things are all contextual, but I'm speaking of a default position.)

Is Iowa a swing state? Not according to Meghan McCain. . . .

Leon Wolf's eviscerating review of "Dirty, Sexy Politics" by Meghan McCain is one of the most entertaining book reviews I've ever read.  He absolutely shreds her book with ample examples (show, don't tell!) of poor writing, nonexistent research, and shoddy reasoning.

I found this part of the review especially interesting:

For instance, McCain devotes a lengthy passage to explaining how Mike Huckabee’s victory in the Iowa Caucuses ipso facto proves that the nominating process is broken. McCain claims that the first two contests which set the tone for the nomination are Iowa and South Carolina, which are “specifically conservative” (as opposed to generally conservative, which would presumably be less scary and ominous).  Therefore, her “reasoning” goes, the process tends to lead to someone unelectable like Mike Huckabee getting the nomination.

Let’s unpack this a little bit. First, Iowa is a swing state. It went for Gore in 2000, Bush in 2004, and Obama in 2008. It is one of the few states in the entire country that swung to Bush in 2004, and then to Obama in 2008 (unless I am misreading my map, New Mexico appears to be the only other). Republican voters in Iowa have got some idiosyncratic tendencies (they tend to be very conservative on immigration and are big on ethanol pork), but it’s flatly erroneous to call Iowa as a state “specifically conservative,” insofar as we can safely assume that “specifically conservative” means “very conservative.”

It seems generally safe to call Iowa a swing state, but a commenter at Michael Froomkin's blog argues otherwise, stating: " I grew up in Iowa, and I was there two months ago to visit family and friends. It is not a swing state, not in the least. It is conservative, and always has been. Throw wolf's review in the trash, where it belongs."

Now, I didn't grow up in Iowa, but I did spend seven years there, so I think I can say a little about it.  (Granted, I lived in Iowa City, which is pretty much the most liberal part of the state.)  People tend to focus on how states vote in Presidential elections and ignoring other statewide races, which give additional information about the leanings of the state.

First, let's start with the federal offices.  Iowa has had a very liberal senator (Tom Harkin) and a kind of conservative senator (Chuck Grassley) for decades now.  Both are strong on agricultural issues, which is how they keep getting re-elected.  If Iowa were always a conservative state, how would Harkin keep getting re-elected?

Now consider the governors that Iowa has had in recent years.  It's been 12 years of Democratic governors (4 of Chet Culver, and 8 of Tom Vilsack).  Before that, it was 16 years of a Republican, Terry Branstad.  Branstad is running again, and it looks like he's going to clean Culver's clock.  Even so, from a statewide standpoint, if Iowa's conservative, it doesn't show in the governor's mansion.

I got called out by Alberto Gonzales!

It's not every day that you get singled out for criticism in a law review article by a former U.S. Attorney General, but it's happened to me!  I noticed that Alberto Gonzales has published "Waging War Within the Constitution" in 42 Texas Tech Law Review 843 (2010).  In this article, Gonzales writes:

Those who criticize the decision to try Reid in our criminal courts instead of a military commission fail also to appreciate that, in reality, the United States did not have this option because Reid is a British citizen. [FN] After hostilities began in Afghanistan, the United States captured several British citizens fighting against coalition forces. The British Attorney General expressed concerns to me directly and other Administration lawyers about prosecuting British citizens in U.S. military commissions. Over the course of negotiations lasting several months, lawyers in the Bush Administration discussed various changes to the military commission procedures to accommodate the concerns of the British as to how the British detainees, if prosecuted, could be assured of fair trials that met international standards. Ultimately, that effort was unsuccessful, and President Bush agreed to the Prime Minister's direct request that the British detainees be transferred to the custody of the British authorities. Since Reid was also a British citizen, I am quite confident that if the United States had, in 2002, elected to try him in a military commission, the British government would have raised similar objections and requested his transfer to Great Britain. Given the long history of cooperation between the United States and Great Britain, and the deep respect between the President and the Prime Minister, I feel confident that such a request would have been honored. Therefore, Reid would only be brought to justice in one of two ways: either in Great Britain or in the American criminal justice system.

That [FN] that I've indicated?  The only source cited was an article of mine, in which I suggested a framework for determining when captured combatants should be treated as criminal defendants versus as military detainees.

Now, on one level, Gonzales's reputation, particularly among academics, seems sufficiently low that being criticized by him is itself a badge of honor.  However, I thought I would actually engage the substantive point that he makes, which is essentially legal realism.  Gonzales's point is that we could not prosecute shoe bomber Richard Reid in a military court because the British would not have stood for it, and we needed British support for our operations in Afghanistan (as well as the upcoming adventure in Iraq).

But this is not a legal policy determination.  That is, given a similar shoe bomber from, say, Yemen, it does not seem as if Gonzales is saying that said hypothetical terrorist would also merit a criminal trial in a civilian court.  Rather, it's entirely a question of whether suspects are citizens of powerful, allied nations.  That may be expediency, but it's hard to see it as justice.

Of course, I don't mean to sound like a pie-in-the-sky deontologist.  One can always play with "ticking time bomb" scenarios that force acceptance of some unlawful act, and there's certainly nothing illegal about giving Reid a criminal trial.  But those were not the only options available to the Bush Administration.  If the Bush Administration failed to persuade the British that the military commission rules were fair, why not modify them to conform as much as possible to Article III procedures?  The answer might be that, well, we don't want to give those procedures to military detainees from other nations . . . but note that "other nations" include our good friends, the Australians (David Hicks, the first person convicted, via guilty plea, in a military commission is an Australian) and Canadians (Omar Khadr, the teenage detainee accused of murdering U.S. soldiers, is Canadian).  It seems awfully strange to dispense justice in such a haphazard manner, even if one understands the legal realism point.