Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a scholar who specializes in work that benefits the “men’s rights” movement. And imagine that you’ve just conducted a study on the effects of “move-aways”; that is, the effects on children when the parents move more than an hour apart from each other post-divorce.

By an amazing coincidence, your study comes out just in time to be used as evidence in a prominent California trial that men’s rights advocates are very interested in.

But here’s the problem: Your study finds that children who live with their mother suffer next-to-no-harm from being moved more than an hour away from the father (or when the father moves more than an hour away from the child). In fact, the only children who seem significantly harmed by move-aways are children in the custody of their fathers - which is not the message you want to send, and not the message the men’s rights movement wants to hear.

For instance, in your measure of “personal/emotional adjustment,” the kids who are the healthiest are the ones who stayed with mom while dad moved away - they scored even healthier than those kids who had both parents stay in close range. The only kids who scored significantly worse than the “neither parents moved” kids were the kids who lived with their dads.

This is a little atypical - generally, the kids who had neither parent move do best, but none of the others are significantly below par - except, by some measures, those kids who are living with their dads. These findings seem to show that there’s little reason for courts to forbid mothers to move out of “the best interests of the child.” So what do you do?

No problem - you just average all the kids together in your press release! That way, you can claim that all kids whose parent moved away did badly - when, really, it’s just the low scores of the lives-with-dad groups pulling the overall average down.

What’s galling is, this study will be brought into court and used by father’s-righters to argue that non-custodial dads should be able to prevent custodial moms from moving, “for the good of the child.” In fact, if this study’s findings have any validity at all, they seem to show that it doesn’t cause children in mother’s custody any significant harm to live more than an hour from their father; and that fathers who sue to prevent moves aren’t improving the lives of their children, they’re just exerting control over their ex-spouse.

So do I think this study shows “men are worse custodial parents,” or some such malarkey? No; I’m convinced that the methodolgy of this study is so dubious, it doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. (Which is, to be fair, also what the study’s authors say.)

But if it does show anything - and I don’t think it does - then it shows that kids in father-custody are in trouble. But somehow, I don’t think that’s a message that the men’s rights groups promoting this study will emphasize. Instead - like this mensnewsdaily report - they’ll report the averages, but leave out the specifics.

For more info, check out Trish Wilson’s blog (Trish is very on top of this story). For a summary of the results, check out Liznotes. To read the study itself (Pdf format), click here. To read the study’s press release, click here.

I just wanted to point out that Blogathon 2003 is a bit under a month away. The Blogathon, for those of you not familiar with it, is an event in which hundreds of bloggers agree to blog for 24 hours straight, posting new updates at regular intervals (I think the standard is something like once every half-hour).

This is not only a fun way for bloggers to run themselves into a state of exhaustion and (readers hope) amusing incoherance; it’s a chance to raise money for charity, since readers can pledge to donate money to charities if the blogger makes it through the blogathon.

I probably won’t be blogathonning this year, since the blogathon begins on July 26th and I’m supposed to go to work on Sunday the 27th at the totally unreasonable hour of 8 in the a.m.. But if you’re looking for a blogger to sponsor, I’d highly recommend Eszter, who’s been on my blogroll for ages, and will use her blogathoning to benefit Planned Parenthood.

In the comments to another post, frequent Alas comments resident Joe writes:

Equal treatment is a wonderful ideal, but in the real world that’s not one of our choices.

Here’s the choice we have: do we have a big overall advantage for whites (no affirmative action), or do we have a somewhat smaller overall advantage for whites (affirmative action)? In real life, that’s the choice we have as a society, right now. We don’t get to choose whether racism exists or not (it does); we don’t get to choose to make the white advantage go away (it won’t). All we can choose is whether or not we’ll support a policy which will reduce the extent of the pro-white discrimination.

Would I support an alternative to AA? Sure, if someone has a realistic one. I don’t know of any, though. But, in effect, eliminating AA without providing an effective alternative is increasing pro-white discrimination.

It would be better if we had equal treatment and therefore didn’t need AA at all, just as it would be better if a stabbing victim didn’t need surgery at all. But, since we live in a society in which racism does exist, we should do something to fix it - even if it’s something painful. Once the person’s been badly stabbed, it’s better to go under the surgeon’s scalpel than not.

And, frankly, saying we must oppose AA in the name of “equal treatment,” even when the effects of opposing AA would be to increase discrimination’s overall impact - that just doesn’t make any sense to me.

You know, we live in a remarkable age when a member of the Supreme Court -the member who is probably the most admired by conservatives, who is often credited by left and right alike as one of the sharpest conservative minds in the nation - writes that the Court shouldn’t have ruled Texas’ anti-Sodomy law unconstitutional because such a ruling might get in the way of state laws outlawing masturbation.

Why is Scalia worried about preserving the states’ rights to outlaw masturbation? Why would anyone worry about that? It’s masturbation, for pity’s sake! Is there anywhere a less harmful action, with less reason for government concern, than masturbation?

Is this something anyone wants the states to do? Does anyone want to live somewhere where you can be arrested for masturbation?

Is this a serious issue for conservatives? Do conservatives secretly want to outlaw masturbation? When they get together to decide on their platform every four years, do they have back-room arguments about whether this is the year the anti-masturbation plank can be added to the platform?

What are the proposed penalties for masturbation? Is it a felony, or just a misdemeanor? If one mastrubates but does not climax, is that the same crime, or a lesser crime (like the difference between murder and attempted murder)? Would “three strikes” rules apply?

I just don’t understand conservatives.

Or, at least, Christ doesn’t keep people from returning to prison. Mark Kleiman has an interesting post on how studies are spun. A study found that attendees of a special prison program for born-again Christian prisoners were a bit more likely to wind up back in prison than a control group which did not attend the program.

However, the folks who run the program have managed to spin this into saying that folks who take their program do much better than those who don’t. Neat trick. Consult Mark’s blog for the details.

In an earlier post, I commented on this stirring anti-Affirmative Action essay, written by Stanford law professor Marcus Cole. Mr. Cole argues that assuming Clarence Thomas benefited from Affirmative Action is unjustified.

As Max Power points out, even the author of a very friendly Thomas biography claims that “Thomas benefited from affirmative action throughout his career; a bright and ambitious young black man of his era could not have failed to. He supported affirmative action as a college student, but soured on racial preferences after learning that some of his classmates and faculty at Yale Law School questioned his intellect because of this assistance.”

Unless Cole has evidence to suggest that Thomas’ friendly biographer is mistaken on this point, the belief that Thomas benefited from Affirmative Action cannot be called an unjustified or racist assumption.

Max Power also argues persuasively that Professor Cole, despite his resentment of Affirmative Action, is almost certainly a beneficiary of it.

Nevertheless, it is clear that some Blacks do feel real pain from the stigma of Affirmative Action. But it doesn’t follow from this that Affirmative Action is necessarily a bad policy, or even that eliminating AA would bring about a reduction in stigma or pain. As Bill Keller wrote in the Times:

The latest fuss in Blogtopia is over this email from an Oxford professor, rejecting an applicant for a doctoral position because the applicant is from Israel. (The professor has since apologized).

Naturally, the accusations of anti-Semitism have flowed like Manischewitz. The accusations are without foundation; the professor’s email makes it clear that his bias is against Israelis, not against Jews. There’s no reason to suppose that he would have discriminated against a British Jew applying for the same position, for instance.

Being anti-Israel is not being anti-Semitic; to assume the latter from the former is illogical.

Of course, none of this excuses the professor’s action; discrimination based on nationality is wrong. But it’s not anti-Semitism.

(Boomshock makes a similar point, but states it much better.)

Via Magpie, a neat t-shirt available online, with its message repeated in every official U.N. language.

Alas reader Stefanie reminded me via email that I haven’t blogged a link to my latest Dicebox page. So, here’s the link.

(This is page 3 of a five-page story; to read the whole thing, you’ll have to subscribe to Girlamatic dot com, which will let you read not only my pages but hundreds of pages by other cartoonists, which is a great value for only $2.95).

Page 3 will be available for free until page 4 is posted (which will happen late Tuesday night, or - if I’m running late, like I have for the first 3 pages - sometime Wednesday afternoon).

Thanks, Stephanie!

In the comments to an earlier post, MDtoMN writes:

Oddly enough, Kucinich’s past as a pro-lifer is one of the things that makes me more enthusiastic about him - albeit in a very cynical way. More than any of the other candidates, Kucinich would need the enthusiastic support of NARAL and Planned Parenthood if he wins the nomination; without their support, his credibility on abortion would be somewhere in the sub-basement. Which means that Kucinich, if elected, would owe those groups big-time, and be forced to toe NARAL’s line far more than other folks would be.

Among all the candidates, I think Dean is by far the best spokesman for reproductive rights. Why? Because every time he talks about abortion, he begins by saying “Speaking as a doctor….” Which gives him a level of credibility on this issue that the other candidates - and George Bush - can’t match. I also appreciate that Dean has spoken out against the so-called “partial birth abortion ban,” rather than dodging the issue.

(Of course, Carol Moseley Braun, as a woman, also has credibility talking about abortion that none of the other candidates can match… unfortunately, the press seemingly never reports what she says.)

As Alas readers no doubt know, the Supreme Court’s final rulings of the season gave liberals some reason to be happy. In what Jack Balkin called “a great day for liberty in the United States,” the Court overturned Bowers v. Hardwick and virtually all of the country’s anti-gay sodomy laws. And Intel Dump is convinced that this ruling begins the end of the military’s homophobic “don’t ask, don’t tell” rules.

I also can’t resist reprinting (via the Sideshow) this comment from Mark Evanier:

Plus affirmative action in higher ed survived - a bit battered, to be sure, but better battered than banned.

Two things that the Court has (apparently) decided not to do provide good news for abortion rights advocates.

First, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from the pro-lifers in the “Nuremberg Files” case. This is good news for pro-choicers and, in my opinion, for free speech in general; it wouldn’t have done political debate in the US any favors for implicit death threats to have been enshrined as protected speech.

Secondly, unless there’s a surprise announcement to come, it appears that no Supreme Court justices are retiring this term. This is probably good news for Republicans, since a Supreme Court nomination fight would probably increase friction between moderates and right-wingers in the Republican party, as well as increasing press attention on domestic issues that Democrats enjoy.

From a pro-choice perspective, this means that Sandra Day O’Connor is likely to still be on the Court when they issue a ruling on the federal Partial Birth Abortion ban. This means that the ban will virtually certainly be found unconstitutional - the only real hope the ban had was the replacement of O’Connor with a more pro-life justice.

Emily of the “after abortion” blog (permalink bloggered) writes:

Is Emily of the opinion that it’s only feminists and pro-choicers who have ever shown contempt or hostility, or “inner meanspiritedness”? That no one on the pro-life, anti-feminist right is ever hostile over the abortion issue?

To anyone who doesn’t dehumanize people they disagree with, it’s obvious that there’s a great deal of hostility on both sides of the abortion issue. Trying to score points on the “people who disagree with my view on abortion are big meanies!” level isn’t just silly; it contributes to the problem - meanspiritedness - it pretends to oppose.

(And yes, pro-lifers have been a great deal worse in one important way - pro-lifers have used terrorism and murder against pro-choicers. However, I don’t think it’s fair to hold typical pro-lifers responsible for the actions of the terrorists and murderers).

The Volokh Conspiracy posts a letter from Stanford Law Professor Marcus Cole, arguing that it’s incorrect to assume that Clarence Thomas has benefited from Affirmative Action:

This seems, to me, to be a straw-man. The argument I’ve heard most frequently is not that Thomas benefited from formal affirmative action at Holy Cross or Yale, but that Thomas benefited from informal affirmative action when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. [*] That is, the president passed over other folks who - both in terms of their achievements, and in terms of their legal writings - seemed far more qualified than Thomas in order to appoint a black justice.

Now, this may or may not be the case; I’m not enough of an expert to say, and if Professor Cole were to argue that Thomas’ nominiation to the high court was entirely about qualifications and not at all about race I’d certainly be willing to listen. And one could certainly argue, in theory, that Thomas benefited from a racial preference but not from “affirmative action” per se.

But Professor Cole, by failing to even address the actual “Thomas benefited from AA” argument, is being disingenuous.

[*]Professor Cole’s letter was inspired, in part, by this Maureen Dowd op-ed, in which Dowd writes that Thomas “knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.” So Dowd did mention Yale (although she makes a distinction between “racial preferences” and “affirmative action” that Cole - and, by the end of the op-ed, Dowd herself - ignores). but she also mentioned Thomas’ rise to the Supreme Court.

By the way, Dowd’s premise is self-evidently wrong; being the beneficiary of X doesn’t mean that you can’t credibly argue against X.

Ramirez is a cartoonist I disagree with frequently, but I thought this anti-Hamas cartoon was wonderful.

Actually, I missed it - the actual blogoversary was June 26th. Still, what the heck - “Alas a blog” is a year and two days old today, and that’s pretty neat.

(Of course, from another point of view the blog didn’t really start until August, when I created “Alas” to be a separate entity from my weekly cartoon update - before that, I was just posting comments on the cartoon page. I can kinda see it either way.)

I’ve been meaning to post about that woman in Florida, who got in trouble for refusing to remove her facial covering for a drivers license photo, for ages. But I just didn’t get around to it. And now I don’t have to, because Evan of Letters from Limbo has written a post which summarizes my views perfectly. (Well, I might quibble with a couple of points - I think he passes over the complexities of religious thoughts too easily - but the overall thrust of Evan’s argument is identicle to the post I’ve been intending to write, but not actually, you know, writing).

Unfortunately, Evan’s blog doesn’t have permalinks, or even archives (or if there are archives, there are no links to archives), meaning that his post is soon going to disappear into cyber-limbo forever. Since I don’t want the post to be banned to cyber-limbo, I’m going to break one of my personal rules and quote extensively from it (I hope Evan doens’t find this objectionable). To read the whole thing, visit Letters from Limbo and look for the June 18th entry entitled “The Pragmaticratic Party.” (The blog as a whole is quite good reading, by the way, and I say that even though it’s chock-full of pro-Dean posts).

One thing Evan didn’t point out - but which strengthens his final paragraph’s point - is that three separate court rulings (none in Florida - but in the past, Florida has allowed veiled drivers license photos) have given Christians the right to get drivers licenses without their photographs being taken at all. According to the Florida ACLU, “those cases involved Christians who believe that the Second Commandment prohibits them from having their photographs taken.”

Jake Rosenfeld is wondering something I’ve wondered myself - why do so many Progressives support Howard Dean? Dean’s policy positions - and, more importantly, his history - are simply not very progressive, especially compared to a candidate like Kucinich.

Nevertheless, Dean is clearly drawing in a lot of progressive support. From the Washington Post:

It’s obvious why Kucinich does well in a poll of (mainly) progressive Democrats - Kucinich is a progressive Democrat. But why does Dean - a centrist Democrat with a history of pissing off Vermont progressives - do so well?

Part of the reason is that Dean has simply been downplaying his centrism to appeal to activist Democrats, who are the core of his grass-roots campaign. If you visit his website’s issues page, for instance, there’s not a word there on NAFTA or on Dean’s mutual-support relationship with the NRA. One page mentions Dean’s strong support for balanced budgets, but instead of explaining just which programs would be on the chopping block - or giving any policy details at all - a notice says “Check back soon for update.”

A more important reason, though, is that Dean has emerged as the voice for progressive anger - not only anger at Bush, but anger at the Democratic party’s cowardice. From a good Salon article on Dean:

That, Jake, is why progressives support Dean.

But why not support Kucinich instead? Or Sharpton, or Moseley-Braun? Well, what it comes down to is, the mainstream media has given Dean a lot of buzz. And candidates with buzz are simply more attractive - the buzz makes folks feel they’ve signed on with a winner.

As the progressive, pro-Dean blog Unmedia writes, “The Dean campaign is like a powerful train, chugging determinedly up what is still a very gradual slope.” The Kucinich train may be more progressive than Dean’s, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Progressives may feel that no matter what we do, the Democratic nominee is going to be another damn centrist Democrat. If that’s the case, people may be figuring, might as well support the best of the centrist lot - and that’s Dean.

I do think there is one strong argument in favor of Dean - he’s shown an ability to run an underdog campaign well. And that’s important, because whoever the Democratic nominee winds up being, he’ll be running as an underdog against the overwhelmingly well-funded, press-adored Bush. I’m not at all convinced that Kerry or Gephardt - let alone Lieberman - has any ability to run and win from an underdog position. And as much as I prefer Kucinich - and hope he turns things around - so far he hasn’t shown much ability to run a great underdog campaign, either.

Some good news, via Political Aims, this story notes that Republicans in the Senate probably don’t have the votes to permanently abolish the estate tax.

The reason is that Senate budget-balancing rules require 60 votes to make this sort of tax-repeal permanent. However, a simple majority can pass temporary tax repeals - as the Republicans (aided by a few right-wing Dems) did in 2001, when they passed a bill gradually reducing the estate tax to nothing in 2010. In 2011, that bill expires, and the estate tax resumes full-force.

If the world works like it does in Agatha Christie novels, then a lot of wealthy parents are going to be knocked off by their kids come 2010.

A recent issue of the Black Commentator put forward three “bright line” questions to pressure Illinois State Senator Barack Obama to disassociate himself from the DLC. (The Commentator’s pressure tactic was successful, by the way). I thought the questions were pretty good for highlighting the differences between centrist Democrats and progressives.

Showing once again that when it comes to bashing progressives, mainstream Democrats are pretty much indistinguishable from Republicans, TAPPED and The Wyeth Wire both link to a transcript of Cynthia McKinney’s comments on the Flashpoints radio show. TAPPED, in an entry entitled “McKinney is still an idiot,” claims that McKinney’s comments “could be fairly described” by this statement from the New York Times:

Wyeth Wire makes a similar claim, calling Gregory Palast’s article defending McKinney “patently false.” Just look in this transcript, Wyeth and TAPPED say, and you’ll see the statement for yourself.

The funny thing is, neither of these blogs actually quotes McKinney’s damning statements. Why? Because - surprise surprise - they’re not there.

Here’s the closest McKinney comes to saying “President Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war.”

So McKinney brings up two classes of people - “the administration,” who should be asked what it knew and when, and “who else,” other people who did know ahead of time and failed to warn the people of New York. To spin this into a specific accusation of Bush, or even of his administration, having specific foreknowledge of 9/11, conciously ignored for profit’s sake, is a bit of a stretch.

(Elsewhere in the interview, McKinney points out that various Bush associates are in the war profiteering business - but she nowhere connects this to foreknowledge of 9/11.)

Later in the interview, McKinney elaborates a little on what kinds of questions the Bush administration should be asked:

To me, it sounds like McKinney is saying that the intelligence prior to 9/11 should have been followed through on and taken seriously, and was not; and she’s calling for an investigation of why this happened. This is a position that many reasonable people have taken. To sum up McKinney’s statements as “President Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war” is “patently” inaccurate and unfair.

TAPPED says “the comments in question are a little ambiguous, but could be fairly described the way NPR and The New York Times did.” But that’s ridiculous. The New York Times quote doesn’t describe an ambiguous statement, and readers were left with a false impression. Furthermore, when a text can be read two ways - reasonable or wacky - it’s obviously unfair to write a news story that emphasizes only the wacky reading, or doesn’t let readers know the text has a non-wacky reading.

Of course, mainstream liberals like TAPPED are quite aware of this sort of press bias. In fact, they bitch about it all the time - when the bias is used against one of their own.

Let’s compare TAPPED’s McKinney-bashing with what The American Prospect wrote about Al Gore’s press coverage. (Of course, TAPPED isn’t obliged to agree with everything its mothership publishes - but the contrast is still interesting).

Here, according to the Prospect, is what Al Gore said about creating the internet:

The press widely (mis)reported this as “Al Gore thinks he invented the internet” or something along those lines. Oddly enough, the Prospect, in this case, doesn’t argue that Gore’s statement was ambiguous but could be fairly understood as the press reported it. But why not? “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” is actually pretty close to saying “I invented the internet.” At the very least, it’s much closer than saying “What did this Administration know, and when did it know it about the events of September 11?” is to saying “Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war.”

But no - Gore, according to the Prospect, was unfairly smeared by press accounts which reported only the most damaging interpretation of his statement, as if there were no other, more reasonable readings of what Gore meant. As it happens, I agree with the Prospect on this point… but it’s clear the same thing happened to McKinney.

So why is the Prospect bending over backwards to defend Gore, while eagerly jumping on the McKinney smear bandwagon? Because Gore is a centrist Democrat, while McKinney is an actual leftist. Just as Republicans hate and smear Democrats, Democrats hate and smear leftists. TAPPED doesn’t think doing this sort of press bias is wrong; they just think it’s wrong to use it against politicians from their own political camp.

There’s also a racist and sexist undercurrent to this story.

Just to make it clear: I’m not accusing TAPPED or Wyeth Wire of being racists or sexists. (I think TAPPED’s calling McKinney an “idiot” is contemptible, but that doesn’t make TAPPED a bigot, just an asshole).

But I do think that the press as a whole is particularly open to the “Cynthia is a nutcase” analysis because she’s an uppity black woman. And I think blacks and women are, due to the racist and sexist undercurrents of our culture, particularly vulnerable to being smeared in this way.

And although I don’t think TAPPED dislikes black women (for all I know, TAPPED is a black woman - although I’d be surprised, considering how few blacks or women TAPPED’s sidebar links to), I’d have a hell of a lot more respect for TAPPED if it fought the racist and sexist presumption used against McKinney, rather than going along with it.