If they’re serious about defending traditional marriage, The Faithful Skeptic has a few modest proposals.

Update: Link corrected!

I posted a few days ago about how well the Democrats are doing with voter registration in Ohio.

Well, now the GOP is fighting back. Are they increasing their own registration efforts? No, of course not. Instead, they’ve dredged up an obsolete rule that voter registrations must be printed on 80-pound stock paper. From the Dayton Daily News:

So in order to protect new registrants from having their registrations accidently destroyed in transit by the post office, any registration on the wrong paper stock that has already made it safely to the board of elections office must be ignored.

Couldn’t they even come up with a rational sounding excuse?

The story explains that the rule is out-of-date:

Teh Republicans are also trying to interpret rules on provisional ballots more strictly than federal law requires. Anything to avoid counting votes, I guess.

Via MyDD.

So let’s review:

• In Kansas, when they won millions of bonus federal dollars for their effective and well-run Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) program, the TANF program administrator said “With our recent TAF caseload increases, these bonuses will really be needed to serve additional families” (Kansas’ TANF caseload has increased 11% in the past two years). (Source).

• The non-partisan Coalition on Human Needs, in their report on Kansas TANF, wrote that “Kansas needs every cent to serve its low-income families.” (Source).
• 11% of low-income Kansas families who return to TANF, could have avoided it if they had adequate assistance with child care or transportation. (Source)

So what should we do? Well, according to the “Kansas Healthy Marriage Institute,” it’s time to divert TANF money away from helping poor people with little petty things like food, shelter, child care, employment training, and the like.

Oh, is that what the money could be used for? Well, as long as there’s nothing important it could be spent on.

(Link via Family Scholars Blog).

If you feel like getting a good blast of anti-fat bigotry combnied with clueless sexism, be sure to read this article about the fat dad/thin mom combo that’s become common on family sitcoms, entitled “Father Eats Best.” Rick Marin, best known for his kiss-and-tell book “Cad,” offers a sort of detached ironic whining about what an insult it is to real-life fathers to depict them as fat, mixed with fat jokes recycled from his middle-school days (one show is described as starring “John Goodman’s jowls”).

To me, the chubby-hubby-slight-wife trend suggests job segregation at work. In TV acting, it’s more acceptable for men to be fat than women; it’s also more acceptable for fat men to appear in comedies than in dramas. (John Goodman has successfully played dramatic and comedy roles on stage and in movies, but on TV he’s been cast exclusively in comedies).

Given that, it’s no surprise to see a bunch of talented fat male actors gravitating towards TV sit-coms. And it’s especially unsurprising that the women cast on these shows are thin and TV-attractive; after all, that’s what women on all TV shows, even feminist-y shows like Gilmore Girls and Stong Medicine, look like.

But talking about something like plain old-fashioned sexism isn’t hip and ironic, and Marin is one of those writers who has never published a thought that hasn’t been market-tested for hipness and irony.

Marin also follows the lead of men’s righters by complaining about how the male leads in these shows are often presented as incompetant bumblers who have to be corrected by their more competant spouses.

What he doesn’t mention is that being a bumbler means that you have the lead role (think of Lucy on I Love Lucy); the reason more sit-com dads are bumblers is because the lead roles on family sit-coms usually go to men. (On the underappreciated Life With Bonnie, Bonnie is the bumbler and her husband is the bland, competant one.)

Although Marin makes plenty of jokes about fat men, he reserves his ugliest barb for fat women: “When I flipped to ‘Trading Spouses’ on Fox I saw two moderately chubby husbands with supersized spouses. No wonder they were trading them.” (Maybe he should take some of those Cad royalties to a therapist and work on those misogyny issues a bit?)

Incidently, reading Marin’s own site makes it clear he considers himself quite dishy - “He’s the funny, sweet guy with the great eyes who asks you a million questions and seems mesmerized by every reply. He takes you on the greatest, longest date of your life.” In contrast, according to one of his ex-girlfriends, he’s boring in bed (”…you drunkenly lose interest and let him know that he’s welcome to finish without you, thanks”) and strongly resembles Milhouse from The Simpsons. But hey, at least he’s not fat.

According to this Planned Parenthood release from Friday:

I haven’t been able to find any news reports on this (frustrating, frustrating!), although I’ll try again on Monday. So I don’t know if this is a real victory, or just a symbolic victory that will be written out of the appropriations bill when the House and Senate bills are reconciled. (I suspect the latter, unfortunately, but I don’t know for sure.)

The Planned Parenthood article gives some idea of the destruction Bush’s policies have created:

Link via Tapped.

Juan Cole has a must-read post….

That’s just a sample - you ought to read the whole. Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Here’s some good news: According to a New York Times study, Democrats in the swing states of Ohio and Florida have been far more successful than Republicans in registering new voters.

New voters are undercounted in “likely voter” polls - so it may be that Kerry is actually doing much better in the swing states than recent polls have indicated. (Via Shadow of the Hegemon).

Ms. Musings has the full story. In a nutshell, however: An Ariizona Fox News station reported on a U of Arizona feminist group’s “Get Out Her Vote” effort with a quote from a local official “who said that students can’t register to vote where they attend college. The word ‘felony’ was used.”

(Fox somehow neglected to inform viewers that the Supreme Court answered this question a quarter century ago - students have - or should have - the right to register to vote where they attend college.)

It turns out - according to the local official Fox quoted - that Fox used out-of-context quoting to distort his meaning. From Katha Pollitt:

Can you imagine the fuss if CBS lied about the law in a blatant attempt to drive down Republican voter registration?

(And while I’m on the subject, do read through People for the American Way’s report on GOP attempts to keep black voters away from the polls. Or Salon’s article on the same issue, via Mouse Words).

Various high-profile law professors at Harvard are having plagiarism troubles. Laurence Tribe - possibly the most influential lefty law prof in the world - is guilty of “plagiaphrasing” from another professor in a 1985 book, according to the current Weekly Standard.

Apparently, Tribe rewrote sentences from a book by a less famous scholar - so that ” noting that he would stand on his record as a Judge and Senator” becomes “said that he would stand on his record as a Senator and a federal appellate judge” in Tribe’s version, and so forth. He did this many, many times, throughout the book. I’ve done the same thing myself, in many academic papers. (Tribe also copied one sentence word-for-word). But Tribe didn’t credit his source, apart from a mention in the “Mini-Guide to the Background Literature” printed at the end of the book.

Is it plagiarism? If you agree with an expert the Weekly Standard quoted that “constant paraphrasing without at least semi-regular attribution constitutes a form of plagiarism,” then it is. I’m not sure Tribe could actually be found guilty in a courtroom - but then again, is it too much to ask for that one of the world’s most promiinant and honored legal scholars be held to a higher standard than “probably not convictable?”

(I should note - perhaps out of a sense of fairness, or perhaps just out of a desire to cover my own behind, depending on how charitably you think of me - that Tribe has not yet responded to the Standard’s charges; perhaps this story will look different after Tribe tells his side. UPDATE: Nope, the story doesn’t look different; Tribe has apologized.)

This year’s more interesting Harvard-Law-Professor-Plagiarism case involves another liberal icon, Charles Ogletree. Velvel’s blog covers the issue at length. Here the issue is both clearer and a great deal more muddy.

First, what’s clear - Ogletree definitely plagiarized. The first 2 and a half pages of chapter 16 are taken directly from a book by Yale law professor (and notable blogger) Jack Balkin.

It’s also clear that Ogletree’s plagiarism was an accident (no one would plagiarize so obviously at such length from such a well-known author if they were trying to deceive). As Professor Ogletree explained in his public apology:

Frankly, Ogletree’s accidental plagiarism - although it involved far more direct quoting - seems to me more acceptable than Tribe’s.

But at the same time, Ogletree’s explanation points to a more serious and widespread corruption, which Dean Velvel discusses at length - how is it that an accomplished scholar can read through a book he’s currently writing and not realize that the first two and a half pages of a chapter were another author’s words?

This is, of course (and as Dean Velvel points out), an American norm.

Of course, being a cartoonist, I read this and immediately thought of Garfield, written and drawn entirely by assistants whose names rarely appear. Or of Doonesbury, which is still written and penciled by its creator, but is inked by a rarely-credited collaborator. At least those two strips’ creators are honest enough to occasionally credit their collaborators in public - many other comic strips are written and drawn by cartoonists who never get credit.

Is it still plagiarism if it’s the way business is done?

Meanwhile, due to work-for-hire copyright laws, DC comics can publish all the Superman stories they want. But if the creators (if they were still living) decided to publish a Superman story - now, that would be plagiarism. To me, work-for-hire creation is (at least in comics and music) primarily a way of making it legal for large corporations to plagiarize the ideas of anyone poor and desperate enough to sign a contract.

Why do we accept that as being okay? Because it’s just the way business is done.

(While I’m asking leading questions, is it ironic that a post about plagiarism consists mostly of words quoting from elsewhere? Ah, but blogs are different, I tell myself.)

Anyhow, I highly recommend reading Larry Velvel’s entire post.

UPDATE: Tellingly, I forgot to credit my source for most of the links - an anonomous emailer using the handle “AuthorSkeptics,” who presumably has been cold-emailing a lot of bloggers about this. Also, Jeremy’s Weblog has a post on the issue. The Boston Globe has an article about Ogletree featuring many scholars criticizing the write-by-committee approach.

Be sure to check out What She Said!, a new blog about female (mostly lefty) political bloggers. There are interviews with female bloggers (including frequent “Alas” comment-writers Sheelzebub of Pinko Feminist Hellcat and Amanda of MouseWords, and my pal Elayne of Pen-Elayne).

The best feature, though, is the blogroll, which is the longest list of female leftyish bloggers I’ve ever seen - lots of new blogs to check out there.

I previously announced when Manitoba legalized Same Sex Marriage. Today,The Gazette reports “Nova Scotia becomes sixth province, territory to allow same-sex marriages”

Remember when the house passed a bill to prevent the federal courts from hearing DOMA challenges? Now, they’ve passed a similar bill to prevent the federal courts from hearing challenges over the words “under God” the Pledge of Allegiance!

Nj.com reports:

Why risk damaging our traditional system of judicial review for two words in the Pledge of Allegiance? Well, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., is worried that, should the courts strip the words “under God” from the pledge, “we will have emasculated the very heart of what America has always been about.” Oh my! Does he mean feminism might win?

For my part, if each state had it’s own point of view on the question of “under God”, I would still myself able to sleep at night. But the precedent of jurisdiction stripping would be a bad one. As Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., who supported stripping jurisdiction from lower federal courts, but retaining jurisdiction at the Supreme Court, noted:

Of course, we all know the issue came up, to use a metaphor, yesterday. That time the issue was same sex marriage. The constitutionality of jurisdiction stripping was discussed widely. Notable discussions are available at: Volokh who thinks it’s probably constitutional, Ox Blog who thinks it’s not and Findlaw who thinks the issue is unclear.

Constitutional or not, jurisdiction stripping is a bad idea. Hopefully, the Senate will not pass this bill. If they do, hopefully the whole idea is unconstitutional. That could keep this strategy from exploding on to the scene and affecting every civil right the American people retained.

===Edited:
Balkinization has an interesting article which appeared at 1 am Sept. 25.

The pro-gay legislation is moving up the California pipeline. Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger quietly signed the California Insurance Equality Act, which prohibits insurance from discriminating against domestic partners. Wednesday, he signed the Omnibus Hate Crimes Act into law. This law includes crimes against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the category of hate crimes. Meanwhile, there is a move to grant some nationwide protection. 356Gay.com reports:

Attention to hate crime seems particularly well timed, in light of Jimmy Swaggart’s recent “jokes” about killing gays who might look at him the wrong way.

365Gay.com reports Allies for Marriage and Children, a newly formed conservative group, is working to introduce an anti marriage equality amendment in Washington State. Washington state already has a one man-one woman marriage law. However, recent rulings in King and Thurston counties said the law was constitutionally invalid; their rulings are being appealed to the Supreme Court, where the constitutionality of Washington’s DOMA will be evaluated.

State Sen. Dan Swecker predicts pressure will mount to pass an amendment this winter; state Rep. Ed Murray, suggest that the amendment won’t even emerge from committee. We don’t yet know the wording of the hypothetical amendment, which thus far, has no sponsors.

The The Seattle PI notes that Washington’s DOMA did pass with more than two-thirds support in both houses. However, some legislators who voted for Washington’s DOMA in 1998 have lost their seats; in contrast no one who voted against it has. In addition, legislators may be more reluctant to amend the constitution than to pass a law.

Of course, I’m hoping this DOMA threat goes no where, and we’ll see same sex marriage legalized in Washington. (And for that matter, in Oregon and California.)

For additional information, visit:Fox 12 Oregon

(I’m posting this partly because I’d like to create a thread that all the third party vs. Kerry arguments can be consolidated on. Folks who are anti-Green, please read this post before you tell me that “Cobb can’t win.”)

There are two candidates I’m seriously considering voting for, David Cobb (the Green Party candidate) and John Kerry.

Reasons to vote for Kerry:

1. Kery would almost certainly refund UNFPA and get rid of the global gag rule. This would have a positive effect on the lives of tens of thousands of poor women worldwide - it seems likely that there are many women who will be more likely to live to 2008 if Kerry’s in the White House.

   On that level, it makes a difference who is elected president in 2004.

2. Kerry seems more competent than Bush, and so might succeed in producing less carnage and tragedy in Iraq.
3. There’s a fairly high chance that whoever wins the 2004 election will get to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, and perhaps more. Regarding many issues that are important to me, not least of which is abortion, who is on the Supreme Court does make a difference.
4. Kerry’s plan to make health insurance more affordable seems to me to be worth trying, and could make a very large difference in my life.
5. There doesn’t seem to be much energy in the third-party movement this election, making voting green less attractive than it was in 2000. (What’s the point of participating in a boycott if I’m almost the only one doing so?)

Reasons to vote for Cobb.

1. Cobb is as good or better than Kerry on virtually every issue I care about.

2. There’s a woman on the ticket, which, all else being equal, I’d prefer to having no women on the ticket. (Of course, it would be better yet, all else being equal, for a woman to be at the top of the ticket.)
3. In the long run, trying to grow a progressive movement in this country is more important than trying to win any particular election. And third parties can be useful progressive forces even without winning any elections.
4. If progressives automatically vote for the Democrat, then why should Democrats care what we think?
5. Kerry has been a back-stabber on gay rights, supporting don’t-ask-don’t-tell and speaking out for homophobic anti-marriage-equality measures in Massachusetts and elsewhere. (I know he opposes the Federal anti-gay-marriage amendment, but since the Federal amendment had no chance of passing, that’s not very meaningful. When push comes to shove, regarding an amendment in Massachusetts that matters much more right now, Kerry sides with the homophobes).
6. There is next to no chance that my vote will make the difference between Bush and Kerry.

So what will I do? I don’t know. Four years ago I voted for Nader. I’m still not sure if that decision was right or wrong.

Right now, what I’m planning to do is wait until November 1st to decide. If the election looks close at that point - both in Oregon and nationwide - then I’ll vote for Kerry. Otherwise, Cobb.

TAPPED reminds us that a year ago today, leading neocon Richard Perle said:

I can see why the Republicans trust that guy.

This was emailed to me by moveon.org. In general, I don’t want to turn this into a pr-for-Kerry blog. However, I thought this was interesting enough to be worth posting, since it’s reasonably substantive and actually related to a real issue. It’s a collection of quotes from Kerry’s recent speech on Iraq.

Here are the main points from Kerry’s speech on Iraq yesterday:

• The war on Iraq was a mistake — war was unnecessary because the inspections were working: “Today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no — because a commander in chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.”

• Iraq distracted from the war on terror: “The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.” President Bush misled us about the reasons for the war before it occurred: “He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens. By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war.”
• President Bush is still misleading people about Iraq, painting an optimistic picture directly contradicted by his own intelligence officials: “In June, the president declared, ‘The Iraqi people have their country back.’ Just last week, he told us: ‘This country is headed toward democracy. Freedom is on the march.’ But the Administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the president last July, tells a very different story. According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the president is saying to the American people.”
• Bush went to war for ideological reasons and consistently misjudged the situation on the ground: “This president was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences. The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators. They were wrong. They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq’s infrastructure. They were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong. They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong. In Iraq, this administration has ! consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.”

John Kerry has a four-point plan to fix our Iraq policy:

• “First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone. It is late; the president must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support. The president should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.”

• “Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces. The president should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.”
• “Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people. One year ago, the administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than a $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we had to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability. Now we’re paying the price. Now, the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects, and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.”
• “Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year. If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces, train the Iraqis to provide their own security, develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year — we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.”

Read the whole speech.

Over on Brad DeLong’s Journal, Brad announces the launching of “The Economists’ Voice,” an online “forum for readable ideas and analysis by leading economists on vital issues of our day.” It sounds like a good idea to me, and I hope it does well. I have a complaint, however.

Here are the regular columnists on the roster so far:

Not one female economist is included. Not one.

Sheesh.

Over on the Family Scholars Blog, Brad Wilcox (who I’ve mentioned before on “Alas,” here and here) writes:

So if an abused woman can’t document her abuse, she should be forced to remain in the marriage?

La Lubu, recalling her own abusive marriage, writes:

It may be that “easy divorces” (it’s amazing that Wilcox has talked to so many men who have been through painful no-fault divorces and can still use the ridiculous, inaccurate phrase “easy divorces”) have hurt women, although nothing in Wilcox’s letter supports that contention. But it’s beyond doubt that “hard divorces” hurt some women by trapping them in abusive marriages. Protecting the interests of only those abused women who can document their abuse (”honey, stop hitting me for a minute so I can set up the vidcam”) is no solution.

For an ironic contrast to Dr. Wilcox’s letter, check out this study (.pdf link) on the effects of no-fault divorce on family violence. According to one of the study’s authors:

So what causes the decline in suicide, domestic violence and intimate femicide? According to the authors of the paper, it’s a change in power dynamics within marriage - men are less likely to become abusive if women have more power to pack their bags and leave. (La Luba is a bit skeptical of that explanation).

Personally, I would have liked to see the authors do a multivariate analysis accounting for the growth of battered women’s shelters, which occurred at about the same time, probably took place in mostly the same (relatively liberal) states, and could reasonably be expected to have similar effects. It’s possible that some of the beneficial effects they attribute to no-fault divorce were in fact the result of the growing availability of other resources to help battered women leave abusive relationships.

Nonetheless, the same basic principle - that the harder it is for women to leave marriages, the more danger abused women are in - applies whether we’re talking about battered women’s shelters or about no-fault divorce. And it makes me extremely skeptical of folks who, like Dr. Wilcox, want to do away with “easy divorces,” and seem heedless of the consequences to women.

David Blankenhorn writes:

(The event he links to, a debate between feminist Susan Brownmiller and anti-feminist Cathy Young entitled “Whose Family Values?: Secularism and Religion in Campaign 2004,” actually sounds pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it’s in NYC, and anyway the webpage writer neglected to include the date of the debate. Oy.)

David has beaten this particular horse quite often - reading his blog, you’d swear that the only people using the term “family values” were sarcastic lefties. As he wrote last year: “My thesis is that the term ‘family values’ is used almost exclusively today as a term of ridicule and accusation.”

I became curious enough to check how major American papers have used the term this week. And although there were, indeed, two or three sarcastic references, a strong majority of the uses of “family values” were either neutral or positive. Here’s a few examples - all from the past week.

• “To me, it is not a political matter to send money to my family in Cuba. To me, it’s a matter of family values.” -Someone objecting to anti-money-transfer-to-Cuba regulations, Boston Globe, September 19.

• “In Missouri, for example, voters ranked moral issues and family values fourth on their list of concerns, after terrorism, the economy and Iraq, but ahead of health care, jobs and taxes.” -Houstin Chronicle, September 19 (Did those voters mean it ironically? Did the pollster? It seems unlikely.)
• “I am for family values and I am the victim of that.” -small-time political conservative candidate quoted in San Diego Union-Tribune, September 18.
• “His stance on family values resonates with me.” -Jeanette Laugen, Bush supporter, quoted in Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 17.
• “Jane Patterson has been named chairwoman of the Parents, Teachers, and Friends Organization’s Sprituality and Family Values Committee.” - From a school news round-up in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 16.
• “Our company has always stood for family values. By having a major-league sports team, we can make a difference in a lot of lives. We stand for honesty, integrity and wholesome Christian values.” -Sports team owner Drayton McLane, quoted in The Houston Chronicle, September 15.
• “‘African-American churches will come up to the line much more than other churches,’ said Mathew Staver, president of the Liberty Council, a group that says it defends religious freedom and traditional family values.” - St Petersburg Times, September 15. (Note that the Liberty Council says “Family Values” without a trace of irony multiple times on their website).
• “I’m very proud of Lost in Space. It has good family values, it’s a cool adventure show, and I think it’s positive for people to watch today.” - Bill Mumy, former “Lost in Space” actor, quoted in The Houston Chronicle, September 14.

To me, it looks like David’s concerns are misplaced. “Family values” is used ironically and derisively fairly frequently, of course - and I think that’s a fair use, considering how often “family values” defenders have defended bigotry - but it’s used even more frequently in the old-fashioned, non-ironic way President Reagan intended, if newspaper usage is anything to judge by.