I’ve been watching the Daniel Drezner – John Quiggin debate about the centrality of policy elites and international law (based, amusingly enough, on a Glenn Greenwald post).Drezner cites Quiggin:

John Quiggin asks some valid questions about my rephrasing of Glenn Greenwald’s take of how foreign policy analysts think about the use of force (“The number one rule of the bi-partisan foreign policy community is that America can invade and attack other countries when vital American interests are threatened. Paying homage to that orthodoxy is a non-negotiable pre-requisite to maintaining good standing within the foreign policy community.”)

Unless “vital national interest” is construed so narrowly as to be equivalent to “self-defence”, this is a direct repudiation of the central founding principle of international law, prohibiting aggressive war as a crime against peace, indeed, the supreme international crime. It’s more extreme than the avowed position of any recent US Administration – even the invasion of Iraq was purportedly justified on the basis of UN resolutions, rather than US self-interest. Yet, reading this and other debates, it seems pretty clear that Drezner’s position is not only generally held in the Foreign Policy Community but is regarded, as he says, as a precondition for serious participation in foreign policy debates in the US.

Drezner then replies:

Quiggin is clearly bothered by the idea that this conception of the use of force is a violation of international law — nay, “the supreme international crime.” Without making a normative comment one way or the other, most positive analyses of world politics would conclude that there hasn’t been a whole lot of adherence to that tenet of international law. As James Joyner observes:

The UN Charter’s outlawing of war has, from its outset, been observed only in the breach. It has stopped the United States from declaring war but not from going to war.

This applies to every other state in the international system as well. Quiggin wants international law to be a powerfully binding constraint on state action. That’s nice, but what Quiggin wants and what actually happens are two very different animals.

Another way to look at it is this:

When I started grad school at U.C. Berkeley, one of my core professors was Stephen S. Cohen (he’s still there, teaching with Brad DeLong). I met him at the first session of his class; there was an overflow of students, and Professor Cohen walked in, smoking a cigarette. This was 1974 or so, and smoking had just been banned in classrooms.

As he stood there and started explaining the class, an aggrieved student interrupted. “Professor Cohen, Professor Cohen…there are rules against smoking in class you know…”

Cohen looked cooly at the student and took a big drag on his cigarette.

“There are also rules against cheating on exams and screwing students. None of those seem to be very closely enforced either.”

I was a fan for life.

Quiggin and other fans of international law want to wish into existence an international polity in which law has or can be given adequate legitimacy to check the ambitions of the actors contained.

Personally, I’m less than thrilled with the idea that I am supposed to be subject to a set of laws crafted with the approval of Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez. I do appreciate the restraint that the concept of international legitimacy ought to bring to the table. But when so many of those who are granting it are themselves despots or otherwise legitimate only through the most brutal application of force of arms, what – exactly – does that legitimacy rest on?

I have my own take on the “Foreign Policy Experts” issue, but I want to dig out my copy of Gaddis and find a quote first.

When I read the NY Times the hotel gave me this morning, this article piqued my attention:

Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege
Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.

The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities.

The dispute isn’t any longer about the research, but about the researcher.

Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.

The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities.

And people took action against him.

Dr. Conway and Dr. McCloskey also wrote letters to Northwestern, accusing Dr. Bailey of grossly violating scientific standards “by conducting intimate research observations on human subjects without telling them that they were objects of the study.”

They also wrote to the Illinois state regulators, requesting that they investigate Dr. Bailey for practicing psychology without a license. Dr. Bailey, who was not licensed to practice clinical psychology in Illinois, had provided some of those who helped him with the book with brief case evaluation letters, suggesting that they were good candidates for sex-reassignment surgery. A spokesman for the state said that regulators took no action on the complaints.

Based on some questionable facts…

Dr. Dreger is the latest to arrive at the battlefront. She is a longtime advocate for people born with ambiguous sexuality and has been strongly critical of sex researchers in the past. She said she had presumed that Dr. Bailey was guilty and, after meeting him through a mutual friend, had decided to investigate for herself.

But in her just-completed account, due to be published next year in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, the field’s premier journal, she concluded that the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.

For example, Dr. Dreger found that two of the four women who complained to Northwestern of research violations were not portrayed in the book at all. The two others did know their stories would be used, as they themselves said in their letters to Northwestern.

The accusation of sexual misconduct came five years after the fact, and was not possible to refute or confirm, Dr. Dreger said. It specified a date in 1998 when Dr. Bailey was at his ex-wife’s house, looking after their children, according to dated e-mail messages between the psychologist and his ex-wife, Dr. Dreger found.

And with meaningful professional consequences…

One collaborator broke with Dr. Bailey over the controversy, Dr. Bailey said. Others who remained loyal said doing so had a cost: two researchers said they were advised by a government grant officer that they should distance themselves from Dr. Bailey to improve their chances of receiving financing.

“He told me it would be better if I played down any association with Bailey,” said Khytam Dawood, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Bailey said that the first weeks of the backlash were the worst. He tried not to think about the accusations, he said, but would wake up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything else. He took anti-anxiety pills for a while. He began to worry about losing his job. He said that friends and family supported him but that some colleagues were afraid to speak up in his defense.

“They saw what I was going through, I think, and wanted no part of it,” he said.

This is what it looks like when people ask why “…should the marketplace of ideas be open to those who espouse reprehensible and repugnant views?”

And it’s a train wreck, morally, politically, and scientifically.

“What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.”

Some people have no problem with throttling free expression. They see it as a way of redressing what they see as imbalances in power, and see free speech as a way or reifying existing power relationships in society. I’ve cited Stephen Hicks before:

What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.

When you see people pushing people out of the marketplace of ideas, you’re seeing speech as a weapon. And – like many mythical weapons – it is one that once used entraps and poisons the weilder.

Lane Hudson over at ‘News For The Left’ has filed an FEC complain against Fred Thompson. I had been wondering “How the heck does he manage to have a campaign without it being a campaign? Isn’t he breaking the FEC regs?”

It appears he may have been, and good for Hudson for rattling his tree.

Fixed dumb name error…

I’ve commented in the past on the newfound interest not just to win whatever the debate of the moment is, but to drive one’s opponents before you from the field in doing so, etc. etc.

I think this is a moral and political train wreck, because more than anything the core of our political system is that the losers are expected to play along with the understanding that they continue to be part of the system. We don’t do purges, and that’s a good thing.

I’ve talked about it kind of seriously, and am not just going to throw my hands up and try something different.

Here’s Atrios today:

Is Tom Friedman a Bad Person?

All signs point to “pretty hideous human being, one which all good people should shun.”

So today, Atrios is the winner of the first Moon Unit award, which I’ll give out to people who think that gagging someone – with or without a spoon – is an appropriate political response.

To be honest, the progblogs are going to be racking up a huge number of these ‘Moon Units’ – but from my point of view, they really aren’t on the same planet anyway…

Patterico’s on vacation, so someone needs to step up and slam the LA Times today.

I only go to churches for weddings and funerals – and to hear my wife sing in her classical choir. Evangelical Christianity makes me mildly itchy, combining as it does spirituality, community, and a uniquely American kind of salesmanship. My own spiritual calls are quieter.

Having said that I curse and tear my hair out when I read stupid c**p like Tom Krattenmaker’s opinion article in today’s LA Times:

Should God go to the ballgame?
Events such as ‘faith day’ at Dodger Stadium signal the Christianization of pro sports.

On Sunday, Christian baseball fans will stream into Dodger Stadium for what is becoming more common fare at professional ballparks across the country — “faith day.”

Following the Dodgers vs. Rockies game, fans with special tickets will gather in a corner of the parking lot for a concert by the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, an appearance by characters from the “Veggie Tales” Christian television program and testimonials by several devout Dodgers. The purpose, according to event organizer Brent High, is to promote the Gospel of Jesus.

High and his Christian events-promotion company, Third Coast Sports, have been organizing faith days and faith nights around minor league baseball for years. They reached the major leagues last season with three events at Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves, and will be in 10 major league cities this season. The event at Dodger Stadium will be the first in L.A.

Tim, please learn something about major league sports marketing before you sit at the keyboard and write something like this again.

Or check out the helpful site www.gaybaseballdays.com:

In recent years, a growing number of MLB teams have hosted gay and lesbian community events or groups, including the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, Oakland A’s, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals and Toronto Blue Jays. And others, such as the San Francisco Giants, Florida Marlins and Baltimore Orioles, have hosted AIDS Awareness Days.

Or go to www.dodgers.com:

Viva Los Dodgers

Presented by Coca-Cola, Time Warner Cable, and Toyota. This year is the 10th anniversary of the music festival that celebrates Hispanic music and culture. Arrive early for the August 18 game for great music, prizes and food.

Tim, is it that you don’t get Internet access at work? You couldn’t pick up the phone and talk to anyone in the event marketing industry (I can suggest some names)? You know, do some freaking research?

Update:Stoner 1st – 25 points; Rossi – 7th – 9 points…hee hee…

It’s the Brno motorcycle Grand Prix, and this season has been particularly exciting as Ducati and young Aussie Casey Stoner appear to have taken the measure of Yamaha and five-time champion Valentino Rossi.

I have a whole lot at state this season, and so I’ll be watching very closely.

Last season I managed to get a sucker knowledgeable race fan to bet Rossi against the field, and Nicky Hayden won.

The payoff was – in a manner of speaking – delightful –

Well, Flashdance wasn’t happy about his public appearance, and requested a rematch. One of the group who’d bet against him stupidly changed the bet for all of us to Rossi vs. Hayden in this series, and because of Honda’s engineering foolishness in building a 3/4 scale racebike for the year, Hayden has essentially no chance to win.

So four of us will be dressing up as the Village People (I’m going to be the Tool Guy) and blessing a Los Angeles restaurant with a well-choreographed version of “YMCA”.

But since the family motto is “never give up” I managed to get the victim Rossi fan to accept a side bet.

Rossi vs. Stoner. If Stoner beats Rossi in the season by more than 13 points, my Flashdancing friend will have to dress up as a sumo wrestler and greet all the patrons at the restaurant we choose for the performance with a bow and a hearty “moshi! moshi!” Of course, if events go the other way, I’ll need to bring a 2nd costume to dinner…

As it stands today, Stoner is ahead of Rossi by 44 points.

Stoner is on the pole at Brno, with a qualifying time of 1’56.884″; Rossi is 6th with a time of 1’57.640.

They are both incredible racers, cool, calculating, unflappable. It’s going to be an amazing race.

And if Stoner takes at least 10 more points out of Rossi, I’m that much closer to not shaving a topknot into my hair…so I’d like everyone reading this blog to close your eyes and clap really, really hard for Casey Stoner.

I’ll report on the results tomorrow.

I saw the news today about the deaths of three rescuers in the Utah coal mine, and after the initial burst of sorrow for them and their families I thought about the incredible sense of commitment miners must have to each other – much like soldiers, firefighters and LEO’s. It’s something that’s there within our society, but is too often buried – our commitment to protect and rescue each other. I’d read about the instability in the mine – either seismic or due to roof failure, I certainly don’t know – and I’d thought about the risks those teams of workers were taking for their colleagues who they may not have even known personally. I wish I’d been wrong about the risks they were taking…

My next thought was to wonder when the first article or blog post blaming this on Bush would come out…and I wish I’d been wrong about that as well…At 10:50 this morning, let me bring you the Liberal Avenger:

Let’s keep in mind that this accident was completely preventable, but efforts to regulate mine safety in the wake of several mine tragedies in 2006 were derailed by corruption and an anti-regulatory mindset within the Republican party. President Bush signaled his unwillingness to regulate the coal mining industry when he appointed Richard Stickler as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety…

So in the wake of series of fatal mining disasters, the Bush administration decided to circumvent the nomination process in order to put a former mining executive in charge of enforcing mining regulations. Is anyone surprised by the result?

Well, I sure as heck was when I did a little research back in 2006.

So in the news recently are the mining tragedies that have killed 21 miners so far this year. And a lot of coverage has focused on the lower fines, and perceived lax enforcement by an industry-friendly Administration.

So I started a post on the importance of re-regulating the industry, and toughening regulation to save miner’s lives.

And I went to the Mine Safety & Health Administration to trend out the pattern of deaths.

And got the data that made up this somewhat surprising graph:

I updated the graph to include 2006 data and annualized the 2007 data as of 8/13/07:

Notice anything?

Look, I may not like the industry cozyness of Bush’s appointments in this area. And maybe there are exogenous factors that are driving the decline in deaths.

But the deaths are declining. And to ignore that is just plain bullshit. Just as it’s bullshit to cite rising troop suicide rates without noting that they remain below those of the civilian population.

Does that mean we shouldn’t look hard at mine and industrial safety? Absolutely not. Of course we need to keep looking at it. Just as we need to look at the psychic welfare of the troops.

But it’s bullshit, pure and simple, to make arguments like this. First, because they are so easy to pick apart – and if you care about worker safety or about troop well-being, you have an obligation to make good arguments in favor of those things.

There was just news about a newsroom in Seattle that erupted in applause when Rove resigned; the editor wrote a perfect memo explaining why that was wrong:

If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue. Survey after survey over the years have demonstrated that most of the people who go into this business tend to vote Democratic, at least in national elections. That is not particularly surprising, given how people make career decisions and that social service and activism is a primary driver for many journalists.

But if we allowed our news meetings to evolve into a liberal latte klatch, I have no doubt that a pathological case of group-think would soon set in. One of the advances of which I’m most proud over the years is our willingness to question and challenge each other as we work to give our readers the most valuable, meaningful journalism we can.

The result: A newspaper that is known nationally for aggressive watchdog and investigative reporting, without fear or favor. From a Democratic United States senator (Brock Adams) to our region’s biggest employer (Boeing) to a large advertiser (Nordstrom) to our school districts and courts and police, we have confronted them all with tough questions to which they had no good answers. The result has been a better community, laws changed, lives saved.

It’s not about “balance,” which is a false construct. It isn’t even about “objectivity,” which is a laudable but probably unattainable goal. It is about independent thinking and sound, facts-based journalism — the difference between what we do and the myopic screed that is passed off as “advocacy” journalism these days.

“It is about independent thinking and sound, facts-based journalism…” Wow. Can I just applaud that line?

And can I ask my fellow pundits to opine away – in fact encourage them to – in favor of worker rights, worker safety, and the well-being of the members of our military? But to do so in a way that’s rooted in provable fact?

We’re suddenly getting a bunch – a large bunch – of hits from search engines looking for Angelyne.

No news about her that I can find online…

Anyone have any idea what the heck is happening??

…as long as the things they are gullible about confirm their prejudices.

I’ve got a newfound – interest – in military welfare these days. So I pay particular attention to news items that cross my computer screen that touch on issues about the welfare of our military.

A few weeks ago, I saw the release about rising suicide rates in the military, and to be honest I was concerned.

Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.

It just made the Washington Post, and was picked up by lefty blogs TalkLeft and Greatscat!, who say – respectively – “This war was not worth the price. We have a President who is unable or unwilling to acknowledge his mistakes. Experts agree the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily. So why are the troops still there? Let’s stop the funding and bring them home now.” and “Um, I wonder if Rove left spin instructions for this report’s release?”

Gosh, guys. It is a damn serious issue – because the rate is rising, and because one suicide is unknowably painful to the circle of the person who kills themselves.

But you know, the first question I asked was “Gosh, I wonder how that compares to normal rates of suicide in the US?

So I spent a whopping ten minutes looking up stats and building a small spreadsheet.

So in 2004, there were a total of 14,328 suicides in the US in the age group 20 – 44 (the group that I think pretty well covers the population in Iraq – some are younger, some are older). the total population in 2004 in that age group was 104,259,000 – so the rate/100,000 population was 15.25.

And since the rate in the military is higher – significantly higher at 17.3/100,000 overall and 19.9 for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – I was darn concerned.

And then I asked one more question.

Well, the suicide rates by sex are pretty different, I recalled. I wonder what happens if I sex-norm the suicide rates in the military?

Here’s an approximation (because the %of women in reserves is slightly higher, and I didn’t find the % serving in Iraq).

According to the DoD, approximately 17% of US active-duty forces are women.

According to the CDC, the 20 – 44 population had 14,328 suicides in 2004. Of those, 11,460 were men, and 2,868 were women. The census gives an estimate for 2005 population from 20 – 44 as 52,513,000 men and 51,746,000 women.

By my math, this gives a suicide rate of 21.82/100,000 for men, and 5.54/100,000 for women.

If I norm the suicide rates by multiplying the sexes rate by the population in the military, I get (21.82*83%)+(5.54*17%)=19.06/100,000.

So the suicide rate among all active-duty troops is lower than the 2004 norm – even at the current high point – and the rate among combat troops is slightly above the norm.

Does this mean it isn’t serious and that we shouldn’t put resources into PTSD treatment or that each suicide isn’t itself a tragedy? What do you think I believe…come on, of course.

But is this a symptom of a military so brutalized by the horrors of service that they are killing themselves at an incredible rate?

What do you believe I think? Why can’t people do some freaking homework before the leap to the Isle of Conclusion – that’s what I think.

Mike Nifong turned in his North Carolina law license this week.

Smoking Gun has a copy of his letter (h/t Instapundit), and this just leapt off the page at me: