So if Steve Neal is a drunk
ArchPundit
And the twit Kevin McCollough can make fun of him for it, why isn’t Tim Johnson IL 15 R given the same treatment at the Leader?
February 2003
Schlafly Returns
And discusses the ERA on the Illinois Leader
Here is a choice comment:
Section 2 of ERA would take enormous areas of law out of the hands of state legislatures and transfer them to the Federal Government: to the Congress, to the federal courts to interpret what Congress does, and to the federal bureaucracy to write regulations that have the force of law.
These areas of law would include marriage, divorce, family property law, child custody, adoptions, abortions, alimony, some criminal laws, age limits for marriage and the age of consent, public and private schools, prison regulations, and insurance rates.
Errrrrr..thanks for playing, but no. What the ERA would do is require states demonstrate a compelling state interest for differentiating based on gender in any of these policy areas just as it must for race, national origin and religion.
Let the lies continue…
Poshard’s Not Running
According to the Capitol Fax. Thus later in the week we’ll have a clear return to the Weekly (sort of) Cattle Call for the 2004 Illinois Senate Race.
Doesn’t Being a Good Ally Swing Both Ways?
Why aren’t we getting Blair’s back on Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
The Krugman Refutation
Of my post concerning credibility is available.
Actually I agree pretty much. It isn’t that we are disagreeing with our allies, it is that we continue to push their faces in the mud over those disagreements. I’m in favor of war in Iraq despite the President.
And no I don’t think he is talking to me before anyone comments…
Political State Report
Post up–check it out.
Comments on Intelligence
Kevin Drum stepped into a firestorm the other day by suggesting that intelligence is a meaningful trait. He suggested two other issues related, but I’m going to primarily focus on that claim because it is at the core of the issue. One can’t continue to argue past that until one understand whether one disagrees that intelligence is meaningful or not.
Apparently Kevin and I missed indoctrination day for liberals on this one. I would say that measuring intelligence is more difficult than I think Kevin allows for, but that isn’t the core of the argument to me.
The ability to process information has its limits. Humans have a vast range of abilities, but we are limited in what we can accomplish intellectually. Within humans, that range varies by person. A significant portion of that range is usually determined by environment. What kind of environment was one brought up in, was there lots of stimulation, did the parents understand how to encourage learning and were they capable of teaching. But also, part of that is heritable. While parents with limited intelligence may have children with low intelligence because of the environment created, it is also true that by heredity the individuals will be lower intelligence on average.
Given inherit ability is a range, to some degree the individual has a range of intelligence they may fall within. Environment then decides within that range how well potential intelligence is actualized. However, there are intelligence speed limits for those born with bad genetics. Some mentally disabled individuals could not be Einstein regardless of the environment around them. And some incredibly bright children will never have high intelligence because they suffer from lead poisoning. We do not question whether these situations are real differences in underlying intelligence.
The problem seems to be that this discussion gets caught up in race because of twits like Murray. What no one seems to be pointing out is that race is essentially a social construct. Race is little more than how much melanin one has. Melanin does not affect intelligence. Duh.
Race in America is seen as some unchangeable thing, but we know this to be not the case. Race depends on socialization. How many stories do we know of where individuals passed as white before the Civil Rights Movement? So categorization of race is not even scientific. Beyond that races have long interbred in America so that while many darker skinned indviduals may be African-American in context of the social setting they live, they are not objectively any single race. Murray and Herrnstein seem to assume this unpleasant complication away when there is no justification to do so. Worse, they like many of their predecessors, want to take their work to inform public discourse despite its failings.
Individuals have different inate abilities. Intelligence, athleticism and other characteristics exist within a range for an individual. The problem comes when those like Murray try and sell the observed differences of complicated process as being caused by simplistic factors. Intelligence is the result of a series of factors including heredity. However, simplifying heredity as race is stupid theoretically and empirically.
Stephen Gould was right to be critical of many of the policy uses of intelligence in the past. Those initiatives assumed we understood intelligence much better than we do and resulted in horrific results often.
The mistake by others is to automatically throw intelligence out as a useful concept. We don’t question it as a useful concept when describing the damage done to children who have lead poisoning because we understand that environmental factor has significant impacts on the child’s intelligence. If anything, our understanding of the importance of environment in shaping even the most genetically capable children should motivate us to fight for opportunity in every child’s environment.
And $15 million for lead abatement, ain’t gonna do it.
Texas Death Penalty: Can’t keep up
Via Talk Left the Trib reports that Texas is killing people as fast as it can despite numerous examples of problems with Texas’s system.
Jeralynn argues that there will be a movement towards a moratorium. I wish I had her optimism.
Is Ashcroft on crack?
I think we have enough evidence for some reasonable suspicions as Talk Left points out the crackdown on people selling bongs.
Bongs are a big concern? Bongs? Are you kidding me? Next he’ll go after sellers of Cheetos.
Motion to Disqualify Cook County Judges from Burge cases
In a stunning motion, a coalition of lawyers involved in cases where John Burge is accused of torture are asking all Cook County judges to be disqualified (via TalkLeft.
The argument is that too many of the judges have been involved as prosecutors in too many of these cases and an unavoidable conflict of interest exists.
While I expect this motion to be quashed, the questions raised are extremely important. The problem is I’m not sure if bringing in judges from outstate or the suburbs will necessarily be better. Chicago judges are probably more likely to accept the notion that police behave badly than outstate judges in Illinois.