Sleep Chronicles

I've come to the realization that the problem with this wedding is going to be less the lack of sleep and more the time zone differential. Going to bed at 4 AM and waking up at 11 AM isn't the worst amount of sleep one could have. But since I'm in Mountain Time, that translates to going to bed at 6 AM and waking up at 1 PM Eastern Time, which is not precisely compatible with the bar schedule. Oy.

Other observation: You ever have that thing happen where you have to wake up by a certain time, and you wake up a little before then, look at the clock, and calculate how much sleep you have left? But sometimes, you're so addled, you completely misremember what time it was you woke up. This is sleep roulette, because it is equally possible that you thought you had one more hour of sleep when you really had five minutes, or vice versa. Today, I won the roulette (I thought I woke up a little before 11, but really had woken up a little before 10). So that was good.

Tripping

Lots of travel in the coming days. Tomorrow I fly out for my college roommate's wedding in Casper, Wyoming (the bride is also a college friend of mine -- it's going to be a fantastic Carleton reunion). This entails flying into Denver, renting a car, and then driving four hours. On Sunday, I'm flying back to DC (again, through Denver) to take the Maryland bar exam (Tuesday and Wednesday). I will then take some very deserved days of doing nothing. And then sometime the week following, I will fly back to Chicago, to prepare to move to Champaign (that will go down August 8th).

Uf-da. There was a time in my life I liked traveling, too.

Franken Finds Focus on the Family Flub

You know, this is funny and all, but it also characterizes why Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is such a good public servant. He does the work. He looks into the studies in the testimony. And here, it turns out the Focus on the Family (surprise!) was blatantly lying about the facts, and it led to them getting called out in public.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) took on a representative of the conservative group Focus on the Family for mis-characterizing a study on "nuclear families" at a hearing on a bill which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

"I actually checked it out," Franken said in reference to a study cited by Focus on the Family's Thomas Minnery at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

"Isn't it true, Mr. Minnery, that a married same-sex couple that has had or adopted kids would fall under the definition of a nuclear family in the study that you cite?" Franken asked.

"I think that the study, when it cites nuclear families would mean a family headed by a husband and wife," Minnery said.

"It doesn't," Franken said, getting laughs from the audience.

"The study defines a nuclear family as one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all the children in the family," Franken continued. "And I frankly don't really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways."

Perversions

A Rick Santorum fundraiser email complains that "[Dan] Savage and his perverted sense of humor is the reason why my children cannot Google their father's name." Which is sad, I guess. On the other hand, Santorum and his perverted sense of ethics is the reason why some of my friends can't get married, don't enjoy anti-discrimination protections, and are otherwise second-class citizens. Which, in the scheme of things, is a far bigger deal, I think.

UN Resolution 181, Baby!

Glenn Beck at his Israel CUFI rally: "When, when has a state been declared a state by a global body?"

Oooh -- I know this one!

Masterchef/Hell's Kitchen Combined Thoughts

It's summer time, and that means a double dose of Gordon Ramsey for Jill and I. Masterchef has been chugging along, but Hell's Kitchen has just started. Some early (for Hell's Kitchen) and late (for Masterchef) thoughts on the two shows thus far.

Masterchef

* When they showed Erryn for the first time on Monday, Jill and I cheered. When they showed him for a second time, we said "uh-oh". By the third time, we knew he was a goner.

* And the week didn't get better with Giuseppe going home today. It was obvious that he was the "dad" of this crew (Alejandra is the mom -- Erryn confirms this), and everyone was clearly devastating to see him go home.

* The challenge today was to cook for the three judge's moms. Which, frankly, is a little unfair to Gordon and Fluffy's mothers. Lidia Bastianich is a world-famous chef -- putting two essentially random people on a panel with her is like having a judging panel of Gordon Ramsey and Jill and I.

* Alejandra's accent seems to vary wildly, not just from show to show, but from paragraph to paragraph. Sometimes it is "just off the boat", sometimes it is "I've spent my entire life in Illinois". It's bizarre.

* I couldn't care less if she wins MasterChef -- any show with Christine on it, I'll watch.

* Suzy may have peaked too soon. She's been having a rough go of it for awhile, and doesn't seem to realize what she's doing wrong.

* Chicago had four people in the finals (five if you count Tony, who was from Grant Park), but only Suzy is left. A shame -- I liked all of them. I wonder if any of them will cook for me before I move to Champaign?

Hell's Kitchen

* Jason was this season's medical casualty; a shame because he seemed nice enough. He also looked like a cross between Paul Kinsey of Mad Men and a Canadian lumberjack.

* Steven was forgettable. But Jill and I literally high-fived when Brendan was eliminated. He demonstrated himself to be a cocky jackass with impressive celerity.

* Speaking of Brendan, Carrie, your taste in men is appalling. You managed to squander the goodwill Jill and I had for you as the target of Elise's bitchiness, and believe me, that was a lot of goodwill.

* Just because Carrie has squandered her goodwill doesn't mean any reverts back to Elise. That woman appears to be nuts.

* The men thus far are far more memorable than the women, who are mostly indistinguishable blondes. This is not necessarily an advantage for the men.

* That being said, Will so far is easily the front-runner. He's very good, very committed, and appears to have a good head on his shoulders. He's a nice guy without being a sycophant. I really like him. Plus, he's got a great nickname: "Pizza bagel" (he's half-Italian, half-Jewish).

* Speaking of nicknames, we've labeled Jonathon "Boomhauer". That boy is unintelligible.

* You cannot tell me that Tommy was not addicted to heroin in the very, very recent past.

* Krupa is the only true standout on the women's team. Though Amanda looks kind of like if you took Amanda from Season 6, aged her a few years, and then dyed her hair. Wait a minute ....

One Week Out Roundup

I'm one week away from the bar exam. My strongest area is constitutional law. My weakest area is everything else.

* * *

Soccer clubs often break along broader cultural and national faultlines, and certain clubs are typically identified with various political movements. In Israel, for example, Hapoel Tel Aviv is identified with the Israeli left, and Beitar Jerusalem representing the nationalist right. Two liberal American Jews have now bought the team; hopefully, they'll help clean up its act (an interesting fact for folks not privy to how Israeli society divides -- Beitar supporters hail overwhelmingly from Israel's large Mizrachi [Arab] Jewish population).

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called Yesh Din a "terrorist organization". Board member Shlomo Gazit notes it's a label he's borne before.

That far-right Iowa "marriage" petition also calls for "robust childbearing". How exactly does one birth "robustly"?

Good post by Ta-Nehisi Coates on people feeling a connection to where they're from, even it is a place that is considered a "problem".

A Columbia professor writes a book on how to resolve (or at least ameliorate) intractable conflicts. One notes that his advice could succinctly be summarized as "the opposite of what anti-Israel BDS campaigners propose".

Hussein Ibish underestimates the proportion of the BDS movement which targets Israel as a whole (the UCU academic boycott being perhaps the most prominent case), but he's absolutely right that the Israeli anti-boycott law itself is not designed to protect Israel but protect its settlements.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) flips out at fellow Floridian Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D). Lest we forget, West is a war criminal.

Maryland Redistricting

Maryland already possesses some of the most bizarrely gerrymandered congressional lines in the country. Some of that is due to the Chesapeake Bay making any line look fuzzy, but not all of it -- the bizarre quad-helix thing going on in Baltimore is truly a gem of the genre. Currently, it has produced a 6-2 Democratic split in the congressional delegation, which, to be fair, isn't totally out of line given the sharp Democratic bent of the state.

But Democratic leaders are going to the drawing board in an effort to make it 7-1. The presumed target had been freshman Rep. Andy Harris (R) of the 1st District (Eastern Shore), but Josh Kurtz is reporting that intense lobbying from Rep. Donna Edwards (D) has instead caused state lawmakers to shift their aim towards the 6th District's Roscoe Bartlett (R), representing the western part of the state.

I like ex-Rep. Frank Kratovil (D), who won the 1st District in an upset in 2006 and seems like a nice enough guy. But Bartlett is going to be 86 years old, and folks raise a good point when they note that the exurbs which would anchor a reformulated 6th district are trending our way. Edwards herself volunteered to take on some deep-red territory (no skin off her back, she won with 83% last time out), and the 8th District (Chris Van Hollen -- and my home turf) probably could do so as well, as we no longer need to pack Democrats in to oust Connie Morella.

The only question is whether the lines can be drawn in a way that looks a little more sane than they do now.

Anti-Gay, Or Kinda-Gay, or Sorta-Looks-Gay, Discrimination

A 22-year old Indiana man was prevented from donating blood because officials at the donation center informed him he "appear[ed] to be a homosexual".

Unbelievably, the center's undoubtedly highly attuned gay-dar misfired, as the man is in fact straight. Of course, the blanket ban on gay men donating blood (first put in place in the early 1980s at the height of the HIV-panic) has long since passed into insanity, but a federal committee upheld it as recently as 2010, provoking protests from gay rights organizations as well as the American Red Cross.

Betraying the Holy Mission

Jeffrey Goldberg has a solid piece up on the dangers of Israel getting too snuggly with its evangelical Christian friends. He sounds some of the traditional refrains: that making foreign policy based on presumptive knowledge of divine revelation is generally unwise, and that the particular policy prescriptions evangelicals often support with respect to Israel may very well prove quite dangerous for that state's well-being.

But his final point may be the most important one -- at least rhetorically. While right-wing Christians often like to cast themselves as "unconditional" supporters of Israel, in contrast to their wishy-wash liberal peers, this is hardly the case. Just like the liberals, they have a particular vision of what they want Israel to do. And when Israel doesn't adopt positions consistent with those policies, they tend to lash out:

How will the Christian right feel if Israel does, in fact, make compromises for the sake of peace by “betraying” its biblical birthright? Some pro-Israel evangelical leaders already blame Jewish stiff-neckedness for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

In his book “Jerusalem Countdown,” Hagee writes: “It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.” The Jews’ own rebellion, he writes, “had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism.”

I’ve met evangelical leaders who share an unpleasant tic with Israel’s critics on the far left: They all hold Israel to an impossible standard of moral and political behavior. To much of the Christian right, Israel isn’t a real nation-state facing a series of painful choices. It is, instead, a biblical fantasyland, and an instrument of Christian salvation. In Bachmann’s case, it’s a living test of America’s fealty to God.

There's no need for conjecture on how some religious conservatives will react if Israel "betrays" them -- Pat Robertson famously declared that Ariel Sharon's coma was divine punishment for dividing the land of Israel (by withdrawing from Gaza).

In any event, the point is that both pro-Israel liberals and pro-Israel conservatives have policies they prefer that the state adopt, and ones they oppose the state adopting. Which is fine -- that's sort of the point of having a political ideology. But casting it in terms of unconditional love or support is simply a misrepresentation. Indeed, in a lot of ways, it is the opposite -- conservative support for Israel is not generally predicated on a fundamental commitment to Zionist principles (a Jewish democratic homeland), with policy preferences flowing out of what they honestly believe will best buttress that dream. Rather, support for Israel is instrumental to goals external to the Zionist vision, e.g., "to thwart the global jihad" or "to create conditions for the return of Jesus."

Choices, Choices

Tablet Magazine has an interesting story up about abortion politics in Israel. Historically, abortion has not been the hot-button topic in Israel that it has been in the United States, but the issue is slowly rising in prominence, as conservative groups in the country argue that abortion conflicts with both classical and post-Holocaust Jewish mandates to bring more children into the world.

The story centers around Efrat, which appears to be a cross between a Crisis Pregnancy Center and what a Crisis Pregnancy Center would be if it wasn't purely evil. Like CPCs, Efrat is quite high on manipulative imagery and purported pleas from the fetus to "let me live". Though they purport to be about "education" and present themselves as pro-"choice", they are deeply tied to movements in Israel which seek to make abortion significantly more difficult to obtain.

On the other hand, Efrat's officially stated mission is in fact deeply tied to issues of "choice": it is "founded on the belief that no Jewish woman should have to abort a child because of money troubles." That, of course is quite true (and true of any woman) -- while I absolutely believe in a woman's right to choose, a women who would rather carry her child to term but feels compelled to abort because of financial insecurity should not be presented with that choice.* And Efrat does appear to put its money where its mouth is, providing needy mothers with cribs, strollers, baby food, diapers, and a cash stipend.

Of course, there is a question how much the tail is wagging the dog here. As noted, like American CPCs (which also sometimes provide similar financial assistance to pregnant mothers), Efrat appears to mostly operate as an adjunct to a broader anti-choice movement in Israel that is not about giving women choices, but rather about channeling them into their preferred outcomes. But that notwithstanding, it is undoubtedly true that the long-term goal of the pro-choice movement should be (and, as best as I can tell, is) to create a world in which every reproductive decision a woman makes is their first-best choice.

* I think a fundamental misunderstanding of the pro-choice movement promulgated by their opponents is that pro-choice woman are totally psyched about abortion -- because, you know, invasive surgical procedures are how kids these days cap off a night of clubbing. Nobody wants to have an abortion, in the sense that it is their first best choice -- something they dream about from the time they were a little girl. They'd rather that their contraception didn't fail, or that they were in position to access contraception in the first place, or that they weren't raped, or that the fetus didn't have health problems, or that they felt financially secure enough to carry their child to term. Abortion is often a welcome relief as an important second-choice option; a fall-back because the best-case scenario didn't happen. And thus, it is wrong to assert that abortion represents some sort of "tragedy"; though it can often be precipitated by one, abortion is no more tragic than surgery is (nobody wants to be in a situation where they need an operation, but if they do need one, it is far better that surgery be available to them). But by necessity, an abortion implies that something happened that one did not want to happen.

So in the case of a woman who would like a child, but does not feel financially secure enough to have one now, the first-best solution is to shift to a world where one's financial wherewithal does not materially impede one's ability to have and effectively raise children. In a world where that is not the case, however, the right to an abortion is an important fallback.

Usain Bolt: The Tea Party's Worst Enemy

The Tea Party is launching a new chapter in South-Central Los Angeles, to battle "the meme repeated and supposedly proven by a series of Racers, Racists and Race-hustlers" that the movement is infected by racism. I'm not sure what a "Racer" is other than someone who runs for a living, but whatever.

Interesting trivia note: Barack Obama got 84% of the vote in California's 35th congressional district, anchored in South-Central LA. Hey, best of luck to the new chapter, which is being led by a man who alleged that the Black community suffers from a "lack of moral character". "Look what they did to the [New Orleans Super]Dome [after Katrina]. In three days they turned the Dome into a ghetto."

H/T: Balloon Juice.

The Left Resurrects?

Bernard Avishai is optimistic about a new protest movement in Israel, that has unified Jews and Arabs together to peacefully promote a vision of peace and equality.

Meanwhile, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin has an editorial in Ha'aretz where he declares himself "ashamed and mortified" that he was unable to stop the boycott bill from passing. Rivlin is a member of the right-wing Likud Party, but he's also always been particularly attentive to minority rights.

Cracks in the Coalition

The major point behind this story is that Yisrael Beiteinu is largely composed of nutcases. And that's nothing new. But insofar as cracks are beginning to form in Israel's governing coalition, maybe the government will fall, and they'll have to hold new elections. And maybe the results will enable a new governing coalition that's less prone to massively self-destructive behavior.

Or maybe the new elections will make things worse -- heaven forbid I dare express optimism about anything in this region of the world.

You've Got a Lot of ....

Tablet Mag: Rep. Michele Bachmann tackles Yiddish; Yiddish wins:



You know what's, er, choot-spa? Trying to drop in Yiddish without having the foggiest idea of how to say it right.

Considering Michele Bachmann Wants To Use Jewish Eyeballs For Soup....

Desperate again to believe that Jews are abandoning Obama, Republicans are now touting (and not even accurately touting) a laughably bogus push poll that attempts to, er, "document" Jewish views. Take this question:

Considering what President Obama has proposed for Israel just over a year before his 2012 re-election campaign — a return to the 1967 borders, dividing Jerusalem, and allowing the right of return for Palestinian Arabs to Israel — how concerned would you be about President Obama’s policies towards Israel if he were re-elected and did not have to worry about another election?

Why yes, if I "consider" naked lies about candidates (by all means, tell me where Obama has proposed a right of return for Palestinian refugees!), I guess that would raise some "concerns". I have to admit, being a pathological liar makes everything easier.

More on Israeli Morons

Israel's anti-boycott law is most obviously a huge win for the boycotters. But it also has accomplished something observers might have thought impossible -- united all branches of the American Jewish community in a chorus of condemnation. In my original post in the matter, I noted the ADL's statement expressing discontent with the law's impingement on free expression norms. Commentary Magazine called it an "unforced error" and a "mistake". And obviously more progressive Jewish organizations have been vociferous in their critiques.

But the true stunner is that it looks like this law is even too much for ZOA's Mort Klein, who said "Nobody was more appalled by the boycott of Ariel theater than me, but to make it illegal? I don't think so."

I mean, seriously? How badly do you have to fuck up for Mort Klein to attack you from the left? Mort Klein criticizing Israel for being too harsh on its critics is like hearing Pat Robertson condemn a "family values" org for being too homophobic. It's a sign that you didn't just go off the deep end, but cracked your head open on the side of the pool mid-leap.

Boycotting Democracy

The Israeli government just voted to pass a law exposing those who call for a boycott of Israel (or just Israeli settlements) to civil liability (without requiring proof of damages). A Yisrael Beiteinu MK is already promising to sue another MK under the law who called for a boycott of the Ariel settlement. Meanwhile, the Israeli left now appears to mobilizing behind a boycott of settlement goods in order to protest the new law. Finally, the ADL, typifying the American Jewish inability to criticize Israel, released a statement that the law may "impinge on the basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and freedom of expression." Wait ... that sounds like a statement critical of Israel! Perhaps they tripped. Or perhaps the meme that they're unable to do so is stupid.

Anyway, and speaking of stupid, one thing we have to remember is that Israel has a government. That, pretty much by necessity, means that some of the people in the government will be stupid, and it also means that sometimes those stupid people will even gain a majority. I'm not sure how anyone in the United States could fail to realize that possibility -- look at our own House of Representatives. Sometimes circumstances conspire so that a Michele Bachmann is a bona fide political force. One hopes that such times are rare, but one cannot hope to extinguish them completely. And when the nuts do take over the asylum, they pass constitutionally dubious (I'm skeptical this one will survive review by the Israeli judiciary) laws that turn out to be massively counterproductive.

Israel's problem isn't that it has a higher propensity for electing stupid legislators than other countries (particularly those who use proportional electoral representation). All countries have their share of idiots, and all experience times when their electorate wafts in favor of unreflective populism. Israel's problem is that it is more vulnerable than most other countries, and thus is less able to afford periodic flights of madness.

A Success Story's Last Chapter?

Dana Goldstein reports on going-ons in Northern Virginia, where shifts in student population may cause district lines to be redrawn, moving a largely White and wealthy subdivision (Wakefield Chapter) from Annandale High School (49 percent low-income and about one-third Latino, 29 percent white, 23 percent Asian, and 15 percent black) to Woodson High School (Two-thirds white and 6 percent low-income).

The interesting part of the debate is how it is shaking out within Wakefield Chapter. Parents of younger students support the move, believing that their students will benefit from it. But parents of students already in Annandale High -- and those students itself -- are stridently opposing it, pointing out to the immense benefits they've received from attending a diverse (and academically very successful high school).

This decision has opened up an interesting rift in the neighborhood. Parents of younger kids --those currently attending whiter, wealthier elementary and middle schools--are in favor of the switch to Woodson. They assume that their own already-privileged children will get more out of a high school experience learning alongside similar peers. But current Annandale High students and parents who live in Wakefield Chapel oppose the move, saying Annandale's diversity, school spirit, and challenging curriculum have shaped their lives in positive ways. In an online petition, they also mention that Wakefield Chapel parents are active volunteers at Annandale, and that rezoning those families to another high school would negatively impact the entire Annandale student body, especially low-income kids whose own parents aren't able to get involved at school.

Dozens of Annandale High families are actively opposing this rezoning, even though current students would all be allowed to finish their high school careers at the school. These parents and teens believe that keeping Annadale integrated is the right civic decision, the best policy for future generations.

This tracks findings common amongst scholars who study integrated schools (something becoming rarer and rarer as resegregation accelerates) -- products of these schools are consistently laudatory of their experience and how it helped enable them to be at ease in multi-racial settings (or where they themselves are in the minority), preparing them for an increasingly globalized and multi-cultural workforce. The major blight on such schools was that minority students were dispirited by the contrast between their integrated educational lives and their lives outside the school doors which remained largely separate and unequal.

Gingrich's Infidility Saves His Bacon

Newt Gingrich refrained from signing a conservative Iowa group's "Marriage Vow" pledge, probably because he recognized that -- as a prominent serial adulterer -- he'd be a national laughingstock if he did (well, more so). Gingrich instead gingerly offered to help "sharpen" the language so he could sign.

But fortunately for Gingrich, the delay probably evaded a serious gaffe. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum -- who already signed the pledge, are now scrambling after folks pointed out the pledge implied that family dynamics for Black children were better under slavery than they are today (Robert George: "Black unemployment? Also low then, too!"). The specific claim -- that "a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household" than a Black child today -- is, in addition to being offensive on face (as the "two-parent household" here typically involved a slave woman and the master who raped her), also wrong on the facts.

Bachmann's damage control included a claim she didn't endorse the slavery portion of the four-page document (which was part of the preamble), wrongly explaining that in the antebellum south marriage was common and recognized amongst slaves, as well as a campaign release telling us that Rep. Bachmann "believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible". That's definitely going to extinguish the fire alright.

So yeah: Lucky Gingrich.