Obama campaign demolishes mostly false Romney ad

Here's a different way to respond to false accusations: Set up your spokesperson to look like a news reporter and state the facts, as confirmed by Politifact. In other words, cut the ominous (or patriotic) music, stare into the camera and treat viewers like adults: Anyone who visits Dangerous Intersection knows that I have serious reservations about Barack Obama (e.g., see here), but this Romney ad is full of provable lies. For conservatives, getting Barack Obama out of office has become a sacred quest, which translates to the means justifies the end. It is quite predictable that Democrats will have their own buckets of falsehoods. All of this brings to mind Jonathan Haidt's admonition that morality "binds and blinds." And see Haidt's discussion with Bill Moyers here.

Continue ReadingObama campaign demolishes mostly false Romney ad

Modern evolution of human animals

Do human animals continue to evolve? The evidence is clear that we do, for instance in the case of that small subset of human adults who drink milk, according to this article in Discover Magazine:

Assertion: Because modern humans are a young species, there has not been enough time for major differences to emerge between populations. This is false. 5 to 10 thousand years ago a set of strangely mutated humans arose. They continued to be able to digest lactose sugar as adults, in contravention of the mammalian norm. In fact, humans are the only mammals where many adults continue to be able to consume milk sugar as adults. The rapidity of this shift has been incredible. 5,000 years ago almost everyone in Scandinavia was lactose intolerant. Today, very few are. The area of the European genome responsible for this shift is strikingly homogeneous, as a giant DNA fragment “swept” through populations in a few dozen generations. The literature on recent human evolution is still evolving, so to speak. But it is clear that during the Holocene, the last 10,000 years, our species has been subject to a wide array of selective forces. Lactose tolerance, malaria tolerance, differences in color, hair form, and size, seem to be due to recent adaptations. And because of different selection pressures human populations will evolve, change, and diversify. Our African ancestors left 50 to 100 thousand years ago. If 10,000 years was enough time for a great deal of evolution, then the “Out of Africa” event was long enough ago to result in genetic diversification, which we see around us.

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Zach Wahls honors his two moms.

Today, an attorney with whom I work told me I absolutely needed to drop what I was doing in order to listen to a 19-year old man giving a statement to the Iowa legislature. Under consideration was a constitutional amendment that would reverse the landmark case of Varnum v Brien. I looked up Zach Wahls on Youtube and watched his incredible speech. My friend then told me that Zach also happened to be in town, at Left Bank Books, 5 blocks away from my law office. I walked over, arriving in time to hear Zach ending his prepared remarks, and opening the floor to questions. One of the main points he made is that people react badly to households of two gay parents because they have a "fear of the unknown."

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EFF offers some thoughts on World Press Freedom Day

Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a thought-provoking article about World Press Freedom day. The bottom line is that the United States can do much better than it is currently doing. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Journalists' sources in the U.S. have been the hardest hit in recent years. The current administration has used the Espionage Act to prosecute a record six whistleblowers for leaking information to the press—more than the rest of the previous administrations combined. Many of these whistleblowers have exposed constitutional violations such as the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and the CIA’s waterboarding practices—issues clearly in the public interest—and now face years in prison. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has brought no prosecutions for the crimes underlying the exposed allegations. In addition, a grand jury is reportedly still investigating WikiLeaks for violations of the Espionage Act for publishing classified information—a practice that has traditionally been protected by the First Amendment and which other newspapers engage in regularly. It would not only be completely unprecedented to prosecute a publisher under the archaic statute, but would also endanger many U.S. based publications like the New York Times. And as former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has remarked, the U.S. government’s investigation into WikiLeaks undermines the United States’ ability to pressure countries like Russia and China to allow greater press freedom.

Continue ReadingEFF offers some thoughts on World Press Freedom Day