Well, we should have seen this coming. Last night, the Rolling Stones -- THE Rolling Stones -- invited country girlie pop superstar Taylor Swift on stage to sing with them during their Chicago tour stop.

Just look at that picture. Looks like a snapshot from a Broadway stage show. Looks like they're singing "Satisfaction"--as interpreted by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

What could this mean other than the end of the end for rock's original rebel band?

Nothing against Taylor Swift, who can't be blamed for taking up such an offer. Good for her. But the Stones--this is really a sign that it's time for retirement. The last bit of edginess has been dulled out.

Admittedly, it must have been an enjoyable experience for Mick and Keith to share the stage with the young and gorgeous Swift. But what could be more odd for the boys who saw the world and wanted to "paint it black" than to go preening about on stage with the sunniest and brightest hero of pre-teen girls the world over? What could be a more unmistakable signal that they don't mean any of the words they're singing, or any of the notes they're playing?

It's starting to make sense now that the Stones had to slash ticket prices in order to fill up the stadiums on their current tour. It's starting to makes sense that earlier this year Chris Robinson, frontman of The Black Crowes, blasted Jagger for his lack of "sincerity" on stage, calling today's Stones concert goers "Rock 'n Roll tourists."

Enough with the back-slapping nostalgia tours, I guess, was Robinson's point. Better to let your legacy live on untarnished than to wear it out.

For mega stars like the Stones, having lived a lifetime under the spotlight, it must be hard to even notice when the seats start to empty and you're pushing 70 and you still feel like you're 19. It must be hard to let go.

Famously, Monet destroyed paintings he made in his latter years when he came to believe they didn't match up in quality to the work he did in his prime. On the other hand, I'd sure pay a lot for one of those destroyed paintings. I'd hang one in my living room, no doubt about it. Not so sure about the Stones though. Not sure what I would pay to see them now -- now that they don't seem to mean anything anymore.

Rock 'n Roll is like that. Music is like that. It's a moment, captured on tape, captured on stage. You can't go on singing the same songs forever, even as you couldn't go on painting the same picture forever. You have to move on, take it somewhere new, or else--retire.

We've all heard the old adage: It's better to go out on top.

Do you all agree? Should this be the Stones' final tour? Do they risk diminishing their prior achievements? Why or why not?

While conservatives are understandably concerned about the IRS targeting Tea Party organizations, there’s another group that has faced the same kind of stonewalling in their quest for tax-exempt status—nonprofit media.

Kathy Kiely, managing editor at the Sunlight Foundation, and Diana Jean Schemo of 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative journalism center, wrote in the Washington Post,

This spring, a consortium of respected philanthropic groups, headed by the Council on Foundations and the Knight Foundation, found that the IRS appears to be slow-walking the applications for tax-exempt status by journalism groups emerging to fill the void left by the dramatic contraction of the news media.

Until 2007, approval of applications for nonprofit investigative news centers took an average of three months, the typical wait for any application for tax-exempt status. But since 2008, the report found, the process has slowed, “in some cases taking as long as three years” for news organizations. Among examples the report cited, the Lens, an investigative online publication started in New Orleans, waited more than two years for approval of its tax-exempt status, the report noted. The San Francisco Public Press, which provides news for low-income communities, waited 32 months.

According to Kiely and Schemo, IRS delays affect nonprofit news organizations even more than political groups:

Donors to political groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax law cannot deduct contributions from their taxes.

The bar is higher for start-up news organizations seeking tax-deductible 501(c)(3) status, which is essential for soliciting the kinds of major gifts that sustain organizations. During the long delay between formation and tax-status designation, potential donors tend to limit out-of-pocket support, our colleagues building news operations have told us.

Investigative reporting is expensive. Without IRS approval, many journalism start-ups are forced to divert as much as 15 percent of reporting grants to outside fiscal sponsors, adding layers of paperwork and bureaucracy to their operations.

No one knows how many nonprofit news organizations are being held in tax limbo, because the IRS refuses to make the information public. Worse, the agency appears to be urging reporters not to speak about it. Kevin Davis of the Investigative News Network, an umbrella group for 82 news nonprofits (including the ones for which we work) said at a Washington conference in March that IRS employees have told news organizations with pending 501(c)(3) applications not to discuss their cases.

One of the reasons given by the IRS for the delays is that there has been a surge of applications for nonprofit journalism groups. As Kiely and Schemo say, “Sound familiar?” The same excuse was made about Tea Party and conservative groups.

A local news site, San Diego Newsroom, endured a 26-month delay in its application for a 501(c)(3):

Throughout this delay the IRS appeared to be writing new rules as it went along, altered its explanation for the holdup, misrepresented facts, made unreasonable requests, refused to provide any estimate of a decision date and stonewalled us in other ways.

The IRS requested and reviewed a list of all our members prior to granting the exemption, and it also devoted a single part-time staff person to manage all the incoming news applications, most of which apparently received heightened scrutiny.

Similar delays have brought about the demise of other nonprofit news organizations. SDNR has been denied incalculable funding, all of which would have gone to additional content and improvements to our website, allowing us to reach more readers and draw more support. This obstruction has severely hampered our ability to contribute to the supply of news in our city.

As Forbes has pointed out, the IRS has facilitated the tax-exempt status of journalism groups for more than 50 years. Some of those include National Geographic, PBS, NPR, Consumer Reports, and Mother Jones. More recent are ProPublica and Voice of San Diego, which received IRS approval before the agency’s clamp-down began. It's worth noting that it was ProPublica that received leaked information from the IRS about Tea Party groups and conservative political donors.

The stifling of non-profit news cannot come at a worse time. Journalism is in decline. There are fewer reporters on the ground creating original content than ever before. Regional news is barely covered. Investigative reporting that starts at the local level and works it way up is all but non-existent because news organizations don’t have the money to pay staff reporters.

Non-profits, while no silver lining, have been part of an effort to inject life into a dying industry, and the need is great. As an FCC report on the decline of journalism stated in 2011,

A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little. [The] independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism—going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy—in some cases is at risk.

I’ll never forget my first reporting job. The hustle and bustle of the newsroom as reporters streamed in and out from school board meetings, courtrooms, and PTA charity events. I can still hear the roar of the presses, smell newspaper ink in the air, and feel lines of glue as I cut and pasted copy onto the layout board with my X-acto knife.

I remember the late nights at the city planning commission where residents protested zoning plans for the newest strip mall, and Christmas mornings at the local police station scanning blotter. Mostly, I remember being in touch with my local community, understanding the real needs of real people, of how policy affected them and their families, and not just aggregating information and statistics from distant sources that carry no sense of personal association or accountability.

While those days are long gone, the First Amendment isn’t. Methods of news reporting change; paper has turned to digital, the X-acto knife has been replaced with a word-processing program, and local newspapers are being replaced or supplemented by non-profit groups -- but the essence of the free press cannot be lost. If we lose it, then we truly lose our country and our freedom.

The Washington Post has a story about "a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people." Highest increases were for men in their 50s and women in their early 60s:

There are no large-scale studies yet fleshing out the reasons behind the increase in boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn — financial recessions are in general associated with an uptick in suicides. But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex matrix of issues particular to a generation that vowed not to trust anyone older than 30 and who rocked out to lyrics such as, “I hope I die before I get old.”

Amazing that this thoughtful philosophy didn't yield long-term happiness. More:

To those growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, America seemed to promise a limitless array of possibilities. The Great Depression and World War II were over; medical innovations such as the polio vaccine and antibiotics appeared to wipe out disease and disability; the birth-control pill sparked a sexual revolution. The economy was thriving, and as they came of age, boomers embraced new ways of living — as civil rights activists, as hippies, as feminists, as war protesters.

“There was a sense of rebelliousness, of ‘I don’t want to live the way my parents did or their parents did,’ ” said Patrick Arbore, director and founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention at San Francisco’s Institute on Aging. “There was a lot of movement to different parts of the country. With that came a lot of freedom, but there also came a loss of connections. It was not uncommon to see people married three or four times.”

How did a generation that started out with so much going for it end up so despondent in midlife? It could be that those very advantages made it harder to cope with setbacks, said Barry Jacobs, director of behavioral sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Pennsylvania.

“There was an illusion of choice — where people thought they’d be able to re-create themselves again and again,” he said. “These people feel a greater sense of disappointment because their expectations of leading glorious lives didn’t come to fruition.”

Turns out that boomers have higher rates of obesity, prescription drug abuse, illicit drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. And their own family dissolutions mean they're stretched thinner then other generations.

One scholar says that boomers' lack of adversity in youth might have kept them from preparing for the difficulties of aging (a problem, I imagine, that later generations will face as well).

Earlier generations, the article says, didn't have the concept of being stressed out and they had actual tangible successes (winning the Great War) instead of imagined ones (defeating one's fertility):

Baby boomers, on the other hand, have struggled more with existential questions of purpose and meaning. Growing up in a post-Freudian society, they were raised with a new vocabulary of emotional awareness and an emphasis on self-actualization. But that did not necessarily translate into an increased ability to cope with difficult emotions — especially among men. Women tend to be better connected socially and share their feelings more freely — protective factors when looking at their risk for suicide.

The economic downturn -- which has been particularly tough on older men -- is particularly burdensome on men. And women are not immune:

Believers from an early age in the power of medicine, boomers are more likely than their elders to turn to drugs, alcohol or even plastic surgery to mask their problems. “Boomers do not want to suffer,” Arbore said.

The country being under attack and threat from radical Islam is also hard for boomers, we're told.

So interesting. And yet how many people will turn away from wallowing in existential questions of purpose and meaning, finding fathers (or mothers) fungible, or any other lesson from the boomer era?

Folks, several of you have mentioned that you would welcome Claire Berlinski's insights into the violence in Turkey. She will be appearing on more than one Ricochet podcast within the next few days, and she has a piece in today's City Journal in which she offers a riveting first-hand account of the events:

Riot police blocked the roads leading to Taksim, the city’s central square, as well as those leading to Istanbul’s famous Istiklal Avenue. They fired gas bombs at everything that moved, including the city’s bewildered stray dogs. Helicopters circled the skies. Wi-Fi in the city center was jammed. The hospitals quickly filled with the injured. So far, reports of deaths have been hard to confirm, with some exceptions. Human-rights activist Ethem Sarısülük is now brain dead, having “come under fire” from police—what kind of fire, we don’t know. Mehmet Ayvalitas, reportedly a member of a banned group of left-wing hackers, is also dead...

It is confirmed that rubber bullets have knocked out the eyes of at least six people. Gas has covered the city like a volcanic cloud. Everyone, even those who stayed indoors, has been weeping and coughing. Adding insult to injury—and injury to injury—the cops fired gas into the accident and emergency ward of two hospitals close to Taksim Square. The police now seem to have moved from pepper spray to a more noxious lachrymatory agent—probably CS gas—causing panic among the public, which believes itself to be under attack by some terrifying species of chemical weapon....

The three largest Turkish football teams, usually mortal rivals (in some cases literally), announced that they would unite to join the protests. Istanbullus poured out on the streets, some in their pajamas, banging pots and pans, whistling, clapping, and shouting “Erdoğan, resign!” Elderly women handed out lemons from their windows (people here erroneously believe these mitigate the effects of tear gas), and shouted at passersby to “keep resisting!” Taxi, bus, and minivan drivers honked their horns in support. Massive crowds crossed the Bosphorus bridge from the Asian side of the city, all marching to Taksim Square. I have never seen such a spontaneous outpouring of public rage—coupled, of course, with the hysterical joy of the mob....

Police threw gas bombs at the capital’s famous Swan Park, injuring (yes) the swans. Last night a friend, an MP from the main opposition party and a tireless campaigner for Internet freedom in Turkey, told me that his daughter, a junior in law school, had been wounded. She had sent him an SMS: “Police gassed the infirmary.” He asked if I would let the American media know. Police in Izmir called female protestors “sluts” and assaulted them; people there were begging to be let into buildings to escape. A journalist whom I trust, based in Izmir, wrote: “I’m telling you. No one threw one single stone this evening where I am. They are still gassing peaceful people.”

Read the whole thing.

Several months ago, when the temperatures dipped into the single digits, I was driving north on US Highway 61, through Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal, Missouri, and on into Iowa. I remarked at the time that I had discovered the temperature at which cow flatulence becomes visible and used the general topic of bovine emissions to segue into a New York Times article, I believe (not nearly as artfully as our James Lileks, of course, but we do what we can with what we have).  

Today I made the same trip, only in the opposite direction. The temperature was in the 40s this morning at sunrise, so no cow poots were visible. However, a large group of them (cows, not poots, …though,…never mind) were gathered in the lush greenery, under a clump of trees, some relaxing, some eating, while others were, …well,… I guess you could say they were engaged in a process of elimination. The only thing was, they were "eliminating" right where the others were resting and eating.  The idea that one could not take meals or even a moment's leisure without another one literally dumping on the proceedings was so ridiculous, so stupendously absurd and revolting that, naturally, I began checking the news to see what the government has been up to lately.

Speaking of execrable emanations, the new head guy in charge at the IRS, Dan Wurfel, explained to Congress today the corrective actions he would implement at his agency, which is now famous for targeting people on the basis of their affinity for such ideas as are found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As friend of Ricochet and superb writer Mona Charen reported today via Facebook, here is what "passes" for solutions in that majestic bullpen inside the beltway:  

The solution here in this situation is to understand what controls need to be put in place, what oversight, what getting the right leadership in place, the right processes in a collective way. The right starting point has to be what is the optimal footprint or framework for doing this right, then we sit down and figure out what the resource allocation is.

Need a drink yet? You do realize, don't you, that an army of 20-somethings texting around the clock, ignoring the endless auto-correct doo-hickies and tapping on their little iPhones, Androids, Astroids, iPads, MaxiPads and MiniPads, whatever … and ignoring all typos, couldn't produce as much Grade-A rubbish as the IRS honcho managed to stuff into that one pathetic example of bureaucratese?  The only "optimal footprint," would be the one left on the backside of the IRS as we kick it out of business, taking with it the intimidation and thuggery that have come to epitomize the ever-growing arrogance of ever-growing government.

There are limits, of course, to thuggery and arrogance. Even the dumbest beast in the pasture might hesitate before taking a load off, so to speak, on the noggin of the lead bull. And so it follows, as Mark Steyn recently detailed, that if your name is Malik Obama, and you're the brother of the US President, your application for non-profit tax exemption might be greeted rather differently from, say, that of a law-abiding citizen. You see, Malik heads up the Barack H. Obama Foundation (named after the President's father) in Kenya, from which his application to the IRS originated.  

Granted, the Foundation has ties to Sudan, one of four countries the US has designated as a "terrorist state." And granted, also, that Malik did attend an Islamic Da'wa Organization shindig in Sudan back in 2010, one of the objectives of which was to help spread a rather extremist blend of Islam throughout the African Continent. But at least the Barack H. Obama Foundation didn't quote Madison or Jefferson, right?  

It didn't cite the Constitution nor did it oppose centralized authoritarian management of the nation's health care like those dangerous Tea Party types, and so it didn't excite the curiosity of the IRS, or anyone else in the federal government for that matter. As a matter of fact, the application for the Barack H. Obama Foundation, submitted on May 30, 2011, was approved less than a month later, on June 26, 2011. Additionally, the approval was retroactive all the way back to April 30, 2008, over three years earlier, thus encompassing all the donations it had taken in without benefit of legality. And you'll never guess who signed the letter of approval (see photo).  

Meanwhile, three years after submitting their applications, some conservative groups still await word on their approval or disapproval. The cows are starting to look better all the time. In a fascinating piece at the American Thinker yesterday, Jack Curtis compares the definition of the word "Integrity" as it appeared in the 1943 Merriam-Webster with that of the 2013 definition.  The results:

1943:  "Moral soundness, honesty, purity, freedom from corrupting influences or practices."

2013:  "Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility."

Note please the relationship to fixed and shared concepts of "honesty," and "purity," and "moral soundness," found in the earlier definition, and how that differs from the weakened and comparatively unfocused definition currently applied. In his book Ameritopia, Mark Levin hypothesized, correctly in my opinion, that we now live in a post-Constitutional nation. To that predicament, I would add another, namely, a lack of virtue. Benjamin Franklin noted that, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."  

And masters we have aplenty, dropping tens of thousands of new regulations on our heads each year, spending money yet unearned by people yet unborn, pushing us around on matters large and small, and sending the tax man to torment any who dare to contradict the prevailing wisdom of the state and its cheerleaders at MSNBC. At least cows have the convenience of being ignorant. Taking advantage of a populace increasingly given to dependence and complacency, our governmental puppet masters make the Founders' point by default.  

Without a return to shared concepts of virtue and integrity, and without the requisite courage to take a stand, we will be in no better place than cattle, stuck on the government's pasture and forced to survive on the droppings of the state while our rulers plan their vacations on Martha's Vineyard and send the bill to our grandchildren.  

Given my earlier post on the misguided French effort to crack down on (potentially lifesaving) e-cigarettes, I found this (from the American Council on Science and Health) to be interesting reading:

A survey of general practitioners in the UK and Sweden revealed that a sizable fraction of them wrongly believed that it’s the nicotine in cigarette smoke that harms health. The online survey was undertaken by UK tobacco giant BAT, and they got responses from 100 British and 120 Swedish physicians. (The study itself is not yet available to non-subscribers of the journal, but can be found here ).

 An amazing 40 percent asserted that nicotine was the primary or second-most dangerous toxicant in cigarette smoke. They are wrong, however: in fact, it is the nicotine that is largely responsible for smoking’s deadly addictive power, although the mixture of the alkaloid with numerous other tobacco smoke constituents enhances its hold on smokers. Nicotine in the doses obtained from cigarettes is not harmful per se; the toxic and carcinogenic chemicals that kill over half of chronic smokers prematurely are in the volatile gas phase and, to some extent, in the solids (“tar”) also inhaled thousands of times over the course of decades.

ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross advises that this belief is not a mere gap in training of no major significance: “The myth accepted by this large group of supposedly well-educated clinicians has the potential to be of major consequence in their ability to assist smokers in their often-desperate attempts to quit the deadly addiction. If they believe that nicotine is the deadly substance in smoke, they will be reluctant at best to advise smokers to use alternative, low-risk nicotine delivery systems to get them smoke-free. These include smokeless tobacco such as snus, and e-cigarettes. Hopefully, the doctors themselves and the medical educational authorities in Europe, as well as here, will become more cognizant of this problem and take measures to correct such mis-impressions, for the good of public health, especially for smokers.”

 A small online survey and all that, but nevertheless...

I came across this really interesting senior thesis paper by Boston College student, Maggie Rulli, titled, "Live from New York it's Saturday Night": The Evolution of Humor as Rhetorical Statement in the 35 Years of Saturday Night Live. Curious about how SNL has changed through the years, I was hoping it might explain why the once hugely popular show among people who are me no longer has purchase.  

While the author's conclusions didn't address the political bent of the show, her analysis supports why SNL with an agenda is so much more annoying today.

In analyzing 35 years of material, Rulli concludes that there is a dramatic difference between what audiences laughed at then, as opposed to now:

"By discovering what type of humor each season of SNL utilizes most frequently, this study uses a comparative analysis to highlight what the viewers of that season find most humorous. Through this identification, it is revealed that the audience of 1975 values drastically different types of humor than the viewers of season 2010. In the first season of SNL, satire and socially inappropriate humor are the most frequently used types of comic devices, and prior knowledge of general society is required for appreciation. In contrast, season thirty-five utilizes parody and invective most frequently, while prior knowledge of specific information is necessary for understanding. "

Rulli goes on to qualify the findings by arguing these differences are signifiers of a cultural "values" shift in what SNL viewers find funny,

"The audience of 1975 values social commentary and finds significance in humor that underscores controversial principles. The viewers of 2010 appreciate comedy that imitates and personally ridicules specific people, events and things. Through social networking, omnipresent communication sources, and innovations in media consumption, this generation is able to identify, understand, and find humor in these highly specific references. The humor of each SNL season reflects the values of its viewers and reveals the underlying fundamental beliefs of its audience."

While the study certainly isn't comprehensive -- it's only looking at Saturday Night Live -- I don't think it's too far off the mark in explaining my global sitcom fatigue. I don't find ad hominem attacks all that funny. I prefer a more subtle, dry approach. So as the largely liberal SNL, and TV in general, shifted from a broad stroke to a scalpel, I found it less tolerable. But, I'm also old now, with kids, so sitcoms have to work harder for me to watch.  

What are your thoughts?  Does Saturday Night Live still keep you up late? Why, or why not?

This is a post only an unmarried person could make.  From the Scientific American:

Two decades ago, a team of researchers led by psychologist John Gottman set out to determine one thing:

Why do couples get divorced?

Gottman decided to answer this question by trying something very simple: Recording married couples talking for 15 minutes about a recent conflict that they were having in their relationship, and then carefully scrutinizing these recordings to see how happy and unhappy couples behaved differently.

That was 20 years ago.  Then came the follow-up:

After keeping track of these couples and noting which ones ended up getting divorced over the course of the next 14 years, Gottman and Levenson eventually realized something incredibly important: They didn’t actually need to note down all that much. In fact, there were just four behaviors that could be used to predict which couples would still be married 14 years later — with 93% accuracy.

It's all in the way people argue, apparently.  If you fight with a spouse -- and, I posit, anyone else -- and exhibit these four behaviors, what the researchers characterize as "contempt, criticism, stonewalling, and defensiveness," then it's almost certain that the relationship will break down irretrievably.  

Contempt.  Criticism.  Stonewalling.  Defensiveness.

The author of the Scientific American piece uses the nano-second relationship between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries to illustrate the concepts.  But -- fingers crossed now -- couldn't you also use the relationship between the press and the Obama administration?

After all, they've been bickering a lot lately. 

And they did used to be so happy together.

Today, the Supreme Court upheld the police practice of taking DNA samples from people who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime.

Scalia dissents:

Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes; then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane (surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the “identity” of the flying public), applies for a driver’s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.

Preach it!

My father-in-law is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and member of the Naval Academy's class of 1958 (also graduating that year: John McCain and John Poindexter). He attended a reunion in late April where Vice Admiral Michael Miller, academy superintendent, updated the class on what was going on.

When my father-in-law got back to Oregon, he wrote down his thoughts and passed them along to Miller and the class. It kind of went viral and Time magazine even picked it up in a piece headlined "A Vietnam-Era Marine on 'Social Engineering' at the U.S. Naval Academy."

He hasn't heard back from Miller yet but he did hear from many fellow alumni.

The letter looks at how decreasing standards for minorities and women -- and the change to embrace homosexuality -- is affecting the service:

Trying to force these changes is already costing the military billions of extra dollars annually. Maintenance of good order and discipline is challenged. The impact on unit readiness is already being felt. As these social engineering efforts are more fully implemented, the concomitant costs will only escalate. Our politicians are either incredibly naïve, willing to buy votes at any cost, or are purposely taking actions to degrade the finest military force the world has ever seen. The ineffective resistance to these ill-conceived policies by our top military leadership has also been disappointing.

The naval service is not about looking sharp, shuffling papers or making people feel good. It is primarily about accomplishing the mission and winning wars. If we don’t get our national priorities straight and our military doesn’t get re-focused, our armed forces may score high in political correctness, but will continue to get their butts kicked in far off places. It is going to take courageous, intelligent and ethical leadership to right this ship.

Admiral, I realize you are saddled with the dictates of your superiors. We have all had to hold our tongues and say, “aye, aye sir.” However, there are times when the very integrity and future viability of the institution are threatened, that the situation merits reasoned, but firm push-back. I am taking the time to tell you how a lot of us alumni feel about what is going on in the military and at the Academy. It is getting increasingly difficult to enthusiastically support even a revered establishment we believe is implementing wrong policies. My hope is that, even if you don’t agree with everything I have said, at least it will provide some useful insight and pause for reflection.

You can read more here.

This is the question author George Dvorsky attempts to answer in his io9 piece, Why Is the US Still Hung Up on the Abortion Debate? A Bioethics Perspective .  I found the article while researching statistics on abortion and found the author's position interesting.  Clearly annoyed to have even to broach what he considers settled science, Dvorsky explains how the U.S. is lagging behind the more evolved, developed nations, such as Canada,

"As an outside observer, I have to admit that the ongoing abortion debate in the United States seems odd — if not a bit anachronistic. Here in Canada, where abortion has been legal since 1969, conservative governments have tried to rekindle the issue at various times, but are quicklyforced to back down after the inevitable public backlash; for most Canadians the abortion debate is over and done with."

Suspecting religion as the culprit he points out that even devout politicians in Canada will refrain from disparaging abortion for fear of public backlash,

"In Canada, politicians re-introduce the abortion issue at their own peril, due to our general distaste for politicians who openly espouse their religious views. This is clearly not the case in the US, of course — a factor that certainly helps to explain why the abortion debate can't seem to go away."

Dvorsky bolsters his argument that americans are in a developmental time warp by pointing out how the U.S. more closely resembles Kosovo, than Sweden, a country that ditched religion a long time ago, 

".... the abortion debate has all but disappeared in countries like Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Japan. And in fact, a recent gallup poll ranked these countries as among the lowest 30 nations in world in terms of public religiosity. The United States, on the other hand, was ranked as the 44th most religious nation alongside such countries as Kosovo and Argentina."

The most pressing issue, in the author estimation, for why the U.S. should just shut up and color about Roe v. Wade comes from science, specifically the idea of "personhood," 

"...the abortion debate so desperately needs to settle around the personhood issue. Unless the dialogue switches from viability to personhood, Roe v. Wade may not stand the test of time."

Using an argument that I've personally never made for personhood, the author takes on the idea of "potentiality."  That because a life has the potential to become... uh.... life, it should be afforded all the rights therein. Dvorsky sees affording rights to such an abstract entity as problematic, 

"Another angle on personhood is the idea of potentiality — that it's the potential of an entity that confers moral status. But this doesn't work either. If a clump of embryonic cells can be considered a person because it has the potential to be a person, then logically speaking a clump of stem cells would also have to be considered a nascent human; recent studies have shown that pluripotent cells can be coaxed into reproductive cells. Moreover, the idea of confering personhood status to an abstract entity is deeply problematic unto itself."

Bioethicists have weighed in and determined that personhood begins when a person can demonstrate conscious and emotional awareness,

"Many bioethicists, on the other hand, consider physiological and cognitive attributes like cortical activity (an indication of conscious awareness), emotional response (like responding to a parent's movement or voice), and the startle reflex (a response to the environment)."

To be fair, bioethicists also think infanticide is perfectly reasonable because an infant and a fetus are moral equivalents,

"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attri- bution of a right to life to an individual.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’."

The take away: bioethics isn't always ethical.  

So what are your thoughts?  Is the author correct?  Is the U.S. too religiously fixated on abolishing abortion?  Or is it because we have a more highly developed respect for human life that we continue to challenge Roe v. Wade?

Would the U.S. be better off without a president or a separation of powers? Should we instead join most of the other advanced industrialized nations as a parliamentary democracy? 

Over at the Liberty Fund's Law and Liberty website, I debate this issue with noted libertarian law and economics scholar Frank Buckley of George Mason Law School, who thinks that American exceptionalism in our constitutional design has led our country astray by producing more executive tyranny than under a British-style parliamentary system. I argue that in American democracy the real threat to liberty comes from congressional and administrative sources -- and that the President is necessary to check those twin excesses.

The debate raises some interesting questions. Look at the presidential systems in the rest of the world. It seems true that they have produced more instability than parliamentary systems, particularly in Latin America. What would have happened in U.S. history if we had been a parliamentary democracy?  Isn't there something unique about the United States that prevents presidential systems from collapsing into dictatorship?

This is graduation season, so we thought it was the perfect time to ask author/journalist Andy Ferguson (Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College) and essayist and former editor of American Scholar Joseph Epstein to discuss the origin and value (if any) of getting a classical liberal arts education. 

The nonsense that Hezbollah, an Iranian-constructed Shia terror weapon, is concerned solely with the "defense" of Lebanon against Israel has been exploded, now that its military role in the propping up of Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad has been laid bare. Hezbollah is now in Sunni crosshairs.

Yesterday (Saturday), a salvo of eighteen rockets and mortar rounds was sent from Syria into the Baalbek region of Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold -- the largest cross-border strike to occur in the war so far. On the same day, gunmen opened fire at the Baalbek shrine of Sayida Khawla, a great-granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. The shrine is a Shiite holy place.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, really doesn't need a two-front war on his hands, but his options are limited. He is responding (at least at this stage) with some tit-for-tat that confirms the sectarian rift. There are unconfirmed reports, for example, that Hezbollah has evicted all Hamas members from Lebanon, effective immediately.

If Hamas -- which sided with the rebels in Syria (resulting in its earlier eviction from Damascus) -- decides to stick around in Lebanon, and if it is able to enlist support from its Sunni coreligionists, Hezbollah could find itself overstretched. Considering the Shia demographic disadvantage in Lebanon and beyond, that scenario could ultimately set up some tough decision-making for Hezbollah's Iranian masters. How far will they be willing to go to prop up not only Assad, but Hezbollah as well? (My guess: very, considering the stakes. From their perspective, the ability to reach from Teheran to the Mediterranean via Syria and Lebanon is a consummation devoutly to be wished.)

In Qatar, meanwhile, the Sunni Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi -- whose TV show is watched by millions of Sunnis -- preached on Friday that it is the obligation of Sunnis everywhere to take up arms against Assad and his Shiite allies. "Everyone who has the ability and has training to kill...is required to go," he said. "We cannot ask our brothers to be killed while we watch."

Hezbollah has already been accused by Salim Idris, the Chief of Staff of the Free Syrian Army, of being collaborators with Israel -- an accusation obviously preposterous on its face, but a reflection of the degree of loathing the group inspires. Al-Qaradawi took that accusation to the next level by calling Hezbollah "the party of the devil". As for Assad, he and his Alawite sect are classified by the cleric as "more infidel than Christians and Jews" (imagine!). 

We are witnessing two fundamental clashes, one nesting inside the other: the Syrian regime against its own people, and the Iranian regime against the Saudis and, indeed, the whole Sunni Muslim world in their quest for regional domination. It remains to be seen to what extent Iran's activation of Hezbollah on Assad's behalf might have been a serious tactical error. 

But maybe it's just me.

The British newspaper The Telegraph conducted a poll asking readers what bills they would like to see debated in the House of Commons. Here are six that caught the editor's eye:

Since the latest version of iTunes has decimated my ability to listen to all the podcasts I used to love, I've been listening to a lot of Spanish talk radio. Fascinating.
There's a token conservative on Saturday night on the main station I listen to, but the daily talk drum beat is immigration reform. There is an obsession with painting the Tea Party as dangerous idiots, rather than people with a different opinion.
What about the constitution? Today I heard it explained as an antiquated document that has little relevance due to today's increased population. 

"Government is not perfect, but it needs to be huge to take care of today's problems." That's the basic line.  Then the 6 day a week host told a story about Ben Franklin, "the guy on the 5 dollar bill."
Then there was at least 5 minutes of dead air, which was nice because I like to recollect before mass. Gracias a Dios.
True story.

There was a time when I subscribed to at least fifteen different magazines, some of them arriving weekly, some monthly, others quarterly.  (And of course National Review comes every two weeks.)  Over the years that list has dwindled to seven or so, and I’m considering a further paring down.  Just this week I received the latest Atlantic, and accompanying it was a notice that it was time to renew.  I’ve found less and less within its pages to recommend it over the last few years, most especially since the days the late Michael Kelly served as editor, so I’m thinking about letting it go too.  Already scratched are Time, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and anything else in which I detected contempt for people like me, i.e. conservative Christians.

My must-reads are the Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary, Sports Illustrated, and The Week.  There are a few others that I get to when time allows.  As is the case with books, I prefer the printed versions, though I confess I download the PDF version of the Weekly Standard every Saturday.  (The mailman brings my copy on Tuesdays, and that just seems too long to wait.)

My questions to the Ricochetti: Which magazines do you read, and do prefer the printed versions or the digital editions for your iPad or other device?

Sigh . . .

• The IRS has problems with you if you are a conservative group that wants to apply for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status. By contrast, the IRS has no problems whatsoever with itself when it wants to spend money like it is going out of style.
• 88 IRS employees have documents related to the investigation of the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. Remember that this story is allegedly only a "so-called scandal," and remember as well--as the CNN story points out--that the initial explanation given for the targeting of conservative groups is that a select few "low-level employees" in one local office decided to go rogue.
• Does this read like just a "so-called scandal" to you?

A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood.

Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS.

Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative causes, then found the IRS challenging his church donations.

While the developing scandal over the targeting of conservatives by the tax agency has largely focused to date on its scrutiny of groups with words such as “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, these examples suggest the government was looking at a broader array of conservative groups and perhaps individuals. Their collective experiences at a minimum could spread skepticism about the fairness of a powerful agency that should be above reproach and at worst could point to a secret political vendetta within the government against conservatives.

The emerging stories from real people raise questions about whether the IRS scrutiny extended beyond applicants for tax-exempt status and whether individuals who donated to these tax-exempt organizations or to conservative causes also were targeted.

When I think of the vast distance covered in recent days, the adventures and misadventures, I want to go lie down.  These were my thoughts yesterday while lying down, flat on my back, on the floor of the trailer staring up and checking to see if anything was broken.  "Are you okay, sir?" one of the delightful young ladies called out from the back of the trailer.  "Yes," I said. "I fell and thought I'd rest as long as I was down here."  

Like leftist political theory, or the myriad schemes cooked by fertile and boundless imaginations in ivory towers and climate controlled cubicles, this load assignment looked a lot better on paper than did its application on the ground.  After a lovely time spent in the American northwest, the load assignment called for me to pick up a fully loaded trailer of assorted retail merchandise in the Seattle area Tuesday at lunch, and have it in Omaha, Nebraska first thing Friday morning.  In total, some 1,700 miles would be covered in very short order, necessitating at least 600 miles driven per day and work days that would start around 3AM.  A tall order, but workable nonetheless.  

The catch?  Delivery would be to three separate stores on Friday (yesterday), two in Omaha and one in Sioux City, Iowa, and said deliveries would be "driver hand unload." The merchandise was stacked floor to ceiling, from the front and 53 feet back to the trailer doors.  "Stacked" is not quite the right word.  "Thrown," haphazardly would be more appropriate.  There was no truck pallet, or "dolly" to use.  Instead, boxes of all sizes, shapes and weights, along with furniture, tables, entertainment centers, rugs, bed rails, vases, mirrors, and much, much more were piled as if by a tornado.  Total weight of freight for this "driver hand unload" experience was 16,000 pounds.  You do see where this is going, no?  

The drive itself was exhilarating if tiring.  The scheduled allowed for no stops other than for fuel.  I lost too much time in construction zones (where traffic is squeezed into one lane for stretches of 2 to 12 miles so that 30 people can watch another 5 do actual work) to allow time for lunch breaks.  All the same, the sunrises were magnificent, the mountains regal, the endless formations of clouds imposingly beautiful.  And then there was Little America, an oasis of good food and happy people in the Wyoming desert.  

By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the first store in Omaha bright and early yesterday morning, I was full of enthusiasm and raring to "driver hand unload" this sucker all to hell and back.  That lasted about 15 minutes, I think, after which each layer of absurdly loaded breakables and heavy items was cleared to reveal a layer of even greater lunacy.  Why would you put a very heavy box labeled "Do Not Drop," precariously on top of fragile and light weight items and then expect anyone less than 8 feet tall to prevent said heavy item from dropping?  This was like playing "pick up sticks" with a pile of railroad ties and glass tables.

My job was to get these items to the tailgate of the trailer where delightful young ladies would put them on carts and wheel them into the store.  The first load, already at the back of the trailer, was a challenge, though not impossible.  That was 5,000 pounds unloaded, with 11,000 to go.   The second store on the list would prove to be my undoing.  

When I arrived at the second store, the parking lot of the shopping plaza was largely empty, making maneuvering the semi into position very easy.  The young ladies would not arrive for another hour or so, which gave me time to catch my breath from the first stop.  In time, however, I was in the trailer again, hauling another 5,600 pounds of merchandise to the tailgate.  The temperature was climbing rapidly, and the trailer was doing an admirable job of heating up.  Sofas were perched precariously at ceiling level.  Heavy mirrors were packed so as to be most easily broken.  Tables were under chairs, which were stacked by fours, upside down, and the weight of the whole predicament pressed down on bamboo poles and railings and ceramic elephants or some such.  Soon, I had taken to extending a middle finger to boxes marked, "Do Not Drop."  

A little over an hour into the services, the heat and exertion became a bit much and things began spinning.  I felt at once very light and yet not totally in control of my faculties and balance.  I had to sit down or fall down.  The young ladies were kind enough to point me to a restroom.  In the mirror, I saw someone with a face as red as an apple.  I looked like an upside down thermometer except that thermometers don't use that kind of language.  But 5 minutes later, I was back in the trailer determined to see this thing through.  

The Mensa Society members who had loaded the thing were kind enough to throw in a couple of pallets full of merchandise, wrapped in endlessly long sheets of plastic.  Cutting through the plastic, I tried pulling the boxes off the pallets, except that the plastic wouldn't turn loose of the boxes and things began falling on me yet again.  There was no other option, however, as I'm not quite tall enough to reach up 9 feet or so and take the stuff off the top of the stack.  

Unaware that some of the plastic had become wrapped around my left ankle, I took a box and tried to back up so that the falling merchandise wouldn't land on my head. The plastic ensnared my foot and down I went, landing on my back, neck and head while all manner of exotic merchandise from far away lands pelted me from above.    But it was nice to get a moment's rest, and the kind ladies were worried too.  They didn't assist me, but they did inquire and I was gratified.  I got up, and continued working another 40 minutes or so until everything for that store had been unloaded.  I walked funny too.   

Once finished, I found that climbing into the cab was more of an ordeal than it used to be.  In fact, I was tempted to plant a flag on the steering wheel and claim it in the name of the something or other.  I was worried about how in the world I would ever finish that last stop in Sioux City when I looked out over the parking lot and knew I had nothing to be worried about.  It had taken a couple of hours to unload the merchandise for that store, and now the parking lot was full of cars which effectively blocked my exit.  I was stuck.  

A three-way conference call with my dispatcher and customer service, confirmed a few things, namely; 1) The final stop would have to wait until Saturday since I was completely wiped out physically, and my truck was blocked in any event, and 2) I was on record as confirming that I would not accept such a load assignment again and would resign if forced to do so.  The customer service representative allowed as how they had assigned this load to a female driver a few weeks ago who had broken her arm while trying to "driver hand unload" the freight and assured me that care would be given to selecting which drivers get these assignments in the future.  But it's a big company and I expect the assurances of one cog in the bureaucratic machinery will likely disappear into a sea of cubicles.  

I've seen a team of half a dozen men load and unload a 53 foot trailer by hand and I've seen it take six hours or more for them to do so.  I've never seen a solitary person assigned the task.  I still love my work, and I'll get that final stop unloaded today no matter what.  But somewhere in the recesses of the mind, the slogans, posters, signs, and sermons on how we value safety ring a little less true now.  No matter, though.  It will go on as before, and people with little connection to the dirt and sweat of an honest day's labor will remain ensconced in climate controlled comfort, issuing out-of-the-box, paradigm shattering directives that have little relation to reality.  And the guys on the ground will make it all work, somehow, with the aid of a little Tylenol and a lot of perseverance.  

Extreme religious beliefs might one day be treated as a mental illness according to Kathleen Taylor, a research scientist at Oxford University’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics.

Taylor told the Hay Literary Festival in Wales that techniques are already in the works to eliminate “negative beliefs,” such as radicalized Islam, and even child abuse.

One man's positive can be another man's negative. One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology - we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.

In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.

I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorised as mental illness.

Links between “extreme faiths and mental health” have been made before. Former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Dr. Dinesh Bhugra said recent religious conversions are associated with a developing psychotic  mental illness. He points to data from studies which show that patients with first onset psychosis are likely to change their religion.

Do you think “negative beliefs” are mental disturbances? What are the implications regarding this kind of classification and treatment for belief systems other than radical Islam?

When it comes to healthcare—particularly in light of the implementation of Obamacare and the broadening of what is deemed a mental illness—who will be the gatekeepers to determine what is an actual belief and what is a disorder?

Reuters:

 France will ban electronic cigarette smoking in public places by imposing the same curbs enforced since 2007 to combat tobacco smoking, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said on Friday.

 The e-cigarettes will also face “a blackout on media advertising”

 E-cigarettes are odorless and give off vapor, not smoke. Whatever the health risks associated with them, there is very little prospect indeed that they will prove to be as dangerous as traditional cigarettes, and every chance that a switch to e-cigarettes will save lives.

No matter. 

Reuters also notes that “health officials in many countries say the impact of electronic cigarettes on health needs further study.” That’s reasonable enough, but this is not:

 "This is no ordinary product because it encourages mimicking and could promote taking up smoking," said Touraine…

 Oh, come on...

As, to take two examples among many,  the drummed-up hysteria over “passive smoking” and the EU's restrictions on Swedish-style ‘snus’ (another hugely safer alternative to conventional cigarettes) remind us, it’s been a long time since the jihad against tobacco has had very much to do with health. The issue now is control and, on the part of the prohibitionists, an opportunity for a pharisaical display of their own immense virtue.

Revolting.  And quite literally lethal.

Over on the Member Feed, Colin B Lane asks if we've reached a point where the ideological chasm between liberals and conservatives is so deep that we're essentially living in two different realities. Here's an interesting geographical cognate from the Guardian:

There is one Republican governor left in New England: Paul LePage of Maine, and one Democratic governor in the old south: Mike Beebe of Arkansas. LePage only won 38% of the vote in 2010 and would have lost had his competitors not split the vote. Polling shows he's incredibly vulnerable in 2014. Beebe is required by term limits to step down in 2014, and Republicans are favored to win his seat.

If Republicans win Arkansas in 2014 and Le Page gets knocked off in Maine, it could be the final dent in the old coalitions of a Democratic south and Republican New England. Assuming no other changes in these regions' governor affiliations, it would be the first time no Republican governor held office in New England and no Democratic governor did so in a confederate state since the end of Reconstruction. In other words, we're basically back to civil war-era politics.

I've spent the last six months commuting back and forth between the West Coast and the South, and, as anyone who regularly rides the circuit between different regions of the country will probably tell you, the differences in politics are symptomatic of a deeper cultural division. It often feels as if you're inhabiting two different countries.

So what of it, Ricochetti? Are we reaching a tipping point where normal cultural variations are morphing into outright contempt between various regions of the country? Or is this all just an overreaction to healthy ideological sorting? Can an enhanced role for federalism ameliorate some of the tensions? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

This Wonkblog article was posted on Twitter via @pegobry. It chronicles a new generation of altruistically-minded individuals who, rather than doing non-profit work or volunteering, are pursuing the most lucrative work possible and then donating (in the case of some of the individuals profiled here, anyway) half of the money to charity.

I think giving away half your income to help save lives is wonderful, but I have serious reservations about hitching it to a Peter Singer thought experiment, as one of the subjects of the piece does. Singer's formulation goes like this: 

A man walking by a shallow pond notices a toddler struggling in the water. No one else is around. Rescuing the child would ruin his shoes and muddy his suit. Tending to the girl and finding her parents would take time, making him late for work. So he walks away. The girl drowns.

Singer first told this story in his 1972 paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” and it is among the most famous in modern ethics. To Singer, the lesson is this: “If it is within our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

It's the caveat, "without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance," which gives me pause. By that definition, if the man in the story determined that the value of his suit and time were comparable to the life of the girl, then, in saving the suit and not the girl, the man has met the burden of his moral obligation.  

This article also raises the question of the state of the giver and not just the gift. This type of monetary giving is indeed very generous and helpful, but it is also the least sacrificial form of giving, in my opinion.  

It's really easy to give money online. It's really difficult to dig a well. Not to put too fine a point on it, I don't know of anyone whose life was irrevocably changed by clicking "SEND."  I may be too harsh, and I'll admit that I don't know whether or not these individuals volunteer, or how they spend their time, but I don't think I'm stretching it to say that purely monetary giving will have less staying power than if one saw firsthand how the monetary sacrifice was changing lives. This brings me to the bigger problem I have with Singer's lesson learned: It seems to me that Singer's idea of what we morally "ought" to do is a relative concept, and can just as easily justify saving a life or not; giving away half your income or not.  

I want to reiterate that I'm not criticizing the generosity of these individuals. They are commendable. I just see the moral driver as weak, and I also see this as yet another way in which progressives will beat us over the head for not caring about people as much as they do.

What are your thoughts?  What am I missing?