Post what you like, when you like, as you like it. Self-linking is so cool even the penguins shiver.
This shot-for-shot remake of a song from the Goofy movie is much more entertaining than I might have thought. I love that the girl in the crop-top shirt is missing her belly button, just like her animated counterpart.
- Political cartoonist Matt Bors has returned from Afghanistan with stories to tell and sketches and cartoons to show. After reading that article, check out Matt’s blog for more.
- Stop blaming the health care cost crisis on obesity.
- Susie Bright’s Post-Mortem on Craig’s List Sex Ads. I agree with Susie.
- A Libertarian’s Take on Basic Unconditional Income
- “A new study by the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that school suspensions of black and Latino students are skyrocketing. The trend, according to researchers, has been triggered by zero tolerance policies set in motion in the 1970’s, and exacerbated by hysteria over youth crime in the decades-long fallout after the Columbine High School shootings.”
- I’ve often heard it said that we can’t ban anonymous donation of sperm, because they did that in the UK and as a result sperm donation dropped way down. Turns out that’s not true.
- A primer on privilege: what it is and what it isn’t.
- yogurt has culture, but what about geeks? Can anything as diverse and varied as geekdom be said to have a “culture”? Then again, it’s common enough for people to refer to whole countries as having a culture.
- Should We Avoid Race When Discussing Education Reform?
- Neo-Nazi Couple Find Out They’re Jewish. They then went and became Orthodox Jews. Some people do nothing in moderation, I guess.
- The War on Undocumented Immigrants’ Unheard Victims: Asian Immigrants
- I had never heard of 3-D architectural projection before watching this video, but there’s quite a few videos of it out there, and it’s awesome.
- This Dream Act Refresher sums up the issue pretty well.
- Teaching Scott McCloud’s Panel Transitions via Craig Thompson’s Blankets
- Gay Palestinian seeks humanitarian asylum in Israel
- The Ten Most
InsaneRidiculous Jimmy Olsen Moments Of All Time - Andrew Shrivell, Assistant Attorney General of Michigan, is pursuing a creepy, obsessive harassment of an openly gay college student.
- Why Maryland Doesn’t Have An Enthusiasm Gap
- If McDonalds really does cut out health care to employees (which they won’t) because of the Affordable Care Act, then McDonalds employees will be much better off.
- Is it just me, or does Samuel Beckett look a lot like an older Leonard Nimoy? Maybe it’s just me. Nice photos, anyhow.
Do white-supremacists in Poland actually refer to themselves as “neo-Nazis”?
I favor the DREAM act in principle. I have some issues with the specifics, though.
1) The college attendance requirement should have to result in at least an Associate’s degree. It’s not all that difficult to hack through 2 years of college attendance, take a bunch of unrelated courses and have nothing to show for it. Note that it says attend two years of college, not pass your courses or have any coherent course of study. Not good enough.
2) The military alternative should require an honorable discharge – which, except in the case of injury, would mean that the person involved would have to have stayed in for more than 2 years. You can’t enlist for only 2 years, there’s no such option. If you stay in for two years, screw up and get thrown out with a general or dishonorable discharge you should not be rewarded.
3) College should not in and of itself substitute for the military requirement. If you don’t serve in the military there should be some kind of community service requirement as well as the college requirement.
Finally – it applies only to those minor children who are resident in the U.S. on the date it passes and stay resident until they satisfy it’s requirements. Leave, or enter after it’s effective, and you are ineliglble. I’m fine with helping out the kids who are here now, but I’m not fine with providing yet another incentive or making it less negative to bring people into the U.S illegally.
Governmental candidate Meg Whitman who has been stern to the hiring of undocumented immigrants in her ads apparently didn’t include herself. But then that’s been the case before with many of those with her ideology do as I say, not as I do. Although her stances at any given time on the issue have been contradictory at best.
I’m surprised it took this long to come out actually. If you’d been inundated with her ads for the past few months, pretty ironic. I’m a fan of neither candidate but stuff like this when it happens just has me rolling my eyes not at the issues but at the hypocrisy that’s so entrenched.
A friend of mine, who I don’t think would call himself a libertarian so much as a utilitarian who thinks that many libertarian policies are consequentially justified on efficiency grounds, detailed his ideal welfare reform as:
1) Figure out how much money we are giving to the poor through various social programs,
2) Eliminate all the programs
3) Cut a check to each poor person equivalent to the amount of money they would have received from the now-eliminated programs.
His argument is that this would (a) eliminate deadweight loss and (b) respects the poor as agents insofar as it lets them decide how and where to spend the resources allocated to them, rather than simply telling them “you need this much for housing, you need this much for these foods, you need this much for training.”
Radfem, from the article you cite:
So many things wrong with this. First, there’s no provenance for this. For all we know the woman grabbed the letter, forged the note, copied it and stuck it in her pocket. I’d think that if someone works for you as a maid for years they can forge a short note like that pretty well. Second, I sure as hell don’t see everything my wife sees and vice versa – her husband seeing something doesn’t prove that she saw it, despite the allegation above. All the above proves is that at one point the maid had that letter in her hand – which is a good reason to believe that nobody ever saw it after that point.
It’s also interesting that the question was raised, but not answered, about whether the letter is actually legitimate in the first place. It’s stated that the letters weren’t usually sent to the employer unless they had at least 10 employees that were out of compliance. There’s no allegation that Ms. Whitman has that many people on her personal staff at all, nevermind 10 illegal aliens on her staff.
Oh, yeah. She’s suffered having a job for the last 10 years that started at $23/hour (plus whatever raises, bonuses, overtime, etc.) in a upscale household in an upscale neighborhood (I’ll bet a pretty safe one) that she has admitted she got by a) breaking the law and b) lying to her employer. “Suffered” is not the word I’m thinking of here.
@11:
If enforcing immigration law = a “war” then the continuous illegal crossing of our borders by large numbers of illegal aliens in the face of ever-increasing efforts to stop them and with the guidance of their home country’s government constitutes an “invasion.”
Well, actually, the 70% who hold current visas or are naturalized are NOT affected, unless they have close relatives who are here illegally. Talk about twisting!
Then, a whole story about a young Cambodian refugee who was here on asylum and then spent 4 years in jail for assault. He was put on supervised release, but was not deported because of “paperwork snafus”. He has since built an apparently productive life for himself, but now the law has caught up with him.
I have a solution for this. For this man’s individual case, let him apply for a pardon. Yeah, I know that may take time he doesn’t have. I’d ask the ICE to take his situation into consideration. But if he gets deported, that’s too bad. Don’t build your house on sand and then complain when it collapses.
In the general case, lets give the ICE the resources they need. Whose fault is it that those offices are undermanned and the system is underresourced? The people in favor of enforcing the law? It seems more likely to me that it’s the fault of the opponents of the laws in the first place. Choke off enforcement of the law and then use examples of the results of underresourcing the enforcement to support that enforcing the law is wrong?
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Absent sitting through that video (not cool to run videos and listen to them at work) if Tony is here illegally he shouldn’t be able to be naturalized at all. He or whoever brought him here (if he came over when a child) put his own life on hold. The U.S. does not owe him anything. If he’s here illegally he should be getting on with his life by going home, not by hanging around trying to get naturalized.
Let’s remember that Lv is the one who committed an assault that landed him in prison for 4 years. He’s the one who caused this situation. That’s where the primary responsibility lies. Tony was fool enough to start up a business, etc., knowing that he could be deported at any minute. I’m also a little suspicious of “paperwork snafus”. Was this governmental bumbling or legal action taken on his behalf to delay his deportation?
This guy is not a victim. The person he assaulted is a victim. The solution to procedural problems in enforcing the law is not to not enforce the law. I can’t believe that the plight of a convicted felon is the big argument in favor of showing that Asians are being somehow victimized by enforcement of immigration law.
Thanks for the link re: #11
@RonF
//If enforcing immigration law = a “war” then the continuous illegal crossing of our borders by large numbers of illegal aliens in the face of ever-increasing efforts to stop them and with the guidance of their home country’s government constitutes an “invasion.”
Hardly. Use of the word “war” does not imply that the war is justified, or that an “invasion” is actually taking place. The federal government (on both sides of the aisle) have declared a war on undocumented immigrants — but that doesn’t imply an invasion, simply a coordinated desire to “stamp out” the problem.
//Well, actually, the 70% who hold current visas or are naturalized are NOT affected, unless they have close relatives who are here illegally. Talk about twisting!
Untrue. Changes in immigration policy affect anyone who holds a visa legally, and affects naturalization proceedings. Basically, anyone who interacts with ICE regularly (which includes visa holders, because they must work to maintain status) is affected when they change their policies, sometimes directly and sometimes not. Efforts to end undocumented immigration led to implementation of a database for all border-crossing, which meant that I was finger-printed and photographed when that database went to effect. Those policy decisions don’t happen in a bubble; most of those decisions ultimately affect legal immigrants.
//In the general case, lets give the ICE the resources they need. Whose fault is it that those offices are undermanned and the system is underresourced? The people in favor of enforcing the law? It seems more likely to me that it’s the fault of the opponents of the laws in the first place. Choke off enforcement of the law and then use examples of the results of underresourcing the enforcement to support that enforcing the law is wrong?
I think you’re making the assumption that I am against enforcement of immigration law, which isn’t true. I advocate reform of immigration law, but also enforcement of those laws. I think you’ll find that many folks don’t have a black or white, you’re either for deporting folks or for open borders, opinion on the issue.
//That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Absent sitting through that video (not cool to run videos and listen to them at work) if Tony is here illegally he shouldn’t be able to be naturalized at all. He or whoever brought him here (if he came over when a child) put his own life on hold. The U.S. does not owe him anything. If he’s here illegally he should be getting on with his life by going home, not by hanging around trying to get naturalized.
I didn’t summarize the episode, but Tony was brought to the States at 7 months old. Because he doesn’t have a SSN, he cannot work and therefore doesn’t have the money to return to Mexico. He also could not go to school because most schools and financial aid programs wouldn’t work with someone lacking a SSN (in the end, he found a part-time job to pay for his college tuition, and he found a school that accepted him without legal status).
As part of his attempts to go to school, he wanted to enter and naturalize, and this would be possible if his cousin sponsored him. But the wait time is 13 years to be sponsored — not just for Tony, but for virtually anybody trying to work the system legally (it’s a much shorter wait time if you marry an American).
That is a broken system.
//Let’s remember that Lv is the one who committed an assault that landed him in prison for 4 years. He’s the one who caused this situation. That’s where the primary responsibility lies… houses on sand
Except that the government released him on “supervised release”, telling him to wait until they could deport him. What was he supposed to do for 12 years if not build a house on sand?
(And incidentally, I agree with you that the grounds for deportation are valid. Iv committed a violent crime, he forfeited his right to be in the country. What he didn’t forfeit, however, were 12 years in bureaucratic limbo.)
//The solution to procedural problems in enforcing the law is not to not enforce the law.
No, and I didn’t argue that the solution is to not enforce the law. In fact, I explicitly said that Iv should be deported, but that perhaps there should be a statue of limitations on deportation procedures if theye extend beyond a decade. The solution to procedural problems is to reform the system so that such problems are no longer an issue. Reform immigration so that your wait times aren’t measured in years, and that legal immigration is more straightforward to obtain and maintain, and I guarantee that undocumented immigration would no longer be a problem.
Nobody *wants* to be an undocumented immigrant. Some, rightly or wrongly, feel they have no choice; the easy solution is to take a second look at how we award visas so that the system isn’t a nightmare to navigate.
//I can’t believe that the plight of a convicted felon is the big argument in favor of showing that Asians are being somehow victimized by enforcement of immigration law.
Hardly. This post was just one part of the overall argument. If you want to engage more about how Asian Americans — specifically — are disproportionately affected by changes in immigration law, I invite you to check out my blog, where we discuss the intersection of Asian Americans and immigration quite frequently.
It’s interesting how the story of Pawel and Ola returns over and over. I know them pretty well, I used to be one their friends at a time.
Their history is the most colorful because of the contrasts, skinhead past and so on. There are many others who “return” to their heritage, me included.
What worries me is the often one sided portrayal of the situation. There some orthodox Jews in Poland, some more of the modern kind, some hasidic. There are also groups of culturally-attached, some who found the masorti (conservative) stream matching their needs. There is a reform gathering place, there are youth clubs, meetings, and most of the people who are getting involved are some of the most progressive and free thinking people I’ve met.
I wished this kind of articles/movies didn’t focus just on the most shocking, colorful or caching, but rather tried to show the reality as it is.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about here. My point is that to describe the enforcement of immigration law as a “war” directed against offenders is hyperbole, just as describing the influx of illegal aliens as an “invasion” is. That includes saying that the legislators on both sides of the aisle have “declared war”.
Changes in policy certainly may affect people here legally. But I fail to see how increasing the tempo of enforcement of existing law by deporting those here illegally affects people here legally.
O.K. I can see where technically that’s an effect on you. But that’s a minor inconvenience and is a very good thing to do, to boot. I had thought you were talking about something substantial.
With the further explanation about Tony I have some sympathy for his plight. I do think that something should be done to normalize the status of people like him. Exactly what is subject to negotiation, which I expect will come up when the DREAM act is debated.
What was he supposed to do? Leave the United States, go somewhere that he could be legally and start his life off on solid ground. He knew that part of the penalty for his crime was deportation. He knew that he was subject to deportation at any time. I won’t defend 12 years of bureaucratic limbo – our government should function better than that. But a) I reiterate the question of whether HE ws the cause of that limbo or not, and b) ask whether the government was preventing him from leaving. If the answer is that, no, he decided to hang around on the off chance that the U.S. would just never get around to him, well – too bad. He made a bet and lost.
I will overall support the concept that our current immigration system operates inefficiently and should not do so. I don’t have a lot of experience with it personally, but I imagine it’s fallen into the usual bureaucratic trap of operating to the convenience and advantage of the bureaucrats rather than the citizenry (and in this case, non-citizens). It wastes money and time and provides poor service. To make it operate so that current immigration law is enforced in a timely, efficient and accountable fashion is true reform in my eyes and I’ll go along with efforts to make that happen. People should not be hung out to dry for years.
That I doubt. Not that those objectives are not desirable – they are. But regardless of how efficient the operations of the immigration system is, there will still be criteria for who is permitted to immigrate into the U.S. and who are not. Now, that can be helped in part by making it easier for both employers and workers to get temporary worker’s visas. But there are always going to be people who want to come here permanently, bring their familes, have their kids, live in safer neighborhoods, etc., etc., and in general gain the advantages of living in a free society without having the education or skills or other attributes that will get the ICE to say “yes, you can come here to live.”
The McDonalds piece shows the tin ear of many liberal thinkers on these matters. E.D. Kain would rather have the plan that would come out of the exchanges, so it’s OK that these low-income workers may lose their coverage now!
If that logic makes any sense, then tomorrow I’m going to come to your house and smash your computer. But don’t worry – in 2014, assuming I don’t lose any elections or court cases in the meantime, I am going to give you a much BETTER computer.
So you’re better off.
Right?
But Robert, the workers aren’t losing their coverage now — much to the disappointment of many conservatives, I’m sure. The feds and McDonalds have both made it clear that the McInsurance plans aren’t going to be dropped for now.
The difference is, if Republicans have their way, McDonalds workers will have shitty insurance whose annual payout can easily be maxed out in a single expensive emergency room visit — not just from now until 2014, but pretty much forever. If Democrats have their way, in contrast, then starting in 2014 the same workers will pay less for much better insurance that will pay for their medical care if something really bad happens. Only a Republican would see that as a bad deal.
I’ve been reading through your archives, and in the discussions about victim-blaming there has often been mention of the “fight or flight” reflex.
However, no one (that I saw) mentioned that “freeze/frightened immobility” is an equally automatic response to trauma or danger. See also: Does “Fight or Flight” Need Updating?
I know that immobility was my response to being sexually assaulted (french kissed against my will by a man, at least twice my age and a foot taller, to whom I had just introduced myself).
Related to an article Amp is reading (I do love the new sidebar!) about carrion beetles carrying mites around on their backs so that the mites will eat the fly eggs and maggots when the carrion beetles find dead mice to lay their eggs in, (a) Cool! and (b) Hey, I’ve seen that. In fact, I have a picture!
[img]https://www.amptoons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/sexton_beetle.png[/img]
Wow, Charles. That’s… gross… Also, cool. But really, taking off Mike’s bandages was all the “well, I guess that’s kind of awesome if you think about it, but eww” I could handle for the day.
I had merely guessed that the poor beetle was being overwhelmed by parasites, so I was glad to discover it was actually carrying around its pack of hunting dogs (as it were).
Hey, at least it isn’t a picture of the mouse part of the story!
RonF @10: There will always be people trying to get into the US illegally. That number will be much smaller if the avenues to get in legally are easier and faster.
Hey, at least it isn’t a picture of the mouse part of the story!
Seriously. The other week I had to deal with the body of a squirrel that had been dead for some time. On an intellectual level, I’m all about the cycle of life, blah blah blah. But I nearly lost my lunch over those maggots.
Cool photo!
In light of our recent discussion of parental leave policies, a European court finds that Spanish fathers are also entitled to “breastfeeding leave.”
Spanish law apparently allows mothers to work a shortened work day or take an hour break in the middle of the day for the first 9 months of a babe’s life. Fathers can only take this benefit if their children’s mothers work outside the home. Now all fathers also will get this benefit, as limiting it to just women and men whose partners work amounted to sex discrimination.
chingona
Thanks!
Yeah, maggots are seriously gross when you come face to face with them (they’re kinda cool when filmed in super fast motion though).
Ah, maggots. That brings back memories.
The dead skunk on the roof outside the window at work one summer was fascinating. One day it swelled way, way up. The next day it deflated entirely. The third day the maggots emerged.
And then, of course, there was the residue of the fly invasion that Elkins and I suffered through in the summer of’86. I never knew that maggots could live on the crispy crumbs in a toaster. Once you turn that toaster on you learn how fast maggots can move.
Thanks for that, Jake. I’ll be skipping the toast from now on.
Well, as long as we’re sharing … I believe I’ve mentioned before that I was in the Peace Corps (and if you know anything about the Peace Corpse at all, you already know where this story is going). People in our area used open pit latrines without the kind of fly control measures that were, among other things, our job to promote (and that you’ll see at pit latrines in state and national parks here). The first time I headed for the latrine at night, I knew damn well that I shouldn’t use the flashlight to look down the hole, but human nature being what it is, I looked anyway. Never in your life have you seen maggots on this scale.
Well, there’s been more since then and yeah, I have serious doubts about Whitman’s ignorance because that’s always been the excuse when politicos get caught doing what they chastise others as Whitman has done in repeated ads on the radio since her campaign began. I think most of the politicians do know and that she threw her maid under the bus right about the time she was going into politics. It’s very interesting watching the staunch anti-illegal immigrationists make excuses for her, call it a liberal smear campaign and are suddenly concerned about this “illegal alien” and her “anchor babies” being deported or divided. Very touching indeed all this sudden concern which wouldn’t be there if it were Brown instead. Meg Whitman, Nicky ceased being Nicky when she became a liability to you and your political ambitions. Don’t blame her for using your formal name now instead of that more informal nickname that she might have used before when she was “like family” before she became a political liability. But it’s been rumored that she hired an undocumented immigrant for her housekeeping for a while. Nothing new. A lot of politicians do the same thing and then plead ignorance when caught…then throw their employee who they claim was a friend or “like family to us” under the bus ASAP.
She initially was paid over $20 an hour but apparently more jobs and hours were added to a fixed salary so that depreciated.
Like I said, there’s so much hypocrisy with this issue and this particular practice is pretty wide-spread…Do as I say, not as I do. I’m not a fan of either candidate but she should just owe up to it and not do what politicians really do best which is point fingers at everyone else.
mythago @17:
The first sentence I’m sure is true. The second is true only for those people who would stand a better chance to get in if policies/laws change as you suggest. For those people for whom it would be made easier to get in I’m sure you’re right. But for those people who would still be excluded as being considered for immigration (e.g., unskilled laborers) it would make no difference. Unless by “easier” you mean not “simpler procedures more efficiently handled” but “more open to anyone who wants to come in regardless of what their skill levels or other characteristics are.” Which is a change I do not favor.
There’s also the difference between immigration and temporary workers to consider. Let’s say that the H2A visa program is made much more efficient so that it’s a lot easier for people to hire temporary agricultural workers (a change I do support). That relieves pressure for those people whose intent is to come to America, work, and go back home. But it does nothing for those people who want to leave their home country and come to America and not go back home.
It also creates an avenue for people to come here legally and overstay their visas, which is already a problem. What the numbers and proportions would be I don’t know.
Jake, @21 – I live very near a large forest preserve. It’s a remarkable day when I don’t see at least one dead animal on the side of the road. Opossums, squirrels, even the occasional deer. But it’s the raccoons that show the most dramatic changes on a day to day basis. During the summer those things can blow up like basketballs, with the feet sticking out up in the air. Then, the next day, poof! All deflated.
Radfem, I’ve been reading up on this Meg Whitman thing. I’m no fan of hypocritical politicians. God knows I’ve seen enough of them here in Illinois in both parties. But it seems to me that her maid got her job after supplying a bunch of false information and that Ms. Whitman never knew the woman was in the U.S. illegally until she claims she did. I’m also a little curious about her lawyer. Tell me this – how is Gloria Allred operating in her client’s best interests? It seems to me that she’s not going to get her client any money and is very likely to end up expediting her client’s deportation. Has she sued for lost wages or something? What is she doing to improve her client’s legal position?
There’s some interesting information out there about that letter, too. According to spokespeople for the Social Security Administration, the National Immigration Law Center and the American Immigration Lawyers Association,
1) The purpose of the letter is to make sure that the SSA’s records are correct in order to ensure the employee receives all the credits they are entitled to, not to notify the employer that their employee may not be legally employable,
2) The employers’s job is to check their own records to see if they are correct.
3) It’s the employee’s job to deal with the SSA if it turns out that the employer’s records are correct and the SSA is the entity with bad info.
4) If the employer takes any action against the employee based on the letter or demands any additional or different documentation for proof of citizenship, they are violating the law and they open themselves up to anti-discrimination charges.
So, in fact, Ms. Whitman’s husband did exactly what he was supposed to do – tell Ms. Santillan to check the situation out and otherwise take no action against her. The law says that they were very specifically NOT supposed to start demanding more information and investigate Ms. Santillan’s citizenship status.
One would think that Ms. Allred would know this, being a lawyer and all. Just who is Ms. Allred representing here?
After attending the Queer Again? Power, Politics, and Ethics Conference in Berlin, I spent a lot of time thinking about academic privilege, specifically in the context of queer studies: http://michelleg3399.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/queer-studies-and-academic-privilege/
Michelle, you can take that post you wrote and substitute a great many other disciplines for the one you reference and it would still read true. Academia tends to be an echo chamber. You have a group whose new members are pretty much selected solely by the existing members and who tend to make that selection based on whether the new members will support the current consensus. Even if lip service is paid to “diversity” by choosing people of disparate races, etc., there seems to be very little diversity of thought or focus – which, to my mind, is the most important diversity of all.
Clarisse Thorn posted a nice article to Alternet that I’m reading right now – I’m surprised she didn’t crosspost it here:
http://www.alternet.org/sex/148291/why_do_we_demonize_men_who_are_honest_about_their_sexual_needs?page=1
I’ve been ruminating on the upcoming elections and their likely consequences, and the allegations that the current political landscape is more highly polarized than ever before. It occurs to me that there’s a reason that the latter might be true, and it’s fed from election campaigns, modern technology and the Census.
My final thought fell into place while listening to a discussion of the upcoming Mayoral election in Chicago (Daley II has abdicated), and looking at the highly convoluted ward map of the city. Of course, gerrymandering is nothing new in the U.S. – it’s named after Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who as Massachusetts Governor signed a re-districting bill in 1812 that “engineered” districts to ensure constituencies that would support his party.
But that was in the day when you were basically building districts out of whole towns. Now, with modern data gathering and analytical technologies we get down to the block and street level. The engineering of election district boundaries is specifically designed to link groups of people with particular narrowly defined characteristics together in one district (race, income, etc.). You end up with absurdities like this. This in turn means that the person representing them adopts a fairly narrow set of political positions and has no incentive to change them. They don’t have to put forward proposals that will appeal to both the whites and the Hispanics in their district because they don’t have to appeal to both to get elected – which in turn feeds the illusion that the two groups don’t have common interests. “Swing” districts are those where the election cartographers have failed in their objective to create a “safe” district and have ended up with a district that has no clear economic or ethnic or racial majority.
Senators you would think would be less affected by this. You don’t change State boundaries every 10 years, after all. The effects of precisely designed relatively uniformly populated Congressional districts affects the House, not the Senate. At least not directly. Perhaps it’s because such districts and the effect they have on the House raises the polarization in politics in general and thus slops over into the Senate. It also keeps turnover low in the House, which is undesirable. There are other factors, certainly. But I think this is one factor that has not been adequately considered.
I would like to see an apportionment law passed which set a parameter for all Congressional districts. It would be a ratio between the square root of the area of a district and the length of it’s boundary. There would have to be a maximum set that could not be exceeded. Now, I understand that this could have an affect on the number of non-white congressmen. But in a day and age when white people voted for a black President I think that effect is weaker than it ever has been before, and there’s still ways to set up majority-minority districts. These days we need to focus on maximizing diversity of thought in Congress.