Open Thread: Epistemology of Photocopiers Edition

  1. Hey, did anyone else watch season 4 of Game of Thrones? If so, what did you think? (Include spoiler warnings if necessary.)
  2. Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls. What Jennifer Lawrence and Clara Bow have in common. Long, but really interesting.
  3. Warren Farrell and other MRAs take note: A new study shows that conventionally good-looking women are attracted, not to big wallets, but to conventionally good-looking men. “…on average, high-status men do have better-looking wives, but this is because they themselves are considered better looking.” Although to be fair, the study’s subjects were only up to age 35, so wouldn’t include stereotypical “trophy wife” couples.
  4. Claire Hannum and Jesse Singal have good posts about sexism compromised previous “trophy wife” research, by in effect assuming that women didn’t have wealth and men didn’t have attractiveness.
  5. Anti-feminists claim that feminists want to receive rape threats.
  6. Border Patrol agents are mocking the child migrant crisis
  7. The sky remains in its non-falling state | The Incidental Economist In many ways, American kids are in great shape now.
  8. Nobody Expects The Genre Police! — Crooked Timber
  9. If the Las Vegas Killers Were Muslims, We’d Call Them Terrorists – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic
  10. 8 conservatives who hated Obama for not releasing Bergdahl — and now hate Obama for freeing him
  11. Don’t Be a Sex-Positive Jerk | this ain’t livin’
  12. A bunch of those Tea Party groups the IRS examined, and then let off the hook, are obviously taking partisan positions and should be paying taxes.
  13. Ask An Elderly Black Woman As Depicted By A Sophomore Creative Writing Major | The Onion
  14. Chicago Cops Being Sued After Being Caught On Tape Physically And Verbally Abusing A Massage Parlor Employee | Techdirt
  15. The Scandal Of The GOP And Climate Change « The Dish
  16. There Is No Childhood Obesity Epidemic. So stop applauding Michelle Obama for reducing it!
  17. No, murder is not the No. 1 killer of pregnant women | PolitiFact Texas
  18. Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity
  19. Study links legislator support for voter ID laws and bias against Latino voters, as measured in their responses to constituent e-mails.
  20. 5 Exonerated in Central Park Jogger Case Agree to Settle Suit for $40 Million – NYTimes.com
  21. “I would rather be amongst city traffic and the noise of man, than amongst forest animals and the sounds of nature.”
  22. Korean toilet unclogger
  23. I Repeat, If We Tell You It’s A Slur Word, Don’t Use It | TransGriot
  24. Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible – Health – CBC News
  25. Mitch McConnell: Repeal Obamacare, except maybe keep everything it does in Kentucky.
  26. Why License a Florist? – NYTimes.com “If both the left and right oppose more occupational regulation, why is it growing?”
  27. Speaking of occupational regulation and racism: Arkansas Hair Braiders File Civil Rights Lawsuit Against State | Braiding Freedom
  28. Building the ultimate Solar System part 5 | planetplanet
  29. You Say “Tomato” and I’ll Say “Sequester” A blogger disagrees with me, in a post that I agree with 80% of.
  30. Sometimes I just stare at Jaime Hernandez’s cartooning and drool with awe, part 1.
  31. Sometimes I just stare at Jaime Hernandez’s cartooning and drool with awe, part 2.
  32. Fannie’s Room: Obvious News: Female Construction Workers Harassed, MRAs Do Nothing
  33. These 3D models of life masks made of Lincoln are really, really cool. Also, as someone (Scalzi?) pointed out on Twitter, in the first mask, Lincoln looks amazingly like Patrick Stewart.
  34. 5 Romantic Comedies That Won’t Make You Feel Like A Bad Feminist | Thought Catalog
  35. We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome / The Dissolve
  36. Our politics is becoming, not just more divided than ever, but more hateful than ever.
  37. Sociological Images – A new study finds that users of classified ads discriminate against people perceived as black.
  38. Every culture looks for creative inspiration to other cultures, but is there a point when this is just outright theft? – Nabeelah Jaffer – Aeon
  39. Colleges Silence and Fire Faculty Who Speak Out About Rape.
  40. The only ‘privilege’ afforded to campus rape victims is actually surviving | Jessica Valenti
  41. Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education | AAUP A study by a Republican finds virtually no direct discrimination against conservatives in academia.
  42. The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji. Century-old bridges made up of still-living tree roots. So cool!

tree-root-bridge

(Photocopier video via Feminist Critics.)

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57 Responses to Open Thread: Epistemology of Photocopiers Edition

  1. 1
    Nancy Lebovitz says:

    I was hoping the Catholic Church’s crimes against humanity link would be a historical overview– I’m fascinated that an organization which has done so much damage still gets people’s loyalty, including the loyalty of good people who believe there’s a real Catholicism which is drastically better than the real one and that can be achieved.

    Part of what I’ve got against Catholicism is that there are people (like those who ran the Irish laundries) who probably would have been in the ordinary range of bad-to-good if they hadn’t been given power in a bad memetic environment. Instead of living fairly ordinary lives, they committed atrocities.

  2. 2
    Myca says:

    By Jamelle Bouie, about a month back: Do Minorities Do Better Under Democrats?

    The answer, unsurprisingly, is “yes,” but I was actually surprised at how much better:

    Specifically, looking at data from 1948 to 2010, Hajnal and Horowitz found that “African Americans tend to experience substantial gains under Democratic presidents whereas they tend to incur significant losses or remain stagnant under Republicans.” On average, under Democratic presidents, blacks gained $895 in annual income, saw a 2.41 point drop in their poverty rate, and a 0.36 point drop in their unemployment rate. By contrast, under Republicans, blacks gained $142 a year, along with a 0.15 point increase in poverty and a 0.39 point increase in unemployment.

    …and hold your horses, keyboard warriors. The authors of the study anticipated your objection that this just indicates that Democrats presided over boom times and Republicans presided over bust:

    … Hajnal and Horowitz ran another test that controlled for median income, inflation, changes in the economy, and control of Congress. In each case, the results were the same: “All else equal, black family incomes grew over $1,000 faster annually under Democratic leadership than they did under Republican presidents. Likewise, the black poverty rate declined 2.6 points faster under Democrats and the black unemployment rate fell almost one point faster.”

    The only difference is under divided government. Black family income—and only black family income—was stagnant when Democratic presidents were coupled with Republican Congresses.

    In most of my past discussion of the racial gap between the parties, I’ve focused on the bald racism of the Republicans, and that racism is pretty fucking bad. This study makes it clear, though, that leaving all of that aside completely, Republican policies are utter failures for African American voters.

    Bouie’s kicker:

    ….when it comes to analyzing black voters, conservatives need to stop treating them as irrational or stuck on some kind of “Democratic plantation.” Like any coherent group of citizens, black Americans have a strong sense of their individual and collective interests. And in their correct view, they do better under Democratic presidents, which contributes to their overwhelming support for Democratic politicians.

    Put another way, if conservatives want to make inroads with black Americans and other minorities, they have to show them they’ll succeed under Republican governance and have to deliver when the opportunity comes.

    —Myca

  3. 3
    RonF says:

    Regarding #19:

    The study purports to show that support for Voter ID among State legislators is racially biased on the basis of the difference in response to a question about whether one can vote without possessing a drivers license purportedly written by [obvious Caucasian name} vs. [obvious Hispanic name]. Interesting concept – but there’s a variable in the methods that are not reported on in the results. They say half the legislators received e-mails written in Spanish and half got e-mails written in English. So who got how many of which – and was there a response difference based on the language? Did all the Hispanic e-mails come from [obvious Hispanic name], or were they 50:50 (and the same with English e-mails)? Can the difference they cite be explained on the basis of the language the e-mail was written in? Additionally, is there any control on how the legislators responded to e-mails in general?

    I always get a little suspicious when something like this is done with multiple variables but the methods are not completely explained and the breakdown for all the variables is not included.

    The other thing to remember is that there’s no way that the legislator the e-mail was written to was actually the person who responded to the e-mail. When I contract a legislator’s office for constituent services, the legislator doesn’t deal with it. Their staff does. If it’s a question on an issue of the day, the staff member pulls out the pre-drafted repsonse and sends it along. If it’s a request for help with the VA or Social Security, the staff member who specializes in that deals with it. So if these e-mails are measuring any racial animus, it’s measuring it on the part of whichever staff member caught it that day, not the legislator.

  4. 4
    RonF says:

    I find myself in agreement with #9. The cop killers in Vegas can fairly be described as domestic terrorists.

  5. 5
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Korean toilet unclogger: Holy shit! That’s what you call “faith in modern adhesives!”

    Discrimination in classified ads:Sheesh, would it have been so difficult to use a gray card? Anyway, I’ve read the actual paper (available for free online) . and as someone who is familiar with online transactions it seems, well.. a bit odd. Can’t put my finger on it exactly. Not that the results are invalid, but rather the results of this particular study may not have a whole lot of validity in other contexts.

    39-40 college rape stuff: I continue to be confused about why all of these folks aren’t pushing for colleges to immediately and promptly help all victims make a report to the police. Schools can give the same support/transportation to assist any student in the filing of a civil restraining order–which, not incidentally, uses the “more likely than not” civil standard of proof. The concept of “victim advocates” is well established and well regarded, so it’s not as if this is a new thing; schools would simply need to contract with a firm to provide victim-advocacy services.

    That would limit the school’s involvement to (a) taking temporary action to protect the victim while waiting for the courts to open; and (b) final disciplinary findings after a trial has concluded, based on transcripts of sworn testimony and court-vetted evidence.

    This seems more rational than having these VERY SERIOUS crimes “investigated” and “tried” by random panels of ill-trained students and faculty. You wouldn’t hire a random detective (or court magistrate) to teach a college course course on French Philosophy in the Late 21st Century; even if you hired an adjunct you would choose someone with literally years of specialized training and probably a PhD. Why would you let students and professors play at being cops, lawyers, and judges without actually being cops, lawyers, or judges?

  6. 6
    Brian says:

    On GoT season finale, it reminded me of a saying I was told in a writing class. “melodrama is good versus evil. Tragedy is good versus good.” The final sword fight is as close to tragedy as I’ve seen yet in GoT. Some show runner is getting a free beer out of me at a sci-fi convention for that one.

  7. 7
    Myca says:

    There’s a great quote from #11 I wanted to discuss. It’s talking about how sex positive people should not be jerks to asexual people (which I agree with), and there’s this paragraph:

    There is nothing abnormal about not experiencing sexual attraction or not being interested in sex, nor is there anything abnormal about needing to work through some things on your own after experiencing sexual trauma, including rape, incest, child molestation, and other traumas. While your lack of desire or inability to have sex might be rooted in trauma, it doesn’t mean that you’re broken or that there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed, nor does it mean that the people around you have the right to insist that you need to join the sexual world.

    Right on.

    This is something that I’ve encountered a lot in discussions of BDSM, the idea that if your sexual interests come from some sort of trauma, those interests are somehow less valid.

    Which is a great idea.

    Because, clearly, the one thing survivors of sexual abuse and trauma need more than anything is less agency and more invalidation.

    —Myca

  8. 8
    Ampersand says:

    Ron:

    So who got how many of which – and was there a response difference based on the language? Did all the Hispanic e-mails come from [obvious Hispanic name], or were they 50:50 (and the same with English e-mails)? Can the difference they cite be explained on the basis of the language the e-mail was written in? Additionally, is there any control on how the legislators responded to e-mails in general?

    Legislators were randomly sent one of four letters – 1) English, Caucasian name, 2) English, Latino name, 3) Spanish, Caucasion name, and 4) Spanish, Latino name. Since legislators (especially those who support voter ID laws) were less likely to respond to requests from those with Latino names, even if the letter was in English, the difference cannot be explained on the basis of the language the request was written in.

    In this sort of field test study, there is no control group needed.

    The other thing to remember is that there’s no way that the legislator the e-mail was written to was actually the person who responded to the e-mail.

    These are state legislators, and most of them have very minimal staffs and do handle at least some office work themselves. But even if it were the case that this was just measuring bias among staff members, wouldn’t it still be a matter of concern – and frankly, rather telling – that the staffs of pro-voter-ID legislators are systematically biased against Latino constituents?

  9. 9
    Brian says:

    Myca;

    Interesting point, trauma can be as much of a “formative experience” as any other, which doesn’t make it automatically invalid. For that matter replicating trauma in a reframed, less frightening way often gets described as empowering.

  10. 10
    nobody.really says:

    Who favors restoring voting rights to ex-felons? Rand Paul!

  11. 11
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Heh.

    Harvard Law Review Counsel Censors Footnote in Harvard Law Review Article on Censorship

    Note 8:
    …see also Svetlana Mintcheva, post to Free Expression Network (Feb. 7, 2010) (in author’s files) (describing decision by domain Network Solutions to eject The File Room censorship archive because of a Nan Goldin photograph; the photograph in question shows two little girls playing; one is naked and her vulva can be seen. A link to the photograph on the File Room website has been deleted from this footnote, over the strenuous objection of the author, on the advice of counsel for the Harvard Law Review. Author’s note: that a link to an innocent photograph by one of the country’s major artists should be censored is evidence of both the danger and the absurdity of confusing images of children’s bodies with child pornography).

  12. 12
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    In the “videos worth watching” category, I nominate this one. Perhaps the writers here will appreciate it:

  13. 13
    Myca says:

    # 18, Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity, is one of the most thunderous denunciations of the evil the perversely sex-obsessed Catholic Church does in the name of Jesus I’ve ever read. That it comes from Andrew Sullivan, a thoughtful and committed practicing Roman Catholic, is astounding.

  14. 14
    ballgame says:

    Myca, this New Republic piece suggests that an important claim in Andrew Sullivan’s post (that dead babies were dumped in septic tanks) is unfounded, FWIW.

    ETA: Andrew presumably based his piece on the original AP report; the AP subsequently released a correction noting that it was not known whether or not any human remains were interred in an unused septic tank.

  15. 15
    Myca says:

    Sullivan has actually addressed that in subsequent posts. I briefly considered linking to the series, but didn’t in my original comment because I was in a hurry.

    Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity, Original Post (Linked Above)
    Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity, Part 2
    Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity, Part 3
    Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity, Part 4 (In which he addresses the revised report)

    Though I am, of course, hopeful that the bodies of hundreds of infants were not stuffed into a septic tank, I think that Sullivan’s larger point about the evil of the church’s view on the moral inferiority of unwed mothers and their children is correct

    From his final post:

    Fintan O’Toole has a must-read on the broader cultural context for the atrocities. In the Catholic mindset of the time, illegitimate children were regarded as physically and mentally weaker than other “virtuous” toddlers.

    —Myca

  16. 16
    Ruchama says:

    Yeah, the septic tank part was the least important detail. The fact that it was a mass grave, and not even in a real cemetery (don’t Catholics have a rule about burying in sanctified ground? Or am I confusing them with some other group?) is bad enough. As well as the sheer number of dead children, and the conditions under which they died.

  17. 17
    closetpuritan says:

    #6–I wouldn’t characterize that tweet as mocking the crisis, and other than the implied-racism “burrito wrapping” phrase, not as mocking the children and teens, either. (Hyperbolic, sure. I doubt any of them are actually cleaning cells or changing diapers. And I’d say it’s pretty common for that kind of casual racism to coexist with some degree of empathy for the targets.)

    Presumably most of the Border Patrol agents got into their career because they wanted to do law enforcement, and feel that that’s where their skills lie, and where their talents are best used. Saying, “OK, but everyone has parts of their job that they don’t like, and you’ve got to deal with it” is one thing*. But I don’t think that this is evidence that they don’t care what happens to the minors.

    Just today I was reading an article describing a somewhat similar situation. Basically, doctors, nurses, etc. tend to focus on medical outcomes to the exclusion of all else (such as letting patients know what is happening to them). Again, we all have parts of our jobs that we don’t like, and in the end, the doctors need to deal with it. But it wouldn’t be fair to say that they don’t care about their patients; they simply don’t see communicating with patients as their primary job.

    *Though, really, the gov’t needs to do a better job of getting these minors out of BP holding cells and into HHS’s care promptly, and the primary reason is not so that BP agents can spend less time caring for minors because they don’t like it–this kind of chaos is probably part of the reason that the abuses described elsewhere in the Vox article are happening–it would be more difficult to for abuse to happen in a less chaotic environment, and more likely for employees to not want to abuse minors (at least through neglect) if they saw caring for minors as their primary job.

  18. 18
    nobody.really says:

    Re: Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity – Let’s take a deep breath here. It’s a shocking story. And the more shocking the story, the deeper the breath required.

    Let me tell you a story about a place called the Home. It was a place in Ireland where nuns took in unmarried, indigent pregnant women until the women could give birth. The nuns had a harsh reputation. The nuns facilitated adoptions. The nuns required the young women to earn their keep as best they could. They exhibited prejudice against both the young mothers and their kids that was characteristic of that time and place. And sometimes the nuns became the de facto foster parents to children left behind when the mothers left.

    But covertly, the Home was also known as the place where people throughout that part of Ireland went to surrender custody of kids they could no longer care for. Kids they could no longer afford. Kids that required extraordinary medical care or other attention. Often both.

    It was an era of backyard slaughterhouses, poor sanitary practices, little refrigeration, and no antibiotics. Diphtheria, influenza, scarlet fever, typhoid were common. And as the Great Depression deepened, the Home found itself under-resourced and overwhelmed.

    Yes, great numbers of kids died — but not necessarily more than would have died had the nuns refused to accept custody from the desperate parents.

    Yes, the nuns disposed of the bodies without drawing attention to the mounting death toll. They needed to part with the bodies quickly for sanitary reasons. They knew that if the deaths became widely known, they’d have to divert scarce resources away from caring for the living in order to care for the dead. And they dearly wanted to avoid terrifying the other kids in their custody. So discretion was paramount.

    The nuns proceeded as best they could given the resources they had. As the economy improved, the flow of hospice-care kids diminished and eventually stopped. And when Ireland evolved to a state where their peculiar kind of services was no longer required, they quietly closed their doors.

    Is this a true story? Not that I know of. But this story seems to account for all the known facts as well as Andrew Sullivan’s story of ideological sadism.

    In short, let’s take that deep breath – instead of that quick leap. The kids are already dead no matter how quickly we rush to judgment. Why not take our time?

  19. 19
    dragon_snap says:

    It’s time to face up to the problem of sexual abuse in the white community.” (read to the end; link is to The Guardian: Comment is free)

    Here are some links I posted in the last open thread (at considerably greater length, as is my wont); I think they merit further exposure and I hope no one minds me reposting them. [Trigger Warning: for all three links for discussion and in some cases graphic description of sexual assault and rape.]

    + “Why Rape Is Sincerely Hilarious.” A short (2.5 min) video on YouTube, the story is heavily based on the writer/performer’s own experience.

    + “When Men Are Raped: A new study reveals that men are often the victims of sexual assault, and women are often the perpetrators.” (link is to Slate magazine)

    + “The Hard Truth About Girl-on-Guy Rape: When a guy is “made to penetrate” a female, is it rape? Long-suffering male victims are turning to Reddit to break their silence.” (link is to the website Vocativ)

    And now for a more uplifiting story: “Wilson High principal comes out as gay at school’s Pride Day.” (link is to the Washington Post)

  20. 20
    RonF says:

    Though, really, the gov’t needs to do a better job of getting these minors out of BP holding cells and into HHS’s care promptly,

    The government needs to do a better job of keeping these minors from getting across the border in the first place. I recommend the National Guard. And they also need to do a better job of sending them right back across the border should they be found to have crossed. If the government’s top priority upon being presented with the problem of how to deal with a large number of minors that are crossing the U.S.’s borders illegally is how to care for them instead of how to stop them from crossing it seems fair to say that the executive authority of the Federal government has simply abandoned the concept that it’s job is to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States of America”.

  21. 21
    RonF says:

    To nobody.really’s point, and to one I’ve made a few times regarding rushing to judgement when sensational allegations are first made, here’s more information on the Irish home for unwed mothers story. A couple of excerpts:

    The Associated Press last week issued a lengthy correction admitting that the septic tank might not contain any human remains at all;

    The high infant mortality rate, at the Tuam home and others, speaks volumes about the Ireland of early twentieth century, but it speaks of poverty and a lack of economic development. And as horrific as those death rates were, how many more mass graves would there be if the Catholic church hadn’t bothered providing social services? Certainly the Irish state of the time showed no appetite for doing so.

    “After the war of independence we emerged as a fledgling nation with enormous poverty. The only institution that was in any way stable was the Church,” says Rev. Vincent Twomey, a retired Catholic moral theologian. “The situation of the past has to be looked at, but looking for criminals to hang is a lynch mob mentality. I’d just like to know the truth; that’s all I want, the truth.”

  22. 22
    RonF says:

    The Supreme Court invalidates Pres. Obama’s NLRB ‘recess’ appointments 9-0.

    First, the central holding of the opinion for the Court is that the Senate gets to determine when the Senate is in recess, provided the recess is of sufficient length. This is significant in that it gives Congress the ability to prevent recess appointments.

    Second, none of the justices were willing to accept the position of the Obama Administration, which was unnecessarily extreme. In choosing the make the recess appointments in the way it did, such as by not following precedents set by prior administrations (including Teddy Roosevelt) and filling some Board spots that the Senate never had time to fill, the Administration adopted a stance that was very hard to defend, so it could not attract a single vote.

    Which makes me wonder if the decisions that the NLRB made while the invalid appointments sat invalid and unenforceable.

  23. 23
    nobody.really says:

    Re: Catholicism’s Crimes Against Humanity — from the Associated Press’s “correction”/follow-up

    The reports of unmarked graves shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Irish public, who for decades have known that some of the 10 defunct “mother and baby homes,” which chiefly housed the children of unwed mothers, held grave sites filled with forgotten dead.

    The religious orders’ use of unmarked graves reflected the crippling poverty of the time, the infancy of most of the victims, and the lack of plots in cemeteries corresponding to the children’s fractured families….

    Corless spent months … buying copies of death certificates and organizing them.

    Her list of the dead shows that nearly 80 percent were younger than 1; two died within 10 minutes of birth and never received first names. Ninety-one died in the 1920s, 247 in the 1930s, 388 in the 1940s, 70 in the 1950s, and one more child in 1960. The most common causes were flu, measles, pneumonia, tuberculosis and whooping cough. Contrary to the allegations of widespread starvation highlighted in some reports, only 18 children were recorded as suffering from severe malnutrition.

    While publicly available records are incomplete, sporadic inspection reports indicate that the orphanage’s population exceeded 250 throughout the worst years of child mortality, when overcrowding would have encouraged the spread of infection.

    (Emphasis added.)

    So my story isn’t quite holding up. I didn’t get all the diseases right. More importantly, the death rate peaked in the 1940s, not during the Great Depression per se.

    However, the Depression arguably lasted longer in Ireland than elsewhere. I’ve learned that following its 1922 War of Independence from the United Kingdom, Ireland remained notoriously poor and rural until the 1990s. The 1930s featured a disastrous “Economic War” of tariffs with Great Britain, the rejection of international trade and the rise of protectionist policies, and the nationalization of firms. Many firms would remain under state control until the 1990s.

    In short, from its founding Ireland had never been able to support its entire population. Throughout the period during which The Home operated, Ireland’s chief export was the Irish.

    And maybe this helps provide a context in which to understand the social sanction on unwanted pregnancy. Rather than regarding the 800 deaths as an emblem of nuns’ cruelty and indifference, we might regard them as an a very tangible symbol of the precise problems these nuns confronted for decades upon decade. Who understands better the cost of unintended pregnancy than the nun who has had to bury 800 abandoned infants? If you were that nun, how much compassion could you muster for the next unwed mother who arrived at your door?

  24. 24
    Ampersand says:

    Breaking: Unanimous Supreme Court Strikes Massachusetts Buffer Zone Law. I more or less agree with the decision, which hinges on the idea that Massachusetts didn’t tailor its law as narrowly as it could have while still serving the purpose.

  25. 25
    Ampersand says:

    From Kevin Drum:

    It’s interesting that we’ve seen back-to-back decisions that, to my mind, were confirmed in diametrically opposite ways. In the Aereo case, Aereo thought it had discovered a clever loophole in copyright law, but the court ruled against them. The general intent of the law was more important. In the recess appointment case, Senate Republicans found a clever loophole to stay technically in session, and the court ruled that this was perfectly fine. The fact that it was a hypertechnical sham didn’t move them.

  26. Thanks for these links, dragon snap.

  27. 27
    Ampersand says:

    Regarding that buffer zone case, this is a funny point.

  28. 28
    Ruchama says:

    And maybe this helps provide a context in which to understand the social sanction on unwanted pregnancy.

    The stigma was not on unwanted or unintended pregnancy. It was on unwed pregnancy. Married couples having eight or ten or more children wasn’t at all uncommon, and birth control was definitely frowned upon (and pretty much illegal, I believe.)

  29. 29
    Ruchama says:

    And the cruelty of the Magdalene laundries has been well-documented. It’s not like this case is the first time that anyone’s looked at those homes, and that we’ve got to speculate about what they were like.

  30. 30
    Myca says:

    It’s not like this case is the first time that anyone’s looked at those homes, and that we’ve got to speculate about what they were like.

    Bingo.

    Also, it’s not like this is the first time anyone has noticed the exceptional cruelty (and staggering hypocrisy) of the Catholic Church when it comes to matters sexual.

    Sullivan’s reaction (and the reaction of other commenters, like Fintan O’Toole) exists in that context. So, no, the story nobody.really proposes isn’t unreasonable when examined in a vacuum … but why would we examine it in a vacuum when we have so much preexisting context?

    From the Fintan O’Toole piece:

    In 1943, the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers compiled a well-meaning memorandum on children in institutions. It noted of those in mother-and-baby homes that “These illegitimate children start with a handicap. Owing to the circumstances of their birth, their heredity, the state of mind of the mother before birth, their liability to hereditary disease and mental weakness, we do not get, and we should not expect to get, the large percentage of healthy vigorous babies we get in normal circumstances. This was noticeable in the institutions we visited.”

    These were humane and compassionate reformers. And it seemed obvious to them that children born out of wedlock would be physically and mentally weak and that “we should not expect” them to be normally healthy.

    You know … when I’m reading through A Song of Ice and Fire (or watching the show), there’s this repeated line about how a bastard is ‘naturally treacherous’ because of the circumstances of his birth. This isn’t far off from that.

    Personally, I agree with Showberyn: “Bastards are born of passion, aren’t they? We don’t despise them in Dorne. ”

    From the same piece:

    A Catholic priest writing in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1922 under the pen-name Sagart, actually objected to the establishment of mother-and-baby homes, not on the grounds that they were horribly oppressive in principle, but that they might let unmarried mothers lose their proper sense of inferiority.

    The homes would “bring these poor girls into touch with each other, a thing which experience shows to be very harmful. They feel that [they] are ‘all in the same boat’ and are inevitably led to ‘compare notes’ and talk of their experiences. Each will thus have borne in on her mind the impression that her case is not extraordinary, and that many girls of seemingly unblemished reputation are no better than herself.” He need not have worried, of course – the regime in the homes ensured that the women would have no illusions of normality.

    Sullivan’s analysis does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within a long and well-documented context. Fintan O’Toole is not an American, and Sullivan is not an Atheist. Fintan is Irish, and Sullivan is Catholic. They are both well aware of this context and don’t need to make up ‘just so’ stories.

    —Myca

  31. 31
    closetpuritan says:

    RonF:
    The government needs to do a better job of keeping these minors from getting across the border in the first place. I recommend the National Guard. And they also need to do a better job of sending them right back across the border should they be found to have crossed. If the government’s top priority upon being presented with the problem of how to deal with a large number of minors that are crossing the U.S.’s borders illegally is how to care for them instead of how to stop them from crossing it seems fair to say that the executive authority of the Federal government has simply abandoned the concept that it’s job is to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States of America”.

    You don’t seem to understand that these minors are being transferred from Border Patrol to Health and Human Services custody as a place to stay while their deportation proceedings are taking place. Some of them will successfully challenge the deportation proceedings, but most will not.

    Also, there are Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil. As the linked article indicates, it is possible to get around them to some degree, but Border Patrol agents cannot normally trespass onto Mexican soil. This would not change if we deployed the National Guard instead–unless you want to invade Mexico.

    There are ways to we can attempt to prevent people from illegally crossing the border without having Border Patrol agents operate on foreign soil, but other than deterrence (which would probably work best if BP Agents spent more time patrolling the border and less time dealing with underage children stuck in their holding cells), the ways that I can think of (building a fence, helping the children’s nations of origin deal with their violence problem) do not involve Border Patrol agents at all.

  32. 32
    nobody.really says:

    [I]t’s not like this is the first time anyone has noticed the exceptional cruelty (and staggering hypocrisy) of the Catholic Church when it comes to matters sexual.

    Sullivan’s reaction (and the reaction of other commenters, like Fintan O’Toole) exists in that context.

    Yup, they do. And if all people wish to allege is this kind of incivility and unforgiving attitude toward unwed mothers and their kids, then this would be sufficient. Indeed, we wouldn’t need the new information at all. (And, indeed, my hypothetical story acknowledges this.)

    If, in contrast, people wish to allege that in the absence of this incivility there’d be 800 additional people alive today, I think evidence would be nice.

    Was Rubin “Hurricane” Carter a murderer? Remember, he stabbed a man when he was 11. He escaped reform school. The army discharged him prematurely for being “unfit.” He committed a series of muggings. He spent years in prison. He owned guns. The police accused him of a triple murder. And to top it all off, he was a professional boxer – and a black man.

    True, Carter’s story that he was at a different location when the crime occurred wasn’t unreasonable when examined in a vacuum … but why would we examine it in a vacuum when we have so much preexisting context?

    So Myca has his conclusion; I’m still waiting on mine. Feel free to criticize my reasoning as slow. From my perspective, that’s not the worst of faults.

  33. 33
    Harlequin says:

    If, in contrast, people wish to allege that in the absence of this incivility there’d be 800 additional people alive today, I think evidence would be nice.

    800 is surely an overestimation.

    Here’s a chart showing the infant death rate in Ireland for both in-wedlock and out-of-wedlock births in the years in question. The out-of-wedlock births are shockingly higher especially in the 1920s: 34% in 1923, vs 7% for all babies out-of-wedlock and in-wedlock combined. The article also discusses the death rates at a number of Irish mother and baby homes (most that seem to be run in a sort of joint way by local governments and nuns–I can’t figure out from the descriptions how much each group was involved). The death rates they cite are higher than the death rates for the out-of-wedlock births as a whole. I take your point that this doesn’t implicate Tuam on its own, but it still supports the broader claim against the Catholic Church that Sullivan made in his piece.

    I’m having more trouble finding the death rate, as opposed to the death number, in Tuam in particular (probably because it’s hard to find the total number of children there in any given year). The best I can find is this article which has the results from the 1940s, when the death rates were 34% in 1943, 25% in 1944, 23% in 1945, and 27% in 1946. That’s to be compared to 25% in 1943, 27% in 1944, 19% in 1945, and 20% in 1946 for illegitimate births as a whole. A lot of noise there due to small numbers, but looks like an extra ~20% bump in death rate for the kids in Tuam vs illegitimate children elsewhere over those four years. And, of course, these were homes set up presumably to help the people in this situation (although their definition of “help” even if it worked perfectly wasn’t what we would consider it today)–so even the same death rate as the rest of Ireland wouldn’t necessarily be a sign that they were blameless.

    But you don’t need to take my word for it: here’s a quote from an economist who’s done studies involving infant mortality in Ireland who says the death rates in Tuam can’t be explained by the high infant mortality rates of the time.

  34. 34
    Harlequin says:

    Of course, those numbers are from different sources, but infant mortality is relatively straightforward to measure if birth and death records are kept. (I’d say the biggest question is whether they cover the same age range–I suspect not.) And the number of deaths was not always as high as it was in the 1940s, although it’s hard to know if that’s because the standard of care declined over time or because the population of children went up.

  35. 35
    RonF says:

    It seems to me that in a poor country babies born to single mothers would suffer a higher mortality that babies born to a married couple. Heck, I well imagine that even with the plethora of social services here in the U.S. you’ll see such a discrepancy. Go to a country where social services are essentially non-existent, where modern medicine doesn’t exist and where the whole country is in the throes of a depression and you’ll see a pretty large discrepancy. Two people simply have more resources to dedicate to child care than one does. The Catholic Church of Ireland in the 1920’s certainly took a different outlook on bastardy than we do today – but to attribute the deaths to it is quite wrong, I think. Disapprove of these women’s actions they did – but they probably kept more of those kids alive than if their homes for unwed mothers had not existed.

  36. 36
    RonF says:

    Myra, I understand quite well that these children are being housed while their deportation proceedings are taking place – at least that’s the theory. My point is that we need to stop them from entering the U.S. in the first place so that no deportation proceedings are necessary. We could contract the building of the fence to some Israeli companies – they seem to have the necessary expertise. While we’re waiting on that, though, I’m sure other measures can be taken to discourage anyone from setting foot on even one inch of American soil.

    I don’t want to invade Mexico. But Mexico is invading us, and their police and military are at best doing nothing to stop it and at worst are aiding and abetting it. If we have to pick people up while they’re still wet from crossing the Rio Grande, run a boat over and dump them back on Mexican soil, too bad if Mexico doesn’t like it.

  37. 37
    Myca says:

    Disapprove of these women’s actions they did – but they probably kept more of those kids alive than if their homes for unwed mothers had not existed.

    You realize that this claim does not square with the stats Harlequin has posted? On what are you basing it?

    The best I can find is this article which has the results from the 1940s, when the death rates were 34% in 1943, 25% in 1944, 23% in 1945, and 27% in 1946. That’s to be compared to 25% in 1943, 27% in 1944, 19% in 1945, and 20% in 1946 for illegitimate births as a whole. A lot of noise there due to small numbers, but looks like an extra ~20% bump in death rate for the kids in Tuam vs illegitimate children elsewhere over those four years.

    —Myca

  38. 38
    Jake Squid says:

    Myra, I understand quite well that these children are being housed while their deportation proceedings are taking place – at least that’s the theory.

    What are the facts?

  39. 39
    closetpuritan says:

    RonF:

    Myra,
    I’m assuming this is addressed to me…

    While we’re waiting on that, though, I’m sure other measures can be taken to discourage anyone from setting foot on even one inch of American soil.

    This makes me wonder if you want to station US personnel along the Mexican border with machine guns and shoot people (including unaccompanied minors) if they look like they’re about to cross the border…

    If we have to pick people up while they’re still wet from crossing the Rio Grande, run a boat over and dump them back on Mexican soil, too bad if Mexico doesn’t like it.

    OK, so you want to violate Mexican sovereignty and put Border Patrol agents National Guard personnel in Mexico, possibly resulting in a war with Mexico and/or sanctions from the UN. And you’re maybe not sure about preventing people from crossing the border and instead want to wait until just after they’ve crossed the border (“pick people up while they’re still wet from crossing the Rio Grande”), then pick them up and dump them on the opposite side of the river and wait and see if they cross again? (I wonder if more would slip through that way, or the way we’re currently doing it, where we eventually return most of them to their home countries in Central America?) So then American personnel won’t be stationed in Mexico–just routinely, intentionally cross into Mexico, breaking their laws as well as violating international norms. In the name of upholding the law.

    But Mexico is invading us,
    Leaving aside that none of the attempted immigrants represent the government of their countries, I thought we were talking about the surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America?

    We do already have a fence along parts of the border, by the way.

  40. 40
    Ruchama says:

    I recently read an article (NY Times, I think) where a border patrol agent said that intercepting the rafts in the middle of the river wasn’t practical — the rafts they use are usually pretty unstable, so any kind of operation like that would end up with a lot of people, both border patrol and immigrants, in the water, and probably a lot of drownings.

  41. 41
    RonF says:

    So, we’re worried about violating Mexican sovereignty, eh?

    Seems like we’d just be returning the favor.

    News 4 Tucson has learned a Mexican military helicopter travelled across the border and fired on U.S. Border Patrol agents.

    It happened in the early morning hours Thursday, west of the San Miguel Gate on the Tohono O’Odham Nation. The chopper fired on the agents but missed them. The chopper then flew back into Mexico. We’re told Mexican authorities contacted the U.S. and apologized for the incident.

    Seems that this is not an isolated case.

    Reports obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act show that members of Mexico’s Army have crossed into the U.S. at least 300 times over the past 18 years.

    But reports show that across the entire border, soldiers have driven into Texas, landed helicopters in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and encountered Border Patrol agents within the United States.

  42. 42
    nobody.really says:

    Ok, now we’re getting’ somewhere! Whodunit: Social prejudice or poverty?

    The stigma was not on unwanted or unintended pregnancy. It was on unwed pregnancy.

    Good distinction; thanks.

    While “800 dead” makes for a powerful headline, I share Harlequin’s view that the more relevant number would be the death rate — and, arguably, the differential between the death rate at the home and the death rate in some relevant comparison group. So – what’s the relevant comparison group?

    The best I can find is this article which has the results from the 1940s, when the death rates were 34% in 1943, 25% in 1944, 23% in 1945, and 27% in 1946. That’s to be compared to 25% in 1943, 27% in 1944, 19% in 1945, and 20% in 1946 for illegitimate births as a whole. A lot of noise there due to small numbers, but looks like an extra ~20% bump in death rate for the kids in Tuam vs illegitimate children elsewhere….

    Nice sleuthin’, Harlequin! If it’s appropriate to compare the sum of percentages, the death rate in Tuam was 8% larger than the death rate for illegitimate kids elsewhere — and more than a 300% bump compared to the death rate of legit kids. That’s pretty damning.

    Setting aside concerns about the small number of data points, I still wonder if there’s systemic bias in the data. That is, was the population of pregnant single women who went to institutions such as Tuam the same as the population of pregnant single women who did not? One of Harlequin’s articles state:

    Mother and baby homes were established in Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s to house unmarried mothers and their children….

    [The Pelletstown home, with its own mortality issues,] was run by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul but was “provided and administered by Poor Law authorities”.

    Does this suggest that mother and baby homes were not used by unwed mothers in general, but only by poor unwed mothers? We might expect poor unwed mothers to experience higher infant mortality rates than other unwed mothers whether or not they entered a mother and baby home. But I’m just spitballing here.

    “Some 119 of the 240 children housed in Pelletstown died in 1925, with the high mortality rate attributed to a measles epidemic.” That’s quite a toll. I could well imagine that death rates among institutionalized kids would be higher due to poverty. Epidemics of infectious diseases would be a larger problem where people are packed closely together due to poverty and where medical care was lacking due to poverty. In contrast, would social prejudice, in the absence of poverty, contribute to a measles epidemic?

    Harliquin cites economist Liam Delaney who reports that infant mortality in the relevant era would have ranged from 7 – 10%. “Prof Delaney said the rate of death at the mother and baby home in Tuam cannot also be explained by the significantly higher rate of infant mortality among children born out of wedlock. ‘This points to something serious within these institutions,’ he said.’”

    Well, yes and no. Again, the possibility remains that the number of bodies found may not all belong to kids born at the home. In my hypothetical, I speculate about the possibility that The Home became the regional dumping ground for kids. This would badly skew the statistics (much like the murder rate in impoverished Camden, Gary, or E. St. Louis would be skewed if they became convenient dumping grounds for murderers in neighboring New York, Chicago, or St. Louis). In short, there is certainly something serious here – but it may extend beyond the institutions themselves.

    But Delaney cites a 1934 public health official explaining the shockingly high death rate of illegitimate kids:

    The illegitimate child being proof of the mother’s shame is, in most cases, sought to be hidden at all costs. What frequently happens is that the mother, or the mother’s family, at the time the mother leaves the hospital or home, make arrangements with someone to take the child, either paying a lump sum down or undertaking to pay something from time to time.

    These arrangements are often made or connived at by those who carry on the poorer class of maternity homes, and the results to the child can be read in the mortality rates.

    If a lump sum is paid or if the periodical payment lapses, the child becomes an encumbrance on the foster mother, who has no interest in keeping it alive.

    This analysis isn’t exactly on point for out discussion, given that it speculates about the death rate of adopted kids rather than institutionalized kids. Nevertheless, it suggests that social prejudice caused unwed mothers to put their kids up for adoption, and the adopting families would tend to be poor and disinterested in the kids. That is, this thesis suggests that social prejudice caused kids to live in poverty, growing up with little money or familial love. So score one for prejudice.

    [I]nfant mortality is relatively straightforward to measure if birth and death records are kept.

    That would be very useful. In particular, if records show that all the kids who died at the home were also kids born at the home, it would largely dispel the possibility that the bodies do not belong solely to kids born in the home.

    Ideally, we’d have death rate data on 1) kids born out of wedlock and living in institutions, 2) kids born out of wedlock but retained and raised by their mothers (or fathers?), and 3) kids born in wedlock but living in orphanages. As Harlequin indicates, comparing Groups 1 vs 2 might illustrate how much of the death rate could be attributed to being in an institution. And comparing Groups 1 and 3 might illustrate how much of the death rate could be attributed to social prejudice against out-of-wedlock births.

  43. 43
    nobody.really says:

    (Aside: In his early 20s, my dad obtained a copy of his birth certificate – and discovered that he’d been born in Montana, far from any family (or anything else, for that matter). And thus unfolded a tale of a pregnant upper-middle-class single woman in the Depression finding a remote location in which to give birth, and quietly returning home with child. Of a quiet adoption by a nearby large family of working-class Catholic immigrants. Of hopes for financial contribution – and hopes unfulfilled? Of enduring feelings of shame, and doubts about how much information to share with his own children. Of family strains. Of nature/nurture debates with siblings. Of reunions. And of the hunt for the father. Etc. It’s a story I only half know. Perhaps I should go find out the rest….)

  44. 44
    Ruchama says:

    Again, the possibility remains that the number of bodies found may not all belong to kids born at the home.

    The count of 800 wasn’t from the number of bodies found. It was based on death records from the home. And from what I know of the homes, it was rare for kids to be living there who hadn’t been born there. And the vast majority of the kids died before they were a year old. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/79-of-babies-who-died-in-tuam-home-didn-t-reach-first-birthday-1.1836023

  45. 45
    mythago says:

    @Jake Squid, “at least, that’s the theory” is meant to darkly hint that Myca is wrong without actually presenting any facts. Because you know, while it would break RonF’s heart to invade Mexico, those manly chests aren’t going to beat themselves.

  46. 46
    ballgame says:

    Laura Carlsen has some good insights about the flurry of mainstream coverage of immigration in her “Child Migrants and Media Half Truths” at the Americas Program blog:

    So why does the mainstream press seek to place the blame on the parents and a supposed softening of immigration policy?

    Because the alternative to blaming migrant families themselves is unpalatable to them.

    The alternative is to accept that the Central American and North American Free Trade Agreements have left thousands of youth with no economic opportunities.

    It is to accept that US security aid for drug wars has armed and aggravated violence in Mexico and Central America.

    It is to understand the high cost of supporting the Honduran coup and how the Honduran people and the US population continue to pay that price, as out migration has surged over 500% in the past two years and human rights violations, instability and violence are skyrocketing. …

    The public-awareness campaign we really need is one addressed to U.S. citizens and Congress regarding the impact of economic and security polices on their southern neighbors, and especially on the children.

    h/t CounterSpin at FAIR.

  47. 47
    Jake Squid says:

    Exactly, mythago.

  48. 48
    Myca says:

    @Jake Squid, “at least, that’s the theory” is meant to darkly hint that Myca is wrong without actually presenting any facts. Because you know, while it would break RonF’s heart to invade Mexico, those manly chests aren’t going to beat themselves

    Though I agree, of course, RonF only thought he was addressing me. He was actually darkly hinting that closetpuritan was wrong without presenting any facts.

    I’m the one who challenged his “even though 100% of the available evidence contradicts this, probably the kids in Catholic orphanages were better off then otherwise” statement. I assume he said this because Yay Jesus, but that’s just a guess.

    —Myca

  49. 49
    Jake Squid says:

    I’m just curious to hear what the facts are. Do they support the theory or expose its flaws?

  50. 50
    closetpuritan says:

    RonF:
    Note that the title of your 2nd article is Rogue Mexican Army troops crossing the line, not “Government-approved Mexican Army troops crossing the line”.

    I had heard about some of these incidents. The ones that aren’t accidental seem to mostly be due to corruption. I doubt that the majority of the 300 incidents over 18 years are intentional:

    Both U.S. and Mexican agents have sporadically and accidentally crossed our common border during their patrols,” he said. “Both countries understand that this is something that happens as part of normal activities.”

    But if your reaction to corruption within the Mexican army is to start a war with Mexico, well, go ahead, see how many people you can convince that this is the right course of action.

  51. 51
    closetpuritan says:

    This is a pretty good quick summary of the surge in Central American unaccompanied minors. It seems that there isn’t a good answer to Jake Squid’s “what are facts?”

    It’s unclear how many unaccompanied children are actually given immigration relief in the courts because no statistics are available.

    According to the article (and according to other stuff I’ve seen), although the UN estimates that 58% are “eligible for some sort of humanitarian protection under international conventions”, the children are not eligible for public defenders or anything like that, so unless they have relatives in the US who can pay for an attorney for them, they’re probably getting deported.

    Oh, and about this:
    And they also need to do a better job of sending them right back across the border should they be found to have crossed… it seems fair to say that the executive authority of the Federal government has simply abandoned the concept that it’s job is to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States of America”.

    From the above article:

    Why can’t these children be deported right away?

    Under U.S. immigration law, Mexican or Canadian children who enter illegally and alone can be returned immediately. However, children from elsewhere cannot be removed immediately and must first be taken into U.S. custody.

  52. 52
    Ruchama says:

    Well, SCOTUS has ruled on the Hobby Lobby case. Corporations really are people, it seems.

    [Thanks! Subsequent posts on Hobby Lobby ruling have been moved to the dedicated thread. –Amp]

  53. 54
    dragon_snap says:

    Happy Canada Day, everyone!

    To celebrate, here is a CBC piece on a new DC superhero joining the Justice League – a teenage Cree girl from northern Ontario who goes by the name of Equinox. And here is an interview with the (Canadian!) writer who created her, Jeff Lemire, about the process. (link is to Maisonneuve magazine)

  54. 56
    Harlequin says:

    Meanwhile, today in climate change stupidity: during a discussion of new EPA carbon emissions regulations, we have Kentucky state senators Brandon Smith (R):

    I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.

    and Kevin Sinnette (D):

    The dinosaurs died, and we don’t know why, but the world adjusted. And to say that this is what’s going to cause detriment to people, I just don’t think it’s out there

    I mean, one of those is obviously way dumber than the other, but neither is, shall we say, covered in glory.

    Edited to add: I missed this glorious comment by the reporter, Jonathan Meador.

    Smith owns a coal company on Earth.

  55. 57
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Dude, the factories are under the canals. Everyone knows that.