Santorum wins Alabama AND Mississippi

Per the Washington Post. Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney, who was recently pro-choice, now wants to "get rid of" Planned Parenthood

At about 1:02 into the video. It was only in 2005 that Romney suddenly discovered that he was pro-life (NYT). Read the rest of this post...

Polls close in AL and MS for GOP primary

Still too close to call. Read the rest of this post...

Video: A 9, 13 and 14 year old play dueling banjos

Takes a minute to get fun, but then it just takes off. Love the kid on the fiddle, wish they'd shot more of him.

Read the rest of this post...

Some mixed feelings on the KONY 2012 movement

The most recent social fad among young people like myself has been the KONY 2012 Movement, started by Invisible Children, an organization dedicated to bringing about the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa. Millions of Facebook statuses, tweets, memes and Youtube videos have flooded cyberspace over the past ten days, proving once again that anyone can be an activist with the push of a button.

But Invisible Children appears to have played fast and loose with the facts, which I'll get to in a moment.

To its credit, the organization has proven adept at using social media to achieve its stated goal of making Joseph Kony famous for the atrocities he has committed. If you haven't watched the Youtube video yet, I'll do my part and link to it here. The video, more or less, recounts the following:

Joseph Kony is the most wanted man in the international community. He has fought against the Ugandan government for decades by abducting children, forcing them to commit heinous war crimes, and mutilating them if they refuse. Invisible Children successfully petitioned the U.S. government to send one hundred advisory consultants (read: troops) to aid the Ugandan military in arresting him so that he can be tried in International Court for war crimes. But there is more work to be done: The movement needs to keep pressure on the American government so that they don't remove the advisory consultants, so we need everyone to do their part to make Joseph Kony famous. The higher his name-ID, the bigger a story it is if the government bails on the operation, and the bigger the political fallout would be. Doing your part includes sharing the Youtube video, signing the pledge, contacting cultural and political leaders, and buying an action kit, which provides the tools for engaging in a more 'boots on the ground' manner.

However, as Michael Wilkerson points out in his guest column for Foreign Policy, the Invisible Children video leaves out a few crucial details, omissions that have served to misinform millions of would-be activists for social justice:

Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic -- where Kony himself is believed to be now 

...Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years. Eerily, it is also the same number estimated for the total killed in the more than 20 years of conflict in Northern Uganda.

...the small remaining LRA forces are still wreaking havoc and very hard to catch, but Northern Uganda has had tremendous recovery in the 6 years of peace since the LRA left.

It appears that, in an attempt to garner broader and more enthusiastic support, Invisible Children has fudged a few important details and portrayed Northern Uganda as something that it is not: a war zone in which children are taken from their beds and either massacred immediately or indoctrinated into the LRA. This may have been the case ten years ago, but has not been since 2006. Wilkerson goes on to write that there are a plenty of other problems facing Northern Uganda that an influx of money from Invisible Children projects could serve to worsen rather than alleviate.

It is also unclear what the organization's overarching goals are now that Joseph Kony IS famous, other than raising a lot of money and planning a day of action that coincides with National Weed Day (I can't tell if that's a really good idea or really bad idea...). As Wilkerson points out:

[The] goal is to make sure that President Obama doesn't withdraw the advisors he deployed until Kony is captured or killed. That seems noble enough, except that there has been no mention by the government of withdrawing those forces -- at least any I can find. Does anyone else have any evidence about this urgent threat of cancellation? One that justifies such a massive production campaign and surely lucrative donation drive?

And what happens if the advisors stay in Uganda but fail to kill or capture Kony, which seems like the most probable outcome considering that Kony has not been in the country for six years?

It seems that one of the reasons that KONY 2012 has garnered such a wide base of involvement is that it requires very little investment for a very small goal. While the movement will almost certainly succeed in keeping American advisors in Uganda, I worry that it will not be able to ensure the arrest of Joseph Kony because it is asking too little; it is low-risk/low-reward activism at the greatest scope possible.

What is so troubling about setting the bar for 'success' so low with the KONY 2012 movement is that more is possible. Invisible Children took in over 15 million dollars in revenue over the past ten days simply from the sales of their action kits (it is safe to assume they took in considerable additional revenue in donations and purchases of other merchandise); much of that could be directed towards direct aid to those affected by the LRA. However, as Jedidiah Jenkins (one of the creators of KONY 2012) said on Sunday, "the truth about Invisible Children is that we are not an aid organization, and we don't intend to be."

If Invisible Children insists on remaining an advocacy and awareness organization, then why not advocate for something more than maintaining the status quo? 100 advisory consultants will likely not be enough to arrest Joseph Kony; those who are serious about seeing him brought to justice must be willing to turn their voices into demands for a legitimate humanitarian force to neutralize the LRA entirely. I do not necessarily agree with that course of action, but it would be far more effective in ending the crisis than leaving some token consultants in Uganda and hoping that Kony hops the border to turn himself in.

Like everyone else, Wilkerson included, I believe that Joseph Kony is evil and should be stopped. But I feel that the KONY 2012 movement in its present form lends itself to slacktivism more than it does to real activism, and there is a better way to go about solving the crisis of the LRA than posting a Youtube video and, if you are feeling especially 'in touch,' buying a bracelet. The movement, like many similar movements, has garnered broad support that is incredibly shallow, as most of the people who have gotten involved are misinformed regarding basic facts surrounding the issue and have no intention of investing themselves beyond what they can do from their dorm room.

If those involved in KONY 2012 were correctly informed by Invisible Children, rather than being misled into thinking that the problem is far simpler than it actually is, the movement may look quite different. Perhaps not as many people would be involved, but those who were would be far more active in pressuring Congress to do what needs to be done and aiding Ugandans in need. It would be far more productive than the mindless re-tweeting to preserve the current situation that we see today. Read the rest of this post...

Is the Afghan murder story our My Lai Moment?

UPDATE: Excellent comments below, including this by Bubs, who links us to Reuters. Note the uncertainty about the number of soldiers involved.
________

Here's a great Rachel Maddow segment on the murder rampage we wrote about earlier. There are so many angles to this story, and this segment is especially good on the politics of both the incident and the Afghan War itself.

But note, before you watch. I'm not a fan of the death penalty, so I don't want to specify the punishment. But what this man did is a war crime, an atrocity.

He is responsible for his actions, and our military is responsible for the conduct of its soldiers.

This may well be, therefore, a My Lai moment, both for those who prosecute this war (our government) and for public opinion. Please keep this in mind as you watch this great segment.



No one loves this stuff. Hopefully we can stop putting people (ours and theirs) into this horrible, indefensible position. Let us pray.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
  Read the rest of this post...

WSJ reporter’s 85-year-old mom goes viral

A cute story about how a Wall Street Journal reporter's mom, who does food reviews in North Dakota, wrote a column about the Olive Garden that suddenly went viral - and how 85 year old mom is handling her new-found fame.

Some people pursue celebrity. Others stumble into it as they are rushing off to bridge club.

My 85-year-old mom, Marilyn Hagerty, a newspaper columnist, is in the latter category. When she wrote a review of the new Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks, N.D., last week, she wasn't expecting anyone other than her thousands of loyal readers in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota to take note. She didn't worry about how her story would play on Gawker, partly because she had never heard of Gawker.

She's too busy to bother with blogs, Facebook or Twitter. She writes five articles a week for the Grand Forks Herald. Her specialties include local personalities, history and, yes, restaurants of high and low repute. Those whom she dubs in her column as "cheerful person of the week" consider it a high honor. She also cleans and maintains her house, cares for an unreliable dachshund, visits her eight grandchildren and volunteers at church.

On Thursday, bloggers happened on her review of the Olive Garden, where she found the portions generous and the décor "impressive." Some wrote clever notes suggesting there might be some sort of irony in writing an unironic review about a chain restaurant like Olive Garden. Others, including media and news websites Gawker and Huffington Post, chimed in. Soon news hounds from Minneapolis, New York and even Fargo were calling Mom and demanding interviews. Basically, they wanted to know whether she was for real and how she felt about being mocked all over the Internet.

She felt fine about it. But she didn't care to scroll through the thousands of Twitter and Facebook comments on her writing style. "I'm working on my Sunday column and I'm going to play bridge this afternoon," she explained, "so I don't have time to read all this crap."

He says her book, Echoes, is on Amazon. I couldn't find it. I did find an e-version of her food reviews, and linked to it above. Read the rest of this post...

Soldier could face death penalty in Afghan rampage killings, Panetta says

This is a Quick Hits post, but I want to keep the story on the radar. (For why, see below.)

As you may know, a 38-year-old U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan lost it and went on a civilian killing rampage:

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead. ... He is reported to have walked off his base at around 03:00 local time (22:30 GMT Saturday) and headed to nearby villages, moving methodically from house to house.

The new news is from the DoD (CNN; my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

The U.S. Army soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan men, women and children in a house-to-house shooting rampage could face the death penalty, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. Panetta spoke to reporters as he flew to the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan for high-level talks Tuesday.

Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets Tuesday to protest the killings as the Taliban threatened to behead "Americans anywhere in the country." ... In Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, "hundreds of protesters, many of whom are university students, have taken to the streets," said Ahmad Zaii Abdulzai, a spokesman for Nangarhar province.

Click through to the CNN coverage for more; it's a nice here's-what-happened review.

Folks, this story is a big deal. If we're lucky, it could end the war in Afghanistan.

Here's hoping.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)

NOTE FROM JOHN: This is one of those times when the old "you'd have to be crazy to kill someone" saying kicks into my mind.  This guy sounds like he absolutely lost it.  While I'm not opposed to the death penalty (I know...), I'm not sure that killing a guy who literally lost his mind is going to send any kind of clear message to anybody else who loses their mind in the future.  And I'm also not sure we should put to death someone who went insane simply to please the locals. Having said that, we need to find out what happened first - was this a case of PTSD overload or just some jerk taking out his frustrations on the locals? Read the rest of this post...

Seriously, who flip-flops on "catfish"?

Guess. Read the rest of this post...

Contraception is a men's issue

No, I am not being sarcastic. Contraception is a women's issue but it is not just an issue for women. Access to contraception directly affects men as well. Or straight men at any rate. Or did you forget that it takes a woman and a man to get pregnant and that unwanted pregnancies affect men as well as women. Opposing the Republican's new war on contraception is not just a matter of solidarity with the women, their latest culture war is an attack on all of us.

I am married and we have two children. We use contraception. That is 'we' not 'she'.

Most married couples use contraception. The alternative would be an explosion in the birth rate and a population crisis. Our biology is designed for an environment in less than one person in five survives lives a full reproductive lifespan. I refuse to believe in any omnipotent being who would seek the role of top-dominant in Santorum's masoerotic sex cult.

Which brings us to this story from WECT TV:

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WECT) – New Hanover County Commissioners voted not to accept a $9,000 grant to help pay for family planning at the Health Department.

During the Board's meeting on Monday afternoon, Commissioner Rick Catlin said people aren't using contraceptives responsibly. As the commission's representative on the board, he opposed accepting the money. Commissioners voted unanimously not to accept it.

Ok, the transparent misogyny behind these statements is directed at women rather than men. The Republican party is trapped in a Victorian time warp where all women (including wives) must be chaste virgins while men sate their carnal appetites with an unending stream of trollops, mistresses and oxycontin pills. But the contraception issue directly affects all of us who are straight or bi. The men who think that contraception is only something that the women need think of are being somewhat neanderthal themselves. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: So Greece has defaulted. What does that mean?

So the process has started. Here's the Professor (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

So Greece has officially defaulted on its debt to private lenders. It was an “orderly” default, negotiated rather than simply announced, which I guess is a good thing. Still, the story is far from over. Even with this debt relief, Greece — like other European nations forced to impose austerity in a depressed economy — seems doomed to many more years of suffering.

And that’s a tale that needs telling. For the past two years, the Greek story has, as one recent paper on economic policy put it, been “interpreted as a parable of the risks of fiscal profligacy.”

We've gone down that road before, the one about how Greece was bad bad bad and deserves what it gets — just like all the other struggling economies. Krugman covers that point again, then goes on to the consequences.

One is this:

[A]usterity in a slump doesn’t just inflict vast suffering. There is growing evidence that it is self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms, as the combination of falling revenues due to a depressed economy and worsened long-term prospects actually reduces market confidence and makes the future debt burden harder to handle.

You have to wonder how countries that are systematically denying a future to their young people — youth unemployment in Ireland, which used to be lower than in the United States, is now almost 30 percent, while it’s near 50 percent in Greece — are supposed to achieve enough growth to service their debt.

Krugman has answers to the headline question. First, about Greece:

[Greece and Ireland] had and have no good alternatives short of leaving the euro, an extreme step that, realistically, their leaders cannot take until all other options have failed — a state of affairs that, if you ask me, Greece is rapidly approaching.

Then, about America:

[I]f you want to know who is really trying to turn America into Greece ... it’s the people demanding that we emulate Greek-style austerity even though we don’t face Greek-style borrowing constraints, and thereby plunge ourselves into a Greek-style depression.

In other words, Greece is still on target for leaving the euro, which will occur just as soon as the crisis is so bad that a euro-exit can't make it worse.

As to ourselves, timid stimulus may keep us limping along, but the Republican party really does want to take down the economy — it benefits their owners (Our Betters) and it damages Obama. Win-win, as they say.

Let's see how that plays out.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

DOJ rejects Texas voter ID law as discriminatory against Latinos

From the LA Times:

The Justice Department on Monday rejected Texas' new voter identification law, saying it could disproportionately harm Latinos under the federal Voting Rights Act.

"Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card," Assistant Atty. Gen. Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, wrote in a letter to Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas secretary of state.

Perez noted that state data showed nearly 800,000 people lacked driver's licenses and personal identification cards issued by the state Department of Public Safety, two key forms of identification required under the new law. More than 38% of those lacking the ID were Latino, he noted.

In case you're wondering what role the Justice Department has in determining the validity of a Texas law, it seems Texas has a little history of racism:

[B]ecause of past voting rights violations in 16 states or portions of states, certain jurisdictions — including Texas — must first obtain "preclearance," or permission from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before changing election procedures.

Under the Texas voter ID law, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, voters must present one of seven forms of state or federally issued photo ID at the polls, including handgun permits. Those without the required ID may receive a provisional ballot, but it will only be counted if they return and present an approved ID within six days of the election, according to the Texas secretary of state's website.

Read the rest of this post...

Limbaugh syndicator suspends national ads for two weeks to let things calm down

Wow, someone is in real trouble. Read the rest of this post...

A whopping 19 people on Twitter celebrate Mitt Romney’s bday

What if you think a virtual birthday party and nobody came? Read the rest of this post...