sncreducer:

So while the message Tyra’s putting out there may be good, the messenger herself lacks credibility.

Therefore you should, what, shoot the messenger? I’d prefer to focus on the message.

As easy as it may be to go around dismissing a statement by a female model as shallow, superficial, narcissistic, self-indulgent, or whatever you please, I think that the vices of the nasty little gossip-rag men who are picking apart Tyra Banks and any other female celebrity they can sink their claws into are doing a lot more damage than whatever vices Tyra Banks might herself have. Why have Tyra Banks’s personal virtues or vices become the main topic of discussion, rather than the sort of overtly sexist malice that she’s rightfully trashing?

TH: I’d tolerate the StripperGram, the boob and underwear obsession, the whole nine yards—if only she had a friggin’ platform, biography page…you know, stuff that might indicate that she’s actually interested in running for office.

From the Flash animation page:

1. Click “Visit the Nall for Governor Website!”

2. Scroll down content area on the right side of the page for links to campaign updates and news coverage

3. Scroll down through the sidebar on the left of the page.

4. Click “Bio” for a biography

5. Click “Platform” for a platform

6. Click “News Releases” for a press release announcing the candidacy and bullet-listing the most important planks of the platform

You can tolerate or not tolerate whatever you want, but it is a bit silly to complain about your difficulty in finding campaign information when I found this material in the few seconds that it took to load the campaign website.

Boogieman: The next set of rights, and the ones supposedly in dispute today are the rights granted by the Constitution. These rights are natural rights possessed by all free men [sic]. … Non-citizens, however are given no such guarantee by the Constitution.

Nonsense. I defy you to show me any passage in the Constitution which distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens in delineating the natural rights which the government is bound to respect, or indeed anything identified as a “right” at all, other than voting rights (which are, in any case, arguably better described as one of the “privileges and immunities” of citizens rather than as a right, which are, except for the franchise, invariably ascribed to “the people” or to “persons” rather than to “citizens”). There is absolutely no textual basis for the claim that the restraints on U.S. government power, as expressed in Article I, the first ten Amendments, the Thirteenth Amendment, etc., don’t apply to the government’s powers over non-citizens as well as the government’s powers over citizens.

Boogieman: If they wish to exercise their natural rights, fine. They have no legal basis to appeal to the Constitution for protection of those rights, however.

Even if this were true, it would only serve as an argument against the legitimacy of the Constitution. If the Constitution allowed the U.S. government to violate the natural rights of non-citizens with impunity, then it would be a criminal document, worthy only of the contempt of civilized people.

Boogieman: In addition, natural rights do not include the right to break the law, for either citizens or non-citizens.

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. … The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’”

Part of what having natural rights means is that there are things that no government has the legitimate authority to do to you. If those sorts of injustices are commanded by a law, then defiance of the unjust law is justified, since laws that are passed without legitimate authority are not binding on anybody.

Of course, you could claim that U.S. immigration law isn’t unjust, and doesn’t violate the natural rights of immigrants. But then you’d just be assuming what it’s incumbent on you to prove. So let’s hear the argument for that, rather than a bunch of pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo about clauses that the Constitution doesn’t actually contain.

Trygve: “Second, I agree that brick walls are a waste of time, but plenty of people who are not brick walls could nonetheless use an education on the subject.”

People who are earnestly interested in learning something about sexism and feminism would be better off picking up one of the many fine books on the topic and reading it. Quite frankly, feminist activists have enough to do already without having to spend more time trying to educate the well-intentioned but clueless. There’s lots on this topic that men can look up on their own time, and indeed they ought to be expected to look it up before they go around making confident pronouncements about the existence of sexism, or about where it is or isn’t an active force. If they have not made the effort to make themselves less than ignorant about something before flapping their yap about it, then I can’t see why it would be obligatory or even useful for feminists to treat them as anything more than a waste of time and energy, unless and until they actually do make some effort to learn the basics on their own time.

Nymphalidae: And these pro-life women are all totally virginal and pure. Uh-huh.

Who cares what their current sex lives or sexual history are like?

ericvfsu: “However, it is also possible that having an abortion does increase somewhat the possibility of depression or other disorders. Is anyone out there willing to objectively consider that possibility? I know, I know – more studies, better designed studies, this one not conclusive … All true. However, if an effect were at some time established, how would you digest that fact? Just asking.”

That’s a good question, and an important one.

I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but my answer is that I’d digest it the same way I’d digest any other fact about medical risks attendant on abortion, or any other medical procedure: it should be honestly and neutrally documented as a side effect, and women allowed to make their own decisions in light of the knoweldge. (The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for how I’d take a genuine demonstration that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, if it ever happened.) I think Lucinda Cisler makes the point excellently in “Abortion law repeal (sort of): a warning to women,” in regard to the particular case of restrictions for “safety” in the case of late-term abortions:

3: Abortions may not be performed beyond a certain time in pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is at stake. Significantly enough, the magic time limit varies from bill to bill, from court decision to court decision, but this kind of restriction essentially says two things to women: (a) at a certain stage, your body suddenly belongs to the state and it can force you to have a child, whatever your own reasons for wanting an abortion late in pregnancy; (b) because late abortion entails more risk to you than early abortion, the state must “protect” you even if your considered decision is that you want to run that risk and your doctor is willing to help you. This restriction insults women in the same way the present “preservation-of-life” laws do: it assumes that we must be in a state of tutelage and cannot assume responsibility for our own acts. Even many women’s liberation writers are guilty of repeating the paternalistic explanation given to excuse the original passage of U.S. laws against abortion: in the nineteenth century abortion was more dangerous than childbirth, and women had to be protected against it. Was it somehow less dangerous in the eighteenth century? Were other kinds of surgery safe then? And, most important, weren’t women wanting and getting abortions, even though they knew how much they were risking? “Protection” has often turned out to be but another means of control over the protected; labor law offers many examples. When childbirth becomes as safe as it should be, perhaps it will be safer than abortion: will we put back our abortion laws, to “protect women”?

Well, my worry about the “Third Wave” terminology has always been primarily that it’s premature. “First Wave” and “Second Wave” aren’t generational terms; when we talk about “First Wave feminism” it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a historical movement that encompassed three generations of women—women spread across a huge array of different organizations and publications and campaigns, and women who at times had pretty intense conflicts within the movement over goals, tactics, ideology, organization, priorities, and (while we’re at it) race; these conflicts often ended up taking shape as intergenerational conflicts between the older leaders and the upcoming young activists.

If we’re going to start using “wave” as a generational term, then we’re not in the third wave of feminism; we’re in at least the 6th (which seems like a bit much). On the other hand, if we’re going to take a bit longer historical view, then we could at least wait until we have put a good 72 years of effort into Second Wave feminism before we start hiving our efforts off into a new “Wave.”

I notice that they are pretty murky on the mechanism that’s causing the increased cancer chance. There are some speculations that it might be lactose, but you have to wonder whether it’s connected to rBGH or other hormonal additives to milk. Higher levels of sex hormones and growth hormones always have been connected with increased risk of reproductive system cancers…

Inquiring minds want to know!

james mentioned: “Oh yeah, the US leaving Somolia really did wonders for those peasants who stayed (and probably were praying for an end to warlord rule).”

Actually, it did; the best thing that the U.S. ever did for Somalia was to get the hell out and leave them alone.

There are many, many problems in Somalia; the country is poor and life is hard. But the civil war has long since evaporated, things are much better than they were in the mid-1990s, and in fact Somalia is doing considerably better by many measures (such as availability of food or percentage of the population living in extreme poverty) than neighboring countries. Better, in fact, than many richer African countries.

Once the prospects of looting foreign aid dried up, the warlords gave up and the civil war petered out. Somalia has been without any effective central government for 13 years, and things seem to be going well precisely because they haven’t got any government. This should not, actually, be very surprising, if you keep in mind the sort of governments that most countries in the area have.

For more, see Andrew Cockburn’s feature on Somalia in the National Geographic @ http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature3/ and the recent report “Anarchy and Invention: How does Somalia’s private sector cope without government?” from the World Bank @ http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/280-nenova-harford.pdf

Hope this helps.