Back of the Envelope

The big news today is that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from nomination to the Supreme Court. The reason given is that she doesn't want to put Executive Privelege at risk by allowing the Senate to demand documents that couldn't be turned over. The real reason is probably the conservative uproar over her lack of qualifications. I never really cared about the nomination one way or another. I considered her an acceptable nominee, though not an outstanding one, but I found the uproar and the belittling of her annoying. I guess I'm just glad it's over.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that this Iraq country I keep hearing about might actually succeed:

Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority in a fair vote during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday. A prominent Sunni politician called the balloting "a farce."
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The vote on the constitution was 78.59 percent in favor of ratification and 21.41 percent against, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (search ) said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.

The referendum results, announced after a 10-day audit following allegations of fraud, confirmed previous indications that Sunni Arabs (search) failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat the constitution.

Slowly but surely, Iraq is making progress. I think that in ten years' time, no one will question whether this was the right thing to do.

For today's misleading headline, how's this, from Fox News: "Study: More Women Being Imprisoned than Men"? If you read the actual article, what it really says is:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports the number of women in state and federal prison rose by four percent last year, while the number of men increased by less than two percent.

And it says women accounted for nearly one in four arrests.

Study co-author Paige Harrison says the increase is largely due to women's increased participation in drugs, violent crimes and fraud.

Overall, women now make up seven percent of the nation's prison population.

Okay, let's do some quick math. If women make up seven percent of the prison population, we can write that as x+dx = .07t, where x is the number of women in prison a year ago, dx is the number added over this past year, and t is the total prison population now (dx is not the number of women sentenced to prison, just the increase, as it doesn't take into account the number released). Meanwhile y+dy=.93t, where y is the number of men in prison a year ago and dy is the number added this year. Later in the article, we're told that t=2,200,000. We also know that dy=.02y, as the number of men in prison rose 2%, while dx=.04x, since the population of women in prison increased by 4%. Now, according to the headline, dx>dy, the number of women in prison increased more than the number of men. Some simple algebra tells us that, rounding to the nearest thousand, dx=6,000 and dy=40,000, meaning that the number of men in prison increased at 6.5x the rate the number of women did. The headline is therefore wrong. The female prison population is increasing as a relative percentage to men, but that's about all that can be said.

Mark Steyn takes a more balanced approach to Miers:

The most bungled Supreme Court pick in recent years was Bush Snr’s: Dubya’s dad picked my fellow New Hampshirite David Souter knowing nothing about him and, ever since he joined the bench, he’s been one of the Left’s most reliable votes. If Junior’s sin is that he’s only comfortable with cronies, dad’s problem was that he was way too trusting: whatever else she may be, Harriet Miers is no Souter Two.

For what it’s worth, my sense is that Harriet Miers will be, case by case, a more reliable vote against leftist judicial activism than her mercurial predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor. Why do I say this? Well, she’s a strong supporter of the right to bear arms. The great Second Amendment expert Dave Kopel says you have to go back to Louis Brandeis 90 years ago to find a Supreme Court justice whose pre-nomination writings extol gun rights as fulsomely as Miss Miers. According to an old boyfriend, Judge Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court, she packs heat — a Smith & Wesson .45 — which I can say with certainty the other lady justice, the far-left Ruth Bader Ginsberg, never has. She is also very opposed to abortion, and a generous contributor to pro-life groups.

In other words, what seems to be emerging is a woman Bush responds to as a fellow cultural conservative and evangelical conservative (she’s a born-again Christian) rather than as a judicial conservative — a label Judge Bork dislikes, preferring quite correctly that we distinguish judges not as conservative or liberal but as either originalists or judicial activists. I find it hard to discuss Harriet Miers seriously in those terms, but on balance she seems likely to vote the right way for whatever reasons. She’s thus another representative of Bush and Karl Rove’s belief in incrementalism — that the Republican majority can be made a permanent feature of the landscape if you build it one small brick at a time. Miss Miers is, at best, such a brick, at a time when conservatives were hoping Bush would drop a huge granite block on the court. But, given that she started out as a Democrat and has been on the receiving end of the partisan attacks on the administration for five years, she seems less likely than any detached effete legal scholar to be prone to the remorseless drift to the Left that happens to Republican Supreme Court nominees.

That doesn't stop him from a bit of wishful thinking at the end:

Of course, this could all be one big Karl Rove head-fake to make conservatives so hopping mad that the Dems scent blood and kill the Miers nomination, after which they’ve shot their bolt and Bush nominates Scalia Mark Two....

Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Read the whole thing.

Apparently, al Qaeda's hiring (from Wired):

The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said on its website this week that al-Qaida had "vacant positions" for video production and for editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.

The paper said the Global Islamic Media Front, an al-Qaida-linked, web-based organization, would "follow up with members interested in joining and contact them via e-mail."

The paper did not say how applicants should contact the Global Islamic Media Front.

Okay, there's a problem when the world's most famous terrorist organization can openly advertise for positions. I just hope this presents an intelligence opportunity for us.

When I first heard that Harriet Miers was selected for the Supreme Court, my first reaction was disappointment that it wasn't a highly credentialed conservative. I won't go so far as to accuse Bush of cronyism, but he definitely bases his selections on how he feels about someone rather than using a more objective judgement. However, after days of listening to people complain about her subpar education and her mediocre career, I'm beginning to get more annoyed with the complainers than with Bush and his nominee. I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, so I know a bit about the importance of an excellent education. And frankly, it's less important than people seem to think. As I said in my post about IQ and Leadership, I am less concerned with the abstract measures of performance than with how well people actually do their jobs. I don't know whether Miers is a good pick or not, but I intend to wait for the hearings before jumping to conclusions.

One of the front page, above the fold stories of MIT's student newspaper, The Tech, this past week was headlined "Anti-Gay Statements Written in Bathroom In Walker Memorial". It begins thus:

An anti-gay slogan was found on Sept. 12 in a bathroom near the Rainbow Lounge in Walker Memorial. The incident is the most recent in a year-long series of anti-gay graffiti that has appeared in the same place on campus. The Rainbow Lounge houses student groups addressing lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered issues as well as a library of LBGT-related literature and films.

The slogan started with the sentence: “Homosexuality may be politically correct, but it will never be BIOLOGICALLY correct,” and proceeded to graphically describe homosexual sexual acts, ending with, “Small wonder that’s a prime vector for contracting AIDS. Enjoy.....”

MIT Police have increased patrols in the affected areas but will have to catch an offender in the act to open an investigation, said Police Chief John DiFava.

James A. Nadeau G, who reported the Sept. 12 incident, said that the slogan was written at the top of a blackboard in the basement men’s bathroom in Walker and would have required a chair to reach. He said that this made him think that someone “really, really wanted to write it.”

I think some perspective is in order. Having gone to MIT, I've seen some of what's written on the bathroom walls. It's always vulgar and often rude, and quite frequently graphic. Accusing the reader of homosexual practices is what passes for a clever insult, often answered by another graffiti artist accusing the writer's mother of bestiality. By that standard, this is rather mild (although that "Enjoy..." at the end is nasty). It is not an anti-gay slogan, but an argument, albeit a crude one. That's apparently the problem: "The slogans found in the Walker basement bathroom are difficult to handle, Bruni[vice-president of the Rainbow Lounge] said, because of the intellectual style they adopt." and "Nadeau [who reported the writing] said the writing struck him because it was not 'derivative and puerile,' but seemed to want to make an intellectual statement." The writing is insulting, but not threatening. As it was written on a blackboard, supposedly in chalk, I'm not sure this even counts as vandalism. However, it makes people uncomfortable:

Francis [project coordinator of Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgendered Services, Resources, and Outreach] said that according to MIT’s non-discrimination policy, everyone has the right to work and feel welcomed in their own space. The writings’ close proximity to the Rainbow Lounge, she said, may cause people to feel threatened in a space reserved to make them feel welcome.

MIT's a private institution, and it can have whatever non-discrimination policy it wants, but it needs to be honest about it. That's why I find this theme, repeated throughout the article, disturbing:

The separation between free speech and hate speech is a fine line, he [Bruni] said.
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The graffiti has not been categorized as hate speech, DiFava said, although he said he felt these incidents differed from free speech because a person desiring an intellectual discussion would use more important venues than bathroom walls to promote his or her opinions.
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Bruni said that the group should address what can be done in response to hate speech, both by the community and by the police. The distinction between hate speech and free speech should be examined, and contacting more administrators about these incidents should be a goal, he said.

Apparently Supreme Court rulings allowing the Klan to have public marches hasn't been enough to get people to understand this point, so let me say this clearly: "Hate speech" is free speech. They are not separate categories. Hate speech is a subset of free speech, and clearly protected by the same First Amendment that lets people call the President an evil moron and a murderous bigot. A private institution can regulate what its students and employees can and cannot say, and exercise disciplinary action based on that, but is it too much to ask that they at least not try to redefine free speech so it doesn't include the things they don't like? And how is hate speech defined anyway? Does it include everything that some group finds insulting? There's no lack of groups ready to find insult in pretty much anything you can say. I do my best not to take part. If I complained every time someone insulted Christianity, I wouldn't have any time left over to actually be a Christian.

Full Disclosure: I went to Grad School at MIT, and I am employed by Lincoln Laboratory, which is owned by MIT. I'm hoping I won't get in trouble for posting this.