So are we *more* healthy, or . . . ?

Pew's polling yields Mississippi as the most religious state in the U.S., followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee. All but Arkansas were also in the top 10 happiest states.

Least religious: NH/VT tie for the bottom, with Alaska, Massachusetts, Maine, and another tie between RI/CT rounding out the five. Maine was # 10 in happiness.

For some reason, ABC News has this on its "Health" page.

Odds & ends

Back on the internet, which shows no signs of having missed my presence, rather like a cat in that respect. A few notable things that popped up during the hiatus:

• Epcot turned out to sell Linie aquavit, whose nature (and pronunciation) merit a click-through.
  
  
• Over at the NYRB, Timothy Snyder shines a penlight at an obscure Ukrainian clergyman who "welcomed the Nazis and saved Jews," and Rory Stewart has a much more measured response to Obama's Afghanistan policy than Garry Wills's inane bleating.
  
  
• Adam Begley has a charming NYT article on Stendhal and Parma, though Begley's laud for the execrable Richard Howard translation is unfortunate. (Avoid also the old Penguin, though the new one by Sturrock is all right; I prefer Mauldon's version for the Oxford World's Classics.) No one familiar with Stendhal will be surprised by Begley's opening:

  From a practical point of view, “The Charterhouse of Parma” makes a lousy guidebook. An ardent fan of all things Italian, and a brilliant, impressionistic travel writer, Stendhal could have bequeathed to the ages an unforgettable prose portrait of Parma, the small, sleepy, provincial northern Italian city where most of the action of his great novel takes place. But instead he made it up; his Parma is imaginary.

  Why trouble over petits faits?

About damn time, too.

Appellate Court Enforces Permanent Injunction against Microsoft Word.

Not, alas, for completely sucking and driving any sane person insane. Rather:

The i4i district court decision created some turmoil this past summer when the Eastern District of Texas court ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of its flagship MS Word product that infringe i4i's patent covering xml editing technology. The injunction was stayed pending appeal, but now the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has affirmed the lower court's findings of validity and willful infringement and its award of enhanced damages and permanent injunctive relief. The only modification made by the court was to push-back the effective date of the injunction from sixty-days to five months (from the original order). Thus, "[t]he injunction's effective date is now January 11, 2010."

To be clear, the permanent injunction "applies only to users who purchase or license Word after the date the injunction takes effect. Users who purchase or license Word before the injunction's effective date may continue using Word's custom XML editor, and receiving technical support." Beginning January 11, 2010, Microsoft will be prohibited from "(1) selling, offering to sell, and/or importing into the United States any infringing Word products with the capability of opening XML files containing custom XML; (2) using Word to open an XML file containing custom XML; (3) instructing or encouraging anyone to use Word to open an XML containing custom XML; (4) providing support or assistance that describes how to use Word to open an XML file containing custom XML; and (5) testing, demonstrating, or marketing Word's ability to open an XML file containing custom XML."

Because the injunction only applies to future purchasers, Microsoft does not need to back-fix its already-distributed software. Rather, it only needs to ensure that software sold on or after January 11, 2010 is non-infringing. Microsoft may request another emergency stay of relief in order to seek en banc review of the decision. However, that process has a low likelihood of success. Because of the large damage award of $240 million, Microsoft will likely push-forward with requests for rehearing en banc and eventually a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.

More at the link.

TBA hates Word because Word teems with preconceptions about how we cannot possibly mean what we type. "Here, let me indent that for you! You think you want your margin here? No no, try this!" etc. Thank god the legal profession has hung onto WordPerfect.

We now return to our promised hiatus. Word-hatin' knows no season.

Noël, and no blog either

Between joining my family at Disney World and tweaking a cert petition in an utterly absurd tire case, I fear that TBA is going to receive short shrift these next few days.

But for your sake, I sincerely hope you're spending your holidays better than by reading blogs in general, and this one in particular.

Merry Christmas!

The trouble with Pakistan is ... Pakistan.

Tony Karon writes that Pakistan can't be bought, because its interests diverge too much from ours:

The reality is that while the war against the TTP is backed by a firm national consensus against those who would seek to impose Taliban rule at gunpoint in Pakistan, there is very little Pakistani support for the US war in Afghanistan.

Even as it pursues the Pakistan Taliban, the military continues to make non-aggression pacts with those jihadists who confine themselves to attacks on western forces across the border in Afghanistan. If, instead, the Army went after the Afghan Taliban as well, they risk igniting a generalised rebellion among the Pashtun population that could fatally undermine its counterinsurgency efforts against the TTP.

Then there’s the matter that the Haqqani network – which controls the key Afghan border provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Khost – as well as Hekmatyar and the Taliban leadership under Mullah Omar are all longtime clients of the Pakistani security forces. Many in the military have viewed these groups as an important strategic asset in what they see as an ongoing regional struggle for influence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan’s generals expect will intensify when the US inevitably departs in the next couple of years.

American officials like to console themselves that this is simply a case of Pakistani fear of abandonment by the US, to which they respond by professing long-term commitment to Afghanistan. But Pakistan’s generals have a good enough sense of what’s going on the ground, with Nato’s supply lines, and with the US economy, to know that Obama’s surge can’t be sustained.

Moreover, while the US objective is to prop up the government in Kabul, Pakistan’s military leaders see that government as a Tajik-dominated regime that serves as a cat’s paw for India. The Afghan Taliban insurgency is viewed as a Pashtun backlash against a government from which the country’s largest ethnic group is alienated – a government that Pakistan has little interest in propping up. While not favouring a rerun of the 1996 Taliban march on Kabul, Pakistani military chiefs are said to favour a negotiated outcome in which many Afghan Taliban elements, and especially Haqqani and Hekmatyar, agree to a power sharing formula that strengthens Pashtun representation – and Pakistani influence – in Kabul, and devolves power to the regions, which would put its allies in charge of the south and east. Far from going after the insurgent groups against whom the US is demanding action, such a scenario requires that Pakistan position itself to broker terms with them that would allow for a US withdrawal.

One wonders if it's even possible to persuade Pakistan's military to at least favor the less antagonistic Taliban-style factions as against those more likely to support al-Qaeda. But as long as we remain hostile to making such fine discriminations, it's even less likely that Pakistan will do so.

... Whereas Mike Crowley at TNR thinks that Pakistani anti-Americanism is the fault of ... the Pakistani media!

At the heart of this problem is the anti-Americanism and conspiracy-mongering of Pakistan's media, which I saw first-hand when I read through a large stack of local papers at the embassy. So I was glad to find on my return to Washington this week that the latest print issue of TNR features a really top-notch article by Nicholas Schmindle about Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani journalist who's been dubbed "the Anne [sic] Coulter of Pakistan," and who has been responsible for countless stories like the one that recently speculated about whether a Wall Street Journal reporter in the country is actually a CIA spy, potentially endangering his life. When I was in Islamabad, one newspaper (I believe it was Mazari's The Nation, which is generally the worst offender) ran a story which included the wacko claim, attributed to Seymour Hersh, that a "death squad" backed by Dick Cheney was behind the 2007 assassination of Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as well as the 2005 murder of Lebanese prime minister Raffik Hariri.

The idea that the media is following public opinion, rather than leading it, does not seem to occur to Mr. Crowley -- that Pakistan's distrust of the U.S. creates an appetite for such stories.

Sometimes, you just don't care if it's Photoshopped.

Great pic, regardless. Feel free to suggest captions. "Reindeer clearing chimney in 3 ... 2 ..."?

H/t ICHC?

Hume deriving an "ought" from an "is"?

NMC directs me to an article on Robert George, the philosophical darling of the Christian Right, who has enjoyed some success in encouraging Catholics and others to jettison any such putatively Christian notions as social justice or concern for the poor and uneducated, in favor of the fundamentalist focus on abortion and gays.

He claims to do so by appeal to "natural law," but as NMC observes, his arguments are unconvincing. This should surprise TBA readers so little that I will simply direct them to the article.

The article bears mention mainly because it points me to an instance of Hume's apparently contradicting himself. The article summarizes George's take on Hume:

Against Aristotle, Hume argued that the universe includes facts but not values. You cannot derive moral conclusions from studying the world, an “ought” from an “is.” There is no built-in, objective reason for me to choose one goal over another — the goals of Mother Teresa over the goals of Adolf Hitler, in George’s hypothetical. Reason, then, is merely a tool of whatever desire strikes my fancy. “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them,” George said, paraphrasing Hume, just as he does in seemingly every essay or lecture he writes.

The "paraphrase" turns out to be a near-verbatim quote from the Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3.

The problem of course is that, if we can't derive an ought from an is, then Hume cannot say that reason *ought* to be the slave of the passions, merely because she is so in fact (according to him). I am a little surprised that this contradiction goes unremarked by the Nortons in their Oxford Philosophical Texts edition of the Treatise.

While the Treatise continues to have legions of students, I have always suspected that Hume was not without reasons for repudiating it in favor of the later Enquiries, and the foregoing contradiction -- like the fact that the "is/ought" argument does not appear in the Enquiries -- "ought" to suggest to students that Hume's repudiation should be taken more seriously than it is.

... Searching the text of the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals for the "slave of the passions" quote, I don't find it repeated, but do stumble upon this gem of a note:

Solon's law forbids paederasty to slaves, as being an act of too great dignity for such mean persons.

Tasteless TBA post of the month

The notorious "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (Work sets you free) sign over the gate to the Auschwitz death camp has been stolen.


Possibly it was needed for the centerpiece of Joe Lieberman's alternative health care plan. No reports yet whether the senator has been questioned by authorities.

... Sign found, hacked into three pieces. No Lieberman connection disproved as of this writing.

States of well-being

Mississippi is the 6th happiest state in the Union, saith happiness science. Indeed, 6 of the happiest 10 are in the South:

1. Louisiana*
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi*
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

__________________________
*Pre-Katrina data, n.b.

Has Haley Barbour ever met a woman-killer he didn't like?

That seems to be a good question, reports Slate:

I happen to think Huckabee’s getting a raw deal on the Clemmons case; instead, we should be talking about the truly bizarre pardon record of one of Huckabee’s possible competitors for the nomination, Haley Barbour. The governor of Mississippi has simultaneously ignored increasing evidence that there may be a disturbingly high number of innocent people in prison in Mississippi and handed out pardons to the convicted murderers who just happen to do work on his house….

….Over the last two years, as reported by the Jackson Free Press, Barbour has pardoned, granted clemency to, or suspended the sentences of at least five convicted murderers, four of whom killed their wives or girlfriends. Those four are:

Bobby Hays Clark, who in 1996 shot his ex-girlfriend in the neck and beat her boyfriend with a broom handle. Clark, who had a previous aggravated assault conviction, was sentenced to 38 years. Barbour pardoned him last year without notifying the family of Clark’s victim.

Michael David Graham, who in 1989 shot his ex-wife point-blank with a shotgun while she waited at a traffic light. Barbour suspended Graham’s life sentence, and he was released.

Clarence Jones, who stabbed his ex-girlfriend 22 times in 1992. She had previously filed multiple assault and trespassing charges against him. He was sentenced to life in prison. Barbour pardoned him last year.

Paul Joseph Warnock, who in 1989 shot his girlfriend in the back of the head as she slept. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1993. Barbour pardoned him last year.

They're just good ol' boys, really.

But wait! There's an exception to the rule:

Barbour also pardoned William James Kimble, convicted and sentenced to life for robbing and murdering an elderly man in 1991.

Maybe Mr. Kimble was mistaken, and thought he was murdering an elderly lady instead.

... Article by Radley Balko, who notes the contrast between Barbour's woman-killin' buddies and the governor's apparent indifference to the possibility that many people in Mississippi have been wrongly convicted based on the hack science of Steven Hayne and Michael West. The article has plenty of follow-up links for those interested.

(H/t bellesouth.)

... UPDATED 1/9/12 to fix expired Slate link, and to note that Barbour's tolerant view towards uxoricide continues:

In 1993, David Glenn Gatlin leveled a gun at the head of his wife, Tammy, and killed her while she held their 2-month-old child, then turned the gun on family friend Randy Walker and shot him in the head as well. Walker survived.

Gatlin was convicted in 1994 in Rankin County and given life for murder, 20 years for aggravated assault and 10 years for residential burglary. He has been a trusty at the Governor's Mansion since Nov. 19, 2009, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections' Website.

That status apparently is what has helped Gatlin, now 40, get a pardon from Barbour.

He's jes a good ol' boy, I'm sure.

Self-defeating judiciary tricks

Speaking to the Madison County Bar Association today, Judge Rhesa Barksdale riffed on some points of appellate practice in the 5th Circuit. He was astounded by the number of appellants who don't file reply briefs. (FOR NON-LAWYERS: appellants file initial briefs, appellees file response briefs, and then appellants can file reply briefs; ordinarily no further briefing allowed.)

In the Q&A at the end, someone pointed out to the judge that the court's own online practitioners' guide does not seem to encourage reply briefs:

The rules allow for an appellant to file a reply brief to address arguments raised in the
appellee’s brief, FED. R. APP. P. 28(c); however, just because it is allowed does not mean that every appellant has to file one. If your reply brief merely reiterates what is already in your opening brief, it serves little purpose and only delays consideration of your appeal. Reply briefs should be filed only if necessary to rebut an important argument in the appellee’s brief.

None of that is *wrong*, but the tone does not seem to encourage reply briefs, and some lawyers inexperienced in appellate practice might take the guide to be discouraging them from filing reply briefs unless they have some special reason. Certainly, the guide doesn't make them sound nearly as important as Judge Barksdale thinks they are.

The amusing thing was of course that the good judge was only faintly aware of the existence of said document, and not at all of its contents. I wonder who writes those things? They probably do get circulated to the court, I'd imagine, but judges are busy folks and not all of them really care to read a 60-page document they don't actually *have* to read.

Bayer at bay?

Law blogger Will Bardwell shows some love for ex-governor Ronnie Musgrove's oral argument at the en banc state supreme court the other day.

Musgrove argued on behalf of the state this morning when the Mississippi Supreme Court heard oral arguments in State of Mississippi v. Bayer Corporation, a (surprisingly interesting) pure civil-procedure dispute wrapped in a Medicaid settlement. Apprising an advocate's persuasiveness is a little like judging a boxer's punching power -- folks sitting in the audience really aren't in the best position to make the call. But from the point of view offered by the peanut gallery, Musgrove looked great. He was impassioned but deferential, appeared to weave the justices' questions back into his argument very well, and balanced the questions of pure law with policy considerations supporting his position. His suit didn't look bad, either.

TBA is not without some interest in the outcome of the suit, so we won't comment, but we wanted to pass this along.

Death of a philosopher

Stephen Toulmin has died, one of those philosophers more heard about than read. The only book (half-book?) of his that I've read is Wittgenstein's Vienna which he wrote with Allan Janik.

The NYT obit makes an unnecessarily cryptic quotation:

In the introduction to a 1986 edition of his first book, “An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics” (1950), he wrote that “having been trained as a natural scientist, I had always hoped to relate philosophical issues to practical experience, and could never wholly side with Hume the philosopher against Hume the backgammon player.” His bent, he wrote, was toward “practical moral reasoning.”

This is of course an allusion to the famous passage at the end of book I of A Treatise of Human Nature, where Hume wrote:

But what have I here said, that reflections very refin'd and metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

More amusingly, the University of Southern California attempts to memorialize its famous professor, and ends up embarrassing itself:

Toulmin’s most influential work was the Toulmin Model of Argumentation. In it, he identified six elements of a persuasive argument: claim, grounds, arrant, backing, qualifier and rebuttal.

I myself have seen some arguments where the "arrant" predominated, but I believe that the correct Toulmin term is "warrant."

Amazing fact of the week

Over at EOTAW, Kid Bitzer relays this curious -- nay, "mindblowing" -- account:

Now. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Who might you guess is the earliest president, chronologically, to have a grandchild alive today? Don't cheat. Guess.

My immediate guess was the aforementioned Theodore Roosevelt. Knowing that he had two children who were born in the 1890s, it seemed conceivable that a grandchild might be alive today albeit very old. Sure enough, TR has one surviving grandkid: son Archie's daughter Nancy is alive and 85 years old. But she doesn't take the cake.

Keeping in mind that Barack Obama is the 44th President, does it blow your mind to know that the correct answer is John Tyler? The tenth President!? The man who was President in 1841? As ridiculous as that sounds, it happens to be entirely true. As noted earlier, Tyler had a very productive wang. And it didn't tire with age: his last three children were born when Tyler was 63, 66, and 70. The first of that trio, Lyon G. Tyler (bitchin' name, for the record), inherited his father's reproductive prowess. Lyon, born in 1853, also had children throughout his life and into old age. In fact he had sons born in 1924 and 1928 when he was 71 and 75, respectively. Those two sons, Lyon Jr. (!!!) and Harrison Tyler, are alive today.

So Mr. Harrison Tyler, a chemist, and Lyon Tyler Jr., a college history professor, can tell people that their grandfather was President … twenty goddamn years before Abraham Lincoln. Their grandfather, as a child, made regular weekend visits to hang out with Thomas Jefferson. Their grandfather was born before the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution.

We are not such an old country as we sometimes seem to be.

We seek no wider war

Via Kevin Drum, we learn that Predator-drone attacks are now vitally necessary inside large Pakistani cities:

The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington's relationship with Islamabad.

The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta — or at least threatening to do so — is crucial to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.

I've been gingerly supportive, or non-oppositional, of Predator attacks in remote areas where Pakistan effectively doesn't exercise sovereignty; but this is just nuts. Isn't it nuts? Explain to me how it's not nuts.

Sure, they want to scare Pakistan into policing Quetta. Fine. But if things have gotten to where (1) Pakistan won't apprehend Taliban/Qaeda members anywhere in its borders, and (2) we can't or won't send in our own ground-teams, presumably for fear of Pakistani interference ... well, isn't it time to declare war on Pakistan? Are they doing any less to "harbor" the Taliban and al-Qaeda than the Taliban did re: Qaeda? And we invaded Afghanistan, didn't we?

... Steve Coll had some relevant thoughts back in October testimony to Congress:

If the United States signals to Pakistan’s military command that it intends to abandon efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, or that it has set a short clock running on the project of Afghan stability, or that it intends to undertake its regional policy primarily through a strategic partnership with India, then it will only reinforce the beliefs of those in the Pakistani security establishment who argue that nursing the Taliban is in the country’s national interests. This in turn will exacerbate instability in Pakistan itself.

At the same time, if the United States undertakes a heavily militarized, increasingly unilateral policy in Afghanistan, without also adopting an aggressive political, reconciliation and regional diplomatic strategy that more effectively incorporates Pakistan into efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, then it will also reinforce the beliefs of those in the Pakistani security establishment that they need the Taliban as a hedge against the U.S. and India.

Between withdrawal signals and blind militarization there is a more sustainable strategy, one that I hope the Obama Administration is the in the process of defining. It would make clear that the Taliban will never be permitted to take power in Kabul or major cities. It would seek and enforce stability in Afghan population centers but emphasize politics over combat, urban stability over rural patrolling, Afghan solutions over Western ones, and it would incorporate Pakistan more directly into creative and persistent diplomatic efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and the region.

Such a sustained policy, combined with heavy new investments in Pakistan’s success, even beyond the commendable achievements of the Kerry-Lugar legislation, will provide the best chance that Pakistan’s army will, over time, continue to share power and accept strategic advice from Pakistani civilians, and eventually cast out the Taliban and similar groups as a hedge against the U.S. and India. That in turn is the best--arguably the only--path to a modernizing, politically plural, economically integrated South Asia.

That 3d paragraph strongly suggests that an "Afghanistan surge" needs to be focused on securing the cities, with Afghan troops handling the rural side, and more security than terrorist-hunting.

The problem remains that the Taliban grew with Pakistan supplying the Miracle-Gro, and even Coll's "middle option" is hopeful at best about the army's disowning its adopted children.

... This story, the NYT version of the LAT story above, dovetails with Coll, but the interesting question is whether more stories like this will find their way into the news, supporting a "get tough with Pakistan" approach:

Demands by the United States for Pakistan to crack down on the strongest Taliban warrior in Afghanistan, Siraj Haqqani, whose fighters pose the biggest threat to American forces, have been rebuffed by the Pakistani military, according to Pakistani military officials and diplomats.

The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan’s spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama’s surge, which envisions drawing down American forces beginning in mid-2011. * * *

The demands have been accompanied by strong suggestions that if the Pakistanis cannot take care of the problem, including dismantling the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, then the Americans will by resorting to broader and more frequent drone strikes in Pakistan.