Federal agents' visit was a hoax: 12/ 24/ 2005

I had reported on this earlier, but apparently the student lied.

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for 'The Little Red Book' by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.

The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.

But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details.

The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student's uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.

But when Dr. Williams went to the student's home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.

Nature encourages its readers to help with WIkipedia

From Wiki's wild world: Researchers should read Wikipedia cautiously and amend it enthusiastically:

Nature would like to encourage its readers to help. The idea is not to seek a replacement for established sources such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but to push forward the grand experiment that is Wikipedia, and to see how much it can improve. Select a topic close to your work and look it up on Wikipedia. If the entry contains errors or important omissions, dive in and help fix them. It need not take too long. And imagine the pay-off: you could be one of the people who helped turn an apparently stupid idea into a free, high-quality global resource.

Nature is one of the top Scientific publications. I think it is significant that it is encouraging its readers to pay attention to Wikipedia.

Politics: the ultimate multi-level system

The point of this posting is to illustrate how multi-level phenomena occur everywhere. In this case, the construction of a big-science project is subject to political and economic pressures having nothing to do with science.

From Science Magazine.

After 18 months of often bitter wrangling, the $12 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has a home at last. …

The basic concept behind ITER--using superconducting electromagnets to hold a plasma of hydrogen isotopes at a temperature and pressure high enough to achieve nuclear fusion--was born in the 1980s. But the design effort, split among centers in Europe, Japan, and the United States, didn't always go smoothly. In the late 1990s, after the engineering design was complete, governments balked at the price and asked the designers to cut the construction cost by half. The United States withdrew from the project in 1999, only to rejoin in 2003. By late 2003, only one hurdle remained: choosing the site. Government ministers from the by-then six members--China, the European Union (E.U.), Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States--gathered in Washington, D.C., for a gala signing ceremony. But when the time came to vote, they split down the middle. …

Europeans suspected that the United States refused to support the French site to punish France for opposing the war in Iraq, while other whispers suggested that the United States had backed the Japanese site in exchange for Japan's support for the war. In the end, Japan and the E.U. hammered out a deal between themselves. In June this year, after months of delicate diplomacy, Japan withdrew Rokkasho in exchange for a bigger share of construction contracts and a hefty European contribution to a fusion research facility in Japan. [Emphasis added.]

Quantum Trickery

The NY Times has an article on quantum theory, entanglement, etc. Read it now before the Times starts charging for it.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Legislation currently pending before the House

would make significant cuts in a number of programs serving low- and moderate-income families and individuals, including Medicaid, child support enforcement, and student loans.

Supporters of the legislation defend the cuts as “tough choices” that need to be made because of large and growing budget deficits. These claims are undercut by the fact that, in the last six weeks, the House has passed four tax-cut bills that together cost more than twice what the budget reconciliation bill saves. The claims are further undermined by Congress’s unwillingness to rethink any previously enacted tax cuts as part of its supposed reevaluation of priorities in light of deficits.

In particular, Congress has chosen to allow two tax cuts that exclusively benefit high-income households — primarily millionaires — to begin taking effect on January 1, 2006. By 2010, these tax cuts will eliminate two current provisions of the tax code that limit the value of the personal exemptions and itemized deductions that people at high income levels can take (see box below for more detail).

Infrastructure and taxes

While driving into work, I was listening to an interview with Kevin McCarthy, top Republican in the California Assembly. He was asked if he favored the rumored $50 billion bond issue to repair California's infrastructure. He said that (a) he was in favor of the state taking some responsibility for the infrastructure and (b) perhaps a better way than a bond measure was to set aside a certain portion of the budget each year for that work.

It's an interesting position for two reasons.

1. A bond issue does exactly what he wants: commits the state to spend a certain portion of its income on a certain project. Bonds must be paid, so if the state takes out a bond issue for a given purpose, it is committing itself to pay for that purpose until the bond is paid off.
   
   I'm sure that's not what McCarthy had in mind, but in fact, that's the way it works. By the way, I'm not necessarily in favor of a bond issue. $50 billion seems like a lot of money. But mechanically, a bond issue will do exactly what McCarthy said he wanted to do. McCarthy suggested spending 6% of state revenue on infrastructure each year. I'm sure a bond issue could be structured to do exactly that!
   
   
2. McCarthy, like most Republicans, said he was not in favor of raising taxes—so that, for example, the revenue out of which a certain portion would be set aside for infrastructure work was adequate. But this is the big hole in that position. McCarthy is not willing to say what he thinks the right tax level should be. He and his anti-tax friends, have nothing good to say about taxes. But I doubt that he would vote to eliminate all taxes. He is not one of those who think the state should dry up and go away. He is in favor of the state having a responsibility for infrastructure. So the question is what is the right level of taxes? Does "No new taxes" mean that we are currently at the right level? Does voting for every tax cut, e.g., elimination of the "car tax," mean that we are at too high a level? If so what is the right level? As far as I can tell, McCarthy and others have no good answer to that.
   
   It's not even clear that the right answer is that taxes should be high enough to pay for whatever we decide the state should do. That doesn't take into account the possibility that we may not be able to afford everything we want the state to do. It's not clear to me if there is a good economic process for determining the "right level" of taxes.
   
   We do need taxes. After all, as the Republicans like to say, freedom isn't free. But how much should we be paying for it?

Politics in the Catholic Churct

Another NY Times report describes politics in the Catholic Church.

At least 1,500 people attended Christmas Eve Mass with an excommunicated Roman Catholic priest presiding, despite warnings from the archbishop that participating would be a mortal sin.

The Rev. Marek Bozek left his previous parish without his bishop's permission and was hired by St. Stanislaus Kostka Church this month. As a result, Father Bozek and the parish's six-member lay board were excommunicated last week by Archbishop Raymond Burke for committing an act of schism.

Archbishop Burke said it would be a mortal sin for anyone to participate in a Mass celebrated by a priest who was excommunicated.

The archbishop, who could not stop the Mass, said it would be 'valid' but 'illicit.'

Like politics in Iraq, this fight too is about power and money.

The penalty of excommunication was the latest wrinkle in a long dispute over control of the parish's $9.5 million in assets.

The parish's property and finances have been managed by a lay board of directors for more than a century. Archbishop Burke has sought to make the parish conform to the same legal structure as other parishes in the diocese.

In Iraq the weapon of choice is the bomb; in the archdiocese in St. Louis, it's excommunication. One uses whatever weapons one has at hand.

Political negotiating in Iraq

The New York Times reports:

Sunni Arab political leaders asked the main Shiite political bloc on Sunday to give them 10 Shiite seats in the new Parliament in an early attempt to defuse tensions over the results of the Dec. 15 election.

The Shiites refused. …

It was not clear whether Iraqi election rules would permit such a seat donation, even if the Shiites had agreed. …

The maneuvering on Sunday was focused on the final election tally, which will not be ready until next month, in part because of the numerous Sunni complaints. Iraqi investigators have begun to look into about 50 complaints that might change the results of the election.

"The real negotiation will start after the final results of the election," said Nadeen al-Jabari, head of the Fadhila Party, which is part of the Shiite alliance.

Political hardball in Iraq is a lot harder than here. In 2000 Gore just gave up. Can you imagine what would have happened if this had been Iraq?

Bush lies again

From an article in the Washintgon Post.

President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device. …

"The fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak." He berated the media for "revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for" and thus helping "the enemy" change its operations.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that the president was referring to an article that appeared in the Washington Times on Aug. 21, 1998, the day after the cruise missile attack, which was launched in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa two weeks earlier. …

The article, a profile of bin Laden, buried the information about his satellite phone in the 21st paragraph. It never said that the United States was listening in on bin Laden, as the president alleged. The writer, Martin Sieff, said yesterday that the information about the phone was "already in the public domain" when he wrote the story.

A search of media databases shows that Time magazine had first reported on Dec. 16, 1996, that bin Laden "uses satellite phones to contact fellow Islamic militants in Europe, the Middle East and Africa." Taliban officials provided the information, with one official -- security chief Mulla Abdul Mannan Niazi -- telling Time, "He's in high spirits." …

Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.

Alito: the ultimate deontologist?

According to the New York Times, Alito Hews to Rules . For example,

In a 2001 case, the judge … sided with a man challenging a murder conviction, this time after finding that the lower court judge had improperly rejected one of the man's arguments. The lower court had correctly dismissed claims that were not properly made, the judge wrote, but incorrectly lumped with them additional claims that the defendant, Robert E. Wenger Jr., should have been allowed to make.

Other cases seem to follow the same patterns. Alito appears to be a strict deonotologist, i.e., someone who judges according to whether the rules were followed, not whether justice was done.

Of course, the problem with this distinction is that it's too easy to make a deontological case for most complex issues. Judges may lean toward arguments that favor their ideological inclinations independent of the strength of the deontological arguments. I'm concerned that Alito will buy a weak deontological argument when he favors its consequentialist outcome but not otherwise.

For example, in tbe case with which the article leads off,

If Samuel A. Alito Jr. had been on the Supreme Court back in January, Ronald Rompilla might well be a dead man.

That month the Supreme Court heard an appeal of a decision, written by Judge Alito for a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, that upheld Mr. Rompilla's sentence for a murder committed in 1988. The Supreme Court, finding that Mr. Rompilla's lawyers had been ineffective representatives at trial, later reversed the ruling in a 5-to-4 vote.

Apparently, Rompilla's lawyers did a reasonable job. But had they done a somewhat (but not heroically) better job, they would have discovered information that was mitigating for the defendant.

How does one decide a case like that? Alito went with the minimalist argument: the lawyers did a reasonable job. The Supreme Court (in a 5-4 decision) said that justice was not served—and it could have been served without requiring an extraordinary effort on the part of the lawyers. So Rompilla deserves a new trial, at least with respect to whether or not he should have been sentenced to death. (Apparently there is no argument about whether Rompilla actually committed the crime.)

Has Alito been as strictly minimalist in cases in which the results do not match his apparent ideological inclinations? I don't know. The case cited at the beginning of this entry suggests that he is able to side with defendants when they have a good case according to the rules. But in that case, the argument was apparently clear. In Rompilla's case it was a lot murkier. Should a person be condemned to death in a situation in which a bit more work on the part of his lawyers might have saved his life?

I suppose that a strictly deontological perspective is what makes a good judge in the eyes of advocates for a "strict constructionist" judiciary. I'm surprised and disappointed that the public discussion of this issue hasn't clarified this point. It's not such a difficult point. And once the distinction is made—when there is a conflict, should following the rules or an equitable outcome take precedence?—at least the issues become a lot clearer.


I have recently been reading about this distinction. In Ill Gotten Gains, Leo Katz, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, claims that the deontological approach is the right one. My previous posting on theologian Lorenzo Albacete suggests that not only is there a distinction between deontological and consequentialist thinking, there is a third option: it's what's in your heart that really counts. Can one make a legal principle out of that? Isn't something like criminal intent required for a criminal conviction? I'm too ignorant of the law to know what that means.


Of course if the deontological perspective is the conservative one, Bush's argument that spying in violation of the law in order to fight terrorism, makes no conservative sense. But then Bush never makes sense. The three arguments in this issue are as follows.

• Deontological. Bush did or did not break the law. It seems to me (and most liberals) that he did. But Cass Sunstein, a liberal law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, makes the deontological case for Bush.



• Consequentialist. Are we safer because Bush authorized the wire taps. We are not likely to hear evidence about that. Bush will claim that all the evidence is classified.



• Intent. What was Bush's intent? Bush's defenders say that his motivation was to protect the country. He didn't want another 9/11. Most people who don't trust him do not believe that this was his primary motivation. They see this and similar actions primarily as exercises in power and arrogance.