Study finds judges with daughters more likely to rule for women’s rights

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 1 Comment
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Reagan, some guy and Toots

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist takes the oath with Reagan, some guy and Toots

In 2003, Ruth Bader Ginsberg described William Rehnquist’s feminist turn as “such a delightful surprise.” Maybe he suddenly decided that combating pervasive gender discrimination trumped states’ rights, or maybe his daughter had just become a single mom. The second explanation would comport with a new study out of the University of Rochester, which found that “judges with daughters consistently vote in a more feminist fashion on gender issues than judges who have only sons.” The effect is especially pronounced among Republican appointments.

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“Phony experts on retainer” at Employment Policy Institute

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 3 Comments
Thirty year-old Michael Saltsman, director of research for the Employment Policy Institute, whose face is gradually becoming evil

Michael Saltsman, director of research for the Employment Policy Institute, gradually becoming evil

Michael Saltsman has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Michigan, which qualifies him to be director of research at Employment Policy Institute. You may recognize EPI from virtually every argument over whether to raise the federal minimum wage, or from this New York Times article accusing it of being a purely political operation. The nonprofit has no full-time employees and pays 44% of its budget to the advertising firm Berman and Company, with which it shares an office. EPI pays Berman employees for the time they spend working on its research and advocacy programs, and it spends the rest of its budget on advertising. By all indications, EPI is a full-time disinformation-producing machine.

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Shia LaBeouf interrogates authorship, taunts Clowes with skyplane

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 0 Comment
An image of Shia LaBeouf originally published in The Worst magazine, as if that means anything

An image of Shia LaBeouf originally published in The Worst magazine, as if that means anything

It’s all our faults collectively, but Transformers made Shia LaBeouf an aristocrat. We had to see live actors be friends with computer-rendered characters from a cartoon about a toy, so now LaBeouf gets an income forever. Like many members of the leisure class, he has turned to art, producing a short film obviously plagiarized from a Daniel Clowes comic. Like many m.’s of the l.c. who get in trouble, he subsequently turned to philosophy, arguing that authorship is censorship and intellectual property is theft in a series of weird interviews that were, themselves, kind of plagiarized. He also hired a skywriter to blanket LA with a sarcastic apology to Clowes, who lives in San Francisco.

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House thwarts bill to create National Science Laureate

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 0 Comment
Science

Science

Yesterday, House Republicans stymied what was expected to be a fast-track bill to create a National Science Laureate, who would foster public understanding and encourage children to pursue careers in scientific inquiry. That would be a mistake. The future will not be determined according to hard truths; children should pursue careers in obfuscation and, when possible, money. That way they can follow their role model Larry Hart, a lobbyist for the American Conservative Union, who wrote a letter to members of the House calling the bill a “needless addition to the long list of presidential appointments” and claiming that it would allow Obama to pick a laureate “who will share his view that science should serve political ends, on such issues as climate change and regulation of greenhouse gases.”

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Citing Christianity, PA rep stops gay colleague from addressing House

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 3 Comments
Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R–Cranberry)

Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R–Cranberry)

Last week, during the end of Pennsylvania’s legislative session, Rep. Brian Sims (D–Philadelphia) took the floor to speak about the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling. Under PA house rules, legislators can speak about uncontroversial issues at the end of the session by unanimous consent. Sims, who is gay, had his mic cut a few seconds into his remarks, owing to the objections of Rep. Daryl Metcalfe. Indignant Democrats subsequently took the floor to speak about DOMA themselves, only to have their mics cut, too. It was a mess. In defending his maneuver, Metcalfe told Pittsburgh’s KDPA:

His talking about that on the House floor would have been an open rebellion against Almighty God and God’s word, against God’s law. And as a Christian, if I would have sat there and been silent, it would have violated my conscience because of my beliefs as a Christian.

Exegesis after the jump.

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