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The Knives of Brixton

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:13:00 EDT

Reader Val sends along this story, which is currently dominating news cycles in both England and France, of two French students in murdered in London, who were bound, stabbed 240 times, and set alight. A man confessed to the killing today, though his motive remains unclear.

The problem of knife violence in the UK is "so serious," according to the Globe and Mail, "that the Metropolitan Police, Britain's major police force, told officers this week that their top priority had shifted from Islamic terrorism to knife crimes."

A few years back, researchers writing in the British Medical Journal called for a ban on kitchen knives, after the team "consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen." Watch for the reintroduction of such suggestions, especially since, according to the Times, "Every initiative [taken by the police] has failed to stop the stabbings in the capital." And as the Globe and Mail reminds readers, the police are already "authorized to stop young people without cause and search them for weapons, and such searches have become commonplace in London."

But despite the breathless reporting of the British tabloid press, the paper notes that, overall, knife crime—and violent crime in general—is actually on the decline:

In some respects, Britain's knife terror is a fear without an underlying story: The number of knife crimes in Britain has not actually increased, even if this year's London stabbings are included, and violent crime across the country and in London is at its lowest level in two decades; in fact, violent crime rates dropped by another 9 per cent last year. On the whole, the country remains far safer than North America.

Full story.

Heller Blogging

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:04:00 EDT

Stick with Hit & Run throughout the day (and the coming days) for ongoing commentary on the Court's landmark 5-4 ruling that Americans possess "an individual right to use arms for self-defense." But if you simply must stray from reason, here are a few blogs to keep an eye on, recommended by our very own in-house SCOTUS nerd, Damon Root: Scotusblog, Volokh Conspiracy, Slate's "Supreme Court Breakfast Table," The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, Law.com's How Appealing blog, and the terribly clever academic bloggers at Prawfsblawg and Balkinization.

Gettin' Sweaty with Jennifer Love Hewitt

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Just months after exposing her plus-size figure to the lissome tabloid readers of England (thanks Daily Mail!), Kids' Choice Award-winning actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, whose credits include Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and Garfield, has outraged a group of perpetually outraged college students. The anti-trade group United Students against Sweatshops (USAS) has launched a website called "Jennifer Loves Sweatshops" (It's funny because it's her name!), accusing the actress, who is a spokesperson for Hanes, of shilling for "sweatshop underwear" and "selling products made in unsafe factories overseas where women are abused." On the site's homepage, the group juxtaposed an US magazine cover featuring Hewitt—headline "Stop Calling Me Fat!"—with a lame magazine mockup of an overworked, mistreated stock photography model. ABC News explains:

On its site, USAS paired it with a cover for a fake "Worker" magazine showing a woman with a drawn face and the headline, "Stop Starving Me!" A footnote explains the quote is not attributable to an actual Hanes worker and the photo is not of a Hanes employee.

A Haynes spokesman called the charges that its factory abused workers "incomprehensible." USAS, he said, is "trying to pick fights with celebrities and other people, it just doesn't make any sense." (The group previously attacked Kevin Bacon.)

Now, I know nothing about the factory in question—USAS could be right about conditions there, though I think a healthy skepticism of claims made by the "living wage" student set are in order—but a few points about sweatshops: As economist Benjamin Powell notes here, few of us lazy Americans would last a day in a Third World textile factory. But that's mostly because we have other options; most of us have far better employment alternatives. This, obviously, is not the case in a place like Vietnam, where a Nike factory worker can earn three times the minimum wage of a worker employed by a state-owned company. In Saigon, the dreaded "sweatshop" position has long been a prized job in a slowly liberalizing economy. This was a revelation to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who understood that his readers would think his admiration for the mustache-twisting, whip-cracking factory owners was simply mad:

The Gentle Reader will think I've been smoking Pakistani opium. But the fact is that sweatshops are the only hope of kids like Ahmed Zia, a 14-year-old boy here in Attock, a gritty center for carpet weaving.
[...]
By this point, I've offended every possible reader. But before you spurn a shirt made by someone like 8-year-old Kamis Saboor, an Afghan refugee whose father is dead and who is the sole breadwinner in the family, answer this question: How does shunning sweatshop products help Kamis? All the alternatives for him are worse.
''I dream of a job in a factory,'' said Noroz Khan, who lives on a garbage dump and spends his days searching for metal that he can sell to recyclers. He earns about $1.40 a day, and children earn just 30 cents a day for scrounging barefoot in the filth -- a few feet away from us, birds were pecking at the bloated carcass of a cow, its feet in the air.
Of course, Western anti-sweatshop activists mean well and aim only for improved conditions and a ''living wage.'' But the reality is that the bad publicity becomes one more headache for companies considering operating in international hellholes (where the only lure is wages so low that it would be embarrassing if journalists started asking questions about them), and so manufacturers opt to mechanize their operations and operate in somewhat more developed countries.

Incidentally, if you want to join one of USAS's balkanized subgroups (choose from the Womyn/Genderqueer, People of Color, or Working Class Caucus), click here.

Ortega a Dictator? Now She Tells Us.

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:03:00 EDT

In a letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, the former "dictator in designer glasses" and el jefe supremo of the Sandinista party, a handful of prominent supporters of the 1979 revolution have denounced the creeping totalitarianism of Sandinismo 2.0. Twenty-nine years too late, but why pick nits?

So what’s bugging Bianca Jagger, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, and Tom Hayden about the New Sandinistas? Dora María Téllez, former Minister of Health during the first Sandinista dictatorship, “Commander Two” in the 1978 seizure of Somoza’s parliament, and icon of the revolution, is on hunger strike after Ortega's government banned her party, the rival Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). According to a report in The Guardian, Téllez is on hunger strike to "protest against the 'dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.'" As a longtime government minister in the first Sandinista regime, Ms. Téllez wasn‘t particularly concerned with the “dictatorship” in its first iteration—the repeated closing and censoring of opposition newspapers like La Prensa, jailing of “bourgeois” political opponents, etc. But this is a political feud with some history: Téllez publicly denounced Ortega’s dictatorial streak all the way back in 1992. When Ortega allied the party with those he once denounced as "counterrevolutionaries"—Contras, Catholics, and conservatives—Tellez spilt with the Sandinistas, forming the splinter group MRS. In 1996 she grumbled that his willingness to work with former enemies "shows just how far Daniel Ortega is willing to go in order to reach power." When Ortega was accused of child molestation, she told Mother Jones reporter Marc Cooper that she "absolutely believed" his accuser.

Now Comandante Ortega-—who has annoyed many former sympathizers on the left with his opposition to abortion and his "newfound Catholicism...[which is] another factor in the dilution of Sandinismo," according to The Nation—has received a sharp rebuke from Chomsky and friends for his treatment of Téllez. From The Guardian:

The celebrities and intellectuals who backed the government in the 80s wrote an open letter in her support: "None of these demands is irrational and a government that wants popular support ought to respond to them. Political representation is a right. It is a right to protest against mechanisms that shut down this space. Dora Maria represents a broad sector of Nicaraguan society that ought to be listened to."
The letter was signed by: Chomsky, a US academic; the British novelist Rushdie; Jagger, a human rights activist and former actor; and several others, including writer Ariel Dorfman, journalists Eduardo Galeano and Mario Benedetti, and human rights campaigner Tom Hayden.
The letter, published last week just as Tellez halted her strike on medical advice, elicited no government response. The office of Rosario Murillo, Ortega's wife and spokeswoman, did not respond to calls.

Full story.

Pat Buchanan Prevents the Holocaust

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:15:00 EDT

There is much to disagree with in Pat Buchanan’s latest book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War and his subsequent defense of its controversial premise. But there is one issue I must take issue with; a claim made in both the book and repeated in his latest syndicated column. According to Buchanan, had there been no American or English involvement in the Second World War, there would have been no Holocaust. This isn’t, in fact, an original line of argumentation—his is a thinly sourced, weakly reasoned, and extreme adaptation of the “functionalist” position. That is, unlike the “intentionalist” historians, who believe that Hitler always intended to wipeout European Jewry, the “functionalists” argue that while persecution of the Jews was integral to Nazi ideology, it was a function of the war that led to the large-scale, industrialized killing of Jews. (I spent my last two years of university looking at this debate, and ultimately writing my undergraduate thesis on Daniel Goldhagen's embarrassingly reductionist book, Hitler's Willing Executioners and came out the other side believing a mild version of the functionalist critique.)

So for Buchanan, because the Nazi regime commenced with the meticulous and industrialized killing of Jews after America entered the war and because there had been no genocide during the prewar years, it correlates that without a war, there would have been no Holocaust. And because England, in Buchanan’s view, provoked the war, then he presumably holds Churchill responsible, to some unknown degree, for the fate of European Jewry. Again, it should be reiterated that this should be categorized as an extreme functionalist position.

Here is Buchanan, writing in his latest syndicated column, on the Holocaust: “[F]or two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust. Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table. That conference was not convened until Hitler had been halted in Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was inevitable. Then the trains began to roll.”

Beyond the absurdity of implicitly blaming Churchill for the Holocaust—because that is what he is really saying when he writes “no war, no Holocaust”—Buchanan ignores an enormous amount of evidence that contradicts his position. What he is really arguing is an issue of scale, for the attempted destruction of European and Soviet Jewry via the concentration camp system began in 1942. But none of this was surprising; none of it a simple reaction to America’s entry into the European war in December 1941 (recall too that it was Germany that declared war on America).

Immediately after invading Poland in September 1939, the invading Germans commenced with the elimination of racial enemies. The murderous Einsatzgruppen, Wehrmacht General Walther von Brauchitsch informed his fellow commanders two weeks after the invasion, were to engage in “certain ethnic tasks” that were not under the purview of the army. According to German historian Wolfram Wette, “It was in Poland that the Germans initiated their policy of enslavement and extermination…and not in the Soviet Union as is often assumed.” Wette is correct that the murderous groundwork was laid in 1939 and 1940. Under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS began “testing three different gassing technologies” during the months of September and October 1941, according to historian Christopher Browning. At Babi Yar, outside of Kiev, on September 29 and 30, 1941, Einsatzgruppe C shot, according to their own figures, 33,771 Jews. All of this was before Wannsee and before America entered the war.

And what about Hitler’s famous January 30, 1939 “prophecy” of extermination; a speech delivered before England had guaranteed Poland, before the commencement of hostilities, before American entry into the war (Buchanan mentions, though doesn’t analyze, the speech in his book; he also misdates the address). Speaking to the Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of the party’s machtergreifung, he bellowed: "Today I will be once more a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" Some historians—like Hans Mommsen—have argued unconvincingly that this statement must be seen in "context," and should not be seen as an acknowledgement of an early plan to massacre Jews. But Hitler publically returned to his Reichstag “prophecy” dozens of times, repeatedly castigating European and Russian Jews for not heeding his warning. (See Jeffrey Herf’s book The Jewish Enemy for the countless of the instances in which Hitler and Goebbels returned to the “prophecy.”)

But what is really mystifying is Buchanan’s contention that if Hitler had been left alone in the East to gobble up Poland and fight an annihilation war against Stalin, the Holocaust never would have come to pass. In a March 1942 diary entry, Goebbels described “A rather barbaric procedure, which I won’t describe in more detail,” noting that “the prophecy [of] the Fuehrer…is now being realized in a more frightful manner. One cannot allow any sentimentality in these matters.” He then explained that it was only under the cover of war against Russia that Germany could achieve its genocidal goals: “Thank God that now, during wartime, we have a whole series of opportunities that would be closed off to us in peacetime. Hence we need to use them.” Buchanan quotes this passage in his book (though in slightly different translation), but doesn’t explain how this supports his case. Indeed, it greatly undercuts it. How further appeasement by England and a Roosevelt non-response to Hitler’s December 11, 1941 declaration of war on America could have prevented the destruction of Jews in the East is left unexplained.

Also Pat, it’s the Westwall—or Siegfried Line—not the “Western Wall,” which is in Jerusalem.

The Center for Disaster Economics

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:58:00 EDT

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, 101 professors at the University of Chicago—8 percent of the full-time faculty—are protesting the school's plan to open the Milton Friedman Institute, a facility, according to a press release, "for path-breaking research in economics to build upon the strengths of economists throughout the University and to honor the contributions of Milton Friedman, considered by many to be the leading economist of the 20th century." The profs are, rather predictably, in a lather that a research center honoring the "right-wing" Nobel Prize-winning economist would damage the university's standing amongst those in the academic community—a tacit admission, I suppose, that the academy has strong political biases. One professor moaned to the Tribune that "It is a right-wing think tank being put in place...This will be a flagship entity and it will attract a lot of money and a lot of attention, and I think work at the university and the university's reputation will take a serious rightward turn to the detriment of all." And yes, he is complaining that the center would "attract a lot of money."

Yalit Amit, a statistics and computer science professor, is worried what the neighbors might think: "For many people who travel around the world, the university has had a pretty bad reputation that is tied to the Chicago School and economic principles that Milton Friedman advocated. We don't think it's a great idea to strengthen this reputation." And it is only a reputation; as Andy Ferguson rightly pointed out in his recent piece on Hyde Park, "Of the tens of thousands of faculty who have taught at the University of Chicago over the past half-century, perhaps as many as 65 have, at some point in their lives, voted for a Republican." Incidentally, the background image on Amit's faculty webpage is a repeated image of Karl Marx.

When I was attending the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the administration decided to rename the school's 26-story brick library after the brilliant/deranged Stalinist W.E.B. Dubois. These aren't parallel situations (the library housed DuBois's papers, after all, and it wasn't a research institution that could be accused of ideological bias), but I recall finding it odd that few, if any, raised any objections. Here, for example, is DuBois—who joined the Communist Party in 1961, long after the purges, Khrushchev's secret speech and the invasion of Hungary—eulogizing Stalin:

"Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. . . .
"Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy or balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality."

Speaking of dictator love, it's likely that at least a few of those 101 disgruntled University of Chicago professors will trot out the supposed Pinochet-Friedman connection, a slander recently resuscitated by the ridiculous Naomi Klein. My esteemed colleague Brian Doherty, author of the fantastic book Radicals for Capitalism (now out in paperback!), debunks the "advisor to an autocrat" myth here.

Still Voting with Their Feet

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:18:00 EDT

The supposed reforms of Raul Castro aren't stemming the flow of citizens attempting to flee the island, reports the London Times. Cubans are still "voting with their feet, and those who succeed in reaching Miami have raised serious doubts about Raul Castro's intentions as he tries to defuse mounting public criticism."

"It's just a big facade to impress the people," claimed Yhosvany Carmona, a popular young Cuban television actor who fled Havana via the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and arrived in Miami last week. "Who are these people who can now afford to buy computers, cellphones and DVDs? They are the same people who could afford to buy them on the black market before." In one sense, Castro, 77, has had little choice but to embark on a radical restructuring of a Caribbean economy that has been struggling to rebuild itself since the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed it of its principal banker.

[...]
Yet other analysts have noted that the reforms announced so far have been more about style than substance. Cuban citizens are now allowed to stay at beach hotels that were previously reserved for foreign tourists, but there has scarcely been a flood of local pleasure-seeking. The average salary of Cuba's 11.4m citizens is £8.70 a month, and hotel rooms cost up to £100 a night.
The government has also removed a ceiling on wages. Originally intended to prevent social inequalities from emerging, the low salaries paid to Cuban professionals have driven thousands of them from the island. While the Castros are proud of the reputation of Cuban doctors, who staff hospitals across South America, sources in Havana say many of the doctors are forced to work abroad because they can barely feed their families at home.

Full story.

I wrote about Obama's ever-shifting position on the embargo here, the media's reaction to Castro's resignation here, and a documentary recounting Cuba's shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes here.

The Equal Sharing of Misery

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:48:00 EDT

Under current National Health Service (NHS) regulations, if a patient chooses to purchase expensive drug treatments not covered by the government, they forfeit the right to further state-funded treatment. Allowing citizens to purchase life-extending drugs not covered by the NHS would create, says Labour Health Minister Alan Johnson, a two-tiered system favoring the wealthy. Of course, Mr. Johnson's is demanding equality of grim outcomes and preventing patients from spending their after-tax income however they see fit. This would be less of a problem if the NHS actually had the money to cover £2,200 a month cancer drugs. The (London) Times fills in the details:

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.
One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.
The growing row over "co-payments" has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a "fundamental rethink" of the policy.
[...]

A former fireman who developed liver cancer after 25 years' service has been told that if he pays for the only drug that can treat his disease his NHS care will be withdrawn.
Barry Humphrey, 59, from North Walsham, Norfolk, was told by NHS doctors that the drug Nexavar was the only available treatment for his advanced liver cancer.
However, consultants at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge said the drug was not routinely funded by the NHS and told him that if he paid for it he would be billed for the rest of his NHS care.

reason on the crumbling NHS.

Oh, Dear God No

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:30:00 EDT

Submitted without comment. From the AP:

CNN's Lou Dobbs isn't talking about rumours that he's thinking about running for governor of New Jersey.
Dobbs lives on a 300-acre farm in Sussex County.
Dobbs told The Star-Ledger of Newark he's "not going to comment.''
State Republican chairman Tom Wilson tells the newspaper the Dobbs' buzz is circulating among GOP officials and fundraisers in New York City and Washington.
Wilson says the first thing Dobbs should do is register as a Republican. The CNN host switched from the GOP to an independent in 2006.

Actually, allow me one comment. A silver-lining, pointed out by Reason Foundation's Director of Government Affairs, Mike Flynn: "Well, at least it will get him off of television."

The New Change Deal and Great Hope Society

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:13:00 EDT

In a blog post this morning, Matt Welch noted "something that has received precious little attention this election cycle: The Democrats, while eyeing the prize of a unified Donkey government, have jerked themselves to the significant economic left of John Kerry and even Howard Dean of 2004, not to mention Gore 2000 and the two Bill Clinton terms." Welch quotes the ubiquitous liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias acknowledging that "the ‘center' wing of Democratic Party economic thought has shifted substantially left over the past few years."

On CNN this weekend, historian Douglas Brinkley made a similar point—one that should terrify libertarians and limited government advocates. Because the Clinton administration "did triangulation," Brinkley said, America "ended up not having a progressive movement, but kind of playing the middle centrist ground." But Barack Obama, "if he becomes president, if he wins, he will have a Democratic Senate and Congress. They're going to come in with the first sweeping legislative agenda which will be Johnson-like or New Deal like. That will be a big moment in this country." David Gergen nodded his head in agreement.

So H&R Obamaphiles and Obamaphobes: Would President Barack unleash upon a wobbly American economy a "Great Society"-like expansion of government? Is Clintonian triangulation dead? Is Obama tacking too far to the left on the economy?

Discuss.

Where's Nelson?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:55:00 EDT

There is much for which we can praise Nelson Mandela, a man instrumental in liberating his country from the yoke of Apartheid. During Mandela's presidency, the country established the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to expose the crimes of both the racist government of PW Botha (and his predecessors) and the more extremist elements in the ANC. The Mandela government wasn't bent on vengeance, instead offering amnesty to a series of murderers and thugs in exchange for detailed testimony of their crimes. But there is much for which Mandela deserves criticism. Despite being imprisoned—and brutalized—for 27 years, Mandela frequently praises prison warden Fidel Castro. Nauseating sample quote: "The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people." And his chummy relationship with Colonel Qaddafi is deeply troubling. (The Libyan dictator was the last official guest of the Mandela government; he referred effusively to the Colonel as "one of the revolutionary icons of our time.") And in recent years, he has been relatively silent on human rights violations in his own backyard. Today in Slate, Christopher Hitchens advises Mandela to utilize his moral authority on behalf of the victims of Robert Mugabe:

It is the silence of Mandela, much more than anything else, that bruises the soul. It appears to make a mockery of all the brave talk about international standards for human rights, about the need for internationalist solidarity and the brotherhood of man, and all that. There is perhaps only one person in the world who symbolizes that spirit, and he has chosen to betray it. Or is it possible, before the grisly travesty of the runoff of June 27, that the old lion will summon one last powerful growl?

Well, don't hold your breath. As Hitchens surely knows, and as I pointed out above, Mandela is pretty forgiving of human rights abusers who self-identify as "anti-imperialist."

Libertarian U.

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:43:00 EDT

The Los Angeles Times profiles Manuel Francisco Ayau Cordon, founder of Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala City, a "citadel of laissez-faire economics." A few clips:

Welcome to Guatemala's Libertarian U. Ayau opened the college in 1972, fed up with what he viewed as the "socialist" instruction being imparted at San Carlos University of Guatemala, the nation's largest institution of higher learning. He named the new school for a colonial-era priest who worked to liberate native Guatemalans from exploitation by Spanish overlords.
[..]
[Ayau] picked up a pamphlet by Ludwig von Mises, a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics. Considered one of the fathers of modern libertarianism, Mises abhorred state intervention in the economy. He believed that open markets, individual choice, private property and the rule of law were the means to a prosperous society.

Something clicked. Ayau read everything he could find by Mises, Friedrich Hayek and other Austrian School economists. He started a small discussion group among some Guatemalan friends and eventually traveled to New York to attend lectures at the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank. Through contacts there he met Mises and others whose works he'd been reading. At Ayau's urging, several traveled to Guatemala to speak to his tiny band of free marketeers, who by now were calling themselves the Center for Economic and Social Studies.
John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20," was honored this year on campus, as much for his ideology as his Emmy awards. An avowed libertarian, Stossel got a warm reception for his discourse against government regulation.

"We celebrate the message that this university teaches because economic freedom makes everybody's life better," Stossel said to rousing applause.
[...]

There are no sports teams and no affirmative action in hiring or admissions. Instructors can forget about tenure; there is none. Ditto for the protests and sit-ins that are common in public universities in Latin America. If Francisco Marroquin students are unhappy with the product they're getting, they're free to take their business elsewhere.

"If you don't like Macy's, you go to Gimbels," Ayau said.

I hate to break it to Ayau, but Gimbels closed more than twenty years ago—but point taken.

Full article.

(Tip: Steve K.)

Googling the Welfare State

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:32:00 EDT

The blogosphere overflows with Google Pundits; those who pooh-pooh, with a few search queries, an argument that runs counter to their own ideological assumptions, usually regarding a subject with which they possess only a passing familiarity. It's a familiar phenomenon, but a recent, particularly egregious, example of Google Punditry deserves to be singled out. In a blog post pompously titled "Everything You Know About Sweden is Wrong," American Prospect guest blogger K.A. Geier, who appears not to have previously written about Sweden, informs Atlantic writer and blogger Megan McArdle that she is "promulgat[ing] some misconceptions about Swedish social democracy." Unfortunately, it appears that everything Ms. Geier knows about Sweden is also wrong.

Geier argues that it is absurd to claim that Sweden's welfare "success" (cough) has benefited from a "homogeneous population" and cites "blogger and political science professor Lane Kenworthy to back me up on this point." According to Kenworthy, Sweden's "immigrant (foreign-born) share is virtually identical to America's, at about 13% of the population." Geier adds, with laughable understatement: "Obviously, Sweden does not have the same degree of racial diversity as the U.S. does, but its population is far from 'homogeneous.'"

This is a mind-bogglingly imprecise comparison. First, Geier, debunker of myths about Sweden and Swedish socialism, surely knows that the plurality of the foreign-born in Sweden are Finns and Finlandsvensk—Swedish-speaking Finns—who are very much a part of the Nordic welfare tradition. This will soon change, with the influx of asylum-seekers from the Middle East, and we'll soon see how much stress this puts on the "Swedish model." That said, and as Geier seems to concede but not comprehend, the remaining 87 percent are native-born Swedes with, for the most part, a common cultural, religious/irreligious, social, and political heritage. This is, obviously, not the case with native-born Americans, a patchwork of ethnicities and religious affiliations. (Incidentally, I am an American-born permanent resident of Sweden.)

Geier takes issue with McArdle's claim that Swedes have high "rates of long term disability, sick leave, and so forth," and huffs that her evidence consists of a single Swedish acquaintance bemoaning the disappearance of the "Protestant work ethic." The Google Pundit responds: "Scandinavians McArdle knows may indeed say all manner of things, but anecdotes are not data, and I don't think it would be a wild stretch to assume that McArdle's Scandinavian friends might be something of a self-selected (and hence unrepresentative) group." So Geier, debunker of myths, defender of the welfare state, upbraids McArdle for not providing any relevant data—and offers no data of her own.

Well, McArdle is correct. Sweden does have the highest rate of workers on sick leave in Europe, despite being consistently ranked by the OECD as Europe's healthiest country. As my former colleague Johan Norberg has observed, sick leave payments—which, at the time of the last election, were as high as 80 percent of a worker's salary—accounted for a staggering 16 percent of the government budget. It should be pointed out though that under the new, non-socialist government, changes to sick leave policy have resulted in a 13 percent decrease in the number of claims filed in 2007. (Personal, unrepresentative, and self-selected anecdote for Geier: An acquaintance of mine in Stockholm was on sick leave for six months, collecting three-quarters of his salary after his girlfriend left him, rendering him "burned out"—utmattningssyndrom—and incapable of work.)

She continues, again quoting, Kenworthy: "The country has a strong work ethos...During the 2000s the Swedish employment rate has averaged about 74% of the working-age population, two percentage points higher than in the United States." This is meaningless. Again, Geier surely knows that preceding the 2006 elections, when the Social Democrats were booted from power, the dominant campaign issue was the massive problem of unemployment. The government figure of 7 percent unemployment was repeatedly mocked by both former Prime Minister Göran Persson's detractors and allies. A study by McKinsey Global estimated the true figure—which included those on sick leave, in early retirement, in jobs programs—to be between 15 and 17 percent. Jan Edling, a researcher with the Social Democratic trade union LO, estimated the total figure of unemployed to be 19.7 percent. (Edling's report was suppressed and he was himself offered "early retirement.") The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said the figure was 16.5 percent. Other studies ranged from 12 percent to 18 percent.

But Google Pundit Geier again goes back to her blog source, Lane Kenworthy, who writes that "The welfare state is generous, but most able-bodied Swedes of working age are expected to be employed." Yes, they are expected to be employed. But the Swedish daily Aftonbladet reported in 2006, "shocking figures" demonstrated that 109,000 people under 30 were unemployed, an 81 percent increase over 2001. These numbers, supplied by the government, are also almost surely understated.

And the problem of unemployment in Sweden loops back around to the difficulty Sweden has had in integrating its immigrants into the job market. As Swedish economist Esra Karakaya wrote in Aftonbladet in 2006, the unemployment rate among immigrants in Sweden is 29 percent—another staggering figure, in marked contrast to the joblessness rate among immigrants in this country. This, Karakaya convincingly argues, is "because the labor market is governed by rigid job security laws" that are incompatible with a globalized economy. Indeed, a recent study tracking the fortunes of Somali immigrants in Sweden and in Minneapolis (reported here in Swedish, summarized here in English) found that its sample group in the U.S. started approximately 800 companies. In Sweden, they managed only 38. In a recent editorial in the newspaper Expressen, Nima Sanandaji, a Kurdish immigrant, argued that it was "important to study how the Swedish system of benefits, taxes and [regulated] job market leads the same group of people to be successful on one side of the Atlantic and to social poverty and dependence in Sweden."

In other words, Swedish social democracy, and its concomitant hostility to entrepreneurship and overly generous network of financial benefits for immigrants and asylum seekers, is a significant contributor to high unemployment rates.

One final point. Amazingly, Geier revels that "the Swedish economy is competitive, the school system offers choice, and pensions are partially privatized" but fails to note—or is simply unaware—that almost all of these policies were either implemented or introduced by the conservative government of Carl Bildt, against the strenuous objections of the Swedish left, after the economy sunk into a deep recession in the 1990s.

Notable & Quotable Reagan

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:34:00 EDT

In today's Wall Street Journal, "Notable & Quotable" excerpts reason's 1975 interview with Ronald Reagan:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals-if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

The full, fascinating interview is available here.

Bardot's Illegal Contempt

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:35:00 EDT

Brigitte Bardot, convicted again:

A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP.
[...]
A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter she sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The remarks were published in her foundation's quarterly journal.

In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."

Bardot, 73, was referring to the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep

This is, if my count is correct, the fifth time Mme. Bardot has been convicted of "hate speech" in France. She was previously fined for telling Le Figaro in 1999 that "my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims" and writing in her autobiography of an impending "Islamisation of France."

reason on "hate speech" and "hate crimes."

The Return of Persian Ameriphilia?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:29:00 EDT

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran this fascinating story by Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad and Time magazine's Iran correspondent, tracking Iranian's ever-shifting attitudes towards America and Americans. Long considered the most pro-American country in the region—world's tallest midget, obviously—opinion towards The Great Satan, Moavenu argues, has ebbed and flowed during the Bush years. Back in 2004, Nicolas Kristof wrote that he had finally "found a pro-American country." The twist was, of course, that he was writing from Tehran. Kristof spoke with an inordinate number of Iranians who were "exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well." Well, that was 2004.

According Moaveni, public opinion turned against Bush and America the following year: "Starting in about 2005, Iranians' historic esteem for the United States gave way to a deep ambivalence that is only now ending. President Bush's post-9/11 wars of liberation on both of Iran's borders—in Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east—rattled ordinary Iranians, and Washington's opposition to Iran's nuclear programa major source of national pride—added to their resentment." But the sands, she argues, are again shifting:

"I used to hear similarly pro-American sentiments frequently back in 2001, when Iranians' romance with the United States was at its most ardent. A poll conducted that same year found that 74 percent of Iranians supported restoring ties with the United States (whereupon the pollster was tossed into prison). You couldn't attend a dinner party without hearing someone, envious of the recently liberated Afghans, ask, "When will the Americans come save us?"

It's highly unlikely that this is a widely held sentiment these days. But, Moaveni writes, the incompetent and corrupt rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shifted the focus from problems in countries that border Iran (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq) to more pressing economic problems at home:

"I lived in Iran until last summer and experienced all the reasons why Ahmadinejad has replaced the United States as Iranians' top object of vexation. Under his leadership, inflation has spiked at least 20 percent, according to nongovernment analysts—thanks to Ahmadinejad's expansionary fiscal policies, which inject vast amounts of cash into the economy. My old babysitter, for example, says she can no longer afford to feed her family red meat once a week. When I recently picked up some groceries—a sack of potatoes, some green plums, two cantaloupes and a few tomatoes—the bill came to the equivalent of $40.

Full story.

Insert Fawlty Towers Reference Here

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:00:00 EDT

It is, without question, the greatest newspaper in the western hemisphere; a bottomless well of wit, wisdom, and gossip about "celebrities" (Jade Goody! Ulrika Jonsson! Kerry Katona!) unfamiliar to anyone outside of the greater Birmingham area. I am, of course, referring to everyone's favorite Little Englander tabloid, The Daily Mail. And browsing its pages today, I came across what might very well be the greatest headline of the year: "British holidaymaker wins compensation because his hotel was full of Germans."The lede paragraph explains:

When businessman David Barnish treated his family to a holiday at a luxury resort, he was soon dismayed to find their hotel dominated by Germans.
But it wasn't an abundance of beach towels on the sunbeds by breakfast time which was to spoil the family's fun - rather that the sports activities and entertainment were only offered in German.

Mr. Barnish was awarded £750 in damage for being set upon by brutish Hun holidaymakers. If European hotels full of Germans are grounds for financial compensation, someone owes me lots of Deutschmarks.

And what issue of The Daily Mail would be complete without the requisite story of a sweet pensioner dying because of NHS neglect?

The Myths of Paris

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:40:00 EDT

I'm a few days late on this, but if you haven't already read Jean-Claude Guillebaud's mildly revisionist Times opinion piece on the 1968 student rebellion in Paris be sure to check it out. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that student leaders like Danny Cohn-Bendit merely "spoke Marxist," but Guillebaud's argument that he and his street-fighting, paving stone-thowing comrades were "useful idiots" for capitalism seems about right:

The real legacy of May '68, as we see in France today, is individualism, the rejection of civic sense and ideology, the rehabilitation of the idea that personal and financial success is a worthy pursuit - in short, a revival of capitalism. To borrow an expression of Lenin's, we were useful idiots. Indeed, the uprising was more a counterrevolution than a revolution.

He grumbles that those "broadcast chiefs and newspaper, magazine and book publishers and senior editors [who] ‘did' May '68...are simply indulging their own nostalgia" by celebrating and mythologizing the anniversary and reminds us that "It was the [general] strike, not the student revolt, that truly paralyzed the country for three long weeks."

The paradox is that these two movements never encountered each other. The students marching toward the factories to "meet the workers" found the doors closed. The unions didn't want them: the workers found the students disorganized and irresponsible.

Full article.

Die Stasi Sind Unter Uns

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:52:00 EDT

Risen from the ashes of the PDS (which itself rose from the ashes of the SED, the East German Communist Party), German's year-old Left Party (Die Linke), led by former Social Democrat Oskar Lafontaine, is surging according to recent polls. Despite the party's numerous ties to the Honecker dictatorship and its brutal secret police (Left Party grandee Gregor Gysi attempted, according to Deutsche Welle, to "prevent journalists getting their hands on sensitive former Stasi files" and was recently and rather predictably exposed as an informant), the party is exerting significant influence over Chancellor Merkel's "grand coalition." From Deutsche Welle:

[The Left Party] boasts an estimated 73,500 members Germany-wide and, with 10 to 14 percent of the national vote, is the country's third largest party next to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
"We are being hailed as the most successful new party in decades and they say we are setting the political agenda in Germany," Lafontaine told some 600 supporters at the party's first national convention, over the weekend, in the eastern town of Cottbus.

And hot on the heals of controversy concerning Gysi's ties to the Stasi comes MEP and Left Party member Sahra Wagenknecht's ties to the radical group Die Kommunistische Plattform, which doesn't seem to have had any effect on the party's popularity:

Ahead of the Cottbus convention, Left member Sahra Wagenknecht was forced to drop her candidacy for deputy party leader because of her involvement in the Communist Platform, an organization that advocates the overthrow of capitalism and is monitored by Germany's intelligence apparatus.

Wagenknecht, a self-identified communist, previously made headlines when she was photographed in Strasbourg restaurant dining on a plate of bourgeois lobster. After realizing her doctrinal mistake, Wagenknecht ordered her assistant to requisition the grain, errr, camera from her Left Party colleague in order "take photographs with an acquaintance." When she returned the camera, the photos had been erased. The lobster-eating commissar had vanished.

Does Yusuf al-Qaradawi Qualify as an Intellectual?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:52:00 EDT

The May/June issue of Foreign Policy lists its picks for the world's top 100 public intellectuals. It's a pretty predictable group—Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Friedman, Alain Finkielkraut, Orhan Pamuk, etc. The list includes, FP says, the "world's most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind. Others are at the forefront of modern finance, politics, and human rights." It was rather surprising, then, to see that the rabble-rousing cleric referenced is the extremist Egyptian preacher and Al-Jazeera host Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Now I understand that by including al-Qaradawi on its list Foreign Policy isn't endorsing the preacher's views anymore than Time Magazine's Man of the Year gongs qualify as endorsements of Stalinism, Nazism, or, more recently, Putinism. It is, of course, merely an acknowledgement of his considerable influence in the Middle East. And while al-Qaradawi is undeniably an influental public figure, is he in any sense an "intellectual"? Because if he qualifies, I'm afraid that the folks at FP will have to start considering people like John Hagee (or the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell) on future lists.

FP describes al-Qaradawi accurately as "Perhaps the most influential preacher in Sunni Islam [and the host of] the weekly show Sharia and Life on the Al Jazeera satellite channel," but should perhaps mention that, in his capacity as "influential preacher," he advises the death penalty for gays and apostates and recommends that husbands beat disobedient wives. On suicide bombings, the Sheik is unequivocal: "It's not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of God," and "I consider this type of martyrdom operation [suicide bombing] as an evidence of God's justice." On Muslims that have committed the sin of apostasy: "'He is no more than a traitor to his religion and his people and thus deserves killing." On wife beating: "If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion, and reasoning with her... If this approach fails, it is permissible for him to admonish her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive areas.'" In other words, try to punch her in the stomach, where the brusies won't show. After rumors surfaced that the Crown Prince of Qatar was spotted in a London gay bar, al-Qaradawi recommended that he be executed by stoning, "whether he is married or unmarried." Lionel Trilling, this guy is not.

Incidentally, all of this was known to former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who famously invited al-Qaradawi to London, claiming that the he was "a powerfully progressive force for change" in the Middle East. But in February, the British government refused to grant al-Qaradawi a visa, stating that "The UK will not tolerate the presence of those who seek to justify any act of terrorist violence."

Radio Is Cleaning Up the Nation

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:43:00 EDT

I'll be talking about something or other on the Michael Reagan Show at 6 p.m. EST. If so inclined, you can listen online here. If you would just rather watch Elvis Costello (with the Attractions, of course) play "Radio, Radio" live in Detroit, you can click here.

Conservative America, Progressive Europe

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:38:00 EDT

On the train to New York last week, I had the displeasure of sitting in front of a rather loud, abrasive woman who, apropos of nothing, lectured/harangued her unfortunate seatmate—a pleasant and soft-spoken Nigerian businessman—about her country's hideous history of bigotry and genocide. America was full of misinformed rubes entranced by American Idol, we are congenitally, irredeemably racist, blah, blah. It was rather obvious, she argued, that Americans wouldn't ever pull the lever for Barack Obama, and for this she profusely apologized. (She actually apologized.) The Nigerian smiled politely. (Actually, in the latest Pew Global Attitudes poll shows that, just behind the Japanese, the Nigerians were most positive towards America.) Then came the rather predictable speech on America's damaged reputation and her deep embarrassment in disclosing her nationality when travelling in Europe, a continent, she sighed, that was light years ahead of us on issues like race, immigration, and various social issues like gay rights and the death penalty.

Well, no. Sure, places like Sweden, Holland, and Norway are to the left of America on many social issues, and many are far more supportive of gay marriage and civil unions than Americans. But there are vast differences in European attitudes on such questions, as evidenced by the much more socially conservative views held by Poles, Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese. Progressive Europe, of course, is only progressive in those progressive enclaves, mostly in Northern and Western Europe. In December 2006, for instance, a Eurobarometer poll reported that "only 32% of Europeans feel that homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children throughout Europe" and "44% of EU citizens agree that such marriages should be allowed throughout Europe." In Greece, that number was only 15 percent, in Italy 31 percent.

So the day after the train lecture on why "Europe" will be disappointed by our inevitable anti-Obama racism, I saw this tale of superior European progressivism in The Guardian:

Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the new rightwing government, want to see all of the country's 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled, according to an opinion poll.
The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps this week, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished.

Full story.

A Crock of a Doctrine

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:45:00 EDT

My friend and former colleague Johan Norberg has just produced a devastating, 20-page debunking of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, a book he rightly calls "hopelessly flawed at virtually every level," with a thesis that rests on a "malevolent distortion" of Milton Friedman's views. The full report, released as a Cato Briefing Paper, is available here. A representative sample of Norberg busting Klein on bowdlerizing Friedman's writing:

When Klein talks about Friedman's suggestions to reduce inflation, she writes, "Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that ‘facilitate the adjustment.'"
Klein gives the impression that Friedman was brutal and wanted to inflict pain to disorient people and push his reforms through. The use of the words "psychological reactions" is also important, because Klein tries to associate liberal reforms with psychological torture and electrical shocks. But the quote in its entirety shows that Friedman had something very different in mind. He actually wrote that if a government chooses to attack inflation in this way: "I believe that it should be announced publicly in great detail . . . . The more fully the public is informed, the more will its reactions facilitate the adjustment."
In other words, if the people are not ignorant, and not disoriented, but fully informed of the reform steps, they would facilitate the adjustment by changing their behavior when it comes to negotiations, saving, consuming, and so on. Friedman's view was the complete opposite of what Klein pretends it is.

I wrote previously about Klein's book here and here. Matt Welch on "disaster capitalism" here.

On the Russian Front

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:30:00 EDT

Last week, Vladimir Putin pretended to hand power to Russia's new puppet president, the amiable former chair of Gazprom's board of directors Dmitry Medvedev. Reuters reports that Medvedev—by which they mean Putin—has "appointed three of Vladimir Putin's closest aides to run his administration, ensuring Putin retains his strong grip on power despite leaving the Kremlin." Breaking with protocol, Putin demonstrated who was in charge before the announcement. As The Moscow Times explains, Putin "not only remained in the left-hand seat, but also spoke first when presenting Medvedev with his new Cabinet." The paper declares the former president "the big winner" in the cabinet sweepstakes, though they reassuringly note that Putin's phalanx of liberal advisors were the "other winners," while a handful of anti-western hawks—the siloviki—were demoted.

And while this is all good news for the Russian economy, Putin continues to bully his critics in the media. Last month, the Associated Press reported that "Russia's lower house of parliament voted...to widen the definition of slander and libel and give regulators the authority to shut down media outlets found guilty of publishing such material." And today, the Times follows up on the case of Russian curator Yuri V. Samodurov, whose controversial exhibitions attacking the church and military have been consistently defaced by nationalists and religious extremists. Back in 2003, the Times explains, "a group of men raided Mr. Samodurov's museum, defacing many of the 45 works in another exhibition critical of the Orthodox Church called 'Caution, Religion!' While charges against most of the men were dropped for a lack of evidence, Mr. Samodurov was convicted of inciting religious hatred."

And so it is again. In an unsurprising move, prosecutors have now charged Samodurov with "inciting religious hatred" for the staging of his 2007 show "Forbidden Art." I am sure, though, that the prosecution is entirely unrelated to Samodurov's recent denunciation of the Putin government as "Stalinist" in its attacks on the pernicious influence of "foreign culture."

Doesn't She Know About the Health Insurance Situation Here?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:42:00 EDT

Amazing that anyone would flee Cuba now that the benevolent Raul Castro legalized DVD players and computers (though both DVDs and Internet connections are still out of the question and the average monthly wage remains around $19), but it appears that 2004 Olympic bronze medalist in judo Yurisel Laborde has defected to the Empire. Despite the supposed liberalization measures undertaken by the new Jefe, Cubans keep disappearing when visiting the U.S. Last month it was four ballet dancers from the National Ballet of Cuba, in March seven members of Cuba's under-23 soccer team, a steady stream of baseball players and doctors, and, of course, the thousands of boat people that set sail every month. The Associated Press on the missing judo star:

The Cubans checked in for their flight lugging new mountain bikes, televisions, espresso machines and other purchases made during their historic stay in Miami. It was the first time in 40 years that a Cuban Olympic team in any sport had competed in this city, a hotbed of anti-Castro sentiment.
As she waited for a bike to be wrapped in plastic, tournament gold medalist Idalys Ortiz said she was proud of her team's performance. Like her teammates, Ortiz declined to talk about Laborde, who won gold in the 78-kilogram division.
"Of that, I don't know anything," Ortiz said.

Coach Ronaldo Veitia Valdivie said he trusted Laborde, whom he had trained since she was 12. He said he had worked hard to enable her to compete in Miami, since she was already qualified for this summer's Beijing Olympics.
"She wasn't thinking it through. You know how youth is," he said.

Full story.