Rights:
- Diane Feinstein among others were willing to have Gitmo prisoners in their backyard (h/t Yglesias). Thank goodness, that vote was embarrassing.
- Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates note that terrorists are not super villains who can escape maximum security prison and if they were they could escape Gitmo.
- More logs on torture related communications (h/t Ackerman). This gets to the sort of issues a truth commission would nail down.
- Yglesias notes that Columbia’s Uribe, like Chavez, is trying to change the constitution to extend his term. There have also been human rights abuses relating to his fairly successful efforts against narco-guerrillas, but as far as I know he hasn’t clamped down on the opposition in the way Chavez has.
- Sen. Specter is apparently backing Speaker Pelosi. Good for him. In my opinion, the burden of proof is on the CIA. They’ve destroyed videotape evidence on torture and Sen. Graham has shown that their oversight record keeping is inadequate and suggested some good reforms. Not that it matters, but I think the attacks on her are unfair and those parts of the CIA under attack haven’t earned the level of respect that various centrists are calling for.
Feminism and Statistics:
- Andrew Gelman passes on an interesting study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers that finds that women’s happiness has declined in the last 35 years despite objectives improvements in quality of life. Also apparently women do historically report being happier than men. That surprises me. I haven’t read the article, but I wonder if the benefits of the women’s movement are most important at the negative extremes.
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