Kiwiblog

Avik Roy at Forbes blogged a list of the 10 worst fact checks of the 2012 US election.

“The problem,” observes Ben, “is that a combination of ignorance and bias warps the perspective of fact checkers, and their focus ends up being on their own personal prism of what’s far as opposed to what’s accurate.”

It is true not all fact checkers are equal.

The one I prefer is Fact Check, as it is independent. It is not run as part of a newspaper, which can mean the editorial direction of the newspaper can influence it.

I think NZ would do well with a Fact Check type site – but again one not linked to any media outlet, and with staff that have no history of political involvement or support. It would need a benevolent non-involved funder – which is the difficult part.

The Herald reports:

An American doctor may face the death penalty after being convicted of the gruesome killings of three babies shortly after their births in his filthy backstreet “abortion mill”.

Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of the first-degree murder of three newborn children, as well as the manslaughter of one of his patients.

A jury in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania also convicted the 72-year-old of carrying out 21 abortions later than the state’s limit of 24 weeks into pregnancy.

The court heard how Gosnell and his unqualified staff persuaded vulnerable women seeking abortions to give birth to live fetuses, whom they killed by “snipping” spinal cords.

What an awful man, and horrible case. Absolutely horrific.

Jon Stewart exposes how CNN did a live split screen interview between two hosts, designed to give an impression they are in different locations but both had the same bus appear behind them within half a second – they were 10 metres apart from each other. CNN chose to deceive the public.

A shocking expose of their values.

Hat Tip: Terry Wallbank

Stuff reports:

The three women held captive for a decade at a run-down US house were bound with ropes and chains, police say.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are believed to have been kept in several rooms of Cleveland house at 2207 Seymour Ave where chains, tape and other bondage devices were found.

Charges were expected by the end of the day against the three brothers under arrest.

Neighbours in the largely Puerto Rican neighbourhood said one of the brothers, 52-year-old Ariel Castro, had taken part in the search for one of the missing women, performed music at a fundraiser for her and attended a candlelight vigil, where he comforted her mother.

The women’s plight has riveted the US since 27-year-old Berry kicked through a screen door at the house on Tuesday, used a neighbour’s telephone to call authorities and told a police dispatcher, “I’m free now”. A policeman showed up minutes later and Berry ran out and threw her arms around the officer, a neighbour said.

Once a loved one is missing for more than a week, you probably accept that statistically they will be dead. But hope sometimes wins out, and amazingly these three lost girls were all alive.

This is not the first long-term abduction case, but I think the first with multiple un-related victims.

I can’t comprehend how someone can do this to other human beings. I guess he or they are just sociopaths.

The Herald reports:

Kim Dotcom has called for an investigation into the FBI case against Megaupload in a legal review which accuses Prime Minister John Key of being misled by the United States.

The “White Paper” released by Mr Dotcom last night also alleges the illegal spying by the GCSB went on for 10 days longer than the spy bureau has previously admitted.

The 39-page document written by his legal team aims to dissect the FBI investigation against him and three Megaupload colleagues arrested on criminal copyright charges last year. It is entitled “Megaupload, the Copyright Lobby, and the Future of Digital Rights: The United States versus You (and Kim Dotcom)”.

It calls for investigations by US Senate oversight committees, linking the motives for the prosecution to Hollywood studios’ political contributions and support for President Barack Obama.

It’s not a “white paper” with or without the quote marks. White papers are government documents. It is a PR document put out by the defence team for someone who has been charged with multiple criminal offences. It isn’t even a legal document – it is purely a PR document. But for this it get heralded as some sort of official white paper, and gets Mr Dotcom a free q&a session on the Herald website. I wonder if they plan to do this for all other people charged with criminal offences in other countries?

Dotcom is trying to turn this into a political issue, rather than a legal one. On the politics of copyright law, i actually agree with much of what he says. But I also believe you try to act within the law and accept consequences if you do not.

Whether the charges laid by the US Government are valid under our extradition treaty is a legal issue to be determined by the NZ courts. If they find they are valid, then he should be extradited – just as the US extradites people from the US to NZ if they face criminal charges here.

If he is extradited to the US, then his guilt or innocence is a matter for the US courts and/or juries. Again it is a legal matter.

If Mr Dotcom wins his legal cases, then as far as I am concerned he is welcome to stay in NZ, despite his less than reputable past and previous criminal offending. But justice should not be decided in the media by PR strategies. The charges he faces are legal matters for the NZ and then the US courts to determine.

Megan McArdle blogs at The Daily Beast:

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

David Lange’s former chief adviser Gerald Hensley has come to the conclusion that the former Prime Minister lied about his early involvement in the anti-nuclear crisis that gripped the fourth Labour Government.

Well he was either incompetent, or lied. Maybe both.

But the bigger shock for Mr Hensley came during research for the book. He said not only had Mr Lange told colleagues he had known nothing about the Buchanan until he had returned from Tokelau but he also told some that it had all been the work of Mr Hensley, Foreign Affairs and Defence.

Mr Hensley said the discovery made him feel “a bit sad”.

“I mean, I like David, still, you might say against some of the evidence.

“He was such a warm, humorous, human man and I knew that he embroidered things, altered them round to make a better story, but I hadn’t actually thought of him being an actual liar.

“But I’m afraid you really can’t use any other word for this. It was a conscious lie to protect himself in the debacle that followed the collapse of the Buchanan visit. And I was a bit shocked.”

If Lange said he was unaware of the Buchanan invite, it was a clear lie.

Margaret Pope, initially Mr Lange’s chief speechwriter, wrote to a newspaper in 1994 saying the PM had not known about the Buchanan until he got back from Tokelau, but she had since acknowledged that was not so.

Of course he knew. Officials don’t invite ships without the approval of the Prime Minister.

Mr Hensley, Ms Pope and Sir Geoffrey Palmer will appear on The Nation, TV3, tomorrow at 9.30am.

That could be interesting.

The Herald reports:

The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had planned to blow up their remaining explosives in New York’s Times Square, officials said.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators from his hospital bed that he and his older brother had decided spontaneously Thursday night (local time) to drive to New York and launch an attack with their five pipe bombs and a pressure-cooker bomb like the ones that blew up at the marathon.

The plan fell apart after the Tsarnaev brothers

were intercepted by police in a stolen car and got into a fierce gun battle that left Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead, Kelly said.

It is fortunate that the brothers were such incompetent morons. News.com.au lists 10 big mistakes they made:

1. Wear a baseball cap backwards and no sunglasses.
2. Not react to the explosions.
3. Leave their car at the repair shop, then go pick it up.
4. Stay in Boston.
5. Run out of cash.
6. Not understand how ATMs work.
7. Confess to the hostage.
8. Stop for a snack and allow hostage to escape.
9. Keep the hostage’s phone.
10. Bring a BB gun.

If they were not so retarded, they may have ended up at large for much longer, and able to kill far more people.

National Review Online reports:

A recent report released by the Walton Family Foundation shows that charter schools in Washington, D.C., received $16,361 per student in FY 2011, compared with $29,145 spent per student at traditional public schools. Those amounts include federal, state, and local tax dollars as well as support from private foundations.

Some have argued charter schools do better because they may attract some private funding. But it seems again the facts do not stack up.

So despite the much lower funding, how do they do?

The District’s charter schools, which serve 41 percent of the city’s public school students, posted higher overall scores on the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System than their counterparts in the traditional schools system, but their gains in math were smaller. Their reading proficiency rates, meanwhile, fell slightly. . .

So better results for less money – no wonder Labour and Greens have vowed to abolish charter schools regardless of how successful they are.

The proficiency scores were:

• Maths – public schools 46%, charter schools 55%
• Reading – public schools 44%, charter schools 49%

Stuff reports:

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing lay hospitalised under heavy guard as people across the area breathed easier and investigators tried to piece together the motive for the deadly plot.

Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, was reported in serious condition and unable to be interrogated the morning after he was pulled, wounded and bloody, from a boat parked in the backyard of a home in Watertown, Massachusetts. 

The capture came at the end of a tense day that began with his older brother, Tamerlan, dying in a desperate getaway attempt.

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers – ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the US for about a decade and lived in the Boston area – had help from others.

“When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right,” Obama said. 

“That’s why we take care not to rush to judgment – not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

However, Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau told CNN the early indications were that the brothers did act alone.

That appears to be the case. In fact it seems the (deceased) older brother probably put his younger brother up to it.

It is still a very distressing case. The two killers were relatively well integrated it seems, but the older brother appears to have become a radical Islamist. Hopefully we may learn from the surviving brother if there was a specific trigger that led to this.

3 News reports:

An explosion at a fertiliser plant near Waco, Texas sent flames shooting high into the night sky, leaving the factory a smouldering ruin, causing major damage at nearby buildings and injuring numerous people.

There are unconfirmed reports up to 60 people may have been killed and more than 100 injured. CBS says authorities have told residents to leave the town due to the risk of toxic fumes from the plant.

The blast at the plant in West, a community north of Waco, happened shortly before 8pm and could be heard as far away as Waxahachie, 45 miles to the north.

The video looks appalling. An awful accident.

Stuff reports:

The US Senate has blocked bipartisan legislation aimed at tightening restrictions on the sale of firearms, a huge defeat for an angry President Barack Obama.

This morning’s attempt to ban assault-style rifles went down, too, and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines faced the same fate in a series of showdown votes four months after a gunman killed 20 school children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The background check measure commanded a majority of senators, 54-46, but that was well short of the 60 votes needed to advance. Forty-one Republicans and five Democrats sided together to scuttle the plan.

Speaking to the nation after the vote Obama said a minority the senators decided “it wasn’t worth it” to protect the nation’s children.

“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama said.”There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics,” he said, flanked by relatives of the victims of recent mass shootings, some of whom wept during the president’s comments.

Universal background checks are, for me, a non-brainer. 90% of Americans support them. You want to make sure sales are not to convicted criminals, and the seriously mentally unwell. It is disappointing that even that modest proposal couldn’t get past the Senate.

The proposed bans on assault-style rifles and high-capacity ammo were never going to pass, and are far more debatable propositions.  But it is very hard to argue against universal background checks for gun sales.

Boing Boing has done this table showing the level of belief in various conspiracy theories in the US.

I’m unsure if 4% of Americans just have a wacky sense of humour or are seriously deranged!

The actual lizard people question was:

Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?

Only 88% were sure this is not true. 4% said true and 7% unsure. Now I guess you can’t be absolutely certain it is untrue but …

The level of belief in the vaccines conspiracy theory is alarming. By chance I am off to Parliament tonight for the launch of a public health report on vaccinations in New Zealand by Pfizer, that Curia did some of the research for.

In NZ we found that only 5% of parents think vaccines are unsafe, which is a relatively low number.

Fox News reports:

The Boston Marathon headquarters has been locked down after two explosions were reported near the finish line, a spokesman told Reuters.

Witnesses reportedly heard two booms near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel that sounded like two claps of thunder. 

The Associated Press says there are reports of injuries. 

Unless this is a freak accident, this is a terrible criminal event – to target marathon runners. One can only assume they wnted to kill or injure as many people as possible.

There are first hand reports on Twitter of horrific injuries, legs blown off etc.

My prayers and thoughts are with the victims, and with the United States today.

UPDATE: Two or three dead so far. My emotions are torn between profound sadness and massive anger. What should have been a day of joy has become a day of tragedy. May those responsible be found and removed from civilisation.

UPDATE2: The NY Post is reporting 12 dead and 50 injured. Note no other media are reporting this many dead. Two dead and six critical is the latest on CNN.

In case you needed convincing about the need for welfare reform, this story from the United States should help convince you.

It was an exclusive story for Planet Money on National Public Radio. It has had great resonance in the US, as it has exposed how great the growth in numbers on disability welfare has been.

Some key findings:

• 14 million people a month now get a disability check from the Government.
• In one county in Alabama, 25% of working adults are on a disability benefit.
• That the proportion of those claiming a disability benefit with a difficult to test problem (back pain, mental illness) has increased from 18% in 1961 to 53% in 2011.
• That some states have as many as 9% of their adults on a disability benefit.
• Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then.
• The disability benefit pays $13,000, just $2,000 less than the minimum wage, plus Medicare so some are better off financially not working.
• The number of children on a disability benefit has increased seven fold since 1974 to over 1.2 million.
• If these children with learning or other disabilities get a job, their parents lose the $700 a month disability check.
• Disability welfare now costs $260 billion a year, and will run out of reserve duns by 2016.

People should remember this story, when Labour and Greens constantly say there is no need for welfare reform in New Zealand. Note that the numbers receiving the Invalids Benefit in NZ has increased eight fold since 1976 from 10,000 to 84,000. Now by no means should anyone conclude this means everyone on that benefit shouldn’t be there. To the contrary I know some people on that benefit who would love to be able to work, or work longer hours than they can. So we need to be careful not to stigmatize those who are in genuine need.

However as the US story shows, the growth in the level of such benefits has been massive, and I encourage people to read the full story about what happens when the incentives to be on welfare are greater than to be in work.

The Political Marketing Group asked me to do an article for their March newsletter. There might be some wider interest in it, so I thought I would blog it here also:

Barack Obama was re-elected for a number of reasons including the quality of the candidates, their policies and their records. But one of the reasons was also the quality of their campaigns, and the Obama’s campaign use of big data to bring a new level of sophistication to political marketing.

The days of campaigns being about getting the best coverage on the 6 pm news every night are well and truly over. By 6 pm, many people already know how the campaign has gone for candidates. The buzz on Twitter has often made it clear how the day’s happenings will be reported.

The Obama campaign used data to divide voters into three categories. Those who were not worth pursuing who were left alone, those who were moderate supporters who might donate if asked and those who were strong supporters who might become activists.

They used research to survey millions of voters so they could sort them into the three categories. The research was a mixture of postal surveys, phoning and visiting. This data was supplemented by social media data and advertising.

An interactive Facebook video would depict to individuals how the President’s policies would help them and their friends. But the real purpose of the video was to get their permission to siphon off data about all their friends so they could be matched to their state voting records.

Having collected so much data on voters, the Obama campaign then used it to personalise online advertisements and messages. Their data told them the most appealing celebrity for middle-aged women on the East Coast was Sarah-Jessica Parker so they used her to appeal for their votes.

Having done badly in 2010 due to low turnout, Obama’s campaign focused on identifying those who voted for him in 2008 and ensuring they voted again. Every voter in the country was assigned two scores. One being their likelihood to vote and one being the probability they would vote for Obama. They then calculated for each individual precinct who were the likely people who voted Obama in 2008 and worked on making sure they voted in 2012.

They also used data to test their messages. Up to ten different varieties of an e-mail solicitation would be sent out to a test group. The communication that achieved the highest response or donation rate was then used for the entire population. Almost every single message and communication was tested scientifically. It didn’t matter so much what the creative director though of the communication. What mattered was measuring what impact it had.

Advertising has been the traditional channel for persuasion in political campaigns.  It still remains an important element, especially as they can impact media coverage also. But the lessons from the 2012 United States presidential campaign are that advertising alone is most definitely no longer enough. Data, social media and electronic communications are the weapons now used in a 21st century campaign, and political parties and candidates that fail to use them will struggle to achieve the result they want.

Gavin White at UMR blogs:

We asked New Zealanders which of the following statements came closest to their views on the origin and development of human beings: 

• A) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process 
• B) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process 
• C) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last ten thousand years or so

To keep the write-up clear, I’ll refer to Statement A as ‘intelligent design’, Statement B​ as ‘pure evolution’ and Statement C as ‘creationism’.

I like that they didn’t just ask people do they believe in evolution or creationism but actually gave them statements to choose from. A good approach in my opinion, as different people may think creationism means different things.

The numbers show that, amongst New Zealanders:

• 26% believe in ‘intelligent design’
• 45% believe in ‘pure evolution’
• 23% believe in ‘creationism’
• 6% are unsure.

I’m surprised the level for “pure” creationism is so high, ie that one in four said they think humanity is less than 10,000 years old.

As you might expect, the American numbers are quite different:

• 32% of Americans believe in ‘intelligent design’
• 15% believe in ‘pure evolution’
• 46% believe in ‘creationism’
• 7% are unsure.

Only 15% of Americans believe in “pure evolution”. Oh dear. Now that I have a problem with people believing in intelligent design. There can be no proof for or against intelligent design. I can’t be certain there isn’t a creator who has been nudging things along.

However I can be pretty certain that humanity is more than 10,000 years old. Unless God spent a lot of time and effort in laying fake clues for us!

Snopes reports that President Obama (and other Presidents) have a food taster.

It seems that even on Capitol Hill, he can’t eat food without a taster checking it out first. During a lunch with Senate Republicans he couldn’t eat lunch as his taster was not present.

I guess I can understand the use of a taster when say travelling overseas. But it seems silly to require one at things like a private lunch with Senators.

Arstechnica reports:

The importation of copyrighted goods made abroad has been an increasingly contentious issue in recent years. Easy access to Internet resale markets like eBay and Amazon have made it possible for a new breed of entrepreneurs to buy low and sell high in a wide array of areas. The Supreme Court handed these resellers a major victory today, issuing a decision [PDF] that makes it clear that the “first sale” doctrine protects resellers, even when they move goods across national boundaries. 

Those upstarts have peeved a lot of corporations, and some of them used copyright law to fight back. Textbook maker John Wiley & Sons sued a Thai student-entrepreneur named Supap Kirtsaeng, who had been buying cheaper (but non-pirated) versions of various textbooks in his home country, bringing them to the US, and selling them to his fellow students stateside on eBay. The price differentials were so big that there was quite a bit of money to be made; at trial, the publishing company’s lawyers hammered home the fact that they had counted up $1.2 million in receipts over the life of Kirtsaeng’s business.

Wiley argued those profits should be barred by copyright law. Their right to control prices abroad was actually part of their copyright grant, they argued. The textbook company won a jury verdict against Kirtsaeng, which was upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and Kirtsaeng appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his business was protected by the “first sale” doctrine.

Today’s decision vindicates the “first sale” doctrine, which allows the owner of a particular copy of a work to do whatever she wants with it after purchasing it. It overrides first sale losses in both the 9th and 2nd Circuits and makes it clear that digital commerce can flourish in the Internet era, even when it crosses borders.

This is good news. Once you purchase something you own it, and that ownership should include resale rights.

The world is increasingly becoming a global market. The days of different prices for different countries is crumbling under the Internet.

Michael Field at Stuff reported:

The United States and New Zealand have announced they are planning to create the world’s largest marine protected area.

The 4.9 million square kilometre Ross Sea MPA in Antarctica would be nine times the size of New Zealand.

The plan has been announced in Washington by new US Secretary of State John Kerry and the New Zealand ambassador to Washington, Mike Moore.

They were speaking at the screening the National Geographic Museum of The Last Ocean by New Zealand film-maker Peter Young. …

The US, the European Union and 23 other countries including New Zealand will decide in July whether to approve permanent protections for the Ross Sea and for a second area in East Antarctica, or to allow large-scale industrial fishing to continue.

An attempt last November to create the MPA at a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, failed. …

Key areas to protect include a full range of marine habitats; from the ice edge to deep oceanic basins. The proposal protects the ecologically important features and habitats, including winter ice-free areas, the entire Victoria Coast from McMurdo Sound to Cape Adare, the Balleny Islands, and almost the entire Ross Sea continental shelf.

The large bulk of the MPA, the general protection zone, will be a no-take area.

Under the proposal the toothfish fishery would continue in areas outside the MPA.

It is good to have the US and NZ in agreement, as previously there were different proposals.

And it is good they are proposing a vast marine reserve for most of the Ross Sea.

But there is still an issue of whether the marine reserve should include the entire Ross Sea – just as all of Antarctica is protected for scientific research, not just some of it.

I don’t think there is a shortage of other areas to fish. Some ecosystems should be left undisturbed, and Antarctica is one of them.

Peter Cresswell responds to my earlier blog on patent trolls:

He says:

Thomas Edison was a “patent troll.”

So was Nikola Tesla.

So was almost every great inventor in the last 200 years*.

So is any inventor who licenses their invention rather than produce it themselves.  Unlike the ignoramuses who attack them, these people aren’t trolls. They’re benefactors:

Not every person who patents something they don’t produce is a patent troll. But patent trolls don’t actually come up with inventive ideas. Their inventive idea is to just file a patent over anything they can think of, even if it is not a true invention. Once they get the patent, they’ll find victims who will pay them a fee rather than go to court to get the patent over-turned.

PC quotes a Judge:

Judge Michel,  former head of the CAFC, the US court that hears all patent appeals, points out that the number of patent suits filed each year has remained constant at less than three thousand.  Only about 100 of these suits ever go to trial.  In a technology based economy with over 300 million people and 1 million active patents this is trivial.

Of course they don’t go to trial. If you want to try and fight a patent claim you need US$1 to US$2.5 million generally. What small business can afford that?

The proposed law change mooted in the US doesn’t ban patent trolls. It just changes the economic incentives so that the trolls have to post a bond to cover the defendant’s costs in case they lose. So you can’t just set up a $500 shell company and threaten patent lawsuits. The problem for the defendent is that even if they win, they will never recover the cost of defending the lawsuit. So of course they settle.

Jordan Weissmann writes at The Atlantic:

It’s hard to think of any business more inherently obnoxious than a patent troll. These are the tech-world parasites that buy up troves of intellectual property, not so that they can make a product, but so that they can turn around and sue successful companies for patent infringement with the aim of nabbing a quick and profitable settlement. They’ve infested the courts over the last decade, and by one count are now responsible for more than half of all U.S. patent cases, potentially costing American businesses some $29 billion a year.

So kudos to Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio, who Thursday morning introduced a bill aimed squarely at putting the trolls out of commission. His smart and simple legislation, called the SHIELD Act, would force trolls that lose in court to reimburse the companies they sue for their legal fees, which can amount to millions of dollars. That might not sound particularly bold. But it’s a carefully calibrated step that could go a long way to containing the the troll problem by driving up the cost — and risk — of bringing flimsy patent cases. 

I like it.

Trolls have flourished over the last few years largely because it’s now easier and cheaper to bring a patent case than it is to defend against one. Much like personal injury lawyers who advertise on TV, the attorneys who represent trolls often work on contingency, meaning they only take a cut of what they win. Defense lawyers, on the other hand, ask for their pay up front, and usually bill by the hour. As a result, a single troll can file a barrage of lawsuits without putting much skin in the game, while the small companies they tend to target – about 55 percent of the businesses sued make less than $10 million a year — are forced to mount a costly defense that saps their finances with each passing day. 

We’re lucky that generally we’re too small to target, but we have had a few.

There’s also a more subtle way DeFazio’s bill throws a kink into the troll business model. At the start of each patent suit, the plaintiffs will have to show that they are either a university, the original inventor of the patent, or a company sincerely trying to turn it into a commercial product. If they can’t, they will be officially deemed a troll, and be required to post a bond to cover the defendant’s costs, should they lose a case. That will tie up their money, which in turn will make it more cost-intensive to bring lots of suits while simultaneously cutting their return on investment. 

Hopefully he can get it past Congress.

This is a real letter written by a father who overheard his son talking about how to come out to his parents. Nate took a photo of it and sent it to FCKH8. On Facebook it has had around 81,000 likes and 49,000 shares.

Rob Portman is a Republican US Senator. He was short-listed to be the Vice-Presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012 and is seen as a credible contender for the GOP nomination in 2016. He has held numerous senior executive roles in the US Government and is an influential figure.

He has just become the first Republican US Senator to back same sex marriage. He explains why in his own words:

Two years ago, my son Will, then a college freshman, told my wife, Jane, and me that he is gay. He said he’d known for some time, and that his sexual orientation wasn’t something he chose; it was simply a part of who he is. Jane and I were proud of him for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he is gay but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love.

At the time, my position on marriage for same-sex couples was rooted in my faith tradition that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman. Knowing that my son is gay prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the people they love, a blessing Jane and I have shared for 26 years.

I wrestled with how to reconcile my Christian faith with my desire for Will to have the same opportunities to pursue happiness and fulfillment as his brother and sister. Ultimately, it came down to the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God.

Love and compassion is far more attractive than bile and hate.

One way to look at it is that gay couples’ desire to marry doesn’t amount to a threat but rather a tribute to marriage, and a potential source of renewed strength for the institution.

Absolutely.

I’ve thought a great deal about this issue, and like millions of Americans in recent years, I’ve changed my mind on the question of marriage for same-sex couples. As we strive as a nation to form a more perfect union, I believe all of our sons and daughters ought to have the same opportunity to experience the joy and stability of marriage.

Nicely put.

Portman’s change of view is sincere, I have no doubt. There is a wider political aspect to this though. If the Republicans don’t moderate their positions on some of these issues, then they will find it harder and harder to win elections.

In the US, support for same sex marriage is:

• 18 – 29 70%
• 30 – 39 60%
• 40 – 49 55%
• 50 – 64 48%
• 65+ 32%

Now I can near guarantee you that those 70% of under 30s who support same sex marriage will not decrease as they get older. If anything, it will increase. So in just 10 years I expect we’ll see something like:

• 18 – 29 75%
• 30 – 39 70%
• 40 – 49 60%
• 50 – 64 55%
• 65+ 45%

A terrifying op ed in the NY Daily News by a Marion Nestle:

Barring any late legal surprises, Mayor Bloomberg’s 16-ounce cap on sugary sodas goes into effect on Tuesday, March 12. After that, restaurants, movie theaters, sports venues and food carts will not be permitted to sell extra-large portions of sugar-packed drinks.

Stay calm. This does not signal the end of democracy in America. This is not the nanny state gone out of control.

Actually is is the precise definition of nanny state out of control.

If we want Americans to be healthy, we are going to have to take actions like this – and many more – and do so soon. It’s long past time to tax sugar soda, crack down further on what gets sold in our schools, tackle abusive marketing practices, demand a redesign of labels – and extend the soda cap, no matter how controversial it may seem. This must be the beginning, not the end, of efforts toward a healthier America.

Be scared, be very scared

I’m amazed she doesn’t just advocate making soda drinks illegal.

The soda size cap is a nudge in that direction. You will still be able to drink all the soda, and down all the sugar, that you want. The cap on soda size makes it just a tiny bit harder for you to do so.

That “tiny bit harder” is its point. If you have to order two sodas instead of one, maybe you won’t. If you have to add sugar to your coffee drink yourself, maybe you will only add one or two teaspoons instead of the 10 or more someone else put in there for you.

Oh, so she also wants it to be illegal to sell coffee with sugar in it?

So-called “nanny-state” measures – like bans on driving while drunk, smoking in public places and, now, selling absurdly large sugary drinks – help to level the playing field. Such measures are about giving everyone an equal opportunity to live a safer and healthier life.

Again, she can’t see any difference between measures about preventing harm to others (killing people while drink driving, passive smoking effects) and measures to control how people live their own lives.

Fix the price differential. A 7.5-ounce can of soda costs twice as much per ounce as a two-liter bottle, and you can’t buy just one; it comes in an 8-pack. Price determines sales. If a 16-ounce soda costs a dollar, a 32-ounce soda should cost two dollars.

They should also abolish large chocolate bars being not the same price per kg as small chocolate bars. In fact let’s just regulate all food pricing. No volume discounts for any food except broccoli.

Actions like these will evoke ferocious opposition from the soda industry, and it will spare no expense to make sure such things never happen. We would surely hear more and more howls of “nanny-state” from those who insist Bloomberg has led us to the brink of a public health police state. Polls say that many New Yorkers oppose the 16-ounce cap and would oppose measures like this, too.

But I can’t tell whether the opposition comes from genuine concern about limits on personal choice or because soda companies have spent millions of dollars to protect their interests and gin up histrionic, misinformed opposition.

That’s easy. Its is genuine concern about personal choice – something that the author seems to regard as having no weight at all.

Hat Tip: Eric Crampton

UPDATE: Great news. A Judge has invalidated the ban on large soda drinks. The NY Post reports:

“[The city] is enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling ruled.

The judge said Bloomberg and the Board of Health overstepped their bounds, to enforce rules that should be established by the legislative bodies.

“The rule would not only violate the separation of powers doctrine, it would eviscerate it,” Tingling wrote. “Such an evisceration has the potential to be more troubling than sugar sweetened drinks.”

“It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city, it excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule, including but not limited to no limitations on refills, defeat and/or serve to gut the purpose of the rule,” Tingling wrote.

The regulations are “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences,” the judge wrote.

A defeat for the nanny statists. But they will try again and again.