2. Perhaps you heard about the “Hand of Frog” that secured France a berth in the World Cup over poor Ireland. Ireland’s petition to FIFA for a replay has been denied, proving that FIFA is an organization mired in the past, both rejecting modern instant replay technology and favoring the world’s powerhouses (particularly the Western ones) over the rest of the world.

3. No one sitting on death row in Texas can expect any sort of clemency from Gov. Perry right now…the man has a primary to win!

4. Short-term lenders in Texas are getting what they pay for with their campaign contributions: zero regulation. As I have said before and will say again, our democracy will forever be corrupted by money until the Supreme Court wises up and decides that money is not the exact equivalent of speech, or political campaigns become publicly funded.

…45 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

They say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.

“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”

Don’t forget kids, millions may live in poverty or die of hunger, the global economy is a wreck, climate change threatens all of nations, but the real issues of consequence are the sexual practices of a minority of Americans!

Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, said it was “fear-mongering” to suggest that religious institutions would be forced to do any of those things. He said they are protected by the First Amendment, and by conscience clauses that allow medical professionals and hospitals to opt out of performing certain procedures, and religious exemptions written into same-sex marriage bills.

Well right, but you can’t get anybody’s attention or sympathy (or votes) be moralizing at them, at least not openly. Far better to pretend you are the oppressed minority, so as to shield your bigory and more grand-standing in the guise of religious tolerance! A technique which, by the way, only works when most people actually agree with your intolerance.

Lambert said she was shaken and appalled by some of the responses she received in e-mail messages, telephone messages and on blogs, which included the publishing of her parents’ home phone number in Southern California and one suggestion that “I should be taken to a state prison, raped and left for dead in a ditch.”

What on Earth? I don’t really feel why anybody thinks it’s necessary to dig up the e-mail address of a female college soccer player so they can send her a nasty message about the highlights of her play in one particular game, or why anyone would publish her private information so anonymous idiots can call and leave hateful and threatening messages. Lambert herself thinks she knows why the incident has garnered so much attention:

“I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it,” Lambert said. “It’s more expected for men to go out there and be rough. The female, we’re still looked at as, Oh, we kick the ball around and score a goal. But it’s not. We train very hard to reach the highest level we can get to. The physical aspect has maybe increased over the years. I’m not saying it’s for the bad or it’s been too overly aggressive. It’s a game. Sports are physical.”

[...]

She said she was taken aback at how the incident had been perceived by some as sexy catfighting between two women. She said she was aghast that some men had sent her messages saying, “Hey, we should meet up some time.”

“That appalled me,” Lambert said. “A lot of people think I have a lot of sexual aggression. I was like, ‘Whoa, no, I don’t feel that way at all.’ That’s bizarre and shocking to me.”

I’d like to think she’s wrong, but I doubt it. As a frequent purveyor of soccer blogs and forums, I’ve come across some pretty appalling sexism that the poster felt no need to make anonymously (so confident was he of the rightness of his sexism and misogyny.) Male soccer fans can be dismissive of the female game, droning on and on about the lack of skill, speed, or athleticism (none of which is entirely true.) I’m sure some men saw that video and considered it proof as to why women’s soccer shouldn’t be accorded any respect. (I’m sure she has also been harassed by women as well, but I’m unqualified to speak as to what would motivate a woman to criticize another woman’s aggressive soccer play other than from a soccer perspective.)

I’m also bothered by the apparent “re-education” Lambert must apparently endure to win her way back on the team:

She is seeing a clinical psychologist on campus to better understand what caused the hair-pulling incident. It is one of several steps she is taking, along with speaking to youth players about acceptable behavior, so she can seek reinstatement to the team in the spring.

A clinical psychologist? Really?? If Lambert is to be believed, she was experiencing a frustrating game, and both teams were allowed to get out of control by an overly lenient ref (she is indeed elbowed in the stomach prior to punching a player in the back.) That sounds like a situation that’s ripe for a player to go off. I understand that we live in an age where people have to make public (if utterly shallow) amends for their bad behavior (especially if it winds up on blogs or YouTube) but I find myself wondering whether a male soccer player would be expected to see a psychologist. I’m sure there are more than a handful of punches thrown in men’s NCAA soccer every year, and I would be surprised to learn that even a single one of those instigators was expected to see a clinical psychologist even if that game were captured on ESPN like the New Mexico-BYU game. I can only speculate but it seems to me that Lambert has to publicly debase herself precisely because she got away with enough bad behavior to fill a YouTube video, and because she’s a woman and women just don’t play that way. Had she been red-carded after her overly aggressive tackle from behind at one point earlier in the game as she should’ve been, none of this would be a story.

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

This is just wrong. Atheists are elated at the news that religious belief may be hard-wired, because it undermines the argument of faith, the bedrock of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Atheists are delighted to tell believers that their faith may be programmed into them.

This is an attempt to build equivalence into the story where there is none. This story does not provide an equal boost (or detriment) to the arguments of atheists and believers; it almost unequivocally backs a standard atheist arguments, that faith is a biological construct. Would it have been offensive to say as much?

TXsharon continues to follow the abuses of Aruba Petroleum in a Barnett Shale backyard and Wednesday the Wise County Messenger picked up the story. It’s all on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is really p*ssed that some South Texas Democrats voted against women’s health care.

WhosPlayin posted an interview with Neil Durrance, the Democratic candidate seeking to unseat Michael Burgess in Congressional District 26.

A guest post from the ReEnergize Texas blog is the pick of the week over at Texas Vox, where we were quite disappointed that Georgetown City Council Snubbed Students over Nuclear Power.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on some of the talk this past week about raising the statewide gas tax. All that being said there are only two options to pay for transportation in Texas, which will we choose Taxes or tolls?.

McBlogger takes a look at Sen. Hutchison’s decision not to resign from her Senate seat.

Off the Kuff looks at a threatened outbreak of homophobic behavior in the Houston Mayor’s race.

The War on Christmas starts early at The Texas Cloverleaf, complete with a beach landing at WalMart.

Sue Schechter announced for Harris County Clerk last week and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs caught the press release.

With Thanksgiving almost here, Neil at Texas Liberal ran a picture of a sultry pilgrim holding a turkey, and included in this post information about the status of women in Colonial New England.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.

But Obama the administration will prosecute Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — the detainee accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen — and several other detainees before a military commission, the official said.

[...]

The decisions about how to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Nashiri have been particularly difficult because their defense lawyers are expected to argue that they were illegally tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency during their confinement, tainting any evidence gathered from their interrogations.

Documents have shown that the CIA used waterboarding — a controlled drowning technique — against Mr. Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. Mr. Nashiri is one of two other detainees known to have been waterboarded before the Bush administration shut down the program, which high-level officials had approved after the Justice Department wrote legal memorandums arguing that the president, as commander-in-chief, could authorize interrogators to bypass anti-torture laws.

Obviously, evidenced obtained from torture is inadmissible in a civilian court, but I’m sure they will have no trouble convicting Mohammed. What’s more interesting to contemplate is the Obama administration’s apparent intention to try some terrorist detainees in civilian courts,and others before military commissions. Why the difference? Speculate away.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald:

…the more consequential impact of Obama’s decision is likely to be overlooked: we’re now formally creating a multi-tiered justice system for accused Muslim terrorists where they only get the level of due process consistent with the State’s certainty that it will win. Mohammed gets a real trial because he confessed and we’re thus certain we can win in court; since we’re less certain about al-Nashiri, he’ll be denied a trial and will only get a military commission; others will be denied any process entirely and imprisoned indefinitely.

Is he wrong? I don’t think so.

Iran currently has about enough LEU [low enriched uranium] to be able to produce a single crude nuclear device. But in order to do so, it would either have to build a completely secret production line or else withdraw from the NPT, kick out the IAEA inspectors, and try to proceed. The more inspectors are on the ground (and Iran is presently the most inspected country under IAEA supervision), the less likely it is that a completely covert facility can be created. Use of the present enrichment facilities to produce bomb-grade uranium would certainly be noticed and reported. It is an early warning system.

If Iran has a known capacity to be able to build a bomb, its negotiating leverage is nearly as great as if it actually had one or two crude bombs in its possession. That calculation, we now know, was the shah’s strategy before the 1979 revolution; it is very likely the strategy of his successors. It maximizes influence and minimizes risk.

[...]

What if Iran got a bomb? Well, unless they buy one intact, the process of actually moving to weaponization is likely to be noticed, so one must ask what happens between the moment when they decide to proceed to a bomb and when they actually have it. That period, which is apt to be several years, would be the true case of the ticking time bomb, and that would be the moment for consideration of extreme pressure tactics, probably with very wide support in the international community. Iran knows this, and that is itself a disincentive for them to proceed.

The real purpose of negotiations, in my view, is to build a system of monitoring and inspections that will (1) provide maximum early warning of a potential future Iranian decision to “break out;” and (2) insure the maximum possible interval between that moment and the moment where Iran could actually have a bomb. Iran has said on several occasions that it is willing to accept such an enhanced inspection regime, but it will no doubt insist on a price. That, I think, is what the negotiations should be about.

An inspection regime would give us some peace of mind and advance notice of Iran’s efforts to actually build a bomb, while giving Iran the leverage to demand concessions of some kind in return. The question of course is, what might Iran want, and can we give it to them? That’s ripe for another blog post.

The Washington Post published this article on Afghanistan yesterday, noting how elements of the Taliban have left their Arabic patrons in Al Qaeda behind to an extent as the war has evolved:

[Mullah Mohammed] Omar’s mission is to force U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan and to recapture the country. His group is particularly active in attacking U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan, his home base.

This year, Omar’s military committee published a rule book for followers, calling on them to protect the population and avoid civilian casualties — much like U.S. counterinsurgency principles. He has railed against the corruption of President Hamid Karzai’s government, an issue that resonates with Afghans. He has also solicited support from other Muslim countries. But al-Qaeda’s agenda of global holy war and taste for mass-casualty attacks, no matter how many Muslim civilians are killed, complicate that goal.

In a February interview with al-Samoud magazine, Taliban political committee leader Agha Jan Mutassim praised the Saudi Arabian government, called for Muslim unity and said the Taliban “respects all different Islamic schools and branches without any discrimination” in Afghanistan.

Such positions may put Omar’s Taliban at odds with al-Qaeda’s extremist Sunni agenda of overthrowing what it sees as corrupt Muslim governments and targeting Shiites. Analysts said that Omar, who leads a council of Taliban commanders based in or around the Pakistani city of Quetta, wants such countries as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government if it regains power and that he has little interest in fomenting war elsewhere.

“We assure all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others,” Omar said in a written statement in September.

The messages from the Taliban leadership since the spring amount to something of a “revolution,” said Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who was a Foreign Ministry official under the Taliban government. “Al-Qaeda’s path is now different from the Taliban’s path, and they are growing more separated.”

The article notes however that Al Qaeda is virtually intertwined with the Taliban forces led by Jallaludin Haqqani in eastern Afghanistan and with the Pakistani Taliban, and operates unrestrained but for the fear of remote drone attacks in western Pakistan. But a slightly widening gulf between the Taliban of the former leader of Afghanistan offers a glimpse possibilities for reconciliation of some kind with elements of the Taliban in the future. A glimpse no doubt, but still something to consider.

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

[...]

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

This is especially interesting in light of this NY Times story from earlier today, which laid out plans favored by his advisors that all called for troop increases of some magnitude:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals — including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control — and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Is the AP story alluding to this fourth option, that shies away from a troop increase, or at least one of the magnitude proposed by Obama’s principal advisors? Perhaps, according to this NY Times story from later in the day:

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, the officials said. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

So a massive troop increase is not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

Demographically, the growth of the prosperity gospel tracks fairly closely to the pattern of foreclosure hot spots. Both spread in two particular kinds of communities—the exurban middle class and the urban poor. Many newer prosperity churches popped up around fringe suburban developments built in the 1990s and 2000s, says Walton. These are precisely the kinds of neighborhoods that have been decimated by foreclosures, according to Eric Halperin, of the Center for Responsible Lending.

Zooming out a bit, [Professor] Kate Bowler found that most new prosperity-gospel churches were built along the Sun Belt, particularly in California, Florida, and Arizona—all areas that were hard-hit by the mortgage crisis. Bowler, who, like Walton, was researching a book, spent a lot of time attending the “financial empowerment” seminars that are common at prosperity churches. Advisers would pay lip service to “sound financial practices,” she recalls, but overall they would send the opposite message: posters advertising the seminars featured big houses in the background, and the parking spots closest to the church were reserved for luxury cars.

That’s it. That’s the evidence for her thesis, which is that the prosperity gospel doctrine is to one extent or another behind the real estate crash. Now it would be easy to come up with an alternate explanation for this connection, which is that the prosperity gospel is attractive to the same sorts of people who would also tend to buy homes that they can’t afford, or who are otherwise living beyond their means. In other words there’s correlation, not causation.

If that was all that’s wrong with Rosin’s article I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post. But there’s another thing that bothers me about her piece, and that’s her focus on minorities. She starts the article discussing a largely Latino congregation in Virginia, and she actually makes a somewhat solid case for the attraction of the prosperity gospel among Latinos especially. But again, her only connection between minorities, the prosperity gospel and the real estate crash is this:

Nationally, the prosperity gospel has spread exponentially among African American and Latino congregations. This is also the other distinct pattern of foreclosures. “Hyper-segregated” urban communities were the worst off, says Halperin. Reliable data on foreclosures by race are not publicly available, but mortgages are tracked by both race and loan type, and subprime loans have tended to correspond to foreclosures. During the boom, roughly 40 percent of all loans going to Latinos nationwide were subprime loans; Latinos and African Americans were 28 percent and 37 percent more likely, respectively, to receive a higher-rate subprime loan than whites.

In other words, subprime lending is largely behind the real estate crash, more minorities got subprime loans, the prosperity gospel is more popular among minorities, therefore the prosperity gospel is in part to blame for the real estate crash. Now all of this might be true, but it certainly isn’t proven by that paragraph above. She says this further down:

[Researcher] Tony Lin is careful—and of course correct—to say that neither immigrants nor Latinos caused the crash; adherents of every stripe exhibited the same sort of magical thinking about finances, as did millions of nonbelievers

Yeah, about that…see, I’ve always been under the impression that the prosperity gospel was enormously popular among more affluent church-goers. That makes intuitive sense; the wealthy especially want to be told that their financial success is not only blessed by but a reward from God. Also, around these parts anyway, megachurches, many among which the prosperity gospel finds a home, are enormously popular in the whiter and more affluent outer suburbs. Scroll down this list and you see a list of many megapreachers and megachurches, many of which are located right here in North Texas; Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Robert Hilton and TD Jakes (the latter an example of a minority prosperity gospel pastor.) Look further down south to Houston and you’ll see Joel Osteen, the pastor of the largest megachurch in America. And a 2009 study by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research demonstrates that attendees at megachurches are generally more educated and more affluent than attendees of other, smaller churches.

Now none of this is an attempt to deny the popularity of the prosperity gospel among minorities. But it’s odd to focus largely on minorities in the article, and then note further down in the article that the adherents are “of every stripe.” I for one think that one of those stripes consist of a large number of middle class and affluent whites, but you wouldn’t know it based on what Rosin writes.

Obviously, it’s hardly fair to accuse Rosin of lazy journalism on the basis of one article. But it was actually an article on breast-feeding that she wrote earlier this year for the Atlantic that caused my skepticism antennae to shoot up. Why? Because she turns what could otherwise have been a straight-forward examination of the legitimate, documented benefits of breast-feeding (as opposed to claims about it’s benefits that can’t be supported) into a tirade against breast-feeding as an instrument of oppression. And again, she demonstrates a loose command of facts and logic:

Rosin points out that breastfeeding’s benefits come from feeding the baby at the breast, not just from breastmilk. Rosin’s bizarre response to this idea is that this makes breastfeeding less important. Wouldn’t that make it MORE important? How many formula feeding moms open their shirts and hold the baby skin to skin against their heart at every feeding? How can you possibly replicate the sucking action at the breast (which helps with jaw and palate development) with a rubber nipple? If the breastfeeding process and the breast milk are BOTH important, why would formula feeding with a bottle be a better idea?

[...]

When it comes to health, Rosin doesn’t think about poor mothers at all. She touts having a prolonged episode of diarrhea in infancy as no big deal. She says that most U.S. babies do not die from diarrhea. Well SOME do, and most of the ones who do probably do not have private health insurance. Let’s also not forget what a hospital bill can look like, even for a simple rehydration procedure. If Rosin’s family even notices such an expense, paying that bill may mean they forgo a few restaurant meals. For a lower-income family, an emergency room visit could cost several month’s rent. A prolonged hospital stay could cause bankruptcy. And even if the baby doesn’t die, does that mean it doesn’t suffer?

Rosin doesn’t mention the long-term benefits of breastfeeding for a mother’s health. Breastfeeding significantly reduces a woman’s risk of breast cancer and some other reproductive cancers. It also helps with post-pregnancy weight loss. Some women may feel that inconveniences associated with breastfeeding may be worth lowering their cancer risks.

Overall, Rosin’s column comes across as an exercise in either therapy, as an attempt to get back at the mothers who unfairly judged her for her unwillingness to breastfeed. Don’t believe me? This is the first paragraph of her article:

One afternoon at the playground last summer, shortly after the birth of my third child, I made the mistake of idly musing about breast-feeding to a group of new mothers I’d just met. This time around, I said, I was considering cutting it off after a month or so. At this remark, the air of insta-friendship we had established cooled into an icy politeness, and the mothers shortly wandered away to chase little Emma or Liam onto the slide. Just to be perverse, over the next few weeks I tried this experiment again several more times. The reaction was always the same: circles were redrawn such that I ended up in the class of mom who, in a pinch, might feed her baby mashed-up Chicken McNuggets.

So, mean women judged her as being insufficiently devoted to her children, so she responded by writing an article explaining why breast-feeding (incorrectly) isn’t beneficial and (strangely) is repressive of women.

And last year she wrote another article for the Atlantic, wherein she attempts to demonstrate that the relocation of minorities from urban public housing to the suburbs via Section 8 rental vouchers is to blame for the increased crime rates in the suburbs. Now that’s a fairly sensational premise; minorities moved en masse from the inner-city to the suburbs, they brought crime with them, and it’s all to blame on liberal housing policies! Well, this lengthy rebuttal demonstrates how it was actually Congressional (specifically, Republican) skinflintedness that undercut programs that would move minorities from poor urban areas to more affluent suburban areas. And her central premise that Section 8 voucher recipients are responsible for increased crime rates simply can’t be supported:

Her most striking supporting evidence comes in the form of a map showing that clusters of Section 8 voucher recipients lived in neighborhoods where incidents of violent crime were relatively high in 2006. The visual comparison is powerful and invites readers to conclude that voucher holders were causing these crimes. Rosin reports that the husband-wife scholarly team who assembled the map — criminologist Richard Janikowski and housing specialist Phyllis Betts — “were amazed — and deflated — to see how perfectly the two data sets fit together.”

But this apparent “smoking gun” is really just smoke. There is nothing amazing or surprising going on here. Section 8 voucher holders typically migrate to lower-cost housing, which tends to be concentrated in poor neighborhoods where crime is a serious concern. As University of Texas public policy professor Paul Jargowsky, one of the nation’s leading experts on concentrated poverty and crime, says: “If you look at cities throughout the country from 1990 to 2000, you see a consistent pattern of increases in poverty in the inner-ring suburbs, while the central cities had declines. Since poverty and crime are correlated, you would expect that inner-ring suburban crime went up and central city crime went down — but that’s only a statistical artifact of changing neighborhood composition rather than a causal effect of poverty on crime. The correlation of crime and poverty, old news to be sure, is the only thing demonstrated by the map in the article. Nobody likes maps more than me, but sometimes they just confuse correlation and causality.”

In other words, recipients of the vouchers moved from low rent urban areas, where crime is a concern, to low rent suburban areas, where crime is a concern. There’s no proof that the voucher recipients did anything more than move from one poor area to another, let alone that they contributed in some manner to increases in crime. Again, Rosin has confused correlation for causation (and again, had the help of a map to do it.)

So…as I think these three examples of her writing demonstrates, Rosin enjoys writing pieces that attempt to overturn conventional wisdom (Wall Street speculation was behind the recent crash, breastfeeding is good for children, voucher programs benefit poor urban residents) but that make sweeping claims that simply can’t be supported by what evidence she musters in her articles. I also think, based on her two of her pieces, that she has a problem with minorities and the poor (though that’s admittedly a sweeping generalization that can only be arrived at circumstantially.) Is the Atlantic Monthly not capable of publishing better journalists than this? What’s William Langewiesche up to these days?

(via John Cole)