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2011: A great year for gay rights

The advancement of gay civil rights is the best thing that happened this year, I argue in the Scripps Howard column. The best event of 2011? The gains made for gay civil rights. Other good things happened -- most notably, the Iraq war came to a close for the United States, ending a disastrously dumb conflict that never should have happened. But the end of a huge negative isn't really a positive. So instead, it was in the arena of gay rights where two big events took place that could wonderfully alter the landscape for future generations. First was repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The law itself passed late last year as Congress was closing out its session, but the law was implemented this year. Despite the hysterical cries of opposition from anti-gay forces, the military seems to have weathered the transition pretty well. Second was the legalization, in New York State, of gay marriage. This was important for two reasons: New York is one of the most popula

How did the guy who was president in 1979 end up doing?

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Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000. via gallup.com 1979 was a comparable year, according to Gallup. But Jimmy Carter fared pretty well in the next year's election, right?

Is Bill Conlin innocent?

Over at The Philly Post (where I contribute weekly ) Victor Fiorillo has a provocatively titled column: " Bill Conlin is innocent. " Conlin, of course, is the legendary sportswriter who retired this week after 40-year-old child molestation accusations surfaced. You’re well aware of this concept: that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, that the accused has no obligation to produce evidence, that the accused has no obligation to make an argument or say anything, for that matter, and that the government has the obligation to prove guilt—beyond a reasonable doubt—and to get 12 people to agree to it, too. You “know it” like you read about it in school. But you sure are quick to forget about it in cases like this. Well, we probably forget about it because the presumption of innocence is only applicable in a court of law—we in the public are under no requirement to make a similar presumption. That doesn't excuse us from wisely weighing the evidence in public, though.

Why we shouldn't cut unemployment benefits right now

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From EPI : Things appear to be improving, but honestly: We're not anywhere close to having enough jobs for job-seekers. Cutting unemployment benefits right now could be a real disaster.

The best of Netflix Instant for 2011

Looking back at my viewing logs, it's amazing to me how much I used Netflix to watch old TV shows this year. There are two reasons for it: A) Again, the three surgeries really killed my concentration and steered me to "comfort food." B) My son, now 3, is old enough to understand stuff I don't want him to be exposed to. So that means grownup movies often wait until he goes to sleep. Which is often too late to start a movie. That said, I know people complain about the selection at Netflix Instant, but I don't usually have a hard time finding something I like to watch. Here were some of my favorite Netflix movies of 2011: "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK" "Jet Li's Fearless" Woody Allen's "Love and Death" "A Room with a View" "Eat Drink Man Woman" "The Red Balloon" "Wing Chun" "Bodyguards and Assassins" "The Dirty Dozen" "The Black Stallion

Books I read in 2011

This was a really terrible book-reading year for me. Three surgeries clouded my head enough to make sustained concentration difficult: I started a lot of books, but finished precious few. The only novels I finished were, frankly, pulpy stuff. I hope to get my game back in 2012. Here are some of the books I read to completion this year: "Bossypants" by Tina Fey. "The Conscience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugman. "Winner-Take-All Politics" by Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker. "Cooking Solves Everything" by Mark Bittman (Kindle Single). "The Gated City" by Ryan Avent (Kindle Sngle). "The Great Stagnation" by Tyler Cowen (Kindle Single). "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain. "Star Trek: The Lost Years" by J.M. Dillard. "Power Wars" by Charlie Savage (Kindle Single). "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction" by Alan Jacobs. "Empire of Illusion" b

Ditch the payroll tax cut. Keep the unemployment benefits.

I'm already on record thinking the continued payroll tax holiday is a really bad idea . I think it undermines the long-term viability of Social Security, and more than a few critics agree with me. But I'm really, really against continuing the tax holiday if the price is cutting unemployment benefits to 3 million people. As a macroeconomic matter, which is going to have a bigger impact on the economy? Lots of workers having a few extra bucks to spend? Or 3 million workers losing all the bucks they have to spend? I very much doubt the stimulative effect of the first outweighs the recessionary effects of the latter. The payroll tax cut is a bad idea. Achieving it by cutting a bad deal is even worse.

Are you paying for some football?

Are you ready for some football? You are paying for it regardless. Although “sports” never shows up as a line item on a cable or satellite bill, American television subscribers pay, on average, about $100 a year for sports programming — no matter how many games they watch. A sizable portion goes to the National Football League , which dominates sports on television and which struck an extraordinary deal this week with the major networks — $27 billion over nine years — that most likely means the average cable bill will rise again soon. via nytimes.com Well, I'm not paying for it: I don't have cable. (Though I do pay an Internet bill to Comcast, so it's possible a few of my dollars go to football. But only indirectly.) There's been increased talk about a la carte cable purchasing lately, which would allow TV viewers to buy the channels they want and not pay for the channels they don't. But that's hardly even necessary anymore. Between H

Poll: More concern about economy than income inequality

These data, from a Nov. 28-Dec.1 Gallup survey, show that while 46% of Americans believe it is extremely or very important that the federal government in Washington reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and poor, 70% say it is important for the government to increase equality of opportunity, and 82% say it is important for the government to grow and expand the economy. via gallup.com I'm not so sure the weak economy and income inequality are discrete issues, myself, but to the extent they are this is probably the right set of priorities. You fight over your share of pie when you actually have a pie to split.

I don't think America is as worried about income inequality as I am

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are now less likely to see U.S. society as divided into the "haves" and "have nots" than they were in 2008, returning to their views prior to that point. A clear majority, 58%, say they do not think of America in this way, after Americans were divided 49% to 49% in the summer of 2008. via gallup.com Read the whole thing. Pretty interesting.

Now I'm an anti-car-fatality bigot

Just kidding. After a week of more-than-expected heat over our column on Tim Tebow, Ben and I have finally produced another column for Scripps Howard News Service. It's about the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation to ban cell phone use by drivers. Ben thinks it's nanny-statism run amok. I differ : Sometimes the "live free or die" crowd takes its motto a little too seriously. When it comes to driving and cellphone use, though, that motto accurately sums up the choices. Should drivers be free to kill two people and injure 38 others? That's what happened in Missouri in August 2010, when a pickup truck rear-ended a big rig, which slammed into a school bus, which rammed another school bus. The NTSB's investigation showed the pickup driver had sent 11 messages in the 11 minutes leading to the accident -- the last message coming "moments" before the tragedy. Should a tractor-trailer driver be free to kill 11 other people? That h

Tim Tebow* and 'All-American Muslim'

Defenders of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow have responded to critics of his faith exhibitions with one consistent response: "What if he was Muslim?" The idea being that Christian-hating politically correct liberals would probably celebrate if Tebow was praying to Mecca in the end zone. We do, of course, have examples of high-profile Muslim athletes to consider. Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar both came in for intense criticism for their conversions to the faith— really intense criticism, which makes the "controversy" surrounding Tebow look like teatime debate by comparison. More recently—but before 9/11—Mahmoud Abdul Rauf (an NBA player) was regularly booed during the 1990s after he decided the Star Spangled Banner was an expression of "nationalistic worship" incompatible with his faith. (Some Christians think the same thing , incidentally.) Beyond sports, though, there's been a recent example of American Muslims trying to publicly de

According to the New York Times, Internet pirates have horrible taste in pop culture

WASHINGTON — Type “download movies for free” into Google , and up pops links to sites like the Pirate Bay, directing users to free copies of just about any entertainment   — the latest “Twilight” installment, this week’s episode of “Whitney,” the complete recordings of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. via nytimes.com

Fox News says I'm an 'anti-Christian bigot'

Hey, at least they spelled my name right . Apparently I'm an anti-Christian bigot for having the temerity to criticize Tim Tebow , using Scripture no less. Which, fine. But what amuses me is that the commentator also paints Kurt Warner with the 'anti-Christian bigot' brush—yes, the same Kurt Warner who was previously the highest-profile evangelical Christian in the NFL. Purity is tough, man.

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to Gene Marks

When I read this piece I was immediately called back, as I so often am, to my days at Howard and the courses I took looking at slavery. Whenever we discussed the back-breaking conditions, the labor, the sale of family members etc., there was always someone who asserted, roughly, "I couldn't been no slave. They'd a had to kill me!" I occasionally see a similar response here where someone will assert, with less ego, "Why didn't the slaves rebel?" More commonly you get people presiding from on high insisting that if they had lived in the antebellum South, they would have freed all of their slaves. What all these responses have in common is a kind benevolent, and admittedly unintentional, self-aggrandizement. These are not bad people (much as I am sure Mr. Marks isn't a bad person), but they are people speaking from a gut feeling, a kind of revulsion at a situation which offends our modern morals. In the case of the observer of slavery, it is the chaini

Unemployment insurance helps, not hinders, Americans looking for work

Claims that unemployment insurance benefits dissuade the jobless from looking for work are untrue, as the accompanying chart shows. Research by Carl Van Horn and the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University shows that unemployed workers who receive unemployment compensation do more to find a job than those who never receive benefits. They do more online job searching, are more likely to look at newspaper classified ads, and are more likely to send email inquiries and applications to prospective employers. The reason unemployed Americans can’t find jobs isn’t a failure to look. As EPI economist Heidi Shierholz points out , they can’t find jobs because there are 10.6 million more unemployed workers than there are available jobs. via epi.org

And now: A moment of snark about Zbigniew Brezezinski

The former national security advisor writes this morning about how to confront and accomodate China's rise: By making allies with everybody else! A successful U.S. effort to enlarge the West, making it the world's most stable and democratic zone, would seek to combine power with principle. A cooperative, larger West—extending from North America and Europe through Eurasia (by eventually embracing Russia and Turkey), all the way to Japan and South Korea—would enhance the appeal of the West's core principles for other cultures, thus encouraging the gradual emergence of a universal democratic political culture. I could be wrong, but Brezezinski seems to want to enlarge the West to include ... everyplace but China and Africa. And I could be wrong, but that seems to be far too large a coalition to actually be effective. As we're seeing in Europe, it's tough to hold continental coalitions together—there are just so many competing interests. Growing the "West"—ev

Soon, foreign nationals may have more ability to influence elections than you do

At least, that's what I take away from Paul Sherman's Wall Street Journal piece today . There's a case winding through the courts in which foreign nationals—both residents of New York—are suing to be allowed to make contributions to political campaigns, saying they have the right to do so under the First Amendment. On Dec. 12, the Supreme Court passed up its first opportunity to announce whether it would take the case. Some observers take this as a hint that the court is going to let the D.C. panel's ruling stand. That would be a mistake, and a sharp reversal from the hard line the court has taken recently on speech-squelching campaign-finance laws.  The panel's ruling stemmed from a conviction that "foreigners" are different and that foreign speech poses a unique threat to the American political system. As to the first point, foreigners surely are different—they can be prohibited from voting, holding elective office, or serving in certain roles of gover

Nobody gets married anymore

Barely half of all adults in the United States -- a record low -- are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data. In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements-including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood-have all grown more prevalent in recent decades. The Pew Research analysis also finds that the number of new marriages in the U.S. declined by 5% between 2009 and 2010, a sharp one-year drop that may or may not be related to the sour economy. via pewresearch.org That last paragraph reminds me of a favorite conservative trope—espoused by National Review's Rick Lowry, among others—that poor people can not be poor if they get

Gene Marks is apparently not a poor black child in West Philadelphia

PhillyGrrl and Dan Denvir have already hopped on Gene Marks for his " if I were a poor black child " piece for Forbes, but it really is breathtaking in its awfulness. Marks writes about what he would do, as a poor black child in West Philadelphia, to stop being so poor. Shorter Marks: "If I were a poor black kid, I'd use all the advantages I have from not being a poor black kid." Sound too harsh? Check out these two, entirely representative paragraphs:  If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar . I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth , TED and the Khan Academy . (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.) I would als