The Bush administration does it again

Bush political appointees discriminated against job applicants to the Justice Department. According to an internal investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, the Justice Department rejected applicants for the Honors Program and the Summer Law Intern Program due solely to their affiliation with the Democratic Party and other liberal organizations. Those rejected included students who were at the top of their classes at prestigious law schools such as Yale and Harvard.

You are thinking “this is just the same as what the Bush administration has always done.” However, this is different and worth paying attention, to for four reasons.

First, unlike much of the Bush administrations previous politicization this is actually illegal. Federal law and Justice Department regulations prohibit discriminating based on political viewpoints in hiring for “career positions” such as the jobs these applicants were applying for. These were not positions like U.S. Attorneys where their hiring or firing can be political.

Second, political discrimination occurred broadly. Esther Slater McDonald, the Justice Department official responsible for most of the political discrimination, apparently engaged in internet searches to find comments or essays written by the candidates.

Third, and possibly most disturbing was the broad criteria for what constituted unacceptable liberalism. For example, individuals who had worked to defend indigent clients were rejected. The administration considered helping poor people who could not afford lawyers to be too left-wing. (It has been pointed out to me that in some contexts defending indigent clients can be a disguise for pushing actual liberal policies. I agree that this may occur occasionally but there’s no evidence that such considerations were at all relevant in these cases.) I can imagine few stronger demonstrations of how sick the current administrations values are.

Fourth, the long-term impact of these actions is bothersome. While the impact on summer interns may be small, for the permanent or semi-permanent positions this discrimination tilts the Justice Department in a specific political direction.
I have a certain personal interest in this issue. My brother is in law school now and he helped write amici briefs for the recent Supreme Court cases about Guantanamo detainees and related cases. I worry that if he applied for a position in the Justice Department, he might not get it due to his political work. I also have two good friends who are working this summer at legal-aid clinics. Will they be discriminated against if they want to work for the Justice Department?

An ethical question from my trip to Israel

Last post I talked about some of my experiences on my trip to Israel. This post I'd like to address an ethical issue that came up during my trip.

Last Saturday night a friend of mine and her friend came across a group of charedi (ultra-orthodox) Jews dancing and singing about the coming of the messiah. This was occurring on Ben Yehuda street, an area where there is a lot of nighttime activity (there are open cafes and bars and all sorts of out-door events. Very nice atmosphere). Around the charedim were many people watching or chatting. Apparently a fair number of people joined the charedim. Now, here's where things get interesting: the group of people dancing were exclusively male. (Most orthodox Jews don't think men and women should dance together and the charedim really don't like it at all). The two people in question are female and decided to attempt to join in as a "feminist protest". This caused a fair bit of disruption.

Now the ethical question: was their intervention? I initially argued that this was unethical and was close to sexual harassment. The two arguments have heard in the other direction are: 1. The charedim were dancing in a public location. 2. This isn't substantially different behavior from Rosa Parks protesting segregated busing by sitting in the white section of the bus.

So what do people think about this? Ethical or unethical?

Various thoughts on my trip to Israel

I just got back from my trip to Israel. Here are a few thoughts and observations about the trip with minimal attempt to put them in a coherent order.

Hezekia's Tunnel is freaking awesome. The tunnel is 1500 feet or so narrow tunnel (thin enough that two people cannot pass each other in it) which was used to convey water from a spring outside the city to a reservoir within the city. This was built roughly the 8th century BCE. The tunnel system is still functioning and you can walk through it. My twin and I along with some of our relatives walked through the tunnel (which is open to tourists). The

The Israeli Supreme Court hears approximately 10,000 cases a year. Roughly half of which are cases where it has original jurisdiction. This is due to the Court having large-scale original jurisdiction and all cases being in principle appealable to the Supreme Court. This is an interesting contrast to the US Supreme Court which is now down to 70 cases a year. Hmm, maybe a happy medium might exist somewhere?

Also, on the topic of the Court, their method of appointing justices would never be accepted in the United States and would be considered very undemocratic. New justices are appointed by a small committee which has on it representatives from the Supreme Court, the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), the Ministry of Justice, and the Bar Association. This committee of nine people makes all appointments to the Supreme Court and there is no way to overrule it.

Saturday night we went to a Sephardi shul for Maariv (the traditional evening prayer). Although I had been to Sephardi davening before, I had not been to their Saturday night services. As before I found sitting down during kaddish to be a disorienting experience. However, there was a nice touch that I'd consider advocating that Ashkenazi Jews consider adopting: for havdalah (the ritual which marks the end of the Sabbath) for the part that requires something that smells nice they used freshly cut flowers and little sprigs as opposed to the Ashkenazi practice of using little bags full of spice.

I have an odd ethical question that came up also that I'd like to get feedback on but I need to think about it a bit more before I post an entry on it. Suffice it to say it is connected to the very weird diversity that Israeli societies is composed of.

William Demsbki and long-term memory.

William Dembski, one of the chief proponents of intelligent design, seems to have a surprisingly poor memory. In a post from his blog he talks about how the proponents of theistic evolution are attacking intelligent design. (Theistic evolution is the idea that evolution occurred as scientists describe it but that there is some overarching deity who set things in motion in an essentially non-testable way. In TE the deity is often credited with adding souls into humans) Dembski as well as the commentators at his heavily censored blog seem to be under the impression that this was some sort of attack launched with no provocation by the TE proponents against innocent ID. Dembski seems to forget that as early as 1995 he said "Design theorists are no friends of theistic evolution." And that isn't his only comment of that sort. For example, Dembski has also said ""As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is American evangelicalism's ill-conceived accommodation to Darwinism." (I'm not going to bother addressing the issue that the prominent proponents of TE are generally Jews and Catholics more than evangelicals).

Oh, and while I'm at it: it isn't that complicated why proponents of TE think that ID is undermining Christianity (one of the things you complain about in your post) I'm not even going to bother trying to have fun with the massive hypocrisy based on the many comments by you and other ID-proponents complaining that evolution undermines good ol' Christian, American values. TE proponents think it undermines Christian values because they think ID involves lying. You know, that whole don't bear false witness thing that the ID proponents ignored at the Dover trial and elsewhere? Furthermore, ID like its close creationist cousins forces people to make a choice between science and religion. Understandably that gets TEists upset.

Lolitics

While procrastinating at the xkcd forum, I ran across a thread linking to political lolcats. The website is amusing, although the makers clearly are very pro-Obama and don't like Clinton or McCain much at all (even if I'm likely going to vote for Obama I'd like a bit making fun of him). Also, most of the captions are not written in lolcat but rather in proper English whereas some could be funnier if written in lolcat.

Highlights include a picture of Obama and Michelle with the caption "Admit it, we're the only political couple you could bear to see naked."

There's a nice one also of Al Gore with a pretentious look on his face and the caption "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees." I imagine it would be funnier as "I r teh Lorax. I speek for teh treas" or possibly "I r teh Lorax. I dfend all treekind". (I'm waiting for someone to translate this into proper Lolcat for me since I'm not such a great speaker).

There are a handful of good ones, including one with Arnold that I won't describe because it is sufficiently funny that it should be seen rather than described. So I recommend you check it out.

Superstition Kills

There are many ways that irrational beliefs can kill. Every year people die from using alternative medicine rather than evidence-based, scientific medicine. Such people even if misguided or misinformed are generally only harming themselves. However, superstition can kill other people as well even those who are not involved. I'm not talking today about herd immunity and how not vaccinating endangers people who have been vaccinating. I'm talking about a far more horrific example, brutal murder to obtain talismans.

In Tanzania, as in a variety of other countries, there are beliefs that the body parts of albinos have magical properties and are good luck charms. Thus, people have taken to killing albinos and mutilating their bodies to obtain the wanted parts. Those albinos were in fact lucky; the unlucky albinos have had their legs and arms hacked off and been left to bleed to death.

Cectic made a graphic point about other species being driven to extinction due to human superstition. But we should realize that it doesn't just happen to other species, it happens to other humans. These murders are not that different from genocide; people of a specific type are being killed simply because of who they are. Let's not forget what happens when irrationally is allowed to run rampant: people die .

A few weighing puzzles

Here are three related puzzles. I'll post answers next week and discuss how it is related to certain notions in computer science.

1) Suppose I have ten stacks of ten gold coins each. Each coin weighs 1 ounce, but there is one set of counterfeit coins. The coins in that stack weigh only .5 ounces. You have a scale. What is the minimum number of weighings to determine which stack is counterfeit?

2) Suppose instead of a scale, you only have a balance and you don't know how light the counterfeit coins are but they are too light. Then how many weighings can you do it in? What if we instead have n stacks with one counterfeit? How many weighings does it take? Can you prove that you can't do it in fewer?

3) This last generalization is due to Elissa. Suppose we again have n stacks with one set counterfeit but instead of a balance we have a k-balance which compares k different objects simultaneously and returns their mass order. So for example, if on a 4-balance I had two two ounce objects (object a and object b respectively), one ounce object (c) and one three ounce object (d), I'd be told that
c < a = b < d. The normal balance is thus a 2-balance. In general for a k-balance with n stacks what is the minimum number of weighings?


Important PointAfter I put up this issue Etienne pointed a issue I had not anticipated. In the original phrasing of 2 and 3 there was only a single counterfeit coin and one no longer had stacks. In my phrasing above I assumed that this wouldn't make a difference for the general solution. It turns out that in fact it does. So instead for 2 and 3 assume that one just has n coins with 1 counterfeit rather than n stacks. Etienne has not yet worked out the general solution with stacks nor have I, so bonus points if you can do that.

Feel free to either post or email me solutions.