Some Republicans rebuke Limbaugh, Gingrich on Sotomayor criticism
Accusations that the Latina Supreme Court nominee is racist can only hurt the party, say GOP members who advocate a more civil debate.
By Janet Hook LA TIMES
While some prominent conservative activists are accusing President Obama's Supreme Court nominee of racism, more Republicans are telling them to chill out and "grow up," or they risk damaging the party's chances of expanding its reach to women and Latinos.
Members of the Republican establishment are trying to steer the debate over Sonia Sotomayor away from the battle cries of conservative icons Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, in favor of a more measured conversation about the legal philosophy and qualifications of the first Latina to be nominated to the court.
"I think it's terrible," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a radio interview, condemning those who have called Sotomayor a racist. "This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent."
Limbaugh earlier in the week had branded Sotomayor a "reverse racist," and on Friday he compared her to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Gingrich, referring to the high court nominee, said on Twitter this week that "new racism is no better than old racism."
They were reacting to reports of a speech Sotomayor gave in 2001 at UC Berkeley in which she said that "gender and national origins" affect a person's judgment, and that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who dropped out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2007, on Thursday threw another log on the fire.
In an interview with CNN, Tancredo accused Sotomayor of belonging to a group that was akin to the Ku Klux Klan, calling the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights and advocacy group, "Latino KKK without the hoods and nooses."
At the same time, the White House tried to defuse controversy over Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, with Obama addressing it directly in an NBC interview Friday.
"I'm sure she would have restated it," the president said. "But if you look in the entire sweep of the essay, she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about struggles and hardship that people are going through -- that will make her a good judge."
Obama added that part of a judge's job is "to stand in somebody else's shoes. . . . And so her, as a Latino woman, part of her job is going to be to listen to the farmer in Iowa and, you know, if he's upset about a farm regulation, and be able to understand how hard it is to farm, and what that means. And to be able to incorporate that into her decision-making."
Attempts within the GOP to find the right tone in addressing the Sotomayor nomination reflect that the party has no clear leader and is struggling to recover from brutal election losses. Some Republicans worry that fighting a shrill, losing nomination battle will not help -- and might hurt -- efforts to rebuild the party.
"Whether or not Barack Obama gets his nominee is not going to determine the future of our party," said Terry Holt, an advisor to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. "He's a popular president with the votes to confirm his nominee. That's not our best fight or our worst problem to deal with."
Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, said: "Any kind of ad hominem attacks are not helpful to the party's reputation, certainly not in attracting independents, which is our challenge at the moment."
But some conservative activists are urging Senate Republicans to mount a vigorous opposition to Sotomayor's nomination in order to fire up the party's demoralized base. Waging an aggressive fight might also send a warning shot to Obama about court battles to come and highlight the differing legal philosophies of the two parties.
"It will help in uniting the Republican coalition," said Curt Levey, head of the conservative Committee for Justice.
Senators are the only ones whose votes on Sotomayor count. And Republicans in the chamber have been keeping their distance from outside activists such as Gingrich and Limbaugh.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) rejected their assertion that Sotomayor is racist. "I don't agree with that," he said on CNN. "And, frankly, I think it's a little premature and early, because she hasn't had a chance to explain some of these comments that she's made."
Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership who comes from a state with a large Latino population, is highlighting the distinction between members of the Senate and outside critics such as Gingrich and Limbaugh.
"Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials," Cornyn said in his National Public Radio interview. "I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."
Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, on Friday offered the bluntest advice of all to Republicans. "Play grown-up," Noonan said in her Wall Street Journal column.
Friday, May 29, 2009
For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’
By SARAH KERSHAW
There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type:
There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there is also the bear claw, when a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out.
There is the hug that starts with a high-five, then moves into a fist bump, followed by a slap on the back and an embrace.
There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.
“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”
There are romantic hugs, too, but that is not what these teenagers are talking about.
Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about “one hour” and “six hour” hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.
A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.
Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact. “It’s a wordless custom, from what I’ve observed,” wrote Beth J. Harpaz, the mother of two boys, 11 and 16, and a parenting columnist for The Associated Press, in a new book, “13 Is the New 18.”
“And there doesn’t seem to be any other overt way in which they acknowledge knowing each other,” she continued, describing the scene at her older son’s school in Manhattan. “No hi, no smile, no wave, no high-five — just the hug. Witnessing this interaction always makes me feel like I am a tourist in a country where I do not know the customs and cannot speak the language.”
For teenagers, though, hugging is hip. And not hugging?
“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.
Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”
Schools that have limited hugging invoked longstanding rules against public displays of affection, meant to maintain an atmosphere of academic seriousness and prevent unwanted touching, or even groping.
But pro-hugging students say it is not a romantic or sexual gesture, simply the “hello” of their generation. “We like to get cozy,” said Katie Dea, an eighth grader at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School in San Francisco. “The high-five is, like, boring.”
Some sociologists said that teenagers who grew up in an era of organized play dates and close parental supervision are more cooperative with one another than previous generations — less cynical and individualistic and more loyal to the group.
But Amy L. Best, a sociologist at George Mason University, said the teenage embrace is more a reflection of the overall evolution of the American greeting, which has become less formal since the 1970s. “Without question, the boundaries of touch have changed in American culture,” she said. “We display bodies more readily, there are fewer rules governing body touch and a lot more permissible access to other people’s bodies.”
Hugging appears to be a grass-roots phenomenon and not an imitation of a character or custom on TV or in movies. The prevalence of boys’ nonromantic hugging (especially of other boys) is most striking to adults. Experts say that over the last generation, boys have become more comfortable expressing emotion, as embodied by the MTV show “Bromance,” which is now a widely used term for affection between straight male friends.
But some sociologists pointed out that African-American boys and men have been hugging as part of their greeting for decades, using the word “dap” to describe a ritual involving handshakes, slaps on the shoulders and, more recently, a hug, also sometimes called the gangsta hug among urban youth.
“It’s something you grow up doing,” said Mazi Chiles, a junior at South Gwinnett High School in Snellville, Ga., who is black. “But you don’t come up to a dude and hug, you start out with a handshake.”
Some parents find it paradoxical that a generation so steeped in hands-off virtual communication would be so eager to hug.
“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.
She added: “I hug people I’m close to. But now you’re hugging people you don’t even know. Hugging used to mean something.”
There are, too, some young critics of hugging.
Amy Heaton, a freshman at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Md., said casual social hugging seemed disingenuous to her. “Hugging is more common in my opinion in people who act like friends,” she said. “It’s like air-kissing. It’s really superficial.”
But Carrie Osbourne, a sixth-grade teacher at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School, said hugging was a powerful and positive sign that children are inclined to nurture one another, breaking down barriers. “And it gets to that core that every person wants to feel cared for, regardless of your age or how cool you are or how cool you think you are,” she said.
As much as hugging is a physical gesture, it has migrated online as well. Facebook applications allowing friends to send hugs have tens of thousands of fans. Katie Dea, the San Francisco eighth grader, as well as Olivia Brown, 11, who lives in Manhattan and is the younger sister of Gabrielle, the LaGuardia High freshman, have a new sign-off for their text and e-mail messages: *hug.*
There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type:
There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there is also the bear claw, when a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out.
There is the hug that starts with a high-five, then moves into a fist bump, followed by a slap on the back and an embrace.
There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.
“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”
There are romantic hugs, too, but that is not what these teenagers are talking about.
Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about “one hour” and “six hour” hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.
A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.
Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact. “It’s a wordless custom, from what I’ve observed,” wrote Beth J. Harpaz, the mother of two boys, 11 and 16, and a parenting columnist for The Associated Press, in a new book, “13 Is the New 18.”
“And there doesn’t seem to be any other overt way in which they acknowledge knowing each other,” she continued, describing the scene at her older son’s school in Manhattan. “No hi, no smile, no wave, no high-five — just the hug. Witnessing this interaction always makes me feel like I am a tourist in a country where I do not know the customs and cannot speak the language.”
For teenagers, though, hugging is hip. And not hugging?
“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.
Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”
Schools that have limited hugging invoked longstanding rules against public displays of affection, meant to maintain an atmosphere of academic seriousness and prevent unwanted touching, or even groping.
But pro-hugging students say it is not a romantic or sexual gesture, simply the “hello” of their generation. “We like to get cozy,” said Katie Dea, an eighth grader at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School in San Francisco. “The high-five is, like, boring.”
Some sociologists said that teenagers who grew up in an era of organized play dates and close parental supervision are more cooperative with one another than previous generations — less cynical and individualistic and more loyal to the group.
But Amy L. Best, a sociologist at George Mason University, said the teenage embrace is more a reflection of the overall evolution of the American greeting, which has become less formal since the 1970s. “Without question, the boundaries of touch have changed in American culture,” she said. “We display bodies more readily, there are fewer rules governing body touch and a lot more permissible access to other people’s bodies.”
Hugging appears to be a grass-roots phenomenon and not an imitation of a character or custom on TV or in movies. The prevalence of boys’ nonromantic hugging (especially of other boys) is most striking to adults. Experts say that over the last generation, boys have become more comfortable expressing emotion, as embodied by the MTV show “Bromance,” which is now a widely used term for affection between straight male friends.
But some sociologists pointed out that African-American boys and men have been hugging as part of their greeting for decades, using the word “dap” to describe a ritual involving handshakes, slaps on the shoulders and, more recently, a hug, also sometimes called the gangsta hug among urban youth.
“It’s something you grow up doing,” said Mazi Chiles, a junior at South Gwinnett High School in Snellville, Ga., who is black. “But you don’t come up to a dude and hug, you start out with a handshake.”
Some parents find it paradoxical that a generation so steeped in hands-off virtual communication would be so eager to hug.
“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.
She added: “I hug people I’m close to. But now you’re hugging people you don’t even know. Hugging used to mean something.”
There are, too, some young critics of hugging.
Amy Heaton, a freshman at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Md., said casual social hugging seemed disingenuous to her. “Hugging is more common in my opinion in people who act like friends,” she said. “It’s like air-kissing. It’s really superficial.”
But Carrie Osbourne, a sixth-grade teacher at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School, said hugging was a powerful and positive sign that children are inclined to nurture one another, breaking down barriers. “And it gets to that core that every person wants to feel cared for, regardless of your age or how cool you are or how cool you think you are,” she said.
As much as hugging is a physical gesture, it has migrated online as well. Facebook applications allowing friends to send hugs have tens of thousands of fans. Katie Dea, the San Francisco eighth grader, as well as Olivia Brown, 11, who lives in Manhattan and is the younger sister of Gabrielle, the LaGuardia High freshman, have a new sign-off for their text and e-mail messages: *hug.*
A Human Language Gene Changes the Sound of Mouse Squeaks
By NICHOLAS WADE
People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.
The gene, FOXP2, was identified in 1998 as the cause of a subtle speech defect in a large London family, half of whose members have difficulties with articulation and grammar. All those affected inherited a disrupted version of the gene from one parent. FOXP2 quickly attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists because other animals also possess the gene, and the human version differs significantly in its DNA sequence from those of mice and chimpanzees, just as might be expected for a gene sculpted by natural selection to play an important role in language.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, “We will speak to the mouse.” He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function.
That is the result reported in the current issue of the journal Cell by Wolfgang Enard, also of the Leipzig institute, and a large team of German researchers who studied 300 features of the humanized mice. FOXP2, a gene whose protein product switches on other genes, is important during the embryo’s development and plays an active part in constructing many tissues, including the lungs, stomach and brain. The gene is so vital that mice in which both copies of the gene are disrupted die after a few weeks.
Despite the mammalian body’s dependence on having its two FOXP2 genes work just right, Dr. Enard’s team found that the human version of FOXP2 seemed to substitute perfectly for the mouse version in all the mouse’s tissues except for the brain.
In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.
There are about 20 million DNA differences between the genomes of humans and chimps, but most make no physical difference. To understand which DNA changes are important, the genes must be put into another species. There is no good way of genetically engineering chimps, even it were ethically acceptable, so the mouse is the test of choice, in Dr. Enard’s view.
Dr. Joseph Buxbaum, an expert on the molecular basis of psychiatric disease at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said Dr. Enard’s team had taken a good first step toward understanding the role of FOXP2 in the development of the brain. “The most surprising finding, and cause for great optimism, is that the gene does seem to have a great effect on pathways of neural development in mice,” he said.
Dr. Gary Marcus, who studies language acquisition at New York University, said the study showed lots of small effects from the human FOXP2, which fit with the view that FOXP2 plays a vital role in language, probably with many other genes that remain to be discovered. “People shouldn’t think of this as the one language gene but as part of a broader cascade of genes,” he said. “It would have been truly spectacular if they had wound up with a talking mouse.”
People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.
The gene, FOXP2, was identified in 1998 as the cause of a subtle speech defect in a large London family, half of whose members have difficulties with articulation and grammar. All those affected inherited a disrupted version of the gene from one parent. FOXP2 quickly attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists because other animals also possess the gene, and the human version differs significantly in its DNA sequence from those of mice and chimpanzees, just as might be expected for a gene sculpted by natural selection to play an important role in language.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, “We will speak to the mouse.” He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function.
That is the result reported in the current issue of the journal Cell by Wolfgang Enard, also of the Leipzig institute, and a large team of German researchers who studied 300 features of the humanized mice. FOXP2, a gene whose protein product switches on other genes, is important during the embryo’s development and plays an active part in constructing many tissues, including the lungs, stomach and brain. The gene is so vital that mice in which both copies of the gene are disrupted die after a few weeks.
Despite the mammalian body’s dependence on having its two FOXP2 genes work just right, Dr. Enard’s team found that the human version of FOXP2 seemed to substitute perfectly for the mouse version in all the mouse’s tissues except for the brain.
In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.
There are about 20 million DNA differences between the genomes of humans and chimps, but most make no physical difference. To understand which DNA changes are important, the genes must be put into another species. There is no good way of genetically engineering chimps, even it were ethically acceptable, so the mouse is the test of choice, in Dr. Enard’s view.
Dr. Joseph Buxbaum, an expert on the molecular basis of psychiatric disease at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said Dr. Enard’s team had taken a good first step toward understanding the role of FOXP2 in the development of the brain. “The most surprising finding, and cause for great optimism, is that the gene does seem to have a great effect on pathways of neural development in mice,” he said.
Dr. Gary Marcus, who studies language acquisition at New York University, said the study showed lots of small effects from the human FOXP2, which fit with the view that FOXP2 plays a vital role in language, probably with many other genes that remain to be discovered. “People shouldn’t think of this as the one language gene but as part of a broader cascade of genes,” he said. “It would have been truly spectacular if they had wound up with a talking mouse.”
The Empathy Issue
By DAVID BROOKS
The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It’s based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that in rendering decisions, disembodied, objective judges are able to put aside emotion and unruly passion and issue opinions on the basis of pure reason.
Most people know this is untrue. In reality, decisions are made by imperfect minds in ambiguous circumstances. It is incoherent to say that a judge should base an opinion on reason and not emotion because emotions are an inherent part of decision-making. Emotions are the processes we use to assign value to different possibilities. Emotions move us toward things and ideas that produce pleasure and away from things and ideas that produce pain.
People without emotions cannot make sensible decisions because they don’t know how much anything is worth. People without social emotions like empathy are not objective decision-makers. They are sociopaths who sometimes end up on death row.
Supreme Court justices, like all of us, are emotional intuitionists. They begin their decision-making processes with certain models in their heads. These are models of how the world works and should work, which have been idiosyncratically ingrained by genes, culture, education, parents and events. These models shape the way judges perceive the world.
As Dan Kahan of Yale Law School has pointed out, many disputes come about because two judges look at the same situation and they have different perceptions about what the most consequential facts are. One judge, with one set of internal models, may look at a case and perceive that the humiliation suffered by a 13-year-old girl during a strip search in a school or airport is the most consequential fact of the case. Another judge, with another set of internal models, may perceive that the security of the school or airport is the most consequential fact. People elevate and savor facts that conform to their pre-existing sensitivities.
The decision-making process gets even murkier once the judge has absorbed the disparate facts of a case. When noodling over some issue — whether it’s a legal case, an essay, a math problem or a marketing strategy — people go foraging about for a unifying solution. This is not a hyper-rational, orderly process of the sort a computer might undertake. It’s a meandering, largely unconscious process of trial and error.
The mind tries on different solutions to see if they fit. Ideas and insights bubble up from some hidden layer of intuitions and heuristics. Sometimes you feel yourself getting closer to a conclusion, and sometimes you feel yourself getting farther away. The emotions serve as guidance signals, like from a GPS, as you feel your way toward a solution.
Then — often while you’re in the shower or after a night’s sleep — the answer comes to you. You experience a fantastic rush of pleasure that feels like a million tiny magnets suddenly clicking into alignment.
Now your conclusion is articulate in your consciousness. You can edit it or reject it. You can go out and find precedents and principles to buttress it. But the way you get there was not a cool, rational process. It was complex, unconscious and emotional.
The crucial question in evaluating a potential Supreme Court justice, therefore, is not whether she relies on empathy or emotion, but how she does so. First, can she process multiple streams of emotion? Reason is weak and emotions are strong, but emotions can be balanced off each other. Sonia Sotomayor will be a good justice if she can empathize with the many types of people and actions involved in a case, but a bad justice if she can only empathize with one type, one ethnic group or one social class.
Second, does she have a love for the institutions of the law themselves? For some lawyers, the law is not only a bunch of statutes but a code of chivalry. The good judges seem to derive a profound emotional satisfaction from the faithful execution of time-tested precedents and traditions.
Third, is she aware of the murky, flawed and semiprimitive nature of her own decision-making, and has she accounted for her own uncertainty? If we were logical creatures in a logical world, judges could create sweeping abstractions and then rigorously apply them. But because we’re emotional creatures in an idiosyncratic world, it’s prudent to have judges who are cautious, incrementalist and minimalist. It’s prudent to have judges who decide cases narrowly, who emphasize the specific context of each case, who value gradual change, small steps and modest self-restraint.
Right-leaning thinkers from Edmund Burke to Friedrich Hayek understood that emotion is prone to overshadow reason. They understood that emotion can be a wise guide in some circumstances and a dangerous deceiver in others. It’s not whether judges rely on emotion and empathy, it’s how they educate their sentiments within the discipline of manners and morals, tradition and practice.
The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It’s based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that in rendering decisions, disembodied, objective judges are able to put aside emotion and unruly passion and issue opinions on the basis of pure reason.
Most people know this is untrue. In reality, decisions are made by imperfect minds in ambiguous circumstances. It is incoherent to say that a judge should base an opinion on reason and not emotion because emotions are an inherent part of decision-making. Emotions are the processes we use to assign value to different possibilities. Emotions move us toward things and ideas that produce pleasure and away from things and ideas that produce pain.
People without emotions cannot make sensible decisions because they don’t know how much anything is worth. People without social emotions like empathy are not objective decision-makers. They are sociopaths who sometimes end up on death row.
Supreme Court justices, like all of us, are emotional intuitionists. They begin their decision-making processes with certain models in their heads. These are models of how the world works and should work, which have been idiosyncratically ingrained by genes, culture, education, parents and events. These models shape the way judges perceive the world.
As Dan Kahan of Yale Law School has pointed out, many disputes come about because two judges look at the same situation and they have different perceptions about what the most consequential facts are. One judge, with one set of internal models, may look at a case and perceive that the humiliation suffered by a 13-year-old girl during a strip search in a school or airport is the most consequential fact of the case. Another judge, with another set of internal models, may perceive that the security of the school or airport is the most consequential fact. People elevate and savor facts that conform to their pre-existing sensitivities.
The decision-making process gets even murkier once the judge has absorbed the disparate facts of a case. When noodling over some issue — whether it’s a legal case, an essay, a math problem or a marketing strategy — people go foraging about for a unifying solution. This is not a hyper-rational, orderly process of the sort a computer might undertake. It’s a meandering, largely unconscious process of trial and error.
The mind tries on different solutions to see if they fit. Ideas and insights bubble up from some hidden layer of intuitions and heuristics. Sometimes you feel yourself getting closer to a conclusion, and sometimes you feel yourself getting farther away. The emotions serve as guidance signals, like from a GPS, as you feel your way toward a solution.
Then — often while you’re in the shower or after a night’s sleep — the answer comes to you. You experience a fantastic rush of pleasure that feels like a million tiny magnets suddenly clicking into alignment.
Now your conclusion is articulate in your consciousness. You can edit it or reject it. You can go out and find precedents and principles to buttress it. But the way you get there was not a cool, rational process. It was complex, unconscious and emotional.
The crucial question in evaluating a potential Supreme Court justice, therefore, is not whether she relies on empathy or emotion, but how she does so. First, can she process multiple streams of emotion? Reason is weak and emotions are strong, but emotions can be balanced off each other. Sonia Sotomayor will be a good justice if she can empathize with the many types of people and actions involved in a case, but a bad justice if she can only empathize with one type, one ethnic group or one social class.
Second, does she have a love for the institutions of the law themselves? For some lawyers, the law is not only a bunch of statutes but a code of chivalry. The good judges seem to derive a profound emotional satisfaction from the faithful execution of time-tested precedents and traditions.
Third, is she aware of the murky, flawed and semiprimitive nature of her own decision-making, and has she accounted for her own uncertainty? If we were logical creatures in a logical world, judges could create sweeping abstractions and then rigorously apply them. But because we’re emotional creatures in an idiosyncratic world, it’s prudent to have judges who are cautious, incrementalist and minimalist. It’s prudent to have judges who decide cases narrowly, who emphasize the specific context of each case, who value gradual change, small steps and modest self-restraint.
Right-leaning thinkers from Edmund Burke to Friedrich Hayek understood that emotion is prone to overshadow reason. They understood that emotion can be a wise guide in some circumstances and a dangerous deceiver in others. It’s not whether judges rely on emotion and empathy, it’s how they educate their sentiments within the discipline of manners and morals, tradition and practice.
Would You Slap Your Father?
Would You Slap Your Father?
If So, You’re a Liberal By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
If you want to tell whether someone is conservative or liberal, what are a couple of completely nonpolitical questions that will give a good clue?
How’s this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit?
And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom?
Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.
Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.
The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.
This came up after I wrote a column earlier this year called “The Daily Me.” I argued that most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices. To overcome that tendency, I argued, we should set aside time for a daily mental workout with an ideological sparring partner. Afterward, I heard from Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. “You got the problem right, but the prescription wrong,” he said.
Simply exposing people to counterarguments may not accomplish much, he said, and may inflame antagonisms.
A study by Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania found that when people saw tight television shots of blowhards with whom they disagreed, they felt that the other side was even less legitimate than before.
The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you’ll have trouble harrumphing.
One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that disgust emerged as a protective mechanism against health risks, like feces, spoiled food or corpses. Later, many societies came to apply the same emotion to social “threats.” Humans appear to be the only species that registers disgust, which is why a dog will wag its tail in puzzlement when its horrified owner yanks it back from eating excrement.
Psychologists have developed a “disgust scale” based on how queasy people would be in 27 situations, such as stepping barefoot on an earthworm or smelling urine in a tunnel. Conservatives systematically register more disgust than liberals. (To see how you weigh factors in moral decisions, take the tests at www.yourmorals.org.)
It appears that we start with moral intuitions that our brains then find evidence to support. For example, one experiment involved hypnotizing subjects to expect a flash of disgust at the word “take.” They were then told about Dan, a student council president who “tries to take topics that appeal to both professors and students.”
The research subjects felt disgust but couldn’t find any good reason for it. So, in some cases, they concocted their own reasons, such as: “Dan is a popularity-seeking snob.”
So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side — ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down “us vs. them” battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side’s morality, even if it’s not our morality.
“Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” Professor Haidt says. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”
Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public’s growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay.
A corollary is that the most potent way to win over opponents is to accept that they have legitimate concerns, for that triggers an instinct to reciprocate. As it happens, we have a brilliant exemplar of this style of rhetoric in politics right now — Barack Obama.
If So, You’re a Liberal By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
If you want to tell whether someone is conservative or liberal, what are a couple of completely nonpolitical questions that will give a good clue?
How’s this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit?
And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom?
Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.
Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.
The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.
This came up after I wrote a column earlier this year called “The Daily Me.” I argued that most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices. To overcome that tendency, I argued, we should set aside time for a daily mental workout with an ideological sparring partner. Afterward, I heard from Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. “You got the problem right, but the prescription wrong,” he said.
Simply exposing people to counterarguments may not accomplish much, he said, and may inflame antagonisms.
A study by Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania found that when people saw tight television shots of blowhards with whom they disagreed, they felt that the other side was even less legitimate than before.
The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you’ll have trouble harrumphing.
One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that disgust emerged as a protective mechanism against health risks, like feces, spoiled food or corpses. Later, many societies came to apply the same emotion to social “threats.” Humans appear to be the only species that registers disgust, which is why a dog will wag its tail in puzzlement when its horrified owner yanks it back from eating excrement.
Psychologists have developed a “disgust scale” based on how queasy people would be in 27 situations, such as stepping barefoot on an earthworm or smelling urine in a tunnel. Conservatives systematically register more disgust than liberals. (To see how you weigh factors in moral decisions, take the tests at www.yourmorals.org.)
It appears that we start with moral intuitions that our brains then find evidence to support. For example, one experiment involved hypnotizing subjects to expect a flash of disgust at the word “take.” They were then told about Dan, a student council president who “tries to take topics that appeal to both professors and students.”
The research subjects felt disgust but couldn’t find any good reason for it. So, in some cases, they concocted their own reasons, such as: “Dan is a popularity-seeking snob.”
So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side — ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down “us vs. them” battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side’s morality, even if it’s not our morality.
“Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” Professor Haidt says. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”
Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public’s growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay.
A corollary is that the most potent way to win over opponents is to accept that they have legitimate concerns, for that triggers an instinct to reciprocate. As it happens, we have a brilliant exemplar of this style of rhetoric in politics right now — Barack Obama.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Speechifying
VARIED OPINION ON CHENEY vs OBAMA
“Does anyone still doubt,” asks Rich Lowry at National Review, “that it was a good and necessary thing for Cheney to be out counter-punching on national security?”
William Kristol reads both speeches, goes with the fight metaphor: “a mismatch“:
Obama’s is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor–platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. . . . Cheney’s is the speech of a grownup, of a chief executive, of a statesman. He’s sober, realistic and concrete, stands up for his country and its public officials, and has an acute awareness of the consequences of the choices one makes as a public official and a willingness to take responsibility for those choices.
“I do find it kind of amazing that Cheney is offering up a national security speech,” writes John Cole at Balloon Juice.
It is just weird to have a former VP out there openly sabotaging a new administration, and make no mistake about it, that is what Cheney is doing. . . .
But what is really weird is that they seem to have just given up any pretense that Bush was anything other than an empty suit. Between Dick’s multiple pronouncements, his really odd response on MTP in which he said “I guess the President had been briefed,” and stunts like this speech today, Cheney is basically telling you who the HMFIC for the last eight years was, and he wasn’t a legacy frat boy from Connecticut.
“I hope that President Obama is enjoying this debate,” writes Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, “and one certainly hopes that he will continue to embrace it, because it is a debate that he has been asking for since he decided to run for president.”
Still, when Goldfarb looks across the aisle, he see little enjoyment:
Each day the Democrat’s angst seems to deepen, and each day the confusion of President Obama’s policies becomes more evident. Despite all the rhetoric of his presidential run, he has now embraced the Bush administration policies on the commitment of troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now supports the wiretapping he threatened to filibuster. He has denied the release of photos that the Bush administration likewise recognized as a propaganda gift for our enemies, and a danger to our troops serving in Iraq, and has revived the military tribunals he once scorned. And on those issues where his record has matched his rhetoric — such as the commitment to close Guantanamo, he is not even supported by his own party.
One wonders what comes next. I bet he tries to change the subject — and quickly.
James Fallows says the following two sentences form the President’s remarks were the “argumentative / explanatory crux of the speech to the right“:
I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are.
“This has been,” continues Fallows, “from the start, the central indictment of the Bush-Cheney approach to al Qaeda.”
Anything-goes tactics may or may not win battles, but they certainly lose wars. Dick Cheney’s speech, cut off by BBC about ten minutes in, is ineffective not just because of its anger/contempt but also because what is billed as a response is in fact one cycle late, simply re-stating the claims Obama went out of his way to rebut (rather that keeping up with the cycle by answering anything Obama said).
At the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder says “Cheney seems to be arguing with himself; or, rather, with the decisions that his President, George W. Bush, made after the thumping of the 2006 elections.”
Ambinder bases his argument in part on an article by Jack Goldsmith in this week’s issue of the New Republic. In particular, Ambinder cites Goldsmith’s description of the primary difference between the Obama and Bush administrations approach
concern[s] not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.
“I doubt that many White House officials disagree,” continues Ambinder, “”although they point out that many of the institutionalized decisions that Goldsmith sees are works in progress, and that the executive is inherently limited in his ability to quickly reverse course on many aspects of national security policy.”
Indeed, it is hard to find a Bush administration official who disagrees with Goldsmith at this point, save for friends and allies of Mr. Cheney’s. That’s because, from the middle of the President’s second term until the end, the Bush administration began the process of legitimation. . . .
Cheney seems to be arguing with himself; or, rather, with the decisions that his President, George W. Bush, made after the thumping of the 2006 elections. He is arguing with Republican Party elites, most of whom are willing to criticize individual decisions Obama has made but who can’t find fault with his general approach to terrorism.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but our president can give a helluva speech,” writes Adam Serwer at the American Prospect.
The most important part of the president’s speech was the framing of our national conversation around this issue. . . . He reframed his positions national security, much as he does with all political issues, as standing between two “two opposite and absolutist ends,” those who would never “put national security over transparency” and those who believe the Nixonian dictum that “that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants.”
I don’t buy this framing. The fact is that there is no middle ground when it comes to due process. With his soaring and sincere rhetoric, the president has done an incredible job of selling his kindler, gentler War on Terror, and ultimately, the American people will likely have his back, if only because they trust him. In a sense, Barack Obama may be far more dangerous than George W. Bush when it comes to violating our civil liberties, where the American people feared the excesses of Bush, they trust wholly in the sincerity of Barack Obama. At least for now.
Glenn Greenwald says “the speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does:
effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn’t changed that. Only actions will.
“I regard it as the national security equivalent of his Jeremiah Wright speech,” writes Andrew Sullivan.
Why? Because it managed to reach a place apart from, while being fully part of, the furious debates we have been having. These debates are vital, and the notion that we can simply move on from the Bush-Cheney era without some accounting or reform is both empirically and morally false. We are struggling for a sustainable, long-term balance between security against a ruthless and unprincipled and lawless enemy - and a law of war, and a judicial system and a civilization that we rightly love and want to defend. This struggle will be a long one, and an extremely difficult one, and the most profound of the insights that the president offered today is as banal as it is central:
“There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions: even as we clean up the mess at Guantanamo, we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term.”
. . . I feel much more confidence now that victory - for both our system and the war against Jihadism - is possible. Civil liberties purists will quibble and fight. Cheney-dead-enders will continue to stoke fear and division. I think this is the right balance - and deserves our vocal and persistent support.
“Does anyone still doubt,” asks Rich Lowry at National Review, “that it was a good and necessary thing for Cheney to be out counter-punching on national security?”
William Kristol reads both speeches, goes with the fight metaphor: “a mismatch“:
Obama’s is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor–platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. . . . Cheney’s is the speech of a grownup, of a chief executive, of a statesman. He’s sober, realistic and concrete, stands up for his country and its public officials, and has an acute awareness of the consequences of the choices one makes as a public official and a willingness to take responsibility for those choices.
“I do find it kind of amazing that Cheney is offering up a national security speech,” writes John Cole at Balloon Juice.
It is just weird to have a former VP out there openly sabotaging a new administration, and make no mistake about it, that is what Cheney is doing. . . .
But what is really weird is that they seem to have just given up any pretense that Bush was anything other than an empty suit. Between Dick’s multiple pronouncements, his really odd response on MTP in which he said “I guess the President had been briefed,” and stunts like this speech today, Cheney is basically telling you who the HMFIC for the last eight years was, and he wasn’t a legacy frat boy from Connecticut.
“I hope that President Obama is enjoying this debate,” writes Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, “and one certainly hopes that he will continue to embrace it, because it is a debate that he has been asking for since he decided to run for president.”
Still, when Goldfarb looks across the aisle, he see little enjoyment:
Each day the Democrat’s angst seems to deepen, and each day the confusion of President Obama’s policies becomes more evident. Despite all the rhetoric of his presidential run, he has now embraced the Bush administration policies on the commitment of troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now supports the wiretapping he threatened to filibuster. He has denied the release of photos that the Bush administration likewise recognized as a propaganda gift for our enemies, and a danger to our troops serving in Iraq, and has revived the military tribunals he once scorned. And on those issues where his record has matched his rhetoric — such as the commitment to close Guantanamo, he is not even supported by his own party.
One wonders what comes next. I bet he tries to change the subject — and quickly.
James Fallows says the following two sentences form the President’s remarks were the “argumentative / explanatory crux of the speech to the right“:
I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are.
“This has been,” continues Fallows, “from the start, the central indictment of the Bush-Cheney approach to al Qaeda.”
Anything-goes tactics may or may not win battles, but they certainly lose wars. Dick Cheney’s speech, cut off by BBC about ten minutes in, is ineffective not just because of its anger/contempt but also because what is billed as a response is in fact one cycle late, simply re-stating the claims Obama went out of his way to rebut (rather that keeping up with the cycle by answering anything Obama said).
At the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder says “Cheney seems to be arguing with himself; or, rather, with the decisions that his President, George W. Bush, made after the thumping of the 2006 elections.”
Ambinder bases his argument in part on an article by Jack Goldsmith in this week’s issue of the New Republic. In particular, Ambinder cites Goldsmith’s description of the primary difference between the Obama and Bush administrations approach
concern[s] not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.
“I doubt that many White House officials disagree,” continues Ambinder, “”although they point out that many of the institutionalized decisions that Goldsmith sees are works in progress, and that the executive is inherently limited in his ability to quickly reverse course on many aspects of national security policy.”
Indeed, it is hard to find a Bush administration official who disagrees with Goldsmith at this point, save for friends and allies of Mr. Cheney’s. That’s because, from the middle of the President’s second term until the end, the Bush administration began the process of legitimation. . . .
Cheney seems to be arguing with himself; or, rather, with the decisions that his President, George W. Bush, made after the thumping of the 2006 elections. He is arguing with Republican Party elites, most of whom are willing to criticize individual decisions Obama has made but who can’t find fault with his general approach to terrorism.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but our president can give a helluva speech,” writes Adam Serwer at the American Prospect.
The most important part of the president’s speech was the framing of our national conversation around this issue. . . . He reframed his positions national security, much as he does with all political issues, as standing between two “two opposite and absolutist ends,” those who would never “put national security over transparency” and those who believe the Nixonian dictum that “that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants.”
I don’t buy this framing. The fact is that there is no middle ground when it comes to due process. With his soaring and sincere rhetoric, the president has done an incredible job of selling his kindler, gentler War on Terror, and ultimately, the American people will likely have his back, if only because they trust him. In a sense, Barack Obama may be far more dangerous than George W. Bush when it comes to violating our civil liberties, where the American people feared the excesses of Bush, they trust wholly in the sincerity of Barack Obama. At least for now.
Glenn Greenwald says “the speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does:
effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn’t changed that. Only actions will.
“I regard it as the national security equivalent of his Jeremiah Wright speech,” writes Andrew Sullivan.
Why? Because it managed to reach a place apart from, while being fully part of, the furious debates we have been having. These debates are vital, and the notion that we can simply move on from the Bush-Cheney era without some accounting or reform is both empirically and morally false. We are struggling for a sustainable, long-term balance between security against a ruthless and unprincipled and lawless enemy - and a law of war, and a judicial system and a civilization that we rightly love and want to defend. This struggle will be a long one, and an extremely difficult one, and the most profound of the insights that the president offered today is as banal as it is central:
“There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions: even as we clean up the mess at Guantanamo, we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term.”
. . . I feel much more confidence now that victory - for both our system and the war against Jihadism - is possible. Civil liberties purists will quibble and fight. Cheney-dead-enders will continue to stoke fear and division. I think this is the right balance - and deserves our vocal and persistent support.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Obama calls for 'common ground' on abortion at Notre Dame
Story Highlights
NEW: 39 protesters arrested before speech for trespassing, police say
NEW: He endorses "sensible conscience clause" for doctors opposed to abortion
NEW: Obama calls for reducing abortions, making adoption easier
Obama's pro-abortion rights, stem cell views opposed by protesters
SOUTH BEND, Indiana (CNN) -- President Obama delved into the abortion debate in a controversial Notre Dame commencement address Sunday, calling for a search for common ground on one of the most divisive issues in American politics.
Addressing a sharply divided audience at the storied Catholic university, Obama conceded that no matter how much Americans "may want to fudge it ... at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable."
"Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction," he said. "But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature."
The commencement ceremony was boycotted by a number of graduates dismayed by the university's decision both to tap Obama as its commencement speaker and to give him an honorary degree. View pictures from the commencement »
The president is a supporter of abortion rights and federally-funded embryonic stem-cell research -- positions that are anathema to traditional Catholic teachings.
Some graduates attended the ceremony, but expressed their disapproval by donning mortarboards marked with a cross and the outline of an infant's footprints. Others countered by wearing mortarboards adorned with an Obama campaign symbol.
Protests by abortion rights opponents before Obama's speech led to 39 arrests, St. Joseph County sheriff's deputy Rachel Zawistowski told CNN. One of those arrested was Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as "Roe" in the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that struck down state laws banning abortion. Watch police arrest anti-Obama demonstrators »
All those arrested were charged with trespassing, and two people taken into custody were also charged with resisting arrest, Redmond said. The charges are misdemeanors, and defendants had to post bail of $250 each before being released, he said.
Inside, several hecklers who interrupted the start of Obama's speech were loudly booed by the audience.
Obama asked the crowd if it's possible "for us to join hands in common effort."
"As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate?" he asked. "How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?"
The president told the audience a story about an e-mail he received during his 2004 Illinois Senate race from a doctor who opposed abortion. The doctor, according to the president, said he voted for Obama during the Democratic primary but felt he might not be able to support him in the general election.
A self-described Christian who "was strongly pro-life," the doctor had been offended by an entry on Obama's Senate campaign Web site that said Obama would oppose "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." Watch Obama discuss abortion »
"The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable," Obama said.
He said the doctor urged him not to change his views, but rather to speak about the issue of abortion in "fair-minded words."
After instructing his campaign staff to change the wording on his Web site, Obama said he prayed "that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me."
"When we do that -- when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground."
The president said that while "maybe we won't agree on abortion ... we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make."
He urged supporters and opponents of abortion rights to "work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term."
He also endorsed the drafting of a "sensible conscience clause" to "honor the conscience" of doctors and other medical workers opposed to abortion.
Let's "make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women," he said.
Obama is the ninth sitting U.S. president to deliver the commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, but none of his predecessors touched off a similar firestorm. Watch how some graduating seniors are taking Obama visit in stride »
"I have no problem with Obama speaking on the campus [but] I do have a problem giving him [this] honor," said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League.
Catholic Bishop John D'Arcy of South Bend, Indiana, was among those who skipped the ceremony.
"President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred," D'Arcy said in a written statement.
Notre Dame President John I. Jenkins noted in a statement in March that the university has hosted Democratic and Republican presidents, and said the invitation does not mean the university agrees with all of Obama's positions.
Obama carried the Catholic vote in last year's presidential election by a margin of nine percentage points, 54 to 45 percent. A Quinnipiac University poll released last Thursday suggests most U.S. Catholics wanted Notre Dame to allow Obama to speak, with 60 percent of Catholic voters in the survey saying Notre Dame should stand by its invitation to the president.
Observant Catholic voters who attend religious services about once a week said by a 49 to 43 percent margin that Notre Dame should keep Obama on the program. Catholics who attend services less frequently said by a 70 percent to 26 percent margin that Obama should speak, according to the poll.
"Neither Americans overall, nor Roman Catholic voters in particular, think Notre Dame should rescind its invitation to President Obama," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"The strongest opposition to the president's appearance comes from observant Catholics, but more of them than not say he should be allowed to speak."
The poll, taken April 21-27, surveyed 2,041 registered voters nationwide. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
"Catholics are not a monolithic group. If you divide between practicing Catholics and nonpracticing Catholics, you'll find that the practicing Catholics for some reason are opposed to Obama getting an honor. They're not opposed to him speaking at Notre Dame. They're opposed to him being honored," Donohue said.
NEW: 39 protesters arrested before speech for trespassing, police say
NEW: He endorses "sensible conscience clause" for doctors opposed to abortion
NEW: Obama calls for reducing abortions, making adoption easier
Obama's pro-abortion rights, stem cell views opposed by protesters
SOUTH BEND, Indiana (CNN) -- President Obama delved into the abortion debate in a controversial Notre Dame commencement address Sunday, calling for a search for common ground on one of the most divisive issues in American politics.
Addressing a sharply divided audience at the storied Catholic university, Obama conceded that no matter how much Americans "may want to fudge it ... at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable."
"Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction," he said. "But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature."
The commencement ceremony was boycotted by a number of graduates dismayed by the university's decision both to tap Obama as its commencement speaker and to give him an honorary degree. View pictures from the commencement »
The president is a supporter of abortion rights and federally-funded embryonic stem-cell research -- positions that are anathema to traditional Catholic teachings.
Some graduates attended the ceremony, but expressed their disapproval by donning mortarboards marked with a cross and the outline of an infant's footprints. Others countered by wearing mortarboards adorned with an Obama campaign symbol.
Protests by abortion rights opponents before Obama's speech led to 39 arrests, St. Joseph County sheriff's deputy Rachel Zawistowski told CNN. One of those arrested was Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as "Roe" in the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that struck down state laws banning abortion. Watch police arrest anti-Obama demonstrators »
All those arrested were charged with trespassing, and two people taken into custody were also charged with resisting arrest, Redmond said. The charges are misdemeanors, and defendants had to post bail of $250 each before being released, he said.
Inside, several hecklers who interrupted the start of Obama's speech were loudly booed by the audience.
Obama asked the crowd if it's possible "for us to join hands in common effort."
"As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate?" he asked. "How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?"
The president told the audience a story about an e-mail he received during his 2004 Illinois Senate race from a doctor who opposed abortion. The doctor, according to the president, said he voted for Obama during the Democratic primary but felt he might not be able to support him in the general election.
A self-described Christian who "was strongly pro-life," the doctor had been offended by an entry on Obama's Senate campaign Web site that said Obama would oppose "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." Watch Obama discuss abortion »
"The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable," Obama said.
He said the doctor urged him not to change his views, but rather to speak about the issue of abortion in "fair-minded words."
After instructing his campaign staff to change the wording on his Web site, Obama said he prayed "that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me."
"When we do that -- when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground."
The president said that while "maybe we won't agree on abortion ... we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make."
He urged supporters and opponents of abortion rights to "work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term."
He also endorsed the drafting of a "sensible conscience clause" to "honor the conscience" of doctors and other medical workers opposed to abortion.
Let's "make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women," he said.
Obama is the ninth sitting U.S. president to deliver the commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, but none of his predecessors touched off a similar firestorm. Watch how some graduating seniors are taking Obama visit in stride »
"I have no problem with Obama speaking on the campus [but] I do have a problem giving him [this] honor," said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League.
Catholic Bishop John D'Arcy of South Bend, Indiana, was among those who skipped the ceremony.
"President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred," D'Arcy said in a written statement.
Notre Dame President John I. Jenkins noted in a statement in March that the university has hosted Democratic and Republican presidents, and said the invitation does not mean the university agrees with all of Obama's positions.
Obama carried the Catholic vote in last year's presidential election by a margin of nine percentage points, 54 to 45 percent. A Quinnipiac University poll released last Thursday suggests most U.S. Catholics wanted Notre Dame to allow Obama to speak, with 60 percent of Catholic voters in the survey saying Notre Dame should stand by its invitation to the president.
Observant Catholic voters who attend religious services about once a week said by a 49 to 43 percent margin that Notre Dame should keep Obama on the program. Catholics who attend services less frequently said by a 70 percent to 26 percent margin that Obama should speak, according to the poll.
"Neither Americans overall, nor Roman Catholic voters in particular, think Notre Dame should rescind its invitation to President Obama," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"The strongest opposition to the president's appearance comes from observant Catholics, but more of them than not say he should be allowed to speak."
The poll, taken April 21-27, surveyed 2,041 registered voters nationwide. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
"Catholics are not a monolithic group. If you divide between practicing Catholics and nonpracticing Catholics, you'll find that the practicing Catholics for some reason are opposed to Obama getting an honor. They're not opposed to him speaking at Notre Dame. They're opposed to him being honored," Donohue said.
So Far So Good New York TIMES
Less than three weeks after Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection, it looks as if the Obama administration will pull off its goal of completing the carmaker’s restructuring by June, allowing it to emerge as a smaller, more viable contender in the global auto market.
Unfortunately, Detroit’s problems — and the White House’s — don’t end there. Still looming is the fate of General Motors, a much larger and more complex company than Chrysler. G.M.’s bankruptcy is becoming increasingly likely as its bondholders refuse to accept the government’s terms for a restructuring out of court.
Even if G.M. — with a lot of help — manages to survive bankruptcy, it has yet to show that it has a solution for one of its most fundamental problems: its inability to make cars that consumers want to drive. This is the government’s problem too. Under a plan being negotiated by General Motors and the Treasury, the government would swap some of its loans for a stake of at least 50 percent.
So far, it looks as if Chrysler will emerge from its restructuring a more sensible company, linked up to Italy’s Fiat, which knows how to manufacture and sell fuel-efficient cars. The deal, which could give Fiat up to 51 percent of Chrysler, was designed under the eye of the government to increase Chrysler’s sales overseas and get Fiat to develop fuel-efficient vehicles in the United States by 2013.
Chrysler’s bankruptcy has been so smooth and fast because the government held its hand all the way — including providing financing to keep it running through bankruptcy and cover its warranties so consumers would keep buying.
The process started with a precooked government plan to divvy up the company between Fiat, a trust fund run by the United Automobile Workers union and the American and Canadian governments. Even then it took a sympathetic bankruptcy judge to convince a group of recalcitrant lenders that it was in their best interest to drop their opposition. The company is still meeting fierce resistance from some of the 789 dealers it plans to shutter, as it shrinks to fit its smaller role in the global market.
G.M.’s restructuring is unlikely to go so smoothly. Many of G.M.’s creditors vehemently oppose the government’s plan to give them a 10 percent share of the company in exchange for debt worth some $27 billion while giving 39 percent to a fund run by the U.A.W. to cover obligations worth $10 billion.
The company must still slash labor costs further, and probably fire 20,000 additional workers. It wants to close hundreds of its dealerships. A bankruptcy process would be further complicated by G.M.’s sprawling global nature — and by the prospect that its subsidiaries might have to simultaneously file for bankruptcy in other countries.
Even assuming G.M.’s likely bankruptcy ends felicitously, the automaker will have to pull off the trick of becoming an entirely different company — one that can make fuel-efficient cars to serve a future of expensive energy and environmental strain and then persuade American consumers to buy them. It has little experience with either.
Culling the Hummer and launching the Chevy Volt won’t be enough. G.M. must swiftly pare its gas-guzzling truck and S.U.V. lines, which last year accounted for 11 of its 20 top-selling brands. It must accelerate development of gas-electric hybrids and other higher-technology cars. Pulling this off successfully could well require further help from Washington to coax drivers to pay the premium for fuel-efficient cars.
Fortunately, the government, the U.A.W. and G.M.’s new leadership all seem to get it. They share a broad vision of where the company needs to go. Pulling it off won’t be easy.
Unfortunately, Detroit’s problems — and the White House’s — don’t end there. Still looming is the fate of General Motors, a much larger and more complex company than Chrysler. G.M.’s bankruptcy is becoming increasingly likely as its bondholders refuse to accept the government’s terms for a restructuring out of court.
Even if G.M. — with a lot of help — manages to survive bankruptcy, it has yet to show that it has a solution for one of its most fundamental problems: its inability to make cars that consumers want to drive. This is the government’s problem too. Under a plan being negotiated by General Motors and the Treasury, the government would swap some of its loans for a stake of at least 50 percent.
So far, it looks as if Chrysler will emerge from its restructuring a more sensible company, linked up to Italy’s Fiat, which knows how to manufacture and sell fuel-efficient cars. The deal, which could give Fiat up to 51 percent of Chrysler, was designed under the eye of the government to increase Chrysler’s sales overseas and get Fiat to develop fuel-efficient vehicles in the United States by 2013.
Chrysler’s bankruptcy has been so smooth and fast because the government held its hand all the way — including providing financing to keep it running through bankruptcy and cover its warranties so consumers would keep buying.
The process started with a precooked government plan to divvy up the company between Fiat, a trust fund run by the United Automobile Workers union and the American and Canadian governments. Even then it took a sympathetic bankruptcy judge to convince a group of recalcitrant lenders that it was in their best interest to drop their opposition. The company is still meeting fierce resistance from some of the 789 dealers it plans to shutter, as it shrinks to fit its smaller role in the global market.
G.M.’s restructuring is unlikely to go so smoothly. Many of G.M.’s creditors vehemently oppose the government’s plan to give them a 10 percent share of the company in exchange for debt worth some $27 billion while giving 39 percent to a fund run by the U.A.W. to cover obligations worth $10 billion.
The company must still slash labor costs further, and probably fire 20,000 additional workers. It wants to close hundreds of its dealerships. A bankruptcy process would be further complicated by G.M.’s sprawling global nature — and by the prospect that its subsidiaries might have to simultaneously file for bankruptcy in other countries.
Even assuming G.M.’s likely bankruptcy ends felicitously, the automaker will have to pull off the trick of becoming an entirely different company — one that can make fuel-efficient cars to serve a future of expensive energy and environmental strain and then persuade American consumers to buy them. It has little experience with either.
Culling the Hummer and launching the Chevy Volt won’t be enough. G.M. must swiftly pare its gas-guzzling truck and S.U.V. lines, which last year accounted for 11 of its 20 top-selling brands. It must accelerate development of gas-electric hybrids and other higher-technology cars. Pulling this off successfully could well require further help from Washington to coax drivers to pay the premium for fuel-efficient cars.
Fortunately, the government, the U.A.W. and G.M.’s new leadership all seem to get it. They share a broad vision of where the company needs to go. Pulling it off won’t be easy.
Plouffe warns of 'swiftboat' attacks on health reform
From THE HILL Sam Youngman
Days after President Obama and members of Congress said they were confident they can pass health care reform this year, Obama's former campaign manager warned supporters Saturday that opposing forces are lining up to "torpedo" the plan.
David Plouffe, the man who ran Obama's historic and ultimately successful run for the White House, wrote in a fundraising e-mail to Obama's massive supporter e-mail list that the same operatives behind the swiftboat campaign that helped end Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) quest to unseat President George W. Bush are regrouping to target Obama's healthcare efforts.
Rick Scott, who helped fund the swiftboat ads during Kerry's run, is helping to fund a new group that is targeting what he and some Republicans consider an effort by Obama to socialize medicine.
"As we speak, the same people behind the notorious 'swiftboat' ads of 2004 are already pumping millions of dollars into deceptive television ads," Plouffe wrote. "Their plan is simple: torpedo healthcare reform before it sees the light of day by scaring the public and distorting the president's approach."
In his e-mail through Organizing for American, Obama's semi-dormant campaign operation at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Plouffe asked supporters to donate money and organize to urge Congress to act on legislation.
"The swiftboaters are once again trying to sell the American people short," Plouffe wrote. "As during the election, we deserve a serious conversation -- not fear-mongering and deceit. You and I see the importance of healthcare reform every day."
Plouffe was spotted recently at the White House when his beloved Philadelphia Phillies were honored by the president for winning the World Series last year.
Days after President Obama and members of Congress said they were confident they can pass health care reform this year, Obama's former campaign manager warned supporters Saturday that opposing forces are lining up to "torpedo" the plan.
David Plouffe, the man who ran Obama's historic and ultimately successful run for the White House, wrote in a fundraising e-mail to Obama's massive supporter e-mail list that the same operatives behind the swiftboat campaign that helped end Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) quest to unseat President George W. Bush are regrouping to target Obama's healthcare efforts.
Rick Scott, who helped fund the swiftboat ads during Kerry's run, is helping to fund a new group that is targeting what he and some Republicans consider an effort by Obama to socialize medicine.
"As we speak, the same people behind the notorious 'swiftboat' ads of 2004 are already pumping millions of dollars into deceptive television ads," Plouffe wrote. "Their plan is simple: torpedo healthcare reform before it sees the light of day by scaring the public and distorting the president's approach."
In his e-mail through Organizing for American, Obama's semi-dormant campaign operation at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Plouffe asked supporters to donate money and organize to urge Congress to act on legislation.
"The swiftboaters are once again trying to sell the American people short," Plouffe wrote. "As during the election, we deserve a serious conversation -- not fear-mongering and deceit. You and I see the importance of healthcare reform every day."
Plouffe was spotted recently at the White House when his beloved Philadelphia Phillies were honored by the president for winning the World Series last year.
May Features on USA.gov
1. H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)
2. Postal Rate Increase
3. Popular Baby Names
4. Memorial Day – May 25
5. Older Americans Month
6. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month
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1. H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find the most updated information and guidance about the H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu).
The H1N1 Flu is believed to spread person-to-person, mainly through coughing and sneezing. To avoid becoming infected, or to avoid infecting others, CDC advises:
• Washing your hands often with soap and water.
• Avoiding touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when coughing or sneezing.
• Staying home from work or school if you’re sick.
• Following public health guidance regarding closures, crowds, etc.
Influenza H1N1 (Gripe porcina)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Postal Rate Increase
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting May 11, postal rates for one-ounce, First-Class U.S. stamps will go up to $.44 (from $.42). Visit USPS to review other postal rate changes.
Remember that you can always use the Forever Stamp without additional postage on standard one-ounce envelopes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Popular Baby Names
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each year—right around Mother’s Day—the Social Security Administration releases the most popular baby names registered during the prior year.
Emily and Jacob have been in the #1 spot for several years. Check out the new listing for 2008 to see if Emily and Jacob are still the most popular girl and boy names in the United States, or if other names have broken their long-standing streak!
Lista de los nombres de bebés más populares
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4. Memorial Day – May 25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, May 25 is Memorial Day, a national American holiday dedicated to remembering those who’ve died in military service.
Visit USA.gov’s Memorial Day page to learn about the holiday’s history; get safety tips on boating, swimming, and grilling; and much more.
In the spirit of unity and remembrance, please observe a moment of silence at 3:00 pm local time on Memorial Day.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Older Americans Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy Older Americans Month! President John F. Kennedy designated the month of May as a time to recognize older Americans, who currently represent about 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Seniors can find a range of government information and services on USA.gov's Senior Citizens' Resources page, including:
• Caregivers’ Resources
• Health
• Housing
• Money and Taxes
Mes de los Estadounidenses de la Tercera Edad
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6. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn more about the special contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders to America’s past, present, and future. You’ll find a range of resources on this topic, including images, audio, and video.
Visit the U.S. Census Bureau for interesting statistics about Asians in the U.S. You can find out which states have the largest Asian populations; see the median income of Asian families; and much more!
2. Postal Rate Increase
3. Popular Baby Names
4. Memorial Day – May 25
5. Older Americans Month
6. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find the most updated information and guidance about the H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu).
The H1N1 Flu is believed to spread person-to-person, mainly through coughing and sneezing. To avoid becoming infected, or to avoid infecting others, CDC advises:
• Washing your hands often with soap and water.
• Avoiding touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when coughing or sneezing.
• Staying home from work or school if you’re sick.
• Following public health guidance regarding closures, crowds, etc.
Influenza H1N1 (Gripe porcina)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Postal Rate Increase
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting May 11, postal rates for one-ounce, First-Class U.S. stamps will go up to $.44 (from $.42). Visit USPS to review other postal rate changes.
Remember that you can always use the Forever Stamp without additional postage on standard one-ounce envelopes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Popular Baby Names
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each year—right around Mother’s Day—the Social Security Administration releases the most popular baby names registered during the prior year.
Emily and Jacob have been in the #1 spot for several years. Check out the new listing for 2008 to see if Emily and Jacob are still the most popular girl and boy names in the United States, or if other names have broken their long-standing streak!
Lista de los nombres de bebés más populares
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Memorial Day – May 25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, May 25 is Memorial Day, a national American holiday dedicated to remembering those who’ve died in military service.
Visit USA.gov’s Memorial Day page to learn about the holiday’s history; get safety tips on boating, swimming, and grilling; and much more.
In the spirit of unity and remembrance, please observe a moment of silence at 3:00 pm local time on Memorial Day.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Older Americans Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy Older Americans Month! President John F. Kennedy designated the month of May as a time to recognize older Americans, who currently represent about 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Seniors can find a range of government information and services on USA.gov's Senior Citizens' Resources page, including:
• Caregivers’ Resources
• Health
• Housing
• Money and Taxes
Mes de los Estadounidenses de la Tercera Edad
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn more about the special contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders to America’s past, present, and future. You’ll find a range of resources on this topic, including images, audio, and video.
Visit the U.S. Census Bureau for interesting statistics about Asians in the U.S. You can find out which states have the largest Asian populations; see the median income of Asian families; and much more!
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