Is Crazy A Discrete Or A Continuous Quantity In Politicians?

Some politicians are crazier than other politicians, with the term "crazy" in this sense, referring to someone whose views and worldview are very far outside the mainstream.

When I was in college, we had Representative James Traficant (who was initially a Democrat and became an independent later on), from Youngstown, Ohio a town that was hard hit by the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt, who ended his off the wall floor speeches in Congress with his trademark line from Star Trek, "Beam Me Up Scotty." 

At the moment, we have lots of other crazy politicians.

We have President Donald Trump who has no difficulty calling white black on a daily basis.

We have Vice President Pence, who worries about being corrupted by having lunch alone with a woman on professional matters and advances a Dominionist ideology.

Ted Cruz, in his campaign for the 2016 Presidential nomination somehow thought that banning birth control was one of the nation's most urgent priorities.

Further down the pecking order, is Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones, who among his many extreme and misguided positions, refuses to equip his deputies with Narcan, a drug which can almost miraculously prevent someone from dying from heroin overdoses, because he thinks that people who overdose on drugs deserve to die.

Somehow (and political theory can explain in part why this is particularly prone to happen in a two party system with closed primaries for each political party), extremists are vastly overrepresented in public office (as well as people who commit crimes).

Of course, there are plenty of politicians who aren't nearly so crazy. To pick one example from the other side of the aisle here in Colorado, former Attorney General and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers is not nearly as extreme as many of his Republican peers. I still disagree with him on most issues, but he comes from the establishment wing of the Republican Party, not the Conspiracy Theorist wing of the party.

The question I'm wondering about today, which spurred this post as a reminder to keep investigating it (I won't answer it in this post), is whether "crazy", as I've loosely defined it, among politicians holding elected office, is basically a smooth continuum, or if it instead is more of a discrete quantity with clearly clustered levels of crazy?

If crazy is a discrete quantity, then the ways to address it in our political system and ideally, to minimize its importance in the process, leads to one kind of approach (e.g. well informed screening processes for candidates to remove bad apples and effective processes to remove existing officials who "cross the line" too far, too many times).

If crazy is a continuous quantity in elected politicians, in contrast, then the ways to address it in our political system are probably different (e.g. movement politics and shifts in the behavior or character of the median voter in each district). This is because if crazy is a continuous quantity, then developing institutions that deprive the very most extreme politicians from power doesn't do much good as it only incrementally changes to political balance.

Mangakas Without Medicine II

On September 18, 2008, a couple of months before Barack Obama, whose signature accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), was elected, I wrote a post entitled "Mangakas Without Medicine" discussing the pre-ACA travails of webcomic authors having a child in a birth that had some complications. Some of what I noted in my previous post is still true:

In Japan, they call a comic book author a Mangaka, and many of the highest income earners in the country write comic books. In the U.S., however, life as a mangaka is tougher. Most are young, often about to get married or just starting families, and cobbling together sufficient health care is a struggle.

The author of the webcomic "Rise from Ashes", who goes by Nim (a.k.a. Madeleine Rosca), recently had a very similar experience, which she explained cartoon style. 

There were financial issues even post-ACA, for her, but the bitterness and hopelessness felt by the Mankagas in 2008 just wasn't there with the same intensity. It is better now than it was before the ACA, especially for self-employed people like my family and that of most Mankaga (many of whom are also working poor or lower middle class economically, which is another group that has been helped tremendously by the ACA).

A return to the bad old days pre-ACA would be a horrible thing.

Internet Trolls Score High On Psychopathy Continuum

Internet trolls tend to score high on psychological measures of psychopath and can determine the feelings of others without sharing or experiencing those feelings. The underlying study is here.

End Near In War On ISIS?

After nine months, the Battle of Mosul has finally resulted in victory of Iraqi allied forces, and the titular capital of ISIS territory, Raqqa may fall soon as well. ISIS has suffered massive losses of soldiers, military equipment and facilities. Its cash flow from oil and other ventures is dwindling.

ISIS has lost 60% of its land since January 2015, with its holdings now reduced to a territory the size of Belgium. 

"Losing control of the heavily populated Iraqi city of Mosul, and oil rich areas in the Syrian provinces of Raqqa and Homs, has had a particularly significant impact on the group's ability to generate revenue[.]"

In Syria, ISIS has lost most of the territory to the north and western edge of its range that it controlled a year and a half ago. So far, most of the victories in Syria have not gone to Syria, which continues to lack control over much of its territory in an ongoing civil war with multiple factions that has produced a massive refugee crisis, but to rebel factions in its civil war.

Iraq seems to be doing a better job of reclaiming control of its territory, and it is mostly the Iraqi government together with Iraqi Kurds that are doing so. In Iraq, ISIS controls only two isolated blobs of territory along the Euphrates Valley, one near Mosul and one near Kirkuk (these two areas appear to be the current military priority for Iraqi lead forces at this point) and one small stretch of territory along the Tigris River near the Syrian border. 

Almost all of ISIS territory in both Syria and Iraq combined is largely cut off from access to the outside world. It has no ports, no aircraft or airports it can use, no border with Turkey, and no access to the main highways across the desert. 

The opponents of ISIS (does it have any sovereign friends?), who are mostly part of a U.S. led international coalition of forces, with particularly large Iraqi and Kurdish components, meanwhile, are continuing to attack its limited military and economic resources can to painstakingly slowly regain the territory that ISIS seized in the blink of an eye. Its opponents have complete control of the air space, advanced weapons, seemingly unlimited budgets for their troops, and greater numbers of troops. 

It may be largely a slow war of logistics and attrition at this point, but ISIS certainly seems to be losing it.

Building Trust and Consensus

A new Pew study shows that the percentage of Republicans who believe that higher education is a negative force in society has surged by 45% and become a majority of Republicans (58%). Just seven or eight years ago, Republicans and Democrats had almost identical views on the value of higher education and overwhelmingly thought that it was a positive force. 

The percentage of Republicans who see higher education as positive (36%) is only slightly higher than the percentage who see unions (33%) as positive, and on a positive minus negative basis, Republicans are more favorably inclined towards unions  (net -13 percentage points) than they are towards higher education (net -22 percentage points).

In contrast, 72% of Democrats see higher education as positive (net +53 percentage points), and 59% see unions as positive (net +37 percentage points).

Longer standing Republican distaste for the media continues, with just 10% of Republicans viewing the media as a positive force in society, while 85% see it as negative (net -75 percentage points). This compares to 44% of Democrats who see the media as a positive force (net -2 percentage points).

The GOP alienation from the media, higher education, and government generally, taken together is profound and troubling, even tough it is somewhat understandable as all three institutions are carried out by people who are, on average, more liberal than average these days.

How can you have a meaningful democracy when 30%-40% of the voters think that the institution that they are electing people to run (and indeed, that their party controlled at the time of the survey) is basically a negative force in the world and when they also feel that the primary sources of reliable information about the decisions that government is making are conspiring to make the world a worse place?

How can anyone reach common ground in policy discussions when there isn't even any source for the facts that has wide trust and support for those involved in those discussions?

How do you get tens of millions of people to step away from the brink of an insane fantasy world and return to the realm of a more rational, more normal world that is connected with reality?

Who Are Flat Earthers?

The Flat Earth movement is a sociological eye opener about how people come to believe things. Rational, scientific arguments alone simply don't cut it for a great many people on a great many issues. This first hand, interview based account from the Denver Post is important because the character of the members doesn't fit a lot of naive stereotypes (I've highlighted some in  the excerpt below) - although conspiracy thinking is one critical part of the mix.

Some have been educated in the sciences. They use computers and aren't Luddites. Their metaphors are as more pop culture than religious and most arrive at their views late in life rather than out of commitment to childhood religious teachings. They are anti-authoritarians, not strict adherents to transmitted authority and religious ideologies that predate the Copernican revolution (ca. 1514 CE).

Every Tuesday at 6 p.m., three dozen Coloradans from every corner of the state assemble in the windowless back room of a small Fort Collins coffee shop. They have met 16 times since March, most nights talking through the ins and outs of their shared faith until the owners kick them out at closing. . . . 

They’re thousands strong — perhaps one in every 500 — and have proponents at the highest levels of science, sports, journalism and arts.  They call themselves Flat Earthers. Because they believe Earth — the blue, majestic, spinning orb of life — is as flat as a table. . . . 

The Fort Collins group — mostly white and mostly male, college-age to septuagenarian — touts itself as the first community of Flat Earthers in the United States. Sister groups have since spawned in Boston, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Chicago. In Colorado, Ptolemaic-science revivalists have lofty ambitions: raising $6,000 to put up a billboard along Interstate 25 broadcasting their worldview. . . . 

(All scientists and educators consulted for this story rejected the idea of a flat earth.) . . .

“There’s so much evidence once you set aside your preprogrammed learning and begin to look at things objectively with a critical eye,” says Bob Knodel, a Denver resident and featured guest at a recent Tuesday meeting. “You learn soon that what we’re taught is mainly propaganda.” 

Knodel worked for 35 years as an engineer and now runs the popular YouTube channel Globebusters, which has nearly 2 million views across more than 135 videos. “I’ve researched conspiracies for a long time,” he says. “I’ve looked very critically at NASA. Why is it that the astronauts have conflicting stories about the sky? Is it bright with stars, or a deep velvet black?” 

His wife, Cami, shares his views. “Our YouTube channel gets people to critically think,” she said to the Fort Collins group. “The heliocentric model says that we’re spinning at 1,038 mph. They say you won’t notice it because it’s a continual motion. But you should be able to feel it. You shouldn’t be able to function allegedly spinning that fast.” 

The weekly meet-ups also give forum to friendly lines of questioning. Some are straightforward (“What do you say back to people who call you stupid?”) and summon a ready-made answer (“You’re not stupid, period. They have to understand that there are deceptions going on at enormous levels”). Others stump even the experts. “How are we Flat Earthers supposed to explain to our friends the solar eclipse in August?” asked one attendee. The room fell silent. “We’ll have to do more research and get back to you on that.” . . . 

Like nearly every member of the movement, Sargent converted to Flat Earthism late in life. For most of his first five decades, he believed Earth to be a spinning globe. But something changed around the summer of 2014, when he stumbled upon a YouTube video contending that Earth is flat. 

“It was interesting, but I didn’t think it was real,” he says. “I started the same way as everyone else, saying, ‘Oh, I’ll just prove the earth is round.’ Nine months later, I was staring at my computer thinking, ‘I can’t prove the globe anymore.’ ” 

He remembers the date — Feb. 10, 2015 — when he took the plunge and started creating Flat Earth content of his own. To his surprise, the daily videos he had begun churning out ignited a firestorm online. The 49-year-old now devotes himself to Flat Earth propagation full time. He has made 600 YouTube videos and been interviewed more than 120 times. 

His conversion to the cult of globe-busting follows a common pattern among proselytes: latent anti-authoritarianism, which first found outlet in popular conspiracy theories of the mid-aughts, that by the mid-2010s transformed into full-blown contempt for the global model. In most cases, the catalyst was YouTube, with its highly popular flat-earth videos that began proliferating in late 2014. . . . “Before I did the first few videos back in 2015, if you typed ‘flat earth’ into YouTube you’d get 50,000 results,” he says. “Now, you’ll come in with 17.4 million. That’s more than a 30,000 percent increase. And we’re growing.” . . . 

The Centennial State has been the cradle of the American flat earth renaissance since birth. The first Flat Earth International Conference, which will be in Raleigh, N.C., in November, features a number of Colorado-based Flat Earthers, including Sargent, Knodel and Matthew Procella, or ODD Reality, a Denver-based rapper and YouTuber with 75,000 subscribers and nearly 7 million video views. 

The movement, though, is not a monolith. Differences of opinion divide the community on matters of scientific interpretation, cosmology, strategy and even the most fundamental questions of geology, such as: what shape is our planet? 

Many subscribe to the “ice wall theory,” or the belief that the world is circumscribed by giant ice barriers, like the walls of a bowl, that then extend infinitely along a flat plane. Sargent envisions Earth as “a giant circular disc covered by a dome.” He likens the planet to a snow globe, similar to the one depicted in “The Truman Show,” a fictitious 1998 existential drama about an insurance salesman unknowingly living in an artificially constructed dome. . . . 

He and other Flat Earthers can only speculate why the global conspiracy has had such staying power for more than 500 years, or why “the top” — the uber-elite heads of governments, universities and major corporations that allegedly know “the truth” — would continue to uphold a scheme that offers little in the way of riches or strategic power. 

“It’s not about money. They want complete mind control,” Knodel says after the meeting in the lobby of the Fort Collins coffee shop. “They want to create two classes: the ultra rich and servants. At that point they would’ve taken over the world, and enslaved the population, and controlled everything.”

From the Denver Post.

Others have faulted the story for its moral equivalency standpoint that threats this viewpoint as valid, although the one line parenthetical statement midway through the story that "(All scientists and educators consulted for this story rejected the idea of a flat earth.)" is probably sufficient when the majority view is so universally and bipartisanly held. 

Only one in 500 people is a flat Earther, while 64% of Americans (including 44% of Americans with graduate degrees and 45% of people who know people from Korea) can't find North Korea on a map.

Quote of the Day

As Rebecca Solnit documented in her must-read history book A Paradise Built in Hell, disaster is not typically attended by a breakdown in the social order that lays bare the true bestial nature of your fellow human. Instead, these are moments in which people rise brilliantly to the occasion, digging their neighbors out of the rubble, rushing to give blood, opening their homes to strangers.

- Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing fame) in an essay at Locus Online Perspective on July 5, 2017.

UPDATE July 11, 2017: Examples of people rising to the occasion can be found here.

Chemical Target For Extending Child-Like Language Acquisition Identified

Tests in lab mice have identified a single chemical that can be manipulated to extend the period during which people would acquire new languages with the ease of children, portending a nootropic drug revolution. 

By disrupting adenosine signaling in the auditory thalamus, we have extended the window for auditory learning for the longest period yet reported, well into adulthood and far beyond the usual critical period in mice," said corresponding author Stanislav Zakharenko, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Developmental Neurobiology. "These results offer a promising strategy to extend the same window in humans to acquire language or musical ability by restoring plasticity in critical regions of the brain, possibly by developing drugs that selectively block adenosine activity."

The paper is:

Jay A. Blundon, et al., "Restoring auditory cortex plasticity in adult mice by restricting thalamic adenosine signaling." Science, 2017 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4612

Teen Birth Rate At Record Low Yet Again

Another year, another record low teen birth rate in the USA. I've written this post so many years since this blog started in 2005, that it is hard to recognize just how remarkable it is. The details are as follows:

In the United States, teen-aged moms are increasingly rare. In 2016, the teen birth rate dropped 9% compared to the previous year, a new government report published Friday found. This record low for teens having babies continues a long-term trend. 

The birth rate among teen girls has dropped 67% since 1991, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which presented preliminary data for 2016 based on a majority (99.9%) of births. 

In 2016, the number of US births totaled 3,941,109, a decline of 1% compared to 2015. The fertility rate of 62 births per 1,000 women is a record low for the nation.

The number of births fell despite a growing U.S. population between 2015 and 2016.

Essentially all of the decrease in the teen birth rate, which has also been accompanied by a proportionate decreases in abortions, is due to to increased teen contraception use. Teens continue to have sex at more or less the same rates that they always have.

The decline in the teen birth rate, which is taking place much more rapidly among black and Hispanic teens is also the main factor equalizing total fertility rates between white and non-white women in the U.S.

Lots of Cops Still Evil

The ACLU of Connecticut is suing state police for fabricating retaliatory criminal charges against a protester after troopers were recorded discussing how to trump up charges against him. In what seems like an unlikely stroke of cosmic karma, the recording came about after a camera belonging to the protester, Michael Picard, was illegally seized by a trooper who didn’t know that it was recording and carried it back to his patrol car, where it then captured the troopers’ plotting.

From here.

ISIS Still Evil

A baby was fed to its own unwitting mother by ISIS, who also raped a ten-year-old girl to death in front of her own family, an Iraqi MP has claimed.

From here.

Second Trimester Fevers Increase Autism Risks 40%

A new study finds that fevers in pregnant women during the second trimester increase the risk of a child with autism by 40%. The magnitude of this effect closely matches estimates from previous independent studies. The sample size is 95,000 (which is just barely big enough to measure these effects), while most other fevers are not as definitvely associated with autism risk.

The link is strongest in the second trimester, when a single fever is associated with a 40 percent increase in autism risk. Three or more fevers after the first trimester triples the risk of having a child with autism, according to the study, which appeared 13 June in Molecular Psychiatry. 

The findings support the idea that a pregnant woman’s immune response, which often includes fever, can disrupt brain development in the fetus, says lead researcher Mady Hornig, associate professor epidemiology at the Columbia University. 

The study is inconclusive on whether drugs that lower fever mitigate the risk, but the results hint that they might, says Sarkis Mazmanian, professor of biology at the 

California Institute of Technology. . . .

15,701 of the mothers reported on a health questionnaire that they’d had one or more fevers while pregnant. The team followed all of the participants’ children until they reached age 9, on average, and found that 583 received an autism diagnosis.

The timing of the fever matters for autism risk, the researchers found. Compared with the 40 percent increase in the second trimester, having a fever in the first trimester carries a 34 percent increase in the risk of autism, but that result is not statistically significant. Having a fever in the third semester has no effect on autism risk.

The researchers also found a dose-response relationship for fever: The increase in risk ranges from 30 percent throughout pregnancy for one or two episodes of fever, to more than threefold for three or more episodes in the second trimester and beyond.

Still, the vast majority of women who have a fever during pregnancy do not have a child with autism and the absolute increase in risk is small. Even among mothers who had three or more fevers, only 5 out of 308 children (about 1.6 percent) have autism, compared with 376 of 65,502 children (about 0.6 percent) whose mothers reported no fevers. . . .

Hornig’s team examined whether medications that lower body temperature would reduce the risk. More than 5,600 women took acetaminophen for fever during their second trimester. The team found an association between acetaminophen use and a decrease in autism risk, but it was not statistically significant. Only 161 women took ibuprofen during the second trimester, and none of them have a child with autism. (About half of pregnant women use acetaminophen at least once, but doctors generally advise against ibuprofen use during pregnancy.) . . .

A 2013 study led by Hertz-Picciotto found that drugs that lower fever mitigate the increase in autism risk associated with fever. 

The mechanism for fevers to cause autism in a fetus might include autoimmune responses and/or inflammation (which aren't mutually exclusive - inflammation is one type of autoimmune response).

Autism has a strong genetic component, although it appears that a lot of the risk comes from de novo mutations that were not present in either of the parents when they were born. It also appears that women have protective genes that are absent in men that mitigate autism symptoms or prevent them from arising.

Baseline autism spectrum disorder risk is on the order of 1% of all births (comprising a large share of symptoms previously classified as cognitive developmental disorders not otherwise classified), so it is closer to 1.4% percent for pregnant women who have fevers in the second trimester (a scenario consistent with the notion that the anatomical systems that develop in this time period during gestation are the ones that are associated with autism).

But, if the 40% figure is to be applied on a case by case basis, rather than across the board (which isn't clear from the media report that I link) the concern may be much more of a concern in pregnancies where this is a high risk of autism (e.g. in cases where the father is middle aged or older, where there is a family history of sub-clinical autism-like personality traits, and where the fetus is male), than in pregnancies where no autism risk factors are present. 

On the other hand, if this is an across the board increase in risk, that does not interact with other risk factors, then second trimester fevers may be the main source of risk in otherwise low autism risk pregnancies, while it is a minor consideration relative to other risk factors in high autism risk pregnancies.

This is one of only a handful of well documented environmental causes of autism, which has a strong genetic component. Another is exposure of the parents to agricultural chemicals (before conception in the case of fathers and during gestation in the case of mothers).

Yet More SCOTUS Rulings

There were five new merits decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday which combined with orders entered today, wraps up the year (the October 2016 session) for the court.

* CALPERS v. ANZ Securities. The three year statute of repose for a suit alleging false statements in a registration statement is not tolled for individual claims while a class action lawsuit is pending. The decision is 5-4 involving the usual suspects. The dissent argues that individual claims of people who opt out of a class action are effectively part of the same civil action and hence are not untimely. But, the court takes an anti-class action stance once again.

* Davila v. Davis. A trial lawyer for a defendant convicted and sentenced to death preserved an arguably valid legal objection at trial, but the appellate lawyer for the defendant failed to raise the issue on appeal in conduct that arguably constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. The habeas corpus lawyer then failed to timely raise the issue of the appellate lawyer's ineffective assistance of counsel, which was arguably a second distinct instance of ineffective assistance of counsel. But, SCOTUS holds that ineffective assistance of habeas counsel in failing to point out ineffectively assistance of counsel by appellate counsel, is not sufficient to overcome the usual deadline for complaining about ineffective assistance of counsel by the appellate counsel. If the mistake had been made by trial counsel and habeas counsel, rather than appellate counsel and habeas counsel, review would have been available. The decision is 5-4 involving the usual suspects. Justice Thomas emphasizes the fact that there is no constitutional right to a criminal appeal (which is true, but generally irrelevant when there is a statutory right to a criminal appeal as there is in every state).

* Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. A state constitutional provision barring any public assistance for religious schools is held unconstitutional as applied to a religious school seeking a grant for rubberized surface material upgrades in a playground. The Court distinguishes between being denied benefits because one is a religious institution and being denied benefits because it would use the benefits for religious purposes (which the Court has previously held is permissible). The decision is 7-2 with Thomas and Gorsuch providing one concurring opinion and Breyer concurring in judgment only.  Thomas and Gorsuch would overturn Locke which held that denying funds that could be used for religious purposes is permissible. Breyer focuses on a narrow ruling limited to "a general program designed to secure or to improve the health and safety of children.", that has no religious content. Sotomayor and Ginsburg, in dissent emphasize that the Court is "holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church." This is contrary to state constitutions in more than 30 states including Colorado. It isn't clear if the conservatives have the votes to extend this to voucher cases like the one arising in Douglas County, Colorado's schools that would have allowed high school vouchers to be used for private religious schools at the K-12 level whose instruction would be explicitly religious, which were remanded for reconsideration by the Colorado Supreme Court in light of this opinion. A New Mexico case involving closer facts was also remanded to be reconsidered in light of this opinion. This case could portend a major change in establishment clause jurisprudence, or could involve only a narrow exception to existing law with little material impact.

* Hernandez v. Mesa, per curiam. The case is a Bivens action against a border guard is shot and killed a 15 year old Mexican boy on the other side of the border from the U.S. for no justifiable reason. The legal standard to determine if a Bivens action is available was clarified in a recently decided SCOTUS case (which is generally favorable to the government and was decided with a four justice plurality that might not have had the same result if all justices participated) and the high court disagreed with one aspect of the Court of Appeals' analysis of the facts (which is generally favorable to the Mexican boy's estate). The Court remanded to the Court of Appeals to reconsider the case in light of the new law and a differently applied factual issue before SCOTUS addresses the merits of the case, with procedural issues to be decided first in order to avoid the substantive law question if possible. It is quite likely that the Court of Appeals, on remand, will deny the boy's estate a right to bring a Bivens action and that the case may return to the U.S. Supreme Court for further review, either way.

* Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project, per curiam. The Court grants cert with regard to the Trump administration's Muslim ban on an expedited briefing schedule, sustaining the stay of the ban as to some people affected by it, while terminating the stay as applied to people with "no connection to the United States at all", pending resolution of the case by SCOTUS. This effectively reinstates the ban as to many refugees who had been fully vetted and has visas in place in a manner that will probably render their case moot by the time that the Court can hear it on the merits (since the ban was proposed to be for 90 days). But, since the stay was in place for a significant period of time pending this order, many such people will have already entered the United States at this point.

Vivid Facts Win Cases

In a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision over whether the Patent and Trademark Office should have the right to ban offensive trademarks, one of the most powerful arguments cited repeatedly in the Court's opinion by Justice Alito was an appendix to an amicus brief from the Washington Redskins which listed myriad really offensive trademarks that the Patent and Trademark Office had already held could be granted registration.

These vivid facts, by example, which the Court was left to its own devices to weigh and interpret, made it obvious that any application of the offensiveness standard was arbitrary. This list also strengthened the case that it would make no sense to adopt the government's argument that registration of a trademark rendered that trademark government speech which was entitled to greater regulation than other kinds of speech.

This brief is a great illustration of an important concept in persuasive legal writing. Often, vivid facts can be as powerful in which side wins or loses a case as legal precedents and statutory interpretation arguments. Certainly, vivid facts don't always work. But, even when they don't, they will often, at least, lead to a heartfelt dissent supporting your argument because they won someone on the bench over to your client's side of the argument.

A U.S. Demography Recap

As of 2008

A summary of the facts derived from census data and vital statistics reports in the U.S. as of 2008 lays out the facts demonstrating an inversion of lifetime fertility trends with the affluent having more kids rather than fewer.  

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2008/04/wealth-and-children.html 

For example, African-American women have had fewer lifetime births per woman than white women in the U.S. since 2002 (although African-American women tend to have their children at a significantly younger age).

Fewer families whose incomes fall in the bottom 10% of the population are having three or more children: 33.7% of such families had at least three kids in 2006, down from 39.8% in 1990, according to Census surveys. 

By contrast, the wealthiest families are having more children. In 2004, an estimated 41.3% of the wealthiest families had at least three children, much higher than in 1995, when an estimated 29.3% of families earning in the highest income bracket (that year, $300,000-plus) had three or more kids. . . .

By age, fertility is up dramatically for women aged 30 and up, and down significantly for women under 30, since 1990. The teen fertility rate has dropped by about 33%, it has dropped by about 12% for women in their early 20s, it has dropped by about 4% for women in the late 20s, it is up by more than 15% for women in their early 30s, it is up by about 50% for women in their late 30s, it is up by about 60% for women in their early 40s and it has roughly tripled for women in their late 40s. 

Fertility rates have dropped only slightly for Cuban-American, non-Hispanic white, and Asian-American women, but have dropped greatly for other Hispanic women, black women and Native American women. 

Multiple births are up almost 50% since 1990, with a disproportionate share of that growth among triplet and higher order births, and among non-Hispanic whites, both of which indicate an impact from fertility treatments. 

In terms of lifetime births per woman the trends are as follows (by ethnicity) with 2013 date from Tables 13 and 14 here.

White:
1980 - 1.8
1990 - 2.0
2000 - 2.1
2004 - 2.1
2013 - 1.9

Black:
1980 - 2.2
1990 - 2.5
2000 - 2.1
2004 - 2.0
2013 - 1.9

American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut:
1980 - 2.2
1990 - 2.2
2000 - 1.8
2004 - 1.7
2013 - 1.3

Asian or Pacific Islander:
1980 - 2.0
1990 - 2.0
2000 - 1.9
2004 - 1.9
2013 - 1.7

Hispanic:
1980 - NA
1990 - 3.0
2000 - 2.7
2004 - 2.9
2013 - 2.1

Since 2002, black fertility has been lower than white fertility, reserving a long term trend. 

As of 2006, the higher a woman's family income the more likely it is that she is childless, so the trend towards high income families with large families is offset matched by the large number of high income families that are childless. Of the poorest women 39.4% are childless, of the most affluent (75,000+ of family income) 47.9% are childless.

As of 2008:

Overall birth rates in the U.S. hit a record low in 2002, and have rebounded only slightly since then. The recent peak was in 1990, which had the highest birthrate for the period from 1972 to the present. The birth rate declined by roughly a third from 1960 to 1972, presumably as a result of improved contraception, continued to decline until 1976, rebounded slightly until 1990, declined slowly until 2002, and then has slowly rebounded again. Part of this change is also an echo of the baby boomers. 

Infant mortality has declined almost every year for decades, dropping about 75% since 1960 and more than 25% since 1990. 

Divorce rates have declined steadily since 1981 to reach the lowest level since 1970 in 2006, after rising from 1960 or earlier until then. But most or all of the decline in divorce rates since 1981 is attributable to a declining marriage rate over the same time period, which is at the lowest level since well before 1960.

Since 2008 - Many fewer teen births especially for non-whites and diverging marriage trends

Since 2008, the trend has continued. I’ve written blog posts touting all time lows for U.S. teen births in most of the years since then.

For example, there were about 1,030 children born to mothers aged 15 to 17 in New Jersey in 2014, a rate of 5.8 per 1,000 girls aged 15-17 down 15% from 2013 and down 78% from a peak in 1991.

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2016/10/child-marriage-in-new-jersey-is-not.html

 Similarly:

“Birth rates are down a whopping 51 percent among Hispanics age 15 to 19 since 2006, and down 44 percent among black teens, according to a survey of census data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teen pregnancy rates among whites also fell by a third.”

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2016/04/us-teen-birth-rate-at-all-time-low.html

The previous year, I noted that teen births had declined at an annual rate of 7% per year from 2007 through 2013. 

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2015/06/teen-births-at-all-time-us-low.html

This plays out against a background of dramatic divides between those with more and less education in the timing of when they have children and their marital status. The average age of a woman when she first marries (currently 27) had grown higher than the average age of a woman having her first child in 1989. The average high school educated woman has a first child two years before marrying while an average college educated woman has a first child two years after marrying. 

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-class-divide-in-marriage.html

“73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less” 

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2012/02/coming-to-terms-with-complicated.html

The likelihood of divorce is also extremely different between women with college degrees and women with only high school educations:

“the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were [divorced within ten years].

At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, it rose from 35% to 38%.”

http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2008/05/changing-face-of-motherhood.html

Happy Summer Solstice!

It is officially summer.

Moderate Brain Damage Common But Not Universal In Serial Killers

Most serial killers have brain damage, but several prominent ones (e.g. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Grady) did not. Those that do have brain damage do not have the most severe cases of brain damage, probably because that would critically impair their ability to plan and execute complex behavior.

We know that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is extremely common in the most difficult inmates. My guess is that those serial killers who do not show signs of brain damage are individuals who were born psychopaths, but who have escaped brain damage from trauma.

More SCOTUS Rulings

The latest from the U.S. Supreme Court:

* An Ohio death penalty sentence for a 1985 murder in Jenkins v. Hutton, is affirmed in a per curium opinion (overturning a 6th Circuit reversal) where the jury was not properly instructed regarding how to weigh evidence in the penalty phase of the case, but the objection was not preserved and neither the 6th Circuit nor the defendant could show in a way that met the heavy burden of proof that no reasonable jury would have convicted him had it been properly instructed.

* In Matal v. Tam, a unanimous 8-0 court (although with some concurring opinions) affirmed the determination that a law prohibiting offensive trademarks (in this case for the band "The Slants") is unconstitutional, affirming the en banc Federal Circuit, at least in this context. The statute is "a Lanham Act provision prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may “disparage . . . or bring . . . into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead.” 15 U. S. C. §1052(a)." Neither of the two concurrences undermine the holding in any way. (The case name was changed between oral arguments and a decision on the merits because the director of the PTO changed in the interim.)

* In McWilliams v. Dunn, the Court's 5-4 decision marks the first dissenting opinion that Judge Gorsuch has joined, which he does with the other conservatives on the court. The Court reversed an Alabama death sentence where the defense was not permitted to obtain a mental health expert as part of his right to effective counsel in his defense to argue their client's insanity as a mitigating factor in the face of evidence that there was a mental health problem present. Neither the state expert's testimony nor brief assistance from a volunteer psychiatrist meet this obligation. A harmless error determination was reserved for the 11th Circuit on remand.

* In Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., San Francisco Cty. the court finds that "specific personal jurisdiction" (as opposed to general jurisdiction) is lacking in this case brought in a California state trial court in an 8-1 decision. According to the official syllabus:

A group of plaintiffs, most of whom are not California residents, sued Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS) in California state court, alleging that the pharmaceutical company’s drug Plavix had damaged their health. BMS is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York, and it maintains substantial operations in both New York and New Jersey. Although it engages in business activities in California and sells Plavix there, BMS did not develop, create a marketing strategy for, manufacture, label, package, or work on the regulatory approval for Plavix in the State. And the nonresident plaintiffs did not allege that they obtained Plavix from a California source, that they were injured by Plavix in California, or that they were treated for their injuries in California. The California Superior Court denied BMS’s motion to quash service of summons on the nonresidents’ claims for lack of personal jurisdiction, concluding that BMS’s extensive activities in the State gave the California courts general jurisdiction. Following this Court’s decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___, the State Court of Appeal found that the California courts lacked general jurisdiction. But the Court of Appeal went on to find that the California courts had specific jurisdiction over the claims brought by the nonresident plaintiffs. Affirming, the State Supreme Court applied a “sliding scale approach” to specific jurisdiction, concluding that BMS’s “wide ranging” contacts with the State were enough to support a finding of specific jurisdiction over the claims brought by the nonresident plaintiffs. That attenuated connection was met, the court held, in part because the nonresidents’ claims were similar in many ways to the California residents’ claims and because BMS engaged in other activities in the State. 

The high court finds that the absence of an in-state injury or injury to a resident plaintiff is controlling. The high court is also unimpressed with the fact that the drug giving rise to the product liability is distributed by a California company. The official syllabus also notes that:

The Court’s decision will not result in the parade of horribles that respondents conjure up. It does not prevent the California and out-of-state plaintiffs from joining together in a consolidated action in the States that have general jurisdiction over BMS. Alternatively, the nonresident plaintiffs could probably sue together in their respective home States. In addition, since this decision concerns the due process limits on the exercise of specific jurisdiction by a State, the question remains open whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same restrictions on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court.

Statutory limits on federal court jurisdiction probably prohibit the possibility of federal court jurisdiction now, but the decision leaves Congress with the option of potentially changing that statute. which currently limits the personal jurisdiction of federal trial courts to that of a state court of general jurisdiction in the same state, even though this is probably not constitutionally required.

Sotomayor's dissent argues that:

Three years ago, the Court imposed substantial curbs on the exercise of general jurisdiction in its decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___ (2014). Today, the Court takes its first step toward a similar contraction of specific jurisdiction by holding that a corporation that engages in a nationwide course of conduct cannot be held accountable in a state court by a group of injured people unless all of those people were injured in the forum State.  

I fear the consequences of the Court’s decision today will be substantial. The majority’s rule will make it difficult to aggregate the claims of plaintiffs across the country whose claims may be worth little alone. It will make it impossible to bring a nationwide mass action in state court against defendants who are “at home” in different States. And it will result in piecemeal litigation and the bifurcation of claims. None of this is necessary. A core concern in this Court’s personal jurisdiction cases is fairness. And there is nothing unfair about subjecting a massive corporation to suit in a State for a nationwide course of conduct that injures both forum residents and nonresidents alike. . . . 

It “does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice,’” International Shoe, 326 U. S., at 316, to permit plaintiffs to aggregate claims arising out of a single nationwide course of conduct in a single suit in a single State where some, but not all, were injured. But that is exactly what the Court holds today is barred by the Due Process Clause. This is not a rule the Constitution has required before. I respectfully dissent. 

In short, this is another manifestation of the Court's longstanding aversion to class action lawsuits. I agree strongly with Sotomayor on this point, but the reality is that the majority's rule is the one I'll have to litigate under for the indefinite future.

* In Packingham v. North Carolina, a unanimous court held that a ban on social media usage for sex offenders was unconstitutional. The official syllabus explains that:

North Carolina law makes it a felony for a registered sex offender “to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages.” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§14–202.5(a), (e). According to sources cited to the Court, the State has prosecuted over 1,000 people for violating this law, including petitioner, who was indicted after posting a statement on his personal Facebook profile about a positive experience in traffic court. The trial court denied petitioner’s motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the law violated the First Amendment. He was convicted and given a suspended prison sentence. On appeal, the State Court of Appeals struck down §14–202.5 on First Amendment grounds, but the State Supreme Court reversed. Held: The North Carolina statute impermissibly restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment. 

Basically, the judges find that the ruling is not sufficiently narrowly tailored to the objective to meet constitutional must and must be limited to postings that could harm children or facilitate contact with children.

* Ziglar v. Abbasi is procedurally weird. Two Justices of the eight person court (both liberal whose involvement would have resulted in the opposite conclusion on the merits) recused themselves and Justice Gorsuch did not participate, and two Justices dissented, so the majority opinion commanded only 4 votes out of 6 justices participating (still a quorum). SCOTUS blog explains that the release of the decision involved some drama, no doubt, in part, because the liberal wing of the Court was pawned on procedural grounds allowing a minority of the court to prevail when it wouldn't have been able to otherwise. The dissent accurately discerns that this ruling is dangerous to the future of liberty in the United States. An analysis at the Atlantic explains why this is the case - basically because it lets officials get away with admittedly wrongful conduct against innocent people in violation of their civil rights in the name of the War on Terrorism.

Kennedy’s second opinion is in Ziglar v. Abbasi, about whether a so-called Bivens civil rights action is available to six people of Arab or South Asian descent detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who challenged the conditions of their confinement. 

Kennedy’s opinion for a four-justice majority (out of six participating) holds that most of the Bivens actions brought by the detainees should not have been allowed to go forward. 

“Judicial inquiry into the national security realm raises serious separation-of-powers concerns,” Kennedy says. He is joined in full by Roberts and Alito, and for the most part by Thomas. Sotomayor and Kagan did not participate for unspecified reasons of recusal, and Gorsuch did not participate because he was not on the court when the case was argued. 

Breyer has written a dissent, joined by Ginsburg, which he will read from at some length from the bench. It is the first dissent from the bench in a term in which some were predicting we might not see any at all. 

“The majority concludes that the plaintiffs cannot or may not be able to bring their suit, even if they prove their allegations and even if the defendants violated clearly established constitutional commands,” Breyer says. “Justice Ginsburg and I disagree. In our view, Bivens actions should continue to provide appropriate compensation for those deprived of important constitutional rights and in times of special national-security need.” 

Breyer goes on for a good 15 minutes. Alito mostly looks down or out toward the crowded courtroom, as do the other justices. 

“We understand the majority’s basic concern, namely that federal officials might hesitate in carrying out their security-related responsibilities if they fear future lawsuits for damages with an attendant risk of judicial second-guessing of decisions,” Breyer says. 

In time of war or national-security emergency, Bivens actions “may be particularly needed,” he adds. “History warns of the risk to liberty in times of national crisis.” He cites the Alien and Sedition Acts, the suppression of civil liberties during World War I, and the internment during World War II of “70,000 American citizens of Japanese origin.” 

While the majority points to suits for injunctive relief that may be brought to challenge government overreach, those are filed during national emergencies when the courts may be hesitant to interfere. “A damages action, however, is typically brought after the emergency is over, after emotions have cooled, and at a time when more factual information is available,” Breyer says. 

He closes by citing Lord Atkins, a British judge who wrote during World War II that “amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.” 

“The court should say the same here,” Breyer concludes.

Quote of the Day

Canon Jesus was way better than Fandom Jesus.

- Wil Wheaton

There is a lot of truth in the quote, but not enough to win my faith in a ministry based to a great extent on a demon-possession theory of mental and physical health, or a demigod sacrifice theory of personal salvation in the afterlife, as portrayed in the Gospels and some of the remaining New Testament. The Canon Jesus is way better than Fandom Jesus, but ultimately, they are both just stories - perhaps even legendary history, but hardly the truth.

The First U.S. Dog Fight In 18 Years

For the first time since the 1991 Gulf War, a U.S. fighter jet (a carrier based F-18) shot down another jet fighter in the air (a Syrian Su-22) in Syria in defense of its allies in the war against ISIS in Syria that is one part of a complex civil war there.

The U.S. military spends an immense amount of time and money developing fight aircraft optimized for air to air combat and training pilots to conduct it, but, in part because of that developed superiority in capability, almost never actually does.

Also, notably, Iran has joined the fight against ISIS by firing ground based missiles at ISIS targets in Syria. This move not only retaliates against recent ISIS terrorism in Iran (which as a Shi'ite state is anathema to Sunni ISIS in addition to the fact that Iran has backed the rump Iraq government fighting ISIS in Iraq). It also demonstrates the military capability of Iran to strike far outside its borders, which coupled with nuclear weapons which it claims to have stepped back from developing, could pose a real threat to Israel.