Radley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona. The only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana. This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn’t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues. But it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s “porn czar,” Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled “Obscenity Cases” which said: We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] comments at the NAC to ‘kick butt and take names’, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations."Adult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a “good case.” It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling. The reason the second chain wasn’t also prosecuted? It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government. And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store. More details and links at The Agitator. And there’s more on the other attorney firings at TPM Muckraker. UPDATE (March 26, 2007): Balko has further comments on Charlton’s firing based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ. Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway. Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn’t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations. UPDATE (April 27, 2007): The New York Times editorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton’s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi: ...

That’s the title of an opinion piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, which I borrowed for a comment of my own at the Secular Outpost. Check it out.

Over at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Tim Lee points us to a dogpile of conservative criticism of Dinesh D’Souza’s book, The Enemy at Home. Some choice quotes: D’Souza has written a very bad book. If one were to take his NRO apologia seriously, his dishonesty would appear to be an issue secondary to his grandiosity. But he is not to be taken seriously and his dishonesty is the primary issue. Thus in his apologia D’Souza fails to address the thesis that frames his book. His thesis, let it be remembered, is this: “The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11.” It is a thesis, he states in the very first sentence of the book, “that will seem startling at the outset.” It is startling because he is the first writer commenting on 9/11 to have tumbled to its cause. [Scott Johnson]and “When in doubt, change the subject.” I don’t really blame Dinesh D’Souza for following that cynical bit of debater’s advice. Had I written The Enemy at Home, I would be tempted to try it, too. Alas, I fear that his 6,800-word effort to stimulate, er, “civil discussion” has failed. Why? It has nothing to do with “heresy,” as D’Souza suggests. He comes much closer when he mentions “massive errors of fact or logic.” The problem with The Enemy at Home is . . . well, everything. (I put this more politely in my original review.) What I mean is that it’s not a matter of this or that argument going astray. It’s rather that D’Souza’s major premise—that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”—is wildly at odds with reality. Starting out from that mistake, D’Souza takes readers on a fantastical voyage in which white is black, day is night, and a dozen jihadists plowed jetliners into skyscrapers because of Britney Spears—or maybe it was because of Hillary Clinton, America’s high divorce-rate, or its lamentable practice of tolerating homosexuals instead of stoning them to death. [Roger Kimball]More at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, including a link to the full set of criticisms. ...

David Friedman has put up a few thoughtful posts about global warming on his own blog, as well as engaged in some discussions in the comments at another blog. He summarizes his own position as: global warming is probably real, is probably but not certainly anthropogenic, is probably not going to have large effects on size and frequency of hurricanes and is probably not going to have large effects on sea level. It is a real problem but not, on current evidence, an impending catastrophe.The posts at his own blog are: “Global Warming, Nanotech, and Who to Believe”“Global Warming, Carbon Taxes, and Public Choice”“Physics, Economics, Hurricanes, and Mistakes” and the two discussions in comments on the Backseat Driving blog are: “Responding to the ’no big deal’ denialists”“The Duke lacrosse controversy and attitudes to global warming”Brian at Backseat Driving says on the first post that “Friedman responds in the comments to this post. The people replying to him in the follow-up comments do a far better job of it than I would.” In my opinion, Friedman completely wipes the floor with those who replied to him. On a related subject, Chris Mooney gives his take on William Broad’s article in the New York Times about criticism of Al Gore’s movie: Let me be clear: I have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and I found it almost entirely accurate. Gore has done a tremendous job of drawing attention to this issue and he gets the science right by and large. But my question as a point of strategy has always been: Why include the 1 to 5 percent of more questionable stuff, and so leave onself open to this kind of attack? Given how incredibly smart and talented Al Gore is, didn’t he see this coming?He points out some specific areas where Gore got it wrong (which Chris also pointed out to me in conversation at last summer’s Skeptics Society conference–this is no change of position for him). John Horgan picks up on the same Broad story, and notes that: What fascinates me about Broad’s stories is that they seemed to at least implicitly contradict the view of global warming purveyed by his Times colleague Andrew Revkin, who spoke about global warming at Stevens in December 2005. Blogging on Broad’s article last fall, I wondered, “Is there dissension at the New York Times on the issue of global warming”? I’m still wondering. Maybe I should try to get Broad and Revkin to visit Stevens again and hash this out. Brian would love that.And goes on in a subsequent post to quote from and refer to Chris Mooney’s blog post. ...

Via Will Wilkinson, the February 12, 2007 issue of The New Yorker has a nice profile of the Churchlands (PDF) which discusses their history and views on mind and brain (without once mentioning the term “eliminative materialism”): One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven my car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.’”Wilkinson points out that he has adopted similar use of scientific language about physical states to describe his mental states, and agrees with the Churchlands that this enhances the ability to describe what he’s feeling: I think that once one gets a subjective grasp of the difference between the effects of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, glucocorticoids, prolactin, testosterone, etc., monistic conceptions of pleasure and happiness become almost self-evidently false, and a kind of pluralism comes to seem almost inevitable as the trade-offs between different kinds of physical/qualitative states become apparent. Wilkinson’s blog post on the subject is here. I was also interested to see that the Churchlands are advocates of using the evidence from neuroscience in ethical and legal contexts, which brings to mind Jeffrey Rosen’s recent article in the New York Times (March 11, 2007) on “The Brain on the Stand." ...

Mr. Juggles at Long or Short Capital takes on Robert Kiyosaki: Robert Kiyosaki is a maroon. … This is idiotic. In fact, this article is so terrible, I find it difficult to even know how to properly form an argument against it. It doesn’t even make sense. But here is more evidence to unback-up the truck on Rich Dad Poor Dad guy. … While he is effectively mananaging his intelligence, and I applaud that, what exactly does this leave people to do with their money? He advocates against cash, stocks, bonds, saving money, buying things, the US, real estate, etc etc. What is left? Brine shrimp futures? Short or long positions in abstract ideas like Perf?Go to Long or Short Capital to see the nonsense they’re criticizing. ...

Check it out here. I’m not on the list, but my 13-year-old nephew is, due to his common last name. (Via Bruce Schneier’s Blog.)

Sen. Charles Schumer has provided a nice list of how the Bush administration has lied to Congress so far about the U.S. Attorney purge: Schumer: Here are some of the falsehoods we’ve been told that are now unraveling. First, we were told that the seven of the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons. It now turns out this was a falsehood, as the glowing performance evaluations attest. Second, we were told by the attorney general that he would, quote, “never, ever make a change for political reasons." ...

Glen Whitman has assembled “a taxonomy of all the questions that ought to affect our choices about dealing with global warming.” His list so far includes: 1. The existence of global warming. (He assigns a 95%+ confidence level to this.) 2. Human contribution to global warming. (He assigns 90% confidence to this, but is uncertain about how much of the effect is due to human activity, though he references David Friedman’s point that this doesn’t make much difference to whether or not we should do anything about it.) 3. Magnitude of the warming effect. 4. Net harms or benefits due to warming. (He observes that the latter is often ignored.) 5. Extent of decentralized response. (How much will be done in the form of individual activity, changes in land prices, etc. to reduce negative impacts?) 6. Marginal impact of collective abatement efforts. (If all nations cooperated, how much of the negative effects could be abated or mitigated?) 7. Marginal impact of unilateral abatement efforts. (What can the United States do on its own, or at least without the assistance of emerging economies not likely to cooperate, and how much effect could that have?) To which he adds that there are many more questions about specific proposed responses, their marginal efficacy, and costs. If you have further suggestions for his list, post comments at Agoraphilia.

Talking Points Memo has a list of reasons Giuliani shouldn’t be president based on his association with and continued giving of high-profile jobs to Bernie Kerik: They seem to be stipulating to their knowing about and being untroubled by a) Kerik’s long-standing ties to an allegedly mobbed-up Jersey construction company (see yesterday’s piece in the Daily News and tomorrow’s in the Times), sub-a) that Kerik received numerous unreported cash gifts from Lawrence Ray, an executive at said Jersey construction company (Ray was later indicted along with Edward Garafola, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s brother-in-law, and Daniel Persico, nephew of Colombo Family Godfather Carmine “The Snake” Persico and others on unrelated federal charges tied to what the Daily News called a “$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle.” b) that Riker’s Island prison became a hotbed of political corruption and cronyism on his watch, c) that he is accused by nine employees of the hospital he worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss, d) that a warrant for his arrest (albeit in a civil case) was issued in New Jersey as recently as six years ago, e) that as recently as last week he was forced to testify in a civil suit in a case covering the period in which he was New York City correction commissioner, in which the plaintiff, “former deputy warden Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman [Kerik was allegedly having an affair with], Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero,” or f) his rapid and unexplained departure from Baghdad. … Pretty much the most generous interpretation of all this is that Giuliani was guilty of amazingly poor judgment in giving Kerik all these plum assignments. And it strongly points to a tendency on Giuliani’s part of bad judgment with a strong penchant for surrounding himself with cronies and yes-men. … TPM Reader RR notes that the list above is by no means exhaustive. And he’s definitely right. This was just the most convenient catalog of sins and ridiculousness that I found with the TPM search function. For instance it doesn’t include the Judith Regan/Luv Shack scandal that broke I think the day after post above ran. This was the case in which an apartment near ground zero – made available by a New York real estate developer – for off-duty cops to relax while taking a break from clean up duties ended up being commandered by Kerik so he could use it as his off the books bachelor pad for doing the wild thing with celebrity book editor Judith Regan.To add to that list, The Smoking Gun obtained a copy of the April 8, 1993 “Rudolph W. Giuliani Vulnerability Study” which was commissioned by Giuliani’s NYC mayoral campaign, all copies of which were supposed to be destroyed. The Smoking Gun comments: He surely could not have been pleased to read that his “personal life raises questions about a ‘weirdness factor.’” That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani’s 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials. “When asked about his personal life, Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers,” the campaign report stated. “All of this brings the soundness of his judgement into question–and the veracity of his answers.” The internal study also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam draft and was a “man without convictions” because of his transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice Department appointee. “In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political contradiction…He doesn’t really fit with the Republicans. Too liberal. Giuliani has troubles with the Democrats, too."Also at The Smoking Gun is a summary of some of the revelations in Wayne Barrett’s biography of Giuliani.