Considerable quote

I first came across this Chesterton passage about a year ago and found it powerful. Unfortunately I neglected to add it to my collection and have been frustrated on several occasions when I didn't have it at hand. I rediscovered it today and find it potent as ever.

 There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Bully for the Boy Scouts

Connie Schultz believes that it is "bullying" for the Boy Scouts of America to have a policy that bars homosexuals from being Scouts or serving as leaders. She has this precisely backwards.

According to my dictionary, bullying is "the act of intimidating a weaker person to make them do something." That's a pretty straightforward definition of the word as it's universally understood.

So is it bullying to have a policy that restricts membership? Most organizations have membership restrictions. I assume I need to be a doctor to join the American Medical Association, or that I need to have a law degree to become a member of the American Bar Association. Are those organizations bullying me? If so, I wasn't aware of it.

The Constitution restricts those who can be a member of the Senate:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

If restricting membership is "bullying," we'd have to conclude that every person in the United States is being bullied by our very Constitution, for none of us is permitted to be a Senator of a state in which we don't live. Yet no one considers this bullying -- because merely having a membership requirement doesn't intimidate anyone. It doesn't force anyone to do anything.

So how is the Boy Scout membership policy different? It's different only in who it excludes. Instead of discriminating against those without medical or law degrees, or against young people or outsiders, it discriminates against homosexuals. And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a private organization have the right to define itself and determine the makeup of its own membership? Ms. Schultz may not like it -- just as I may not like the fact that I can't represent the state of Hawaii in the United States Senate -- but we don't have an inalienable right to not be offended by others' choices.

But back to Ms. Schultz' bullying charge...

Can it fairly be argued that the Boy Scouts are intimidating anyone simply by restricting their membership? Can it fairly be argued that they are forcing anyone to do anything? As far as I can tell the Scouts aren't on any crusade to combat homosexuality, or to impose behaviors or values on anyone. They're not activists, overtly political, or overtly anything, really. They simply want to be left alone, to do what they've always done, promote traditional values and foster thoughtful, responsible young men -- something America badly needs at this juncture.

And that, I submit, is what this is really all about. It's not that the Boy Scouts have intimidated anyone, or that they are attempting to force anyone to do anything. The Scouts is a voluntary organization. It hasn't bullied anyone. The true source of the conflict is Ms. Schultz, and so many like her on the Left, who hold traditional American values in contempt. The Boy Scouts represent everything they wish do destroy -- traditional families, Judeo-Christian values, personal freedom, individual responsibility.

The Left brand the Boy Scouts as intolerant and bullying. But ask yourself, who is the real aggressor here? Which side is minding its own business, and which side is trying to intimidate and force the other side to do something? Who is the real bully?

The Left -- always the Left.

Considerable quote

“When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off.”
~ Claude Adrien Helvetius

Obama is a Big Fat Liar

Ira Stoll asks:

Where are the “fact-checkers” when you need them?

On CBS News’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, President Obama said, “Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes.”
As of Monday morning, neither the Washington Post’s Pinocchio-awarding Fact-Checker, nor the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org, nor the Tampa Bay Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning Politifact.com had risen to this opportunity, so let us take a stab.

Stoll takes more than a stab. He sets Obama's well creased pants ablaze. Using the Obama administration's own numbers, Stoll looks at the facts nine different ways and concludes that Obama is a Big Fat Liar. It doesn't matter if you look at taxes paid, tax rates, payroll taxes, whatever -- Big Fat Liberal Liar.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Michael Cannon says Stoll was generous.

You keep using that word...

I'm posting this chart just so I'll have it handy next time someone says we need to "invest" more in education.

We've increased our "investment" in education nearly 300% over the past several decades. We've got exactly nothing in return.

Distrust of the media at record highs

A new Gallop poll suggests that 60% of Americans have little or no confidence in the news they get from the media. This is the highest level of distrust ever recorded and, sadly, I think its entirely warranted.

One interesting breakdown in the poll is the difference in trust by political affiliation. Only 26% of Republicans and 31% of Independents say they trust media reporting. Democrats are roughly twice as trusting, with 58% saying they trust the media "a fair amount" or  "a great deal."

Putting aside the issue of how much trust in media reporting is actually warranted, this poll underscores a fundamental fact: Republicans and Democrats live in different worlds. They start with different assumptions, view the world through different lenses, and draw different conclusions about the same information.

We often hear calls for Rs and Ds to put aside partisan differences and work together for the good of the country, but how is that possible when they have such different ideas about they way the world works? How can they find common ground when one group readily accepts what the other views with skepticism? And why should we have any confidence that compromise will yield good results when the two sides wish to take the country in such different directions?

From God's lips to your ears

Matthew 20

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ² He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³ “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴ He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶ About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
⁷ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
⁹ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I'm not a Christian, so I defer to others on how this passage should be interpreted. For my part, I find verse 15 instructive. Christ, the very embodiment of altruism, relies on the individual right to do as one wishes with one's own money to support his teaching. Further, He exposes the pettiness of envy. The grumblers were not wronged in any way by the landlord's generosity to others. Yet they took offense at a perceived slight and became ungrateful. There's a powerful lesson there for those who trade in class envy.

A related point: many liberals appeal to the concept of "Christian charity" to justify higher taxes (inevitably on the rich). They either don't understand, or pretend not to understand, that charity is a voluntary act. You can't force someone to be charitable, and you can't be charitable with other people's money. What these people are promoting is much closer to theft than charity.

And another: President Obama often insists that we need this or that government program because the Bible teaches that we are our brother's keeper. I'm pretty certain he's got this wrong. In the first place, I can't find the part in my Bible where it says I'm my brother's keeper. In the second place, even granting that we have a duty to help those in need, why does he take this as a call for bigger government? Government is notoriously bad at identifying those in need, let alone helping them. Individuals, on the other hand, are very good at this. Most people don't realize that poverty rates in America were dropping steadily right up until government declared its "War on Poverty." Since then, poverty rates have flat lined, and even gotten worse.

Ask not what your country can do for you, nor what you can do for your country. Ask instead what you can do for yourself, your family, and your community.

Oh, and keep your self-righteous hands out of my wallet.

Considerable quote

Freeman Hrabowski:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes destiny.

Obama votes present on the economy

Yesterday, I learned that President Obama has been blowing off his "daily" national security briefings. Today, I read that he's been blowing off his "daily" economic briefings as well.

Just what is this guy doing? And why does he deserve another term?

Considerable quote

Richard Epstein:

It is not possible to have such a thin and immature understanding of how an economic system is put together by accident. That can only arise from the failure to adopt the right premises in the first place.

h/t: Instapundit

"Mind Hacks" by John Hawkins

John Hawkins shares 5 Simple Mind Hacks that changed his life:

1. 1. "A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me." (Frederick Douglas)
2. “When you have to make a decision, think carefully about it, pick the best option, and then don’t revisit it again unless you receive new information.” (Richard Branson)
3. “You always do the best you can right now.”
4. “Will this matter in five years?”
5. “If you have to choose between two roughly equal options, always take the one that leads to you doing something.”

The president who wasn't there

With apologies to Hughes Mearns:

Yesterday upon a chair
I saw no POTUS sitting there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away

Obama votes "absent" on national security

How big a deal is it that President Obama skips more than 50% of his daily intelligence meetings?

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting...

During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB [Presidential Daily Brief] just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting. 

This seems like a big deal to me, and indicative of a Commander in Chief who isn't very engaged in being Commander in Chief, particularly considering that we are at war. But Obama's National Security Council spokesman says the meetings aren't all that important.

Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions.

This makes no sense to me. If my top priority were keeping the country safe, there's no way I'd be blowing off face to face meetings and relying on executive summaries.

Compare Obama's approach to that of his predecessor:

[President Bush] held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.

Now that sounds like a Commander in Chief who takes his constitutional oath to protect the country seriously. Obama sounds like he's just going through the motions.

The science behind "throwing like a girl"

Tamar Haspel of the Washington Post:

“The overhand throwing gap, beginning at 4 years of age, is three times the difference of any other motor task, and it just gets bigger across age. By 18, there’s hardly any overlap in the distribution: Nearly every boy by age 15 throws better than the best girl.”

Around the world, at all ages, boys throw better — a lot better — than girls. Studies of overhand ball throwing across different cultures have found that pre-pubescent girls throw 51 to 69 percent of the distance that boys do, at 51 to 78 percent of the velocity. As they get older, the differences increase; one U.S. study found that girls age 14 to 18 threw only 39 percent as far as boys (an average of about 75 feet vs. about 192 feet). The question is why.

Since boys generally learn to throw young and do more throwing than girls do, it would make sense that they’re better at it, and Thomas acknowledges the nurture component. “The gap is much larger than it should be, and it would be smaller if girls got more practice,” he says.

To try to distinguish nature from nurture, Thomas studied aboriginal Australian children, who grow up in a culture where both men and women hunt, and both sexes throw from childhood. “Our hypothesis was that [the aboriginal] girls would be better throwers and not as different from the boys as in European, Chinese, Australian and all the U.S. cultures.”

The data bore him out. Aboriginal girls threw tennis balls at 78.3 percent of the velocity of boys — closer to boys than in most other cultures, but still significantly slower.

 h/t: John Miller

So the president likes golf

I read today that President Obama has played 140 rounds of golf in the past 9 days. (Those numbers may be off; I'm going from memory and I'm too lazy to look it up.) I'm sure I'm supposed to be outraged by this, but I have no idea why. Why should I care if Obama plays a lot of golf? Is he supposed to be presidenting 24 hours a day? I figure his days are plenty full, and plenty stressful, and if golf is his way of getting away from it all, that's okay with me.

I felt the same way about Bush-43 and his vacations. People complained that he vacationed too much, but that didn't upset me either. It's not like these guys drop off the grid when they take time off. People know where to find them. And they still seem to have plenty of time to figure out ways to spend my money and meddle in my life, so it's not like they are getting behind in their work.

I also read today that Michelle Obama spent a billion dollars on a dress. (Maybe it was only a million; I'm going by memory again.) But unless she bought the dress with tax payer money, again, so what? She's filthy rich, and rich people buy nice stuff. That's kind of the whole point of being rich in the first place, isn't it? I can tell you right now that if I ever get rich I'm sure as hell going to buy a of nice stuff.

I guess the point is supposed to be that the Obamas are "out of touch." I'm not even exactly sure what that means, but I do know that I don't care. I don't need the president or his family to "feel my pain," and I don't give a putt what they do with their own money.

All I care about is what the president and his friends are doing with my money -- and that is definitely a cause for outrage.

A confusing cartoon

I think the point of this cartoon is to poke fun at those who denounce government-run health care as socialism while they are perfectly happy to embrace socialism when the benefit is one they like. But maybe I'm wrong, because it really doesn't make that point very well. Let's break it down:

1) Government-run health care does smack of socialism. It's an intrusion into the affairs of private companies and private citizens. It attempts to force economic outcomes by managing an entire industry through centrally planned government. That's why it's called socialized medicine.

2) Regulation of the airwaves is not socialistic. Governments of all types regulate all sorts of things. True, regulations can, and often do, become too restrictive. But free market advocates challenge such overreaching when it occurs; they don't embrace it, as the cartoon suggests.

3) The automotive bailouts are an example of socialism, as the government came in took control of private companies. But far from celebrating this, the majority of Americans opposed the bailouts, and still do. The cartoon suggests that the passengers are fine with it, but in reality they would be as apt to object to government-run car companies as to government-run health care.

4) The Interstate Highway System was constructed with the aid of the Army for the purpose of national defense, so that equipment and personel could be mobilized efficiently throughout the country. National defense is universally acknowledged as one of the right and proper responsibilities of government and has nothing to do with socialism.

5) Our public education system does smack of socialism, and the public generally embraces this, so the cartoon's creator got that one right. Unfortunately, the government monopoly on our schools ensures that millions of kids, especially minorities, aren't receiving a good education and are condemned to remain in lives of poverty. The good news is that this is changing, and parents are increasingly demanding free market reforms like school choice, charter schools, and vouchers.

6) A municipal water system isn't a hallmark of socialism. The word municipal refers to a city or town, not a centrally planned government. This simply makes no sense.

7) The National Park System has a tinge of socialism to it. There's no reason why the federal government needs to own or run our parks, and it could probably be done more efficiently by the states or by private companies. Still, this doesn't represent a huge intrusion into our lives the way socialized medicine does, so most people don't think about it much. I suppose this technically makes the artist's point, but it seems like a very weak argument to me.

If I'm understanding at all the artist's intent, I'd have to say that he fails miserably at making his point. His examples are very hit and miss -- mostly miss -- and, on net, undermine his argument more than suport it.

The Truth Behind Teachers Unions

"When school children start paying union dues, that‘s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children."
 ~Albert Shanker, former President, National Education Association

"We bear a lot of responsibility for this [resistance to school reform]. We were focused -- as unions are -- on fairness and not as much on quality.
~ Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

The above statements expose a vital truth about why government schools aren't improving. Teachers unions are extremely powerful in America. Unfortunately, that power is primarily used to advance the interests of the unions themselves rather than to improve student performance. This point is well made in a new video from Reason TV and the Moving Picture Institute.

Update: I forgot to mention one quibble I have with the video. It states that teachers are forced to join unions. This isn't true in all states. Some states have no official requirement, but the pressure to join the union is so great that there might as well be a requirement. In other states, teachers are not forced to join a union, but are required to contribute to them even if they don't. Still other states have no membership or contribution requirements at all. It's a mixed bag, and the video should have made this clear.

Capitalism can't fund Socialism

Best thing I read today:

Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade. Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect....

[T]he myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. This is the defining political problem of the early 21st century.

Read the whole thing.

Foreign policy, the next four years

Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is talking much about foreign policy these days. This is understandable given the state of the economy. Still, it's important to understand the candidate's foreign policy positions, as back burner issues have an uncanny habit of turning into crises when we're not looking.

Jackson Diehl has put together a helpful summary of what he believes are "big and bright" differences between Obama and Romney on matters abroad. Here are the bullet points:

• Russia: Obama is committed to striking a deal with Putin to reduce nuclear stockpiles and intends to offer compromises on NATO missile defense to bring this about. Romney intends to do the opposite, holding nuclear capabilities where they are and increasing missile defense.
• Afghanistan: Both candidates support plans to withdraw forces by the end of 2014. However, Obama is likely to order a cut in 2013, while Romney will follow the advice of U.S. generals to maintain troop levels through the end of next year.
• Syria: Obama rejects proposals to set up safe zones for civilians or supply weapons to the rebels. Romney is in favor of arming the rebels.
• Iran: Obama will likely use force only after the Iranians start building a bomb. Romney will likely act if Iran gets close to obtaining all the materials for a bomb.
• Israel-Palestine: Obama remains eager for the establishment of a Palestinian state, despite failing in his first-term attempts. Look for him to try again in a second term. Romney is not likely to push on this front.

With these having been documented as the things to watch, look for the real crisis to emerge in North Korea, China, or Latin America.

Thoughts on the Akin affair

I've been kind of passively following the dust up over Rep. Todd Akin's recent comments on abortion. In case you missed it, here's what he said:

It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, [is that pregnancy resulting from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.

Both the Right and the Left are in a frenzy over this. For the Left, this is understandable. Akin's underlying view -- that all abortions should be banned -- is in extreme opposition to pro-choice sensibilities. Add to that the caustic phrasing ("legitimate rape") and the assertion that women's body's somehow parry evil rapist sperm and you've got the makings for some righteous (Lefteous?) outrage. Some of the indignation is, er, legitimate, of course, while a lot of it is political. There's blood in the water, and Politics 101 dictates that the Left make sure that Republicans in general, and Romney and Ryan in particular, have plenty of it on them. Fair enough.

The reaction from the Right has been more interesting to me. Sure, the Republicans are on defense here. One of their members committed a huge unforced error and there's a mad scramble to get him into quarantine lest the malady spread to the body large. There's a lot at stake, so this all makes sense too.

What I find interesting, and impressive, is just how unified, rapid, and demonstrative has been the condemnation of Akin from the Right. This is the Stupid Party, after all, renown for its capacity for self-sabotage. Yet Akin has been nearly as universally lambasted by the Right as by the Left. He's truly become radioactive -- a political leper, for a comment that, frankly, doesn't strike me as all that egregious when you unpack it. Yes, politically it was a stupid remark, a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but let's break it down a little.

Akin was trying to make a a point about the Left's disingenuous tactic of always making the abortion argument about the exceptions rather than the rule. Virtually all abortions in the US are done as a form of after-the-fact birth control -- not as a response to rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. It's been a while since I've looked at the numbers, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 98% of abortions are cases where the woman engaged in voluntary sex, got pregnant, then decided she didn't want the baby. That is what the heart of the abortion argument is about. But the Left routinely tries to brush that aside and make the argument about the other 2%, the exceptions where women are helpless victims instead of willing participants dealing with the consequences of their own choices, as is the case in the vast majority of abortions.

Now I'm not going to defend the crude and clueless way Akin made his point. But let's look at what he actually said:

1) He stated that pregnancy resulting from rape is rare. "Rare" is subjective, of course, but is this controversial? A quick and dirty web search gives me estimates of about 32,000 rape-related pregnancies per year in the U.S. out of approximately 6 million total pregnancies. That's about one-half of one percent, which strikes me as pretty rare.

2) He asserted that in a "legitimate rape," a woman's body has ways of preventing pregnancy.

Now the phrase "legitimate rape" is excruciating, but it's silly to suggest that he was endorsing rape or suggesting that it's sometimes okay, so don't even go there. He is obviously referring to forcible, violent rape -- a distinction that, unfortunately, it's necessary to make in this day in age as, in some circles, it's now considered "rape" if a woman consents then changes her mind after the fact. ("Sometimes yes means no too," we're told. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.)

In any case, the assertion here is that a woman's body somehow reacts to violent rape in a way that reduces her chances of being impregnated. Now, I have no idea whether this is true, and neither do you, but Akin was immediately and universally condemned for this remark. I find this interesting, as I can readily think of an explanation for why this might be so. What if the female body has evolved to react to extreme mental and physical trauma by taking measures to thwart or terminate impregnation? Isn't it conceivable that Nature has determined that carrying and/or raising a child in the midst of undetermined and indefinite upheaval isn't a good way to propagate the species and has taken measures to prevent it?

It's an extraordinary claim, admittedly, and so Akin should be challenged on it. Just who are these doctors that have told him this, and what is their evidence?  Those are fair and appropriate questions, and the guy should have to put up or back down, as the case may be. But I'm no expert on these things, and neither are most people, so I say give him a chance to make his case before branding him a liar and a fool. If it turns out that he is, then have at him, by all means.

3) Finally, Akin expresses an opinion: that abortion is wrong, even in the case of rape, because it punishes an innocent for the crimes of the rapist.  Whether you agree with it or not, that's a pretty mainstream opinion. It's the official position of the Catholic Church. It's a view held by millions of Americans. Yet the Left act as if he's guilty of child abuse -- a bit ironic, when you think on it.

The Left claim to be champions of tolerance and civility, but they show damn little of it anymore, viciously attacking any viewpoint that differs from their own, even if those viewpoints are widely held and informed by centuries of tradition. This is all the more annoying as they are constantly harping about need for tolerance and acceptance on the part of their opponents.

But anyway, just to be clear, I'm not defending Akin. I know nothing about the man, and I don't share his views on abortion. (I'm kind of a "tweener" on this issue, but that, too, is a discussion for another day.) He obviously stepped in it big time with these comments, and I think it's probably in the best interests of his movement and his party that he step aside. But those are political considerations. When I consider what he actually said -- foolish and clueless as it may be -- I'm just not that outraged.

More: A very interesting take on this from Larry Elder. He doesn't exactly defend Akin either, but he sure puts things into perspective.

More: Mona Charen has, I think, I reasonable take:

Is it such an outlandish idea? I looked it up, and it appears that there is no evidence that pregnancies are less likely in cases of rape, but it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility to me. Many things about the human body are peculiar and amazing. And frankly, more people than are today admitting it must believe that a woman's mental state has something to do with her capacity to conceive. Consider that every woman (including me) who has ever experienced infertility is told, even by some doctors, that she should try to "relax."

Though dismissed as a myth for some time, the role of stress in infertility is being reconsidered now by specialists. Dr. Margareta D. Pisarska, co-director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles told WebMD that "it's becoming more and more important, in terms of what studies we do, to focus our efforts on the physiological effects of stress and how they may play a role in conception."

So maybe I'm not so alone in my lack of outrage as I thought.

Charen also echos Elder's observation of a severe double standard:

So Akin's views are scandalous and can be used to discredit (however implausibly) other Republicans. But the views of the leaders of the Democratic Party —favoring abortion for any (including sex selection) or no reason throughout the nine months of pregnancy — are not controversial. The Democratic Party's support for partial-birth abortion is not worthy of skepticism. The views of the president of the United States — opposing a law providing that a baby accidentally born alive after a botched abortion be protected from the abortionist's knife — is not shocking. No Democrat has ever, so far as I know, been challenged by a member of the mainstream press to distance himself from the president's extreme abortion position.

Akin is guilty of having his facts wrong. Many of his critics are guilty of worse.

Yeah, I've always wondered about that. Obama thinks it's okay to kill a baby that has actually been born despite efforts to abort it. This isn't at all a mainstream position as far as I can tell. I've never met anyone, on the Left or the Right, that doesn't think this is plain murder. But Charen's right: no one in the media challenges him on this, or asks other leaders on the Left to comment on it.