Colbert Gives Huckabee an Opposable Thumbs Up

Mike Huckabee was on The Colbert Report again last night, this time trying to capitalize on his over-hyped second-place showing in the Iowa straw poll. (The whole segment from the Colbert Report is available here.) Huckabee was smart enough to try to play the whole thing for laughs. Colbert, for his part, made it clear just how seriously he takes Huckabee:

In one of the republican debates, sir, the candidates were asked, if they did not believe in evolution, to raise their hand. Now you raised your hand. Did you raise your hand to indicate you did not believe in evolution, or were you raising your hand simply to show off your opposable thumb?

Sooner or later, you'd think it would occur to potential guests that no matter how good a sport they are, Colbert's going to call them on their stupidity.

Again, it's important that people look past Huckabee's seemingly pleasant demeanor and understand the crooked politician that's lurking behind the smile. Huckabee fervently supports the Iraq war. As governor of Arkansas, he was anti-environment and pro-death penalty, he accepted huge amounts of gifts from supporters, ignored the state Ethics Commission, flew the Arkansas Highway Department airplane around to political events and book signings, embarrassed the state on numerous occasions, and then punished reporters for asking him about his misdeeds. Yeah, Huckabee's a laugh riot.

WTF?

Ender, a resident of my little corner of cyberspace, has started a new blog here. I'm damned if I can figure out what it's about, but the date involved (1-18-08) is my birthday. Perhaps Ender's planning a surprise party for me?

We Get Letters

Last month, I wrote a post about the release of Earl Washington, Jr. from Virginia's death row. Washington was coerced into confessing to a murder that another man, Kenneth Tinsley, committed. DNA evidence exonerated Washington and implicated Tinsley, who pled guilty to the murder earlier this year. My original post said:

The Commonwealth of Virginia this week attempted to right a wrong, and declared Earl Washington, Jr. innocent of a rape and murder that DNA evidence determined that he didn't commit. Even though this evidence was uncovered six years ago--and another man was convicted of the crimes--a special prosecutor in the case insisted for years that Washington was still a suspect. That's right--the prosecutor, James Camblos, would rather see an innocent man convicted than admit that he had erred in the case. (This might have something to do with the fact that Camblos once acted as a defense attorney for the real killer, Kenneth Tinsley). At one point, Washington was only days away from execution for a crime he didn't commit.

Today, a reader who calls himself Factchecker commented on my original post:

This would be a chilling story if our transitional fossil had bothered to check his facts and make sure what he was reporting was accurate. James Camblos was not the original prosecutor of Earl Washington. As a matter of fact Mr. Camblos wasn't even a prosecutor when Mr. Washington was errouneously convicted in Culpeper (not Albemarle where Mr. Camblos is the chief prosecutor). When the case was returned to Culpeper after Mr. Washington was released, Mr. Camblos was selected to special prosecute any potential retrial. It quickly became evident that the real suspect was Mr. Tinsley, a man that Mr. Camblos had defended when he worked as a defense attorney before his election to Commonwealth's Attorney. For Mr. Camblos to continue the investigation and prosecution would have been an ethical violation, so he appointed his deputy (Richard Moore) who then went on to successfully prosecute Mr. Tinsley. The only reason Mr. Camblos could not come out and declare Mr. Washington's innocence and Mr. Tinsley's guilt was his ethical obligation due to a conflict of interest from his previous job defending Mr. Tinsley on an unrelated matter. To have done otherwise could have resulted in disciplinary action against Mr. Camblos. I would suggest that next time you decide to besmirch a public official, that you at least check your facts before writing inflammatory rhetoric. This type of behavior is exactly why bloggers get a bad rap. If you are going to pretend to be a journalist, at least act like one.

First, I don't believe I've ever claimed to be a journalist; I merely comment on news items from other sources, and in this case, the sources were clearly linked. My original post does say that Mr Camblos was a special prosecutor, but incorrectly implies that the original error was committed by Camblos. This is not true--the original prosecutor on the case was John Bennett. I apologize for the inaccuracy, and I'll amend the original blog post to reflect the facts.

But Factchecker's comment prompted me to dig a little further into the matter. Again, I have no special knowledge of this case; I'm not a journalist--just a guy with a computer with access to Google. Here's an excerpt from an article from the Newport News Daily Press (summary here on the Daily Press site, complete article here):

Tinsley, who remains in prison on the rape conviction, is considered a suspect, said James L. Camblos III, an Albemarle County prosecutor who was appointed in August to review the case for state police. But so is Washington, he said this week, noting that he couldn't rule out that the two may have worked together. "There are a lot of crimes that are committed by more than one person, but you get physical evidence from only one of them," Camblos said.

Washington's lawyers dispute Camblos' theory of two attackers - before she died, Williams said she was attacked by a lone black man with a beard, according to police records.

Hall also criticized how state police were reviewing the case. Camblos once represented Tinsley as he appealed his rape conviction in 1985. When asked about his history with Tinsley, the prosecutor said he had no memory of it. Camblos removed himself from the case anyway, handing it over to his deputy, Richard Moore, this past week.

The date on the story is March 18, 2004, four years after Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore pardoned Washington. Indeed, as Factchecker states, Camblos stepped down from the case, but only after Washington's attorneys filed a suit to have him removed. Factchecker would have us believe that Camblos knew that Tinsley was the murderer, and was doing his duty as a defense lawyer by not proclaiming Washington's innocence; if that were so, it seems to me that a simple "No comment," would have been sufficient, and not a fabricated theory of how Washington might have been involved. But let us assume that Camblos, and Bennett, and all the police involved in Washington's trial and near-execution were acting in good faith. In that case, mistakes were made, and an innocent, but not very smart, man confessed to a crime he didn't commit. He was days away from execution.

And that was exactly my original point.

Cat Salvage

The picture to the left is Howard. The only thing that keeps him from being a true albino is the amber color of his eyes. Howard showed up on the porch of my weekday residence. I tried to convince him that he didn't belong to me, that I already had three cats and no more room, but after a day or two, he convinced me that maybe I belonged to him. When I headed to my regular home, a 90-mile car trip, Howie slept in my lap, waking up a time or two to put his forepaws on my chest and nuzzle my nose. His mere presence caused a ruckus at my house--my wife was delighted, my resident cats somewhat less so. The next day, we went to the vet. I was already attached to the little guy, and nearly made myself sick waiting for the results of his feline leukemia and FIV tests. Fortunately for Howard (and my other cats) the tests were negative. It's been a couple of days, and Howie's incredibly friendly demeanor has won over the other cats.

That demeanor has made me pretty angry, too. Howie was obviously not a feral cat. Somebody dumped this kitten. Had he not appeared on my porch, he would have starved, or been run over, or killed by a dog, or a hawk, or another cat. Had he survived, he would have fathered countless unwanted kittens, killed innumerable birds, lizards, and rodents, and spread diseases to other feral cats, pets, and even to people. Dumping unwanted pets is irresponsible--and loathsome.

It's pretty easy to say you're against ditching animals, I guess. But I'm doing my part to solve the problem (and Hipparchia is doing hers). Animal shelters are full of cats and dogs that need homes. Who doesn't have room for one more?

Colbert 1, Behe 0

Stephen Colbert is not a fundamentalist zealot--he just plays one on TV. He's also not an economist, or a politician, or a scientist, but he has the ability to look right through specious arguments of these people and skewer them to humourous effect on basic cable television. His victim last night was Michael Behe, the grand poobah of the Intelligent Design movement. Behe was on Colbert's show plugging his new book, which better minds than mine have already torn to shreds (here and here, for instance). Behe's a jovial sort, and he seemed relaxed and in his element; after all, Colbert had said twice that all he wished to do was agree with Behe that God had created the universe in its present form. Behe apparently has never seen the Colbert Report. He launched into his tired (and repeatedly discredited) mousetrap analogy--that even a simple mousetrap is useless if one of its parts is removed, and so is an example of irreducible complexity.

Colbert is not an athiest--he famously teaches a Sunday School class at his church--but he's also not a fool. When Behe stated that dismantling a mousetrap would leave only a wire, a spring, and a block of wood, Colbert gave exactly the right response: "And of course we know, none of those things is even remotely useful." This gets right to the heart of the problem with irreducible complexity. Even if it is true (and it usually isn't) that some complex structure or metabolic pathway won't work without all its components, it doesn't mean that those components are useless in and of themselves. For instance, one of the favorite targets of the ID crowd is the bacterial flagellum, a structure seemingly so complex that it can't possibly work without all the parts. However, recent study indicates that parts of the flagellum are identical to mechanisms used by some bacteria to attack others. In other words, the flagellum was put together out of parts of other mechanisms being used for unrelated purposes. It should be obvious to any idiot that the individual parts of a mousetrap have other uses. It was obvious to Colbert; it wasn't obvious to Behe.

Close Encounters of the Blurred Kind

NASA is calling "troubling" reports that some astronauts on the space shuttle were allowed to fly while drunk. According to NASA's own report:

Several senior flight surgeons expressed their belief that their medical opinions regarding astronaut fitness for duty, flight safety and mission accomplishment were not valued by leadership other than to validate that all (medical) systems were “go” for on-time mission completion. Instances were described where major crew medical or behavioral problems were identified to astronaut leadership and the medical advice was disregarded. This disregard was described as “demoralizing” to the point where they said they are less likely to report concerns of performance decrement. Crew members raised concerns regarding substandard astronaut task performance which were similarly disregarded.

Troubling? I'll say. Including the cost of the shuttle itself, each launch costs 1.3 billion dollars. That's some pretty expensive equipment to be turning over to people in no shape to operate it. How could NASA flight controllers allow drunken astronauts into space? Forgetting the danger to the shuttle, how are besotted astronauts supposed to carry out their scientific mission?

I guess they realize there is no scientific mission. It's not that NASA doesn't do some good science--it's just that all the good science is done by unmanned space probes and earthbound scientists. The manned mission is a taxpayer-financed corporate welfare system that allows over-testosteroned space jockeys and love-crazed borderline-personalitied Alex Forrests to play Star Trek--and not the Captain Picard Star Trek with the good special effects, but the Captain Kirk Star Trek with the cheesy sets and rubbery-faced aliens. What are we getting for our billions of dollars? According to NASA, we're getting space age golf clubs and new generation toy airplanes. In other words, it just doesn't matter if the shuttle astronauts are drunker than Barney Gumble.

NPR quoted one NASA official as claiming that the agency's oversight functions failed because of NASA's "can-do" spirit. That's right--they couldn't let a little thing like a drunken astronaut stand in the way of colonizing the planets and exploring the asteroid belt. Apparently, the people running the manned space program at NASA are as much a part of the reality-based world as their current boss.

Latest From the Discovery Institute

Apparently someone over at the Discovery Institute has decided to clean up their web page a bit. Click here for a pretty concise summary of their thoughts on a recent talk by P.Z. Meyers of Pharyngula.