Month: April 2005

Lying Liars at the Heritage Foundation

As you might guess from reading my anti-animal rights website I am very much pro-hunting. On the other hand, I’m also very pro-truth, which is why this pack of lies from the Heritage Foundation is so annoying. There’s enough things to hang the anti-hunting movement with; conservative groups don’t have to go out and lie about proposed legislation that might impact hunting.

In this case, Heritage’s Trent England and Steve Muscatello lie by omission. They selectively quote a bill introduced by New York State Assemblyman Alexander Grannis to make it appear as if Grannis wants to ban ordinary hunting (emphasis added),

New York has a large, vibrant hunting community outside its metropolitan areas. Assemblyman Alexander Grannis, who is from the nation’s largest metro area, has drafted a bill that could, if passed in its present form, make all hunting illegal in the Empire State. The text of New York State Assembly Bill 1850 reads, in part: “A person is guilty of aggravated cruelty to animals when … he or she intentionally kills … an animal or wild game [or] wild birds.” You don’t have to be a National Rifle Association die-hard to see the danger in a bill that makes pursuit of game, “so as to capture or kill,” a felony with a minimum one-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. Advocates, of course, claim this is merely a means to criminalize the torture of animals. But the phrase “intentionally kills,” in this context, clearly could apply to hunters as well as those who would mistreat animals for fun.

Now compare the text of the bill’s language that England and Muscatello quote compared to the full text of the bill, (emphasis added),

A person is guilty of aggravated cruelty to animals when, with no justifiable purpose, he or she intentionally kills or intentionally causes serious physical injury to a companion animal, OR WILD GAME AND WILD BIRDS AS DEFINED IN SECTION 11-0103 OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION LAW, with aggravated cruelty. For purposes of this section, “aggravated cruelty” shall mean conduct which: (i) is intended to cause extreme physical pain; or (ii) is done or carried out in an especially depraved or sadistic manner.

So the bill doesn’t call for prosecuting people who kill wildlife, but rather people who kill wildlife “with no justifiable purpose” with the intention of inflicting extreme pain or killing in an extremely depraved or sadistic manner.

Rather than focus on “no justifiable purpose” or “in an especially depraved or sadistic manner”, England and Muscatello deceive readers into thinking that the bill applies to any intentional killing of wildlife, such as hunting.

This is an outrageous distortion. The last thing those of us who oppose the animal rights movement and its anti-hunting agenda need are people like England and Muscatello adopting PETA-like tactics and distorting the truth.

Source:

Hunters in the Crosshairs. Trent England and Steve Muscatello, Heritage Foundation, March 31, 2005.

Typical Bullshit from the Local Newhouse Rag

On Friday, the local Newhouse rag, The Kalamazoo Gazette, fired reporter Craig McCool and photographer Mairin Chapman over a story the two contributed to about alcohol usage by local college students (guess what — they drink a lot).

McCool and Mairin went to a party to report on beer drinking games. Now McCool did one thing that was unethical — he wrote about his experience as if it occurred in one night when, in fact, the details were a composite of two nights attending parties. Not the most serious of ethical lapses, especially given how common composites like that are, but not a good habit to get into and McCool deserved some discipline for that.

But the Gazette didn’t fire him over that. No, they fired McCool and Mairin because they consumed alcohol at the parties they attended.

Publisher Jim Stephanak says that their transgression was becoming part of the story,

There are some basic principles guiding journalists. One of them is to remain free of associations and activities that may compromise our integrity or damage our credibility. This principle has been clearly violated and cannot be tolerated.

Hmmm . . . so you need to maintain a distance from the subject to avoid conflicts of interest or lack of credibility?

For example, when the Kalamazoo Gazette built a new $33 million printing press, it could have gone to the City of Kalamazoo — which it covers extensively, after all — and asked for a special property tax abatement for the improvement. But, of course, doing that might be an “association or activity” that might make people wonder about the future credibility of Gaztte coverage of the City. Of course our glorious Newhouse rag, which would fire a fine reporter and photographer for daring to legally consume alcohol, would never even think of such an activity, now would it?

Oh, wait a minute, that’s exactly what they did, because when you’re only pulling in an estimated $4 billion annually in revenues like the Newhouse chain is, you’re counting every penny!

Idiots and (worse) hypocrites.

British Study Confirms that Multiple SIDS Deaths Not So Unusual

This site frequently mentions cases where parents or others kill children and escape with ridiculously lenient sentences. But there is another sort of injustice, and that is where overzealous officials use pseudoscientific nonsense to create a hysteria that convicts people of crimes that they did not commit.

Such a wave of hysteria hit the United Kingdom in the late 1990s when a number of women were convicted of multiple homicides in deaths that the defense claimed were due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Rather than just relying on the physical evidence of autopsies, etc., prosecutors also pulled in alleged experts like Dr. Roy Meadow who testified that the odds of a couple having more than one child die from SIDS was astronomically low.

For example, Sally Clark was convicted of murdering her 11-week old son Christopher in 1996 and her eight-week old son Harry in 1998. Clark’s defense was that the children died from SIDS. But Meadow testified at her trial that the odds of the two boys dying from SIDS was “one in 73 million.” Meadow provided similar testimony at the murder trials of other women who had more than one child death.

But Meadow’s claim was pure speculation backed up by no evidence. As the Royal Statistical Society noted in a press release it issued about Meadow’s claim,

In the recent highly-publicised case of R v. Sally Clark, a medical expert witness drew on published studies to obtain a figure for the frequency of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS, or “cot death”) in families having some of the characteristics of the defendant’s family. He went on to square this figure to obtain a value of 1 in 73 million for the frequency of two cases of SIDS in such a family.

“This approach is, in general, statistically invalid. It would only be valid if SIDS cases arose independently within families, an assumption that would need to be justified empirically. Not only was no such empirical justification provided in the case, but there are very strong a priori reasons for supposing that the assumption will be false. There may well be unknown genetic or environmental factors that predispose families to SIDS, so that a second case within the family becomes much more likely.

The well-publicised figure of 1 in 73 million thus has no statistical basis. Its use cannot reasonably be justified as a “ballpark” figure because the error involved is likely to be very large, and in one particular direction. The true frequency of families with two cases of SIDS may be very much less incriminating than the figure presented to the jury at trial.

“Aside from its invalidity, figures such as the 1 in 73 million are very easily misinterpreted. Some press reports at the time stated that this was the chance that the deaths of Sally Clark’s two children were accidental. This (mis-)interpretation is a serious error of logic known as the Prosecutor’s Fallacy. The jury needs to weigh up two competing explanations for the babies’ deaths: SIDS or murder. Two deaths by SIDS or two murders are each quite unlikely, but one has apparently happened in this case. What matters is the relative likelihood of the deaths under each explanation, not just how unlikely they are under one explanation (in this case SIDS, according to the evidence as presented).

It turned out that the odds were actually closer to 1 in 100.

In fact, in December the results of the largest study of second-infant deaths was published and found that a) second-infant deaths are not that rare, and b) in 80 percent of cases, second-infant deaths were due to natural causes rather than homicide.

Published in the Lancet, research by Professor Robert Carpenter, studied all 6,373 families who had lost an infant due to SIDS and the enrolled in a program designed to support them with their next child.

Of those 6,373 families, Carpenter’s research found that 57 of the second-infants died. It found that nine deaths were inevitable, including infants born with severe birth defects, and 48 were unexpected deaths.

After interviewing the families and checking autopsy records, 40 of the unexpected deaths were due to natural causes, while 6 were due to probably homicides.

Carpenter was quoted by the Scotsman as saying,

Our data suggest that second deaths are not rare and that the majority — 80-90 percent — are natural. Families who have experienced three unexpected deaths also occur.

. . .

Consequently, although child abuse is not uncommon, from the best available data we believe that the occurrence of a second or third sudden unexpected death in infancy within a family, although relatively rare, is in most cases from natural causes.

Some of the women convicted based, in part, on the testimony of Meadows have had their convictions overturned, but prosecutors bizarrely say they still have faith in Meadows’ testimony. Sound science is clearly not on their agenda.

Sources:

Royal Statistical Society concerned by issues raised in Sally Clark case. Press Release, Royal Statistical Society, October 23, 2001.

Baby-death study finds natural causes evidence. Lyndsay Moss, The Scotsman, December 31 ,2004.

Profile: Sir Roy Meadow. The BBC, April 11, 2005.

Doubt cast on baby killer case. The BBC, July 15, 2001.

UNICEF Report Says 211 Million Children Worldwide Work Full-Time

In February, UNICEF UK released a report on the current status of child labor across the globe. According to the UNICEF report, worldwide about 211 million children ages 5-14 work full-time. UNICEF estimates that 1 in 12 children work in an industry that is hazardous to their health.

Not surprisingly, the area with the highest rate of childhood labor is Africa, where 41 percent of children aged 5 to 14 work. That compares to just 21 percent of 5 to 14-year olds working in Asia and 17 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Due to the difference in total population however, 60 percent of all child laborers are working in Asia.

Worldwide UNICEF estimates that eight million children work in what the International Labor Organization terms “unconditional worst forms” of labor — six million bonded labor (essentially slaves); about 300,000 as soldiers in various armed conflicts around the world; and 1.8 million in the sex industry as prostitutes or the production of pornography.

Most child labor occurs in developing countries, but UNICEF estimates that about 2.4 million children 5 to 14-years old work full-time in the developed world. For example, in the United States anywhere between 300,000 to 800,000 children of Spanish-speaking immigrants are believed to work full-time in farm-related occupations. Similarly in Portugal UNICEF estimates that up to 47,000 school-aged children work full-time in industries such as shoe production rather than attend school.

Sources:

UN urges action on child labor. The BBC, February 21, 2005.

End Child Exploitation: Child Labour Today. (PDF) UNICEF, 2005.

New Mexico Hounded Father for Support for Non-Existent Child

In December, Wendy McElroy wrote about one of the strangest cases of child support gone awry in a case where a man was hounded by the state of New Mexico to support a child that didn’t actually exist.

Viola Trevino essentially invented a child that did not exist and claimed that Steve Barras was the father. Barreras denied being the father, but ended up paying $20,000 in child support before the fraud was exposed.

Trevino went to extreme lengths to pull off her fraud. She filed a false paternity test using a DNA sample from an adult daughter of Berreras, and enlisted a friend of hers who worked at a lab to process it. Based on the results of the fraudulent paternity test she obtained a court order for child support.

Trevino went on to obtain a Social Security card, Medicare card and a birth certificate for the invented child.

Barreras repeatedly told New Mexico’s child services that he couldn’t possibly be the father of Trevino’s child because he had a vasectomy years prior to the child’s birth and tests showed a zero sperm count. New Mexico authorities basically ignored him when he tried to tell them that the child did nto exist, with one worker telling him, “your daughter does exist, as I am sure you already knew.”

Only after Barreras hired a private investigator and New Mexico TV station KOBTV did a report on Trevino’s case was Trevino finally ordered to produce her now allegedly 5-year-old daughter in court.

On the day of that hearing, Trevino snatched a 2-year-old girl from her grandmother and tried to pass the girl off in court as her daughter.

McElroy reports that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has asked the state’s Human Services Department for an investigation and report on how this fraud was allowed to go on for so long.

Obviously Barreras case is an extreme example, but that fact that Trevino could pull of this sort of fraud for 5 years whille Trevino’s pleas that he couldn’t possibly be the father are indicative of just how broken the system is.

Source:

Agency culpable in child support scam. Wendy McElroy, Fox News, December 14, 2004.

Botswana Demonstrate Just How Democratic It Is

Botswana is generally considered one of the more democratic African nations. Now if you’re a generally democratic nation how do you go about demonstrating your devotion to democratic principles? Well, of course you try to deport a college professor critical of your country.

In February, Botswana President Festus Mogae declared University of Botswana lecturer Kenneth Good to be an “prohibited immigrant” and ordered him deported to his native Australia. Good is being allowed to remain in Botswana while he appeals the deportation order.

The irony here is what Good said that set Mogae off. Good gave a lecture in which he claimed that rather than being democratic, Botswana is run by a secret elite with a few people making all of the decisions. Specifically, he alleged that presidential succession in Botswana is managed by backdoor wheeling and dealing. Obviously having the president initiate a deportation order against Good really disproved that!

Good, for his part, has a habit of being booted out of African countries. According to Reuters, the minority white government of what was then called Rhodesia also deported him in 1973 after he criticized government policies.

Sources:

Prof. Good Allowed to Stay in Botswana Until Deportation Case is Discussed. Network for Education and Academic Rights, March 7, 2005.

Botswana lecturer wins reprieve. The BBC, February 28, 2005.