Frank’s Case Book

In March of 2003, Barack Obama was state senator in Illinois dealing with the Illinois Born Alive Infact Protection Act (BAIPA). The key goal of the act was to make it an affirmative obligation to render conventional medical treatment to all children born, even if the birth was a consequence of an induced abortion. The act brushed against the ragged, politically dangerous edges of the pro-choice and pro-life movements.

One aim of pro-life advocates was to ensure that children born alive and completely separate from their mothers are not treated as medical waste, but accorded appropriate medical attention. Pro-lifers may want to prevent abortions, but there is a much broader constituency who would want to protect children already born. Testimony before Congress has reported cases where live children, the product of unsuccessful abortions, were unceremoniously disposed of rather than treated. The concern was clearly not just a theoretical one.

Pro-choice advocates were concerned that about the legal assertion of rights for babies that were theoretically pre-viable; though one might  expect viability to change as a function of medical technology. Specifically, the  Illinois BAIPA declared, “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.” The pro-choice community is perhaps rightly concerned that someone sometime in the future might ask the embarrassing question: How is a being a fully recognized human only moments after being excess tissue?

The legislative dilemma is how to reconcile the humanity of treating with medical respect babies born alive versus the concerns of the pro-choice community to avoid the legislative precedent of declaring babies born alive as persons. Obama and his Democratic colleagues implemented a compromise by adding a clause to the  law that would effectively prevent the law’s use a precedent against abortion. Specifically they added:

“Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this Section.”

Curiously, the record shows that Obama voted only for the amendment, but still voted against the bill. The problem is that Obama’s district was still sufficiently to the Left, that deviation from pro-choice purity, even at the cost of the maltreatment of born-live infants, would have had political costs. Either Obama believed that such infants do not deserve such protection or that the political costs of approving the bill were too high. The whole episode was hardly  a “profile in courage.”

If this story became widely acknowledged, it would make Obama appear far out of the national mainstream on the issue of abortion. When asked about the vote in 2004, Obama claimed, according to the Chicago Tribune, that  he voted against the state legislation but would have supported a similar federal bill because “the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion.” However, contrary to Obama’s assertion, the two bills are nearly identical. Obama knew they were nearly identical because he was chairman of the committee that amended the bill so that it would resemble its federal counterpart.

Rather that conceding the issue, Obama accused his pro-life critics of “lying” about his record. Finally, Obama’s campaign’s has conceded that the federal and state bills were near identical. The only way to reconcile his vote in Illinois against the BAIPA and his later claim that would have voted for the nearly identical federal act, is that in both cases he was acting in immediate political self-interest.

There is certainly room to argue about Obama’s first vote in Illinois, though it does depict him as part of the extreme pro-choice wing of the spectrum. However, there is no excuse to misrepresent his vote and worst to call others liars for disputing what turns out to be the facts of this case.

It is not surprising that this story has not been discussed much in the pro-Obama press, but the story is slowly emerging. One character test for Obama supporters is how do they deal with this report. The reactions can involve either be honesty, dishonesty, or deliberate self-deception

One honest reaction is to concede Obama’s serious mistake and consequent dishonesty, but still maintain their support given his overall record and ideology. However, this would tend to undermine the serious messiah complex of some Obama supporters.

The dishonest way is to continue to obfuscate the issue and to attack the veracity of opponents. This will undoubtedly be the reaction of political partisans.

Perhaps the most common way for Obama supporters to deal with the issue is denial. Rather than examine carefully the details of this serious vote and related dishonesty, they will just to avert their gaze. They will not take the time an effort to determine out the truth. It easier to believe that political enemies are after your candidate than to face an unpleasant truth.

A pro-life advocate, Jill Stanek, performed the difficult task of digging up many of the original documents some of which are linked to in this post.

It is often interesting to watch old movies and television programs. Although there are certainly classic movies and programing with a timeless quality, it is often illuminating to see the world through the unique cultural vision of the period . Perhaps the most conspicuous and consistent difference is the past glamorization of smoking before the 1960s, whereas by contemporary standards smoking is considered déclassé. Other times we are reminded of more heroic perspectives.

This week the TV Land network aired an episode of Lou Grant with an important message for our times.  If you remember back to the 1970s, the character Lou Grant, played by actor Edward Asner, began with comedy, the Mary Tyler Moore show, set in a Minnesota newsroom. Lou Grant was a spinoff drama, where character Lou Grant was now a news editor of the fictitious Los Angeles Tribune.

In the particular episode, Nazi, reporter Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey) is pursuing a story about an American Nazi  who turns out have been born Jewish. The salient point here is that the reporter was fearful for her life, but pursued the story nonetheless. The show was not shy about moralizing, and the message here was clear: Fidelity to the truth and the unfettered right of free expression often requires courage. In this case, the reporter was not threatened by government censorship, but self-censorship induced by fear of private person or group.

Three decades later, that message of courage seems to have been forgotten. Sherry Jones is  a journalist who has taken a considerable interest in Islamic culture and pursued its study. That study and several years of writing led to a fictionalized historical novel about Mohammad and his favorite wife Aisha. Random House publishing company advanced Jones $100,000 for two books, of which The Jewel of Medina was the first.

Now Random House has lost it publishing nerve. As far as we know, there have been no specific threats against Random House or the author. Rather, the book was sent to Denise Spellberg, a scholar in Islamic studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Spellberg warned that some Muslims might find the book offensive. After the experience of the Danish anti-Mohammad cartoons that caused riots and the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the death of Salmon Rushdie who wrote the Satanic Versus, Random  House is apprehensive.

With this recent history, the concern about a violent reaction to a book that is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as insulting to Islam, is not irrational and precautions are prudent. However, if Random House and the author are convinced of the literary quality of The Jewel of Medina, they would demonstrate considerable moral fortitude in proceeding with the publication. If not, they will help establish precedent that one can successfully intimidate the publishing community.

As the British Empire was expanding its reach both for military supremacy and trade, navigation at sea was a limiting factor. Latitude, the angular distance from the equator, was relatively easy to determine in the sixteenth century. It could be measured by the angle between the horizon and the North Star or by the sun’s angular position at noon coupled with tables of solar declination.

Unfortunately, determination of longitude was more difficult. In principle, it could be calculated astronomically or with a sufficiently accurate clock. The necessary astronomical observations, though useful on land, were impossible to make from a bobbing platform of a ship. The most accurate clocks relied on a pendulum as a timekeeper. However, the motion of the ship and the large changes in temperature rapidly degraded such a clock’s accuracy.

The British were painfully reminded of this inadequacy in 1707. After a victory over the French, four British warships were destroyed when through a longitude navigation error they struck shoals around the Scilly Islands, and thousands of sailors perished. Clearly dead reckoning based on estimated speed was not sufficient for navigation.

This prompted the British Parliament in 1714 to offer the Longitude Prize, 20,000 pounds for a practical method of measuring longitude to within 60 nautical miles. In the popular book Longitude, Dava Sobel, artfully describes John Harrison’s three-decade pursuit of the prize through the steady improvement of his clocks. Sobel’s story explained Harrison’s very human struggle. It took decades to effectively claim his prize. The Longitude Board established to adjudicate the prize always seemed to keep moving the threshold for the prize. Harrison finally claimed the balance of his prize in 1765.

Now in response to rapidly increasing oil prices, Senator John McCain has suggested that we might mimic the success of the Longitude Prize with an $300 million prize for anyone or group that can produce a battery with “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

It is hard to argue against the offer of such a prize, not as substitute for additional action, but as away to draw attention and excitement to the technological challenge. Certainly, there is little cost to the prize unless its challenge is successfully met. Under those circumstances, no one would begrudge the prize.

There is one important lesson we can apply from the Longitude Prize. During his efforts, Harrison was granted stipends from the Longitude Board for promising innovations. If the government ultimately offers a Battery Prize, it should offer intermediate awards for important, but incremental steps along the way. This would maintain interest and keep monetary awards within reach. For example, there might be a prize for an alternate battery chemistry with higher energy density, that might still be more expensive than a conventional battery.

Innovation does not always occur at large institutions with large budgets. Indeed, “out of the box” thinking is hard to nurture at large research establishment and private companies. A Battery Prize might be just he motivation for a break through. There is certainly little downside.