Daily Archives: August 29, 2003


Future Leaders?

This story does not tell us how many perps are involved or whether charges were filed in these cases and without seeing the questions we can’t evaluate bias within the survery itself. Nevertheless this is not good:

the questionnaire administered this year showed that 109 of the 579 female cadets surveyed, or 18.8 percent, said they had been sexually assaulted in their time at the academy. Sexual assault was defined as anything from unwanted touching to rape.
In 89 percent of the cases, the alleged assailant was identified as another cadet.
The survey also said that 11 percent of senior female cadets and 3 percent of freshman female cadets reported having been the victim of rape or attempted rape since enrolling at the academy.

Shouldn’t the selection process filter out most of the perp types? But perhaps it does just the opposite. How many past perps are still in uniform and does that make you feel more or less secure?
Just to show how easily riffing on a single article can lead you far astray I’m going to leave my original words (above) about the Acadamy selection process just as I wrote them. Here is how I would have written it if I had the information from Dave Cullen’s work at Conclusive Evidence (linked below):

Things could be much worse at the Acadamy but their selection process has apparently weeded out some of the potential perps. If this were a public university the Department of Justice believes the incidence of rape would be as high as 20%.

For more see Talkleft and Conclusive Evidence.
Via South Knox Bubba.


Taking on ashcroft’s campaign

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights filets an August 19th ashcroft speech.
ashcroft also announced a Patiot Act propaganda site: preserving life & liberty. blargblog took some issue with the campaign:

Angered by the ACLU’s lawsuit against what they consider the PATRIOT Act’s “radical expansion” of surveillance powers, the Ashcroftians have targeted three main ACLU claims as myths: 1) the suppression of political dissent through intimidation, 2) the surveillance of library usage and 3) the “sneek and peek” provision delaying notification of surveillance skirts the Fourth Ammendment. Go read it for yourself to see if you can spot gaping holes in the DOJ’s collective memory or some fine legal points it deliberately elides.

The Angry Bear found Dave Ross‘ defense of the patriot act wanting.
For a view supporting the patriot act from a philosophical perspective take a look at at David Veksler’s posts here and here.
Via beSpacific.