Brendan Nyhan

The Duke lacrosse rape charges were dropped Friday while I was stuck in traffic on I-95, but district attorney Mike Nifong is still pursuing other charges, baffling everyone:

A prosecutor’s decision to drop rape charges but keep other counts against three Duke University lacrosse players has left many legal experts – including some who had supported him – wondering what case he could have left.

Sexual offense and kidnapping charges remain against the defendants, but even some former backers of District Attorney Mike Nifong say the accuser may have lost her credibility for good after backing off a key allegation.

You think? The wheels are off the wagon. There’s no way Nifong is going to get a conviction. Even Richard Brodhead, the ever-cautious president of Duke, is now calling for Nifong to step down from the case:

In response to Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s decision Friday to drop charges of rape in the Duke lacrosse case, President Richard Brodhead questioned Nifong’s conduct and called for the district attorney to relieve himself of his duties in the case.

Brodhead said Nifong’s decisive public statements about the rape allegations and subsequent decision to drop the charge call into question the validity of the remaining charges that have been brought against three members of the 2005-2006 men’s lacrosse team–kidnapping and sexual offense.

“The district attorney should now put this case in the hands of an independent party, who can restore confidence in the fairness of the process,” Brodhead said in a statement Friday. “Further, Mr. Nifong has an obligation to explain to all of us his conduct in this matter.”

A New York Times story yesterday offered an especially crude summary of former Harvard president Lawrence Summer’s controversial remarks on gender and aptitude:

Organizers of these events dismiss the idea voiced in 2005 by Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, that women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics.

What Summers actually said was more subtle. He suggested that the variability of mathematical and scientific ability may differ between genders, which means that there could be more men at the high and low end:

The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I’m focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it’s not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it’s talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I’m sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they’re all over the map, depends on which test, whether it’s math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end. Now, it’s pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people’s ability to do that. And that’s absolutely right. But I don’t think that resolves the issue at all. Because if my reading of the data is right-it’s something people can argue about-that there are some systematic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well. So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.

Now, I have no idea if Summers is correct, and it was probably an inappropriate suggestion given his position as Harvard president, but to claim that he said women are “handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics” is an unfair and reductive representation.

Thomas Friedman’s cliche-spouting has entered the realm of geometry :

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer yes, you can’t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany — not Iraq.

Yes, the lead foreign affairs columnist for the nation’s top newspaper is recycling his lame “Meet the Press” soundbites in print. Coming soon: How we need to square the circle in Afghanistan…

Due to family obligations, trips, and so forth, blogging is going to be intermittent here through mid-January. But keep an eye out; I’ll still be posting when I have time.

DNA Security director Brian Meehan dealt yet another blow to the crumbling Duke lacrosse prosecution yesterday with this testimony about DNA test results from his lab that were not provided to the defense:

[Defense attorney Jim] Cooney continued: Did Nifong and his investigators know the results of all the DNA tests?

“I believe so,” Meehan said.

“Did they know the test results excluded Reade Seligmann?” Cooney asked.

“I believe so,” Meehan said.

Was the failure to report these results the intentional decision of Meehan and the district attorney? Cooney asked.

“Yes,” Meehan replied.

At that answer, several people in the courtroom clapped. Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III warned the crowd to be quiet or leave.

Nifong then changed his story about the results:

At the beginning of Friday’s hearing, Nifong made a statement that differed from Meehan’s subsequent testimony:

“The first I had heard of this particular situation was when I was served with this particular motion” on Wednesday, Nifong told the judge.

After court, Nifong amended his remarks and said he knew about the DNA results.

“And we were trying to, just as Dr. Meehan said, trying to avoid dragging any names through the mud but at the same time his report made it clear that all the information was available if they wanted it and they have every word of it,” Nifong said.

A Duke law professor sums it up:

“I tell you, the more you hear about his missteps, the more you have to question whether it’s purely a matter of incompetence or worse,” said James E. Coleman, a law professor at Duke University who has been critical of Nifong.

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a story on controversy over Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in which the reporter, Julie Bosman, quotes a misleading Michael Kinsley column without mentioning that it is apparently wrong:

[T]he bulk of outrage has come from his use of the word apartheid in the title, apparently equating the plight of today’s Palestinians to the former victims of government-mandated racial separation in South Africa.
Jewish groups have responded angrily, saying that Mr. Carter’s claims are dangerous and anti-Semitic. But Mr. Carter is steadfastly defending the book, saying he believes there is a valid comparison between Israelis and the white South Africans who oppressed blacks.

“It was obviously going to be somewhat provocative,” Mr. Carter said of the title. “I could have said ‘A New Path to Peace’ or something like that.”

But Mr. Carter said he felt apartheid was the most pertinent word he could use, and in retrospect he would not change any of the book’s content.

…In the interview Mr. Carter defined apartheid as the “forced separation of two peoples in the same territory with one of the groups dominating or controlling the other.” Under that definition, he said, the United States practiced a form of apartheid during its “separate but equal” years of segregation.

Opposition to the book has appeared widely on newspaper editorial pages, including in The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In an essay titled “It’s Not Apartheid,” Michael Kinsley lambasted the book in The Washington Post on Tuesday. “It’s not clear what he means by using the loaded word ‘apartheid,’ since the book makes no attempt to explain it, but the only reasonable interpretation is that Carter is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa,” Mr. Kinsley wrote.

By quoting from a post-publication interview with Carter explaining his use of the term and then presenting Kinsley’s claim without contradiction, Bosman makes it seem as if Carter did not address the issue in the book. But as Kevin Drum pointed out, Carter does explain the distinction between Israel and South Africa in the book — here’s what he writes on page 189 (according to Drum):

The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa — not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life.

Kinsley apparently didn’t read the book very closely. Did Bosman?

Via Drudge, Rush Limbaugh is running tape from Barack Obama’s appearance in New Hampshire in which Obama apparently complains to Maureen Dowd about a reference to his ears. Limbaugh’s response was as constructive as you’d expect (Windows Media Player audio):

Obama up in New Hampshire being treated like a god making a speech. Now, apparently before he made the speech, Maureen Dowd had written something about his big ears. Obama, after the speech, made a beeline for Maureen Dowd who was in the audience to tell her that he didn’t appreciate her writing about his big ears. Now, there’s a lot of noise here and it’s very muddy. I’ll translate it for you, but here’s how it sounded.

OBAMA: Talk about my ears. So I just want to put you on notice, I’m very sensitive about — what I told them was I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.

DOWD: We’re just trying to toughen you up.

RUSH: “We’re just trying to toughen you up.” Here is what Barack Obama said. “Talk about my ears. So I just want to put you on notice, I’m very sensitive about — what I told them was I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” Now, there are many aspects of this, folks, that we need to delve into and explore. For one thing, I mean you know me, if the guy’s sensitive about his big ears, we need to give him a new name, like Dumbo. But that doesn’t quite get it. How about Barack Obama Hussein Odumbo. Well, if he’s sensitive — stop to think about this. This is a man being lauded as the savior of the country, a presidential candidate ready to be anointed, and he can’t handle being teased about his big ears? He goes out to Maureen Dowd and says, I am putting you on notice? Is that a threat? I want to put you on notice?

The transcript on Limbaugh’s site is accompanied by this classy graphic:

On the one hand, I can understand the sensitivity. But on the other, Limbaugh is right — Obama is going to have to toughen up if he wants to be president. He can take solace in the lack that he doesn’t give conservatives much to work with, as Isaac Chotiner noted on TNR’s The Plank, but the onslaught is inevitable. Remember, Limbaugh attacked the mild-mannered Tom Daschle as “El Diablo.” It’s going to get a lot worse, unfortunately, than making fun of his ears…

Update 12/16 6:30 AM: A commenter is already referring to him as “Obama bin Laden,” which I’m sure will become common among Free Republic types very soon:

I’d vote for Allen with a clear conscience and a cheerful heart. On the other hand–and I say this as a lifelong Republican–I will not vote for Giuliani, Romney, or any other East Coast lunatic-fringe liberal kook masquerading as a conservative. I see no difference between either of them and Hillary, Ted Kennedy, or Obama bin Laden when it comes to the issues that matter to me.

Update 12/17 10:44 AM: Media Matters Link: reports that some media figures say Obama was “teasing” Dowd or “joking” with her.

[Postscript: For more on Limbaugh, see our extensive coverage of him at Spinsanity.]

Eric Alterman appropriately sums up the prospects for a Bloomberg presidential run in 2008:

My buddy John Heilemann skillfully spun 6,617 words, here, out of a story that has no significant possibility of happening, as Bloomberg himself asks: “What chance does a five-foot-seven billionaire Jew who’s divorced really have of becoming president?”

The answer is zero. So save your half a billion dollars, sir, or better yet, give it to someone who can use it.

New evidence has emerged that casts even more doubt on the rape case against the Duke lacrosse players:

DNA testing conducted by a private lab in the Duke lacrosse rape case found genetic material from several males in the accuser’s body and her underwear — but none from any team member, including the three charged with rape, according to a defense motion filed Wednesday.

The motion, signed by attorneys for defendants Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, complained that the information was not disclosed in a report on the testing prosecutors provided earlier this year to the defense.

Meanwhile, a member of Congress is calling for an investigation of Durham district attorney Mike Nifong’s handling of the case:

A North Carolina congressman wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong committed “prosecutorial misconduct” and violated the civil rights of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of raping a dancer at an off-campus party last March.

Third District U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C.,3rd, sent the letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, saying he acted in response to “serious questions” raised in recent months by constituents and the media about the dancer’s allegations and Nifong’s handling of the case.

I don’t know if what happened meets a legal standard of prosecutorial misconduct, but it certainly seems unlikely that any conviction of the defendants will hold up on appeal.

Try to believe this really happened. In retaliation for negative coverage, Michael Crichton, the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, depicts a thinly-veiled version of The New Republic’s Michael Crowley as a pedophile who rapes his two-year-old nephew in his new book.

Crowley explains in a TNR column that runs under the apt header “Michael Crichton, jurassic prick” (free registration required):

There is an obscure publishing doctrine known as “the small penis rule.” As described in a 1998 New York Times article, it is a sly trick employed by authors who have defamed someone to discourage their targets from filing lawsuits. As libel lawyer Leon Friedman explained to the Times, “No male is going to come forward and say, ‘That character with a very small penis, ‘That’s me!’” This gimmick was undoubtedly on the mind of Michael Crichton, the pulp science-fiction writer of Jurassic Park fame, when he wrote the following passage in his latest novel, Next. (Caution: Graphic imagery. Kids, ask for permission before reading on):

Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. …

It turned out Crowley’s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]–as was his custom–tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child’s mother as “fantasizing feminist fundamentalists” who had made up the whole thing from “their sick, twisted imaginations.” This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley’s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler’s rectum.)

The next page contains fleeting references to Crowley as a “weasel” and a “dickhead,” and, later, “that political reporter who likes little boys.” But that’s it–Crowley comes and goes without affecting the plot. He is not a character so much as a voodoo doll. Knowing that Crichton had used prior books to attack very real-seeming people, I was suspicious. Who was this Mick Crowley? A Google search turned up an Irish Workers Party politician in Knocknaheeny, Ireland. But Crowley’s tireless advocacy for County Cork’s disabled seemed to make him an unlikely target of Crichton’s ire. And that’s when it dawned on me: I happen to be a Washington political journalist. And, yes, I did attend Yale University. And, come to think of it, I had recently written a critical 3,700-word cover story about Crichton. In lieu of a letter to the editor, Crichton had fictionalized me as a child rapist. And, perhaps worse, falsely branded me a pharmaceutical-industry profiteer.

Crowley’s conclusion is exactly right:

Crichton launched his noxious attack from behind the shield of the small penis rule because, I’m sure, he’s embarrassed by what he has done. In researching my article, I found a man who has long yearned for intellectual stature beyond the realm of killer dinosaurs and talking monkeys. And Crichton must know that turning a critic into a poorly endowed child rapist won’t exactly aid his cause. Ultimately, then, I find myself strangely flattered. To explain why, let me propose a corollary to the small penis rule. Call it the small man rule: If someone offers substantive criticism of an author, and the author responds by hitting below the belt, as it were, then he’s conceding that the critic has won.