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We don't know what we think about a lot of issues – hardly a novel finding, dating back to Converse. What's even more problematic is how badly we misjudge what others think, which is a fundamental component of how we form our own opinions and orient ourselves toward society.

A real psychologist might disagree here, but political psychology evaluates judgment and decision-making under the assumption that much of human cognition is "hard wired" for basic survival functions and is quite poorly adapted to understanding abstractions like politics (see Kuklinski & Quirk, Reconsidering the Rational Public: Cognition, Heuristics, and Mass Opinion). In other words, our thought processes are geared toward self-preservation, including bolstering our self-image. This is part of the reason why having a low self-image is recognized as a medical condition. The "normal" mind excels at convincing itself that it is correct even when it is very, very wrong.

One of the tricks our minds use to make us feel better about the decisions we make is to convince us that others share our opinions. It is common in the absence of other information (and perhaps even despite it) to believe that the majority of our fellow citizens believe the same things we do. If I am against capital punishment and don't know anything about public opinion on that subject, I will guess that a majority of the public is also against it.

This, I believe, is one of the main culprits explaining survey results like these:

Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences Survey. May 12-18, 2010. N=1,001 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.7
"From what you’ve heard or read, do you think the evidence on global warming is widely accepted within the scientific community, or do many scientists have serious doubts about it?"

Widely accepted: 37%

Many have serious doubts: 49%

Unsure: 14%

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Dec. 10-13, 2009. N=1,003 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.5
"Do you think most scientists agree with one another about whether or not global warming is happening, or do you think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists on this issue?"

Most agree: 36%

A lot of disagreement: 62%

Unsure: 2%

Your gut reaction is probably that this is the media's fault – too much Glenn Beck, too many effective disinformation campaigns by denialist groups and professional "skeptics." But these are objective questions, namely about the scientific consensus. A five-second google search would reveal that 90%+ of climate researchers subscribe to the climate change hypothesis. Even denialist arguments on Fox News don't have the audacity to claim that a majority of scientists have serious doubts; in fact, the small minority status of the Skeptics is often played up to fuel the right's latent martyr complex. If we had the information we would probably answer the question accordingly. Lacking that information we just assume that everybody else probably believes what we believe, namely that global warmin' is nothing but a big pinko conspiracy to take away our Dodge Durango.

It is regrettable that we use our own opinions as a proxy for the majority so often given how sorely misinformed we are most of the time. But if I feel that it's regrettable, then surely most people do. A collective solution may be just around the corner.

On account of an 11-hour drive late Thursday and a wedding to attend today I regret that you were not able to wake up to some NPF this morning. To make up for this failure on my part, here is a photo of the world's tallest man (Bao Xishun of China) reaching into the stomach of a bottlenose dolphin to remove a potentially fatal piece of plastic it swallowed.

I would love to have been at the meeting where Chinese veterinarians and medical professionals were trying to figure out how to save the dolphin using the latest medical technology until someone stood up and said "All we need is a guy with 50-inch arms and an economy sized tub of Vaseline!"

Fortunately for the dolphin, China has both.

Octopus-armed NBA player Cliff Ray was called upon to perform the same life-saving service for a dolphin at a California zoo in the 1970s. Whether the Chinese were aware of this incident is unclear; this may be a case of simultaneous independent discoveries of something brilliant.

Occasionally a state legislature will pass a law so blatantly unconstitutional that even the tamest mainstream media outlets refuse to be diplomatic and pretend otherwise. It seems like a fantastic waste of time and resources to pass such legislation but it is usually an effort, driven by well-funded interest groups, to force an issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. Most of the truly wacky anti-abortion legislation – say, an Oklahoma law that allows physicians to withhold ultrasounds from pregnant women if it reveals birth defects that may lead her to consider abortion – is a transparent attempt to goad the Supreme Court into rehashing Roe v. Wade.

So when Arizona's state legislature – and by the way, Arizona must be butter because it's on a ROLL lately – proposes legislation to forbid birthright citizenship to babies born in Arizona of illegal immigrant parents, we recognize their larger goal. That a state cannot pass a law altering Federal immigration and citizenship policy is so obvious that it requires no comment. That this law is bound to work its way into Federal court is equally obvious. I'm afraid, however, that anti-immigrant people may get exactly what they want from the Courts this time.

American citizenship is available through three avenues: naturalization, jus soli (literally "law of the ground" or "soil"), or jus sanguinis ("law of blood"). In other words one can apply for citizenship or be born with it either by being born on U.S. territory or being born of two American citizen parents (even if born outside of the U.S.) The Arizona law would try to redefine jus soli, which, unlike many aspects of citizenship law, rests on particularly shaky ground.

Jus soli is based on the 14th Amendment, which states that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Like so many Constitutional provisions, there is an obvious subjective component to this language: what exactly does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean? Is 'jurisdiction' being subject to the laws of the US? If so, than anyone physically present in the US meets the definition. Does 'jurisdiction' imply citizenship or legal residence? Let's just say it would not be difficult to make that argument. Not at all.

The Court ruled on that issue in one of the most important – even if not the most well known – decisions in its history: US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). Wong was born in California to two Chinese citizens. As an adult he was denied re-entry into the US after a visit to China because he was not a citizen by virtue of his parents' Chinese citizenship. Eventually the Court ruled in Wong's favor (following the British common law application of jus soli) stating that a child born in the U.S. of two non-citizen parents is a birthright citizen as long as the following conditions exist:

1. The parents are not born of foreign diplomats.
2. The parents are not hostile forces occupying U.S. territory by force.
3. The parents have permanent residence in the U.S.

The problem is that Wong's parents were legal residents of California, hence the decision does not tell us whether or not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" requires residence or legal residence. "Permanent" residence does not imply legal residence, hence the decision has been interpreted to mean that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen. As far as defining jus soli in the United States, this case is pretty much it. The concept of birthright citizenship rests on an interpretation of the Constitution, not the Constitution itself. The language is too vague to permit the latter. It would not be difficult to make a plausible argument that the Wong decision need not automatically apply jus soli to the children of illegal immigrants depending on what constitutes jurisdiction. To be honest, I think that's a pretty good argument.

In short, I will not be even slightly shocked if the current Court – with its four vote block of ultra-conservatives – were to offer a different interpretation of "jurisdiction" that excludes illegal residents. I am personally ambivalent about this issue. I don't lie awake at night worrying about "anchor babies" and how the imm'grunts are a-comin' to take our jobs and women. The problem of illegal immigration is caused entirely by lax enforcement (or non-enforcement) of immigration law, which in turn is a function of campaign contributions from businesses that thrive off illegal workers. So I'm willing to consider "anchor babies" an externality of the elevation of profit above all other concerns. In other words, I won't shed tears over the decision either way despite my belief that the current interpretation of "jurisdiction" is correct. For people with a stronger stake in the issue, though, the Arizona bill and the potential for this issue to reach the Supreme Court should be troubling.

A brief tale in pictures:

Please note that this has nothing to do with our current economic problems. That is why it is never discussed in the news, during elections, or by elected officials. Our problems may be due to a lot of different things, including but not limited to:

- Outsourcing blue collar jobs
- Costly wars
- Tax cuts during costly wars
- The collapse of the dollar
- Poor monetary policy
- Lazy, entitled poor people
- Shiftless minorities
- Spanish language billboards
- Snake-handlers
- Al Worthington of Al Worthington Chevrolet in Grand Forks, ND
- Solar wind
- The death of Billy Mays
- Infrastructure destroyed by the Sasquatch, Rodan, or both
- Reckless disregard for official signage
- Jews

But not inequality. So keep moving, there's nothing to see here.

When Thomas Frank wrote in 2000 about the decline of labor reporting in American newspapers since the 1970s, he summed up the prevailing attitude by the late 1990s as "Unions are obsolete and strikes are sad." Strikes are no longer indicative of any underlying labor dispute, and certainly not extensions of any social or class conflicts (America having magically purged itself of the concept of class in the Reagan years). They are simply sad things that happen that make people fight and end with companies losing money and people losing jobs. The most damaging change, however, was the abandonment of the idea that the interests of management and labor are – or even could be – different. The 1990s revolution of Third Wave whiz-bang techno-capitalism, complete with video montages of the crumbling Berlin Wall and other tomahawk dunks of the free market, told us all that the interests of management and labor are one and the same. Strikes, unions, and class conflict are little more than personal vendettas and grudge matches played out by New Deal era relics who are too stupid and too stubborn to accept the inevitability of progress, refusing to accept the new, improved future in which the wage-grubber and CEO join hands and stride proudly onto the broad, sunlit uplands of post-regulation capitalism. Federal law prohibits the pre-1930s practice of setting up bogus "company unions" to derail organizing drives, but that is no longer relevant: the entire country is a company union now and we're all members.

In the interceding years, news coverage of labor issues has further degraded – which is to say that it is essentially nonexistent. The coverage of the pilots' strike at Spirit Airlines has abandoned any pretense of talking about labor-versus-management. Instead it focuses on passenger inconvenience, the quintessential "What's in it for me?" angle. Don't talk about the issues, just tell me if my flight has been canceled and how I can use my iPhone to get a refund.

No matter how many coats of sugar we apply over the issue with corporate propaganda and compliant, unquestioning journalism (due in no small part to the consolidation and successful union-busting in the print journalism industry since 1990) our society and economy really haven't changed that much. Workers and their employers are in a fundamentally adversarial relationship. The Company wants to get as much work out of you as possible at the lowest cost, and if they find a way to do your job more cheaply they will do it. You want to work as little and get paid as much as possible, and if a higher-paying job comes along you will take it. They are trying to fuck you, and it is in your interest to see to it that they do not succeed. That truth is fundamentally absent from labor journalism these days, which is unsurprising given the anti-union position of the newspaper industry and the generation after generation of brainless 23 year old journalism students with little practical skill aside from writing bland, inoffensive copy and sucking up to their corporate masters.

That said, the Spirit Airlines strike is an excellent example of how 21st Century strikes are born and play out. Management is emboldened by decades of compliant legislation and judicial willingness to strip away regulatory and labor protections. Labor is endlessly frustrated by the continued degradation of the things that have always defined "good jobs" in our society – benefits, pensions, reasonable hours, and good salary. The emboldened management acts like a swaggering caricature of John Wayne; the exasperated employees dig in their heels in an effort to salvage pride if not a better deal. Basically, picture two people holding a revolver to one another's head and saying "Don't push me, or I'll…"

The end result of this dispute is most likely going to be the collapse of Spirit as a viable airline, which feeds into the "strikes are sad" storyline. But the important questions go unasked. What kind of system produces management willing to burn their company to the ground rather than pay their pilots wages in line with other bargain basement airlines? What kind of system produces employees who would rather strike and possibly lose their jobs rather than continue to work under the existing conditions? Examining the underlying issues that produce this kamikaze approach to negotiation would require not only more effort than we are willing to devote to any issue but the admission that, believe it or not, labor and management are fundamentally in opposition – not to mention that they are engaged in a death struggle over a piece of a rapidly shrinking pie.

We can probably do better than "Unions are obsolete, strikes are sad." But even good labor reporting under the current economic circumstances would probably conclude that labor-management disputes are like two bald men fighting over a comb.

The social sciences are a great place to be a cynic. Acquire even a passing understanding of the cumulative research in political science, sociology, psychology (I know, they resist being lumped into this group), or economics and it quickly leads to the conclusion that humanity is unfit to feed and clothe itself let alone govern or live in society with one another. However low your expectations of the "average American" may be, spend a few hours with the literature of political science and sociology and recognize how generous you were being. Americans know next to nothing, believe absolute nonsense, and lack any interest in social, political, and economic issues. There is nothing more trite or true than stating, "Americans are idiots." It isn't even controversial anymore.

So the question, and a particularly problematic one for the courts, is just what we can reasonably expect Americans to understand about the law and their rights.

Last week the Supreme Court issued a split (5-4) and controversial decision in Berghuis v. Thompkins, allegedly weakening the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. As is often the case with Supreme Court controversies, the reaction focuses on the decision and ignores the facts of the underlying case. Briefly, an individual was arrested and read his Miranda rights but he made no statement either invoking or waiving them. That is, he didn't say much of anything. For over 2.5 hours police asked him questions about a murder while he said nothing, and after 3 hours he made a self-incriminating statement.

Statements made after invoking the right to remain silent are inadmissible. The defendant's attorney claimed that he invoked his rights by remaining silent for nearly 3 hours. The lower courts agreed, but the 5-4 majority on the SC disagreed. The majority bloc (Clarence Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy) is not one that I often side with, but in this instance I see the logic of their decision, even though the implications are troubling.

The basic question is a thorny one: what can and should police assume? Now, we know that I am not a friend of American police tactics and what we mockingly call a justice system. But this fuels my belief that asking police to assume anything is a dangerous enterprise. On the one hand, the dissenters on the Court and liberal groups are arguing that 3 hours of silence should be interpreted as invoking the right to remain silent. On the other, the majority argued that responding to any questions should be interpreted as waiving the right.

Much of the reaction has echoed Sotomayor's dissent in arguing that:

A) The burden should be on the police to prove that the rights were waived, not on the defendant to prove that they were invoked. As the original Miranda decision states, a "heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self-incrimination and his right to retained or appointed counsel."

B) Our rights have been weakened because police can hypothetically pepper a silent person with questions for hours until he or she finally responds. I agree with the first part, but the second only holds if we assume that Americans have not the slightest understanding of how their rights work. That might not be a bad assumption, of course.

A person need only say "I wish to remain silent" or "I don't want to say anything" and everything beyond that point becomes inadmissible in all but a few unique situations. The real question at hand here, then, is whether it is reasonable to expect that an adult under arrest should know this. Can we expect them to know that they should affirmatively state their invocation of the right? Interrogations would be so much less effective at extracting confessions if people simply remembered what any half-decent lawyer will tell you: don't say anything and ask for a lawyer. That people don't understand this is the Cops' Best Friend. But how far do police have to go to make people understand it? After they state "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you choose to say can be used against you at trial." do they need to take out finger puppets and crayons until the point is clear?

As for silence being interpreted as invoking the 5th Amendment, that too is very problematic for the dissenters' argument. What about the rest of Miranda? Does silence also invoke the right to have an attorney present? Ideally we want police doing as little "interpretation" as possible. The fewer points of law they have to think about, the better. I for one don't want them trying to interpret the meaning of silence. ANY statement, even as simple as "I have nothing to say, asshole", will invoke the 5th. Furthermore, the suspect in this case was given the "extended" Miranda and was informed that he could choose to invoke his rights at any time before, after, or during questioning.

I'm a pretty good civil libertarian and I recognize that most people know very little about their rights under arrest. And the Court has been cognizant of that over the years with Miranda, ruling that a Miranda warning is only valid if the suspect affirmatively indicates that he understands his rights and that it must be read in a language understood by the suspect. Is it too much to ask people to state their intent to invoke their rights after those rights have been explained to them? Sadly, the answer is probably yes, so I sympathize with Sotomayor's argument about the burden resting on the state to prove that the right was waived. That said, it isn't hard to see the majority's point that there is a limit to what we should expect of the police. After informing suspects of their rights and explicitly asking them (as is near-universal in American law enforcement) ""Do you understand each of these rights? Understanding each of these rights, do you now wish to speak to the police without a lawyer being present?" I fail to see what more can reasonably be done to make individuals understand that saying "No" invokes legal rights that protect them.

From the 2006 World Cup (ps HOLY CRAP I have been doing this for a long time).

This is what makes soccer so farcical and unwatchable to the average American:

1. Player One slide-tackles Player Two, making minor leg-to-leg contact

2. Player Two goes limp and crumples to the turf in a near-perfect (and no doubt well-rehearsed) re-enactment of Frame 323 of the Zapruder film

3. Player Two grabs his calf/shin/ankle and makes a grimacing face as though he is attempting to defecate a shattered beer bottle

4. Player One throws up his arms, gesturing a combination of "I'm innocent" and "This man is an enormous vagina" to the crowd, followed by "Surely you aren't buying this horseshit" to the ref (who is always from a neutral yet vaguely dislikeable country, usually Argentina)

5. A team of doctors rush over to Player Two with a stretcher, neck brace, donor kidney, gas cromatograph, and the Jaws of Life.

6. After carrying Player Two off the field on said stretcher, he waits until the crowd's attention is diverted back to the game before getting up, walking it off for about 10 feet, and then "heroically" re-joining the action moments after his near-crippling injury.

Let me add a couple of questions that continue to plague me:

Why is there a clock? It operates in the wrong direction and seemingly at random, being ignored by everyone on the field and seemingly having no effect on the game whatsoever.

Why do goaltenders wear neutral colors?

Why are fans allowed to employ whatever kind of noisemaking implement they choose? This would be like having a basketball game where everyone in the stadium had a whistle.

Why are substitutions treated like the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns?

Help me understand, soccer people. My brutish, ignorant American mind does not get it.

So I grew a 56-day playoff beard for the Blackhawks and I was not about to shave it without maximizing the entertainment potential inherent in facial hair. It seemed appropriate to honor my favorite presidential facial hair, that of Chester A. Arthur.

Please try to control yourself upon discovering how attractive I am.

Most people with a half-decent interest in presidential elections know that facial hair has mandatory between approximately 1850 and 1920 but almost nonexistent outside of that time period. HuffPo has a short slideshow refresher course on some of the more impressive instances of Executive beardage, or you could stop being a dilettante and go for the ridiculously thorough catalog of mustaches, beards, sideburns, and stray mole hairs among presidents as well as presidential candidates by Nicholas Whyte.

While Mr. Whyte does note that no "serious" candidates have had facial hair since 1948 (Thomas Dewey) there have been some quasi-serious ones. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr was nominated by the American Mustache Institute (which apparently is real) for its (I shit you not) "Robert Goulet Mustached American of the Year Award" in 2008.

This is an actual thing.

What is behind the modern aversion to facial hair? Yes, mustaches make 99.9% of their wearers look like registered sex offenders, meth dealers, or state troopers. But older men can sometimes look more stately with a beard. Something odd like bushy sideburns could also make a no-name candidate stand out from the pack. I am not holding my breath, but I hope that facial hair becomes politically acceptable again at some point in the reasonably near future. I don't want to live in a country that wouldn't elect James A. Garfield on account of his massive, bushy beard or, even worse, a political system that would scare him out of growing one in the first place.

Real post soon. But not now.