Once again, I’m out of my depth, but after reading Tipsy Teatotaler’s thoughts on the mystery of confession in the Orthodox Church, I got to thinking about the notion of shame. (Note: one isn’t necessarily closely related to the other – the synapses in my brain just fire pretty freely on occasion.)

My thought was to question whether shame is a valuable emotion for the individual. I can definitely see the value in such things as guilt, regret, sorrow, and other emotions which are similar, but a little different. Shame, it seems to me, not only has a component dealing with unhappiness about something one has done wrong; it also has to do with perceiving one’s self as having low self-worth in the eyes of the community or some outside source. In other words, it’s not just (or even primarily?) about judging one’s actions as deficient and feeling bad for that; it’s about believing that the Other judges one’s actions as deficient, attributing weight to the judgment of the Other, and feeling bad accordingly.

So, in a sense, shame is a diminishment of self in favor of others. (Not a libertarian emotion, I guess!) I can see how, as a society, it would be a useful emotion to cultivate in members. But, is it beneficial on a personal level?

Random thoughts for a Wednesday morning.

Memorial Day is a day to honor the dead who have died in military service to our country. Gifts impose duties upon the recipient. In fact, in some cultures, you could do great offense by giving a gift that exceeded the recipient’s ability to reciprocate. I’m not sure how you adequately respond to a gift of this magnitude. But, I have some ideas.

First, simply honor the sacrifice. As I tell my kids, never underestimate the power of “thank you.”

Second, the military in our country serves the civilian political authority. This gives us an opportunity and a civic duty. Keep informed and object to the extent you’re able when the civilian authority proposes to use the military in ways that aren’t necessary to “defend our freedom,” as they like to say. If the policy in question isn’t worth killing and dying for, possibly the military shouldn’t be involved.

Third, (and to be honest, I’m not sure there is any help for this), it would be nice if we could stop our politicians from using the trappings of patriotism and military service for partisan advantage. Use of flags, love of country, and our military can mean short term gain for the politician who is able to appropriate the “good will” associated with these things. But, the long-term effect is for these symbols to become tainted by association with the partisan using them. For example when I see a flag and hear the word “freedom,” I start thinking of the disastrous policies of George W. Bush who liked to wrap himself in such things. He’s hardly the only one, but his branding efforts seemed especially vigorous.

That’s short term stuff. We need to remember the patriots who died in the Revolution to found the country; the soldiers who fought the British invasion in 1812; the Union soldiers who preserved the Union against treason in defense of slavery; and the Greatest Generation who fought the evil of the Nazis and the aggression of the Empire of Japan. But our reverence needs to be tempered by the realization that soldiers’ lives have also been spent on efforts that were, at best, of ambiguous moral character even if the soldiers’ personal efforts were valiant. Among others: our war against Mexico for territory; our war against the various Indian tribes for territory; our war of empire against Spain premised on sketchy evidence about destruction of the Maine; our efforts in World War I where neither side seemed especially virtuous; any number of skirmishes in Central America that primarily benefited the United Fruit Company; and, of course, Viet Nam. (I didn’t forget the Korean War, but I’m not entirely certain which side of the ledger to put it on.)

So, thank you to all of the soldiers who have died in service to this great country of ours. Our country would not be what it is today without them. It is up to us as citizens to see that that willingness to serve and sacrifice is used wisely in the future.

Lindsay Beyerstein has a good post, specifically about Dr. Wakefield being stricken from Britain’s medical register and more generally about his work attempting to link autism to vaccination. The links between vaccination and autism have never been very credible, and Wakefield’s excommunication discredits them further.

“The investigation focused on how Wakefield and colleagues carried out their research, not on the science behind it,” according to the New York Times. That makes it sound like Wakefield’s ethical lapses had no bearing on the validity of his research, or lack thereof. In fact, some of Wakefield’s unethical behavior undermines the credibility of the study, which made international headlines when it was published in the Lancet in 1998. The report propelled Wakefield to guru status within the international anti-vaccination movement. His research went down in flames, but he’s still getting on the Today Show.

I am certain I am not immune to it, but I am always irritated where our risk assessments are significantly out of proportion. We blithely and routinely accept risks with a 1/1000 chance of happening and then completely freak out over a 1/100,000 risk that’s more exotic. And the fact that this crap gets on the Today Show is a big part of the problem. These shows have no sense of responsibility. They just know if they can run a story with Jenny McCarthy holding forth on the perils of vaccination to scare the bejeezus out of a bunch of suburban moms, they’ll have a nice demographic sticking around through the commercials.

As a population, we’re basically innumerate and unscientific. Our sense of perspective is skewed. Again, I am not immune, I’m no scientist and my math skills are decent but nothing spectacular. But, in the long run, we’re all dead; there are about a billion different ways we can die; and if we spend our lives worrying about all of them, we might as well be dead. So, you have to spend your time and resources protecting against the major dangers and take your chances with the rest. We know that the diseases against we immunize our kids were huge risks – autism from vaccination is comparatively insignificant, if there is an increased risk at all. Probably we have been so successful with immunizations, we don’t really appreciate what a problem those diseases were.

For some reason, this Memorial Day Weekend, it occurred to me to compare and contrast soldiers and ACLU attorneys. They both fight for our freedom. The ACLU lawyers don’t die for the cause, so this weekend is justifiably not for them, but they frequently (to paraphrase J.D. Salinger) live humbly for the cause. And, while they do their thing without the physical risk that our soldiers so courageously face, they also do it without much in the way of gratitude. Time after time, they challenge infringements to our rights under the Bill of Rights. I suspect they get so much grief about what they do because they frequently make those challenges on behalf of the less desirable elements of our society; folks every bit as entitled to Constitutional protections, but still we’d rather not hear the bellyaching from these particular people. I respect what the ACLU does, even though they sue my clients from time to time which, I’ll have to admit, is a bit of an annoyance.

Anyway, they are at it again; challenging an Allen County ordinance (h/t Indiana Law Blog) that requires doctors who don’t live in Allen County or surrounding counties or who don’t have admitting privileges to area hospitals to provide contact information to area emergency rooms and the local health department. It looks like at least part of the challenge is going to come from an angle that I suggested when these ordinances hit the news. The trouble Allen County will face is that the practice of medicine in Indiana is already heavily regulated by the State.

As a general proposition, the default setting is that municipalities have a power unless it is specifically withheld. However, once the State undertakes to regulate an area, the presumption shifts to an assumption that municipalities do not also have the power to regulate that area unless the legislature specifically gives them that power. It was this dynamic that resulted in county “Certificate of Need” ordinances being struck down – the counties wanted to protect their county hospitals but the federal courts held that the counties didn’t have the power to enact those ordinances because the State had already taken over the hospital regulation business. I would expect a similar result for Allen County’s abortion regulation statute.

Here’s one from the “Special Place in Hell” Department:

Three people kept a 65-year-old woman locked in a tiny room with a urine-soaked mattress to sleep on and a dog bowl to drink from so they could live off her monthly Social Security checks, authorities said.

You can usually understand people to a certain extent by realizing they are, to some extent, good guys in their own personal narrative. You find the angle where their actions are justified, and things usually click into place in terms of understanding where they’re coming from. I have no idea what kind of messed up mental contortions you’d have to do to make you think that it’s somehow “o.k.” to lock up an elderly woman for her social security check.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” approach to allowing gays in the military on this blog before, but probably because my take is pretty simple: get rid of it; let gays serve on an equal footing.

It occurred to me to mention this because Maureen Groppe, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about Indiana’s Congressional delegation’s position on the policy.

Andre Carson and Pete Visclosky are on the side of history with this one, explicitly favoring repeal. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer will find a spot in the history books next to the folks who were reluctant to let blacks serve in the military. Pence thinks all of this talk about equality is a bunch of liberal hoo-ha (I paraphrase), and Buyer is very concerned about morale and discipline – I’m not sure if he’s afraid that the military will turn into a sort of Gomorrah with guns, “carrying each other’s baggage” like so many camouflaged rentboys or what. I can’t see where Dan Burton was asked, but I’ll assume he’s against repeal.

The rest of the Indiana delegation: Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Evan Bayh, and Dick Lugar seem to be waffling in one way or another. I don’t believe Ellsworth responded, and the rest of them were going to hide behind the study commissioned to provide cover for the politicians who have to make the decision.

We don’t hire these guys for their sexual activity or their choice in significant others any more than we hire them for the color of their skin. We hire them to fight or provide support to those who do. We hire them for their love of country and willingness to die for same. And yet, once upon a time, we excluded or segregated blacks who wanted to serve in the military. That didn’t make any sense. And it doesn’t make any sense to exclude gays based on their sexual orientation. There will be excuses for excluding gays, but there were excuses for excluding blacks. But, at the end of the day, we stopped discriminating against blacks in the military, and it was the right thing to do. Same with gays.

Maureen Groppe has a news story about a Kaiser Family Foundation study on the impact of the health care reform bill. The value of these reports is going to be marginal, I think, if they don’t (and I’m not sure how they could at this point) get to the bottom line of “what is this going to cost me and how much health care am I getting for my dollar.” Gov. Daniels will, no doubt, seize on on a projected increase of $500 – $900 million for the state of Indiana. But, if I’m paying more tax dollars to Indiana, but my health insurance premiums flatline instead of continuing to skyrocket, I’m not going to care that the money is getting funneled through the State instead of Anthem – (the state is likely to rake less off the top if it comes down to it). What I care about is that my health care costs become more manageable or, at the least, become unmanageable less quickly.

And I’m not sure how good a job these reports are going to do in helping folks decide how good or bad a deal it is for them, personally.

Not to be a stickler about the law or anything, but IC 3-10-8-1(3) was brought to my attention as it applies to Rep. Souder’s vacating Indiana’s Third Congressional seat:

A special election shall be held. . . whenever a vacancy occurs in the office of United States Representative unless the vacancy occurs less than thirty (30) days before a general election.

Other than that language about the vacancy occurring less than 30 days before a general election, I don’t think there is an exception for those situations where the Governor believes selecting representation for a Congressional District would be a waste of money. The use of the word “shall” is generally understood to be mandatory. Where the legislature is leaving the matter up to the discretion of a public official, generally it uses the word “may.”

Rand Paul, following his nomination as the GOP candidate to be the Senator from Kentucky, made a bit of a splash on the issue of Civil Rights. Rachel Maddow asked him about his position (also see) about whether he would have supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically the portion that makes it illegal for businesses open to the public to discriminate on the basis of race.

Paul danced a little bit, but I think he was reasonably forthright as these things go. He is personally opposed to racist behavior. He thinks that legislation to prohibit racism in public institutions is and was appropriate. But, he does not favor legislation that limits a property owner’s right to discriminate on the basis of race.

I don’t think Rand Paul is a racist, but I can see why an ideology that elevates private property rights above other sorts of rights might appeal to those who are. Where minorities don’t have as much private property, a preference for private property rights over other rights can effectively exclude minorities from a good deal of the public sphere or relegate them to second class status. The test, of course, is how dedicated the person is to private property rights in other contexts: Can it prohibit sale of pornography or nude dancing on private property? Prostitution? Marijuana use?

My guess is Rand Paul is dedicated enough to private property rights that he’d allow private property rights to trump the government’s interest in battling social evils – racism, pornography, drugs – pretty much across the spectrum. My guess is that a non-trivial segment of people voting for him wouldn’t necessarily be so even handed.

For my part, watching the oil gushing out in the Gulf, it’s hard not to conclude that private property rights are just one important interest among many to be valued. Clearly the invisible hand isn’t going to clean up that mess. The government is going to have to be involved in a serious way, and, in hindsight, it should have been more involved – even at the expense of some private property rights – prior to the disaster.

The Palladium-Item has a story about federal charges against a mortgage broker with a screwy factual background. The broker’s world started unraveling when she, apparently, paid a couple of guys to rough up a real estate investor who was, if I followed the story right, the boss of the broker’s daughter.

Anyway, the broker is facing charges that she falsified loan application documents and took undisclosed commissions for selling higher interest rate loans. This highlights one of the factors that got us into our present real estate bubble induced financial mess. The incentive structures were all wrong. This woman’s incentives were all geared toward selling a mortgage, preferably at as high an interest rate as possible. The qualifications of the borrower were of no real concern to her since she had no long-term stake in the loan.

Once the loan closed, the mortgage broker coud take the money and run. Then the loan would be sold up the chain, packaged, and securitized. AIG sprinkles magic fairy dust on the product, “insuring” it with money AIG didn’t have, and some credit agency blesses it, turning it into a AAA security, and then pension funds pay top dollar for it. Presto! A figment of a corrupt mortgage broker’s imagination is now a bullet-proof investment opportunity, suitable for widows and orphans.