Later On

Interesting story by Michael Warren of AP:

The search is finally over for Abel Madariaga, whose pregnant wife was kidnapped by Argentine security forces 32 years ago.

After decades of doubt and loneliness, of searching faces in the street in hopes they might be related, Madariaga has found his son.

"I never stopped thinking I would find him," the 59-year-old father said, squeezing his son’s arm during a packed news conference Tuesday.

"For the first time, I know who I was. Who I am," the young man said, still marveling at his new identity: Francisco Madariaga Quintela, a name he only learned last week.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights group believes about 400 children were stolen at birth from women who were kidnapped and killed as part of the 1976-1983 dictatorship’s "dirty war" against political dissidents, which killed as many as 30,000 people.

Madariaga and his wife, Silvia Quintela, were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group targeted for elimination by government death squads. He last saw his wife — a 28-year-old surgeon who treated the poor in a Buenos Aires suburb — being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train on Jan. 17, 1977.

Madariaga managed to flee into exile to avoid the same fate. Ever since, he has made finding the children of those who disappeared his life’s cause.

Returning to a democratic Argentina in 1983, he became the grandmothers group’s secretary and first male member. He lobbied the government to create a DNA database and dedicate judicial resources to the effort, and developed strategies for persuading young people with doubts about their identities to come forward and get DNA tests.

All the while, his own son’s fate remained a mystery.

As it turned out, …

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From the Center for American Progress in an email:

This past weekend, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) featured two immigration events that provided a dissonant narrative on how conservatives view immigrants and the relationship some are seeking with a voting bloc for whom the issue is “deeply personal” — Latinos. While one panel portrayed Latinos as part of an immigrant “invasion,” the other identified them as integral to the future of the Republican Party. The immigration discord at CPAC wasn’t a scheduling mistake. If anything, it was a microcosm of the growing internal debate raging within the conservative movement. Ultimately, immigration is one of many issues that concerns the Latino electorate. However, polling of Latino voters reveals that demagoguery on the issue is what has largely tarnished the Republican Party’s image and sparked a surge in hate crimes and racial profiling that the community is collectively experiencing. Yet, while many Republicans recognize the need to adjust their immigration rhetoric and regain the trust of a growing demographic that might otherwise be voting Republican, a significant faction of right-wing politicians and candidates remain belligerently stubborn.

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I finally watched this video, and I was intrigued by Alton Brown’s lists, reproduced below.

His lists:

Daily
fruits
whole grains
leafy greens
nuts
carrots
green tea
breakfast

3x Week
oily fish
yogurt
broccoli
sweet potato
avocado

1x Week
red meat
pasta
dessert
alcohol

Never
fast food
soda
processed meals
canned soups
“diet” anything

Another fantastic shave. The Merkur Classic head does well—as does QED shaving soap. This morning I used my Rooney Style 3 Size 2 Super Silvertip—it felt enormous. I once had a size 3, but I cannot imagine so large a brush now. Still, the great size was a pleasant change, and it certainly generates and holds a ton of lather. QED’s Rose Geranium has a wonderful rose fragrance, and the shave was transformed by that aroma. My Edwin Jagger Georgian did a great job with a previously used Polsilver blade, and a splash of Pashana was a fine finish.

I finally made this mix—which turns out to be delicious and surprisingly light-tasting. I didn’t put it on bread, since I had some crackers to use up. It makes a half-recipe quite nicely. I’ll most definitely be making this again—in fact, it will probably become a regular.

Changes next time: try lime or lemon juice in lieu of the vinegar, and add a dash or two of pepper sauce or a good sprinkling of cayenne or ground chipotle.

Via Open Culture:

James Fallows has another excellent post, with valuable links, regarding the OPR reports. I encourage you to click that link.

In the post was a comment from a reader on the high number of civilian deaths due to US drone strikes (whereas I would fault the US for the MUCH higher number of civilian deaths in Iraq in an unnecessary war). That reminded me of a train of thought from last night:

It struck me as odd, with all our other advances, that we (as humans, save a few pacifists) still find that war is an acceptable way to settle disputes between groups. I can’t imagine representatives of two groups in a final negotiation saying, “Well, we just cannot find a way to agree here, so this is what I propose: we get large groups of citizens, yours on one side and ours on the other, and we have them start killing each other and the side that sooner tires of getting killed, or is wiped out, loses the argument.” Is that really wise? Isn’t it amazing that we’ve found no better way? (just more efficient ways of doing the killing).

Then it struck me that, in the animal kingdom, very few species wage war against their own species, and even fewer force members of their species (from other tribes) to be slaves. The only examples that come to my mind are humans and ants. Ants also grow crops and domesticate animals. It sounds almost as though our closest cultural relative is the ant.

UPDATE: It’s evolutionarily peculiar that we haven’t developed a better strategy to settle disputes between groups given that co-operation is far superior to competition as a survival strategy—see, for example, the fascinating book The Evolution of Cooperation, by Robert Axelrod, or the equally fascinating book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, by Alfie Kohn. Somehow, we solved the problem at the individual level (rarely are disputes now settled by a fight to the death or murder), but still are having trouble with the group part—only countries, though: corporations manage (for the most part) to settle disputes sans killings.

Had to hold Megs off while I ate. This is new. At one point, her little furry paw did that sort of scratching thing at the plate (not snagging anything, though)—I think that’s the motion of grabbing quickly a lot of times just in case you catch something.

I thought of trying the "No! Bad kitty!" thing but dismissed it out of hand. She didn’t want an explanation, she wanted a chicken wing.

I finished the plate in the kitchen.

In Discover:

When we last left the Lower Merion School District, its officials had circled the wagons and refused to openly discuss the lawsuit charging school administrators with remotely accessing the webcams in the laptops loaned out to students, and doing so without the students’ or their parents’ knowledge. The school stayed pretty quiet about it over the weekend, but spokesman Doug Young says that the district has suspended the practice amid the lawsuit and the accompanying protests by students, the community and privacy advocates [The New York Times].

That might not be enough to quell the swell of anger over Lower Merion’s policy. The district, which loans out Apple laptops to all it students, admits remotely activating the webcams 42 times over the course of the last 14 months, but says all of those instances were attempts to find missing or stolen computers. However, this whole fracas started after school administrators tried to use a photo taken of student Blake Robbins as evidence to corroborate charges that the young man had engaged in some sort of mischief. Robbins told CBS News that the school accused him of selling drugs and tried to back up the charge with images from the webcam.

Robbins’ parents filed suit in U.S. District Court, but that won’t be the end of Lower Merion’s legal troubles. The FBI has launched a query into the incident. Risa Vetri Ferman, the Montgomery County district attorney, said Friday that she might also investigate [ABC News].

David Savage in the LA Times:

The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday to resolve a conflict between the free-speech rights of a Los Angeles-based advocate for international peace and a broad anti-terrorism law that makes it a crime to advise a foreign terrorist group, even if it means advising its members to seek peace.

The justices sounded closely split between those who saw this as a terrorism case and those who saw it as a free-speech case.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan urged the court to uphold the broad sweep of the terrorism law and to permit prosecutions of anyone who gives any support to a terrorist group. She discounted the "supposed 1st Amendment claims" raised by human rights advocates.

"When you help Hezbollah build homes, you’re helping them build bombs," she said.

But Georgetown Law Professor David Cole said the human-rights advocates he represents are not interested in supplying bombs, but rather in urging foreign groups to avoid violence and to take their disputes to the United Nations.

"They seek peaceful solutions to conflict. And they support only lawful activities," he said, not terrorism. Cole is representing the Humanitarian Law Project in Los Angeles and its president Ralph Fertig, a USC professor of social work who has advised the Kurds in Turkey.

In 1997, the State Department listed the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, as a foreign terrorist group, which meant that Fertig could go to prison for giving "expert advice or assistance" to Kurdish leaders.

"The government has been arguing for more than a decade that our clients cannot advocate for peace," Cole said.

When asked whether Fertig would be prosecuted for advising the Kurds, Kagan agreed he could be. If he is working for and on behalf of the PKK, he would be subject to prosecution, she replied.

In response to other questions from the justices, she agreed an American citizen could be prosecuted for drafting a legal brief or writing a newspaper article in coordination with a banned group, such as Hamas.

For his part, Cole urged the justices to rule that the 1st Amendment protects those who speak out or advise foreign terrorist organizations, so long as they advocate only peace and nonviolence.

Justice Antonin Scalia agreed with the government’s lawyer and said he saw no constitutional problems with the anti-terrorism law. "If you provide any aid" to them, it "furthers their terrorist activity," he said…

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Very interesting column by Shannon Meehan in the NY Times:

SINCE the two recent NATO-led military strikes that accidentally killed dozens of Afghan civilians, I have been thinking a great deal about the psychic toll that killing takes on soldiers.

In 2007, I was an Army lieutenant leading a group on a house-clearing mission in Baquba, Iraq, when I called in an artillery strike on a house. The strike destroyed the house and killed everyone inside. I thought we had struck enemy fighters, but I was wrong. A father, mother and their children had been huddled inside.

The feelings of disbelief that initially filled me quickly transformed into feelings of rage and self-loathing. The following weeks, months and years would prove that my life was forever changed.

In fact, it’s been nearly three years, and I still cannot remove from my mind the image of that family gathered together in the final moments of their lives. I can’t shake it. It simply lingers.

I know that many soldiers struggle long after they leave the battlefield to cope with civilian deaths. It does not matter whether they were responsible for those deaths, whether it was a mistake of the command, of the weaponry, or even the fault of the enemy, who in parts of both Iraq and Afghanistan have been known to intentionally place or involve civilians, even children, in their operations. Just seeing the lifeless body of a little boy or girl is all it takes.

For many soldiers, what follows a killing is a struggle of the mind. We become aware that what we’ve seen has changed us. We can’t unlearn it, and we continue to think of those innocent children. It is not possible to forget.

Killing enemy combatants comes with its own emotional costs. On the surface, …

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Interesting book review by Michael LePage in New Scientist:

• Inside the Human Genome: A case for non-intelligent design by John C. Avise
• Published by: Oxford University Press
• Price: $19.95

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome causes compulsive self-mutilation. Children eat their lips or fingers and stab their faces with sharp objects. They feel the pain, but they can’t stop themselves. Why would a loving, all-powerful creator allow anyone to be born with such an awful disease?

Lesch-Nyhan is just one of tens of thousands of genetic disorders that afflict humanity. At least 1 in 10 people have some kind of debilitating genetic disease, and most of us will become sick as a result of mutations that cause diseases such as cancer.

The reason? Our genome is an unmitigated mess. The replication and repair mechanisms are inadequate, making mutations commonplace. The genome is infested with parasitic DNA that often wreaks havoc. The control mechanisms are prone to error. The huge amount of junk, both between genes and within them, wastes cellular resources. And some crucial bits of DNA are kept in the mitochondria, where they are exposed to mutagenic waste products. "It is downright ludicrous!" declares John Avise, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Irvine.

The human genome, concludes Avise, offers no shred of comfort for those seeking evidence of a loving, all-powerful creator who had a direct hand in designing us, as not just creationists but many believers who accept evolution think was the case. If some entity did meddle with life on Earth, either it didn’t know what it was doing or didn’t care.

There is a need for a popular book explaining what a botch job our blueprint is but Inside the Human Genome is heavy going. And Avise’s conclusion made my jaw drop. "Evolution by natural selection emancipates religion," he writes. "No longer need we agonize about why a Creator God is the world’s leading abortionist and mass murderer."

I’d call it emasculation, not emancipation. If "God" is not the creator, why intervene in human affairs at all? Why worship a deity who can’t or won’t help? Avise never addresses these issues.

Instead, he goes further: "The evolutionary-genetics sciences can thus help religion… return to its rightful realm… as a respectable philosopher counsellor on grander matters including ethics and morality." Yet, if conventional religious notions about biology are so misguided, it is downright ludicrous to suggest believers have some privileged insight into the morality of issues such as IVF, abortion and homosexuality.

To me, Avise misses the big point. Why do we continue to allow children to be born with hideous diseases? Our ethics have been so distorted by superstitious nonsense that we cannot see the clear moral imperative: we need to sort out our mess of a genome just as soon as we can.

Fascinating article in New Scientist, by Mark Buchanan:

JUST suppose that Darwin’s ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth’s history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin’s explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth.

At the root of this idea is overwhelming recent evidence for horizontal gene transfer – in which organisms acquire genetic material "horizontally" from other organisms around them, rather than vertically from their parents or ancestors. The donor organisms may not even be the same species. This mechanism is already known to play a huge role in the evolution of microbial genomes, but its consequences have hardly been explored. According to Woese and Goldenfeld, they are profound, and horizontal gene transfer alters the evolutionary process itself. Since micro-organisms represented most of life on Earth for most of the time that life has existed – billions of years, in fact – the most ancient and prevalent form of evolution probably wasn’t Darwinian at all, Woese and Goldenfeld say.

Strong claims, but others are taking them seriously. "Their arguments make sense and their conclusion is very important," says biologist Jan Sapp of York University in Toronto, Canada. "The process of evolution just isn’t what most evolutionary biologists think it is."

How could modern biology have gone so badly off track? According to Woese, it is a simple tale of scientific complacency. Evolutionary biology took its modern form in the early 20th century with the establishment of the genetic basis of inheritance: Mendel’s genetics combined with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Biologists refer to this as the "modern synthesis", and it has been the basis for all subsequent developments in molecular biology and genetics. Woese believes that along the way biologists were seduced by their own success into thinking they had found the final truth about all evolution. "Biology built up a facade of mathematics around the juxtaposition of Mendelian genetics with Darwinism," he says. "And as a result it neglected to study the most important problem in science – the nature of the evolutionary process."

In particular, he argues, nothing in the modern synthesis explains the most fundamental steps in early life: how evolution could have …

Continue reading.

Very interesting post—and somewhat lengthy, but rewarding:

It was interesting to stumble over this page titled ‘Cannabis – a few issues’ on the UN Office and Drug and Crime website, nestling within the on ‘Youth and Drugs‘ pages of the the UNODC ‘Youthnet’ micro-site, making a clear and convincing case for decriminalisation of cannabis possession.

The page open with this introduction:

Cannabis (including marijuana, hash, hash oil) continues to be a controversial drug in many countries as people try to figure out the place that the drug has in their society. In the Western world, marijuana smoking by young people has become a very common activity – in some countries even more common than tobacco smoking. The UN’s international conventions require countries to treat cannabis and other drug offences as criminal offences. However, these conventions leave the door open for countries to establish alternative measures as a substitute for criminal prosecution. Consequently, much of the debate about cannabis is around the legal status of the drug.

These questions are not simple. For that reason through the month of November, the Global Youth Network is going to review what is known about cannabis use and young people in a four- part series dealing with:

(i) the level of use worldwide;

(ii) why some young people use cannabis/why some have problems;

(iii) the harms associated with cannabis use; and

(iv) the effect of cannabis laws.

What follows is a refreshingly sensible and balanced review of the issues highlighted. Most interestingly is the final section on the cannabis laws, copied in full below,  making a strong case for cannabis decriminalisation: …

Continue reading.

I got this insight from reading this column by Greenwald, where he cruelly quotes many of the journalists. Read it all. It begins:

On so many levels, this is one of the most stunningly revealing things I’ve read in quite some time.  As I documented last week, the media’s reluctance to describe IRS attacker Joe Stack as a "terrorist" reveals that this term has little to do with the act itself and everything to do with the demographic attributes of the actor:  namely, in the American political lexicon, "Terrorists" are Muslims who dislike the U.S., while Americans — especially ones who are white and non-Muslim — cannot, by definition, qualify.  Anyone who has doubts about that or who thought my argument was hyperbole should click on that link, which will direct you to an internal discussion among Newsweek editors and writers over their reluctance to use the term "Terrorist" to describe Stack and who they believe qualifies instead.

Aside from the suffocating denseness of their discussion — most of them ramble on about who is and is not a "Terrorist" for three straight days without even attempting to define what that term means — just look at how blatantly tribalistic and propagandistic they are about its usage.  Many of them all but say outright that it can apply only to Muslims but never non-Muslim Americans.  The whole thing has to be read to be believed — and what’s most amazing is that they published it because they obviously though it was some sort of probing, intelligent discussion which would enlighten the public — but let’s just examine a few of the contributions.  First, here’s the question posed to the group by Newsweek Editor Devin Gordon:

We’ve been having a discussion over here about the aversion so far to calling the Austin Tax Wacko a terrorist – or as the Wall St Journal called him "the tax protester." And I’m wondering if anyone has read yet – or would tackle themselves – a thorough comparison between our ho-hum reaction to a guy who successfully crashed a plane into a government building versus the media’s full-throated insanity over the underpants bomber, who didn’t hurt anyone but himself.

This is the first answer, from Managing Editor Kathy Jones: …

Continue reading. It’s interesting to note that none of the journalists thought to look at "terrorist" as defined in law.

Matt Corley at ThinkProgress:

For months now, Republicans in Congress have been complaining that health care reform legislation put forward by congressional Democrats is too long. “All you need to know is there are 1,990 pages,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) of the House health care bill in October. “That should tell you everything.” But when President Obama released a proposal yesterday bridging the differences between the House and Senate bills, Boehner’s office changed its complaint and argued that it was too short:

A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner today ridiculed President Obama’s health care proposal because it’s too short.

“The White House’s ‘plan’ consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States’ economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they’re complaining that they can’t find our plan on their own website? C’mon,” said the spokesman, Michael Steel, in an email to reporters.

Boehner’s changing complaint isn’t surprising. Earlier this month, he and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent a letter to the White House requesting that “If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal” at the bipartisan health care summit, he should “make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand.” But as Chris Bowers pointed out, when the White House announced they would do just that, Boehner attacked them for it.

UPDATE: Steve Benen does a good job of dissecting this craziness.

Obviously the torture supporters and torturers knew that they were doing wrong (a war crime, no less), so all along the way they took care to destroy evidence (Yoo’s careful deleting of all his torture emails, for example, or the CIA’s destruction of the tapes of their interrogations—normal practice is to preserve interrogation tapes indefinitely so that they can be reviewed later in the light of new information). Here’s a story of good cooperation to destroy evidence, by Scott Shane in the NY Times:

At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday.

The senator, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency’s harsh interrogation methods, which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say.

But Mr. Roberts, through a spokesman, denied having approved the destruction of the videotapes, which is under criminal investigation, and defended his record in overseeing the interrogation program.

His assertions were backed by his former staff director on the Intelligence Committee, William D. Duhnke, who said that while the senator had not objected to the tapes’ destruction, he was “in receive mode” and was simply listening to get the facts about the interrogation program, which he was learning about for the first time.

According to a memorandum prepared after the Feb. 4, 2003, briefing by the C.I.A.’s director of Congressional affairs, Stanley M. Moskowitz, Scott Muller, then the agency’s general counsel, explained that the interrogations were reported in detailed agency cables and that officials intended to destroy the videotapes as soon as the agency’s inspector general completed a review of them.

“Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent,” the C.I.A. memo says.

In November 2005, after nearly three years of internal debate, the agency destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogations of two people suspected of being terrorists, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

That action has been under criminal investigation by the Justice Department since early 2008. A prosecutor, John H. Durham, is trying to determine whether it violated court orders to preserve evidence related to detention and interrogation or violated any laws.

Last August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. directed Mr. Durham to expand his inquiry to consider whether the interrogations themselves broke any law. Mr. Holder noted that in at least a few instances, interrogators went beyond methods authorized by the Justice Department, including threatening Mr. Nashiri with a pistol and a power drill.

Those incidents were also described in the 2003 briefing for Mr. Roberts; when they were described, “Senator Roberts winced,” according to the memo on the briefing.

The same document says that Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the Democrat who had preceded Mr. Roberts as chairman, had proposed that the committee “undertake its own ‘assessment’ of the enhanced interrogation,” the C.I.A.’s term for coercive methods. Agency officials told Mr. Roberts that they would oppose allowing any Senate staff members to observe interrogations or visit the secret overseas prisons where they were taking place.

“Quickly, the senator interjected that he saw no reason for the committee to pursue such a request and could think of ‘10 reasons right off why it is a terrible idea,’ ” the report says.

In a separate statement, Mr. Roberts said the memo did not “begin to represent the entirety of my oversight of interrogations.”

Mr. Duhnke, the former Intelligence Committee staff member, said he had originally proposed …

Continue reading. It seems obvious to me that many of the people involved knew that they were participating in a series of criminal actions and that their primary concern was to ensure that no evidence remained that could result in their prosecution. "Scum" is too nice a word for these. Pat Roberts, of course, has been known as a scum-sucking pig for years.

Marian Burros in the NY Times, 18 Dec 2002:

Right in the middle of the season for fattening ourselves for the long, hard winter ahead, as if we were wolves or bears, an obesity specialist in Washington says we can make it easier to stop pigging out or we can make it harder. Naturally, many of us make it harder.

Unlike those who are always exhorting dieters to use willpower, Dr. C. Wayne Callaway, an endocrinologist and weight specialist at George Washington University, says that it is not really a matter of willpower. Or at least not willpower alone.

”Sure it’s nice to have willpower and eat less and exercise more,” Dr. Callaway said, but many people undermine their good intentions by failing to understand their bodies.

It seems logical that if you are expecting to eat a lot at a party at night, you ought to cut back on breakfast and lunch. You could starve all day and splurge on drinks and desserts, right? Wrong.

”The optimal thing is to have a regular breakfast and lunch,” Dr. Callaway said, ”so that when you sit down and eat you are not fighting genetically ingrained signals that cause your brain to get hungry after a meal.”

Because of chemical changes that take place in the body after the first meal of the day, if you skip breakfast or skimp on it you will end up compensating later, he said. ”Any time you undereat, you will eat the ordinary amount at the next meal, but shortly thereafter you will have the urge to keep on eating,” Dr. Callaway said.

Humans, like animals, have a mechanism to help them compensate when food is in short supply. Our distant ancestors probably did not have a proper breakfast when they woke up in their caves, so they gorged whenever they made a kill. Even though there aren’t many of us scratching out a living in the forest anymore, our brains are still wired for that potentially life-saving response to undereating.

Dr. Callaway explained: …

Continue reading.

Her recipe:

MUSHROOM BARLEY SOUP

Time: About 1 hour

• 1/3 cup dried mushrooms like porcini
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 medium carrot, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 pound white mushrooms, washed, trimmed and coarsely cut
• 1/2 pound shiitake, criminal, Portobello or other mushrooms, washed, trimmed and coarsely cut
• 1/2 cup pearled barley
• 6 cups no-salt-added beef broth or stock
• 3 tablespoons dry sherry
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon wine vinegar.

1. Cover dried mushrooms with 1 cup hot water, and set aside for 20 minutes. Drain, reserving liquid. Finely chop mushrooms.

2. Heat oil in heavy-bottomed deep pot. Sauté onions and carrots over medium heat until onions begin to color. Add garlic, and sauté for 30 seconds.

3. Add fresh mushrooms, and sauté for 5 minutes, until they begin to release liquid.

4. Raise heat and add barley; sauté until it begins to color. Add broth and sherry. Strain mushroom-soaking liquid and add to pot along with reconstituted mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for about 40 minutes, until barley is tender. Stir in vinegar; adjust seasonings and serve.

Yield: About 6 cups.

Lynn Harris in Salon.com:

Four years ago this month, a 4-year-old boy named Sean Paddock died when his adoptive mother wrapped him in blankets so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. His adoptive mother, Lynn Paddock, was later convicted of his murder. The case brought some mainstream attention — including a 2006 Salon story — to the popular, pervasive and controversial child "training" practices of Michael and Debi Pearl, which Lynn Paddock was said to have followed. The teachings of the Pearls and their Tennessee-based  No Greater Joy ministry, which brought in $1.8 million last year in sales of books, DVDs and the like, are widely known and normalized across many conservative Christian churches and home-schooling communities. Perhaps the most popular of several ultra-conservative Christian figures to carry forward this centuries-old strain of Christian thought, the Pearls advocate a specific program of even-tempered, non-injurious corporal punishment, or "chastisement," designed to bring about total obedience — even by infants — to their sovereign parents. (The Pearls’ ministry and principles are described in greater depth, and broader context, here.) By no means do the Pearls advocate suffocation with blankets; they are emphatically against "abuse." But they do not spare the rod. From their Web site: A length of quarter-inch plumbing supply line is a "real attention-getter."

This month, another child has died: 7-year-old Lydia Schatz, an apparent victim of repeated beating with — as it turns out — quarter-inch plumbing supply line. Her parents, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz of Paradise, Calif., who reportedly called 911 to report that she was not breathing, stand charged with her murder. They are expected to enter a plea on Thursday. According to the authorities, forceful and numerous whippings, apparently with plumbing line, may have caused tissue breakdown so massive that Lydia’s vital organs could no longer function. The Schatzes also face torture and abuse charges for significant injuries sustained by Lydia’s also-adopted sister Zariah, 11, who was hospitalized in critical condition, as well as for extensive bruising on a 10-year-old biological son. (The Schatzes have six biological children and three adopted from Liberia.) Though the remaining children showed no visible signs of abuse, they told police they’d been "disciplined" with the tubing as well. Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey told Salon that the Schatzes had explicitly described to police their adherence to the Pearls’ philosophy, which, as one of many horrified anti-Pearl bloggers within the conservative Christian community observes — recalling precisely what prompted the Schatzes’ call to 911 — includes the admonition that a proper spanking leaves a child "without breath to complain."

It’s one thing for those of us outside the fundamentalist Christian/Christian home-schooling world to point fingers at the Pearls and voice outrage at their methods. What really matters, and what stands to have actual impact, is the outrage inside the Pearls’ world. And right now, more than ever, an anti-Pearl movement within the conservative Christian community is rising up in heated, if sometimes whispered, fury. Some say — even pray — that Lydia Schatz’s death will bring Michael and Debi Pearl exactly the kind of attention they deserve.

"I think many in the Christian and/or home-school community wanted to see Sean Paddock as an ‘extreme’ example. Lynn Paddock was ‘just’ a foster mom. She already had issues. Whatever someone could use to rationalize away the influence of Michael and Debi Pearl, they would. Because they did not want to admit that a ‘normal’ home-schooling mom could abuse her child to death, they did not want to admit that a book that has been normalized in home-schooling circles was a factor in the death, they did not want to admit their own vulnerability to being deceived or hurting their child," says Alexandra Bush, 35, a "home-schooling mom and theologically conservative Christian" in Sarasota, Fla., who grew up with Pearl-style teaching around her (though not in her family) and who is an oft-heard anti-Pearl voice online. "Now, with Lydia Schatz, it is harder to explain away. I have seen a stronger response than before to her death and her sister’s hospitalization. The defensiveness has cracked a bit. This is the logical outcome of the spank-until-submissive teachings of the Pearls. People are no longer able to see it as just an ‘exception.’"

In a statement issued in response to the Schatz arrest, Michael Pearl said, …

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