Live-blogging the first major Republican debate of the 2016 presidential race

I'll be live-blogging the debate here. Keep reloading for more updates.

Any quotes in this post will be written down on the fly, so they might not be verbatim, but I'll try to make them reasonably accurate.

[You can watch the whole thing here.]

[Here's a transcript of the debate — except with Jeb Bush's answer about belonging to an organization that funded Planned Parenthood mysteriously removed!]

[I missed about the first 8 minutes, so I went back and non-live-blogged it, with time stamps as if I had been watching live:]

9:03 — After introducing the candidates, the moderators in Cleveland remark that John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio, has a "home-field advantage."

9:04 — Brett Baier starts with a "hand-raising question": Is anyone unwilling to pledge support for the eventual Republican nominee, and not to run as an independent? Donald Trump is the only one who raises his hand, and he's loudly booed. Baier comes back: "That would virtually hand the presidency to the Democratic nominee." Rand Paul says: "This is what's wrong. He buys and sells politicians of all stripes. . . . He's already hedging his bets because he's used to buying politicians."

9:06 — Megyn Kelly asks Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with no political experience, about his past errors in talking about world affairs. Carson says: "The thing that is probably most important is having a brain, and being able to figure things out, and learn things very rapidly." America didn't become a "great nation" by being "filled with politicians."

9:08 — Marco Rubio tries to tamp down concerns about his inexperience by saying the election "cannot be a resume competition . . . because if this election is a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton's going to be president, because she's been in government longer than anyone on this stage tonight."

[Here's where I started actually live-blogging:]

9:09 — Rubio: "If I'm the nominee, how is Hillary Clinton going to attack me for not understanding people living paycheck to paycheck? I grew up living paycheck to paycheck! How is she going to lecture me about student loans? I owed $100,000 just 4 years ago!"

9:10 — Jeb Bush: "They call me Veto Corleone, because I vetoed 2500 separate line items in the budget." [I went back and corrected the number of line items.]

9:11 — Megyn Kelly asks Trump about how he calls women names like "fat pigs." Trump: "Only Rosie O'Donnell." Trump segues into saying the country has a "big problem" with "being politically correct." He doesn't have time for "total political correctness." Trump adds that he's been very nice to Megyn Kelly — "although I could probably not be based on the way you've treated me."

9:16 — Megyn Kelly asks Scott Walker if he'd really let a woman die rather than have an abortion, which he's suggested is his position. Walker doesn't directly answer the question, but bears down on his pro-life credentials.

9:18 — Mike Huckabee says he'd invoke the constitutional rights — equal protection and due process — of fetuses. We need to stop "ripping off their body parts and selling off their parts like they were a Buick."

9:20 — Megyn Kelly asks John Kasich why Republican voters should trust him after he accepted Obamacare's Medicaid funding. Kasich focuses on his program for prison inmates to treat their addictions and reenter society. Then he adds a flurry of facts about how he's actually shrunk government.

9:23 — Chris Wallace asks Bush about his past statement that illegal immigration is "an act of love." Bush says he still agrees: "They have no other options." Predictably, he pivots to talking about the need to secure the border and crack down on "sanctuary cities."

9:25 — Wallace asks Trump to "share your proof" of his assertion that Mexico is sending criminals to the US. "We need to build a wall, and it needs to be built quickly. And I don't mind having a big, beautiful door in that wall for people to immigrate legally." He doesn't give any proof, but repeats that "they send the bad people over."

9:30 — Kasich admits: "Donald Trump is hitting a nerve in this country. They're fed up with what's happening in this country. For people who just want to tune him out, they're making a mistake. . . . Mr. Trump is touching a nerve because people want to see a wall being built."

9:32 — Rubio notes that most people crossing the Mexican border aren't Mexican. "This is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration. We feel like despite our generosity, we're being taken advantage of." This seems like a smartly moderate way to frame the issue.

9:34 — Walker says what everyone has been saying: we need to secure the border, not allow amnesty, and promote legal immigration.

9:35 — Ted Cruz claims that most of the other candidates on the stage have "supported amnesty."

9:38 — Rand Paul: "I want to collect more records from terrorists but less records from innocent Americans." Chris Christie retorts: "That's a completely ridiculous answer. How are you going to know the difference?" Paul interrupts him: "You fundamentally don't understand the Bill of Rights!" Christie comes back that Paul likes to give speeches on the floor of the Senate to be able to put them on the internet to raise money for his campaign, while putting American lives at risk.

9:40 — Ted Cruz says President Obama won't even say the words "radical Islamic terrorist." Obama is "an apologist" for terrorism.

9:42 — Megyn Kelly asks how Bush can say "your brother's war was a mistake." He bears down: "Knowing what we know now, . . . it was a mistake. I wouldn't have gone in." He pivots to criticizing Obama for "abandon[ing] Iraq" and allowing ISIL to flourish.

9:44 — Megyn Kelly asks Ben Carson about waterboarding. "Well, thank you, Megyn, I wasn't sure I would get to talk again." To answer the question, he says: "I wouldn't necessarily broadcast what I'm going to do." He focuses on using the military's "tremendous intellect to win wars." Subtext: Don't worry about Carson's lack of political experience — he's really smart and would know how to delegate to smart experts.

9:46 — Trump is asked about some of his liberal views. He emphasizes that he was the only one on the stage to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. Then he actually praises "single-payer health care," at least as it exists in other countries. Trump suggests that single-payer might have worked at one point in this country, but says that now he wants to reform the system in other ways. Paul: "I think you're on the wrong side of this if you're arguing for single-payer." Trump: "I think you misheard me. You're having a hard time with that."

9:49 — Trump is asked what he got from his donations to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. What he got from Clinton: "She came to my wedding."

9:50 — Brett Baier notes that Republicans keep promising to shrink government, but government keeps growing, even under Republican leaders.

9:52 — Carson would have "a proportional tax system" based on "tithing."

9:55 — A dull back-and-forth between Bush and Rubio about Common Core.

9:59 — Chris Wallace points out that Hillary Clinton is probably going to be the Democratic nominee, and he asks Kasich how he'll respond to her predictable attacks — that the Republican nominee wants to take the country backward. Kasich: "Economic growth is the key to everything. But once we have economic growth, it is important to reach out to people in the shadows — people who don't think they ever get a fair shake. And that includes minorities." (Our internet connection cut out at this point, so I didn't catch his whole answer.)

10:03 — Wallace asks Bush how he'll accomplish his plan of 4% economic growth and 19 million new jobs, which would be triple the number of new jobs under his dad and his brother combined. As with most of Bush's performance tonight, his answer seems solid and fact-filled but isn't particularly memorable.

10:05 — Walker: "Hillary Clinton thinks Washington creates jobs. I think most Americans understand that people create jobs."

10:08 — Huckabee absurdly declares that no one is on Social Security because they decided when they were young that they wanted to "entrust some of their money to the government."

10:10 — Wallace asks Trump about his statement: "I used the laws of this country to my advantage." Trump repeats: "I have used the laws of this country . . . to do a great job for my company." He admits that he did this four times by declaring bankruptcy. "I have a great, great company . . . and I am very proud of the job I did . . . and frankly, so has everybody else in my position." Wallace bears down by focusing on how lenders complained that they lost billions in the most recent bankruptcy of one of Trump's companies. Trump zeroes in on that reference to lenders: "These lenders, they're not little babies, these are not the nice, sweet people you think they are, Chris. They're killers. You know, you're living in a world of the make believe, Chris."

10:14 — Rubio, who hasn't gotten to talk for a while, reels off a lot of standard conservative positions: reduce taxes on small businesses, reduce business regulations, repeal and replace Obamacare, repeal and replace Dodd-Frank. Rubio has been giving a fine performance but doesn't seem to be doing anything to really stand out tonight.

10:16 — Walker would repeal the Iran deal on day 1, then put even more crippling sanctions in place. I'd say the same thing of Walker that I just said of Rubio.

10:17 — Paul on the Iran deal: "You should negotiate from a position of strength. President Obama gave away too much too early. . . . I would have never released the sanctions until there was evidence of compliance."

10:18 — Huckabee says Obama's approach to Iran, instead of "trust but verify," is "trust but vilify — trust our enemies, and vilify anyone who disagrees with him."

10:23 — Kelly asks Bush about the fact until late 2014, Bush sat on the board of the Bloomberg Foundation, which donated to Planned Parenthood. Bush denies knowing what the foundation was doing, then says: "My record as a pro-life governor is not in dispute."

10:25 — Kelly asks Rubio about his support for exceptions to abortion bans for rape or incest. Rubio has a deer-in-the-headlights look, and says he's "not sure" that's an accurate representation of his position. [ADDED: Politico says Rubio voted for a bill with those exceptions.]

10:26 — Kelly asks Trump about his past statement that he was pro-choice. She asks the elephant-in-the-room question: "When did you become a Republican?" "I've evolved on many issues. And you know who else evolved on many issues is Ronald Reagan."

10:28 — Trump responds to Bush's past attacks on his tone: "We don't have time for tone. We have to go out and get the job done."

10:31 — Paul: "I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington."

10:32 — Walker is asked about racial bias in policing. "It's about training . . . particularly when it comes to use of force." There need to be "consequences" for the "few" who engage in misconduct. Walker is the only candidate who's asked about that issue. It's as if Fox News didn't really want to have a discussion about it but wanted to prevent people from saying they didn't talk about it.

10:38 — Trump: "If Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it, because it will quadruple."

10:40 — Baier asks Carson about Obama's infamous "red line" comment about Syria. Would Carson have taken military action against Syria? Carson avoids answering the question. "I would shore up our military first."

10:41 — Walker: "It's sad that the Russian and Chinese governments know more about Hillary Clinton's email server than the US Congress."

10:42 – Huckabee is asked about transgender people in the military. "The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things."

10:45 — Paul is asked why he used to want to cut foreign aid to Israel, then changed his mind. "We shouldn't send money to countries that hate us. Israel isn't one of those." But "we cannot give away money we don't have."

10:55 — Carson, asked about race relations: "When I take people to the operating room, I'm operating on what makes them who they are. Their skin doesn't make them who they are, and their hair doesn't make them who they are."

Notice: before the debate, everyone was worried that Trump was going to ignore the rules and talk over everyone. But he didn't. That was the dog that didn't bark.

11:00 — Cruz's closing statement: "My father fled Cuba, and I will fight to defend freedom because my family knows what it's like to lose it."

11:01 — Carson: "I'm the only candidate to take out half a brain, although if you've been to Washington, you might think someone else beat me to it."

11:02 — Walker brags that he's been called "aggressively normal."

11:03 — Bush complains that "we're not protecting and preserving our entitlement system." So he's positioning himself as the clearly moderate, establishment candidate.

11:04 — Trump predictably uses his closing statement to attack America's status quo: "We can't do anything right!"

Nicholas Kristof says:

I thought Trump was a loser in the Republican debate (though it's also true he got particularly tough questions) and lost stature. I thought Jeb Bush did okay. I thought two people did better than expected. One is John Kasich, who had two of the freshest answers of the evening, about poverty and about same-sex marriage. I doubt Kasich will be the nominee, but since he's from the swing state of Ohio he's a strong contender for running mate. Then I thought Marco Rubio also did well, speaking smoothly and articulately. The other candidates I thought mostly seemed to shrink on the stage. Actually, the people I was most impressed with were the questioners--bravo to them for asking tough, smart, provocative questions.

Here's a fact check of the debate.

Alex Knepper's take:

Winners: Kasich, Rubio, Christie, Trump, Paul

Losers: Jeb!, Walker, Carson, Huckabee, Cruz

Kasich was energetic, thoughtful, and also intriguing, since he still feels 'fresh,' as the last candidate to announce. I could see him drawing support away from the underwhelming and boring Jeb!, who at one point seemed like he actually lost his train of thought.

But no one was more boring than Walker, who mostly just blended in. Christie was the one who brought the fireworks -- but he also showed a willingness to distinguish himself from the others by promising to tackle entitlement reform. That could have been part of a winning message had he not imploded last year!

Paul actually got the better of the exchange with Christie over the NSA, much as it pains me to say. Paul did well for himself because he, too, distinguished himself from the others -- he owned his heterodox foreign policy stances proudly. Carson, on the other hand, looked amateurish not only on foreign policy but on policy generally. He really had no business being on that stage.

Neither did Trump, but he answered his questions about as well as he could have while still being true to his personality. He didn't shine, but he didn't say or do anything that would alienate his current supporters. If he did anything obviously wrong, it was that he too often seemed like he was yelling. Sure, he evaded his questions, but so did everyone, at some point. This was Trump's first time in the ring with successful national politicians and he held his own.

Rubio delivered solid answers to most of his questions, but did himself a disservice when he decided to fully own his Huckabee-style social conservatism, ranting about "murdering babies" and the "barbarism" of our age. Cruz was surprisingly restrained and felt increasingly irrelevant as the debate went on -- which is a good way to describe his campaign generally, so far.

How much smarter are Americans today than a hundred years ago?

Nicholas Kristof points out this shocking fact:

The average American in the year 1900 had an I.Q. that by today’s standards would measure about 67. Since the traditional definition of mental retardation was an I.Q. of less than 70, that leads to the remarkable conclusion that a majority of Americans a century ago would count today as intellectually disabled.

Nicholas Kristof on poverty and unintended consequences

Nicholas Kristof writes:

THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability. . . .

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire. . . .

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households. . . .

About four decades ago, most of the children S.S.I. covered had severe physical handicaps or mental retardation that made it difficult for parents to hold jobs — about 1 percent of all poor children. But now 55 percent of the disabilities it covers are fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation, where the diagnosis is less clear-cut. More than 1.2 million children across America — a full 8 percent of all low-income children — are now enrolled in S.S.I. as disabled, at an annual cost of more than $9 billion.

That is a burden on taxpayers, of course, but it can be even worse for children whose families have a huge stake in their failing in school. Those kids may never recover: a 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of these children make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled. They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole — and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty.

Kristof talks about this article on Facebook:

With today's column about domestic poverty, I've turned the tables. Some liberals are irritated, while conservatives are sharing the column. I find the politicization of poverty a bit depressing. The evidence of what works and what doesn't in social policy is getting better, so let's put aside ideology and look at evidence!

Amen!

Nicholas Kristof is waiting for a "moderate" Mitt Romney to come back after the primaries are over.

Kristof's views on Romney are refreshingly sensible, with a nuance that's been lacking from most left-leaning commentary on Romney (remember back in 2004 when we were supposed to care about "nuance"?):

The Democratic National Committee has already released a slick four-minute video . . . excoriating Romney for his gymnastics:

“Mitt Romney, unparalleled flip-flopper, has proved he is his own toughest opponent on the issues,” the Democrats write on MittvMitt.com, where the video is housed. “The one thing Mitt and Mitt can agree on? That they want to be president — so Romney will say and do whatever it takes to get elected, no matter how contradictory.”

[T]he Democratic claims of constant inconstancy seem exaggerated. The excellent Web site FactCheck.org found that most of the accusations in the Democrats’ video were dubious. Typically, Romney had a fairly complex position, and the Democrats caricatured it to portray a flip that wasn’t there or that was ambiguous. For example, Romney supported a stimulus, but not of the magnitude of Obama’s, so it wasn’t a flip-flop for him to oppose the Obama stimulus.

If we do see, as I expect we will, a reversion in the direction of the Massachusetts Romney, that’s a flip we should celebrate. Until the Republican primaries sucked him into its vortex, he was a pragmatist and policy wonk rather similar to Bill Clinton and President Obama but more conservative. (Clinton described Romney to me as having done “a very good job” in Massachusetts.) Romney was much closer to George H.W. Bush than to George W. Bush.

One reason to expect a re-emergence of the traditional moderate Romney — other than that it will be expedient — is that his advisers incline in that direction.

On the economy, Romney has been advised by the likes of Professor Gregory Mankiw of Harvard and Professor Glenn Hubbard of Columbia. Both are experienced, prominent figures, albeit tending conservative. In foreign affairs, Romney’s advisers have included Richard Williamson, Eric Edelman, Meghan O’Sullivan, Paula Dobriansky, Daniel Senor and Dov Zakheim. These, too, are credible, respected figures.

So, in the coming months, the most interesting political battle may be between Romney and Romney. Now, do we really want a chameleon as a nominee for president? That’s a legitimate question. But I’d much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn’t require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says things that Republican candidates have all been saying and, God forbid, actually means it.

So would I.

Nicholas Kristof on North Korea after Kim Jong-Il

Posted on Facebook by Kristof:

North Korea is by far the most repressive and totalitarian country I've ever visited; it makes Syria or Burma seem like democracies. In North Korea, homes have a speaker on the wall to wake people up with propaganda in the morning and put them to sleep with it at night. The handicapped are sometimes moved out of the capital so they won't give a bad impression to foreigners. And triplets, considered auspicious, are turned over to the state to raise. And now this nuclear armed country is being handed over to a new leader, presumably Kim Jong-un, still in his 20's. The last transition was a dangerous time, as Kim Jong Il tried to prove his mettle by challenging the world, and this one may be as well. Look out.

Mickey Kaus calls out Nicholas Kristof's "faux mot" about Republicans supporting contraception for horses but not for humans.

Kristof posted this to Twitter:

You can’t make this up: Republicans back contraception for wild horses, cut it for humans.

He explained the point at the end of his most recent New York Times column.

Kaus points out that Kristof's refusal to appreciate the views of people who disagree with him is actually unhelpful in advancing Kristof's own position:

The conservative Republican response is presumably that life begins at conception and human life is sacred, while horse life is not. Duh! Also that we worry considerably less about the moral and social effects of promiscuity and eugenics on equine society. . . .

The chances that it will actually win over anyone are nil–but it will get him applause from a large audience (at least 1,079,881 [the number of people who follow Kristof on Twitter]) of the already convinced. It’s as much entertainment as argument. Not that there’s anything wrong with it! Unless you want Kristof’s side to win.

This is not just an issue about contraception for humans and horses. There's a much broader problem with people failing to understand their political/ideological opponents' actual views (particularly the left failing to understand the right). When people do this, it's a giveaway that what they care about most is not whether their position actually prevails; they're more interested in demonizing their opponents and, by contrast, putting halos over themselves.

Nicholas Kristof explains the dearth of news coverage of Yemen, Syria, and the Ivory Coast

He says on his Facebook page:

People often ask why there isn't more coverage of Syria, Ivory Coast or Yemen. One answer is something that non-journalists sometimes don't appreciate -- the difficulty of getting visas. Yemen and Syria are completely blocking Americans. Only hope to get an Ivory Coast visa is to go to Senegal and beg its embassy there. Sad truth is we systematically undercover what we don't get access to.

A reader responds:

Stating this outright, more frequently, would count as 'more coverage' in my book.

I agree. Another good point from another commenter:

And thus the world media rewards dictatorships by over representing Israel in their stories instead of trying harder and covering dangerous places, or simply dictators wishing to hide their genocides.

Nicholas Kristof reports from a hospital in Bahrain

On his Facebook page:

At the main hospital in Bahrain, I interviewed doctors who said they treated about 600 injured. I saw 3 dead in morgue with gunshot wounds. Interviewed ambulance drivers/paramedics who said they were beaten for trying to treat the injured. Hospital says government has barred ambulances from going out on calls. The hospital scene breaks my heart.

UPDATE: Just 2 days later, the New York Times reports:

Thousands of jubilant protesters surged back into the symbolic heart of Bahrain [Pearl Square in Manama] on Saturday after the government withdrew its security forces, calling for calm after days of violent crackdowns. . . .

The shift . . . was at least a temporary victory for the Shiite protesters, who had rejected a call to negotiate from Bahrain’s Sunni monarch until the authorities pulled the military off the streets.

Unfree speech in Pakistan and the bravery of Umar Cheema

A 34-year-old journalist named Umar Cheema (who writes for a Pakistani newspaper but has also worked for the New York Times) was kidnapped from his home in Islamabad, Pakistan and taken to a remote area where he was beaten, stripped naked, and otherwise humiliated. They then dumped him by the side of a road 100 miles from Islamabad.

That New York Times article reports:

At one point, while he lay face down on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him, his captors made clear why he had been singled out for punishment: for writing against the government. “If you can’t avoid rape,” one taunted him, “enjoy it.” . . .

His ordeal was not uncommon for a journalist or politician who crossed the interests of the military and intelligence agencies, the centers of power even in the current era of civilian government, reporters and politicians said.

What makes his case different is that Mr. Cheema has spoken out about it, describing in graphic detail what happened in the early hours of Sept. 4, something rare in a country where victims who suspect that their brutal treatment was at the hands of government agents often choose, out of fear, to keep quiet.

“I have suspicions and every journalist has suspicions that all fingers point to the ISI,” Mr. Cheema said, using the acronym for the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the institution that the C.I.A. works with closely in Pakistan to hunt militants. The ISI is an integral part of the Pakistani Army . . . .

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof says on his Facebook page:

Sometimes I'm just embarrassed by the contrast between American "journalists" like Glenn Beck or our gossipy reporting on celebrity shoplifters -- and the real, courageous journalism done by some foreign journalists. Reporters abroad have to far gutsier than us. Take my brave friend Umar Cheema of Pakistan: [link to the article] And a word to readers from Pakistan's military and ISI: don't mess with Umar.

Of course it's terrible what happened to Umar, but his heroism is an odd basis to put down American journalism. He only had the opportunity to be so brave because the Pakistani press is muzzled by the government, and intransigent reporters face brutal, covert punishment.

By all means let's celebrate Umar. But let's also denounce the Pakistani system and celebrate the freedom of speech we usually take for granted.

Kristof has a complaint but no real alternative. Since people aren't perfect, you can count on the results of freedom being messy and annoying and less-than-ideal. If some of the consequences of free speech are that the most popular talk-show hosts aren't as reasoned and nuanced as you or I would like, and that reporters cover the trivial hijinks of celebrities . . . so be it.

Colonialism's legacy isn't the most important thing holding Africa back.

So says Nicholas Kristof.

It's very easy to invoke "colonialism" as the root cause of anything that goes wrong in Africa. (An example is the fifth comment in this Metafilter thread about the article on African "un-wars" that I blogged the other day.) I say this is easy because it almost always sounds plausible, and you can make the assertion without knowing much beyond the general fact that there was a lot of colonialism in Africa. Not many people will defend colonialism, and that's fine with me -- but I don't think it's fine to use it as a convenient scapegoat for all the current-day problems in an entire continent. Kristof supports his conclusion by taking a reasoned looked at the actual evidence from developing nations that experienced heavy, light, or no colonialism. Anyone who wants to opine on the effects of colonialism should first look at Kristof's fact-based reasoning.

Although placing all the blame on outsiders who did wrong in the past might feel like a righteously perceptive outlook, this can't be the key to future progress. It's similar to turning every discussion of race in America back to slavery. While it is important to recognize that slavery (aside from its inherent evil) had deleterious consequences that are still with us, it's counterproductive to place all the blame on slavery. If you send a message that a group of people is persistently held back by things someone else did in the distant past, you're denying the current-day people their own agency and capability to solve problems for the future.

What I don't understand about Kristof's blog post, though, is why he doesn't link to his own vividly reported column about a household in Zimbabwe, which that blog post is based on. (See how easy this linking thing is?) You can find the link somewhere on the page, but it's buried deep in the right-hand sidebar. (And I've found by observing the behavior of blog readers that people rarely look at the sidebar.) Basic blogging practices dictate that if your blog post begins, "In my Sunday column . . . ," you need to link to that column. Kristof writes a New York Times blog and has an active Twitter page; surely he's blog-savvy enough to know how to do this, or he has staffers who are supposed to do it for him.

By the way, Kristof notes in that column that the leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, "subjects journalists to imprisonment," so he had to keep his reporting "surreptitious." He risked his liberty to bring us this column; he should promote it as effectively as possible.

What news is the American media "worst at covering"?

The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asks the question, and gives his answer:

I would argue that it’s public health. One problem is that we tend to cover things that happen on a particular day, and public health challenges usually unfold every day — so they’re never really considered news. Conversely, we’re at our best covering politics and governments, particularly the decisions that are made on a particular day, because they have drama as well as consequences. They feel like news, in a way that a million people dying annually of malaria does not.

See the comments on that post for lots of answers.

It's an inherently hard question to answer since, by definition, poorly covered subjects are ones you wish you knew more about. But here are my answers:

1. Supreme Court (and other appellate) decisions. The media seems generally competent at legal reporting of pre-trial procedure and trials. But the media will report the latest Supreme Court decision as if it affected only the parties in that case. In reality, those parties are relatively insignificant; the broader legal principles are more important. The media seems to think that the latter are too abstract, hypothetical, or academic to be worth reporting.

2. Long-term war. Once it became clear that the Iraq War was going to be a lot harder and longer than people expected, the New York Times and the Washington Post (my two main sources for news) became obsessed with keeping track of how any given month compared with past months in terms of American casualties. I don't mean to disrespect the casualties, but from reading the NYT or WaPo you'd think the war mattered only to the extent it affected American troops. Also, the focus on ranking the different months is completely arbitrary.

3. Stuff going on in foreign countries that isn't (a) a humanitarian disaster or (b) directly, obviously relevant to our national interest.

4. Political campaigns. There's a vicious circle going on here. The media is ready to pounce on the slightest arguable misstep by candidates or people associated with them. This causes the candidates to be more and more cautious in everything they say and do, which causes them to be more and more phony. This, in turn, causes the media and the public to feel starved for any evidence that the candidates are real, fallible human beings, which causes them to pounce on the candidates' missteps, etc.

Whose lives are valued more, men's or women's?

Nicholas Kristof's latest op-ed is about women in Africa who die in childbirth. He says:

According to the World Health Organization, Sierra Leone has the highest maternal mortality in the world, and in several African countries, 1 woman in 10 ends up dying in childbirth.

It’s pretty clear that if men were dying at these rates, the United Nations Security Council would be holding urgent consultations, and a country such as this would appoint a minister of paternal mortality. Yet half-a-million women die annually from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth without attracting much interest because the victims are typically among the most voiceless people in the world: impoverished, rural, uneducated and female.

When he links to this op-ed on Twitter, he uses the feminist point as the draw:

If men were dying in childbirth, this would be a crisis.

"Reader_iam" (who sometimes comments on this blog) responds:

It would? Are you sure? Which men? All men? Everywhere?

I've become exhausted with feminist counterfactuals like Kristof's. You hear them frequently: "People would take this problem more seriously if it were happening to men." "No one would care if a man did this." It's easy to make these claims without any evidence, because they're usually unfalsifiable.

But I actually do think Kristof's claim is falsifiable -- and indeed, false. You don't need to go through the Rube Goldberg-esque procedure of (1) starting with a problem that only leads to women's deaths, then (2) imagining a world where it happened to men, then (3) comparing the real-world reactions with the alternate-universe reactions. All you have to do is look at how people react in the real world when a disaster such as an earthquake kills a large number of people. The fact that "women and children" died will be specifically noted, as if the expected reaction is: "Not just people died, but women -- oh no!" It's similar to how the American media will report that a bomb in a foreign country killed a large number of people ... "including 3 Americans" -- horrors!

In fact, even the headline of Kristof's piece (which I know he might not have written) suggests that people are more moved by the deaths of women than of men -- or, at least, the media expects them to be. The headline is: "This Mom Didn't Have to Die." Do you think the Times would be as likely to run a tear-jerker headline: "This Dad Didn't Have to Die"?


IN THE COMMENTS: "Jason (the commenter)" has some questions for Kristof:

Who has longer life expectancies? Who gets off of boats first? Is more money spent on breast or prostate cancer research? ... Does the media worry about men dying unnoticed? Who makes up a greater proportion of the prison population? Who makes up a greater portion of the people begging on the streets?

If the average woman's lifespan were several years less than the average man's, it would be a crisis!

Also, "reader_iam" follows up with a couple important points:

I do want to be clear that the high rate of deaths in childbirth in Sierra Leone, and elsewhere, is not something I wish to make light of (nor you, I know). Indeed, it was the framing that bothered me, especially in light of the broader situation in Sierra Leone, based on other WHO statistics which (coincidentally) I'd happened to review recently, and therefore they jumped to mind when I saw Kristoff's piece.

As you'll notice, the stats here are appalling all the way around, but in all categories divided by sex, you can see that males are slightly worse off.

If you follow that link, you'll see that this includes general lifespan and infant mortality -- both are worse for males than females in Sierra Leone.