Lawyers are apparently the same everywhere

This guy is not helping the reputation of lawyers at all:

The president of Jordan's Bar Association, Hussein Mjalli, a high-profile advocate for Saddam's defense against the multiple war crimes, genocide and other charges he may face, said that this growing international brigade of lawyers opposes any trial at all for Saddam. The former Iraqi dictator, Mjalli said, was "unlawfully deposed and captured by U.S. troops" and remains "Iraq's legitimate president."

I mean, really.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:19 AM 0 comments

 
Now THAT's the Stuff

Self-help books may be a dime a dozen, but this is one I can believe in. If only my boss would agree . . . .
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:03 AM 0 comments

 
Staggering

Right Wing News puts up the top ten quotes of the Democratic Underground. I realize these folks are the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe, but, still, wow.

Hat tip to Instapundit.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:00 AM 0 comments

 
The Man in Black

A very interesting take on the life and art of Johnny Cash.

But more than that, Johnny was the kind of person who could simultaneously hold in tension the conflicting parts of his personality and communicate to those who are alienated by a deeply counterfeit culture—particularly a counterfeit Christianity. Cash could preach to offenders and the defenseless alike, and make faith believable in a way that most of us never can. We seem to prefer the smile that conceals an inner deception to the honest purgative truth about ourselves. But with Johnny it was otherwise.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:03 AM 0 comments

 
Really, eveything is the president's fault. Everything

The phenomenon of Bush hatred has been well documented, and it has even been praised as a rational reaction to events by such paragons of reasonable analysis as EJ Dionne in today's Post (remember, Dionne is #1 on Lying in Pond's "Positive Democratic Index"). So perhaps it's no surprise that the president is being blamed for the mad cow scare (see, e.g., this Post editorial cartoon). Even Howard Dean has been piling on, blaming the administration's failure to devise a plan for instant traceability that would have cut the problem short, if not solved it.

It must break these folks' hearts to read the news this morning:

A U.S. Holstein probably was infected with mad cow disease before safety bans were enacted in 1997 on feed in the United States and Canada, officials said yesterday.

The infection probably occurred around the same time as a beef cow from the Canadian province of Alberta became sick. Scientists may need to increase monitoring of thousands of cattle born before the bans were enacted on potentially infected feed, through which the disease spreads. The animals are now spread across the continent.

"The age of the animal is especially important because it is a likely explanation" for the Holstein's infection, said W. Ron DeHaven, deputy administrator and chief veterinary officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "She was born before feed bans were implemented in North America."

So, this cow was born at a time before there are any safety regulations here or in Canada and when Clinton was president. The animals have spread all over the continent and been intermixed with other cows. It's a serious problem - I don't mean to minimize it. But it is hard for me to see how one can even argue coherently that it's the president's fault. Althogh, coherent arguments aren't really the issue here . . .
- posted by Anonymous @ 6:47 AM 0 comments

 
Lieberman gets it right

After Dean whines that Terry McAuliffe should protect him from attacks by other Democrats, Lieberman says it like it is:

I've got some news for Howard Dean. The primary campaign is a warm-up compared to what George Bush and Karl Rove have waiting for him. . . . He's going to melt in a minute once the Republicans start going after him.

- posted by Anonymous @ 6:43 AM 0 comments

 
How quickly we forget

All I need to do is quote the AP:

Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean has demanded release of secret deliberations of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. But as Vermont governor, Dean had an energy task force that met in secret and angered state lawmakers.

Dean's group held one public hearing and after-the-fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but the Vermont governor refused to open the task force's closed-door deliberations.

Have fun spinning this one, Howie.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:29 PM 0 comments

 
Vomit

Howard Dean finds religion just as the campaign turns south.

"Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind," [Dean] said. "He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. ... He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years."

Now, I strongly believe that no one has direct access to God, that our limited minds cannot fully comprehend Him, that, as a result, every Christian's beliefs will differ, and that we should examine others' beliefs with an open mind and a willingness to learn. I also believe fighting for the disenfranchised is a morally worthy task. Having said that, I will also say this: If, during your first candid discussion about your faith, the most you can say of Jesus is that he lead a praiseworthy struggle for civil rights, you are missing an important part of his message. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure he was serious about that whole Son of God thing.

This kind of pandering will lose Dean more Christian votes than it will gain him. He'd be better off just keeping his mouth shut about it.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:35 PM 0 comments

 
Andrew Sullivan Awards

If you don't visit Andrew Sullivan on a regular basis, you should (at least if you're a conservative). He's both funny and insightful. Now is an especially good time to visit, as he hands out his annual awards, including the Sontag Award for egregious moral equivalence in the war on terror, and the Begala Award for extreme liberal hyperbole.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:13 PM 0 comments

 
Out of my hands

That's it. The PhD applications are all off. One of them, two weeks late, but even that one is beyond my control now. So, it's wait and see, and wait and decide if I want to go even if I do get in (which is a real question now that I've seen blogs like this one). In any case, what it means is that I'll be back to blogging more. Which, I suppose, one can take as one wishes. I'm excited about it.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 5:15 PM 0 comments

 
Ho ho ho!

As in, horray for the blog of the London call girl that won the Guardian's blog awards. Apparently there is some dispute as to whether it's a work of fiction or not, but, since it's more interesting if its not, I'm going with that for the time being.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 5:09 PM 0 comments

 
Merry Christmas

As explained recently by the font of all spiritual wisdom:

"Let's just say that on this day, one million years ago, a dude was born that most of us think was magic. But other's don't, and that's cool. But we're probably right. Amen."

- posted by Anonymous @ 10:15 PM 0 comments

 
The Universal Genius

There are those who believe lawyers are "universal geniuses," that they know how to think and so, given facts about anything they can come to a correct decision about it. Most of those folks are lawyers, of course (including, legend from my Constitutional History class has it, Thomas Jefferson). This attitude may explain a lot of the problems with lawyers today, as well as why lawyers are so hated. It certainly explains this blog, which is made up of all lawyers (bar one occasional contributor). Today, the one lawyer who best exemplifies lawyer-as-universal-genius is Richard Posner. True, he has explicitly rejected this role, for himself and others, but I'm going to hang it on him anyway. The latest example of this is his fascinating take on the Massachusettes decison legalizing gay marriage. It's a highly recommended read.

Go on. Start reading.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 6:31 PM 0 comments

 
Sure you would have

Former general Wesley Clark, a former general who has been in the military, says he would have caught bin Laden by now, and would have caught Hussein much quicker:

“I would have kept the focus on Osama bin Laden. I would have gotten him. . . . I would like to think I would have had Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein by this time."

I am not sure about this, but with Madonna’s help, anything is possible.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:37 AM 0 comments

 
A preview

In what I hope becomes a recurrent theme, the Post this morning presents a catalog of misstatements and foolish comments made by Howard Dean, under the headline Dean's Remarks Give Rivals Talking Points :

Howard Dean's penchant for flippant and sometimes false statements is generating increased criticism from his Democratic presidential rivals and raising new questions about his ability to emerge as a nominee who can withstand intense, sustained scrutiny and defeat President Bush.
Dean, for instance, recently spoke of a "most interesting theory" that Saudi Arabia had "warned" Bush about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although Dean said he does not believe Bush was tipped off about the assaults that killed nearly 3,000, he has made no apologies for raising the rumor.

It doesn’t stop with this most recent foolishness, but goes ahead and covers various other flaps: misleading statements on his reason for sealing gubernatorial papers, penchant for playing loose with the truth during speeches, backtracking and denying prior statements, etc.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

 
Piling on Jacques

I quote from The Economist's editorial on Chirac's plan to ban headscarves, yarmulkes and crucifixes in schools, taking an expedient viewpoint:

One way to make the task [of cultural integration] harder is to alienate people who could be allies, such as religious leaders (the government is rightly worried that some imams are zealots whose values reflect the countries of North Africa and the Middle East in which they trained, not Europe). But another group, the young, may be more important: they are France's future. And one way to alienate the young is to forbid them to wear something: at once the wearing of it becomes an act of defiance. Thus Muslim girls will see the headscarf as a mark of their separate identity and a rejection of the rules imposed on them by an oppressive majority—just as Muslim girls in such countries as Iran, where the headscarf is obligatory in public places, see bare-headedness as a rejection of intolerant authority.

The better argument is the moral one, laid out below by Travis, but this one is interesting as well. The Economist may well be right about this, and if so it's a great example of the unintended consequences that come when government screws around where it doesn't belong. And one place (or three places), where it does not belong is the mosque, church, and synagouge.
- posted by Anonymous @ 11:06 PM 0 comments

 
Madonna endorses Clark

Democratic candidate and former general Wesley Clark, a former general who has been in the military, has been endorsed by Madonna. Sometimes, the news requires no comment. This is one of those times.
- posted by Anonymous @ 10:59 PM 0 comments

 
GALLIC LOGIC

Muslim terrorists good. Muslim headscarves bad. Go figure.

Here's the Economist's take.


- posted by Anonymous @ 9:46 AM 0 comments

 
Amusing Essay

I highly recommend a short and very amusing essay in this quarter's Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy entitled "An Empirical Test of Justice Scalia's Commitment to the Rule of Law." No summary can do it justice. It is only a few pages so go look at it. Here is the link to the table of contents, but you will have to find a hard copy of the publication to read the article.


- posted by Anonymous @ 7:12 PM 0 comments

 
No More Blatently Political Opinion

I have just begun reading the full text of McConnell v. FEC and I don't believe I have ever seen an opinion that more clearly adopts a political point of view and then relentlessly reasons toward such view with little regard to the actual law. The dead give away is on page six in the midst of the Court's tortured summary of the history of campaign finance "reform." The Court states very matter of factly:

"In early 1972 Congress continued its steady improvement of the national election laws by enacting FECA..." (emphasis added)

Hmmm.... "Steady improvement." Any doubt on where that decision is going from there?
- posted by Anonymous @ 4:04 PM 0 comments

 
The Family Child

Anyone who has watched The Family Guy knows that it is Stewie, the one year old who is bound and determined to kill his mother , steals the show, much like Eric Cartman steals Southpark. Well, here you can get a handful of Stewie audio clip. Enjoy.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:33 PM 0 comments

 
Hussein face-to-face with the new Iraq

The Washington Post reports this morning that four members of the Iraqi giverning council met with Hussein yesterday to confirm his identity. While there, they challenged him on his past conduct; his responses are chilling:

Later in the meeting, Hussein insisted the chemical weapons attack on the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed, was the work of Iran. And in response to a query about the invasion of Kuwait, he insisted that the tiny nation belonged to Iraq.

Asked about the mass graves across the country that contain the bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by his government, Hussein scoffed and called the victims "thieves, army deserters and traitors," according to Rubaie.

- posted by Anonymous @ 8:48 AM 0 comments

 
The list of happy people grows

One more story of happiness at Saddam's capture, this one from my hometown paper:

On Sunday night, after a day of watching the news and calling all her family members, Hassan and about 100 other members of the local Kurdish community celebrated Saddam’s capture with a gathering and dance at the Days Inn in Moorhead.

About 400 Kurds, members of a minority ethnic group that was oppressed under Saddam’s regime, live in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Many have family members still living in Iraq, and all can cite the atrocities Saddam performed against their people.

- posted by Anonymous @ 8:32 AM 0 comments

 
Contrary voices

I agreew ith Travis' post about the Supreme Court's campaign funding decision, but EJ Dionne does not:

The majority decision, written by Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, is refreshing because it resolutely avoids mystifying abstractions and faces the political world squarely as it is. Writing for the five-justice majority, Stevens and O'Connor asked whether those large, unregulated campaign contributions that pass under the label of "soft money" have had "a corrupting influence or give[n] rise to the appearance of corruption."

Even assuming that characterization is accurate of the "political world squarely as it is," I have this haunting impression that the Court is supposed to reflect the Constitution squarely as it is. But I guess not, so long as they focus on "reality."

And the reality is, actually, that Republicans, though they "lost" this round, will most likely be the long-term winners under the new system. See this interesting Atlantic article for a more complete explanation. As for Dionne, he calls this view "unseemly and foolish," unseemly because the decision "struck a blow for freedom" and foolish because, as I understand it, without this reform the Democrats would be even further behind the Republicans. Casting around a bit, aren't we, EJ?
- posted by Anonymous @ 6:48 AM 0 comments

 
Unintentional Irony Alert

Here, is Michael Crichton, proving that being a novelist is not a good qualification for being a social commentator. His main claim is a fairly harsh indictment of the environmental movement:

We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record.

I don't want to look to closely into that main claim (though you might, its contrarian if nothing else). Instead, this comment struck me:

Today it is said we live in a secular society in . . . But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

That's certainly not the dictionary definition, which, I think quite properly includes something about supernatural forces. If "belief in something that gives meaning to your life" is religion, then its hard to imagine someone who's not. If that's true, we really do live in a secular society.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:26 PM 0 comments

 
War makes strange bedfellows, on both sides

One of the great ironies of the anti-war movement as applied to Iraq is that the man these noble souls effectively supported, Saddam Hussein, is one of the most evil men of the last 100 years. We already knew he had gassed the Kurds, and now comes a Gallup Survey showing he may have executed up to 61,000 Baghdadis as well. But those numbers are a mere suggestion, since they're only Baghdad, not the whole country:

The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed.

So estimates range from a horrifying million to a merely shocking 300,000. I realize that the peace groups can make cogent, if not convincing, arguments that opposing the war is not the same as supporting Hussein. And I suppose that, in a college symposium/legal brief kind of way, that may be right.

But tell that to the families of the only 300,00 killed by Hussein.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:55 PM 0 comments

 
Kiss of death

Albert "Loser of the Century" Gore is going to endorse Howard Dean. This is probably the kiss of death for Lieberman, Gore's running mate, and it may push Dean over the edge and into a nomination, allowing him to be chewed up and spit out in the general election.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:28 PM 0 comments

 
Lieberman: Caught in the middle

One more example of why Lieberman is too liberal for Republicans but too conservative for Democrats, this time from the entertainment industry. The Washington Post graces its front page with a story today on Lieberman's history of battles with Hollywood over the violence and sex in movies, TV, and video games, battles that earned him the undying enmity of the entertainment industry. You'll also note that his name is conspicuously absent from this USA Today story on fundraising efforts by Hollywood. It looks like on this issue, as on so many other, Lieberman is stuck; he just can't run left enough to win the primaries, even though he might be a credible candidate against the President if he made it that far (for more on the general Lieberman malaise, see here).

NB: The USA Today story tells us that former general Wesley Clark, a former general who has been in the military, has held "briefings" with Madonna, J Lo, and Ben Affleck. You cannot make this stuff up.
- posted by Anonymous @ 2:35 PM 0 comments

 
Rumsfeld: Metaphysician par excellence

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently won the Foot in Mouth Award from the Plain English Campaign for this quote:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.

He was promptly mocked by the left, which seized on this as yet more proof of his idiocy. See here for a typical and moderately clever example.

Luckily, the great media corrective that is The Economist has come back with this short article defending the Secretary (registration may be req'd). Its main point is that the quote reflects a rather sophisticated level of epistemological inquiry:

By contrast [to prior winners], Mr Rumsfeld is a model of clarity and wisdom. The nature of ignorance is a serious philosophical problem; for decision-makers, it is a knotty practical one. For a senior politician to grapple with serious epistemological questions, and to do so publicly, is as commendable as it is rare.

Right on.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:12 AM 0 comments

 
The Bad Sex passages award: Rated R

I don't know where the Guardian found these. Apparently, they are from real publishers, but, boy oh boy are they bad. I mean really, truly, truly terrible. A short set of highlights:

she came with the exhilarating whoops and pant-hoots of a troop of Rhesus monkeys, which was flattering, if alarming.

he reached up between her legs and plunged two fingers into her vulva, and began to probe her vaginal canal, as if he was searching for lost car keys.

She sandwiches your nozzle between her tits, massaging it with a slow rhythm. A trailer to bookmark the events ahead.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 11:32 AM 0 comments

 
I am speechless

Actual headline: Cannibal Case Grips Germany: Suspect Says Internet Correspondent Volunteered to Die

- posted by Anonymous @ 9:59 AM 0 comments

 
It begins

A man convicted of polygamy intends to argue that the conviction should be overturned in light of the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision. He hasn't got a prayer - first because several of the brides were too young to consent and also because reversing a criminal conviction on the basis of a change in law is extraordinarily difficult, even when the change applies directly (as this one does not). But this is the start of what I have been predicting - that to the extent homosexual persons have a right to marry, so do polygamists.

Caveat #1: The members of such marraiges would have to be non-incenstual, of age and fully consenting. At least some (and maybe many or most) polygamous marriages involve young girls, and the state still has a basis for regulating that, as well as incest, I think.

Caveat #2: The state might be able to articulate a basis for limiting paid benefits to one partner - I suppose the law in this area would have to change.

But the basic point is that if Lawrence's explicit holding that morality alone can never be a compelling state interest means homosexuals have a right to marry - and that's a big if - then polygamists who meet caveat # 1 should have the same right. I invite readers (and my Remove All Doubt colleagues) to prove me wrong, but I have been unable to imagine and articulate a compelling state interest in preventing polygamy that is not independent on a moral judgment, which the Court says we need. I assume tradition won't be enough, and neither will enforcing cultutral norms - or at least they won't be enough unless they are for homosexuals as well.

I have put this point to friends who explicitly support homosexuals unions and have yet to get a convincing answer. So that's my contention for the day - if states are constitutionally required to recognize homosexual marriage (a long way off, I know), then they are also required to recognize polygamous ones. As Seymour Skinner famously said, "Prove me wrong kids. Prove me wrong."
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:53 PM 0 comments

 
Freddy Adu: Soccer star, good businessman

A few weeks ago Major League Soccer (the US' top league) announced the signing of Freddy Adu, the 14-year old, Ghanian-born but American soccer phenom. In MLS, players sign with the league, not teams, but Freddy will certainly go to DC United (he's from Maryland). To accomplish this, United will be given the top draft pick over Dallas, who "earned it" with the worst record (they'll get a player or case of balls or something). This signing has been met with wonderment by soccer fans in Washington and the US in general, and even got some mainstream press.

One of the surprising points was that it's a fairly long contract, reported generally at four years. I realize he'll only be 18 when it's over, but consider that the Brazilian Rivaldo, former world player of the year and current World Cup holder, is more or less washed up at 31, Basically, top level soccer is a young man's game.

But this makes it make sense - reports that the contract has a clause allowing him out if a team bids three million dollars for him. That's peanuts for a superstar player, and it makes so much sense for him. He can show he can cut it professionally, maybe even be a star at the MLS level, and then, at maybe 16 or 17, head to Europe. This way he could be in MLS in the run up to World Cup 2006, improving his chances of making the team, and head over there immediately afterwards, rather than cashing in now and languishing on someone's bench, having his growth held back. This is a good business move, and a sign of shrewd management by his advisers. I hope he's a smashing success - it'd help the national team - and the fact that he is making prudent decisions off the field is a good omen.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:41 PM 0 comments

 
Coolest. Website. Ever.

Mr. Picassohead.

Strong work by Volokh, as always, on the link.
- posted by Anonymous @ 4:47 PM 0 comments

 
Duh.

From the Guardian, news that every endurance athlete already knew:

Scientists were surprised to find that mice prevented from running showed surges of neuronal response. The more compulsive the urge to run, the higher the surges when the treadmill was locked away. These surges were the equivalent of cocaine cravings in human drug addicts.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 2:33 PM 0 comments

 
If it can do that, it must be REALLY good

I will admit to being a fan of grammar. Although you may not be able to tell it from my writing, I enjoy as much as the next guy a good discussion about the merits (which are many) and demerits (which are few) of starting a sentence with "and" or "but." But, I've never thought about punctuation being very interesting. Until now. A new book, available in the UK, but unavailable at Amazon (if you can believe it), apparently has this effect:

Most of all, it makes you love punctuation; you want to conserve what is still left and perhaps even call for more of it. Is it time to campaign for the British to adopt the Spanish upside-down question mark, which appears as an advance warning of a sentence with a query in it? Should we demand more tildes?

That's pretty impressive work.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:53 PM 0 comments

 
In a contest between The New Yorker and Travis

I'll take Travis. His post (immediately below this) is a good corrective to the quotation in my original post on redistricring (here). Good stuff.
- posted by Anonymous @ 11:08 AM 0 comments

 
Big Arm Woman gets it right (as usual)

A few months ago Big Arm Woman, at her consistently excellent and amusing blog Tightly Wound, ripped Michael Nednow, the plainitff in the case claiming that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Alliegance is unconnstituitonal. Her key point: "You, sir, are an asshole." Her analysis is now amply confirmed by this Washington Post profile, which paints a picture of Nednow as, frankly . . . what she said he was.

The evidence of his status is ample, but my personal favorite:

On Sept. 11, 2003, after a 10-day custody trial that Newdow had demanded, Mize modified the order slightly, giving him nominal legal custody and some additional visitation time but leaving Banning veto authority over major decisions -- and Newdow still bitter.

Each month, his child-support checks arrive with the notation "under protest," [the child's mother] said.

Newdow's main argument in the case is that the entire family law system is wrongly premised on "the best interests of the child," when what should really count is what he says is the parents' constitutional right to equal time.

Words fail me.

- posted by Anonymous @ 6:32 AM 0 comments

 
Some things never change

I just started reading Tournament of Shadows: the Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia It starts by recounting the travels of William Moorcroft, a Briton who explored much of Central Asia. When entering Afghanistan in 1823 he found the region was "not unusually [] embroiled in a ferocious power struggle," and Moorcroft was warned that in particular the region of Waziristan was exceedingly dangerous and lawless.

As you may have heard, Afghanistan is now somewhat unsettled politically (the link is to an index of the Post's Afghanistan coverage), and Waziristan (now part of Pakistan) is the reputed location of Osama bin Laden (the story is a few months old but I have not seen anything to change it since).

Very interesting. Small wonder democracy is proving difficult to plant in the region.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:21 PM 0 comments

 
Cracking, packing, and kidnapping

Jeffry Toobin of the New Yorkerweighs in with an interesting piece about the recent spate of gerrymandering, culminating in the recent Tom DeLay-orchestrated manuevers in Texas. Interesting stuff. It's lightly anti-Republican, but not offensively so, and it makes for an interesting primer on the issue for those who don't know a lot (like me) in advance of the Supreme Court's upcoming decision. Here's the gist:

“This was a fundamental change in the rules of the game,” Heather Gerken, a professor at Harvard Law School, said. “The rules were, Fight it out once a decade but then let it lie for ten years. The norm was very useful, because they couldn’t afford to fight this much about redistricting. Given the opportunity, that is all they will do, because it’s their survival at stake. DeLay’s tactic was so shocking because it got rid of this old, informal agreement.”

Interesting, and from the little I know, mostly accurate. We'll see if those who know more about politics (such as Travis), illuminate me.

UPDATE: The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday rejected a redistricting plan, discussed in the article above, on state constitutional grounds.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:08 PM 0 comments

 
Maybe I was a bit too hasty

I originally was not very impressed by J. M. Coetzee, who won the nobel prize in literature for his book Disgrace. I now realize I was being unfair, at least in some ways. Check out this explaination for why he rejects interview requests:

"To me," writes Coetzee, "truth is related to silence, to reflection, to the practice of writing. Speech is not a fount of truth but a pale and provisional version of writing."

Its good to see an introvert stand up for himself in this extroverted world.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 2:08 PM 0 comments

 
Good Stuff

If you're looking for a stimulating, subperbly researched book on the Supreme Court's ability to affect social policy, look no further than here. Michael Klarman will challenge many of the conceptions that you have about the Supreme Court as hero to minorities (racial and otherwise), a topic especially interesting as the Court injects itself into the cultural debate on homosexuality. Here's SSRN's summary:

The essay concludes by deriving some general lessons from this history: the extent to which the Supreme Court systematically favors the interests of racial minorities, the circumstances under which Court rulings are likely to prove efficacious, and the extent to which such decisions are likely to deviate from popular opinion.

The most important of those questions is the last, and Professor Klarman answers it with a resounding - not much. Here are some other chapters, and other articles he's written. All are worthwhile. And, hey, it don't cost nuthin'.

Tip o' the hat to the Legal Theory Blog.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 1:54 PM 0 comments

 
My First Amendment screed for the day

The Supreme Court tomorrow hears arguments in Locke v. Davey, in which the state of Washington refused to grant an academically-qualified, low income student a scholarship he had earned once he stated his intent to use the money to pursue a career as a minister. The student challenged that and won at both the district and Ninth Circuit (!) level. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has an excellent synopsis of the case, as well as links to the briefs. The young man is represented by the American Center for Law & Justice, which has issued this press release on the case. For the other side, here is the quick version of the ACLU's views supporting the state, with links to their amicus brief.

This seems to me a fairly clear example of overreaching by the state. If the scholarship is available on the basis of permissible criteria, and the recipient attends a properly accredited school, the state should be unable to block religious studies, for several reasons:

1 - It would require an active hostility to religion that the First Amendment does not mandate or even allow. The First Amendment might properly prohibit the state from offering scholarships available ONLY to religion students, or available to Presbyterians but not Catholics. But to suggest that the state can indirectly fund anything except the study of religion seems to me to go too far.

2 - The connection between the state and religion is too attenuated to justify this sort of treatment. The state is funding a individual student, who is free the use the funds on any course of study. It is not analogous to what would be impermissible, such as direct state funding of a particular seminary. This support is indeirect in a categorical sense - the state has made no comprehensive commitment to funding religion - even if it is direct in this one instance. This should not violate the First Amendment.

3 - Perhaps less clear, this gets into the issue of defining "religion" and "religious views" about which I have blogged before. Just to make the most obvious point, Washington would presumably have allowed this guy to major in philosophy (as I did) and devote himself to studying, for example, Neitzsche ("God is dead"). It seems to me that this is a religious sort of study, and differentiating between this and a religion major is tricky stuff. I recognize that one can draw a distinction between academic study of religious issues and training to be a religious leader. But this distinction is, I think, both weak and impossible to apply. One could just duck the issue by majoring in the academic discipline of religion and them attending seminary afterwards. That seems a pretty fine slice on the hair, and it would allow colleges to duck the issue by replacing pre-seminary programs with generic religion majors, which looks a triumph of form over substance.

I'll watch for highlights of the argument and post about them tomorrow.
- posted by Anonymous @ 12:42 PM 0 comments

 
Steel tariffs bad; dropping them good

According to a Washington Post article this morning, "The Bush administration has decided to repeal most of its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products exported from politically crucial states[.]"

This is a good move, because the tariffs are illegal under WTO standards and are frankly indefinsible, would have precipitated an ugly trade war, and had negative overall impacts on the US economy, especially among indistrial end users of steel, such as carmakers (here's a Detroit News editoriall making that point). I hope the administration has learned its lesson and won;t engage in this foolishness again.
- posted by Anonymous @ 6:36 AM 0 comments