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March 31, 2004
West Wing Celebrities By Gail Heriot There was a time when working as a White House staff member was not quite so public a position as it has become in recent decades. Only Washington insiders knew much about even top White House staff members; they were shadowy figures who did their jobs and received little media attention. I like that way. If a presidential advisor has to think about how he’s going over with the media at the same time he thinking about how he’s going over with the President, he is having to think too much. Nobody is smart enough for that. Today, however, a few staffers--like Karl Rove or Condoleezza Rice--might have a difficult time buying a cup of coffee in Djakarta without attracting attention. They are celebrities in their own right. The news media is so big and hungry for interviews that elected officials cannot possibly satisfy it. Top White House staff members must ride the Sunday morning news show circuit. It’s part of what’s expected of them. An unpleasant side of celebrity is asserting itself this week. The Washington Post described the scene at Mr. Rove’s home in Northwest Washington on Sunday this way: “Several hundred people stormed the small yard of President Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants. “Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove’s Palisades neighborhood ... chanting, ‘Karl, Karl, come on out! ...’” It’s a shame. Karl Rove and his family shouldn’t have to put up with this harassment. That would be so regardless of the policies he has advocated at the White House. And, as the Wall Street Journal observed today, it is especially so in view of Bush’s (and Rove’s) strong pro-immigrant policies. If Karl Rove has not been sufficiently pro-immigrant to keep the crazies from pounding on his windows, then it can’t be done. I wonder, however, if such ugly incidents aren’t difficult to avoid in the era of celebrity advisors. For good or ill, Karl Rove is a household name now. There are a lot of crazies out there, and crazies are attracted to celebrities the way that bugs are to light. They’re either going to pound on Karl Rove’s window or they’re going to pound on Ozzy Osbourne’s or Nicole Kidman’s and I guess this week it was Rove’s. The Condoleezza Rice issue this week is related. Some people were asserting that it would be politically damaging for Bush to forbid Rice from testifying before the 9-11 Commission in view of her regular appearances on radio and television. And that sounds right to me. The average American is indeed likely to believe that if the President is not worried about Rice’s appearing on Face the Nation and Meet the Press, he should not be worried about her appearing before the Commission. He must therefore being trying to hide something–or so some people’s line of reasoning might go. Maybe that’s among the reasons that Bush relented and allowed the testimony. If so, that’s a shame too. The argument that Presidential advisors should not be called to testify by Congress, the Courts or any other governmental body is by no means a frivolous one. It’s hard to give candid advice when you think that you might later have to explain that advice under oath to someone who was not there (and who may be unsympathetic to your position to the person you are advising). Rice testimony does indeed set an uncomfortable precedent. After yesterday’s announcement, all White House advisors with any sense will realize that they too may be called to testify before some politically-charged commission some day. The question is whether the existence of celebrity advisors makes all this inevitable, and if so, whether that existence needs some re-thinking. Will on Clarke By Mike Rappaport George Will chimes in with his criticisms of Clarke. Here is an excerpt:
By the eighth day Clarke was telling Tim Russert that the difference is that Clinton did "something" whereas Bush did "nothing." Nothing except, among other things, authorizing a quadrupling of spending for covert action against al Qaeda. Hitchens on Clarke By Mike Rappaport As my blogging no doubt reveals, I have been a bit obsessed with reading about Richard Clarke lately. One of the best pieces is by Christopher Hitchens in Slate. He just seems to know so much about these matters, including significant details. And, of course, he has a way with words. The highlights of the Slate piece: Hitchens's description of how the book "The Age of Sacred Terror, published in 2002," depicts Clarke "as an egotistical pain in the ass who had the merit of getting things right." Hitchens's discussion of how Clarke previously accepted the connection between Iraq and Al Qaida. Hitchens's pointing out the important state sponsorship that Al Qaida and other terrorists received from American "friends" Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and how the war against Iraq has constrained them. And he ends with this parting shot: "But in my experience, dud theories die only to be replaced by new and even dumber ones. The current reigning favorite is that fighting al-Qaida in Iraq is a distraction from the fight against al-Qaida." Bill Clinton, Antiterrorist Extraordinaire By Mike Rappaport Of all the misleading claims that Richard Clarke appears to have made, the most outrageous is that the Clinton Administration did a good job of fighting terror. For the latest outrage by the Clinton Administration, being revealed now for the first time, see Cori Dauber. March 30, 2004
The Scottish Nectar By Tom Smith In addition to creating some of the best philosophy and economics in history, the Scots also make the finest distilled beverage. Here's a link to my favorite, part of an effort to enlighten certain persons who might otherwise be swayed by the prejudice against strong liquors. I hate it when you're nice By Tom Smith Just when I thought David Brooks was getting in touch with this inner wolverine, he writes this icky sweet thing. Sorry, kids, it does matter where you go to college. Very good piece on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act By Tom Smith I was going to write something on this point, but it probably would not have been this good. (via realclearpolitics.com). European Offensive By Maimon Schwarzschild Mark Steyn has it right, as usual, on Europe (specifically Germany). Meantime, Sen. Joe Biden, who is maddeningly inconsistent but who occasionally talks straight and sensibly, says some of the right things to the Euro envoys in Washington. (Biden, when it comes to action, not words, is almost always a generic Democrat. But he does have an occasional independent train of thought, so long as he is just thinking out loud. The Senate would be a more interesting place, at least, if there were more like him.) Finally, a propos America's European allies, read Kenneth Timmerman's book on Chiraq if you haven't already. A Book to Sell, An Axe to Grind By Mike Rappaport I watched much of the Richard Clarke interview on Meet the Press. A couple of reactions. First, Clarke is an articulate and polished spokesmen for his point of view. He comes across very well in these settings. While some of the force of what he says comes from his ability to point out, after the fact, mistakes or oversights by the Bush Administration, much of his impact come from rhetorical skills. He has several different maneuvers that he uses. As one might expect, media expert Cori Dauber identifies his main tactics. A couple of these tactics: Its not about me. The problem is that when his criticism of the Bush Administration depends on his credibility, it is in part about him. Its for the families. As Dauber says, “He's draping himself in the families like a cloak. He's only doing this because the families have a right to know. I find this especially annoying. It's a form of political armor, a way of demonstrating that his motives are pure: if he's doing it for the families, then to question him must mean you are trying to keep something from the families, right?” Dauber finds this annoying. I find it despicable. What the White House did and what Clarke did. As Dauber says, “Listen to Clarke talk about the Bush administration pre-9/11. They did nothing. He did X, Y, Z. He's totally dissociated himself so that even though he worked for them, whatever actions he took are not actions that count in the administration's column as steps taken pre-9/11.” The problem is that it takes some thought and expertise to recognize that he is employing these tactics. In the end, it is a bit sad that Clarke has chosen to make his allegations in a heavily promoted book, during a political campaign. Had he presented these ideas at another time, in a less politically strident manner, it would be easier to listen to these criticisms. Now, unfortunately, it is all about defending his reputation and promoting his book. March 29, 2004
Colorado Fails to Eliminate Racial Preferences By Gail Heriot It is difficult to deny that racial preferences are unpopular. In California and Washington, the two states that have had voter initiatives on the ballot prohibiting such policies, the intiatives have passed by substantial margins (54.6% in California and 58.22% in Washington). Moreover, judging by surveys described by public opinion experts Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza, the results in California and Washington may have significantly understated opposition to such policies: The affirmative action agenda "is politically controversial precisely because most Americans do not disagree about it," they wrote in The Scar of Race. "The distribution of public opinion on ... affirmative action ... is unmistakable .... [T]here is scarcely any support ... among whites." Polls cited by Sniderman & Piazza show that even African Americans are "split right down the middle on affirmative action." Some polls show opposition higher than 90%; all polls show overall opposition to be high. Even so, it has proven almost impossible to end racial preferences through legislation. It is the classic special interest policy. A few people benefit handsomely from preferences, particularly preferences in public contracting. They desperately want to retain these discriminatory policies and they are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep them going. One group even calls itself the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). In the end, legislators, timid souls that they are, always cave to them. And on Friday, the Colorado Senate joined the list. Because I co-chaired California's Proposition 209 campaign, I sometimes get calls from state legislators around the country interested in sponsoring legislation that would ban racial and gender preferences in their state. I've spoken to several thoughtful and hardworking representatives from both parties who are convinced that justice requires them to act to prohibit these policies. Invariably, however, they have misjudged the power of the affirmative action lobby. Despite support from the public at large, they find themselves unable to garner the support of the majority of their colleagues. The effort collapses. That's apparently what happned to State Senator Ed Jones, the African American Republican who sponsored the Colorado bill. It lost 18 to 17, in a mostly party-line vote in which one Republican senator defected to vote with the Democrats. I have come to believe that popular initiatives are the only effective way to deal with the issue. It's a shame, since in many ways popular initiatives are an unwieldy tool. Since Colorado is an initiative state, we may see such an effort soon. Stay tuned. March 28, 2004
The 9-11 Commission By Mike Rappaport On my weekend away, I had the opportunity to watch a bit of C-Span's broadcast of the 9-11 Commission hearings. Most of the members of the Commission read like the Ghosts of Government Past, including Thomas H. Kean, Lee H. Hamilton, Fred Fielding, Slade Gorton, Bob Kerrey and John F. Lehman. And there was Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense from the 1970s testifying before the Commission. Obviously, he could have been on the Commission had God not shined down upon us and allowed him to be our present Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld has more life in him than anyone else in that room, and in my view at least, more knowledge and skill as well. Las Vegas By Mike Rappaport I just came back from a long weekend vacation with my wife in Las Vegas. We both had a great time, and we don't even gamble. For those who are not familiar with the place, Vegas has much to recommend it besides gambling. For one, it probably has more great restaurants in a small area than any other place, largely because great restaurants throughout the US have also opened there. For example, we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Commanders Palace, which is as good in Vegas as it is in New Orleans. We also ate at Olives, originally a Boston restaurant. Las Vegas also has culture, both high and low. We saw two museum exhibits, one of Monet's works and the other from the Guggenheim in New York, entitled From Renoir to Rothko. (Sadly, though, I don't really like Impressionism.) There was also a great deal of low culture to pick from (and I don't mean strip clubs). There was Elton John, Penn and Teller, and our choice -- the lowest of the low, Don Rickles. As politically incorrect as they come, Rickles did not tell a single new joke -- yet, he was quite funny. One of the really nice things about Vegas is that you can enjoy these treats at what appear to be a subsidized prices. I would guess that the money the hotels make from gambling lowers the prices a bit. And, happily, I don't have to give the casinos a cent. Of course, many of Justice Scalia's airplane ticket critics might regard my behavior as improper. Presumably, I should gamble a bit just because the hotels expect it, or at least announce to them, that I have no intention of gambling. Yeah, right. If it's good enough for the Secretary of Commerce ... By Gail Heriot I just peeked ahead to April on my calendar and saw that April 21st is designated "Administrative Professionals Day." Evidently, I am lagging behind the times again (a positon to which I've grown accustomed). A quick internet search revealed that "Administrative Professionals Day" is the new, blander, more PC term for what was originally called "National Secretaries Day" when it was proclaimed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer in 1952. At the time, there was thought to be a critical shortage of qualified secretaries; Secretary Sawyer hoped that a special day of appreciation would encourage more people to enter the occupation. The term was changed to "Administrative Professionals Day" in 2000. I've never understood why the term "secretary" should be demeaning, but evidently some view it as such. I was told a few years ago that some secretaries here at the University of San Diego were so desperate to have their job titles changed that they were very nearly in tears over the issue. (They are now called administrative assistants.) Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like the term "secretary" better. It derives from the Latin "secretum" (or secret) and conjures up images of the confidante. "Administrative assistant," on the other hand, is bureaucratic and lifeless. What's interesting, of course, is that it's getting to the point where the only ones left with the title "Secretary" are cabinet level officers of the United States government--like Secretary Sawyer himself. Somehow I can't imagine them adopting the title "Administrative Professional." March 27, 2004
Yassin the spiritual By Tom Smith I agree with almost everything in this Martin Peretz piece. But when writers put scare quotes around "spiritual leader" in describing persons such as Yassin, they are just showing their naivite about things spiritual. It is entirely possible, even likely, that Yassin was a spiritual leader. Being a spiritual leader does not mean you are good. Not everything spiritual is good. If you believe in things of the spirit, there is a good chance you believe some of those spiritual things are evil. Indeed, evil spiritual things are more evil than just regular old bad things. Spiritual is not a synonym for "introspective," "compassionate," or "appreciative of new age music and low fat spa food." Personally, I think the Yassins of the world would be less scary if they were not spiritual, but as it is, I don't doubt they are. Cool jet By Tom Smith NASA sets new world speed record in cool scramjet. In my next life, I'm going to join the Air Force. I know, naval aviators land on pitching decks at night, but that's too scary. March 26, 2004
Annals Of Socialized Medicine By Maimon Schwarzschild One of Britain's leading vascular neurosurgeons was suspended from his hospital position last week over allegations that he took an extra serving of croutons for his soup in the hospital canteen. All the operations he was scheduled to perform have been postponed, pending a full investigation. Reporting the story, the Daily Telegraph notes that the waiting time for brain surgery in Nottingham -- where the soup suspension took place -- is 39 days, and that according to a report by the Society of British Neurological Surgeons, patients are dying needlessly in Britain because of a shortage of surgeons. The left wing Guardian newspaper also carries a report, if that allays any suspicion you might have that TheRightCoast (or the Daily Telegraph) are making this up. A further English note in this story (apart from the petty-mindedness -- about food and otherwise -- that one sometimes experiences in England) is that the surgeon has been devoting his time to gardening while under suspension, and that he has been wearing a bright red wig when he ventures into his garden, apparently hoping thereby to evade journalists and press photographers. On knowledge and belief, as I say, this lunatic story is apparently not merely a rejected Monty Python sketch. (Hat tip to Oxblog.) March 25, 2004
Deliberation Moment By Tom Smith As an alternative, I propose that Congress appropriate $500,000, to be paid to Bruce Ackerman on the condition that he not come up with any dumb ideas for a period of one year. Some ideas just create negative externalities. Famous professor proposes dumb idea. Across the country millions of American pause and think, hmmmm, that seems like a dumb idea. In sum, thousands of man-hours are wasted, time that could have been spent shaving, or recording sports shows, or sweeping out the garage. This is just wrong. $500,000 would be money well spent. I'm sorry. Maybe there's something wrong with me. I went to Yale Law School and attempted to take a class from Prof. Ackerman and ended up dropping it because after listening to R.M. Hare, Jeremy Waldron, Ronald Dworkin, HLA Hart and Charles Taylor at Oxford, it was just too depressing. I went around thinking, "why does everybody think this guy is so smart?" I still do not understand. It's not just politics. Some conservatives think he's smart. I admit he is very charming if you can stand to suck up to him like your life depends on it. But not everyone has that kind of energy. What if you just ate? Well, you all have your deliberation day. I've got a garage to clean. Conference on Judicial Appointments By Mike Rappaport Earlier this week I got back from a conference on the issues relating to judicial appointments, including papers on advice and consent, the filibuster, recess appointments, the role of ideology in making appointments, and explanations for the tremendous political conflict that now occurs in the area. The conference was quite interesting, but a little depressing: it suggests that the conflicts over judicial appointments are likely to be here for the indefinite future. Larry Solum, who presented an excellent paper on the relationship between theories of judging and judicial appointments, blogged the conference here and here. Did Scalia engage in promissory fraud? By Tom Smith Brian Leiter has linked to this item, floating around the blogosphere, to the effect that Scalia, J., engaged in promissory fraud by buying a round trip ticket he intended to use only one leg of. The first response is, oh please, give me a break. But actually, there may be a bit of a puzzle here. Airline pricing is just an exercise in pure price discrimination. The idea in this instance is to sort out those who really are engaging in one way travel and those who are going round trip. Needing to go only one way is a rather odd situation when you think about it. Airlines undoubtedly sell far more round trip than one-way tickets. They sensibly figure they can extract more from one way travelers. Of course, any idiot would buy a round trip ticket instead of one way, for the same reason you would buy a dozen oranges for $2 rather than a half-dozen for $3. So, apparently, airlines make it a standard term in the form ticket contract nobody has ever read that the buyer of the round-trip ticket really is a round trip flyer and not a one-way flyer. In effect, the buyer is making a representation about his intentions. But it is a queer sort of representation. It is not like "I will make my best efforts to sell your widgets" or the like. It is more like "$100 is really the most I am willing to pay for this widget." This is so because that's all price discrimination is, an effort to sort people out according to what they are willing to pay. But does anybody really think it is fraud to represent to a seller that you are not willing to pay more than $X when in fact you would be willing to pay more? Even if there is an odd term in the contract that says "I really am unwilling to pay more than $X", how could such a term have any effect? A related reason to think buying a round-trip ticket when you mean to travel only one way is not fraud, is that it is hard to see how the airline could possibly rely on such a representation and undoubtedly they do not. They must realize that lots of people buy round trip tickets and throw away the return. They would like to price discriminate against these people, but are defeated when people respond rationally by buying the round trip. For a passenger not to do so would constitute the ethical lapse of being an idiot. Further, for there to be fraud, their must be damages. "I wanted to price discriminate, but he wouldn't let me because he misrepresented how much he was willing to pay," would be a pretty strange case for damages. Some sort of lost profits claim, I guess. But the airlines still sold the round trip ticket. They can fill the empty return seat with a stand-by or by over-booking, which they normally do. Even if the seat sits empty, so what? The buyer already paid for it. So the airlines says, you can't do that, you must be there. But the airline cannot compel performance of this sort. So it asks about present intentions, presumably. Then you are back to the supposed ethical obligation to let somebody price discriminate against you by revealing your indifference curve. That's indecent. Nobody has the right to insist you expose your indifference curve. The only way I can see to argue the seller has suffered any harm is to go back to the price discrimination point, and I doubt any court would call that fraud. (But just wait. Somebody will send me a case in which some benighted federal judge did just that.) But honestly, how could anybody reasonably rely to their detriment on a representation to the effect that "yes, I'm really a round trip flyer" when they are asking you just so they can soak you if possible? No doubt there is some refined moral theory under which you may not misrepresent such intentions in the marketplace, but it would be a rare bird that followed it in practice. The morality of contract law, I would hazard, is much more practical. I would put representations given merely to avoid price discrimination in a category similiar to agreements to agree. You might be able to make sense of them, barely, in theory, but in practice, they're meaningless. That's what I would say if I were a judge anyway. Then I would fly away on a public private jet and kill some ducks. And one more thing: Scalia was using both legs of the ticket if you consider the strange ethical position he was is. If he is going to accept a ride on somebody's jet, it helps to be able to say "I didn't save any money by doing so; I already had a round-trip ticket." So he needs that empty seat on the plane. It is occupied, if you will, by his conscience or at least by his reputation, or perhaps only by some purely juridical body. Just because his actual bottom, on which we are not going to dwell, is not in the seat, does not mean he's not using it. But I suppose there's some really, really refined view under which it is unethical or illegal to buy an airline seat you want to use (maybe it's a weird hobby you have, or maybe you're fulfilling your late girlfriend's last wish, or whatever) in some way other than just sitting in it. Of course, it's funny that Scalia saved money on his one-way leg by buying a ticket that shows he did not save money by taking a private plane for the other leg of the trip. But it still allows him to say "I already had a round trip ticket," and in this age of soundbites, that's a useful thing to be able to say. March 24, 2004
Beginning of end for Kerry? By Tom Smith Dick Morris may have odd sexual tastes (who can forget 'bark like a dog'?) but I've long thought he has acute political judgment. This NY Post piece via realcl arpolitics.com is well worth reading. I'm on record as thinking that the election would be close, but maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. I just keep remembering how many votes Al Gore, not exactly one of nature's charmers, managed to get. More, even, than Bush. Did you know the Kerrys or the Kerry-Katchups or whatever they're called, live in a house in Sun Valley that was disassembled in Europe, shipped to the US, than reassembled? Assuming this is actually true, and it seems too awful to be really true, it bothers me. As I mention every chance I get, I grew up in Idaho, and it is one of the tree capitals of the world. Boise means trees. Ever heard of Boise Cascade? We are very proud of our wood. It offends me that someone should think it necessary or desirable to disassemble some Euro-shack, ship it to my home state, and put it together again. We have lots of nice wood and we know how to build houses with it, even big ones. I would be happy with a constitutional amendment which provided that no one who lived in a house that had been taken apart in Europe, shipped here, and put back together again, may be President. Talk about conspicuous consumption. And not to mention phoniness. Here's a fun fact. Sun Valley is not in Europe. But maybe John needs it to feel more comfortable. Clarke v. Clarke By Mike Rappaport Take a look at this interview given by Richard Clarke in August 2002. It is extremely favorable to the Bush Administration and contradicts many of his claims regarding the White House's antiterror activities. Really, it is so positive as to the Bush Administration, one would tend to be skeptical of it. Obviously this casts some doubt on the man's credibility. Really stupid point By Tom Smith Ian Ayers makes a really stupid point, which is rare for him. He accuses Justice Scalia of buying a "throw-away" round trip ticket, that is a ticket he intended to use only one leg of. Airline pricing is such that this can sometimes be cheaper than buying a one-way ticket. First, doing so is not illegal in any way I can see. Airlines don't want you to do it. So what. At most, it amounts to some technical breach of the terms of the ticket contract, for which the damages would be zero when the airline fills the seat with somebody else, or when the seat you've already paid for sits empty and somebody puts their coat on it. As far as any ethical problem, oh please. It does not nearly rise to the level of say, feeding a parking meter against regulations, where your action is arguably selfish. Furthermore, Ian Ayers probably has no idea with Scalia's intentions were. Plans change. A round trip ticket might have come in handy. Scalia deserves to be criticized for frolicing with rich and powerful muckity-mucks in an way unseemly for a jurist. But the violation is of good taste, not morality. Idaho update By Tom Smith This little tidbit from a special correspondent (whose parents happen to live in Sun Valley). I was listening to the Sean Hannity show today and someone from the Sun Valley area called up to tell a little tidbit about Kerry's visit. I guess there was a party for the all the volunteers -- those who drove people around and did other things to make the Senator's trip to the area more enjoyable. There were about 100 people and Kerry was down the street having dinner and was supposed to show up. Well after a couple hours of waiting, word was received that he wasn't going to come. He basically stood up all these people that had given of their time to him. I wonder if Blaine County [Idaho, where Sun Valley is located] will still go to the Dems in November? March 23, 2004
Learn how to write pompously By Tom Smith When we allow people to write like this, we are letting the terrorists win. Life-style stylings of the help-the-poor set By Tom Smith I would satirize the high living of our liberal nobility, but I am not worthy. (via opinionjournal.com) squeaky squeals in mouse tell-all By Tom Smith Somebody should ask those starving mice just why they live so much longer than mice that occasionally get to eat their fill. I have an idea. Pure mean-spirited revenge. Furry spite. Rodent malice. Put yourself in their place for a moment. Trapped in a small cage with nothing to amuse yourself but an exercise wheel and a water bottle. Sound familiar? A little rodent action when the lab lights go out? Oh no. Your genes aren't good enough. Well, you can always down another mouthful of those green pellets they call food. But wait! Now you can't even do that! It's just hour after hour of gnawing rodent hunger, and for what? To prove that a miserable mouse can live longer than one that gets to eat. So you hang on, knowing that every hour more you live is thousands more humans who feel guilty for that extra bowl of raisin bran, and ashamed for each additional fry. Vicious, hate-filled little bastards. I saw some documentary on public TV about this starvation and longevity stuff some years ago. They interviewed some guy who was a professor at some UC school who was on this low calorie regime, along with his daughter if I remember correctly. They were skinny. I mean stick-man, death's head skinny. Every meal was some elaborate salad, piles of vitamins etc. etc. The reporter, to her credit, asked him the important question "Aren't you hungry?" "All the time," he said. And you could tell he really, really meant it. But he said he thought it was worth the trade off. He figured he would get extra years of life out of the deal. Poor, sad, scared little man. However, I do wish I had taken it easier at the Asian stir-fry buffet in the faculty dining room today. The Death of A Spiritual Leader By Mike Rappaport Once again, we are in the upside down world inhabited by the European Union and the liberal media, like the New York Times. Misleading claims, built on lies, resting on obsfucations. A man, who if nothing else, was a general in a terrorist war against Israel, is described as a spiritual leader. I suppose one could describe Osama Bin Laden as the spiritual leader of Al Qaida. Of course, the purpose of the phrase is to give impression that the Sheik was caring for the souls of innocent people, when he was doing nothing of the kind: he was a spiritual leader of Radical Islam, a sect that by its own admission embraces death. Consider this New York Times editorial:
The editorial says "while Sheik Yassin was the group's spiritual leader, Israel accused him of responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks" but what it means is "We are not going to admit that he is a murderous terrorist nor are we going to deny it. It would be difficult for us to defend the notion that one should allow such terrorists to continue their behavior with impunity. And we are not able to admit that we do know whether he is responsible for terrorism, since it is much harder to sound morally superior based on ignorance." It says "it's hard to see how his martyrdom will make Israel any safer. Hamas will now redouble its efforts to send human torpedos into Israel." What it means is "We are putting this point this way, because it would be hard to argue that killing the leaders of a terrorist sect has no influence on the sect's ability to pursue its activities. After all, if killing the leaders had no effect, we might then have to admit that it is no real problem that the evil Bush Administration has not found Bin Laden, since there would not make America any safer. We also put the point this way since it allows us not to have to acknowledge that Hamas was, to its core, against any deal with Israel and would view any restraint by Israel as a sign of victory." Krugmanology By Tom Smith Who is Paul Krugman trying to influence? Is he just consumption for the Democratic base? Lying in Ponds looks at four years of columns. Somebody has to do it. Via instapundit. March 22, 2004
This makes me nervous By Tom Smith This story makes me nervous. About a year ago or so, debka.com (check it out it you're not familiar with it--their format is lousy, but they seem to have some good inside sources) was running a similar story with dates and names. What bothers me is, it's not impossible. The Soviets did have suitcase nukes and they would fetch a very high price. There are people that evil out there. I hope the CIA is on the hunt. Unfortunately, I think San Diego would be a natural target. It is very rich in high value naval targets and easily accessible from Mexico. Family Life Update By Tom Smith I don't generally wear shorts, unless it's really warm. A few months ago, I was wearing shorts and my lovely wife Jeanne said, "Your legs look really . . . " At this time I was working out maniacally, especially with my legs, for a climbing trip. I would do 120 squats with 150 lbs. I spent four hours on a step mill with a 60 lbs. pack and mountaineering boots. I would do toe raises until I wept. "Strong-looking?" I was thinking, "shapely? fit? ripped? powerful?" "Really what?" I said. "Really white." * * * "I'm glad I'm not named Rich," William (age 7) said. "Why?" said Jeanne. "Because it means weiner!" "I think you mean "dick," dear." "I know." *** I promised Jeanne not to blog about the child or the behavior during Mass yesterday that very nearly caused me to go insane and beat my child to death during the service, which would be no doubt some sort of serious sin. However, just a note to those who might give sermons in the future. If there is a story in the gospel, there is no need to repeat the entire story in different words during the homily. Take yesterday, the story of the prodigal son. You know the story. You have heard it before. Good story. You listen to it again. By Catholic standards, it is a long gospel, especially in a packed church with kids driving you deeply insane. So, yes, it ends as it has before. Now comes the homily. Do not repeat the story! We just heard it! We get it! Add something! We know it is a parable! And then this praying for the sick business. It has gotten so that we are sitting through scores of names being read out. No doubt they are really sick. But how about "and all the sick in our parish," or maybe you should at least have to be in the hospital or something. There is some evidence (controversial of course) that intercessory prayer for the sick works. But is there any evidence you have to mention them by name, out loud, to have the desired effect? I doubt it. March 21, 2004
all things japanese By Tom Smith My oldest son is obsessed with all things Japanese. As a result, among many other things, I am spending four hours a week training with him in Japanese style martial arts, two in Jujitsu, the weaponless fighting technique of the samurai warriors, and two hours in their sword fighting art. I'm in the process of turning our garage into a martial arts training area, and I'm most of the way there. I am planning a post on sword fighting, which I think many blogophiles will find interesting, given the high level of interest by many internet types in LOTR, fantasy novels and other genres that involve fighting with blades. In just a few weeks, I've learned a number of things you wouldn't necessarily expect from having read Tolkein or Robert Jordan. Anyway, just a teaser. The novel Across the Nightingale Floor, a fantasy novel set in an imaginary version of medieval Japan, is really quite good. It is certainly on a higher literary level than the vast majority of fantasy novels. It has unusually developed characters, and works in elements of magic and fighting prowess much more naturally than is usual in the genre. And here's a blog from some design type guy in Tokyo, where my son threatens to move. I'm worried. How about you? Are you worried? By Tom Smith The New York Times is impossible to parody. Check this out. The Times dishes out a story on how both Republicans and Democrats are "worried" about the harsh tone the campaign is taking. What this really means, of course, is that the Times is worried that Bush's attacks are scoring, as they are. Kerry is turning out to be one of those guys who can dish it out but can't take it. Such a charming trait. What Republicans are worried. Two guesses. That's right. John McCain, that flinty individualist, that rock of integrity, that roarin' Commie-defying man of iron. I am so sick of McCain. That fact that his self-promotional instincts stop him from ever following anybody does not make him particularly admirable. And Chuck Hagel. Please. Is there any issue on which he does not have an opinion? What chances would his mother have if she stood between him and a TV camera? The Times has been joyously running negative stories on Bush and his policies everyday for months, as is their right and by now their accepted role. So Bush has a rally, Cheney gives a speech, Kerry pouts in Sun Valley, surrounded by Secret Service agents he abuses and various idle rich sorts, and all of a sudden, it's oh dear, have we huwt youw feewings, John? The putative concern is, negative campaigning depresses turnout. Oh yeah, just like it did in 2000. What a joke. I miss the old Democratic party. Can you imagine HHH whining about negative campaigning? LBJ practically invented it. Kerry can get together with his pals at the Times and play beanbag if he doesn't like getting some of what he's been tossing. Weird is right By Tom Smith Kerry has had a weird and not-so-good couple of weeks. Mark Steyn does his usual unkind best to rub it in. (via realclearpolitics.com) I'm generally sympathetic to insecure displays of macho. I would love to have Kerry's motorcycle, house in Sun Vallley, and wife's fortune (though I would prefer to keep my own wife). But Steyn is right about the male insecurity thing. I wish there was some less risky way to reassure him that didn't involve the security of the nation. March 20, 2004
Jets for Justices By Tom Smith This New York Times article shows a picture of the business jet that flew VP Cheney and Associate Justice Scalia to their duck blasting fandango in America's swampland. Much has been made of their chummy relationship. As far we know, they did not paint runes in duck blood on each others bellies (in Cheney's case that might have taken several runes, perhaps a whole epic). And the Justice noted he and the Vice President did not share the same blind or "swap spit." Oh, all right, I made that quote up. This controversy, however, has neglected the real issue. The fact that the judicial branch, unlike the Executive, does not have its own fleet of jets that it can use when it goes on vacations. What is this all about? Is not the Supreme Court at least as wonderful, brilliant and deserving of our sycophantic up-sucking as any other branch of government? If each Justice had his, or her, own jet, then they would not have to chum around with Executive Branch officials. It is this egregious oversight in equipping some of the most powerful near-superhumans in our power stratosphere that led to this indecorous infraction in the first place. In general, it is dangerous to let Justices wander about in the social highlands with inadequate status symbols. They must suffer from a bad case of what David Brooks called in his mean ,but funny book, Bobos in Paradise, of status-income disparity (or something like that). Supreme Court justices are supremely important. They have whole battalions of law professors trying to figure out what they meant in opinions they did not even write themselves. Justices go home at night and wonder if they are really historic or not. But unless they are married to super rich lawyers, as Justice Ginsberg is, do they wonder this in marble bathrooms? Do they have personal shoppers to spare them the time to worry? Do they get to fly about in private jets? Do they get to dump their tired spouses and hook up with young hunks or hunkettes, or at least with interns? They do not. It is shockingly unfair. No one can fairly blame Justice Nino for jumping at the chance to fly in such a cool aircraft. The answer is clear. The Justices need their own jets. At say $25 million a pop, times ten (you need an extra to send out for extra shotgun shells or whatever, and I can multiply by ten in my head) that's a mere $250 million. Chump change in our empire's capital. Something else the Justices need is their own song. The President has "Hail to the Chief" but what do the justices have? "I'm leaving on [my own, taxpayer funded] jet plane"? No, too sappy. "Chain of Fools"? No, too sarcastic. "You're So Vain"? No, too true. I suppose each Justice could have his, or her, own song. Yippy Tie Yie Yay, Get Along Little Doggies, is one obvious choice, but what about the rest? Food for thought, you must admit. (My son suggests "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but you'd have to know the lyrics to know how appropriate that is.) In a republic, the people are governed by laws, and the public servants affect a certain stern austerity, as the Romans knew. So what would be appropriate in our case? I suppose some sort of transparently fake austerity, with our leaders living like the super-rich every chance they get. Like Cheney, or Clinton, or Scalia. Welcome to club, Nino. UPDATE: The other side of the story here. Doctrinally, I would be happy to see Scalia have 9 votes to everyone else's one. I just think flying around in non-commercial jets, hunting with oil industry elephants, etc. etc. is unseemly in a judge. I know it's how the world works. I don't have to like it. I agree the L.A. Times has redefined media bias. Is Democracy a Smokescreen? By Michael Rappaport UCLA Law Professor William Rubenstein writes, in a New York Times op ed, that politicians of the left and right are hiding behind federalism and separation of powers in order to avoid taking a clear position on same sex marriage. Perhaps, but Rubenstein is also missing an important point. While some people may feel so strongly about the issue, from one side or the other, that they do not care how same sex marriage is established, for many people the process by which it occurs is important and perhaps crucial to its legitimacy. If a significant majority in a state opposes same sex marriage, but it is imposed by the judiciary, one might be against it for that reason -- because of democratic values, because an institution like that needs democratic legitimacy to be successful, and because the democratic process might involve compromises that would make it more successful than the form of same sex marriage that the courts would require. One would have thought these lessons had been learned from the abortion example, but I suppose not. Is That Domino Teetering? By Mike Rappaport The New York Times headline says it all: "Hussein's Fall Leads Syrians to Test Government Limits." The story continues:
In any event, the story cannot resist some editorializing:
Weird Science By Tom Smith This is pretty weird. Apparently in Minnesota, kids will now be taught that evolution is just one of at least two "scientific" theories accounting for such things as marine iguanas and puffer fish. I suppose this means if you want to learn evolution, and not the book of Genesis in biology class, you'll have to go to a Catholic school. I admit I find this pretty rich. Maybe we'll repeat history, in which the Irish monks preserved civilization through the dark ages. I looked at my sixth grader's science book the other day, curious about its treatment of evolution. The book discussed evolution, but not very well. One argument in favor of teaching evolution and teaching it well is that it is very interesting. There are lots of great computer simulations that would appeal to kids, for one thing. Another thought that occurs to me is that if it were easier for kids to study their own religion while in school, there might be less pressure to inject it into inappropriate places, such as science classes. Why shouldn't Christian kids be able to take a Bible study class in a public school? Because the ACLU and federal judges won't let them, but how would such a class hurt rather than help their education? If there were such classes, then religion teachers could tell them the theory of evolution was false, and biology teachers could shoot back with evidence and arguments. Kids could decide for themselves. Now instead, at least in Minnesota, they will have every right to be confused as to what scientists actually think. Does Kerry read the Right Coast? By Tom Smith Drudge reports today that Kerry has been hiking up to the 9000 foot level on Baldy and snowboarding down, taking repeated falls. I guess I have to withdraw my judgment that he is a weiner, at least on the grounds of his snowboarding. Reporters counted at least six falls. So maybe he is trying after all. Could this be in response to my comments on this blog? Never underestimate the influence of the internet. March 19, 2004
NRO needs to clean up its act By Tom Smith In the intelligent design kerfuffle over at Brian Leiter's site and National Review Online, Brian's opponents seem to be striking below the belt. Read all about it over there, but in a nutshell, a graduate student of the Intelligent Design scientist posing as an independent journalist attacked Brian in a piece published by NRO. Of course, the conflict came out, thus discrediting the attack. Nobody enjoys a good, honest fight more than I, and Brian, as you have no doubt noticed, can take care of himself, but even in the Wild West of the blogosphere, certain rules have to observed. One of them is you can't pretend to be something you're not. You don't have to reveal that you are a dog, but you can't hold yourself out as something else. Or so it seems to me. Kerry is a weiner By Tom Smith You may have missed this account of an incident in today's New York Times about Senator Kerry's vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho: The image-conscious candidate and his aides prevailed upon reporters and photographers to let him have a first run down the mountain solo, except for two agents and Marvin Nicholson, his omnipresent right-hand man. His next trip down, a reporter and a camera crew were allowed to follow along on skis — just in time to see Mr. Kerry taken out by one of the Secret Service men, who had inadvertently moved into his path, sending him into the snow. When asked about the mishap a moment later, he said sharply, "I don't fall down," then used an expletive to describe the agent who "knocked me over." The incident occurred near the summit. No one was hurt, and Mr. Kerry came careering down the mountain moments later, a look of intensity on his face, his lanky frame bent low to the ground. Ms. Heinz Kerry, for her part, stuck to a pair of skis and was taking her time down the slope, accompanied by two old friends, one a former Olympian, the other a ski school instructor. "I'm going tentatively, but prettily," she said, wearing tight black pants and a flaming red jacket. I grew up skiing in Idaho, and I can assure the Senator if he does not fall down, it's because he's not trying hard enough. In fact, what we used to say was, if you don't fall, you're not trying hard enough. And we had a term for people who say things like "I don't fall." Senator, you, sir, are a weiner. And a weiner of the worst sort. A rich, Eastern weiner who clogs up the ski slopes with your snootiness and mediocre technique. "I don't fall" indeed. Maybe the Senator should try the chutes at Alta or Steeplechase at Aspen Highlands or Tuckerman's in New Hampshire or anywhere off-piste in the Canadian Rockies or do some trees on skinny skis. "I don't fall." What an unbelievable weiner. If you don't fall, it because you're skiing where it's flat. You probably are followed around by a lackey with one of those little hand brooms to brush you off when you do whatever it is you do when you don't fall, you weiner. And then you blame the Secret Service Agent (who stands ready to take a bullet on your behalf) whom you run into for getting in your way and call him a name. It's like driving. If you run into someone from behind, it's your fault. You're supposed to be able to stop. Somebody who wasn't a complete weiner would have said something like "My fault! Sorry! I was going to fast!" and then see if the guy you hit was alright. Flatlander weiner to the core. And I think it's great that somebody asked Kerry which foreign leader told him he wanted him to win. Probably a native. Inherit The Wind By Maimon Schwarzschild Very interesting Gregg Easterbrook obit of Jerome Lawrence, the playwright who wrote "Inherit The Wind". Lawrence died last month at 89, after a long and successful career as writer and director on Broadway and in Hollywood. "Inherit The Wind", especially the movie version with Spencer Tracy, is often taken as virtually a documentary on the Scopes trial. The film is shown to schoolchildren to teach them about the evolution case, and so on. In fairness, it is a very good movie. But Easterbrook points out a variety of ways in which the film (and the play) are fiction: and Lawrence never pretended that he was writing history. In real life William Jennings Bryan was significantly less of a yahoo, and above all Dayton, Tenn., was very significantly less a fever swamp of fanaticism than the film represents. It is a striking example of how a polemical fiction can come to be taken as sober fact. March 18, 2004
The Middle East Propoganda Association By Mike Rappaport Take a look at this letter describing some of the problems with the Middle East Studies Association. I am sure there is no prejudice there. The only reason they do not want to honor Bernard Lewis is that he is not smart enough. Good speech By Tom Smith Very good speech by Veep Cheney, the avuncular looking guy with ice water in his veins. Read the whole thing. And see this observation by Dick Morris. (Both via realclearpolitics.com) March 17, 2004
An Arbitrary Supreme Court By Mike Rappaport Stuart Buck excerpts an excellent opinion by Judge Easterbrook. If there were more ridicule of Sandra Day O'Connor by influential lower court judges, she might feel a little bit more constrained about being lawless. While you should read the entire excerpt by Buck, here is Easterbrook's conclusion:
The business of the Passion By Tom Smith Interesting piece on the economics of the movie. Gibson is going to make an astonishing amount of money on it. Liberal Bias Pure and Simple By Mike Rappaport This piece is just outrageous and shameless. What a piece of trash the New York Times can be. I guess the Times could not find anyone who disagreed with the position of the couple of professors and activists who are quoted. Why else would they subtitle their article "Scholars say that an examination of the last national debate on marriage shows that the president misunderstood the legal terrain." Too bad Eugene Volokh's ideas are so hard to find on the Web. So here's a hint for Adam Liptak (the Times reporter), take a look at this post (by a defender of same sex marriage) for some balance! Update: The basic point that needs to be understood is that, even if the existing doctrine concerning the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require state A to recognize same sex marriages from state B, that is not necessarily a reason to be against amending the Constitution. As the Lawrence decision, and a hundred other cases show, when the Supreme Court wants to overrule a case, it can do so. Mad Cows or Crazy Bureaucrats? By Mike Rappaport The New York Times reports on the new rules for testing cows for mad cow disease. According to risk analysis, the new regime will test half of the downer cows and should detect mad cow disease even if it is present in only 5 of the 45 million cows in the nation. That sounds pretty good. But wait. How much is dependent on enforcement? Do the farmers have to self identify the downer cows? The article does not answer these questions, and they are crucial. As
March 16, 2004
"Bill Kerry" By Mike Rappaport Kerry seems more and more Clintonian to me. Consider this statement:
When giving in to terrorists is not giving in to terrorists By Tom Smith I knew Madrid was George Bush's fault, I just couldn't quite work out the logic. Now Tom Oliphant explains it all to us. Patrick Henry addresses Europe By Tom Smith As have countless sixth graders before him, my son Luke is memorizing Patrick Henry's famous speech. It strikes me that it provides the perfect sentiment with which to answer the Spanish and like-minded Europeans: They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? . . . Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. We have met the enemy, and they are French By Tom Smith If this were a Tom Clancy novel, it would be unbelievable. Is trying to intimidate the Free Chinese anything other than a cynical power play by the French? Or maybe the Chinese are in the market for some WMD parts. On the bright side, the French are to naval warfare, what the British are to food (and vice versa). The universe and God By Tom Smith Here's an interesting talk by a distinguished chemist about cosmology and creation. Rational Free Riding by the Spanish By Mike Rappaport In his column criticizing the Spanish, David Brooks writes:
Of course, this economic logic also explains why the United States should not allow other nations to control its foreign policy -- a point made by Eugene Volokh the other day. March 15, 2004
Its Democracy in Iraq, Stupid By Mike Rappaport Andrew Sullivan writes:
Krugman and the CEA By Tom Smith As an alum of the CEA (Senior Counsel and Economist, 1988-89), it makes me mad when people attack the CEA. (And I have a picture of a much hairier me with the Gipper to prove it.) Yes, we were a stable of economics who worked for the POTUS, but the CEA is structured to protect against the corruption of academic standards, as much as any group of academics in political office could be. I think it is really a wonderful institution, an economic think tank inside the White House, and one much less liable to capture by regulated industry. So now Paul Krugman is attacking the CEA, saying their job numbers are lies. Talk about the pot and the kettle. Marginal Revolution comes to the defense. San Diego county astronomy rules! By Tom Smith Not the biggest, but possibly the coolest observatory makes an important discovery. I wish it were true By Tom Smith Jacob Levy argues that Spanish election and change in foreign policy is not a victory for al Queada, but it reads to me like wishful thinking. But then, I spent the morning cleaning the garage while listening to NPR. They really need to get some training at not sounding delighted when America suffers a defeat abroad. You get the feeling that if 1000 died in Madrid instead of 200, they would be beside themselves with joy. What a defeat for Bush. Terrible, of course. But what a defeat for Bush! Liberal Bias By Mike Rappaport This post by Eugene Volokh about the NY Times and the Washington Post's omission of politically damaging statements by John Kerry from their reporting says it all. While the Times and the Post try to deep six these remarks, the internet and Fox News won't let it happen. Just think how much more effective liberal bias was before the new media. Bernard Lewis on Iraq By Mike Rappaport Bernard Lewis was interviewed about Iraq in the Jerusalem Post. Here is an excerpt: Can the US really take on countries directly responsible for terrorism? I don't think that there's a need anymore for other wars. If the opposition isn't blocked, Iran is poised for a democratic revolution. As for the other countries involved in funding terrorism, I can imagine the collapse of corrupt minority regimes in crisis, ones which persecute and impoverish their citizens. Do you have faith that, in spite of everything, democracy will prevail? Saddam Hussein, a Ba'athist-minority dictator, was nourished by Nazism first and then by communism, both European totalitarian ideologies. If anything, the risk of not succeeding in dismantling these fragile Middle Eastern dictatorships today lies more in the history of the rapport between the Muslim and the Western worlds than it does in Muslim roots. Islam, which has been weak for two centuries, has always sought backing to help it fight the enemy - Western democracy. First it supported the Axis against the Allies, then the communists against the US: two disasters. Today it is seeking the protection of Europe against the US, which it sees as its principal enemy. And Europe is facing a difficult debate between those who want to accept that role and those who don't. Please, I have no intention of comparing Europe to Nazi Germany or the USSR, I'm only talking about the position in which the Arab world is trying to put the old continent. How has America's war on terror affected the terrorists? The war, which has set the entire Middle East in motion, threatens terrorism, and so it contributes to the terrorists' activating their defenses. You see, Iraq today could become a democracy in the middle of the Middle East. In the papers we may only read about terrorist attacks, but in reality Iraq is bustling with all kinds of movement - new newspapers, new local forms of self-government, young people signing up to be in the police or the army. Things are incomparably better than they were under Saddam. And we can proceed with caution, without rushing to carry out elections that would require local electoral lists, laws and structures that still need to be defined. Survival of the fittest in the blogosphere By Tom Smith Brian Leiter has got them fuming at the National Review online. UPDATE: Here's Brian's response. Rubin on the Iraqi Constitution By Mike Rappaport An interesting column in the Jerusalem Post assessing the temporary Iraqi constitution by writer Barry Rubin. As usual, Rubin is both sensible and interesting. (Registration required.) March 14, 2004
Just Say No To Gerrymandering, Part II By Maimon Schwarzschild Interesting paper by Columbia law professor Sam Issacharoff on gerrymandered elections and the rise of "direct democracy". Issacharoff doesn't like "direct democracy" -- whether ballot initiatives or recalls of elected office-holders -- and he thinks the Framers didn't like it either. But he argues that gerrymandering has increasingly insulated Congress, in particular, from any electoral competition, and has contributed to the dramatic polarization of the political parties: Democrats to the political left, Republicans to the right. Voters, most of them centrists, are relegated to "direct democracy" if they want to have any influence at all on public policy. Hence, says Issacharoff, the stunning majority for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California recall election. Along similar lines, this RightCoaster has urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to support an initiative that would take Congressional districting in California out of the gerrymander-happy hands of the legislature, and perhaps to create a non-partisan redistricting commission along the lines of Iowa's. (It makes a dramatic difference in Iowa. There are 40 or fewer "competitive" House races in the entire country, out of 435 seats. Iowa, with one percent of the national electorate and one percent of the House seats, has ten percent of the competitive races...) The A-word By Tom Smith I know people are sick of abortion, and I don't blame them. It always leads to unpleasant arguments, at best. I understand that it is a religious or otherwise purely ethical view that it is wrong to kill a little ball of cells smaller than a grain of rice. But there is something deeply wrong with killing a full or nearly full-term baby in a horribly inhumane way just to salve our own less than fully formed consciences. I gather that is what "partial birth abortion" is. It would be much more humane to deliver the baby and then kill it with an injection of morphine or whatever, to "put it to sleep" as we do with old or injured animals, rather than cut it apart. At least part of the reason for doing it the hard way (for the baby) is presumably that it qualifies, for legal, not medical or moral reasons, as an abortion rather than a murder. Of course, I understand it is easier on the mother, presumably, to have the baby come out in crushed pieces rather than as a whole. But surely avoiding the suffering of the infant is worth something. Animal loving Americans would be outraged at the prospects of dogs and cats being cut into pieces in order to avoid even significant human pain and inconvenience, as they should be. We should take the suffering of animals seriously. Yet because it is a "choice," it is somehow OK to do anything to a baby, as long as it is partly enclosed by its mother's body. People who think it is morally acceptable to kill infants who could survive outside the womb, should at least be humane about it, and argue for humane infanticide, rather than abortion of full term infants. But of course they won't, because that would be politically unacceptable. We would do that much for our pets. The fact that the abortion rights crowd doesn't acknowledge the ethical interest in avoiding suffering by the baby or "fetus" shows just how depraved they have become. It gets even weirder when you realize that what abortion rights is largely about is lowering the costs (including the expected cost of various risk exposures) of sexual gratification. But if abortion is about making sexual pleasure more available, then the suffering of other humans, or nearly humans, further down the line, should be taken into account. But my impression is that many abortion proponents don't even rise to the undistinguished moral level of utilitarianism. We're fat because we're rich By Tom Smith Food is cheaper, so we eat more of it. We are more productive, so we work less, though we complain about it more. March 13, 2004
Reality Hits By Mike Rappaport Lileks provides this nugget:
Why I don't read contemporary "quality fiction" By Tom Smith Just what we need, a really funny attack on the family. Leiter on USD Law School recent hires By Tom Smith Brian has this informed review of our recent successes in hiring at USD law school. I, of course, agree that we are a school with a lot of momentum in the right direction. I mean the correct direction. Upward. You know what I mean. Brian's famous (and notorious) efforts to review and rank law schools and philosophy departments are a boon to schools that want to rise in quality rather than merely rest on laurels. It just goes to show you how important competition is in the marketplace. I am happy to be among Brian's favorite "right wing kooks." He in turn is my favorite Red. If things ever really get out of hand, Brian, you're welcome in my bunker. Brooks on Kerry By Mike Rappaport David Brooks devastates John Kerry by ridiculing him with his own words. Definitely worth reading. March 12, 2004
Leiter on the NY Times By Mike Rappaport While I don't agree with Brian on the war, I do share his disdain for the New York Times. Of course, Brian sees the Times as a support for capitalism, while I disdain it as the paper of limousine liberalism. But he is on the mark with this article on wine. When aviators and digital cameras mix By Tom Smith Can I have a jet please, mommy? Check out these pics from Afghanistan. Via Instapundit. Leiter on Berman By Mike Rappaport A while back I praised Paul Berman’s article in Dissent trying to explain why the Left opposed the Iraqi war. So it should not be surprising that Brian Leiter now criticizes that article. Do take a look at Berman’s piece, and while your at it, glance at Leiter’s criticism. Berman argues that the Left has opposed a war against fascism, which they should have supported, for various reasons, including the Left's hatred of Bush, the Left’s prejudice that America is the source of most problems in the world, the Left’s excessive sympathy for anticolonial movements, the belief of many of the Left that Arabs may not really want democracy, the Left’s excessive attention on Israel and the accompanying view that the main problems in the region are caused by Israel, and the Left’s failure to realize that the Arab world’s antisemitism is part of its facism. In the main, Brian’s critique is not really responsive. Berman is trying to explain why the Left has failed to see that the war is one against fascism. He is not trying to establish that it is a war against fascism. Presumably, to him, as to me, it is patently obvious that it is – Saddam Hussein was a fascist if anyone is, and the US is clearly attempting to install a democratic government. What one thinks the “real” motives for fighting the war were, or whether the attempt to establish democracy will be successful, are largely beside the point. Brian attempts to show that the reasons Berman gives for why the left does not recognize the war is a justified one against fascism are not the stated reasons for their opposition to the war. (At other times, Brian simply asserts that the Left does not believe certain things.) But the stated reasons are largely irrelevant. Berman’s point is that the Left is fooling itself – that the reasons he mentions, even if largely unarticulated or unconscious, are nonetheless what is doing the work. Very little Brian says responds to the point. Leiter on Berman By Mike Rappaport A while back I praised Paul Berman’s article in Dissent trying to explain why the Left opposed the war. So it should not be surprising that Brian Leiter now criticizes that article. Do take a look at Berman’s piece, and while your at it, glance at Leiter’s criticism. Berman argues that the Left has opposed a war against fascism, which they should have supported, for various reasons, including the Left acted based on hatred of Bush, the Left’s prejudice that America is the source of most problems in the world, the Left’s excessive sympathy for anticolonial movements, the belief of many of the Left that Arabs may not really want democracy, the Left’s excessive attention on Israel and the accompanying view that the main problems in the region are caused by Israel, and the Left’s failure to realize that the Arab world’s antisemitism is part of its facism. In the main, Brian’s critique is not really responsive. Berman is trying to explain why the Left has failed to see that the war is one against Fascism. He is not trying to establish that it is a war against fascism. Presumably, to him, as to me, it is patently obvious that it is – Saddam Hussein was a fascist if anyone is, and the US is clearly attempting to install a democratic government. What one thinks the “real” motives for fighting the war were, or whether the attempt to establish democracy will be successful, are largely beside the point. Brian attempts to show that the reasons Berman gives for why the left does not recognize fascism are not the stated reasons for their opposition. (At other times, Brian simply asserts that the Left does not believe certain things.) But the stated reasons are largely irrelevant. Berman’s point is that the Left is fooling itself – that the reasons he mentions, even if largely unarticulated or unconscious, are nonetheless what is doing the work. Very little Brian says responds to the point. Council Of Trent, Part II Simonino In Old Europe By Maimon Schwarzschild Life as a law professor is not all bad. (Is there a Nobel Prize for English understatement?) I was one of fifty-or-so lucky participants in a conference on international law and human rights ("Building a Culture of Peace") in Trento, Italy, at the end of February. Trento, of course, was the site of the Council of Trent, where the Roman Catholic reaction to the Reformation was crystallized in the mid-1500s. In addition to reaffirming quite a few Catholic dogmas, and casting many anathemas, the Council also adopted the version of the Mass known as the Tridentine Mass. "Tridentine" doesn't mean the Devil will poke you with a trident if you don't attend Mass: "Tridentum" is the just the Latin name for Trent. There is a pretty baroque fountain in the Duomo Square in Trento with Neptune and his trident, though, so perhaps I am not the first person to have thought of the "trident" connection. Trento today is a pastel town, surrounded by snow-covered Alps. The place looks almost as much Swiss or Austrian as Italian, and in fact it was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. Today the town is Italian-speaking, but the language boundary -- not the international boundary -- is just a few miles north of Trento. The next town to the north, Bolzano, is German-speaking, as is that entire region of northern Italy south of the Austrian border. (Trento is on the Adige River, or Etsch in German. Connoisseurs of national anthems will recall that Deutschland Ueber Alles mentions the Etsch as one of the boundaries of Germany: "Von der Etsch bis an den Belt..." All the other three boundaries the song mentions are also far beyond the actual boundaries of Germany, even the extended 1938 boundaries.) My "culture of peace" conference was hosted very generously by the Trento town government, and by the government of the Alto Adige province. There were quite a few Israelis and Arabs among the conferees, and the Italians clearly hoped that the conference would contribute to Arab-Israeli peace, which made the Italians' generosity all the more impressive and touching as far as I was concerned. (Given what the Palestinians and other Arabs actually had to say, it might be fair to assume that peace is not right around the corner. But that is another story.) For a Jewish traveller, though, Europe is full of painful history. On my first day in Trento, I noticed a nice-looking palazzo with an eighteenth century bas-relief and a Latin inscription that somehow made me stop and try to decipher the inscription. The bas-relief was of an infant apparently being strangled with a scarf, surrounded by hook-nosed characters wearing caftans. The inscription explained. This was the site of the synagogue in Trento. In 1475 the local Jews were accused of having murdered a Christian child in order to use its blood for a Passover ritual: the old blood libel. The Jews were convicted, of course. Many were burned alive. Others were murdered in a pogrom. The survivors were expelled, the synagogue torn down, the "victim" child canonized, and the family of the prosecuting attorney got the synagogue property and built the palazzo. The child's name was Simon, known by the diminutive "Simonino". There are "Simonino" frescoes and paintings in all the Trento churches: perhaps they provided extra inspiration during the long sessions of the Council of Trent. One of the town's main shopping streets is the Via del Simonino, now featuring United Colors of Benetton, and a Starbucks of course. What came to mind looking at the Simonino bas-relief, of course, was the famous front-page cartoon in La Stampa, one of Italy's two most important newspapers, two years ago at Easter time. The cartoon has the Christ child in the manger in Bethlehem staring terrified at an Israeli tank emblazoned with a Star of David; the Christ child says "Surely they don't want to kill me again?!" Trento is a lovely town. But Simonino -- and La Stampa -- are reminders of why Israelis might be reluctant to entrust their survival to the good offices of Old Europe. March 11, 2004
A Sick World By Mike Rappaport According to the New York Times, "South Korea's opposition-dominated Parliament on Friday passed an unprecedented bill to impeach President Roh Moo Hyun, accusing him of illegal campaigning and suspending his powers." So far so good, democracy, messy and all, at work. Now consider this: "Demonstrating the level of emotion gripping the country, a supporter of the South Korean president doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire late Thursday night to protest the impeachment effort." I suppose we can thankful that this person did not try to kill anyone else. Cowan on Blogs By Mike Rappaport Tyler Cowan has a great piece on blogs. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowan). Here is an excerpt:
The “blogosphere,” as it is known, is an efficient and remarkably speedy means of processing and evaluating information. Once a new idea or fact has been posted on a blog, it is digested, analyzed, and evaluated within a matter of hours. Errors of fact or reasoning do not go unpunished. Furthermore the writer has the chance (obligation?) to respond to commentary and criticism. In these regards blogs are more efficient than newspapers. And many blogs offer a “comments” section, where readers can see how other readers have responded to the posted material. In short, the blogosphere functions as a remarkably decentralized and powerful spontaneous order, to cite a concept from F. A. Hayek. No single person planned the evolution of blogs, but an entire intellectual architecture has arisen to serve millions. Norval Morris By Gail Heriot Norval Morris, the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law & Criminology Emeritus at the University of Chicago, was my criminal law teacher back in the late 1970s. He collapsed and died at a restaurant this week at the age of 80. I almost never agreed with him about anything, and evidently a significant number of the members of Congress felt as I did, since they forced President Carter to withdraw his nomination as head of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. (A quick and somewhat unfair summary of Morris' views: Putting criminals in prison is usually excessive and counter-productive.) But he was an interesting and entertaining figure as well as a talented teacher and storyteller. He will be missed. Evil children's books By Tom Smith This post of Brian's got me thinking about the swill we often expose our children to in "children's books." For reasons I can't reconstruct, I was reading an awful screed called "The Rainbow Fish" to my children. The rainbow fish has pretty scales and so all the other little fishies resent him and won't play with him. So what to do? In the book (supposedly "a classic") Rainbow fish gives away his scales so all the fishies each have one pretty scale (which of course looks really stupid). The moral? If you're lucky enough to have something like pretty scales, other people will resent you until you make yourself as ugly as they are. True enough, but hardly edifying. So I changed the story for my kids. All the other fishies admired the scales and wanted them. But were they worth more to them, really, than they were to Rainbow fish? How do we figure this out? We let the other fishies bid for the scales of course! So little Rainbow Fish held an auction, and sold off some of his scales to other fishies who actually did value them more than Rainbow Fish did. And it was Pareto Superior. "What does that mean, dad?" It means some of the fishies were better off, and none were worse off! Of course, some of the fishies didn't want to buy any scales; they just wanted to complain that Rainbow Fish had nicer scales than anybody else. But they were no fun to be around, anyway, so Rainbow Fish just ditched them, and discovered he had more fun anyway. The end. The kids loved it. The Corps By Tom Smith This is San Diego, so I've known quite a few Marines over the years. Some random impressions. My dad, who missed all of WWII except for the Battle of Okinawa, had mixed feeling about Marines. He thought they cut through Japanese (they didn't use that term) so fast that they left too many behind who still had to be fought. Yet my father's outfit, the 77th Infantry Division, US Army, gladly accepted the ulitmate compliment paid to them by the Marines, who called them "the 77th Marines." In combat situations in which other fighting organizations would use armor or artillery, the Marines often seem to wade in, preferring rifles and bayonettes and pappy's bowie knife pulled from a boot. They did this on the outskirts of Baghdad, to which they got with impressive speed. Marines seem to enjoy their work. Their training seems to emphasize the blunt fact that war is about fighting and killing people. It's good to know that. People don't realize how small the Marine Corp is compared to the Army, Navy or Air Force. I agree with general Smith (no relation except of admiration), I think it's useful to keep them around, just to scare our enemies. I want the response to "the Marines have landed" to be however you say "Oh Shit" in Arabic. Yes, he was the greatest By Tom Smith Yes, Yeats was the greatest poet in English since Shakespeare. I can think of anyone better, anyway. Of course, it helps that everything went seriously downhill after his time, in terms of the arts. I suppose the motive of post-modernists might be, "if we can't produce art (and we can't), then nobody else will be able to either, ever again! And we'll make sure everyone is (mis)educated, so they can't appreciate the art of the past, either. There, my revenge is complete!" Some other day, I'll tell you about my pilgrimage to Sligo. Forget about Christians. Anybody who cares about beauty should be homeschooling. Regulate before it's too late By Tom Smith Science has its fads, memes and bubbles too. (via arcturus.) Although I am not an expert on global warming, I seem to be the only person who isn't. While people who seem to know what they are talking about think the planet might be getting warmer, I doubt very much we have any idea how much human activity has to do with that. As to climate models, oh please. I have seen economists from the Fed model the macro-economy, and it makes sausage making look pretty. Somehow I doubt the world climate over centuries is any easier. And how much grant money is the science guy who produces a model suggesting we just can't know, going to get? The moral is, we had better hurry up and establish some kind of ridiculously inefficient and corrupt international system to tell every country how much economic growth they can have, before we realize the science wasn't very good after all. We did that with financial markets in the 1930's and we're happy with that, aren't we? March 10, 2004
Exorcist bunnies By Tom Smith If you have seen the Exorcist too many times, you might find this funny. I did, but what does that prove? EV on gay marriage By Tom Smith Eugene makes a very good point against professor Brylmeyer's argument in the WSJ that federal marriage amendments supporters needn't be worried that full faith and credit will require all states to recognize out of state gay marriages. Full faith and credit has never been applied to marriages that violate local public policy, says Lea. But Eugene makes the very good point that this is reassuring only in a world where judges are bound by precedent. If the US Supreme Court can overrule Hardwick in the recent Lawrence decision, why not go against a couple centuries of precedent and tradition in reading the full faith and credit clause? It certainly doesn't sound as controversial as saying homosexuality is protected by privacy rights. To this I would add one modest point. If it is true that the amendment is not necessary, then an amendment that only said full faith and credit would not apply to state marriage laws, would not do any harm either. But of course, we know that most opponents of the amendment oppose it in part because they fear it would foreclose exactly the possibility that they hope for--that the Supreme Court, perhaps with some new members, would declare that all states had to recognize gay marriages made in Massachusetts or, coming soon perhaps, California. Yet still even more on the Passion By Tom Smith Generally speaking, I think James Carroll has made a career out of misrepresenting himself as a Catholic to non-Catholic and lapsed Catholic audiences. You're right; I don't like him. But this piece of his on The Passion is interesting, especially in how it ties into Gibson's appetite for violence in his movies. But on the other hand, critics such as Carroll are not really confronting the uncomfortable and even embarrassing fact that at the core of Christian doctrine is the idea that the suffering of Jesus was extraordinary and was redemptive. Carroll's claim that in the Catholic tradition the suffering of Jesus is meant to heard about and read about only is a ridiculous falsehood. Hasn't this guy ever heard of the stations of the cross? Didn't he go to Catholic school? Hasn't he ever seen a bleeding Jesus on a crucifix in his many tours of Europe? As a rule of thumb, whenever Carroll says anything about Catholicism, you can assume roughly the opposite is true. Also, it starts to get hypocritical when those on the left strive to outdo each other in how much opprobrium they can pour on Gibson. It turns out, how could I ever guess, that somehow President Bush is responsible for the excesses of the movie, which are connected to our excesses in Iraq and Afghanistan, and blah blah blah. It is boring to listen to people just seething with hatred for America, and who by and large hate Israel too, and don't seem to get too upset if a few Jews get beaten up in France, either, blather on about how hateful we are all are because the movie is popular. As I have said here, I don't blame Jews for finding the movie offensive. If I were Jewish, I would find it offensive. I'm not Jewish, and I find its depiction of Jews problematic at best and at times downright offensive. I also think there are some beautiful moments in the movie. But I also think the violence is obscene, and wonder whether it serves any legitimate artistic or religious purpose. That being said, no children were blown up in making the movie. No Jews were murdered because they were Jews. No one connected with the movie that I know of is working secretly, ruthlessly and without mercy for the destruction of the Jewish state. Nobody connected with the movie is apologizing for terrorists who would leap for joy if every American were flayed alive as Jesus was, their being the sick bastards that they are. No one connected with the movie is finding every excuse they can for attacking Bush's attempts to keep the country safe from threats that would be even more frightening than they are if we knew all about them. On the other hand, support by the left for Israel had been, let us say, not as hearty as its willingness to pour scorn on Gibson. So when the American left goes off on the movie, you have to wonder, oh, please, when did you start caring about the Jews? More on blondes and marriage By Tom Smith Marriage is getting to be as rare in Sweden as warm, sunny weather. Via realclearpolitics.com What me worry? By Tom Smith Kristof, generally boring NYT columnist, has a point about dangers of a nuclear 9/11. Love and Other Catastrophes By Mike Rappaport I want to recommend this independent film about a day in the life of several Australian college students. It is funny and captures something about (what I remember) college to be like. March 09, 2004
Funny By Tom Smith I like to think I have a good sense of humor. This person, "The Rat," is funnier, however. (via eve tushnet. Surf over to the rat for more strange but funny stuff. But very strange.) Hubble space telescope By Tom Smith Big government spends a lot of money on big science and I bet of lot of it is wasted. But every once in a while, if only by virtue of the law of large numbers, they construct a magnificent instrument that actually changes our view of the universe. Then it decides, what, this is working too well? Not as politically sexy as sending hunky astro boys and girls to Mars? Sending teachers into low earth orbit? I hope they keep the Hubble working. Gay marrigage By Tom Smith The New York Times published this morning, presumably by accident, one of the most intelligent short pieces on the gay marriage issue I've seen yet. 9/11 Ad baloney By Tom Smith You probably saw this on instapundit already, but it bears repeating. Maybe I'm weird, but it just doesn't seem normal that if you lost a family member in 9/11, your reaction would be "let's make sure the Taliban don't get thrown out of power!" Sympathy for isalmo-fascists who make women wear parachutes seems odd to me in the best of times, but after they shelter the terrorists who killed a member of your family? ATTENTION all fat middle aged guys! By Tom Smith This study is a big deal. Just because the New York Times says it is a big deal, doesn't mean it's not. The secret is now out. Cardiologists have been quaffing statins like bikers at a beer bust, and now we know why. Those of us in the not that slim but still want to live forever class who follow this sort of thing, have been expecting this study for a while. And the results are impressive. I am not a doctor, but I am married to one. Granted, she thinks my health theories are nuts, but with that disclaimer, here's what I plan to do: first, double my dose of Lipitor from 20 to 40 miligrams (and I'm barely elevated -- you should probably be on the maximum dose of 80) (but keep an eye on those liver enzymes--if you are in the 3 percent or whatever who can't do this, you will die a slow horrible death. Better yet, stop reading now); second, be absolutely sure to have at least one drink a day, preferably red wine, but scotch will do in a pinch. Beer, you should be aware, makes you fat. I still drink it, but not for health reasons. Third, resist what I call the statin moral hazard problem. You know, you look at a big, well marbled piece of meat and think to yourself, "Oh, f#$% it, I'm on Lipitor" and proceed to eat it. This is like driving fast because you have an airbag. Normal, but stupid. Third, or forth (I forget), exercise more. Forth (or fifth). Eat less. Finally, where did I put my gingko biloba? And finally, baby aspirin, if you can find where you left it. Iraqi Constitution Signed By Mike Rappaport Fortunately, the 5 Shiite holdouts have changed their position and approved the temporary Iraqi Constitution. It thus received the votes of all 25 members of the governing council. Apparently, Ayatolla Sistani decided that it made more sense to agree to the Constitution and to attempt to work out differences at a later point. This is enormously important, not just because it allowed for the establishment of the temporary Constitution. It also shows that the Shiites can compromise and decide to forego lesser goals in order to achieve larger ones. While this might seem weak praise, it is not. In a region without free politics, these habits of political behavior must be learned. After more than 50 years of negotiating, the Palestinians have never done so. While I am discussing the temporary Iraqi Constitution, I should clarify something I previously wrote. The temporary Iraqi Constitution requires that the permanent Constitution be enacted through a general referendum and provides that “The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.” In an earlier post, I described this as requiring a supermajority rule for the establishment of the permanent Constitution. While the rule is a supermajority rule in the broad sense of not making majority support sufficient to pass the Constitution, it differs from ordinary supermajority rules that require, say, 2/3 of voters to enact a measure. This rule is less constraining than an ordinary supermajority rule, because it allows a majority to enact the constitution subject only to the constraint that the constitution is not strongly rejected by three provinces. While an ordinary supermajority rule would have been stricter and therefore potentially better, it also would have made it more difficult to negotiate an agreement. Despite Iraq’s achievement in securing unanimous agreement for this temporary Constitution, perhaps it would simply be too difficult for that nation, which has not had democratic institutions, to ratify a constitution under a supermajority rule. While Americans did it in 1787, they were not plagued by terrorists from other nations and had been engaged in democratic politics and constitution-drafting for many years prior to the ratification contest. March 08, 2004
Word is out; it's time for us to shut up! By Tom Smith Let me be the first to say that when I joined the chorus of people complaining about discrimination against conservatives in academia, I had no idea that it would go on so long that Kevin Drum would get tired of it. (Via instapundit. And a post well worth reading.) But I am sure he can understand that it's very easy for this to happen. You're getting stepped on (just a metaphor! I don't mean to say that getting discriminated against in employment is anything nearly as bad as actually getting stepped on!), you complain, and next thing you know you have annoyed the person stepping on you. What is there to do except say, so very sorry, maybe I could polish your boots while I'm down here? And please feel free to use my head as a place to put your drink. Herr Doktor Professor Drum suggests we "give some serious thought" as to why there aren't more conservatives in the academy. And do I have to go to my room and do it too, or is it OK if I stay downstairs and watch television during my time out? But let me guess. There are so few conservatives in the academy because: conservatives are stupid compared to liberals, conservatives are evil compared to liberals, liberals need those jobs to save the world and finally, please shut up, you are starting to annoy me. That wasn't too hard! Have I missed anything? It's easy to think like a self-satisfied liberal academic. All you have to do is decide what position is most in your own interests, puff yourself up with self-righteousness, posture as much more thoughtful and deeply informed than your rivals, put aside any remnants you may have of a temptation to consider both sides of an argument, and then gravely inform everyone that soon, very soon, you are going to stop listening to them as you have had just about enough. Yet there is a serious question here. What explains the astonishing stupidity of the "arguments" that liberal academics make to justify the facially deplorable fact that academic fields that have a lot to do with politics, such as history, economics, political philosophy, political science and law, tend to be dominated by persons to the left of the political spectrum of the country as a whole? Let me offer a hypothesis. My explanation is that liberal academics are so used to talking only among themselves, so used to simply eliminating opposition in hiring committee decisions rather than in anything like open debates, so used to confusing pomposity with responsiveness, that they have forgotten how to make a convincing argument. They are like a bunch of confused, old aristocrats burbling on about why they should be only ones allowed to wear swords or whatever. There are lots of things in this world that require "serious thought." The self-serving cant of liberal professors justifying discrimination against conservatives is not one of them. Interesting blog from Gordon Smith By Tom Smith I've long admired Gordon Smith's scholarship in my area, corporate law. Now he has a blog full of interesting stuff. His judgments on Martha Stewart are right on, as are Steve Bainbridge's. The whole thing with Martha is distressing, because her violation was at most hyper-technical, and she never, ever would have been prosecuted if she weren't, to use Tom Wolfe's phrase, "the great white defendant." This case was about prosecutorial self-promotion. Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Milken all over again. March 07, 2004
Supermajority Rules in Iraq By Mike Rappaport Last week, five shiite council members refused to sign a temporary constitution for Iraq. They did so because of a provision that would have required a supermajority of the nation’s provinces to ratify the permanent Constitution. As the New York Times stated,
According to language agreed on this week, the permanent constitution would be written by a popularly elected national assembly and put to voters in a nationwide referendum. If a majority of Iraqis approved the document, then it would be permanent. But there is an additional provision that if two-thirds of the voters in 3 of the nation's 18 governorates, or provinces, reject it, the constitution will fail. The language was inserted in large part to reassure the Kurds, who are fearful of losing control of their affairs to the Shiite majority. Most importantly, a supermajority rule is needed to secure widespread consent and support for the constitution. If a simple majority could ratify it, a majority could impose a constitution on a large minority that harmed its interests. A large minority might then oppose the constitution and be alienated from the nation. Due to the difficulty in securing adequate support for the proposed Constitution in 1787, the nationalists at the Convention were forced to compromise with the advocates of states’ rights, and to produce a document which employed federalism and imposed real limits on the powers of the federal government. Even more significantly, during the contest over ratification, the Federalists were often faced with states that might reject the Constitution and with the possibility that the requisite nine states would not ratify. Consequently, the Federalists were led to promise to adopt a Bill of Rights in order to secure the support of the Framers. Thus, the supermajoritarian process for ratification may have been responsible for two of the most innovative features of the Constitution—federalism and the Bill of Rights. We can only hope that the Iraqi Constitution will also require a supermajority for ratification and that the supermajority rule will produce similar beneficial institutions. Grecian Formula By Maimon Schwarzschild Greek conservatives have won a thumping victory in Sunday's elections -- displacing the left-wing parties that have governed Greece for the past two decades. The Greek left is even more viscerally anti-American than most of the Euro-left: harking back to the strong Stalinist affinities of the left during the Greek civil war after World War II. So this weekend's election results could be helpful, at least in a small way, to the US diplomatic position in Europe. Legal help needed By Tom Smith The other day I asked some of my colleagues whether there was any reason that no court had been willing to enjoin San Francisco mayor what's-his-name from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. I was assured that there was good reason to think that the statute forbidding gay marriage actually violated the state constitution and so on and so forth, and so it was not surprising that no court would issue an injunction to the effect of, please stop doing this patently illegal thing. I was pretty skeptical at the time, but didn't really feel like arguing about it, or even talking about it. Now comes this column by my former colleague and brother of my friend Ahkil Amar, to wit, Vik Amar, who I know knows a lot about California law, and is no conservative. In fact, I would call him a Bay area Democrat, but not, I suppose, really on the left. A moderate. He seems to think there is no serious case at all that the marriage licenses are not illegal. So what is a poor corporations scholar to think? Here's an excerpt: California Statutes Clearly Do Prohibit Same-Sex Marriage To begin with, it is quite clear that California statutes currently prohibit same-sex marriage. One provision of the Family Law Code says that "marriage" is a "personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman." Another provision states that those capable of providing consent to marriage are an "unmarried male of the age of 18 years or older, and an unmarried female of the age of 18 years or older." Finally, and perhaps most importantly, section 308.5 of the Family Law Code -- , which was enacted by the voters themselves as an initiative (Proposition 22) in the 2000 election -- , says that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The Constitutional Provision that Requires Enforcement Until a Court Says Otherwise Thus, the only imaginable defense for Mayor Newsom's actions is his belief that these statutes violate the California Constitution. And that, indeed, has been his defense - that the oath he swore to uphold the California Constitution when he took office permits (indeed, perhaps compels) him to disregard state statutes that conflict with the highest of California's laws. The problem for Mayor Newsom is a specific provision of the California Constitution. Article III, section 3.5 of the California Constitution says that an "administrative agency has no power to refuse to enforce a statute, on the basis of its being unconstitutional unless an appellate court has made a determination that such statute is unconstitutional." In other words, the California Constitution itself says that when an agency thinks that a statute violates the Constitution, the agency should continue to obey the statute until appellate courts have resolved the matter. Section 3.5 thus sets up an orderly process to prevent each agency from going its own way and disregarding the will of the legislature in the name of constitutional conscience. Section 3.5 is the provision the Attorney General relied on heavily in making his request for an immediate cease-and-desist order, and to my mind, his argument is quite forceful. While I will of course be interested in seeing what Mayor Newsom's legal team says in the response it files today, my sense is that under Section 3.5, even if the Mayor is right in thinking that state statutes violate the Constitution, he was acting illegally in disregarding state statutes until the invalidity of those statutes had been made clear by the appellate courts. Harry Potter book to be translated into ancient Greek By Tom Smith Sing, muse, of the book about the magic boy Which will be out soon like the sun rising over the wine-dark sea and brave Harry dead, or not In any event, it's supposed to encourage young Brits and others to learn the language of philosophers, poets and so on. Middle class economic anxiety By Tom Smith I think Mort Zuckerman is right on in this essay (via realclearpolitics.com). What would help two-income middle class workers (in particular lower middle class workers--those struggling to stay in the middle class) is deep tax cuts for everyone with joint incomes below $200 or $150K, policies to improve public schools, and privatizing social security. But of course, politicians of both parties get very nervous when letting people keep the money they've earned means they will have less to play with. Then they revert to type. Democrats define two teachers or an insurance salesman and a grocery clerk with three kids, living in a house with one bathroom and 2 five-year old cars, as "rich." Republicans explain that some some tax break tailored for helium refiners in North Texas will put people to work and promote growth, when it just some lobbyists' scam. Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Passion movie By Tom Smith I think she is right, as usual. However, that doesn't change the fact that many of the critics of the movie just hate Christianity. Should I start taking folic acid? By Tom Smith I think we've got folic acid pills floating around the house. Should I start taking it? I find these public health interventions in the macro food supply chain interesting. Now I'm confused By Tom Smith It's so hard to keep up with the news when you read the New York Times. I read it yesterday, and the front page was all about, oh, what a disaster it was that the Shiites weren't going to sign the new constitution. An enormous setback for the administration. A disaster. An embarassment. And so and so on. But now, it looks like the constitution will be signed after all. UPDATE: But the NYT is not ready to give up the hope that we will fail. So I guess this gives the Times and Al Queda something in common. Both are pulling for a failure in this peace process. But John Burns is still worth reading. Sweden eden By Tom Smith This interesting article from googling "Sweden sex." And yes, I was looking for this sort of thing--I didn't google "Swedish blondes," which gets what you would expect. I gather that to get babies in Sweden, you have to import them. Why not make them at home? Perhaps because Sweden enforces child support laws against men, and so men don't want to help make them. Some delicate discussion of the apparent tendency of these imported kids to commit suicide at a disproportionately high rate. And Swedes already off themselves at an alarmingly high rate, and drink a lot too. Some of that must be the miserable climate. And maybe some Swen the Horrible, he of the large sword and self-destructive tendencies, got into the gene pool a few centuries ago and hasn't been diluted out yet, since it's not that diverse a country. Who knows. I wonder whether it's gay marriage and the like that underminies traditional family structures in the great North Whiteland, or just socialism? Maybe gay marriage would be just fine, if the government didn't subsidize it or problems it might create. I tend to think the reason traditional nuclear families have prospered is that they make more economic sense than the alternatives. But if you subsidize various not-very-independently-viable family forms, you will get more of them. So then the question becomes, not whether gay marriage should be allowed in some robust libertarian society, where the answer may well be yes, but what it effect it would have in this one where social pathologies have a way drawing down government support. So if we end up with even more single moms with kids, the product of temporary lesbian marriages, then there will be even more pressure for state provided child care, which will in turn reduce the incentives to form an economically viable family in the first place. In my nightmares, the state says, well, we're paying for them, so we should get to determine their design features. But nothing like that could ever happen, I suppose, since we don't intend it to. Hard to believe By Tom Smith Justice Kennedy getting cold feet? I don't believe it! That warrior, that hero, that man among men, that flinty individualist waffling at the last minute?! How could it be?! The Burden of the Ring By Mike Rappaport Speaking of Justice Blackman, is it me, or has anyone else noticed that he looks a lot like Gollum? That would also explain Blackman's degeneration over the course of his appointment. March 06, 2004
FAQ for persons about to delve into the Blackmun Tapes By Tom Smith Q: Is there really such a thing as "permanent boredom injury"? A: The existence of PBI is still controversial among neurologists and psychiatrists. Toll booth operators, security guards in quiet neighborhoods, and of course, some lawyers have experienced symptoms of what some experts refer to as PBI. Inability to concentrate, sobbing, hysterical laughter and various kinds of substance abuse are all possible symptoms. Others regard PBI as merely a special case of post traumatic stress syndrome. Q: Is there any relationship between PBI and Justice Blackmun? A: Whether coincidentally or not, reported incidence of PBI is much higher than expected among groups that have been exposed to a Blackmun speech, especially one in which the topic of Roe v. Wade comes up, which includes every known speech given by the late justice after his emergence from obscurity after the famous decision permitting the non-killing killing of non-person persons. Q: Is there any hard evidence that listening to Blackmun causes PBI? A: No. However, this answer should be qualified by noting that some promising cases (in the research sense) were unable to respond to queries because they had been institutionalized. And of course, there is the well-known and sad case of the suicide mid-way through a speech by Justice Blackmun. Q: Is there anything I can do to take precautions against PBI if I am determined to listen to the Blackmun Tapes? A: Yes. First, you should consider your own risk factors to determine what level of precautions is advisable. Persons from the mid-West, especially Minnesota, persons who think Justice Blackmun was a hero, and persons who can honestly say "I enjoyed that summary of the consolidated return regulations of the Internal Revenue Code" may get by with lower levels of precaution. However, persons who know that they often say (or think to themselves) phrases such as "rubbish," "self-serving cant," "what an idiot" or cognate phrases, are particularly at risk. Second, if you are a high risk person, you should consider exposure only after appropriate pre-medication. A dose of Valium or similar benzodiazapine, sufficient so you could say on a commercial flight "we're going to crash and I don't care" is a reasonable rule of thumb. By combining this with a caffeine dose equivalent to about 5 shots of espresso, PBI is likely to be avoided. Third, however, and this must be borne in mind, there are no guarantees. Q: Do you believe persons about to have to listen to a Blackmun speech, or to the Blackmun tapes, should have the right to commit suicide? A: This question is much debated within the "right-to-life", anti-so-called-"abortion"-(but only of non-person persons) community. Some believe that self-euthanasia is morally justified given the grave threat of PBI and similar injuries. Other, especially religious, pro- so-called "life" activists see this view as inconsistent with valuing life, even when it has been reduced to a pathetic, slavering shell of its former self, that can only mumble "how can that man . . . he couldn't think his way out of a . . . why do we bother having a constitution if . . . " Ultimately, this is decision that can only be made for us by second rate minds who stumbled into history by weird quirks of fate. Please violate my human rights again By Tom Smith Life in American prison was great, says former resident of Club Med/Guantanamo Bay. Maybe we should contract this out to the Cubans. I bet they know how to run a prision. (via memeorandum.com). More on "Gimli" By Mike Rappaport A good piece on John Rhys-Davies, the actor who plays Gimli the Dwarf in Lord of the Rings. I have posted on his political views before. Rhys-Davies has sound views and is quite courageous. Here is how he first started to question his leftist views: "Rhys-Davies used to be a radical leftist, as a university student in the '60s. He first started to come around when he went to the local hall to hear a young local member of parliament by the name of Margaret Thatcher. "I went to heckle her," Rhys-Davies says. "She shot down the first two hecklers in such brilliant fashion that I decided I ought for once to shut up and listen." The Missing; weird drugs By Tom Smith Jeanne and I watched The Missing last night, which was a treat from me as I usually have to watch Westerns alone. (But a man is alone in the world, except for his horse, of course.) As many reviewers have noted, the movie is a bit of a disappointment, given the originality and richness of the themes it explored. As you probably know, Kate Blanchette (spelling is a guess) is a rugged yet very full lipped healer woman making her own rugged way in the world, healing the occasional Injun and having non-too-hygienic looking sex with her hired man. Tommy Lee Jones, her estranged, gone-Native American, daddy appears. Jones looks the part very well. Too bad he's not a more versatile actor. I liked the story. Maggy's (that's Kate's) daughter is kidnapped by a convincingly evil gang of white slavers (no doubt an a term we're not supposed to use any more) led by a superbly nasty and evil Brouhah (sp?), an Apache medicine man, whose wicked spells nearly kill Maggy. The chase and counter-chase are all pretty standard Western stuff, and reasonably well done. I thought the medicine man's frequent use of home-brewed or ground poisons and drugs was an interesting twist-- I can't think of another Western in which American Indian botanicals are so featured -- but more could have been made of it. A western has to pretty bad before I won't enjoy it, and I enjoyed this one--I would give it a solid "B". The best human performance was put in by the Apache witch doctor. (The best overall performance by the spectacular New Mexican scenery). In one horrifying scene, the villian glowers at Maggy's daughter, who has tried to escape. "You won't hit me," she says, "because then you'll get fewer pesos for me, and you know it." The brouhah scoops up a handful of sandy dirt, forces it into her mouth, and as she gags, says to her "that is what the rest of your life will taste like." The use of drugs and potions in the movie reminded me of something I have been thinking about lately a little, given the troubles in Haiti, which with voodoo (or Voodun) is a kind of capitol of bad medicine. Wade Davis's fascinating book, The Serpent and the Rainbow (nothing like the ridiculous movie) is a anthropological adventure story of the yummiest sort. Yes, they really do turn unfortunate people into zombies in Haiti, and at the risk of making one of those awful, value laden, ethnocentric judgments, it seems to be a thoroughly evil practice. But then pharmaceutically lobotomizing someone, burying them alive, digging them up and then enslaving them is not something I do in my culture, so perhaps I do not fully understand its contextual hermeneutics. An even better book is Davis's One River. If you have ever wanted to explore the rain forests of South and Central America and discover where all the various botanical intoxicants, hallucinogens and healing drugs come from, this is the book for you. It would be perfect for a rainy day inside a tent or next to a warm fire. Last summer in Peru, I drank a little bit of a truly disgusting potion made out of tapioca root that had been chewed by Indian women and then spat out into pot and fermented for a while. This was part of a ceremony that was put on for the eco-tourists at the lodge we were staying it. The ceremony involved lots of drums, young scantily clad male and female dancers and a large snake. I was the only tourist to drink any of the home brew, probably because I was the most adventurous, or alternatively, the most drunk, having already had some indeterminate number of gin and tonics, which I do recommend in the jungle. If I ever get another opportunity to drink this spit spirit, or whatever you call it, I think I will pass it up. It tasted horribly like what it was, and I can confidently say that the oral hygiene among Peruvian rainforest Indians could stand some improvement. The idea that people drink enough of this stuff to get drunk is truly appalling. The other native remedy I tried was chewing cocoa leaf for altitude sickness. This is the leaf out of which cocaine is made, but the refined product is much, much more potent. Chewing the leaf is like sipping a strong cup of coffee continuously. It does suppress appetite and make it easier to carry loads uphill at altitude, too easy in fact. I stopped using it because I felt it made me exhaust myself, since I think it makes you less aware of how hard you are working. But it sure takes the edge off hiking up a steep trail with 50 lbs. on your pack at an hour when God wants you back in your warm sleeping bag. On the down side, it makes you produce copious quantities of bright green spit and is quite bitter. You need to make sure you don't inadvertently pack any back to the States, as they are notoriously humorless about the stuff at the border. Folks down there also make tea out of it. Women at Harvard By Mike Rappaport It is not all that often that I can enjoy Brian Leiter's biting wit. Take a look. March 05, 2004
Good poll analysis By Tom Smith Good analysis of polling data by Barone, via realclearpolitics.com. As I said to anyone who would listen in 2000, it is going to be a close election. In 2000 (I know it's easy to say) I said I was worried that the election was so close, that election fraud could make a difference. I was right, as is so often the case. I am not ready to make a prediction yet, except to say that as of now, it looks close to me. Of course, this could change for any number of reasons, including a successful campaign by W to brand Kerry as the Mass. liberal he actually is. But Kerry and old media both will be working hard to re-brand him as some sort of centrist. You can't make up the LA Times By Tom Smith A good reason not to be PC is how stupid you often have to appear. It's too hard to explain this story about the LA Times. Just read. Via opinionjournal.com. What Martha should have done By Tom Smith If I were Martha, I would have bought a ton of put options on Martha Stewart Omnimedia before the jury came back. I feel sorry for her. She would never have been a target but for her fame and wealth, and they got her for covering up something that turns out not to have been a prosecutable crime anyway. SUV haters -- read at your own risk By Tom Smith You may have missed this little gem in today's NYT. There's a lot going on here. FAQ for middle aged guys By Tom Smith Q: Was she hitting on me or just being friendly? A: Just being friendly. Q: Lately I have noticed in combing my hair, lots is coming out. I have gone from having a receding hairline to being actually bald. Is there anything I can do to restore that youthful, vigorous look that comes from having a full head of hair? A: No. To be continued . . . Direct Democracy Protects Supermajority Rule By Mike Rappaport California’s election this week involved some significant issues regarding the budget. Californians had to decide on Propositions 56, 57, and 58. Happily, a majority of voters agreed with me in each case. You gotta love direct democracy. Proposition 57 and 58, which were supported by Government Schwarzenegger (don’t you just like the way that sounds!), authorized significant borrowing to finance Gray Davis’s economic catastrophe and substantially tightened the constitutional requirement of a balanced budget. Although I was not enthusiastic about the borrowing, I voted for both propositions. Borrowing seemed better than taxing at this point, especially if the new balanced budget rule has some bite to constrain further borrowing. More important in my opinion, though, was the voters’ big rejection of Proposition 56. Gail beat to me to the punch on this one, but let me add my two cents anyway. Under the California Constitution, budget and tax bills must pass with a two-thirds supermajority of both houses. In my view, this supermajority rule is important as a check on excessive and imprudent spending. By requiring additional votes to pass spending measures, it should filter out, on average, lower quality spending. Supermajority rules do have costs. One problem, especially with a supermajority rule that applies to spending laws, is that they can cause delays in the passage of budgets and leave the government with funds to spend on programs that citizens rely upon. But there is a way to address this problem. One solution that I have proposed in my work with John McGinnis is to use a 90 percent rule. Such a rule would allow a majority of both houses to pass spending that is no more than 90 percent of the previous year’s amount. This would allow a majority to pass stop-gap spending to prevent a government shut down while the larger budget is being negotiated. It would also enhance the leverage of those who want to spend less. Under an ordinary supermajority rule, big spenders have the same leverage in negotiating a budget agreement as smaller spenders. Under the 90 percent rule, however, the small spenders would have more leverage, since they would be more willing to live with spending of only 90 percent of the previous year’s amount. Small spenders could simply refuse to compromise, knowing that the stop gap spending that had been passed, was more to their tastes than to those of the big spenders. Despite the lack of a 90 percent rule, the existing supermajority rule is still far superior to majority rule in the area of spending. And therefore I was overjoyed that the California Voters overwhelmingly refused to weaken the supermajority rule. Russians Violate UN Sanctions By Mike Rappaport According to the New York Times, Russian firms provided assistance to Iraq in building missles that violated UN requirements. I just can't believe it. What am I supposed to believe next? That the French did much the same. The world is just so unpredictable! March 04, 2004
For SoCal readers only By Tom Smith I guess it was a nice day in Tennessee so Glen Reynolds decided to blog about it. We've have had a lot of rain recently but yesterday was nice. So was today. Tomorrow looks pretty good too. In general, March is lovely here. April is really nice. May is beautiful, in a warm, sunny sort of way. June is pretty warm. You have to wear shorts and a T-shirt. If you can stand high 70's and breezy it's good though. Oh, right. "June gloom" It's cloudy on the coast in the mornings. But then there's July. Watch out for July. It's warm and sunny. September is really hot here. Good thing we have that pool. Oh, well. You get the idea. It may be boring, but it's the kind of bored I like to be. If I never have to suffer through another summer in DC it will be too soon. I'm a San Diego weather snob. But we have firestorms and earthquakes, so I guess it evens out. One more thing to worry about By Tom Smith The odds that we'll all die from an asteroid strike are better (worse) than you think. Certainly much greater than winning the California lottery, and much less fun. Via VC. I like to stand under the stars and drink scotch while my computerized telescope finds obscure objects for me. I'm probably not going see anything before it hits us. Here's a picture of my telescope. I'll let you know if I see any big rocks coming our way. I've often wondered what I would do if I saw something big land in the Pacific to my west, and a giant wave coming my way. I think it's another reason I need an SUV. Lateness By Mike Rappaport Why do the people in some societies display habitual lateness? Does it have something to do with the culture or is it just that everyone knows everyone else will be late and therefore there is no point to being on time? Marginal revolution discusses the issue. Gay marriage in Scandanavia By Tom Smith This article suggests gay marriage doesn't promote marriage, at least in Scandinavia. Here's an excerpt from the conclusion, but the whole thing bears reading: Developments in the last half-century have surely weakened the links between American marriage and parenthood. Yet to a remarkable degree, Americans still take it for granted that parents should marry. Scandinavia shocks us. Still, who can deny that gay marriage will accustom us to a more Scandinavian-style separation of marriage and parenthood? And with our underclass, the social pathologies this produces in America are bound to be more severe than they already are in wealthy and socially homogeneous Scandinavia. All of these considerations suggest that the gay marriage debate in America is too important to duck. Kiernan maintains that as societies progressively detach marriage from parenthood, stage reversal is impossible. That makes sense. The association between marriage and parenthood is partly a mystique. Disenchanted mystiques cannot be restored on demand. What about a patchwork in which some American states have gay marriage while others do not? A state-by-state patchwork would practically guarantee a shift toward the Nordic family system. Movies and television, which do not respect state borders, would embrace gay marriage. The cultural effects would be national. What about Vermont-style civil unions? Would that be a workable compromise? Clearly not. Scandinavian registered partnerships are Vermont-style civil unions. They are not called marriage, yet resemble marriage in almost every other respect. The key differences are that registered partnerships do not permit adoption or artificial insemination, and cannot be celebrated in state-affiliated churches. These limitations are gradually being repealed. The lesson of the Scandinavian experience is that even de facto same-sex marriage undermines marriage. The Scandinavian example also proves that gay marriage is not interracial marriage in a new guise. The miscegenation analogy was never convincing. There are plenty of reasons to think that, in contrast to race, sexual orientation will have profound effects on marriage. But with Scandinavia, we are well beyond the realm of even educated speculation. The post-gay marriage changes in the Scandinavian family are significant. This is not like the fantasy about interracial birth defects. There is a serious scholarly debate about the spread of the Nordic family pattern. Since gay marriage is a part of that pattern, it needs to be part of that debate. Conservative advocates of gay marriage want to test it in a few states. The implication is that, should the experiment go bad, we can call it off. Yet the effects, even in a few American states, will be neither containable nor revocable. It took about 15 years after the change hit Sweden and Denmark for Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate to begin to move from "European" to "Nordic" levels. It took another 15 years (and the advent of gay marriage) for Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate to shoot past even Denmark's. By the time we see the effects of gay marriage in America, it will be too late to do anything about it. Yet we needn't wait that long. In effect, Scandinavia has run our experiment for us. The results are in. I must say, this is exactly what I am afraid of. Our stupid telecom regime By Tom Smith It sure sounds like Gilder is right about this-- on today's WSJ op-ed page. You may need a subscription. Losing my hearing By Tom Smith This morning as I was preparing breakfast for the kids or something, Jeanne asked "Would you see if Luke's musk ox has a vulva?" I knew immediately something was not quite right. I was virtually certain none of our children had a musk ox. We have two large dogs, a missing snake, a gecko, and a diabetic and emotionally needy guinea pig, but no musk ox. Furthermore, it would have been much more natural to say, "Do you happen to remember if Luke's musk ox is a cow or a bull?" Or, not being agricultural people, "a boy ox or a girl ox?" I often find the little tasks Jeanne asks me to do in the morning a little trying, but it seemed a bit much to ask me to examine the genitals of a large bovine purportedly belonging to my 12 year old. At a loss, I finally gave in. "Musk ox?" "What?" said my lovely wife. "What about a musk ox?" "LUNCH BOX," said Jeanne. Ah, does my eldest son's lunch box have a vulva. Now I was getting somewhere. No need to examine a large and quite probably smelly beast to know the answer to that question. Certainly not. "No," I replied confidently. Not a satisfactory answer, apparently. Silence, of the bad sort. "Luke's lunchbox does not have a vulva," I reinterated. Exasperated laughter. "WOULD YOU CHECK TO SEE IF LUKE'S LUNCH BOX IS IN THE VOLVO?!" Ah. I task I can understand. So I walked out to the driveway and looked in the Volvo. Old backpack. Copy of Princess Moenoko or whatever, miscellaneous CDs, used Kleenex. What was it I came out here looking for? Getting old is so wonderful. Council Of Trent, Part I Arsenic And Soft Soap By Maimon Schwarzschild This RightCoaster is just back from a three-day conference in Trento, in the Italian Alps, on "international law, peace, and human rights". I gave a short paper whose point was that international law, peace, and human rights are often in mutual conflict: in fact they usually are whenever times are interesting. Scepticism like mine was, to put it mildly, not otherwise the theme of the conference. The conference was mostly organized by Israeli academics, and several Palestinians and Arabs participated, so the most interesting bits of the conference (apart from my pathbreaking paper, of course) were about the middle east and the prospects for peace there -- "vel non", as we lawyers say: i.e. "or not". The conferees (your RightCoaster apart) came in three flavours: Europeans, Israelis, and Arabs. The European academics were evidently believers in a "culture of peace", the subtitle of the conference; although exactly what that phrase means remained nebulous to me, despite many words on the subject. The Israelis apparently wanted to be believers too: they were certainly for peace, and generally seemed eager to please, although most of them were unwilling to roll over completely when it came to specifics about the middle east. The Arabs, though, were the most interesting to watch and listen to. Several had hair-trigger tempers, and there was a general air of complete inflexibility about Israel. In fact, their theme was to insist on a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel, an idea which almost all Israelis think would amount to the abolition of Israel. It should be emphasized that these were Arabs and Palestinians who were willing to meet and sit in a room with Israelis, which makes them unusual, even courageous, in the Arab world. They are, as it were, the Arab "peace movement". But their interest in, say, a "two state solution" -- i.e. a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza living side by side with Israel in its original 1948-to-1967 borders -- seemed practically nil. The "Palestine" issue for them, now as in 1948, is about Israel's occupation of any part of Palestine whatsoever: i.e. Haifa and Tel Aviv at least as much as the West Bank or Gaza. It all suggests that a "culture of peace" will not be forthcoming anytime soon in the middle east. To which, sadly, you will probably say: no need to go half way round the world to the Italian Alps to discover that. Wright A Footnote to History By Maimon Schwarzschild Odd Connections Department (a propos of Tom's "cool site" about Frank Lloyd Wright): Wright's apprentice and leading disciple was one William Wesley Peters. Peters inherited Wright's architectural practice as well as Wright's Taliesin estate and leadership of the commune-like "fellowship" at Taliesin, having married Wright's adopted daughter Svetlana in 1936. There is lots about Wesley Peters here . But Svetlana Wright was Wesley Peters' first wife. She and their son and an unborn child were tragically killed in a car crash in 1946. Years later, strongly encouraged by Frank Lloyd Wright's widow, Peters then met and married... Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of a different sort of architect: Joseph Stalin. (Robert Conquest, in his great book about the Soviet purges of the 1930s "The Great Terror", calls Stalin "the architect of terror".) Wright's widow was something of a cultist, and she had become obsessed with the idea that Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, was the reincarnation of the dead Svetlana Wright. Hence her urgent encouragement of Peters' second marriage. Wesley Peters and Svetlana Alliluyeva had a daughter of their own, who is therefore Stalin's American granddaughter -- by way of Taliesin and the world of Frank Lloyd Wright. March 03, 2004
Proposition 56 By Gail Heriot One heartening result of yesterday’s election here in California was the drubbing of Proposition 56, which went down by a 2 to1 margin. The main effect of passage would have been to allow the California Legislature to pass a budget and budget-related tax and appropriations bills with a 55 % majority, rather than the 2/3 majority currently required. I was against it, because I view the 2/3 majority as an important protection against pork-barrel politics. But that really isn’t what causes me to celebrate its defeat; I can easily imagine people of good will being on both sides of that issue. What bothered me about the campaign was the level of pure misrepresentation by initiative supporters. They called it “The Budget Accountability Act” and emphasized that it was an effort to “get tough” with irresponsible deficits. Voters were left with the impression that the initiative actually increases the size of the majority necessary to pass a budget, rather than decreases it. As usual, however, fears that California voters are rock stupid turned out to be unfounded. The word got out. The public employees unions managed to get out their vote in favor of the initiative. But it looks like the rest of the state overwhelmingly rejected it. It’s not nice to try to fool California voters. They can get pretty testy about it. Cool site on Frank Lloyd Wright By Tom Smith Here's a cool site on Frank Lloyd Wright. My wife and I both really love his stuff and related arts & crafts movement, mission style etc. etc. We're trying to do our house in that style, but when you're starting with a semi- hemi- demi- custom home (i.e., a tract house) it's not so easy. By following links around you can also see various "modern" homes. I think they are cool as well. The street Jeanne grew up on in New Canaan CT has two Phillip Johnson houses on it, one of which is a spectacular glass cube so utterly impractical it was given to an order of nuns for the tax write-off. They eventually sold it and now it seems to be lived in and well cared for. Speaking of architecture, take a look at the most recent Architectural Digest in your local supermarket. (I would link to their web site but it's totally lame.) It has an envy-inspiring spread on George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, it of the to-die-for private library. Actually, I would have liked it better in sleeker style (like Mission!) but it's still very cool, and confirms the wisdom of my ambition to become a billionaire. Gibson's Denial By Mike Rappaport I have not seen the Passion yet. Based on the descriptions of others, it seems that Gibson may have portrayed the Jews more negatively (and the Romans more favorably) than the Gospels or history warrants . But I will reserve judgment on that until I have seen the movie. And, in any event, there is much more to this movie than how it portrays the Jews. Much more troubling, though, are Gibson's comments in response to questions by Peggy Noonan and Diane Sawyer about the holocaust. As David Frum points out, Gibson may not actually have the beliefs of a holocaust denier, but he sounds not a little like such a denier. Frum concludes his column:
I should say that when I first heard about the controversy concerning The Passion, my sympathies were mainly with Gibson. And I think some of the criticisms of the movie are way over the top. That said, Gibson's answers concerning the holocaust are troubling. While some have argued that he does not want to offend or dishonor his father, that is no excuse. Sadly his father dishonors him and his project. While Gibson does not have to go out of his way to criticize his father's view, when he is asked about the holocaust, he ought to speak frankly. Wolf and Bloom By Tom Smith Slate puts it pretty well. In my hopelessly un-PC way, I wonder why, if beauty is a myth, why does Ms. Wolf appear to be such a babe in her PR photos? (Oh I'm sorry. I forgot. It must be my and other men's fault that Ms. Wolf feels the need to be professionally groomed. Mea maxima culpa. Where did I put that scourge?) Call me cynical, but I suspect the pain Ms. Wolf was enduring was that of being out of the limelight for a while. Now she's on the cover of New York magazine, and we can all marvel at the shock, the horror that a famous professor groped her after getting drunk with her in her apartment 20 years ago. Bloom was supposed to be there to read Wolf's poetry, so he cannot be blamed for getting drunk. No, I have never read any of Ms. Wolf's poetry. I've never had my arm cut off either, but I can tell you I have a good idea it would be awful, and I would polish off a bottle of scotch just to be on the safe side, and the same goes for if for some dreadful reason I was obliged to read Ms. Wolf's poetry. This is no excuse for Bloom's alleged thigh grope. Maybe Professor Bloom should have his hand cut off. Maybe Ms. Wolf should be awarded the babe-victim of the century prize. Maybe flabby old professors and attractive young students should not go off to apartments and get drunk together. Maybe, just maybe. Just an ever so timidly made suggestion by a crusty old Republican who would die before he would willingly make a feminist mad at him. Maybe she should fly to Africa and consult with whats-her-name, Kerry's young squeeze? Maybe we should have an all Rhodes Scholar conference on sexual transgressions, with presentations by both Ms. Wolf and former POTUS Bill. It would all be very famous. If Wolf feels the need to be more famous, why doesn't she write another book. That's what Bloom does. And I know it's an obvious point, but I'm sorry, I just can't get too exercised any more about famous feminist victimhood from dirty old men after big bad Bill. The accusations that Bill had raped women were at least as well supported as this story on Bloom's drunken pass, and the silence from the feminists was deafening. But that was then, and this is now, I guess. Pardon me while I do my best to ignore you. Just Wondering By Mike Rappaport David Bernstein writes that
Does anyone know of any opinion polls or other statistics on blog readership or awareness? For example, what percentage of 30 year olds read blogs? Or have even heard of blogs? I have been conducting my own informal survey, but a formal poll would be interesting. March 02, 2004
Aristide, the poor man By Tom Smith Crumudgeonly Clerk says it all. Is this hell? No, M. Presidente. It is the Central African Republic. Conservative judge appears human By Tom Smith Best known as my brother-in-law and husband to my lovely sister Trish, who in turn is best known for crushing people on the tennis court, Federal District Judge Paul Cassell appears to be human after all. God and SUVs By Tom Smith Just thought readers would like to know that at Mass last Sunday our pastor mentioned driving an SUV in a long list of sins under the general heading of vanity, this a propos the gospel involving Satan tempting Jesus in various ways in the desert, one of which was with "what he deserved." As in "I deserve X, because I'm better, more powerful, richer than, etc. etc. other people." This was particularly annoying as I would have happily traded my ultra-PC Volvo wagon for any of the full sized SUVs in the parking lot, which were legion. The homily didn't make much of an impression on me, however, as I was trying to get my 12 year old not to make unbelievably loud yawning noises during the rite. He has started doing this thing were he makes a noise when he yawns like that of a very large dog. Alarming and not polite. He was outdone, however, by a cute 4 year old several pews ahead who cracked off a window-rattling belch, and then smiled proudly at the assembly. He thought it was funny, and so did I. Push comes to shove By Tom Smith Evidence that the US did not always play its role as idiot giant in the recent Cold War. Bill Casey was the CIA director the left loved to hate. But he died and pulled down the Soviet Union before they could destroy him. He always had a great sense of timing. He was an Irish Catholic of course, often a good sort to have in a fight. Too bad some idiot bishop gave a disgraceful sermon at his funeral about the crimes of the CIA. For a neglected account of Casey's role in kicking out the legs from under the evil empire, take a look at this. (Classic whiney review from Kirkus as well.) And if you're in the mood for CIA fiction, there's The Company, which is a fun read. If you can stand to read Norman Mailer, there's Harlot's Ghost, but I admit I couldn't get through it. Mailer's weird take on sex and marriage, not to mention WASPs, about whom he writes as if they are some alien species, were too much for me. He seems to think WASPs live in castles on the coast of Maine and spend a lot of time brooding about sex. Actually, no. But he does have significant talent as a writer, even if he is a thoroughly twisted soul. On a completely irrelevant personal note, the mother of James Angelton lived in my home town, Boise, Idaho. His father fought with General Pershing in Mexico, and met and married his mother, an elegant Mexican woman, there. She used to regularly attend Mass at St. John's Cathedral, where I went to school, and my mother sometimes gave her a ride home to her apartment building, where coincidentally, my parents now live. I went to school for a while with his nephew, who is now a physician in Boise. But I'm not a member of Skull and Bones and have never worked for the CIA. It's just that I wish I was and had. UPDATE: But if you want to peer into the WASP soul, read this and this. Penn State Prof fired for criticizing University policy By Tom Smith Eric Rasmussen raises important questions about just what kind of academic freedom academics at Penn State actually have. (via VC) If you're not free to speak about the academic dimensions of academic programs, you're not very academically free. Boycotts and the Conservative Mind By Gail Heriot Note: Ok, I admit it. I wrote this essay more than a year ago, but I couldn't think of anything to do with it. I ran across it in my computer files over the weekend and figured it might be appreciated by someone in the blogosphere. Boycotts It was beautiful--the perfect dress for a warm summer afternoon in San Diego. And since it was cut just slightly above the knee, it allowed me to indulge my belief that, for a woman over forty, my legs still look pretty good. When I got it home, I took it out of the bag and gazed at it. It was cobalt blue–and I’d gotten it for 50% off its original (absurd) price. “Don’t you love it?,” I asked my friend. “Sure,” he said reflexively. He had been well-trained. “Where did you get it?” “Nordstrom.” “But I thought you said a few years ago you were going to boycott that place for the rest of your life.” Me? Boycott Nordstrom? Perish the thought. A few years ago, I had indeed worried that Nordstrom would follow the lead of other trendy Seattle-based businesses, like Eddie Bauer, Microsoft, and Starbuck’s in opposing the Washington State Civil Rights Initiative–the Pacific Northwest’s version of California’s Proposition 209. Having worked hard to ensure the passage of Proposition 209 a few years back, I felt I needed to do whatever I could to support the Washington State effort. When Seattle’s business elite took the position that race and gender discrimination was just fine as long as the right groups are benefitted, I figured I should do my part to remind them that many of their customers disagree. “You’re mixing Nordstrom up with Starbuck’s,” I told him. “I’m boycotting Starbuck’s.” Thank God it was only Starbuck’s. During the tense weeks in 1998, when it looked as if Nordstrom might weigh in on behalf of the opposition to the Washington State initiative, I had been preparing the rationalizations. I figured that I could boycott Starbuck’s and not Nordstrom because both Starbuck’s and its CEO had contributed significantly to the opposition. Nordstrom’s corporate management, on the other hand, had been split. One retired executive had supported the initiative; another had sent money to the opposition. It was relief when Nordstrom ultimately decided to stay out of affirmative action politics. No rationalizations would be needed. The real reason for my distinction had nothing to do with either company’s management. I feared I simply wouldn’t be able to make good on a threat to boycott Nordstrom. Starbuck’s just sold coffee, and although I appreciate a good cup of coffee as much as the next person, I figured I could always find a just as good a cup somewhere else. (A special boycott of Eddie Bauer never crossed my mind, since I have been boycotting it all my life. I don’t look good dressed as a lumberjack, and my mother, a fiercely loyal Down Easterner, keeps me supplied with flannel nightgowns from Eddie Bauer’s Maine-based competitor L.L. Bean. As for Microsoft, well, you know the story.) But looking back, even my boycott of Starbuck’s has been a failure. I didn’t mention it to my friend, but at least a dozen times in the past several years, I had walked right into Starbuck’s, plunked down my dollar and left with my shot of caffeine. One such occasion was a particularly hot July day in our nation’s capital, when I might have bought a Frappacino from Benito Mussolini. On the other occasions, however, my excuse is somewhat embarrassing. I just forgot–not just once but over and over again. My brain’s filing system has no place for “boycott.” I’m fascinated by the left’s ability to stage consumer boycotts. As one Jesse Jackson admirer put it, “If Jesse says ... that African Americans are planning to boycott the XYZ company during, say, the Christmas holiday, just the threat ... moves the company ....” Leftists even have a web site listing “leftist/progressive boycotts” courtesy of an ominous-sounding “Boycott Board.” Anyone can propose new targets to the Boycott Board. The web site gives you a form with a list of approved reasons for the boycott: environmental abuses, racist policies, sexist policies, homophobic policies, animal rights abuses and a few more. It’s all very high tech and efficient. Sort of anyway. If you try to get a list of current boycott targets, you’ll find the web site is broken. Still, I was impressed. While conservative groups, too, have attempted to use the boycott as a political weapon, their successes have been more limited than at least the Reverend Jackson’s. Perhaps too many conservatives are like me; they just can’t seem to remember which companies we’re supposed to be boycotting. Maybe I’m just weak-willed. That’s certainly a plausible explanation, although the consensus among my friends and acquaintances seems to be that I lean in quite the opposite direction, perhaps to a fault I prefer to think that my forgetfulness is the result of a deep-seated ambivalence about boycotts in general. On the one hand, I hate to cede this weapon to my political opponents. Although many of the left’s boycott efforts are as comically ineffective as mine, some are not. Why send a message that only the left is to be feared in this way? On the other hand, I prefer to live in a world in which nobody thinks about whether his dry goods sellers agree with him about the issues of the day–at least so long as they aren’t out there advocating that is wholly beyond the pale . It’s part of what makes the American political system work tolerably well; only a few of us are so tribal about our politics that we prefer to do business only with our ideological allies. I would like to leave insistence on political purity to the fringe left and to let the wheels of commerce turn. But I can’t think about things like that right now. I’ve going to be working late tonight, and I need a cup of ... uh ... Peet’s coffee. Crooked Timber on me By Tom Smith Well, I seem to have inspired John Holbo to write another one of his very long posts. Whether I am to be held culpable for this, you will have to judge for yourself. I should correct a few misimpressions I may have inadvertently caused. In my little tragedy, gosh, nearly some twenty years ago now, I just got the bad news indirectly through Charles Wright. I got the impression he was just making a judgment about the political climate at Texas some twenty years ago, not that he personally had anything against conservatives. Since then, I was invited to be a visiting professor at Texas, or at least asked if I would like to be one, to which I had to answer "no" as I am not enough of a pig to abandon my wife to her busy medical practice and scads of youn'ins for mere reasons of career advancement. And I was asked to visit at Penn some years ago, I did visit at UCLA, I received an offer of a very well remunerating chair at Ohio State, and my dean smiles at me most of the time when he sees me. So, all in all, I don't really bear much of grudge toward anybody any more, not even Texas, as they have in recent times at least been willing to take a hard look at me. Also, I get what I consider well paid to teach bright and nice students mostly interesting stuff. Being a law professor is swell, a very good gig and I'm not complaining. I would still rather be an internet billionaire, but maybe this is the best of all possible worlds. As to Professor Holbo's other arguments, if that's what they are, I am at a bit of a loss how to respond. I feel as if I am being attacked by a strangely animated feather boa trying make me sneeze myself to death. But OK, let me make some counter-assertions that might at least put any argument worth having on a better footing. First, I think it's fine if liberals as a general matter don't like conservatives personally. It's a free country and their loss. Second, while discriminating against conservatives in academic hiring is a small unfairness in the grand scheme of things, it is as wrong morally as other kinds of discrimination that are illegal and widely considered wrong, such as job discrimination on the basis of religion, race or irrelevant physical disability. Third, the production of ideas benefits from competition just as the production of other goods does. At the same time, there is the constant danger that producers will try to impose a monopoly for their own, as opposed to consumers' benefit. That is what has happened, I think, in many areas of the academy. Life is easier if you don't have to defend your ideas constantly. Academic life would produce more of the public goods that it is its job to provide, if conservatives (using the term broadly) were not excluded from areas of academic life. A closely related point is that liberals or conservatives, left to argue only among themselves, get boring. (I realize this is a straight line, but the point merits the risk.) Finally, just as a rhetorical stratagem, I would ask anybody who has an open mind on this subject (and the time and interest) to read Professor Holbo's post. Frankly, it seems to me any person, liberal or otherwise, who has a well-rooted sense of fairness in their personality would be embarrassed by it. But maybe I overestimate liberals. We all know what crooked timber we are made out of. Social Forces in the Academy By Mike Rappaport One situation that Becker and Murphy's book does not address involves social forces in academia. If academics gain utility from holding the same basic positions as others, then there should be a tendency for academics to conform their views to those of the majority. In other words, there will be a force inducing people who enter a liberal dominated academic world to have their views mirror that world. Sadly, this effect will be reinforced by the incentive that academics have to follow the prevailing academic orthodoxy, since both consciously and unconsciously that world discriminates against those who hold views that it dislikes. What then accounts for the increases in right wing academics, in at least certain areas, such as economics and law? Part of the explanation seems to be that people with minority views form their own smaller groups and they gain utility from having the same views as those in their relevant group. Certainly, the Federalist Society, which was formed in my first year of law school, has made it much easier and more enjoyable to hold right wing views. Book Recommendation: Social Economics By Mike Rappaport Although I believe that social forces are important, I have usually been frustrated by the sociology that I have read. These works often suffer from various sins, including either lack of rigor or clarity, or political bias. (One exception is Peter Berger’s book, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality, & Liberty, a great book that attempts to provide a sympathetic understanding of capitalism from an empirical perspective – although it is a little out of date.) Recently, I found Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy’s Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment. The book attempts to understand certain social forces with an economic type rational choice - equilibrium model. As a law professor with a long term interest in economics, I found the analysis extremely helpful, since it took a very clear and familiar model and used it to analyze social forces. The key idea, underlying all of the book’s models, is that people care about goods, based not only on the the goods themselves, but also on how many other people in a social group desire them or buy them. So teenagers may desire to smoke based on how many of their peers do so, and people may purchase certain fashions because many other people do. The models have many implications. For example, it may turn out that as a couple makes less money, they may not have fewer kids if there is strong social pressure to have a particular number. The book also seeks to explain the sense in which social forces seem to leave people without choices. When the interdependences are strong, people derive so much more from taking the actions that other people do that they seem forced to make the same choices as others. This can be true even if the underlying activity is relatively undesirable. So one might play basketball because one’s friends do, even though one does not really like it. In the end, I did not find the predictions in the book all that surprising. The book generally predicts “sociological facts” that we all know. What was significant was that it generated these predictions with an economic-type model that made clear to what extent a desire to be like others was doing the work. Computerized voting disaster in San Diego? By Tom Smith Local radio pundit Rick Roberts is reporting massive failure of the new touch screen electronic voting machines all over San Diego county this morning. Apparently, the new machines just aren't, well, working. If these early reports are true, it's hard to see how the election won't be thrown out. This would be too bad, as there are some important matters on the ballot, such as Proposition P, intended to secure more funding for our dangerously under-staffed and equipped fire fighting forces. Stay tuned. March 01, 2004
Physics Blog By Mike Rappaport Take a look at this blog by University of Chicago physicist Sean Carroll, who seems to be a famous physicist. (Hat tip: Crescat) Not only is there a theory with his name on it, his name is first. ("We analyze the Carroll-Field-Jackiw (CFJ) modification of electrodynamics reformulated as the ordinary Maxwell theory with an additional special axion field.") As someone with an occasional interest in physics, I plan to check the blog out. For now, though, I can't resist the petty enjoyment of watching what must be an extraordinarily bright man exhibit his ignorance about how links and blogging works. Readers By Mike Rappaport February was The Right Coast’s biggest month yet, with an average of approximately 1000 visitors per day. Thanks for all of the support. Brilliant solution to the abortion problem By Tom Smith I know, Gail. A perfect solution in this controversial area. Killing a fetus in an assault isn't quite as bad as killing say, a movie star or a Democrat, so let's say killing a not-really-a-person of unbornness is equivalent to killing three-fifths of a person. A little rough, perhaps, but the intuition seems sound. They're worth something, just not as much as a regular person. You could even have a sliding scale so that they reached full personhood right at the time they were able to rationally articulate, say, the moral imperative of recycling. Please don't think I'm being cynical about recycling. It's the socially responsible thing to do. Katharine Hepburn By Mike Rappaport A nice tribute last night at the Academy Awards to the late Katharine Hepburn. My three favorite of her movies were Philadelphia Story, A Lion in Winter, and Guess Whose Coming to Dinner, the last two for which she won Oscars. (She also won two other Oscars.) All three of those movies are great, but Lion in Winter is a bit neglected. Its diologue is especially clever and funny. If you haven't seen it, be sure to rent it. Ann Coulter By Mike Rappaport A great column by the unfairly maligned (by both conservatives and liberals) Ann Coulter. The claim in her column is reasonably novel, very entertaining, and even true. |
