Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Now both their music and their politics suck (explicit lyrics)
By Tom Smith

You put up with the nasty, ranty left wing politics for the music, but what happens when the drug-addled, self-indulgent thrashers let you down? You certainly have no reason not to say so. The new Audioslave album sounds like somebody said, you may be enraged against the machine, but it takes some serious bucks to live this lifestyle, so it's time for another album, boys! Sounds like Audioslave ground this thing out under an injunction. Yes, I know, you can't personally enforce, etc. etc., and this album is an argument for why. This is what art sounds like when it's forced. Or maybe it's just what your brain looks like on drugs. And yes, I'm just assuming they're drug addled slackers, as most rockers are. It is so sad.

Speaking of down, don't listen to these guys. I have a 13 year old son, so I listen to them all the time, and I can tell you, don't do it. The worst thing is, something about their lyrics and weird, little Armenian tunes gets into your head, and will not go away. What do you want to bet these revolutionaries grew up in splendor in Los Angeles before they became professional detractors of the American way of life? What a country. Where else can you make millions singing little ditties about the fascist oppression you labor under, to the undulations of scantily clad 16 year old groupies? Their video for whichever tune it is ("why don't Presidents fight the wars/ why do we always send the poor . . . where the fuck are you?") is particularly nauseating, as well. The reason we send the poor, by the way, is because most millionaire rock stars are too busy spending their money and their brain cells to fight for their country. Why fight for your country when you can make millions running it down? You put up with Audioslave because they (used to) rock. System of a Down is just a bunch of spoiled LA weenies. Maybe Homeland Security could deport them: they could write a song: "where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?" In some country that won't put up with you, that's where, you losers.
posted by thomas at 5/31/2005 07:01:00 PM

 
What's the French word for blog?
By Mike Rappaport

I suppose some of this is a joke, but how much?
posted by Michael at 5/31/2005 06:02:00 PM

 
Oh, No! Has the Wall Street Journal Become Impervious to Reason?
By Gail Heriot

Loyal readers may recall a three-part series I wrote a few months ago entitled "Don’t Blame Pete Wilson for Making California a Blue State." (If not, you can read it here, here and here.) In it, I tried to respond to the Wall Street Journal editorialist Brendan Miniter's accusation that former California Governor Pete Wilson had somehow transformed California from a toss-up state into a Democratic stronghold on account of his allegedly anti-immigration agenda.

Evidently what I said failed to get through, since in today’s Political Diary (no link available; it's a subscription service) Mr. Miniter repeats the slur that an anti-immigration agenda "cost Republicans control of California in the 1990s." I did e-mail him earlier. But evidently my message either went unread or was unpersuasive. (A third possibility is that aliens bent on destroying the WSJ’s credibility have entered Mr. Miniter’s body and are purposely causing him to make inappropriate accusations, but I am willing to leave this possibility aside for the moment at least...)

Let me try again.....

1. Pete Wilson’s so-called anti-immigration agenda consists of his strong support of Proposition 187–a 1994 initiative that prohibited the State of California from granting certain state benefits, including welfare benefits, to illegal immigrants. It's worth noting that 187 applied to illegal immigrants only and not to legal immigrants. For the record, I opposed Proposition 187. But I was very much in the minority. Proposition 187 passed overwhelmingly with 59% of the vote in 1994. Any argument that Proposition 187 supporters have been politically damaged as a result of their support for that extraordinarily popular measure should bear an enormous burden of proof.

2. It’s not just that supporters of the "Proposition 187 backlash" theory can’t overcome that burden of proof. They have no evidence of a backlash against Republicans at all. Latinos, for example, the group most likely to resent Proposition 187, do not appear to have changed their voting patterns as a result the 1994 initiative. Indeed Proposition 187 itself got a larger share of the Latino vote (23%) than George H.W. Bush had gotten back in 1992 (14%)(with 71% for Clinton and 15% for Perot and others). In 1996, Latinos gave Dole 22% (and 70% for Clinton, 7% for Perot). In 2000, 23% of California Latinos voted for George W. Bush and 75% voted for Gore. There does appear to have been some improvement in the 2004 election when it is estimated that 31% of the California Latino vote went to Bush and 68% to Kerry.

3. The real explanation for California’s switch from a toss-up state to a reliably Democratic state is far simpler. It’s not California’s immigration policy, it’s immigration itself. As I’ve said before, Pete Wilson could have met each and every immigrant at the border with a bottle of champagne and a brass band and the result would still be the same. Recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia tend to vote Democratic. And there are a lot more of them in California now than there used to be. Hispanics have gone from being 25.83% of the California population in 1990 to 32.38% in 2000. Asians have gone from 9.56% in 1990 to 10.92% in 2000. Non-Hispanics Whites, on the other hand, have decreased in absolute numbers due to out-migration and low birth rates and thus moved from being 57% of the California population in 1990 to only 46.7% in 2000. Again, there is no evidence that these individuals when they become voters are any more Democratic-leaning than they've ever been; the difference is only that there are more such voters than there used to be in the California electorate. And that difference is huge; it dwarfs any possible effect that Proposition 187 could be imagined to have.

4. The Left is full of folks who hate to let facts get in the way of their political fantasy world But I’d like to keep the feet of my fellow conservatives as close to the ground as possible. It’s fine to be pro-immigration. I’m moderately pro-immigration myself. But it’s important to at least recognize that it has its costs. Among those costs for Republicans is the fact that recent immigrants tend to vote for Democrats. At some point, that will cause a state (like California) to go from being politically contested to reliably Democratic at least in the Presidential election. ((In statewide elections, Schwarzenegger proved that a Republican can still win under certain circumstances, but Schwarzenegger is a special case for a lot of reasons, so it's not clear yet what those circumstances are.))

Does any of this mean that the immigrant vote should be conceded by the GOP? Of course not. It should (and must) fight for every vote it can get. But it’s important to be realistic and recognize that only so much progress can be made in the short run. It is only in the long run that one can move a lot of votes from one party to another.

5. Recent evidence on Asians voting patterns further confirms that immigrants from Asia tend to vote Democratic. A recent exit poll of 11,000 Asian voters (82% of them immigrants) in eight states east of the Mississippi showed that they went for Kerry over Bush 74% to 24%. This is obviously not the result of Proposition 187, since the polls didn’t even include California. ((The poll–conducted for the liberal Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund–may nevertheless have overstated the Asian preference for Kerry. An L.A. Times national exit polls found Bush carrying 34% of the Asian vote. Either way Bush was trounced.))

6. I’ve been trying to figure out what might inspire Mr. Miniter to believe in the Proposition 187 backlash myth and I wonder if maybe somebody once showed him statistics on state by state Latino voting patterns. If so, they would probably show California Latinos leaning more Democratic than Latinos in many other states. From this, he might conclude that Proposition 187 was to blame. But again, demographics are the real explanation. Other states have more Cubans in their Latino electorate than California does. Cubans are more likely to vote for the party that they regard as the more anti-communist. That ordinarily is the GOP. Similarly, among Asian voters, Vietnamese voters, especially those with memories of the fall of Saigon, tend to vote in higher proportions for the GOP than other Asian voters. How a state's Asian electorate will vote will thus depend in part on the proportion of Vietnamese voters in the group.
posted by Gail at 5/31/2005 04:33:00 PM

 
Deep Throat is Revealed
By Mike Rappaport

It turns out to have been the No. 2 man at the FBI, Mark Felt. Felt comes across as pretty interesting in the articles about him.

Felt himself was mentioned several times over the years as a candidate for Deep Throat, but he regularly denied that he was the source. "I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant in 1999. "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"

Felt had expressed reservations in the past about revealing his identity, and about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI man, his grandson said. According to the article, Felt once told his son, Mark Jr., that he did not believe being Deep Throat "was anything to be proud of. ... You (should) not leak information to anyone."

The New York Times saves for the last paragraph of the story this interesting tidbit: "Felt was convicted in the 1970s for authorizing illegal break-ins at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981."

It would be interesting to know more about him. I suppose we will find out quite a bit in the next few days.
posted by Michael at 5/31/2005 03:09:00 PM

 
Tribe's Decision
By Mike Rappaport

Larry Tribe has decided not to finish the third edition of his constitutional law treatise. Some view this as big news:

"It's like Michael Jordan leaving basketball at the top of his game," says Ross Davies of George Mason University School of Law. "This is like George Lucas announcing that he would not finish Episode III," adds Florida International University law professor Thomas Baker.

Yeah, right. I suppose I would think it a bigger deal if I ever read it any more. As a law student, I read the first treatise, but I found that it reflected Tribe's views, not the law or what I considered interesting. I have barely even glanced at it since then.

Update: Jack Balkin discusses some of the reasons for Tribe's decision:

For many years, Tribe has been a key exponent and defender of a liberal synthesis of the constitutional law created by the Warren and Burger Courts. Because Tribe has seen his job as synthesizing and reconstructing the larger themes of constitutional law as it actually exists, several of his positions have changed over the years as the Supreme Court (and existing doctrine) have become more conservative. Yet at the same time, the Rehnquist Court has pushed the liberal civil rights agenda in ways that the Warren and Burger Courts never did, for example, in the area of gay rights. Hence, until this moment, Tribe has worked on the assumption that the Supreme Court, even if it has not decided every issue in the ways he would prefer, has been working within the basic paradigms of reasoning established by the Warren and Burger Courts. Apparently, Tribe now believes that this may no longer be the case, and that a Supreme Court stocked with new Bush appointees will shift constitutional doctrine in important new directions. Perhaps equally important, Tribe appears to believe that the new Court will shift doctrine in directions that will make his synthesis of existing doctrine outmoded or irrelevant.

posted by Michael at 5/29/2005 11:19:00 PM

 
David Brooks Updates Karl Marx, Part 2
By Gail Heriot

My fellow Right Coaster points out David Brooks' NYT column for today. (For a link, go to Mike's post below, since when I blog from my antiquated home computer, as I am doing now, I cannot furnish links.) In it, Brooks' Karl Marx alter ago asserts that according to a study by the Educational Testing Service, only 3% of the students at elite colleges and universities are from households in the lowest-income quartile--a figure that he and others find troubling.

But if the ETS study is like the studies that have gone before it on this topic, then the 3% figure is exaggerated (although I've no doubt that a more accurate measure would still show significant disproportionality). Households that are in a plausible position to send a child to college are not by any means a cross-section of American households. For one thing, they all have a child around age 18. The parents, whether they are both present or not, have at least one thing in common: They are not spring chickens. Even the unwed mother who gives birth at age 15 will be 33 by the time her child is old enough for college. The older parents are, the more likely they have their act together, and the more money they are likely to make. As a result, households with children around age 18 are disproportionately from the higher income quartiles. I may be mistaken, but I believe that the effect I'm describing is rather large.
posted by Gail at 5/29/2005 09:55:00 PM

 
David Brooks updates Karl Marx
By Mike Rappaport

in this new column. Pretty powerful.
posted by Michael at 5/29/2005 01:05:00 PM

 
USD School of Law Graduation Today
By Gail Heriot

Congratulations to the Class of '05. (And my apologies to anyone whose name I mispronounced or otherwise inflicted harm upon during the Roll Call of Graduates at the ceremony this morning.) Special congratulations to valedictorian Sebastian Lucier, salutatorian Tonya Cross, and Ben Ammerman, winner of the Owen Stark Heriot Prize (named in honor of my late father and given each year to the outstanding student who is a present or former member of the armed forces).
posted by Gail at 5/28/2005 08:13:00 PM

 
Another victim of the vast RW conspiracy
By Tom Smith

Poor fellow.

posted by thomas at 5/28/2005 06:02:00 PM

 
Votez Non
By Maimon Schwarzschild

In Europe -- where I´ll be in the next few days for an urgent academic conference -- the European Union Constitution may go down in flames in the French referendum tomorrow. A London Times report suggests the French Establishment is losing hope and now expects a ¨No¨ vote. ¨It´s all over save the teeth-gnashing.¨ I´m not so sure. But the Noes do seem to have the edge.

The weekend Financial Times makes a plausible argument that a ¨No¨ vote in France will greatly weaken European supporters of freer markets, and strengthen the most reactionary socialist-minded throughout Europe.

On the other hand, a ¨Yes¨ vote might surely be an important step towards a French-flavoured anti-American Europe.

So perhaps any outcome will be bad. That appeals to my sense of life. (Only at bad moments; only at bad moments...)

Until a very few years ago, I would have been rooting for a stronger common-market Europe. But the last few years of often-frenzied European anti-Americanism, too often with anti-semitic overtones, has made me think again.

Votez ¨Non¨, les français!
posted by maimon at 5/28/2005 04:38:00 AM

 
The Wild Kingdom of Public Policy
By Gail Heriot

One of my favorite Monty Python skits was entitled "Life or Death Struggles"--a spoof of pompous nature shows. As the screen depicts men dressed up as horses fighting with each other, a German-accented voice intones:

"In the hard and unrelenting world of nature the ceaseless struggle for survival continues. This time one of the pantomime horses concedes defeat and so lives to fight another day"

After a few more shots of animals (or people pretending to be animals) involved in "life or death struggles." the narrator goes back to the pantomime horses:

"Here we see a pantomime horse. It is engaged in a life or death struggle for a job with a merchant bank. However, his rival employee, the huge bull pantomime horse, is lying in wait for him. [Smaller pantomime horse is killed.] Poor pantomime horse."

It didn't occur to me until much later in life that the guys at Monty Python were really onto something. Human beings will fight like animals to preserve their jobs. It's seldom a pretty sight. And it's surprising how many major public policy issues are driven by such considerations. A few years ago when I worked on the Proposition 209 campaign, I noticed the folks who argued in public against Proposition 209 were overwhelmingly employed as affirmative action officers and felt their jobs to be in jeopardy. And many of them were as scrupulously devoted to truth and accuracy in debate as ... well ... a pit bull ... or a pantomime horse.

This leads me to what I will call "Heriot’s Iron Law of Public Policy: No matter how silly, wasteful, wrongheaded and/or harmful a particular program might be, it will take an extraordinary exercise of political will to eliminate it once someone’s job or other substantial financial benefit depends on its continued existence." Please remember that, Gentle Reader, whenever you are in a position to make policy. Unless you are really sure that a policy is a good one, make sure no one is hired specially to execute it or it will be close to impossible to terminate the program.

There is, of course, a corollary to this rule that has been thoroughly grasped by the Left: If you want to entrench a policy that your opponents object to, the best way to do it is to make sure someone is specially hired to execute the policy. Even if the person you hire is not initially a true believer, he will be by the time his first paycheck arrives. And he will fight tooth and nail to preserve the program you love if it is ever threatened.

I thought of this today when I took a look at the proposed new "Five-Year Plan" for diversity at the University of Oregon. Among other things, it calls for aggressive hiring of up to 40 new faculty members in areas like "critical race studies, critical gender studies, queer studies; disabilities studies" who will be teaching in a variety "Cultural Competency" programs for faculty, students and staff. Yup, 40 new faculty members, that ought to just about do the trick....
posted by Gail at 5/27/2005 02:28:00 PM

 
Hillary in 2008?
By Tom Smith

New poll.

posted by thomas at 5/27/2005 02:14:00 PM

 
Politics and philanthropy
By Tom Smith

Interesting history of both liberal and conservative philanthropy. I did not know a lot of this stuff. It's really too bad McGeorge Bundy didn't decide to be a botanist or something.
posted by thomas at 5/27/2005 10:27:00 AM

 
How economic policy gets made
By Tom Smith

This is a nice interview of somebody who knows what he is talking about, unlike Paul Krugman, who has chosen to be ignorant.

posted by thomas at 5/26/2005 06:16:00 PM

 
Maybe those Catholics have a point . . .
By Tom Smith

Gentlemen, this concerns you too.
posted by thomas at 5/26/2005 12:26:00 PM

 
Soccor and Baseball
By Mike Rappaport

Interesting facts from Tyler Cowan.
posted by Michael at 5/26/2005 09:29:00 AM

 
Why they serve
By Tom Smith

This is a beautiful piece in USA Today by my former student and friend Kathryn Roth-Douquet. Kathy (as I called her) has a fascinating story. She was an assistant deputy in DOD, a quite responsible post, in the Clinton administration, when she met the handsome aviator who flew Marine One, the President's helicopter. Now Kathy is the CO's wife, has two lovely kids, and her husband, Greg, has just left for his second tour to Iraq, in command of (my military terminology fails me here) a large group of Marine choppers. Dangerous, important work. Kathy explains why Marine families do it.

I have learned a lot from Kathy. Whenever I am tempted to think that conservatives or Republicans have a monopoly on patriotism, I think of Kathy and Greg. I never have or will make a sacrifice like they have made for this country. The Marines may be mostly a pretty right wing lot, but there are still plenty of Marines, soldiers and airmen who vote on the Democratic side of the ballot. Another thing is something about patriotism, as transfigured through an organization like the Marines. Having had quite a few Marines (there really doesn't seem to be such a thing as a 'former Marine') as students over the years, I have seen the way they really are a band of brothers (and sisters) and a band of families. It helps give you a clue about what makes a nation a nation, what allows it to survive, and what makes it worth fighting for. It is something like love. Yet it is almost as if to be an academic, you have to prove that you are completely unaware or indifferent to this.

So add Kathy and Greg and their family to your list of people to pray for this Memorial Day. Family, in this context, covers a lot of ground.

HERE is the official website of Greg's unit. The official history makes interesting reading.

I AM advised by a former Marine USD Law grad that former Marines may refer to themselves as 'former Marines' but never 'ex-Marine.'
posted by thomas at 5/26/2005 08:42:00 AM

 
History Professors on George W. Bush
By Mike Rappaport

A history professor/blogger reports on the views of his colleagues concerning our current president. They don't like him. What a surprise. More than 80 percent regard his presidency as a failure.

One would think that historians would understand that a judgment of this kind requires us to wait many years. After all, certainly it is possible that George Bush has helped to launch a movement towards democracy throughout the world that would render his presidency a success. Apparently, these "experts" don't need the knowledge that time would provide.

One pro-Bush historian nailed it: “I suspect that this poll will tell us nothing about President Bush’s performance vis-à-vis his peer group, but may confirm what we already know about the current crop of history professors.” Even the blogger acknowledges that "The liberal-left proclivities of much of the academic world are well documented, and some observers will dismiss the findings as the mere rantings of a disaffected professoriate. 'If historians were the only voters,' another pro-Bush historian noted, 'Mr. Gore would have carried 50 states.'"

To give you a flavor of the attitude toward Bush, here are the views of the blogger:

My assessment is that George W. Bush’s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we’ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president’s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.

These could be talking points for Barbara Boxer. Yet, this historian tries to put it forward as the results of expertise. Sad. Very sad. No worse -- pathetic.

Update: This post is discussed over at the Madison Principles Blog, see here and here.
posted by Michael at 5/26/2005 08:35:00 AM

 
Embryonic Stem Cells and Therapeutic Cloning
By Mike Rappaport

With these issues making it to the front page, I decided that I needed to learn more about them. A good place to start is this article.

Eugene Volokh has some thoughts about the subject here.

I hope to have more to say in the future.

Update: Here are views of one of the Powerline bloggers.
posted by Michael at 5/25/2005 01:53:00 PM

 
Bainbridge on the Filibuster
By Mike Rappaport

Stephen Bainbridge has responded to my comments and those of other bloggers. See here. While many people have taken issue with his claims, let me just add my two cents. He basically has two arguments. First, in response to my questioning why he thinks "President Hillary Clinton, with a Democrat Senate, won't use the nuclear option when Republicans filibuster," Bainbridge writes that the Republicans should trust the Democrats more. Sorry. This issue is too important for the Democrats to trust that they will show restraint, especially given their largely unprecedented decision to use the filibuster. Moreover, only 7 Democrats signed on to the agreement and the agreement seems to apply only to the current Congress. So they can eliminate the filibuster in the future without violating the agreement.

Second, Bainbridge argues that he favors the filibuster as a matter of principle, not as a means of benefitting conservative nominees. I am in favor of following principle also, but it does not necessarily make sense to follow principle when the other side doesn't. When the Confederacy started hanging black soldiers during the Civil War, instead of treating them as prisoners of war, Abraham Lincoln abandoned the principle of treating a few Southern soldiers as POWs, hanging them in response. The Confederacy changed its tune quickly. Principle is fine, but reciprocity is fairer and can often help to sustain principle. If the Democrats are going to use the filibuster in an excessive way, then the Republicans should use the nuclear option -- or at least threaten it to get an acceptable deal, such as one that applies in 2009 when neither party knows who will be the President. A deal that applies only when the Republicans have the Presidency and the Senate, and says nothing about the future, is, well, a bad deal.
posted by Michael at 5/25/2005 07:54:00 AM

 
Harry Potter
By Mike Rappaport

Apparently, J. K. Rowling has said that one of the major characters will be killed in the next book. Chris Lynch has reported the betting odds, which I copy here:

Professor Dumbledore - 1/5
Neville Longbottom - 4/1
Hagrid - 4/1
Cho Chang - 11/2
Ron Weasley - 6/1
Fred and/or George - 6/1
Molly Weasley - 6/1
Arthur Weasley - 6/1
Severus Snape - 7/1
Professor McGonagall - 7/1
Ginny Weasley - 8/1
Hermione Granger - 10/1
Dobby - 10/1
Oliver Wood - 14/1
Harry Potter - 16/1
Draco - 22/1

Dumbledore at 1-5. Hmm. My son, a Harry Potter expert, has been predicting that Dumbledore would die in this book for a while. I am not so sure -- still he either needs to die (but perhaps in the seventh book) or be incapacitated for Harry to show his greatness. (Perhaps Harry will rescue Dumbledore.)
posted by Michael at 5/24/2005 11:11:00 AM

 
The Filibuster Deal: Was it a Bad Deal?
By Mike Rappaport

The key issue is: for whom? Was it a bad deal for conservative Republicans? Of course, and they never would have agreed to it. Was it a bad deal for Republicans in general? Yes, as well, but again the Republicans party leaders did not agree to it. Was it a good deal for liberal Republicans, like John McCain? Perhaps, in the sense that he doesn't really want conservatives to be confirmed, but it will cost him if he runs for President.

Was it a bad deal in general? In other words, did it lead to a bad result? Well, that turns in part on how the deal is supposed to work. Filibusters are supposed to occur only under extraordinary circumstances, but what are they? One might interpret that to mean very few filibusters. For example, one might argue the deal precludes filibustering of any judges who are no more conservative than Pryor, Brown and Owen -- after all, the deal seems to suggest that filibustering these three judges would be illegimate. On the other hand, information about the deal suggests that other nominees, like Saad, will be stopped (if not through a filibuster, how?), which suggests that filibusters will occur with some frequency.

I would probably have supported a deal allowing for a supermajority rule for confirmations of Supreme Court justices beginning in 2009, with the election of a new President and Senate -- although even that would probably work against Republicans, since they are likely to hold the Senate. See here. But this deal is much worse than that, since it applies not in 2009, but today, when Republicans control both the Presidency and the Senate. Unless the Democrats do not filibuster again, which is quite unlikely, this looks like a bad deal to me, perhaps a very bad deal.

One final word: Stephen Bainbridge argues that saving the filibuster was a good thing. Perhaps. But what makes him think that President Hillary Clinton, with a Democrat Senate, won't use the nuclear option when Republicans filibuster?
posted by Michael at 5/24/2005 09:04:00 AM

 
Peace in our time
By Tom Smith

Once again, the stupid party lives up to its name. In fairness, the Republicans have only the barest majority, and several of them are not really Republicans. A "deal" was probably inevitable. But here's the point the commentators seem to be missing. Who's to say if the deal will really stick? Toobin on CNN and other commentators are speaking as if, when W puts up a conservative for the Court, and 40 Democrats say that's "extraordinary," the Republicans will just sit back and take it, because that was the deal. But political deals fall apart all the time. It's just a matter of how much pressure the Republicans are under, and they will be under a lot. This deal just puts off a battle, and like most such delaying tactics, it will make the battle more ferocious when it actually comes. It might be different if the moderates believed in something more than moderation for the sake of moderation. But they don't. They are just the people who believe (in some cases, like Chafee's, accurately) that moderation is more politic, given their own circumstances. If Bush nominates a conservative for the Supreme Court, and he probably will, my prediction is this deal is going to blow up big time.
posted by thomas at 5/23/2005 10:27:00 PM

 
The Filibuster Deal: How it Happened
By Mike Rappaport

For the moment, I will postpone commenting on whether this deal is a bad one for the Republicans to focus on the separate issue as to how it could have happened. Why do these centrist Senators have all of this power?

The short answer is that they usually don't. The median voter theorem says that in legislatures, the centrist voters should have the power. But under the party system, there are strong forces causing the median voters to stick with their party. This occurs especially on issues where party cohesion is deemed important, which includes the appointment of appellate judges. As a result, something like the median voter of each party controls the party, and median voter of the majority party then controls the legislature.

But this system can always unravel, if the median voters decide to bolt, which is what they did in this case. The centrist voters of both parties joined, and pursued their own preferences.
posted by Michael at 5/23/2005 09:13:00 PM

 
Recognize anyone?
By Tom Smith

Honesty is still the funniest. Go Lileks.
posted by thomas at 5/23/2005 08:00:00 PM

 
Fat Hype
By Tom Smith

Our friend and frequent recruiting target Paul Campos at Colorado-Boulder gets a lot of play in this must-read (for people who follow this sort of thing) article on the obesity controversy. Paul's book The Obesity Myth, seems to be getting a lot of attention. Some sages criticized Paul for writing a book that is not really about Law, as in The Law. People who know Paul know he is not overly preoccupied with what other people think. He even has certain tendencies toward fearlessness, an extremely rare trait in academics, which makes you wonder what tenure is for . . . In any event, the book seems to be just the sort of thing a Public Intellectual should write. If medical mavens are spouting bad science in order to maximize grant money, somebody has to call them on it, and other scientists may be reluctant to do so. Good work, Professor. Now, for another helping of mashed potatoes.
posted by thomas at 5/23/2005 05:40:00 PM

 
Return of the Sith
By Mike Rappaport

Like most everyone, I caught the final Star Wars episode over the weekend. And my verdict was a strong thumbs up. The movie did pretty much what I thought it needed to do: finish the story from the first two episodes, show how Aniken turns to Vader, and explain in a believable way how the characters got from the end of episode 2 to where they were at the beginning of episode 4.

In preparation, I watched episode 4 (that is, the first Star Wars from 1977, A New Hope), which helped. Most of Sith was consistent with A New Hope.

And of course Sith had some great scenes, including two of the fights that everyone has wanted to see since the first two movies came out. If not for the weak acting of Hayden Christensen, the movie really would be quite excellent.

But I can't help ending with something of nit: When they are trying to hide Luke from the Emperor and Darth Vader, why do they give him the same last name that his father had -- Skywalker -- especially since they do not appear to place him in a family which had that last name?
posted by Michael at 5/23/2005 05:37:00 PM

 
Leiter on the Filibuster
By Mike Rappaport

You have to give Brian Leiter credit. While many commentators on the filibustering of judicial nominees make exaggerated claims, he takes the cake. Just sign me, "Evil"
posted by Michael at 5/23/2005 04:09:00 PM

 
The Law Deans and Judicial Independence
By Gary Lawson

On May 10, 2005, a gaggle of law deans sent a letter to Congress complaining about criticism of the judiciary. In particular, the deans were hot and bothered by intimations that judges might suffer consequences, and perhaps even impeachment proceedings, as a result of their decisions. The letter’s conclusion regarding the constitutional power of Congress to discipline rogue federal judges was that “[r]ecent threats of retaliation against federal judges by members of Congress and others harm the rule of law and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers . . . . [I]t is irresponsible and harmful to our constitutional system and to the value of a judiciary that is independent, in fact and appearance, when prominent individuals and members of Congress state or imply that judges may be impeached or otherwise punished because of their rulings.” The letter’s argument in support of this conclusion about the constitutional power of Congress to discipline rogue federal judges was that “[r]ecent threats of retaliation against federal judges by members of Congress and others harm the rule of law and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers . . . . [I]t is irresponsible and harmful to our constitutional system and to the value of a judiciary that is independent, in fact and appearance, when prominent individuals and members of Congress state or imply that judges may be impeached or otherwise punished because of their rulings.” No, wait -- that was the conclusion. No, wait -- that was the argument. No, wait -- that was the conclusion . . . .

Surely I must have left something out. Surely such a distinguished group of academic minds could not have neglected to include anything remotely resembling an argument for an important proposition of constitutional law in a well-publicized letter to Congress. Let’s look at the full text to see what I missed:

Recent threats of retaliation against federal judges by members of Congress and others harm the rule of law and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers. We strongly oppose these threats of retaliation. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with their opinions, we express our full support for judges who properly discharge their constitutional responsibilities by deciding the cases before them as they believe the law requires.

We recognize that Americans will often disagree, as do we, with particular judicial opinions. But the legislative and executive branches have constitutional means available to them to seek to alter the law as declared by the judiciary. An effort to use those means is part of our tradition of separation of powers and is entirely proper. But it is irresponsible and harmful to our constitutional system and the value of a judiciary that is independent, in fact and appearance, when prominent individuals and members of Congress state or imply that judges may be impeached or otherwise punished because of their rulings. We urge them to stop.

Well, that certainly tells us what the law deans oppose, express, support, recognize, and urge. But there is nothing in this statement that communicates to any modestly intelligent creature why any reasonable person would oppose, express, support, recognize, and urge such things. This is not a minor omission. The Constitution permits impeachment and removal of “all civil Officers of the United States” for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” and specifies that federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” Do these provisions permit Congress to impeach and remove judges for issuing ludicrously bad decisions? One might expect a letter addressed to that subject to devote an odd sentence or two to the constitutional provisions involved; after all, if those provisions do indeed give Congress power to impeach and remove judges for mangling the law beyond recognition, then it is hard to see how mentioning such a power could “harm the rule of law and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers.”

Is it self-evident that judges cannot be impeached for rendering absurdly stupid decisions? Suppose that a judge decides cases based on the names of the parties by always ruling in favor the party with the largest number of letters in his or her last name (with appropriately imbecilic tiebreakers to handle the occasional Lawson v. Leiter dispute). Or suppose that a judge decides cases based on race. If it is not beyond the realm of conceivability that these could be impeachable offense, it is not a huge leap to conclude the same about a judge who decides cases based on the political platform of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (or the conservative wing of the Republican Party) rather than on the law as it objectively exists.

My point here is not that it is permissible to impeach and remove federal judges for issuing ludicrously stupid decisions. (I do believe that it is permissible, but that is not my point here.) My point, rather, is that the law deans’ letter fails to make anything recognizable as an argument for its rather boldly proclaimed assertions of constitutional law. If this is what our deans regard as legal reasoning, it is no wonder that we have a generation of legal minds who think it obvious that the Constitution guarantees the right to suck out a baby’s brains.

Note: Our friend Gary Lawson is a law professor at Boston University.
posted by Michael at 5/23/2005 11:59:00 AM

 
ETS President Hurls Ill-Considered Insults
By Gail Heriot

American corporate leaders have never been known for their political courage. They generally try to keep their heads down when any sort of threat is in the air. Way down if possible. Unfortunately for conservatives, the result is usually corporate statements and activities with a distinctly politically correct flavor. Corporate leaders correctly recognize that it is far easier to get hurt by angering those on the left side of the political spectrum than it is by angering those on the right. Consequently, they make very sure that they give no cause for offense in the leftward direction even if it means occasionally rubbing everyone else the wrong way.

But the Educational Testing Service goes too far. Sure, ETS considers itself vulnerable to left-leaning political attacks on account of its products--the SAT, the LSAT, the MCAT, etc. On average (subject, of course, to significant individual variation), Blacks and Hispanics don't do as well on these tests as Asians and Whites. Here are the SAT I group averages from 1999 (the year for which I happen to have the statistics handy):

Asians: 499 Verbal/565 Math
African Americans: 431 Verbal/425 Math
Mexican Americans: 453 Verbal/460 Math
Whites: 528 Verbal/530 Math

These figures are disappointing to almost evryone. As a result, ETS has had to defend itself from attacks from the left. For example, the Clinton Administration's Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights Norma Cantu went so far as to issue guidelines for the use of standardized tests, which, if implemented, would have wiped ETS off the face of the Earth--thus shooting the messenge rather than solving the problem.

But none of that excuses the full-page advertisement that ETS has taken out in the Weekly Standard (and I assume elsewhere)entitled "Making Diversity a Reality." Of course, it's a paean to diversity. But that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Every corporation in America sings that tune. What bothers me is Landgraf's reckless accusation concerning the motives of employers who find work place diversity difficult to achieve. In the ad, he states:

"[T]he response that 'We want to have a more diverse workforce, but we just can't find enough qualified candidates' doesn't cut it. Worse than an excuse, it's frequently code for something else entirely."

Say what? Landgraf doesn't specify what the "something else" is, but it's obvious from the context that he's talking about racism. It is evidently Mr. Landgraf's opinion that American employers are "frequently" covering over sinister racist motives when they complain of their difficulties.

Such an accusation trivializes the the genuine problems faced by employers seeking to hire qualified minority (or non-minority)employees. ETS, perhaps more than any corporation in America, is aware of those difficulties. Talented employees are hard enough to find when race and ethnicity don't matter. Finding them in just the right skin color is very difficult indeed.

Was this ridiculous statement written by Landgraf himself? Or one of the many diversity "experts" that ETS has hired in recent years in a mostly unsuccessful effort to appease ETS' critics. Either way Landgraf is way off base and should apologize.
posted by Gail at 5/22/2005 05:41:00 PM

 
Dr Jekyll I Presume
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Extremely interesting review in the (London) Times Literary Supplement of a "Dictionary of British Classicists" -- several volumes of short biographies of classical scholars. The reviewer skewers academic biographies in general for bloodlessness: a bland avoidance of what is often most interesting about the people in question.

One of the Dictionary entries, for example, is about a German Jewish refugee at Oxford from 1935 to 1953 named Eduard Fraenkel. The bio gives almost no information about Fraenkel's personal life. There have been other short biographies of him elsewhere, but they are almost as unrevealing. A typical one describes him as working hard at his desk all day, going back to work after dinner "unless a guest claimed his attention", and then walking home to his wife Ruth. "The other aspect of Fraenkel which completes the standard picture", says the review, "is his suicide, just a few hours after the death of Ruth. 'Fraenkel chose not to survive her and died at his home', as [one bio] elegantly puts it"; another, more "extravagant", says "We revere his suicide, for love".

In fact, says the reviewer, it was well known to everyone in the tight-knit world of Oxford classicists that Fraenkel was an insistent "groper" of female students, often in private after-dinner tutorials, a "predilection" well known to Ruth.

Says the reviewer:

Any academic woman older than her mid forties is likely to have an ambivalent reaction to this. On the one hand, it is impossible not to feel sisterly outrage at what would now be deemed a straightforward case of persistent sexual harassment and the abuse of (male) power. On the other hand, it is also hard to repress a certain wistful nostalgia for that academic era before about 1980 when the erotic dimension of pedagogy – which had flourished, after all, since Plato – was firmly stamped out. Mary Warnock [a distinguished former student of Fraenkel's] herself shares that ambivalence, weighing the damage done - to Fraenkel’s wife no less than to some of his “girls” - against the inspirational teaching which came with, and was inextricable from, the “pawing”. In more than one newspaper interview she has singled Fraenkel out as the best teacher she ever had.

As for Fraenkel's suicide,

It would be foolish to imagine that love for one’s wife is necessarily incompatible with “pawing” one’s female students. But Fraenkel’s uxoriousness does look rather different in the light of the experiences of Mary Warnock (who refers directly to Ruth’s unhappiness at Fraenkel’s “predilections”). At the very least, the authorized version of Fraenkel's career and character fails to do justice to what was obviously a much more complicated and interesting reality.

This is an exceptionally intelligent and humane review. It is light years away from any sort of crude "political correctness". Far from picking on Fraenkel, the reviewer evinces sympathy toward the Jewish refugees in Oxford who had fled the Nazis, "many of whom, whatever we like to think, found acceptance here difficult".

Who is the reviewer? It is Mary Beard, the Oxford classicist. Beard was the most egregious participant in the notorious "Symposium" in the London Review of Books a few weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The Symposium offered dozens of short essays on the attacks by regular LRB contributors, almost all of them extraordinarily ugly: seething with anti-Americanism, paranoid, and obsessive in expressing hatred for the State of Israel, whose existence -- in the clear opinion of many of the contributors -- was the reason if not the justification for the attacks. But the ugliest of all was Mary Beard, whose explicit view about Americans under attack was "They had it coming". (The LRB has never posted the Symposium online. I won't speculate why...)

Does Beard's very impressive review in TLS soften my feelings toward her? It would if anything could. Nothing can, I'm afraid. She has all but formally announced, after all, that she would rejoice if I and everyone like me were murdered. But perhaps there is something here, as Mary Beard says of Eduard Fraenkel, along the lines of "a complicated and interesting reality".
posted by maimon at 5/21/2005 02:33:00 AM

 
Is Harvard Unconstitutional ....?
By Gail Heriot

John Eastman recently drew my attention to the Massachusetts Constitution, which contains the following provision on Harvard University:

Chapter V, Section I, Article I. Whereas our wise and pious ancestors, so early as the year [1636], laid the foundation of Harvard College, in which university many persons of great prominence have, by the blessing of God, been initiated in those arts and sciences which qualified them for the public employments, both in church and State; and whereas the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, and the great benefit of this and the other United States of America, it is declared, that the president and fellows of Harvard College, in their corporate capacity, and their successors in that capacity, their officers and servants, shall have, hold, use, exercise, and enjoy all the powers, authorities, rights, liberties, privileges, immunities, and franchises which they now have, or are entitled to have, hold, use, exercise, and enjoy; and
the same are hereby ratifiedand confirmed unto them, the said president and fellows of Harvard College, and to their successors, and to their officers and servants, respectively, forever.

The document justifies giving Harvard special privileges and immunities (although it isn't clear exactly what those privileges and immunitie are) on the ground that the encouragement of arts and sciences "tends to the honor of God" and "the advantage of the Christian religion."

This raises an amusing question. If the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chose to ratify and confirm Harvard's status in order to confer honor on God and advantage on the Christian religion, shouldn't that make the grant (or the re-grant) of Harvard's charter "unconstitutional" under some popular interpretations of the Establishment Clause? I suppose Harvard could argue that the Massachusetts Constitution was adopted on 1780 and hence the grant was already complete by the time the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution was adopted. But I doubt anyone would argue that if the Commonwealth had granted any official status to the Unitarian Church that it would be "grandfathered" in simply because the grant had occurred before 1788. Maybe the ACLU can be persuaded to look into this.....
posted by Gail at 5/20/2005 03:38:00 PM

 
Coulter on Newsweek
By Mike Rappaport

Ann Coulter takes a lot of flak, not only from the MSM but also from many of those on the right. Most of it is undeserved. But whatever you say about her, she often writes with power and insight that others lack. As an example, take a look at her most recent column on the Newsweek story. This is by far the best criticism of Newsweek and MSM attitudes that I have seen.
posted by Michael at 5/20/2005 11:21:00 AM

 
The Federalist Society Has an Heir
By Gail Heriot

Congratulations to my friends Gene and Lori Meyer on the birth of their first child. The as-yet-unnamed son entered the world at 10:43 a.m. Tuesday. May 17, 2005, weighing 7 pounds, 3 ounces. Mother and child are doing fine at Fairfax Hospital.
posted by Gail at 5/19/2005 07:37:00 PM

 
Now we know why Stanford and USC win
By Tom Smith

This is weird -- on psychology of sports.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2005 01:19:00 PM

 
The most boring nuclear event ever
By Tom Smith

There's something weird in the zeitgeist surrounding the confrontation in the Senate over judicial nominees. I can't quite figure it out. For one thing, the MSM doesn't seem quite as hysterical as they should over it. They are somewhat hysterical yes, but it is certainly not the "Satan himself has been nominated to the Court" that we had with both Bork the Infidel and Clarence the Unbeliever. Is the story too complicated? Are the liberals holding fire? Or are they just outnumbered and exhausted? Or are they just rightly embarassed by the position that the President and the majority of the Senate should not together be able to select federal judges, if 41 democratic Senators disagree? I know extremely distinguished constitutional scholars have taken both sides in this debate, in some cases first the one side, and then the other. So it is hard to know what to think. But to me, the fillibuster seems an odd constitutional principle to take a stand on. And in the event, not a very good tactical choice either, as it seems the Senate rules probably will allow the majority to force debate to end and a vote to be taken. In any event, what puzzles me is why the end of the world talk has been relatively muted. If I had to guess I would say, they're saving themselves for the Supreme Court fight. Remember, when you say "right to choose," you're not taking about Republican Presidents.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2005 12:55:00 PM

 
LA Times shocks with sensible editorial
By Tom Smith

I am agog.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2005 12:53:00 PM

 
The Church of Chess
By Tom Smith

Eugene has a link to a nice law professor authored chess site. It is not exactly what the doctor ordered -- more on that later. My problems are more basic. The following exchange from this morning explains.

My 13 year old Luke: Dad, did you really call chess club "The Church of Chess"?
Me: Yes, Luke. I was trying to get everybody to shut up. They wouldn't talk in church, so I was telling them it was the church of chess, where they should just be quiet and play chess. I thought it was a pretty good analogy.
Luke: Well, everybody is making fun of you now for saying that.
Patrick (11): Yeah, Dad. Everybody is making fun of you.
Me: Well, it was just a joke. To try to get people to quiet down.
Patrick: They didn't know it was a joke. They thought you were weird.

They have no idea.

The problem I see with teaching chess is to get the little demons to play plausible openings (e4 or d4) and not do STUPID THINGS (a4 is an ever popular stupid first move). Another big problem is the transition between the first few moves of the opening and what you might call the later opening. It seems very hard to convince kids they really should think about things like establishing a position or even getting control of the center of the board. Too boring, I guess. Instead they go off on these bizarre lines that would make smoke come out of Deep Blue's cooling vents.

There's only one more meeting this year. Next year, I think I'm going the Supernanny route. There will be tables, assigned games, scores kept, tournaments, clocks and scorecards kept. By God. The whole, we're just getting together to have fun playing chess, is a recipe for chaos and ennui. Structure! Order! Of course, they may find some other dad who is less weird.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2005 12:33:00 PM

 
"Deep Blue Campuses"
By Gail Heriot

These figures are from the Leadership Institute's study of political giving by employees of elite universities. I've included the most extreme schools (both pro-Kerry and pro-Bush)--Dartmouth, which was 100% for Kerry and Vanderbilt, which was only 64% for Kerry. I've also included some of the schools that are nearest and dearest to the hearts of Right Coasters. The actual study includes more schools.

Harvard: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--25 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar%--97% to 3% //Number of Donations--406 to 13

Princeton: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--302 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar%--99.7% to 0.3 //Number of Donation--114 to 1

Yale: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--20 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--95% to 5% //Number of Donations--150 to 3

Duke: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--9 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--90% to 10% //Number of Donations--98 to 7

MIT: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--43 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--98% to 2% //Number of Donations--121 to 2

Stanford: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--6 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--86% to 14% //Number of Donations--257 to 28

Columbia: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--8 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--89% to 11% //Number of Donations--197 to 14

Dartmouth: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--Infinity
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--100% to 0% //Number of Donations--39 to 0

Northwestern: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--11 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--92% to 8% //Number of Donations--100 to 6

Washington U.: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--2 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--65% to 35% //Number of Donations--56 to 14

Cornell: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--29 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--97% to 3% //Number of Donations--142 to 7

Chicago: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--3 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--73% to 27% //Number of Donations--77 to 15

Rice: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--3 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--72% to 28% //Number of Donations--21 to 6

Notre Dame: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--3 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--75% to 25% //Number of Donations--18 to 8

Vanderbilt: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--2 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--64% to 36% //Number of Donations--76 to 26

Univ. of California: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--21 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--95% to 5% //Number of Donations--694 to 28

Michigan: Kerry/Bush Dollar Ratio--10 to 1
Kerry/Bush Dollar %--91% to 9% //Number of Donations--159 to 7
posted by Gail at 5/18/2005 10:40:00 AM

 
So you'd like to . . . know all about the constitutional/nuclear option
By Tom Smith

Here it is boys and girls: the alleged script for how it will go, or might go.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2005 08:52:00 AM

 
But is it art
By Tom Smith

I really miss the NYC art scene.

I think it's important that this sort of thing be federally supported.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2005 05:03:00 PM

 
New Affirmative Action Study
By Gail Heriot

After the passage of Proposition 209, many argued that even highly qualified minority students had ceased to apply, because they felt "unwelcome" at the University of California. This argument was used to justify a massive increase in the UC's spending on outreach (as well as to show that Proposition 209 was a bad idea in the first place). If this new study is correct, it may have been a false alarm. The study finds that the number of highly qualified minority students who chose to send their SAT scores to the UC did not drop off following the adoption of color blind admissions policies. As Gilda Radner might have put it, "Never mind...."
posted by Gail at 5/17/2005 11:39:00 AM

 
Cola comments
By Tom Smith

I liked "I'd like to teach the world to sing" better. Anyway, I'm diet Coke person myself. Now I can not drink Pepsi and feel like I'm making a political statement.

Which reminds me, at my alma mater, Cornell, there is a tradition -- no honorary degrees, no commencement speakers. It just isn't done. Think about it: With all the graduation addresses you have heard, have you ever heard one that was memorable for something other than being bad? The commencement address at Yale Law School when I graduated was an offensive left wing rant. (I remember the studly Tony Kronman remained in his seat, refusing to join the standing ovation, even though he is hardly a conservative.)
posted by thomas at 5/17/2005 09:22:00 AM

 
UN has new anthem
By Tom Smith

This is funny.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2005 07:12:00 AM

 
Hands Across the Aisle Against the Boycott
By Maimon Schwarzschild

US academics, including many on the political left, are condemning the boycott of Israeli scholars and universities that left-wing academic unions are fomenting in Britain. Here is a post on one anti-boycott petition now circulating: there are already more than 4,200 academic signatures, including Todd Gitlin (whom I admire very much), Juan Cole (whom, otherwise, I don't), Richard Rorty, and many others.

As the post notes, the British boycott had been condemned by the American Association of University Professors; and also by the Middle East Studies Association, which is not a Zionist front, to put it mildly.

Full credit, and all honour, to each of these individuals and groups.
posted by maimon at 5/17/2005 02:03:00 AM

 
Powerline on Newsweek's Blunder
By Mike Rappaport

It is hard to believe just how bad the MSM is these days. This Powerline post also has the interesting comments of John Steele Gordon (whose book on American Economic History I recently finished and will strongly recommend in a post later this week).
posted by Michael at 5/15/2005 11:46:00 PM

 
"Revisionism" Revised
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Victor Davis Hanson has it right about Second World War "revisionism", which is now routine in American elementary schools and high schools, as well as on college campuses (of course) and on the usual newspaper op-ed pages:

Revisionism holds a strange attraction for the winners of World War II. American textbooks discuss World War II as if a Patton, Le May, or Nimitz did not exist, as if the war was essentially the Japanese internment and Hiroshima. That blinkered and politically correct focus explains why so many Americans under 30 are simply ignorant about the nature and course of World War II itself. Similarly, the British have monthly debates on the immorality of their bombing Hamburg and Dresden.

In dire contrast, even the post-Soviet Russian government will not speak of the Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact, the absorption of the Baltic states, the murder of millions of German citizens in April through June 1945 in Eastern Europe, and the mass execution of Polish officers.

Read the whole thing.
posted by maimon at 5/15/2005 01:17:00 AM

 
On This Day in Constitutional Non-History...
By Gail Heriot

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was scheduled to get underway on May 14, 1787. But things did not get off to a good start. When the appointed day came around there was no quorum. Nor was there a quorum on May 15th, 16th, 17th or for many days thereafter. Some began to worry that the convention would be a bust as a similar meeting in Annapolis, Maryland had been the year before.

I would tell you how the story ended, but I have a feeling that you know.
posted by Gail at 5/14/2005 05:39:00 PM

 
Ironic Accidents
By Mike Rappaport

When I moved to California from the East Coast, people often noted the additional risk of earthquakes. Of course, though, earthquakes and accidents are hard to predict. This collapse of a retaining wall in northern Manhattan occurred in the neighborhood where I grew up and where my mother still lives. If memory serves, I used to play football on the portion which collapsed. Good thing I no longer play football.
posted by Michael at 5/13/2005 01:36:00 PM

 
Dartmouth Coup d'Etat
By Gail Heriot

Congratulations to renegade candidates Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson for being elected to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees. Powerline and Inside HIgher Education have more.

The first thing I'm going to do when I finish this post is try to find out what other colleges and universities have alumni-elected trustees. Perhaps we can make this a trend ....
posted by Gail at 5/13/2005 11:20:00 AM

 
Serial killer Michael Ross executed in Connecticut
By Tom Smith

Ross was a graduate of Cornell University (my alma mater). The history of the investigation, convictions and appeals is particularly circuitous. I'm of two minds about the death penalty, but he certainly seems like a good candidate for it.

Some interesting questions raised, including, should "sexual sadism" qualify as a mental illness that mitigates the penalty for murder? And, to what extent should the convicted murderer's desire to be executed to attone for his crimes be taken into account? Curiously, as Ross arguably become more sane on medication, his sense of guilt and desire to be executed increased.

Also note, the one woman who survived one of Ross's attack put up a fight.
posted by thomas at 5/13/2005 07:13:00 AM

 
Famous All Over Town
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Fascinating review in the New Criterion by "Theodore Dalrymple" of a novel by Rahila Khan, or rather "Rahila Khan". The novel is called "Down The Road, Worlds Away".

The novel is about Muslim immigrant girls growing up in Britain, "down the road, but worlds away" from their often-loutish white underclass neighbours and schoolmates. Says Dalrymple:

The girls are vastly superior, morally and intellectually, to their white counterparts. Their problem is precisely the opposite of that of the white youths: far from nihilism, it is [their parents'] belief in a code of ethics and conduct so rigid that it makes no allowances for the fact that the girls have grown up and must live in a country with a very different culture from that of the country in which their parents grew up. In the eyes of their parents, the girls are easily infected with, or corrupted by, the dream of personal freedom, and since the only result of such personal freedom that the parents see around them is the utter disintegration of the white working class into fecklessness and slovenly criminality, where every child is a bastard and families are kaleidoscopic in their swiftly changing composition, [the parents] become even more rigidly conservative than they might otherwise have been.

Rahila Khan's novel was published by Virago Press, a feminist publishing house in England. But it soon emerged that "Rahila Khan" is actually a Church of England vicar, the Reverend Toby Forward. Male. White.

("Toby Forward" sounds invented too, but it's apparently not.) (When Eric Blair in the 1930s suggested possible pen-names to his publisher, he offered "the Reverend Blewberry Jones" as well as "George Orwell". Would the Berlin Wall still be standing if Orwell's publisher had made the wrong choice...?)

As for "Down the Road, Worlds Away", Virago Press -- true to its name -- was outraged when the Rev Forward came forward, and promptly pulped the book. You will not be able to find it.

Theodore Dalrymple thinks very highly of the book. Read the review. Dalrymple, a prison psychiatrist in England, reveals much -- as he always does -- about life, especially underclass life, in Britain.

The "Rahila Khan" story is reminiscent of the great Chicano novel "Famous All Over Town", by an unknown young Danny Santiago: in fact a very good novel. "Famous" turned out to have been written by an elderly WASP named Dan James. A Hollywood scriptwriter in the 1930s, later blacklisted for his Communist connections, Dan James was luckier than "Rahila Khan". His novel was not pulped, despite James' having been a Yalie and no Chicano. The book is still very much in print.

"Theodore Dalrymple", meanwhile, is really Anthony Daniels, who sometimes also publishes under his own name.

I, by the way, am really Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I am hoping my books won't be pulped if my true, not very Russian, identity is ever discovered.
posted by maimon at 5/13/2005 02:05:00 AM

 
Creative Lawyering
By Gail Heriot

When a death row serial killer says he is tired of the appeals process and wants to die, what does a good attorney acting in the public interest do? How about bring a lawsuit arguing that the execution should be enjoined because it constitutes state-assisted suicide and will encourage other prison inmates to kill themselves too? "Suicide contagion" they call it. "These prisoners will try to kill themselves in the hours, days and weeks following Michael's death,'' the suit states. Hmm.
posted by Gail at 5/12/2005 05:32:00 PM

 
Stop Us Before We Lie Again
By Mike Rappaport

CBS is at it again. Do they realize they are lying? Either way, they are either knaves or fools.
posted by Michael at 5/12/2005 03:40:00 PM

 
Silly Statute Struck Down
By Gail Heriot

Loyal readers with incredibly good memories may recall a post I did back on September 29, 2003 while the Davis Recall was pending. If not, I re-produce it:

Karl Marx isn't one of my favorites, but he nailed one thing: History
repeats itself--first as tragedy and then as farce. The continuing battles over affirmative action and California's Proposition 209 are a case in point.

The original tragedy occurred when the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offered so much hope for racial reconciliation, was transformed in part into an instrument for discrimination. All too quickly after it became law, its clear ban on race discrimination was interpreted to apply only to members of certain races. The country was forced to be satisfied with only half a measure. Discrimination against whites and Asians was fine, even encouraged.

It took almost three decades for Californians to draw the line, but they finally did. Crystal clear language was drafted: No race discrimination may be practiced by the State of California or its subdivisions, not against any person, no matter what his or her race, not even for superficially well-meaning reasons. With the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, voters put a stop to preferential treatment based on race (or sex or ethnicity).

Or at least they thought they did. Members of California's Legislature have frequently voiced dissatisfaction with Proposition 209's requirement of race neutrality. And recently with Gray Davis's blessing, they took action. They passed a statute that purports to interpret, but that in reality twists, Proposition 209 into somethings more to their liking. If the courts accept this new law as an authoritative interpretation of Proposition 209, it will "interpret" the initiative right into oblivion.

A.B. 703--taken from the U.N.'s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination--exempts from the definition of race discrimination "measures taken for the sole purpose of securing adequate advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups." In other words, it exempts precisely the kind of case voters were thinking of when they passed Proposition 209 in the first place. Proposition 209's opponents could not ask for a more complete and dramatic back-from-the-grave victory.

Fortunately for the strong majority of voters who cast their ballots for Proposition 209, the whole enterprise is a fool's errand. California's comically out-of-control legislature has no power to bind the courts to an interpretation of a voter initiative, particularly when, as here, the interpretation is so obviously contrary to the voter's understanding of the initiative.

No one can argue that Proposition 209 was a stealth initiative. It was debated in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, in churches and meeting halls and over breakfast room tables all over California. Its basic purpose was well known. If Proposition 209 doesn't apply to the kind of affirmative action measures described in the new law, then the Migratory Birds Act doesn't apply to creatures with feathers. The courts are unlikely to view this legislative escapade as anything more than another reason to be embarrassed for their state government--though I suppose anything is possible.

Gray Davis was never a friend to Proposition 209. But at least in the past he could be counted upon to veto the more ridiculous excesses of the Legislature. These days, however, Davis evidently thinks he cannot afford to antagonize any Democratic constituency. The result has been a feast of special interest legislation of which A.B. 703, which Davis signed into law, is just one one example. For some Californians unsure of how to vote on the recall, it may be one example too many.

Anyway, the statute was struck down in the California Superior Court today. I can't say that this was a great victory, since if the forces of truth and reason couldn't win this one, then they probably couldn't win anything. But it is a victory, and sometimes you have to take your victories where you find them.
posted by Gail at 5/12/2005 02:02:00 PM

 
Filibustering Judges
By Mike Rappaport

At the Conspiracy, Orin Kerr asks whether anyone has written about "the structural and systematic effect of filibustering judicial nominees." It just so happens that John McGinnis and I have looked at this question in a recent article. As readers of this blog will know, our conclusion is that the ideal rule for confirming judges "would be a supermajority rule for Supreme Court nominees, but only a majority rule for circuit and district court nominees."

The Supreme Court has substantial power to entrench new norms under the Constitution. Many of the same reasons that support requiring a supermajority to enact new norms through a constitutional amendment also support requiring a supermajority before confirming officials who will have the power to entrench new norms. In particular, a supermajority rule would have the effect in this area of making it harder to confirm justices whose views significantly depart from the political center.

By contrast, a supermajority rule is needed much less for circuit court judges, because they lack the power to establish new norms. Moreover, a supermajority rule would tend to reduce the diversity of views among circuit court judges -- a diversity which contributes to the quality of judicial decisionmaking.

The supermajority rule for Supreme Court nominees, however, should only be adopted through a bipartisan agreement between the political parties. (For example, it could be applied prospectively beginning in January 2009). If one party applied it unilaterally, the rule would be likely to lead to high decisionmaking costs -- that is long delays in confirming nominees -- because the President would be reluctant to compromise with the Senate minority and instead would attempt to fight what he would regard as an improper decisionmaking process.
posted by Michael at 5/12/2005 01:32:00 PM

 
You know you're doing something right when . . .
By Tom Smith

Daily Kos is upset. Enjoy.

Actually, I feel bad. In the interest of building bridges, pouring oil on the waters, and making sure we don't hurt anybody's feewings over saying hurtful things about the enslavement of half of Europe for half a century, which was, after all, inevitable, not that bad, necessary to make the world-historical omelette, better than Hitler at least, and maybe not the product of a first class mind, but certainly the product of a first class temperment (which is, after all, the thing, you know, temperment, that and the cut of your jib), I ofter this little morsel. Just a little Yalta memory.

What! Will no one speak up for the sainted FDR?! I call the first witness!

Besides, there was no way to know Stalin was that bad.
posted by thomas at 5/12/2005 12:21:00 PM

 
You are not the lightning
By Tom Smith

But the problem is, the tracks released so far on the new Audioslave album are incredibly lame. Chris Cornell prating about how you have to "be yourself" -- that's original -- instead of telling his former lover "when you asked for light I set myself on fire." The latter, we know exactly what he is talking about, if we've ever been the bottom in a relationship, and a lot of us have. But "be yourself"? Who is this, a guidance counsellor? The first Audioslave album is, by rock and roll standards, something of an astonishment. Musically interesting, emotionally compelling, and addicting to listen to. A hard act to follow. And I fear they will not. Nothing would please me more than to be wrong about this.
posted by thomas at 5/11/2005 10:43:00 PM

 
Some American crimes may not be named
By Tom Smith

What an extraordinary thing that Bush actually apologized for Yalta. Nothing can have shown more clearly that he is miles ahead of the dunderheads at the Times and the Post, who still think it is 1962. Some habits die hard, I guess. Yalta was a profound disgrace. It never would have happened but for FDR's illusions about Stalin. If FDR had made a deal with Hitler, I like to think we would have no problem seeing it as evil, but for mysterious reasons, the illusion of Uncle Joe refuses to die, or dies only very slowly. W just put another stake in that stubbornly animate corpse. Arthur Schlesinger may never figure it out, but in Latvia, Poland, Hungary and everywhere else in the former Soviet empire, they know what Bush acknowledged, that they were betrayed by what Eisenhower called a crusade for freedom. Their freedom was sold cheaply, far more cheaply than we sold the British, Italians or the French. And the French had a lot more to answer for than the Poles.

Nothing could show more clearly than Bush's apology how far he has moved away from the realist camp of his father, Kissinger, Nixon, and the rest of them. It's hard to imagine Reagan making those remarks about Yalta. He may have thought it, but it would have been too radical for him to say. There is still apparently some need to apologize for the Evil Empire in aging Democratic circles, but nobody will hear it in Warsaw or Budapest. What a bracing thing it is to see new democracies forcing old democracies to speak the truth. This is Bush's evil empire moment. Yalta was necessary, Yalta was justified, Yalta was just realistic -- more filler for history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.
posted by thomas at 5/11/2005 10:12:00 PM

 
Treating pain
By tom smith

this is interesting.

posted by thomas at 5/11/2005 04:54:00 PM

 
St. Kristof the Ignorant speaks
By Tom Smith

This has got to be my least favorite canard. This is the claim, close to absurd on its face, that the Catholic Church is encouraging the spread of AIDS by not promoting the use of condoms in the Third World, especially Africa.

Notice how innocent of anything like statistics Kristof's opinion piece is. It is called opinion, and boy, that's what it is.

The spread of AIDS in Africa has a lot of causes, none of them pretty. Not having condoms is the least of their problems. For one, many southern Africans favor dry sex. You haven't heard that? Well, maybe you don't know a hell of a lot about African sexual practices, just like Kristof. I heard about it from an infectious diseases expert in Peru, who mentioned several reasons for the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Catholics not being one of them. If Africans are averse even to natural or artifical lubrication, because they don't like the way it feels, just how are condoms going to save the day? Kristof makes it sound like all these happy innocents just want to have nice, sex with a condom, but darn it, Sister Chastity told them no condom, so boo hoo, I guess we will just have to risk AIDS. What rubbish. The huge cultural barriers against condoms in Africa don't need any help from the Church. It's just a convenient way to bash the Catholics. How sad for the New York Times that abortion doesn't cure AIDS.

Oh, here's a fact. Catholicism is small, minority religion in the African countries where incidence of AIDS is highest. However, maybe the Vatican is somehow controlling behavior remotely.

Here's another thing. All kinds of extra- marital or extra-stable relationship sex is common in Africa. Prostitution is rife. So is sex with children, "sugar daddy sex," promiscuity and various other practices that help spread AIDS. Lots of discussions of AIDS downplay this, but it is extremely important. Yes, it doesn't help that so many Africans choose not to use condoms, but the deeper problem is that so many choose to frequent prostitutes, keep multiple sexual partners, and infect their young mistresses. The idea that if the Church would just support condoms, this would all change, is ridiculous. What needs to change is behavior. Prostitution is a horrific industry in Africa that exploits women and children mercilessly. In many instances, it is simply sexual slavery. If Kristof wants to help the victims of the world, maybe he should say something about that, instead of criticizing the dedicated people who actually work to help the victims in these places, rather than getting paid top dollar to recycle tired lefty bromides.

And yes, AIDS is also a disease of poverty in Africa. It has more to do with lack of jobs than lack of condoms. What African women need is a place to work besides a brothel, not a brothel with plenty of condoms. What African children need is schools, not truck drivers with plenty of rubbers. Kristof may think he is just indulging in a little innocent Catholic bashing, but what he is really doing is showing his typical American liberal ignorance about the plight of the people his moral betters -- I refer to the priests, nuns and lay people who are actually working in Africa -- are trying to help. Catholic charities are doing a lot more to fight AIDS in Africa than Kristof and the New York Times are. All he is saying in effect is, Let's make sexual exploitation more hygenic! The Congo isn't some Manhattan day academy, and theTimes is not helping by not telling lies about the Church.

Some info.

Catholic Relief Services in Africa.

Another example.
posted by thomas at 5/11/2005 11:03:00 AM

 
Yalta
By Mike Rappaport

In response to outrageous columns like this one by Jacob Heilbrunn, Jonah Golberg explains why Yalta was a travesty.
posted by Michael at 5/11/2005 10:47:00 AM

 
Fate of the academy
By Tom Smith

This at opinionjournal is a must read, if not the best written thing in the world.

Some observations and quibbles. I simply do not believe that the University of California will, or is anywhere close to deciding to, provide sex change operations to "transgender" students on the California taxpayers' dime. I don't have any evidence for not believing it; I just don't believe it. California taxpayers would go insane. There may be some committee talking about it somewhere, but they may as well be talking about our ethical obligations to extra terrestrial visitors.

I do think that the quotation from Marcuse is well taken. The enemy of many on the sexual left really is the family. Just because you're a paranoid right wing nut doesn't mean there really are not people who want to kick the legs out from under ordered liberty. Why they want to do so is a job for a psycharitrist. One hopes someday there will be a medication that works for this problem. I must say, it is the hard core anti-family people that give me pause about gay marriage. Every time I meet some nice gay couple that seems more married than, oh, say, some people in my parish I could name, I think, of course gay marriage should be legitimized. Just about then you read something that makes you realize there really is a campaign against the family (you may have to decipher a lot of jargon to realize that, however).

Kimball is also correct that a lot of the zaniest left wing claptrap has been institutionalized in universities. Maybe Catholic universities will be like Irish monasteries of old, preserving civilization while the rest of the country slides into the PC Dark Ages. Or, maybe they'll just all become "universities in the faith tradition formerly known as Catholic, but please don't hate us!"

One note of cautious optimism. Students seem increasingly sensible to me. (Granted, I am at a Catholic university, and at a law school known as conservative because we have a half dozen conservatives out of 40 or so faculty members.) The looney academic left must have difficulties gaining converts. It must be graying. When Smith or Wesleyean goes all PC weird, that creates opportunities for other institutions. The marketplace for ideas works slowly and imperfectly, but I think it still works. But who knows. Look at France.
posted by thomas at 5/11/2005 10:42:00 AM

 
The New Intelligence
By Mike Rappaport

From a review by John Leo in the Wall Street Journal (not available online without a subscription):

Steven Johnson, the author of last year's "Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life," is now determined to topple the reigning clichés about pop culture. Not to worry about all those sarcastic sitcoms, humiliating reality shows and murderous video games, he says in "Everything Bad Is Good for You" (Riverhead Books, 238 pages, $23.95). Throughout the vast wasteland a kind of education is taking place: Electronic culture and movies are teaching us how to grapple with an ever more complex society.

Following Marshall McLuhan, Mr. Johnson argues that most of us pay too much attention to the content of pop culture and not enough to how the culture alters our minds and frames what we learn. Video games may be obsessed with shooting aliens and rescuing princesses, but they build cognitive muscle by dangling rewards and forcing decision-making. They develop "visual intelligence" and "coping skills."

It is true that at least since the Mario Brothers game hit the console in the 1980s, parents have been quietly amazed that very young children can negotiate video worlds where the rules are unclear. Picking up rules on the fly is a decisive advantage in life, Mr. Johnson notes. So is the ability to persist long enough to penetrate a complicated world. The average video game takes 40 hours to complete, yet millions of young people who would be sure to fall asleep after five sentences of Hemingway are willing to play to the end.

I sure hope Johnson is right, for my kid's sake. John Leo, the author of the review, is skeptical, though.
posted by Michael at 5/11/2005 12:43:00 AM

 
Do You Mean Extremely Moderate?
By Gail Heriot

My friend Roger Clegg posted an item on the NRO Corner yesterday:

"The AP story today on the Bush judicial nominees being filibustered says that they are being targeted because of what Democrats call their “extreme views” on affirmative action, among other issues. I would submit that it is not possible to have an “extreme view” opposing affirmative action. The furthest to the right you can be is to want racial preferences in college admissions, employment, and contracting completely eliminated—but that is actually the mainstream position, if by mainstream we mean what most Americans favor. It is possible to be an extremist in the other direction—favoring, say, mandatory quotas for every classroom in every university in every state in the country—but not on the right."

Roger has a point. How can opposition to racial preferences be out of the mainstream? In the two states that have had voter initiatives on the ballot prohibiting racial preferences, both passed by substantial margins--California (54.6%) and Washington State (58.22%). Moreover, Drs. Paul Snideman and Thomas Piazza, co-authors of The Scar of Race (which I recommend) and leading experts on public opinion, state that the racial preference agenda "is controversial precisely because most Americans do not disagree about it. Over the past decades, their opposition has been consistent, unyielding and from all corners of society. For example, a poll conducted by the Washington Post a couple of years ago showed that 94% of whites and 86% of African Americans agreed that hiring, promotions,and college admissions should be based "strictly on merit and qualifications other than race/ethnicity."

Supporters of racial-based admissions policies argue that public opinion is malleable on this issue and that results vary according to the way the question is asked. The point about results varying is true: But they vary only to the extent that they go from bad news for supporters of race-based admissions policies to very, very, very bad news. For example, the Gallup poll released just a day before the Supreme Court's decision in the Michigan cases was touted by some as evidence of public support for race-base admissions, because a plurality (49%) expressed support for the abstract concept of "affirmative action." But respondents made a clear distinction between affirmative action and preferential standards. A full 69% said that college applicants "should be admitted solely on the basis of merit, even if that results in few minority students being admitted." Only 27% took the position that an applicant's race should be taken into consideration "even if that means admitting some minority students who otherwise would not be admitted."

It is laughable to argue that Bush nominees are out of the maintream on this issue.
posted by Gail at 5/10/2005 11:02:00 AM

 
Hitchens nails it
By Tom Smith

CH may be an anti-Catholic bigot, but he nails it with this one.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 07:09:00 PM

 
Judging while Black
By Tom Smith

Democrats have invented a new kind of racial profiling. If you are judging while Black, you had better mind your p's and q's. Ditto for Hispanic jurists. See Hentoff.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 06:57:00 PM

 
That's funny, you don't smell gay
By Tom Smith

Those darn scientists are at it again.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 06:47:00 PM

 
More on the Federal Estate Tax
By Gail Heriot

My friend and former student John Wallner is unimpressed with Irwin Stelzer's efforts to refute the arguments against the Federal Estate Tax:

"...Irwin Stelzer [stated]:

'* Inheritance taxes force the sale of small businesses or farms. No. Any such entity surely has borrowing power in excess of the amounts required to meet the taxman's demands, and can therefore raise any needed cash. Besides, a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Thomas Dunn and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (the latter is now director of the Congressional Budget Office) suggests that an entrepreneur's "propensity to become self-employed" is affected far more by the human capital he or she inherits than by inherited financial assets. So inheritors of businesses, and of that "self-employed propensity," are not likely to sell out and join the ranks of wage earners merely because the value of the enterprise they inherit is taxed.'

This may be a theoretical issue to Mr. Stelzer, but it is not for me. The margins on agriculture and cattle (I am a cattleman) are very small -- having to get a huge loan to continue owning the family farm will kill that farm for the low-end producers (which family farms normally are.) Larger farms are corporations, and do not have this problem.

Why does Mr. Stelzer not tell us why family owned farms should be heavily (and I believe unfairly) taxed every generation, but not their largest competitors (corporate farms)? A one-sentence "No" is hardly an argument.

Also, heavy leverage is common in agriculture, and small farms are already heavily in debt. It is not the case that 'Any such entity surely has borrowing power in excess of the amounts required to meet the taxman's demands.' He offers no evidence for this claim, except to assure us 'surely'. I find it unlikely. "

John certainly has a point that estate taxes will sometimes be enough to put businesses over the edge and Stelzer is certainly wrong to suggest that any business "surely" has the borrowing power it needs to get past the tax man. Some won't. But I'm not sure that's enough to cause me to want to abolish the tax. All taxes have the capability of putting low-margin enterprises out of business--certainly property taxes and sales taxes do, but sometimes even income taxes do. You can be like my fellow RCer Tom and talk about abolishing all sorts of taxes, but if we start with the premise that there are going to be taxes, then the question is not whether the estate tax will drive some low-margin enterprises out of business, but whether the estate tax is more painful or less painful method of taxation than the alternatives. In general, I would guess it to be less painful (and if it isn't it less painful, I would guess that it can be made less painful by employing methods like those suggested by my fellow RCer Mike). The nice thing about an estate tax is that usually the guy who had been enjoying the wealth is too dead to miss it and his heirs have not yet put themselves in a position where they just can't afford to part with any of it. I certainly don't advocate onerous taxes on estates, but modest ones might be a good idea.

((As for corporate farms vs. family farms, aren't both subject to estate tax in the sense that if Grandpa owned stock in a corporate farm, that stock is subject to estate tax upon his death and it may be sold to pay the tax? The heirs who thought that they were going to be stockholders of a corporate farm may thus find that they are not. Somebody else now owns the stock. In that respect at least, the situation is like that of the family farm. If the farm, is sold to pay the tax, the heirs who expected to own the farm find that somebody else does instead.))
posted by Gail at 5/09/2005 03:20:00 PM

 
Remember . . .
By Tom Smith

The late 'seventies/early 'eighties. There's a lot I miss about being in my twenties, but being so dumb is not one of them.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 12:27:00 PM

 
FCC, Hollywood take hit
By Tom Smith

The good ol' DC Circuit just gave it to Hollywood and the FCC on the chin, and I'm glad. I don't have a legal opinion on the matter. I haven't read any ad law opinions lately, something to be avoided if possible. But as a matter of politics, anything that erodes Hollywood's cultural monopoly has to be a good thing. Let a thousand flowers bloom; not all of them can be (to mix metaphors) obnoxious, prating, overpaid termites determined to chew at the foundations of Civilization.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 08:43:00 AM

 
"Omelette" and "omelet" are both okay, "omlette" isn't
By Tom Smith

The above from RC'er Gail Heriot. All I can say is, I'll try to do better. On the hopeful side, pretty soon I'll probably forget how to say omelette and start saying "egg thingy."

On the food and wine front, last night I prepared dinner for my lovey wife Jeanne for mother's day, and I must say it was a tasty success. I used a couple of recipies from the big, new Gourmet cookbook which is now out, and which has to be one of the biggest collections of great recipies ever to appear in print. Over 1000 of them, which passed one hurdle to get into Gourmet magazine in the first place, and another to get included in this "best of." I made sauteed lamb chops with a sauce of butter, cream, lemon juice, and onions, garnished with fried capers and italian parsley, and an endive, red onion and orange salad. It came out perfectly, and I served it with a very nice Merlot, which is a swell wine, Sideways notwithstanding. And I did it all without getting stressed out. OK, that last part is a lie, but if children would learn to obey their fathers instantly and with enthusiasm, there would have been no problem.

The entertainment for the evening was Sideways from Netflix, after kids were in bed. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, even though I don't see why there should have been so much excitement over the movie. Both the male characters, Miles and Jack, are quite pathetic. I was relieved it managed to have a happy ending, or at least a hopeful one. Apparently as a result of this movie, merlot sales have plunged, as Miles, the wine loving, as yet unpublished novelist in the movie, loathes merlot. There is nothing wrong with merlot. I like merlot. It may be more accessible than some wines, but so what. I prefer a classic cab, but really, it's just something to drink, for heaven's sake. One of the things you see in the movie is people turning to wine (and in Jack's case, sex) to find something that is not in their lives. Extremely sad stuff. Make sure your glass is filled up with a great merlot.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2005 08:00:00 AM

 
Two Generalizations about Liberty
By Mike Rappaport

No bourgeoisie, no democracy (Barrington Moore)
No feudalism, no socialism (Louis Hartz)

And that tells you what is so special about America.
posted by Michael at 5/09/2005 07:57:00 AM

 
More Crusading, or, God Will Know His Own
By Maimon Schwarzschild

A few further thoughts on the crusades and European Christendom. (For those of you who had enough from Tom Smith and me on this subject last week, forgive us, and scroll on.)

First, some points on which I agree with Tom. I think the liberal democracies of the West -- most of them Christian or post-Christian -- today represent a good way of life, not perfect of course, but almost certainly the best way of life on a large scale that there has ever been. The enemies of the West offer alternatives that are much, much worse, if they offer anything at all. I count the Communists and Nazis as having been such enemies: they had Western roots, but they saw themselves as enemies of the West, which I believe they were. Today, the enemies of the West –- both within and without –- are my enemies.

I agree that Christianity is, or was, crucial in creating the West. As such, it may indeed be difficult to know what “that's valuable in European civilisation could or would have evolved without it”.

Tom goes on to argue that the Crusades, and all the Christian wars against Islam, made possible the West as we know it today.

But Christendom surely has a very mixed secular history. When it comes to political institutions, I’m not sure it’s the West as such that I admire, so much as what the English speaking world has created, and exported (more or less successfully) around the world. The older democracies in Continental Europe, such as they were, developed mostly along very anti-clerical lines; and apart from a few small ones like Switzerland and Scandinavia, they were notably fragile. In the past century, on the other hand, English-speaking institutions have been very influential, including in those parts of Continental Europe and the Far East where they were basically introduced by force of arms. Which political institutions and cultures in Christendom, without roots in the Anglosphere, does Tom particularly admire? Feudal Europe? The Bourbons? The Concert of Vienna? The Spanish and Portuguese empires, whose successor states in Latin America and the Phillipines are corruption-ridden and deeply troubled to this day?

Isn’t it asking a lot to solicit support for the Christian side in every battle in the past thousand years, regardless of what the Christian side actually did, on the grounds that it all somehow “led to” English liberty many centuries later?

It's not as though the Crusades, and Christendom's later religious wars, weren't lethal on what you might call a twentieth century scale. The Crusader massacres devastated the Jewish communities of Europe: many communities like Mainz were slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child. The Crusaders' slaughter of Eastern Christians in Constantinople was just as horrific. Later, the 16th and 17th century Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants are reckoned to have killed fully one-third of the German speaking peoples in Europe, as well as countless others. This sort of death toll is enviable even by Stalin's standards. Stalin's Communism killed tens of millions -- in peacetime -- and brought untold suffering, but even he didn't kill 1/3 of the people of the USSR.

There is the famous story from the French crusades of the Catholic captain who captured a town in the south of France that was mostly -- but not entirely -- "heretic". The Duke who commanded the captain had made it known that all heretics should be slaughtered whenever possible. The captain asked the Duke, now that he had taken the town, how he should distinguish the Catholics from the heretics. "Kill them all", said the Duke suavely, "God will know His own."

So, was Christian warfare against “Mohammedanism” -- if not the Crusades proper, then in later centuries -- a Good Thing in the long view? Who can know how things would have turned out if history had taken a different turn or two?

Bernard Lewis, the historian of Islam, points out the perennial conflict within Islam between urban civilisation on the one hand, usually fairly tolerant and often with a superb high culture, and the desert ethos on the other, puritanical, hostile to urban sophistication, and geared towards war against any and all infidels. If Islam had prevailed, or even held its own better, in its wars with the Christians, how would things have developed? Might the Muslim "city" have prevailed in turn, far better than it has in fact, over the Muslim "desert"?

What about English democracy? Would it never have happened? Edward Gibbon has a passage about how Oxford might have become an Islamic seminary, with the muezzeins calling the faithful to prayer from the dreaming spires of the Oxford colleges. But he was at least partly teasing, as usual.

As for me, I don't how to judge things on a thousand-year perspective. Did the bloodbaths of the crusades, or for that matter the devastation of the Jews of Spain in the 1300s and 1400s, "lead to" Parliamentary democracy in Saskatchewan and the Securities and Exchange Commission? I go for democracy and the West, pugnaciously and even fervently. That includes Saskatchewan and the SEC. But I can only judge the crusades -- and the "reconquista" and the Wars of Religion -- for what they were. The eighteenth century Enlightenment, whose ideas were so important to the American Founders, took a dim view of all these things. A horrified view, in fact. Me too.
posted by maimon at 5/09/2005 01:50:00 AM

 
Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East
By Mike Rappaport

That is the name of an article by Bernard Lewis in Foreign Affairs discussing the emergence of authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world, regimes which replaced the more traditional, moderate governments in the region. A good piece, but I wish that Lewis had spent more time discussing those moderate governments and explaining how they contributed to the great Islamic civilization of the past.
posted by Michael at 5/09/2005 12:16:00 AM

 
Nice horse
By Tom Smith

There was another horse named "Russians love their children too," and it just gave up and let the other horses win because iy didn't want to make them mad.

posted by thomas at 5/08/2005 05:57:00 PM

 
Die death tax, die, die, die
By Tom Smith

I hate the death tax. But for the death tax I might be a gentleman rancher in Idaho. At least, the big ranch(es) on my mother's side of the family ended up being sold to pay inheritance taxes. They probably would have failed anyway, but I still hate the death tax. Yes, I know, that particular problem has been fixed for farms and ranches, after however many hundred or thousand farms and ranches were forced to be sold to pay taxes. Now, if you spend enough on lawyers, you can probably figure out a way to pass your business on to your kids. It's like money spent on locks and security guards. If you don't spend the money, somebody will steal you blind.

But forget me. Support of the death tax is just creeping egalitarianism. It's just the clinging remainders of the view that if you didn't earn something yourself, somehow, the government should take it and give it someone who deserves it even less. This is a very silly view. What justifies a transfer of wealth is that someone wants me to have it, and so do I. A gift given and accepted is every bit as much a free transaction as a contract. You could say that the state should be able to tax every transaction, which they are happy to do, but there's no special justification for it. Other than that it can, so it does.

One could say taxing bequests is somehow more efficient than taxing earned income, and maybe it is. But in this tough, old world, the real battle is about somehow getting the state to take less from us. Taxes are too high. Too much gets taken to be redistributed to achieve political ends. If getting rid of the death tax locks one drawer in the pantry that the morbidly obese government can't get its hands on, then lock it, I say. And if it slams shut on its pudgy little fingers, so much the better.

Here's the story of the death tax. John makes some money in his business and wants to leave it to his kids so they can have an easier life than he had, which he remembers largely as working his butt off all the time. Ah, but do his children really deserve it? Did they earn it? Oh, well, maybe not. So, let's take half of that money, then the government can use it to build a Museum on the History of Wool and pave a road to a donor's house and pay social security to some guy who doesn't need it. Let's take that money from the people whom the guy who earned it wanted to give it to, and it give it to people who really don't deserve it. Oh yes, and the guy who earned it already paid a third to a half of what he earned to the government anyway. It's not double taxation, it's another sort of thing that allows the government to take more of what the guy who earned it earned. It only looks like double taxation, in the sense that it is economically indistinguishable from double taxation. If you are willing to pay three hundred bucks an hour, you can get your tax lawyer to explain it to you.

I worked across Pennsylvania Avenue from the IRS for a few years, and I would walk past it on the way to the Mall. I would see that epigram of Holmes, I think, up above the pillar: Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. And I would wonder, so where's the civilized society? And, society seems to be getting less civilized, yet taxes are going up. What gives? So I say get rid of the death tax, and probably a lot of other taxes besides. My guess is, things would get more civilized, not less.
posted by thomas at 5/08/2005 05:16:00 PM

 
AudioSlave does Havana
By Tom Smith

And this one goes out to the Supreme Leader . . .

When you wanted me I came to you
And when you wanted someone else I withdrew
And when you asked for light I set myself on fire
And if I go far away I know you'll find another slave . . .

. . . Now I'm free from what you want!
Now I'm free from what you are!

No wonder they were cheering.

posted by thomas at 5/08/2005 05:07:00 PM

 
Those darn Communists
By Tom Smith

In this piece What Gulags?
the WSJ explains how harmful it is not to see the past for what it was. Russians nostaligic for the Soviet Union are not the only culprits. Plenty of American academics do their part to keep the vaults of the past locked and the evil spirits unexorcised. If things had gone differently at Moscow and Stalingrad, and Hitler had won the war well enough to secure a separate peace for Fortress Europe, and his kingdom of night lasted 50 years or so, you can bet there would be plenty of American academics who would say, what Jews? and Naziism was never really practiced, and you can't make omlettes without breaking eggs.
posted by thomas at 5/08/2005 04:47:00 PM

 
Great Literature: "To Be or Not To Be: That is the ... Chimpanzee..."
By Gail Heriot

Grading student essays is very time consuming. Chimpanzee. And frequently it’s painful. Mandrill. But it’s an important part of the job of a law professor. Bonobo. And I can’t help feeling that when my colleagues give multiple choice only exams that they are not doing an important part of their jobs. Siamang.

But perhaps relief is on the way. Gibbon. Or perhaps not. Baboon. Associated Press reports that some University of Missouri sociology professor is trying to come up with a computer program that will grade his students’ essays automatically. Macaque. Just scan the essay and it’s graded. Gorilla. So even the most time-pressed professor will have the time. Orangutan.

In fairness, I should point out that so far the professor is using this software only for drafts. Marmoset. But a similar technology is already being used to grade the essay portion of the GMAT. Langur. And a half million K-12 students are already getting their essays graded by a yet another computer technology. Tamarin. It’s a growth industry. Bushbaby.

The up-side of the technologies is that they are quick, they don't miss anything that they are programmed to see, and they are consistent. Vervet. The more obvious down-side is that they are formulaic and easy to game. Grivet. Indeed, a few years back, one clever "troublemaker" simply scattered the word “chimpanzee” throughout his text and found the grading software he was working with would give him a higher score. Loris.

Maybe I'll be proven a fool some day, but I'm not optimistic about the likelihood that these problems can be overcome. Lemur. In the meantime, however, I'm doing what I can to improve my own writing. Potto.
posted by Gail at 5/08/2005 03:00:00 PM

 
More on the Estate Tax
By Mike Rappaport

As long as we are coming clean, I too must admit to being somewhat agnostic about eliminating the estate tax. Sure reducing taxes is great, but the question is whether eliminating the estate tax is worth raising taxes somewhere else. (Or, if we are planning on reducing taxes, whether we should eliminate the estate tax rather than lowering marginal rates on income taxes.)

The effect on small businesses strikes me as the strongest argument for eliminating the estate tax. Still, there may be other alternatives. Off the top of my head, I could imagine allowing the tax to be paid over a ten year period or when the business is sold, whichever occurs first.
posted by Michael at 5/07/2005 06:59:00 PM

 
Now that the House Has Voted to Eliminate the Federal Estate Tax Permanently...
By Gail Heriot

I've always been slightly unnerved by what seems to be the near uniformity of opinion among my fellow conservatives in opposition to the federal estate tax. The passion with which they make their case never seems in any way proportional to the strength of their argument.

Think tanks denizens are frequently the worst offenders--and it's easy, though just a bit troubling, to see why. Those institutions depend on contributions from wealthy and usually elderly individuals for whom the estate tax is a significant issue. And if an issue, particularly a financial issue, is important to an institution's donors, it will be important to the institution--at least if the institution wants to grow and prosper.

I was pleased therefore to see Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute writing in the Weekly Standard with a more skeptical view. Among other things, he attempts to meet some of the more common arguments against the tax:

"* Surviving spouses will suffer. No. Inheritance taxes are not levied on spousal transfers--quite right, since we now recognize that the accumulated wealth of husband and wife is due to the efforts of both.

* Inheritance taxes are "death duties" or "vulture taxes." No. They are not levied on people foolish enough to die, but on those lucky enough to be named beneficiaries in a will. The Wall Street Journal's rallying cry, "No taxation without respiration," is catchier than it is accurate.

* Inheritance taxes constitute "double taxation." No. They are
one-time taxes on the income of the recipients of inherited assets, not a double tax on those who earned the money in the first place. Besides, as William Gale (Brookings) and Joel Slemrod (University of Michigan) point out in a paper prepared for a National Tax Association symposium, "It turns out that much of the wealth subject to the estate tax has not previously been taxed."

* Inheritance taxes force the sale of small businesses or farms. No. Any such entity surely has borrowing power in excess of the amounts required to meet the taxman's demands, and can therefore raise any needed cash. Besides, a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Thomas Dunn and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (the latter is now director of the Congressional Budget Office) suggests that an entrepreneur's "propensity to become self-employed" is affected far more by the human capital he or she inherits than by inherited financial assets. So inheritors of businesses, and of that "self-employed propensity," are not likely to sell out and join the ranks of wage earners merely because the value of the enterprise they inherit is taxed."

I suppose it's getting to be a little late to be making arguments on this issue. Stelzer predicts that the Senate will follow the House lead and vote to make the elimination of the federal estate tax permanent. And like me, he is not sure if that's a bad thing. "But," he concludes, "the burden will be on the inheritance-tax repealers to decide which taxes they will raise to make up for the lost revenue--$1 trillion over 10 years. Unless, of course, they favor a still-larger deficit."
posted by Gail at 5/07/2005 12:58:00 PM

 
Kingdom of Whatever
By Tom Smith

Well, almost the entire brood, including my lovely wife Jeanne, and one friend, saw the Crusader movie Kingdom of Heaven yesterday. 18 month old Mark stayed with his nanny.

My 13 year old loved the movie. I think he tends to see these movies as "plot plot plot BATTLE! BATTLE! plot plot plot," so this movie had enough to keep his interest. I however was a little disappointed. Not hugely. Just a little. On a scale where Ridley Scott's previous battle epic Gladiator would get an A or A-, Kingdom of Heaven gets only a B.

The reason is simple. The movie has a very weak script, which is to say, it just does not have an interesting story to tell. To make a movie like this work, you need a strong story that gives vivid characters credible motivations. Gladiator ("My name is Gladiator, and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next!") is motivated first by the desire to be a good general and servant to wise Emperor Marcus, and then by the quite understandable passion to revenge his horribly murdered family. The praetorians crucified his lovely wife and children, for heaven's sake. That would irritate anyone. But he gets captured by slavers, ends up in the ring and has to fight his way up to where he has a shot at the disgusting perv emperor Maximus, whose motives are also quite clear. He wants absolute power, popular adulation and to get it on with his sister. Yukky, but it makes for a good villain.

In contrast, the characters in Kingdom are opaque. Orlando Bloom seems to think crusading will ease the pains of his suicide wife in hell, but he seems to forget her quickly enough when he lays his eyes upon the hot future Queen of Jerusalem. He comes across as a confused, drifting sort of hero. Realistic perhaps, but not good movie material.

The villains similarly make no sense. Guy de whathisname, husband of hot sister of the Leper King Baldwin, wants to start a war with the Sarecens, but why? It is obvious he cannot win. Evil as he is, does he think God will not let him lose? It is completely obscure. His greasy henchman, Raymond de wherever, actually has a line where he says something like, "I'm a villain, that's just what I do," and indeed, that's about all the sense it makes. He's off to provoke war, kill Salladin's sister, and generally be awful because, well, that's just the sort of chap he is. Villains need motives too. Actually, their motives may be the most important of all. In a particularly nice example, in the pretty darn good western Tombstone, Wyatt Erp asks Doc Holiday what motivates the almost unbelievably nasty Ringo (I think it's Ringo). Doc says "Revenge." Wyatt says "Revenge? Revenge for what?" "For bein' born," says Doc, and you think you know exactly what he means, and why that makes Ringo an especially depraved sort of villain. The wickedness of the Crusader villains, you're supposed to take on faith, I guess. (Speaking of motives, of Wyatt's motives, Doc says "It's not revenge he's after. It's a reckoning." A great line, perfectly delivered, and all the better for its utter opacity.)

Is Kingdom of Heaven offensive PC tripe? I did not take it that way, but a good case could be made that it is. Orlando Bloom (Baron Balin or whatever his name is) has the chance to save Jerusalem, get the hot Queen, with whom he has sort of fallen in love, maybe, or at least is fond of, get rid of the villains, and save the people from war. We know what W would have done. But no, doing that would smack to much of preemptive war, I guess. Baron B cannot, and keep his soul pure, even though it is far from clear what would be morally objectionable in this course of action, and seems a bit finicky for a guy who has thrown a priest in furnace and is busy boinking the married princess, even if her husband is a bad guy. (In a memorably stupid line, princess hotness says to Orlando, immediately before throwing herself at him, that "In the East, there is nothing between people but light." What the heck does that mean? Something like "forget it, it's Chinatown"? or "Dude, you can't let all this atmosphere go to waste"?) If Baldwin wants to name Orlando as heir, what is wrong with that? If Raymond and Guy end up getting the chop because they won't acknowledge him, isn't that their own doing? It's not explained; we just have to assume it was too dirty for Orlando. Just like defending against terrorism is wrong if it means you might have to kill anybody. Guy and Raymond head off to war, it being perfectly clear they will die in the desert, as they promptly do, and it's on to the seige of Jerusalem. The seige scenes are technically impressive, but there is no suspense, since you know the Crusader defenders are just fighting for good terms of surrender. This they get, and everyone gets to march out of Jerusalem under the banner of honorable surrender.

It's hard not to see this as a metaphor for how Hollywood sees US foreign policy. Everything would be fine if we would just not provoke the Mohammedans, but for inexplicable reasons, the bad guys in power have to provoke them. At that point, the most that can be hoped for is honorable surrender to the powers of the non-West, who after all have the cooler clothes, better climate, and vastly superior interior decorators. But there is honor in surrender, because it's all about saving the people. It's not so bad not being King and Queen; you get to ride off into the horizon, as if on a camping trip.

So, yes, I'm afraid the movie, which seems silly at first viewing does upon reflection resolve into a PC tale that is deeply stupid. But perhaps not intentionally so. It comes across as not really being aware of how dumb it is, which is more than you can say for a lot of Hollywood products, which seem intelligently designed to gnaw at the foundations of civilization. The movie also seems to view Islam as a more benign religion than Christianity, which certainly seems an odd historical judgment to make. The vague, questing spirituality of Orlando Bloom and Liam Neesom seem OK, but the Church comes across as very much the realm of evil doers. Orlando tells a paunchy, cynical, sneering Bishop "you've taught me a lot about religion." I suppose we should be grateful there was no subplot about the right to choose, like maybe a deformed baby that really had to be exposed on a hillside for the good of everyone involved.

In defense of the movie, however, it's sheer dunderheadedness becomes clear only upon reflection. You can definitely watch it for the battles and the locations. It is almost up to the Gladiator standard on that score. I could have done with more close quarter combat of the Gladiator kind, where one could see how the fight choreographers conceived of medieval fighting styles, about which a lot has been learned in the last 20 years or so. You can see a bit of that, and it is pretty good, with fights showing how weapons are versatile. If you know a bit about weaponry, you can see a nice variety of weapons, including swords, maces, axes, war hammers and crossbows. The Muslims seem to favor round shields, swords and spears, and much less in the way of hammers, axes, and maces. I don't know whether that is accurate or not. Siege artillery is given a prominent role in the big battle, which I suspect is realistic. However, I wonder if the trebuchets would really be capable of achieving the low angle, high velocity shots shown in the movie. Cool looking, but I think the physics is dubious.

My advice is, if you like big epic battle scenes, the movie is worth watching. Just don't expect a particularly good story inbetween the battles. If you are not battle scene person, you might enjoy the costumes, which are extremely well done. But otherwise this is a missable movie. It's too bad, because any sensible script, which was inhabited by recognizable humans, would have made the movie so much better.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2005 09:05:00 AM

 
Remember the Alamo: It was all about slavery
By Tom Smith

Well, this is annoying. The kid's channel Nickelodeon is running this little "educational" spot about the Battle of the Alamo. You know, the one where a few hundred Texans fought Santa Ana's army, and ended up dying to the last man. I get the feeling it means something to Texans. Personally, I enjoyed the movie.

Well, now I know different! According to the cartoon channel Nickelodeon, in fact, it was all about Texans fighting to preserve slavery, against those "Mexican authorities" who wanted to end it! The Mexicans were liberators, not conquerors. Not the "shrine of Texas liberty" as the Alamo website says, but just the holdout of a bunch of slavers fighting off Mexican liberators! What a relief Nickelodeon is there to put all those little Texans straight.

There must be some Texans who read this blog, or people who read this blog who know Texans. I would link to the little spot if I could, but I can't find any links to it. Tivo Nickelodeon for a few hours on a Saturday morning, or maybe weekday too, and it will show up. Nickelodeon really deserves to get some grief for this one. There are some pretty influential Texans around, I believe.

I'm sure slavery was part of the story. But so was not wanting to be under the thumb of a none too benign Mexican regime, I would be willing to bet. I'd say the last 150 years or so has borne out the judgment of those who figured they'd rather have their kids grow up in the USA.

On a slightly related subject, California is no better. At the Catholic Academy where we send our kids to school, they use what I believe is the standard curriculum used in the public schools for California history. I asked my son what he had learned about the missions of California and he replied without hesitating that "they were concentration camps for Indians." This is not what Catholic schools should be teaching kids about the missions of California. I'm sure it was not all sweetness and light; but it certainly wasn't genocide either. We have a hall and a statue named after Father Serra here at USD. I think we here at USD take some pride in the Spanish Mission heritage of this region. We're across the street, or freeway more precisely, from the Alcala mission, which makes a pretty darn picturesque view. Every building on campus is built in the Spanish Mission style. I really don't want my kids to look at them and think, oh, there's the concentration camp. I'm sure whatever the California state authorities have come up with doesn't say precisely that. But kids are geniuses at cutting to the essential message. They know what they are being taught. The Alamo: Texans fighting for slavery. California Missions: concentration camps.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2005 08:35:00 AM

 
William Buckley on Withdrawing from Iraq
By Mike Rappaport

I am a great admirer of William Buckley, but for the life of me I can't understand his position on Iraq. His latest column reiterates his concern that the US leave Iraq, if not now, then apparently soon.

I find this extremely odd. The case for continuing our presence is that it helps the Iraqis pursue freedom and democracy, which is in our interest, and that a country in the Middle East that is free and democratic, with US help, will tend to promote these values in other countries in the region, which is also in our interest.

The loss of American lives is, of course, a serious matter, but I find it hard to believe that these goals are not worth it. That is especially the case if we conclude that our premature withdrawal might cause the new regime to unravel.

Perhaps if Buckley provided some explanation for why he does not believe the continued presence of the US in the area is worth it, that would help. But alas he does not.
posted by Michael at 5/07/2005 01:06:00 AM

 
Althouse on the Role of the Judiciary
By Mike Rappaport

Quite effective.
posted by Michael at 5/06/2005 10:51:00 AM

 
Attractive women for freedom
By Tom Smith

I don't really understand this blog trend of posting digital pictures of attractive women at pro-democracy demonstrations. But anyway, here's the latest from Lebanon. I do think there is some kind of sociological indicator at work. Or maybe it's just another excuse to post pictures of women on the internet. Or maybe there's some kind of evolutionary psych explanation. In any event, I don't think it's good news for all the democracy will never work in whatever hell you happen to be talking about nay sayers.

Sometimes I wonder, could the 21st century be as good as the 20th was bad? Could the era of the unbelievably stupid and evil (Let's get rid of property! Let's kill all the Jews/landowners/people who can read/people not as black as we are/people who actually know how to farm) but believed-by-intellectuals ideologies, actually be coming to an end? If that's what beauties going to demonstrations for freedom means, then post away.
posted by thomas at 5/06/2005 09:56:00 AM

 
Conservative Postmodernists
By Tom Smith

This is interesting, and I think there's some truth in it. Some conservatives, especially religious conservatives, take post modern tacks. Mostly, I suspect, for pragmatic reasons.
posted by thomas at 5/06/2005 09:36:00 AM

 
Taranto on the Religious Right
By Mike Rappaport

James Taranto writes in the Wall Street Journal words that I easily could have written myself:

I am not a Christian, or even a religious believer, and my opinions on social issues are decidedly middle-of-the-road. So why do I find myself rooting for the "religious right"? I suppose it is because I am put off by self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and contempt for democracy and pluralism--all of which characterize the opposition to the religious right.

One can disagree with religious conservatives on abortion, gay rights, school prayer, creationism and any number of other issues, and still recognize that they have good reason to feel disfranchised. This isn't the same as the oft-heard complaint of "anti-Christian bigotry," which is at best imprecise, since American Christians are all over the map politically. But those who hold traditionalist views have been shut out of the democratic process by a series of court decisions that, based on constitutional reasoning ranging from plausible to ludicrous, declared the preferred policies of the secular left the law of the land.

For the most part, the religious right has responded in good civic-minded fashion: by organizing, becoming politically active, and supporting like-minded candidates. This has required exquisite discipline and patience, since changing court-imposed policies entails first changing the courts, a process that can take decades. Even then, "conservative" judges are not about to impose conservative policies; the best the religious right can hope for is the opportunity to make its case through ordinary democratic means.

In the past three elections, the religious right has helped to elect a conservative Republican president and a bigger, and increasingly conservative, Republican Senate majority. This should make it possible to move the courts in a conservative direction. But Senate Democrats, taking their cue from liberal interest groups, have responded by subverting the democratic process, using the filibuster to impose an unprecedented supermajority requirement on the confirmation of judges.

posted by Michael at 5/05/2005 10:29:00 PM

 
Offensive Language
By Mike Rappaport

Interesting post on the biases of lexicographers. What a shock that this profession displays a liberal bias.
posted by Michael at 5/05/2005 05:18:00 PM

 
Law professors and students need a new drug, and other news
By Tom I forgot the rest

We need this and we need it now. Hurry up, scientists. I sounds even better than, than, that coffee drug thing. It's on the tip of my tongue.

And in the meantime, keep eating those berries.

Loneliness is worse than you thought. Just add that to global warming as something to brood about in your terrible moments of terrible loneliness.

You should have skipped the potato chips, fatso.

How to build a dream team, according to the mathematicians.

Maybe they could put one in a Prius.
posted by thomas at 5/05/2005 03:18:00 PM

 
Weird little cameras for very tiny subjects
By Tom Smith

Courtesy of weird physics (evanescent light waves? Who knew.) we can now take pictures of very tiny objects, very useful for the upcoming nanotech calender.

And now, digital cameras and lasers will be able to make detailed 3D maps of cities in a matter of hours . . . Can somebody say Instalink? No? I don't know why I bother with this stuff . . .
posted by thomas at 5/05/2005 03:10:00 PM

 
God wills it (or not)
By Tom Smith

Arguing world history, especially if it bears significantly on the history of the Jews, with Maimon is a job for someone braver than I, or at least better read. I have ordered a couple of books on the Crusades recommended by loyal readers and, assuming I actually read them, I will be far, far better informed than I am now.

Having said all that, I will just express some doubts as to whether it is really all that clear that the Crusades did not contribute to the security of Europe at a time when the Mohameddans, if I may use that quaint term, were doing a credible job of conquering the world. Maimon suggests the Crusades actually weakened Byzantium and made it more vulnerable to the Ottoman Turks. I am not even close to having an informed opinion on this. I am just at the crude level of wondering whether, with an expansive Islam on the march in the 11th century, the establishment of Christian kingdoms in the Near East did not act as an obstacle and distraction to Islamic expansion.

It is interesting that some of the debate might turn on how one defines "Crusades." The old Catholic Encyclopedia wants to define all wars against Muslim "invaders" as Crusades or Crusade-like. Under that definition, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain would count as a Crusade. While sometimes the behavior of the Spanish and French makes one wonder, I think I am glad the Spaniards did that. Though, it may well not have been good for the Jews, what with the Inquisition and all. If you took all European resistance to the expansion of Muslim empire or empires into Europe, or attacks that had that effects, as part of Crusades broadly defined, it's hard for me at least to see how there ever would have been a Europe without such wars. I may well be missing some important dynamic in my simple minded way of looking at it, however. Certainly it would be impossible to justify the Sack of Jerusalem, which stands out as a particularly horrible event, in terms of early medieval geopolitics, except as an exercise in speculation.

I do not think it is fair to compare the Crusades or any of the other religiously-inspired sanguinary episodes in European history to Communism. For one thing, the scale of bloodshed is orders of magnitude different. In a bad month, Stalin killed more people I should think, than in any of the religious wars one has heard of. For another, the Crusaders were not trying to enslave the world to a particularly odious ideology, though this is no doubt what PC historians would have us believe, not just about the Crusades but about the sale of Coca-Cola.

Christianity has its critics, and it would be hard to argue it has done well by the Jews, but at least in my world view, I don't see how everything that is valuable in European civilization could or would have evolved without it. In a world were there were not even organized states as we know them, I am not sure how one would defend a nascent European civilization, except by inspiring a counter religious fanaticism. Yes, this is eggs and omlettes. But it is not as if anyone could draft a secular army and send it to some defensible lines in Turkey somewhere. How this argument would come out depends on historical knowledge I certainly don't have. At present, I am just not convinced that the Crusades, at least broadly defined, did not play a role in defending Europe against Mohammedan invasion. And I am also going to be careful about what I believe from contemporary historians (including Catholic ones) who, for mysterious reasons of their own, are usually on the other side from me on every other issue, such as whether defeating Communism was a good idea.
posted by thomas at 5/05/2005 09:28:00 AM

 
Tape Recommendation: Economics
By Mike Rappaport

I just finished a lecture course from the Teaching Company on Contemporary Economic Issues. It was 48 tapes of 30 minutes each taught by Timothy Taylor. While a long course on economics is not for everyone, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The lecturer is very clear and well organized. His approach to economics is, in my view, that of a New Democrat: he clearly appreciates the importance of markets but there is no mistaking his liberal committments and his willingness to intervene in the economy often. Despite my disagreements with his politics, I still learned a lot from the course, since it covers such a variety of topics. He seemed best when discussing international trade and the need for developing countries to adopt market institutions.

I should also recommend two of his other courses, which I have enjoyed: Legacies of the Great Economists and History of the US Economy in the 20th Century.

One course from the Teaching Company that I have not been thrilled with is their recent release on Alexis De Tocqueville and the American Experiment. Anything on Tocqueville can't be all bad, but the lecturer just was not my cup of tea. He had a good ability to translate some of Tocqueville's ideas into modern conditions, but he just wasn't precise or theoretical enough for me.
posted by Michael at 5/05/2005 12:26:00 AM

 
Action Against the British Anti-Israel Boycott
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Emanuele Ottolenghi writes, with appropriate anger, about the British Association of University Teachers' boycott of Israeli scholars and scholarship. Ottolenghi himself teaches at Oxford. The boycott, which evokes memories of the Nazi boycotts of German Jews, has indeed a slimy totalitarian air. This should be no surprise. The AUT is a college-level teachers' union in Britain: it is effectively a plaything of the academic left.

The AUT's attitude toward the State of Israel and towards the Jewish people is, of course, all too common nowadays, especially among the "chattering classes", in Britain as well as on the European continent.

David Bernstein, at the Volokh Conspiracy, passes along the following email from anti-boycott Scholars for Peace in the Middle East with practical suggestions on how to oppose the boycott:

-- Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Working With Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities To Develop International Affiliate Faculty Status in Protest of Boycott by British --

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is working with department heads and deans at Bar-Ilan University and Haifa Universities to develop a mechanism for affiliate faculty status at both Universities for faculty members from around the world to show support for these two important institutions targeted by the British Association of University Professors. It is important that institutionally based full-time, part-time and adjunct faculty of good will to support our faculty colleagues in Israel by requesting affiliate faculty status.

Academics are being asked to submit a letter requesting an affiliate appointment to each university with a resume/CV to ScholarsforPeace@aol.com.

In addition, colleagues are urged to write to the Association of University Teachers in the United Kingdom to express their condemnation of the boycott and to advise them that they are seeking affiliate status with these universities. Those letters should go to:

AUT Headquarters: hq@aut.org.uk ; AUT General Secretary Sally Hunt, sally.hunt@aut.org.uk; AUT President Angela Rogers, president@aut.org.uk, Assistant General Secretary for International Affairs, Brian Everett, brian.everett@aut.org.uk with a copy to Doctor Ed Beck, President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, ScholarsforPeace@aol.com

I have done what Scholars for Peace are urging. I urge you to do likewise!
posted by maimon at 5/04/2005 09:50:00 PM

 
Barnett vs Sunstein
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Very interesting online debate between Randy Barnett and Cass Sunstein on the alleged belief among some conservatives in a "Constitution in Exile" -- and on approaches to constitutional interpretation more generally. Barnett effectively refutes the suggestion that there is a nefarious Constitution in Exile "movement" -- and Sunstein is essentially constrained to agree. Barnett concludes:

We agree that this is not a debate about "the Constitution-in-Exile movement" or about a group that is pining to return to the constitutional law of 1930 or 1920. This was the scare picture drawn by Jeff Rosen's New York Times Magazine story that provoked this debate, but no actual scholar or judge fits this description.

Read the whole thing.
posted by maimon at 5/04/2005 08:53:00 PM

 
Resolving the Crusades (Not)
By Maimon Schwarzschild

The old Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1914, took a wonderfully rosy view of the crusades: far rosier than even the Catholic Church would today endorse. ("Triumphalist", says Tom, "which we would all now reject.") It seems to me deeply dubious that the crusades, which began in 1095 and essentially ended in failure two centuries later in the 1290s, after horrific anarchy and bloodshed, ought to get any credit for Europe's later defeat of the Ottoman Turkish armies -- starting two centuries later still towards the end of the 1400s and into the 1600s. The Fordham Medieval Sourcebook makes clear that the crusades proper ended in 1291, with the crusaders' failure to hold Jerusalem. In fact, the crusaders' attacks on Greek Orthodox Byzantium had fatally wounded Eastern Christianity and set the stage for Ottoman Turkish expansion at Byzantine expense in succeeding centuries:

The fall of Acre closed an era. No effective Crusade was raised to recapture the Holy Land after Acre's fall, though talk of further Crusades was common enough. By 1291 other ideals had captured the interest and enthusiasm of the monarchs and nobility of Europe and even strenuous papal efforts to raise expeditions to liberate the Holy Land met with little response.

The Latin Kingdom continued to exist, theoretically, on the Island of Cyprus. There the Latin Kings schemed and planned to recapture the mainland, but in vain. Money, men, and the will to do the task were all lacking. One last effort was made by King Peter I in 1365, when be successfully landed in Egypt and sacked Alexandria. Once the city was pillaged, however, the Crusaders returned as speedily as possible to Cyprus to divide their loot. As a Crusade, the episode was utterly futile.

The fourteenth century saw some other so-called Crusades organized, but these enterprises differed in many ways from the eleventh and twelfth century expeditions which are properly called Crusades. The "Crusades" of the fourteenth century aimed not at the recapture of Jerusalem and the Christian shrines of the Holy Land, but rather at checking the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe.

History is more than its crimes? No doubt, and I'll resist, sort of, the analogy to many of today's queasy academic defenders of 20th century Communism, who basically rely on that same forensic tag-line. The crusades involved wanton slaughter and plunder of many people: Jews were a prime target -- perhaps in practice the main target -- but there were uncounted numbers of Christian as well as Moslem victims too. Did the crusades bring civilisation to Europe or to the Near East, as the European settlement of North America created the New World as we know it? Or were the crusades one of history's many horrific examples of egg-breaking criminality, from which no omelette (or only poisonous omelettes) resulted? Tom and I are unlikely to settle that question to our mutual satisfaction. But meantime, here is Bernard Lewis on the crusades and Osama's jihad: proving yet again that history lives. Which isn't always a good thing.
posted by maimon at 5/04/2005 01:57:00 PM

 
Interesting polygamy story
By Tom Smith

Here and here.

You would think there would be lots of good constitutional issues here. My sources in Utah say the troop leader, or whatever they call the FLDS leader, has a very good lawyer . . . Maybe in America, you can do whatever you want, if your lawyer is good enough.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2005 11:19:00 AM

 
Jon Stewart the Phenom
By Tom Smith

Very interesting article on Jon Stewart, comedian and media darling.

I think there's a deep (or deep-ish) relationship between irony and the left. I think what happens with a lot of people is that they get to their thirties or forties, get kids, find some modicum of success in something, and then realize all that stands between them and the dark, old void is a pretty fragile civilization. Before that, you still subconsciously think someone out there is playing parent, and that if things get too far out of hand, he or she will step in, and make everyone behave. It's hard to be really ironic when you realize that's not the case. That often enough, all that stands between the nutcase terrorists and the White House is some former rugby player who's in no mood to let them get away with it. I can't remember that guy's name. Jon Stewart should come up with some good jokes about him.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2005 11:03:00 AM

 
Crusade on
By Tom Smith

I'm obviously not going to defend Crusader thugs murdering Jews or Crusader opportunists crusading for loot. But just as the movement of Europeans across North America was about a lot more than murdering Indians, so the Crusades were about a lot more than killing Jews and other innocents. Here's an excerpt from a somewhat dated, but still useful semi-official account from the old Catholic Encyclopedia (for links go to original; the links in the excerpt below don't work) and some links following to sources for those who want to follow up on their own.

The history of the Crusades is . . . intimately connected with that of the popes and the Church. These Holy Wars were essentially a papal enterprise. The idea of quelling all dissensions among Christians, of uniting them under the same standard and sending them forth against the Mohammedans, was conceived in the eleventh century, that is to say, at a time when there were as yet no organized states in Europe, and when the pope was the only potentate in a position to know and understand the common interests of Christendom. At this time the Turks threatened to invade Europe, and the Byzantine Empire seemed unable to withstand the enemies by whom it was surrounded. Urban II then took advantage of the veneration in which the holy places were held by the Christians of the West and entreated the latter to direct their combined forces against the Mohammedans and, by a bold attack, check their progress. The result of this effort was the establishment of the Christian states in Syria. While the authority of the popes remained undisputed in Europe, they were in a position to furnish these Christian colonies the help they required; but when this authority was shaken by dissensions between the priesthood and the empire, the crusading army lost the unity of command so essential to success. The maritime powers of Italy, whose assistance was indispensable to the Christian armies, thought only of using the Crusades for political and economic ends. Other princes, first the Hohenstaufen and afterwards Charles of Anjou, followed this precedent, the crusade of 1204 being the first open rebellion against the pontifical will. Finally, when, at the close of the Middle Ages, all idea of the Christian monarchy had been definitively cast aside, when state policy was the sole influence that actuated the Powers of Europe, the crusade seemed a respectable but troublesome survival. In the fifteenth century Europe permitted the Turks to seize Constantinople, and princes were far less concerned about their departure for the East than about finding a way out of the fulfilment of their vow as crusaders without losing the good opinion of the public. Thereafter all attempts at a crusade partook of the nature of political schemes.

Notwithstanding their final overthrow, the Crusades hold a very important place in the history of the world. Essentially the work of the popes, these Holy Wars first of all helped to strengthen pontifical authority; they afforded the popes an opportunity to interfere in the wars between Christian princes, while the temporal and spiritual privileges which they conferred upon crusaders virtually made the latter their subjects. At the same time this was the principal reason why so many civil rulers refused to join the Crusades. It must be said that the advantages thus acquired by the popes were for the common safety of Christendom. From the outset the Crusades were defensive wars and checked the advance of the Mohammedans who, for two centuries, concentrated their forces in a struggle against the Christian settlements in Syria; hence Europe is largely indebted to the Crusades for the maintenance of its independence. Besides, the Crusades brought about results of which the popes had never dreamed, and which were perhaps the most, important of all. They re-established traffic between the East and West, which, after having been suspended for several centuries, was then resumed with even greater energy; they were the means of bringing from the depths of their respective provinces and introducing into the most civilized Asiatic countries Western knights, to whom a new world was thus revealed, and who returned to their native land filled with novel ideas; they were instrumental in extending the commerce of the Indies, of which the Italian cities long held the monopoly, and the products of which transformed the material life of the West. Moreover, as early as the end of the twelfth century, the development of general culture in the West was the direct result of these Holy Wars. Finally, it is with the Crusades that we must couple the origin of the geographical explorations made by Marco Polo and Orderic of Pordenone, the Italians who brought to Europe the knowledge of continental Asia and China. At a still later date, it was the spirit of the true crusader that animated Christopher Columbus when he undertook his perilous voyage to the then unknown America, and Vasco de Gama when he set out in quest of India. If, indeed, the Christian civilization of Europe has become universal culture, in the highest sense, the glory redounds, in no small measure, to the Crusades.

This is obviously written in an old-fashioned, triumphalist vein, which we would all now reject. While I am not erudite enough to have an informed opinion, I am, however, at least doubtful that without papal leadership and an offensive defense against the "Mohammedans," there would have been a West or a Europe. World history may well have gone a different way, and we might still be living in a world "lit only by fire." I'm not sure how you judge centuries worth of history, but I'm sure you have to look at more than its crimes.

More sources on the crusades here, and here.

posted by thomas at 5/04/2005 09:11:00 AM

 
Crusaders
By Maimon Schwarzschild

The mediaeval crusades gave us freedom, democracy, the rule of law, the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the Neighbourhood of Boston, and the self-adhesive 37-cent stamp? I like those things too -- well, most of them. But the crusades, in their time, were riots of thuggery, mass psychosis, and murder. Here are a few source references on the crusader massacres of Jews throughout Europe. (Here is an account, written at the time, of the massacre of the Jews by crusaders in Mainz, Germany.) The relatively few crusaders who actually reached Palestine were probably even worse. They committed wholesale murder when they succeeded (briefly) in capturing Jerusalem. The slaughter there was on an equal opportunity basis: Moslems, Jews, and Orthodox Christians; men, women, and children.

Raymond of Aquilers reported that he saw 'piles of heads, hands and feet' on a walk through the holy city. Men trotted across the bodies and body fragments as if they were a carpet for their convenience. The Europeans also destroyed the monuments to Orthodox Christian saints and the tomb of Abraham.

Barbara Tuchman's fascinating book "A Distant Mirror" gives a detailed character portrait of one French brigand-aristocrat involved in the later crusades -- the Sieur de Coucy: a drunk, hot-tempered kid with a lot of armed followers.

I really don't think Tom Smith's mom would have liked the Sieur -- or most of his fellow-crusaders.
posted by maimon at 5/03/2005 10:57:00 PM

 
Let's hear it for the Crusades
By Tom Smith

This Friday, the entire family unit (except for 19 month old Mark, who is not old enough to wield a weapon) will be going to Kingdom of Heaven, the new sword and seige battle epic. (Reviews and much else here; follow the links.) I'm determined to enjoy it, even if it sounds like the politics will be annoying.

Some of the criticisms in the review sound dumb. You do not go to a Hollywood epic war flick expecting serious history. The history in Gladiator was barely recognizable. (Yes, Maximus was a bad, cruel emperor who did appear in the arena, but he was not killed there by a popular gladiator, who happened to be Marcus A's right hand man in Gaul . . . ) But it was still a great movie. Not a Great movie, but thoroughly entertaining.

Even if Orlando Bloom is too wimpy to be a good hero, there is still all the battle to be enjoyed. I'm determined to enjoy it.

As to the Crusades, my default position still is, but for them, there may not have been a Western Christendom. What we used to quaintly refer to as Western Civilization. Me, I like the West. Freedom, democracy, the rule of law, dignity of individuals, equality before God, all of that stuff, well, it works for me.

By way of a boast disguised as full disclosure, I note that my remarkable mother is a Lady of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, a Papal order of nobility dating (some say) back to the first Crusade. She gets to wear cool outfits, as Catholics are wont to do. So I am in the pro-Knight camp.
posted by thomas at 5/03/2005 07:37:00 PM

 
Tenure and all that
By Tom Smith

Not to be a stinker, but contrary to the implication of this post by Instapersonage, I think the view among a lot of thoughtful law professors, anyway, is that getting tenure at law schools at least, is too easy, in some cases, way too easy. There are exceptions. The University of Virginia and that of Chicago have the reputation of eating their young, Yale has just stopped hiring entry level people, and their hiring of laterals has been a little uneven (this is my polite way of saying they have hired some people I would not want to hire even at our modest, but undeniably cute law school), and I don't really know enough about Harvard or Stanford to say. But, generally speaking, if you can get hired at a law school, you will almost certainly get tenure, if you can manage to write a couple of half way decent law review articles, which, if you managed to get hired in the first place, you can certainly manage to do.

Frankly, law schools should just get rid of tenure. It's a really dumb institution. Those of us who have it already should be grandfathered in, of course. Or better, our tenure should be bought out for some amount the reflects the diminishment of certainty of future income.

As you may have noticed, tenure seems to cause professors to bloviate, and so I shall continue.

While law school tenure seems to be too easy, the tenure process in humanities departments does seem awfully arbitrary. I suspect some of this stems from the nature of the disciplines themselves. How do you make a judgment of somebody's work if it is one of your principles that it is impossible to make valid judgments of anything? (I'm not counting philosophy as a humanity.) I like to think in the sciences, tenure decisions are made more rationally. Since I have nothing more to say, I will stop writing. This suggests that tenure has yet to have its full effect on me.
posted by thomas at 5/03/2005 07:08:00 PM

 
W more Catholic than JP?
By Tom Smith

I don't think so, but this somewhat silly piece on NRO is kinda interesting.
posted by thomas at 5/03/2005 05:04:00 PM

 
Culture update
By Tom Smith

I think I will say a decade of the rosary just as a kind of thank you that we don't have this kind of thing (yet anyway) here at this small, but undeniably cute Catholic university in America's most mediterranean climate. They do apparently at some Catholic universities, which is pretty shocking. I mean, really. Does this really go on at Brown and my alma mater Cornell? I suppose you're not supposed to say Alma Mater any more, either. Alma Parentis? I really have to think people will come to their senses and be embarassed about this sort of thing.

Without meaning to sound too much like a nut myself, doesn't the above referenced cultural phenomenon (which I'm sorry, I can't really bring myself to describe any more precisely than that) strike one as rather demonic? Would it be all that surprising if the participants started to drink wine, chant, and then run across the countryside pulling men and animals limb from limb? Just to be clear, I feel that would be a bad thing, even if it would be ever so empowering.
posted by thomas at 5/03/2005 04:21:00 PM

 
This post actually has to do with corporate law
By Tom Smith

Delaware pokes imperial California corporate law doctrine. And I'm glad.
posted by thomas at 5/03/2005 04:00:00 PM

 
Dyslexic Doctor
By Gail Heriot

God bless the National Board of Medical Examiners. Citing the need to maintain standards and protect patients, they are refusing to allow Heidi Baer, who has now flunked the medical boards three times, extra time on her fourth attempt. Of course, Ms. Baer is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ms. Baer claims to be dyslexic (and has several experts who back her claim). But what difference should it make if she is or isn't? Does anyone doubt that the ability to read and digest complex written material is crucial to a doctor's success? Indeed, given the astonishing speed at which medical science is changing these days, the ability to keep up with the medical literature is more important now than it's ever been. A doctor who can't do it is a hazard to patients, whether you call the problem "dyslexia," "poor reading skills," or "Fred."

The ADA requires that institutions like the NBME make reasonable accommodations for students' disabilities. But it is patently unreasonable to require the NBME to accommodate a reading disability when excellent reading comprehension skills are among the abilities that are necessary to success in the medical field and there will be no opportunity to accommodate the lack of those skills once the doctor is actually practicing. It would be different if the NBME were refusing to allow her to sit for the exam because she can't throw a baseball. Such skills bear no relation to the ability to practice medicine. Or it would be different if she needed a special light in order to read well. Although the ability to see what one is reading is important, once she got into the practice of medicine she could carry around her own flashlight. It would therefore be unreasonable to refuse her an accommodation during the exam. Her actual problem, however, is far more serious. Doctors are among the most time-pressed professionals out there. (How long did your doctor spend on you last time you went to see her?) Emergencies are routine. Ms. Baer isn't going to be able to slow everything down just because she's a slow reader.

I know, I know, it isn't her fault if she is dyslexic. But it wouldn't be her fault if she had been born with a low IQ either. Or a quadriplegic. Fate deals us all certain cards. The issue isn't whether fate has been fair, but rather the exam is a fair evaluation of her likelihood of success as a doctor. Nor does it matter that she has certain other qualities that would make her a good candidate for the medical profession if only she hadn't been dealt the dyslexic card. We're all package deals. And there are lots of professions out there where reading skills are less important.

Alas, the ADA has not always been interpreted sensibly. Instead of arguing that even if Ms. Baer is dyslexic, the NBME should not accommodate the problem because it would compromise standards, the NBME is arguing that Ms. Baer isn't really dyslexic, because she has average reading skills rather than below average ones. It's a funny argument. Do they really mean that if Ms. Baer had been a terrible reader, then they would have been under an obligation to give her extra time on the exam? I hope not. But the ADA frequently gets folks tied up in knots.

We'll see what happens. Unfortunately for the NMME, this issue has already been decided in favor of accommodations in the closely related legal context. See Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners. There a dyslexic aspiring lawyer (whose overall reading skills were average) who had made a career out of special accommodations in law school (and nevertheless did poorly there) was given extra time by the Second Circuit. As I've said many times before, it's a crazy old world.
posted by Gail at 5/03/2005 11:07:00 AM

 
Book Recommendation: Tom Wolfe Goes to College
By Mike Rappaport

I recently finished Tom Wolfe's new novel, I am Charlotte Simmons. It was quite good -- kind of a Bonfire of the Vanities in the Ivy League.

The book displays Wolfe's genius at observing and describing character types in modern society -- especially their flaws. Like Bonfire, this book has many unforgettable portraits, of frat boys and sorority girls, of freshmen misfits and cynical professors, and of college basketball players. The descriptions are so powerful that I can no longer think of these character types the same way, which is saying something coming from someone who works in a college. (The same was true of my reaction to Bonfire, which described a New York City I had grown up in.)

The only flaw in this book is that Wolfe's ability to see the dark side blinds him to the light side. None of the characters are sympathetic. I don't like a single one of them, really. Even cynics like some people.

Despite this flaw, I would strongly recommend this book, especially to those who want some insight into modern college life.
posted by Michael at 5/03/2005 07:41:00 AM

 
French Diplomacy and the Jews
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Commentary Magazine has posted David Pryce-Jones' account of French diplomacy in the Middle East. He gives a full history of French attitudes toward the Zionist movement and toward the State of Israel: attitudes which have generally been deeply hostile, and repeatedly expressed by French officials in viscerally anti-semitic terms. Pryce-Jones makes it clear that French officials over the years have objected not so much to this or that Israeli policy, but to the existence of a Jewish state, regardless of its policies, and within any borders whatsoever.

It is a squalid but important history. Nowadays once again, as Pryce-Jones shows, there is a recrudescence of anti-semitic attitudes in both the substance and the expression of French policy toward the Middle East:

Jacques Huntziger, the French ambassador to Israel, slammed his fist on the table and left the room when the parents of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hizballah asked him to intervene on their behalf after a visit by Chirac to Lebanon. Gérard Araud, the current French ambassador, declared in December 2004 that “Israelis suffer from a neurosis, a veritable mental disorder that makes them anti-French.” At a London dinner party, Daniel Bernard, ambassador to England and previously the Quai d’Orsay’s official spokesman, called Israel “a shitty little country.” And so it goes.

There are strong ripple effects from this within France itself. Pryce-Jones argues that the official tone not only encourages violent anti-semitism among the growing Moslem minority in France, but also promotes what goes along with it, a generally enraged attitude among French Moslems: separatist and angrily hostile to any idea of assimilating into broader French society. This climate among a large and growing minority in France, in turn, may actually threaten the peace and stability of the French state.

This is an important story. Pryce-Jones tells it well, with plenty of evidence. Read the whole thing.
posted by maimon at 5/02/2005 12:45:00 PM

 
Discriminatory Filibusters
By Mike Rappaport

Steve Calabresi's article also reminded me of a concern that I have about the Republicans' response to the Democrats here.

It seems clear that the Democrats are discriminating against conservative minorities and women. It is not that they dislike women and minorities in general; rather they are especially opposed to conservatives from these groups for the reasons that Calabresi mentions.

Why aren't the Republicans emphasizing this? Vice President Cheney or some other prominent official should charge the Democrats with applying a stricter standard against conservative women and minorities. Not only would it be true, but I would guess it would be extremely effective -- placing the Democrats on the defensive and making it difficult for them to continue their discriminatory filibusters.
posted by Michael at 5/02/2005 12:01:00 AM

 
Exacting Tribute
By Gail Heriot

I am in D.C. this weekend and a friend of mine invited me to go to some of the preliminary festivities leading up the the Annual White House Correspondents Dinner with the President. No, I wasn't invited to go to the dinner itself. I don't know if anyone is important enough to get last minute tickets to the dinner; I do know that I'm not that important. But the preliminaries are interesting events in themselves, so I was pleased to don appropriate attire and go in my capacity as a spy for the blogosphere.

I'm not very good at cocktail receptions; I usually spend a significant part of my time smiling and nodding at someone who, for all I can tell, is moving his lips without making a sound. But sometimes I like going to them anyway (at least for a little while). I regard them as anthropology lessons, and Saturday's festivities gave me a glimpse of the media tribe at play (or at least pretending to be).

Quite of few of the journalists I spoke with likened the event to a kind of East Coast Oscars night. And the analogy seemed apt. There are dozens of pre-event receptions at the hotel at which the dinner is held and pre-pre-event garden parties around town. There is even a red carpet with throngs of photographers and cameramen hovering about (all of whom were wise enough to continue their naps when I walked down the carpet). And there are celebrities and pseudo-celebrities of every kind--including Richard Gere, Goldie Hawn, Bill Kristol, Mary Tyler Moore, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Robertson, and some famous football player I had never heard of. And, of course, Arianna Huffington. If you are looking for a star-studded, elegantly groomed and dressed crowd suffering from the effects of a day's worth of free drinks and you can't make it to the Oscars, you should consider going to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner as a reasonable substitute... except without all those perfect bodies.

Of course, there are other differences. The Oscars are clearly focused on the recognition of excellence within the movie industry. But why hold an Annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner? It has no such obvious purpose ... unless it's to prove, year after year, that the President must attend and crack a few jokes. And I'm inclined to think that's at the heart of it. At one of the receptions I attended, a group of journalists were speculating about whether a President would ever dare break the tradition and not show up for the annual feast. The consensus was that he would never, never, never do so without his paying dearly. The attendance of the President is the outward and visible sign of MSM power.

Is that so terrible? I'm not sure it is. I saw coverage of Bush's appearance on tv the next morning and he looked happy enough. Imagine what mischief these folks might get into if they used their power to acquire something that wasn't essentially frivolous. Liquoring them up just a tad keeps them out of trouble for a while. And it gave me a chance to wear glittery earrings.
posted by Gail at 5/01/2005 08:05:00 PM

 
The Red Flag
By Maimon Schwarzschild

On May Day the parliamentary Labour Party used to sing "The Red Flag" on the floor of the House of Commons. I assume they don't do that anymore. (In the spirit of the very uneasy straddle -- between bitter old Left and Tony Blair -- that is today's New Labour in Britain, it may be just as well that May Day is Sunday this year and Parliament is closed on Sundays.)

(To the tune of "O Tannenbaum":)

The worker's flag is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead;
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their life-blood dyed its every fold.
Chorus:
Then raise the scarlet standard high!
Beneath its folds we'll live and die.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

A character in one of Arthur Koestler's novels remarks, sometime in the 1930s, that it's not a good sign that the Nazis have all the pretty girls and all the good songs. "The Red Flag" doesn't refute that. For one thing, the tune is borrowed --from "O Tannenbaum", of course. Still, the lyrics aren't bad. But in the spirit of Arthur Koestler, perhaps we should say it's a good sign that there aren't many songs nowadays to go with political movements. Songs are one of the -- many -- things that pervert politics into a kind of religion. The less of that, surely, the better.
posted by maimon at 5/01/2005 05:56:00 PM

 
Liberals need to rethink their view on freedom
By Tom Smith

Or not. Interesting review of what some of us lived through.
posted by thomas at 5/01/2005 09:27:00 AM