Analogizing law schools to the Boy Scouts.

As I noted yesterday, the Third Circuit relied on Boy Scouts v. Dale as it barred the enforcement of the Solomon Amendment. (The Solomon Amendment withholds funding from universities that don't give military recruiters the same access to campus facilities given to other recruiters.) It was ironic that a precedent that recognized a right of association permitting discrimination against gay persons provided the basis for saying that law schools had a right of association permitting them to exclude an employer that discriminated against gay persons. I've been reading the Third Circuit's long opinion today, trying to see how plausible the analogy really is. The court characterizes law schools as "expressive associations," then determines that the Solomon Amendment significantly affects the law schools' expression. The court writes -- there a link to the case here -- analogizing law schools' self-expression to the Boy Scouts:

Just as the Boy Scouts believed that "homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath," the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to justice and fairness. Just as the Boy Scouts maintained that "homosexuals do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of Scouting families," id., the law schools maintain that military recruiters engaging in exclusionary hiring "do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of," id., their students and the legal community. Just as the Boy Scouts endeavored to "inculcate [youth] with the Boy Scouts' values--both expressively and by example," the law schools endeavor to "inculcate" their students with their chosen values by expression and example in the promulgation and enforcement of their nondiscrimination policies. And just as "Dale's presence in the Boy Scouts would, at the very least, force the organization to send a message, both to youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior," the presence of military recruiters "would, at the very least, force the law schools to send a message," both to students and the legal community, that the law schools "accept" employment discrimination "as a legitimate form of behavior."

What concerns me about this analogy is the idea that "law schools endeavor to 'inculcate' their students with their chosen values." The Boy Scouts have decided to commit to a particular moral code and devote themselves to instilling it. Do law schools do the same thing? Aren't we devoted to empowering students by teaching legal skills and to fostering the expression of a diverse array of viewpoints with respect to issues that are subject to reasonable, professional debate? The law schools argue that they express themselves through modeling nondiscriminatory values. Having to accept a discriminatory recruiter on an equal basis with other recruiters, they say, interferes with their expression. That seems to me to go beyond Dale. The law school isn't chosing who will speak for them, while the Boy Scouts were choosing who will hold their leadership positions. We don't perceive the recruiters as speaking for the law school. That doesn't mean I think the law schools shouldn't win this one, but I do think there are some key differences from Dale.

Whatever happened to all the Madison photographs?

I haven't posted any Madison photographs in a long time. Not since that peace rally. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the winter light: it's all glare or shadow and it's gone altogether in the late afternoon. Maybe it's that not much is going on out there now that it's colder. But it isn't all that cold. You still see guys in shorts and women in sandals. (Oh, it's in the 30s, so don't think I'm saying it's quite warm. It's just that people have a different attitude toward cold and clothing around here. We're pretty tough and we relish our freedom from bulky outerwear.) Maybe I'm just more likely to stay in if it's not genuinely warm. But let me get out today, camera in hand, and see what's going on. I'll at least get a walk.

UPDATE: Did you go for a walk? Yes. Did you see any guys in shorts? Yes, one. And the temperature is? 30 degrees. Anything photographable? I was about to come back and say no, but I paused on the Park Street bridge to take in the bleak scene and had a slight feeling that I was looking at something. This is, in any case, exactly what Madison is like today. If these vague clouds decide not to precipitate, we will have completed the month of November without snow.

No, no, not streetcars!

The Wisconsin State Journal reports on the continuing effort to impose streetcars on the city of Madison.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants to press ahead with his idea for city streetcars regardless of other regional rail proposals.

Cieslewicz announced his plan to create a separate City Streetcar Committee at Monday night's Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force meeting.

Cieslewicz said he plans to present this new committee as a resolution at the Dec. 14 City Council meeting. Cieslewicz, who favors a plan to run electric streetcars Downtown, led a delegation of community leaders and developers to Portland, Ore., to study a trolley system earlier this year.

An emailer, who flagged this article, writes:

I am fascinated that no one brings up the fact that the cities that our city fathers & mothers are emulating all have much larger populations, very different demographics, and much longer commute times than Madison. And it is population, demographics and commute times which determine the market for light rail or trolleys. If someone can show me a similarly sized city to Madison that has a successful light rail/trolley system I might be convinced; but to the best of my research there is none. Chicago has about 3 million people. Portland has 1.7 million people. San Diego has 1.25 million. And, having lived in both areas, I can tell you that the commute from Middleton to downtown Madison IS NOTHING like the commute from San Ysidro to downtown San Diego. I am not hearing many people complain about the "grueling" 15 minute slow down on the beltline so where is the popular mandate for all this talk about light rail or trolleys? As an obviously enlighted conservative maybe you can explain to me what I am missing here.

You're missing this (to go back to the WSJ article):

The city has secured $300,000 from the federal government that will go toward a streetcar study, Cieslewicz said.

The feds are willing to pay for this particular boondoggle. And note that the main dispute within the city government is about the possible conflict with a separate commuter rail plan for the city (which also taps federal money).

"We need to have one vision about how we deal with transportation, and it needs to be regional," said County Board Sup. Scott McDonell, co- chairman of Transport 2020....

"I do think this is the wrong direction," said Michael Blaska, Transport 2020 committee member and former County Board member. "I always thought the problem was regional. It seems like that's where our priority ought to be. I really don't think that our community is large enough to support two systems."

McDonell said Transport 2020's next step is to figure out a process for dealing with the different ideas for commuter rail and streetcars and how they fit together.

There is $1 million in federal money for the commuter rail and $300,000 for the streetcars. I guess that ought to cover it. What's to worry about? Let's play with trains, trains, trains.

Is there anything wrong with selling a 1,420 calorie hamburger?

I say no. Hardee's is getting a lot of attention for its "Monster Thickburger." But the fact is that fancier places that sell hamburgers regularly sell things like this. All Hardee's is doing is selling something for much less.

I bought the DVD of "Super Size Me" a while back, and like the filmmaker trying to eat his super sized meal, I'm having trouble getting through it. Why? Well, partly because I'm exasperated listening to the soundtrack of a man chewing, which is disgusting, whatever he's eating. But what irks me more is the attempt to say something about real life by forcing yourself to eat what you don't even want and to eat a big McDonald's meal three times a day every day.

How about a little consideration for the many people who work hard all day, without eating much, and want to have a big, satisfying dinner without paying much? 1,420 calories is not that unreasonable for an adult man who is having his main meal of the day.

"The company got the idea from mothers just storing umbilical cords and navels in an album or what-not."

Yeah, what not.

Desperate film ad.

A two inch square on page B4 of today's NY: "Christian Bale Lost 63 pounds" and then some almost invisible writing ("It's one of the reasons the film works so well"), the name of the film, the fact that it's now playing, and a grungy little photo of said emaciated actor. The things one has to do to get attention.

Another last-week-of-law-school drawing.

Another drawing from the margin of my 1981 Federal Courts classnotes.



Law people may detect that the topic is habeas corpus -- FvN is Fay v. Noia -- a subject usually placed at the end of the fedcourts course. That placement seems to symbolize habeas as the last hope. The Supreme Court took certiorari in a significant habeas case yesterday, as Lyle Denniston reports over on SCOTUSblog:

The time period prison inmates have to file challenges in federal court to their convictions and sentences might be considerably longer than the one year set by Congress, depending upon how the Supreme Court decides the one case it agreed on Monday to hear, Dodd v. U.S. (docket 04-5286). The case, coming from the 11th Circuit, tests when that one-year deadline starts to run, under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Under AEDPA, Congress set the requirements federal and state prisoners must meet if they want to try to take advantage, through a federal habeas challenge, of a constitutional right that has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court. Among the provisions of AEDPA is a one-year limit on the time such habeas petitions may be filed in federal court. Congress, however, apparently did not speak plainly enough in saying when that period starts to run, because the circuit courts are split on that question. The Supreme Court agreed to rule on the Dodd case to clear up that conflict.

The law specifies that the period runs from the date on which the Supreme Court “initially recognized” a new right. But it goes on to say that the right must have been made “retroactively applicable to cases” that are still pending in post-conviction court proceedings. The question before the Court is whether that second provision is a separate factor in calculating the time period.

In the case of Michael Donald Dodd, who was identified by prosecutors as a leader of a large Jamaican drug gang in New York City called the “Sprangler Posse,” the 11th Circuit ruled that the one-year period starts to run as soon as the Supreme Court has issued a ruling setting up a new right. The time, it said, is not extended until the point at which a court decides to apply the new right to cases still pending – an extension that could run a year or longer after the Supreme Court’s initial decision. The Circuit commented: “It would not be logical for Congress to have enacted a strict one-year limitation and then qualified that time by reference to ambiguous events,” such as a later ruling on making the right retroactive. The clause specifying retroactivity, the Circuit added, “qualifies the right asserted – not the time limit.”

That view, cutting off habeas challenges at an earlier point, is shared by the Second, Fifth and Eighth Circuits, but conflicts with the views of four other circuits – the Third, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth. Those four have ruled that, unless a court has declared that a new decision applies to already pending cases, the filing window has not yet opened. That approach can considerably lengthen the one-year span.

Just deal with it.

You've got to learn how to behave in airports.

"I said if it's that big a deal, just keep it," he said. "But then the screener gets really officious with me. He's taking everything out and looking at it, and then they're calling my flight, which inexplicably they call 30 minutes early. I kept saying, 'Look, I got to get going.' I look toward the gate."

"The screener says: 'You cannot look away from me. You have to have your eyes on me at all times,' " Mr. Stevens said. "Every time I would turn, this guy would stop and say, 'Do not look away!' I said, 'O.K., I'm sorry. Please just get me out of here.' "

That only brought over reinforcements. "Then a big fat guy who was sitting there eating comes over and says, 'If he does that again, we're going to throw him out of here.'"

"Every time I tried to reason with them they got nastier and nastier..."

I say deal with it. The man who tells this story was trying to get on a plane with two bottles of carpet cleaner in his carry-on bag! It's irrelevant that he was bringing home his wife's favorite cleaning product. I want the screeners to take account of a person's behavior. Everyone has a flight to catch! You think you're special because you're really a nice person -- with a wife! and a dog! You have to be awfully self-involved not to realize the screener doesn't know that. The man in the anecdote should have thought about how his behavior affected other people and just apologized.

UPDATE: Hamilton's Pamphlets takes a much more negative view of the screeners. I don't fly enough to have a first-hand opinion of what it's like out there these days. I do think the men described in the Times article were being childish, and I'm certainly not saying people ought to put up with everything in the name of security.

An interesting turnabout.

The Third Circuit takes the Boy Scouts case, in which the Supreme Court found a first amendment right to exclude a gay scoutleader, and uses it as a basis to say that universities have a right to express their opposition to discrimination against gays by excluding the U.S. military recruiters on campus.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from the military.

The 2-to-1 decision relied in large part on a decision in 2000 by the United States Supreme Court to allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters. Just as the Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gays, the appeals court said, law schools may prohibit groups that they consider discriminatory....

"Just as the Boy Scouts believed that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath," Judge Ambro wrote, "the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to fairness and justice."

Seinfeld on "Oprah."

Jerry comes out to a huge ovation. He looks at the audience and says: "This is something. You do this every day?"

The audience constantly over-applauds. Oprah notes that she and Jerry are the same age (50), and the audience goes wild.

Jerry's response is perfect: "I love being 50. It means I'm almost done." Oprah goes into no! no! mode and Jerry has to say "it's just a joke" and a few other things until he finally lands on "it doesn't matter how old you are," and the audience goes wild again.

Oprah asks why they've only released the first three seasons on DVD, and Jerry says, "That's 40 episodes. How much time do you have?" There's a very distinctively Seinfeld way to say "How much time do you have?" and you've got to imagine it to find it funny. It's impossible to render in type. Something like: "How … much time … do you … have?"

Oprah asks him what he finds funny on TV today, and he says he watches a lot of "Sesame Street," and he thinks about how people tell him he should do another show: "I sit there and I watch this Elmo guy. And he is so likeable and so funny and so charming. And I sit there with my daughter, and I think: let him bust his little red ass."

Jerry's wife is there (and moved to tears by the experience of being 20 feet away from Oprah), so the conversation turns to marriage. Jerry says he was surprised at all the questions. He thought "Do you take this woman?" would be the last one. But now it's "How long are you going to sit there watching TV?": "I wish I knew the answer to that one myself."

Jerry's wife tells us he's "sweet," but can't come up with much of an answer to Oprah's request for a story. He's nice to his kids.

Oprah asks him about his obsessions: dolphins (they have "nice smiles"), Bic pens ("Every joke for the Seinfeld show was written with a Bic pen"), sneakers ("I'm wearing shoes just for you.")

The Puffy Shirt is being put in the Smithsonian, we're told.

Seinfeld's wife says has not seen all the episodes of "Seinfeld."

Oprah brings out Jason Alexander. The crowd acts pretty thrilled, even though it's just Jason Alexander.

Oprah brings out Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Clearly, the audience (nearly all women) likes her more than Jason. She looks great, Oprah tells her. Truthfully! Oprah shows Julia a clip of several audience members imitating Elaine's little steps dance [added: technically, it's "The Little Kicks."]. Julia says "wow" but doesn't seem that enthused. She seems not to be so much like the people in the audience, even though they identify with Elaine. Jerry helps out with a joke: "It's really true that girls just wanna have fun."

Oprah brings out Michael Richards. His hair is slicked down. He describes looking for "little things" in the script, ad libbing "the sound effects," practicing lines off by himself, and feeling that Kramer was playing him and that what he needed to do was to "get out of the way."

We're told Jerry bought Billy Joel's house in the Hamptons and we're shown some photos of him and his wife and kids on a windswept beach and in a sparkling, white kitchen. The audience goes "aaah!"

Talking about the last "Seinfeld" show, Jason Alexander says that, as they were about to shoot, Jerry said to them, "For the rest of our lives, when anyone thinks of any one of us, they'll think of all four." The audience goes "awwww." Oprah goes, "That is sweet." When the show ended, Jerry took some parts of the set (which he keeps with his Porsches). He took the door, the couch, and one of the booths from the restaurant. Michael Richards and Jason Alexander just took their shoes and (Alexander only) his glasses. Julia Louis-Dreyfus took her wardrobe, and jokes that she doesn't know why. (On the DVD commentary, she often talks about how bad Elaine's clothes were, and also how bad Jerry's clothes were. George's clothes were always intended to look bad. Kramer's clothes were supposed to be strange, and it's noted in the DVD commentary that only Kramer's clothes look good now. That vintage look aged well.)

After the final commercial break, there's only time enough to push the DVD one more time and say good-bye, but Oprah whips the crowd back up into a hysterical, jubilant cheer. As the closing credits roll, Oprah hugs each of the "Seinfeld" castmembers, kicking one leg up when she hugs Jerry and again when she hugs Michael Richards.

UPDATE: The group continues, more casually, on "Oprah After the Show." Oprah talks about how Jerry and his wife invited her to dinner but she had to refuse because she's on a diet that has a rule against eating after 7:30 at night.

We're shown photos of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's house, which has a retractable roof is dedicated to ecological principles. "It has sustainable woods" causes Jerry to say "What does that mean?" The question isn't answered. It's a joke. The tile, we're told, is made from recycled carpet. "It is a totally green house," Louis-Dreyfus says. Much applause.

Jerry offers this piece of advice: "If you never make a career choice based on money, you'll always have money." Hey, it worked for him!

Oprah asks what's your favorite episode. Jerry: "The Marine Biologist." Jason: "The Parking Garage." Michael: "The Parking Garage." Julia: wasn't asked.

They talk about Jerry's favorite comedian, Bill Cosby. When he walks down the street, Jerry says, he's happy to meet everyone who comes up to him. Oprah tells us that when he appeared on her show, he was dropped off alone! She clearly thinks this is flat-out amazing.

What comedian does Michael Richards love? Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Jacques Tati, the early Peter Sellers. Good answer! So good it almost makes me cry to think that more roles have not come Richards' way. He adds: "And I love the great Red Skelton." Ah! I loved Red Skelton so much when I was a child. I loved him in that deep, childlike way where you completely believe that everyone loves him.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus? "I think Ellen DeGeneres is unbelievably funny." She also loves the funny actresses, specifically, Mary Tyler Moore and Lucy.

Jason? Jon Stewart. And Jerry.

What's next for TV?

I find this a little surprising:

Fox brass are said to be particularly high on a project that one could dub "That '70s B.C. Show": It imagines Jesus as a slacker teen under pressure from his parents -- God and Mary -- to enter the family carpentry business.

UPDATE: Actually, I don't think this is such a bad idea. Referring to it as "That '70s B.C. Show" was an incredibly lame joke, but I think the show could be well done. Have you ever watched the beginning of the DVD of "The Last Temptation of Christ" with the director's commentary on? Jesus is just writhing on the ground, but Scorsese is saying that what interested him was the idea that Jesus would have gradually understood and had to face the reality of who he was and that this would have caused him a great deal of personal turmoil. With that approach to the subject matter, go back to an even earlier period, where Jesus is a teenager. We have no Biblical text describing this period of his life, so a leap of imagination is required. You have to invent a character. I'm sure that would offend some people, but "The Last Temptation of Christ" offended some people and so do many TV shows for one reason or another.

I think the show seems as though it might be like "Joan of Arcadia," which handles the subject of a teenager singled out by God and dealing with it in an American teenager way. "Joan" is a drama, and I think the Jesus TV show is a comedy, but conceivably it could be well-written.

I'd like to see more sitcoms set in historical time. There's "That 70s Show" and other shows in the "Happy Days" mold that use the recent American past, but not much else. If you're as old as I am, you might remember "It's About Time," which took place in the Stone Age (and included some time traveling astronauts, one of whom was played by one of the "Car 54, Where Are You?" actors -- not the one who became Herman Munster ... the other one). "It's About Time," like "Car 54," had a very memorable theme song.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A correction. The "Car 54" actor (Joe E. Ross) played one of the cavemen.

The medical marijuana oral argument.

The first report looks good for the federal government on this, as Justice Souter seems dubious about the plaintiffs' argument:

Backers of California's law seem to think "everybody is going to get it from a friend or from plants in the back yard," Justice David H. Souter told the lawyer for the two women. "They're going to get it in the street. Why isn't that the sensible assumption?"

UPDATE: Justice Breyer also seemed unreceptive to the plaintiffs' argument:

Justice Stephen Breyer said supporters of marijuana for the ill should take their fight to federal drug regulators before coming to the Supreme Court, and several justices repeatedly referred to America's drug addiction problems.

But it's important to note that Breyer and Souter have strongly and consistently backed strong deference to the policy choices of the federal government and opposed the enforcement of constitutional federalism. To be principled and consistent, they really should be expected to reject these arguments, as I noted yesterday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justice Scalia shows some signs of agreeing with the federal government's position that it may regulate an entire market, even trivial parts of the market that seem quite separated from the ordinary trade in the product that gave rise to the motivation to control it:

Justice Antonin Scalia asked [plaintiffs' attorney Randy] Barnett how his argument of a trivial economic effect from medical marijuana would apply to federal laws protecting endangered species. Those laws ban possession of ivory or eagle feathers without regard to whether a person obtained them through interstate commerce.

"Are those laws likewise unconstitutional?'' Scalia asked.

The 9th Circuit had relied on the notion that the medical use of home-grown marijuana does not interact with the market in marijuana, and Justice Stevens asked a question that seemed designed to pursue this theory:

Stevens asked Barnett how allowing medical use of marijuana would affect the illegal market. The lawyer said it would slightly reduce demand and reduce prices.

"Reduce demand and reduce prices? Are you sure?'' Stevens said.

Barnette seems to have conceded a point that related to a key part of the 9th Circuit's decision, which is why Stevens express some surprise, saying "Are you sure?"

Justice O'Connor is reported as asking whether medical use of marijuana is "something traditionally regulated by states.'' It's hard to tell, without more, which way she may have been leaning by asking this. I'd like to see more of the transcript before speculating any more, but I'll just note that O'Connor's vote is often crucial. Still, from what I've seen so far -- admittedly little -- I think the Court will find the federal government has the power to regulate here.

UPDATE: Marty Lederman at SCOTUSblog predicts the decision for the federal government will be unanimous (though Justice Thomas might conceivably dissent). Lyle Denniston, also at SCOTUSblog, seems to perceive a ray of light for the plaintiffs. I'll read the whole transcript when it's available, but as indicated above, I agree with Lederman.

The last week of law school, and an old law school doodle.

It's the last full week of the semester here at the law school. Consequently, I feel a lot of pressure to get through the material--none of the usual expanding into areas that stimulate good discussion. It's time to be crisp and on task. You can't just increase the flow of information because it's close to the end. That's not fair. Yet you have to get to the end somehow. In one class, we've stayed on schedule and will finish simply by continuing at the pace we've followed all semester. In the other class, I've had to use the technique of cutting readings and switching to lecturing. But then there is a special obligation to make the lectures clear. Things we would have puzzled over, had we read a case on the subject, must be simplified now.

I'll have some more news-oriented blogging later. I'm especially interested in two federalism cases to be argued in the Supreme Court today. But, for now, I'll leave you with a doodle I did years ago in the margin of my law school class notes. I used to find drawing in the margins like this helped me focus on what I was hearing. The date was 5/6/81, sometime close to the end of the semester in Federal Courts, where maybe we were encountering new material, tying things together, and still leaving a few threads dangling.

Jerry Falwell's curtain imagery.

Jerry Falwell was on "Meet the Press" today. Tim Russert reminded him of the offensive statement he made shortly after 9/11:

I want to ask Reverend Falwell about something and broaden the conversation. We talked about Iraq and the war on terrorism. Something that you said two days after September 11, when you were with Reverend Pat Robertson: "I fear... that [September 11th] is only the beginning. ...If, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve ... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle ... all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say `you helped this happen.'"

Falwell answered:

And I went on to say in a sleeping church, a lethargic church likewise is responsible. I do believe, as Ben Franklin said, that God rules in the affairs of men and of nations. I believe that when God blesses a nation, as he's blessed America for a lot of reasons, things happen that don't happen other places. I believe when we defy the Lord, I think we pay a price for it. So I do believe in the sovereignty of God.

In our house, for example, my wife of 47 years and our three children, eight grandchildren, we begin every day in prayer. We ask the Lord's blessings. This morning in the shower I prayed for all 15 of our family by name, by need, because I want the curtain of God's provision upon them and protection along the highways and decision-making, God's wisdom.

Falwell praying in the shower? I could have gone my whole life without having that picture in my head. But now that he's said it, I have some idea where he gets his imagery. "God continues to lift the curtain ..." Was that the shower curtain? God as Norman Bates?

First, a multiple choice question, then some discussion of wabi-sabi.

Fill in the blank, completing the sequence:

sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, toaster, _________

a. iron

b. vacuum cleaner

c. vibrator

You can find the answer in this article, pointed to by Nina, who comments on something else about the article, wabi-sabi, to be specific. As to why she's sitting next to a potato-chip-spilling guy, read the previous post.

Wabi-sabi is a cool Japanese aesthetic.

It's about spare living spaces and well-worn handmade objects, and an appreciation of quiet pleasures — indeed, of plain old quiet. Sweeping a floor rather than vacuuming, taking up knitting, washing the dishes by hand — these are wabi-sabi activities....

Don't buy a new couch .... Try not to freak out when you come home to a dirty house. Turn the lights off and light some candles, making sure they're strategically placed away from the dirty dishes and the dog hair on the carpet.

Hmmm.... I've been following this aesthetic for years. Minus the dog and the knitting. Ideally, I want to live in a place with only wood floors and no carpeting and throw out the vacuum altogether. It's such an ugly thing.

Speaking of sweeping (and things Japanese), on Friday evening, we parked the car on the street in front of a lit up Aikido place. Inside were about ten men in traditional Japanese clothes, holding what at first I thought were swords. But they were brooms. They were sweeping the place, possibly ritualistically, and it was such a fascinating sight that I watched them as I walked a couple steps and knocked into a telephone pole. Even though the street was otherwise entirely deserted, at that very moment a man walked by, as if he had been dropped onto the earth for the purpose of laughing at me. Really, that happened. That was not a Freudian dream.

The marijuana case: a great test of law and politics.

Tomorrow the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Raich v. Ashcroft, the medical marijuana case, which sets the federal government's interest in comprehensive regulation of the marijuana market against the state's interest in controlling small, isolated uses of marijuana. In the case at hand, California would like to be free to legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Generally, judicial and political liberals have opposed the Supreme Court's enforcement of constitutional federalism, which limits the reach of federal governmental power and leaves room for individual states to experiment with their own policies, suited to local conditions and local political preferences. But some state policy experiments are appealing to those who did not like it when the Supreme Court used ideas about federalism to strike down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and part of the Violence Against Women Act.

So it will be interesting to see the response of those who have harshly criticized the majority's recent federalism decisions and have professed abject deference to Congress and the Executive branch about federalism matters. From a liberal perspective, one might want to think: I support the enforcement of federalism limits when federalism is really a stand-in for individual rights, and I support strong federal government power when the federal policy in question is really a stand-in for individual rights. But it is rather hard to translate that instinct into sound constitutional law.

Conservatives face a dilemma too, if their conservatism is the kind that puts great importance on strong anti-drug enforcement. But conservatives who take the libertarian position on drugs can happily seize a two-fold opportunity: they can demonstrate a principled fidelity to constitutional federalism and, at the same time, improve federalism's reputation among liberals.

My earlier posts about federalism and medical marijuana are here and here .

Drawing of the day.

Here's a photograph of a drawing that I like in part because on the left side you can see through to the drawing on the previous page. Another thing I like about the photograph is that red background, which happens to be the Corvette brochure that got me blogging about cars a while back. That gives me a good opportunity to save readers the trouble of sending any more "so are you buying the Corvette?" emails and say there was virtually never any chance I'd buy a Corvette (even though it won on the blogpoll)). So am I buying the Audi TT? That's what I'd buy if I were to buy a new car, but right now I'm keeping my Cosmic Green Beetle (to which I recently added a spectacular dent).

The President is fat.

The NYT is exploring new ways to knock the President:

Yes, the president of the United States, known for his robust good health, is officially overweight, according to the standards of the National Institutes of Health. At 6 feet and 194 pounds, his body mass index, or B.M.I., a measurement of height relative to weight, is 26.4, and 25 or above is officially overweight for both sexes.

Actually, I was just noticing in the video of the President from his visit to Chile that his Texan walking style now involves leading with a prominent belly.

Click on "graphic" at the link to see a chart comparing presidential BMIs. We all know who the fattest President was, but did you know what a teeny tiny man l'il Jimmy Madison was? At 5'4" and 99 pounds, don't you just want to pick him up and carry him around?

I should note that the article is also another one of the NYT's many attempts to remind us of the horrendous American fatness problem, which is always presented as a matter of health rather than aesthetics.

UPDATE: A medically trained reader notes that writes:

Just commenting on BMI. BMI is a cookie cutter measurement and we all know everyone is built different- some are beanpole, some are stout. A six foot 250 lb predominantly fat person would have the same BMI as a 250 lb six foot professional athlete. The BMI only uses two metrics: height and weight. It should be used as one tool in evaluating someone's health along with fitness, comorbidities, family history, etc... The problems are obvious when you consider muscle is heavier than fat.

Hey, the last person who mentioned that fact to me was the butcher that sold me a pork loin roast!

Gore Vidal bumbles to the defense of Oliver Stone.

Reuters reports:

Tired of watching the movie critics of America pile on director Oliver Stone - or perhaps sensing a golden opportunity to make headlines - novelist Gore Vidal leaped to Alexander's defense, calling Stone's film barrier-breaking for its frank depiction of bisexuality.

Vidal tells Reuters that Stone's $160 million Thanksgiving turkey was "a breakthrough in what you can make films about. Movies are always the last to register changes in society and this movie does it."

Except that since "Alexander" is a monumental flop, it would seem to stand more as a lesson in what you can't make films about. Which, of course, it isn't either, because it's really just a thuddingly non-breakthough reminder that people don't want to go to see boring, bad movies. But Vidal does have a point, and it's the point Vidal usually has: Look at meeeeeeee!!!!

Blogging self-censorship.

Tonya recounts part of a conversation she and I had last night at Harmony Bar, including a lot about beards. She writes: "Why should I spend so much time shaving, tweezing, exfoliating, moisturizing, deep conditioning, blow drying, curling and polishing when the men around me look like freaking Grizzly Adams?" But having said all that, she hits the real topic: how much should a blogger self-censor? Especially a blogging lawprof.

Democratic art.

Yesterday, I complained about the Wisconsin quarter. An emailer wrote:

If I do collect that one at all it will be like the daffy great-aunt, relegated to some attic room. Most of the state quarters have been, shall we say, "unfortunate," but that's what you get with a popularity contest amongst amateur designs. Compare that to the spring 2005 version of the nickel.

Yes, the new nickel is excellent. I note the entire bison is pictured, not just a head. The the new Jefferson profile is even less that a head now. Still, it looks nice, and it was designed by artists. Art cannot really be done by a democratic process.

For a demonstration of how bad art produced by democracy is, I strongly recommend "Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art." This is from the Library Journal review:

In December 1993, the Russian emigre art collaborators Komar and Melamid began a statistical market research poll to determine America's "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings. Since then, the whimsical project has spread around the world. Polls in the United States, Ukraine, France, Iceland, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Kenya, and China revealed that people wanted portraits of their families and always "blue landscapes." After conducting research, the pair paint made-to-order works that meet the wanted (landscape) and unwanted (abstract) criteria; they follow up with town meetings as virtual performance pieces.

The paintings in the book, produced to give people what they've said they wanted, are hilarious.
For a brilliant collection of ideas about art and facts about artists, I recommend David Markson's "This Is Not a Novel." It contains the too-snobbish Schoenberg quote: "If it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all it is not art." It also contains a quote, from Diego Rivera, at the other end of the spectrum of opinion about art: "Art which is not propanganda is not art."

UPDATE: Komar and Melamid have a terrific website, where you can read their surveys and look at the various paintings. The material is well-organized. You can click through all the countries on a particular question. I enjoyed seeing what color was the most popular in each country. It's always blue! And the second most popular color is nearly always green. Is that because we've adapted to the natural world?

Komar and Melamid (with David Soldier) also have a most wanted songs project, as one of my students just pointed out. Unfortunately, you can't listen to the most wanted song at this website, but here's their description of it:

The most favored ensemble, determined from a rating by participants of their favorite instruments in combination, comprises a moderately sized group (three to ten instruments) consisting of guitar, piano, saxophone, bass, drums, violin, cello, synthesizer, with low male and female vocals singing in rock/r&b style. The favorite lyrics narrate a love story, and the favorite listening circumstance is at home. The only feature in lyric subjects that occurs in both most wanted and unwanted categories is “intellectual stimulation.” Most participants desire music of moderate duration (approximately 5 minutes), moderate pitch range, moderate tempo, and moderate to loud volume, and display a profound dislike of the alternatives. If the survey provides an accurate analysis of these factors for the population, and assuming that the preference for each factor follows a Gaussian (i.e. bell-curve) distribution, the combination of these qualities, even to the point of sensory overload and stylistic discohesion, will result in a musical work that will be unavoidably and uncontrollably “liked” by 72 plus or minus 12% (standard deviation; Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic) of listeners.

UPDATE: Prof. Bainbridge responds to this post, adding a point, which he predicts I'll agree with, and I mostly do. Art is best produced by artists, and it is usually best that they act separately from government. But I don't support the complete separation of art and government, because government must have its coins and paper money, monuments, signs, buildings, and so forth. In producing these things, it is best to rely on artistic experts and not simply put things up for a vote. I want such things to be beautiful, and it seems that many of the people who are doing the voting are thinking about things other than beauty, such as the representation of corn on the quarter. As to trusting markets to produce art, as Prof. Bainbridge recommends (and I agree), we end up with a lot of trashy but decently good pop art, and there isn't anything terribly wrong with that (although I insist on zoning to protect me from trash of the architectural kind). There will still be artists who chose to produce high art, and some people will pay money to some of them some of the time.

Today's drawing: Voltaire, pens.

This is the drawing I wish I'd used yesterday. It's from the same notebook as the Thanksgiving drawing of the wineglass, which was not drawn on Thanksgiving but in Paris a few years ago. The reason I wish I'd used this drawing yesterday is that yesterday was the day my Normblog profile ran, and there was a reference to Voltaire in one of my answers. I don't know when I'm going to have occasion to talk about Voltaire again and rather than try to work Voltaire into some future posting, let me use the Voltaire drawing today. This drawing was done at the Louvre, the bust is the work of Houdin, and the comment in the cartoon bubble was not something I heard but something I read on a card on the wall.



Going through my Paris notebook is always troubling to me because I remember how much I disliked the pens I took to Paris. They were India ink felt tips that just didn't feel right. I had recently taken a trip to Amsterdam and done my best travel notebooks, and I knew part of the reason the Amsterdam notebooks worked out well was the pen: a new gold-nibbed Mont Blanc pen, which I filled with fountain India ink. A fountain pen enthusiast emailed after I posted the law school notes drawing and asked if I still used a fountain pen. This is a bit of a sore subject with me, as I wrote back:

I lost the Pelikan pen that got me through law school, eventually admitted to myself that I wasn't going to find it, replaced it with a Mont Blanc pen, which I used a lot, including for drawings (with fountain India ink), finally admitted that it just didn't work right anymore and I wasn't going to be able to figure out a way to fix it, replaced it with another Pelikan pen, which I promptly lost. So I'm in the phase where I think I've got a shot at finding the lost pen.

The emailer sent me to a very nice website for pen enthusiasts, and I'm thinking maybe I can find some way to revive the Mont Blanc pen, which is the one that helped me so much in Amsterdam and was so sadly missed in Paris. I've never had a pen I liked so much as the Pelikan pen I had in law school. When I finally gave in and replaced the Mont Blanc with a new Pelikan, I really hoped to get back to the feeling of the best pen I ever had, the law school pen. But the truth is the new Pelikan did not feel like the one given to me 25 years earlier. Is it possible I lost it on purpose out of disappointment? Yet I still believe that I would have broken it in and made it feel like the old one. Maybe memories of how things felt 25 years ago cannot be trusted.

But back to Voltaire. Mont Blanc, I see, makes a Voltaire fountain pen. This seems fortuitous. Maybe I should buy one. What is the connection between pens and Voltaire? He was a writer, of course. But also, he used a pen name. It would be quite nice if it were Voltaire who said "The pen is mightier than the sword," but he did not, even though it seems like the sort of thing he might have said. Even that other great free speech quote, is apparently not actually his. But there is a Voltaire pen quote:

To hold a pen is to be at war.

"We don't need no education."

But we do want our royalties.

State colors, state quarters.

Here are the winners of a Crayola contest, with a color name for each state. You can buy the State Colors Collection of crayons here. Maybe a good Christmas present for someone who thinks the state quarters are cool.

Since they were producing a set of crayons, these are not the 50 best names they got. They needed names to cover a proper array of colors. In case you're wondering, black is "Abe Lincoln's Hat," the state color for Illinois. White is "Space Needle," the Washington crayon. Here's a local news story about the woman -- hey, it wasn't a contest for kids? -- who won the Wisconsin section of the contest. And, of course, yeah, it's cheese-related.

Speaking of cheese-related and the state quarters, the Wisconsin quarter came out recently, and, man, is it bad. Possibly the worst state quarter yet. I understand why something dairy-related was desired, but why a cow head and a block of cheese? And then why throw in an ear of corn? The corn farmers are jealous of the dairy farmers getting all the attention? And a block of cheese is not an interesting image. They should have used just the cow -- and the full cow, not the severed head of a cow. Look at the Kentucky quarter, which uses just a horse and it's the entire horse. I suppose Kentucky figured out that a horse's head, shorn of the horse's body, would have led to "Godfather" jokes.

Why haven't the states later in line learned from the mistakes of previous state quarters? The best state quarters show just one thing. The more items you throw together the worse it gets. And keep the words to a minimum! Wisconsin puts its motto on the quarter, on a dumb banner swirling from cow head to cheese block. It's true the motto is only one word, but what does that word say about Wisconsin?

Wisconsin adopted the State motto, "Forward," in 1851, reflecting Wisconsin's continuous drive to be a national leader.

So basically, we're admitting that we're backward and we need to catch up.

Chris peeks over at what I've just written and says: "You should note that the dairy product does not come out of the cow's head. The important aspect of the cow is not its head."

A cow's udder -- and nothing more! -- now, that would be a fabulous state quarter. If we had the guts to do that, why, then, we wouldn't be backward any more!

"The widespread parable version."

Virginia Heffernan, in today's NYT, reviews tonight's incendiary "20/20":

"20/20" takes the position that the description of [the Matthew Shepard] murder as an anti-gay hate crime is entirely wrong. After six years of sentimental theater, documentaries and television movies that have bolstered the hate-crime view, tonight's program is no less than iconoclastic. ...

None of this ... changes the horror of the murder, or the inspiration and awareness that people gained from the widespread parable version of the event. But getting the truth - in ABC's revisionist investigation, which seeks to overturn the powerful and canonical version of the facts and meaning of this crime - is worthwhile, as it thickens the description and adds to the mystery of what happened that night in Laramie.

"The widespread parable version" remains intact as a source of "inspiration and awareness"? "Getting at the truth" is "worthwhile" because it "thickens the description and adds to the mystery"? We like the mythological story, and the reason we also like the truth is because it makes the myth more mysterious???

Isn't the truth a bit more important than that?

Consider this commentary from JoAnn Wypijewski in the L.A. Times:

So was Shepard's murder a hate crime or was it something else? "20/20" comes down on the side of something else, amplifying the meth connection, which I first reported in Harper's in 1999, and exploring Laramie's drug subculture, through which Shepard seems to have become acquainted with McKinney. Some gay advocates of hate crime laws have already blasted the network for raising the question. Michael Adams of Lambda Legal Defense says ABC is trying to "de-gay the murder."

Scrapping over the nature of Shepard's victimhood is the wrong debate. Whatever his killer's degree of homophobia, Shepard is dead. Powerless to restore him, society is obligated to ask what is owed to the living — to gay people, who have suffered ages of abuse, and also criminal defendants. Tinkering with criminal law is a backward step in countering the deep cultural realities of homophobia, racism, sexism. Prosecuting murder as a hate crime only lets the rest of us think we're off the hook, while it tramples on justice.

If a legend is used as leverage to change the law, we need to be willing to think about whether the legend is true, and if it is not, we need to be willing to rethink our analysis.

Remember Cindy Dixon? She was the mother of Russell Henderson, one of the two men convicted of murdering Matthew Shepard. Henderson, the L.A. Times article tells us, "was the driver that night. He never hit Shepard, but, on McKinney's order, he tied him to the fence."

In January 1999, Henderson's mother, Cindy Dixon, was found dead. She had been raped and struck and left in the snow to die. No powerful advocates spoke for her. She was likely to come to a bad end, people said, what with the drinking and the men, and then her son….

Nobody took the measure of hate. By the time the Dixon case was wrapped up, they weren't even talking murder. A man pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the same judge who sent Dixon's son to prison forever sentenced her killer to four to nine years. He got out last year.

Justice demands that we think clearly about criminal responsibility and not let our minds be clouded by evocative stories that mesh with our assumptions about the world and our social policy aspirations. I believe the cause of gay rights is a very good one, and I also think that if the cause is good, truth should serve it. If you think your cause is so important that you must put it ahead of the truth, you are deeply confused.

UPDATE: I've watched the "20/20," and it didn't impress me much. There were a lot of interviews with people who had plenty of reason to lie. Now that the public's strong reaction to the original "gay panic" story is known, the two murderers have every motivation to say it wasn't like that at all. And the people of Laramie can't appreciate having their town associated with bigotry, so they too have a motivation to retell the story. I have no idea what is true here. Since the men weren't convicted of a "hate crime" and, in any event, they pleaded guilty, their convictions are sound whether their motivation was robbery or bigotry. As to the question of whether there should be hate crime legislation, I do not mean to offer an opinion on the subject. I have not done the complex policy analysis that I think is needed to decide whether there should be additional, separately defined crimes in addition to murder and assault. The main point of this post is to highlight the importance of truth and to be critical of people who would subordinate truth to their political and policy goals.

Doodle of the day.

Profile.

My Normblog profile is up!

"The unexpected ruling, released in the evening darkness."

The NYT reports:

"There is a God," Mr. Yushchenko said to the crowd, and told them that complaints of election abuse would be heard in court. The square erupted in cheers and applause.

I understand the deep feeling that makes someone say "There is a God" in this situation, but there is also law: there is something in human beings that wills law into existence.

One more thing.

I'm sorry, but I've got to kick "Alexander" one more time, even as it dies at the box office. For anyone who thinks Oliver Stone is bestowing some sort of favor on gay people, read this insight from the Washington Post review:

In many ways the movie feels 50 years old already. It offers the standard 1950s melodramatic theory of Alexander's sexual orientation: the scheming, sexualized, domineering mother, and the distant, uncaring father.

A Thanksgiving-appropriate post.

Sorry for going off the Thanksgiving topic in that last post (my longest ever, long enough that I know that without looking over any other posts). Here's a Thanksgiving post as an antidote, in which Jim Lindgren, of Volokh Conspiracy, gives us a contemporaneous account of the original feasting and makes some observations about the history of gun ownership. And this is a good article in the NYT about immigrants experiencing some perplexity over Thanksgiving ("The children have Thursday off to eat a turkey?").

Rabies.

Read the amazing story of the doctors--here in Wisconsin--saving the teenage girl who developed rabies after being bitten by a bat. It is the first time a human being has survived rabies without receiving the vaccination. Sometimes people don't go in for treatment because they don't realize they've been bitten, but this young woman did know. A bat flew into her church during a service:

"As society has developed, people have forgotten the folklore about don't play with stray animals, or stay away from bats," Dr. Willoughby explained. The bat drew blood, he said, but the bite was quick and small, so Jeanna thought she had just been scratched. Her fellow churchgoers assumed that only healthy bats could fly, so they picked it up after it flew into a window and threw it out the door.

The girl was not taken to a doctor, or she would have received the vaccination. Ah! People need to know not to touch a bat!

I used to have problems with bats getting into my house. As I later figured out, they came in through the attic. More than once, I went up to my bedroom at night, turned on the light, and had a bat swoop right at me. I always scream, quite hysterically, but then I try to figure out a solution. One night, a few years ago, I had already prepared a box to trap the next bat. It was a shoe box with one edge of the lid removed so that the box could be placed over the bat when it landed on a surface and the lid slid under. Then, I planned to toss the box out the window. The first time I tried this maneuver, the bat squiggled its way out as I was trying to get the lid under. It flew lengthwise figure eights in the room over and over and never found the open window. Finally, it flopped onto a table, I got it in the box, and I threw the box out the window, feeling quite triumphant. I closed the window and went to wash my hands and saw a tiny wound --- just four little lines -- on the back of my right ring finger.

It took me a few hours to decide I ought to go to the hospital. It was such a tiny wound. I knew even a scratch could lead to rabies, but I kept thinking maybe I had scraped my finger on the sand-textured wall. What made me go to the hospital was the observation that the four little lines were symmetrical, like this: | '' |. That is the pattern of teeth. The wall might, by chance, produce such a symmetrical pattern, but that was much less likely. I felt silly going into the emergency room with such a tiny wound, especially when a moaning boy with gauze wrapped over his eyes came in. Later, I was in a room where the opthamalogist came in to get some equipment, and we talked for a moment. I asked what happened to that poor boy, and he said "I'm not at liberty ... someone poked him. He's going to need surgery."

I was apologetic when I arrived at the emergency room. I said things like "maybe I'm overreacting," but I also mentioned over and over again something I'd read in a Harper's Magazine Index about how many people die from rabies after they don't realize they've been bitten. In fact, as is usually the case, there were very few people using the emergency room at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. I was quickly seen by a nurse, then a doctor, then a second doctor. All three had me tell my elaborate story and expound my symmetry theory, and all three spent a lot of time puzzling over the wound. Doctor 1 thought maybe it was from the wall. Doctor 2 said it was my choice, but he'd get the treatment. He said, you could get 1000 bat bites and do nothing and nothing might happen, but considering that you would die if you bet wrong and the treatment, done now, is 100% effective, you should get the treatment. This puzzling over the wound process took three hours for some reason. Slow night? State law required them to call the police when an animal bites someone, and that call resulted in a long visit from police officer, who took pages of notes, apparently about how I caught the bat in a box and threw the box out the window and so forth.

Finally, I got the treatment. And the rabies shots, which were given in the arm, did not hurt any more than a tetanus shot. It did hurt to get one of the immunoglobulin shots that preceded the rabies shots, because it was injected at the site of the wound. It is damn hard to find a place to put anything in the middle of the back of a finger! But they did. Afterwards, I felt faint and they had me rest for another twenty-five minutes. At midnight, the nurse said "The witching hour," and I said "I'm going to turn into a bat."

The next day, when I came home from work, I found a legal notice posted on my door. It was a formal demand for me to surrender the animal that, according to a police report, had bitten a person. I had to call animal control and explain how I had thrown the bat, in a box, out of a three-story window. The person I talked to was very chatty, and I had a long interesting discussion about rabies and bats. She told me about Americans who get rabies shots before traveling to certain parts of the world where there is great danger of exposure and difficulty obtaining treatment. (The linked article notes that "rabies kills tens of thousands of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.")

Later, I was asked to come in and talk to two doctors at the UW Hospital who specialized in infectious disease research, and these two men also talked to me for a long time. I heard all sorts of stories about rabies. I asked if it was true that if you had the vaccination there is zero chance of getting the disease, and they told me that there are cases of people with very deep, tearing bites from wolves who still get the disease. The disease creeps slowly up through your nerves to your brain, and that time gives the vaccine a chance to work. But with the large wolf bites, the disease reaches the brain much too soon. In the cured case in Wisconsin, the treatment consisted of using drugs to induce a coma, to deliberately shut down the girl's brain while the disease passed through.

So, wonderfully, there is now hope for those who fail to get treatment, but it is much better, still, to go in for treatment, even for a tiny scratch. Once the symptoms appear, as in this recent case, it is too late to prevent the disease. The other thing I learned from my rabies experience was to catch a bat in a little plastic margarine container, with a snap-on lid, and take the bat in for testing. It wasn't that long after my experience, that I woke up one morning hearing that leathery flapping sound, and I tried to convince myself that I was still dreaming. Then I felt that leathery wing brush my hand, did some preparatory screaming, then got the margarine container and caught the bat against the window. I snapped on the lid and took it over to the animal testing lab. When I handed the container to the woman at the counter, she asked "How long has it been dead?" I said, "It's alive."

Not long after that, I spent $800 having the house bat-proofed. The bat proofing guy told me all the houses in my nicely wooded neighborhood probably had bats, unless efforts had been made to seal out the bats. I know he was in the business of providing that service, but based on my experience, I'd say get an older house bat-proofed. I haven't had a bat in the house since I did. I do still worry, though, when I hear a little noise in the night, and many times I've turned on the light to look around for a bat!

UPDATE: Let me add that awful as a bat in the house is, bats outdoors are perfectly excellent. Here's a bat conservation website. And here's a cool blog entirely devoted to bats.

Thanksgiving in NY/Madison.

Nina's in NYC for Thanksgiving, and she's got some relevant photos today, including "Kermit, still groggy after a year in seclusion." I'm jealous of her trip to the new MOMA--here, with photos, including one of a woman with a baby, which reminds me of how, back in 1981, I took my two week old baby way uptown to the Whitney Biennial, which I didn't want to miss, and felt guilty, because I was still skipping law school classes, having told myself I wasn't sufficiently recovered from my C-Section. That's how much I care about art museums.

I'm not so jealous of the ventures into food shopping in NYC, shown here at Balducci's, because Nina mentions that the Whole Foods in NYC has a one hour long checkout line! I just got back from the Madison Whole Foods, a mile down the street from my house. Granted, it was early, shortly after the 8 a.m. opening time, but I breezed though the beautiful place and did not have to wait in line at all. Two cheese attendants were ready to help me find things. And the meat guy not only got me that two-pound, securely tied, pork loin roast I needed, but he also offered an explanation for why the two-pounds looked so large (it has no bone, and muscle is lighter than bone, though fat is even lighter than muscle).

So, why did I rush out at 8 a.m. to buy a pork loin roast? After posting the previous entry, I worried that one or two of my Madison readers might suddenly decide they wanted the ultra-delicious arrosto di maiale al latte for Thanksgiving dinner too and would dash off to Whole Foods and get the last one. There were three luscious pork loin roasts there, and it was nice to get there so early and see the place almost empty of people but teeming with even more beautiful food than usual.

Speaking of loin, here's a bonus family story: When my sons were little, we often drove all the way to Florida to see my parents and my sister's family, and we always stopped to eat at Cracker Barrel restaurants. Three times a day, mealtimes were determined by the presence of a Cracker Barrel at an exit along the Interstate. Once, when Chris was pretty young, he tried to read the menu and cried out "Baby Lion Back Ribs! That's terrible!"

Doodle of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving. This was drawn some years ago in Paris, hence the big ashtray on the table. I don't recommend smoking for Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving smoke--that's not a tradition, not for me anyway. But I do recommend a nice glass of wine, and whatever else you've decided to make.



I've decided to make arrosto di maiale al latte--pork loin braised in milk (which I know sounds horribly wrong from some religious perspectives). This is an old favorite recipe from Marcella Hazan's "Classic Italian Cookbook," which is by far my favorite cookbook. After cooking for two and a half hours, the milk is not at all recognizable as milk, but has become a delicious gravy.

I have not had this dish, which we used to make all the time, since 1989. I was just thinking yesterday about how much I love it and why I had not made it for so long. It took no time to remember the reason: the last time I sat down to eat it, I received a phone call and heard shocking news about my father. Shortly thereafter, my father died. Thanksgiving is a good time to gather with the family that you do have, but it can also make you think of the ones who have gone. Yet I didn't make a special Thanksgiving effort to think about my father. I was just running through my mental file of festive meat dishes and remembered that pork roast that became associated by chance so long ago with a sad memory. Nevertheless, it has been 15 years, and that pork roast was quite delicious. The moratorium is over.

Iconic character needed.

Yesterday, I said we need a character like Scrooge or the Grinch for Thanksgiving. And I mean I want an iconic character, a major, memorable character who embodies our hostility to Thanksgiving, through whom we can experience our antisocial feelings vicariously and who, in the story narrative, learns the true meaning of Thanksgiving so we can distance ourselves from our own unacceptable antagonism and feel good about ourselves in the end.

It's not enough to coin a term for a Thanksgiving hater. And it's not enough to say some character on some sitcom (e.g., "Friends") bellyached about Thanksgiving for whatever reason. People are always complaining about various things about Thanksgiving. In fact, one of the main things I don't like about Thanksgiving is having to listen to the same complaints every year: turkey makes you sleepy, it's dry, etc. I especially don't like hearing routine, flat statements about how your family members misbehave or are annoying. At least you have a family sizable enough to create an Thanksgiving-style crowd.

"Alexander" versus "The Aviator."

Oliver Stone's movie "Alexander" is getting such abysmal reviews that it can't all be chalked up to red-state homophobism. But if the movie weren't so horribly long and boring, it might be a laugh to see the Angelina Jolie performance. NYT meanie Manohla Dargis writes:

Mad of eye and teased of hair, Olympias, played with nose-flaring gusto by Angelina Jolie, was the mother of all monstrous mothers, a literal snake charmer whose love for her only son had the stench of incestuous passion and the tedium of the perpetual nag....

As the young marauder kills and enslaves peoples from Egypt to India, Mr. Stone repeatedly returns us to Olympias, snakes coiling around her body and chastising her absent son in a bewildering accent, part Yiddishe Mama, part Natasha of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame: "You don't write, you don't call, why don't you settle down with a nice Macedonian girl?" or words to that effect. Rarely since Joan Crawford rampaged through the B-movie sunset of her career has a female performer achieved such camp distinction.

Meanwhile, Roger Friedman of Fox News says Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" "will not only be nominated for the Academy Award, but ... will win [it] without too much trouble." In a world where Oliver Stone has won an Oscar and Martin Scorsese has not, one last chance has come to restore justice and fairness, so that one day, we may hear that Martin Scorsese has won a Best Director Oscar.

UPDATE: Larry Ribstein points to one of the many older films that depict gay relationships. (Here's a great documentary on the subject of gay characters in films.) Ribstein writes:

The important point is Stone's reticence compared to a more than 30 year old film. Does this suggest, not that the public is not ready yet for gay relationships, but that a once-ready public is not so ready anymore?

First, as I've said before, I don't think Stone is displaying any reticence. He's just using current political issues to promote his movie and excuse its horrible badness. Second, he may show the relationship less graphically than this older film, but that doesn't say much at all about the culture then and now. He's crafting a hugely expensive Hollywood film that must bring in far, far greater crowds than an art film. Stone would like you to think people have gotten especially repressive and intolerant lately, but I am not buying it. Gay marriage is controversial, but it wasn't even mentioned thirty years ago. I'm quite sure that if it were, it would not have found a ready public. In fact, people are much more accepting of gay relationships now than they were then.

The "Seinfeld" DVD.

Somehow, I couldn't help buying the first "Seinfeld" DVD collection. I stopped by Borders for another purpose and there it was on one of the front tables, with an excellent price, so I picked it up. Once I decide to buy one thing, the chances of my buying any given other thing in at the store skyrocket. For some reason, I have no problem leaving with nothing, but I hate to buy just one thing. So if I'm going to buy one thing, it seems I have to find something else. Every other item near that item I've choosen suddenly becomes more desirable. Once I find the second item, I'm able to back off of this mania. It's basically an anything-but-one mania. Yesterday, what I picked up, from the same table, was "Eddie Izzard, Unrepeatable."

I sat down to read a few things for a while, because I had 20 minutes or so to kill before I needed to be at an appointment. A woman slumping in a chair near mine was reading "The Bush Survival Bible." She looked very glum. I tried not to let my get-over-it-already reaction show. The Democrats need to win new converts. How do they expect to do that as the Party of Deep Depression? And why mire yourself in books about your own oversensitive psyche? I thought the point of being on the left was your deep concern about other people. Sigh.

(I'd like to put in some Amazon/Borders links, but can't reach the site. Is Amazon down?)[UPDATE: Finally got through and have added links.]

So, the "Seinfeld" DVD. Seasons 1 & 2. That sounds like a lot, but it's just the first eighteen episodes. I watched the original pilot episode, with the written commentary on. These subtitles give you all sorts of trivia. It takes some doing to read this commentary and watch the show at the same time, clearly not the best way to savor the comic energy of the show, but there are lots of cool facts to absorb. Like: not only are they calling Kramer Kessler in this episode (because they haven't cleared the name Kramer with the real-life Kramer) but they considered calling Kramer Bennett. And: why Kramer had a dog just that one time. You can also get distracted trying to spot the 1 to 2 minutes of material that has been missing from each episode since its original airing. Unless you watch the DVD alone, there's sure to be a lot of talk in the room along the lines of: "Hey, that's it," "No, that's not it," "Yeah, I don't remember that," "Well, I do, that's not it."

This DVD collection makes a great Christmas gift, if you can avoid buying it now as a gift t0 yourself, as I did. If only I had one of those shrink-wrap re-wrappers and the will to resist blogging about the DVD, maybe I could have "re-gifted" this to one of my sons.

Doodle of the day.

Yesterday, I looked through a folder of class notes that I had kept since 1981, when I studied Federal Courts at NYU School of Law. I suppose I kept these notes (and not all my law school notes) because this was the first course I taught here at Wisconsin (where we call it "Federal Jurisdiction"). I've never referred to these notes, in my teaching preparations, but I've somehow always thought maybe I would. I still do!

There are 167 legal-pad pages of notes, written in black fountain pen. I'm shocked at how many topics we covered in that class, far more than I cover when I teach the course. How did we do it? A week of these notes is copied from someone else's: I had a baby on March 17th of that semester. That fell on spring break, luckily, but, having a C-section, it took another week to make my way back to school. Consequently, the Eleventh Amendment has always been a special mystery to me, but I have discovered over the years, that it is a bit of a mystery to everyone.

There are many marginal doodles in these 167 pages. Here's one:



UPDATE: An emailer writes:

I saw your doodle today and have to say that it looks like an individual contour from a contour map of steep terrain.

I used to be a mining engineer, and, to be more precise, would produce maps that estimate where mineral deposits would intersect the surface. Your doodle looks like a map that would be produced for such an investigation.

Its odd to see something so familiar in such an unusual venue. The unusual aspect is that the doodle looks like a mineral deposit that is dipping to the right where it intersects more surface than it does on the left. That your spacing would emulate this scenario surprised me. Of course you may have seen this type of map before.

Maybe I was a mining engineer in a previous lifetime. Spooky!

ANOTHER UPDATE: My email correspondent writes back:

Just checked your site and appreciate you including my comment. I probably didn't make myself clear but the previous doodle was the one I was referring too.

So if you get comments that my comments don't make sense, you should know that I was referring [this] doodle.

Since I work for NASA now, I'd have to say that the doodle the update is attached to looks more like a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Well, that proves I didn't steal my ideas from mining engineering maps!

"The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

I didn't like this movie very much when I saw it in the theater, but I really enjoyed it at home on DVD, for some reason. The DVD has a couple deleted scenes and a nice interview with Jim Carrey and the director Michel Gondry. I went back and found my old post from when I saw the movie in the theater and was surprised to see that I wrote:

I prefer TV--including watching DVDs--because I don't like being stuck in the theater. Some things need to be seen on the big screen, but ES isn't one of them. It has a music video look that would do better on TV I think. There is a bluish pall over the whole thing, broken only by Kate Winslet's hair, orange sweatshirt, and a few other things. Okay, that's a color idea. I think color movies should have color ideas, but I think it is a video screen, not a movie screen idea.

Funny to read that! Before reading that, though, I had a big conversation about the difference between movies on TV and movies in the theater and what makes the experience so different. I was saying I have more patience at home, because I'm in control and I can pause it if I want, but that the theater can be good precisely because of the loss of control. Another thing I like about TV is that the frame is there, so you see the composition. And the picture is crisply rectangular. The theater screen has that ugly curve, which you're supposed to ignore, letting the big picture envelope you. Then, composition doesn't matter so much. But having the frame around the image can totally change the effect, greatly improving a well-shot movie (for me).

Christmas has Scrooge and the Grinch. What about Thanksgiving?

Isn't Thanksgiving more deserving of a naysayer? I mean, really, we eat dinner every day. Is it that for Thanksgiving--as opposed to Christmas--you are only asked to give thanks, not presents? To give thanks and eat dinner. But you must give thanks and eat dinner in a way that outdoes the thanks-giving and dinner-eating of other days. I do think there should be a Scrooge/Grinch analog. The Thankswithholder. The Ingrate.

UPDATE: Midwestern Mugwump suggests "Thanksgriper."

ALSO: More here.

Two polls on Bush.

The NYT/CBS poll, according to the headline, detects that "Americans Show Clear Concerns on Bush Agenda."

The CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll shows "Majority gives Bush good job approval marks."

Despite the headline, the NYT poll found:

[E]ven after this tense and vituperative campaign, 56 percent said they were generally optimistic about the next four years under Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush's job approval rating has now inched up to 51 percent, the highest it has been since March....

Across the board, the poll suggested that the outcome of the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr. Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks - and that they liked him more than Mr. Kerry - rather than any kind of broad affirmation of his policies.

I like the way the NYT poll reexplored the question of support for "moral values" (which 22 percent of respondents called the most important issue on a well-publicized Election Day poll). In the Times poll:

[W]hen allowed freely to name the issue that was most important in their vote, 6 percent chose moral values, although smaller numbers named issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. On a separate question in which voters were given a choice of nine issues, 5 percent chose abortion, 4 percent chose stem cell research and 2 percent chose same-sex marriage.

The top issue was the economy and jobs, which was cited by 29 percent of respondents.

I didn't like the way the Times then went on to pad its article with material about the red state/blue state culture clash that it has been so wedded to since the election. If you've done a survey, talk about what the survey shows. I don't need the long quote from a Republican guy from Michigan and a Democratic guy from Georgia, especially when they seem to be selected to keep the big "moral values" issue going.

Distinguished diatribe.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

People who packed the Union Theater on Monday night expecting to hear about the best-selling book "Fast Food Nation" were instead served a diatribe from the author about his thoughts since the presidential election.

"Three weeks ago . . . I went into a real funk," said Eric Schlosser, author of bestsellers "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer Madness."

"I really went into a depression. A really dark place."

A crowd of 1,100 had gathered to hear this lecture which was part of the university's distinguished lecture series.

UPDATE: Here's the coverage in the UW student newspapers the Badger Herald and the Daily Cardinal. Both of these articles make Schlosser's speech seem more coherent and focused (on the topic of legalizing marijuana). So who knows? I wasn't there and I don't have a text. Feel free to email me if you were there and can describe the lecture.

Doodle of the day.

Your shrinking brain.

So alcohol, it turns out, does not kill brain cells, according to the NYT. But a study associated back pain with brain shrinkage. And another study found brain shrinkage in obese women. I'm making a mental note to make an appointment with my chiropractor, to stop eating, and to worry even less (if such a thing is possible) about that glass of wine.

"The artful, undulant array of organ pipes captivated."

The NYT appreciates the pipe organ and the Overture Center that houses it, here in Madison.

Oliver Stone's new rant.

I have a new entry in my running account of Oliver Stone's attempts to prepare the American people for his grand opus "Alexander." This is Stone raving to the AP (the "thing" referred to is the movie):

"I started this thing before all this nightmare came down, this morass," Stone said of the Iraq war. "It's ironic, and I think there is a coincidence that's far beyond my understanding, but I would certainly not limit this to the current situation. This is an older situation, East vs. West. This is pre-Muslim, and there was always a conflict between Persian and Greek."

So you got the idea to make the movie, and then world events caught up with you, you brilliant, prescient man!

"Alexander was beautiful because he saw beyond that conflict into a synthesis," Stone added. "I'm not so sure our present administration does. It's great that they say, `Democracy, blah, blah, blah,' but you have to modify democracy to the local customs."

Even though the world has changed dozens of times over since Alexander's days - which predated Jesus Christ and Mohammed - lessons in ancient history remain for modern people.

"And what is the lesson?" Stone asked. "Alexander brought the Hellenic way which is, let's say, more freedom for the individual. He abided by the customs of, unlike our administration, of leaving the (opposing) armies intact and used the armies. He always needed more men."

After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the United States disbanded the Iraqi army instead of incorporating those not loyal to Saddam as a police force, a move criticized as making it more difficult to fight anti-U.S. guerrillas.

"(Alexander) was always inclusive, and we were exactly the opposite when we went into Iraq. We were totally exclusive. ... You could argue the policy was malformed from the beginning, misintended."

Stone said he considers that an error in strategy and has no interest in bashing the president.

"I would not put Bush down..." Stone said.

No, no, of course you wouldn't. You're just offering some military advice. Great. Thanks. That was really a very useful explanation how Bush can become "beautiful" by seeing "beyond that conflict into a synthesis."

UPDATE: Film critic Richard Roeper makes fun of the movie:

A group of Greek lawyers has threatened to file a lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Oliver Stone "for suggesting Alexander the Great was bisexual," as the National Post put it....

Having seen the film, I can categorically state that Stone does not in any way suggest Alexander was bisexual.

He suggests Alexander was absolutely, fabulously gay.

ANOTHER UPDATE: If you've come here from a link where I was characterized as part of a big Them that has a Plan to do something or other, I would encourage you to read around on my blog, including following the link that appears in the first sentence of this post to my earlier, much more substantive statements about the film "Alexander." I would encourage you to judge for yourself whether it makes much sense to characterize me as part of a politico-cultural scheme.

Christo.

Drudge is linking to this AP story headlined "Christo to Wrap Central Park in Fabric." Look at Christo's beautiful web page explaining this brilliant project. He's not wrapping anything! He sometimes has wrapped things, but this is not a case of wrapping. These are flowing, flapping hangings! You might enjoy reading Christo's "Most Common Errors" page. I've blogged about Christo before here and here.

TV on DVD.

Tomorrow the new "Seinfeld" DVD collection comes out and Entertainment Weekly is recommending it because you'll get to see the full-length original show (the syndicated version shaves off a minute or so), there are commentary tracks (with Julia Louis-Dreyfus partaking of episode one for the first time), there are deleted scenes, additional stand-up material, and there's a 60-minute documentary.

EW also has some recommendations about what other TV shows ought to come out in disc form. But they don't seem remember any shows before 1965, so they fail to mention the show I really want: "Dobie Gillis"! Oh, how I love that show! Warren Beatty was even in it--a minor character, but it's fun to see him as a high school student. There are all these people who love "Gilligan's Island," so there must be a fan base for Bob Denver: he was unforgettably great as the beatnik high schooler Maynard G. Krebs ("You rang?"). And no one has ever been more beautiful and funny at the same time than the brilliant Tuesday Weld (who played Thalia Menninger).

UPDATE: I picked up the first "Seinfeld" collection on Tuesday. Couldn't resist.

Desperate moral values.

The NYT, in a front page article, searches for meaning: if a lot of the voters in the last election polled that they cared about "moral values," why is "Desperate Housewives" such a big hit? I didn't get much out of this article.

For one thing, there's no serious discussion of the numbers and what those numbers represent. The article doesn't even mention that only 22% of voters said they voted based on "moral values" and the many criticisms that have been made of that poll. And the television ratings numbers aren't translated into percentages of voters in particular areas, so why are we inferring that the same segment of the population that picked "moral values" is watching that popular TV show?

Secondly, the article assumes that people who would say "moral values" and watch "Desperate Housewives" must be hypocrites, showing one face to the world and doing something else at home in private. But someone watching a TV show about adultery is not necessarily secretly embracing the immorality of the characters. You might watch people involved in adultery because you are struggling with temptations yourself and want to experience the good and the bad vicariously. I haven't watched "Desperate Housewives," but I know the series began with the discovery that a housewife has committed suicide. Is the show promoting adultery or warning people about it? "Desperate" is a word with multiple meanings. It may suggest the "housewives" in question are just eager to have sex, but it also connotes anxiety and despair.

There are many interesting things that might be said about wanting both to watch "Desperate Housewives" and to reelect George Bush, but this article doesn't say them. It's just a ragged hash of speculation. Why not do a real survey and find some people who both watch "Desperate Housewives" and voted based on moral values (and really meant traditional sexual morality); then follow up with some questions designed to understand these people? To me, this article, featured on the front page, is just one more example of the way the New York Times has decided to process its disappointment in the election results into a tale inferior red staters and their bogus moral values.

Doodle of the day.

Those religion-oriented law schools.

The NYT reports on the new religion-oriented law schools.

"The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason," said Bruce W. Green, Liberty's dean.

The claim that professors at the leading law schools tilt to the left is supported by statistics. According to a forthcoming study of 21 top law schools from 1991 to 2002 by John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University, approximately 80 percent of the professors at those schools who made campaign contributions primarily supported Democrats, while 15 percent primarily supported Republicans.

Hmmm.... that seems to equate "tilting to the left" with "extreme rationalism." What's needed are law schools that expose law students to the full range of professional debate. It doesn't make much sense to counter one law school with another law school: the poor student has to go one place or another!

But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."

Try saying that at your confirmation hearing!

But that's Jerry Falwell, the school's chancellor. What are the lawprofs really like? The Times makes the civpro teacher's class sound much weirder than perhaps it should:

In Professor [Jeffrey C.] Tuomala's civil procedure class, the topic on Wednesday morning was a law school warhorse: the Supreme Court's 1938 decision in Erie v. Tompkins, a case that has baffled generations of law students. Judging by the halting Socratic dialogue, Professor Tuomala's natural-law critique of the case did not immediately clarify matters.

The Erie decision, which is viewed as uncontroversial in much of the legal academy, represented a disastrous wrong turn, Professor Tuomala said. In ruling that federal courts may not apply general principles in some cases but must follow state laws, he said, the Supreme Court denied the possibility of "a law that's fixed, that's uniform, that applies to everybody, everyplace, for all time."

The "natural-law critique" of Erie is not just some quirky angle Tuomala cooked up! Erie overruled Swift v. Tyson, an 1842 case, written by the great Justice Story, which did in fact rely on principles of natural law. Any lawprof teaching Erie would need to talk about natural law. Erie is the one civpro case where you have to talk about natural law. And nearly any civpro lawprof (myself included) when attempting to teach Erie in the Socratic mode would seem "halting" and unclear much of the time. A good civpro lawprof would not polish Erie off as "uncontroversial," even though it must be seen as well-settled law, but would vividly present the different jurisprudence underlying Swift and the case that overruled it. It is the most interesting question to be found in Civil Procedure!

Tuomala isn't a bad lawprof if he happens to think Swift was right and Erie was "disastrous." That's a perfectly sensible thing to think. What would be wrong would be to teach students that they ought to go out into the world as lawyers and attempt to do legal work without understanding that they have to function in a system that accepts Erie as settled precedent. Lawprofs at all law schools are likely to convey to the students their opinion that key cases were wrongly, even disastrously, decided. There is nothing abnormal about that. What is important is to equip your students to work within the existing legal system (which, of course, includes working to change things).

"We're the good guys."

The NYT directs us to the web posting of the cameraman who photographed the shooting of the wounded Iraqi in Fallujah last week. Here is the post at Kevin Sites Blog:

[O]bserving all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. ... [T]he rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all....

I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation....

For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole....

Even if, in the end, it is determined that the act shown on the video was unjustified, the willingness of the military to include the reporters, to release the video, and to fully investigate the incident supports the belief Sites says he relied on that "We're the good guys."

George Carlin.

George Carlin was on Tim Russert's CNBC show this weekend, promoting his book "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops." The show ended with Russert asking Carlin "Do you vote?" Carlin answered:

No, I don't. No. I voted up to McGovern. I feel, actually, a little purer, a little more detached emotionally from it. I really have no stake. If you dropped me from an airplane, I would come down left of center, because I believe more in humans than I do in property. But in terms of the minor machinations and the way they put these things together, I've no interest.

I think Carlin's distance from mundane political choice makes him a better comedian, which is so much more valuable than his individual vote.

"I loved Tang and I would sometimes eat it by the teaspoon, straight from the jar."

So writes Augusten Burroughs in the first true story in his new book "Magical Thinking." He's a school kid at the time, excited to be chosen to appear in a Tang commercial. One thing I love about Augusten Burroughs is, as soon as he brought up the subject of Tang, the first thing I thought of was eating it straight from the jar. And there he is, eating Tang out of the jar.

Reading about Burroughs and Tang brought back a flood of memories of a childhood spent eating sugary granules that were supposed to be mixed into some more conventional food substance. I was particularly fond of eating strawberry Jello mix straight out of the box. And of course there were always the lumps to be found in the brown sugar. Great, it got lumpy. And why not eat plain white sugar? We would eat spoonfuls of white sugar, but we preferred to sprinkle a thick layer of sugar on a slice of white bread, fold the white bread in half, and make a delicious and crunchy snack out of sugar sandwiches. We would also, routinely, sprinkle plenty of white sugar on tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and cottage cheese. Much as we viewed mashed sweet potatoes as a way to eat marshmallows, we saw tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and cottage cheese as a way to eat sugar. For a particularly thrilling, inappropriate sugary treat, we would eat Fizzies, undissolved.

UPDATE: A number of people have emailed me to say that they too ate sugar sandwiches but thought the bread ought to be buttered. We used butter too sometimes, but you need softened butter and butter would also melt the sugar a bit, making the sandwich less crunchy. Hardcore granule fans could do without butter. But butter is good too, and makes the concoction something more like cake--instant cake, you might say, or a homemade pseudo-Twinkie. One writer, from India, specified using two thick slices of white bread, slathering both with plenty of unsalted, softened butter, and sprinkling on either white or brown sugar. Well, as long as we're thinking of switching to brown sugar, I'm thinking, why not try sprinkling on some Tang, for a pseudo-orange-sponge-cake effect?

Tilt-a-Whirl.

Nice photo sequence!

That unidentified saucer.

Last spring, I had a temporary copy of the program iBlog, and I started a second blog, which I kept up until the software expired. But I still occasionally get email from people who protest this post, about trying to figure out the markings on a saucer that I'd had lying around in my kitchen for a long time. The saucer had a star on it, and I'd always assumed it was a souvenir from Texas. On closer examination I see letters arrayed inside the star: A-L-F-A-T. I can't figure out which letter to start with, so I go through the various options until I get FATAL, which I don't like very much. Anyway, I pursue the mystery a bit and end the brief personal essay. That was back in May. I still get email like this:

It is ... sad that you may now have been led to believe that your grandfathers may have some how been involved in some sort of evil secret society.

The anti-masons appear to forget or choose to ignore how Masons where involved in the founding of this country and the freedoms the anti-masons now have.

Well, she's right that I really don't know much about the Masons, but I don't go around worrying about them. Nevertheless, "FATAL" is one hell of a motto.

UPDATE: Apparently that crappy new movie that's number one this week--"National Treasure"--has a big Masonic angle:

[A child watching] this sluggish two-hour trudge through landmarks in Washington, Philadelphia and New York [might] come away believing the bogus mythology that detonates it with a squishy thud.

That mythology, derived from Freemasonry, holds that a map, drawn in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence, contains clues to the whereabouts of the Greatest Treasure Ever Told About. The Knights of Templar, some of whom were Founding Fathers, supposedly left a trail of coded clues that begins on a frozen ship north of the Arctic Circle and ends in the bowels of Lower Manhattan under a crumbling system of dumbwaiters.

It should be easy enough to acquire that treasure. All you have to do is steal the Declaration of Independence, unroll it on a kitchen table, apply a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice, heat with a handy hair dryer, and presto, letters and numbers appear. Another major clue can be deciphered only through special spectacles designed by the real-life Benjamin Franklin and hidden behind a brick near Independence Hall.

If I really had true blogging stamina, I'd go to see this piping-hot pile of patrio-tainment so I could blog about it.

Journey through the NYT completed ahead of schedule.

For some reason, I'm through the whole pile by 10 a.m. Only the crossword puzzle is left. I feel like the weekend has an extra day to it! Maybe I'll actually finish hanging those blinds I blogged about hanging last Sunday (when I only got one of the five blinds up). Perhaps a little breakfast and a look at what Sunday news talk shows the TiVo dragged in....

The intense sexual politics of the new literature Nobelist.

Elfriede Jelinek interviews:

I describe the relationship between man and woman as a Hegelian relationship between master and slave. As long as men are able to increase their sexual value through work, fame or wealth, while women are only powerful through their body, beauty and youth, nothing will change.

How can you cling to such dated stereotypes when you yourself are acclaimed internationally for your intellect?

A woman who becomes famous through her work reduces her erotic value. A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but speaking in public with authority is still the greatest transgression.

You're suggesting that your achievements, like winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, detract from your overall appeal.

Certainly! A woman's artistic output makes her monstrous to men if she does not know to make herself small at the same time and present herself as a commodity. At best people are afraid of her.

Filibustering.

You can't have a piece about the filibuster without a picture of Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," a film that is much worse than people remember. Yes, Jimmy Stewart is great, and he's especially great in the scene from the movie that people remember as he talks about America! and Justice! and Democracy! until he passes out on the Senate floor. Do you even remember the part where the Senator played by the equally great Claude Rains is moved by Stewart's efforts into such profound remorse that he runs out of the Senate chamber and just shoots himself to death? Well, not only don't you see that sort of response to the filibuster, you don't even have the speechifying anymore.

[In the 1970s,] the Senate created a two-track process that allows senators to block action on a piece of legislation merely by invoking the right to filibuster, without actually having to stand before the chamber and drone endlessly on. Meanwhile, the Senate can take up other business.

The measure, intended to promote efficiency, inadvertently encouraged filibusters by making them painless, said Julian Zelizer, a historian of Congress at Boston University. "The filibuster exploded, and became a normal tool of political combat," he said. In 1995, he noted, almost 44 percent of all major legislation considered by the Senate was delayed by a filibuster or the threat of one.

Bring back the pain! In the era of C-Span and 24-hour news networks, we want to see the real-time, real-world blocking of debate, if that's the right these characters mean to invoke. You can't wave that cornball Jimmy Stewart image around and not put on the big Jimmy Stewart show. Bring back the politico-tainment. And then if what you are doing is foolish and obstructionist, we'll be able to say, "Senator, I've seen 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'; I love Jimmy Stewart. Senator, you're no Jimmy Stewart."

UPDATE: As an emailer was nice enough to remind me, the Claude Rains character only tries to kill himself. He gets off a gunshot, but other Senators are wrestling the gun away from him. Rains emotes:

I'm not fit to be a Senator! I'm not fit to live! Expel me! Expel me! Every word he says is true!

Rains rushes back into the Senate Chamber confessing to all that he's comepletely corrupt and Mr. Smith's been telling the truth. Once Rains confesses, everyone instantly takes Mr. Smith's side and jumps around and cheers for Stewart, who is still passed out. Our last sight of Mr. Smith is a beaten, unconscious man being carried out of the Senate. The image reminds us of paintings we've seen of the dead Christ.

Mr. Smith, we should know, filibustered to convince his colleagues of the truth of particular facts--that Rains was corrupt. The filibusters we actually see in the Senate are not about getting facts straight, though, they are about policy or political preferences. The real filibusterer is not a crusader for truth, but simply someone who holds the minority position and wants to block the majority from having its way. The maudlin vanity of Senators identifying with Mr. Smith--and surely not Rains!--should embarrass them.

"Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo."

A school district in Pennsylvania has authorized teaching "a new theory called intelligent design" to balance the teaching of evolution. No litigation yet.

Wisconsin plays defense against California... over stem-cell research.

When California voters authorized spending $3 billion on stem-cell research, that put pressure on Wisconsin, where stem-cell research originated, to preserve its leadership in the field. Now Wisconsin Governor Doyle has responded by proposing to spend $750 million on a biotechnology research institute here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's a matter of economic self-defense, according to the Governor.

"I know the vast majority of the people of Wisconsin understand how important this research is, and they want me to help the scientists that are working so hard to cure juvenile diabetes, and Parkinson's and spinal injuries," Doyle said. "And we also know how important it will be to the future economy of this state."

Not everyone is a member of Doyle's "vast majority":

"When you hear people talk about this and the biotech industry . . . it's all in economic terms," said Susan Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life. "They're willing to destroy human life to build an economic base.

"Is that what we're about in Wisconsin? I don't think so."

"I have always thought of New England as the last death-free zone in the United States."

So says a lawprof and former capital defense lawyer. Connecticut faces the fact that it has the death penalty:

Beyond resurrecting the vicious details of the killings, the pending execution is forcing a confrontation with a discomforting fact for one of the country's most liberal regions. It would be the first time in more than 40 years that an inmate has been put to death north or east of Pennsylvania.

Note that the impetus toward this execution is not coming from the state, which hasn't executed anyone in over 40 years and which has housed this man on death row for 20, but from the murderer himself, who has chosen to forgo more appeals. And not everyone in Connecticut feels a compunction against capital punishment:

"This guy is a poster boy for the death penalty," said Michael Malchik, the former Connecticut State Police detective who arrested Mr. Ross in 1984, after the body of his last victim was found hidden inside a stone wall bordering a field. "He deserves no sympathy from anyone. I think the problem is that the people who are against it have never seen the other side of it. They've never smelled it, looked at it, felt the weight of a dead body in a body bag."

A Whitmoresque Bush.

Wow, kind of like President Thomas J. Whitmore having to do everything himself.

Doodle of the day.

Let's just start off with the drawing, photographed on the window sill next to where I'm planning to sit all morning reading the Sunday NYT. I've sorted the Times into sections. Tossed in the far corner of the table are the things I'm not going to read: the special poetry edition of the Book Review, the travel section, the travel magazine, the business section. Piled in front of me are the things I'm going to read re-piled in the order I'm going to read them: front page section, Week in Review, Sports (only to check a couple things), Styles, Arts. Tossed over there is the thing I'm saving for last: the NYT Magazine (with the crossword puzzle but, sadly, no acrostic today).

Political humor of the maitre d' kind.

Gawker prints this "Gawker Stalker" item sent in by a reader:

Freemans, tuesday night the 16th of nov. the bush twins , along with 2 massive secret service men, tried to have dinner. they were told by the maitre'd that they were full and would be for the next 4 years. upon hearing, the entire restaurant cheered and did a round of shots... it was amazing!!! [Ed: We're hearing that this is actually true.]

Too ugly, of course, but it was a rather clever thing for the maitre d' to come up with to say.

It doesn't seem right to root for Ohio State...

Over my undergraduate school Michigan. But thanks, Buckeyes. And go, Badgers.

UPDATE: AAAAGGGHHHH! That was grim!

Life is a sport.

At the moment, one of the listings on the sports page of Google News is:

Oldest man dies at 113
CBC Montreal - 3 hours ago
SYRACUSE, NY - The world's oldest man, according to Guinness World Records, has died less than two weeks before he would have turned 114.

And this is on the sports page because ... ?

UPDATE: Several readers have emailed to say that the article has a line about the man being a Red Sox fan. One of the articles on Google's list under this heading does call the man a "noted Red Sox fan." I'm sorry, I don't like that answer. I think the answer is that we are all participating in a competition, refereed by Guinness, to try to outlive each other.

Out-of-touch Hollywood.

On last night's episode of "Joan of Arcadia," Joan's boyfriend said to her: "So what if you don't make Ivy League? Is it really that big of a deal? If George Bush is any indication..."

The actor says "George Bush" with a mild but scoffing inflection that invokes the Bush-is-dumb opinion it's assumed we share. But this a big, popular network show, and Bush just won a decisive re-election. Who do they think watches the show? Or maybe they are just trying to keep the Kerry voters from hating the boyfriend character for having such an evil last name: Rove.

Doodle of the day.

This one wasn't drawn today, but it looks like the ones drawn yesterday and the day before. And it is photographed on today's paper:

Oliver Stone conquers the New York Times.

The NYT is helping Oliver Stone lay the foundation for the excuse he's planning to use when his movie "Alexander" bombs. (I pointed out Stone's plan here.) Here's the NYT:

As the culture wars rage anew between social conservatives and their liberal counterparts, Hollywood is preparing to break fresh ground by releasing a high-budget epic film in which the lead character - a classic, and classical, action hero - is passionately in love with a man.

In Oliver Stone's three-hour [$155 million] drama, "Alexander," Colin Farrell, as the fourth-century Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, has a number of tender love scenes with his best friend, Hephaistion, played by a long-haired Jared Leto.

We're being warned not to give in to our impulse to laugh as these two dopey actors -- in big close-ups and, we're told, heavy eye make-up -- declare their love in "tender" scenes. Don't laugh or you're homophobic! Yes, but what if the scene is laughably BAD, as tender love scenes in Hollywood ancient history movies usually are? No, you have to sit there and behave solemnly, appreciating the lesson in diversity and history that Oliver Stone is now going to teach you or you're a homophobe, you bad person! Now, just a minute, Oliver Stone is going to teach me history? Haven't we been there before?

[T]he director, who critics say took liberties with historical fact in films like "J.F.K." and "Nixon," said that his choice with "Alexander" was to hew to the record.

"I don't want to corrupt history," Mr. Stone said in an interview. "I don't want to say, 'How do I make this work for a modern audience?' Alexander to me is a perfect blend of male-female, masculine-feminine, yin-yang. He could communicate with both sides of his nature. When you get to modern-day focus groups, to who'll get offended in Hawaii or Maine, you can't get out of it."

Oh, yeah, that sounds really historically accurate. The Greeks with their yin-yang philosophy and their self-help books about "communicat[ing] with both sides of [your] nature." What's feminine about Alexander? I mean, even assuming he had sex with men, what's feminine about that? I love the way Stone is lecturing us, as if we are too backward to tolerate homosexuality, when he's relying on the stereotype that men who have sex with men are feminine. Are gay men supposed to be so damned pleased a big expensive movie is including them that they have to appreciate the way Oliver Stone defines them? And in the end, it will all be about Oliver Stone, won't it?

Mr. Stone said he was concerned that there might be a backlash. "I'd be naïve not to be concerned, in America, anyway," he said. "I didn't know there would be a parallel situation going on."

The parallel situation Mr. Stone refers to is that in the wake of the presidential election and the passage of prohibitions on gay marriage in a number of states, homosexuality has resurfaced as a focus of debate and controversy among cultural critics.

Oh, Oliver Stone will cry: I'm being politically persecuted! Ooh, the backlash! How was I to have known, when I set out to provide this useful history lesson, that there would be a -- gasp! -- political situation? Oh, no! So if you're not right-wing, and you wanted Kerry to win, you better get out there right away and see my movie and applaud me. And don't you dare laugh, because laughing means you're a homophobe.

Kerry credits bin Laden.

How awful of John Kerry to give Osama bin Laden credit for determining the outcome of the election! I'm sure bin Laden appreciates your acknowledgement of his influence, which is exactly what he seemed to want.

This is from "Special Report With Brit Hume" tonight:

In Little Rock, at the dedication of the Clinton Library, Fox News has learned, John Kerry said what tipped the election scales was the last minute Osama bin Laden videotape. Well, the tape surfaced the Friday before the election. Kerry says he didn't have enough time over the weekend to reassure voters that he could protect them as well as the President. Kerry told several friends of Bill, "It was the Osama tape, it scared them," meaning voters.

I'm sure Kerry feels a lot of pressure to explain his loss, but he really ought to resist giving bin Laden this affirmation. The fact that Kerry would say that bin Laden holds this power over the minds of Americans, for me, reinforces the mistrust of Kerry that made me decide to vote for Bush. And Kerry's contempt for us -- we're just scared, and without a bin Laden tape, we'd have forgotten about bin Laden! -- is just one more hearty shove in the direction he sent me two months ago. Thanks for making me feel sure it was right to vote for Bush.

UPDATE: Sissy Willis agrees (and has a great final zinger).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thinking about Kerry's bin Laden comment and remembering Kerry's snub of Allawi makes me think Kerry really lacks good instincts about conducting foreign affairs!

Just when I thought I was out...

I watched "The Apprentice" again! I had stopped watching it. Prof. Yin even blogged about how I'd stopped watching it! Well, it was kind of interesting last night. Maria was nutty. Per Entertainment Weekly:

As Maria slowly but surely lost her mind, I got legitimately giddy. Like, Al and I kept pausing the DVR so we could make weird pointing gestures with our hands just like her and so I could write down the completely psychotically bizarre things that were coming out of her mouth. A couple fan favorites: ''Give me bitchy or give me death. '' Oh, or how about, ''If sexy is wrong, I don't wanna be right!'' Or, wait, my favorite: ''It angers me to be called a control freak, because I'm just quite simply not.'' Blink-blink. Blink-blink. BLINK-blink. Bli-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni. Blink-blink....

The word "ass" was said about a thousand times -- call the FCC! -- as the contestants made up an ad campaign for Levi's jeans and Trump excoriated the losing team for not fully appreciating how jeans are all about "ass" -- a word he says in a uniquely unattractive way. The winning team's reward was, as it often is, torture. This time: spending time with Billy Joel, which motivated the EW recapper to write this song parody:

''What's the matter with the show I'm watchin'?
(Can't you tell that it's out of touch?)
Will the P.M. ever not get fired?
(Don't you think that you ask too much?)
Nowadays you can't be too sentimental.
The best characters are gone, and everyone is mental.
Blond chicks, Trump's tricks, who picked these big —
Anyway, it's still rock & roll to me-heeeeeeee....''

UPDATE: Tung Yin has a long recap of the show, and somehow it doesn't include the word "ass." I don't get it. If I had a one word recap of the show it would be: Ass. And I'd say it like Donald Trump: ey-ess.

400 greatest movie quotes.

It takes a while to read through all 400 quotes nominated as greatest movie quotes by the American Film Institute, which Throwing Things threw at me. If you decide to read over the downloadable PDF document available at the first link, note that the list is in alphabetical order, not order of greatness: "All-righty, then" from "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" is not the greatest quote in the history of film. I spent a moment contemplating how anyone could think such a thing. These are nominees, from which a final 100 will be chosen. Reading the standard the jurors are asked to apply helps makes some sense of some of the choices (e.g., "Damn!"):

CULTURAL IMPACT
Movie Quotes that viewers use in their own lives and situations; circulating through popular culture, they become part of the national lexicon.

LEGACY
Movie Quotes that viewers use to evoke the memory of a treasured film, thus ensuring and enlivening its historical legacy.

Well, so we're really trying to generate a list of greatest catchphrases. It's not so much great writing as a particular actor memorably getting off a "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" zinger at a key point in a big film. Once that's clear, it's fun to read the list.

"Sanctuary!" (from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame")

"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast." (from "King Kong")

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" (from the "Wizard of Oz")

"Hey, lady!" (Jerry Lewis as Herbert H. Heebert in "The Ladies' Man")

Some work for me as beautiful lines:

"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me." (from "In a Lonely Place")

"To God, there is no zero. I still exist." (from "The Incredible Shrinking Man")

And some are perfectly insufferable:

"It's amazing, Molly. The love inside, you take it with you." (from "Ghost")

Here's the most hilariously bad one:

"Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!" (from "The Ten Commandments")

And somebody please teach these clowns some basic Italian. It's not "Take the cannolis."

UPDATE: A reader writes:

"Cannolis" may not be grammatically correct in Italian, but indeed the Godfather mafiosi called them "cannolis" in the movie, and so do all my Italian in-laws.

I haven't gone back and checked the movie. I'm seeing both versions on line. The DVD doesn't have this line as a chapter title. Sarah Vowell called her cool book "Take the Cannoli."

Important note: I don't mean to insinuate that anyone who says "cannolis" is a clown, only that if the original movie has "cannoli" and AFI corrupted it into "cannolis," they're clowns. They present themselves as an "Institute," suggesting an academic take on film. Now they produce these top 100 lists, that are more pop culture and promotional, so their reputation is on the line. They need to get the quotes right. As to what the right quote is, the emailer makes me doubt my memory of the film.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader notes something I didn't know about that "In a Lonely Place" quote.

And as long as I'm back here updating again, let me ask, with respect to the email quoted in the previous update, if the mafiosi say "cannolis," why don't the mafiosi say "mafiosis"?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I've checked the DVD, and it is "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." It's a little hard to hear, and easy to imagine you hear an "s," but I listened to it four times and also put on the English subtitles, and it is definitely "cannoli." Which I'm sure is a relief to Sarah Vowell and to grammarians everywhere. And to people who think the AFI is not the high-tone outfit it might like to seem to be.

BONUS: Here's a good, amusing article about Americanized Italian-speaking.

Doodle of the day.

Drawn during a presentation about voting rights, at noon today, in the faculty library:

"Irritable Male Syndrome."

I think what we need is a term for the syndrome that involves coming up with a memorable but annoying name for a banal observation in order to sell books. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that if you're a male and you're suffering from this problem (basically, being a cranky bastard), there are some solutions available for you, according to this review:

[Jed] Diamond's many suggestions include buying his book, adding more zinc to the diet, decreasing licorice (he says it can reduce testosterone levels by 34 percent), practicing meditation and positive thinking, and avoiding circumcision.

Great, now he tells us.

"I now believe that this practice is one of the physical factors that contribute to IMS," Diamond writes with his typical surety based on no findings whatsoever. "Although there haven't been studies linking circumcision to IMS, there is enough evidence of the effects of early childhood trauma that I believe it's wise for parents to carefully consider the subject before making a decision."

Oh, what the hell? Just make stuff up. What's the difference? Why not encourage men to blame their penis (and their parents) for everything?

Local radio guy slurs Condoleezza Rice.

Here's the Wisconsin State Journal coverage of the story about Madison talk radio host "Sly" (John Sylvester). Note how gloriously polysyllabic Senator Feingold gets trying to distance himself from the guy:

"While it is not my intention to comment on every extremely inappropriate remark made in our society," Feingold said in a statement today, "given the proximity to the unfortunate comments made by another member of the media, I feel it is necessary to completely reject and repudiate these recent comments."

Feingold is referring to the fact that back in October, a Milwaukee talk radio host slurred Mexicans. That doesn't seem all that proximate to me. I think most observers would conclude that Feingold felt it was necessary to speak because Sly had intensely supported Feingold in his recent successful re-election campaign.

At the library.

Most interesting paragraph in Todd Purdum's account (in the NYT) of President Bush's remarks at the opening of President Clinton's library:

There was no mention of the sex scandal that led to Clinton's impeachment. Bush recalled that shortly before leaving office, "President Clinton said, 'Christ admonished us that our lives will be judged by how they do unto the least of our neighbors.' Throughout his career, Bill Clinton has done his best to live up to that standard and Americans respect him for it."

He did "his best," and we won't be uncivil and point out that he wasn't always perfect. And note how elegantly Bush implicitly takes a swipe at those who criticize his religiosity: he quotes Clinton beautifully connecting public service to religion (and not just amorphous "ceremonial deism," but Christianity.)

I wrote about the umbrella decisions yesterday, but there's good new detail here:

The wives of the four presidents walked out to the stage, each with an umbrella. Their husbands followed with no umbrellas.

As the men took their places, the women hurried to try to cover them. Bush first took refuge under Chelsea Clinton's umbrella, posing for pictures with his arm around her, then settled on pairing with his wife. Barbara Bush eventually prevailed in convincing her apparently reluctant husband, the elder Bush, to come under her umbrella as well.

So the undersized umbrellas were the women's umbrellas. The manly thing to do is to stride out there with no umbrella at all. (Don't want to be the "man with the umbrella.") But it won't do to look sodden in all the photographs. The hairspray melted out of Clinton's hair, de-pouf-ifying it into a Julius Caesar style. So the women rescued the men. Then, there they were with the undersized women's collapsible umbrellas, emasculated en masse.

UPDATE: A reader sends this link to the Army Officer's Guide:

There is a long-standing taboo against a male officer in uniform carrying an umbrella. However, it is authorized and proper for women in the Army to do so when not in formation.

Three of the four Presidents who went umbrella-less in the rain are, of course, former military officers. They may have a strong sense that carrying an umbrella is inappropriate for a man. Ironically, this left them open to being pestered by the women to hold dinky women's umbrellas after they'd paid the price of manhood and gotten soaked. Interesting that Bush got help from Chelsea before he "settled on pairing with his wife." I'll bet Laura, unlike Barbara Bush, did not prevail upon her husband to take umbrella-shelter, and Chelsea offered the umbrella and the two of them had a nice little relationship. Time to quote this Hollies lyric:

Bus stop, wet day
She's there I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella
All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella we employed it
By August she was mine

The Mel Gibson movie-making model.

You may remember that Mel Gibson put up $20 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ." But do you realize that Andrew Lloyd Webber put up $90 million of his own money to make "The Phantom of the Opera"? It's all about the deep belief and the strong personal vision. And having a huge load of cash.

Doodle of the day.

Drawn on page B11 of today's NYT, the page facing the crossword puzzle and the Alessandra Stanley review of the new Carrie Fisher talk show.



UPDATE: I caught the first episode of Carrie Fisher's talk show, the one where she interviews her father, Eddie Fisher. It was ragged, frighteningly raw, really, but very funny. He is an eely sweetheart of a man, and he sat there and let his daughter bounce zingers off him for an hour. She's bitter and good natured, and she let him have it about his life of heavy drug use and womanizing.

Abused by blogs.

Last night I had a blogger dinner with two bloggers who have in the past taken down posted statements after I've linked to them and a third blogger who has demanded that I clear it with her before I link to her blog anymore. Now, the one who demands the right of pre-link clearance has no compunction about blogging about my "hard-edged realism and cynicism" (i.e., I don't stoke romantic fantasies long and hard enough). One of the post-link tamperers is publicly blaming my hair for the fact that dinner was scheduled for seven rather than six thirty, and the other used his blog to invite the public to advise him whether he ought to attend the dinner or take an alternate invitation (i.e., please, ladies, fight over me). No links for any of you!

Presidential umbrellas.

Can't someone find a real umbrella for these men? Those short-handled, foldable ones look absurd on anyone, but if two Presidents are going to appear side-by-side at a major photo op, can't they find suitable props?

UPDATE: I think they had the usual big umbrellas, along with spiffy-looking guys to walk around holding an umbrella over each presidential head, but it was decided it looked silly to have four guys, and maybe Hillary and Chelsea too, followed around by umbrella-holders, and you couldn't have all of these people holding full-sized umbrellas, or it would have spoiled the photo op with comical bumping around, trying to decide whether to hold one umbrella higher or lower than the other guy's umbrella, and never getting the presidential faces close enough for a good group shot. That said, it was gutsy of Hillary to go with the optimistically beige-colored umbrella amid the uniform black of all the other umbrellas. Still, the NYT managed to center and flatter Chelsea in its front-page line-up of umbrella celebrities. (Can't find the picture on line, sorry.)

Augusten Burroughs.

Augusten Burroughs was just on Fresh Air. You can listen to the interview here. The show ends with him explaining how he changed his name and why he chose "Augusten Burroughs." It has nothing to do with William Burroughs, whom he'd never heard of at the time.

I highly recommend the audio versions of Augusten Burroughs's books. His manner of speaking adds a lot to the humor (and the horror) of his books.

2000 nostalgia.

Yesterday, Best of the Web wrote about nostalgia for the 2000 election.

History repeats itself, as Karl Marx observed, first as tragedy, then as farce. In the farce of 2004, the Libertarian and Green parties have raised enough money to pay for a statewide recount of presidential ballots in Ohio. "The recount would be conducted after the election results are certified in early December," reports the Associated Press.

There's no chance that it'll change the outcome in Ohio, where President Bush won by some 136,000 votes; in Florida four years ago, even multiple recounts by partisan officials in heavily Democratic counties were able to generate no more than 1,500 votes for Al Gore. The Washington Post reports even an aide to John Kerry "is rolling his eyes" when discussing conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

I've noticed a kind of nagging, low-level election 2000 nostalgia. We just had an appointments vote here at the Law School, and people could not get through it without saying "Florida," "butterfly ballot," and "hanging chads." Will that ever get old? I hope.

Can that kid get his quarters back?

U.S. News reports that Democrats are a bit irked about how much money Kerry has left over from the campaign.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

Apparently he had much more (at least $15 million more) than he could spend. Maybe next time candidates come around asking for contributions, people won't be so ready to believe they need to stretch to send in money. You didn't even use what we gave you last time! Remember this passage from Kerry's concession speech:

And I thank your families and I thank you for the sacrifices you've made. And to all the volunteers all across this country who gave so much of themselves. You know, thanks to William Field, a 6-year-old who collected $680 a quarter and a dollar at a time, selling bracelets during the summer to help change America.

Thanks to Michael Benson from Florida, who I spied in a rope line holding a container of money and it turned out he had raided his piggy bank and wanted to contribute.

I think little William and Michael have some reason to be irked too.

Oliver Stone's preemptive strike.

Here's how it looks to me. Oliver Stone's big, expensive, horribly bad movie "Alexander" is about to come out, and Stone is trying to lay the foundation for blaming moral-values, red-state Americans for his own embarrassing failure.

"Alexander lived in a more honest time," Stone told Playboy magazine.

"We go into his bisexuality. It may offend some people, but sexuality in those days was a different thing. Pre-Christian morality. Young boys were with boys when they wanted to be."

Yes, ancient Greece was all about honesty, and we're all just too Puritanical and repressed to appreciate your God-awful movie.

The political structure of academia.

The NYT reports on a study that shows (unsurprisingly) that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in academia. The ratio is 7 to 1, generally, 9 to 1 at Berkeley and Stanford. The article doesn't say where the Republicans are clustered (the hard sciences?), but it does say that the studies found a more extreme disparity among younger professors (183 to 6).

There are a lot of different theories on why this is so and what, if anything, should be done about it.

One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are what the humanities and social sciences are about."

The other side of that theory would be that conservatives are less likely to have a problem with trying to make a lot of money, which causes academia to fall in their ranking of preferred options. Then there's this reference to The Federalist Papers:

Some non-Democrats prefer to attribute the imbalance to the structure of academia, which allows hiring decisions and research agendas to be determined by small, independent groups of scholars. These fiefs, the critics say, suffer from a problem described in The Federalist Papers: an autonomous "small republic" is prone to be dominated by a cohesive faction that uses majority voting to "outnumber and oppress the rest," in Madison's words.

It doesn't need to be a nefarious desire to oppress the minority here.

Martin Trow, an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley who was chairman of the faculty senate and director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, said that professors tried not to discriminate in hiring based on politics, but that their perspective could be warped because so many colleagues shared their ideology.

"Their view comes to be seen not as a political preference but what decent, intelligent human beings believe," said Dr. Trow, who calls himself a conservative. "Debate is stifled, and conservatives either go in the closet or get to be seen as slightly kooky. So if a committee is trying to decide between three well-qualified candidates, it may exclude the conservative because he seems like someone who has poor judgment."

It's an ancient human foible to think people who don't agree with you must be uninformed or dumb.

UPDATE: The Times points us to a website where you can read the details of the study. And contrary to what I wrote above, the Times did have a bit of information about where the Republicans were clustered: "The ratio of Democratic to Republican professors ranged from 3 to 1 among economists to 30 to 1 among anthropologists." Looking at the survey itself, you'll see that it's 28 to 1 in Sociology, 13.5 to 1 in Philosophy, 9.5 to 1 in History, and 6.7 to 1 in Political Science.

A glance at the Clinton Library.

When I first glanced at this photograph of the inside of the Clinton Library (I didn't see the headline, just the picture), I thought: what a glamorous-looking prison!

UPDATE: You may have to scroll down for the picture that shows the big interior view. The picture at the top right now shows Clinton looking at models of Buddy the dog and Socks the cat in a glass case. That doesn't remind me of prison. It did make me wonder whether they actually had the freeze-dried or taxidermied bodies of the actual dead pets. My guess, based on an estimate of presidential library-style taste--is that these are sculptures.

What really sets us apart from the apes.

"Have you ever looked at an ape?" Dr. Bramble said. "They have no buns."

Dr. Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah has co-authored a study of the ability to run and its role in human evolution, reported in today's NYT.

Teaching evolution.

In my Religion and the Constitution class this week we're talking about a favorite topic of mine: teaching evolution in the public schools. It's especially timely here in Wisconsin, considering this recent report about Grantsburg:

The city’s school board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism ... School board members believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum “should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,” said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

Last month, when the board examined its science curriculum, language was added calling for “various models/theories” of origin to be incorporated.

“Insisting that teachers teach alternative theories of origin in biology classes takes time away from real learning, confuses some students and is a misuse of limited class time and public funds,” said Don Waller, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There is a 1987 Supreme Court case -- Edwards v. Aguillard -- striking down a Louisiana law that required schools that teach evolution to also teach the scientific evidence that might support creationism. In Edwards, the Court said the statute had no secular purpose. The idea that it protected academic freedom was rejected on that ground that it did not give teachers any new flexibility in designing their curricula; it deprived them of the option of teaching evolution without creationism. The Grantsburg curriculum, on the other had, allows the teaching of creation theory, as a way to balance the evolution that the state already requires teachers to cover. So I don't think Edwards dictates the outcome here, and I don't know how any litigation might play out.

But I tend to doubt that teaching creationism in public school will prove very satisfactory for anyone. Some parents and kids will chafe at having their time wasted on the topic or at having religious subject matter presented in public school. And people who are eager to have creationism taught may change their minds as science teachers invite kids to compare the evidence and look critically at a subject people normally approach through scripture and faith. In practice, there is a lot of potential for holding up religion for scorn among the students and offending the creationism-believing students and parents who are now hoping to find their beliefs supported and accommodated. Asking students to take a scientific and critical approach to religion seems more likely to undercut religious belief than just teaching evolution without mentioning religion. I think Grantsburg will abandon its creationism experiment soon enough, with or without the intervention of a court.

Back when I was in 9th grade in the mid-1960s, we were taught evolution by a teacher whose last name makes me infer that he was probably Catholic. One day in class I made a statement, which I can't precisely recall anymore, that indicated that I accepted the theory of evolution as a true account. The teacher snapped at me: "You're not a good Christian!" I was stunned. I bet they don't do that in public school anymore. And this was a very fine high school in an affluent suburb in northern New Jersey. For many years, I felt that I had been deeply wronged by this teacher, and understanding the Constitution now, I can easily see how wrong he was. But it has only been in teaching the constitutional religion clauses these last few years that I became able to understand what could have made him say such a thing. I think he was forced to teach evolution in order to keep his job and that he must have thought that he was committing a sin if his teaching made students believe it was true. Faced with plain evidence that I believed the theory, he lost it and said something completely inappropriate. And no, I didn't think of things like phoning up the ACLU. I just went around for a couple years feeling bad that my teacher said I wasn't a good Christian. After I got through that, I had a long period of feeling he had outrageously wronged me. Only in the last couple years have I been able to see the way in which he suffered.

It's a difficult topic.

UPDATE: Speaking of difficulty, I should acknowledge (as several emailers have pointed out) that Catholics do not have the same problem with evolution that Protestant fundamentalists have. I don't want to purport to distinguish among theologies, but from what I've read, Catholicism has been harmonized with evolution. Still, at some point God plays a role in the process within that harmonization. Since I can't remember what I said that triggered the over-the-top response from my ninth grade biology teacher (a man of Italian descent), I'm left with a mystery. Maybe my newfound sympathy for the man is not called for. Maybe he had no problem with teaching evolution generally, and I'm just imagining he suffered. Should I get pissed off at him again?

And what about Condoleezza Rice?

Having just relayed the NYT description of Kerry's lonely lunch, let me pass along the description (by Elisabeth Bumiller) of the Condoleezza Rice lifestyle, which includes lunch:

Her entire life has been instilled with ... discipline, from her training as a concert pianist and competitive ice skater to her service on the first President Bush's National Security Council staff and as provost of Stanford University. Even now, Ms. Rice still packs her lunch many days as a way of avoiding the expense and calories of the White House mess. She rises at 5 a.m. to run on the treadmill ... that she keeps in her sparse Watergate apartment, is in the office before 7 a.m. and is in bed by 10 p.m.

But what does she eat for lunch? Broccoli and green beans? Bumiller needs to get some writing tips from Purdum (see previous post). But Bumiller does have the good fashion details in this nice account of the surprise party Bush gave her:

Ms. Rice, who has never married, celebrated her 50th birthday last weekend with a black-tie surprise party at the British ambassador's residence, attended by Mr. Bush, who put on a tuxedo and spent a rare night out in formal Washington.

Ms. Rice, who arrived in casual clothes en route to what she thought was to be a dinner at a restaurant with relatives, changed into a red gown that the designer Oscar de la Renta had created for her for the occasion.

Wow! Beautiful! And there's good material here too about her preference for Brahms:

"I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured," she said in the interview a year ago. "And he's passionate without being sentimental. I don't like sentimental music, so I tend not to like Liszt, and I don't actually much care for the Russian romantics Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, where it's all on the sleeve. With Brahms it's restrained, and there's a sense of tension that never resolves."

Bumiller ends the article with that point, and you know she means for you to take that statement about Brahms and to read it as Rice's description of her own personality.

What is Kerry doing these days?

He's back in the Senate, the NYT reports in this nicely written article by Todd S. Purdum:

Mr. Kerry attended the morning caucus in the Old Senate Chamber where his fellow Democrats selected the new minority leadership, in which he has no formal role, and got a warm reception and multiple ovations....

But Mr. Kerry skipped the weekly Democratic caucus lunch of chicken, salmon and salad in a meeting room off the Senate floor in favor of takeout shrimp, broccoli and green beans with a side of rice, ferried from Hunan Dynasty on Pennsylvania Avenue by his trusty assistant, Marvin Nicholson, to his cubbyhole up a winding stairway above the Little Rotunda in the Capitol's Senate wing.

Nicely observed details. Broccoli and green beans, eh? Sounds so sad and grim. New Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said this of the Senator who retreated for a solitary lunch in his cubbyhole:

"Senator Kerry is not a shrinking violet," Mr. Reid said. "We are looking for John Kerry to find what he wants to do.''

The news story continues:

In a parliamentary system, Mr. Kerry himself would loom as a likely leader of the opposition, but Mr. Reid already had that job locked up before Mr. Kerry could even really decide whether he might be interested. Mr. Kerry has won praise from his fellow Democrats for running a strong race, but the Senate is now as full of potential rivals as it is his supporters, especially should he decide to run for president again in four years.

I wonder what the climate in the Senate really is for Kerry right now. Sounds chilly. The Times article doesn't mention it, but Kerry has $45 million left over from his campaign, giving him a big headstart over anyone else who may want to run in 2008. One can imagine Hillary Clinton having an easy time raising a lot of money, but what about everyone else? I would not be surprised if his Senate Democratic colleagues, already struggling to make a show for themselves from the minority position, want to block him from finding a shining new role for himself in the Senate.

UPDATE: The $45 million number is from mid-October. The estimate is that the final number Kerry will report having left over is $15 to 16 million. And note note that he seems to be on the receiving end of a lot of bullying about it:

Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country.

Some said he will be pressured to give the money to Democratic campaign committees rather than save it for a potential White House bid in 2008.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

"It's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings."

So sang Kurt Cobain, not so many years ago. But now PETA says they do have feelings. (Via Drudge. Hey, do we have to "via" Drudge? He never "vias" anyone else.)

Check this photo, of PETA's big plush fish-with-feelings. See how they put the eyes in front? It makes them seem more human. You can't identify with an animal with eyes on either side of its head. That's why we love owls more than other birds. And note that the PETA fish has eyelids. We don't identify with a beast that has gaping ever-open eyes. That's one of the reasons Wesley Clark did so poorly in the primaries.

Time's Person of the Year.

Hasn't it been leadenly obvious for the past two weeks that George Bush will be Time Magazine's Person of the Year? But Time ran a panel discussion on the subject of this year's choice, and Andrew Sullivan, one of the panelists, describes it. I guess if you're on a panel like that you have to come up with interesting things to say. You can't just say, duh, it's Bush! Sullivan came up with "Karl Rove, Muhammed, or a mix of Michael Moore and Mel Gibson." Doesn't the person have to still be alive? Why? Check out 1988: the person doesn't ever have to have been alive. Time can do what it wants. The wonder is we care.

The swimming pool boondoggle.

Madison has five lakes and many beaches, and it has private swimming pools that are undersubscribed, not to mention a short swimming season, but some public leaders here have long pushed for a lavish public swimming pool project. The current political momentum for the project has been generated from a private donor pledge of $2 million. Here's the description of the pool that is supposed to get us all enthused:

[T]he pool ... would offer something for everyone: The preferred option is a $4 million, 16,400-square-foot "family aquatic center" with capacity for 1,000 people. It would have an eight-lane, 25-meter lap pool with two diving boards, a pool with beach-style entry and water fountains for young children, a deep well pool with two waterslides, dressing and shower rooms, concession stands, a sand volleyball court, group shelters and a sand play area for young children with outdoor showers.

Something for everyone? Well, there's nothing for those of us who don't want to go swimming, but I assume there will be something for me in the form of a tax bill. Oh, but there are private donors? That description says it's a $4 million project, which is already twice what the donors are offering, and that project described sounds as though it's going to cost a lot more than $4 million. Even if the described fantasy pool could be built for $4 million and the full amount could be raised privately, there will be no end to the costs for maintainance, employees, insurance, and the like. One must be awfully naive not to see all the tax money that will flow into this huge pool. How about raising a private endowment that would actually pay for the ongoing costs of the luxury of maintaining a elaborate public pool in Madison? I'm tired of the public fawning over two donors whose donation is a small part of the real costs. It is as if these two have simply bought the right to direct public policy!

UPDATE: An emailer writes:

I think your concerns about the public swimming pool are spot on. I live in California, in a community that highly values its swim teams - summer is just not summer if we aren't at the pool every day for practice and every Saturday a.m. and Wednesday evening. for meets. An "aquatic center" was built several years ago on the grounds of our high school due to a large grant from a donor. It is a huge 20 lane or so pool, bleachers, changing facilities etc. plus 2 separate pools for warm-ups and water polo. From what I understand, the pool has consistently lost money every year, even though it gets $$ from user fees. Every year our swim league holds a huge 2 day meet there (1000 swimmers plus spectators) and even with the fees that meet generates the aquatic center can't break even. And the center is used year-round, due to our weather! You are right to be concerned.

That reminds me. I forgot to mention: our high schools already have indoor pools! Our high schools are terrific, by the way, and I don't mind paying taxes to make these schools great. Read about East High School here and West High School here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just fixated on the expression "family aquatic center." What an absurd phrase! Why say "aquatic center" instead of "swimming pool"? It's as if you wanted to be made fun of. And, more seriously, why "family"? If there is "something for everyone," why use a restrictive term? Are you trying to telegraph that this is about parents and young children, and no one else belongs here? (Ah, it would be so much cheaper for the city to just subsidize memberships at the private pools for lower income residents!) Or is "family" just a word that is supposed to mean "good, clean fun" or "uplifting, wholesome activity"? How I detest that cornball use of the word! But maybe the point is to make the place seem so hopelessly square that no teenager would want to set foot in the place and the parents with young children can feel warmly cosseted at the swank aquatic center.

Beatles Faux Sale!

My son John responds to the previous post:

The decision to release the American albums does not "make the most sense"; it distorts the Beatles' artistry. The fact that certain songs are on Revolver and certain songs are on Rubber Soul matters a lot; you can't just mix them around. For some reason, some executives decades ago decided that Rubber Soul would be better starting out with "It's Only Love" (John's least favorite song of his; intended to be on Help!, not Rubber Soul; and totally inappropriate as an opening track) and that Revolver would be better if it had more George songs (3) than John songs (2).

Some people, like you and me, understand this point, but a lot of people are going to be misled by these "albums." It's particularly bad because the original misleading was completely deliberate. It wasn't just saying, "Let's take out some filler to make the album shorter" (though that would have been bad enough). It was saying, "Rubber Soul starts with Drive My Car--that's bad, because we want the selling point to be that the Beatles are turning 'folk'--so start out with a slow acoustic song." Drive My Car sets the tone for the whole album. (It makes sense to have Drive My Car on the same album with Norwegian Wood, Michelle, and Girl; they're all joke songs.) If there are people who feel that it's "wrong" for the album to have Drive My Car, that's all the more reason to have it on there.

The only John songs on Revolver are the two side-closers, She Said She Said & Tomorrow Never Knows---creating the impression that Paul is the leader, the brains behind the Beatles, while John turns up every once in a while to do something heavy and far-out. Only the original album--with 3 extra John songs--gives a complete picture of the band. Again: This is not a problem for YOU, because you're aware of this. But if "Revolver" is being sold as a CD, teenagers are going to buy it mistakenly thinking, "I heard that this is the #1 album of all time."

(I know that those albums aren't being released yet, but presumably they'll be in "Volume 2" or something.)

UPDATE: Somebody emailed to tell me: "Your son sounds like a music snob." Somebody else emailed about this nice website dedicated to the Beatles' American albums.

"'Something New'? That can't be a Beatles album because we have all the Beatles albums and we don't have that."

That's something that a Generation Y-er said to me a few years ago. And my own son likes to say to me, when I say something like, "That's my favorite song on 'Beatles 65,'" "There is no 'Beatles 65.'" My answer is something like: ""Beatles 65' is more real to me than whatever it was released as in England and on CD. 'Beatles 65' is part of the structure of my brain! 'Beatles 65' is my youth!"

Of all the packagings and repackagings of the Beatles music, the decision to release the original American albums on CD makes the most sense. These albums may be dismissible to later generations because they are not the collections the Beatles themselves made, but they have everything to do with memory and feeling for those of us who made these albums a part of ourselves, one by one, as they were released to us in the 1960s.

Funny, my previous post talks about the problem I had when "Ruby Tuesday" followed "She Smiled Sweetly" when Margot played "Between the Buttons" in "The Royal Tenenbaums." The records you play as a teenager make a deep and meaningful imprint!

"The Life Aquatic," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Nico Icon," "Between the Buttons."

I'm so looking forward to the new Wes Anderson movie, "The Life Aquatic" -- which has a cool webpage -- that I got out the old DVD of "The Royal Tenenbaums" and watched it today. I don't know if there is a movie made in the last five years that I like better. The part that precedes the opening credits is perfect. Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson could not be funnier. Gwyneth Paltrow is perfectly un-show-offy as the deadpan Margot, who wears a mink coat (when she's not soaking in the bathtub and turning off the TV with her toe) and smokes (when she's not huffing on her nicotine inhaler). Danny Glover also takes a low key role as an accountant (whose book is wonderfully titled "Accounting for Everything"). Angelica Huston is beautifully repressed (telling Glover her secret: she hasn't slept with a man in 18 years). And Bill Murray and Ben Stiller are there too.

I loved the music in "The Royal Tenenbaums," especially the singing by Nico (and if you like Nico, don't miss the documentary "Nico Icon") and the use of "Between the Buttons," which Margot plays on the record player in the great scene in the tent in the ballroom, where Margot and Richie declare their love. They let "Ruby Tuesday" play after "She Smiled Sweetly." I guess they think you won't notice that's the wrong order. The real album deprives you of the comfort of hearing the two slow songs in a row. "Between the Buttons" is one album that really takes me back to a painfully specific time and place, so the effect of those songs playing in that scene is overwhelming to me. And it's hard not to think of poor Brian Jones: look at what a weird gnome he had turned into by 1967--at age 25!--when that album came out (he's in the center). Just a few years earlier he had looked like this, and a couple years later he was dead.

UPDATE: A "Royal Tenenbaum" character name was corrected.

"Beavers weave stolen cash into dam."

Yes, that happened:

A bag of bills stolen from a casino was snapped up by beavers who wove thousands of dollars in soggy currency into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek in eastern Louisiana.

So: Condoleezza Rice for President in '08.

ABC News reports:

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of President Bush's closest counselors, will be nominated to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state...

UPDATE: Andrea Mitchell on Hardball tonight, giving a reason why Rice may be more effective than Powell: "She is really an extension of George Bush."

The chaplain's view of Iraq.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about a Wisconsin native who serves as a U.S. Army chaplain in Iraq:

[Ken] Sorenson said he had talked and prayed with two wounded soldiers who were leaving an aid station in Fallujah and were eager to rejoin their unit. After spending eight years as a military chaplain, he said he is amazed by the spirit of American soldiers.

"Over the course of this year, I've seen a number of wounded soldiers," he said, and "their attitude is phenomenal. It's - 'Get me back in the fight.' They really look after each other. It's wonderful to be a part of it."

"We have been silent enough."

The Washington Post has a compelling account from one of the 2000 Iraqi soldiers who fought with U.S. troops against the insurgents in Fallujah:

"If we could control Fallujah and defeat the terrorists in the city, all Iraq will stabilize," Mustafa said. "I've seen nightmares for the last few days, all about the fighting in Fallujah, but when I think of the results, I feel better."

Mustafa said that after the city is secure, the 1st Battalion will head to the northern city of Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been clashing with insurgents for the past several days.

"I think people there are waiting for us," Mustafa said.

He said he would never think about giving up now, not when his country needed him. "If I don't try and others don't, those rats will spread with their diseases," he said. "We have been silent enough."

Americans need to give more respect to these Iraqi soldiers. In fact, we need to give more respect to the American fighters. The NYT quotes Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, a senior Marine commander in Iraq:

"People will never appreciate the movement of soldiers down here, what it took to move them and immediately conduct a relief in place with the soldiers. It ought to go down in the history books."

But the Times article emphasizes the devastation of the buildings in Fallujah and the movement of rebels to other cities. Military victories are never celebrated anymore. They are barely recognized.

UPDATE: Don't think you need to email me to point out things that did not go right in the battle in Fallujah. I am aware of these things too. But what is your message to the Marines and the Iraqis who are doing the fighting? That if anything goes wrong, you will deny them credit for all that they have done? Since war cannot be done perfectly, then either you want people to fight but to keep it to themselves like a dirty secret or you want to delegitimate all war.

A woman's view of Carville's smashing that egg on his face.

Okay, it was pretty funny when James Carville smashed a raw egg on his face on "Meet the Press" yesterday. It's hard to do self-abasement well, and he does. But my immediate reaction was that the egg went flying everywhere and his wife Mary Matalin was sitting right next to him -- dressed and coifed (wigged?) to the hilt for the big Sunday show. Mary's always got a bit of a sneer on her face anyway, but she was not laughing, not prepared, and pretty disgusted at James's antics. Much as I like James Carville -- he was great in the documentary "The War Room" -- this female viewer was worrying about Mary's clothes. Tim Russert handed her a handkerchief to wipe the egg slime off her husband and she gave his suit shoulder a quick swipe before tossing the icky, salmonella-contaminated handkerchief on the table. Or was Mary actually prepared for the stunt and just did a great job carrying out her part in their comedy duo routine?

Interesting times ahead.

Bush is buoyant, Colin Powell is resigning, Arafat is still dead, there was quick victory in Fallujah, new places may open on the Supreme Court. There are interesting times ahead. From the first linked article:

The West Wing is buzzing with a new sense of possibility...

The president is moving briskly to seize the moment. He is consolidating power at the White House, channeling ever more influence to Vice President Dick Cheney, his closest confidant, and counselor Karl Rove, architect of his November 2 victory. Senior White House officials tell U.S. News that Bush plans to replace at least half his cabinet over the next few months. His aim is to remove officials who have become lightning rods for controversy or who seem to have lost their desire to serve in Washington. ...

White House officials say they've rarely seen Bush so upbeat. "He's got the wind at his back," says a senior aide. "He's in very high spirits. He looks at the election as strong validation of his agenda."

"Had we done in April what we did now, the results would've been the same."

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, who designed the ground attack on Fallujah, describes the brilliant, ahead-of-schedule takeover of the city:

"Maybe we learned from April ... We learned we can't do it piecemeal. When we go in, we go all the way through. We had the green light this time and we went all the way."

The linked article has some nice details on the military tactics:

Natonski described the six days of ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

Several pre-assault tactics made the battle easier than expected, he said.

Insurgent defenses were weakened by bombing raids on command posts and safe houses. Air-dropped leaflets may have also demoralized some defenders and convinced some residents that the city would be better off under government control, he said.

In the days before the raid, ground troops feinted invasions, charging right up to Fallujah's edge in tanks and armored vehicles. Natonski said these fake attacks forced the insurgents to build up forces in the south and east, perhaps diverting defenders from the north, where six battalions of Army and Marine troops finally punched into the city Monday.

The deceptive maneuvers also drew fire from defenders' bunkers, which were exposed and relentlessly bombed before the ground assault.

"We desensitized the enemy to the formations they saw on the night we attacked," Natonski said.

Are the blue-state secessionists learning they love federalism?

Andrew Sullivan is promoting this Dan Savage piece and this article in the Stranger, both of which go on about various liberal urban areas and how they ought to withdraw from the dominant national trends and do things their own way (which they think is better). That is, they want to take advantage of federalism values. But don't look for that phrase anywhere in these articles. For years, liberals have been decrying federalism as a nefarious conservative plot.

Politics and storytelling.

Rational Explications had a post (via Instapundit) a few days ago that sorted occupations into two columns. Column A listed several occupation -- Actor, Lawyer, Teacher, Writer -- and tied them, first, to "the ability to tell a story well" and, second, to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party by contrast was tied to other occupations -- Business Owner, Physician, Engineer, Soldier -- and to "the ability to perceive the facts of a given situation clearly." The election results were explained as "a clash between the realm of talk and the realm of action."

With that in mind I was struck by this passage from the today's Boston Globe article, "On the Trail of Kerry's Failed Dream," describing Paul Begala's advice to Kerry:

Begala, knowing the senator was a former prosecutor, asked the candidate to present his case to voters to hire Kerry and fire Bush. Kerry responded by naming six issues, according to Begala's notes of the conversation: Jobs, taxes, fiscal policy, healthcare, energy, and education.

This was a list, not a "case," Begala fretted.

That is, Kerry was failing to put his issues into a story form to persuade the voters (like a good lawyer).

Today, on "Meet the Press," James Carville had this analysis of why Democrats keep losing presidential elections:

By and large, our message has been, we can manage problems, while the Republicans -- although they say we can solve problems, they produce a narrative, we produce a litany. They say, I'm going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood. We say, we're for clean air, better schools, more health care. And so there's a Republican narrative, a story, and there's a Democratic litany.

So is Rational Explications wrong about the Democrats being the "storytelling" party, or are Begala and Carville just coming up with a story -- the story of the lack of a story -- to explain Kerry's defeat? I know what Carville means. Kerry was going around listing things everyone cares about, as if people would vote for him simply for naming the problem. Yet, what is the main thing Carville says Bush did differently? Is it that he specified that he was going "protect you" from various problems, or that Bush had a different list of problems? I don't see how saying "I will protect you" from the problems is much more than the implicit promise of a solution when a candidate cites a problem. Neither is enough. The candidate must inspire trust in his competence and willingness to solve those problems. And in the end, saying things is not enough. But, of course, the belief that the solution lies in telling a better story -- as opposed to doing things that inspire trust -- is what "Column A" types do.

The kitten bowler hat.

This discussion on Metafilter about an optical illusion involving a paper cutout of a dragon led one poster to write "I just found perhaps the ultimate optical illusion, the kitten bowler hat," which I found terribly funny.

The 51st State.

The post-election talk of blue-state/red-state divisions (and the recent retirement of Jimmy Breslin) got me thinking about the time Norman Mailer ran for mayor of NYC (with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate). It was 1969, and their big issue was that New York City should become the 51st state. They had a cool poster, which I looked for and couldn't find on line. By chance, I ran across this photograph from 1970 showing the very poster. Too bad it's so blurry and not in color, but let there be at least one display of the great old poster on the web. And that's me, at age 19 (looking annoying in that special 1970 way).

"Coffee and Cigarettes."

I loved the movie "Coffee and Cigarettes" (which is newly available on DVD). Keep in mind that two of my favorite movies are "My Dinner With Andre" and "Slacker" before regarding my opinion as a recommendation. Here's the beautiful "Coffee and Cigarettes" website.

When a movie is broken into a series of vignettes as this one is, critics usually can't resist saying which vignette is the best and grousing that some vignettes are better than others. With an ordinary movie, it doesn't seem worth saying that some scenes are better than others! But with each vignette, you get a new set of two or three actors, so it's hard not to single out, for example, Cate Blanchett. Patty Duke style, she plays two cousins who have the same face, but different hair, clothes, mannerisms, attitudes. The final vignette is especially poignant. It features Taylor Mead, so unrecognizably older than he was in the Andy Warhol movies -- like "Lonesome Cowboys" -- where we loved him so much.

I must get back to watching "Dead Man," which, like "Coffee and Cigarettes" is directed by Jim Jarmusch. I watched about a third of that movie once and then got distracted by something -- too long ago to remember what. I'll have to go back to the beginning now. But the gorgeous black and white photography of "Coffee and Cigarettes" -- which looked great on the Sony HDTV -- makes me want to get back to "Dead Man." Longtime readers may remember that I bought "Dead Man" along with four other DVDs back in March when I went on a Johnny Depp-focused buying spree.

Pajamas: not just for blogging anymore.

The NYT reports -- on the front page -- about how much cereal young people eat. They love their Cap'n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and Fruity Pebbles. What's interesting is that businesses are catering to their humble taste in comfort food:

A new restaurant called Cereality Cereal Bar and Café is scheduled to open at the end of this month on the University of Pennsylvania campus, with a menu of more than 30 cereals and even more toppings served by pajama-clad "cereologists" in a setting of comfy chairs and farmhouse tables.

It's considered "hip" now to eat cereal:

"When we went out to do our initial research it was clear that college kids were getting tired of typical institutional food service and were looking for more branded and hip concepts," said David Roth, a co-founder and the president of Cereality, which is based in Boulder, Colo. ''Cereal was a staple of their diets, and they would eat it at different times of day."

But wait! Here's is an important marker of generational change. A whole big culture article about eating cereal all the time and no mention of Jerry Seinfeld?

Paglia on Zappa.

Camille Paglia reviews a new book about Frank Zappa in the NYT Book Review. True to Paglia form, she emphasizes Zappa's Italian background. The book, by Barry Miles, is just called "Zappa," but Paglia titles her review "Freak Out!" after Zappa's first album. I can't hear that title without guilt, because a friend of my brother's loaned me the album, an expensive double album, 35 years ago, and I've never given it back. For the last 30 years or so, I haven't remembered the person's name or had any idea how to reach her. So it's really just a permanent burden of guilt. But here's some Paglia on Zappa (and Miles, whom she doesn't seem to like very much):

Miles, who knew Zappa, often seems ambivalent about him. There is a gap between the ''juvenile and prurient'' Zappa he describes and the one we see in the book's sensational photographs, which show a man of burning magnetism and piercing intellect. Miles calls Zappa a ''cold nihilist'' who felt no real emotions for anyone. Along with ''cynicism and misanthropy,'' he detects Catholic guilt and ''deep-seated problems with women.'' Zappa was ''stuck in a 50's time warp'' -- yet the bold feminist Germaine Greer was a Zappa fan.

Whatever the meaning of the S-and-M and fetish imagery in his songs (a theme that makes Miles squirm), the picture painted here of Zappa's family life is troubling. When not touring (which he loved to do -- Miles calls him a ''road rat''), Zappa spent 10 to 18 hours a day holed up in his cavernous basement studio in his Tudor mansion in the Hollywood Hills. He was a born tinkerer and a groundbreaker in early digital production.

Addicted to black coffee and cigarettes (he was fiercely antidrugs), he slept during the day and saw little of his family. His second wife, Gail, said, ''Frank did not do love.'' When she was 13, Moon Unit slipped a note under the studio door to ''introduce'' herself and her ideas. The result was the hit song ''Valley Girl,'' a phenomenon when it was released in 1982. Because he thought formal education a waste of time, Zappa took his children out of school at 15 and refused to pay for college.

Painful. But "black coffee and cigarettes" -- that reminds me, I'm in the middle of watching "Coffee and Cigarettes," and liking it very much. I'm up to the scene with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits and I'd only meant to stop for a minute to go see if the Tom Waits fan in the house wanted to watch that scene, and I got sidetracked by my laptop and that Paglia review!

The President and the Supreme Court.

Jeffrey Rosen has a Week in Review piece in tomorrow's NYT that looks at what sort of Supreme Court President Bush may be able to produce in the next four years. "Strict constructionism" and "originalism" are discussed, and then comes this part about what the Times loves to call the "federalism revolution."

In 1995, for the first time since the New Deal, the court said there were limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. And since then, the court has struck down 33 federal laws. During its first 70 years of existence, the court invalidated only two.

33 federal statutes have been stricken down on federalism grounds? There are two cases that strike down parts of federal statutes on the ground that they are beyond the scope of the Commerce Power! There are a few more federalism cases, but 33? Does Rosen just mean 33 federal statutes have been stricken down on all sorts of grounds, including the constitutional rights grounds that were favored by judges of the Warren Court era? And why compare the current Court to the earliest days of the Supreme Court. People love to point out how few laws were stricken down in those early years, but it says very little about the level of activism of this Court. Compare this Court to another Court of the modern era, when federal statutes are plentiful and courts feel secure in the role of judicial review.

Rosen raises the alarm:

[T]he federalism revolution hasn't quite delivered what conservatives hoped. Each time the court's strict constructionist justices have appeared on the brink of striking down environmental laws or health and safety laws, the moderates, Justice O'Connor and Justice Kennedy, have stepped back from the brink. They are less willing to overturn 60-year-old precedents that might strike at the core of the regulatory state.

"If the 'Constitution in exile' were taken seriously, a lot of environmental regulation could be under attack, occupational safety and health regulation, even possibly some securities regulation," said David Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago. "Minimum wage and maximum hours laws? You never know."

The reader is urged to picture a "brink" -- a precipice up there that we would have tumbled over already if not for "the moderates" O'Connor and Kennedy. Without moderates nailing down the center -- we're left to think -- the Court would roll things back to the way they were when FDR proposed his Court-packing plan (reviving the so-called "Constitution in exile").

[F]ormer administration officials say all of the names on Mr. Bush's short list for the Supreme Court are considered strict constructionists who are closer to Justice Scalia than to Justice O'Connor.

"An entire generation of lawyers have been reared and trained in Justice Scalia's philosophy," said Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, who led the second President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel after Mr. Yoo. "So the Bush administration is likely to be more successful than its predecessors in finding reliably conservative nominees."

I very much doubt that many law students are being "reared and trained" to think like Justice Scalia! My sense is that the Warren Court vision of constitutional law still prevails among law professors. In fact, it's probably safe to guess that Justice Scalia's positions are routinely derided in most law school classrooms! It is true at least that students have read the conservative Supreme Court opinions (though I bet they were informed by their lawprofs about how wrong and bad these decisions are) and they have been able to participate in the Federalist Society if they wanted to pursue the conservative viewpoint. But the liberal position continues to dominate.

That said, I'm sure President Bush will be looking for conservative Justices -- not moderates like O'Connor and Kennedy -- and that he will be able to find them. But it is alarmist to suggest that these people would radically dismantle federal law, tossing out statutes like those that protect the environment and guarantee minimum wages at a shocking new rate.

UPDATE: Law students or recent law students are welcome to send me their observations. For example, I just received this from one law student:

[A]s for law students being reared and trained in Justice Scalia's philosophy, I'd be shocked out of my socks if there were a professor in my law school who doesn't think Scalia is a wacko and curmudgeon who is blind to the "realities of the situation." Every SCOTUS case we've ever discussed (now halfway through my second year), the professor criticizes the Scalia opinion, sometimes to the exclusion of discussion of the majority opinion! So, you are EXACTLY right. And keep in mind that [state name deleted] is probably the reddest of the Red States. If he's that despised here, I can't imagine it's any better anywhere else.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More email:

Well, I graduated from law school in 1996, so maybe that's not "recent" but it's a good deal more recent than anyone who's likely to be considered for a Supreme Court appointment in the next four years. I can certainly tell you that professors at Harvard Law School were very much interested in presenting Scalia's views but equally interested in deriding them, to the point that my first-year criminal law class actually sent a petition to Justice Scalia to come and give us the other side of the story. This being Harvard, he did just that and had a toe-to-toe debate with our professor, Alan Dershowitz. Suffice to say that they did not agree on much.

On the other hand, the existence of the Federalist Society certainly does give young lawyers a sufficient exposure to a comprehensive Scalia-like judicial philosophy that you can expect to see more and more people who can be depended upon by Republican presidents to be genuine Scalia-like conservatives. So Rosen's essential point isn't all that off the mark.

I agree with that second-to-the-last sentence, as my original post shows. But Rosen is overeager to make a point and in the process drags in much dubious information. My post doesn't even begin to deal with the blather about "strict constructionism," which Scalia himself makes a big point of disavowing.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Another email:

I can affirmatively assert that at my school, the University of Chicago (I'm the class of '00), the professors took Scalia very seriously. Some seemed to disapprove of originalism, others rather liked it. But everyone ... approached Scalia and originalism as a vital form of constitutional jurisprudence.... [at Chicago], Scalia's writings and teachings -- along with law and economics and formalism and feminist jurisprudence and other theories -- are certainly taught and treated with respect. And why wouldn't they be? Scalia, like many other originalists, are federal court judges after all. It would be pretty silly to train lawyers to exercise contempt toward a judicial philosophy that moves so many of the arbiters of the lawyers' future clients' cases.

The emailer is quite right (and lucky to have gone to Chicago). One of the reasons I became a law professor was to find for myself the experience I felt I was denied as a law student: exploring the full scope of the debate about law.

STILL MORE: No Oil For Pacifists writes about his experience in law school in the early 80s:

I was one of the few conservatives in law school. My views were tolerated at best, derided at worst. I remember a First Amendment course taught by an old-time socialist. He was smart and funny, but increasingly frustrated with my interjections. So, after calling on me about halfway through the semester, he paused for a few seconds, put hands on hips, and said "Carl--you're a wrong thinker and should be liquidated." He never solicited my views again.

He probably thought he was being hilarious--and perhaps that conservatives have no feelings so why not torment them and have fun at their expense?

Politics and fear.

I just ran across the September 6th copy of The New Yorker, which has a painting on the cover of fearful elephants crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The reference is to the Republican Party's convention in New York City, and the notion is that Republicans are anxious about a visit to the unfamiliar territory that is New York (a popular pre-convention topic). It's funny to see this image now, after reading endless post-election expressions of fear about the territory of the red states -- Jesusland! -- coming from Democrats.

Four hours later.

Somehow in all this time, I've only managed to read seven admissions files and put up one of the blinds. Some cursing was involved. Not at the admissions files however. And at least now I understand how the new brackets work and why they can't be put in the same spots as the old brackets. I spent way too much time looking for the chuck for the drill before finding it clipped to the drill's cord and trying to figure out how to run the drill in reverse to remove the screws on the old brackets before giving up and using a screwdriver. Now it's nearly 4 on this Saturday of mine, it's getting dark, and I have yet to touch the rake -- or even leave the house!

UPDATE: An emailer writes that I should call that drill thingy the chuck key and not the chuck, but I think I remember my father calling it the chuck and this diagram calls it the chuck. Anyway, have you ever noticed what an elaborate website the writer Chuck Palahniuk has? The things one finds while Googling for answers to one thing may be more interesting than what you were looking for. I'm much better at blogging than hanging blinds or fiddling with drills because I enjoy all sorts of distractions and digressions. I prefer them. I believe that John Lennon lyric: "Life is what happens to you/While you’re busy making other plans."

More interesting to me than whether that thingy is actually called a chuck or a chuck key -- and no, I'll resist writing anything about the new Chucky movie -- is that since Chuck is a classic macho guy's name -- Palahniuk seems pretty macho -- and since the key device is more masculine than the clamping jaw mechanism of the drill, that it would be more linguistically elegant for the thing I was looking for to be called the chuck.

Also, here's Chuck Berry's official website. Another good Chuck is Chuck Jones. And you know that Chuck E. Cheese slogan, "Where a kid can be a kid?" How many times a day do you think somebody sees that and cracks a joke that begins "and an adult can..."?

So I have four more blinds to hang, 32 more admissions files to read, and a yard full of leaves that cannot be raked today because it is already dark out. Which means the bright day I described earlier is a thing of the past. And I still have not left the house!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Note that I do concede that damn thing must be called the chuck KEY.

A Saturday plan.

It's nice to have a Saturday. The carpenters who have been yanking out and replacing pieces of the exterior wall to my house are off, and I can sit at my dining room table this long morning, idly reading the New York Times, intermittently blogging or reading email, and inking in the crossword puzzle, without feeling the cold air pouring through gaping window frames and without having to hear the carpenters' radio. They keep it tuned to a Wisconsin Public Radio station, even during the fund drive parts, but most of the time it's classical music that I hear along with their hammering and sawing.

It's a clear, bright day today. I haven't left the house yet. I'm just getting to the end of my NYT-and-blogging session, which has stretched out as it always does on Saturday. I do have two pressing household tasks to accomplish today.

First, I've got to rake the leaves in my front yard out into a pile by the street. I only rake the front yard. I've been relying on a self-serving theory of mulching for the backyard for the last decade or so. My backyard is ruled by a 200 year-old oak tree named Agatha, and in her domain, lawn is banished. There is only ground cover and whatever else she deigns to preserve. But the front yard leaves must make it to the street before the first snow falls, and today, with the temperature at 30, has chosen itself as the day when the task must be done.

Second, I need to put the new blinds up on the five six-foot windows in my bedroom that look out on Agatha's domain. These blinds have been lying on my bedroom floor for several weeks. The paint-splattered step ladder is right there by the first window, and the power drill is in the spot on the desk where I put it shortly after the blinds arrived. I keep thinking I'm about to put the blinds up, and all these things in my room are there night after night, mocking me. It's a wonder I can sleep at all.

And I've also got a non-household task to accomplish. I have forty law school admissions files to read. I'm thinking if I just start one thing, then, when I need a break, switch to one of the other things, I can generate energy and endurance out of the three distinctly different things that need to be done. I'm also hoping that blogging about this plan will create some crisp commitment to the three-task plan. I'm envisioning an update here later saying that it has all been done and an excellent night's sleep, after a hard day of mental and physical labor, in a newly darkened room with a clear floor.

UPDATE: No, this isn't the update I was envisioning. Scroll up for the description of my level of progress on the three tasks. This is an update to include an email:

I had no idea that carpenters in Madison were so educated. I would have thought they would be listening to classic rock, or sports radio. How very frou frou of them. Your life sounds so... so... I don't know. Like a wine commerical sort of. A leisurely Saturday reading the NY Times, sipping Celestial Seasonings or riesling, and trying to decide whether to get the Corvette or the Range Rover while the carpenters (who have all graduated Harvard and are slumming) carefully add a new wall and deck and wine cellar. In only a matter of moments, the educated and single man next door will look out his window and see you looking out yours watching him make Berilla pasta. I'm only too sure he will next ring your doorbell and you, carpenters and hunky neighbor will sit down to pasta with shaved truffle sauce, and discuss methods to reduce your massive 10,000 property bill (which must mean you live in a $7 million dollar home....though, math is not my strong point either).

I don't think it's math so much as Madison politics that this guy lacks knowledge of. Let's just say the property tax rate is about 14 times what he thinks it is and see if you can calculate the assessed value of my house. And if I am really so rich, why am I driving a five year old New Beetle, hanging my own blinds, and raking my own leaves. But as for the tea, it was Twinings Lady Grey!

The news from Ann Arbor.

One of my email correspondents sends this, from Ann Arbor:

Since about 8:45AM today morning, a 2 to 3 block area around Ann Arbor City Hall has been closed down, and cordoned off, because, it seems someone had called in a bomb threat. The police have Division, 4th Ave, 5th Ave, Huron, Washington and Liberty Streets closed off for the time being, while they investigate. And it is totally disrupting traffic, especially since today, there is a football game at Michigan Stadium - the season's last game!!!. I walked downtown to check it out, and talked to some folks who were gathered there also watching the happenings. The rumor was that it was a threat called in by a Bush-hater, who was angry about Pres Bush being reelected.

From what I've seen here in Madison, the peace movement folks lack much regard for the way ordinary citizens feel about traffic and football. (Let's hope it is just a lame threat in Ann Arbor.)

UPDATE: The emailer sends this:

As of 12pm, Ann Arbor time, the bomb threat situation has been resolved, and the police has opened up all the streets. While I haven't heard any sort of an official statement, I would assume that it was a hoax, and that they checked everything out and found nothing.

Good to hear. And note that I don't intend for my comment up there to suggest that I think the peace movement folks use bomb threats as a technique. I just think their protest rallies and marches are obtusely insensitive to the driving and football interests of people they (presumably) want to persuade.

So what about that car?

You may remember my "Should I buy a new car?" post, and you may have even voted in the poll, perhaps as one of the 805 who produced the winning choice: buy the Corvette! I hope you didn't imagine that I agreed to be bound by the poll. I notice Chevrolet has thus far failed to pursue the fabulous PR opportunity of giving me a Corvette. The fools! Don't they realize I would blog about it?! I would drive all over the U.S.A., taking digital pictures of the mythic landscapes, many of which would include the Corvette, and I would post these pictures prominently on my popular blog?!

I see that theCarblog, discussing my little blogpoll, simply assumes I have the money on hand to buy a Corvette. Didn't I just tell you about the carpenters I've hired to rebuild the exterior wall of my house? I may be a tenured law professor, but I'm also a tuition-paying parent, and I live in the city of Madison, Wisconsin, which is about to mail me its annual property tax bill for well over $10,000. Yeah, yeah, I know that inspires absolutely zero pity. Nor should it. But buying a Corvette is quite irrational. If everyone who voted for me to buy a Corvette would click on that Amazon Honor System button over there and make a $75 contribution, I'd buy the Corvette!

About moving to New Zealand.

Americans contemplating moving to New Zealand after the election are following an Australian tradition:

After Australian voters re-elected Howard last month, giving him an expanded mandate and control of both houses of parliament, commentators in that country also raised the idea of unhappy Australian liberals fleeing to New Zealand.

In a satirical column in The Bulletin magazine, Tim Blair wrote: "The malaise among this bunch is so profound, many are threatening in various online forums to leave Australia for New Zealand, which is as close as you can get to committing suicide while still registering a pulse."

Strong words, especially considering that the contrast is with Australia, which already seems unusually calm and remote to us Americans. I had thought that blue-state types generally looked down on the red states for being boring -- too remote, too rural, too monotonous, too bland. I cannot understand the idea of leaving the country -- where presumably you are already living in blue-state, urban pluralism -- to go someplace that seems more bland and remote.

A radiant ferret.

Arafat interred. (Anagram.)

"It's a little sexist. It's not creating an image of a woman as an elegant creature. It's a little bit down and dirty, a little crass."

The "voluptuous" new mannequins have 38" hips and actually wear a size 8. Should we be offended at the loss of "elegance," like the executive quoted above, whose company manufactures the "Twiggy mannequin," which is tall and wears a size 2 or 4? The voluptuous mannequin -- called the Goddess! -- ends up selling a lot of clothes, because the clothes (especially jeans) look good on the mannequin and then look good on the customer. Who hasn't wasted time trying on something that looked great on the mannequin (or the hanger) and then been horrified at how it looked on? If you go to all the trouble to try something on and it looks the same on you as it looked on display, you're extremely likely to buy it.

And then there are the men: "Men like it. Some guys come in and buy the mannequins."

Moving out.

Here's another article about people wanting to move out of the country because Bush got reelected. Choice quotes:

"Life is too short to spend with people whose values you don't like or agree with."

"Why would I want to fight to change things here when I can just move there?"

[re New Zealand, a preferred haven] "Yeah, they have a big ozone hole, but I'm nocturnal. They have great coffee, great food and a great music scene."

I suppose these people mean to register a protest, but they sound so watery-blooded that it's hard to imagine anyone cares about their threatened departure.

[Here's what I wrote yesterday about threatening to leave the country.]

Secret Service responds to high school kids' rendition of Dylan's "Masters of War."

Some teenage kids played Dylan's "Masters of War" at a Boulder, Colorado high school talent show and the Secret Service later came to town.

"It's just Bob Dylan's song. We were just singing Bob Dylan's song … If you think it has to do with Bush that's because you're drawing your own conclusions. We never conveyed that Bush was the person we were talking about," said Allysse Wojtanek-Watson, a singer for the band.

The lyrics are devastatingly harsh:

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

But the song is about "masters of war" -- "masters" with an "s" -- and it could be about a lot of people, I write as I sit here watching the news which conspicuously features a casket today.

The latest in Duke Ellington CDs.

My wonderful colleague Stewart Macaulay sends out advice about buying Duke Ellington records to the faculty email list here at the University of Wisconsin Law School. I keep telling him he should start a blog for this sort of thing. But since he hasn't, I asked if I could reprint his email here. He said yes. So here's the latest missive from Prof. Macaulay:

Several people have asked that I keep you up to date on Duke Ellington CDs. If you couldn't care less, stop reading now.

There is a brand new never before issued release on the Danish Storyville label called "The Jaywalker." These are recordings from 1966-67 and part of the collection of stuff that Mercer Ellington gave to Danish radio. Some of the cuts are things that appeared on other CDs such as "Rue Bleu,"" Chromatic Love Affair" and Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count." It also includes music for the play "The Jaywalker," a religious allegory "about the boy Mac (Mac meaning Son of) trying to have the traffic on the highway stopped so that people living on either side of the road could cross freely." I think the music is better than the concept for the play.

At the other extreme, there is the Bluebird release called "The Centennial Collection: Duke Ellington," which goes back to the original "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "East St. Louis Toodle-O." But it also has such classics as "Ko Ko" and "Concerto for Cootie" (which later became "Do Nothing 'Till You Hear It From Me."). It includes 7 previously unissued tracks from 1940s radio broadcasts. Also included in a DVD with films of the Ellington orchestra playing.

Finally, there is one that many of you might like. It is "Duke Ellington's Jazz Violin Session." It is on Wounded Bird Records WOU 1688. (It originally was released in 1976 on Atlantic). It feaures Svend Asmussen on viola and Stephane Grappelli and Ray Nance on violins. The tunes are classic Ellington, such as "In a Sentimental Mood," "Don't Get Around Much Any More," "Day Dream" and "Cotton Tail." This music was recorded in 1963 for Reprise, the then new label formed by Frank Sinatra when he decided to eliminate all the middle men and make off with more of the money from recording. He engaged Ellington as his jazz A & R man. Warner Brothers bought Reprise and didn't release much of what Ellington had recorded. Of course, the mid-1960s was a time when people weren't listening to much jazz. I have found myself putting this one on over and over. The strings playing this music are different and nice.

I got all of these from Tower records on line. (www.towerrecords.com) I assume that they are available elsewhere as well. The nice thing about Tower is that you can switch to recent releases in order without having to go through everything as you do on Amazon.com.

I don't watch "The Apprentice" anymore.

But I do still glance at some of the recaps. This, from Entertainment Weekly, amused me:

[H]aving a task that is the exact job of one of the contestants in real life seems a little bit disingenuous to me, like casting, I don't know, a survivalist on Survivor or, like, a hooker on The Bachelor.

A "long, white, wordless banner" of peace.

Here's a report of a 60-person peace march that took place in Madison yesterday. Maybe someone ought to tell these people than snarling rush-hour traffic for over an hour is not a good way to influence public opinion. The group carried a "200-foot piece of white fabric ... a sculpture by a veteran that symbolized peace." One group member said: "There were some elements of teamwork that were kind of interesting." The drivers whose trip home was blocked were not terribly intrigued by the symbolism of what the Capital Times calls the "long, white, wordless banner." On my way home, I saw the protesters clustered in front of the ROTC building with their banner crisscrossing itself in the space above them. It didn't look like "peace" to me. It looked like someone had TP-ed the trees in front of the ROTC building.

"You can't have an arsenal on school property."

School fundraiser goes awry.

"The consequences ... of losing are great. And we're unprepared for the consequences of winning."

So says Matthew Coles, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's lesbian and gay rights project, discussing the pursuit of a constitutional right to gay marriage in the courts. Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says: "Our legal strategy is at least 10 years ahead of our political and legislative strategy." These quotes and some excellent analysis appear in this NYT article by Adam Liptak. The gay marriage question is the most complex interaction of law and politics I have ever seen.

Resurveying about that "moral values" motivation.

Pew Research finds that you get very different results if you present voters with a list than if you ask them an open-ended question:

[W]hen [voters] were asked an open-ended question about the top issue, Iraq and the economy moved past moral values. Iraq was picked by 27 percent, the economy by 14 percent and moral values tied with terrorism at 9 percent.

Presumably, there's suggestive power to mentioning "moral values" to people. They want to look like they care about morality once it's brought up, but before that, they may not have been thinking about it. The new poll also probes what people mean when they say "moral values":

Just over four in 10 of those who picked ``moral values'' from the list mentioned social issues like gay marriage and abortion, but others talked about qualities like religion, helping the poor, and candidates' honesty and strength of leadership.

"We did not see any indication that social conservative issues like abortion, gay rights and stem cell research were anywhere near as important as the economy and Iraq,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "'Moral values' is a phrase that's very attractive to people.''

The new Vanity Fair website.

Looks nice!

"Well, they are taking away my license but at least it's by a Lamborghini."

Italian traffic cops!

Paolo Mazzini, a highway police commander, said: "Italian people are not always friendly toward authorities. They are curious, so they accept the ticket more readily."

"It's not for fun," he added.

If only there were enough money to solve all of our difficulties dealing with authority in this Italian manner!

The voting fraud rumor lives and dies by the blog.

The NYT reports:

In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.

Seems healthy enough. Much better than the long-festering conspiracy theories of yore. I think some people are working through their own feelings of bitter disappointment, and nursing a little, quirky hope for a few weeks is a minor matter.

That article also features this idiotic quote from a Kerry campaign spokesman: "I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true."

Car choices.

A while back, spurred on by a brochure for Corvette that came in the mail, I asked whether I should buy a new car or keep my old car. I did a blogpoll that a lot of people voted in, and I wrote later commenting on how impractical it would be for me to have a Corvette, but also talking about my personal history with Chevrolet. I noted that the only cool car I'd ever had was the 1961 Chevrolet Impala convertible that my father passed on to me, and that, when the time came to buy my first car, I chose a Chevy Chevette (the lesser 'vette). Chevrolet had a place in my family's story. I neglected to tell the older and more important family story that involves Chevrolet. In the 1930s, my grandfather, George Dewey Althouse ("Pop"), was a car mechanic with enough money to start his own business, faced with the decision which make of car to work with, a decision that came down to Chevrolet and Pierce Arrow. He chose the Pierce Arrow. That is the perfect example of making what is simultaneously exactly the right and exactly the wrong choice. Pop worked on beautiful cars before he went out of business.

What car did Pop drive when I knew him? A Pontiac. And it was a Pontiac that my father bought when he handed down the Impala to me. Before the Impala, the previous two cars my father had owned were both Nashes. I particularly remember the day he brought home a new car in the mid 1950s. The old car had never been a new car to me, so it was the first time I had ever experienced the event of introducing a new car into the family. Though it was the same make as the car it replaced, the new car was much bigger and flashier, in the style of the 1950s. It was a fleshy tan color with a white roof and the spare tire mounted -- who cares if it's ridiculously inconvenient? -- in front of the trunk. I remember being fascinated by the big fold-down armrest in the middle of the back seat. Another amazing feature of this car was the gas cap, which was hidden under one of the tail lights. Of course, in those days, people didn't pump their own gas, and my father used to get a kick out of pulling into the gas station, saying "fill 'er up" to the attendant, and watching the poor man search in vain for the gas cap. The light actually pulled out and up. But the most amazing thing about the car was the hood ornament. Scroll down on this page and you'll see one that's quite close to what we had. All the kids on the block were fascinated by this hood ornament. You think a Jaguar has a cool hood ornament? You should have seen the hood ornament on our Nash.

"If Bush wins I'm leaving the country"--some nostalgia and a question.

Let's look back to the year 2000. Here's an old Snopes inquiry:

Claim: Some celebrities promised to leave the USA if George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election.

Status: True.

So threatening to leave the country over Bush getting elected is at least boringly old. But here's the problem I have with the leaving-the-country meme. When rich celebrities and comfortably ensconced academics and other elite blue-staters say they feel like going to France/Canada/wherever, what are they talking about? Isn't your problem with Bush what he will (supposedly) do to other people -- the poor, the unfortunate, the underclass, the third worlders? Didn't you put aside your own interests -- which you proclaimed were actually served by Bush's tax cutting -- to oppose him for the sake of people who were not like you at all? If that is the case, what is the point of leaving the country? It shouldn't matter where YOU are, since your problem with Bush is with what he will do to people other than you? You were unselfishly concerned with others, weren't you? So what are you trying to achieve by leaving? Is it that you just don't want to be anywhere near those Jesuslanders who let "moral values" determine their votes? But I thought it wasn't all about you. I thought it was about other people! Or are you discovering that you really just don't like other people as much as you thought you did? They seemed so sympathetically in need of your love and concern before, but then they actually voted and even said things about why they voted the way they did, and then they seemed so horrible that you didn't want to be within a thousand miles of them.

Good observation about CBS.

Yeah.

Ants.

1. Like my new Blogad? It's for an ant farm. See the holly sprigs? That's to let you know an ant farm -- especially a high-tone, woodworked ant farm -- makes a great holiday gift. Why was my blog chosen as a place to advertise an ant farm? I've been wondering about that all day!

2. Remember the movie "Antz"? It was a computer animated thing that came out the same year "A Bug's Life" came out, back in the early days of computer animation when it was too hard to do hair so they made up stories about plastic toys and then bugs? I walked out of "Antz." I just hated it. It gave me a headache to see the big ant face closeups. I was glad when the NYT was mean to "Polar Express" yesterday, because I find computer animation repellent. Not out of principle -- I feel a purely physical repulsion.

3. The other day I noticed key parts of my house were rotting and I called in some highly recommended carpenters to figure out what to do about everything, which turned out to be to yank out and replace a lot of wood. My approach to house repairs is: hire someone trustworthy and then trust them to do things right -- I feel the same way about car repairs -- but (maybe it's a Madison thing) these good people usually want to explain to me exactly what they are doing and why. The other day, the head carpenter described the hundreds of ants that he'd had to scoop out along with the rotted wood. "That's pretty gross," I said and apologized for putting him in the position where he had to deal with ants. "That's okay," he said, "it's my job." Which kind of surprised me. I would have thought dealing with insects was a specialized job that would require calling in an exterminator, but apparently it goes along with being a carpenter. Well, they were, in fact, carpenter ants.

4. Hey, remember this game?

Not showing "Saving Private Ryan" on Veterans Day.

Some ABC affiliates are declining to carry the network's Veterans Day broadcast of "Saving Private Ryan," which, pursuant to the network's contract with director Steven Spielberg is shown unedited and contains a great deal of violence and some profanity. Although the film has been shown on previous Veterans Days, events of the past year have heightened awareness of the FCC's concerns about indecency (particularly regarding Janet Jackson's breast revelation at the Super Bowl).

"We have attempted to get an advanced waiver from the FCC and, remarkably to me, they are not willing to do so," [Ray Cole, president of Citadel, which owns WOI-TV in Des Moines, KCAU-TV in Sioux City and KLKN-TV in Lincoln, Neb.] told The Des Moines Register. ...

ABC has told its affiliates it would cover any fines, but Cole, of Citadel, said the network could not protect its affiliates against other FCC sanctions. ...

Cole cited recent FCC actions and last week's re-election of President Bush as reasons for replacing "Saving Private Ryan" on Thursday with a music program and the TV movie "Return to Mayberry."

"We're just coming off an election where moral issues were cited as a reason by people voting one way or another and, in my opinion, the commissioners are fearful of the new Congress," Cole said.

It sounds to me as though Cole is using the occasion to express his displeasure at the outcome of the election, and Veterans Day should not be appropriated for the purpose. Maybe the FCC ought to find a way to clear things like this in advance; the FCC's policy is not to monitor broadcasts, but only to react to complaints. Still, when the network aired the uncut movie before, the FCC denied the complaint it received. Cole's point is that he can't trust the past denial because the FCC's actions in the past year and the election itself make him worry that the result will be different this time. But ABC is promising to pay any fines, so Cole's rejection of the film feels more like political grandstanding. It is Veterans Day, and he ought not to deny viewers access to the network's commemorative experience.

And why "Return to Mayberry"? What the political message is that choice supposed to convey? It's not hard to figure out. You dumb rubes, you voted for Bush? Okay, watch this.

UPDATE: Here's another version of the same story, noting that 18 ABC affiliates are refusing to carry the film and giving a better explanation of the FCC's policy:

Janice Wise, spokeswoman for the FCC's enforcement bureau, said they had received calls from broadcasters asking if the film would run afoul of the rules. Wise said the commission was barred from making a prebroadcast decision "because that would be censorship."

"If we get a complaint, we'll act on it," she said.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I can't get over how crudely political the choice of "Return to Mayberry" is. If you're genuinely concerned about violating decency rules, replace the movie with something else that has some bearing on Veterans Day!

Imagine coming all the way from Kansas to picket a high school play...

Because you just have to let the kids know their principal is "Satan's Pied Piper."

UPDATE: The group in question is depicted in the play itself ("The Laramie Project," which has an HBO filmed version, now playing on HBO on Demand). It makes a point of showing up at high schools that are staging the play (see, for example, here and here). I'm not going to link to their website, but it is an openly hateful (and very small) organization.

Apparently, the subject of cars is so popular...

That people are emailing Professor Bainbridge about MY car!

UPDATE: If you're into cars, try theCarblog.

Phrases you really don't want to see in the NYT review of your children's Christmas movie.

From Manohla Dargis's review of "Polar Express":

creepily unlifelike beings

vacuum-sealed simulacrum of the world

Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances

airborne scrotum

Things that remind me my property tax bill is arriving soon.

Joanne Jacobs notes the strange approach to spending money that prevails here in Madison, Wisconsin.

A lapel button.

A colleague of mine walked by wearing a big white lapel button with one of those red circles with a slash mark that signify "no." I looked to see what he was saying "no" to -- more politics? -- but it said "proximate cause." He was a Torts prof off to teach a class -- let me guess -- about Palsgraf.

UPDATE: I spoiled my own joke. I've corrected it now. It's "proximate cause," not "probable case," as I'd written initially. Well, you know how we lawprofs are always out to confuse you ....

ANOTHER UPDATE: An emailer writes:

Though I began reading your blog out of interest in the election, your references to your life as a lawprof are intriguing. A case in point is today’s post about proximate cause. I sense there is an entertaining joke there, but since my knowledge of the law is limited to what I can glean from watching “L.A. Law” reruns and the constant Peterson trial coverage on Fox, I can’t get the full measure of enjoyment that those in the know must get.

Let me tell you, proximate cause is hiLARious. Sorry to seem to be withholding the secret info that would make that post a "joke." I mostly just thought it was funny that the button turned out not to be political, but the tortsprof wore the button to be funny, so there still is a question: what's so funny about no proximate cause. Partly, it's the double meaning.

The subject of the class on proximate cause would be about when a person who does something negligent should be liable for an injury that is caused by that act of negligence. In the classic case, Palsgraf, the one case every first year student is sure to study, this happened:

Plaintiff was standing on a platform of defendant's railroad after buying a ticket to go to Rockaway Beach. A train stopped at the station, bound for another place. Two men ran forward to catch it. One of the men reached the platform of the car without mishap, though the train was already moving. The other man, carrying a package, jumped aboard the car, but seemed unsteady as if about to fall. A guard on the car, who had held the door open, reached forward to help him in, and another guard on the platform pushed him from behind. In this act, the package was dislodged, and fell upon the rails. It was a package of small size, about fifteen inches long, and was covered by a newspaper. In fact it contained fireworks, but there was nothing in its appearance to give notice of its contents. The fireworks when they fell exploded. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at the other end of the platform, many feet away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing injuries for which she sues.

The question is whether an act -- here, the guard's act -- is the "proximate cause" of the injury, and the class usually proceeds with many hypotheticals designed to make students think about what is proximate cause and what is not. How are you going to know the difference between causation that is proximate and that which is not? Especially on the exam! So the question of when there is "no proximate cause" -- as the button says -- is very important to students.

The double meaning would be that a law student might feel overwhelmed by the seeming difficulty of the subject and want to say "no proximate cause" in the sense of: don't make me study that!

You may note that I said "seeming difficulty." Part of learning law is just getting used to the idea that you've got to draw lines somewhere. You need to learn to live with -- maybe even enjoy -- the feeling that you won't have a way to know exactly where to draw the line in all the hypotheticals and exam questions.

The Rove fixation.

Adam Nagourney has a little piece in today's NYT headlined "'Moral Values' Carried Bush, Rove Says."

Mr. Rove appeared to stifle a grin when asked whether he was "indebted" to Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, who opened his City Hall to gay marriages until he was blocked by a court, and to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, for ruling that gay couples have a right to marriage.

Well, let's inspect the inscrutable face of the evil genius Rove for expressions that might have been about to happen. That's reportable news, isn't it? At least the Times buried this story on page A18.

The effort to portray the election as some devious Rovian plot is rather desperate and pathetic (and unlikely to do much good in equipping the Democrats to compete more effectively next time), but let me nevertheless copy this chunk of transcript from Rove's appearance last Sunday on "Meet the Press" to show what Rove actually says when asked to analyze that exit poll where "moral values" was the most-cited influence on voters:

I do have a little bit of a different view of those numbers. First of all, if you take Iraq and terrorism and aggregate them, which I think are sort of different sides of the same coin, 34 percent of the electorate we're concerned with, if you will, the security issue. If you take taxes and the economy and aggregate them, they're 25 percent of the electorate and then moral values is third. That's not to denigrate the importance of moral values which have traditionally been about 16 percent of the electorate have been concerned with that as their number one issue in past races. What essentially happened in this race was people became concerned about three issues--first, the war, then the economy, jobs and taxes, and, third, moral values. And then everything else dropped off of the plate. And security grew the most in comparison to past races but values grew second, the second most amount.

Perceptions of "Jesusland."

Here is another email I found interesting:

I was in a meeting today, and a man was talking about an urban renewal event he went to. He praised cities highly but spoke with some heat about how awful suburbs are and how they're destroying everything, etc. I couldn't help but think of the Kerry-Bush divide, city people vs. country people. This man voted for Kerry and doesn't much like Bush. He even had sitting out that list of states ranked according to IQ, the one that says the smart people voted for Kerry and the dumb ones for Bush. It occurred to me how everthing is connected: cities, Kerry, smart, good... country, Bush, dumb, bad. I wish folks could see that city living and country living each have their strengths and dangers, just like Kerry and Bush each have their good points and weaknesses.

The human mind sorts through information efficiently, not in a way that is fair, but in a way that enables the organism to get through life on a basic level reasonably successfully. This is also the mechanism of prejudice, and we all have this mechanism going for us. We'd be hopelessly stymied at every decisionmaking point if we did not have it. Yet we must also develop the consciousness that we do have it, and the ability to override it when we should. Often we are better at perceiving when other people stick too much with their prejudices than we are at seeing how much of what we think is mere prejudice. The "Jesusland" response to the election is a classic example of blindly indulging one's own prejudice in the process of perceiving prejudice in others. Ironically, the central prejudice maintained by the propagators of the "Jesusland" meme is that they are smart and the others are dumb.

"Insurgents."

I've gotten a couple emails complaining about the way I put "insurgents" in quotes for this post. Am I the only one who thinks "insurgent" is too flattering a term for these people?



UPDATE: Austin Bay objects to the term "insurgents" too. (He prefers "reactionaries.") And as long as I'm here, updating, let me point out the logic flaw in my poll. As soon as one other person has voted "no," everyone, even those who favor the term "insurgents," should also vote no, since I am at that point manifestly not the "only one." But, don't do that! Keep voting, but the question should be understood to ask whether you think the term is appropriate.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrities talking about politics ..."

Chris (my son) said when I pointed out this story. He added: "It just shouldn't be reported."

Federal judge halts Guantanamo tribunal.

Tung Yin has some insights into the case.

Are the Fallujah "insurgents" escaping?

The NYT reports from Fallujah:

Reports from inside the city said the insurgents were spreading the word that they were not retreating but rather luring the American forces into a "killing zone" deep in the city, though that claim was so far unrealized. …

General Casey said on Monday that his forces had been expecting the insurgents to put up a fight. He predicted that they would probably fall back from an outer ring of defenses and retreat toward the city center, leaving a minefield of improvised explosives to slow the progress of American and Iraqi soldiers.

"What we have generally seen is there's an outer crust of the defense, and then our estimates tell us that they will probably fall back toward the center of the city, where there will be probably a major confrontation," General Casey told journalists at the Pentagon by telephone from his headquarters in Baghdad. …

The invasion actually began 26 hours before the troops charged over the embankment. Beginning Sunday afternoon, Colonel Formica's battalions moved into position, forming an impenetrable chain around the city.

A Falluja resident who tried entering the city on Monday said he had found no way through the seal. The resident said the situation was much different from the situation in April, when Americans battled the Falluja insurgents before withdrawing and when there were many gaps that gun runners could exploit to keep the insurgents supplied.

Yet, those who can't believe the military can get anything right in Iraq have been saying things like:

The main rebel force is long gone. And those that are left are either in hiding, or slipped out of the city under cover of darkness. Remember, Fallujah is the size of Cincinnati. Slipping in and out is a cinch in a city that large, and no blockading force, especially one as small as the one in Fallujah (15-20,000 troops), could completely seal the city. ...

It's all going to hell. ... Most of the insurgents will melt away in the face of the far superior American force. Then the US will be forced either to pull back, ceding the city back to these same insurgents, or we'll garrison the city making our troops car bomb magnets.

Sometimes it seems as though people want bad news so much that they make up their own bad news.

The day I finally had to admit that I can't answer all my email.

That would be today. I'll still answer some, and I am still reading it all or nearly all, and I really do find it excellent and will even use a lot of it in updates. Please keep sending email and forgive me for not personally answering everything.

Did someone write something about me?

Somewhere in here? (Via Volokh Conspiracy.) Well, at least he didn't say this.

UPDATE: Note that in actual blog space, that last link was followed by this.

About "Jesusland."

I don't know who started the "Jesusland" map, but it seems to have zipped through the email-o-sphere very soon after the results of the election became apparent. I Googled "Jesusland," and this tirade from Ken Layne came up first. It's timestamped 1:30 on November 3rd. It's quite virulent:

While there is no headquarters for Jesusland, all of its subjects do march at the command of the RNC and Karl Rove.

Rove's re-election strategy was elegantly simple: Scare the bejesus out of Jesusland. Faggots are headed your way! Satanic Muslims are hiding everywhere! That's all it took to get Jesusland to do the job. Intellectual conservatives like the National Review staff are flattering themselves if they honestly believe Jesusland cares about conservative thought. The "reality-based" folks are learning that Jesusland doesn't even care about jobs or the economy. In Jesusland, it's all the will of Jesus. ... Keep praying and always keep your eye out for homosexuals and terrorists, and you will eventually be rewarded ... all you have to do is die, and then it's SuperJesusLand, where you will be a ghost floating in a magic cloud with all the other ghosts from Jesusland, with Jesus Himself presiding over an Eternal Church Service.

I've never had a problem with actual conservatives ... But I've got a big problem with Jesusland. If you want to worship the ghost of a jew from the Roman Empire, that's cool. Enjoy it! But when you people and your bizarre mystery cult claim the goddamned president as your prime convert who rules by the voices in his head, I call bullshit.

Layne includes a second, crueler, map, representing the world view of Jesuslanders. It is drawn children's drawing style, complete with misspellings. (By the way, the linked page shows Google Ads at its most obtuse, displaying: "Free Jesus Christ Video/A beautiful account of the Savior's miraculous life and ministry," "Ave Maria Singles/Real Community, Serious Catholics Marriage, Friendship & Faith," "Passion of Christ - Free/The Passion of the Christ Movie," "Searching For Christ?/We'll Pay You $300 Right Now For A Jesus Christ Survey," and "Jesus T-Shirts And More/Feel Good About What You Wear/Quality Christian Apparel For All.")

I ran "Jesusland" through a Technorati search and got 687 hits. So there's no way I can trace the life and times of the Jesusland meme through the blogs. I'll just say that I ran into a colleague in the faculty library today and asked him how he was doing. He told me that he could not get over his feelings of bitterness and horror at the outcome of the election. Like Layne, he focused on Karl Rove and accused him of carrying out a brilliant and cynical plot to con millions of religious naifs into voting for a party that in fact has nothing to offer them. Read the Newsweek article! It's all there, I'm told. It's all about Karl Rove and religious simple folk who don't understand politics. Okay, I'll read it. We did both agree that it wasn't going to do the Democrats much good to express contempt for the very people they need to find a way to win over.

Unfortunately, the massive "Jesusland" blurt was a spontaneous expression that everybody heard. It will be hard for Democrats to find a way into a place where they can believably say, no, really, we think you are the real working people that make this country great, you are the heart and soul of America, and other such cornball campaign-isms.

The "service learning" graduation requirement and religion.

The UW-Eau Claire considers changing its service requirement:

Today, the Eau Claire faculty senate will discuss a proposal that would make it so students could not perform any sort of religious practice in order to fulfill their service learning requirement.

The proposal would make it so that any volunteer work on behalf of a religious institution, such as missionary work or teaching at a religious school, would not be counted toward a student's service learning requirement. Secular work in a religious setting, such as work for religious charities like Habitat for Humanity, would still be allowed. ... While religious advocacy does not count toward the requirement, other types of advocacy, including political solicitation, will continue to be worth service learning credit.

According to the linked opinion piece, the proposal is intended to fend off lawsuits. Last time I looked, there was more to the First Amendment than the Establishment Clause. It may be hard to steer between Rosenberger and Locke here, but this looks to me like viewpoint discrimination in a limited forum, a free speech violation. The cure is, as the opinion piece suggests, excluding all advocacy from qualifying as "service learning."