Cocoliquot.

A cool new restaurant in Madison, specializing in small plates. A tiny coq au vin in a crepe. A little risotto. A cold (!) omelette. A trio of tiny soups. It's very dark in here, and very stylish:





Your humble blogger:

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The oral argument in the abortion case.

David Stout reports:

Justice Souter challenged [New Hampshire attorney general, Kelly Ayotte's] assertion that a doctor who performed an emergency abortion would be "constitutionally protected" from prosecution or civil liability. "What do you mean when you say it would be constitutionally protected?" asked Justice Souter, who is from New Hampshire....

Ms. Ayotte did not budge, asserting at one point that even in the most dire emergencies, and when a judge might not be available to authorize an abortion in the absence of a parent, the doctor would be protected. When a parent is not available to give permission, the state law at issue empowers a judge to grant emergency approval.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing for the Bush administration on behalf of the New Hampshire law, said critics of the New Hampshire statute had focused on "a one in a thousand" circumstance in which a teen-ager might need an abortion quickly, and that the entire statute should not be undone.

"And the real question for you is, faced with that kind of case, do you invalidate one thousand applications of the statute, noting that 999 of them are constitutional?" Mr. Clement asked rhetorically.

But Jennifer Dalven, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which challenged the law, said that even a minor delay can be disastrous. "As the nation's leading medical authorities have explained, delaying appropriate care for even a very short period can be catastrophic and puts the teen at risk of liver damage, kidney damage, stroke and infertility," she said.

Ms. Dalven met with some skepticism when she said that the provision for a judge's order can be a dangerous obstacle. "Once a minor arrives in the emergency room, it is too late for her to go to court," she said.

Justice Antonin Scalia wondered what would happen if the state created "a special office, open 24 hours a day" to field just such emergencies: " 'This is the abortion judge.' It takes 30 seconds to place a phone call."...

The New Hampshire bill's sponsors successfully fought against a health exception on the grounds that it would give doctors too big a loophole to avoid parental involvement in decisions about ending pregnancies. Justice Breyer acknowledged that point in passing, noting that "lots of people think 'health exception' is a way of getting abortion on demand."

Scalia's hypothetical may be interesting, but the state hasn't set things up like that, and the doctor is obviously in a better position to make the call. Even if we were assured there would always be an "abortion judge" by the phone, you'd still have to explain the condition which would presumably take some time. Why should someone have to endure the "risk of liver damage, kidney damage, stroke and infertility" for the time it takes to do that, especially considering that the doctor is the one with the medical understanding of the situation?

And what does Ayotte's assertion about 1000 applications of the statute mean? That every 1000 times it's imposed, one unfortunate woman suffers a serious injury? Why is that acceptable?

UPDATE: Listen to the whole oral argument here or download here.

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Do you buy Christmas presents for yourself?

I'd heard some women do that. (Maybe men do it too.) Now, advertisers are openly encouraging the behavior with copy like this:

"Because I've been an exceptionally good girl, I deserve sweet nothings from Dolce & Gabbana Intimates to make my husband forget he's an accountant... and a tartine from SnAKS to fuel my shopping spree, a dress that's the height of chic from Elie Tahari and some flat boots from Jimmy Choo to keep me grounded, anything Marni and something Versace and divine peau de soie pumps from Roger Vivier that I can't get anywhere else."

That might seem laughably over-the-top, but it's beautifully written to reach out and grab a woman's deep longing. It's a nice touch that the ad-character has a husband, but he's such a nonentity -- an accountant! -- that women with no men (to buy them presents) can fully identify.

And have you heard of the Right-Hand Ring campaign?

The marketing campaign has successfully appealed to women with female-empowerment pitches like: "Your left hand says you're taken. Your right hand says you can take over."

Buy yourself a diamond ring. (I Freudian-slip-typed "diamond wring.") How do you palm that off as not pathetic? Well, have you seen the ads? They're mesmerizing.

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"Poppy isn't getting Junior back, Vice vowed, muttering: 'He's my son. It's my war. It's my country.'"

Sad that you can't get to Maureen Dowd's column? She's Dowding it up big time today. (TimesSelect link.)

By the way, in the paper version of the Times, the word "my" is italicized all three times in the quote. In the online version, there are no italics. That's bugging me.

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"Finish" is an exquisite word choice.

"Finish the war" means something different from "end the war," right? Or will it mean whatever you need it to mean, later?

Just a thought about a very carefully crafted quote from Hillary Clinton:

"We must set reasonable goals to finish what we started and successfully turn over Iraqi security to Iraqis."

UPDATE: "Complete" is the word choice of President Bush, in today's speech on the war. Speaking of the troops fighting in Iraq, he says we must "complete their mission." "Mission" is a much stronger expression than Senator Clinton's "what we started." Do you think we should complete our mission or finish what we started? Or do you think they're the same thing? I don't.

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Unintended comedy, economic news reporting division.

The NYT just needs to bring us down, for some reason. All the economic news is good, but Vikas Bajaj, on the front page of the paper today, searches desperately for the bad. Check out the first few lines:

Gasoline is cheaper than it was before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Consumer confidence jumped last month and new home sales hit a record. The stock market has been rising. Even the nation's beleaguered factories appear to be headed for a happy holiday season.

By most measures, the economy appears to be doing just fine. No, scratch that, it appears to be booming.

But as always with the United States economy, it is not quite that simple.

Consumer confidence is bouncing back from what was arguably some of its worst readings in years. Gasoline prices-the national average is now $2.15, according to the Energy Information Administration- have fallen because higher prices tamped down demand and supplies in the Gulf Coast have been slowly restored. The latest read on home sales, released today, contradicts virtually every other recent measure of housing activity that generally indicate a slowdown. And yes, manufacturers' fortunes are on the mend, but few besides airplane makers are celebrating.

It all means that the economy is likely to end the year with a splash, but that does not mean the broad economic picture next year will be even better.

How can anyone read that and not laugh?

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"You think loners are weird? I think couples a weird."

Says a loner to Nina, provoking her to consider appreciating loner-tude... rather skeptically it seems to me. Is there a he's-just-not-that-into-you subtext here?

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"Isn’t it the right of citizens of the state to answer this question?"

Yesterday there was a long, crowded hearing at the Wisconsin Capitol. The subject: a resolution to amend the state constitution to preclude gay marriage. Voters would make the final call next November.

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"Does your emphasis on authority give any substance to the claim ... that conservatism is repressive and dictatorial?"

Marking the 25th anniversary of "The Meaning of Conservatism," Right Reason interviews Roger Scruton.

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Not 35 million, 77 million.

A death toll, reestimated. (Via No Speed Bumps.)

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Live-blogging the Alito panel.

Readers were hoping for a podcast of the big panel we had tonight at the Law School about the Alito nomination, but I couldn't make that happen. Fortunately, Steve S was there to live-blog!

Schweber is leery of radicals....

"I kind of like radicals," says Downs.....

Sharpless makes a joke - "I'm not a lawyer!" Then he goes on a bit of a rant....

It comes to Althouse... If you read her blog, you probably know what she'll say....

Read the whole thing. Lots more at the link.

He doesn't include the thing I found most interesting. UW lawprof Linda Greene, who was Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s, implied that the Harriet Miers nomination was set up to fail. She said it was a "signal that something was amiss" when Miers turned in an incomplete questionnaire to the committee, given the "intellectual talent that normally flocks to a nominee." Yeah, why didn't people nail that thing for her?

Anyway, the panel was sponsored by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society -- who seem to have a very nice working relationship here -- and they did a great job. Big crowd too!

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"An unremarkable use" of the spending power or "a core violation of the First Amendment"?

Yale lawprof William Eskridge and George Mason Dean Daniel Polsby are debating about the Solomon Amendment case -- FAIR v. Rumsfeld -- which raises the question whether the federal government can require universities, as a condition of receiving federal funds, to give military recruiters the same access given to other employers. The Supreme Court is hearing argument in the case next week. Polsby says it's "an unremarkable use of Congress’s Spending Power, while Eskridge sees "a core violation of the First Amendment."

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"The reaction from many bloggers has been nothing less than scathing."

The Christian Science Monitor has a big article on Pajamas Media:

Though Pajamas Media is bringing even more attention - and possibly a new revenue model - to blogging, the reaction from many bloggers has been nothing less than scathing. One site, pjmdeathpool.blogspot.com, is collecting guesses as to how many weeks or months Pajamas Media will last before it folds.

"If you say [something] is going to be great for months, and you announce it with a big gala bash, you're asking people to look at it," says Ann Althouse, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin and a well-known blogger (althouse.blogspot. com). The nature of bloggers "is to mock and pick at things," she says, "that's sort of to be expected." But the Pajamas Media site hasn't helped itself, she says. It's been bland.

Mr. Simon urges patience and promises that the best is yet to come. "I don't think the site is going to seem the same to you in three weeks," he says. "We're learning. We are a work in progress. We are new media in the most extreme sense."

UPDATE: Daniel Solove responds to the article:

Pajamas Media seems like a corporate wrapping around the blogosphere. It has too much of a corporate structure and neglects one of the key elements of the blogosphere -- the unexpected way various blogs gain attention from the ground up. Blogging is a bottom-up grass-roots kind of practice, not a top-down enterprise.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is key. The great power -- the great beauty -- of blogging is the natural formation of connections among individuals. (Much more at the link. Go there.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dan at Riehl World View responds to the article. I like the way he makes his argument initially just by boldfacing some of the language in the article. He's got some laugh-out-links and a profoundly true link at "This is blogging." Hey, I was so there last February! MORE: here.

IN THE COMMENTS: I have cause to say: "I'm thinking of 'The Producers.'" And Jim makes a sublime wisecrack:

Best quote from the article: Simon wants The Entity's site "to be the place for breaking Internet opinion." And here we have the one objective that's actually been met, since they seem to be breaking it right and left.

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"I am happy to let everyone sort themselves into whatever Nozickian communities they want."

Says Andy Morriss, taking issue with my criticism of the plan to wrest Ave Maria, a nicely established new law school, from its current place in Ann Arbor, Michigan and strand it in a cloistered enclave in rural Florida. Latching onto my word "creepy," he writes:

The very idea of a university, however, is to some extent a place where people are to a degree sheltered from the "real world" to allow them to focus on learning. What's particularly creepy about people wanting to be in an environment free from pornography, etc.? This doesn't strike me as any different from, say, people at a law school in a rural town touting the atmosphere available from rural living. Given UPS, the internet, Amazon.com, Netflix, and so on, I don't think "Ave Maria town" is likely to be particularly more closed off from the "real world" than most small towns in rural areas are today. What will be different is that it will be a community that shares values, Catholic values as it turns out, and that, in turn, strikes me as sounding a bit like what you might find in a monastic community.

But Morriss is missing one huge thing. There is an existing community of scholars in Ann Arbor that is not volunteering to move. They like it where they are, in a lively university town, where they've established lives for themselves and contributed to the building of an institution. (Don't believe me? Ask them!) The move is to be imposed, top-down, by one man who happens to have the money. There's nothing Nozickian about that.

Thanks to Juan Non-Volokh for linking to the Morriss piece and for quoting from an article and a letter in the WSJ.

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Senate Democrates have "rebuffed, rebuked and rejected" civil rights and women's groups opposed to Roberts and Alito.

Says AP's David Espo:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee, underscored their political objectives recently to ... representatives of groups opposed to Alito's nomination.

In a private session, Reid and Schumer urged the groups to show restraint when lobbying Democrats from states that Bush won in 2004 - senators from Nebraska, Arkansas, the Dakotas and elsewhere who probably will be the most tempted to support the appointment. Officials who described the session did so on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the conversation.

Reid, in his first year as party leader, first angered groups opposed to Bush's court nominees last spring. Hoping to head off a showdown over appeals court nominees, he privately told Republicans he would allow confirmation for a few of the appointments that Democrats had long blocked.

[Nan Aron, president of the Alliance For Justice,] made her disagreement plain. "We don't want a deal. We have worked too hard, since we see these nominees as really extreme," she said at the time.

I think it's easy to predict that Alito will be confirmed. I hope the Senate Democrats are smart enough to use the confirmation process to win respect for the liberal version of constitutional interpretation, rather than to portray law as a political struggle and Alito as a candidate they must defeat.

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"I'd probably call it an afterthought. It was, 'Oh yeah, by the way, you don't have to do it.' "

Such was the attention to the subject of abstinence in sex education in one Wisconsin high school, as described by a current UW student. Now, a bill requiring a stronger abstinence message is about to pass the legislature here. (What the governor will do is another matter.)

The bill ... would require school districts that offer sex education programs to "present abstinence from sexual activity as the preferred choice of behavior" for unmarried students....

The current state law simply lists more than a dozen topics that districts "may include" in their sex education instruction but does not stress one as more important than others. The word "abstinence" does not appear, although "discouragement of adolescent sexual activity" is one of the topics districts can choose to include.

Should the legislature be requiring all the schools in the state to push abstinence as "the preferred choice of behavior"? The culture varies from place to place around the state, so I don't like a statewide requirement that goes this far, even though I think it's important for young people to hear a strong presentation of the case for abstinence. Shouldn't local school districts decide this one rather than posturing state legislators ?

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Alito panel.

Here at the law school tonight, the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society are hosting a panel discusion about the Alito nomination. Room 3250, 7 p.m. I'll be participating, along with Professors Church, Greene, Downs, Schweber, and Sharpless. It should be pretty lively!

UPDATE: Notes on the panel are here.

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"UK scientists have identified the part of the brain that determines whether a person perceives themselves as fat."

Would that be the part connected to the eyeballs? Oh, I'm just being mean, and this is the second post today about fat people. (Althouse is obsessed!) Actually, it's a pretty interesting study.

And did you know that "people who suffer from migraine with aura can sometimes experience a phenomenon called the 'Alice in Wonderland syndrome', where they feel that various body parts are shrinking"?

Ah, that calls for another link back to an old, related post: "My scotoma."

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Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Miles Davis, Blondie.

The new inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you approve?

Note that Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd got rejected the first seven times they were eligible, and the Sex Pistols got rejected four times.

"It's about time," Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward told Reuters, adding that he had long ago given up on getting inducted.

"What bothered me was not necessarily that Black Sabbath was being passed over but that hard rock and heavy metal was being passed over ... Bands that created heavy metal music or brought it into the foreground ought to have gone into the hall of fame some time ago, quite honestly."

The injustice!

Related post: I visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I'll bet Lynyrd Skynyrd was helped by the very nice presentation they were given on "American Idol" this past season -- backing Bo Bice.

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some questioning of why Miles Davis belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All I can say is: I saw him open for Neil Young & Crazy Horse at the Fillmore East in 1970.

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Abortion case to be argued tomorrow.

Linda Greenhouse writes about Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England:

When the Supreme Court meets on Wednesday to hear its first abortion case in five years, the topic will be familiar: a requirement that doctors notify a pregnant teenager's parent before performing an abortion....

[O]f the 43 states with parental-involvement statutes, New Hampshire is one of only five that do not also provide an exception for non-life-threatening medical emergencies, and it was on this basis that two lower federal courts declared the law unconstitutional....

Waiting in the wings, as the justices surely know, is another, perhaps even more highly charged abortion case. The Bush administration recently filed an appeal in defense of the federal ban on the procedure that abortion opponents have labeled "partial birth abortion," and the court must decide shortly whether to hear it.

CORRECTION: "Today" in the title corrected to "tomorrow." It is not Wednesday!

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"'The Wall' is where you don't want to put any more in your mouth."

Said Ian Hickman, who competes in eating contests. You have to train for these things!

First he'll fill up on liquids. Then "I'll practice eating hot dogs when I'm full. The contest is going to be won not by someone who's hungry but by someone who's able to eat when they're full."

Others rely on "guzzling large volumes of water or chowing down low-calorie foods, such as cabbage, in the weeks leading up to an event."

And note that the best contestants these days are not fat!

"About eight out of the top 10 are svelte, athletic," said an eater who goes by the name "Crazy Legs" Conti, who stands 6-foot-3, weighs 210 pounds, and runs marathons. [Sonya Thomas, 5' 5" and 98 pounds] beat him handily last month at a Buffalo wing contest in Bethesda.

He and others buy into what they call the belt-of-fat theory, which supposes that abdominal fat inhibits the stomach from ballooning. "A thinner person has much more room for expansion. An eater like myself, unfortunately, is struggling to catch up," Conti said.

Funny. I like watching a good eating contest. But maybe you think these displays are immoral or obscene. If your reason for objecting to these contests is that the food could have been used to feed someone who is hungry, should you not regard every fat person as embodying the same immorality?

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Too many opinions, too few cases -- can't the Supreme Court do better?

Jason Mazzone draws attention to the Supreme Court's glaring problem:

Last term, the Supreme Court issued opinions in just 74 cases. That’s pretty pathetic. It means there are many areas of the law that are unsettled or unreviewed; many important issues in which the Supreme Court could helpfully weigh in but it doesn’t; many issues that, once decided, will not reach the Court again for decades, if ever.

A low number of cases does not, however, mean light reading. Many of these 74 cases produced multiple opinions by sub-groups of justices. It’s not hard to see why this is true. Divide 74 up among nine justices and 30-plus law clerks and the temptation to write separately is irresistible.

Most of the 74 opinions are also lengthy and convoluted, larded with unnecessary detail and footnotes, and containing inappropriate swipes at the work of the other justices.

Oh, don't I know this! Trying to teach constitutional law cases to law students, I sometimes feel I need to defend myself from their hostility by stating the obvious: I didn't write these cases! Or: I'm really sorry but this happens to be the Supreme Court case on the subject.

Like me, Mazzone looks to the new Chief Justice to whip the Court's work product into shape:

My advice for Chief Justice John G. Roberts: double the number of cases the Court decides (it decided 123 the term Roberts clerked for Rehnquist), halve the length of opinions, make unanimity the goal, and discourage separate concurrences.

Mazzone doesn't mention the other change in the offing and the effect it will have on the problems he describes. Justice O'Connor is leaving, and Justice O'Connor was frequently the one who insisted on carving out a middle path between two crisper opinions. Take away Justice O'Connor and replace her with someone who will commit to plainly stated doctrine, and you may not need all that much of the new Chief's charismatic powers to turn things around.

But will we be happy with the new set of problems that replaces the old? Hazy, blabby cases are a pain, but clear doctrine -- quite a shock after all these years -- might hurt a lot more. And it's going to hurt some of us a lot more than others, which explains the hand-wringing over the impending confirmation of Samuel Alito.

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Four truths about Bob Woodward.

Her unique personal situation enables Nora Ephron to discern:

Truth #1: Bob is not a liar. ...

Truth #2: Bob has always had trouble seeing the forest for the trees. That’s why people love to talk to him; he almost never puts the pieces together in a way that hurts his sources....

Truth #3: Bob is not to be confused with other reporters.... He knows everything. What’s more, he has no idea what it adds up to. How could he possibly keep anyone, much less his editor, in the loop?...

Truth #4: If you don’t talk to Woodward, you’ll be sorry. I mention this not because it’s precisely true (look at me), but because it’s an operating truth in official Washington....

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Unintentional humor: "My Best Friend's Wedding."

We're watching "My Best Friend's Wedding," which looks beautiful on HDTV, on Showtime, right now. And we just dissolved into hysterical laughter. Here's Julia Roberts, served an elegant dinner in a lovely restaurant, sitting across the table from Rupert Everett -- he's gay! -- and we hear her cell phone ring, she pulls it out, and the thing is as large as a man's shoe!

In the next scene, she's at home, and her phone rings. Chris says: "Her home phone is smaller than her cell phone." And we laugh a lot all over again.

Later:

Me: This is a pretty good comedy.

Chris: Do you remember totally hating this movie?

Me: What'd I say?

Chris: I think you said there were too many closeups.

Me: (laughs.)

Later:

Chris: These actresses [Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz], if you saw them in real life, they wouldn't be that attractive.

Me: But the thing is, their face, their whole body sends out so much personality.

Later (as Julia Roberts sets up Cameron Diaz for humiliation in the karaoke bar):

Me: She's really evil.

Chris: That's what people don't like about it.

Me: I like that about her!

That's why it's a cool comedy. Julia's bad!

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"He did the worst thing an elected official can do."

"He enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there."

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"Who’s the real whore here?"

Steve H. is talking about me. In a good way.

MORE: There's a Wikipedia entry for Pajamas Media, now, and not only am I discussed under the heading "Feuds and Flamewars," but the expression "Berkeley house whore" appears.

AND: "Will they succeed? Who cares." Dan from Madison weighs in.

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In Dubai: compulsory hormone injections for gay men.

Andrew Sullivan links to this disturbing news report from Dubai:

The Interior Ministry said police raided a hotel chalet earlier this month and arrested 22 men from the Emirates as they celebrated the mass wedding ceremony - one of a string of recent group arrests of homosexuals here.

The men are likely to be tried under Muslim law on charges related to adultery and prostitution, said Interior Ministry spokesperson Issam Azouri.

Outward homosexual behaviour is banned in the United Arab Emirates and the gay group wedding has alarmed leaders of this once-isolated Muslim country as it grapples with a sweeping influx of western residents and culture.....

The arrested men have been questioned by police and were undergoing psychological evaluations on Saturday. Azouri said the Interior Ministry's department of social support would try to direct the men away from homosexual behaviour, including treatment with male hormones.

"Because they've put society at risk they will be given the necessary treatment, from male hormone injections to psychological therapies," he said.

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Tim Blair quits Pajamas Media!

You knew someone would be the first to jump ship. Did you think it would be Tim?

TO BE CLEAR: Blair has withdrawn from the Editorial Board. His blog is still listed as one of the member blogs. I don't know what the contractual details are here, but based on the offer I saw, the member bloggers had to commit themselves for 18 months.

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Scientists say "romantic love" lasts one year.

Face reality. You are just some chemicals:

The University of Pavia found a brain chemical was likely to be responsible for the first flush of love.

Researchers said raised levels of a protein was linked to feelings of euphoria and dependence experienced at the start of a relationship.

But after studying people in long and short relationships and single people, they found the levels receded in time.

The team analysed alterations in proteins known as neurotrophins in the bloodstreams of men and women aged 18 to 31, the Psychoneuroendocrinology journal reported.

They looked at 58 people who had recently started a relationship and compared the protein levels in the same number of people in long-term relationships and single people.

In those who had just started a relationship, levels of a protein called nerve growth factors, which causes tell-tale signs such as sweaty palms and the butterflies, were significantly higher.

Of the 39 people who were still in the same new relationship after a year, the levels of NGF had been reduced to normal levels.

Now, stop being so damned sentimental.

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"And, man, I was gratified when the fab chicks screamed."

Janet Maslin writes about -- sorry, he's an old Althouse favorite -- Donovan:

In his prime, the astral singer-songwriter Donovan appeared to take a serene view of show business and its cutthroat ways. Not anymore. Nowadays, Donovan would like you to know that he never received proper credit for Flower Power, World Music, New Age Music, the boxed-set album package, using LSD and the lyric "Love, Love, Love" before the Beatles did and playing folk-rock five months before Bob Dylan wielded an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

He deserves this credit too, Maslin says. Donovan states his claims in a book:

"The Autobiography of Donovan" is a very strange book (what else?) that revisits the fertile, trippy 60's, the elaborately constructed aura of Donovan's beatitude, the wild incongruities of that era's popular culture (when the guest list for one Donovan party included Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante and the Doors) and the lingo that has become so quaint. "And, man, I was gratified when the fab chicks screamed," he writes in all seriousness about appearing on his first television show....

"The constant gibes in the British press about my love of beauty has long left a false impression of my work," he maintains. "I was mocked as a simpleton when I sang of birds and bees and flowers like a child." He was also mocked for being wild about saffron, but it turns out that he loves saffron monks' robes and saffron cake with raisins. In any case, this book is where the mockery ends. And the last laugh begins.

Okay, that explains the saffron, but what about "I'm just mad about fourteen/She's just mad about me"? On "Donovan in Concert" he sings "Mellow Yellow" with the variation: "I'm just mad about fourteen-year-old girls. They're mad about me." Aw, they're just all the young girls in the audience, the fab chicks who screamed. I was one of them.

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"More people seem to be interested in movie grosses than in the movies."

Mark Steyn writes. Yes, it's strange, isn't it? Maybe the reason for the box office slump is that all the talk about box office makes movies seem like devices for taking our money. From early childhood, Americans learn to detect and resist such devices. The box office slump is testament to how savvy we are.

Remember when intelligent adults thought engaging with the films of the day was an essential part of life?

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What can you infer from a single incident?

Crooked Timber is talking about the Madison incident involving third grade teachers assigning their students to write letters calling for withdrawal from Iraq. It's a good discussion, even though they say this about me:

Ann Althouse, oddly, uses the case as a reason to suspect that the District does not have its act together—an odd conclusion to draw from a single instance in which it does the right thing effectively and immediately.

Here's what I said:

The project was cancelled -- school district policy prohibits teachers from presenting controversial issues with bias and promoting their personal political views.

I wonder how well that policy is enforced. That a group of five teachers thought this was an acceptable assignment suggests that it's hardly enforced at all.

"I don't see it as a controversial issue." I love that. It's so it depends on what the meaning of controversial is. Community standards seem to apply to that. And we're all here in Madison, Wisconsin.

What can you infer from a single incident? In this case, you have five teachers who got together and planned something without anyone figuring out what the problem was and one of them continuing to assert that it is not a controversial issue. How did these teachers arrive at such a mindset? From living and working in a particular environment, I would assume. Oh, but the system "does the right thing effectively and immediately," Crooked Timber says. Not really. The response only came because parents got mad. If a letter describing the assignment had not been sent to the parents, would anything have happened? What evidence do we have that the school district's policy has any mechanism of enforcement? I think the fact that the teachers thought what they were doing is fine strongly suggests that the policy is not ingrained in the practice of teaching in the district.

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"It's like having a bum living in your house."

Larry David (in tonight's episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm") saying what it's like to have a dog.

I also liked his contempt for campfire-roasted marshmallows: "Why don't you reduce all your foods to cinders?"

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Audible Althouse, #23.

Finally, the podcast is back. #23 has: the Thanksgiving squirrel, the Thanksgiving salmon, bedbugs, metaphorical vermin, the dog-eat-dog world of blogs, schoolteachers who get too political, and crazy architectural and lifestyle fantasies brought on by winning the lottery or taking LSD. 44 minutes.

IN THE COMMENTS: I apologize for coughing into the microphone.

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"See, here's what I don't understand...."

I was just scanning the Pajamas Media discussion boards and ran across this comment:

I *very* much agree that the site needs to be bloggier. The ad revenue is supposed to mostly come from the associated blogs, not the portal, with the portal's role being to boost traffic to the blogs, give people an easy starting point, and provide some original reporting, etc., that will encourage people to go there and encourage bloggers to do more original reporting.

That means that the portal needs to be interesting, and to change a lot. Right now it's neither.

I thought: Wow, that's about the smartest, clearest thing I've read here yet. Who said that? Then I see, it was Glenn Reynolds. Okay. Well, see? That was a blind reading test.

A few posts down Cal lays down the harshest critique I've seen yet:

See, here's what I don't understand: why are these discussions even necessary? Why is Glenn saying (to paraphrase) "hey, great idea, I'm passing this on to the others!"?

What was Glenn doing for the past 8 months or so, exactly, as part of the editorial board? More to the point, what was anyone involved with this absurd enterprise doing all this time?

This isn't a bootstrap organization. It's not something that was cobbled together and thrown open to the public for feedback. This was a venture with 3.5 MILLION dollars in funding.

Where did that money go? Apparently, it was all spent on a blowout opening bash. It clearly hasn't gone to technicians who could quickly respond to the most basic requests for change. Nor has it gone to any more advanced development work--at least none that's readily apparent. Just as obviously, it wasn't spent on competent legal or marketing advice.

When the only evident sign of investment is in the party you throw to announce an organization with an illegal name offering a service that no one