"He obviously is capable of maintaining contact with Washington and being constantly updated."

Says the press secretary about our wartime President who is gallivanting in South America. Stop this criticism. Look! He's canceled his Mayan ruins sightseeing plan and will instead hole up in the American Embassay and do "at least one conference call."

Why did Obama cancel his visit to the Mayan ruins?
	So he could do phone calls about Libya.
	Swanning around ancient ruins is about exactly the opposite of the photo-op it was supposed to be.
pollcode.com free polls

"Voodoo priest linked to Flatbush blaze is one of many scammers, predators, say neighbors."

What a ridiculous headline from the Daily News! The man's link to the fire is that he was the source of a candle.

A voodoo priest whose ritual candles sparked a deadly fire in Brooklyn last month is just one of a cadre of supposed mystics who prey on women for money and sex.

The women - most of them African or Haitian - sought good fortune, fertility, love, employment and sometimes revenge....

"It is very discreet," said Father Jean-Miguel Auguste, who heads the St. Jerome Catholic Church about a block from the E. 29th St. fire. "No one really talks about it."

Auguste, who came to the parish in 2004, said he's counseled hundreds of women who were taken advantage of by the smooth-talking con artists.

So you have rival religions, and a representative of one portrays the other as preying on people. Why not portray the Catholic priests as "smooth-talking con artists"?

"In this community we have people who are desperate," said Auguste, 51, a Haitian immigrant. "When you are desperate, you will believe anything."

Ahem. Listen to yourself, man.

Elizabeth Taylor.

The goddess walked the earth for 79 years.

"This no-fly zone doesn’t mean anything to us because Gaddafi only had a few planes and they were doing nothing."

"We need a no-drive zone because it is tanks and snipers that are killing us."

Obama's aloofness/aloftness isn't working.

"Unions are almost dead."

"We cannot survive doing what we do but the simple fact of the matter is community organizations are almost dead also. And if you think about what we need to do it may give us some direction which is essentially what the folks that are in charge - the big banks and everything - what they want is stability. There are actually extraordinary things we could do right now to start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement."

"No wonder these people assumed the Tea Party movement had to be some kind of astroturf."

"They were just relying on their own experience."

72-hour wait between consultation and abortion...

... just enacted in South Dakota.

"I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives,” the Republican governor said the statement. “I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices.”

Lawsuit forthcoming. Under the case law, "the means chosen by the State to further the interest in potential life must be calculated to inform the woman's free choice, not hinder it." So you tell me, why 3 days?

A protester sits in the center of the Capitol rotunda floor, day after day, with posters spread all around, facilitated by Democratic Assemblyman Brett Hulsey.

The last few times we've gone to the Wisconsin Capitol, we've encountered a woman who sits on the floor, right in the center of the rotunda. You can see her in this picture from March 15th [and at 1:39 in the video here]. She spreads posters (and a display of buttons) right where visitors are most likely to want to stand to gaze up into the dome. Children love to lie down there for dome-gazing. But this woman has appropriated the spot — not just for sitting, but for a display of anti-Walker signs.

Now, there is a list of rules about what you can't do in the Capitol, and one thing is: post signs. This is perhaps a good law school exam question: Are signs arrayed on a horizontal surface posted? Meade — Flip camera in hand — started to interview the woman about that. No sooner does the questioning begin than WI Assemblyman Brett Hulsey shows up to ask the woman whether Meade "is behaving himself"....



The woman tells Hulsey Meade's question, and Meade amplifies the issue by asking "What's to stop you from getting, you know, 100 times this number of signs and spreading out into the whole rotunda and spreading out into all the hallways?" She says: "I don't think there's anything with that except I have to pick them up at the end of the night."

Hulsey answers: "Personal restraint." Meade says: "Is that it? Personal restraint?" We see that Hulsey has turned his back and is walking away (as Meade is in the middle of thanking him). Then, hilariously, the woman volunteers: "Brett is nice that he told me that when I bring these in, I don't have to take them with me at night. I can go store them in his office overnight."

The camera pans to Hulsey, who has turned back toward Meade. Hulsey has a sheepish frown-grin on his face. Meade says "Truly?!" The woman says "yes, yes" as Hulsey nods his head a few times. Hulsey says: "We believe in free speech."

Meade: "So, you're not only approving, but you're facilitating?"

The woman: "He's not facilitating. I only just asked him if I can, I said, I come here with signs. I just asked him if I could store the signs in his office overnight and he told me I could."

There's overtalking as Hulsey says "We believe in the First Amendment, freedom of speech" and Meade is asking her if she's in Hulsey's district and the woman says "I'm in Madison, but not his district. I have friends in his district."

Now, we are in Hulsey's district, and Hulsey knows it, because Meade has talked to him on several occasions. Meade goes after Hulsey, who is turning again to walk away, and asks him, "Do you have 5 minutes?"

Hulsey lets out a long "uuuuhhhhhh" then says: "Actually I... t-t-t-to discuss what?" Why should the subject matter affect whether our assemblyman has 5 minutes to talk to Meade? Especially if he's big on free speech, the subject shouldn't matter.

Meade: "I wanna ask you questions and, uh, get your thoughts and opinions..."

Hulsey interrupts to say that Meade should make an appointment with "Terry" — "because I'm on deadlines with a couple things." The deadlines didn't stop him from darting right out to protect the rotunda-sitting lady from Meade's questioning, and indeed, when Meade goes into the office to make the appointment, Hulsey's assistant says "This is a slow week."

So... deadlines... slow week... What's the deal?

UPDATE: So, in the video you see Hulsey's assistant scheduling his appointment for 2 days later. Today, Hulsey's office called to reschedule and canceled the existing appointment (without giving him a new one). Evasive? But he's was right there when papers-on-the-floor lady seemed to need help answering Meade's questions. And, he was also right there — in video Meade took — when another legislator fell flat on the floor of the rotunda after slipping on papers protesters had put there!

"7 Questions For Liberals About Obama's Libyan War."

Questions based on the overarching question: Did they really mean the criticisms they had against Bush or not?

At the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates's debate, incumbent David Prosser goes after JoAnne Kloppenburg for what commenters have written on her Facebook page.

What can we attribute to the person with the power to delete comments?

While there was no explicit mention of a Dane County judge's decision to issue an emergency order to block the state's contentious new collective bargaining law, Prosser acknowledged the attacks against him on Klopperburg's Facebook page were from people hoping to elect someone to decide "cases that come out of the governor's budget bill."...

Prosser said Kloppenburg is responsible for the comments on her Facebook page and should take them down. He said the nature of the comments raises questions about whether she can impartially decide any cases that come before her with the budget bill. He mentioned one that read, "Stop the turd, vote Kloppenburg."

"Now am I the turd or is the governor the turd?" he said to laughs from the audience. "Either I am being sort of dissed or she is committing herself to vote in a particular way on a particular case. That's totally inappropriate."

Kloppenburg said the people who post the comments are responsible for the content and that the postings aren't untrue.

"They understand that it is so important to have an independent and impartial court," she said of the people posting on her Facebook site.

I have a very free comments policy myself, and this blog's comments thread is full of things I don't agree with, so I'm strongly disinclined to attribute comments to someone who maintains a comments section. Now, a political candidate might want to clean up the comments, but if she doesn't, what does it mean? It might mean nothing more than a failure to monitor the page — mere inattention or sloppiness. It might mean a commitment to free speech. But one might infer that a candidate would scrub comments that were damaging to her in the election and, perhaps, keep what was helpful.

The key question is whether Kloppenburg has "committ[ed] herself to vote in a particular way on a particular case." Clearly, many of her supporters are saying that she is much more likely than Prosser to give them the outcomes they want, and some of them have said that where she has the power to delete. But Prosser's campaign manager wrote in an official campaign news release that Prosser would "act as a common sense compliment to both the new administration and legislature." Now, that's not exactly a "commit[ment]... to vote in a particular way on a particular case," but it's a signal to people on the conservative side that Prosser to is more likely to give them the outcomes they want. Prosser has "disavowed the release and said he didn't see it before it went out," but what's worse? The Prosser campaign statement or the Kloppenburg Facebook comments?

The answer to that question isn't going to determine who votes for which candidate. Obviously. It's a shame if the judicial campaign has turned into a referendum on the Governor and the GOP legislature, but both candidates bear some responsibility for that. Normally, judicial candidates in this state try quite hard to look as though the race is all about judicial skill and temperament. I think Wisconsinites want that message, and, also, that they are more likely to conflate conservative politics with properly judicial skill and temperament. (That's how Gableman defeated Butler, in my view.)

But at this point in the Wisconsin craziness, some unknown large number of Wisconsinites — especially those who will take the trouble to vote on April 5th — see the election as a way to express an opinion about what the Republicans have been doing in Wisconsin. Presumably, there are some more who have opinions about the extent to which a court should check the legislative process — a more conventional view about judging. I think there are also plenty of Wisconsinites who have a general preference for conservative judges. (They worry that liberal judges will be too sympathetic to criminals and that sort of thing.) Lots of people just vote for the incumbent because they figure he's a solid guy who knows what he's doing.

Who will turn out on April 5th? My sense is that the people who have been protesting for the last month have a lot of pent-up energy to expend on getting their people to the polls, and they are saying vote Kloppenburg.

"Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy. Their political convictions and the two moments in history are quite different."

Writes UW history prof William Cronon in a NYT op-ed:

But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

A couple preliminary observations:

1. The protesters and the Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature are making a much bigger show of lacking "neighborliness, decency and mutual respect" than the Republicans, who won the election last fall and are attempting to solve a terrible economic problem. Legislators ran to another state and hid out to obstruct the majority, and the protesters have been chanting unneighborly chants and carrying outrageous signs — depicting Scott Walker as Hitler, etc. — for a month. They took over the Capitol, covering its marble walls with nasty signs, defiling its war monument, and breaking things. They mobbed a state senator. They made death threats! Not all of them. But how can you talk about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect and not acknowledge these things?

2. Cronon's the historian, and he points to Joe McCarthy. But couldn't one also point to Ronald Reagan? Yeah, I know: not from Wisconsin. But he was perceived as "a sternly uncompromising leader" when he was Governor of California. All the college kids — including me — thought he was a demon. Cronon says McCarthy "helped create the modern Democratic Party," but Reagan's role in creating the modern Republican Party is even more dramatic. Walker is much more like Reagan. In fact, Reagan's resemblance to McCarthy is greater than Walker's. Reagan got in front of the camera and said some pretty harsh things back in the late 60s. Walker always comes across as a nice person, making tough decisions and doing what he thinks needs to be done.

Somebody has written "Workers of the World Unite" on the monument to Civil War hero Hans Christian Heg.

And Meade is not happy with that. This evening at the Wisconsin Capitol:



2 protesters — a teacher and a lawyer — arrive on the scene, and a hilarious argument ensues. This might seem long, but don't miss the "teabagger" part.

"Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying."

Said the judge:

"Phrases such as 'I'm working late tonight, hunny,' 'I got stuck in traffic' and 'I didn't inhale' could all be made into crimes," wrote Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, concurring with the federal appeals panel's denial of the government's request for an en banc hearing of the case. "Without the robust protections of the First Amendment, the white lies, exaggerations and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse would become targets of censorship, subject only to the rubber stamp known as 'rational basis review.'"

Faced with a criminal indictment, Xavier Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act by telling his colleagues on a water district board in Los Angeles that he had been in the Marines for 25 years and had been awarded the Medal of Honor in 1987.

"He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying: 'You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight.'"

Lynsey Addario, one of 4 NYT journalists — the only female — who were captured by the Libyan government, describes her ordeal.

David Weigel smugly mouths a most despicable theory of presidential power.

His post is titled "Why Obama Doesn't Need to Ask Congress Before Attacking Libya." He posits:

It's simple: Most of Washington doesn't want him to. To coin a phrase: If they want the president to do it, that means it's legal.

The allusion is to the famous Nixon quote (which was distorted for effect in ads for the movie "Frost/Nixon"): "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal." Why would Weigel repurpose that quote? Is he criticizing Obama? Nixon asserted that "in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we’re all talking about."

Does anyone argue that attacking Libya is needed to preserve the United States? But quite aside from that, Nixon was talking about the President stepping up and doing what he thinks is needed. That's entirely different from saying that a structural safeguard entrusted to Congress may be dispensed with whenever Congress doesn't feel like taking responsibility.

Now, possibly Weigel is thinking everyone knows Nixon was wrong — false, but let's assume it — and so presenting a theory in the Nixon format is a way of saying it's wrong. But I think that's way too subtle for Weigel to have intended. I think what he meant was to adopt a political pragmatism, which he imagines Nixon to have used. In that view, the President acquires power when Congress avoids its responsibility. Weigel continues in this vein [quoting Lindsey Graham, with apparent approbation]:

"I don't believe he needs to come to Congress. I'd gladly vote on what he did. I think it's inherent within the authority of the commander-in-chief to take such action."

Such action? What action? Helping out rebels in a foreign country where our national security is not at stake?

"We have been overly cautious, unnervingly indecisive. This thing melted down. I wish we would have acted sooner. I don't feel a need to bless this action before he took it. I'd be glad to vote on it afterwards."

Bless?  Glad? It's not about your feelings or Congress's avoidance of formal gestures. Either there is a serious constitutional safeguard here or there is not. If there is, it doesn't disappear because you are comfortable without it or because Congress holds back. If there is a constitutional safeguard, it is a permanent guarantee that goes to us, the people.

"Having taken a closer look at the text of Judge Sumi's decision in Ozanne v. Fitzgerald, I am quite frankly astonished."

"The court seems to have managed to enjoin publication of the statutory changes in the budget repair bill without addressing any of the difficult issues that the case presents."

Says Marquette lawprof Rick Esenburg.

AND: More here:

Setting aside the multiple jurisdictional issues that should have led the court to conclude that it did not have authority to hear the case at all, let’s focus on the heart of the defendants’ (and the unions) dispute: whether the conference committee meeting was properly noticed. It was....

"The concept that God longs for the likes of me is so unbelievably sweet."

Wrote lawprof William Stuntz, taking comfort, when he was dying of cancer, in a line from the Book of Job: "You will call and I will answer. You will long for the creature your hands have made."

"I hope we can now stop minimizing and trivializing the impacts that outdoor cats have on the environment and start addressing the serious problem of cat predation."

Pussy belongs inside.

"Those snaps are all you need to know."

"The working man's plight is boiled down to the struggle for money.  Ford uses his gospel training to make this fight seem almost as fight that Jesus himself would join to defeat the forces that make him 'another day older and deeper in debt'.  But because he lacks hope of escape, Ford's message here seems to subscribe to the 'take this job and shove it' school of country music as opposed to the aspirational.  The snaps, though; that's the heartbeat of America there."

#180 on List-a-Beefy's top 200 #1 songs of the last 55 years.

"On Justice Samuel Alito: Conservatives Can Have Empathy Too!"

The Wall Street Journal law blog acknowledges this Emily Bazelon piece.

This reminds me of what I wrote (in a NYT op-ed) when Bush first nominated Alito. Describing 2 cases in which he "displayed a sensitivity to the needs of adherents of minority religions" that was missing from the Supreme Court decision that, as a lower court judge, he had to apply, I went on to say:

Yes, chances are that a Justice Alito will please conservatives more often than liberals.... Still, [liberals] should give serious study to his record; they may discover that there are varieties of judicial conservatives, just as there are varieties of political conservatives, and that Samuel Alito is not Antonin Scalia.

Speaking of conservatives and empathy, Rush Limbaugh monologued about that last week:

By itself, what does sitting around caring about something accomplish? Now, if it motivates you to do something that's an entirely different thing. I find that most people, particularly people on the left, want plaudits, they want gold stars, they think of themselves as superior people just because they care....

I don't worry about things that I have no control over. I used to, big time. I can't tell you the shackles I had on myself worrying about all kinds of stuff. I was worrying about what might happen next year if I did this or did that. There was nothing more paralyzing in my life than to worry about stuff I had no control over. And in the process, I actually limited what I could control.

"There was simply no basis for the Ninth Circuit to reach the opposite conclusion, particularly in such a dismissive manner."

The Supreme Court, per curiam, grants a petition for certiorari and a motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis, and delivers an immediate reversal, after the 9th Circuit blatantly disregards the standard imposed by the federal habeas statute.

The image of Wisconsin as a clenched fist.

Lots of Facebook folk actually use this in the spot where most people put a picture of their own faces, so it's not just that the state is turned into a fist. People are willingly replacing their own faces with a fist.

By the way, if Door County were included the fist would have an extended pinky. That would be more polite.

IN THE COMMENTS: Phil 3:14 says:

And appropriately Madison lies over the "capitate" bone.

(And stretching this a bit, and assuming Milwaukee is Democratic, they're "pissed" over the pisiform.)

Paul Zrimsek says:

Alternative caption: BEND OVER, ONTARIO.

Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas and the Chief would like you to know that they do care about the privacy of your backyard.

But not when the decisions comes to them on review of a decision by a state intermediate appellate court. I mean, you've got your backyard privacy and they've got their Rule 10. The New Jersey Supreme Court didn't want to talk about it, so they don't want to talk about it.

Madison's other rotunda — the Wisconsin protest moves to campus.

A Facebook group:

As students, teachers, researchers, and workers at UW-Madison we ask you to gather with us tomorrow, Monday, March 21st at noon to show your solidarity against this massive attack on public eduction and labor in the state of Wisconsin. Our plan is to quietly congregate and publicly perform our role as teachers and employees of the university, so participate by bringing your grading or other work. We will meet in the rotunda at Bascom Hall in order to promote our status as graduate student workers committed to accessible public education and the fair employment practices guaranteed by collective bargaining rights. Bascom is the home to University Administration, Faculty Senate, and PROFS, and thus serves as a symbolic space where we can convey our persistent dedication to this struggle to KILL THE BILL.

Bring your lunch, bring your work, and wear your TAA shirt tomorrow. Help us keep labor visible, and remind the campus that the UNIVERSITY WORKS BECAUSE WE DO!

This looks like a job for New Media Meade.

UPDATE: At 12:04, per Meade: "Fewer than 12 people waiting for TA Godot." "Two are grading blue books."

UPDATE 2: At 12:15: 30 people now. Plus, an iPhone photo:



The sign says: "Productive Protesters/Grad Students Working for the Cause."

UPDATE 3: Earlier someone said, "I'm here for the pizza," and now Ian's Pizza has delivered. Text: "Meade eschewing communist pizza." Nobody has run him out of town yet.

UPDATE 4: "I believe this may be a trial occupation." Later: "If this is an occupation, it's lame. More like a study hall or 30 person study date." Also (with typical Meadhouse Dylan reference): "People walking through not in group must step over TAs sitting in doorways blocking up the halls/Hope no one stalls." I get it... Don't criticize what you can’t understand...

Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

Or a fist. Get outta town. You old geezers...

"Say, whatever happened to the antiwar movement?"

Asks Instapundit:

“It’s hard to escape the conclusion that antiwar activity in the United States and around the world was driven as much by antipathy to George W. Bush as by actual opposition to war and intervention.” Well, the corpse is twitching a bit today, but yeah.

Come to Madison, Wisconsin. There was a big antiwar rally here this weekend, and protesters confronted about about Obama made no excuses for him. Like this guy:



He always knew Obama was a corporate puppet.

"Just a couple of months ago, in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, simple talk of 'targeting' a political opponent for defeat was treated as beyond the pale."

"But let's look at some more recent language -- and conduct -- that our bien-pensant punditry can't be bothered to notice, let alone condemn."

"[I]f Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached."

Says Ralph Nader.

On the other hand, if you thought George Bush acted appropriately, then you should see that one benefit of the Obama presidency is that it has denied the Democrats the ability to stand at a distance and criticize, as if they were above that sort of thing. This was one of the reasons I voted for Obama: "When [the Democrats] can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do?"

Thanks to all the readers...

... who've spontaneously made donations to this blog via PayPal. I love the encouragement!

"I constantly hear Gregorian chants. That's the noise... I always think I'm in touch with God."

Says Rush Limbaugh.

"Clinton's two key statements: 'We did not lead this' and 'America has unique capabilities' are not consistent with each other."

"Because of America's unique capabilities, it is in fact leading the Libyan effort.... [Vice Admiral Bill] Gortney's briefing made clear that the United States is not only leading the Libya operation but is virtually the only force involved in the operation.... And few Americans would want U.S. forces to go into combat under anything other than U.S. command. But why would the Secretary of State step onto the world stage and announce, 'We did not lead this'?"

Byron York poses a question.

ADDED: NYT:

“We are not going after Qaddafi,” Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said at the Pentagon on Sunday afternoon, even as reports from Tripoli described a loud explosion and billowing smoke at the Qaddafi compound, suggesting that military units or a command post there might have been a target.