2006!

Happy New Year. It looks just lovely so far from here. I hope '06 is off to a good start for you too.

"The first job of a rock 'n' roll band is not to be dull."

Bono pretends to worry that U2 will kick him out of the band.

Is it really this easy to become famous these days?

I'll bet if his name wasn't Farris he couldn't have ridden one plane ticket this far.

Trump as governor of NY?

Oh, the horror! Ridiculous, really. You can't be that weird and run for office. (Can you?)

Investigating the leak... and reporting about it in the NYT.

The Justice Department has started to investigate the leak of classified information about the NSA surveillance program:

"The leaking of classified information is a serious issue," said [White House] spokesman, Trent Duffy.

"The fact is that Al Qaeda's playbook is not printed on Page 1, and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that," he said, referring to the Chinese warrior who wrote "The Art of War."

The president last week denounced in strong language the leaking of information about the agency's program, saying: "My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

I'm linking to the NYT and quoting its article, even though the NYT is the place where the leaked information first appeared. It is a special challenge to them to report the investigate well, and we shall see how well they report it. The author of the article, David E. Sanger, does a good job, I think, even if he gives prominent place to quotes that lamely say that investigating the surveillance program ought to predominate. Here's Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union:

"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens... But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistle-blowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."

And here's Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center:

"[T]he priority at this point for the Department of Justice should be the appointment of an independent prosecutor to determine whether federal wiretap laws were violated" by the security agency program, not the leak inquiry.

Sanger does call attention to the leak investigation in the Valerie Plame case, which tends to refute Romero's implication that the President is only concerned about leaks as a way to get at his critics. (I wonder if those who screamed loudest about the Plame leak and national security are equally outraged about this new leak?) Sanger also quotes Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, "a nonprofit law firm that defends whistle-blowers," saying that "his group would not object to a limited investigation of the leak of classified information":

"But if they do a blanket witch hunt, which I fear, ... it would trample all over good government laws" intended to protect government workers who expose wrongdoing.

"The whole reason we have whistle-blower laws is so that government workers can act as the public's eyes and ears to expose illegality or abuse of power."

Sanger offers a neutral-sounding account of the newspaper's role in leaking the information:

The administration first learned that The New York Times had obtained information about the secret eavesdropping program more than a year ago and expressed concern to editors that its disclosure could jeopardize terrorism investigations. The newspaper withheld the article at the time, and the government did not open a leak investigation at that time, presumably because such an inquiry might itself disclose the program.

The newspaper did additional reporting and eventually decided to publish the article despite the continuing objections of President Bush and other top officials.

Why? Naturally, we crave more information here, but Sanger's inability to offer it does not undermine his report. The Times is part of the investigation, and Sanger can only tell us: "Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, declined to comment on the leak investigation."

UPDATE: If you came here from Crooked Timber and want my response to the scurrilous things that were said about me there, it's here.

Counting the laughs...

... in Supreme Court oral arguments.

Is a sense of humor a mark of a good judicial mind? It's Scalia and then Breyer with the most laughs, and Roberts is off to a good start.

To get laughs from your sense of humor, of course, you've got to make your observations out loud. Who knows what amusing things Clarence Thomas is thinking in his silence? I know I'd have different thoughts depending on whether I actively engaged in debate with the lawyers. If I did, I'd have to concentrate on the terms of the legal argument. If I didn't, I'd think much more about how the lawyers and judges looked and acted as characters in a human drama -- a very rich source of witty remarks, but nothing you can interpose at oral argument.

ADDED: Why isn't Green Bag available on line? It would be nice to be able to read an link to Professor Wexler's article (the basis for the article I linked to above).

MORE: Gordon Smith aptly observes that counting the laughs mostly only counts which judges think they are funny, since the captive audience will tend to oblige the judge with a laugh when he tries to be funny. What are you going to do? Groan and roll your eyes? Also, the courtroom is a tense and sober place that laughing is a special relief. You might have had any number of things you wanted to laugh at and had to stifle yourself.

AND: Here's a PDF of the Wexler article!

My New Year's prediction for the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, I blogged about William Safire's predictions about what the Supreme Court would do in a handful of cases. This led to some more generalized speculation in the comments, and Eli wrote:

Actually, with the four on the right, and with the four on the left, we have a court balanced perfectly around one justice. So, one man will control one third of the government. 2006 will be a year in which Anthony Kennedy will wield a sharper and more powerful sword than George W. Bush.

Even though I've said things like this myself, I think it underestimates the intellectual and charismatic powers of the new Chief Justice. So I want to make a different prediction for what 2006 will be like for the Supreme Court: Kennedy will work with John Roberts to forge a newly coherent moderate-conservative position. The project of creating an articulate moderate position will be so compelling and promise such benefits that Stephen Breyer will contribute his formidable skills, and we will see the era of fragmented, ad hoc decisionmaking come to an end.

Article III Groupie goes to Washington.

Article III Groupie -- AKA David Lat -- of Underneath Their Robes, is leaving his job at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark. He sent out email to the office yesterday saying he was going to Washington, D.C. and "You'll be hearing from me more." He was not forced out of his job -- according to the article -- though, of course, he was forced to closed down his incredibly cool blog after he revealed his identity. So what is he going to do in Washington? Something that taps his amazing creativity? I hope!

A year in the life of the blog.

January: I just wrecked my car.

February: Is podcasting good?

March: Is it possible to explain the Schiavo statute on television?

April: "Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist"

May: Notes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

June: Who was inconsistent about federalism in Raich?

July: Tattoos remind you of death

August: Where am I?

September: The Roberts confirmation hearing

October: State Street, pre-Halloween

November: In which I advise local liberal lawyers to support Alito

December: How political is that "gay cowboy movie"?

The romantic entrepreneur...

Burns out:

The psychological gap between working in a cafe because it's fun and romantic and doing the exact same thing because you have to is enormous. Within weeks, Lily and I—previously ensconced in an enviably stress-free marriage—were at each other's throats. I hesitate to say which was worse: working the same shift or alternating. Each option presented its own small tortures. Two highly educated professionals with artistic aspirations have just put themselves—or, as we saw it, each other—on $8-per-hour jobs slinging coffee. After four more months, we grew suspicious of each other's motives, obsessively kept track of each other's contributions to the cause ("You worked three days last week!"), and generally waltzed on the edge of divorce. The marriage appears to have been saved by a well-timed bankruptcy.

Many years ago, in the 1970s, when I was married, R and I seriously considered opening a small bookstore, which we envisioned in romantic terms. Nevertheless, I got a book from the library about starting a small business. It had a chapter "Would You Hire Yourself?" that doggedly pressured you to seriously consider whether you would hire yourself to run this business you've got in mind. My reaction to that chapter was very much like my reaction to the lecture I received, around the same time, from a young woman at the SPCA, where I'd gone to adopt a dog. Suffice it to say, I've never owned a bookstore or a dog. I'm capable of having romantic visions of myself engaged in some activity in the future, but I'm at least as good at picturing myself in the negative variation. I can see the nightmare that cancels the dream.

Robscalithom predictions.

William Safire returns to the NYT op-ed page to do his usual "office pool" on predictions for the year 2006. Question 4 is about the Supreme Court:

The Robertscalito court will: (a) in the Texas case disengage from involvement in states' redistricting; (b) go the other way in Oregon, holding that federal power to prohibit substances trumps a state's authority to permit physician-assisted suicide; (c) decide that federal funds can be denied to law schools that prohibit military recruitment on campus; (d) uphold McCain-Feingold, enabling Congress to restrict political contributions but not expenditures; (e) reassert citizens' Fourth Amendment protection from "security letters" and warrantless surveillance.

His answer is "all." Some are more likely that others, though, especially (c). And "Robertscalito" is an awfully inelegant coinage for a notorious word maven. Much as I object to "Scalito," I still find it aesthetically appealing. If you're going to go toward ungainliness and make it "Robertscalito," leaving out Clarence Thomas becomes conspicuous. So in the interest of inclusiveness and aesthetics, I'll suggest: "Robscalithom."

"My kids aren't going to relate to Jesus Christ the same way we do..."

"And that's to be expected because Jesus Christ is your own personal lord and savior," says one mother who's accepting of the way teenagers these days shop around for a church that's more exciting that the one their parents take them to: "At New Life, ... the youth group sessions feel like rock concerts: T-shirts are on sale outside and bands are onstage, grinding their way through screaming songs of praise for Christ while teenagers dance before them."

Quotes of the year 2005 -- my choices.

After writing that last post, on the WaPo's quotes of the year, I got the idea of going through the past year of my writing on this blog to find the quotes I thought were most interesting. Here they are, beginning with a quote from back in January:

"I can't think of any examples where I said, 'Gosh, I wish I had more power.'" -- President Bush

"When you think of the New Testament, they get about 2 of the values and we get about 27." -- Howard Dean

"Christ did not come down from the cross." -- Pope John Paul II (on why he didn't retire)

"But I also know if I can get music without buying it, I'm going to do so." -- Justice David Souter (at oral argument in the Grokster case)

"I can't agree with you. 'Our laws come from God.' If you don't believe it sends that message, you're kidding yourself." -- Justice Antonin Scalia (at oral argument in the Ten Commandments case)

"Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist." -- Camille Paglia (speaking in Madison)

"If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please, for the love of God, don't ever show me in that condition on national television." -- Kenny in the "Best Friends Forever" episode of "South Park"

"Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is." -- Tom Cruise

"What are you, some redneck blogger pig?"-- Claire Fisher on "Six Feet Under" (to her boyfriend, when he defended the war in Iraq)

"Narm." -- Nate Fisher on "Six Feet Under."

"That's for me to know and for you to find out." -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist (responding to a question about whether he's retiring on July 11th, causing me to write "How near death can he be if he's horsing around like that?" He died on September 3rd.)

"The Supreme Court voted last week to undo private property rights and to empower governments to kick people out of their homes and give them to someone else because they feel like it." Rep. Tom Delay (on the Kelo case)

"He's crushing his testicles in tight trousers for world peace." -- John Lydon (insulting Bono)

"We have an American refugee situation on our hands." -- a Red Cross spokesperson (re Katrina)

"We perceive no reason why both parents of a child cannot be women." -- the California Supreme Court

"What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it." -- Christopher Hitchens (on Cindy Sheehan)

"If you're not on drugs, you've got problems." -- Jimmy Kimmel (to Courtney Love)

"There's loads of room for judgment. The judges do judge." -- Justice Stephen Breyer

"They will do what they think is in their interest, however they define it." -- Senator Hillary Clinton (predicting how Democrats would vote on the nomination of John Roberts)

"Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?" -- Senator Tom Coburn (asking the most ridiculous question asked at the Roberts confirmation hearings)

"By becoming John Roberts the chief justice, don't ever forget to be John Roberts, the man." -- Senator Mike DeWine (at the Roberts hearing)

"Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire." -- John Roberts (at his confirmation hearing)

"I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder." -- Werner Herzog (in voiceover in the movie "Grizzly Man")

"I haven't even run out of weed yet." -- one of the New Orleans holdouts (on not evacuating after Katrina)

"Almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black." -- Wolf Blitzer (on the Katrina victims)

"Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." -- Steve Colbert

"She needs more than murder boards. She needs a crash course in constitutional law." -- Arlen Specter (on Harriet Miers)

"I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called." -- Howard Dean

"I know her heart." -- President Bush on Harriet Miers

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." -- President Bush (finally fighting back against war critics)

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." -- Judge John E. Jones III (in the Intelligent Design case)

"I don't expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom." -- President Bush (on the Iraq war)

"We will talk to each other, and we will connect with each other, and we will weave the country together like a piece of cloth." -- A voter in Iraq

"I have no friends." -- Howard Stern

"We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." -- Senator Joe Lieberman

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them." -- Harold Pinter (accepting the Nobel Prize)

"I for one do not dance to dance music; disco for me is a lofty metaphysical mode that induces contemplation." -- Camille Paglia (criticizing Madonna's new CD)

"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

Is that the quote of the year? WaPo's Mark Leibovich says so. The runners-up are pretty amusing, especially the horrifying "This is working very well for them."

The sole voice of reason?

Arye Dworken of The Jerusalem Post attacks "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as anti-Semitic:

Some might argue [Larry] David's misrepresentation of Judaism is but a warped, misguided love letter to his own tradition, and that his humor doesn't discriminate when it comes to mocking any religion or ethnicity.

This is true to an extent, but if one takes a closer look at the show's cast of characters, Judaism is the most poorly portrayed. The cast, which features Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin, Larry David and Richard Lewis, is predominately Jewish. All four characters have similar traits, most of them unflattering (with the occasional exception of Garlin, who can be a well-intentioned individual). And interestingly, the one non-Jew, Cheryl Hines, represents the sole voice of reason among the aforementioned neurotics.

Wait. Cheryl is out of her mind.

Question about shirt collars.

How should a man decide whether or not the collar of his shirt belongs inside or outside the lapels of his jacket? Obviously, if he's wearing a tie, the collar goes inside, and a big crazy disco collar goes outside. But other than that, what is the significance of inside or outside?

The problems with boys and school.

Melana Zyla Vickers writes in the Weekly Standard about the gender gap in higher education:

What is going on? Schools are not paying enough attention to the education of males. There's too little focus on the cognitive areas in which boys do well. Boys have more disciplinary problems, up to 10 percent are medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder, and they thrive less in a school environment that prizes what Brian A. Jacob of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government calls "noncognitive skills." These include the ability to pay attention in class, to work with others, to organize and keep track of homework, and to seek help from others. Where boys and girls score comparably on cognitive skills, boys get worse grades in the touchy-feely stuff. Perhaps not coincidentally, boys reportedly enjoy school less than girls do, and are less likely to perceive that their teachers support them, according to studies of Hispanic dropouts.

Harvard's Jacob is one of the few scholars to have studied the gender gap in higher education. His statistical analysis suggests it is boys' lack of skill in these noncognitive areas that is the principal cause of the gap.

Let me tie this to my usual point that whatever is discovered to be true of the female is portrayed as superior. Here, we see characteristics discovered in the male portrayed as a deficiency in "noncognitive skills." But isn't this because the scientists are defining "noncognitive skills" to fit what they find to be true of girls? Once could just as well spin what the boys seem to have as "noncognitive skill." You can easily translate Jacob's diagnosis into a positive one for the boys: Boys have wide-ranging, active interests and the capacity to deftly shift from one area of interest to the next. They resist becoming bogged down in details and meaningless exercises and hold fast to their independence. They are not subservient and are straightforward in their criticisms of authority figures. But then the girls might come out deficient. And, of course, designing a classroom to suit these skills would be much more difficult.

UPDATE: Slate links to this post and ridiculously garbles my meaning!

"I had stressed if they have to denounce me then please denounce me -- no problem."

The Dalai Lama.

The Panchen Lama: "I've been to many places in the past decade and witnessed the ample freedom enjoyed by individuals and religious organisations alike. Living Budhhas like myself are able to perform religious rituals under the wing of the Chinese constitution and other laws."

If you like the Audible Althouse theme music.

If you like the theme music on my podcasts, you might want to stream these two songs by Lucas Cates. Brit Rice, who worked on the podcast theme with my son John, plays the drums and percussion.

Happy New Year... Virtuous New Year!

The NYT has two op-eds today on happiness, which will be pushed in our faces perhaps a bit too much this weekend. Psychprof Timothy Wilson says thinking about your happiness is counterproductive:

Numerous social psychological studies have confirmed Aristotle's observation that "We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage." If we are dissatisfied with some aspect of our lives, one of the best approaches is to act more like the person we want to be, rather than sitting around analyzing ourselves.

History prof Darrin M. McMahon has a similiar message:

"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so," [John Stuart] Mill concluded after recovering from a serious bout of depression. Rather than resign himself to gloom, however, Mill vowed instead to look for happiness in another way.

"Those only are happy," he came to believe, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, that message is worth heeding.

It's true we say "Happy New Year" and therefore seem to focus on happiness, but we also have the practice of making resolutions, so perhaps we have already incorporated the message that the route to happiness is simply to do the kinds of things that will make us better human beings. Maybe we just need to change the saying. Instead of "Happy New Year": "Virtuous New Year!"