A blog by Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, it's a salon that takes on six or seven issues every day. Some are political, some are cultural, and some are just for fun. Great comments!Yeah, comments so great, she has to marry one of her commenters.
Blog admirers. Yes, Ann Althouse married on[e] of her frequent commentators, but…(Not married yet. Soon.)
Officially, more than 500 young men (they [are] almost all under 30) die in America each year from AEA related accidents. The real number is thought to be much higher given the unwillingness of some parents to disclose the graphic nature of their son's death. Apparently, some parents would prefer people to think their son was suicidal rather than sexually adventurous....I've long deplored that awful death cliché: "He died doing what he loved." But here, where it really applies, people are probably not going to say it.
Chances are that every guy they cut down with his fist around his dick thought he had devised a "safe" way to do this. And not all victims are dim bulbs whose deaths served the interests of progressive evolution. Some smart guys have been found with their thickened tongues lolling from their mouths, including (reputedly) Michael Hutchence, front-man for the rock group INXS, cult cartoonist Vaughn Bode and Stephan Milligan, a British Member of Parliament. Likewise not all deaths are the result of stupidity or unseen failures in the fail-safe mechanism. Suffocation and orgasm in combination can place an unbearable strain on the heart.
And I got a little grief from people for saying that there's no such thing as reverse racism, just call her a racist, so - and they're right. That ["wise Latina" remark] is a racist thing to say and it's bigoted. And she would bring, no question about it, racism and bigotry to the court, if she is confirmed.
But, Sean, I've been thinking about this, and there's something else going on with Sonia Sotomayor. We don't know what she thinks about Roe versus Wade. She hasn't said. Now we know that she's Catholic. We know that she's Puerto Rican - Hispanic Catholic. They tend to be devout.
She has no record. She hasn't said much about it. If, and I'm speaking for me personally, if I learned, if I could be assured, that she is actually a pro-life person and does think that Roe versus Wade is bad constitutional law, and if she would rule on the right side on the life issue, I might look past this racism and even deal with that, but that's something very, very important to me, and she could be stealth in that regard.
And I know that - well, there's no record. Normally most liberals, they love to tell you how pro-choice they are and abortion. She doesn't have any of that.
EnigmatiCore beat me to it: Althouse, what's up with that "women can feel good about our brains" thing? Care to qualify it?
[Obama expresses] admiration for and no reason to doubt the fine character of either man.Give more weight to his deeds than his reassuring words? The funny thing is: if the American people had done that, Obama would not now be in the position to appoint Supreme Court Justices.
But, ultimately, Obama explains on Sept. 22, 2005, a nominee's character alone is insufficient to earn his support because both men, he alleges without detailing the merits of specific cases, too often side with powerful interests over others, with large companies against individuals, with prosecutors over defense attorneys.
He says he's seeking a judge who wants to "even" the playing field and that in a private meeting Roberts agreed. But Obama states that Roberts' words are unconvincing and contradicted by his decisions. "Ultimately," Obama says, "we need [to] give more weight to his deeds than his reassuring words."
There was little conversation and even less romance. She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful.Ugh. You can squeeze material like that — or just as bad in some different way — out of the raw material of almost any marriage.
I TWEETED TWEETING. Twitter gets to your brain. In think it’s made me more Instapundit-y this go-round subbing for Glenn. Lord knows how he got so concise and spontaneous, pre-Twitter, but we’re all catching up.Copied here to get things started and so you can comment.
Posted at 6:46 am by Ann Althouse
“MUSICALLY, IKE WAS BY FAR THE GREATER OF THE TURNERS.” Tweeted, by Phil Spector. Response #1: Nervy to say that — given Tina’s story of domestic abuse — when you’re in prison for shooting a woman to death. Response #2: If I knew I’d get a laptop and WiFi in prison, my calculation about whether to commit crimes would change radically.
Posted at 6:45 am by Ann Althouse
One function of the second amendment is to prevent the national government from interfering with state militias. It does this by creating individual rights, Heller holds, but those rights may take a different shape when asserted against a state than against the national government.The panel adheres to Supreme Court precedent, but it also lays out the federalism argument in clear bold terms for future consumption by the Supreme Court.
Suppose Wisconsin were to decide that private ownership of long guns, but not handguns, would best serve the public interest in an effective militia; it is not clear that such a decision would be antithetical to a decision made in 1868. (The fourteenth amendment was ratified in 1868, making that rather than 1793 the important year for determining what rules must be applied to the states.) Suppose a state were to decide that people cornered in their homes must surrender rather than fight back—in other words, that burglars should be deterred by the criminal law rather than self help. That decision would imply that no one is entitled to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, because self-defense would itself be a crime, and Heller concluded that the second amendment protects only the interests of law-abiding citizens....
Our hypothetical is not as farfetched as it sounds. Self-defense is a common-law gloss on criminal statutes, a defense that many states have modified by requiring people to retreat when possible, and to use non-lethal force when retreat is not possible. Wayne R. LaFave, 2 Substantive Criminal Law §10.4 (2d ed. 2003). An obligation to avoid lethal force in self-defense might imply an obligation to use pepper spray rather than handguns. A modification of the self-defense defense may or may not be in the best interest of public safety—whether guns deter or facilitate crime is an empirical question, compare John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime (2d ed. 2000), with Paul H. Rubin & Hashem Dzehbakhsh, The effect of concealed handgun laws on crime, 23 International Rev. L. & Econ. 199 (2003), and Mark Duggan, More Guns, More Crime, 109 J. Pol. Econ. 1086 (2001)—but it is difficult to argue that legislative evaluation of which weapons are appropriate for use in self-defense has been out of the people’s hands since 1868. The way to evaluate the relation between guns and crime is in scholarly journals and the political process, rather than invocation of ambiguous texts that long precede the contemporary debate....
Chicago and Oak Park are poorly placed to make these arguments. After all, Illinois has not abolished self-defense and has not expressed a preference for long guns over handguns. But the municipalities can, and do, stress another of the themes in the debate over incorporation of the Bill of Rights: That the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule. See New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”); Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 40–53 (1978) (Powell, J., dissenting) (arguing that only “fundamental” liberties Nos. 08-4241, 08-4243 & 08-4244 9 should be incorporated, and that even for incorporated amendments the state and federal rules may differ); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon. How arguments of this kind will affect proposals to “incorporate” the second amendment are for the Justices rather than a court of appeals.
Sotomayor was labeled “anti-gun” by Gun Owners of America for refusing to extend to the states the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision overturning a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. The group said a January ruling by a three-judge panel that included Sotomayor displayed “pure judicial arrogance” for declining to throw out a New York state weapons law.But Easterbrook and Posner — "two top conservatives on the federal bench" — are on the same side.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this year that states are bound by the Second Amendment’s protection for an individual’s right to bear arms -- in contrast to the three-judge panel in New York that included Sotomayor....And that's exactly what the 7th Circuit said.
Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggested it was the 9th Circuit approach that is “activist.”
“Judge Sotomayor’s position, and the apparent positions of Judges Posner and Easterbrook, is far more in the mainstream,” Tushnet said....
In a brief, unsigned opinion, [Sotomayor's 2d Circuit] panel said it lacked authority to overturn the ban because that is a matter for the Supreme Court. The high court has “the prerogative of overruling its own decisions,” the opinion said.
[Peter B.] Gray studied testosterone in saliva collected from 58 men (48 of them Harvard students) between the ages of 20 and 41. Half were married, and of those, 15 were married with children. He took four saliva samples from each man: two in the morning and two in the evening. The subjects also completed questionnaires about their demographic, marital, and parenting backgrounds. Among other things, the questionnaires asked how much time the men spent with their spouses (instead of hanging out with the guys) on their last day off from work, and measured the effort they expended caring for their children. Analysis showed that marriage, fatherhood, and longer periods spent with wives and children were all linked to lower testosterone levels. Fathers in particular had levels significantly lower than those of unmarried men. Researchers also observed that hormone levels in the morning samples were high and relatively even among the men; the differences appeared at night.This is all very interesting, but let me extract one very useful piece of advice: Marrieds should not make bed time their primary time for having sex. Quite aside from the fact that you're tired, if this study holds true, the man is likely to have lower testosterone.
[M]ental retardation for purposes of Atkins, and mental retardation as one mitigator to be weighed against aggravators, are discrete issues. Most grave among the Sixth Circuit’s misunderstandings, issue preclusion is a plea available to prevailing parties. The doctrine bars relitigation of determinations necessary to the ultimate outcome of a prior proceeding. The Ohio courts’ recognition of Bies’ mental state as a mitigating factor was hardly essential to the death sentence he received. On the contrary, the retardation evidence cut against the final judgment. Issue preclusion, in short, does not transform final judgment losers, in civil or criminal proceedings, into partially prevailing parties.Ouch.
... Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant...Surreal.
Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born....
“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently....
Mr. Deese’s role is unusual for someone who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries....
This characterization of Tiller fits exactly into ancient conservative, paranoid stories: a decadent, permissive and callous elite tolerates moral monstrosities that every common-sense citizen just knows to be awful. Conspiring against our folk wisdom, O'Reilly says, the sophisticates have shielded Tiller from the appropriate, legal consequences for his deeds. It's left to "judgment day" to give him what's coming.So now that Tiller has been murdered, does O'Reilly have blood on his hands?
This does not mean there is a cause and effect between O’Reilly’s rhetoric and Tiller’s murder...I think Joe is saying that O'Reilly has blood on his hands.... although Joe avoids using the "demonizing" rhetoric that in his calculation is what makes you responsible for the actions your words inspire. Perhaps he means to invoke the First Amendment idea that lets us punish speech that creates a "clear and present danger." "Vigorous, heated debate" is important and protected. But there is a line that can be crossed, and Joe says it's "demonization." And O'Reilly demonized Tiller. So, Joe, could you spell it out? You meant to say that O'Reilly is morally responsible for Tiller's death, right?
But... the over the top, demonizing rhetoric that has become the rage in 21st century America could have serious consequences....
Vigorous, heated discussion isn’t the same as demonization. And demonization has become the way to garner huge viewerships and readerships. But if issues are framed in terms of good versus evil some people could act.
O'Reilly demonized Tiller on 28 episodes of his show. I have no doubt his words wil be played endlessly on cable in some kind of hideous irony. This really could be the end to O'Reilly's dangerous, demonizing game.What exactly does Sullivan mean? That O'Reilly should be shut down? That people should hold him responsible for murder and — what? — stop watching? I doubt if he means that O'Reilly will see the light and, on his own, decide to tone his routine down.
[G]ive credit to George Tiller for being a courageous man and making an important contribution to human welfare. Abortion is a crucially important social asset as well as a legal right in American society. The fact that women are not forced to carry pregnancies to term has helped open up tremendous new vistas of freedom for American women and has been an incalculable benefit to our society as a result.... Given that the material in a pregnant woman's uterus is a "fetus," a woman has as much right to control and/or dispose of that material as she has a right to contraception, regulating her periods, or anything else to do with gynecological health. As a result, there should be more abortions in this country rather than less....Caric's argument would be more effective without the extreme rhetoric about "that material" and Jesus. But, I assume, like O'Reilly he wants us to pay attention to him. And I just have.
George Tiller deserves a lot of credit for performing abortions at all.... But he especially deserves credit for continuing to perform abortions and late-term abortions after the first armed attack on him.... But he kept providing abortion services to women in Kansas despite the vigilante death sentence hanging over his head. It's significant that Tiller died while attending a Christian church, the Reformation Lutheran Church of Wichita, Kansas. Not unlike Jesus, he died for the benefit of others.
[I]n an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims.So the reverse-discrimination claim is one of the very few cases where she stood out from the other judges. It's notable that that was a case that turned on free speech rights — and the speech in question was speech Sotomayor presumably disgrees with vehemently:
Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002), involv[ed] an employee of the New York City Police Department who was terminated from his desk job because, when he received mailings requesting that he make charitable contributions, he responded by mailing back racist and bigoted materials. On appeal, the panel majority held that the NYPD could terminate Pappas for his behavior without violating his First Amendment right to free speech. Sotomayor dissented from the majority’s decision to award summary judgment to the police department. She acknowledged that the speech was “patently offensive, hateful, and insulting,” but cautioned the majority against “gloss[ing] over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives just because it is confronted with speech is does not like.” In her view, Supreme Court precedent required the court to consider not only the NYPD’s mission and community relations but also that Pappas was neither a policymaker nor a cop on the beat. Moreover, Pappas’s speech was anonymous, “occur[ring] away from the office on [his] own time.” She expressed sympathy for the NYPD’s “concerns about race relations in the community,” which she described as “especially poignant”....But she upheld the rights of the employee as grounded solidly in the constitutional law of free speech. So let's think clearly about the real working of this "empathy" Obama has touted. Stop jumping ahead to the assumption that Sotomayor stretches the law to decide cases in favor of people who tug her heart strings and look at the record.
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