"Muslim woman who voted for Trump asks Georgetown to intervene over professor’s ‘hateful, vulgar’ messages."

The Washington Post reports on the harassment that has befallen a former Georgetown professor, Asra Q. Nomani, who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post — "I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump."

On Thursday, Nomani filed a formal complaint with the university, alleging discrimination and harassment after comments made by Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown’s School for Foreign Service....

“I’ve written you off as a human being,” Fair wrote in one message detailed in the complaint. “Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don’t you understand, you clueless dolt?” Fair wrote, later adding: “YOU publicly voted for a sex assailant.” She went on to say that Nomani “pimped herself out to all media outlets because she was a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.’ ”

Fair called Nomani’s appeal to her employer a “very dangerous trend.” She said Nomani, a former professor at Georgetown, has no standing at the university to complain.

“I am most concerned about the increasing appeal to employers to silence the criticism of citizens made in their private capacity as citizens,” [Fair] wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “Because most of us need our jobs, as few of us are financially independent, this is the most pernicious form of bullying of critics.”

Who's the bully here? The bully may be the one who's crying "bully."

“I am writing to share with you that, as a result of my column, Prof. Fair has directed hateful, vulgar and disrespectful messages to me, including the allegations that I am: a ‘fraud'; ‘fame-mongering clown show'; and a ‘bevkuf,’ or ‘idiot,’ in my native Urdu, who has ‘pimped herself out,’ ” Nomani wrote in a Dec. 2 email included in the complaint to Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies. “This last allegation amounts to ‘slut-shaming.’ ”...

“She has no right to decry criticism . . . even criticism that is in language that offends her fragile sensibilities,” Fair wrote in a Facebook post. “ ‘F–k off’ and ‘go to hell’ and ‘pimping yourself out’ for media coverage offended her . . . but not ‘I can grab their p—–s’ or the various misogynist, racist, xeonophobic [sic] race-baiting bulls–t espoused by her candidate of choice.” Fair concluded: “So again, Ms. Nomani, ‘F–K YOU. GO TO HELL.’ ”

Well, Fair has gone pretty far, but I side with her free speech rights and interests. Nomani had her say and Fair reacted to it, with vivid speech. Fair could be fancily articulate, but sometimes what you have to say really is "Fuck you. Go to hell." Form is part of the expression, as Justice Harlan fancily articulated in Cohen v. California (the "Fuck the Draft" case)(and, yes, I know Georgetown is a private institution):

To many, the immediate consequence of [freedom of speech] may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated. That is why "[w]holly neutral futilities . . . come under the protection of free speech as fully as do Keats' poems or Donne's sermons," Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 333 U. S. 528 (1948) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting), and why, "so long as the means are peaceful, the communication need not meet standards of acceptability," Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 402 U. S. 419 (1971).

And let me just focus on Nomani's charge that Fair committed "slut-shaming" when she said that Nomani "pimped [her]self out." That's Nomani engaging in some vivid, hostile speech, leveraging the liberal meme "slut-shaming." Is the metaphorical use of "pimped yourself out" really so bad? Writing for personal gain is often analogized to sexual prostitution, and we know that calling someone a whore for selling out his or her intellectual work product is not sexual. It's no more sexual than "fuck you" to express anger. It's no more literal than "Go to hell." It's just coarse, hyperbolic speech.

Maybe you remember back during the 2008 presidential primaries, when a reporter — MSNBC's David Shuster — got in trouble, for saying "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

After Shuster made the remark on "Tucker," Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines contacted him and said the reference was offensive. Shuster e-mailed back that he was referring to the fact that Chelsea Clinton is making calls to convention superdelegates but refusing to talk to the press. After Shuster continued to defend himself, Phil Griffin, MSNBC's top executive, called Reines yesterday to apologize.

[Clinton campaign communications director Howard] Wolfson noted that MSNBC's Chris Matthews expressed regret last month for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's political success can be traced to sympathy stemming from her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "At some point you have to question whether there is a pattern at this particular network," Wolfson said.

That was back when Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC and it was possible to argue that MSNBC had a plan to use sexism to thwart Hillary Clinton. Times change.

And here's where I realize I need to use my "civility bullshit" tag. Calls for civility are always bullshit. That's what I always say. It's particularly interesting when — as in the case of Nomani v. Fair — both sides are purveying civility bullshit.

The right remedy, as ever, is more speech. That goes for women too. Stop running to the paternal authority for help. Return fire as a free and fully empowered human being. You don't like her speech? Show me that your speech is better. Don't try to get the other person fired.

You know, Nomani purports to be for Trump. How about asking: What would Trump do? When hit with verbal criticism, he hits back with words. He's shown us how to verbally joust and not crumple. Take a cue.

Here's video of Shuster making the "pimped out" remark and then apologizing in case anybody took it literally:



ADDED: I'm just now looking back at what I wrote at the time about the Shuster remark. I like looking back 9 years and seeing how consistent I've been:

Really, how bad is it to say "pimped out"? Is it "nappy-headed hos" bad? Did anyone think Shuster was literally calling Chelsea a whore or even making any reference to her womanly virtue? "Pimped out" is a common colloquialism these days. According to the Urban Dictionary, which gives a good read on how young people use words, the connotations having to do with exaggerated fashion and style predominate.

Even if the clear associations with prostitution remain, we often make figurative references to prostitution in speech, and the cause of feminism is not served by requiring special limitations when we're talking about women. We ought to be able to call a female publicity hound a "media whore."

I've never watched "Tucker," the show Shuster was guest-hosting when he made the supposedly offensive remark, but if the conversation there is casual and slang is the norm, then saying "pimped out" about Chelsea should be taken in stride. Otherwise it looks as though NBC caved to the Clintons.

ADDED: Ugh! Here's Shuster groveling...

Ha! I've got exactly the same video embedded. 

"All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton"? Why? Because, sublimely privileged, she went to work for a hedge fund? And, generally, why should anyone be "proud of" someone else's children? Plus, Chelsea isn't a kid anymore! I think saying "All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton" is offensive. Please fire David Shuster.

AND: Out in the real world today, I had an encounter with the word "pimp." Plus, the dominant meaning of the word today — relating to style — may be the original meaning, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

pimp 1607, perhaps from M.Fr. pimper "to dress elegantly" (16c.), prp. of pimpant "alluring in dress, seductive." Weekley suggests M.Fr. pimpreneau, defined in Cotgrave (1611) as "a knave, rascall, varlet, scoundrell." The word also means "informer, stool pigeon" in Australia and New Zealand and in S.Africa, where by early 1960s it existed in Swahili form impimpsi. The verb is attested from 1636. Pimpmobile first recorded 1973.

MORE: The Moderate Voice has a big roundup of the commentary, which does not just break down along partisan lines. For example, Jane Hamsher said:

It may surprise everyone but I actually wasn't bothered by [what Shuster said]. The phrase is ubiquitous, I use it all the time and although it is a loaded term my initial impression was that in the wake of all the truly awful sexist stuff that's come down the pipeline from MSNBC over the course of this campaign, much of which I have personally railed about, this just didn't fall into that category. At first I thought it might be because I know Shuster and don't think he has the women's issues that many on MSNBC seem to have, and maybe that was affecting my assessment of the situation. But I wrote a post recently about Ben Affleck appearing at a press conference for the SEIU in Boston, and shortly after it went live someone involved in helping me put together the story sent me an email wondering what the hell I was thinking linking to a headline that said something on the order of "Boston Mayor Pimps For Healthcare Workers." I wasn't sure what they were upset about either at the time, but after a moment I realized that the term probably didn't strike others as being as inert as it did me so I changed the link. I understand that this situation is different, we're talking about a young woman and Hillary Clinton has been on the receiving end of a lot of really misogynistic and disrespectful shit from MSNBC and that on the heels of that, a comment which overtly compared her daughter to a prostitute probably did not sit too well. Still, if you asked me, I'd say that while I certainly understand that others might feel differently, for me this was a minor infraction.

And if anyone thinks my comment here is partisan, remember that I just defended Randi Rhodes (and I've been arguing the free speech side of nearly every dispute over the 4-year life of this blog).

4 years. It's 16 years now. I've been staunch!

50 years ago today: The Supreme Court announced its decision in Miranda v. Arizona.

That's how it looked on the front page of the NYT. Here's the Wikipedia article on Miranda:

Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former prosecutor, delivered the opinion of the Court, ruling that due to the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police (Warren cited several police training manuals which had not been provided in the arguments), no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect had been made aware of his rights and the suspect had then waived them:

The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.

In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote that "nothing in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or in the precedents squares with the heavy-handed and one-sided action that is so precipitously taken by the Court in the name of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities". Harlan closed his remarks by quoting former Justice Robert H. Jackson: "This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added."

But Miranda was a fine added story, and the temple held up pretty well.

(That other case on the NYT front page is important too: "Dissenters Fear Widening of Congressional Power." That was Katzenbach v. Morgan.)

How the Supreme Court decided the draft evasion case against Muhammad Ali.

It's hard to remember the details, and today's obituary's don't linger on this topic. For example, the NYT obituary just says: "As Ali’s draft-evasion case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, he returned to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, through the efforts of black politicians in Atlanta."

But Ali had been convicted in 1967 and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The Supreme Court case that ultimately kept him out of prison came in 1971. What did the Court decide? Here's the very unusual inside story, found in "The Brethren" by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong:

Apart from the complicated war and draft issues, there were racial overtones to the case.... Public sympathy was growing for Ali, but at the same time the Black Muslim faith had been portrayed as separatist, antiwhite and bizarre....

"When judges are not interpreting, they’re creating, and to understand judicial creation one must understand first of all the concept of 'priors.'"

Writes Judge Richard A. Posner in a WaPo column titled "The Supreme Court is a political court. Republicans’ actions are proof."

Priors are what we bring to a new question before we’ve had a chance to do research on it. They are attitudes, presuppositions derived from upbringing, from training, from personal and career experience, from religion and national origin and character and ideology and politics. They are unavoidable tools of decision-making in nontechnical fields, such as law, which is both nontechnical and analytically weak, in the sense that there are no settled principles for resolving the most difficult and consequential legal controversies. The tools I am calling priors can in principle and sometimes in practice be overridden by evidence. But often they are impervious to evidence, being deeply embedded in what we are, and that is plainly true of judging — not in every case but in cases that can’t be resolved by interpretation or some other decision-making tool that everyone understands and uses in an identical way. The priors that seem to exert the strongest influence on present-day Supreme Court justices are political ideology and attitudes toward religion....

I may seem to be criticizing the court by calling it politicized. That is not my intention....

IN THE COMMENTS: PB says: "Singling out one party over the other is idiotic, in spite of my respect for Posner."

I think Posner would admit that if the parties were reversed and the President were Republican and the Senate Democrat that the same strategies would be followed by the President and the Senate. His theory does dictate that, even though the WaPo headline writer makes this piece looks like a swipe at Republicans.

This reminds me of a passage I was just reading in the great book about the Supreme Court, "The Brethren.": "Brennan liked to tell his clerks that Harlan had been the 'only real judge' on the Court in the years of Brennan’s service, the only Justice who weighed the legal issues with sufficient dispassion."

ADDED: Posner makes much of judges' religion and elsewhere in WaPo today there's "What would a Hindu justice mean for the Supreme Court?" (by Julie Zauzmer). One of the buzzed about names is Sri Srinivasan, who is Hindu, so Zauzmer — speaking with much less depth about law than Posner — asks how Hinduism might affect "religiously charged issues like abortion and gay rights." She finds an expert on Hinduism who isn't thinking about Posner's notion of "priors" when he tells her:

“There is no such thing as a Hindu belief about, say, abortion or stem cell research right now which would influence any particular case. Any Hindu who occupies a judicial position will interpret the law as it is, rather than through his or her religious viewpoint... There is no Hindu baggage, as such, at all.”

By the way, if we're going to think about the religion that exists in the minds that will be making decisions for us, and I think it is something important to consider, we ought to remember that there are currently no Protestants on the Court. Yes, a Hindu would give us another "first," but in terms of representing the majority of Americans and the history and tradition of America, the complete absence of Protestants is dramatic. 

If Donald Trump isn't a fascist, how about calling him a Know-Nothing?

John Cassidy, in The New Yorker, tries "Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing." Various people are trying to wreck Trump by calling him a fascist, and Cassidy doesn't exactly want to absolve Trump of the charge...

Originally used as a collective noun for the murderous, revolutionary hypernationalist movements that emerged in Europe from the embers of the First World War, the word is often employed today as a catch-all term of abuse for right-wing racists and rabble-rousers. Trump certainly qualifies as one of the latter, but calling him a Fascist serves to obscure rather than illuminate what he is really about.

... he just wants to find something that works.

Part of the problem is a definitional one. Even historians who have spent their lives studying Fascism can’t agree on what the word means.... 

Once something becomes an insult — like "asshole" — it loses its particular meaning and at some point it doesn't even hurt. But if you could get all historical about what "fascist" means, you'd have to admit Trump isn't a fascist:

Is calling a pregnant woman a "host" insulting to the woman...

... or to the unborn child?

Seems like it's saying the unborn is a parasite, but an anti-abortion politician said it, so he's being lambasted for insulting the woman.

ADDED: It's worth noting that the politician, Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin, added in parentheses "some refer to them as mothers." Here's the whole sentence: "However, once a child does exist in your womb, I'm not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child's host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn't want it."

Let's not forget that abortion-rights advocates have also objected to the word "mother," most notably when Justice Kennedy used it in Gonzales v. Carhart (the 2007 case that upheld the federal ban on "partial birth" abortions). Here's what lawprof-blogger Jack Balkin wrote at the time:

In his discussion of informed choice and in his purple prose about the natural bonds of love between mothers and children — call it Kennedy's "mother and child reunion" speech — Justice Kennedy adopts some of the rhetoric of Operation Outcry — an anti-abortion group which has honed the new style of pro-life rhetoric. The basic goal of this new rhetoric is to undermine the notion that women exercise any kind of choice when they decide to have abortions. It seeks to turn the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement on its head. Women, the new rhetoric argues, don't really understand what they are doing when they decide to have abortions; as a result, they often regret having them later on....

[The idea] is that because of the kind of culture we live in, women who think they know what they are doing when they have abortions actually don't know. They only think they know at the time. Later on, they will come to regret it, and we can say that they weren't informed. And because we can't tell which women will come to regret the decision later on, the state needs to pass laws that discourage all women from having abortions.

That Operation Outcry rhetoric parallels rhetoric one often hears from left-liberals — not on abortions, but on economic matters. See "What's the Matter With Kansas?" And remember when "If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance" was exposed as a false promise and some Obamacare supporters got nuanced about the meaning of "like," so that it didn't mean what a person felt he liked, but what the government knew he really, deep down inside, liked.

I prefer the locutions that treat the woman as an autonomous individual with a fully human mind, capable of reflecting on the real or potential humanity of the contents of her womb. I think those who are anti-abortion should show respect for the woman's authority over her own body and concentrate on persuading her to love and protect the unborn entity.

But politicians like Martin wield power in legislatures, and as they say, to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you are a lawmaker, every problem looks like it needs a law. The bad part of Martin's statement, to my eye, is "I'm not going to assume a right...." I think legislators should have tremendous respect for the liberty of the people. They should assume a right to be free of constraints. Presume against restrictions. That should be your starting point. Then ask why your solution justifies the limitation.

AND: Here's what Justice Harlan wrote in Poe v. Ullman. That was in 1961, before Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the majority of the Supreme Court saw the right of privacy that became the basis for abortion rights. Harlan was the conservative on the Warren Court, so he is expressing the libertarian position that might be persuasive to some conservatives today:

The best that can be said [about due process] is that, through the course of this Court's decisions, it has represented the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society....

This "liberty" is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints....

When "the Government trespassorily inserted the information-gathering device" on a car, it was a search within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.

Says the Supreme Court, this morning, in United States v. Jones. Scalia writes the privacy-protecting opinion, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayor.

It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information....

The text of the Fourth Amendment reflects its close connection to property...

Consistent with this understanding, our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass, at least until the latter half of the 20th century....

Our later cases, of course, have deviated from that exclusively property-based approach. In Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967), we said that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” and found a violation in attachment of an eavesdropping device to a public telephone booth. Our later cases have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in that case, which said that a violation occurs when government officers violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy”....

Despite the deviation — which worked to protect people using public phones and so forth — the Court rejects the Government's argument that Jones had no "reasonable expectation of privacy" with respect to the underside of his Jeep and where the Jeep was when it was driving about on the public roads. The Katz test was about extending the scope of an individual's privacy, not cutting back on traditional property-based protections.

There's no dissent, but Alito writes a concurring opinion which is joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Alito characterizes the majority of using "18th-century tort law" to interpret the 4th Amendment and says the question should be analyzed in terms of reasonable expectations of privacy.

Judge Posner includes a photograph of Bob Marley in an opinion and sloughs off worries about copyright.

The case was about dreadlocks (and the prison officials who cut them off), and Posner said his use of the photo fit the "fair use" doctrine:

"It's not as if we're selling our opinions in competition with a photographer... Using the photo in a judicial opinion couldn't conceivably be hurting the copyright holder."

Posner did not give the photographer credit, though it's a commercial photographer who uses Getty Images to collect fees. But Posner just grabbed the photo from the internet. He says "With the Internet, it's extraordinarily easy to find photographs of anything," so there's a good chance he encountered the photograph on a website that didn't name the photographer.

Posner seems to think it's quite fun to toss photographs into judicial opinions. It reminds me of the way some judges like to quote song lyrics or lines from movies. Blogging, I always feel that it's more questionable to use an image that someone else created than it is to cut and paste a block of text, but why should that be? I quote blocks of text all the time, but I remember, when I started blogging, worrying quite a bit about whether it was acceptable to copy that much text, so I'm relieved to hear a judge take a broad view of fair use and set an example.

Here's an opinion where Posner includes a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand and a picture of (presumably) a lawyer with his head in the sand as he criticizes a lawyer who failed to cite a case that should have been cited. The lawyer filed a grievance against Posner for funning with him like that. The grievance was dismissed, and Posner offers the classic nonapology "I'm sorry he was upset by it."

There's more going on here than copyright. There's also the idea that judges are supposed to be neutral and sober. They wield power against real individuals, and it's a power that's supposed to come solely from law, not from any will of the judge's own. In that light, when the judge displays that he's enjoying the experience or playing to the crowd, entertaining the audience, we may fear that he's doing something wrong. This is why most judicial opinions are so godawful tedious, as the judges all sound alike and phrase everything in the dullest possible way. And there are no pictures!

This reminds me. We lawprofs have to make students read these texts, and we use casebooks that have edited the tediously verbose writings down, but the casebooks are still ponderous — in more ways that one. I'd like to take iBooks Author — an amusing new app — throw all the cases I assign into it. (All the judicial opinions are in the public domain, so there's no copyright issue at all.) Edit the cases down, summarize some things, and embed some pictures in a Posneresque way.

For example, take Griswold v. Connecticut (the old birth control case that flummoxed Mitt Romney in the debate the other day). There's a point in Justice Harlan's concurring opinion where he writes:

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stands, in my opinion, on its own bottom.

That's just begging for a photograph grabbed from the internet.

Should Althouse use iBooks Author to write a Posneresquely amusing Constitutional Law casebook?
	No. It would be undignified and unserious and thus not usable in a real law school class.
	Yes. Students (and other readers) will love it.
	No. It won't be that good. It might be annoying. And Althouse has better things to spend time on.
	Yes. I'd like to see Althouse's creative energy drained away in this idiotic project.
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

Posner is The Crack Emcee of judicial opinions?

Our favorite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, takes up arms in the War on Christmas.

"[T]he placement of a creche surrounded by a motley crew of humans and animals has no more Scriptural warrant than does 'The Life of Brian.'"

But the lack of "Scriptural warrant" for the modern American form of the Christmas celebration isn't where Hitchens is going with this piece. In fact, it's because Christmas is religious that he's opposed to the Christmas decorations in the public part of the White House. Why isn't it enough, he asks, that there are Christmas decorations on all sorts of private property?

It is not the business of the Chief Executive to take any part in this business, and he has already sworn an oath to put the Constitution first, last and above all. This oath is not general but specific, which means that any detail however trivial is important. May his daughters' stockings be well-stuffed, may a mythical Saint Nick from ancient mythology delight them, may visions of sugar-plums dance in their heads, and may they be little drummer girls for baby Jesus but please, not in the parts of the White House that belong to the world's first secular Republic.

Can you imagine what a fool Barack Obama would be if he took on the project of banishing Christmas decorations from the White House? He of all Presidents — because his Christianity has been questioned — needs to put on the usual display. Oh, we could credit him with bravery if he made this his issue, but his political power is at stake, and I don't want a Commander in Chief who throws away power to gesture at an ideal. And, ironically, it would be the sort of gesture that would stir up political opposition and tend to lead to bold gestures in the other direction if Obama is ousted in 2012. Better to stand on the middle ground and adopt an easygoing maintenance of American Christmas traditions in the White House.

But quite aside from that — assume some other President taking Hitchens's teachings to heart — what is the good of taking away the evergreens and lights that make the darkest part of winter feel especially warm and happy? Does the Constitution require sanitizing religion out of public spaces? It was quite recently — in the case about the stone 10 Commandments monument — that the sensible, practical Justice Breyer wrote:

Where the Establishment Clause is at issue, tests designed to measure “neutrality” alone are insufficient, both because it is sometimes difficult to determine when a legal rule is “neutral,” and because

“untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious.” [School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp.]

... [T[he relation between government and religion is one of separation, but not of mutual hostility and suspicion...

Justices Goldberg and Harlan concluded in Schempp that

“[t]he First Amendment does not prohibit practices which by any realistic measure create none of the dangers which it is designed to prevent and which do not so directly or substantially involve the state in religious exercise or in the favoring of religion as to have meaningful and practical impact.”

Peace, Christmastopher.

Harlan, entertained ... Souter, not so much. Two things I enjoyed reading in Nina Totenberg's NPR reports on the Blackmun Papers (available through SCOTUS here). The first one is Blackmun, in his oral history, describing the Justices and clerks viewing pornographic films to determine whether they were obscene:

I remember one time Justice Harlan was there, sitting with his law clerk up front. Of course, his eyesight was almost totally gone, and it was hard for him to see. I sat right behind him, and as the film moved on--and they were all alike // he'd lean over and say to his law clerk, "and what are they doing now?" and the law clerk would describe it and Justice Harlan would say, "You don't say, you don't say."

The second is a written message from Justice David Souter, explaining why he was declining to go to a speech Blackmun recommended:

"I know you get a kick out of these things, but you have to realize that God gave you an element of sociability, and I think he gave you the share otherwise reserved for me."