"I whooped and applauded as Medea Benjamin... spoke eloquently of the trauma and horror inflicted by the invasion on the women and children of Iraq."

Whooping and applause is the right reaction to stories of trauma and horror? Well, yeah, if you're Camille Paglia. She was having what she calls her "peak Web moment of recent weeks," watching some video of a Code Pink encounter with Hillary Clinton that took place 2003.

Here's the video. You can see women in pink, swaying and singing about peace. Hillary Clinton arrives and says: "You guys look like a big bunch of pink tulips." Wearing turquoise herself, Hillary stands through a mini-lecture from a woman wearing a pink tunic with a scrawled message that includes the huge, misspelled "Hilary." Hillary graciously hears out the woman and then articulates her reasons for voting for the Iraq war. There's more lecturing from a woman in the group, and Hillary tries to appease them with some criticism of President Bush and then deftly disaggregates herself from the meeting.

Paglia: "There's a priceless moment when a protester strips off her pink slip and hands it to Hillary (who had just voted for the war resolution the prior October) as a symbol of her flunking this ethical test. Hillary, who has problems when life departs from script, at first takes the gift, then yanks her hand back and loses her temper. The hapless slip is seized by a female flunky and abducted. It's a classic!"

I don't see Hillary losing her temper. She was right to subtly shrink from a photo op intended to make her look bad. It's not a "gift." It's a visual pun, and she's right not to look grateful for an insult.

And let's not forget that a slip is an item of underwear. When people come up and try to hand you underwear, it shows good instincts not to accept it.

"An Awkward Plea."

Don't forget to read my column in the NYT about Justice Kennedy wrangling with the Senate Judiciary Committee. My conclusion:

Low judicial pay should trouble us not because the judges will somehow lack “excellence.” It should trouble us because the law will be articulated by ideologues and recluses.

This is the first of five columns, so look for me on Saturdays and Tuesdays.

What's the difference between living in a trailer...

... and this?

One answer: People in a trailer don't say: "It feels acutely more sheltering to be in a tiny house rather than a big one... Looking out at the vastness of the environment heightens your sense of containment.”

"You can do legal scholarship as performance art, like Ann."

Jack Balkin said that at the conference, making an impressive play for a spot in the banner... and winning it! He was talking about the different ways of doing law blogs:

"You can do legal scholarship as performance art, like Ann. I sometimes regard what she does as a kind of art. She's performing in a certain way. It's aesthetic and there's a certain high style to it."

(Here's Jack's blog.)

Liberals ideate furiously over the black-and-white McCain website.

John McCain has an aesthetically pleasing website, which is distinguished by the very low color level. Instead of the usual florid blue and red, it uses elegant, crisp black, white, and gray. Perhaps that calls to mind some beautifully photographed black and white movie. Bring on the liberal commentators, and what movie do they think of? Of course, it's "Triumph of the Will," which, admittedly, is a film known for its crisp black and white photography (to go along with its Nazi propaganda).

Here's Atrios:

Imperial Stormtrooper Chic

And here's Ezra Klein:

But to get the full flavor of the terrifyingly martial undercurrent, watch the video "stand up," which is currently the default clip on the front page. It looks like an over-the-top parody of fascist campaign propaganda from a movie, and sounds like Triumph of the Will. It's also worth noting that in an effort to shore up his conservative credentials in a particularly pandering and ghoulish way, the next video is simply called "Reagan Tribute," and the weird shoehorning of McCain's time as a POW into his admiration for Reagan really has to be seen to be believed. I don't know how many cults of personality one web site can foster, but props to the McCain team for trying to find out.

What bugs me the most about their reaction is not the usual conservatives-are-Nazis business, it's the thoughtless tainting of the aesthetic of black-and-white design, this eagerness to score political points, with no feeling for art.

Klein does have a point about the film clip. The music is over-the-top. Visually, I think the film -- Errol Morris? -- and the website are excellent, but the music is off-putting. It announces the intent to manipulate you emotionally. That makes it a less effective effort at manipulation, though. I don't think Leni Riefenstahl would have done something so crude.

ADDED: I've amused Kevin Drum.

NYC morning.

Yesterday was the "Writing About the Law" conference and the first deadline for the NYT column, and now, it's Saturday in New York. Time for a little blogging. I've got my tiny tray from room service, a small carafe of coffee and an orange juice, for which I signed the bill for $18 without joy or regret. I want to be in my room, I need coffee, and that's what it costs.

I'll do some NY things today, and at 5 I'm doing the meet-up with readers of this blog. (Email me if you want to be included.) I still have some notes from the conference which I'm going to use in a few posts. You'll have to wait! (Unbloggy, I know.)

I'll do a pretty substantial post on the lunch talk from John Jay Osborn (the author of "The Paper Chase"). 

For now -- because I want to get to the morning news -- let me post some photos from the dinner the night before the conference. We were in a cool basement room at the City Hall Restaurant... honoring Jethro K. Lieberman's book "The Litigious Society":

   

At my table, the glamorous and charming Nadine Strossen (of ACLU fame):

 

Also at the table, two very nice New York Law School students, John Indeck (left) and George Esposito (right):

I expect big things of these guys.

Jeremy overhears something contextless...

... hilarious ... and scary. Now, I'm thinking of things I feel I would never have done if I'd overheard that myself years ago.

A nice diagram.

It represents exactly why I chafed at a "billable hours" job... not to mention a 9 to 5 job.

More discussion (from Bradley Wright) here.

I'm a guest columnist at the NYT this month.

The first column is up. It's about Justice Kennedy's confrontation with the Senate Judiciary Committee over judicial pay and cameras in the Supreme Court. You'll need TimeSelect to read it here. Or you can go out and buy the paper.

At the "Writing About the Law" conference.

I'm watching the second panel at the conference now. My panel -- about law review writing -- is over, but you can read about it over here on Larry Solum's blog. The second panel are all people who write about law for the popular reader: Dahlia Lithwick (of Slate), Adam Cohen (NYT), Jamie Heller (WSJ), and Richard Sweren ("Law and Order").

Here's a picture of me -- arranged randomly -- with Dahlia Lithwick:



I think that's Jim Lindgren's thumb. Here is the possibly dangerous and unlawful Lindgren:



And David Lat is here too. Here he is explaining something to conference organizer Cameron Stracher:



Here's David's description of my panel. Hey, he gives me a quote for the banner! And here he is on the second panel.

And here's some idle chatter before the panel starts:

Althouse coffeehouse.

Keep the conversation going without me for a while.

The World Trade Center site at dawn.

This is the view from my hotel room. I'm off to a conference at New York Law School. Perhaps I can blog from there later, but my panel is up at 9:15, so it won't be for a while.

Marcotte blames sexism for her troubles.

Amanda Marcotte talks about why she had to leave the Edwards campaign. Summary: sexism!

What I ... failed to understand was how much McEwan and I would stick out. I was aware that I didn't exactly fit the image people have of bloggers who join campaigns -- the stereotype being 30-something nerdy young white men who wear khakis and obsess over crafting their Act Blue lists. I wasn't aware that not fitting the image would attract so much negative attention. In fact, I mostly saw this all as a baby step in the direction of diversity, since McEwan and I differed from the stereotype mostly by being female and by being outspoken feminists....

When you've got a mark that you're aiming to humiliate publicly, it helps if she's young and female and doesn't know her place....

One question that's hard to avoid is how much of the venom had to do with the fact that McEwan and I were young women entering into a field (Internet communications) that's viewed as almost monolithically masculine. From my vantage point, it appeared that sexism was one of the primary motivating energies behind the campaign....

Regardless of its motive, the result of the smear campaign was to send a loud, clear signal to young feminist women. It tells them that campaigning for Democratic candidates, and particularly doing so in positions that would help the candidate connect with young feminist communities like the one that thrives in the blogosphere, is a scary, risky prospect.

I think Marcotte goes way too far blaming sexism for her troubles, but there is still some truth to it. I've seen plenty of attacks on me that have the odor of sexism. I think there is a sense out there that the blogosphere belongs to the guys and the women are interlopers. Rationally, most guys will say that's not true, but I think they still have that prejudice, that instinctive reaction: Who does she think she is? Who let her in here? And I readily admit that some of what I think is my own imagination, but I've read enough things about me to believe it.

But the blogosphere is a rough place, and people use whatever tools they can grab to make their arguments and sex is a particularly useful rhetorical device. Marcotte uses it, I use it, and so do a lot of guys. It's one way to write in the blogosphere, and it's often overdone. Sometimes there really is sexism, and when you see it, it's one more thing you can write about. But if you don't write about it well -- if you overdo it, as Marcotte does here -- you're just setting up another wave of attacks.

ADDED: Dr. Helen doesn't really agree with me, but she makes points that I concede are excellent:

Sexism is what got Marcotte hired in the first place -- she and her co-blogger were hired because they were women, and Edwards as well as the bloggers mistakenly believed that because they were women, they could get away with anything. No self-respecting politician would have hired a man who talked and acted like a deranged teen who spouted off at the mouth as if he were a sexually abused borderline using the internet as a weapon against all that angered him....

As for the notion that the blogosphere is full of sexism and men just don't realize it, I think the Professor should take a real look at who some of these sexist comments are made by. I, for one, have noticed that as many sexist and nasty comments on my blog are written by females as by males....

My experience is of blogs written by men who seem to have a regular practice of selecting posts of mine to react to -- usually with almost no substance, but just rank name calling, as if they thought they could chase me out of the blogosphere by making it an intolerably rough place. I do get negative things from women, but much of this is sexist too -- in that special sexist way where women who like to call themselves feminist feel complete outrage toward women who don't tow the line and support the Democratic Party across the board. These women become most vicious when you point out feminist values that run counter to Democratic Party interests.

Anyway, Dr. Helen seems to think I'm condemning a lot more people than I am. I'm not saying everyone is sexist or all men are sexist, just that I think there's a lot of sexism on the web and I've experienced a lot of it personally. I guess, once again, I'm taking the middle position on this. Marcotte sees too much sexism, Dr. Helen too little, and I'm seeing the right amount.

CORRECTION: That's toe the line, not tow the line. It's about standing in the right spot, not pulling anything.

Gesticulating and menacing -- and getting the double entendre -- in the Supreme Court in 1824.

Putting in time in the historical archive, reading the correspondence of Supreme Court Justice Thomas Ruffin, Eric Muller ran across a letter written to the Justice in 1824 by former state attorney general named Henry Seawell, describing the oral argument in the great case of Gibbons v. Ogden:

"The council in argument begin so low, as scarcely to be heard," Seawell writes, "and gradually swell until they fairly rave; then they gently subside into a soft whisper. Their gesticulation is menacing, both to the Court and the bystanders, and an equal portion of all they say, is distributed to every part of the hall."

As Muller notes, this is not the way the lawyers do oral argument today. Hammy oratory is no longer at all acceptable.

People were different in the past, and we may forget that. But people were also the same, even in some ways where we've been assuming they were different.

Reading Gibbons v. Ogden today, we tend to titter when we get to the line "Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse."

Personally, when I teach Gibbons, I never read that line out loud. It sounds too ridiculous, and it's pointlessly distracting. Only once in 20 years has a student introduced the word into the discussion. We're sort of being polite, giving John Marshall credit for using a word that obviously couldn't have conveyed sexual meaning at the time.

But check out Seawell's letter:

"According to a definition given to the word 'Commerce' by the Atto. Genl. that it means 'intercourse,' I shall soon expect to learn, that our fornication laws are unconstitutional: for the favorite doctrine now is, that all the powers which Congress possesses are exclusive – and consequently the sole power of acting upon that subject is transferred to them."

He got the double entendre and thought it was cool to joke around about it in a letter to his pal the Supreme Court Justice in 1824.

We forget that people in the past were always talking about sex.

Airborne.

Leaving Wisconsin:



Arriving in Chicago:



Now, I'm waiting in the airport... with WiFi. It's not so bad. I paid extra for a nonstop flight, but it got cancelled. Snow in NYC. My connecting flight is delayed an hour, but I found an electrical outlet, and the WiFi here is only $6.95. Lunch is a Starbucks venti latte, with lots of vanilla sugar.

ADDED: I'm blogging from inside the plane. Nothing to say though. It's crowded.

AND: I'm in NYC. LaGuardia airport was insanely crowded. I made it to my 7 pm dinner and am now ensconced in my hotel with a spectacular view, but it's a view that inclines one toward sober thoughts. We overlook the World Trade Center.

Rudy's running... and talking about abortion.

On "Larry King":

[H]e declined to say whether it would bother him if the Supreme Court were to overturn the landmark decision Roe v. Wade.

“I don’t think it would hurt me or help me,” said Mr. Giuliani, who has long said he favored keeping abortion legal. “It would be a matter of states making decisions.”

He has said lately that he would appoint “strict constructionists” to the bench, a phrase taken by many conservatives — and, yesterday, by Mr. King — to mean judges who would not support the Roe decision.

“I don’t know that,” he said. “You don’t know that.”

When Mr. King asked him to define what a strict constructionist is, Mr. Giuliani said, “There are a lot of ways to explain that,” and did not elaborate.

Can Rudy walk this tightrope? I think he can. With the level of legal understanding that Giuliani obviously has, it's a very thick, stabilized tightrope. You pick great judges who follow a strong interpretive methodology, and they take their proper constitutional position in an independent branch dedicated to law. How utterly solid and responsible. If you want more than that, you're only showing that you don't understand the principles of law. Rudy can explain it again and make it even clearer that the one doing the explaining deserves to hold the power to appoint the judges. It's a very thick, stabilized tightrope.