Ronald Reagan!

"This Supreme Court is quite clearly the enemy of progressivism.... What is to be done?"

Writes Reed Hundt at TPM Café.

What is to be done? ... there's a phrase.

Hundt goes on:

Congress can launch legislative remedies against much, although not all, of what this Court does. It also can expand access to courts, use the Senate confirmation process to challenge anti-progressive nominations, couple judicial salaries with retirement so as to encourage a new and young generation of law professors to go to the bench.

Mostly, Congress can rise to the challenge posed by this Supreme Court to the American Dream. In an age of rising inequality and irresponsible governance, it is critical that Congress not tolerate the Court's roadblocks to progress.

What got into him? Apparently, he's exercised over the voter ID case, which was argued in the Supreme Court this week. Predictions are that the Court won't stop Indiana from requiring a photo ID. (Yes, I know it's a dispute between two political parties, but Indiana made its choice, and it's not unconstitutional.)

Meanwhile, over on Andrew Sullivan's blog, we see a "Dissent of the Day" from a reader who won't vote for Obama because Obama voted against the confirmation of John Roberts, who was "clearly an outstanding candidate, perhaps one of the best ever nominated."

This makes me look back to what I said at the time of the confirmation:

As to those 22 Democrats who voted no, they have openly embraced an ideological view of the Court from which they can never credibly step back. For them, appointing Supreme Court Justices is a processes of trying to lock outcomes in place, and we shouldn't believe them if in the future they try to say otherwise.

[In my comments persona] Roberts is ... stunningly, brilliantly qualified. You can't vote against what he is without permanently branding yourself an ideologue who does not respect judicial independence. I'm disgusted with all 22 of those characters. They have abused their constitutional power, and I won't forget it when they run for President.

ADDED: Here's a letter the NYT published about the case (from one Mark Kraemer):

That the court would even consider validating these new, onerous voter ID rules exposes the hypocrisy of the Supreme Court today (whatever happened to “judicial restraint”?). It also illustrates that Republican partisanship has infested our legal system at its highest levels. Our nation must act in the next election to fight this corruption of our judiciary.

Whatever happened to judicial restraint?! (And I know why you put it in quotes. You think it's a smokescreen for conservative decisions.) Judicial restraint is about leaving the results of the political process in place, which is exactly what would happen if the Court declined to strike down the state law. So where's the hypocrisy? Corruption? What on earth are you talking about, and why does the NYT publish drivel like that?

"Portuguese opera stars, dressed as vacuum cleaners, singing in English..."

"... about conquering the world."

IN THE COMMENTS: Our house ghost, Sir Archy pays a visit:

Spectatum admissi risum teneatis?
—Hor.

To Professor Althouse.

Madam,

As the Ghost of a Person dead these 250 Years and more, you may imagine the Vagaries of Taste & Fashion to which I have been Witness. Nowhere is the World chang'd more sensibly than in the noble Art of Musick. In my Day, we thought harmonis'd Musick sweet; whereas the Present World seems continually bath'd in a Cacophony fitter to the Cataract at Niagra, than to sooth and ennoble the Soul of a rational Person.

So it is among the infinite Varities of Musick at the present Time, there are several that may be known as 'Contemporary Classical,' or 'Serious Musick,' or, to the Connoisseur, simply 'Modern Musick.' I will not play the Etymologist, and try Definitions of these upon your tiring Readers; suffice it to say that Musick of these Kinds will be fitt'd out with all manner of Squeaks, Honks, Knocks & Groans, not to mention every odd Thing that may be play'd upon any & all Instruments that Ingenuity may furnish.

I suppose, Madam, that I should be gratified that the Opera, irrational Entertainment as it may be, hath persisted from my Day to this. What are we suppos'd to make, then, of Operas, which were a bad enough Pastime in my Youth, now gone from the harmlessly Ridiculous to a Degree of Absurdity that only a Madman could compass? The Example you quote, Madam, seems to have been written by an Inmate of some Latter-Day Bedlam, but without, perhaps, the Common Sense of many a Lunatick I remember from that Institution. That an Opera may be written after the Manner of Modern Musick mentioned above, fill'd with Shrieks instead of Song, must be either a Sign of Madness, a Comick Pose, or, what is worse, that the Composer is pretending to a Humourous Irony.

The Portuguese are a lugubrious Nation. So it may be that, not having a form'd Taste for the refinements of Satire, they mistake what is Silly for Wit. That Monty Python have caus'd many Another to do so, may have lent Weight to the Pretense that, like the famous uncloath'd Chinese Emperor, Mr. Jones may be a Composer.


Before I close, Madam, I should like to quote Mr. Addison, writing in the Sixth Number of the Spectator, on Mynheer Handel's Opera of Rinaldo:

An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations,
as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent
Attention in the Audience. Common Sense however requires that there
should be nothing in the Scenes and Machines which may appear Childish
and Absurd. How would the Wits of King Charles's time have laughed to
have seen Nicolini exposed to a Tempest in Robes of Ermin, and sailing
in an open Boat upon a Sea of Paste-Board? What a Field of Raillery
would they have been let into, had they been entertain'd with painted
Dragons spitting Wild-fire, enchanted Chariots drawn by Flanders
Mares, and real Cascades in artificial Land-skips?

What a Field, indeed, had they my ghostly Fortune to be entertain'd by singing Kitchen Implements and dancing Auto-Mobiles.

Sensible of the Difficulties of Anyone who would play the Musick Critick,

I remain, Madam,

Your most humble & obt. Servant,

Sir Archy

Changing hotels in Cassis.

Nino saves the day for Nina in France.

And scroll down — she went to Warsaw in January too. Nina has some strange mania — I can't understand it — for going places way out of season. Is it the light, perhaps, for the photographs? I've noticed that bright sunlight is almost always terrible. Or is it something about the animal behavior? Look at that peacock on a park bench, and check out the ears on that red squirrel.

Carvings.

Who knows what the connection is between delicate stone animals and a bank on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn?

ADDED: Wouldn't it be cool if the carvings around the door to a bank were of dollar signs and money bags?

When I saw this I realized something I've discovered over and over.

That there are always details that you've never noticed, even on your most familiar walk. Here I was, walking down Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights, and I'd never really seen that before. So I pushed myself to do that thing I do sometimes — I need a word for it — requiring myself to find one thing after another that I've never noticed before....



To prove to myself that it is always possible to see something new...



... something beautiful.

57. Is there anything interesting about it?

When I tried to think of what was interesting about 57 — I happen to have just turned 57 — the first thing I thought was that it seems like a prime number, but as soon as you test — 3 works — you see that it's not. Consulting Wikipedia, I see that thinking about 57 as a prime number when it's not has a distinct history (PDF):

[Alexandre] Grothendieck had a mathematical style all his own.... [I]t seemed completely different and new. But it is hard to articulate what the difference was....

Although Grothendieck approached problems from a very general point of view, he did so not for generality’s sake but because he was able to use generality in a very fruitful way....

One striking characteristic of Grothendieck’s mode of thinking is that it seemed to rely so little on examples. This can be seen in the legend of the so-called “Grothendieck prime”. In a mathematical conversation, someone suggested toGrothendieck that they should consider a particular prime number. “You mean an actual number?” Grothendieck asked. The other person replied, yes, an actual prime number. Grothendieck suggested, “All right, take 57.”

But Grothendieck must have known that 57 is not prime, right? Absolutely not, said David Mumford of Brown University. “He doesn’t think concretely.” Consider by contrast the Indian mathematician Ramanujan, who was intimately familiar with properties of many numbers, some of them huge. That way of thinking represents a world antipodal to that of Grothendieck. “He really never worked on examples,” Mumford observed. “I only understand things through examples and then gradually make them more abstract. I don’t think it helped Grothendieck in the least to look at an example. He really got control of the situation by thinking of it in absolutely the most abstract possible way. It’s just very strange. That’s the way his mind worked."

Strange, how minds work. I think there is a similar divergence of minds in law and in politics, but it's so nicely clear in that contrast of the mathematical minds, Ramanujan and Grothendieck.

Lacking the subtle joy of living in a prime number year, I have the opportunity to see my life in segments, in this case, 3 segments of 19. (19 segments of 3 is not interesting.) The story of my life does, in fact, divide neatly into 19-year segments, not that I'm going to reveal why the first 2 19-year points look significant from the vantage point of the third. But will the fourth 19-year segment be different from the third? Will I have all 19 years? 19 beyond that? 19 beyond that? 19 beyond that? Surely, not 19 beyond that.

Sunrise with an X.

Is it a sign? It's the first thing I see when I open the blind this morning, my birthday.

ADDED: Ruth Anne started a little Althouse blog meme yesterday, and Simon contributes here.

AND: Blake continues the meme.

AND: Sean Wisnieski joins the meme.

Sunset with statue.

"Hillary Clinton proposed a $70 economic stimulus package today that would help...."

Whoooa! Just a damned minute! 70 dollars! Take pity on the taxpayer, you crazy tax-and-spend Democrat!

IN THE COMMENTS: I say:

Maybe it's like the butterfly effect. If you took $70 and spent it exactly the right way, it really would stimulate the economy. You just have to be really creative. Think about it. You have $70. How will you jump start the economy?

Blake says:

$70 to "jump-start" a trillion dollar economy.

If it were a little more, say, $7000, I could take some talking heads to a really nice lunch and change their minds.

But with $70 I'd open a cheap website (jumpstarttheeconomy.com) and encourage everyone to send me one dollar, which I would then spend on lottery tickets.

No...uh...I'd set up a pyramid. People like pyramid schemes, that's why MLMs and Social Security are so popular. I'd have plenty of money in no time, and so would the first two people under me who signed up.

An Edjamikated Redneck said:

70 bucks, huh?

I'd spend it at Walmart on books by conservative authors.

Walmart makes a few bucks and can hire another American, reducing both the unemployment figures AND reducing the roles of the uninsured by a family.

The conservative authors make a few bucks, and best of all, their books move a few points up the NYT bestseller list.

This is where I get the best bang for my $70; faced with multiple conservative writers in the top ten, the NYT has a conniption in the editorial pages and has to hire more editorialists, printers, distributors, buy more paper and presses, all stimulating the economy to well over my $70.

"We should have bombed it."

Said George Bush.

Are we seeing an ugly racial edge to the Clinton campaign?

Ben Smith writes at The Politico:

A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband, and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary....

The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they've drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians....

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., through a spokesman, [said:] "Following Barack Obama's victory in Iowa and historic voter turnout in New Hampshire, the cynics unfortunately have stepped up their efforts to decry his uplifting message of hope and fundamental change...."...

Thursday, a key player in black South Carolina politics, Rep. Jim Clyburn, told The New York Times he’d consider endorsing Obama in response to what he considered a lack of respect in the Clinton campaign’s approach to Obama.

“For him to go after Obama, using a ‘fairy tale,’ calling him as he did last week. It's an insult. And I will tell you, as an African-American, I find his tone and his words to be very depressing,” said Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who is neutral in this race, on CNN earlier this week.

Of course, Obama supporters have a motivation to characterize things as racial that are not, and the Clinton campaign must be frustrated that it's hard to attack Obama, who seems to be getting a free pass. But I don't doubt that the Clintons will use whatever works for them. Insinuations — and even slip-ups — don't work, however, when so many people are so ready to detect racial content. So that is a safeguard against the Clintons stirring up racial prejudice against Obama.

And yet... they won in New Hampshire, doing whatever it is they did.

UPDATE: Bill Clinton went on Sharpton's radio show today:

"There's nothing fairy tale about his campaign. It's real, it's strong, and he might win," Clinton told Sharpton...

"It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war," Clinton said during the rally. He suggested Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 Senate campaign.

"There's no difference in your voting record, and Hillary's, ever since," Clinton said. "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."....

Clinton told Sharpton the "fairy tale" remark was only intended to describe Obama's claim to have exercised better judgment about the war, and was not intended as a sign of "personal disrespect."

IN THE COMMENTS: Jeremy said:

The Clintons are nothing if not calculated. Could it be that they're trying to draw out the Sharpton/Jackson crowd? I think Barak has done really well without "Black Leadership's" prominent endorsement. That endorsement seems like it'd be a big turn off to a lot of white voters. Maybe the Clintons want the Sharpton/Jacksons to make some noise?

Freakin. I'm sounding too paranoid.

You can't demonstrate here. This is the Supreme Court.

81 people were arrested for demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court today.

Thanks.

Ruth Anne.

"(The brother and sister) met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction..."

Twins separated at birth meet and marry. The marriage is annulled when the truth is discovered, but it's interesting to see this assertion that that the attraction was "inevitable." Is there something about the close blood relationship that causes attraction, that we only deny because we've learned the incest taboo?

David Alton, a member of the House of Lords, revealed their situation as a way of highlighting perceived shortcomings in the Human Embryology and Tissues Bill which is now going through Britain's Parliament....

"I suspect that it will be a matter of litigation in the future if we do not make information of this kind available to children who have been donor-conceived."

Yes, there are an awful lot of half-siblings out there — the fruit of popular sperm donors — who are going to meet and feel this "inevitable" attraction.

IN THE COMMENTS: Diane writes:

If I discovered my husband was my brother, I'd find a way to hide it. I love my husband, and frankly, I'd be unwilling to give him up. Now, I wouldn't have biological children with him--I'm not that twisted.

Am I alone?

This suggests a follow-up question. If you knew that a happily married couple were — without knowing it — brother and sister, would you hide it from them?

"I think we're slipping toward a recession. A couple of people that I met on the street, they work in construction. They tell me it's slowed down."

Economic analysis, campaign style. That one's from Hillary Clinton, but it's not as if they don't all spout nonsense like that.