"I have the feeling [my baby is] not very fond of me..."

This is a very touching Ask MetaFilter.

I don't think this is a normal way for me to feel, but on the other hand I have no idea what I should do about it. I don't feel depressed - more just disapointed in myself, and jealous of the relationship other people seem to be able to build with her. Are some people just not cut out to be mothers? I love my husband, and my parents, and many friends, and my child is, by all accounts, beautiful, but I don't ever seem to have "bonded" with her - I don't find any trace of the feelings I have for them when I look at her. I keep hoping that perhaps when she's hold enough to hug me, or even respond in some way to anything I do that things will change, but I don't hold out much hope.

Now that we have the choice whether to have babies, we rely so much on over-the-top descriptions of baby love. An honest person living a normal life quite sensibly wonders what's wrong with me?

The same is true of love, isn't it? We aren't assigned a husband or wife and required to deal with it. So when we go ahead and pair up, we're disappointed that it's not the big thrill it was promoted as. We think everyone else is in ecstasy, and we're puzzled by the flatness of our own lives.

It's hard to get the truth out, that with freedom comes ordinariness.

"Hey, by turning yourselves into men, don’t you realize you’re going over to the other side?"

Is sex reassignment treatment an insult to homosexuals? It does seem to make a very strong statement that homosexuality is unacceptable. But why are lesbians rebelling about this when gay men are not?

“There is the sense that a transman is ‘betraying the team,’ joining the oppressor class and that sort of thing,” said Ken Zucker, a clinical psychologist and a specialist in gender research at the University of Toronto.

So a gay man identifying with women is completely different from a lesbian identifying with men? There is, for a woman, the idea that various privileges would come along with being perceived as a man.

Ben A. Barres, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford and a transgendered man, recently provided fodder for that view in an article in Nature and an interview with The New York Times. “It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants,” he told The Times.

That makes your motives impure, then? But surely the man attracted to men who wants to be a woman is after some advantages too, if of a different kind.

The shocking decision in ACLU v. NSA.

I guess I should say I gagged on it, to keep up today's neck/throat theme. But really...

I'm truly shocked. It's like the feeling you have when you're grading blue books and you realize this one's going to have to get an F.

I finally had the time today to read the whole opinion in ACLU v. NSA... I mean, that was the whole opinion, right? I kept shuffling the pages around and looking under the table to see if there were some pages I missed...

What the hell? Was there no law clerk who had enough nerve to say, Judge, it can't go out like this? How do you ever get to the level of arrogance that keeps you from seeing when an opinion is this patently deficient? Where do you acquire the vaulting imagination that allows you think an opinion in this form will even help the side you're rushing to hand a victory to? I can see slipping into abject carelessness in a low profile case, but this is such a conspicuous case. I simply cannot fathom how a judge with any sense at all, with any assistance from law clerks who were not cowed into ridiculous submission, would file a case in this form.

I'm not talking about the normal way judges write result-oriented decisions, which is to layer in the scholarly and neutral-looking verbiage in the hope that most people will swallow it and the critics will seems like sore losers. This opinion -- beginning midway through the text -- does not even look like a rough draft. It seems as if the judge ran out of time and handed in something that was less than an outline. Much less.

The first half of the text is written in a creditable style. Most of this is the discussion of the state secrets doctrine, which concludes with a dismissal of the plaintiffs' claim challenging the data mining program. We then begin the material that leads to the judge's conclusion that the warrantless surveillance program -- known as TSP -- should be enjoined. The first few pages of this are written competently, as the judge finds that the plaintiffs are suing because they have a "distinct and palpable injury" and thus satisfy the first of the three constitutional requirements for standing to sue. Cases are cited and discussed appropriately. One could argue with the analysis, but it is what one expects from a decently written opinion.

At this point, with many issues left to discuss -- including the rest of the standing doctrine and all of the questions of statutory and constitutional law relating to TSP -- the writing falls headlong off a cliff. I have never seen anything like this. There are many sections left to the opinion, but each contains little more than preliminary verbiage -- quotes from old cases and zingers about how the Framers opposed King George III -- with tagged on conclusions about how "obviously" the Fourth Amendment/First Amendment/Separation of Powers is violated. These read like place-keeper sentences that were slated to be replaced by real analysis.

The judge grants a permanent injunction on the assertion that the requirements "have undisputedly been met." Undisputedly? No one disputed that the requirements were met? I guess that was supposed to be "indisputably." The judge drops a footnote listing the requirements for an injunction:

(1) that [the plaintiff] has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that, considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction.

The text of the opinion offers three sentences of analysis of these requirements:

The irreparable injury necessary to warrant injunctive relief is clear, as the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Plaintiffs are violated by the TSP. See Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1116, 14 L. Ed. 2d 22 (1965). The irreparable injury conversely sustained by Defendants under this injunction may be rectified by compliance with our Constitution and/or statutory law, as amended if necessary. Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution.

That's not analysis. That's a petulant refusal to take the task of judging seriously. Where is the discussion of hardship and public interest? The judge is so hot to hold the President to what she sees as his constitutional obligations. You'd think she'd take a little more care to give the appearance of adhering to hers.

“I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman."

Liesl Schillinger writes:

In her latest essay collection, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,” the roman-à-clef author, playwright, screenwriter and film director Nora Ephron offers rearview reflections on her life as a talker and writer, as well as a flinching but honest look at the image she lately confronts in the mirror....

[L]ately Ephron has learned that there is one betrayer upon whom no woman (with the possible exception of Cher) can exact vengeance or impose a fairy-tale finish: the body, with its dazzling flurry of early gifts, and its misleading air of permanence. Just as you begin to count on it, off it goes, hooking up with its smirking henchman, the aging process. She does not hide her pique at this 11th-hour deserter. “Why do people write books that say it’s better to be older than to be younger?” she asks. Ruefully, she catalogs the body’s defections, and the desperate measures she has taken in her attempts to woo it back — creams, waxes, injections, dental work, dyes, threading, bleaches: “Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death,” she writes. But she doesn’t wallow. Instead, she does what she has always done — she buries the bad news under a barrage of shareable anecdotes, humorous self-deprecation and womanly bravado.

1. Has Liesl looked at Cher recently?

2. Ephron's book sounds like all the stray articles in fashion magazines I have ever read. (And I once had a job that consisted of reading magazines, including all the women's and fashion magazines, circa 1975.)

3. "I Feel Bad About My Neck" really is a great title for a book trying to get the attention of the aging woman crowd. But I can't picture myself standing in line and buying it at a bookstore. Everyone would look at my neck.

Oh yes, it's another theme day here on Althouse.

And we have a mascot. It's Jeffrey Sebelia of "Project Runway," otherwise known as the guy with a tattoo on his neck.



We were just talking about him yesterday. My two questions -- sure to get a conversation started at your house -- try it! -- were: 1. Why would you get a tattoo on your neck if you had a incredibly wide neck? and 2. Assuming you've decided to get a tattoo on your neck -- and I mean straight across the front of your neck -- and assuming it had to be a bunch of words, what would you get?

My answer on question 1 is: Maybe people kept bugging him saying things like: Man, you have a freakishly wide neck. Could you wear a turtleneck or something so I don't have to look at that thing? It's scaring me. Or maybe even: It's so wide, it's like a billboard, you could make a fortune selling ads on that thing. And he just snapped.

As for question 2: First, I have to imagine myself as the me that would get a tattoo on my neck, and I'm not so sure I'm in any position to do that. But no weaseling out of this. (Note: only one animal in the previous sentence.) Assuming I'm still myself, maybe Article III, Section 1 or a classic quote from Marbury. Do you think that would help the students pay attention?

More about Jeffrey, from the first link:

At age 16, Jeff left home to live in a garage with his punk band where he fell into a life of music, art and fast times, all supported by a mild criminal habit. It was, according to Jeff, “A lifestyle of freedom, rebellion and self-expression. Working for little money and ‘trade.’ ”

Let's hope he's calculated that it's too late to prosecute him for those crimes.

“I’ve grown to love fashion, namely John Galliano, Comme Des Garcons, Vivienne Westwood, Ann Demeulemeester, Junya Watanabe, Rick Owens, and Yohji Yamamoto,” says Jeffrey, but it was watching his friend Santino that inspired him to try out for season three.

His friend Santino?! Just as I suspected. He's acting like a jerk on the show as a strategy. You probably need to really be something of a jerk if you want to "make it work" well enough to be a successful strategy. The Santino character was quite brilliant. I don't think Jeffrey's got that much to offer. Another reason for the neck tattoo, though, right? Any time he starts to bore you, you can find something to occupy your thoughts. Why did he get that tatttoo? Especially considering that he was starting with that freakishly wide neck?

IN THE COMMENTS: Sanjay wonders:

Is his neck so wide? Maybe it's like striped shirts -- if his neck tattoo were primarily vetical his neck would look long and thin but it's horizontal lines so it looks wide.

And he gets a friend to prove it.

Concreteness blindness.

There's a writing defect that I'm going to call "concreteness blindness" because I don't know if there is an established term for it. I got to thinking about it when I read this sentence in a somewhat interesting article about the pre-fame life of the loser/monster who has confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey. And I apologize in advance for the bad taste of using material from this disturbing story to talk about language usage.

Here's the sentence:

From his tiny, rusted balcony, Karr could crane his neck to the right and watch Bangkok's choked traffic snake along a highway.

"Crane" and "snake" are perfectly ordinary verbs as used to express what the neck and the traffic did. In fact, necks crane and traffic snakes so often in writing that you could complain they're too trite to use. So this is certainly not abnormal word choice. It's solidly idiomatic. The problem is that you've got two animals in one sentence, and a reader who is in touch with the concrete image behind these very ordinary verbs might -- like me -- become distracted by amusement. The writer is trying to portray the bleak life Karr lived in Bangkok, so you certainly don't want anything silly in the sentence. Frankly, I'd avoid using the word "snake" as a metaphor at all for another week or so, unless you're describing the line around the block for the new Samuel L. Jackson movie.

And whenever you're writing about Bangkok, you need to be especially careful. "Bangkok's choked"?! No, no, no, no, no. You never want that juxtaposition, especially not in an article about a sexually molested murdered child. In fact, the figurative use of "choked" should be eliminated from any story that has anything to do with a person who was literally choked.

"Karr" itself is a concrete image. Don't make up an insignificant scenario that shows a guy named Karr going out of his way to look at cars! And don't draw attention to the neck of a man that you're writing about because he's suspected of an act of violence aimed a girl's neck.

I don't think if I tried all day I could concoct an more impressive example of concreteness blindness.

"The eccentricities are no longer funny. His voice is shot."

Bob Dylan gets a terrible review:

Last night, his singing was reduced to high, pinched whines and hoarse, phlegmatic notes that sounded less vocal than terminal. Pitch was a relative concept. His once-vaunted phrasing was rushed....

He knows that people will always cheer when he wheezes into a harmonica - and that it doesn't matter that it's awful.

Wait. Let's be fair. The harmonica playing was always awful.

NYT turnaround.

This morning's NYT editorial page displayed embarrassing overenthusiasm for Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision in the NSA case, saying it was "a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion" that "eviscerated" the administration's "absurd" arguments. This evening, in this article by Adam Liptak, the Times is facing up to the harsh criticisms that in fact rained down on the decision.

Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday.

They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions.

Read the whole thing. Lots of lawprof bloggers are quoted (but not linked!).

A new season of Ricky Gervais podcasts.

About to begin, August 22. Entertainment Weekly has an interview -- probably only for subscribers -- here. An excerpt:

EW.COM: How do you account for the podcast's popularity?

RICKY GERVAIS: It's engaging, it's real. It's a man who sees the world differently from us. It's like we download his head so everyone can see it. We prod him and we shake him, and interesting trinkets fall out. It all comes from a good place, this slightly confused man who wanders around the world and sees things from a slightly different angle than the rest of us. As inarticulate as he may sound, there is a poetry to his strange words of wisdom. Often, he's sort of right, once you know what he means. The things he takes to his bosom, and the things he rejects are often the other way around for most of us. He thinks painting is pointless and he thinks choice is confusing, and those are the things we cherish. He's just different but very nice and honest. Even the things he says that sound heartless, they come from a good place. He's not trying to be funny. He's just a fascinating little creature. He's like a fictional character. He's the closest thing to a living Homer Simpson.

Steve and I see ourselves as carnival barkers who've found the most fascinating creature in the world. We really think of ourselves as some sort of Victorian entrepreneurs, bringing out the Elephant Man. I feel like Anthony Hopkins, taking out John Merrick, going, ''Look what I found.'' Not only is it our own experiment, and fascinating to us, but we want the whole world to see the amazing Eighth Wonder of the World that is the mind of Karl Pilkington.

Ah, Karl Pilkington. We're so ready to spend some more time with him, aren't we?

Mmmm.... bacteriophages.

They're going to be spraying viruses on meat (so the viruses can eat the bacteria). Sorry, that completely grosses me out! Or should I be enthusiastic about this because it's natural?

Wisconsin polls.

A new poll shows 48% of Wisconsin voters favor the constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. 40% are opposed, and 12% undecided.

More striking is the new poll in the governor's race:

A day after a poll by a Madison TV station... showed Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle with a 10-point lead on Republican challenger Mark Green, a new poll released today showed only a one-point lead.

What's happening there? Green just started running an ad, which we talked about on the radio this morning.

Listen.

The radio show is up! Go here, and click on "Listen" at the 8:00 hour. It's a fast-moving hour with me and Matt Rothschild -- of "The Progressive" -- talking about the new NSA case, Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of American politics (including Lamont and Lieberman, Hillary and Russ, and Mark Green and Jim Doyle).

Vietnam Vets and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

It's been vastly overstated all these years, according to a new study:

The report, published in the journal Science and viewed by experts as authoritative, found that 18.7 percent of Vietnam veterans developed a diagnosable stress disorder that could be linked to a war event at some point in their lives, well under the previous benchmark number of 30.9 percent. And while the earlier analysis found that for 15.2 percent of the veterans the symptoms continued to be disabling at the time they were examined, the new study put that figure at 9.1 percent....

The researchers pored over data from the original 1988 study, and checked it against extensive military records and records of exposure to combat. They found that many servicemen in noncombat roles were exposed to considerable horrors, from shelling and ambushes to caring for the wounded, and that very few exaggerated their experiences.

But a number of veterans whose difficulties were diagnosed as post-traumatic disorder developed it before serving in the war. Others developed symptoms that could not be linked to any specific traumatic event — a crucial element in the diagnosis. And there were some veterans who exhibited symptoms, like nightmares, that were not severe enough to be disabling.

It's interesting to learn this now, when there have been so many articles -- in the NYT, in particular -- about the way the Iraq war is debilitiating the minds of those who doing the fighting.

I wonder how much of the stress the Vietnam vets suffered came from the way Americans treated them after the war. Not only did a lot of people regard them as war criminals, but a lot of us uncritically slid into accepting a Hollywood-influenced image of the Vietnam vet as a woeful shell of a man, if not a raging nut.

Not digging Judge Anna Diggs Taylor.

I haven't had the time to read Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's opinion about the NSA program, other than to skim it and form the impression that it wasn't well-written and that the real analysis will have to come at the appellate stage.

Eugene Volokh's observations resonate with my superficial impression:

[T]he judge's opinion in today's NSA eavesdropping case seems not just ill-reasoned, but rhetorically ill-conceived. A careful, thoughtful, detailed, studiously calm and impartial-seeming opinion might have swung some higher court judges (and indirectly some Justices, if it comes to that). A seemingly angry, almost partisan-sounding opinion ("[The orders] violate the Separation of Powers ordained by the very Constitution of which this President is a creature," emphasis added, thanks to a caller for pointing this out) is unlikely to sway the other judges — especially when the opinion is rich in generalities, platitudes ("There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution"), and "obviously"'s, and poor in detailed discussion of some of the government's strongest arguments.

Also at Volokh Conspiracy, Dale Carpenter is critical of the judge's conclusion that the plaintiffs have standing to sue, and Orin Kerr blasts the Fourth Amendment analysis.

This morning, the Washington Post is really hard on Judge Diggs:

[T]he decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful....

The NSA's program, about which many facts are still undisclosed, exists at the nexus of inherent presidential powers, laws purporting to constrict those powers, the constitutional right of the people to be free from unreasonable surveillance, and a broad congressional authorization to use force against al-Qaeda. That authorization, the administration argues, permits the wiretapping notwithstanding existing federal surveillance law; inherent presidential powers, it suggests, allow it to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance on its own authority. You don't have to accept either contention to acknowledge that these are complicated, difficult issues. Judge Taylor devotes a scant few pages to dismissing them, without even discussing key precedents.

It's hard to understand why a judge writing an opinion in such a high-profile case, dealing with such difficult law, would not put immense effort into creating an outward appearance of heavy scholarly effort and pristine neutrality. Does the judge lack the competence to do it? Does the judge have a hot feeling of righteousness and outrage about the case and also think it's good to show it? Perhaps it's some subtle combination of those two things.

UPDATE: The 6th Circuit reverses -- discussed here.

Radio. Deadline met. Things not read.

I'm going in to the WHA radio station in about an hour to do the "Week in Review" show. Yesterday, I was preoccupied meeting a deadline, or I would have spent more time reading and thinking about this week's news stories. In particular, there is the district court decision relating to warrantless wiretaps, which I've only skimmed. My impression was that it was not competently written. But let me start a separate post to survey what people are saying about the case.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: That was great fun and very passionate! My opponent on the left was Matt Rothschild, editor of "The Progressive," and he was in the studio, which made it much easier to argue. Last time I was on the show, the other guest was on the phone, and it had a big effect on the dynamic. Even though the show itself sounds quite passionate in the recording, I felt I had to dial it down to avoid overpowering the guest who was downsized by the phone line. Today's show should available for streaming soon. You'll find it here, at the 8:00 hour.

"We took down any bird that landed on our boat and we ate it like that, raw."

Three men survive for 9 months, adrift in the Pacific Ocean in an 8-meter fiberglass boat. (Via BizzyBlog.)

Yes, but it would have been more impressive if they'd had a tiger on board.