5 new Supreme Court cases.

SCOTUSblog has a preliminary account.

ADDED: The campaign finance cases -- both called Randall v. Sorrell -- lack a majority opinion. The Court strikes down a Vermont law that imposes limits on what candidates may spend and what individuals, organizations, and political parties may contribute to candidates.

Justice Breyer writes the main opinion, joined only by the Chief and Alito:

Well-established precedent makes clear that the expenditure limits violate the First Amendment. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 54–58 (1976) (per curiam). The contribution limits are unconstitutional because in their specific details (involving low maximum levels and other restrictions) they fail to satisfy the First Amendment’s requirement of careful tailoring. That is to say, they impose burdens upon First Amendment interests that (when viewed in light of the statute’s legitimate objectives) are disproportionately severe.

Overruling Buckley is considered and rejected, applying the standard test for whether there is "special justification" to overcome stare decisis:

Subsequent case law has not made Buckley a legal anomaly or otherwise undermined its basic legal principles. We cannot find in the respondents’ claims any demonstration that circumstances have changed so radically as to undermine Buckley’s critical factual assumptions. The respondents have not shown, for example, any dramatic increase in corruption or its appearance in Vermont; nor have they shown that expenditure limits are the only way to attack that problem. At the same time, Buckley has promoted considerable reliance. Congress and state legislatures have used Buckley when drafting campaign finance laws. And, as we have said, this Court has followed Buckley, upholding and applying its reasoning in later cases. Overruling Buckley now would dramatically undermine this reliance on our settled precedent.

Alito writes separately to say the issue of overruling Buckley should not have been reached.

Kennedy provides the fourth vote for the outcome, writing:

Viewed within the legal universe we have ratified and helped create, the result the plurality reaches is correct; given my own skepticism regarding that system and its operation, however, it seems to me appropriate to concur only in the judgment.

The fifth and sixth votes come from Thomas and Scalia. Thomas writes:

I continue to believe that Buckley provides insufficient protection to political speech, the core of the First Amendment. The illegitimacy of Buckley is further underscored by the continuing inability of the Court (and the plurality here) to apply Buckley in a coherent and principled fashion. As a result, stare decisis should pose no bar to overruling Buckley and replacing it with a standard faithful to the First Amendment. Accordingly, I concur only in the judgment.

Justice Souter has a dissent that Stevens and Ginberg join, and Stevens also writes a separate dissent. According to Souter, the limits on contributions were constitutional because they were not "depressed to the level of political inaudibility." (An odd locution.) As for the expenditure limits, there should be "further enquiry into their fit with the problem of fundraising demands on candidates."

"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

Wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, quoted by foodie Kelly Alexander in TNR. She's riffing on a cookbook -- published two years ago -- that collects various recipes from politicians, and she purports to be especially stunned that Dick Cheney served up a dopey chicken casserole recipe.

Someone's writing a cookbook collecting recipes from bloggers. I got a request to contribute that I'm told many prominent bloggers have already responded to. So I guess we'll be seeing a book that will give us the opportunity to blab about what these characters are.

But, presumably, Brillat-Savarin wanted to know what people actually ate, not what they'd want displayed next to their name in a cookbook. We need to reframe the quote: Tell me what you want me to think you eat and I will tell you what you want me to think you are. Or maybe: If you want to tell me what you supposedly eat and I will know that you care what I think you are.

"Better for me to grab an hour in which to sit looking at the garden and sipping rooibos tea..."

(My ex) Richard decides to cut way back on blogging... on the occasion of (my son) Chris saying he's up and quitting altogether. My other son, John, comments at Chris's post, saying why he's always known better than to blog: "I'm sure you're better off spending that time living -- in the nonblogosphere."

(Rooibos tea?)

"A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an 'intellectual' -- find out how he feels about astrology."

So wrote Robert Heinlein. RedState mobilizes the quote in the context of excoriating beseiged blogger Jerome Armstrong. Commenters on my various "Kosola" posts keep pushing me to talk about the astrology angle, so I'll just say this. I don't think writing about astrology means you're nutty, though it's great material for people to use if they want to portray you as nutty. While I think it's perfectly idiotic to actually believe in astrology, I think many people are either playing with it -- using it to stimulate thinking about themselves and their relationships -- or trying to make money off of the people who enjoy fooling around with it. I'm assuming Jerome is the kind of guy who falls in the latter category.

But how big is the third category -- those people who actually believe? Once, quite a while back, I had a long conversation with a man whom I was considering going out with, when he brought up the topic of astrology, which caused me to instantly write him off as someone I couldn't take seriously. (I admit I was looking for an out, and that was convenient.) I told this little anecdote a friend, a law professor, who burst right out with the statement: "I believe in astrology." I then told the anecdote, with the new coda, to another friend, also a law professor, and I got the same response: "I believe in astrology." These people were not joking -- unless their humor was very, very dry, and they were both also sadistic enough to leave me wandering through the rest of my life with diminished faith in the strength of the human mind.

Macondo/Aracataca.

The people of Aracataca, the hometown of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, had a vote on whether to change the town's name to Macondo, the name of the town in the nobelist's "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Ninety-three percent of the votes were yes, so the measure failed.

''The problem here is that people long ago grew accustomed to receiving money and gifts in exchange for votes."

"There are two major narratives in the world, the narrative of fundamentalism and the narrative of consumerism."

Do you watch that PBS show "Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason"? Edward Rothstein -- paid by the NYT to subject himself to such ordeals -- is "agnostic — perhaps, even atheist — about whether this group of novelists and artists can provide profound insight on such an urgent subject." Go read the whole thing. I just want to excerpt this adorable fragment:

[Novelist Mary] Gordon suggests that "there are two major narratives in the world, the narrative of fundamentalism and the narrative of consumerism." Given her own religious faith, she explains, she is much more comfortable imagining the inner life of a suicide bomber "than I am of Donald Trump"; she finds the terrorist mind, with its belief in eternal truth, "much more comprehensible."

Ms. Gordon says that whenever she sees people driving Hummers, "I want to just drive them off the road" — or worse. She could "go out on quite a spree," she says. What stops her from becoming a roadside bomber fighting for eternal truth, she explains, is her Christian belief that these "greedy" materialists "are sacred and valuable in the eyes of God."

Well, come on. The mind of Donald Trump -- that's a very special object of contemplation. Who can fathom it?

But it's scary to think of novelists with murderous thoughts restrained only by their religious faith. I guess if there are "two major narratives," she herself is subscribed to the fundamentalist one, and we're just lucky she's locked onto a religious belief that includes nonviolence and all that love -- that love for all the greedy bastards in this damned world.

Renegade publisher.

A great obit. Read it.

"Scalia twisted my words."

The Supreme Court doesn't cite too many scholarly works, so it's a thrill when one of yours is cited -- at least until you see your piece has been forever inscribed in the annals in support of a proposition that's exactly the opposite of what you meant to say.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr has at the censorious scholar. "Scalia agrees with and cites Walker’s descriptive argument but then disagrees with Walker’s normative views." That's the risk a scholar takes, of course. You can still be mad about it, you can probably get a spot on an op-ed page where you can vent.

Why not keep track of whether every child in the country is eating enough vegetables?

That's what they mean to do in England and Wales. In fact, the new database will track all sorts of "concerns" and developmental targets, with doctors, teachers, and police compelled to submit information and investigations triggered by various warning signals:

Child care academics, practitioners and policy experts attending a conference at the London School of Economics will express concern about how the system will work.

Dr Eileen Munro, of the LSE, said that if a child caused concern by failing to make progress towards state targets, detailed information would be gathered. That would include subjective judgments such as "Is the parent providing a positive role model?", as well as sensitive information such as a parent's mental health.

"They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure," she said. "The country is moving from 'parents are free to bring children up as they think best as long as they are not abusive or neglectful' to a more coercive 'parents must bring children up to conform to the state's views of what is best'."

I'm sure they mean well, and I'm sure many parents really can't be trusted with their own children, and it's terrible for a child to be isolated in a home that falls short of minimal standards. In fact, the whole idea of children being left in the care of the individuals who happen to have them is quite disturbing. But this cure is so invasive and oppressive. Imagine having to fret about the government's rules every time you feed your kids. Imagine not having any creative role in thinking about how to bring up your children. In your intimate family life, you'd feel like an employee of the state. To have a child would be like accepting a permanent job working for the government. And to be a child! When your parents tell you eat your vegetables, your parents will be begging you to eat your vegetables lest they become the subject of a government investigation. The child gains a powerful new weapon. I won't eat that broccoli! And you are in so much trouble, old man.

Audible Althouse #55.

The new podcast. Streamable here -- no iPod needed. But the sane thing to do is subscribe:

This is a podcast about insanity -- about breaks with reality. Craziness and things that seem like craziness. A cat suddenly bites. Timothy Leary takes drugs and floats downstream. A man has a flips out and strips off his clothes. A blogger gets some power and either gets nutty or inspires others to portray him as nutty. And two men climb an icy mountain and touch the void.

In the Heights.

Here are some exterior views from yesterday's architecture tour of University Heights.

First, the Sigma Phi House (you remember the interiors):



Second, the Airplane House:





Third, a pretty cool red house across from the Airplane House:

Joe Lieberman's website.

Go and click on the "get involved" button. Notice anything? It really is quite pathetic. (Via Kos.)

Do you recognize these faces?

Have you seen the movie? Quite a trip! It's what "I Shouldn't Be Alive" would be with a larger budget and the most harrowing, amazing tale to tell.

Why is Althouse blogging at 5 a.m.?

It's a day about 5.



I'm waiting for my 5 millionth visitor today.

Newsweek goes after Kos but if he says they do, he's paranoid.

Newsweek has a big article on Kos that starts off looking like a puff piece. He's listening to hummingbirds and finally getting that flat-screen TV. But, make no mistake, it's quite hard on him. He "picked a rough time" to crash the gates of the Democratic Party:

[T]he Democrats lost the week in the war over the war, and Moulitsas — who chats with Senate leadership aides several times a week and has brainstormed with Democratic operatives about the fall campaign —could no longer just criticize from the outside. Indeed, the Democrats' failed Iraq strategy — stand together, talk tough and make plans to leave —lined up exactly with the prescriptions found on Daily Kos.

Moulitsas is also learning another downside of membership in the elite: the bigger the liberal sniper gets, the more incoming fire he faces. The talk of the blogosphere last week was "Kosola"— allegations that Moulitsas wrote favorably about candidates with whom he or his close friend and coauthor Jerome Armstrong had financial relationships. Moulitsas swore the charges were baseless (Armstrong, too, has denied impropriety), but they clearly got under his skin. When The New Republic's Web site published an e-mail from Moulitsas to a group of friendly activists urging them not to talk about Kosola and thus "starve it of oxygen," Moulitsas went berserk in a blog posting, accusing the venerable liberal journal of treason. By the weekend, Moulitsas's allies were sending each other e-mails infected with the paranoia of revolutionaries who've gained power too fast: How should they deal with traitors? How much openness could they handle? Which fellow travelers could they really trust?...

[S]ome Dems fear that Moulitsas's popularity will pull the party so far to the left that it won't be able to win the general election in 2008. "It's a little bit like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' with these guys," said an aide to a Democratic presidential candidate who asked not to be identified while the boss was angling for Moulitsas's support. "You like what they're saying when they're coming in, but you don't know what they're going to do once you let them into your house." Newt Gingrich, who wins points even from liberal bloggers for his political acumen, marvels at the Democrats' embrace of the blogosphere: "Candidates out there run a risk of resembling the people they're trying to appeal to," he tells NEWSWEEK. "I think the Republican Party has few allies more effective than the Daily Kos."...

The pressure on Moulitsas — to be consistent, to be pragmatic, to win — will only grow as the fall elections approach. Already, the strain of the spotlight is beginning to show in his growing belligerence and paranoia. When Kosola broke, Moulitsas e-mailed fellow progressive activists, wondering who might be shopping the story. "I've gotten reliable tips that Hillary's operation has been digging around my past (something I confronted them about, btw, and never got a denial), and you know the Lieberman/DLC/TNR camp is digging as well," he wrote, referring to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and The New Republic.

Kos's writing style -- which has obviously served him well as a blogger up to this point -- sounds angry and crazed to the outsider. It's easy to get him to react with "belligerence and paranoia," and the more successful he is, the more Democrats are motivated to marginalize and disqualify him. Those he's accused of "digging around in my past" have denied that they're doing it, but, really, why wouldn't they be doing it? And why wouldn't part of their strategy be to make him think that they are so they can lure him into displaying more of that "belligerence and paranoia"?

So I assume there is a conspiracy and a strategy to investigate Kos. And it's so easy to do because it can succeed even if it fails to turn anything up, because it will provoke him, and when he reacts, they'll all say he's paranoid, belligerent. Escort that man back outside the gate.

But why is Althouse saying all this? Is she trying to stoke his paranoia and lead him into the very pitfall she's identified? Is she nonpartisan and just calling them as she sees them? Or is she just saying that because she knows that's the kind of assertion that Kos folk are least likely to believe? And is that one more reason to suspect there's a big plot? Look at that line she boldfaced up there. There's a Republican plot and a Democratic plot all converging on poor Mr. Moulitsas.

And if he exhibits these suspicions, he's going to look crazy. And you know what they do to you once they have the material to make you look ca-ray-zee.

"Islam's Ann Coulter."

An op-ed (by a rabbi) about Wafa Sultan (whom we talked about a few months ago, when she made a big splash):

As I experienced the fervor sparked by Sultan's anti-Muslim tirade and stoked by a roomful of apparently unsuspecting Jews, I thought: What if down the street there was a roomful of Muslims listening to a self-loathing Jew, cheering her on as she spoke of the evils inherent in the Torah, in which it is commanded that a child must be stoned to death if he insults his parents, in which Israelites are ordered by God to conquer cities and, in so doing, to kill all women and children — and this imagined Jew completely ignored all of what Judaism teaches afterward?