Let's take a look at that 10 Commandments monument.

Strolling around the grounds of the Texas Capitol, I looked for the Ten Commandments monument, the one that was the subject of the Supreme Court case -- Van Orden -- two years ago. Here it is:



Here's how Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, described the setting:

The 22 acres surrounding the Texas State Capitol contain 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating the “people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity.” Tex. H. Con. Res. 38, 77th Leg. (2001). [FOOTNOTE TEXT, with links to my photos]: The monuments are: Heroes of the Alamo, Hood’s Brigade, Confederate Soldiers, Volunteer Fireman, Terry’s Texas Rangers, Texas Cowboy, Spanish-American War, Texas National Guard, Ten Commandments, Tribute to Texas School Children, Texas Pioneer Woman, The Boy Scouts’ Statue of Liberty Replica, Pearl Harbor Veterans, Korean War Veterans, Soldiers of World War I, Disabled Veterans, and Texas Peace Officers.]...

Texas has treated her Capitol grounds monuments as representing the several strands in the State’s political and legal history. The inclusion of the Ten Commandments monument in this group has a dual significance, partaking of both religion and government.

Justice Breyer cast the deciding vote in Van Orden. Here's his description of the setting:

Here the tablets have been used as part of a display that communicates not simply a religious message, but a secular message as well. The circumstances surrounding the display’s placement on the capitol grounds and its physical setting suggest that the State itself intended the latter, nonreligious aspects of the tablets’ message to predominate....

The physical setting of the monument, moreover, suggests little or nothing of the sacred.... The monument sits in a large park containing 17 monuments and 21 historical markers, all designed to illustrate the “ideals” of those who settled in Texas and of those who have lived there since that time.... The setting does not readily lend itself to meditation or any other religious activity. But it does provide a context of history and moral ideals. It (together with the display’s inscription about its origin) communicates to visitors that the State sought to reflect moral principles, illustrating a relation between ethics and law that the State’s citizens, historically speaking, have endorsed. That is to say, the context suggests that the State intended the display’s moral message–an illustrative message reflecting the historical “ideals” of Texans–to predominate.

So it's just one monument in a group of monuments. What's your mental picture from that description? Like this?



See the other monuments?

Perhaps a longer view will reveal the context that matters so much in Establishment Clause cases:

Yeah, I know...

I said I'd write about the global warming case. I'm too on vacation to get to it right now. There's a million articles about it. I've got to read the case to say anything worthwhile at this point. The longer you wait, the more you have to say in this blogging game. If you can speak in the first couple hours... or better yet, minutes... such freedom! Wait a day... it's work. And I'm on vacation.

That's the secret?

I'm feeling some doubt.

A telling picture...

... of a 62-year-old man with his 37-year-old wife.

UPDATE: They seem to have taken down the picture, but you can see a tiny thumbnail of it here. It's Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas.

For those who don't like their diavlogs surrounded in acid green.

Bloggingheads has competition from TNR's "What's Your Problem?" In the linked episode, Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg talk about blog comments, which Jonah thinks tend to be "inconsequential and snarky." Fortunately, they have comments. Let's check them out. I'd say they're more inconsequential than snarky. Somebody needs to bring the snark over there.

"The liberal justices, or at least their leader, Justice Stevens, may well have decided that refraining at this point was the wiser course...."

Linda Greenhouse has a theory about yesterday's cert. denial in Guantanamo detainees cases (Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States). Noting that Justice Stevens declined to vote along with Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer and that while four votes are needed to hear a case, five are needed to decide it, she writes:

The liberal justices, or at least their leader, Justice Stevens, may well have decided that refraining at this point was the wiser course, given the risk that the case might come out the “wrong” way, from their point of view, with an affirmation of the appeals court’s decision that would then become a hard and fast Supreme Court precedent.

Another evening in Texas.

Bob Wright on why I thought I was "ambushed" on Bloggingheads.

Sorry, this isn't the post about the new Supreme Court case. I'll get to that later. Remember, I'm on vacation. But I've just got to post about the new Bloggingheads episode in which Bob Wright and Michael Kinsley talk about me.

Bob introduces the topic by saying that under "the new Bloggingheads business model," he's going to have to yell at Kinsley and threaten to hang up. It's "the precedent" and "a proven traffic-generation model." Kinsley says he's fine with that, "the sooner the better."

Referring to the precedent, set, of course, by me, Michael says:

I didn't completely understand it. I certainly sympathize with Ann, the woman who felt she'd been abused by the bloggers.

Bob says that's good and notes that I didn't get much sympathy from the Bloggingheads commenters. He goes on:

I'm sympathetic. You're sympathetic because you recently got trashed by liberal bloggers. I'm sympathetic because I am myself prone to fly off the handle.

Michael asks for an explanation of what exactly it was that upset me, and Bob tries to explain. You can go over and listen to the explanation, which I don't entirely agree with, because it lacks context. He makes it sound as though all I ever wrote about was that a woman posed in a way that accentuated her breasts!

Now, Bob says: "Ann, I think, thought it was a set up. She... and I'm slightly culpable for this in a way I could go into and now that I've said this, I guess I have to go into it." He explains that before a Bloggingheads episode, the diavloggers agree to a series of topics, and that Garance Franke-Ruta and I had not agreed to talk about that old controversy -- what Garance referred to as "the Jessica Valenti breast controversy." (I would have refused, by the way, and in the past, Bob has tried to get me to diavlog with someone on that subject, and I have declined.) Bob: "Ann thought this was an ambush. Okay?"

Michael guesses that it was within a larger topic of "people being rude on the internet." But that was not one of the agreed-upon topics either. Bob says he doesn't know what our topics were, but says he's "sure" the topic of "mean left-wing bloggers" was. Well, it wasn't!

Bob says, "so from Garance's point of view, there was a legitimate context." But, no, in fact, she introduced the whole topic.

Bob goes on: "Ann thought it was an ambush, and here's my culpability." He explains that when he was arranging the diavlog with Garance, she had said she'd like to diavlog with -- guess who? -- Jessica Valenti! Bob didn't think that would be a good idea, because he assumed the two of them would just agree about everything, and so he suggested me instead. He makes a point of saying that he didn't realize that Valenti was the subject of the old controversy, however. But he did see me as an "ideological opponent" of Valenti's, based on the way her name had come up in my diavlog with Glenn Reynolds.

Bob reveals that he'd given me all that background and says that he sees it as a basis for me to have assumed Garance and Valenti are "kind of allies." This "increased the plausibility that this is an ambush," he says.

Bob invites Kinsley to comment on it, and Kinsley says, "it makes for good video when people are really upset and threatening to leave" and tells a story about Christopher Hitchens storming off the set of "Crossfire."

I'm not planning to keep bugging you with the old Bloggingheads story (which is a continuation of the old Clinton-lunching-with-the-bloggers story), but Bob Wright and Michael Kinsley were talking about me.

Just you wait for the next post.

I see Justice Kennedy voted with the liberals on the global warming case. I'm on vacation, but I'm going to write about that case for you anyway. Because I care... and because we're just hanging out here at The Flightpath:

But why am I writing about that? I'm on vacation!

Here in Austin, I've got places to go. You're expecting something from me?



Events are taking place...



Just off in the distance....



No, no weddings or gala events for me. Just need to wander around... and see the pedestrian beauty...



... which is everywhere.

I'm not trying to dredge up the old Bloggingheads thing...

Which is, you know, an old blogosphere flame war, but I see there's a transcription going around -- of this notorious segment of the diavlog -- that has a glaring error that is being used against me. I'm not going to link to any of the many blogs that are using this text, and I don't know what enterprising loser took the initiative to type it out, but it's perfectly easy to Google if you want to know who's purveying the defective text:

these are flame wars, and what I'm trying to say on the overarching point, is that the left side of the blogosphere is vicious and unfair and nasty to me, and I don't like it, and I'm trying to ask you why that's the way they treat me when I support most of what they're for. Meanwhile, on the right side of the blogosphere, where there's much less overlap, I think, I am treated in a very warm and connecting kind of way. And you're really just kind of undermining my point, uh, by bringing that up like that.

Here's what it should be, with the mistakes corrected in boldface.

These are flame wars, and what I'm trying to say on the overarching point, is that the left side of the blogosphere is vicious and unfair and nasty to me, and I don't like it, and I'm trying to ask you why that's the way they treat me when I support most of what they're for. Meanwhile, on the right side of the blogosphere, where there's much less overlap with what I think, I'm treated in a very warm and connecting kind of a way. And you're really just underlining my point by bringing that up like that.

See that last one! I don't say "undermining." I say "underlining." I will wait for the apologies from all the nasty, vicious characters who thought I'd hilariously misspoken and who used that as an occasion for mocking me. (And I didn't say "kind of" before it either, which just shows how sloppy the transcriber was. )

What I find hilarious is that the reaction to this video clip is really just underlining my point! The leftosphere is nasty and vicious to me. And they are trying to assassinate my character, as I say in the clip. They jumped to make themselves into the example of the very thing I was talking about. Ironic, no?

But let me admit something. I do think they have the motive to try to destroy me, and I can see why the left treats me nastily -- unlike the right -- even though I share their opinion on practically all the key issues (except national security).

I have obviously disaggregated myself from the fortunes of the Democratic Party. I will say what I have to say without trying to protect the party's interests. That's dangerous to them, and they should be afraid for me to have clout in the blogosphere. They have reason to portray me as crazy, stupid, drunk, or whatever the latest attack is. They should worry. And, as I say in the video, I will stand my ground.

The source of this distance I feel is exactly what I was talking about in those posts that ignited the old blogosphere flamewar: the way so many Democrats changed how they talked about sexual harassment in order to defend Bill Clinton. (Specifically, I was monumentally impressed by Stuart Taylor's comparison of the way Clinton and Clarence Thomas were treated.)

Let's take a closer look at what I wrote back then, when I mocked that photograph.

Bill Clinton, apparently eager to influence bloggers to give his wife favorable coverage as she sought the presidency, sat down for a lunch and a photo shoot with a select group of them. They ate up the lunch and the flattery it represented and posed looking thoroughly pleased. I think bloggers should maintain their independence and their critical stance, so I hated to read their gushing posts and to gaze on their shiny, happy faces in that photograph. I meant to be cruel to them.

(If they are cruel to me, I concede that I started it and that I meant to be nasty. In that sense, I can't complain... except for effect.)

My cruelty took the form of trying to ruin the picture they thought was so nice by merging it with the idea of Monica Lewinsky. The last thing Bill Clinton wants as he offers his prestige to the cause of his wife's quest for power is for us to think about Monica Lewinsky.

So I called attention to the fact that Jessica Valenti, positioned right in front of Clinton, did look a bit like that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I thought the photograph was set up in a way that was detrimental to the Clintons' interests, and I thought that was funny and that it presented an opportunity for some painful satire. I made it quite nasty, and I did it deliberately. I'm not sorry I did it. I mean to castigate feminists and so-called feminists who cozy up to Clinton. They were surely justified in fighting back at me, and I can understand why they want to ruin me.

But I did achieve my goal and ruin the photograph. You've got to admit that you cannot look at it the way the shiny, happy posers meant you to. The photograph is -- as they say -- reframed. If I must suffer for that achievement -- which I sought -- so be it.

Audible Althouse #81.

It's a podcast... about standing my ground in the blogosphere.

You don't need an iPod. You can stream it right through your computer here.

But people who get it subscribe on iTunes:

There are so many phallic skyscrapers.

It's good to see some representation for the vulva:  

ADDED: In the comments, some folks have trouble seeing what I'm talking about, and I admit to being influenced by that "snuck a snuke in her snizz" episode of "South Park." If you haven't seen it, just picture a female robot's genitalia. (Oh, don't tell me you don't do that all the time!) Then, Chip Ahoy offers up an image of a much more vulva-like building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow! China! Aren't you blushing?

Austin images.

There's some desperately bad graffiti under that bridge (the one with the bats):





Man, that second one is so bad it makes me want to crumple up into a helpless ball of emotion and whimper "Hold me!"

Let's go to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and do the "Jesus Christ Superstar" singalong:



There's some sort of Cows on Parade type thing with guitars going on in Austin:



This one somehow represents Billy Bob Thornton.



If my eyeballs had the wings of an angel.

Arthouse/Althouse.

Posing at the Arthouse.







In Austin, Texas.

"In truth, I am so very close to the place where Ann’s favorite post-dinner beverage is made."

Good lord, Nina's back in France again. Investigating cognac, apparently. Me, I'm in the U.S.A., in Madison's southern counterpart, Austin. Where I did have a cognac last night. But first:



On the other side of the table:



(My younger son is older than Ezra Klein. Ezra doesn't like me because I'm "superficial and Maureen Dowd-ish" and because I committed the unforgivable sin of mocking a photograph that one time. I like the way, at that linked post, Fenrisulven shows up and gives the anti-Althouse crowd a lesson on the interpretation of my old satirical post and the meaning of sexual harassment before and after Bill Clinton befogged the minds of partisan Democrats. Meanwhile, Ezra compares me to "conservative bloggers" he likes, never picking up the reality that I'm pretty much a liberal, a liberal who attacks the Democratic Party. Or maybe he does get that, and that's what he hates. He should! I'm dangerous. I might say anything, because I really don't care about your party.)

Isn't it funny that Nina's caught the new blog meme: Althouse drinks? And I'm drinking right now. A huge coffee, lovingly made at The Hideout:



I swivel my head 56 degrees. Man, that building seems to exist to tempt me into the graffiti life.