Not the last café in Madison.

Blago has a vortex?

Now, I'm jealous.

An academic conference about sex at academic conferences.

Yeah, I know it sounds like the the theme of novel that should have been written in the 1980s if it was going to be written at all, but there really was this conference. This week, in San Francisco, Modern Language Association.

Jennifer Drouin, an assistant professor of English and women’s studies at Allegheny College, argued that there are eight forms of conference sex...:

1. “Conference quickies” for gay male scholars to meet gay men at local bars.
2. “Down low” sex by closeted academics....
3. “Bi-curious” experimentation by “nerdy academics trying to be more hip” (at least at the MLA, where queer studies is hip)....
   
4. The “conference sex get out of jail free” card that attendees (figuratively) trade with academic partners, permitting each to be free at their respective meetings....
5. “Ongoing flirtations over a series of conferences, possibly over several years” that turn into conference sex....
6. “Conference sex as social networking”...
7. “Career building sex,” which generally crosses lines of academic rank....
8. And last but not least — and this was the surprise of the list: “monogamous sex among academic couples.” Drouin noted that the academic job market is so tight these days that many academics can’t live in the same cities with their partners. While many colleges try to help dual career couples, this isn’t always possible, and is particularly difficult for gay and lesbian couples, since not every college will even take their couple status seriously enough to try to find jobs for partners. So these long distance academic couples, gay and straight, tenured and adjuncts, must take the best academic positions they can, and unite at academic conferences. “The very fucked-upness of the profession leads to conference fucking,” Drouin said.

Okay, so we are doing lists. Here's mine:

1. Sex at conferences. Do you have sex at conferences?

2. The AALS — Association of American Law Schools Conference — is next week. Are you going? To have sex?

3. Have you ever had "career-building sex"? Why wasn't there a category for career-destroying sex?

4. Why all this positivity about sex, especially from English professors? In novels, sex — more than the fucked-upness of any profession — is always destroying characters. Don't these jokers think the world owes them a living for reading novels? Why don't they sound like people who've plunged deeply into the lives of fictional characters? (I used to want to write a novel called "My Life as a Fictional Character" — based on being married to a novelist.)

5. Doesn't it seem as though the MLA is trying too hard to be hip? An academic conference about sex at academic conferences? It's like a coffee table book about coffee tables. Hip or hipster doofus? I know I don't want it! I don't need you to tell me what I don't want, you stupid hipster doofus!

6. Now, go, go, go have sex at your sex at conferences conference, and when you come home, I won't be here anymore....

Karl Rove... "The wounds I received I got in a job I love."

I see that quote in the WSJ's email teaser for a Karl Rove column and click over thinking maybe this will be Karl's musings on all the hate that's been aimed at him over the years. It's not:

During my White House years, I came to know of the heroic actions of the Seals and other special operators in the global war on terror. These men willingly follow evil into dark and perilous places. They volunteered to be on the front edge of the conflict whose outcome will shape this century....

I met [a Seal who had] been shot eight times in Iraq and had undergone nearly two-dozen operations. One bullet had taken off part of his cheek and nose. He was destined for reconstructive surgery in a few days.

Yet he didn't feel sorry for himself. He was full of charisma, confidence, cockiness and joy. After all, he confided, when you're a wounded Seal, the world's best doctors want to operate on you so they can brag about it. Besides, he explained, he was just showing that a Seal really could catch bullets with his teeth....

The next day, I got an email from the retired Navy Seal buddy who'd talked me into speaking at NSWF. He shared a picture of the sign the wounded Seal put on his Baghdad hospital door.

On it, the Seal had scrawled that visitors shouldn't "feel sorry" for him. "The wounds I received," he wrote, "I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough." And on his sign he promised "a full recovery" and wrote that his hospital room was a place of "fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, GO ELSEWHERE." He signed it "The Management."

IN THE COMMENTS: knox said:

There's a wealth of material in the stories of our special forces. Too bad Hollywood ignores them all... there's got to be hundreds of great action/war movies just begging to be made.

Pogo said:

Well, at least we have a good movie about gay rights and other one about/not about pederasty, plus a Hitler movie and a Nixon movie (not the same film, BTW).

Larry J said:

My SEAL story is from October 1975 when I was in Jump School. SEALs go to Jump School after their much tougher UDT training. To them, Jump School is a vacation.

I heard a lot of commotion when falling out for noon formation one day. From what I was told, one of our SEAL students had just jumped from a 3rd story window, did a parachute landing fall, and entered formation saying, "This shit bores me."

I didn't see it happen so I can't swear it's true but it would be typical of SEALs. They're genuine bad-asses not to be messed with.

Why aren't we talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks?

Noticing the absence of the usual catty talk.

What with all the time spent this year by women and journalists and everyone else obsessing over Sarah Palin's looks and lipsticks and wardrobe, it's hard to believe the absolute dearth of women journalists obsessing over Caroline Kennedy's physical appearance, makeup choices, and hairstyles. Why are her highlights not front-page news?...

.... Caroline was routinely compared to her famously svelte mother, and as a result her self-esteem plummeted. In a fit of pique that bordered on the bizarre, she shaved off one eyebrow. "My face," she offered by way of explanation, "is too symmetrical."

Bordered?

UPDATE: I have 6 answers to the question why we aren't talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks.

"Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all..."

“... thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno"

Mickey Rourke, lusting for the Oscar, texts about Sean Penn.

ADDED: You know, if I wanted to argue that the movie "Milk" is homophobic, I could think of a good 6 points.

Roland Burris's monument...

... to himself.

AND: For comparison, check out the Howard Stern headstone. They had a "Secret Santa" thing on the radio show, and the guy that got Stern's name gave him that headstone with his picture on it. Hilarious! Howard did not like the gift at all and kept saying that he did not want to contemplate his own mortality.

"Typical Althouse blog thread."

As conceived by Michael H.

Funny, but I'm sure funnier ones could be written.

Things we drank.

"A woman called at 10 p.m. from the 11000 block of Mooney Flat Road to report a person was causing an argument and throwing cheese in her eye."

"A man at the house also called. He sounded as if he had been drinking, and he said a woman was throwing cheese all over the house and his wife was acting 'nutso.' The man said the fight was not physical, but a woman could be heard in the background saying, 'yes.' A deputy determined the fight was not physical. No arrests were made."

Don't you love the old "police blotter" feature in newspapers?

The Kit-Cat Clock brings out the Proust in Bird Dog.

A black plastic cat pricks the memories of a man who's named himself after a dog.

I see my room, the window, my bookshelf-turned-rock-and-fossil collection, the Revolutionary War prints on the wall, my little desk and chair with my chemistry set in one of the drawers, my first precious little transistor radio, the big aquarium set up with rocks and sand for my various lizards, and my bed that I hid my forbidden Mad Magazines beneath to read with a flashlight after lights-out....

***

Don't you want a Kit-Cat Clock?



If you do, support the Althouse blog on New Year's by using this link.

Why social conservatives should not argue — as Dennis Prager does — that a woman should have sex with her husband whether she's in the mood or not.

And by "social conservatives," I mean, specifically, persons who oppose homosexual relationships or, at least, same-sex marriage.

Here's Dennis Prager's much-mocked Townhall column. He says things like "Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him?"

Prager's position throws away the most persuasive argument that marriage, limited to the relationship between a man and a woman, is the basis of civilization.

Do you see my point? I'll elaborate later, but I would like you to think about it on your own before I explain what, in my view, is obvious.

LATER: Okay, here's my point. Prager sees the differential sex drive of males and females as a problem that should be solved by wives going along with sex even when they are not in the mood. But why do social conservatives see heterosexual marriage as the foundation of civilization? I thought their idea was that various male urges were controlled and sublimated through marriage to females. There is a civilizing effect — I think the theory goes — as the natural impulses pressure a man to do what he can to impress and please the woman. This process is undermined if the woman simply accedes to his sexual impulses. The pressure must be kept up. The man should be required to understand the woman and figure out how to do things that will make her desire sex with him. Or he can sublimate his urges, and pour his energy into great architectural and scientific achievements and the like.

So Prager should not want sex to become more efficient and more in line with the male biological drive. If that is the goal, he ought also to favor sex between 2 men. Homosexual sex is a solution to the problem he identifies. It should be favored. To remain socially conservative, it is necessary to honor the female fussiness about sexual intercourse, because it inspires the male to work harder and to acquire greater self-control. This is the reason for thinking of heterosexual marriage as the foundation of civilization.

Note: I'm not a social conservative, and I support same-sex marriage. I just want to clear away some of the obfuscation about marriage and this often odd-sounding notion of "defending" it. Something important happens when men and women get together. I don't think that means same-sex couples should be disrespected any more than I think it's wrong to remain single.

Film dead, 2008.

The Senate has the power to exclude Roland Burris, say lawprofs Akhil Reed Amar and Josh Chafetz.

They look at Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution — which makes each house of Congress "the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own members" — and find a power to judge the Blagojevich appointment:

At the founding, Senators were elected by state legislatures. If the Senate believed that legislators in a given state had been bribed into voting for a particular candidate, the Senate could refuse to seat him.

Because of the word "returns" in Section 5, what is true of elected Senators is equally true of appointed Senators. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "Return" in the time of the framers involved a report of an appointment made by a sheriff or other official. If the Senate may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt election, it likewise may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt appointment process.

Amar and Chafetz need to deal with Powell v. McCormack, in which the Supreme Court said that the House did not have the power under Article I, Section 5 to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell. That case focuses on judging "qualifications," and the Court said that only relates to the qualifications specified in the Constitution — age, citizenship, and residency. Beyond those 3 qualifications, the people had the power to choose the representative they wanted. But Powell was clearly the people's choice, so what do you do with Powell when the governor appoints the new member? For an accurate analogy for the Burris appointment, imagine if the problem with Powell hadn't been that the members of Congress thought he was corrupt, but that they thought there had been a fraud in the election.

Now, the Powell case was about whether Powell could use the courts to override the decision to exclude him. The argument on the other side was that the House had the final call about the scope of the power to judge the qualifications of their own members. In that view, which the Court rejected, a vote to exclude already embodied the constitutional interpretation that they had the power. Our current discussion of the question of the scope of the power to exclude Burris will affect how the Senators think about the scope of their power, and articles like Amar and Chafetz's should embolden the Senators, and they may vote to exclude him. If that happens, Burris may sue in federal court, and then the court will have to decide whether the Senators' assessment of their own power is the final answer about the meaning of the Constitution.

But doubts about the scope of the Senate's power to look into the circumstances of the appointment may give the Senators pause. The vote to exclude Burris may fail — because of these constitutional doubts and for other reasons. If that happens, Burris will be seated and there will be no occasion for a court to discuss the scope of the exclusion power.

To be sure, there are plenty of other reasons to seat Burris. For one thing, if we rely on the theory that the Senators have the power to exclude him because the appointment process was corrupt, they will need to go through some sort of factfinding process. Blagojevich faces his criminal trial, but he is the duly elected governor of Illinois, with the power to appoint the Senator. What sort of parallel process in the Senate will be needed to make the exclusion legitimate?

In this context, the Senate itself is a judge, in the words of the Constitution, and can decide facts for itself. It need not follow the rules of criminal courts. That means it need not find Blagojevich guilty beyond reasonable doubt, as a court would if his liberty were in jeopardy. It is enough for the Senate to reject Blagojevich's appointee if a majority of senators are firmly convinced that Blagojevich is corrupt and that any nomination he might make is inherently tainted by such corruption.

If the Senators exclude Burris because they simply feel quite certain the appointment is tainted and not because they've gone through some impressive and fair factfinding, when — if — Burris goes to court to override their decision, Burris's argument about the scope of the power to exclude will look much more appealing. The Senate will need to argue that the court should defer, but the court will think less of this notion of deference if the process to be deferred to is not very impressive. Amar and Chafetz recognize this reality of litigation:

To make sure its ruling sticks, the Senate should follow its own procedures with due deliberation. Burris' case can be referred to a committee for careful review. He need not be seated while this committee does its work, and it will be very hard for Burris to persuade any federal judge to interfere in the meantime, especially if Senate Democrats and Republicans unite. With any luck, Blagojevich will be out of office soon enough and a new appointments process (or a special election) can begin that would supersede the attempted Burris appointment.

The delay itself is effective, but it does mire the Senate in an investigation of the Democratic governor. The argument will be made that the effort to exclude is more of a power grab than the governor's attempt to fulfill what is, after all, a duty of his office. Should the Senate Democrats want that? What a nasty preoccupation for Congress at what should be the fresh beginning of a new administration!

Amar and Chafetz make a good argument about the power to exclude but in doing so, they expose the political disaster it would be to vote to exclude.

ADDED: Lawprof Sandy Levinson puts it well:

I don't see how one can mount a good-faith argument against seating Burris unless one is willing to open each and every gubernatorial appointment to some kind of "good-government" scrutiny....

Should the motives of Gov. Patterson [sic] be subjected to relentless scrutiny if he bows to pressure to name Caroline Kennedy as a tribute to a dying senator and, in addition, to get access to the Bloomberg and Kennedy donor list that presumably comes with that appointment?

Should Governor Paterson choose a caretaker Senator?

There's a new election for the Hillary Clinton Senate seat in 2010 (and then again in 2012), so why not let that field of candidates develop in a naturally competitive fashion by putting someone there now who will perform the function in a dignified, statesmanlike way?

Some are suggesting Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo, but — even if one of them would do it – there's an obvious problem: Shouldn't a woman replace Hillary? There are some senior, statesmanlike women in New York, and I don't mean Caroline Kennedy.

The caretaker option was exercised last month by Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who picked a former aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden to succeed him in the Senate until a new senator is elected in 2010. By then, Biden's son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, will have returned from a tour in Iraq with the National Guard — just in time to run for his father's seat.

Caroline Kennedy is in the Beau Biden category. I know he's delayed by his trip to Iraq, but aside from that, he wouldn't be properly respected if he didn't run for office. Let Caroline prove her stuff in a real competition for office. Perhaps she won't even try, if she's put that test. Deciding whether to run in a real competition is itself a test, and perhaps Princess Caroline would decline. I think the people of New York deserve to see if she would subject her royal self to the ordeal and, if she did, how she'd do debating scrappy politicians who haven't lived their lives swathed in adoration, wealth, and deference.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everybody!

If my new year's resolution was to get the first post of the day up early, I have already broken it.

Have you broken your resolutions yet? Do you have the classic cliché resolution to lose weight? At this point, you can probably remember everything you've eaten this year. Have you eaten the wrong thing yet? Me, I've eaten nothing this year but a glass of skim milk.

Vows of abstemiousness are all well and good, but the more interesting resolutions are about doing something, not avoiding doing things. And going to the gym doesn't count. That's still in the abstemiousness category. I'm interested in your resolve to live a larger, more expressive, more fully dimensional life.