"You don't have money to fund the war or children but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people..."

"....if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement." That's what Rep. Pete Stark said the other day. But it's not what Crooks and Liars (acts like it) heard.

IN THE COMMENTS: John Stodder said:

Good news! Crooks and Liars has just deleted virtually all the comments that don't fall into line with the host's take. Any criticism of it makes you into a troll, apparently.

Now they've manufactured a consensus over there. Rep. Stark was strong! He had a spine! And isn't this really about the children? Those wingnuts need a fainting couch!

Amazing. Just amazing.

"I'm not a morning person.''

''You're going to look at me straight in the face and say 'I'm not a morning person,'?''

"Rudolph W. Giuliani strolled into the maw of the religious conservative movement Saturday..."

And apparently, the maw found him deliciously satisfying.

The maw... I'm picturing something like this:



It's not a walk in the park, this stroll amongst the dreaded values voters.

ADDED: None of this is to say that Giuliani is the first choice of values voters. Their straw poll put Huckabee clearly first. The issue isn't, however, whether Giuliani is their favorite. (Of course, he's not.) The issue is whether they will support him if he becomes the Republican candidate.

I smiled all the way through this....

... and also almost broke down and cried from sheer pleasure. I've always loved the use of things other than instruments for percussion — ever since a transplendent Incredible String Band concert I saw when I was a teenager where they kicked an old trunk for a bass drum sound. But this beats all. We all need to work harder at whatever it is we're doing, just like Ben Folds. It's a cover of something that was already awfully wonderful:



The Ben Folds clip came recommended to me in the first email I opened as I got on line in my old favorite coffeehouse here in Madison, Wisconsin, where I arrived last night. This morning I got in my car — can I still drive after not driving for a month? — and the disc player came on in the middle of the song I'd played over and over the last time I was here:



Am I still in the mood to find that almost unbearably touching? Could I ever be in the mood to listen to the Incredible String Band again?

"Dumbledore is gay."

J.K Rowling, who apparently needs even more publicity, has informed us of the sexual orientation of one of her characters.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."...

Rowling... also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."

She's baiting the usual anti-Potter groups. Do I have to look to see if they are taking the bait?

Coffeehouse.

This post is an Althouse coffeehouse. Please congregate in the comments and get the conversation started without me.

Hugh Hewitt talks to Clarence Thomas about religion, Jeffrey Toobin, blogs, jihadists, Black Power, Anita Hill, George Bush....

1. Does Catholicism affect his judging? Hugh Hewitt asks Clarence Thomas. Hewitt notes that Chicago dean Geoffrey Stone of Chicago has said that Catholicism infused the the Court's recent "partial-birth" abortion decision. Answer:

Oh, no. In fact, it works just the opposite. My view is simply that the important thing that it pushes you toward is adherence to your oath, which is to judge impartially. And my view is once you start sort of putting your personal beliefs and opinions into the law, or into the Constitution, you cease to have legitimacy, and I don’t think you should be on the Bench. Now I find that fascinating, though, that people would say things like that, and in the same breath, what I get, is the criticism that I don’t judge as a black judge, you know?

I’m supposed to somehow include my race in my judging, but the religion, you don’t include in your judging. I don’t think you should include either in your judging, and I don’t. And in sixteen years on the Bench, well, I’m one week short of sixteen years. But in the almost sixteen years I’ve been on the Bench on the Supreme Court, I have never done that. And in the more than sixteen I’ve been a federal judge, I have never done that.

2. Thomas loved Justice White:

I just loved the way Byron White conducted himself. I love the fact that he felt that the job was important, he felt that the Court was important, that the Constitution and our laws were important, but he wasn’t. that he was there to do his job and go home. And that’s what he did. He was just a good man.

3. Has he read "The Nine"? No, and he won't, but he knows Hewitt didn't like it. Hewitt says he thought Jeffrey Toobin was "very unfair" to some of the Justices, the way he made the Court — after Bush v. Gore — look "dysfunctional," with "bitterness is going on and people are crying and crushed." Thomas:

I didn’t see anybody crying. And the last I can remember is that after we announced the opinion, we all went upstairs and had lunch.

HH: He writes in there that the Court’s embarrassed by Bush v. Gore. Is that fair?

CT: I haven’t seen it (laughing). Look, I suffer from the disadvantage that I’m there every day.

HH: (laughing)

CT: I mean, this would all probably make more sense to me if I wasn’t there. I’ve not seen any embarrassment, I haven’t seen any dysfunctional, any evidence that the Court is dysfunctional. And so I can’t, I really can’t comment on something that’s not happening.

4. Hewitt asks Thomas if he reads the blogs! He says "no," then backtracks":

No….some of them. You know, occasionally I’ll read something, but not that much.

HH: And do your colleagues? Or are they still practicing Supreme Court jurisprudence the old fashioned way, via the briefs and not public opinion?

Are the lawprof blogs really "public opinion"? This gets Thomas off the subject of blogs and back to the denial that he lets public opinion affect his decisions. But the law blogs contain legal arguments. Sometimes...

5. Hewitt asks Thomas if he's "aware of the war," which seems like a ridiculous question, but what he means is does the knowledge of the war affect his judging. But then, Hewitt poses a really insightful question:

HH: I was…when I was reading My Grandfather’s Son, I had an unusual question that I wrote down. Do you understand the jihadists who are these angry, young men, who are locked out of opportunity, who suffer discrimination of the worst sort, and who really have nowhere to go except into this sort of conflict?

CT: Well, I can’t say that I understand them. I do know that for example in this country, and I make this point in the whole portion of the book in 1968, when I talk about being drawn into this whole notion of black power, and that is that you know, when you feel locked out, you do gravitate toward things that feel, that seem empowering. At least that’s the way it was for me. I can’t speak for others. And so this black power notion made you feel, it was invigorating, and it made you feel empowered. And it could also be debilitating, as I found out later, or self-destructive. But I can’t speak for them, but I know in my own case, it was sort of something similar to that, but not nearly as, I guess, as universal.

6. And Hewitt's got a theory about Anita Hill:

HH: I want to try out my theory on you, and maybe you can comment or not, but that she had told little lies to explain failures that got out of hand, and she had to defend them. Does that make sense to you?

CT: That makes sense, but you know, again, I can’t, I have not gotten into whether or not…I could speculate, but I think it would probably, it would be remiss if I did so.

We don't get to hear his speculation, of course.

7. Hewitt asks him if he likes George Bush:

I admire anybody who stands up and leads. Now you can always disagree with a person here or there, but I admire anybody who gets in a position and actually tries to lead.

There's some faint praise!

"You wanna know what you're playing for? The right to be punished for winning, that's what."

Throwing Things analyzes the twist on last night's "Survivor." Personally, I liked it. I like when the team — tribe — that is down figures out a way to save itself from doom. The twist did seem manufactured to give them a shot. It injected competition back into the game. I assume the producers don't plan all the twists and challenges in advance, but come up with things to make a better show. Who wants to watch a dominant player proceed inexorably toward the million dollars? It was cool to see the underdog Peih-Gee figure it out and bring in Jaime who had the power over — he's a virgin! — Erik.

Television Without Pity has the full recap up already. Very nice.

"I met someone, I fell in love, I left."

"We tried everything, I tried everything. What happened to me has happened to millions of people: one day you no longer have your place in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing of your life. It no longer functions; it no longer works." And that's that, from Cecilia Sarkozy, now divorced from the President of France.

Maybe you think that's too blithe of an attitude to take toward marriage. But you never know what happens inside someone else's marriage.

I like what she's saying about the political spouse: "France elected a man, not a couple."

And from Nicolas Sarkozy:

"My state of mind is very simple: I was elected by the French people to solve their problems, not comment on my private life... If you think that the French people elected me for anything other than to work, work, and work more — for the rest, the French ask for no comment from me. It interests them much less than you [the press], and they are right. And perhaps they have a greater sense of propriety and more discretion, sir."

I know this is just what they say since they've broken up, but it made me wish we could get a lot less of the wives/husband of our various presidential candidates.

What did Ann and Rush and Jimmie talk about?

As long as we're reading the gossip column this morning, let's keep going:

Talk about random: Jimmie (J.J.) Walker of "Good Times" fame dined at Elaine's with Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

So... what did they talk about? Ann's latest publicity baiting? Rush's eBay auction? (He's got one of the great documents in American history for sale over there with the bid up over $2 million now.) But what about Jimmie? Will Ann and Rush help him dream up a scheme to rake in millions?

Is Jimmie a right winger? Let's see. He's got a website with a tab for "Jimmie's Views." Here he is on Barack Obama:

" Nothing from nothing leaves nothing"... That sums up the " Golden Boy" of the Democratic Party... Barack Obama... Obama has been annointed the Savior of the Democratic Party... But what has he done or said?... NOTHING... Until the Democratic Convention of 2004 when you mentioned the name Barack Obama... people thought you talking about Osama Bin Laden... Obama doesn't seem to be a bad guy...but there's nothing of substance in anything he's said or done ... maybe that's what so appealing about him to so many people ... he's managed to say a lot of nothing... His best selling book doesn't have any policies or new ideas... it's more like a Tony Robbins feel good book...Barack is Tony Robbins on speed...There are tough decisons to be made as president of the United States... and not everyone is going to like you... Unlike Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Mr. Obama is a candidate white America can live with, like Colin Powell... But unlike Colin Powell, Barack Obama is more than willing to accept whatever the party will give him... with the Black critics using the " He's not Black Enough" card ...He is the Johnny Mathis of candidates to Black voters...... But that's more than enough to get the white liberal establishment behind him... Ivy league educated and the first Black editor of the Harvard Review...Obama hasn't used the Black card... but he's let others around him play it ... to the point of " All In "... Every Democrative operative From Hillary Clinton to John Kerry to James Carville has mentioned it ... Every news organization has run with the Black card... But never Barack Obama...He has learned his lessons well ... never speaking about policy... but instead giving feel good Tony Robbins speeches...getting into the Senate was a lucky break for Obama... he was elected on a pass... late in the race, his opponent was caught up in sex scandal with a vengeful ex-wife, and dropped out ... Ultra conservative Alan Keys was brought in to as a carpet bagger to run against Obama on short notice... and was soundly defeated... Two schools of thought come in... With Hillary Clinton being the clear front runner... what is her real chance of being elected... why not have the " Star" of the 2002 Democratic Convention make a run.. Or with Hillary Clinton it would be great to have the fair haired boy run with Hillary... to have a woman and a Black running together... Barack Obama hasn't been in the " cess pool of American Politics"...He hasn't had to defend his record or policies... 'cause he doesn't have any...the American Public hasn't seen nor heard a negative word or political ad from Obama and the American people have no Idea what he stands for ... Maybe that's good... but is it good enough to be President...

So what's the scheme here? Is someone writing for Jimmie (and taking the trouble to misspell Keyes and insert typos to throw us off the track)? Did Rush/Ann spot this writing — which I note is dated "11-21-07" — and pounce on an opportunity? Or are we to think this dinner at Elaine's was just a wacky, "random" meetup that belongs in the gossip column?

"The Spinach Brownie."

That could be the name of a "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry's new girlfriend is a cookbook author and...

[Jessica] Seinfeld's new "Deceptively Delicious," about hiding healthy ingredients in foods children will eat, is already the best-selling book in the country, with print runs of 2.5 million through January.

But chef and baby-products mogul Missy Chase Lapine came out in April with a book, "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals." Lapine baked her spinach brownies with Al Roker on the "Today" show; Seinfeld shared her spinach brownies with Oprah on that show last week.

Oh, of course, it's Roker. He'll do a cameo, for sure. He was in "The Cigar Store Indian" episode, which had one of the great "Seinfeld" book plot lines:

JERRY: Thanks, because I would really like... (distractedly puts coffee cup back
on the table)

GEORGE: (screaming) Aaahh!!

JERRY: Alright, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. (picks it up again)

GEORGE: But Jerry, this is not coming out!

JERRY: Just put a coffee table book over it.

GEORGE: My parents don't read! They're gonna wonder what a book is doing on the
table!

KRAMER: Hey, hey, hey, hey. You know what would make a great coffee table book?
A coffee table book about coffee tables! Get it?

And speaking of stealing an idea... remember when Kramer had an idea for perfume that smelled like the beach:

KRAMER: You smell like the beach. What's the name of that perfume? you're wearing.

TIA: It's Ocean by CALVIN KLEIN.

KRAMER: CALVIN KLEIN? No, no. That's my idea. They, they stole my idea. Y' see I had the idea of a cologne that makes you smell like you just came from the beach.

JERRY: I know look at this [shows ad]

KRAMER: Whooo, ... That's you! What is going on here? The gyp(?) he laughs at me then he steals my idea. I could have been a millionaire. I could have been a fragrance millionaire, Jerry. ... They're not going to get away with this.

The transcriber seems to want to get Michael Richards in trouble for more politically incorrect language. The name of the character who steals the idea is Steve D'Jiff — not "the gyp" — as you can see from the episode "The Pez Dispenser" — my favorite episode — where Kramer first gets the idea for a perfume he called The Beach.

"The Spinach Brownie"... it practically writes itself:

Seinfeld and Lapine both have recipes for mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower, grilled cheese with secret sweet potatoes, green eggs made with pureed baby spinach, and carrot-laced tacos....

[Seinfeld's publisher, Steve] Ross did admit that Lapine's agent had submitted her book to them "in May of 2006, but it was rejected."...

Oh, I can just picture the scene where Ross rejects the book. He acts so disgusted by the idea of slipping spinach into kid's brownies. Here's some inspiration from "The Pez Dispenser":

KRAMER: Go ahead smell, smell

STEVE: Yeah, so?

KRAMER: Do you recognize it? ... The beach.

STEVE: What are you talking about?

KRAMER: Oh, I'm talking about the beach.

STEVE: What about it?

KRAMER: You know the way you smell when you first come home from the beach?

Well, I want to make a cologne that captures the essence of that smell.

Oh yeah.

STEVE: That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard.

KRAMER: Oh, wait, Did you here what I just said?

STEVE: Do you think people are going to pay $80 a bottle to smell like dead fish and sea weed? That's why people take showers when the come home from the beach. It's an objectionable offensive odour.

KRAMER: So you don't think it's a good idea?

And poor Missy Chase Lapine — love the name! — is crushed. Meanwhile, Ross find the glitzy wife of some filthy rich comedian to put her imprint on the same idea. Does Mrs. Filthy Rich Comedian even cook?

As for whether [Jessica] Seinfeld actually toils over a hot stove, Ross said: "Well, I can tell you that she cooked [mac and cheese and meatballs] for us, and it was delicious. And we've heard from Jerry that he's been a guinea pig."

A spokesman for Seinfeld said, "She admits she didn't invent pureeing. But she never saw the [Lapine] book. And she worked really hard on hers."

Of course, she never saw the Lapine book! Does she even read?

A vlog about sleepclimbing over the railing...

... and other things.

Should a lawprof let students read the Teacher's Manual for the casebook?

It would never have occurred to me to consider saying yes to a student who wanted to read the Teacher's Manual, but a colleague of mine is taking the request seriously. I received this email via faculty email list (and have permission to print it here):

I am sitting on an email request from a student who wishes to obtain info so that she can acquire a copy to the Teacher's Manual for our CivPro I casebook, and I am looking for input as to how to respond. The book contains a number of problems, and she says it would be helpful to check her answers. I agree. But we do much of this in class — and my fear is that students would not attempt to figure out the answers — but simply look them up, thus defeating the whole purpose. (And I do recommend supplementary materials which gives them more and better problems — as well as much better answers geared towards to students — not class instructors.) So I am learning towards saying no — but I am troubled by denying access to educational materials to a student who sees benefit in using them.

Why is anything readable off limits to a student who wants to learn?

The eternal kiss.

Rest in everlasting ecstasy, Deborah Kerr:

Throughout her career, Miss Kerr worked at being unpredictable. She was believable as a steadfast nun in Black Narcissus; as the love-hungry wife of an empty-headed army captain stationed at Pearl Harbor in “From Here to Eternity”; as a headmaster’s spouse who sleeps with an 18-year-old student to prove to him that he is a man in “Tea and Sympathy”; as a spunky schoolmarm not afraid to joust and dance with the King of Siam in “The King and I”; as a Salvation Army lass in “Major Barbara”; and even as Portia, the Roman matron married to Brutus, in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

She could be virginal, ethereal, gossamer and fragile, or earthy, spicy and suggestive, and sometimes she managed to display all her skills at the same time.

Oh, can't we all? Just for today? Be virginal, ethereal, gossamer, fragile, earthy, spicy, and suggestive — all at the same time.

A slice of Manhattan.

Why don't I vlog anymore?

I don't know. No reason. I just remembered I used to vlog by having readers give me the subject matter. I think I quit right after I moved to NYC because the suggestions all seemed to be: How do you like New York, could you picture yourself staying in New York, what do you miss about Madison, and so forth. So, maybe I'll try to vlog now and then. Like today. But serve up some subject matter that isn't about me. Believe it or not, I'm not interested in talking about myself. It's possible, though, that I'm just tired of talking. Not writing. Just talking.