"Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?"

WaPo's E.J. Dionne Jr. is getting histrionic about voter ID laws in his piece called "How States Are Rigging the 2012 Election." Making it as racial as he possibly can...

In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African Americans from voting.... This is the civil rights issue of our moment.

... he himself propagates racism in the form of an assumption that black people have trouble performing the simplest task. 

"Shakespeare would have been appalled."

Asserts Julie Taymor, who wanted to be free of the people taking shots at her show, especially via Twitter and Facebook and blogging, which Shakespeare did not have to put up with.

"It’s very hard to create, it’s incredibly difficult to be under a shot glass and a microscope like that...

"When you’re trying to create new work and you’re trying to break new ground and experiment, which seems an incredibly crazy thing to do in a Broadway environment, the immediate answers that audiences give are never going to be good...

"It’s just in the nature of things that when you’re doing something very new, audiences don’t know how necessarily to talk about it immediately..."

How does she imagine Shakespeare worked?

At the Eastern Vantage Café...

... we're so far from all the struggles of the past.

"Whatever problems Blogger had or has, it’s a great place to start."

Says Prof. Jacobson, who's now gone independent.

As you may remember, I'm going independent too, and if you want to know why it hasn't happened yet, it's what Jacobson is talking about. And my blog archive is really large large — 24,371 posts and nearly 1 million comments. You can't just push the "export" button and extract your archive. Not yet, anyway.

So if you are wondering when the big move is going to happen and how Jacobson got out ahead of me, that's the issue. The archive, including the comments, needs to move with me, and it's a big move, requiring more than even the special help Jacobson is talking about. 

The NYT goes after Clarence Thomas over "an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship."

It's a long article, and you have to comb through it to try to grasp what we're supposed to think Justice Thomas did wrong. I'd just like to highlight the historical preservation that is at the center of the insinuations. You have to get to the 3rd screen of this 4-screen-long article to read:

At first glance the Pin Point Heritage Museum, scheduled to open this fall, would seem an unlikely catalyst for an ethical quandary. That Pin Point’s history is worthy of preservation is not in dispute.

Part of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor designated by Congress, it is representative of tight-knit Southern coastal settlements that trace their roots to freed slaves and were often based around fishing. In Pin Point, the Varn crab and oyster cannery, founded in the 1920s, was a primary source of jobs until it closed in 1985....

Justice Thomas, 62, was born and raised near the cannery overlooking the Moon River, where it was not uncommon for babies to rock in bassinets made of crab baskets while their mothers shucked oysters.

Imagine a liberal justice raised under such circumstances. Imagine this historical preservation project without any connection to conservative politics. What article would appear in the New York Times?

But Clarence Thomas is the man that liberals would love to discredit. Here, the idea is that although the judicial code of conduct does not apply to Supreme Court justices, the justices do purport to follow it, and:

The code says judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of concern that donors might feel pressured to give or entitled to favorable treatment from the judge.

Here's the actual text of the code:

A judge should not solicit funds for any educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization, or use or permit the use of the prestige of the judicial office for that purpose, but the judge may be listed as an officer, director, or trustee of such an organization. A judge should not personally participate in membership solicitation if the solicitation might reasonably be perceived as coercive or is essentially a fund-raising mechanism.

Note how the "personally participate" language relates to "membership solicitation" and there's nothing in the article about that. At most, the article has Thomas saying "I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with" to the owner of the cannery. So "a judge should not solicit funds..." — let's use the actual text. How is that soliciting funds? You can see the interest in sliding over to the "personally participate" language that relates to "membership solicitation." Pretty sleazy.

And all in the context of preserving a site in the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor designated by Congress!

The Times notes: "The justices are not bound by the federal judiciary’s conduct code, because it is enforced by a committee of judges who rank below the justices." Right. Of course, that's the way it has to be. Imagine a committee of judges unleashed to have at Clarence Thomas!

The constitutional check on a Supreme Court Justice is impeachment. Picture Congress going after Thomas for playing some background role in preserving a valuable black history site.

ADDED: Instapundit says:

But of course, the New York Times piece isn’t really about ethics. It’s battlespace preparation for the Supreme Court’s healthcare vote. The problem for the Times is that Thomas doesn’t care what the New York Times thinks. Which means this is more about preparing a narrative of failure for ObamaCare — It was struck down by evil corrupt conservative judges. I think they’re going to be kept quite busy constructing failure narratives over the next couple of years.

What will the unions do now?

Probing into the unions' strategy here in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel only comes up with 2 things:

1. The recall elections. The article mentions the "so-called in-kind work" which "gives union members the ability to go door-to-door lobbying to defeat Republican senators facing recall." Gives union members the ability...? You mean allows unions to pay people to do door-to-door work. [ADDED: That sentence should end in a question mark. I really don't understand whether the members are paid to perform this "in-kind work" for candidates. Are they volunteers?] If you're in a recall district, steel yourself for paid [?] union activists coming to your door. Or maybe you already have the homeowner policy that I have: I don't answer the door unless I know who's there and want to see them. By the way, how many of the protesters in February and March were paid by the unions?

2. The federal court lawsuit challenging the collective bargaining legislation on equal protection grounds, the absurdly weak theory being that the state can't treat different categories of its own employees differently.

Walker's bill exempted firefighters and police officers, as well as some transit workers, from the legislation. The unions say, at least in the cases of the police and firefighters, that was political payback for their support of Walker in the gubernatorial election.

Imagine courts striking down legislation on the ground that the political majority drew lines that seemed to favor its supporters! The unions also contend that free speech rights require the state to submit to collective bargaining with its employees. Here's a clue: The First Amendment protects us from compelled speech. It doesn't require it!

So that's it for the unions' strategy. How many people reading the linked article are fooled by all the bluster? The strategy is pitifully weak!

The unions suffered a crushing defeat, and the only way back — not mentioned in the article — is to regain the legislature and the governorship in future regular elections. That's a long time line, and it will give the people of the state a chance to see if the Republicans' budget fix worked.

At this point in the protracted budget battle of 2011, the people of Wisconsin deserve that information before we plunge into another big change. If the unions look too desperate grasping at strategic moves like #1 and #2, above, then Wisconsinites ought to suspect that they are afraid to let us see how good the new policy really is.

Happy Father's Day!

A drawing of my father, Richard Althouse, dating back to the 1940s, signed by Henry Jacobs.

"I was a born rock ’n’ roll sax player."

Clarence Clemons, RIP.

The Silent Majority Walk and the Naked Bike Ride.

Today at the Capitol Square. Video shot and edited by me. Small glimpses of genitalia from 6:03 to 6:30. Breast alert.

The event I came to see was the Silent Majority Walk, an event planned to show appreciation for Scott Walker and the Republican legislature that passed the Budget Repair Bill this week.



0:00 — The pro-Walker walkers congregate a block away from the square and receive instructions to walk completely silently, confident in the rightness of their position, without response to "any of the mud that going to be slung at us today."

0:28 — The group walks by a sidewalk café (Graze) and an old man on a bench who says "Boo from me. Boo from me. You get a boo from me. You get a boo from me. Hold that flag up straight."

0:57 — More walking, past various street musicians and people enjoying the lovely day. Zero heckling.

2:40 — A young man — wearing capris over leggings — registers some objections.

3:02 — An older couple on bikes call out, naming some accomplishments of the labor movement —"Let's hear it for minimum wage" — then switch to a fairly polite "shame, shame, shame." The woman smiles. I suggest they catch up with the group since they are on bikes. The man says, "No, we're not going to harass them any more." I say, "People haven't really been heckling them at all. I'm surprised how civil people are being." The man says, "For some reason, we just got turned on." I laugh and say, "You're the only ones."

4:28 — A bagpiper gives them the thumbs down.

4:38 — "That's brand new. I'm shocked as shit," says a black man, laughing. I ask him some questions about why he's shocked and try to find out if he might perhaps actually be a Walker supporter himself.

5:54 — We hear a hubbub and I realize "These are the naked bike riders!" They ride by chanting "Less gas, more ass." I continue my discussion with the shocked-as-shit guy, who declares "That's America! That's America! That's the freedom!"

7:48 — An old guy in a protest contraption with pinwheels and palm trees.

8:04 — I talk to a young man who is tending a table marked "Madison Objectivists." "Is there much interest in Ayn Rand here?" I ask.

"It's important for people to come out and risk arrest and do whatever it takes. Food is a right."

Says Nick Emery, one of 5 young activists arrested for feeding the homeless.

"Edward Alan Feldman will be the recipient of a 24-hour hug from his conceptual artist son beginning at 12 a.m. Sunday."

You can attend this "healing and transformative experience" in the boxing ring at the Orange Avenue Gym, 1616 N. Orange Avenue, Orlando. Only $10. And you can get in the ring an embrace your own loved one.

Pat Benatar sang "Love Is a Battlefield." But sometimes love is a boxing ring. With lots of clinching.

At the Wisconsin Capitol today: The Silent Majority Walk.

The pro-Scott Walker folks showed up today, with signs...



... and T-shirts:



They marched silently around the square and part way down State Street, competing with the bicyclists and the Farmers' Market...



... and a sprinkling of other politicos....



(Enlarge to read the signs. The guy under the red and white umbrella is promoting the philosophy of Ayn Rand.)

There were about 100 people in the silent walk. Here they are getting prepped about the route and the no-talking rules:



Madison is a street festival on a Saturday like this...



So silent walkers for Walker don't get too much attention:



But there was the occasional remark, boo, or thumbs down...



There was also the World Naked Bike Ride, but that's on video, and it will take a little longer to process. Hang on! Hang on tight...

Blaming "politically correct" textbooks for the widespread ignorance about history.

It's David McCullough (the very popular writer of historical biographies):

"History is often taught in categories—women's history, African American history, environmental history—so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what."

What's more, many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back"—such as, say, Thomas Edison—"are given very little space or none at all."

Mr. McCullough's eyebrows leap at his final point: "And they're so badly written. They're boring! Historians are never required to write for people other than historians."

McCullough sounds a bit self-promoting or self-defensive there. He knows he writes well. He's popular. And other historians disrespect that, perversely. But keep to the point. Who writes textbooks for schoolkids? Not the lofty scholars McCullough has a gripe about. There should be an immense amount of care taken with respect to school textbooks. Why wouldn't those things be written especially well? The whole point is to digest material and present it for the consumption of children.

Also, it seems to me that McCullough himself gives "considerable space" to  "minor characters" to satisfy the "fashionable" interest in women's history. I read his tome about Truman, and there was an insane amount of material about Bess Truman. I mean, there's no historical significance at all to Bess Truman as far as I can remember. It just doesn't matter. It was pablum for female readers. And then he did it again with his book about John Adams. Abigail Adams is more important than Bess Truman, but nevertheless, why are we reading a thousand-page book about a reasonably nice marriage? Clearly, McCullough isn't following some rule about giving characters attention in proportion to their historical significance.

"According to the liberal apparatchiks in the White House, Mr. Obama can bypass Congress simply by redefining 'hostilities.'"

"War is no longer war. It is whatever Mr. Obama says it is — or isn’t. George Orwell warned that the perversion of language is the first step on the dark road to authoritarianism."

Oh, settle down. You're acting like Obama is a Republican.

ADDED: "You only are what you believe, and I believe the war is over," sang Phil Ochs a long time ago. And Barack Obama believes what we're doing in Libya is not the introduction of U.S. armed forces...

(1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances;

(2) into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation, while equipped for combat, except for deployments which relate solely to supply, replacement, repair, or training of such forces; or

(3) in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation...

No. He can't even believe that. He can only pose as someone who believes that. And he can't believably pose as someone who believes that. The linked article warns us about the first step on the dark road to authoritarianism. I would have pictured the first step on that road as more of a confident stride or bold march, not a crazy bike trick with a spectacular stumble and...



... "I meant to do that."

"It's like the president's not our boyfriend anymore."

For the netroots, it's like waking up in a cold tent alone, instead of in his arms. Well, you shouldn't have drunk all that Kool-Aid.

Did Levi Johnston rape Bristol Palin?

The NY Post reports:

Bristol Palin was so drunk on wine coolers the night she first slept with boyfriend Levi Johnston that she couldn’t recall losing her virginity at the tender age of 15 — and he was nowhere to be found the hazy morning after to refresh her memory.

"Levi wasn’t even there to help me process — or even confirm my greatly feared suspicions," she writes in a new revenge tome disguised as a memoir. "Instead of waking up in his arms, I awakened in a cold tent alone."

I'm reading that as an accusation of rape. She was too drunk to consent or perhaps even passed out?

(The age of consent in Alaska, by the way, is 16, but I am not referring simply to statutory rape.)