Is God Messing with my Ipod?

I got my first Ipod (Nano, 2nd generation) for Christmas -- well, for some unidentified winter holiday (my folks didn't specify) -- and I'm a little weirded out right now.

(Sorry, somewhat lengthy) background: I'm a Jewish agnostic. I have a certain emotional tug toward belief in some sort of Involved and Caring Presence. I see no compelling intellectual justification for believing in the tenets of any religion I know of (despite the smooth and occasionally tricky arguments of C.S. Lewis).

One reason I'm not an atheist is my awareness of the dictum that you can't be angry at God without in some way believing in him. My parents are, by some definitions, Holocaust survivors (they fled just barely in time, and most of their extended families didn't make it). From the holocaust to tsunamis to horrendous diseases, I have a hard time believing in a God who is both good and anywhere remotely close to omnipotent. My own life, while not trouble-free, has been a very good one so far, and I sometimes feel, in relation to any God there might be, the way the favorite niece or granddaughter of Josef Stalin might feel. Grandpa Joe has always been loving and generous with me -- in between starving millions of peasants to death and so forth. How should I feel about Grandpa? How is it right to feel?

I must acknowledge the argument (was it Lewis who made it, or Jonathan Kellerman in Conversations with Rabbi Small?) that free will allows people to choose to do evil, and evil hurts the innocent -- that's what makes it evil. One can certainly find enough free-will choices behind the Holocaust, and various individual choices made the havoc wreaked by the 2005 tsunami worse, etc., etc. . . . I'm still not entirely won over.

So, finally, to the Ipod, which I'm playing mainly in my car (with a neat gizmo that uses the cassette tape player). I'm still learning how to use it. I accidentally turned off the volume during Tom Paxton's "Home to Me", and missed a few bars. I felt briefly wistful about it. Then I left the car and turned off the Ipod while Simon and Garfunkel's "Benedictus" was playing, and somehow messed things up so that when I got back to the car, the shuffle started over with something else. I was thinking about going home and playing "Benedictus" on the computer when the current song ended and up popped -- "Benedictus". Oy. Coincidence, or a tap on the shoulder?

A song or two later, along came -- "Home to Me". Alright, already! And the next song -- from Handel's Messiah, "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth." ALRIGHT, I GET IT!! Although, of course, I still don't know whether I do.

I have to admit that along with fear of being irrational, there is the fear of the implications of belief. . . .

The next song was Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" -- which could be interpreted theologically, I suppose, but I don't hafta.

Note to Elder Daughter

To my teenage daughter:

On those occasions when I kick myself in the butt hard enough to make myself vacuum, it would be helpful if I could actually gain access to some appreciable portion of your floor, without needing to move papers and clothes about (possibly, in the process, noticing something you'd prefer to keep private).

(No, I didn't find anything interesting -- this time....)

Puppy and Puppy

When my younger daughter was about 9 months old, and going through the trauma of being required to sleep through the night, she attached herself to a stuffed dog. With our usual minimalist approach to naming things, this toy was named "Puppy". We have since acquired a backup called "Puppy's Sister", but Puppy reigns supreme to this day. Puppy is naturally somewhat threadbare, and stuffing-bare, and generally worn -- but is still recognizable and basically whole.

Our real live dog is now well past one year old, but we still tend to call her "the puppy" and to address her as "Puppy". She used to sleep in her crate in the guest room, but when we actually had guests coming for a change, we put her in my daughter's room, where she sleeps on the bed. The other morning, when I came in to wake girl and dog, Puppy was curled up next to Puppy. They looked very sweet together.

Our assignment from God?

My husband, the Hoosier Gadfly, has an interesting take on the question of life after death. He suggested the other day that if there is a God who in some manner created homo sapiens sapiens, he might be expecting us to figure out how to become immortal. He/She/It got us started -- the rest is our job. An exercise for the student, as it were.

We might, for example, figure out feasible procedures for the electronic storage of personality and memory, in programs able to interact with each other, with the outside world, and with other data storage banks. You can see this idea explored in depth in Frederick Pohl's Heechee Rendezvous and The Annals of the Heechee.

I thought my husband should blog about this, but he hasn't been blogging much these days. He has an excuse at the moment -- the all-too-common cold.

Morning conversation

On weekday mornings, I get up just after my 15-year-old daughter, mainly to make sure she makes it out the door on time. She has to be at the bus stop down the street by around 7:05 a.m. We often have a few minutes to chat while she drinks tea, though she is not always awake enough to talk.

One morning recently, we had an exchange something like this (I'm K, daughter is L):

(L) It was pretty spooky waiting for the bus yesterday. I thought there was a swirling vortex of death behind the trees. There was a lot of movement.

(K) It was probably a deer.

(L) Would a deer make loud moaning and hissing noises?

(pause)

(K, brightly) It might if it was caught in a swirling vortex of death....

Almost healthy, and well fed

The universe is being kind to me for a bit. It's unseasonably temperate and pleasant this week, and I can sleep later on the holiday weekend, so the day is not so cold when I first take the dog out. I suspect that's why this is the first day in some weeks that I've hardly coughed at all. (Little cough.)

We had Thanksgiving at a restaurant with a buffet -- hence no leftovers from the holiday meal itself. I took several steps to avoid feeling deprived: I had turkey and dressing twice at a local cafeteria earlier this week, and I made turkey (a breast and four drumsticks in the crock pot) on Wednesday and yam casserole and stuffing today. (Well, Alissa did at least half the work on the yam casserole, though she has no interest in eating it.) Tomorrow we make pumpkin pie. So there will be lots and lots of leftovers.

Only wrinkle was, after our restaurant feast, I had very little interest in leftovers, and not much in food. I resolved to clean out the freezer and make room for some turkey, yam casserole and stuffing.... However, it's been a few hours, and I can actually contemplate eating tomorrow, and even eating leftovers.

Chicken Soup

I have been sick. Quite. If it wasn't the flu, it was close enough. The up side was that my family was driven to be helpful in unaccustomed ways. My husband, who has not willingly relinquished the era when people let their dogs roam freely, finally took the dog out for walks on a leash.

My mother of course prescribed chicken soup. We had some packaged chicken noodle soup, but the instructions looked too challenging (in that standing, reading, and keeping track of anything were all beyond me at that point). I mentioned this fact to my husband. Shortly thereafter, my 10-year-old stood before me asking me how to make chicken soup. Turned out my husband had presented the girls with a choice: either walk the dog in the rain, or make Mom some chicken soup. I told my daughter that she'd need to figure it out with her big sister's help. Paul took the dog out; I went to take a shower, while sounds reminiscent of a Three Stooges routine floated after me....

Dog, husband, kitchen, and girls all survived (as did I), and the soup was the best thing I'd eaten in days. I ate almost all of it. (The dog got the rest.)

one of my creative daughters

I've thought of nothing to write for ages, but at least I have creative daughters. The younger one had pancakes at our usual Sunday morning restaurant, and took most of them home. On the takehome box, she wrote many rapturous slogans about waffles and how wonderful they were (including the claim "Chickens eat waffles!"). Then, in teeny-tiny print in a corner, she wrote, "This container does not contain waffles.". . .

In other news, Mom likes the dog

I never had a pet as a kid. I wanted a dog, but my mother -- raised in rural Poland -- saw dogs as farm animals, and we didn't have a farm. In our overlapping lives up until now, I only knew her to like one dog -- a beautiful Samoyed named Lapa, belonging to a family friend.

Well, my folks visited us for the first time since we became a family-with-dog. Davida is shy -- loudly shy -- of strangers. She barked at my folks for about a day. Then she settled down, except when she'd just woken up or they turned up in pajamas, and then she'd bark again.

A couple of days before they left, my mother announced that she would miss the dog! And when Davida would beg for food, my mother would tell her, "I like you, but no."...

Amazing! (Although Davida is a pretty appealing animal, I must say.)

MLF Lullaby, redux

In the short term at least, it sounds like good news that Japan may rearm itself in response to North Korea's nuclear saber-rattling. But I keep remembering Tom Lehrer's classic "MLF Lullaby". The MLF, or multilateral force, was a US proposal during the Cold War. Submarines and warships armed with nuclear missiles would be manned by international NATO crews -- including Germans. Quoth Lehrer:

Sleep, baby, sleep, in peace may you slumber
No danger lurks, your sleep to encumber
We've got the missiles, peace to determine
And one of the fingers on the button will be German....

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean
But that couldn't happen again
We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen
And they've hardly bothered us since then....

(Follow the link for the full lyric.)

Disturbed and Uncertain

I was going to do a passionate denunciation of the recently passed detainee bill, but I'm now not sure that what I thought was its most outrageous aspect is actually in there. Nonetheless, there is plenty I either dislike or am queasy about. Although the question of how to interrogate suspected terrorists, and what to do with them afterwards, is not easy either conceptually or morally (or legally).

I'll post more analysis when I have time and energy, but on the subject of the statute's removing federal court habeas corpus jurisdiction and otherwise restricting federal judicial review:

--I gather the issue of when non-citizens have habeas corpus rights may be complex, or maybe I just haven't seen the right sources explaining it.

--Whatever the scope of habeas corpus, the Constitution says it can't be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion. Neither of which is happening. The Constitution (Article III, Section 2., second paragraph) does say that the U.S. Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, as to both laws and fact, over a host of matters "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Lower federal courts exist only "as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish" same -- which could be read to allow that they be established with the same sorts of "Exceptions". Also, it's not entirely clear that the Founders intended the U.S. Supreme Court to have the power to declare statutes unconstitutional. HOWEVER -- now that we have hundreds of years of case law saying that the federal courts do have that power, then it seems to me we cannot read Article III, section 2. as making it perfectly OK for Congress and the Executive Branch to conspire to pass unconstitutional laws by prohibiting the courts from calling them on it.

By the way, appellate jursidiction as to fact is part of what the detainee statute explicitly purports to take away. Which leaves detainees without recourse if the military commission makes utterly unsupported findings of fact -- unless you can call that a legal issue, or unless the statute's own procedures say that factual findings must be supported. (I don't have the energy right now to read it through looking for the latter.)

UPDATE: a reasonable way to read the "exceptions and regulations" language is that Congress could, in some initial legislation, have done some fine-tuning of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, as long as it didn't outright remove any of the broad categories of jurisdiction listed in Article III, sec. 2. That'd be quite a different kettle of fish from passing a statute later on that violated some part of the Constitution, and then tacking on a tailor-made exception to keep the Court from entertaining challenges to that statute.

My New Slogan

Here's my latest slogan, ready to put on a bumper sticker or T-shirt:

"JUST SAY NO . . . to the Caliphate."

As for what I'm talking about, see this article by Daniel Pipes of the New York Sun., or this one by James Brandon for the Christian Science Monitor.

Caveat re Constitutional Law

To clarify a slightly earlier post: I wrote (in general terms) about the significant differences between the ACLU principles I grew up with (as I then understood them, at least), and constitutional law as it has been shaped by the U.S. Supreme Court. I do not mean to say that when ACLU and USSC are in conflict, I always agree with the USSC. For example: not that anyone cares, but I do not endorse the degree to which 4th Amendment protections have been eroded during the drug war. I have also felt for many years that the right to peaceably assemble is under-protected in comparison with the rights to freedom of speech and of the press. ("Time, place and manner" regulations of an assembly are intrinsically more burdensome than "time, place and manner" regulations of primarily verbal expression.)

And I emphatically do not endorse the decades-long weakening of the fundamental principle of limited federal powers, with the concomitant drastic expansion of the scope of the Commerce Clause. I was cheering for the turn toward constitutional reality that U.S. v. Lopez seemed to herald. Raich v. Ashcroft (aka Gonzales v. Raich - ??) largely squelched that hope, and the Rapanos/Carabell cases were not much more encouraging.

Mission Statement

Here's a mission statement I'd like to see from Bush & co.:

"We are fighting those who want to establish an Islamic theocracy over most of the world. It is necessary to fight them because, even though they're religiously batshit, not all of them are technologically batshit or logistically batshit."

Bureaucrats and Secular Puritans

I'm not surprised, but I'm still ticked off -- even though it doesn't directly affect me.

The local public schools, based on what they say is state law, are telling parents not to bring home-baked goodies to school on their kids' birthdays -- because home kitchens aren't Inspected the way commercial kitchens are. And because sugar is sinful, anyway. Not their language, but that's the underlying feeling, as I read it.

We've got an unholy coming-together (damn, I know there's a word for that!) of governmental nannies and busybodies who think every human activity needs their oversight and regulation, and the contemporary secular equivalent of Puritans, who don't want people indulging in anything that's fun instead of wholesome. (Hey, guys, remember that chocolate is good for you after all!...)

And again I say DAMN! -- Americans should be able to sell or give away food from their kitchens without interference! Are we supposed to be unable to figure out that people's kitchens vary, and that there's some slight theoretical risk that a particular household is too sparing with the disinfectant? Or must we march on toward the utterly impossible goal of risk-free living?

Shopping while hungry

So this is what happens when I eat breakfast too early and go to Marsh at 10 a.m.:

--polenta (which I have eaten in restaurants once or twice and don't know how to prepare -- but the package says I can just "heat and serve"...)
--breaded chicken livers
--half a spinach quiche
--3 ounces of smoked salmon, which must be kept at 38 degrees F or lower, and I have no idea how cold my refrigerator is, except I think it's pretty cold
--half a chocolate cake (my eldest had requested this one)
--grape tomatoes, even though I had some, because the ones I had were getting wrinkly

Now I'm trying to stall eating it.

An Echo of my Past

I'm just now getting around to posting my reactions to a Molly Ivins column from late August. She's discussing the opinion by federal district court judge Anna Diggs Taylor, holding the NSA warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional. Ivins notes that many "soi-disant" (self-styled -- I had to look it up) legal scholors are complaining that Judge Taylor's opinion was not well written. (More on that in a moment.) Her response: "Nevertheless, warrantless spying is illegal. Did it ever occur to these literary critics that Taylor has a lay-down hand? The National Security Agency program is flat unconstitutional . . . ."

Ivins doesn't appear to be troubled by even a hint of doubt about what the law is. She betrays no sign of knowing that the case involved -- and should have turned on -- several very complicated legal issues. Assuming that she's not being disingenuous, I think I know where she's coming from.

I grew up in the ACLU the way Catholics grow up Catholic. The creed I absorbed was quite straightforward. I wouldn't have stated, in so many words, that civil liberties were simple and absolute, because those terms would have suggested the possibility of limits and complexities. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying that ACLU's lawyers held or hold such views. I can't say the extent to which my parents, extremely intelligent laypeople and first generation Americans, saw the shades of gray that I didn't even imagine.)

It was a significant shock to get to law school, take constitutional law, and discover that the case law of the U.S. Supreme Court did not always uphold what I believed to be our constitutional rights. I wish I could remember more details about that encounter with cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure how Molly Ivins has protected herself against similar disorienting experiences -- but it appears she has managed it.

As for Judge Taylor's opinion: here are links to a few comments from the "soi-disant legal scholars", otherwise known as law professors whose widely read blogs regularly include technical legal commentary.

--Prof. Ann Althouse's op-ed in the New York Times;
--an August 17, 2006 post by Prof. Eugene Volokh;
--Prof. Orin Kerr's August 18, 2006 post about the opinion, the criticism of the opinion, the criticism of the criticism, and how the opinion's defenders are unwittingly echoing the arguments of President Bush's supporters.

UPDATE: see more recent post, "Caveat re Constitutional Law".

Heads gotta roll

Call me an armchair overseas military planner, but I do believe something drastic had better happen in the Israeli military. They rested on their laurels and forgot how to be the amazingly effective fighting force that Israel still needs. Major housecleaning and redirection of energies is indicated. Someone is a lot more likely to call the next bluff, so it had better not be all bluff.

the ones that didn't get away

I've been too sluggish and too busy (not a great combination) to blog, even though I've had a few ideas for a change, and now I can't remember all of them. So here's what I can still dredge up:

--Braces are a whole different critter than when I had them. Elder Daughter is now sporting what I'd call tooth jewelry. It's delicate, rather pretty, and directs attention away from the crookedness of the underlying teeth. What I wore certainly merited the term "metal mouth".

--It is Not Good to start five days out of seven with the bone-deep knowledge that I shouldn't have to be awake yet. This is at the top of my gripes with the school year (my kids', that is). And of course, it is a terrible idea to get my night-owl insomniac teenage daughter out of bed at 6:35 a.m. -- which leaves barely enough time for her to make the bus.

I assure you that those ideas that have gone a-glimmering were more profound. Even.

A Moment of Peace Dearly Bought

Is there any way to look at this Israeli-Lebanon ceasefire other than, "Hezbollah wins"? Or less succinctly: "Many Israelis and even more Lebanese died so Hezbollah could win"?

I hope to G-d we didn't pressure Israel into this. That would bode extremely ill for our own future in the war against Islamist jihadism.

I can find a silver lining or two. Israel now knows, though I hope its intelligence forces already knew, how sophisticated and well-prepared Hezbollah has become. The rest of the world knows it too. That's a mixed bag, but may eventually come in handy.

And maybe there's some complex and under-the-table way that this is preparation for some move by somebody against Iran or Syria. But I ain't betting on it.

reaping

Once a year, at least -- rarely, twice -- my daughters and I go to visit my parents and much other family in Los Angeles, CA. And every year, as our date of returning to Indiana bears down on us, I get to explain to one or both daughters just why my husband and I decided to leave Los Angeles and start our family so far away.

This year, my younger daughter's anguished questions focused on just why we didn't fully appreciate how weird and wrong it would seem to spend so little time in a place that feels so like home, full of family we love. She hasn't quite focused yet on the fact that every time we visit, it may be the last time my parents or aunts or uncles are there, or are healthy, or are able to enjoy our visit and their own lives.

I try to remember the reasons and the way we weighed them -- the way I weighed them. My husband had disliked southern CA from the moment he got there (seeking a major change of scene). I didn't see it as the best place to raise a family. Bloomington, IN sounded like it might be a better one. I'd lived away from my parents and the other L.A. relatives for much of my adult life up to that time. I was younger, all the relatives were younger, this part of our lives ws dimmer in the distance. My parents didn't have a slew of doctors they would have to live near, and we knew less about why they wouldn't be comfortable in Indiana -- not that I think we thought about that very much.

If I hadn't been willing to relocate, Paul and I might well have parted -- our bond was still tentative then. And of course, if anything -- even far less major events -- had been different, our children would have been conceived at different moments and they wouldn't be the same children....

It's still not right, even if I can't say (as if it would matter if I said) that I want the alternate never-leaving-L.A. future with all its implications.

two hands

On the one hand, it's frustrating and too bad that this last week of summer vacation, I'm too busy and too jet-lagged to enjoy sleeping late.

On the other hand, it's a good thing I have this last week to recover from jet lag before I have to resume getting up at a ridiculous hour.

Did Israel decide Iran had enough rope?

So Israel has decided to treat the latest act of war by Hezbollah as, by gum, an act in a war, and is fighting a war in return. Israel's ambassador to Washington is also talking very tough about Iran's part in Hezbollah's activities.

I wonder if this is as much about how to solve the problem of Iran-about-to-have-nukes as about Hezbollah. Perhaps Israel has been biding its time, waiting for Iran's interference in Lebanon to become blatant enough that (a) there'd be sufficient provocation to go into Lebanon and (b) attacking Iran would be a logical next step. If Iran's nuclear program wasn't sufficient casus belli, now Israel has a better one.

Meme offered -- jobs you'd be lousy at

As I was wondering what the heck I could post, since I haven't been posting often enough for anyone to keep checking my blog, I recalled occasional past thoughts of being a columnist. Clearly I don't have something to say often enough to be good at that job. Hence the meme: what jobs would you be lousy at, suck at, be promptly fired from?

--Cook. I barely and rarely cook, even after producing a daughter who claims to want to be a chef. When I do cook, it's either assisting her, or using the crockpot. I'd say I generally assemble meals rather than cook them.

--Taxi driver. I have overcome a fear of driving that haunted me through and beyond my 20's, but I still have no sense of direction to speak of. I could get people places, but I'd spend too long studying maps.

--Truck driver. I do not like driving anything big. My CR-V is at my limit.

--Teacher of masses of young children. I have insufficient patience, am not very playful (except verbally, to some extent), and have no idea how to control more than three kids at a time. (I have two.)

--Waitress. In college, when people typically brought coffee back to a tableful of people in the dining room, I could barely manage two cups. I do not have much upper body strength and couldn't balance anything tricky with one arm. I have a fairly bad memory, and I constantly forget what I left or entered a room for. The diners would lynch me before my first shift ended.

--Anything that requires a lot of physical strength/lifting ability.

--Con artist. I'm a lousy liar and dislike trying to lie.

Anyone else want to play?...

There shouldn't be a way to get there from here

OK, here is how the National Academy of Sciences summarizes its recent report on global temperature over the centuries:

"There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then."

And here's how the Associated Press summarizes the same report:

"It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since the Earth has run such a fever.
The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress . . . ."

Scuse me?? !

Not only in biology

I gather there has been some recent support for the hypothesis that too clean an environment is bad for children's development. If kids don't have bacteria and dirt to exercise their growing immune systems, those systems don't, in effect, learn what they're supposed to be doing, and instead go apeshit about the wrong stimuli. Result, the ongoing increase in allergies and asthma.

Is it too cute to draw a parallel between this problem and the effect of our overall societal obsession with safety? If people don't grow up in an environment with a certain baseline level of risk, if they don't learn how to handle some risk as a matter of course, what may be the permanent distortions in their social and political development, and what sort of society will they produce?...

the Dixie Chicks are dissing me

I was not particularly hot and bothered about the infamous Dixie Chicks remark (something like "we're embarrassed the President is from Texas") -- although I didn't think much of their (well, her -- the lead singer's, I guess) judgment in making this crack to an audience outside the U.S. I don't know whether it was more self-expression or pandering to an anti-Bush audience. Certainly, some of the reported reaction was way out of line. (Boycott, sure, if you feel like that. Death threats, go lock yourself up.) But I think I am by now fed up with the angry smugness and offhand condescension that has been showing up in their interviews. They seem to be making a point of telling country music listeners that the Chicks are too smart and cool and progressive to want their patronage.

So why is their new album -- consistently reviewed as not really country in sound -- going to debut as #1 on some country music chart(s)?? Do that many listeners miss their music that much??

Publicity is not always the obvious answer

So. We have personal data on millions of veterans in a laptop computer. It's stolen in a routine burglary. The chance that either the thief or the fence knows they have a gold mine of data: pretty small. Eventually, some user may stumble on this data. Chance that this user, this purchaser of a hot laptop, will have the know-how and mindset for massive identity theft, or for marketing the personal data: hard to determine.

If I had to decide whether to alert millions of veterans, giving them a chance to protect themselves but greatly increasing the chance that some bad guy would know what s/he was sitting on -- it wouldn't be an easy call, and I probably wouldn't make it overnight.

So maybe we should cut the VA some slack on this one.

Open Bed, Insert Child

My daughter liked that description of how quickly I would put her to bed if I allowed her to stay up and watch a late-evening television show on a school night. (Her usual bedtime ritual is a good deal more prolonged.)

About that wolf

I consider it simplistic and inaccurate to label Bush's actions re Iraqi WMD as "crying wolf". However, even accepting that formulation for the sake of argument, and considering the threat posed by Iran in that light, there is a fairly important aspect of the original fable that people should keep in mind:

The last time, when the villagers didn't come running, a real wolf showed up.

And the flock Bush is guarding is us.

Nice Jewish dog

It turns out our dog is well situated in our more-or-less-Jewish household. We had our seder the other night, and the dog loves both gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup.

slightly sheepish about Daylight Savings Time

I was adamantly and loudly opposed to Indiana's going on Daylight Savings Time -- especially if we were to remain in the Eastern time zone, where we don't really belong. I made a point of asking whether perhaps Gov. Mitch Daniels' mother should have said more often, "I don't care what all your friends are doing. If your friends were jumping off a cliff . . . ."

So I feel compelled to report that I am enjoying having light so late in the evening. Taking the puppy outside at 8 p.m. and not needing a flashlight is pretty neat.

I am still indignant on behalf of the schoolkids walking to, and standing at, school bus stops in darkness or near-dark. But I must acknowledge that I'm getting something good out of the change.

Bambi and Hitlerjunge Quex

I was pondering the anti-human undercurrent in many environmentalists' world view, and wondering where it comes from. What leads people to view their own group as the enemy? One answer is: propaganda. Bambi is perhaps the clearest, but far from the only story anthropomorphizing animals and omitting any humanity from the human portrait.

I happen to know from family history that this sort of storytelling can have the effect I speak of. My father grew up a Jew in Nazi Germany (in Berlin). At age 12 or 13, he, like all Berlin's schoolchildren his age, were taken to see the Nazi propaganda movie Hitlerjunge Quex. This was the story of a young German boy with Communist parents, martyred because of his loyalty to Hitler and National Socialism. My father found himself profoundly moved by the film, identifying with the boy, and -- briefly -- hating those villianous Jews....

My husband, the Hoosier Gadfly, notes that religions preaching self-abnegation have had an appeal for centuries, with Medieval Christianity an important example.

Are Harvard and Stanford as bad as Yale?

I've read a few news stories and blog posts about Yale's welcome of the former Taliban spokesman (the context definitely does NOT suggest the word "spokesperson"), Rahmatullah Hashemi, as a student. The common theme of the (few) responses from both students and the administration is moral relativism. As Penraker points out, the Yale community is more than ready to be morally intolerant of various domestic figures and positions, but where a foreigner is concerned, perish the thought.

I was a Stanford undergrad and went to Harvard Law School. (I don't usually admit the latter straight out -- for some reason I usually adopt the customary circumlocution that I went to law school "back East" -- but my point precludes adhering to that silliness here.) I wonder whether either Stanford or Harvard has a less appalling political/moral environment than that to which Yale has descended.

Fed up with yet another aspect of Islam

OK, this is f---ing ridiculous. Afghanistan, post-"liberation", is getting ready to try and quite possibly execute someone for the capital crime of converting from Islam to Christianity. What kind of religion depends on death threats to keep its adherents? What the hell is this kind of judicial set-up doing in a country with any connection to the modern world? Where are the protests from "moderate" Muslim leaders worldwide? (Maybe I just haven't heard about them yet. Any bets?) And are we, the U.S., going to apply any diplomatic muscle to get this guy sprung?

robberies and filibusters

I've noticed that in many robberies of banks, stores, etc., there's no weapon displayed -- and the news reports don't indicate that any was even mentioned. It appears to be common these days to hand someone a note saying "This is a robbery", and immediately get cash handed over. I understand that the rob-ees don't want to ask "Well, are you armed?" and get a fatal, nonverbal reply. I believe that most employers tell their employees to be very cooperative with robbers to reduce the chance of violence. Reasonable as those attitudes may be, they still feel somehow odd to me. I'm reminded of filibusters. Back when, a filibuster was work. You had to actually stand up and pontificate for hours on end. Now, a senator essentially hands the Senate a note saying "This is a filibuster", and the Senate rolls over and gives up the intended legislation. In both circumstances, neither the victim's powers of resistance nor the determination of the perpetrator are tested. Am I being an old crank to sense a whiff of decadence?

Any good enough translation software yet?

I haven't kept up on translation software -- but if there are any programs that're more than halfway decent, for translating Arabic to English (or to any other widely read language), let's give 'em a crack at the newly available trove of Saddam documents! (They are in Arabic, aren't they?)

Guantanamo and marijuana policy

I wish I could believe that anytime soon, the U.S. government would acknowledge that a number of the prisoners at Guantanamo don't need to be held, and release them. I strongly suspect that is so -- not necessarily of a majority of those held, but of some not-trivial percentage. However, any such acknowledgement would be an implicit admission of having overreacted, cast too wide a net, skipped a crucial weeding-out step (to mix my agricultural metaphors). Admitting that a government policy was a goof doesn't come naturally to governments. Continuing a misguided and counterproductive policy to avoid such an admission comes far more easily. Hence we still have not only a drug war, but an active war against possession, growth and sale of marijuana. When the DEA admits that marijuana should be taxed and sold in liquor stores and served in tea shops, I'll hope for a thorough and accurate review of detentions at Guantanamo.

pet euthanasia and capital punishment

Is there any doubt that the injections used to put sick dogs and cats to "sleep" are essentially painless? If so, a lot of pet owners would want to know it. If not, would that be a simpler approach than the multi-stage "lethal injection" for condemned humans, now the subject of several court cases?

Related question: why do states insist that lethal injections be administered by the one group -- medical professionals -- whose code of ethics prohibits doing harm? I suppose it'd be impractical to have "executioner" as a non-medical technical career -- there wouldn't be enough work to keep anyone fully employed. One hopes.

Meme: pet names for pets

I'm sure we're not the only family that gives pet names to pets. Our dog is "Sweet doggy-dog" to one, "Puppalicious creature" to another.... Anyone care to confess to any such?

Jihadists and Greens -- room for temporary alliance?

My husband, the Hoosier Gadfly, now and then comments that environmental extremists are the greater enemy, but that it appears we'll have to deal with Islamic jihadists first. It occurred to me this morning that there is some possibility we'll at some point be dealing with them simultaneously. If bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could contemplate some mutual assistance, despite fundamental differences in their world views, then mightn't these two groups, both of whom are deeply suspicious of scientific and technological progress (though willing to use same for their own purposes), both of whom are nostalgic for eras several centuries past, find ways to help each other out in the short term?

I am more worried than I used to be about the worldwide vigor of an Islam that wishes not to tolerate various democratic freedoms. The chance that environmental extremists will try to tap that energy or benefit from it in some way may not be huge, but it exists.

Climb in and stay a while

This morning my husband and I and younger daughter had the day off, and my older daughter did not. And it was very cold out. So in addition to getting up and making sure she made it out the door to the school bus, I drove her there and waited until the bus came. (This is harder to do when I have to get ready to take daughter #2 to school.) Then I came home and got back into bed, and spent some time contemplating beds, sleep, sleeping positions, expensive mattresses we don't have that may be very comfortable, etc. One thing that occurred to me is that most of the pleasure of getting into bed (leaving out any sexual possibilities) comes from knowing you'll be allowed to stay there for a while. It's an anticipatory pleasure. Having a young child or (as in our case) puppy in the household makes the prospect of staying in bed somewhat iffy.

OK, Mr. Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt asks bloggers who are discussing the cartoon controversy to answer the questions: "Are we at war with Islam? Do you want a war with Islam?" He goes on, "My answers and the answers of any sensible person ought to be 'no,' and 'no.' "

It may be almost that simple, but not quite. We are not at war with Islam in general in anything like the sense that we are at war with radical Islamic jihadism. But if Islam, in some monolithic general way, requires an end to any political commentary that could offend religious sensibilities, then it seems we are or should be at war with that demand. Using the term "at war" in this context is unnecessarily inflammatory -- unless it turns out that the Islamic world as a whole takes this demand seriously enough to condone and organize violence in support of it. I hope and so far believe that this is not the case. But let us stay tuned.

Iranian nukes, space shuttles, and the Cold War

An article in some MSM today, I forget which, indicated that many people are shrugging their shoulders and saying that well, the Iranians will get nukes sooner or later. They're counting on the roomier estimates of when, and hoping that something lucky happens by then to change the Iranian leadership or its intentions.

This is a continuation of Cold War thinking. It's a "well, we've lived with nukes this long..." approach. The difference is that it's hard to deter people who think that glorious destruction of self and populace is a good second best to glorious victory, with either outcome highly acceptable to Allah. It also reminds me of the thinking that contributed to both space shuttle disasters. Each time, those dealing with the shuttle got used to seeing certain anomalies. They weren't per spec, they weren't supposed to happen, but they kept happening and the shuttle kept making it home. Rather than blessing their good luck while feverishly trying to solve the problem before next launch, they redefined what was acceptable to include the anomalies -- since, after all, they hadn't caused any problems so far. (I'm oversimplifying, but it's that or never get it written.) (And no readers will explode as a consequence, at least not literally.)

Wake-Up Calls

The latest eruption of militant Islamic intolerance, this time over the cartoons featuring Mohammed, has served as a much-needed wake-up call to many in Europe. I won't exactly say "Ain't it great?" about intimidation and arson, but the impact these events have had, and the refusal of many European media to roll over submissively, is a nice silver lining, to say the least. Of course, not everyone wakes to a wake-up call; some just mutter a rejection of unpleasant reality and keep sleeping.

I was ready to blast the State Department for failing to defend and explain freedom of speech, but it does seem that the higher-ranking spokesfolk did do some of that, and that the reporting here at home re State Department statements has been (once again) misleading. See this post at the Volokh Conspiracy, and the discussion currently at the top of the Media archive page at Right Wing Nuthouse, entitled "More Lazy Reporting from the Media". However, as Instapundit noted, "this was not a time for nuance." Or at least not for confusion and internal contradiction. One can acknowledge that some might be offended, and still not suggested that the world would be better if everyone trod too carefully to cause such offense.

After I'd already drafted some of this post, my husband, the Hoosier Gadfly, sent me the link to this article at RealClear Politics, which semi-scoops my conceit of a wake-up call. So I'm being fair and linking to it....

T-shirts are one way to petition government

I more or less detest Cindy Sheehan, despite the magnitude of her loss, but it was outrageous of the Capitol cops to disturb her, let alone arrest her, because she wore a T-shirt with a political message. It was delightful karmic retribution that the same force then had to figure out what to do about a T-shirt with a less disagreeable political message, worn by the wife of (so I read) an influential member of Congress.

Note to everyone connected in any way with any branch of government or law enforcement: the First Amendment specifically protects "the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." If a law enforcement officer has occasion to shout "Protester!" when spotting a political T-shirt, it should be in respectful recognition of a citizen exercising this basic right -- saying "Right on!", if you will.

If Bush is happy...

In his recent Kansas appearance, and some other recent appearances and speeches, President Bush has seemed to be in a good mood. I can't imagine he'd be in a good mood if he had given up on defanging Iran, and was going to let the international muddlers handle it or fail to do so. So maybe we will be invading Iran, after all....

Warmongering, or What I Sent the President about Iran

Well, this post on the Belmont Club scared the hell out of me, just by summing up what I more or less knew so well -- so despite the insignificance of such drop-in-the-bucket actions, I sent the following email to the White House.

------

Dear Mr. President:

I write urging you, in the strongest terms, to take whatever military action is necessary to stop Iran from becoming the first – but hardly the last – Islamic jihadist nuclear power.

Invading Iraq was good long-term strategy. Invading Iran – and it will take full-scale invasion – is far more critical. Once Iran has nuclear weapons, other Islamic regimes and terrorist organizations will follow. We will have a far more dangerous situation than the Cold War, because these religious fanatics will not all, always, be deterred by the possibility of nuclear retaliation.

God helps those that help themselves. If we sit back and allow the Islamic jihadist movement to acquire nuclear weapons, what will prevent them from pursuing and quite possibly realizing their dreams of a resurgent Islamic theocratic empire in Europe and beyond? The survival of Western democracy, and of the United States, is not inevitable – but it is still achievable.

If you have a destiny, if you are President at this time for a reason, that destiny and that reason is to stop the Islamic jihadists from becoming a nuclear juggernaut. And time is short. Nor will half measures suffice. This is the most important battle – no, war – for this country since World War II at least. If we do not use all the force necessary, even if that is every soldier and bit of armament we can spare, we will only reduce our strength without reducing the threat.

I hope that this email is unnecessary, and that you have been preparing for just such action as I am urging. God be with you as you steer our course.

Sincerely,

Karen A. Wyle

---------

I'm not as religious as this message suggests, but the President is, and I can get into that mindset with not too much imaginative stretching.

All Right, My Horizons Have Expanded

The Dog has led me places I might not otherwise have gone. Like our back yard. It's more of a back forest, and for the last (blush) 16 years or so, since we moved here, I've avoided climbing around in it. Which is how I thought of it. Within a couple of weeks of our acquiring Davida, she led me back there, and I found that it was not actually intimidating. One can walk around in the fairly sparse forest, and it's not all steep and thorn-filled (though parts are).

Today, in celebration of finding some lost toys, my 9-year-old headed back there as we took the dog out for fresh air. It has been delightfully and unseasonably warm, all the way up to the upper 60's, which feels like due payback for winter coming several weeks early. Anyway, we headed down the slope toward the creek at the boundary of our property, which my daughter didn't even know was there. Davida and I went most of the way; Daughter made it all the way, triumphantly stuck a finger in the water, leaned against a tree and contemplated her achievement in happy satisfaction. Thanks, dog.

Now What

Artificial as year endings/year beginnings are, this one has had me pensive and sometimes sad or morbid. This will be the first year (in my lifetime) without my brother, who died in June. It will be a year with the dog to whom we gave his name (a decision that seemed right at the time and isn't readily changed, except via nicknames).

I am, more than on any New Year's Eve I can clearly remember, aware that the coming year -- like any year -- could bring the loss of people I love, or things I value.

But for now, the dog doesn't need my care at the moment, my older daughter is at a friend's and not nauseous enough to call for pickup, my younger daughter is playing video games with a friend, my husband is writing a story, the house is cozy, there's pumpkin bread in the kitchen, and I am grateful for all of it.

Still out here

I've been in a sleep-deprived, bronchitis-aggravated, dog-related fog for weeks, but I thought I should make a post, even if I have no clear (let alone interesting) thoughts to record.

It's a beautiful, unseasonably pleasant day with a deep blue sky, and I wish I was energetic enough to do much with it. Maybe this afternoon I'll take dog and daughter to the park -- it'd be a first for the former. She's afraid of parking lots, so she won't like the idea at first, but....

Talking to invisible dogs

Well, talking to absent dogs, to be more precise -- but invisible sounded catchier.

When I'm home alone with The Dog, and she's awake, and we're not in the middle of tug-of-war or some such, I tend to think out loud at her. Whether it's more to make her feel like she has company, or to make me feel that I do, I won't try to assess.

So now, when I'm on my own in Kroger or someplace, I find myself thinking out loud. About nothing more interesting than milk or sandwich bags. I have probably been on the verge of talking to myself in public places anyhow, but The Dog has pushed me over the line.

one of many terrific drawings

My daughter Livali is an artist and cartoonist. She drew a holiday picture involving various characters from a comic book she is writing/drawing. She wasn't able to post it on her live journal for size reasons. So I'm posting it here, Blogger permitting.

Happy Holidays, my Livali!

Love sponge with teeth

Well, we're still working on being a dog-owning household. The puppy turns out to grow like something alien -- in 2 weeks and one day, she went from 10 lbs. and change to 14 lbs. 13 oz. The duffel-bag carrier we got for her is too small -- today, puppy and I went shopping together (a great luxury Petsmart provides) and got her a plastic car crate. It could be used on a plane, but the only place I tend to fly at this stage of my life is to my parents, who most emphatically will not be hosting a dog. I am pretty boggled by how fast she's getting big. It would be nice if I could establish more complete dominance while she's still a fairly small percentage of my size.

She loves people, and is always begging for belly rubs and the like. When she's particularly happy to see someone, she wags her whole body. When she's in a crate, the rhythmic thumps of the wagging tail are kind of cute.... She's very cooperative and tolerant in most respects -- quiet on car rides, good at the vet, good with strangers. She has only one bad habit, but it's disconcerting. She lunges at legs and nips, alternately chewing on pants instead. I have strategies for coping with this -- getting her to chase a stick, making her go on a walk, dragging her inside to her playpen -- but my 9-year-old falls apart when the puppy starts this up. We have a somewhat desperate call in to a trainer recommended by our vet. My husband, Mr. Alpha Male, has no such problems. We've had him shadow us and step in when the puppy starts lunging -- too soon to say if it's helping.

Thank G-d puppies sleep a lot!

This is my life...

... repeatedly droning "Potty spot ... poop ... "at an oblivious puppy dog as I watch her chew on a rock.

We got a 3? month old Corgi-and-who-knows mutt at the shelter on Monday. We knew she was smart and/or somewhat trained -- she'd come when you clapped. (She is less likely to do so now. Guess she knew when she had to impress us....) She turns out to be paper-trained -- except she sometimes shreds and eats the paper -- and partially housetrained, and pretty good on the leash for a pup. She is not easily dissuaded from chewing on people and their clothing. She is more interested in people than toys, which is part of what attracted me to her. Downside, she wants lots of attention, and I am not a very playful person, word play aside. Word play being wasted on the pup.

We got the dog because daughter Alissa had wanted a dog for years, and she's 9-1/2, and it seemed like time to stop stalling. We did not get the dog because I wanted a dog, though I often enjoy her. She was sick for a day, and I felt maternal and protective for that day -- too bad I can't feel that way when she's healthy and chewing again.... I'm feeling some of the trapped, lost-freedom feeling I had when my older daughter was an infant, with fewer payoffs. However, there is the option, this time, of leaving the baby in a crate, or in a duffel bag in the car.

Bad grammar makes cases more fun

I was just reading an opinion from the Indiana Court of Appeals, and here was this bit:

"
While questioning Murray on the driver’s side of his vehicle, Officer Moore noticed that Murray’s eyes were watery and bloodshot, his speech was slow and slurred, and there was a strong odor of alcohol on his breath. After failing several field sobriety tests, Officer Moore arrested Murray."

I'm having fun visualizing this scene, if read literally. "After failing several field sobriety tests, Officer Moore arrested Murray." So Officer Moore failed several field sobriety tests, eh? Who administered these tests? Was it Murray, drunk as a skunk though he was? This is a comedy routine someone MUST perform! I'll suggest it to our local kids' theater....

Circular Accomplishment

Seems to me, the increasing nervousness among Republican Congressfolk, and their willingness to undercut Bush's policy by passing legislation carping at him (while he's out of the country yet), is most likely traceable to media reports of decreasing public support of the war. Which dwindling support, even if the reports of same are not slanted in themselves, is most likely the result of slanted reporting of what's happening in Iraq -- failure to mention Iraqi attitudes and Iraqi or American accomplishments that might give U.S. readers some hope that things are working out. So by selective and sometimes misleading reporting about Iraq, the press has managed to reduce even passive home-front support for our military/political operations there, and then has milked that decrease in popular support for all it's worth (or more) so as to undercut Congressional support.

Which I find disturbing.

Which does not mean I'm always critical of critical press re Iraq. I'm somewhat conflicted about the Post's scoop re secret CIA detention centers. I wish I knew more about whether the interrogation tactics they're using there are actually at all helpful in obtaining critical information on Islam jihadist plans, locations and tactics. Then I'd at least know whether the questions -- is the existence of these places disgraceful, and was the Post justified in reporting about them -- are easy or hard.

Does Zarqawi have Jordanian underlings?

The news of the slaughter in Jordan made me wonder if Jordanian Zarqawi has any Jordanian staff/underlings. And if so, whether they are as ready to kill innocent wedding parties, etc. in Jordan as Z. is. And if not, whether we might get some good news sometime, like Z. being found in the street in various bloody pieces.

Bush, Alito, and Saddam Hussein's miscalculation

I've been following the nomination of Judge Alito with great interest, and reading many articles and posts about him and opinions by him. There have been some commentators who, with some reason, have described him as less conservative than partisans on both ends of the political spectrum have painted him. Which raises the question of whether (as some liberals darkly mutter) the conservatives know something the rest of us don't, or whether they've been believing oversimplifications just as the liberals have.

Whatever the answer, the question leads me to wonder whether Bush has been playing a delicate game -- assuring conservatives that Alito is just what they've been dreaming of, while pointing out to Democrats and other non-conservatives the evidence against that view. If so, he might want to remember what turned out to be Saddam Hussein's downfall. Saddam wanted to get out from under sanctions, and apparently didn't want to count 100% on oil-money bribery -- so he apparently destroyed his WMD stockpiles or allowed their destruction, though keeping the knowledge necessary for quick rebuilding. But he wanted his neighbors to keep fearing him, so he simultaneously tried to maintain the illusion that he still had WMD's aplenty. Turned out he convinced the wrong people of the latter -- and down he went. Bush could end up undermining his conservative support, while failing to assuage liberals -- though I doubt he'll fail to the point of setting up a filibuster.

Old dog performs new trick

There's a new link at the side of this page -- the link to my new lawyer web page. I started out using a form offered by the host, but that didn't allow me to include sample briefs for folks to look at. The host's technical support was too basic to help me out. So I found some primers about html and read some instructions the host had. And I figured out what to do! And did it! And added some italics, even!

To anyone under age 25, this will look like bragging about learning to wipe one's nose. But I'm a dinosaur twice that age, and though I started working with computers before most folks my age, this is only my second attempt to do anything with even the simplest html. So I am pleased with myself!

While I'm at it, I guess I'll add the link to my wedding-photographer web page. Yes, I have many talents. Or two heads. Or something.

Words of Wisdom, apparently

If my teenage daughter thinks something I came up with is worth writing down, I guess I should offer it here...:

"There has to be a happy medium between blissful ignorance and paralyzing fear."

This could apply to many contexts, I suppose, including the one I talk about ad nauseum, our societal obsession with safety -- but it arose from a discussion of shoes. A blog entry I read about brown recluses prompted me to suggest that my kids shake their shoes out before putting them on. My daughter complained that she was now afraid to put on shoes. Hence my new-minted proverb-or-whatever.

The phrase "happy medium" always makes me think of the Happy Medium in A Wrinkle in Time -- a chronically cheerful clairvoyant.

Anywhere to go back to?

I don't have time or mental clarity, this late in the evening, to say much about the violence and destruction in France. However: it appears that a great number of people left various places in Africa and came to France, the Netherlands, and I dunno where else in Europe, presumably to escape poverty and/or find work and/or live under less oppressive governments. It doesn't seem to have worked out very well. They may be less poor than they (or their parents or grandparents) were, but they don't appear to be looking at their economic status as a glass half full. A high percentage are unemployed. And they're going to end up making their governments more oppressive, at this rate.

Fox News (online) reported that some of the rioters set fire to a middle-aged woman on crutches. If that's true, it'd sure be nice -- and quite unexpected -- if some of the rioters reacted the way Gandhi did when members of his noncooperation movement in Indiana attacked and killed (burned, if I'm remembering correctly) some Indian policemen. He called off the noncooperation tactic and went on a hunger strike until his followers went along. Of course, that'd require drawing a sharp ethical line between property destruction and torturing disabled women to death in the street.

As for solutions, oy. If I were a French policymaker, I'd be inclined to cut back drastically on immigration from Africa, if much of it is still happening, until my country had figured out how to cope with the previous immigrants and their descendants -- unless some humanitarian emergency were involved, in which case I'd be scurrying to come up with some improved intake/assimilation procedures. What about all those folks who are already in France and unhappy about their lives there? Is there any African country whose languages include French and which is welcoming new citizens with some knowledge of Western ways??? I'm not talking "send them back", a la Abraham Lincoln at some stage of his thinking, but if there were such a place, and if any of the disaffected were interested in relocating, some program could be developed to assist in that process. Those who didn't choose that option might become clearer in their minds about their own investment in France. Which still leaves what I gather are very serious French cultural obstacles to effective assimilation. Which I doubt will change soon.

Halloween dog owner etiquette (revised)

I don’t have a dog. In fact, I have never had a dog, although I’ve been friendly with other people’s dogs. So maybe my assumptions are off base. But it seems fairly obvious to me that if you have a large and fairly territorial dog, and if lots of little kids are going to be trick-or-treating at your house, and if you’re going to be opening your front door to give the kids candy, then you should do something with your dog other than leave it loose near the front door. Where the kids can wonder whether the big barking dog is going to get them.

And if a kid and/or parent expressed nervousness at this arrangement, I would consider it inappropriate to more or less tell them (even if politely and with a smile) to take a flying (and candy-less) leap.

(Fortunately, another member of the household restrained the dog. At which point, some standing and staring and other body language on my part induced the distributor of candy to hand some over.)

I need Miss Manners. What is dog owner etiquette for Halloween?

An interesting theory implicit in Alito's Casey dissent

I've been reading Judge Alito's 3rd Circuit dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It's not as scary as some are assuming (or wanting others to assume). (NPR is giving out a short and greatly oversimplified version of what he wrote.) For one thing, the spousal notification statute in question let a woman avoid telling her husband about her abortion plans if she believed the husband was not the father, or if she had reason to believe that telling the husband would lead to anyone inflicting bodily injury on her. (Ditto if the pregnancy is the result of spousal rape, or if the husband can't be found.) That leaves women who think the fetus is the husband's, as the result of consensual intercourse, and who aren't afraid that the husband will respond with violence. It does not seem inappropriate that the father should be in the loop under those circumstances. Also, the spousal notification provision was essentially unenforceable -- a woman's statement that she'd told her husband did not have to be made under oath, or otherwise under penalty of perjury. Moreover, the plaintiffs' statistical evidence seems to have been on the thin side.

What's most interesting about the dissent from a technical point of view, and the aspect that I find possibly questionable, is how Alito handles the question of which level of scrutiny applies. Alito says that the outcome depends on whether one applies strict scrutiny or rational basis analysis, and that under Webster and Hodgson v. Minnesota, strict scrutiny only applies if the statute imposes an "undue burden" on the right to an abortion. I haven't reread all of Webster or Hodgson, so for now I'm assuming he's characterizing them correctly. Alito then goes on and quotes a number of Justice O'Connor's opinions, often dissenting opinions, in order to define "undue burden". He concludes that, per these opinions, an "undue burden" most be either an absolute prohibition, a severe limitation, or a substantial limitation of access. In his view, given the evidence presented, the plaintiffs didn't make the case that the spousal notification provision met the "undue burden" test as thus defined.

But does one really interpret key language in a U.S. Supreme Court decision by looking to how its author -- rather than the Court as a whole -- interpreted that language in other opinions, including dissenting opinions? And is the answer to that question affected by the fact that O'Connor's "undue burden" opinion in Webster was a one-Justice concurring opinion?

Of course, there may not have been a lot in the way of post-Webster discussion of "undue burden" by the Court as a whole, when Alito was writing....

How can you found a movement you're already in?

Much of the reporting about Rosa Parks since her death has tracked the myth rather than the reality. For example, I've read in several places that her refusal to vacate her bus seat sparked the civil rights movement, or gave rise to, or led to the founding of, etc. etc. Ms. Parks was already active in the civil rights movement before her famous stand (sit) for bus equality. How can you found or give rise to a movement you're already part of? That her actions took the civil rights movement to another level, I readily concede.

Blog Quake Day - and a link for the lazy

The blogosphere did a terrific job of raising money for victims of last year's tsunami, and this year's hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. It's been a little slower to get up to speed helping victims of the Pakistan earthquake -- but it's getting there. Today is Blog Quake day, and many blogs are focusing on helping earthquake relief organizations raise money.

Me, I like the easy way to donate -- using Paypal. I don't need to go get my wallet and fill in a bunch of numbers. So to assist those as lazy as I, here's a relief organization that accepts Paypal donations, and offers three different funds to which you can donate -- some offering more immediate relief, others addressing long-term needs:

Association for the Development of Pakistan

If you'd like a wider choice, check the list at Desipundit.

Rosa Parks and a recent echo

When I first heard about Rosa Parks, many years ago, I didn't realize that she had been a civil rights activist before her famous refusal to vacate her seat on the bus, and that she was deliberately setting up a test case. I assumed, rather, that she had not been particularly political, and that the idea of standing up for herself was a spontaneous response to a last straw. I would guess that many in the civil rights movement implicitly encouraged such assumptions, although I'm not aware that Ms. Parks herself tried to obscure the truth. I don't think that her activist history in any way diminishes what she did -- but it makes for a different story than the mouse-that-roared version. Perhaps a less thrilling story, to some -- but I'm for knowing what really happened, when possible.

A September 19, 2005 Village Voice article stated that Cindy Sheehan "may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement." That may be true in ways the Voice didn't mean. While I don't think she was a particularly influential activist before her son's death, she was a highly political animal, anti-Bush and generally left-wing. And Sheehan herself has tried to use the popular misconception to her advantage.

Standing, or sitting, up to be counted

The blog The Truth Laid Bear is asking bloggers who have a position on the Miers nomination to state it. OK, here it is: I oppose the Miers nomination. I will not lose night after night of sleep if she's confirmed -- at least, not unless/until she issues shallow or muddily written opinions in a constitutional area I care about. Which could happen, because she appears to be an inconsistent or even mediocre writer. Which is one straw too many, for me. I had earlier suggested that it might be good to have a practicing lawyer on the Court, who would realize the importance of clearly conceived and written opinions. She does not seem like the lawyer to advance that agenda. I am also concerned about what would happen re my own constitutional hobby-horse, concerning when state courts can issue grandparent visitation orders. (These orders override the judgment of fit custodial parents about who should associate with, influence, supervise and/or care for their children. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), put the brakes on to some extent.) Miers is conspicuously disclaiming having endorsed either Griswold v. Connecticut, one of the first right-to-privacy cases, or Meyer v. Nebraska, one of the first cases establishing the fundamental right of parents to decide how to raise their children. That does not bode well for her position on the existence on constitutional limits on state interference with parental decision-making.

There are, I concede, some problems with the notion of "substantive due process" (and if you want me to sum up those problems, ask me in the comments) -- but one can rely on stare decisis as a basis for treating that concept as a done deal, or one can explore bases (e.g. the Ninth Amendment) for the same principles.

a test of whether Congress has any, even a little, integrity - plus update

Many bloggers (including Instapundit, Red State and Powerline) have been discussing the Coburn Amendment, offered by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. This amendment to a budget bill would undo the much-criticized allocation of $220 million dollars to collect a town with 8,000 inhabitants to an island with fewer than 50 inhabitants. (There is already a ferry with frequent trips between the two.) It would re-allocate that money to reconstructing the Twin Spans Bridge between New Orleans and Slidell, LA. This amendment is meeting fierce resistance. As my husband, Hoosier Gadfly, would say: un-f__king-believable.)

Power Line is urging people to write their Congressfolk. I obliged with this message:

"Dear Representative Sodrel:

I write hoping and urging that you will support the Coburn Amendment shifting money for the notorious Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" over to desperately needed bridge construction in Louisiana. There is no conceivable reason to oppose this amendment except to protect the budget-busting pork-swapping culture that has plagued Congress for too long. I look forward to hearing that you have been our stand-up guy in Congress on this issue."

I thought of saying that no Republican with any lingering notion of Republican Party principles who nonetheless opposed the Coburn Amendment should be able to sleep at night -- but I thought it might antagonize him.... Also, it didn't seem fair, since I'm not a Republican. (Or any other name brand, at the moment.)

So I hope some of y'all will go forth and do likewise....

UPDATE: The Coburn Amendment failed in the Senate, mustering something like 15 votes in support. However, my husband, Hoosier Gadfly, just came back from Alaska and informs me that there may be another side to this question. According to what he was told up there, there are two different bridges, both of whose funding would have been cut by the Coburn Amendment. One of the bridges would enable the Anchorage region to expand outward; the other, the one with an island on one or both ends, would connect an airport (on the small island) to somewhere or other. I remain dubious that these bridges are worth this large a national investment, but it just goes to show that being REALLY sure you're right is asking for karmic difficulties....

Writing a political primer

A friend of mine who has been apolitical for years, and has particularly avoided the news since 9-11, has decided it's time to find out what's been happening. She asked me to get her started. Political animal that I am, I was drooling at the prospect. We had a lunch where I did most of the talking, and threw at her more facts than anyone could absorb. She asked me to write it all down. So I'm in the process of writing a partial political primer for the formerly news-averse, or (as my husband put it) for any Rip Van Winkles out there. So far, I've only done Part 1: Who is Saddam Hussein, and what have we done about him and why? If anyone would for any reason like a copy, just drop me an email. However, I haven't fact-checked my memory, so I can only hope my errors are reasonably minor.

Note: dead animals smell bad

For about two weeks now, we have been battling a smell. The evidence suggests that an animal, most likely a squirrel, entered our attic through a hole in an overhang and then burrowed through some insulation into the wall between our kitchen and dining room. And was then inconsiderate enough to die.

I had procrastinated about getting the hole fixed because I was afraid we'd trap some little animal in the attic or the walls, which would then die and stink up the place. Ain't irony fun.

At the moment, the smell is concentrated in our dining room, which is not the ideal location for it. We tried putting out coffee grounds, which absorb odors and have a strong and more pleasant odor of their own. Problem is, coffee doesn't just absorb odors -- it acquires them. After a while, the dining room smelled like the sort of flavored coffee that zombies might order.

Now we're trying baking soda and open doors and fans, and hoping all those little bacteria work overtime.

Legal Fictions, I Mean Jury Instructions

California recently completed a big job: rewriting all its sample jury instructions so that normal people can understand them, without getting any of the law wrong in the process. I've only heard one of the rewritten ones, which sounded fine.

This needs to be done in every state, folks! Here's an example of a typical jury instruction:

"Intent is a mental state, and the trier of fact must, absent an admission, resort to reasonable inferences based upon examination of surrounding circumstances to determine whether from a person’s conduct; and the natural consequences that might be expected from that conduct, there exists a showing or inference of intent to commit that conduct."

Oh, and that would be one of dozens of similar instructions thrown at the jury. Some states now give the jury a written copy; others probably pretend to expect the jurors not only to understand the instructions on first hearing, but to remember them days or weeks later.

Riiiiiiiight. A "legal fiction" is something the law pretends is a fact, often to get around some awkward aspect of decades-old case law. (If you want a more formal definition, it's "a presumption of fact assumed by a court for convenience, consistency or to achieve justice. ") When a legal fiction goes this far, it should be called a legal delusion.

Beware men who give a damn about kids!

I'm fuming about the recently publicized list of signs that a man may be a child molester. I gather Oprah had something to do with spreading this around -- if so, she should be deeply ashamed of herself.

This list essentially suggests that any man who shows any inclination to help, nurture, or teach children who are not his own should be regarded as a likely child molester. One would think the societal disadvantages of this approach are obvious enough. It's not bad enough that many children in this country don't get enough time with their parents, or their sole parent -- now we're sidelining any male adult who might partially fill that gap. Do these people think the number of child molesters compares with the number of decent human beings who just want to show kids how to care for farm animals, or hug a troubled student, or coach a softball team? Do they think the number of kids who may encounter a child molester is great enough to impoverish the lives of many, many times that number?

I know this list is just summing up and continuing what's been going on for years. Which is no excuse whatsoever.

This skewed look at the world of adults and children is related to our society's current paralyzing obsession with safety, which I have been lamenting for years. (On this blog, I did most of it in May of this year, if anyone wants to go to the archives and look.) Most people have no intuitive understanding of what it means to live in a country with hundreds of millions of people -- let alone a world with how-many-billions-are-we-up-to-now. If they read about some nasty class of events three times in five years, they start believing such events are a looming threat, justifying curtailing otherwise normal and healthy activities, altering time-honored habits and customs. Ironically, this pursuit of safety has its own risks, and many of its own casualties -- but they are harder to sum up in an AP article or sound bite. For example, people not cured by new drugs that don't get invented or marketed don't make the headlines. More fundamentally, the effects of working so hard for safety -- the opportunities not pursued, the experiments not tried, the initiatives smothered, the lives cramped -- undermine key elements of the American spirit.

Will the tide ever turn? Will common sense, a sense of proportion, or maybe a sense of humor, ever lead us to shake off our ever-increasing restraints and get on with living?

Why A Trial Lawyer Could be Good for USSC

It occurs to me that an experienced trial lawyer could bring a useful perspective to the U.S. Supreme Court. A trial lawyer knows firsthand the effect of confusing or complex USSC opinions on lawyers and on trial judges, and hence on the individuals and businesses those lawyers and judges serve. Ditto for the effect of decisions with no majority opinion and a host of concurring and dissenting opinions.

Quake is horrible -- but a nasty thought intrudes

I really, truly, am horrified and sad about the earthquake in Pakistan-etc., and the ever-increasing casualty figures. I wish it were not too late for anyone to help thousands of people, and hope that the international aid being offered will help thousands of others. It nevertheless occurs to me that those jihadists who were smug about Katrina and Rita being Allah's judgment upon us may need to shut up for a bit.

Miers and that fable about the donkey

Looking at what's going on re the Miers nomination, I'm now reminded not of another play, but of a fable. The one about the old man, the boy, and the donkey. I don't remember the order of events, but no matter how they arrange things -- whether the boy rides the donkey, the old man rides the donkey, no one rides the donkey, or they carry the donkey -- someone is outraged, or something goes wrong. The moral is: You can't please everyone. Did Bush try to please everyone?

Harriet Miers and Thomas Becket -- a warning

There has been much discussion in the MSM and various blogs about how close Harriet Miers is to Bush, and how well he knows her, and how much has relied upon her. Some have opined that Bush is hoping to have a “friend” – a pliant vote – on the Court. I doubt he sees it quite that way – but if he did, he might want to take a look at the play Becket, by Jean Anouilh. (This was made into a wonderful movie starring a young Peter O’Toole as Henry II of England and Richard Burton as Thomas Becket. Many years later, a much older Peter O’Toole starred again in A Lion in Winter, playing – a much older Henry II.)

In Becket, Thomas Becket is Henry II’s close companion, friend, advisor, and right-hand man. He professes belief in nothing, and purports to have subordinated honor to personal and political pragmatism. (He has his reasons – but that’s another story.) When the Archbishop of Canterbury – a frequent thorn in Henry’s side – dies, Henry has a sudden inspiration:

H: … Listen, Thomas! Tradition prevents me from touching the privileges of the Primacy. You follow me so far?

B: Yes, my prince . . . .

H: But what if the Primate is my man? If the Archbishop of Canterbury is for the King, how can his power possibly incommodate me?

Becket is profoundly troubled by this scheme, and begs Henry to abandon it, but Henry insists, and forces Becket on the bishops as Archbishop of Canterbury. (He is not a priest, but is a deacon – so he can be quickly elevated to priesthood and then on up.) Becket then finds that his new position commands new loyalties and offers him a second chance at personal integrity. He ends up staunchly opposing Henry -- to the point of martyrdom -- on matters of church vs. secular jurisdiction.

I am not suggesting any close parallels between the principals in this story and those in our current political drama. Nevertheless -- lifetime tenure as a Supreme Court Justice is the most exalted position any American lawyer can attain, bearing the greatest responsibility. It would be foolhardy to gamble that a lawyer assuming that role would end up treating it as a vehicle for furthering a President’s – or a friend’s – political agenda.

Bush’s Speech to Congress – I Don’t Think

I don’t expect to read about this speech, but it sure would be interesting….

“As the Gulf Coast struggled to cope with and to recover from Hurricane Katrina, as I heard tale after tale of federal bureaucratic obstruction of relief efforts, I turned to aides and said, ‘Fix it!’ But I soon learned that they couldn’t fix it; and I couldn’t fix it. For that, we must turn to you.

“Federal civil service jobs are something close to de facto lifetime appointments, the significance of which we have recently been contemplating due to the vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, in the case of civil service positions, the problems are not derived from an erroneous hire or an individual’s shortcomings. They are endemic, due to the nature of large bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are self-perpetuating. Its members may become more involved in the life and politics of the bureaucracy than in the task for which the bureaucracy was created. They typically become more complex and hidebound as they grow. A government bureaucracy is particularly prone to the unfortunate tendencies of bureaucracies in general, because it is not in immediate and direct competition with others, and thus has little short-term incentive to be responsive to the needs of those it purports to serve. Instead, to justify and ensure their existence and growth, federal bureaucracies promulgate ever-growing masses and mazes of regulations, which entwine themselves around the economic arteries of our nation – our businesses and entrepreneurs – and threaten their continued health and vigor. And a large government bureaucracy is particularly ill-suited to any task which requires fast responses, flexibility and improvisation. We have all learned this the hard – the tragic – way in recent weeks.

“Tinkering with details will not ‘fix it.’ What we need is a complete rethinking of our government’s entire approach to getting things done. We need to find ways to decentralize without entirely abdicating oversight. We need to restructure in ways that bring back accountability and flexibility. And we need established procedures for ignoring established procedures when necessary!

“Part of this restructuring, I believe, will have to be a fundamental change in the nature of government employment. There is no reason that civil service employees cannot be judged on their performance, much as employees in private businesses are judged. We can and must retain protections against treating employees differently based on race or gender – but it is time to treat employees differently based on whether they are indeed helping the people it is their job to serve.

“[Etc. Contributions to this speech, or revisions to put it in the proper George W. style, are invited... as are corrections to my factual assumptions about civil service employment.]

Shark-Induced Survival Pressure?

It has often seemed to me that taking a shower temporarily slows or stops menstruation. I haven't found any studies confirming this, though I'm apparently not the only one who thinks it can happen. If it's a real phenomenon, I wonder if it's another sign that humans spent some important period of their development as a species living largely in water. (That hypothesis may be thoroughly debunked by now -- I read about it years ago and haven't checked up on it.) Sharks can smell blood in water from a very long way away. If we did do a lot of prehistoric wading around, women whose menstrual flow stopped upon immersion in water would have had a huge survival advantage.

A familiar theme in Germany

In the aftermath of the inconclusive German parliamentary elections, I've been reading about "Die Linkspartei (the Left Party)" in Germany, with whom both of the major parties currently say they won't negotiate, but without which neither is likely to be able to form a coalition government. Populists and leftover East German communists using coded racist language about immigrants.... As one writer put it, this party is "mingling right-wing nationalism and left-wing socialism at a time of huge economic anxiety". Hmmm. Sounds awfully familiar. Like the early 1930's. THAT went well.

Yikes.

Anyone remember Tom Lehrer's "MLF Lullaby", discussing the Germans having a finger on the nuclear button? "Some say the Germans are warlike and mean/ but that couldn't happen again/ We taught them a lesson in 1918/ And they've hardly bothered us since then...."

Nominee Roberts and definitions of scrutiny

In the Roberts confirmation hearings earlier today, Senator Biden and Judge Roberts got into an exchange about a 1982 memo, in which Roberts supposedly said that some sort of gender discrimination should not get "heightened scrutiny". Roberts explained that statutes differentiating on the basis of gender get "intermediate" scrutiny, and said that what the memo meant by "heightened" scrutiny was the more traditional "strict scrutiny", a very tough hurdle to pass. (Intermediate scrutiny requires the showing of an important, but not a "compelling", governmental interest. Also, the statute must be "substantially related" to the governmental interest, whereas in strict scrutiny, the statute must be necessary to serve that interest, and/or there must be no less restrictive means of serving that interest.)

I've been poking around in US Supreme Court precedent from before and a bit after 1982. It looks as if "heightened scrutiny" at least frequently meant "intermediate scrutiny", at least in the context of gender discrimination. See Rostker v. Goldberg et al., 453 U.S. 57, 69-70, 87 (1981); Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 238-239 (1982). However, there are cases where my quick and distracted read suggests that "heightened" scrutiny may mean strict scrutiny, or at least isn't clearly limited to "intermediate" scrutiny. See Regents University California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 296 (1978) (where I think the context in which "heightened judicial solicitude" is mentioned suggests strict scrutiny); City of Mobile v. Bolden et al., 446 U.S. 55, dissent fn. 15 (1980) (context is filing fees for voting).

So, I am a bit skeptical about Roberts' explanation, but depending on the context, maybe I shouldn't be....

what citizens of other countries may not realize

I've read about the shocked reactions of citizens of various foreign countries to the post-Katrina tragedies in New Orleans, Mississippi, etc. What they're seeing looks as if it belongs in a third world country, not in the modern, powerful United States.

I don't know enough about the media in other countries to really know what I'm talking about... but here goes anyway.

In some countries, the press is largely or entirely government-controlled. Disasters in those countries would be minimized, particularly if to show them in more detail would suggest failures in government's response. Citizens of those countries may assume that for these TV images to be broadcast, things must have fallen apart so much that government censorship can't function or can't keep up.

In Europe, it's possible that viewers don't realize how much of the mainstream U.S. media is intent on trashing the U.S. in general and anything conceivably related to the Bush administration in particular. They may thus lack the information to perceive and adjust for the media's emphasis on, and in some cases exaggeration of, the death toll, the chaos, the suffering, and its failure to cover the extent to which the relief effort was unprecedented in its scope and perhaps even in its successes.

teenagers and adventure

A young teen of my acquaintance (going on 14) doesn't like the sound of a nearby train. It sounds to her as if the universe was rushing at us to consume us (or something of that sort -- I forget the exact phrasing). I tell her that to me, a train is the sound of heading off to adventure. She exclaims most earnestly: "I don't want any adventures! I just want to sit in my room and draw!"

This young woman is a highly talented cartoonist, and does indeed like to sit and draw (and instant-message her friends, and listen to loud edgy rock music on itunes) for hours on end. She thoroughly enjoys friends and any outings with them. Is she skipping any desirable phase of growing up by brushing aside any desire for adventure, for the big and disruptive and unexpected? (That sounds more like an earthquake -- which I guess is what many adventures feel like at the time....)

relying on Toby Keith's sense of humor

I've liked Toby Keith's country music for years. I didn't, at first, register his name as I enjoyed his songs. It wasn't until "How Do You Like Me Now" that I made that connection. The song is a taunting missive to the once-popular girl back home, from a now-popular country singer. (It's "taunting" quite literally -- toward the end, there's an instrumental of the familiar playground "naaah-naaah-na-naaah-naaah" tune.) (Does anyone know whether that tune is whined at kids in other countries? In non-English-speaking ones?) Whether there's any resemblance between Mr. Keith and the song's narrator (if that's the word), I of course couldn't say.

Anyhow, I liked the song while finding the narrator's attitude somewhat annoying. He writes a "good girl's" phone number on the football field with "Call for a good time", and he's miffed that she doesn't fall for him?!?...

So I wrote a response from that girl, or by that point woman, set to the tune of the original. I'm not anywhere near as good at writing lyrics as Toby Keith, but I had fun. Though the girl/woman doesn't show much of a sense of humor. And she probably could have been nicer to the boy in high school....

I've continued to like Toby Keith's songs -- with varying attitudes to the personas adopted therein.

And here, for the brief bloglike version of posterity, all rights reserved, with apologies and thanks to Mr. Keith, is the response I wrote. I tried to post it side by side with the original, but couldn't make the formatting work -- so I'll put a verse of the original followed by a verse of the response.

Original:

I was always the crazy one
I broke into the stadium
and I wrote your number on the 50-yard line
You were always the perfect one
And the valedictorian
So under your number, I wrote "call for a good time"
I only wanted to get your attention
But you overlooked me somehow
Besides, you had too many boyfriends to mention
and I played my guitar too loud
How do you like me now?

Response:

The night we got the first lewd call,
I heard my ma cry down the hall--
she didn't think it was much of a joke.
I told her not to worry much,
it was just some jackass with a grudge --
I guess those words were the truest I've spoke.
Maybe you wanted to get my attention,
but boy, what it showed about you --
You had no clue what a girl could've cared for --
So what if your dream came true?
Why should I like you now?

Original chorus:

How do you like me now,
Now that I'm on my way?
Do you still think I'm crazy,
standing here today?
I couldn't make you love me, but I always dreamed about
Singing on your radio --
How do you like me now?

Reply chorus:

Why should I like you now,
just 'cause you think you're hot?
With everything you are, think of
everything you're not!
Making it to the big time
was never what it's about.
You may win a Grammy, but
why should I like you now?

Original, next verse:

When I took off to Tennessee,
I heard that you made fun of me --
Never imagined I'd make it this far
Then you married into money, girl --
Ain't it a cruel and funny world
He took your dreams and he tore them apart
He never comes home and you're always alone
and your kids hear you crying down the hall
Alarm clock starts ringing, who could that be singing
It's me, baby, with your wake-up call
How do you like me now?

Response, next verse:

I've made mistakes and I have paid,
but it's not just mistakes I've made --
I have my kids, and
I'm glad they're not yours!
If you want someone who's in awe
of every voice on the radio,
I'm sure you'll find some on
all of your tours!
I'm often alone and yes, I do get lonely --
but boy, it would never have worked.
It's not just that you played your guitar too loud, boy --
it's that you were always a jerk!
Why should I like you now?

Why "Yo Mama" Isn't Slander

This morning, I was musing about whether insults of the "your mother [insert obscene activity here]" variety would constitute slander. Slander is a verbal false statement made to someone other than the subject of the statement -- and by definition, "your mother [etc]" statements are made to someone other than the mother. And it would be quite a coincidence, in most cases, if they were anything but false. I wondered whether the fact that such statements were meant to insult, rather than to persuade -- that the content was understood by all concerned to be false -- would keep the statement from being slanderous.

A little homework reminded me that to be slanderous, the statement must be one that would harm the reputation of the subject. If it's not meant to be believed literally, and would not be believed, then no harm, no foul (except possibly the language used), no slander.

Malevolent Design

At breakfast with friends this morning, someone mentioned that Daniel Schorr had asked whether Hurricane Katrina could be considered consistent with the notion of "intelligent design". Someone else mentioned the tsetse fly as incompatible with the idea of a loving designer-creator. However, there's nothing about the intelligent design hypothesis that requires the Designer to be benevolent. How about teaching Malevolent Design as an alternative explanation in biology classes? Will someone, pretty please, propose this to the Kansas Board of Education?

Crying Wolf about Supreme Court

Justice Rehnquist's death at this time will, I think, show the down side of the decision by opponents of the Bush administration to gear up against the Roberts nomination.

Roberts is superbly qualified to be on the U.S. Supreme Court. His records suggests that he will not be reckless in approaching precedent, and will justify any decisions with painstaking and scholarly reference to the Constitution and prior USSC cases. He is less predictably conservative than many other basically-qualified candidates Bush could have picked to replace Justice O'Connor. Yet because Bush picked him, and because he is likely to ally with conservatives in some case somewhen, the opposition has rather visibly strained to find credible reasons to oppose his nomination.

Now that Bush has a chance to replace Rehnquist, he is likely to pick someone more obviously conservative, as Rehnquist was more obviously conservative than O'Connor. Yet for most observers not already members of the choir, the likely objections to the new candidate will sound like somewhat dubious echoes of the less well-founded objections raised to Roberts. Crying wolf is a very short-sighted strategy.

UPDATE: Obviously, I didn't predict what actually happened. Given O'Connor's promise to stay until her replacement was confirmed, it made eminent sense for Bush to move Roberts over to the Chief Justice vacancy. Bush may or may not go for a tough conservative the next time around. If he doesn't pick someone glaringly controversial, the cry-wolf analysis still makes sense to me.

In trying to find out whether the New Orleans schools had started before Katrina, I did a Google search to find out what county New Orleans was in. I found a site that is gruesomely out of date: all about New Orleans real estate, real estate values, realtors.... Links included "View New Orleans Homes for Sale" and, even worse, "What's My Home Worth?"...

I also found a long, long list of schools in New Orleans. When, if ever, will those schools have students again? How many of the students who should have gone there this fall will return someday?

I finally found the info I was looking for. Schools in New Orleans started on August 18th. An article described the school system as in "turmoil" -- because of deteriorating buildings and budgetary and administrative messes. What's a strong enough word now for what has happened to New Orleans schools?

What made me start searching was a thought that sickened my heart, for the who's-counting time today. I thought of kids starting school not long before the storm hit, some in new schools or in school for the first time, meeting their teachers, and some of them coming home in happy relief that they liked their classrooms, their teacher was nice, their best friend was in the same class....

Damn, damn, damn.

Sinking In, so to speak

My reaction to the horrible situation in New Orleans, Biloxi, etc. is very like my reaction to 9-11 in one respect: it took a while for me to realize how many people were trapped in the disaster. When I first saw one of the towers collapse, I hadn't yet had a chance to find out whether the towers had been evacuated. I hoped they were nearly empty. When I found out otherwise, I had a weird, hollow, disoriented feeling at having seen something whose tragic dimensions I hadn't understood.

I had been reading Glenn Reynolds' urgings that people evacuate, days before Katrina hit. I didn't know how many were left in New Orleans, hadn't known where else the storm would hit. I hadn't comprehended how logistics and lack of resources would make it hard or impossible for many people to leave. I'm only now understanding how many.