Eric Alterman has a list of relief agencies and philanthropies that are providing assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, here.

There has been an unhealthy desire of many bloggers to use Katrina to justify their political position, whether pro- or anti-Bush. Hurricanes of the size and devastation we've seen this week, although rare, do happen, and will continue to happen, regardless of whether we deal with global warming, maintain the wetlands, or keep a sufficient National Guard presence in the homeland. Of all people, the son of Robert F. Kennedy should be the last person who uses human misfortune as orginating from the temper of a vengeful god. And rightists who are attempting to shift the blame to the state and local government of Louisiana as a way of scoring racist points (not to mention the coverage of "looting", which is suspiciously focused on African-Americans) may try to explain the similar destruction in Republican Mississippi and Alabama.

Anyone would be hard-pressed to point to a single policy that this President pursued that would have alleviated the damage, or stengthened our ability to protect the Gulf Coast from such a disaster, although it's not Bush's (or Congress') fault New Orleans is 20 feet under water; it just happened. Being unprepared for the Worst Case Scenario is an all-too-human fault. That was true last week, before the hurricane, and it will be true next week as well. Partisan blame has nothing to do with the immediate problem, which is saving lives.

But if the Democratic Party doesn't heed the lessons of this tragedy, than it truly is unworthy to be an opposition party. As with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean last year, we, as a species, should be well past the point where thousands of people get killed in a disaster of this magnitude. Tsunami warning systems, reinforcing dikes, retrofitting building to withstand most earthquakes: we can do all of that, right now. We know Bush and the Republican Congress have a misplaced set of priorities, and that money has been drained from FEMA to pursue less important objectives. But what have liberals done to sound the trumpets? What did Clinton do? Why was the possibility that a disaster like this could strike perceived by all sides as less important in the last election than abortion or gay marriage?

As a society, our first priority should be to protect each other from predictable disasters, even before we focus on luxuries like fighting wars and such. This wasn't the first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans is not the first American city to be nearly destroyed by such a disaster. Even if it is in poor taste to immediately point accusatory fingers at your ideological adversaries right now, it is not inappropriate to ask what we do now to make sure that something like this, or something like the Christmas Day Tsunami, does not have the same impact on humanity in the future.

UPDATE: A challenge to progressive bloggers. Clearly, this project is going to entail more than just donating money and blogging up a storm.

Why Bush sucks, or at least why that suckiness has brought us to defeat in the War on Terror. To put it another way, if Clinton had been President, is there any doubt that at the very least, bin Laden would have been killed or captured by now? Or that Iraq would have been pacified? Of course not. I'm not saying he could have prevented 9/11, or that there wouldn't have been other problems with terrorism, but Clinton would have done a better job managing them. Elvis was knowledgeable, listened to other people, and knew how to charm his political adversaries. Bush, on the other hand, is an asshole, perhaps the biggest asshole in the White House since Nixon, but without Tricky Dick's shrewdness and understanding of the big picture.

To answer Prof. Kleiman's question, the last (and heretofore only) child of a President who was eligible to serve in the Armed Forces at a time of war, but failed to do so was...John Payne Todd, step-son of James Madison. Very interesting character, that Mr. Todd. He was the only surviving son of Dolley Madison from her first marriage, and was still a toddler when his mother met the future President in 1794 (at the time, Todd's guardian was a friend and political ally of Madison's named Aaron Burr). When the War of 1812 started, he had just turned 20.

He seems to have been spoiled by his mother, and spent much of his early years at school, far away from the political world his parents occupied. He quickly gathered some worrisome vices, including a proclivity for drinking and gambling that would, over the fullness of time, bankrupt his widowed mother. Rather than putting the boy in harm's way, at a time when the British were sacking the White House, his step-father sent him on a diplomatic mission to Europe in 1813. By all accounts, he embarrassed himself on the junket with his public drunkenness, and the nation remained at war for two more years.

In short, nothing at all like the current situation....

Headline of the Year.

Another newspaper dumps Ann Coulter, in light of her recent mocking of the brave firemen and police officers of New York City.

Matt Welch brings up an interesting point: that the people who enable this bigot always justify their tolerance by saying what a "funny" or "nice" person Ilsa is in real life. I think there ought to be a circle in hell reserved for people who are willing to excuse those who are hateful simply because they have a genial manner. C'mon, Josef Stalin had a very biting sense of humor; Hermann Goering also could be quite charming and witty, when the occasion demanded it. The fact that Ms. Coulter can be generous to her friends or occasionally crack a joke about herself is insignificant, when compared to the debasement she has brought to political rhetoric in this country.

I used to have a friend in law school who was a social acquiantance of Alexander Cockburn, the Stalinist apologist for The Nation. Supposedly, he was quite the raconteur, with a flirtatious charm and a passion for the vintage Ford Thunderbird. He sounded like a pretty interesting character, and I can appreciate the temptation to associate with such notoriety. But not everyone is entitled to my good will, and especially not those who gloss over Soviet genocide. With the Coulters and Cockburns of the world, it's important for the rest of us to set some standards, lest we succumb to the temptation of political relativism.

Free Judy Miller ?!? To even make that demand shows an enormous amount of entitlement and privilege. She's a percipient witness in an on-going criminal investigation, a court having determined that her testimony is critical, and her silence leads to the suspicion that she may have been a source for a criminal act. The most generous interpretation of her actions is that she's protecting an anonymous source who gave her disinformation in order to justify the outing of an undercover agent; the least generous is that she was, in fact, the disseminator.

Reporters have no more of a First Amendment right to be a part of a criminal conspiracy than any other citizen. Let her rot.

It took only two years for Ahnolt to reach the same low level of support that it took Grey Davis five years to attain. Believe it or not, he's even more unpopular in California than George Bush is in the rest of the country.

YBK [Part 16]: Summertime is traditionally the coolest period of the year for bankruptcy filings, while spring and fall usually see most of the action. This is not surprising, since consumers always have big-ticket expenditures around the holidays at the end of the year, and family vacations and weddings in the middle; not until they get their first credit card bill afterwards do they finally begin the overdue process of reevaluating their debt situation.

Whether this summer will be any different may be critical to whether there is another Black Friday in October ten weeks from tomorrow. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, bankruptcy filings soared to a record level in the quarter ending June 30, 2005. A total of 467,333 bankruptcies were filed, surpassing the previous quarterly record by over 7%, and as I mentioned last month, it beat the same period last year by 12%. Again, this has happened without any significant gains occurring in California, which has disproportionately benefitted from the Housing Bubble.

Apparently, the American Legion leader who's been so vociferous in denouncing those peaceniks opposing the President got as close to the frontlines during 'Nam as the President did....

In what is becoming a hardy perennial, yet another article on the death of motion pictures. It runs through the whole litany of reasons, from formulaic pictures, to excessive in-theatre advertising, to the advent of technology that brings a comparable visual experience into the privacy of your own home, as well as a new claim (that the publicizing of celebritydom has made the "real life" antics of stars more entertaining than the films they appear in) that can barely withstand the giggle test. It concludes with the announcement of what may be a sea change in philosophy at some of the studios:

With the task so large, and so very complex, Hollywood is still grappling with how to broach solutions.

[Michael] Lynton (Sony) said he would focus on making "only movies we hope will be really good." At Fox, executives said they are looking to limit marketing costs. At Universal, [Marc] Shmuger said he intends to reassert "time and care and passion" in movie production. Some of his own summer movies, he conceded, should never have been made.

He declined to name them.

Mr. Shmuger, it should be pointed out, has been the Veep at Universal since December, 2000, so it's not like he's blasting what others greenlit.

IMHO, you can boil all these explanations down, and what you will come up with is that the long-term trends have pointed to declining movie attendance since the late-1940's. If given a choice, most people would prefer to do something at home with their families rather than go out, and technological advances now mean that the one big advantage that motion pictures still had over television, the visual experience, is almost gone.

It's not a question of scripts, or cellphone noise, or expensive popcorn; once the potential movie consumer starts asking himself why he has to go see something on a movie screen rather than waiting until it comes out on DVD, the bar gets set much higher, and it's not something that will go away simply because the studios decide to release better movies. In other words, no matter how good the movie, if it doesn't promise the viewer a sumptuous visual treat, as with the Lord of the Rings movies or Revenge of the Sith, or an excuse to communally experience an uncommonly hilarious or traumatic film, he would just as soon stay home.

Fund-Raising !! Fund-Raising !!

I haven't done this before, but I thought I'd avail myself of the opportunity to do some fundraising for a truly worthy charity this week: me.

I've been doing this for three and a half years now, and I have always maintained my amateur status. But I love writing, much more than I what I actually do for a living, and if I'm going to devote the time necessary to be a writer, I need some help.

So if you have a few dollars to swing my way, the PAYPAL button will point you in the right direction, and you will have my undying gratitude...thank you.

Say It Ain't So, Lance: Well, it probably ain't so. The paper that broke the story, L'Equipe, has been out to get Armstrong for years, and the problems with the chain of custody concerning the urine sample probably won't get this case out the arraignment stage. Nice try....

Bring me Wallace, alive if possible; dead...just as good. Seven hundred years ago today, Sir William Wallace was drawn and quartered by the forces of King Edward I.

In a column from last week that has been approvingly cited elsewhere, New Republic writer Jonathon Chait questions the validity of the notion that a veteran has a special moral claim to comment on foreign policy, asking:

One of the important ideas of a democratic culture is that we all have equal standing in the public square. That doesn't mean stupid ideas should be taken as seriously as smart ones. It means that the content of an argument should be judged on its own merits.

The left seems to be embracing the notion of moral authority in part as a tactical response to the right. For years, conservatives have said or implied that if you criticize a war, you hate the soldiers. During the Clinton years, conservatives insisted that the president lacked "moral authority" to send troops into battle because he had avoided the draft as a youth or, later, because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

So adopting veterans or their mourning parents as spokesmen is an understandable counter-tactic. It was a major part of the rationale behind John Kerry's candidacy. The trouble is, plenty of liberals have come to believe their own bleatings about moral authority. Liberal blogs are filled with attacks on "chicken hawk" conservatives who support the war but never served in the military.

(snip)

The silliness of this argument is obvious. There are parents of dead soldiers on both sides. Conservatives have begun trotting out their own this week. What does this tell us about the virtues or flaws of the war? Nothing.

Or maybe liberals think that having served in war, or losing a loved one in war, gives you standing to oppose wars but not to support them. The trouble is, any war, no matter how justified, has a war hero or relative who opposes it.

Sheehan also criticizes the Afghanistan war. One of the most common (and strongest) liberal indictments of the Iraq war is that it diverted troops that could have been deployed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Are liberals who make that case, yet failed to enlist themselves, chicken hawks too?

To answer Mr. Chait's question, yes, absolutely. I don't happen to care for the word "chickenhawk", as it conjures up an association with pederasty, preferring instead the word "coward", but liberals like myself who support sending our troops to fight the remnants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without being willing to volunteer myself are as cowardly and gutless as Cheney, Bush, Hitchens, and the rest of the neocons, all of whom became more vociferous in support of an aggressive foreign policy once they were safely out of harm's way.

In fact, I have less of an excuse. When the President commenced hostilities with the Taliban in October, 2001, I was 38 years old. I probably wouldn't have been the optimal material for a recruit (think "Private Pyle" from Full Metal Jacket in terms of body type), but older men than I volunteered. I'm single, with no children, and the type of legal practice where I could afford to suspend operations for a time without hurting my clients. And I supported our fight in Afghanistan, as did most of the rest of the human race.

When Pat Tillman volunteered for duty, almost a full year after 9/11, and months after the Taliban had fled into the mountains, he wasn't much younger than I, and he was in an occupation that had a very narrow timeframe for him to excel. He went anyways, and never came back. Tillman was a hero; I'm not.

And that is why the story of Casey Sheehan resonates, and why his mom's vigil has so captured the public's imagination. Casey Sheehan did not have to die in the service of his country, but he chose to do so. I have no idea what mixture of idealism and calculation went into his decision, but he made a choice to put himself in danger, because our democratically-elected leaders told him that his country needed him. And as a result, he's dead.

Now that his life is over, his mother, like so many other parents who've gone through the hell of having to bury a child, asks why he had to die. Was it to punish Iraq for the deaths of September 11? There's no evidence Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. To protect the "homeland" from WMD's? Iraq, as it turns out, didn't have any. To fight "Islamofascism"? Saddam was one of the most repugnant dictators who ever lived, but he was kind of weak on the "islamo-" part of the equation, and anyways, the constitution that's being drafted doesn't seem that much different than the laws governing Iran or Saudi Arabia. And, of course, Al Qaeda is more powerful than ever.

I'd say Ms. Sheehan has a right to some answers, as do the rest of us. And yes, Mr. Chait, giving greater moral weight to the opinions of those, like Ms. Sheehan, who've paid the ultimate price, while disregarding the views of those who claim that in spite of this being the most important cause of their generation, they don't have to sacrifice, is only fair. Realizing that such a cost must be borne by people like the Sheehan family is the only way one the "content of an argument" should be judged on its merits.

Museum of Retreads: Where the Spice Girls, Jar-Jar Binks, David Hasselhoff and Anna Kournikova still matter...at your local Ninety-nine Cent Store. [link via Defamer]

YBK [Part 15]: The nation's paper of record finally reports on the bankruptcy boom that began with the passage of the new law. What's interesting about the NY Times article is that it indicates that the states where filings have gone up most dramatically are those that have been untouched by the Housing Bubble, like Idaho, Indiana, Ohio, Texas and Utah. Residents in those states can't stave off the debt collector when times are tough by borrowing on the equity of their home, so they often have no choice but to file.

The YBK trouble will occur when the bubble begins to burst elsewhere, in states like California, Massachusetts and New York. As one of the Volokh Conspirators notes, 61% of all new mortgages in California are interest-only, no-money-down deeds of trust, where the borrower agrees to incur a sizeable debt on their home in the expectation that they will be able to refinance or sell at a higher price down the line, before monthly payments at a prohibitively higher level kick in. If they are unable to do that, the borrower has two options: either file a Chapter 13, and try to repay the arrearage over a period of time, or simply default, and allow the lender to foreclose.

The result is scary to think about. Lenders, who are limited to what they can recover in a foreclosure to the actual value of the property plus costs, will lose their figurative shirts. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which exist to alleviate the burden for low and middle income borrowers to buy a house, could collapse, requiring a massive government bailout that will dwarf the S&L bailout in the '90's. Unsecured creditors, like the credit card companies that so aggressively lobbied Congress to pass its wish-list, will see a lot of their loans vanish in bankruptcy, especially non-delinquent accounts. And for homeowners, the expectations that were generated by the steady, dramatic rise in home values may make the fall especially galling. We might be staring into the abyss if the bubble begins bursting before October 17.

Wow. A law prof with a blog doesn't perform the one ethical requirement all attorneys must obey, that of performing due diligence, then complains that others are being "uncivil" to point that out? Unfreakingbelievable. [link via ODub]

Duke Cunningham is not the most sympathetic of victims, but there is something very disturbing about the lis pendens placed on his Rancho Santa Fe mansion (or, as they would call it in Texas, his "ranch"). It is based on a "secret" civil suit, filed but not served on the defendant, which alleges he is the beneficiary of a bribe, and the lis pendens is the first step toward the oft-odious use of a civil forfeiture claim. The lawsuit is being kept a secret so as to not give away evidence against the Congressman, which makes it next to impossible for him to defend himself. His only option is to move the court to release the lis pendens; the government will undoubtedly argue that to present evidence justifying their case would imperil ongoing criminal investigations, as if a politician receiving a bribe was tantamount to a plot by Al Qaeda. He may be a sleazy politician, but in the eyes of justice he must be seen as innocent.

Please tell me the puzzle in this morning's LAT was not rated "diabolical"...I've become a bit of a sudoku fiend the past few weeks, so I know that any "diabolical" puzzle has to be one that gives you few leads and much guessing. Any sentient being should be able to solve the "easy" puzzles without resorting to notes; giving the highest rating to a puzzle that I was similarly able to solve in ten minutes does violence to the English language, and frankly insults all past and present Sudoku Masters. I'm just not that good yet.

Religion of Peace: Heh. Indeed.

Law of Unintended Consequences, Part 145: Dwight Meredith, another blogger who passes the time away by practicing law, points out the biggest reason why frivolous lawsuits happen; the "tort reformers" themselves. In reference to the investigative series in the LA Times this week, he notes:

Part of the tort reformers' narrative is that greedy lawyers push clients into bringing marginal law suits. That may be true in some class action suits in which the lawyer is committed to a certain amount of work regardless of whether the class is large or small but in everyday individual suits, it is almost always the prospective client who is pushing the hardest for a suit to be brought.

The client has been told over and over by the tort reformers and the media that a jury may award him the riches of Croesus regardless of whether he has suffered significant damage and regardless of whether he has been wronged. It is not surprising that prospective clients are eager to collect.

If the tort reformers and the media provided a more accurate picture of the nature of the litigation system, fewer people would be so eager to sue. The tort reformers do not really care if people bring frivolous suits or potentially meritorious suits with small damages. The frivolous suits lose early and often. The trivial suits do not cost much. The tort reform lobby is quite willing to accept an increase in trivial suits if they can create a political climate that allows them to limit the exposure of businesses and insurance companies on the really bad cases. Perhaps the media should expose that game. It would not even have to make stuff up.

[link via Charles Kuffner]

...to err, DeWine: As if his heartbreakingly-close loss last month didn't caused enough pain, now comes word that any possible U.S. Senate run by Paul Hackett in Ohio next year has now been doomed by the Curse of Zuniga: Kos has predicted his victory.

File this under the "Who Knew He Was Still Alive" category: Tonight, Bobby Bragan became the oldest manager in professional baseball history when he helmed the Fort Worth Cats of the independent Central League to an 11-10 victory. Bragan, who is just three months shy of his 88th birthday, previously managed several major league teams, as well as the legendary Hollywood Stars of the PCL in the mid-50's.

I'm sorry, but this just blows me away. My father, who died seven years ago at the age of 61, used to tell me anecdotes about his beloved Stars, and their manager during his boyhood years, Bobby Bragan. Bragan used to pal around with a young actor and baseball fanatic named Jack Webb, who according to an apocryphal tale, later decided to playfully wink at his buddy by giving a character he created, Joe Friday, a badge number that referenced a certain legendary baseball statistic. For a few seasons, the Stars decided to play a few games each summer in shorts, drawing the derision of much of the sports media in the country; Bragan was their manager.

In terms of having celebrity backing, the Stars made the Lakers seem like the Clippers. Besides the aforementioned Webb, Jack Benny, Gary Cooper, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and Laurel & Hardy were regular fans; Elizabeth Taylor was even a batgirl one season. And of course, Raft wouldn't have been caught dead at Gilmore Field (next door to Farmer's Market and CBS-Television City) without his "associates", Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen.

Jeez, the guy managed Carlos Bernier. He managed against the late Gene Mauch, when Mauch was still a minor league player (with the L.A. Angels).

It's like finding out Al Lopez is still alive....

Two points, concerning what is becoming an increasingly dull debate in the blogosphere:

1. The use of racist and sexist vulgarities against non-white bloggers is always uncalled for, no matter what they write. And that even includes someone as racist and vile as Michelle Malkin. Just don't go there.

2. Those who are unwilling to repudiate the bigotry that streams out of websites like Malkin's and LGF have no credibility when it comes to speaking out on this issue. Go fart somewhere else.

UPDATE [8/17]: What he said.

She's been snubbed by the President. She's been shot at, seen a local thug desecrate a memorial to fallen servicemen near her camp, and insulted by complete strangers. She's been falsely accused of anti-Semitism based on a probably fake e-mail, had her motives questioned for having the audacity to question the war, and had her private life targetted by the revanchists of the Right. And of course, she has had to grieve the loss of a son, which a national pundit, the adult children of whom are not in uniform, had the temerity to call a "piffle".

She is Cindy Sheehan, the woman who symbolizes the crystalizing opposition to the war in Iraq. And, according to this blogger, she's doing it all to divert attention from...the Air America "scandal".

The Los Angeles Times has a good investigative series this week about the "tort reform" movement, and in particular its use of bogus or exaggerated anecdotes, and the reference to inflated jury awards, to argue its case to the public. The corporate lobby, for example, often mentions the lady-who-spilled-coffee-and-sued as an example of how the system has run amok, without mentioning some other telling details (such as the third degree burns the lady suffered when she spilled the caffeinated magma over her lap). Even worse, it will refer to high jury awards without mentioning that the verdict was later overturned, or the award reduced, on appeal. Due to the prevailing bias against lawyers, the public (and more importantly in this case, the media) buy stories that are as factual as letters to the Penthouse Forum.

As long as we're on this point, why exactly should even the most frivolous, bad faith awards be detrimental to the economy? It's not as if the money leaves the country or disappears; it simply goes from one sector, corporations, to another, consisting of consumers. The ambulance-chasees, as it were, then spend their ill-gotten gains on items such as housing, food, and various consumer items, boosting the economy. The price of goods may theoretically increase to accomodate the higher legal costs, but if more consumers have more money to spend, what's the problem? Why is it more important to protect Exxon or Phillip Morris from boneheaded juries than it is to protect consumers from the same?

Swift'd: It appears that Samgrass, Drudge, and others have been conned by a bogus e-mail about Cindy Sheehan.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy: It has been said that LBJ knew that South Vietnam was lost when Walter Cronkite came out in favor of withdrawal, but Armstrong Williams ?!? [link via John Cole, who uses a much better headline on his link]

Quickie Trivia Answer: Tampa Bay. I didn't give credit to those who guessed too many teams.

The Nationals have hosted every team in the National League this year, save Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Frisco, as well as two of the three AL expansion teams (Seattle and Toronto) since 1971. And of course, before moving to Arlington, the Senators played the remaining eleven American League teams. The catch: Washington played in the National League for a few years in the 19th Century; the Reds, Cards and Giants all previously visited D.C. the last time the city had a team in the Senior Circuit, in 1899.

Volokh Conspiracy is generally considered by lefty bloggers to be the best conservative blog out there. It's intelligent, provocative and fun, and for a lawyer like myself, it is indispensible in finding out what the other side is thinking without the demeaning, partisan tone that exists elsewhere. When the competition consists of nothing more than posts of "Heh. Indeed", "Religion of Peace?" and "Wankers", and when argument is limited to the banal overuse of the word, "liar" (which, among bloggers, means "a person who stated something that I consider to be factually incorrect"), the VC is an invaluable resource.

So it's a bit of a disappointment to read Prof. Volokh's list of "supporters" of the insurgency in Iraq. Inspired by the death of an American journalist a few weeks back (originally attributed to the insurgency, but more likely the result of his having run afoul of Shi'ite bigots upset with his plans to marry a local), the professor recently asked his readers for examples of Westerners who support the Iraqi insurgents. By any fair meaning of the term, that should be limited to those who've provided rhetorical support not only for the insurgents' goals, but also those who have cheered their tactics, including the killing of American G.I.'s and murder of civilians.

Of the people mentioned on the site, they are either are marginal political wack-jobs, such as George Galloway, or some professor emeritus back east, or they are people whose past statements have been so blatantly taken out of context so as to earn the most scornful term that can be used by a blogger, "dowdification". That would include the most famous American on the list, Michael Moore, who is there because he compared the insurgents to the Minutemen and the Viet Cong, and predicted that like those forces, they would ultimately win. Anyone who has seen Fahrenheit 911 knows that although Moore opposes the war, he is not anti-G.I., nor has he glossed over the horrors of terrorism.

Another example concerns former British Cabinet minister Clare Short, because she supposedly told a Dubai "newspaper" in an interview that the cause Osama bin Laden was fighting for was "just", and that the insurgents were analogous to the French Resistance during WWII. Criticism of the latter is simply political correctness; the analogy she drew between the Resistance and the insurgents was that they were fighting an occupying army, not that their goals were equally praiseworthy. And the former statement was in reference to a book about bin Laden that Ms. Short was citing to the interviewer, and had nothing to do with whether or not she supported Al Qaeda. Had Prof. Volokh decided to do some actual research on the subject, he might have come across this article, written by the same Clare Short only a few weeks ago:

"Let it be proclaimed without qualification: the messianic millenarianism of Osama bin Laden is a form of fascism that has no place in any society that believes in or aspires to freedom.

But we need to think more ambitiously still. The objective should be to get an international consensus, including the leadership of the Muslim and Arab world, which places all attacks on civilians and non-combatants in a war situation beyond the pale. We have, fortuitously, a series of opportunities to advance this seemingly simple, but until now impossible agenda." (emphasis mine)

Well, if you believe the professor, it seems the Right Hon. Clare Short was a supporter of terrorism before she was against it. More logically, though, you could conclude that maybe her earlier remarks were jumbled, taken out of context, or even misquoted.

If guess if you try hard enough, and cherrypick your source material on Google, you can prove that anybody supports the terrorists. I just thought that wasn't the sort of rhetorical game a law professor ought to play.

Today's class assignment is to read Bray v. Alexandra Clinic (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court decision which has recently played such a prominent role in the John Roberts' nomination. Roberts is getting a bum rap for his role in writing an amicus brief in favor of the defendants' position whilst at the Solicitor General's office. Notwithstanding the fact that the defendants included some pretty unsavory characters, an attorney should be allowed to question the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, or the treatment of prisoners at Git-mo or Abu Ghraib, without being called "pro-terrorist"; the same standard should be applied when deciding whether it is appropriate to use a particular federal law to prosecute people who blockade abortion clinics. Since the high court ultimately agreed with his position, it begs credulity to argue that Roberts' position was extreme.

NARAL's ad is the leftish equivalent of Roger Simon's blanket condemnations of "objective pro-fascists" behind every tree. It was a stupid, counterproductive ad, and did nothing to weaken Roberts.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

...and the big fool says to push on.

Back from a well-deserved holiday, Frank Rich, on the ongoing debacle in Iraq:

Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him.

(snip)

The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.

Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

Finally, some good news from the bankruptcy front: the state that has the highest per capita rate of bankruptcy filings, Utah, has seen a decline in filings this year, a trend that continued in July. Utah also has had the lowest growth rate in home values of all 50 states since 2000. I might also point out that here in the Central District of California, after only a slight increase in June, 2005, the number of filings actually declined last month, according to my unofficial count.

UPDATE [8/24]: Spoke too soon. According to the official figures just out, there was a slight increase last month as well, albeit barely over a percent. Again, the increase is entirely due to a moderate rise in the number of Chapter 7 cases; Chapter 13 filings, which reflect the strength of the housing market, are way, way down. So far, so good; the canary hasn't keeled over yet.

Quickie Trivia: Name the only major league baseball team(s) to have never played a regular season game in Washington D.C., as of today?

The otherwise fine libertine site Hit&Run goes into my blogroll penalty box this weekend, for this excruciating pun.

As if the Catholic Church's recent endorsement of creationism isn't bad enough, now comes the story that B-16 intends to grant plenary indulgences (ie., the blanket forgiveness of sins to erase purgatorial debt) to participants of World Youth Day next week. If the term sounds somewhat familiar, it was the sale of said indulgences by the Church that led Martin Luther to post the 95 Theses on the cathedral door at Wittenburg in 1517. [link via Nicholas von Hoffman, at HuffPost]

George Bush's most important legacy might be the creation of a solid, dependable liberal voting bloc consisting of...veterans. To wit, the story of Army Pvt. Terry Rogers, who lost a leg and much of his eyesight in Iraq:

One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."

(snip)

Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.

"It's gonna go on as long as we're there," he says. "There's always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There's just too many of 'em that are willing to do it. You're never gonna catch all of 'em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don't think it's ever gonna end."

Link via Dan Savage, sub-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, who also observes: "Maybe Michelle Malkin could visit Rogers at Walter Reed and tell him whether the leg he lost in Iraq would approve of such behavior?"

There will be some who are going to spin this as imposing a religious test on the judiciary, but I think it makes plain good sense. If the Roman Catholic Church (of which I am a member) is going to demand that its practitioners serving in public office adhere strictly to church dogma when enacting policy, it is fair to ask whether said demands shall also be imposed on judges, and if they are, to require said judges to recuse themselves when an issue like abortion comes before them.

Perhaps it's just the idiotarian in me speaking, but I'd rather live in a country that loses a couple thousand people each decade to terrorist violence, but maintains its civil liberties and its best traditions of freedom and liberty, than live in a nation where such such freedoms have been compromised in a desperate, and likely vain, attempt to prevent such violence.

"This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss." So says Paul Krugman, in this morning's very illuminating column on the onset of the bursting of the Housing Bubble. He mentions something that I've frequently referred to on this site, the fact that there are two separate "countries" within the United States, what he calls "Flatland" (where home prices have flatlined, due to the availability of open spaces to build new housing) in the middle of the U.S., and "Zoned Zone" along the coasts, where prices have skyrocketed. The Bubble will burst not by a dramatic fall in housing prices, according to Prof. Krugman, but in a long, sustained slump, where homes stay on the market longer and existing inventories remain unsold, creating a buyer's market (Angry Bear has a useful graph as to what past housing recessions have looked like, here).

Of course, as you might recall, I referred to the same phenomenum as "Red" and "Blue" America: the areas that have seen the most explosive growth in the past twenty-five years, almost without exception, voted for Kerry in the last election, while the states with the slowest growth went for Bush, again almost without exception. The YBK problem will disproportionately effect those areas of the country that favored Kerry, since it will be those homeowners who have been using their home's equity to stave off financial disaster that will feel the immediate impact of the Bubble.

Did you know there is a Wikipedia definition of "idiotarian"? It's full of s***, of course, and one that I'm going to have a great deal of fun editing (an "idiotarian" is someone who believes, perhaps naively, that every other problem in the world didn't disappear because of 9/11, and that the solution to said problems doesn't necessarily involve the U.S. military), but it's interesting to see a different perspective on a commonly-used word....

The resignation speech delivered by the late Sir Robin Cook may have been the most eloquent, prescient words spoken about what was about to take place in Iraq, only days before hostilities commenced. Read it here.

For some idea as to how the other half lives in the run-up to YBK (now only ten weeks away !!), here's a Dallas Morning News article on the recent increase in bankruptcy filings in North Texas. The Lone Star State would probably not be directly effected by the bursting of the housing bubble, since home prices in Texas have not increased in value that much in recent years. In fact, the value of single family residences went up only 3.77% last year, putting the state dead last in the country, and barely keeping ahead of inflation; since 1980, Texas ranks 49th, ahead of only Oklahoma.

According to statistics published by the Northern District of Texas, filings went up 11% in the quarter beginning in April, the month Bush signed the new bankruptcy law, and in the month of June alone, filings rose almost 35% from the same month last year. Because of the stagnant real estate market in that state, however, the new law will not have as dramatic an effect in Texas. Without being able to borrow on the equity in their homes when times get tough, Texas homeowners are less likely to incur high levels of secured debt, but are more directly susceptible to the threat of foreclosure.

Because of that, when it comes time to seek bankruptcy relief, Texans have been more likely to file under Chapter 13, the procedure favored under the new law, which requires debtors to make monthly payments to certain creditors (and, as I noted earlier, the procedure most amenable to fraud) over a period of time. Since 1994, nearly half of all bankruptcy petitions in Texas have been filed using that procedure, which allows the debtor to hang on to his home while discharging other debt at the same time.

Under current law, Chapter 13's are mostly used to repay delinquent mortgages and car payments, and are filed literally on the eve of a foreclosure sale; after October 17, however, the courts may force more debtors into that procedure, whether they own a home or not. Since Chapter 13's are already more prevalent in Texas, and since the impact of the housing bubble bursting will not be felt as severely in that state, the YBK effect won't have quite the same dramatic effect in the Lone Star State that it will have in, let's say, California or Florida. So any increase in bankruptcy filings will be due exclusively to the ominous threat of the new law, not to other economic trends, and the devastation to that economy will be far less.

UPDATE [8/8]: But see also, contra, Charles Kuffner, who believes that the Great Burst will impact states like Texas, albeit in a different way than the YBK impact: via an increase in inventory of unsold homes. If that happens, the impact would initially hit businesses (ie., construction, mortgaging, contracting, etc.) rather than consumers no longer able to borrow on their homes.

Hitchitis: Another Brit joins the Junior Orwell brigade, belatedly.

The next battle in the quixotian struggle to take the battle deep into the core of Red America will be fought in the 48th Congressional District in California. A special election is scheduled for late-September to fill the seat left vacant after former incumbent Christopher Cox was picked to head the SEC. As in the recently-ended fight in Ohio, the 48th is an overwhelmingly Republican district, located smack dab in the middle of Orange County, and the GOP primary will likely be hotly-contested.

Some miscellany about the 48th:

1. Cox won reelection in 2004 by 33% over his Democratic rival, a slightly narrower margin than the previous outcome in Ohio. In 2002, Cox won by 40% over the same opponent;

2. As might be expected, the other races in that district were closer than the one that featured the incumbent. Although Bush received an asswhuppin' in the rest of the state, he won the 48th by 18 points over John Kerry. However, Barbara Boxer, who is arguably the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, lost by only 7.7% in that district. A repeat of last week's race, where a strong, charismatic Democratic lost by 3.4% to a weak Republican in an overwhelmingly Republican district, is therefore possible here as well;

3. In both 2002 and 2004, the election was essentially a three-candidate race, with the two major parties being joined in the contest by the nominee of the Libertarian Party. This time around, the most intriguing rumor floating around is the possible third-party candidacy of ex-Congressman Robert Dornan. Since his defeat at the hands of Loretta Sanchez nine years ago, Dornan has become increasingly vituperative in his rhetoric against immigrants, and against Latinos in particular. Should he make the ballot this time, Dornan has the potential of both drawing away support from the Republican nominee as well as raising the turnout with Latino voters, whose emergence in Orange County has begun to make the area, at one time synonomous with right wing politics, more competitive;

4. As in Ohio, the probable Democratic candidate is a local attorney, Steve Young, a self-described "fiscal conservative" who has denounced the Kelo decision, CAFTA, and the parsimonious manner the Republicans have treated our returning soldiers from Iraq. Like his NFL Hall of Fame namesake, Young attended college in Utah, but there is no evidence yet that he likes to scramble in the teeth of a massive blitz.

Anyway, there will be more to follow in the coming weeks....

YBK [Part 14]: Personal insolvencies are at a 45-year high...in Great Britain. Of course, the numbers are quite relative; the 15,400 insolvencies in the last quarter in the UK are less than the number of filings in the Central District of California for the same period. Debtors have fewer rights under British bankruptcy law, and can exempt less property, but the reasons for filing are invariably the same: borrowers are increasingly unable to remain current on mortgage and credit card payments.

No matter what your position is on the Roberts nomination, his participation in a pro bono challenge to an anti-gay statute in Colorado before the Supreme Court cannot be explained away as simply a lawyer acting as a "hired gun". Pro bono work is never something a lawyer does just for the an intellectual challenge; in order to do your job effectively, you have to be able to convince yourself of the merits of the case, of its importance, first.

Roberts worked at Hogan & Hartson, a large D.C. firm with over a thousand attorneys. He was not the only appellate litigator at the firm, so he would not have been indispensible in preparing the case, and he could have easily begged out of working on the matter. Clearly, he participated in the manner in which he did because he believed in the importance of the issue presented by Romer v. Evans; according to the partner who asked his assistance, Roberts didn't flinch for a second before volunteering to assist. The very fact that he was a doctrinaire conservative on other issues, well-versed in the judicial thinking of Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist, made his help invaluable.

None of this answers the important questions about where Roberts stands on a constitutional right of privacy, or his interpretation of the commerce clause; Romer, after all, was a civil rights case dealing with discrimination under color of state law, not a privacy challenge to sodomy laws. The refusal to produce the relevant papers from Roberts' tenure with the Solicitor General, and particularly the claim that said documents are being withheld under the "attorney-client privilege", still fails to pass the giggle test, and Senators should seriously consider the use of the filibuster if the Administration refuses to cooperate. But lets not act like Roberts' work on the Romer case means nothing, or pretend that he's cut from the same cloth as the other Court conservatives.

YBK [Part 13]: Did you know there is now a blog devoted to the Great Housing Bubble?

Perhaps more remarkable (and more important, over the long term) than the narrow margin of his loss in one of the most Republican Congressional districts in the country, was the fact that 2/3 of the money Paul Hackett raised for his campaign originated through blogs.

Anabolic Steroids: It was all Clinton's fault !!! [link via Pandagon]

On Saturday, I made light of a story about an alleged "investigation" of Air America Radio, based on a story published in something called the "Bronx News". It spread out along the Right Blogosphere like gangbusters, and was picked up by the various Moonie/Murdoch media organs without having advanced much further than the original allegations. Contrary to these stories, there is still no evidence to date that Air America itself is under criminal investigation, although it did agree several months ago to repay money that had been diverted to it by a Bronx-based charity.

As it turns out, there actually is an honest-to-goodness paper called the Bronx News. It is a weekly paper published by a company called Hagedorn Communications, Inc., which also publishes several other throwaways, including "The Real Estate Weekly", the "Parkchester News", the "Town & Village News", and the "Co-Op City News". H.C.I. has not yet embraced the world wide web, unfortunately, and the only way I could be certain that the above papers actually existed was a reference in Nexis to a couple of articles published in the Real Estate Weekly.

The circulation of each of these papers is minimal, to say the least. According to a NY Times article in 1993, the "Bronx News" had a circulation of 7,150 (in a borough of 1.36 million); in comparison, the Village Voice weekly has a circulation rate of 260,000. Mr. Hagedorn himself got into some trouble at that time for inflating the circulation of his weeklies by a factor of between 1.5 and 2, including the Bronx News, and plead guilty to a charge of falsifying business records in April, 1993. That any MSM organs would pay serious attention to a story from such a paper, especially one based entirely on anonymous sources (even "informed" anonymous sources), without performing due diligence first, is mindboggling.

"Schmoozalism?"

Two contrasting takes on the legacy of Rafael Palmeiro, by Jayson Stark [link via OffTheKuff] and NY Times columnist George Vecsey. Stark raises some good points, about how cheating has always been a part of baseball, and how it is impossible to calculate the edge any juiced athlete might have received, but I have to agree with Vecsey on this one. Before today, Palmeiro was a cinch for the Hall of Fame, with the only question being whether his steady career numbers would offset the lack of any spectacular, dominating seasons for him to enter on the first ballot. The consensus was that anyone who could get over 3000 hits and approach 600 home runs was probably a pretty damn good player, and to hell with whether any of those hits was memorable.

Now, whether he deserves this fate or not, he will probably have to wait a few years to get in, if at all. The line on Palmeiro will now be that he was an ordinary singles hitter who bulked up in his mid-20's after a few unimpressive seasons, and then pounded out a series of 40-home run, 110-RBI seasons at a time when the greats of the sport were hitting 50+ /125+ per season. He had one big post-season jack (1996 ALCS, Game 2), but it was the only game his team won in that series, and I would be hard-pressed to name another big Raffi moment that actually had something to do with his team winning an important game. He never won a batting crown, a home run or RBI title, or an MVP award. His biggest credential was his statline, and now that will draw raised eyebrows. And, to boot, he went before a Congressional committee, and lied; in comparison, Mark McGwire's response (to tell the starchamber to stick their questions up their collective rectum) seems even more manly than it did before. Like Steve Garvey, another player who always seemed destined for first ballot honors during his playing career, to be enshrined he's going to have to wait for cooler heads to prevail.

Apparently, I'm not the only one troubled by the response John Roberts gave last week as to how he would reconcile his faith with his constitutional role. Samgrass is also giving him some grief over the issue.

Conservative Blogger Makes Good: Or, at least, trying to make good. Steve Urquhart, a state legislator who shares the same last name as one of the most notorious fictional politicians in TV history, has announced that he will oppose longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in the primaries next year. He's very conservative, bears an uncanny resemblance to Penn Jillette, and actually has the integrity to write his own blog (as opposed to greasing others to do that for him). So I wish him the best of luck, in the same way that I would wish godspeed to any of the writers at VolokhCon should they receive federal court nominations, while reserving the right to bring to bear the full power of this website in opposition, if need be.

If you need anything to convince you that Bush is now a lame duck, the fact that he must dole out a recess appointment to get John Bolton through the Senate (which his party controls, by a healthy margin) should suffice. For all the talk about "obstructionism" by the Democrats, this was a nomination that would have had no problems obtaining confirmation if GOP Senators had wanted it badly enough. Hopefully, the rest of the world will just ignore him. He won't be speaking for America.

Busted !!! I believe Palmeiro may have denied under oath that he ever juiced, so his brief suspension (and diminished Hall of Fame chance) may be the least of his worries.

Like the rectangular pizza at Barone's, or the beef and bean burrito from Casa Vega, the slippery shrimp made by Yang Chow's in Chinatown is a quintessential dish for true Angelenos. For those of you who've left the area, or who may have visited the restaurant while on business or vacation in the city, here's the recipe.

From the folks who brought you the Schiavo Memo and the Swift Boat Vet Scam, comes this embarassment. Starboard bloggers seem to encompass a disproportionate percentage of the low-hanging fruit our society provides. If they weren't at their terminals, they would be trying to outrace oncoming trains at busy intersections, or licking frozen poles. Thank god they're all chickenhawks; if they actually had the courage of their convictions concerning the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, we would probably be battling Iraqi insurgents on the streets of Los Angeles.

Big Bill: Not to put too fine a point on this, but is it really good advice for the labor movement to follow the example of a man whose mentality was little different than Osama bin-Laden's?

Dog Bites Man !!

Regarding the Turley Column: What with all the talk about whether an attorney-client privilege compels the non-production of John Roberts' papers from his time with the Solicitor General in the early-90's, I'm surprised that the revelation that he would recuse himself if his legal judgment were to contradict his religious conscience hasn't gotten more play. Until this gets cleared up, I can't see how any self-respecting Democrat can allow the Roberts nomination to go forward to a Senate vote. This isn't a matter of extremism; if Roberts would allow his religious views to trump any contrary interpretation he might have to make concerning the Constitution, he simply can't be a judge. If Antonin Scalia, by all accounts a devout Roman Catholic, is able to rule in favor of the state on death penalty cases, in clear defiance of the stated views of his church, then Roberts has to be able to assure the public that he can do the same, on that and other issues. No one should be allowed to sit on the highest court of the land who cannot give our laws and precedents his absolute loyalty as a judge.

YBK [Part 12]: Bankruptcy filings were up 14% last month from the comparable total in June, 2004. Even more troubling, the number of filing last month increased from the previous month, which is almost unheard of; the summer months traditionally see a lull in personal filings. Yikes.

The Cancer of Hate: It seems to be metastasizing. Oriana Fallaci pens her Mein Kampf.

Defamer points out that while love letters purportedly written by Jennifer "Overrated" Aniston are going for over $100,000 on E-Bay, fake love letters not written by the former "Friends" star are going for over $12.

YBK [Part 11]: Houston, we have a problem...bankruptcy filings were up 12% nationwide for the months of April, May and June of this year. Also, the housing market is beginning to flatline in "bubble states", with national figures now being kept high only through increased sales in the Midwest and of multiple-unit housing, both of which had heretofore seen a much lower rate in their expansion of value. Consumers will also soon receive the unpleasant surprise of having their monthly credit card payments double.

[Previous YBK posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.]

I think I've mentioned this a few times before, but right now we are living through a unique period in the history of the Democratic Party. For the first time ever, the party is really competitive only in its pursuit of one branch of government: the Presidency. Our nominee has captured a plurality of the vote in 3 of the last 4 elections, and the one time we didn't, we lost to an incumbent President in the middle of a war with an improving economy, by 2.4% of the vote. In the last two elections, the Democratic nominee lost the election by one state.

Down ticket, the Republicans have a mathematical advantage in Congressional races that is disproportionate to their actual vote totals, so even though the Democrats and Republicans are roughly even nationwide, the GOP will still win a larger share of seats even if the vote is divided 50-50. By having only a tiny edge in the party preference, the Republicans gain a significant lead in Congress. And, of course, the federal courts have a partisan slant in favor of the Republicans that will probably continue through the lifetime of most of the people reading this blog.

That's why it is hard to take the DLC seriously when they hold one of their annual corporate junkets, and take turns knifing every liberal in the back. It's not just a counter-productive strategy; obviously, the minority party can never hope to gain its footing if significant players on the political scene insist on violating what should be the Democrats' Eleventh Commandment. More to the point, the DLC brings nothing to the table. Nothing.

Gore and Kerry may have run to the left in their losing efforts the last two elections, but at least they came close enough to get screwed by the other guys. The Deaniacs and Move On may have questionable appeal south of the Mason-Dixon line, but at they find a way to win elections everywhere else. But the "centrist" hacks the DLC consistently put up for the down-ticket races have gotten their asses handed to them the past decade. As blogger Steve Gilliard, in discussing Hillary Clinton's pandering to the DLC, points out:

Her enemies will ALWAYS paint her as a liberal, regardless of her real stands. Her name is a byword for liberalism and corruption among the right. They will fight her to their last breath. The DLC wants to use the same failed playbook it has always used, run down the middle of the road and lose to the GOP.

At the same time, all this does is alienate liberal supporters who are perplexed by her insane and pointless manuvering. Video games, abortion, all these issues do not help her. They just make her look weak and vaciliating.

John Kerry ran to the left and lost by 110K votes. He didn't hide from being a liberal and he came close enough to winning that Bush was sweating out election day. So what lesson does Clinton take from that: run to the middle. Despite every poll, every focus group that wants a strong, active Democratic party, the Democratic Loser Council wants to stay in the middle.

She keeps this up, she'll be watching John Kerry or John Edwards take the oath of office in 2009.

Why does the DLC not get it? Why does the DLC think that they can recreate 1992 when they can't even hold on to Senate seats. All their bright shining boys like Brad Carson got waxed by hard core GOP nutters. Why does she think Vichy can do anything more than appease and lose?

In other words, getting advice from the DLC on winning elections is kind of like listening to Colin Montgomerie give advice on how to win PGA tournaments. As someone who agrees with the DLC on issues like welfare reform, the death penalty, and free trade, and who has a decidedly agnostic position on abortion, it irritates me no end when this influential group wastes so much of its time running down allies who will work their asses off to get Democrats elected, including Hillary Clinton should she win the nomination in '08. Why don't they try to win something, somewhere in 2006 first?

Twelve Hours: Depending on the type of shredder used, the White House may have been able to shred up to 10,000 pages of Plame-related evidence on the night of September 29, 2003. And that's just with one shredder !

Some of you may have noticed some new additions to my blogroll, as well as other bloggers who are now missing. The explanation is, I've discovered the joys of syndication, and I can now track many more sites than I could before. The blogroll has always been mainly a tool of convenience for me: the sites listed on the right are the sites I read every day, and what has resulted is simply a lazy man's way of assembling different links without having to go through the trouble of saving them on my computer. Thanks to RSS/Atom feeds, I don't need to do that anymore, so I can prune the blogroll accordingly.

In the past, my standard for blogrolling was threefold: it had to be a site I visited everyday; it had to be published by someone accountable (ie., no pseudonyms, unless I have actually met the proprietor); or, in the alternative, it had to be someone who linked to me first. That's it; no political test, no e-mails suggesting a "link swap", or anything like that.

Recently, something has begun to bother me about a number of sites that I link to. The use of substitute bloggers, to maintain a site while the real author goes on vacation, gets operated on, or deals with events in the real world, has started to become more prevalent with the Big Feet in the blogosphere. Rather than losing that all-important ranking in the Blogger Ecosystem, or see any diminishment in the number of page visits that advertisers demand, the guys at the top of the mountain have started foisting assorted friends, flunkies and knob polishers in their stead.

I happen to believe that practice pertrates a fraud on the public. And obviously, I'm not talking about group blogs, such as the Kos universe or Hit&Run, or sites like the ones run by Drum, Marshall or Alterman (whose site is more of an on-line daily newsletter than a blog), where other writers appear as a routine policy. I'm referring, instead, to blogs such as the one you're reading, only bigger, sites that present themselves to the world as the individual expression of the person (or persons) writing them.

There is simply no substitute for the original. Bringing in a replacement while you go to the Bahamas shows utter contempt for your audience, who, after all, have made it a point to visit your blog because they want to hear your voice, not some understudy's. It is also degrading to the understudy, because it puts him in the position of an underling, existing only to maintain your traffic levels, not to develop his own audience or communicate his views.

So as to this noisome practice, I draw a line in the sand. Henceforth, my blogroll will omit any reference to blogs, even blogs that link to me, during any period that a substitute blogger is employed in place of the real thing. I regret the inevitable massive loss in traffic to those sites, but someone has to say no to this scam if this emerging medium is going to maintain any ethical standards.

This is precisely the sort of thing that will make people like me suspicious of John Roberts. Not a "dues-paying member" of the Federalist Society, just a Grand Kleagle....

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that actress Mira Sorvino has purchased a home in the Venice section of Los Angeles. The Times, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes the past two years, also published the exclusive that Ian Ziering (TV's "Steve Sanders", from Beverly Hills 90210) has put his home in Vail, Colorado up for sale.

As a habit, I never read Nicholas Kristof columns, largely because his topics don't interest me, as well as the fact that his writing style is maybe the blandest possessed by any Times Columnist since Flora Lewis. But tomorrow's column, about the "shame" of liberals in ignoring North Korea's horrendous human rights record, certainly grabbed my attention. And here I was, thinking that my willful refusal to denounce Maximum Leader Kim jong-il would remain undetected...or could it simply be that progressives can do next to nothing for the North Koreans, insofar as we're not the ones in power at the moment. For an example of what a column should be, without the strawmen and desperate attempts to overcome writer's block, read Frank Rich's contribution tomorrow, on PlameGate.

Winston Churchill has been treated kindly by history, deservedly so, for his leadership of Great Britain during World War II (even if it essentially meant giving inspiring speeches to his countrymen while waiting for Hitler to do something really stupid, like attack the Soviet Union or declare war on us), but it also helpful to remember that even great men can have scummy qualities as well. Here's a passage by Churchill, in his own words, that is replete with the sort of racism that would make David Duke blush. No wonder post-colonial Africa is such a mess.

...but they grind exceedingly fine: According to the Guardian, the PlameGate investigation is now examining the issue of who forged the Niger Documents that were at the center of the controversy concerning Joe Wilson. This has been such a hot potato that the Senate committee charged with investigating the intelligence failures that led us into the debacle in Iraq refused to pursue the matter. Special prosecutor Fitzgerald's inquiry is currently focusing on whether elements within the U.S. Government collaborated with Iraqi exiles to spin the bogus documents, then presumably leaking Mrs. Wilson's identity to cover their tracks. [link via Digby]

Although I respect their passion on this issue, these bloggers are in danger of jumping the tracks over the use of what has become a rather banal piece of political jargon. Although the term "strict constructionist" has been warped in past use as code for judical conservatism, it actually refers to a judicial philosophy that is separate and distinct from "originalism". A contructionist looks to the "plain meaning" of the text, with the framer's intent becoming important only if the text is capable of several meanings; for the most part, the "clear meaning" will be the "framer's intent". An originalist is only concerned with the framer's intent; if the drafter(s) of the text meant something different than what the text appears to be saying, then you go with what the drafters wanted, and ignore the plain meaning of the statute today.

The example we were always given in law school concerned civil rights cases. An originalist ignored the literal meaning of the words in the 14th Amendment, for example, and attempted to assay what its drafters thought back in the late-1860's when they drafted those words, in order to give them meaning. Since many of the drafters were comfortable with Jim Crow laws in the North at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, the "separate but equal" doctrine could survive constitutional muster when reconciling the clear language of the 14th Amendment with the actual beliefs of its drafters. A "strict constructionist", on the other hand, emphasized both the clear language of the amendment and the impact "separate but equal" laws would have on African-Americans, and saw a contradiction. The majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson was an originalist one, while Justice Harlan's dissent was based on a strict interpretation of the actual language of the 13th and 14th Amendments.

In all honesty, I'm a bit creeped out by any judicial candidate discussing (or being asked about) his "philosophy", unless that philosophy is essentially that he will be fair, unbiased and without prejudice. Although the example listed above is a clear case of a strict interpretation of the Constitution leading to a better, more humane result than an originalist reading, there are cases (such as the meaning of "freedom of speech") where the views of the Framers are more expansive than those who take the strict constructionist view, ie., that the right only extends to the barring of legislation infringing on vocal expressions. Depending on your ideology, one man's activist judge is another's strict constructionist. Possessing a "philosophy" should be a disqualifying demerit for any judicial nominee, and one of the few hopeful signs so far about Roberts is that he doesn't appear to be wed to any.

How is it possible to defame a child molestor?

'60's YD'er Makes Good: Perhaps the most effective Congressman in California history, Henry Waxman, has started a diary over at the Daily Kos site. My dad would be so proud....

There have been some bizarre analogies involving events in Europe sixty years ago with the events of today, but this has got to be the strangest: critics of the Iraqi Adventure are just like...Jews being marched to the ovens ?!?

Small Bombings in London; Not Any Dead. Sorry, I couldn't resist....

Ann Coulter, plagiarist? You make the call...apparently, according to resident ilsagrapher Scoobie Davis, this has been the recurring M.O. throughout her career. This incident several years ago is an even more egregious example, since the work she ripped off was turned into a bestselling book.

24,865: Those are the number of violence-related civilian casualties in Iraq in the twenty-four months after hostilities started in March, 2003, according to this study. [link via The Poor Man]

This blogger seems to think that Bush has not flip-flopped on the issue of whether he will cashier anyone who leaked the identity of our secret agents to reporters out of sheer spite, and, in fact, makes a compelling case that Bush has been an oily sleezebag on this issue from the start(although it's unclear whether the original promise to "take care of" anyone who violated the law really amounts to the same thing as "fire"). I sometimes wonder whether the hard right really knows they aren't doing the President any favors by defending the likes of Karl Rove.

Terrific NY Times piece, on the type of person who becomes a paparazzo:

He sits at nightfall in his home office in the San Fernando Valley, a dimly lighted room except for the glow emanating from his computer, his flat-screen television, and a half-dozen other state-of-the-art gadgets. He is showing off a little: not just his high-tech toys, but the quality of his information.

"That's the thing that's valuable," Mr. Griffin says, explaining how his cash payoffs to tipsters can come to $100,000 a year. "The best ones are the ones who do it for pure greed. Because nothing else colors their judgment."

He opens a drawer, pulls out a few stacks of paper. Here, he says, are this week's scheduled movements of every famous passenger of a major limousine company in Los Angeles. He has an employee of the limo company on retainer, with bonuses "if there's results."

Here, too, are what Mr. Griffin describes as the passenger manifests of every coast-to-coast flight on American Airlines, the biggest carrier at Los Angeles International Airport. "I get the full printout," he says. "If they fly any coastal flight, I know. I can also find anybody in the world within 24 hours, I guarantee it. If they don't mask the tail number on a private plane, I'll find it." He says he has law-enforcement officers on his payroll, too, and can have a license plate checked in an hour on weekdays, 20 minutes on weekends.

(snip)

He pulls out a photocopy of what he says are the transcribed notes of a top film actress's examination by her doctor, and points to a reference to her breast implants.

What's really sad is that these people's lives revolve around getting a candid photo of...Alyssa Milano? Anyways, why can't the local paper get entertainment reporting like this?

The Supremes: Rumor has it that Edith "Joy" Clement will be nominated tonight to fill the O'Connor seat on the Supreme Court. Clement has been a federal judge for fourteen years, and an appellate judge for four; both times she was confirmed by 99-0 votes. People for the American Way has a page sampling some of her appellate decisions, but if this is the worst they have to offer, she shouldn't have any problems getting confirmed.

UPDATE: The timing of the nomination hasn't been lost on the media. According to Reuters:

Sources said the timing of an announcement had been moved up in part to deflect
attention away from a CIA leak controversy that has engulfed Bush's top
political adviser, Karl Rove. A Republican strategist with close to the White
House described Clement as the leading candidate. "She's pretty
untouchable," he said. "Plus, it helps take Rove off the front pages
for a week."

Unless, of course, it isn't Clement after all; ABC is reporting that an "informed source" told them that Judge Clement was notified this afternoon that Bush had decided to go in "a different direction".

UPDATE [II]: CNN is now reporting that Bush has picked John Roberts for the spot. Good--another white boy. We can filibuster this guy and not lose any sleep...

UPDATE [III]: ...or maybe we should just sleep on it. Several progressive bloggers are actually quite sanguine about this nomination, with one posting that it indicates how far Bush's star has fallen in the last few weeks that he has to settle for Roberts. We don't have to even think about a filibuster until after the Judiciary Committee decides whether to forward his nomination to the floor, which probably won't be til late September anyway.

Remember Heath Shuler? A former high first round pick by Washington (as a Blue Stater, this site has a policy of not printing racist slurs unless it's really, really necessary, so the team's nickname will be omitted), Shuler's NFL career quickly fizzled. But just to show that he's no Ryan Leaf or Todd Marinovich, Mr. Shuler has decided to run for Congress next year in North Carolina, as a Democrat !! That's right; there is actually a real life, honest-to-goodness, highly-paid white pro athlete who is also a Democrat. I haven't been so shocked since discovering John Malcovich was a Bush supporter.

Has any writer so completely and utterly destroyed whatever remaining bit of personal integrity he had faster than Christopher Hitchens? Going from an inheritor of the Mantle of Orwell and a self-proclaimed "contrarian" just a few years ago to a Pegleresque crank has got to cause anyone whiplash...I blame it all on Rickey Ray. Here, the once-inventive provocateur parrots Mehlman's Talking Points on the Plame Affair, including a reference to the discredited accusation that Valerie Plame "authorized" her husband's mission to Niger, and he might be the last person who still believes in the authenticity of the documents in question.

It would be like shooting fish in a barrel to come up with counter-examples for how he reacted when Clinton was President. He's gone from a defender and protector of Salman Rushdie to a supporter of the Bush Administration leaking leaking bogus information to discredit political opponents. The man has no bottom.

What earthly difference should it make to Mr. Alterman (or anyone else, for that matter) that the "extremely capable" Democratic opponent of George Pataki one election was African-American? Would it have been o.k. if the NY Times had endorsed Pataki over an "extremely capable" white nominee? Does the Grey Lady have some sort of responsibility to rubber-stamp endorsements of African-American Democrats?

Anyways, if whoever was so "extremely capable", how come he was running as a Democrat in New York, but still couldn't win?

What I Learned This Weekend While Attending My Cousin Dean's Wedding:

1. Never, ever go to Las Vegas in July unless you really, really have to. Lord, it was a scorcher. On the outskirts of the city, where the wedding took place, the thermometer got as high as 118°, and even at night, it rarely dipped below 100. Man was not meant to live in such an environment. Of course, casinos are always air-conditioned....

2. Avoid video blackjack. The odds are even more decisively in favor of the house than they are at the tables, where you at least have more options to double down, and the speed at which you can play ensures that at some point, you will encounter the bane of any player, which is the prolonged losing streak. If you must play video blackjack, do not drink. Besides the fact that the casino is comping the drink precisely so that you stay longer, you will end up doing things without thinking that you would never do at the tables. There is nothing better at killing the human spirit and shredding any sense of dignity than accidently hitting on 20 (twice !!), unless it's hitting on 19, getting dealt an ace, but still losing to the dealer's 21.

3. If you like to gamble, avoid the Strip. Most of the high-rent hotels aim for higher rollers, so the table minimums can be prohibitive for a working-class stiff like myself (my family stayed at The Venetian, which is tres posh). Downtown is less pretentious, has lower table limits, and you can even find places where they play single-deck blackjack, if you happen to possess certain Rain Man-like talents. Hotels on the Strip may be more comfortable, but you are not honor-bound to patronize their facilities, and the Downtown casinos are only a cheap cab ride away.

4. Never go to Vegas on a weekend of a major event, such as a title fight or a poker championship, both of which converged on the city at the same time Saturday. It pretty much made the south end of the Strip unnegotiable, so going to the MGM Grand or Mandalay Bay (two favorite stops of mine) was out of the question.

5. (For L.A. residents only) Always assume that at some point on a weekend visit, you will hit a major traffic jam both coming and going. Although there is plenty of room to do so, the federal government has never seen its way to construct a third lane of traffic for the I-15, so any accident or mishap will effect cars hundreds of miles away. Just accept the things you have no control over.