Ignatz

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

I'm still not blogging, but wanted to note that our friend Wieb was quite a great guy.
posted by sam 1:19 PM

Friday, August 08, 2003

test

testing
posted by sam 4:45 PM

Friday, July 25, 2003

What should a judge do if he or she can prevent the slaughter of millions?

Recognizing that books can be (and have been) written about the moral/legal topics involved in this post -- and that a little blog post can only skim the surface -- let me say this:

If I were ever given a judgeship (ha ha, no way), you can be assured of this: that if I had a chance to make a ruling that would prevent the slaughter of millions of innocents, I would do it. Even if I had to fudge the precedents a bit, and even if I realized that I was basing my decision in large part on my own preferences, I would do it. I would prevent the slaughter of millions of innocents, if I could. Wouldn't you? And if I thought that the institutional role of "judge" required me to make a ruling that allowed the slaughter of millions, then I wouldn't be a judge. I would resign in protest -- and would, in fact, refuse the judgeship in the first place, if I foresaw this possibility. Wouldn't you? [UPDATE: The classic questions in this regard tend to be phrased in terms of judges in Hitler's Germany, and 19th century U.S. judges dealing with fugitive slave issues. Think about those examples before saying that you would elevate "the rule of law" above all other considerations.]

And we are supposed to believe that Bill Pryor -- who (according to himself and to his mentor Sen. Sessions) believes that abortion is the slaughter of millions of innocents -- wouldn't fudge the precedents a bit, or otherwise stretch the boundaries of the law whenever he could, to prevent such slaughter? I just don't buy it, given his demonstrated willingness to stretch the law to reach towards the results he favors in even less monumental contexts.*

Does this mean that I think that people who believe that abortion is the slaughter of innocent millions are ipso facto incapable of being "good judges"? No. It means that -- at least when we're talking about somebody with a track-record of bending legal principles to his own liking -- I predict that such person would in fact fudge the applicable precedents whenever he could, on the issue of abortion. And nobody owes anyone else an apology for making such a prediction, or for taking it into account when deciding as a political matter whether he or she supports or opposes the nomination. This is true, no matter what (religion, science, parental influence, you name it) impels the nominee towards the belief that abortion is the slaughter of innocent millions.

*(In this vein, I will also mention one thing that Pryor's defenders often cite: the fact that he gave a narrowing construction to an Alabama anti-abortion law, to bring it more in line with existing Supreme Court precedent. This is, to me, no proof that he set aside his own beliefs and preferences. It is, instead, precisely what a person would have done, had he (a) held the powers and authority of Attorney General, and (b) been determined to do whatever was in his power to reduce the "slaughter". The law, given a narrowing construction, prohibited some abortions; had he not narrowed it, it would have been struck down and would have prohibited no abortions. So I am completely unconvinced by this assertion that he set aside his preferences, in that episode.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Juan Non-Volokh for paying attention to this post, even if he disagrees with my assertion that Bill Pryor has a track record of fudging precedents and bending legal principles to his own liking. For prior explanations and support for my assertion in this regard, you might perhaps look to my posts on Pryor and Bush v. Gore and Pryor and Hope v. Pelzer
posted by sam 1:16 PM

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

got an Apple computer, and love music?

Got an Apple computer? Love music? Then you need Clutter, a freeware thingy that sees what you're playing in iTunes, and gets the album cover for you from Amazon -- and allows you to cover your desktop with album covers, and then when you say to yourself, "you know, that album cover reminds me, I'd love to listen to King Bennie Nawahi right now," you can click on the album cover and it starts up iTunes for you and there you go.
posted by sam 8:27 AM

Monday, July 21, 2003

the future of Ignatz

So it was a year ago yesterday, or today, or something like that, that I started this silly blog. I am much older and wiser now. And I find myself with a decreased desire to spout off, at least for a few weeks. This does not constitute a true "hiatus", which seems to be the accepted term in blogtopia, because I reserve the right to spout off on whatever sporadic basis I feel like, in between now and whatever future time I decide to become a full-time spout-offer again.

What I would like to ask you to do, if you care to, is to set your RSS reader, or whatever other sort of aggregator you've got, to check Ignatz for you periodically. That way, I won't have the feeling that I've got to pretend that I've got something worth saying when I really don't, just to keep you in the habit of checking. And, if I ever do have something worth posting, your aggregator will tell you that Ignatz has returned. You may find, in a few weeks or months, that I have joined a group blog, which might well be the right answer for a part-time spouter.

Because this is not a blog goodbye, there is no occasion for musing on the nature of things, or for a list of all the people whom I would like to thank. Thanks. Sam
posted by sam 9:11 AM

Friday, July 18, 2003

GREAT presentation on the White House e-mail system

From here, you can download a brilliant Powerpoint presentation on the user-unfriendliness of the White House's "who cares what you think?" email policy. Definitely worth a look.
posted by sam 4:02 PM

By the way, I forgot to point out ...

... that all credit for the NYT story about the White House's bizarre "we don't care what you think" email system should go to the AFL-CIO. Read the Times story.
posted by sam 2:05 PM

You know how I said you should be reading Votelaw?

This morning, Ed Still offers a detailed and reasonable hypothesis as to why Bill Pryor and his defenders are trying to avoid scrutiny of RAGA fundraising -- a hypothesis under which Pryor would have been violating Alabama law, and indeed his own officially-stated interpretation of Alabama law. This clearly warrants a serious investigation, without artificially short time limits.
posted by sam 8:43 AM

Greetings, Metafilter readers

If you're coming to read stuff about Bill Pryor (a recurring topic on this blog, since his nomination was first floated in January), please poke around in the archives for my thoughts. You can be assured that, despite what many of his supporters may tell you, the opposition to his nomination is NOT anti-religious or anything of the sort. Please check out the archives here; if your time is short, maybe start here. That April archive page has a lot of the most detailed stuff that I've written. Thanks.
posted by sam 7:53 AM

The White House

The White House doesn't really want to know your opinion, thanks very much.

[update: Really. Go try to send them a webmail. Go to whitehouse.gov, figure out how to get to the webmail page (it's not prominent!), see if you can get a connection (it was very hard for me, this morning), then navigate your way through the forms. Don't forget to declare yourself Mr. or Ms. or whatever -- you will be chided in red letters, and will (if you're like me) say "forget it." Along the way, note the oddly selective choices for subject matter.]
posted by sam 7:14 AM

The White House

also thinks that gay people and Canadians -- or at least gay Canadians -- are inherently non-credible.
posted by sam 7:13 AM

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Bill Pryor

As you may know, the Judiciary Committee had a fight this morning over whether to proceed to a vote on the nomination, or whether to take more time to investigate the newly-obtained documents about RAGA fundraising. That fight is, I believe, unresolved at this point -- but from the sounds of it this morning, I expect Senator Hatch to ram this through to a vote this evening.

If so, then the time will have come to contact all Senators, not just those on the Committee, if you (a) care to do so, and (b) haven't done so already. You can see that a very large coalition of environmental groups -- so I am told, the largest coalition of national environmental and planning groups, and the largest-ever coalition of local grassroots environmental organizations, ever to oppose any of President Bush's judicial nominees -- has prepared a letter to all Senators about this nomination. The letter can be downloaded in pdf format from Earthjustice here.
posted by sam 3:36 PM

fun in the Court of Appeals

My last 11th Circuit argument was on the same day as, with the same panel as, the Alabama Ten Commandments case.

And my luck holds: I just found out that my next 11th Circuit argument, in September, will be on the same day as (and presumably with the same panel as) the Alabama vibrator law case! That should be a great argument to see. Here, for vibrator law afficionados, is the Circuit's decision the first time around. The District Court has once again held the law unconstitutional, and Attorney General Pryor has appealed again. It will be, among other things, an interesting test of the impact of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Lawrence v. Texas.
posted by sam 12:07 PM

Bill Pryor

Today is the day for Pryor's vote in the Judiciary Committee. Word is that Sen. Specter will demonstrate his lack of moderateness and will vote in favor the nomination, giving rise to a pure party-line vote, and that then there will be a filibuster.

Note this post from Balasubramania's Mania, demonstrating that even if Pryor's actions in litigation and speeches aren't enough to win your opposition, his high-level involvement with the Republican Attorney Generals' Association could be. The post links to this article from the Wash. Post, which ought to mark the beginning of serious investigations (both public and private) into the fundraising of that organization (which Pryor helped to found). Here's how it starts:
Republican state attorneys general in at least six states telephoned corporations or trade groups subject to lawsuits or regulations by their state governments to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to internal fundraising documents obtained by The Washington Post.

One of the documents mentions potential state actions against health maintenance organizations and suggests the attorneys general should "start targeting the HMO's" for fundraising. It also cites a news article about consolidation and regulation of insurance firms and states that "this would be a natural area for us to focus on raising money."
According to the Bham News, Democrats will request a delay in the Committee vote in order to look into this further; but I'm not holding my breath for Sen. Hatch to say "that's fair!"

[UPDATE: Via Ed Still's Votelaw, you can find a link to Nina Totenberg's informative coverage of the RAGA fundraising issue, including her discussion of the leak by Senate Republican staff to a friendly pro-Pryor writer in an effort to preempt any investigation of the issue. In fact, Ed at Votelaw was writing about RAGA fundraising and Bill Pryor six months ago, which just goes to show that everybody should be reading Votelaw.]
posted by sam 7:11 AM