The Right Coast

California Supreme Court rules law against same-sex marriage unconstitutional Tom Smith

And there you have it.  I was wondering whether the law was constitutional or not, and it is a relief to finally get that settled by such a font of legal learning.  It may even be worthwhile to read the opinion.  Though probably not.

ACTUALLY I started reading it, and so far, it's a hoot.  So maybe it is worth reading!  So far, it looks like banning same sex marriage would be OK, if you got rid of domestic partnerships too.  You've got to see how that ends.

Your house could be art Tom Smith

My former secretary has retired and started an architectural rendering business.  Take a look.

HIV at the gates Tom Smith

Well, here's a shocker.  I don't really agree with Orin Kerr and Andrew Sullivan that the ban on travelers with HIV coming to the US should be lifted, or that it is "absurd."  It certainly is not absurd.  Absurd means something that is against reason, that flies in the face of reason.  Public health restrictions on travel have apparent reasons.  They are there to inhibit the spread of disease.  I would be surprised if you could come into the US if you were infected with some contagious, deadly disease such as measles or, I don't know, Marburg virus.  (Though Sullivan appears to be claiming this is the case -- see below.) HIV is far less contagious than many pathogens, but it is still contagious.  And it is certainly deadly enough.  The fact that one of the ways to spread it is through sex seems irrelevant to me.

I'm too lazy to investigate this and so will just ask, do other STDs make you ineligible to travel to the US?  Such as say syphilis?  If so, I don't see why HIV should be treated any more leniently.  But if not, then Sullivan has a point.

The tone of Orin's post is -- what am I missing here?  What could the reason for such a ban possibly be?  Well, the reason is, uh, that we don't want people with deadly, contagious diseases coming to the US and spreading them around.  I'm not an expert on the law of travel and public health, but that would be my inference.  We don't consider a promise not to do so reassuring enough, given the costs.  It's a costs and benefits thing, beloved of policy makers.  Foreigners have no fundamental right to travel to the US last I checked. (Though it would not surprise me to learn that they have acquired one in my mental absence.) If there's a sound public health reason to stop a traveler at the borders, then you should, unless there is some strong countervailing reason, and for that you could have an exceptions process.  I do know that travel has profound implications for the spread of disease and that public health officials pay a lot of attention to it.

I do see that Andrew Sullivan claims in his column that HIV is the only medical condition that would make you unable to enter the US.  Is that really true?  If I were in the throes of an Ebola meltdown could I really just stroll through customs and no one would ask me why I was bleeding all over the place?  I seem to recall something about a lawyer with antibiotic resistant TB, who was an American citizen and a lawyer, and had left the US for his wedding, having to sneak back into the US, because of his condition.   Are all restrictions on entry into the US special cases?  Is the rule really, Bird Flu?  Come on over!  If so, that strikes me as bad policy. That would be absurd.  Not shocking, given the ubiquity of stupid policies, but still absurd.  There are lots of nasty diseases out there that I think should, other things being equal, disqualify you from visiting our fair shores.  Quite possibly HIV is not one of them.  That's a question for some policy maker who knows what he is talking about.  But somehow I think we are not getting the whole story here.

Best mountaineering documentary ever? Tom Smith

I just finished watching Storm Over Everest on KPBS (thanks to Matt for alerting me to it).  It's probably the best climbing documentary I have ever seen.  It was filmed by David Breashears in HD, and the footage of the Himalaya and Everest are something to behold.  For my own part I will say, I get it now.  I have trekked in the Alaska Range and the Alps and climbed in the Andes and the Rockies, but I guess I always thought a bit, what's the big deal about the Himalayas?  I don't think that anymore.  Somehow Breashears managed to (partially?) capture something I have not seen captured before.  It left me feeling a little sick with longing to go there, not a welcome feeling maybe, but proof of his success. 

Not only did he capture some of the thrill of being on the mountain, he very effectively portrayed, as well as any film could, I imagine, the terror of being caught in a storm at 27,000 feet.  The darkness, the noise of the wind, the bottomless cold, the realization that you are probably going to die there -- he made it all quite easy to imagine.  For the first 40 minutes, I was thinking, God, I want to be there.  For the last hour and 20 minutes I was thinking, God, I would not want to be there.  You see a flimsy tent getting blasted by 100 mph winds, just barely clinging to the mountain, and marvel that any of them made it out alive.

There were some insights in the film. Beck Weathers I think was eloquent in describing the desolation of the high mountains, the sense they have of people truly not belonging there.  You don't hear that mentioned a lot, but it is very true, I think, a kind of deep, lunar hostility you see above maybe 18,000 feet that is both thrilling but also kind of evil seeming.  Anyway, I thought Weathers said it well.

Some commentators have criticized this Frontline episode for punting on the controversies of the 1996 Everest season, and they have a point.  I was left a little baffled as to who were the good guys and bad guys Weathers was referring to at the end.  I read Into Thin Air and thought Krakauer did not come off very well even in his own estimation, but Storm Over Everest certainly didn't clear anything up on that score.  Pretty obviously guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer made some grave misjudgments.  If you and some of your clients die, some bad decisions have been made, especially if some clients survived by turning back more or less against their guide's leadership.  But none of that was explored in the documentary.  Of course, that would have made for a duller show.

I also don't buy the romantic line that mountains reveal your true character, and that if you are able to drag yourself or someone else to safety, then you are truly of the right stuff.  It is a nice thought, but it probably has more to do with how well your red blood cells freight oxygen than the strength of your spirit. There were people who displayed enormous courage on Everest and others, not so much, but it is very difficult to judge the behavior of people who are profoundly hypoxic and hypothermic, who think they see their families in front of them or that they are home in bed, as they are slowly dying on a mountainside.

Cruel to geese, unhealthy for humans. But delicious! Tom Smith

Chicago has overturned its ordinance against foie gras, that food treat made out of the livers of geese, who have (often?) been force-fed grain in order to make their livers bigger and fatter.

I have eaten foie gras a number of times, twice memorably.  Once was at the fancy French restaurant of its day in Boston in the 80's after a deal closing, the other at this trendy NYC restaurant more recently.  The former served it in its traditional French glory, more or less pan fried in butter.  The experience can be described roughly as being what it must be like if some Star Trek technologist stuck a probe into that part of your brain that registers pleasure when you encounter fat, and gave it an almost unbearably intense jolt.  So, fat heaven.  Pure, buttery, this will kill you, sort of pleasure.  Do you experience as much pleasure as the goose did pain?  Hard to say.  Improbable, I suppose.  But this is the last thing on your mind as you chow down on fried liver.  Goosey feelings be damned.  I am not saying this is right.  I am just saying this is how it was.  At WD-50, they cooked an entire goose liver using some sort of steam pressure method, and the liver came out looking like, well, a liver, instead of the crusty, gooey thing a la the traditional method.  The steam cooked thing was good, especially consumed with some obscure white wine, Riesling maybe, that our host, a very rich guy, had selected and was fortunately paying for.  I much preferred the traditional approach.  (I also object to the trendy co-ed restrooms that happenin' places in Manhattan such as that restaurant seem to have now.  Give me a gnomish man handing out little towels any day.)

I think the utilitarians have a point about animal suffering.  In fact, for something like two weeks in my youth, I was a vegetarian on ethical grounds.  The problem is, if you do this, you can't eat meat.  And face it, there's nothing like meat.  I may like meat more than the normal person.  I once ate an entire filet mignon steak raw.  I don't mean rare, but cool, right out of the fridge.  Yes, it was delicious, but I think it is better a bit cooked.  It's not that I don't care about animals.  I love animals.  It's just that I want to eat them too.  I would not eat a dog, but pigs are probably smarter than dogs, and I eat them happily.  So, I grant that vegetarians have a point, it's just not persuasive enough to stop me from eating animals.

But possibly foie gras is just too grotesquely cruel to geese.  I don't really know.  Perhaps there is a way to make it without force feeding the birds.  In the meantime, the reason not to eat it is that it is really bad for you.  If you do indulge, be sure to drink lots of red wine, which will help counteract all that fat.

Go Craig Tom Smith

So EBay has a minority stake in CraigsList.  EBay also owns one of CraigsList's biggest competitors.  Craig of CraigsList, does not want EBay represented on the board of directors of CraigsList.  As far as I can tell, EBay does not have any special rights to be represented on the board of CraigsList.  Now, taking some steps not described in the article, so I could be wrong, CraigsList is trying to make sure that EBay is not represented on the CraigsList board.  So, of course, EBay is suing.

All I can say is, you go Craig.  Dilute EBay, just as far as your old corporate contract says you can.  That's what it is, a contract.  If it says you can dilute EBay, then do it.  You are not obliged to give the owner of your competitor a seat on your board just because that would make their life more meaningful.  Your duty is to the CraigsList corporation, not some minority shareholder that would just as soon eat your lunch.  This can all be expressed in more corporate law speak, but that's the nub of it. 

P.J. O'Rourke's Commencement AddressMike Rappaport

Pretty darn good!  I wish he had been the speaker at my graduation rather than Marriet Wright Edelman for Law School graduation and Donna Shalala for College graduation.  Hat tip: Todd Zywicki.

Deep TruthsMike Rappaport

Tom utters a deep truth: "People who get inspired by government don't know a lot about government."  Even when government does good, it is not pretty. 

What more can you say?  I wonder whether anyone would claim otherwise?   

Of course, they would.   

The cult of the presidency Tom Smith

Much true in this essay.

People who get inspired by government don't know a lot about government.  Well, some do, and they are really scary.  But most are just "young people", whether chronologically young or not.

I fear Senator Obama is our next president, and we are in for an orgy of self-congratulation that will make the Oscars look like medieval self-flagellation.  It will make that party the Israelites had before Moses showed with the tablets, look like tea time at the Waldorf.  Then we will be told that though we are cretinous, benighted Republicans or worse, he shall be our president too, a president for all Americans.  It is going to be awful.  There is some hope in the fact that Obama seems to be a complete opportunist, which should limit his ideological excesses somewhat.  He is likely though to at least experiment with doing what he thinks is right, and that could do a lot of damage.  It could be years before he gets his belated education in why government doesn't work, assuming such education is even possible.  Most really ambitious people aren't that interested in learning anything, unless it is directly related to their careers.  That's part of what makes extremely ambitious people so tedious.

I know, McCain could win.  I just don't think it's likely.

I hate to say this, but I think it's going to make us miss Bill Clinton.  The man is a moral jellyfish, but that means he floats toward the political center, even as his libido goes crashing about. 

Would Divided Government with John McCain Really Be a Good Thing?Mike Rappaport

John McCain proposes a mandatory cap and trade policy for greenhouse gases, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2025.  If McCain proposes it, it will pass the Congress, whether or not the Republicans have a fillibuster proof minority in the Senate.  If Obama proposes it, the Republican Senate might fillibuster it. 

This is part of the counterargument to those, like Ilya Somin, who favor McCain as a means of promoting divided government.  McCain has shown himself willing to work with Democrats to get big government policies passed.  A republican Senate minority will be unable or unwilling to fillibuster proposals by McCain.  By contrast, a republican Senate might sometimes attempt to stop Obama's proposals.

To be clear, I am not sure this effect by itself outweighs the forces of divided government under McCain.  But at the least, it significantly reduces their benefits.

Too Late Maimon Schwarzschild

"By the time Hillary Clinton figured out how to beat Barack Obama, it was too late", says Charles Krauthammer.

When she began the race in 2007 thinking she was in for a coronation, she claimed the center in order to position herself for the real fight, the general election. She simply assumed the party activists and loony Left would fall in behind her.

However, as Obama began to rise, powered by the party’s Net-roots activists, she scurried left, particularly with her progressively more explicit renunciation of the Iraq War. It was a fool’s errand. She would never be able to erase the stain of her original war vote and she remained unwilling to do an abject John Edwards self-flagellating recantation. It took her weeks even to approximate the apology the Left was looking for, and by then it was far too late. The party’s activist wing was by then unbreakably betrothed to Obama.

But going left proved disastrous for Clinton...  Matched against this elegant, intellectually nimble, hugely talented newcomer, she had no chance of winning that contest.

It wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter that she figured out the seam in Obama’s defense...

The line of attack is clear: not that Obama is himself radical or unpatriotic, just that, as a man of the academic Left, he is so out of touch with everyday America that he could move so easily and untroubled in such extreme company and among such alien and elitist sentiments.

Clinton finally understood the way to run against Obama: back to the center — not ideologically but culturally, not on policy but on attitude.

It was an overreach...  The lightness in Hillary’s step in the days before Indiana and North Carolina reflected the relief of the veteran politician who, after months of treading water, finally finds the right campaign strategy. But it was far too late. And the gas-tax overkill, one final error of modulation, sealed the deal — for Obama.

There’s only one remaining chapter in this fascinating spectacle. Negotiating the terms of Hillary’s surrender. After which we will have six months of watching her enthusiastically stumping the country for Obama, denying with utter conviction Republican charges that he is the out-of-touch, latte-sipping elitist she warned Democrats against so urgently in the last, late leg of her doomed campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Very enlightening article on Obama Tom Smith

I found this article on Obama's political career and style very enlightening.  Not particularly comforting, but enlightening.

How anybody could think this guy is dangerous is beyond me Tom Smith

Good ol' UK.

Ignorance: McCain's and the People's

Bryan Caplan, whose book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies I strongly recommend, defends the McCain proposal in the New York Times on seemingly perverse grounds. 

Caplan agrees that the gas tax will not lower prices:

Why are economists so opposed? In the short run, the supply of gasoline is basically fixed; it takes a while to build a new refinery. The demand for gasoline, in contrast, is more responsive to price; we’re already seeing greater use of public transportation and brisk sales of fuel-efficient cars. When you combine fixed supply with flexible demand, it’s suppliers, not demanders, who pocket the tax cut. That’s Econ 101.  Nevertheless, I think it’s an idea worth supporting. In fact, I’ve got . . . arguments in favor of it, though I doubt that either candidate will want to repeat them in public.

He goes on to argue that the gas tax reduction will do little harm, as compared to price controls.  While I think he is correct, as far as his claim goes, the problem is that the real world "goes" further.  As I suggested, McCain might get pissed that the oil prices were not reduced and then support regulation.  Moreover, Hillary has already  suggested a windfall profits tax combined with the gas tax reduction. 

Still, Caplan might be right -- the gas tax reduction might be the least bad thing possible.  But call me an idealist, I am not sure he is right.  Why not use the rise in gas prices as an opportunity to argue for opening up drilling in ANWR and on the US Coasts?  Oh yeah, I forgot, McCain opposes drilling in ANWR. 

McCain's IgnoranceMike Rappaport

With all of the focus on Hillary's endorsement of a temporary gas tax reduction, let's not forget that it was McCain who first suggested it.  McCain's proposal suggests that he does not understand how the economy works, as if we needed confirmation of this after the long string of regulations he has supported.   

Arnold Kling explains how the gas tax reduction would operate:

There is a wholesale market for gasoline, and there is a retail market for gasoline. Gas stations buy in the wholesale market and sell in the retail market, with essentially no profit margin.

If I'm a gas station selling for $3.18 a gallon, the instant that the tax is cut by $.18 I have an $.18 profit margin. That is not going to last. It is going to be competed away.

I might try to lower my price and sell more gas. If every gas station does this, then the price goes down and the consumer benefits. But in order to get more gas, I have to bid for it in the wholesale market. And we can't get more gas out of the wholesale market, because for the next few months the supply is essentially fixed. So what's actually going to happen is that the gas stations are going to bid up the price of gas on the wholesale market. In fact, this process is going to reach a point where in order just to keep my share of gas, I'll have to bid higher by $.18. The net result is that more money goes to refiners, my gas station pays less in taxes, but we pay more for gasoline wholesale, and the consumer gets no benefit.

But that is only part of the bad news.  If the price stays the same, despite the gas tax reduction, what would McCain do?  We can only guess, but I know what I would think would happen.  McCain would rail against the gas companies as special interests and monopolistic actors.  He would then support regulation, not out of any real understanding of economic forces, but because he believes it would be the sensible and fair thing to do.  The gas companies would have shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

My sense is that McCain has a set of moral principles that often leads him to support regulation.   And if the Republican President supports regulation of the gas companies, where does that leave the Republican party and the cause of freedom?  In a very bad place. 

That is why I currently believe the Republican party and cause of freedom are better off in the long run if McCain loses. 

Innocent detainee goaded to bombing by unjust confinement and insults Tom Smith

Just trying to get the headline right.

Not very smart op-ed on intelligence Tom Smith

Can you tell what this writer's point is exactly?  Perhaps before going all skeptical on the value of intelligence s/he should evince more in his/her writing.  That sounds mean, I know.  Sorry.  It's just that it looked interesting, but turned out to have nothing much to say, and was not even funny.  I hate that.

Ludwig von Mises and the FedMike Rappaport

Greg Mankiw writes:

      Alan Blinder makes the case for more regulation of financial institutions. The key passage:

It will, for example, substantially reduce the profitability of investment houses and, therefore, reduce their scale. But that’s the price you pay for access to a publicly financed safety net.

That is why some economists cringe when Wall Street firms are bailed out. Beyond the obvious equity issues about risking taxpayer money to help rich guys, there is the problem of efficiency. If you start bailing the firms out when they lose, you have to regulate the gambles they take. You can no longer count on the creditors to limit the firms' leverage, as the creditors are counting on Uncle Sam if things go wrong. But the more regulated these firms are, the lower their productivity will be.

It was von Mises who did the most to explain why one form of regulation led to additional regulation in a market economy.  The problem is that neither Blinder nor other advocates of regulation ever explain, when they support the first regulation, that additional regulations will be part of its costs.

Life in prison for rapists of USD students Tom Smith

The judge got this one right, not that it was a tough call.  It's not justice, but at least it is three predators off the streets.  Have a prayer for the victims, readers.

The argument against the death sentence for rape that convinces me is the marginal deterrence argument.  If death were the penalty for rape, rapists would have no incentive not to kill their victims.  And that is another argument for the death penalty for murder, so that there is a marginal deterrent for murder in connection with another crime, such as robbery or rape, for which the penalties should be severe.  But for that, I would support the death sentence for the crimes involved in this case.  I don't think all rapes warrant capital punishment, but aggravated rapes like those in this case do.  Practical considerations militate against it, however. 

DNA evidence takes most of the wind out of the argument that rape is particularly susceptible to false convictions.  The marginal deterrence point makes Louisiana's statute imposing the death penalty for child rape of dubious wisdom, since children are particularly vulnerable.  It may be, however, that strangers who rape children are so likely to kill them, that not much marginal deterrence is lost.  Boy, criminal law policy is a nasty business.  I remember my father would sometimes sigh in disgust after telling me about some awful criminal case or another and say "sometimes I feel like society's garbageman." 

Various commentators have noted a gun in the house would have been helpful.  Probably correct.  But it might not have made a difference.  A door was unlocked, as I have noticed my own front door sometimes is.  I always lock it when I notice that.

Mildred Loving Dies at 68 Gail Heriot

Was there ever a more perfect name for a civil rights plaintiff?  She and her late husband get the credit for consigning miscegenation laws to the dustbin of American history.  Rest in peace, Mrs. Loving.

The New York Times has this to say:

By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”

Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

After Mr. Loving spent a night in jail and his wife several more, the couple pleaded guilty to violating the Virginia law, the Racial Integrity Act. Under a plea bargain, their one-year prison sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together or at the same time for 25 years.

Judge Leon M. Bazile, in language Chief Justice Warren would recall, said that if God had meant for whites and blacks to mix, he would have not placed them on different continents. Judge Bazile reminded the defendants that “as long as you live you will be known as a felon.”

They paid court fees of $36.29 each, moved to Washington and had three children. They returned home occasionally, never together. But times were tough financially, and the Lovings missed family, friends and their easy country lifestyle in the rolling Virginia hills.

By 1963, Mrs. Loving could stand the ostracism no longer. Inspired by the civil rights movement and its march on Washington, she wrote Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and asked for help. He wrote her back, and referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The A.C.L.U. took the case. Its lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, faced an immediate problem: the Lovings had pleaded guilty and had no right to appeal. So they asked Judge Bazile to set aside his original verdict. When he refused, they appealed. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court, and the case went to the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Cohen recounted telling Mr. Loving about various legal theories applying to the case. Mr. Loving replied, “Mr. Cohen, tell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

Times have changed for the better.  I am told that one in eight African American marriages today is "mixed."  (By the way, a very significant number of the most active  leaders in opposing racial preferences in college admissions, public contracting and employment are in racially mixed marriages.  Yet they are called racists.)

Big drug bust at SDSU Tom Smith

Here.  You've got your variety of drugs, weapons, and ties to Mexican drug cartels.

Yale law students not very nice Tom Smith

1L at Yale Law complains some of her peers are not very nice.  This may include her peers at Princeton as well.  Sort of makes you wish you were young again.

I know what she means, but the truth is, there are a lot of not very nice people wherever you go.  And nice too.  Not trying to be judgmental here.  But if she doesn't like law school, she should go try an investment bank.  Those guys would as soon eat her liver as look at her.  If she's lucky.  I worked in a lumberyard once.  Did not find the people all that nice, I have to say.  I had a job as a groundskeeper once.  My boss?  Not so nice.  I had an extremely mean football coach in high school.  He was subsequently fired (I am pretty sure) for making inappropriate advances, and not the kind you make in yards.

Really, though, it does kind of make you wish there was a planet all the nice people could go to.  It might be a nice place to visit.

Hitchens on Michelle ObamaMike Rappaport

Some interesting questions about Michelle Obama, and her influence on her husband, from Christopher Hitchens.   

"Ivy League Prof Sues Students for Being Mean to Her" Gail Heriot

File this under "It's a Crazy Old World."

He ought to be illegalMike Rappaport

Mark Steyn is such a great essayist -- combining amazing insight with devastating wit -- that you could almost sympathize with the desire of some to have the Canadian Human Rights Commission shut him up by making his commentary illegal.   Steyn's treatment of the Obamas is devestating.  First, Barack Obama:

Four score and seven years ago… No, wait, my mistake. Two score and seven or eight days ago, Barack Obama gave the greatest speech since the Gettysburg Address, or FDR’s First Inaugural, or JFK’s religion speech, or (if like Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books, you find those comparisons drearily obvious) Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech of 1860. And, of course, the Senator’s speech does share one quality with Cooper Union, Gettysburg, the FDR Inaugural, Henry V at Agincourt, Socrates’s Apology, etc: It’s history. He said, apropos the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, that “I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” But last week he did disown him. So, great-speech-wise, it’s a bit like Churchill promising to fight them on the beaches and never surrender, and then surrendering a month and a half later, and on a beach he decided not to fight on.

But then a few paragraphs later he gives the same treatment to Michelle Obama:

Mrs. O is becoming a challenge for satirists. My radio pal Hugh Hewitt played a clip on his show of the putative First Lady identifying the real problem facing America:

“Like many young people coming out of college, with their MAs and BAs and PhDs and MPhs coming out so mired in debt that they have to forego the careers of their dreams, see, because when you’re mired in debt, you can’t afford to be a teacher or a nurse or social worker, or a pastor of a church, or to run a small non-profit organization, or to do research for a small community group, or to be a community organizer because the salaries that you’ll earn in those jobs won’t cover the cost of the degree that it took to get the job.”

insofar as I understand Mrs. O, she feels that many Harvard and Princeton graduates have to give up their life’s dream of being a minimum-wage “community organizer” (whatever that is) and are forced to become corporate lawyers, investment bankers and multinational CEOs just to pay off their college loans. I’m sure the waitresses and checkout clerks nodded sympathetically.

Michelle Obama is a bizarre mix of condescension and grievance — like Teresa Heinz Kerry with a chip on her shoulder.

There is plenty more, so do read the whole thing. 

 

The ABA's "Diversity" Diktat Gail Heriot

If you missed my op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, then ... well ... shame on you.  Fortunately for you, the internet allows for infinite grace.  You can read it here.

Calling All Friends of USD's Mike Kelly Gail Heriot

Our friend Michael Kelly, Associate Dean of the University of San Diego School of Law, has had a ghastly week, and it won't start getting better for a while.  He's in intensive care at Sharp Memorial Hospital here in San Diego with Guillain Barre Syndrome.  Guillain Barre hits pretty quickly.  On Sunday, I was at Mike's house for a party and he was just fine; by Wednesday he was hospitalized and is now on a ventilator.

The good news is that Guillain Barre victims do recover.  There will be a very, very inconvenient period while Mike is stuck in bed unable to move or talk beyond signaling "yes" or "no."  But after a fews weeks, the symptoms will begin to lift.  In the meantime, my fellow Right Coasters and I will be visiting Mike often, so if you want to send Mike a note, you can send it to us, and we'll take it there and read it to him.  You can e-mail me or if you want to send a handwritten note, mail it to me at:  Gail Heriot, University of San Diego School of Law, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, California  92110.  Don't e-mail Mike directly, since I suspect nobody has access to his account except for Mike himself and Mike cannot get to it yet.

Ecophobia Tom Smith

Please stop hurting us.

On just one point, this whole ethanol thing is starting to get to me.  I got to see inside of it a bit when I was a laboring oar in the Reagan administration.  To call ethanol (biofuels, etc.) a scam is to do an injustice to all the hard working con artists in the world.  Maybe, just maybe, we should not be paying big agribusiness subsidies so they can grow stuff people can't eat, so poor people starve.  Financed with taxes that left in the hands of the people who made the money in first place could be used to create real economic growth.  And this is done to prevent global warming, which I now read is going to happen, don't worry, right after the spell of cooling that's going to last for a while. But don't say you're a global warming skeptic, because that makes you a pawn of the Man.
(hattip:  Heather)

Tamanaha's Criticism of Thomas and ScaliaMike Rappaport

Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization notes that according to a measure pubished in Posner and Landes's recent paper on judicial behavior, the most conservative justices since 1937 are Justices Thomas, Rehnquist, and Scalia.   He suggests that Thomas and Scalia are not real originalists, but political partisans, because their results end up conservative: 

It is reassuring that Thomas and Scalia follow "originalism" and interpret statutes according to their literal meaning . . . .  I wonder what their numbers would have looked like had they gone ahead and voted their political views.

Well, this is a common complaint, but in my book there is not too much to it.  In 1937, the Supreme Court was taken over by New Deal liberals who rejected originalism in a variety of areas, because it interfered with the New Deal State.  This Court was soon followed by the Warren Court, which did not even feel the need to cloak its decisions in originalist garb, instead pursuing their naked vision of justice.

So it should not be surprising that originalism would lead to "conservative" results, because it was abandoned largely to promote liberal results.

Tamanaha's rhetorical question, "I wonder what their numbers would have looked like had they gone ahead and voted their political views," actually is important.  As Posner and Landes indicate, when Rehnquist was promoted to be Chief, he moderated his views.  One common way to view his actions was that he largely abandoned originalism and instead decided cases politically to increase his power -- that is, to move from being a Scalia to being a Kennedy or O'Connor.  Originalism provides a discipline that inhibits judges from  doing as they please, either to promote their political views or their power.

Somin on Rauch's Claim that McCain is a Burkean ConservativeMike Rappaport

Ilya Somin questions Jonathan Rauch's claim that John McCain is a Burkean Conservative. I had the same skeptical reaction when I saw Rauch's article in the Atlantic. 

At present, I still plan not to vote for McCain.  There is just too much I dislike about him and his positions. 

One issue  where I have tended to agree with McCain is Iraq, but even there I gain little comfort.  I supported the War in Iraq as a significant exception to my general opposition to intervention in other countries.  I don't -- and never did -- favor intervening throughout the world to promote democracy or humanitarian aims.   Like Charles Krauthammer, I supported Iraq, but opposed the intervention in Kosovo (as well as the Sudan, although I don't know what Krauthammer's view on Sudan was).  My impression is that McCain would like to intervene in many other places if he could.  So I am likely to disagree generally with McCain on military policy, even though we agree on Iraq.  Whether I will vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all for the presidency, I am not sure. 

Ilya does present the strongest argument for supporting McCain: the desire to promote divided government.  If I do end up voting for McCain, that will be the reason.  But I am not convinced that a limited period of government by Democrats will be bad -- in the long run -- for the Republic.  As I have repeatedly argued, four years of Jimmy Carter made the Reagan and post Reagan boom possible, and two years of Bill Clinton and a democratic Congress made the Clinton-Gingrich boom possible.

Boris! and England Votes Conservative Maimon Schwarzschild

Boris Johnson is the new Mayor of London - defeating "Red Ken" Livingstone.  This is a dramatic revival in the Conservatives' fortunes in England.  Not just in London: Conservatives did convincingly better than Labour in the local-government elections throughout England yesterday.

Foreign elections are not referenda on the United States, obviously: nor on President Bush.  But during the Bush years, when we are told America has alienated the world, it is the democratic world's anti-American demagogues who have lost time after time. France's Jacques Chiraq, Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, Italy's Romano Prodi, Canada's Paul Martin: eager subscribers all to the moral-equivalent-of-war against Bush.   Now Ken Livingstone: a far-left warhorse, although a successful roads-and-subways Mayor of London - up till now.   All defeated at the polls and turned out of office. 

(The exceptions - but they are exceptions - are Spain, where a party-line leftist was elected and now re-elected, with some help from a Jihadi terror-bombing campaign.  And Australia, where John Howard was re-elected against the odds in 2004 despite an energetic leftist anti-American campaign against him: but after a long run in office, Howard was defeated for re-election this year.)

British feelings about America are complex, of course: and politically, as Tony Blair proved, it's not so simple as "Labour: Anti-American" and "Conservatives: Pro-American".  Still, Labour politicians and voters are heavily leftist and politically anti-American.  Blair was loathed for this very reason by many, if not most, in his own party.  And Conservative politicians and voters mostly have a sunnier view of the United States, despite the persistence of some traditionalist (and snobbish) Tory anti-Americanism.

So in fact, it was a good day in England for friends of the US.  And certainly a bad day for the Left.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the one country (almost) in which a candidate for national leadership gets elected despite (or because of) affinity to the anti-American world Left will be... the United States next November.

UPDATE: IBD explains why English voters threw the bums out: "It was no capricious shift, but a citizen revolt against trendy carbon and nanny-state taxes that empower only bad government."

Could this really be the ruling?Mike Rappaport

According to the New York Sun:

It's hard to recall a decision that is more outrageous. Judge Lippman, whom Governor Spitzer appointed to the First Department, upheld the notion that the Port Authority was 68% liable for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, while the terrorists were only 32% liable.

I am certainly willing to believe that a court reached this decision in order to promote loss spreading or placing damages on deep pockets or some other notion, but is that actually what happened in this case?  If anyone skims or reads the decision, feel free to leave a comment clarifying the story.  Hat tip: How Appealing

What sort of jet do you want? Tom Smith

I want my own jet when I grow up too.  Here's a little tip.  If you go to the netjets website, and download some brochures, you'll get on their email list.  And then they may send you invites to special events, like an exclusive pre-release sneak preview of Kung Fu Panda (!!!).  Actually, I want to go to it, and so does one of my boys, but it's too much of a drive from San Diego (it's in the OC, natch).

Kindle, will you marry me? Tom Smith

I'm in love, and it's with a gadget.  Contrary to what some of you may think, I do not frequently fall in love with gadgets or gear.  I am always looking for love there, true, but I rarely find it.  I like iPods, sure, but they didn't change my life.  XM radio is a big improvement over FM, but it's still hard to find anything you actually want to listen to.  My seven station weight machine in the garage was a bust. My smartwatch hooked up to some useless Microsoft network was like an ill considered fling with a crazy chick, not that I've ever done that.  And so on.  But this little beauty is different.

For those of you who still dial into AOL, a Kindle is Amazon's new e-book reader gizmo, a "wireless reading device."  With it you can download as many books as you could conceivably want to carry around with you from a library of 100,000 or so books in Amazon's Kindle bookstore.  It looks like this:

It's on its own wireless network, so you can download books, some magazines, and the WSJ and NY Times wirelessly most places you probably are, unless you live in the sticks.  I live in the semi-sticks, out with the pickups and emu-ranchers, and it's no problem.

You can read all the technical stuff at Amazon.  Let me tell you about the experience of using it.  It's great.  As a gadget, it may be somewhat ugly, but I like its 1960's World Book Encyclopedia educational look. It's the future, baby. It takes me back to my childhood. 

But what's really great about it is the way it reads.  Stuff downloads fast and the selection is good.  One hopes it will grow, but there is plenty to go wild on now.  Very useful is the feature that allows you to sample a big chunk of a book before you decide to buy.  I have downloaded several books in the popular physics domain, for example, and sorted through what I want to keep.  Out go the ones with equations and the ones that divulge that quantum physics shows we are all part of one big consciousness, but there stay a couple really good ones.  Start a thriller and find out if it thrills.  You're saving money!

The Kindle sits nicely in your hand.  It's not too heavy.  It makes reading with one hand easy, useful if you like to read and drink coffee or whatever at the same time.  Something I really love is the ability to adjust the font size.  I can't keep track of my reading glasses, a recent acquisition for me, and I hate them anyway, as they make me look older than I really am.  The Kindle allows me to make the letters big, which makes it easier to read than I would have guessed.  Maybe the author is not peddling obscure rubbish; maybe you're just an old fart slowly going blind!  I am reading a book about the philosophy of time I think most people would find hard going (and I do) and I am amazed how much more lucid it seems in big letters.  That's Boltzmann, not Pulxzsdqwr, which clears things up considerably. 

It's great to find the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times Latest News waiting for you in the morning.  I plan never to attend another faculty meeting without this puppy.  I have been called out for playing chess on my computer and falling asleep during deliberations, but no one will be able to tell what I am reading.  I also note it is perfect for various exercise machines.  I bet they beta'ed this aspect of the Kindle.  It slots into the bookholder on Stairmasters and treadmills like it was made for it. 

Probably the next few years will see improvements.  The leather-like case it comes with is unbelievably lame, as many reviews have noted.  Does Jeff have a girlfriend in some gadget cover design firm or something?  It  is almost that bad.  Almost, because unfortunately I have come to realize that incompetence in this world requires no explanation.  It is rather miraculous that some things work as well as they do, so one should rejoice merely that the thing inside the cover works as well as it does.  Probably the Kindle should be made less ugly, for those not into 1960's design nostalgia.  One can imagine page-turner buttons less prone to accidental page turnings, but it's a minor issue. 

I should mention the display.  The artificial ink or whatever they call it is pretty nifty.  It works.  It is easy to read wherever you have enough ambient light.  Sunlight is OK, which means you can read the Kindle by the pool.   Why go anywhere?   I imagine it would be perfect for commuters by plane or train, situations I do my best to avoid, since public transportation is communism or at best a good way to catch a cold.  They must have really studied the correct size for the display.  It strikes me as close to perfect.  Maybe it should be a bit bigger.

I think the Kindle works as well as it does because it is a special purpose device.  It's not a PDA.  It can store and play audio files, which I have not done yet, but it is a thing designed for reading.  If you are the kind of person who always wants to have a book with him in case you get stuck waiting somewhere, or can steal a few minutes to read something interesting, this object is for you.  On mine right now I have, in no particular order, the Bible (I've been planning to read it for some time), several books on physics and philosophy, Holmes's The Common Law, a sample of Jane Austen's complete novels, a dumb thriller, the Pope's book on Jesus of Nazareth (good so far), Getting Things Done (I want to), a sample of Oprah's new favorite Zen book, forget the name, a new book about Custer's Last Stand, and samples of miscellaneous books of military history and history of the enlightenment era.  And Mark Steyn's America Alone, which is very funny and thought provoking.  And I'm just getting started.  This thing can hold something like 200 books, more if you buy another chip.

I really think a new era in reading is arriving, and I'm glad.  Less to carry and more to carry at the same time.  Kindle may not be the standard setting device, but it works, and to beat it,  Sony or whoever will have their work cut out for them.

SO for example, I just ordered a sample of this book.  We'll see . . .

Dem race in 7 minutes Tom Smith

Recap of the Dem nomination race so far.  Fast and funny.  Slate does manage to do a few things right.  For this, I spare them my gmail Report Spam button.

The Case Against ObamaMike Rappaport

Thomas Sowell sums it up:

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.