"As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates' private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election."

Says Sarah Palin, after the man who broke into her personal email account was found guilty of obstructing justice and unauthorized access to a computer.

(The 22-year-old student, who faces a 20-year prison term, would like you to see what he did as a mere prank.)

"If these people go ahead banning polygamous marriages it means many women will go into prostitution."

"Every woman has the right to be under the shelter of a man."

What are we looking for?

What are we finding?



A toad.



AND: Before there was Althouse + Meade, there was Meade + toad.

"It is what it is. Whatever it was, it wasn't good enough.''

Tiger Woods misses the cut... by 8 shots.

The new shark that looks oddly human.

The Iceland catshark.

Reminds me of... who? Ringo?

Come on, guys! Take the nasal spray that will help you care about other people — like women do!

Some scientists "found that inhaling the 'cuddle hormone' oxytocin made men just as empathetic as women."

Empathy, eh? So Obama didn't have to appoint the "wise Latina." We could have male judges and spray hormones up their noses.

"Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women..."

"... handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged 'immodest.'"

Harvard 3L Stephanie Grace writes "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent" — and is publicly reamed.

... at her law school, on the internet, and in the press. Grace's statement came in email sent to 2 friends, who'd had a private conversation about affirmative action. She felt a need to extend her remarks. And at some point the email got out on the internet, and all hell broke loose:

“Here at Harvard Law School, we are committed to preventing degradation of any individual or group, including race-based insensitivity or hostility,’’ [Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School] wrote in a message to Harvard’s law school community.

Minow said she had met with leaders of Harvard’s Black Law Students Association on Wednesday to discuss the hurt caused by Grace’s e-mail....

... Minow called the incident “sad and unfortunate’’ but said she was heartened by the student’s apology. She added: “We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility.’’

(Via TaxProf, who collects a bunch of other links on the story, including links that will get you to the full text of the email.)

Grace has apologized. Of course, she's sorry now. "I am heartbroken and devastated by the harm that has ensued. I would give anything to take it back." Note the passive voice: "the harm that ensued." A  new way to say I'm sorry you were offended. She also says "I understand why my words expressing even a doubt [that African-Americans are genetically inferior] were and are offensive." She's learned something: This is a subject where you can't play with ideas and speculate. People get very angry, and the speaker had better be ready to deal with it.

Did Dean Minow handle this the right way? One question is: Why does the dean even get involved with something one student said in private email? If the answer is because the Black Law Students Association came to her and demanded a response, then maybe the question should be why did the  Black Law Students Association go to the dean for help? Why didn't the students all just argue and debate and express themselves to each other? These are Harvard students. Law students. Why not dig in and have it out and show your stuff? Why go to the nearest, biggest authority figure? Stephanie hurt me!

Here's the full text of Minow's message. (By the way, Martha Minow's father was FCC chairman Newton Minow, the man who called television "a vast wasteland.")

This sad and unfortunate incident prompts both reflection and reassertion of important community principles and ideals. We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility. This is a community dedicated to intellectual pursuit and social justice....

Law school is a community with shared ideals. One of the ideals could be: When a student makes a point that contains what you think is an outrageous statement, unless she's been actively insulting to you, you should engage her in debate and not not expose her to a public trashing. And don't bring the dean into the fray as your champion. More from Minow:

As news of the email emerged yesterday, I met with leaders of our Black Law Students Association to discuss how to address the hurt that this has brought to this community. For BLSA, repercussions of the email have been compounded by false reports that BLSA made the email public and pressed the student’s future employer to rescind a job offer. 

I was going to say that "the hurt" to Grace and her reputation was much greater than the hurt to those students who only read the email. It's not as if she shouted ugly words in their face. But now I see that the BLSA students had reason to worry that they were the ones who would look bad because they were believed to have overreacted and taken some nasty revenge. Minow may have been activated by the need to clear their reputation.

A troubling event and its reverberations can offer an opportunity to increase awareness, and to foster dialogue and understanding. 

Minow tries to be even-handed and control the fallout. She frames it as a teaching moment. But what has everyone learned?

Did Obama drop immigration reform...

... because that poll showed a majority of Americans support that new Arizona law?

"What’s an externality?"

"My friends tell me that in the Vondelpark, a delightful reserve in central Amsterdam, it is illegal to let your dog off a leash. But it’s perfectly legal to have sex in the park, so long as it is not in view of a children’s playground. The argument is that the dog may make a mess that imposes costs on the unwary walker, while the couple imposes no costs on other park users. I wonder which of these two actions would be more likely to be outlawed in the U.S. Implicitly, how do attitudes toward negative externalities, as expressed in city ordinances, differ between the U.S. and the Netherlands—or among other Western countries?"

At the Arboreal Sunset Café...

... you can stretch out...



... and feel the last glow of the day.

"He defies the laws of physics as his daily exercise, but without him the universe just wouldn't be as friendly to humans."

Bono effuses inanely over Bill Clinton.

"I followed my heart, and I believe it was the right thing to do, which is weird — I get how weird that is..."

"... because I didn’t make a commitment to Elizabeth. I wasn’t the one lying, like, to her, and I was supporting him in his process, and his intentions never wavered. I knew that he wanted — he just had a really unique way of getting there — to live a life of truth."

Rielle Hunter, being weird, on "Oprah."

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

If she would have, like, made a commitment to Elizabeth, then it wouldn't have been weird.

Like, she could have made a commitment to respect Elizabeth's marriage to John? - it would have been, like, a really unique way of getting there? Getting to, you know, that space of living a life of truth?

But it wouldn't have been weird. It would have been just, you know, like a really really real... process.

Oh! It's Everybody Talk Like Rielle Hunter Day!

It's time to be with trees.

They're reaching out to you.



Feel them!



"Now, what we’re doing, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned."

"I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

"Mythic Giant Earthworm Not Extinct, Spitting, or Sweet Smelling."

If only it were extinct, we could imagine that it spit and smelled sweet. Is it better to know it's still around, but not that interesting, or would you prefer it gone and looming large in our heads?

It's not really too late for magnolias...

... if you look at them the right way.

A socialist, an atheist, and a Muslim.

Ah! I've unwittingly written a "Jeopardy"-style answer. Now, you tell me the question!

ADDED: You could also take it as a Karnak answer.

WE HAVE A WINNER: Irene says: "Which affiliation do most Americans agree would disqualify a person from nomination to the US Supreme Court?"

Yes, there is a new poll about replacing Justice Stevens, and in one part of it, Americans are asked if they would be "comfortable" with various sorts of nominees. Here's the PDF of the results. A socialist, an atheist, and a Muslim are the 3 types of nominees that a majority of Americans would not be "comfortable" with. 64% were uncomfortable with the socialist (though Democrats were split 47/47%). 58% were uncomfortable with an atheist, including a majority of both Democrats and Republicans. And 53% were uncomfortable with a Muslim (though only 45% of Democrats had a problem). Interestingly, in contrast to the socialist, libertarians did pretty well. 57% were comfortable, including 53% of Democrats. The poll also asked about Mormons and Christians who take the Bible literally. Both of those types did quite will, with 65% and 62%, respectively, feeling comfortable.

"Meetings between great men don't always result in elevated colloquies; sometimes they tend towards the crudely basic."

For example:

When Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald met in Paris, at Le Dingo Bar on the rue Delambre in April 1925, Hemingway was disconcerted to be asked: "Did you have sex with your wife before you were married, Ernest?" They became friends, however. Their most intimate conversation (as reported by Hemingway) was also about wives. One evening, Scott Fitzgerald confessed to his friend that his wife, Zelda, had told him his penis was unusually small, and that he could never satisfy any woman. Hemingway said it was just typical of Zelda's undermining ways, but Scott wasn't reassured. So Hemingway asked him to come to the lavatory, where he inspected his friend's lance of manhood. Back in the bar, he explained:

"You're perfectly fine," I said. "You're okay. There's nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile." Now there was an act of friendship between creative giants, if not an especially artistic conversation.

Oh, I think it's artistic as hell.

"We will not stop! We will take up our shovels and pickaxes and we...we will use them against you! Believe that!"

Imagine if this level of anger and threatening speech had come from the Tea Party people?

We need cameras in the courtroom, because of the "long, slow decline of the newspaper industry" and the rise of "pseudo-journalist."

Says Judge Kozinski.

What word in what Frank Sinatra song would Siobvan Magnus have magnificently shrieked?

She got sent home last night, so it's alternate reality speculation. But look at the song list — after the jump — it's real. "American Idol" will do Sinatra next week. (Via Throwing Things, where Adam realizes he can't understand America's taste.)

Which of the 5 that are left will do best with this sort of material, and what do you want to hear each one sing?

Here are the songs — all painfully better than any of the Shania Twain stuff they did this week:

• All or Nothing At All
• All the Way
• Anything Goes
• As Time Goes By
• Blue Moon
• Blue Skies
• Come Dance with Me
• Come Fly With Me
• Come Rain or Come Shine
• Fly Me to The Moon (In Other Words)
• I Get A Kick Out of You
• I Love Paris
• I Only Have Eyes For You
• I’ve Got a Crush On You
• I’ve Got the World on a String
• I’ve Got You Under My Skin
• In The Still of the Night
• In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning
• It Had to Be You
• It Was a Very Good Year
• Just One of Those Things
• Love and Marriage
• Love is Here to Stay
• Love Walked In
• My Funny Valentine
• My Kind of Town
• My Way
• New York, New York (From “On the Town”)
• Night and Day
• One For My Baby
• Pennies From Heaven
• Put Your Dreams Away
• Someone to Watch Over Me
• Somethin’ Stupid
• Strangers in the Night
• Street of Dreams
• Summer Wind
• That’s All
• That’s Life
• The Best is Yet to Come
• The Good Life
• The Lady is a Tramp
• The Way You Look Tonight
• They Can’t Take that Away From Me
• What Is This Thing Called Love
• Witchcraft
• You Do Something To Me
• You Make Me Feel So Young
• You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me
• Young at Heart

I hope no one thinks it's a good idea to do "My Way" or "New York, New York." I love "Someone to Watch Over Me" as sung by Sinatra, but it's a dangerous song for a man to sing without sounding like a pussy — or a little lamb that's lost in the woods. I would advise Aaron not to sing "You Make Me Feel So Young." (He's 17.) "One For My Baby" is also a dangerous song — very heavy on the drinking and driving.

Isn't Apple about love? Where's the love Apple?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Appholes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

A great coinage: "Appholes."

CONFESSION: The video clip looked beautiful in full screen size on the 27" screen of the iMac I picked up at the Apple store 2 days ago. So crisp I exclaimed "He needs to get his knuckles waxed."

$8,875,000 for "an ocean-view villa... with a swimming pool, spa and fountains... 6 fireplaces, 5 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms."

Another place for Al Gore and his lovely wife "Tipper" to snuggle up and keep warm.

It's nothing but jealousy and pure peevishness to mock and complain when this delightful, public-spirited man takes another modest step to find some little comfort for himself and his wife.

At the Catkin Café...

... let the feline family meow.

Peter Beinart asks a question that annoys me even without the thesis I know he's working on: "Put a Mom on the Court."

The question is: "Why should we want more women on the court at all?" Grr. Shut up.

But let's see how deeply he steps in it:

[Why?] For two reasons. First, because female justices, on average, will be more sensitive to the problems women face. Since they will have likely encountered gender bias themselves, they will be more likely to support government action to remedy it. And that firsthand experience of injustice may also sensitize them to the plight of other groups that have historically experienced discrimination. These are crude generalizations, of course, but they have a basis in fact. Just look at the women in Congress, who are far more likely to be pro-choice—and to lean left more broadly—than are the men.

In other words, you want more lefties on the Court, and femaleness is a rough proxy for leftism.

Our government is actually doing a pretty good job of providing role models for the 20 percent of American women who don’t want kids. Where it’s failing is in providing role models for the 80 percent that do.

But there’s a second reason we should want more women on the court. It’s not just that they may alleviate gender injustice through their rulings; they may alleviate it through their example as well. Just as Barack Obama empowers African-American kids to believe that there are no limits to what they can achieve, female Supreme Court justices send the same message to young women. As anyone who has ever watched their daughter eye a Barbie Doll can attest, role models matter.

Oh, for the love of God! As if it's 1975! I was irked in 1985 to be told that I had the role of being a role model. I thought the male law professor who told me that was discriminating against me. The men didn't have that extra dimension to their job — that basis for being valued apart from the strength doing the real work. Frankly, I found it diminishing. So that's me being "be more sensitive to the problems women face." One of the problems is men portraying our success as some kind of Oprahesque self-esteem lesson for the backward.

And that’s why it’s important not just to have lots of women in positions of political power, but to have lots of women with kids. It’s important because otherwise, the message you’re sending young women is that they can achieve professionally, or they can have a family, but they can’t do both. 

Hey, buddy. My career is not your messaging device. My birth canal is not a beacon of light to the unenlightened.

And without quite realizing it, that is the message our government has been sending. According to the Census Bureau, 80 percent of American women over the age of 40 have children. But look at the women who have held Cabinet posts in the last three presidential administrations. Only two of the Clinton administration’s five female Cabinet secretaries had kids.... In the Bush administration, the figure was two of seven. In the Obama administration, so far, it is two of four. And if Obama chooses Elena Kagan for the High Court, the figure there will be one of three.

Let's roll back to Reason #1 for wanting a woman on the Court: to get a bigger leftist. So why are you knocking Kagan? Because she's childless, or because you prefer Diane Wood, the woman with kids who is — so they say — the bigger leftist?

Beinart, I call bullshit.

AND: Consider this NYT article from 1922 (as reacted to by me, pretending to be a blogger of the time):

The NYT contends that the 12 greatest women "are women that have never been heard of outside of their own homes, and seldom appreciated there; who have put aside their own ambitions ... to build careers for which their husbands got credit." But the [National League for Women Voters] is looking for famous women, so the Times names 12 famous women: Geraldine Farrar, Edith Wharton, Carrie Chapman Catt, Molla Mallory, Alice Paul, Ida Tarbell, Jane Addams, Amy Lowell, Minnie Maddern Fiske, M. Carey Thomas, Mary Pickford, and Agnes Repplier. Ah, but "six of the twelve have never married," and the married ones are all childless. "Let those who think it is easy to manage a first-rate career and a first-rate home simultaneously find an explanation for that."

Well, my first attempt at an explanation would be to guess that the NYT composed its list of twelve with an eye toward who was childless. But, yet, it's certainly true that it's not easy to balance career and family. Why can't we factor that in as we select the greatest women? First, you say the really greatest women are the ones who put aside all career ambitions for the sake of the family, and then you present us with a list of great women who are all childless. It's obvious what you want to say. You want to warn women away from careers. Unless we are willing to abandon the hope for a good family, we should forget about having a career. This is a terrible message. Try harder to find good examples of women who have balanced family and work and show us how they have done it — or modern women should toss this reactionary newspaper aside. We deserve better.

"I took a weekend class at NYU on speed fiction."

"The instructor would hold up a picture or postcard for 20 seconds or so. Then the class would write a short story about what they saw — in five minutes."

Great idea! Okay, here:



Quick now! Time yourself! 5 minutes!

"Has the appeal of painter's tape ever led someone to trim their walls in blue?"

"I often wonder that when painting."

"You're the first friend from television I ever had."

"And probably the closest, I think."

(That's not really the clip I intended to find, but I got sidetracked. I was looking for something from 1954 to go with this obit for Allen Swift.)

The tiniest horse in the world.

I thought I was resistant to this sort of thing, but I vocalized a heartfelt "aw" — with my office door open, and I'm a little embarrassed. The teensy-tiniest bit.

"Imagine if Obama's gaffe about 'clinging to guns and religion' had been uttered by John McCain, about his own base."

It would look like this...

But, actually, to be fair, that is worse than the hypothetical McCain scenario. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on tape insulting a particular individual — Gillian Duffy — calling her a "bigot" right after talking to her, and her reaction to hearing about it (and then listening to it) is caught on video.

More of Gillian Duffy's amazing real-time response here. (I like when she gets a cell phone call and the reporters can't believe she'd take a phone call while she's on live TV.) Brown has now given Duffy an in-personal apology, but as you can see in that video she says she doesn't want that. She wants to know why her comments were counted as bigotry.

IN THE COMMENTS: Class factotum said:

Josephine the Plumber has been born.

Hey! Wait a minute! Josephine the Plumber? Jane Withers!



When my mother saw those Comet ads, she's always exclaim about how mean Jane Withers was to Shirley Temple. She was the child actress who was most emphatically not Shirley Temple:



And the actor in the wheelchair is Charles Sellon — or as I insist on calling him, Mr. Muckle. Now, open the door for Mr. Muckle:

"Women appear much less happy when spending time with their children and parents than men do."

Now, how are you going to explain that? I mean, the way you have to, so that women are the good ones and it's the men who are bad.

"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins."

"We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

"A nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth."

Great! I hope.

A Meadhouse counterscape...

... with morels.



Found somewhere in Wisconsin.

It only hurts when I'm wet.

Last night on "American Idol," it was Shania Twain night. There was some talk about how the guys — there are 4 left — would sing such feminine songs. After Michael Lynche sang "It Only Hurts When I Breathe," Simon Cowell said "I thought the performance, however, was a little bit wet, as if you were in a musical acting out the words."

Wet, eh? Questioned about what that meant, Cowell was coy: "the opposite of dry." Further grilled, he said "It was a little bit girly for you." I think he was signaling the people at home that it's time to let go of poor Michael, who is a big burly guy whose fatherhood the show has touted since his first appearance. Now, when they'd like us to dump him, Simon injects doubt about his manhood into the American mind.

Meanwhile, Kara DioGuardia snarked about how the little guy, Aaron Kelly, wisely changed the words "when we made love" in Twain's "Way About You." Kara wriggled around as though she was uncomfortable referring to the fact that he's so young he must be a virgin. (He just turned 17.) And then Aaron upped the discomfort level by letting us know he was "singing the song to my mom." A wave of "aw" rose up in the audience, and Aaron bit his lip as if he might sob with love for his mother. No way he's voted out! Moms watch the show, and moms vote. If they were trying to signal that we should drop Aaron, they botched it.

Anyway, I suddenly realize I know that damned "breathe" song. Yeah! Here it is! A blog post written on March 31, 2004. I'd gone to the dentist:

The dentist pipes in music that most resembles the kinds of songs that contestants on American Idol sing. When I'm at the dentist I'm hyper-aware of how much I hate that kind of music, which makes me wonder what strange force makes me watch American Idol. Oh, the Motown stuff last night was good--I like Fantasia--but it's that generic bellowing anthemic crap that I can't tolerate (for example, at the dentist today, Melissa Etheridge singing something along the lines of "It only hurts when I breathe....," where the approach seems to be come up with one line that appears clever and just emote the hell out of that one line over and over). But that is all to say: I really do have a lot of work to get on to. I've got a Conlaw class at 11...

Ha ha. More than 5 years later, I'm still watching "Idol," and they finally do that song. (And I did correct the Melissa Etheridge mistake in an update at the time, even though I don't really care which lung-y woman is which.

And, actually, I've got a Conlaw class at 11 today too. The last class of the Spring semester....

"In an angry hearing peppered with shouts and potty talk, Goldman Sachs brass doggedly insisted Tuesday they have no regrets about dubious mortgage deals that soaked investors."

Pepper... potty... brass... dogs... soaking.... The Daily News madly mixes the metaphors as it challenges us to understand who, if anybody, are the good guys in the big showdown.

The potty talk was the repeated use of the word "shitty," which began in some Goldman Sachs email, and then got flung back at them by Carl Levin, who somehow thought it was a good idea to try to intimidate the Wall Greed Guys with lines like "Your own employees believed they are crap, a piece of junk, or a shitty deal."

NSFW video:



If your scatalogical stream of consciousness flows like mine, you may be thinking about the "soaked investors" being soaked in shit — something like that scene in "Slumdog Millionaire."

But the old expression "soak the rich" was not originally based on an image of dunking the rich in a vat of water or other liquid or somehow hosing them down or otherwise wetting them. The original etymology of "soak" is "suck." So "soak the rich" is more like suck the rich dry. I haven't been able to Google that answer successfully (suck-sessfully, as Bob Dylan would say).  But I wondered about this expression back in 1990, when we had to look things up in real books. Take my book-learned word for it and don't picture those "soaked investors" drenched in shit (or anything else). Picture them dessicated. Not wet.

Trillium Erectum.

Ah! Trillium Erectum! We found a flower we didn't know could be found in Wisconsin. And we had all kinds of other adventures today....

Tom Goldstein predicts that Obama will nominate Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court.

He'd already predicted it, and he still thinks so:

It seems clear to me that none of the three nominees—including even Diane Wood—will generate a knock-down, drag-out fight in the Senate. In effect, the White House preempted the prospect of an all-out war by not including the leading liberal prospects in its published short list of finalists. The Bush White House took a similar approach when it nominated the conservative Samuel Alito, but passed on then-Fourth Circuit Judge Michael Luttig, to whom Democrats had signaled their very strong objections....

More surprising, institutional Republicans have not been particularly vocal in their objections to the potential nomination of Diane Wood. Judge Wood’s abortion-related opinions would mean that she would receive only in the range of 55 to 60 votes. But confirmation would still be all but assured....

It is ... true that Judge Wood is the nominee whom progressives would prefer to see nominated, by an order of magnitude. While criticism from the left of General Kagan (who as the perceived front runner has received the most attention) and Judge Garland has been limited to a few, very vocal liberal commentators, it nonetheless exists.... So to the extent that Wood presents the potential downsides of some fight in the Senate and mobilizing conservatives in the election, she has the upside of appealing to and mobilizing core constituencies of the president....

On the ability of the three to persuade a conservative member of the Court such as Justice Kennedy, all have significant strengths as well.... Diane Wood is not only personally charming but has gone toe to toe with Judges Easterbrook and Posner and persuaded them on significant issues. Elena Kagan has significant demonstrated success in working with conservatives at Harvard Law School, which is an exceptionally challenging environment, and has parallels to the relationships at the Court. But she has never been a judge, and would as a consequence presumably take longer than the others to adapt to the new role.

I don't quite get it. Why won't Obama give liberals what they want? The strongest argument for Kagan over Wood seems to be age. Kagan's 49. Wood is 59.

At the Pulpit Café...

... sermonize and harmonize.

"Our reflexive response to 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day'... was sympathetic. But Althouse prompted us to reconsider."

"Us" = Best of the Web (James Taranto):

"Piss Christ" is not an entirely apposite example, for it prompted no threats of violence or calls for suppression. It was an issue not of free speech but of subsidized speech; people objected to their tax dollars' bankrolling Serrano via the National Endowment for the Arts. But it isn't hard to think of other examples in which speech that is offensive to large numbers of people has occasioned censorship or violence or the threats thereof.

I'm glad to see Taranto do what I was challenging my commenters to do. (I said: "If you don't think the 'Piss Christ' or the American flag hypos are sufficiently on point, then make a better hypo. That's my challenge. Make a hypo that is the same but without the Muslim element, and seriously test your thinking on the subject.") Taranto:

Until 1989, it was a crime in some states to burn the American flag as a political statement. In Texas v. Johnson the U.S. Supreme Court held that this is protected symbolic speech. In ensuing years members of Congress repeatedly tried to propose a constitutional amendment permitting the criminalization of flag burning. It is the view of this column that flag burning is and should remain protected speech. We deplore it nonetheless, and we think holding an "Everybody Burn the Flag Day" would be stupid, obnoxious and counterproductive if one seeks to persuade others that flag burning should be tolerated.

In my comments, Jason (the commenter) had posed the flag hypo — sarcastically: "If burning an American flag were illegal and there was a 'Burning an American Flag' Day, you can bet I'd be out there burning an American flag, because I believe the right to burn an American flag is what America is all about." Back to Taranto:

"Hate speech"--for example, shouting racial slurs, positing theories of racial supremacy or denying the Holocaust--is illegal in Canada and many European countries. In the U.S. it is protected by the First Amendment--but it has been known to provoke a violent reaction....

This column is also of the opinion that hate-speech laws are pernicious and that the First Amendment does and should protect the expression of even ugly and false ideas. But we would not endorse or participate in an "Everybody Shout a Racial Slur Day" or an "Everybody Deny the Holocaust Day" to make the point.

"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" seems different to people, Taranto says:

Because the taboo against depictions of Muhammad is not a part of America's common culture. The taboos against flag burning, racial slurs and Holocaust denial are. The problem with the "in-your-face message" of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is not just that it is inconsiderate of the sensibilities of others, but that it defines those others--Muslims--as being outside of our culture, unworthy of the courtesy we readily accord to insiders. It is an unwise message to send, assuming that one does not wish to make an enemy of the entire Muslim world.

Okay, all you readers who drove the comments up over 400 trying to push me back. I have Taranto! What say you now?!

***

I'm still searching for the perfect hypo that involves upsetting Christians. How about a proposal to protest the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic church with "Everybody Suck on a Crucifix" day?

No shun ≈ notion.

And that pun takes me back to an old song.

"Your touch has thrilled me like the rush of the wind" inspires "your blog has thrilled me like the rush of the limb... bough."

35 years of "Blood on the Tracks."

Do you remember waking up in that tenement apartment that morning in 1975 and listening to the new Dylan album on the FM radio? "'Twas in another lifetime... one of toil and blood..."

Shelter from the Storm begins with four seconds of unaccompanied acoustic guitar strumming, lively, purposeful, and then it is joined by the voice. “’Twas in another lifetime,” Dylan begins, “one of toil and blood,” immediately establishing this song as one cut from the same musical cloth as the traditional folk tales, gospel songs, and murder ballads Robert Zimmerman was learning before he “came in from the wilderness,” only not as “a creature void of form” but as “Bob Dylan”. It is a song that, thirty-five years after its original release, remains both contemporary and as timeless as one of the most basic archetypes of human experience: the hunter.

History and myth reveal three basic types of hunter: first, the hunter/gatherer who operates strictly to sustain life on either a personal or group level; second, a warrior whose primary motivation is destruction; third, a seeker whose interest lies in finding Holy Grails or a heart of gold.

The hunter in Shelter is ... a seeker with no interest in destruction but reconnection.  Despite being “burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail, hunted like a crocodile (the hunter becomes the hunted), ravaged in the corn”, this quest will continue until she is found or the hunter is dead.  “Nothing really matters much,” the narrator in Shelter states, “it’s doom (destiny, fate) alone that counts.”

I made fun of the mixed metaphor — I had the ridiculous image of somebody raping a crocodile in a cornfield — and you defended Bob. That was in another lifetime, it seems.

Corn smut is tasty and good for you too.

A fungus we should be eating, not eradicating.

When huitlacoche attacks corn, the insidious-looking pustules that bubble up don't just force the husk to explode, it forces the metabolical process inside the cob to change, creating new, healthier nutrients.

Take lysine, one of those ''essential amino acids'' that the body requires but can't manufacture. We need it to fight infections and strengthen bones. Bodybuilders pound lysine when they want to build muscle, and estheticians recommend it to keep skin looking young.

Corn has virtually no lysine; huitlacoche is loaded with it. It also is packed with more beta-glucens -- the soluble fiber that gives oatmeal its well-known cholesterol-cutting power -- than, well, oatmeal.

This is a great metaphor for all the things we think are bad that could be perceived as beneficent if we just knew more about what it really is. What else is like huitlacoche?

Meade takes me hunting.

It's into the woods again today...



Where, exactly? I won't tell. I mean... look! Really, look:



Would you have seen what we saw?



Would you have had your Swiss Army Knife?



Would you have found this much?



Ha ha ha ha ha....



... la la la la la la.

The tallest teenage girl.

Originally from Jamaica, now going to school (and playing basketball) in New Jersey, Marvadene Anderson is 5" taller than Michael Jordan.

"People are friendly with me because of my height and my personality. If I was tall and mean, I think I'd have a problem," she said.

"The rudest thing anybody ever said about my height is that I'm not going to be able to find a husband."

I identify. I was told when I was a kid that I'd never be able to find a husband. Not that I was tall. I wasn't.

Meade buys food.

Some people thought the Meadhouse refrigeratorscape looked a little food-deprived. They were right. It was time for some food-gathering. Meade wanted all of you who were worried that we weren't eating enough to see what he brought home:



(Enlarge.)

A Meadhouse mountain range...

... of bread.



Meade advocates keeping bread in this position. You don't need to wrap it up. Just put the cut side of the loaf down on the cutting board and it will stay fresh just as long. This assumes you've got "artisanal" bread. I don't argue about such things. But I do photograph them sometimes when so many artisanal loaves have lined up on the cutting board.

Who could have imagined that one day the Supreme Court would take a case called Schwarzenegger...

... and Schwarzenegger would be arguing for preventing young people from viewing graphic depictions of violence? That day has come.

Don't worry kids. If you can't get your hands on those video games, you can sit quietly on the sofa and watch an old Schwarzenegger movie.

It's a game... between life and death...

Yesterday, in Wisconsin.

Today, it's bright and sunny, but it's Monday. Everything balances out, perhaps. In fact, I love the misty days with heavily filtered light, and tromping about in the woods was lovely.



I love Mondays too, in fact. It's fun to serve up dollops of doctrine at 11 a.m.

And it's the last Monday like that until 4 months from now.

Silly WaPo headline: "Obama and Democrats appeal to new voters in midterms."

By "appeal," of course, they don't mean that voters find them appealing. I know that without reading the article. Is anyone clueless enough to think otherwise?

First paragraph:

President Obama is declaring his stake in the November midterm elections, as his Democratic Party prepares to announce an ambitious strategy to appeal to independent voters in its quest to maintain control of Congress.

Declare! Ambitious! Strategy! Appeal! Independent! Quest! Control!

Could you please settle down and become a newspaper?

Obama plans to issue a call-to-action video message to his supporters on Monday. Democratic officials called the video the first in a series of personal efforts designed to rekindle the grass-roots momentum that propelled Obama to the presidency -- this time, in a way that will benefit his party's congressional and gubernatorial candidates.

Let me try to understand. The Washington Post, which aspires to prestige in journalism, is front-paging the news that the President of the United States is going to release a campaign video and that he wants his party to win in the November elections? And it presents this non-news in cheesy PR language? Do the editors have no shame?

And what the hell does "designed to rekindle the grass-roots momentum" even mean? A presidential video is the opposite of grass roots.

Also, it's a mixed metaphor. Kindle... grass. Are we growing grass or burning things? Or did you mean to make me think of a prairie fire? Remember "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism" (1974) by Bill Ayers, et al.? ("We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years.")

That's not the image WaPo wanted, I'm sure. "The name came from a quote by Mao Zedong, 'a single spark can set a prairie fire.'"

Ambitious! Strategy! Quest! Control!

Will anybody shed a tear for the last...

... floppy?

"Why do I want more haters? If someone had told me when I signed up I'd get half a million haters... It's all about the approval."

When do celebrities quit Twitting? When they don't get the love they sought. Aw. Poor celebrities!

“I wouldn’t want to show proof of citizenship, but I also don’t feel it is racial profiling."

"You are going to look different if you are an alien, and cops know."

Says an Arizonan named — to the NYT's delight? — Mr. White.

[The new Arizona law] gives the local police broad powers to check documentation “when practicable” of anyone they reasonably suspect is an illegal immigrant....

What will be seen as constituting reasonable suspicion? How will it be possible not to unfairly burden all the Hispanic citizens?

“This law might kick some of these immigrants out,” said Mr. Lowis, 76.... “They vandalize the golf course, throwing flags in the ponds. Burglaries. There are too many immigrants. I get tired of seeing all these people standing on the corner.”

Such sentiments propelled the bill through the Republican-controlled Legislature, with supporters listing well-publicized cases in which illegal immigrants committed rapes and shot and killed police officers....

The linked article is called "Growing Split in Arizona Over Immigration."

No Democrats in the Legislature supported the bill, and only one Republican voted against it.

While those opposed to the law are making the most noise....

No details in this article about that.

... the quiet support can be found here, though some people are uneasy about being cast as anti-Hispanic and several people interviewed declined to be named out of concern they would be thought of as prejudiced.

“I don’t want people to be afraid to come,” said Pam Sutherland, who is a window manufacturer and a fan of the crime sweeps but is also concerned about the state’s image. “I just want them to do it legally.”

For many, though, support for the law comes down to a way to vent frustration that, in their view, the federal government has not done enough to control immigration — particularly in a state on the border where reports of drug busts, houses overcrowded with illegal immigrants and people dying in the desert trying to get here fill the airwaves.

So where's the "growing split"? I don't get the headline, and I sense the NYT's frustration looking for evidence of anti-Hispanic attitudes. Where is the discord? It seems like ordinary people are struggling with a serious problem and the ethics of solving it. (The 2 political parties are, of course, acting in accordance with their perceived political interests.)

At the Woodpecker Café...

Leave your mark.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Stephen Hawking warns against contacting aliens.

A Meadhouse refrigeratorscape.

(Enlarge.)

ADDED: The longer view:



(Enlarge.)

A Meadhouse counterscape.

(Enlarge.)

"The epistemic closure on the right is how other conservatives still manage to blind themselves to the pragmatic virtues of this president's remarkable 15 month record at home and abroad."

What?

"I'm Jewish, and I don't even know how to drive a stick shift!"

Said Amanda Pogany, whose 1996 Honda Accord was stolen and, 3 years later, returned "with a brand-new V-8 engine, tinted windows, oversized tires with special hubcaps - and custom valve stem caps shaped like bullet casings... manual transmission... leather interior... and a Dominican flag and a giant wooden cross [hanging] from the rearview mirror."

When the car disappeared from her block in 2006, Pogany said cops laughed when she asked about tracking it down....

... Pogany had basically forgotten about the car, simply using the car-sharing service Zipcar instead....

An officer told Pogany that cops found her Honda while busting a Queens chop shop and were able to trace it back to her even though the VIN number had been filed off.

"I was like, 'Shut up!'" said Pogany, who teaches Judaic Studies and Hebrew language at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan.

Turns out, a major car enthusiast bought the Honda from the thieves and then put a ton of work into it, police told her. He was in the middle of paying to put in the brand-new transmission when the raid occurred.

What should Pogany do now?
	Sell the car to the "enthusiast" for a price equal to what she lost in the theft.
	Put the car up on eBay and get the best price for it.
	Learn to drive a stick shift and have fun.
pollcode.com free polls

The Empire Diner.

We were there in 2008.



"After nearly 35 years, the iconic Empire Diner in Chelsea is closing its doors."

"The guys who run these places can't control themselves. They're around beautiful naked women all night..."

"... but they don't understand they have to keep the hands off."

Says Matthew Blit, the NY lawyer who's been successful with sexual harassment lawsuits brought by the dancers who work in those places that are called "gentlemen's clubs."

When Mary Travers was thin, Mama Cass was radiant, and Joni Mitchell did not have multicolored fibers protruding from her skin.

They say everything can be replaced...



... but they are wrong.

Any day now, any day now...

Are you still looking toward the future, or do you look back to the gorgeous, unreachable past?

Crack Skull Bob is drawing the Sunday talking heads again.

An enticing snippet:



Read and see the whole hilarious thing.

"The Democratic disaster scenario would make absolute sense if it did not also require that the Republicans do something right."

"The whole world is expecting a cataclysm for the Democrats in November," Gail Collins concedes. But she notes what is obvious: You can't beat something with nothing. You can't run Not A Democrat. You have to dig up an actual Republican that real people will vote for. It's not so easy.

***

Also in today's NYT is this Jeff Zeleny/Adam Nagourney piece about how Democrats who've long held seats in the House of Representatives are finding their safe districts not so safe anymore.

Representative David R. Obey has won 21 straight races, easily prevailing through wars and economic crises that have spanned presidencies from Nixon’s to Obama’s. Yet the discontent with Washington surging through politics is now threatening not only his seat but also Democratic control of Congress.

Hey, Zeleny's in Ashland. Welcome to Wisconsin!

In the Seventh District of Wisconsin, which covers 17,787 square miles from the middle of the state to Lake Superior, signs of Mr. Obey’s service in Congress are found in new bridges, highway expansions and countless other projects. Yet there are fewer signs of Mr. Obey himself. At the Democratic Party office in Wausau, his hometown, campaign placards hang in the window for Senator Russ Feingold, but none for Mr. Obey.

When asked to discuss his re-election bid, Mr. Obey declined, saying that it was too early to begin talking politics and that he was focused on his legislative duties. “I have never met anyone who thought political campaigns were too short,” he said.

Can Obey take solace in the Gail Collin's theory about the dearth of Republican opponents?

Mr. Obey, 71, was elected two years before [Sean] Duffy, 38, was born. Mr. Duffy is widely seen as leading in the Republican primary — his opponent is the candidate who lost to Mr. Obey two years ago by 22 percentage points — and his race has drawn support from party leaders in Washington, Tea Party activists and Sarah Palin.

He has been elected four times as the district attorney of Ashland County, but the attention surrounding him began in 1997 when he was on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston.” 

"The Real World"! Were you still watching "The Real World" in 1997? I bailed after Season 5 (Miami). That show peaked in San Francisco (Season 3). Here's a list of all the seasons. Boston was Season 6.

He also is well-known here as a champion lumberjack sports competitor.

He said he decided to challenge Mr. Obey because of his leading role in the economic stimulus bill, health care legislation and the growth of government. “I know that I can have a serious impact on the direction of the country if I could take out Obey,” he said.

Take out?

But Mr. Obey, who has a campaign balance of $1.4 million compared with $400,000 for Mr. Duffy, is also emblematic of a bright spot for Democrats: a financial advantage.

That's something. But $400,000 is not nothing.

ADDED: Duffy is married to Rachel from "Real World" San Francisco. Now, that means something to me. Rachel, whose full name now is Rachel Campos-Duffy, was an out-and-proud Republican on the show. And Rachel and Sean now have 6 children: Evita Pilar, Xavier Jack, Lucia-Belen, John-Paul, Paloma Pilar, and MariaVictoria Margarita.

"Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy."

"I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress."

Says Senator Lindsey Graham, who is retaliating by withdrawing his support for the climate change and energy bill.

Progress on an energy and climate bill in the Senate has relied heavily on Mr. Graham’s active participation and support. He is the only Republican to have formally endorsed a broad approach to dealing with global warming and energy issues and is needed to try to bring in support from other Republicans.

Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate policy, said that the administration would work to secure bipartisan agreement on both energy and immigration measures this year....

Bipartisan. That treasured principle. If you've got one person from the other party, you can try to assert that you're pursuing it. Without even one... people might notice the exaggeration.

[Senator Harry] Reid said that Mr. Graham was under “tremendous pressure” from fellow Republicans not to cooperate with Democrats on either energy or immigration. In a swipe, he added, “But I will not allow him to play one issue off of another, and neither will the American people. They expect us to do both, and they will not accept the notion that trying to act on one is an excuse for not acting on the other.”

I love Reid's purported channeling of "the American people," which, it seems, he needs to do really quickly, before actual Americans get to the polls in November and tell him what we really think.

"Fibres in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral."

Joni Mitchell says she's got Morgellons disease, a "weird, incurable disease that seems like it's from outer space."

"Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer – a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year."

Is this disease real or a delusion?

***

Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in

Instapundit vs. Isthmus.

Glenn schools a UW undergraduate who doesn't get lawprof blogging.

Rain and tulips.

At the Farmers Market this morning, in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Obama's use of Meds Yeghern 'is an elegant dodge to avoid using the 'g-word'..."

"... but the substance of what he states about what happened gives no comfort to those who cling to the Turkish official version... '1.5 million Armenians were rounded up and massacred or marched to their death.' Despite the passive construction, that assumes intentionality."

Is radical Muslim the new Goth?

You can upset your parents and teachers by masquerading as a zealous devotee of other people's religion.

[Zachary Adam Chesser] was a "loner," a former classmate said, one who frequently drew pictures of Satanic figures in his notebooks and had just a few friends, most of them male.

"He was definitely sort of weird," the classmate told FoxNews.com. "He was very into violent industrial music, borderline Satanic bands and stuff like that. He had dark undertones in his interests."

Two years later, Chesser is literally a changed man. He now uses an alias and has a new set of hobbies. He now likes to be called Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, and his primary interest in this world appears to be Islamic radicalism.

This is a much greater mockery of Islam than a drawing of Muhammad! Nice work, Chesser, you loser.

ADDED: Eugene Volokh notes the historical resonance.

"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is not a good idea.

And as long as I'm disagreeing with Glenn Reynolds, let me say that I disapprove of "Everybody Draw Mohammed" Day, which he seems to be promoting. (Hot Air, Dan Savage, and Reason are actively delighted by the idea.)

I have endless contempt for the threats/warnings against various cartoonists who draw Muhammad (or a man in a bear suit who might be Muhammad, but is actually Santa Claus). But depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats. In pushing back some people, you also hurt a lot of people who aren't doing anything (other than protecting their own interests by declining to pressure the extremists who are hurting the reputation of their religion).

I don't like the in-your-face message that we don't care about what other people hold sacred. Back in the days of the "Piss Christ" controversy, I wouldn't have supported an "Everybody Dunk a Crucifix in a Jar of Urine Day" to protest censorship. Dunking a crucifix in a jar of urine is something I have a perfect right to do, but it would gratuitously hurt many Christian bystanders to the controversy. I think opposing violence (and censorship) can be done in much better ways.

At the same time, real artists like the "South Park" guys or (maybe) Andre Serrano should go on with their work, using shock to the extent that they see fit. Shock is an old artist's move. Epater la bourgeoisie. Shock will get a reaction, and it will make some people mad. They are allowed to get mad. That was the point. Of course, they'll have to control their violent impulses.

People need to learn to deal with getting mad when they hear or see speech that enrages them, even when it is intended to enrage them. But how are we outsiders to the artwork supposed to contribute the the process of their learning how to deal with free expression? I don't think it is by gratuitously piling on outrageous expression, because it doesn't show enough respect and care for the people who are trying to tolerate the expression that outrages them.

UPDATE: More here.

"Were I representing Arizona, I’d argue that the federal government is in default on its 'protection against invasion' responsibility, and that this empowers the state to resort to self-help."

Says Glenn Reynolds, citing Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. ("The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.")

Not sure how that would play out, but it would make an interesting law review article. And a fun oral argument.

I'm pretty sure how it would play out. The courts would apply the political question doctrine and say that Article IV, Section 4 is a "textually demonstrable commitment" of the question to Congress and the Executive. It is for them and not the courts to say what constitutes an "invasion" and what protection is warranted. Even though it would not be a lawsuit against the federal government, attempting to get a court to compel it to act — it would only be a justification of the state's acting in its own defense — the courts would refuse to interpret and apply that provision of the Constitution.

UPDATE: Glenn fights back on the political question doctrine. He connects Article IV, Section 4 to Article I Sec. 10. ("No State shall... engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.")

Arizona is not — yet, anyway — engaging in war, but it’s clear from this language that it’s constitutionally empowered to do so when invaded, even if the federal government does nothing (and perhaps even in the face of federal objection). Arizona’s legislation is passed in response to armed people coming across the border and killing Arizonans, which sounds rather like an invasion. If that’s the case, then lesser responses to invasion are, arguably, permissible as well in the face of federal inaction. What the courts will do with this is, of course, uncertain (and likely not tied very closely to the actual text of the Constitution!) but it’s certainly not a frivolous argument.

An immediate military response to a sudden invasion that "will not admit of delay" is clearly distinguishable from the long influx of migrants to which the state has responded with a stringent policy of requiring and checking papers and deporting people. Arizona has adopted its own immigration policy, because it doesn't like the policy the federal government is following. But the federal government has complete power over immigration. This "invasion" concept is offered as a work-around to that power.

I think that if the Arizona policy were challenged and Arizona argued it had suffered an invasion that the feds wouldn't deflect, that the courts would say: It's not for us to decide what constitutes an "invasion." Congress and the Executive have already made their decision about that, and the Constitution makes that the final answer. As they say in political question doctrine talk, there's "the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government... an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made... [and] the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."

At that point, the court would be back at the original barrier to the state's law: the exclusive federal power over immigration.

It's the President and the First Lady vacationing in Asheville and eating at 12 Bones.

That's what we did last year. Look at the photograph.

***

See the big red sign in the background in that photograph? Here's my picture from the same room:



The guys are RLC and Meade (my 2 husbands).

(And here's my old blog post about 12 Bones. We need to do a summer drive that takes us back down that way again. I'd like to spend a few days in Asheville and eat every meal at 12 Bones.)

A less close look.

Old images.

I have so much more time and subject matter for artistic projects in the summer, and with classes ending on Wednesday, I was looking for inspiration in the earliest examples of photography on this blog.

1. The blog post with the first digital photograph I ever took.

2. An early model of a post using photographs I happened to take that day and creating — concisely — a narrative arc.

3. Riffing on a movie with photographs taken — unabashedly — from the TV screen.

4. Photos of signs and displays accompanied by text that looks at them from a skewed perspective.

5. Attending and interpreting a genuinely interesting artistic event: Here and here.

6. I could use my drawings in a bloggy style. That reminds me: Palladian has done a magnificent job of presenting his drawings on line. Check it out. I used to travel with a pen and a sketchbook instead of a camera. I was highly influenced by this book. You have no idea how much time I spent, traipsing about, alone, looking and drawing. I don't know if I could go back to that, now that I've found digital photography. But I think there are alternative things that you can do, combining drawing and photography. I wonder if I'll ever get back to something like that....

7. Another idea is to get a new lens for the SLR camera and see what happens. 

Anyway... just casting about....

At the Violet Café...

... it's getting dark. Let's think deep thoughts.

"Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration bill in the country... and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally."

Why is it so inflammatory for the people of a state to deal with a problem of disorder within their own borders?

Even before she signed the bill at a 4:30 p.m. news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it....

Saying the failure of officials in Washington to act on immigration would open the door to “irresponsibility by others,” he said the Arizona bill threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

What is irresponsible and unfair about what Arizona did?

The law... would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime. It would also give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have decried it as an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.

The New York crime of having a balloon.

In NY, a court found helium a "noxious substance" and upheld the charge of "unlawfully possessing or selling noxious material" against a man who sold 2 helium balloons. It says "possessing or selling," so I must infer that even having a helium balloon is a crime. So watch out kids.

"I would like the firing squad, please."

In Utah, one has a choice of execution method.

If you faced unavoidable execution and had a choice of lethal injection or firing squad, what would you pick?
	Firing squad if I believe I deserve the death penalty, but otherwise, lethal injection.
	Lethal injection if I believe I deserve the death penalty, but otherwise, firing squad.
	Whether I deserve the death penalty or not, I'd take the lethal injection.
	Whether I deserve the death penalty or not, I'd take the firing squad.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Almost no one is going for the idea that your choice of method would depend on whether you deserved harsh punishment. I put those alternatives in there because I thought people would quibble about that. But no. Now, the 2 choices have been polling about equal, and I wonder if it's because there's a difference of opinion about which is actually less painful or if it's a preference about the sort of drama you'd feel best about.

I like this Harvard Law Review attack on the FTC regulation of bloggers who write about stuff they get free.

Noted here. But whatever happened to editing?

In the interest of providing consumers with full disclosure, the Guides require bloggers to disclose any “material connection[s]” they have with producers of any products that they “endorse” on their blogs. A “material connection” includes not only monetary compensation, but also any free good received by the blogger — even if that good was provided unsolicited, with no conditions attached, for the purpose of allowing the blogger to review the product.

The word referring to merchandise is "goods." You can't invent the singular "good" in serious writing. Come on, Harvard!

"This. is. the. best. thing. in. the. known. universe! Excuse me while I roll around on the floor as if I were Ann-Margret and this post were baked beans."

Ha.

And:

"High-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse."

Other people's money is so much less interesting than other people's naked bodies.

The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years....

• A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.

• An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.

• Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418.

• The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

I wonder what people who read about this are thinking. I'll bet a lot are outraged — and the GOP is banking on that outrage as it makes this an issue right now (because attacking the SEC is something they want to do for reasons utterly unrelated to porn). But I bet a lot of people — guys — feel really nervous about it because they are looking at porn at work too.

Is it good politics for the GOP to go on an anti-porn rampage?
	Yes.
	No.
pollcode.com free polls

Explain your answer in the comments, if you like. I have my answer, but I'll wait to say it so I don't over-influence the discussion.

Limbaugh cites a BarackObama.com sponsored link on Google as evidence of collusion between the White House and the SEC.

On Wednesday's show, Rush Limbaugh was talking to a former Google employee — "John Doe" — about the way sponsored links on Google work. Rush was unusually thick trying to understand, and I found that pretty annoying considering that he'd been riffing this week about how a sponsored link to BarackObama.com — Obama's campaign site — comes up on a Google search for: goldman sachs sec. (It still does. Try it. You get "Help Change Wall Street/www.BarackObama.com/It's Time for Financial Reform that Protects Main Street. Act Now!")

Rush has been saying things like:

So this is pure Alinsky on steroids. This guy is incompetent to run the private sector but, boy, does he know how to agitate and community organize. They had no advance knowledge this was happening, but they happened to get hold of Google and they said, "Look, we want to buy the search terms 'Goldman Sachs SEC,' we want you to direct the first hit to our website where we are going to raise campaign funds and awareness of the effort to demonize Wall Street." Meanwhile, the White House continues to deny that there's any link between the timing of the SEC suit and its push for regulatory reform.

Okay. Interesting conspiracy theory — collusion between the White House and the SEC. That's something to consider. It was pretty convenient that the SEC moved against Goldman Sachs just as Obama was presenting his finance reform bill. But what kind of evidence is the Google ad?

Back to the colloquy with John Doe:

CALLER: The way it works is that, for instance, with the Goldman Sachs SEC key word, a company or a political campaign can put in a bid on that key word or that phrase so that when someone does a Google search for that phrase an online auction is conducted instantaneously, and the highest bidding organization has its advertisement displayed there. So if you were the Obama campaign, you would bid enough so that the very top result would be the one that you want people to see, namely the anti-Goldman Sachs advertising campaign.... [I]t can cost anywhere from five to ten cents a click or it can cost upwards of two to five or ten dollars a click depending on how popular and how much in demand those key words are. And so, for instance, every time you click on that ad, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents....

I'm editing out the parts where Rush struggles to understand this description. You can read the whole dialogue at the first link in this post. It's possible that Rush pretends to have trouble understanding to help radio listeners keep up with something that might be a little challenging.

Now, the funny thing is that John Doe didn't call in to help us weigh the evidence of collusion. (What would motivate the Obama campaign to bid for the "goldman sachs sec" search term? How likely is that bid to a result of advance knowledge that the SEC was going to charge Goldman Sachs with fraud?) Instead, John Doe has an idea that will waste the Obama campaign's money:

CALLER: [W]hat your audience might be interested to know, sir, is that each time somebody clicks on that link, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents or greater. And so I don't want to tell anybody what to do, but again, your audience of millions of people might be interested to know that each time they click on that link, the campaign is charged a small fractional amount, but with millions of listeners, sir, that can end up having --

RUSH: Snerdley, do you know what he's talking about? I have no idea what he's talking about here?

Ha. Is Rush pretending not to understand?

CALLER: Sir --

RUSH: John Doe from somewhere in the country, uhhh, sometimes I'm pretty thick.... So if the 20 million people in this audience all entered "Goldman Sachs SEC" and then clicked on the first result that came up at the top of the list, the person responsible behind that link -- in this case the campaign -- would be charged 25 to 50 cents.

CALLER: That's correct, sir.

RUSH: That can add up to a lot of money if I'm hearing you right.

CALLER: It can, sir, and in many cases the organization will establish a daily budget of maybe $50 or $100 or $10,000 or $100,000 dollars. But in any case, each time there is a click, there is a charge against that organization, and when they reach their maximum budget for the day, their ad disappears.

RUSH: Oh, is that right?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Oh! Oh! So the White House -- I'm sorry -- the campaign here has agreed to a maximum daily financial exposure, and whenever that limit is reached per day, that link then disappears from any further searches?

Oh, too bad! Because 20 million clicks at 50¢ each... talk about pure Alinsky on steroids! But it's still pretty good Alinsky stuff to get people who don't like Obama to go max out the clicks, use up the campaign's allotted money for that sponsored link, and make it go away so it can't reach anyone the campaign was hoping to reach.

After the break, Rush goes into a related riff that is horribly ignorant about Google. Rush either doesn't know or pretends he doesn't know the difference between a sponsored link and a "Google bomb":

RUSH: You remember late in the second term of George W. Bush, if you entered the search term "miserable failure" in the Google search field you would come up with stories on George W. Bush. And Google said, "There's nothing we can do about that, that's just the way it happens." But then when it began to hurt Obama -- 'cause after Obama was elected you put in "miserable failure" or whatever the algorithm was, it defaulted to whoever the president was. That was a way of hiding it being a direct default to George W. Bush. There was a time you could enter "miserable failure" in a Google search field and you would end up with Obama. They found a way to fix it then.

But it's incredibly easy to find out that Google fixed the Google bomb problem by January 29, 2007 — before Obama had even announced his candidacy for President. I Googled "Google bomb" and got the Wikipedia article on the subject. It has a section on the "miserable failure" incident, and that got me to the NYT article, dated January 29, 2007, which makes it obvious that Google responded to the problem Bush had:

It has been a bad month for anti-Bush snarkiness.... 

[A] favored online tactic to mock the president — altering the Google search engine so the words “miserable failure” lead to President Bush’s home page at the White House — has been neutralized.

Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our analysis of the link structure of the Web” such mischief would instead “typically return commentary, discussions, and articles” about the tactic itself.

Indeed, a search on Saturday of “miserable failure” on Google leads to a now-outdated BBC News article from 2003 about the “miserable failure” search, rather than the previous first result, President Bush’s portal at whitehouse.gov/president.

Such gamesmanship has been termed “Google bombing,” and is not unique to President Bush, or even politics. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, was linked to the search “waffles,” while other Google bombs have been elaborate jokes or personal vendettas.

So, note: Google didn't respond to the problem when it affected Kerry. So Rush's they're-all-against-us pose is ridiculous. Yet it's unlikely his millions of listeners will notice. It happened to jump out at me. I think Rush Limbaugh reads my blog, by the way — I have my evidence — so Rush, I'm talking to you.

Back to Rush's Wednesday show:

"Miserable failure" at Google was linked to the White House page, the official WhiteHouse.gov page. And so when Bush was president, "miserable failure," took you there. But when Obama assumed office it still took you there, and then Google found a way to change it. They said they didn't know how it was happening. So when Obama was elected, it went to him, and Google said, "Oh, no, no, we can't have that," so they changed it. So now "miserable failure" does not take you to the White House website ever since Obama has been immaculated.

That's just plain not true. And even if it were true, it wouldn't have anything to do with the suspicions about the sponsored link and the question whether there was collusion between the White House and the SEC.