Live-blogging the Scott Walker/Tom Barrett Wisconsin recall debate.

8:40 Central Time: We're set to begin in 20 minutes. You can stream it here. Hang out here in the comments.

8:53: Wisconsin polysci prof John Coleman has some excellent, detailed graphs of the polling.

9:00: They're at Marquette Law School, and the moderator is Mike Gousha. It's a bright, banked classroom, and the candidates are sitting together at a table. No lecterns. No opening statements, and the candidates can talk to each other.

9:03: Question 1: What's at stake in the recall? Walker (who won the coin toss) says it's whether a politician can be decisive. Barrett says it's "the future of this state," then switches to some of his buzzwords: "rock star" (Walker is one) and Tea Party (what Walker wants to impose on us).

9:05: Gousha asks about Walker's "divide and conquer" remark. Walker says it had to do with breaking up the power of the special interests and returning the power to the people. Barrett says "you wanted to pit people against each other... you wanted to use a crisis to divide and conquer... you say you're 'going to drop the bomb.'"

9:11: This is a great format with the men sitting side by side. Barrett — a larger man — leans toward the governor and speaks with urgency and stress. Walker seems more relaxed. He's earnest, gesturing and explaining. Walker's theme is: the taxpayers.

9:15: Barrett calls Walker "the poster boy of the Tea Party." He insists Walker would sign a right-to-work law, which Walker — who won't vow to veto it — says will never arrive on his desk. Barrett is speaking very fast. They're arguing about labor statistics now and Barrett, who's relying on old estimates as opposed to the actual, verified numbers, is turning bright red.

9:21: Gousha challenges Barrett to say something specific what he would do to increase economic development. Barrett complains about Walker's tax cuts. I really don't think Barrett has any material on this, the most important issue to people. Gousha ultimately lets him get away with talking about education.

9:28: Walker says "The mayor has a moral obligation" to tell us what his budget reform plan is. (He's never done it.) Barrett says a lot of nonresponsive words. Walker, smiling, and finally doing an expansive gesture, says: "Just to be clear, so everybody's clear here: The Mayor doesn't have a plan, so all he's got is to attack me. That's what, you just heard here. The Mayor did not answer the question, because he doesn't have an answer." Barrett acts like now he will, but he does the same thing again: complaining about what Walker did and saying he'll sit down and talk to people.

9:35: Barrett keeps calling Walker "Scott," while Walker invariably calls Barrett "the Mayor."

9:39: Gousha brings up the John Doe investigation, and Barrett lashes into Walker for his lack of integrity. Walker brings up the misleading numbers about crime in Milwaukee, and Barrett does a how-dare-you-question-my-integrity routine. Which is it? Must we assume integrity, or can integrity be attacked?

9:47: Barrett says that Walker — in the name of attacking Barrett's record — has been trying to make people afraid of Milwaukee. Walker says he loves Milwaukee... and brings up Barrett's 2-mile trolley.

9:52: Barrett is agitated about all the Scott Walker commercials that are "ripping my face off."

9:54: Walker warns that if he loses, we're going to have "ping-pong recall" — one recall after another. People "are sick of" the recalls.

9:58: Closing statements. Barrett has no intention to be a "rock star," but he will be "rock solid." It's an election about trust. He'll restore "Wisconsin values." Walker touts his "courage" in taking on "the tough challenges." He's about moving forward and the future... for the next generation.

10:05: I think the highlight was when Walker said "Just to be clear, so everybody's clear here: The Mayor doesn't have a plan, so all he's got is to attack me." And beyond that, Barrett simply hasn't established that a recall is justified. Walker defended what he's done, made the usual claim that his reforms are working, and stood his ground. What more is there to say? Maybe that Barrett was disrespectful. Isn't it obvious that he should call Walker "the Governor"?

IN THE COMMENTS: Jon Burack said:

I paid almost no attention to the substance of what they said (why would anyone?). I watched body language. What struck me most was the imperious yet at the same time perplexed look Barrett directed at Walker almost constantly. A combination of ridiculous pomposity and pathetic passivity. Amazing he could pull off such a combo. A talent of sorts, I guess -- for doing himself in. Walker looked relaxed and human and never once reciprocated with any form of rudeness such as he was getting.

And Walter quotes me saying "Barrett is agitated about all the Scott Walker commercials that are 'ripping my face off'" and adds "That is totally insensitive to those in the news lately truly ripping and chewing off faces."

At the Rose Café...

... conversation rises.

"John Edwards Jury Reaches Verdict on Just 1 of 6 Counts."

"Jurors told Judge Catherine Eagles they had reached a unanimous verdict only on Count 3 of the indictment. That charge pertains specifically to more than $700,000 in donations wealthy heiress Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon gave Edwards to allegedly cover up an illicit affair and illegitimate child."

UPDATE: "The jury in the federal campaign finance case against former Senator John Edwards said Thursday that it had found him not guilty on one of the six counts against him, and the judge declared a mistrial on the others."

ADDED: Let's try to figure out what happened. Here's a list of the 6 counts. Count 3 accused Edwards of receiving illegal campaign contributions from Mellon in 2008. Now, Count 2 is the same thing, except in 2007. So what they agreed on was that the prosecution hadn't proved what was required with respect to 2008. Count 5 was about contributions from Fred Baron in 2008. Count 1 was conspiracy to do the things in the other counts, and Count 6 was false statements. It seems that there's plenty there for a retrial.

Annoying email annoys me.

2 teachers and a busload of high school students vote — using early in-person absentee balloting — in the Walker recall election.

"A witness at the Milwaukee Municipal Building on Friday reported seeing about 30 students from Pulaski High School arrived at the polls around 10 am. About 10 or 11 of them used their class schedules to vote."

However, according to the Milwaukee Elections Commission and the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, voters do not need to provide proof of age in order to register. All they have to do is check off a box on the registration form certifying that they are a qualified elector, a U.S. citizen and at least 18 years old by the time they vote.

"The whole system relies on the honestly and integrity of the individual," Sue Edmond, Milwaukee's Election Commission director, told the MacIver News Service. "If we find after the election that they lied, they could be charged with a felony."

The new voter ID law is not currently being enforced (because of the judgment of 2 Dane County judges). Interestingly, the new Marquette Law School poll, surveying likely voters in the recall election found that "61% percent favored requiring a government-issued photo id to vote, while 37 percent opposed that." People really do worry about voter fraud. Given the polls that show Walker leading — the Marquette poll has him 7 points ahead — if Barrett wins, people should be suspicious.

Here's Reince Priebus on the subject:

"I'm always concerned about voter fraud, you know, being from Kenosha, and quite frankly having lived through seeing some of it happen," Reince Priebus said. "Certainly in Milwaukee we have seen some of it, and I think it's been documented. Any notion that's not the case, it certainly is in Wisconsin. I'm always concerned about it, which is why I think we need to do a point or two better than where we think we need to be, to overcome it."...

Lester Pines, an attorney involved in a separate legal challenge to the voter ID law, also denounced Priebus' comments, saying they were baseless.

"His statement that Republicans need to outperform Democrats by one to two percent to account for vote fraud is an absolute, total, 100% lie," Pines said. "It is a fantasy. And Reince Priebus and his ilk are saying this and they're saying it over and over and over because they're using the well-known propaganda tool called 'the big lie.' If you say it enough times, people will believe it. There's no other way to characterize this except that Reince Priebus is a liar."

"The Big Lie" is indeed a well-known propaganda tool, but it is not simply something that's repeated a lot. "The Big Lie" refers to "colossal untruths" of the sort that ordinary people don't even think of telling, which they don't suspect because "they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." I'm quoting Mein Kampf there. It's Adolph Hitler's term. Know it. Use it, but know what you're saying when you use it and only use it when you mean it, Mr. Pines. Don't make casual, vague allusions to Hitler. It's not right.

Elizabeth Warren says — for the first time — that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American.

Boston Globe reports:

Federal statistics like those in the Harvard records, which were compiled for the Department of Labor, rely on a definition of “Native American’’ that requires both ancestry and an official affiliation with a tribe or community. The 1992-93 and 1995-96 Harvard reports indicate the university relied on that definition during those years as well as the years since.

Warren has not met any of those standards. Though she continues to consider herself Native American, she has not provided any genealogical evidence....

Professor Charles Fried, who sat on the committee that recruited Warren, reiterated to the Globe on Wednesday that he was unaware of Warren’s minority status when she was hired. He said that the committee never discussed it and that he does not consult the legal directory in which Warren had listed herself as a minority.

However, Fried acknowledged Wednesday to the Globe, it seemed strange that the issue of her heritage would not come up during the hiring process since she was recruited in the early 1990s, when the school was under intense pressure to diversify its faculty....

"New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something."

"I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do."

Elsewhere, "all over the United States," they "are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’” but not in New York. In New York, they are doing something.

Do something — what a wonderful concept, often heard in the old cry for help: "Don't just stand there; do something."

It's the the motto of the liberal. The corresponding motto of the conservative is: First, do no harm. Or to put it in the form that I thought up (in another context) and have adopted as a kind of a personal motto: Better than nothing is a high standard.

1st Circuit says Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

"The appeals court agreed with a lower court judge who ruled in 2010 that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies married gay couples federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns."

The court didn't rule on [whether] states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where it's legal. It also wasn't asked to address whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

ADDED: Here is the opinion. After concluding that the equal protection doctrine requires minimum scrutiny (but not "the extreme deference accorded to ordinary economic legislation"), the court switches to discussing federalism. Congress uses the concept of marriage in many federal programs involving taxing and spending, and it normally relies on the states' determinations of who is married, but — the court says — that doesn't mean Congress is required to do so.

The court looks at the 10th Amendment but distinguishes this case from Printz and New York v. United States, which involved Congress commandeering the internal operations of state or local government. And the court looks at the Spending Clause doctrine and finds no limitation, because Congress is merely defining the terms of various spending programs.

However, the denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married does burden the choice of states like Massachusetts to regulate the rules and incidents of marriage; notably, the Commonwealth stands both to assume new administrative burdens and to lose funding for Medicaid or veterans' cemeteries solely on account of its same-sex marriage laws. These consequences do not violate the Tenth Amendment or Spending Clause, but Congress' effort to put a thumb on the scales and influence a state's decision as to how to shape its own marriage laws does bear on how the justifications are assessed.

That's quite a sentence! There's no violation of the 10th Amendment or the Spending Clause, but because federal choices affect how states may decide to exercise their powers, the court will give congressional decisions less deference.

In United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), and United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), the Supreme Court scrutinized with special care federal statutes intruding on matters customarily within state control. The lack of adequate and persuasive findings led the Court in both cases to invalidate the statutes under the Commerce Clause even though nothing more than rational basis review is normally afforded in such cases.

The Supreme Court has made somewhat similar statements about the need for scrutiny when examining federal statutes intruding on regulation of state election processes. Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 129 S. Ct. 2504, 2511 (2009); cf. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 534 (1997) (calling RFRA a "considerable congressional intrusion into the States' traditional prerogatives and general authority to regulate for the health and welfare of their citizens").

True, these federalism cases examined the reach of federal power under the Commerce Clause and other sources of constitutional authority not invoked here; but a statute that violates equal protection is likewise beyond the power of Congress. See Moreno, 413 U.S. at 541 (Douglas, J., concurring). Given that DOMA intrudes broadly into an area of traditional state regulation, a closer examination of the justifications that would prevent DOMA from violating equal protection (and thus from exceeding federal authority) is uniquely reinforced by federalism concerns.

This is a remarkable move! The enumerated powers cases involve judicial line-drawing about what matters may be governed by federal law and what are left exclusively to the states. The cases about rights concern what is left to individual citizens. It's one thing to say that federalism concerns affect what is governed by federal law and what is left exclusively to the states, quite another to say that the realm that belongs to the individual increases or decreases based on federalism concerns. Our rights are bigger when states have interests and smaller when they don't? The court seems to be creating a hybrid of rights and state interests.

Or we might understand this as an idea about deference to Congress: The question isn't so much whether Congress has power or not, but whether the court will see the lack of power. What the court is doing is looking at all the factors that affect how closely it ought to look at what Congress has done. Although as a matter of doctrine, the official level of scrutiny is minimum — Congress need only have a legitimate interest that's rationally related to the policy it has adopted — the fact that this isn't just economic legislation makes the court look a little more closely and, separately, so does the fact that the states are burdened in an area they have traditionally controlled.

With the degree of scrutiny established, the court goes on to the interests that supposedly support DOMA. One is "preserving scarce government resources."

But, where the distinction is drawn against a historically disadvantaged group and has no other basis, Supreme Court precedent marks this as a reason undermining rather than bolstering the distinction. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 227 (1982); Romer, 517 U.S. at 635. The reason, derived from equal protection analysis, is that such a group has historically been less able to protect itself through the political process. Plyler, 457 U.S. at 218 n.14; United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 n.4 (1938).

Another purported interest is "to support child-rearing in the context of stable marriage," but the court finds "a lack of any demonstrated connection between DOMA's treatment of same-sex couples and its asserted goal of strengthening the bonds and benefits to society of heterosexual marriage."

A third interest is "moral disapproval of homosexuality":

But, speaking directly of same-sex preferences, Lawrence ruled that moral disapproval alone cannot justify legislation discriminating on this basis. 539 U.S. at 577-78. Moral judgments can hardly be avoided in legislation, but Lawrence and Romer have undercut this basis. Cf. Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433 (1984).

Lastly, it was argued that Congress, facing a period of changing state laws, had an interest in "freezing" the law in place, taking "a temporary time-out." But, the court says, DOMA isn't framed as a temporary measure.

If we are right in thinking that disparate impact on minority interests and federalism concerns both require somewhat more in this case than almost automatic deference to Congress' will, this statute fails that test.

Invalidating a federal statute is an unwelcome responsibility for federal judges; the elected Congress speaks for the entire nation, its judgment and good faith being entitled to utmost respect.... 

But what about deference to tradition — the tradition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman? Why can't Congress base its law on that?

Traditions are the glue that holds society together, and many of our own traditions rest largely on belief and familiarity--not on benefits firmly provable in court. The desire to retain them is strong and can be honestly held.

For 150 years, this desire to maintain tradition would alone have been justification enough for almost any statute. This judicial deference has a distinguished lineage, including such figures as Justice Holmes, the second Justice Harlan, and Judges Learned Hand and Henry Friendly. But Supreme Court decisions in the last fifty years call for closer scrutiny of government action touching upon minority group interests and of federal action in areas of traditional state concern.

To conclude, many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest.

Ronald Poppo, the cannibal's victim, the faceless man.

Video shows 3 bicyclists pedal past the naked cannibal attack. The attack goes on for 18 minutes.

I don't blame the bicyclists for not stopping to help. It would be heroic to stop, but getting away and calling 911 is all that is morally required. Do you disagree? I would not even stop long enough to figure out who was the one that needed help. Now, if the bicyclists casually observed the scene and moved on, that would be wrong.

There's also now an answer to the question I had: Why was the victim naked? The attacker, Rudy Eugene "pulls Poppo from the shade, strips off his pants and pummels him. He hunches over Poppo and appears to lie on top of him."

And here's an article about Poppo, whose sister thought he'd died years ago.

“I tried to reach him, and I just thought he killed himself,” she said. "We really thought he was no longer on this Earth."

So here was this poor, lost man. Before the attack, the word "faceless" could have been used figuratively to describe him. Now, having literally lost his face, he is famous. His face, in old photographs, is on the front page of the newspapers. What strange paradoxes. Lying in the street, with no one to care about him, he was suddenly "pull[ed]... from the shade" and into the bright light. He suffered a horrible attack, but before the attack, no one cared about him or gave him any thought at all. Now, everyone cares intensely about him. We want to know how he came to be lying there that day, how he suffered, whether he can be saved. The doctors and the nurses will lavish medical care upon him.

He lost nearly 80% of his face on Saturday when Rudy Eugene, 31, chomped away at his nose, eyes and face. He also lost one eye when it was gouged out, police said.

“He had his face eaten down to his goatee,” said Sgt. Armando Aguilar, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police. “The forehead was just bone. No nose, no mouth.”

The beard was not eaten. The crazed cannibal maintained possession of the sane person's distaste for hair? Perhaps when Poppo wandered the streets, that beard marked him as a homeless man, and outsider. And then the beard preserved a part of his face.

Antoinette remembered her sibling as “a very intelligent boy.”

“My mother always sent him to private schools, and I really don’t understand what happened,” Antoinette said....

He was remembered as a “nice guy” by his fellow classmates at Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious city school from which he graduated in 1964.

Stuyvesant isn't a private school, so it's hard to make sense of what the sister said. Maybe just that the place was exclusive. You have to do well on a difficult test to get in.

“The sad reality is there are many brilliant people who become schizophrenic and end up on the streets,” said a Stuyvesant classmate, Felix Freshwater, who became a pioneering plastic surgeon in Miami.

Now 65, Poppo used to sleep on a cardboard box across the street from the crime scene, often listening to a small radio, a homeless man named Andrew told the Daily News.

“He didn’t mess with anyone, and he seemed like a very educated man,” Andrew said.

Very sad.  I hope it's some consolation to the poor man that, after all these years, people do care about him. Here are some more details about medical treatment. The injuries are not life threatening, but the human mouth is full of germs, so the worst danger is infection:

[R]ebuilding of Poppo's face would happen in stages after doctors try to keep his wounds clean, salvage viable tissue and determine a plan for skin grafts. Protecting his remaining eye and maintaining an airway are priorities.

To keep the wounds clean, doctors use grafts of the patient's skin, cadaver skin or synthetic skin to cover the exposed bone or cartilage, said Dr. Blane Shatkin, a plastic surgeon and director of the wound healing center at Memorial Hospital Pembroke in South Florida....

"You would not just take this guy to the OR for a face transplant — you really have to go in a staged fashion. You save what you can and use what you have available first, don't burn any bridges and move forward slowly," Shatkin said. "And you have to see what he wants."

Psychological care is important to the recovery, and patients need to participate in the decision-making process, said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He performed a facial transplant on a Connecticut woman who was mauled by a friend's pet chimpanzee in 2009.

"I think the patient has to be able to cope with the injury and the trauma and needs to figure out what has happened. It often takes them weeks to understand what has happened," Pomahac said.

They have a man who hasn't coped with ordinary life, but he had his survival-level life on the streets for 30 years. In that, he's not much like the chimpanzee victim, abruptly thrown from ordinary life into abnormal life.

"When the gunmen began to slaughter his family, 11-year-old Ali el-Sayed says he fell to the floor of his home, soaking his clothes with his brother's blood..."

"... to fool the killers into thinking he was already dead. The Syrian boy tried to stop himself from trembling, even as the gunmen, with long beards and shaved heads, killed his parents and all four of his siblings, one by one."

The judge overseeing the John Doe investigation defends it against charges of partisanship.

"This has been an orderly and professionally conducted procedure... I realize the length of it frustrates some people. Once it's run its course, it's run its course."

Said former Appeals Court Judge Neal Nettesheim of Waukesha, interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Nettesheim declined to comment specifically on whether Walker was constrained under the John Doe law from discussing what he knows about issues under investigation or from releasing specific emails. Nettesheim noted that his secrecy order extends to all parties, including the judge. Violators can be held in contempt of court. Nettesheim would be the enforcer if violations occur.

I guess it's for the judge to decide how far he's allowed to go.

ADDED: At a Barrett rally last night in Madison:

The mayor again appeared with former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, who has joined Barrett on the campaign trail this week. Feingold called Walker's decision not to disclose John Doe documents "cynical" since voters cannot recall him again in his first term.

"If we do not prevail ... Scott Walker will have committed the perfect political crime," Feingold said. 

Oh, that's rich! As if Scott Walker schemed to set up a recall election against himself. Instead of calling Walker "cynical," he should call the people who demanded the recall idiots. Plus, Feingold.... if Feingold really cared about recalling Scott Walker, he'd have stepped up and become a candidate. Instead the Democratic Party got stuck with a lackluster candidate who had already lost to Scott Walker. Finally, there are remedies other than the recall, and in fact, the recall is a bad political remedy that ought to be abolished. If Scott Walker is actually guilty of some crime — if there's ultimately something of substance behind all this John Doe investigatory smoke — the remedy of impeachment will be available. There is also the political remedy: pressure on Walker to resign.

Scott Walker and Tom Barrett, together again — the second and final debate.

Tonight, at 9 Central Time.

Walker and Barrett held their first debate on Friday night. Barrett was aggressive in his attacks on Walker in that contest, but Walker stood his ground in defending his record as governor over the past 18 months.

Yes, and I wonder what Barrett will try to do this time. Last time, I think his strategy was to try to produce a moment, by being pretty irritating and disrespectful toward the governor. He repeatedly called him "Scott" (not "Governor") and repeatedly used confrontational phrases like "divide and conquer" (a phrase Walker once used, to which Walker opponents attribute great meaning) and "civil war" (a condition supposedly created by Walker, which Barrett likes to say he'll end). I think Barrett hoped to rile Walker and get a great video clip out of it. But Walker just ignored Barrett and answered the questions directed at him, sticking to the message: Our reforms are working. When one question turned out to be an invitation to Walker to ask Barrett a question, Walker said he didn't think the people of Wisconsin wanted to hear the candidates "bickering" and declined ask a question.

So Walker deflected Barrett in that first debate, and since then, Walker's numbers have climbed. Barrett got no traction. So what can he do tonight? The provoke-Walker strategy is terrible. It didn't work the first time, and now, you can predict Walker won't take the bait. He didn't take it the first time, and now he's seen it before. Barrett had better try looking gubernatorial. Be dignified and state your principles and policies in an intelligent, persuasive manner. It's not going to shake things up, and it's not likely to lead to a victory in next week's election. (Barrett is way behind in the polls.) But at least he can lose gracefully, and he can begin rebuilding the Democratic Party's reputation in Wisconsin. After the siege of the Capitol, the teachers and the fake sick-out notes, the fleeblagging to Illinois, the Hitler posters, etc. etc., show us some maturity and depth... including some depth about what their policies actually are. Last time, Barrett kept talking about how he would "focus" and "set priorities" and sit down with people and discuss what might be done. Let's have some substance. Dignified substance.

And stop trying to make "Scott" lose his cool. It's not going to happen. And it's not very gubernatorial.

Will I be live-blogging? If I and the internet live until 9 this evening, with our faculties intact, I sure will.

Spelling time again.

The best blog coverage, year after year, is at Throwing Things.

ADDED: "doo buh TAHN tay: The attitude of the Montana Supreme Court towards Citizens United."

ALSO: Here's some detail about that Montana case, from George Will.

Three Montana corporations sued to bring the state into conformity with Citizens United by overturning a 100-year-old state law, passed when copper and other corporations supposedly held sway, that bans all corporate political spending. The state’s Supreme Court refused to do this, citing Montana’s supposedly unique susceptibility to corporate domination — an idea amusingly discordant with the three corporations’ failure even to persuade the state court to acknowledge the supremacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the Events Garden Café...

... you could walk down the aisle.

"I can’t find it in me to remand him to state prison that houses people convicted of offenses such as murder, armed robbery and rape."

"I don’t believe that that fits this case. I believe that he has to be punished, and he will be."

Says Judge Glenn Berman, as he sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail for spying on his roommate Tyler Clementi (who shortly thereafter killed himself).

[The judge] argued that the legislature intended prison terms to be attached to bias crimes that were “assaultive or violent in nature,” not invasion of privacy. 

“I also know his age,” Judge Berman added, calling it a mitigating factor. 

“I believe justice compels me to deviate from the guidelines,” he said.

"Walker leads Barrett 52% to 45% in new Marquette Law School poll."

Likely voters. Margin of error +/-4. In early May, Walker led by 50% to 44% in this poll.

The same Marquette poll that showed GOP incumbent Walker leading in his recall fight also showed Democratic President Barack Obama leading in his re-election fight against Republican Mitt Romney, 51% to 43%. The two were tied in Marquette’s early May poll.   

That's a big advance for Obama. Not surprising Obama wants nothing to do with the Wisconsin recall election.

ADDED: More here:

Majorities supported increases in public employee contributions to health and retirement benefits, with 75 percent in favor and 22 percent opposed.... A smaller majority, 55 percent, said they favored limiting collective bargaining for most public employees, while 41 percent opposed such limits. A subsequent question found a closer division on collective bargaining, with 50 percent wanting to keep the current law on bargaining and 45 percent wishing for a return to the previous law prior to last year.

So on main issues that fired the protests last year, the people clearly support Walker.

"Chicago distances Obama from Wisconsin recall."

Chicago? Chicago = the Obama campaign. Isn't that weird?

Anyway, Chicago wants you to know that the Walker recall business has got nothing to do with Obama.

"This is a gubernatorial race with a guy who was recalled and a challenger trying to get him out of office," Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on MSNBC Wednesday. "It has nothing to do with President Obama at the top of the ticket."

A guy... and a challenger... don't even say the names in the same breath as you say the name of The One.

Asked whether the recall showdown means anything for the November general election, Cutter told host Chuck Todd, "No, I don't think so."

Some Wisconsin Democrats and labor officials have privately groused that the Obama campaign has not sufficiently been involved in backing Walker's challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Neither Obama nor Vice President Biden have been dispatched to campaign on Barrett's behalf.

Not even Biden! What a gulf! What a vast, yawning chasm there is between Chicago and Wisconsin. Chicago, which sent busloads of Chicagoan union types up to inflate the crowds in the protests of yore.

"I must say this venture of mine into this Intrade market has been worthwhile."

"I have never really interacted directly with you wingnuts before, and the expression, 'shit for brains,' now has a meaning I never quite appreciated as much before now. Thank you for making it real for me."

A comment, just now, on the Intrade market "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to win the 5 June 2012 recall election," which just hit 94.5%.

Hey, remember the new civility? The weird thing is: Tom Barrett (Walker's opponent) has made his main issue the prospect of restoring civility — ending what he repeatedly calls "the civil war." But I'm only seeing incivility from the anti-Walkerites. Walker fixed the budget, and (some) people flipped out, mainly over an issue that Tom Barrett doesn't even want to talk about anymore (because the clear majority of Wisconsinites agree with Walker).

Check out what happened over at the Isthmus forum (Isthmus is our local "alternative" newspaper) when Meade — responding to a guy who'd said "What do you know personally about the rest of Wisconsin? Little, I think." — said:

Tell you what, Mr. Henry. A week from tomorrow, June 6, if your guy Tom Barrett has more votes than Governor Walker - you name the place. Anywhere on Monroe Street. I will buy you a beer. And I'll listen to anything you feel like teaching me about Wisconsin.

Incivility ensues.

ADDED: Sorry about leaving out that last link until just now.

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

There's no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking. I felt very strongly, and I, of course, do so today, that regardless of the number of Soviet armored divisions in Poland, the Russians would never dominate the Polish spirit. That's what I should have said. I simply left out the fact that at that time in 1976, the Russians had about 10 to 15 divisions in Poland. Well, of course the presence of those divisions indicates a domination physically of the Poles, but despite that military occupation of Poland by the Soviets, it never in any way ever destroyed the strong, nationalistic spirit of the Polish people. And I felt, and of course, I'm pleased now the Poles are going to throw the Russians out And the quicker they do it, the better. And I'm proud of what they're doing, and, of course, I get a little satisfaction that maybe I was right in 1976.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back at the time you said that. I'm sure you've replayed this in your mind a million times. I don't have to remind you what happened. You gave that answer, and then there was a follow-up, and you repeated it, so my question is did you have any idea that you had said something wrong?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at the time. Not at the time, because as you may remember, I included Yugoslavia, and Hungary, I believe, and Poland in the initial answer, and I said the Soviet Union does not dominate these countries. They're autonomous, and of course, it related to an earlier comment I had made about the Helsinki accord, which had established the borderlines of all the Eastern and Western European countries. So at the time, I did not feel that I had made an error. In retrospect, obviously, the inclusion of a sentence or maybe a phrase would have made all the difference in the world.

JIM LEHRER: When did you realize that you had made a mistake, or at least or do you honestly believe you made a mistake, now, sitting here now?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Well, I can see that I made a mistake in not adequately explaining what I had in mind. I have never had any doubts, none whatsoever about the strength of the Policy people to throw the Soviet or the Russian forces out, and to reestablish an independent Poland. I felt after the debate was over that I had overall done well because we had pointed out that Mr. Carter had been calling for significant reductions in military expenditures, which, of course, was not the right policy, and I pointed out his lack o experience in foreign policy military decision making. So when I finished the debate, I felt very comfortable. But the press focused in on that one exchange, and I happen to think that most of the press distorted the facts, and overly emphasized something that was not the most substantive issue in the whole debate.

JIM LEHRER: Do you happen to remember that just as the debate was over, when you first talked to your aides, your family, or whatever, did anybody say to you, Mr. President you made a mistake, you did bad on this one statement.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The first comments by my staff were that we had done very, very well overall. But then when the press, in their own analysis --

JIM LEHRER: Immediately, you mean right after the debate.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The press that were making the post debate analysis focused in on that, and made very adverse comments about my comment. Well, when that press reaction became the dominant one, of course, the whole feeling that I had won this debate overall changed quite dramatically.

JIM LEHRER: How important do you think that was to the outcome of the election?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: It was a factor. As you also know, we ended up losing by only a point and a half, or maybe two points. So any one of a number of problem in the campaign could have made the difference. The second debate might have made a difference. The pardon of President Nixon might have made a difference. The timing of certain economic news that came out in October that indicated we were not doing as well in coming out of the recession if the news we got in because through mid-November on the economy had come in mid-October, I think we would have won, because through November, economic news was good. The October news just before the election was not very good. So any one of a number of three or four problems, difficulties could have made a difference. We only had to change 6,500 votes in Ohio out of 4 million, and about 20,000, as I recall, in Hawaii and we would have won the election.

JIM LEHRER: When you lost the election, did you ever fly back some night by yourself thinking if I just had not said that in that debate about Poland and Eastern Europe, it might have come out differently? Did it haunt you?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at all, Jim. I have always had the attitude, what's gone past you have to forget, and you have to look down the road and build for the future. Of course, Betty and I hated to lose. We did our best. But once the verdict was there by the voters we had no remorse. We didn't sit around and moan and groan. We had a new life to lead, and we started planning whatever our future would be.

By the way, I watched the debate at the time, and I understood what he meant as he said it. I heard how the spinners spun it immediately after the debate and saw how it played in the media and how much it hurt him. If only there had been bloggers back then to push back! 

"It's capitalism vs. crony-capitalism."

"Romney: I’ll See Your Bain And Raise You A Solyndra."

Why did Bob Dylan wear sunglasses to the White House?

Caitlin McDevitt (at Politico) simply notes that he did, but we watched the video (over there), and this was the dialogue at Meadhouse:

ME: Look how emotional he is. That's why he's wearing sunglasses...

MEADE: He doesn't want people scrutinizing him...

ME: He's crying. He doesn't want people to see him cry. Oh, jeez, look at Obama. That smug look on his face... compared to Dylan... who is shaking and crying... [Blogging the conversation:] Did you say he didn't want people peering into his soul?

MEADE: No, I said he doesn't want people scrutinizing him. He's very expressive. He doesn't want people to be able to see that.

ME: Oh, I'm mixing it up with Bush and Putin. [Bush said: "I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul..."]

MEADE: "Please don’t put a price on my soul... I know you’ve suffered much/But in this you are not so unique.... And if you don’t underestimate me/I won’t underestimate you..."

ADDED: And if you don’t misunderestimate me, I won’t misunderestimate you...

ALSO: What Bob Dylan said about Barack Obama in June 2008.

"A lot of politicians can go negative without losing too much altitude, but President Barack Obama doesn’t seem to be that guy."

Writes Glenn Thrush in Politco:

Obama’s sag — and it’s definitely more of a sag than a collapse — is a natural function of reluctant Republicans finally coalescing behind Romney, who clinched the nomination Tuesday night with a victory in Texas.

But the president’s enemies, and a few of his friends, think his in-your-face negativity, on display in his attacks on Bain Capital and a snark offensive that included comparing Romney’s statements to a “cow pie of distortion,” have produced a backlash among independent voters who have finally given up the image of Obama as a new-breed politician....

Nowhere has Obama’s slide been more dramatic than in supposedly safe Wisconsin — currently in the throes of a highly contentious gubernatorial recall election — where Obama’s margin over Romney has plunged from as much as 17 points in the early spring to about 3 points, according to Real Clear Politics’s average of the last four polls in the state....

Well, now don't blame the Wisconsin collapse entirely on Obama.  You've got to put some of the blame on the pumped-up protesters who stormed the Capitol last year and banged on drums and chanted for months, until they conjured up of vision of taking down Governor Scott Walker in a recall election. That delusive mission has flooded the people of this state with all manner of propaganda, left and right, and who knows what that does to the precious, all-important independent voters?

"Father's death made Obama realise he could do more with his life than smoke pot Michelle tells Jon Stewart."

A Daily Mail headline. Details:

On the Daily Show, Stewart joked that the stories about the president as a young man resembled the 'script of a Cheech and Chong movie.'

While the First Lady didn't directly address the claims in Maraniss' book, she did say that her husband underwent a change during his college years.

Mrs Obama responded by saying: 'By the time he was in college, like so many young people, he realised that he could do more with his life.'

'He had a mother that was always saying you're so gifted, you're so talented, slap him on the head, "get yourself together."'

Watch the clip at the link. After she gets that far and Stewart tries to push her farther, she says "I'm not taking the bait," and Stewart says "Don't worry. It's organic."

By the way: "slap him on the head" seems to take domestic violence as a joke.

Everybody's talking about cannibalism.

I'm just checking the front page over at USAToday, and I'm struck by the top entry on the "most popular" list:

"Police: Woman killed her infant, ate part of brain." Has the country gone mad? More of this bath salts, the new LSD business? No, it's a story from 2009, revived because... Well, I'm promoting it now, and if you clicked on it, you're pumping its popularity.

"Yeah, that’s just who I want helping me out with my legal problems. A guy who technically isn’t even a lawyer yet..."

"... and has absolutely no experience. Experts believe there has been a huge disconnect between the learnings in the classroom and what goes on after passing the bar."

Says The Weakonomics blogger who just had to find the right picture to illustrate his musings.

(Man, I have been working on that Federal Courts take-home exam, with my legal pad, my Pelikan fountain pen, my "Annie Hall" glasses, my self-cut bangs, and my lactating breasts since 1981!)

"New Jersey man stabbed himself, threw skin and intestines at cops..."

Reports the Daily News, where comments in the "That took a lot of guts" vein are accumulating.

Don't tell me... bath salts... the new LSD....

"The first of the three eyasses (chicks) to fledge took off this morning (May 30, 2012) at 6:59 a.m."

Here at the University of Wisconsin—Madison:



Thanks to kcom in the comments over here for pointing to that video. We — especially Meade — have been watching the hawkcam a lot, and we were checking it out at 7:30 a.m. We've seen them almost take off a few times, but the helicopter-like total liftoff in that video is truly cool. We'd have loved to witness that live.

"If you're over 70, you should be able to go and say, 'Just give me some diamorphine and I won't mither you any more.'"

Said John Cooper Clark, the "great punk poet," in this long and fascinating piece in the Guardian. The subject of opiates arose in connection with the years he lost to heroin addiction. He's asked if he misses heroin, and he says he does:

A lot of times I remember it as fabulous. But I can't do that and have the life I have. And I ain't gonna sink the ship just so I can feel a bit better. If I live 'til I'm 80, I fully intend to reacquaint myself with the world of opiate drugs. I think it's ideal for the elderly. It should be there for the asking.

In his heroin days, he lived with Nico — lived with, it wasn't sexual.

Ach, that's disappointing. He smiles and says that's everybody's response. "Who wouldn't like to think you were with one of the 10 most beautiful women in the world, official – and that was in the day of Brigitte Bardot and Julie Christie."

Did Nico ever make a pass at him? "Well, we were junkies so it doesn't really come up. It's not a physical world. It's just not a sex drug, heroin. You just don't get round to thinking about it." Do any junkies have an active sex life? "I've known it happen. Yeah, but not guilty. Ha ha ha ha!"

Here's a great documentary about the very beautiful and self-destructive Nico.

And here's an article about how hard the old folks are hitting narcotics these days.

In 2009, the American Geriatrics Society joined others in advocating for greater opioid use to treat chronic pain in seniors, especially those 75 and older....

So they're basically on the same page as the punk poet genius Clark.

Andrew Kolodny, a New York psychiatrist and addiction specialist, said the American Geriatrics Society guidelines were likely influenced by the panel's financial ties to drug companies and, as a result, they mistakenly recommended opioids over traditional, anti-inflammatory drugs.

"Finding prominent experts without these conflicts of interest isn't very hard," said Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. "Looks like (they) didn't even try."

Drug dealing, a complex economic topic. Discuss!

Back to the Clark article:

In the past, he has proposed that, for National Poetry Day, all human affairs be conducted in rhyme, with the exception of the emergency sevices. But now he's decided there need be no exception. He grins. "You go to the doctors, the doctor says, 'I understand your question./ Now here is the answer./ It isn't indigestion./ You have stomach cancer.' To which you reply, 'My imminent estrangement/ has come as quite a shock/ I'll make the relevant arrangements./ Thanks for the information, doc.' What d'you think of that? It's good, isn't it? It could even bring a much-needed smile to the cancer sufferer's face."

And you're probably still wondering about the word "mither." It's a word going back to the mid-19th century, a regional word used in northern England, meaning — obviously — "to bother, pester, worry, irritate" (OED)("1879 G. F. Jackson Shropshire Word-bk. 286   Them women's clack mītherd the poor chap tell 'e didna know whad 'e wuz sayin'.")

Chagas Disease — the “new AIDS of the Americas.”

The "new AIDS"... and "[n]ew research suggests Chagas may have led to the death of Charles Darwin — one of the great medical mysteries." Doesn't sound so new!

Darwin wrote in his diary that he was bitten by a “great wingless black bug” during the trip in 1835. He died 47 years later of heart failure.

"In an embarrassing blunder, Romney's campaign misspelled the word 'America' on its new 'With Mitt' iPhone app, launched Tuesday."

Ouch.

"Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite."

WaPo reports:

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them....

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not....

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his mother.

“He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”...

“I promised the Lord I’d do everything in my power to keep the faith going,” he said in October. “I spend a lot of time going a lot of places that handle serpents to keep them motivated. I’m trying to get anybody I can get involved.”

With "bath salts" — "the new LSD" — there have been 3 or 4 cases in Miami like the naked cannibal.

According to Armando Aguilar, head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police:

[H]e said the people have all taken their clothing off, been extremely violent with what seemed to be super-human strength, even using their jaws as weapons....

In many of the cases, [emergency room Dr. Paul] Adams said the person’s temperature has risen to an extremely high level, they’ve become very aggressive, with logic and the ability to feel pain lost in their reactions. Some have used their jaws as a weapon during attacks.

Dr. Adams said the patients were in a state of delirium.

“Extremely strong, I took care of a 150 pound individual who you would have thought he was 250 pounds,” Dr. Adams said. “It took six security officers to restrain the individual.”

At the Rose Fly Café...

... you can talk all night.

President Obama ties the Medal of Freedom around Bob Dylan's neck.

Photo.

Bob looks so old and frail! Also there and getting the same award but not shown in the picture: Justice Stevens.

"The UW's Teaching Assistants' Association has declined to endorse Democratic challenger and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who faces Walker in the June 5 recall election..."

Hot news! (You may have to wait a while for the stressed Isthmus website to load.)

"Through his use of Act 10 against the workers in Milwaukee [Barrett] has shown that he is not deserving of support of unions in Wisconsin," says Dan Suárez, a member of the TAA and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UW-Madison. Barrett made use of Walker's collective bargaining restrictions in Act 10 to increase pension and health care contributions for workers employed by the city of Milwaukee. Barrett has said he took those steps to avoid layoffs of public workers.



Without an endorsement, the TAA won't expend any of its volunteer or financial resources on electing Barrett, although individual members are still free to contribute as they wish.

"What this means for the TAA is that the conversation is going to shift back to how to meaningfully and effectively rebuild our membership [instead of wasting] time and money on supporting a candidate who doesn't care about us," says Suárez.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski bristles at the suggestion that Democrats aren't committed to defending organized labor. "The attack on collective bargaining was the original sin that sparked this movement," says Zielinksi. "Scott Walker's total dishonesty with the public on the matter of collective bargaining informs every inch of what we do going forward."

But a well-publicized memo (PDF) outlining the Democrats' messaging strategy for the recall election makes little mention of collective bargaining and lays out a range of alternative issues as the recall campaign's focus. In an interview for Mother Jones magazine, Zielinksi defended the strategy, stating, "Collective bargaining isn’t moving people."

Wisconsin recall voters "shouldn’t be basing their decisions on recent job growth, which owes far more to individual entrepreneurs and chance than to anything the governor has done."

"They should be making their choices based on the things the governor does control, not on short term economic data, which are neither perfectly measured nor under the governor’s control."

Says Harvard economics prof Edward Glaeser, who looks at the controversy between the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development numbers, which are being used, respectively, by Tom Barrett and Scott Walker.

One way to judge between the numbers is to look at alternative data sources and see whether they tend towards gloom or growth. The BLS itself provides an alternative estimate of job growth from its household survey, which is generally less accurate than the employer survey and suggests strong job growth between 2011 and 2012.  According to the household survey, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has dropped significantly over the last year, and employment has increased by 22,000 between March 2011 and 2012, again not seasonally adjusted, which is closer to the figure Walker is promoting than the BLS’s own establishment survey.



The BLS Mass Layoff database also shows that between the first four months of 2011 and the first four months of 2012 the number of mass layoffs dropped by about 30 percent and the number of new unemployment insurance claims from those layoffs fell by 36 percent. Wisconsin’s total personal income grew by 4.5 percent nominally, or about 1 percent in real terms, between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2011. Wisconsin’s rental vacancy rate was down to 6.6 percent in 2011, down from 8.6 percent in 2010.

My best guess is that the truth lies between the two figures, but closer to the upbeat Wisconsin state numbers than the BLS estimate.

"Will a Mormon president treat constitutional clauses as divine injunctions?"

"If so, what grounds will we non-Mormons have for interpreting with secular arguments what is presented as God’s will? For that matter, what right will the Supreme Court have to treat the document as anything less than a divinely inspired covenant? Does the First Amendment actually separate church and state, or does that not count, since it is merely an amendment, not the original word of God? But why, then, did a mere amendment change the first inspiration that made slaves less than full persons?"

Garry Wills, he's not anti-Mormon. He just has questions. A lot of questions. Can't blame a man for asking questions, can you? I'd say you can. This is an effort to smear Romney with some really silly insinuations. Why would the fact that the President is a Mormon — even assuming Wills states the belief correctly and Romney himself holds that belief — affect what the Constitution means, what non-Mormons will be able to think about what it means, and how the Supreme Court would interpret it?

In any case, isn't the belief that the framers of the Constitution were divinely inspired fairly common? Where does it get you... other than to profound reverence and dedication? What's wrong with that? The President is supposed to be dedicated to the Constitution. The original Constitution is structured around the existing institution of slavery, but what's the point of bringing that up? Wills is asking questions, not making arguments, which let's him be very slippery. He knows that the part of the Constitution that liberals care about is all in the amendments, and perhaps he'd like to separate the good part of the Constitution — the amendments — from the bad part — the part with slavery... and all the structural safeguards that conservatives would like to see enforced.

"Telling young people that some jobs are 'menial' is a huge disservice to them and to the whole society."

"Subsidizing them in idleness while they wait for 'meaningful work' is just asking for trouble, both for them and for all those around them."

Also: "The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good."

ADDED: This idea of working when and only when it is meaningful relates to the women's movement. We were told that staying home with the children was unfulfilling and satisfaction was to be found in the workplace. (I've been reading the old feminist classic "The Feminine Mystique" recently.) If women are free to choose — that's what they keep telling us — and it's all about what fulfills us, then of course, work must be meaningful.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate commits a Class I felony...

... punishable by up to 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

"Democrats also believe that if they can keep Walker’s margin to low single-digits heading into the vote next Tuesday they can win it on the ground..."

"... thanks to their superior organizational efforts — much of which is being spearheaded by labor unions. As evidence of their organizational edge, Democrats note that early voting is running higher than expected — a good sign for them, they believe."'

AND: This, from Politico: "The Wisconsin governor is running under the radar in an attempt to freeze the race where it stands and limit the chances of a momentum-shifting mistake." Blah blah blah and then you get to this:

Walker’s approach stands in contrast to Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor who held open press campaign events at three weekend festivals and marched in a parade Monday. He accused Walker of trying to avoid scrutiny at a crucial juncture of a race entering its final week.

“There’s no question he’s trying to play out the clock and run out the clock,” Barrett said during a campaign stop at a festival in West Allis, a suburb 15 minutes outside of Milwaukee.

Is there any question that Politico is taking dictation from its preferred candidate?

“There are just so many questions that Gov. Walker refuses to answer. He refuses to answer questions about who’s paying his legal defense fees for his criminal defense lawyers. He refuses to answer questions on where he goes on fundraising trips when he should’ve been in Madison working on legislation. He refuses to answer questions, such as, ‘Did he sign recall petitions against Sen. [Russ] Feingold and Sen. [Herb] Kohl?’ The more questions he refuses to answer, the more people are asking themselves, why is he asking us to trust him?

Speaking of unanswered questions and moving on to questions of actual, central importance in the recall, Tom Barrett has never offered a plan for how he would deal with Wisconsin's budget.

"In this video, what is astounding is that Rebecca, the Planned Parenthood counselor, starts arranging with the actor about how to get a late-term abortion."

"To wait until her pregnancy is so developed that — and using Medicaid for this, using the state to pay for the ultrasound to determine the gender, and then to do a late term abortion if it was a little girl."

ADDED: Planned Parenthood responds:

"Within three days of this patient interaction, the staff member’s employment was ended and all staff members at this affiliate were immediately scheduled for retraining in managing unusual patient encounters...."

This spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America [said] that the organization condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender, but its policy is to provide “high quality, confidential, nonjudgmental care to all who come into” its health centers. That means that no Planned Parenthood clinic will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortions (Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois).

Then why did they fire the staff member? I'm guessing the problem was that she colluded with the "patient" about how to extract money from Medicaid and services from the OB doctor in her effort to find out whether she was pregnant with a girl.

"A boozed-up driver tore through a 96-year-old woman’s Long Island house Monday..."

"... spinning such a devastating path of destruction that the stove wound up in the back yard...."

Great pic at the link.

Barney Frank — giving a commencement speech — makes a "hoodie" joke.

At the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, giving an honorary degree to a black man:

“You know, when you get an honorary degree they give these,” Frank said, tugging at the hood on his commencement gown, “and Hubie, I think you now got a hoodie you can wear and no one will shoot at you.”

The crowd did not laugh. They gasped. Later, Frank attempted to explain: “I have used the ‘hoodie’ line to ridicule the notion that a hooded sweatshirt is somehow sinister.”

"I lived my whole life in New York and never experienced something this crazy."

Absurd statement from a man who witnessed a naked man biting off chunks of another naked man's face, swallowing the flesh, and growling and continuing face feast after he was shot by police. 

Now, what is it about New York City that makes people think that everything happens there and they'll be seeing all manner of bizarre activity to the point where it would occur to that man to comment that, despite living his whole life in New York City, he's never seen anything at that level of insanity?

The "most popular" article in WaPo right now is "Romney's distortions about Obama do us a disservice."

But when you click on those words, you get to a column titled "Romney’s pants on fire."

The 2 different headlines go to such opposite extremes of phoney politesse and dopey childishness. Who writes that stuff... and what's the thinking about which attitude goes where?

I didn't read the attached column, though I did glance at the last sentence: "He seems to believe voters are too dumb to discover what the facts really are — or too jaded to care." I really identified with those last 4 words: too jaded to care.

"Their policy is to take out high-value targets, versus capturing high-value targets..."

"They are not going to advertise that, but that’s what they are doing," says Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, "the top Republican on the intelligence committee," quoted 2/3 of the way down in a NYT article that forefronts Obama's professorly thoughtfulness as he takes responsibility for the "final moral calculation" in deciding whether to take advantage of an opportunity to kill somebody on the list al Qaeda kill list.

John B. Bellinger III, a top national security lawyer under the Bush administration, said that was because Mr. Obama’s liberal reputation and “softer packaging” have protected him. “After the global outrage over Guantánamo, it’s remarkable that the rest of the world has looked the other way while the Obama administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several different countries, including killing at least some civilians,” said Mr. Bellinger, who supports the strikes.

The take-no-prisoners approach avoids dealing with the problems — which include, for Obama, political problems — of detention and interrogation. The NYT interviewed 3 dozen of Obama's "current and former advisers" and says:

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing.

Is there really a paradox here? He has chosen not to close Guantanamo, but to make it a low-profile political issue by never sending anyone there, and to build his reputation as tough on terrorism by regularly blowing somebody away. The careful "moral calculation" in the individual cases isn't reexamining the general policy; it's about the risks of screwups:

“He realizes this isn’t science, this is judgments made off of, most of the time, human intelligence,” said [William M.] Daley, the former chief of staff. “The president accepts as a fact that a certain amount of screw-ups are going to happen, and to him, that calls for a more judicious process.”

Wurst Times... the other alternative brat fest in town.

The other day, I showed you some pictures of the People's Bratfest, the alternative brat fest. Little did I know there was also another alternative brat fest going on in Madison.

“We’re here because we support the recall of (Gov.) Scott Walker,” said Alyson Pohlman, 32, sitting at a table with a group of friends waiting for the band Halley’s Hoop to perform at the Wurst Times festival.

“It’s a wonderful spin on a Madison tradition, where we get to support and empower our values,” Pohlman added.

Brian Cislak, 62, was there for the same reason: “To gather with people of like minds who want to see Scott Walker recalled.”...

The Wurst Times festival...  sprang up last year along with two others as an alternative to the World’s Largest Brat Fest, now in its 30th year.

So there are 3 alternative brat fests, along with the traditional World's Largest Bratfest?

The World’s Largest, a four-day festival that runs through today at Willow Island at the Alliant Energy Center, has raised more than $1 million for charity. It became controversial last year after it became public that executives of sponsor Johnsonville Sausage made campaign contributions to Walker....

So where did the alternative brat fests buy their brats? Did they make sure the brats were made by Wisconsin workers whose employer's executives contributed to Tom Barrett? Are there brats like that?

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African..."

"... that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

Says the famous paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. That's a funny quote, isn't it? It starts out so big. If only everyone would accept evolution, then... then what? What would follow? He doesn't say World Peace. He says a chance of a better response to challenges.

I'm sure the people who don't believe in evolution think if only everybody would believe that God created human beings in His own image, that we'd have a better chance of responding better to challenges.

Here's a poll about what works, pragmatically, not about what is true. That is: DO NOT use this poll to express your belief in the existence of God and His role with respect to the creation/evolution of human beings:

What belief is more likely to overcome disharmony among the people of the world?
	God watches over and loves His Creation, humanity.
	Humankind arose from evolution, with no divine plan or supervision at any point.
pollcode.com free polls

Anticipating your possible need to express your belief in what is true, I am providing this additional poll:

What is actually true (or most likely true)?
	There is a God, and He created human beings in their current form.
	There is a God, and He created the process of evolution that unfolded over the eons.
	Human beings evolved without the participation of any God.
pollcode.com free polls

"Ann Althouse pushes back, and she has a point. But watch a few episodes of 16 and Pregnant..."

"... and you might think that 'it’s wrong' is a useful heuristic for people incapable of fully understanding what 'it will be hard' actually means."

Writes Instapundit, pushing back to my pushback on the "Dan Quayle Was Right" article.

Let's take a closer look at this "useful heuristic" concept, which expresses something truly profound about the role of traditional religion and other conservative philosophies in society. Look at what is being admitted. There are a whole lot of people who are insufficiently smart, competent, and emotionally stable to make a decision involving a complex set of factors, so we need to dominate their minds with a starker structure of "right" and "wrong," even where those of us who are really smart and able to process complex factors know it's not really a matter of right and wrong. 

Instapundit continues:

At any rate, after twenty years of hearing SUV drivers described in terms more applicable to Himmler, the 1992 condemnations of moralistic language from political leaders ring particularly hollow.

So... because lefties put their arguments in starkly moralistic terms, it's tiresome to hear about the way righties overuse morality talk. I get the point. In fact, what bugs me the most about lefties — what motivates me to go after lefties much more than righties on this blog — is the way they set themselves up as the good people and prance and stomp all over the place shaming and blaming the people who won't agree with them. Having lived in Madison for the last quarter century, I am fed up with their domineering bullshit. The reason my blog appears to skew conservative — when I am a political moderate — is that I am not surrounded by pious, overbearing right-wingers sneering at me and gasping about what a bad person I am.

BUT: I am not saying that domineering bullshit from righties is okay because lefties do it too or do it more or do it nearer to me. I don't like it.

"The Tea Party's Senate Insurgency Hits Texas."

Have you noticed Ted Cruz?

A former state solicitor general and clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the 41-year-old Mr. Cruz... is a staunch defender of states' rights, or what he calls the "forgotten Ninth and 10th amendments." He was the lead lawyer representing Texas before the Supreme Court in Medellin v. Texas (2008), after the International Court of Justice had tried to override Texas's justice system, and in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) he wrote the amicus brief on behalf of 31 states challenging a gun-control law on Second Amendment grounds.

He favors school choice, personal accounts for Social Security and a "low uniform tax rate—either a flat tax or the FairTax," he says, and his goal in the Senate would be to "cut federal spending as much and as quickly as possible." He's contemptuous of congressional Republicans who suggest that some of the popular features of ObamaCare can be retained. "I will work to repeal every last word of the law," he insists.

Mr. Cruz's Hispanic surname also isn't a liability when many Republicans seem to be searching for the next Marco Rubio. Like the Florida Senator, Mr. Cruz is of Cuban descent and has a gift for communicating his conservative credentials to right-leaning audiences. (At the same time, some Texans grumble that the Princeton and Harvard Law grad has the Barack Obama disease of coming across as a slick know-it-all, "the smartest guy in the room.")

Too smart? Not the right kind of Hispanic? We shall see. The primary is tomorrow. The "establishment" guy is David Dewhurst, the Lt. Gov. He calls Cruz "Washington lawyer Ted Cruz."

Sarah Palin, who seems to have the magic touch, has endorsed Cruz. I'm making a tag for Cruz (and not for Dewhurst), so that's something like making a prediction.

ADDED: You can listen to Cruz arguing for the independent power of the states in Medellin here. (His turn begins about halfway through.)

Memorial Day.

"So what happened to all those candidates embodying the spirit of Egypt’s modern progressive democratic youth movement..."

"... that all those Western media rubes were cooing over in Tahrir Square a year ago? How are they doing in Egypt’s first free presidential election?"

2 photographs from this week in Wisconsin politics.

(The first photo, by me, is from the People's Brat Fest. The second photo, by Meade, is from an equal pay press conference.)

"One sign that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is likely to win the election on June 5 is the sudden disappearance of national media attention to the race."

Writes Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard:

The networks and newspapers that gave wall-to-wall coverage to protests in the streets of Madison in the spring of 2011 and excitedly reported on the drive to collect signatures to force a recall have gone relatively quiet as a succession of polls show Walker leading.... Obama himself, who once promised to walk the picket lines with his union backers when their interests were threatened, seems to want no part of the recall​—​or at least not a high-profile part.

Police gun down a man who is — quite obviously! — unarmed.

It's obvious, because he is naked. They gun him down, because he his eating the face off another man, who is also naked. They continue shooting until the man is dead because one shot doen't stop him from devouring the other man's face.

Investigators believe the victim may have been homeless and laying down when the crazed man pounced.

But why was the victim naked?

ADDED: "And the guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth, so I told him, 'Get off!'... You know it's like the guy just kept eating the other guy away like ripping his skin.... Police officer came over, told him several times to get off and a police officer climbed over the divider and got in front of him and said, 'Get off!' And told him several times and the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled."

"What’s wrong with Johnny Depp playing an Indian?"

"Nothing now, because he is an American Indian. If the Comanche say it, then it is so."

... Now that he’s one of us, he’ll need to learn more to help us.

At the Glass Pipe Café...

... you can talk all afternoon.

"Half of us thought that he wasn’t John Waters, because that would be impossible, and half of us thought that he was."

"So we argued about it for one exit, and the only way to resolve it was to just turn around and go back."

The things people do to generate material for a book.

"t was two people able to agree to disagree and still move on and have a great time. I think that’s what America’s all about."

"Facebook, I wanna thank you..."

And I want to thank you... for the sublime horribleness.

(Via Buzzfeed.)

"When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances..."

"... or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink."

Item 2 in "The Overthinking Person’s Drinking Game." There are many items!

Via Metafilter.

"Twenty years later, [Dan] Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic."

Writes Elizabeth Sawhill in the Washington Post, citing the increased number of children born to unmarried mothers and correlations between being such a child and having a worse outcome in life.

Now, what Quayle said was:

“Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong... Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”

Quayle took some gratuitous shots at women in his notorious remark, and he could just as easily have put his main point in a way that nearly everyone would agree with. So, I dislike this simple declaration that he was right (which I've seen many times). He phrased it in a way that's either deliberately or unwittingly provocative.

Some single-parent families are better than others and some mother-and-father families are worse than others. I question whether it's the single parent per se that's the problem — where it can be shown that it's worse — or whether more women who get into the single-parent position are the irresponsible/disagreeable/poorly skilled kind of person.

Another problem with what Quayle said is that he characterized the kind of woman that we'd presume to be responsible — the "intelligent, highly paid professional woman" — as doing 2 things she might not have been doing: 1. "mocking the importance of fathers," and 2. treating child-bearing as "just another lifestyle choice." This "Murphy Brown" woman might very well prefer to have a solid marriage with a father in the house but not be able to make that happen. And she might dearly and virtuously want to mother a child.

I know Quayle was saying that the TV character provided women with a role model and might have fooled us into thinking raising a child alone would be easier than it is, but he was focused on getting out a rival moral message. Murphy Brown is telling you it's fine, but I need you to know it's wrong. There's a difference between saying it will be hard and it's simply wrong.

"In A World Where..."

"... One Teen's Voice Is An Internet Hit."

It's the People's Brat Fest...

On the Library Mall, here in Madison, Wisconsin, today. It's "brat" as in "bratwurst." Please spare me your sausage-based wisecracks.

The Industrial Workers of the World were there, with their "Abolition of the Wage System" flag, under the "God" banner:



You could "Stand with Women"...



... and listen to the "Mighty Wind"-ish band, with the iconic Wisconsin Blue Fist image on the back of the stand-up bass:



You can run, but you can't escape the politics:

Can you convict a man of murder when all you have is a confession?

There's nothing corroborating his statements. He just said he did it, 33 years ago, and he's a man with [perhaps?] mental illness. This is Pedro Hernandez, arrested in the Etan Patz case. People want to believe that at long last, we have the answer and a man to punish, but do we really know?

“You want to make sure he’s not a chronic confessor,” the [unnamed] detective said. Many books are about those who confessed to crimes they did not commit...

“You always go back for more detail, more detail, more detail,” [said  Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police lieutenant commander in the Bronx]. “The confession is usually devoid of a lot of facts. They just want to get it out. Once it’s out, the barrier has been crossed.” The need to confess behind him, the suspect may relax. “Get him something to eat, something to drink. ‘By the way, did you speak to anybody? Did you go to work the next day, or take the day off?’ Important things.”...

The detective I spoke with said he would return to [the people who worked at the bodega in 1979] and find others. “What he said to them, when he said it, what details he gave. What was his demeanor? Has he ever admitted to doing anything else?... Corroboration is such a legal thing, it’s a thin requirement... The question is, do you get the jury to believe this is the real thing?”

The detective stresses getting a conviction, but we need to also worry about what is actually true.

Mitt Romney journals his "feelings" on his iPad.

Feelings? The Romnster has feelings? What feelings?

"The only time I'm unhappy is if I've done something that hurt the prospects for the success of our effort," he said of his frame of mind, adding that his errors "make me want to kick myself in the seat of my pants."

"I've had a couple of [gaffes] during the campaign, which have haunted me a little bit, but I'm sure before this is over will haunt me a lot," he said.

I await the memoir.

By the way, have you heard of the 8 ghosts that haunt "Dreams From My Father"?

The Pope's butler has been arrested!

"His job included handing out rosaries to dignitaries and riding in the front seat of the 'Popemobile,' a vehicle used for public papal appearances..."

Did you just get a Mardi Gras image from that job description, like I did? Picturing the Popemobile, with the butler tossing out rosaries?

Anyway, the butler, Paolo Gabriele, 46, is one of the few individuals who has access to the Pope's desk, and there have been leaks of "hundreds of personal letters and confidential documents" to a journalist who published them in a book called "His Holiness."

It seems absurd that the butler did it. Here's a Straight Dope inquiry into the old phrase, supposedly based on hackneyed mystery novel plots.

The expression "the butler did it" is commonly attributed to novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958), who wrote dozens of popular books, starting with The Circular Staircase in 1908. In 1930 she published The Door, in which — I'm sorry if this ruins the suspense for you — the butler does it. But the words "the butler did it" do not appear in the book, as far as I can tell — I confess I skimmed — and Rinehart was hardly the first crime writer to implicate a menial...

[C]rime-fiction writers of the day tended to think that casting one of the hired help as the culprit was cheating. (That is, it was only OK for the butler to be suspected of doing it.) In his 1928 essay "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" (the source of rule number seven above — you thought I was making this up?), S.S. Van Dine spells this out in rule eleven: "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion." Noting the blithe classism in this suggestion, we return to the Oxford Companion: "Because the butler can move about the house in the course of his duties with complete freedom and because he is so taken for granted by the other characters that no one pays attention to him, he makes an ideal culprit."

You see the divide here. Too easy! say fans of the ten-people-in-a-country-house subgenre. Perfect! say slightly more adventurous writers, and indeed, having the butler do it seems like a great opportunity to inject the resentments of the proletariat into the genteel world of Hercule Poirot and his ilk. 

You hear that? It's too easy.  Look for a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion. Hmmm.