Ted Cruz's office says "in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of 'critical legal studies'..."

"... a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism – and they far outnumbered Republicans."

That's in response to a New Yorker article quoting something Cruz said in a speech 3 years ago. (What Cruz said back then, at an Americans for Prosperity conference, was that when he was at Harvard Law School "There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.")

The Cruz spokesperson called it "curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a three-year-old speech and call it 'news.'"

Curious... there's a noncommittal word. I don't see anything wrong with digging stuff out of old Cruz speeches. He's a new character on the national stage, so it's not like old territory is being reworked. It was an inflammatory statement, and he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.
The New Yorker writer, Jane Mayer, was following up after Barbara Boxer had compared Cruz to Joseph McCarthy. That was pretty inflammatory too (as I said at the time). What Boxer said made it a valid line of inquiry for Mayer and not odd at all. What you say to your base will be heard by the outsiders too, and any politician needs to be prepared for that. Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group. This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Mayer talked to Charles Fried, the Harvard lawprof who was probably the one Republican referred to by Cruz. Fried says:

"I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government".... Fried acknowledged that "there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.” He pointed out that by the nineteen-nineties, Communist states were widely regarded as tyrannical. From Fried’s perspective, the radicals on the faculty were "a pain in the neck." But he says that Cruz’s assertion that they were Communists “misunderstands what they were about."

Clearly, it was rhetoric to call the Critical Legal Studies professors "Marxists" who believed in "Communist" revolution, and Cruz chose to do that at a particular place and time. Cruz is accountable for that. It's a shibboleth of the right to rely on the words "Marxist" and "Communist." It wasn't the way the lefty lawprofs of the time talked about themselves. I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none." I got the message: You sound right wing. It was understood that to sound right wing was to become toxic.

Here's a useful passage from the classic 1983 CLS book by Harvard lawprof Duncan Kennedy, "Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System":

Left-liberal rights analysis submerges the student in legal rhetoric, but, because of its inherent vacuousness, can provide no more than an emotional stance against the legal order. The instrumental Marxist approach is highly critical of law, but also dismissive. It is no help in coming to grips with the particularity of rules and rhetoric, because it treats them, a priori, as mere window dressing. In each case, left theory fails left students because it offers no base for the mastery of ambivalence. What is needed is to think about law in a way that will allow one to enter into it, to criticize without utterly rejecting it, and to manipulate it without self-abandonment to their system of thinking and doing.

Attacking the aggressive Ted Cruz when Liz Warren simultaneously hits the Senate in full aggression mode.

Big Media is hot to wreck Ted Cruz. Here's the NYT piece: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles." Oh? Bipartisan has hackles? Well, then I guess those bipartisan hackles are also raised by Elizabeth Warren. Here's HuffPo: "Elizabeth Warren's Aggressive Questioning Prompts Anger From Wall Street."

The NYT forefronts this quote from Barbara Boxer:

“It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such and such a date,’ and, of course, nothing was in the pocket,” she said, a reference to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s pursuit of Communists in the 1950s. “It was reminiscent of some bad times.”

Boxer didn't name names, but the NYT wants us to know that referred to Cruz, but why not Warren too? Because the NYT wouldn't have structured its rhetoric that way if it had known that a new Senator from the Democratic Party was going to go into attack dog mode the day they published the piece?

In just two months, Mr. Cruz, 42, has made his presence felt in an institution where new arrivals are usually not heard from for months, if not years....

In a body known for comity, Mr. Cruz is taking confrontational... sensibilities to new heights...

Ha ha ha. Cruz, that clod, doesn't know the comity tradition. Meanwhile, here comes the brilliant Harvard lawprof, and she's not meekly conforming to the be-seen-and-not-heard routine. So how are those hackles doing now — those bipartisan hackles — raised... or lying flat and flobby?



Hackles? More like hacks.

For comparison purposes.

Are those comediennes funnier than these?

And let's try to think deeply about gender politics. There's something distinctive about the argument — coming from females — that we will withhold sex unless you give us something we want. The argument, even as joke, assumes the audience grasps the notion sex is not intrinsically valuable to women. It's currency to be used to purchase something else.

In contrast to the idea of women exercising power by withholding sex is the idea that men seek political power to get sex. "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" is something famously said by a man who looked liked this:



That's Henry Kissinger in his younger days. Think he would have had much political success saying do what I want or I won't have sex with you? No. It was the other way around for him. By acquiring power he became seductive.

Perhaps men have had such success reaching high positions of political power because of their sexual drive. If sexual energy propels their climb to power, it's surprising women ever win elections. Why bother? I mean, really. Why bother? They must really want political power as an end in itself. And... well, there's this:

Rick Santorum on feminism and abortion.

From his book "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good":

It is obvious that for [women who feel regret], abortion was not a liberating choice. These women and many others say abortion was a last resort, or that they felt they had no other choice. It is a decision, often born out of loneliness and desperation, that can cause a lifetime of suffering.

Alice Paul, the feminist author of the Equal Rights Amendment, was right when she said, “Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

Dorinda Bordlee of Americans United for Life wrote recently, “Roe has ruined romance. Every woman's deepest desire to love and be loved has been distorted into a license to use and be used. Women have paid with their bodies and their souls. Abandoned emotionally and financially by the men they loved, and moved by profound grief at the loss of their children, they stand in front of crowds with signs that say ‘I regret my abortion.'” Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life sums it up well: “Women deserve better than abortion.”

... [I]f you were to ask one of the village elders their view of liberty they would say, “the freedom to do whatever you desire, as long as nobody gets hurt.” How does that square with abortion? Doesn't their support for abortion undermine the basic tenet of liberal orthodoxy? Can you honestly say that in an abortion “no one gets hurt?” What about the 327 women who died and countless others who became sterile from legal abortions between 1973 and 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control? What about the four women you just heard from: didn't they get hurt? What about the exploitation and misogyny? And, yes, what about the babies? Is this caveat to No-Fault Freedom just an obligatory yet disingenuous smokescreen? The village elders' response provides great insight into the liberal mind.

The village elders choose to ignore or deny the humanity of the child in the womb and the emotional trauma of the mother and choose to focus solely on freedom or “choice.” Think about it. When you hear an abortion supporter argue his or her position, nowhere do you hear that a baby's heart can be seen beating at three weeks; that new 4D sonograms show that from twelve weeks, unborn babies can stretch, kick, and leap around the womb—well before the mother can feel movement; from eighteen weeks, they can open their eyes, although most doctors thought eyelids were fused until 26 weeks; from 26 weeks, when partial birth abortions are still performed, they appear to exhibit a whole range of typical baby behavior and moods, including scratching, smiling, crying, hiccupping, and sucking.

Almost never do you hear about what is being chosen, other than the sterile words “terminating a pregnancy.” Nowhere do you hear that over 93 percent of abortions are performed on healthy mothers with healthy babies who were not the victim of rape or incest, which means that in the vast majority of cases abortion is actually postconception birth control. Nowhere do you hear that 48 percent of women obtaining abortions in any given year already had at least one abortion. Nowhere will you see the words infant, baby, or child.

The advocates of abortion, like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League, teach that if you have to say anything about what is in the womb you should use dehumanizing terms like “product of conception,” “embryo,” and “fetal tissue.” Or, if you must, fetus. Thanks to a lot of help from their allies in the news and entertainment media, they have turned the child in the womb into a nobody, and therefore “nobody gets hurt.”...

This chapter goes on to quote from the 1999 Senate debate over partial-birth abortion law. Santorum, as Senator, argued with Senators Boxer and Feingold in an effort to make them appear unprincipled if they tried to draw any line defining who is a human being deserving the protection of the law. Santorum's position is: "If you don't draw a bright clear line to give constitutional protection—i.e., personhood—to all human life at the moment when human life begins—at conception—then everything becomes just a power game."

"Top stylists from New York to Hollywood told me their liberal clients are guiltily requesting the Bachmann Look."

Forget politics! They love her hair:

"A lot of clients have asked for Sarah Palin hair in the past four years, and now, it's Bachmann," says Andi Scarbrough of Byu-ty Hair Therapy in L.A. "Politicians are the new celebrities, because they're real. They didn't just spring up out of the red carpet."

However, she admits, "I have women who come in with photos with the face cut out sometimes."

"She has great coppery color that warms her up a little bit," said Angelo David at his E. 43rdSt. salon, who confirmed a spike in copycat requests for the candidate's look. "Not everybody wants to look like Kim Kardashian."

Bachmann's style "is safe, but not soccer mom. It's sexy," said Alma Qeraxhiu at her AlmaG Salon and Spa on E. 21st. St.

"I have found it a little bit amazing how many women have been coming in asking for her hair style, even though they don't agree with her politics."

Having the best hair is an important step. If  you're betting on who will win in politics, you'll come out ahead, I think, if you always pick the candidate with the best hair. Male or female. But with female candidates, the hair can be a distraction if it's not resolved into a predictably sensible yet pretty style.

(Remember when Carly Fiorina said Barbara Boxer's hair was "so yesterday"?)

"It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title."

David Zucker — direct of "Airplane!" — directs a little campaign ad called Call Me Senator":

Was Carly Fiorina, talking about Barbara Boxer's hair, guilty of what Robin Givhan calls "style bullying"?

Givhan writes:

[S]tyle encompasses far more than good looks. In fact, it trumps beauty because it's rooted in deep cultural knowledge and self-confidence. Style is an expression of choices -- a declaration of individuality. And thus, the lack of it is not a matter of poor genetic luck. It is, a particularly judgmental soul could argue, your fault....

[I]t can make others feel terribly old-fashioned and parochial by comparison.... Women -- and men -- use style as a tool of intimidation, self-promotion and belittlement all the time. U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's off-topic remark about Sen. Barbara Boxer's hair caused quite the explosion when it was captured by a live microphone. Fiorina quipped that Boxer's hair was "so yesterday." Fiorina has said she was quoting a friend, but her tone oozed delight in the observation as she happily repeated it...

Fiorina's words weren't, by any means, vulgar or angry. Indeed, she had the cutting tone of a gossipy girlfriend who knows a thing or two about hair travails. But as she gently fingered her own chic pixie, while relaying an insulting description of Boxer's hair, the polite smile never faded from her face -- until she realized her microphone was on. She bore all the earmarks of a style bully.

Givhan concludes that Fiorina was making an indirect but effective political argument that Boxer is out of step with the times. But let's take a closer look at what was really going on. Rewatch the short clip and think about whether what we are really seeing is a woman "ooz[ing] delight" because she thought her hair was "chic" — a "chic pixie" — and the other woman's hair really was so much worse. Does Fiorina even agree with the friend she quotes? Watch carefully, and keep in mind that Carly Fiorina was only quite recently bald (as a consequence of cancer treatment):



It's a bit hard to tell unless you look for it, but I'm looking after hearing a friend, a cancer survivor who lost her own hair, insist that what we are seeing is a cancer survivor's humorous attitude about hair. I now think that Fiorina stopped in the middle of an anecdote when someone off camera signaled for her to shut up, but that if she had gone on, she would have made a self-effacing/sarcastic wisecrack about her own hair along the lines of: Oh, yes, because my hair is so today, if by "today," you mean not utterly bald.

The gesture she makes at her own hair, just before she clams up, is not, I think, a mean girl's I'm-so-gorgeous primp. It's comic business that would have fit amusingly with the wisecrack that was never cracked. My friend, a woman who, like Fiorina, has recently regrown hair, feels sure she has the ability to recognize a shared dark humor about hair that women who have not gone through the experience don't pick up on. Hair is a big deal to women, and our ears perk up when we hear talk about other women's hair. Givhan explores that with good sensibility, but I think she, like many others, is judging Fiorina without a full understanding of the context.

On the other hand, Fiorina's private psychodrama is a bit beside the point when she's running for the Senate. She's got to get these things right and not give her opponents material to use against her. In that light, it doesn't matter what the explanation is, because she's running for office, and she needs to do that competently.

And speaking of context, this is funny:

"Men who go there are branded pigs. Gals who do it are denounced as catty, bitchy perpetuators of a system that fixates, unjustly and insultingly, on..."

... on hairstyles and, generally, the way women look. Michelle Cottle is ruminating over what Carly Fiorina said about Barbara Boxer's hair and, more specifically, how Carly tried to save herself from opprobrium by playing the breast cancer card:

“My goodness, my hair has been talked about by a million people, you know. It sort of goes with the territory.... Especially when you don’t have any hair. As you remember, I started out with none.”

Fiorina also likes to say things like: “After chemotherapy, Barbara Boxer isn’t very scary anymore.”

While overcoming any serious disease can make for a compelling political narrative, beating breast cancer is a struggle that resonates with, and makes a candidate more relatable to, women in particular....

From a purely strategic perspective, the heroic cancer narrative is hard to counter. ...

Invoking a breast cancer battle as a kind of character testimony is one thing; brandishing it as a partisan weapon is more problematic....

This kind of naked exploitation is risky—as is Fiorina’s using her survivor status to deflect criticism when she makes a bush-league mistake like Hairgate. But if the candidate can avoid such heavy-handedness, her more subtle invocations of her cancer battle could prove devastating in her fight for California women in particular.

Should a candidate can talk about his or her diseases? I remember Paul Tsongas doing it well, many years ago. It made him look sympathetic and strong... at least until it turned out he was actually too ill:

If Mr. Tsongas had gone on to win, America would now [in 1992] have a President-elect stricken with a debilitating, conceivably life-threatening disease....

When Mr. Tsongas' health became an issue during the primaries, his doctors at first said he had been free of all traces of cancer ever since, suggesting that the radical procedure had cured him. Only after he dropped out of the campaign did they acknowledge that he had suffered a "localized relapse," suggesting that the cure may not have been complete.

Now a cancerous growth has been found in Mr. Tsongas' abdomen....

Tsongas died of his cancer in 1997.

Exploiting one's cancer is a self-limiting political enterprise.

"It almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism."

"Because, each one of them, really, most of them, are, you know, very much, uh, uh, you know, against so many of things that women have fought for such a long time."

That's Tina Brown trying to babble her way to saying something that makes sense. Watch the video at the link. I think she realizes in the middle — at the "you know, very much, uh, uh, you know" — that after invoking the big idea "feminism," she doesn't know how to say the right thing about feminism. It's not right to say according to feminism, women aren't supposed to be Republicans, so she can't say that. What then can she say? She goes with the weak, mealy-mouthed "against so many of things that women have fought for such a long time." So many of the things, eh? What? And fought for such a long time — as if women are supposed to — what? — adhere to traditional values and not make waves?

And what about the idea that there is variety within feminism and vivid debate about what is good for women? George Stephanopoulos pushes Brown with "Well, you could argue they're different kinds of feminists...." And Brown settles in to the routine partisanship that is easy to spit out clearly: "Women, too, can be wing nuts, is the point." Yeah, that's cogent and clear. Funny too. Brown's attempt at a point about feminism was flabby blather because it was dishonest. "Women, too, can be wing nuts" — she's telling it straight now and shows it with the kicker that it's "the point." Thanks for abandoning your pretense of intellectual analysis for some plain politics. We get it, Tina. You're a liberal. You don't like when strong candidates emerge on the other side. And you have nothing interesting or insightful to say about feminism. Noted.

And speaking of the poverty of feminist analysis on "Good Morning America," the discussion turns immediately to Carly Fiorini's comment about Barbara Boxer's hair:

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...Carly Fiorina after the election, getting caught on tape....

CARLY FIORINI: Laura saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning. And said what everyone says. God, what is that hair? So yesterday....

BROWN: You know what I love about it so much? It's like, as we were saying... it was great that it was gender-neutral. Then, all of a sudden, you've suddenly switched to absolute claws come out. And it's like — the women. What really killed? It was so yesterday. It wasn't just women. It was rich women. That's the point.

Oh! Brown is declaring something else to be "the point." I'm not sure what, though. Rich women. Stephanopoulos cuts her off and crashes headlong into what will be the next underdeveloped topic (that Fiorini and Meg Whitman were CEOs). Presumably, if given a little room, Brown would have spouted some class politics about hair. Think of all the middle aged women who heard the rich lady's catty remark and looked at themselves in the mirror and saw a overgrown, undercolored, Boxeresque mops of hair and wondered if they could squeeze enough dollars out of the family budget to make a trip to the salon. Boxer's floppy, grizzled tresses will get knotted up with the heartstrings of California working women.

But Brown didn't get to say that, because it was time — fast-moving "Good Morning America" time — to opine about whether America could admire a corporate CEO these days. As if Hewlett Packard and eBay were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

How to choose between 2 female candidates?

Who's got better hair?

"Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title."

It's just a thing! And another thing is that a sharper, abler... ma'am is eager to undo all the hard work:

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and GOP candidate Carly Fiorina have already started sharply attacking each other and offering a preview of what could become one of the most compelling Senate races in the country this fall.

"In her 28 years as a career politician, Barbara Boxer is a bitter partisan who has said much but done little," Fiorina said in speech full of barbs at Boxer as she accepted the GOP nomination Tuesday night here. "She gets an A in politics, but she gets an F in achievement."....

Boxer, meanwhile, is one of the more liberal members of the Senate and voted three years ago against a war funding bill that did not include a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. She is one of the key backers of the climate change legislation in Congress and has voted for almost every part of President Obama's agenda in Washington...

In 2007, in criticizing the Bush administration's policy on Iraq, she highlighted the fact that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn't have children, drawing ire from conservatives.

"Who pays the price?" Boxer asked Rice at a hearing while discussing families who might send their children to war. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."

You may have a title, but you don't have an entitlement.

"It's not a good sign when their anointed choice for Senator, a well-known three-term incumbent..."

"... loses 20% of the vote in their own primary against a couple of complete unknowns--after two transcontinental trips by President Obama to support her."

Mickey Kaus, about Barbara Boxer, to whom he had to concede.

"We are going to do that"/"Yes, we can!"

Here's President Obama stumping for Barbara Boxer and interrupted by hecklers demanding the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Obama turns on some charm and says "We are going to do that," and the crowd starts chanting "Yes, we can."



Now, I interpret the "Yes, we can" chant as sarcastic. You say you "are going to" do something, but why haven't you done it? You ran for office telling us "yes, we can," and you got the power of the office, so you've had time to demonstrate your vaunted capacity to do things. To tell us now that you will do something in the future isn't good enough. Sarcastic, right? If not, it should be.

Is Mickey Kaus really running for the Senate against Barbara Boxer?

"Technically I've only taken out the nomination papers, to gather the necessary signatures. I haven't returned them yet."

All right then. Good luck!

"The Democrat has been centrist and even conservative on some of the issues on which Boxer has taken a more left-leaning stand, including immigration: He does not favor amnesty and favors a more restrictive national policy."

Well, it's a good time to shake things up. These are unsettled times, and the Democrats could use a good dose of conservatism.

What we watched off the TiVo last night.

1. "Death Camp of Tolerance." (And no, we're not going to using "Lemmiwinks" as a pet name for our dear commenter Lem.) ("Death Camp" ≈ "death panels," no?)

2. "The Colbert Report," #05108 with Barbara Boxer. (Haven't watched Colbert in a while. He's less funny pretending to hate Democrats than he was pretending to love Republicans.)

3. "Trapped Under a Boulder." (This one never gets old. Well, what would you do if you were out camping amongst the Australian boulders and you had to pee in the middle of the night? Watch for the crawfish cameo.)

"Red meat by the slab, folks! Barbara Boxer wound up getting reamed by Harry Alford, the chair of the National Black Chamber of Commerce..."

"... , after attempting to challenge his testimony on energy policy. When Boxer started waving position papers from the NAACP and the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, Alford called it a 'condescending' attack and complained about Boxer’s focus on black people rather than science..."

Could you stop chomping on that red meat for a second and explain to me how the chair National Black Chamber of Commerce can get all outraged about being addressed as a representing the opinion of black people? It's the Black Chamber of Commerce! Why does he think he's been invited to speak to Boxer's committee? Don't play innocent. If he'd come there from some race-neutral organization and Boxer had brought up the NAACP and the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, he'd have had standing to complain, but he's from the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Give me a break. Plus, he was rude to Boxer from the start, interrupting her and acting combative. He seems to have been waiting for this moment to generate a hot YouTube clip. Color me unimpressed.

"It is a shame. But you have to come to a realization around here that at this point in time, the N.R.A. gets the votes."

"Either you are going to bring down the whole Senate and never do anything or you or going to swallow hard and say, ‘I will just vote my conscience on those amendments and speak out until people get a hold of their senses.’ ”

Senator Boxer said. The bill permits us to carry concealed guns in National Parks.