"Cruz has taken the wear-their-scorn-as-a-badge-of-honor approach with his liberal critics."

"Behind the scenes, Cruz has rankled even Republican colleagues, who think he lectures too much at private party sessions — 'pontificates' is one word used — and listens too little, especially for a newbie."

WaPo's Ruth Marcus unleashes some classic schoolgirl-style taunting: No one likes you.

ADDED: He pontificates? You mean he's uppity? The liberals need to pre-ruin any people of color on the GOP side. After Marco Rubio's career went down in flames because he drank a glass of water, the appetite for destruction rages. Look! There's another Hispano-Conservo! Get him!

Romney and Obama — the leader of the bullies and the follower.

The Washington Post is doubling down on its Romney-the-bully story, with multiple columns today dragging the story out, but let's focus on faux-earnest angsting from Ruth Marcus over the "troubling" story:

So how to think about The Post’s story of Romney and the purportedly gay prep school classmate he bullied? Recklessness is a common side-effect of adolescence — drinking too much, driving too fast. Meannesss is another matter. Yes, teenager are more prone to displaying the primal cruelty of “Mean Girls” and “Lord of the Flies” than their grown-up selves. But the Queen Bees of middle school have an unpleasant tendency to grow into the Real Housewives of Wherever.

Romney’s reported leadership in the episode; his merciless wielding of the scissors to snip off the bleached-blond hair that seemingly so offended his sense of propriety, his continuing cuts in the face of John Lauber’s cries for help — these do not speak well of him. 

Now,  yesterday, when we first looked at this story, I brought up the anecdote in Obama's "Dreams From My Father," in which Obama had "found" himself in the playground horsing around with a "plump and dark" girl named Coretta who "didn’t seem to have many friends." Suddenly, he saw that he was surrounded by "a group of children," whom he describes as "faceless." (This is a literary conceit: Of course, the children had faces, but from his perspective, with "the glare of the sun" behind them, they appeared faceless.) The children chanted "Coretta has a boyfriend!," and Obama "stammered" “She’s not my g-girlfriend,” and then — as the chants continued and poor Coretta stared downward — he shouted "I’m not her boyfriend!" Then he "ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove," causing her to "stagger[]" back and look at him. He shouted at the poor girl: "Leave me alone!"

And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class.

Obama was an abject follower, who responded to chants, and gained the reward of "appreciative chants." As an adult, looking back, his descriptions drip with weird passivity. There's zero will involved in his playing with the girl. He simply "found" himself with her. Then the group of "faceless" children were there, then Coretta "disappeared," and then "teachers appeared." It's like he's sleepwalking in ghost world, where human beings are apparitions.

Ruth Marcus says "You want to imagine your future president in the role of the wise-for-his-years leader who intervenes to calm the howling mob of his more foolish peers." Yes, it would be better if Romney's role in boyhood bullying had been to apply his leadership tendency for the good. But Obama's role in boyhood bullying was as a follower of the bullies — responding to the "howling mob."

Obama's judges. Althouse's obsession with linking.

WaPo's Ruth Marcus quotes me in her column, which is aimed at allaying fears about what Obama might do to the federal judiciary, fears stoked by Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi in that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Marcus quotes Calabresi and National Review's Ed Whelan -- linking to both -- then asserts that it's "easy to exaggerate the impact of the next president" on the courts.

First, she quotes and links to Terry Eastland of The Weekly Standard, who, she says, "has managed not to succumb to the fevered worries of his fellow conservatives" and says that "a Democratic president would probably simply be doing 'maintenance work' on the Supreme Court, at least in his first term, replacing one liberal justice with another." The direct quote from Eastland is: "Obama couldn't create a liberal majority unless at least one conservative, or man-in-the-middle [Anthony M.] Kennedy, were to step down, and that looks doubtful, at least in the next four years." Marcus thinks Eastland "understates" how much McCain could do to tip the Supreme Court with conservatives to replace the liberal Justices. Eastland aptly noted that McCain will need to appoint people that the Senate will confirm, so he won't be able to go as far as avid conservatives would like.

But how far to the left will Obama go in picking judges? Here, Marcus looks at Obama's July 2007 statement (dicussed in Calabresi's op-ed): "we need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

Marcus writes:

This stance, Calabresi said, is tantamount to requiring “the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating” the oath they take to dispense justice impartially. But as University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, no wild-eyed liberal, pointed out, Obama “is not saying that judges should distort the meaning of law so that people they empathize with can win cases. He's saying judges need to understand the realities of the world, most significantly, what life is like for people.”

Now, the first thing I notice there is that Marcus did not link to my blog post, which you can find here. As you may remember, I got quite angry at The New Yorker's George Packer for writing about something from my blog without linking, depriving his readers of quick access to the complete context. Packer was especially irksome because he insulted me and clearly meant to damage my reputation as a law professor. But Marcus, distinctly differently, means to take advantage of my reputation as a law professor. She has chosen the statement of mine that best suits her argument and intends for my status as a law professor to bolster the statement. (By the way, Marcus dropped the italics I had on the 2 words, and I put them back above.)

Why no link? She linked the other writers she quoted. I see 2 possible reasons (aside from simple inattention to detail).

One reason would be to deprive readers of the context. Marcus picked the quote she wanted. She goes on to argue that "the suggestion that electing Obama threatens the rule of law, representative democracy and liberty itself is so unhinged it is hard to take seriously" and admits that conservatives won't like Obama's judges. My comparable assertion is: "I don't doubt that Obama will appoint liberal judges and that the Senate will approve them. But there is a limit to what judges can do, and if Obama appoints anything like the hemorrhaging hearts Calabresi envisions... there will be a mighty backlash," a GOP resurgence in 2010 and 2012. It's possible that Marcus wants to keep her readers from seeing that. I come out and say I think Obama's judges will be liberal, and she only says they probably won't make conservatives happy.

The other reason is that if she were to link to my blog, I would be transformed into Ann Althouse, the blogger, who might be writing some odd, bizarre thing at any given moment. Perhaps she stopped by at 10 a.m. yesterday when the top post was a picture of terrified eggs and the second one was titled "Priapism? That's the least of your worries!" Not so helpful in credibility-boosting as University of Wisconsin law professor. On the other hand -- let's be honest -- University of Wisconsin law professor connotes a person who would enthusiastically welcome the most far-left judges. What a dilemma! Oh, well, shore that up with "no wild-eyed liberal." What are you going to do? Write identifed as "right-wing" by The New Yorker?

IN THE COMMENTS: Trey writes:

Since I have highly developed empathy I am a shoe in [sic] for a high level judge appointment by He Who Must Not Be Criticized, dare I hope for SCOTUS? I dare!

After my appointment, I will have empathy for your distress Ann, and I will legislate from the bench. I will make quoting without linking to blogs written by women a federal hate crime.

I feel your distress.

Aha! Marcus linked to all the males she named and failed to link to the one female. Let's get the jump on the law of the future and think like a judicial-empath.

UPDATE: Email from Ruth Marcus, quoted with permission:

Dear Prof. Althouse,

I'm sorry about the missing link, but the explanation is a lot less interesting than the one you conjured up. The boring truth is that I'm a (relative) techno-idiot, and new to blogging. When I wrote the post in a word file, I was rather proud of myself to have put in hyperlinks, including to your post. But my email wouldn't let me attach the document to send to editors (yes, we still have editors here), and when I copied the documet into the body of the message, the links disappeared. My editors dug up the links themselves, but apparently neglected yours. I guess that makes them part of the grand conspiracy, but now that it's been unmasked, I'll ask them to put it in. Also your italics, which I suspect were the victim of the same word to e-mail copying.

It's probably more fun to impute motive to people, but a quick email to me would have gotten the link inserted pronto. Of course, it wouldn't have made for a blog post. And by the way, no wild-eyed liberal was my effort to try not to pigeon-hole you, to avoid the kind of resorting to cartoonish labels that you rightly criticize without going into a lengthy explanation. No good deed, I guess.

Best,
Ruth

That time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary's space.

Everyone talks about the time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary Clinton's space in a debate when the two were running for Senator. The myth is that people were viscerally offended by a man aggressively approaching a woman.

The Clinton campaign recently complained about "the boys" ganging up at a debate, and there was speculation that it was an attempt to get people to react to her opponents the way New York voters reacted to Rick Lazio.

This made me want to see the old video of the debate with Lazio, but I couldn't find it through Google and YouTube searching. My commenters were helping me search, and Ruth Anne Adams came up with the clip from the debate as it was used on "The Daily Show." But, finally, Hector Owen found the whole segment of the debate: here. (Ignore the error message. It should play.)

Let's examine the Lazio Space Invader myth. Here's a contemporaneous article in the NYT:

... Mrs. Clinton exploited an opportunity before a friendly audience of women to make a concerted attack on Mr. Lazio's debate tactics. Many supporters of Mrs. Clinton said they found Mr. Lazio to be pushy and disrespectful during the debate in Buffalo -- bullying her in a way that he would not have bullied a male opponent.

Mrs. Clinton's senior advisers have seized on that notion to blunt favorable portrayals of Mr. Lazio as strong-willed and determined, and Mrs. Clinton joined the effort yesterday. Expanding on a comment she made the morning after the debate, Mrs. Clinton received knowing chuckles and applause when she said having two younger brothers was the best preparation for her sometimes bruising encounter with Mr. Lazio.

Then she complained of having to share her lectern with an overly aggressive Mr. Lazio. (He approached her at the end of the debate and urged her to sign a document he said was a promise not to raise or spend any more soft money.)...

''How about that idea that you turned off women voters?'' Gabe Pressman of WNBC-TV asked [Lazio].

Mr. Lazio said women were being sold short by suggestions that they would not vote for him because he gave Mrs. Clinton a tough debate....

Here's Kate Phillips (of the NYT) after the recent debate:

[S]o many political correspondents... have invoked the Rick Lazio moment...

The former Congressman’s charge across the stage in September of that year was equated with bullying, something that’s a far cry from the largely reasoned responses of Mrs. Clinton’s rivals on the stage the other night.

Still, we’re told it’s all gender politics, or as one of our colleagues once called it back then, hormonal politics (on both sides, folks).

Funny how history and language keep replaying, no?

WaPo's Ruth Marcus wrote:

Now this six-on-one stuff. Clinton stumbled in the debate, uncharacteristically but nowhere near fatally. In response, Penn & Co. are playing a good game of rope-a-dope.

After all, they have experience with this move, from the 2000 New York Senate race, when Republican Rick Lazio loomed into Clinton's personal space during a debate and quickly saw his numbers tank. For the Clinton campaign, the best thing would be to have the Philadelphia story played as Lazio II -- more bullies trying to intimidate her....

[U]sing gender this way is a setback. Hillary Clinton is woman enough to take these attacks like a man.

Yeah, that's what Lazio said at the time and voters resisted.

Here's what Rush Limbaugh said:

Now she's out there playing this victim card, and a lot of people in the media are not happy about this -- and I'll tell you what it is. You know, it's not just the cheapest form of pandering. To all of a sudden, say, "I'm a strong woman. I'm strong as a man! I can handle this job." Now all of a sudden to go victim, and to have your campaign tell the press, "Yeah, well, this is part of a long-planned strategy based on what happened when Rick Lazio invaded her space during a Senate debate for the election in New York."

So they're going back to that playbook because they think it worked then, but running for president is a little bit different from running for the Senate, especially if most of your career has been built up on, "You're tough, and you're not going to back down from anybody! You're Hillary Clinton! You've got a testicle lockbox."

(A testicle lockbox?)

But the fact is: It did work then. You can say, as Phillips did, that what Lazio did was different. But look at the video. Don't rely on the myth. Look at the video. It might have been inept theater to ply the piece of paper at her, but it wasn't an effort to bully the woman out of politics.

"Unfortunately, Thompson's dialogue so far consists of folksy platitudes and broad pronouncements, unobjectionable yet unenlightening."

Writes Ruth Marcus.

Is Fred a fizzle?

MEANWHILE: McCain moves nearly even with Thompson in this poll. Has Thompson's entering the race boosted McCain? Why would that be? Because Thompson, the reality, doesn't compare with Thompson, the repository of all your hopes and dreams?

Gonzales "employed his signature brand of inartful dodging -- linguistic evasion, poorly executed."

"But I don't think he actually lied," says WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus.

"The disagreement that occurred and the reason for the visit to the hospital . . . was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the Terrorist Surveillance Program that the president announced to the American people."

The emphasis is mine, and it matters. We know, from Comey's account, that the dispute was intense. We don't know precisely what the disagreement was about -- and it makes sense that we don't know: This was a classified program, and all the officials, current and former, who have testified about it have been deliberately and appropriately vague....

[T]he calls by some Democrats for a special prosecutor to consider whether Gonzales committed perjury have more than a hint of maneuvering for political advantage. What else is to be gained by engaging in endless Clintonian debates about what the meaning of "program" is?

Orin Kerr agrees with Marcus. And both dislike Gonzales and think he should resign.

"Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation..."

WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus tries to put WaPo columnist Robin Givhan in her place:

[Hillary Clinton was] dissected by Post fashion critic Robin Givhan for showing cleavage: "It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative -- aesthetically speaking -- environment of Congress." Givhan contrasted Clinton's decolletage with the more abundant display by Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, and her complaint seemed to be that Clinton was showing too little, too unassertively.

Might I suggest that sometimes a V-neck top is only a V-neck top? As a person of cleavage, I'd guess that Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation, not a deliberate fashion statement.

Breasts may be an advantage in certain settings; the Senate floor isn't one of them. If you're giving a speech on higher education, as Clinton was, you don't want Ted Stevens thinking about -- and you certainly don't want to think about Ted Stevens thinking about -- your cleavage.

Marcus is clear that cleavage distracts viewers into sexual thinking and that a politician giving a serious speech should not reveal it. On that firm foundation, she builds the argument that Clinton bumbled. It was mistake. A miscalculation from a woman who is continually called calculating? A very wealthy woman who must have people helping her dress? I think women -- unless they are inept or don't care what people think -- know how much of their breasts are showing! The suggestion that Hillary Clinton of all people did not know is beyond absurd.

So let's go back to Marcus's firm foundation -- that cleavage distracts viewers into sexual thinking and that a politician giving a serious speech should not reveal it -- and build something else. Hillary Clinton deliberately crossed a well-understood line, because she'd calculated that it was in her interest to do so. As Marcus notes, Clinton had just received criticism from Elizabeth Edwards for being insufficiently womanly. Hillary wanted to prod us -- subtly, with a small and deniable amount of cleavage -- to think of her as more feminine.

Now let's examine the issue raised by Givhan that the problem was showing too little cleavage. Here's how Givhan's column ends:

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton's was a teasing display, then Smith's was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn't as unnerving. Perhaps that's because Smith's cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith's fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

So both Marcus and Givhan find fault. One sees mistake, and the other sees tentativeness. I see a deliberate, controlled gesture that was exactly what she wanted to do, what she thought would be advantageous. Why must a fashion expression -- or a political expression -- be forthright? Givhan uses words like "teasing" and "surreptitious," but I'm thinking: subtle, deniable, diplomatic.

But I do love Givhan's idea that the most advanced woman would be so confident about her image as a competent professional that she'd forthrightly use clothing to express her sexuality. If she does this in a profession setting though, she will be surrounded by men in suits who have no way to present themselves more sexily. What's the male equivalent of the Jacqui Smith style? Can Joe Biden wear a codpiece?

Women have much more freedom than men do. Along with this benefit of more freedom comes more room for personal expression. We can adjust what we wear to express as little as possible. A female politician can wear a dark "Dress For Success" suit if she wants, and then, like the men, she's not saying much. But if she does more, we shouldn't say oh, that's nothing, as Marcus would like. We should talk about it!

Remembering Abscam... and why Murtha shouldn't be majority leader.

Ruth Marcus reminds us:

"I'm not interested -- at this point," he says of the dangled bribe. "You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't, you know." Indeed, he acknowledges, even though he needs to be careful -- "I expect to be in the [expletive] leadership of the House," he notes -- the money's awfully tempting. "It's hard for me to say, just the hell with it."

This is John Murtha, incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi's choice to be her majority leader, snared but not charged in the Abscam probe in 1980. "The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," Pelosi pledged on election night. Five days later she wrote Murtha a letter endorsing his bid to become her No. 2.

I hadn't remembered that. My objection to Murtha as a leader is based on an opinion I formed watching him on "Meet the Press" back in June. I just don't think he's mentally with it at all. He was embarrassingly inarticulate and confused.

Why don't Supreme Court nominees relax into a more revealing position?

In the WaPo, Ruth Marcus expresses her frustration with the way John Roberts and Samuel Alito talked about the role of the judge at their confirmation hearings. They presented themselves as humble, neutral interpreters of legal texts. She appeals to Judge Richard Posner for more insight:

As much as a court "is supposed to be tethered to authoritative texts," Posner writes, the Supreme Court often finds itself facing issues to which "the constitutional text and history, and the pronouncements in past opinions, do not speak clearly." It is in that "broad open area where the conventional legal materials of decision run out, and the Justices, deprived of those crutches, have to make a discretionary call."

Such cases, as Posner notes, inevitably bring into play competing conceptions of social good, without solutions that can be derived with certainty: the desire to ensure public safety vs. the need to protect those accused of crimes; the rights of the fetus vs. a woman's autonomy; the importance of colorblindness vs. a recognition of the legacy of discrimination; religion as a positive force in public life vs. the risk of marginalizing the minority. On a more elevated but even more important plane, different judges bring to the bench different attitudes about presidential power, federalism and constitutional interpretation.

What has been so disappointing about the nominees' testimony is their unwillingness to engage in this discussion in an honest, meaningful way. What has been so maddening about the questioning is the senators' inability to penetrate their platitudes or robotic restatements of the law. Because thinking hard isn't enough....

Can we picture a new, improved Senator who could penetrate the facade? Much as the Senators exasperate me, I think not. The neutral-expositor-of-the-law pose is so effective and appealing that it is highly unlikely that a nominee -- conservative or liberal -- will relax into a more revealing position. Posner's insights are important, but they are mostly accounted for at the point when the President makes his selection. He must pick someone whose instincts and judgments deserve our trust. Beyond that, the Senators may find things out about the leanings of the nominee, but, unless the President has blundered, they are unlikely to uncover something serious enough to overcome the sense that a highly qualified nominee warrants confirmation.

The flap about Summers.

Here's a good opinion piece (by Ruth Marcus) in the Washington Post about Harvard President Larry Summers and his suggestion that a biological difference between men and women might contribute to the underrepresentation of women in the sciences.

[S]ome who weren't present took the reported remarks and inflated them, as if Summers had said biological differences were both irrefutably established and the sole cause of the shortfall. Summers has since issued three increasingly lengthy -- and increasingly groveling -- explanation-apologies....



[M]any who find Summers's remarks offensive seem perfectly happy to trumpet the supposed attributes that women bring to the workplace -- that they are more intuitive, or more empathetic or some such. If that is so -- and I've always rather cringed at such assertions -- why is it impermissible to suggest that there might be some downside differences as well?...

"Impermissible" is an extreme word. The question should be: why is it worrisome? And then the answer is obvious: it's worrisome because there has been and continues to be so much deeply entrenched unfair discrimination against women that we are afraid that any negative quality that science might establish will be used to mean more than it should. Like Marcus, I cringe at the blather about female intuition and empathy and agree that those who talk about that seem to invite the observation that there is a downside. People talk about the positive in the hope of overcoming all the negative assumptions that underlie the unfair discrimination that really has taken place historically. But I do think it would be better to cut out the patronizing flattery of women. And I don't oppose legitimate scientific research into biological differences or think people should be gasping with horror at offhand speculation about biological sex differences, but we can properly demand that presidents of universities do a first-rate job of speaking in public about such things.