"The right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is of the very essence of the personal freedom and opportunity that the Constitution was designed to protect."

Wrote the federal judge who struck down Utah's requirement that you need a cosmetology license to work as a hair braider.

This is a sharply libertarian result, so I find it amusing to see NPR and Matthew Yglesias celebrating the decision. Why would liberals love a decision second-guessing the legislature's judgment about the extent of government regulation in the economic realm? Click on the links and see if you too are amused.

A lawsuit challenging Utah's anti-polygamy law, premised on Lawrence v. Texas.

To be filed by Kody Brown, the husband of 4 wives (who starred in the reality show "Sister Wives"):

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

Mr. Brown has a civil marriage with only one of his wives; the rest are “sister wives,” not formally wedded. The Browns are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon Church, which gave up polygamy around 1890 as Utah was seeking statehood.

Making polygamous unions illegal, they argue, violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, as well as the free exercise, establishment, free speech and freedom of association clauses of the First Amendment.

“We only wish to live our private lives according to our beliefs,” Mr. Brown said in a statement provided by his lead attorney, Jonathan Turley, who is a law professor at George Washington University.

The connection with Lawrence v. Texas, a case that broadened legal rights for gay people, is sensitive for those who have sought the right of same-sex marriage. Opponents of such unions often refer to polygamy as one of the all-but-inevitable outcomes of allowing same-sex marriage. In his dissenting opinion in the Lawrence case, Justice Antonin Scalia cited a threat to state laws “based on moral choices” against “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”

I think the Lawrence-based argument for decriminalizing polygamy is much stronger than the Lawrence-based argument for requiring the government to give legal recognition to same-sex marriage. One is an argument demanding only that the government leave them alone as they pursue their "own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." The other is a demand that the government alter its treatment of its citizens, giving them access to to the benefits of having the official status as a married couple.

"Barack Obama braces for Jon Huntsman 2012 bid."

A big headline over at Politico that had me wondering: Who's Jon Huntsman?

He's: 1. the U.S. Ambassador to China, 2. the former Governor of Utah, 3. Republican, 4. wealthy, 5. good-looking, 6. Mormon, and 7. was co-chairman of McCain's campaign in '08.

“I couldn’t be happier with the ambassador’s service, and I’m sure he will be very successful in whatever endeavors he chooses in the future,” Obama said of Huntsman.... “And I’m sure that him having worked so well with me will be a great asset in any Republican primary.”

I love when the Prez gets sarcastic.

“It’s also good to see Jon Huntsman, our ambassador to China,” [White House Chief of Staff William Daley said...] “Or as we call him around the White House: the Manchurian Candidate. I want Jon to know that the president has no hard feelings. In fact, he just did an interview with the Tea Party Express saying how integral he has been to the success of the Obama administration.”

So... they sound worried, right?

[T]he appointment of Huntsman was, in the first place, unmistakably political. With senior Obama advisers openly fretting about the prospect of facing off against a telegenic, wealthy, center-right Republican, shipping him off to Beijing was hailed as a savvy play.

Helloooo, savvy plan!

No way, the assumption went, could he somehow return stateside and capture his party’s nomination after serving in the Obama administration.

Okay, let's look back at the news reports from 2009, when Huntsman was appointed ambassador:

For Mr. Obama, whose advisers already have their eyes set on his re-election in 2012, the selection of Mr. Huntsman is something of a political coup. He has emerged as one of the nation’s most visible Republican governors and was expected to at least consider seeking his party’s presidential nomination to run against Mr. Obama....

It was far from certain whether Mr. Huntsman would have actually sought the Republican presidential nomination – his centrist views could have created a challenge in early-voting states – but if he is confirmed by the Senate for the ambassadorship to China, he is part of the Obama team at a time when China is of critical importance. And he is out of the mix in the 2012 presidential race.

“When the president of the United States asks you to step up and serve in a capacity like this, that to me is the end of the conversation and the beginning of the obligation to rise to the challenge,” said Mr. Huntsman, who was joined by his wife Mary Kaye, and the couple’s seven children, one of whom was adopted from China....

“Governor Huntsman has respect for China’s proud traditions,” Mr. Obama said Saturday. “He understands what it will take to make America more competitive in the 21st century and will be an unstinting advocate for America’s interests and ideals.... I hope the good people of Utah will forgive me and understand how proud they should be of their governor for his willingness to serve... He always puts country ahead of himself. That’s what Jon has always done.”

So everyone knew what was going on. It was hailed as a savvy plan. What now? The savviest people are the one who can outfox somebody else's savvy plan.

"Death penalty scholars say that legislators tend to like lethal injection because it appears dignified and medical."

"When Utah officials were planning the state's most recent firing squad execution, they were met with interest from the international press, repeated comparisons to Old West justice, and a flurry of volunteers offering their services as executioners. Maybe firing squads get people going not just because they're unusual, but because they cater to a certain bloodthirstiness and obsession with guns. And because they seem like a more heroic way to die."

"I would like the firing squad, please."

In Utah, one has a choice of execution method.

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

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

Religious monuments, government speech, Justice Breyer's "freak out" test, and Justice Stevens's Vietnam memorial hypothetical.

Dahlia Lithwick covers the oral argument in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, the case about whether a city that has put up a donated 10 Commandments monument in a public park is stuck having to put up some other donated monument. (Here's the PDF of the transcript.) It shouldn't matter that the other monument represents a weird religion, should it? "Weird" is Lithwick's word:

With its pyramids, and mummification, and nectars, and hairless blue aliens, Summum is an existential stew of transcendental Gnosticism and particle physics: Isaac Luria meets Star Trek Voyager.

Lithwick quickly quips that it's always the other person's religion that seems weird, while your own religion seems "rational." But the reason the 10 Commandments seem more acceptable than the Summum "Seven Aphorisms" is not so much that we are not members of Summum -- maybe a few of you are -- it's that the 10 Commandments are a component of a long tradition that is elaborately integrated into the history of the United States.

That is the reason -- or part of the reason -- why the Supreme Court found -- in Van Orden v. Perry -- that it didn't violate the Establishment Clause for the state of Texas to have a 10 Commandments monument on its state capitol grounds. By the way, the 10 Commandments monument in Pleasant Grove is basically identical to the monument in Van Orden. The context is a little different though, in that the Van Orden monument has been where it was for more than 40 years, and the Pleasant Grove 10 Commandments only dates back to 1971. Also, the city of Pleasant Grove was founded by Mormons, and the 10 Commandments monument isn't the Mormon version of the 10 Commandments, so it doesn't reflect the history of the city in quite the same way.

Back to Lithwick:

In 2003, Summum's founder, Summum "Corky" Ra, requested permission to donate a monument to the park celebrating the Seven Aphorisms upon which their beliefs are based. (The Seven Aphorisms are, in brief: the principles of psychokinesis, correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender.) Summum holds that these aphorisms were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, but he demurred because his people were not yet ready for them. The Decalogue was the rewrite.

Not surprisingly, the city doesn't want this monument in its park. But if they accepted the 10 Commandments monument from the donor (the Fraternal Order of Eagles), does it violate freedom of speech to reject the message Summum wants to express? Is it unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination to favor the Judeo-Christian speech -- in monument form -- over the similarly stone-carved Summum speech?

Summum isn't before the court as a religion case. It was brought as a free speech case, and, as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice learns about three minutes into oral argument this morning, if he wins this case as a result of the court's free speech jurisprudence, he will be back in five years to lose it under the court's religion doctrine. The more zealously the city claims ownership of its Ten Commandments monument, the more it looks to be promoting religion in violation of the Constitution's Establishment Clause.

Chief Justice John Roberts puts it to him this way: "You're really just picking your poison. The more you say that the monument is 'government speech' to get out of the Free Speech Clause, the more you're walking into a trap under the Establishment Clause. … What is the government doing supporting the Ten Commandments?"

Sekulow replies that the display is 100 percent Establishment Clause kosher in light of [Van Orden and its companion case McCreary]. Justice Stephen Breyer was the deciding vote in each of those cases, which—read together—stand for the current Third Aphorism of Religion Cases: Government establishment of religion is only impermissible when it freaks out Justice Stephen Breyer.

Is that really the law, you may ask, or is that some kind of joke? Here's the post I wrote about the cases at the time. Breyer's opinion was the deciding vote, and he eschewed any clear rule, opting instead for what he called called "legal judgment," "tak[ing] account of context and consequences measured in light of" the purposes of the religion clauses -- promoting tolerance and freedom.

Lithwick's line -- "Government establishment of religion is only impermissible when it freaks out Justice Stephen Breyer" -- is a joke with some truth to it -- and also some serious inaccuracy. It assumes a conclusion that is in issue: that the monument is a "government establishment of religion." And Breyer seems like too cool a character to be "freaked out" by anything. Plus, he votes against government religious expression much more than we'd see on anything like a "freak out" standard. (See McCreary.) It would make more sense to say Breyer permits government religious speech when the idea of courts stopping it freaks him out.

Lithwick notes that Breyer signaled his dissatisfaction with the doctrinal rules -- the "artificial kinds of conceptual framework." Breyer sent very similar signals at oral argument in Van Orden, which I noted at the time.

But it looks as though there is room for a clear rule here:

Justice Samuel Alito observes that there is a difference between free speech, in the classic sense of protests, leafleting, and speech-making, and hauling around massive granite monuments, then demanding public-forum analysis be applied to "the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial." Joseffer says that when the government is "acting as curator," it can engage in viewpoint discrimination. In other words, it can choose the speech. "You can't run a museum if you have to accept everything, right?" says Scalia.

When government takes on the role of curator, it is no longer a question of the free speech of the original speaker. The government that chooses or rejects objects for presentation in one of its own displays is exercising its own speech, and it doesn't violate anyone else's free speech rights. It might violate the Establishment Clause, but that is another question.

Pamela Harris has 30 minutes to represent Summum, and Roberts hits her with the hypos: "You have a Statue of Liberty; do we have to have a statue of despotism? Do we have to put any president who wants to be on Mount Rushmore?"....

Even the most doctrine-loving justices seem to be bothered by the practical problem of city parks becoming cluttered with hate monuments, weird stuff, and, eventually, rusted-out cars.

I think it's pretty obvious that the city will win as the Justices (like Scalia) who support free speech for the government will have the support of the Justices (like Breyer) who look at real-world consequences and think practical thoughts.

But there still should be some hand-wringing over the one hypothetical that really did freak out everyone -- well, not Scalia, but almost everyone: What if the United States had decided to express itself by excluding the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial? Justice Stevens posed the hypothetical, and the Justices struggle with it. From the transcript:

JUSTICE BREYER: That seems to be the problem here. And what I have in this is the -- the problem I have is that we seem to be applying these subcategories in a very absolute way. Why can't we call this what it is -- it's a mixture of private speech with Government decisionmaking -- and ask the question, as we do in election cases, is the restriction proportionate to a legitimate objective? I know how you're going to answer that question. You're going to say: Of course, it is. But what's interesting me is, are we bound in these cases to apply what I think of as an artificial kind of conceptual framework or are we free to ask what seems to me to be at the heart of the matter? The answer to Justice Stevens's hypothetically is: Of course the Government can't do that because it's disproportionate.

JUSTICE STEVENS: I didn't get the answer. Did you --

MR. JOSEFFER [representing the United States, as amicus curiae]: Yes, the Government can choose to memorialize who it wants on the mall. When the Government is -- now, to be clear, that's under the Free Speech Clause.

JUSTICE BREYER: So what is the answer to the -- what is the answer to Justice Stevens's hypothetical? What is the answer to the homosexual hypothetical? What is the answer?

Breyer seems to be verging on freak-out mode there.

MR. JOSEFFER: The only question --

JUSTICE BREYER: Because that tests the theory.

MR. JOSEFFER: Well, as a matter of the Free Speech Clause, there are no limits on the Government's ability to speak freely. Under the Equal Protection Clause, the Establishment Clause, perhaps the Due Process Clause, there might be thought to be independent checks on the Government's speech. But the Free Speech Clause, whatever else it does, does not prevent the Government from speaking freely.

JUSTICE SCALIA: It seems to me the Government could disfavor homosexuality just as it could disfavor abortion, just as it can disfavor a number of other things that in -- in many States people are free to do. The Government can disfavor all of it, can't it?

MR. JOSEFFER: The Government would be powerless to do anything if it cannot first formulate and then express its own viewpoints....

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Does the law always require us to adopt an all-or-nothing position? Aren't there some extreme cases indicated by the hypothetical where the First Amendment does enter in? Do we have to decide this case that it's all or nothing?

So will the city win with a clearly stated rule, will the city win with a "legal judgment" based on the whole context, or will the city win based on a clearly stated rule that has an escape clause comprising Justice Stevens's Vietnam memorial hypothetical?

ADDED: Lawprof Chris Lund reads the transcript:

... Summum argues that the display was the Eagles' message in 1971, and it's the Eagles' message now. But that claim is really hard to square with the fact that the display has been owned and controlled by the government and has been sitting in a government park for 36 years. The Eagles haven't really been involved since 1971 -- so how is this their speech? So Summum's counsel says that the crucial thing is this -- it can't be the government's speech until the City officially adopts it by some sort of resolution....

JUSTICE SOUTER: So this case -- your claim would disappear if this town in Utah had passed an ordinance saying we adopt the Ten Commandments Monument?

MS. HARRIS: It would, Justice Souter. We would no longer have an equal access right going forward --

JUSTICE SOUTER: But that's -- I mean, if that's all that's involved here, we're engaging in kind of a -- almost a silly exercise in formality.

Now Summum's counsel tries to say it's not a mere formality. She suggests that much of the Mormon population might object to the display because it's not the Mormon version of the Ten Commandments.... But besides being arguably a formality, it's difficult to see where the "official resolution" requirement would be coming from in terms of precedent or principle....

Lund thinks Summum may lose 9-0.

"The main focus is going to be going after the Utah brand.We're going to destroy the Utah brand. It is a hate state."

Said blogger John Aravosis, as 3,000 people protesting the Prop 8 vote in California marched in downtown Salt Lake City in Utah.

Church officials are "disturbed" that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was "singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election," said LDS spokesman Scott Trotter earlier Friday....

Attacking a religious organization rarely works, said Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a political think tank in southern California....

"Mormons are unpopular and the church went a long way in diving into this issue," he said. "But it doesn't make long-term strategic sense. You are appealing to religious bigotry and I don't think that's a good idea. You need to convince people of faith that they're not under attack."

Let's characterize more things as hate and then fight hate with hate. What a terrible idea!

UPDATE: CBN reports:

Several churches have been vandalized by apparent supporters of same-sex marriage since the idea was banned in California last week, local police have reported....

Monday in Utah, home to the Mormon church, the windows of five Latter-day Saints wardhouses were shot out with a BB gun. Police, however, did not openly link the damages to Prop 8 supporters.

"A lot of opinion has generated that this is in connection with Prop 8," Layton Utah Police Lt. Quinn Moyes said. "We aren't making that connection yet."

A bumbling new chapter in the saga who wrote "Dreams from My Father"?

The other day we were talking about the theory that William Ayers -- Obama's ex-terrorist neighbor -- had actually ghost-written Obama's memoir "Dreams from My Father." I think, in the comments, there are some allusions to the kind of computer analysis that is used in literary scholarship to figure out if a known author has written a particular work that is attributed to him.

Now, we see this about "Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, [who] has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases." He's been contacted by "Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah" about running the test on Obama's book and Ayers's.

“He was entirely upfront about this. He offered me $10,000 and sent me electronic versions of the text from both books.” [Millican said.]

Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausible”. A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.

Millican said: “I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them.” He said Fox gave him the impression that Cannon had got “cold feet about it being seen to be funded by the Republicans”.

I find it hard to believe that if Millican had the digital files that he could resist running them through his computer program out of sheer curiosity. I wonder what "took a preliminary look" means. You have a program and you have the digital files. I don't quite understand. But Millican makes it sound like Cannon and Fox backed out when they thought the news would probably be that Ayers is not the ghostwriter and that the public would be told. But that's what nearly everyone already thinks, and Millican has essentially gone ahead and told us so.

Why didn't Cannon and Fox strike a deal with Millican before sending him the digital files? Then Millican wouldn't have had his own knowledge of the results (preliminary or not) when negotiating. Why would Cannon and Fox care about suppressing the information if it turns out to be what people expect when they could have had Millican obliged to vouch for the result if it happened to be what they were hoping for?

Cannon insisted, however, that he was not interested in making an issue of Obama’s memoir “even if it were scientifically proven” to be someone else’s work.

Huh? If there's one thing in this whole story that reeks of lying, it's that. Cannon and Fox -- what bumblers!

IN THE COMMENTS: Larry says, "This may well have been the most wingnutty, wingnut idea of this election." Oh, I don't know. There's this.

Another religious monument case for the Supreme Court — this time it's the Seven Aphorisms of Summum.

SCOTUSblog reports:

The newly granted case on monuments on public property — Pleasant Grove City v. Summum (06-665) — will return the Court to the thorny issue of government control of expressive displays in city parks and other public places. The case grows out of a dispute between a city in Utah and a religious sect, Summum, that sought to place in a city park — along with other monuments, including one dedicated to the Ten Commandments — a monument to the tenets of Summum’s faith, the “Seven Aphorisms.”

What are the Seven Aphorisms of Summum?

1. THE PRINCIPLE OF PSYCHOKINESIS
2. THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE
3. THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION
4. THE PRINCIPLE OF OPPOSITION
5. THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM
6. THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
7. THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER

So, expect to hear a lot more about Summum.

"Transgressive caregiving" and a view of a frozen lake.

At the race-and-feminism conference this morning, I'm sitting next to a huge window, with this view of Lake Mendota:



Ah! The warmth of home!

I'm listing to Utah lawprof Laura Kessler read from a paper about "Transgressive Caregiving." Transgressive caregiving? It sounds alarming. From her paper:

Can unpaid family caregiving be a form of political resistance or expression? I argue that it can, especially when done by people ordinarily denied the privilege of family privacy by the state. Unlike feminists from other disciplines, feminist and queer theorists within law have largely overlooked this aspect of caregiving, regarding unpaid family labor as a source of gender-based oppression or as an undervalued public good. Consequently, prominent feminist and queer theorists within law have set their sights on employment or sexual freedom as more promising sources of emancipation for women.

This book examines a less well-explored conception of family caregiving within law, revealing the way that family caregiving can be a liberating practice for caregivers. Specifically, sex, reproduction, parenting, and housework can constitute affirmative political practices of resistance to a host of discriminatory institutions and ideologies, including the family, workplace, and state, as well as patriarchy, racism, and homophobia. I label such political work “transgressive caregiving” and locate it most centrally—although not exclusively—in the care work of ethnic and racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and heterosexual men, whose family caregiving practices are the focus of the book.

Sex, reproduction, parenting, and housework can constitute affirmative political practices of resistance to a host of discriminatory institutions and ideologies.... Discuss!

ADDED: You can download Laura Kessler's article here.

"We're still on our feet, and much to the amazement of many, we're getting there, folks, we're getting there."

Huckabee reemerges.

He won the South. Did he win it because of something about the South, or because he has so little money that he had to concentrate it somewhere?

Ed Rollins, Huckabee's chief political strategist, said he would be astonished if Huckabee has spent more than $10 million on his candidacy....

But Huckabee focused his limited resources almost exclusively on the Southeast, with old-fashioned, retail politicking. He presented himself as the only true social conservative in the race, jabbing at Romney as a flip-flopper as he pulled conservatives disenchanted with McCain into his orbit.

"Conservatives had the opportunity to pick a real conservative in the South," Rollins said. "And they did."

Even as McCain was claiming the mantle of front-runner in his victory speech last night, he was compelled to congratulate Huckabee on his sweep of the South. "Not for the first time, he surprised the rest of us," McCain said.

So McCain is handling this gracefully. Meanwhile, Romney has been a clod about Huckabee:

Over the past weeks, Romney has said repeatedly that Huckabee was more a nuisance than a threat, a candidate who should drop out of the race and leave it to the only two Republicans who could reasonably claim to be contenders for the nomination. Huckabee complained during last week's California debate that he was being treated as a third wheel....

Romney supporters and aides continued to show Huckabee little respect despite the Super Tuesday victories....

"He deserves credit for hanging in there and being the winsome personality he's been. We've all enjoyed him," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a Romney backer. "But everybody knows Mike is not going to be in the final two. That hasn't changed."

Coming from a campaign that isn't doing very well, that haughtiness is ridiculous. "We've all enjoyed him"? That's so patronizing. It's got to push the religious conservatives even more strongly toward Huckabee. And it gives Huckabee more material for his folksy jokiness:

"I've got to say that Mitt Romney was right about one thing — this is a two-man race. He was just wrong about who the other man in the race was. It's me, not him."

"When you say Wisconsin, people most often think of the Green Bay Packers, cheeseheads, beer and cold weather."

Does Wisconsin need rebranding? Apparently, the Wisconsin "brand" ranks 37th among states. States that rank higher: Kansas, Rhode Island, Minnesota, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Utah. New Jersey is 50th. (Even after "The Sopranos"?) California ranked first, of course.

How would you bolster the Wisconsin brand? And are all the states supposed to get into a big competition to have the most lustrous brand? I guess it's good federalism for the states to compete this way, by making you think well of them. Federalism and advertising — they go together under the heading "American" (even as Packers and beer go together under the heading "Wisconsin").

What does Mickey Kaus have against "This American Life"?

When I was driving home from Austin two Saturdays ago, I listened to a lot of talk radio. I especially enjoyed the hours when "This American Life" played on the XM Public Radio channel. The segment on the DREAM legislation moved me to tears -- and I do try not to succumb to tears while driving. It told the story of a young woman whose parents had brought her to the United States when she was a child and who had worked very hard and achieved a lot toward her goal of becoming a doctor, but who could not go on to medical school or ever hope to be a doctor unless she were to first move back to the unfamiliar country of her birth and wait her turn to immigrate legally.

Here, Mickey Kaus blasts "This American Life":

Does it always feature tedious bits of propaganda like the recent segment (#4 on this link) from a "fellow at the New America Foundation" crudely presenting one side of the argument for the DREAM Act? ("There is a very simple solution to all of this, a bill called the DREAM Act ..." concludes narrator Douglas McGray--as if he were talking to children and there were no arguments against rewarding "undocumented" immigrants by granting their children legal status, in-state tuition and citizenship.) You'd get a lot more useful information from a two-graf editorial in USA Today.

Well, you listen to that segment and tell me if it's crude or profound. It doesn't set out to examine the provisions of the act. It reaches you emotionally by bringing you inside one person's life. Admittedly, that has a propaganda effect. I was ready to promote the act, though I didn't know the details of it. But I got the message that there is a narrow legislative proposal that is being stalled by those who want to deal with the much larger immigration problem and I realized I'd have to look up the proposal on the web and see if the details checked out. I don't see what is crude about making you care about a problem rather than dissecting the legislation.

So read about the legislation at Mickey's link and tell me -- Mickey doesn't -- why we shouldn't care in a special way about young people who were brought here by their parents, educated by Americans, and then left with no way to follow through on their dreams?

And let's look a little more closely about why Kaus doesn't like "This American Life." He seems quite concerned about Ira Glass and his "clipped, geeky," "ironic nerd/hip" voice. I think it's the big testosterone discrepancy between Ira Glass and Mickey Kaus that is squicking Mickey out.

ADDED: The producer of the "American Life" segment, Douglas McGray, wrote a long piece in the L.A. Times before he did the radio version linked in Kaus's post. Here's some detail about the DREAM Act from the article:

Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, [Democrat Dick Durbin] introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. The bill recognized that kids such as Thi and Martha grew up as Americans and may not even remember another home. It offered them conditional resident status when they graduate from high school; if they graduate from college or serve in the military, that conditional status becomes a green card.

When Durbin and Hatch introduced the DREAM Act in 2001, it provoked the kind of deep disagreement that seems to follow each new immigration proposal. Eventually, though, the bill had collected a staggering 47 co-sponsors, nearly half the Senate, including immigration hawk Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho; likely GOP presidential candidates John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and their Democratic counterpart, New York's Hillary Clinton; Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman; California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The bill has enjoyed unusually broad support for an immigration measure for several reasons.

Only the most extreme immigration hard-liner would blame a toddler, or even an adolescent, for the choices their parents made. Some strain to make the case that offering opportunities to kids such as Thi, Martha or Esmeralda is akin to rewarding their parents, but that is just a polite way to argue that punishing children will discourage illegal immigration—not exactly a crowded bandwagon, when there are other ways to address the problem. Besides, there is something undeniably American about kids who scrap their way out of a bad situation with talent and hard work.

In 2003, the Senate's right-leaning Judiciary Committee voted 16-3 to bring the DREAM Act to the rest of the Senate. But the Senate's Republican leadership refused to schedule the DREAM Act for an up-or-down vote. The bill had Republican dissenters, and Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, appeared fearful of dividing his party and alienating right-wing activists.

Again this year, the Judiciary Committee endorsed the DREAM Act, voting to attach it to the Senate's sweeping immigration reform bill. But before Congress left for recess earlier this month, that bill bogged down, perhaps indefinitely. Even if the measure ultimately passes the Senate, it must be reconciled with a tougher House bill on immigration. Just before legislators left town, however, a bipartisan group of House members reintroduced their version of the DREAM Act. Compared with the nightmarish task of overhauling America's immigration system, and determining the future of 12 million illegal residents, offering green cards to a few all-but-American college kids hardly seems controversial.

A warrantless search based on the smell of marijuana?

Well, it ≈ imminent destruction of evidence. The Utah Supreme Court said no.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sippican sez "Dave's not here." And -- thanks to Google -- I get it.

"If people shine light on our religion, they will find some strange things, they will find some unsavory things..."

"... and they will find some wonderful things."

Mormons contemplate the scrutiny and criticism they will face if Mitt Romney runs for President. When Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, he faced "almost daily to potshots that his religion was racist, then sexist, then backward, then clannish with designs on ruling the U.S. if not the world." Nowadays, the church is "more proactive":

[LDS President Gordon B.] Hinckley has also downplayed the more unusual elements of the faith. He has dismissed the pre-1978 ban on blacks becoming priests and the practice of polygamy, which ended officially in 1890, as "in the past." He has written inspirational books without using any Mormon language. He welcomed the world to Utah for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

All of these efforts may help Romney, who could hardly look more All-American. His answer to questions about underwear could be an ad he once ran that showed him bare-chested on a beach.

"If you listen to Mitt and [President Hinckley] long enough," says [journalist Ron] Scott, "you might conclude that Mormons are really just Episcopalians who wear funny underwear."

But some members are wary that in an effort to explain the LDS faith to a critical audience, officials may end up watering it down.

"Downplaying temple garments? What else do we want to demystify and de-weird for the sake of gains in popular opinion?" asks Steve Evans, a Seattle attorney who helps run the Mormon blog bycommonconsent.com. "I'm all in favor of clarifying misconceptions, but eventually I am worried that we lose something vital."

Aren't all religions mysterious if you look closely? Normally, in politics, we just hold religion at a distance. We expect the candidates to have some religion but refrain from talking much about how the religion's beliefs interweave with the candidate's political thinking. But there is a move that can be made against a candidate that drags religion into the campaign and tries to stir up prejudice:

Romney got a taste of it in his 1994 attempt to unseat Edward Kennedy in the Senate.

Despite his brother's famous speech saying that a person's religion should be off-limits, Kennedy "played the Mormon card so relentlessly and cynically that even the leader of Boston Catholics, Cardinal Bernard Law, indignantly wrote that the lessons John Kennedy taught the country about a man's religion have 'been lost on President Kennedy's youngest brother, but salvaged by Mister Romney,' ''

Of course, President Kennedy said what he said because he was the one who was being attacked. He doesn't deserve special credit for taking the high road. The high road was best for him, and he might have taken the low road if it was better. But it was the high road.

"Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle..."

They speak in terms of freedom and individual choice -- not religion. Good move, considering the audience they are most likely to persuade.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which voided laws criminalizing sodomy, ... aided polygamy's cause because it implied that the court disapproved of laws that reach into the bedroom.

Since then, liberal legal scholars, generally no friend of the polygamists' conservative-leaning politics, have championed decriminalization. One of them is Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has written two op-eds for USA Today calling for the legalization of bigamy -- and same-sex marriage.

"I find polygamy an offensive practice," said Turley, who has become something of a celebrity among polygamists in Utah. "But there is no way its practice among consenting adults should be a felony."

I think it's rather obvious that it shouldn't be a crime for adults to live together and call themselves married. As long as it's not about having more than one marriage treated as a marriage in the legal sense, forcing anyone to marry, defrauding someone, or having sex with minors, the government should leave people alone.

Don't call them "conspiracy theorists." Call them "truth activists."

The SF Chronicle has a long article on the 9/11 conspiracy theorists that goes into some general discussion of the conspiracy mentality.

While many conspiracy theorists are politically liberal, they also include people on the right, including members of the John Birch Society, who imply that the Sept. 11 attacks were part of a continuing plan by U.S. elites to create a "New World Order" and impose greater control over Americans.

Some conspiracy theories are fantastical (CIA agents orchestrated the attacks; Israel planned them.) -- the epitome of preposterous beliefs that start with a conclusion and work backward to find evidence. Each new month brings a deluge of crackpot theories, but a growing number of people say there are too many improbabilities -- too many illogical holes -- in the government's version of what happened....

"Conspiracists (come) from all parts of the population, they (come) from all racial and religious groups," says Bob Goldberg, a history professor at the University of Utah and the author of "Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America." "The fact that people who have advanced degrees believe in conspiracy theories does not surprise me because it's not an issue of whether you're smart or dumb. In fact, when you look at conspiracy theories, what distinguishes them is how rigorously logical they seem to be, that they are so intensely structured and that there's a belief that every single fact is important and connects to another fact. There's a rigor to (their) logic."

Is anyone surprised by fact that people with advanced degrees believe conspiracy theories? Although plenty of sensible people get advanced degrees, the pursuit of an advanced degree is something that appeals to the kind of person who wants to load a lot of material into his brain and do things with it. Someone like that is more likely to get into conspiracy thinking -- things are connected! -- than the ordinary person who wants to get through with school and get out in the world and do things there. The sizzle and ferment of the inside of the head isn't what most people want. And they're suspicious of academic types with good reason. There are a lot of screwy people in academia.

ADDED: Here's an article about two new government reports refuting the 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Arches.

I was just having coffee with a friend yesterday, talking about my recently completed road trip, and she said, "I thought there would be more photographs." Oh, there are more photographs all right. It will take me some time to sort through them all. I got through my Badlands set, from the last day of the trip. Now, I'm going back to the beginning, to the second day, when I drove from Denver to Moab, Utah, and toured Arches National Park, the park with even better rocks than the Badlands. I'll display a few here, but the whole big set is here.

There in the distance is the famous Delicate Arch:



These things are amazing but have a rather obscene vibe:



The road gives a good idea of the scale:



Like a castle in the distance:



Sublime layers. This is the one I would paint:



Doesn't it seem as though every Hollywood cowboy who ever rode a horse should come galloping out from behind that monolith?



This is the Moab Fault, where something quite extraordinary -- a 2500 foot displacement -- happened 6 million years ago:



As they say in the movies, let's get out of here:



It was beautiful:

Reaching Utah.

I drove what seemed like all day. But it was only half as much as yesterday. Big mushroom-shaped thunderstorms loomed in the expanse of desert in front of me. The lightning looked strangely three-dimensional, not flat against the sky the way it looks back home, but in a precise place in the middle ground. Mostly, I drove in bright, hot sunlight, but a few of those blinding storms hit me. One made the temperature -- around 100 all day -- suddenly drop to 67. But I was inside the car, with the windows up and the air conditioning on. I was just reading the numbers on the dashboard.

I'm in love with the beauty of the western landscapes. But at the same time, I know that without the car, this place would be frightening and dangerous. I delighted when the ground went from green to brown as I drove west, and the land went from gentle hills to gigantic, ragged rocks. But it is only because there is so much land like Nebraska and Iowa that I'm in a position to see these desiccated landscapes as beautiful. Without all the affluence produced on that land I snub, I would have to see all this as a tragic wasteland.

But it's beautiful, isn't it?




Helping make it beautiful:

1000 miles.

I drove today, getting the boring part of the drive behind me. I'm really too fried to write a blog post, but what is this blogging enterprise if not daringly throwing yourself in front of the world in whatever condition you're in? So I'm trying to get through the comments moderation for the day. Scroll down and find the post that explains why I've had to turn on comments moderation. You know there are so many beautiful strangers who have made my blog a little coffeehouse, where people can talk about all sorts of things. And it only takes one person to spoil the ambience. Moderate though I am -- I like to say -- I don't like doing this moderation, mainly because it slows everything down.

How awful to think that with all the wonderful students I've had over twenty years, a former student should be the one screw up my place -- which is so much about enabling people to have good conversation.

Patience, everyone. I'm doing badly today getting through approving all the comments, but it's not the usual thing. Today was one of my all-time heavy driving days. I made it past Denver, and the last part, in blinding rain was really, really hard. But the motel is fine, and the internet is working, and there's a plastic cup into which I've poured X ounces of the single malt Scotch I've stashed in my bag.

So I will blog-tend and sip until I hit the wall. Tomorrow will be leisurely and scenic... with photographs, I assure you. It will be all about Colorado and Utah. I'm in love with the American West. Driving across Nebraska today, I appreciated the lush farmland. It's important. But my heart lightened when the land started looking dry, when the green verged over into brown.