From the "Grass is Greener" file.

So are you married? Are things, well, dull and you're wondering if that cute young bartender, say, from El Salvador with the improbable operatic-sounding name of "Aida" is really coming on to you?

Well, smell the coffee, Mister, and read this Tone Cluster post on the real glories of the single life.

Then, go home with some flowers and tell your wife that you love her.

[Thanks to The Window Manager for the tip.]

More ripples in the pond from the dense stone which is the Da Vinci Code

Yikes, I saw a Da Vinci Code poster at the local googleplex. Before that bagpipe of flatulence even hits the theaters, I'm going to have worked myself into a total fit of apoplexy by yelling "Soylent Green is people" or somesuch.

Anyhow, you can taunt the RC Church with tendentious, spurious, malicious drivel with impunity, but you better think twice before you tackle the lithe, lean ecumenical ninjas of the Anglican Communion. According to this Amy Welborn post, the churchman at Westminster Abbey are handing out free fliers correcting the many errors that cosmic genius Dan Brown larded into his "faux-intellectual" tome.

From the "Banality of Evil" files.

Well, of course, Mark Felt, the #2 man in the FBI, was "Deep Throat". That makes perfect sense.

Who??????

This reminds me of the late '70s when, after years of Kennedy conspiracy theories, many of which focused on the mysterious "umbrella man", who seemed to give the signal for the assassination, we found out that "the umbrella man" was doing an idiosyncratic protest against JFK's father's Chamberlain-like support for Hitler.

Get it? Umbrella...Chamberlain...Hitler.

Never mind. You had to be there.

And so it goes with all the great conspiracies and plots. It's never the one you expect, or secretly root for, acting from some great raison d'etre; it will always be some spear-carrier motivated by something that seems a little bit "loopy" to everyone else, such as having an axe to grind about not getting a new coffee maker or a raise or the primo parking space.

Now, obviously, we don't know if Felt's claim is true. The truth probably is that there were a lot of "Deep Throats" talking to Woodward and Bernstein at the time, all leaking bits and pieces of information that they were able to retail into their stories. (Because if watching the X-Files for eight years taught us nothing else, it taught us that "there are no secrets.") Felt could have been one of the many "Deep Throats" who played their role and went back to their "deep cover" as a bureaucrat.

Although I have to agree with John Podhoretz, could you imagine the dark mutterings about coup de etats if Felt had "shopped" a Democrat? But - as with State Department functionaries and CIA agents - disloyalty, institutional or personal, is lauded as serving a "higher ideal" if it's a Republican administration; whereas if it is a Democratic administration, the MSM finds a new respect for the virtue of loyalty and the importance of privacy.

Update: The Washington post confirms that Felt was "Deep Throat."

Yippee. We get to relive the glory days when we on the verge of lawlessness in government, when the President thought that he was above the laws, when his administration was mired in corruption and so many presidential advisers and associates faced criminal charges, when the President thought nothing of lying under oath, when the President viewed other human beings as mere objects to sate his excessive carnal desire, when....

Oops. Wrong flashback.

Also, on the point about "petty men making history for petty reasons", check out John Podhoretz' theory about whether Felt was a hero.

Having narrowly missed the Watergate era, I just get so tired of the self-congratulatory spin that the media and Democrats put on Watergate. The air went out of the balloon of their tired rhetoric about "no man is above the law" when they explicitly - and with no shame whatsover - carved out a "Bill Clinton is the President and a supporter of abortion on demand exception" for sexual harrassment laws. What happened to Clinton was no different from what many other American men go through every year, and no one cares about "privacy". Since the Democrats were the ones to start the ball of "sexual correctness" rolling along - to my personal enrichment - they were hardly the ones to whine about the consequences.

And so it goes with the corrupt elite media. Is Felt a hero? Absolutely, he helped bring down a Republican. He served the cause. Do we care that he undoubtedly violated laws or internal procedures against the disclosure of FBI confidential information and that he flushed his fiduciary obligations down the toilet? No way; he served the cause.

What about Linda Tripp? Well, she's a betrayer of her sacred trust of friendship and possibly violated the law by taping confidential communications. Was she justified by the fact that the Clinton "sluts and nuts" team was about to gear up on her and Lewinski as they had done to so many other women? No way; in that case the President served the cause and great men deserve a little bit more lattitude about such things, don't you know.

Such is the "cargo cult" of moral reasoning fashioned in these latter days by our modern sophists.

As we go through the triumphalistic Watergate retrospective over the next day or so - which the elite media so desperately needs for its morale - let us keep in mind that there is a reason Fox News is kicking the collected, corrupt butt of the elite media.

New Meme - No tags

I caught this meme from Polipundit, who reveals that he has a Roger Zelazny autograph as part of his list of "10 things I've done, that most other people haven't."

So, here's my contribution to the meme in chronological order:

1. I was born in a territorial possession days before statehood (Hawaii - 8/18/59 and 8/21/59, respectively, but, hold on for a moment, according to this 2002 Statehood Day Resolution claims that "on August 18, 1959, Hawai`i was admitted to the Union" and that August 21, 1959 was the day that President Eisenhower proclaimed that Hawaii was admitted to the Union - so either I was one of the first persons born in the state or the last ones born in the territory. Now, one ironic thing about that is that I shared a lab bench at Fresno City College with the guy who was the bona fide first person born in the State of Alaska - what are the odds of that?)

2. 7 schools in 12 grades. (Navy brat; see item #1.)

3. Shook Ray Bradbury's hand in a private audience before he gave a talk at CSUF. May, 1977)

4. College graduate at 20; Law School graduate at 23. (1980 and 1983, respectively.)

5. Published co-author of law review article ("Can Science be inopportune: the Constitutional validity of restrictions on race/IQ research", UCLA Feb 1984)

6. Divisional sabre and foil championship winner for Mountain Valley Division of the USFA. (Mid to Late '80s)

7. Tried cases to jury. (variously from 1989)

8. Spoke to Claude Pepper, of whom it was alleged that "his sister was a thespian"; alas, this story appears to be yet another joy-killing urban legend.

9. Represented prevailing parties in precedential decisions published in the California official reports and cited by Witkin (and, sadly, one case cited in Witkin where I came in "second", which strangely received an entire chapter explaining the significance of the case in terms that the litigants never thought of.)

10. Defended designer of first privately funded/designed spaceship and first civilian test pilot of same in depositions - the case had nothing to do with the spaceship, by the way. Also, and this is interesting in itself, our co-counsel was George Hedges, who after the case was involved in the discovery of the "lost city of Ubar."

I really want to get this one in for the sheer cluelesness of it all...

11. Experienced Fairbanks, Alaska on the shortest day of the year. (12/21/2004)

Also, I wanted to add this one, simply because I try to push the news that private initiative will, and has, changed the world...

12. Established 2 Paul Harris Fellowships and working on a third through Rotary International to contribute to the eradication of polio in the world; God willing, we will see the extermination of the polio virus in the next 5 years.

OK, maybe it doesn't include "flying the bush in Alaska", but it'll just have to do until I get a better life.

Catholic Carnival

Deo Omnis Gloria is hosting Catholic Carnival XXXII - Table of Plenty.

Hail yourself over there. After all it's the feast day of St. Joan of Arc - the Boff's favorite Saint - and if you don't, it's the auto da fe for you.

George R.R. Martin's fourth book in the Saga of Fire and Ice trilogy is out.

Here is the link to Martin's website. And here is Martin's explanation that the "tale has grown in the telling" and the book is now being split into separate novels.

Crooked Timber carried the news and some annoyed fannish reactions.

Non!

Powerline has a "red/blue" map showing the overwhelming opposition of French voters to the EU constitution.

But don't count the Eurocrats out of the game just yet.

Anglican North Global writes off Anglican South Global in clever bid to race the United Methodist Church into oblivion.

Get Religion posts on a proposal by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to allow gay Anglican bishops and priests to marry, so long as they stay celibate.

Yea, that makes sense

I mean there's no way that the next stop on the road would be to point out how "unfair" and "unnatural" it is for two "married" people - or, heck, a polyandrous coterie of transgendered priests married to cross-specied wildebeasts - to refrain from the primal necessity which defines their existence.

Well, at least someone cares about "marriage."

You know, we could defined "marriage" to include "racquetball" and nobody would know the difference.

Today in History

Christopher Marlow was murdered in the famous "tavern brawl" over the reckoning of the bill on this day in 1593.

Also, after being shopped to the Brits by her fellow countrymen, Joan of Arc was martyred on May 30, 1431.

Catholic Carnival

Living Catholicism is hosting this weeks Catholic Carnival.

Check it out for bloggy Papist goodness.

Want to support the Republican party?

Then, support policies that encourage marriage, mortgage and babies.

It seems that this analysis - particularly the mortgage issue - works perfectly for California, where the impacted coastal areas are liberal, and the average income earner is effectively priced out of the market, while the inland areas are conservative, and housing goes for half the cost of the rest of the state.

Contrawise, isn't it interesting how strongly invested the left is in destroying the principle and practice of marriage?

Q: What's a conservative? Answer: A liberal who was mugged by reality.

Keith Thompson picked the day of the Iraqi election to time his break with the Left. After talking about the serious cognitive dissonance on left, where people who once claimed solidarity with the repressed now gleefully wait for the failure of democracy in Iraq and who once believed in free speech now create codes to control speech, Thompson writes:

My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

Absolutely right.

I've seen younger Catholics argue with Pre-Vatican II Catholics over whether Catholicism should be more or less tolerant of sexual heterodoxy. Oddly, it is the younger Catholics who argue for less tolerance and the older Catholics who are still reacting against the moral strictures of their youth, never realizing that the world has changed and that the last thing that a person in his 20s needs is to add gasoline to the fire of serial marriages, "hooking up" and "dating with privileges."

By the way, Thompson is gesturing at nothing more, and nothing less, than Aristotle's idea of "virtue," which argues that fulfillment is to be found in developing those traits that lead to human "excellence"; which goes to show that the great ideas are neither "conservative" or "liberal."

They are "true."

[Via Lane Core.]

Hey, Tom, you do realize that your religion's "prophet" was actually a mediocre science fiction writer who wanted to exploit a loophole in the tax laws, right?

Tom Cruise affims that "promiscuity is part of marriage, it's OK. You have this whole thing going out there."

Huh?

Oh, what the hell then, let the gays marry.

In fact, let polyandrous groups of trans-gendered transexuals marry cross-specied wildebeasts.

Who cares?

Marriage has been so deconstructed by the elite Hollywood culture that we could define it to include "racqetball" and no one would notice.

Nicole Kidman is hot, though, you know, for a redhead.

[Via Relapsed Catholic.]

Being a fool for Christ.

Midwest Conservative Journal has a post on a "Clown Mass" at the historic Trinity Episcopalian Church.

This is not going to be yet another one of those "piling on the ECUSA" posts. Rather, MCJ makes a point about what is so very mistaken in the idea of a "Clown Mass", which is worth some reflection:

Tell the guys that you're not going to stay out drinking until 3:30 AM because you really want to make Mass in the morning. Tell your friends that you're not going to see that new Tarantino flick everyone's talking about because you no longer find violence, murder, obscenity and profanity particularly entertaining. Tell the liberals in your family or your social circle that you won't be voting for the liberal candidate because he/she is pro-choice and you think that abortion is murder.

If any of your friends or family asks for an explanation for your behavior, give them the Reason and suggest that they might want to avail themselves of It. And then stand there while they laugh at you or call you a "holy roller," a "fundamentalist" or a "theocrat" and start going on about the "Christian right." Or be prepared to spend your weekends completely alone when they shun you entirely.

But you can't be a fool for Christ simply by declaring yourself one and troweling on the white face. So whatever you do, don't participate in self-indulgent tripe like clown eucharists. Because ridiculous displays like Trinity's impress nobody at all and do nothing to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yea, that makes sense.

Home-town Girls Does Well.

Caltechgirl, the pride of Edison Computech, is now "Doctor Caltechgirl."

Great news seems to be breaking out everywhere.

Update: And Three Bad Fingers shares some very good news.

Internet Love.

The Master of None has just announced his engagement to the The Daily Spork.

I, for one, am going to miss the Master's frequent posts on the state of confusion amongst modern young singles who haven't matured into the bitter misanthropic curmudgeonly status one can find on this blog.

Nonetheless, I have to offer my congratulations, particularly in light of the Spork's promise that "[f]or every liberal comment I receive here in the future, I'm going to have triplets that carry guns everywhere!"

You go, girl!

There is hope for the Republic.

Orson Scott Rocks!

SciFi author turned ornery political pundit, Orson Scott Card, generates a high-wattage column on the Newsweek fiasco and what it means:

Our country is at war. And it's a war in which victory absolutely depends on the Muslim world perceiving it as a war between the U.S and its allies on one side, and fanatical murderous terrorists on the other.

If it is ever perceived as a war against Islam, then we have lost. The world has lost.

So during such a difficult time, even people who think the Iraq War or even the whole war on terror is a horrible mistake still have an obligation of loyalty to the nation that offers them protection, prosperity, and freedom.

I mean, what kind of idiot breaks a hole in the hull of his boat during a storm, just because he doesn't like the guy at the tiller and thinks the storm could have been avoided?

Even if the allegations about Quran desecration were completely and absolutely verified, why in the world would you publish the information during wartime? It's not that the Media themselves regard the Quran as sacred.

Absolutely correct. When it's a crucifix in a jar of urine or a feces smeared image of Mary, who does the press disparage for intolerance? The offended believers, of course.

Later Card writes:

After all, who benefits from the publication of such a story at this time?

Only one group: People who want to bring down or weaken President Bush and everything he stands for, no matter the cost

By the way this fact is not lost on our troops. I just returned from my weekly Rotary meeting where our speaker was a young soldier who had been shot through both knees in an ambush in Iraq. He pointed out that while the press was covering the ambush not one of them called in to the American base to report that his unit was under attack.

He also said that the press's consistent slant of news from Iraq, such as covering the death of soldiers and ignoring the positive actions of Americans, could only be explained by the press's bias against the President.

Now, let's assume he's wrong for the moment. So what? That's what he believes. In other words, we are witnessing the creation of a cadre of Americans who believe - based on their experience - that the media is corrupt and biased and at best indifferent to the lives of Americans.

What will the future look like for the media when those soldiers really start having an influence on politics and the culture?

If I was part of the liberal media, I'd be very concerned.

Update: Oops. Linked fixed. Thanks, John, for the "word up".

By the way the link is via Relapsed Catholic who also rocks.

Book Memes - Still waiting for Ith.

Bill Sulik pairs his book meme response with the news that he is going into blogging sem-retirement. We'll just have to see about that; a person who had to ship 70 boxes of books (!!!!) home from law school is a person with a crying need to share the fruits of his reading. Bill selects Bolton's play about St. Thomas More - which really ought to be required reading in law school - and a book on mathematics that was given when he was little. While I am sorely tempted to make some snarky comment about "pegging the nerd-o-meter" with that selection, but the truth is that when I was in first or second grade - I remember it as being when we lived on Whidbey Island - I read Men and Molecules and was able to correct my teacher's erroneous statement that no one had ever seen a molecule on the basis that there were pictures taken by an electron scanning microscope of molecules in the book.

*Sigh* Is it any wonder my social life has always sort of sucked.

Rick Horowitz at Unspun proves that, left or right, secularist or devout, moonbat or wingnut, a booknerd is a booknerd. Mr. H also boasts that he could turn either of the "most recent" books he has - both on the dire effects of globalization - "into an ice-breaking pick-up line or two in a bar" and that "[n]o doubt, the target would cough up the Holy Grail every chick magnet seeks: her phone number."

*Snort* Yea, that'll work. Dude, you'll crash and burn every time with Friedman.

On the other hand, I've been told "ice breaking pick-up lines" from Derrida, Nietszche or Sartre are pure gold.

By the way, absolute props for originality in the "books that were personally significant" column - the Dictionary? (But, you know, in a sick, twisted way, he's got a point.) Also, Chapter 20 of Migrating from NT 4 to Windows 2000 Exam Prep? Maybe it's just me but I found myself thinking "“What kind of geek is this guy?”" (Just joking; an author should be proud of his published material.)

Anyhow, thanks for playing.

Now we are "waiting for Ith."

Melancholy Parenting Moments

Yesterday, I dropped the Widget, the Wadget and Boff in front of the Wadget's second grade classroom. Immediately, the Wadget was pleading with me to park further up the street where her class couldn't see that she was still riding around in a car seat. It turns out that she was experiencing tremendous social anxiety over the whole "car seat" issue because purportedly no one else in her class rides in a car seat.

So, I checked the law and it turns out that the separation point for mandated car seats is four years old and 40 pounds, not 70 pounds as I had incorrectly believed.

I let the Widget and the Wadget know that, if they so preferred, we'd yank the car seats this weekend. My first and second graders cheered the fact that they were no longer "little kids."

So, for the first time in over a decade, I'm going to be travelling in a car without babyseats or car seats. Obviously, it will be great to have more space in the back and once I use industrial strength solvent to clean out the decades worth of detritus that has accumulated under those seats, I might be able to actually provide a ride to more than one other adult at a time.

But, on the other hand, this is another one of those little milestone that passes and reminds us that time arrow points in one direction only.

Somewhere between "what could it hurt?" and "how could we know?", we discover...

...an unsettling development in philosophical poverty.

No Left Turns deconstructs Michael Kinsley's blithe attempt to equate the moral value of one natural and inevitable stage through which all human beings must pass with that of an insect.

A mosquito to be precise.

Ken Masugi makes the rock-solid Aristotelian point about why a "clump of cells" and a "baby" and a "child" and a "citizen" are all connected - are all one thing - because of their "final cause":

To put the defense of embryos in another light, it seems clear the Kinsley reasoning excludes the notion of final causes or purposes of the fetus/baby. The "clump of cells" should be seen in light of its ultimately dignity as a human being. Any other perspective is a distortion of reality.

Which is a point lost in the cargo cult of ideas that is modern moral thinking.

Given my interest in history, I sometimes reflect that it was not so long ago that slavery went from a morally neutral institution to a sin. (To be precise, it was at Vatican II in the early 1960s when this development happened sub silentio.) Because of that fact, I wonder what evils could have been perpetated if slavery had survived for an additional .01% of its total existence and made its way into the age of genetics.

Who knows? With recent developments in science, maybe we will actually be able to create humans with the moral value of mosquitoes.

It's been tried before.

We are all Manichaeans now; a discursion based on last week's Communio Circle discussion.

Sometime after he helped Kurt Russell out of Big Trouble in Little China - a movie warm to our hearts because it featured a friend’s brother in the seminal role of Chang Sing #4 - Victor Wong starred in another John Carpenter opus named Prince of Darkness. The premise of Prince of Darkness was that Donald Pleasance had discovered some eerie, glowing, green goop that was the “distilled essence of pure evil” or as the advertisements phrased the idea: "Before man walked the earth...it slept for centuries. It is evil. It is real. It is awakening." (Read the linked review for a sketch of the plot outline of the movie, as well as for some cool pictures and an assortment of snarky comments about Jameson Parker’s “Village People” mustache.)

However, enough about awful moments in horror movie history, what about that “distilled essence of pure evil” stuff?

While we have no idea what he would have said about John Carpenter’s thin plotline or Jameson Parker’s mustache, we are certain that St. Thomas Aquinas would have scoffed at the idea of “distilled essence of pure evil.” Here is why.

In his Summa, Aquinas addresses the key principles of “goodness” in the abstract. One of the questions he asks is whether goodness differs really from being. While any person of ordinary intelligence would ask “what is goodness?”, “what is being?” and “what is differs”, Aquinas is not burdened by ordinary intelligence. His answer is that “being” and “goodness” are really two words for the same thing. To wit:

Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea; which is clear from the following argument. The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. i): "Goodness is what all desire." Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists; for it is existence that makes all things actual, as is clear from the foregoing (3, 4; 4, 1). Hence it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present.

I think that Aquinas is putting his own spin on Aristotle’s point, here made in the Rhetoric, that “[f]or that which all desire is good, as we have said; and so, the more a thing is desired, the better it is.” Now, one thing that "all" desire is to be better and, hopefully, be perfect. Consequently, improvement, up to and including perfection, is good. Since it is unreasonably difficult, or merely illogical, to be perfect, or better, without existing, existence comes along for the ride as an aspect of “goodness.” Therefore, “existence” is an aspect of “goodness.”

So, what about the creepy, glowing, green essence of distilled evil or the “dark side” of the Force?

Aquinas gets vastly more interesting on the subject of “evil”, or, perhaps, the subject is simply more interesting. Concerning the question of ”whether evil is a nature”, Aquinas writes:

One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the nature of good. Now, we have said above that good is everything appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its own perfection, it must be said also that the being and the perfection of any nature is good. Hence it cannot be that evil signifies being, or any form or nature. Therefore it must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. And this is what is meant by saying that "evil is neither a being nor a good." For since being, as such, is good, the absence of one implies the absence of the other.

Got that? For something to exist it must be good in some absolute way because existence and goodness are the same thing. Or, to put it in more comprehensible movie terminology, if the glowing, green, gloopy “essence of distilled pure evil” was “pure evil” it would not “desire” anything “good”, it would not want its own perfection, and it would not, therefore “desire” existence. Even if the gloopy, green, glowing essence of pure evil wanted to exist in order to do evil to others, it’s existence would be “good” because it would provide the means of carrying out its nefarious plans.

In short, if it was “pure” evil, it would disappear in a spectacular display of self-loathing self-deconstruction.

Well, then, what is “evil” from a Thomistic - i.e., a Christian - perspective? For Aquinas evil is “only the privation of a due perfection.” (On Evil, Question 1, Article 2.) Note the “due perfection” language. Blindness, for example, is an evil because it deprives the eye of due perfection. On the other hand, your lack of wings is not “evil” because your due perfection does not involve flying with wings. (It may be “bummer” but it is not an “evil.”)

Evil, in other words, is parasitic and found only in good; it is found in those things and situations that limit or depart from excellence or “virtue”:

Therefore, although human beings, by the very fact that they are human beings, are one kind of good, till they are not by that very fact good human beings; rather, it is the proper virtue of each thing that makes it good. For virtue makes it possessor good as the Philosopher says in the Ethics. And virtue is a thing’s highest potentiality…”

(On Evil, Question 1, Article 2.)

This is why Star Wars is unmitigated heresy. The idea of a “dark side of the Force” contemplates a free-floating, self-contained, independent entity constituting evil and nothing but evil. Evil, however, is not an entity; evil is the flaw in an entity. It is the bug in the system, not the feature.

Why is this theologically important? Because the idea is out-and-out Manichaeism. As everyone acquainted with early Medieval history will recall, Manichaeism was a heresy imported into Christianity from Persian Zoroastrianism. Manichaeism posited a "dualistic theology" whereby a god of goodness was opposed by a god or principle of darkness or evil. Manichaeism had its heyday in the 4th and 5th Century, albeit dualistic heresies have recurred throughout Christian history. Catharism, which was exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade, was a dualistic heresy. Manichaeism was superficially persuasive enough to capture the allegiance of St. Augustine because it purported to offer an easy explanation to the question of where evil came from.

But these heresies make their force of evil independent from the dominion of God. Augustine's answer to the problem of evil, which was later adopted by Aquinas, is given perfect voice by James Blish's book A Case of Conscience in this passage:

These days, most sick children recovered in a day or so, after a shot of spectrosigmin or some similar drug, even from the brink of terminal coma. Question: Has prayer failed, and temporal science wrought the recovery?

Answer: No, for prayer is always answered, and no man may choose for God the means He uses to answer it. Surely, a miracle like a life-saving antibiotic Is not unworthy of the bounty of God.

And this, too, was the answer to the riddle of the Great Nothing. The Adversary is not creative, except in the sense that He always seeks evil, and always does good. He cannot claim any of the credit for temporal science, nor imply truthfully that a success for a temporal science is a failure for prayer. In this as in all other matters, He is compelled to lie.

But Star Wars fits the modern American psyche. We want to be in the middle. We want “good” sides and “dark” sides. We want Yings and Yangs. We want balance so that we can have freedom.

We certainly don’t want the sense that our evils come from our own imperfections.

The cutting edge

We just received an advertisement for the Religion Case Reporter, which romises to provide comprehensive coverage of cases that may be of interest to religious institutions. Interestingly, it has separate categories for Quaker, Buddhist, the Wiccan Religion, the Episcopal Church , the Methodist Church and Jehovah's Witnesses, but no similar category for Roman Catholicism.

*Sigh*

Probably because a category devoted to the RCs would involve too many cases to be an effective category.

The Meme Wars

John Barnes' Candle is a fairly so-so science fiction book, but the major premise of the book is fairly fun. Barnes' posits the creation and spreading of "memes" - or artificial intelligence - written around various big ideas. When these memes conflict, war among the human carriers of the memes results.

Anyhow, here is a round-up of the book meme as it has thus far propagated.

Mark Byron sort of surprised me. I thought we'd see something by Hayek or von Mises on his "books that meant something special list." He also lists Stranger in a Strange Land as one of those books, because it represents a stage in his life. Yes, I definitely see how that book plays to a particular age.

On the other hand, on further reflection, I decided over the weekend that Stranger doesn't belong on my list because another science fiction book with religious themes does. That book is A Case of Conscience, which I read in Junior High School. A Case of Conscience made Thomistic Catholicism look cool, which was quite a feat for a British atheist named William Atheling, who wrote under the pen name James Blish.

Blish's book features a visit by a Jesuit biologist to a planet where evolution is a daily fact. The priest realizes that this planet is nothing less than a creation of the devil - thereby implicating him in the heresy of Manichaeanism. He struggles with his conscience and eventually exorcises the planet.

Honestly, Blish made an argument for a religious position on evolution that I trot out occasionally. He connected faith with reason and Catholicism with science in a way that left a lasting impression. And exorcising a planet is simply too cool for words. I also had an introduction to concepts like Manichaeanism at a very early age, such that my later forays into Augustine were like a visit home.

Based on the number of books he has,Lane Core appears to be another guy with a "book dependence issue".

And you never can tell what you'll learn from another person's reading list. For example, The Red Hat sparked Lane's decision to join the Catholic Church? I thought Lane was a cradle Catholic. Who knew?

Finally, the poetry of St. John of the Cross is on Lane's "most important books" list. Neat. Someday I'm going to invest the time into that. Until then my exposure is limited to Loreena McKennitt who set a portion of the poem to music and, I hope, captured the mystical quality fo the "dark night" of love.

We're waiting on Mr. Sulik. (And looking forward to his thoughts on the ARCIC document.) We're also waiting for Rick's contribution.

Claude Muncey up in Merced has been tagged with the meme from another source. He's also listing John Henry Newman as a seminal author (like Lane Cork); I know of Newman, but only vaguely. Maybe I'm missing something?

Also he has Lord of the Rings as a step on his journey to faith. Interesting, but I don't get the qualia of that experience and I have never understood the Christian dimensions of the trilogy. I know they're there, but, frankly, I've never read the trilogy. It's definitely on my reading list.

And, hah, I've just picked up Reading the Old Testament because I was inspired to learn more - something, anything - about Saul, David and Judges by this Teaching Company lecture series on the Old Testament, which I recommend like all of its other lecture series.

Further notes on the Anglican/RC document on Mariology.

Lane Core has his weekly round-up of "good reads" up on his blog.

Lane links to this Jimmy Akins analysis, albeit based on a quick read, of the new Anglican/Catholic joint statement on common beliefs about Marian doctrines. If you have an interest in that kind of thing, there's a place for you to start.

Latin Survives.

Publius links to this article on the continuing popularity of Latin in American high schools.

I was surprised a few years to learn that my Rotary Club's faculty contact with the Fresno High School Interact club was the school's Latin teacher. I'd never heard of any high schooler taking the language of Cicero, let alone enough to fill a classroom. Moreover, while Fresno High School was the elite school in Fresno 50 years ago - it was the school that launched Tom Seaver's career, for example - it is now the high school for a generally socio-economically disadvantaged, minority community; in other words, the kind of community for whom, as we have been repeatedly told over the last 40 years, "dead white men" like Plutarch and Virgil is supposed to have no relevance.

And, yet, the Fresno High School tradition of teaching Latin has remained alive and relevant for the last 100 years.

Star Wars ROTS

Dodd likes Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Beware of the spoilers - as if there could be any spoilers; we've known who is going to live and die in Episode III for the last 28 years.)

On the other hand, a friend who stood in line seven hours to see Star Wars ROTS on opening night was disappointed in the movie. On the other hand, she also liked Sin Cityand The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. So, her input may represent a fairly, er, eclectic view point.

This is something new.

To me at least.

Here is the home page for ASPMA.com ASPMA says about itself:

ASPMA.com analyzes hundreds of thousands of blogs in (almost) real-time to determine the topics that are gaining momentum, losing popularity, or eternally ubiquitous.

ASPMA.com analyzes hundreds of thousands of blogs in (almost) real-time to determine the topics that are gaining momentum, losing popularity, or eternally ubiquitous.
We're ramping up our data analysis and natural language tools right now, so stay tuned for all sorts of fancy features that will help answer questions like:

Who's currently getting more blog coverage, Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh?
Do more people write about global warming in the summer?
Does increased blog buzz about Google correlate with their stock price?
How much do people complain when gas prices go up?
Is anyone actually interested in Social Security Reform?

Right now, Benedict is the most popular word used on the internet. Last night is the second most popular and Star Wars is number three.

Michael Jackson is ranked number 175.

There has to be some kind of sampling bias in the blogs that ASPMA selected.

ASPMA also provides links to the blogs that used the words.

BFL Roound-up

California Mafia has done a heroic job of putting together the Bear Flag League Round-up.

This would be the first round-up done during the term of BFL's "Patron Babe" Janine Turner, who won the coveted position despite a spirited write-in campaign for Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Crossing the Tiber.

The Anchoress advises that the Anglican blogger Pontifications is joining the Catholic church. He is also renouncing his orders as an Episcopalian priest and will be seeking ordination as a Catholic priest.

Commenters at Episcopalian blog Titusonenine offer their perspectives.

Tagged with a Meme - It's All about Books.

Publius at Res Publica has provided a post on his bibliophilic proclivities and has tagged me and four others to follow suit.

This is going to be somewhat tender subject because, well, I'm a "book-abuser". There are days when I wish I could turn to substance abuse because it would provide me with greater social outlets. Also, a simple cocaine problem would probably be a whole lot cheaper.

To the questions -

1. Total Number of Books I’ve Owned: Well, doing a quick mathematical calculation based on an estimate of books per shelf and number of shelves, I'd say somewhere between 600 to 1,000.

But, then, we have to take into account my hoard of "classic" science fiction paperbacks that are hermetically sealed in plastic storage bins, and the number probably doubles. And if we're talking about the total number of books I've owned over a lifetime, fuggedaboutit; I don't even want to think about that number.

It would seem that I've got a "book dependence issue."

2. Last Book I Bought: Well, I purchased two books at my last visit to the pusher, aka Barnes & Noble: Brimstone and Star Wars and Philosophy.

Brimstone seems to be some kind of horror/supernatural/police procedural. It features cliches characters and wooden writing, but, I'm sad to say, I'm sort of enjoying it.

Star Wars and Philosophy invites academic philosophers to consider the Star Wars universe from a philosophical perspective. It's actually rocking good fun. The last essay I read considered Darth Vaders' relationship with the Emperor from the perspective of Hegelian master/slave dialectics. What a hoot!

Strangely, none of this is able to provide a decent "pick up line" that might work in a bar.

3. Last Book I read: Justice John T. Noonan's "A Church that Can and Cannot Change" is an absolute gem. It has everything you might want in a book - obscure Catholic theology, obscure history and a discussion of doctrinal evolution. Actually, it is a pretty important book and should be read by anyone who doesn't understand in their marrow that the "past is a different country."

4. Five Books That Mean Alot to Me:

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I read this book for the first time when I was 12 years old and haven't changed my political philosophy ever since. (Except, obviously, for the part about polyandry and line marriages.)

2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Same thing as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I read it in 6th or 7th grade and it's kind of shaped my views on religion ever since. Also, wasn't Jubal Harshaw just a great character? Perhaps it's the books that we read in our youth that have the most effect on us.

3. St. Augustine's Confessions. I've read the Confessions three times over the last 15 years, and listened to this terrific Teaching Company lecture series on the work. I find that as I grow older, I get a different and more satisfying understanding of the text.

4. Aristotle's The Nichomachean Ethics by way of this excellent Teaching Company lecture series in the subject by Father Joseph Koterski S.J. After finally being introduced to Aristotle a few years ago, I have come to regret the way in which the modern educational system has discounted the clear and common sense writings of this seminal philosopher. I now wish that I had been introduced to Aristotle in college or high school.

5. Plato's The Gorgias. Again, I spent most of my life discounting the relevance of Plato, and, to be honest, placing myself on the side of the Athenian democracy that fed Socrates the hemlock. A few years ago, though, I finally started reading Plato's dialogue, and you know what? He's a great read! The Gorgias in particular contains both very funny and very profound insights about very modern issues. In fact, I found myself chuckling at certain exchanges between Socrates and his interlocutors. The issue that The Gorgias addresses is stunningly central to many modern debates, namely, is pleasure the real meaning of human life?

5. Tag 5 people and have them do this on their blog. I think I want to mix it up between the secularists and the theists, so, if they're willing to play, I'd tag Ith (and see if she can out-nerd me on science fiction), Rick at Unspun (to see how many basic works by Karl Marx will show up (For heaven's sake, I'm joking)), Mr. Sulik (for the culture that the High Church tradition can bring), Mark Byron (because I suspect his reading list is going to go in a different direction), and the erudite Lane Core.

Heh, heh, heh, stop it. My side is hurting.

Jimmy Akin on the reflexive anti-catholic bigotry at MoveOn.

Geez, what a great way to make inroads into the states they lost in the last election.

By the way, you know who is actually funny. The Curt Jester is funny. He's doing what G.K. Chesterton would have done if he was alive today.

Pat Buchanan can be so exasperating.

He can be so wildly off the mark, and then he can just nail the landing like in this column on "Catholic-bashers and Pius’ Defenders."

Dispatches from the Methodist Front.

Wesley blog has two noteworthy posts -

The first shows how ripples spread out in the religious pond, as Wesley Blog warns British Methodists from seeking rapproachment with the Anglicans because of the recent Anglican/Catholic statement on Marian doctrines. So, its "Tinkers to Evers to Chance" as British Methodists become British Anglicans and, then, the next thing they know, they're acknowledging the suzerainty of Rome.

The second post involves an interview with Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life, who takes great care to explain why he is an evangelical and not a fundamentalist.

The significance of this post is a recent contretremps I had with Rick at Unspun where he disputed my claim that "evangelicals" tended to differentiate themselves from "fundamentalists."

In other words, I was right, which keeps my accuracy quotient in the 90th percentile.

Catholic Community

As part of the "catechistically lost generation" of post-Vatican II cradle Catholics, I have only the dimmest awareness of non-parish forms of Catholic organization. So, I am intrigued by Disputation's discussion of the Dominican Third Order, of which he is a member, and Chris Burgwald's post on his involvement with Communion and Liberation, which is an "ecclesial movement," whatever that means.

What is "misinfo".

Thanks for visiting, but when I click on the http://misinfo/ link, all I get is the "can't find the site"/"the page cannot be displayed" screens.

Thanks.

House

If you like House, you might want to check in with Ith's e-mail list.

It's a great program. Who would have thought that Bertie Wooster could be so snarky?

Carnival of the Vanities

Chris Burgwald at Veritas is hosting the current instalment of the cavalcade of Catholic bloggers.

Check it out.

Debate Club

Should States Abolish Marriage?

Although what is driving the discussion is the homosexual agenda of "same sex marriage," both debaters favor "same sex marriage", which provides a clue about how far afield the intellectual elite is from the common sense of average person.

The problem is that both debaters see marriage as a kind of libertarian consensual structure based on contract, where the rights of the parties are to be determined through some contractual analogy. What will be missing from the discussion is the idea that marriage is not a contract, it's a covenant, and that marriages are not ultimately based on a negotiation of terms between equals.

Ultimately, marriage is based on love. The technical term for the other approach is a "failed marriage."

The MSM isn't a safeguard of democracy; it's on the other side.

At some point in time the conclusion can't be avoided.

First example, the MSM has absolutely refused to downplay imagined incidents that will obviously be used to incite anti-American feelings in the Arab world, but they deliberately suppress pictures of Americans jumping to their death on 9/11 because it might incite Americans.

Second example, when confronted with the truth, it falls back on the "fake but accurate" defense. I actually heard some professor of journalism on Hannity & Colmes making the argument that since "everyone knows" that this kind of incident is not "beyond our imagination", it has a narrative truth which made the false Newsweek article truthful.

That's the standard? That's pathetic and something needs to be done.

My partner is cancelling his subscription to Newsweek, which is certainly one place to start.

After a lengthy review process the editorial board has decided to name the official "Patron babe" of Lex Communis.

She's hot, clever and a Republican. She's Janine Turner.

[FYI - the inside joke is the "Ours" v. "Theirs" e-mail that Dr. Wong sent me. If you haven't seen it and would like to have it forwarded to you, drop me a note. But be warned - it's not for the faint of heart.]

Update: It seems that we may have spoken too soon. Based on her being named Republican Babe of the Week and, well, the cheesecake photos at the Republican Babe of the Week site, Sarah Michelle Gellar deserves some serious consideration.

But, no, we have to remain faithful to Janine.

It's the right thing to do.

But - and I realize that I'm playing into a pernicious stereotype here - don't you think Ms. Gellar is showing rather a lot of skin for a Republican?

Second Update: And don't even get me started on Leeann Tweeden, who deserves it based on this nuanced contribution to political philosophy:

FHM:
Whose ass would you really like to kick?

LEEANN:
Can I make it a combination? Bill Clinton and Al Gore. I'm a Republican, but Al Gore because he and his wife are idiots, and Clinton because I'm pissed off he's gotten through unscathed after some of the things he's done.

and, of course, based on her pictures.

I'd put her in a one on one debate against Cameron Diaz any day of the week.

Sauce for the Goose/Sauce for the Gander Update: Caltechgirl is looking for suggestions on a "Patron Hunk" for her blog.

If you're so inclined, visit her blog and support a write-in for Fresno's mayor and former actor, Alan Autry.

Or vote for that Baldwin youngster.

Whatever.

Huh? You mean we were right?

Anglicans acknowledge that that Catholic teachings on the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary into heaven are consistent with Anglican interpretations of the Bible.

To my Pisky friends - and you know who you are - kind of sorry about copping that snarky attitude about Mariolatry now, aren't you?

Oh, and I've got two words for you - "Papal Supremacy."

Get used to it.

Update: Midwest Conservative Journal, who I believe is on the crypto-calvinist side of the Anglican communion, seems to support my observation in the comments that the report will probably be irrelevant to ecumenism or the Anglican church. He also points out that it's interesting that the Anglicans moved toward "Rome", not vice versa, because:

Because Canterbury needs Rome much more than Rome needs Canterbury and I think both know that. So Rome doesn't have to concede anything. I can't conceive of the Pope, whoever he is at the time, allowing Anglicans to ordain women as long as they acknowledge his supremacy. And I also can't conceive that western Anglicans would ever be even remotely willing to give up female priests.

MCJ seems to think that this may be part of a strategy based on "Benedict know[ing] that over the next several years, a large number of Anglicans will swim the Tiber regardless of what any Anglican-Roman Catholic commission does or doesn't decide." (You can see this in Dave's comments below the post that hint at a scheme to grab the Anglican "global south".)

The "C" Word.

Lauren Winner on chastity.

Noli Irritare provides the link. Also, appropos of my recent snit about the rhetorical uses and abuses of the Inquisition, I really like her husband's observation that "the saints to come out of the Inquisition period were Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross - not Torquemada," which is a shorter, neater and more charitable response than discussing the inglorious history of the Spanish Inquisition.

Celtic Confusion.

So much assumed, so much to unpack. Read this Victor Morton post on the etiquette of booing caused by the mention of the Pope's death at a Scottish Cup semi-final between Glasgow Celtic and Heart of Midlothian and be grateful that you're an American where we've managed to leave so much of our cultural baggage behind.

Update: I changed the post to reflect Mr. Morton's comments.

Equal Rights for Dumb Blondes!

From You Can't Make It Up blog comes this snippet on a Cameron Diaz speech on human rights:

She then read her bit about Carlos Rojas, a videographer documenting violent atrocities against his indigenous ethnic group in Oaxaca. "Brutalized, attacked, imprisoned and tortured by the Mexican military, the Mixe found themselves without a voice," Cameron read. Then, looking up at the audience, puppy dog eyes wide, she ad libbed, "I think we all know what that feels like, right guys?" From the back of the auditorium came the response, "I want to do you, Cameron!" She smiled and waved. "You guys are so awesome!"

Awesome!

"Newsweek lied, people died."

Propaganda can be defined many ways. For example, "propaganda" can mean:

The systematic effort of controlling public opinion or a course of action by using selected facts, ideas or allegations

Or

Information given to show something or someone in a biased way

Or

a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda. At its root, the denotation of propaganda is 'to propagate (actively spread) a philosophy or point of view'.

Governments used to pay good money to create and disseminate propaganda. In the modern world, our elites and media do it for free.

The Rantingprof has the story on Newsweeks spurious claim that Americans in Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down the toilet, a claim that was used to spark violence in Afghanistan. And here is Newsweek's apology.

Glenn Reynolds nails the issue with this observation:

People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because -- let's be clear here -- Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

On a not entirely unrelated intellectual front, Victor Davis Hanson points to another kind of anti-western progaganda - the systemmatic effort by intellectual elites to write America and Britain out of the history of World War II.

What is going to happen if in the future we ever really need the will to win against opponents like the Nazis?

"Tell me that when I can look her in the eyes while you're saying it."

Nykola offers some friendly fashion advice for Anne Coulter.

For those of you who aren't really interested in fashion, i.e., "men", Nykola provides a number of photos illustrating what Nykola refers to as Anne's "Premium Hooker Couture", i.e., "eye candy".

And we absolutely refuse to be drawn into any discussion about whether Anne's fashion sense is a "good thing" or a "bad thing".

What hath the Reformation wrought? - Episode III.

Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic uses a news report about how a German brewery was struggling until it was discovered that it brewed the Pope's favorite beer as an illustration of "the difference between Protestants and Catholics, lesson LXIV."

Shaidle also links to Midwest Conservative Journal,who offered this initial observation:

Good Calvinist that I am, I was about to get offended by that title until I realized that it was, well, right. The Protestants that you’ve heard of either don’t drink or wouldn’t advertise the fact if they do. And no one’s ever heard of the Protestants who do drink so they would never be asked to do commercials.

He then offers a clever take on what liquor ads would look like if they featured endorsement from Episcopalian Bishops. The comments are great also.

And as it turns out, BFLer Patrick O'Hannigan aka The Paragraph Farmer employs the powerful research algorithms of the world wide web to locate the homepage of the brewery that makes the "Pope's favorite beer."

All of which is merely a set up for me to share my Mennonite partner's favorite Mennonite joke:

Question: Why don't Mennonites have sex standing up?

Answer: Because it could lead to dancing.

Thank you, Fresno! Don't forget to tip the waitresses.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

I went to see H2G2 tonight.

Long story short - the 1981 BBC version was much funnier.

Actually, the movie version wasn't funny, perhaps because the director actually wanted to make the Arthur Dent characer into someone with redeeming qualities, instead of the complete nebbish he was in the original (and I assume the book.) They also seemed to minize Ford Prefect's role so that they could expand the love story between Dent and Trillian, which was odd because I didn't know there was a love story in the original.

One redeeming feature was that the Zooey Deschanel, who played Trillian, is very attractive and had a nice charisma in the expanded and liberated role carved out for her character. She looks like an actress who can take over the Meg Ryan ingenue roles when Meg is finally put out to pasture.

Anyhow, here's a site dedicated to maintaining the "cult" status of the Beeb's version.

From the "There's no such thing as a Liberal Media" file.

Patterico has the synopsis on CBS distorting Ken Starr's comments about judicial filibusters. (And here is a follow-up on the controversy.)

Perhaps, just perhaps....

... I need to get a life.

But I'm really looking forward to watching Discovery Channel's Alien Planet tonight.

And here is another link.

Man, could I push the nerd-o-meter any farther into the red?

Update: Well, yes, I seems that I actually did find a way to push the meter further into the red.

On reviewing the post I had the feeling that "farther" didn't look correct. So, I did a quick search on "farther/further" and the answer is...

Well, it's not clear. According to Bartleby's the two words are interchangeable, but "[a] relatively recent rule, however, states that farther should be reserved for physical distance and further for nonphysical, metaphorical advancement"

Like I'm ever going to remember that. But this site says that "some people get testy" about this distinction. And this site is absolutely dogmatic about the distinction.

But based on that distinction, the sentence should have read "push the nerd-o-meter further into the red." And, strangely, that sounds right.

Or correct.

Second Update: There is alien life out there - and it's blogging about Alien Planet.

Federal Court tells Nebraska voters that they can't define marriage.

Although there has been a great tumult about the risk of an incipient "theocracy", the risk to democracy comes from an entirely different direction. Eugene Volokh critizes the legal analysis of the decision by a federal judge to strike down a Nebraska law limiting valid marriages to those between a man and a woman.

Not surprisingly, the decision relied on Romer v. Evans, under which the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado law forbidding municipalities from extending equal rights protection to homosexuals. Volokh describes Romer as "wrong, badly reasoned, and vague in its implications." Romer is, however, the law and generally stands for the idea that the legislature can't single out a particular (lawful) group for stigmatization, which, if that is the real intent of the legislation, would bear no "rational basis" with any proper state interest. (This seems to be a fair insight; while controlling activity can be a legitimate interest; all other things being equal, simply calling people names for the sake of calling them names is not.)

Professsor Volokh thinks that the Nebraska law will pass judicial scrutiny under Romer:

The test that Romer set forth was that the law must have a rational relationship to legitimate state interests, not the very demanding "strict scrutiny" test (which requires narrow tailoring to compelling state interests). This "rational basis" test is traditionally pretty deferential to the government; and while in Romer it wasn't applied with the normal deference, the Court's stress in Romer was simply that the law was so overinclusive relative to the interest in protecting associational freedom that it was irrationally broad. Here, the law is a much better fit with the government interest. And it seems to me (and, I'd wager, to the Supreme Court) that the government interest in promoting opposite-sex relationships as the best for society is indeed a legitimate interest, even if it's one that reasonable minds may differ about.

I think that Professor Volokh is right, but who knows. There are some who would argue that the state should have no interest in "promoting opposite-sex relationships as best for society" because that is a moral judgment and, pace Lawrence, it is not clear that there is a state interest in promoting morality.

As for the more pragmatic issues involved in "opposite-sex relationships", in which a state might have some interest - i.e., cultivating future generations of tax payers - the argument might be that this is a mere technical detail. And since breeding will not be disrupted by same-sex marriages, there is no rational basis for a law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

The argument seems far-fetched today, but the bricks have been baked to build that conclusion.

Update: The Jaded JD, who appears to favor filibusters, points out that the Nebraska decision may push some Nebraska senators into the "pro-nuclear" camp.

Although I don't think this is Jaded's point, actually this aberrational decision, which is out of touch with mainstream values, is a text-book reason for the "nuclear option."

And while I'm on the "blawg" dance, here is Huskerblawg - Nebraska law blog that identifies this decision as the "poisonous fruit" of Romer and hails Justice Scalia as being prophetic. For variety, here is Angry Single Mom who hails the decision as a victory against the ignorant forces of hate, because, obviously, anything short of unconditional agreement with the absolute leading edge of social deformations must be motivated by "hate." Angry Single Mom proves her commitment to Christian charity by offering a series of ad hominem claims and non sequiturs commments about "conservative hypocrites", "California carpetbaggers", Nazi concentration camp survivors and purported higher divorce rates of conservative states.

Update: David Morrison agrees with the decision and with the Washington Post's support of the decision on the grounds that the Nebraska statute swept up more than marital and "psuedo-marital" relationships. In other words, it would have barred business partnerships between homosexuals.

If that were true, then the statute ought to have been stricken down on Equal Protection grounds. Unfortunately, I don't think that any sober reader of the statute could have come to that conclusion. According to the decision, "Section 29 of the Nebraska Constitution provides that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska.” Neb. CONST. art. I, § 29.

Under standard rules of statutory construction, the listing of various kinds of arrangements - civil unions, domestic partnership and marriage - has significance because it indicates the legislature's intent to control "family law" not "businesss law." (In fact, according to Wittgenstein, this listing shows a "family relationship", which is how we generally understand the meaning of words. We don't understand the meaning of "chair" through some contemplation of an "ideal chair" as Plato would have had it; we know what "chair" means by seeing lots of examples of chairs.)

Now, it's possible that some other court might have swept up a business partnership, but, well, that court would have been a complete idiot and one court is not supposed to assume that future courts would have committed that error.

In other words, this statute could easily have been construed to have passed constitutional muster by avoiding the overbreadth issue, and that is precisely what would have happened in virtually every other area of statutory construction.

By the way, the decision goes out of its way to point out that signatures were gathered disproportionately by Mormons. That fact is mentioned, but is never developed.

Why is that important? Aren't Mormons entitled to political participation, or is it that certain groups better not participate in certain issues, lest their participation taint the product?

How come that "buried lede" doesn't qualify as a "barrier to political participation"?

Communio Next Week - Thomas Aquinas on Evil.

Here is the link to the Thomas Aquinas chapter on "Evil" we will be discussing next Thusday.

And here is the section from a Companion to the Summa that may correlate to Question 48.

These links come through Disputations who is a Dominican and thereby has a proprietary interest in St. Thomas Aquinas.

Friday Afternoon Inspirational Moment.

Disputations has a post on three Dominican women who show three quite different "paths to sanctity."

One of these women was Rosa Hawthorne, who at age 45 moved into a tenement in the poorest area of New York City, and began nursing incurable cancer patients. Her apostolate became the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.

Now for the "gosh-wow" portion of the program: Rosa was the daughter of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Announcing our new litigation sub-specialty.

[Via the Captain, whose brother is one of those guys at Overlawyered.]

Cat law.

Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!

When Bill Clinton was on his never-ending apology tour, I always had this low bubble of anger. I knew that Bill wasn't really apologizing. Rather, he was using the these apologies as a passive-aggressive way of tarring his political opponents. But, after all, since it is rather hard to fashion a coherent defense for the Atlantic Slave Trade, most conservatives let Clinton's self-serving lachrimosity pass in silence.

Apparently, Bush's comments on Yalta are having a similar effect on the left, who are rising to take the bait.

Tom Smith at the Right Coast is enjoying the moment.

"The Pope Caused the Spread of AIDS in Africa."

Continuing the theme about how prejudice "fills the gaps" between facts and emotionally-satisfying fantasies, Thomas Smith at the Right Coast blogs on his "least favorite canard," to wit "the claim, close to absurd on its face, that the Catholic Church is encouraging the spread of AIDS by not promoting the use of condoms in the Third World, especially Africa."

Give it a read.

He's right, of course. No where in the Catechism does the Church counsel that extra-marital sex is licit so long as barrier contraceptives are avoided.

This theme has appeared several times, and is in fact a variant on the well established BURP phenomenon. In fact, the Right Coast post links to Nicholas Kristoff's May 8, 2005 column, which ensures that more BURPing will be circulating the internet for as long as the eye can see.

Right Coast properly attack Kristoff's tendentious reasoning by pointing out that Catholicism is a substantial minority in those countries most afflicted with AIDS and that the Church's position on condum-usage is not likely to be a major determinative in a culture that prefers "dry sex." (On that last point, read the linked Salon article and tell me if you don't say "yikes!")

This is relatively embarrassing.

[Via California Conservatives for Truth, who scored a manly 85/15.]

Your Political Profile

Overall: 70% Conservative, 30% Liberal

Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

The problem is that anything under 80/20 gets you excommunicated from the Bear Flag League.

I don't know, maybe I need to develop a harsher attitude about feeding the poor.

Halting the "March of Unreason".

Spiked Science has a post about a new book by Liberal-Democrat MP Dick Taverne with the title, The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism.

"Good heavens", you're thinking, "do we need yet another book flaying the creationists?"

Not exactly, according to Spiked Science. Apparently, the book launches a broadside at another group of dogmatic, crypto-religious, ideologues, specifically 'dogmatic environmentalists'.

I have noticed that in discussions between Catholics and secular liberals on the subject of political, social or religious tolerance, the probability of the secular liberal raising the Inquisition is equal to "1".

In fact, it is usually raised in the second or third round of the exchange, just before the the "Giordano Bruno gambit" is deployed. (And check out this post if you are thinking "who the heck is Giordano Bruno?"

I was motivated to diagnose and fix the rules of this tactic - which will henceforth be known as the "Bradley Universal Reductionist Principle", aka the "BURP" - in the lexicon of argumentative techniques because of this post by John Derbyshire at National Review Online:

REDUCTIO AD INQUISITIONEM [John Derbyshire]
Further to Ramesh's point, a couple of readers have reminded me that referring to the Inquisition when writing about religion is like referring the the Nazis in a political discussion. Play stops and everyone goes back to his last legal position. Sorry about that

Sounds like a fair rule - and it will henceforth be known as the "Derbyshire Orthodox Reply Condition" or the "DORC" - particularly since the Inquisition which is used as the argumentative version of a nail filled sock isn't the Inquisition of historical memory, but something deeply metaphorical and legendary. But explaining that distinction in the midst of a discussion requires too much effort because one has to walk uphill against a whole bunch of conventional wisdom.

Incidentally, the use of the Inquisition as a rejoinder in arguments about the modern idea about freedom of conscience is a classic example of the "tu quoque", or "you too", fallacy. Assume, for example, that in response to my argument that prejudice against evangelicals is bad, the response is made that the Catholic Church had a history of burning people who didn't convert to Catholicism. That response would be an example of the tu quoque fallacy since (a) it is an absolutely irrelevant comparison and (b) it is implicitly an ad hominem attack on proponent of the argument, rather than the argument itself. It essentially argues, "don't listen to this guy because people like him are evil or corrupt."

Update: For an example of a "BURP" in progress, check out this comment thread at Moonbat Central, which moves from a discussion of the movie, Kingdom of Heaven, to a tu quoque on the Inquisition in about 10 posts. Then, when the historical facts of the Inquisition are provided to counter the BURP, the original poster "sees and raises" by invoking the Albigensian Crusades and the Thirty Years War, but oddly fails to see the generally show-stopping "Giordano Bruno gambit". He ends with this measured observation:

The Catholic Church is the longest lasting criminal conspiracy in history and I would no more accept the word of the Church than I would accept the word of Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, who, by the way, is a practicing Catholic.

See how the Tu Quoque fallacy works?

FYI

[Via Ith.]

David Brin has a blog.

Lawsuit delays California from spending money like an addict in desparate need of a fix.

Apparently, a pending lawsuit is dampening the enthusiasm of lenders to take advantage of the three billion (!!!) dollar stem-cell research initiative approved by California voters, who were promised by scientists with undisclosed stock options in the companies benefitting from the intiative that the lame would walk and the dead would rise.

Because, after all, the way to assess precisely the right level of funding for cutting edge bio-medical research is to turn the question over to 10 million randomly selected citizens with no experience in genetics or medical research.

No word, though, on whether the initiative was put "over the top" by a coalition of "easily led" evangelicals.

"Kingdom of Heaven" may be bombing at the Box Office.

Q and O has an interesting post on how Hollywood's revisionism may be driving off customers, who are not looking for storylines based on politically correct mush.

I should be part of the target market for Kingdom of Heaven, and I haven't seen it. I go to movies all the time and I have incredibly low threshholds for what I like - I enjoyed The Chronicles of Riddick, for Heaven's sake! I also liked National Treasure, notwithstanding its goof of making the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence a part of a Masonic conspiracy.

But I'm not inclined to spend good money in order to be forced to sit through a two-hour anachronistic retrojection of political correctness.

If I wanted that kind of extended exposure to political fantasy, I could get it for free by spending the morning reading the Daily Kos or the Democratic Underground.

Robertson Transcript - Walking and talking stereotypes.

Here is a portion of the Pat Robertson transcript, which has been produced without a link to a primary source by Sunday Morning Talk. [Sunday Morning Talk e-mailed me to correct my statement and point me to this link, for which I am grateful. By the way, SMT is worth a bookmark since it "is the only site on the internet that actually stores the primary source transcript for This Week and FOX News Sunday, every week." ] This site, which describes Pat Robertson as "increasingly irrelevant", is clearly no fan of Robertson.

Based on an L.A. Times distillation of the interview, I previously described Robertson's statements as examples of prejudice. The transcript, however, shows that Robertson was far more nuanced than the L.A. Times suggested. For example, Robertson says he would not appoint atheists or Muslims in his cabinet. He cites Jefferson for precedent on his position about atheists and the idea that Presidents are "has a right to work with people who share his point of view." As for judges outside of the "without Judeo-Christian values" Robertson does a buck and wing about not appointing committed jihadists and how important it is for judges to share the values of the Declaration of Independence.

Perhaps Robertson has some technically interesting points. After all, John Locke's classic tome on religious freedom specifically argued that Catholics and atheists didn't deserve religious toleration; Catholics because of their allegiance to a foreign power and atheists because they could not swear oaths. Locke was a smart guy who knew what he was talking about. I'd argue that he had a better grasp on the subject than anyone else in the Seventeenth Century.

Really, though, aren't we past all that religious oath stuff? The Consitution specifically forbids "test oaths" and even atheists are now permitted to testify in court, after simply acknowledging their liability for perjury if they lie. Robertson's citation of Jefferson for excluding atheists is simply inane.

As for appointing judges, sure, we want judges who live and breathe the values of the Declaration, but assimilation is a wonderful thing. In fact, there was a time when advanced thinkers, like John Locke, didn't believe that Catholics (or Anabaptists) shared Enlightenment values. Maybe that opinion was not wrong, but generations spent in America mainstreamed those values into those alien cultures. (In fact, according to Justice John Noonan of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, it was American Cardinals who turned the Roman Catholic church from an opponent of religious toleration into one of the strongest proponents of freedom of conscience by projecting their distinctively American views on the value of religious liberty. (But let's not forget that a Polish guy named Wojtyla also played an important role in this volte-face.)) It takes a great deal of pessimism to think that American values will be less effective when faced with other traditions.

So, is Robertson guilty of prejudice? I think he is. He's playing off definite stereotypes about atheists and Muslims. Notwithstanding the fact that he quickly dances away from a categorical position on the suitability of Muslims (and Hindus) for judicial appointments, the fact that he's raising the stereotype at all is obnoxious.

But what about George Stephanopoulis and This Week? Aren't they doing the same thing?

After all, why is Robertson being asked about his philosophy of judicial appointments? He's not in any danger of being elected president. The position he espouses is uniquely his. In fact, Stephanopoulis sets up Robertson by pointing out that "President Bush at that press conference also said that he believes you're equally American, whether you're Christian, Muslim or Jew." So why are Robertson's views worth parsing on This Week?

Obviously, Stephanopoulis is playing off a different set of stereotypes. Stephanopoulis is playing the "theocracy card" by setting up the "increasingly irrelevant" Pat Robertson with sucker lines so that the audience of This Week, who have no love for Robertson or Robertson's fellow low-church Protestants, can enjoy the brief shudder of excitement as they see the enemy unmasked.

Update: On the subject of playing on stereotypes, I serendipitously ran into Barbara Nicolosi's description of "getting spun" by the Hollywood entertainment media to fit a stereotype:

But in both interviews a funny thing happened. About half way through lots of half-hearted questions about why Christians won't like Revelations and whether Christians will take a contract out on Tom Hanks for starring in The Da Vinci Code, both journalists slipped in the query, "So, who did you vote for in the last election? You're a Bush voter, aren't you?"

I said to the Daily Variety guy, "You aren't trying to narrowly define me so you can dismiss me, are you?" When it happened yesterday with the Times I got a little more annoyed. "Did you ask the Hollywood pagans you are interviewing for this story that question?" Both journalists demurred in extravagant terms. They were just "collecting context" for their pieces. But then, the Times guy came back insistently, "Would you characterize yourself as right or left of center?"

I liked both the journalists, and they liked me. The Variety guy asked me if he and I could have coffee someday soon, just to talk about a whole lot of things. The Times guy said, "This has been a fun interview. You're not a regular Christian, are you?" I said to him, "Why, because you like me, and that doesn't fit with your prejudice about my people?" He said to me, "You don't sound like some other Christians I have interviewed." I couldn't resist coming back with, "That's because we are a diverse people, not chained by politically correct dogma."

Amen!

Baldilocks invokes the book of Job to propose an armistice on one of the many interminable, internecine fronts of the culture war.

At least the modern world is not running short of occasions for irony.

Roger Ho links to this article about how the National Organization of Women is selling "keep abortion legal" bracelets for Mother's Day.

Continuity and Coherence.

[Via Captain Spaulding.]

This Metaphilm essay details the intricate explanations generated by continuity obsessesed fan of science fiction and comic books.

"When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom."

[Via Relapsed Catholic.]

Over at Christianity Today, Thomas F. Madden offers a correction to the conventional wisdom.

Seductive, specious and spurious.

Harper's Magazine fires a fusillade at fundamentalist culture in it's current issue. There is a lengthy article on a fairly odd fundamentalist church in Colorado Springs by Jeff Sharlett, editor of the Revealer. Sharlett is annoying because he's one of those writers who likes to pose as an open-minded neutral, but who has no real sympathy for the believers, whom he depicts invariably as denizens of a strange sub-culture who would be better off if they were institutionalized. So, it's fairly hard to figure if Sharlett simply cherry-picked marginal members of the church who would confirm his prejudices and make for an interesting article.

What really turned me off of Harper's was the "Harper Index." This is a feature where the editors list various statistics without commentary, but the reader is supposed to connect the dots and conclude that anything outside the liberal orthodoxy is corrupted by hypocrisy.

For example, on one line it listed "the number of people who died per year while crossing the East Berlin border [in to West Berlin at the end of the Cold War]", which was around 17. On the next line it listed the number dying while crossing the Mexican-American border, which was around 400.

You can map out the mental reaction that Harper's was trying to invoke in its readership:

Har, Har, Har! Take that you hypocritical conservatives. You guys are always talking about how bad the Communists were, but America is murdering more than 20 times as much. What a bunch of liars. Score!!

But, really, this shows an embarrassing level of denseness for Harper's. Is Harper's really saying that there is any equivalency between a situation where people are intentionally murdered by their own government in their attemtp to flee a "worker's paradise" by running a guantlet of human-engineered death traps and guards with guns, on the one hand, and, on the other, people who die through their own "misadventure" because there is a whole lot of dry empty land between their impoverished country and another nation that is ineffective in enforcing its legitimate immigration laws?

Wouldn't the better comparison have been the number of East Germans who lived during the border crossing per year, probably less than 10, and the number who annually cross th Mexican-American border and live, potentially in the hundreds of thousands?

"You know it's a bad movie, when you see saracens praying on their prayer rugs, and you start wishing you had one to sprawl out on somewhere on the theater floor..."

Catholic screenwriter, Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses, reviews Kingdom of Heaven.

Prejudice.

Mark Byron has graciously taken up the negative position on the question of whether fundamentalists are in the thrall of a few charismatic leaders in his post "Poorer, Less Educated, but not Easily Led", which seems like a very accurate description of the Scotch-Irish branch of the Irish family.

But while we're on the subject of prejudice, and in the interests of consistency, let's note Pat Robertson's recent statement concerning the suitability of Muslim-Americans for higher office. The L.A. Times reports:

Televangelist and one-time presidential candidate Pat Robertson praised former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Sunday, saying that despite disagreements on social issues, Giuliani would make "a good president."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Robertson — who founded the Christian Coalition — also said he would be wary of appointing Muslims to top positions in the U.S. government, including judgeships.

His comments on Islam drew a heated response from Muslim leaders, who criticized them as racist and inaccurate

The lefty Americablog is claiming this as a golden opportunity to destroy Pat Robertson, and someone named Lou Sheldon, and to demand that Bush apologize. (Huh? I must have missed the logical leap on that last item.)

Cranky leftist James - "Let the voters eat their own vomit for electing Bush" - Wolcott describes Robertson's statement as an "odious discharge."

Well, it most certainly is. Robertson's statement is entirely obnoxious and appears to rest on some buried notion that Muslims can't really be committed to the principles of democracy or that Muslims have allegiances to something other than this country. None of those buried premises can be shown, and even they could be shown, it would have no bearing on the merits of any individual Muslim.

Robertson is trafficking in prejudice and bigotry and his statement deserves condemnation.

"Scientists discover "hard evidence" of own existence."

The Therapist reports:

Cape Canaveral--As NASA scientists continue to scour the face of Mars, analysts within the aerospace organization are admitting that repeated pummeling of the planet with metallic hybrids and non-biodegradable textiles could make their search for life difficult.

"We have concluded in our findings that we exist," said one NASA insider. "We have also concluded that since we exist, that some remotely-guided waste management system would be in the best interest of that planet as well."

Most say that any assumed microscopic organisms that may live on the red planet will have a hard time moving discarded rovers and unwieldy parachute material.

Kingdom of Heaven Round-up.

Beautiful Atrocities has a heroic - and I mean heroic - compilation of the reviews on Kingdom of Heaven. His short take is "If you loved Alexander..."

Kingdom of Heaven is a movie about tolerance and understanding. So, naturally it feeds anti-catholic prejudice by depicting a priest as the authentic villain of the movie. (I may be off-base here in thinking that the character is supposed to be a Catholic priest since the non-moslems are called "Christians" in the movie, and Ridley Scott could have based this character on the only Anabaptist priest in 11th Century Europe.)

According to this review:

The story begins in 1084 with the burial of a lovely young woman (Nathalie Cox) who has committed suicide because her child died during birth. As was the practice of those times, people who committed suicide were not given a Christian burial. The priest (Michael Sheen) who buries the woman steals the crucifix from her neck.

How like those religious people not to live up to the teachings of their faith!

Apparently, this priestly perfidy is vital to the plot:

His next visitor is the priest who buried his wife. The priest taunts Balian about his wife's suicide. When Balian sees that the priest is wearing his wife's crucifix, Balian kills him. He decides to flee immediately and joins Godfrey, hoping he will find forgiveness for his sin in Jerusalem.

Taunting a husband about a wife's suicide? How like the superstitious Romanists to be insensitive to basic human dignity. How amazingly similar to the depiction of Roman Christian priests in the 2004 version of King Arthur, where a righteously angry Clive Owen dispatched a couple of "Roman Christian" priests who running a torture chamber for the purpose of converting woad-wearing Celts to the Faith. (Because, really, the most effective way of winning the hearts and minds of a pagan population is to torture them into belief one soul at a time.)

Also, isn't interesting how the putative Catholic teaching on suicide is of particular popular interest this year. This theme made its way into Ralph Fienne's Luther, which all in all is a very good movie from a historical and dramatic perspective. (And don't think it didn't hurt to have to type that just now.) Incidentally, the Lutheran teaching on suicide is as pastorally ambiguous as the Catholic position (See RCC at para. 2283), and for good reason.

The one way trip to the coals because of "self-murder" by a youth tortured into insanity - and therefore who presumably could not have been culpable for murder - was a major plot point in Keanu Reeve's "Constantine".

I don't know what this cultural current means, but it is odd that the Catholicism is being targeted by the culture for its purportedly heartless position on suicide at this particular moment when the Catholic church is one of the key opponents of euthanasia.

Opinion Survey - If I write that "evangelicals largely tend to be poor, uneducated and willing to do whatever one or two charismatic leaders tell them to do"...

... is that statement evidence of prejudice or a discriminatory animus against evangelicals?

Rick at the Unspun Zone and I have been engaging in a "diatribe" on constitutional law and, specifically, whether Congress can exercise "checks and balances" on the federal courts other than by amending the Constitution. Rick's concern is that contemplated congressional actions to rein in the courts may bring us closer to a "theocracy." In the course of his original post, he cited an ABC source for the proposition that "evangelicals largely tend to be poor, uneducated and willing to do whatever one or two charismatic leaders." (I assume that the logical connection between the two issues is that if one believes that "evangelicals" are "easily led" by their "charismatic leaders", then they can be easily led into establishing a theocracy.)

My description that such a characterization of "evangelicals" or "fundamentalists" was a kind of "bigotry" or "prejudice" was met with a vigorous rebuttal.

You can read Ricks's original post here and Rick's follow-up here.

What do you think? I am particularly interested in knowing what those of you who are "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" think, which I hasten to add, I am not.

And to those following the link from Patterico - who may be more secular - I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

Thanks.

Don't you love it when two great socially incorrect obsessions come together?

[Via Relapsed Catholic.]

Religionlinks suggests that journalists should reflect on the religious themes in the newly released - or shortly to be released - science fiction movies, like "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" and "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith."

By the way, if you really want to peg the nerd-o-meter, the Open Court Press's engaging "Popular Culture and Philosophy" series has released "Star Wars and Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine." (Because, as Arnold Schwarzenegger has proven time and time again, the strength of a philosophical idea is directly correlated to its ability to be turned into a science fiction movie.)

The "Popular Culture and Philosophy" series really is very good. The series basic conceit is to ask that academic philosophers take some element of a movie or TV show and write about that element or idea from a philosophical perspective. So, you get Homer Simpson as a Kantian idealist or the four "houses" in "Harry Potter" as elements of Aristotle's virtue ethics. The articles are generally engaging and it really is a much easier way to absorb the "great ideas" of philosophy.

Update:

On further reflection I've decided that I really must get that "Star Wars and Philosophy" book as soon as possible.

The review I linked to has this "teaser" about the subjects considered by the various contributors:

Why do bad Sith nearly always tell the truth and good Jedi often tell lies? When is it justified to raise an army by breeding clones? If the Force must have a Dark Side, how can the Dark Side be evil? Why and how did the tyrannical Empire emerge from the free Republic? Are droids persons, entitled to civil rights? Is Yoda a Stoic or a Zen master?

Cool! After reading this book, I should have the social interactivity skills of a rabid but incontinent dachshund.

Debate Club.

Cass Sunstein is still backing and filling in the Thursday installment where he opens with "[t]hanks Randy. I'll turn to substance shortly, but I guess we should spend a little more time on semantics."

Really, by the fourth day of a five day debate some substance ought to be allowed to surface.

Sunstein also argues:

Many people believe in recovering the Lost Constitution, in one or another form, but no one wants to return, precisely, to the Constitution of 1930. That's a red herring. We're now discussing originalism because that's what you would like to defend.

So, could it possibly be the case that projecting straw-men positions onto one's opponent could be the reason for spending four days on semantics?

The focus of the debaters is interesting. Sunstein also wants the focus to be on specific results in specific cases, such as sex and race discrimination. But Barnett wants to address the meaning of the text. As Barnett notes:

(Perceptive readers may notice that, while I ask you about the meaning of clauses, you keep asking me about particular results and doctrines. But first comes the meaning of the text, then come doctrines and results!)

Then, Barnett returns to an earlier point about textualism versus non-textualism:

The problem here is that, in our polity, we disagree about what is really a matter fundamental enough to set aside or update the text of the Constitution. Some might disagree with you and believe that helping the starving is sufficiently fundamental. Others might believe that religious values are that fundamental. By your method of interpretation—discarding some outmoded provisions, updating others—how can you complain when your ideological opponents get control of the Presidency and the Senate and appoint justices who agree with their fundamental values and reject yours? Of course you can debate the values themselves, and I am all for that. But on your theory you cannot contend that these judges with different values are doing something that is constitutionally or judicially improper.

For that matter, how can the opponents of textualism even claim that the Congress or President are doing something unconstitutional? Perhaps, a Congressional action to limit the jurisdiction of the courts is simply an evolution of a "living" Constitution.

The point of a constitution is that it's a compact among political players to limit political competition. The point of the compact is to get an agreement that these players will limit themselves to playing "between the lines." If the lines can be moved by one of the players, the whole purpose of the compact is eliminated.

The left is kind of, sort of beginning to understand some of this if "as through a glass darkly." For example, Rick at Unspun Zone has recently denounced what he sees as unfair congressional strategies to attack the courts, but which may simply be "checks and balances." His point, as I understand it, is that the only check and balance is an amendment to the Constitution.

But why should this be the case if the text of an amendment only means what a judge might at some future time declare it to mean? Why should there be any faith in the meaning of words or the willingness of competing factions to submit to the limitation of power which envisioned by a written constitution? Under that kind of "non-originalist" regime, maybe it is entirely appropriate for the party which has momentary power to defund the courts, or limit jurisdiction, or pack the courts in an act of congressional droit de seigneur.

But constitutions are drafted to avoid exactly those kinds of power plays.

The most important battle in American history.

On May 5, 1862, at the Battle of Puebla, a rag-tag, outnumbered, ill-equipped band of Mexican irregulars defeated the cream of the French army, which under Napoleon III was considered to be the best in the world.

In 1862, things were not going well for President Lincoln. The bloodiest day of fighting at Shiloh inApril 1862, had discredited Ulysses Grant; the Pennisular Campaign was stalemated. The immediate future held Lee assuming command of the Army of Northern Virginia and Second Bull Run.

1862 could have seen French and British interest in intervention in the Civil War. The British would have benefitted from the elimination of the American blockade and the return of the cotton trade. The French.. well, the French are the French, and they would have seen the security of their Mexican holdings benefited from a weaker Northern neighbor.

In 1862, the French and the British could have intervened by recognizing the sovereignity of the Confederate States of America and by putting diplomatic pressure on the United States of America to negotiate a peace. That was certainly the strategy that the CSA was counting on. The shape of such an alternative future is at once oddly familiarand alien. Harry Turtledove - the Dean of Alternative History Science Fiction - has played with that scenario in a series of books that eventually pit a USA/German alliance against a CSA/British/French entente in a different version of World War I.

But it never happened, and the reason it didn't happen was because 4,000 Mexican irregulars defeated the cream of the best army of Europe, which dampened the interest of Europe in becoming involved in other North American interventions.

Viva Cinco de Mayo!

All together now, "it's only a movie and who cares if it promotes historical illiteracy?"

Cacciaguida lists the positives and the negatives - and the purely embarassings - of Kingdom of Heaven.

Also, check out this worthwhile post that challenges the conventional wisdom on Crusades.

The conventional wisdom is a product of historical revisionism. The idea that Christians irrationally, and without provocation, attacked Islam requires that events prior to the Crusades be ignored. For example, a proximate cause of the Crusades was the Turkish success at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which resulted in the loss of the historically Christian heartland of Anatolia and cut off pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem.

Kathy Shaidle hits a chord.

Kathy Shaidle is completely wrong for saying that she shouldn't post this off the cuff thought that there's a reason it's not called the "Holy Girlfriend Church":

Mother says no, and your Girlfriend never would. Your Girlfriend would let you change the rules in the middle of the game, so you could win. Every night would be poker night with the boys. She'd never get old and boring and senile. Or embarrassing.

The Holy Girlfriend Church exists. It just isn't the Catholic one, and never will be.

Debate Club - Round 2.

As any experienced debater knows, you're in some kind of trouble when your first words in a rebuttal are an acknowledgement of a need to "step back" and define your terms. But that is Sunstein's opening move in Round 2 of the "Constitution in Exile" debate.

Barnett has nicely responds to Sunstein's attempt to characterize all textualists as people who merely want to return to some imagined halcyon era when workers could be exploited and property could be protected at the expense of individual rights. Barnett is not having any of that and argues that the constitutional jurisprudence of the 1870's, when the the "Privileges and Immunities Clause" were read out of the Fourteenth Amendment, saw developments as noxious as anything happening today. In the course of his response, Barnett makes a point about judicial reasoning that lauds "good results" without concern about the words on the paper:

How do we criticize a non-originalist judge except by whether we approve of the results? "I like Nozick; you like Rawls. What else is there to say?" goes the quip. The abandonment of any method of constitutional interpretation that is independent of results is what has led to the downward spiral over nominating judges. If only results matter, then you need to vet nominees for their views about lots of results, and only approve those with whom you agree.

That is very true and that reality shapes areas outside of federal jurisprudence. For example, the decision by a Methodist judicial panel to reinstate Reverend Beth Stroud - who acknowledged that she was a "self-avowed, practicing homosexual" - despite clear textual authority in the Book of Discipline is a manifestation of the same phenomena.

Ultimately, the non-textual approach is destructive of democracy. Under the textual approach, legislators can have some confidence that the words they enact will be given effect without regard to the feelings or desire of the judicial officer. The focus can therefore be on the legislation.

Under the competing approach, the premium is on making sure that the "right" judge handles the case. This therefore makes judicial selection far more important, with the premium being placed on receiving assurances that the judicial officer will come up with the "right" result at the proper time. Also, one suspects that the legislative process will become corrupted as legislators realize that there is no necessary connection between law and result, which may be one reason why we now have campaign finance reform law that limits political speech.

Further signs that the imminent collapse of civilization is, well, imminent.

"The prospect of public readings from P-Monologues on campuses around the country just might be the reductio ad absurdum that could drive the vagina warriors to the bargaining table."

For the "backstory," you'll just have to read Christina Hoff Summer's essay. But note the warning that the essay "contains adult (in this case, collegiate) language, along with gratuitous references to male and female genitalia."

Legal Affairs Debate Club.

The Constitution in Exile.

This subject is a charge created by the left to level at the right. Apparently, some on the left are claiming that the right is always talking about "the Constitution in exile." However, in fact no such discussion is actually occuring on the right. Barnett begins his piece with the the observation:

There is no "Constitution in Exile" movement, either literally or figuratively. As for literally, I and others had not even heard the expression, plucked from an obscure book review by Judge Douglas Ginsburg, until well after folks like you and Jeff Rosen had started using it to describe their intellectual opponents.

But, hey, if ascribing arguments and positions to their opponents makes it easier for the left to attack preferred straw-man arguments, why should objective facts get in the way of the "narrative?"

Barnett speculates on why the left is advancing the "Constitution in exile" meme:

For obscure reasons that we may perhaps glean from this week's debate, the phrase "Constitution in Exile" viscerally appeals to critics of scholars and judges who, like me, favor interpreting the Constitution as amended according to its original meaning. Maybe it makes these "originalists" sound kooky or marginal or radical—like Russian nobility with their shadow governments futilely planning their return to power from the irrelevant comfort of London tea rooms. Maybe this rhetorical move has something to do with undermining future nominees to the Supreme Court who may be originalists.

Barnett's entire opening statement appears to be one long effort to cut a path throught the field of straw-men planted by Sunstein.

The world changes, and sometimes for the better.

In about thirty minutes I will be visited by around 11 lawyers from Novosibirsk. They are part of a Rotary "group study exchange" and are coming to my office to see how small firm lawyers in America attract clients, handle calendaring and practice law. Among its many other virtues, Rotary sponsors such exchanges as a way of fostering international peace and understanding.

I am almost tempted to trot out what I retain of the two semesters of Russian I took 25 years ago. I've been practicing "zdrastvuite" and "dobri utro" all morning, but I'm afraid that I'm going to run through my limited repertoire all too quickly.

I'm also reflecting on the world's situation when I took Russian back in 1979 and 1980. As you may recall, after coming into office with the promise of being a realist, Jimmie Carter had so thoroughly undermined America's place in teh world that he felt he had to take a strong stand against the USSR. In 1980, Carter cancelled the Olympics and there was talk of reinstating the draft. The word 'mujahidin' shows up in some of my old notebooks from the time as an interesting word that might be worked into some story.

I could never have imagined at that time that I would ever be visited by Russians acting in an authentically private capacity, who were interested in learning the realities of American business for pragmatic reasons. The very idea that the USSR would quietly go out of business by the end of the 1980's was not foreseeable by anyone, including the prophecies of Malachi and the quatrains of Nostrodamus.

Creepy! Creepy! Creepy!

They may not be quite as creepy as the uncorrupted 600 year old head of St. Catherine of Siena, but they have their own intrinsic "creep factor." Window Manager Mitch rates children's shows and gives "Teletubbies" a "Cthulu" rating for "evil."

I've always viewed "Teletubbies" as kind of a dark science fiction dystopia. Obviously, these "Teletubbies" are too stupid to pound sand, they live in a oddly antiseptic world, and they're large and plump. My thinking is that in the "teletubby universe" there must have been some kind of apocalyptic nuclear war and these "things" are the devolved mutated heirs of a remnant of humanity and are being bred for the amusement of - and raised as livestock by - that vacuum cleaner device, who serves some Morlock-type uberspecies.

At least, that's what I ascertained back when my kids were watching the show.

It gave me nightmares.

Communio seems thrilled about the whole Ratzinger thing.

Communio, the International Catholic Review that was started in the wake of Vatican II, has provided a link to its on-line Ratzinger corpus.

Communio is providing links to the pope's articles on Jewish-Christian relations and the typical make-your-eyes-glaze-from-sheer-density-of-theological-nuance of article with titles like "The Holy Spirit as Communio: Concerning the Relationship of Pneumatology and Spirituality in Augustine."

That last one is a definite "must-read."

By the way, Res Publica has information on how to sign up for a Ratzinger Fan Club Discussion List.

Ice Age Ocean Circulation Changes were a Reaction to Climate Changes.

According to this Science Daily post, recent studies of "neodymium chronology" shows that "the ocean’s “conveyor belt” system did not trigger the changing conditions of cold and ice on the surface of Earth but rather responded to them."

This is, obviously, truly awful news for the hysterics who sincerely believed that "The Day after Tomorrow" was based on real science.

Also, this post on James Hansen - the "Father of Global Warming" - at World Climate Report is interesting. The post notes that Hansen has been systematically lowering his estimate of climate "sensitivity," which is the measure of temperature increase based on changes in Greenhouse gases. In the 1980s, Hansen was predicting a 1 degree rise, which he lowered to .75 degrees, and has recently lowered still further to .67 degrees. The Climate Report explains why this is significant and how these changes, and other news that would undermine the public perception of dramatic climate changes, are not being reported. [Via Envirospin Watch.]

Do NOT mention dental hygiene or cooking or the aristocracy or....

[Via The Jawa Report.]

Remember those officious Brits who wanted to interfere in our election last year?

The Commissar suggests returning the favor.

Revising the story to preserve that edge.

Patterico catches the Los Angeles Times removing details from a Reuters story so as not to acknowledge that the American military was telling the truth all along.

Those facts just didn't fit the narrative that the LA Times wanted to frame.

Science as public relations.

Science refused to publish a review of the literature that showed a lack of a scientific consensus for the human-caused global warming theory, ostensibly because the points made by the paper are "widely dispersed on the internet".

But let someone find one warm weather-loving insect in a cold weather city - such as the stinkbug nymphs that caused Discover Magazine to declare global warming a proven reality - and the presses will roll!