WHAT AM I? A POTTED PLANT?

Apparently. But, you know, I did write this piece taking the Bush Administration to task for not paying attention to federalism.

ARTHUR SILBER thinks you should donate money to bloggers like me. I think Arthur Silber is a very insightful and persuasive fellow. . . .

VIA BLOGCRITICS, I see that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s works have been remastered (“brilliantly”) and I’m going to have to go order the whole set now.

John Fogerty rules, but with Creedence the whole was more than the sum of the parts. I think they’re the greatest — and most thoroughly American — American rock and roll band.

UPDATE: Reader Joel Nickelson writes:

I would add that for people of my age group (late 20’s and early 30’s) who grew up on punk and independent rock in the 1980’s, Creedence resonated like no other band of their era. If there was a common denominator that various isolated punks across the country could understand, that would be Creedence. Not Bruce, not Dylan, not even the Velvet Underground who always seemed too influential to uncynically embrace. For a while there it seemed we might have had our own Creedence in The Minutemen were not for the death of

D. Boon in the mid 80’s.

A final note: Creedence is most certainly the finest driving music there is. There is some techno from Detroit that comes close for me as well, but techno irritates too many people for that to be a commonly accepted sentiment. Well, that’s their loss.

I agree on all counts.

PETER CARNLEY, the Primate of Australia’s Anglican Church, is Fisked to within an inch of his life by Christian blogger Martin Roth.

I’M OFF TO TAKE MY DAUGHTER TO BROWNIES. Back later. In the meantime, there’s a lot of good stuff on censorship and political correctness at places like Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Tennessee over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Just keep scrolling.

UPDATE: Hmm. “Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Tennessee.” Maybe our new President and Provost aren’t really suffering from an advanced case of political correctness — maybe they just promised the Board of Trustees that soon people would be mentioning UT in the same sentence as Harvard and Stanford. . . .

ANDREW SULLIVAN thinks the GOP would be crazy to make a big deal out of abortion in January.

UPDATE: Charles Oliver writes: “Once again, Bush shows himself to be a smarter politician than many give him credit for. And Lott shows himself to be as dumb as many of us believe.”

MORE UNREST IN IRAN. I think the mullahs’ days are numbered.

MAYBE THESE GUYS CAN GET A JOB AT HARVARD. Or here at UT. A showing of the Pearl Harbor movie Tora! Tora! Tora! in San Pedro has been blocked by the city on the ground that it’s insensitive to Japanese Americans:

While there was a previous theater booking for Dec. 7, according to theater manager Lee Sweet of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, which manages the facility, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn concluded that the event would have been insensitive to the Japanese-American community.

“I wanted to be very sensitive to the Japanese-American community,” Hahn said. “Dec. 7 is a tough day, especially for the second and third generations of Japanese-Americans. Why do we want to do something that makes it more difficult?” The showing was planned this year to take the place of the Fort MacArthur Military Museum’s annual Pearl Harbor Day observance. . . .

After that, volunteers said, city officials told them two weeks ago that the event couldn’t be held because it might be offensive to members of the Japanese-American community.

Hahn, who was asked to intervene on the museum’s behalf to show the film on Dec. 7, said that after talking with Japanese-American friends, including state Assemblyman George Nakano, D-Torrance, she agreed with the city’s concerns. . . .

Hahn said she’s taken lots of heat for the decision, but still thinks the program would be inappropriate on the anniversary of the attack.

“People here lost their property, they lost their families, right here in San Pedro,” she said of the local Japanese-American community. “My father was a veteran of the war, and I was raised to be very supportive of veterans. I just wanted to be very sensitive to the Japanese-American community.”

Hmm. Can this possibly be as dumb as it sounds?

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs emails:

Hahn’s email address is

And here’s the link on Amazon to the Tora Tora Tora DVD. Some of the reviews are interesting.

Link.

It gets rather a lot of praise for fairness. And reader Greg Lester points out:

Yes, it is as dumb as it sounds.

What’s more astounding about the decision not to screen Tora! Tora! Tora! is that it was a joint Japanese/American production.

That’s like not showing Das Boot because it may offend German-Americans whose families were detained.

What is it with these people?

THE NEW YORK TIMES is opening its source code to readers, according to this report.

JAY CARUSO WONDERS if Nancy Pelosi’s celebrated closeness to Jack Valenti and the entertainment industry will lead the GOP to stand up for consumer rights in digital entertainment. He concludes:

The GOP should take note of this. They could easily make a case for the ‘little guy’ in the fight for fair use. Let them make Democrats on national television defend practices that have sent others to jail. Ask them if they want consumers to have to purchase two copies of the same CD so they can listen to it on a stereo and a computer. Ask them if they want a CD crashing their PC.

It’s an issue the GOP could easily win.

I agree, of course.

HARVARD HAS CANCELLED the appearance of terrorist-sympathizing poet Tom Paulin: “The English Department sincerely regret the widespread consternation that has arisen as a result of this invitation, which had been originally decided on last winter solely on the basis of Mr. Paulin’s lifetime accomplishments as a poet.”

(Via Jacob T. Levy). He must have published a cartoon criticizing the Administration, or something.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS has the definitive response to those who disparage “armchair generals” and “chickenhawks:”

My wife is not of military age, and there is little chance of a draft for mothers. Are her views on Iraq therefore disqualified from utterance? And what about older comrades who can no longer shoulder a gun? What about friends of mine who are physically disabled? Should their expertise—often considerable—be set aside because they can’t ram it home with a bayonet?

There are some further unexamined implications of this stupid tactic. It is said, for example, that someone like former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey has more right to pronounce on a war than someone who avoided service in Vietnam. Well, last year Kerrey was compelled to admit that he had led a calamitous expedition into a Vietnamese village and had been responsible for the slaughter of several children and elderly people. (He chose to be somewhat shady about whether this responsibility was direct or indirect.) Do I turn to such a man for advice on how to deal with Saddam Hussein? The connection is not self-evident, more especially since, as far as I am aware, Kerrey knows no more about Iraq than I know about how to construct a chess-playing computer.

I can’t help but feel that if it were Republicans arguing that only those with military experience are entitled to opine about war they’d be accused of fascism, sexism, and excessive enthusiasm for Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.

BELLESILES UPDATE: A new article over at History News Network says that the investigative committee was too circumspect in its report (actually, the article accuses the committee of “cowardice”):

Using such tactical maneuvers, the committee avoided its main goal, which could have easily been met. The report furnishes ample proof of fraud by almost any conceivable standard lower than conclusive proof. Even the most restrictive intent category found in the Model Penal Code (1962) would have been satisfied in some instances by the overwhelming case against Bellesiles. (That category-purpose-means that the actual result of the conduct is the actor’s conscious object, § 2.02(2)(a)(i).) The committee should have found that Bellesiles intentionally committed fraud of some kind, under both a preponderance of the evidence standard and under a reasonable doubt standard. This is not to say that Bellesiles actually did commit fraud. It is to say that, given the committee’s own findings, the committee should have drawn the conclusion most commensurate with its own evidence, in this case a conclusion of fraud of some kind. . . .

But this fact’s significance goes beyond Bellesiles; it implicates the forthrightness of the committee itself. Having found a subject on which Ulrich is much more familiar than Bellesiles, and with a cover-up story the report says could not possibly be true, it is amazing that it did not conclude that he had lied. The case for fraud is clear.

There’s much more.

THE F.B.I. IS ATTACKING THE B.A.T.F. in a scathing report, according to The New York Times:

The unsigned report accuses counterparts at the firearms agency of poor training for agents, dangerous handling of explosives at crime scenes and efforts to control cases outside its jurisdiction. The report cites examples from the recent sniper investigation, terrorism inquiries, the Salt Lake City Olympics and other prominent cases pursued by both agencies.

“Due to the A.T.F.’s lack of strategic vision and sole jurisdiction mission,” the report says, “they have `crept’ into areas beyond their mandate.”

Agents from the firearms agency who have seen the document said that they were outraged and that the accusations were unfounded.

“I’m appalled at the shots the F.B.I. is taking at us,” said Art Gordon, a 27-year veteran at the agency and its representative to the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

The suggestion is that this is an effort to preempt a law-enforcement reorganization that might combine the two agencies. This kind of turf-protection, of course, serves to strengthen the case for a reorganization: one in which a lot of turf-conscious managers lose their jobs.

And while the ATF has serious problems, certainly the FBI is in no position to throw stones.

READER CECIL TURNER WRITES that this is the best anti-war argument that he’s seen:

The gist is that we should focus on Al Qaeda, contain Iraq, and avoid making new enemies among Arabs. It’s wrong–suggesting there is no collusion between Iraq and terrorists, and that Islamist attacks are limited by depth of feeling rather than military capability–but at least it’s coherent.

But the big question: why did I have to go to a conservative website to find it?

Beats me.

UPDATE: Reader Chris Wyatt points out this article in The New Yorker as something Turner should be reading. And The Pontificator, a blog I wasn’t familiar with, sends this link.

CENSORSHIP AT HARVARD? Will these people ever learn?

Like most campus censorship incidents, this seems to be inspired by some administrator’s fear of bad publicity. And, as usual, the censorship is generating more bad publicity than the original event ever could have. If I were thinking of applying to Harvard Business School, this would be a major turnoff. It would be an even bigger turnoff if I were thinking of donating to Harvard Business School. Here’s my favorite part:

The words “incompetent morons,” which appear in one of the pop-up windows, provoked administrative response when HBS Career Service Officer Matthew S. Merrick told senior administrators that he felt offended by the phrase, according to HBS Senior Associate Dean Walter C. Kester.

Hmm. “Offended” is a PC term of art. But why does it apply here? Is this because he is a moron, and thus finds the term offensive to a group to which he belongs? (It’s offensive to “moron-Americans!”) Or is it that he doesn’t like being called incompetent, which would seem to be a fair criticism given persistent computer problems? Either way, this is awfully thin-skinned. How can people operating in this kind of a culture turn out CEOs capable of operating in the real world, where “incompetent moron” is pretty low on the insult totem pole?

UPDATE: A reader emails that the very fact of this censorship scandal proves the cartoon right:

So the cartoonist at Harvard was right! The administration at the Harvard Business School ARE “incompetent morons”–and downright mean too. Truth ought to be a defense to any disciplinary action for calling them “incompetent morons.”

Sounds fair to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course, it’s okay to offend people at Harvard by saying that Jews “should be shot dead,” and that you can understand suicide bombers. As Best of the Web noted, Harvard is having Oxford poet Tom Paulin in to discuss his views on these subjects, which certainly offend me. “Incompetent morons,” indeed. Or something worse. (NOTE: Paulin has been disinvited. See this post, above.)

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader King Tower writes that they’re incompetent, lying morons:

As with many of these campus censorship matters, the administraction is weakly backtracking without, of course, admitting any error. Along these lines, I have to take issue with the Crimson’s acquiesence in Mr. Kester’s attempt to deflect blame onto some amorphous “miscommunication.” The article reads:

Miscommunication between the deans on the subject seems to be part of the issue. “We all agreed to say nothing that could be construed as intervening with

the content of the paper, or the content of articles regarding Career Services,” said Kester. “We wanted to narrowly focus our message on the impact of those two words.”

What Mr. Kester apprently fails to recognize is that “those two words” [incompetent morons] WERE the content of the paper. In fact, intervening with the paper’s content is exactly what the administration was trying to do. Whether there was confusion over the degree to which the poor student editor was to have his educational prospects threatened is beside the point — Mr. Kester’s chosen agent delivered precisely the content-based, chilling message that Mr. Kestner intended.

This seems right to me. The other possibility, of course, is that they’re telling the truth and that “communications problems” at a premier school of management have led to public humiliation. That makes them look like, well, incompetent morons. Adding to the humiliation, TAPPED and The Corner have joined in bipartisan disapproval.

STILL MORE: Eugene Volokh weighs in:

The funny thing is that, at least based on my experience of universities and graduate schools, counter-speech is a highly effective reaction to offensive speech (much more so than in public debate generally). Students generally respect the administration, especially when the administration says sensible things — “name-calling is juvenile,” “how do you think this makes the career services staff feel?,” “do you think this is good training for your future life in the business world?,” “the people around you will be potential future business partners and employers; do you want them to remember you as rude, juvenile, and irresponsible?” But, no, that’s somehow not good enough for the administration, which (assuming, of course, that the Harvard Crimson’s account is correct) seems to insist on threatening administrative sanctions where moral leadership would work much better.

Volokh is right to demand moral leadership from academic administrators. But he’s optimistic to expect it. It certainly isn’t evident in this case.

ONE MORE UPDATE: N.Z. Bear calls Harvard’s behavior “thuggish” and offers some observations from his own experience editing an Ivy League student paper.

This whole thing must be giving Larry Summers heartburn.

THE EVER-VIGILANT MICKEY KAUS has noticed Bruce Fein’s statement that even a conservative Supreme Court won’t overturn Roe v. Wade because such an action would be “too wrenching.”

I think that’s true as far as it goes, but there’s more to it than that. Ironically, the very pressure that the Court has faced for the past three decades makes it less likely to overturn Roe, since doing so sends a signal that if you don’t like what the Court does, just demonstrate on its front steps and it will change. That has to give even anti-Roe judges pause. Right now the flak the Court gets over abortion is largely sui generis, but if it looks like such pressure will produce a change in the Court’s behavior, lots of other people will come out of the woodwork to give that approach a try on their own pet issues.

As a result — despite what I read from some lefty commentator or other — I don’t think we’re “just a few years away from The Handmaid’s Tale” as a result of the midterm elections. That’s especially so given that many Republicans have figured out that pushing hard on abortion is a political loser that blows up in their face whenever they try it, much as gun control does for the Democrats.

In fact, I think — and Bruce Fein says this — that a strategy of incrementalism is more likely. I think that Bush appointees will be more likely to uphold restrictions that don’t directly trench on Roe, and of course some controversial restrictions, like partial-birth abortion bans, don’t conflict with Roe anyway. (Though, as Dave Kopel and I have written, Congress lacks constitutional power to regulate abortion itself entirely aside from Roe’s limitations, meaning that such regulations would have to come from the states).

Even a greater willingness on the part of the federal courts to uphold abortion restrictions, however, won’t actually produce such restrictions unless politicians are prepared to get behind them. Some will be, especially at the state level, but many won’t be — and efforts at the state level will still have to contend with state constitutional protections for abortion, like Tennessee’s, that can’t be overturned by federal judges anyway.

As a result, I think we’re a long way from The Handmaid’s Tale.

BILL HOBBS IS FACT-CHECKING an article on Internet sales and sales tax from the Nashville City Paper. Interesting. And go here, or scroll up, for more.

CATHY YOUNG REPORTS on the women’s groups that are opposed to domestic-violence outreach programs, and the politics behind their stance.

ANOTHER SENSIBLE STATEMENT BY AN IVY LEAGUE PRESIDENT about divestment, this one from Penn’s President Judith Rodin. And there’s this passage, which I wish my own University’s Administration would read:

Finally, we all should recognize that neither Penn nor any other institution has the power to ban hatred; rather, we believe that the appropriate role of an academic institution is to counter hatred and intimidation by empowering our students with the knowledge, self-confidence, and critical thinking skills they need to defeat hate.

Yes.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU: Make sure the gun is unloaded before you put it away! Then check it again when you take it out!

(Via Cronaca).

I BRAG ON HOSTINGMATTERS from time to time. I’m not the only one. Stacy and Robyn of Sekimori were so happy with the special services they got in support of their charity drive that they designed this cool retro-scifi-horror template for Annette’s blog.

HERE’S AN ARTICLE putting law professor / blogger Eugene Volokh on the short list for a Supreme Court appointment.

Eugene would certainly get my vote, but I suspect that the Senate would consider him a bit young for the job.

You know, though, Bush could throw the Democrats in the Senate into a tizzy by appointing, say, Randy Barnett — a law professor from Boston University with experience as a criminal prosecutor, whose pro-choice credentials would confuse Democrats, as would his pro-gun credentials. As far as I’m concerned, it would be worth it just for the confusion it would create.

UPDATE: Alex Knapp emails:

I know you mentioned it as kind of a throwaway idea, but I think that Barnett would make one helluva Supreme Court Justice. Hell, arguments between Barnett, Thomas, and Scalia over what originalism really means alone would insure one of the most intellectually stimulating Courts ever. Saw Barnett at last years Federalist Society conference last year and loved hearing him trash Bork on the Ninth Amendment. I swear one or two of the more sensitive conservatives fainted.

I’d love to see it.

ERIC ALTERMAN’S COLUMN ON GEORGE BUSH IN THE NATION has generated some responses. Here’s one from Howard Owens, and there are a bunch on the letters page at Romenesko (just keep scrolling).

I’VE MENTIONED A FEW TIMES that I was working on remastering some songs by Michele Newton. They’re up on the web now here, and they’re worth a listen. I especially like the title song, “Broken Pavement,” (direct link here.) I don’t usually go for the girl-with-a-guitar stuff, but the singing and songwriting are so very strong here that I can’t help myself. I found the songs staying in my head for a long, long time after we recorded them, and coming back perfectly when I started the remastering. That’s always a good sign.