JUSTICE POSNER?

Bush has a key weapon with which to beat any reluctant groups into submission — the truth. “This is the greatest jurist of our time,” he can say. “How can you oppose him? Such opposition could only be based on crass politics.”

And he’ll be right.

The social-conservative folks probably won’t like it, but I think it’s a great idea. Almost as good as Justice Volokh — though I think that Eugene’s skill at consensus-building makes him a natural choice for Chief Justice, not Associate Justice.

UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge is one of those social-conservative folks who don’t like the idea much. My response: Would you prefer another Souter? Because in the real world, that’s probably the choice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the pro-Posner side, Baseball Crank observes:

Certainly, Judge Posner is the most qualified man for the job on credentials and intellectual accomplishment alone, moreso even than, say, Ken Starr or Laurence Tribe or his Seventh Circuit colleague Frank Easterbrook. My sense is that this would make Posner an attractive candidate if Bush faced the need for a compromise a down the road. But I have no doubt that Posner would not be his first pick, particularly due to his age.

Dave Price opines:

Someone as devoted to rational thought as Posner would be good for America.

And there’s this angle:

This is a good choice.

I’d like to mention three others: Alex Kozinski of the 9th circuit; Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the DC circuit was filibustered to death by Senate Democrats, apparently for being Hispanic and conservative; and Janice Rogers Brown of the DC circuit, also filibustered for years, again apparently for being a conservative and a minority, but recently confirmed.

I like Kozinski a lot. With Eugene Volokh, and Posner, that makes three.

MORE: Reader David Gulliver emails:

At my law school, the professors are nearly unanimous in their outright disdain for Posner. With this kind of “support,” how can I not love the guy? I am a social conservative and I would absolutely support the President if he nominated Posner for Chief Justice. I think many other social conservatives, given the opportunity to learn more about Posner from a well-informed source, would rally around him, too.

Hmm. Could be.

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND REPORT, WITH PHOTOS, from a midnight tank patrol in Iraq. Meanwhile, Maj. John Tammes is angry about Afghanistan.

MARK GLASER REPORTS on underhanded search engine tricks.

YEAH, I READ THIS, and I thought about posting something to the effect that I couldn’t take seriously a newspaper published by guys named “Pinch” and “Punch.” But then I thought ah, what the hell.

I did have a very nice lunch with Victor Navasky some years ago, though. He was very pleasant and interesting, and it was made nicer still by the fact that he paid.

HOW TO BE HAPPY: In footnote 7, we learn that sex contributes much more to happiness than does commuting.

DAVID CARR posts an obituary for the E.U. Constitution. It’s perhaps premature.

JEFF JARVIS is standing up for nipples. Best line from the comments: “It’s sweeps week at buzzmachine, isn’t it?”

RON BROWNSTEIN TAKE NOTE: Journalist-blogger Michael Silence comments on conflicts of interest.

LIVEBLOGGING THE SPELLING BEE, over at Throwing Things.

DUTCH VOTERS HAVE “OVERWHELMINGLY REJECTED” THE E.U. CONSTITUTION:

An exit poll broadcast by state-financed NOS television said the constitution failed by a vote of 63 percent to 37 percent, an even worse defeat than the 55 percent “no” vote in France’s referendum Sunday.

Turnout was 62 percent, far exceeding even the most optimistic expectations and a reflection of the heated debate in recent days over an issue that has polarized Europeans. Dutch liberals worried a more united EU could weaken liberal social policies, while conservatives feared losing control of immigration.

Although the referendum was consultative, the high turnout and the decisive margin left no room for the Dutch parliament to turn its back on the people’s verdict. The parliament meets Thursday to discuss the results.

It’s a double-whammy this week. Dutch blog PeakTalk has much more.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner has more on the Dutch decision, and how it differs from what happened in France.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Totten writes on what’s really wrong with the E.U. Constitution. Meanwhile, Matt Welch worries that we’re heading toward a Lou Dobbs world. And here’s the Washington Post story:

Like the French, many Dutch voters said in interviews that they were concerned the 25-member European Union had grown too much, too fast in recent years and that they feared giving more power to European bureaucrats in Brussels to regulate everyday life across the continent. . . .

“Europe is big now and that’s a good thing,” said Peer van der Wonde, a 52-year-old artist and furniture designer, shortly after he voted “no” at city hall in The Hague.”But we have to be careful. In the last 10 years, the people in Brussels have tried to minimize the input of regular people in democratic decisions.”

That doesn’t sound too Lou-Dobbsish to me. Also, see Dutch blog Zacht Ei for more, including this observation:

EC President Barroso made his familiar point again, about how nine countries have ratified the constitution already.

André Rouvoet of the ChristenUnie just pointed out the fallacy in this argument: only three of those countries have put the constitution to a vote. And two of them rejected it.

Two countries that are, by the way, founding members of the EU.

Ouch.

MORE: Over at ChicagoBoyz, Lex writes: “I think I am going to go out and buy some Dutch beer this weekend.”

ANYBODY IN THE KNOXVILLE AREA INTERESTED IN ADOPTING A CAT? The Insta-Daughter and Insta-Wife have turned out to be allergic, explaining all sorts of medical problems, and although my Dad has Nicholas as an outdoor cat, we still need to find a home for Precious, shown below. She’s a quiet, mostly-indoor cat. We’re sad to lose them both, but the Insta-Daughter’s asthma seems to be triggered by cats, and we can’t have that. Please email me if you’re in the area, and interested in adopting.

ODDJACK is the latest Nick Denton blog, this time devoted to gambling. Strangely, John Bolton makes an appearance.

UPDATE: So does the National Spelling Bee. They’re nothing if not eclectic.

By the way, I highly recommend the Spelling Bee documentary Spellbound. Here’s my review from last year. And scroll up for a post tying the documentary together with the outsourcing debate.

RUSSIAN TROOPS WILL PULL OUT OF GEORGIA by 2008.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

NASA’s new administrator and Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay said Tuesday the space agency will have the necessary funding to implement President Bush’s vision to send astronauts back to the moon and to Mars.

At least, I think it’s good news.

GREG SCOBLETE wonders if the current outbreak of Deep Throat nostalgia isn’t based on the media’s current troubles. “This is the perfect chance to relive – in Al Bundy-like fashion – the Big One.”

Of course, it’s not so clear that the story reflects as well on the press as some think.

UPDATE: InstaPunk has thoughts on Mark Felt.

And Austin Bay observes that “conspiracy theorists of another era would have a field day with a J. Edgar Hoover protege bringing down a president.”

Yep. I don’t mind Nixon going — I think he was a pretty lousy President for all sorts of reasons aside from Watergate — but it’s obvious that the simplistic Woodward & Bernstein hero-tale is a bit, um, incomplete.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ben Stein offers a defense of Nixon, but I’m unpersuaded. And his historical claim that Felt, Woodward, Bernstein, et al., laid the foundation for the Cambodian genocide seems a bit hysterical. I think it’s also ahistorical, as I don’t see any reason to think that events in Cambodia would have gone differently had Nixon finished his term.

MORE: Stephen Bainbridge has more thoughts on Deep Throat and anonymous sourcing: “Might we not have evaluated Woodward and Bernstein’s work with a more informed eye if we knew they were being fed stories by somebody with a bureaucratic axe to grind?”

IN THE MAIL: Steven Stark’s Meet the Beatles: A Cultural History of the Band That Shook Youth, Gender, and the World.

My grandfather thought they were a flash in the pan. My mother knew better. But then, your mother should know.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION is up.

THE COTILLION collects a lot of female bloggers from the right half of the blogosphere.

AUSTIN BAY:

Amnesty International is paying a hard price for its PR cheap shot, and it should. . . . Amnesty’s current leadership inhabits a self-referential echo chamber, and over the next few months will find that there is such a thing as bad publicity, particularly when an organization relies on “moral principles and human rights” An organization with genuine moral principles and genuine respect for human rights must be able to distinguish between scattered crime and focused genocide, between criminal actions at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo (on the one hand) and 9/11, the Taliban, Bali, Saddam, suicide bombers (etc) on the other. Koran flushing? Does anyone remember the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddas of Bubiyan? Does Amnesty? Amnesty has cheapened the language of suffering, and for an organization espousing Amnesty’s principles, this is a grievous error.

Yes, when you go over the top like that, people quit taking you seriously. Read the whole thing, which has a useful quote from just after 9/11.

UPDATE: Reader Wagner James Au emails:

Back when Amnesty International actually used to promote global human rights, they’d lead widescale letter-writing campaigns against rights abusers around the world, in the hopes that the public attention would shame the regimes into reform. By focusing so much ideologically-driven, disproportionate attention on alleged rights violations committed by the US, they are actually providing PR and moral cover to genuine gross violatars around the world. By the simple principle of opportunity cost, any excessive public pressure spent on US behavior is pressure *not* invested on, say, China, North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, etc, etc.. Who really benefits most from describing Guantanamo as a “gulag”? People genuinely concerned with legitimate complaints against Gitmo– or regimes which run actual gulags right now, and are more than happy that their behavior doesn’t warrant anywhere near the same high moral dudgeon from the most recognized rights group in the world? (Who now have a perfect diversionary alibi, if Amnesty International ever condescends to devote as much attention to them. Tell them about their mass executions, or their forced labor camps, or their collective starvation campaigns, and they’ll retort, “At least we don’t have a Guantanamo.” Thanks, Amnesty!)

The cause of promoting human rights worldwide is being actively impeded by the leadership of the largest human rights group in the world. So how about a letter-writing campaign against Amnesty International itself, in the hopes that that the public attention will shame them into reforming?

Interesting idea.

UPDATE: An interesting Amnesty International experiment.

HUGH HEWITT is calling for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to expand his investigation of leaks that damage national security to include the New York Times’ CIA story from yesterday. I doubt that will happen.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has more.

PETER BERKOWITZ WRITES on restoring free speech values to university campuses.

BILL HOBBS has some thoughts on what journalism schools should be teaching that they’re not. Actually, the UT journalism program is trying to address some of these issues — they’ve had me over several times to talk with students, and I’ve worked a bit with some colleagues there on a mass communications textbook.

People in journalism schools — and at TV stations — should also read this post by Terry Heaton on postmodern media.

CREDIT FOR NAKASONE.

SETTING A PRECEDENT: “Although, there have been successful political revolutions in former Soviet States in the last eighteen months, this is the first Russian Republic that has had a leader resign.”

I ONCE HAD A GIRLFRIEND whose joking motto was “Better living through self-deception.” I guess she was right.