Mohammed cartoons on campus

One of my favorite groups, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)has reported on reactions on campus to the posting of the Danish cartoons:

Although censorship in response to displays of the cartoons has been rare, it has indeed occurred. At Century College in Minnesota, adjunct professor of geography Karen Murdock posted the 12 original cartoons, articles about the resultant international controversy, and comment sheets on a bulletin board near her office. After the cartoons were anonymously torn down several times, Murdock reported that her division head removed the cartoons and a university administrator requested that she not repost them.

Some Muslim students also wrote a letter saying they were “heartbroken” to see that Murdock had posted the cartoons, claiming that “[d]uring the last week, this incident had a very negative impact on our ability to concentrate on our studies.” While no disciplinary action was taken against Murdock, she has not reposted the cartoons out of fear of possible fallout. She told FIRE, “When a division chairman and a college vice president both tell an untenured adjunct professor that something should not be posted on a bulletin board, this is a suggestion that has the force of a direct order. The cartoons would still be posted if I felt that I had a say in the matter.”

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, student editors Acton Gorton and Chuck Prochaska printed six of the original 12 cartoons in the independent student paper The Daily Illini. The Chicago Tribune reported on February 14 that the Illini’s board of directors, composed of staff and students, dismissed Gorton and Prochaska for failing to consult with “other student editors and staff members” in making the decision to print the cartoons. The paper then ran an editorial apologizing for printing the cartoons and calling Gorton “a renegade editor who firmly believes that his will is also the will of the paper.”

The Chicago Maroon reported on February 17 that an anonymous University of Chicago student hung a homemade sketch of Mohammed with a caption reading “Mo’ Mohammed, Mo’ Problems” outside his dorm room. After receiving a complaint about the sketch, Resident Head Andrea Gates ordered it removed and reported the student who had posted it to the Housing Office for a possible investigation. The student removed the sketch and issued a written apology. The university has taken no further action, and FIRE continues to investigate the situation.

Similarly, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), student Mitchell Foley reported to FIRE that he had posted the 12 cartoons on his dorm room door until his resident assistant told him to remove them. He removed the cartoons and has not reposted them; RPI has not commented on the situation

FIRE reports that campus newspapers have reprinted the cartoons at an number of schools without official reaction, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard.

Jihad in Topeka ?

The Thomas More Law Center has asked the Supreme Court to review a ruling by the 10th Circuit that a sculpture at Washburn University in Kansas was not "hostile to religion" in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The sculpture in question depicts a Roman Catholic bishop with a grotesque facial expression holding a miter that resembles a phallus. It is entitled "Holier than Thou" and contains what a Roman Catholic (or an Anglican, for that matter) would regard as heretical and derisive statements regarding the concept of penance as a part of reconciliation. It was paid for with public funds and prominently displayed outside the student union.

A couple of thoughts.

1. I missed the riots through the streets of Topeka. Where were all the nuns, priests and even Dad29 firing kalishnikovs into the air and demanding death for the infidels? How is it that the Washburn student union has been left standing? Had the religious community "expressed its pain," then perhaps the university would have concluded that "sensitivity" requires that it not display something so offensive to some members of that community.

2. The Thomas More Law Center is trying to hoist the Supreme Court on the petard of its own incoherent Establishment Clause jurisprudence. The Court's recent decisions have been dominated by Justice O'Connor's "endorsement" test. She argued that the government "establishes" religion (or, if you prefer, violates the "separation of church and state") when it endorses religion in a way that makes dissenters feel like they are outsiders; disfavored members of the political community." Thus, she concluded, display of the Ten Commandments was improper because non-believers would think that the state was endorsing religion (and, in particular, the Abrahamic faiths). The Court says that this applies to the endorsement of "non-religion" as well, but has never really squarely held that something hostile to religion endorses non-religion. The Washburn case presents the question in a way that is hard to avoid. If the Ten Commandments can make an atheist feel excluded, how is this sculpture going to make a Roman Catholic feel?

3. My hope is that the Court, now sans Justice O'Connor, will abandon the whole concept of endorsement as establishment. In a society where schools teach more than the 3-Rs and government endeavors to address social problems and itself participates in the public debate (by, for example, putting statues outside the student union), it is impossible to be neutral between religion and irreligion. My own view is that the state of Kansas is free to display this sculpture (although it shouldn't) and the Ten Commandments.

The morning after in OZ

Owen at Boots and Sabers praises us in Mequon for voting "no" on a referendum to exceed school revenue limits. Owen writes:

This is great because the teachers’ union and school officials pulled out ALL of the stops to get this passed. They sent home multiple fliers with the kids (yes, that’s probably not legal). They put up signs, canvassed neighborhoods, bullied people who opposed it, drove supporters to the polls, sent absentee ballots to college students who don’t even live in Mequon anymore, and even scheduled the election for such an obscure day in February. They did EVERYTHING to get this passed.

I agree with everything that he says, but my conclusion is a bit different. They did not do the one thing that they needed to do and that is reach out to those who they did not feel were their natural allies. The brochure I got when they canvassed my neighborhood just assumed the need for more money. It basically said that the sky would fall in if they didn't have more money without even attempting to explain why it was so. There was a sense that they would have preferred that as few people as possible outside the "school community" knew this was happening.

I would hope that school districts get the message that passsing these referenda is going to require a lot more heavy lifting. Your natural constituencies will not get you over the top and you're going to have to explain just why it is that you haven't been able to live within the revenue limitations.

In other words, M-T did not do EVERYTHING that it needed to do. So it lost.

Jed does it again

A black goo is bubbling up in Los Angeles?

Voter Disenfranchisement Alert !

A co-worker went to vote on the referendum in Mequon and was asked to, please sit down and brace yourself, photo id ! When he didn't have it, they would not let him vote! He had to go home and get it! When asked why he was "marked" as having to show id, he was told that the State Elections Board required it because he had an "old form" of registration. The city clerk's office was unable to explain what distinguished an old registration from a new one and why the difference it could not explain required photo identification.

Of course,he was voting for the referendum. Welcome to George Bush's America, man!

Update: The city says that the request was required for implementation of the Statewide Voter Registration System mandated by the Helping America Vote Act. Apparently, they need to have your driver's license number or, if you don't have a license, the last four digits of your social security number. They say you'll never be asked again which makes the value of the whole exercise a bit wispy.
I wonder if anyone will think to look at the numbers and try to determine how many people who actually vote lack ID?

We have all been here before ...

Eugene Kane has once again provided fodder for his conservative critics by writing a column in which he says that he can now watch the Olympics because he has a "brother" to root for in speedskater Shani Davis. He adds fuel to the fire by suggesting, although not really trying to establish, that Davis' conflict with his teammates over his failure to participate in a team event and his less than winning public persona are the products of racism.

My brothers and sisters on the right side of the Cheddarsphere will be all over him. (I think my wife has already sent an e-mail.) Kane's supporters in the newsroom will shake their heads over all the "nasty" e-mails that he gets (and I am sure that some of them will be vile).

Why does he do it? Because he can. Why do we do it? Because we must. But I'm ready for a new act; something that Kane is quite capable of. This one has gotten old.

Stupidity is not a crime

After I wrote a column in the MJS on the Danish cartoons, I began to get e-mails from a neo-Nazi group (and they were more Nazi than neo)complaining about the fact that Holocaust denial is a crime in Europe. Now David Irving, a historian of little merit, has been sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for giving a speech in 1989 in which he claimed that the Nazis did not exterminate millions of Jews. He apparently admitted that he was wrong after his arrest. No matter.

Given my strong support for PM Rasmussen and the Jyllands-Posten, I should say that I think this is wrong as well. I am sympathetic that countries like Germany, in light of the horror that it wrought, would want to ensure that future generations always remembered. (The Austrian law in question was passed in 1947.)

But the truth is best served by free and open inquiry. Period. Enforced orthodoxies, even then they are true, tend to become brittle. In a fallen world, governments with the power to silence dissent can't be trusted to limit themselves to silencing only that which has no value. Free and open debate has a tendency to expose dreck for what it is.

Irving is a case in point. He was thoroughly discredited and financially ruined long before he was arrested in Austria. Now he'll have a second life as a martyr.

Still reading Reschovsky

One interesting note about the oft-cited Reschovsky study that says Wisconsin ranks 23rd in the country in general revenue per $1000/personal income. If, as seems to be the case, he is using the rankings for general state and local revenue from this 2005 Legislative Fiscal Bureau report, the numbers apparently use federal revenue. This lowers Wisconsin's ranking because we don't do too well at the federal trough. When you consider general revenue from our "own sources," we actually rank 15th.

More significantly, it is not at all clear to me that the more pertinent measurement is not taxes, rather than general revenue. When you limit the query to state and local taxes, we are 6th or 13% above average. In the face of this , opponents of the amendment want to change the subject to general revenue from all sources. But there is a difference between a tax and most forms of fee. The latter is compulsory while the former may not be to the extent that one can avoid using a particular state service. A fee is not always just a tax by another name.

All this and other types of wonky goodness can be found in this 2005 Legislative Fiscal Bureau report.



h/t: Seth Zlochota

A moment of candor

Seth of In Effect says the following in the comments section on Thought Experiment No. 4 below:

Amendment opponents also largely believe that budgetary decisions should privilege the discussion of the actual services provided by governments, rather than putting cost as the primary dictator of public policy. Cost should certainly be considered, but any constitutional amendment that caps the growth of public services is not putting those public services first.

That's pithy, accurate and, in my view, illustrates why the WTPA is a good idea. Why, exactly, would the legislative process "privilege" the discussion of the provision of government services over their cost. Shouldn't legislators be just as concerned over what the state can afford? Shouldn't they treat the amount of money that they have to work with as a brutal reality that cannot easily be avoided.

But they don't, as Seth recognizes in suggesting that the legislative process privileges focus on services over focus on their cost. This is because the particular interest of those who benefit from, or provide those services, is, for any particular program, more intense than that of those who pay taxes. The WTPA is, as Seth would put it, an effort to "privilege" or, as I would put it, balance the interests of those who pay against those who receive.

My view is that the state will be better off in the long run because legislators will be forced to make the hard choices that they currently avoid.

But it was Christmas ...

From the state GOP:

Trial lawyers flooded Jim Doyle's campaign coffers with thousands of dollars the week he vetoed a bi-partisan bill that would have restored sensible medical malpractice caps. Records show that trial lawyers donated more than $20,000 to Doyle from December 1, 2005 to December 9, 2005. The governor vetoed a bi-partisan bill restoring medical malpractice caps late in the afternoon of Friday, December 2, 2005

Lot. No. 1 is a brand new casino In Kenosha

Gov. James Doyle (D-Sotheby's), pictured here, was hard at work on Monday resolving the dispute between the Forest County Potawatomi and Menominee over the approval of a new casino in Kenosha.

Its not just about free speech

Jessica McBride links to an explanation by Flemming Rose, the editor of the Jyllands-Posten as to why he ran the Mohammed cartoons. Three things caught my attention. First, Rose responds to the idea that it was disrepectful to publish Mohammed's image because Islam (or at least some factions within it)prohibit depicting the Prophet:

When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.

The other thing that struck me is his defense of the now infamous cartoon of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped into a bomb:

One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name.

I would take this a step further. If - as is undeniably the case - a significant element of Islam has decided that it has a religious duty to attack nonbelievers, then the presuppositions and images of Islam are no longer of concern only to Muslims. If some Muslims are going to argue that Islam requires flying planes into buildings and blowing up trains and busses, those of us who would be the victims are going to push back. We're going to hold that idea up to the ridicule it deserves.

If some Christian cleric decided to preach a 21st century Crusade, I'd expect both Christians and Muslims to point out the incompatability of that with the teachings of Christ and I suspect that, sometimes, it would be done in a way that makes us uncomfortable. That might even be what makes it effective.

Which brings me to the last thing that struck me in Rose's piece:

In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy. A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between "them" and "us," but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.

... In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe.

A friend in Copenhagen e-mailed me this morning that "it is not over yet", but let's hope and pray that Rose and Ali are right.

Thought Experiment No. 4

Opponents of the WTPA are making much of the fact that it caps revenue increases through the use of the CPI rather than growth in personal income. This, oh horror, will result if government becoming a smaller part of the state's economy. We ought to at least ensure that government gets a stable share of state income, need it or not.

There seems to be some dispute over whether state and local spending has outstripped the growth in personal income. Reschovsky argues that state revenues have declined as a percentage of personal income (although a more reasonable way of putting it is that it increased, declined and has now more or less returned to the 1985 level). A 2004 study by Richard Chandler for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, on the other hand, claims that state and local spending increased as a percentage of personal income between 1986 and 2002.

The idea that government is "entitled" to a constant share of personal income is problematic. Generally, in managing personal and organizational finances, one tries to reduce all expenses as a percentage of income. But this is a thought experiment, so let's put that aside.

What if the WTPA allowed revenue increases commensurate with the growth in personal income? The party of government would retain its tribute and the rest of us would at least know that the state will not grow larger without our express approval.

Wouldn't that solve the problem?

Any liberal and Democrat readers can leave their endorsements in the comments section.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

I find it amazing that at the Huffington Post (H-Bomb) its all Cheney's Accident All the Time. Perhaps the most unintentionally revealing piece is this one suggesting that Whittington's concern for the guy who accidentally shot him could only have been caused by fear or, in any event, is so incongruous as to be the occasion for satire.

Gee, guys, do you think that Whittington may have learned, in all those 78 years, that accidents happen and that its not all about him? Do you think he may regard emphasizing his victimization as classless?

Children Are the Littlest Politicians

Political scientists are pondering the observation that people with sons are more likely to identify as Republicans and that those with daughters are more likely to be Democrats. The pols offer a bunch of reasons - men work harder, earn more and want to pay lower taxes; parents with boys go a-huntin' and a-fishin' and meet conservatives; and people with daughters understand that sometimes you can't make it on your own.

I am skeptical about whether this really stands up to scrutiny and, of course, I am not without my own stake in the game. When it comes to kids and (even at my young age) grandkids, I've got sons all day. The House of Esenberg lives on!

How about this: the Dems have identified with the notion that women are an underclass; a group of people who are victimized and need help. To the extent that you buy into that view, you'll be more sympathetic to policies that are designed to help women rise above the man's world that they must live in. Abortion, Title IX, comparable worth, cultural feminism. Its all good.

The parents of sons may be less likely to see them as oppressors.

Don't bother us with the facts

A study by a team of researchers in New Zealand suggests that abortion is associated with subsequent mental health problems in young women. When Warren Throckmorton of the Washington Times asked the American Psychological Association how this finding might effect its advocacy of abortion rights, he was essentially told that "it doesn't matter.". An APA spokesperson said that "[t]o pro-choice advocates, mental health effects are not relevant to the legal context of arguments to restrict access to abortion." She went on to say that evidence of negative effects of abortion would be relevant only to give women the information they require to make an informed choice.

But if that's the case, then why does the APA even have a position on abortion as opposed to simply disseminating the information required for an "informed" choice? It offers, if anything at all, insight into psychological issues, not into what should and should not be a civil right.

Professional organizations, like the APA and our own American Bar Association, are frequently hijacked by people with a political ax to grind. No one else cares enough to play the type of professional politics required to gain influence in these groups. Keep that in mind the next time someone offers the "considered" position of a professional organization as a supposedly disinterested source of authority. That is rarely the case.

SAGE vs. the MPCP

Brian Fraley does a service by linking to the WPRI study of the SAGE program. I know that some people are going to start the "WPRI is right wing" chant but the conclusions of its report really don't seem all that different from the more recent WCER evaluation. It is far from clear that there is any more evidence of SAGE's effectiveness than there is of the MPCP. In fact it might just be that MPCP has stronger empirical support than SAGE since SAGE's positive evaluations seem to come from people who contracted with DPI for the evaluation and DPI is hardly disinterested. Yet we're spending just as much on SAGE (which is not just a Milwaukee program) than on the MPCP.

Perhaps the Doyle/Gard deal should be amended to include a more rigorous and independent evaluation of SAGE.

Why is UW so expensive?

This morning's MJS included a thumbsucker on increases in UW tuition and the way in which it keeps low income students out of college. I'm not so sure that the article makes its case. That students don't want to take out loans does not amount to a crisis. I seem to recall that students took out college loans back in the 70s (when the financial advantages of higher education were much less pronounced than they are today) and it is not self-evident why someone ought not be obligated to finance a portion of his or her own education. Loans make that possible for people who presently lack the means to do so.

A more interesting question is why the cost of higher education has risen at a rate greater than the rate of inflation. In preparing a recent column for the MJS (this one), I looked at the long term trend on state assistance to the UW. Its gone down recently but over the long run, its been relatively stable in real terms. Yet the UW's budget - and tuition - has increased at a rate that exceeds inflation for just about forever. Why has that been necessary? There's a series I'd like to see the paper tackle.

I must defend the Wal-Mart

Jenna at Right Off the Shore and John McAdams at Marquette Warrior have commented on the New York Times' recent report on the release of internal Wal-Mart e-mails from a company forum in which managers get to ask questions of CEO H. Lee Scott.

As I have blogged before, I don't much like Wal-Mart and am probably in the bottom 1% of American consumers ranked by trips to a Wal-Mart. Basically, I haven't been.

But what I found interesting in the Times piece, in addition to the items discussed by John and Jenna, is the following comment by Scott on Wal-Mart's recent sluggish sales:

"Wal-Mart's focus has been on lower income and lower-middle income consumers," he wrote. "In the last four years or so, with the price of fuel being what it is, that customer has had the most difficult time. The upper-end customer got a tremendous number of tax breaks about four years ago. They have been doing very well in this economy."

He said having to pay $50 to gas up a car did not change anything for rich customers, but did for those who didn't earn a lot. "It changes whether or not you go to the movie, whether or not you buy new sheets, whether or not you go out to eat."

As much as it must drive the left crazy, there is a great deal of truth in this. Wal-Mart has succeeded by providing adequate goods at phenomenally low prices to people who can't afford more. They have done it, in part, by paying employees in pretty much the same way that retailers have always done and - this is their innovation - by beating the bejesus out of their suppliers. I wonder if, at the end of the day, Wal Mart hasn't transferred income downward.

Thought Experiment No. 3

The teachers unions are given to paeans to the teaching profession. I'm sympathetic. Its an important job. In fact, wouldn't the unions agree that the most important factor in quality education is the quality of teachers? This is presumably why it is not scandalous that something like 87% of MPS' budget goes to salaries and benefits.

So ensuring teacher quality. Nothing is more important.

Now, in every other endeavor in life in which the quality of a professional is important, we do two things. One, we pay those who are good more than those who are merely adequate. Two, we fire those who are no longer performing.

When it comes to teachers, we do neither of these things. (Don't start with MPS' TEAM program. Based on its own numbers, its a joke.)So isn't the most critical educational reform an end to teacher tenure and the introduction of merit pay? In fact, why would we commit any additional resources to education (an enterprise which has seen, over the past 40 years or so, an enormous increase in resources and a significant decline in accomplishment) until this vital reform is secured.

I'm torn on this

The state apparently provides free contraceptives to low-income women between the ages of 15 and 45 (virtually all women under 18 are considered low income). Some Republicans are trying to increase the minimum age to 18. (Doff of the cap to Dad29.) Kelda Helen Roys, executive director of Pro-Choice Wisconsin, in a bit of a non sequitur, is quoted as saying that "[w]hen we give teens accurate information about sex, we empower them to make healthy choices...."

But children under 18 are presumed incapable of making a choice to have sex. If you have sex with a sixteen year-old who is not your spouse, you have committed a class A misdemeanor. If he or she is under 16, you're looking at a felony. Nothing in the law will excuse you because you are also under 18.

So why do we wish to empower children to make a choice that we believe they are incapable of making? The only answer I can think of is that we don't believe we can stop them. And maybe we can't. We live in a highly sexualized culture in which the inhibition against pre-marital - and even casual - sex has been systematically deconstructed. While my own sense is that his was intentional and not inevitable, I am not convinced that it could ever be undone.

But there was a price to pay for this; a price paid in out-of-wedlock births, abortions, divorce and, if you believe the laments of many young women, a diminished capacity for intimacy. If parents want to resist this, is it really that outrageous to say that the state will not frustrate their efforts? Would requiring parental consent for kids under 18 be all that ridiculous? The oft-repeated claim that some families "can't talk about" sex is, more often than not, another way so saying that some parents won't consent.

So its back to "we can't stop them." But should it really be the policy of the state become complicit in a 15 year old's efforts to defy his or her parents?

Reading Reschovsky

The Dems are all aflutter about the analysis by UW Professor Andrew Reschovsky of the "devastating impact" of the Taxpayer Protection Amendment. Basically, Reschovsky calculates that, had TPA been enacted in 1985 and its revenure caps had never been exceed, state government would have to spend 30% (or 5 billion dollars)less than it actually spent in 2005. You can read some of our liberal friends being impressed by this here and here.That this would be a disaster is assumed, if not proven. What would you cut, they ask, and some conservatives have tried to provide an answer.

More fundamentally, Reschovsky argues that, by capping revenue growth by the rate of inflation, the TPA would have reduced government as a percentage of the state's economy which, over the period in question, grew in real terms (i.e., personal income growth beat inflation). Thus, he concludes, the TPA is a ruse to reduce the percentage of the income that goes to government.

My initial response to this is sort of along the lines of "No s***, Sherlock." As income grows faster than inflation (something which doesn't necessarily happen and which might not happen over the next twenty years), we are generally able to devote that additional income to new things. Over time, the percentage of income that human beings spend on meeting their basic needs has declined. That's progress.

So there is no Platonic Ideal that says that the percentage of income that goes to government must remain the same at all times and in all places. Reschovsky's answer seems to be little more than "we can afford it" and therein lies the rub. If the money is there, it will be spent.

What have we gained by allowing government to grow at a rate greater than the rate of inflation. If goverment has gotten a "real" (after inflation) increase in income, has it delivered more to the taxpayers? Are the roads better? Are the schools more effective? Have we pulled more people out of poverty? I am skeptical.

And Reschovsky, unwittingly, provides the reason that none of this has happened. The reason, in his view, that government has "had to" grow at a rate higher than the rate of inflation is that the things which government must pay for have increased at a faster rate.

What are those things? Here is the money line:

"A substantial share of their budgets goes to pay for the services of highly-skilled labor, for example, police officers, teachers and doctors.>" Although throwing doctors in there is misleading (the state doesn't employ a lot of doctors and its reimbursements for medical services apart from its employee benefit packages are well below market), he's got it exactly right. The state's cost have increased at a pace above the rate of inflation because its labor costs - what it pays to state employees in wages and benefits - have done so. Reschovsky makes this sound like it is the result of the inexorable operation of the free market, but that just isn't so. The wages of these particular "highly-skilled" laborers is set through negotiations with politically powerful public employee unions; special and highly-invested interests who exert a disproportionate influence over the political process.

And that's the rationale for the TPA. Its an attempt to redress an imbalance on the playing field by requiring that increases that exceed the general increase in the cost of living and in the number of citizens to be served should be taken to the people.

Personally, I'd prefer that the authorization to exceed caps be undertaken by a legislative super-majority since I dislike referenda. But the idea that there must be greater intentionality to permit government to simply expand to take the next available money has merit. As Reschovsky's study unintentionally demonstrates.

Tasteless. Mean-spirited. Still funny.

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Dog! Gone!

Champion Bohem C'est La Vie (pictured here), who answers (well, responds anyway)to "Vivi" escaped from her handlers at JFK Airport, choosing to return to Manhattan after winning an award of merit at the Westminster Dog Show.

Appearing later in the day on Springer, the three year old whippet, circled three times before a howling crowd of mutts and backyard breeds, saying that the judges "gonna have to handle my s***" and that "y'all can just call me the next American Idol."

Shark and Shepherd on the Air

I will be playing my usual role as resident wingnut on Eric Von's Backstory segment this afternoon from 4:30 to 6:00. (WMCS-1290) Come and listen to the Truth!

Past the City Limits

I didn't know that I got a little love from Jessica McBride in the GM Today column on local blogs which was longer than her Freeman column. I assume that the Freeman is just as fascist about word limits as the Journal-Sentinel. (Ricardo, Ernie and Mabel: just kidding; you know I love you guys!) I made the "broader" list (i.e., the second cut). I appreciate it.

And it seems fair. I have nothing against Waukesha but about the only time I find myself there is on the way to Madison. I have little sense of what goes on there.

But I also have little sense of what goes on in Ozaukee County either. For a guy that lives in Mequon, I'm rather city-centric. I have never written about anything Oz.

But now we have a school referendum in Mequon and apparently the world will end if we don't exceed revenue limits. My son graduated from Homestead in '02. I graduated from Greenfield in '74. The one thing that struck me about Homestead is that, compared to where I went to school, it was the Taj Mahal. I'm keeping an open mind, but someone has some persuading to do.

Leave Mr. Whittington Alone?

Marcus Aurelius at Blogger Beer raises the issue of HIPAA (the law that gives you the absolute right to keep your hang nail to yourself!) with respect to Mr. Whittington's condition. This wouldn't apply to the fact of the shooting and it wouldn't apply to otherwise confidential information that is released to a non-health care provider (like Scott McClellan), but it does suggest that there is cause, at least by the spirit if not the letter of the law, for some circumspection about Mr. Whittingon's condition.

True story: Last year my wife goes in for a cervical spine fusion. Hardly a mark of shame. She was a figure skater well into her 30s, but she's open about it. She warns young girls that even Dorothy Hamill wound up with an Ibuprofen jones. Anyway, our priest is nice enough to come to the hospital to say a few prayers and wish her well. But she arrives before we do, so she goes up to the information desk and asks for the Reddess of Roscommon (well, not exactly, but in substance). So here is a woman in a frickin' clerical collar asking for a patient about to have neck surgery. You don't need a translator to figure out what that's about. I kind of doubt she's trolling for new members. But the info desk refuses to tell her if KFM has arrived. HIPAA, you know.

So we're now supposed to see Whittington's cardiac cath screen on the internet. And within no more than 15 minutes, please. Give me a break.

NAALP?

The NAACP gives 51 of 55 GOP Senators and 98% of Republican house members a grade of "F" on its "Civil Rights Legislative Report Card." Here's how many of the 20 bills that the NAACP rated legislators on related to what most people would regard as "civil rights."

None. Well. Maybe one. The NAACP supported a Ted Kennedy amendment to exempt civil rights litigation from the class action reform bill. I can't see how that would advance the cause of civil rights but Teddy works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, so I'll give them this one.

All of the other votes had to do with spending money on stuff, approving CAFTA or opposing the President's judicial nominees. In other words, the NAACP rated legislators on whether they were liberal. That is, of course, its right to do and it can even argue that liberal policies are better for black people. But its misleading to suggest that they are about "civil rights."

Law schools better not follow the law

David Berstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says the American Bar Association plans to require law schools seeking its stamp of approval (which is essential for any law school) to maintain racial, gender and ethnic diversity in admissions and hiring. That's not surprising.

But it is surprising - no, actually its shocking - that the ABA says that "the requirements of a constitutional provision or statute that purports to prohibit consideration of gender, race, ethnicity or national origin in admissions or employment decisions is not a justification for a school's non-compliance...." In other words, our nation's national organization of lawyers is telling law schools that they better get their racial and gender numbers in order (actually, this is all about race; gender disparities disappeared in law schools a long time ago) and, if they have to ignore the law to do it, well, there's never been an omelette made without breaking some eggs.

This reminds me why I refuse to belong to the ABA.

Doyle gets out of the school house door?

Did Doyle cave on school choice? The deal seems to be a 50% cap increase, some requirement of some form of accreditation and no poison pill on funding (indeed, no change in funding at all). There will apparently be some increase in SAGE funding. The cap increase should be adequate for a while. I haven't got a huge problem regarding some form of accreditation as long as its reasonably flexible. The "fly-by-night" choice schools aren't really helping anyone and gave the opposition unnecessary ammunition.

I guess the increased funding for SAGE will be Doyle's sop to WEAC. Milwaukee taxpayers, I guess, can go and eat cake. I think some adjustment in the funding formula could have been justified (although one could also argue that defections to choice should sting), but its not hard to see who Doyle thinks his real friends are.

The devil is in the details, but I think this is an acceptable outcome.

Give us your scared, your long hairs on the lam, yearning for self preservation

I am old enough - barely - to have opposed the War in Vietnam and I am still not prepared to say I was wrong (although I will admit that, at 14, I knew far less than I thought I did). War is a grave matter and, in Vietnam, I don't know that the stakes were high enough. I won't even call everyone who ran to Canada cowards.

But I can't quite get behind the idea of a Canadian monument to draft resisters. I can't believe that George McGovern, a man who, as misguided as may have been, was nevertheless the nominee of a major political party to become the most powerful man in the world would think it is a good idea to speak at the dedication of such a monument. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am, that the Canadians want to be known as the world's hiding place.

(Hat tip: W. Thomas Smith, Jr.)

And now for something really stupid

Larry O'Donnell blogging at the H-Bomb thinks he knows why Cheney didn't hold a press conference immediately after a hunting accident involving his good friend. He was drunk. Larry knows because he's been at Ivy League football games and everyone knows that if you'll drink before a football game, you'll drink before you try to successfully shoot small birds that dart about at the speed of your average mosquito with live ammunition. I don't hunt, but I do scuba dive. Would I drink at a tailgate before a football game? I'd insist. Would I have a drop before I engage in an activity where a mistake can result in death? Not hardly.

O'Donnell writes:

How do we know there was no alcohol? Cheney refused to talk to local authorities until the next day. No point in giving him a breathalyzer then. Every lawyer I've talked to assumes Cheney was too drunk to talk to the cops after the shooting. The next question for the White House should be: Was Cheney drunk?

I am not aware that he "refused" to talk to local authorities on Saturday (that they interviewed him on Sunday is not the same thing) nor can I fathom why a lawyer would think that he or she was justified in "assuming" that Cheney was drunk. What I do know is that everyone of those lawyers - if he or she was at all competent - would be all fists and teeth if someone made such an assumption about his or her client.

But this is what gets you prime space at a leading liberal blog. No wonder we are kicking these guys for drill.

No one is on the line

21% of Americans apparently think that the feds have listened in on their phone calls. Either a lot more Americans have friends in Ramallah than I would have thought or have a highly inflated sense of their own importance. Or if you screech the phrase "domestic wiretapping" enough, people will start to believe it.

What?

I find this rather curious. Jay at folkbum, channelling Seth at In Effect, disses Alberta Darling for hoping that W-2 moms can get jobs at the renovated Bayshore. Darling is not supposed to have any authority to speak to the problems facing Milwaukee. As Brian Fraley points out, its not clear what these guys want. Should Darling not give a rip about whether poor people can get jobs? Is the problem that we don't let single moms just sit at home and collect welfare? That worked real well. Is it that Bayshore jobs won't pay enough? I guess I wish there was someone who was willing to hire 9000 unskilled people at $25/hr too. I bet even Alberta Darling would like that.

U-W-M

I have two alma maters: UW-Milwaukee and Harvard Law School. The one I love is at Kenwood & Downer. So I would like to give some bloggy love to the UWM Times, the latest incarnation of the conservative paper of that name at Milwaukee. I really love the academy and I really hate the way its come to be an extraordinarily homogeneous institution. Anyone who is promoting intellectual diversity on campus is doing righteous work. The new Times is a start up by a small group of students. Jessica McBride, UWM instructor, give these guys and girls some props.

And since we are talking Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Panthers can clinch a tie for their third straight Horizon League title tomorrow night at the Cell. We're in the situation we are normally in this time of year. Probably going to win the conference tournament, but probably not going to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament if we don't. Our chances of the latter may be a bit better this year given that our RPI is somewhere in the 30s and we have an opportunity to get a good Bracketbuster win on Saturday at home against Missouri State. (Next year looks challenging.)

And Marquette still won't play us. I like really like the school but, notwithstanding that they have some good young players, the basketball program can get ebola and die until it comes off its high horse.

Good work if you can get it

Mike Nichols has a nice piece in the MJS about class action litigation. Next time you get one of those notices of settlement in the mail saying you might have been shafted on your cell phone bill or paid a tad too much on your auto lease, check out what the lawyers are getting. It is generally quite a bit. Then check out what you might get (assuming that you can even tell). You will be reminded of the scene in The Jerk where Steve Martin's earthly possessions are hauled away while he writes thousands of checks for "one dollar and nine cents."

The theory behind class actions is that they are legitimate way to stop someone from stealing just a little bit from a lot of people. If your credit card company overcharges you a nickel each month, you may not notice it or, if you dispute their right to that extra five cents, its not worth it to take them to court. If, however, they have fifty million customers, thirty million dollars is at stake each year. Its worth it to the class of all customers to go after that money even if it isn't for any individual class member.

But the flip side is that if you can make a colorable argument for an overcharge and the number of people who were allegedly overcharged is large, the downside of losing is significant. Its safer to settle. But to settle, all you really need to do is satisfy the lawyers because there isn't a real person who is that lawyers' client, just a large group of people who don't even know they are in a law suit. (There are class representatives, but they get bought off too.)

In theory, the whole thing has to be scrutinized by a judge who is supposed to make sure that the lawyers don't get too much and that the class isn't being cheated, but most judges are powerfully inclined to approve settlements. It makes one more case on an overcrowded docket go away.

The Time-Warner settlement that Nichols writes about demonstrates the beauty part for the company. Often the settlement does not involve paying cash to the class members, but instead requires a discount or other credit toward continued use of the company's sevices. So you'll remain a customer. Which makes paying off the lawyers that much more palatable.

The Men - and Women - of National Review.

In honor of V-Day, NRO has a symposium on the men and women that certain of its contributors love. Being homophobic and heteronormative, no admiration of the Brokeback Mountain kind was on offer.

It looks like K-Lo gets around. I mean, she likes a lot of guys.

More Effrontery

The Iranian government is protesting a new cartoon published in the German newspaper Der Tagespiegel depicting Iranian soccer players as suicide bombers. The cartoonist has garnered the customary death threats but I didn't need to tell you that.

I wonder where the cartoonist got such a crazy notion? Perhaps it was here or here.

Stupid Lawyer Tricks at Starbucks?

Peter at Texas Hold 'Em and Patrick at Badger Blogger have commented on the decision by the Starbucks at 76th & Layton to cancel a gig by a Christian musical group - apparently because of the complaints of one customer. It was apparently reported on Belling's show. (Why anyone was listening to Belling when I was a short trip up the dial is beyond me, but that's taste for ya.)

Starbucks deserves whatever bashing it gets, but this is actually a scarier scenario than Peter and Patrick and Belling have already suggested.

There is a substantial possibility that Starbucks' lawyers advised them to dump the Christian band. Here's why. Starbucks is a public accommodation under the Civil Rights Act. As such, it can't discriminate on the basis of religion. That much is clear and all good.

The problem is that courts have developed the concept of a "hostile environment." You can discriminate against someone by creating an environment in which he or she is uncomfortable because of your conduct based on race, sex, etc. Mostly this concept has been used in sexual harassment cases. Think of the female worker who complains because the employer allows a male "locker room" environment on the shop floor.

But while it is an idea that grew up in cases involving hostile environments for women, its not limited to that context. People have argued that employers who put bible verses on their paychecks or even the Washington Redskins (by using their name in a stadium that is a public accommodation) have created an unlawful hostile environment.


Am I defending Starbucks? No. I still think there is room for a more reasonable interpretation of the law to prevail. But I am pointing out the ways in which lawyers and courts can take perfectly reasonable statutes and turn them into something Orwellian.

We are beyond the looking glass, people.

I am taken by the media's insistence to know how long it was between the time that Cheney was identified as "the shooter" and the time that the incident was disclosed to the public.

How easily they are duped. Cheney was not the lone gunman. Bush (behind the grassy knoll) and Rumsfeld (behind the other grassy knoll, I suppose) provided triangulated crossfire.

Whence WTPA?

Xoff celebrates and Charlie Sykes laments the potential opposition of three GOP Senators to the Taxpayer Protection Amendment. I'm thinking that the fat lady hasn't even begun to loosen her vocal cords.
The problem for opponents is two-fold. First, as the Journal-Sentinel's star community columnist once noted, Wisconsin imposes above average taxes on below average income. (Original insight, that.) This is what business people call a brutal reality. It is a problem that you can't wish away. Second, the WTPA sounds fairly reasonable. Why should government need to increase its revenues by an amount greater than inflation and the increase in persons to be served? It certainly is true that some costs, say energy or health care in a given year, may increase at a higher rate, but this is the kind of thing that households have to manage all the time. My guess is that most Wisconsin families have faced an increase in their home heating bills far in excess of their salary increases. Its going to be hard to explain why, if incomes go up y percent and the population goes up x percent, why government ought to take an increase greater than y adjusted by x.

Throwing around terms like "ravage," "slash" and, for the polysyllabic, "eviscerate" is not going to seem right.

Shark and Shepherd on the Air

I will be on Eric Von's show this afternoon at 3 (WMCS-1290 AM) debating Joel McNally. Something about how the Republicans have decided that the Democrats are mean and angry. Decided?

Carter Would Have Missed

Vice President Cheney actually shot a fellow hunter yesterday. Must have been faulty intelligence.

In related news, PETA expressed relief that the bird was unhurt.

Cheap Trick?

Something about this story bothers me. An Episcopal priest in Delevan dressed up like a homeless person and sprawled outside the entrance to church on Sunday morning, rattling a cup and asking for money. Apparently this showed the moral laxity of his even his generous congregaion (or "of us all") because only a half dozen folks invited him into church or because he only scored $ 23. I'm not sure.

I understand the Matthew 25:40-ness ("Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me") of this. I also acknowledge the need for us to get out of our comfort zones in bearing witness to the radical nature of Christian love, but I still find it offputting. Maybe part of it is the sense that Fr. Myrick was playing a game with his parishioners. I am not a clergy person but I do preach every once in a while and I am all for challenging the folks in the pews. Still, this strikes me as too cute by half. It doesn't seem like any of the parishioners minded, but this raises trust issues for me. I don't want my priest making me an unwitting participant in his morality play.

The other seems to be the presumption that people who are wary of scruffy homeless beggars are somehow in need of major reform. There are very real issues concerning the proper way to respond to street people. My own church is in downtown Milwaukee and the clergy there have a rather rigid rule (for themselves) against giving street people money. I have violated that rule twice in the past year and I suspect that I did little more than enable someone to continue substance abuse. The clergy will invite them inside and even offer food if they have it, but no money. Ever.

And that makes perfect sense. The correlation between street begging and substance abuse may not be 1:1, but it is very high and enabling someone's continued self-destruction isn't really a very Matt. 25:40 thing to do.

Yet money is exactly what Fr. Myrick sought. He didn't speak to them (he couldn't), he just dressed himself up to look like someone with a drug or alcohol problem and rattled a cup at them. Its not surprising that the congregation wasn't sure what to do. He may have dramatized an issue that rarely arises in places like Delevan, but I am not as sure that he taught his congregants any sort of lesson about themselves.

Funeral Update

Ben at Badger Blues thought about St. Thomas Beckett in connection with Coretta Scott King's funeral. That's good. What isn't so good is his suggestion that there is some parallel between Beckett's martyrdom and its role in establishing the rule of law, King's martyrdom and its role in bringing about an acknowledgment of the evil of racial prejudice, and turning Coretta Scott King's funeral into an opportunity to embarrass the President.

How would that connection made? Bush going to Mrs. King's funeral was sort of like when King Henry II had to, you know, wear like sackcloth and ashes and get whipped by these monks because - the King? - he murdered St. Thomas Beckett. And then it was like the King had to obey the law just like a regular dude. So at the funeral, you know, they actually made Bush sit and listen to what a tool he is. Way cool.

On a certain level the fact that four Presidents (from both political parties) attended Coretta Scott King's funeral does suggest an enormous sea change in our political life in a very short time frame. We have come, in a relatively short period of time, to an almost univeral consensus about an idea that was once very controversial and the idea that King was martyred for that idea is not a new one. But the fact of that sea change and the significance of that martyrdom is what makes the behavior of Rev. Lowery and our worst ex-President so disgusting.

Martin Luther King and his wife are widely admired (there's the sea change)because of their commitment to the notion that persons ought not to be treated differently on the basis of their race. You can argue that they did - or would have - supported a whole slew of liberal positions on Viet Nam, Iraq, affirmative action, etc., but their moral authority is based upon that single proposition. We remember Dr. King because he dreamed of a day when people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Perhaps he also dreamed - or would have dreamed - of a day when 30% of municipal contracts would be set aside for minority owned businesses or of a day when we would spend even more than the trillions we have already spent (for good or ill) on urban poverty. Maybe he would have dreamed of the day when we treated the international terrorism that he did not know about as a law enforcement problem and not as the equivalent of war. But that's not why we celebrate King Day.

And it is that one concept; that commitment to equality before the law that drew four Presidents to Coretta Scott King's funeral. It was appropriate for them - and appropriate for us - to honor the fact that, whatever else we disagree on, we now do agree on that one principle. It would have been appropriate to put politics aside. It would have been appropriate to resist squandering the moral capital built up around that principle on the political differences of the day.

But that didn't happen. Rev. Joseph Lowery trotted out the multi-discredited "Bush lied about WMDs" trope and suggested that liberating Iraq from a murderous dictator was like genocide. He then suggested that because, I guess, the President could have called for increasing social spending even more than he has, he is "turning a blind eye" toward the poor. We can disagree all day about Iraq and poverty policy, but that's all just silly.

The increasingly execrable Jimmy Carter then implied that the complicated legal wrangle over NSA eavesdropping undertaken to prevent foreign terrorist attacks was like spying on Martin Luther King for political gain. I concede that there are serious issues around the NSA program but it is a world away from what Carter was referring to. He pulled out the now largely discredited set of racial myths about Katrina. As President Carter's ineffectuality blunted his sanctimony. Now that he is responsible for nothing, he has become insufferable.

Perhaps obeisance to this week's lefty shibboleths is the equivalent of forcing a monarch to submit to the rule of law. But I can't see it.

Free the Red Raiders

I think there is an irony in the Indian-themed mascot controversy that is largely unremarked upon. It seems to me that these nicknames, at the time they were adopted, reflected a certain degree of respect. The MJS editorial board and liberal blogger Carrie Lynch seem distressed that the name "Red Raiders", for example, connotes "an element of bellicosity" and is "predatory" or "hostile." The unstated assumption is that this is derogatory.

Maybe so, but I don't know that it was intended to be. When it comes to competitive sports, the connotation of bellicosity is generally regarded as a good thing. My son graduated from Homestead High School whose teams are known as the Highlanders. When you enter the school's campus there is a statue of a Scottish warrior with a very big sword. I do not think the message that this intends to send is an affirmation of the Scottish Enlightenment with its commitment to reasoned discourse and tolerance. Think Braveheart, not David Hume. I am half Scots-Irish. I suppose that I could complain that this does not reflect the true role of Scotsmen in the world, but I would be manufacturing offense.

Indian-themed nicknames, it seems to me, were largely adopted because those who chose them wanted to invoke a certain image of the nobility and bravery which they found expressed in the mythic Native American warrior. You can argue that this myth is inaccurate or that it is not one that today's Native Americans wish to see propagated, but it wasn't a sign of disrespect.

I don't have a huge problem with removing Native American imagery that bothers people today. But once you get rid of images like Tommy Raider and Willie Wampum, names like Red Raiders and Warriors are pretty generic. To demand that they be eliminated because they once were associated with an image that we have now decided was inappropriate is both unnecessary and revealing. It seems rooted more in the desire of those demanding the change to show their supposed moral rectitude than it is the need to remove any remaining offense.

Cartoon Update

Andrew Stuttaford on The Corner draws our attention to the comments of Ayann Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP, who is crticial of her own government's feckless response to the controversy over the Danish cartoons:

We have been flooded with opinions on how tasteless and tactless the cartoons are -- views emphasising that the cartoons only led to violence and discord. What good has come of the cartoons, so many wonder loudly? Well, publication of the cartoons confirmed that there is widespread fear among authors, filmmakers, cartoonists and journalists who wish to describe, analyse or criticise intolerant aspects of Islam all over Europe. It has also revealed the presence of a considerable minority in Europe who do not understand or will not accept the workings of liberal democracy. These people – many of whom hold European citizenship – have campaigned for censorship, for boycotts, for violence, and for new laws to ban ‘Islamophobia’. The cartoons revealed to the public eye that there are countries willing to violate diplomatic rules for political expediency. Evil governments like Saudi Arabia stage “grassroots” movements to boycott Danish milk and yoghurt, while they would mercilessly crash a grassroots movement fighting for the right to vote… I do not seek to offend religious sentiment, but I will not submit to tyranny. Demanding that people who do not accept Muhammad’s teachings should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission.”

Ali is a Somalian-born Dutch woman who fled to Holland to escape an arranged marriage. She wrote the script for Submission, a film critical of treatment of Muslim women. This is the movie that cost filmaker Theo Van Gogh his life.

Shark and Shepherd on Dead Tree

My latest MJS column is in this morning's paper.

McBride on the Air

Since I have been out sick (translation: trying to work at home while barking like a two-pack-a-day seal), I got to hear that Jessica McBride will be taking over for Mark Reardon and hosting a talk show on TMJ from 8 -11. That's not surprising. (Karen From Mequon: I called it first.) Good for her.

What I hope (and which, based on her comments this morning, there is every reason to expect) is that she will contribute a distinctive voice to conservative talk radio. The emphasis on the backstory in what she does makes her take interesting.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out on (later) night radio. My sense is that it might work well because, I assume, there are fewer casual listeners who have the radio on while working or getting in and out of the car.

On the other hand, as a media critic, I'm a pretty good lawyer. (KFM: I'll say!)

Got Live If You Want It

The Stones are apparently upset that ABC and the NFL censored the, please excuse the phrase, "money line" from the song Start Me Up in which Jagger sings of his interlocutor's extraordinary capacity to elicit a sexual response from someone who is, well, deceased.

I understand that this line may have somewhat more, I don't know, punch for the boys than it did when it was first written, but I can't say that I missed it.

The Rough Beast Slouches Toward Us

The Rapture is nigh! Be afraid! Be very afraid.

Thought Experiment No. 2

A while back, I wondered if those who claim that accountability is the issue surrounding lifting of the cap on school choice would agree to enhanced funding of choice schools in exchange for compulsory testing and accreditation. I had no takers. In fairness, the idea was expensive.

So here's a more modest idea.

The Weekly Standard reports on a recent study by the New Teachers Project showing that in a one year study of four large urban school districts, only four teachers out of 70000 were terminated for poor performance.

This suggests one of three possibilities. First, human resources managers at our nation's urban school districts ought to quit their day jobs and publish business books explaining how they manage to hire at a success rate approximating 99.99428%. I don't know how they do it and what to call the book, maybe I Feel It in My Fingers; I Feel it in My Toes.

The other possibiility is that teachers are pretty much fungible and don't make much difference, so why bother firing them? Can't imagine that the unions will buy into that. Even I don't want to think that is the case.

The third is that we have an Accountability Gap of Nixonian proportions.

So here's my new proposal to break the cap logjam. Let's move to standardized testing and accreditation for choice schools. But let's not, at the same time, tie the hands of public school administrators in striving for their own accountability. Let's welcome public school teachers back into the real world. Let's make them "at-will" employees. Let's do it for the children.

Any takers?

We Are Made of Sterner Stuff

We Baby Boomers are tougher than I thought. Millions and millions of us are about to bankrupt the social security and medicare systems and to be a burden on working people for the next 30 to 40 years. And yet ... we were transported as children, not only without booster seats but without car seats! We hung out on jungle gyms with jagged metal edges - suspended over concrete. Without supervision. I never saw a bike helmet until I was in my 20s.

And yet we survived. And survived in numbers sufficient to throw the whole darn country into insolvency.

Ah, that was when giants roamed the earth.

I jest cain't quit you.

From Richard Aleva in Commonweal:

Miraculously, you discover that you can take your heart out of your chest without dying. Well, perhaps you’re not really alive but you walk, talk, get business done, and nobody suspects that you are actually an ambulatory corpse. You keep your still throbbing heart in a little box in the attic. You go up to visit it from time to time. In the attic’s darkness you breathe on your heart, whisper tributes to it, caress it with your eyes. Of course you must keep your visits furtive and few lest anybody suspect how weird you are.

Quick and without looking. Is this a review of Brokeback Mountain or an essay on Doyle's fundraising?

Jimmah: You Will Respect Mah Authoritah

Former President Jimmy Carter manages to show his increasing lack of gravitas twice in less than twenty-four hours. First, he enters the fray on the NSA surveillance program by announcing it is illegal. He knows because he signed the FISA Act into law at the same time that he and Sen. Frank Church were gutting the rest of our intelligence-gathering abilities.

Guess what? I don't know whether the NSA surveillance program is illegal and neither does the increaingly sanctimonious Carter. Part of the problem is that no one knows exactly what the program entails because, everyone agrees, the precise nature of the program needs to remain classified. The repeated claim that the administration "could have" obtained warrants after the fact might be true, but no one who is making it really knows if that's the case.

The legality of the NSA program would make a great law school exam hypothetical. The Constitution probably permits it, but you could make an argument the other way. The language of the FISA Act probably forbids it, but there is some wiggle room (depending on precisely what they are doing), and, after the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi in which a majority of the Court found that the Authorization to Use Necessary Military Force after 9/11 authorized detention of American citizens who were enemy combatants, it is just not clear that Congress didn't grant the President this authority under the AUMF.

And even if the FISA act forbids it, there is a neat question as to wheher Congress has the authority to place such a restriction on the President's exercise of his power as Commander-in-Chief.

John McAdams links to some useful background material.

Then Carter participates in turning Coretta Scott King's funeral into a political rally. Very Nobel Laureate-like.

Having presided over one of the worst administrations in American history, you'd think he'd have the decency to slink off into anonymity. Play golf. Build houses. But please don't continue to bore us. Over twenty-five years ago, we told you that we don't care.

Blame Me Not !

Carter's comments criticizing Bush on the NSA program came in connection with his son Jack's campaign for Senate. Now there's a candidacy witn nostalgia appeal. I am certain the the voters of Nevada want nothing less than to bring back that brief shining moment that was the Carter administration.

I know I shouldn't but I am beyond help. With apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein and to the tune of "Camelot," I offer.

BLAME ME NOT


JIMMY:

(behind his desk in the Oval office; wearing a cheesy sweater.)

It's true! It's true! I have made perfectly clear.
That my own reign was perfect all the year.

(he wanders toward the camera)

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
To spy on enemies, a warrant must be got
This may result in occasional ter - ror
But Blame Me Not

(we now see Carter waiting in a gas line in a Ford Pinto)

I told you that you must learn to love stagflation
And try hard to want less than what you’ve got.
It may be that gas was ration’d
But Blame Me Not
Blame Me Not! Blame Me Not!
Jobs fell while prices raised,
But Blame Me Not, Blame Me Not
The fault was your malaise.

(we find Jimmy amidst the wreckage of helicopters in the Iranian desert)

In freeing hostages, it is true that I was clueless
In fending off wild rabbits, I showed fear.
But I reaped what I had wrought
And Reagan cleaned my clock

(Jimmy, Roz, Fritz and Cy Vance join arms on the front porch of the Plains General Store and sing together)

That lead to happily-ever-aftering
So Bla -- aaa ---aame Me Not

More on the Jihadist's Veto

Dad29 and Sean from the American Mind take issue with my criticism of the Vatican's claim that there is no good reason to offend religious sensibilities.

I agree that there is not reason to give gratuitous offense, but I can't see how someone else's religious sensibilities can be the limit of my right of free speech. For example, everyone rushes to agree that these cartoons are "offensive." Why is that? They seem to offend by 1)depicting Mohammed at all and 2)suggesting a connection between Islam and violence. I agree that the second is offensive, but it is hardly the cartoonists who have claimed that connection, a significant portion of the Muslim world has not only claimed it, but celebrated it.

The first is a requirement peculiar to Islam and I guess I wouldn't go out of my way to transgress it. But if speech must respect the peculiar religious sensibilities of any and all religious groups, there is no limit. As far as I know, Theo Van Gogh did not depict Mohammed in making a film criticizing the treatment of women in Islam. But he did offend the "religious sensibilities of believers" and paid with his life. Did he ask for it?


Dad says offense will never do any good. I agree that there is a level of provocation that is best avoided, but criticism of a religious tradition can do a lot of good. When we discussed this issue last night in Law & Theology, my theologian partner, the Rev. Dr. Joe Pagano, made a rather powerful argument that even offensive critiques of religion that were ultimately off the mark may have theological value. In particular, he argued that the Marxist and Freudian critiques of religion as an opiate and projection, respectively, while wrong, forced theologians to wrestle with how faith can be misused in this way. They were offensive. They were wrong. But they lead to useful reexamination.

The Vatican on free speech

Dad29 posts the Vatican's comment in light of the hysteria in the Muslim world over the Danish cartoons. I'll have a column addressing this in the MJS, but, while I have the greatest respect for the Vatican, this statement seems unhelpful. It is wrong to say that the freedom of thought and expression cannot imply the right to offend the sensibilities of religious believers.

I acknowledge that there is a point at which something becomes so offensive that it has little chance of acting as communication as opposed to provocation. But it is often that with offends us that shakes us sufficiently unsettled to examine what may be our mistaken presuppositions. My sense is that southern Christians once found ti quite offensive to be confronted with the notion that segregation was inconsistent with the witness of Jesus Christ. But it was and they eventually had to accept that.

If Muslims are offended by the image of Muhammed with a turban fashioned into a bomb, it may do well for them to ask why someone else felt it necessary to depict the Prophet in that way. Maybe they will conclude that there is no justification to connect Islam with terror. Maybe they won't.

To restrict speech to that which will be accepted by the least tolerant among us makes the least tolerant the arbiters of what can be said. And encourages others to be just as vigilant on what they find offensive.

No wonder Walker wants to move to Madison

Today Scott Walker explained the extent to which pensions and retiree health benefits are bankrupting the County. This whole fiasco, which was initially dismissed by many as a "nonstory," was the perfect storm of interest group liberalism. No one watched while the "progressive coalition" that ran the County mortgaged its future. So now Walker is being blamed for "cold-heartedness" when programs must be cut. If you're upset about the reduction in county services, go complain to Tom Ament. If you can find him.

Its the cartoons, stupid!

Some of my fellow Wisco Bloggers, most notably Jenna at Right Off The Shore, reprised by Peter at Texas Hold 'em, have begun to look at the left's response to the Islamic temper tantrum over a few Danish cartoons.

Lefty blogger Suzanne Nossell, writing at the H-Bomb, sort of hits all of the bases. The problem, she says, is that the Danes (and other Europeans) have not adequately assimilated Muslims and sorely need to implement, among other things, "War on Poverty-style efforts to combat Muslim unemployment, economic deprivation and social isolation ...." Its not clear to me what additional "War on Poverty" type initiatives that little Denmark with its cradle to grave social welfare might try.

But, says Ms. Nossell, the problem is also that they have wrongly insisted on assimilation of Muslims. Denmark, she says, is moving in the wrong direction, " enforcing required Danish lessons and stricter marriage [the Danes seem to have a problem with arranged and forced marriages] and citizenship laws." Imagine insisting that people who want to live permanently in Denmark conform to Danish norms by,say, learning the language. That sure couldn't help Muslim unemployment and social isolation.

This denial that what the rioters say angers them might be - exactly what angers them - reminds me of those who think the Palestinians voted for Hamas because, as Charles Krauthammer puts it, they want efficient garbage collection.

The Palestinians and Muslim rioters know exactly what they want. And that's the problem.

Reverse, option, touchdown

But if Chuck Noll were dead, wouldn't be be turning over in his grave?

Reich gets ripped

As I expected, my fellow community columnist Dale Reich got ripped by the readers for his column suggesting that there might be some connection between atheism and immorality. Dale led with his chin and was, I think, mistaken in suggesting that no one can be good without God. Some people are.

But its an entirely different matter to say that whether a society believes in God and what kind of God it believes in do not matter. I was struck by one reader who writes "[a]n atheist simply derives his ethos from that most beautiful and powerful trinity of empirical evidence, reason and logic ...." How anyone can be optimistic about that after a variety of materialist ideologies - all based on empirical evidence, reason and logic - turned the twentieth century into a charnel house is beyond me.

I see no reason why a newspaper's editorial page has to be consistent. In fact, it shouldn't be. The MJS board should publish Gregory Stanford, Patrick McIlherhan and ... me. (Especially ... me.)

But I do think its worth noting the contrast between the editorial board's opinion that the Sykes-Holt spot on school choice was "over the top" and this morning's Carlson cartoon, suggesting that placing Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court (who was sworn in on the day Coretta Scott King died) somehow undercuts the legacy of Martin Luther King (we are supposed to have felt a "scary" shifting of tectonic plates).

Martin Luther King (and his widow) are revered for their commitment to a color blind society. Perhaps Dr. King would have supported racial quotas, opposed the war in Iraq and supported the liberal nostrums of the day. But that's not why he is a national hereo.

Thus to suggest that Justice Alito undercuts the King legacy is to imply that he supports what King opposed, e.g.,segregation and racial prejudice.

That is way over the top.

Parker breaks one

I guess I'm glad to see the Steelers go up by 11. The only rooting interest I can muster today is fairly narrow-minded and vindictive. I don't want to see Mike Holmgren win in a different shade of green. This is not big of me.

An MATC Board that looks like Milwaukee

MPS Board President Ken Johnson has been sued for appointing three white guys and no women to the MATC Board. He gets four appointments and the law requires that they reflect, to the extent possible, the distribution of women and minorities within the city. Liberal activist Charlie Dee says that Johnson's appointments are "illegal" and that he "cannot imagine anything more undemocratic" than selecting people by their race and gender.

We have been hearing from Charlie Dee around here for years and this is the first time I recall him taking a firm stand for "law and order" so perhaps this is time to be encouraging. In that spirit, I have the following advice for Mr. Johnson should he be ordered to try again.

According to the 2000 census, the city is 50% white, so that part's easy. Two whites and let's make one a man and the other a woman. The census said that blacks make up 37% of the city so we are going to need an African-American and a half. That's going to be harder but we can't give up. Number three should be black, but lets get a fourth appointee with just one African American parent. We also need about 1/8 of an hispanic (12% of the city) so the other parent will need to have one - but only one -hispanic grandparent. Any latin country will do, we don't want to be rigid about this.

I am not sure what to do about representation of our Asian (2.9%) or Native American (0.9%)populations. Perhaps we can combine them by buying into the theory that Native Americans migrated across the Bering Strait and require that this fourth person have at least visited Alaska.

Human sexuality is an important element of diversity but, on the assumption that the city's population is 90-97% heterosexual, it would be wrong to appoint an actual gay person. What we can do is have one of the four straight appointees certify that he or she once looked across the locker room in lust but never acted on it.

Two of the appointees may have children, but no more three between them(one of whom must have spent three semesters at a choice school). Three appointees should be lactose intolerant and one should suffer from depression no more than ninety but no less than fifty-three days each year. (Tip: seasonal affective disorder can work for us here!) One appointee will have to demonstrate that he or she cannot read. At least not well.

For the male appointees, I think we're going to have to insist that for one its Ginger, while the other says Mary Ann.


Given that George Bush received 27% of the vote in Milwaukee, I might have suggested that one appointee be Republican, but you can't take this diversity thing too far.

The Implosion of Tolerance

In our private lives, when we claim to merely "tolerate" something, we mean that we "put up" with it. We allow it to happen but we do not necessarily approve of it and feel under no obligation to refrain from criticism. Thus, I may "tolerate" the fact that an adult child smokes, but I do not hesitate to tell him that I disapprove.

The meaning of tolerance in public life, however, has moved beyond simply letting something be to include the notion that tolerance of a person or an idea means acknowleging that she or it is "just as good as" anyone or anything else - or at least refraining from criticism. Thus, if I oppose criminalization of homosexuality, but nevertheless condemn it as "sinful" I am said to be "intolerant."

This kind of tolerance is bound to crack-up in the end as the controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed demonstrates. It cracks up because it eventually requires us to approve of the intolerant. If tolerance toward Islam means that we must not criticize it, then how do we respond when Islam itself becomes intolerant as Muslims around the world have over these silly cartoons? If we must pretend that Islam is everywhere and always a "religion of peace" while much of the Muslim world is interested in anything but peace, then how do we respond when the Muslim world acts to undercut the very idea of tolerance that prevents us from speaking uncomfortable truths?

What we wind up doing is validating the demand for the supression of speech. CNN refuses to show the offending cartoons. An editor of the French paper who ran them gets fired. Bill Clinton likens the cartoons to anti-semitism. Who is not going to think long and hard before running anything like this in the future?

We wind up with civil peace, I suppose. At least for a while. But we get it on the terms of the intolerant. In the end, they shut us up.

Shouldn't the MTEA Change the Subject?

I was in Arizona yesterday and haven't seen the MTEA ad on school choice, but it really strikes me as throwing into double coverage.

Why would MPS teachers ever bring up the relationship between property values and schools? Everyone in the area knows that the major reason people move out of Milwaukee is the schools. Go to the highest value neighborhoods in Milwaukee, knock on the doors and ask where the families with children send their kids to school. For most people I know deciding to live on the East Side or in Bay View or in one of those enclaves on the northwest side that consist almost entirely of city and MPS employees who are trying to move as far out as they can included a decision to pay private school tuition for their kids.

This isn't "because of" choice. Its been going on ever since I returned to Milwaukee from law school in 1981. It isn't because spending at MPS has gone down - because it hasn't.

We can argue about why MPS is a failed school system but the fact that it is has been the largest single factor driving the middle class into the suburbs. For the MTEA to blame declining property values on choice is like Roseanne barr blaming Calista Flockhart for eating that last chicken wing.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night ...

This post by the Prof. McAdams is fascinating. I am intrigued by the notion of unions 1) hiring folks to picket in the heat outside Wal-Mart at wages significantly less than Wal-Mart is paying to the "exploited" folks working in the air-conditioned big box and 2) east coast trade unions hiring homeless people who picket the "substandard wages" paid non-union labor (which are, I am almost certain based on professional experience, are many times what the picketers are paid) because their own members are too busy making good money elsewhere.

If Wal-Mart was really opressing the brow of labor, you'd think there might be some actual Wal-mart employees who might want to get on that union train. It wouldn't be necessary to out-source at "slave" wages.

If non-union labor was getting into the pockets of union workers, maybe a few of them would be available to picket. Anyone who has dealt with east coast trade unions (as I have) knows that what they want from non-union jobs is the dues and contibution to the "benefits" fund, not to unionize the "scab" contractors. Pure and simple. If you pay, they go away. Every time.

I grew up in a union household and am steeped in labor lore. I know all the lyrics to "Joe Hill" by heart - and have for about 35 years. But if this is what the labor movvement has come to, its not hard to see why its comatose.

Jensen Wasn't the Victim

Here's at least one reason why Jensen's motion on selective prosecution isn't the moral equivalent of the guy who complains that other speeders did not get tickets.

Using state facilities for campaign work is not intrinsically wrong. It is wrong because it is prohibited. It is prohibited, at least partially, because we don't want to give incumbents an advantage in the political process which is, after all, a competition. Its sort of like the rule against traveling in basketball. It sets the rules of the game.

To enforce those rules against one side but not the other, defeats the very purpose of having the rule in a way that ticketing only some speeders does not. It isn't just that its unfair to Jensen. It tilts the playing field in favor of the side against whom the rules have not been enforced. It doesn't just hurt the poor schmuck who got caught, it undermines the fairness of the entire system and undercuts the purpose of the rule which was to level the playing field.

More on Moral Values

Since I riffed on my fellow community columnist Dean Mundy's column on moral values, I thought I'd do the same with my boy Dale Reich's most recent column suggesting that atheism is linked to immorality. Dale has drawn criticism from at least one liberal blogger, Jay Bullock (am I mentioning that guy again?)and I am sure many others disagree strongly with his piece.

I wouldn't have written what Dale did - at least not the way he did - because I know lots of people of no apparent religious sensibility who comport themselves in a way that is quite consistent with Christian values. But as a caution against what can happen when a society cuts itself loose from transcendent values, he's got a point.

Jay is not merely dismissive, but responds to Dale's argument, writing:

Reich wonders why we irreligious would bother to help stranded motorists, for example, since helping others is not "seeking personal pleasure, procreating [or] dying." He neglects that many of us find being nice, kind, generous, or charitable in itself a pleasurable activity, even if we believe the good works bring little more than temporary satisfaction. In fact, a key principal of evolutionary biology is the idea of altruism; helping other members of the species ultimately benefits our own chances of survival, and those of our offspring. I look at it more from the angle of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility." This giant frontal lobe of mine--and the attendant consciousness and reason--endows me and all of the rest of us with a responsibility to take care of each other and the world we live in. There's a reason why those noted non-Christians, Native Americans, practiced a "seventh-generation" philosophy; it's not that they wanted to do and be good to please God, but rather to ensure that their descendants would survive and inherit a society worth living in.

But, I wonder, if someone helps others because it is "in itself a pleasurable activity," what happens when, as is so often the case, it is not? If altruism is rooted in benefiting our own chance of survival (I'll refrain, for now, from considering the circularity of attributing every damn thing to evolution), what do we do when it doesn't do that? If great responsibility comes with that giant frontal lobe and if we are to do as those non-Christian (but not non-religious) Native Americans did, why not exercise it to build a Master Race or, at the very least, rid ourselves of the weak?

I'm not saying that any individual can't find some source of values that he or she regards as non-religious, although I think they will often be rooted in some religious tradition now abandoned. (There is a reason we generally believe in the equal worth of all human lives in the West; this is not a universal human value.)My sense is that the abandonment of some source of transcendent value tends to result in utilitarianism and utilitarianism tends to result in slaughter.

Buy Danish !

Muslims around the world are calling for a boycott of Danish products after the Danish government refused to move against the Jyllaands-Posten for publishing some cartoons that satirized Islam and the prophet Mohammed. "Its a free speech thing", the Danes effectively said, "you wouldn't understand."

I'm not endorsing religious disrepect. I understand that Islam (but not Danish law) forbids the depiction of Mohammed. I can see how the cartoon of Mohammed with a turban in the shape of a bomb and fuse could offend. ut who is it, really, that has committed that bit of blasphemy? (The cartoon where the Prophet calls upon the homicide bombers to stop because they have ran out of virgins provides a hint.) But, in western democracies, we are free to offend one another. One of the reasons I am not a big fan of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, despite a great deal of ideological affinity, is that they are perpetually offended.

So, buy Danish (but not the pastries which are hard to provide fresh across the Atlantic). When I'm feeling better, I'm going to pick up a sixer of Carlsberg. Someone has to.

Update: Lots more on this at the Infidel Bloggers Alliance. Those of you gentlemen who are bored by Danish may still want to check out IFA's Babe of the Week who, despite being a blatant traffic ploy, has ... er ... nice eyes.

Are Shopping Malls "No-Go" zones?

Since I am out sick, I got to hear Charlie Sykes bring up John Mecure's report on violence in shopping malls. Maybe there's more to it than this, but it strikes me as an example of pushing the facts beyond where they can comfortably go. Mercure begins - "shootings, sex assaults, armed robberies" - time to be alarmed! - but having suggested that this description has something to do with what goes on in the malls, the balance of the story doesn't deliver. From what Mecure reports there has been one shooting (which he mentions twice) and a report of shots fired (but were they?). He reports no "sex assaults" although there was apparently a call for one. The statistics he cites show no armed robberies (although I'd have to think there were some.) There are a lot of thefts, but my guess is that this is largely shoplifting. Hardly surprising at a mall. "Experts," he says, "recommend that you do not go into a mall alone at night." I know that its a brief TV news report and it would be unreasonable to expect a reporter to say which experts, why they are experts and just why they say this, but it seems overwrought to me.

One of my own pet peeves about the MSM is that it seeks to attract readers, listeners and viewers by telling us how much we have to be afraid of or worry about. Back when I would have been caught dead watching the Today Show (a day which has long since past; nowadays its strictly E.D. Hill for me), you could hardly avoid the impression that life was well nigh unlivable, what with all the hidden time bombs" of something that you shouldn't be eating, the "threat" imposed by some financial precaution you hadn't taken and the "heartbreak" of some condition that just about everyone has and somehow still manages to live with.

I'm not saying that Mecure intentionally hyped this but, if I'm going to be afraid to go to the mall, I need more than this.

Bush Should Come Clean !

I think it's time for the Bush Administration to admit that Cindy Sheehan is the creation of political mastermind Karl Rove. Talk about a dirty trick!