Avram's journal

The recent news about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is that he wrote a qualifications statement back in 1985, when he was seeking a position as Assistant Attorney General, in which he stated that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion". I'm actually more interested in other parts of the letter (emphasis mine):

When I first became interested in government and politics during the 1960s, the greatest influences on my views were the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr., the National Review, and Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment. I discovered the writings of Alexander Bickel advocating judicial restraint, and it was largely for this reason that I decided to go to Yale Law School.

A few minutes with Google and Wikipedia told me what Warren Court cases Alito was talking about:

Reapportionment:

Baker v Carr (1962)

Established that voting district reapportionment is a matter in which federal courts can intervene.

Reynolds v Sims (1964)

Established that state legislative districts had to be roughly equal in population, according to principle of "one man, one vote".

Wesberry v Sanders (1964)

Established that congressional districts had to be roughly equal in population.

Criminal Procedure:

Escobedo v Illinois (1964)

Affirmed right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, making it harder for police to coerce confessions.

Miranda v Arizona (1966)

You've heard of this one; it's the case which established that police must inform suspects of their 5th and 6th Amendment rights.

Establishment Clause:
This refers to part of the First Amendment that prohibits Congress from establishing religion.

Engel v Vitale (1962)

Established that school prayer is uncontitutional.

Abington Township School District v Schempp (1963)

Declared school-sanctioned, organized Bible reading in public schools to be unconstitutional.

So, there's Sam Alito's America: A land in which rural voters can have hundreds of times as much legislative representation as city voters, where the cops can beat or trick confessions out of you without a lawyer present, and where public schools are places of religious indoctrination.

And he might not be as big a fan of Alexander Bickel's as he claims to be.

Unintelligent Design Network, Inc:

We hereby propose that a new debate be held, including members of the scientific community to argue that evolution should be taught as is, members of SEAO or the Intelligent Design Network, Inc. to argue that life shows evidence of an intelligent, omnipotent creator, and member of our organization to argue that although life was designed by an all-powerful creator, he is in reality pretty dumb and not very good at it. [...]

There have been 23 elephant-like animals in history, and yet only two survive today (and we add, they're not doing very well). Clearly, this is the mark of an all-powerful creator who is stuck on the same stupid idea and can't figure out why the hell they keep dying off. Hmm, perhaps it's because giant, big-eared mammals with huge, prehensile noses are ridiculous? I mean, WTF? A giant, powerful, grasping… nose? It looks like something a preschooler would make up. [...]

And who the hell though giraffes were a good idea? Bloody unlikely looking, if you ask me. And those tyrannosaurus, with the tiny little arms? Why even leave the arms in, except to flail about Corky looking for a snack. Speaking on this subject, did you know whales have hip bones? That's like if a human engineer put an outboard boat motor on a city bus. I think it's clear God never went to college, and I'm thinking it's sketchy he even has his GED. They guys in middle school shop class made more function and professional looking projects that half of God's motley menagerie.

Wikipedia’s entry on Ahmed Chalabi tells you his Erdös number.

Via Anyway, I found Get Religion, a blog about media bias and religious matters. Seems like a decent enough place, and I’m getting into a few discussions there, and it’s led me to a couple of conclusions about the media that I’ll get to sometime when I’m not just about to go to bed, but here’s a bit that’s too good not to pass along. The St Petersburg Times has an article about Valerie Plame — well, not so much an article as a list of facts, most not very interesting, but one that is:

She attends the same church, but not the same service, as Republican mastermind Karl Rove.

Man, what if it were the same service, wouldn’t that be worth watching, just for the icy glares?

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Karl Rove goes to church. I mean, I knew he was nominally a Christian, but I always figured the holy water would sear his flesh.

I was reading this mediocre essay by Jonathan Chait on Robert Bork, and I was struck with an impulse to read up on the Watergate scandal. What’s the link? Bork had been Solicitor General at the time Nixon tried to quash the investigation, and had wound up in charge of the Justice Department after the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General had both resigned rather than fire the investigator. Bork did the firing.

This led to the creation of the Office of the Independent Council, a check on the growing power of the executive. I’d known that the office had since expired, but I hadn’t known when: At midnight on the 11th of September, 2001.

akawil tells me that this isn’t quite as eerie a coincidence as it might seem: The reason it expired then was because that was the first day Congress was back in session after summer recess; since Al Qaeda was aiming to hit Congress with United Airlines Flight 93, they’d chosen this day. But it looks to me like the recess ended the previous Tuesday, Sep 4th.

This Register article on new US anti-porn actions has a strong headline and lede:

US rules all porn is child porn
All pornography in the US is now effectively classified as child pornography, unless providers can prove the ages of everyone taking part.

...but displays unfortunate naïveté further in:

While the law is designed to protect minors, and prevent exploitation, some free speech campaigners argue that the law gives authorities an awful lot of power to close down site they don't approve of, even if that was not its original goal.

Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that, guys.

bugsybanana and I finally saw Revenge of the Sith tonight. Oh, man! Is Lucas deliberately telling all his actors to tone it down to mannequin levels? Even Samuel Jackson was wooden. I guess all the emoting was being saved up for the Emperor’s mad cackle-fest.

Speaking of which, all those people saying Lucas intended a commentary on recent politics were right. The parallels with Viktor Yuschenko couldn’t have been more obvious.

The romance scenes were terrible, as I expected. The scene where Anakin and Padmé argue over who loves the other more had me moaning in pain. What surprised me was how uninspired the fight scenes were. There were occasional moments of cleverness, but mostly the fights were rote and sometimes hard to follow. The fight scenes in the Clone Wars animated series beat the hell out of this.

My favorite moment may have been seeing the inside of Senator Organa’s ship, which I had recognized from the first exterior shot as the rebel blockade runner that’s the very first ship we see in the original Star Wars. The interior, while clearly new, had that obvious designed-in-the-1970s look.

Via The Poor Man, I see that Tech Central Station — Instapundit’s favorite right-wing propaganda mill — is now running essays preaching creationism (in its latest pseudo-scientific flavor, “intelligent design”). Not that scientific illiteracy is anything new for TCS; they once ran an article claiming that temperature does not measure a physical quantity!

The creationist article, by Mustafa Akyol, is a generally unremarkable piece of bullshit, hitting most of the usual ID lying points. False claim that ID is not motivated by religious belief — check. Appeal to “specified complexity” (ID shorthand for picking some existing biological feature and arguing that evolution must have had the goal of producing that feature) — check. Wait, here’s something new!:

Non-design is "old ground," too. It dates back to Ancient Greece. As theologian Benjamin Wiker unveils in his book, Moral Darwinism, the first theory of an un-designed and evolving world was developed by Epicurus, the founder hedonism. And his point of reference was not scientific evidence; he simply wanted to get rid of the idea of the divine, which he found disturbing. Epicurus' ideas about nature were later developed by Lucretius and much later by the modern forerunners of Darwin.

Cute! Here’s what’s going on in that paragraph: Epicurus’s philosophy, generally called Epicureanism, claimed that a good life could be had by seeking modest and temperate pleasures — knowledge, freedom from fear, friendship — rather than following the dictates of gods. While the philosophical term “hedonism” is sometimes applied to this philosophy, the common use of the word implies a decadent lifestyle devoted to seeking crude pleasures and indulging gluttony, sloth, and lust.

By misrepresenting Epicurus’s ideas this way, Akyol implies (without actually saying outright) that evolution is part of a secularist plot to undermine belief in God so as to allow sinners to sin without guilt. (This plugs into something I’ve heard right-wing Christians say, that secularists really do believe in God, but we deny it so that we don’t have to live by God’s rules.) It’s a pretty elegant bank shot, economical and concise.

Remember a couple years back when I summarized the Lawrence vs Texas decision? A bit from my characterization of Scalia’s dissent:

This decision will make it harder for to make life difficult for gay people. We won’t be able to fire them at will, or evict them from their homes, or ban their yucky behavior. [... ] Um, not that I have anything against gay people. Honest.

Scalia hasn’t clarified that position much, refusing even to tell us whether he’s stopped sodomizing his wife yet. But here’s a Canadian evangelical who’s clearly Scalia’s philosophical bedfellow:

• Teachers who will be forced to teach about same-sex relationships and validate same-sex marriage to their students without accommodation for their deeply held religious beliefs. See the Chris Kempling case.
• Students who will not have their religious beliefs respected but will be forced not only to learn about theses issues but also to reproduce what they have learned on tests.
• Politicians will be required to give congratulatory certificates on significant anniversaries of same-sex couples.
• Printers will be required to print invitations for same-sex weddings. See the Scott Brockie case.
• Halls, caterers, florists, musicians, etc. will all be required to provide their services without discrimination to same-sex weddings.

Imagine. Soon we’ll have to let them drink out of our water fountains and sit wherever they want on the bus. (Though what’s with the congratulatory certificates? Is that a Canadian thing? Are they worried that gay cooties can be transmitted backwards through the mail?)

Idaho State Legislature’s House Concurrent Resolution No. 29:
A Concurrent Resolution Stating Legislative Findings and Commending Jared and Jerusha Hess and the City of Preston for the Production of the Movie "Napoleon Dynamite."

[...] WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export; and
WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered multiethnic relationships; and
WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics;
and [...]
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!" [...]