Stare decisis and super precedents...

There's a great post over at Balkinization about the role of precedents in the Supreme Court and how that relates to cases such as Roe, which most right-wingers would like to see over-turned.

Failure?

Here's a neat trick that jessmerk pointed out to me today. Go to Google and type in "failure", then click on "I'm feeling lucky." What should come up, but the official biography of George W. Bush.

Moral relativism

If you've ever had a chance to read it, Southern Appeal is a conservative legal blog written by a pretty smart guy. He and Publius of Legal Fiction often go at it, and the results can be entertaining. That said, the blog is basically crap, starting off with the tagline "Giving the bayonet to the 'dictatorship of relativism' since 2002." Why it is crap is perfectly exemplified by this post. Read it and read the comments. You'll see that it's a bunch of southern troglodyte conservatives (am I being redundant?) joking about the Reformation and deciding it's better to bag on liberals. Now isn't that nice. For 500 years Catholics and Protestants have been at each other's throats over the "fundamental" issues of their respective theologies. I mean, these battles were so important that members of each sect have willingly killed and tortured thousands of members of the other. And yet, this battle is unimportant, a laughing matter even, compared to the vicious attack of liberal thought and politics. Hmmmm... So are they acknowledging that relative to liberal ideas, the concepts they originally fought over are similar enough to merit cooperation? Doesnt' this seem to imply that their so-called dedication to moral objectivity exists only within the scale of inter-sectarian issues and fades away when they move out of sectarian topics? And how does that differ from relativism? Anybody?

It's all about control.

Do you know what this article and this article have in common? If you do, do you know how they might relate to this article. Let me tell you: they're all about control. Specifically, they're all about the religious right's burning desire to control our sexuality and our lives. Really.

Consider the first article. It reports the heartening news that pharmaceutical companies have developed a vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer in this country. It also reports the appalling, yet unsurprising news, that our radical mullahs have severe misgivings about making this vaccine available to teenage girls because it might "send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage". Really? And what subtle message are these cracker-ass christopaths sending? Well, really, there's two. They are:

1. "I don't care if your cervix turns into a rotten pile of mush rendering you either sterile or dead, at least you weren't having sex."
2. "Our desire to see all woman conform to our views on sexuality and behavior outweighs any concern we might have for their health and welfare."

Both are equally disgusting and, ultimately, both are about controlling women's behavior. Consider what the wingnuts want to do: create disincentives to pre-marital sex. They want to make the avoidable risks of pre-marital sex unavoidable, thus ensuring that women inclined to consider such things won't engage in pre-marital sex. Unable to pass laws that explicitly penalize pre-marital sex, they're content to gamble away women's future for the sole purpose of controlling their behavior.

And look at the second article. It's all about Samuel Alito, Bush's new nominee to the Supreme Court and how the right-wing loves him. Why? Well, for one thing, he's opposed to abortion and seems likely to be another vote on the Court in any future challenges to Roe. Ask any right-winger why he opposes Roe and they'll try to stuff your ears, eyes and mouth full of putrescent shit about "the sanctity of life" and "save the babies" and "aren't you glad your mother didn't have an abortion?" Dig deeper, though, and you'll come up with this justification, "women should bear the consequences of their pre-marital sex and those consequences should always include a baby." Same argument, same topic. Make the risks of sexual activity so high that it creates disincentives to have pre-marital sex and do that regardless of the ultimate long-term effects. How many conservatives, despite their pathological willingness to suggest they might do so, have actually adopted a baby from a girl or woman who decided not to have an abortion? Not many, I'm quite certain.

So finally, we come to the third article. It reports that some drug companies are working on creating anti-HIV gels that can be inserted directly into a woman's vagina and, presumably, a man's anus so as to prevent the transmission of HIV. Sounds good, right? Well, it is. But what's going to happen if those companies are successful and start trying to market the gel in the United States. Well, suddenly, gay men might be better able to avoid a risk of unprotected gay sex. And, suddenly the raving lunatic fucktards of Kansas City won't be able to chant AIDS Kills Fags Dead with any factual basis. If the risk of gay sex decreases, what do you think the right-wing is going to have to say about that?

Etymology

Last night on a South Park re-run Chef got engaged to a succubus. The boys of South Park went to their closeted gay teacher to ask why he might do such a thing. The teacher, trying to act hetero, said it was because no man can withstand the power of the poontang. I don't think I've heard that phrase since high school. So, for shits and giggles, I googled it. And guess what. There's a website that discusses the etymology of poontang.

Enjoy!

Evil bastards

I'm posting this late, so you all have probably seen this story, but I'll post it anyway. Is there any better proof that we are being governed by a cabal of evil bastards? In public, IN FUCKING PUBLIC!, the Fat Bastard says that he wants to exempt the CIA or some such intelligence agency from bans on torture. Where are the psychotic Christopaths to rail against evil now? Goddam.

The market at work...

The post has an informative article on how to avoid high heating bills this coming winter. High heating bills. Call me a naive moron, but why oh why do we only see this stuff when the price of gas goes up? I mean, why can't we have articles about how to save energy. Or articles about how to reduce fossil fuel consumption and stave off global warming. Or articles about efficiency as an aesthetic concern. Really, I mean it.

Having fathered a petite little lass recently, I (and my lovely wife) have been on a home ownership kick recently. We've looked at houses all over Capitol Hill and even in...gasp!...Virginia. One thing I've noticed is that, almost uniformly, houses currently on the market in DC lack good windows. Not only that, but they also lack efficient heating systems, insulation, and other such methods of energy savings. Last week we nearly put a bid down on a house. It was a beautiful house. We visited it four times, it was so beautiful. Each time we went, though, I was struck by the tall ceilings, the uninsulated sky lights, the single-pane windows and the 40s-era furnace in the basement. The wife and I worried about whether we could afford the heating bill this coming winter, much less the cost of making the house air-tight. Thus, on our fourth and last visit, I asked the owner what his heating bill was the previous two winters. His answer: $200-300 per month.

If gas prices really do double this winter, that dude (actually, the new owner) is going to be in a world of hurt. But had he done anything like insulate his skylights or replace his furnace? Nope. Of course, that might be because he's not sensitive to price changes. Or maybe he knew he was going to sell his house. I don't know. But even if I were wealthy, $300 a month to heat 1200 square feet seems downright foolish.

Rant rant rant.

Anyway, here's the thing. If you're a homeowner, read the article and contemplate which, if any, of the simpler steps in the article you could take. Weatherstripping is a breeze and caulking is easy too. Try it and see if your energy bills (and hence usage) don't improve this winter. And if you live in an older house like on we're going to buy on the Hill, try getting an energy audit. The link will take you to a self-audit, but energy firms will actually do a full audit on your house and tell you exactly how you can save energy and preserve natural resources.

Accelerating global warming

There's a lengthy article in the Times today. It has an interesting discussion about how feedback mechanisms in the Artic act to amplify warming (and cooling) trends in that region. Though there are clearly scientists who think that current artic melting is likely not anthropogenic and that it may merely represent an amplification of a natural fluctuation in artic weather, the general consensus seems to be the current warming and melting is the result of human influence and must be halted to avert disastrous global effects. None of this is news to attentive environmentalists, but it's always nice to read in-depth articles on the subject.

Oh how I miss the days when I could fuck hookers, get the clap, take penicillin, marry a chaste young virgin and beat her uneducated ass with impunity

Not me, of course. I wasn't born then. I'm a product of the sexual revolution. Thus, if I weren't happily married with a child, I'd be a sad and lonely, yet highly successful, predatory bachelor racking up the score. So you can see, I'm not complaining. Rather, the lamenting comes from none other than Mr. Leon Kass, former chairman and current member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

Mr. Kass, or Lonely Leon as his friends like to call him, begins his lament in this delightful piece. Read it and weep with the sorrow of our lost innocence, sacrificed on the bloody altar of female sovereignty. Think back to how lovely it was in the days of yore when the miracle of biochemical transmutation took the sodden contents of men's aching testicles and created love. As Lonely Leon so gracefully states it:

"For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love".

Cry for those bygone days for they are gone forever. Now, here in this gray and gloomy present; in this modern, loveless wasteland; in this barren cultural steppe, we are faced with certain doom. Why? Because, "For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature."

That's right boys and girls, we're doomed because instead of abiding by their natural programming and fucking like rabbits after they marry at age 19 so that they can make lots and lots of babies during their fertile twenties, women are staying....gasp....SINGLE!

Wow. If it ain't those durn gays trying to get married and destroy the world, it's those durn single gurls trying not to get married and destroy the world.

Bobke on the Prez

If you like Bob Roll, like Lance Armstrong and think our President is a two-bit nudnik, please check out this blogpost. It's worth a laugh.

Rational self-interest?

So, I've been reading "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Tom Frank. I should have read it 9 months ago, but I've been distracted. I'm not terribly far into the book, but the thesis is pretty easy to distill:

Kansas is the state which best represents the changing winds of American politics. In recent years, Kansas has become overwhelmingly Republican. This has occurred as overwhelmingly poor to middle-class white counties and towns switch their political allegience from the Democratic party. These voters make this switch despite the fact that the economic policies espoused by Republicans have decimated their local economies and deprived them of the various social protections (i.e. affordable healthcare) that they have had in previous years. This seems irrational only until you realize that they are motivated almost entirely by their social conservatism and hatred of all things gay, elitist, east-coast, snobby, ad infinitum.

So far, this seems about right to me, atleast at first glance. I rail regularly on this blog (or used to when I posted regularly) against Americans who buy gas-guzzling cars and then whimper like beaten dogs about the high price of gasoline. Any half-wit who reads the newspaper knows, of course, that gas supplies are going to be more scarce in the future and will drive prices up. The fact that this has occurred in recent weeks due to hurrican impacts merely represents an acceleratoing of that that schedule. Either way, some suburban fucktard driving a Hummer is going to get dinked (and I'm going to laugh at his fat, ignorant ass). And that, of course, is why Tom Frank's thesis initially makes sense. If you're too fucking stupid to recognize the long-term financial impacts of your driving choices, how the fuck are you going to look beyond inflammatory social and plumb the economic impacts of voting Republican?

As it turns out, though, that Tom Frank's analysis may not be sufficiently precise and my sweeping generalizations may actually reflect voting changes in Kansas better than one might think. What do I mean by that?

A professor from Princeton has recently released a paper titled, What's the Mater with What's the Matter with Kansas. In it, he takes 50 years of National Election Survey data and tries to tease out voting trends in Kansas. I haven't yet read the whole thing, but the executive summary pretty much lays it out. Lower-income whites are not voting Republican at any greater rate now than they have in the past in Kansas. The people in Kansas who are voting Republican are the middle- and upper-classes. Thus, Joe Six-pack is likely to vote much like he did in 1950. It's Johnny McMansion who is more likely to vote Republican. And who is Johnny McMansion? That same fucktard in the Hummer with the "I Support Pres. Bush and Our Troops" stickers on his car bitching about the price of gas.

Hah! Anyway, once I finish the paper and the book, I might have something more intelligent to say.

Evolving viruses

The Times has an article this morning that is well-worth reading. It concerns the spread of avian flu into Western Europe from Asia and mentions, ever so briefly, that though Asian bird flu is not yet transmittable from human to human, it may well gain that capacity through "a variety of biological processes".

Hmmm... What could those processes be? Evolution anyone? Certainly, the CDC seems to think so. What about our President? Well, it's hard to say. Given his seriously low poll numbers, the President has decided to prove to America that he's "serious" about keeping us safe and undertaken a new effort to address asian bird flu. But, isn't this the same President who endorsed Intelligent Design, a non-scientific theory whose pseudo-scientific proponents couldn't design an anti-viral drug if their lives (or, more importantly, our lives) depended on it? Why yes it is.

So what's an ignorant chump like Pres. Bush supposed to do? Well, he could recognize that ID is just a bunch of creationist claptrap, let the real scientists go to work, and get the fuck out of the way. Or, he could just use the Army to quarantine the entire country. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Black helicopters

I saw a news story the other day which reported that President Bush is looking to either do away with or further limit the Posse Comitatus Act. The act, which is located at 18 USC 1385, says the following:

"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

This language was written in 1878 during the last throes of Reconstruction. Federal troops had spent the last 13 years keeping the peace and, among other things, protecting polling stations. Though there are suggestions that its authors were concerned that the troops were preventing the imposition of Jim Crow, it is also clear that there were very real concerns about the politicization of a standing army. Whatever the case, this Act has stood since that time for the proposition that armed forces are intended to protect against foreign invaders and that they should not be involved in domestic law enforcement. In a world in which far too many purportedly democratic countries have fallen to rogue armies, this seems like a pretty smart idea.

Now, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, Dear Leader and his cronies want to sink that idea. According to the principle conservative narrative coming out of Katrina, the federal response to the hurricane was not a disaster and any difficulties that arose were either the fault of Democratic state leaders or limitations, such as Posse Comitatus, on the President's ability to act. Thus, the only way for Americans to protect themselves in the future is to elect Republicans to state government and unfetter our President from the arduous confines of the law.

Such a step fits quite nicely withthe unitary executive theory, which Dear Leader and his apologists have adopted wholesale. The unitary executive is the idea that the structural separation of powers written into the Constitution isn't as clear cut as most people would assume. Whereas you or I view our government as a system where Congress creates laws, courts interpret them and the President executes them, a proponent of the unitary executive would argue that the President also has an important interpretive role and that it is his duty to refuse to execute laws he believes are unconstitutional.

The problem with this idea, apart from the fact that it woven out of whole cloth by right-wing idealogues in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, is that it effectively removes the judicial check on presidential actions. And, when you've got an insular administration devoted to secrecy, inclined to fabrication and devoid of decency, that's a dangerous position. In such an administration, it's easy to find people willing to argue thatthe President has carte blanche to torture prisoners or imprison American citizens without charge and without an opportunity for a hearing. The question is, what would those people do if you took away any limit on their power to employ troops within our common boundaries?

I'm not saying there's black helicopters poised to cart us all of to the camps, but one has to wonder whether President Bush and his Republican minions have any outer limits on their will to power.

Peewee's Fun House

Actually, it's a cool interactive site with GWB as Ragdoll in Chief.

If you want to live in a theocracy...

I came across this lovely bit of reporting on Daily Kos today. Seems that some members of the Indiana state legislature have decided to criminalize artificial insemination by unwed women. That's right, if this law passes and you're, say, a single, professional woman in Indianapolis who wishes to bear a child, you better find yourself a man. The ol' turkey baster method is going to get you 3 to 5 in the slammer.

Query why exaclty the enlightened Republicans of Indiana decided to sponsor this bill. The sponsor claims that she is trying to get the law passed because she believes that marriage should be a requirement for motherhood. Obviously that is a lie. The bill doesn't bar unwed women from having babies through sexual intercourse, only through artificial insemination. If she really wanted marriage to be a requirement for motherhood, the sponsor should try to ban single-motherhood entirely (ignoring Constitutional questions for the time being). But that's not what she did. She targetted only women who get pregnant through artificial insemination. Again, I ask, why is that.

Here's what I think. I think that what this law is really trying to do is prevent gay couples from having children through artificial insemination. I doubt there's many single women in Indiana seeking artificial insemination (though there's probably a few). I bet, though, that if you went to Indianapolis or South Bend you'd find plenty of solid, middle-class gay couples who'd like to join us heteros in the joys of child-rearing and family life. Basically, this bill is just another salvo from the bible-thumping neanderthal proto-fascists; another assault on liberty from the people who brought you the Inquisition (except they're probably Protestant).

A parliamentary system?

Leave it to Publius, my favorite blogger, to write a post that nearly convinces me that we need a parliamentary system. Given the profound corruption of the Republican Party leadership and the abject cowardice of most Democratic politicians, perhaps it is time for a parliamentary system that allows smaller parties to create governing coalitions. It's got to be better than our current system of governance, in which politicians either polarize their electorate to appeal to the 50.0001% of the voting population that is there base or mold themselves to every passing fancy of some faceless average voter they've discovered through polling.

On a not dissimilar note, my father made an interesting comment this weekend. While discussing the current political situation in this country, he wondered just how venal politicians have become if they're basically willing to give away the farm in return for a couple thousand dollar donation from corporate interests. He's so right.

Tom Delay is but the shiny, pus-filled head of a much larger and deeper boil on the ass of America.

And that boil, dear readers, is called the Republican Party. As the linked article makes clear, you can lance the boil and let some pus out, but let it go untreated and it will grow another slimier, dirtier and more deeply infected head.

But this isn't a post about medicine, so much as one about legal procedure. If you read this CNN story you will see Tom Delay assert, as he has repeatedly over the last few days, that the indictments passed down against him are products of Ronnie Earl's partisan vendetta. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Given that Mr. Delay is making this accusation, I'd like to suggest that he has the burden of proof with regards to that statement. Specifically, I'd like to see Mr. Delay prove that a grand jury indictment has been fabricated with partisan ends.

Consider for a second, the following paragraph from the Travis County's court website concerning the rights of defendants in felony cases:

"In Texas, the law dictates that before a defendant can be forced to face trial in a felony case, a grand jury must return an indictment for the specific offense charged. A grand jury consists of 12 citizens who sit for a period of three months and listen to allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Nine members must determine that probable cause exists to believe the defendant has committed the offense and vote a true bill before the indictment will issue. The defendant has no right to appear before the grand jury or offer evidence before that body, but the grand jury can allow such evidence if it desires."

Huh. Assuming Ronnie Earl, in his vast and partisan conspiracy to deny Tom Delay his god-given right to subvert democracy hasn't altered the Travis County website and filled it with lies, this means that at least 9 out of 12 people viewed the evidence against Tom Delay and determined that there was probable cause that he broke the law. And what, exactly, is probable cause? Well, we know that it requires less evidence than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in trials. However, it requires more evidence than a "mere suspicion" that a crime has occurred. The exact definition is unclear and has traditionally been defined by courts to be some version of a "what would a reasonable man" believe.

Which brings us back to the issue of Tom Delay. Assuming that Ronnie Earl is out on some political witchhunt, how exactly did he get 9 or more grand jury members to agree that Tom Delay broke the law? Did he pay them? Did he coerce them? Did he just show them the evidence and let them decide? If he did, is it really a partisan witchhunt or is Tom Delay just the scuzzbucket fucktard we know him to be?

The problem with marketing

The New York Times Magazine has a fairly interesting article today, arguing that resource conservation, especially energy conservation, will never succeed until it becomes "fashionable". The article contains a variety of quotes from various marketers and advertisers about the fact that conservation is currently just too uncool. Among other policies, the article suggests that environmentalists should move away from un-hip conservationists like Jimmy Carter and Ed Begley Jr. and lavish its attention (and presumably dollars) on people like Michael Stipe and Mos Def.

Personally, I think that's a load of crap. I agree that very few people will adopt energy conservation measures out of a sense of altruism. Shit, most people won't even do so out of a sense of duty to their offspring. If that's the case, is it really reasonable to expect "fashion" to be any more powerful a motivator than familial ties? I don't know.

I do know that even if it is, fashion is not the key to the sort of sustainable, systemic change that is necessary to provide the sort of environmental, economic and social benefits the article hints at. Consider the example of the 1970s. The early 1970s were, by any measure, the heyday of the environmental movement. We saw such landmark laws as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species movement come to fruition. As the article notes, these laws were driven by popular support and the clearly fashionable idea that protecting the environment was a good thing. Just a few years later, during the oil shocks of the mid-1970s, people even began to reject icons of the American car culture like the Nova SS muscle car in favor of smaller, fuel-sipping Japanese imports. These sorts of changes, driven either by fashion or by economics seemed to be lasting.

Fast-forward 30 years and consider the environmental landscape now. You've got a hairy-backed whore for the development lobby...um...I mean Richard Pombo, trying to "improve" the Endangered Species Act. Average fuel economy of cars purchased and driven in the United States has been declining since 1988 and the nation's administrative agencies and Senate refuse to improve or increase our national Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. The President, meanwhile, has spent the last five years trying to gut the Clean Air Act.

If the fashionable environmentalism of the early- and mid-1970s had been truly sustainable, would we be in this situation? I don't think so. Fashion, be it political or be it sartorial, is ephemeral at best and hardly the basis for a sound national policy. Admittedly, fashion can get people motivated, but I think the track record for America's environmental laws suggests that it cannot sustain them. What's the answer then?

I don't really know. I'd like to think it's education and appeals to reason, but I don't think so. I know far too many smart, liberal people who view the environment as a useful political cudgel but not as the fundamental underpinning of our economy and society (and for that matter, lives) that it actually is. And perhaps that is where the problem lies. The "environment" is just too big an idea. For that matter, so is "ecosystem". These words are abstractions representing systems that are so complex as to be impossible to fully understand. Asking someone to sustain an interest in "protecting the environment" is like asking someone to "define life". Most people are wiling to give it a go, but after a while they'll get bogged down and lose interest. Make it fashionable and they might try a little longer, but it won't last.

So what can we conclude from all this? Perhaps this: We're Doomed.

Isn't that cheery?