Quote For The Day

“In America there is no anti-status quo media,”says Smith. “It’s all the same four big companies, and they’re all afraid of losing Budweiser so it’s just like, there’s no voice. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the most watched ‘news’ program by people under thirty-five and it’s a spoof comedy show. There is a huge market out there of disenfranchised kids, and we do these political things which aren’t Republican or Democrat, but more like how a punk would look at things, which is more like ‘This is absurd. It’s not right, left, center, whatever, it’s just fucked.’”

Shane Smith, quoted in Matt Mason's excellent book The Pirate's Dilemma.

If He Plays, We Must Praise

Purty writing can never be lauded too highly. Here is a very nice, tender and compassionate piece by James Matthew Wilson. Sample:

We marched in support of the foundation of charity at the root of any Christian society; we marched in declaring the liberty of the Catholic Church to feed its flock no matter where that flock might be, and no matter what its circumstances. We did not march in complacent favor of the destructive effects of illegal immigration on American society, in support of “redistributing” income from the poorest Americans to the poorest foreigners, or in scorn of the rule of law exercised within its constitutional limits.

No one would know why we marched that day, however, just to look at us. And few persons trouble themselves to recognize how the advocates of rampant, open, and unregulated immigration into this country are pleased to pit the interests of the poor against the poor. Those same advocates-ever ready to put a knife to the throat of the Catholic Church, when it proclaims its gospel of justice and charity regarding the dignity of the unborn, the importance of private property and free association, and the sovereignty of the family-were doubtless happy that day to take advantage of that Church to swell the crowds and defeat any meaningful effort to slow the economic and cultural dissolution of our country.

Concern respecting immigration isn't always a dog whistle for bigotry. I wish that more spokesmen were this articulate. I further wish that this could be distributed to every Parish in the country.

GOP And Business -The Honeymoon Is Over

Well, I predicted something like this:

he fight over President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan shined a light on the growing gap between Big Business and the GOP. While House Republicans voted unanimously against the legislation — twice — the vast majority of major business groups lobbied hard for it.

Eric Gomez Crawls Back Down

As if to emphasize the appropriate nature of the group's name, as well as demonstrating his uncertain grasp of First Amendment jurisprudence in the defamation area, City Councilor Eric Gomez initially threatened to sue community organizer Julie Hall and the organization Who Owns Tulsa for this allegedly defamatory statement:

"And, that has been a pattern that we've seen with him and his voting, when his constituents voice their concerns, he votes the other way,"

Now it would appear that Gomez has abandoned the notion of litigation and is willing to "settle for an apology". Actually, an apology from the City Council to the residents of the regrettably named White City neighborhood would be far more in order.
The Council has done a first-rate job of portraying the White City protest as a simple NIMBY problem, and one must concede that there is some of that involved. But then one remembers that the construction/development interests downtown want the YMCA relocated because it interferes with their backyard, and specifically with their misguided and phantasmal vision of a revitalized downtown (I've lived through at least four of these doomed schemes already and I've come to know a boondoggle when I see one). The White City residents noted that Tulsa has a much more appropriate setting for the mental patients and alcoholics living at the "Y" - a location boasting excellent proximity to high-quality medical care and good access to the public transportation lines which would connect the new neighbors to the social services and blood banks downtown. Yeah, you got it....Utica Square would be the perfect new location for the "Y" and would permit the downtown Mob an opportunity to develop their nascent egalitarian impulse. Maybe some of the Cascia hall moms could swap their prescription Somas for a little crank or junk with the new arrivals to the community.

Who owns Tulsa? We already know the answer to that one, and it ain't us. But Julie Hall and her friends deserve a salute for fighting the good fight, anyway.

John Derbyshire - A Neo-Rockefeller?

Here's a very entertaining article by right-wing curmudgeon John Derbyshire, "How Radio Wrecks The Right" in which he outlines the manifold ways in which the Dittoheads contribute to the petrification of the GOP.

He's right, of course, but fortunately the process of ossification is too far advanced for his counsel to be heard. This is probably why the article is published in The American Conservative, the Warsaw Ghetto/leper colony of conservative magazines. Even so, one of the lunatics at Free Republic went so far as to describe Derbyshire as a "neo-Rockefeller" type, which is a hoot. For those who haven't read him , the man is not merely right-wing but Screaming Monster Loony right-wing. Still not quite crazy enough for the Alan Keyes grokking brown-shirts that seem to constitute an amazingly large proportion in what's left of the Party,though.

Alan Keyes - "A Highly Articulate Thug"

Just in case you aren't already a Ta-Nehisi Coates fan, here is one reason you should be:

Keyes, a product of the Ivy Leagues, has long been held aloft as some sort of intellectual of the far right. But anyone who's ever seen the wannabe Malcolms coming out of the prison talking "knowledge of self," anyone who's read Soul On Ice, knows exactly what Alan Keyes is--a highly articulate thug.

Couldn't possibly say it better. The comparison to Eldridge Cleaver is brilliant. That's gonna leave a mark.

Jim Bunning Is An Asshole

And a particularly disgusting one at that.

At a Lincoln Day Dinner speech over the weekend, Bunning predicted that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer in nine months, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The paper reports that Bunning reiterated his support of conservative judges, saying “that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg…has cancer.”

Cold? Check. Vicious? Check. Incredibly stupid? Check, check, check.

Alternative Tulsa Needs To Pass The Smoke

....because it's gotta be some pretty good shit.

Yet the election of Bell puts Tulsa Republicans increasingly out of step with the public, even with Republican voters. Bell, after all, is a proud John Birch Society member and its a safe bet that few GOP voters under 40 have ever heard of John Birch.

Bell's Ron Paul connection is equally problematic since the deservedly obscure Rep. Paul proved to be a colossal dud among GOP primary voters last year. (How many primaries did Paul win?)

Then there's the losing record of Bell herself, defeated in her race for county commissioner in a heavily Republican county.

Add in her ties to GOP has-been Chris Medlock, former city councilor who lost a race for mayor and the state legislature, and you have local Republican leadership so hapless, cranky and right-of center that anyone even remotely interested in sensible public policy is likely to flee to the Democrats.

As we said at the outset, with Sally Bell in charge, it's a great time to be a Tulsa Democrat.

Wow. Where to begin? First of all, during the Presidential, Tulsa marched in lockstep with every other Oklahoma County to join Alabama in the ranks of "least progressive State" in the Union. Some of that was due to our good ol'fashioned, unreconstructed racism, but not all off it. If our Democratic talent doesn't come from Muskogee or Cherokee County or, God Forbid, from Little Dixie it doesn't come at all. It is easier to find a live octopus here than it is to find an elected Democrat. Texas will go blue before Tulsa does - count on it.

Secondly, by his vigorous opposition to much of the construction and realty interests that treat City Hall as their own personal fiefdom, Chris Medlock actually takes the more progressive position. Greater transparency, neighborhood empowerment....what's so Neanderthal about that?

Lastly, Ron Paul performed shockingly well in the Republican Primaries, particularly since his anti-war, anti-deficit zeal flew right in the teeth of the putative leader of his Party as well as being in harp deviance from the Republican base. Yet, IIRC, he outpolled the "inevitable nominee" Rudy Giulianni and may well have factored in McCain's win in South Carolina.

I'm all for Democratic optimism, but a little realism is usually a good thing.

GOP Suicide

If there were a Darwin Award for politics, this would surely be a nominee:

Sunday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour announced he would join his neighbor, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, in turning down federal incentives to expand unemployment insurance coverage; both are Republicans.

"It would require us in the future to raise the unemployment tax," Gov. Barbour said in an interview at the meeting of the National Governors Association. "We're looking to create more jobs. It's a practical matter."

My David Broder Problem - And Ours

Courtesy of the comments section at Balloon Juice, we are reminded in the wake of the Judd Gregg debacleof Atrios's definition of "High Broderism":

We normally think of "High Broderism" as the worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. But in reality this is just the cover Broder uses for his real agenda, the defense of what he perceives to be "the establishment" at all costs. The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way."

Nancy P. looks pretty savvy at the moment, no? Judd Gregg, who New Hampshire has long known to be a whore of the old school, fumbling for your wallets and watch before you ever hit the sack, reveals this bipartisan nonesnse to be the Chimerical Questing Beast it truly is.

Israeli Politics - Soviet Style

From Anti-War News:

Israel Bans Arab Parties From Election
Balad Chairman Asks Why Lieberman is so Afraid of Democracy

By a margin of 26-3, the Israeli Central Elections Committee decided to ban the Balad Party from running in next month’s election. By a margin of 21-8, they also banned the United Arab List-Ta’al (UAL-T). The two bans will prevent more than half of the current Arab members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, from running for reelection.

The Arab parties earned the ire of the most hawkish elements in the Israeli government by publicly opposing the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Balad likewise made enemies by explicitly calling for equal rights for all citizens of Israel, regardless of national or ethnic identity, which the ruling Kadima Party said would “undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”

A handful of Arabs will remain on the ballots across Israel, running for as-yet-unbanned Jewish majority parties, but with the general consensus among most of the population that Israeli Arabs are traitors based purely on their ethnic background, they would seem to have an uphill battle. Many disillusioned Arab voters may not vote at all, now that the only significant Arab parties aren’t allowed on the ballot.

During the discussion, Balad Chairman Jamal Zahaika called the move to ban his party “a test for Israeli democracy” and warned that the ban would lead to an outright Arab boycott of the election.

Zahaika also asked Avigdor Lieberman, the driving force behind the ban, “Why are you afraid of democracy?” Lieberman declared Balad a terrorist organization and said “whoever values life” would understand the need to ban it.

Spheres Of Consensus

Here is a very good article,"Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press" by Jay Rosen. Essentially, Rosen describes why the journalist class sound so unbelievably out-of-touch when dealing with any topic. As seen on the graph above, the pundits and reporters view themselves as the gatekeepers for the coveted positions within the "sphere of consensus" which, for them, defines issues that lie beyond all questioning or legitimate inquiry. Rosen argues that the sphere of consensus, as determined by the so-called MSM is deteriorating, and one gets the feeling that he sees this as a good thing.
I'm certainly inclined to agree, though I think there is a counter-argument that this is symptomatic of a decline in consensus of any kind and thus a risk of true societal deviancy and civil disintegration.

When You Agree With A Buffoon

it is a painful situation.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A Tulsa lawmaker said Tuesday he will file legislation to repeal the sales tax on the purchase of guns or ammunition in Oklahoma.

"As Americans, we should not have to pay a tax to exercise our constitutional rights — especially our Second Amendment rights," said Rep. Eric Proctor, D-Tulsa.

The measure, by Proctor and state Sen. Kenneth Corn, D-Howe, D-Poteau, will not affect any dedicated revenue stream for wildlife or other programs, Proctor said, adding it would have minimal impact on the state treasury.

I am opposed to all regressive taxation, so good for him. But Proctor (delightful name, so redolent of association with School hall monitors and proctologists) is clearly trying to appeal to the most hysterical wing of Second Amendment enthusiasts. A pox upon this butched-up wus.

Althouse And Balkin On Marriage

Pretty good bloggingheads discussion on the topic of eliminating the status of marriage that I mentioned a few posts back.

Sullivan v. Paglia

In re the little dustup between Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia on the topic of gay marriage I must say that I find that Paglia has far the better argument when she says "....government should get out of the marriage business. Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by churches." By way of replying, Sullivan says:

his is a very strange reading of Catholic history and American history. Marriage was not a sacrament until the thirteenth century; many Protestants, most famously Luther, denied its sacramental quality through the sixteenth century. The first marriages in America were civil, not religious in nature:

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, among the first things they did for the well-ordering of their new commonwealth was to institute the Dutch custom of civil marriage with which they had become familiar during their long sojourn in the Netherlands.

The Dutch made civil marriage the law of the land in 1590, and the first marriage in New England, that of Edward Winslow to the widow Susannah White, was performed on May 12, 1621, in Plymouth by Governor William Bradford, in exercise of his office as magistrate.

Now it is true that the churches have conflated civil and religious marriage ever since and this has become part of the messy civil-religious aspect of marriage in contemporary America. And Camille, as usual, has a point: a cleaner solution would be civil unions for everyone, gay and straight.

For most of it's existence, marriage has been a much more laisseze faire institution than it is today. The entire business of formal registration of marriage in the west did in fact begin as a function of the ecclesiastical courts and was mostly concerned with the establishment of legitimacy of children (largely of concern in terms of inheritance) and settlement of property rights. Today these concerns are no longer as relevant and are often handled without regard to the marriage estate. In the wake of the Reformation (which serves to explain a lot about why Luther argued against Church control over the formalities), marriage increasingly fell under the authority of the state. At this point the government has maintained the prerogative to issue marriage licenses for so long that no one even questions their warrant to do so. But most of the accoutrements of marriage can and are handled through a variety of other devices of the civil law, such as health-care proxies, and through a more enlightened treatment of testamentary law and child-support. The other issues that arise should be (relatively) simple subject matter for statutory cures. The argument for any state licensing of marriage is just rather weak....after all, the IRS doesn't hesitate to argue the existence of a common-law marriage when it suits their purpose, so the licensing or lack thereof is not always dispositive even today.
I think that this would not satisfy Sullivan, however, as what he really wants is the State sanction, even if the State properly has no good business sanctioning any sort of marriage whatsoever.

What Dreams May Come

K-Lo gets terrifying:

Tonight I was over at the vice president's house for one of their holiday parties. It was like a gathering of old friends — friends who likely won't see the inside of the naval observatory for a bit. Cheney aides like David Addington. Conservative Hill aides. Bill Bennett ... Karl Rove.

And that's the picture I want for my Facebook page: Karl Rove with Dick Cheney; Karl was two behind me in the receiving line. Maybe Lynne Cheney will bring a signed copy for Jon Stewart next time she's on.

They could still come back in four ...

In the strange, shadowy world of K-Lo's fevered imagination Lynne Cheney still has the opportunity to carry on the Presidential Dynasty. No word on how her campaign will explain the soft-core lesbian porn passages in Lynne's legendary 1981 pulp non-bestseller Sisters (available as a .pdf file here).
if they can make that one fly, they might as well run Mary Cheney too.

HRC, Emoluments And The "Saxbe Fix"

I was a dreadfully mediocre law student so perhaps it was just one of the many things that I neglected but I don't recall ever hearing the word "emoluments" However, it would seem that the "emoluments clause" of Article I of the Constitution has suddenly, like the zombie from an old George Romero flick, sprung to ugly life.
Amazingly, Professor Volokh has found one of the happy few - JAG Corps attorney John O'Connor - who did not ignore the Emoluments Clause ....Who in fact wrote a Hofstra Law Review article on it, thereby proving once again that there is no subject so arcane that some law review will not publish on it. For those who may not be able to find the relevant page in their Boy Scout Handbook, the Emoluments (or Ineligibility Clause provides:

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

In January of 2008 the salary of the Secretary Of State was increased by Executive Order implementing a COLA enacted by the Congress in which Hillary Clinton served. The standard view is that Senator Clinton is barred from serving in the office of Secretary Of State until the Constitutional disability is cured by another election, an intervening election providing the opportunity for the electorate to either ratify or disavow the act of their representative. It appears that the Emoluments Clause has only twice been the subject of legal challenge, both actions being dismissed for want of standing. And, as the topic is almost the epitome of the unsexy Con Law area, the academic commentary has been fairly scant.
It would seem now that the "unsexy" quotient has changed, changed utterly by the proposed appointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton by the President-elect. At Volokh Conspiracy John O'Connor gets to the nut-cut:

I do not believe it affects the analysis that the salary increase occurred as a result of an Executive Order or that the statute creating these quasi-automatic salary increases was enacted prior to Senator Clinton’s current term. By its plain language, the Emoluments Clause applies when the office’s salary “shall have been encreased,” without regard to exactly how it was increased. Indeed, an early proposed draft of the clause included language limiting it to an increase of emoluments “by the legislature of the U[nited] States,” and was later revised to encompass any increase in emoluments. It is worth noting that several Framers thought, without much explication, that the clause was too lax as initially drafted. The clause also does not require that a Senator or Representative have voted for the increase.

The more difficult question is whether Senator Clinton’s ineligibility for appointment may be cured legislatively through the “Saxbe Fix,” where Congress reduces the Secretary of State’s salary to a level at or below where it was when Senator Clinton’s current term began in 2007. The Saxbe Fix got its name because the Nixon administration sought to eliminate Senator William Saxbe’s ineligibility for appointment as Attorney General by reducing the salary of that office to the level that existed before Senator Saxbe’s appointment. Although there was some opposition on constitutional grounds (most interestingly by Senator Robert Byrd and then-Harvard Professor Stephen G. Breyer), the legislation passed and Saxbe was confirmed. Later, Lloyd Bentsen served as Treasury Secretary after “Saxbe Fix” legislation reduced the salary of that office to its level immediately before Senator Bentsen’s Senate term had begun.

It is my view that the Saxbe Fix [] fails to remove an ineligibility for appointment. I believe the Saxbe Fix is ineffectual based on the plain reading of the Emoluments Clause and is also contrary to the intent of that clause. The Emoluments Clause provides an ineligibility for appointment to an office the emoluments of which “have been encreased.” Even if the emoluments of the office are later reduced, it seems to me that they “have been encreased” during Senator Clinton’s current Senate term even if they are later decreased.

Other Scholars drop by and deal themselves a hand. A good time is had by all. I recommend the entire posting thread to all.

UPDATE: I find I can't resist quoting Mickey Kaus in his entirety on the ridiculous, patronizing, typical and stupid response emanating from Team Clinton.

I didn't think her spokesman Phillipe Reines could top his obnoxious and nonsensical response to the Gerth and Van Natta report that Hillary had secretly eavesdropped on her enemies ( “We don’t comment on books that are utter and complete failures”). But he's come close with his spin on the legal argument--a seeming winner*** if you actually believe the Constitution's language--that Hillary is barred from becoming Secretary of State by the Emoluments Clause:

This is a Harvard Law grad nominating a Yale Law grad here, so all parties involved have been cognizant of this issue from the outset,” [E.A.]

Well all right then! No clinging to guns and God in this administration! ... I'm sure they spent a lot of time on the Emoluments Clause at Harvard and Yale.

It's A Good Question

Mark Kleiman at RBC:

Hank Paulson seems to have decided that the right response to a situation in which cheap credit pushed housing prices way too high compared to either rents or incomes, leading to over-investment in housing and then a fall in housing prices which then put lots of homeowners under water and threatened the solvency of the financial system is ... wait for it ... to offer cheap credit to keep housing prices way too high.

....I usually shy away from conspiracy theories, but just ask yourself: if Paulson were an al-Qaeda sleeper agent tasked with destroying the U.S. economy, is there anything, starting with letting Lehman go down, that he would have done differently?

In my opinion, we have been keeping interest rates to unsustainable, artificially low levels for more than a decade. The fact is that a deep recession followed by a period of slow growth is probably the only medicine that can unwind this disaster. But before we can get well, we have to put the needle down.

Joan Walsh Humiliates Christopher Hitchens

This entire Hardball segment was well worth watching in order to relish the sight of Walsh handling Hitchens's arguments with the sneering contempt that they deserve. I have always wondered why more folks don't apply the treatment to this absurd little man. I half-suspect that many of them are intimidated by the poxy British accent and by his ostentatious, often irrelevant, literary references. Walsh actually gets many better licks in than the link above indicates.
Joan Walsh as been a pretty biased Clinton booster for quite a time, and Hitchens is correct to say that Clinton's qualifications for State are pretty thin. Nonetheless, his constant attacks on Hillary are so ad hominem and so reflexive that they really deserve to be called out as the shrill hysteria the Clintons so often provoke. Buffoons like Hitchens are actually something in the way of a secret weapon for the Clinton team, as their attacks are so over the top and unhinged that they make the pair seem more reasoanable. Had the Clinton foes not attempted to torpedo them, the so-called "Progressive" wing of the Democratic party would have emasculated President Clinton far more effectively than the haters ever could.

Judge Richard Sanders: A Very Cool Guy

Andrew Sullivan points toward this amazing report about Washington State Supreme Court Judge Richard Sanders, one of the last uncastrated men on the bench.

Sanders initially dodged reporters' questions about the incident this week, refusing to comment on anything he might have said at the event.

A video on the Federalist Society's Web site shows that Sanders' outburst came just over 17 minutes into Mukasey's speech, after Mukasey talked about what he said was the "casual assumption among many in media, political and legal circles that the administration's counterterrorism policies have come at the expense of the rule of law."

Shortly after that point on the video, a voice is clearly heard yelling: "Tyrant! You are a tyrant!"

Mukasey can be seen briefly stopping and looking up from his speech. A few minutes later, Mukasey began shaking and slurring his words.

Of course, in today's climate such courage cannot go without censure:

Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said Tuesday that he was very concerned about the outburst's potential damage to Sanders' reputation, and to the court.

Alexander said he planned to speak privately to Sanders to express his disapproval about the incident, but said he has no authority to discipline him.

"People have a First Amendment right to speak, but that's not conduct that I would like to see judges display," Alexander said.