Am I Just Phrasing The Concept Badly?

To call something an inherent good is to say, at some level, that an intellectual examination of a moral value has reached a stopping point.  But it is certainly possible to at least try to explain why something is held to be an inherent moral good.  One could argue in terms of consequence -- to give money to charity is morally good because it relieves another human being's suffering, and the lack of suffering is to be morally preferred to suffering.  Or one could argue in terms of reciprocal duty -- to give money to charity is morally good because were one to be in a position to have to rely on charity, one would prefer that others had made donations so that the charity could be effective.  Maybe I've picked a bad example here -- perhaps I should be examining why the lack of suffering is morally preferable to the presence of suffering, or why I should care about a hypothetical role-reversal situation.  But even so, you can get at least a shadow of an idea from these two explanations about why giving to charity is a moral good.

What's the point of that concept?  I've noticed that whenever I get into a discussion with an apologist, I am never, ever told that worshiping Jehovah is an inherently moral thing to do.  Nor will the apologist ever react to my contention that his or her claims are based on the idea that worship or belief are inherently morally good.  Instead, the apologist usually (at least to my impression) winds up tied in knots trying to explain why things which are obviously morally bad are, in fact, morally good so as to avoid the undesirable result of concluding that [pick one or more: Jehovah, Allah, Jesus, the Bible, religion, faith] are sometimes morally bad.

Am I just not expressing myself well?  Is the concept of "inherent moral worth of belief" too obscure or too abstract an idea?  Or has it just been a coincidence that dozens of apologists over the years have been so concerned about responding to other parts my arguments that they've let this one fly by?  That seems unlikely.

Well, I want to take on that point directly.  Believers -- do you contend that worship and/or belief, by itself and with all other factors of human behavior being equal, elevates the moral worth of the believer?  If so, can you offer up at least some idea of why that should be the case?

Don't Believe Everything You Read

Like that if you enroll at that for-profit online university, you'll be getting a beneficial and innovative education packed with quality learning and appropriately-qualified classmates, or that you'll have good luck getting employment in your field of study after you download the pdf of your sheepskin. 

My experience and The Wife's suggests that the contrary is probably the reality of the situation.  At least at the for-profit school where I teach now, I know that my students are already employed in the field where they will make their careers; they have a credible chance of advancing within already-established careers so I can feel better about taking their money.

And even if The Chronicle of Higher Education says glowing things about such institutions of "higher learning" which in practice seem to demonstrate remarkable aptitude for marketing and streamlining student loan applications, but only minimal ability to engage in student and faculty selectivity, claims that the degrees being thus sold still might not be true -- and there might be some hints of financial bias on the part of the Chronicle itself.

Hat tip to eric at Edge of the American West.

Christopher Maloney is a Cowardly Quack (UPDATED)

It's never a sign of the strength of your scientific idea when you have to resort to censorship to prevent criticism of it.  Which is the first clue that perhaps elderberries do not actually provide any material protection against the H1N1 virus, despite the spurious-sounding claims of a "naturopath" to the contrary.  If you want to claim that elderberries are effective against H1N1, great.  Go round up some pigs, set up a double-blind test, and publish your results in a medical journal -- the way a real scientist would do it.

More importantly, the bigger picture is that these dispensers of so-called "alternative medicine" consume money and resources that could better be spent on actual medicine, grounded in real science, and not inducing a false sense of confidence and well-being that conceals a real problem.  As a commenter on P.Z. Myers' blog inspiring the title of this post points out:

Naturopaths divert people from seeking proper medical attention. If that vague unease and intestinal distress you're feeling is cancer then the time you wasted taking herbal supplements just might mean your death. The anti-vaccine nonsense has killed or disabled how many children? Naturopaths are no better than homeopaths.

Which is exactly right.

While I hesitated to title the post as I did for fear of defaming this Maine naturopath responsible for that oddly-colored video linked above, in fact the contents of the title suggested by Prof. Myers are true.  Christopher Maloney misused the law to censor someone who had offered legitimate scientific criticism of his proposal, rather than to defend his claim on its merits, which makes him a coward.  And hHe sells woo instead of medicine, which makes him a quack.  And even if those are not objectively-verifiable facts, they are well within the scope of legitimate expression of opinion.  So I think I'm good here.  Sue me, dude.  I dare you.  And remember, you have to come to my forum to do it, so you probably ought to read this before you talk with the clerk of court.

UPDATE (complete with actual science goodness):  Maloney responded to Prof. Myers, which response is reprinted in full, here. Most of it is whining, but as to the scientific merits of his claim, he says:

In terms of poor maligned elderberry, the medline citation is "The H1N1 inhibition activities of the elderberry flavonoids compare favorably to the known anti-influenza activities of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu; 0.32 microM) and Amantadine (27 microM). (Phytochemistry. 2009 Jul;70(10):1255-61) While this is a test tube study only, please keep in mind that we had no vaccine and were at the peak of the pandemic here in Maine. I never suggested elderberry as a vaccination but as a possible home treatment for sick children.

Prof. Myers responds by pointing out that a single test-tube study is simply insufficient evidence for prescribing treatment regardless of the level of desparation; at most a single study "shows promise" for future kinds of treatment.  But there is some suggestion that a third party from South Carolina, and not Maloney, was the person who got the original critical blog pulled off the internet rather than Maloney himself, so for now, I'm striking out the references to the "cowardly" bit -- because it's not clear whether this person was Maloney himself, an agent or a proxy for Maloney, or was a true officious intermeddler.

Judicially-Enforced Indoctrination

Divorced couples use their children as pawns in power plays against one another all the time.  It's despicable.

Parents and adults of all sorts also believe that they have a religious duty to indoctrinate children into their weird religions, and that it is imperative that they do so before the child attains the age of reason and critical thinking skills.  And indeed, the Constitution of the United States gives them the right to do so, in possibly the only two substantive due process cases that social conservatives familiar with the law actually like, Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) 269 U.S. 510, and Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) 262 U.S. 390.  Now, as I've discovered in my own practice, the scope of the parental rights articulated in Pierce and Meyer are probably limited to a very close orbit around the facts of those particular cases.  But that doesn't mean that this substantive due process right doesn't come up.

Which is how we get results like this -- Catholic guy marries Jewish girl, ostensibly converts to Judaism, has baby with Jewish girl, then divorces her and reverts to Catholicism, and then he pours some water over the baby's head and mumbles a few ill-understood words, with the result that he faces charges of contempt of court because he used the child in an utterly meaningless ritual that she is far too young to even be able to remember much less understand, in violation of the wishes of the custodial mother who would prefer that the infant be used in different but equally meaningless rituals that she will still be far too young to even be able to remember much less understand.  A man could easily be going to go to jail for doing that and is presently under a court order to not expose the girl to any religion but the Jewish faith.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues passionately that the indoctrination of children into religions before they are able to decide about the supernatural for themselves is a form of child abuse which people of morality ought to oppose.  I'm not entirely sure if I buy that, because whatever else we might say about indoctrinating children into religions, it is pretty clearly a well-intentioned act.  That doesn't necessarily mean that we should exonerate it morally, of course; it's not too hard to think of other things that parents do, or used to do, with the intent of benefiting or at least educating their children which we now think of as morally indefensible.  And I also do think that parents have a presumptive right to raise their children as they see fit and are presumptively the best judges of their childrens' best interests.  It should take a heavy burden to overcome that presumption.  Which, of course, is what the Constitutional cases I mentioned before are all about, and why whatever the merits of Dawkins' quite well-grounded idea that there are no "Christian children," just children of Christian parents, can't realistically ever be anything more than an intellectual exercise in this country.

If this seems like an uncomfortable concept to you, take a moment to imagine a bizarre cult.  One that advocates communion with spirits through the ritualized use of mind-altering drugs, the mutilation of children' genitals, and preaches the moral imperative of adhering to the literal translation of nonsense poetry from an age before gunpowder.  You'd probably think that raising children in that environment was dangerous.  You'd be right, too, because when you put nutty religious beliefs and children together, sometimes children die.  I'm not just making this up -- religion kills children.  Of course, the ritualized use of mind-altering drugs, the mutilation of children' genitals, and preaching the moral imperative of adhering to the literal translation of nonsense poetry from an age before gunpowder are all things that one could attribute to any of a number of  flavors of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

So I look at a case like this one from Chicago, and I have to wonder about the just how worthy of respect concepts like a parent's Constitutional right to raise her child as she sees fit, the automatic assumption of respect and tolerance for religious beliefs, and the idea of governmental neutrality towards religions really are when they play out to their extremes like this.  Here, the little girl's primary custodial parent is her mother, who will indoctrinate the girl to be Jewish.  But her father hasn't lost his rights under Meyer and Pierce because of the divorce.  So I think the judge exceeded the Constitution in issuing her restraining order and will probably wind up jailing the father in violation of those Constitutional rights in a couple of weeks.

But here's the thing -- the little girl in this story is three years old.  The baptism ceremony can't possibly mean anything to her.  The court is not really addressing about the girl's religious beliefs here -- a three-year old doesn't have any religious beliefs; at most, she will parrot things she can't possibly understand in order to please whatever adult she is with.  What this case addresses is the right to brainwash the child into religion A or religion B.  After all, there is no objective reason to choose Judaism over Christianity.  They are equally fanciful mythologies.  And the court cannot favor one over the other.  Later in life, the girl is going to grow old enough to look at different religions and compare them on their merits.  But it's very difficult for someone to do that objectively when they have been brainwashed their whole lives into accepting as true the myths of whatever religion their parent chose to tell them were the right religion -- which is why the children of Christians tend to become Christian themselves, why the children of Jews tend to become Jews themselves, the children of Muslims tend to become Muslims themselves, and so on.

It is vexing indeed that a court should have to be tied up in these legal knots about how to soften a child's mind so that when she becomes an adult, her powers of reason will be handicapped in this fashion -- picking and choosing between religions, picking and choosing between parents who have equal rights as compared to one another.  It is intensely aggravating that the Constitution I am sworn to protect and uphold enshrines the right to do this to a child as a fundamental right, and both mother and father are to be condemned for their immature and unnecessary actions compelling the court to wade into these treacherous waters in the first place instead of behaving like the adults they are supposed to be.

Just think of all the resources that have been wasted on this.  Hours of the court's time that could have been spent handling other cases, forcing judges and law clerks to dig deep into complex, murky, and difficult Constitutional territory (and probably coming up with the wrong answer despite what I'm sure were their best efforts).  Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of dollars on lawyers.  All the anger and anguish.  A man's freedom.  All over something that has no objective meaning and which the girl herself will barely remember.  (Although when she's old enough to find out about this, she'll be able to research the issue and no doubt be utterly humiliated.  Good job, mom and dad!)

Far better would have been a recognition on the part of everyone involved -- mom, dad, and judge -- that the girl is going to figure things out for herself one day anyway.  If dad thinks a particular ritual on a three-year old is important to do, and it doesn't hurt the girl to do the ritual, then so be it.  Where's the harm?  It doesn't really make her a Christian.  It doesn't make her any less Jewish.  It doesn't make Christianity true or Judaism true.  But it does expose some rather thorny facts, including the fact that the Constitution protects a parent's right to brainwash her child and honoring that right means sending a man to jail for harmlessly splashing some water on his own daughter's head.

Legal Xenophobia In Arizona

From Eugene Volokh, I see an interesting and highly questionable piece of legislation pending in Arizona:

A. A court shall not use, implement, refer to or incorporate A tenet of any body of religious sectarian law into any decision, finding or opinion as controlling or influential authority.

B. A court shall not use, implement, refer to or incorporate any case law or statute from another country or a foreign body or jurisdiction that is outside of the United States and its territories in any decision, finding or opinion as either:

1. Controlling or influential authority.

2. Precedent or the foundation for any legal theory.

C. Any decision or ratification of a private agreement that is determined, on the merits, by a judge in this state who relies on any body of religious sectarian law or foreign law is null and void, is appealable error and is grounds for impeachment and removal from office.

D. This section applies to a federal court sitting in diversity jurisdiction.

E. This section does not apply to:

1. A statute or any case law developed in the United States and its territories that is based on Anglo-American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded.

2. A statute or any case law or legal principle that was inherited from Great Britain before the effective date of this article.

3. The recognition of a traditional marriage between a man and a woman as officiated by the clergy or a secular official of the matrimonial couple’s choice.

F. For the purposes of this section:

1. “Foreign Body” includes the United Nations and any agency thereunder, the European Union and any agency thereunder, an international judiciary, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the World Bank and the Socialist International.

2. “Foreign Law” means any statute or body of case law developed in a country, jurisdiction or Foreign Body outside of the United States, whether or not the United States is a member of that body, unless properly ratified as a Treaty pursuant to the United States Constitution.

3. “Religious Sectarian Law” means any statute, tenet or body of law evolving within and binding a specific religious sect or tribe. Religious sectarian law includes Sharia Law, Canon Law, Halacha and Karma but does not include any law of the United States or the individual states based on Anglo American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded.

The sponsors of this legislation are, in my opinion, pointing their law at application of Sharia in judicial confirmation of arbitration agreements.  I've written about this issue before, as has Professor Volokh and his co-conspirator David Kopel.  The vast bulk of cases involving Sharia law enforced by U.S. courts deal with family law situations in which all the parties to the divorce are Muslim and all have agreed in advance to submit to Sharia law as a result of deep and heartfelt religious conviction. And of course, it is the mere fact that such people exist in the first place which motivates a bill such as this -- a motive that I will shorthand as "bigotry."  All of the rest of the cases found in this category involve international commercial disputes in which the parties have agreed to apply the law of a foreign nation in their contracts and the law of the nation thus selected incorporates Sharia.

The only other thing that I can imagine motivating a bill like this is a generalized fear based on a misunderstanding of the interest of certain jurists, most prominently Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in looking to the laws of other nations for guidance when considering questions of U.S. law.  That fear is unfounded and I would challenge anyone who raises this as a serious concern to show me a case in which U.S. law was suborned to the law of some other nation absent either affirmation of that law through a treaty properly ratified by the Senate, or the effect of a choice-of-law clause in a private contract.  Neither of those situations can possibly represent an erosion of U.S. sovereignty because they all arise out of the voluntary choices made by private parties.

This leaves me wondering several things about this legislative proposal.

First, aren't they using a sledgehammer to swat a fly?  How many arbitration agreements with Sharia choice-of-law provisions are Arizona courts being asked to affirm every year?  This can't possibly be high on the list of problems pressing on the state of Arizona or even the civil justice system of Arizona's judiciary.  I looked around and a bunch of academics looked around and we found a handful of cases involving Sharia law confirmed by various courts out of the tens of thousands of cases decided every year.  We've got to be talking about a minute amount of lawsuits here -- and this law would have the tendency to increase, rather than decrease, the burden on trial courts because it would require a trial court to throw out a resolution of a dispute reached after private arbitration.

Second, and possibly fatally for the bill, doesn't this restrict the free exercise of religion?  The single largest religious denomination in Arizona is Roman Catholicism.  A devout Catholic might consider principles of Catholic Canon Law to be important for any number of legal issues.  For instance, whether or not Catholic Charlie and Catholic Cathy get a civil divorce might depend on whether or not Canon Law will permit a religious annulment of their marriage.  While I personally think that Canon Law is a remarkably silly thing to consider when deciding how to plan one's life, I also have to respect that others might feel differently and want to take this elaborate and well-developed  body of law and the ethical concepts incorporated in that body of law into account -- and to bind themselves to it for a higher good. 

Third, there are lots of Native Americans in Arizona and they have lengthy legal traditions and court systems of their own.  Would an Arizona state court be bound to reject decisions based on those bodies of law, too?  The definition of "Foreign Law" is, at best, ambiguous in that respect.  Certainly Navajo law has nothing to do with the "Anglo American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded" (more about that in a few moments).  But a significant number of Arizona's citizens have those laws as part of their own cultural traditions and there are special courts, chartered by the Federal government, that enforce provisions of those laws.

Fourth, what exactly is wrong with people privately agreeing on a set of rules to control their relationship and a court then enforcing those rules?  That is something I would call a "contract" and one would tend to think that the sort of legislator who is concerned about a state's court only enforcing U.S. law would recognize that the ability of people to make their own contracts is a bedrock principle of U.S. law.  Indeed, it's a good bet that these legislators were more than a little bit enthusiastic about the potential revival of the Privileges and Immunities Clause urged in the respondent's brief in McDonald v. Chicago -- the fundamental Privileges and Immunities freedom being the "freedom of contract" so roundly condemned by the Court's rejection of Lochner v. New York in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) 300 U.S. 379.

Fifth, if the concern is not about Shaira specifically but foreign law generally, the concern is founded in the fear that the reliance on foreign law represents an erosion of U.S. sovereignty.  But failure to allow parties to engage in choice-of-law clauses does restrict their ability to make contracts and do business -- and thus, potentially violates not only property rights but also treaties (like, say, NAFTA) that the U.S. has ratified.

Sixth, I really have got to look closely at what kinds of laws are and are not affected by this bill.  Section (E) of the bill contains three exceptions, each of which reveals something rather telling about the authors' ideas about what are good laws and bad laws for Arizona courts to endorse through the act of affirming private arbitration agreements.

The "Anglo American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded" are exempted from the condemned, impeachable laws.  But "Canon law" is not.  So the law of the Catholic church, which was certainly considered heavily in heavily Catholic colonies like Maryland before the Revolution, is not a part of the "Anglo American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded."  One wonders if Protestant takes on the legal procedures and principles set forth in the Bible are or are not within that body of "Anglo American legal tradition and principles on which the United States was founded." 

Then, I see that "A statute or any case law or legal principle that was inherited from Great Britain before the effective date of this article" is also exempt.  Certainly we would want a court enforcing contracts to be able to consider, for instance, Hadley v Baxendale (1854) 9 Exch. 341, possibly the most important case in Anglo-American law about the issue of consequential damages.  (The influence of this case is also an example of why Justice Kennedy's interest in foreign law as a guide is really nothing new at all.)  But Hadley is clearly not binding authority in any way and not a part of the legal legacy taken by U.S. courts from England -- U.S. law branched definitively from British law at some point between 1775 and 1787 when the U.S. became a sovereign nation.  Since then, British common law has not been a part of our legal tradition here in the States.  Influential, persuasive, and interesting, but not binding here. 

Finally (as to this point), the author of the legislation is perfectly happy to allow a judge to recognize "a traditional marriage between a man and a woman as officiated by the clergy or a secular official of the matrimonial couple’s choice" even if that marriage was conducted under the authority of another body of laws. Well, that's swell, but note that it is limited to "a traditional marriage."  Like, say, mother-son incest, pawning off your maid on your husband to deal with his incessant demands for sex, or a man and his eight wives, just like the Bible said.

Seventh, judges in Arizona are selected in a manner similar to that of California -- they are initially appointed by the Governor after going through a bar-and-bench screening process, and thereafter they must stand for election every four years.  If applying Sharia law (in the form of confirming an arbitration award) is really that unpopular, can't the political process be left to its own to sort that out?  And if Arizona's constitution and laws are anything like California's or Federal law, then there is no specific definition anywhere of what constitutes an "impeachable offense" anyway; the exact definition of phrases like "high crimes and misdemeanors" are left by the judiciary to be political questions.  They are also apparently subject to recall, just like any other elected official.  So this law is hardly necessary if what the authors want to do is actually remove judges from office for this reason.  They could just go ahead and do it right now.

But of course, the authors of this law don't actually want to remove any judges from office.  They want to engage in political theater.  And they also want to claim that they aren't being bigots when they do it, so that's why they have to dress it up in broad-sweeping, allegedly non-discriminatory language when they do it.  With the result that we have this complicated mishmash of restrictions on a judge's conduct over a ridiculously tiny number of cases of importance to no one but the private parties, threatening to erode the concept of an independent judiciary buffered from political pressure, and which makes a mockery of the Constitution along the way.

If these guys can't think of anything better to do with the time and money of the citizens of Arizona, I suggest that they recess and go home instead -- before they do any more harm than this.

Why The Tea Party Movement Is Doomed

Like it or not, the United States of America has a two-party political system.  Eventually, any political movement that gathers any steam, any appreciably number of followers, or any recognized intellectual force, becomes a plum for one or another of the parties to grab.  That party will gain votes if it can show that it can make common cause with the new movement, and fields candidates who say things that are sympathetic to that movement.  That is what is happening with the Tea Party movement now.  When Sarah Palin tells Tea Partiers that the time is coming very soon to pick a "D" or an "R," she's quite right -- and no one has done more than her to court the Tea Party votes to the GOP than any other mainstream politician.  Not that this would have been a difficult sell -- while Tea Partiers certainly had criticism of the free-spending ways of the Bush Administration, the focus of their invective was always aimed at the Obama White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the anger did not coalesce into political action until after the 2008 elections.  Gov. Palin was always pretty popular with the Tea Party crowd anyway, and she never left the GOP.

So that's why the Tea Party movement is doomed -- not that it has failed to articulate something or to meaningfully affect in the political discourse.  Indeed, it is its very success and energy that dooms it to become co-opted and assimilated into the GOP.  The only real question is whether it becomes an identifiable faction within the party the way gun rights advocates, pro-lifers, budget hawks, and religious conservatives are, or rather stands for a set of generalized and somewhat indefinite concepts.  I tend to think the latter.

Tourism In The High Desert

I've been doing stuff, and not spending a lot of time blogging.  While my in-laws were in town, I logged 800 miles on my car.  This involved:

• Soffit House to LAX to pick up the in-laws
• LAX to Chinatown for dim sum
• Chinatown to Glendale for Pinkberry (for which I am currently feeling a cocaine-like impulse to get more of despite the unreasonably long drive to the nearest store)
• Glendale to home and then to the Persian restaraunt for belly dancing
• Breakfast at Crazy Otto's for omelets bigger than our heads
• A trip to see the solar power plant all aglow
• Driving down the only musical road in America
• Seeing the big cats at the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound
• A drive through Southern California's largest operational wind farm
• Visiting the Mojave Spaceport to see the Rotary Rocket display (no tours at Scaled Composites, as it turns out)
• Seeing the Tehachapi Loop, with return trip through the Grapevine
• A visit to the plane museum and Blackbird Park so my father-in-law could spend about half an hour talking to a retired U-2 pilot
• Bad Movie Night at our friends' home theater (the feature flick was Robot Monster In 3-D! which was really really bad. And in 2-D. And hilarious.)
• Dropping off the in-laws at their cousin's house in beautiful Fontana, including a stop at the local kitsch emporium.

And we've done some cooking and playing of games and generally gabbing with the in-laws.  So I've barely had time to myself.  In fact, I'm astonished to consider all the food we've eaten over the past four days.  And tonight I need to finish writing my class for tomorrow night, which means I've precious little time to comment on recent political or legal developments.  Stay tuned, though, because I expect I will be back Wednesday.

Torte Lombard Con Le Noci E Pere Tostate

A rich, indulgent, northern Italian style version of quiche, best served with a fruit salad on the side:

½ stick butter
½ onion, finely chopped
4 eggs
1 cup cream
½ cup coarsely-chopped walnuts
5 ounces gorgonzola cheese
2 bosc or d'anjou pears, diced
1 pie crust
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350°. Line 9" circular baking pan with pie crust. Melt 2 tbsp. butter in sauté pan. Add onions, cook for about three minutes until onions soften. Layer softened onions around base of pan. Then layer walnuts on top of onions, and gorgonzola on top of walnuts. Heat cream in microwave for 90 seconds. Beat eggs until well-mixed, add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and vanilla, then fold in heated cream. Pour custard mixture into pan. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until top starts to brown. Meanwhile, melt remaining butter in sauté pan until it starts to brown. Add diced pears, stirring frequently until pears begin to carmelize and brown. Serve torte warm with the toasted pears atop.

Happy Darwin Day!

TL The Tour Guide

The in-laws are out from Wisconsin to visit.  Yesterday The Wife and I drove down to the airport to pick them up in the late morning.

The Wife suggested we take them to Philippe for lunch, which seemed like a great idea -- a fine sample of old Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, the place was shut down -- the County closed it for health code violations!  I've never known Philippe to be closed for any reason before.

Plan B was dim sum, since we were right there in Chinatown.  Just up the block from Philippe was a place where we were the only white folks there and the signs on the wall had no English.  Taking that as a good sign, we popped in and had a bunch of stuff.  The in-laws had never before had dim sum and didn't really know what to expect.  But the food was really good and amazingly affordable.  We also indulged in Pinkberry (warning, link goes to a site that violates TL's Rule 1 of Web Design -- do not auto-load audio).

Then it was back up to the high desert and more sitting around and catching up.  The in-laws enjoy board games and we played some Blokus, which they enjoyed.  After that, we went to Palmdale's finest restaurant, a Persian place.  We got lucky and it happened to be exhibition night -- seven belly-dancers performing for their class.  So the in-laws have got a good sample of a bunch of different experiences, ethnic foods, and other things that they would have limited access to back home in Wisconsin.

Today we're going to try and get more fun stuff.

No Longer The Outrage Of The Week

To Nick Gillespie's three points, I would add a few more:

• Do you really have any doubt that in the 2008 elections, big corporations didn't figure out a way to funnel big money to both Presidential candidates? What were 527 groups if not a way for corporations to sneak around McCain-Feingold?
• There was never any ban on "issue ads" which in practice have just as much influence on elections as regular commercials do.
• If you really think that it's a bad thing that "corporations are legally people," and therefore entitled to Constitutional rights, then aren't you suggesting that a corporation's office may be raided by the police without probable cause or the issuance of a search warrant? Or that the government might condemn the corporation's place of business without bothering to so much as write a check to pay for the property it has taken? That doesn't strike you as somehow wrong? And when I say "corporation" in this context, I don't want you thinking about Wal-Mart or Microsoft, I want you thinking about the mom-and-pop business down the street from your house -- a business that you probably like and support, and which probably is (or at least ought to be) incorporated for the benefit of its closely-held owners.
• If you support the stunt of running a corporation for public office, 1) don't you think the voters are smart enough to figure out whether they want a corporation to be elected, and 2) isn't that really running the corporation's President for office because that's the person who will discharge the public duties? Let's think about how a corporation is controlled -- its shareholders elect directors, who then set broad corporate policy and appoint officers, and the officers then discharge those policies by acting as agents of the corporate entity. In practice, the shareholders of a corporation hold indirect democratic control of how the corporation acts -- which exactly describes the relationship of a citizen to the government in a representative democracy.

Besides, the Constitution says what it says whether it's good policy or not.  And given the nature of Federal politics that pre-existed this case, I find it easy to predict that Citizens United will have no discernable effect on any future Federal election.

That Figures

Of course I'd be linked up to several popular blogs on a post that contained a misspelling in its title.  Oh, I fixed it now, but I need to remember the "i before e except after c" rule does not have a "or before I've finished drinking my morning coffee" codicil.

Wielding The Power Of Life And Death

Plenty of people, myself included, got upset when the Bush Administration reserved for itself the right to unilaterally engage in a warrantless wiretap.  I thought it was an affront to the Constitution that the President, acting on his authority alone, could violate an individual's right to privacy and not even so much as retroactively seek judicial concurrence.

Plenty of people were also upset that the Bush Administration reserved the right to arrest and detain anyone, even a U.S. citizen in U.S. territory, without the issuance of an arrest warrant or the explanation to anyone outside of military or intelligence chains of command whether there was any probable cause to arrest and detain them.  I got particularly upset at the idea that the detention thus resulting would be indefinite, denying the detainee the right to an arraignment.

But like Chris Hallquist, I'm surprised that very few people seem upset at this.  I am not in their ranks. 

The director of national intelligence affirmed rather bluntly today that the U.S. intelligence community has authority to target American citizens for assassination if they present a direct terrorist threat to the United States. Information gained from the Christmas Day bomber has officials on high alert.

"We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community; if … we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee.

... According to U.S. officials, only a handful of Americans would be eligible for targeting by U.S. intelligence or military operations. The legal guidance is determined by the National Security Council and the Justice Department.

If George W. Bush thought you were a terrorist, he was going to read your e-mail, listen to your phone calls, and hold you in a dungeon until he figured it was safe to let you out. But Barack H. Obama? He'll effin' kill you, man!

From a macro-level Constitutional perspective, the issue is the same. The Executive branch reserves the right to act unilaterally, without judicial or Congressional oversight, to deprive an American citizen of a right protected by the Fifth Amendment. Due process falls by the wayside because the Executive branch chooses to label you a "terrorist."

From a moral level, it's obviously a whole lot worse to be assassinated than to be eavesdropped on or even arrested.

Now, when I was outraged at the Bushmen for this, I did give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't actually do this unless they had some really good reason.  I didn't think for a second that they would arbitrarily eavesdrop on and arrest people just because they didn't like them.  And I don't think the Obamamen are going to assassinate just anyone, either.  NSA Blair went to some pains in his testimony before Congress to claim that the number of people targeted under this policy are very small and that high-level, case-by-case reviews within the CIA and DOJ take place before an assassination is attempted.

But I have two big concerns and I would hope that Readers of all political stripes would share them.  The first is the unilateral wielding of the power of life and death against a U.S. citizen by his own government against him, without any kind of a Constitutional check and balance.  I don't oppose the death penalty (the Constitution specifically authorizes it in certain cases, after all) and I hardly suggest that there are no U.S. citizens out there in the world somewhere who are not dangerous.  But it would be nice if a government headed by a man who used to teach Constitutional law might pay a decent respect to that Constitution and derive some kind of a minimal check against abuse and dangerous accumulation of power in the executive.

Second, why are we talking about assassination policy in public Congressional hearings in the first place?  Why is the National Security Advisor bluntly, candidly, and publicly saying to the world that we do, in fact, assassinate specific individual bad guys?  Shouldn't the public line be something like this:

"Our priorities are to first thwart terrorist activities from harming Americans, second to neutralize terrorist groups, and third to deny terrorist groups the ability to act.  This does mean taking direct action against them and yes, sometimes people are killed when that happens.  But our preference is to take them captive, because terrorists, once captured, stop being threats and start being intelligence assets."

Instead, we've got a guy who reports directly to the President saying, "Yeah, sometimes we just decide to take some of these m-f'ers out.   But no worries, the Big Guy gives us the A-OK when we do that, so it's all good in the hood.  What's your next question, Congressman?"

If we're going to have an overt policy authorizing assassinations -- and I can see that there are some good arguments for why we should -- then we should do what we can to make that policy conform to our Constitutional ideals.  We already have a legal framework for the establishment of a "National Security Court" and a working court that already reviews secret applications for wiretaps and other would-be violations of citizens' Constitutional rights to make these actions conform to the Fifth Amendment.  If the President or his delegate determines that an assassination is necessary in the interests of national security, maybe that's the right call.

And if that process already requires high-level review before the order to kill is given, then that means we aren't dealing with a "ticking time-bomb" situation anyway and there is time for review and contemplation.   Other procedures exist for expedited review of time-sensitive matters; the FISC often reviews matters submitted within 48 hours of the field-level identification of need for action.

So let the Administration present a request for a death warrant to an independent Article III court.  There are plenty of procedures in place to seal up records from public review if they involve confidential or sensitive information already.

If no existing court can accommodate these kinds of actions, then Congress can create one; Article III specifically gives Congress the power to create "inferior Courts," meaning courts subordinate to the Supreme Court.

But please, let us not shrug off the President's arrogation to himself the unilateral power to literally kill a U.S. citizen, just because we're pretty sure that the only ones he's going to kill are bad guys.  Our Founding Fathers would weep long and hard to think that we would fritter away the legacy they left us in such a manner.

Well Enough Again

A five-day course of antibiotics, a shot in the ass (which still hurts when I lay down on it just right), inhalable steroids for my lungs, and some powerful cough syrup to take at night has mended me nicely.  I'm not entirely free from coughing and I spent last week muddling through work, but a week of taking it easy has done me a world of good and I felt good enough yesterday to go out to a friend's Super Bowl party.  And I'll be in good shape for when the in-laws come to visit this weekend.

Super Bowl Ads

At the Super Bowl party last night, I was amazed at the interest in the advertisements by the other guests.  Maybe half the people there even cared about the game at all.

The cleverest ad, I thought, was the "Green Police" ad by Audi.  Maybe it was the use of the Cheap Trick song.  Had we not been using TiVo, I would not have noticed the Focus on the Family advertisement with Tim Tebow -- an ad that, by itself, was completely innocuous.  The reason is that people were still laughing at the Betty White/Abe Vigoda ad for Snickers bars, which was probably the funniest of them all, even funnier than Brett Favre as the 2020 MVP wondering aloud whether or not he'd come back the next year (which was not an effective ad since I don't remember what product it was selling).

Oh, yeah, and the game was good too.  As soon as another guest finished making his gumbo, which tasted great, the Saints started winning again.  Coincidence?

Best Bad Guys In Science Fiction

I had a brief but potentially interesting discussion with a fellow Super Bowl partier last night, a guy who is more than a little bit of a leftist.

HIM: "The Colts, man, they're really good but have no personality.  They're like the Borg."

ME:  "Are the Borg the best bad guys in science fiction ever?"

HIM:  "Oh, yeah.  They're the ultimate capitalists."

ME:  "Funny you should say that.  On the other side, they can hate the Borg because they're the ultimate socialists."

HIM:  "Well, they think that, but they don't understand what socialism and capitalism really are."

I think I have a pretty good idea of what capitalism and socialism are.  And I've got to think my friend was wrong.  Perhaps he was thinking about the Borg as competing against the Federation and the Klingon Empire and such, and heartlessly assimilating the best they had to offer so as to expand and make everything like themselves.  But I was thinking about the unsentimental destruction of the individual, ruthlessly taking everything each individual member has to offer and forcefully adding it to the collective.

Sarah Palin And The Hand Jive

Holy crap, it's been three days and people are still blogging about Sarah Palin writing notes to herself on her hand while speaking at the Tea Party convention in Nashville on Friday.  Seriously.  How is that different than if she had used a teleprompter or index cards?  Anyone who's had to do public speaking for longer than five minutes at a stretch knows how easy it is to forget even very basic things.  So she used a few notes, and chose a rather juvenile method to write them down.  So what? 

No other politician in America would have received such vicious scrutiny and content-free criticism.

I say, criticize what she said, not the notes she used to remind herself to say it.  What did she say that's worthy of criticism? 

After spending ten minutes justly criticizing the Administration for the bank bailout and the stimulus package, she then advocated tax cuts without advocating a scaleback in government services.  That's bad for the national debt.  ("Washington has got to across the board, lower taxes for small businesses so that our mom and pops can reinvest and hire people so that our businesses can thrive.")

She complained that Abdul Mutallab (the Amsterdam "Christmas bomber") got a lawyer and was read his Miranda rights, suggesting that basic and fundamental components of due process are somehow bad.  ("The protections provided—thanks to you sir [PALIN ADDRESSES MALE VETERAN IN AUDIENCE]—we’re going to bestow them on a terrorist who hates our Constitution and wants to destroy our Constitution and our country? This makes no sense because we have a choice in how we’re going to deal with the terrorists. We don’t have to go down that road. There are questions that we would have like answered before he lawyered up.")

She mocked the idea that the President ought to be respectful of the Constitution.  ("Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at grave risk. Because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war. And to win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a PROFESSOR OF LAW STANDING AT THE LECTERN!")

She was dismissive of the possibilities of diplomacy to resolve international conflicts.  ("...we must spend less time courting our adversaries and spending more more time working with our allies. And we must build effective coalitions capable of confronting dangerous regimes like Iran and North Korea. It’s time for more than just tough talk. Ah! Just like you . . . probably just so tired of hearing the talk talk talk . . . Tired of hearing the talk!")

All of these suggest that she has not thought through her ideas for governing the country.  All of this suggests that were she put in power, she would take the country down a dangerous path which we will later regret taking.  And none of it has anything to do with a few scribbled notes on her hand.

Pneumonia Asthmatic Bronchitis

After coughing and vomiting fits drove me off the bench while serving as a pro tem judge yesterday, and then literally kept me awake all night, I'm finally forced to concede that I don't just have some minor crud.  I literally can't lay down without quickly falling into a coughing fit so painful it feels like a car battery is being applied to my lungs.  My neck and shoulders are sore from coughing and every sneeze and cough send sharp, shooting pains from my neck to my diaphragm.

I need to see a doctor.  My question is whether I have acquired bronchitis or pneumonia, and all I can do right now is hope that my colleagues at work can cover for me while I seek medical attention.

UPDATE:  Turns out it's asthmatic bronchitis.  I've got about five days of antibiotics and an inhaler, and a narcotic-strength syrup to help me sleep (which means it will help The Wife sleep, too), and sleep is much my entire plan until tomorrow.  I don't think I've ever had a hypodermic injection in my ass before (as an adult) and damn, but it still hurts an hour later.  Take your shots in the arm if you can!  And thanks for all the well wishes in the comments, everyone!

What We Need

At last.  A fleshed-out, real policy proposal with the audacious long-term goals of generationally re-casting the role of the government in society and creating a sustainable, pay-as-you-go tax-and-benefit scheme.  Congressman Paul Ryan deserves high honors for actually advancing a deficit elimination plan.  It makes painful, distasteful choices.  It isn't an overnight cure -- he wouldn't have the deficit gone until 2080.  But it would be gone

What this really does is serve as the launching point for the real debate we need to be having in this country.  Not the one about whether we're going to incrementally increase the role of the government in health care or maintain the status quo.  The discussion we really need to have is about getting our government's financial house in order.  If you don't like the spending cuts and policy choices Congressman Ryan suggests, great.  What's your alternative?  If you're talking about a budget that is truly in the black, I bet he'll listen to you.  I know I will.

Hat tip to Ezra Klein at WaPo.

Morning Reading

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi uses military airplanes to shuttle her family around the country without even bothering to go with them or providing any substantial tissue of even political necessity.  Millions of public dollars used to provide for one powerful woman's personal needs.  Will Collier quite fairly asks, will the media treat this like the scandal it really is?

Dave Schuler wonders, why all the outrage over the specter of a government-controlled healthcare pricing system producing a hybrid of public and private insurance payers?  That's what we have already -- the government effectively dictates the prices because it controls 60% of the medical insurance market under the status quo and the "free" market for the remaining two-fifths of healthcare spending is hardly operates the way you'd expect a "free market" to behave.  Nearly all the decisions about pricing are made on autopilot anyway.  A point worth careful contemplation on all sides -- to opponents of HCR, what exactly are they terrified of, and to advocates of HCR, why do they expect their proposal to make things any better?

And it's quite evident that the specter of a discretionary federal budget freeze for 2011 is even less meaningful than I sourly noted.  After all, and indexed freeze on spending for three years doesn't mean much when you pump up the spending to ionospheric levels before you freeze it, and as Doug Mataconis notes, we're only looking at reductions in the deficit if wildly-optimistic projections about economic growth in what the Administration hopes is President Obama's second term actually come true -- which will be difficult when the deficit represents nearly 5% of the money going in to the economy.


Howard Friedman provides one of many links to a story about ten Baptist -- missionaries? relief workers? -- who are being charged with kidnapping 33 Haitian kids.  They say they were only following Christian morals to try and take the kids to the US where they could be provided for.  The kids didn't want to go, and many of them were with their families.  In fact, Haiti has long had a problem with foreigners (many of them Americans) who take babies from Haiti to (effectively) sell them elsewhere.  The father of one of the detainees says that he's sure his daughter will be set free soon, because they have God on their side:  "When God calls you to a certain mission and a specific action he’s not going to let it fail, ... I’m convinced that nothing will stand in the way of Him accomplishing his purpose through this whole team. I know even as we speak and the 10 people sitting in the Haitian jail are convinced of the same thing."