"I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but..."

"... if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over... Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future."

EMS workers who post pictures of the sick, wounded, and dead on social media...

"... a twisted hobby of voyeurism that has been part of the emergency-worker culture for years."

“I saw one where this victim’s head and spinal column were completely removed from his body,” [said one former EMS worker]. "Lots of people have them — patients galore, all ripped apart and mangled... And it’s not just EMS. Fire has them, too, of burn victims, and police take them of people who get killed. It runs across the service. They have them on their phones and there are lot of hardcover books like photo albums."

A nurse on Staten Island complained about one EMT who got his kicks shocking health workers with images of bodies arranged into poses. One showed a woman’s corpse hanging from a noose with a cigarette in its lips. Another showed dismembered legs placed in a sexually suggestive position.

"There are abundant terms of endearment and appreciation for women and children, and far fewer for men..."

"... this says more about the nature of the appreciation than about the nature of those being appreciated. There are many words and expressions that present women as commodities; you can still read, for instance, about women being 'married off.' Men are sometimes forced into arranged marriages, but the language used of this is not dehumanizing. We also see gratuitous modifiers: someone is described as a ‘lady doctor’ or a ‘male nurse,’ implying norms (male doctors, female nurses) that are outmoded. Even apparently innocent terms such as girl and lady are more heavily sexualized than their male equivalents."

Henry Hitchings, "The Language Wars: A History of Proper English," pages 223-224.

"The idea that having a capacity for empathy, for expressing and understanding emotion, is part of being a normal male..."

"... is fundamentally contemporary and a way of asking that men learn a traditionally feminine virtue. When men were in an unquestioned position of control in the economy — when the bedrock of the nuclear family was a single male wage, a flow of income largely unavailable to women — there was less force compelling men to make themselves attractive mates through understanding the feelings of others and expressing affection. The Asperger’s population is 90 percent male; it’s likely that one reason Asperger’s got 'discovered' and then 'boomed' is that the rest of us have been slowly revising our expectations of men."

Benjamin Nugent, "American Nerd: The Story of My People." (Kindle Locations 1840-1845).

"10 Easter Bunnies Straight From Hell."

Oh, no!

"15 People Who Think Google Is Honoring Hugo Chávez."

"Hugo Chávez was the socialist president of Venezuela; Cesar Chavez was a labor leader and civil rights activist. See the difference?"

ADDED: "But to a small minority of conservatives thumping away at their keyboards on Easter Sunday it was something more sinister. It was a slight on Jesus. Worse still, it was a slight on Jesus directed by the White House, and in particular Barack Obama, America's Kenyan-born Muslim leader, probably."

"Strictly speaking, ghana was the title of the king..."

"... but the Arabs, who left records of the kingdom, applied the term to the king, the capital, and the state."

The 9th-century Berber historian/geographer Al Yaqubi described ancient Ghana as one of the three most organized states in the region (the others being Gao and Kanem in the central Sudan). Its rulers were renowned for their wealth in gold, the opulence of their courts, and their warrior/hunting skills....

Ghana succumbed to attacks by its neighbors in the 11th century, but its name and reputation endured. In 1957, when the leaders of the former British colony of the Gold Coast sought an appropriate name for their newly independent state — the first black African nation to gain its independence from colonial rule — they named their new country after ancient Ghana. The choice was more than merely symbolic, because modern Ghana, like its namesake, was equally famed for its wealth and trade in gold.

Ghana is today's "History of" country.

"The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness."

"Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. Not for him the strenuous athleticism — which is the novelist’s daily task — of laying out his deepest griefs and shames before the world. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others."

Janet Malcolm, "The Journalist and the Murderer," page 159.

At the Sunday Café...

... find the joy.

"Just don’t say the Chicago police picked on your child, when we were watching all the assault going on, especially by teen women."

A mob of 500 teenagers, supposedly organized via Facebook, hit the city's elite shopping district.

Purchase of the day.

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"America 'Can Do Better'..."

A Drudgtaposition.

Driscoll is talking about the photo of Obama that happens to have a portrait of George Washington in the background, but that Drudge page he links to begins with a very striking picture of the new Pope, lying prone — with the quote "Respond to evil with good"— and a big closeup of a cute baby getting a spoonful of mush — with the headline "Putin Orders Ban on Adoptions By Foreign Gay Couples."

Graphically, the horizontality of the Pope corresponds to the spoon, but if that's expressing an analogy, it could be: 1. The Pope's advice is pap, 2. The Pope's advice is the simple nourishment that Putin would take from helpless babies, or 3. Sexual perversion (is the Pope humping the rug and what does Putin think gay people put in a baby's mouth?!!!).

ADDED: Sorry that #3 is inflammatory, but I'm just being honest about the alternative interpretations of the imagery. #3 is especially justified by the phallic imagery on either side of the Obama photo. Atop the left column, there's an upright microphone (representing the newly dead record producer Phil Ramone), and atop the right column there's Kim Jong-un (and another N. Korean) aggressively pointing fingers or guns or some sort of metal cylinders.

"Sometimes by nature, the Church has got to be out of touch with concerns, because we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless..."

"Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way. And sometimes there is a disconnect – between what they’re going through and what Jesus and his Church is teaching.  And that’s a challenge for us."

So said Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He was talking to the less-than-eternal and somewhat attractive George Stephanopoulos, who naturally asked him about same-sex marriage. The answer:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is, ‘I love you, too.  And God loves you.  And you are made in God’s image and likeness.  And – and we – we want your happiness.  But – and you’re entitled to friendship.’  But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that – especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally,” Dolan said. “We got to be – we got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people.  And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that.  We try our darndest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody.”

I wonder if a solution could be for the government to recognize same-sex marriages, so that gay people aren't deprived of any of the legal rights, and the religious people who think God has proscribed gay sex could simply view these gay couples as friends and stop thinking about what they might be doing sexually. Even if you think gay sex is a sin, isn't it also sinful to put time and effort into thinking about what sins other people are committing? Even where you don't think sex is a sin — for example, where a married man and woman engage in fully loving sexual intercourse — isn't it wrong to pry into another couple's sexual interaction? Why not back off and concentrate on doing your darndest to make sure you're not anti-anybody?

ADDED: Remember that Jesus said:

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

And if that log is other men's cocks, really, get it out of your eye. You look ridiculous.

"Friends and major donors insist that Mrs. Clinton is sincere in expressing ambivalence about seeking the presidency again..."

"... and they go so far as to assert that she is simply happy to have time to clean out her closets for the first time in decades."

Sincere... Clinton sincere... depends on what the meaning of sincere is.

The releveant OED definition of "sincere" is "Characterized by the absence of all dissimulation or pretence; honest, straightforward." Referring to persons, the word in English goes back to 1539, and the (unlinkable) OED has a lot of historican examples, but one stands out:

1824   Byron Don Juan: Canto XVI xcvii. 112   For surely they're sincerest, Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest.

In context:

So well she acted all and every part
By turns — with that vivacious versatility,
Which many people take for want of heart.
They err — 't is merely what is call'd mobility,
A thing of temperament and not of art,
Though seeming so, from its supposed facility;
And false — though true; for surely they're sincerest
Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest.

Right now, the closets are most near/To clean them must be quite sincere.

"I remember that night fondly, even though my feminist sensibilities cringe a little now."

Says the author of a WaPo op-ed titled "Time to stop hooking up. (You know you want to.)"   

That night was a Halloween when she was a college student and she dressed up as a whore. Now that she's not a college student it's time for you to stop hooking up. She did that whore-costume thing when she was younger, so it's time for you to stop. Guess why? Because of feminism! Ha ha. That was the most transparent slip I've ever seen.

And I don't mean why not wear a transparent slip next time you want to dress like a whore. I mean, she did what was fun for her when she was so young that dressing slutty easily made her look super-sexy, and now that she's older and it's others who are young and have this automatic sexiness at their command, she's suddenly staunchly feminist. Ha.

This woman, Donna Freitas, is flogging a book — "The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy" — but the sample of her writing she's sharing in WaPo is awful.  

I remember that night fondly, even though my feminist sensibilities cringe a little now. Not only is "fondly" the most cliché adverb to slap onto "remember" to try to give it some oomph — "sensibilities" can't "cringe."

And does feminism cause a feminist to cringe when thinking about things like that time she dressed like a whore? To cringe means (quoting the unlinkable OED):

To contract the muscles of the body, usually involuntarily; to shrink into a bent or crooked position; to cower.

Picture a position of the body. Is that a feminist position — shrinking and crooked, cowering? Figuratively, it's:

To experience an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust, etc.; to wince or shrink inwardly; (hence) to feel extremely embarrassed or uncomfortable. Freq. with at.

Is that feminism — shivering with embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust? Maybe Freitas is purveying the same old shame with a deceptive "feminism" label, and maybe she's just a bad writer. Either way, I wouldn't recommend this book (though with that title, it could be a great gag gift for the right person).

Hey, this is what I was going to do...

... if I got Alzheimer's.

"It is noteworthy that among the Germanic languages the word (as the name for Easter) is restricted to English and German..."

"... in other Germanic languages, as indeed in most European languages, the usual word for Easter is derived from the corresponding word for the Jewish Passover; compare pasch n."

Says the Oxford English Dictionary (to which I cannot link). 

Bede... derives the word < Eostre ... the name of a goddess whose festival was celebrated by the pagan Anglo-Saxons around the time of the vernal equinox (presumably in origin a goddess of the dawn, as the name is to be derived from the same Germanic base as east adv....). This explanation is not confirmed by any other source, and the goddess has been suspected by some scholars to be an invention of Bede's. However, it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival in order to account for a Christian one....

Compare Old English Ēastermōnað April, cognate with or formed similarly to Old Dutch ōstermānōth (in a translation from German), Old High German ōstarmānōd (Middle High German ōstermānōt, German Ostermonat , now archaic)...

A borrowing of the Old English word into West Slavonic (during the time of the Anglo-Saxon mission to Germany) perhaps underlies Polabian jostråi, Lower Sorbian jatšy, (regional) jastry , Kashubian jastrë, all in sense ‘Easter’; however, it has been argued that these are rather to be derived from a native base meaning ‘clear, bright’, and thus (via a connection with the coming of spring) show a parallel development to the Germanic word.

Pagan goddess or clear and bright?

The lamb and the dog.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"

"And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

2 Corinthians 6:14-16, one reason why Puritans did not celebrate Easter. Another reason was that the celebration (as opposed to the event commemorated by the celebration) doesn't appear in the Bible.

Some Christian groups continue to reject the celebration of Easter due to perceived pagan roots and historical connections to the practices and permissions of the "Roman" Catholic Church. Other "Nonconformist" Christian groups that do still celebrate the event prefer to call it "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day", for the same reasons as well as a rejection of secular or commercial aspects of the holiday in the 20th and 21st centuries....

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as part of their historic testimony against times and seasons, do not celebrate or observe Easter or any other Church holidays, believing instead that "every day is the Lord's day," and that elevation of one day above others suggests that it is acceptable to do un-Christian acts on other days....

Today is Easter, a day that is celebrated for religious reasons and, alternatively, in a completely secular fashion. It is also a day that some people do not celebrate, and the reasons for noncelebration can also be religious — even among Christians — as well as secular.

Opposition to a celebration can be based on a problem with that particular celebration — as the Puritans objected to Easter because it's not in the Bible — or on a more general objection to holidays — the belief that all of our days deserve equal celebration. That idea too can be religious. As the Quakers say "every day is the Lord's day." And that idea can be secular: the recognition of the beauty and promise in every day.

Happy Easter/Happy Day to everyone, believer and infidel, yokemates and yolkmates.

Saturday Cinema Verité...

... in 3 scenes.

"Having watched the arguments in the same-sex marriage cases, it is hard for me to imagine how they would have been different..."

"... if small, unobtrusive cameras had been there to record what was going on. With or without cameras, Justice Antonin Scalia was his spirited self, demanding that lawyer Theodore Olson tell him 'when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexuals from marriage?' Olson's sharp reply would not have been different with cameras on hand. 'When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?' Olson said. Judges and lawyers with experience before cameras in other courtrooms universally say that, especially at the appellate level, the questioning, listening and responding demand all their faculties. They soon forget cameras are there."

Writes Tony Mauro.

Now, we don't get video, but we do get this. I've clipped the same section Mauro refers to:

So then, what more would we have with video, and is it important? I remember opining on this subject back in 2005. I thought of it in terms not only of public access but as a check on the Court:

The Justices have life tenure, and they know how to use it. We just saw 11 years pass without a retirement. Presidents go through through entire terms without a single opportunity to choose a fresh voice for the Court. It has become the norm for Justices to hold their seats as they pass into old age and severe illness. With the support of four gloriously able and energetic law clerks and the silence of the other Justices, no slip in a Justice's ability ever shows in his writing. But the Justices do need to take their seats on the bench for oral argument, and it is here that the public has the chance to judge them.

This judgment may be unfair. Some Justices, as noted, are better looking than others. Some will subject themselves to hair and makeup specialists, and others won't tolerate it. And getting older damages even the prettiest face. Some Justices love the verbal jousting with the lawyers in the courtroom, while others think that all they need is the written argument and opt out of the live show. With cameras, Justice Scalia would win new fans, and "The Daily Show" would wring laughs from Justice Thomas's silent face. The read is inaccurate.

But the cameras would expose the Justices who cling to their seats despite declining ability. It is true that the journalists in the courtroom might tell us if a Justice no longer manages to sit upright and look alert. But the regular gaze of the television cameras would create a permanent but subtle pressure on the Justices to think realistically about whether they still belong on the Court. Self-interest would motivate them to step down gracefully and not cling too long to the position of power the Constitution entitles them to. I think this new pressure would serve the public interest. It would institute a valuable check on the life tenure provision, which has, in modern times, poured too much power into the individuals who occupy the Court.

And I want to watch the arguments on television too.

"The [arrest] warrant against Bassem Youssef is also the latest in a series of legal actions against the comedian, who has come to be known as Egypt's Jon Stewart."

"Youssef's widely-watched weekly show, ElBernameg' or The Program, has become a platform for lampooning the government, opposition, media and clerics."

The fast-paced show has attracted a wide viewership, but has also earned itself its fair share of detractors. Youssef has been a frequent target of lawsuits, most of them brought by Islamist lawyers who have accused him of "corrupting morals" or violating "religious principles."...

In a post on his official Twitter account, Youssef said he will hand himself in to the prosecutor's office Sunday. He then added, with his typical sarcasm: "Unless they kindly send a police van today and save me the transportation hassle."

At the Road Trip Café...

... are we there yet?

(Neither I nor Meade took this picture, but I have permission to post it. And, no, these are not our dogs. If your heart goes out to the boy in the middle, please let me know.)

"Breast-feeding is time-consuming, exhausting and unselfish."

"While I am thrilled that I have been able to breast-feed my son successfully, I become frustrated when his future ability to connect with others is called into question because I text someone during a feeding session instead of staring at a wall in a dark room for 30 minutes straight."

Is texting while breastfeeding any different from reading or watching television while breastfeeding? How bored do you need to allow yourself to get before you can give yourself credit for being a good enough mother? And you'll never be good enough, because the bored-out-of-her-skull mother isn't very good. And let's say you could force yourself to always believe that your children are not only endlessly fascinating, but fascinating in a way that leaves no room for other interests: Would your marriage work out? If not, now, you've hurt those kids. Would the kids truly and perfectly benefit from having a mother who found them endlessly fascinating and utterly fulfilling? I suspect that by the time they turned 13, they'd be telling her she's out of her fucking mind.

Purchase of the day.

From the March 29, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Tell Mama: The Complete Muscle Shoals Sessions Etta James

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"The falsified test scores were so high that Parks Middle was no longer classified as a school in need of improvement and, as a result, lost $750,000 in state and federal aid..."

"... according to investigators."

That money could have been used to give struggling children extra academic support. Stacey Johnson, a Parks teacher, told investigators that she had students in her class who had scored proficient on state tests in previous years but were actually reading on the first-grade level. Cheating masked the deficiencies and skewed the diagnosis.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta school district superintendent, Beverly L. Hall — indicted yesterday — "earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses while superintendent." And:

Teachers and principals whose students had high test scores received tenure and thousands of dollars in performance bonuses. Otherwise, as one teacher explained, it was "low score out the door."

This is terrible, but it's only an extreme permutation of the deep structural problem that permeates schooling: teachers and administrators have a conflict of interest with the children who are at their mercy.

"I was raised that if a doctor tells you something, it’s gospel, like the priests..."

"... They know better than we do. Now if I suspect something, I’m definitely more proactive."

About the doctors... or the priests?

"Republicans like him will soon be extinct, and that’s a good thing for the GOP."

"But in the meantime, when they make these remarks, it makes it harder for those of us who are trying to grow the base of our party."

Don't worry, kids. The bad ones are dying off. Please hang on for another 15 or 20 years, and we won't be toxic anymore. See ya then!

"Illinois Tollway underlings took photos of their boss sleeping on the job because they were upset he was finally making them put in 'a day’s work for a day’s pay'..."

"... an attorney for the fired Tollway boss said Friday."

"With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany's 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them."

"To help educate postwar generations, an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Berlin features a Jewish man or woman seated inside a glass box for two hours a day through August to answer visitors' questions about Jews and Jewish life. The base of the box asks: 'Are there still Jews in Germany?'"

Performance art... what can't it do?

"Mother of Two Princeton Men Scolds College Women For Showing Insufficient Enthusiasm for Marrying Princeton Men."

Scoffing at what might be good advice

The advice: "Find a husband on campus before you graduate.... you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you."

The scoff — by the oft-off Amanda Marcotte — is that the woman is really only concerned about her sons and she's embarrassing them badly.

"White men have much to discuss about mass shootings."

An op-ed headline at The Washington Post.

Nearly all of the mass shootings in this country in recent years — not just Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson and Columbine — have been committed by white men and boys. Yet when the National Rifle Association (NRA), led by white men, held a news conference after the Newtown massacre to advise Americans on how to reduce gun violence, its leaders’ opinions were widely discussed.

Unlike other groups, white men are not used to being singled out. So we expect that many of them will protest it is unfair if we talk about them. But our nation must correctly define their contribution to our problem of gun violence if it is to be solved....

I would have thought white men were the one group that American elite media does feel free to single out... as evidenced by this article. And I didn't know we were calling the Fort Hood killer a "white man." But I'm sure you can find some other problems with this piece.

ADDED: This topic made me think of R. Crumb's "Whiteman":

"Could Google tilt a close election?"

"That’s the question psychologist Robert Epstein has been asking in a series of experiments testing the impact of a fictitious search engine — he called it 'Kadoodle' — that manipulated search rankings, giving an edge to a favored political candidate by pushing up flattering links and pushing down unflattering ones."

"Animals March Madness: Semifinal Lightning Round."

Wombats vs. Elephants & Red Pandas vs. Otters.

"It is disgusting and despicable the way that certain media constantly harass the pregnant Kim Kardashian."

"It's enough that they persistently project a negative focus on women's physical shapes; but a public bullying and attacking of a pregnant woman because of her growing shape is just lower than low."

ADDED: "Could Kim Kardashian, whose dubious fashion choices have made her pregnancy curves look even larger than life, be teeing herself up for a deal with Weight Watchers?... Kim has drawn ridicule for strutting around in tight-fitting couture maternity wear, including sky-high heels, snug dresses and A-line skirts...."

"What was worse — having to be heterosexual or being a politician?"

"One of the great moments" in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary "Fall to Grace," according to Carl Swanson in New York Magazine. The documentarian daughter of Nancy Pelosi is interviewing disgraced former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey.

Pelosi tells me the lesson of the documentary is “Don’t let the worst thing you did define who you are now. Think of it as Tony Robbins for the HBO-documentary set.” I ask her if she worries that she is essentially enabling McGreevey’s need for attention, and she admits that the idea “does keep her up at nights.”

This is my second post of the day about McGreevey. The first was about a NYT article that was either atrocious or brilliant satire. I'm writing this one because I have now watched the "Fall to Grace," and I just want to say it's horrible. Pelosi didn't get much good footage, and we mostly see women in prison going through prison therapy, a topic that could be handled in many different ways by serious film documentarians but is here used to promote McGreevey, whom the women just adore, because he tells them they should not be defined by the worst things they've done.

Why is McGreevey doing therapy in women's prisons? Because he left the Catholic Church (because they won't let you feel good about being gay) and went to Episcopalian seminary (where it's apparently okay both to be gay and to have a gay sexual relationship), but the Episcopalians rejected him for the priesthood anyway. Is McGreevey angling to get back into politics? I bet he is, in which case Pelosi's puff piece is supposed to help. It shouldn't though, because it's so awful. Worst thing about it? The maudlin tinkling piano soundtrack that never shuts up.

Destroying Ben Carson.

TPM:

Students at Johns Hopkins University’s medical school are circulating a petition to replace Dr. Benjamin Carson as their commencement speaker after the famed neurosurgeon... [said on Sean Hannity's show] on Tuesday that opposite-sex marriage is “a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”

The Supreme Court has many options in the Prop 8 case.

How many? Marty Lederman says he'd originally thought there were 5: 1. no standing, 2. uphold Prop 8 on the merits, 3. reject Prop 8 in a way that relates only to California, 4. reject Prop 8 in a way that would also require gay marriage in the 8 states that have civil unions for gay couples, and 5. find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage that would apply throughout the country. Now, he sees 2 more options: 6. dismiss the petition (decide it was a mistake to take the case at all), and 7. vacate  and remand for reconsideration in light of whatever it does in the DOMA case.

Lederman thinks you can't tell from the oral argument, in which it seemed that at least some of the Justices were struggling to try to figure out what to do, but he thinks 2, 3, 5, and 7 are unlikely and 6 is also pretty unlikely.

So what about 1 (standing)?

... Justice Kennedy, expressed concern that if the Court were to hold that the Proposition 8 proponents lack Article III standing because they are not agents of the state of California... such a ruling might invite executive officials in California to effectively “thwart the initiative process” (Justice Kennedy’s words), simply by refusing to appeal lower court rulings declaring that such initiatives are invalid....

And 4 (reaching the merits and covering 8 states)?

To be sure, Justice Kennedy stated that it would be “very odd” for California to in effect be “penalized” for being “more open to protecting same-sex couples than almost any State in the Union.”  To like effect, Justice Sotomayor said that there would be an “irony” if “States that do more [for same-sex couples] have less rights.”...

But that objection doesn’t quite capture the fundamental nature of the eight-state argument—namely, that it’s an underinclusiveness argument of the sort the Court often invokes to explain why a state’s defense of a law is inadequate. 

Actually, everything seems unlikely and unsatisfying... and yet there will be a decision. I note that there could be an outcome without any rationale commanding a majority. That should be considered the 8th possibility. The 8th option for Prop 8.

Why, on your birthday, you should call your mother.

To thank her for not aborting you.

(Especially if you were born in the U.S.A. after 1973.)

"As the viewer is struck with eggs spilling out in all directions twisting like an egg tornado and wondering how all that was packed into a flat card..."

"... and further how in the world will all that mess ever close back, depicted in black and white and in a smaller scale behind all of that, Jesus of Nazareth ascends in triumphant pose presiding over all, but his astonishing Earth-shattering demonstration of survival of the death experience goes unnoticed because attention is misdirected to the movement of colorful eggs."

At Saint Friday's Café..

... you can observe anything you want.

Prosecutors not ready to let the Aurora theater killer plead guilty to escape the death penalty.

"In a court filing, prosecutors criticized defense attorneys for publicizing [James] Holmes’ offer to plead guilty, calling it a ploy meant to draw the public and the judge into what should be private plea negotiations."

Legal experts say the case pivots on whether Holmes was legally insane when he opened fire in a packed theater in Aurora, killing 12 people.

Is life in prison an acceptable deal?

"Possible Stylish Owners: People who shop at Orvis, Dads with Barbour jackets that faintly smell of gunpowder."

"For men who wear hunting jackets for real, actual hunting, and use shooting patches to cushion the blowback from the butt of their Winchester rifles, this is their unironic dog..."

#8 on the list of "Most Stylish Dog Breeds."

Ah, but what kind of style are you talking about?

Note that German Shepherd is not on the list, the "Possible Stylish Owner" that we're talking about 3 posts down is not identified as possibly stylish on this possibly authoritative list.

Chaos for all-female Smith College after it rejects a transgender applicant, who's got social media to champion her cause.

"A transgender high school student has had her application to a prestigious all-women's college denied because she is tagged as legally male on government documents, prompting a vocal online and social media campaign on her behalf."

Laurie Fenlason, Smith's vice president for public affairs, said the school does not comment on the status or admissibility of individual applicants. But she added, "Every application to Smith is treated on a case-by-case basis, and application materials must reflect female identity."

Smith also has legal concerns over changing its admissions policies, Fenlason said. Schools such as Smith are concerned they could lose federal funding under Title IX, a law that bans sexual discrimination in education but exempts single-sex institutions.

Female identity... that sounds like they've already worked out the answer for the future. Beyond that, they can't say why they rejected the applicant, Calliope Wong. They're not allowed to talk about that. It's Wong going public, making the claim, enlisting social media in publicizing it.

Students and graduates have taken to social media sites, including the Facebook groups "Trans women belong at Smith College" and "Smith Q&A," to show support.

Here's "Trans women belong at Smith College." Sample comment there: "Our alma mater is being incredibly douchey...."

They're allowed to discriminate against men. They're more discriminatory than most schools. But I guess that's the trouble. Once you start discriminating and draw a line, you have to figure out who's on which side of that line, creating problems non-discriminators don't have.

For example, if you are going to do affirmative action, do you simply accept that people are the race they feel that they are? Actually, it does work out that way! It's surprising there isn't more chaos around that, but that's because once students are admitted, they make their own assumptions about who is what race, and they are never confronted with the admissions materials. So, for example, if Liz got bonus points because her application said she was Native American, and when she joins the student body, she's a blue-eyed blonde, the other students just see the blue-eyed blonde. Meanwhile, the school is happy to show better diversity statistics. Everybody wins. (That is, everybody who's there, in person, now, wins. The losers are unknowns exiled who knows where.)

But if you have a place like Smith, that's all female, everyone on site is quite aware that this is an all-female place, and they'll notice if a non-female makes it past admissions. The entire student body is activated as a check on the admissions people. Some of those students might be inclined towards inclusion of transgendered individuals, but some are not. Chaos!

Wong has not undergone the costly reassignment procedure.

Chaos!

Purchase of the day.

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Blue Ocean Relief MOVA World Globe

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"I don't know why you guys ask me, I'm just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man's perspective."

Doug Gottlieb on CBS before Marquette-Miami game last night.

Later in the evening, having noticed the criticisms on Twitter, his co-commentator Charles Barkley said:

"I know this has nothing to do with the game. I wanna say something about Doug Gottlieb. He made a joke earlier tonight. All those people on Twitter who are going crazy, which I would never ever do, listen me Kenny, Greg Anthony, and Greg Gumbel didn’t take that personally so all you people at home who've got no life who are talking bad about Doug Gottlieb get a life. It's no big deal."

Big deal or not, Gottlieb apologized — "It was not a smart thing to say and I apologize" — which I take it is kind of the white man's perspective.

"Most of his sexual interludes with men had been furtive; to him, gay culture meant Liberace and Paul Lynde."

One of many hard-to-believe sentences in this long NYT article about James McGreevey, the disgraced former governor of New Jersey. He's 55, not 75. He got into trouble putting his lover on the state payroll in 2004, not 1974. He's a big old fraud in my book, and his effort to cloak himself in "I am a gay American" sentimentality is disgusting.

Relentlessly excavating his heart and soul, he later went into psychotherapy and resurrected the calling he said he had felt since he was an altar boy in Carteret, N.J. Now an Episcopalian with a degree in divinity from the General Theological Seminary, he’s embracing the Lord’s work with the same fervor with which he once pursued politics. 

Look, I hope he's turned his life into service and good works, but this article is fawning — PR-style.

Until recently, Mr. McGreevey and his partner had kept their relationship private. This Thursday, however, is the debut of Alexandra Pelosi’s HBO documentary “Fall to Grace,” which explores his spiritual makeover, so he’s sharing the happily-ever-after. 

Sharing the happily-ever-after? Who talks like that?

Not, he stipulates, because he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico, but because he’s eager to focus attention on his work.

Oh, he stipulates? Sorry, this is just making me believe he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico. Did the NYT writer think that passing along this fawning PR was a joke — a nudge to make us think this is such bullshit? We're shown McGreevey's partner, an "Australian financier," 9 years his junior who — we're told is "[s]turdy and handsome in an unpolished way" and "with taste for modern art." The modern art taste is nowhere to be seen in the photograph of the pair in their "pistachio-walled conservatory with worn-leather sofas and ethnic touches that could have been conjured by Ralph Lauren."

With severely cropped hair, khakis and navy sweater pocked with moth holes (his uniform), the ex-governor has the look of a missionary. Upbeat and charismatic, he laughs easily and often exclaims, “God bless!” Mr. O’Donnell has a warier, more reserved air — at least, when he’s on the record. Wearing smart corduroys and a taupe cardigan, he keeps his phone in hand and peers at the screen through thick-rimmed glasses.

Smart corduroys? Cardigan?

ADDED: The cardigan is the main thing that pushed me over the line to finding this article bloggable, because I'd just read this question in the Gentleman Scholar advice column at Slate:

Out of nowhere, my husband of 21 years has started wearing cardigan sweaters. I can't tell you how much this turns me off—the soft, sloppy, indecisiveness of the garment, not jacket, but not fully committed to being a sweater, either. He will point to younger men wearing them and say, "See? I'm bringing them back." The thing is, I'm not going home with those younger men and I don't know why the younger men are wearing them, maybe it's ironic or something? I don't know. But when I see a man in a cardigan, all I can think is Mr. Rogers. My husband usually has excellent taste but every now and then he likes to rock something positively cringe-worthy. He doesn't like me to tell him what to wear. Do I just suck it up? Or do I draw a line in the sand? Thank you!

I mean, maybe that article was ironic or something... I don't know.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said: Oh my God. That piece has to be satire. Please tell me it's the smartest satire ever written. "

I just noticed the line — in the "smart corduroys" paragraph — "Mr. O’Donnell... at least, when he’s on the record."

AND: More from Palladian: "I'm still trying to imagine how they figured out how to make pistachios work as a load-bearing structural material." 

"'I felt bound by those mandatory guidelines and I hated them,' Judge Lagueux said from the bench..."

"... as [Denise] Dallaire sobbed quietly and the room froze with amazement. 'I’m sorry I sent you away for 15 years.' He urged her to get home quickly to her ill mother but not to run down the court steps as people do in the movies. 'Those steps are dangerous,' he told her."

... Like many petty criminals snared by sentencing rules aimed at drug kingpins, Ms. Dallaire had virtually no hope of an early release, even after the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision and subsequent Congressional action reducing prison terms in crack cocaine cases. She got there through an exquisitely rare constellation — her exemplary prison record, Judge Lagueux’s nagging conscience and the interest of another judge who persuaded a top lawyer to volunteer his time to work for her release. Without those, Ms. Dallaire would still be working three jobs at the Danbury federal prison.

“There are a lot of people like Denise doing bone-crushing time under the old sentencing regime, and we need to try to find ways to help them,” said Judge John Gleeson....

Rush Limbaugh on gay marriage: "This issue is lost."

Fascinating to hear it phrased that way by Rush Limbaugh, who for years — for mockery purposes — has played the audio clip of Harry Reid saying "This war is lost."

The Reid clip works as mockery because Reid was so wrong, wrong about the war being lost and wrong to express the demoralizing opinion. So in Rush's statement yesterday I hear a little nudge, a little cue that the issue isn't lost. Rush is answering an email from someone who feels that Rush has never expressed his opinion on gay marriage, and Rush begins with "Is my position on this really not known?"

This is a great teaser, keeping us listening at the end of the third hour of the show, which has already been full of talk about gay marriage. We're brought up short: Do we really not know what Rush thinks on the subject? He shifts away from that topic to a reverie about a conversation with a friend about "the left" and "the language game." We're looking at the show transcript here, but as a subscriber to the website, I'm hearing the audio as well, and it's slow and drawn out, like he's going to circle around before he gets to answering that emailed question, which nags me: I find myself assuming that Rush doesn't really care what gay people do in their private lives. He's not bound enough to tradition to have kept his own marriage vows, having divorced 3 times, and he hasn't put his life's energy into raising children. If gay people want to commit to monogamy, let them have their go at it. Good luck being better at it than I've been. That's what I think he thinks.

But I've got to listen to this disquisition on the left and language, which right away reminds me of how lefties are always whining that the right wins through "framing" — calling the estate tax the "death tax" and so forth. Both sides do things with language, and Rush is a master at pulling apart the other side's language (which, of course, entails substituting preferred language).

The language game, the left really excels at changing the language to benefit them politically, and they do it in such a way that a lot of people on our side have no idea what's happened until it's too late and the issue is already lost, which this issue is. This issue is lost. I don't care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable -- and it's inevitable because we lost the language on this. I mentioned the other day that I've heard people talk about "opposite-sex marriage," or you might have had heard people say "traditional marriage."

You might have heard people say "hetero-marriage." I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word "marriage" to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it, because marriage is one thing....

The social conservatives were playing a corresponding language game the whole time. They were relying — much too heavily — on the assertion that marriage has a fixed definition restricting it to one man and one woman.  If anything, the social conservatives insisted on framing the argument with the definition of the word marriage. "Opposite-sex marriage" is a retronym, like "snail mail." The existence/acceptance of the retronym proves the meaning of the root word has changed. Rush speaks in terms of "allowing" something like this to happen, but you can't control the evolution of the language that way.

The anti-gay-marriage side needed much more than a language argument. It lost not because the pro side did something with language. The pro side developed arguments about fairness, equality, and privacy. The traditional marriage people kept talking about the definition of marriage, which made it look more and more as though they had no good argument on the underlying substance. That's why they lost. Would they have lost even more quickly if they'd been less dictionary-focused and had concentrated on fairness, equality, and privacy? Either they were shallow or they were smart. That is, either they didn't know how to delve into the underlying principles at stake or they knew they'd get into trouble venturing beyond the definition-of-marriage argument.

Rush goes on to assert that the idea the marriage is between a man and a woman "was not established on the basis of discrimination."

It wasn't established on the basis of denying people anything. "Marriage" is not a tradition that a bunch of people concocted to be mean to other people with. But we allowed the left to have people believe that it was structured that way. 

No. That's not the pro-gay-marriage argument. No one thinks marriage was designed for the purpose of excluding gay people. The argument is only that there is an exclusion that we are now able to see. If someone points out that you're standing on his foot, you'd say I'm sorry and move your foot. You wouldn't say It's not as if I deliberately stomped on your foot and then keep standing on his foot. The continued behavior is mean. That's the meanness "the left" — along with many moderates and righties — has made many people believe. It has become mean. I believe that, and not just because Rush and others have "allowed the left to have people believe." Allowed!

Rush continues:

I would go so far as to say that there are some people who think marriage is an evil Republican idea, simply because they're the ones that want to hold on to it. 

That's hard to understand because he's using the restricted definition of "marriage." I almost wrote Huh? No one seems to be saying marriage is evil anymore.

So far as I'm concerned, once we started talking about "gay marriage," "traditional marriage," "opposite-sex marriage," "same-sex marriage," "hetero-marriage," we lost.  It was over.  It was just a matter of time.  This is the point a friend of mine sent me a note about.

"Once you decide to modify the word 'marriage,' then the other side has won, or at least they're 90% of the way home.  The best thing that 'marriage' had going for it was basically what they teach you the first day in law school: 'If you hang a sign on a horse that says "cow," it does not make it a cow,' although today it might."  That's where we are: 5 + 5 could = 11, if it works for the Democrats.  A cow could be a horse, if it works for the Democrats. 

Yes, the best argument was the words-have-meaning argument, but law school doesn't end on the first day, and the meaning of words is a complex topic. It's not like adding 5 + 5. I know there are a lot of jokes about lawyers like the client asking what's 5 + 5 and the lawyer answering "What do you want it to be?" In fact, I think I heard that joke on my first day in law school. But law isn't arithmetic, and people's lives are not numbers, and the question of what is right and wrong can't be done on a calculator. In fact, it's morally wrong to treat human beings as if they are numbers that can be added and subtracted mechanically.

Back to Rush:

The thing is, discrimination has never been a part of marriage.

It evolved as the best way to unite men and women in raising a family and in cohabitating a life.  It's not perfect.  The divorce rate's what it is.  But it evolved with a purpose.  It was not a creation of a bunch of elitists wanting to deny people a good time.  It was not created as something to deny people "benefits," but it became that once we started bastardizing the definition.  But discrimination is not an issue, and it never was.  No one sensible is against giving homosexuals the rights of contract or inheritance or hospital visits.

Right. No one sensible.... See how he's conceding there's no legitimate reason for the discrimination? In law — this is something you learn after the first day of law school — discrimination between classes of persons must be supported by a legitimate government interest. That's always an issue. You can't say that we didn't originally notice this discrimination. It must be justified. This is called the "rational basis" test, and it's the question right now before the Supreme Court. Rush has conceded the irrationality: No one sensible would deny gay people what government makes depend on being married.

There's nobody that wants to deny them that.  The issue has always been denying them a status that they can't have, by definition.  By definition -- solely, by definition -- same-sex people cannot be married.  So instead of maintaining that and holding fast to that, we allowed the argument to be made that the definition needed to change, on the basis that we're dealing with something discriminatory, bigoted, and all of these mystical things that it's not and never has been.

So he's in my "smart" category. He knows the definition-of-marriage argument is the only good argument. There is no other argument. Once that is lost, the game is lost. For the social conservatives — in this view — the only game was the language game.

At this point in the monologue, it becomes comical with a far-fetched analogy to someone who complains that they want the money and fame that someone else has. "I want to be an Obama... It's not fair that I can't be an Obama.... They're discriminating against me!" Rush is stretching for time now and retreating to the familiar ground of Obama and the redistribution of wealth, which is far from the problem of inequality enforced by law. This silly stuff goes on and on up to the commercial break, after which he says he's "just illustrating absurdity by being absurd." But he didn't illustrate absurdity. He ran from his own realization that the definition-of-marriage argument wasn't good enough and that in the end it was not a language game. It was real life.

And now he's out of time:

Just trying to point out what happens if we lose definitions, which is why we are where we are here.  People refuse to stand fast on the definition of something. 

But the anti-gay-marriage people did stand fast. They stood on the only decent ground they had, and they fought there, and they lost not because of words, but because of moral feelings that developed on a deeper level, a level where the antis chose — wisely! — not to go.

And did you notice? Rush never answered the question asked! He mentioned law school: When I — a law professor — grade exams, I only give credit for answering the question asked. He got on a riff and filled the page, but I haven't forgotten the question: "Is my position on this really not known?"

But this isn't a law school exam. It's a radio show. And the riff was great radio, and he's got everyone talking about it this morning, including me, a law professor. What was the question anyway? He posed it himself! It was: "Is my position on this really not known?"

I'll answer that question. The answer is: No!

At the Abbie-Got-the-Ball Café...

... there are many new things.

The child philosopher.

What do you do to get a child like this?



"I don't think [the parents] have a particular method or anything like that. They're both excellent human beings and they treat their kids as if they're intelligent young people, and not children who couldn't possibly understand how the world (or universe) works."

"An exercise in virtuosity, with undeniable intelligence, but with no particular relation to the history of philosophy..."

"... Can come back when he is prepared to accept the rules and not invent where he needs to be better informed."

"One of Time's two new cover photos declaring 'gay marriage already won' looks like a wedding kiss. The other looks more like a makeout session."

One is 2 women. One is 2 men. Guess which pair is kissing wedding style (with their collars showing) and which pair is kissing sexy (with no indication that they're not naked)?

This says so much about what even the politically correct really think about gay folk:



I call sexism!

Maria Shriver still has her Christmas lights up.

And the neighbors are annoyed.

We're told the neighbors haven't approached Maria directly yet because they like her and don't want to hurt her feelings ... but in typical passive aggressive neighborly fashion, they're hoping word will make its way back to her.

How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Why does Chicago have the least federal gun-crime prosecutions?

"The districts of Eastern New York, Central California, and Northern Illinois ranked 88th, 89th and 90th, respectively, out of 90 districts, in prosecutions of federal weapons crimes per capita last year..." — but why? Wayne LaPierre has pointed to this study, as if it shows why we don't need more gun laws and we simply need to get serious about the gun laws we already have. Chicago epitomizes a city with a gun violence problem, so why is it "dead last"? — to quote LaPierre.

From the first link, which goes to a U.S. News article:

[T]he U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of Illinois maintains that federal weapons law enforcement is among the top priorities of their office. "We have a number of different methods of attacking gangs, guns, drugs and violent crime," says spokesman Randall Sanborn, who notes that many gun arrests are reviewed to determine whether the arrest should stay with the county or be brought to the federal level. "We look at which court the defendant is likely to get a substantially greater sentence... More cases that used to be brought federally are now staying in state courts because [they are] now able to get a sentence equally great or greater," he says....

While the districts that ranked lowest last year for federal gun crime prosecutions all contained major cities, the districts at the top of the list for its enforcement were almost exclusively rural. The districts of Southern Alaska, Kansas and Western Tennessee ranked first, second and third in prosecutions of federal weapons laws per capita last year.

Susan Long, a statistician and co-director of [Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal data], said the data revealed a stronger federal enforcement presence in rural areas than urban ones. "If taxpayers of [a certain area] don't pass strong gun control measures ... the feds pick up the ball," she said.

So Chicago ranks last in federal prosecutions because there's more state law regulating guns and there's more enthusiasm among state prosecutors about enforcing it. Street-level violence is more properly handled in state court. Unless you've got interstate webs of criminal activity, gun crimes shouldn't be cluttering up the relatively scarce federal district courts (which have to handle civil and criminal cases). What seems to be happening in Chicago is a preferable allocation of federal and state power.

The reason other areas have a higher proportion of federal gun-crime prosecutions seems to be that there's much less state-level enthusiasm about gun crimes and the feds are stepping in to fill the gap. Depending on what crimes are prosecuted, you might want to criticize the feds for oppressing the people in the states that — following their vision of government — have a more easygoing attitude about what people do with guns (perhaps because people around them aren't doing such bad things, as they are in Chicago). But you've got to perceive the way these sparsely populated places are getting proportionately more prosecutions and thereby driving places like Chicago lower on the TRAC list of federal prosecutions rankings.

Did WaPo's Dana Milbank just call Clarence Thomas an oreo?

No.

He called him a tagalong.

"The swing vote is in (so stop kissing up)."

Writes Dana Milbank, in a slight twist of the usual lazy journalist approach to covering the Supreme Court: Inform readers that Anthony Kennedy is the swing vote, pull his statements/questions out the transcript, and riff about them — What's he thinking? Who knows? Could go either way — and let him know — subtly or unsubtly — how much you'll love him if he does what you want and how he risks his social and historical standing if he does not.

There's an issue of "standing" in both same-sex marriage cases. Standing — the legal doctrine — has to do with whether the party seeking access to the judicial process has a concrete and particularized injury that is fairly traceable to the opposing party and likely to be redressed if he happens to prevail on the legal issue. But the real issue of standing — these journalists make me think — is Justice Kennedy's standing within the elite crowd of politics, academia, and journalism.

Milbank's riff is: He can already tell. 

Early in the oral argument [in Windsor], the conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts (a silent Clarence Thomas can be assumed to be their tacit tagalong) — explored the idea that the case might be disposed of on the technical grounds that no injury had been proved, a technique that would avoid a ruling calling DOMA unconstitutional.

But Kennedy was having none of it. “It seems to me there’s injury here,” he said.

The swing vote had swung....

Kennedy left little doubt about what he thinks the answer is. When Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that DOMA violated the notion of equal protection under the law, Kennedy cut him off. “You are insisting that we get to a very fundamental question about equal protection,” he said, “but we don’t do that unless we assume the law is valid otherwise to begin with.”

And if Kennedy doesn’t assume something, nobody can assume it.

The usual sucking up is not needed.

It's embarrassing to the Court that it is talked about this way, and — ironically — it makes it harder for the Court to find new/bigger individual rights that ordinary people can believe really came out of a dutiful judicial analysis of the law. That unwittingly bolsters the argument for leaving this issue in the arena of majoritarian politics.

Purchase of the day.

From the March 27, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

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by Intuit.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And fear not – we can't see your name.

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A real Cloak of Invisibility.

"Titled 'Demonstration of an ultralow profile cloak for scattering suppression of a finite-length rod in free space,' their research, published in the New Journal of Physics, describes a cloak consisting of 66 µm-thick copper tape and 100 µm-thick flexible polycarbonate film which scatters and cancels out incoming waves."

“In principle this technique may be extended to visible frequencies; in fact metasurfaces are easier to realize than metamaterials in optics. However, the object size that can be efficiently cloaked with this method scales with the wavelength, so when applied to optical frequencies we may be able to efficiently stop the scattering of only micrometer-sized objects,” the research paper claims.

"When I talk to people about the bowl, it is always about something else."

"It’s a metaphorical conversation about ritual, like in the tea ceremony, or about the fabrication process. It’s very hard to just talk about the bowl itself. We talk around the bowl."

Please talk about the bowl. I knew somebody who had, amongst the cardboard boxes stacked up in his garage, a box marked "BOWELS."

Are you familiar with the typo/misspelling distinction? I make a big deal about it in the comments thread here, and ultimately assert: "Under that definition, I don't think I have ever misspelled writing this blog, other than (very rarely) the occasional proper name."

Put that in the bowel of your pipe and smoke it.

"Flashback: When Democrats Swore They Would Never Back Gay Marriage."

"[A] short video composed of the floor speeches some top Democrats made about SSM. At the time, Republicans wanted to block gay marriage in Massachusetts by amending the constitution with an official marriage definition. Democrats argued against that, but they didn't argue in favor of gay marriage. They argued that DOMA made such an amendment unneccessary. They assured people like Rick Santorum that the slippery slope case for gay marriage was bogus."

Asked "How old are you?," the 7-year-old said "What difference does it make? I’m older than you, anyway."

"Why do you think you’re older?" Rabbi Schacter asked.

“Because you cry and laugh like a child,” Lulek replied. “I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?”

"The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness..."

"... and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money."

I suspected that some of you might be hoping for another sentence from "The Great Gatsby." (Here on the Althouse blog, there's the "Gatsby" project, which happens these days when the mood strikes me, and consists of a sentence from the great novel, taken out of context, to be employed — however you wish — as a conversation piece.)

Today's sentence has a resonance of extravagant numbers: "many times a millionaire" and "an infinite number of women."

There's also the nice hard and soft. Our man is "physically robust" but "soft-minded." Hard and soft might correspond to male and female, but it's the male who is both hard and soft. Hard below the neck and soft above. And the women have enough stuff above the neck to suspect... to get a glimmer of what's going on. They are gold-diggers, but in this case it's only copper. Tawdry!

"Fetal Heartbeat Laws Gain Momentum."

"Idaho teacher investigated for saying ‘vagina’ during biology lesson."

"Tim McDaniel, who teaches 10th grade science at Dietrich School, told the Twin Falls Times-News that four parents were upset when they learned that his lesson included the word 'vagina' and information about the biology behind female orgasm."

"The concept of Germany as a distinct region in central Europe can be traced to Roman commander Julius Caesar..."

"... who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul (France), which he had conquered...."

In the first years of the 1st century, Roman legions conducted a long campaign in Germania, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine, in an attempt to expand the Empire's frontiers and shorten its frontier line. They subdued several Germanic tribes, such as the Cherusci. The tribes became familiar with Roman tactics of warfare while maintaining their tribal identity. In 9 AD, a Cherusci chieftain named Arminius defeated a Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, a victory credited with stopping the Roman advance into Germanic territories and forming the birth of German history....

Much more happens in Germany, today's "History of" country.

Obama thinks it's "important for the court to weigh in" on gay marriage.

"My hope is that the court reaches these issues," he said, alluding to the standing problems in the 2 cases, which could keep the Court from reaching the merits.

The standing problem in the DOMA case resulted from Obama's own decision not to defend the law. I'm sure Obama — as an erstwhile lawprof — knows that the Supreme Court doesn't just "weigh in" on issues. It can only decide real adversarial disputes between parties, and his refusal to defend the federal statute is the basis of the argument that this is not a "case" within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution.

Justice Breyer makes the clearest argument for why there is standing in the DOMA case.

And Chief Justice Roberts takes a different tack. This part is about the bizarre situation in which President Obama and Eric Holder have decided that DOMA is unconstitutional, and they won't defend it in the Supreme Court, but they intend to continue applying it. As Roberts puts it: why doesn't the President "have the courage of his convictions" and stop enforcing DOMA — "rather than saying, oh, we'll wait till the Supreme Court tells us we have no choice"?

"Congress decided to reflect and honor a collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality."

Justice Kagan quotes from the House of Representatives legislative history of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act at today's oral argument. (Audio and transcript here. The quote in the title corrects a slightly garbled transcript.) There's a murmur of laughter. Here, listen. This clip includes the response from the very well-prepared Paul Clement, who's defending the federal statute.


By the way, the quote in the post title appeared in the amicus brief filed by 172 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 40 U.S. Senators. Here's the context, showing something of the case law that makes this a powerful argument (to anyone who accepts the precedents and is willing to consider the legislative history):

DOMA is... unlike most other Acts of Congress in another critical respect: A clearly stated purpose for its enactment was to express moral disapproval of a disfavored minority group. Many proponents repeatedly stated their intent to "honor a collective moral judgment" reflecting "moral disapproval  of homosexuality" (House Report at 15-16). Chairman Hyde explained, for example, that "most people do not approve of homosexual conduct * * * and they express their disapprobation through the law." 142 Cong. Rec. H7501 (July 12, 1996). Lead Senate sponsor Don Nickles likewise stated that "we find ourselves at the point today that this legislation is needed" because of the "erosion of values." 142 Cong. Rec. S4870 (May 8, 1996).

Those views no doubt reflect "profound and deep convictions," reflecting the "ethical and moral principles" of those who hold them. [Citation to Lawrence v. Texas]. But this Court has made clear that such "considerations do not answer the question before us." Ibid. No matter how sincerely held, such beliefs are not a constitutionally valid basis for enacting "a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake" and "den[ying] them protection across the board." [Citation to Romer v. Evans].

Justice Ginsburg's idea of "two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage."

Here's the audio and transcript for today's oral argument in United States v. Windsor, challenging part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. I've listened to the whole 2-hour argument and I'm going to pull out a few things in separate posts. The first hour is about whether there is standing — a technical but extremely interesting and difficult issue.

At the beginning of the second hour, Paul Clement is defending DOMA. He states his point clearly: Congress has power to define marriage for the purpose of all the many federal programs that have long relied on a marriage classification, and even though it has long treated couples as married when they are married according to state law, it had the "flexibility" to exclude same-sex marriages when some states switched from the traditional definition of marriage. The states still control the definition of marriage, in this view, and all Congress did was define the scope of the coverage of the federal programs.

The first Justice to break in is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who seems prepared with her own succinct argument:

Mr. Clement, the problem is if we are totally for it would totally thwart the States' decision that there is a marriage between two people, for the Federal Government then to come in to say no joint return, no marital deduction, no Social Security benefits; your spouse is very sick but you can't get leave... one might well ask, what kind of marriage is this?

(The strikeout shows where I corrected the transcript, based on the audio.)

Ginsburg returns to this idea later in the argument, after Clement asserts that the states don't "los[e] any benefits" — they are merely blocked from "open[ing] up an additional class of beneficiaries."

JUSTICE GINSBURG: They're not -- they're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's -- it's -- as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was you would really [be] diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.

It's an interesting puzzle. What is a marriage? Is it the bundle of benefits you receive? Marriage is seen as something left to the states in American federalism, but to say that is to ignore the immensity of what the federal government does, much of it hinging on this marriage classification that refers to state law. You really do have much less of a marriage if you don't get all those federal things, but these federal programs all rest on an enumerated power — taxing, spending, etc. — and why wouldn't the feds, in designing any given program have, within that power, the power to delineate who qualifies?

I'm only talking about whether Congress has an enumerated power, not whether this exercise of that power violates the equal protection right, which is also part of this case. And obviously, I'm not talking about the things government does not even attempt to do with marriage — which is to determine whose love relationships are "full" in an emotional and spiritual way.

"In Love With a Sex Addict" — oh, really?

I hadn't given much thought to the much-bruited Tiger Woods/Lindsey Vonn romance, but something about that magazine cover set off my bullshit detector. I think his PR people contacted her PR people and this couple was concocted for our consumption. I love the way they are in love... with the camera. Smiley eyes!

Here's the underlying story.

"They're a really happy couple -- not living together yet," a source explains to Us Weekly... "He confessed everything in his past to her and stuff - they're really into each other," the source tells Us.

Confessed? How do you confess — and stuff! — when everything was all already in the newspapers? And speaking of everything... did you see this new Nike ad that's been "criticized by some"?

"5 Justices Seem Skeptical of Ban on Benefits to Gay Spouses."

The 2 hours of oral argument in the DOMA case have ended. Adam Liptak summarizes:

“The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has the authority to regulate marriage,” Justice Kennedy said during oral arguments, suggesting that the question should be left to the states. He disagreed with the contention that the federal law simply created a single definition for federal purposes, noting that same-sex couples are not treated the same as other married couples. “It’s not really uniformity,” he said....

It should please conservatives to see an opinion based on the lack of an enumerated federal power. Unlike yesterday's Prop 8 case, the legal problem isn't only about constitutional rights. There's a question of congressional power (which should have been addressed 15+ years ago).

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and some of the other conservative justices expressed irritation that the case was before them at all because an appeals court threw out the law’s definition of marriage and the Obama administration agreed with that ruling but appealed it anyway. President Obama has declared that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and refuses to defend it in court, though the government is continuing to enforce it until the Supreme Court offers a judgment.

Chief Justice Roberts called that a contradiction by the president. “I don’t see why he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions” and not enforce the law if he thinks it is unconstitutional, the chief justice said.

Ha ha. That's what I said in my post earlier this morning: "They're lying back waiting for the Court to do the difficult work.... It might be that the Court shouldn't rescue the administration from its politically uncomfortable position." If the matter belongs in the political area, let them sit in their own mess.

AND:

Final update: #scotus 80% likely to strike down #doma. J Kennedy suggests it violates states’ rights; 4 other Justices see as gay rights.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) March 27, 2013

ALSO: If the 4 liberals "see... gay rights" and the 5th vote says there's no enumerated power, there can be a result without an impact on what states can do. The federal government would have to start recognizing same-sex marriages from the states where they are legal, and there wouldn't be any rights-based doctrine applicable to the states. There would be an open question about the part of DOMA that authorizes states to deny recognition to ssms from states that record ssms. The argument for an enumerated power there is somewhat different. If that part of DOMA were stricken down too, there is still an argument that the states could deny recognition to ssms performed elsewhere. In fact, it's an argument DOMA tried to resolve. So somewhere down the line, it's possible that ssm would apply everywhere as long as couples travel to a state that permits them, which would be very easy to do.

"Karma's a bitch."/"But I still love her, because she's always there for me."

Said bagoh20 (responding to me) in comments in to "This is where I will employ the term 'Althousenfreude.'"

That made me say out loud, "I bet there are a lot of girls named 'Karma' now."

I found the old Name Voyager too, and here's Karma — a name that peaked in 2009 with 89 per 1 million babies.

Who would name their child Karma? For insight, consider the the brother and sister names from families with a girl named Karma:

Camron Carmelo Jaxson Kelvin Mauel Memphis Noah Orion Phillip Regulo Roanin Robert Sean Zavior

Graciela Honey Jerry Juniper Katrina Kirra Na'yzia Narida Sophia Voj Zia

Peaked in 2009... goes with the sister name Katrina... ?!! And here are the twins: Karma and Katrina. They look like trouble!

Personal experiences with the name Karma:

Karma is my first name, and in my experience, no one says it right, no on spells it right and everyone feels the need to comment on it - which gets VERY annoying VERY quickly.

Try one of the nicknames: Karms, Kaz, Tarmie, Kar-Kar....

Car car...

At the Taking-It-With-a-Large-Grain-of-Salt Café...

... don't believe everything you hear.

That's an actual grain of salt served in my portion of bacon and eggs this morning, by Meade, who alerted me: "Watch out for the large grain of salt."

(It's Cyprus Flake Mediterranean Sea Salt.)

"This is where I will employ the term 'Althousenfreude'..."

"I would like to say Ann's arguments had no effect on me, but I cannot state this, realistically, as True. I have to acknowledge what I wish I could ignore or elide."

Quite aside from ssm, I'm very interested in the mental processes — the emotional metabolism — in forming opinions and making decisions. It's hard even to observe your own. You try or bumble into affecting the mental processes of others, but you don't really know how to do that. Imagine what would happen to us — politically and economically and personally — if others knew how to persuade us. Ah! It's impossible! There are so many politicians and salespersons and stalkers making their pitches. Even if the pitches were perfect, there'd be cacophony, ruining everything.

Persuasion is a mystery. But I will say that I have a superpower here — a strange superpower (which makes me a better lawprof than lawyer) — and that is that I don't feel any need to win. To me, the expression is complete in the writing. I blog for the intrinsic reward of writing and having readers. Thinking out loud — it's so thrilling and intimate and human! You give up the best part if you rework the expression in the hope of manipulating another human mind.

There's a place for writing as a means to an end, but it's not this place.

Purchase of the day.

From the March 26, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Miele Style FJM Vacuum Bags Includes Bags & Filters.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And fear not – we can't see your name.

The Althouse Amazon portal: now color-coded, self-locking, and auto-sealed to ensure that what goes through the portal stays through the portal.

"The prophet Isaiah... inveighed against the Israelites for vainly fasting when so much injustice surrounded them."

"Such fasting, and particularly fasting only for self-affliction, was sinful, rabbis of the Talmud said. But the Talmud also counseled 'removing your hand from a meal that pleases you.'"

The Talmud teaches that people should eat enough to fill a third of their stomachs, drink enough to fill another third, and leave a third empty...

Rashi, a medieval French rabbi, interpreted the Talmud to mean that the final empty third is necessary so that the body can metabolize emotions. If one ate until one’s belly was completely full, there’d be no room left to manage one’s emotions and one would burst asunder.

However absurd this may seem to us today, it made physiological sense in the premodern world as the emotions were considered physical things that, like food and drink, were metabolized by the body. A body stuffed with food and drink is full only of biology; it leaves no room for biography, for what makes us human.

It may seem absurd, but it's less absurd than a lot of diet advice, and lofty metaphorical visualizations like this may be better physically and psychologically than fussing over calories and carbohydrates and latching onto the latest report of a scientific study somewhere. This is a realization that extends beyond diet advice. It's a more general idea about the role religion plays for people who are not able or willing to put the time into long, brooding studies of moral philosophy.

ADDED: Maybe Rashi's "burst asunder" referred to vomiting. Presumably, that drink that filled a third of the stomach was alcoholic (in the old days, before water was a reliably healthy drink). With a third food and a third wine in your stomach, piling on more risks losing it all — a waste. You don't need the scientific method to arrive through observation and experience at the idea that one third of the stomach should be left free.

Quite aside from the problem of vomiting — which would be much worse when food was not abundant — there is the sluggishness of mind that we all experience when we've eaten too much. You don't need to know any physiology about blood going to the stomach or whatever to come up with advice about eating less so you can manage your mental processes.

Today in the Supreme Court: the Defense of Marriage Act.

Adam Liptak explains the statute and the arguments against it.

This law was passed in 1996 — almost 20 years ago. Why has it taken so long to get to an answer about its constitutionality? I did a final exam in my Constitutional Law class based on DOMA in, approximately, 1996.

One thing about the current case: It has a crisply defined embodiment of the asserted constitutional right — an 83-year old woman (Edith Windsor) whose spouse died and left her property that would be tax free if the IRS recognized her marriage and who is stuck instead with a $360,000 tax bill.

Her opponent is "United States," a formidable party, usually, but in this case, bizarrely vague:

[I]n February [2011], Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he and President Obama had concluded that [DOMA] was unconstitutional and unworthy of defense in court. Mr. Holder added that the administration would continue to enforce the law.

That's unpleasant. They're lying back waiting for the Court to do the difficult work.

[The administration] agrees with Ms. Windsor that the law is unconstitutional, but will not pay her the tax refund she seeks. House Republicans, represented by Paul D. Clement, a former United States solicitor general, intervened in the case to defend the law, losing in the lower courts.

Even though the administration’s legal position prevailed in the lower courts, it filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying the matter should be decided by the nation’s highest tribunal.

The Supreme Court appointed Vicki C. Jackson, a law professor at Harvard, to argue a position not fully supported by any party: that the case’s odd procedural posture means the court lacks jurisdiction to decide it. The court scheduled a separate 50-minute argument on that question.

Does anyone want that argument to succeed? But I await Professor Jackson's arguments. It might be that the Court shouldn't rescue the administration from its politically uncomfortable position. But I feel sorry for the Edith Windsors whose cases are not governed by the 2d Circuit opinion.