Heard about a woman living in the USA …

… she traded in her baby for a Chevrolet.

People to watch out for

These dangerous characters are not limited to the faculty lounge, but can be found in any social group.

E-mails I didn’t finish reading

“If you’re interested in poetry about place (the South), marriage and divorce, sexuality and inheritance …”

I prefer poems about Nantucket.

Scary monsters, super creeps, keep me running, running scared

Once again, the feckless and faithful Democratic Party border collie patrol seeks to rein in stray sheep with dark warnings about something wicked this way to come should the scary monster GOP gain numerical (as opposed to merely practical) control of Congress. Once again, IOZ provides the appropriate rejoinder:

Republicans drive the empire; Democrats consolidate and rationalize what their partners have wrought. George Bush expands the global gulag; Barack Obama writes the employee handbook. The Republicans promise billions to the banks; the Democrats do the accounting. It’s not a competition; it’s a partnership.

American Exceptionalism

In more than 160 countries worldwide, workers enjoy a legal entitlement to paid sick leave. The US is not among them. Instead, like such bastions of individual liberty and economic efficiency as Mongolia, Angola, and Mozambique, we leave our workers free to choose between their health and their job.

The Union Makes Us Strong, and Fox’s Corporate Backers Can’t Stand That

My friend and mentor Big Stu provides a succinct answer to the question, “Are unions still relevant?“

The story itself is classic Fox: feigned objectivity while implicitly slanting the story in favor of the corporate narrative. Yes, “the numbers don’t lie”. But the numbers have a history, one that Fox and other corporate outlets persistently distort or ignore altogether.

Union membership didn’t magically shrink. The decline was the intended result of a sustained ideological, political, and economic campaign aimed at redistributing wealth and power away from workers to further enrich and empower the already wealthy and powerful, and at delegitimizing every social movement and institution–including but not limited to labor unions–that dares stand up for social justice and economic democracy.

Are you aware of the penal codes in this state?

Most of the entries from this year’s Times Higher Education survey of British “exam howlers” are only mildly funny. This one stands out from the pack:

Throughout one essay, a student from the University of Portsmouth wrote about “anus” crimes. The academic marking the paper eventually realized that he meant “heinous” crimes.

Soup is good food for thought

A friend of mine (a very clever and witty person) has had several poems published at Very Bad Poetry (“the last refuge for the world’s worst poetry”). This is my favorite:

A Bowl Of Friendship Soup

By Ceejay Writer

I want to fly away with you

In a shiny spoon-shaped ship
Off to a planet made of soup
Where we can swim and sip!

We’ll loll about on a cracker shore,
Beneath the crouton moons
And gawk at creatures in broth galore
Made of noodles, singing tunes.

And when we’ve had our fun and fill
Of landscapes so enchanted
We’ll come back home and never will
Take minestrone for granted.

GOP Senators <3 judicial activism — when it suits their reactionary agenda

A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but the problem doesn’t seem to afflict mindless little hobgoblins like Senators Cornyn, Coburn, and Sessions.

Meanwhile, in a twist on their argument that Ms. Kagan might be a “judicial activist” who would legislate from the bench, some Republicans expressed concern on Wednesday that she might be too hesitant to strike down acts of Congress that arguably exceed the federal government’s constitutional authority.“

I am concerned that she views the power of the federal government to be essentially without limit,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “She said yesterday that the courts would defer to Congress, and Congress knows no limit to its power grabs, as we’ve seen.”

A nice parting shot from Mr. Justice Stevens

On the merits, I generally agree with the majority’s conclusion in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to the states and not just the federal government; I also agree with the holding in Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to possess and use guns. On the more specific question of what that means for state and local gun control laws, my own view (at least vaguely similar to that expressed by libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett) is that a rough analogy to the First Amendment concept of “time, place & manner restrictions” should apply, permitting regulations that reasonably advance the compelling government interest in public safety. Under that test, a sweeping ban on handgun possession seems clearly overbroad; narrower regulations — such as requiring safety locks or cabinets, gun safety training, or similar measures — should be permissible.

Notwithstanding my view on the outcome of the case, I am delighted by the dissenting opinion of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens — specifically, Part VI of that opinion, in which Stevens lays out a sharp and devastating critique of Justice Scalia’s shoddy analytical approach. What Stevens says of Scalia’s concurring opinion in McDonald applies as well to the entire Scalia œuvre: the analysis “does not have nearly as much force as the rhetoric”.

Although JUSTICE SCALIA aspires to an “objective,” “neutral” method of substantive due process analysis, his actual method is nothing of the sort. Under the “historically focused” approach he advocates, numerous threshold questions arise before one ever gets to the history. At what level of generality should one frame the liberty interest in question? What does it mean for a right to be “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’”? By what standard will that proposition be tested? Which types of sources will count, and how will those sources be weighed and aggre­ gated? There is no objective, neutral answer to these questions. There is not even a theory—at least, JUSTICE SCALIA provides none—of how to go about answering them.

***

My point is not to criticize judges’ use of history in general or to suggest that it always generates indetermi­nate answers; I have already emphasized that historical study can discipline as well as enrich substantive due process analysis. My point is simply that JUSTICE SCALIA’s defense of his method, which holds out objectivity and restraint as its cardinal—and, it seems, only—virtues, is unsatisfying on its own terms. For a limitless number of subjective judgments may be smuggled into his historical analysis. Worse, they may be buried in the analysis.

Stevens is absolutely correct that Scalia’s approach “invites not only bad history, but also bad constitutional law.” The fact that Scalia managed to reach what I consider to be the correct outcome in this case doesn’t alter that assessment. It’s nice to see Justice Stevens departing, not with a whimper, but with a bang.