Happy Halloween

This year marks the first in a very long time that I've actually gotten in costume for Halloween. Mary and I went to a party on Friday dressed as "Breakfast with the King" from that totally creepy and disturbing Burger King ad campaign. And yes, that is a real Meat'normous Omelet Sandwich that I'm holding. Mmmm….

Tonight, however, for the sake of the children, we're going to greet our trick-or-treaters out of costume. So if you want some Snickers bars, come on over — someone's got to take all this candy off our hands.

Flip-Flopping on Harriet Miers

President Bush was right — the more I learn about Harriet Miers, the more I like her:

In an undated speech given in the spring of 1993 to the Executive Women of Dallas, Miers appeared to offer a libertarian view of several topics in which the law and religious beliefs were colliding in court.

"The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women's [sic] right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion," Miers said.

Those seeking to resolve such disputes would do well to remember that "we gave up" a long time ago on "legislating religion or morality," she said. And "when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act."

Now, let's be clear about one thing. As I've said before, Harriet Miers is simply not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. She doesn't have the background, and she doesn't have the requisite knowledge of Constitutional law.

But let's face it — while Miers isn't qualified to be nominated, the President isn't really qualified to nominate, and liberals aren't going to do any better than Harriet. In my mind, better a person who has at least some of the right ideas than some conservative freakshow who, while perhaps impeccably qualified, can be guaranteed to vote the wrong way almost every damn time.

So what the hell, let's confirm her. Plus, she pisses off Tony Perkins, and that's worth something, too.

Cornell, ID, and Openness

Last week, Hunter Rawlings, the interim president of Cornell University (my alma mater), gave a speech on some of the scientific and public policy implications of the "intelligent design" movement. On the question of whether ID should be taught alongside evolution in science classrooms, his response is unequivocal, as it should be:

The answer is that intelligent design is not valid as science, that is, it has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results, and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights.

But his real focus is the question of how society as a whole should address this issue, as well as the larger issue of the interaction of religion and civil society. On this point he is also unequivocal:

I want to suggest that universities like Cornell can make a valuable contribution to the nation's cultural and intellectual discourse. With a breadth of expertise that embraces the humanities and the social sciences as well as science and technology, we need to be engaging issues like evolution and intelligent design both internally, in the classroom, in the residential houses, and in campus-wide debates, and also externally by making our voices heard in the spheres of public policy and politics.

I agree with Rawlings that issues like these need to be tackled directly by expanding the discourse, not by the different "sides" hunkering down in their ideological bunkers and refusing to engage each other. And given Rawlings rather unambiguous statement to this effect, I was a little surprised to see this reaction:

John G. West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which is a leader in the intelligent design movement, said he was concerned that Cornell's president was "fanning the flames of intolerance."

"A college president is in a unique position to create an atmosphere of free speech," Mr. West said. "If he's implying that faculty don't have the right to discuss ideas, I'm very concerned."

Clearly, the only one "fanning the flames of intolerance" here is West, and I can't help but wonder why. If West really wants ID taken seriously as science, then he should spend more time working on its scientific bona fides instead of taking cheap shots at someone who is actually encouraging public debate on the issue. But then it's altogether possible that West might have a completely different agenda.

Return to Sender

Apparently, FEMA just can't stop screwing up. Here's the latest from the local front:

Hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees could soon be evicted from their Charlotte homes because federal relief checks have not arrived, local social workers say.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has dispatched teams of workers to North Carolina to find out why evacuees don't have rental assistance, four weeks after FEMA promised to send checks of $2,358 to cover three months' housing.

In some cases, evacuees say FEMA mailed checks to former addresses in New Orleans. Other checks arrived in Charlotte but never reached evacuees because they were sent to the wrong address.

As a result, frustrated former Gulf Coast residents who fled the devastating Aug. 29 storm are inundating FEMA and local social agencies with calls, and social workers fear many hurricane evacuees will become homeless.

FEMA mailed the checks to New Orleans?!? I don't think these guys are even trying anymore.

College Football Update

Good for the Gamecocks — they hung tough at the end and found a way to win against Vanderbuilt, 35-28. Bad for the Gamecocks — Syvelle Newton, who in this game played quarterback, wide receiver, and tailback, is out for the rest of the season. Good for the Gamecocks — they're 4-3 now, and 2-3 in the SEC East. Bad for the Gamecocks — they play Tennessee next week.

UMass just keeps on rolling. This week, they beat Maine 35-14. The game was a little closer than the score might indicate, but it was another solid performance by the Minutemen, who are now 6-1 overall and still undefeated in the Atlantic Ten.

Cornell didn't do so well, losing to Brown at home 38-24. Cornell had the lead early in the fourth quarter, but 21 unanswered points sealed the deal for Brown. Cornell is now 3-3 for the year.

No Second Chances

There was a story in the news today about the man who's getting a new house on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" — apparently he's got a criminal record. Nothing serial-killerish, mind you, but still pretty serious: an armed robbery conviction when he was 17 or 18, and a couple of DUIs.

Why this is news escapes me, but CNN decided that they needed to put a poll on their front page today asking the important question: "Should convicted criminals be allowed on TV shows that offer big money prizes?" And a resounding 68% answered "No".

The wording of the question is pretty severe. The issue isn't whether people should be rewarded for their criminal behavior, but simply whether someone with a criminal past should be allowed win money on TV. And two-thirds of the respondents indicated that people who do wrong shouldn't get any second chances, even if they had to cut off their own arm because of a horrible work-related accident years after their last crime.

A more interesting question might have been: "Should media companies be allowed to profit from the suffering of other human beings?" But then again — could there be any TV without it?

Friday Cat Blogging

Birds… they're always watching me.

College Football Update

USC had the week off, but my other teams didn't let me down. UMass kicked a last-second field goal to beat defending I-AA national champ James Madison 10-7. The defense played great again, and is ranked #1 in the nation; James Madison's only points came from an interception returned for a touchdown. The Minutemen are still undefeated in the Atlantic 10, and 5-1 overall.

Cornell seems to have worked out some of the kinks in it's offense — it gained 323 yards of total offense on the way to beating Georgetown 57-7. The Big Red are now 3-2 for the season.

Friday Cat Blogging

Pay no attention to that cat behind the curtain.

Not Even a Pot to Piss In

There's a lot to be outraged about when it comes to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, but for some reason, this story really got to me:

It was the moment when the portable toilets were taken away that almost took the fight out of Tony Earl.

For six weeks, ever since Hurricane Katrina destroyed his trailer home and his town, Mr. Earl and his family have been living in a tent, with no sign of the housing promised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and President Bush.

So when FEMA, without explanation, carted off the portable outhouses the Earls had been using, he realized he had little choice. He is now struggling to build a free-standing bathroom out of the slabs of wood and tin that have washed up nearby.

The official reason?

As for the portable toilets that were hauled away more than a week ago, they had been provided by a company whose federal contract expired, according to FEMA, which is trying to shift contracts to state and local governments.

So let me get this straight. If we need to pay $11 million per day to house refugees in hotels, no problem. And if we need to spend $236 million to house refugees for six months on some luxury cruise ships docked at port — double what it would cost to actually send these folks on a real six-month cruise — that's a done deal. But pay a company some minuscule amount to provide toilets to people living in tents? Sorry, no can do.

Proof!

A while back, I wrote about my conversion to Pastafarianism. Not being a religious person by nature, the transition to a faith-based reality has been awkward. But now I am happy to announce that my new religion has been validated by science!

First, the facts:

Penne Rigate will spontaneously insert itself into Rigatoni (order pasta) under liquid to gas transition conditions of H2O to create the previously unobserved species Noodleous doubleous. The estimated probability of this spontaneous generation event is too low to be explained by thermodynamics and therefore apparently represents intelligent design.

And who is this intelligent designer? Top scientists give us the name:

A viable hypothesis is that a divine Noodly Appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was responsible for the effect. These results are therefore strong empirical in support of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

Now, this isn't definitive, but science should always leave room for faith. However, there is another piece of evidence that has come to my attention that casts doubt on an alternative account of creation. I mean, how can the Christians claim intelligence when so many of them are doing this this weekend?

Don't You Know That's Your Base?

Here comes the First Lady, dropping the "S" bomb on national TV:

Asked by host Matt Lauer if sexism might be playing a role in the Miers controversy, [Laura Bush] said, "It's possible. I think that's possible…. I think people are not looking at her accomplishments."

I think Laura must have forgotten who her critics are in this instance. The fallout from this should be fun to watch.

Framing Poverty

The New York Times has an odd story today about how liberals are losing momentum in the debate about poverty that Hurricane Katrina helped revive. While I believe that conclusion is justified, writer Jason DeParle allows conservatives to frame the issue on their terms and assume something which really needs to be proven: that federal anti-poverty programs are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

"This is not the time to expand the programs that were failing anyway," said Stuart M. Butler, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and advocacy group influential on Capitol Hill.

While the right has proposed alternatives including tax-free zones for businesses and school vouchers for students, Mr. Butler said, "the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.'"

[…] "What we've done for the poor hasn't worked," said Robert L. Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a conservative policy group. "People are going to say, 'How did these people get into this circumstance in the first place?' It gives us an opportunity to really turn over a new leaf."

Nowhere in this article is this assumption challenged, and it's an important one. If everyone believed that the current system was fatally flawed, then there really would be no alternative but to come up with an different set of policies. But a lot of liberals (including this one) don't believe that. In fact, the Democrats' War on Poverty was a huge success:

When Johnson left office, the official poverty rate had fallen from 22 percent in 1960 to 13 percent - which is where the poverty rate remains today. AFDC payments had risen to $577 (in 1980 dollars). Infant mortality among the poor, which had barely declined between 1950 and 1965, fell by one-third in the decade after 1965 as a result of the expansion of federal medical and nutritional programs. Before the implementation of Medicaid and Medicare, 20 percent of the poor had never been examined by a physician; when Johnson retired as president the figure had been cut to 8 percent. The proportion of families living in substandard housing—that is, housing lacking indoor plumbing - also declined steeply, from 20 percent in 1960 to 11 percent a decade later.

But then along came Reagan, who cut a lot of these programs to the bone, and thus ended any serious attempt by the federal government to alleviate poverty on a large scale. Yet conservatives continue to point to the programs they eviscerated as proof that the programs themselves can't work. And now, because of their deficit, their tax cuts, and their lack of natural disaster readiness, they want to cut even more from the programs that work, and invest more in the programs that don't do a damn thing (tax cuts, enterprise zones, etc.).

And yet, despite the fact that conservatives have been singing this same tired song for years, DeParle somehow decides that they are the ones who get to self-identify as the new-leaf-turner-overs while portraying the liberals as a bunch of tired do-nothings. Which is why this story is, to put it mildly, odd.

College Football Update

USC won their first SEC game of the season, beating Kentucky 44-16. Kentucky had some serious problems holding on to the the ball in the fourth quarter (three consecutive fumbles!), when USC broke it wide open. With the victory, the Gamecocks evened their record at 3-3, and finally climbed out of the cellar in the SEC East (a place now occupied by — guess who — Kentucky).

UMass came off their bye week strong, beating Northeastern 27-0. As usual, the defense was superb. The Minutemen are now 4-1, and leading the Atlantic 10 conference.

Cornell made it a clean sweep, beating arch-enemy Harvard 27-13. Harvard had five turnovers, and couldn't put any points on the board before the fourth quarter. Cornell's now back at .500, 2-2 for the year.

Why Does Norway Hate America?

The votes are in:

The U.N. nuclear watchdog and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their efforts to limit the spread of atomic weapons.

This is a real poke in the eye for the Bush administration, which just a few months ago was working so furiously to have ElBaradei fired for not agreeing with all the stuff it made up about Iraq's nuclear program (or lack thereof). Ha ha!

Judging Judges

Regardless of how much I enjoy seeing conservatives fight amongst themselves over Harriet Miers, what I really find remarkable in all of this is how freely many of these conservatives admit that judicial nominations are part of their political agenda.

For example:

A day after Bush publicly beseeched skeptical supporters to trust his judgment on Miers, a succession of prominent conservative leaders told his representatives that they did not. Over the course of several hours of sometimes testy exchanges, the dissenters complained that Miers was an unknown quantity with a thin résumé and that her selection — Bush called her "the best person I could find" — was a betrayal of years of struggle to move the court to the right.

Or this:

On the conservative side of the party, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has said he would vote against a nominee who was not "solid and known" on cultural issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and religion in public life.

Statements like these shouldn't come as any surprise — of course the courts are part of the partisan political struggle. Conservatives want conservative judges, liberals want liberal judges, and everyone knows it.

After the Robert's confirmation, it's easy to see the hypocrisy here. Conservatives demand for themselves a detailed accounting of Miers' views on specific legal issues, but claim that Democrats were acting inappropriately when they tried to come by some of that same information about Roberts. The interesting thing, however, isn't that the fact of this hypocrisy. Rather, the real question is, how are the Republicans are able to get away with such a transparent flip-flop?

Part of the answer has to be that many Democrats are very interested in learning more about Harriet Miers, too. For the moment at least, that need to know outweighs scoring a few political points by pointing out the Republican's changing criteria.

But the most important factor here is that conservatives are able to make these fights not about specific issues, but about the correct way to interpret the Constitution. By not aggressively contesting the doctrines of strict constructionism and originalism in the public sphere, liberal legal scholars have left the issue to conservatives who champion these doctrines as the only valid ones, necessary to prevent the sin of "judicial activism." As a result, when a Republican Senator demands to know where a nominee stands on a particular legal issue, he can plausibly argue that this information is necessary to determine whether they will interpret the Constitution in the proper way. However, if a Democrat asks for the same kind of information, it's characterized as an attempt to inject politics into the process, since the first principles of a correct judicial philosophy have already been granted.

As long as Democrats tacitly accept the premise of originalism and let the Republicans frame the debate as a fight against judicial activism, then they are not going to have many successes now, or even in the future if they reclaim the Senate majority and the White House. The rhetoric of "rogue judges inventing rights for minorities at the expense of democracy" is both powerful and easy to understand. Democrats need something just as good. Perhaps Justice Breyer's new book could serve as the theoretical starting point. But the first thing to do is to commit to doing something; the current approach won't give liberals the judges they want.

Moore Trouble in Alabama

It's official: Judge Roy Moore is challenging Alabama Gov. Bob Riley in the GOP primary next year. This campaign should be both ugly and fascinating.

On the one hand, we have the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who erected a 5000 lb. granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse rotunda, defied a federal court's order to have it removed, and was thereby forced to resign. As a result, "Moore's stand turned him into a hero among social conservatives." He's currently lobbying for legislation in Congress to strip all federal courts of any jurisdiction over government agencies or officials who acknowledge the supreme sovereignty of God (presumably, his God).

On the other hand, there's Governor Bob Riley, who attempted to raise revenues for education while simultaneously cutting taxes for the state's poorest citizens. He said this kind of tax reform was necessitated by Christian values:

"According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor," [Riley] said. "It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax."

The Christian Coalition and other religious-right organizations have taken the opposite view, calling him a Judas for wanting to raise taxes. Riley now appears to have serious problems with his right flank, and is expected to lose.

Although it's just begun, this race already teaches us two lessons. The first is that, in conservative politics, appeals to God's will are most successful when made in the service of greed or intolerance, not sacrifice or compassion. The second is that an aggressive theocratic state is a more appealing vision to many fundamentalists than the moral duty enunciated by Jesus to help the poor. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine what these lessons tell us about the real values of many conservatives today.

Harriet, We Hardly Know Ya…

Bush is not the first President to appoint his close friends and advisers to positions of power, but it's hard to think of any President in recent memory who has done so with such single-mindedness, across the board. And today Bush continues that trend by nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court — a woman who, for the last 10 years, has hopscotched her way up the ladder courtesy of her Presidential patron.

Her last job as White House Counsel was the key to her selection, it seems. She was the person in charge of evaluating potential Supreme Court nominees, and it turned out the best candidate around (sans John Roberts) was herself. Funny how that works out — I seem to recall that was how Dick Cheney got his job, too.

Judging from Bush's speech this morning, Miers seems to have three main qualifications for the job of Justice:

1. She's a woman
2. She's a Christian
3. She's a compassionate person

This is all well and good, and I expect that we will hear Bush praise her "good heart" in the not-to-distant future. But noticeably absent from that list is, "She's a good judge," because, in fact, she's never been a judge.

Yes, I know, we've had Supreme Court justices who've lacked judicial experience that were not disasters, and we've had Supreme Court justices that did serve on the federal bench that were. But I'm not optimistic that Miers will turn out to be one of the former.

At this point, we know next to nothing about how Miers would behave as a judge, apart from her pledge this morning that she will "strictly apply the law" (which is merely a code phrase meant to signal her conservative credentials). Presumably, Bush himself knows more about her than he will be willing to say publicly, although I expect he will need to have some quiet chats to reassure some of the more primitive members of the Senate who expected a more Bork-like ideologue.

As for the rest of us, we stand to learn little more about her, which must have been what clinched her nomination. Her work at the White House? Privileged. Private-sector practice? Privileged. Unless the media digs up some skeleton from back in her Texas lottery days, the only place we could learn anything meaningful about her judicial philosophy will be in the Senate hearing room, and after Roberts, refusal to answer a Senator's questions is hardly a disqualifying tactic.

Flying blind this way when it comes to nominating a Supreme Court justice is simply unacceptable, and the Democrats in the Senate need to draw the line. I'm sure she'll have many "constructive" conversations with various Senators in the coming weeks as she makes her tour of the Hill, but those kinds of private discussions are no substitute for a public paper trail.

A former president once said, "trust, but verify." No different approach should be taken with something as important as a Supreme Court nomination. By putting forward a stealth candidate, Bush wants to take out the "verification" part, and say instead, "trust me". Please. As a future former president once said, "Fool me once, shame on… shame on you… but fool me, can't get fooled again." Here's hoping, anyways.

College Football Update

Right now, the Gamecocks are just sad. USC got bombed on Saturday by Auburn, losing 48-7. Managing only 199 yards of total offense, with five fumbles (silver lining: only one turnover), I think the bloom is off the Steve Spurrier rose by now. But those of us who remember him from his Redskins days saw that coming a mile away. USC is now 2-3 on the year, and a miserable 0-3 in the SEC.

In upstate New York, Colgate beat Cornell for the tenth time in a row, 34-20. That perfect record of two weeks ago seems so far away now that the Big Red is 1-2.

UMass was off this week, but has the only winning record so far (3-1) among the schools I attended.