Search Results for 'Althouse'

Impeachment? More Like Tried For Treason!

Roy reports on the scandal that is even worse than the Benghazi failed Arkansas drug running land deal scandal: something about an umbrella. There are many crazy responses documented, but the source of the very funniest is, in retrospect, not entirely surprising:

We must clear some extra space for Ann Althouse’s four (!) posts about the umbrella. First Althouse was “seeing something tragic” in the umbrella scandal: “The old ways — that made us love him — don’t work anymore,” she sighed. “The gentle, slow-talking, stalling with ‘uhs’ for Woody Allen-like timing… We see the rain failing on his dark suit, and maybe we think about how, yes, that’s the White House in back of him and he does have his closets in there, full of suits… empty suits… skeletons in the uh uh uh…” After a good deal of this, Althouse challenged a Washington Post story that said conservatives were irked by the umbrella: “who were these ‘irked conservatives’?” she demanded. “WaPo only cites an email from the conservative Move America Forward PAC…”

Althouse later posted on Nabokov’s objections to Freud, asking “What would Freud have said about Obama’s endless uh-ing?” Later still she told us, “The word ‘umbrella’ appears exactly once in Obama’s ‘Dreams From My Father’… Now, I’m astounded to see that the umbrella figures importantly in the book — and it is even an umbrella held over him by another man… it is at the moment when he finds out who he really is that another man suddenly appears and is sheltering him with an umbrella… Flash forward, and he’s President. He is in the Rose Garden. It starts to rain. No man suddenly appears with an umbrella. He is getting wet and he is President — with plenty of airplanes and rifles and all of the world’s greatest military at hand — but he is still getting wet…”

She also discussed the phallic symbolism of umbrellas. You can read the rest at the links, or just wait for the audiobook version. (Throughout, Althouse’s commenters reacted in their by-now expected way, e.g., “That baboon isn’t fit to shine the Marine’s boots.”)

If the Wall Street Journal is ever in the market for a conservative hack for people who find Peggy Noonan a little too substantive and coherent, they always have somewhere to go. I do regret, however, that Althouse failed to emphasize the new evidence that Dreams From My Father was written by the Weather Underground.

A Rare Victory Against the War On (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs

It obviously won’t get as much attention as yesterday’s oral argument, but as I note at the Prospect there was a major Fourth Amendment ruling yesterday. The fact that it involved marijuana generally makes one fear the worst, but since it involved a property trespass Scalia and Thomas voted to rule that sniffing for drugs on the outside of someone’s house is, in fact, a search.

It was a 5-4 decision, which as some of you have calculated means that the always shaky-on-civil-liberties Breyer joined the dissent. The dissent was, of course, written by Sam “Strip Seach” Alito. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, on the question of whether Alito is a reasonable moderate liberals should have been grateful for you can believe Althouse and Taylor, or you can believe all of the available evidence.

Antonin Scalia, the Last Honest Judge

Antonin Scalia, as Antonin Scalia will be the first person to tell you, does not let his social conservatism affect his jurisprudence. It’s just that the equal protection 14th Amendment concerns only racial discrimination, with particular attention to “discrimination” against white people, which is why the Freedman’s Bureau was considered unconstitutional by the framers of the 14th Amendment. It is just objectively true that the 14th Amendment doesn’t forbid invidious discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. This objective truth remains true although the 14th Amendment says nothing about race. And the subsequent amendment shows that the framers could have limited the equal protection clause to racial discrimination if they choose to. And Scalia is supposed to be a “textualist.” Where was I?

Oh, yes, Scalia’s reading a “race, especially racial classifications that aren’t related to maintaining a caste system, only” qualification into the 14th Amendment does not in any way reflect his reactionary political views. Which is why he would never fill the United States Reports with specious and offensive analogies about gays and lesbians.

And, actually, Millhiser is being too charitable to Scalia. Scalia didn’t actually say in his Lawrence dissent that he had “nothing against homosexuals.” Here’s the full quote:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.

He’s not saying that he has nothing against homosexuals; he’s generously allowing that he has nothing against homosexuals participating in the political process.* And note for the second time in his dissent he alludes to the “homosexual…agenda,” which as everyone but Ann Althouse understands in itself ends any question about whether Scalia is a homophobe, since nobody who supports gay and lesbian rights uses the phrase “homosexual agenda.” Have you ever seen Scalia refer to the “evangelical Christian agenda” in his Establishment Clause opinions? And of course this affects his jurisprudence.

*Great point by Joe in comments: Scalia does, in fact, have something against homosexuals participating in the political process, given his support for constitutional amendments prohibiting homosexuals from participating in the political process and all.

…Adam has more.

Of course Obama is Satan.

Whether you believe that Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni, the man portraying Satan in the Hitler Channel’s adaptation of The Bible, looks like President Obama depends on a number of factors, foremost among them your familiarity with people of other races. If, like many white conservatives, the majority of your interaction with people darker than you occurs when you watch the evening news, you see this image and are shocked by the similarity:

Just look at his skin! The deep set eyes! The wide nose! His ears aren’t visible but surely they’re identical too! Except they aren’t. This is why I force my students to pay very close attention to the actual frames they’re analyzing instead of relying on an uncritical sense of what’s being represented on screen. To wit:

I chose this comparison because it’s the one in which the likeness, such as it is, seems greatest. It’s important to note that it’s from the conservative Newsbusters site, meaning that it’s been selected in order to heighten the featural similarities between them. The President’s lips aren’t always pursed, and choosing an image in which they are creates some features that wouldn’t otherwise be there, but for argument’s sake I’ll pretend this is how the President always looks.

We’ll start our comparison with the forehead: not only is Ouazanni’s deeply furrowed, the muscles above his eyebrows are far more defined. Moving down to the glabella — the bit between the eyebrows — Ouazanni’s contains both vertical and horizontal furrows, whereas the President’s is smooth. Both have deep-set eyes, but Ouazanni’s are hooded and appear almost rectangular, whereas the President’s are almond-shaped. Beneath both of their eyes is a pronounced lower eyelid furrow which combines with an intraorbital furrow to create downward facing triangles on their cheeks. In this image, they both also have well-defined nasolabial furrows descending from the tips of their nostril wings out and around their lips to their chins, both of which are squarish. There are significant differences: Ouazanni’s cheeks are sunken, whereas the President’s are puffed; the shape and presentation angle of their nostrils is completely different, etc.

In other words, a simple description of the features of their face makes it possible to believe that they look somewhat similar — or that, as many on the right are arguing, Ouazanni looks like an older version the President. Except they don’t. The number of specific features a viewer needs to overlook — or be race-blind to — in order to claim a holistic similarity between the two is just too high.*

If you want to see a connection, enough featural similarities exist for you to do so, but only if you make a conscious decision to equate an image of Satan in a hoodie with the President. The number of distinctions you must overlook is equaled by the number your cross-racial identification bias prevents you from seeing. Factor in whatever intuitive model of aging you use to crease the President’s forehead and wrinkle his cheeks and it’s clear that quite a bit of cognitive processing has gone into the “intuitive” association between these faces. Which means you ought to ask yourself:

Why do I want to overlook these distinctions and age him in this way? The answer, obviously, is that you want to see what you think you see, and are probably upset that I’ve demonstrated how your “plain observation” has been filtered by political and racial recognition biases. So much so that your rebuttal will amount not to a refutation of the features I’ve identified, but by linking to the image again and insisting that anyone with eyes agrees with your holistic judgment. As Allahpundit admits, he now has “a new front-page thumbnail for when Obama pushes an especially terrible policy.” That’s all he really wanted in the first place.

*I’m not saying there’s no resemblance. Only that judgments about human faces are highly susceptible to suggestion, as analyzing them in detail, feature by feature, demonstrates.

Also, Washing the Dishes Before You Eat Off Them Again is Worse Than the Gulag

Ann Althouse has some Deep Thoughts regarding an innocuous article about how Barack Obama was something of a slob when he first started dating his now wife, and oh boy does unintentional comedy ensue. I had assumed that my favorite line would be this:

That’s a very casual revelation that she would have slept overnight with him if only he’d had a nicer looking place. There’s zero regard for the folks in this country (and world) who think you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married.

And, also, there’s no regard for the people in this country who believe that Barack Obama should have asked Michelle Robinson for her father’s permission, because she was her father’s property until she gets married. For shame! This could be a genuinely new angle in the belated-conversion-to-five-alarm-wingnuttery genre: “I used to be a Democrat, but then I found out that Barack Obama does not show sufficient respect for the reactionary gender norms of 50s sitcoms.”

But, never, ever, ever, think that Althouse has written the most risible thing you’ll see her write, as she further ponders a woman who might not wish to spend the night in a messy bachelor pad:

Plus, from a political standpoint, it sounds fascist, and it prompts us to think about her efforts to tell us what we’re allowed to eat. Does she care about our health, or is it — as the right-wingers like to say — all about control?

I shall now turn things over to Thersites, who it must be said reflects dismaying insolence towards a respected member of the legal academy:

Hitler made Poland clean up the old pizza boxes before he fucked it. This is exactly why Michelle von Obama wants your kid to eat celery and do some jumping jacks.

I think a woman who suggests that her date not wear a tracksuit to a wedding ranks somewhere between Ceausescu and Pol Pot.

The Fourth Amendment, Science, And The War On (Some People Who Use Some) Drugs

Two Fourth Amendment cases yesterday, with one dubious search upheld and another thrown out.

As I say at the link, the cases also indicate a couple of important things about the current Court. First of all, as I assume is now obvious to everyone with the possible exceptions of Ann Althouse and David Nieporent, Alito is the most consistent reactionary on the Supreme Court. (“Scalito” was indeed a label that was misleading and unfair — to Scalia.) And, second, as the unanimous decision to uphold a search in which the probable cause was established by a drug-sniffing dog that managed to produce two false positives out of two searches indicates, this Court lacks a single civil libertarian in the Douglas mold (and Breyer, one of the Democratic appointees, is sometimes to the right of Scalia on 4th Amendment issues.)

UPDATE: An excellent piece from Julian Sanchez explaining why relying on certification is grossly inadequate.

More on the Swartz Prosecution

Orin Kerr has a typically thoughtful two-part series on the Swartz prosecution. The first part confirms what I assumed to be true — the charges were plausible under the letter of the law. The second — which is essentially a defense of Ortiz that is sympathetic to Swartz’s dilemma — is very much worth reading but more problematic. I certainly agree with Kerr that the central problem is that “[f]elony liability under the statute is triggered much too easily.” A too-broad statute, to borrow Robert Jackson’s phrase, “lies about like a loaded weapon,” and if it wasn’t Ortiz and Swartz another prosecutor was going to bring excessively harsh charges eventually. The key to his defense of Ortiz, though — “[w]hat the prosecutors did here was what federal prosecutors often do” — is less convincing. Not because it isn’t true, but because it comes too close to being a “no justice for x until justice for y (and hence no justice for anyone)” argument. The fact that overcharging for nonviolent offenses to coerce plea deals is common doesn’t make it appropriate, and any high-profile case in which it happens merits criticism. It would be best if the discretion of prosecutors was substantially reduced — Radley Balko is good on this — but given the reliance of the system on prosecutorial discretion criticism of common abuses is appropriate.

Even more problematically, there’s the question of priorities, which Kerr doesn’t address at all. Kerr accepts that “special deterrence” was required for Swartz’s “anti-democratic” actions. The problem here is that we have recent examples — financial fraud, torture — in which the federal government has used its discretion not to bring criminal charges in cases of people seeking to “anti-democratically” undermine public policy in ways that caused far, far more harm than Swartz. Yes, lest I be accused of contradicting myself the fact that the federal government decided to let class of serious potential criminals x and y get off scot free doesn’t in itself mean that they can’t pursue the much less severe alleged criminality of z. But particularly given the extent to which Kerr’s defense requires on Swartz meriting “special deterrence,” the more cautious treatment of much more serious crimes is highly relevant. Of all the illegal behavior that undermines public policy the state might go after, I’d have to say that “undermining firewalls that obstruct access to obscure academic articles the authors weren’t compensated for” would have to rank pretty close to the bottom. Hence, I don’t find the case that “special deterrence” was required in this case very convincing.

The fact that both one of the alleged victimized parties and the local authorities also didn’t think that “special deterrence” was required also seems relevant:

State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Middlesex County’s district attorney had planned no jail time, “with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner,” the report (alternate link) said. “Tragedy intervened when Ortiz’s office took over the case to send ‘a message.’”

The evaluation made by J-STOR and the local authorities seems, ultimately, quite a bit more persuasive to me than Kerr’s.

Meanwhile, conservative who is…less thoughtful Ann Althouse has some very tasteful comedy stylings to share on this subject:

Is the prosecutor getting bullied? If she were to commit suicide — Swartz-style — would everyone feel ashamed of what they did to her?

Haw-haw-haw! It’s funny because state coercion is just the same as criticizing someone on the internet! And the idea that public officials with substantial discretion over that coercive apparatus should be subject to some measure of public scrutiny, what are you, some kind of free-thinking anarchist?

Damn it, Bill

I defended Obama against Althouse et al.‘s unfounded and visually illiterate accusations, but I just can’t bring myself to back the Big Dog when he’s so obviously enjoying the view:

Let’s Play “Bad Faith, or Delusional?”

Via Paul’s other place, I was fascinated to read this discussion thread, in which a law professor at Santa Clara entered what remained a largely substantive discussion and was thoroughly routed (with inevitable resorts to baseless questioning of the motives of people who presented inconvenient data.) I think my favorite of his comments, though, was this one, which reaches almost Althouse levels of “I cannot believe what I just read”:

In any case, that kind of disappointment has been part of the law school process for many decades. It has nothing to do with the 100 year storm that has left us with the overhang in the market today as it has in every other job market. It turns out, John, that for everyone just living in the United States for the last four years was a “horrible decision.” [One that does not entail 200 grand or so of debt, but moving right along. --ed.]

But this is really not the point I was (trying) to discuss. I have only maintained that a student accepted at BOTH schools [Santa Clara and Stanford] would most likely have very similar opportunities once they graduated. I feel reasonably confident, in other words, that Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati would be interested in that student, assuming they performed well, whether they took me for securities regulation or Joe Grundfest. But whether that student should go to SCU or Stanford or another school is an entirely different question depending on values, career goals, and other factors. For example, I readily admit, if you play golf, I would recommend going to Stanford.

I mean, can Diamond possibly believe that graduates of Stanford and Santa Clara law schools have similar employment prospects? That the only reason to attend Stanford is that it has a nicer golf course? Or is it that he thinks a non-negligible number of people accepted to Stanford would pay anything to attend Santa Clara? Either way, assuming he’s arguing in bad faith would be the charitable interpretation.

Glenn Reynolds Presents: How to be a Painfully Unfunny Hack

Glenn Reynolds has been using nutty Clinton conspiracy theories (which he clung to for a ridiculously long time) as a vehicle for running a one-liner into the ground, showing that if there’s anything worse than Glenn Reynolds trying to sustain thoughts for a couple paragraphs at a time, it’s Glenn Reynolds trying to be witty:

LEADERSHIP: Benghazi? Whatever! There was just some ‘sloppiness’ there, says Obama. According to a State Department spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary of Clinton was unable to comment because of “a really bad hangover.”

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? AFRICA IN CRISIS: U.S. Abandons Embassy, France Won’t Intervene. “The last time the U.S. abandoned an embassy? Syria.”

BACKBONE: Senate Republicans refuse to confirm Kerry until Hillary testifies about Benghazi. According to a State Department spokesperson, such testimony is doubtful as Secretary of State Clinton is suffering from “really bad canker sores.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: We Still Need A Comprehensive Libya Policy Review. “The Benghazi attack was one small chapter in an an expensive and still unfolding tale of policy failure, in which U.S. forces were committed to Qaddafi’s ouster without proper assessment of risk, analysis of policy costs, or preparation for consequences.”

According to a State Department spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unable to comment because of “a really bad eczema outbreak.”

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Benghazi penalties “bogus,” officials returning to work? “The New York Post has learned that the four State Department officials that supposedly resigned after the Accountability Review Board report slammed Foggy Bottom for its ‘systemic failures’ and ‘leadership and management deficiencies’ will return to work after all — and all but one in the same post.”

According to a State Department spokesperson, Hillary Clinton was unable to comment because she was being treated for “a really painful hangnail.”

DUCKING ACCOUNTABILITY: Hillary’s Benghazi Role. According to a State Department spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unable to respond due to “female problems you really don’t want to hear about.”

Ha-haw! This list, sadly, is not exhaustive. At any rate, how do you think Reynolds would react when the basis for these jokes for people who find Two and A Half Men hilarious but a little too highbrow is conclusively disproven? With a little graciousness or modesty, perhaps?

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ON HILLARY’S BRAIN: “The illness has kept her out of the public view since Dec. 7, and has started to raise a host of questions as her team keeps typically tightlipped about the details: Where is the clot located? How severe is her condition? How soon will she recover? And, as Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating, how might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016? . . . Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.”

UPDATE: A reader emails that it’s lucky Hillary is a Democrat. If she were a Republican, we’d be hearing jokes like “Good news: They X-rayed Hillary’s brain and didn’t find anything!”

Yes, it’s Democrats who like to make tasteless jokes after people suffer serious injuries. Also, if Reynolds is going project his pathologies onto Democrats, I’d prefer if he find someone other than himself or his readers to write the material he puts in our mouths.

Elsewhere, Ann Althouse would like you to know that SHE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED! How dare people try to “control the political debate” by noting that Ann Althouse’s latest implausible conspiracy theory about the Clintons is not merely devoid of evidence but contradicts all the known evidence? Rest assured that making fun of her will not stop her from making herself look foolish!

Awful People

It’s like 1990s-vintage Clinton derangement.   Generating a conspiracy theory from the Benghazi faux-scandal, a passel of wingers argued that Hillary Clinton was faking an illness. (Glenn Reynolds, needless to say, was in the lead.)

Clinton, as most of you now know, has a blood clot from her concussion and has been hospitalized.  Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

…As R. Porrofatto notes in comments, longtime Clinton conspiracy nut Ann Althouse would still like to subscribe to Charles Krauthammer’s newsletter.   And yet, she refuses to tell us whether the fake blood clot is related to the murder of Vince Foster or Bill Clinton’s massive drug-running operation!  We need answers, people!   Needless to say, it got her an Instapundit link.

The Most Farcical Conservertarian Reaction To Newtown: The Competition Ends Prematurely

We’ve had some strong early entries: Glenn Reynolds, “let us cite William Burroughs as an authority on the dangers of gun control”; Ann Althouse, “let us speculate about how Nancy Lanza conspired to help her son murder kindergartners, perhaps with Jose Padilla’s terrorist blinking acting as a go-between”; and let us nor forget Eugene Volokh, “an armed-to-the-teeth kindergarten classroom is a safe classroom.”

Megan McArdle, however, decided to obliterate the field:

I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

I…what the hell? Wait — it gets better!

But I doubt we’re going to tell people to gang rush mass shooters, because that would involve admitting that there is no mental health service or “reasonable gun control” which is going to prevent all of these attacks. Which is to say, admitting that we have no box big enough to completely contain evil.

Yes. Clearly the only practical problem with telling unarmed people to rush at people firing semiautomatic weapons rather than running away is that we would have to admit that gun control cannot entirely stop evil but merely substantially contain it.

Chait:

Unless I am missing a very subtle parody of libertarianism, McArdle’s plan to teach children to launch banzai charges against mass murderers is the single worst solution to any problem I have ever seen offered in a major publication.

He understates, but close enough.