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December 31, 2005

New Year's Eve Dinner.

H
omemade baguettes (made with the recipe in this book excerpt--the best they've ever come out!) and cheese (brie with mushrooms and a soft goat cheese; steamed clams and mussels).

Allagash White and/or Lambic Raspberry.

Salad.

Osso bucco.

Sauteed green beans with a touch of Iron Chef sesame garlic sauce.

Homemade pasta (made with this nifty attachment to my Kitchenaid mixer).

Wine.

For dessert, Molten Chocolate Babycakes.

Yum.

Happy New Year!

Posted by Eric at 5:32 PM | Comments (3)

And No, I Am Not Faking.

J
ust watched my first complete episode of Seinfeld.

Yup. First complete episode. Ever.

(Season Five, Episode 1: The Mango.)

Funnier than I'd expected.

Posted by Eric at 12:00 AM | Comments (9)

December 30, 2005

I'm Back.

M
any thanks to Lance and Jenny for keeping the place running in my absence! Please be sure to keep an eye on their blogs--BlueNC (Lance) and laloca.org (Jenny).

Perhaps Jenny was too humble to publish many photos here, but I encourage you to check out some of the photos she has taken in South Korea. They're great.

Happy New Year!

Posted by Eric at 6:26 PM

December 29, 2005

So Long! Farewell!

I
t's been a pleasure guest-blogging at Is That Legal where the readers leave such thoughtful and interesting comments (unlike the readers of my personal blog, where I keep having to tell kitt3nxx that I'm simply not interested in herbal Viagra). To show my appreciation, I'll leave you with this extra-special interactive name-that-location post. Below is a photograph taken on my holiday travels. Be the first to identify the location depicted and full bragging rights will be yours. There's a hint below the fold, in case you have trouble guessing from the photo alone.

IMG_13074.jpg

The Tackiest Place On EarthTM!

Posted by at 1:05 AM | Comments (10)

December 28, 2005

location, location, location.

T
he difference in emotional atmosphere between the army bases in seoul and the ones up near the dmz is palpable. the soldiers in area one (camp casey, camp red cloud, etc.) seem perpetually on edge; camp casey soldiers travel in groups that circle each other like stray cats. there is very little to do on post besides bowl, drink, and fight (but the bowling alley is smoke-free, so that's a plus), and unless you have the time to make the hour-plus trip down to seoul, nearly nowhere to go off-post. the attempt at christmas cheer -- a pyramid of christmas lights draped haphazardly over a pile of rocks inside gate 1 -- doesn't extend much further than the pale glow of the bulbs, and any trace of it is gone by the time you cross the open sewage canal bisecting the post. everywhere you turn buildings are decaying, concrete is crumbling and the gazebos designated as trash collection areas are overflowing.

area two (seoul and surrounding areas) feels like a different planet. entering main post, you're greeted by two large lit displays proclaiming "merry christmas!" and "happy holidays!" there is a large hotel on the base, filled with seasonal decorations, multiple christmas trees, and a rather haphazard assortment of christmas lawn ornaments. the streets have crosswalks, the soldiers are friendly ("what're you looking for? the px? oh, it's just this way, follow me."), and people walking around post are actually smiling. here, there is none of the hollowness that echoes through camp casey.

a few photos of seoul are forthcoming; if anyone is anxious to see them, they're already up over at laloca.org.

Posted by at 7:51 AM

December 27, 2005

Farmtacular

I
got a farm tour yesterday--some relatives run a soybean & agrochem business in the Missouri bootheel. Here's what I learned: the "farm" isn't contiguous. The 5600 acres are spread out in patches as far as 20 miles from each other. You can grow wheat on a field, harvest it, and then grow soybeans the same year. This close to the Mississippi river, the large center-pivot irrigation systems are running off of wells less than 100 ft. deep. When the tourguide (Uncle Milas) was a boy, his father harvested about 50 bushels of beans per acre; now he gets around 100 bushels per acre; he thinks the land has the potential to yeild much more. Below the fold: one more picture of East Prairie, pop. 3,227.

IMG_12638.jpg

Posted by at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

December 25, 2005

More Culture Wars

I
attended a Christmas service with relatives today and the War on Christmas made an awkward appearance during the sermon. I understand that it's polite to say "Happy Holidays" around non-Christians, but how often does it happen that people are forced to refrain from wishing a "Merry Christmas"? I read Eric's post below, but how often has this happened to you? Has anyone been corrected this holiday season? Just curious.

Posted by at 7:22 PM | Comments (4)

December 24, 2005

Holiday Greetings from EPMO

IMG_12174.jpg

E
ast Prairie, Missouri

Posted by at 6:54 PM

merry xmas!

A
s a nominally jewish, married by unitarians, schooled by evangelists, areligious woman blogging from a traditionally buddhist/confucian country, i wish all the readers of eric's blog a pleasant december solstice holiday of their choosing.

Posted by at 5:23 PM

Fighting the Culture Wars in the Land of Joseph Smith.

I
t's Eric here, chiming in with a brief update from Ground Zero of the Culture Wars: the State of Utah.

Yes, Utah.

In this morning's Salt Lake City Tribune, I note the following stories:

1. Logan Mall Asks Band to Stop Religious Music. It seems that a mall in Logan, Utah, invited a rock band that plays Christian music to come in and entertain its patrons for the Christmas season. Then, when the band played a rendition of "We Three Kings," mall officials asked them to stop. They only wanted "traditional holiday music," it seems. Bill O'Reilly could not be reached for comment.

2. Arizona Judge Rejects Defendant's Bid to Overturn Ban on Polygamy. In order to avoid a legal test of Arizona's ban on plural marriage, prosecutors dropped a couple of charges in the prosecution of a Colorado City man who is a member of a renegade branch of the Mormon Church that continues the Church's early practice of polygamy. The defendant had been charged with two counts of sexual assault on one charge of sexual conduct with a minor. The minor was apparently his second wife. By dropping the charge concerning the minor, the case is now just an assault case, and the religious defense that the defendant was preparing disappears.

If an effort to invoke substantive due process in defense of multiple marriage ever reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, you can be fairly sure that the case will come from one of these small mountain communities on the Utah/Arizona border where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints thrives.

Posted by Eric at 8:49 AM | Comments (2)

December 23, 2005

how great white killed christmas

i
n providence, anyway.

Posted by at 9:26 AM

December 22, 2005

Is That Lite?

I
'm in a two-car caravan to Missouri with a puppy, a baby, and a mother-in-law starting at 4am tomorrow morning, but before I go I want to leave you with plenty of weighty stuff to chew on.

Enjoy! See you Saturday.

Posted by at 9:49 PM | Comments (1)

Today in Bigotry

R
acial slurs and "KKK" were spraypainted in a nice neighborhood, says the Durham Herald Sun. An area resident says "The less you write about it, the better off it will be . . . . The less I say about it, the better it will be." A local NAACP leader says it wasn't the real KKK.

Charles Smith, president of the NAACP's Durham chapter, said he didn't think the vandalism was evidence of an active hate group in Durham.

"I would think it's a prank, the way it's done and where it's done at," Smith said, adding that he thought the vandals might be teens or "someone trying to get attention."

Smith also said that if the incidents were connected to the Ku Klux Klan, the crime would have been more serious than vandalism, like a house fire.

heraldsun.com: Vandals spray paint racial slurs in...

Posted by at 11:08 AM | Comments (1)

symbiosis?

I
t's a fact of life of military bases that rather... specialized... economies grow up around them. on guam, a u.s. territory, this was generally limited to a proliferation of strip joints and dive bars.

up here near the dmz, the situation is similar. while there doesn't seem to exist a local population of strippers, the dive bars are plentiful within spitting distance of the main gate of the installation. inside, you can pay $20 to buy a drinky girl a glass of juice; in return, she makes conversation with you. during warmer weather, the girls hang out in the doorways of the clubs, trying to attract customers. the laws of supply and demand, until recently, have held sway with little government interference.

the major difference that i see between guam's military-focused sex industry (a term i'm using here to the exclusion of prostitution) and the one here is that this one seems to have a predatory undercurrent that was lacking on guam. human trafficking supplies most of the women who work in the clubs and bars; they are under contracts that can be bought out by those willing to pay the balance the woman owes. from what i've heard, it's quite common for the women to try to get the GIs to buy out their contracts. the bars prey on the women, the women prey on the (usually very young) soldiers. some of the women get pregnant, a common step to a green card and hopefully a better life for themselves. the GIs get sex (i assume, given the pregnancies and allegations that the father's a GI), some minimal level of companionship, and hopefully temporary relief from the caged monotony and dreariness of their heavily-regulated lives. i can't help but think, however, that many of them are just jumping into another cage to forget about the one they're already in.

Posted by at 3:53 AM | Comments (6)

December 21, 2005

Survey Says:

billboardx.jpg

A
couple of weeks ago, Is That Legal reported on an an attempt by a group seeking a change in North Carolina driver's license law to put up a racist billboard in Raleigh. Today Raleigh's News & Observer reports:

A group that feels the state has lax standards for issuing driver's licenses has backed off plans to put up a billboard with a picture of an Arab clutching a grenade and a North Carolina license.

The decision was made after Lamar Advertising, a national advertising company based in Baton Rouge, La., refused to put the image on one of its billboards.

newsobserver.com | NC News Wire

The article also tells us that "[c]oalition spokesman Bill O'Reilly said the charge [of racist fearmongering] was ridiculous." Is that the Bill O'Reilly? I just can not believe that, given the man's love for falafel, Bill would harbor such ill-will towards Arabs. You just never know, I guess.

Posted by at 11:49 AM | Comments (1)

Lance Here...

I
t's exciting to be guesting at Is That Legal—this is the blog that got me blogging. Eric mentioned my regular gig over at BlueNC, and I'll just add that we recently renovated the site from top to bottom. Very nice. Highly recommended.

I'm sure I'll have something interesting and insightful to say tomorrow, but for tonight I thought I'd take advantage of the big Is That Legal audience and ask a question.

I was having dinner this evening with a group of folks and the conversation turned to Iraq (one of our number went to high school with Iyad Allawi!), domestic spying, and the Bush administration generally. Various left-of-center political positions were staked out, but as the conversation wound down someone made a statement that everyone apparently agreed with: "oh well, things all go in cycles, and their turn will end eventually."

I say "apparently agreed" because I've never understood what people mean when they say this. Is it harmless social lubricant, a way of saying "whatever; things change"? Or do some people really think of political power as a pendulum that swings between left and right? And if it's the latter, just what do you say to that?

Ok, that's three questions. I very much look forward to hearing from the erudite Is That Legal readership.

Posted by at 12:22 AM | Comments (8)

December 20, 2005

Guns and Butter. Oh, and Guns. And ... Did I Mention Guns?

D
ave Kopel has an idea to help the starving and disease-ridden genocide victims of Darfur: arm them!

Posted by Eric at 7:05 PM | Comments (3)

across the international dateline...

...it's already tomorrow (as per eric's post below). the next few days i'll be blogging both here and on my own site from (currently snowy) south korea. i'll try to keep my posts here at least somewhat interesting, and my usual blather over on laloca.org. most likely i'll be writing about what it's like to be back here, after a 27-year absence, and random observations on what life must be like for the servicemembers posted up here at camp casey, "a speed bump on the way to seoul from pyongyang."

from the link above,

Camp Casey is one of the forty-two camps north of Seoul authorized Hardship Duty Pay of $150 per month as of 01 January 2001. The Hardship Duty Pay is paid to troops who are permanently assigned to areas where it is authorized or who serve 30 consecutive days of temporary duty in those areas. Several factors are considered in determining whether a location qualified for the pay: climate, physical and social isolation, sanitation, disease, medical facilities, housing, food, recreational and community facilities, political violence, harassment and crime. The extra pay provides meaningful financial recognition to troops assigned in areas where living conditions are substantially below US standards.

from what i've seen so far, the climate isn't much different from the midwest (high today around 20F); however, the physical and social isolation is intense. sanitation? an open sewer runs through the base; if not for the stench and questionable health impact it would be charming: local ducks huddle near the outflow points to take advantage of the warmer water. there's a bowling alley, so i suppose that qualifies as the "recreational facilities," and plenty of drinky girls (basically indentured servants, mostly philippina and russian) to be seen at the bars in "the ville." i can't help but wonder if the USG is thinking of soldier-on-soldier "harassment and crime" when they figure the hardship pay -- from what i understand, such things are far from rare. photos and more informed commentary to follow.

Posted by at 7:05 PM | Comments (1)

My Holiday Gift To You: Great Guest-Bloggers

S
tarting tomorrow, two guest bloggers will be running the place for a week. Both, as it happens, are (among many other things) law students, though I didn't invite them for that reason.

One of them is Jenny, who has guest-blogged here before. She blogs at laloca.org. She's a law student in DC, but will be blogging from South Korea, where she's visiting her husband (a military shrink detailed to South Korea for a year). If we're lucky, she'll post some pictures. She's a great photographer.

The other guest-blogger will be Lance, a student here at UNC Law School. He blogs at BlueNC.com and at his own personal site. Lance will not be blogging from an exotic place like South Korea, but mostly from some bland location in the Midwest. But he's an interesting guy.

I'll be checking in, but only very sporadically.

Enjoy the change of scenery here at IsThatLegal! And very happy holidays to all of you!

Posted by Eric at 5:36 PM

"Known Links to Al Qaeda": An Historical Perspective

A
frequent claim in the current debate about the scope of executive power is that the courts (and the people) ought to defer to the superior knowledge of the security experts in the executive branch, who know stuff that we don't.

Think especially of the President's assurance yesterday that the people he's surveilling in the United States outside of legal authority are all people "with known links to al Qaeda."

For what it's worth — you decide — I share with you substantial excerpts from a classified memorandum prepared in the Provost Marshal General's Office (in the War Department) in 1943. This was the secret point system by which the office determined which American citizens of Japanese ancestry were loyal and which disloyal. Using this and other similar systems, it ultimately found more than one in four American citizens of Japanese ancestry to be disloyal.

The "questions" to which the table refers ("Ques. 7," "Ques. 8," and so on) were questions on a questionnaire that Japanese Americans were made to fill out behind barbed wire in the late winter of 1943.

Ques. 7.
a. If registered in Communist Party......2-Minus
b. If registered voter.....1-Plus

Ques. 8.
a. If spouse is citizen of Japan.....1-Minus
b. If spouse is a Nisei.....1-Plus

Ques. 11.
a. If one or more relatives in U.S. Military Service voluntarily.....1-Plus
b. If father is interned.....3-Minus

Ques. 12.
a. If subject has one or more of the following in Japan: wife, children, parents, brothers, or sisters.....3-Minus

Ques. 13
b. If subject attended school in Japanese territory six months or more, for each 2 years or part thereof......1-Minus
d. If subject attended Japanese Language School more than 3 years in this country......2-Minus
f. If subject received entire education from schools in U.S......3-Plus

Ques. 14.
a. If subject has travelled to Japan 3 or more times.....Reject
d. If subject has travelled to Japan once......1-Minus
e. If subject has travelled to Japan twice.....3-Minus
f. If subject has never travelled to Japan.....1-Plus

Ques. 15.
d. If subject was employed as Japanese Language school instructor.....3-Minus
f. If subject was fisherman, licensed or amateur radio operator, hotel owner or operator, steamship line, Merchant-Marine.....2-Minus
g. If subject was employed by reputable American business doing business only in U.S......2-Plus

Ques. 16.
a. If subject is Shintoist.....Reject
b. If subject is Buddhist.....1-Minus
c. If subject is Christian.....2-Plus

Ques. 17.
a. If subject is member of Kyudo, Jyudo, Kendo or other Japanese National Club or other Japanese named organization.....Refer
c. If subject is member of Japanese-American Citizens League.....1-Plus
d. If member of Boy Scouts of America, Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A. or other recognized American Clubs.....2-Plus
e. If member of K of C, Masons, Rotarian or other American fraternal society.....2-Plus

Ques. 18.
a. If subject reads, writes and speaks Japanese good [sic].....2-Minus
b. If subject reads and/or writes Japanese fair, or good [sic].....1-Minus

Ques. 19.
a. If subject is an instructor in Japanese hobbies or sports. (Jyudo, Kyudo, and Kendo).....2-Minus
b. If subject is an instructor in American sport or hobby.....2-Plus
c. If licensed or amateur radio operator.....2-Minus

Ques. 23.
a. If subject has made substantial contribution to organizations connected with Japanese Army, Navy or kindred agencies.....Reject
b. If a contribution were made to any organization containing a Japanese name.....Refer
c. If contributions were made to American organizations prior to Pearl Harbor.....2-Plus

Ques. 24
a. For each Japanese or Japanese-American periodical, trade journal or magazine.....1-Minus

Ques. 25
a. If subject's birth was or is recorded with Japanese Consulate and cancellation has been made or is pending.....3-Plus

Ques. 26
a. If subject himself has ever applied for repatriation......Reject

Glossary
Question 8: A "Nisei" is an American citizen of Japanese ancestry.
Question 17: "K of C" presumably means "Knights of Columbus."
Questions 17 and 23: "Refer" meant that the person's file would be submitted to a superior officer for subjective review regardless of his point totals.

This system of "intelligence" processing produced findings of disloyalty in more than twenty-five percent of its cases. Forty thousand U.S. citizens; more than 12,000 deemed disloyal.

Can the executive branch be trusted with the sort of unreviewable power it is currently arrogating to itself to determine who should be surveilled, and how, and for how long? Perhaps the government's approach to assessing security risk has matured in the last sixty years. But to the extent that this wartime history is any guide, the answer is, quite clearly, "no."

(Document source: Japanese-American Schedule for Rating, Referral, or Rejection, P.S.D. March 24, 1943, National Archives, Record Group 389, Entry 480, Box 1732.)

Posted by Eric at 9:31 AM | Comments (13)

December 19, 2005

Lawless. Like I Said.

O
rin Kerr's verdict is in over at the Volokh Conspiracy. He says it's a tentative view, but here's my quick and dirty summary: the President's domestic eavesdropping program is lawless.

Told you so.

One quibble with Orin's otherwise excellent analysis: he says that the program is "probably" constitutional (albeit a violation of statute), but then says that the President lacked power to enforce the program under either the post-9/11 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) or Article II of the Constitution itself. So if the President lacked statutory or constitutional power to create and enforce the program, that makes it ... unconstitutional. I suspect that what Orin means is that the program probably does not violate the 4th Amendment. Even if that's so, that doesn't mean the program is a constitutional exercise of power.

Posted by Eric at 5:19 PM | Comments (15)

Concerned Alumni of Princeton ... With Razors.

B
ack on November 30, I blogged about an article that appeared in the magazine of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton ("CAP") in March of 1984, a year before Sam Alito bragged about being a CAP member in a Justice Department job application.

The article, which identified a Princeton freshman and divulged details about her sex life, drew critical national attention, garnering two separate articles in the New York Times.

I thought it'd be interesting to see what the offending article actually said, so I asked someone at Princeton to track down the magazine in the campus library and send me a copy. It turned out there was a long wait for this obscure publication; not only was it already checked out, but another patron was in the request line ahead of my researcher.

My researcher finally got his hands on the issue yesterday.

The article in question has been cut out.

(Also razored out, incidentally, is an article entitled "Sexuality at Old Nassau" in the March 1975 issue of CAP's magazine.)

Posted by Eric at 2:13 PM | Comments (21)

In Which I Learn That I Should Probably Not Be A Radio Talk Show Host.

A
s a guest on a local radio program this morning, I got nasty to a caller who was arguing that conservatives are logical and liberals are irrational. Not smooth.

Posted by Eric at 9:25 AM | Comments (5)

Another Lie from Dick Cheney

S
peaking of the lawless electronic eavesdropping that the Bush Administration has been engaging in, Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday said: "It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11."

What I'm about to say is a bit laden with lawyerly technical jargon, but stay with me:

ARGHHHH!!!! $%$#(**&^%$#%^#_)(* GRRRR!!!!

The Administration did have this capability before 9/11, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. All they needed to do was seek and obtain a warrant from a special intelligence court. This court issued warrants in every one of the many cases presented to it, except a couple of times in 2003.

Liar.

Posted by Eric at 7:26 AM | Comments (4)

December 18, 2005

Photoshop help?

I
'm new to Photoshop, and trying to do something so basic: I've got a canvas that's 3" by 5", and I've got several layers of text on it, and now I'm trying to position an image (a digital photo I took that's in jpg format) on the canvas too. I understand that I'm probably supposed to have the image be in a separate layer, but I can't figure out either (a) how to cut and paste the image onto that layer, or, once it's there, (b) how to resize it and make it small so that it's sitting down in the corner of the canvas rather than occupying the whole thing. Suggestions appreciated.

Posted by Eric at 9:48 PM | Comments (4)

December 16, 2005

Legality Is, Like, So September 10th

I
f you should happen to go over to the Volokh Conspiracy to read the comments to Orin Kerr's very reasonable post announcing the revelation of lawless domestic spying by the federal government, here is my advice: pace yourself, take deep breaths, and think calm thoughts. Take frequent breaks to look at pictures of little puppies or something after this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.

Then, if you've managed to maintain your meditative calm, head on over to Jackboot Central and read the Stasi talking points.

Posted by Eric at 8:21 PM | Comments (33)

UNC Law Students Doing Pro Bono Work for Katrina Victims

T
his is very cool. A group of UNC Law School students are spending their Christmas break in Louisiana doing pro bono legal work for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

They'll be blogging their experiences at forthegoodofthegulf.blogspot.com. You'll read more about this here over the next week or 10 days, but now might be a good time to bookmark what promises to be a very interesting site.

Posted by Eric at 3:40 PM | Comments (1)

Koufax Awards

K
oufax Award nominations are open. (These are the annual awards for the left-of-center blogosphere.)

If you think this blog deserves a nomination--maybe "most deserving of wider recognition?"--I'd appreciate a mention! But whether you mention me or not, do go over and share your favorites.

UPDATE: Nominations are now going here.

Posted by Eric at 11:35 AM

December 15, 2005

Click to the Past

G
o have yourself some fun at History Carnival XXII.

Posted by Eric at 9:58 AM

Give All The Toys ... To The Little Rich Boys

I
f there is a better Christmas song than the Kinks' "Father Christmas," I'd sure like to know what it is.

Posted by Eric at 9:50 AM | Comments (12)

December 14, 2005

Roses Are Red/Violets Are Blue/Don't F*ck With Me/Or I'll Shoot You

I
f you thought libertarian rants and Second Amendment diatribes were hard to endure in prose, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Check out the poetry.

Posted by Eric at 10:06 PM | Comments (2)

Winning Away, Losing At Home?

M
y local hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes, are having a great season so far. It is fun to watch.

This article, though, raises a question for you sports psychologists out there. The article notes that last night's 5-3 win against the Blackhawks was "just the second time in franchise history that the Canes came off a six-game road trip to win at home," and quotes coach Peter Laviolette: "We all knew that coming back from the road trip, it was going to be pulling teeth at times to get going. Nobody wants that, but it's just there, and the players deserve credit because they responded to the situation that was adverse."

What's the dynamic that makes it hard for teams to win after returning from a road trip? Are they referring just to tiredness here, or is some more sophisticated psychological thing going on?

Posted by Eric at 11:58 AM | Comments (3)

December 13, 2005

HECANN. Or Can He?

E
d Hasbrouck's fight for accountability and lawful process at ICANN makes for a long read, but a very worthwhile one.

Posted by Eric at 10:15 AM

Novak Column on Sam Alito Out; No Mention of Support from Former U.S. Attorneys

I
t looks as though the effort to insert a list of former U.S. Attorneys who support Sam Alito's Supreme Court nomination into Bob Novak's column failed.

Posted by Eric at 10:05 AM | Comments (5)

December 12, 2005

Another Cross Burning in Central North Carolina

2
005 has been a good year for cross burnings in central North Carolina. Last Friday evening, the fourth of the year, in Sanford, NC.

Posted by Eric at 7:45 AM | Comments (1)

December 9, 2005

The Signs of Danger

Y
ou don't need to be too deeply versed in semiotic theory to know that the images we see around us both reflect and reenforce how we understand the world. That's the whole idea behind most advertising, right?

So consider this billboard that will soon begin to appear in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is part of a campaign calling for the state to tighten its driver's licensing rules:

(It's a bit hard to see here, but that's Arabic writing scrawled across the top.)

Could there possibly be a more blatant equation of Arabs and Muslims with terrorist danger?

If this country ever again goes after its own citizens in the ways that it did sixty years ago, will later generations see a billboard like this one the way we now see the below newspaper advertisement from the Seattle newspaper in March 1942, as the mechanics of curfew, exclusion, and internment were being designed?

(Image borrowed from David Neiwert.)

Posted by Eric at 8:21 AM | Comments (12)

December 8, 2005

Bob Novak Trawls For Pro-Alito Column Material

C
onsider this email that went out a few days ago to dozens of people from John Kalinger of the Committee for Justice. The "Leonard" referred to is, I presume, Leonard Leo, Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society:
Hi everyone,

I need a little help on a letter I’ve been assigned to put together by Leonard. He wants me to find as many former US attorneys as I can to sign on to the letter below. I’m sorry for the short notice, however, I was just assigned this today and I recently found out we need it by Thursday morning at the latest for Robert Novak’s Sunday column.

If you could send me the contact information for any former USAs you might know or forward this message on to them and ask them to reply back to me, I would greatly appreciate it.

The only information we need from them is their preferred prefix (Hon., Mr., Ms., etc.), name and the city and state where they now practice and/or live.

We really do need this ASAP.

Here’s the letter (there may be some cosmetic changes, but this is same letter than went out for John Roberts):

December 6, 2005

Dear Mr. Chairman,

We write to you as members of the bar and former United States Attorneys who strongly support the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Having served in frontline prosecutor positions with the federal government, we recognize the great importance of having Supreme Court Justices of great legal acumen, good judgment, and personal decency as well as the ability to construe and apply the law fairly and impartially.

We urge the Senate to give its consent to Judge Alito’s nomination because he embodies these qualities and has a demonstrated record of faithfulness to the fair and impartial administration of justice.

Sincerely,

(Names)

Thank you for your help,

John Kalinger
Committee for Justice
1275 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
(202) 481-6841


It's hard to be sure, but this sure makes it look as though Bob Novak is out generating expressions of support for Sam Alito's confirmation so that he can write about them in his column.

How else would Leonard Leo know what Bob Novak needs for an upcoming, as-yet-unwritten column?

In Iraq, we pay journalists for propaganda. Here, it's free.

Posted by Eric at 1:34 PM | Comments (10)

The Past As It Was And As We Need It To Be

G
reg Robinson muses in very interesting ways on how psychology can drive one's understanding of history. Very much worth thinking about.

Posted by Eric at 12:12 PM | Comments (1)

Good Morning, and Good Luck.

K
en Masugi thinks it's again time to search for disloyal Americans.

Because, you know, we've had such excellent success with these sorts of efforts in the past.

Posted by Eric at 8:40 AM | Comments (7)

December 7, 2005

"You Learn Something New" Department, #3"

O
ne more new thing I learned this morning at the National Archives.

I knew that the U.S. military declined requests to bomb the train tracks leading to the Nazi concentration camps in Poland.

I didn't know we declined to do it because we thought that was Soviets' department.

(This is a memo from Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy's top assistant, relating to a request the War Department had received to bomb the train tracks that were about to be used for the deportation of the Jews of Hungary.)

Posted by Eric at 7:40 PM | Comments (3)

"You Learn Something New" Department, #2

I
learned something else new this morning at the National Archives.

In 1942, the War Department prepared legislation suspending the writ of habeas corpus specifically for Japanese Americans removed from the West Coast and detained in the so-called "relocation centers."

I did not know that.

I suppose it should not have suprised me, but it did. A little.

I was unable to determine why the Administration never presented the proposal to Congress. Perhaps they didn't need to because they were winning the Japanese American habeas cases that were then pending in the district courts.

You learn something new.

Posted by Eric at 2:10 PM | Comments (4)

"You Learn Something New" Department, #1

P
erhaps the best thing about doing research in the National Archives is that you never know what's going to show up in the files adjacent to those you've requested. In WWII, the War Department filed all of its correspondence under a decimal filing system not unlike the Dewey Decimal system, with the result that adjacent decimal numbers might have nothing whatsoever to do with each other at the level of substance.

Thus, this morning, just next to a file about Japanese Americans in the files of Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, I saw a file labelled "Jews," and in it found this:

The Nazis floated the idea of foregoing the total annihilation of the Jews in exchange for war supplies and provisions. Wow.

The excerpt is from a diplomatic document from the British, sent to the U.S. government for comment in June of 1944. According to the British, the Nazi offer came from a top Gestapo official in Turkey who communicated it to a Zionist official for further communication to Britain and the United States.

Britain and the United States apparently said "no."

Like I said, at the National Archives, you learn something new.

UPDATE: More on these "blood-for-trucks" negotiations.

Posted by Eric at 1:51 PM | Comments (3)

Genetic Disloyalty

A
fter a full day of poring over archival records of the military's apparatus for identifying disloyal American citizens of Japanese ancestry in World War II, I figured there'd be nothing like going to a movie to get my mind off of things. So last night I went to the movies. I saw "Good Night and Good Luck." Great movie. Very bad choice for getting my mind off of things. My outrage level was even higher after my night out than it was before.

"Outrage?" you ask. "What's to be outraged about?" Well, consider this lovely document I turned up yesterday. It's from a training session for officers who would be deciding which individual Japanese Americans were too disloyal to be allowed back to the West Coast in 1945, after the blanket order excluding Japanese Americans as a group had been lifted. It's a training lecture by a Colonel Hazzard entitled "Background of Japanese Social, Family, and National Customs and Some Criteria for Exclusion."

A famous Scotch surgeon once told me that he could tell the year that a Japanese surgeon graduated from medical school ... from the way he did certain operations--it might be an appendectomy, a tonsilectomy, or operation on the brain or any other portion of the body. I said, 'Why does he differ from a Westerner?" He said, "Because there is a group of brain cells which, when highly developed or among civilized people, they can visualize an incident from a word picture." The Japanese have not yet developed that particular group of brain cells--probably a few thousand that would represent a small section of one percent of the people, who by association of several generations with Western people and by being educated in Western universities, have developed their brain cells.
Colonel Hazzard also covered the subject of the importance in Japanese culture of the idea of "saving face":
We run up against a lot of things which are difficult to understand in conducting these hearings and trying to evaluate their answers. ... Face-saving is just the result of a training that they have had since childhood -- a very primitive training which is more or less mechanical and which does not develop individually because with the exception of those two or three thousand Japanese leaders you will find very little individuality among the Japanese people.
With this expert training under their belts, the officers went out and continued the exclusion of more than 10,000 U.S. citizens from the West Coast as security risks.

"Good night and good luck" indeed.

Posted by Eric at 6:43 AM | Comments (2)

December 5, 2005

Perhaps Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson Was One of the Judges.

T
his evening's coverage of this story about the Turner Prize on the BBC World Service might just be the funniest thing I have ever heard on the radio.

I've emailed the program and asked them to post the audio. I'll link to them if it appears.

UPDATE: OK, I found the audio. Here's the deal: I have no idea if this will stay up any longer than today. Go to the homepage of the World Today program (I mean "programme"), scroll down to the bottom right where the archived shows are listed, click on 02:00 GMT, and go to the forty minute mark in the program. Sorry, programme. It's a seven-minute bit.

Just do it. You will not regret it.

FURTHER UPDATE: I think that the link is up permanently here; go to the six-minute point and enjoy.

Posted by Eric at 11:27 PM | Comments (6)

Living the Good Life in the Triangle, Far-Right-Wing Version

I
have a guest-post today at a local (Orange County, NC) politics blog about the extreme right-wing rants that grace the pages of what is supposed to be a high-gloss local "living the good life" feel-good magazine. Check it out.

UPDATE: A commenter, speaking of the original title of this post, which was "Living the Good Life in the Triangle, Wingnut Version," says: "Use of the word 'wingnut' speaks volumes. Eric obviously does not think this guy is even near the realm of the reasonable."

It is true that I don't think many of the views Bernie Reeves expresses in his column are "near the realm of the reasonable." The commenter is right, though, that the word "wingnut" was nasty and ill-advised. I apologize to Mr. Reeves for using that term to describe his views, which in my view speak for themselves without the need for any such derogatory adjective.

Posted by Eric at 12:37 PM | Comments (6)

December 4, 2005

Announcing the Winner of the IsThatLegal "Name My Book" Contest

T
he response to my name-my-book contest was incredible -- beyond all expectations. I was astonished by the quality of the suggestions.

Now I have to announce a winner, which is a mighty tough thing to do. The one title that I keep coming back to, over and over again, is this one:

"I Judge Allegiance to the Flag: The Government Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty during World War II" (submitted by a reader who goes by the name "StarFiend")

Yes, there is a problem with it: starting with "I" doesn't quite work. But I love it anyway.

Will it end up as the title to the book? I really can't say for sure. Time will tell. But it's a remarkably good and catchy suggestion. Thanks to StarFiend, and to everyone else who made suggestions. I am deeply appreciative.

Incidentally, StarFiend did not leave an email address. So StarFiend, I owe you a Barnes & Noble gift certifiicate. Be in touch.

Posted by Eric at 7:28 PM | Comments (8)

December 2, 2005

I Believe This Is Called "The Base."

T
he student newspaper at Bob Jones University is calling for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

I would say that support for the war is slipping a tad bit.

Posted by Eric at 3:35 PM | Comments (4)

If You're in Princeton, NJ, and Have An Hour To Kill, Drop Me A Line.

I
'm looking for somebody in the Princeton, NJ, area who has an hour on his/her hands (at the most) to do a tiny bit of library research for me. Compensation will be my gratitude. Please leave a comment or drop an email (to the address at the top of the sidebar on the right) if you're a Princetonian who is feeling magnanimous.

Posted by Eric at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)

December 1, 2005

Graphics help sought.

S
o let's say I wanted to make a little rectangular graphic for this blog, kind of like the "progressive law bloggers" one over there in the sidebar on the right. Maybe with the title of the blog in those way-cool black letters with the shadows trailing behind them, like at the top of the page, and with my little fluffy doggie on there too. How would I do that, anyway? Just wondering.

Posted by Eric at 9:34 AM | Comments (7)

Neither is Hercule Poirot to Be Trusted.

F
rom this story, a reasonably cautious person who is not stuck in a September 10 mindset can conclude only one thing: It's internment time for Kim Clijsters and Lara Fabian.

(Hat tip: Chris Bray.)

Posted by Eric at 8:47 AM | Comments (4)