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March 31, 2006

Hamdan, Kennedy, and Separation of Powers

T
oday the always-worth-reading Orin Kerr is, well, worth reading.

Posted by Eric at 12:14 PM

March 30, 2006

Justice Scalia and the Quest for Original Meaning

A
s usual, Atrios is being demure. What Justice Scalia actually said in church the other day means ...

(Note: potentially offensive language below the fold)

"go and do it in the ass."

Posted by Eric at 9:50 AM | Comments (20)

March 28, 2006

It Is A Very, Very Good Day

I
get to go see Glenn Tilbrook tonight in Raleigh.

UPDATE: Fantastic show. All the standards (minus, notably, "Tempted"), with some real gems thrown in as well: "Someone Else's Bell," "The Elephant Ride," a very spirited "Voodoo Child" (Jimi Hendrix), "Labelled With Love," and "The Truth" (at my request, no less!).

Posted by Eric at 9:36 AM | Comments (3)

Go Mayor Mineta!

C
heck out this collection of (mostly) Asian American political memorabilia.

Posted by Eric at 8:42 AM

Dear Miss Breed: A New Book For Young Audiences About the Japanese American Internment

A
new book for kids and teenagers about the Japanese American internment, the value of friendship, and the freeing power of the printed word: Dear Miss Breed.

It is fantastic. Check it out.

Posted by Eric at 8:30 AM

Or French Toast. Whatever.

W
hat I really meant, I suppose, was that it sounds like Moussaoui's a croque-monsieur.

Posted by Eric at 8:00 AM

March 27, 2006

*sigh*

T
he memo also shows that [President Bush] and the prime minister [of England] acknowledged [in a meeting on Jan. 31, 2003] that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
It is a comfort, at least, that they did not discuss taking twelve prisoners out of Guantanamo, poisoning them, dressing them in Iraqi military uniforms, shooting them just inside American borders, and then maintaining that Iraq had tried to invade the United States.

(Yes, this is deliberately provocative, and very exaggerated. I know it.)

Posted by Eric at 8:54 AM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2006

"Full of It" Would Probably Work, Too.

I
f you're headed over to "Classroom Justice," allow me make a few suggestions:

"Achingly handsome." "Uproariously funny." "Painstakingly fair-minded." "Impossibly brilliant." "Understatedly messianic."

Posted by Eric at 8:19 PM | Comments (3)

Can You Hear Me Now?

I
f you're a local reader of this blog (meaning that you live in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Durham NC area), would you please leave a comment reporting on how good/bad your cellphone reception is around town? If I get a bunch of comments, I'll come back and re-post a summary of what I learn.

Posted by Eric at 4:11 PM | Comments (8)

Curses!

F
oiled again.

Posted by Eric at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)

March 24, 2006

Shoot.

G
uess I'm not married to the perfect wife after all.

Posted by Eric at 5:10 PM | Comments (3)

A Middle-School Lesson in Free Speech?

T
here's a First Amendment fuss at my elder daughter's middle school -- a fuss big enough to make the Raleigh News & Observer.

The most recent issue of the school newspaper included a story about a kid who got busted and given detention for kissing his girlfriend in the hallway (violating the rule against public displays of affection) and a story about some kids who were busted for assaulting a bus driver (an incident that, as it happens, my daughter actually witnessed, because she was on that bus). The stories name the kids charged in both incidents; in fact, a couple of the kids gave interviews to a student reporter, and one of them allowed his picture to be used.

The assistant principal seized all 500 copies of the paper, and the principal backed him up. (Actually, my daughter tells me that the paper was distributed at lunchtime, and then, somewhat awkwardly, collected again a period or two later.)

The administrators are concerned with protecting the confidentiality of school disciplinary proceedings, and with preventing public dissemination of the identities of the students involved.

Some are spinning the story as a big First Amendment crisis: they maintain that the incidents and the identities of the kids involved were common knowledge in the school, and that the kids who were named consented to their naming.

This isn't true: my daughter didn't know anything at all about the kissing incident, and even though she witnessed the bus assault, she didn't know the names of the kids who'd been charged.

More to the point, I doubt that the kids involved had the legal capacity to consent to the dissemination of their involvement in school disciplinary proceedings. I'm confident that the student reporters, diligent and fair as they may have been, did not contact the parents of the kids they were naming to get their consent.

Admittedly, this looks like a bit of a bungled play: the best mechanism, it seems to me, is for school administrators to look the paper over before distribution in order to work with the student editors to help them understand all of the ramifications of confidentiality. But in the end, I think the administrators are in the right here: their responsibility is to protect the confidentiality of school disciplinary proceedings.

I'd encourage them to help the students re-publish the paper after spring break, with the relevant stories included, but with the confidentiality of the affected students protected.

Posted by Eric at 8:37 AM | Comments (41)

March 23, 2006

Talking Out Of School

I
don't think I'll ever understand what leads academics to blog about the internal political dynamics of their home institutions.

Posted by Eric at 1:39 PM | Comments (3)

Rough Seas.

N
ot a good moment for the cruise industry.

Posted by Eric at 1:28 PM

Straining to See a Strain at the Supreme Court

T
his piece by Linda Greenhouse, suggesting that the opinions in a 4th Amendment case decided yesterday reveal "strains" underneath the Court's "placid" surface, strikes me as exaggerated. Yes, the language in the footnotes is strong for Justice Souter. But does it reveal "strains" on the Court, or just strongly held views? Without other evidence, I'd assume the latter.

Posted by Eric at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2006

Sorry, Folks.

I
'll be damned if I have anything interesting to say right about now. Hence the comparative silence here at IsThatLegal. Thanks for stopping by, though.

Posted by Eric at 10:05 PM | Comments (3)

A Talk This Afternoon On Loyalty During Wartime

T
his afternoon at 4:15 in the rotunda of the UNC law school, I'll be giving a talk about the World War II-era American bureaucracy that passed judgment on the loyalty and disloyalty of 40,000 Japanese Americans.

If you're on campus, and are interested in issues relating to civil liberties and national loyalty during wartime, stop on by.

Posted by Eric at 9:15 AM | Comments (1)

Political Cyber-Discourse at UNC Law School

I
've just noticed a new right-of-center online publication here at UNC Law School called "The Right Flank," along with a left-of-center blog that's responding to it.

Interesting.

What's doubly interesting to me is that we have a "Free Speech Board" here in the law school -- a bulletin board where people in the community are encouraged to post commentary on matters of interest. It has hung empty on the wall for a couple of years now.

And yet, in cyberspace, a conversation flourishes.

Posted by Eric at 8:51 AM | Comments (3)

March 20, 2006

This Day In History

O
n Anniversary, King Henry IV Asserts "I'm Feeling Quite Well, Thank You."

Posted by Eric at 7:28 AM

March 19, 2006

Life Imitates Joke.

S
o two Israelis, a Palestinian, two Americans, an Iraqi, an Afghani, an Iranian, an Ukrainian, and a Tibetan decide to drive across the Sahara in a German firetruck.

You with me so far?

It's no joke.

Posted by Eric at 2:53 PM | Comments (3)

Looking for Guidance on a Year Abroad.

I
'd be interested to be in touch with people (especially academics) with school-age children who have spent a year abroad in a country where English is not the national language.

This is something my wife and I talk about doing from time to time, but the imagined logistical difficulties quicklly overwhelm us and we drop the whole thing. It's an attractive idea, if for no other reason than that we'd give our daughters (now 11 and 9 years old) the lifelong gift of fluency in a foreign language. But it seems like it would be such an enormously disruptive thing for them, educationally and of course socially.

So if this is something you've actually done, I'd love to correspond with you about it. Or if you know someone who has, and would put me in touch with him or her, I'd appreciate it. Please leave a comment or send me an email.

Thanks!

Posted by Eric at 12:16 PM | Comments (4)

March 17, 2006

"BJ" U?

S
pring is in the air at Bob Jones University, and the students are getting positively randy!

Backwards. In kilts. On their hands.

My goodness!

Posted by Eric at 11:15 AM | Comments (5)

March 16, 2006

Censure? Censure!

A
stonishing poll numbers reported at discourse.net.

Posted by Eric at 3:55 PM

NC Muslims on Muhammed Taheri-azar

N
orth Carolina Muslims are condemning the religious views of Mohammed Taheri-azar, the guy who plowed a jeep into pedestrians on the UNC campus a couple of weeks ago.

Posted by Eric at 8:45 AM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2006

Censure: A Tragedy in One Scene

I
was out of the country when Russ Feingold went all censurious on the President's you-know-what -- a move, incidentally, that I quite admire -- but a friend who is an astute political observer captured the "debate" I missed in the following one-act play:
FEINGOLD: The President broke the law. We should censure him.

WINGNUTS: Dems are crazy extremists, rabid with Bush hatred, committing political suicide.

LIBS: Russ is a saint. He has courage. Other Dem politicians are weak, simpering, without principles.

ESTABLISHMENT DEMS: [cue crickets]

OTHER LIBS: Russ For President!

STILL OTHER LIBS: He can't win, he's Jewish and divorced.

LIBS: Can too! BTW, wasn't Dean the greatest? Feingold's kinda like Dean.

ESTABLISHMENT DEMS: Um...

MORE LIBS: I'm pretty sure they don't like Jews and divorced people out in those big square states.

LIBS: Well, anyway, I'm for Russ and his censure motion. Send him flowers!

OTHER LIBS: He won't accept them - for "ethical" reasons.

LIBS: Well then, send him money.

STILL OTHER LIBS: This shouldn't be about money.

WINGNUTS: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! These people are unbelievable!

DEM SENATORS: Fuckin' Feingold!

LIBS: Dean really was great. Is Nader still around?

Curtain.

Posted by Eric at 2:24 PM | Comments (7)

Was Gone, And Now I'm Back

I
'm just back from a quick trip to London to gather some family history and visit a sick relative. It was just a three-day trip -- a long way to go for just three days -- but was well worth the effort in many ways. I gathered lots of important information for an eventual writing project about the life and demise of my great-uncle Leopold, about whom I have blogged before. (World War I vet, lost use of left arm in combat, deported from Bad Kissingen, Germany, to the East in April of 1942, where he was murdered.)

Here's a photo of him from April of 1925, in happy times.

I also made time during my London weekend for a couple of hours in the National Gallery, a couple of hours in the British Museum, and a wonderful production of Hamlet.

I read an excellent book on the plane trip home yesterday -- The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr. Highly recommended, especially to those with any interest at all in art history, or in unraveling the secrets of the past.

I leave you, for now, with a scanned image of a pack of cigarettes, picked up off the street outside my hotel.

Now that is what I call a warning label.

Posted by Eric at 8:48 AM | Comments (4)

March 10, 2006

Defending This Community's Response to Last Week's Assault

J
ust did a segment as a guest on Brad & Britt's morning show on WZTK-FM. All week they've been in the chorus demanding that the assault on the UNC campus a week ago be labelled "terrorism" and criticizing this university community for hesitating to throw around that label.

I tried to make the points I made on this blog earlier this week: yes, the assault was an act of terrorism, but there are good reasons for us to try to be careful with a word like that rather than jumping up and down and screaming it from the top of every dormitory. "Terrorist" is our enemy-demonization-word-du-jour; we've had them in the past ("Hun," "Jap," "Communist," and they've never worked out particularly well for us domestically. One way to be careful about a word like "terrorist" is to talk about it when we use it -- to open up discussion about the word and its connotations. Yet it is precisely that reflective effort by this university community that seems so annoying to many people. Isn't this what a university community should be doing?

And more to the point, when a victimized university tries to react thoughtfully to an assault, shouldn't there be a little respect for the victim -- for its ways of dealing with being attacked?

Posted by Eric at 9:11 AM | Comments (6)

March 9, 2006

Songs With Staying Power

D
o you have any songs that will touch you in exactly the way they touched you when you first heard them -- the shiver down the spine, maybe -- if you only let enough time go by between listenings? Just as much power, just as much feeling?

I am now listening -- again -- to Peter Gabriel's song "Blood of Eden," after setting the disk aside for six months or so. And I am just as astonished and overwhelmed by it as every other time I've listened to it after setting it aside for six months or so. The song just never loses even an ounce of its power. I marvel at what an achievement the song is, exactly as I have done many times before.

A few other such songs, for me: The Truth (by Squeeze); Some Fantastic Place (again Squeeze); There Is No Language In Our Lungs (XTC); God Only Knows (The Beach Boys).

What are yours?

Posted by Eric at 1:37 PM | Comments (25)

History Should Not Be Roadkill

S
ally Greene is looking for a little truth in Texas roadside historical markers. Interesting stuff.

Posted by Eric at 8:47 AM | Comments (1)

March 8, 2006

In Defense of Worrying About The Word "Terrorist"

T
he word "terrorism," as I use it in everyday speech, has this definition: "the use or threatened use of random violence against civilians to express a political message."

So to me, what Mohammed Taheri-azar did on my campus last Friday was an act of terrorism. There's no other word for it. (I concede the possibility that he was not responsible for his actions due to mental illness, but on the basis of the facts thus far disclosed, this seems quite unlikely.)

However ...

I admire my community for engaging in a debate about whether to label the act with the word "terrorism." Because right now that word carries social meanings far larger than any dictionary can capture. That word carries the connotation of "German" in World War I and "Jap" in World War II and "Communist" at the height of the Cold War. It carries the connotation of "other"--a faceless, less-than-human horde that we can treat as we will, rather than by the rules and standards that we usually accord to citizens.

As UNC professor Christopher Browning has written, "war, a struggle between 'our people' and 'the enemy,' creates a polarized world in which 'the enemy' is easily objectified and removed from the community of human obligation. War is the most conducive environment in which governments can adopt 'atrocity by policy' and encounter few difficulties in implementing it." It should give us little comfort to realize that these words appear in the concluding chapter of Browning's outstanding book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland."

"Terrorists" are people we "hunt down and kill." They are people we can spy on, can subject to interrogation methods just a whisker short of "organ failure or death," and can "disappear" into secret and unreviewable detention. (And that's just what we know about so far.)

So this question of what to call Mohammed Taheri-azar is not an easy one. Yes, what he did was, on my view, "terrorism." But I do not wish to join those clamoring for the deployment of the word. I want to use the word deliberately, carefully, without shearing from it its very worrying connotations. That is what I see this community doing as it debates what to call this frightening young man, and I applaud the community for it.

Posted by Eric at 8:01 AM | Comments (14)

March 7, 2006

"Terrorism?" Or Not?

T
here's much debate here in Chapel Hill over whether the incident last Friday in which a man ran over lots of UNC students with a rented SUV in order to protest America's treatment of Muslims around the world is or isn't an act of "terrorism."

College Republicans yesterday demonstrated on campus, demanding that the act be labelled as a terrorist act.

In this thread on a local left-of-center political blog, especially toward the bottom, some people seem eager to avoid the "terrorism" label and instead attribute the act to mental illness.

I'll post my own view on why the question matters later in the day; right now I've got a class to prepare for. But it's an interesting and important thing to think about and to discuss.

Posted by Eric at 8:03 AM | Comments (16)

March 6, 2006

Profile of UNC Assailant

T
here's an article this morning in the UNC campus newspaper about people's impressions of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the young man who drove an SUV into a crowd of students last friday.

Posted by Eric at 8:39 AM

March 4, 2006

Jeep Assault at UNC - Chapel Hill

I
am nearly speechless about the jeep attack on the UNC campus yesterday.

The spot the assailant chose was the very center of the campus -- a pedestrian zone that sits between the main campus store, the main campus dining hall, the main library, and a couple of other buildings. In the noon hour it's just mobbed with students, faculty, and staff. Not infrequently I'm over there in the noon hour myself; there's a Jamba Juice in the dining hall where I like to get smoothies.

At the time of the attack, I was at the law school, listening to a presentation on the Fourth Amendment by GWU professor (and Volokh Conspiracy blogger) Orin Kerr. We had no idea that any of this was happening, because the law school sits on a different part of campus.

We will know, in time, whether the initial reports of a terrorist motivation are accurate, and how mentally stable the driver is.

For now, I'm mostly just thankful that so few people were injured, and that none of the injuries is life-threatening. I wish all of the injured students a speedy recovery.

Posted by Eric at 8:36 AM | Comments (6)

March 2, 2006

We Could Call It, I Don't Know, a "Court Strengthening Plan" or Something

T
he blogosphere is starting to buzz about the horrifying news that 72-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep at the end of a two-hour argument the other day.

So I was thinking about this and I think I came up with an idea. Just go with me on this for a second. A couple of the justices are really pretty old -- in fact, over 70. They're tired and overworked, but they've got life tenure, and we can't kick them off. So check this out: I think that for every justice over the age of 70, the President should be given the power to appoint an additional justice to the Court, just to make sure that the Court is not overworked or anything. I swear, this idea just came to me like a bolt out of the blue.

It's so crazy, it just might work.

Posted by Eric at 10:41 PM | Comments (10)

March 1, 2006

A Quick Game of Twenty(-five) Questions

W
ould you please take a moment and fill out the 25-question survey that is being run by blogads, the company that provides the ad content over there on the right side of IsThatLegal? I'd appreciate it, and so would blogads.

In Question #23, please list IsThatLegal as the blog that referred you to the survey.

Thanks!

Posted by Eric at 2:14 PM | Comments (6)