The rule of the fucking law!

Consider the following sentences:

I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. 

That was from a speech in 1987.

That paragraph could also serve as some kind of a Rorschach test, I suppose, on how we think about the Constitution and the rule of law. How do you feel about that paragraph?

That excerpted paragraph is from a speech that Thurgood Marshall gave when he was serving as one of the nine in the US Supreme Court.  It was in the context of the bicentennial celebrations of the US Constitution.

Marshall refused to participate in those events.

 The focus of this celebration invites a complacent belief that the vision of those who debated and compromised in Philadelphia yielded the “more perfect Union” it is said we now enjoy.

A sitting member of the Supreme Court openly critiquing the Constitution.  And I had no idea about that all these years!

Marshall pulls no punches. Not even a bit.

What is striking is the role legal principles have played throughout America’s history in determining the condition of Negroes. They were enslaved by law, emancipated by law, disenfranchised and segregated by law; and, finally, they have begun to win equality by law. Along the way, new constitutional principles have emerged to meet the challenges of a changing society. The progress has been dramatic, and it will continue.
The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 could not have envisioned these changes. They could not have imagined, nor would they have accepted, that the document they were drafting would one day be construed by a Supreme Court to which had been appointed a woman and the descendant of an African slave. "We the People” no longer enslave, but the credit does not belong to the Framers.

It continues to boggle my mind that Marshall's vacancy was filled by Clarence Thomas!  And even more mind-boggling that we have justices who believe that the Constitution's "original" intent ought to be interpreted, despite all the moral fatal flaws from which the laws been birthed.

We will see that the true miracle was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life, a life nurtured through two turbulent centuries of our own making, and a life embodying much good fortune that was not.

Of course, very little of such substance will be discussed and debated over the coming weeks of the Senate's consideration of the President's nominee for the Supreme Court.  As has become the standard practice, the nominee will pretty much refuse to answer any question.  The uber-conservative judge will be confirmed, and will help solidify the "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution.

Tell me again why the "rule of law" is so crucial?  Whose law, and whose rule?

I dream of Obama v. Romney, like Gore v. Bush

In an email to my friend, a few days ago, as a follow-up to his guest-post and my own post, I wrote:

Just for the heck of it, I want Romney to win the popular vote and for Obama to win the electoral votes including Florida, and have the entire country replay 2000 all over again--only that this time those who argued one way the last time will take up their opponents' arguments from then.  That will make it a political theatre that we will never ever forget .... I can dream, can't I?

Looks like President "I was napping" Obama is working hard to make my dream come true; for once, it warms the cockles of my heart that my President is working for me!

The swingers are certainly charmed by Willard "snake oil salesman" Romney's aggressive pitch to get all of us our own unicorns:

In one set of polls, conducted by The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and Marist College, President Obama and Mr. Romney are in a dead heat among likely voters in Florida (Obama 48 percent, Romney 47 percent) and in Virginia (Romney 48, Obama 47). In Ohio, Obama leads 51 percent to 45 percent.
Earlier this month, before the debate, Romney trailed in Ohio by eight percentage points, 51-43, according to the same poll. In Virginia, he trailed 48-46, and in Florida, it was Obama 47, Romney 46.

The swingers have made elections to be about the presidency of the Discontiguous States of Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

I hope that both Romney and Obama will do their part over the remaining weeks to get us to the point where we can re-live 2000 all over again, because, it is not merely about popular votes but about electoral college votes.  And that is a tough job, which, I am not sure both Obama and Romney are capable of!  They need to work harder than what they are doing now to make real my dream because the electoral vote situation looks like this:

The more troubling sign for Mr. Romney, however, is that although he’s made gains, he does not seem to have taken the lead in very many state polls. That trend, if anything, has become more entrenched. Of the half-dozen or so polls of battleground states published on Wednesday, none showed Mr. Romney ahead; the best result he managed was a 48-48 tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll of New Hampshire. ...
Our forecast model does infer that Mr. Obama has a very slight Electoral College advantage. (As of Wednesday, it gave him a 67.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College against a 66.7 percent chance of winning the popular vote.)

Won't it be awesome if once again we have the electoral vote versus popular vote controversy?  All the more because since the Gore v. Bush controversy, the Supreme Court itself has been coming across as a political body instead of a sober, neutral, judicial arbiter!  As Jeffrey Toobin noted:

Even at the time, Bush v. Gore was treated as a kind of novelty item, a one-off decision that applied only to the peculiar facts then before the Justices. The majority itself seemed to want it that way. In the most famous sentence from the decision, the Justices wrote, “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”

We can call their political bluff by presenting the court with a second attempt.  They can always claim that Gore V. Bush was not precedent setting ;)

Yes, I am having fun ... because ... well, I wrote about it already!

Harvard prepares Presidents, judges, and China's commie leaders?

A follow-up to my earlier post.  Matt Yglesias corrects Niall Ferguson with this simple graphic (HLS is Harvard Law School, and Harvard's business school is HBS)

So, Harvard is tightening its grip on the Executive branch, it has more than a choke-hold on the Judiciary! And they are prowling on Wall Street, too!

Hmmmm ...

If Harvard is that good, well, it should not surprise us then that Harvard "is training the next generation of Chinese Communist Party leaders"

The Harvard curriculum, specially designed for this program, resembles a midcareer executive course. Housed at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center—the same graduate school Bo Xilai’s son attended—Harvard faculty teach Chinese officials leadership, strategy, and public management. Some of the lectures are given by big-name Harvard professors, including Roger Porter and Joseph Nye. Although the classes are restricted to Chinese officials, these party members have ample opportunity to mix with the school’s faculty and general student body. Borrowing from the case-study method made famous at the university’s business school, the coursework zeroes in on specific topics such as U.S. policy and government, how the media operates, negotiation strategy, and even social media. The classroom work is supplemented by site visits to places like the Massachusetts State House, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and larger institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. Besides its main leadership program, which lasts eight weeks, Harvard runs more tailored courses, too. One is focused on crisis management. Another is entirely devoted to the Shanghai municipal government. A new energy program will bring together executives from the China Southern Grid Power Corporation. “The goal is to help the Chinese government work in this environment of globalization,” says Lu. “To catch up.” 

Harvard specially designed a curriculum for this? As Johnny Carson often said, "I did not know that!"  The difference, however, is that this this Harvard story ain't funny. 

BTW, the graphic interests me for another reason: I will add this to my venn diagram collections--well, this be only the third!   The Venn diagrams that my math teacher, Vimala Sitaraman, taught us a long, long time ago :)

"The law is a ass--a idiot"--continued

A follow-up to this earlier posting where I used the Charles Dickens quote in the context of a law suit that had worked its way up to the Supreme Court.  A quick recap of that case:

Ralph Fertig hardly resembles a terrorist, but the soft-spoken 79-year-old pacifist and human rights activist from Los Angeles might well qualify as one under the government's strong anti-terrorism law.
He is the lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court case to be heard next week that will test whether speaking out on behalf of an oppressed foreign minority -- represented by a group that's been deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. -- can result in a long prison term.

So, what did the Supremes say?  Are we to be surprised that the uber-conservative Supreme Court supports the government's position?

The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.

Six to three!  even the retiring Stevens sided with the conservatives on the bench.  (Well, this is merely another piece of evidence that Stevens is not that much a "liberal" justice, as is often mistakenly presented.)

What did the three dissenting justices say?  Here is their spokesman, Justice Breyer:

I cannot agree with the Court’s conclusion that the Constitution permits the Government to prosecute the plaintiffs criminally for engaging in coordinated teaching and advocacy furthering the designated organizations' lawful political objectives. In my view, the Government has not met its burden of showing that an interpretation of the statute that would prohibit this speech- and association-related activity serves the Government's compelling interest in combating terrorism. And I would interpret the statute as normally placing activity of this kind outside its scope.

It is bloody f*ed up, I say. Again, as a reminder, what did Ralph Fertig do, and what does he want to achieve?

The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army, two of history’s most notorious terrorist groups, have never appeared on the State Department’s List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. By the time the list was first compiled in 1997, both groups were deemed to be moving away from violence and toward a peaceful resolution of their grievances.
Ralph Fertig, president of the Humanitarian Law Project, wants to encourage a similar change within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a violent separatist group in Turkey also known as the PKK (its Kurdish initials). But he worries that doing so will expose him to prosecution for providing “material support” to a terrorist organization, a crime Congress has defined so broadly that it includes a great deal of speech protected by the First Amendment. When it hears Fertig’s case next week, the Supreme Court will have a chance to correct that error.
Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and former administrative law judge, seeks, as the district court described it, to “provide training in the use of humanitarian and international law for the peaceful resolution of disputes, engage in political advocacy on behalf of the Kurds living in Turkey, and teach the PKK how to petition for relief before representative bodies like the United Nations.” Fertig says he also wants to “advocate on behalf of the rights of the Kurdish people and the PKK before the United Nations and the United States Congress.”

I am looking forward to Glenn Greenwald's and Dahlia Lithwick's analyses ...

BTW, does this mean that the 80-year old Ralph Fertig is looking at prison time?

More on Kagan

Ok, here is one reason why I support Elena Kagan

Because I want Pat Buchanan to get mighty pissed off.

Media Matters reports this from Pat Buchanan's May 14 syndicated column (emphasis added in the original Media Matter's post):

Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.
Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?
But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.
Not in living memory has a Democratic president nominated an Irish, Italian or Polish Catholic, though these ethnic communities once gave the party its greatest victories in the cities and states of the North.
What happened to the party of the Daleys, Rizzos and Rostenkowskis?
And not in nearly half a century has a Democratic president nominated a white Protestant or white Catholic man or woman.
[...]
If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.

Buchanan ought to be happy and relieved that he lives in the US of A where we protect the freedom of people to say such loony and offensive things ... What is wrong with these people?

It is Kagan, not Diane Wood, for the Supremes :(

I would have voted for Diane Wood to replace the retiring Stevens.
Kagan?
Even Bill Clinton, who forever tried to appease everybody, nominated Ginsburg to the court--despite all her overt association with ACLU that, unfortunately, the "liberty loving" right tends to despise. (Yes, I am proud to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU!)

As one would expect, Glenn Greenwald is, well, not happy with the Kagan nomination; this opening paragraph sets the tone for the rest of his commentary (this guy is way too sharp!):

Nothing is a better fit for this White House than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration's lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority.  The Obama administration is filled to the brim with exactly such individuals -- as is reflected by its actions and policies -- and this is just one more to add to the pile.  The fact that she'll be replacing someone like John Paul Stevens and likely sitting on the Supreme Court for the next three decades or so makes it much more consequential than most, but it is not a departure from the standard Obama approach.

Dahlia Lithwick, at Slate, explains why Kagan makes everybody nervous:

With no judicial record to pore over, and some of the wonkiest law-review articles ever penned to her credit, Kagan has mastered the fine art of nearly perfect ideological inscrutability. Even Jeffrey Toobin, her law school study partner, has virtually no idea what she really believes.

How could such a track record be possible for somebody who will end up interpreting the Constitution for the rest of us?  I have no idea, and it is bizarre. Lithwick writes:

It's not at all clear from her record whether Kagan will someday prove to be the Jurist for the Little Guy or the Judge Who Bridged the Partisan Divide. There is ample evidence in her professional and academic record that she has ably managed to do both at different times, depending on the professional position she held and whose views she was representing. We will hear a good many testimonials in the coming weeks that Kagan has the heart of a progressive lion and the political skills of a diplomat. What remains to be seen is whether she will put the former to service in the interest of the latter—or vice versa.

More on Diane Wood for the Supreme Court

As I have remarked often in this blog, I am a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald's analysis and opinions, particularly on constitutional issues.  So, yes, I have been reading his recent notes on the replacement for Justice Stevens.  From an ill-informed perspective, I had already decided--if I had my vote, it would be for Judge Diane Wood.
Apparently my vote is consistent with Greenwald's bottom-line:

She has not refrained, due to careerism and personal ambition, from issuing principled rulings (even in dissent) that she knew could be used against her (such as the series of abortion rulings which are now being used to depict her -- falsely -- as some sort of pro-abortion extremist).  That she graduated college and law school from the University of Texas (before clerking for Justice Harry Blackmun) will bring some much needed diversity to the Court; by all accounts, this background (along with her raising three children while piling up these accomplishments) causes her to bring a different perspective to the circumstances of individual litigants as compared to the typical Yale/Harvard federal judge or academician.  As a result, her judicial record evinces a steadfast commitment to ensuring (rather than closing off) justice system access for ordinary Americans when the law permits it.  I document these attributes below.
* * * * *
But the starting point for seeing why Wood is such a superior alternative -- what first convinced me -- is the University of Chicago Law Review article she wrote in early 2003, entitled The Rule of Law in Times of Stress.  This courageous analysis was designed to warn the nation about the profound threats posed to the rule of law and the Constitution by excesses in the War on Terrorism, but also more broadly to set forth her general view of the proper role of the Supreme Court when rights are being assaulted and individuals from marginalized groups are being mistreated.  By itself, this article says more than I ever could about why she is really the ideal replacement for Justice Stevens, using every standard which progressives have always claimed to embrace regarding their views of the Court.

And, Greenwald also observes this, which is an important point to note:

Whatever else is true, progressives should demand a replacement for Justice Stevens whose values, approach to the Constitution, and judicial philosophy they can know, as well as someone who has embodied the function the Supreme Court is intended to serve in our political system:  namely, one which checks and limits the other branches and safeguards core Constitutional liberties, especially when the political climate makes it most likely that those rights will be assaulted.

Yes. No more stealth candidates. Never, ever.  That should be our directive to the people we elect to represent us.  For instance, as Greenwald points out, we know exactly what Wood thinks about the rule of law even during times of stress: she has written about it, and she asserts the supremacy of the rule of law.  Wood writes: In a democracy, those responsible for national security ... must do more than say "trust us, we know best"
I am all the more for Judge Wood--just for this sentence alone :)

Judge Diane Wood for the Supreme Court

I don't drink wine, but am reasonably ok with the wine that I pick for dinners.  So, if I can be successful there, why not with my bets on the nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stevens' retirement? :)

I say it will be Judge Diane Wood.
Why so?

I can't imagine President Obama nominating a male and, thereby, having only two women justices there.
Judge Wood is from the University of Chicago--Obama's ol' stomping grounds
Her degrees are from the University of Texas, which breaks the Harvard-Yale stranglehold on the court.
Wood is a Protestant--Stevens is the only Protestant in the current court. (Six are Catholic, and two are Jewish)
Wood clerked for Justice Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade

Convinced?

"The law is a ass—a idiot"

So said Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

That is what I could think of when I read a LA Times news story about this man and a Supreme Court case:

He went to the South as a "freedom rider" in 1961, joining other civil rights activists on behalf of African Americans seeking the right to travel freely on interstate buses. He was arrested, then badly beaten by white cellmates. "When I went to jail in Alabama for violating the Jim Crow laws, they charged me with disturbing the peace," he said.

Guess what? According to the government, this man is a terrorist!

Who is he and why is he a terrorist?

He is Ralph Fertig, a retired judge and USC professor.  The guy turns 80 next week (Happy birthday, Mr. Fertig.)

What did he do?  Hide explosives in his underwear while on a plane?  Nope.

Fertig says he wants no part of terrorism or violence, but rather the freedom to advocate for the rights of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. He is troubled that Kurds can be punished for speaking their own language or displaying their national colors. And he believes the 1st Amendment protects his right to counsel Kurdish leaders to steer away from violence and to take their cause to the United Nations.

"I am opposed to violence. It seems crazy to me that I could go to jail for trying to persuade people to engage in nonviolence," said Fertig, a retired judge and a USC professor of social work.

The State Department has named the Kurdistan Workers Party, or the PKK, as a terrorist organization. The PKK, which seeks an independent state for the Kurds, has been accused of violent attacks on Turkish targets, including civilians.

See, the law is a ass.

BTW, apparently even writing columns in newspapers can warrant a terrorist label:

Government lawyers say [the anti-terrorism law] even forbids filing a legal brief or writing an op-ed essay on behalf of a designated terrorist group.

Great! Now my colleagues will be happy to report to the feds my opinions as terrorist activity in their attempts to oust me:)

More on the Supreme Court decision on free speech ...

Supreme Court Allows Corporations To Run For Political Office
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision that overturned decades of legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to remove all restrictions that had previously barred corporations from holding public office. "This is an unfair, ill-advised, and tragic mistake," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said before boarding a flight to Arizona in response to primary poll numbers that show him trailing the Phoenix-based company PetSmart by a double-digit margin. "Despite the deep discounts and exciting promotions that they may be able to offer, these huge, soulless entities are not capable of truly serving the American people's—or their pet's—needs." Corporate attack ads have already begun to hit the airwaves in New York, where a new Pepsi commercial set to a catchy modern remix of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" blasts incumbent governor David Paterson as "unrefreshing" and urges New Yorkers to "taste the choice of a new generation this Nov. 2."

Source
ahem, it is a satire :)

Justice Alito's reaction to Obama

Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker writes:

What makes Alito’s reaction even more delicious is that it’s further evidence that the Justice just can’t stand Obama. As a Senator, Obama voted against Alito’s confirmation, which the Justice does not seem to have forgotten. When the President-elect Obama made a courtesy call on the Justices shortly before his inauguration last year, Alito was the only member of the Court not to attend. (Obama voted against Roberts, too, but the Chief Justice managed to spare the time to welcome Obama.) The first law that Obama signed as President was the Lilly Ledbetter Act—which reversed a decision by the Supreme Court that had erected new barriers to plaintiffs filing employment discrimination cases. The author of that now-overruled decision? Samuel Alito. These two guys have a history.

And now everyone knows it. And for that reason, then, I don’t begrudge Alito his grimace. He was just being honest. Alito’s role in that room—and his place at the Court—is no different from that of the Republican members of Congress; both are dedicated political adversaries of the President. The camera—and the Justice—didn’t lie.

And just in case you want to see it to believe it, Toobin provides this video clip too :)

Justice Roberts, and his argument on "corporate" free speech

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Will Justices Stevens and Ginsburg please quite the Court ASAP?

I have absolutely nothing against Justices Stevens and Ginsburg.  I am thankful they were there in that court to duke it out with Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts on a daily basis.  I wish we had more of these kind of people up there, instead of "scalitomas" Hmmm .... maybe I ought to copyright this "scalitomas"--sounds like it merits medical attention, eh!  Ha ha

Anyway, the reason I want Stevens and Ginsburg to quit now?  I am not sure how much more the Democrats will fumble the ball and, therefore, how much more they will lose their advantage in the Senate.  It will be terrible if in 2011 we end up with a much stronger Republican presence in the Senate, and an even readier-to-fold Democrats, and then comes up the need to nominate two for vacancies in the Supreme Court.  I am tired of nominees who will mouth off being "umpires" who are merely people who have well hidden their ideological track records.  To lose these two liberals and then to replace them with "centrists" is not what I am looking forward to.

The boringly choreographed Senate hearings!

Of course, I know nothing about the law. But, as a citizen commentator, I did not particularly care for the celebrated John Roberts line that his job was to play plate-umpire and call balls and strikes. I did not care for it because the supreme court is a place where the definition of the strike zone itself if defined. To carry the metaphor more, well, they can also call a balk. Ok, enough with that baseball stuff. My point is that the Supremes figure out what the law can be, or cannot be, and it is not reducible to a simplistic balls/strikes analogy.

But, Roberts set up the formula for relatively easy confirmation hearings. And Alito followed that same strategy. And so did Sotomayor. This sucks! I am so glad that a legal expert like Ronald Dworkin can explain so well why it sucks:

[Sotomayor] repeated at every opportunity throughout the hearings, that her constitutional philosophy is very simple: fidelity to the law. That empty statement perpetuated the silly and democratically harmful fiction that a judge can interpret the key abstract clauses of the United States Constitution without making controversial judgments of political morality in the light of his or her own political principles. Fidelity to law, as such, cannot be a constitutional philosophy because a judge needs a constitutional philosophy to decide what the law is.

Thanks, Professor Dworkin.

And Dworkin also points out how tweedledum and tweedledee, er, Republicans and Democrats alike play this game:

Sadly, practically everyone concerned in judicial confirmation hearings—senators and nominees—has an overriding interest in embracing the myth that judges' own political principles are irrelevant. Sotomayor was, of course, well advised to embrace that myth. Her initial statement, and her constant repetition of it, made her confirmation absolutely certain; she could lose the great prize only by a candor she had no reason to display. She was faced by a group of Republican senators who had no interest in exploring genuine constitutional issues but wanted only to score political points, if possible by embarrassing her but in any case to preen before their constituents. They scoured her record of extrajudicial speeches for any sign that she actually doubts the myth so they could declare her a hypocrite who is not faithful to the law after all.

Democratic senators had no wish to challenge the myth either. They only wanted to protect her from questions that might supply ammunition to her opponents, so they offered her endless opportunities to repeat her empty promise to follow the law. Only President Obama, in a remarkably candid statement, seemed to challenge the myth. The law, he said, decides 95 percent of the cases but that leaves 5 percent to be decided in the judge's "heart." Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona asked Sotomayor if she agreed with Obama on this point. No, she roundly declared, I do not.

So the minuet was choreographed, and any illumination ruled out, before the hearings began.

Dworkin's conclusion--recommendation--is far from optimistic:

What is to be done? Nothing, I fear, until the idea that judges' personal convictions can and should play no role in their decisions loosens its grip not just on politicians but on the public at large. Perhaps a brave senator, who declares that he will not vote for any candidate who does not respond to questions like those I described earlier, may begin that process. But the only realistic solution is longer-term. In a book recently reviewed in these pages I suggested that our politics would be improved if high school classes were encouraged to explore political issues in a much more sophisticated way than has been customary.^[14] An enlightened discussion of the Constitution and of constitutional adjudication would be an essential part of such courses.

A "brave senator"? Hmmm .... add to the list of political oxymorons!

Sotomayor. Hispanic. Identity politics.

Matt Yglesias has a wonderful post; here is an excerpt:

The idea that any time a person with a Spanish last name is tapped for a job, his or her entire lifetime of accomplishments is going to be wiped out in a riptide of bitching and moaning about “identity politics” is not a fun concept for me to contemplated. Qualifications like time at Princeton, Yale Law, and on the Circuit Court that work well for guys with Italian names suddenly don’t work if you have a Spanish name. Heaven forbid someone were to decide that there ought to be at least one Hispanic columnist at a major American newspaper.

Somehow, when George W. Bush affects a Texas accent, that’s not identity politics. When John Edwards gets a VP nomination, that’s not identity politics. But Sonia Sotomayor! Oh my heavens!

At any rate, Ann Friedman wrote a great piece on the hypocrisy of this back during the Democratic primary. And I think this item from Neil Sinhababu on constructing political identities is insightful.

And, how about the following from Reason's Steve Chapman?

Few objections were heard from Republicans in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush decided that the ideal person to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, was Clarence Thomas, who just happened to be black as well.

Bush did his best to have it both ways. He insisted that race was irrelevant and that Thomas was simply the "best qualified" candidate in the country. But he also said, "(I)f credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better."

Back then, conservatives played the identity game gingerly, as if they were slightly embarrassed. But they have since learned to make the most of it. The most recent and regrettable example is Sarah Palin, lustily cheered by Republican audiences last year not because she had the credentials and ability to step into the presidency, but because she was the Right Kind of Person.

First, she was a woman, picked to attract disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, as Palin shamelessly highlighted: "Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Second, she was not one of those effete urban elitists but a real American—small-town girl, beauty queen, hockey mom, "Bible-believing Christian" (as she put it), mother of five, and moose hunter.

Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), said she was controversial because "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Palin herself celebrated her brethren from small towns, which she called "all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Of course it's useful to include the perspective of small-town residents in formulating policy, just as it's a good idea to consider the impact of laws on Latinos. But to imagine that either group—or any group—has a unique claim to wisdom or goodness is only to prove that no group is immune to foolishness.

Elections, and the possibility of a dead Osama bin Laden

Given that elections are now just over 50 days away, how much will things change if the US incursions into Pakistan yield Osama himself--dead or alive--or even al Qaeda's number two man-Zawahiri?

It is not outside the domains of possibility. But, imagine for a moment that happens--even as late as the Monday before elections. The global implications will be HUGE--far more than influencing the elections here on November 4th.

For starters, nabbing bin Laden or Zawahiri will just swing the elections to the Republican side. Not only the presidential elections, but even the Congressional seats. Every Democrat who opposed Bush's approach on the war on terror will pretty much be on an ejection seat. While as loyal citizens, Democrats will be thrilled with the capture of bin Laden or Zawahiri, I am guessing this will be ultimate nightmare scenario.
(I think early voting might make all the difference then. I suspect Democrats will urge their faithful to vote as early as possible--taking such a scenario also into consideration.)

Not only will Republicans end up winning it all, it might then take Democrats more than a decade to recover and gain any significant political strength. Conservatives would have completely taken over the Supreme Court by then.

If such a scenario unfolds, then we can expect Britain's Labour Party to be thrashed at the polls. Gordon Brown is a weak leader even now. We can also expect tough-on-terrorists parties to sweep elections in continental Europe. This will also strengthen Putin and Medvedev, who think that anybody who disagrees with them is a terrorist.

Israel will be tempted to become even more aggressive towards Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran. In turn, Iran will feel even more threatened and could start volleying missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, and shut down oil shipping for weeks.

Many Islamic countries will have to deal with a public face of being happy that the terrorists were caught, but will have to deal with the internal displeasure from a significant percentage of their citizenry that won't be happy if bin Laden is caught or found dead.

And, given that the world's economy is quite in doldrums now, I can only imagine that this (more so if Iran shuts down Hormuz even for a month) will trigger a global economic depression.

My own personal preferences aside, as an academic interested in politics and public policy, this is a scenario that completely fascinates me.