G.O.P. to Academia: Get Back in Your Ivory Tower

With the intimidation campaign against the University of Wisconsin-Madison's distinguished historian, and president of the American Historical Association, Professor William Cronon, the G.O.P. is essentially demanding academia to get back into its ivory tower. And from their vantage point, it's a move that makes sense. As shameless and transparently authoritarian as this all is, one still cannot underscore enough just how chilling the effects of this kind of calculated assault on academic liberty will be in the future. Since anti-labor forces are winning (at least for now), they might as well have started replying to the many criticisms against their FOIA request for Professor Cronon's emails by saying, "Look: We may allow your ineffectual chatter amongst yourselves, in your tower, but the masses are for us----exclusively-----to misinform and propagandize. Real investigations of fact, historical or otherwise, have no place in our society." To be fair though, conservatives have been at this for some time now, through the despicable likes of people like David Horowitz, laboring to subvert academic freedom from within the university, while simultaneously professing to achieve the contrary. Really, who's afraid of a Freedom Center anyways? No, it is quite clear that the battles in the Midwest right now are highlighting how much of a threat it is to the Republican Party and The Right in general when civil-minded types strive to educate and encourage the public to think critically about the facts and the larger context of the moment (Something historians can do very well). As TPM reported, here's Professor Cronon's sin:

On March 15, Cronon posted a blog entry entitled, "Who's Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn't Start Here)", seeking to focus attention on out of state conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the infamous phone call that Walker had a month ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who posed as Republican financier David Koch.

Yes, the facts are certainly stubborn things, and they remain biased against The Right: liberal inquiry and freedom in the pursuit of knowledge and truth may be tolerated at the universities (for now), as long as these quaint vestigial traditions of the Enlightenment are not admitted into the common discourse, the general political culture, such as it is. Everybody by now knows about Professor Cronon's story, but how about this one?

Just this week, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right-wing research group in Michigan, has now made an even more widely drawn public records request to the labor studies departments at three public universities in the state asking labor studies faculty members for any emails mentioning “Scott Walker,” “Madison,” “Wisconsin,” or “Rachel Maddow.” The group is funded, according to Mother Jones, by “the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation (the Wal-Mart Waltons), and foundations tied to two of Michigan's best-known and wealthiest conservative political families: the DeVos family of Amway fame and the Prince family of Blackwater fame.”

Is this very public fusillade against labor right now some desultory, coincidental case of earnest budget warrior happenstance? No, because these bills clearly have nothing to do with the budget. The real answer is that corporate America has labor, and hence the only truly effective means for participatory democracy, by the throat-----and the poor economy is only emboldening them to squeeze. Out of the top 10 contributing donors in our elections, five support Democrats, and three of those are big unions. A pretty easy calculation for Republicans wanting to knock them out. Nonetheless, it should be interesting to watch Obama and the Democratic Party do next to nothing besides spout the occasional platitudes from the sidelines. Seated alongside their Wall Street donors, the Democrats will most likely yawn while the victims, actual working Americans, continue to be more and more productive only to ensure less and less in compensation (As a side note: see this unsurprising story on how the U.S. economy is growing faster than other industrialized countries, yet creating fewer jobs. "Jobless recovery" anyone? These guys are loving it, and some magnanimous economic leaders may even let shareholders vote on executive compensation sometime in the NEVER existent future). Take one of the many studies illustrating something very obvious to working stiffs in this country: that there has been an enormous increase in productivity over the last thirty years with only marginal increases in wages:

...American workers across the board -- whether in the private or public sector, high school- or college-educated –- "have suffered from decades of stagnating wages despite large gains in productivity." The trend isn’t new, either. Between 1979 and 2009, EPI says, U.S. productivity increased by 80 percent, while the hourly wage of the median worker has only gone up by 10.1 percent.

However, with college-educated public sector workers, even though their wages have gone up only 9.5% compared to 19.4% in the private sector, they are most likely targeted (for among other reasons) because of their benefits, which raise them up to 20.5% compared to the 17.9% of their counterparts. Holy shit! How outrageous that they would like to gain at a rate slightly more commensurate to their productivity. And at 2.6% more than their private counterparts? Oh, the shame. Yet, all of this should be understood as the climax (or denouement, rather?) of what the Center for Economic Policy in its study of labor markets and inequality since the 1970s has identified as "broader shifts in political power":

changes in the legal environment facing unions; legislative decisions about the level of the federal minimum wage; central bank decisions about interest rates; the federal government's attitude toward industry regulation; and public opinion about issues as diverse as the efficiency of markets and the desirability of maintaining a social safety net for those experiencing short- and long-term economic difficulties.

And what are the effects of this shift?

Between 1979 and 2004, wages for workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution only just kept pace with inflation –over a period when the output per hour of the average workers grew by over 66% in real terms...incomes across most of the distribution have grown more slowly than they did in the earlier postwar period, with rising annual hours worked playing an important role in what real gains families did experience. The distribution of wealth has become more skewed toward the very top, with "stock-holder democracy" having little impact on the actual distribution of national wealth. In all cases, these economic divisions are especially sharp across gender and racial lines. The well-documented decline in union representation, the falling real value of the minimum wage, nearly two decades of restrictive macroeconomic policy, and a forced opening up of much of the US economy to competition from the rest of the world can explain much of the recent rise in economic inequality. These key developments all took place alongside a widespread move toward economic deregulation, the privatization of government services (especially at the state and local level), and cutbacks in the social safety net (best exemplified in the wholesale restructuring in 1996 of the "welfare" system supporting poor mothers of young children).

"Stockholder democracy" indeed. Consider Warren Buffett's challenge to find anyone making a living off investments who is taxed at a higher rate than those making wages. He pays a little more than half the tax rate his receptionist does (17.7% vs. 30%). There are some societal values for you: make your living through wages and not only do you have to listen to wealthy investment types bitch about how much they pay in taxes, but their type of work is so valuable they only pay half the rate you do. Justin Wolfers at the Freakonomics site has an interesting discovery as well regarding those who are well off, but not super rich, like himself. "But the point remains: I had never quite realized that the Warren Buffett problem extends far enough down the income distribution that even folks like myself aren’t paying their fair share." He pays 16% of his income in taxes. "And if it is true here, I suspect the same goes equally for most folks in the top 10 percent of income earners.(Incidentally, according to Piketty and Saez, around half of all income in the U.S. goes to those of us in the top decile — roughly anyone with a family income of six figures or more.)" It's actually more than that. But here's where silencing the people who are constantly trying to set the record straight, and address the political misconceptions, seems moot: the assumption that when confronted with the truth, people will make rational decisions and correct political misinformation that could seriously improve their own lives and the health of society as a whole is also apparently belied by the facts. From the Daily Kos:

Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

So, why even care, right? What's so threatening about an "elitist," "ivory tower" Prof adding some much-needed context to the Wisconsin fiasco? Many knew that out-of-state Mormons injected millions in order to defeat a California proposition to finally respect gay Americans 14th Amendment rights. It didn't change the result. What's so big about a historian pointing out the concerted, out-of-state efforts to subvert collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, a very pro-labor state with a very pro-labor history? One might as well ask then: Why is the governor of Maine removing a labor mural (over the weekend when he thought nobody would notice) from the Department of Labor? Easy enough. It's because the "11-panel mural includes scenes of mill workers, labor strikes and child laborers" and "depicted a biased view of labor history." Governor LePage wants to correct our misapprehensions about the history of our poor, beleaguered wealthy classes. He "contends the mural depicting labor history overlooks the contributions of entrepreneurs." Simultaneously, his party is pushing brand new child labor laws that do not oppress entrepreneurs. No kidding: "LD 1346 suggests several significant changes to Maine’s child labor law, most notably a 180-day period during which workers under age 20 would earn $5.25 an hour." But there's so much more:

•Maine State Sen. Debra Plowman (R) introduced a separate bill that would extend the number of hours employers can require a minor to work. Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) backs this proposal.

•Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered a lengthy lecture where he claimed that federal child labor laws violate the Constitution. His Republican colleagues in the Senate rewarded him with a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — the committee with jurisdiction over constitutional questions.

•Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) introduced a bill which would “eliminate[] the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed.”

•Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s (R) most recent brief attacking the Affordable Care Act relies heavily on a discredited Supreme Court decision striking down a federal child labor law that was overruled decades ago.

•Judges Roger Vinson and Henry Hudson, the two outlier judges who struck down the ACA, also relied heavily on this discredited anti-child labor decision in their decisions.

Ok, so Republicans’ contempt for workers is hardly news. But G.O.P governors in the Midwest are playing their hand at utterly annihilating unions. And during economic hardship and faux concerns over the deficit and budget, what better place to start than with the public sector, especially considering that the union rate there is up to 36% compared to the 6.9% of the private sector that is unionized? Overall, that only 12% of American workers are protected by a union doesn't matter because the public sector is the only place where unions are growing. So, it is more about defeating the last formidable bastion of unionism, public unions, in hopes of ultimately nullifying union influence entirely. God help us, as that would continue unabated the already nearly inconceivable disparity in the distribution of wealth, which, for the last thirty years has been working out so well for the already very well-to-do. But that is just it. Almost as terrible as the disparity itself, is the incredible misperception about it. In a report entitled "United by Our Delusion" * tax reporter David Kay Johnston looks at Americans' perceptions about the disparity:

They estimated that the top fifth of Americans owns about 60 percent of the wealth. The reality? Eighty-five percent. So what about the bottom 120 million of us? Those surveyed said that ideally, the bottom 40 percent would own 20 to 25 percent of all wealth. When asked to estimate the share of wealth actually owned, the collective guesses were between 8 and 10 percent. Reality: 0.3 percent. That means Americans think ideally the poorest 120 million Americans should own somewhere between every fourth and fifth dollar of net worth, when in fact they own every 333rd dollar.

Reminds me of Ishmael being offered the 777th lay aboard the Pequod. Although, he had it negotiated down on his behalf to the 300th, without unions, we could all be relegated to the 777th lay. And we all know how that ship fared (Ishmael had a Quaker with a conscience in his corner). But the scientific survey Johnston offers us, conducted by Prof. Ariely and his coauthor, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School, also demonstrated this:

High-income or low, Republican or Democrat, young or old, male or female, Bush voters or Kerry voters, Americans are united in what they believe is the ideal distribution of wealth. And they are just as united about what they imagine to be the distribution of wealth in America. The problem is that neither the ideals we broadly share, nor our estimated distributions of wealth today, bear much relationship to reality.

Without using loaded words like "death tax" the 5,522 participants were shown pie charts and asked to estimate the actual and then select the ideal wealth distribution. Little did they know they selected Sweden's distribution for the ideal, and were way off on the actual distribution. Their discrepancies are intriguing. They estimated that the top 20% own around 57% of the wealth when actually it is 85%. Moreover, the lowest two quintiles at .3% didn't even register yet they imagined them at almost 10%. And therein lies the explanation for silencing the truth. Johnston sees the "learned helplessness" of those at the very bottom and the "lack of knowledge about taxes" as the "politically toxic amalgam" ripe for political exploitation. It's the political and economic truth these well-funded proponents of the ultimately unstable wealth disparities that will seek to silence whomever they can, by whatever methods. Information----and more importantly peoples' perceptions----matters, so the G.O.P. will continue attempting to intimidate public university academics for the same reason that government tries to silence whistle blowing in general, or Wikileaks (or its supporters) in particular. Well, let's see how this plays out in the Midwest, but point taken. G.O.P. to academia: If you enter into the fray armed with facts, the Party will call that [actual quote] "the use of state resources for political purposes," and even play the victim themselves for good measure. Wisconsin State Republican Party Executive Director Mark Jefferson: "I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government." Since when are public universities government? Profs are not public officials either, but maybe pointing out that reality is "political" as well. Yeah, there's a "concerted effort" all right, but not of the type he's suggesting. *This report comes from University of California at Santa Cruz Professor of Sociology G. William Domhoff's invaluable site, which is well worth a perusal. p.s.--I don't know why this won't space correctly.

Following Up on the "Debate"

Ok, a post the way it's supposed to be: short (sort of).

First: Even though Jon Stewart does it daily, this time he really really really has put the nail in Fox News' coffin (my favorite yet).

Second: A perfect example of what Eric Alterman calls "working the refs," the way the institutionalized infrastructure of the Right can steer public discourse, even intimidate and coerce public figures by repeatedly calling "Liberal Media" fouls like a bunch of hyper-sensitive, overly histrionic, self-perceived martyrs. Notice the inconsistencies of these two facts:

1. Shirly Sherrod hastily abandoned by White House before they could even substantiate the evidence against her (Not that surprising seeing that the W.H. is good at not needing to provide evidence or to prove anything with regards to civil rights and the "War on Terror" in general).

2. Alan Simpson of the Deficit Commission----read: Bipartisan front committee for cutting Social Security----again disparaged those of whom he is ostensibly trying to help, Social Security recipients. Saying to the Older Women's League (of all groups)

that Social Security is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits...If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know...Call me when you get honest work."

Keep in mind that he's already called Social Security recipients "lesser people." So, of course it makes perfect sense keeping this guy on the Deficit Commission, a group that is all but bragging about its intention to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age, even though it is completely unnecessary. If you have any doubts about this, then you should really see this interview with economist Dean Baker.

Again, we see the true intentions of the Obama administration and its callow, uncourageous, obeisance to the forces of the Right. However, by keeping Simpson, I'm not sure Obama really is bowing to these forces so much as getting a desired result: reduced benefits, and longer working lives for "the least among us."

The Democrats and the administration have ceded----no squandered----an opportunity to change Washington (what all those enthusiastic voters voted for 18 months ago) and have instead sided with the culprits in our economic catastrophe, those who "frankly own the place," which will allow the Republicans to hypocritically utilize the faux economic populist, overtly racist wedge strategy straight to the bank (probably literally in some cases). This striking double standard, ignominiously firing Sherrod, and yet keeping Simpson in place (know your priorities) is just another illustrious example of the administration cynically "capitulating" to the Right-Wing media infrastructure.

And for those of you who are still not yet adequately deferential to the president, and have criticism for/of him, you must remember that you will be disregarded as simply being "the professional left," those who "ought to be drug tested" because you won't "be satisfied...[until] we have Canadian health care...we've eliminated the Pentagon," and "Dennis Kucinich...[is]president."

Lastly, I recently made an argument that frankly wasn't all that original, but nonetheless true (I think there's a version of it here):

(1) The Republicans are using xenophobic/ethnic/ religious racism as a new wedge issue to propel themselves to power during this coming election season in lieu of reasonable policies to address the economic suffering of millions of Americans, which is the foundation and impetus for all of this deliberately stirred up anti-Muslim nativism.

(2) That tactic is extremely insidious, pernicious, and dangerous because the majority of Americans that are insisting that to build an Islamic community center near "Ground Zero" is "insensitive" are (a) disregarding the fact that many Muslims died during the attacks too, and (b) are accepting the implicitly racist premise that the entire religion of Islam is synonymous with the handful of terrorists that perpetrated the attacks. This seemingly reasonable concern over "sensitivity" gives cover to the dangerous forces that seek to intimidate, harass, maybe even persecute American Muslims.

(3) That this latent racism is also what allows for the collective punishment, the blithe, often sanctimonious disregard for those innocents we kill overseas in Muslim countries, the "collateral damage" in our self-proclaimed, self-reinforcing, self-justified "War on Terror."

(4) That if we don't acknowledge this point in the supposed "debate" over the mosque, we are allowing not just "entire peoples to continue being the playthings of irrational, often hateful domestic politics," but we are also continuing to be complicit in the racism that makes our imperialist-driven foreign policy possible in the first place. If the moral arguments against this kind of militaristic imperialism aren't enough, consider the practical and economic reasons for its opposition.

And so we have this story:

A New York City taxi driver was stabbed multiple times Tuesday after a drunken passenger determined he is a Muslim. The victim, Ahmed Sharif, was slashed across his face, neck and hands. Sharif says the suspect, Michael Enright, had asked him several questions about his religion, including whether he’s a Muslim and observing Ramadan.

Note that the alleged assailant, Michael Enright, is a film student who was embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. What does this mean?

No one knows exactly, but it sure does tell us that this mosque story is more than just a First Amendment issue, or a story about the "insensitivity" of the Muslim community. I don't care if it's the majority of the American people who feel "hurt" by the proposed community center; they must be challenged.

Insidious, Pernicious, and Extremely Dangerous

With all the outright opportunistic insanity being waged over the proposed Islamic Community Center several blocks from the World Trade Center site, I find myself with mixed emotions and concerns. On one hand, it is typical as a Republican-conceived wedge issue to hammer away at Democrats in an election year in lieu of offering viable policies for responsible governance (Unless of course one thinks not allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of the population to expire even though it adds an exorbitant amount to the deficit is responsible. All the while, these folks claim to be fiscally-conservative, responsible deficit hawks during an economic recession that actually requires government spending to get out of. John Maynard Keynes is still in fact very right on this point.)

Yet, I would be very remiss to just see it as typical of the right-wing paranoid style of American politics, with its long and shameful history. No, it is unquestionably more serious than that, and underscores some frightening themes of their entire---for lack of a better phrase----mode of "thinking." Themes that are insidious; themes that are pernicious; themes that are extremely dangerous; themes that are not too subtly racist even. And though I hate the use of this predicate: Themes that are truly un-American.

Firstly, forget about the disinformation coming from all the usual suspects, those promulgators of a post-truth society with all their propagandist proclivities for assertion, innuendo, half-truths, AND STRAIGHT UP LIES instead of cold, hard, dispassionate and objective facts. No, it's not a mosque that's being proposed, though that shouldn't matter in the least anyway. No, it's not on or even very close to "Ground Zero," though that too shouldn't be of concern either. And no, the man behind the community center, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is no "radical" terrorist sympathizer, no Nazi-loving "Islamo-fascist," nor a (fill in whatever empty right-wing verbiage you like here):__________.

In fact, he was appointed by Bush The Younger to head interfaith outreach to educate on just how strongly American Muslims believe in religious pluralism and political liberalism, while bridging faiths together (also the State Department and FBI have drawn on his expertise). And if his long and distinguished religious resume is not enough the antithesis of a fundamentalist, "radical terrorist" for you, then there's this irony of the man's beliefs in action: Currently, as we speak, Imam Rauf is touring through the Middle East trying to persuade Arab Muslims that American pluralism and religious liberty is the way to go. No shit: America respects religious diversity. Why can't you 12th Century-minded totalitarians be more like us Americans? Meanwhile, practically one and a half of the two dominant political parties in America are in practical agreement on the "debate" over whether a mosque can and/or should be built near the World Trade Center. Of course, they are quick to point out that New Yorkers are strongly against it:

Opposition remains strong against building the mosque, 63-27 percent, however, by a margin of 64-28 percent voters say that the developers of the Cordoba House have a Constitutional right to build it. Nearly one-quarter of voters say the position of the gubernatorial candidates on this issue will have a major effect on which candidate they support.

Likewise, and according to script, 25% say the candidate they support will depend on this particular issue: it's life or death, folks, isn't it? The G.O.P. has really done its homework ever since Nixon first instituted the Southern Strategy. Only today, just add Muslims to the wedge issue formula of god, guns, gays, and mix in a little hate, fear, and racism. However, quite revealingly, a 46-36 plurality of Manhattanites favor the site. Doesn't that seem to be the case: the further away you are from the site the more you insist it's yours and Muslims must stay away. Moreover, it's usually rural know-nothings that clamor on and on about 911 and the Islamic scourge. Nate Silver suggests that Manhattanites are simply more familiar with the geography of the site so it's less contentious for them.

It is embarrassing having to again and again tell the world we hold certain truths, principles, liberties inalienable, and then our actions and words demonstrate the exact opposite. According to the cynical and naive, we're even willing to go to war for the greater part of a decade in two Muslim countries purportedly to spread, to teach, and to share these liberal democratic values in a part of the world where the main religion, Islam, is equated with terrorism by the majority in our public "debate," whether they intend it or not.*

The list of our hypocrisies with regards to not living up to our own principles of law is growing more and more conspicuous. And our imperially-motivated, transparently self-serving sententiousness is coupled with the soft bigotry that our two intellectually, historically, and morally-deficient political parties temper with their postured, constitutional prevarications----their consensus view: that "Of course They have the right to build a mosque, but really to do so would just be sooooo insensitive, "a real affront to the people who lost their lives" on 911. Therefore, they really shouldn't.

Or, take our increasingly cynical president of and ex-advocate for "Change": "I was not commenting on and will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding." To be fair, if I were a Christian, and the president of a country growing increasingly Islamophobic,** one in which one in five believe, contrary to all evidence and rationality, that I was Muslim, I might say exactly the same thing.

But here's the main idea I want to propose, the connection I see that is so frightfully insidious, pernicious, and dangerous. The idea that American Muslims are "insensitive" to build----I don't care, let's call it a "mosque" for argument's sake, though it's a misnomer----a "mosque" "at" (though we know that too isn't true) "Ground Zero" is implicitly very insulting in the least, and at worst----racist. By demanding that American Muslims admit it's "insensitive," which is what they'd be doing by not building the center, they're asking Muslim Americans to tacitly acknowledge the premise that Islam is synonymous with terrorism; that it's religious tenets are essentially responsible for Islamic terrorism; or, that they should accept them being conflated as such in the Public Mind.

Somehow, in this rhetorical framing, a radical minority is representative of an entire group of people, an entire religion. How is this?

Well, it's a common fallacy, mainly a conservative intellectual attribute, to derive from the part, the whole (Ironically, the microcosm of the Great Chain of Being, a literary device deriving the whole from a part, is what Enlightenment poets and thinkers, distinguished Tories like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson employed to great effect for the opposite purpose: for the edification of, about, and for all mankind).

We don't see these faux freedom-loving, purveyors of strict-constructionism and strong localism condemning other entire religions like Catholicism, for example, for propagating terrorism because in the past the IRA resisted, interestingly, what they saw as an illegitimate occupation of Northern Ireland by Protestant Englishmen and women. The irony is amazing seeing that even the Muslims in countries we are occupying against their will are seen as "terrorists" for resisting us, the invaders. Terrorists if they fight back, terrorists if they don't. No ambiguity there, yet the IRA hasn't tarred the whole Catholic religion? Moreover, nobody's calling for the Catholic church to stop building churches because of the current, very real, very endemic sexual-abuse problems and lack of accountability for their crimes or redress for their victims. The list could go on: What about the church of that psychopath who shot an abortion doctor as he was walking out of church? Is his entire congregation a "cult" of radical murderers too because one of their terrorist congregants is devoted to that particular religion (Though I wouldn't be surprised if they did espouse a violent liberation theology regarding baby fetuses)? I don't want to see a single, new Baptist-whatever church he belonged to go up ever again! Right? Get your pitchforks, you idiots!

And though I see racism as highly complicated, and I'm personally not quick to use the word to automatically deduce motivation, this clearly has the racist underpinnings of fearing The Other. Who'd be surprised to see the correlation between those against the mosque, and those susceptible to the nativist fervor over illegal immigration? Those advocating the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment for children born in the U.S. to "illegals" probably harbor much of the same latent, inchoate, though sometimes rabid, racism for not just Arab Muslims, but American Muslims too. And voila!

Seventy percent of independents oppose the plan to build the Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. By contrast, 54 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans opposed the plan. The same poll also found a clear partisan divide on changing the Reconstruction-era 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of law and defines who is a U.S. citizen. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans support a change while 39 percent of Democrats do so. Independents are split 50-50.

So there's our enlightened citizenry! And to think judges have the temerity to rule against the will of the people when protecting fundamental constitutional rights. Notice that the 14th applies to gay marriage too, equal protection under the law. Maybe these jackasses should try and change the constitution so that it doesn't apply to "illegals'" children and to gays, killing two birds with one racist/sexist stone?

But back to the argument: It's a rhetorical conflation of an entire religion----"a cult" according to some politicians, the Nazis and the KKK to others----with the actions of a select few. It's a form of rhetorical collective punishment for the deeds of some renegade terrorists.

However, this conflation is much more serious than it first appears because it is directly related to the mindset of the invasion and occupation of entire Muslim countries, like Iraq and Afghanistan, where collective punishment and "collateral damage," the killing of innocents, is cavalierly---even sanctimoniously---- accepted as the cost of bringing those barbaric brown people of the Middle East the gifts of pluralistic, tolerant, liberal democracy. After all, what are the deaths of a million, and the displacement of two in Iraq to an Empire of Freedom and Democracy, but the collateral damage, the collective and often fatal punishment of entire countries. What to make of the Empire's support for the illegal, collective punishment of Palestinians, and let's not forget the Lebanese, with the disproportionate use of force against civilians? Well, we did kill a few "terrorists" for every ten-plus civilians so it's worth it, right?

To say race or ethnicity doesn't play into the shallow disregard for the deaths of the innocents, often women and children, would be tragically inaccurate. Furthermore, not recognizing this mode of "thinking" and exposing it makes us involuntarily complicit in the continued, "collateral" deaths over which our Empire suffers zero compunction: They are The Other; it's ok to kill them over there, just as it's ok to conflate American Muslims with terrorists here. When you see statistics for just how assimilated American Muslims are into U.S. culture this conflation appears even more absurd:

The survey results also show that American Muslims are integrated in American society—89 percent said they vote regularly; 86 percent said they celebrate the Fourth of July; 64 percent said they fly the U.S. flag; 42 percent said they volunteer for institutions serving the public (compared to 29 percent nationwide in 2005). On social and political issues the views of American Muslims are as follows: 84 percent said Muslims should strongly emphasize shared values with Christians and Jews, 82 percent said terrorist attacks harm American Muslims; 77 percent said Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews do; 69 percent believe a just resolution to the Palestinian cause would improve America’s standing in the Muslim world; 66 percent support working toward normalization of relations with Iran; 55 percent are afraid that the War on Terror has become a war on Islam; only 12 percent believe the war in Iraq was a worthwhile effort; and just 10 percent support the use of the military to spread democracy in other countries.
[iv]

Moreover, isn't it at least ironic that right-wing Christians, actual fundamentalists here in America----as opposed to Imam Rauf's pluralistic, tolerant, modern beliefs---want to breach the First Amendment's establishment clause at every turn and impose Christian religiosity on secular government, in the least by publicly acknowledging the Judaeo-Christian foundations of our secular law by posting the Ten Commandments on courthouses, and more seriously by denying rights to homosexuals and autonomy to women's bodies while creating a de facto religious litmus test for public service?

Is it not ironic that some of the more outspoken of them claim that all Muslims, including American Muslims, want to impose sharia law on our government when in fact it is they who want to disregard that inconvenient establishment clause of the First Amendment that is so antithetical to their purpose, their mission: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." So they fear the establishment of the Islamic religion in our culture and upon our government, all the while seeking the same for themselves. Meanwhile, they insist on denying the second clause "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" to Muslims while using the very same freedom of religion provision as a martyrdom rallying cry every time they are thwarted in their attempts to establish a Christianized government. Of course, they, like all petulant, hypocritical, self-unaware persons like to project their own desires for power and the subjugation of others onto all those they see as their enemies, whether it's Muslims, "secular humanists," "atheists," or the anti-Christmas conspirators.

They often claim that freedom of religion means that it's expression must not only be very public, and very much on public property, but it must take place at government institutions themselves. They forget how and why their own history of religious liberty began---- because of feelings that American Muslims are experiencing right now, something Muslims have in common with the Danbury Baptists of the early 19th Century.

Lest these contemporary Christian fundamentalists forget: What they----the Baptists, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, et al.---wanted from the Jeffersonians was protection of religion from the government, a separation whereby each could practice one's conscience however one saw fit without intrusion or interference. They advocated for "a wall of separation" because they were the minority then and they understood and feared the history of majoritarian tyranny with regards to the Church of England's power (especially to tax non-Anglicans), or even worse, the long and disgraceful absolutism of the Roman Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire. Oh, how nice it is to be the majority now so that the minority faith of all those barbaric darker people can be targeted for persecution, harassment, and coercion. Indeed, American Muslims have assimilated to the actual, historical tradition, the law of religious liberty and protection from government and majoritarian tyranny, that very American set of core principles and beliefs. It's the proponents of the "don't build"-for-whatever-irrational-reasons that are un-American, not American Muslims. Maybe if these hysterical fearmongers would educate themselves, like their Muslim counterparts do***, entire peoples wouldn't become the playthings of irrational, even hateful, American domestic politics.

Update: Glenn Greenwald has linked to some other anti-Muslim activities around the country, other cases where the issue for these dangerous, useful idiots isn't the building of a mosque on Ground Zero per se, but Islam itself and the building of mosques in general:

The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways. In June, The New York Times reported on a vicious opposition campaign against a proposed mosque in Staten Island. Earlier this month, Associated Press documented that "Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive." And today, The Washington Post examines anti-mosque campaigns from communities around the nation and concludes that "the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted.

* In March 2006, when the United States was clamoring about its declining standing among publics in the Arab and Islamic region, a Washington Post-ABC poll revealed that the image of Islam among Americans had similarly declined. Nearly half (46%) of Americans surveyed had an unfavorable opinion of Islam. While half (54%) thought Islam was a peaceful religion, 33% thought that mainstream Islam encouraged violence against non-Muslims, and 58% felt that there were more violent extremists within Islam than other religions. Another Washington Post-ABC poll in March 2009 detected few changes in public opinion. Negative American sentiment and images of Islam and Arabs are what prominent Middle East scholar and commentator Juan Cole said in his recent book, Engaging the Muslim World, are undermining America's relations.

**Four months after 9/11, 14 percent believed mainstream Islam encourages violence; today [2004] it’s 34 percent.

*** In 2006 the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conducted a survey of American Muslim voters. Results show that American Muslim voters are young, highly educated, (62 percent have obtained a bachelor degree or higher. This is double the comparable national figure for registered voters), more than half the community is made up of professionals, 43 percent have a household income of $50,000 or higher, seventy eight are married and the community is religiously diverse (31 percent attend a mosque on a weekly basis; 16 percent attend once or twice a month; 27 percent said they seldom or never attend). The largest segment of the respondents said they consider themselves “just Muslims,” avoiding distinctions like Sunni or Shia. Another 36 percent said they are Sunni and 12 percent said they are Shia. Less than half of 1 percent said they are Salafi, while 2 percent said they are Sufi.[iii]

The Newest War Against Abstraction

Well, now that the president has perfunctorily declared war on the seemingly inexhaustible Gulf spill, we can now lump it together with all the other wars, metaphorical and literal, that we're engaged in: Afghanistan, Iraq, "Terror" (although it's now called something else), Drugs, Obesity, Christmas, blah, blah, blah. But now, also thanks to The President of Hope and Change, there is a new undeclared war (Aren't all modern wars usually undeclared?) against information and transparency, those abstractions that can both empower the cynically rhetorical, the economic and political elites that govern us, as well as check them, thus preventing tragedies like the newest Gulf spill before they happen. Say, some information and transparent oversight at Minerals Management Service perhaps?

But no. It is now WikiLeaks who has been decreed a Public Enemy, along with all the other whistleblowers Obama vowed to defend as a candidate. The tough and terrified U.S. government is "hunting down" the owner and founder as we speak so that we can all sleep well at night, unafraid that we might stumble upon information we might find upsetting or inconvenient. And true to form, Glenn Greenwald compares the vigilance against those exposing government misdeeds and worse, like WikiLeaks, James Risen, etc. versus the administration's defense of Bush Era crimes (notwithstanding their own in Bagram and elsewhere). Medical professionals experimenting on detainees? It's all legit.

Numerous incidents now demonstrate that as high-level Bush lawbreakers are vested with presidential immunity, low-level whistle blowers who exposed serious wrongdoing and allowed citizens some minimal glimpse into what our government does are being persecuted by the Obama administration with a vengeance.

While George W. can brag about how he would water board people again if given the chance, thanks to our three strikes laws, some Americans are allowed to rot in jail for life for non-violent drug offenses. Culture of impunity, and lawlessness, indeed. Good thing 2.3 million Americans don't lie in jail right now because they are too much the "common criminal" to get out of serving time. Also, the fact that high-level offenders escape prison time becomes even more egregious once you learn that crime has not even increased in the U.S., and yet, more and more are imprisoned:

According to the Pew Center study, the higher rates of incarceration did not reflect a similar increase in crime, or in population, but tougher sentencing measures [study found here].

When we see the selectivity of enforcement and incarceration according to race, the picture of U.S. justice and jurisprudence looks bleak. Or, if you're someone like John McCain and Barack Obama, it is unambiguously a beacon of liberty and justice that all the world should emulate. Nuff said. Try to prove otherwise with actual information, and we'll shut you down.

Well, all hope is not lost though for those who still believe in an efficacious Fourth Estate, although you must move to Iceland. They have recently passed a law protecting whistle blowers and independent media journalists and bloggers, which will have worldwide implications. Just as an interesting side note: It was the fact that the banks silenced a story on their participation in the economic collapse there that got Icelanders enraged enough to pass this law. Economic malfeasance led to more open protections for journalists and information vital to the democratic health and welfare of the country. Here in the U.S., however, where we've had an economic assault---need we say war----against taxpayers, consumers, and homeowners, not to mention the war crimes, black sites, and legal black holes, the government is clamping down hard on information and transparency. Nothing has changed economically here except that our Congress is haggling over a tepid derivatives "reform" bill, which looks to accomplish nothing for limiting the "too big to fail" Corporate Nanny-State (They can't even pass unemployment protections, nor an effectual jobs and stimulus bill). And we've actually lost protections as far as the Public's right to know? Only in the United States of Apathy. Or is it United States of Amnesia? I am too listless and forgetful to remember which.

Anyways, here's the video on Iceland:


And here's Jon Stewart handing it to Obama:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daly Show FullEpisodes Political Humor Tea Party

And don't forget this incredible episode of This American Life, which teamed up with ProPublica to investigate "hedging," or the practice of banks betting against their own investments. Spoiler: there is a great song about this practice set to The Producers. Brilliant stuff.

Animals Are Beautiful People*

It's been a while since I've written anything, and much has happened, but nothing---not even the new nativistic Arizona immigration law---is as remarkable as this, my new favorite fact (Since the mid 19-f*&!ing-70s they've been doing this!), and my new heroes:

(photo: National Geographic)

Not even this "common sense" pandering to racist Southerners (I love that he says, "It'll save money."As if printing driver's license tests in other languages is what keeps Alabama down economically. Way back during the antebellum glory days, those days that Virginia's governor recently attempted to exalt, it used to be that elite Southern landowners would make the not-too-dissimilar hard sell, telling their poor, out-of-work-whites: "Listen up...y'all may have to compete with African slave labor, but hey: at least you ain't in that "peculiar institution" to which Nature has seen fit to reduce the poor Negro. The absence of these chattel chains, by the miracle of your white birth, means you are free. Don't y'all see? Haven't y'all read the Bible, the story of Ham?");

• Nor this "I-can-micro-chip-my-dog-so-I-can-find it.-Why-can't-I-micro-chip-an-illegal?"-argument;
  
• Nor this "I-support-deporting-American-citizens-whose-parents-are-illegal-immigrants" position;
  
• Nor this "Congressman-Grijalva-is-ceding-his-district-to-Mexico" claim from American Know-Nothing Congressman, Steve King (R-IA);
  
• And of course not even this "Arizona-has-been-under-terrorist-attack-from-illegal-immigrants" bull honky;
  
• Nor the fact that ethnic studies programs in Arizona have been targeted with a ban (meet the man behind it here);
  
• Nor that a douche-bag congressman from the great state of Texas is comparing illegal immigrants to grasshoppers (Think that's bad? Though slightly off topic...Watch this New Hampshire state rep who is working to repeal gay marriage say, "We're talking about the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement.");
  
• Nor the response of the Arizona governor that she doesn't even know what an illegal immigrant looks like, but "assumes others do";

None of this is as incredible as the fact that generations of f-ing beavers over the last 35 years have built a dam that can be seen from space! What the hell have my cats been doing this past decade? For all I know they've been breaking revolutionary ground in political philosophy by sniffing each other's scent glands (...some of which are in their butts).

(photo: Steve Anderson, The Edmonton Journal)


Or maybe they're actually just doing stuff like this when I'm not around:















There are other idiotic things going on I'll never want to forget though. For example, Nevada senatorial candidate, Sue Lowden, advocating (in earnest) for a bartering system for those without health insurance. Colbert, true to form, nails it.

Though that particular story may be eclipsed by this man trying to carry out the citizen's arrest of a grand jury foreman IN TENNESSEE for not investigating the non-issue of President Obama's legal status. Consequently, another man was so outraged by the arrest of the wannabe citizen's arrester that he attempted to show his solidarity with the aforementioned by driving from his home in Georgia, armed with an AK-47, out to the Tennessee jail to demonstrate. He was arrested after he told the cops during a routine traffic stop what he was doing, and that he was armed (Pssst: can't cross state lines with firearms, Jackass). The melodramatic call to arms on the video to head down to the courthouse to free Mr. Citizen's Arrest is classic right-wing paranoia. A couple citizen's arrests indeed! The white man is sooo persecuted.

I wonder how these oppressed dissidents reacted to the news that Louisiana shot down a gun bill that would have allowed firearms IN CHURCHES. They are no doubt some of the same self-perceived martyrs fighting against the "tyranny" of the Obama administration by coming armed to a gun rights rally----held in a federal park, one of the many which now allow guns because of Obama---- on the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing. Don't take our guns away? How about: "Thank you, Mr. President. We thought you would be a liberal or leftist. Apparently, you're neither."

I hate to be simplistic, but these are all the same people.

And finally, Seth Myers with a funny:


*The title of the wonderful film, Animals are Beautiful People.

Political Conservatism, Authoritarian-Motivated Social Cognition

Funny that the authoritarian Right didn't learn from the last time it attacked the military. Joseph McCarthy's latest reincarnation, Liz Cheney, ought to know that the hapless drunk of a senator from Wisconsin went down after targeting the military as harboring "communists." In going after the DOJ as the "Al Qaida 7," Cheney should meet a similar fate. Although, it is true that "conservatives" these days are allowed to say whatever asinine things they want through media without serious rebuke (Must be a left-wing mainstream media conspiracy). Quite the contrary, they usually get a louder mic and more coverage. This really is appalling:

The tough and terrified hypocritical vein that "conservatives" try so desperately to strike really is an overt appeal to the authoritarians among us: those susceptible to the irrationality of FEAR. A couple of years ago, I wasn't surprised to learn that according to a psychological study, "conservatives" are more prone to fear as a motivating force (This study was much talked about at the time. However, I am not sure what to make of the methodology of it though).

I've long wished someone would write a book (Tough and Terrified) juxtaposing all the jingoistic-America is#1-tough-guy-rhetoric against all the fear-the-Islamic-medievalist-cave-man-existential-terrorist-threat messages out there. Which is it, authoritarian propagandists? We are either tough, or terrified. Not both. For more on this historical, psychological drama there's this great BBC documentary about the parallel rise of the neo-conservative and Islamic jihadi movements, which was banned here in freedom-loving America, The Power of Nightmares.

After watching this film, the context of "conservative" fear is quite apparent. If the right wing has any discernible credibility left, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's propagandistic neo-McCarthyism would be repudiated by every single so-called conservative who participates in the public sphere. This is inexcusable.

Money for Breakfast for Mouths Full of Money

One should really never underestimate Fox News' capacity for unabashed vulgarity. The corporate statism that their hired cynics, ignoramuses, and opportunists call "capitalism" apparently does a body good because they have a show called Money for Breakfast. For some reason I'm reminded of American Psycho, especially the scenes where Patrick Bateman works out to porn before going to work in the morning.

But money isn't just something we're putting in our mouths for breakfast these days; legally speaking, its also coming out of our mouths in a curiously ironic form known as "free speech." About this subject, everyone is opining, which is generally a good thing because the Citizen's United ruling, which will allow corporations, unions, and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts on elections, is one of those cases that truly warrants plenty of discussion. However, I would place one conversation in particular between Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig and Salon's Glenn Greenwald above most in the analyzing-each-side-rationally-category.

But seriously: I don't know what to think about this case. I hate the notion of money being equivalent to speech, but I know that even the dissenting judges believe it to be true legally. And even though the court went beyond the narrow issue specifically raised by United, and also defied a century of precedent, I think Greenwald and the ACLU are mostly correct here (One should read their positions carefully). However, my inchoate thoughts on what's at issue here are finding lucid articulation in Patricia Williams latest piece in The Nation.

Even accepting that progressives are clearly outmatched by reactionary corporate interests, I'm not sure this decision is really the death knell of the American republic that so many in media are portraying it as. Even given that the common understanding or established interpretation that corporations are more than, in Patricia Williams' words, a "juridical stand-in for a person" is erroneous nonsense (See below for why), campaign finance laws prevented little to no corruption, because they protected Congress little---if at all---from the influence of money. Likewise, some respected people Greenwald cites say "this decision will do little more than move money around that is already flooding the political process."

Furthermore: to say that corruption is only going to get worse because of this decision isn't a prudent legal opinion either. The "compelling state interest" argument is not only an insufficient reason for restricting this kind of stupid speech, but really quite frightening, and even possibly harmful if it is used against clearly enumerated, core civil liberties, such as freedom of speech---both individual and collective. As Greenwald persuasively argues, whether or not there will be even more corruption is besides the point: judges are not supposed to rule on pragmatic, "outcome-based" grounds---- the desirable effects of a possible decision----but strictly on constitutional grounds:

The "rule of law,"however, means that if the Constitution or other laws bar X, then X is not allowed regardless of how many good outcomes can be achieved by X. That was true for the "crisis" of Terrorism, and it's just as true for the crisis of corporate influence over our political process.

I applaud him for reminding liberals why we opposed the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties: warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus, etc.etc. There too was a "compelling state interest," right? President Obama certainly thought so when he hypocritically voted for retroactive immunity for the telecoms as a senator. Today, he shows little reservation about carrying out all those other policies that were SO odious when Bush was in power. Let's not also forget the right to assassinate American citizens too. Sounds like a right-wing conspiracy theory (as some variations are), but this painfully absurd fact is also very true, acknowledged by the Director of National Intelligence himself last week. (Yemen, beware of harboring more alleged, American-born terrorists lest the U.S. government arbitrarily decides to bomb you silly again!) But back to the issue at hand...

Does it even matter that corporations aren't actually people when the Constitution says Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press? It doesn't say only individual speech is protected---and clearly----by press we can infer collective entities and organizations, right? So what do we do about that? Money=speech; individuals and organizations' rights of speech=shall not be abridged; money shall not be abridged the freedom of speech, apparently. Moreover, we too would like our own advocacy groups spending money in order to nudge representatives towards our own special causes. And until the Citizens United case, many of The Good Guys out there were prevented from doing so. So is it all that bad?

Yet still: corporations will win this battle to inundate our politics with their "speech." Simply the threat of withdrawing inordinate sums of money from a candidate's campaign will no doubt induce complete and utter obeisance. People will have to organize and finance counter messages to feed the Public Mind, at which point we can hope that unadulterated facts, reason, and rationality will prevail in the end despite our better funded adversaries. Public discourse will have to step up qualitatively to match this fusillade of corporate, post-truth political advertising. Maybe this is just the opening salvo necessary to re-galvanize the public financing of elections movement.

Supposedly states can alter corporate charters to remedy the United decision without over-reaching on the First Amendment. There are, and there should continue to be, thoughtful discussions on passing a constitutional amendment that could answer the problems of the court's ruling----despite the difficulty of doing so. And lastly, the U.S. Congress should be compelled to pass legislation for the public financing of elections, period.

With all of that said, Patricia Williams makes a typically trenchant observation about the history of money as "political speech" that all nine justices should avail themselves to understand (This, admittedly, makes United so frustrating and complicated because---again---none of the justices see the notion of money as political speech this way). Juxtaposing the corporate restrictions on speech for those within the organization against their newly won unrestricted "freedom," Williams sets out to answer "why 'freedom' (as in speech) has become the functional equivalent of 'expenditure' (as in money) and why on earth corporations are considered 'persons' to begin with." She takes the interpretation of the courts since Buckley v. Valeo to task:

the "corporate citizenship" that the majority in Citizens United touts so blithely is a very different beast from citizenship founded on a constitution of enfranchised individuals and premised on a constituency of souls united in allegiance to an ideal of community, an egalitarianism of society, the mutual shelter of a nation.

But it gets better:

about the history of legal "persons": for more than a hundred years, certain inanimate entities have been granted the status of fictive personhood for limited purposes. The concept grew out of the necessity for businesses to negotiate as well as to be accountable in the marketplace. When, for example, a company manufactures a defective product and sells it to you, you sue the company--not the individual executives or employees (unless there has been some act of extreme wrongdoing on their part). In other words, the company is a kind of juridical stand-in for a person, with that status rooted in the efficiency interests of contract and property law.

Ok, so not only can corporations restrict the individual speech of their members, but they are able to advocate for policies counter to the public good, the "egalitarianism" of the "ideal of community," all because of an erroneous conflation between the animate----actual people----and the "inanimate entities" whose "limited," "fictive personhood," "a kind of juridical stand-in for a person" is no longer interpretively "rooted in the efficiency interests of contract and property law." That "efficiency interest," as I understand it from my privately-financed, undergraduate public education, is the whole point of forming a corporation: limited liability. Whose speech rights are actually restricted:

If a public "person" is capacious enough to encompass a privatized "corporate" plurality, then are "We, the people" not thereby reduced by propertied fiefdoms huddled behind a facade of "free" republicanism?If, once upon a time, enfranchisement was calculated according to such diminishing metrics as "three-fifths of a person," does not this ruling confer a similar, if magnifying, mathematical disproportion upon the organizational prostheses we know as corporations?

Good question. Williams' correct understanding of history here, and her premise that "If there is no such grounding in practical purpose, we humanize a golem" challenges Greenwald's view that since the nine justices aren't even considering corporations' "personhood" and whether speech for them is money, then the battle against Citizens United must necessarily be a legislative one. To my mind, Greenwald's strict, conscientious fidelity to the oft-abused "rule of law"---such as it is today---is in contention with Williams' more fundamental truth, the veracity of history, which should be inviolable. Reconciling these two perspectives is extraordinarily difficult. Not least because the importance of historical perspective and the "original intent" of corporate, contractual law are contending with practical applications of why corporations must be protected as individuals: Ironically, Greenwald's view becomes more "practical"* than historical because his legal reasoning here builds off of contemporary interpretational concerns, whereas, Williams is advancing an "originalist" view, one based around the historical intent of this legal construct----the corporation (This is an ironic switch because I believe liberal interpretations tend to be of more the pragmatic strain---seeing the constitution as a "living" and "evolving" document. Conservatives, at least Scalia---and usually in an ahistorical, ideologically-driven manner----feign to interpret the constitution in the "originalist," historical-contextual mode).

*(Indeed, Greenwald is very much thinking about the practical ramifications of not defending money as free speech. See these questions he asks to illustrate the point.)

But still, Goddamnit!---how does one respond to Williams' underlying point, which she emphasizes with a brilliant quote from "the great legal realist philosopher Felix S. Cohen":

When the vivid fictions and metaphors of traditional jurisprudence are thought of as reasons for decisions, rather than poetical or mnemonic devices for formulating decisions reached on other grounds, then the author, as well as the reader, of the opinion or argument, is apt to forget the social forces which mold the law and the social ideals by which the law is to be judged.

___________________________________________________

Anyways, for more on the new ruling and it's likely pernicious effects on judicial elections, one of which is increased conservative "judicial activism," watch Moyers here (And then don't miss him with Jefferey Toobin). Also check out his interview with First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, and then Floyd Abrams v. Trevor Potter . Lastly, see Larry Lessig debate Nick Gillespie on Moyers.

And speaking of the conservative brand of judicial activism, with its purported reverence for tradition, precedent, and stare decisis take a look at Colbert's destruction of Justice Roberts' flimsy opinion on United.

(Starts around 2:00)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Prece-Don't
http://www.colbertnation.com/
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I tried to get at few words on this decision from someone whose legal opinions I really hold in high regard:

Orange Gatito, AKA Kittyheart

He KNOWS WHAT'S TO BE DONE ABOUT ALL THIS.