Truth no defense in Establishment case

Farnan [C.F.] asserts that his rights under the Establishment Clause have been violated by a practice and policy hostile toward religion and favoring irreligion over religion. . . .

Corbett stated, "I will not leave [fellow teacher] John Peloza alone to propagandize kids with this religious, superstitious nonsense." One could argue that Corbett meant that Peloza should not be presenting his religious ideas to students or that Peloza was presenting faulty science to the students. But there is more to the statement: Corbett states an unequivocal belief that creationism is "superstitious nonsense." The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

But creationism is superstitious nonsense and there is little else except a legitimate secular purpose to saying so. Corbett is guilty of — if anything — being rude and insensitive, but that's about it.

C.F. v. Capistrano Unified School Dist. (.pdf; 37 pgs.).

Cite it quickly, while it's still good law.

Points to ponder (Limbaugh ed.)

If the Taliban welcomes moderates, why doesn't the GOP?

Impeach Carrie Prejean

"I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos."

Okay fine, as long as you remain silent in the churches.

Only in America.

Lowering the bar for Obama's nominee

In its damning totality, the memorandum is an indictment of Judge Jay S. Bybee himself, evidence that he is morally, ethically and legally unfit to serve on the federal bench. His continued presence there is an affront to the integrity of the judiciary, to a nation founded on laws and ideals protecting human dignity, and to all Americans [not to mention permanent legal residents] who once believed their government would never indulge in the same human rights violations we have long condemned in other countries.

Salt Lake Tribune.

A press clipping to save

Bristol Palin, 18, said in a statement that she feels she could be a living example of the consequences of teen pregnancy.

"If I can prevent even one girl from getting pregnant, I will feel a sense of accomplishment," she said.

Son, you're a consequence that should have been prevented.

Milwaukeean "murders a cat" on live teevee

Danny Gokey could have picked something more befitting his voice (Rod Stewart?) and spared us the sound of animal sacrifice that ended his performance.

Rolling Stone.

Fortunately there was a hockey game on.

eta: After listening to the clip online, I have to say that the feline death rattle finale was actually the best part of Danny Gokey's rendition, and certainly no worse than much of what Aerosmith has perpetrated (who, as I have continuously maintained, should have stopped making records after Toys In The Attic [1975]).

No such thing as a dumb question

Or is there.

Do you think in hindsight that they overreacted by closing schools? — Editorialist David Haynes

Serious lapses of judgment

The NYT carries a little preview of the Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility's forthcoming report on the circumstances surrounding the production of the so-called "torture memos":

Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos reflected the lawyers' independent judgments of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were skewed deliberately to justify what the C.I.A. proposed.

Which in turn presents a number of larger questions that lead well beyond the authors of the memos.

And if Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay Bybee is disbarred, that will surely provide grist for Sen. Feingold's impeachment mill.

Bachmann macht frei

Screenshot at 0:36.

(That podium is just begging to be retouched.)

What evolution is*

Dogma is certainly what is on the other side of ["intelligent design"] in this fight — a materialist dogma which, posing as the standard-bearer of reason against obscurantism, actually embodies irrationality and a kind of intellectual fascism.**

It is a secular inquisition — as the reaction to my [specious, unsupported drivel] makes all too plain.

Poor beleaguered Melanie Phillips! — Jerry Coyne

Earlier: Radical like a Puritan.

* h/t Ernst Mayr.
** Read: Teaching biology in biology class.

U.S. military confiscates Farsi Bibles

In the video, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells soldiers: "The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down."

Hopefully just not with the Sarah Palin Mother's Day model NRA commemorative .50 caliber AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Jesus killed Mohammed (Requires subscription.)

h/t Religion Clause.

Thomas, J., concurring.

CNN

Talk radio logic revealed

Lie now, modify conditional statement later.

Useful transcript here (plus even more comic rationalization*):

As usual, I was shooting my mouth off ... That's what I do if you haven't noticed. I shoot my mouth off and make all sorts of bold statements ... in the way that only a blowhard gasbag like myself would do.

Props for not being completely dishonest.

* Nobody's taking it that seriously.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

Caldwell said his second wife would give him the rest of the child support money. Kuhnmuench wasn’t buying that story either. The judge had just evicted Caldwell’s wife from the courtroom after she became loud, profane and threatening to her husband’s ex-wife.

I missed all that, but I did hear a judge tell a woman accused of prostitution she was lookin' pretty good. That was funny.

Thanks Mr. Rosen!

What a refreshing piece! It's rare to read something where the journalist actually admits to you that he was too lazy to finish the job: "I haven't read enough of [Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia] Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths." Keep up all that good hard work!

— posted by brad

The Case Against Sotomayor [sic].

Next Justice will be "pro-abortion"

So sayeth Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

"Pro-abortion," as in, "favors abortion." Right.

[Barack Obama has] also said that a judge has to be a person of empathy. What does that mean? Usually that's a code word for an activist judge.

Or else it's code for "non-psychopath." Senator Hatch just wishes he could have another conservative activist, an "anti-empathy" judge.

Just think, we have five months of this nonsense to look forward to.

Christianity Today

As exemplified by Joe the Plumber.

"The Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values," says JTP. And he won't let queers near his children.

Gableman finally partially correct

Embattled judge Mike Gableman, who in November, 2007 described a 2005 decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court as "resulting in the release of the defendant into Milwaukee County," was partly vindicated in April, 2009, when Richard A. Brown was set free.

That's only 525 days (one year, five months, and eight days) after Mike Gableman claimed that he was, and also only 1,481 days (four years and 20 days) after the Supreme Court decision in question.

Close enough, I guess.

Except the decision to order Brown released from custody was made by a circuit court in Milwaukee County, not the Supreme Court.

Brown is said to reside in Milwaukee's Goldman Park neighborhood. At six-foot-four and 315 pounds, he shouldn't be too hard to spot.

During this year's Supreme Court election, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Randy Koschnick criticized Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson for finding unconstitutional the State's statute governing the civil commitment of dangerous sex offenders, Chapter 980.

In fact, he couldn't stop talking about it. He even lied about it.

In her opinion, the Chief Justice suggested that instead of trying to detain sex offenders beyond their initially imposed sentences, the legislature and the executive branch of government should act to impose lengthier prison time for sex offenders in the first place.

Indeed, Richard Brown is "on the street" today thanks in large part to the Koschnick-championed procedures implemented by Chapter 980.

Points to ponder (Cynics ed.)

[John Chipman] Gray managed to conduct a major law practice in Boston throughout his forty years on Harvard's faculty. His special field was real property — legal rights in land — although he had once taught constitutional law (which he abandoned because he was convinced that "there was no such thing," that constitutional law was merely politics).

— Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, p. 50

And he hadn't even seen D.C. v. Heller, where the Court was reduced to reading the Constitution backwards to reach the proper result.

Openly gay justice

Politico.com reports that some groups are lobbying Obama to nominate an openly gay Supreme Court Justice. Given that the U.S. Supreme Court is the country's highest profile affirmative action battleground — and the only place nobody seems to complain* about it — it's not any more or less remarkable than lobbying for a black woman, an Asian, or an atheist.**

The openly gay nominee they have in mind is Kathleen Sullivan, a Stanford University law professor who notoriously failed the California bar exam in 2005. It was an insignificant blip in an otherwise impressive career, but for some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would be mouthwatering red meat.

I'm thinking particularly of Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, a physician who is baffled by legal terminology and who attempted to get now-Chief Justice John Roberts to stipulate that mentioning foreign law is an impeachable offense under the United States Constitution.

Roberts refused to, obviously.

Speaking of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Arlen Specter was the ranking member, the Republicans are reportedly set to announce his replacement on Tuesday.

Orrin Hatch of Utah is the next most senior GOPer. Hatch has already had a few kicks at the can, and term limits prevent him from taking the job again. After Hatch comes Iowa's Charles Grassley, but he is already the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, and you can't retain that status on two committees.

Which leaves us in the company of the comically petulant Senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. As the Recess Supervisor puts it, "God help us." I say, bring him on.

* Except for, ironically, Clarence Thomas.
** Fat chance of the latter, although it would provide for the most entertaining Senate committee hearing of all times.

Lieutenant Governor Glenn Grothman

In the WisPolitics straw poll for lieutenant governor, Superior Mayor Dave Ross had 147 votes, state Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend had 109 votes ...

Scary. We're talkin' Palin-Scary. Louie Gohmert-Scary.

Is Glenn Grothman still a frequent guest on WVCY? I love those guys. One of my earliest memories of Milwaukee was watching Vic Eliason picketing Sun Myung Moon outside the Hilton on Wisconsin Ave.

Vic Eliason is also an outspoken opponent of the VeggieTales.

Try the chewable Dulcolax

"Neumann is also getting a log of pressure to run for Senator."

Even better:

"The venerable James T. Harris will be speaking."

ven·er·a·ble, adjective, 15th century

1: deserving to be venerated — used as a title for an Anglican archdeacon or for a Roman Catholic who has been accorded the lowest of three degrees of recognition for sanctity

2: made sacred especially by religious or historical association

3: N/A

(Courtesy B&S, which makes more sense minus the ampersand.)

Scott Walker arrested

"I'm in holding room right now #wisgopconv."

Twitter will destroy the English language yet.

Follow the logic!

I haven't been able to determine whether Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, but she's Puerto Rican (most of whom are Catholic) and went to Catholic schools as a child.

If Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, and pro-choice, we may get a wave of discussion about whether the Supreme Court justice should be denied communion.

beliefnet.com

Earlier: No Eucharist for you

Local Christians urge book burning

Literally:

The Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union is seeking $30,000 per plaintiff, [West Bend Mayor Kristine] Deiss' resignation and a racist book be removed from the Library at Alexandria West Bend Community Memorial Library and publicly burned or destroyed as a deterrent to repeating the offensive conduct.

h/t Mpeterson.

GOP does the math

The folks who want to recall Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle are soliciting volunteers here. So far, 2,500 have signed up statewide, said Vince Schmucki, a recall organizer.

Wisconsin State Journal, 0919 hrs

Organizers of an effort to recall Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle say they have signed up about 3,500 volunteers to gather signatures and that they plan to formally start the recall process around June 1.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 1043 hrs

But there are only 700 convention attendees.

He does the work of three men: Curly, Larry, and Moe.

Meanwhile, local health officials announced two dozen additional probable cases of swine flu as Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker presided over a kaffeeklatsch in La Crosse.

Although Milwaukee officials have not advised people to avoid gatherings such as State Republican Party conventions.

Loophole Krauthammer

Takes a beating.

Krauthammer, meet Malcolm Nance.

McIlheran exercises individual right

To keep and bear silliness:

Except that individual right, of course.

David Souter is a "fierce defender" of, well, some constitutional rights. And pointedly not others.

Of course? Pointedly? Italics? Sounds conclusive!

Except in District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court unanimously resolved the "individual vs. collective right" controversy by affirming the former. Including Justice David Souter.

So, yes, David Souter has indeed interpreted and defended the Second Amendment as a protection of the rights of individuals.

But I should expect one to have initially located a particular constitutional right before such time as that person might be reasonably criticized for not fiercely defending that same right, no?

What does this other crazy liberal activist have to say:

The text of the [Second] Amendment, whether viewed alone or in light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or other sport, or for the defense of person or property. It is doubtful that the Amendment could even be thought to require that members of State militias be allowed to keep weapons in their homes, since that would reduce the militias' effectiveness.

Obama?? Is that you?!

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, a decision handed down shortly before Heller, the Supreme Court held that to execute a person who rapes a child but does not kill her violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment. That was a loose construction that tied the hands of the States and the federal government, and Scalia and the other conservative justices dissented. But in Heller it was the liberal justices who were dissenting from a decision that ties the hands of the federal government, and of the States, too, if the Supreme Court decides that the Second Amendment constrains State as well as federal government action.*

Richard Posner, noting how these things can work both ways.

Incidentally, has McIlheran ever printed a correction?

Better, why not simply say what he meant: 'I think I disagree with Justice Souter's joining in Justice Stevens's exhaustive historical analysis of the Framers' understanding, mostly because they clearly got the better of that guy who I just know is always correct, Scalia.'

Even though Scalia had to pretend the Second Amendment was written in Hebrew and read it from right to left to get there.

* The Ninth Circuit has since determined that the 2A does constrain State action (at least those States within the Ninth Circuit).

David Hackett Souter replacement contest

Enter early, enter often.

In the running:

Elena Kagan
Sonia Sotomayor
Bill Clinton

I really hope that last one's a joke.

A Canadian on the U.S. Supreme Court?

Some informed commentary, as opposed to this junk.

(I wonder if Gov. Granholm renounced her Canadian citizenship, which I believe is an optional requirement for naturalization.)

Steven Walters stares down a deadline

Abrahamson won't seek Souter seat

Thanks, because people were really wondering about that.

Commentary and Dissent merged

And formed dysentery:

Justice Souter is a down-the-line un-originalist, pro-activist judge to whom no great legal opinions or insights can be attributed. His replacement will certainly be equally unconcerned with the text and/or meaning of Constitutional language.

Expect to hear a lot of similarly idiotic and unsupportable drivel from the right over the next few months. There is not a single judge in the whole country who is "unconcerned" with "text and/or meaning."

Gov. Jim Doyle worships the Antichrist

Funny stuff from Michael Horne.

Seriously, would somebody please inform these people that there is no "Antichrist" in the Bible? There are "antichrists," plural, who were reportedly wandering around 1600 years ago. See, e.g., 1 John 2:18.

And that was supposedly an indication of the "End Times."

The End Times have since been postponed four billion years or so, until that star closest to Earth starts running out of hydrogen to burn.

America: All is lost

When the United States Supreme Court goes from 22% Democratic appointees to 33% Democratic appointees, it's game over.

Might as well just unlock all the prisons right now.

And how come we've not heard a peep about either Gerard E. Lynch or Andre M. Davis? Obama nominated them both to the circuit courts of appeal in early April. Didn't judges used to be important?

They were when Terri Schiavo was on life support.

Remember? Tom DeLay couldn't locate one single activist judge in the land, so he was going to burn down a courthouse, or something.

Obama's first nominee to the Seventh Circuit, David F. Hamilton, appeared at his second Senate hearing yesterday. But only one Republican bothered to turn up, albeit the craziest one.

And even he behaved like he was under heavy sedation.

That'll teach them to write an LTE

Or continue paying the subscription, if it was me.

In the good old days, newspapers would publish letters to the editor in response to issues raised by the paper. The letters might express agreement, disagreement, correct a factual error, and so forth.

The correspondence was allowed to stand — or fall — on its own merits. Letters were addressed to the editor, but they were published for the readers. At least, most papers treat them that way.

When the Toronto Telegram went belly up in the early 70s, it was replaced by a cheap tabloid called the Toronto Sun. The Sun ran letters to the editor too, of course. But each was accompanied by an italicized, often unwarrantedly snide riposte from the paper's editors.

That was distasteful and insulting enough.

Now we have the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, where a letter writer can expect no less than a member of the newspaper's own editorial board, name of Patrick McIlheran, to clamber aboard his little soapbox/blog in a self-righteous huff to mock and denounce the correspondent not just once but twice, in separate entries.

And for what? For the offense of managing to agitate Mr. McIlheran's longstanding devotion to the project of torture apologetics, naturally.

From a perspective of ethical journalistic practice, it's remarkably bad form for a paper's editors to attack a letter writer. But perhaps McIlheran's petty performance is evidence that his conscience is finally getting the better of his enthusiastic defense of torture.

Although that seems unlikely.

Waterboard Charlie Sykes for charity

I can see this guy here is going to be hugely entertaining.
And, speaking of entertaining, Boots & Kittens is updated.

Gableman, J., did not participate.

Through April 30, 2009, number of written opinions:

Abrahamson 6*
Bradley 6
Crooks 5
Roggensack 5
Ziegler 4
Prosser 3
Gableman 2

Not counting attorney discipline cases and a boilerplate per curiam dismissal. And, obviously, only one of several possible measures. Plus, Gableman occupies the "gofer" chair in the conference room and there's a number of worthwhile take-out joints around the Capitol.

* Not bad for being 75 and running a Statewide election campaign.

CLE bargain of the century

Sixty bucks for 11.5 credits? Sign me up.

Some props for the composer

Sinatra classic lifts Gokey into this week's 'Idol' elite

First of all, I thought Come Rain Or Come Shine was a Sandra Bernhard classic. But what it is is a Harold Arlen classic.

Personally, I can't stand American Idol for a variety of reasons. But I was rudely awakened this morning by some twot in a ridiculous mini-fedora engaged in attempting to warble My Funny Valentine, which is not a "Rat Pack classic" but rather the ingenious handiwork of Richard Rodgers, one of the finest songwriters of all times.

I often give My Funny Valentine to my piano students because — among other things — its slow ballad tempo makes it easy to play and because it's a brilliantly succinct compendium of clever chord progressions and basic musical form.

(A 16-bar verse, an 8-bar bridge in the relative major, and an 8-bar reprise with coda, all containing just about every type of 7th-chord they'll ever need to know, for the pedagogically inclined.)

As for American Idol, by all means brutalize Grease Is The Word and MacArthur Park, but please, please leave the masterpieces alone.

H1N1 + HIV = Hilarity!

Charming.

(No Nazi Swastikas this time out.)

A civilized man

It is a peculiarity of such a man that he is usually in favor of whatever the mob is against, and against whatever it is in favor of.

— H.L. Mencken

Arlen Specter hyperbole watch

No, not Michelle Malkin, Charlie Sykes, or Rush Limbaugh.

[Arlen Specter] destroyed the foundation of Anglo-American jurisprudence. — Paul Soglin, Waxing America

That would be one Hell of an accomplishment indeed.

Mayor Soglin is apparently referring to Arlen Specter's vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which contained a provision (MCA §7) enabling the federal government to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for certain detainees captured in the "war on terror."

According to Arlen Specter's commentary at the time, he voted for the MCA as a matter of political expediency, even though he was strongly opposed to the provision in question.

Moreover, Sen. Specter believed the provision was constitutionally infirm, in that present circumstances did not adequately conform with U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2, and predicted that it would be declared so by the federal courts on those grounds and on those that the MCA impermissibly stripped the courts of jurisdiction.

He was correct on both counts, and it was so decided.

As a matter of fact, Specter filed an amicus curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court in the case, Boumediene v. Bush.

Specter's brief concludes:

To avoid an incongruous legal "black hole" at Guantanamo, this Court should strike down the MCA’s illegal suspension of the Great Writ [of habeas corpus] and allow Congress to establish procedures consistent with what national security and the Constitution require.

Which is what the Boumediene Court did, in spite of the risibly strenuous objections of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.*

Read Specter's foundation-destroying arguments here (.pdf; 36 pgs.).

* "The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays ... will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

How far gone is the GOP?

Pretty far gone, when Gary Bauer is its voice of reason:

The longtime Republican evangelical activist said Arlen Specter's critics did not give him enough credit for his work in the Senate. "I don't think that Clarence Thomas would be on the Supreme Court today if not for Arlen Specter," said Bauer.

Arlen Specter's most important role, and the one in which he's wielded the most power, has been as a member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where federal judges are screened.

He also supported and voted to confirm the last two Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Few Democrats joined him, especially in Alito's case. Obama voted against both.

While Specter opposed Robert Bork, contrary to revisionist Republican persecution mythology, Bork made his own bed with his radical views and his suspicious "confirmation conversion."

Separation of Church and Taste

It is finished.

A Specter is haunting Kentucky

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.), said the switch posed a "threat to the country."

Red alert.

At least Grandma Hatch will be happy. The big challenge for the GOP will be finding a new committee member crazier than Tom Coburn.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is in the wrong (hyperbaric) chamber.

MKE's Chief Flynn: The fallout continues

When last we checked in with WTMJ radio's a cappella vocalist Jeff Wagner, he was experiencing some difficulty engaging with the infamous "baby mama" court of appeals opinion of January '09.

Now he's claiming that Milwaukee Chief of Police Edward Flynn has "ordered his officers to ignore the law."

This is pure fantasy, of course.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's celebrated gun memo is no more "the law" than is this here blog post. Strictly speaking, Van Hollen's memo isn't even a "legal opinion," as Jeff Wagner calls it.

It's an "informal Advisory Memorandum," and it includes an express statement distinguishing it from the AG's opinions mentioned in Wis. Stat. § 165.015(1). It's meant only to be "educational and informational" (and the former purpose has turned out to include for a number of delightfully unintentional effects).

Which is especially noteworthy because Jeff Wagner himself links to a WTMJ news item that depicts Flynn as telling Milwaukee police officers to "ignore the memo." So how Wagner gets from there to "ignore the law" remains an ineffable mystery of construction.

Recall that the memo's function was simply to expound on whether openly carrying a firearm might per se warrant a charge of disorderly conduct, which is ultimately a question for the district attorney.

How police officers in the field deal with Wisconsinites wandering about armed on city streets is a different story. Indeed, the memo wasn't even addressed to police officers, so in that sense alone, Chief Flynn's advice to the rank and file is perfectly appropriate.

It's like saying, 'Don't read John Chisholm's inter-office mail.'

Anyway, Jeff Wagner's recent pontifications are in service of congratulating the Deputy Chief of Police in Waukesha, Wayne Dussault. Dussault, enthuses Wagner, is a law enforcement officer who "actually believes in following the law." As opposed to Edward Flynn, apparently, who actually doesn't believe in following the law.

What Dussault told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, however, is that carriers of "exposed and holstered handguns" will only be "observ[ed to] see if they're committing any actions that draw suspicion."

Observed for how long, for which actions, and by how many officers, he doesn't say. (And prospective open keepers and bearers may want to further bear that potential commitment of LE resources in mind.)

Except among the several hypothetical scenarios proffered by Van Hollen, Dussault's relatively innocuous situation won't be found. Instead Van Hollen contemplates, for example, a shotgun-bearing hunter "quietly tracking game" along a "crowded street" who may or may not be overheard "barking" at passersby.

And that manner of activity, affirmed Dussault, "would be approached differently." Who knows, the said urban hunter may even have to be "taken down," as Chief Flynn suggested.

Like AG Van Hollen himself memorandum'd, by way of citing a series of U.S. and Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions governing police action obtaining from legally permissible inferences of reasonable suspicion, it "depends on the totality of the circumstances":

Even though open carry enjoys constitutional protection, it may still give rise to reasonable suspicion when considered in totality. It is not a shield against police investigation or subsequent prosecution.

And the cases teach that among such circumstances are those where a suspect may warrant being "taken down." That is, after all, the memo's bottom line: It depends. But everybody already knew that.

One should be grateful to Chief Flynn if not for his demonstrated commitment to maintaining public safety on the streets of Milwaukee, then at least for his ability to prod the local conservative blogogentsia to even more fantastical flights of silliness.

P.S. And that would be Townes Van Zandt's Pancho and Lefty. A poncho is a Peruvian Snuggie™ where Willie Nelson stashes his bud.

So what else is new

Fox to air "Lie to Me" instead of Obama

Dad29 on the briefs

Dyspeptic Über-Catholic liturgist and celebrated internets logician Dad29 of Brookfield, WI has helpfully identified the dispositive legal issues presented in Americans United's motion for a preliminary injunction against Elmbrook Church:

Elmbrook is using a facility which accommodates all the requisite parking needs for the event(s) [and] is air-conditioned and has comfortable seating.

Seriously.

That's so one might enjoy a little A/C and a bit of stuffed cushion prior to his or her eternal separation from God and consignment among the other "damned, demons, and souls filled with hate."

In fact, supplicants gain access to the said parking lot via streets named "Agape" and "Barnabas" and if they had had mechanical refrigeration in the Bible, the authors of the Book of Revelation never would have been tripping on Claviceps purpurea.

Commencement speech aborted

According to Mary Ann Glendon, President Barack Obama is "a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church's position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice."

Or could it be that Obama has his own position, one based in something other than religious doctrine — i.e., substantive due process and United States Supreme Court precedent — that has absolutely no connection with the Roman Catholic Church's.

In fact I'm certain Obama has expressed sympathy with — and not opposition to — similar religious positions. But this isn't a theocracy.

Previous recipients of the Laetare Medal include an assiduous serial adulterer, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the actor Martin Sheen.

Isn't Martin Sheen an atheist?

"Thank God I'm an atheist." — Luis Buñuel

Screamers vs. Invokers

Reportedly, the Federalist Society has lately taken to marshaling its formidable legal acumen in defense of former vice-president Richard B. Cheney, Ninth Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, et al.

Inquires a Federalist Society worthy, presumably rhetorically: Why should we look to, for example, the waterboarding Grand Inquisitors, when we have the U.S. military's SERE program, in which willing waterboardees were quickly un-drowned at their throwing down of the safe signal. Um, because perhaps the former are more analogous?

The Federalist Society's "purpose," as we are duly advised, "entails reordering priorities within the legal system."

Check. However disingenuously, evidently.

Locally, Marquette University law professor and FedSoc operative Rick Esenberg has promised a series of "blog posts" examining the rationale behind the so-called torture memos.

He's tipped his hand quickly, however, with an amusingly revealing choice of action words. In the course of laying out his internal debate's "guidelines," he describes torture critics as "screaming" while on the other hand, torture defenders are calmly "invoking."

In doing so, Prof. Esenberg has left little doubt as to where he thinks the reasonable conclusions lie. So, let's dispense with the ruse.

Not content with only this dichotomous ad hominem, Esenberg erects a Straw Man to boot: The "screamers," says he, are those doing so "without much thought about what was actually done and how often."

Fallacies aside, here's hoping Prof. Esenberg deigns to address the numerous non-screaming torture critics, those who have actually given a lot of thought to what was done, as well as to how often.

Because there appears to be a considerable quantity of them, including, notably, the former Viet Nam POW and current Senator from Arizona (and especially his comic sidekick) that Prof. Esenberg energetically supported for President of the United States.

Whatever Prof. Esenberg's ultimate conclusions, we can all expect the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's in-house torture apologist and guide to good reading, Patrick McIlheran, to be salivating in anticipation.