The Seventh Sense

Fatal Attraction: The Original Ending

Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) doesn't try to kill Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas).  No bathtub scene.  In the original version, she exacts her revenge in a different way.

Test audiences hated the original ending (shown below), so the cast was called back together to reshoot the ending as we now know it.

But here's how it originally went.  If you're a fan of the movie, and haven't seen this yet, it's an.... interesting... treat:

Tom Goldstein Reviews Sotomayor's Decisions

Over at SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein notes all proverbial ink being spilled over Sotomayor's race, along with the implicit and explicit statements that her supposed bias will prevent her from judicating equally and fairly.

So he decided to do something novel:

It seems to me that there is an infinitely simpler and more accurate way of figuring out whether Judge Sotomayor decides cases involving race fairly and dispassionately - read her decisions. 

Gee, what a concept.

He notes that she has heard over 100 cases dealing with race, covering everything from employment discrimination to bias in jury selection.

After reviewing 50 cases, he offers this interim report:

In those 50 cases, the panel accepted the claim of race discrimination only three times.  In all three cases, the panel was unanimous; in all three, it included a Republican appointee.  In roughly 45, the claim was rejected.  (Two were procedural dispositions.)

On the other hand, she twice was on panels reversing district court decisions agreeing with race-related claims - i.e., reversing a finding of impermissible race-based decisions.  Both were criminal cases involving jury selection.

In the 50 cases, the panel was unanimous in every one.  There was a Republican appointee in 38, and these panels were all obviously unanimous as well.  Thus, in the roughly 45 panel opinions rejecting claims of discrimination, Judge Sotomayor never dissented.

It seems to me that these numbers decisive disprove the claim that she decides cases with any sort of racial bias.

Goldstein will update his findings, with numbers, when he is finished.

Jon & Kate and Child Labor Laws

First, a disclosure: I hate reality TV.  And I never even heard of "Jon & Kate Plus 8", the popular TLC reality series, until a week ago. 

Apparently, it is a reality show about Jon and Kate Gosselin, a Pennsylvania husband and wife, as they raise their eight young children, including 8-year-old twins and sextuplets who just turned 5.

An interesting legal question has come up regarding the show (and no, it doesn't have anything to do with their supposed extramarital affairs).  Depending on the outcome, it could spell trouble for reality shows in general.

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor says it's looking into whether the hit show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" is complying with the state's child labor law. TLC said Friday it "fully complies" with state laws and regulations.

***

The Labor Department received a complaint against the show and is "gathering information" from its representatives, department spokesman Justin Fleming told The Associated Press. Fleming would not say when the complaint was filed or who filed it.

The fact a complaint is being investigated doesn't necessarily mean the department believes the show did anything wrong.

"Any complaint we get, we investigate," Fleming said.

Here's the legal issue:

Child actors and other young performers are protected by Pennsylvania labor law, but it's not clear whether the law applies to reality TV. Investigators will have to decide whether the Gosselins' house in southeastern Pennsylvania is essentially a TV set where producers direct much of the action — in which case the law may apply — or a home where the kids aren't really working but are simply living their lives, albeit in front of the cameras.

What are the repercussions?  Forget about child labor -- that's important as far as the Gosselin kids are concerned, but there are bigger issues than that.  Specifically, if it looks like, under the eyes of the law, reality shows are deemed to be "directed", with the "stars" being "employees" rather than, say, "subjects of documentaries", that opens up a whole host of legal issues in the areas of labor and employment law, actors unions, and other matters.

Put another way, this investigation has the potential to expose, if only a little bit, so-called "reality" shows for what they often really are: unscripted yet staged dramas with non-actors.  And, I hope, perhaps their popularity might diminish once people realize that what they're watching isn't really "reality".

Ending This Once And For All

Rich Tucker at Townhall, saying succinctily what many on the right are saying about Sonia Sotomayor:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said back then. Oh? She seems to be saying a person’s ethnicity or gender (or both) would make that person better able to read the law than a person of a different ethnicity or gender. That’s a nakedly discriminatory statement.

She "seems to be saying"?  Good God, man.  It's in English, not some code.

And in plain English, what she IS saying is not a blanket statement that all Latinos and/or all women would make a better judge than any white man.  She's talking about wise Latina women who have had experiences (by virtue of being in a double minority) that white males have not had.

And she's not even saying it as a statement of fact.  It's a statement of desire.  The first three words are "I would hope...."

Words have meaning, and only the feverish anti-Obama partisans are drinking the Koolaid regarding this fast-and-loose re-interpretation of what Sotomayor said.  The rest of us understand.

Quote Of The Day

"It's like, `Oh great, we made the cut.'"

-- David Hyde Pierce, on the California Supreme Court ruling (Pierce was one of the 18,000 same-sex couples who wed in California, and whose gay marriage remains valid despite the recent court ruling)

In Honor Of Sonia Sotomayor

Rita Morena and a cast of racists put their bigotry to music...

Meanwhile, a small chorus of conservatives are coming out urging that Republican opposers of Sotomayor show restraint, and get away from the silly "racist" name-calling.  Even the Wall Street Journal is saying, "Republicans, Let's Play Grown-Up", to which John Cole responds:

Does anyone honestly think they can dial back the crazy on this? It seems like it is already out there and way too late. You’ve had Rush, Newt, Tancredo and others calling her a racist for days, you have all the groups that stand to do some serious moneymaking out there screaming radical activist (think Wendy Long and company), and the assorted right-wing magazines like Commentary and NRO and the Weekly Standard have already pretty much staked out a position on the lunatic fringe, and of course the WingNet has followed suit. How do you roll that back?

Can the Wurlitzer play in reverse?

UPDATE:  I guess the call to conservatives to be nice and adult didn't reach this clown:

Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing's all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. [...]

"I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, 'the race.' And that should not surprise anyone because she's already on record with a number of racist comments." [...]

"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

Wow, racist and misogynistic.  These people just can't help but show their ugly nature.

Dear Michael Steele

I read your article in Politico.  I see you were trying to strike a theme:

Republicans have engaged in some healthy soul-searching since Election Day, trying to come to grips with our minority status and debating the best way forward....

To accomplish this goal Republicans are turning a corner in three important ways: First, the Republican Party will be forward-looking – it is time to stop looking backward...

Republicans are emerging once again with the energy, the focus, and the determination to turn our timeless principles into new solutions for the future...

Okay.  Forward-looking, future-oriented.  Got it.

So I hit a wall when I read this, toward the end of your article:

The Republican Party has turned a corner, and as we move forward Republicans should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan.

Eeeeeeeerp! *CRASH*

Reagan?  Who became president a generation ago?  Reagan?  That's "forward-looking"?

Care to 'splain?

Again, we’re not looking back – if Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward.

That has to be the most unintentionally funny-in-an-ironic-way statement I've read in ages.  Dude, you're invoking a long-dead, hopeless irrelevant Ronald Reagan to support your thesis of not looking backward!

Fail.

In order to go forward, the Reagan worship has to stop.  A few weeks ago, Jon Chait explained that the conservatives' approach too often consists of "latching onto an old president, glossing over the reality of his record, and trying to recreate all of his actions whether or not they have any bearing upon the circumstances of the present day.... The 'philosophical content' of Reagan-worship is a cult-like process for circumscribing original thought."

Indeed. And it shows no signs of letting up.

Laodicean

...meaning "indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion".

That was the winning word in last night's Scripps 82nd Annual National Spelling Bee:

Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, spelled "laodicean," Thursday night to take top honors in the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The eighth-grader won $40,000 in cash and prizes for nailing the final word. Pronounced lay-odd-uh-see-an, the word means lukewarm or indifferent, particularly in matters of politics or religion.

This year's bee -- an event that has skyrocketed in popularity, thanks to exposure on television and in movies -- started on Tuesday in Washington with a record 293 spellers.

The competition went 15 rounds. Spellers ranged from 9 to 15 years old. According to the contest's Web site, 117 of the spellers speak languages other than English, and English was not the first language of 33 of the spellers.

The first National Spelling Bee was in 1925 and featured nine contestants.

In an event that has seen contestants visibly crack under the strain of the national spotlight in past years, Shivashankar -- competing in her fourth national finals -- appeared composed throughout.

As she spelled words that included "phoresy," "hydrargyrum" and "huisache," she calmly went through the routine of asking each word's pronunciations, origin and roots before ticking them off for the judges.

Her father, who is her spelling coach, would tap his foot in time as she spelled the words and at one point appeared so confident that he waved to someone while his daughter was in the middle of spelling a word.

Second-place finisher Tim Ruiter of Reston, Virginia, bowed out after misspelling "Maecenas," a generous patron of the arts.

Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, was in the audience to watch the finals, which were nationally televised on ABC.

Shivashankar attends California Trail Junior High School. Her hobbies including swimming, cycling and traditional Indian dance, according to the contest's Web site. She plans to become a neurosurgeon.

Downfall Redux

One of my favorite internet memes is to take the bunker scene from the film Downfall (a German movie about the last days of Hitler, which was nominated in 2005 for the Academy Award, Best Foreign Language Film) and add "better" subtitles.  It's that simple, but the results are often laugh-out-loud funny.

Here is one entitled "Real Estate Downfall":

In this one, Hitler reacts with displeasure to the new Star Trek movie:

And Hitler reacts badly to Twitter problems:

Okay.  Those last two were kind of geeky.  How about Hitler learning there's no Santa Claus?

And of course, the meme gets meta, as Hitler learns that the subtitles are changed:

There's plenty more if you search Youtube.....

Teen Txt Translator

LG (maker of Voyager and other cell phones) has provided a web service called DTXTR (de-text-er) which translates teen txt shorthand to English, and vice versa.

That's because (according to LG), teens text an average of 1700 times per month (wow!); texting is more common than actual phone calls.  (And 42% of teens report that they can txt with their eyes closed!)

As a result, a whole new shorthand lingo has developed.  And we old farts (parents) need to keep up apparently.

Look for example, at LG's glossary of txt terms -- this is for acronyms beginning with Y only.

Y	Why?
YA	Yet Another
YABA	Yet Another Bloody Acronym
YACC	Yet Another Calendar Company
YAFIYGI	You Asked For It You Got It
YAOTM	Yet Another Off Topic Message
YAUN	Yet Another Unix Nerd
YBS	You'll Be Sorry
YBY	Yeah Baby Yeah
YCT	Your Comment To
YDKM	You Don't Know Me
YEPPIES	Young Experimenting Perfection Seekers
YGBK	You Gotta Be Kidding
YGLT	You're Gonna Love This
YGTBK	You've Got To Be Kidding
YGWYPF	You Get What You Pay For
YHM	You Have Mail
YIC	Yours In Christ
YIU	Yes, I Understand
YIWGP	Yes, I Will Go Private
YKW	You Know What
YKWIM	You Know What I Mean
YM	Your Mother
YMAK	You May Already Know
YMMV	Your Mileage May Vary
YNK	You Never Know
YOYO	You're On Your Own
YR	Yeah Right
YRYOCC	You're Running on Your Own Cookoo Clock
YS	You Stinker
YSAN	You're Such A Nerd
YSIC	Why Should I Care?
YSK	You Should Know
YSYD	Yeah, Sure You Do
YTB	You're The Best
YTRNW	Yeah That's Right, Now What?
YTTT	You Telling The Truth
YUPPIES	Young Urban Professionals
YW	You're Welcome
YWIA	You're Welcome In Advance
YY4U	Too Wise For You
YYSSW	Yeah Yeah Sure Sure Whatever

As for me, I'll pass, thank you.

Catch The "Wave"

Ten years ago, nobody knew what it was to "blog" or "text" or "tweet" or "IM".

So what new thingee will we be doing 2-3 years from now?

I predict that we'll be "waving", thanks to Google.

What is the "wave"?  Well, it's hard to describe.  Basically, the folks at Google were wondering why we communicate in different ways -- email vs. chat, conversation vs. documents, etc.  They decided to combine it all.  The result they got?  Google Wave.

Oh, it's not out yet.  But this is how Google describes it:

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

Here's a pic (click to embiggen):

Yeah, ok.  Cool.  But here's the $64,000 question: why?  I guess it might be good if two or more people are collaborating on, say, a screenplay or something.  In fact, that might be kind of fun.  But what other uses might it have?

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter.  There's no "why" to Twitter or Facebook either, but people seem to gravitate to it.

So I'm going on the record as predicting that in 2011, we'll all be "waving".  For better or for worse.

Delayed Gratification And SAT Scores

Wow.  Parents, take note.

This recent New Yorker article on the Stanford research is very compelling.

The test went like this: put a marshmallow on the table in front of a four-year-old; tell the child that he or she can either eat the marshmallow now, or leave it uneaten for a while (15-20 minutes) and receive a second marshmallow at the end of the test; have the researcher leave the room for the prescribed period of time; if the child sits alone with the marshmallow for the test period and does not eat the treat, the researcher returns and gives the child two marshmallows to eat. This a test of delayed gratification — the ability for a person to put off the instant thrill of one marshmallow for the promise of two marshmallows down the road.  (The research also involved treats other than marshmallows — including small toys and other treats — presumably to control for kids who just don’t like marshmallows.)

Here’s a snippet (emphasis added):

Most of the children [struggled] to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. “A few kids ate the marshmallow right away,” Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. “They didn’t even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later.” About thirty per cent of the children, however, were like Carolyn. They successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist.

… Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

Two hundred and ten SAT points?  That's astounding!

No Wonder Conservatives Hate Science

Because science hates them.  Here's the abstract from a recent issue of a scholarly journal called Intelligence, describing a study funded by the National Institute of Education:

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

Ouch.  That's gonna leave a mark.

A conservative tries to spin the study, trying to make it NOT say that conservatives are stupid:

But there’s a more basic reason the conservatism-is-stupid argument does not actually follow from this research. As long as smarter people are more likely to be skeptical of tradition, then full-blown rejection of tradition will almost inevitably be associated with higher IQ, even if a majority of smart people still favor traditionalism.

Ummmmmm, what?  Okay, whatever, but the study has nothing to do with acceptance or rejection of traditionalism.  It has to do with cognitive ability.  Conservatives have lower cognitive abilities and less education, period.  That's what the study found.

On a related note, the people at the National Organization for Marriage (who provided that wonderful "The Gathering Storm" ad a couple of months ago), have a new ad.  Pay particular attention to the final image (and if you need help), read below the fold.

 

Sotomayer's Supposedly "Terrible" Reversal Rate

Steve Benen addresses this argument:

The conservative Washington Times ran a headline yesterday that read, "Sotomayor reversed 60% by high court." The article quoted a right-wing activist saying, "Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record."

Rachel Maddow had a great segment on this GOP talking point last night, and it's worth keeping in mind as the debate over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination continues, not only because it's likely to be repeated quite a bit, but also because it points to a certain desperation in the judge's detractors.

Sotomayor has been on the appeals court federal bench for over a decade, and during her career, she's written 380 rulings for the 2nd Circuit's majority. Of those 380, five have been considered on appeal to the Supreme Court. And of those five, three have reversed the lower court's decision. That's how the right gets to a 60% reversal rating -- three out of five, as opposed to three out of 380.

Of course, if that 60% figure were really scandalous, the right should have balked at the Alito nomination -- he had two of his rulings considered by the high court, and both were overturned. (That's a 100% rating! He must have been a horrible judge!)

The irony is, Sotomayor's reversal numbers are actually better than the norm, not worse. Media Matters noted yesterday, "[A]ccording to data compiled by SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor's reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present -- both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term."

And yet, conservative media personalities nevertheless continue to tout this as evidence of a Sotomayor weakness, either unaware or unconcerned about how completely wrong the argument is.

Next?

The Newest Anti-Sotomayor Meme

OMG! OMG!  She's a member of "La Raza" which means "The Race"!  Scary foreign-sounding name, so it must be a scary radical terrorist group or something.

Seriously, that's the cry from the far right this afternoon:

As President Obama's Supreme Court nominee comes under heavy fire for allegedly being a "racist," Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, a group that's promoted driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police.

According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the NCLR, which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S.

Meaning "the Race," La Raza also has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of America.

Love that language -- "has connections to groups that advocate...".  This from the right wing, which only weeks ago was all about seccession.

You can click through to La Raza yourself (they merely represent Latino interests in the areas of assets/investments, civil rights/immigration, education, employment and economic status, and health), but if you want a quick snapshot of just how radical it is, take a gander at some of its corporate sponsors.  These are photo captures of La Raza's 2008 Annual Report...

 

 

Yeah, that's one scaaaaary organization....

Virginia: For Lovers, But Not Smilers

The Virginia DMV now bans smiles on all driver's licenses.  Seriously.

Today's Favorite Lede Paragraph

From Goshen, NH:

GOSHEN — State police say a construction company owner shot his only employee on two different days this month with a BB gun and now faces felony assault and other charges.

Twice?

On two different days?

Why, oh why would the employee be anywhere near the company owner after being shot the first time?

Sotomayor, Minority Status, and "Empathy"

The Republicans are going to go ballistic about this quote from the Supreme Court nominee:

"[W]hen a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

"And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, 'You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.' ...

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

You see?  She is going to take her heritage and background "into account"!

Except -- gotcha!  -- that quote wasn't from Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor; it was from Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito during his 2005 confirmation hearings.

Here's what Glenn Greenwald has to say regarding Justice Sam Alito on empathy and judging:

Anyone who is objecting now to Sotomayor's alleged "empathy" problem but who supported Sam Alito and never objected to this sort of thing ought to have their motives questioned (and the same is true for someone who claims that a person who overcame great odds to graduate at the top of their class at Princeton, graduate Yale Law School, and then spent time as a prosecutor, corporate lawyer, district court judge and appellate court judge must have been chosen due to "identity politics").  And the idea that her decision in Ricci demonstrates some sort of radicalism -- when she was simply affirming the decision of a federal district judge, was part of a unanimous circuit panel in doing so, was supported by a majority of her fellow Circuit judges who refused to re-hear the case, and will, by all accounts, have at least several current Supreme Court Justices side with her -- is frivolous on its face.

Yup.  So these talking heads are going to have to explain why Sam Alito is NOT a racist:

And while I'm at it, what's this with calling Sotomayor a "reverse racist"?  That's what Rush and others are saying, based on an out-of-context quote in which she expresses the hope that her life experiences as a minority and woman would make her a better jurist than a white man who didn't have those experiences.

Why is that reverse racism?  If it's anything, it's racism (and it's not that).  If racism is not liking someone of a different ethnic group, then "reverse racism" would be not liking someone of your own group, I would think.

Sure, I get the reasoning at work here: those who hate whites are reverse racists; whites who hate others are regular ol' racists.  But isn't making that distinction itself racist?

UPDATE:  Mark Krekorian over at NRO's The Corner has found yet another reason to dislike Sotomayor (pronounced Sot-oh-may-YORE):

Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.

To which I respond....

 

By the way, EVERYTHING about Sotomayor you read, see and hear over the next few months is just political theatre.  She's going to be confirmed.  That's so patently obvious that one wonders why anyone is bothering to object.

The Prop 8 Battle Continues

Ted Olson and David Boies in the same courtroom.  Last time that happened it was in Bush (Olson) v. Gore (Boies).  But now they have teamed up to fight Tuesday's decision by the California Supreme Court on Proposition 8:

A lawsuit filed in federal district court states that Proposition 8 -- which eliminated the right of same sex couples to marry in California -- creates a class of "second-class citizens" and thereby violates the U.S. Constitution. The suit also calls for an injunction against Proposition 8 until the case is resolved, which would immediately reinstate marriage rights to same sex couples.  [...]

The plaintiffs are represented by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies. Olson, a former U.S. Solicitor General, represented George W. Bush in 2000’s Bush v. Gore, which decided the presidential election. Boies represented Al Gore in that case.  [...]

"Yesterday, the California Supreme Court said that the California Constitution compels the State to discriminate against gay men and lesbians who have the temerity to wish to express their love and commitment to one another by getting married," Olson said. "These are our neighbors, co-workers, teachers, friends, and family, and, courtesy of Prop 8, California now prohibits them from exercising this basic, fundamental right of humanity. Whatever discrimination California law now might permit, I can assure you, the United States Constitution does not."

"Mr. Olson and I are from different ends of the political spectrum, but we are fighting this case together because Proposition 8 clearly and fundamentally violates the freedoms guaranteed to all of us by the Constitution," Boies said. "Every American has a right to full equality under the law. Same sex couples are entitled to the same marriage rights as straight couples. Any alternative is separate and unequal and relegates gays and lesbians to a second class status."

Their argument is that Proposition 8:

• Violates the Due Process Clause by impinging on fundamental liberties,

• Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,

• Singles out gays and lesbians for a disfavored legal status, thereby creating a category of "second-class citizens,"

• Discriminates on the basis of gender, and,

• Discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

It seems simple and unarguable, yet Proposition 8 was upheld. The question is, why?  

Opponents of the proposition asked the court to overturn the ballot measure on the grounds that banning same-sex marriage changed the tenets of the state Constitution and therefore amounted to a revision, which can be placed on the ballot only by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. Proposition 8 reached the ballot after a signature drive.

In Tuesday's ruling, the court said Proposition 8 "adds but a single, simple section to the Constitution" and therefore was a constitutional amendment and not a revision.

Of course, the California court only considered Prop 8 under the California Constitution.  Olson and Boies are challenging Prop 8 based on federal Constitution grounds  And if they win there, then all states must accept gay marriages (since federal law trumps state law).

I'm not optimistic for this to happen.  But if any legal powerhouse can get this done, it's Olson-Boies.

Sotomayor Socialist

It's early yet, but I'll bet we're going to hear LOTS about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's 1976 Princeton yearbook photo.

 

Who is this "Norman Thomas" that she quotes?  From Wikipedia:

Norman Mattoon Thomas (1884—1968) was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

Oh, hell's bells.

UPDATE:  And if you don't think the Sotomayor opposition isn't already being overly-silly, read this -- and no, it's not from The Onion:

Sotomayor delivered the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

Conservative critics have latched onto the speech as evidence that Sotomayor is an “activist judge,” who will rule on the basis of her personal beliefs instead of facts and law.

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” Sotomayor said. “My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with chickpeas — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Oy.  And no, it's really not a joke:

I called Bolton earlier today and asked him whether this was for real--whether any conservatives were genuinely raising this issue. He confirmed, saying, "a source I spoke to said people were discussing that her [speech] had brought attention...she intimates that what she eats somehow helps her decide cases better."

Bolton said the source was drawing, "a deductive link," between Sotomayor's thoughts on Puerto Rican food and her other statements. And I guess the chain goes something like this: 1). Sotomayor implied that her Latina identity informs her jurisprudence, 2). She also implied that Puerto Rican cuisine is a crucial part of her Latina identity, 3). Ergo, her gastronomical proclivities will be a non-negligible factor for her when she's considering cases before the Supreme Court.

Double oy.

Oh Who Gives A Sh*t?

The New York Times covers the American Idol scandal:

AT&T, one of the biggest corporate sponsors of “American Idol,” might have influenced the outcome of this year’s competition by providing phones for free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, the Arkansas singer who was the winner of the show last week.

Representatives of AT&T, whose mobile phone network is the only one that can be used to cast “American Idol” votes via text message, provided the free text-messaging services at two parties in Arkansas after the final performance episode of “American Idol” last week, according to the company and people at the events.

There appear to have been no similar efforts to provide free texting services to supporters of Adam Lambert, who finished as the runner-up to Mr. Allen.

I thought Susan Boyle was a shoo-in.

100 Best Movies Lines

How many do you recognize?

Answer Engine

The web is full of fancy search engines, some of which claim to not only search, but to give answers.   For example, if you google "45 meters into yards", it will do that conversion.

But there's a new experiment out there called Wolfram/Alpha which is trying to "make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone".  In short, it is an answer engine, or, as they put it, "'a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links."

What does that mean?  Well, click the link above and play around.  At first it seemed rather limited to me, but as I experimented more, I realized it had pretty strong capabilities.  For example, I wanted to know what the weather was on the day I was born (in Omaha, Nebraska).  I simply typed "weather in omaha on september 27 1962" and learned not only that I was born on a Thursday, but that it was 56 degrees and partly cloudy.  Google can't do that.

Find out the cast of obscure movies.  And yes, if you type "woodchuck chuck", it will tell you how much wood a woodchuck would chuck.

And even though it is billed as an ongoing project, and its knowledge base is expected to grwo, it already knows the answer to the "meaning of life".  Not bad.

21st Century Etiquette

The New York Times examines the (im)propriety of texting at the dinner table.  Making a phone call at the table is an obvious faux pas, but what about the less intrusive texting? 

As you might expect, working husbands and teenage daughters don't see it as a problem.  But there are exceptions:

Brigid Wright, 17, from Needham, Mass., said that like many teenagers, she has honed the skill of eating with one hand and texting with the other. But, she said (and her family confirms), she does not text at the table at home.

“No teenager wants to look up from a glowing cellphone screen to see a disappointed parent frowning across the table,” she wrote in an e-mail message.

Ms. Boyd is 31. Sometimes she looks up from her glowing iPhone screen to see her husband, Gilad Lotan, a Microsoft designer, frowning at her across the table.

“If I’m sitting there privately responding to messages, Gilad might say, ‘Hey, I thought we were at dinner,’ ” she said. “I’ll be, like, ‘Hmm, sorry, just doing this quickly.’ ”

They both bring their iPhones to the table, she said, using them as conversational tools. If they’re debating a question, for instance, they might use their phones to look up the answer.

They try to avoid texting, she said, “if it’s a dinner where we’re trying to be engaged.” (As opposed to a dinner “where we both need food in our systems so we can both get back to work.”).

There is no texting or e-mailing at the dinner table in Lydia Shire’s home, in Weston, Mass. “My son would never dream of texting at the table,” said Ms. Shire, a chef and restaurant owner in Boston. “And he wouldn’t do it at anyone else’s table, either.”

As for me, I'm amazed that families still sit down to dinner together.

Cali Supremes Uphold Gay Marriage Ban

Not entirely unexpected, but in a six-to-one decision, the California Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gay marriage, the Proposition 8 referendum voters approved last November. The court ruled that Prop. 8 “constitutes a permissible constitutional amendment (rather than an impermissible constitutional revision).”

Silver lining: the court declared that the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted last summer, prior to the passage of the proposition, would remain legal and recognized.  I think this presents an odd legal problem -- how can 18,000 gay marriages be considered legal when the rest of California’s gays are legally forbidden from marriage?

Importantly, though the court upheld the ban on the use of the term “marriage” by same-sex coupes, it reaffirmed the fundamental constitutional rights of gay couples:

[T]he measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term “marriage” for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law, but leaving undisturbed all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

Indeed, the bulk of the court’s May 2008 ruling that originally legalized gay marriage — which emphasized “respect and dignity” — stands.

In a blistering dissenting opinion, Justice Carlos Moreno wrote that the decision "weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority." Moreno also rejected the majority's claim that banning full marriage rights was a "narrow" civil rights restriction for gay couples. Regardless how narrow the restriction, he argued, the ruling violates these couples' right to equal protection:

Denying the designation of marriage to same-sex couples cannot fairly be described as a “narrow” or “limited” exception to the requirement of equal protection; the passionate public debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, even in a state that offers largely equivalent substantive rights through the alternative of domestic partnership, belies such a description. [...]

But even a narrow and limited exception to the promise of full equality strikes at the core of, and thus fundamentally alters, the guarantee of equal treatment that has pervaded the California Constitution since 1849. Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment to all. Promising treatment that is almost equal is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment. Granting a disfavored minority only some of the rights enjoyed by the majority is fundamentally different from recognizing, as a constitutional imperative, that they must be granted all of those rights.

He's right, of course.  But I suspect that in a few years, or one generation at the most, California will come around and overturn Prop 8.

So It's Sotomayer

You probably know this by now:

President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.

Judge Sotomayor, who stood next to the president during the announcement, was described by Mr. Obama as “an inspiring woman who I am confident will make a great justice.”

The president said he had made his decision after “deep reflection and careful deliberation,” and he made it clear that the judge’s inspiring personal story was crucial in his decision. Mr. Obama praised his choice as someone possessing “a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law.”

But those essential qualities are not enough, the president said. Quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Obama said, “The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience.” It is vitally important that a justice know “how the world works, and how ordinary people live,” the president said.

I co-argued in front of her once, before she was appointed to the Second Circuit, and found her to be very competent and prepared.

Regarding her jurisprudence, there isn't much for conservatives to object.  She certainly leans "liberal", but not too the point of circumnavigating clear and established law.  In her biggest abortion case, for example, she denied a claim brought by an abortion rights group challenging a Bush policy that prohibited foreign organizations that receive foreign funds from performing or supporting abortions.  Her biggest decision in the field of environmental law also happened to go against environmental groups.  (A rundown of her major decisions can be found here).

But that hasn't stopped the early cirticism.  The (predictable) theme seems to be that she will rule based on her own prejudices, rather than the law.  Exhibit A for this seems to be the recent case of Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor's highest profile case to date.  Sotomayer joined the decision of an en banc panel of the Second Circuit, which upheld a lower court decision denying a lawsuit by white firefighters in New Haven. 

In Ricci, the town of New Haven refused to certify the results of a civil firefighter examination, after the results showed that blacks did unusually worse on it (leading to allegations that the examination itself may have had a racial bias).  New Haven refused to certify the results in order to protect itself against a Title VI civil rights lawsuit.  The white firefighters sued, but the lower court rejected the lawsuit.  The Second Circuit (including Sotomayor) upheld the lower court decision.  The case was recently appealed and re-argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the decision will probably come out before Sotomayor is confirmed.

There exists a couple problems with using Ricci as the blunt instrument to hit Sotomayor with.  For one thing, it doesn't really jibe with the allegation that Sotomayor will be swayed by her own personal bias -- after all, she is Hispanic, and so was one of the white firefighters who filed the lawsuit and lost.  Secondly, the court was showing deference to the legislative process, which is something conservatives complain that liberal judges don't do.

With the GOP in disarray, it will be interesting to see how senators will vote and more importantly, why they will vote a certain way. The Republicans accidentally sent out their talking points to the media. Here are the talking points:

o President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is an important decision that will have an impact on the United States long after his administration.

o Republicans are committed to a fair confirmation process and will reserve judgment until more is known about Judge Sotomayor's legal views, judicial record and qualifications.

o Until we have a full view of the facts and comprehensive understanding of Judge Sotomayor's record, Republicans will avoid partisanship and knee-jerk judgments - which is in stark contrast to how the Democrats responded to the Judge Roberts and Alito nominations.

o To be clear, Republicans do not view this nomination without concern. Judge Sotomayor has received praise and high ratings from liberal special interest groups. Judge Sotomayor has also said that policy is made on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

o Republicans believe that the confirmation process is the most responsible way to learn more about her views on a number of important issues.

o The confirmation process will help Republicans, and all Americans, understand more about judge Sotomayor's thoughts on the importance of the Supreme Court's fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law.

o Republicans are the minority party, but our belief that judges should interpret rather than make law is shared by a majority of Americans.

o Republicans look forward to learning more about Judge Sotomayor's legal views and to determining whether her views reflect the values of mainstream America.

President Obama on Judicial Nominees

o Liberal ideology, not legal qualification, is likely to guide the president's choice of judicial nominees.

o Obama has said his criterion for nominating judges would be their "heart" and "empathy."

o Obama said he believes Supreme Court justices should understand the Court's role "to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process."

o Obama has declared: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old-and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges."

Additional Talking Points

o Justice Souter's retirement could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for:

o Further eroding the rights of the unborn and property owners;

o Imposing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

o Stripping "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and completely secularizing the public square;

o Abolishing the death penalty;

o Judicial micromanagement of the government's war powers.

That's pretty tame if you ask me.  The GOP is in a bit of a bind -- how are they to oppose a Hispanic and a woman, who is left but not FAR left, and who is (by all accounts) intelligent and qualified?  AND who many voted for in 1998?  Ed Kilgore writes about the risks for the GOP in opposing the nominee:

Conservatives could definitely try to turn Sotomayor into a latter-day Lani Guinier, and turn her confirmation hearings into a white male pity party, all about identity politics. This would not, of course, go over very well with Latinos, who will naturally feel strongly about their first-ever Supreme Court nominee, and who probably think white men have been pretty well represented in the Court’s history.

The rightwing punditry is a little more unhinged in their opposition.  Take Glenn Beck this morning, who tweeted:

"Does the nominee still have Diabetes? Could the Messiah heal her, or does she just not want to ask?"

Hmmmm.  Such important relevant questions by the loyal opposition.

Anyway, it's off to the races.  I predict a lot of fury [UPDATE: and lies], but in the end, she will pass easily.

UPDATE: Perhaps I should address the "controversy" surrounding Sotomayor regarding her statement in a symposium that the appellate courts are where "policy is made".  This no doubt will be used by conservatives to bolster the argument that Sotomayor will ignore the law and simply use the court to dictate her policy.  Here is Sotomayor making the statement, in context:

The best rebuttal to this comes from the Anonymous Liberal:

The context, as Orin Kerr helpfully explains in this post, is that Sotomayor was explaining the differences between clerking at the District Court level and clerking at the Court of Appeals level. Her point, which is unquestionably true as a descriptive matter, is that judicial decision making at the Court of Appeals level is more about setting policy, whereas judging at the District Court level is a more about deciding individual cases and disputes. And the reason for this is obvious. Decisions at the Court of Appeals level don't just determine the fates of individual litigants; they serve as controlling precedent for all District Court judges within that circuit. Thus any decision by a Court of Appeals becomes the policy of that circuit, at least until it's overruled by the Supreme Court (which is rare).

There is nothing remotely controversial about this. Cases get appealed to the Circuit Court level for one reason: because the answer to the question being litigated is not clear. When the law is clear, no one bothers to appeal (because it's really expensive). A Court of Appeals grapples with the difficult questions, the gray areas in the law, and ultimately issues rulings one way or the other. These rulings then become the policy of that particular circuit, serving as controlling precedent in future cases. This is just as true in the ultra-conservative Fourth Circuit as it is the more liberal Ninth Circuit.

But in Simplistic Republican World, none of this actually happens. Good conservative judges don't "make policy," they simply enforce the law. The law is apparently always clear. Indeed it's a wonder that lawyers even bother to appeal cases in the Fourth Circuit. After all, they should know that the conservative jurists in that circuit will simply "enforce the law" (because they wouldn't dream of "making policy"), so the outcome should be very predictable.

Undoubtedly conservatives will point to Sotomayor's reaction to her own words as evidence that she was letting slip some secret about how liberal judges actually operate. But the obvious truth is that she was merely anticipating that some clown like Orrin Hatch might someday twist her worlds to mean something they don't. She was talking about how all judges operate at the Court of Appeals level. If you're not thinking about the policy implications (i.e., the precedential effect) of your rulings, you're not doing your job.