I’m holding my nose while I link to Drudge, but he is claiming that the NY Times is investigating the adoption of John Roberts’ children. If this is true, the Times should be ashamed. If they really believe that this is appropriate as part of a “routine background investigation” of a Supreme Court nominee, they should be doubly ashamed. If they’re right, and this is what reporting on nominees has become, we should all be ashamed. These are 4 and 5 year old kids, for god’s sake. Leave the man’s family alone.
4
Aug
Yahoo’s new Audio Search looks for music files on the web and on the major (legal) download services. This could be handy for those times that the iTunes Music Store doesn’t have a particular track and I’m curious whether the other major services have it. Of course, since I believe the rental model pushed by the non-Apple services is a Bad Idea, it will have somewhat limited value. It remains to be seen whether Yahoo will eventually favor its own music service if it has trouble competing with ITMS.
4
Aug
Due to our state legislature’s paranoia about meth, I had the privilege of standing in a long line at the Walgreen’s pharmacy counter while my ID was checked and I was entered into a written log of pseudoephedrine buyers, all because I wanted to buy a box of Tylenol Cold. We tried to buy it last night at a Kroger, but couldn’t because the pharmacy counter was closed. I guarantee you that the binder in which I am now recorded as having purchased 840 mg of pseudoephedrine contains a whole lot of people like me. Listed meth cookers is a number approaching zero. So I get to suffer a night without relief so a bunch of legislators in Frankfort can pat each other on the back about having done something about the Great Meth Menace.
It could be worse. At least I didn’t have to go to the doctor for a prescription. And Kentucky police haven’t started entrapping store clerks.
Echoing a distinction I tried to make in my post about the Federalist Society, Orin Kerr looked at one John Roberts memo from 1982, and concludes that Roberts is less a committed political conservative than a committed judicial conservative
It’s hard to read too much into this one memo, but to me it’s consistent with the idea that Roberts is less a committed political conservative than a committed judicial conservative of the Harlan/Frankfurter school. If his views today are the same as they were in 1982, Roberts’ conservatism is a conservatism that “believes in the system” of institutions, not one that pushes the law to reach conservative results. That’s the sense I get from the memo, at least.
I hope this is right, and my sense is that it is. Better to have a Justice who occasionally reaches decisions that are politically unpalatable than one who reaches good ends for bad reasons. Political conservatives are sometimes tempted to use non-conservative means to reach conservative ends, which can be a problem when the precedent is applied by Justices that are both judicially and politically conservative.
Mark Steyn didn’t much like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Fair enough, I guess, although I certainly think he’s wrong. But a couple of points he makes are so off-base that they desire a response. Criticizing Danny Elfman’s score, he says that
the Bricusse & Newley songs were criticised for not being in the spirit of Dahl. ‘Candy Man’ was a fairly transparent bid for a hit, and it became one, thanks to Sammy Davis Jr:…But, while it may not be authentic Dahl, at least it’s something in its own right. Elfman doesn’t seem to do anything except loud orchestral bombast and some clumsily repetitive songs that aren’t quite observant enough to qualify as pastiche. This is a big loss, and one that sums up the differences between the two movies.
This gets it half-right. Anthony Newley’s songs were not only not in the spirit of Dahl, but completely contrary to the tone of the book. Dahl’s Chocolate Factory was a dark place beneath its pastiche of color, and songs like Candyman and Golden Ticket and, yes, the Oompa-Loompa songs are just a little bit too happy and upbeat. Just one of the many ways the 1971 film changed the spirit of the book. Elfman’s songs are not only in the spirit of Dahl, they are Dahl, with lyrics taken directly from the Oompa-Loompa songs in the book. So we don’t just timidly chide Augustus Gloomp for “eating what an elephant eats” but feed him to the gears and slicing knives.
Steyn also joins Gene Wilder in claiming that Burton and Elfman and Depp are only in it for the money:
Lee’s a marvellous actor, but wasted in a lame five-minute subplot about parental bonding. The faux warmth of his scenes with Depp seems particularly odd in a film whose heart is icy cold and never quite shakes the feeling that everyone’s only doing it because someone else told them it would be a great way to make a pile of money. Remake fatigue is setting in with audiences, and this Charlie takes itself way too seriously.
This is just an odd argument. As is conceded on the featurettes on the 1971 film’s DVD, the original existed primarily as a vehicle to launch a line of Wonka candy (now owned by Nestle). In the end, the candy was a flop and the movie eventually became beloved. Now we’re arguing that a movie faithful to the original novel is somehow less virtuous than a 90 minute product placement for candy bars?
Hey Raffy, here’s a shovel. Just keep digging. From finger-wagging denier at Congress’ anti-steroid show trial to “I never intentionally took steroids” to stanozolol user in the course of half a week:
Palmeiro said Monday that he had never intentionally taken steroids, but stanozolol does not come in dietary supplements and is among the most popular steroids on the market. It can be ingested or injected and usually remains in a person’s system for at least a month.
“It’s a mildly strong to strong steroid,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, a professor at New York University who is an expert in sports doping. “Potent is the word I would use.”
Palmeiro’s argument is not technically impossible, as there are Winstrol-containing products that one could theoretically use without knowing about it (a la the Barry Bonds cream and clear), but that argument has become incredibly tenuous. Palmeiro is either a doper or an idiot. Either he’s been juicing and lying about it or he followed up his finger-wagging testimony on Capitol Hill by using products with ingredients he didn’t bother asking about. The former seems more likely than the latter.
My evolution on this topic follows James Joyner’s, who went from giving Raffy the benefit of the doubt to being convinced of his guilt in the course of two days. After the hearing, I belived Palmeiro’s denials – he didn’t look like an overgrown ape like Giambi or McGwire or Canseco. After the test was revealed, I wanted to believe him, and the refusal to disclose the “banned substance” made it possible – maybe it was just a steroid precursor found in a supplement. By yesterday, I was warming to the arguments being made on ESPN’s Cold Pizza (also featuring the inestimable Dr. Wadler) that Palmeiro’s case was greatly weakened by his failure to disclose what he tested positive for and where he thought he was exposed to it. Now this. He’ll still get into the Hall of fame with 3000 hits and 500 HR, but it will always be suspect.
Strangely enough, it’s Canseco who seems to be left with the most credibility.
What is it that makes the Federalist Society so scary to non-lawyers? First, the LA Times describes the society as “secretive”:
In the questionnaire, Roberts took issue with media reports that he was affiliated with the Federalist Society, a somewhat secretive group of conservative lawyers who hold debates and other events designed to promote conservative legal views.
The New York Times goes even further, making the group sound like some sort of cross between Skull and Bones and Opus Dei (the Dan Brown version).
But much of the influence, and most of the intrigue, flows from an informal social network, which members use to advance one another’s causes and careers. Openly and behind the scenes, members have played prominent roles in the most pitched political battles in recent years, including the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the Florida recount fracas in 2000 that led to the election of Mr. Bush.
The society takes few official positions. But to some liberal critics, the activism of its members conjures all they fear about the legal right, from the defense of states’ rights and business interests to attacks on affirmative action, gay rights and abortion. One liberal blog, democrats.com, called the group “the conservative cabal that is attacking America from within.”
Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, did not go that far in an interview last week. But he pointed to the society as a link between Judge Roberts and two Supreme Court justices many on the left abhor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Scalia was a faculty adviser to the society, and Justice Thomas has praised its work and spoken at its events.
“Just because someone belongs to the Federalist Society does not inherently disqualify them,” Mr. Neas said. “But it certainly raises a lot of questions about whether that individual adheres to the judicial philosophy of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia,” who are not “mainstream conservatives,” he said.
A “secretive” group, “attacking America from within” that “doesn’t inherently qualify” a nominee to the Supreme Court? Seems a little over the top. The Federalist Society is quite open about recruitment and activities, with chapters at most law schools and in many cities. I’ve been a member off and on for almost 15 years, ever since a meeting advertised on the law school bulletin board. Never even learned a secret handshake. I did just re-up with the organization just because the press makes it sound sinister, though.
The harshest criticism seems to be social networking and career advancement, but the same could be said of the alumni networks of top-tier law schools, or the fraternity of former judicial clerks. Of course, the underlying concern is that there is a secret cabal of conservatives working to undermine liberal society (kind of like the fictional Constitution in Exile movement). But what does the Federalist Society really stand for? Its website says the group was founded “on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”
That’s a notion of judicial conservatism that liberals object to, and is more or less in line with Scalia/Thomas “originalism”, but it’s not necessarily a politically conservative one. You are as likely to encounter a Federalist Society member who opposes Roe v. Wade as bad law (founded as it was on an inherent, rather than explicit, right to privacy) as one who opposes Roe as bad policy.
The real truth is both obvious and a little boring. The Federalist Society is an easy way to connect John Roberts not only with Scalia and Thomas, but with Robert Bork, Orrin Hatch, Boyden Gray and Ed Meese (all of the latter group being members of the Board of Visitors). Easier than actually making a case about a nominee’s actual views, which is why Dick Durbin asks nominees about it all the time.
[via Michelle Malkin]
