A Christmas Martyr

In what tragically doesn't surprise me in the slightest, the Washington Times and Han Van Spokavosky both pen pieces decrying the persecution of Joe "War on Law" Arpaio. (Via).

Go Sox

I love this piece, mostly because it is accompanied by the perfect photo of Professor Nussbaum. It's 100% "Oh yeah, I'm actually even more badass than you knew. Turns out, that is possible."

The Physics of Space Battles

One of the coolest sci-fi-esque articles I've read in a long time.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superfederalist!

The compromise the Senate finally hammered out on Stupak's language was that states can impose the Stupak rules on their own exchanges, but the rules will not be imposed by the federal legislation (apparently, somehow, there will be at least one plan per state guaranteed to have abortion coverage).

But David Waldman says that isn't far enough: "I think states should leave the abortion question up to the counties. Then I think counties should leave the abortion question up to municipalities. Then the neighborhoods should leave the abortion question up to each block." And then each block, to the household, and household member.

"Travel" Day

I'm flying to Florida tomorrow.

Hahaha! Obviously, I'm kidding. What I'm really going to do is wake up at the crack of dawn, try to get to the airport through a hellicious snowstorm, sit in the terminal as my plane is delayed indefinitely, and then eventually go home once it is canceled.

UPDATE: Never even made it out of my bedroom. We made a judgment call that our flight wasn't going to ever get out. Right call: It was delayed until 2:00 before it was canceled (it was scheduled for 10:00 AM).

The Espino Carleton Connection

Miguel Espino (20-2-1, 9 KOs), the handpicked opponent for Kelly Pavlik's return from a hand injury, doesn't have much of chance to win his fight this weekend. But he does have a sibling who attended Carleton College. So now, he's automatically one of my favorite fighters.

(His sister apparently transferred out to CSU-Northridge to be closer to their legally blind mother. But once a Carl, always a Carl -- I've known a few people who transferred out who later transferred back in. We hold on to our own).

It's Tough Being Meek

I may have spoken too soon regarding the impact of Marco Rubio's recent surge in his Republican primary Senate race against Charlie Crist. Though the conventional wisdom held that Meek would had a better shot against the far-right Rubio than the centrist and popular Crist, a new poll has Rubio with a considerably wider lead over Meek than Crist does -- mostly because Rubio has nailed down the support of the right more effectively.

I still think in the context of a general election race, the conventional wisdom is right that Meek is better off against Rubio than Crist, but this does give one pause.

Traveler's Roundup

The writing just ain't happening, and for that I apologize. I'm packing today, flying home tomorrow morning (and pretty soon after that turning right around and flying out to Florida).

* * *

Cancel tax-exempt status for funders of the settlements. I had some pretty harsh words for the Hebron fundraiser mentioned in the post.

Doing some research, I stumbled across this old profile/interview with legendary organizer Saul Alinsky.

Good news for my summer employment: DC is leading the pack of cities seeing earlier-than-expected economic recovery.

It's hard to believe that Joe Arpaio is real, let alone popular. But if ever there was someone whose hubris is going to bring about his downfall, I'd tag him for the honor.

Lou Dobbs has been huffing glue (how's that for hyperbole?).

Marco Rubio has all the momentum in the Florida Senate Republican primary. Good news for Democrats -- Kendrick Meek was dead in the water against the popular government, but has a strong chance against the extreme-right Rubio.

Tim Starks has his nominees up for knockout of the year. There really is only one choice (Pacquaio KO2 Hatton), but they're still fun to watch (any other year, Randall).

Columbia introduces co-ed rooms. Fun quote: "I was shocked enough last year when we moved our son in and we saw that guys and girls shared a bathroom on the hall," said Laura Hannon, whose son, Michael, is a Columbia sophomore. "If it had been our daughter, we would have turned around and walked straight out." But since it's your son, happy hunting!

Come and Sing with Me!

Done with exams, done with exams, done-done-done-done-done with exams!

Wind Down Roundup

One more exam to go. Jill just left to go home for break (she'll be coming to DC for New Years), so I'm all alone.

* * *

Military engineers are pioneering so-called "guilty robots" -- robots with complex ethical programming designed to make them better at following the rules of war than humans.

The Nevada brothel industry is now open to men. It was actually just a technicality that had kept male prostitutes out (they can't get a "cervical exam"), but hey, gender equality!

A great profile in Tablet magazine about Salam Fayyad, Palestinian Prime Minister and the man Shimon Peres calls "the Palestinian Ben-Gurion".

Houston became the largest city in the US to elect an openly-gay mayor.

BRICUP may have invited a racist to speak before them, but don't worry, they were quite eager to justify it through dialogue and explanation.

The bill targeting ACORN grants was ruled an unconstitutional bill of attainder. Adam Serwer reminds us of why it is a bad thing for Congress to appoint itself a quasi-judiciary and make determinations of guilt and innocence in response to popular akrasia.

Obama doesn't have a Jewish problem. Rinse, wash, repeat, until it sinks in.

IDF Ordered to Cut Ties with Rejectionist Settler Yeshiva

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (Labor) ordered the IDF to sever its connections with a far-right Yeshiva which had been urging IDF soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate the settlements.

"The defense minister views with considerable gravity any instance of insubordination and he is not ready to accept any deviation from what he views as a red line," the statement read.

"The actions and statements of Rabbi Melamed undermine the foundations of Israeli democracy, actions which incited some of his students to refuse orders, take part in demonstrations, and harm the spirit of the IDF, [actions] which have no place in a properly functioning country."

MK Michael Ben-Ari, of the extremist right-wing party National Union, was displeased:

"Barak, in his belligerent manner, is harming the security of the state of Israel," Ben Ari said. "Canceling the arrangement with the heroes of the Har Bracha yeshiva is a heavy-handed move that is meant to inflate the ego of a politician who is at the end of his road."

"Those who will be harmed [by the move] are the IDF and the state of Israel," the MK said.

Because the IDF is stronger when it is populated by soldiers taught to disobey legal orders. That makes sense.

Fun fact: MK Ben-Ari is a Kahanist and the guy who, responding to the terrorist burning of a West Bank Mosque, stated that "those who wish to wipe out the Jewish people must not expect us to identify with their symbols and centers of incitement. I ran out of condemnations when the synagogues at Gush Katif were burned."

Expel the Darkness

A group of rabbis from the religious Zionist tradition are visiting the Mosque that was burned down by Jewish extremists earlier this week.

Dozens of rabbis and activists from the Religious Zionist camp will visit Sunday the West Bank Palestinian village of Yasuf to protest against the torching of the village's main mosque and to send a message of reconciliation to the Muslim population, Ynet has learned.

During their visit, they will lend a hand in the clean-up and refurbishing efforts at the mosque. They will also donate a number of Korans in place of those that were burned in the fire.
[...]
Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, who heads the yeshiva on the religious kibbutz Maale Gilboa, initiated the event together with Rabbi Avia Rosen from Ein Hanatziv and Rabbi Shmuel Reiner. Rabbi Gilad said, "We came to expel darkness, especially during the days of Hannukah. Light is not added by hurting our brothers, the Muslims, who are the servants of God just as we are. This is an important message to relay."

According to Rabbi Gilad, rabbis from across the spectrum of Religious Zionism and from areas throughout Israel are expected to partake in the event that was put together just Sunday morning. "This is not a political protest, but a humanitarian, moral, and religious issue. We have seen and heard condemnations (of the mosque arson) from both ends of the political spectrum," said Rabbi Gilad.

Rabbi Menachem Froman, the rabbi of the town of Tekoa who speaks with a lot Muslim religious figures, said that the response on the other side was considerable. He noted that the visit is being coordinated with the Palestinian military governor in the region.

"They are receiving us openly. We will drink coffee with them. We will speak about the halachic opposition to what happened there on Friday and just how harsh such an act is from its (halacha's) perspective. We will make a joint prayer for peace," said Rabbi Froman.

Rabbi Froman said that at the conclusion of the event, his son, who speaks Arabic, will sing an Arabic version of the Hannukah song "We Have Come to Expel Darkness" (Banu Hoshech Legaresh).

A good gesture, and a needed one.

Mosque Burns in the West Bank

Seeking to extract a "price tag" for the settlement freeze, Jewish extremists have torched a West Bank mosque and burned their holy books, in an appalling act of terrorism. The attack has been harshly condemned by the Israeli government, the United States, and the IDF. Which is good. And they're looking to bring the perpetrators to justice. Which they should.

But I'm sick of wrist slaps for this sort of thing. What's the penalty if we catch a Hamas operative who snuck into Israel and burned down a synagogue? Whatever that is, that's what these thugs should receive.

Meanwhile, the IDF needs to step up its security measures geared at settler extremists. The level of Palestinian violence flowing out of the West Bank has been steadily dropping for some time. By contrast, the settlers themselves have barely been staunched at all in their harassment of the Palestinian people. Right now, the settlers are as big of a threat to security and peace in the West Bank as are Palestinian extremists, and they should be dealt with accordingly.

The settlers want to put a "price tag" on the rule of law? Well, here's a price for them: long jail times. It couldn't make me happier.

Sticky Slopes Draft Posted

You can download the full text of the draft at my SSRN page. Below is the abstract:

Legal literature is replete with references to the infamous “slippery slope”, basically, where a shift in policy lubricates the path towards further (perhaps more controversial) reforms or measures. Less discussed is the idea of a “sticky slope”. Sticky slopes manifest when a social movement victory acts to block, instead of enable, further policy goals. Instead of greasing the slope down, they effectively make it “stickier”. Despite the lack of scholarly attention, sticky slope arguments show up again and again in legal argument particularly in areas focused on minority rights. Formal legal doctrine can create sticky slopes insofar as it reduces legal protections for marginalized groups as they gain political power. Informally, sticky slopes can also develop through backlash, through legal arguments whose valences drift from their original intention, or through social exhaustion at grappling with the problem of inequality to seemingly little effect. I argue that attentiveness to sticky slopes is important for two reasons. First, awareness of the prospect of a sticky slope can be important in long term social movement strategizing. Where social movements are in pursuit of a cluster of related political ends, they will want to choose their tactics carefully so as to minimize the degree that their past accomplishments can be turned against them. Second, when deployed by legal actors, sticky slope arguments sometimes do not play true causal roles, but instead act as a mask for other, less tolerable justifications. Unmasking sticky slope logic can force legal policymakers to be more explicit about the rationales and implications of their decision.

I'll be presenting this paper at the 2010 Law and Society Conference this May, in a panel entitled "Social Change in Unexpected Ways". The discussant is scheduled to be Gerald Rosenberg, Lecturer in Law and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and author of The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Any comments you have are greatly appreciated -- I love getting feedback.

And I might note, in blogging solidarity, that this paper originally was a blog post I wrote back in May of 2008.

Saving Grace

It unnerves me slightly that this post continues to have a quite active comment thread (perhaps because it is the number one hit for "fuck you google". But at least I won a new fan:

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Aww. It's the readership that makes it all worthwhile.

So Young ... So Very Young

All I can add to this series of photographs of Michael Steele and his interns (aside from the obvious) is that I am utterly unsurprised to see Georgetown Prep so, er, flagrantly represented. Nice belt, dude.

Real America: The Prequel

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been doing some reading on the history of America, cast through the lens of Detroit. This excerpt deals with a libel suit brought by Henry Ford against the Chicago Tribune, which was hammering him as basically an intellectual simpleton:

Daily the Tribune attorneys hammered at his intellectual capacity, knowledge of history and comprehension of world events. On the stand Ford described a "large mobile army" as "a large army mobilized," In response to the question: "What was the United States originally?" he replied: "Land, I guess." Asked to identify Benedict Arnold, he said that he was a writer. The American Revolution, he thought, had taken place in 1812...

The city slickers attack on Ford's IQ misfired, for the upbringing, education and values of the jurors were much like those of Ford. Ruling for Ford they awarded him six cents and court costs...Rural small town Americans, who bought two thirds of the Model T's, acclaimed the verdict. In the cities, Ford was laughed at...

The trial was a microcosm of the conflict between small-town and urban America, between fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism, between a return to insularity and internationalism, between nineteenth century and the twentieth century education. For the moment, the tide seemed to be running backward to the nineteenth century.

"The real United States lies outside the cities," Ford concluded....

The real America lies in those who think it's a symbol of authenticity that you don't know when the American revolution was.

Male Iranian Protesters Don Hijab

As part of their broader crackdown on student democracy activists, the Iranian government arrested Majid Tavakoli, then published a photo of him wearing a headscarf to try and insinuate he and his fellow protesters were unmanly.

Instead, it prompted dozens of male democracy activists to wear hijabs themselves. Cross-dressing, it is worth noting, is illegal in Iran.

Brief Masuku Update

A consortium of prominent British Jewish organizations have called for the removal of the UCU from the Government Group on Antisemitism and Higher Education, after it's decision to host and promote a South African union official found to have engaged in hate speech targeted at the Jewish people.

UCU’s hosting of Masuku and their refusal to engage with the concerns of the Jewish community follows a pattern: the Union refused to address the resignations of large numbers of Jewish academics from UCU in recent years, and summarily rejected members’ complaints of antisemitism. UCU has allowed its politics on Israel to override the concerns of its Jewish members and students. It appears that UCU simply does not care about the anti-Jewish impact of its activities.

It is now hard to see how UCU can continue to play a constructive role in the Government Group on Antisemitism and Higher Education when its latest actions are likely to encourage antisemitism. The Government should review UCU’s membership of this group as it has failed to oppose antisemitism inside its own structures. UCU cannot credibly be a part of the solution to antisemitism while its activities are encouraging the problem.

Meanwhile, there are murmurs that the SAHRC is under significant pressure to revise its decision. That doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- when powerful forces align against the interests of small, vulnerable minorities, judicial (or quasi-judicial) bodies have a difficult time mounting resistance.

War on Law

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio ("America's toughest sheriff") continues his brazen assault on the rule of law, including indicting their political enemies on trumped up charges, publishing personal information, and ignoring valid court orders.

I have to think they've finally stepped too far. It's only a shame that it got to this point.