Giving Offense

Took a second stab at apartment hunting today, with considerably more success than the first go-around. With luck, we may have a place to live next year.

Meanwhile, I haven't been able to get this Alyssa Rosenberg post on "offense" off my browser, so now's as good a time as any.

I think that one of the common defenses whipped out by people who make art—or hell, say things in any forum—that’s sexist or racist or transphobic is to say that they’re brave, speaking truths others dare not utter. The thing this, these people rarely speak these so-called truths to unfriendly audiences. And the easiest thing you can do with any audience is to confirm the beliefs they already hold. Sometimes, that can be a useful thing to do. Confirming that people aren’t alone in their beliefs or reactions to things can be a powerful way to bring marginalized people together. And telling people that their beliefs matter and are actionable in the world is a major mobilizing tool. But there’s a difference between those kinds of conversations and affirming people’s fears, prejudices, and need to be superior to someone. If you view giving offense as a sign of courage, it’s much more courageous to poke at your allies rather than the people weaker that you’ve determined to keep that way, to take a broad view, really see what the conventional wisdom is, and then challenge that. There are pieties in every movement, be it left, right, or center. But if you want to skewer them, you have to do better than “bitches be crazy” or “trans people are gross.” Smashing things and causing pain are not the same things as making a point.

What one believes to be unsaid, rarely is.

(Im)Proper Constitutionalism: Roberts' Revenge?

Now that the original frenzy over the ACA ruling has died done (a little), folks are starting to dig a little deeper into the opinions (particularly Roberts') to figure out what it means for the next case (incidentally, you can read the opinions here). Chief Justice Roberts' formulation is that the individual mandate does not lie within Congress' commerce clause power (nor the necessary and proper clause), but functions effectively as a tax and thus is part of Congress' taxing power. Now that I've quickly read over the commerce/N&P parts of the opinions (well, Roberts, Ginsburg, and the joint dissent), I have a few thoughts on them as well.

First thing is first -- I'm not sure I've ever seen as vicious a spanking as Justice Ginsburg delivers to Chief Justice Roberts on the commerce clause question. It is an utter smackdown of epic proportions. She clearly demonstrates that, under existing precedent, the ACA should have been by all rights a slam dunk, and that the parade of horribles Roberts and others have trotted out are more or less fanciful. So you go Justice Ginsburg. Keep on keepin' on.

Some folks are speculating that Chief Justice Roberts is pulling a Marbury -- issuing an opinion that on face is a victory for the President while actually sharply moving doctrine in a new direction undesired by the Chief Justice's political opponents (in Marbury, establishing judicial review, here, sharply circumscribing the Commerce Clause).

Chief Justice Roberts' attempt to atomize the discussion (is this individual person "in the health insurance market"?) is reminiscent of the style of commerce clause analysis the Court rejected in Jones & Laughlin. There, the Court rejected older decisions which looked individually at particular segments of the steel production process and asked if, individually, they were exhibiting a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The Court instead said we should look at the "steel industry" as a whole (which clearly does significantly impact ISC), and then Congress can issue regulations of the steel industry as part of regulating ISC. Similarly, the "health insurance market" is clearly a huge part of interstate commerce, so the question is whether regulating persons who do not possess health insurance substantially effects that market -- which of course it does (Justice Ginsburg's arguments about these persons "proximity" to the market were particularly on target).

But the part of the opinion that is more eyebrow raising to me is not the Commerce Clause analysis, but rather the decision to give the "proper" in "necessary and proper" independent weight. Given McCulloch (and Raich), that the individual mandate satisfies the necessary and proper clause would seem to be obvious -- it is an essential part of Congress' attempts to regulate the health insurance market as a whole. The rhetoric in McCulloch focused particularly on the word "necessary" -- to wit, does it mean "absolutely indispensable", or just convenient or useful? The Court found it meant the latter, reasoning that an alternate interpretation would render the Courts an effective super-legislature judging for themselves what was the single best way of regulating health care policy (this did not stop the joint dissent from explicitly doing just that, saying that the individual mandate was not necessary because the dissent could conceive of alternative health care regulations). This means, as Chief Justice Roberts acknowledges, that courts are very deferential about what legislative policies are "necessary".

Still, with "necessary" seemingly a bust, what about "proper"? It was the claim that the individual mandate was not a "proper" way of exercising the commerce clause authority that was Chief Justice Roberts' ultimate hinge. Here, Chief Justice Roberts accords no such deference, and that's especially worrisome given that the only constraining text he's using is the word "proper". As much as we might worry about courts imposing their own policy preferences when they utilize relatively open-ended language like "due process of law" or "cruel and unusual punishment", that risk has to be tripled when the alleged constitutional infirmity is that the law isn't "proper". I don't even know what that could conceivably mean other than raw imposition of judicial preference.

And the Chief Justice's opinion hardly inspires confidence that "proper" will mean anything more than "personally distasteful". What makes a law not "proper"? All Chief Justice Roberts can give us is that the legislation isn't "proper" where it would "undermine the structure of government established by the Constitution" or is "not consist[ent] with the letter and spirit of the constitution." There is almost no constraining bite to that "doctrine" at all -- it is an open invitation to simply strike down whatever it is a given Justice finds distasteful. Which is more or less how it was used here: The individual mandate is not "proper" because ... mandates, ew, scary. There just isn't a workable argument in there -- particularly when, as Justice Ginsburg (again!) notes, it is far from clear that the mechanism of a penalty payable as a tax is more far-reaching than Chief Justice Roberts' own example of admittedly "proper" congressional exercises (such as, say, keeping someone in jail). Nor is it clear why, if the form of a mandate is so repugnant to the constitutional order, it becomes okay when it is viewed as a tax regulation rather than a commerce regulation. The answer is that programs like this aren't actually that scary, but using constitutional language as vague as "is it proper" is an invitation to disaster.

Now, on the "proper" end of things, it is possible that this is meant to be a ticket good for this ride only -- that the Court will not in fact start using questions of "is the law proper" to strike down legislation left and right (well, most likely left). But maybe not -- if it was meant to be just a tool for this case, Roberts would have joined his conservative colleagues and struck the thing down. If we do see a revitalization of Lochner-era due process jurisprudence under the new guise of "proper", that would be nothing short of a catastrophe.

Why Roberts Why?

That must be the question conservatives are asking themselves today. After all, the prevailing wisdom (one I signed onto) was that this was a 5-4 decision one way or the other, with Kennedy holding the swing vote. Now, I thought maybe if Justice Kennedy bit, Roberts might come along -- both to keep the decision from being yet another 5-4 ruling and to keep the opinion for himself. But Justice Kennedy voted to strike down the ACA -- indeed, by signing on to a far-right joint dissent for himself, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, it indicates that it wasn't even a close call for the usually swingy justice. Which means that it was Chief Justice Roberts serving as the middle vote. So what prompted him to (switch his?) vote to uphold President Obama's signature law?

I have two potential explanations floating around right now. The first is legalistic. Chief Justice Roberts has always been a big government conservative. In fact, that's why he was appointed to the Court in the first place -- President Bush wanted someone he could count on to affirm his vast expansions of executive power in the War on Terror. One of the ways I teach my students that judges can exercise some independence from politics is that the political motivations which put them on the Court may not turn out to track the same sets of concerns as their careers progress. The classic example is Justice Frankfurter. Frankfurter was appointed to the Court as a fierce advocate of judicial restraint, which, with the Four Horsemen running roughshod over any and all state and federal economic regulation, was a defining progressive value at the time. And Frankfurter did turn out to be a reliable vote to uphold the New Deal. But as his career continued, the defining controversies for the Supreme Court started to become civil and criminal rights cases. And there, Frankfurter's deference to legislatures led to a far more conservative voting record. I'm not saying Chief Justice Roberts always is going to vote in favor of enhanced government power, only that the particular ideological profile he cuts -- the one that put him on the bench in the first place -- might have made him more sympathetic to the ACA than one might expect from a run-of-the-mill conservative judge.

Second, there are institutionalist concerns that may well have played a role. When he was first appointed Chief Justice, Roberts made clear that he wanted a more unified, less ideologically polarized Court. Whatever else one thinks of his tenure, it is clear that in that respect his has been a colossal failure. The Roberts Court has been bitterly fractured along partisan lines, and more and more (particularly with Citizens United) has been gaining a reputation as an ideologically conservative activist court. It's not that liberals are suddenly going to start singing the praises of the Roberts Court, but had the ACA been struck down, that train would have left the station for good. Basically, Chief Justice Roberts saw in this case that a vote to strike down the ACA was a vote to permanently remake his Court's image into one adjunct to the Republican Party. And he blinked.

ACA Upheld!

What, you didn't hear? (Oh, by the way, the Stolen Valor Act was struck down too).

Now, I haven't read the opinions yet. But it's not like that's stopping anyone else from opining. And I know the basics: The 4 liberal justices vote to uphold on commerce clause grounds, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy vote to strike down the entire law, and Roberts votes to uphold the law as an exercise of the tax power (there's a minor hiccup regarding how medicare funding is allocated that I'll ignore for now). Scattered thoughts below:

* I agree that the dissent's simultaneous assertions that the whole of the ACA must be struck down because the mandate and funding conditions are unconstitutional, and that the mandate is not "necessary and proper" to Congress commerce clause authority, are completely inconsistent with each other.

* I also agree that Justice Ginsburg repeatedly citing Justice Scalia's Raich opinion is a thing of beauty.

* Revenge of the tax power! That was the issue that everyone kind of forgot was an issue, even though that's really what the mandate most closely simulates. I don't know enough about tax law to understand why it isn't a tax for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, though.

* Conservatives might claim a minor victory in that the opinion may further cabin the commerce clause power a bit, but ultimately I don't think that changes that much.

* People who say they're moving to Canada after this really need to rethink their strategy.

* UPDATE: I separately give my thoughts on why Chief Justice Roberts voted the way he did.

Anti-Semites Lose in New York

Well, it looks like a lot of worrying was for naught. The semi-credible attempts of two anti-Semitic nuts to make it to New York's congressional ended tonight, both by sizable margins. With 69% reporting, Hakeem Jeffries is blowing out Charles Barron 74.5/25.5 in NY-8 Democratic primary. Jim Russell did a little better in the NY-17 Republican primary, but only reached 35% against Joe Carvin (94% reporting).

Jeffries crushing victory over Barron ratifies something we should have already known: Black voters can indeed be trusted to hear the concerns of their Jewish colleagues, and are not swayed by racialized and anti-Semitic appeals. The belief that Blacks are more prone to conspiracy theories and other harbingers of extremism has never been true, and this is just one more data point for that.

Of course, fringe candidates can sometimes gain more traction than they should -- in both parties (as Russell demonstrates further upstate). But for whatever reason, there is a mythology that Black voters are more prone to this sort of nuttery. And it's just not true. It's consistently not true, and they're proving it time and again.

New York Primaries: Home of the Anti-Semite?

Daily Kos Elections has a good rundown of today's primary races (in New York, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, and Utah). Most notable (and disturbing) is the possibility that not one but two raging bigots could score major party nominations in New York house races.

We've already talked about David Duke-endorsed Charles Barron in NY-08, where he's running to replace retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D). State Assm. Hakeem Jeffries is the establishment choice here and has vastly outraised Barron, but Barron has scored a few union endorsements as well as that of Towns (who was unhappy at lackluster establishment support for him back when Jeffries was mounting a primary challenge to him). I've seen no polling on the race, but there are reports that New York Dems are "panicking" about a potential Barron victory. Even if Barron does pull off the upset, though, it isn't over -- Jeffries is also on the Working Families Party line and will thus be on the general election ballot regardless.

Meanwhile, over in the NY-17, two Republicans are looking to challenge Rep. Nita Lowey (D). The establishment choice is hedge fund manager and Rye town supervisor Joe Carvin. But he's facing a surprisingly stern test from White supremacist and anti-Semite Jim Russell, who scored 38% of the vote when he was the Republican nominee for this seat in 2010 (despite official GOP disavowals of his candidacy after his racist views became known). With relatively high name recognition from his previous run, Republicans too are a bit nervous about what election night might bring.

Oh, the Empire State. What will you bring us next?

UPDATE: This is a stellar short profile piece on Barron, explaining where he gets his support. It's a mix of an old core of 60s-style pan-African radicals (who love that he does things like speak out in favor of Mugabe), coupled with an indefatigable focus on local issues -- combating drug gangs, cleaning up neighborhoods, attending local labor protests -- that has made him a respected figured amongst his constituents who couldn't care less about international pan-African liberation.

Lots of radicals with global visions flameout because they don't actually care about the community's they purport to represent. Barron appears to have enough energy to keep an eye on both prizes, and together it makes for a potent and dangerous combination.

Iraq Cuts Arts Ties to the US over Jewish Artifacts

America's refusal to turn over Jewish artifacts recovered from Iraqi archives has caused that country to cut archaeological cooperation with the United States. I wrote about the dispute in more detail here, but basically there are three major elements:

First, the possibility that Jewish artifacts in Iraq won't be safe due to anti-Semitic pressure in Iraq. Second, the possibility that preserving and displaying such artifacts in Iraq will play an important role in humanizing Jews to Iraqis and reminding Iraqis of the long and vibrant Jewish history there prior to their effective expulsion in the wake of Israel's Independence. And third, the interests of the Iraqi Jewish community itself, many of whom live in Israel and thus would likely not be able to access their own history if it was hosted in Iraq (which refuses to admit Jewish visitors).

Late is Not Never: JFed Cancels Anti-Muslim and Anti-Semitic Speaker

I saw the other day (while I was traveling to Chicago) that the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was hosting a speech by notorious bigot Pamela Geller (sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America, which I'll return to in a moment). Geller's rabid hatred of Muslims has been noted by groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League to the Southern Poverty Law Center. But beyond her hatred of all Muslims, Geller is also equally incensed by most Jews ("liberal Jews", which is another way of saying "most Jews"). She refers to us as "kapos" and "Nazis" who yearn for Israel's destruction and the genocide of Jews. She is a repulsive speaker and it was shocking to see her gaining a platform at a mainstream (albeit regional) Jewish organization.

Well, say goodbye to the platform. Little Green Footballs has informed us that the federation has canceled her speech (to Geller's spit-flecked rage). This is a victory for decency, yes, humanity, yes, religious equality, yes, and also the Jewish people -- not just because it shames the holy name to associate ourselves with such hate, but because Geller hates most Jews too. She is nothing more than a disgrace.

I haven't seen a statement from the LA Jewish Federation on their decision yet. I did visit their contact page to drop a note thanking them on making the right call, which I encourage you to do as well (you can also tweet them @JFedLA). The event was scheduled for today, and almost all the outraged coverage occurred yesterday, so this was very fast motion by the organization.

Meanwhile, let's talk about ZOA again. They weren't involved in the cancellation -- Geller thanks them for finding an alternate venue after the JFed cancellation -- and they were the one's who sponsored the event in the first place. ZOA, of course, has already revealed itself as an anti-Israel organization with its push for a one-state solution (which needless to say Geller supports), and its support of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic speakers alike is nothing new. But -- if only by age alone -- they maintain some clout in the Jewish community. It is an excellent thing that the LA JFed stood up to them, and their endorsement of Geller should render them as far beyond the pale of Jewish communal life as any other extremist, racist group.

UPDATE: Here is ZOA's statement on the cancellation. They pointedly do not blame "security threats" but rather acknowledge it was political pressure (they say by extremist Jewish and Muslim groups -- because we all know how beholden Jewish Federations are to JVP!) that caused the federation to back down. So more kudos to the Jewish Federation, and tally up another instance of ZOA being a disgrace to Jews and pro-Israeli Americans alike.

UPDATE x2: I've read accounts -- unconfirmed, but it seems plausible -- that the Jewish Federation did not invite Geller to speak. Rather, it was ZOA's doing, and they just reserved space at the Federation, which they could do since they were a member of a group. Once the Federation was informed of the nature of who was speaking, they cancelled the event.

Now, it's implausible that they weren't aware that Geller was coming -- the event was announced on their webpage, after all -- but it is possible that they did not know who she was beyond ZOA's white-washed biography. In any event, that would be much better than the alternative -- that the Federation knowingly was going to have someone like Geller speak, but caved under pressure.

UPDATE x3: JTA picks up the story. They weren't able to get a comment from the Jewish Federation prior to press time though.

Blankenhorn Defects on Gay Marriage

Over the past decade, polling on same-sex marriage has seen a dramatic swing. Once a marginal, even fringe position, support for gay marriage has become a mainstream, perhaps even a majority position, The most recent poll I've seen has a plurality in favor (42/40), and I have little doubt that given another few years, support for marriage equality will consistently be the majority position.

Implicit in that shift is that people who used to oppose gay marriage now support it. Many of those are, of course, ordinary citizens who have realized that marriage equality is just the latest permutation of the American credo demanding equal dignity, rights, and respect for all. Some are high profile political and social figures whose shifts have made major headlines (ranging from Barack Obama to Colin Powell to Bill Clinton).

But the announcement by David Blankenhorn (H/T: Dale Carpenter) that he now supports gay marriage may be, in a sense, bigger than all of these. Blankenhorn, obviously, does not have the profile of the President of the United States. But Blankenhorn's career as a public intellectual has been as one of the most prominent opponents of the same-sex marriage. He represents possibly the highest profile defector from that position to the side of equality.

Blankenhorn's reasons for his shift are interesting. He does not recant his belief that there is a positive good in children being raised by their biological parents. But he acknowledges that outside a few lonely voices writing newspaper editorials, the campaign against same-sex marriage has not been characterized by concerns about parenting, but about dehumanizing gays and lesbians. And perhaps even more importantly, from his vantage point, opposing gay marriage has had no discernible impact on any of the tangible ways Blankenhorn had hoped it would strengthen the institution of marriage as whole. His belief that stopping gay marriage would strengthen marriage has been falsified, and so he no longer holds the belief. That is an all-too-rare case of intellectual integrity, and it is worth applauding.

In essence, Blankenhorn now concedes that whatever trivial impacts opposing gay marriage has on strengthening heterosexual marriage (and he, like I, am unconvinced these impacts are real), they are vastly outweighed by the enduring dignitary and de jure harm such bars place upon gays and lesbians. He's right, and his transition represents the crumbling of credible intellectual opposition to the project of gay equality. It's just not that complicated.

Charles Barron Endorsed By David Duke

The Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) has gotten even more bizarre, with former KKK Grand Wizard and White supremacist David Duke endorsing pan-African extremist Charles Barron. Barron, notorious for his embrace of folks like Muammar Gaddafi and his loathing of Israel (among other things), is facing off against Hakeem Jeffries. Democratic leaders are panicking a bit as Barron, a longtime New York City councilman, has apparently gained some traction (including an endorsement from Towns as a final "fuck you" to the local and national Democratic establishment).

“The possible election of a dedicated anti-Zionist to the U.S. Congress has thrown the Zionist influenced media and the Zio-political establishment in a tizzy,” Duke says. “The Jewish-controlled New York media is now calling Barron the, quote, ‘David Duke of New York,’ unquote. I’ve been deluged by media inquiries as to whether I would endorse Barron because of his very strong anti-Zionist and anti-Israel positions.”

“In a race for Congress between an anti-Zionist black activist and a black activist who is a bought and paid for Zionist Uncle Tom, I’ll take the anti-Zionist any day,” Duke explains — the "Zionist Uncle Tom" being Barron's opponent Hakeem Jeffries, the establishment favorite.

I have to think being called an "Uncle Tom" by David Duke must be the highlight of any Black politician's career.

Radley Balko joked on twitter that "It's a new morning in America when a white supremacist and a black nationaist can join hands in a shared hatred of Jews." Which I retweeted, because it's hilarious, but actually this sort of alliance is not all that new -- Black nationalists have been forging bonds with White supremacists dating back to at least Marcus Garvey, and one of the commonalities Garvey shared with White supremacists was mutual loathing of Jews.

Of course, part of what brought Garvey down was his ties to the KKK, which rendered him beyond the pale for nearly all Blacks. And one cannot imagine that a David Duke endorsement is helpful in this majority-Black district no matter how crazy things get.

Hold It

Wait ... are you telling me that sometimes, when a cargo ship is potentially smuggling arms to a murderous armed faction, that a civilized nation might contemplate using military forces to board it? Headline from the Telegraph:

Syria: David Cameron considered ordering special forces to seize Russian ship

David Cameron considered ordering British special forces to board and impound a Russian ship suspected of carrying arms to Syria, it has emerged.

No. No, no no no no. Such things are always, always, inherently illegal. Or worst, Zionist. I just can't fathom that anyone, anywhere, would even contemplate such an outrageous breach of human decorum.

Midweek Roundup

Going to Chicago next weekend, Minnesota next week. Lot's of good stuff on my browser, which I don't have as much to say on as I should.

* * *

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League issues a warning: "Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends, since there are so few of them." He attributed the comment to former NYC mayor Ed Koch, but Koch denies saying it.

Arizona SoS, already under fire for being birther-curious, gives the conspiracy a new spin -- Obama was born in Hawaii but lied about being born in Kenya to get into college.

Kieran Healy gives a satirical statement from UVA's Board of Visitors.

The National Review bringing aboard unrepentant racist David Yerushalmi prompts Ta-Nehisi Coates to write two great posts on "politically correct conservatism", where the most offensive thing you can say is that anyone, anywhere is a bigot -- even someone who wants to criminalize being a Muslim with a 20 year prison sentence.

Interesting study on how the triumphs and failures of male and female Olympic athletes are described by commentators.

The Spy Who Loved Me

One of Israel's shining achievements is its relatively egalitarian treatment of gays and lesbians, not just compared to its neighbors but compared to any other country in the world. Among other things, Israel allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly in the IDF well before the US repealed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (as ex-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) argued, this must have been because Israel lacks "Judeo-Christian values").

But National Union MK Uri Ariel, unwilling to allow Israel to have any amount of a good thing, has urged Israel stop letting gays serve in the army. To be fair, Ariel is a fringe player (National Union is a small, far-right party too extreme even for Netanyahu's right-wing coalition). And Ariel himself has admitted to serving as a spy for militant settlers as they worked to disrupt IDF activity, making him at best a weak source of credible information about what benefits Israel's security or the IDF (at worst, it makes him a traitor).

Alice Walker Says No Hebrew Translation of "The Color Purple"

As part of her general boycott of Israel, Alice Walker is refusing to allow her novel "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew (the article sounds like her objection is to the Hebrew language, not the publishing house, though it's a little unclear). Though if it is literally just a problem with the language that Jews and Israelis speak, then I think we've found a topper to this includes any reference to their wildlife.

In all seriousness, Alice Walker's problems with anti-Semitism -- going well beyond "criticizing Israel" -- are nothing new. I mean, even Michael Lerner regretted invited her to speak, saying she was offensive and put-downish towards the Jewish people as a whole. Lerner's note that Walker was utterly dismissive of Jewish history accords with my own reading of her, and is doubly ironic given her prior arrogant assertion that "Jews who know their own history" agree with her.

But this does demonstrate with renewed vividness the connection between Walker's famous sentiment ("No one is your friend who demands your silence"), and her later remark regarding Israel that "when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet." Walker, of course, feels that Israel is primarily fear-inducing to "the people of the world" (most Jews excluded, naturally), and so she would rather not engage in discourse with them -- preferring them to be silenced as others determine their fate.

Alice Walker is no friend of Jews. There's nothing new to that statement, but it bears repeating. It's tragic when someone looked up to by so many turns so viciously, but it can't be ignored.

Atzmon-esque Islamophobia

Gilad Atzmon is a fringe anti-Semitic thinker, who spends much of his time savaging Jews for alleged schemes of world-domination and racist parochialism. For the most part, he owns this identity (calling himself, among other things, a "proud self-hating Jew"), but occasionally he tries to kick up some dust around it. One way he does this is by saying that when he attacks "Jewishness", he isn't referring to all Jews per se but rather a style of thinking or behavior that is wrong or immoral, which may be done by Jews or non-Jews (so, for example, he might say George W. Bush is behaving Jewishly). It's not a good faith argument (Atzmon's argument is more or less far-right hyper-colorblindness and his definition of "Jewishness" is anyone who maintains any sort of group identity. But he doesn't apply this "standard" universally, only to persons he dislikes), but even taken on its face it'd still be anti-Semitic -- using "Jew" as a pejorative is inherently hostile to that group "even if" one means to encompass non-Jews under its ambit (compare calling someone a "Jew" because they're allegedly cheap).

It's no shock to anyone that Robert Spencer is a racist bigot against Muslims. But his latest column might as well be taken from the Gilad Atzmon playbook, asking whether New York mayor Michael Bloomberg "is secretly a Muslim". Now, Spencer agrees that obviously Bloomberg isn't literally a Muslim. But, he says, by taking authoritarian actions (Spencer is referring to the big soda ban, rather than something like, I don't know, barring minority religious practices), he's basically "acting" Muslim. "Muslim" is a referent not to Muslims, necessarily, but to a class of behavior that Spencer finds distasteful (which he imputes to the vast majority of all Muslims but also to basically anyone else he disagrees with). That behavior is then transmuted into a sort of totalitarian impulse that desires to squelch liberty and dominate the world. So it's basically Gilad Atzmon with a new label. He can't even distinguish himself based on target profile -- after all, Spencer's targeting Jews too (who -- though probably not supporting soda bans -- tend towards the sort of liberalism that Spencer has painted a target over).

This isn't really all that surprising -- bromides about haters being haters aside, polling indicates that the best predictor of anti-Muslim sentiment is anti-Jewish sentiment. Spencer is just another practitioner of far-right hatred that, while casting itself as Islamophobic, really has its sights on essentially any minority group.

Africans Who Want To Convert Rejected by Israel

I've been ambivalent about Israel's policy towards African migrants. I have a general belief in relatively liberal immigration policies, at least for the United States. At the same time, most countries aren't the United States (for example, they're much smaller). Certainly, while humane treatment of immigrants is an absolute must, I don't view rejecting an open border policy as a per se human rights violation.

But another facet of Israel's existence is as a haven for Jews -- Jews, of course, have a "right of return" to Israel regardless of where they're from. So what about African migrants who wish to convert to Judaism? Ha'aretz is reporting that Israel's conversion committee has rejected every single one of those applications was rejected ("Of course, all the requests were rejected," is how the Prime Minister's Office put it).

This is deeply upsetting. Israeli society has long had a problem with racism directed towards its African community (including African Jews), so in a sense it is unsurprising that it is erecting a per se bar to African conversions. Still, it strikes very close to the heart of the very function of the Jewish state, and the way in which the "Jewish" part has been captured by regressive, ultra-orthodox forces who view any Jew that isn't under their thumb as a threat.

Now. the claim here is that these migrants are seeking to convert in bad faith, simply to gain citizenship in Israel. This doesn't move me, for at least three reasons. First: All of them? Every last one? 100% is a figure that one rarely reaches via dispassionate evaluation; it's the province of banana republic "elections" and Ron Paul newsletters. That "of course" all of them were rejected is heavy evidence that the bad faith came from the government's conversion committee, not each and every applicant. Second, conversion to Judaism isn't exactly a walk in the park. It's a difficult, grinding process -- quite capable of forcing people to prove their commitment to the faith. In fact, that's the entire design of it. So if someone wants to go through conversion, I say you start him or her down the process and see where it leads. Bad faith will reveal itself soon enough.

But perhaps most importantly -- what is the "bad faith" here? A bunch of people saw a Jewish society, saw that it functioned well, saw that it produced opportunities they lacked elsewhere, saw that it operated in a way they viewed as promising such that they wanted to stay a part of that community -- how is that not the epitome of what we want in a convert? Is keeping strict kosher part of what is driving them? Admittedly doubtful, but then I don't do that either, so I can hardly view it is an essential part of a genuine design to join the Jewish community. As far as I'm concerned, the desire to live in Israel as a Jew is almost self-referentially proof of a good-faith desire to become a Jew. The Israeli government should have treated it as such.

In any event, it would be interesting to see what would happen if some Orthodox Rabbis traveled with these deportees back to their countries of origins and tried to set up a formal, full-length Orthodox conversion process. Outside the direct control of the Israeli government, it would be far harder to deny them re-entry if they come back as Jews.

But It's a Proud, Family-Owned Brothel

PPP: Sixty-six percent of Nevada Republicans support legalized brothels (same percentage as Democrats), but only 20% of them support same-sex marriage. Now that's some family values!

Obama Lets Them Work

In a bold new pronouncement, President Obama has decided to stop deporting most illegal immigrants who came to the US as children, don't pose a criminal or security threat, and either did well in school or served in the military. In other words, people who already are for all intents and purposes not just Americans, but Americans we're lucky to have.

Republicans were predictably outraged ("predictable" both because they substantively oppose immigration reform and because they're outraged at anything Obama does). Haley Barbour did warn his party-mates not "demonize" illegal immigrants, which likely means Haley Barbour is about to be bitterly disappointed.

We should be clear: This does not replace the necessity of the DREAM Act (it doesn't provide a path to citizenship, merely work permits), but it is a good first step at both humane treatment of these persons, and for strengthening America via their contributions to our society.

If Only Jews Were Dumber....

This year's Jennifer Rubin award for conservative Jews who hate American Jews goes to ... Barry Rubin! It's a Rubin-to-Rubin handoff!

Like Jennifer, Barry Rubin is trying to answer the vexing question as to why Jews support liberals like Barack Obama. His consternation over the question is in inverse correlation to its difficulty: Simply put, Jews are liberal. Take a voting bloc that's 90% pro-choice, 70% pro-gay marriage, 60% pro-union, and 66% in favor of tax hikes on the rich, (not to mention strong supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- unlike the Republican Party) and yeah -- tough nut for Republicans to crack.

But Rubin eschews the obvious "liberals prefer liberals" analysis in favor of basically saying Jews are a bunch of dupes

Propaganda: As highly educated and literate people, Jews are more heavily impacted by schools, universities, and mass media that are engaged in indoctrination or highly concerted efforts to campaign for Obama and his ideas. By the same token, Jews as a whole tend to give higher credibility to the fairness of media and academia.

Camouflage: The concealment of Obama’s radicalism and that of those supporting his ideology as supposed liberals plays into Jewish reverence for liberalism.

Obama’s persona: While the notion of Obama as a “Jewish president” is absurd, its appeal to some does in fact have a material basis. His image as an apparently highly educated, supposedly intellectual, superficially sophisticated, cosmopolitan personality fits with majority Jewish preferences.

Jews like superficial sophistication and faux-intellectualism (and weirdly are willing to view someone with a Harvard law degree as "highly educated"). But if only we weren't so literate and educated, we'd be less prone to base our opinions on suspect sources like "media" or "academia", instead favoring more credible ones like Barry Rubin, Glenn Beck, or the semi-literate ravings of local talk radio hosts.

You know your argument is in trouble when it basically boils down "the problem is Jews aren't dumb enough to dislike Obama."

(Rubin also talks a bit about Jews' relationship with race and racial issues. It's pretty garbled -- boiling down to "Jews have a compulsion to appear anti-racist" -- and not all that helpful. For a better discussion, read Eric Goldberg's The Price of Whiteness, reviewed by me here).

Quote of the Year

Sally Quinn's essay blaming the fall of bipartisanship on the lack of DC dinner parties (with a healthy dose of damn kids these days) is being roundly mocked by just about anyone. But Jon Chait takes the cake when he digs up a gem of what Quinn considered to be the good old days:

Washington writer Sally Quinn told of a 1950s reception where: “My mother and I headed for the buffet table. As we were reaching for the shrimp, both of us jumped and let out a shriek. Senator Strom Thurmond, grinning from ear to ear, had one hand on my behind and the other on my mother’s. As I recall, we were both quite flattered, and thought it terribly funny and wicked of Ol’ Strom.”

To which Chait sums up:

Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist. Sadly, it has all been ruined by Kim Kardashian and Ezra Klein.

Bang.