It's Grading Time!

Grading exams. Really, my first time out (obviously I graded last term too, but I only had six students and four of them did reaction papers throughout the term). This, hopefully, explains my silence.

* * *

All-boys Catholic school forfeits league championship rather than play baseball against a (*gasp*) girl.

Shorter Joshua Trevino: Physically assaulting people who look weird is what I look for in a candidate.

Jonah Goldberg is a moron: A closer look.

Out in Florida, one entrepreneur is selling a Trayvon Martin gun range target (George Zimmerman's attorney, unsurprisingly, harshly condemned this).

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on marriage equality.

What's The Impact of the Grand Coalition

The shocking news out of Israel is that Kadima has agreed to join with Likud in a unity coalition formed of 90+ MKs. New Kadima head Shaul Mofaz will join the government as Deputy Prime Minister. Bibi had been in the process of calling early elections that would have almost certainly seen Likud gain seats and Kadima lose (a great many of) them. So it was unexpected that Bibi would agree to this, and everyone is trying to figure out what's going on -- who wins and who loses.

The obvious winner is Kadima -- which just staved off a crushing, potentially back-breaking election defeat. Equally obvious losers are Labor -- which was looking like it was poised to bounce back in the new elections, and Yair Lapid, who had formed a new party that looked like it was gaining traction on a populist platform. But with Likud gaining new breathing room, folks are inevitably wondering if any of Bibi's current coalition partners are on the outs, and eyes are falling both on Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu. The former seems the more immediate target, as one of the first things the new coalition plans on doing is reforming the laws granting ultra-orthodox Jews exemptions from military service. But I'm hearing a lot of chatter that it is Avigdor Lieberman in the cross-hairs. Corruption issues aside, and his disastrous reign as Foreign Minister also aside, Lieberman and his party represent the biggest threat to Likud's dominance as the preeminent right-wing party. It wouldn't surprise me if Bibi was trying to hobble their stratospheric momentum.

Kadima's decision to join the government breaks persistent party policy dating from the last election -- a policy Mofaz swore to continue when he was campaigning for party chairmanship last month. I remember being very sympathetic to Kadima not joining the governing coalition back in 2009. It was a principled stand on the notion that Kadima just couldn't link arms with an essentially fascist party like Yisrael Beiteinu.

But the thing about principled stands is that they come with costs. And this one has been costly. The right/far-right coalition that emerged instead has been a disaster for Israel. And the fact that essentially all of Bibi's coalition partners were to his right meant that the Prime Minister was forced to be far less accommodating and far more belligerent than I think even he would have liked.

J.J. Goldberg makes the case that may well save the Israeli peace camp. Mofaz ousted Tzipi Livni, whom I admired, but on substance they aren't that far apart. That includes Mofaz having good social democratic instincts and, more importantly, a clear-eyed picture of the situation with the Palestinians. Putting Mofaz in government gives Netanyahu a countervailing voice, which at least makes it more likely he'll move the peace process forward. We can only hope, anyway.

The other major question around this whole thing is what it means for Israel's Iran policy. Here, I have little to say. Mofaz is Iranian-born and this an issue close to his heart. But I've seen wildly conflicting predictions about what direction this pushes Israel vis-a-vis Iran. Some think "grand unity coalition" equals run-up to war. Others think that Mofaz has demonstrated no interest in Israel adopting a more aggressive posture. I don't know what to think on this, so I'll just wait and see, like everyone else.

More Deafening Silence from "Pro-Israel" Stalwarts

Back in March, I noted my growing frustration that mainline pro-Israel groups were staying silent as one-staterism grows in influence and respectability, particularly amongst the American right. Endorsements by the RNC, two state legislatures, and several high-profile Republicans have been met with nothing but a blank page from groups like the AJC, ADL, JCPA, and others.

The other day, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) took to the Washington Times to explicitly say what many on the right are thinking -- no to a two-state solution. Israel should annex the West Bank outright. Recognizing that this would force Israel to choose between being a full democracy or a Jewish state, Walsh elects for the latter, and reduces Palestinians to only a limited degree of political rights. It is equally obvious to the rest of us that this is unsustainable, and while Walsh is already sacrificing Israel's democratic character, he'd likely end up sacrificing its Jewish nature as well. Either way, it's the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish, democratic homeland in Israel.

Walsh is certainly not as high-profile as, say, Rick Santorum. He has also not been a friend to Israel or Jews. But in dedicating a column explicitly to supporting a one-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Walsh immediately has made one of the highest-profile gestures towards mainstreaming that position in American politics.

Over the last few days, I've been searching in vain to see Jewish, pro-Israel groups denounce Walsh's dangerous proposal. J Street has a tweet up (update: and now a full post). And ... that's it. ADL? Nothing. AJC? Nothing. JCPA? Nothing. We Are For Israel? Nope.

All of these groups purport to denounce one-stateism. And they'll do it, when the promoters are some fringe academics or lunatic activists. But none of them have the guts to take it on when it presents itself as an actual threat -- from U.S. Congressmen, from major political players, from folks with money and power and influence. In other words, none of them are ready to defend Israel when it matters. It's pathetic.

Olmert Blames American Right-Wing for Blocking Peace Deal

I just feel compelled to point this out: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that it was right-wing American dollars that prevented his peace plan from going through back in 2008. He didn't name names, but we know the sorts of folks who is referring to. They like to call themselves pro-Israel. They're anything but. And as far as Olmert is concerned, that Israel didn't get a peace deal signed with the Palestinians is directly on their heads.

Silly Studies, Part II

Last year, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) put out a list of NIH-research items that he deemed frivolous and examples of wasting tax-payer dollars. I found the list interesting, because pretty much all of the studies he picked sounded quite worthwhile -- providing useful information about various health and safety risks and the best responses to them.

In this same vein, I'm left gobsmacked by this Chronicle of Higher Education hit piece against the field of "Black Studies". I mean, the piece is appalling on a ton of different levels, but let's start with the most obvious: The author (Naomi Schaefer Riley) by admission didn't actually read the dissertations she's mocking. All she had was brief synopses of the proposed dissertations. This would be cringe-worthy enough without reading the title of her post: "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations." Oy. You first, Ms. Riley.

Amazingly, Riley defended herself in a follow-up post by attempting to argue that "it is not my job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about them. . . there are not enough hours in the day or money in the world to get me to read a dissertation on historical black midwifery." One would think before dismissing a whole area of study, one would actually read full, completed works of scholarship in the field. One would vastly overestimate the prerequisites Ms. Riley thinks necessary before she confidently tries to bring the banhammer down on a whole discipline of study. (I will, however, agree with her that there likely is not enough money in the world to justify spending any of it on having Riley read much of anything, or employing her in jobs that would seemingly make that into a requirement).

But what's really getting me is that even on Riley's own terms (her incredibly, incredibly poorly argued terms), I don't see her point. All three of the projects she identifies seem like clearly valuable and important scholarly endeavors -- and I don't think that about every project I see. The first one, "'So I Could Be Easeful': Black Women's Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth" (that's the Black midwifery one), is part of an important area of literature on laws and cultural meaning given to reproduction. This is an area I'm obviously prone to defend, given that my girlfriend's area of expertise is anthropology of reproduction, and this is an area that has historically been strongly mediated by race. From mandatory sterilizations to the mainstream American belief that teen pregnancy in the Black community is community-destroying pandemic, these sorts of issues have both historical and contemporary import (hell, one of the areas Ms. Riley says people should focus on instead of on Black midwifery is Black teen pregnancy! I'd ask if she even is listening to herself, but I suspect that the sort of "research" she wants done on the latter area can be summed up as "tongue-clucking").

The next dissertation is "Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s." Government, housing policy, race -- what could possibly go wrong? Again, finding out how various housing policies were or weren't motivated by racial ideologies, or did or didn't have important impacts that affect the current racial state of affairs -- important information! Why am I supposed to think that it isn't, exactly? Well, apparently, I'm supposed to dismiss this line of research unless I think that race is the only important social force in America today and that its salience has not changed in any way since 1954. Of course, all one actually needs to show is that race is an important social force in America today, and it's probably better from an intellectual novelty standpoint that it's salience has changed in important and measurable ways over the past several decades. Which it has -- but those changes do not include "everything that ever happened with respect to race no longer matters, and we can treat the past several hundred years as a really bad dream."

Speaking of which, how about that last thesis, which explores the role Black Republicans have played in conservative attacks on the mainstream civil rights establishment. That would seem to be exactly the sort of "change" that might be worth exploring, no? It specifically locates its agenda in cultural transitions that took place in the 1980s. But no -- the problem here is that the author doesn't like these Black conservatives, and thinks their contributions malignant. This is very upsetting to Ms. Riley, and if people have differing normative commitments than she does -- bzzzt! Not real scholarship. Seriously, that's all the last attack boils down to -- the author and Ms. Riley have a political disagreement. How we jump from that to "and therefore, what she's doing isn't academic" I have no idea, except that a true scholar would never, ever say anything that Naomi Riley would disagree with.

So to sum up. Black Studies is bad because (a) three student dissertation proposals which (b) Riley has only read summaries of are (c) personally not interesting to Ms. Riley and, a fortiori, to anyone else (even though actually all three seem very interesting) while (d) potentially demonstrating normative commitments that Riley doesn't like. Oh yes, color me persuaded.

Via.

The Decision on Who Is To Be the Future of Pro-Israel

J Street's latest campaign is called the Future of Pro-Israel. It makes the point that it is the younger generation -- my generation -- that will be picking up the future of pro-Israel advocacy, and that we want and demand an Israel that is safe, secure, democratic, and living side-by-side in peace with a Palestinian state.

But of course, we're not the only players in the field. Who is and isn't pro-Israel, now and in the future, is always up for contestation. Folks closer to the middle of Jewish institutional life have to make calls everyday over who they align with and who they oppose. At a recent New York conference on Israeli affairs, I think Alan Dershowitz might have gotten a taste of that, after witnessing a largely conservative crowd boo several members of the Israeli security establishment for disagreeing with the Netanyahu government, and loudly applaud denunciations of President Barack Obama by unhinged Israeli columnist Caroline Glick.

Dershowitz was furious: "Do not ever, ever boo a president of the United States” when “speaking in the name of the state of Israel," he scolded. And he was then booed in turn. The people at this conference have a very particular outlook on Israel, and they have no compunction about booing either the President or Israel's security leaders when the deviate from the One True Path.

I'd feel bad for Dershowitz, but I can't help but think he's reaping a bit of what he's sown here. After all, it was Dershowitz who endorsed Jonathan Pollak in his futile quest to knock off Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a pro-Israel lawmaker whose sin was ... being too close to Barack Obama. At the time, Dershowitz was quite alright with trying to exclude the pro-Israel left from the community of pro-Israel, trying to act as if support for Obama's aggressive pro-two-state efforts was a betrayal of Israel. And wouldn't you know it if some people take Dershowitz seriously, and start treating Obama as if he was a threat to Israel and its long-term security.

The point of this is that Dershowitz has to take a breath and ask himself who he wants to align himself with. There are competing camps of pro-Israel advocates in the United States, and one cannot straddle the line forever. When Dershowitz gives a wink and a nod to effective one-staters, when he plays in the fever swamps that treat Obama has basically Yasser Arafat in drag, he's using his influence in the Jewish community to make that the future of pro-Israel in this country.

I think, at this conference, he got a taste of where this all leads. I don't think he likes what he saw.

Archbishop Tutu Sad To Say That Most Jews are Deranged

Anti-Apartheid hero and Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu took to the Tampa Bay Times to argue for a divestment campaign against Israel and, in particular, to chide the Jewish community for its widespread and fervent opposition to such programs. He declares that he has come to this decision "painfully." Well allow me to stipulate that my reply is "painful" as well: my continued belief that Archbishop Tutu "does not hold egalitarian views towards Jews." As that link will demonstrate, I do not see Archbishop Tutu as a first-time offender on this score. And his column here only reaffirms my initial judgment on the matter.

To put aside the obvious -- this is not because Archbishop Tutu is "critical of Israel". I am critical of Israel, almost everyone is critical of Israel in one way or another. Nor is it even his endorsement of BDS, though that position is inherently suspect in my eyes. No, it is the way he talks about and treats his "Jewish brothers and sisters" that is so troublesome. It is more than a denial of Jewish experiences, though it is that. It is a denial that Jewish voices matter. It is a presumption that Jews could not possibly have anything worth listening to, any concerns worth addressing, any interests needing defense. This was characteristic of the speech I critiqued in my other post, and it emerges here. It's simply too prevalent and too common in Christian outlooks towards Jews for me to overlook it.

The Archbishop describes his call for BDS as "painful". Why? One would hope it would be painful because he is aware of the depth of Jewish feeling on this issue, their sincere belief that BDS is antithetical to their liberation as a people and their free and equal standing in the global community. It would stem from knowledge of the long history of boycott campaigns targeted against Jewish institutions as a crucial component of anti-Semitic domination. It would come tied to a cognizance of the credibility deficit largely Christian institutions bring to the table when they seek to lecture Jews about matters of justice and equality. In short, it would take the widespread Jewish opposition to such plans seriously as legitimate questions of moral and political justice that deserve serious thought and consideration.

Instead, we get this:

I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades.

In sum, it is painful for Archbishop Tutu to call for BDS because he knows it will hurt the feelings a group of people who are willfully deluding themselves about reality. At no point -- nowhere -- does Archbishop Tutu even gesture in a direction approaching an acknowledgment that Jews have anything worth saying at all on these questions. The sum total of the mainstream Jewish contribution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a sort of mass communal psychosis blinding them to the oppression of the Palestinian people.

When Archbishop Tutu sees that 1,200 Rabbis have signed onto letters urging opposition to various divestment proposals being forwarded in Christian churches, his thoughts are not "wow -- a community whose opinions I respect and who have long faced ingrained prejudice and hate believe a proposal I support reinscribes this history of prejudicial domination. I need to think carefully about that." Rather, his conclusion immediately jumps to "wow -- 1,200 Rabbis just outed themselves as delusional." They possess "blinders", they are "not yet ready to reckon" with reality -- a reality Archbishop Tutu is confident he can perceive without mainstream Jewish assistance or contribution.

These Rabbis, in Archbishop Tutu's perspective, are like the White liberals Martin Luther King critiqued from Birmingham Jail, who repeat the mantra that "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action." He misses an essential difference -- as Jews, we cannot say with confidence that we do agree with the goal being sought. We have no way of knowing what that goal really is. Is it one that treats Jews with respect? Is it one that respects their right to national self-determination and autonomy, not to mention safety and security? Is it one that acknowledges Jews have the right to act, advocate, and influence independent of what others think we should say? Is it one that fundamentally views Jews as equal? Christians have not earned the right to come to the table and simply demand that Jews accept their good faith on these questions. They certainly don't have the right to demand that Jews accept their absolute prerogative to determine, for Jews, what counts as a valid answer.

The White liberals did not (and did not claim to) have any credible fears regarding the desire or capacity of the civil rights movement to impinge on any serious rights- or justice-claims Whites might have in the reconstructed America. This is not the case when the question is Jews and the gentile world, including in the particular forum of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Plenty of people with plenty of power have explicit ideological commitments that would see Jews tossed into the sea. Plenty of others may well find such an outcome perfectly acceptable, and plenty more would be appalled but would not find themselves willing to stand up for Jews and stop it. Both the history of anti-Semitic oppression and the contemporary status of Jews in global society give us ample grounds to raise our own questions of justice and to demand more from our interlocutors than arrogant assertions of good intentions. The Palestinians are not the only people whose liberation remains "on the table".

It is because Archbishop Tutu is so committed to reducing Jewish voices to so much discordant noise that he gives short-shrift to how mainstream Jewish institutions approach this conflict in ways that are a far cry from "doing nothing and for standing aside." TULIP is obvious example. The OneVoice movement -- bitterly opposed by the BDS campaigners -- is another. The Abraham Fund would be a third. I could go on. More to the point, Jewish campaigners who are not enthusiastically playing the role of Herman Cain could have gone on. But one only sees those alternatives when one (a) recognizes that when the Jewish community speaks, their words are worth listening to and (b) that the Jewish community has valid, substantive, non-hypothetical concerns about justice, equality, and respect with respect to both the final resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the role of Christian players in it. Archbishop Tutu demonstrates no awareness of either, and so his stunted view of Jewish humanity leads him to a stunted view of the options before us beyond BDS.

Archbishop Tutu is a great hero in the anti-Apartheid movement. There is no questioning that, and I do not question that. He does not get to use that status to simply assume a sense of egalitarian respect towards Jews (any more than civil rights icons cannot be deeply sexist, or feminist reformers deeply racist). Archbishop Tutu offers nothing to demonstrate even a modicum of respect to Jewish perspectives other than a haughty assertion that he does, in fact, respect them. I have no obligation to accept his word, and I have compelling reasons not to. His credibility is zero with me. And until he demonstrates that Jewish protestations will be treated as anything more than an annoying buzzing in his ears, I'm not sure why I should accord his columns speaking about me any more respect than he gives to me.

Oh Yeah ... It's a Walk Out

A group of George Washington University students silently walked out of a speech given by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. Oren asked them to stay and participate in a dialogue, but they refused, instead protesting outside.

And you know what? Fine by me. This isn't UC-Irvine, where students yelled and attempted to overtly prevent Oren from speaking. They stood up and made a point in a manner that did not materially affect Oren's ability to present.

Do I prefer dialogue to this sort of action? Sure, I guess. But people have a right to protest in ways other than my own preferences. So long as they aren't being disruptive or interfering with the ability of others to present their views, I have no grounds to complain.

Livni Resigns

After getting ousted as Kadima chair by Shaul Mofaz, Tzipi Livni has resigned her Knesset seat. She did, however, promise to stay in public life, and warned of the "existential threat" the current Netanyahu government is placing Israel in:

In her speech, Livni warned of an existential threat Israel faced under its current leadership, saying that "Israel is on a volcano, the international clock is ticking, and the existence of a Jewish, democratic state is in mortal danger."

"The real danger is a politics that buries its head in the sand," Livni said, adding that it didn’t "take a Shin Bet chief to know that" – an apparent reference to recent comments made by the former chief of the security service Yuval Diskin, critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies on Iran and Middle East peace.

Livni said she didn't regret the decisions that may have brought on her political downfall, saying she wasn't "sorry for not backing down in the face of political blackmail, even when the price was staying outside the government, and for not being willing to sell the country to the ultra-Orthodox.

"And I'm definitely not sorry for the main issue I promoted – even if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't in vogue right now, there's an urgent need to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians as well as with the Arab world," she added.

Livni is an example of all that is right in Israel. I wish her luck as she tries to Safeguard Israel and lead it towards a brighter, safer, freer tomorrow.

It's the Bad Law ... That You Just Didn't Pass

The UNHRC has added Israel to its list of countries which restrict the activities of human rights groups. The reason is a proposed law that restricts foreign funding to domestic NGOs. Now, I'm no fan of this law (though I don't know how it compares to other regulations countries have about international funding of domestic groups), indeed, I view it as another instance of waxing illiberalism in Israel's political sphere.

But there's a reason why "proposed" is in the other sentence: the law never actually passed the Knesset. Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered it frozen after it was determined that the law likely wouldn't pass muster with Israel's high court. So one would think happy ending, yes? Not according to UNHRC chieftain Navi Pillay:

“In Israel, the recently adopted Foreign Funding Law could have a major impact on human rights organizations, subjecting them to rigorous reporting requirements, forcing them to declare foreign financial support in all public communications, and threatening heavy penalties for non-compliance.”

Obviously, Pillay has a different definition of "recently adopted" than most people, who would presumably require the law to be, you know, adopted at all. But when the subject is the UN and the opportunity is to flambe Israel, there is no need to get hung up on such technicalities. It's repulsive.

Bobby Newport Gets Ambitious

The current Parks & Recreation storyline features protagonist Leslie Knope running for city council against Bobby Newport. Newport is the son of the wealthiest man in town (owner of a candy company), and he is basically an utterly unaware moron. He's not a "bad guy", per se -- in fact, his main flaw is he seems utterly oblivious to how anything matters to anyone. As far as he's concerned, everyone should be happy all the time -- not realizing that not everyone has a trust fund they can dip into when times get rough.

I'm starting to view Mitt Romney as similar. He's not as obviously dumb as Bobby Newport is. But he just seems completely unaware that not everyone has a free pile of familial wealth to dip into when things aren't going well. Responding to the issue of student debt, Romney recommends ... having mommy and daddy give you a $20,000 loan. Of course, I'd imagine a substantial majority or recent college grads don't have parents with a spare 20 grand they can just lend at will. But for Romney, it just seems clear as crystal.

Marxist Cannibal Nazis from Kenya!

Barack Obama wants to eat your babies:

"This is so reminiscent of the Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man,' " West wrote. "Obama and his liberal progressive disciples are the modern day Kanamits."

For those of you not intimately acquainted with insults taken out of television episodes from 1962, the Kanamits were a race of nine-foot-tall aliens that come to Earth and cure famine, blight, and nuclear warfare. They also bring in advanced technology to solve the world's energy problems. In other words, the Kanamits were acting like dirty, rotten progressives.

The problem, though, is that the Kanamits don't have noble intentions -- their kindness is really just a not-very-elaborate ruse to fatten up the human race so they can be carted back to the Kanamit home planet to be eaten. A Kanamit book called To Serve Man that was discovered by the humans turns out not to be about helping man at all -- it's a cookbook. (Get it? Serving man?)

The man is unreal.

Jesus Loves Superior Firepower

Franklin Graham promotes bombing Syrian airstrips to protect civilians from the Assad regime. This, in of itself, may not be a fringe position, but Robert Farley is surely correct that the rhetorical decision to cast the F-15E Strike Eagle in the role of the Good Samaritan may be a little incongruous.

Playing Nice When Concurring Rough

Professor Kerr offers his response to my post on the judge as moral arbiter. Frankly, I don't find much to disagree with. And much of that boils down to the simple point that while I don't have an intrinsic problem with opinions like Judge Brown's, this one in particular was poorly formed -- it was not exactly the shining moment for the genre.

I certainly did not mean to imply that judges should be intemperate or injudicious in their language. Obviously, judges (really, all of us) should strive to be polite and well-reasoned when making arguments, and perhaps judges in particular should be especially attentive to that virtue. To the extent that Judge Brown's opinion fails in that, it is deserving of criticism -- but that's a problem of rhetoric, and I don't see it as a necessary part of the type of opinion I'm defending.

I do think judges have the right to extend wide-ranging critiques of whole lines of doctrine, same as of individual cases. If the problem is that Judge Brown did not support her arguments with well-reasoned analysis, then I agree she should reason better or come up with more defensible policy beliefs. But I think Professor Kerr and I generally agree that tempered, well-mannered and well-reasoned judicial opinions that are designed to either guide legislators (or other judges) or prevent wrongful appropriation of moral credibility are permissible, and may often be salutary.

Top Reality

Last Tuesday, I saw my first episode of Top Shot on the History Channel (they're in the middle of Season 4).

By this weekend, I had completed watching all of seasons 1 and 2 (the only ones available on Netflix). That's a rather brisk pace, even for me -- and particularly so given that I have no shooting background or any real desire to fire a gun (ditto for Jill, who really likes the show too). So what gives? Why is Top Shot so compelling? I can think of a few reasons.

* Genuinely interesting challenges. Top Shot is very good on variety, not just in the weapons they use but the way they have them used. Almost every episode involves people doing things that just look cool.

* (Relatively) little drama. There's not none -- there are definitely cliques that form and alliances and such (more in Season 2 than Season 1). But it's not forced, and it's not rammed down your throat.

* Great camera work. The high-speed cameras mean you get to watch bullets piercing jugs of liquid in exquisite slow motion. That never gets old.

* It's objective. There's really no place for biased judging like on, say, Project Runway. You hit the target or you don't. You go faster or you go slower. No excuses. No way for weak shooters to slide by because they have a back story the producers like.

* I can appraise it. Listen, I really like Hell's Kitchen. But at some level, I'm just taking the announcer's word for it as to what's happening and how people are doing (wow, I bet that beef wellington really was delicious!). By contrast, on Top Shot I can see what is happening. I see that the target was hit, or I see that it wasn't. I don't feel like I'm being led by the nose.

I See Gay People

This year's Jerry Falwell Teletubby Memorial Award goes to ... Tony Perkins!

These days, you can't get a sugar high without experiencing a cultural low. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. There's trouble in candy land. After more than 70 years together, Mike & Ike are calling it quits. The duo is staging a gay divorce as part of a new ad campaign to draw in younger customers. In this society, even candy has an agenda! From Facebook to Tumblr, the fruity pair says, "The rumors are true. We just couldn't agree on stuff anymore." Starting this summer, the company will spend $15 million on billboards and TV commercials that poke fun at the breakup. It's just another subtle example of society chipping away at the value of marriage. And I don't know what's more disturbing--that advertisers think divorce appeals to kids or that sexualizing candy will make people buy more.

I suppose at least Perkins has the fact that Mike & Ike have two dudely-sounding names and are presented as being in a marriage -- all Falwell had to go on was Tinky Winky's triangle symbol and purple color. But it's tough to live up to a legend like Falwell -- kudos to Perkins for giving it his best shot.

"Rational Basis with Bite" for All

Randy Barnett responds to my blog post Strict Scrutiny for All! I mentioned this to a friend and he remarked that Barnett is the current "constitutional giant-slayer", to which I replied "and I'm no giant."

That being said, I don't think Barnett gets my post quite right or succeeds in defending Judge Brown's opinion. His basic argument is that Carolene Products, properly understood, still would allow meaningful review of economic regulations because the way it articulated rational basis still had some bite to it. The case that gave us our modern, toothless "rational basis" doctrine was actually Williamson v. Lee Optical. But we can restore "the real Carolene Products" and still have something properly called "rational basis" (rather than strict scrutiny) that nonetheless gives the Court meaningful oversight over economic regulation.

I venture no opinion as whether this is the correct reading of Carolene. As a response to my post, though, it's mostly a non-sequitur, for two reasons. First, Judge Brown's opinion did not cast its villain as Williamson -- it set its sights on Carolene. And it didn't say "rational basis is being wrongly applied", it attacked rational basis review wholesale: "The practical effect of rational basis review of economic regulation is the absence of any check on the group interests that all too often control the democratic process. . . . Rational basis review means property is at the mercy of the pillagers. The constitutional guarantee of liberty deserves more respect—a lot more."

Second and more importantly, the main point of my post was that whatever she thinks the remedy should be (rational basis plus, strict scrutiny, a yea or nay vote by Richard Epstein, whatever), Judge Brown's indictment is not limited to economic regulations but applies equally to any law Congress passes. This is the focus of her attack on Carolene and its echoes of Ackerman's -- that public choice theory denies that "discrete and insular minorities" should be at a democratic disadvantage, hence, Carolene's decision to provide heightened protections for laws targeting them and them alone is utterly wrongheaded. Small special interests are actually quite powerful, and political ignorance prevents adequate checks at the ballot box, so even diffuse majorities are vulnerable to political exploitation.

But this line of attack is not limited to economic regulation -- it is a general indictment of our democratic structure and its operation as pluralistic interest-group bargaining. Every law is vulnerable to this process defect, every law ought be suspect. Whether that means every law deserves strict scrutiny, like Brown effectively implies, or some heightened form of rational basis, as Barnett does, the point is that there is no reason to treat economic regulations specifically as any more likely to be the product of this general shortcoming in the system.

Gay Masorti Rabbis in Israel

The Israeli branch of Conservative Judaism (known as Masorti Judaism) has announced it will begin ordaining gay Rabbis, following a similar decision by the American branch several years ago. This is important, for several reasons (beyond the obvious advance for gay equality).

For starters, that this is happening in Israel has significant symbolic value. But moreover, Jewish organizations outside the US tend to be more traditional than their American counterparts (that is to say, Conservative Judaism in the US is more liberal than its analogue, Masorti Judaism, outside the US). Hence why the decision by American Conservative Jews to ordain gay Rabbis was both pathbreaking and lonely -- the non-US groups notably refused to follow along. But now they're catching up, and that's no small thing.

In the Room with Barney Frank

A fascinating interview with retiring Democratic Rep. Barney Frank (MA). My favorite part is when he talks about him telling House Speaker Rep. Tip O'Neill (D-MA) that he was planning on coming out publicly.

Robert Bauman had written a book in which he outed me. He incorrectly referred to somebody as my boyfriend—he wasn’t; he was a close personal friend—but he referred to me as gay. The press didn’t pick it up, but I thought, I’d better tell Tip. So I went to Tip. We were sitting on the floor, it was a bad day, we were losing the vote on the Contras, and I sat next to him. I said, “Tip, I’ve got to tell you something. Bob Bauman is coming out with a book that says I’m gay.”

“Awww, Bahney, don’t listen to that shit. You know they say these things about people.” I said, “Well, Tip, the point is it’s true.” He said, “Oh, Bahney, I’m so sad.” That’s when he told me he thought I was going to be the first Jewish speaker. He acted as if it was the end. But he was wonderfully supportive.

The final part of the story was when he told Chris Matthews, “We better get ready to talk to the press. They tell me Bahney Frank is going to come out of the room.” Matthews said, “What?” Finally he figured out Tip meant “come out of the closet.”

The whole thing is fascinating. Give it a read.

Cosplay for Killers

I'm a "fan" of the Assassin's Creed series on Facebook, which means their messages occasionally wander across my wall. Today, I saw one that I found interesting -- a plug for "the 1st Assassin's Creed Online Cosplay Contest."

Why do I find this odd? Well, to my lights at least, cosplay has always had the public image of being very geeky fanboy/girlish (I'm not saying I agree with this assessment, only that's how I've understood its public meaning). It's girls in anime costumes and guys with an obsession for Japanese RPGs. Assassin's Creed, by contrast, is much more of a macho man game; its advertising uses professional athletes*, incredible acrobatic feats, and, of course, the prospect of brutally dismembering half of Renaissance Italy.

Given that, I find it interesting that the game's official feed is promoting a cosplay event -- one would think they'd be more attentive to preserving the fragile egos of teen gamers for whom being associated with, ew, nerds is the last thing they want. But maybe I'm too cynical about Ubisoft. Or maybe I'm entirely misreading the cultural salience of cosplay. Thoughts?

* Funny story -- I was with my cousin when an ad for AC:Revelations came on. It showed a bunch of pro athletes in hoodies that mimicked the assassin garb, followed by "stats". The last state was for "Ezio Auditore", who, of course, is the protagonist of the series -- but my cousin just assumed he was another NBA player and was curious why he had never heard of this "Eezee-oh" guy.