Best of the Web Today - May 23, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Shut Up, She Explained
The woman who gave us same-sex marriage shows what she thinks of free speech, reports the Boston Globe:
The chief justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court said yesterday that rhetoric about judges destroying the country and the suggestion that court decisions should conform to public opinion are threatening public trust in the judicial system, a cornerstone of democracy.
Justice Margaret H. Marshall, who has been widely criticized as a judicial activist since writing the court's 2003 decision allowing same-sex marriage, spoke before a crowd of 7,000 at Brandeis University's 54th commencement. . . .
''I worry when people of influence use vague, loaded terms like 'judicial activism' to skew public debate or to intimidate judges," Marshall said. ''I worry when judicial independence is seen as a problem to be solved and not a value to be cherished."
Gee, what about vague terms like "extremist" or "out of the mainstream"? Has Marshall forgotten the vituperative attack liberals waged on Judge Robert Bork 18 years ago--an attack in which her husband, Anthony Lewis, played a prominent role as a New York Times columnist? Is she unaware that Senate Democrats are similarly attacking a raft of Bush judicial appointees?
Perhaps this stab at humor casts some light on the questions:
Marshall began with a joke about the blue and white balloons suspended from the Gosman Sports Center ceiling. She said she liked the colors, which included ''no red states"--winning a big laugh.
So if you don't like liberal activist court rulings, you should just shut up about it, but Marshall lacks even the self-restraint to refrain from partisan japery in public. Our respect for the judiciary is diminished somewhat after reading about Marshall's performance. Isn't yours?
Chairman of the Bored
Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday, and the interview looks almost as cornucopian as that of John Kerry* 113 days ago. So we'll just mention a few highlights today and return for more later in the week.
Did you know that Howard Dean is a right-wing kook? Well, OK, he isn't really right-wing, but he has one surprising area of agreement with his fellow kooks on the right, as we learned when Tim Russert asked him about the race to replace Sen. Jim Jeffords:
Russert: In your home state of Vermont, there's a vacancy for the United States Senate about to occur. Bernie Sanders, the congressman from Vermont, wants to run for that seat. He is a self-described avowed socialist.
Dean: Well, that's what he says. He's really a populist.
Russert: But is there room in the Democratic Party for a socialist?
Dean: Well, first of all, he's not a socialist, really.
Russert: He--
Dean: He hasn't said that for a while.
Russert: Oh, he has a--he wrote in his book: "Outsider in the House, I am a Democratic socialist."
Dean: Well, a Democratic socialist--all right, we're talking about words here. And Bernie can call himself anything he wants. He is basically a liberal Democrat.
Sanders actually is not a Democrat; although he usually votes with the Dems, he is officially independent. But if, as Dean claims, a socialist "is basically a liberal Democrat," then a liberal Democrat is basically a socialist. Which, as we say, is something you'd expect to hear from a right-wing kook, not the Democratic chairman.
Russert also asked Dean about his over-the-top comments on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay:
Russert: "Serve his jail sentence"? He--what's he been convicted of?
Dean: He hasn't been convicted yet, but he is also, in addition to the things that I just mentioned, under investigation in Texas by a district attorney down there for violating the campaign finance laws of Texas by funneling corporate donations, which is illegal, into certain campaign activities. This gentleman is not an ethical person, and he ought not to be leading Congress, period. And it is endemic of what happens in Congress when one party controls everything.
Russert: You said in December of 2003 that we shouldn't prejudge Osama bin Laden. How can you sit here and have a different standard for Tom DeLay and prejudge him?
Dean: To be honest with you, Tim, I don't think I'm prejudging him.
As for Osama bin Laden, Dean later pronounced him innocent:
Dean: The thing that really bothered me the most, which the 9/11 Commission said also wasn't true, is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false. The 9/11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, said it was false. Is it wrong to send people to war without telling them the truth. And the truth was Osama bin Laden was a very bad person who was doing terrible things, but that Iraq was never a threat to the United States.
On CNN's "Capital Gang" Saturday, Sen. Ted Kennedy opined that "Howard Dean is doing a first-rate job." Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way promised 113 days ago to release his military records.
Fake and Inaccurate
Newsweek has followed up its retracted story alleging that U.S. servicemen had flushed a Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay. It turns out that there is a record of Koran-flushing, but it wasn't Americans who did it:
In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur'ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department's account of what is in the guards' reports. . . . Prison commanders concluded that certain hard-core prisoners would try to agitate the other detainees by alleging disrespect for Muslim articles of faith.
And what about "abuse" of the Koran by soldiers? Well, here's what Newsweek was able to document:
In fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far, said [Pentagon spokesman Lawrence] Di Rita, there is a mention of detainees' complaining that guards or interrogators mishandled their Qur'ans. In one case, a female guard allegedly knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the detainee's bed. In another alleged case, said Di Rita, detainees became upset after two MPs [military policemen], looking for contraband, felt the pouch containing a prisoner's Qur'an. While questioning a detainee, an interrogator allegedly put a Qur'an on top of a TV set, took it off when the detainee complained, then put it back on. In another alleged instance, guards somehow sprayed water on a detainee's Qur'an.
That's it. What's more, after a December 2002 incident in which "a guard inadvertently knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the floor," the Guantanamo commanders "issued precise rules to respect the 'cultural dignity of the Koran thereby reducing the friction over the searching of the Korans.' "
So assuming Newsweek has the story right this time--and you can bet they were extra careful--it's clear that those journalists who defended the original report as "fake but accurate" were only showing their own deep prejudice against the U.S. military.
In a defense of Newsweek just out in The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg concludes by warning of the danger that "we'll lose sight of what we're fighting for, and, little by little, become the mirror of what we're fighting against." Isn't that precisely what's happened to the press, as it has lost sight of accuracy in the pursuit of a political agenda?
Hey, Wait for Us!
In Iraq, "a broad gathering of Sunni sheiks, clerics and political leaders formed a political alliance on Saturday, seeking to win back the political ground they had lost to Shiites," reports the New York Times from Baghdad:
The meeting was the first wide-scale effort by Iraq's embittered and increasingly isolated Sunnis to band together politically, and was broadly attended by what organizers said was about 2,000 Sunni Arabs from Baghdad and nearby cities. The gathering was an implicit acknowledgment that it had been a mistake to turn away from the political process and allow Shiites to control the government for the first time in modern Iraqi history. . . .
In speech after speech at the meeting, at a Baghdad social club, delegates called on fellow Sunnis to cast aside doubts and throw themselves into politics to try to weigh in on the writing of a constitution, which is under way in a Shiite-controlled committee in the National Assembly. Even the Association of Muslim Scholars, a leading voice in the Sunni election boycott, signed on as one of the conference's organizers.
Remember the calls for postponement of the Iraqi elections, on the ground that Sunni Arabs would not participate and civil war would ensue? Well, we do.
Narrowing the Field
"Iran's hard-line constitutional watchdog has rejected all reformists who registered to run in next month's presidential elections, approving only six out of the 1,010 hopefuls," the Washington Post reports from Tehran.
Well, OK, so they rejected the other 1,004. But an optimist would say the glass is 1/168th full.
This Just In
"Saudis Earn Low Rank in Women's Rights"--headline, Associated Press, May 21
Suppression Meeting
The Associated Press reports from San Francisco on a pagan parley:
The attendees of the "All Atheists Weekend" came together to discuss what they call the rise of fundamentalism in the U.S. and the blurring of lines between church and state. . . .
The religious right's increasing involvement in U.S. politics has triggered an angry backlash among the godless, say Bay Area atheist groups, five of which organized the event.
"It's time for us to push back," said psychologist Jaime Arcila, 52, of San Francisco, who was accompanied by his two children, Javier, 15, and Amanda, 12, in a tiny theater Saturday night just south of downtown.
Arcila, who is not an official member of any atheist group, said he was prompted to attend Saturday's showing of "The God Who Wasn't There," along with about 100 other people, because of what he sees as a growing intolerance in the U.S. for people with alternative views and lifestyles. . . .
Ali, a 36-year-old native Iranian, agreed. He declined to give his last name because he said he wants to return to his Muslim-dominated homeland someday and fears that he could be persecuted if he's identified as an atheist.
Doesn't this just say it all? If America really were intolerant, Arcila wouldn't have given his name either.
Killing Leslie Burke
During the Terri Schiavo controversy, one refrain we heard was that those who opposed starving her to death were hypocrites unless they favored "universal health care"--which is to say, government control over medicine. A story in the Times of London illustrates the hazards of this approach:
Leslie Burke, 45, who suffers from cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative brain condition, won a landmark case last May granting him the right to stop doctors withdrawing artificial nutrition or hydration (ANH) treatment until he dies naturally.
The Department of Health, backing the [General Medical Council's] attempt to reverse the ruling, said that if that right were established, patients could demand other life-prolonging treatments. The department argues that this will create a culture in which patients request treatments "no matter how untested, inappropriate or expensive, regardless of doctors' views."
Philip Sales, for the Health Secretary, told a panel of three appeal judges, headed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers: "A general right, as identified (in the High Court), for an individual patient to require life- prolonging treatment has very serious implications for the functioning of the NHS.
"It may be interpreted as giving patients the right to demand certain treatments, contrary to the considered judgment of their medical team, that would lead to patients obtaining access to treatment that is not appropriate for them, and to unfairly skewed use of resources within the NHS."
Burke, unlike Schiavo, is of sound mind. He doesn't need a feeding tube yet, according to Wesley Smith's account in The Weekly Standard, but his disease "may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow." If the British government has its way, he will die because his life costs too much.
Zero-Tolerance Watch
A 9-year-old student at Milwaukee's Thurston Woods Campus Elementary School fell asleep in class and "woke up with a broken tailbone after an MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] teacher yanked the dozing child's chair away," reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Then, according to the report, the teacher called the girl's mother to complain about the girl's dozing off:
The teacher told police that "she tried to wake (the girl) up the first time by shaking her and telling her that she needed to wake up," the report says. "(The girl) woke up the first two times to read her part in the book and then go back to sleep."
The next time the girl fell asleep, the teacher said she began counting loudly to three and said she would move the chair, but it didn't work. The teacher told police "she did not realize that the girl was sitting on the edge of the chair" and that "her intentions were to startle (the girl), so she would stay awake and sit up."
[Robert] Levine [the girl's mother's lawyer] called the incident "kind of bizarre" and said he plans on formally filing a lawsuit once the appointment to serve as guardian goes through.
"I don't know why a teacher would do that," Levine said. "Not a real good judgment, obviously."
You Don't Say
"[Former Enron adviser] Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."--departing public editor Daniel Okrent, New York Times, May 22
Homer Nods
It seems we erred in an item Friday on a scatological artwork by one Tom Friedman. We skimmed this passage from a Washington Post article describing the auction and thought we had read that the piece had sold:
"Lot 416, now showing on the screen," [the auctioneer] said. "And $45,000 to start here. At $45,000. $48,000, at $50,000. Any advance from 50?" It might seem like someone was bidding from the way the price went up but that apparently was just the auctioneer trying to gin up interest and give the sale some forward momentum, an accepted and common tactic. There were no bidders. Strongin paused for a moment, then gave up.
"Down it goes, at $50,000," she said.
In another item, we said that the Associated Press had declined to mention the name of Janet Perkins, the 9-year-old girl for whose murder Vernon Brown was executed last week. That was true of the story to which we linked, but a reader from the AP points out that another dispatch did mention Perkins, along with 19-year-old Synetta Ford, whom Brown also murdered.
Is There Anything That Isn't a 'Sign of Warming'?
"Antarctica Ice Cap Growing, Another Sign of Warming"--headline, Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, May 20
Are They Endangered on Their Home Planet?
"Conservationists Track Jaguars From Space"--headline, MSNBC.com, May 20
Only if They Get Them First
"Jobless Workers Could Lose Jobs"--headline, South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, May 20
What Would We Do Without Doctors?
"Doctors Say During a Heart Attack, Make Sure You Call 911"--headline, KTUU-TV Web site (Anchorage, Alaska), May 17
Can't He Afford Real Ties?
"With More Private Giving, Bloomberg Forges Ties"--headline, New York Times, May 23
Your Tax Dollars at Work
"Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday," the Associated Press reports from Albany, N.Y.:
Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said. . . .
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that it was "deeply disturbing and runs contrary to the purpose of Medicaid, which is to provide health care coverage for uninsured, low-income individuals." Clinton, a Democrat, urged Leavitt to look into the matter, and said she would explore legislative options.
New York's other senator, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said at a press conference in New York City that he hoped the issue could be resolved without a bill, but he's prepared to offer one if needed.
"While I believe that HHS did not do this intentionally, when the government pays for Viagra for sex offenders, it could well hurt many innocent people," he said.
It's nice to see the AP adopting our practice of referring to Schumer as "New York's other senator." Though we'd say in this case the other senator has a better grasp of the problem than does Mrs. Clinton, who seems to think the problem is a failure of means-testing.
Great Moments in Public Education
A state math exam for North Carolina seventh-graders included a question on football that asked students "to calculate the average gain for a team on the game's first six plays." But there was a problem:
The team opened with a 6-yard loss, a 3-yard gain and a 2-yard loss, which would have made it fourth down with 15 yards to go for a first down. The team's fourth play was just a 7-yard gain, yet it maintained possession for a 12-yard gain and a 4-yard gain on two additional plays.
A state official defends the flawed question:
Mildred Bazemore, chief of the state Department of Public Instruction's test development section, said the question makes sense mathematically and was reviewed thoroughly.
"It has nothing to do with football," Bazemore said. "It has to do with the mathematical concepts that you're studying."
It seems mathematicians are out of touch with the real world--and even with the world of sports. |
