Why did liberals give the Second Amendment away?

Unfortunately, most liberals are wusses. They let conservatives interpret and own the Second Amendment. So when Scalia made up the individual right to own firearms for the purpose of self-defense (an outstanding example of true judicial activism), liberals had only milquetoast counter-arguments. When Elena Kagan faces the Senate Judiciary Committee, she will make a generic statement that she supports the Second Amendment, without challenging Scalia's interpretation. Democratic politicians do it all the time, even if they really do not believe in any of the reasoning in Heller.

That makes liberals look like an unprincipled bunch, cherry-picking the Constitution. In fact, they are stupidly squandering the opportunity to take the high ground in every respect.

Scalia's interpretation makes no sense. There can't be a right to own all weapons - I bet Scalia would not support Heller's right to keep nuclear bombs in his home - so where do you draw the line? If handguns must be allowed, can bazookas be banned? Probably, but that is just as arbitrary as saying that swords must be allowed, but guns can be banned. There is no principled way to determine the limits of this "right".

By contrast, the interpretation that makes complete sense is that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to serve in the military. That is what "to bear arms" means. People don't "bear arms" when they go hunting; that is not, and never has been, the idiomatic use of that phrase. This interpretation fits well in the context. It makes the "well-regulated militia" reference relevant, and the right recognized by the amendment meaningfully curbs a practice that was common in the 18th century, to limit military service (or officer ranks) to upper classes.

This interpretation was politically meaningful in the 18th century, and it is politically meaningful now. It makes it unconstitutional to deny the right of military service to homosexuals. (That it is currently denied only to those homosexuals who do not hide their sexual orientation does not change anything. A whole class of citizens is excluded, it's just that the government is limited in the ways it can ascertain membership in that class.)

Why is no politician using this argument? Where are the liberal jurists or law professors arguing for this view? I googled gay military "second amendment" and the top hit that combined the terms in this sense (and the sixth hit overall - the top five were not relevant) was a comment on a blog. Kudos to ober from albany ny for comment #9 here:

The second amendment of the US Constitution says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." If this is true, that we have a right to bear arms, then how can the government stop its citizens from joining the military? It seems to me that gays have a right to join the club. And the second amendment guarantees a person's right to join the military. If the military is not open to all of the country's people, then that might allow factions to gain control of it. A country whose military is dominated by one group may turn on the others: Can tyranny be far behind?

That's right. Notice the inanity of the reply by one Capt, USMCR:

There is no right to join the military. There's a duty to serve, but not a right to serve. If you can't see well enough to shoot - is it a civil rights issue? Should we tell the Marine Corps that the policy/slogan "every Marine is a rifleman" is a civil-rights violation? The right to bear arms, n the other hand, belongs to all citizens, whether members of the military or not. The 2nd amendment's militia isn't the military - it's a hypothetical draft of every able-bodied man - assumed to have acquired competence with a rifle on his own in the woods. I just hope that my legally blind neighbor sticks to knives and baseball bats.

That's just silly. Freedom of expression does not mean that an illiterate person is entitled to have an op-ed published in New York Times. Marriage and reproductive rights do not mean that the most repulsive guy in the world can force some woman to marry him and bear his children. And equality of rights in education does not mean that those who cannot pass first grade are entitled to finish college. Of course competence is required, but exclusion of a whole class unrelated to ability is clearly forbidden in all analogous situations.

The Constitution Commandeth: Thou Shalt Not Call Creationism "Superstitious Nonsense"!

I woke up from blogging hibernation because another Bush-appointed judge decided that we've always been at war with Eastasia.

As Orwell said, freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If a teacher is not allowed to say that creationism is "religious, superstitious nonsense", then we are in deep trouble. And, as of last Friday, a teacher is not allowed to say that, at least not in the Central District of California.

Briefly, James Corbett, a high school history teacher and adviser for the student newspaper, was found liable for Establishment Clause violation because of the comment he made in reference to John Peloza, a biology teacher who has been fighting (and suing) the school district for his "right" to teach creationism in his science class.

The most important reason this ruling is appalling is that it prohibits telling the truth. PZ Myers nails it:

First of all, he told the truth: creationism is religious, it is a product of superstition, and it is nonsense — it doesn't fit any of the evidence we have about the history of the world or life on it. We have to have the right to tell students not only that something is wrong, but that it is stupidly wrong.

And the judge's reasoning is mind-boggling (emphasis mine):

The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

Hello? The context, as described by the judge himself, was Corbett's opposition to Peloza's attempts to teach creationism. Not only is creationism false, but teaching it in public schools - especially in a science class - is illegal. Pointing this out obviously has a secular purpose.

So much for one prong of the Lemon test; the judge sours the next one just as badly:

The Court finds that Corbett’s statement primarily sends a message of disapproval of religion or creationism. As discussed above, Corbett states an unequivocal belief that creationism is “superstitious nonsense.” Corbett could have criticized Peloza for teaching religious views in class without disparaging those views.

This is wrong on several levels. First, it is beyond dispute that, in the context of science, which is what Peloza was supposed to teach, creationism is superstitious nonsense. If it weren't, the fact that it is illegal to teach it would be hugely problematic. If those views did not deserve disparaging, Peloza would be a victim of persecution by the Capistrano Unified School District, the US District Court for the Central District of California (the same one that decided this case) and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There is a reason creationism is not allowed in the science curriculum.

(And, to preempt the argument that it has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, but only with favoring religion, let me ask if teaching some claim that came from a religion - and, to make the case harder, was denied by another religion - would still be prohibited if the claim turned out to be true. Let's say science discovered that it really was turtles all the way down; would it make any sense to proclaim that teaching that violates the Establishment Clause?)

Furthermore, if so many non-fundamentalist believers and conciliatory non-believers have been trying to convince the public that religion is compatible with evolution, how come disparaging creationism is equated with disparaging religion? Again, I'll outsource this to PZ:

[W]e are being told over and over again that Christianity is not equivalent to creationism. This teacher has specifically said that creationism is nonsense, and this judge has equated a dismissal of a weird anti-scientific belief with making a rude remark about Christianity. So…where are all the Christians rising in outrage at the slander of their faith?

Finally, this suit was not brought by Peloza, but by a student, Chad Farnan. It is a mystery why Farnan should have standing to sue over a disparaging statement one teacher made about another teacher.

Ed Brayton wrote about the decision as well, but he seems terribly confused for a normally staunch free speech proponent. While Ed seems to tepidly agree that the creationism comment did not violate the EC, he also seems to think that some of Corbett's other comments, which the judge found not to have violated the EC, were more problematic:

Again, this is really strained reasoning. If he really wanted to make the nuanced point that the court thinks he was making, he could certainly have done it in a much more scholarly and serious way. Instead, the statement he made was inflammatory and insulting. There just isn't any place for that kind of hostility in a public school classroom.

The way I read it, Ed would have found Corbett liable at least for the "Jesus glasses" comment. That is very disappointing, even more so because he stops at hand-waving and makes no attempt to argue with the Court's actual reasoning. Not surprisingly, a lot of Ed's commenters agree with him, many of them flaunting their ignorance of the facts (e.g., implying that Corbett was a science teacher). I will reproduce my comment here:

Why would the "Jesus glasses" comment be inappropriate? Jesus (if he existed, or other people in his name) promoted a certain set of moral rules that are demonstrably impossible to follow without acting against one's best interest, as the vast majority of Americans understand "one's best interest". It should be a history teacher's duty to explain why a certain group acted against its own interests - at least as it would appear to us. Unless there is evidence that "they were blinded/manipulated by religion" is not a fair explanation, i.e., not one widely accepted by historians, the teacher should be free to teach it.

As for the Mark Twain quote, as long as it is a true quote, it ought to be fair game for a teacher to use it. After all, Twain is arguably the greatest American writer ever (certainly the most acclaimed word-wide), and is (hopefully) well-represented on the syllabus of some required courses. Shouldn't students learn that the greatest American writer was an atheist?

But don't take my word for it, go to the source and read the decision.

UPDATE (5/5/09): As usual, Digby gets it.

Does Obama oppose same-sex marriage?

A commenter to this post keeps insisting on false equivalences based on Obama's stated lack of support for gay marriage. Bullshit. First, the obvious: Obama spoke clearly against California's Proposition 8, which proves that he is even less supportive of opposition to gay marriage. But let's think about this issue a bit deeper. Obama could support gay marriage all he wanted, but there is nothing he could do as president to institute it. Marriage is not a matter of federal policy. At least, it is not supposed to be; however, conservatives (who are for "states' rights" when the states are bigoted, but apparently not otherwise) have tried to change the Constitution to define marriage as heterosexual only. And back in 1996, when the public opinion was much less enlightened, they passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) with significant bipartisan support. So what is Obama's position on DOMA?

Here's Glenn Greenwald:

Some appear not to know that a candidate (named "Barack Obama") who has repeatedly and emphatically vowed to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act -- and who called it an "abhorrent law" -- just won a national election in a landslide. And, in the very widely watched Vice-Presidential debate, this is what his Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said:

Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple. . . .

It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do. . . . there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple.

That's what repeal of Section 3 of DOMA would enable -- treating opposite-sex and same-sex couples exactly equally. That's all it would do; it would not re-define "marriage."

So in every way that matters, the Obama-Biden administration is committed (in the sense of clearly stated campaign promises) to equal rights for same-sex couples. True, they will not force the individual states to allow same-sex couples to marry (And how could they? The President has no such constitutional authority.) but they have clearly promised not to stand in the way of same-sex marriage when states choose to allow it.

Police right to wait for sermon to end?

A few corrections and second thoughts about the Rev. Hannibal Lecter:

1. I used the ubiquitous, but wrong, spelling of the infamous name in the title of that post. I should have written "Usama bin Ladin".

2. To avoid misunderstanding: I think the police should generally do their work rationally, and that includes minimizing the possibility of riot or other risk of injury, particularly to innocent bystanders, when making arrests. However, I also feel it is extremely important that all people be equal before the law; therefore, the arrest procedure must not depend on the occupation or social status of the accused. Discrimination based on race, sex, or religion, is particularly pernicious.

3. Testimony in blog comments from former law enforcement officers (in whose identification or words I have no reason not to believe) has convinced me that I was likely wrong in assuming that the police would have behaved differently if the accused had not been a preacher. My tentative conclusion is that I might have overlooked the, let's call it, "man bites dog" bias in news reporting. While there are many reports of police brutality and haste in arresting criminal suspects, the total number of arrests is far greater. It is quite likely that the spectacular raids and high-speed chases we read about are anomalous, and that they make news because they are exceptional.

4. That said, there have also been blog comment testimonies for the opposite view - that theatrical and dangerous arrests are the norm. Incidentally, all those testimonies seem to be about drug-related arrests. That's disturbing. While I can understand that drug arrests present special challenges for gathering evidence (if the police aren't quick, the suspects can get rid of the drug), something is profoundly unjust in a system that, by design, puts suspects of non-violent drug offenses at greater risk of injury during arrest than murder suspects.

5. I think that people who use the "innocent until proven guilty" principle as the main justification for the police waiting until the end of Hopkins' sermon to make the arrest are seriously misunderstanding what that principle means and how it is applied.

What if Osama bin Laden is taping a message when we find him?

Should we let him finish before arresting him?

Apparently, the police in Jackson, AL, think so:

Police allowed Hopkins to finish his sermon before arresting him

WTF!? He is a murderer and (probably serial) child rapist! What is the point of the police waiting? So his holy message wouldn't be lost?

Looks like you can get away with almost anything in the name of religion, and even when you cross all bounds, you still get way more respect than other criminals.

UPDATE: Over at Pharyngula, many commenters think the police did the right thing because (1) Hopkins was not about to flee or commit another crime, and (2) he is only charged with those crimes at this point, not convicted. Those people are completely missing the point. Commenter karen (#31) has it right:

The police wouldn't wait for any other type person to finish his business before arresting him. This is just pandering to the woo.

The procedure for arresting a preacher must be exactly the same as that for arresting anyone else. If it is not, the police is violating the Constitution, specifically the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.

UPDATE 2: It gets interesting. A comment by "Doug the Trucker" (#104) challenges my (and PZ's) view in a valid way:

OK, former LEO here.

We try to avoid creating a scene when arresting someone, especially if it in a public place where an arrest might stir up an even larger problem. From the description, Mr. Hopkins was in a controlled area, wasn't planning on fleeing, and was quickly arrested after the sermon. If there had been reason to believe he was armed, or was about to take off and run, then the officers would have moved in for an immediate arrest.

We try to do this for everyone, not just clergy.

If this is factually correct, I am ready to agree that the police did the right thing. But, for now, I find it hard to believe that the police would normally wait when arresting someone for murder.

UPDATE 3: Another police officer says this is standard. Well, I would hope it would be, but how then do we explain numerous accounts of SWAT team drug raids, high-speed chases, and so on?

Lesbians are from Lesbos... and everywhere else

Those activist librul judges:

ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.

This world must be going to Hell! What will they say next?

That residents of Czech Republic may not forbid socially unconventional people to call themselves "bohemian"?
That residents of India may not outlaw the name "Indian" for Native Americans?
That residents of Holland may not withhold the phrase "Dutch treat"?
That residents of Russia may not kill the phrase "Russian roulette"?
That residents of Germany may not stifle "German measles"?
That residents of France may not censor "French kiss"?
That residents of Thailand may not enjoin "Siamese twins"?
That residents of Scotland may not stick it to "Scotch tape"?
Even that residents of Turkey may not dicree what we gobble for Thanksgiving meal?

Now if only the Greeks realized that it is not their prerogative to tell another nation that it may not call itself "Macedonia"...

Mr. Jefferson, Tear Down This Wall!

Almost two years later, why does the teacher in this story still have his job?

And why does the principal still have his or her job?

Appalling.

SCOTUS Digression: Beating a Dead Horse

It seems that the army of brainwashed libertarians still can't accept the Kelo decision, although in a rational world there would be no discussion about it - it was one of the most clear-cut cases ever to be granted certiorari. Something is seriously wrong with the central nervous system of those who insist that the decision was wrong.

Let's quote the goddamn Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment:

...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

That's as clear as any constitutional provision can be. The petitioner's argument was, essentially, that the Clause absolutely prohibits the government from taking private property for private use. A person who can speak English and follow simple logic cannot possibly reach such a conclusion.

First, the Takings Clause says nothing whatsoever about taking for private use. It says that, if the government wants to take your property for public use, it has to pay you "just compensation". It can take your property, it just has to pay you. (Whether "just compensation" is fair market price or something else, is a legitimate debate issue.) But it says nothing at all about "private use", and it is simply idiotic to conclude that anything in the Clause implies that such takings are forbidden.

Second, what would it even mean for the government to take property for private use? That's a contradiction in terms. The government is a public institution, and whenever it takes property, it is for public use. That doesn't preclude some private use: governments do sell (or give away) property to private individuals or businesses, just like they often outsource provisions of public services to private industry. But a government cannot, by definition, do anything that has no public purpose.

Suppose the local government takes your land (and your house on it), pays you just compensation (and assume, for the sake of argument, that everyone involved agrees that the compensation is just), holds it for 100 years as the idyllic Fifth Amendment Park, and then sells it to a private business that wants to build a shopping mall on it. Would this violate the Constitution? Would any of the dissenters in Kelo even think that it might violate the Constitution? If it did, then every sale of government property to private entities is unconstitutional. You cannot draw a distinction based on how the government acquired the property, because that would in effect give the original owner continued property rights - in other words, the taking would never be complete. But that would be absurd; not even the staunchest libertarian would argue that the government doesn't really own the property for which it paid full price.

Now change only one thing in the previous hypothetical example: instead of 100 years, the government holds the property for one minute. Can this change the constitutionality of the described actions? I challenge anyone to find anything in the Constitution - and feel free to search the penumbras as well - that would make this time interval relevant. There is nothing, and the example now resembles closely what happened to Susette Kelo. This is a no-brainer: no constitutional violation occurred. (There could have been a dispute over whether the compensation was just, but that was not the issue brought before the Court.)

What the city of New London did may well have been bad policy. The municipal and state laws that allowed it may well have been bad laws. While the Constitution doesn't forbid the kind of eminent domain exercise as happened there, it also doesn't prevent state and local governments from enacting laws that restrict takings and prevent commercial involvement, or simply impose an arbitrary time limit in the hypothetical examples above. But those are not constitutional issues; moreover, the most zealous critics of Kelo generally want to minimize federal government's powers and favor maximal freedom of state and local governments to run their affairs as they see fit. Yet in this case, they wanted the federal government - federal courts, no less - to invent a new concept in the Constitution and use it to tell every state and local government, for every property transaction they make, whether they are allowed to do so or not.

Bang Bang! Part 2

Continuing with the observations on the Heller decision... Scalia wrote (pp 19-20):

These experiences caused Englishmen to be extremely wary of concentrated military forces run by the state and to be jealous of their arms. They accordingly obtained an assurance from William and Mary, in the Declaration of Right (which was codified as the English Bill of Rights), that Protestants would never be disarmed: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” (...) This right has long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment. (...) It was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia.

(Emphasize added.) That is a wrong conclusion. All the historical facts Scalia quoted were about one social group (religious in this case) trying to dominate the other and the other being armed to defend itself. While I would agree that all rights are individual, this is about as collective as the exercise of rights can be. In Scalia's context, arms would be of no use to an individual Protestant, but only to a Protestant militia resisting a Catholic domination. Scalia is not helping his cause with this example.

Another instance where Scalia's historical facts don't help his interpretation is found on p. 25:

During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric. (...) John Smilie, for example, worried not only that Congress’s “command of the militia” could be used to create a “select militia,” or to have “no militia at all,” but also, as a separate concern, that “[w]hen a select militia is formed; the people in general may be disarmed.”

If anthing, this points to my preferred interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is that it codifies a right to serve in the armed forces (be part of the militia), a right that would be violated by a formation of a restricted military class of citizens, something that would have been reasonably perceived as a real risk in the late 18th century. But that is far from a right to own or carry weapons as a private citizen, unrelated to military or paramilitary service.

Scalia is on the verge of agreeing, but he doesn't like the result, so, after all this analysis, he declares the prefatory clause academic:

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.

This logic would be palatable if Scalia were known as a supporter of unenumerated rights, but, that not being the case, he is strangely out of character. He gives all the importance to the right that, according to him, most Americans perceived to have at the time (a typical foundation for an unenumerated right), and none at all to the reasons this right was codified in the Constitution. He seems to argue that the operative clause of the Second Amendment is redundant, while the prefatory clause is irrelevant.

Scalia's interpretation of the analogous provisions in state constitutions adopted around the same time is extremely strained. While PA and VT clearly did guarantee private citizens a right to bear arms for self-defense, Scalia's ascribing the same meaning to the provisions in NC ("for the defence of the State"), GA (“for the security and defence of this province from internal dangers and insurrections”) and MA ("for the common defence") constitutions is arbitrary, to put it mildly. And again, the very nature of the argument is so un-Scalia, who would never find the right to privacy in various state constitutions relevant for the U. S. Constitution, nor would consider the significant minority of states that have abolished the death penalty to be a relevant factor in Eight Amendment cases.

Next time: Scalia vs. Miller and so on.

Bang Bang!

I expected the SCOTUS would strike down DC's ban on handguns, but I wasn't sure if they would do it on very narrow grounds with something approaching unanimity, or with a sweeping interpretation of the Second Amendment in a 5-4 decision. The pessimists have it - the right wing decided to pursue its own agenda and carve in stone its side of the controversial issue, even though it could only do it with the slightest possible majority. Regardless of the quality of arguments, this stubborn approach is one further step in undermining the reputation of the Court.

The opinion has 64 pages and the dissents another 90, so it will take me a while to read through it, and I'll comment on it as I go. Here is the first instance of the typical Scalia sacrifice of logic for rhetoric (pp. 6-7):

What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. (...) This contrasts markedly with the phrase "the militia" in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the "militia" in colonial America consisted of a subset of "the people"---those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to "keep and bear arms" in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause's description of the holder of that right as "the people."

There are two logical problems with this statement. First, Scalia is ignoring plausible alternative readings that avoid this purported tension, and second, his insistence on "a subset" is tenuous.

If the Second Amendment is read to guarantee a right to "keep and bear arms" for militia-related purposes, and that right belongs to "the people", then it also implies the right of "the people" to serve in the militia. In other words, it prevents a permanent segmentation of the society into an armed military class and a disarmed one. That couldn't have been a trivial issue in 18th century, so this is at least a plausible reading of the amendment, and one which uses the terms "the people" and "militia" in a fully compatible way.

Also, being "male, able bodied, and within a certain age range" is hardly a restrictive set of conditions. The political community of the time included only men, and of course only adult men, so exclusion of women or underage men is already implied in "the people" as Scalia defines the term. We thus only need to consider the significance of the exclusion of old and disabled men for the distinction between "the people" and "militia" as its subset. But a musket was not of much use to many a disabled man (particularly if the disability had to do with upper extremities or teeth), and an older but healthy man, although not required to serve in the militia, wasn't necessarily forbidden from doing so. Therefore, Scalia's distinction is meaningless.

And yes, he tries to justify it in the next several pages, but his arguments just get more and more strained, culminating with a false analogy on p. 13, where he writes that (because of how he parses the idiom "to bear arms") using the phrase "to keep and bear arms" to imply a military context would be like saying "he filled and kicked the bucket" to mean "he filled the bucket and died". He calls that grotesque, which it is, but mainly because of his own mangling of the relations between words.

Deep-Sixing the Sixth?

I wish there were no trials by jury, at least not by jury of citizens with no qualifications for critical thinking. Out of 12 randomly chosen people, at least 8 have either no ability or no will to consider evidence without prejudice. And it is difficult to get juries to convict in cases of police brutality or vigilante vandalism. But the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to jury trial (and the Seventh does it for civil cases), and it would be almost impossible, as well as unwise, to change that. So what is to be done?

We could have professional or semi-professional juries, as some other countries do. Contrary to the popular misconception, there is no constitutional (or otherwise recognized) right to trial by jury of one's peers. On the contrary, the concept of "peer" is rooted in aristocracy and thus repugnant to our constitutional principles.

A reform to introduce trained juries would be difficult, and would increase the cost of government, but it would greatly improve the integrity of our judicial system. It could also enable a compromise between those who want elected judges and those who prefer appointed ones. We could have appointed judges and elected jurors. And states could experiment with various flavors of such reforms.

Another feasible reform could be doing away with "guilt" as the issue in a trial. Rather than decide if the accused is "guilty", the jury would decide whether the accused "did it". Objectively, this may be just a difference in words, but framing matters, and many people would probably perceive their role differently, as objective fact finders rather than judges of value. That could quell the annullment-by-jury tendencies, which usually have the effect of letting abusive cops and vigilantes off the hook.

All Men Are Created... Stop Here, Say No More.

Bush believes people are created, but he has a problem with the "equal" part. Ed Brayton shows that the Libby commutation hypocrisy is even deeper than it looks.

Protect the Children by Locking Them Up

A 17-year-old and a 16-year old took photos of themselves engaged in unspecified "sexual behavior" and got charged and convicted as child pornographers. They didn't even intend to distribute the photos; they were for their private use only. Florida state appeals court upheld the conviciton.
The idiot judge who wrote the opinion reasoned that

the statute was intended to protect minors like appellant and her co-defendant from their own lack of judgment...
Appellant was simply too young to make an intelligent decision about engaging in sexual conduct and memorializing it. Mere production of these videos or pictures may also result in psychological trauma to the teenagers involved.

So, to protect her from "psychological trauma", we should lock her up and stigmatize her as a criminal. Remarkably, another judge agreed with this bullshit, producing a 2-1 opinion.

People like this not only shouldn't be judges, they shouldn't even be allowed to vote for their neighborhood association boards. Heck, they should be locked up, to protect them from their own idiocy.

Atrios has more on this and related subjects, as does Yglesias.