Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first run for President

So Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michelle Bachmann each discloses that he or she is running for president at God's behest.

The relevant Scripture is 2 Chron. 18:

"I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing on his right and on his left. And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab king of Israel into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’

“One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’

“‘By what means?’ the LORD asked.

“‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.

“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the LORD. ‘Go and do it.’"

(It occurs to me that Descartes should've recalled this passage when he was ruling out the possibility that our consciousness is the work of a deceiving spirit.)

The NY Mag reporter was unable to get direct confirmation:

God could not be reached for comment by press time, because, a spokesman says, he was helping a baseball player hit a game-winning home run, giving an old churchgoing lady the winning lottery numbers, making sure that a plane made it through the turbulence okay, helping someone survive a heart attack, and also, just for fun, creating a new animal that's like a cross between a leopard and an alligator.

"Why, no, I've never had a zero bank balance -- why do you ask?"

Part of the village-commons aspect of the internet is that you find conservative types who suddenly startle you by having no clue whatsoever how the world works for those struggling between paychecks:

It makes no sense to declare bankruptcy simply to get out of paying medical bills; just do not pay them and move along. If you have no money the medical debt is not collectible; and if you do have money a bankruptcy judge would require part of it be used to pay the debt.

Belle Waring risks her life to bring you the TRUTH

Respect her courage and her (apparent) sacrifice. Click the link. Discover what OPPEC doesn't want you to know!

Littlejohn to be publicly reprimanded, fined $100

The Mississippi judge who, back in October, jailed a lawyer for 5 hours because the lawyer wouldn't recite the Pledge of Allegiance in open court has been ordered to submit to a public reprimand in his courtroom and to pay a fine. Pretty swift work as these things go.

Just let everyone buy insurance! Problem solved!

It's unwise to rely on media accounts of legal issues, but this report on the 11th Circuit oral arguments on the PPACA does not sound promising:

Hull also seemed skeptical about the government's claim that the mandate was crucial to covering the 50 million or so uninsured Americans. She said the rolls of the uninsured could be pared significantly through other parts of the package, including expanded Medicare discounts for some seniors and a change that makes it easier for those with pre-existing medical conditions to get coverage. Dubina nodded as she spoke.

Uh, yeah, and how are you going to get people to buy insurance if they can wait until they're sick? If you don't understand how the mandate and the preexisting-condition reform are tied together, then what do you understand about the issue, really?

An example of why judges should not supersede Congress as policy-makers.

The case for Obama's incompetence

Various folks have noted Christy Romer's remarks about the White House's economic policy:

Like the Federal Reserve, the Administration and Congress should have done more in the fall of 2009 and early 2010 to aid the recovery. I remember that fall of 2009 as a very frustrating one. It was very clear to me that the economy was still struggling, but the will to do more to help it had died.

There was a definite split among the economics team about whether we should push for more fiscal stimulus, or switch our focus to the deficit.

This was "awesome folly," as Krugman correctly states.

But let's look at the politics, not the economics. What was more likely to keep Obama from re-election: high unemployment, or a high deficit? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

We are pushing 10% unemployment ... still. This does not seem to concern very many people inside the Beltway, except to the extent it encourages the Republicans. Has Obama decided he doesn't want to keep his current job?

... Re: deficit reduction, the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts merits notice.

Big debt: Between 2001 and 2010, the Bush tax cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, 50 percent of the total debt accrued during that time. Over the past 10 years, the country has spent more than $400 billion just servicing the debt created by the cuts.

Supply-side failure: Far from paying for themselves with increased economic activity as promised, the tax cuts have depleted the public treasury. Tax collections have plunged to their lowest share of the economy in 60 years.

No jobs: Between 2002 and 2007, employment increased by less than 1 percent when the economy was supposed to be expanding. Employment growth barely kept pace with population growth. Between the end of 2001, when the country was in a recession, and the peak of the real estate bubble, er, economic expansion in 2007, the US economy performed worse than at any time since the end of World War II.

Rich people benefit: The best-known result of the Bush tax cuts is that virtually all the benefits were conferred upon people who didn’t need them at all and who didn’t use the money to, say, create more jobs or pay their workers better. Median weekly earnings fell more than 2 percent between 2001 and 2007. Meanwhile, people making over $3 million a year, who account for just 0.1 percent of taxpayers, got an average tax cut of $520,000, more than 450 times what the average middle-income family received.

Via. And that, remember, is what was so important to the GOP that they were willing to cut a deal with Obama on the budget.

A dry one, that Mr. Attlee

When asked whether he was an agnostic, Attlee replied "I don't know."

-- Wikipedia

Mr. Midshipman Cox's Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Jim McDonald at Making Light has a serious post up on the duel of U.S.S. Chesapeake vs. H.M.S. Shannon, riffing off Heinlein's use of an example from it in Starship Troopers. Not to be missed, by those who don't like to miss such things.

The Heinlein ref, which turns out to be inaccurate in a small but important detail, is the best teaser.

“When I suggested that your platoon leader might be killed, I was by no means citing the ultimate in military disaster. Mr. Hassan! What is the largest number of command levels ever knocked out in a single battle?” * * *

"... I am thinking of a case in which four levels were wiped out in six minutes--as if a platoon leader were to blink his eyes and find himself commanding a brigade. Any of you heard of it?”

Dead silence.

“Very well. It was one of those bush wars that flared up on the edges of the Napoleonic wars. This young officer was the most junior in a naval vessel--wet navy, of course--wind-powered, in fact. This youngster was about the age of most of your class and was not commissioned. He carried the title of temporary third lieutenant’--note that this is the title you are about to carry. He had no combat experience; there were four officers in the chain of command above him. When the battle started his commanding officer was wounded. The kid picked him up and carried him out of the line of fire. That’s all--make pickup on a comrade. But he did it without being ordered to leave his post. The other officers all bought it while he was doing this and he was tried for `deserting his post of duty as commanding officer in the presence of the enemy.’ Convicted. Cashiered.”

"I think God understands, and we must as well."

If you've expended your NYT clicks for the month, try the new parody site. For instance.

Tony Perkins, head of the Washington-based “Focus on the Family” conservative lobbying organization, said today in a statement that while male homosexuality is still an affront to God and a threat to Western Civilization, female homosexuality may be acceptable in some contexts, as long as the women in question were young, physically attractive, and wearing high heeled shoes.

Of course, he finds Biblical support in Leviticus.

I'm sure he just doesn't grasp the Iranian threat

The NYT reports that Israel's ex-Mossad chief is very worried about his country's politicians in charge:

The man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and that the anticipated pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions — like an airstrike on Iran. * * *

This week Mr. Dagan, speaking at Tel Aviv University, said that attacking Iran “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” He added, “The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”

Mr. Dagan went on to complain that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He worried that Israel would soon be pushed into a corner.

On Thursday he got more specific, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but this time through a leaked statement to journalists. The statement had to do with his belief that his retirement and the retirement of other top security chiefs had taken away a necessary alternative voice in decision making. * * *

While in office, Mr. Dagan served three prime ministers, was reappointed twice and oversaw a number of reported operations that Israelis consider great successes — forcing delays in Iran’s nuclear program through sabotaging its computers and assassinating scientists; setting the groundwork for an attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007; and assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative, in 2008.

When Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2002, appointed Mr. Dagan, he was reported to have told him he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.

Likud responds that such candor helps Israel's enemies. Oh yes, that's always a good one.

"Marquee Moon" reveals previously unsuspected phase

"Marquee Moon" has been one of my favorite songs since I bought the Television album. My favorite part was the ending: after the loooong guitar solo trails off, the riff from the beginning of the song comes back in, Verlaine sings the first line of the song -- "I remember how the darkness doubled" -- and the song fades out just as it comes back round to its beginning. Beautiful.

And, as I discovered last week when I finally got around to replacing my tape with the CD, entirely a figment of the record company's imagination:

The original vinyl LP faded out "Marquee Moon" to 9:58 because of space limitations. All CD issues have featured the full-length version of the song, clocking in at 10:40.

And the original version just isn't as good! Verlaine sings the first verse again, they do a little flourish, the song ends. Whee. And all these years, I thought the band had actually managed to do something cool with the conventional fade-out.

I'm thinking that was a "probably not."

Glen David Gold, novelist, explains why he doesn't ask readers what they thought of his books:

True story: the first piece of writing I published was in a local free weekly about our local suicide prevention agency, where I was a volunteer. I skulked around cafes that week, hoping to catch someone reading my article. And then I did. A woman in her sixties was slowly going through it. I ambushed her.

Me: Are you enjoying that?

Her: I’m hoping this article can explain to me why my son killed himself.

Oy.

"The icecold law, from which no friction will excite sparks"

A colleague sends us this quote, from the MSSC's 1900 op in Illinois Central R.R. Co. v. Johnson:

By the wisdom of the common law, so profound as to be quite undiscernible ....

That's 28 So. 753, 754, for those of you itching to use it in a brief.

The whole opinion, by one Calhoon, J., is charming.

We should be glad, if we had space, to follow by quoting the subsequent remarks of this very able brief, since they illustrate true eloquence,--the lightning of passion playing along the links of thought. But we must content ourselves with the icecold law, from which no friction will excite sparks. The common law must govern us, except where it is modified by statutory enactment. Accepting, as we do, the description of the status of bastards at common law furnished us by appellee's counsel, it may be noted that the basis of the rule was the discouragement of immorality in the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, not sanctioned by the public contract of marriage. The effect of the law on the millions who were governed began, after the lapse of many centuries, to dawn on the minds of the select few who governed them. These few, at occasional intervals between the numerous avocations of the multitudinous pleasures offered by wealth, began to observe that bastardy continued to prevail; that illegitimacy of birth, notwithstanding the thunders of the law from parliament house, the right reverend clergy, and the wigs and gowns of the courts, continued to be, as it always had been before, a “condition, and not a theory.” Bastards still dotted and spotted the kingdom as before, and, while the particular kingdom was in no worse situation in this shocking regard than the other kingdoms, empires, and suzerainties of earth, still it was in no better, to say the least of it. It was seen to prevail still. So, the premises being well considered for 700 years or so, it finally dawned on the benevolent minds of a few of “my lords and gentlemen,” who we must assume were not at all interested personally in the question, that the unoffending, unconsulted, and innocent offspring of unhallowed natural appetite ought to have some sort of consideration. Thereupon a law was enacted magnanimously recognizing that bastards were in its eye, as in fact, the children of their own mothers.

... Having had the fortune to be Episcopalian, Justice Calhoon's career is epitomized here.

Appellate advice

Texas Lawyer mag talks to Edith Jones (h/t), which was of sufficient interest to me that I actually watched the 4-minute video.

(Digression: I hate internet video. I read quickly, so scanning blogs doesn't take too much time, but 4 minutes is 4 minutes -- or rather, 5 or 6, when the video keeps halting.)

Anyway, to spare you the trouble, here's the skinny. First, 5 tips for lawyers:

(1) Have a beginning, middle, and end to your argument. Get the court's attention, present your analysis, and have something to end with.

(2) Know the record cold. (Duh, but the judges keep having to tell us this.)

(3) Don't address the court as "you guys" (this is "becoming a little more frequent").

(4) Give case cites, particularly to authorities not in your brief.

(5) Update your authorities the day before argument.

Judge Jones says yes, oral argument can change the court's mind, particularly in helping it to see what the critical issues are in a case.

Finally, having a succinct narrative can help the court, but "don't start at the beginning of the world."

Rand Paul's First Amendment

But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

-- Rand Paul. (Via.)

... Another one for the "'Libertarian' just means 'don't tax me'" file.

... Eugene Volokh is on the case.