Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in John Wirenius' LiveJournal:

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Sunday, November 15th, 2009
9:10 am	The Bartilucci Clause So, as I'm reading my dead-tree edition of the New York Times (you're welcome, free-riders!) what do I run across? An old and dear friend up to new-ish tricks: Bravo, say people like Vinnie Bartilucci, a computer programmer from Lehigh Valley, Pa. Among his methods for countering loud cellphone talkers is to place a small recording device he carries for work on the table next to the offender. Mr. Bartilucci did just that last summer at a McDonald’s in lower Manhattan, soliciting the logical question: What are you doing? (Which was punctuated by an expletive.) “I said, ‘Well, since you obviously want me to hear your conversation, I’d better keep a copy of it,’ “ Mr. Bartilucci recalled. THE ploy worked: the man got up and walked away — but the victory felt Pyrrhic. “We’ve learned so much about personal freedom that we sort of work under the assumption that everything we do is perfectly acceptable, and God help the person who tries to limit us in any way,” Mr. Bartilucci said. Ah, Vinnie. The man who once tried to convert a Jehovah's Witness to the Church of the SubGenius, who shattered the Chaminade High School dress code by staying within its technical limits while subverting its spirit in toto (the subsequent revision was known as the Bartilucci Clause), and who (with my connivance, and a bravura performance by a now-respectable Marianist brother, whose confidentiality I will respect) hoaxed my high school graduation party so notably that it still comes up 25 years later at Wirenius family gatherings. (Not to mention my mother who still dissolves at the memory of certain impressions done at the dinner table when Vinnie would visit ....) Some people have the knack, as Thomas Wolfe noted in Look Homeward Angel, of raising the temperature in any room they are in--of bringing life, and spontaneity and fun with them. If the occasional windmill gets speared in the process, so much the better. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 13th, 2009
10:23 pm	Mark Twain Tonight! Here is Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain on Man: the Reasoning (?) and Religious (?) animal: And a glimpse of the genuine article: (Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
7:42 pm	Um, Crikey. Do not, do not ever get into a debate with Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens (Jeeves and Boozer?). Behold: Intellectual demolition derby, with manners. From Intelligence Squared; hat tip: Andrew Sullivan, himself a Catholic, who writes: You can forgive the pro-Catholic side for losing the debate in Britain on whether the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan were up against Hitch and Fry. What you cannot forgive is the sheer intellectual shallowness of the defense. Just listen to the small speech above, I mean: really, this is the best we've got? **** The problem with the theoconservative take-over in the Catholic priesthood is not so much its extremism as its mediocrity. And it is mediocre because it has been trained not to think, not to argue, and not to engage the modern world. It has been trained solely for obedience - blind, dumb, unquestioning, intellectually moribund obedience. Actually, I think the extremism and the mediocrity are both problematic. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
10:01 pm	Your GOP at Work Here is Rep. John Shadegg putting his own stupidity into the mouth of a baby, from whom he thinks we should take policy advice: Here's Shadegg a few years ago, when he had thoughts of higher office: Some guys never learn... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
9:08 pm	Brush Up Your Shakespeare! Yesterday wasn't just Election Day, it was a chance for me to reconnect with some old friends (and new) by engaging in a great cultural event. I refer of course to Theatre of Blood, with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg Sometimes the classics don't age well. But then there's this one, which was every bit as delicious as I recall from my admittedly misspent youth: Enjoy! (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
9:02 pm	And Chris Christie is an Honorable Man... First, he blatantly steals from Monty Python, whose surviving members may sue him. (The video is here). Then he rips off a stock footage house. Meanwhile, no explanation for Christie's driving with impunity scandals or his loan to a subordinate who appears to have used her position with the US Attorney's office (where he had supervised her) to benefit the Christie campaign. Look politics ain't beanbag, as they say. But stealing from Python...despicable. A palate cleanser : (Comment on this)
7:56 am	The Bitter Taste of Kool-Aid Let me see if I've got this crystal clear: 1. Dede Scozzafava, who lives in the District and has previously served in the State Assembly, wins the Republican nomination for NY's 23rd District, a traditional Republican stronghold. 2. Conservative Republican launch a more conservative candidate against her, denouncing her as a "RINO," a "leftist" and seeking to tie her to ACORN. GOP Celebrities such as Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty supported her conservative rival, Bill Hoffman. Although nominally supporting her, Meanwhile, the RNC formally supports her, but provides no financial support. Money pours into the district in support of Hoffman. Even Newt Gingrich called it a "purge." 3. Outspent by both Bills, Scozzafava withdrew from the election, a move Steele praised as "unselfish," allowing the NRC to join the roster of its luminaries officially embracing Hoffman. 4. Yesterday, Scozzafava, a lifelong Republican endorses Owen. The GOP's response? State Party Chair Edward Cox:“Dede Scozzafava’s endorsement today represents a betrayal of the people of the North Country and the people of her party." Similarly, Dick Armey (who supported Hoffman, by the way), “She basically put aside any pretensions and threw in with the Democrats.” Now, isn't this rather like saying that Julius Caesar betrayed Brutus with his dying words? And isn't this the fate of moderate Republicans in the modern era? To serve as a reassurance to the less extreme elements of the party, to be used by the dominant, increasingly, er, frothy, hard right, and then discarded and dismissed as traitors when they have the temerity to resent being cast aside? (Remember my Whitty Awards? Named after Chriistie "It's My Party, Too" Whitman, it's gone not only to Colin Powell, and Matthew Dowd, but even to George W. Bush). Like all good cults, conservatism needs its scapegoats. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
4:53 pm	Timothy Geithner... really is like some little weasel. I mean it: (Or, see here) The President should fire him and the horse he rode in on. And the smug, oleaginous buffoon Larry Summers, too (listen for "Now, Gwen," when she catches him in contradictions. What a preening popinjay.). Update: Oops. Wrong Summers clip. Try this one: http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2009/03/23/20090323_summers.mp3 (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
8:50 am	Creativity in straitened times As a child of the 70s, I admit this worked for me: (or, view here). H/t: Financial Armageddon) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
6:31 pm	Rector Takes the High Roast As opposed to my own rather dyspeptic take, Rev. Bill Tully responds in a manner that matters to be both irenic and ironic: Pope Benedict's invitation to Anglican (including Episcopal Church USA) priests and parishes to become part of the Roman Catholic Church, retaining our liturgy and some customs, is fine with me. In fact, I think it's wholly fair. I'm an Episcopal parish priest, so my reaction is less about the cosmic implications, if any, of this initiative. *** But fair is fair. For most of my ministry, beginning in 1974, I've been in parishes that are uncharacteristically (for Episcopalians) interested in membership growth. When I work to put out the welcome mat to serious spiritual seekers, the result is usually a heavy preponderance of Roman Catholics, at least 50% in most years. So, fair is fair. We have a principled approach to Christian practice that takes the Bible, tradition, and human reason with balanced seriousness. On the ground, we like ritual, think and act sacramentally, and for a variety of historical reasons have a euphonious liturgy. Roman Catholics resonate with that. What most who come to us want to get away from is centralized, exclusively male authority structures and the top-down insistence that some moral and practical questions are settled for all time. When they hear the Pope say the question of the ordination of women as priests cannot even be officially discussed, they are often ready to join a different conversation. Fair enough. We've been doing the inviting for years. We welcome the Pope to the business of welcome. Well played, sir. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 19th, 2009
10:30 pm	Well, Yes As Horace Rumpole might put it:: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
10:46 am	Deep Thought After re-reading Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which reversed a a fifty year old interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, making it dramatically harder for plaintiffs to bring any kind of suit in federal court, despite that rule's repeated re-enactment without change, the lack of any challenge to the rule in Twombly, and the fact that over half the states based their pleading rules on the federal rule--well, let's just say that after all this, I don't ever want to hear any more whining about liberal activist judges. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
6:18 pm	Michael Steele--What Up? GOP Chairman Michael Steele has already abandoned that title for his official GOP Website blog, but as a question to Steele himself, I think it has some merit. On health care, Steele wants a "Rodney King moment." and says that, if indeed the health care train is leaving the station, far from jumping on board, "I'm the cow on the tracks. You're gonna have to stop that train to get this cow off the tracks to move forward." Er, interesting metaphors, Mike. And, uh, train versus cow? Doesn't actually end that way, as a TPM commenter pointed out: Which, interestingly,is the fate predicted for Steele by media commentators: Steele's comic stylings are further proof of the GOP's utter severance from reality. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
8:48 pm	How Do You Solve a Problem Like Scalia? (Part 2) Yesterday's oral argument in Salazar v. Buono demonstrated that Justice Scalia's onetime sensitivity to First Amendment values (remember Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) has disappeared into thin air. Rather unbelievably, the choleric Justice chastised a lawyer for advancing the "outrageous" proposition that a cross might not be seen by Jewish veterans as an appropriate memorial for their service: Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.” Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.” “What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?” Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom. Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.” According to Tony Mauro, "[i]n the audience, several people were offended by Scalia’s comment about the cross as 'the most common symbol' for the dead, said lawyer Jeffrey Pasek, who authored a brief against the constitutionality of the cross for the Jewish Social Policy Action Network. 'A lot of people were surprised at the insensitivity of that comment,' Pasek said." I'm actually just finishing up Martha Nussbaum's fine study of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, Liberty of Conscience (2008), and one of her major points is that the creation of an "in-group" whose orthodoxy is treated as normative, "even if not coercively imposed, []is a statement that creates an in-group and an out-group. It says that we do not all enter the public square on the same basis: one religion is the American religion and others are not. It means, in effect, that minorities have religious liberty at the sufferance of the majority, and must acknowledge that their views are subordinate, in the public sphere, to majority views." Id., at 2. In brief, that is exactly why it is Scalia, not Eliasberg, who made an "outrageous" statement in the oral argument. Back in 2006, I posted an entry raising the question of Scalia's increasingly emotional, self-interest referencing jurisprudence. I did not find that an easy post to write, as I had previously respected Scalia for what seemed to me to be a sincere effort to build a jurisprudence of originalism--as exemplified by his concurring in Texas v. Johnson, above. But here, he is turning the Establishment Clause upside down, denigrating not just its text but its intent--and damning as "outrageous" all those who point out that the Cross, the supreme symbol of his own Catholic faith, is not universally emblematic of all faiths, especially the Jewish faith, with which it has, at best, a rocky history. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
8:48 pm	The Animal Cruelty Depictions Case The oral argument in U.S. v. Stevens, addressing the constitutionality of the 1999 federal law criminalizing depictions of cruelty, to animals seemed to tip in favor of finding the statute unconstitutional, according to Tony Mauro. That's not surprising; the statute, as the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held, appears to me to be overbroad, criminalizing fictitious representations of such cruelty along with video or other recordings of actual incidents of cruelty. The statute (codified at 18 USC sec. 48 bears that construction, but, it should be noted that the lower court did not consider whether a limiting construction could properly be applied to restrict the statute's ambit to exploitation of the actual harm of real animals--that is, profiting from the crime of animal abuse. That distinction--drawn by the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002)--has been used in differentiating protected speech from unprotected conduct. See Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105 (1991). In other words, the statute should be limited to focus on the kind of "crush" videos that provided the primary impetus to its enactment, and should not be read to extend to Gary Larson's "The Far Side." ("Tethercat," anyone?) There is a reasonable reading of the statute which supports this, as it rather confusingly defines "depiction" in terms of "living" animals. The Third Circuit had no such argument before it, as near as I can tell, because the Government seems to have overshot--asking the Court to create a new categorical exception to the First Amendment, instead of limiting the target to the dissemination of the record of an illegal act. In view of the Court's narrowing of New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982) in Free Speech Coalition, along just these lines, the Government appears to have missed the best option to uphold the statute--and that which is most consistent with the First Amendment. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
8:01 pm	"Put Her in Her Place" From the National Republican Congressional Committee, under the headline "General Pelosi Knows Better, Slams McChrystal": If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place. (My italics, their emetics) And what, pray dear Republicans in Congress, would that place be? In the kitchen, or in the bedroom, perhaps? Or is this use of a classic sexist trope inadvertent, and all that you are saying is that the Constitution (Art. I, sec 8) be damned; the civilian leadership's role is to defer to the military? Personally, I'm guessing both. They're back to women in the Daily Offense Order. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 5th, 2009
9:23 pm	Best Fleeced in the West You know you're a Nimrod if ... You buy law enforcement and corrections services from an outfit that swipes its emblem from a fictitious tiny nation that creates comic havoc on a regular basis. Seriously; here's the APPF logo: (Photo: TPM) Here's the Duchy of Grand Fenwick's: Oh, Montana...you've done it again! More here (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
9:42 pm	The "Loyal" Opposition Conservatives exult at America's defeat in the competition to host the 2012 Olympics. What a surprise. After all, as long as Obama loses, that's all that counts. It's a trivial matter, but reflective of where we are as a nation. As I have written elsewhere, the institutional GOP has chosen to try to de-legitimize Obama, and that they are playing with fire. We're not talking about isolated provocateurs here--the Chairman of the Republican Party as above linked a plethora of governors and senators have been flirting with birtherism, and feeding the fire that Obama is a raging evil pretender to the throne. It's one thing to disagree with the guy, and to denounce his policies, but the appeal to revolutionary rhetoric is so crazed that even Tom Friedman, who is a centrist with neo-con leanings, and a Bush supporter on many issues, recently published a column worrying that the GOP is fueling an atmosphere like that which led to Rabin's assassination: Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination *** Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work. Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm not (unlike Friedman in his Op-ed) calling for legal sanctions against those who are on the crazy end of the spectrum. What I am suggesting is that they are becoming mainstreamed in a way that could lead to a breakdown in our ability to govern. Tactics--the "who won the day?" approach--has a place. But strategy--the long term picture is far more important. That's why, to pick a great conservative to make my point, Winston Churchill's many tactical blunders (opposing Normandy, his "soft underbelly" fixation in World War II, to name just two), are dwarfed by his seizing of the truth long before anyone else: that Nazi Germany had to be defeated, not appeased. He kept his eye on the goal, and was willing to work with anyone--even his bete noir, Stalin, to attain that goal. We need more Churchills, not cynical, vapid Becks and Steeles. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
10:41 pm	This Just Isn't Good When the RNC Chair send out mass e-mails comparing the President to Stalin and Kim Jong Il, as well as calling his party engaged in a "radical leftist transformation of America," one has to ask if those who believe that the institutional GOP wants to see civil discord are entirely without a point. They're playing with fire, recklessly. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
10:11 pm	Words Fail Me What the-- Right. Like TR, Lincoln and Ike wouldn't have beaten the snot out of Nixon, Regan and Bush. So awesomely stupid that I just had to share. Via Shakesville. (4 Comments |Comment on this)