Captain's Quarters was hit by TrackBack Spam, as was BatesLine
I hope they don't delete TrackBack's because I really like to credit Blogs that I quote.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Trackback Spam
Constitution in Exile
NYT reported If you think back to Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, what most likely comes to mind are the explosive allegations of sexual harassment made by the law professor Anita Hill. Years from now, however, when observers of the court look back on the hearings, they may well focus on a clash that preceded Hill's accusations -- an acrimonious exchange that few remember today.
Early in the hearings, Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced a concern about Thomas's judicial philosophy. In particular, he singled out a speech that Thomas gave in 1987 in which he expressed an affinity for the ideas of legal scholars like Richard A. Epstein. A law professor at the University of Chicago, Epstein was notorious in legal circles for his thesis that many of the laws underpinning the modern welfare state are unconstitutional. Thomas tried to assure Biden that he was interested in ideas like Epstein's only as a matter of ''political theory'' and that he would not actually implement them as a Supreme Court justice. Biden, apparently unpersuaded, picked up a copy of Epstein's 1985 book, ''Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain,'' and theatrically waved it in the air. Anyone who embraced the book's extreme thesis, he seemed to be suggesting, was unfit to sit on the court.
As Epstein sees it, all individuals have certain inherent rights and liberties, including ''economic'' liberties, like the right to property and, more crucially, the right to part with it only voluntarily. These rights are violated any time an individual is deprived of his property without compensation -- when it is stolen, for example, but also when it is subjected to governmental regulation that reduces its value or when a government fails to provide greater security in exchange for the property it seizes. In Epstein's view, these libertarian freedoms are not only defensible as a matter of political philosophy but are also protected by the United States Constitution. Any government that violates them is, by his lights, repressive. One such government, in Epstein's worldview, is our government. When Epstein gazes across America, he sees a nation in the chains of minimum-wage laws and zoning regulations. His theory calls for the country to be deregulated in a manner not seen since before Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
After Thomas joined the Supreme Court, Biden's warnings seemed prescient. In 1995, echoes of Epstein's ideas could be clearly heard in one of Thomas's opinions. By a 5-4 majority in United States v. Lopez, the court struck down a federal law banning guns in school zones, arguing that the law fell outside Congress's constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. Lopez was a judicial landmark: it was the first time since the New Deal that the court had limited the power of the federal government on those grounds. Thomas, who sided with the majority, chose to write a separate opinion in which he suggested that even his conservative colleagues had not gone far enough. The real problem, he wrote, was not just with the law at hand but with the larger decision of the court during the New Deal to abandon the judicial doctrines of the 19th century that established severe limits on the government's power. He assailed his liberal colleagues for characterizing ''the first 150 years of this Court's case law as a 'wrong turn.''' He continued, ''If anything, the 'wrong turn' was the Court's dramatic departure in the 1930's from a century and a half of precedent.''
Chief Justice William Rehnquist is expected to announce his resignation sometime this year, perhaps before the end of the court's current term in June. Rehnquist's retirement would create at least one confirmation hearing for a new justice, and two hearings if President George W. Bush chooses to nominate one of the current justices to be chief justice. At the same time, there is a political battle looming in the Senate over seven federal appellate-court candidates whose nominations were blocked by Senate Democrats during Bush's first term but who were renominated by the president after his re-election. Many liberals and centrists worry, and many conservatives hope, that the doctrine favored by these judicial candidates is originalism, the stated constitutional theory of Scalia. Originalists don't like interpreting the Constitution in light of present-day social developments and are generally skeptical of constitutional rights -- like the right to have an abortion -- that don't appear explicitly in the text of the Constitution. At least in theory, those in the originalist camp champion judicial restraint and states' rights.
But as Thomas's presence on the court suggests, it is perhaps just as likely that the next justice -- or chief justice -- will be sympathetic to the less well-known but increasingly active conservative judicial movement that Epstein represents. It is sometimes known as the Constitution in Exile movement, after a phrase introduced in 1995 by Douglas Ginsburg, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Captain Ed blogged Jeffrey Rosen writes a long article in today's New York Times magazine, which starts off by lambasting Justice Clarence Thomas and then paints a picture of Republican efforts over the years to create Supreme Courts that will give unfettered reign to the rule of corporations. This lengthy and tedious essay goes on interminably about the Constitution in Exile movement and a supposed network of jurists standing by to take us back to its "glory days".
David Bernstein, blogged O.K., besides the fact that
there is no "Constitution in Exile movement", there is nothing blatantly inaccurate about the above; the Republicans did dominate the United States from 1896 to the Roaring Twenties. But Jeff is clearly implying that there was some correlation between libertarian interpretation of the Constitution and Republican politics, in a way that would both draw parallels to today, but also suggest that such views have always been tied up in partisanship. In fact, however, some of the most libertarian Justices of the period Jeff refers to–Melville Fuller (Cleveland), Rufus Peckham (Cleveland), and James McReynolds (Wilson) were appointed by Democrats. Some of the most statist Justices–Holmes (Roosevelt), Stone (Coolidge), Roberts (Hoover), and, at the tail end, Cardozo (Hoover) were appointed by Republicans. Constitutional interpretation simply wasn’t a partisan (though it was a political) issue, and with few exceptions the Justices of the period from both parties accepted constitutional limitations on both federal and state regulatory power that none of today's Justices would countenance.
Ann Althouse blogged The phrase was pretty much ignored until 2001, when it was picked up and publicized by liberals. In October 2001, the Duke Law Journal, at the behest of some liberal law professors assumedly worried about what would happen to constitutional law under Bush appointees, published a symposium on the Constitution in Exile. Thereafter, other left-wingers, such as Doug Kendall of the Community Rights Council and Professor Cass Sunstein, began to mutter about some dark conspiracy among right-wingers to restore something called "the Constitution in Exile." You can read that symposium issue of Duke Law Journal here. I was one of the participants.
James Joyner blogged Volokh conspirator David Bernstein argues, quite persuasively, that there is no such thing as a Constitution in exile movement, except in the minds of liberal conspiracy theorists. I would argue though, that Epstein, and to the extent he agrees with him, Thomas are essentially right in their view of the Constitutionality of much of the post-New Deal regulatory state. Most of the early New Deal regulations were quite properly struck down by the Supreme Court. The idea that the federal government had the power to mandate huge public welfare programs was held to be far outside the scope of the Commerce Clause or any other conceivable constitutional delegation of power. Franklin Roosevelt intimidated the courts, though, with his plan to expand its membership and pack it with those sympathetic to his views. While that threat created a lot of uproar and was ultimately not enacted, the Court nonetheless got the message and soon reversed itself. By 1937, with NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel, the Court created out of thin air an absurdly broad interpretation of the federal commerce power that opened the door not only for the New Deal but the modern regulatory state.
Jeralyn Merritt blogged Since I oppose Congress' use of the commerce clause to federalize crimes that should be left to the discretion of the states, I can't endorse everything in this article, even though the article focuses on property and economic issues.
Orrin Judd blogged You needn't embrace quite so extensive a counter-revolution to find something bizarre about people arguing against rights that precede the Constitution and against the idea that the federal government is limited by the Constitution. On the other hand, these economic conservatives are, or ought to be, likewise limited by the texts.
I view this just as NYT being worried about the possibility that Bush will nominate Thomas to become CJ when Rehnquist retires.
Bolton's just too hip
Chicago Sun-Times editorialized Bolton's just too hip for scaredy-cat Dems
Boy, this confirmation battle over John Bolton, the president's plain-spoken nominee for U.N. ambassador, is really heating up. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the Democratic Party's comely obstructionist, has charged that Bolton needs ''anger management lessons.'' I don't know about you, but nothing makes me want to hurl a chair through the window and punch someone's lights out like being told I need anger management lessons. So I was interested to hear about the kind of violent Boltonian eruptions that had led Boxer to her diagnosis. Well, here it comes. (If you've got young children present, you might want to take them out of the room.) From the shockingly brutal testimony of Thomas Fingar, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Intelligence Research:
Q: Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm? Fingar: No, he was angry. He was standing up. Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face? Fingar: I don't remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn't characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad.
He was ''standing up'' with ''hands on hips''! Who's he think he is -- Carmen Miranda? Fortunately, before Bolton could let rip with a ''pursed lip'' or escalate to the lethal ''tsk-ing'' maneuver, Fingar was able to back cautiously out of the room and call the FBI anger management team, who surrounded the building and told the deranged diplomat to come out slowly with his hands above his hips....
So vast battalions of America's ''public servants'' sit around all day cross-examining each other about some guy's unacceptably aggressive body language. He put his left hand in! His left hip out! In, out, in, out, he shook them all about! It's the hot dance craze we all do at the Sinister Neocon Conspiracy Initiation Ceremony:
''Ev'rybody's doin' a brand new dance now
C'mon, baby, do the loco-Bolton!''
If he doesn't get the nomination, he's got the makings of this summer's novelty hit, Neoconga No. 5:
''A little bit of fingering of my hips
A little bit of sneeriness on my lips
A little bit of rolling of both my eyes
A little bit of petulance in my sighs
A little bit of starting to almost mock
A little 'You so totally do not rock'
A little bit of memo on your desk
A little bit of you makes me Hulk-esque!''
And, if an underperforming bureaucrat winds up getting Atlanta or Dallas nuked, tough. Better that happen than that out-of-control nutcakes rampage around with hands on hips. After all, as National Review's John Derbyshire put it three years ago, deftly summing up the philosophy of this new war: Better dead than rude.
Scott @PowerLine blogged Do the Loco-Bolton. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, we proudly present Mark Steyn's Chicago Sun-Times column: "Bolton's just too hip for scaredy-cat Dems."
Betsy Newmark blogged Mark Steyn is in top form today on the John Bolton nomination. He notes that the Democrats are all upset about how abusive John Bolton is to his underlings and, as Barbara Boxer said, needs anger management classes.
Of course, all this talk about Bolton's manner in dealing with subordinates is just a smokescreen. The Democrats don't like his strong criticixm of the United Nations and his support for the President's foreign policy. They know that it is a winning PR strategy to be seen as shills for the UN. The UN hasn't had much good press in the United States recently and most people agree that it is an institution ripe for the kind of hardheaded reforms that John Bolton represents.
Betsy is right. The Dems just don't like his strong criticism of the UN, and are afraid he is going to push for real reforms in that dysfunctional organization.
A New Power Rises Across Mideast
WaPo reports Advocates for Democracy Begin to Taste Success After Years of Fruitless Effort
Early this year, a small group of advertising executives, journalists and political operatives began meeting around the crowded tables of a popular cafe here [Beirut] to plot an opposition media strategy for Lebanon's spring parliamentary elections. The mission was a long, almost hopeless quest to upend years of Syrian political domination. "Like all Lebanese, we thought we were experts on politics," recalled Francis, who volunteered his time on the politically sensitive campaign. "But progress was slow." Then a bomb exploded Feb. 14 along Beirut's waterfront, killing former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The media group immediately put its election strategy into action as tens of thousands of protesters flooded Beirut's central square demanding that Syria pull out of Lebanon. The group's choices -- the red-and-white color scheme and "Independence '05" slogan -- were broadcast across the Middle East. Suddenly, Francis and his colleagues were at the cutting edge of the Arab world's democratic spring....
The prospect of sectarian violence still shadows Lebanon; crackdowns against dissent threaten reform movements in Egypt; and Saudi Arabia and other autocratic strongholds in the Middle East are taking only the most cautious steps toward democracy. But across the region, political reformers are benefiting from the unifying forces of technology and mass media. Digital channels outside the control of states are carrying anything from a Kuwaiti woman's call for voting rights in her country to a Lebanese Christian's demands to drive Syrian troops out from his. The foot soldiers are Islamic political activists in some cases, Bob Dylan disciples, communists or Arab secular nationalists in others. Many are united only in their common desire for fair elections, free speech and political rights.
John @PowerLine blogged This morning the Washington Post begins a two-part report on the stirrings of movements for democracy across the Middle East. Today's article focuses on Lebanon and Egypt. Of course, in the Post's telling, the main credit for the "rising" of a "new power" goes not to the Bush administration, but to more congenial figures--journalists and advertising men, one of whom, a Lebanese, assures us that if he lived in America, he would surely be a liberal Democrat. The Post seems to think that it is the proper color-coordination of street demonstrations, not January's election in Iraq, that explains why democracy is suddenly resurgent in the region.
What most liberals stubbornly refuse to acknowledge is that for decades, American policy in the Middle East centered on supporting pro-American regimes, even when those governments were autocratic and unpopular. What makes the "neocon" policy in the region a sharp departure from the past is precisely the fact that the only respect in which governments are expected to be pro-American is that they neither support nor spawn terrorism. Democracy in Muslim countries will, no doubt, result in the election of some governments that are unfriendly both to American culture and to American foreign policy aims. As long as those governments are not starting wars or spawning terrorism, however, the administration and its allies will be satisfied.
Cori Dauber blogged On the other hand, too many articles fawn over the groups pushing for electoral reform in Egypt without making clear who they are or what their agenda is. It's useful to make clear, as this article does, that not everyone who wants to be elected into power would be friendly towards the United States. Others, we should understand, if they are interested in free elections, are interested in them only as a tool to gain power. One man, one vote, one time.
Orrin Judd blogged It's a favorite argument of the Realists that the situation in any given country is so unique that it isn't fertile ground for participatory government--and they're always wrong.
Betsy Newmark blogged The Washington Post has a fascinating look at some of the groups that have been working behind the scenes to bring about democratic reform in the Middle East.
Some may be pushing electorial reform just to get in power, with the thought they will remove it then, but when the people have an opportunity to pick their leaders they are not likely to forget that feel, even if they have to realize they made a mistake once. It just means they will be more careful the next time. And just because a country is Democratic does not mean they are going to support the US, but they are not likely to decide to go to war with their neighbors. And a lot of the countries in Eastern Europe, who just got Democracy, were some of GWB's greatest supporters in the war in Iraq.
Classical holy grail
A good friend forwarded me this news story:
The Independent reports For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.
In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.
Will Baude blogged Apparently we are on the verge of uncovering loads of classical works previously thought lost
Alex Tabarrok called his reader's attention to this item.
The Light of Reason blogged How incredibly, spectacularly wonderful. I’ve been very personally discouraged of late—but this is the kind of event that gives me enormous hope, and the courage to go on, no matter what barriers may seem to be in front of us. You truly never know what tomorrow may bring. And on very rare occasions, it can bring a miracle—or as close to a miracle as we are likely to see. And this is certainly very close indeed to a miracle. I still have goosebumps. Wow.
blogged New and improved ancient texts.... There is more where the above came from here.
Kiko Matsing blogged Classical Writings That May Change Human History Discovered in Ancient Garbage Dump.
Jim Davila blogged The web page of the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project is here (and note this page especially), but there's nothing about the breakthrough there yet. We are already aware that the Oxyrhynchus papyri contain some of our earliest fragments of important Old Testament pseudepigrapha (2 Baruch is an example), and it's on our agenda to go through the published material to look for hitherto unidentified pseudepigrapha fragments for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. With luck, perhaps these new developments will add to our corpus.
Winston Smith blogged Ancient Greece maybe have just become less tragic
See also this article, and check out a number of the links highlighted above
Issues of Faith
At the same time the extreme Left is browbeating any contact Republicans have with people of faith, accusing them of trying to set up a Theocracy, things are no better in Britain. The Guardian reports Issues of faith could lose Labour one of its strongholds in the poorest borough of London.... But there is another reason why this campaign has become a flashpoint of the election. It risks being fought along religious lines. 'At stake here is whether we have a politics that appeal to people's religious background or ethnic background, rather than a politics based on issues.... If we can show the world that we can build a community, rather than divide it, along religious and ethnic lines, people will say, if it is possible there, it is possible anywhere.'... But this is a borough where people care more about what happens in Palestine than what happens in London, where Baghdad feels closer than Brixton
At a conference for Bengali Women Entrepreneurs, I speak with Anisah, a twentysomething who works in community development. She is pretty, soft-spoken, traditionally clad in a hijab. 'When our parents came from Bangladesh, they encountered racism: they were brown, they were ethnically different, this was the big issue that influenced their lives. Today we encounter religious discrimination ... I felt that I was personally blamed for 11 September - and that all Muslims were.' Derwala Takdir, who works for the Active Women's Group, agrees: 'Islam and terrorism, Islam and terrorism, the words always appear together in the media. It has become very difficult to be a Muslim in Britain. We feel isolated.'
The Bengali Women Entrepreneurs' Conference is held at the huge, ultra-modern Muslim Community Centre on the Mile End road. The six-storey complex houses a plethora of Bengali community associations, a mosque, two boys' schools, a gym, several lecture halls. It was built in 2004 with contributions from the Muslim community
Gene @HarrysPlace blogged George Galloway never tires of telling conservative religious voters that he is against abortion.
'I have religious beliefs and try to live by them,' Galloway tells me. 'I have all my life been against abortion and against euthanasia... I am not surprised if my position on these issues strikes a chord.' So why did he write to The Guardian last June: I am not opposed to a woman's right to choose and neither is the Respect coalition... Now Galloway may be personally against abortion. But if he is "not opposed to a woman's right to choose," doesn't that make him pro-choice? Or is he trying to have it both ways: assuring conservative Muslims that he shares their abhorrence of abortion, while signaling to his secular leftist supporters that he's really on their side?
Harry @HarrysPlace: blogged Is Galloway embarassed at sharing an agenda on such issues that not even the most right-wing Tory candidate would admit to holding?
'I have religious beliefs and try to live by them,' Galloway tells me. 'I have all my life been against abortion and against euthanasia - in fact, on Question Time two weeks ago I was the only panellist to inveigh against the creeping euthanasia in our society. I am not surprised if my position on these issues strikes a chord.'
It appears that politicians in Britain are just like politicians here in the US. They tell whatever group they are talking to exactly what that group wants to hear.
Sunday, April 17
This Day In History
- 1492 Christopher Columbus signed a contract with a representative of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.
- 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano reached present-day New York harbor.
- 1629 Horses were first imported into the colonies by the Massachusetts Bay Colony on this day.
- 1790 American statesman Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia at age 84.
- 1861 The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from the Union.
- 1935 People gathered around the radio to listen for the first time to what would become the ultimate horror show on NBC Radio. "Lights Out" remained on radio until 1946.
- 1941 Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter (or heliocopter as it was called then) lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.
- 1964 The Ford Motor Co. unveiled its new Mustang model.
- 1964 Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, became the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world.
- 1969 A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
- 1969 Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed.
- 1970 The astronauts of Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft.
- 1975 Phnom Penh fell to Communist insurgents, ending Cambodia's five-year war.
- 1985 The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new 22-cent "LOVE" stamp. In a clever promotion, the USPS used the set of ABC-TV?s "The Love Boat" as a backdrop. The stamp went on to become one of the most popular ever offered by the postal service.
- 1991 The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,000 for the first time.
- 1993 A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were acquitted.
- 1996 Lyle and Erik Menendez were spared the death penalty by a Los Angeles jury, which recommended they serve life in prison without parole for killing their wealthy parents.
- 1998 Photographer Linda McCartney, wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney, died in Tucson, Ariz., at age 56.
- 2001 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hit his 500th career home run, becoming the 17th major leaguer to reach the mark.
- 2003 Diet doctor Robert C. Atkins died in New York at age 72.
- 1837 J.P. (John Pierpoint) Morgan (financier; died Mar 31, 1913)
- 1894 Nikita Khrushchev (U.S.S.R. premier [1958-1964]; died Sep 11, 1971)
- 1918 William Holden (Beedle Jr.) (Academy Award-winning actor: Stalag 17 [1953], Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Born Yesterday, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Casino Royale, The Moon is Blue, Network, Picnic, Sunset Boulevard, The Towering Inferno, The World of Suzie Wong; died Nov 16, 1981)
- 1923 Harry Reasoner (newsman: Sixty Minutes, CBS Sunday Night News with Harry Reasoner, ABC News with Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters; died Aug 6, 1991)
- 1959 Stephen Singleton (musician: saxophone: group: ABC: Tears are Not Enough, Poison Arrow, Be Near Me, When Smokey Sings, King Without a Crown)
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Bill Frist's Religious War
NYT reported Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts.
Senator Frist is to appear on a telecast sponsored by the Family Research Council, which styles itself a religious organization but is really just another Washington lobbying concern.
According to the FRC's websiteThe message is that the Democrats who oppose a tiny handful of President Bush's judicial nominations are conducting an assault "against people of faith." By that, Senator Frist and his allies do not mean people of all faiths, only those of their faith.The Family Research Council (FRC) champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society. FRC shapes public debate and formulates public policy that values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and the family. Believing that God is the author of life, liberty, and the family, FRC promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.I see a reference to God and Judeo-Christian worldview, but I don't see them saying it is a religious organization. And Guidestar says they are a 501(c)(3) organization, and IRS Regulations say "no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying)" so I don't see how it can be "just another Washington lobbying concern" as the NYT claims.
It is one thing when private groups foment this kind of intolerance. It is another thing entirely when it's done by the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate, who swore on the Bible to uphold a Constitution that forbids the imposition of religious views on Americans.
The Constitution says " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". I.E. Congress may not establish a particular religion as an official State Religion, but Senator Frist does not seek to do this.Unfortunately, Senator Frist and his allies are willing to break down the rules to push through their agenda - in this case, by creating what the senator knows is a false connection between religion and the debate about judges.
Senator Frist and his backers want to take away the sole tool Democrats have for resisting the appointment of unqualified judges: the filibuster. This is not about a majority
You are wrong. It specifically is about a majority being sufficient to approve the confirmation of judges, and that a minority should not be able to block the appointment of judges.or even a significant number of Bush nominees; it's about a handful with fringe views or shaky qualifications. But Senator Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions. Senator Frist has an even bigger game in mind than the current nominees: the next appointments to the Supreme Court, which the Republican conservatives view as their best chance to outlaw abortion and impose their moral code on the country.
A moral code sounds good to me.We fully understand that a powerful branch of the Republican Party believes that the last election was won on "moral values." Even if that were true, that's a far cry from voting for one religion to dominate the entire country. President Bush owes it to Americans to stand up and say so.
How does a speach to an organization that promotes the promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview mean having one religion dominating the entire country. When the first amendment was written, four of the fourteen states recognized an official state church (and I believe all were Christian). The Founding Fathers did not fear religion, they just did not want the Federal Government to select one of those four churches and making it a national church (like the British had with the Church of England).Joe Gandelman blogged We've gotten emails saying "How can you call yourself a moderate? You don't sound moderate on this issue?" The answer: those speaking out and making it clear that they want the America in which they were raised — an America where other religions are respected and religion is not used as a tool to smear and stir up hatred against others — are moderate.
It would seem that appear on a telecast sponsored by an organization that promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview certainly respects at least two of the major three monotheistic religions, and it is not clear that the thrid is the "Religion of Peace" some claim it to be
Filibuster myth-busters
By Wendy Long write in the Washington Times If you were a senator, whose views would be more important to you: liberal special-interest groups, or registered voters?
The liberal groups demand that Democrats filibuster (prevent the Senate from voting on) some of President Bush's best-qualified nominees to the federal appeals courts. But a recent Ayres McHenry nationwide survey reveals that 82 percent of registered voters believe well-qualified nominees deserve a Senate vote. That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 81 percent of Democrats, and 81 percent of Independents.
Some Senators apparently believe voters won't see through partisan obstructionism. But they can't possibly believe the other myths about the filibuster.
Myth No. 1:Filibuster of judges is a sacred tradition.
Fact: The filibuster is nowhere in the Constitution. It is not among the "checks and balances" our Founding Fathers created. It did not even exist until the 1830s, and the "tradition" involves legislation, not judicial appointments. The filibuster was used to defend slavery and oppose the Civil Rights Act — hardly noble purposes. The current obstruction of judges is no "traditional" filibuster: it is the first time in more than 200 years that either party has filibustered to keep judges with majority support off the federal bench.
Myth No. 2: Mr. Bush's nominees are being treated no differently than other presidents' nominees.
Fact: In the last Congress, 10 of the president's 34 appellate nominees were filibustered — the lowest confirmation rate since FDR. Democrats mask their sabotage of these nominees by citing the confirmation rate of judges to federal courts overall — an irrelevant statistic, because the federal courts of appeal make final rulings on most issues of constitutional law. Liberals also argue that Abe Fortas was not confirmed as Chief Justice in 1968. But Mr. Fortas was opposed by a Senate majority (both Republicans and Democrats), and President Johnson withdrew the nomination. Today, a Senate majority supports the nominees, and the president is not withdrawing them.
Myth No. 3: The Senate has a "co-equal" role with the president in judicial nominations.
Fact: The Constitution expressly gives the president — and only the president — the power to nominate federal judges. All the Senate can do is say "yes" or "no" to the president's choices. That is the "check" in the "checks-and-balances" system, to make sure no unqualified nominee becomes a federal judge. It does not give Senators — and a minority of Senators at that — the power to insist on judges who suit their own ideology.
Myth No. 4: The current filibuster is about "free speech."
Fact: Historically, the filibuster has given senators in the minority a chance to speak on the Senate floor before the majority rushes to pass a bill. But the current filibuster is not about the right to speak out. It is about blocking judges. These nominees have been pending for months — some for years. There has been, and remains, ample time to speak about them. The majority welcomes free speech and free debate — followed by a free vote.
Myth No. 5: The filibuster protects "the right of the minority" to veto nominees.
Fact: The Constitution requires two-thirds vote for certain things. Appointing judges is not one of them. So the basic principle of democracy applies: The majority decides. The filibuster of judicial nominees turns majority rule on its head, because 41of 100 senators can keep a judge off the bench without ever even voting.
A liberal minority needs federal judges to advance their agenda — allowing child pornography as free speech, mandating same-sex marriage, removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, banning school prayer and preventing the death penalty for murderers and terrorists — because they can't win these issues at the ballot box. Mr. Bush promised to nominate judges who will apply the law as written and stay out of politics. The recent Ayres survey shows 67 percent of voters agree that "we should take politics out of the courts and out of the confirmation process." A full 61 percent of Democrats agree with this statement, as well as 73 percent of Independents and 69 percent of Republicans.
The American people want senators to do the job our tax dollars pay them to do. Senators who fail to do their jobs — either by failing to show up for their committee meetings, by voting against restoring the Senate tradition of up-or-down votes for judges, or by halting the work of the federal government — might find themselves out of work when they really need the consent of the governed: at their next election.
Wendy E. Long is counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a former Clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and former press secretary to former Sens. Gordon Humphrey and Bill Armstrong.
Matt blogged posted this at BlogsForBush.
Robert Novak writes Republican leaders count only two or three GOP senators who will vote against the efforts to end, by a straight majority vote, filibusters on confirmation of judicial nominations.
Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island will not support this move, and they are likely to be joined by Sen. John McCain of Arizona. That would mean 52 senators would go along with the parliamentary maneuver attempting to end filibusters on judges. Only 50 are needed.
The only Democrat who might possibly join this effort is Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. But Bush will not press him to break party discipline if his help is unnecessary.
Michael Crowley wrote in The New Republic Everyone is waiting to see whether Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist can muster the 51 votes he needs to trigger the so-called "nuclear option" and change the Senate's rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering judicial nominees.
But, even as reporters buttonhole every fence-sitting Republican to parse their latest thoughts about the nuclear option, few people are talking about what would follow Frist's mushroom cloud. Call it nuclear winter: the scenario in which Democrats retaliate by exploiting Senate procedures to plunge the institution into chaos and prevent anything from getting accomplished. Think Mad Max Goes to Washington. "We will deny Republicans the bipartisan cooperation that allows the Senate to function effectively," says Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Translation: You want to rename a post office? Better allow a couple days for it. As People for the American Way President Ralph Neas, a key organizer of liberal resistance to the nuclear option, puts it, "Detonating a nuclear weapon will have nuclear fallout."
This is classic deterrence theory at work. Democrats are talking about political Armageddon in the hope that Republicans will chicken out. Unfortunately, it's easier for Democrats to threaten dire consequences than it would be to enact them. Because, while Democrats feel they are morally justified in shutting down the Senate, some are concluding that, as political a matter, the strategy is too radioactive to handle.
Democrats certainly have the power to shut down the Senate. Virtually all of the chamber's business is conducted with the "unanimous consent" of all 100 senators. Usually that's a formality. But a senator always has the power to stand up and raise a procedural objection that requires a majority vote to dismiss. Senators rarely exercise such power because it infuriates their colleagues and, if everyone did it, nothing would ever get done. Reid and company could start raising nonstop objections, however--forcing multiple votes on, say, a resolution congratulating the national champion University of North Carolina basketball team. Frist would have to keep 51 friendly senators near the Senate floor to accomplish anything, which is about as easy as keeping dozens of grasshoppers in an uncovered box. The Senate rarely operates smoothly. But, in a nuclear winter, it would be about as efficient as your average Department of Motor Vehicles--and about as pleasant....
The specter of a shutdown certainly pleased the pugilistic liberal left. But it seems to have spooked Senate Democrats, who now emphasize all the things they don't intend to block, like bills dealing with national security or "critical government services." Where their tone was once bellicose, Democratic staffers are now circumspect....
Why the skittishness? Perhaps because Republicans like Grassley quickly offered a shrewd response: that Democrats were threatening to "shut down the government," a phrase that evokes the disastrous budget showdown the Gingrich Republicans forced with the Clinton White House in 1995....
So what are the Democrats willing to hold up? There aren't many good targets. Republicans have already passed major class-action and bankruptcy reform bills.... "Now that the Republicans have gotten all their agenda items through, they can afford to piss off their business backers" who are always trying to pass pet provisions, says one Democratic strategist. Meanwhile, some Democrats complain that Reid's promised exception for "national security" legislation was a blunder. "From a tactical perspective, Reid made a mistake," adds the strategist. "He created a litmus test for national security. Well, suddenly everything becomes vital to our national security." And, with the apparent demise of Bush's Social Security plan, there aren't many other major Republican agenda items left. Even a pork bonanza like the $284 billion highway spending bill would seem to pose too many hazards for obstruction-inclined Democrats. "Do they really want to go back to their states and say, 'Yeah, I know you're not getting the road funding that you wanted, and it's all because of a judge'?" asks an aide to one leading pro-nuke Republican senator.
I hope the will finally get the nerve to try it, whether they call it the Constitutional Option, or the Nuclear Option, or something else.
Saturday, April 16
This Day In History
- 1789 President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Va., for his inauguration in New York.
- 1862 A bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia became law.
- 1900 The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.
- 1905 An endowment of a college teachers' pension fund was established by Andrew Carnegie. He donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
- 1912 Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1917 Revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia after years of exile.
- 1945 In his first speech to Congress, President Harry S. Truman pledged to carry out the war and peace policies of his late predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- 1947 Financier and presidential confidant Bernard M. Baruch said in a speech at the South Carolina statehouse, "Let us not be deceived. We are today in the midst of a cold war."
- 1962 Walter Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of ''The CBS Evening News.''
- 1964 ''The Rolling Stones (England's Newest Hitmakers),'' the band's debut album, was released.
- 1972 Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon.
- 1985 Mickey Mantle, banned from baseball in 1983 because of his association with an Atlantic City casino, was reinstated on this day. He threw out the first pitch to a standing ovation as the New York Yankees played their home opener against the Chicago White Sox.
- 1992 The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts.
- 1996 Britain's Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announced they were getting a divorce.
- 1999 Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement from hockey.
- 2003 The Bush administration lowered the terror alert level from orange to yellow, saying the end of heavy fighting in Iraq has diminished the threat of terrorism in the United States.
- 2003 Michael Jordan played his last NBA game as his Washington Wizards ended their season with a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
- 1867 Wilbur Wright (aviator: one of the Wright Brothers; passed away May 30, 1912)
- 1921 Sir Peter Ustinov (Academy Award-winning actor: Spartacus [1960], Topkapi [1964]; Quo Vadis, Death on the Nile, Beau Brummel; died Mar 28, 2004)
- 1924 Henry Mancini (Enrico Nicola Mancini) (Academy Award-winning composer: Moon River [1961], Days of Wine and Roses [1962], Breakfast at Tiffany?s score [1961], Victor/Victoria score [1982]; composed themes for The Pink Panther, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, Charade, NBC Mystery Movie, NBC Nightly News, Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet; 20 Grammy Awards; passed away June 14, 1994)
- 1935 Bobby Vinton (Stanley Vintulla) (singer: Roses are Red [My Love], Blue on Blue, Blue Velvet, Mr. Lonely, There! I?ve Said It Again, My Melody of Love)
- 1947 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) (Basketball Hall of Famer: LA Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks: NBA career record: games played [1.560], points [38,387], field goals [15,387], blocked shots [3,189] cameo role: Airplane!)
Friday, April 15, 2005
Publish or Perish
Blogger Larry E. Ribstein (ideoblog) is a a law professor who once talked about the virtue of the law review system is that it provides a law school subsidized outlet for just about anything a law professor or lawyer wants to publish. The system lets a million flowers bloom and lets this vibrant intellectual market ultimately decide merit. There is no lengthy bottleneck at a few peer reviewed journals, no chance that widely shared intellectual prejudices (such as we have seen on the causes of Alzheimer's disease) blocking publication.
The problem, of course, is that there's little vetting or intermediation. The quality of the law school publishing the review says something about the intelligence of the students, but there's only so much they can really understand, and the quality variations aren't that great. Once out there, the writer's reputation and other quality signals matter more.
Moreover, there is an alternative -- the Social Science Research Network, which makes thousands of working papers free on line with no real review process. If the purpose is to disseminate work and let the market decide based on the author's reputation, this would seem to be the way to go. And SSRN does have a kind of vetting process measured in number of downloads.
In a later blog entry Larry discusses whether blogging should be subsidized, and said at least in the law school environment, the issue isn't really direct subsidy of costs (expenses are low, and we waste our time on lots of stuff), but whether we law professors should be paid for blogging in the currency of raises, tenure and promotion....
He is referring to the fact that in the academic world, one must "Publish or Perish", and does blogging count as publishingtraditionally we've relied on student law review editors. Blogging will force us to come up with new standards and, even, read and judge the stuff for ourselves.
Blogging will not, however, force us to do without intermediaries. In my blogging article I point out that while anybody can blog, not everybody can get noticed, and this involves making investments in reputation. Intermediary blogs could, and have, developed (e.g., Solum's), which can serve as the academic filters of the future.
Blogs for Bush
One of the first blogs I read when I got into blogging was , and then later it's companion blog . I just learned that their BlogRoll (list of other blogs that also support President George W. Bush) has now reached 1500 blogs.
Congratulations to Blogs for Bush
Constitutional Option
Powerpundit blogged It looks as if Sen. Bill Frist is finally ready to take action in the Senate that will allow for an up or down vote on the president's judicial nominees. The Democrats have led an unprecedented effort to filibuster the nominees, and this action will allow a filibuster to be cut off with a majority vote by senators, not the sixty votes now required. The change will be to a Senate rule, and anyone who says anything different is simply trying to mislead you. No one is messing around with the Constitution. That is a Democrat smokescreen.
I wish him luck. Doug TenNapel has a list of the only nine instances where a supermajority is allowed.
Doug TenNapel blogged The U.S. Constitution is careful to limit Supermajorities to key votes...votes that are extraordinary and require broad bipartisan support because they are so weighty. Here are the only nine instances where a Supermajority is allowed
A number of other bloggers are fed up with the discussion, and won't provide any more money until the Republicans find the nerve to break the filibustering of judges.
CQ blogged I have been a loyal member of the GOP since I cast my first vote. I have worked campaigns and championed candidates well before I ever posted anything on my blog at CQ. However, with the defection of John McCain and the lack of any real response from party leadership on the issue, I have to take a stand and demand either action or accountability -- and this is the time to do it.
Not. One. Dime. The next time Ken Mehlman sends you a request for money, that's the message he needs to get back. We ponied up in 2004, and in 2002, and in 2000. The GOP not only has not delivered, its current leadership won't even try. Frist and Rick Santorum claim they don't have the votes. Balderdash -- they don't have the leadership to get the votes. I'm not going to fund or support people who won't try to win, especially when the issue is so important.
Wilson Fu blogged Captain Ed goes on to say no more money. I agree. Frankly the Republican Party at all levels has been in full blown fund raising mode since the election.
Ric James blogged I've received fundraiser letters from the Republican Party in the past few months. Well, I'm done with sending money in to an organization whose leadership called on its members to help in the last election and then won't even try to live up to their promises. I'm done supporting Congressmen and Senators who either can't or won't summon the courage to do what they said was necessary back when they wanted the votes. If they won't step in and handle their own house, then I'm not trusting them with anything else. If they can't take care of the problem they have already acknowledged, then maybe it's time to start putting my money behind people who will. Hear, hear, Captain Ed. Not one dime from me, either.
See also Hugh Hewitt
Blogging for a New Middle East
MBA reports The Jerusalem Report quotes MBA Member Applicant Curt Hopkins in an article titled "Blogging for a New Middle East."
Hopkins: [blogs are] "not monolithic like a newspaper, which you can shut down. It's a bunch of chirping birds in a tree and it's really hard to shoot them all out."
To expand on what the MBA item quoted: Although governments like Iran's and Tunisia's try to filter which websites people can access, there are ways to work around the filters.
In fact, if a blog is shut down, another can be started up in minutes, with the information from the old blog replicated on the new one. "I think it will be a while," concludes Hopkins, "before these countries realize that you can't shut them down."
And the Committee to Protect Bloggers recently linked to A technical guide to anonymous blogging and EFF's How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
McCain Sells Out The Republicans
Powerpundit blogged John McCain has gone on MSNBC'S Hardball with Chris Matthews to indicate that he will vote against the constitutional option to get an up or down vote on the president's judicial nominees when it comes up.
Note to John McCain: You can kiss any presidential hopes that you ever had goodbye. They just went right down the drain. Don't even bother visiting Iowa or New Hampshire. Save the money and go buy some champagne to celebrate with Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid. You'll get a lot better reception from those four then you will ever get from Republicans in the 2008 primaries.
Not only has he blown his chances at the Presidency, he is not even right in what he did. He said he did it because at some time in the future the Dems will control the White House and the Senate, and the Republicans will want to block the appointment of liberal judges. In times where the Dems controlled the Senate Robert Byrd already pushed through several rules changes to make it easier for them to do things. What the heck makes McCain think that if they found Republicans fillibustering the appointment of liberal judges they would not invoke the nuclear option to stop it. They are more ruthless than the Republicans are, and if they are able to intimidate the Republicans into not doing it now, does not mean they would not do it if and when they are in power and faced with the same situation.
What Is The White House Trying To Hide?
Michelle Malkin blogs The Bush administration will not let Education Department investigators interview current and former White House officials about the hiring of commentator Armstrong Williams, Rep. George Miller asserts.
Legally, the White House is on solid ground, according to Alan Morrison, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at Stanford University. "The inspector general has no right to tell anyone outside Education that they have to talk to him," he told USA Today. However, there is apparently no legal reason why President Bush cannot order White House officials to speak to the investigators. If President Bush will not do so, he should explain why.
I will tell you why. It is the principle of Executive Privilege. The Inspector General of the Education Department, was asked by a Democratic member of the Education Committee to investigate something the Education Department did. That is within their oversite responsibilities. But if Bush set a prescient and ordered all White House officials to speak to the Education Department's Inspector General, then any minority member of any committee of the Legislative Branch could institute any investigation he wanted to try to embarrass the Executive Branch.
This does not say what was done was right. But it was stopped, and Armstrong Williams paid the price.
Mark Tapscott blogged It makes absolutely no difference that the administration has the law on its side in matters like this.
It makes a significant difference. Executive Privilege is very important, and we can't have the White House Staff interrogated every time someone screws up in some executive branch department.In 1965, when Washington wanted to keep something behind closed doors it was easy because the MSM was for the most part willing to abide just about anything in the interest of advancing the New Frontier/Great Society. In 2005, there is no way to keep something behind closed doors for long. If it is damaging to Republicans, odds are good the MSM and the Left side of the Blogosphere will find it sooner or later. If it is damaging to the Democrats, odds are good Talk Radio and the Right side of the Blogosphere will find it sooner or later.
It is already out.Bottom line: Trust is earned through transparency. Distrust is earned through evasion. When is Washington going to get this?
What makes you think the Democrat ordering the IG of the Education Deparatment to do something would be impressed if Bush rolls over. It will just cause Dems in other committees to try to find other things to embarrass the White House.
The Coming Muslim Conquest of the Vatican
LGF blogged We’ve been told by the usual suspects that the next Pope must “reach out” to Muslims and build bridges between the Catholic Church and Islam.
The highest authorities in Islam, however, seem to have a different sort of “reaching out” in mind: The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy.
The referenced FrontPage article reported Following Pope John Paul II's visit to the Middle East in 2000 and 2001, some prominent Muslim leaders openly discussed the future dominance of Islam in Europe, including conquesting the Vatican.
While the identity of the next pope is decided, one of the pressing issues he will have to deal with is the growing Muslim community in Europe, part of which have Islamist inclinations. As the New York Times reported this week, the next pope will be facing "increasing secularism in Europe, contrasting with the religious revival in the Islamic world… and the rising number of Muslim immigrants in Europe."
Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi, Imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy, discussed the coming Muslim conquest of the Vatican. Citing a Hadith in an article posted on the Kalemat website in 2002, he stated: "… We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims … will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…"
I wonder if that conquest of the Vatican will be done peacefully, because isn't Islam a "Religion of Peace"?
Moore's Law Due For Retirement
Forty years ago next week, an obscure trade magazine called Electronics published an article by one of the electronics industry's leading thinkers, the director of research and development for the semiconductor division of the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. It was entitled "Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits." The author was Gordon Moore. Three years after the article was published he, Robert Noyce and Arthur Rock would settle on a contraction of the phrase "integrated electronics" as the name for their new company: Intel
His forward-looking article has for years been widely acknowledged as Moore's Law, one of the great benchmarks of faith in technological innovation as an engine of economic growth. It's also widely misunderstood. The key section of Moore's piece doesn't exactly sing. "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year," he wrote. "Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least ten years." Loosely translated, Moore was arguing that the number of transistors which could be economically built on a chip tended to double every year. In those days, the most advanced chips had about 50 transistors, but he argued it would be economical to build chips with 65,000 transistors by 1975. On the whole Moore's Law has shown to be prescient, but by the time of its 50th anniversary in 2015, it will probably no longer be true.
The most advanced chips currently being manufactured have elements 90 nanometers in size, and by the end of the year, smaller chips with 65-nanometer elements will come to market. Chip manufacturers tend to upgrade their manufacturing technology to allow for the smaller transistors every two years or so. Smaller transistors can be crowded in greater numbers onto ever-small slices of silicon, increasing the amount of work a chip can do. You can expect Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, IBM and others to further shrink their manufacturing capabilities to 45 nanometers by 2008 and 32 nanometers by 2010. How they'll get to that point is generally well understood, but looking beyond 32 nanometers is hazy, says Kevin Krewell, a chip technology analyst with Instat/MDR in San Jose, Calif.
Many have predicted this before only to regret it later. But I'm willing to bet that by the time Moore's Law turns 50, it will be nothing but a memory. It's due for retirement.
Many thought Moore was wrong when he said what he said, and to some extent they are right, but not for the reason they thought. They did not think it possible that the number of chips could possibly double every year, and in fact they have more than doubled every year since then. There may be a point in time when that will no longer take place, but I would not want to be my lunch money on it. I might go hungry.
Intel is unveiling its dual core Pentiums on the 40th aniversary of Moore's Law
Media Bloggers nominated
BatesLine reported Reporters without Borders has nominated the Media Bloggers Association for a Freedom of Expression Blog award, in the International category.
You'll recall that the Media Bloggers Association provided legal assistance to BatesLine in response to the threat letter I received from the Tulsa World back in February. If you appreciate what MBA did on my behalf, help them get some well-deserved recognition by clicking here and voting.
I agree with Michael, and I ask all of my readers to vote for Media Bloggers Association. For complete disclosure, the fact that I am up for membership in the MBA has nothing to do with my support for them receiving the award; it is because of the help they provided Michael.
Computer-generated gibberish
CNNreported In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference. Jeremy Stribling said Thursday that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with "context-free grammar," charts and diagrams.
The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida. To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation. The prank recalled a 1996 hoax in which New York University physicist Alan Sokal succeeded in getting an entire paper with a mix of truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and otherwise meaningless mumbo-jumbo published in the quarterly journal Social Text, published by Duke University Press.
Joanne Jacobs blogged You can write your own meaningless computer science paper by using the paper generator at their SCIgen site. I tried it myself and came up with this:
Mitch Berg blogged If you love the English Language but fear its gatekeepers, read the whole thing.
Betsy Newmark blogged First of all, why did the three reviewers not reject the paper immediately? Had they read it? And why accept non-reviewed papers for a conference that people are presumably spending money and time on attending. It sounds like a conference that only exists so that people will have something to put on their resume. Kudus to the kids. Maybe they should be invited next year to present a paper on how they designed their program that lets people spoof the gibberish that is many scholarly papers.
I agree with Betsy. I think they should present a paper on how they designed a program that can write a "scholarly paper" that can fool the people selecting papers for presentation.
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