Ken_L said...I'm an Australian who has loved and admired the USA for 50 years. At the risk of sounding condescending or superior, I can only say I've been staggered to watch the descent of the conservative voice since 2000 through immaturity into childishness.
There is no fun any more in mocking these people. The fact that they apparently represent a significant section of the US population and continue to have influence on policy-makers is just a stunning national tragedy.
Think Progress: Franchise defends its ‘Global warming is baloney’ signs: Burger King is acting like ‘cockroaches.’
The Memphis Flyer recently caught multiple local Burger King restaurants sporting big “Global Warming is Baloney” signs. The Burger King corporation quickly distanced itself from the controversy: “The two restaurants where these signs appeared are independently owned and operated and were not authorized to display this statement. The signs have since been removed.” However, Leo Hickman of the Guardian reports that many of the signs are still up, and the corporation in charge of the franchises — a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation — is defending its position:Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC’s marketing president, John McNelis.
“I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on,” said Mr McNelis. “I’m not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don’t think they have the authority to do it.”
McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. … Burger King can bluster all they want about what they can tell the franchisee to do, but we have free-speech rights in this country so I don’t think there’s any concerns.”
Susan Robison, vice president of corporate communications for BKC, responded that “BKC has guidelines for signage used by franchisees [which] were not followed. We have asked the franchisee to remove the signage and have been told that the franchisee will comply.”
Scott Lemieux (LGM): Advocate of Arbitrary Torture Shows Lack of Ethics
Although I regret this particular manifestation highly, it's obviously not surprising that Ed Whelan is a reprehensible, thin-skinned bully. (Who apparently can't use a search engine.) Or as Cole says:
Meanwhile, for anyone tempted to read any of Whelan's "analysis" of Obama's judicial nominations, I would just get your relentless parade of vacuous cliches -- especially embarrassing in a post-Bush v. Gore era -- from Pajamas TV commentators; at least they're funnier when they're mangled.
For those of you keeping score at home, the current President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center not only worked for the Bush administration OLC while they were creating the legal justification for torture, but is now using their email address to send juvenile emails while outing anonymous bloggers because they pointed out he was wrong.
- Kevin Drum adds: I see that the conservative movement is continuing its long descent into juvenile thuggery and intellectual gutlessness as a substitute for actual ideas. It's like being back in seventh grade. Nice work, NRO.
- DougJ has A quick note on the publius outing - Ed Whelan, the man who revealed the identity of publius, is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as many have pointed out. It should be noted that Jeff Rosen’s wife works at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
- Chaoticgnome notes that
Whelan seems to have bypassed Godwin’s Law and found some new bonus stage.
If you ‘out’ your opponent you have not only admitted to losing the argument but revealed yourself as unfit to argue with.
If this happens again we’ll have to refer to it as Whelan’s Law.
Neil Sinhababu has a smart take on the NR Sotomayor cover:
[T]he way I see the joke actually depends on incongruities between the stereotypes of the nonwhite ethnicities involved. The Buddha-like pose and Asian features are tied to lofty pretensions of sagelike wisdom. And what sort of person is it who’s pretending to be some kind of sage? A Hispanic woman! As if.
The in-joke in this cover is for people who have already internalized a stereotype of Hispanic women as hotheaded and not that bright. Put one of them in the Buddha suit, and if you’ve absorbed the right racist stereotypes, the incongruity is hilarious.
I think that definitely captures some of what’s happening here. It should also be said that some of the ugliness of this whole thing clearly stems from the whole dysfunctional relationship our political system has to Supreme Court appointments. I remember from the Alito nomination that it’s somehow very difficult to articulate the view that “the president is someone whose ideas I think are wrong so I’m convinced that his SCOTUS pick also has bad ideas, but those who like the president are bound to see this differently.” Instead, there’s incredible pressure to “unearth” the “truth” about the nominee and how deep down he or she is history’s greatest monster.
hilzoy: Stuart Taylor Goes Through The Looking Glass
In his column this week (h/t), Stuart Taylor argues that most Americans want racial preferences abolished, and 71% want the Ricci decision overturned. (That's the case in which New Haven threw out a test for promotions when all but one of the candidates who passed were white.)
Personally, I don't think that judges should decide cases on the basis of polls, especially when the poll questions do not include a summary of the relevant laws and precedents. I would have thought that conservatives who oppose judicial activism might agree. But not Stuart Taylor:
"But is it judicial activism when the justices stretch the Constitution to go over the heads of the political branches -- which are dominated by special-interest lobbies -- not to overrule the voters but rather to give them what they want?
Maybe not. And it's clear that the voters want racially preferential affirmative-action programs abolished.
Scholars have long applauded liberal justices who have stretched the Constitution's meaning to get rid of unpopular laws that had persisted only because of special-interest pressure. One example is the 1965 decision striking down Connecticut's anti-contraception law.
Conservatives could invoke similar logic, as well as several major Supreme Court precedents, to justify curbing unpopular racial-preference programs that -- like that anti-contraception law -- have persisted only because of special-interest pressure."
I'm opposed to judicial activism, though I disagree with a lot of commenters about what counts as 'activism'. I don't think it's activism when courts settle on a specific meaning for a contested term that Congress has not defined, for instance. Much more controversially, I think there's a very interesting argument to be had about what response to the existence of the ninth amendment would count as 'activist'.* In general, I don't think it's always obvious when someone is engaging in "judicial activism", but I do think that it should be avoided.
But I would have thought that if anything counts as judicial activism, "stretching the Constitution" to enact policies that the Congress has not passed would. But apparently I am wrong! I look forward to further articles by Stuart Taylor explaining why it would not be "judicial activism" if the Supreme Court created a program of national health insurance -- after all, a majority of people in the US favor that as well.
In all seriousness: I can't believe that Stuart Taylor wrote this article with a straight face. Of course it's judicial activism when you "stretch the Constitution" to enact new policies. Of course you don't find out how a case should be decided by taking a poll, especially when that case involves the application of some fairly complicated law that there's no reason to think the poll respondents know much about, and double especially when you claim to be concerned about judicial activism.
It's hackery, pure and simple.
***
*The ninth amendment states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This plainly implies that the people have rights other than those enumerated in the Constitution, and that these should be respected, but it does not say what these are. Is it more "activist" to try to come up with some such rights, at least in the easiest cases (e.g., the right not to have the government expropriate one of your kidneys, which the framers would surely not have looked kindly on), or to pretend that the ninth amendment does not exist? Isn't it plausible to read the ninth amendment as implying that the courts should protect not only those rights that are enumerated in the Constitution but other unenumerated rights as well, and doesn't this imply that it actually invites "judicial activism"?
If so, doesn't the ninth amendment force us to choose between the 'activism' of discovering unenumerated rights, and the opposite 'activism' of pretending that there is no ninth amendment? And if you choose the latter on the grounds that granting courts the power to discover new rights in the Constitution is too dangerous, aren't you just disregarding the plain text of the Constitution in favor of producing the consequences that you think are best -- which is judicial activism if anything is?
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