Month: September 2009

A reader writes:

I think you dropped a line in your recent post about Robert McDonnell's thesis for Regent University, inadvertently conflating his opinions about the Supreme Court's 1965 decision in Griswold with a 1972 followup in Eisenstadt. The missing line is important, because his views on Griswold are much more radical than the excerpt suggests.

Here's the original, from the Wikipedia page you cite: "[he] criticized Griswold v. Connecticut for "attempting to create a view of liberty based on radical individualism, while facilitating statist control of select family issues," and described the Eisenstadt v. Baird decision as "illogical." In Griswold, the court upheld the right of married people to purchase contraceptives. In Eisenstadt, the court extended the right of contraception to unmarried couples — this is the "illogical" extension that McDonnell appears to be complaining about.

The Griswold decision was the first to enunciate a "right of privacy" implicit in the Bill of Rights — a "right" which later became the basis for the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. McDonnell's position, based on the full quote, appears to be that the "right to privacy" is "radical individualism." He goes on to state that, after Roe and its progeny, "the Court had, for all practical purposes, obliterated the difference between marriage and non-marriage, by replacing the sacred convenantal view of marriage with the positivistic view that a marriage is but an act of the state."

Many legal scholars have criticized the logic of Griswold and Roe by contending that there is no legal authority for finding "implicit" rights in the Constitution. To those scholars, if a right is not explicitly stated, it doesn't exist. But McDonnell's position, as stated in this paper, seems to go far beyond that. He appears to believe that the government doesn't have the right to rule about marriage and family matters at all, since they are "sacred covenants" and not legal creations.

He is a radical theocrat. Which makes him right at home in Virginia's GOP.

Something I've noticed more and more: the lead story in today's NYT-on-dead-tree is essentially a rewrite of what Marc Ambinder, Jon Cohn and the Dish have been arguing for the past week or so in the blogosphere: that the real story of August is how healthcare reform survived the Fox circus. Or take the Washington Post story on the US moving away from barring "disappearances". How different is it from this HuffPo piece by Scott Horton over a week ago?

In some ways, the MSM is ripping off the blogs as much as the blogs are ripping off the MSM. To which I say: as long as it means more information for more people, let us all be ripped off.

Jack Nicholson, taking my idea of a vacation. More Nicholson vacation pics here.

The Dish is still trying to figure out what to make of it. Here's Yglesias' take:

The status quo in the United States is really bad. Baucus’ plan would make it better. There are people right now who could use health insurance, but they’re too poor. Baucus would make many of them eligible for Medicaid and more of them eligible for subsidies to let them afford private insurance. Hopefully something better than this plan can be worked out between the merger of the Finance bill and the HELP bill and the conference committee and all the rest. But even in its meager Baucusish form, the health reform currently on the table would be the biggest piece of progressive social policy in decades.

Kaiser Health News rounds up MSM parsing of the proposal. Tax Foundation doesn't think that taxing some employer provided medical coverage goes far enough, but completely eliminating the employer tax advantage doesn't seem politically viable. Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein both weighed in yesterday, as did Reihan, who wasn't too impressed.

Nicolas Sarkozy hasn't had an easy time passing a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Plumer:

The goings-on in France are worth checking out for anyone who thinks a carbon tax might be a more politically palatable method of dealing with global warming than the cap-and-trade approach. As it turns out, the carbon fee has been remarkably easy to demagogue—and this in a left-leaning country that's hardly averse to taxes. Sarkozy's presidential opponent, Segolene Royal, dashed out of the gate early on this, criticizing the proposal as "unjust" and "inefficient"—even though most economists will happily tell you that a straight-up carbon tax is the most efficient way to curb emissions.

The Lost Levels, a Norwich-based electro-indie-pop group, live up to their name:

The Lost Levels 'The Early Sheets' from RadarMusicVideos on Vimeo.

A rabbi writes:

Your question could reasonably be asked about any matter of ritual behavior: what we eat, what we wear, how we pray, on what days, in which language, standing or sitting, facing East or West. . . . the list goes on and on. An equally valid question is: why does God care about bread and wine, or about any sacrament or holy act? The answer, of course, is that on some level, God [well, at least the God of the monotheistic faiths] probably doesn't care, as such, except insofar as these acts bring the human heart into communion with

its Source.

One way that happens is to surrender oneself to a symbolic system of stories and rituals and ethics, all manifested in community; ritual both binds this community together and instructs it in basic values. So I believe Jews and Muslims will indeed keep circumcising their sons, because it really is one of those defining aspects of being part of the community. Some won't, of course, but in my experience, Jews who either weren't circumcised or didn't circumcise their sons later regret this if they choose to be closer to the community- without pressure they come to conclude it's something that keeps us deeply connected to our ancestors and descendants. Besides, regarding the woman who concluded that it must be "traumatic spiritually" to be circumcised- well, sure, anybody can be traumatized by anything, but I think there are plenty of spiritually whole Jewish men who are doing just fine, thank you very much.

I take all these points except one: "to surrender oneself" is one thing; to surrender a part of a defenseless infant's body is quite another. It's the consent here that troubles me – and the irreversibility of a mutilation of the most intimate and sensitive part of the body. Another reader writes that the permanent mutilation is the point:

Back when it began, the question seemed to be, what would you give up – what sign could you give – that means your devotion is totally irrevocable? Circumcision as recorded in the Bible began with Abraham and his household in Genesis 17. (The Bible records his son Ishmael as being 13 at the time). Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac purely on God's say-so three chapters later.

I think it's pretty clear, at least from a Christian persepctive, that God doesn't much care about foreskin as such. Paul practically says this in Galatians 6:15; "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation." God doesn't care, but man does, and that was the point of there being a ritual to begin with.

But she's still no Susan Boyle.

Robert Reich, who sometimes lets ideology get in the way of analysis, doesn't like the idea. He explains the premise:

Her idea (evidently encouraged by Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff) is to hold off on any public option. Give the private insurance companies a period of time — say, five years — within which to make changes that extend coverage to more people and also drive down long-term costs. If those goals for coverage and cost aren't met by the end of the five-year grace period, kaboom: The public option is triggered — which will force such changes on the insurance companies. The beauty of Snowe's proposal is that it seems to offer Blue Dogs a way out and liberal Democrats a way in. Nobody has to vote for or against a public option. The public option just happens automatically if its purposes — wider coverage and lower costs — aren't achieved. And the trigger idea seems so, well, centrist.

He then goes on to argue against it because "Washington is a vast cesspool of well-paid specialists who know how to stop anything resembling a "'trigger'" and because "any controversial proposal with some powerful support behind it that gets delayed — for five years or three years or whenever — is politically dead." I find both arguments unconvincing. Suzy Khimm has more details on what Snowe's trigger might look like. This is what legislating means: compromise.

A good summary:

(Hat tip: John Cole)