Category: The Dish

It’s clearly Sean Hannity’s current mission.

Mike Gravel switches to the Greens.

Great moments in bodybuilding:

A list of new supporters.

Ross notes:

Americans want border security and they want a lower immigration rate; what they don’t want is to feel like they’re being asked to vote for “Operation Wetback, Part II.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any Republican politicians who actually believe in the moderate-restrictionist position. Instead, there are politicians who make restrictionist promises they don’t intend to keep in the hopes of keeping the yahoo vote appeased, and politicians who sound like, well, yahoos themselves.

Larison, for his part, blames the moderates:

In theory the “enforcement-first” bloc, the second on this list, is the “moderate restrictionist” position, but as a matter of intra-party politics the pro-amnesty forces have pushed together enforcement-first and all other restrictionists and deliberately try to obscure the differences between all positions to their right.    

In response to this post, a reader writes:

My name is on the federal "born-alive" infants protection act; it footnotes my Tribune stories that detailed Jill Stanek’s allegations. I’m not at all convinced that this issue shows Obama is an absolutist on abortion. A few facts:

A.) There was no documentation of anything to back up the "crimes against humanity" claim. The hospital where Stanek worked did induced labor abortions, but there was no evidence that the hospital killed the pre-viable fetuses after they were outside the womb. A state investigation found no violations by the hospital.

B.) The Illinois "born alive" legislation was much different than the federal BAIPA, and would have given parents or public guardians the right to sue a hospital that performed induced labor abortions. One of the bills would have required two physicians to be present for many induced labor abortions, restricting the ability to use that common abortion method. Moreover, Illinois already had laws requiring doctors to give appropriate medical care to viable, live infants. For all of these reasons, the legislation that Obama opposed was also opposed by the Illinois Medical Society. Jim Geraghty has a reasonable run-down here.

Reasonable people can disagree, but Obama had a valid claim that there was no need for additional laws on this. At a minimum, there was no good reason to think that anyone had, as your reader claims, "killed babies" after they were born.

His pitch is pretty strong and fair, as far as I can see. And to reiterate calmly and coolly that defusing identity politics is the core of his campaign and his message is exactly the right thing to do.

You learn about candidates from this process. Obama keeps trying to rise above it; Clinton keeps trying to plunge us back in. She’s behind, of course. She needs to break through somehow, and with no substantive policy differences, and a serious delegate deficit, you can see why the Clintons are engaging in the politics of fear and division. But to my mind, it simply re-emphasizes why we need the Obama candidacy.

"I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, she doesn’t speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee," – Senator Hillary Clinton, finally getting it (or pretending to).

A blog about a puddle. It has a nice Zen quality.

(Hat tip: kottke)

A reader writes:

Let me make it all clear for your reader.  Since the 1988 California Supreme Court decision People v. Freeman, hiring someone for work in a porn film has not been considered pandering or pimping and the participants are not prostitutes.

Hal Freeman, the defendant in the case, was a porn director/producer. He was arrested in 1983 in connection with his film, Caught from Behind, Part II, and charged with pandering.  California law defined a panderer as someone who procures “another person for the purpose of prostitution.”  The statute defines prostitution as “any lewd act between persons for money or other consideration.”   To connect the dots, the kind of lewd act that has to be accomplished consists of “the genitals, buttocks, or female breast, of either the prostitute or the customer” coming in “contact with some part of the body of the other for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification of the customer or of the prostitute.”  Freeman was convicted, and after several years of appeals the case hit the CA Supreme Court.

The defense argued that the pandering/prostitution statutes didn’t apply to porn. Who is receiving sexual gratification? Not Freeman. Nor, principally, are the performers; they are accomplishing a labor intensive, albeit revealing, acting job.  Their primary interest is in getting a paycheck, not to receive or bestow gratification.  On those grounds, The CA Supreme Court overruled the conviction.

California sought to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the CA Supreme Court, but Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the Court turned down the requested stay. See: California v. Freeman, 488 U.S. 1311 (1989).

For what it’s worth, the CA Supreme Court also held that the application of the prostitution statutes to porn films was a “somewhat transparent attempt at an ‘end run’ around the First Amendment and the state obscenity laws.”

After that lengthy prelude, the answers to your reader’s questions are: 1.) he is getting sexual gratification from the hookers, and the director is paying for an acting job. 2.) Read my dissertation.