The Dish

Richard Epstein weighs in on the Bush-Cheney innovation of countless signing statements, designed to remove legislative and potentially judicial checks on executive power. Epstein is a limited government conservative with libertarian leanings. Hence his resistance to King George. Money quote:

Modern understanding of judicial review requires the executive branch to take its marching orders from the Supreme Court. Signing statements, I fear, could be the opening wedge to a presidential posture that judicial decisions may limit the president’s ability to use courts to enforce his policies, but cannot stop him from acting unilaterally. On this theory, the president could continue to order wiretaps and surveillance in opposition to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after a court had determined that he has exceeded his powers–he just couldn’t use the evidence acquired in court. Different branches of government have different views of the law, yet the executive marches on. A major check on executive power goes by the boards.

Vive la resistance. Scalia, of course, has dutifully backed the logic behind the "signing statements" in his Hamdan dissent. We are one Supreme Court Justice away from an executive above the law, and able to interpret it retroactively as s/he sees fit.

I guess I should belatedly comment on the much-cited piece about gay intolerance toward straights and others in Provincetown. My main response is: duh. Why would anyone think gay people would be any less prone to bigotry or intolerance than any other human beings? They’re … human. Prejudice is ugly wherever it comes from, and gays are no exception. Toleration is a difficult virtue. It comes no more naturally to minorities than majorities – although minorities have often had to master it in self-defense.

All I can say is that as a longtime summer resident of this little town brimming with award-winning fudge and mannish women (in Dina Martina’s immortal words), it’s full of personal feuds but remarkably tolerant of group differences. We’re talking Jamaican laborers, post-drag drag-queens, bearded ladies, senior transgendered people, interracial couples, straight families, Portuguese-American clans, Irish cops, circuit queens, jolly bears, cross-dressers, rabid racoons, bustling skunks, countless dogs, power-lesbians, Bulgarian students, gay families with kids, Russian entrepreneurs, ancient eccentrics, nocturnal painters, bad musicians, cult film-makers, elegant novelists, excitable pundits … well, you get the idea. Cram them onto two streets, add summer heat, and all you get is a few random slurs? If only they could be so "intolerant" everywhere else.

Glenn Reynolds airs many of the important points and calmly keeps asking the right questions, it seems to me. His responses are among the sanest I have read on the topic. I agree with him that this issue emerged before many people were ready to deal with it. But, having watched this close up from the beginning, I know this was not a decision made by the leading gay groups. At the beginning and throughout the 1990s, the gay establishment fought marriage rights passionately and treated marriage advocates as cranks. HRC did all it could to prevent this issue from dominating the discourse. They did the polling, like all principled Democrats, and wanted to play to their strengths. No gay group agreed to take the first real marriage suit in Hawaii. It took a straight guy from the ACLU to handle it. The Human Rights Campaign’s leadership refused to speak of the matter for years, and only included the m-word in their literature in the last few years. Major Democratic donors also refused – and Bill Clinton talked them out of it, when necessary.

The trouble was: gay spouses found themselves barred from each others’ hospital rooms in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis, lesbian mothers had their children taken away from them, long-standing de facto marriages had family members rescind their inheritance rights, and gay consciousness evolved to the point where such scond class status rankled deeper and deeper. It was ordinary people, ordinary couples who pioneered this movement. This push emerged organically as society changed. Such pushes are always "before their time" – all social change is premature at some point. The key is to stay rational, engage the debate, see what the courts, legislatures and governors do, and let federalism do its work. I’m grateful – and so are many gay people and their families – to sane straight guys like Reynolds for standing up for this.

And other weirdnesses in the new religious landscape. My take in the Sunday Times (of London) today.

Staring-Down as a competitive sport. Don’t blink!

It has entered a more intense phase in the Middle East. Worried? Terrified? Fear not. Just drop by "Rapture Ready" website and you’ll feel cheered up. The Christianists can’t wait for the bombs to go off. Money quote:

"Is it time to get excited? I can’t help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing somehow fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won’t be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not."

That poster’s name is "ohappyday". Tom Lehrer, alas, is retired. Blogger Jonathan Swift comments here.

(Photo: Kevin Frayer/AP.)

Chelsea, Michigan, 1.45 pm.

Three recent pieces are now available in the "Latest Essays" box on the right: my take on the evolution of Bush’s foreign policy, my celebration of the Hamdan decision, and a memoir of a trip to my home town in England.

"Well, of course, when you cut taxes, government revenues go up. Why couldn’t I see that before?" – Mike Kinsley’s first words after coming round from brain surgery.

"No one can believe that this will stop without a huge victory for Hezbollah and for Syria. I haven‚Äôt felt so optimistic since 1973. I think we are closing the noose on Israel. This may be the last battle, and we may be able to redraw the map of the Middle East, but not on the schedule of America’s plan for the greater Middle East," – Imad Fauzi Shueibi, a political analyst who often works as a consultant to the Syrian government.