I didn’t get a chance to follow Beck closely this weekend. But reading some reviews from friends, it strikes me that there was a highly religious overtone to Beck’s rally. This further leads me to speculate if combing these religious themes with the rally itself brings forward the conclusion that Beck sees himself as a leader of an emergent religious Reawakening in America. These movements, as we know, are quite common in our history. Additionally, they are distinctly American. If this is the case, then I wonder: why would many Evangelical Christians flock to Beck, a Mormon (albeit a lapsed Catholic to boot), as a potential religious leader, but instinctively reject the idea of a Mormon president, a la Mitt Romney. Is that a double standard?

And like a lot of things out of the left….lame, lame, lame….And it shows some of the unintentional genius of Palin: it’s hard to mock her:

In case you didn’t hear, NJ had Department of Education funds denied because of a clerical error. I love how Governor Christie admits fault, takes responsibility and then shows the absurdity of the situation. All of this while NOT playing the victim card (“it’s for the children…”). Take heart, Northerns, we can make some of you honorary Southerners for your character and integrity!

Beck is planning on having a rally this Saturday in Washington, DC. Coincidentally, that day is the anniversary of King’s I Have a Dream Speech. Beck’s methodology and argumentation, like Sarah Palin’s, has always scared me a bit. It’s oversimplified and way-too-ideological in its view of the world. Still, the MSM’s obsession with both of them and in particular, Beck’s mastery of rhetorical style and Palin’s ease at rallies, has made them both serious political forces. They can rally people around an idea. They can point masses in a direction. They can lead, in a certain degree, even if neither articulates where we should go (other than saying, not off that cliff.) Is this Beck rally on Saturday something significant? Anyone planning on going?

My friend and fellow lawyer (and law clerk and TA at Penn State University’s School of Law) Josh Blackman has put out two new videos with his non-profit, the Harlan Institute. Named after the former justice, the Institutes mission is to facilitate learning about the supreme Court and the Constitution among high school aged students. Among other services, Harlon offers preset curriculums for teachers—great for rainy days! Josh has recently been able to multiply his institutes efforts by partnering with Justice Sandra O’Connor’s outfit dedicated to promoting created civic awareness. Check out Josh’s videos promoting the Harlan Institute and FantasyScotus—yes, a fantasy sports game that allows you to predict just like the justices predict:

As I read the Washington ComPost this morning, my coffee flies out of my mouth. They agree that the Virginia Attorney General is correct in saying that the Commonwealth can medically regulate abortion clinics:

THE QUESTION borders on the inane: Can Virginia regulate “facilities in which first-trimester abortion services are provided” and “medical personnel who perform first-trimester abortions”? The answer is obvious: Of course it can. Every state regulates medical personnel and facilities, from those that dispense acne medication to those that perform open-heart surgery.

But there’s a catch:

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Michael Gerson has a semi-interesting read on the Tea Party Movement today. I call it semi-interesting because while trying to wrestle with the Tea Party Movement, Gerson too quickly and too easily sets up straw men: all tea party people (or most or many or some) want armed resistance to the government. Why? Because they advocate for the second amendment. However, the more interesting point comes in his portrayal of Reagan and his stance on Social Security. Gerson asserts that while it is true there is no Constitutional authority for the Welfare state, he just responds, “So what! It’s reality and Reagan lived with it:”

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… clearly because of his hostage-freeing prowess of yore.

From Yahoo! News:

Former President Jimmy Carter will travel to North Korea soon to win the release of an American held prisoner there, the U.S.-based Foreign Policy journal reported on its Web site on Tuesday.

Now if we could just find a siege for Janet Reno to diffuse.

VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is at it again, this time issuing a legal clarification saying that Abortion mills can be regulated like health care facilities, potentially forcing them to be compliant with more stringent standards. Abortion proponents are already saying that executing such a standard could shut 17 of the Commonwealth’s 21 abortion mills. Stay tuned.

“Even the venerable Robert E. Lee has taken some vicious hits, as dishonest or misinformed advocates among political interest groups and in academia attempt to twist yesterday’s America into a fantasy that might better serve the political issues of today. The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy. Often cloaked in the argument over the public display of the Confederate battle flag, the syllogism goes something like this: Slavery is evil. The soldiers of the Confederacy fought for a system that wished to preserve it. Therefore they were evil as well, and any attempt to honor their service is a veiled effort to glorify the cause of slavery.” ~ From Born Fighting by Virginia Democrat Senator James Webb (Page 208)

“But what most historians miss—and what those who react so strongly to seeing Confederate battle flags on car bumpers and in the yards of descendants of Confederate veterans do not understand—is that slavery was emphatically not the reason that most individual Southerners fought so long and hard, and at such overwhelming cost.” (Page 211.)

“. . . to tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age.” (Page 225.)

“. . . we are also the caretakers of the memory, and the reputation, of those who performed their duty—as they understood it—under circumstances too difficult for us ever to fully comprehend. No one but a fool—or a bigot in their own right—would call on the descendants of those Confederate veterans to forget the sacrifices of those who went before them or argue that they should not be remembered with honor.” (Page 231.)

A charming Southern lady, Jennessa Durney, comments on the skills real men should know. Popular mechanics put out a list not too long ago (in Miss Durney’s article) that details 25 things all men should know. The list is certainly all well and good. Know how to drive out of a skid. Learn how to fillet a fish. Frame a wall. There are some “nerdy” ones like knowing how to extend your wireless network and protect your computer. As Miss Durney notes:

I find it interesting that these skills can all be classified under 4 stereotypical male categories: cars, tools, outdoors, or electronics. I guess that kind of list is to be expected in a magazine titled “Popular Mechanics.” Nevertheless, are these 25 skills really the skills that men should know? Are these the skills that make men “men?” I am not sure I agree. Something is missing. I am probably a skeptic of these skills for a good reason. These are great intellectual virtues but today we need more men looking to foster the moral virtues within themselves.

So what should real men focus on? She continues: (more…)

One thing people always remark about the South is how often Southerners have a sense of hospitality. Rare is it to enter a Southern town and not be greeted with a smile, hello and a friendly, “How are ya!” With that said, R.J. Snell has a wonderful essay on manners today, an essay that is a well thought-out reflection on something so necessary to our public square. As he writes on Robbie George’s blog with the Witherspoon Institute, Public Discourse: (more…)

These courtesy of The Sacred Sandwich:

King James, Publisher:

A level-headed entry into the “Obama is a Muslim” controversy: “He’s not living his Christian faith as most Americans say I want to live my Christian Faith.”

The great and worthy Commonwealth of Virginia would like to announce that it has produced a budget surplus of around $400 million dollars this year. It has done so through a variety of measures: accelerating business sales tax payments, cutting spending, asking government agencies to forbear unnecessary spending, delaying payments to retirement funds and rescheduling our expenditures. Some call it “cheap tricks” to produce a budget surplus. The fact is, however, that spin it as you like, the state found a way in a recession to raise necessary revenue and cut unnecessary spending until it had the money to fund the myriad of worthwhile (and not so worthwhile things) that states should do. All that for a state that is not experiencing the impact of the recession quite like the others. Perhaps more states should be a Commonwealth!

I figured that I might as well give my take on the recent goings on at Southern Appeal. First, I want to make it clear that if this blog ever begins supporting ancient druid ritual human sacrifices, I will cease supporting it in any fashion.

Cries or insinuations of racism at Southern Appeal do not merit discussion. One could read through every post ever published on this blog without finding a scintilla of racism.

I therefore move for summary judgment on all insinuations of racism and hypothetical “things on the blog that I would not support if they ever came to fruition.” Instead, here are a few of the reasons that Southern Appeal is great:

• The staunch adherence to core conservative principles by all contributors (e.g. the absolute sanctity of life)
• The robust dissenting views among contributors within those principles
• The variety of contributors and greater variety of commenters which makes SA more of a marketplace than a pipeline
• That we are engaged in the business of  “giving the bayonet to the dictatorship of relativism,” committed to the idea that there is absolute truth
• The courtesy (but not passivity) that ultimately prevails herein

I am now and always have been honored to be a part of Southern Appeal. I do not foresee its integrity or mission being compromised.

I don’t post here very often anymore, but I feel compelled to comment on Tom’s equating of the Confederate flag with the swastika.

1) That’s offensive and crazy. It actually plays into the hands of the David Dukes of the world — and I know this, having been at the forefront of the fight against Duke for three years — because it allows neo-Nazis to claim for their own a symbol that has many other meanings, some of them defensible and many of them romantic. Robert E. Lee, a good man, did not fight on behalf of genocide. Period.

2) Nevertheless, I’ve always been a bit baffled by those who still proudly wave the Confederate flag. What are they trying to say? That it would have been a good thing, historically, if the union had broken up? That if the union had broken up, it would have been good to serve under a flag that, whatever else it ALSO symbolized that might have been worthy of celebrating, did indeed still countenance slavery? That secession without agreement from the rest of the union is a good, or constitutional, thing? As I read histories of the civil war, I find myself far more moved by the valor of the Confederate armies and generals than I do by those of the Yankees. I find their dedication, divorced from the precise nature of their cause, more ennobling. I find the successful union generals such as Sherman and Sheridan to be irredeemably brutal. I am in awe of much of what Stonewall Jackson accomplished militarily, and I admire greatly the utterly unappreciated James Longstreet. But I do not, in the end, pine for a different outcome in which the union was split, slavery continued in the South, and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence left unrealized. The fact remains that if the Confederacy had won, slavery would have continued there for many years. Slavery is indefensible and inhuman. Period.

3) Yes, the flag also stood for a belief in federalism — yes, in “states’ rights” — that, when not taken to the extremes that Calhoun advocated, is not just defensible but in almost all respects correct. One can believe in federalism without believing in seccession; one can resent the bullying both of industrial, moneyed interests and of centralized government without secretly pining for a diminution of human rights. And one absolutely, positively, proudly, can celebrate the culture of the old South COMPLETELY DIVORCED FROM SLAVERY, and can see the flag as a symbol of that culture. A culture of courtesy. Of honor. Of chivalry. Of appreciation for the land. Of honoring and protecting ladies who live up to the name. Of individualism. Of decentralized authority. Of governance by tradition and cultural mores as much as by formal government that is enforced, as all government eventually is, at the point of a gun. (And of the idea that guns are there as much to protect against oppressive government — as a last resort — as for anything else.)

4) Nevertheless, one can also honor those good things without needing to wave a Confederate flag. And it is indisputable that the flag is inextricably linked with an armed effort that, whatever else its goals, also would have had the effect of (and in many cases was motivated by the desire to ensure) the continuance of the absolute evil of slavery. For those reasons, I myself never will raise aloft a Confederate flag. I think it appropriate to be unfurled only in certain, very very very limited circumstances (historical re-enactments of course among them). And I understand those who find it offensive even as I fully understand those who mean to give no offense by unfurling it.

5) In conclusion, I do not think the Confederate flag is something worth fighting over. It is not inherently evil, but by its very nature, even if unintentionally, it carries at least a little whiff of evil no matter how many other ennobling things it may also represent to the people who display it. If it is absolutely sick and unfair for people like Tom to equate it with Nazism, it also is at least a little bit intellectually dishonest to deny that its symbolism is somewhat troubling. If I thought that Southern Appeal was dedicated to the Confederate flag (in any of its forms) or to glorifying the entire cause of the Old Confederacy, I never would have joined it. I joined because it was a blog that mainly focused on appellate legal matters, with a particular emphasis on southern legal matters and a southern sensibility of the right sort (i.e., chivalry, etc.), and those are matters that are of great interest to me. The site now seems to spend as much or more time on matters Catholic (not, by the way, traditionally predominant in the South, old or new) and broadly cultural — matters definitely worthy of discussion and also of interest to me as a near-Catholic and as a deep admirer of John Paul II. But they are matters that have strayed from the “appeal” part of the blog’s name in its original sense. As long as those emphases, and the particularly southern character of the site in terms of chivalry, etc., continue, I am happy to be an occasional blogger here — and I am always happy to call its founder, Feddie, my friend. But if this site becomes an apologist for the Confederate cause in toto, I then will say goodbye. If I ever do so, I certainly will do it without a noxious, below-the-belt attack such as the one with which Tom bid adieu.

Ahhh. Obamacare. The gift that keeps on giving. Now we see states increasing the income caps on the people eligible to receive medicaid services, particularly, those involving reproductive health. With sob stories like this one, who could resist such a sanguine policy maneuver:

Ariel Wilberg, a 20-year-old student in Edgerton, Wis., says she enrolled in the program two years ago to cover the cost of her birth-control pills. With a part-time bookstore job that pays $10 an hour, she couldn’t afford to pay for the NuvaRing prescription birth control she now takes. She estimates it would cost her about $300 for the three-month supply she gets at a Planned Parenthood outlet.

“It’s very nice to know that I’m healthy in terms of I don’t have to worry about pregnancy,” she said.

The conclusion is clear: the day she gets pregnant, she’ll have a disease. That’s the warped world the culture of death has wrought.

The Pew Foundation released a survey yesterday stating that around 20% of Americans believe President Obama to be a Muslim. I don’t consider myself in that 20%. I don’t really feel the need either to tread down the path that Obama isn’t an American citizen (the consequences of that logic are really too deadly serious to casually entertain the thought). But I find it interesting. 20% of my fellow citizens, prior to Obama’s public celebration of Ramadan last Friday, think he is a Muslim. Is this crazy?

I don’t think it is. Obama says he is a Christian. O.k. What type of Christian is he? He’s certainly not Catholic or Orthodox; no one would call him evangelical. His sparse attendance at church makes it hard to even label him a traditional Protestant. His lack of an identifiable religious affiliation is part of a larger problem about Obama the man that has persisted since his early days of his campaign: he is largely an empty shell.

Every man has to be from somewhere. Every man has to believe something. The little we know of Obama is that his father was a muslim and he did in his early childhood have Muslim schooling. He goes to the middle east and speaks directly to the Muslim world. His State Department sponsors extensive outreach to Muslims. He publicly celebrates Ramadan. I’m not saying any of this makes him Muslim. But when there is little else to cling too, that hardly makes 20% of Americans irrational. What else are they to believe?

My friend Michael has a particularly thoughtful post on the issue with the downtown New York Mosque:

In this particular case, tolerance and respect must be considered from two perspectives: the freedom to exercise religion and the sensitivity due to the relatives and victims of 911 and to all U.S. citizens who remain scarred by the wounds of 911. Many opponents of building the Mosque near Ground Zero are not intolerant of the Muslims’ right to exercise religion, they just consider exercising that right at the chosen location a breach of civility.

President Obama missed an opportunity to use commonalities in our diverse religious faiths as a unifying force when he addressed this controversy. Rather than taking sides on Friday evening and reversing sides on Saturday, he could have considered the prudence of the great scholar Rabbi Hillel who taught Jewish followers two thousand years ago something that is at the very heart of Torah:

“Don’t do to your neighbor what you would hate if your neighbor did it to you.”

That is the essence of civility. Or he could have taken a lesson from the deceased Pope John Paul the II who strongly suggested to the nuns who wished to build a convent a Auschwitz, notwithstanding the fact that they had the clear legal right to build a convent there, to be prudent and respectful of the millions of Jews who lost their lives at Auschwitz and build a convent at another location. It takes the virtue of prudence to sometimes not exercise your legal rights in order to avoid doing to your neighbor what you yourself would not like done to you.

Hopefully this farewell will be less contentious.

I’m stepping away from blogging with the exception of my history blogging over at Almost Chosen People (check it out). The long and short of it is I simply don’t have the time to write about current events in the depth that I once did.  Also, truthfully, I’m a tad burned out.  Considering that I haven’t posted much here lately, I don’t think I will be all that missed.

Thanks to Feddie for inviting me to blog here – twice.  This was my first blog home, and thus it will always have a special place in my heart.  Hopefully at some point I’ll be able to re-dedicate myself to current affairs blogging, but for now I’ll just be another lurker and occasional commenter waiting to be placed out of moderation.

[Ed. Note -- I've placed Tom's original post below the "more" link.  So that others can read what he wrote I didn't delete it, but I didn't want the text of his rant displayed too prominently.   -- Patrick]

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The jury managed to reach a verdict on only one count against former Ill. Gov Rod Blagojevich: “making a false statement.”

The thumped US Attorney “absolutely intends to retry” the case. I wonder what exactly he intends to do next time, having failed to convict a defenseless Defendant.

The moral of this story: never, ever, talk to the Feds

CNN reports that stem cells from bone marrow have shown promise for treating a rare congenital disease called epidermolysis bullosa.

The transplanted bone marrow contains stem cells that can turn into skin cells. These new skin cells could produce the missing collagen 7 to stitch the skin layers, gradually healing the blisters and improving the patient’s condition.

Unfortunately, any treatment will be too late for the children in the Netherlands with this condition who have been euthanized.

From deep, deep inside the bowels of the modern university system:

Hey, University of Alabama, you might want to occasionally divert some of your enthusiasm and budget from football to that whole edu-ma-cation business y’all are supposed to be in.  Just saying…

In Louisiana, it is illegal for anyone other than licensed funeral home directors to sell caskets. The state is now after Saint Joseph Abbey in Covington, LA, for their nefarious casket-making activities.

The Institute for Justice is on the case and has put out this video:

The 6th Circuit struck down a Tennessee law that prevented anyone who was not a licensed funeral home director from selling caskets in Craigmiles v. Giles, 312 F.3d 220 (6th Cir. 2002). Significantly, the court held that the law did not even pass rational basis review. My (liberal) constitutional law professor described the law as “So crazy — this law smells so bad, like unrefrigerated 5-week old fish.”

Civil liberties cases like these (i.e. the right to be left alone) create an interesting analysis as they do not fit well in the pedestrian definitions of “conservative” and “liberal.”

Of course, a favorite conservative battle cry around SA is “States’ Rights!”. For a while (the Lochner period) the Federal government was acting like a super-legislature, severely meddling in the States’ economic activity. Finally, we emerged from this period (via Nebbia v. New York) and the Supreme Court said it would uphold any state economic regulation that served a rational basis.

So what about cases like Saint Joseph Abbey? An unbridled pro-States’ rights viewpoint would say it is up to Louisiana to decide how they run their business. Despite my affinity for States’ rights, I think the Federal Courts should strike laws like this down when there is no rational basis supporting the law. The only reason for the Louisiana casket law is to protect funeral home directors. I love States’ rights, but I like to be left alone even more.

What are your thoughts: valid regulation or impermissible interference?

Chivalry is not dead — but this tool should be next time he sees his girlfriend’s dad. Watch him bail while she gets pegged by a foul ball.

And I’m not buying his alibi.

Update: She dumped him.

and also Viagra.

A Milwaukee teachers’ union has found a hill it will die on — insurance coverage for Viagra. Never mind that the district is $30M in debt and our education system stinks. Certainly there are altruistic souls who devote their lives to training children and are not paid enough for their efforts. However, there are also a sickening number of people involved in “education” who suffer from delusional, self-inflicted martyr complexes.

I am convinced that our education system does not suffer because it is underfunded; it suffers because it is misfunded.

For some things, you’ve just got to turn to bluegrass.  Who better than Bill Monroe in a solo performance?