A couple of days ago, I linked to a Tim Swanson article for the Mises Institute titled, “Will the University Survive?” Swanson had a post on the Mises Blog today that updates his article a bit, and points us to a terrific story in Forbes:

In an unprecedented move, Stanford University is collaborating with Apple Computer to allow public access a wide range of lectures, speeches, debates and other university content through iTunes. No need to pay the $31,200 tuition. No need to live on campus. No need even to be a student. The nearly 500 tracks that constitute “Stanford on iTunesâ€? are available to anyone willing to spend the few minutes it takes to download them from the Internet.

Check out the Stanford on iTunes webpage, here.  The press release announcing its launch in January is here, and an article in the Stanford alumni magazine describing it is here. For a description of Apple’s “iTunes U,” click here.  The Chronicle of Higher Ed weighs in, here.
What a world!

I just had a chance to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Ayotte. My take is that the justices resolved the case as they did to delay a final decision until after Justice O’Connor’s replacement was confirmed. A remand for a different remedy still leaves open the possibility that there is no underlying constitutional violation. That, however, would be a split decision and likely close, and therefore it was more prudent to wait until the composition of the court was set. I do, however, think that a majority of the court would say that there is a violation and that the remedy is limited to striking only that portion that is unconstitutional. I think the Supreme Court also resolved Ayotte as it did to give the government a hint on the federal partial-birth abortion ban. And I predict the 9th Circuit’s ruling today, striking the entire ban will be remanded on the same grounds.

Finally, on a different Supreme Court note: After the Roberts and Alito proceedings, it is now clear to me that there are few attorneys who could possibly pass the constitutional examination nominees confront. And the best approach, as Feddie pointed out, is the most highly qualified originalist.

Robert George has a dead-on article in the most recent City Journal, arguing for the importance of civics education at the college level:

For all their academic achievement, students at Princeton and Yale and Stanford and Harvard and other schools that attract America’s most talented young people rarely come to campus with a sound grasp of the philosophy of America’s constitutional government. How did the Founding Fathers seek, via the institutions that the Constitution created, to build and maintain a regime of ordered liberty? Even some of our best-informed students think something along these lines: the Framers set down a list of basic freedoms in a Bill of Rights, which an independent judiciary, protected from the vicissitudes of politics, would then enforce.

He ends with a call to action:

Our posture cannot be—must not be—complacent. We must firmly resolve to make reform and renewal—whatever the obstacles, whatever the costs—our constant endeavor. We must not let the resistance of entrenched interests or recalcitrant ideological forces in the academic establishment, the funding bureaucracies, or anywhere else intimidate us. Let us seize every opportunity, marshaling our resources and deploying our wits to advance the cause of reform wherever we detect an opening, however much the weeds may obscure it. The reform and renewal of civic education in our nation is a noble cause. We must make it an urgent priority.

He is exactly right.  Read the whole thing — especially if you are a college student thinking about law school!

I’ve been meaning to post this Mobile Register editorial about SA patron saint Bill Pryor’s wonderful speech at Notre Dame a week ago. I’ll also cross-post it at Confirm them.

I believe it was October of 2004 when, on this site, I first wrote that the best two choices for the Supreme Court were Sam Alito and Emilio Garza. I have since soured just a bit on Graza — publicly so — although I still would be delighted to have him named. But I never wavered from saying that the best choice of all would be Alito. So, after 15 months, this confirmation feels especially sweet. I hereby tip my cap, though, to all the bloggers here at SA, and especially to feddie, because without SA providing such a crucial early forum for conservative law scholars and enthusiasts, I don’t think the groundswell would have beens trong enough to result, in the long run, in a Justice ALito. Now it has, and victory is sweet. ALITO, ALITO, ALITO!!! Oh, happy day!!!

Coretta Scott King has died at the age of 78. She apparently passed quietly in her sleep. Given the many tumultuous years of Mrs. King’s life, it seems fitting that God would give her peace as quietly as He did.

I’ve never been all that familiar with the Civil Rights Movement. My generation, for better or worse, knows more about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton than we really do about King’s efforts anymore. Sure, we’ve seen the footage of Birmingham and sit-ins and the like, but I don’t have a good working knowledge of the fabric of the movement or who played what roles in the process.

With that said, I’d really like to think we have readers here on SA who are very knowledgeable on the subject. Perhaps some even witnessed events at the time. I’d like to designate the comments section for this post as an area to leave your reflections on the Civil Rights movement, how it’s benefited us as a society, how it’s impacting on us today, and what the future holds.

My feelings: I support equal rights for every American, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or religious belief. I believe that when a right is denied to a group – due only to their group identity – while shared by others, something has to give. I also cannot fathom the courage that must be necessary to stand up and demand that kind of equal treatment. To that end, I have nothing but awe for the Civil Rights pioneers in this country who demanded equality.

Now, I think some of the more modern incarnations of Civil Rights activists are perverted by an unhealthy obsession with the continuation of racial tensions in our society. I believe some level of racism will probably always exist (just as ignorance, illiteracy, etc. will), and we should address specific cases where that racism harms others. But in terms of the Big Picture, I think we realistically need to get to a point as a society where racism is no longer institutional or accepted. I think we are very, very close to that goal.

As for the future, I believe you’re going to see more and more folks coming to the side of people like Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman – people who apparently believe the institutional problems are close to resolution and who want to see our society attempt to move forward in a less factious way. I also think you’ll see race warlords on the national scene so long as people are willing to send checks into their various foundations. It is a free market, after all.

This was a duplicate of my Coretta Scott King post, and WP won’t let me delete it.

So I’m venting on the software a little instead.

Antonin Scalia’s Jurisprudence, by Ralph Rossum, is favorably reviewed by John McGinnis on Opinion Journal today:

Respecting the original meaning of the constitutional text is, for Justice Scalia, the only way of making judicial decision-making consistent with the rule of law and democracy. The greatest threat to both, he believes, is the temptation of judges to substitute their own values for those of the Framers, thereby cutting legal rules free from their moorings and, too often, usurping elected legislatures and the popular will. The constitutional text may at times be ambiguous, he concedes, but the best response to such ambiguity is to defer to American traditions, not to the enthusiasms of the moment.

The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change aims to be “the best site on the Internet for the ideas and concerns of conservative blacks and other nonwhite Americans.” It now offers PDF files of all of Justice Thomas’s majority opinions, here. Here’s hoping they add his dissents soon!

Lagniappe: Ralph Rossum debates Henry Jaffa on natural rights and the Supreme Court, here.  Rossum’s 2002 book, Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment: The Irony of Constitutional Democracy, is reviewed here.

So the interesting thing about the attempted filibuster yesterday isn’t so much that the Democrats wanted to filibuster Alito.  Given the view that he was unacceptable for whatever reason, they wanted to stop him.  It’s probably a bad precedent – someone like Ruth Bader Ginsburg would almost certainly face a similar effort if she were nominated in the current climate – but not surprising.

What is surprising is that they attempted the filibuster when they knew it would fail.  Why?  Well, one answer is that they were just being Kossite lackeys.  That is, anyone who wants to warm up to the hard left of the Democratic Party, especially if you’re thinking about running for President in 2008, needed to come out in favor of the filibuster.  That probably explains a lot, but it’s not entirely convincing to me.  Explain what electoral successes Kos and his folks have had – why think they’re the force they claim to be?  Maybe you need Kos to win the Democratic primary, but that seems like a big, big maybe, given the lack of any empirical evidence to back it up.  Dean flamed out in the Iowa primary, after all.  (Of course, it might be the case that any number of potential nominees perceive that they need to win over the Kossites to win the primaries).

Another answer would be that the two parties are now so divided with regard to their underlying political philosophies that there really is no common ground.  I don’t think that most conservatives think that Alito is in any way radical or pushing the boundaries of good judicial judgment.  Most think of him as squarely in the mainstream.  The fact that a good number of Democrats (and, perhaps most importantly, their leadership especially) think he is suggests that part of the reason for the attempted filibuster is to demonstrate how firmly they feel about Alito’s views.  They mean to signal here that they think Alito is way out of the mainstream and an attempted filibuster does just that.  (As an aside, the fact that they could only manage a bare majority of their own caucus shows, perhaps, that it’s the Ted Kennedys of the world that are outside the mainstream.)

Finally, though, it might just be a case of what political scientists call ‘path dependence.’ There was probably a point at which, in the last couple of weeks, when some of the Democratic Senators who voted against the filibuster were wavering, unwilling to commit. Perhaps Sens. Kerry and Kennedy thought (not unreasonably) that if they got close to getting the 40 votes they needed, the pressure against those waverers would intensify, even to the point of moving them into the pro-filibuster column.  Imagine you were one of just a couple of Senators who were standing in the way of the filibuster – can you imagine the pressure you’d be under?  And once Kerry and Kennedy committed to the filibuster, they couldn’t back down (at risk of looking more ridiculous than they already did) and once Kerry committed to the filibuster, so too did the rest of the presumed Presidential contenders (Clinton, Evan Bayh, etc.).

All very interesting.

I rarely watch TV (except for sports).  However, I have been watching ABC’s Dancing with the Stars.  I have an interest in the show because I have been ballroom dancing for about 10 years.  I take one hour of group class per week, one hour of private lessons, and usually go to at least one dance per week.  In short, I like it.

For those of you who don’t know, the show takes B List “stars,” pairs them with pros, and the couples compete in various dances.  Judges vote on the couples and the masses have a vote as well via phone or internet.  Each week one couple gets kicked off.

One of the celebs was “Master P,” a rapper from the Big Easy. Master P finally got the ax last week, and the cry of racism has surfaced.  One person commented that P was voted off because “if Master P ends up winning this, the White people are gonna start a riot and get P killed.”

P was without question the worst dancer on the show.  He even refused to wear dance shoes, which have special soles and make dancing much easier.  He admitted that he put in about 1/5 of the time in practice that the other couples did.  He was bad, terrible, and didn’t even try.  Objectively, P did not belong on the show. 

What frustrates me is that the race issue even came up.  Even to the eyes of a non-dancer, there was no excuse for P’s failure of effort and inability to even do a basic step in the dances.  No one can defend him.  Yet, when he gets his just reward for virtually zero practice time, the race card surfaces.  I’m beginning to think there will never be a subject or time when race is not improperly put into play.  This silly Master P  business is but the lastest example of race popping up where it does not belong. 

I got a Barnes and Noble gift card for Christmas from one of my aunties, but since there’s not a B&N in town I decided to use it online to buy a few used books.  Those, plus a couple of others that I bought recently make up my reading list for the next few months (not including technically related ones).  So here they are:

• The Conservative Mind From Burke to Eliot by Russell Kirk
• The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design by William A. Dembski
• Did You Ever See A Dream Walking?: American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century edited by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• What Color is a Conservative?: My Life and My Politics by J.C. Watts, Jr. with Chris Winston
• My Love Affair With America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative by Norman Podhoretz

I’ve had The Conservative Mind for a few months and I’ve been reading it off and on.  A piece of advice: brush up on your 18th British politics if you what to make it out of the first chapter alive.  I’ll probably put that book on hold and delve into Dembski’s book, which looks to be very exciting.  The last three books are the ones that I bought used.  The Buckley one is really used since it was printed in 1970 and has that wonderful “old book smell”.

The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, the dominant newspaper in the state, has started three blogs.  One’s of the newspaper’s legislative reporting team with posts on the goings-on in the state capitol.  The other two belong to paper’s editorial director David Hampton and to Perspective Editor Sid Salter, both of whom are on the New Republic-y center-left.  They’re interesting reads, especially if you have a hankerin’ for Misssissippi politics.  That’s not to say that they are right on anything, of course

This is classic. As most are aware, James Frey, author of the now infamous book “A Million Little Pieces” has since been discredited for writing what was supposed to be a non-fiction book detailing his drug additiction and rehab. Anyway, via Overlawyered, law suits against Mr. Frey are beginning to arise, to wit, one such suit seeks damages for “lost time” spent reading the book.

This obituary of a 1988 winner of the Pennsylvania lottery is the cautionary tale of the week.

Don’t blame the messenger, now:

*  Gerard Baker in The Times of London, today.

*  Tom Holsinger, Joe Katzman and Armed Liberal on Winds of Change, last week.

*  “Will the University Survive?”  Not as presently constituted, according to author Tim Swanson:

Rather than focusing on revenue generating specialties, [colleges and universities] overextend and misallocate resources — ultimately beyond their fiduciary capacity thus find themselves asking for handouts (e.g. donations). This is not to say that the modern institution as a whole will be done away with, but rather they will inevitably be forced to confront the subsidy bubbles that insulate assorted pursuits. How they deal with the reality of market forces will ultimately determine whether each institution lasts.

*  Tom Smith had a nice post on The Right Coast the other day, remarking on the dearth of conservatives on college faculties and on the nature of the Federalist Society’s successes.  Well worth reading.

*  I only recently stumbled across the blog The Education Wonks.  It is focused primarily on K-12, but also hosts the weekly “Carnival of Education” and has a useful education blogroll.

From this morning’s Washington Times:

“I suppose we can all agree that it is an international filibuster because it was apparently hatched in Davos, Switzerland, where Senator Kerry now is with those masters of the universe that are out there trying to figure our world economy out,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican.

It’s no surprise to learn that Sessions is a Tom Wolfe fan, and also is skeptical of the prospects for international economic policy “coordination”.

I caught the end of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on TCM Thursday. You may remember that Big Daddy, played by Burl Ives (cool photos here), repeatedly rails against “mendacity!” Near the end of the movie, he turns to his son, played by Paul Newman, and says

What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it Brick? Didn’t you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?…There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.

I keep thinking about this scene as I hear Senate Democrats saying that their opposition to Judge Alito is based on something other than Roe – worries about the unitary presidency [sic] or his voting record in employment cases, etc.

Mendacity!

Yesterday, I received the latest edition of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and was delighted to see that sometime-SA blogger Adam White has an article entitled “Toward the Framers’ Understanding of ‘Advice and Consent’:  A Historical and Textual Inquiry.”  I’ve yet to read the entire article but it looks excellent.  Given the individuals listed as providing helpful comments, I’m sure there’s no way it’s not excellent.

If you haven’t yet, you’ve got to go check out Drudge’s link to Janet Reno singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T karaoke style…tons of irony to found.

And do you know what? For the first time in my life, I felt a little sad for her. (tear) You know, it tugged a heart string just a little. And if I wasn’t laughing so hard, I might’ve cried.

On Wednesday I linked to an article by Hugh Hewitt meditating on the changes afoot in the Columbia Journalism School.  Readers interested in this topic should take a look at two subsequent posts on Hewitt’s blog, here and here.

Check out Carson’s Monologues From Heaven.

Check it out, here.

For any of you interested, please see this link for a copy of my working paper on popular sovereignty and judicial review.  There is a good deal of history in the essay, but the final conclusion is relevant for our day. My reserach has revealed that the doctrine of judicial supremacy is incongrument with the main tenet of the American Revolution, which is ultimate power in the people.

After examination of early English cases and state cases discussing judicial review in the 1780s, I turn to Marbury and conclude that Chief Justice Marshall never contemplated establishing the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of our Constitution. A believer in popular sovereignty, Marshall would not have reverted to British practice whereby a branch of government has total control over fundamental law. Instead, the Marbury opinion–ike the state decisions before it–simply recognized that the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government empowered to interpret the Constitution along with the president and Congress.

For what it’s worth, here is what we at the Mobile Register had to say about the Dems’ treatment of the fine Judge Alito.

William Underwood has taken over at Mercer University, promising a ‘new’ kind of Baptist Higher Education.  But what that means seems very, very unclear – except that it ain’t whatever Baylor is doing.  (At the very least, those who have been supportive of Baylor’s 2012 initiative ought to view Underwood’s speech at Mercer with some relief, since he pretty clearly thinks it a mistake).  He’s pretty clearly committed to free speech at the university, but it’s less clear what will make Mercer ‘Baptist,’ unless Baptist has come to mean only that one has the liberty to choose what one believes.

In one sense, of course, the unmodified commitment to academic freedom is simply asinine.  At the very least, a commitment to the truth means that you wouldn’t keep someone around if he teaches that the world is flat or that Pluto aligning with Jupiter means you’re going to have good luck in romance on Tuesdays.  Moreover, no university is going to keep someone around who teaches and writes on how certain classes of people are inferior or deserving of slavery (or worse).  (Anti-semites might be an exception to this in some places, alas).

Here’s a prediction: in ten years (perhaps less) Mercer will look *just* like every other middling liberal arts college – no different than, say, Davidson or Furman or wherever.  (Actully, Davidson and Furman are much better than Mercer, but you get the idea).  Unless Underwood can articulate some view of religious education that goes beyond the freedom of individual inquiry, Mercer will quickly cease being a Baptist college and become a “college in the Baptist tradition.” That is, just another college.

Note: I tried posting this earlier this morning, but to no avail.
The New York Times editorial today demanding filibuster of Sam Alito is yet another in a line of glaring examples of the newspaper’s eroding grip on political realities in this country. Because this one has oh-so-many jewels within the space of a few paragraphs, I figure we might as well hit the fine points. We’ll skip the lead ‘graph, as I think it’s mere partisan hackery at its worst.

At the Judiciary Committee hearings, the judge followed the well-worn path to confirmation, which has the nominee offer up only the most boring statements and unarguable truisms: the president is not above the law; diversity in college student bodies is a good thing.

Someone needs to explain to the NYT that a Confirmation Hearing is not intended to be made-for-television material. A confirmation hearing isn’t intended to distill a punch list of how a particular judge will rule on cases, let alone the sexy ones the NYT evidently wants Alito to own up to having pre-judged. It is well-settled, and understood by those who pay closer attention than the vitriolic sound bites of bullying Senators, that a judge up for confirmation should not speculate to the Senate how he or she would rule on a case. To do so is to set the table for recusal in entire spheres of law, which serves no one in the end.

The Alito nomination has been discussed largely in the context of his opposition to abortion rights, and if the hearings provided any serious insight at all into the nominee’s intentions, it was that he has never changed his early convictions on that point. The judge — who long maintained that Roe v. Wade should be overturned — ignored all the efforts by the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, Arlen Specter, to get him to provide some cover for pro-choice senators who wanted to support the nomination. As it stands, it is indefensible for Mr. Specter or any other senator who has promised constituents to protect a woman’s right to an abortion to turn around and hand Judge Alito a potent vote to undermine or even end it.

So let me get this straight. The NYT wants Judge Alito to state his position on every matter under the sun, but in a way that provides cover for Senators so the nominee can secure their votes for confirmation? This is so ridiculous I can hardly conceive of the thought process that brought pen to paper to write it. Confirmation Hearings are, in the NYT’s view, tantamount to the nominee running for the office of Justice, and, where possible, the nominee should sugar-coat or doctor whatever views he does share for the benefit of his voters. Rest assured that had Judge Alito engaged in such a pattern of response he would have been crucified in kind by the very same paper.

Judge Alito’s refusal to even pretend to sound like a moderate was telling because it would have cost him so little. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who was far more skillful at appearing mainstream at the hearings, has already given indications that whatever he said about the limits of executive power when he was questioned by the Senate has little practical impact on how he will rule now that he has a lifetime appointment.

It’s OK to lie, so long as there are no consequences. And look at Roberts – he was a big fat liar (in the NYT’s views), and it’s OK because he got a lifetime appointment because of it. And as a little FYI to the NYT: Roberts didn’t “appear” mainstream; he pretty much is mainstream. The depths to which this editorial had sunk at this point disturbed me.

Senate Democrats, who presented a united front against the nomination of Judge Alito in the Judiciary Committee, seem unwilling to risk the public criticism that might come with a filibuster — particularly since there is very little chance it would work. Judge Alito’s supporters would almost certainly be able to muster the 60 senators necessary to put the nomination to a final vote.

This is called bowing to political pressure. It’s what politicians (unlike Judges) are supposed to do as elected representatives of the people. If a Senator believes her voters would support an Alito filibuster and would reelect her for her efforts, she will do it. If a Senator fears she would not get reelected because of her role in a filibuster, she will sit it out. This is how representative government works. For a paper who claims to know our system of government so well, the NYT knows almost nothing. That whole majority rules thing sure is a pain in the rear when it works against you…

A filibuster is a radical tool. It’s easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

Since when are Dems frightened of using the filibuster? If any shred of credibility was left from the initial onslaught of ill-conceived partisan rabble, this last statement killed it.

I know I shouldn’t give this much attention to an editorial as stilted and disingenuous as this one. The gist seems to be that if Alito had only lied for the NYT’s benefit they would be so much happier today, if only because they would be blissfully ignorant of who Judge Alito is. If the kind of Justice the NYT wants would stoop to double-talk and lies to put them at ease, I don’t think I want their input on the selection anyway.

From today’s editorial:

It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public’s attention to the import of this nomination.

…A filibuster is a radical tool. It’s easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

Me: This is a stupid idea. Plain and simple. Dems aren’t afraid of filibustering for noble purposes, they are afraid of being taken to the woodshed politically. I hope to God that they filibuster. In the wake of all the so-called “scandals” surrounding the Republican party right now, I can’t think of a better way to shift momentum.

Hugh Hewitt files this report, based on his visit to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.  He predicts that the efforts underway to reform the school’s curriculum and the nature of its graduates are doomed.

There is too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.

Very interesting.