That’s the charming title of a Daily Kos diary by “edencho” (real name Ed Encho) in which the author expresses a thoughtful critique of the culture and politics of the denizen’s of the South. Here’s a taste:

Given the regressive hostility of the south and the willingness of the Republican party to capitalize on southern desire to drag the country back to the good ole’ days of Jim Crow, religious intolerance and a gross renunciation of intellectualism is only too deserving of a descriptive term from days past be resurrected for these folk and that word is PECKERWOOD

A peckerwood is a rural white southerner, usually poor, undereducated or otherwise ignorant and bigoted, the term gained popularity in the deep south during the early twentieth century and was meant to be derogatory. It is a reversal of the name of the red bellied woodpecker which had a patch of red on the back of it’s head and neck, therefore a peckerwood is a redneck, terms that describe similar groups of people are trailer trash or white trash but neither of those have the same effect or ring to them as peckerwood does.

Such a wonderful display of leftist open-mindedness and compassion. Rhetoric like that is surely going to help “progressives” make in-roads in the land of Dixie.

Seriously speaking, this guy’s a hate-monger and as we “peckerwoods” say in hinterlands, “someone ought to learn him some manners”. Also, judging from the comments on that diary there’s a lot of lefties who agree with him (In fairness, there are some left-leaning commenters that are very critical of Mr. Encho’s bile-filled diatribe, though they do seem to be in the minority).

via The Corner and DonkeyCons

We’re off to spend the weekend tooling around in Alabama (are y’all going to have a governor’s wing in the state prison soon?)- I’ll be the guy reading Mansfield’s Manliness and Dostoevsky’s The Devils.  (Friends say Mansfield’s got a bit of the devil in him, so it seems like a good combination).  Our thoughts and prayers with the men and women who are in much less pleasant places doing the hard work of keeping a people free.

The WSJ Editorial staff explains why it ran the story that revealed the Bush Admin’s banking monitoring program.

Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish.

The WSJ also blasts the NYT:

We suspect that the Times has tried to use the Journal as its political heatshield precisely because it knows our editors have more credibility on these matters.

I just finished reading the majority and concurring opinions in Hamdan and before moving on to the dissents, had a couple of practical and political thoughts, and one random thought.

 1)  The concurrences made clear that Congress could give the President the authority to formulate tribunals.  And the procedures required in those tribunals was NOT decided by Hamdan, as Kennedy did not join on to that portion of the opinion. 

 2)  So the political solution is for Bush to immediate ask Congress for authority to constitute the tribunals, under the formulation he had already established.  Again, Kennedy’s concurrence here is key because Kennedy indicated that such tribunals could be “regularly constituted tribunals” for purposes of the Treaty. 

3)  Politically, Hamdan is the ideal Gitmo detainee to focus on, given that he was Bin Laden’s bodyguard.  Putting this issue before Congress with up coming fall elections would seemingly benefit the President and republicans.

 4)  If Congress passes such a law and that is challenged, the Chief Justice would no longer need to recuse, which could sway the balance.

 5)  The majority made clear that its opinion in no way meant that the government could not continue to hold detainees while hostilities continued.  Its been a while since I’ve been knee deep in these issues, but given that point, couldn’t the government just keep holding Hamdan and others while the war on terror continues (which will be until the Second Coming.)

 6)  Finally, the majority notes that some of the charged Hamdan’s conduct occurred before 9-11-2001.  However, Al Queda engaged in war before then with the first World Trade Center bombing, among other things, so 9-11 wasn’t the beginning of the war–it was just our wake-up call that war had been declared against us.

How, you wonder?  Well, I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks.  I will not have a cell phone, internet, no nothing.  We’ll be flying to London on Sunday, board the QE2, and then travel to Iceland and Norway.  Here is the route we are taking.

As a young soldier, I traveled throughout central Europe, but I never made it very far north.  I’m looking forward to this and especially the recharging of batteries. C-ya.

This Cartoon says all that needs to be said about the recent PCUSA decision to allow for alternative ways to refer to the Trinity.

(cross posted from The American Spectator blog) The Mobile Register reports that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman has been found guilty on multiple counts, including bribery, in a long-running trial. Finally. And deservedly. The man has shown dishonesty again and again and again. The very first time I ever saw him in person, he looked directly into my eyes and told me a whopper of a lie. Good riddance to him. But a further observation is in order. In bearing, partly in personality, and in some ways in looks, Siegelman has always reminded me of convicted former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. Clearly too much political animals for their own good, they both lost sight of propriety while in pursuit of political advantage. But there is an important distinction between them, too: Tucker, I think really cared about trying to change things for the better. (Not that his policy prescriptions were always right, but he really was a policy pathfinder at heart.) I remember, when I worked in Arkansas, Tucker (then under house arrest) called me out of the blue to praise a column of mine on education issues, and invited me to his house for a sandwich and a policy chat. His political career was over; there was no ambition in it; he just wanted to push some ideas, some idealistic reforms, and trade some stories (including some veiled allusions to his skanky predecessor and longtime nemesis, Boy Clinton). He seemed quite sincere. If it was all mere performance, which I doubt, it certainly was a winning performance. One couldn’t help but think that, absent the challenge of trying to keep up with the dizzying corruptions and preternatural political skills of the Clintons, Tucker might have been a fair-to-middling public official whose weak ethical compass led him only to non-criminal edge-skirting rather than prosecutable transgressions, but who also accomplished some decent things for his constituents. One can’t say the same for Don Siegelman. His conviction is one more reason to have faith in our system. Justice is sometimes hobbled, but more often than not it still reigns in these United States.

The once sovereign Parliament is looking pretty impotent in the wake of a court order striking “control orders” as violating the European Convention on Human Rights rules on detention without trial.  Under the control orders, the six suspected terrorists were banned from leaving their homes for 18 hours a day, could not use mobile phones or the internet, and their visitors had  to give the authorities personal details and photos in advance. The judge said the home secretary had no power to make the orders and they must therefore all be quashed

At one time Parliament had was sovereign in the British system.  But, with the Convention, British Courts are following the example of their American counterparts and assuming a role akin to sovereignty in the British System.

One backbencher had this to say about the approaching constitutional crisis:

“When many of us, as I did, supported the Human Rights Act and indeed still support it, we thought that on great matters of state of this sort – if the elected parliament had taken a careful view of what was in the wider public interest – that would be given considerable weight by the courts.

“That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening at the moment and that’s why I don’t think it’s over- the-top to talk about an emerging constitutional crisis.

“We have got to have a serious discussion between lawmakers in parliament, ministers and judges about the way through here.

“I know that when Charles Clarke was home secretary he was deeply frustrated that senior judges would not discuss these issues of principle with him.

“And I think before we get into too big a conflict, sensible people have got to get round the table and explore the way in which this is going to be handled.”

He added: “This is not a battle between government and the judiciary; this is between the elected parliament and the judiciary.

Parliamentary sovereignty has been the bedrock of the British system for at least 300 years.  Although we Americans rejected the idea of legislative sovereignty, it has worked well for the Brits, making them among the freest people on earth.

We can only wish them good luck with this apparent transfer of power to courts. 

You heard it here first.  Casey Cagle is going to soundly defeat Ralph Reed in the upcoming Republican primary for Georgia Lt. Governor.  I’ve spoken to a “person in the know” and I believe him. 

Call Reed another casualty of the deadly musical Abramoff, Abramoff!

I thought this story was a spoof.  But apparently this judge is on trial on four felony counts of indecent exposure, which allege that he used a penis pump to masturbate while on the bench.

I’m sure trial judges can get bored, but masturbating during murder trials? 

Here’s a new job announcement just up:

Position in Political Theory/Gender Studies The Department of Political Science and the Gender Studies Program of the University of Utah invite applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in political theory and gender studies. Starting date is August, 2007. A Ph.D. and a strong commitment to research and teaching are required. The position is a joint appointment, with teaching responsibilities equally divided between Political Science and Gender Studies. Applicants should have demonstrated expertise in political theory and gender theory. The successful candidate will teach and advise graduate students, offer undergraduate courses in his/her area of specialization or political theory more generally, and teach courses in the Gender Studies core curriculum, with the opportunity to create cross-listed electives.

Given that I found Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness at Borders under the ‘Men’s Studies’ section (who knew there was such a thing?), maybe I should apply.  Hmmm…we could have a class on Southern Football Traditions, the Fine Art of BBQ, Deconstruction of Soccer…all kinds of possibilities.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian thug, but, as the saying goes, if you poke at the bear, you might wake him up.  And this case, at least the rhetoric suggests they did.  It’s worth noting that, inasmuch as various folks might complain about the harshness of American tactices in the war on terror, it’s nothing compared to the Russians’.  They practically obliterated Grozny after getting hammered the first time they tried to put down a regional insurgency.  And there are lots of juicy rumors about how the Soviets reacted brutally when 1980s-style Islamic radicals tried to target Soviet diplomats or airplanes, including scrambling fighter jets across the Iranian border and mailing pieces of Hezbollah fighters back to their families.

The letter to the President can be found here. 

No, this is not the title of a lost Beatles bootleg. 

Prompted by the Instapundit, I went over to check out the Acidman’s blog after hearing he’d passed on after quite an interesting blogging career.  What I found was a radical individualist who liked to cook himself egg sandwiches with lots of tabasco sauce.  I just kept reading and got a little addicted to this NRA-member, middle-aged southerner apparently outfitted with artificial wedding tackle. 

Maybe you could visit with this cranky and highly interesting fellow for a few minutes as his virtual reality lingers.  His earthly commencement took place at his home in Rincon, GA, not so far away from some of us at Southern Appeal.  I got the idea to mention him when I saw SA on his blogroll.

 Update:  I should add that the Acidman is a bit testy at times and does some of his blogging while apparently quite ill (physically).  He’s an acquired taste, but he reminds me of some of the southern men I’ve known through the years.  Not my daddy, mind you (who is a bit of sunshine), but like some good old boys you would never emulate but can’t help sort of like a little.

I saw this bumper sticker in a Samford parking lot yesterday.  Strange, eh?  And I should say that the other stickers on the bumper clearly indicated the car was owned by a Democrat.

From his recent opinion in Kansas v. Marsh….

…. There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America’s death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers belong had the death penalty themselves until recently–and indeed, many of them would still have it if the democratic will prevailed.³) It is a certainty that the opinion of a near-majority of the United States Supreme Court to the effect that our system condemns many innocent defendants to death will be trumpeted abroad as vindication of these criticisms. For that reason, I take the trouble to point out that the dissenting opinion has nothing substantial to support it.

It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case–not one–in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent makes much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to establish innocence. But in every case of an executed defendant of which I am aware, that technology has confirmed guilt. …..

This and the other opinions are interesting DP reading.

Here (on The Corner) is a letter from Treasury Secretary Snow to NYT editor Bill Keller regarding their recent story on American tracking of financial data.  If the letter accurately portrays what went on pre-publication, the NYT did everyone an awful disservice.  Imagine, though, how powerful Mr. Keller and the rest of the crew at the Times must feel – they had a Cabinet secretary, members of Congress, White House officials groveling at their feet trying to convince them not to publish the story.  And then, with nary a sniff, off the story went.

I really don’t think the government ought to prosecute the NYT.  They’re doing what the press has always done – print things that will increase their circulation and win Pulitzers.  (Spare me the “public right to know” nonsense – they’re not somehow more noble than the rest of us).  But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t prosecute the stinkers who first leaked the thing – they took an oath not to let that sort of information out and they know better.  The justice department, if they’re not already, ought to be front and center demanding to know who it is whispered think the NYT’s proverbial ear.  March ‘em all into a grand jury and let ‘em rot in some nasty prison cell if they won’t tell.  And when they do tell – who wants to miss “the season” at Martha’s Vineyard? – put the leakers in jail, for a long, long time.  You can’t stop the leaks at the press level, but you can stop the bureaucracy.

A good article on former Baylor provost David Lyle Jeffrey and the troubles surrounding Baylor 2012.  (Ignore the “what a bunch of rednecks” tone of the article).  I’ve had the honor of meeting David a couple of times and always came very, very impressed.

Watched the 2004 German film Downfall this weekend.  Very interesting – it tells the story of the end of Germany’s Nazi regime and specifically the end of Hitler’s small circle in his bunker as the Russians advanced on and then, for all practical purposes, destroyed Berlin.  What’s striking about it, and what makes it worth watching, is that it works hard to show not only Hitler’s (and his compatriots’) madness, cupidity, and plain evil-ness, but also their humanity.  They could laugh, sing, show tenderness, even love to one another, all the while their death machine marched on.  It’s a reminder, I guess, that “they” can quite easily be “us.” Well worth watching (though well after the kids have gone to bed).

Today, I have a column on the Haynes nomination appearing in the Greenville News, a South Carolina paper covering the upcountry.  Here is how I conclude the piece:

With the recent retirement of Judge Michael Luttig from the Fourth Circuit, the conservatives on the court have only six votes out of 12. The Fourth Circuit currently has several open seats, and unless the Senate votes on qualified nominees such as Jim Haynes prior to the mid-term elections we could see a Fourth Circuit much less in agreement with the average South Carolinian.

Jim Haynes is a qualified nominee with South Carolina roots. Too much is at stake to permit the Haynes nomination to die at the hand of obstructionists in the Senate. Sen. Graham and his colleagues in the Senate owe it to South Carolinians to make one final push to bring the Haynes nomination to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote.

VDARE has up a letter from a former California police officer who offers his experiences with the INS and explains just when the feds stopped caring about illegal immigration. 

According to this news article, baby No. 300 million will likely be Hispanic.  Considering the failure to enforce immigration laws, the baby will probably be a child of illegals to boot.

As for long-term projections, according to the AP:

By the time the U.S. population hits 400 million, in the 2040s, white non-Hispanics will be but a bare majority. Hispanics are projected to make up close to one-quarter of the population, and blacks more than 14 percent. Asians will increase their share of the population to more than 7 percent.

Most of us have heard about the “aspirational terrorists” arrested for planned attacks on targets in Miami and Chicago.  A copy of the indictment can be found here.  This matter is being handled in the criminal justice system and the men have not been designated as enemy combatants. 

I have heard representatives of the Justice Department claim that American citizens guilty of participation in terrorist activities, even though they have never been to a foreign battlefield, could be designated as enemy combatants and held until the end of the War on Terror.  These Justice Department officials claim that the world is now a battlefield and thus we cannot limit enemy combatant status to those captured or present on the battlefields in Afghanistan or Iraq. 

As most of you know, I have long opposed treating Amercians (not matter how reprehensible) who have never been involved in the hostilities abroad, and who were captured in the United States, as enemy combatants.  This gives the Executive too much discretion and deprives citizens of fundamental constitutional rights. 

It will be interesting to see if the government keeps these men in the criminal justice system or if an effort is made to designate them as combatants.   Because they were stopped before attempting actual attacks, my gut is that they will remain in the criminal justice system.  Had they caused damage or loss of life, we might have seen an effort to expand Executive power by designating them as enemy combatants.

As the warrant shows, this dude is pretty whacked.  Of course, SCOTUS would probably view this as self-actualization and hold that state police power regulations barring such conduct are irrational.

Since a growing number among us aspire to appear in a Mad Max movie, I’m thinking of investing in tattoo removal technologies.  Especially after viewing this video.

SocialistAppeal.org

Have fun with this one, folks. Here’s mine. Post your most outlandish global warming tale of terror in the comments.

I went to the beach not too long ago, and it was really, really hot. Seriously. It was, like, baking temperature. That’s about as horrific as it gets in my little sliver of the world.

UPDATE: All the comments have been a load of fun, but where they’re merely swinging a hammer in the general direction of ABC “News”, NRO’s Media Blog drops the hammer. Hard.

(HT on the update: Blue Crab Boulevard)

I’m doing a low-country boil – anyone have any good recipes/suggestions?

Michael McConnell reviews Justice Breyer’s Active Liberty in the Harvard Law Review.

UPDATE: Having read through the review now, it seems to me that McConnell’s critiques help point up the main problem with Breyer’s “active liberty.”  Namely, they show how there’s an ambiguity between thinking that the Constitution means that judges should show deference to democratic decision-making and thinking that the Constitution means to empower individual citizens to participate in their own self-government.  What McConnel points out, though I don’t think he says it in so many words, is that Breyer’s judicial opinions (if not the arguments in the book) tend to range between these two.  For those who are more “democratic” in their political thinking, this has always been a conundrum, starting with Rousseau’s Social Contract.  There, he invokes the “General Will” and some superhuman Legislator as a way of solving the “problem” that, sometimes, what the “people” decide isn’t always actually what the “people” should want.  I don’t think there’s anyway to cross that chasm, mostly because I don’t have all that much faith in the “people”, but I think the best way to understand Breyer’s “active liberty” is another, fairly meager, attempt to do so.
(HT to Stuart Buck)

Stuart Taylor has an interesting article on the above topic in the National Law Journal.  The essay is a good discussion of an upcoming law review article written by Richard Sander.  Here is a taste:

But these preferences are at best a mixed blessing — and are often a curse — for their recipients. After a year or two on the job, most minority associates at big firms get less desirable assignments and less training than their white counterparts. Many become discouraged and embittered. Young black lawyers leave big firms “at two or three times the rate of whites.”

These problems plague minority lawyers precisely because of the racial preferences that got most of them hired. By lowering the big firms’ usual hiring standards, large preferences bring “disparities in expectations and performance that ultimately hurt the intended beneficiaries.”