Matthew Franck has a post up discussing whether or not Henry Reid and the Senate Democrats have the constitutional authority to reject Governor Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to fill President-elect Obama’s Senate seat.  Eugene Volokh also tackles the issue.  Both commentators say no based on the 1969 decision of Powell v. McCormack.  What I find interesting is that both seem to rely on the Supreme Court case, but do not fully tackle the issue of whether or not the Constitution actually permits the Senate not to seat Burris.  In fact Franck states that he thinks the Powell case was wrongly decided.

So we’re confronted with a number of issues.  Was Powell correctly decided?  If not, should the Senate in effect ignore the precedent and do what it is constitutionally permitted to do?  Even if it is constitutionally permitted to block Burris’s appointment, should it?

On the first question, I have no opinion because I haven’t read the case, and don’t really have the time to skim it now.  On the third question, I think anything or anybody associated with Blagojevich is so tainted that the Senate ought to block the appointment.  As for the constitutional issue, on it’s face I think that the Senate has a leg to stand on.  Here is the relevant passages from Article I, Section 5: (more…)

Michael Lind wrote an article at Slate accusing the South of waging an economic civil war against the North and calling for another reconstruction of the South. I have been meaning to comment on this article for some time but have only recently found the time.

First of all, it should be noted that Mr. Lind has made attacking the South and Southern culture his professional calling card. A reoccurring theme in his work is the threat the South posses to the rest of America. Consequently, one should consider the source when reading this article.

With the predatory warning out of the way, let me also say that one could write a book debunking the encyclopedic volume of economic fallacies, hyperbolic silliness, and faulty reasoning on display in Mr. Lind’s article. For instance, Mr. Lind states that:

“Today the division is no longer between slave and free states, or agrarian and industrial states, but between two models of industrial society — the Northern model, based on adequate public service funding and taxation and unionization, and the Southern model, based on low-tax, low-service government and low-wage, non-unionized, easily exploited labor.”

Let’s leave aside the debate on whether “adequate public service funding” or “bloated bureaucracy” is the appropriate term and focus on the underlying premise of this statement. Mr. Lind seems to think that high taxation, bureaucracy, and union domination of labor is a recipe for economic success. If that were the case then he and his fellow blue state liberals would have little to fear from the South and there would be no need for him to offer up such a contradictory argument for increased Federal assistance. Mr. Lind unwittingly concedes that his system can’t succeed on its own in a free market system. Instead of seeking ways to improve Northern industry he has to argue for the destruction of the South’s competitive advantage.

Lind’s retreat from reason is spectacularly on display with this little gem:

“If the industrial North and the industrial South compete for global capital investment, then the industrial South is likely to prevail, because Northern advantages in the form of a skilled workforce and superior public services are unlikely to overcome the South’s advantages of low wages and low taxes and state and local tax subsidies.”

If the North has an advantage in skilled workers benefiting from superior public services than why aren’t they more productive? If they are the recipients of better pay and services shouldn’t they be able to produce more? The disparity between the big three and their Japanese rivals regarding labor costs and productivity has been obvious for awhile (as this June 13th Washington Times Article points out). The Japanese cars produced in the South also happen to be superior products.

The real problem with Mr. Lind’s article is the awful conclusion he comes to. When Lind states that we need to replace state power over services and economic policy with a federal tax revenue sharing program and total federal control over all state economic activity he is arguing for the destruction of our Constitutional form of government. Instead of the federal system enshrined in our Constitution where the states retain the power to direct the bulk of their domestic activities Lind would set up a single government leviathan controlling everything. Mr. Lind wants to replace the diversity of our federal system of government with a one size fits all system with no room for individual state innovation.

Our parish has a Las Posadas observance which is where small statutes of Mary and Joseph are carried from one home to another during Advent in search of an “innkeeper” who will let them stay the night.  As part of our parish’s observance of this custom, each family takes pictures of Mary and Joseph in the family and those photos are added to a scrap book which accompanies Mary and Joseph.  One of our curates and his family were taking Mary and Joseph (who happen to be 24 inch tall plastic statutes) to their next home when they decided to stop at Starbucks.  They took Mary and Joseph in with them only to be told that Mary and Joseph couldn’t stay in the store because their presence might offend other customers and the priest (who was not wearing his collar), his wife and daughter were asked to leave. 

Now I understand that there is always a risk of internet hoaxes but I know this priest and trust him.  He has gone so far as to write a letter to editor of the local paper describing the events (no link available) so I believe that the event did occur.  It is outrageous.  So if I walk into the Starbucks and see an “Obama” t-shirt and decides it offends me (it wouldn’t but stay with me) can I then insist that the wearer be required to leave.  Of course not!  It is only because the statutes have religious significance to Christians that the employees thought it not only appropriate but their duty to insist on the offending symbol be removed.  It is sad commentary on the state of our Nation and political correctness run amok again.

Feast your eyes on the incarnation of all that is cool.

You can buy yours here. I did.

Today I showed that conservatives win when they actually try to limit government. Comments welcome.

I once recall hearing an anecdote about Reagan. Apparently, Reagan and his handlers were experts at ensuring that his public appearances — all of them — were carefully managed to project positive qualities. Even the simple act of Reagan exiting Air Force One was done in such a particularly reassuring, presidential fashion.

On one occassion, a major network did a story on Reagan that was extremely negative, but they used stock footage of Reagan throughout. Afterwords, a Reagan staffer called the reporter to thank him for the story. The reporter was aghast, and explained his shock given the negative tone of the piece. The Reagan staffer then explained that most viewers didn’t pay attention to the content, and that the constant montage of commanding Reagan appearances actually played to his benefit. Despite the hostility from the media, Reagan won out.

With Obama, we’re seeing a different dynamic. Obama doesn’t have to go around the media — he can work directly with it, because the mainstream media isn’t hostile to his presidency. This is most pronounced with Time Magazine’s recent decision to name Obama “Man of the Year,” and then use Obama campaign art on the cover. (more…)

Now you know.

That is the title of an article of mine just published in the Santa Clara Law Review 49.2 (2009). It is the article that I wrote about earlier this year on What’s Wrong With the World and in which I offer, in the footnotes, a clarification of my views on intelligent design that attracted the attention and ire of Bill Dembski on Uncommon Descent. Here’s how the article begins (footnotes omitted):
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From Joseph Bottom at First Things:
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As a result of talking a lot to students this past semester about the financial meltdown and related metastasis of the feddle guvmint, I’ve pulled together nine easily accessible articles to help people understand the shape we’re in (i.e., cheerleading for ever-larger government).  If you’re interested, click here.  (Civil comments welcome.)

That is the title of a piece I published this morning as the Daily Article in First Thing’s On the Square. Here is an excerpt:
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Treasuries Fall Below Zero As Investors Seek Safety.

Is available as a PDF file on the Chicago Tribune’s website.

Wow.  Just wow.

I wonder:  Do corruption stories ever give big-government aficionados any real worry?  If not, why not?

I am not a Catholic.  I was raised heavily in the Southern Baptist faith, but I would refer to myself these days as “irreligious.”  My views on religion have made it an unimportant grounding point for my personal beliefs in economics, philosophy, or politics, and it can be difficult to engage in debate at times with people who do have strong religious beliefs and who apply those beliefs to the secular world because we are playing by different rules.  There are those on the irreligious side of the wall who don’t understand that divide between themselves and the faithful and are frightened of it.  I’ve been on both sides at certain times in my life, so I think I understand what’s going through the minds of all parties to some degree or another.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped me from forgetting the differences. (more…)

We’ve already seen America’s automotive future, comrades.

For more, click here and here (text), and here (video). (The image is courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Kathleen Parker has a major case of secular reason sickness and it needs to be cured.  I’ll keep this short and simple.  Here is an offensive line from one of Kat’s latest columns:

How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments.

Problem #1:  Social conservatives very rarely argue for their public policy positions on the basis of straight-up revelation.  It is much more common to hear them talk about scientific evidence that life begins from conception (which could be found in an embryology textbook, for example) than to hear a scriptural exegesis of, say, Jeremiah 1.  If anything, American social conservatives have worked quite assiduously to persuade their fellow citizens without direct appeal to revelation.

I think the Yale Law professor Stephen Carter was more correct several years ago when he complained conservative Christians relied on a platform that lacked spiritual distinctives and simply mimicked Republican positions.  See, Kathleen, Mr. Carter is a scholar in the area of law and religion.  His observation runs completely counter to yours, which you have seemingly formed on the fly in response to your personal Sarah Palin fiasco.

And let us not forget that when some Christian leaders hid behind the separation of church and state to avoid addressing topics like Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and nuclear proliferation, their liberal colleagues were applauded for highly public spiritual approaches to those controversies.  When liberals do it, we call it “speaking truth to power” or “speaking prophetically.”  When conservative religionists enter the political process, everyone suddenly frets about impending theocracy.

Problem #2:  Ms. Parker acts as though everything we discuss in politics can be parsed scientifically.  This is the same sort of casual toss-off we get when some self-satisfied personage says, “You can’t legislate morality.”  Really?  Hate crimes?  The illegality of segregation?  A welfare state?  Human rights?

The simple fact is that politics concerns itself with the realm of value as well as the realm of fact.  There are both religious and philosophical approaches to questions of value.  Is there any compelling reason to commit epistemological segregation, Ms. Parker? Must the religious contestants sit at the back of the bus to satisfy you?

67 years ago today the Empire of Japan perpetrated a surprise attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor. Please remember both the survivors and the families of the American deceased of that terrible day.

My friend, Rob Bowman, at the Institute for Religious Research, provides a nice analysis of the comments by Emergent church leader, Tony Jones, who recently came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Here’s an excerpt:
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I thought I’d make a comment on this story, because I think it shows how some police departments really need to decide whether they want to be on good terms with the public. The “blue wall” mentality, though harped on far too much by those who would hate the police regardless of their conduct, still occasionally rears its ugly head.

In Boston, a state trooper ticketed the husband of a woman in labor who was using the shoulder lane to get to an exit more quickly. He pulled up behind a state trooper, who demanded that his wife pull up her shirt to prove that she was pregnant (she was) and then proceeded to issue a citation anyway.

What the trooper did was regrettable, but there are bad eggs in every force. I’d expect the trooper to get a dressing down and for the ticket to be ripped up the moment a complaint was issued, with an apology from the department. Instead, this is what happened: (more…)

I just deactivated my Facebook account. Why? Because the phony intimacy of the whole thing just creeps me out. All these people want to be my “friend.” Plus, once you’re someone’s “friend,” every little stupid thing that the “friend” writes, posts, or photographs and posts is inexorably tied to your page. 

So, I quit.

The multi-talented Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University