Hi world. Here is a picture of my first Halloween costume, slated for Friday and possibly Saturday night, October 28th and 29th. I say "first Halloween costume" because in the likely event that it becomes destroyed/unwearable by the end of the weekend, I'll have to come up with something else for festivities on actual Halloween. The two-costume format is definitely the way to go when you celebrate Halloween on multiple nights.
I'm going to be a ninja, as part of a stealthy, deadly, and very, very drunk band of ninjas that includes K-Rock, LongMan, Dolph, Gate, and possibly others. We will be carousing the shadows of Lakeview and Wrigleyville next weekend practicing, as Napolean Dynamite says, the deadly art of invisibility. And when I say invisibility, I mean loud, drunk, obnoxious, and armed with plastic throwing stars. We also found matching costumes for the ladies who will (until they become too annoyed and leave) accompany us, but the ninja skank outfits were too big. It's a shame, but we're going to look sharp anyway.
Not much to report today...I love hump day but my week has been crazy. How about you? I'm always nervous the week before going out of town because I feel like all my obligations at work will come due while I'm away from my email/office. I have to learn to get over it.
Two news notes: Tom DeLay is officially on the lamb and Hurricane Wilma looks like a bad one. I've gotten some hits from Florida here at the Offering, so let me say this if you are reading from that part of the world: leave now. Don't be stubborn, too many people thought they would be fine during Katrina and Rita and it cost a lot of lives. If you want to help with the hurricane relief effort, don't be afraid to click on the link to the right.
Finally, Dolph brought this interesting op-ed from the Wall Street Journal by Justice Bork to my attention today. I'll copy the text here (please don't sue me, Wall Street Journal) and withhold my opinion on the matter for now. We haven't gotten into Justice Miers and the nomination all that much, so go ahead and tell the world what you think.
Slouching Towards Miers
By ROBERT H. BORKOctober 19, 2005
With a single stroke -- the nomination of Harriet Miers -- the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That's not a bad day's work -- for liberals.
There is, to say the least, a heavy presumption that Ms. Miers, though undoubtedly possessed of many sterling qualities, is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. It is not just that she has no known experience with constitutional law and no known opinions on judicial philosophy. It is worse than that. As president of the Texas Bar Association, she wrote columns for the association's journal. David Brooks of the New York Times examined those columns. He reports, with supporting examples, that the quality of her thought and writing demonstrates absolutely no "ability to write clearly and argue incisively."
The administration's defense of the nomination is pathetic: Ms. Miers was a bar association president (a nonqualification for anyone familiar with the bureaucratic service that leads to such presidencies); she shares Mr. Bush's judicial philosophy (which seems to consist of bromides about "strict construction" and the like); and she is, as an evangelical Christian, deeply religious. That last, along with her contributions to pro-life causes, is designed to suggest that she does not like Roe v. Wade, though it certainly does not necessarily mean that she would vote to overturn that constitutional travesty.
There is a great deal more to constitutional law than hostility to Roe. Ms. Miers is reported to have endorsed affirmative action. That position, or its opposite, can be reconciled with Christian belief. Issues we cannot now identify or even imagine will come before the court in the next 20 years. Reliance upon religious faith tells us nothing about how a Justice Miers would rule. Only a commitment to originalism provides a solid foundation for constitutional adjudication. There is no sign that she has thought about, much less adopted, that philosophy of judging.
Some moderate (i.e., lukewarm) conservatives admonish the rest of us to hold our fire until Ms. Miers's performance at her hearing tells us more about her outlook on law, but any significant revelations are highly unlikely. She cannot be expected to endorse originalism; that would alienate the bloc of senators who think constitutional philosophy is about arriving at pleasing political results. What, then, can she say? Probably that she cannot discuss any issue likely to come before the court. Given the adventurousness of this court, that's just about every issue imaginable. What we can expect in all probability is platitudes about not "legislating from the bench." The Senate is asked, then, to confirm a nominee with no visible judicial philosophy who lacks the basic skills of persuasive argument and clear writing.
But that is only part of the damage Mr. Bush has done. For the past 20 years conservatives have been articulating the philosophy of originalism, the only approach that can make judicial review democratically legitimate. Originalism simply means that the judge must discern from the relevant materials -- debates at the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers, newspaper accounts of the time, debates in the state ratifying conventions, and the like -- the principles the ratifiers understood themselves to be enacting. The remainder of the task is to apply those principles to unforeseen circumstances, a task that law performs all the time. Any philosophy that does not confine judges to the original understanding inevitably makes the Constitution the plaything of willful judges.
By passing over the many clearly qualified persons, male and female, to pick a stealth candidate, George W. Bush has sent a message to aspiring young originalists that it is better not to say anything remotely controversial, a sort of "Don't ask, don't tell" admonition to would-be judges. It is a blow in particular to the Federalist Society, most of whose members endorse originalism. The society, unlike the ACLU, takes no public positions, engages in no litigation, and includes people of differing views in its programs. It performs the invaluable function of making law students, in the heavily left-leaning schools, aware that there are respectable perspectives on law other than liberal activism. Yet the society has been defamed in McCarthyite fashion by liberals; and it appears to have been important to the White House that neither the new chief justice nor Ms. Miers had much to do with the Federalists.
Finally, this nomination has split the fragile conservative coalition on social issues into those appalled by the administration's cynicism and those still anxious, for a variety of reasons, to support or at least placate the president. Anger is growing between the two groups. The supporters should rethink. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative (amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while maintaining its unconstitutionality). This George Bush, like his father, is showing himself to be indifferent, if not actively hostile, to conservative values. He appears embittered by conservative opposition to his nomination, which raises the possibility that if Ms. Miers is not confirmed, the next nominee will be even less acceptable to those asking for a restrained court. That, ironically, is the best argument for her confirmation. But it is not good enough.
It is said that at La Scala an exhausted tenor, after responding to repeated cries of "Encore," said he could not go on. A man rose in the audience to say, "You'll keep singing until you get it right." That man should be our model.
Mr. Bork is a fellow of the Hudson Institute and editor of "A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values" (Hoover, 2005). He is co-chairman of the Federalist Society.
Have a great Wednesday.
