November 5, 2008
The View from That Other Illinois State Senator.
Posted at 8:20 AM
November 4, 2008
Shehecheyanu.
Your video for today:
-- EricPosted at 8:46 AM
October 8, 2008
It's Enough To Be On Your Way.
-- EricPosted at 5:27 PM
September 29, 2008
On Second Thought, Maybe There Is Something Worse.
Posted at 5:21 PM
September 23, 2008
Hey You With The Pretty Face!
-- EricPosted at 4:43 PM
September 11, 2008
Palin
1. Astonishment.
2. Perverse joy.
3. Disbelief.
4. Anger.
5. Abject terror.
I'll be stuck at stage 5 from now until Election Day.
-- EricPosted at 9:44 PM
September 9, 2008
It's a Sad Situation.
-- EricPosted at 10:18 AM
September 8, 2008
Funnye. He Doesn't Look Jewish.
Posted at 10:27 AM
September 2, 2008
Put a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul.
-- EricPosted at 9:32 AM
August 25, 2008
A Milestone
And so this:
Posted at 9:20 AM
August 18, 2008
The Biggest Lie of the Greatest Generation
To wit: a new article I'm posting to SSRN today entitled "Hirabayashi: The Biggest Lie of the Greatest Generation." The article presents important new archival findings about Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), which upheld the constitutionality of a racial curfew imposed on Japanese Americans in World War II. The Court concluded that because of the enormous security threat facing the United States -- a threatened invasion of the West Coast by Japan in the months after the Pearl Harbor attack -- the ordinary constitutional prohibition on "discrimination based on race alone" was not controlling.
The Court emphasized the threat of an invasion because that is what the government's lawyers told the Court the West Coast was facing. "Invasion" was the constant drumbeat not only of the government's brief but also the Solicitor General's oral presentation to the Court.
It turns out that all this talk of invasion was a lie. At the time that military officials planned and implemented the racial curfew, there was no danger of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. The army and navy viewed any sort of Japanese invasion of California, Oregon, or Washington as impracticable. They were neither anticipating nor preparing for any such event. Indeed, during the key time period of early 1942, the Army was more concerned with scaling back the defense of the West Coast from land attack than with bolstering it.
What's more, the lawyers who signed the government's brief in Hirabayashi knew this. By the time they filed the brief in May of 1943, they had known for months that the military foresaw no Japanese invasion of the coast in the months after Pearl Harbor, and that the curfew was not part of a plan to resist an invasion. Yet this knowledge did not stop them from representing to the Court in Hirabayashi that the "principal danger" that military officials had "apprehended" was "a Japanese invasion" which "might have threatened the very integrity of our nation."
My article documents all of this from primary archival sources, and then goes on to speculate about what might have led Justice Department lawyers to such a large and consequential deception. Perhaps I'll blog more about that soon. In the meantime, though, you can download the article here.
-- EricPosted at 8:30 AM
July 29, 2008
"A Life Without the Distraction of Television ..."
Posted at 5:58 PM
July 28, 2008
Yes, I Am Still Here ...
-- Eric
Posted at 11:32 AM
June 26, 2008
The Heller Decision -- Saw That One Coming a Mile Away
(The opinion can be downloaded here, courtesy of SCOTUSBLOG.)
I posted in regard to Heller back on March 24th, after oral argument.
My post focused on an 1846 ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court called Nunn v. State. And I suggested, based on Nunn and other early 19th century gun cases, that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual's right to own a gun subject to reasonable regulation.
In its opinion today, the 5-member majority to the Heller opinion four times cited and twice discussed the Nunn decision. Justice Breyer's dissent likewise cited Nunn.
So, Mom and Dad (if you can read this in Heaven), law school wasn't a total waste of time.
-- shertaughPosted at 10:50 AM
May 16, 2008
And, While I'm On The Subject ...
Posted at 2:49 PM
Xanadu!
-- EricPosted at 2:25 PM
May 12, 2008
Ziggy Hair Essential.
(Found while looking for local bands in search of a bassist, which I am planning to become...)
-- EricPosted at 6:13 PM
May 6, 2008
"Exporting American Dreams"
Oh, come on. Do you expect me to believe that? Of course you didn't.
Neither did I. But we'll all have a chance to learn more about this fascinating episode in Marshall's life this summer, when Mary Dudziak's new book "Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey" hits the bookstores.
It gets a great review from Publisher's Weekly. (Go here and scroll a bit more than halfway down.)
-- EricPosted at 5:27 PM
April 29, 2008
Berkeley's New Hire! Muller Scoops Leiter!
Not only that, but I found a picture of the professor getting started on his summer writing project:
Posted at 8:48 PM
April 26, 2008
"American Inquisition" Hits Youtube!
It's a pretty good talk, I think, though I confess that my attention is mostly drawn to the facts that (a) the chair was very low, (b) I have more of a Philadelphia accent than I thought I did (you hear it especially in the "o" and "ow" sounds), (c) when I'm talking, I look a bit more like my mother than I thought I did.
-- EricPosted at 10:33 AM
April 24, 2008
Lights On, Nobody Home at the National Archives
This is highly specialized research that focuses on voluminous records catalogued in highly idiosyncratic ways. Finding aids and research guides are sparse. To do the work effectively, a researcher absolutely needs to consult with an archivist who lives and works with the records, and knows their ins and outs.
So I contacted the National Archives today to find out who has replaced the expert on Justice Department records who recently retired.
The answer: nobody. "We really have no one," I was told.
I knew that staffing at the National Archives had been cut back dramatically, but I had no idea it had reached the point where there is no specialist dealing with a major group of records like those of the Department of Justice.
Truly remarkable.
-- EricPosted at 8:30 PM
April 22, 2008
Vanishing.
Posted at 7:24 PM
April 16, 2008
Deportation, Ioannina, 1943.
I have seen many moving photos of the deportation of Jews, including photos of the deportation from Würzburg of a group that included my great-uncle Leopold and his wife Irene in April of 1942.
But I don't think I've ever seen one as wrenching as this:
And this one is pretty tough too -- especially the child on the right.
It looks as though these photos captured the moment when the men were driven away.
-- EricPosted at 2:34 PM
How Times Have Changed!
UNLIKE any other candidate, the voters know what to expect if they elect Gov. Michael S. Dukakis as their next president. Dukakis is the only Democrat in the race who has a proven track record of success, and he has also demonstrated the personal qualities of honesty, candor, and integrity that set him apart from his competitors.-- EricDukakis is the only candidate who has run a government. Sen. Paul Simon, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and Sen. Albert Gore '69 have built their careers on Capitol Hill, while Jesse Jackson has never held elected office. Dukakis is the only one who has balanced a budget, formulated a legislative program, led a cabinet, and acted as an executive. He has learned the need for compromise and agreement, which will serve him well in Washington. He has drawn his experience from the act of governing, not sitting in a comfortable Washington office building worrying about PACs and interest groups.
Dukakis' record as governor of Massachusetts illustrates a record of tangible achievement, rather than the theoretical--and at times fanciful--plans of his competitors. Fiscal prudence and compassionate, practical social programs have become the Dukakis trademark. Massachusetts has led the nation in its workfare programs, its housing and education initiatives, and in its insurance and health legislation.
And the governor is the only candidate who can make good on his promises for economic success. Under the Dukakis administration, the state became known as the "Massachusetts miracle" for its booming economic growth--employment hovers around 2 percent, three points below the national average. Dukakis has implemented policies which have fostered innovation and growth, while he has personally encouraged the partnerships between industry, government, and universities that have made Massachusetts one of the nation's high-tech, export centers. Dukakis can rightfully claim some credit for transforming a state once called "Taxachusetts"--beset with high unemployment, crime, and a declining economy--into the nation's top economic success.
UNLIKE Reagan, Dukakis' management style displays a "hands-on" philosophy. The recent shake-ups in the Dukakis campaign hierarchy, in which Dukakis fired two of his most trusted advisors for unethical practices, show that for him, the ends do not justify the means. This is a refreshing and attractive attitude after eight years of the most scandal-ridden administration in history, presided over by a man who neither knows nor cares what his subordinates do in his name.
But Dukakis is not only running as governor of Massachusetts, but as a man who can apply his knowledge and expertise to national problems--such as trade, foreign affairs, and the environment. Dukakis rightly places himself against Gephardt's call for sweeping protectionist legislation and instead calls for national attention on rehabilitating our weaker industries. Dukakis considers the best policies to be limited protection of only the most hard-hit industries--such as oil and textiles--only so long as to allow them time to catch up with existing technologies.
The governor's vision comes through in his plan for a national energy program, which would help reduce our dependence on foreign energy production. This includes tax breaks for Texas oil producers and development of alternate energy supplies. This would decrease our dependence on nuclear energy, which Dukakis has fought in his battle against the Seabrook nuclear plant.
Dukakis has moved to develop a coherent foreign policy, one that recognizes that America can no longer dictate to the rest of the world. President Dukakis would use both negotiation and a newly-revamped and efficient military to live in a multipolar, not a bipolar, world. Perhaps what we need now is a president who can bring intelligence and good sense to foreign policy, not a strict ideology as a "hawk" or a "dove." Dukakis would be an "owl."
DUKAKIS has proved himself a "man of the people." He rides to the office on the T and he buys his suits from Filene's basement. Dukakis, in fact, has better proven himself to be "one of us" in the South than has Gore, whose Washington upbringing, prep school/Harvard ties and liberal voting record are taken as evidence that he has betrayed the South.
Dukakis has an excellent reputation for honesty and straight-forwardness, qualities which have deflected much of the moral criticism that has plagued the other candidates. America's love for these virtues, which Reagan captialized on in his campaigns, shows the importance they hold for voters.
On many issues Dukakis shows fundamental disagreement with other candidates and he emerges with more of a discernable identity than others. He repudiates Gore's militaristic foreign policy, Simon's ludicrous public works-balanced budget proposals, and Jackson's unfeasible visions.
Michael Dukakis is the man among all the presidential contenders who has consistently shown his desire to address the needs of all Americans. His record has not favored the rich or the poor, but has treated all fairly with an aim toward social justice and sensitivity from the government. His record as a chief executive and his inherent integrity show that he is the man who can succeed in this effort. We support him for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Continue reading "How Times Have Changed!"
Posted at 12:04 PM
John Yoo, Karl Bendetsen, Firing, and Hiring
I say it because firing academics to punish them for their views is abhorrent. I suppose I might think about it differently if Yoo were someday convicted of some sort of criminal offense for his OLC activities (which strikes me as very unlikely). But if Boalt Hall were now to fire Yoo, it would, I think, go down as one of the more serious blows to academic freedom in our nation's history.
I guess this aligns me more with Sandy Levinson in the disagreement he is having at Balkinization with Stephen Griffin, who, as I read him, is arguing for Yoo's dismissal.
Griffin's analogy of Yoo to Karl Bendetsen subtly shifts the inquiry, however. He asks how we would respond if Bendetsen applied to teach a course on military law at our law school, and suggests that Boalt Hall will continue to have a Yoo problem so long as there are lots of people who would not hire Karl Bendetsen.
I would not hire Karl Bendetsen into a tenured or tenure-track position at my law school if he were circulating his CV after his stint in the Western Defense Command helping to engineer the incarceration of Japanese Americans.
But if he took a leave of absence from my law school to work in the Western Defense Command, and there ended up helping engineer that program, I would not fire him when he got back after the war.
(It's worth noting, in this connection, that the Leflar Law Center, the home of the University of Arkansas School of Law, is named for Robert A. Leflar, a former dean who, as a government lawyer, helped to run the Jerome and Rohwer War Relocation Centers in Arkansas.)
It strikes me as pretty easy to make the case for not hiring John C. Yoo -- and, it goes without saying, for not conferring on him the honor of a distinguished lectureship, as Canisius College very recently did.
Crossing the line to firing him would be a fateful step.
-- EricPosted at 11:12 AM
April 14, 2008
Glimpses.
I especially like the photos of the wall postings.
-- EricPosted at 2:23 PM
April 13, 2008
Some Thoughts About The Phrase "Concentration Camp"
This is not a new debate. Indeed, it began while the camps were still open. Remember that in Korematsu v. United States, decided in 1944, Justice Roberts called them "concentration camps," a phrase for which Justice Black took him to task.
At the level of ordinary usage, Justice Roberts had the better of the argument; it was Justice Black who was getting an early start on revisionism. In ordinary conversation, everyone from FDR down to the detainees in the camps called them "concentration camps" back then. Here, for example is an excerpt from an article from the NY Times in January 1943 about plans to recruit soldiers out of the camps:
But it's not enough for us today simply to point out that people in 1942 or 1943 called them "concentration camps"; we are using the words in 2008, and the phrase took on a different meaning when the horrors of the Nazi genocide became linked it. To the average American today, "concentration camp" principally means "confinement site for genocide." The camps for Japanese Americans were not confinement sites for genocide.
I guess I can see why, in the eyes of a person like "Older American Historian" (referred to in the post at Mixed Race America), the term "concentration camp" might seem like a suspect effort to depict the camps as places even worse than they were.
But that's not why scholars use the term "concentration camp." We use it chiefly for a different, and far better grounded, rhetorical reason: to defeat euphemism. The government clothed each step of the process of evicting and detaining Japanese Americans in sweet-sounding words of assistance: exile was "evacuation"; detention and scattering were "relocation." The camps were "relocation centers" in government parlance. These were all Orwell-speak. And everyone knew it; hence the ubiquitous "concentration camp" in day-to-day conversation.
We have another purpose in using the term "concentration camp" -- to remind readers and listeners (or to bring to their attention, if they'd never thought about it before) of what the American and the Nazi camps actually had in common: the forced warehousing of a racially defined enemy of the state. Justice Frank Murphy saw this common thread in 1943, when he wrote (in Hirabayashi v. United States) of the "melancholy resemblance" that the U.S. program against Japanese Americans bore to the treatment of Jews in Europe.
So there are definitely rhetorical reasons for using the term "concentration camp," but "Older American Historian" apparently mistook them for an effort to capture genocidal meaning from the Nazi Holocaust. The points are principally to deny a legacy of American euphemism, and secondarily to emphasize the racial scapegoating that characterized the confinement.
None of this means that "concentration camp" is a term to be thrown about loosely. In my view, the term has become so laden with the connotation of genocide that scholars should not use it in speaking of or writing about the Japanese American experience without briefly explaining that the term is historically accurate, necessary to defeat euphemism, and not a claim of identity with the Nazis' camps in Europe. But properly explained, "concentration camp" strikes me as an accurate -- indeed, a necessary -- term for the Japanese American "relocation centers" of World War II.
-- EricPosted at 3:38 PM
April 12, 2008
Memo to McCain: Repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax Will Increase Federal Revenues . . . Duh!
What's surprising to me is John McCain has not been on the stump demanding that Congress just eliminate the AMT. Yes, just repeal it.
Why? Because, according to McCain, tax cuts increase federal revenues. That is, tax cuts pay for themselves and then some. (Yippee!)
Supply-Side economic-types live and breath the truism that tax cuts actually increase growth in the economy and, hence, revenues to the Treasury.
So how much easier could the answer be in solving the AMT crisis (or any crisis really)? Just cut the damn AMT out of the Internal Revenue Code and . . . bingo! . . . Americans will start making more money and the federal budget will be balanced.
Isn't that right? Isn't that the way tax cuts have worked in America since McCain became one of those Reagan foot soldiers back in 1981?
So why isn't the GOP demanding the repeal of the AMT on the ground that the damned tax-and-spend Democrat[ ] Party is once again in the way of progress?
Here's a thought . . . maybe the GOP isn't demanding the AMT's repeal on Supply-Side grounds because the AMT is now a *middle-class* tax problem. It's not like the high-enders will reap the big rewards from its repeal. And if the high-enders aren't going to get oodles more money in their stockings at Christmas, then why bother?
My point? That the GOP -- and John McCain -- is full of shit on taxes and tax cuts.
Someone should call him on it . . . but I won't be holding my breath.
-- shertaughPosted at 11:57 AM
April 10, 2008
Click Through To Her Notes If You Want To Read About The Mute Parrot.
Posted at 12:35 PM
April 9, 2008
Pandora!
Utterly brilliant. Fabulous. I lack the words to describe what a great idea this thing is.
You tell it which artists you like. It creates a "radio station" for you that features music that's similar to what you like.
I gave it just a few hints, and it has just played for me, in succession, "Shot With His Own Gun" by Elvis Costello, "If Not for You" by Bob Dylan, and "Your Mother Should Know" by the Beatles. And now it's playing Nick Lowe's version of "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock 'n Roll)". And it is often throwing in bands I don't know well, like Weezer and Nada Surf.
And you can create multiple stations -- so I have a separate roots reggae and ska station that I can listen to when I'm in the mood for that.
Damn! This is good stuff! Try it.
-- EricPosted at 12:24 PM
