Supremes Strike Down McCain-Feingold. Reading the Supreme Court's latest free speech decision, the Straton case, I was struck by how strong and broad the language of the opinion is. The second sentence lays it out: "Through this facial challenge, we consider the door-to-door canvassing regulation not only as it applies to religious proselytizing, but also to anonymous political speech and the distribution of handbills." The Village of Straton adopted an ordinanace requiring registration prior to engaging in door-to-door speech. Those who registered were given a permit -- no fee was charged and the local government made no determination as to whether the speech was approved. In other words, it was basically a notice requirement with a permit being issued after notice.

The Court, using pretty sweeping language struck down this ordinance:

It is offensive–not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society–that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so. Even if the issuance of permits by the mayor’s office is a ministerial task that is performed promptly and at no cost to the applicant, a law requiring a permit to engage in such speech constitutes a dramatic departure from our national heritage and constitutional tradition.

The more I read this, the more I think that the Court is sending our politicians, most noteably John McCain and Russell Feingold a strong message that their so-called campaign finance reform measures are patently unconstitutional.

After the passage quoted above, the Court goes on to mention three broad areas that are unconstitutional, on their face: (1) Any restriction on anonymity ("First, . . . there are a significant number of persons who support causes anonymously.") (2) Obtaining a permit prior to engaging in speech ("There are no doubt other patriotic citizens, who have such firm convictions about their constitutional right to engage in uninhibited debate in the context of door-to-door advocacy, that they would prefer silence to speech licensed by a petty official."), and (3) Restrictions that impede spontaneous speech ("Third, there is a significant amount of spontaneous speech that is effectively banned by the ordinance.")

McCain-Feingold, with its restrictions and bans on political speech in the form of a 30 or 60 blackout period in advance of an election, its burdensome disclosure requirements, and its registration and permit requirements, is clearly unconstitutional and will be quickly quashed by the Court.

Update [Via Instapundit] The WaPo's lead editorial today speaks in favor of the Court's decision noting:

Yet the court rightly rejected even this minimal regulation. Requiring people to register in order to speak, as Justice Stevens points out, renders certain types of spontaneous speech illegal. . . More fundamentally, such a licensing scheme insinuates the government -- however minimally -- into the exchange of ideas between individuals. The government needs a compelling reason to burden such communications, and the reasons Stratton offers -- protecting privacy and preventing con artists from preying on residents -- don't remotely justify the intrusion. It isn't the place of government to protect people from being irritated by the religious or political convictions of those among whom they live.

Yeah! The Post is right on this -- so why doesn't it agree when it comes to McC-F? Simple, it likes the shift of power from the people to the "professional journalists."

Strange World. Missouri Episcopal bishop George Wayne Smith attacks the head of the Southern Baptist Convention and defends the Islamic faith. According to the news article, Bp. Smith was provoked to call a news conference which was held "before the altar in Christ Church Cathedral" because Rev. Jerry Vines, the former president of the SBC, told a conference of pastors that "Islam is not just as good as Christianity." Okay -- not sure what Vines meant by that, but it seems to me that if you are a minister in a Christian church of any kind, you are because you implicitly believe that your church is better than another. For example, the article notes that Bishop "Smith, who was baptized in a Southern Baptist congregation as an adolescent [] later converted to the Episcopal Church while a student at Baylor University, a Baptist college in Waco, Texas." So, in the Bishop's case, he believed that the Baptist denomination just wasn't as good as the Episcopal denomination. That's not a big deal, is it?

The article goes on to note that Vines "went on to call Mohammed 'a demon-possessed pedophile' in reference to the fact that the prophet's 12th wife was nine years old when they were betrothed." To which Bp. Smith responded: "To equate Mohammed's marriage with pedophilia is horrific." The article further notes Smith, repeating earlier statements from the news conference "that the marriage was not consummated until the girl was of age. He added that betrothals of children were common in Mohammed's day as a way to unite families. He explained that such customs are not practiced by Muslims today."

I'm concerned, first of all, that the Bishop is using the altar of a cathedral as a place to hold a news conference. Second, I'm troubled that the Bishop doesn't have a problem with a guy having 12 wives. Vine's statement seems to be intemperate, yes, but I'm not sure it warranted Bishop Smith's counter-attack.

Update In the comments Brian Jones writes "You ascribe a type of gamesmanship to church choices that I believe is specious." I would normally address a response to a comment in the comments, except that he is quite right. Please read his full comment. I knew that there was something I didn't like about this when I wrote it. My analogy is wrong; comparing choices among Christian denominations with the differences between Islam and Christianity is specious. If you choose to follow Christ, you reject all other religions, but you are free to follow Him within any of the denominations or not. If you follow Mohammed, you reject the divinity of Christ.

Toxic Sludge Good. The Washington Times today has a memo from the EPA which states that the dumping of toxic sludge by the Army Corps of Engineers is good for the fish in the area. The EPA writes the sludge "actually protects the fish in that they are not inclined to bite (and get eaten by humans) but they go ahead with their upstream movement and egg laying."

Earthquake in Indy? This afternoon -- I wonder how close this is the New Madrid?

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake in SOUTHERN INDIANA has occurred at: 38.07N 87.68W Depth 5km Tue Jun 18 17:37:13 2002 UTC. This is just 10 miles from Evansville.

Update Here is a link.

Last Thought. When I was a young boy, and my father was stationed in Taiwan, I had an opportunity to see Madame Chiang Kai-shek (or Soong Mei-ling) she was very well respected from at least the 1940's through the 1970's. In 1943, she addressed the United States Congress. It's my understanding that she's still alive.

Michigan School Choice is covered in this article.

Idle Thought 4. As Italy learned today, the prevent defense never works. The best defense is offense.

Idle Thought 3. Was the first true distortion of time and space the eternal 3 seconds that took place in Munich in 1972? It seemed to go forward, then back, then forward, then back, and finally forward again. Has Stephen Hawking written about this?

Idle Thought 2. Why are so many of the great American writers of the last century from the South? Why are so many of the great folk singer/poets from Canada? (or in Bob Dylan's case, near Canada.)

Idle Thought 1. Is there any significance to the Volokh Conspiracy's Juan Non-Volokh e-mail acronym being jnov? For human beings (i.e. non-lawyers) a JNOV means "judgment not withstanding the verdict" a situation where the Judge basically overrules the judgment of the jury.

Movies. A few notes on some recent movies. First, The Rookie, which the family took in on Father's Day, may be the best baseball movie of all time. [ESPN list]

Second, read Charlie Murtaugh's thoughts on Tora, Tora, Tora (which too many have panned, IMHO), Pearl Harbor, 9.11 and intelligence failures. I wouldn't go so far as to equate the FDR-debunkers with Cynthia McKinney (one, amateur historian Daryl Borgquist, I worked with for 2 or 3 years, is a really great guy). The incident that always got me was the Opana radar report.

Third, my daughter and I watched Cromwell on Friday night -- it was the first time I saw it since it came out in 1970 or 1971. We both enjoyed making Star Wars references to Alec Guiness ("use the force") who played King Charles I. The movie is a good one, although there are a number of historical flaws both glaring and small. Nonetheless, it pretty accurately portrays the conflict between a democracy and a monarchy -- how do you overthrow a monarch without being consumed by the same chaos yourself. With Guiness in the movie, I kept thinking that George Lucas should've watched this movie before doing Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. He tries to set up a similar contest but fails miserably, because he doesn't know what's wrong with the empire and what's right with the Senate. For more extensive criticism along these lines, see Jonathan Last's essay in the Weekly Standard.

Fourth, casting Matt Damon as the lead in the Bourne Identity doesn't seem right.

Fifth, I'm really looking forward to the Minority Report -- I think it will actually surpass the Philip K. Dick short story which is very imaginative, but too truncated. BTW, I just re-read Dick's story and came away amused at his comparing the three pre-cogs to computers where one might be in error, and if two are in conflict, you don't know which is right, but if two of the three computers agree, you can rely on the majority report. Of course, if the three computers are running the same programs on the same data, they won't disagree. See also, GIGO. Plus it was amusing to see our future people lighting up pipes and cigarettes like they would in the 1950's.

Update: "Spielberg's sharpest, brawniest, most bustling entertainment since Raiders of the Lost Ark"

— RICHARD CORLISS, Time Magazine

Ordered Liberty. Supreme Court Justice-in-waiting (my not-so-humble opinion) Eugene Volokh has a series of interesting discussions about the legality and morality of forced confessions running over the past week. In the latest, he asks

But if the dirty bomb / nuclear bomb / smallpox vial is hidden in Los Angeles, is it really the case that the Constitution prohibits the use of truth serum on a suspect? Let's say that we conclude that outright physical torture is just not allowed, no ifs, ands, or buts -- perhaps that's right. Are we really prepared to say the same even as to truth serum?

I say no (and, it should be noted, that Eugene's hypothetical imagines our truth serum is effective and reliable). For this, I would draw on Justice Robert Jackson's dissent in Terminiello v. City of Chicago (all the way at the end/bottom):

This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

See also, Justice Arthur Goldberg in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez (1963) ("...while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact.")

In short, by continuing the exclusion of evidence obtained by coercion, we preserve the liberty interest necessary for liberty, while at the same time providing for a limited means of also maintaining a civil society. In short, ordered liberty.

That's a wrap. Six cases out today -- Zelman was not one of them (this does not bode well). I'll have a rundown on the other three shortly. Or read them here.

Barnes v. Gordon. Punitive damages may not be awarded in private actions brought pursuant to the ADA. Unanimous decision. Majority opinion by Scalia and an opinion joining in the judgment (but not the majority opinion) by Stevens joined by Ginsburg and Breyer.

Horn v. Banks a per curiam clarification with respect to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Since this is a 3rd Circuit case, look for Howard Bashman to be all over this.

Carrey v. Saffold This is another case dealing with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which provides a one year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas corpus petition, but it tolls the limitations period while a “properly filed application” for collateral review is “pending” in the state courts. Breyer, writing for a 5-member majority holds that "pending" means one thing, while Kennedy, writing for the 4 dissenters, sees it meaning something else. The three more centrist judges split 2-1 on this with Souter, the liberal-leaning "centrist" and O'Connor going with the majority (Kennedy writing the dissent).

Two More cases: The Jehovah's Witness case -- town regulations on door-to-door soliciting were struck down (no surprise) and the police don't have to give public transportation users notice of their rights (big surprise -- NOT -- post-9.11).

More. The first case, above, was Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. etc. v. Stratton, Ohio, et al. 00-1737 and was appealed from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (240 F.3d 553). This was written by Stevens 8-1, Rehnquist dissenting.

The second, U.S. v. Drayton, Christopher & Brown, Clifton. 01-0631 was appealed from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal s (231 F.3d 787) . Basically, if you get on a Greyhound bus in the Florida heat, wearing bulky jackets and baggy pants, you're going to be searched. Kennedy writing for a 6-3 majority.

Supremes. First case out -- the Fior d’Italia loses, the IRS wins. This overturns what I thought was a very persuasive opinion from Judge Alex Kozinski holding that the IRS does not have the authority to guess at what tip income may be and then assess a tax on the restaurant. Details later...

Lower Court Decision: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (242 F.3d 844) .

More Interesting -- a 6-3 decision with Scalia, Thomas and Souter in dissent. Breyer writing for the majority

Today. Today should be the day the Supreme Court announces its decision in the Zelman (school voucher) case. There's only one other pending case (about 19 pending cases altogether) that has been on the docket longer, so this is just an educated guess. Check back here after 10:20 or so for updates.

Chief Justice Kennedy? The WaPo looks at whether Anthony Kennedy is positioning himself to be nominated as the next CJ. The internet version of the story should be reviewed if for no other reason than to get a look at the picture of Clarence Thomas in the background, rolling his eyes.

Deep Throat? Who was "Deep Throat"? Howard Kurtz digests John Dean's picks. However, after his books on John Belushi and William Casey, I'm convinced that there was no Deep Throat -- that was just a cover story invented by Woodward so he could make up his own facts. Do you really think Janet Cooke was unique?

2-0. USA beats Mexico in World Cup action.

Cover Watch. Newsweek on the brain beats Tom Cruise on Time's cover -- although, had Time gone with Pre-crime, maybe tying it in with pre-empting the terrorists, it would've won.