Kewl! Thanks to the Judds and Tracey Wilson I now have a button (Go here, and scroll down). They offered to put one together for me awhile back -- I started to play with one but never got it done. Looking at my schedule, I could see I wasn't going to get it done, so I finally surrendered my pride and accepted their offer -- why did I wait so long?

Learn from the Idiot -- never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Go USA! Beat Poland!

Update 7:34 EST: Argh! Poland up 1-zip, uh, nil. Emmanuel OLISADEBE(ski, I'm sure).


2nd Goal. . . and just 5 minutes into the game... At least Pawel KRYSZALOWICZ is a Pole...

It's over -- a third goal in the 66th minute. So how does all that goal differential stuff work -- Let's see, I guess South Korea has to win 15-0?? And I guess the US must score at least once, right? Update. Actually, on the webcast, they just noted that Korea finally scored and that the US would continue if Korea won 1-0.

Finally. A US goal -- but just, what, 7 minutes left. Korea's still ahead 1-0.

Game is Over, and the USA loses, but since Korea has won, the US goes on.

Comments. After all my efforts, I think I have finally activated comments. I know I like to use this feature on others blogs, we'll see if it works here.

Apology. After talking with my Dad last weekend, I see I owe Chris Burgwald a public apology. Although we can, and do, disagree, I must acknowledge that my approach toward that disagreement crossed off the path that Augustine mentions ("So that we may keep to the path, in love, as we fare on toward Him, 'whose face is ever to be sought.'"). I'm sorry Chris and ask your forgiveness.

As my father-in-law frequently says "We can disagree without being disagreeable."

Neil Young. New book out on Neil Young, who is probably my all-time favorite.

Bethlehem Chapel. Frontline is running a show on the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem tonight.

"God is great. God is good. Thank you, God, for my food." That simple prayer may be said aloud by a 5 year old kindergarten student again in New York. Once again we see the triumph of the citizen over the petty official.

Catching Up. I'll spend the next few days catching up, after a quick trip to visit my parents in North Carolina and then a visit to Hampton for work. I received a lot of messages and will get to those as well.

Not a vehicle. From Rich Hailey, I see that a Federal Judge has ruled that an airplane was not a mass transportation vehicle as defined by section 801 of the USA Patriot Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272, 374-76 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1993) (“section 1993"). Hailey lodges his complaint against the defense attorneys in the case, but when I heard this story on the radio, my gripe was against the stoopid judge.

So, when I checked the story out, I was pretty surprised to find out the judge in the case was William G. Young, a very respected trial court judge, appointed to the bench by President Reagan. Reading Judge Young's decision, which you can read here (in .pdf), I can see his point.

The relevant text of the US Code, Title 18, §1993, is as follows:

Sec. 1993. Terrorist attacks and other acts of violence against mass transportation systems
``(a) General Prohibitions.--Whoever willfully--
``(1) wrecks, derails, sets fire to, or disables a mass transportation vehicle or ferry;
``(2) places or causes to be placed any biological agent or toxin for use as a weapon, destructive substance, or destructive
device in, upon, or near a mass transportation vehicle or ferry, . . .

Etc.

The statute later contains a series of definitions, including one for "mass transportation," however, not one for "mass transportation vehicle" or "vehicle" itself. “Mass transportation” is defined by a crossreference to section 5302(a)(7) of Title 49 of the United States Code (“section 5302"), “except that the term shall include schoolbus, charter, and sightseeing transportation.” 18 U.S.C. § 1993(c)(5). Section 5302 defines “mass transportation” as “transportation by a conveyance that provides regular and continuing general or special transportation to the public.” 49 U.S.C. § 5302(a)(7). Based on this, if Congress had just left it at "mass transportation," I'd say that Judge Young was wrong to toss this count.

However, Congress used the phrase "mass transportation vehicle" without including a definition or cross reference to a definition. So it is a legitimate issue as to whether "mass transportation vehicle" includes aircraft. I would agree with the government that it does, if there were no definition of "vehicle." In fact, so does Judge Young: "The Court holds that an aircraft of the type involved here engages in 'mass transportation' as that phrase is defined in section 5302." (slip opinion at 10. See also, at 12.) Therefore, if the U.S. Code doesn't define "vehicle," the count stands.

As you can imagine, the code does define "vehicle" very precisely: "The word ''vehicle'' includes every description of carriage or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on land." Title 1, Section 4 (my emphasis). Moreover, the Supreme Court has previously slapped down a case that sought to stretch the meaning of "vehicle" to include aircraft, McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25 (1931), as Judge Young notes at 13-15.


As those of you who know me can guess, I look to Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons for guidance:

More (very still) What is the oath?
Roper (Puzzled) It's about the marriage, sir.
More But what is the wording?
Roper We don't need to know the (contemptuously) wording -- we know what it will mean!
More It will mean what the words say! An oath is made of words! It may be possible to take it. Or avoid it.

This isn't just a neat trick on the part of the defense attorneys -- if anything, this is yet another failure of Congress to adequately articulate what it want prohibited, restricted, or punished. If the Congress really intended to include airplanes in this statute, it should amend the law immediately.

More. See this story concerning the shoebomber. "Let's not tell the feds about this guy, we don't want anymore delays."

Hmmm. On the other hand, Title 1, Section 1 defines ''insane'' and ''insane person'' and ''lunatic'' to "include every idiot. . . "

Supremes. Six cases today -- I've only skimmed through them. The one that caught my eye was a case involving the EEOC and was unanimous in part and split 5-4 in part. What caught my eye was the 5-4 majority, with Thomas writing being joined by the four liberals. Time to surf over to How Appealing to get the real scoop.

Update. Family things kept me tied up over the weekend and now I'm in the middle of doing a training (and away from a PC). I should be back in the groove by Wednesday or Thursday.

This town's only big enough for one of us. The Poppa Ooo Mow Mow of the bloggesters today writes that King County Superior Court Judge James A. Doerty "appears to be a blithering idiot." I beg your pardon, Professor.

We look nothing alike. Here's his picture [scroll down], and mine, well I can't get mine up right now [no jokes], but I look something like this guy, or this guy.

Moreover, I think blithering idiots all over the globe will rise up in umbridge or outrage or some other complicated word, if you persist thusly.

It is clear that Judge Doerty has just "stopped watching wrestling because it's too complicated" so he needs some other amusement.

I think you owe all the blithering idiots an apology.

Gear. I thought I'd let you know that I, too, have a cafe press store. Although I didn't set it up to do any "Blithering Idiot" merchandise. We set this up to put together stuff for a family reunion for my father-in-law that we're doing this summer. What makes it kind of fun is that I was able to adapt two watercolors painted by the daughter of a civil war veteran who lived into the 1970's and was the matriarch of the family.

LPs. Speaking of old records, now that I have a CD burner, I hooked up my turntable and receiver to my computer and have slowly been putting my old LPs and 45s onto CD. Last night my oldest daughter came asking about this ancient technology. At first much of what she was asking was just in jest, but she actually was pretty interested in how it all worked. She was thrilled to actually be able to see and manipulate the disc. It is a lot different from a CD/DVD/VHS/CD-ROM/Floppy, -- even cassette etc. where you put the thing inside some sort of box and let it work.

It was fun for me to see her experience this old technology and thereby experience it again.

MARS NEEDS WOMEN The note and link from the professor reminds me of this old song by Tonio K:

well we argue all day
then we argue all night
we stand up sit down fight fight fight
i don't know about you
I'm just talkin' for me
but i don't see no future in this thing

i hear mars needs women
maybe you should apply
don't worry 'bout me baby
have a good time
i hear mars needs women
i don't know if it's true
but that's all right for you

you don't care about true
you don't care about false
you just want everyone to agree with you that's all
you can't live in the city
you can't live on the farm
you can't live nowhere on this planet with that kind of charm

I hear mars needs women...

yeah we argue all day
then we argue all night
we stand up sit down fight fight fight
so I'll take the attic
or the wilderness
you take the next flight out
they're waiting for you up there

I hear mars needs women...

(outro ramblings)
take your cool clothes....
Be sure to drop me a line from the Van Allen belt...
Is that intergalactic enough? Van Allen belt... hahahaha

© 1981 Worthless Music (ASCAP)

The Spong is Dead, Long Live the Spong. The Episcopal Church in the US, of which I am a member, has always had it's flaky bishops and clerics. Recently, we had a bishop by the name of John Shelby Spong who denied the divinity of Jesus, not to mention the resurrection. Such claims go beyond mere flakieness and cross over into heresey.

Thankfully, Mr. Spong has retired from his position and has gone off on his mission to create a new religion.

Regrettably, however, it appears that a newly ordained Bishop has picked up where Spong left off. John Bryson Chane (why do the heretics get such preppy names?), in his Easter sermon states:

, the Easter story…the event of the resurrection, which defines the core of our Christian theology, is, at best, conjectural, based upon what we are able to read from the Gospel accounts and the Book of Acts. Paul, the patron saint of this cathedral, wrote I Corinthians almost thirty years after the event of the resurrection. In fact, the concept of Jesus' physical, bodily resurrection, was not even part of the early Christian experience for the first forty years of the Jewish/Christian Community's life! It was not until the Gospel of Matthew, written in 85 of the Common Era, that an account of the bodily resurrection of Jesus was even mentioned!

Balderdash! As Paul himself writes: "...if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." I Cor. 15:14.

In fact, what Paul writes in this 15th chapter indicates that this testimony what he initially received:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas [Peter], then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. [1 Cor. 15: 3-8, NKJV (my emphasis)]

Moreover, there is a considerable body of scholarship that believes the initial statement made by Paul ("that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures") was a primal creedal statement that circulated among the believers prior to, or contemporaneous with, Paul's conversion.

Even if you assume that this statement originated about 52 AD/CE, it still puts it in the lifetime of those witnesses who could contradict the story. And this isn't a matter of what someone wore on their first date, as Chane, started off his Easter sermon. This is a matter of life and death. When I saw my grandmother at the funeral home, I knew she was dead. If she came and talked to me the next week, several days after we had entombed her, I would know it. It's not a matter of getting details wrong or embellishing a story.

But maybe Chane is right. Maybe Paul and the other contemporary witnesses were wrong and just needed to step back nearly 2,000 years and look at if from the perspective of the new bishop of Washington, DC. Yeah, then we'd know that Jesus is dead and the preaching of a bishop who believes these things is, as Paul wrote, "useless."

Not Just Women. Both Peggy Noonan and Anita Hill have written recently about women in the headlines exposing problems within their agencies. Prof. Hill, in today's NY Times, writes:

The magnitude of Ms. Rowley's role in exposing the mishandling of vital intelligence has no direct parallel. However, it can be likened in the private sector to the central role that Sherron Watkins played in exposing the extent of corporate culpability in the Enron scandal.

Last week Peggy Noonan wrote:

Colleen Rowley . . . has joined the ranks of those women--these days, as others have noted, they are always women--who blow the whistle on sick and shameful actions within powerful organizations.

It should be noted, first, that it's not just women who are bringing these things out. Recall, for example, at the end of the Clinton years, Notra Trulock coming forward. [Actually, one of the scandals of the Clinton administration was the way it treated women as window dressing or cover to protect the President from his corruption and wrong-doing. Think back, for example, how he sent Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala out to the end of his driveway to confront reporters back on January 23, 1998; one of just two cabinet meetings he held that year. When Clinton wasn't using women as a shield, he was forcing them to their knees or attacking them for speaking the truth, as he did with Jean Lewis.] Two persons do not a trend make. What does make a trend is what the press chooses to report and why.

A place where I work(ed) [I want to leave it very ambiguous] had some Republicans in charge during the Reagan presidency who did some naughty things which resulted in headlines and Congressional hearings. The Clinton people came in and did the exact same things -- were slammed by the Inspector General for it -- but there were no hearings and no headlines. For me, it seemed like the reason behind this was purely a matter of politics -- the press covering up for its friends. [In fact, to a certain extent, it was worse than that. What the Democrats did was more like televangelist Jimmy Swaggert who did something he campaigned against. With the Republicans, at least it was what the Democrats warned against. In my desire to be ambigous, I'm afraid I'm being confusing -- sorry for that.]

When I read the Rowley memo, I felt shivers and my hair stood on end. I just kept thinking, I could've written this:

To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of . . . management has occurred and is occurring. The term "cover up" would be too strong a characterization which is why I am attempting to carefully (and perhaps over laboriously) choose my words here.

That is exactly what I could write -- except no one dies when we make mistakes.

Where I work is a similar story. It's an insignificant government agency -- so insignificant we are still being run by the Clinton people and there is no sign of a replacement. Just last week they fired three pretty low-level employees, for no apparent reason. One was a lady who had worked here for 12 years -- another had been here about 8 years. The speculation is that the firings were done because the political appointees want to free up some funds to make more grants to their friends. Is it true? Who knows, and even if so, no law has been violated. Each of these employees was considered to be 'at-will' so there does not need to be cause for firing. None was given. And the appointees clearly have the authority to take the policy actions they are taking. We have been instructed to ignore something Congress has directed -- in this case it's a sin of omission, not commission. By ignoring it, we're not violating any law -- it's more a case of leaving an arrow in the quiver -- or actually leaving it locked in a safe.

Yeah, I know, I'm rambling now -- I admit that I'm frustrated. Anyway, lunch is over, and I'm dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" so I'd better get back to work.

I admire whistle-blowers -- it is a very difficult thing to do.

More. Orrin Judd has some thoughts about whistleblowers in his review of Serpico.

School Choice. Eugene Volokh very graciously gives his prediction in the Zelman case. I do hope he's right on the prevailing party.

We disagree, slightly, on the ordering of the Justices. I see his point regarding Ginsburg and confess that my prediction is based more on an unfounded hope. He looks at her dissent in Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette. This was the case where Ohio law had set aside the Capitol Square as a public forum, the KKK filed an application to place an unattended cross in the Square during the Christmas season. In this case, the Court (Scalia writing the main opinion) Souter and O'Connor concurred, Stevens and Ginsburg dissented.

My hope is that Ginsburg will not see this primarily an Establishment Clause case, but rather one of choice in using public (or government) benefits. This was why I mentioned the Witters case awhile back. In that one, Mr. Witters, a blind man, wanted to use state funds awarded to the blind to pursue education to go to seminary. There, the state of Washington rejected his request saying this was too close to crossing the line of establishment of religion. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this concern, with Justice Marshall writing for the Court. I confess that my hope on Zelman is that it will follow the Witters precedent and find that this is not a grant of government funds or benefits to religion, but a grant to parents, who may choose it for religious or non-religious schools.

A week or two ago, when I started harping on this, I quoted Eugene's law review article: “government doesn’t necessarily endorse private choices that people make with government funds, any more than it endorses cabbage by letting people use food stamps to buy the food of their choice, which may include cabbage.” [Equal Treatment Is Not Establishment in 13 Notre Dame J. L. Ethics & Pub. Policy 341, 357-358 (1999).] To extend his analogy slightly, it doesn't necessarily endorse Judiasm if the person uses food stamps to buy kosher products.

Now, having just written that last line, I don't want to seem like I'm trivializing Judaism and reducing it to Hebrew National Wieners. That is not my intent.

Outrageous. So this is the latest atrocity in the Middle East? A messed-up bed? Check out Arafat's look of outrage.

Which Church? Terry Mattingly raises a good number of questions about the recent seige at the Church of the Nativity, that, although, unanswered, actually give more clarity to what happened than does most of the news reports about the seige.