George W. Bush, Loyal Foot Soldier in the War on Christmas

A little late for Bill O'Reilly, but here it is -- evidence that President Bush is a closet liberal, intent on oppressing Christians by denying the role of Christ in Christmas. Herewith, the evidence:

You say FEE-sah, I say FI-sah

Slate has a disturbing article about the checkered history of NSA spying on U.S. citizens. [link]

One thing that sticks out from the items in the article is that in May 2002, the FISA court, after two decades of granting 10,000 secret warrants, and never denying a single one, took the radical step of actually denying one. Right around this time -- the New York Times report isn't clear exactly when -- the President broke the law by authorizing NSA to go around the FISA court. In other words, when the law got inconvenient, Bush deemed it within his "inherent powers" simply to ignore the law (and the Constitution, for that matter). This isn't an isolated incident -- as the Slate article points out, the President authorized similar violations of other inconvenient laws, including the Geneva Convention, the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. I can't say that it's evidence of a trend, but the data points are nevertheless interesting.

Surviving the Strike

Well, day 1 of the NYC Transit Strike is history, and I have to say, it wasn't so bad. In fact, I'm embarrassed to say, getting where I needed to go was downright easy.

Sam and I walked two blocks from our house to the garage where we keep our car. From there, it was an easy seven-minute drive, with no traffic to speak of, to a parking lot down the street from Sam's school. Expecting the worst, we had left an hour early; lo and behold, we arrived at school almost exactly an hour early, which just meant I got to spend an extra hour playing with Sam. What a hardship. (And what's more, coming home was a breeze as well -- in fact, it was so good, I got a parking space right in front of the house, so tomorrow should be even easier!)

It'd be expensive to keep doing this all the time, and so for that reason (among others), I hope the strike ends soon, but man-oh-man, a guy could get used to a life like this...

On coincidences

Abraham Lincoln's speech in Edwardsville, Illinois, quoted in my last post, reads as an almost pitch-perfect counterpoint to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, TIA, FISA, "if you're not with us you're against us" and all of the other offenses against liberty that our President justifies by reference to September 11, 2001. Obviously, the quote turns out to be surprisingly relevant to today's headlines, not least because of Lincoln's later (controversial) decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. That's why I posted it.

But even as I was typing it in, I was struck by the truly random circumstance that brought it to my attention -- I was browsing in Barnes and Noble for a securities law textbook to assign to my graduate students this spring, and saw the "The Law Professor's Handbook", by Madeline Schachter, which is a book I had not heard of before and which was misfiled among the textbooks, else I would not have come across it. As you might guess from the title, the book is about how to teach law classes more effectively, which happened to catch my eye only because I just completed my first semester teaching a new course on Securities Law and Business Crime, and have for a few weeks been doing a sort of mental self-assessment of the semester (preparing to repeat the course in the Spring).

Anyway, the speech is quoted, rather incongruously, in a section about why people decide to teach, despite the fact that the quote has little, if anything to do with teaching.

But here's the weird part, particularly since it so neatly counters the "9/11 changed everything" argument of the Bush administration: As I was typing it into the blog, I happened to notice that that speech was delivered on September 11, 1858.

Cue theme music from The Twilight Zone...

Inherent Authority

...For more on the President's invocation of "inherent authority" to flagrantly violate the Constitution and his oath of office, let's go to our Illinois correspondent, Abe Lincoln. Abe?

"Thanks, Daniel. What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning embattlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises. Reporting from Edwardsville, Illinois, I'm Abraham Lincoln."