From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:19 P.M. EST

Whistleblowing Past the Graveyard
ABC's "Nightline" last night featured one Russell Tice, a fired National Security Agency employee who has now confessed that he was among the sources for a New York Times story last month revealing that the NSA has eavesdropped on al Qaeda terrorists' phone conversations. This is from ABCNews.com's companion piece:

Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.

"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.

Apparently the mentality of Tice and many Democrats is that we don't need to get these guys and we're not going to do whatever it takes to get them.

Sing Me a Swing Song
A pair of Associated Press stories provide good examples of laziness and bias in reporting on the Supreme Court. A roundup by David Espo of yesterday's confirmation hearing for Justice-designate Sam Alito describes the Jersey jurist as "Bush's pick to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the swing seat on the court." We've scoured the Constitution, and we can't find any reference to the designation of one of the court's seats as a "swing seat." Perhaps if any lawyers read this column, one of them can point us to a statute establishing such a designation.

Then there's a piece by Jesse Holland, which has this to say about an abortion case:

The judge defended his dissent in the 1991 case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood, in which the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

The Supreme Court also rejected the spousal notification, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist quoted from Alito's opinion in his own dissent. The high court, on a 5-4 vote, upheld a woman's right to the procedure but was divided on other elements of the case.

In November we explained why Alito was right. Anyway, notice how Holland characterizes the court as "divided on the other elements of the case," in contrast with the 5-4 vote to strike down spousal notification.

The "other elements" of the Supreme Court's Casey ruling upheld Pennsylvania's regulations requiring parental consent, informed consent, a 24-hour waiting period, and the filing of a confidential report on each abortion. The votes on these parts of the case were 7-2, except for the reporting requirement, which the court upheld 8-1.

We wonder if the AP would consider a unanimous decision "divided" if the outcome were unfavorable to the "liberal" side.

Gas Glut
Much of the coverage of the first day of Alito's questioning has centered on the ponderousness of the Judiciary Committee senators. "For nearly eight hours, Judge Alito was placid, monochromatic and, it seemed, mostly untouchable," the New York Times reports: "For the most part, his handling of questions from Democrats had the effect of leaving his questioner shuffling through papers in search of the next question."

Actually, though, the senators didn't seem to have any trouble finding the next "question." Another Times piece notes:

The Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. were supposed to be about the judge, but on Tuesday it sometimes seemed as though somebody forgot to tell the senators on the Judiciary Committee.

The lure of 50 cameras and the captive audience in the Senate Hart Office Building appeared too much of a temptation for some of Capitol Hill's windiest lions, who began by promising not to run a marathon session of questions, then did so anyway.

Blogger Herman Jacobs ran the numbers: he counted the number of letters in the words uttered by each of the first seven senators and divided it by the total number of words in his exchange with Alito. Results: the biggest gasbags are Joe Biden (78.13%) and Ted Kennedy* (68.84%). Only one of the seven, Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, actually let Alito outtalk him, albeit just barely. The Kyl ratio was 49.87%.

* Mary Jo Kopechne's total was 0%.

Guilt by Association
The Democrats, eager to smear Judge Alito, have alighted on his membership in a group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. This afternoon Ted Kennedy was interrogating Alito about his reading habits, demanding to know if Alito had read an article expressing some noxious views that appeared in a CAP magazine more than two decades ago. It's rather reminiscent of the tactics Sen. Kennedy's elder brother Robert's former employer, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, employed some half a century ago--except that CAP, unlike the Communist Party, is not an enemy of America.

Anyway, the Daily Princetonian reports on a rather amusing flip-flop by Joe Biden:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who grilled Samuel Alito '72 about his CAP membership, also said that he "wasn't a big Princeton fan."

"I didn't even like Princeton," he said, to laughter from the gallery. "I mean, I really didn't like Princeton. I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed like you concluded it had," referring to Alito's earlier statement that Princeton had changed its traditional ways before he enrolled.

But Biden had nothing but praise for the University in a 2004 speech at the Wilson School.

"It's an honor to be here," he told the audience. "It would have been an even greater honor to have come here."

Maybe the Senate Ethics Committee should subpoena the Wilson School for any record of Biden's speech so as to determine whether he has behaved improperly.

Say It, Don't Spray It!
"Democrats Grill Supreme Court Nominee Alito: Spat over ruling on records of controversial Princeton group"--headline and subheadline, CNN.com, Jan. 11

Metaphor Alert
From a Washington Post article by Marcia Davis:

It was beginning to look as if the Democrats had shown up to a knife fight without a knife yesterday.

There were some deft jabs, for sure, and Democrats did visit the territories they had promised--from abortion rights to executive power to issues of discrimination and the appellate judge's ethics. But the Dems didn't rampage, didn't storm the barricades as all their tough talk had promised. . . .

That's hard to take when Americans have been promised a smackdown. This is a reality TV nation, a WWF kinda country, where we like to see a fight even when we know it isn't real, even when we know the stakes might just be a bag of Cheetos.

So when it's the Supreme Court, well, that's when the sparks are supposed to fly.

Doebbler Nothing
Yesterday we noted that among the minuscule number of law professors signing a letter opposing Judge Alito is Southern Methodist University's Jane Dolkart, who was convicted last year of deliberately running down a bicyclist with her car. Blogress Gail Heriot points out another member of the legal "mainstream": Curtis Doebbler of an-Najah University, in the Palestinian Arab town of Nablus, whose name appears right above Dolkart's. As we noted in September 2001, an-Najah was the site of an exhibit celebrating an attack on a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in which a suicide bomber murdered 15. Those entering the exhibit were directed to step on an American flag.

Doebbler presumably isn't responsible for that, of course, but his choice of clients is interesting: This AP dispatch from last month notes that Doebbler is working with anti-American crackpot Ramsey Clark on Saddam Hussein's defense team. Saddam, like any criminal defendant, is of course entitled to a vigorous defense, but Clark and Doebbler are not public defenders and they aren't doing this for the money.

Another signer is Marie Ashe of Boston's Suffolk University Law School. Ashe made a cameo in "Law School Humbug," an influential 1995 article by City Journal's Heather Mac Donald:

In an article widely viewed as a model of the narrative genre, Marie Ashe of Suffolk Law School presents graphic descriptions of her reproductive life, including the birth of her children.

In a 1999 article for the Florida State University Law Review (link in PDF), Arthur Austin named the Ashe article No. 8 on his list of "The Top Ten Politically Correct Law Review Articles." He gives a more detailed description (see pages 261-262, or 29-30 in the PDF; footnotes omitted):

Evaluation capability is tested by Marie Ashe's Zig-Zag Stitching and the Seamless Web: Thoughts on "Reproduction" and the Law. It is a story of her "anger," "humiliation," "indignation," "desperation," "horror," and "rage" at law and the legal regulation of birthing. The discourse "originates in men; it defines women with certainty; it attempts to mask the operations of power; it silences other discourse." The pleasant experiences of home birthing are vividly contrasted with the agonies of the hospital treatment: "He slit my vagina. Then he backed off." "I feel they are trying to kill me. . . . This pain destroys me." "He raped me." Ashe describes other agonies: the death of her friend at age 34 from cancer, the death of her father, a prosecutor insults her by addressing her as Mrs. rather than Ms. as requested, and the remorse from purposely drowning five pups: "I have not forgotten the weight of those small, wet, stiffened forms in my hands."

Meanwhile, here is Jane Dolkart's complete list of "recent publications and activities," according to the SMU Web site:

Books and Supplements:

Primary Articles:

Other:

Chapter on Law for the GAY AND LESBIAN ALMANAC, St. James Press, 1998.

Speeches/Presentations:

Speaker for the Dallas office of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, two events.

At least Prof. Ashe's scholarly output seems to outmatch Prof. Dolkart's in terms of quantity.

The World's Smallest Violin
"Writer/editor" Stephen Dujack turned out to be too "mainstream" even for Judiciary Committee Democrats, who dropped him from their anti-Alito witness list when it turned out that he had likened the production of meat to the Holocaust. Now Dujack is whining back, with an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times:

In 21st century Washington, fame doesn't last for 15 minutes anymore. It lasts for a single news cycle. There is the big press release. The next morning the major newspapers spell your name right. But by noon the Drudge Report runs a shotgun blast of half-truths and innuendoes, and by evening pundits are sifting through your entrails on CNN and Fox. Can citizen participation in government survive the advent of the Internet search engine? . . .

In the era of the search engine, no good (or bad) deed goes unpunished. Then again, perhaps I should take pride in being ridiculed by a U.S. senator, John Cornyn (R-Texas). "It seems like a little bit of desperation to call a witness whose only apparent expertise is in comparing meat-eaters to those who stood by during the Holocaust," a Cornyn spokesman said. The Washington Times led with, "A free-lance reporter who compared the Holocaust to eating meat . . ." A right-wing blog gloated, "Latest Dem charge: Alito's a carnivore."

So let's see if we have this straight: Dujack is upset that his 15 minutes of fame were cut short because the Internet rescued his 2003 op-ed from obscurity?

We Did It!
Congratulations to fascist fishwife Cindy Sheehan, proud winner of the 2005 Idiotarian of the Year Award. Although she didn't quite crack 50%, she finished with an impressive plurality of 48.4%, well ahead of second-place Hugo Chavez's 26.9%. Sheehan is in fitting company: Previous winners of the award were Jimmy Carter, Rachel Corrie and Michael Moore.

Thar She Blows
"Natural-food grocer Whole Foods Market Inc. said Tuesday it will rely on wind energy for all of its electricity needs, making it the largest corporate user of renewable energy in the United States," the Associated Press reports.

"It's a sales driver rather than a cost," Whole Foods regional president Michael Besancon tells the AP. "All of those things we do related to our core values: help drive sales, help convince a customer to drive past three or four other supermarkets on the way to Whole Foods."

So gas up that SUV and do your part to help promote energy conservation!

First, They Came for the Communists . . .
"Beijing Declares War on Spitting, Littering"--headline, Xinhuanet (Red China), Jan. 10

Above 100%?
"Midlife Obesity Raises Later Risk of Death: Study"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 10

The Other 85% Can Hold Their Liquor
"15 Pct of Workforce Affected by Alcohol: Study"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 10

A Moment on the Lips, a Lifetime on the Hips
"Fat-Building Pathway Figured Out"--headline, HealthDayNews, Jan. 10

Sounds Like Mono
"One-Eyed Cat Had Medical Condition"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 10

Thanks for the Tip!--XXXVI
"Health Tip: Cross the Street Safely"--headline, HealthDayNews, Jan. 11

What Would We Do Withou8og;hvfzsedddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
"Study: 'Sleep Inertia' Affects Decision Making"--headline, ABCNews.com, Jan. 11

Lech Walesa Will Have to Come In Through Canada
"Federal Gov't Installs Pole Barriers at Mexican Border"--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 11

But if Abramoff Is Nice, Dean May Give Him Some Hats
"Dean Denies Party Ties to Abramoff"--headline, Washington Times, Jan. 11

How Does Pat Robertson Explain This?
"Father of LSD Turns 100"--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 10

Bottom Story of the Day
"Air Force, Rockers Use Same Earplugs"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 11

An Evergreen Story
On Saturday the Washington Redskins beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17-10 in an NFL wild-card game, which means that this weekend the Redskins travel to Seattle to play the Seahawks, whose 13-3 record is the best in the National Football Conference. The Washington Post, a newspaper in the District of Columbia, reports that this is causing some trouble for a newspaper in Washington state:

To avoid insulting native American heritage, the Seattle Times decided to limit severely the use of the term Redskins in the paper--even if a team with that name will dominate news coverage this week. The Times will not use the moniker in headlines or captions. Reporters can use it only once, as a first reference, in all stories. The Redskins will be referred to almost exclusively as Washington--which could get a little confusing for local readers who also live in that state.

Interestingly, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer does not seem to be avoiding Redskins, which suggests it is as intelligent as the Post.

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