Games and Fun:
People on the College Bowl team with me have discovered (I don't know how) an online game I've been playing for quite some time. Go. It's called Nation States. The creator of the page is a brilliant, brilliant man, Max Barry (or Maxx Barry) who constructed the game as a promotion for his new novel, Jennifer Government. The book is very good, though not as good as his first (and far too un-famous) novel, Syrup.

I'll make a quick post now, and then you can go back to my brother's witty, insightful, and socially-minded posts.

Our school is doing a production of Much Ado About Nothing, and tryouts were Tuesday and Wednesday. Being one of the any guys that tried out Wednesday, I got called back. I thought I did all right, and I heard she was going to put me in this pretty small part, but I didn't mind, because it was pretty cool. Now, though... it's... I don't know. I think she put me in this different, bigger part because she was desperate. Very interesting...

Here is where I stroke my imaginary beard, scribble something in my notebook, and charge you two hundred and fifty dollars.

Sigh:

For transcript junkies, the Senate debate on Miguel Estrada's confirmation hearing is available here (follow How Appealing's instructions). Two long-ish thoughts:

In general, I'm nervous about attempts to ferret out the ideology and philosophy of a potential judge. In this case, however, I think it's slightly more appropriate, since the Democrats are probably quite concerned about the concept of Judge Estrada becoming Justice Estrada, and ideology and philosophy are, I think, okay criteria for picking a Supreme Court Justice (within limits). So I could understand the Democratic concern if Estrada were some kind of Bork, and maybe they have reason to think he is. But if he's just some kind of Scalia . . . I don't think that's so out of the mainstream that he ought to be kept out of federal court. [Full disclosure: I'm writing as somebody who has dreams of one day being appointed to the federal bench]

My other thought is annoyance with Senator Hatch, who was making perfectly respectable speeches in defense of Estrada, citing the wide support for Estrada, and then made a special speech laying into Mr. Bender, one of Estrada's chief critics. His principle criticisms of Bender were his "extreme" views on child pornography. These included:

1: Believing that child pornography should only include nude children, not simply "suggestively posed" ones (the case in question involved children in bathing suits and leotards, among other things; I certainly wouldn't want to be the trial judge deciding which children were posed suggestively and which simply happened to look that way)

2: His skepticism about the link between child pornography and child abuse

3: Believing that the usual statistics on pornography incidence are "much too high" (Hatch's retort: "Tell that to the millions of people who see child pornography all over the internet;" given the extremely harsh penalties for viewing actual child pornography, I'm skeptical.)

Granted, these are debatable points, but holding them shouldn't disqualify a lawyer from any ability to make public comment, especially about the qualifications of somebody he worked with. Hatch quotes Bender as saying one thing sort of disturbing and un-politic: "most kids who act in these films probably are doing these acts aside from the films anyway. ....." but Hatch deletes all of Bender's (presumed) evidence and argument, and the rest of the quotes don't mark Bender as a nutcase by any means.

I began the transcript in favor of Estrada's nomination, although fairly uninformed. Hatch, who I usually find quite persuasive, has made me a lot more nervous about this.

Yumm:

The Supreme Court has posted more oral argument transcripts. Time to get cracking.

Obscurity:

Would I be less likely to post things here if anybody actually read them? And when will my brother post again? I'm boring.

Woo-Hoo!:

We made it! We're on Google! (Weirdly, a second unrelate site now also appears for the once empty "baudes blog" search). Guess these days are gone.

And a search for 'baude blog' (no quotes) brings up not only our site, but also our mention on How Appealing. Ironically, a search for 'amanda butler blog' (no quotes), brings up our site, and not hers.

Death:

Via Amanda Butler, who's newly redesigned her blog in a rather attractive way: Ashcroft is telling New York and Connecticut prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

Ashcroft argues that the move is necessary to get more consistency across jurisdictions. Of course, since no New York jury has returned a death sentence in over ten years, what are the odds that trying a few more capital cases will get any capital convictions? Not high. Especially if (though I assume not) Ashcroft's intervention can be mentioned during the course of the trial. Supposedly, though, Ashcroft wants one, perhaps for symbolic reasons.

Critics say that the way to get consistency is to reduce the number of death penalty trials, not to increase them. This is true for the reason mentioned above, but I worry about news stories like this. People tend to get all addled when talking about the death penalty, and I'm afraid of where this one will go. (The ACLU listhost here, which I realize I malign a lot, also was recently packed with calls for the abolition of the death penalty following Governor Ryan's move to commute all of Illinois's death row).

Maybe I'm an alarmist. But in general the principle of consistency in application of the death penalty seems like a perfectly laudable goal, although not a very federalist one. If Ashcroft fails to get his NY convictions, then his critics will be right that he chose the wrong method to pursue consistency. But if he gets his convictions, he'll be shown right, yet somehow I suspect that his critics won't apologize.

Feminism and Common Sense:

So I spoke at tonight's University of Chicago panel on "What is Feminism?", and I'll send my remarks to anybody who's curious. But what I'm blogging about was the real focus of the event, which was our "mainstream" feminist's coup against our counter-feminist group, the "common sense" feminists. (Full disclosure, the mastermind of the coup, the president of the UC Feminist Majority, is my roommate).

The common sense feminists believe two things, near as I can tell. The first is that in America, women's battles have largely been won. The second is that one can be pro-life (or as my roommate prefers to call them, "anti-choice") without being "anti-woman".

Sarah Butler (the "common sense" feminist) was a particularly unfortunate choice of speaker since she is (or at least appears to be) an educated, well-off, blonde, white woman. My friend and co-panelist Noah Millstone lashed back with (paraphrasing) "Sarah says she doesn't have any problems. I'm glad she doesn't have any problems. But a lot of women do have problems..." Still, the Libertarians who I represented have remarkable common ground with her principles, if not her facts.

I think that we don't need many more laws to protect women than the ones we have, although I do think we need to enforce the laws we have, especially prosecutions for rape and domestic violence. The point the other panelists made, that a lot of women do have problems (very true) is really, I think, a collection of problems stemming from poverty and crime (especially the rape and domestic violence, not from a systematic oppression of women in other ways.

So I was a little sad that Sarah Butler came off sounding so silly since I think she had a decent point to make on that score, but then she compounded her problem by coming out against abortion. Worse, she didn't even really explain why, except to say that she thought unborn women were as important as born ones. Here, she and I part company.

I had my belief in abortion shaken somewhat by Steven Levitt last spring, but it's returned. Still, it is a question on which reasonable people can disagree, which is part of why I think it's so important to keep the government out of it. I would be willing to grudgingly consider, though, a movement to totally and legally recognize fetuses as human beings, if it were universally applied. I think this is wrong medically, but it's at least acceptable philosophically.

Anyway, a rant on abortion rights won't be very productive or helpful. Really, I just wanted to say that while I think Sarah Butler is wrong on abortion, and she definitely got killed rhetorically this evening, most of the massacre was in rhetoric. I know people care about rhetoric, especially in these political movements, but some of her substance isn't so abhorrent. In fact, a lot of it isn't. Of course, political debate between activist organizations may not be the best place to search for intellectual rigor, precisions, and honesty. I really wish it were.