There were rumors about a certain one of my former employers that instead of taking his access pass out of his wallet every day he used to wave his rear end toward the card-reader to pass through. Being reminded of this made me laugh out loud when I read the latest Miss Manners query and reply:

Dear Miss Manners:

Like many office buildings, the one in which I work uses an access-card entry system. I keep my card in my wallet. Often, instead of taking out the wallet to run it by the sensor, I merely swivel my hip slightly to allow the card to be "read."

Is this move considered rude if (1) no one is in the vicinity? (2) I believe no one is seeing this? and (3) I'm only with close colleagues?

Rude? Actually, it sounds exciting. Miss Manners lives in a city with hardly a building standing that doesn't require an access pass or at least a show of identification, and none of them features a folk dance. Would you care to come to Washington, D.C., and teach it to us?

The Associated Press ran a short profile on this blog's favorite candidate in the Louisiana gubernatorial election five days from today. However, they didn't manage to mention that the candidate is the Republican and overall forerunner. Current polls have him at 22%, with no other Republican in the top five (the incumbent, Mike Foster, is Republican). I also wouldn't call him a "hard-right conservati[ve]." But that's the impression given by this, which makes him sound like the dark horse doomed to be a footnote:

Indian American candidate soars
By Adam Nossiter
Baton Rouge, LA
Louisiana goes its own way in politics, veering forward, backward or crawfish-wise.
Now, the state of the populist Longs -- Huey and Earl -- of flamboyant and now jailed Edwin Edwards and of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is cracking the political mold again.
A son of immigrants from India, a Republican whose given name was Piyush but who calls himself Bobby, is topping polls in the governor's race and astonishing political connoisseurs.
''Louisiana is still a racist state,'' veteran political consultant Raymond Strother said recently, explaining why he thought it unlikely Bobby Jindal could be elected.
That was the conventional wisdom when Jindal, a 32-year-old Rhodes scholar with a reputation as a health care policy whiz kid, left the Bush administration seven months ago to run for governor.
But Jindal's resume, combined with an in-your-face, hard-right conservatism, has neutralized race as an issue.
The Oct. 4 election is an 18-candidate open primary, a free-for-all unique to Louisiana. To win the election, a candidate must draw more than 50 percent of the vote. If no one gets that majority, a runoff election will be held Nov. 15.
Playing well in Louisiana is that this immigrant's son is imbued with a fervent belief in the American dream.
''I'm against all quotas, all set-asides,'' he said at a recent forum. ''America is the greatest. We got ahead by hard work. We shouldn't respond to every problem with a government program.''

This is fascinating stuff:

In a move that could complicate the RIAA's pursuit of peer-to-peer pirates, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday it had filed court documents accusing the trade association of illegally using thousands of subpoenas to unmask alleged copyright infringers.

The recording industry's subpoenas, filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violated due process and constitutional rights shielding Internet users' anonymity, the ACLU claims.

It's something between conventional wisdom and urban legend that if you drink a whole lot of milk in a short period of time, you get sick. I know several people who have undergone the "milk challenge" and attempted to drink a gallon of milk in an hour (all of them, incidentally, have failed). Does anybody know why this is so? What is it about milk? Does it matter whether the milk is whole, skim, 2%, or 1% (my intuition is that skim milk is easier to digest than whole)? What other beverages is this true for? Vodka, obviously, but not water. What biological princicple is at work here? I'll post any convincing explanations.

UPDATE: Beth Plocharczyk replies.

So, like Eugene Volokh, I lack the time, and more importantly, the institutional capacity, to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame affair by myself. Follow Dan Drezner's post for roundups, thoughts, and the like. That said, here are a few thoughts:

1: Robert Novak shouldn't get in trouble for this-- it's important to draw a distinction in situations like this between private actors and public ones. When journalists decide to reveal information they know, that's freedom of the press.

2: But government officials, who contract away some (but not all) of their right to speak freely in exchange for access to official secrets don't have the same sorts of rights, so if any government officials revealed Plame's name to Novak, that's very bad, and should be harshly punished.

3: The consequence of 1 and 2 is that this seems like the right place to use an independent counsel, or some similar mechanism (I don't follow the specifics of what sort of board composed of whom should investigate; it should be independent and bipartisan (ha, shouldn't they all?)). The goal is to be very harsh to the "senior officials" without punishing the journalists.

4: Obviously, this whole scandal is made worse if it's the case that the "senior officials" who did the leaking did so in order to punish Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson. Illegally endangering U.S. intelligence agents out of ignorance or personal spite is one thing, doing so by using them as pawns in a campaign to suppress ideas is even worse.

5: This (#4) is a costly program in the long run, even if the Bush officials get off scot-free. The costs of having a family with its feet in both administrations rises dramatically if one of those administrations is likely to pursue a program of punishment against the families of dissidents.

6: Come to think of it, #4 sounds eerily like the sorts of punishments used in pre-war Iraq.

7: I want to emphasize that I have no idea what is actually the case here. Novak claims that the Bush administration didn't call him-- he called them. We don't know yet who these alleged officials are or what precisely they are supposed to have said to whom, let alone why. An investigation seems appropriate, and maybe some modest jumping-to-conclusions, but I don't want to put a horse in that race myself. I'm glad that large portions of the media think they know enough already to be calling for Karl Rove in an orange jumpsuit. I don't, but I do think it's time for him (and some others) to start answering a lot of questions.

If you're in Hyde Park this year (sigh), be sure you notice that your ability to get downtown has expanded. Firstly, the #6 (formerly called the Jeffery express, now the Jackson Park express), the bus of choice for those in the know, no longer uns south of 79th Street. This doesn't directly affect Hyde Park, but ought to clear up the buses to be able to run more often, or at least more punctually (hah!). Further, (and here's the big news) the #28 Stony Island will also go downtown from now on. Catch both of these wonderful buses at the corner of 57th and Stony Island, right next to my former apartment. [Incidentally, here's the CTA Website].

I've gotten a lot of mail from people who like the look of the new site. This is good, and I'm really glad people like it. But I just wanted to make something clear-- I did approximately none of the work in making the current site look as it did (that is, I spent a lot of time looking at the site and deciding whether or not I liked how it looked). This is all the product of the hard work of my co-blogger, Amy Lamboley. So thanks on her behalf, and do pass your praise on to her.

A post from Jennifer's History and Stuff

What's in a name? A lot, when it's associated with someone who broke your heart. I read something several moons ago somewhere that polled guys on which female name they most associated with heartbreak..."Jennifer" was the winner. Statistically speaking, who woulda thunk it?

My favorite play, Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, prominently features the radio show Desert Island Discs. On DID, guests must pick which 8 albums they'd bring with them on a desert island. In preparation for my upcoming travel, I had to decide what books to take with me. Since books are rather heavy and can also be readily acquired at Trinity, I decided to limit myself to ten (which some say is still too many). Here they are (Incidentally, this isn't at all a reflection of my ten favorites; books were chosen based on a number of criteria, including how hard I thought they'd be to acquire in England, whether I had my own annotations in them, whether I wanted to read them on the airplane, whether I would feel silly buying a second (or third or fourth) copy in England, how bulky they were, how often I re-read them, what they said about me as a person, and so on):
Darlington's Fall, by Brad Leithauser
Hence, by Brad Leithauser
The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
The Captain's Verses, by Pablo Neruda
Dragons of a Fallen Sun, by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard
Ada, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco
The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy and Vice, by Phineas Mollod, Jason Tesauro

I suppose this will be obvious to anybody who cares, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway. I recently received an email from a reader titled: "OK, you hate comments. But why do you avoid XML?" asking why there was no RSS feed on our blog. The simple answer was because I had no idea how to create one. But our new digs and the hard work of my co-blogger have brought XML with them. You'll see the link at the bottom of our sidebar, or here.

Continuing in his role as internal Volokh gadfly, Jacob Levy has a post taking on his co-blogger Juan Non-Volokh. Non-Volokh (who implies, incidentally, that he himself blogs anonymously because he's an untenured faculty member who fears reprisal) writes:

Jacob Levy is quoted in the Brooks piece, suggesting that much of academia is more tolerant than many conservatives might suggest. At some places, such as Chicago, that is clearly true. At others, well . . .

The implication here is a tough one to argue with, since, of course, I am at Chicago. I'm going to argue anyways, not least since I've believed since long before I came to Chicago that the "bias against conservatives in academia" claim is a) overstated and b) self-destructive.

People argued with me. I argued back. That's what we do.

(Link via Howard Bashman) This New Yorker review of the Chicago Manual of Style is a must-read for the grammar- and style- obsessed. And it mentions Indiana University:

There is no such thing as the University of Mississippi Press. It is the University Press of Mississippi (just as Indiana University must never be called the University of Indiana, even though that, in fact, is what it is).

“I think to drink creme de menthe in a pale blue cravat would be the abandonment of everything I stand for.”
“What do you stand for?” asked Moon. . .
“Style, dear boy,” Said the ninth earl. “Style. There is nothing else.”

I suppose this is also the appropriate time to note that my snail-mail address for the upcoming year will be different. I'll be studying in England for a year, and anybody who wants to send me a postcard will earn great appreciation. So I should be reachable at:

Will Baude
Trinity College, Cambridge
CB2 1TQ
United Kingdom

Via Overlawyered (my brief guest home), and The Curmudgeonly Clerk, I see this news on blaming video games for violence. (sigh)

So I thought I'd take this chance to promote (again) Judge Richard Posner's opinion in American Amusement Machine Association v. Teri Kendrick, dealing with Indianapolis's video game ordinance. It's short, sweet, and just a little bit moving (at least for us mushy civil-liberties types). An (extended) excerpt:

The issue in this case is not violence as such, or directly; it is violent images; and here the symmetry with obscenity breaks down. Classic literature and art, and not merely today's popular culture, are saturated with graphic scenes of violence, whether narrated or pictorial. The notion of forbidding not violence itself, but pictures of violence, is a novelty, whereas concern with pictures of graphic sexual conduct is of the essence of the traditional concern with obscenity...
Children have First Amendment rights. This is not merely a matter of pressing the First Amendment to a dryly logical extreme. The murderous fanaticism displayed by young German soldiers in World War II, alumni of the Hitler Jugend, illustrates the danger of allowing government to control the access of children to information and opinion. Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old's right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well- functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble.
No doubt the City would concede this point if the question were whether to forbid children to read without the presence of an adult the Odyssey, with its graphic descriptions of Odysseus's grinding out the eye of Polyphemus with a heated, sharpened stake, killing the suitors, and hanging the treacherous maidservants; or The Divine Comedy with its graphic descriptions of the tortures of the damned; or War and Peace with its graphic descriptions of execution by firing squad, death in childbirth, and death from war wounds. Or if the question were whether to ban the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, or the famous horror movies made from the classic novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein) and Bram Stoker (Dracula). Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.
Maybe video games are different. They are, after all, interactive. But this point is superficial, in fact erroneous. All literature (here broadly defined to include movies, television, and the other photographic media, and popular as well as highbrow literature) is interactive; the better it is, the more interactive. Literature when it is successful draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own. Protests from readers caused Dickens to revise Great Expectations to give it a happy ending, and tourists visit sites in Dublin and its environs in which the fictitious events of Ulysses are imagined to have occurred. The cult of Sherlock Holmes is well known...
Self-defense, protection of others, dread of the "undead," fighting against overwhelming odds-- these are all age-old themes of literature, and ones particularly appealing to the young. [The video game] "The House of the Dead" is not distinguished literature. Neither, perhaps, is "The Night of the Living Dead," George A. Romero's famous zombie movie that was doubtless the inspiration for "The House of the Dead." Some games, such as "Dungeons and Dragons," have achieved cult status; although it seems unlikely, some of these games, perhaps including some that are as violent as those in the record, will become cultural icons. We are in the world of kids' popular culture. But it is not lightly to be suppressed.

Yesterday's New York Times contains an interview with a Spam King. If you care about this stuff, read it. The article also contains some interesting suggestions for intelligent Spam reform-- ways to separate out the annoying and harmful and highly costly spam from the stuff that actually has some sort of legitimate purpose. It's refreshing to see somebody recognizing the upsides of Spam without being doctrinaire about it.

Ever since the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year held a spam conference -- which brought together spam recipients, Congress, antispammers and the spammers themselves -- a metaphysical question has emerged: Is there such a thing as good spam versus bad?

So a while back I did a 20 Questions interview with Steve Dillard (fka Feddie) at Southern Appeal. One of my questions to him was about bourbon ("sipping whiskey") and why Jefferson's Reserve was his favorite. This caused my father and me to begin a taste-testing run through a number of bourbons, and now that I have sampled some Jefferson's Reserve myself, I can finally post my own thoughts.

I wouldn't have thought I was going to like the stuff, I have to say, but I was very surprised. Bourbon, incidentally, should always be drunk on the rocks. Take a sip or two before the ice melts much at all. If it's too strong for you (and it might well be) then sip it as the ice melts, and notice the changes in flavor-- by the time you're done you may think you're having a different drink. So I've now tried two different Maker's Marks, Bookers, Blanton's, Wild Turkey, Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, Knob Creek, and Jefferson's Reserve.

Now, all of these had their own various appeals, but in my opinion, the ones worth coming back to were the Maker's Mark, the Bookers, the Blanton's, and the Jefferson's Reserve. I still don't have very well-thought-out thoughts about the last of these, as I only had it last night. The other three form a sort of continuum. Bookers is perhaps 50% more alcoholic than the others (something like 120 proof instead of 90 or so), so it almost requires that you let your ice melt a little before really tucking in. Also, I highly suggest a rule that when drinking Bookers before dinner, one is allowed only one glass. This rule applies doubly if you have anything important to do the next morning. The Blanton's occupies the other side of the scale-- it's mellow and delicious and somehow the faint alcoholic sting (which isn't always unpleasant) of other bourbon's is entirely gone. It also smells the best of them all, though all bourbon smells great. This mellowness, of course, makes Blanton's a little bit deceptive, but also makes it yummy; highly recommended for bourbon beginners or those with slightly more delicate tastes. Maker's Mark occupies some sort of delicious fugue state. It's a little more forceful than the Blanton's, but lacks the serious punch of the Bookers. One of its major distinctions is that it might be the most "metamorphic" of the three (as the ice melts), going from deep throated flavor at the first sip to mellow dessert by the last.

And where does this leave Jefferson's Reserve? I'm not sure yet. It touches the bases of the others, though it shares more kinship with the Maker's Mark and the Blanton's than with the Bookers. I'll post further thoughts on it as I have them. Now back to blogging. . .

What better way to inaugurate our new blog home than with another addition of our 20 Questions series? This week's interviewee is rather timely, what with all the fuss about the California Recall, the BCRA campaign finance bill, the Texas redistricting mess, and so on. With no further ado, I give you Rick Hasen, of the Election Law blog.

1: What made you decide to start blogging?

Back in January, I was talking about The Senate's filibuster of judges with my Loyola Law School colleague, Kurt Lash. He told me I should check out the How Appealing blog. "What's a blog?," I asked. A month later I was blogging, realizing that there was a need for coverage of election law in the way that Howard Bashman covers appellate law. What is so wonderful about Howard is that he is comprehensive and fair. Although he has definite opinions, he never uses his blog to stifle or distort others' points of view. To the contrary, it is a forum for exploring many different ideas. I have tried to emulate the "fair and balanced" Bashman (I hope he won't get sued by Fox now!).

2: You're clearly the blogosphere's foremost expert in election law. What made you decide to pick election law as your field of specialization?

I have a Ph.D. in political science and a law degree. Election law is a natural intersection of the two fields. Dan Lowenstein of UCLA, one of the founders of the field, was my first teacher, and after taking his course I realized that this was the direction I wanted to take my scholarship.

3: Redrawing the lines for congressional districts often results in a mess (see, for example, the ongoing fiasco in the Texas state legislature). What sort of solution should we adopt (if any) and would it need to be on the state or the federal level?

Now you are getting into the substance of election law and policy. So before we get into the specifics, let me give a caveat: for me, the most important question in election law is not what the best electoral rules are but who gets to decide that question: the courts or the political process. My new book, The Supreme Court and Election Law: Judging Equality from Baker v. Carr to Bush v. Gore, sets out my theory of when courts should interfere in the political process.

I tend to argue for less court intrusion than others do. So in the redistricting context, assuming that there are no Voting Rights Act violations (which there could well be in the Texas re-redistricting), I think the choice is essentially a political one, not a judicial one. I therefore don't agree with people such as Sam Issacharoff, who recently published an article in the Harvard Law Review arguing that redistricting done by elected officials should be presumptively unconstitutional. Redistricting for partisan advantage happens all the time, but there's not much that courts should do to police it. The Supreme Court is revisiting the question in a case, Veith v. Jubelirer, to be heard next term, and the Court could impose more restrictions on partisan gerrymandering. If people want redistricting by commission, or a limit on re-redistricting (as in Texas or Colorado), they should fight for that in the political process.

4: The electoral college has two controversial components-- one if the greater weight it gives to small states as opposed to large states. The other is its winner-take-all nature. Do you think either or both of these is outdated?

There is great debate over the merits of the electoral college. I doubt we would adopt the same process today for choosing a President if we were writing a new constitution. We might use a population basis or some kind of proportional system. But I see that states have very little incentive to change the process now.

5: Is higher voter turnout good? Should the government try to increase it?

It depends upon your normative goals. I think that higher turnout is good if one wants to increase political equality. I discuss why we might want to adopt a compulsory voting law in this country on political equality grounds in "Voting without Law?," 144 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 2135 (1996). I don't expect that proposal to be adopted any time soon. I also talk about payments to increase turnout in "Vote Buying," 88 California Law Review 1323 (2000).

6: What are the comparative merits of the available vote-counting
technologies? What voting technology do you think is generally the best
choice in the U.S.?

This is beyond my area of expertise. But I would refer interested readers to the Caltech-MIT Voting Project. One thing we learned after the Florida debacle is that punch card systems are much worse than the other systems in terms of voter errors, and education does not seem to help. We have great resources and smart people in this country. I fervently hope we'll be able to have voting systems in place soon that insure that each person has about the same chance of casting a vote that will actually count.

7: What are your thoughts about the process (rather than the substance) of the California recall? Do you think recall measures are generally a good idea?

Again talking policy, not court intervention, I am generally ambivalent about measures of direct democracy. I think it causes all kinds of problems with things like budgeting, it also allows for nasty interest group and single-interest politics, but I also think it is valuable as a way of bypassing the legislature in situations where legislative self-interest is a particular problem, such as in passing campaign finance legislation. I think the recall is a good safety valve, but I think that California's recall laws are a mess and need to be rewritten. I have five suggestions for improving the California recall process posted here.

8: The Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore has probably gotten more criticism in recent years than any other high court decision. Do you think the case was wrongly decided, and if so do you think the dissenters were right?

In my book, I argue that the Court was wrong to take the case, and wrong in terms of the remedy. But I think once the Court took the case, its decision to extend the Equal Protection Clause to the nuts and bolts of elections is as defensible (or not) as some of the other election law cases from the Warren Court, Burger Court and Rehnquist Court. In general, I argue that when the Court decides to endorse a contested equality claim (as in Bush v. Gore and other cases I discuss), it should do so slowly and use lower courts to provide valuable information in forming the contours of the new equal protection right.

9: Now that we're stuck with the Bush v. Gore decision, what should we do with it? Should lower courts take seriously the court's claim that it shouldn't be used as precedent?

I ultimately believe the Supreme Court will say the opinion has no precedential value. But I believe there is currently a window of opportunity where lower courts should experiment with what the case means as precedent. I've developed these ideas in a few places, including this article.

10: In all of the fuss over the recall, little attention has been paid to another aspect of California's predilection for direct democracy--the ballot initiative. Do you think the initiative system is a good idea, or does it elimiminate the processes that make democracy work?

See my answer to question 7.

11: You heard the oral arguments in McConnell v. FEC, which will decide the constitutionality of BCRA. Understanding that handicapping the court is a very dangerous, what is your best guess about how (and when) the court will rule on the bill?

After oral argument, I'm not sure how the Court is going to rule. Once again, it probably comes down to Justice O'Connor. I predict a divided court on the major issues of soft money and issue advocacy. Beyond that, it is futile to guess. I would think that we could see an opinion as early as mid-October and as late as mid-December.

12: And what do you think would be the right decision about the bill

In terms of constitutionality, I think the soft money provisions are constitutional (see my article on this point here) and that the issue advocacy provisions are constitutional (see my article here and the amicus brief I filed with the Court on behalf of the Center for Governmental Studies here). In terms of policy, I support the issue advocacy provisions and I am ambivalent about the soft money provisions, because of how they might harm political parties.

13: Most campaign finance regulations are justified under the elections clause of the constitution (Article 1 Section IV), which reads:

Section 4. The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

Sec. 324. <> An individual who is 17 years old or younger shall not make a contribution to a candidate or a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party.

Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old's right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well- functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble.

A rather odd New Yorker profile of Judge Richard Posner mentioned, in passing, his recipe for shrimp cocktail (the article claimed he made it every Friday night: not true, but a claim that certainly sparks interest). With permission, here it is:

-- 4 tsp mayo;
-- a few squirts ketchup, just enough to turn the sauce light red;
-- 1 drop Worcestershire sauce;
-- 2 tsp cream sherry, more if desired;
-- 1 squirt of fresh lemon juice, not RealLemon;
-- small pinch each: sugar, salt;

Mix together in the above order.

For good cooked shrimp in the Chicago area, I followed his recommendation to Treasure Island at 1639 N. Wells.

For cream sherry, go Spanish. Once you're in Old Town for the shrimp, you might as well stop by Sam's Wine and Spirits in the near area, over at 1720 N. Marcey.