[Ugh. I lost the first version of this post, so let's try again...]

Howard Dean recently noted that he didn't want to express a view on what punishment Osama bin Laden should get until bin Laden faces a jury.

Which means we can play The Headline Game, which is fun for the whole family!

• CNN: Dean: Bin Laden guilt best determined by jury
• Fox News: Dean Not Ready to Pronounce Bin Laden Guilty
• San Francisco Chronicle: AP Interview: Dean says Osama deserves death, beef farmers need aid
• World Net Daily: Dean not sure Osama's guilty -- Says he has 'old-fashioned' notion about 'jury trials'
• ABC News (among others using this headline): Dean: It's Premature to Convict Bin Laden

• Dean Defends Bin Laden

That's what you get for saying something so easily distorted, Howard!
(In fairness to Dean, he has tried to clarify the issue. See, e.g., here.)

UPDATE: Here are two more that display, uh, contrasting styles:

• New York Post: Dean's Stunner: I won't prejudge bin Laden


• New York Times (second item!): New Hampshire: Punishing bin Laden

For background -- a Washington Post article on the new faith-based prison recently opened in Florida, see here. Residency in this prison is entirely voluntary, and there are already 26 religions represented here. As Gov. Jeb Bush said at its opening, "I can't think of a better place to reflect on the awesome love of our lord Jesus than to be here at Lawtey Correctional. God bless you." um, yeah

Will worries below, "But if a faith-based prison gets more books or liberty or visitation than the non-faith-based prisons, that's bad. It's hopefully a violation of the Establishment Clause, too."

At the moment, faith-motivated prisoners can get more books than their Dostoevsky-motivated secular counterparts. This is part of the accomodations for religious practice mandated under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act -- to give the guy his Book of Common Prayer even if it puts him over his limit for books he can have in his cell. I'm not entirely sure how the particulars of this work, or how much it's been argued at this level, but it seems that if there's a one book limit, he can claim an exception to permit his first book (which I'll say is the the KJV) and the BCP. I'm not sure that if there's a two book limit and he's already got the KJV and the Grisham novel he's reading, whether he can get an exemption for the BCP, or if he must give up the secular work. I would think that he'd have to return the Grisham to prevent RLUIPA (or any program in a prison that was concientious about inmates' religious reading materials) from violating the Establishment Clause.

But who is to determine what's secular and what's religious? I could want to study the Bible as a literary work reflected in Paradise Lost. I could claim some novel by some sci-fi writer is my holy testament. I don't think I'm the only reader of this blog who could see Will in a position legally analagous to conscientous objectors to the draft-- he might want his novels and plays as texts from which to study morality and ethics, letting those works fill the same role in his life as the Bible may fill in another person's. I've now got one situtuation in which it's to my advantage to pretend to be religous, for my demand will probably be granted, and two situations in which I wouldn't be surprised at skepticism that these were bona-fide religious beliefs. I agree with Will that the Constitution should be enforced, but I don't have much hopes for it being enforced well here. Can the degree of institutional incompetence that I pessimistically forsee violate the Establishment Clause?

Speaking of setting the table, it looks like we're going to have Mr. Stern around here for another week or so. Hopefully you won't mind as he breaks the monotony of my posts.

Tyler Cowen reports on this faith-based prison in Florida. I generally think that religious tolerance from the government is a good thing. Kids should be allowed to wear head coverings to school, Catholics should be allowed to drink communion wine, children should be allowed to spend school vouchers at religious schools, and the poor should be allowed to spend food stamps on kosher food. But I'm worried about this policy.

Near as I can tell, prisoners are to self-separate themselves into a religious and a not-particularly-religious group. That's fine so long as the two facilities stay separate-but-equal (where have we heard that before?). But I fear that won't happen, especially because the religious prison is being made selective, and it's only natural to want to treat the hand-picked prisoners with a little more leniency.

But if a faith-based prison gets more books or liberty or visitation than the non-faith-based prisons, that's bad. It's hopefully a violation of the Establishment Clause, too.

The segregation at issue here is less bad than racial segregation, for one thing because in this case prisoners are allowed to assign their own identities rather than have one chosen for them based on immutable characteristics. But it's still a potentially bas thing if it results in government officials showing favoritism to a group of people that's been formed on the basis of their religion.

Incidentally, the whole thing also presents trouble for the court overseeing it. Do they say "separate but equal is so hard to reach that we're presumptively disallowing the program"? Or "we lack the institutional capacity to figure this out, so we have to trust prison officials"? Or "well, we aren't very good at this, but it's our job to enforce Constitutional rights so let's give it a shot"?

My own preference is probably for the third course, but hopefully it won't come to that.

I always enjoy it when Justices Scalia and Souter argue in Supreme Court opinions. I've found that their squabbles are generally the most entertaining. While writing my paper, I just found another example:

Scalia:

I do not find [the Souter-written plurality opinion's] explanations persuasive, particularly that with respect to silencer, which resorts to that last hope of lost interpretive causes, that St. Jude of the hagiology of statutory construction, legislative history.

Souter:

JUSTICE SCALIA upbraids us for reliance on legislative history, his "St. Jude of the hagiology of statutory construction." Post, at 521. The shrine, however, is well peopled (though it has room for one more) and its congregation has included such noted elders as Justice Frankfurter . . . .

Shouldn't these disagreements be settled over a game of Parcheesi or something?

1. You know when you wake up to find that you've slept in a position that has cut off blood flow to your arm? It's annoying, yes, but I secretly love it.

The medical term for that is "sleep-induced floppy-arm." Or at least I think it is. My girlfriend's a med student; I'll ask her.

2. Don't ever tell me that Darwin wasn't right (last item):

ATHENS, Ga. -- A Phi Kappa Psi fraternity member was treated for possible exposure to rabies, and he and two others could be expelled for beating, skinning and then eating a raccoon that might have had the disease, the fraternity's president said. The men had spotted the raccoon behaving erratically outside the fraternity house at the University of Georgia on Dec. 12.

Lovely. Only one corrupt politician away from being a RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES episode of Law & Order: SVU.

If you don't regularly read Heidi Bond's Letters of Marque, you might want to start.

She's a Michigan Law Student and has, for example, this great post about why "V" is Scrabble's letter of doom and not worth nearly enough points, while "X"s get overpaid (X lets you make AX, OX, XI, and XU; V doesn't let you make any two-letter words at all). [She's wrong, though, to defend Q, which is definitely a kiss of death, even when it's worth ten points-- "qi" isn't acceptable in American Scrabble, which leaves you with qat, qanat, tranq, faqir, qoph, qivuit and qaid. In other words, even without a u, there's only one q-word that doesn't require an a, and only two of those that don't also require ts. And even if you can get rid of it, your chances of being able to cash in big aren't great. Unless you have the letters to play it fast, just exchange the q away so it doesn't waste your chances of getting a seven-letter word.]

Ms. Bond also discusses search algorithms for her mother's keys (as Elizabeth Bishop said: "Lose something every day; accept the fluster/of lost door keys, an hour badly spent/the art of losing isn't hard to master.")

Or this post on the failures of Return of the King or this one on Sauron, or this one on how much you can get away with by simply pushing the boundary of normalcy hard enough:

At any rate, after about half an hour, he can't contain himself. So he says, "Heidi, what are you doing?"

Wrong question, Mr. Rasmussen. What I'm doing is obvious. I'm taping strips of paper from my desk to everyone else's. But we both understand that the question is a proxy for "Why are you doing it?" and honestly, I haven't the faintest idea why. So I say the first damned thing that comes into my head.

"Earthquake safety belts," I say. "If there's an earthquake, they'll prevent people from being hurled across the room."

At long last, some technological rather than legal anti-spam measures are in the works.