I got a kick out of this, which was the reaction of Iverson to the new NBA dress code (which Stephen Jackson thinks is racist, and Frank J. thinks is racist to call racist).

Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson also was critical of the new rule, which the NBA made teams aware of in a memo Monday.

“I feel like if they want us to dress a certain way, they should pay for our clothes,” he said. “It’s just tough, man, knowing that all of a sudden you have to have a dress code out of nowhere. I don’t think that’s still going to help the image of the league at all.”

I have trouble feeling sorry for Iverson for having to buy a few new suits. After all, he is the 6th highest paid NBA player, making $16,453,125 per year. “It’s tough man.” Most people with real jobs actaully have to buy their own work clothes (I am excluded from the “real job” thing, since I work and blog from home).

Wow. (H/T ITA)

Before:

After

And check out this one, painted inside the walls of a women’s prison. To “provide a mental escape.”

The media is in full blown mode trying to publicly pressure Patrick Fitzgerald into indicting major government figures. If Fitzgerald falls for this ploy and bows to the current orchestrated effort by the media to pressure him into phony indictments just to placate these salivating coyotes it will be another sad day for the justice system.

Judith Miller has managed to pull a fast one on investigative prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The scene sets up like this (from our friends at Powerline via the NY Times) …

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I [Judith Miller] could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

Selective memory loss anyone?

In order to get Miller to testify before his grand jury he had to agree to limit his questioning of Miller to her conversations with Scooter Libby of Cheney’s office.

Judith Miller writing in the NY Times…

Equally central to my decision was Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. He had declined to confine his questioning to the subject of Mr. Libby. This meant I would have been unable to protect other confidential sources who had provided information - unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his wife - for articles published in The Times. Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald agreed to limit his questioning.

Powerline notes…

It is hard to square this with the interview given by her former lawyer Floyd Abrams, in which Abrams said that Fitzgerald’s agreement to limit his Plame questioning to Libby, and forgo asking about other sources of the same information, was critical to Miller’s decision to testify.

It would seem clear there are other sources involved with this so-called Valerie Plame “leak”. Otherwise, why limit the questioning to only Libby? Why not limit the inquiry to the subject of Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, rather than just Scooter Libby? Miller’s insertion in her article of “unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his wife” seems designed as a decoy.

Who else is Miller trying to protect? Tim Russert perhaps? And why is she so concerned about restricting the questions to her conversations with Scooter Libby? What about other conversations related to this matter?

Given Miller’s liberal bent and Wilson’s Democrat Party connections along with Plame’s rather suspicious involvement in the selection of her husband for the mission to Niger, we can reasonably assume Miller would have no hesitations about discussing sources which could potentially injure the current administration. So who is she protecting that might conceivably cause real problems for the Democrats?

Thus surfaces the now common malady among the left, selective memory loss.

Which brings us to Harriet Miers and Trent Lott.

Miers could use the same approach with the Senate Judiciary Committee. She could only agree to entertain questions related to the office for which she is being nominated. That would take the lottery commission off the table completely.

Recall too, that the precedent setting Trent Lott agreed to the Democrats’ demands at the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton that the Senate could not call any witnesses nor explore any of the peripheral evidence. Thus Lott presided over a sham trial, in effect, no trial at all.

So the precedence is set Harriet. Democrat senators should certainly understand your desire to limit the scope of inquiry. But should their memory loss persist then you could join their memory loss chorus.

That is the conclusion of this paper. However, Josh Rosenau sets out to point out the flaws in the report (via Skeptic’s Circle #18).

[C]orrelation isn’t causation. It would be interesting to look at these data after appropriate statistical controls, or to look at a time series for a nation that is becoming more secular with a nation becoming more religious and a nation with constant religiosity. That’d get you closer to causation.

So, don’t go claiming that religiosity causes social ills. That’s not justified by this study and won’t win you friends.

Harriet Miers’ responses to the Senate questionaire are being parsed and torn apart. After seeing this, I would be really surprised if she makes it through the confirmation hearings, but I’ve been surprised before with politics (such as when Bill Clinton made it through eight years in office).

In answer to question 22 (Page 49) asking her for examples of constitutional cases she had dealt with in the past, Miers answered the following:

While I was an at-large member of the Dallas City Council, I dealt with issues that involved constitutional questions. For instance, when addressing a lawsuit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.

But the Washington Post has an article that says:

“There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He and several other scholars said it appeared that Miers was confusing proportional representation — which typically deals with ethnic groups having members on elected bodies — with the one-man, one-vote Supreme Court ruling that requires, for example, legislative districts to have equal populations.

So sure, anyone can slip up in a conversation, but a mistake of this magnitude on a questionaire submitted by Congress in preparation for hearings for a nomination to the Supreme Court does not bode well for Ms. Miers perceived intellect or grasp of Constitutional law.

Vic Fleischer, a friend of Prof Bainbridge, says:

I’m sort of amazed this woman made it through a clerkship. The most desperate cries for the red pen: “An example, of this distinction …” (delete the comma!), “position, we were against flag burning” (semi-colon or period, not comma), “requirements, as well” (awk).

… The problem goes beyond misplaced commas. Her answer sounds like that of an earnest (but not overly bright) high school student writing a practice essay for the SAT. “The Council was free to state its policy position, we were against flag burning.” Hmmm. Did the Council state its policy position, or did it enact a statute? Did the Council itself have an obligation to consider whether the ban was constitutional? If not, why not? Should the Council just enact whatever it wants, constitutional or not, and wait for the courts to knock it down?

And Christine Hurt makes the same point I do above:

… everyone makes typos/spelling errors. However, most of us catch them before we hand them to the Senate in our application for one of the most powerful positions in the country, which is the most powerful in the world.

Here is some general information on the fourteenth ammendment that may provide context for the non-lawyer like myself.

It is interesting that in Davis v. Bandemer (1986), the court wrote the following majority and minority opinions. (Emphasis mine)

JUSTICE WHITE, joined by JUSTICE BRENNAN, JUSTICE MARSHALL, and JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concluded in Parts III and IV that the District Court erred in holding that appellees had alleged and proved a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

(a) A threshold showing of discriminatory vote dilution is required for a prima facie case of an equal protection violation. The District Court’s findings of an adverse effect on appellees do not surmount this threshold requirement. The mere fact that an apportionment scheme makes it more difficult for a particular group in a particular district to elect representatives of its choice does not render that scheme unconstitutional. A group’s electoral power is not unconstitutionally diminished by the fact that an apportionment scheme makes winning elections more difficult, and a failure of proportional representation alone does not constitute impermissible discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. As with individual districts, where unconstitutional vote dilution is alleged in the form of statewide political gerrymandering, as here, the mere lack of proportional representation will not be sufficient to prove unconstitutional discrimination. Without specific supporting evidence, a court cannot presume in such a case that those who are elected will disregard the disproportionally underrepresented group. Rather, unconstitutional discrimination occurs only when the electoral system is arranged in a manner that will consistently degrade a voter’s or a group of voters’ influence on the political process as a whole. The District Court’s apparent holding that any interference with an opportunity to elect a representative of one’s choice would be sufficient to allege or prove an equal protection violation, unless justified by some acceptable state interest, in addition to being contrary to the above-described conception of an unconstitutional political gerrymander, would invite attack on all or almost all reapportionment statutes.

(b) Relying on a single election to prove unconstitutional discrimination, as the District Court did, is unsatisfactory. Without finding that because of the 1981 reapportionment the Democrats could not in one of the next few elections secure a sufficient vote to take control of the legislature, that the reapportionment would consign the Democrats to a minority status in the legislature throughout the 1980’s, or that they would have no hope of doing any better in the reapportionment based on the 1990 census, the District Court erred in concluding that the 1981 reapportionment violated the Equal Protection Clause. Simply showing that there are multimember districts and that those districts are constructed so as to be safely Republican or Democratic in no way bolsters the contention that there has been a statewide discrimination against Democratic voters.

(c) The view that intentional drawing of district boundaries for partisan ends and for no other reason violates the Equal Protection Clause would allow a constitutional violation to be found where the only proven effect on a political party’s electoral power was disproportionate results in one election (possibly two elections), and would invite judicial interference in legislative districting whenever a political party suffers at the polls. Even if a state legislature redistricts with the specific intention of disadvantaging one political party’s election prospects, there has been no unconstitutional violation against members of that party unless the redistricting does in fact disadvantage it at the polls. As noted, a mere lack of proportionate results in one election cannot suffice in this regard.

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE REHNQUIST, concluding that the partisan gerrymandering claims of major political parties raise a nonjusticiable political question, would reverse the District Court’s judgment on the grounds that appellees’ claim is nonjusticiable. The Equal Protection Clause does not supply judicially manageable standards for resolving purely political gerrymandering claims, and does not confer group rights to an equal share of political power. Racial gerrymandering claims are justiciable because of the greater warrant the Equal Protection Clause gives the federal courts to intervene for protection against racial discrimination, and because of the stronger nexus between individual rights and group interests that is present in the case of a discrete and insular racial group. But members of the major political parties cannot claim that they are vulnerable to exclusion from the political process, and it has not been established that there is a need or a constitutional basis for judicial intervention to resolve political gerrymandering claims. The costs of judicial intervention will be severe, and such intervention requires courts to make policy choices that are not of a kind suited for judicial discretion. Nor is there any clear stopping point to prevent the gradual evolution of a requirement of roughly proportional representation for every cohesive political group. Accordingly, political gerrymandering claims present a nonjusticiable political question.

UPDATE: Patterico is out on the window ledge today.

It sure sounds like she is saying that the Equal Protection Clause requires that members of protected classes be represented on legislative bodies in numbers corresponding to their proportion in the general population. If that is indeed what she is saying, it is just stunningly wrong.

If you have a plausible alternate explanation of her comment in the context of Section 2, please let me know. But please: whisper when you do it. That window ledge is mighty narrow, and you don’t want to startle me.

But A.W. of FreeSpeech.com comments on Patterico’s comments:

I don’t agree at all about this. To my reading, she seems to regard the issue of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and proportional rights to be two different issues. She seems to be saying, more or less, that as they addressed the concerns raised by the VRA, she had to make sure they didn’t violate the constituiton, either.

And to me, I don’t see any reason to think she is talking about racial gerrymandering or any similar issue when talking about proportional representation. It does reveal that she apparently is not inundated with the code words that they teach us for these concepts in law reviews, and in Ivy League law schools. But contrary to what Sustein says, the one-person-one-vote principle is PRECISELY a requirement of proportional representation. The fact that the Lani Guinier crowd uses it as a code term for racial proportionality doesn’t mean Miers is talking about that.

Mind you, I am not a blind Miers defender. I am more “wait and see” but at the moment I don’t support this nomination. I want the best for this Court, and I am not even close to being convinced she is the best. And I would favor them asking her to decipher this comment if only to quiet your concerns. But I think you’re wrong here. She has not made a clear error, contrary to what you say, except maybe in failing to use the accepted code words.

The New York Times slams (via OTB):

But her responses were so unimpressive that the top Republican and Democrat on that committee took the extraordinary step yesterday of instructing her to give it another try, this time with more “particularity and precision.” She thus became perhaps the most important judicial nominee in history to be offered what amounts to a do-over on a take-home quiz.

Ian has the audio.

Michelle has some commentary, as does Captain Ed.

QT Monster has the transcript.

That’s what liberal columnist Richard Cohen says today.

Conservatives — and some liberals — have long argued that the right to an abortion ought to be regulated by states. They have a point. My guess is that the more populous states would legalize it, the smaller ones would not, and most women would be protected. The prospect of some women traveling long distances to secure an abortion does not cheer me — I’m pro-choice, I repeat — but it would relieve us all from having to defend a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument.

Captain Ed reacts with:

Originalism could hardly get a better explanation these days, especially in this media environment. Originalism limits the Court’s ability to proclaim policy by “fiat”, as Cohen rightly calls it. It protects against ends-justifying-means rationalizations, and it requires the Legislature to do its job instead. The judicial restraint in originalism keeps the courts from having to revisit questions about its self-created right to privacy with silly questions about the constitutionality of barring prostitution. The debate on whether laws banning prostitution or drug use are good public policy belongs in Congress and the state legislatures, not in the courts.

Industrialblog agrees.

Cohen’s analysis is obvious. But it’s nice to see even liberals starting to get it: That extending rights to the unborn is a quintessential liberal issue.

Nilu agrees with the analogy but not the conclusion presented by Cohen.

This is a classic case proving how extending an analogy does not complete an argument. What Cohen ends up proving is the futility and hypocrisy of something called “law”.

Andrew over at Confirm Them points out that Cohen can’t have it both ways.

He seems to want to keep Griswold though. Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. As I’ve written before at this site, the legal theory of the two cases (substantive due process or SDP) is indistinguishable, and equally bogus in both cases.

Steven also picked up on this, but from the opposite perspective.

I shudder to think of the consequences of this anti-Griswold point of view wins out.

Blue Moon Mama is sticking with the ends justifies the means.

Though I understand Cohen’s reasoning, I find it hard to believe that a pro-choice woman would be as quick to find such a scenario a welcome relief from defending musty old Roe.

If you ever find yourself in jail, and are considering an escape attempt, just remember, you can’t fit through the toilet drain. And besides, if you could, you probably would rather be in jail than end up where it would lead you.

Kevin Aylward astutely points out that Schumer can’t have it both ways. There is lots of buzz regarding the NY Daily News story indicating that Bush knew about Rove’s role in the Plame affair (after the fact) and did not fire Rove.

Schumer writes, “In light of these reports, I urge you to make public the details of Mr. Rove’s involvement, your understanding of that involvement, and an explanation as to why Mr. Rove was neither dismissed nor his security clearance revoked when you learned of his participation in the Plame affair.”

What’s so shockingly hypocritical about Schumer statement is that he has yet to address the exact same questions about his involvement in the case of two of his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffers who admitted to illegally obtaining the credit report of Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele in July 2005.

Many other bloggers are in attack mode.

Egalia asks:

In other words, Bush is a co-conspirator and a liar. No wonder the pResident didn’t want to testify under oath.

…

Can presidents be indicted?

Scott McClellan yesterday said that he “would challenge the overall accuracy of” the article.

Stygius has a quick of quotes timeline and then summarizes:

From this it follows from his September 30, 2003 press conference that he was most likely lying, and in June 2004 was most definitely lying; furthermore that President Bush possibly misled Justice Department investigators, and all simply because they didn’t think they would get caught.

These are the two main quotes that appear to lead to Stygius and others screaming “he lied!”:

The Cunning Realist points to this article, which leads with:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.

and

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson

Given what we apparently now know about Russert’s likely conversation with Rove, I fail to see how this is a “Bush Lied” moment. Maybe I’m missing something, but I think this is a witch hunt leading to nowhere, particularly since Plame’s status as a CIA employee was apparently common knowledge at the time.

I wonder what surprises there will be in the impending indictments, though Drew McKissick points out that the law is a bit ambiguous (or at least the application of the law in this case) and doubts indictments will come down at all. Mark Noonan wonders if all the press is because the Iraq elections went off so well:

Given that the Iraqi elections appear to have gone off splendidly, we can expect our MSM to seek anything else to talk about. It seems as though the Independent Counsel investigating the Plame non-scandal is about complete his business, so the media is already breathless with speculation about just how many senior Bush Administration officials will be indicted.

Mostly, it is a big yawner because there is zero actual indication that anyone in the Bush Administration broke even so much as the spirit of a law, let alone its letter. Be that as it may, it will be much in the news and our leftwing friends will be harping on it quite a lot.

And after all that, go read this start to finish summary of the Plame affair from The Weekly Standard.

Everyone seems to be wondering why Tim Russert is keeping silent on his conversation with Libby.

NBC was clear–Libby did not talk to Russert about Plame’s identity. But did Russert tell Libby? Back to the NBC statement:

“Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby. Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame’s name and her role at the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.” [Emphasis added.]

What’s plainly left unsaid in the carefully worded statement is whether Russert, without mentioning her name or specific status, told Libby that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.

The AP is reporting that it was Russert who gave Libby the info on Plame. The AP also apparently is taking Russerts carefully worded statement at face value and not parsing it.

Libby’s testimony stated that Rove had told him about his contact with Novak and that Libby had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson’s wife from NBC’s Tim Russert, according to a person familiar with the information shown to Rove.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson’s wife’s identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it.

Jane Hamsher has this to say: “Forget the Avian flu, contact memory loss seems to be spreading like wildfire.”