I’m a mindless tribalist, and I support Elena Kagan

Save me, please, from progressive Democrats. They’re using the same red herrings and specious arguments right-wingers use. Elena Kagan has no record like…oh, let’s just drag somebody with no record in here like Harriet Miers, and then we get to compare Obama’s thought process with Bush’s, and then we get to say Obama’s no better than Bush, and he’s trying to expand executive power just like Bush was, and because Kagan hasn’t said much about this she too believes in executive power, and therefore she’s definitely going to make the Supreme Court even more conservative than it already is.

And also, by the way, if you support Kagan because you elected Obama for his judgment, you’re no better than the slobbering idiots who believed in Bush.

I know it’s hard to believe intelligent people are actually arguing this way, but here’s just one example, by Glenn Greenwald in Slate:

If the choice is Kagan, you’ll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence: “I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it’s quite possible she’ll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice.” In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama’s choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it’s Obama choice. Isn’t that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism? Democrats love to mock the Right for their propensity to engage in party-line, close-minded adherence to their Leaders, but compare what conservatives did with Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers to what progressives are almost certain to do with Obama’s selection of someone who is, at best, an absolute blank slate.

And one more carping comment: Glenn, those people who stick with their leaders are closed-minded, not close.

One Latin cross in the desert

Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields making the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.

One Latin cross in the desert does evoke far more than religion. It evokes the blinders Justice Kennedy and the four others (all, not coincidentally, Catholics) don’t even know they have. It evokes the presumption of those in a majority religion that all soldiers’ graves need crosses. It evokes the faulty logic that if this one big cross in the desert is removed, all the soldiers whose graves do have crosses will therefore be forgotten.

The whole case came about because the Park Service wouldn’t allow a Buddhist soldiers’ memorial on the site. It seems to me you either take the cross down, or allow all of the 41 “emblems of belief” permitted for use on government graves by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Including this:

and even this (you have to guess what the “A” stands for):

The New Yorker cartoon contest

For these cartoons you always have to figure out who’s talking, and here it looks like it’s the guy who looks either like Roberts or Alito, although it must be Alito because the guy on the end is holding the gavel (but why is he smoking? and does Roberts wear glasses?).

It’s very funny that Alito, if it is Alito, and Ginsburg are having a tug of war over Kennedy, and that Roberts and Alito are holding hands. Poor Stevens and Sotomayor are marginalized, down there at the end, but what’s Scalia doing down there? And where’s Thomas?

It takes a type of thinking I can’t even conceptualize to come up with cartoon captions: it’s clearly not auditory, and it’s not purely visual; it’s inductive and deductive at the same time.

They have special brains, those people who can do it. And for this cartoon: extra-special brains.

Stay tuned.

An open apology to Sonia Sotomayor

Can I take it back? I’m so sorry. Not only do you not go to church anymore, but there’s this, from the Times yesterday:

Studies have consistently shown that the 57 percent of Catholics who rarely or never attend Mass are far more liberal on political and cultural issues than Catholics who attend weekly or at least once a month.

And I hope it’s true, that you have a sharp tongue. You’re going to need it to deal with those four who walk in lockstep in matters of faith and everything else.

Supremes court Jesus

Jesus is the son of God; his body is actually there in that Communion wafer; and, forty days after coming back to life after his crucifixion, that whole body of his ascended into heaven. Not to mention that the Pope is infallible.

Soon we will have six out of nine Supreme Court justices who believe these things, in a country that, at least according to President Obama, doesn’t consider itself a “Christian nation.”

Next time, please, an atheist or an agnostic. And maybe make them have a law degree from a non-ivy-league law school, to keep poor John Paul Stevens (who is now also the only Protestant) company.