This post over at Ben Domenech’s made me laugh out loud:

VA Gov. Mark Warner has discovered a new God-given right to raise taxes:

“D.C. should have the right to raise taxes on its own citizens as much as it would like,” Warner said. “That’s a God-given American right.”

I wonder why the Founders failed to recognize that right, back when George the Third was using it to great effect.

Well, I’m sure the Founders included it in a penumbra somewhere…

The ACLU has filed suit challenging portions of the Patriot Act.

I’ve long considered joining the ACLU for the same reason that Michael Moore is a card-carrying member of the NRA, but now I may have a legitimate reason to do so.

[Thanks for the kind words of introduction, Alex. I feel a bit like Tom Green when he hosted Letterman...I'm just a goofy guy with my own little show, here to fill in for a master.]

Why don’t we jump right in? Roger Simon didn’t appreciate Bush’s words on gay marriage yesterday. The part quoted by Simon is:

I am mindful that we’re all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own,” the president said. “I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts.”

Instapundit and Simon’s commenters take a bit more reasoned tone, and Simon updates his post to back off his original response. There are still a couple of things worth pointing out. First, Simon says the following:

Sinners?… Whoa! I thought we had separation of church and state in this country. What about those of us who don’t believe in “original sin?” Hey, George, I’m not a perfect man, but I don’t think of myself as a “sinner.”

Well, I don’t like to think of myself as a sinner, either. I doubt many of us do. But since “sinner” is a concept brought to us (in this country) by the Judeo-Christian tradition (and that’s the way in which Bush uses it in this context), and the definition of “sin” is “an offense against religious or moral law,” one is defined as a sinner according to the tenets of that law. In this case, that means that lying, disobedience to your parents, and covetousness could all qualify me or you for that appellation. And I would guess that 99% or more of us have done at least one of the three in our lifetime. I don’t like to think of myself as a “criminal,” either, but I broke the speed limit multiple times last night. Nor do I consider myself an “infidel,” but under the Islamic law, I probably am.

That was mainly a semantic argument. The main point that needs to be addressed is that many folks are just reading this statement in the wrong light, i.e., “homosexuals are sinners, because they are homosexual.” While that’s a possible interpretation, it probably misses Bush’s real point. In trying to understand what Bush was saying, it’s important to consider his constituency. While he’s not a guy who is particularly fond of nuance, this is a case where nuance matters.

Did anyone really expect Bush to come out and say, “I think gay marriage is a great idea, one which we should include in the Constitution immediately”? Nope. But what he did say, in my opinion, was actually pretty favorable for homosexuals. Bush’s audience for this part of his statement was obviously the “hard Christian right” (”those who try to take a speck out”). In case you haven’t listened to Christian radio recently, homosexuality is usually trumpeted as one of the Big Sins. It’s one of those “sure signs” that America is soon to follow Rome down the slope of debauchery to some Tim Burton realization of the deepest level of the Inferno. Considering that this was whom Bush was addressing (also, please note that here Bush was using the lingo of those to whom his comments were targeted, and it could be argued that he was trying to make his point clear to his target…not that he thought it would be the best way to convey his idea to the public as a whole), an ambiguous reference to homosexuality as a speck hardly meshes with the typical hard right concept of homosexuality as a Big Sin.

If anyone has cause for real concern about these comments by Bush yesterday, it may be the hard right…and even moreso when one considers the original passage from which Bush quoted: “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5, NIV) Considering that context, I’d take “speck” over “plank” and “hypocrite” anyday.

Update 9:30 CST: [Actually, not much of an update, I just forgot to put it in the main post.] Glenn Reynolds says something in the post linked above that underlines the importance of the “speck vs. plank” distinction: “Most Americans, I think, are increasingly comfortable with gay people, but not as comfortable with the idea that gayness itself is truly acceptable.” If most Americans still think of gayness as a “plank,” then that should make the President’s comments a bit more encouraging to gays.

Update 9:31 CST: Let’s head one thing off at the pass. Much of the above is theoretical and could be giving Bush entirely too much credit for nuance, yes. Even if this is so, I still don’t think the President’s comments were as bad for gays or as religiously ominous as some commentators fear.

I’ll be gone on vacation until Sunday in the wilds of Colorado. But never fear–Pauly will still be blogging, and Bobby Allison-Gallimore of the great blog The Rattler will also be guest blogging while I’m gone. Adios!

“The nation of Dubai banned the movie Charlie’s Angels because it’s ‘offensive to the religion of Islam.’ Apparently, the religion of Islam is offended by anything without a plot.”
– Jon Stewart

“Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.”
– F.A. Hayek

After my Constitutional Law class in my first year of law school, I found myself in a very odd position as to where I stood on Constitutional issues, particularly when it came to the Ninth Amendment and the Right of Privacy. I discovered that while I generally approved of the results of those decisions, I didn’t like their basis–that some things were fundamental rights and some weren’t, the decision therein to be made by, at minimum, five people.

However, I’ve just finished reading Randy Barnett’s excellent paper Justice Kennedy’s Libertarian Revolution: Lawrence v. Texas, where Prof. Barnett argues that there can be an entirely different way of looking at personal liberty issues:

Though he never acknowledges it, Justice Kennedy here is employing what I have called a “presumption of liberty” that requires the government to justify its restriction on liberty, instead of requiring the citizen to establish that the liberty being exercised is somehow “fundamental.” In this manner, once an action is deemed to be a proper exercise of liberty (as opposed to license), the burden shifts to the government.

After some consideration, I find myself convinced by Barnett’s argument. There’s a clearly articulable legal standard to be found here, and the presence of a “presumption of liberty” in the Constitution seems to me to be in keeping with the intent of the Framers. I’d urge you to read Prof. Barnett’s whole article. It’s extraordinarily convincing.

I hope that this story isn’t true.

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

I’m sorry, but kidnapping and extortion is not the American way, no matter what the cause. This is disgusting beyond measure. Kidnapping civilians in war to use as hostages is a war crime, and those who perpetrate them should be punished accordingly.

(via Mark Kleiman)

A couple follow-ups to some posts from the past few days:

• Wind Rider has some corroboration for his thesis that we’re slow playing the Saudis and redacted the portions in the Congressional Report so that they wouldn’t know to what extent we’re on to them. My jury’s still out on this one, though.

• Randy Barnett has a follow-up to his previous article that I blogged about here. I think that he’s definitely cleared up his point now:
  

  It also fits another observation that I had assumed was unrelated but now suspect is not: that in the past 5-10 years, since talk-radio, the Internet, and now FoxNews, the Left no longer monopolizes mass access to factual information. This very new contrast between the two media may account for the perception that the Left is doing this more (when they really are not). The new media is available as a contrast and is itself identifying more instances of this happening on the Left and in the old media. In addition, the very existence of the new media could be both provoking the Left into being more vocal in asserting these sorts of beliefs, and quieting out the Right who feel less need these days to do so because they see their views represented somewhere in the media, making the Left appear more strident by comparison.

  I think that this point, and an earlier point he makes in the follow-up helps to clarify his comments enormously. So I retract my criticism of his thinking as “silly” because there’s a lot of truth to some of what he says. I’ve noticed a lot of arguing over facts, as opposed to interpretations of facts, between left and right as well. Though I’m not entirely sure how much this is a new thing.

• Finally, Ipse Dixit notes that UPI has “corrected” their story on the 9/11 Commission to bring it more in line with reality. Not that the article still doesn’t contain errors.

Rand Simberg has the lowdown on the President facing a quagmire in the aftermath of the war.