The Neo-Malthusian Tribulation

A couple of significant recent articles by Murray Waas and Walter Pincus indicate that indictments are looming for high administration officials Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in connection with the Plame investigation.

In discussing the Waas article, Congressman John Conyers asks: "Why Won't Scooter Libby Grant Judith Miller a Personal Waiver?"

"Libby met with Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame. This meeting, six days before the publication of Robert Novak's infamous column outing Mrs. Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame), is a "central focus" of the Fitzgerald investigation.

The kicker: "Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller's decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003."

Kevin Drum gives the "nickel version" of the theory deduced from Pincus's Washington Post article by Armando at DailyKos.

"In July 2003, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told reporters that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had been responsible for sending him on his fact finding trip to Niger the previous year.

However, virtually every source says that's not true. The CIA maintains that senior officials in the counterproliferation division chose Wilson, and that Plame's only role was to write a memo about his credentials that they asked her to write.

In fact, as of July 2003, there was only one source that said the trip was Plame's idea: the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which had written a memo in June about the affair.

Therefore, that State Department memo must have been Rove and Libby's source of information about Plame — and if that's the case, it's bad news for the White House since the memo clearly marked the information about Plame as classified. (Further tidbit: Is it possible that this memo was what Rove was talking about when he told Time's Matt Cooper that "material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt on Wilson's mission"?)"

JUSTICE KENNEDY: So a candidate says, "This is the worst decision that's come down since Dred Scott, it's a plague on our people, it's an insult to the system, but I'm not telling you how I'll vote." (Laughter.)

MR. GILBERT: Your Honor, that's the point.

Keep an eye on Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002) when John Roberts tries to evade specific questions during his confirmation hearings.

In Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, Wersal, a Republican judicial candidate, along with the Republican Party, challenged a Minnesota ethical canon that prohibited candidates for judicial office from announcing their position on disputed legal issues.

The Supreme Court's decision was 5-4. Guess who voted in favor of Wersal and the Republicans? Guess who voted that it's okay for judicial candidates to announce their positions on disputed legal issues? Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and O'Connor, the five conservative conspirators of Bush v. Gore infamy, that's who.

Think the Republicans will still be agreeing with the decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White when Roberts comes up before the Senate? They'll probably say something like, "Oh, but that's different, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White concerned elections, not the appointment of a federal judge." But why should that make any difference?

Oyez has a brief summary of the case, an MP3 file of the oral argument, and a transcript of the oral argument.

"Judicial activism," "strict constructionism" nothing but meaningless, imprecise fluff - Scalia

MR. GILBERT: [H]e talked about his judicial philosophy. He has said that he can't talk about his judicial philosophy. He did. He said, "I'm a strict constructionist," and he criticized the Minnesota Supreme Court for being a judicial activist. But more --

JUSTICE SCALIA: What does that mean? I mean, that's so fuzzy, that doesn't mean --

MR. GILBERT: Well, but --

JUSTICE SCALIA: -- that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't say whether you're going adopt the incorporation doctrine, whether you believe in substantive due process. It is totally imprecise. It's just nothing but fluff.

Oyez.org is a great U.S. Supreme Court resource. For example, the site has a podcast, a collection of audio files from the arguments of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts before the court.

Oyez.org has extensive resources for a number of significant Supreme court cases, such as Griswold v. Connecticut, Bush v. Gore, and Roe v. Wade, including case briefs, links to full text opinions on Findlaw and MP3 files of oral arguments. Oyez.org also sells a collection of oral arguments on CD in Real Audio format.

Recently, Oyez began posting transcripts of the oral arguments in some cases. Sometimes the oral arguments contain little known facts that one can't find in the published opinion. For example, the oral argument in Roe v. Wade reveals that it was legal in Texas for a woman to perform an abortion on herself.

The State of Texas, represented by Assistant State Attorney General Jay Floyd, began its oral argument to the nine black-robed male Justices in Roe with this choice remark:

"Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the Court: It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word."

Justice Potter Stewart is famous for his remark in Jacobellis v. Ohio

"I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court's decisions since Roth and Alberts, that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. "

In Roe, Stewart had this to say about freedom of choice:

JUSTICE STEWART: How do you suggest, if you're right, how do you... what procedure would you suggest for any pregnant female in the State of Texas ever to get any judicial consideration of this constitutional claim?

MR. FLOYD: Your Honor, let me answer your question with a statement, if I may. I do not believe it can be done. There are situations in which, of course as the Court knows, no remedy is provided. Now I think she makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant.

That is the time of the choice. It's like, more or less, the first three or four years of our life we don't remember anything. But, once a child is born, a woman no longer has a choice, and I think pregnancy then terminates that choice.

JUSTICE STEWART: Maybe she makes her choice when she decides to live in Texas.

Well they are, aren't they?

Onward Decadence and Bohemianism!

Senatorial candidate Katherine Harris (R-FL) claims the mainstream media has published altered photographs of her in an effort to cause her make-up to look buffoonish.