Tag Archives: o’connor

2009 in Books

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For the last few years I’ve been keeping a list of the books I read. (Here’s last year’s list.) What strikes me about 2009 is the number of just plain big books I’ve read. In the winter was The President’s House: A History, by William Seale. In the spring there was Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein. In the summer, inspired by the anniversary of Apollo 11, I read This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, by William E. Burrows. And in the fall I read Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, by Peter Watson.

By far, my favorite book this year was The President’s House. I have rarely become so immersed in a book as I did in this one. In two volumes, it’s an incredibly leisurely stroll through 200 years of White House history, from the building of the house up through the present day. Along the way you meet all the presidential families who have lived there, and some of their long-serving aides. You live through weddings, deaths, funeral processions, wars. You experience the fire set by the British in 1814, the Lincolns’ life during the Civil War, the installation of gas lamps and then electricity, the utter reimagining of the house by Theodore Roosevelt, the creation of the West and East Wings and the Oval Office, the destruction of the Oval Office by fire in 1929 and its rebuilding, the complete gutting of the White House by Harry Truman so that a steel skeleton could replace the crumbling infrastructure and the two sub-basements could be added, and the postwar decades. The book is a presidential history, a social and cultural history, and an architectural history. It was a very special reading experience for me and I was sad when it ended. I feel like I know the White House much more intimately than I ever did. I fantasize about taking up residence in one of the several bedroom suites on the third floor (which you can’t really see from the outside, since it’s hidden by the parapets), hanging out up there in the solarium or the music room on a snowy day.

Anyway, here’s the complete list of books I’ve read this year, in chronological order:

The President’s House: A History, William Seale (2 vols.)

On Being a Therapist, Jeffrey A. Kottler

The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem (started)

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Rick Perlstein

Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, David Greenberg

Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, Will Bunch

Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy, Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon

Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice, Joan Biskupic

The American Supreme Court, Robert G. McCloskey (started)

This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, William E. Burrows

The Fabric of the Heavens: The Development of Astronomy and Dynamics, Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, Peter Watson

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, David D. Burns

Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vincent Bugliosi

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vincent Bugliosi (a third of it)

The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold

Here’s to more happy reading in 2010.

Justice Stevens

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So, it looks like Justice Stevens might be retiring next spring, or so say the Supreme Court kremlinologists. Justices usually hire clerks a year in advance, and Stevens has hired just one for the 2010-11 term instead of the usual four. The man’s going to be 90 years old in April, so it wouldn’t necessarily be surprising. But I thought he was going to stick around until death, and he apparently still plays tennis regularly. Anyway, retirement announcements don’t usually come until the spring, so we won’t know for a while.

If Stevens announces retirement effective at the beginning of the summer recess, like Souter did, that would peg his retirement at about 300 days from now, and he might just miss surpassing Justice Field as the second-longest-serving justice. If he announces a retirement upon the swearing-in of his successor, like O’Connor did, then that would be a couple of months longer (or even more, if we get a Roberts–>Miers–>Alito situation, like we did four years ago), and in that case he would definitely surpass Field, leaving him second only to William O. Douglas in longevity — who happens to be the man Stevens replaced on the bench in 1975.

Think about that. If Stevens retires next spring, then only two justices will have held that particular Supreme Court seat since 1939. And who held it before Douglas? Louis Brandeis! That’s how long it’s been.

Scotusblog on Souter

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Tom Goldstein at ScotusBlog has interesting thoughts on Justice Souter’s retirement and his possible replacements.

David Souter will be the first Supreme Court justice whose career I’ll remember from start to finish. I was too young to know about Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment; I was 16 when Souter was appointed in the summer of 1990, living at my aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey on a break from Japan. Souter’s will be one of the shortest terms in recent Supreme Court history, at just 19 years. O’Connor served for more than 24 years; Rehnquist, more than 33; Blackmun, 24; White, 31; Marshall, 24; Brennan, 31. The last justice to serve fewer than 20 years was Lewis Powell, from 1972 to 1987.

So Souter will retire at age 69 and go back to New Hampshire, where he can spend the rest of his life hiking, reading, and eating his daily lunch of a whole apple (including the core) and yogurt, seemingly unchanged by the city where he’s spent the last two decades. I wish him a happy retirement.

Supreme Court Struggle

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If the Tony Awards are the gay Superbowl, then the last week in June is the Superbowl for law geeks. The last week in June is the final week of the Supreme Court’s term, the week when the Court usually issues its rulings on the toughest or most controversial issues on the year’s docket. These often result in the most complicated lineups, with pluralities, or splintered majorities, or numerous concurrences and dissents, which is why it takes so long to get the opinions issued. (Conveniently, this timing also gives the Justices an excuse to get the heck out of Dodge right after they rile up millions of people.)

There’s been a lot of anguish among liberals about Monday’s three 5-4 decisions that could be construed as leading to “conservative” results: Morse v. Frederick, in which the Court found it constitutional for a principal to punish a student for unfurling a banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a school-sponsored event; Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, in which the Court essentially said that corporations and organizations have the presumption of freedom to endorse candidates by flooding the election system with their money; and Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., in which the Court said that taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives merely because they are taxpayers. Additionally, tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., the Court will probably gut affirmative action laws in two school segregation decisions by a 5-4 vote.

None of this should be surprising. As the Washington Post’s Andrew Cohen wrote today:

Justice Samuel Alito is more conservative than was his predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor? Go figure. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is a lot less beholden to court precedent than we were all led to believe? Can’t be. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee over and over again during his confirmation hearing that he would respect precedent and try to build consensus on the court. Justice Anthony Kennedy isn’t the second coming of the moderate O’Connor or the more liberal Souter? What a surprise! The election of 2004 (and 2000) mattered in shaping the court? Who knew?

However – and this is where my post take a 90-degree turn:

I don’t think the conservative justices are demons. (Not all of them, anyway.)

Because the thing is – law is hard. If these were easy decisions, they wouldn’t need to be decided by the Supreme Court.

Okay, not totally true – there are plenty of 9-0 decisions each term. But there are always a bunch of 5-4 decisions as well, and even 6-3 decisions.

Granted, not every 5-4 decision is hard. For example, Bush v. Gore was easy as pie but five justices blatantly and deliberately misread the law.

But they’re usually hard.

There are many times when I read (or read about) a Supreme Court decision and feel angry or annoyed at the result, and I think to myself, “Damn that Justice X!” or “Damn that Justice Y!” And yet… sometimes, underneath my anger and certitude, I find myself uneasy. Because even if I’m angry at the result, I’ll think to myself, actually… those justices do have a point. Or at the least they have a good argument.

I’m not too angry at the student speech decision – the majority made clear that it’s a narrow decision. (It was only Thomas, in his lone concurrence, who wrote that students should have no free speech rights at all, not even as to political speech.)

As for the decision about the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, it wasn’t really a case about the separation of church and state; it was a case about standing. (This sums it up well enough.) Is the commingling of church and state an issue that’s so crucial that it should trump the usual rules of standing? You can argue no, because isn’t the Court only supposed to rule on actual controversies between aggrieved parties? You can argue yes, because if there’s no standing here, than where are we supposed to turn when the government violates the First Amendment? (Arguably, a secular institution could apply for Faith-Based Office funding and then sue when it’s denied that funding.)

Then there’s the campaign finance decision. On the one hand, shouldn’t Congress be allowed to make laws that try to fix our screwed-up campaign finance system? On the other hand, under the First Amendment right to free speech, shouldn’t an organization have the right to spend money on ads to take positions on the issues of the day, even if those ads happen to mention political candidates? Aren’t organizations allowed to campaign in favor of candidates?

I don’t really know where I stand with regard to many Court decisions. It doesn’t really matter what I think – I’m not a Supreme Court justice, I don’t have to make the decisions. But for my own benefit, for the sake of my own intellectual integrity, I sometimes struggle with these matters. (And heck – I just find it interesting.)

The fact is, I think I agree with the so-called “conservatives” more often than I’d like to. Not all the time – but more than I’d like to. And that bothers me.

The fact is, these are hard decisions. (Say it again: “Law is hard!”) They’re not cut and dried. The law does not exist in a vacuum; there is a tension between the law’s crisp, satisfying logic and the injustice it can wreak on actual human beings.

The problem, as Dahlia Lithwick pointed out today, is that the majority on the Roberts Court – and particularly the newcomers Roberts and Alito – just seem “mean.” But it’s not really that they’re mean; it’s that they seem to lack humanity.

We’re looking for some sort of acknowledgement from the majority that these are hard decisions, not cut and dried; that the law does not exist in a vacuum; that there is a tension between the law’s crisp, satisfying logic and the injustice it can wreak on actual human beings.

The justices avoid any mention of humanity because they’re afraid to admit to us that they themselves are human. That’s why they wear black robes – to create the illusion that they’re high priests with exclusive access to the knowledge of What the Law Is. They fear that if they admit that these are hard questions, they might lose legitimacy in the eyes of the American people.

But they would appear more legitimate to us if they openly struggled with these issues. They would appear more legitimate if they acknowledged the truth – that the world exists in shades of gray.

IENJTFPS

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I’ve begun working with a career counselor, and she thought it would be helpful for me to take two standardized tests: the Strong Interest Inventory, which evaluates your career interests, and the MBTI, which evaluates your personality type along four dichotomies: introvert (I) vs. extrovert (E), sensing (S) vs. intuiting (N), thinking (T) vs. feeling (F), and judging (J) vs. perceiving (P). I’ve taken abbreviated forms of the MBTI in the past, twice, a long time ago: the first time I came out INTJ, the second time INFP.

I just took the full MBTI for the first time, and it’s so frustrating. It’s a bunch of theoretical questions followed by two alternatives. For instance, do you prefer a schedule or do you prefer to be spontaneous? Do you usually introduce people at parties or do you usually get introduced? Do you prefer a boss who is good-natured and inconsistent, or one who is sharp-tongued and logical? (Can I pick good-natured and logical but also compassionate?)

I had a hard time with many of the questions. I don’t think I have a consistent personality type. I’m a ball of contradictions. Sometimes I want to be alone and sometimes I want to be around other people. I’m more social than I used to be, but it was something I had to learn. Am I more open or more reserved? It depends on how I’m feeling. Do I prefer a schedule or do I prefer to be spontaneous? It depends. Does my head usually rule over my heart or vice versa? No clue. My head and my heart are in constant conflict. I think too much and I feel too much. Do I prefer logic or emotion? Coldly logical people bother me, but I don’t like mawkish sentiment either.

Grrr.

You know, if I were on the Supreme Court I’d be Justice Kennedy. No, O’Connor. Or maybe Breyer.

Granted, this test doesn’t determine the outcome of my life, or anything, really. It’s just supposed to be insightful. But it still pisses me off because it tries to pigeonhole me into categories, and I don’t like to be pigeonholed. I mean, look. Once I came out INTJ and once INFP. And on the I/E questions 10 years ago, I came out almost equally introverted and extroverted.

Anyway, I’ll see how I wind up scoring this time. It will be really interesting. Or maybe not.

Alito, Kennedy, Gays

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Here’s an interesting post touching on Alito, gay rights, and Kennedy becoming the new swing justice. See the comments as well. Of course, Kennedy’s becoming the swing vote merely means that the Court will move to the right, not that Kennedy will move to the left, but Balkin notes that Kennedy “supports gay rights claims a bit more than O’Connor.” One of the commenters notes that in Lawrence, O’Connor’s concurrence was limited to the issue of equal protection, whereas Kennedy’s majority opinion was broader, focusing on due process and liberty while also incorporating O’Connor’s equal protection argument.

Another commenter thinks that Chief Justice Roberts might be a swing vote on gay rights.

Finally, here’s a piece on Alito and a couple of gay harrassment cases.

Thoughts on Alito

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Get used to saying “Scalia, Alito” rapidly, as in, “Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas,” who will be voting closely together in lots of cases.

Fortunately, there are still five pretty solid votes on the Court for the area I care most about, gay rights – Stevens, Kennedy (who wrote Lawrence and Romer), Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Now that O’Connor’s presumably gone, I think Kennedy’s going to become the new swing vote. Also interesting and still semi-applicable: this SCOTUSblog article from June about a possible “gang of three” – just replace “Rehnquist” with “Alito” in the following excerpt:

On a Court somewhat more conservative without O’Connor, Kennedy’s influence seems sure to grow. He has a chance to become the new balance wheel, a role that was filled so routinely by O’Connor. (Even if there were to form a solid Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas-Roberts phalanx, they would still need Kennedy to prevail, and he would not be with such a quartet automatically.) Kennedy also has more influence than is sometimes credited to him. He has a store of common sense that saves him from ideological rigidity, and that steers him away from agenda-driven voting. He has an even deeper sense of what history asks of the few who become members of the Court. Those are summonses to the use of sound judgment.

As I’ve said recently, despite my relatively liberal social views, my judicial views have been in flux lately. Alito seems not be an ideologue or an asshole like Scalia, which is good. I prefer him to someone like Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen. (And hey – go, New Jersey, with two out of nine seats!)

The Harriet Miers nomination was bad for the Court as an institution. The Alito nomination is good for the Court, regardless of how good or bad it turns out to be for the country.

The Krauthammer Compromise

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From Miers’s withdrawal letter:

As you know, members of the Senate have indicated their intention to seek documents about my service in the White House…

Repeatedly in the course of the process of confirmation for nominees for other positions, I have steadfastly maintained that the independence of the Executive Branch be preserved and its confidential documents and information not be released to further a confirmation process. I feel compelled to adhere to this position, especially related to my own nomination… I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield.

From the White House statement in response:

It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House — disclosures that would undermine a President’s ability to receive candid counsel.

Wow. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer couldn’t have scripted it any better. But he didn’t have to – this is exactly how he scripted it last Friday, and the White House was listening:

Finally, a way out: irreconcilable differences over documents.

For a nominee who, unlike John Roberts, has practically no record on constitutional issues, such documentation is essential for the Senate to judge her thinking and legal acumen. But there is no way that any president would release this kind of information — “policy documents” and “legal analysis” — from such a close confidante. It would forever undermine the ability of any president to get unguarded advice.

That creates a classic conflict, not of personality, not of competence, not of ideology, but of simple constitutional prerogatives: The Senate cannot confirm her unless it has this information. And the White House cannot allow release of this information lest it jeopardize executive privilege.

Hence the perfectly honorable way to solve the conundrum: Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive’s prerogatives, the Senate expresses appreciation for this gracious acknowledgment of its needs and responsibilities, and the White House accepts her decision with the deepest regret and with gratitude for Miers’s putting preservation of executive prerogative above personal ambition.

Faces saved. And we start again.

Bush was clearly laying the groundwork for this the other day:

When George W. Bush was asked this morning about a report that the White House is thinking through contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers’ nomination, he responded with what we thought was a non sequitur: Rather than confirming or denying the report, the president said that he will refuse to release documents reflecting the advice Miers has given him as a member of his White House staff.

It wasn’t an answer to the question he was asked, but… maybe it wasn’t quite the non sequitur we thought it was, either…

At his Cabinet meeting this morning, the president all but blurted out that he wouldn’t and couldn’t turn over such documents without jeopardizing the ability of future presidents to hear frank advice and “to make sound decisions.”

And like clockwork, the mainstream press is now reporting that a “document snag” is threatening to “scuttle” Miers’ nomination. Maybe this is all just coincidence. Maybe Krauthammer was tipped off to a plan already in the works. Or maybe, with Karl Rove distracted by other matters, the president is taking advice from wherever he can find it.

So, there we go – the Krauthammer Compromise. Miers is gone. Her name will never sully the Court.

I wonder who’s next.

Poor O’Connor – she was really hoping to be living it up in Arizona by now, wasn’t she?

Poor Justice Breyer II

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Poor Justice Breyer can’t get a break. His eleven years of having to answer the door, which seemed to be coming to an end, will instead continue even after Roberts is confirmed to the Court. As How Appealing notes, Breyer will continue to be the most junior justice after Roberts becomes Chief, because the Chief Justice is, by definition, the most senior member of the Court. Breyer will have to wait until O’Connor’s replacement gets confirmed – whoever she turns out to be.

(Heh. I said she.)

Roberts as Chief

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There’s been way too much news this past week. Between Katrina and Rehnquist/Roberts, I can’t read the newspapers and blogs fast enough. And I’m pissed that The Note has been on vacation for two and a half weeks. Mark Halperin and his staff will have a lot of catching up to do when they return tomorrow.

It’s not totally suprising that Bush has moved Roberts’s nomination to the Chief Justice position. He’s practically in love with Roberts, and he wasn’t going to name someone who wasn’t a white male as Chief Justice, but he wasn’t going to nominate a white male for the second vacancy. So O’Connor’s replacement will probably be someone non-white or female or both.

On the other hand, Bush has never acted in line with political predictions.

Interesting fact: since Roberts is only 55 only 50 years old, he could wind up having one of the longest Chief Justiceships in American history, second only to that of John Marshall. [Update: or even the longest!]

The switch of Roberts to the Chief Justice’s seat changes the dynamics of Bush’s two appointments. As SCOTUSblog writes, “The nomination of a doctrinaire conservative to replace the Chief Justice could have been explained as ideologically neutral for the Court, as the new nominee would not move that seat to the right. Moving Judge Roberts to the seat of Chief Justice, by contrast, opens up again the debate over what Democrats will describe as the ‘O’Connor’ seat — that of a moderate conservative.”

There’s going to be pressure (again) to replace O’Connor with a moderate. But hasn’t that ship sailed? What if Roberts actually turns out to be the moderate of the two appointments? Ugh. It’s still possible.

At any rate, here’s hoping that Chief Justice Roberts will be presiding over Bush’s impeachment trial soon.

Poor Justice Breyer

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There are a couple of good behind-the-scenes articles today on how the White House, Congress, and outside groups are prepared to react in the event of a Supreme Court retirement and subsequent nomination of a new justice. One conservative group, the Committee for Justice, “plans to feed research to conservative bloggers so they can fact-check and counter opponents’ claims,” according to the Washington Post. I was struck by the reference to bloggers – at the time of the last nomination, in 1994, the Web barely registered in our culture. The next nomination will be the first of the Internet Age.

Anyway, a retirement seems increasingly unlikely this year, especially given Justice Thomas’s remark yesterday that the Court’s recent term ended as “winds of controversy swirled about the Court’s decisions and, unfortunately, about the imagined resignations.” I’ve been annoyed by the media’s breathless speculations, both this week and two years ago, over non-existent retirements. And it would be sad if someone retired now, when the Court is achingly close to breaking the record of the longest period of time without a change in membership. The current record is just over 11 years, from February 3, 1812 (the arrival of Joseph Story) to March 18, 1823 (the death of Henry Brockholst Livingston). Since Stephen Breyer joined the Court on August 3, 1994, the record would presumably be broken around September 15, 2005. The new term doesn’t begin until the first Monday in October, so theoretically Rehnquist or O’Connor could announce his/her retirement now, I guess, but not make it effective until the second half of September. But that seems to me like cheating.

Meanwhile, poor Justice Breyer has been the junior justice for 11 years. That’s 11 years of answering the door. He must be sick of it. If anyone’s looking forward to a new justice, it would be him.

Kelo v. New London

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I didn’t think this day would come, but today I find myself agreeing with Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist (and O’Connor) and think that the more liberal-minded justices (Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer, and sort of Kennedy) issued a really asinine decision this morning.

The Court ruled in Kelo v. New London, 5-4, that governmental entities can take private homes for private economic development. The “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment states: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” A governmental entity has always been allowed to take someone’s private property and provide compensation for doing so, but only if it’s for a “public use” – a highway, a railroad, etc. (There are more examples, but I can’t think of any – I’m far from an expert on the takings clause.) This morning, in an opinion by Justice Stevens (who’s usually one of my favorites), the Court broadly interpreted “public use” and stated that private economic development can be considered a public use if a government entity thinks it is.

What’s weird is that this decision can be interpreted, in one way, as pro-corporation. Meanwhile, Thomas, dissenting, writes, “This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a ‘public use.'”

FYI, Kennedy agreed with the majority, but only based on the specific circumstances of this case. It’s possible that if the facts were a bit different, the decision might have gone the other way.

I don’t know what on earth the majority was thinking with this one.

Interstate Wine

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that a state cannot prohibt wineries located out of state from shipping wine directly to customers in that state. The decision “is expected to increase the sales of wines over the Internet by small, boutique wineries.”

And I love it when things like this happen:

The majority is Kennedy (author), Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The dissent is Rehnquist, Stevens, O’Connor, and Thomas.

Scalia versus Thomas! Stevens and Thomas voting together! Dogs and cats living together!

And how often do you see the Supreme Court having to interpret the amendment that repealed Prohibition?

I’ll really have to read the decision.

I Live Here, Too

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I’ve gotten over being depressed. Now I’m just pissed. I’m not moving to Canada; this is my country, too, and nobody gets to tell me to leave. Forty-nine percent of the country voted against W — and probably even more, but thanks to likely voter fraud, we can’t know for sure. And don’t hate the red states — there are plenty of blue-staters in that part of the country. (Except not so much in Nebraska, Kansas or Oklahoma.)

A 51-percent, 3.5-million popular-vote win seems shocking only because Bush lost the popular vote in 2000. In reality, W won the popular vote by the narrowest margins of any candidate since 1976. That’s not a mandate. That’s not some overwhelming voice of the people.

Two out of three Americans are not evangelical Christians. There are more of us than there are of them.

The gay marriage amendments? Read Evan Wolfson’s piece, to which I linked yesterday. Momentum is on our side. Young people are on our side, and they’re our country’s future. Remember — forty years ago, bans on interracial marriage were still legal.

As for the Supreme Court, Lawrence v. Texas was decided 6-3. If Rehnquist and O’Connor had retired and been replaced by archconservatives after Democratic filibusters were overcome, we still would have won Lawrence, 5-4. We must not relax, though. Justice Stevens, please hang on for a few more years. O’Connor, you too.

This is my fucking country, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some bigots take it away from me.

The Day After

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What I wrote in my head as I lay in bed at 4:00 this morning:

Half of me wants to scream, half of me wants to cry, and half of me is just numb. That doesn’t make mathematical sense, but it hardly matters in a country that no longer cares about reality.

What a disaster.

Bush won 51 percent of the popular vote, a higher percentage than Clinton ever got. No candidate had broken the 50-percent mark since 1988.

All 11 of the anti-gay-marriage amendments passed, even in Oregon.

Social conservatives Jim DeMint (North Carolina), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and John Thune (South Dakota) will now be in the Senate, and probably gay-baiting Mel Martinez (Florida) as well. The Senate will contain 54 Republicans.

Chief Justice Rehnquist is likely dying, so we will soon have Chief Justice Scalia. Moderate Justice O’Connor will probably retire, and liberal Justice Stevens is 84 years old.

The fabled youth vote never showed up. Young people didn’t vote in any greater numbers than last time. As Matt Haughey says, “Fucking stoned slackers. You can never depend on them for anything.”

(Update: Youth turnout actually went up.)

And Bush won the same percentage of gay voters as last time. Absolutely fucking astounding.

Sparky speaks my thoughts.

The Left Coaster writes excellently.

Andrew Sullivan writes about the impact on gays.

I feel reverse schadenfreude. Instead of taking pleasure in others’ pain, I’m taking pain in others’ pleasure. I felt this way in fifth grade, when one of my best friends won both the math and language-arts awards, leaving nothing for me. He was beaming and I was in tears.

I get the message. We’re not wanted here. Fine. I’m ready to secede. Let’s create the Greater Federation of Canada and Former Northeastern United States. It would look something like this. Who’s with me? West Coasters, you can join us too.

Part of me says: We got through the first four years, we can get through the next four.

The other part of me says: Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Supreme Court. That’s 25 years of hell right there.

Last night at around 6:30, before any polls had closed, I turned to Matt, breathed deeply, and said, “Let’s just sit here for a while and appreciate this moment, before any bad news starts coming in.” He looked at me like I was crazy.

What a disaster.

Justice Stevens

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Imagining America if George Bush Chose the Supreme Court

I’d guess that the justices most likely to retire in the next four years would be Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O’Connor, and perhaps Justice Stevens.

Here are the general leanings of the current court members:

conservative — Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas

swing voters — O’Connor, Kennedy

liberal — Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer

Clearly, the biggest blow to social liberals would be the loss of Justice Stevens. A Rehnquist retirement wouldn’t change the court that much; an O’Connor retirement would. But the loss of Justice Stevens would be the biggest deal. You don’t hear much about him. He’s currently the oldest justice, at age 84 (he was appointed by Ford in 1975). However, I’ve read that he’s as mentally sharp as ever, and as one of the most liberal of the liberals, I’m sure he wouldn’t want Bush to name his replacement. He’d die on the bench first. (Which I sure hope doesn’t happen.)

If Bush wins, I fervently hope that the Democrats retake the Senate in 2006, if they don’t do so this year.

Limon v. Kansas II

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Last week a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld a 17-year jail sentence given to an 18-year-old guy who gave a blowjob to a 14-year-old guy. (Here are the majority, concurring and dissenting opinions.) This was his third “offense.” Seventeen years in jail for a gay blowjob! If one of them had been female, the sentence would have been, at most, 15 months.

I blogged about this in June. The Kansas Court of Appeals had previously ruled the same way; the Kansas Supreme Court had declined to review the case and it went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two days after Lawrence, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment:

The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Kansas for further consideration in light of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003).

The U.S. Supreme Court was basically telegraphing to the Kansas Appeals Court that the original Kansas decision was unconstitutional. “The court’s directive… that the Kansas courts reconsider the Limon case with Lawrence v. Texas in mind was tantamount to an instruction to set aside the prison term imposed on Mr. Limon,” the New York Times said in June. But apparently the justices should have been more explicit, because the judges of the Kansas Appeals Court (two of them, anyway) chose to ignore this directive. I don’t see why the justices didn’t just reverse the ruling instead of sending it back to Kansas for reconsideration. Judge Green is correct that Limon v. Kansas involved a minor and the Equal Protection Clause, while the Lawrence decision involved adults and was based on the Due Process Clause. (Justice O’Connor’s concurrence was based the Equal Protection Clause.) But this still stinks. I hope this case goes back to the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices reverse.

So, yeah. Homosexual sex in Kansas with someone who’s 14 or 15 can get you 17 years in jail. That’s right. If a high school senior and a high school freshman in Kansas have gay sex, the senior can go to prison for SEVENTEEN YEARS.

Sure, let’s send him to prison. No chance for gay sex there.

This is outrageous.