1) Don’t count them before they’ve hatched. 2) Don’t forget their tendency to come home to roost. * **** update: Now that I think about it, I easily could have added a third rule about it being important to remember to take off your counting shoes before heading back into the house and grinding chicken shit into the cream-colored Berber. But then, it’s probably best I didn’t burden you all
May 2010
May 14, 2010
Advice to an egret, revisited
Were I to answer a certain egret’s concerns, I would say that we are not talking past each other, and that I know that even though we started off speaking about interpretation and have now moved on into application or enforcement or implementation, the principles of intentionalism are nevertheless still determinative. To wit, let me restate it this way and see if it makes a difference: the “interpretive” standard used
May 13, 2010
a note to that guy I saw earlier today wearing the purple camo cargo pants / open thread
Dude. Nobody’s gonna look for you in a vat of fucking grapes. So the pants? Total overkill. Just saying.
May 13, 2010
“A Downside of Racial Awareness?”
From Mark Bauerlein, Minding the Campus: For all the approval of diversity thinking, though, it may have a downside precisely for the universities that proclaim it so forcefully. For what if, in raising racial diversity awareness and emphasizing the racial climate of the campus, a university raises sensitivities to racial difference at the same time? If campus counselors, diversity officers, and others administrators lead seminars, training sessions, and orientations that
May 13, 2010
"A Downside of Racial Awareness?"
From Mark Bauerlein, Minding the Campus: For all the approval of diversity thinking, though, it may have a downside precisely for the universities that proclaim it so forcefully. For what if, in raising racial diversity awareness and emphasizing the racial climate of the campus, a university raises sensitivities to racial difference at the same time? If campus counselors, diversity officers, and others administrators lead seminars, training sessions, and orientations that
May 13, 2010
On textualism?
Rather than answer Patrick Frey’s latest “challenge” to intentionalism by explaining yet again how language functions over the life of a speech act, I have decided to try a new approach. Frey and many of his commenters claim to be textualists. Frey has argued (or at least, implied) that textualism as an interpretive methodology is if nothing else practical (and therefore legitimate) — though on what basis this is so
May 12, 2010
Kagan and free speech
JHo sends along this CNSNews overview of SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan’s views on speech as outlined in a 1996 article published in the U of Chicago Law Review. From CNS: In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact
May 12, 2010
“Why Bother With the Constitution?”
Stanley Fish, erstwhile champion of reader response theoretics, channels his inner intentionalist. Not that he really has a choice — as both he and I continue to make abundantly clear. But be that as it may. Using as his exemplar the text of the First Amendment, Fish fashions his rebuttal to David Strauss and the Living Constitutionalists, who have taken to arguing that, when it comes to constitutional interpretation, “the
May 12, 2010
"Why Bother With the Constitution?"
Stanley Fish, erstwhile champion of reader response theoretics, channels his inner intentionalist. Not that he really has a choice — as both he and I continue to make abundantly clear. But be that as it may. Using as his exemplar the text of the First Amendment, Fish fashions his rebuttal to David Strauss and the Living Constitutionalists, who have taken to arguing that, when it comes to constitutional interpretation, “the
May 11, 2010
Corey Haim’s “Notes from the Afterlife,” 7
In Heaven, for every five delicious homemade meatball sandwiches you purchase from this little family-run Italian joint across from our local head shop, you get one delicious meatball sandwich absolutely free. Free! Had somebody back in West Hollywood thought of something like that, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have gone completely bust charging up sushi and kingsized Sapporos in between paying gigs — then later counting on Feldman to