Dr. George Tiller, z"l

I am shocked and saddened by news of the death of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in cold blood as he entered his church this morning.

Dr. Tiller was one of the few abortion providers in this country, and the fact that his practice was in Wichita - a central location of the religious right and a state that would make abortion completely illegal if the Supreme Court would let it - has led him to be the object of actual and intended violence for much of the past 20 years. I haven't seen any interviews with Dr. Tiller in the time I've been here, so I don't know what his motivations were, but I know that he provided a service that (in the vast, vast majority of cases) would only be utilized in the most difficult circumstances.

I only had one brief interaction with him. He called me one day to tell me that he had a Jewish patient who wanted to have a ceremony for their loss. I referred them to Rabbi Davis. I've been thinking about trying to interview him and trying to get it into Nation, but didn't get around to it, and again, he seems like a person who was averse to unnecessary publicity.

There isn't a suspect in custody yet, but I'm presuming that the person who committed this crime was acted on religious motivation. It's extraordinary that a religion can convince a person that God wants him to kill someone for his (the murderer's) beliefs. It's extraordinary when it's Yigal Amir, it's extraordinary when it's the 9/11 murderers, and it's extraordinary here. And there is absolutely no difference between them.

My heartful prayers go out to the family of Dr. George Tiller. May he rest in peace, may the murdered be swiftly caught and justly punished, and may the women whose health and welfare demands it find another person who is willing, as this honorable man was, to help them. It is truly unfortunate, and says much about this society, that such a doctor would need to put him/herself at profound personal risk to do so.

May his memory be a blessing.

Richard Cizik

Yesterday Kansas Interfaith Power & Light (which has a new website, btw) welcomed Rev. Richard Cizik to town. He's the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, and he was the one who tried to get the evangelical movement to move away from a singular focus on gay marriage and abortion and toward a more broad agenda, especially regarding climate change.

He gave an interview to Carla Eckels on KMUW in the morning, and then spoke to a small group of clergy over lunch at Inter-Faith ministries, which my friend Rev. Cindy describes on her blog. Then he met with the editorial board of the Eagle, and in the evening he gave a keynote address at Asbury United Methodist Church. Today he has an oped piece in the Eagle.

Rev. Cizik is convinced that the evangelical movement as it has been constituted over the past decade or so is on its way out, for many of the same reasons the Republican Party is facing such difficulties. Younger evangelicals see climate change as the core issue for this generation, and Cizik believes (and maintains that he has proved from the response he has gotten to his new organization, in terms of both fundraising and people-raising, especially amongst younger people) that unless people get on board they risk irrelevancy.

He thinks that this cadre of young people can be very effective politically, especially in Republican primaries, as they can be deployed for the benefit of those candidates who are open to the realities of climate change and the urgent need to do something about it, which he can articulate most effectively. We happen to have a lot of political figures who are climate skeptics here in Kansas, so I'll be interested to see if this actually happens, especially as the Republican senate candidates are now busy trying to out-right each other on this issue.

To the global warming naysayers who came to the evening talk, Rev. Cizik answered with a version of Pascal's Wager. This, you may recall, is the idea that if we live as though there's a God and there turns out that there isn't a God, then we haven't lost anything, because we've lived a good life. But, if we act as if there is no God and it turns out that there is one, then we're lost. Similarly, if we act as if there's climate change and there isn't, we haven't lost anything, but if we act as if there isn't and it turns out that there is ....

I was kind of hoping he would argue science with them but he didn't, and that's probably why he's wiser than I am. He said, Look actions about this issue are happening - in Congress and on the state level - and you can continue to argue about whether it exists, which is yesterday's argument, or you can be part of the conversation about where we go from here. (Parenthetically, I looked up the scientific arguments against climate deniers and found this, "How to talk to a climate skeptic," on grist.org.)

He also had another great line: When you get up to heaven, God isn't going to ask you how old you thought the earth is or whether it was created in 6 days or not. God knows the answers to those and doesn't need your help. What God's going to ask you is "What did you do with My creation while you were here?"

For me it was also an interesting view into a world that I don't normally enter. I was happy to meet him, and I think it was energizing for KSIPL, despite the relatively small crowds.

A good time to ignore the noise machine

First impressions are good ones on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. A compelling personal story, mainstream-liberal opinions, lots of experience including two previous Senate confirmations. She seems like she will be a good justice, which is exactly what we would expect of Obama.

Most of the criticism of her has been of her "demeanor," which is code for acting like the male judges act. (Helpful hint: If the word "domineering" appears in an article about an accomplished woman, it's sexism.) A particularly problematic instance of this was Jeffrey Rosen's article on her in New Republic; this has been authoritatively inspected and rejected by Glenn Greenwald but it will be interesting to see how many times the article is cited in the next couple of months.

Mainstream journo Mark Halperin thinks that her confirmation will not only come, but will come easily:

Assuming nothing surfaces in Sotomayor's background that causes controversy, expect her to be seated when the court opens for its new term in October, after thorough confirmation hearings that will seem more like a lovefest than a legal firing squad. By both design and luck, Obama faces a Supreme Court–pick process that has been drained of the tension and combat that has characterized such moments in the past several decades.

(snip)

Since she is certain to be confirmed, there are plenty of smart conservatives who will, by midday Tuesday, have done the political cost-benefit analysis: at a time when Republicans are trying to demonstrate that their party can reach beyond rich white men, what mileage is there in doing anything but celebrating such a historic choice?

Which means that the only people who will be complaining about her are the hard-right, the people whose only goal is governmental dysfunction, Arbitron numbers and/or direct-mail fundraising. Given this near-consensus, this is a really good opportunity for the mainstream and mainstream-left press to take my prior advice to stop letting the right wing drive the agenda. If Olbermann and Maddow spend the next 2 months with stories like, "Can you believe what those nutters are saying about Sotomayor now" (at least as major stories; if Keith wants to make them "worst persons" I have no objection) then they're wasting valuable time that could be spent explaining the actual issues that are actually facing this country.

The right-wing noise machine is only that if we help it be so. This is not a controversial pick, and we have no reason to abet those who will pretend that it is.

Avot 2:2

It’s a custom in the weeks between Pesah and Shavuot to study the section of Mishnah known as Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Ancestors. This is a collection of rabbinic aphorisms, pithy wisdom on how one is to act in the world. The full text is available on-line; one such translation is here.

Since next week is Shavuot, I wanted to make sure to mention this custom and learn a little Avot with you before the Omer period passes. Picking one sort-of at random, here is chapter 2, mishnah 2, with a bissel commentary as we go along:

Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince said: Great is study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for keeping oneself busy with both puts sin out of mind. All study of the Torah which is not supplemented by work is destined to prove futile and causes sin.

The first sentence is as we would expect, that one who is busy with worldly endeavors – work, family, Facebook – is also obligated to carve out time for the study of Torah, for that’s what keeps one grounded in the eternal truths which form the foundation of our people and indeed of all commonly accepted morality. The second sentence – that Torah study without worldly work is also dangerous – might seem a little more unusual, until we remember that there is no monastic tradition in Judaism. Torah study and (as will be included in a moment) communal responsibilities are to be part and parcel of one’s daily life, not something reserved for rabbis or priests or monks or whatever.

As a (somewhat gratuitous) aside, those “Torah scholars” in Israel who are supported by the State, who don’t work or serve in the army, seem to me to be in clear violation of this rabbinic precept.

Continuing:

Let all who occupy themselves with communal affairs do so for Heaven's sake, for then the merit of their ancestors sustains them and their righteousness endures forever. And as for you, God will then say: I count you worthy of great reward as if you had done it all yourselves.

Here the question is, why do we do what we do for the community? The Mishnah seems to countenance the possibility that there are people who would be active on behalf of the community for self-aggrandizing reasons – ego or accolades or social climbing or whatever. I have known people like this in my time: there was a person in another community I served who reminded everyone regularly about the fairly large contribution she had made to the community about 15 years earlier.

But in all honesty, people like this are few and far between, I find. Most people who work on behalf of Jewish community (or for other worthwhile causes) really are doing it because they believe in what they’re doing, they believe in what the communal organization is doing, and because involvement in congregations or Federations has rewards that go far beyond temporal record-keeping – spiritual rewards, one might call them, whether or not one considers oneself particularly “religious.”

“Their righteousness” – who does the pronoun refer to: is it the ancestors’ righteousness that endures by the actions we take on behalf of community, or our own? And the answer is: yes.

And then the conclusion: Every wonderful thing that everyone did to get us here – to get the Jewish people here, to get the Wichita Jewish community here, to this place at this time – will be counted to the benefit of the people who are involved in this work today, as long as the work we do is for the good of the whole – or as the Mishnah puts it, “for Heaven’s sake.” That’s a lot of merit to acquire – at not a lot of cost!

And that reminds me of another powerful Mishnah from Avot (2:21), which is also worth keeping in mind: You are not required to complete the task, but neither are you free not to undertake it.

Shabbat shalom.

This week's links

The meeting actually took place last week, but via JTA, here’s some pundit wrap-up of the meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu:

One recent kerfluffle with Jewish implications is the hosting by Facebook of anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial groups on its site. Here’s an article on this subject, which includes a comment from the ADL. I understand from my ADL friends that there’s more to come on this issue.

Also from JTA, the foiled attack on two Bronx synagogues this week (and a similar plot foiled by Brazilian police) underscores the threat to Jewish targets by individuals or small groups.

Weeds

Don't usually do commercial posts, but this one is totally worth it. h/t Daily Dish



I might also point out that the so-called "war on drugs" is yet another reason Ronald Reagan was a bad president.

5 things you need to know about Obama's public health insurance option

From Moveon.org, h/t Kos

1. Choice, choice, choice. If the public health insurance option passes, Americans will be able to choose between their current insurance and a high-quality, government-run plan similar to Medicare. If you like your current care, you can keep it. If you don't—or don't have any—you can get the public insurance plan.
2. It will be high-quality coverage with a choice of doctors. Government-run plans have a track record of innovating to improve quality, because they're not just focused on short-term profits. And if you choose the public plan, you'll still get to choose your doctor and hospital.
3. We'll all save a bunch of money. The public health insurance option won't have to spend money on things like CEO bonuses, shareholder dividends, or excessive advertising, so it'll cost a lot less. Plus, the private plans will have to lower their rates and provide better value to compete, so people who keep their current insurance will save, too.
4. It will always be there for you and your family. A for-profit insurer can close, move out of the area, or just kick you off their insurance rolls. The public health insurance option will always be available to provide you with the health security you need.
5. And it's a key part of universal health care. No longer will sick people or folks in rural communities, or low-income Americans be forced to go without coverage. The public health insurance plan will be available and accessible to everyone. And for those struggling to make ends meet, the premiums will be subsidized by the government.

Listen up, Wichita

h/t Daily Dish

Nate Silver suggests that America's car culture is over:

...there is some evidence that more Americans are at least entertaining the idea of leading a more car-free existence. Between October 2004, when gas prices first hit two dollars a gallon, and December 2008, when they fell below this threshold, three cities with among the largest declines in housing prices were Las Vegas (-37 percent), Detroit (-34 percent), and Phoenix (-15 percent), each highly car-dependent cities. Conversely, the two markets with the largest gains in housing prices were Portland, Oregon (+19 percent), and Seattle (+18 percent), communities that are more friendly to alternate modes of transportation.

Counting the Omer

During the seven weeks between Pesah and Shavuot every night is counted. This is called “counting the Omer” – there’s a blessing for it that’s recited at night before the next day is counted. In Jewish mystical thought, each week of the Omer is associated with one of the sephirot, the emanations which are considered to be manifestations of different aspects of God. And then each day of the week is also associated a sephirah. So tonight, for instance, is the 30th day of the Omer; this falls within the week of “Hod”, and the manifestation associated with the day is “Gevurah”, so the day is considered to be “Gevurah she’be’Hod” – Gevurah within Hod, or the Gevurah aspect of Hod.

What in the world do those words mean? Hod is a hard one to translate, and in fact it often is translated into various words that don’t seem like that have any connection. Sometimes Hod is translated as humility, sometimes as empathy, sometimes as majesty. I think it’s significant that we can have a Jewish concept where humility is considered a synonym for majesty! What could that teach us about ourselves?

Gevurah means strength. So we have Strength within Humility. Now that’s interesting – strength is often considered to be the very opposite of humility! Well, if you think that humility means weakness or meekness, that’s a misunderstanding of humility. If you think humility means low self-esteem, that’s a misunderstanding also.

Humility is the realization the we are but one small element of God’s creation, but Strength in Humility means that even so, we also understand that each of us is has a unique role to play in that creation - that no one could do what each of us is here to do here but each of us.

Or, as Rabbi Tarfon is quoted as saying in Avot 2:21: You are not expected to complete the task, but that doesn’t excuse you from beginning it.

This week's links

This week was the annual AIPAC conference in Washington DC. As usual, many prominent members of the administration and congress as well as Israeli political figures from the new government attended. The main remarks were delivered by VP Joe Biden. This is the first conference for brand-new governments in both Israel and the US, so everybody was on their best behavior. A JTA analysis of the conference is here.

The pope has begun his visit to the Middle East, which will include a visit to Israel. Unlike papal visits to most other places, the visit will be neither pro-forma nor uncomplicated, as there are some bad feelings brewing between the Vatican and both Jewish and Moslem communities. Here’s a story on NPR that you can either read or listen to.

Then there’s been quite a bit of anti-Semitism in the news this week, I’m afraid:

Blogger Adam Holland describes how former Congressman and (to their eternal shame) Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has found the financial crisis a good opportunity to double down on her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, thereby finding common cause with the far right (h/t JTA).

The Jewish Chronicle in Britain reports that there are concerns that the University and College Union (a union of collge professors) will once again take up a proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions, despite legal advice that it violates anti-discrimination law, as well as academic freedom.

I also extend my condolences to the family and friends of Wesleyan junior Johanna Justin-Jinich, whose murder this week apparently contained elements of both dating violence and anti-Semitism.

Reading the tea leaves

David Albert, poli sci professor and board member of Brit Tzedek, has a post on JSchool reading the Obama tea leaves at the AIPAC conference, leaves that were delivered by VP Biden. Money quote:

About half-way through the speech, the Vice-President Biden finally got specific. He affirmed AIPAC’s position that the Iranian threat must be addressed diplomatically and militarily, if necessary. But here’s the rub. AIPAC and Bibi Netanyahu seek a U.S. policy of Iran first and only MINUS the two-state peace process. Biden didn’t give them that. Biden argued that the resolution to the conflict must remain a primary focus as a means of containing Iran and blunting its influence. Implicitly, he argued that a coalition with the Arab states against the shared threat of Iran will be much stronger in the context of an active, engaged peace process.... [H]is demands were not completely one-sided. He challenged Israel to freeze settlements, dismantle outposts (which he called “outposts” not “illegal outposts”) and to allow the Palestinians more freedom of movement and access to economic opportunities (presumably by ending the siege of Gaza). He also asserted that U.S. will continue to aid the Palestinians in Gaza and pursue the Syrian peace track. In other words, he gave them a U.S. policy of Iran PLUS the two-state peace process.

He goes on to say that it doesn't seem apparent that the current Israeli government is really interested in pursuing a two-state solution. If Obama demands it, then we have a bit of quandary on our hands, I'd say.

A tough bill to swallow

The day has been spent picking through the analysis and fallout from yesterday's deal between the governor and Sunflower to allow one of the coal plants in exchange for some renewable energy provisions. Realizing that this is Kansas and that we were unlikely to get the provisions any other way, judgment on the plan was suspended while we tried to figure out if the green provisions were meaty enough to justify giving in on the coal plant. The consensus seems to be - they are not.

Here are some of the articles from today: An account of legislator skepticism on the bill, including Parkinson's meeting with the Democratic caucus, was in the Topeka Capital-Journal.

“There will still be people who say this is a bad settlement,” Parkinson said.

Gee, ya think?

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said he understood why Parkinson struck a deal with Sunflower to permit the construction of an 895-megawatt coal plant in Finney County. It was the only way to move renewable energy legislation through the Republican-dominated Legislature, he said.

Still, Hensley said he wasn’t certain the plant would ever be built. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and President Barack Obama were sending signals that more stringent regulation of air pollutants was on the horizon, he said.

“I think in terms of any future coal plants, much is contingent on future air standards,” Hensley said. “Everything is up in the air if they could ever construct a second plant.”

The second plant, y'understand. That's because, as this analysis of the deal from GPACE makes clear, the "compromise" was a lot of give and not much take: the renewable energy standards of 20% by 2020 are based on capacity and not on output (they could build a high-capacity plant and never fully run it); the net metering provisions are limited to areas with private utiltities, exempting municipal utlitlties and areas with rural co-ops like Sunflower; building efficiency standards are just for state buildings, and they're not building too many of those right now.

Worse, Kansas CO2 standards are to be no more stringent than the federal limits, and KDHE no longer has the capacity to derail the plants. So Sunflower can apply for another permit in 2 years, and if the federal standards aren't stronger by then, there will be no legal means for the state government to deny the permit (even assuming ol' Governor Sam would care to do so). Oh, and they agreed to decommission a couple of oil-burning electric plants that apparently haven't been in operation for 20 years.

And in exchange for all this, we get a freaking tremendous coal plant.

The Democratic party leadership is spinning this as a big win, though it's hard to see why. We were two days away from sending Sunflower home with nothing, and then we could have come back next year and reacted to whatever Washington does in the meantime, passing the energy standards without having the coal plants hanging over our heads. Parkinson in effect gave away the only card we had. As Scott Allegrucci of GPACE says in a blog entry, it seems that the governor has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

I remember when Obama first got inaugurated, before it became clear that the Republicans were going to say no to everything, we were debating what bipartisanship means you give up what you stand for for the sake of including members of the other party. Obama didn't, and it was to his credit. For all his posturing about being the energy governor when he took office, it's clear that, like the good moderate he is, the governor values agreement over principle. It's most unfortunate. The deal was also brokered directly between Sunflower and the governor; GPACE wasn't even in the room.

There isn't really anywhere to go from here. They'll pass the bill and he'll sign it. Whether Sunflower can get the thing built is another story; they claim to have the financing in place, and I guess we'll see if that's true. We'll also see if Congress can get something passed that will change the calculation in the meantime.

But there's a great sense of loss - even betrayal - amongst those who have been working on this issue for the past 2 years. It's a difficult pill to swallow.

Coal plant: Compromise or sell-out?

The new governor today announced a compromise on the Holcomb coal plants: one plant will be allowed to be built, it will have a smaller capacity than the two proposed plants together but larger than what was proposed for each plant (895 megawatts instead of the 700 each that was proposed). In exchange, the legislature will pass some of the green provisions that were previously tied into the bill as sweetener, including energy efficiency measures, net metering, and renewable energy requirements (20% of KS's power from renewable sources by 2016).

Tomorrow's Eagle story is here, and Kansas Jackass has a post on it here.

One thing that Jackass mentions that the Eagle doesn't is that as part of the compromise, Parkinson agreed to take away from the KDHE director the authority to block construction of future coal plants.

It's hard to know what to think about this at first glance, based entirely on not having enough information on whether the green provisions are real or if they are the same kind of watered down placator that was in the original bill. On the one hand, we weren't going to get net metering without some sort of compromise, because the GOP legislators are so pissed off about failing to override Sebelius' veto that they weren't going to allow a separate bill. On the other hand, a) renewable energy standards, efficiency standards, etc. are probably going to be coming from Washington sooner rather than later, so there was no real reason to give in on the coal plant to get them, and b) the KDHE provisions are also extremely worrisome, as there is no good public policy rationale for giving in to industry on this point. If industry were to make all the decisions on regulation, we wouldn't have any regulations at all. Oh wait...

I would hasten to point out that just because they have the permit, doesn't mean that the thing will get built. They have to get the financing together, and the environment hasn't been so great for such large scale, old-technology projects lately. OTOH, rural electric coops are largely peopled by reactionary hacks, who are not under any pressure to make logical or financially prudent decisions, as Sunflower's actions throughout this controversy have amply demonstrated.

In other words, I'm reserving judgment until I find out more about the green provisions. If they're for real, I probably can live with this. If they're not, then we've been sold out. I need to learn more, and will post again when I get the information.

Parshat Kedoshim

This week we have a double parshah, Aharei Mot and Kedoshim - which makes for one long parshah when read in its entirety! Much of this is known amongst scholars as the “holiness code” – it’s a collection of laws that, if followed, are meant to set off the people of Israel as a holy people. “You shall be holy, as I your God am holy.” (Lev. 19:2) A nice interpretation of this is that holiness is not the condition of these activities, but the result – that is, it’s not that we should do these various things because we are a priori holy; rather, we should do these things so that as a result, we will become holy.

In ch. 19 v. 9-10 we read, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field…[rather] you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.” This is one of those great tzedakah verses of which I am so fond. It is where we begin to get the Torah’s teaching, re-emphasized over and over again, that caring for the poor is not largesse, but rather is justice – the root of the word “tzedakah” is “tzedek” – justice. It’s not a matter of charity, it’s a matter of right.

The Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra interprets this verse to mean that keeping everything for ourselves is a form of stealing. Rabbi Elie Munk, the chief rabbi of Paris in the mid-20th century, said (thanks to Torah Productions for this teaching, which is a paraphrase):

The purpose of these laws was not merely to support the poor with whatever pitiful leftovers the wealthy landowner might have, but to remind the propertied class that their land and its riches is not for them alone. The earth belongs to God, and God wants its produce shared with the disadvantaged -- not as charity, but as their just right. Assisting the less fortunate is not based on vague feelings of pity or sympathy, but on God's direct commandments.

This of course does not apply only to the wealthy among us. Even those receiving alms are supposed to turn around and give part of the alms, no matter how small, to someone less fortunate. But even for those of us in the middle, it is quite important for us to remember two things: first, that our material well-being is not solely the result of our own efforts, but is bestowed upon us by God - or, if you prefer, it is the product of being born in America, brought up by people who could give us advantages, etc. Either way, a lot of our success is due to circumstances beyond our control. This is why I very strongly believe that libertarianism of the teabagging, Voice for Liberty variety is antithetical to the values put forward by the Torah.

The second thing for us to remember is that our wealth is not for our benefit alone, but is given to us in large part so that we may pass along a certain significant percentage for the maintenance of those less fortunate.

We do this not because we’re so great, but in order that we may become great, morally speaking.

Happy May Day

Courtesy of my friend, colleague and comrade Rebecca Lillian, the Internationale sung in Yiddish (subtitles in Hebrew). I love that they all know the words by heart, and that they stand up to sing it.



If you want to sing along, here are the words and music in Yiddish, and here are the words in Hebrew.

The lesson of torture is that there have to be lessons

Worthwhile reading is Serge Schmemann's account in today's Times of the Israeli Supreme Court's deliberative process before it banned what are euphemistically being called "advanced interrogation techniques" in 1999. Here's a quote from then Supreme Court President Aharon Barak which captures the issue quite well:

This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it.

As I've written before, I understand President Obama's reluctance to get into the torture issue. He's got a lot on his plate already, and he doesn't like to stir up partisan hornets' nests that aren't directly related to what he's trying to accomplish. But honestly, it's hard to see how he can avoid dealing with this issue in the long run. If, as he admitted at the press conference the other night, waterboarding is torture, then the United States is obligated under its treaty obligations to investigate and punish its performance. And therefore so is he.

My concern is that if this isn't dealt with in using some kind of objective, legal mechanism, the so-called debate that has arisen about this issue - the partisan split, the arguments over whether torture is effective, and whether that makes any difference - will be left unresolved, leaving such steps available to the next administration that wants to use them.

After Nixon's resignation there was quite a bit of soul-searching about the excesses of the CIA and the administration, and certain steps were taken to prevent their recurrence. Obviously those steps didn't work effectively forever, but at least there was a broad agreement that such measures were wrong.

If similar steps aren't taken now, and the Republican party as the party that not only supports the use of torture, but believes it necessary to the self-protection of this country, how long will it be into the next Republican administration before whatever measures are put in place by Obama are overturned and we're right back to square one?

Until and unless there is a definitive legal finding that these practices are illegal and unacceptable, there is no deterrent for the next administration that wants to cut those corners. That's why there has to be some sort of legal process, whether it's convenient for the president politically or not. After all, as Aharon Barak said in 1999, “Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand.”

Cui bono?

This was my favorite analysis of Obama's first 100 days, from Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:

Because no one ever marches for stimulus or a budget, maybe it's easier to assess Obama's achievements by thinking of the people on the receiving end. If you're a woman seeking pay equity, a child in need of health insurance, a nurse trying to avoid a layoff, a $25,000-a-year worker hoping for a tax credit, a passenger who would rather take the train, a group of parents trying to start a charter school, a homeowner facing foreclosure, a cancer researcher strapped for funding, a hiker looking for more wilderness, a small business tired of exorbitant federal loan fees, a historian trying to see some long-secret documents, a young person eager to take part in national service, a prisoner praying to avoid torture, then you got something tangible out of the president's debut.

And how happy am I that Justice Souter waited to retire until we got a real president?