John Edwards feels pretty.

2:01 video

Gary Shapiro, in the New York Sun, discusses Barack Obama’s collaboration with Harvard Law School’s ultra-liberal Constitutional Law Professor Larry Tribe in the production of a 1989 Law Review article employing scientific metaphors to justify bizarre and over-reaching interpretations of the Constitution.

You thought liberal Supreme Court justices’ interpretations of the Constitution were bad enough now? Just imagine new Obama-appointed justices following Larry Tribe’s suggestion of applying a little Heisenberg to Constitutional jurisprudence.

Is Barack Obama a space cadet? The man who would become senator of Illinois and a top Democratic presidential contender was credited for editorial or research assistance in a page-one footnote of what may be the zaniest-titled article ever published by the Harvard Law Review: “The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics,” authored by noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe.

The 39-page densely argued treatise — think “The Paper Chase” meets “Star Trek” — argues that constitutional jurisprudence should be updated in a similar way that Einstein’s theory of relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics, a view that would release judges from the original intent of the Founders of America. Published in 1989, with help of the much younger and politically greener Mr. Obama (a few others are also thanked in that footnote), the article is sprawling with references to cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz and physicists Stephen Hawking and Werner Heisenberg.

In 1990 Mr. Obama became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. The long-ago article could indicate his views on the Constitution, which, if he is elected, could come into play in such matters as his choice of nominees to the Supreme Court. …

Mr. Tribe employs this analogy to argue for a more expansive view of what constitutes governmental action. He examines legal cases involving child abuse, suburban white flight from suburbs, and abortion, asking what the state’s role was in shaping the legal environment.

A Yale-trained lawyer who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at New York University, Elisha Kobre, said Mr. Tribe is “making a reasonable — but debatable — legal point that courts should intervene not only when government directly infringes individual rights but also when people are adversely affected by existing social structures that he asserts have been created or perpetuated by the government.” Mr. Kobre added that while Mr. Tribe’s physics analogy did not particularly add to or enlighten a point that others have made before, it was nice to see a lawyer managing to incorporate ideas of science into legal theory. …

If Mr. Obama captures the White House, he might not curve space but may settle for setting aside a high-altitude seat on the Supreme Court for his former teacher, Mr. Tribe, who is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard.

Whether James Madison and the other Founders would have had such a benign view of Mr. Tribe’s theory is another matter, though.

Read the whole thing.

George W. Bush, who is not running for anything, neither blocked the Plamegame witch hunt nor pardoned its only victim, Lewis Libby. But Fred Thompson, who is considering running for the presidency in 2008, will be hosting fundraisers to help pay for Libby’s defense.

He’s definitely winning points in my book.

Pat Toomey, whom Bush ought to have supported in a primary against Arlen Spector, explains why John McCain’s record makes him unacceptable as Republican nominee for the presidency.

The reduction of tax rates on income and investment is a cornerstone of limited-government philosophy and a powerful driver of economic growth. When the most important pro-growth tax cuts in a generation were proposed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, Sen. McCain vigorously opposed them. While he has more recently supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts and has previously proposed requiring a supermajority vote in Congress to raise taxes, the extent of his opposition in 2001 and 2003 supersedes any potentially redeeming votes.

Sen. McCain was one of only two Republican senators to oppose the 2001 tax cuts and one of only three GOP senators to oppose the 2003 reductions. Furthermore, his reason for opposing the cuts was taken straight from the playbook of the most radical left-wing Democrats. In 2001, Sen. McCain argued, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.”

That statement is virtually indistinguishable from the class-warfare demagoguery used by Democrats like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. More importantly, it was grossly inaccurate. The Bush tax cuts lowered income taxes, and other taxes, for every American who paid them. In percentage terms, lower-income workers enjoyed the greatest savings, and today, upper-income workers pay a larger share of total income taxes than they did before the Bush tax cuts.

Sen. McCain did much more than just criticize the Bush tax cuts–he also joined leading liberal senators in offering and voting for amendments designed to undermine them. All in all, he voted on the pro-tax side of 14 such amendments in 2001 and 2003. These included an amendment he co-sponsored with Sen. Tom Daschle to limit the rate reduction in the top tax bracket to one percentage point and an amendment sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold against full repeal of the estate tax, aka the death tax. This latter vote is in keeping with Senator McCain’s 2002 vote against repealing the death tax…

Over the years, Sen. McCain has supported a number of other big-government bills, including an amendment that would authorize the government to set prices on prescription drugs under Medicare and an amendment to prohibit oil drilling in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

But of all his infringements on personal freedom, Sen. McCain’s persistent attacks on political speech are the most worrisome. The First Amendment is an important safeguard of pro-growth policies. When government strays from sound economic policies, citizens must be free to exercise their constitutional rights to petition and criticize those policies and the politicians responsible for them. The 2002 McCain-Feingold bill (or the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act), named in part for the Arizona senator who gave it life, seeks to squash political dissent by imposing grossly unconstitutional restrictions on citizen participation in political debate.

In defense of the bill’s provision severely limiting the freedom of private groups to run political TV ads, Sen. McCain argued in a Supreme Court brief, “These ads are direct, blatant attacks on the candidates. We don’t think that’s right.” He thus anointed himself the arbiter of appropriate political speech, worthy of deciphering which speech is “right” and which should be permitted in American political debate. His law constitutes the greatest modern infringement of the First Amendment right to political free speech. While bestowing significant advantages upon incumbent office holders, it has created neither a less corrupt political domain nor a more democratic one.

I would support Newt Gingrich, possibly Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson, but definitely not Giuliani or McCain.

Ann Coulter

The New York Times is reporting that Giuliani, McCain, and Romney have condemned Ann Coulter for jestingly applying to John Edwards a pejorative term for a male homosexual. What a bunch of sissies!

video of Ann Coulter being so bad.

says Gerard Baker in the London Times, who also echoes the Jonah Goldberg thesis that it would serve the democrats right to win in 2008. The theory that the burden of responsibility would sober the democrat leadership is an interesting one, I think, but it is obviously not necessarily right.

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

John Derbyshire has some words of wisdom for would-be Republican nominees. But they obviously come much too late for Giuliani.

As the Zumbo case illustrates, the point of maximum friction is between hunters and the rest. There is a lurking suspicion among non-hunting gun sportsmen that the hunters will sell them down the river, if some clever politician can clinch the deal:

A problem with the duck hunter crowd is that politicians try to take away our handguns or my black rifles, but insist they’ll never go after your over-under. The duck hunters nod and let the confiscation proceed, and before long all that’s left are the duck hunters, who have no support as their shotguns are confiscated…

What the Zumbo case shows is that these minor differences will be brushed aside when gun enthusiasts sense a threat to their rights. Hunting-outdoor sportsmen piled on with the rest — though in general, like Steve Bodio, with a bit more regard for civility. As I started out by saying, for all the magnificent achievements of the NRA in keeping gun rights secure, gun hobbyists and sportsmen live in a state of mild, if permanent, insecurity, and our natural posture is defensive.

The political lesson to be taken by any contender for the Republican nomination who is seriously short of creds on gun rights issues — no names, no pack drill — is that Second Amendment enthusiasts stand head and shoulders above other conservative groups in their passion and solidarity on behalf of their constitutional rights. You will need to work very hard and tread v–e–r–y carefully if you want the support of this large and well-organized constituency. Set a foot wrong and you could find yourself being zumboed!

* in Glenn Reynolds‘ felicitous phrase.

EARLIER POSTING

Hillary Clinton goes to a primary school in New York to talk about the world. After her talk she offers a question time.

One little boy puts up his hand. The Senator asks him what his name is.

“Kenneth.”

“And what is your question, Kenneth?”

“I have three questions: First – whatever happened to the medical health care plan you were paid to develop during your husband’s eight years in the office as President? Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office? Third – whatever happened to all those things you took when you left the White House?”

Just then the bell rings for recess. Hillary Clinton informs the kids that they will continue after recess.

When they resume, Hillary says, “Okay, where were we? Oh, that’s right, question time. Who has a question?”

A different little boy put his hand up. Hillary asked him what his name is.

“Larry.”

“And what is your question, Larry?”

“I have five questions: First – whatever happened to the medical health care plan you were paid to develop during your husband’s eight years in the office as President? Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office? Third – whatever happened to all thosethings you took when you left the White House? Fourth – why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early? Fifth – what happened to Kenneth?”

The McCain campaign has some very professionally produced videos on its website, which are worth a look. Some of the left blogs are screaming in indignation about them.

The tribute to Reagan (and to Goldwater) is very nice indeed. Pity that John McCain is not a Reagan and Goldwater Republican after all.

Jonah Goldberg has fun scaring himself, and the rest of us, thinking about a democrat winning in 2008, and being in charge of defending America against Islamic terrorism. Hillary is certainly ruthless enough, but still…

There is an idea out there. Perhaps not a fully formed one. Perhaps more like the whisper of one gusting like a sudden draft through the rafters of the conservative house, causing some to look toward the attic and ask fearfully, “What was that?”

This wisp of a notion is simply this: Maybe a Democrat should win in 2008…

The idea goes something like this: If you believe that the war on terror is real — really real — then you think it is inevitable that more and bloodier conflicts with radical Islam are on the way, regardless of who is in the White House. If the clash of civilizations is afoot, then the issues separating Democrats and Republicans are as pressing as whether the captain of the Titanic is going to have fish or chicken for dinner…

..if you really think that we are in an existential conflict with a deadly enemy, there’s a good case for the Democrats to take the reins. Not because Democrats are better, wiser or more responsible about foreign policy. That’s a case for Democrats to make about themselves and certainly not one many on the right believe. No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties, is that the Democrats have been such irresponsible backseat drivers that they have to be forced to take the wheel to grasp how treacherous the road ahead is.

Try sleeping tonight after thinking about that!

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to David Larkin.

Sucking up to California liberals at San Francisco’s Churchill Club, Rudolph Giuliani hurriedly jumped on the environmental bandwagon.

I do believe there’s global warming, yes,” said Giuliani, in response to reporters’ questions following his talk to the Churchill Club. “The big question has always been how much of it is happening because of natural climate changes and how much of it is happening because of human intervention.”

But “the overwhelming number of scientists now believe that there is significant human cause,” he said, adding the debate on the existence of global warming “is almost unnecessary … because we should be dealing with pollution anyway.”

Meanwhile, the ever-liberal John McCain was editorializing with Joe Lieberman in the Boston Globe:

THERE IS NOW a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it. The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded there is a greater than 90 percent chance that greenhouse gases released by human activities like burning oil in cars and coal in power plants are causing most of the observed global warming. This report puts the final nail in denial’s coffin about the problem of global warming.

In addition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has identified a warming climate, and the resulting melting of sea ice, as the reason polar bears may now be threatened as a species.

Right!

Ice Storm Cancels Congressional Global Warming Hearing

A recent scientific study shows that glacier melting can vary from year to year. Surprise!

And some Indian scientists think Himalayan glaciers are not changing, and reports to the contrary have been sensationalized by a few individuals.

Bill Kristol, in Time, thinks Congressional democrats are making a big political mistake by failing to control their insatiable appetite for American defeat.

When last seen before election day 2006, the Democratic Party seemed the very soul of moderation. And they stayed the course for the next two months…

But in the past few weeks, the Democrats have gone wild. The mushy domestic agenda is quickly disappearing beneath a tide of antiwar agitation in Congress. Joe Biden is leading the way, seeking to have as one of the first acts of the new Democratic Senate a nonbinding resolution condemning a troop increase in Iraq. Others want action, not just words. On the presidential side of the party, Hillary Clinton has gone at breakneck speed from being a mild critic of the war to calling for a legislated troop cap and threatening to cut off funds for the Iraqi army. Obama and John Edwards are cheerfully one-upping her by demanding a firm schedule for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. What happened?

In part, an accelerated presidential race, with its own dynamic. In part, the fact of congressional majority status, which has its own dynamic too. But in largest part, Bush. He crossed up the Democrats. They expected him to stay the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey course in Iraq. Or, they thought, he might accede to the Iraq Study Group, admit errors and lead us to gradual defeat. Neither would have required Democrats to do anything much except lament the lamentable situation into which Bush had got us. Instead, Bush replaced Rumsfeld, rejected the Iraq Study Group’s slow-motion-withdrawal option and chose to try a new strategy for victory, backed by a troop surge. The Democrats were genuinely shocked that Bush wouldn’t behave as if the war was lost.

What’s more, the Democratic presidential race was beginning, and the candidates were under pressure to do more than express generalized disapproval of Bush. And so for the past three weeks, Democrats have been outdoing one another in lambasting Bush and–as they see it–his war.

But in politics, as in life, exercises in competitive indignation can get out of hand. Biden got rolling his resolution disapproving of the surge–but without thinking through the counterattack that would be opened up. Now, as the troops begin to enter the theater, Republicans can ask whether the main effect of these merely symbolic resolutions isn’t to undermine the chances of Americans succeeding and to encourage our enemies. Similarly, the idea of a legislated cap on troop strength had seemed a good way to show real commitment to the antiwar cause. Yet actually explaining why 137,000 troops in Iraq was fine but increasing the number to 160,000 should be prohibited– when the new commander wanted those reinforcements and said they were necessary to give the new strategy a chance of success–that isn’t so easy.