Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

John Martin Fischer on the radio

Distinguished philosopher and PGR Advisory Board member John Martin Fischer (University of California, Riverside) will be the guest on John Perry and Ken Taylor's radio program, "Philosophy Talk," Tuesday January 20 at noon PST. The topic will be "immortality". There will be a live stream on the internet at the KALW website, KALW.org. The first program, aired Tuesday Jan. 13, was on the topic of preemptive war, and the guest was George Lucas of the US Naval Academy. The Philosophy Talk website is here.

This should put the Bush-Hitler nonsense to rest once and for all

Leave it to the sensible Canadians to clear things up here:

"Some refer to George W. Bush as another Hitler. This is a gross exaggeration. He has constructed no death camps and only one concentration camp — at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"While it does seem, in Nuremberg terms, that Bush could be called a war criminal (invading other countries on the flimsiest of pretexts), he has not engaged in genocide. Nor, unlike Volkswagen supporter Hitler, does he promote the production of small, cheap cars.

"True, both came to power constitutionally (although under dubious circumstances and with the support of only a minority of voters). True, both masterfully used traumatic events at home (the 1933 Reichstag fire for Hitler; 9/11 for Bush) to make a frightened and resentful populace accept restrictions on civil liberties.

"True, also, that the U.S. leader shares Hitler's taste for military costumes — although to be fair to the German dictator, he did serve on active duty in wartime.

"But overall, the comparison is far from exact, lending credence to Karl Marx's famous comment that when history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second, farce."

And now the Florida Taliban...

...go after the judiciary. More from Miami Law prof Michael Froomkin here.

Ned Block turns down Harvard

Ned Block, a leading figure in the philosophy of mind currently at New York University (and even more distinguished, of course, as a member of the PGR Advisory Board!), has turned down the senior offer from Harvard. That's a setback for Harvard, which has plans to try to replenish its strengths in what is sometimes called the "core" areas of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.

The hopeless Association of American Law Schools

I've heard from various friends and acquaintances who had expected to see me on the Sunday morning (January 4, 2004) panel on "Motivations for Legal Scholarship: Why We Write?" at the annual meeting of the AALS in Atlanta. I was listed in the program, along with Yale Kamisar (Michigan/San Diego), Jonathan Macey (Cornell), Kimberly Yuracko (Northwestern) etc., but I had in fact withdrawn back in October, with the permission of Emily Sherwin at Cornell, who had kindly invited me in the first place.

Complaints about the AALS are legion among law professors: the organization's relentless political correctness (without regard to the diversity of views among its members), its inability to stage real scholarly conferences, and its intrusive, and again largely politically motivated (when not cartel-motivated!), regulation of law schools. On one important issue where the AALS might have made a difference--namely, the growing influence of the U.S. News law school rankings--the organization's response was to put its head in the sand and tell prospective students, incredibly, that they shouldn't look at law school rankings. (The AALS is endlessly ridiculed by prospective law students for this posture, as it should be: students understand full well that prestige and reputation are important factors to consider in choosing law schools. It's a shame US News does such a shabby job in measuring it.)

Complaints about the AALS annual meeting are particularly common, such as this one from a prolific young scholar about the recent meeting Atlanta:

"The panels were okay, though I think I'd prefer the format of real academic conferences. Trying to be timely produces pretty half-baked comments, in my opinion. I mean, is a four person, three hour discussion about Guantanamo Bay going to change any minds or shed significant light on the relevant constitutional issues? Hardly."

Panels in which speakers haven't prepared papers, and in which they appear to have only thought about the topic ten minutes earlier, are all too common.

But none of that had anything to do with my withdrawal this year, though the issue here will also resonate with many law professors.

A gripping letter from a U.S. soldier about the real situation "on the ground" in Iraq

With permission, I'm printing below a lucid and gripping account from a U.S. soldier with a reserve unit of the 82nd Airborne in the vicinity of Fallujah. (This came via a colleague, though I touched base with the solider directly to secure permission. Identifying references have been removed.)

=============

Hi guys, I got some internet time so I thought I'd drop you a line....

You may have heard about Fallujah in the news--it's the most dangerous place in Iraq. My best buddy was seriously wounded day before yesterday...in downtown Fallujah. We've had one soldier killed and about 8 wounded in my company of 65 guys. My buddy who was wounded is from a sister company of ours. We get shelled nightly (yesterday night a rocket wounded 3 guys who were leaving the shower tent about 60 yards from my barracks), although it's pretty inaccurate and I generally sleep right through it (like a thunderstorm). How in the Hell I ended up here I have no idea--life's been quite a journey since late January of last year when this mess all began. I'm not bitter about it anymore--I was and remain convinced that this war was wrong and more importantly that it was a terrible strategic error....Nevertheless, I'm going to do my job and try to get out of here with me and my men unscathed, and just wash my hands of it and move on. It does bother me knowing the damage that this has done to America's standing in the world and also knowing that Iraq is too important geopolitically and economically to lose. Everytime I see someone's arm, leg, or face blown off or see dead bodies (Iraqi and American), I get this terrible pit in my stomach. What a waste.

Needless to say, the situation on the ground here is deterioriating. We were woefully unprepared. We need about 40,000 more interpreters (preferrably former Iraqi military--they can spot trouble more quickly than we can or our interpreters can) and about 100,000 more troops (preferrably an international mix) if we really want to do this right and make the best out of a real mess. Unfortunately, that appears to be neither possible nor politically feasible for the administration since the idealogues in the Pentagon are bent on saying that they were right and since they and the rest of the administration have alienated all of our friends, particularly the two most powerful countries in continental Europe. There are numerous misunderstandings here on the ground every day, and there's no doubt in my mind that we've alienated 90% of those who were at least pre-disposed to give the Americans the benefit of their patience to see if things got better post-Saddam. It is plainly obvious to even the lowest private that in this region 95% of the people want us dead. We get ambushed in plain daylight daily in downtown Fallujah by remote-detonated roadside bombs usually followed up with small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire. With so many of the people on the street watching, they HAVE to know who's behind the
attacks. Yet our intelligence fails to ever generate any leads as to who's actually behind the attacks (by the way, our intelligence is pathetic--all of this purported "iron fist" policy is a shot in the dark--they don't know who the insurgents are). The sheiks always claim it's foreign fighters, but when we get lucky and kill one of the attackers, his mother always comes to claim the body--I doubt these impoverished women come all the way from Syria or Yemen the next day to claim their dead son. When we raid someone's house and find a weapons cache, they always claim that they don't know where they weapons came from, that Allah must have left them there, or that Saddam told them to keep these weapons, blah blah blah. I've definitely met some very friendly, decent Iraqis, most of whom work on our base. They're mainly former exiles who've returned. They're so worried, and I feel bad for them because I know they'll have to leave again when we leave, which I'm sure we eventually will. Fallujah is a traditional, Sunni Wahabi extremist tribal hotbed (this is what the Baghdad Iraqis tell me, also). It is worth noting that the Wahabi mosques are heavily funded by Saudi "charities." You almost NEVER see a woman out on the street, and their treatment of women is absolutely barbaric (beatings, honor killings, etc.). I generally try to be respectful of foreign cultures (having lived in several myself, I understand resentment against American cultural hegemony), but I must admit that the treatment of women here is absolutely appalling and unacceptable. Also, the level of misinformation here is unbelievable. Reading the intelligence reports makes you laugh out loud, especially the accounts of the ridiculous market rumors (market rumermongering is the main way of learning the news in Iraq). It is widely believed that Jewish drug dealers and prostitutes have been smuggled into the country by the Americans to pollute Iraqi culture. I know that sounds laughable, but people here really do believe such fantastic
conspiracy theories. It is widely believed, even among fairly sophisticated Iraqis, that the Mossad and CIA conspired to undertake 9/11. Not only are
the rumors wildly anti-semitic, but there are also wild rumors about the powers that American soldiers have (X Ray vision to violate the sanctity of the Muslim home), and wild rumors about Saddam's imminent triumphant return to power. While these rumors may be laughable due to their being outrageous, it's also scary to hear the virulence of the anti-semitism and anti-Americanism that is so deeply ingrained in the psyche here. It also illustrates the challenge of trying to communicate to a society that's been brutalized and lied to for 2 generations, and that has an inherent distrust of the media (remember the media here communicated that the first Gulf War was going to be the "Mother of All Battles.")

So, like I say, the population's resistance is massive. They find other ways besides overt violence to demonstrate their resistance, and that clearly wasn't the case in June or July. We estimate that 85% of the men of Fallujah and west along the Euphrates are unemployed (from the number sitting around, it certainly appears that there's not a lot of work getting done anywhere). I must say that I don't blame them for resenting the occupation--I would also. Nevertheless, it doesn't make me feel any better when they're trying to kill us daily. The sheiks claim they're powerless to do anything to stop the insurgents. Incidentally, soldiers here become indignant when they hear politicians on television (we purchased satellite TV off of some folks in Baghdad and get lots of US and British news stations--see www.orbit.net) describe the insurgency as "terrorists, killers, or thugs." That's bull$hit, they're a very well organized, smart insurgency. Their strategy is brilliant, and it's like a carbon copy of what we did with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, of course adjusted for the nuances of the current situation (like going after any potential ally, like Spain, Turkey, and now Italy, and of course the NGOs like the Red Cross and to some extent the UN). The Soviets tried to dismiss the Afghan insurgents as terrorists, killers, and thugs, also (see Pravda, 1986-89). The Soviet troops never quite figured out who the ghosts were who were attacking them, much like we're not sure who these guys are.

More on the Bush Administration War on Science...

...is here. So much for the Enlightenment...

A day in the life of a Princeton philosophy graduate student

But the day happens to be the day of his orals...more here. Very funny. (Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)

Legal Obligation and Authority

Anyone interested in legal philosophy will want to read my colleague Les Green's new essay on the subject in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Yet More on Blogging and Academia

So far the discussion among myself, Steve Bainbridge, and Dean Sargent (and now add philosopher Brian Weatherson as well) has focused on whether existing faculty should get "scholarly" (or perhaps "service") credit for the work they do on their blogs. But what about those bloggers who are not presently faculty but may be looking to get in to academia?

There are more than a handful of bloggers--in some cases students, in some cases recent graduates who are now lawyers or judicial clerks--who certainly appear to have academic ambitions and whose blogs purport to have intellectual, scholarly and legal content. (I'm not talking here, obviously, about the many law student blogs that are genuinely diaries of sorts, many of which are charming, fun and funnier.) Are these folks helping their academic ambitions with their blogs...or destroying them?

Ironically, one person who certainly helps himself is also anonymous, namely, the Curmudgeonly Clerk, whose blog demonstrates consistently well-written and solid legal analysis. Sadly, some of those who are not anonymous, and whose credentials might otherwise position them well for the legal academy, may not realize the kind of damage they are doing to their academic prospects--either through advertising their political predilections in unattractive ways (there is more political bias in legal academic hiring--for more, go here), or through frequently sloppy argumentation and misreadings, or simply sophomoric intellectual posturing--at least to the extent hiring schools become aware of their blogs. But given the extensive communication between law schools during the hiring process, and the decent number of law faculty in the blogosphere, it seems likely this will come out. This is a development worth watching with interest: how will these blogs affect the academic job prospects of these individuals? My prediction is: by and large, not favorably.

UPDATE: More reason for blogging faculty candidates to worry here. Part of the difficulty is that those seeking to enter academia almost never have the same kind of track record that established faculty do, so even if their blog is bad evidence of ability/potential, it can easily overwhelm anything else available.

FURTHER UPDATE: I think philosopher Brian Weatherson is probably correct here as to the neutral effect of blogging on the philosophy job market. Partly, this is because I can't think of any philosophy graduate students blogging who are as hopelessly inept intellectually as some of the lawyer/law student bloggers out there. But I won't go further with that one!

More on Academic Credit for Blogging

Dean Sargent from Villanova has offered some additional thoughts in response to my comments on the subject here.My thanks to Dean Sargent for continuing the discussion. His comments follow:

In his thoughtful comments on my post, Brian Leiter advances the discussion, as usual. I'm glad to see we agree "in principle" that blogging can constitute scholarship, at least hypothetically. Brian's observations lead us usefully to the questions of how how it can do so, and how close current blogging by law profs is to that status. Here are some thoughts.

1. Brian's point that some law prof blogging can be better characterized as "service," in its familiar meaning in law schools, is a good one. Blogs that post links, workshop calendars etc. are a good example of that. Maybe even "reporting" from the AALS about a panel is really just "service" - a kind of journalism - but the "value-added" in the from of the type ofcommentary I've seen lately strikes me as being scholarly in nature.

2. It is certainly true that not all of the law prof blogs are "scholarly," and those that are also contain elements that cannot be described as scholarship. And most areas of legal scholarship do not have bloggers. That is merely to say, however, that the phenomenon is in its infancy. One could envision a time in the near future in which most of those fields have a few serious bloggers/group blogs, and that blogs become one of the primary areas for scholarly interchange. It's at that point where we can assess whether something new and important in the way we do scholarship has emerged.

More Advice for Academic Job Seekers (in Philosophy specifically): an addendum to Part I of this series

Philosopher Sean Kelly (Princeton) has called to my attention something important, namely, that the American Philosophical Association has issued an official policy statement on offers of employment here. Note, in particular, the APA's recommendation that:

"In normal circumstances, a prospective employee should have at least two weeks for consideration of a written offer from a properly authorized academic officer...."

Thanks to Professor Kelly for this pointer.

Earlier postings in this series are here.

Academic Credit for Law Blogging?

Steve Bainbridge (UCLA law) reports remarks by Mark Sargent, the distinguished and successful Dean of Villanova Law School, here that suggest a case for giving scholarly credit for blogging by law professors.

Law faculty are typically evaluated along three dimensions: scholarly publication, teaching, and "service" to both the institution and the community. It seems to me clear that there is a case for giving "service" credit for some kinds of blogging--Solum's Legal Theory Blog is the obvious, maybe preeminent, example (von Fintel's Semantic etc. blog is another). By collecting links to articles on-line, providing a legal theory calendar, and so on, Solum performs a valuable service for the academic community in law. So at a minimum this is an example of a blog that helps fulfill the "service" obligations of law faculty.

But Dean Sargent suggests that blogging might, in some cases, count as "scholarship," which is typically the most important factor in how law faculty are evaluated (and, needless to say, compensated). I agree that, in principle, blogging might so qualify, though there are few cases to date that, it seems to me, would qualify. But let's review some of the issues here.

(1) The main obstacle to giving scholarly credit for work done on blogs in most disciplines is largely (but not entirely) absent in law: namely, that blogging is not subject to peer review (which is one reason most of it, of course, is awful). But in law, most publications are not subject to peer review either, since most--not all--publications by law professors are in student-edited law reviews. Review by students is, on average, better than no review at all, but it is not peer-review, which is one reason why the interdisciplinary turn in legal education has led to a proliferation of faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journals in law and economics, law and philosophy, law and the social sciences, and so on. (Very little serious work in law and philosophy, for example, appears any longer in student-edited law reviews, other than symposia issues or as commissioned pieces; important articles in law and philosophy now appear in faculty-edited journals like Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Ethics, Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, and so on. The change is less dramatic in other interdisciplinary areas, though my non-expert's impression is that law and economics, at least, is moving in the same direction.) So the absence of a serious peer-review norm in law means that, in principle, scholarly blogging ought to count as much as scholarly publishing in the Harvard Law Review. (Dean Sargent suggests there is a kind of peer-review mechanism at work in the blogosphere, namely, that if blogposts "are at all interesting, they are immediately seized upon, dissected and assessed. That process gives an evaluator a sense of the quality of the blogger's thinking. As a reader, I'm impressed when a blogger is taken seriously by serious people." The problems with these proxies for peer evaluation, however, are twofold: first, the number of "serious" evaluators in any given area of legal scholarship who are blogging is very, very small (and in the law blogosphere, heavily skewed in one political direction)--in most areas of legal scholarship, there is no one blogging, and in others, there are perhaps one or two whose opinion one would actually seek in a professional review context; and second, my overriding impression is that blogposts are often "seized upon, dissected and assessed" for reasons unrelated to their quality or intellectual content. This second problem is obviously related to the first.)

(2) Dean Sargent suggests "that legal scholars' ability to contibute to and advance scholarly debates through the blogosphere is real, despite the relative brevity of most posts. The blogosphere allows for wide, rapid and highly interactive dissemination of views in a way that is unique. A faculty member who is blogging in a serious way thus would seem to me to be engaged in scholarship." The question is how any of this is different from engaging in scholarly discussion with colleagues or participating on e-mail listserves with other professors in one's field? All these activities "contribute to and advance scholarly debates" and listserves are certainly "wide, rapid and highly interactive." So something more is needed, as Dean Sargent goes on to note:

Anti-Bush Ads are...

...here and they certainly make clear why Bush is the worst President in the history of the United States. How embarrassing that so many law professors who blog won't say as much.

The Missouri Taliban...

...are trying to strike a blow for ignorance, and Pharyngula wipes the floor with them. Bravo!

Funny

MOVING TO FRONT BECAUSE OF FUNNY UPDATE, BELOW

Speaking of Blogopaths...this right-wing blogger (according to his bio: Pepperdine Law grad, "licensed to practice in the State of Illinois") claims to have been having an e-mail debate with Noam Chomsky, but Noam made him promise not to publish it, so all he can do is tell us what a bad debater Chomsky is and how much more clever he is than Noam.

This led a commenter on the site to post the funniest rejoinder in memory:

"I beat Chomsky in an email debate once too. He asked me not to make it public as well, so I can't show it either.

"Gotta go, my girlfriend from Canada is calling me - she misses my 14 inch trouser snake...

"Posted by sum ting wong at December 13, 2003 06:59 AM "

(Thanks to an anonymous grad student for the pointer.)

Reader reaction on French secularism

A student at a top law school writes with comments on the Arab poet Adonis's defense of French secuarlism:

"I check your website regularly; thanks for the insightful posts. I write to respond to one of them.

"I begin by writing that I feel blessed to not live in France. I’m a law student at [school name omitted]. My wife did her undergrad at [school name omitted] and will apply to public and private dental schools in the fall. She proudly wears the head scarf. Contrary to Orientalist fantasies, no aggressive, overbearing patriarch in her family made her do it; her father actually opposed it at the time. She did it as an affirmation of her religion (Islam,) and has never faced a lick of opposition Stateside for wearing it—she’s had access to the best internships, job opportunities, and academic opportunities. Under Title 7 and the Free Exercise clause, she can’t legally be denied work or schooling unless she lacks merit.

Been there, done that

An assistant professor of history writes here about the deluge of mindless hate mail he got for an op-ed critical of Bush. He concludes:

"So I suppose what gets me the most about this whole ugly episode is the creeping realization that some members of the audience "out there," the people that I've always felt we have a duty as professional historians to reach, want nothing more than their prejudices confirmed, one way or the other. Leave the argumentative politesse, the respectful disagreements, the open-mindedness, and the whole idea of a disinterested dialogue in the seminar room. Tell me what I want to hear, and if you don't, well then, you're a "pathetic creep." It's a challenge I've never considered until now, but it helps explain why so many academics stay in the tower."

Need one remark that the same is plainly true of much of the blogosphere?

UPDATE: A reader comments: "I knew this would happen a long time ago when talk radio first took hold. It has empowered the previously mute pent-up malcontents suffocating in America to vent with impunity. If you spit on the sidewalk, you can be fined. If you spit verbally on decent people, you are applauded by other sputum-laden verbal wheezers."

The University of California system may be...

...in trouble: vide Bainbridge and the UCLA press release for more.

UPDATE: Philosopher Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis) writes with the following useful perspective on the preceding:

"The fact is that almost all of the cuts that have taken place are in things like outreach programs, agricultural extension, etc. As far as I can see core teaching programs have not been affected at all. The situation here at Davis ,which to my knowledge is not unrepresentative, is that we are hiring this year ( and in principle given the Jubien departure we could hire as many as three people), we have been assured that if we don't fill the positions this year we can fill them next year, and we have another fte [full time faculty position] waiting in the wings. The quote from the state of the state means that there will be some kind of tuition increase, perhaps as much as 10%, but this is actually a good thing from the point of view of the uc system (although perhaps a bad thing from the standpoint of assuring equal access on the part of students). The message from the President is the usual "washington monument" statement designed to influence the legislative process. So, in short, while the budget shortfall is serious, there is no evidence that the fate of philosophy departments or law schools is dire...."

FURTHER UPDATE: Yet more from Bainbridge, who seems less sanguine.

"For the Record"

Visit Jessica Wilson's site, if you haven't already--one of the best political sites on the web, with loads of great links.

Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Part II

(The first installment in this series is here.) Two questions: How do I prepare for a campus visit, and what information should I get from the school where I'm interviewing? Suppose my spouse/partner is also seeking an academic job. Is it appropriate to raise that issue with the schools interviewing me, and if so, when? What should I be looking for from these schools?

3. How do I prepare for a campus visit, and what information should I get from the school where I'm interviewing?

Law schools and philosophy departments have somewhat different norms on this score. Let's take law first.

Idle Hands, the Devil, and Law Students on holiday break...

...have all coalesced here in "The Brian Leiter Project." Rather amusing I thought.

Some more law faculty moves

Lee Anne Fennell (behavioral law and economics), currently an Assistant Professor here at Texas, has accepted an offer from the University of Illinois (where her husband--alas for us, good for them--secured a tenure-track post in the Anthropology Department). Sigh...

David Hyman (health law), currently at the University of Maryland, has accepted an offer from the University of Illinois.

Dalia Tsuk (legal history), currently at the University of Arizona, has accepted an offer from George Washington University.

Illinois is having an enviably good year!

Sorrows of Empire: An Interview with Chalmers Johnson...

...is here. An excerpt:

What hope is there for the international community?

The main prospect for the future of the world is that perpetual war waged by the United States against small countries it declares to be "rogue states" will lead to the slow growth of a coalition of enemies of the United States who will seek to weaken it and hasten its inevitable bankruptcy. This is the way the Roman Empire ended.

The chief problem is that the only way an adversary of the United States can even hope to balance or deter the enormous American concentration of military power is through what the Pentagon calls asymmetric warfare ("terrorism") and nuclear weapons. American belligerence has deeply undercut international efforts to control the nuclear weapons that already exist and has rendered the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty more or less moot (the U.S., in particular, has failed to take any actions it contracted to do under article 6, the reduction of stockpiles by the nuclear armed nations).

The only hope for the planet is the isolation and neutralization of the United States by the international community. Policies to do so are underway in every democratic country on earth in quiet, unobtrusive ways. If the United States is not checkmated and nuclear war ensues, civilization as we know it will disappear and the United States will go into the history books along with the Huns and the Nazis as a scourge of human life itself.

More on French Secularism

The Arab poet Adonis comments on the French approach, especially as it affects Muslims here. He writes:

"Public institutions belong to all citizens: schools and universities, in particular, are open to all. They are places from which all external marks of denomination and distinctive 'signs' should be excluded. And to this category of 'public institutions' we can add streets, cafés, meeting places, cinemas, conference halls, and so on."

Memorandum to Empire

...by a gifted Philippino writer is here. (If this link doesn't take you directly, click on "Columnists" and then "Red Constantino.")

Also nicely done is "remember, refuse, resist."

Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure

Christmas Cancelled as Security Measure

by Austin Pastor Jim Rigby

(Ellis Island) The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as "frankincense" and "myrrh." While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.

Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary.
An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that
her son would "bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the
lowly." In an obvious assault on law and order, the couple claims their
son will someday "help prisoners escape captivity."

"These people match our terrorist profile perfectly," an official source reported. "They dress different, they talk different, and they come
from nations that have resources we want."

Blog Stats

A bit more than 5 months have passed since I started this blog.

The first month I got 4,941 visits.

The second month 9,387 visits.

The third 13, 790.

The fourth 20, 372.

And the fifth, 23,458.

It's clear my readership is heavily, but not exclusively, academia-based: the first two weeks of December, for example, I was running around 7,000 visits per week, a figure which was cut in half as soon as we entered the holiday period (Xmas week, New Year's week) when most students and faculty are away from their usual academic haunts and computers. Today, already, visits are way up...welcome back all!

The Far Right Texas Eagle Forum...

...is plugging my blog (sort of). According to their December updates:

UT LAW PROF CALLS CONSERVATIVES THE "TEXAS TALIBAN”
University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter refers to Christian conservatives as the "Texas Taliban” on his website: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/.“While Professor Leiter is certainly well within his First Amendment rights, this kind of rhetoric is not only intemperate, but shameful,” says Marc Levin of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “It reflects poorly on the University of Texas Law School and is inconsistent with the scholarly approach to public policy issues that one would hope a professor would exemplify.”

Source: Marc Levin, General Counsel, Young Conservatives of Texas

==============

Marc (who was in my Evidence class as I recall a few years back!) is certainly knowledgeable about shameful and intemperate rhetoric in his role with the Young Conservatives of Texas (about whom I wrote here).

Anyone who's been reading my Texas Taliban Alerts, however, will know that I do not refer to "Christian conservatives" as the Texas Taliban; I use the label for those who want to make the law of their God the law of the land. From my own experience, I know there are many conservative Christians who have respect for religious liberty and separation of church and state. The Texas Eagle Forum is probably not among them, however.

First the Dixie Chicks, now Willie Nelson!

First a singer with the Dixie Chicks dissed President Bush by saying she was "embarrassed" he was from Texas. And now country music and Texas legend Willie Nelson has gone a step further, casting his support for Dennis Kucinich and penning a scathing anti-war, anti-Bush song. Nelson's friend, the great Houston trial lawyer Joe Jamail (for whom, I'm pleased to say, the chair I hold is named), will pay to reprint the lyrics in major newspapers. The Kucinich campaign has released the lyrics here; some excerpts:

What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth
There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth