VARIOUS AND SUNDRY NOTES

Right now I'm hard at work on a paper for the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago at the beginning of April. The paper is turning out to be a defense of partisanship in constitutional law. I'm happy to send a draft to anyone who'd like to see the argument. Just send me an e-mail.

Right now I'm going to brave the bitter cold, go to the library to pick up a copy of Robert Mason's Chickenhawk (along with Arthur Bentley's classic pluralist analysis of government, and Dennis Chong's work on collective action in the civil rights movement). You can read a sample few chapters of Chickenhawk at the linked site. I strongly recommend it, especially for those who are arguing for a broader democratizing role for the U.S. military.

Other possibilities for reading over dinner tonight: March 10th New Yorker, with Simon Schama on anti-americanism throughout history, and Jane Mayer on the Lindh case. Plus, since we've started talking about obscenity this week (and I realized that I like Warren's concurrence in Roth), Eric Schlosser's essay on porn king Reuben Sturman should be interesting. [I meant to write: we've started talking about obscenity in my civil liberties class this week.]

If you haven't seen it yet, go read Deborah Sontag's NYT Magazine piece on the 4th Circuit. If you're happy about what you see there, you'll be happy with Bush's judicial nominations. If not. . .well, vote Democrat in 2004. And 2006. And 2008. . .

[note: Chickenhawk, the memoir, is not about members of the current administration who avoided military duty but are now convinced of the necessity of war. Rather, it is Robert Mason's autbiographical account of his tour of duty as a chopper pilot in Vietnam. A little realist writing on war helps to put things in perspective.]