IF STEVEN IS SERIOUS. . .

the book will be in the mail tomorrow! Or, er, today, as it were.

THAT'S COOL

For my midterm exercise in Civil Liberties, I wrote up a hypothetical case about a fictional Seattle law aimed at preserving the city's musical heritage. In my hypo, this law ends up preventing a church from leveling a house on a piece of property it acquired after the law was passed. The church is dedicated to an innovative blend of reggae and gospel music (and has become popular with German tourists). The property that they acquired happens to be the childhood home of Kenny G, and aside from aesthetic objections to his music, church leaders also have a religious objection to it. The idea is to get my students to write about free exercise, establishment, and takings.

Then Dan, one of my students, sent me a link to this site, which carries these words:

March 23, 2004 11:30pm

**** BREAKING NEWS ****

Huntington Town Council voted unanimously to schedule a public hearing on the Historic Landmark Designation of the Coltrane Home

A Resolution co-sponsored by Councilwoman Berland and Councilman Mark Cuthbertson to schedule a public hearing on the Coltrane was voted unanimously in favor by the Town Council.

A Public Hearing will be held on April 20th, 2004 at 7pm in Huntington Town Hall to consider the designation of historic landmark status to the Coltrane Home in Dix Hills

This is it !!! What we have been waiting for !!

This is our opportunity to tell the members of the Town Council how important it is to designate the Coltrane home as a local landmark. The Town Council will vote based upon the input received from the public.

The Town Council’s vote is the final word on the status of the home. If they vote in our favor, the home will be saved from demolition !!!!!

We Need YOU !! to come to Town Hall and show your support for the Coltrane home.

Please save the date ... and be there on April 20th.

More info to come ....

I wrote back to the student and said that if I had put Coltrane in the hypo, it would have been an easier case. (BTW, today in class the lawyers for the city couldn't quite defend Kenny G with a straight face; one of them made references to the desirability of preserving Kenny G's home in the event that elevator music suddenly became unavailable.)

SPAIN

Venkat took a trip to Spain and has some thoughts on March 11 after seeing the reactions first-hand. I've been meaning to link to his post for a while, so here it is.

PS

Thanks to everyone who has helped me on the job search so far (Ben, Thomas, Charles, Gur, Jack, Damon, and, of course, Anita and her family for moral support!). Nothing solid yet, but I'm still optimistic.

Here's a picture of Anita and me on a recent sunny afternoon in Bethesda:

READ THE PLATFORM

With all of the Clarke discussion in the air, I'm just beginning to understand the rhetorical advantages of the line that "9/11 changed everything" (call me slow). This line focuses attention only on what the administration did following its 234th day in office -- quite a long time after the vaunted first 100 days that we're now hearing about from the campaign ads. This administration wants to be judged by what it did after 9/11/2001, but they also want to be able to blame Clinton for everything on the terrorism front that happened up to 9/11/2001. The administration even tried to start the clock again on the 100 days by beginning the count on September 11; see here.

The argument doesn't really work, however. The main difficulty is this: the Bush administration did not do anything significant on the terrorism front before September 2001, so the charges against Clinton are a boomerang. The first 100 days of the Bush presidency revealed its initial priorities: tax cuts, faith-based initiatives, an education bill, free trade zones, ditching Clinton environmental policies, and national missile defense. (Check out CNN here, and the NewsHour here.) The big foreign policy ideas of the 2000 campaign were establishing free trade zones, withdrawing from treaties, and developing national missile defense. If you don't believe me, go back and look at the platform, for example. Al Qaeda isn't even mentioned in the document.

BTW, that missle defense thing turned out to be really crucial in the war on terrorism, no? Seems about as important now as Traficant's hair.

Now the administration's reluctance on the 9/11 commission makes sense, I think, as do their covert attempts to bury the commission this spring (does anyone believe Hastert was acting solely on his own authority in initially refusing to extend the deadline for the report?). Perhaps they were afraid of what has happened this week, namely, that people would begin to apply to them the very same standards that the administration wants the public to use in judging a potential Democratic administration. Some Bush defenders want to spread the idea that "everyone got it wrong" before 9/11: "I don't blame the Clinton administration for 9/11, I don't blame the Bush administration for 9/11. I blame ourselves as a whole. We are all responsible." As a description of what might be in the head of this particular blog-poster, fair enough, but the overall message of the Bush / Cheney campaign is that it's all Clinton's fault. (For more links, go here.)

Ultimately, I don't believe that this particular issue -- what the administration did before 9/11 -- is all that critical, although as Scott McClellan might say, "it goes to credibility."

MORE: Here was part of the campaign plan: blame Clinton, then taint Kerry with the blame as well. That obviously becomes much harder if the administration can't blame Clinton without looking blameworthy itself, by the exact same criteria. The basic reason why I don't think that this issue is "critical" is that I think the main policy differences between Kerry and Bush are only partially implicated by these issues.

GO SCOTT

Wow. Scott McClellan is floundering. The administration is very nervous about Clarke. I'm looking forward to reading the transcript of today's briefing.

MORE: Here's the transcript.