Well, of course the fatuous notion that speech is tyranny — that accusations of bigotry "break the marketplace of ideas", and intimidate poor, hapless victims into silence — can be applied to whine about vigorous discussion of gay rights. How could we think otherwise?

Thanks to Kip for identifying a specimen in the wild, by Sven Wilson at Pileous:

The so-called gay rights movement is not, fundamentally, about civil rights (though gays certainly have had their civil rights violated in the past). It is about the complete normalization of homosexuality. Advocates want to obliterate any notion that homosexuality is outside the bounds of what is considered normal, acceptable, or desirable in society.

So-called blogger Sven (I like that he went with so-called rather than with scare quotes; those are so last year) wants you to understand that the gays don't merely want to get married on the City Hall steps. They want to "obliterate" entire normative concepts. From our minds. This probably seemed like a much more terrifying idea if you recently watched Inception. I don't want some gay Leonardo DiCaprio traipsing around my prefrontal cortext assaulting my tendency towards snark and preference for limited government. At first blush the gay agenda imagined by Sven seems rather ambitious, but bear in mind that we've been at war with social phenomena and concepts (War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terror) for decades, so obliterating notions is a logical next step. The future holds epistemelogical wars, in which some future interests groups attempt to carpet-bomb the concept of whether or not it is possible to know whether or not they are or are not discriminated against.

But I digress. Sven is deeply concerned that gays and their fellow-travelers pose threats to freedom of speech and expression through their sheer hair-pulling nastiness:

What opponents of normalization fear most, I think, is not that gay marriage will damage the institution of marriage, but that their own rights and abilities to stand up against normalization will be further infringed. Those who oppose normalization do so on a variety of grounds: cultural traditions, historical precedent, religion, instinct, science, moral reasoning, emotion, even love. Certainly, these different grounds can all be contested, but many gay advocates want to paint the opposition as motivated only by ignorance, bigotry and fear. Such a characterization can be as hateful and damaging as any other kind of bigotry. Sadly, calling someone a hater (like calling someone a racist) merely degrades one’s opponents and stops civil discussion.

Oh my God! Advocates of one interest group want to argue against strawmen, mischaracterize and misinterpret their opponents' arguments, and treat extremists among their opponents as representative of all opponents? Say it isn't so! This is unprecedented in politics and Western thought!

Or, you know, maybe it's characteristic of every political dispute there ever was. Perhaps anti-gay folks are especially sensitive to offense? I don't know.

Notice how Sven subtly conflates "rights and abilities to stand against normalization" (suggesting some actual legal restriction on free expression) with being painted as a bigot. Sven thus pushes the "speech is tyranny" narrative that suggests being criticized — even roughly, even unfairly — is the equivalent of being censored. This is, as I've argued so many times before, an entirely incoherent approach to freedom of expression. But lying about the incidence of actual conflicts between anti-discrimination law and free speech, characterizing protests as assaults, and mixing up criticism and censorship are characteristic rhetorical devices of some elements of anti-same-sex-marriage movement.

Sven pushes the "speech is tyranny" button harder in the next paragraph:

Should we completely normalize homosexuality? Given our short sense of history, many forget that this is a radical question, not even conceivable in nearly all societies and times. Many say the answer is yes. But those who say no fear that their ability to peaceably espouse their views and to try to shape social institutions according to their beliefs are under serious threat.

Once again, Sven is smuggling bullshit — he's asserting, in effect, that vigorous pro-gay advocacy impairs the right to "peaceably espouse views." To the extent that any jurisdictions use the Prop 8 ruling as an opportunity to promote hate speech laws, or to the extent federal courts use it to further their Harper v. Poway style use of anti-discrimination principles to undermine free speech principles, he'd be right. Freedom of expression is under constant assault from both "liberal" and "conservative" directions, and ought to be defended vigorously. But that's rather clearly not the limit of what he is saying. He's suggesting that accusations of bigotry somehow impair actual rights.

But that's not the way the marketplace of ideas works. It's tough. Wear a cup. Cowboy up. Hell, from listening to the bigots I thought that it was the gays who were supposed to be unmanly and limp-wristed. But this "halp, halp, we can't express our disgust at gays without people expressing disgust at us" is just embarrassing. Should opponents of "normalization" of homosexuality have the unimpaired right to express their views, however nauseating they are? Absolutely. But under what rational or coherent theory of free expression should that right be cherished or defended more vigorously than the right of supporters of gay rights to criticize, ridicule, and belittle anti-gay views?

Laws outlawing gay marriage? Those may or may not be tyranny, depending on your interpretation of state and federal constitutions. But uttering controversial and sometimes pungent views, and being subjected to controversial and sometimes pungent criticism in return? That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, tyranny.

Race for the Galaxy is a fun card game where each player is trying to conquer the galaxy. There are many different ways to win – economic, military, research. It's all about building an engine that can grind out victory points faster than your opponents. Will you choose to try to get victory points by consuming goods, or by colonizing (or conquering) lots of planets. Of course, it's a card game so there is a heaping helping of randomness in there as well.

The good news is, a fellow named Keldon has created a single player version that is available for download. It includes a very capable AI. Trust me, this could waste more than just this Friday. Download Keldon's great Race for the Galaxy game at his website. And, in case you need a rules refresher, you can find the rules to the game here.

This is part II in a series.  For the introduction to the politics of Starcraft 2, see: The Return of Kekeke.

I’ve harped on this before, but I’ll do it again.  Real time strategy (RTS) games consist of two separate but equally important parts: Macromanagement (Dicking around in your base) and Micromanagement (Killing stuff).  You can have the greatest micro skills on earth, but if you can’t successfully manage the economy to make a decent army (or more importantly, to reinforce that army) you will never win. And of course, vice-versa.  This is very important to remember: they are two separate but equally important parts.  It’s all about maximizing economic efficiency and army savvy.  The best players are able to think quickly on their feet; the key isn’t the initial strategy or build order, but rather the adjustments on the fly.

This is exactly what makes the current Democratic regime so hilariously incompetent.

Oh no guys, watch out... he's put on the ANGRY EYES. QUICK! SOMEONE FORM A TASK FORCE BEFORE HE WRITES A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER.

Continue Reading »

What brilliant mind agreed to this?

To members of the Denver Board of Education, it sounded ideal. It was complex, involving several different financial institutions and transactions. … Rather than issue a plain-vanilla bond with a fixed interest rate, Denver followed its bankers’ suggestions and issued so-called pension certificates with a derivative attached; the debt carried a lower rate but it could also fluctuate if economic conditions changed.

The Denver schools essentially made the same choice some homeowners make: opting for a variable-rate mortgage that offered lower monthly payments, with the risk that they could rise, instead of a conventional, fixed-rate mortgage that offered larger, but unchanging, monthly payments.

The question before the Denver school board was how to finance a gap in its pension fund.  Denver agreed to a bond deal with JP Morgan in which the interest rate Denver paid on the financing would fluctuate, rising in the event of an economic downturn, falling in the event of an upturn.

The Denver school board agreed to this four weeks after Bear Stearns collapsed.  The same week that the price of a gallon of gasoline hit a record high. If the school board couldn't foresee that recession was in the wind in April 2008, well, there were other warning signs about the deal.

For instance, Denver knew that JP Morgan was an adverse party in the deal.  That JP Morgan was betting against Denver.  No problem: Denver hired the Royal Bank of Canada to act as its independent advisor, then allowed Royal Bank of Canada to participate in the deal, also as an adverse party, waiving the conflict of interest.

Look, Denver.  When a guy offers to trade you six magic beans in return for your cow, your goose, and your chicken, it's certainly a good idea to be skeptical.  Hiring a magic bean appraiser is the right thing to do.

But when your independent magic bean appraiser tells you that these are wonderful beans, and that he'd like to put up a couple of additional beans himself, for which he'll take an interest in the goose, and, Oh by the way, would you mind signing this form acknowledging that I've informed you that I have a conflict of interest in the transaction, and that you knowingly waive the conflict and will allow me to stay on as your magic bean appraiser? …

Don't walk away.  Run.

So far the magic beans have not produced a single stalk, but they have produced an angry man-eating giant, in the form of higher interest rates than Denver would have paid on a standard bond.  Unfortunately this giant carries no gold.  He does carry an $81 million termination fee, payable to JP Morgan, in the event that Denver tries to get out of the deal.

Denver's school superintendant Thomas Boasberg, who was one of the prime movers behind the magic bean trade, dismisses critics as "politically motivated."   That's code language.  It means "My conduct was wrong.  It was indefensible.  Since I have no defense, I'll use ad hominem to attack those accusing me, who are politically motivated doodoo-heads."

And while Boasberg has no defense, he can at least console himself that there are others with whom to share the blame.  There's the rest of the school board, and there's Boasberg's former boss, who left the school system to take a different job in November 2008.

You might think the old boss's "new job" was a euphemism for "resigned in disgrace," but in fact it was a promotion.  Boasberg's old boss, who pushed the magic bean trade through the school board, is United States Senator Michael Bennet.

Senator Bennet's webpage, as of this writing, features a large banner with a Wall Street sign, and the words, "PAY IT BACK!"  A good sentiment, one that Senator Bennet ought to follow as well.

But of course anyone suggesting that Colorado voters should remember Bennet's job performance, as a Senator or as a magic bean trader, come this November (Bennet was appointed to the office shortly after the bond deal) 2014 would be "politically motivated."

Was I hallucinating as I watched the Glenn Beck show this evening, or did he compare funding for the arts to Mountain Dew & Cheetos?

Oh, he really did. Wow. Just wow. Are we sure old Glenn isn't insane

I love the short version Gawker has there. Great stuff.

Just when you thought that the internet couldn't get any more entertaining, it coughs up the likes of Doctor Kevin Pezzi.

Dr. Kevin Pezzi, part-time ninja, full-time sex god

Dr. Pezzi, who writes about science for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website:

• Achieved the highest IQ test score ever recorded;
• Developed a cure for cancer, only to have it suppressed by Big Pharma (no relation to Big Government);
• Aced final exams in college, by mistake;
• Knows the secret to giving her perfect female pleasure, every time; and
• Fights a neverending, one-man war against the threat of "poisonous Chinks".

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I agree with E. D. Kain: Dr. Pezzi's is the most most inspiring story you'll read all day.

Although he languishes in obscurity now, that's bound to change.  I daresay that Kevin Pezzi will soon take his rightful place among the internet's highest stars, right up there with Cleve Blakemore and even Dr. Gene Ray.

Faced with judge Vaughn Walker's order finding that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, and faced with the blast from the past showing that Judge Walker was a Reagan appointee whose nomination was urged and supported by conservatives and opposed and decried by the unholy trinity of Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and gay activists, the most vocal opponents of gay marriage have headed in a direction we should have predicted: towards increasingly nutty conspiracy theories.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin (my favorite source for commentary on gay rights issues, thanks to thoughtful analysis and principled stands like opposition to attempts to censor anti-gay speech), I see that the Family Research Council has decided that Vaughn Walker is a sleeper agent.

It turns out that the Judge behind Proposition 8's undoing was just biding his time until he could unleash his ultimate agenda: decimating marriages that have defined civilization since the beginning of time.

How many more gay "sleeper cells" are out there, just waiting for some secret predetermined signal** to activate them and send them on their ruthless anti-family campaign, armed with the weapons of mass destruction of due process and equal protection?

**("When Rush Limbaugh gets married for the fourth time, strike out against the sanctity of marriage!")

From an email I just sent firm-wide:

To all:

In addition to our firm’s internet use policy, there’s something you should know: web sites have increasingly robust capability to track your visits.

Specifically, if you browse a web site from here at work, the web site operator can (1) tell that someone from the [lawfirm].com domain visited their site, (2) tell how long you spent there, (3) tell what pages you viewed there, (4) tell what link you used to get there, and (5) tell where you went from there. (That’s in addition to more mundane information they can gather about your city and the operating system and browser you are using).

Therefore, in addition to our existing internet use policy, keep a few things in mind:

1. Even if you use an alias, if you surf at work any comments you leave on a blog or forum or web site can be traced to this firm.

2. If you visit a site that is commenting upon one of our cases – or even upon the firm – the site operator can see that you have visited and read, and may comment upon it.

3. If you visit the web site of opposing counsel, or of an adverse party, you should assume that they will know.

Please exercise good judgment accordingly.

Postscript: I'm hearing people say three things in response: (1) "We have an internet policy?" (2) "Is it wrong that I'm reading TMZ?" and (3) "Wait, what if I surf from home? Can they see my name?"

In this post, I dabbled in the "nice" approach to attorney comment spammers, temporarily eschewing my normal inclination and Eric Turkewitz' exhortation to name and shame attorneys who market (deliberately or through reckless failure to supervise) via comment spam.

It hasn't really worked out.

The attorney to whom I extended that courtesy, after an initial email, never got back to me, even though I handed over a bunch of information and made some suggestions about tracking down what contractor or employee was spamming on his firm's behalf.

I told him I wouldn't out him based on what happened so far, so I won't. Not that he deserves it.

But that's it. From here on out it's naming and shaming. Including with that attorney to whom I was nice — if we receive even one more spam comment promoting his law firm.

The great website RPGGeek (sister site to the invaluable boardgamegeek) is having a fun little trivia/scavenger hunt for it's year anniversary. It's a quest to discover how to defeat Tiamat, and you have to scour their website, do a silly rebus puzzle and then solve a legitimately challenging old D&D quiz. I just finished the quiz, and it was a lot of fun to try to remember things like the title for an 8th level bard. I'll admit, I did some googling.

To participate, you have to register for the site, since you use their internal geekmail system, but really you should have registered already just for boardgamegeek! Hurry, the contest only goes until Friday. To start, check out this thread in their forum, and let your adventure begin. Oh, and if you need a copy of the original Deities and Demigods, you can borrow mine.

Godwin's Law:  As the length of an internet discussion increases, the probability of a reference to Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Corollary to Godwin's Law:  In any argument, the first participant to invoke Nazis or Hitler loses.

The courts of New Jersey are quite of aware of Godwin's Law.  How else to explain New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. I.H.C. and D.C., handed down this morning?

The facts, as found by the trial court, are that I.H.C. and D.C. are the parents of A.H.C, J.C., and H.C.  The Division of Youth and Family Services received a complaint about I.H.C.  After an investigation, the DYFS found that I.H.C. and D.C. strapped their children into child safety seats during meals.  DYFS also learned that I.H.C. and D.C. yelled at one another a lot.  And I.H.C.'s ex-wife, before I.H.C.'s marriage to D.C., complained that I.H.C. hit her.  D.C. denied that I.H.C. had ever hit her.

Based on its investigation, the DYFS removed the children from the home of I.H.C. and D.C. indefinitely, placing the kids in foster care.  Although the family court found that this evidence did not justify removing the children from the home, and ordered the children returned, the New Jersey Appellate Division immediately stayed that order.  Today, the Appellate Division held that strapping kids into car seats for meals, yelling, and an allegation by an ex-wife absolutely justify indefinite separation children from their parents.

One presumes that half of the children in New Jersey will be removed from their parents' homes in coming weeks.  It isn't as though what I.H.C. and D.C. were found to have done is anything unusual in New Jersey, after all.

The draconian remedy, removal of children from the home, seemed a bit extreme to me.  After all, I read all the time of kids who suffer abuse far worse than being strapped into a car seat, or hearing mom and dad yell, being returned to their parents.  Alleged wife beaters like I.H.C. are never chemically castrated.  They keep breeding like rabbits, and keep their kids.  I became curious about who these people actually were, and did a little digging.

And wouldn't you know it, A.H.C. turned out to be our old friend Adolf Hitler Campbell, who was taken from his parents after they complained that Shop-Rite wouldn't give the boy a birthday cake.  Yet the New Jersey appellate court never once mentioned, or even hinted at, A.H.C.'s rather unusual name.

Now it isn't unusual for courts not to publish the names of children, but given that I.H.C claimed, all along, that his children were taken from him solely because he's a neo-Nazi with awful taste in baby names, you might think the court would have addressed that point.  A cynic might say that the court neglected to address that point because it wanted to see the children removed from their horrible parents on whatever flimsy grounds it could find, without exposing its opinion to First Amendment challenge.

A cynic might say that.  But I won't.  These children were removed solely because they'd been strapped into car seats, and not because their parents are non-violent but horrible freaks, who unfortunately may have a constitutional right to be horrible freaks.

And I'll look for the court's new, and incredibly broad definition of a threat of domestic violence, to be applied all over the state of New Jersey starting now.  Even against parents who don't violate Godwin's Law.

Update: See the comments to this post, which are interesting.  On reflection, I owe our frequent commenter Imaginary Lawyer a point, one that he hasn't fully raised but that I didn't consider when I wrote the post.

I do not know that the defendants ever raised a First Amendment or other constitutional issue.  I strongly suspect that they did, based on prior media reports (see links above).  But it's possible that they didn't on advice of counsel.

Now, I believe that a lawyer who didn't raise a constitutional issue in a case like this, specifically that the parents were singled out based on their horrid beliefs, would be an ass and a fool.  And I'll note that Nazis are hypocrites, scoundrels who are the first to raise a Constitution that they despise whenever the government they wish to overthrow acts against them.

But I can't know whether the issue was raised, as all records and briefs are sealed.  And if I'm wrong (I doubt that I am), this entire post is moot.

Point to Imaginary Lawyer.

Paul Tibbets was a hero who helped to bring World War II to an end.  Tibbets commanded the bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the "Little Boy" atomic bomb over Hiroshima Japan.  Americans should honor Paul Tibbets, because his service on August 6, 1945 likely saved a million American soldiers from maiming or death.

Tibbets also saved countless Japanese, more than a million, who would have died fighting to support a fascist government against vastly superior American and Soviet forces had an amphibious invasion been necessary.  For the survivors a post-invasion Japan, like Germany and Korea, would have been divided into American and Soviet spheres of influence, hardening into separate governments, backed or ruled by foreign troops facing one another over a DMZ.   The Soviet sphere would have contained a Gulag.  The American sphere might have developed a democratic government like that of West Germany, or it might have been ruled by a military oligarchy as South Korea was until the 1970s.  Either way, the survivors, north and south, would have faced the prospect of living on divided land with nuclear weapons pointed at them in each direction.

So we should honor and respect Paul Tibbets.  His son James Tibbets, may be another story.

The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration's decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an "unsaid apology" and appears to be an attempt to "rewrite history."

James Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday's visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved.

"It's an unsaid apology," Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. "Why wouldn't it be?  Why would [Roos] go? It doesn't make any sense.

"I know it's the anniversary, but I don't know what the hell they're trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over."

With respect to Mr. Tibbets, the war isn't over.  Not for the people who survived the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which only happened 65 years ago.  Nor for their families, who've lost parents and relatives to cancer and may carry the scars themselves, in their own genetic codes.  Nor for Japan, which still carries scars from the attacks.

Were the scars deserved?  Well, if we believe in collective guilt, sure.  Japan, as a nation, surely asked for August 6, 1945 on December 7, 1941.

But America isn't a nation founded on notions like collective guilt and punishment.  The American ideal, at least the one to which I subscribe, is an individualistic one.  People are judged on their own merits.  We don't punish the families of the guilty.  We don't brand them as "subversive elements" or gloat when tragedy befalls them.  Similarly, with a few exceptions, we don't give special privilege to the families of the powerful and successful.  We are not a collective.  We do not enshrine class into law.

That would be un-American.

And so, to me, it seems proper that we send a representative to Japan to mark a tragedy in living Japanese history, even if it was a tragedy of the Japanese government's making.   That government is gone.  Its leaders died on the gallows. Japan is not an enemy nation.  65 years after Hiroshima, Japan is a friend to America.

To memorialize a tragedy is not to apologize for wrongdoing.  Another American virtue, at least in the America where I live, is that we are a forgiving people.  Old enemies, such as Britain, for over a century the greatest threat to this country, become friends.  As has Japan.  As have almost almost a third of the American population.

If you visit the town of Gettysburg Pennsylvania, and drive a little distance into the battlefield, you will see many monuments.  A number of them look like this one:

There is no doubt that soldiers who fought under the flags of North Carolina and the Confederacy posed a greater existential threat to the United States than the soldiers of imperial Japan ever did.  Yet the field of battle on which they were beaten contains multiple monuments to North Carolina's war dead, as well as to those of other Confederate states.  And visitors to the Gettysburg cemetery and battlefield show those dead as much respect as they do to Union dead, even when the visitors come from Wisconsin or Massachusetts.

Similarly, though Japan isn't part of the United States, we should respect the innocent who died or were ruined at Hiroshima, for innocent they were.  It isn't an apology to respect the dead, and one of the ways that governments show respect is to send diplomats to memorial ceremonies.

James Tibbets is an American, and he has the right to speak his mind, but he didn't fight against Japan any more than I did.  His descent from a famous man gives him no moral authority.  He is not a hereditary war hero.  His father's courage and service won't be lessened one bit by a diplomatic visit to a ceremony for the dead.

And while I can excuse James Tibbets for his strong feelings about Hiroshima, for Fox News to use him in the pursuit of its own political war against a President who is merely following the historic American practice of reaching out to defeated enemies, who are now friends, is shameful.

It's everywhere now, but if you are Google-impaired, here is the opinion.

I've taken a very brief read of the legal analysis, and am circling back to read the findings of fact. A couple of early observations:

1. As is often the case, the fight is won on definitions. There's no dispute that marriage is a fundamental right. Judge Walker correctly states that the issue is what "marriage" means — does it mean "a bundle of rights held by a man and a woman wishing to join in matrimony," or does it mean "a bundle of rights held by two people wishing to join in matrimony." He answers that it is the latter. This is a situation where my ability to critique is clouded by my liking the result, a hazard of all legal commentators. I'll read it again, but it comes off a little question-begging to me upon a first read.

2. Having found that the due process right to "marriage" means for any two people to marry, Walker finds that Prop 8, limiting it, does not satisfy strict scrutiny. That part isn't particularly remarkable. The justifications for the restriction are primarily morals-based and otherwise weak. Walker goes further than he needs to on this point, saying that the reasons are not even legitimate, let alone compelling.

3. On equal protection, Walker dodges one issue by refusing to find that gays are a suspect class triggering intermediate scrutiny (Kip argues that this was the real issue and everything else is "sideshow.") Instead, he finds that there is no rational basis for the distinction. Once again, it is difficult to fit my lawyer hat and human being hat upon my head at the same time. I find the reasons offered for Prop 8 sub-rational (particularly as they were rather lamely offered in this case). That said, I have read a hell of a lot of rational basis cases, and this rational basis review is much more muscular and much less forgiving than 99% of them. (For the record, I'd be happy for all laws — including economic regulations — to be subjected to such actual scrutiny.)

I beg your pardon. I recognize that is a rather rude inquiry.

But I feel I must make it.

I am driven to do so by this column by Bruce Walker of American Thinker. Bruce is excited by some Gallup figures suggesting that "conservatives" outnumber "liberals" in 49 of 50 states. This is an occasion for frothy triumphalism by Mr. Walker, whose trust in Gallup and faith in everyone meaning something similar by "conservative" and "liberal" I cannot match.

But that's old hat.

What's notable is Mr. Walker's vigorous pushing of a concept that, in a rational world, would offend actual conservatives: America only seems liberal because all the conservatives are too afraid of liberals to speak their minds.

The institutional stranglehold that the left has on American society is almost Orwellian in its breadth and intensity. Why would anyone in America willingly call himself a "conservative" when the left has so insidiously smeared conservatives with the failed leftist malignancies of National Socialism and Fascism? Conservatives, to the omnipresent organs of leftism, are like Dalits in India: untouchables, loathsome and despised. So the upper-caste leftists think nothing of privately joking about Rush Limbaugh in agony or gratuitously smearing Fred Barnes or Karl Rove as racists. Leftists are simply terrorists. Many closet conservatives, I suggest, are too frightened to be open and honest about what they believe.

Mr. Walker suggests that the new poll results show that, just as the Soviet Union fell and revealed that nobody actually liked communism, liberalism is falling and revealing that nobody actually believes in its tenets. The crude tongue of the liberal hath lost its sting:

It means that all the firebrands, the scourges, the torments which the left uses to keep us in chains and in fear are losing their sting. The Tea Party members simply accept, as a matter of course, that they will all be called fascists, racists, and morons — and no one cares anymore.

(Emphasis added, pusillanimity in original.)

Liberals will no doubt be offended by Mr. Walker's characterization of them. But they, at least, come off looking like muscular, powerful, and capable of achieving their political goals. It's conservatives who come off looking really bad. Mr. Walker apparently thinks they are America's own natural cowards, endowed with insufficient spine (or insufficient belief in the righteousness of their cause) to endure verbal abuse from Hippie McWierdo, Tenured Professor Kablooie Lovehamas, or Katie Couric. That's just downright rude.

I disagree with Mr. Walker. I don't think most conservatives are cowards. Certainly some are. Those are the people who think that free speech is all well and good, but that being called a racist douchebag breaks the marketplace of ideas and renders them incapable of response, or that criticism is akin to vandalism, or that vigorous criticism violates their free speech rights. To which I respond: oh, for Christ's sake, grow a pair, and if you can't, get Nancy Pelosi to lend you hers.

I have no stake in Republicans or Democrats prevailing, or "conservatives" or "liberals" prevailing, because I think all four are clumsy tribal associations with decreasing relevance to actual issues and principles. I have a stake in ideals prevailing: ideals like due process, the rule of law, personal responsibility, limited government, and freedom of speech. If people saying mean things about you is enough to deter you from announcing your support of ideals like that, how can you be trusted to run a government?

Perhaps Mr. Walker can commission a Gallup poll about that.

As part of their crusade to reform censorious and lawless policies on college campuses across America, the FIRE offers up a "Speech Code of the Month," in hopes that exposure will shame colleges into compliance with fundamental free speech principles — or at least spur action by students, alumni, and critics.

This month's entry made me laugh out loud at the loutishness of the policy. Front Range Community College in Colorado — a state institution, bound by the First Amendment — has adopted one of those appallingly prevalent "free speech zone" approaches, confining protest and other expression to limited areas chosen by the college. That's bad enough — and very likely unconstitutional. But that's not what made me laugh.

What made me laugh is that Front Range Community College wants you to know that the price of you exercising your First Amendment rights in a state-owned forum is waiving the right to redress if you are killed, paralyzed, or otherwise abused as a result of the College's negligence:

For myself, my heirs, successors, executors, I hereby knowingly and intentionally waive and release, indemnify and hold harmless the college, Front Range Community College (FRCC), The State Board for Community College and Occupational Education, The State of Colorado, trustees, officers, employees, agents and volunteers from and against all claims, actions, causes of action, liabilities, suits, expenses and NEGLIGENCE of any kind of nature arising directly or indirectly out of any damage, loss, injury, paralysis or death in connection with my participation in this activity at FRCC and/or use of this equipment and to waive all claims for damages or losses against the state, the Board or the college which may arise from such activities.

As a new strategy for speech suppression, this is brilliant. Want to protest at this government-owned public forum? Fine. But you should know some of the guards we hired have itchy trigger fingers, and sometimes the gardeners leave pit traps with feces-smeared punji sticks, and we're not going to protect you from violent counter-protesters, and you have to sign a waiver that we're not liable for any of that. Where is your First Amendment now?

FIRE doesn't analyze the enforceability of the waiver. Suffice it to say plaintiffs' lawyers reading it are drooling right now.

FIRE does explore all the other ways Front Range Community College's policy on expression is ridiculously, patently unconstitutional. Sometimes you have to ask — who drafts these things? Did their counsel review it? Has their counsel read any First Amendment cases whatsoever? Does their counsel have a debilitating head injury, or some sort of tenure?