County commissions seem to attract the most colorful characters. I’ve criticized commissioners before (for example, in Perry County, Alabama and Blount County, Tennessee) but this guy takes the prize. Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart has created a comic book which he says is “more or less a story of my experiences of the last four years of being the county commissioner of District 2.”

Toga-wearing gays, political figures, trench coat-clad henchmen, concerned residents and Rinehart round out the comic’s cast.”

This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. “I’ve never seen a comic book with the phrase ‘anal sodomy’ in it before. That was a new one for me.”

Gaddie said comics were common political campaign tools decades ago, but not for today.

“He’s pretty much grinding every ax he’s got from his days in the county commission,” Gaddie said. “In a way, it’s a sophisticated piece.”

In one sequence, Satan says: “If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal!”

The angel replies: “Hey Satan, not with Brent around you won’t!”

“The history of my office is that I do expose the homosexual agenda, and that it does exist in the state of Oklahoma, and my history also would show that I am very much opposed to the homosexual agenda,” Rinehart said.

In the comic, Satan endorses Rinehart’s opponents in the July 29 Republican primary for the District 2 county commissioner seat. The angel endorses Rinehart.

Repeat: Satan endorses Rinehart’s primary election opponents—other Republicans—because they are part of the “homosexual agenda.” Eeesh. Sometimes I’m not too sure about this local democracy thing.

I suspect that we’ll look back on this year as the tipping point when the theory of anthropogenic global warming begins to go the way of the dodo. Aside from the mountain of contradictory scientific data, the theory was just too convenient. People want to believe that they are the most important things on the planet. Like the old geocentric model of the universe, anthropogenic global warming places humans at the center of everything.

But the times are, well, as changeable as the weather. Here’s the latest in global warming news:

First, David Evans, formerly of the Australian Greenhouse Office has become a skeptic.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

He goes on to discuss four inconvenient truths about carbon dioxide: (1) scientists can’t find its “greenhouse signature” in the atmosphere, so they’re fudging the data; (2) nor have they actually observed carbon emissions having an effect on global temperature; (3) measurement of global temperature is seriously flawed; and (4) Al Gore’s much ballyhooed arctic ice cores do not show what he says they show. Read the whole thing.

Second, the American Physical Society has acknowledged that there is “considerable presence within the scientific community” of anthropogenic global warming skeptics. APS is an organization of physicists, not atmospheric scientists, but it is nice to see them having the debate. No matter how much they try, global warming alarmists cannot credibly claim that the science is settled.

Third, the idea that the Sun has a more important role on climate than was previously thought is gaining attention. Recently, the Sun has displayed unusually low levels of sunspot activity. There is some conjecture that this will lead to a cooling trend on Earth. The latest news is that the solar flux is at a near record low. I have no idea what that means, but I liked this observation:

Expert forecasts that have called for the sun to be regularly active by now have been falsified by nature, and the question of the day is: how long before the sun becomes active again?

Calling to the sun? They sound more like sun shamans than experts to me.

It looks like we’re beginning veto season early this year. House Democrats passed their version of the 2009 intelligence budget today. The exact amount is classified, but the public version contains provisions limiting how the money can be spent. President Bush pointed out some dealbreakers:

The bill, which passed on a voice vote, would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations under way. Panel members also would be granted access to any other details necessary to assess the value of intelligence operations.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president’s right to protect intelligence. In a statement Wednesday, the administration said the bill could expose information previously protected under executive privilege, including pre-decision legal opinions, risk assessments and cost estimates.

The legislation “would undermine long-standing arrangements between Congress and the president regarding reporting of sensitive intelligence matters,” the statement said. [...]

Other provisions in the House bill that provoked a veto threat include a prohibition on the use of contractors to interrogate detainees and a demand that the CIA inspector general audit all covert operations every three years. The administration contends that the required audits would “interfere with the independent judgment” of the agency.

The president also objects to the Senate version, which has yet to pass, because the proposed text prohibits the intelligence services from using any interrogation tactic not listed in the Army Field Manual. At present, the CIA has broader discretion to use other tactics so long as they do not constitute “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.” In March, the 2008 intelligence authorization was vetoed because it contained the same provision. Congress failed to override.

Certainly these are just the first steps in a lengthy back-and-forth about next year’s budget. Still, I wonder if Democrats are trying to keep national security arguments away from the general election. Last year, they were handily and repeatedly embarrassed by the President and congressional Republicans on things like war funding, timelines for withdrawal, and defense appropriations. They also bowed to Republicans on domestic issues like SCHIP and stem cell research. For a lame duck president and a failing party, we sure are giving congressional Democrats a hard time.

An en banc panel of the Fourth Circuit announced its decision in a Guantanamo detainee case, Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli (PDF) today and it is a mindnumbing 216 pages long. The decision itself is per curiam which means the court came to a conclusion without assigning a specific judge to present it. Why? There are nine judges and seven different opinions, including two different 5-4 decisions and four decisions “concurring in part and dissenting in part.” This is what the War on Terror looks like in the federal courts. It is an unholy mess.

Boumediene is cited throughout the opinions. It would be amusing were it not so important, but the judges have conflicting ideas about the meaning of several Supreme Court cases, including Boumediene and Hamdan. The opinions also have duelling claims about international law. Justice Stevens’ disastrous mistake of international law in Hamdan (characterizing the war against Al Qaeda as “not of an international character”) is cited as binding precedent by one opinion, while another ignores it completely. These judges are doing a very good impression of nine people who simply have no idea what they are doing. One judge even attempts to justify his decision by declaring that he can predict how Supreme Court justices would rule on the questions, explicitly admitting, I suppose, that the law is only what the Supreme Court says it is and legislatures be damned.

I don’t have time right now to go through the opinions to see what they got right and what they got wrong (and we might as well wait for the inevitable Supreme Court case anyway), but I will summarize the result. First, Al-Marri, even though he is a legal permanent resident of the U.S., can be held as an enemy combatant. My reasoning last year on that point was that if we can hold a U.S. citizen (as in Hamdi), we can hold an LPR. Second, Al-Marri has not been given his constitutional due process opportunity to challenge his detention.

I am pleased that they came to the conclusion that I predicted in June of last year, though that was when it was possible that the Supreme Court could take the case. Still, I have no confidence in how they came to their conclusions:

Well, if the Fourth Circuit takes it en banc, I expect that they will reverse, but that is based only on the conservative reputation of the circuit.

If the Supreme Court takes it, I expect that we will see something similar to the Hamdi case in 2004. The Hamdi ruling establishes that the AUMF 2002 allows the indefinite detention of enemy combatants, even U.S. citizens, but they must be given limited due process because they possess Fifth Amendment rights. Here, Al-Marri (who as a resident alien has Fifth Amendment protections) was denied even limited due process.

I just can’t wait to see the mess when the district courts and the other circuits get involved.

Update: Oh yeah, and while I’m thinking of it: Judges Matter.

Several lefty blogs pointed out a so-called flip-flop from McCain on the DREAM Act yesterday. Michelle Malkin jumped on the bandwagon, probably because it’s something we’d all expect from him. Unfortunately, she was taken in by the misleading video that’s been passed around by the left. Allah has the real quote.

QUESTIONER: Hi. I’m a part of One Dream 2009 and I am one of the 6 million who either have an undocumented parent or is undocumented and I wanted to know if you would support humanity all around the world and support our Dream Act that we are trying to pass.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. Yes. Thank you. But I will also enforce the existing laws of a country. And a nation’s first requirement is the nation’s security, and that’s why we have to have our borders secured. But, we can have a way and a process of people obtaining citizenship in this country. And, we cannot penalize people who come here legally and people who wait legally. And so, that’s a fundamental principle on which we have to operate. Thank you.

Most of the video being passed around cuts off McCain’s answer after the first or second “Yes.” In reality, McCain has been consistent since his decision to secure the borders that security comes first. Keep in mind that this answer was given in front of La Raza, where McCain’s pandering instincts must have been in full force. And yet he stuck with the promise he made to conservatives after the comprehensive reform fiasco. Good for him.

That doesn’t mean he is giving up on DREAM. After all he’s one of the cosponsors. The bill is not a bad one and I support its most recent incarnation…provided the border is shut. Giving amnesties without ending illegal immigration just incentivizes more illegal immigration.

I forgot to mention this over the weekend as an immigration criterion I liked the sound of. A Moroccan woman in France, her name truncated to “Faisa M” in reports, has been denied citizenship because she is insufficiently assimilated.

The report [to France's highest administrative body] said: “She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind.”

The woman had said she was not veiled when she lived in Morocco and had worn the burqa since arriving in France at the request of her husband. She said she wore it more from habit than conviction.

Daniele Lochak, a law professor not involved in the case, said it was bizarre to consider that excessive submission to men was a reason not to grant citizenship. “If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French,” he told Le Monde.

The law professor misses the point entirely (que surpris!). Submission by itself is not the problem. The problem is that Faisa M’s submission keeps her from understanding and participating in French society. She has carved out a space for herself in which the values and beliefs of an anti-Western culture exist; it’s the faux-Caliphate underneath her burqa. Thus, France has no obligation to admit her into its society.

It’s too early to tell if Faisa M’s case is part of a new trend or an isolated incident. President Sarkozy has been turning up the pressure on immigrants, requiring that they take an exam on French language and values before they even leave their home countries. I keep expecting this summer’s riots and, in fact, thought that this case might be the spark that inaugurated another attack of the YOUEEs. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Update:
The McCain campaign sent out a clarification of his position on gays and adoption. It sounds a lot like what several of you wrote after my original post:

McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue. He was not endorsing any federal legislation.

McCain’s expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.

Thanks to DrewM., who also notes that this is not high on the list of things people care about.

Original Post:
The McCain on gay adoption story hasn’t penetrated the dextrosphere much, though it’s been tearing up the in-the-out-door-sphere since Saturday evening. The usually thoughtful Marc Ambinder writes:

Curious as to why cultural conservatives haven’t picked up on this. Maybe because it was in the New York Times?

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple

Mr. McCain: Yes.

As with the New Yorker story that Dave talks about below, Ambinder seems to be looking for the strawconservative lurking just out of sight with his guns and his churches and his conspiracy theories about black presidential candidates and his well-known dislike for the gays. The simple answer is that conservatives are not eagerly watching the news just for an excuse to talk about gay stuff. They’re just not.

More than that, the things that get people excited are not present in this story. What McCain said is not controversial for conservatives. That’s why you see this story in the gay blogs and on some liberal blogs. It’s a big deal to them. Conservatives, not so much. Nor does the particular issue of gay adoption impact all that many lives. Contrast: marriage, where nearly everyone has some stake, to adoption, which impacts relatively few individuals and families. Finally, there’s no sudden scandal here, just a single question and follow-up in a N.Y. Times interview so lengthy that I fell asleep before I reached the end.

Which leads me to an observation of my own: there’s no meat here. I mean, I would have commented about this earlier if I knew just what McCain was talking about. I think when he says “both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption” he means “both genders are important in the success of a family.” If that’s the case, the real story here is that McCain opposes adoption by unmarried individuals, which is legal (and not uncommon) in 49 states. The gay thing is just incidental to his preference that children stay in an orphanage rather than be adopted by anyone other than a “traditional couple.” On the other hand, I don’t know just how much emphasis was placed on the word “couples” in the question, so McCain may just be going along with the usual “Gays? No, I am pro-family values” shtick.

That’s the problem. McCain gave an ambiguous answer and then said “yes” to an uncompleted question. You don’t get anything from the story except that he is not a big fan of gays, but that he is pro-adoption and pro-family. All of which, we already knew. So the gays can go ahead and get huffy, the dems can go ahead and get snooty, and the rest of everybody can go ahead and think about stuff that actually matters to them. That’s why “cultural conservatives” haven’t picked up on this.

Ace blogged about this case back in April; it caused quite a ruckus in the comments so I’ve been keeping an eye on it. Today the en banc Ninth Circuit reversed the earlier decision that got our attention. The opinion is here (PDF).

This is the one where a 13 year-old student was subjected to a strip search in the nurse’s office after another student who was caught with prescription-strength ibuprofen implicated her. The search of her bag turned up nothing, but the school has a “zero tolerance policy” when it comes to drugs of any kind, so the administrators lost their minds and made her strip. And shake.

Still, it was only 6-5, so this was a close call. The majority pulls no punches:

Nowhere does the T.L.O. Court tell us to accord school officials’ judgments unblinking deference. Nor does T.L.O. provide blanket approval of strip searches of thirteen-year olds remotely rumored to have had Advil merely because of a generalized drug problem. Rather, the Court made it clear that while it did not require school officials to apply a probable cause standard to a purse search, it plainly required them to act “according to the dictates of reason and common sense.” As discussed below, the public school officials who strip searched Savana acted contrary to all reason and common sense as they trampled over her legitimate and substantial interests in privacy and security of her person.

(T.L.O. is the Supreme Court case that largely sets out how the Fourth Amendment modernly applies in public schools.)

The appeals court is unequivocal about how far from reasonable this search got once it went beyond a mere bag search. The administrators didn’t have much reason to expect to find what they were looking for and ibuprofen pills do not represent all that great a danger of physical harm to students or disruption in school. The court explains that blanket claims regarding prescription drug problems in schools do not justify outrageous behavior from school administrators. The drug in question must actually be causing a problem for a search to be reasonable. It doesn’t rule out strip searches in all cases, but it does make clear that the circumstances must actually warrant such a drastic intrusion. Also, the court concludes that the assistant principal who ordered the search should have known that his actions were a violation of the student’s constitutional rights. The opinion uses the phrase “common sense” a lot.

Now the case goes back to the district court.

Lawyer Greg May has more.

Via Professor Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy comes this example of a judiciary in trouble. This is from a dissenting judge in a recent Sixth Circuit case about searches and seizures of email (PDF). The en banc decision dismissed for lack of ripeness. One of the original panel judges dissented and absolutely loses his shit:

While I am saddened, I am not surprised by today’s ruling. It is but another step in the ongoing degradation of civil rights in the courts of this country. The majority makes much of the fact that facial challenges are no way to litigate the constitutional validity of certain laws. Yet our Supreme Court has no problem striking down a handgun ban enacted by a democratically elected city government on a facial basis. See Dist. of Columbia v. Heller, — U.S. —, 2008 WL 2520816 (June 26, 2008). History tells us that it is not the fact that a constitutional right is at issue that portends the outcome of a case, but rather what specific right we are talking about. If it is free speech, freedom of religion, or the right to bear arms, we are quick to strike down laws that curtail those freedoms. But if we are discussing the Fourth Amendment’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, heaven forbid that we should intrude on the government’s investigatory province and actually require it to abide by the mandates of the Bill of Rights. I can only imagine what our founding fathers would think of this decision. If I were to tell James Otis and John Adams that a citizen’s private correspondence is now potentially subject to ex parte and unannounced searches by the government without a warrant supported by probable cause, what would they say? Probably nothing, they would be left speechless.

There are a couple of things to note here. First, I’m amazed at the disdain that this judge shows for the judiciary in general, and the Supreme Court in particular. Of course judges disagree with each other and with the Supreme Court. In fact, all lawyers who are litigators are wrong half the time—that’s the point of an adversarial system (keep that in mind the next time you hire one!). Usually, judges—especially federal appeals judges—exercise a little dignity and decorum in disagreements with other jurists. This judge has shamefully added his voice to those who question our entire system of justice.

Second, his explicit disagreement with the Heller decision calls into question his ability to fairly adjudicate gun cases that come before him…at least, that’s the argument I would make if I were in his court. Note that this is not uncommon in the lower courts. The individual rights view of gun ownership has not penetrated the judiciary to the extent it has the general populace in the past twenty years. Much of the judiciary is having to adapt to a changed worldview, and they don’t plan to go about it quietly.

Finally, as the majority notes, when a court dismisses a case because it is not ripe, the court is making no judgment approving or disapproving of the underlying statutes or constitutional claims. They’re just saying that there is no justiciable case at this time. It can, of course, come up properly when circumstances change.

Democrats usually claim that voter fraud doesn’t exist, or at least that it is not a big problem. After all, everyone knows that Republicans just want to suppress the black vote, right? Well, Alabama is getting national attention today for claims of voter fraud in its June 3 non-presidential primary elections. I’ll give you two guesses as to which side likely broke election laws, but you’ll only need one:

In May, a local citizens group gathered affidavits detailing several cases in which at least one Democratic county official paid citizens for their votes, or encouraged them to vote multiple times. The affidavits were presented to state officials in Montgomery, the capital, and after the June 3 primary, the Alabama attorney general, Troy King, a Republican, seized voting records from the primary election in Bullock, Lowndes and Perry Counties. [...]

Ms. Chapman also raised questions about the possible abuse of absentee ballots. In the election on June 3, a quarter of the voters here [Perry County?], 1,114, cast absentee ballots, a percentage that is six times the state average and a figure that Ms. Chapman called “astronomical.” In Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and has 60 times Perry County’s population of 10,600, there were 365 absentee ballots. [...]

Some Democrats here say the inquiries are motivated by racism and partisanship.

“The Republican Party has an unscripted mandate to target Democratic counties, and African-Americans particularly,” said Albert Turner Jr., a county commissioner here.

Mr. Turner’s father, a local civil rights hero, was tried and acquitted on vote fraud charges 23 years ago. The younger Mr. Turner was photographed talking to voters in a polling place in the National Guard Armory throughout the day on June 3, when he was a candidate for re-election.

How sadly typical. A black man likely breaks the law and his first defense is to yell “Raaaaacists!” I believe this is the same Albert Turner Jr. who punched a woman at a Perry County Commissioners meeting and who has been obsessed with vilifying whites for his entire career. I don’t know why anyone would want this man to represent them even on a simple county commission, but that too is sadly typical.

Alabama seems to have hit the voter fraud trifecta: absentee ballot irregularities, candidate misbehavior, and good old fashioned voter intimidation. Wouldn’t it be a nice change if someone were actually prosecuted for it?