Intelligent Design Wins Again! (er, not)

When I was in high school, there was a girl who printed a list of quotes that she had heard every month, assigning each one to a particular day of the month. Each month, one of the quotes was "Marcia wins again!" And she had a perfect system, because she had enough friends who were interested in getting their name in print that someone would always find a way to ask, "So, who said 'Marcia wins again!' this month?", which of course meant that that person had said it.

The proponents of intelligent design are like that. If there is any tiny thing that Darwinian evolution cannot explain perfectly, that is, to them, an argument in favor of intelligent design. Because no matter what the case, intelligent design is the answer to all unanswered questions. One of the alleged arguments is that flagellum don't serve any purpose except in the organisms that have them, so somehow they couldn't have been selected for in natural selection. So naturally, they must be the product of intelligent design. This ignores two basic points of the scientific method. The first is that in natural selection, it is simply not the case that something can only be selected for because it has a valuable function. Many things can be selected for because they are dragged along with other characteristics that are selected for. Or the characteristic can be entirely neutral based on the pressures on the population at the time, and so be retained or even mutated in favor of randomly. We have no idea if there were organisms that didn't have flagella that didn't survive. But more importantly, we have no pure history of all the pressures that were on all populations of organisms throughout the history of the planet. So just because we cannot explain something today doesn't mean that it has no explanation entirely consistent with natural selection.

But you see, that's just a theory! So Intelligent Design can be a theory, too! And since Intelligent Design, using its tautological, Panglossian logic, has an answer to every question (even when the answer is "we cannot know the mind of the Intelligent Designer"), Intelligent Design Wins Again!

So Intelligent Design gave us the hantavirus, and the AIDS virus and bird flu and mad cow disease, and of course left us with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden and George W. Bush. Everything is perfect in this best designed of all possible worlds!

Hello "Good Night and Good Luck"

We attended a showing of "Good Night and Good Luck" at the Guild 45th Theater in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood (i.e., our neighborhood theater) at 7:20 on the first Friday night when it was out, and it wasn't sold out. Given our neighborhood is about as liberal as a neighborhood can be, the film had been well-reviewed in our local papers and there was a dearth of movies for anyone over 20 recently, this was surprising. Mind you, it was busy, just not sold out. The two seats next to us weren't occcupied, which was actually rather convenient.

I had read an article in Slate a couple of weeks ago trashing the film for historical mistakes. The particular claims were that the film made too much of Edward R. Murrow's role in bringing down McCarthy and didn't make the point that Murrow was late to the game.

Not guilty.

The film makes quite clear that Murrow was late to the game in the anti-McCarthy crusade. Indeed, the film begins by making the point that Murrow had signed a loyalty oath that more left-wing members of his staff were hesitant to sign. The whole point of the movie is that Murrow was a man who answered directly to William Paley, the president of CBS, and, together with Fred Friendly, was responsible for the jobs of the entire staff of two shows. As a result, he agreed to host "Person to Person", holding his nose when interviewing the likes of the child Liza Minnelli and Liberace, and he was hesitant to rock the boat further than he thought Paley would let him. The ambivalence this created in both his relationship with Paley (who never told him no) and his staff (who worshipped him but knew he had clay feet that kept theirs out of the fire) are important themes of the film.

As to the role in bringing down McCarthy, the movie makes clear that there were cracks in his armor before the broadcast and that it was the Army hearings, and Joseph Welch, that really brought him down. So I don't know what the fuss was really about.

As to the movie itself, it was good cinema. David Straitharn, last seen snogging Carmela Soprano, did a fine Murrow impression. The cinematography is great and the sets really take you back to the fifties (my parents will love the modernist furnishings in the CBS corporate offices; it's just like what I grew up with). George Clooney makes a fine Fred Friendly and Frank Langella gives Paley some humanity instead of making him the big corporate heavy.

The one thing that was missing was Murrow when he wasn't at the office. They showed other characters, particularly the Wershba's, at home, but not Murrow. If he was off on a crusade that put his livelihood at risk, it would have been nice to see what he was putting at risk, i.e., his family.

Nonetheless, it's good, quick movie, that makes its point and gets over with it

Some thoughts on Harriet Miers

Everything I hear and read about Harriet Miers is negative, which is remarkably unusual. This link to an article on Slate really set me off, because like everything else I've read about her religious bent, up to and including W.'s comments, it really misunderstands the relevant questions.

The real issue for Harriet Miers, or any other Supreme Court nominee, is her judicial, not her religious, philosophy. Two of the justices--Ginsburg and Breyer (the two appointed by Clinton and the two I've seen in the flesh, Ginsburg when she judged the moot court finals when I was in law school and Breyer because he was on the faculty)--are Jewish. Observant Jews do not believe in eating pork or shellfish. Nonetheless, it would be absurd to suggest that if Ginsburg or Breyer were particularly observant Jews, they would read the Constitution as prohibiting the eating of pork or shellfish because it accorded with their religious philosophy.

The same should be the case with Miers. Let's just posit that these people who are all whispering that she is this or that kind of Christian, that she told this justice of the Texas Supreme Court (who should know better than to shoot his mouth off, though maybe he was a W. appointee and so can be expected to have the brainpower of a newt--nope, looked it up, he was elected while W. was governor; of course, he too went to Yale) that she is pro-life or whatever. None of this ought to matter. None of this should be the subject of focus or inquiry.

What matters is how she interprets the Constitution. If she believes that she should, or can, interpret the Constitution only to be consistent with her religious beliefs, she is not qualified for her current job as White House Counsel, let alone for a federal judicial position. There are many ways to interpret the Constitution, but none of them include interpreting it solely in conformance with one's own religious beliefs. The Constitution doesn't outlaw pork (hello, Don Young!) just because you're Jewish, and it doesn't outlaw abortion just because you're an evangelical Christian (and it doesn't mean Bush won in 2000 just because you're a Republican, Justice Kennedy).

I was taught in law school by a very smart professor named John Hart Ely, who wrote a very influential book called Democracy and Distrust (buy it here from Amazon.com). The ultimate thesis of his book was that in Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun proved that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit a state from allowing abortion (because a fetus isn't a person under the Constitution) but was, in Professor Ely's view, unsuccessful in demonstrating that the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment did not allow a state under any circumstances to interfere with a woman's right to choose before the second trimester, which is part of the holding in Roe. In my opinion, Professor Ely was essentially right as a constitutional matter as things stood in 1973, and had he been on the Supreme Court that year, he might have written a relatively respectable and influential dissent to Roe.

But, well, two things: (1) Roe is not within a million miles of the worst-reasoned Supreme Court case, or even Supreme Court constitutional case. The Supreme Court completely vitiated the Fourth Amendment whenever the search is of an automobile. There is no textual distinction between automobiles and other "effects" of a person, there is no meaningful distinction between the mobility of an automobile in the late 1970's, when they engineered this nonsense, and the mobility of a fast horse or stagecoach when the Fourth Amendment was drafted and in fact it's probably easier to disable an automobile from going anywhere while seeking a warrant, which can be done using today's faster transportation and communications, thna it was a fast horse or wagon in 1791. Moreover, those cases denied Americans rights. Roe grants Americans rights. If the Supreme Court is to err, doesn't the very nature of the Bill of Rights indicate that it should err on the side of greater, not lesser, rights? (2) Roe is a 32-year old precedent. Its parent, Griswold (the contraceptive/right of privacy case) is such a given now that even John Roberts did not challenge it in his confirmation hearings. Its abortion-related progeny, Webster and the like, have for the most part whittled back the "slippery slope" arguments that Roe meant federally-funded abortion on demand for minors without any parental or judicial input. Its other progeny, such as Lawrence v. Texas (the sodomy case) have been carefully measured and reasoned steps along the road, not giant leaps. The Massachusetts gay marriage case, Goodridge, really followed from Lawrence and Griswold, as well as the Massachusetts equal rights amendment, than from Roe. So if Roe in some sense added to the liberty clause of the due process clause beyond its intended scope, the world has not come crashing down upon us as a result.

Back to Harriet Miers. From all I have read, I'm not sure that she could make as reasoned an argument about Roe as the above. Does that make me more qualified to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court? No. On the other hand, I could probably rattle off a list of 200 women lawyers in the U.S. whom I know personally who are more qualified. And I suspect most other lawyers could as well.

Welcome to Jeopblog

It's Saturday, October 15, 2005, and it seemed time to start blogging. Who knows what journeys this may take us on.