What's Going on at Lexis?

There have been some troubling things happening at Lexis lately--nothing earth shattering, perhaps, on an individual basis, but the cumulative impact makes me wonder if there are problems within the company. For instance,

- There is no TRIALL this year.
- We didn't get any National Library Week goodies this year.
- They dropped sponsorship of the Legal Research Teach-in notepads.
- Our excellent regional academic rep left and was guarded about the reasons for his departure.
- There have been personnel changes at Matthew Bender, and rumors of staff dissatisfaction. This information comes from someone who works there.
- The LexisNexis database is not keeping up with Westlaw. It is less user friendly, and it is getting harder to persuade students that they need to learn how to use it. It seems to be standing still.
- The exclusive deal with ALM that Westlaw just announced is going to make LexisNexis a great deal less useful to researchers. And why didn't the reps know about the removal of the New York Law Journal, etc.? I think users knew before the reps did.

Does anyone out there know if any of this means anything? Does anyone know of more examples of trouble at Lexis?

Massachusetts SJC hears Oral Arguments in GLAD Challenge to Proposed Anti-Gay-Marriage Ballot Question

May 4, 2006 -- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in GLAD's lawsuit challenging the Attorney General’s decision that a proposed ballot question that would once again exclude same-sex couples from marriage satisfies the Massachusetts constitution.

See the GLAD website for court documents from that organization in the matter.

The oral arguments on May 4 should have been taped as part of a joint program with the SJC and Suffolk University Law School. We will have the archives in the library if that is so. I will post a link to the archived oral argument.

Beyond Passwords -- Measure brainwaves?

This interesting article from Wired News, "Your Thoughts Are Your Password," by Lakshmi Sandhana, reports on work being done at Carleton University in Ottawa. They, among other experts, are investigating using brainwaves and thought patterns as a form of biometric security device to authenticate users' identity, a kind of password. It is attractive because, unlike other biometric security devices, like iris scanners or fingerprint scanners, you can periodically change the thought password.

The idea grew out of the difficulties with EEG (electro-encephalogram) reading because each person's brain waves are so unique. The Carleton researchers thought they could take advantage of the individuality of each person's brain wave patterns for authentication purposes.

However, there are some major obstacles to bringing the technology to market. Iead Rezek, of Pattern Analysis Research Group at the University of Oxford remarks that

Too many things are going on in the brain at the cellular level that all look the same from a scalp distance. "Signals from an uncountable number of nerve cells are smeared and lumped together by the time we are recording the brain-wave patterns," says Rezek. "Authentication is akin to recognizing speakers from muffled voices because, for example, the speakers are some distance away."

Another critic comments

"the link between thought and brain waves is immensely indirect," says Jacques Vidal, a BCI expert and professor with UCLA's computer science department.

Moreover, the way we remember things evolves. It may not be possible to design a system that can passively recognize the changing signature of the same thought by the same individual over time.

Vidal is more optimistic about a simpler form of mind reading, in which the computer provides a stimulus, then measures the brain's response. Such "event-related responses," or ERPs, to color flashes or specific sounds tend to produce brain signals that are different with each individual, but nearly identical when repeated on the same person. "ERPs could be used for biometric identification," says Vidal.

Such a technique could even benefit from the adaptability of our brains. Instead of trying to passively recognize a thought, like in the ideal implementation, a system could rely somewhat on the user deliberately learning how to generate the right brain pattern, using feedback from the machine as a guide.

(snip)

For now, the Carleton group is proposing a simple, binary pass-thought system as a first step -- something similar to the brain-guided spelling devices being developed for the extremely disabled. A successful login would only occur when you are able to identify your password by thinking "yes" to the letters or pictures that form it in sequence -- like a mental game of 20 questions.

If they get it working, there remain pragmatic obstacles to rolling out pass-thoughts as a replacement for other biometrics. It's easy enough to slide an index finger into a fingerprint reader, but right now the only way to tap into a person's brain signals is through a highly inconvenient EEG cap that's smeared with conductive gel and worn on the scalp.

Ewww. The story goes on to discuss options that they are hoping to roll out in the future, but probably not before 20 years go by. We may all be looking at those wavy letters on Blogspot and trying to recall 20 changeable passwords for the rest of our working lives.

Mapping Information - Beyond Search Engines

I am so impressed with Professor Katy Börner, at Indiana University School of School of Library and Information Science, Adjunct Associate Professor of Informatics, Core Faculty of Cognitive Science, and Research Affiliate of the Biocomplexity Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington!

I linked above to a simple website she maintains at I.U. But you probably want to visit first this interview from Inf@Vis!, a digital magazine at InfoVis.net link. Here is a neat summary of her recent work,

analysis and visualization of user activity data, the mapping of knowledge domains, and the design of cyberinfrastructures. One of her latest works is Places and Spaces, a science exhibit created to demonstrate the power of maps for the navigation of physical places and semantic spaces.

The interview includes a terrific list of linksites, including a number to very scholarly PDF articles by Prof. Börner. Basically, she sees the web flooding our brains with so much data that we can't handle it all. Search engines can locate things, but they don't do anything to help us form the huge amounts of stuff they find into patterns that we can begin to comprehend and manage. She wants to build tools to help us make conceptual or semantic maps that we can overlay onto the search engine findings.

Take time to look at her stuff. And if you are near NYC, you can see her exhibit at the NYPL Science, Business and Industry Library link, Places and Spaces. It runs from April 3 - Aug. 31, 2006. The website explains:

The Places & Spaces exhibit has been created to demonstrate the power of maps. An initial theme of this exhibit is to compare and contrast first maps of our entire planet with the first maps of all of science as we know it.

You can also click on a link to hear a radio interview with Katy Börner. Cool

Senate vows to hold hearings on Bush Signing Statements

The Boston Globe reports today that the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a hearing with the FBI director Mueller, vowed to hold hearings on Bush's use of presidential signing statements to sidestep legislation.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the White House of a ''very blatant encroachment" on congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight hearing into President Bush's assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years.

''There is some need for some oversight by Congress to assert its authority here," Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''What's the point of having a statute if . . . the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"

Specter said he plans to hold the hearing in June. He said he intends to call administration officials to explain and defend the president's claims of authority, as well to invite constitutional scholars to testify on whether Bush has overstepped the boundaries of his power.

The senator emphasized that his goal is ''to bring some light on the subject." Legal scholars say that, when confronted by a president encroaching on their power, Congress's options are limited. Lawmakers can call for hearings or cut the funds of a targeted program to apply political pressure, or take the more politically charged steps of censure or impeachment.

Specter's announcement followed a report in the Sunday Globe that Bush has quietly asserted the authority to ignore provisions in 750 bills he has signed -- about 1 in 10.

Over the past five years, Bush has stated that he can defy any statute that conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. In many instances, Bush cited his role as head of the executive branch or as commander in chief to justify the exemption.

The statutes that Bush has asserted the right to override include numerous rules and regulations for the military, job protections for whistle-blowers who tell Congress about possible government wrongdoing, affirmative action requirements, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Bush made the claims in ''signing statements," official documents in which a president lays out his interpretation of a bill for the executive branch, creating guidelines to follow when it implements the law. The statements are filed without fanfare in the federal record, often following ceremonies in which the president made no mention of the objections he was about to raise in the bill, even as he signed it into law.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said via e-mail that if Specter calls a hearing, ''by all means we will ensure he has the information he needs." She pointed out that other presidents dating to the 19th century have ''on occasion" issued statements that raise constitutional concerns about provisions in new laws.

But while previous presidents did occasionally challenge provisions in laws while signing them, legal scholars say, the frequency and breadth of Bush's use of that power are unprecedented.

Bush is also the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, an act that gives public notice that he is rejecting a law and can be overridden by Congress. Instead, Bush has used signing statements to declare that he can bypass numerous provisions in new laws.

The statements attracted little attention in Congress or the media until recently, when Bush used them to reserve a right to bypass a new torture ban and new oversight provisions in the Patriot Act.

''The problem is that you have a statute, which Congress has passed, and then the signing statements negate that statute," Specter said. ''And there are more and more of them coming. If the president doesn't like something, he puts a signing statement on it."

Specter added: ''He put a signing statement on the Patriot Act. He put a signing statement on the torture issue. It's a very blatant encroachment on [Congress's constitutional] powers. If he doesn't like the bill, let him veto it."

It was during a Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the FBI that Specter yesterday announced his intent to hold a hearing on Bush's legal authority. Another committee member, Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, also questioned Bush's assertions that he has the authority to give himself an exemption from certain laws.

''Unfortunately, the president's signing statement on the Patriot Act is hardly the first time that he has shown a disrespect for the rule of law," Feingold said. ''The Boston Globe reported on Sunday that the president has used signing statements to reserve the right to break the law more than 750 times."

Feingold is an outspoken critic of Bush's assertion that his wartime powers give him the authority to set aside laws. The senator has proposed censuring Bush over his domestic spying program, in which the president secretly authorized the military to wiretap Americans' phones without a warrant, bypassing a 1978 surveillance law.

At the hearing yesterday, Feingold pressed FBI director Robert Mueller to give assurances that the bureau would comply with provisions in the Patriot Act and to tell Congress how agents are using the law to search homes and secretly seize papers.

Mueller said he saw no reason that the bureau couldn't share that information with Congress. But he also said that he was bound to obey the administration, and declined to promise that he would ''go out there and fight" on behalf of Congress if Bush decided to override the Patriot Act's oversight provision and ordered the FBI not to brief Congress.

Feingold also said Bush's legal claims have cast a cloud over a host of rules and restrictions that Congress has passed, using its constitutional authority to regulate the executive branch of government.

''How can we know whether the government will comply with the new laws that we passed?" Feingold said. ''I'm not placing the blame on you, obviously, or your agents who work to protect this country every day, but how can we have any assurance that you or your agents have not received a secret directive from above requiring you to violate laws that we all think apply today?"

Mueller replied: ''I can assure with you with regard to the FBI that our actions would be taken according to appropriate legal authorities."

Specter said that challenging Bush's contention that he can ignore laws written by Congress should be a matter of institutional pride for lawmakers. He also connected Bush's defiance of laws to several Supreme Court decisions in which the justices ruled that Congress had not done enough research to justify a law.

''We're undergoing a tsunami here with the flood coming from the executive branch on one side and the judicial branch on the other," Specter said. ''There may as well soon not be a Congress. . . . And I think that most members don't understand what's happening."

I was particularly taken with Mueller's careful answer to the unnerving question about whether FBI agents might be acting under secret directives from the White House. See my bold face-added emphasis above. That's no kind of answer is it?

A Defense of Student-edited Law Reviews

Every semester I share with the students in my Advanced Legal Research class Judge Richard Posner's piece, Against the Law Reviews, in Legal Affairs (Nov.-Dec. 2004) criticizing the student-edited law review (http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/review_posner_novdec04.html). Many of the students serve on one of my school's three law reviews, and they take umbrage at Judge Posner's statement that the today's "system of scholarly publication in law...[results in] too many articles that are too long, too dull, and too heavily annotated, and...many interdisciplinary articles are published that have no merit at all." I'm grateful to Judge Posner for his negative spin on the law review because it is guaranteed to get discussion going.

A new article provides a useful balance to Posner's position, and I plan to mention it to my class. Natalie C. Cotton, who is a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and editor of two different law reviews at Penn, has just published an article that responds to each one of Posner's criticisms. The citation is: Comment: The Competence of Students as Editors of Law Reviews: A Response to Judge Posner, 154 U. Penn. L. Rev. 951 (2006). I found Ms. Cotton's remarks on the article selection process and the tenure process to be particularly cogent. Ms. Cotton opposes using the alleged quality of the law review in which a faculty member publishes as a proxy for the quality of the scholarship itself. She fears that this happens during the faculty hiring process as well as during the reappointment and tenure process. As she points out, "the best scholarship is not published only in the top reviews, and the top reviews don't publish only the best scholarship." Busy committees might not have time to read and evaluate a candidate's scholarship, so they might take a short cut and assume that an article is worthy because it was published in a top-tier law review. Ms. Cotton speculates that "professors might dislike the system of student-run law reviews...because they fear that students' selection of article will influence...[their] careers." But surely Judge Posner has nothing to fear on this score?

Ragged Stray

Ragged Stray

Betsy McKenzie

My heart goes out to you;
I see you poking in the trash.
Looking for some over-looked bit.
Your ragged coat is not warm enough,
Even in the thin spring sun.
Whose little one were you?
Why would they let you wander off,
So uncared-for, unfed, and unkempt?
Competing with pigeons for handouts,
You try to look appealing,
While staying well out of range
Of cruelty and “the law.”


The image of a runaway teen above is from a collection of black and white photographs at www.Humanistic-Photography.Com where Abraham Menashe has an expanded collection on autistic children, domestic violence, runaway teens, Alzheimer's patients, emergency medicine, and compassionate nursing. All are keyword searchable, model released, real people. The image of a stray cat is from http://valine.org.

Language Nests - Nurturing First Nation Languages

On May 1, this day when we are so focused on immigration issues, let's step back and look at this issue for First Nations, the only people in North America who are not immigrants (at least in the last several thousand years):

The Boston Globe Magazine on Sunday, April 30, 2006 featured a story about the Penobscot tribe in Maine working to teach children to speak the Penobscot language before the last native speakers die out. This is a problem for other aboriginal peoples. From Maori tribes in New Zealand, to Hawaiians, to Nizpuh (Blackfoot), Arapaho and Mohawk tribes in North America, to Welsh and Irish speakers of Gaelic, as native speakers age, there is a growing urgency to save languages on the brink of dying.

As long ago as 1905, the speaking of Maori was banned in New Zealand schools. Like other aboriginal people, the Maori became ashamed of their language and culture after being punished in school and taught that it was somehow lower or less cultured than the European colonial cultures.

Faced with alienation and aging native speakers, the Maori elders developed on their own immersion programs for children in the early 1980's, called Te Kohanga Reo, or language nest schools. The children are placed with native speaking elders in the school, where nothing but the native language is spoken. Even science and math and English are taught in Maori language. Part of the program is to increase pride in one’s heritage, and therefore there is no smoking, and the school is kept crupulously clean. One of the problems is to maintain the speaking of Maori and cultural habits once the children leave the language nest and move into mainstream schools. The New Zealand government began to fund the language schools for elementary and secondary education. The Kohanga Reo schools are uniquely integrated with the families and communities, because the school board and principals are answerable to the community as a whole. Maori children are thriving in the schools according to the Maori reports, although the New Zealand Ministry of education is concerned with the schools meeting requirements before being funded.

Hawaii began in 1983 to offer family-based pre-school with native speech immersion. In 1987, the state changed its English-only education law, and Pünana Leo immersion schools became available funded by the state.

The mission statement for these schools explain in a moving way what the native peoples working to save their language (and culture) see
in these language nests:

The Pünana Leo Movement grew out of a dream that there be reestablished throughout Hawai’i the mana of a living Hawaiian language from the depth of our origins . The Pünana Leo initiates, provides for and nurtures various Hawaiian Language environments, and we find our strength in our spirituality, love of our
language, love of our people, love of our land, and love of knowledge.

(Aha Pünana Leo, 2003).

In 1999, the first Hawaiian immersion students graduated from high school, and the University of Hawai’i at Hilo has a Hawaiian immersion teacher-training program to staff new immersion schools.

There are newer language nest schools for the Nizpuh or Blackfoot tribe in Montana, Arapaho, and another for the Mohawk tribe in New York state. There is a great deal of interest in saving native languages among other tribes, such as the Wampanoag and the Penobscot on the east coast.

Darrell R Kipp, who co-founded the Cut-Bank Language Immersion School that teaches the Blackfoot language in Montana gives the following advice:

* Rule 1: Never Ask Permission, Never Beg to
Save the Language. Go ahead and get started,
don’t wait even five minutes. Don’t wait for a
grant. ...

* Rule 2: Don’t Debate the Issues

* Rule 3: Be Very Action-Oriented: Just Act

* Rule 4: Show, Don’t Tell. Don’t talk about
what you will do. Do it and show it.

Here are some notes from a variety of web-
accessible resources:

http://www.schoolnet.ca/aboriginal/fnesc/index-
e.html link

This is a very lengthy site, aimed at professional
educators. It is very informative, and briskly
business-like. It includes social-science style
citations to references. It is based on British
Columbia, so it includes Okanagan Language
Association, and discusses other First Nations
efforts to save their languages and cultures.
Includes a sample syllabus and list of courses
offered for adults in native language.

For instance, it has a section on standards. The
website warns the reader that not all aboriginal
language programs as proposed or in existence
meet reasonable goals: 1) teach the student to
speak proficiently, with confidence and ease so
that they will speak the language at home with
their own children; 2) provide incentives and
measures for re-integrating the use of the
language outside the school in the household
and community. This website notes for
instance, that British Columbia has a Language
Education Policy. That means it also has similar
standards for the teaching of aboriginal
languages in the public school system. Many of
the tribes are uncomfortable having an outside
system impose standards in education rather
than developing their own system and standards.
However, it is part of the package if the
government funds native language education as
part of the public education system. It is a
useful if uncomfortable site to read.


***************************
Native Language Immersion
by Jon Reyhner

A very informative compilation of information,
again with social science style citations. The
end of this article summarizes what he calls
“The Natural Approach:”

The best way to acquire a second language is the
same way children acquire a first language:
Immerse students in a second language rich
environment rather than the traditional teaching-
learning situation. As Judith Lindors states,
“What’s good for the first-language learner is
good for the second.” As well worked out
approach to immersion education is Stephen
Krashen and Tracy Terrell’s (1983) Natural
Approach, which is based on four principles:

1. “Comprehension Precedes Production”
* The teacher always uses the language he or
she is teaching;
* The lesson (what is talked about) is focused
on a topic that the students are interested in and
* The teacher works continuously to help
students understand using gestures, visuals, and
real objects.

2. Students learn new languages in stages,
beginning with a “silent period” where they just
listen and then by starting to speak single words,
then a few words, then phrases, and finally
moving to sentences and complex discourse.
Errors in grammar and pronunciation that do not
interfere with understanding should not be
corrected.

3. The objective of learning a language is to be
able to carry out a conversation in that language.
Lessons should center on an activity rather an a
grammatical structure.

4. Classroom activities need to lessen student
anxiety. They need ot focus on topics of interest
and relevancy to the students and “encourage
them to express their ideas, opinioins, desires,
emotions, and feelings.” The teacher needs to
create a warm, friendly, welcoming classroom to
insure language learning. (Adapted from
Reyhner, 1992, pp. 75-76)

He includes a reference to more information on
immersion at

Teaching Indigenous Languages
website at http://www2.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_3.html
link
This is a website about the Arapaho immersion program. Written by Steve Greymorning, and published as part of a book at Northern Arizona University. It is an exciting account of his adventures establishing the immersion program on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He talks in detail about what works.

******************
http://www.ahapunanaleo.org/index.html
link

E Ola Ka ‘Olelo Hawai’i (1997) Winner of two
Canadian film festival awards. In Hawaiian
with English subtitles. 23 minutes. For more
information, e-mail
hauoli@leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu

************************

http://www.k12.hi.us/~kaiapuni/
link
Official website of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program
Since 1987, Hawai'i has had 2 official languages. The Hawai'i State Constitution mandates (in Article X, Section 4) "to promote the study of Hawaiian culture, language and history and the persistent requests of parents and Hawaiian community leaders, the Department of Education established the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program, Ka Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai'i."

**********************
Kipp, Darrell R. (2000) Encouragement,
Guidance, Insights, and Lessons Learned for
Native Language Activists Developing Their
Own Tribal Language Program (St. Paul, MN:
Grott Foundation)


******************
http://www.kohanga.ac.nz
link

Te Kohanga Reo
About the Maori Language Nest program.


*******************

http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues02/Co11022002/CO_11022002_Saving_Culture.htm


November2, 2002, Issue 73
An “online newsletter celebrating Native
America,” Canku Ota means Many Paths. This
issue containss an article titled “Saving a
Culture” by Reed Lindsey, “Special to the
Washington Times.” It tells the story of the
Blackfoot language nest very beautifully.
Nice illustration.

Here is their home page http://www.turtletrack.org/index.html
link

************************

In the Language of Our Ancestors
http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/09-03/language.php
link

NorthWest Education Magazine (online), an article about language immersion programs in the Pacific Northwest and Montana, September, 2003. Accessible and has some of the same research provided in the lengthy text article by Jon Reyhner, above.

**************************

There was also a, intersting story in the November,
2003 Smithsonian Magazine, titled, “Tribal
Talk: Immersion schools try to revive and
preserve Native American languages.” Written
by Michelle Nijhuis, it is a excellent article.

***************************

http://pages.slic.com/mohawkna/freedom.htm
link
Akwesasne Freedom School
The Mohawk language and culture school in
New York state. A private school receives no
state funding. You can see also an article in Canku Ota, the online newsletter, about Akwesasne Freedom school,
receiving an environmental award at http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues02/Co05042002/CO_05042002_Freedom_School.htm
link


*****************************

http://www.shunpiking.com/shun0844/Native-Lang.htm


Mac-talla
An exciting Canadian initiative to teach teachers for young children. Based in Nova Scotia. Page is dated June, 2003. For further information, e-mail abear@stu.ca
or

***************************

http://www.collegefund.org/pdf/ImmersionBook.pdf
link

Native American Language Immersion: Innovative Native Education for Children and Families by Janine Pease-Pretty On Top.

A lengthy PDF file, but full of detailed information for organizations wishing to plan an immersion program.

***********************

http://www.turtleisland.org/culture/culture-language.htm
link

Turtle Island Native Network on cultures and languages. Includes links to hear spoken language and live radio in various First Nation languages. I have decorated this blog entry with the bead turtle decoration from this wonderful website. It is full of interesting links.

*********************

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/ModStrat/pt3a.html
link

A report on The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)and the Southwest Memory Project. AILDI was founded in 1978 by Hualapai tribal educators, Native American parents, and experts in linguistics to help several Southwest tribes develop a written language and curriculum materials that reflect attention to Native American students' heritage, needs, and learning styles. Dated 1995.

***********************

http://www.ed.gov/programs/naancs/index.html
link

Dept. of Education: No Child Left Behind program for Native American and Alaska Native School Children with limited English.

As part of the over arching No Child Left Behind P.L. 107-110, Part B, sections 3201 et seq 'Improving Language Instruction Educational Programs For Academic Achievement Act' covers "public institutions or agencies whose mission is the preservation and maintenance of native languages."

*****************************

http://www.afterschool.ed.gov/grants/grants_ana.html
link

The grants for children and families are no longer announced in the Federal Register; you have to go to www.grants.gov link or to the above site for specific grants which are available for after school programs for language programs, for instance. There is a grant opportunity open until March 8 for Native American Language Maintenance announced there in January.

Everybody must watch Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Seriously. Right now. This is a watershed event. If you didn't watch it on CSPAN (as I didn't), watch the clips online.

Says billmon:

American Nightmarez

If you want to see the difference between real political satire and the cheap imitation stuff, watch (or read) Stephen Colbert's merciless skewering of the Cheney administration and its media lapdogs, then go fork over your $10 and see the movie American Dreamz, which purports to do the same thing....

Colbert's routine was designed to draw blood -- as good political satire should. It seemed obvious, at least to me, that he didn't just despise his audience, he hated it. While that hardly merits comment here in Left Blogostan, White House elites clearly aren't used to having such contempt thrown in their faces at one of their most cherished self-congratulatory events. So it's no surprise the scribes have tried hard to expunge it from the semi-official record -- as Peter Daou notes over at the Huffington Post.

Colbert used satire the way it's used in more openly authoritarian societies: as a political weapon, a device for raising issues that can't be addressed directly. He dragged out all the unmentionables -- the Iraq lies, the secret prisons, the illegal spying, the neutered stupidity of the lapdog press -- and made it pretty clear that he wasn't really laughing at them, much less with them. It may have been comedy, but it also sounded like a bill of indictment, and everybody understood the charges.

If things were going well, if Bush's approval ratings were north of 60%, gas was 80 cents a gallon and the war was being won, I suspect Colbert would have gotten a different reception. His audience could have pretended to be amused -- in that smug, patronizing way we all remember from the neocon glory days. But we're long past the point where the Cheneyites and their journalistic flunkies are willing to suffer such barbs with good humor. The regime's legal and political troubles are too serious, the wounds too open and too deep for the gang to smile while somebody like Colbert gleefully jabs a finger into them....

The light entertainment at these events is also supposed to reflect the same spirit of forced good cheer, to the point where even matters of deadly seriousness -- things that in other countries might cause governments to fall -- are treated like inside jokes, as with Shrub's looking-for-the-missing-WMDs-under-the-couch routine. Ha ha ha. We're all friends here!

The underlying message, never stated or even acknowledged, is that there are no disputes that can't be resolved within the cozy confines of our "democratic" (oligarchic) system. Friends don't send friends to jail -- or smash their presses or abolish their political parties or line them up against the wall and shoot them.

The problem is that the tissue of this particular lie has been eroding ever since the Clinton impeachment, if not before, and is now worn exceedingly thin. It's becoming harder and harder to conceal the ruthlessness of the struggle for power, or ignore the consequences of losing it.

Happy Law Day!

Jack Balkin at Balkinization:

Today, May the 1st, is Law Day, celebrating the Rule of Law, which, under this Administration, has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Indeed, this article by Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe points out that

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Savage is pointing to one of the effects of the explosion of Presidential signing statements under the Bush Presidency: Bush's decision-- instead of vetoing legislation-- to state that certain parts of laws that he signs are unconstitutional and will not be enforced or will be applied in very limited ways. One effect of this policy, as I've described here, is that the President may be directing his subordinates to refuse to enforce a wide variety of federal laws in secret, with little or no public accountability, and with no effective way for the courts or Congress to hold him to his duties to enforce the law and "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" under the Constitution....

The irony is that, at least in the early years of the Republic, the only time that Presidents tended to use their power of veto was when they believed that a law was unconstitutional. Bush's decision *never* to veto any bills he believes are unconstitutional is in some tension with his duties under the Constitution, at least if his views about unconstitutionality are in good faith. Surely Presidents shouldn't be required to veto every bill that passes their desk that has a constitutional difficulty, especially if the problem is a relatively minor part of a major piece of legislation. However, it is hard to argue that none of the 750 bills he claims are unconstitutional don't deserve a veto if he is serious about the constitutional claims he is making. One suspects that the President is primarily interested in escaping accountability for executive actions rather than having courts determine the constitutionality of provisions the President objects to; this is especially the case in the area of foreign relations, prisoner detention and prisoner interrogation.

The Bush Administration didn't want Congress regulating how the it treated prisoners, regarding any such interventions as unconstitutional; at the same time, it didn't want the courts deciding the question of constitutionality either. It simply wanted to be free of legal obligations or responsibilities in this area other than those that it choose for itself.

Rule of Law, R.I.P.