This op-ed, calling for a de-authorization of the U.S. effort in Iraq is rather too simple, and indeed, unworthy of an aspiring President. Here’s one line of which I approve, however:

If the Bush administration believes that the current war, as it is being executed, is critical to America’s future, then it should make the case and let the people decide.

HRC goes on to say that the Senate didn’t authorize our involvement in a civil war, to which NRO’s Andrew McCarthy has this response:

Not a civil war, Senator Clinton. A chaos strategy to win a war al Qaeda is fighting against the United States.

In his second post, Lawler cites to another definition of judicial activism, this one used by Stuart Taylor. This time around, judicial activism seems to be defined in terms of failing to adhere to precedents (it should be noted that this is clearly seen as a negative, contrary to Lawler’s previous amoral description). Obviously, a judge may be activist if they are ignoring precedents simply to apply their own policy preferences (the case of Ninth Circuit Judge Pregerson, who refused to enforce California’s three-strikes law even after it was upheld by his superiors at the United States Supreme Court because it offends his notions of justice, comes to mind). But every act of failing to adhere to precedent, particularly non-binding precedent, is not activism. Even the most stringent adherents of stare decisis recognize that the Supreme Court has a decreased interest in adhering to erroneous precedent where that precedent involves constitutional interpretation. While courts apply a more rigid form of stare decisis in the statutory context, that is because Congress can remedy any error in interpretation with comparative ease by passing a new statute. By contrast, amending the Constitution to correct a Supreme Court err is exceedingly difficult. (NB: Obviously, Congress or the Executive could challenge an erroneous constitutional interpretation through coordinate branch construction, but given that these branches have functionally acquiesced to the Supreme Court’s assertion that they are the final arbiter on constitutional meaning, I limited my commentary to those options which are most practicable.) While Lawler focuses on the stability of the rule, stability and expectation interests must eventually yield even under stare decisis review if the rule is sufficiently incorrect.

Peter Lawler responded to my post on judicial activism with two new posts. In the first, he suggests that there is an “amoral or merely behavioral definition of activism” which is satisfied any time that a court substitutes its will in the place of the legislature, whether correct or incorrect. As an initial matter, while judicial activism is not a term of art and has been used in many different ways, Lawler’s definition is not the common understanding of the term. As I suggested previously, the “striking down laws” definition of judicial activism is one that left-wing professors like Cass Sunstein are trying to perpetuate, because if the term “judicial activism” is neutral, then it loses its power as a pejorative. Judicial activism has generally been used in popular parlance to describe “judges behaving badly”--a negative description of judges who are functionally legislating their own policy preferences from the bench. This is why someone like Adam Cohen screeches that the Roberts court is “activist.” He doesn’t do so because the term is neutral, amoral, or a behavioral definition, but rather to malign the court.

Is the new September, according to this WaPo article. The good news is that wobbliness seems to be out of the question.

Update: Ralph Peters interviews Gen. Petraeus (who my father informs me is Dutch). Here are the last paragraphs:

I can think of few commanders in history who wouldn’t have wanted more troops, more time or more unity among their partners; however, if I could only have one at this point in Iraq, it would be more time. This is an exceedingly tough endeavor that faces countless challenges.

None of us, Iraqi or American, are anything but impatient and frustrated at where we are. But there are no shortcuts. Success in an endeavor like this is the result of steady, unremitting pressure over the long haul. It’s a test of wills, demanding patience, determination and stamina from all involved.

Harvard’s Michael Sandel has taken this article and turned it into a book, described here and reviewed, by Slate’s William Saletan, here.

Sandel appears to respect the religious case against perfection and seems to try to fashion a secular counterpart. Saletan isn’t persuaded:

Once gene therapy becomes routine, the case against genetic engineering will sound as quaint as the case against running coaches.

In other words, saying that enhancement isn’t sporting isn’t good enough. Here’s what Saletan prefers:

Given a choice between a world of fate and blamelessness and a world of freedom and responsibility, I’ll take the latter. Such a world may be, as Sandel says, too daunting for the humans of today. But not for the humans of tomorrow.

***

In a world without givens, a world controlled by bioengineering, we would dictate our nature as well as our practices and norms. We would gain unprecedented power to redefine the good. In so doing, we would strip perfection of its independence. Its meaning would evolve as our nature and our ideals evolved.

Brink Lindsey denies that there’s any "libertarian triumphalism" in this essay, but you could have fooled me. Consider these snippets:

American society has become more libertarian because, more than any other country on the planet, it has successfully adapted to the novel conditions of economic abundance. And because of the way this adaptation took place, a broadly defined libertarianism now occupies the center of the American political spectrum.

***

Our politics today is stuck in a reactionary rut. The right remains unreconciled to irreversible cultural changes from the ‘60s and ‘70s. The left remains unreconciled to irreversible economic changes from the ‘70s and ‘80s. The idea of the libertarian center suggests that the way to break out of this rut is with a new, post-culture-wars politics that embraces both economic change and cultural diversity. I am not saying that some particular package of libertarian reforms is now the key to assembling a winning political coalition. The idea of a libertarian center is about the core of American political culture, not the margins of political change. What I’m saying is that partisans on both sides need to recraft their messages and programs to better reflect the entrepreneurial, tolerant spirit of contemporary America.

***

[O]n subjects that have been of central concern to the conservative movement, Americans are becoming bluer, not redder, and conservatives will have to change with them or else be marginalized.

Lindsey’s description of the drift of American public opinion toward a kind of tolerant libertarianish center is plausible, but I’m not as convinced that the attitudes that sustain our decency and prosperity will survive the acid bath of libertarian individualism. For example, Lindsey quotes Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart to this effect:

“In a major part of the world, the disciplined, self-denying, and achievement-oriented norms of industrial society are giving way to an increasingly broad latitude for individual choice of lifestyles and individual self-expression.”

Is the apotheosis of choice and self-expression going to sustain a stable social order? Is it going to sustain a productive economy? Is it going to see us through the challenges we face, now from radical Islam and perhaps later from an emerging superpower like China? What will happen when the going gets tough? Where will our mushy libertarian centrists go? If "people are much less willing to subjugate their personal interests to standards set by families, employers, churches, and governments," will we ever be able to call them to sacrifice in the face of a civilizational challenge?

Perhaps. But in so doing we’ll reveal the shallowness of libertarianism with its all-too-optimistic and all-too-individualistic view of human nature.

While I certainly agree with Lawler’s earlier post insofar as it makes clear that Adam Cohen’s article in today’s NYT was a train wreck of logic (i.e., Cohen complains in one breath about the activism of the Supreme Court striking down laws, then in the next about the fact that the court did not strike down the federal partial-birth abortion statute, and then in conclusion referred to striking down a federal statute as "the ultimate act of judicial activism"), I am not sure that I would agree with Lawler’s conclusion that the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Louisville and Seattle’s non-remedial use of race was "somewhat activist." I am not sure how he reaches that conclusion, but it would seem that to do so in some way accepts Cohen’s premise that when courts strike down a statute, that is activism. Now, I don’t mean to ascribe this theory to Lawler if it is not what he meant, but it should be noted that this is an increasingly common understanding of what constitutes "judicial activism"--one which does not reflect what the term “judicial activism” generally has been understood to mean.

Our friend Jon Schaff calls attention to this letter, written a couple of weeks ago. Led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, fourteen Catholic Democrats in the House call upon the American Catholic hierarchy "to join with us in mobilizing support for Congress’ efforts to end the war."

Jon’s comments are worth reading:

These liberal Democrats are calling on Catholic clergy to work to change public opinion. Further, they say, simply speaking against injusitce is not enough; action must be taken. One assumes this means legislative action. The Catholic Democrats are asking the bishops to use their moral weight to fight injustice through lobbying for legislation. If the bishops were being asked by other parties to work against the injustice of abortion instead of the war in Iraq, one would expect an outcry about the bishops seeking to impose their values on the public. Predictably, we’d read blog posts and opinion columns about "theocracy" and "separation of church and state" as the Catholic bishops were denounced for trying to write their own religious values into law. "It’s all right for them to be opposed to abortion," we’d hear, "but why must they seek to impose their values on everybody?"

One sees liberal Christians increasingly discussing their policy preferences in terms of their religious faith. This is a welcome addition to the public rhetoric. Let’s have people of various political and religious perspectives express their policy preferences in both terms of secular reasoning and demands of faith. The American people can then work through the competing claims as diligent citizens ought. Then let’s drop the silly rhetoric about "imposing values" and "theocracy."

Congratulations to this month’s winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Joel Charles
Nat Stevens
Thomas Reilly
Mike Scully
Jack McDonald

Sunday’s Cleveland paper had an article on the effect of vouchers (five years after the Supreme Court’s Zelman decision) on Cleveland’s Catholic schools. Here’s a snippet:

Budget proposals from Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Ohio House and Senate all provided money to continue the 11-year-old initiative, which gives parents a taxpayer-supported voucher to spend toward tuition at participating private schools.

Those factors have helped establish the voucher program as a solid safety net for Cleveland’s Catholic schools.

***

In one South Broadway neighborhood school, Holy Name Elementary, more than 90 percent of the students receive vouchers. In at least seven other Catholic elementary schools, more than 80 percent of the students use public dollars to attend.

***

"Vouchers have little impact except in so far as they support enrollment," [Margaret Lyons, superintendant of the Cleveland diocese’s schools] wrote. "Positive enrollments stabilize a school. However, vouchers do not cover the costs, so schools still need to find resources to supplement vouchers."

The article also notes that "[l]ast year, about 53,000 Cleveland students attended public schools, about 11,500 attended charter schools, which are also financed by the state, and about 12,000 pupils were enrolled in Catholic and other private schools." There’s nothing about student performance, but some about parental satisfaction and about the way in which church-related schools actually provide the public a bigger bang for the buck.