A team of doctors in is working on a face transplant. "After years of heated scientific debate over ethics and technical feasibility, the Cleveland Clinic last fall became the first institution to approve this novel surgery. Already Dr. Siemionow’s group is searching for its first patient." This will not be plastic surgery:

This is brutal, if unsurprising, news:

Mitt Romney vetoed a bill that would expand access to the morning-after pill, thereby keeping his campaign promise not to change Massachusetts abortion laws.

’’I promised the people of Massachusetts that as governor I would not change the laws of the Commonwealth as they relate to abortion," Romney wrote in a veto letter to lawmakers. ’’If taken soon enough, the so-called ’morning after’ pill performs as a contraceptive. But in some cases, it can also act to prevent the implantation of the embryo. To those who believe that life begins at conception, the morning-after pill can destroy the human life that was created at the moment of fertilization."

Since the bill was passed by apparently veto-proof majorities in the state legislature, the principal practical effect of this stance is to burnish Romney’s credentials for the 2008 primary season.

He explains himself to legislators here and to the readers of the Boston Globe here. His conclusion:

There is much in the abortion controversy that America’s founders would not recognize. Above all, those who wrote our Constitution would wonder why the federal courts had peremptorily removed the matter from the authority of the elected branches of government. The federal system left to us by the Constitution allows people of different states to make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus avoiding the bitter battles engendered by ’’one size fits all" judicial pronouncements. A federalist approach would allow such disputes to be settled by the citizens and elected representatives of each state, and appropriately defer to democratic governance.

Except on matters of the starkest clarity like the issue of banning partial-birth abortions, there is not now a decisive national consensus on abortion. Some parts of the country have prolife majorities, others have prochoice majorities. People of good faith on both sides of the issue should be able to make and advance their case in democratic forums -- with civility, mutual respect, and confidence that democratic majorities will prevail. We will never have peace on the abortion issue, much less a consensus of conscience, until democracy is allowed to work its way.

This may be a bit of good news. At least it’s confusing enough to seem like good news. The University of Washington announced this month that, for the first time since the women’s studies department’s creation in 1970, it will be led by a man, David G. Allen. He will be the only male heading any of the 10 women’s-studies departments in the country that offer a doctoral degree. He took the job because no women were interested, or qualified. Nancy J. Kenney, an associate professor of women’s studies, found this "depressing." "There simply aren’t enough women of the right type and interest to take over this position," she said.

Unrelated, but equally amusing, reserachers have discovered why cats are such finicky eaters: genetics. They found a dysfunctional feline gene that probably prevents cats from tasting sweets, a sensation nearly every other mammal on the planet experiences to varying degrees. "Because cats can’t taste sweets, they’re cranky," joked Joseph Brand, one of the researchers. Also see Kipling’s The Cat that Walked by Himself.

According to this article, Richard Durbin denies the incident discussed here. His denial prompted Jonathan Turley to claim that Durbin was in fact his source. Who’s not telling the truth?

Today’s NYT has more, including this nugget:

Mr. Cornyn called Professor Turley’s account of the discussion "troubling, if true." In his own meeting with Judge Roberts on Monday, Mr. Cornyn recounted, "I said, ’I hate to see somebody going down this road because it really smacks of a religious test for public service.’ "

He added, "I said, ’I hate bringing this up, but since someone else already has and I know it is going to come up, is there anything about your faith or religious views that would prevent you from deciding issues like the death penalty of abortion or the like?’ "

"Absolutely not," Mr. Cornyn recalled Judge Roberts replying.

Mr. Durbin declined to discuss the issue on Monday. A spokesman, Joe Shoemaker, said, "What Judge Roberts did say clearly and repeatedly was that he would follow the rule of law, and beyond that we are going to leave it to Judge Roberts to offer his views."

Of course, the Times does manage to misstate Turley’s contention:

Professor Turley cited unnamed sources saying that Judge Roberts had told Mr. Durbin he would recuse himself from cases involving abortion, the death penalty or other subjects where Catholic teaching and civil law can clash.

Here, once again, is Turley:

According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral.

Even if it’s true that this was the question, and even if Roberts answered by saying that he would recuse himself if could not in good conscience follow the law (both Durbin and Cornyn deny that this is Roberts’s position), the Times got it wrong. No one has claimed, as the Times implies, that Roberts said he would recuse himself on every issue where the Catholic Church has a teaching that might be at odds with (someone’s understanding of) what the law requires or permits. The Times’s shorthand characterization of his answer makes it seem as if he wouldn’t touch any of these vexed issues at all. At most (and let me emphasize that this characterization is controverted), he has said that he couldn’t rule in a way that contradicted his conscience, and so would recuse himself. The Times makes it seem as if any time a matter on which the Catholic Church had a position came up, Roberts would back out. In other words, it construes his position in such a way as to suggest that serious religious believers would have a problem interpreting the law, a position that is at best a vast oversimplification (for reasons I offered in yesterday’s post) and at worst evidence of anti-religious animus.

Update: Win Myers has more here.

Update #2: Paul Mirengoff and Hugh Hewitt think Durbin tried to plant a story through Turley, only to have to back off when Turley actually quoted him. Hewitt’s advice to Roberts: always have a witness when you talk to Democrats.

Jonathan Turley reports on a conversation between John Roberts and Richard Durbin. Asked what he would do if the law required that he rule in a way that the Roman Catholic Church considers immoral, Roberts apparently (after a long pause) said that he would have to recuse himself.

Here’s a little bit of Turley:

Roberts may insist that he was merely discussing the subject theoretically in an informal setting, and that he doesn’t anticipate recusing himself on a regular basis. But it’s not a subject that can be ignored; if he were to recuse himself on such issues as abortion and the death penalty, it would raise the specter of an evenly split Supreme Court on some of the nation’s most important cases.

Roberts could now face difficult questions of fitness raised not only by the Senate but by his possible colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative members of the court (and a devout Catholic). Last year, Scalia chastised Catholic judges who balk at imposing the death penalty — another immoral act according to the church: "The choice for a judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty."

Of course, Turley seems to assume (with respect to abortion at least) that Roberts’s duty as a judge might be inconsistent with his duty as a Catholic, which isn’t altogether clear, given the narrowness of the questions with which he’s likely to be presented, the role of prudence in Roman Catholic moral thinking, and some of the considerations advanced in this post, as well as others (like this one) on the same site.

Turley also describes Roberts and his colleagues, quite misleadingly, in this way:

[He is] one of a new generation of post-Bork nominees, young conservatives who have been virtually raised on a hydroponic farm for flawless conservative fruit. They learned to confine their advocacy to legal briefs so that their true views are only known to the White House and to God.

I find it passing strange that other potential Supreme Court nominees (such as all those apparently interviewed for this slot), as well as someone like Michael McConnell, weren’t raised on the same farm. Of course, if the first President Bush had had his way, Roberts would by now have had a long record of opinions, as would a number of the current President’s appointees. In short, Turley’s characterization of the Republican stealth strategy is so far from accurate that one wonders what non-partisan reason he could have had for offering it.

Hat tips: Powerline and Southern Appeal.

Update: Nathan Forrester has more.

Update #2 Michael DeBow, a card-carrying member of the Federalist Society, had this to say in an email:

Wasn’t the "hydroponic farm" route entirely predictable after Bork’s treatment? And isn’t it remarkable that an entire shadow legal academy has to exist, outside the leftist bastion of "mainstream" legal education, in order for the traditional view of law to be preserved and transmitted? If Turley were interested in the substance of the matter, either of these points would have been more important to make than the cheap shot he took.

Admit it: You regular sneak a peek at the New York Times Sunday wedding announcements, as a kind of highbrow People magazine (which was only created to shorten the perception of the waiting time in doctor and dentist offices).

The NYT wedding announcements are typically blue-blooded affairs—-Thurston Howell the Fifth, grandson of Thurston Howell the Third, lost on a three-hour cruise in 1964, marries Buffy Trumpington-Cadbury, etc. Of course, the Times pays homage to diversity by being sure to include minorities of all stripes, but these are usually high achiving minorities, i.e., Harvard Law Grads, Ford Foundation program officers, scientists, and so forth.

It would seem, however, that the Times has to lower its standards dramatically to include announcements of gay partnerships. Today, for example, includes a notice for the nuptuals of Anthony Brown and Gary Spino. Brown is "of counsel" to a law firm in East Rockaway (not exactly Fifth Avenue white shoe territory), having earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School, and Spino is an office manager for an osteopath.

Peter’s post below about the Washington Post Book Review of Surviving the Sword provides the opportunity to bring up the best movie you’ve never heard of, To End All Wars. This movie tells the true story of Ernest Gordon, a Scottish regimental soldier captured in Singapore in 1942 and sent to a Japanese labor camp in Thailand.

The movie, which stars Keifer Sutherland ("24") and Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) is extraordinary. In addition to its gritty accuracy, it tells a story of philosophical and spiritual redemption for the survivors. (Ernest Gordon went on to become chaplain of Princeton University, and died three years ago shortly after the film was completed. The last scene of the movie is real footage of Gordon reconciling with the Japanese camp translator in a war cemetary in Thailand.)

If this were a just world, the filmakers would have a shelf full of Oscars. But despite winning several regional film festivals, the movie never made it to general release in part because it defies all the Hollywood conventions, and all the usual distribution studios were scared to touch the film and had no idea how it could be marketed. But you can order the DVD from Amazon by clicking the link above. You will not be disappointed. You also won’t be able to stop thinking about it for a week.