1. From Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privatized its Public (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 236:

Contemporary elites have found that they need not engage in the arduous task of building a popular constituency. Public interest groups and environmental groups have large mailing lists but few active members; civil rights groups field more attorneys than protestors; and national political parties activitate a familiar few rather than risk mobilizing anonynmous millions.

2. From Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” The New York Times, April 3, 2005:

No, not everyone has access yet to this platform,* but it is open now to more people in more places on more days than anything like it in history. Wherever you look today–whether it is the world of journalism, with bloggers bringing down Dan Rather; the world of software, with the Linux code writers working in online forums for free to challenge Microsoft; or the world of business, where Indian and Chinese innovators are competing against and working with some of of the most advanced Western multinationals–hierarchies are being flattened and value is being created less and less within vertical silos and more and more through horizontal collaboration within companies, between companies and among individuals.

*The referent here is not precisely clear, but “this platform” roughly means: the Internet and the global information marketplace.

Today I’ll travel to Miami University in Oxford, OH, having been in that other Miami not more than 10 days ago. While I was in the Big Miami, during a break, I managed to ride a city bus over to South Beach. Uncomfortably warm in my dark suit and business shoes, I walked on the sand with the art deco pastel buildings on one side and the hazy Atlantic on the other. I drank a cappuccino in a beachfront restaurant where all of the staff spoke Italian and the young guy at the next table quickly downed three bloody marys. It was 10 am.

In contrast, the last time I visited Miami of Ohio, the weather was freezing–close to or below zero fahrenheit and with a high, dry wind. However, Miami of Ohio is a picture-perfect Midwestern community with white picket fences, Christmas lights, and kids in varsity jackets. If I had to choose, I’d pick the Miami of the Midwest (the original one, as the residents will eagerly tell you).

GRAHAM: Are you a strict constructionist?

ALITO: I think it depends on what you mean by that phrase. And if you…

GRAHAM: Well, let’s forget that. We’ll never get to the end of that.(LAUGHTER) Have you heard the term used?

ALITO: I have heard the term used.

GRAHAM: Is it fair to say that, when it’s used by politicians, people like me, that we’re trying to tell the public we want a judge who looks at things very narrowly, that doesn’t make a bunch of stuff up?

Is that a fair understanding of what a strict constructionist may be in the political world?

ALITO: Well, if a strict constructionist is a judge who doesn’t make things up, than I’m a strict constructionist. (LAUGHTER) …

ALITO: I think that a strict constructionist as you understand it would engage in a certain process in evaluating that question. And a strict constructionist, a person who interprets the law — that’s how I would put it — a person who interprets the law would look at the language of the authorization for the use of military force and legislative history that was informative, maybe past practices. Were there prior enactments that are analogous to that? What was the understanding of those? And a host of other considerations that might go into the interpretive process.

If a “strict constructionist” looks at precedent, legislative intent, “past practices,” and a “host of other considerations,” then strict constructionism means nothing at all. Judge Alito clearly doesn’t like the phrase–perhaps because it’s too controversial, or perhaps because it’s vacuous. But could it be a meaningful theory? I suppose it could mean:

1. A judge should deliberately refuse to consider all the matters that Alito listed above, except the text of the relevant statute or constitutional provision. It is improbable that anyone can understand a text without some recourse to context, but trying to do so would be the judge’s intent.

2. A judge should apply the law regardless of its consequences. In moral philosophy, “consequentialists” are those who would assess actions or policies by their results. “Deontologists” instead apply principles or rules, without directly considering consequences. It was a consequentialist Supreme Court that ruled that public schools could not be segregated by race because segregation had bad effects on minority children. A deontological court might have said that barring any child from any public school on the basis of color, even if it has benign effects, always violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Strict constructionism would be a form of deontology in which existing laws (not morality) provide the principles to guide a court’s decisions.

Judge Alito sounds like something of a legal deontologist some of the time. For instance, in defending his decisions regarding searches, he says that these police actions were harmful but allowed by the law. Note, however, that a legal-deontological approach would not always push in conservative directions. A strict constructionist (in this sense) could not argue that courts ought to enhance economic efficiency, nor could he defer to the president in order to promote national security. That would be paying attention to predicted consequences. The motto of the strict constructionist would rather be “Fiat justitia et pereat mundus”: let justice be done even if the world should perish. (This is not a smart thing to say in confirmation hearings, however.)

I first posted on January 8, 2003. The congressional office that I described that day belonged to Bob Ney–“Representative no. 1” in the Abramoff court papers.

I’ve since posted 766 times more: once every work day, except when we’re on family vacations. I enjoy the rhythm of a daily activity; it’s my hobby now. For better or worse, it has replaced playing the clavichord.

I’ve discovered that if you stick with blogging for long enough, your archive of posts becomes more popular than your daily contribution. People reach an archive by searching the whole web, which means that they don’t read my old posts about extremely common terms, like “George Bush” or “philosophy.” But quite a few people find themselves on this site because of a search for Miles Horton, the great American political educator and civil rights leader, about whom I once made an offhand remark. (There is a great need for a good Miles Horton website.) Some come to find out about Lia Lee, the tragic victim of cultural miscommunication in Anne Fadiman’s great book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (Sometimes people email me to find out whether Lia is still alive. It’s possible, but I don’t have any way of knowing.) And some arive from Google’s image search page to see a photo of a Persian lion that I took one summer in Burgundy. These most common search terms are pretty miscellaneous and random–but then so have been my experiences over the past three years.

Byron York in today’s New York Times:

if Congress passes, as it does hundreds of times each year, a spending measure that affects a specific business, it attracts the intense interest of that business, which has a strong incentive to do whatever it takes to achieve a favorable result. A number of reformers believe there’s no way to clean up lobbying without cutting down on those so-called earmarks, and that’s a far bigger problem than lobbying reform.

Earmarking is very pervasive and a very bad thing. Take a small federal program that I happen to know about, the Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE, pronounced “fipsee”). Congress appropriated $157.2 million for FIPSE in fiscal year 2005, of which $135 million was then earmarked for specific projects at colleges and universities favored by Members of Congress. For instance, Alaska Christian College, with 37 total students, receives around $400,000 a year in earmarked FIPSE funds. As a result, there is no merit-based competition, and there is no accountability. The people who run the program in the Department of Education simply mail checks to fund projects, whatever their merits. They have no leverage to demand rigorous evaluation or results.

I know something about FIPSE, but I suspect that the earmarking problem is infinitely worse in big-ticket programs like Defense procurement. Byron York is right to link lobbying scandals to earmarking: it pays to influence a Congress that doles out pork. However, three questions:

1. Which causes which? Does Congress earmark because of lobbying pressure and money from special interests, or do special interests employ lobbyists because Congress earmarks?

2. Which problem is easier to fix? York thinks that it is impossible to restrain lobbyists, so we should make them less important by reducing earmarks. I could make precisely the opposite case–that campaign finance reform and ethics rules are easier goals than budget reform.

3. To what extent are earmarking and high-priced lobbying linked? After all, FIPSE grants go to colleges and universities. These institutions employ lobbyists (exercising their right to petition the government). I would be surprised, however, if they make big campaign contributions or buy political access at a high price. Presumably, Members of Congress earmark funds for their hometown colleges, not to obtain campaign funds, but to gain local goodwill, to feel important, and to support institutions that they genuinely like. Taking the money out of politics woulndn’t change those incentives.