Balkinization
an unanticipated consequence of
Jack M. Balkin
E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Ian Ayres: ian.ayres at yale.edu
Mary Dudziak: mdudziak at law.usc.edu
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Mark Graber: mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Bernard Harcourt harcourt at uchicago.edu
Scott Horton shorto at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman: marty.lederman at comcast.net
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
Neil Netanel netanel at law.ucla.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at princeton.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Brian Tamanaha: tamanahb at stjohns.edu
Mark Tushnet: mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
President Bush urged the nations of the Western Hemisphere on Monday to work together to prevent governments in the region from backsliding to authoritarian rule. . . . . Bush, in his speech, spoke of two competing visions for the hemisphere.
"One offers a vision of hope. It is founded on representative government, integration into the world markets, and a faith in the transformative power of freedom in individual lives," Bush said.
"The other seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades by playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people."
I don't, but only because the truth is not especially funny in this case. Apart from the fact that Bush should have said "last twenty decades" if he had been talking about his administration, the substance of his critique is apt. I'm appalled by the Republican Party's manipulation of fear and homophobia as an electoral technique and think JB was quite right in pointing out the quote.
George 'DWI' seems to have a habit of back-handedly hitting himself. I remember watching him speak at the Minority Journalists conference. The context of questions was about racial quotas in colleges and universities, and one individual asked Jr. what he thought about legacies. Of course, the reference appeared to be about non-minorities being admitted because their parents went to some institution. Looong pause, perhaps as GDWIB almost becomes aware that he's the biggest legacy example to date. Then, of course, he doesn't, and quickly declares legacies to be bad. Bad indeed...