Hey K-Lo!

The Corner beat the websites of Fox News and MSN.com for posting the verdict soonest.

First, it must be noted that Specter's claim to have supported every Bush nominee isn't entirely true. It's only true that he supported CLOTURE on every Bush nominee. But, unless I missed something, he never promised to support Bill Pryor on final passage; indeed, reading between the lines, it was easy to take his hint that he actually would oppose Pryor on final passage. (Again, this bears checking out; Specter may have quietly changed his tune during a later cloture vote.) Meanwhile, he quite publicly gave succor to those who were pushing some of the trumped-up charges against Pryor, especially the bogus charges on RAGA, which Specter said were troubling. And, if memory serves correctly, there were other nominees that Specter never committed to supporting on final passage (although I didn't pay quite the attention to later filibustered nominees that I did to Pryor, so, again, this might require a fact-check).

Second, it seems to me that, in light of Frist's speech last night, conservatives should demand that, if the GOP senators refuse to block Specter for the chairmanship outright, they should at least block his ascension unless and until he commits not just to voting against a filibuster, but to SUPPORTING ANY RULES CHANGE that would end filibusters of judicial nominees. In other words, even if it comes to the so-called "nuclear option," Specter should commit to supporting it, and thus killing the filibusters altogether. If he won't make a firm commitment on that front, he should not be chairman.

Finally, back to the reasons to oppose Specter as chairman regardless: The one argument I haven't seen made is that it is absolutely crucial to keep a solid, conservative staff on the Judiciary Committee. The chairman controls the staff. If Specter becomes chairman, I guarantee he'll purge the staff of its conservatives (not that the whole existing staff is conservative, by the way, but it's at least semi-conservative right now) and replace it with a staff full of Specterites. That will matter not just for processing nominees, but for oversight and drafting of all manner of legislation, from tort reform to the Patriot Act to.... well, you know what Judiciary handles…

From a reader:

Dear Jonah, I've been following for a while your continuing thoughts of the moral roots of American order. They are not only welcome; they are correct. Where reasonable people do not agree about human ends and purposes, there is no possibility of real democratic discussion. (Most contemporary political philosophy is premised squarely on the explicit denial of just this. See Rawls, Habermas, etc.) I write, however, simply to point out a book on the subject that you may not have read. John Courtney Murray's *We Hold These Truths* is a locus classicus on the issue, and no thoughtful conservative (or American!) can understand American order without understanding the substance of Murray's argument. I respectfully suggest a discussion in The Corner on the perennial philosophy of Fr. Murray. I'm certain that Ramesh has something typically smart to say on the matter. K-Lo too. And add Fr. Rutler, if he's still around.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club has a really outstanding post about the problems and challenges a society faces when its democratic apparatus loses the moral superstructure it was originally housed in.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. As Wretchard notes, America's founders took it as a given that the larger society had the sort of moral controls and institutions necessary for a healthy society. The machinery of the American democratic system was largely -- though certainly not entirely -- amoral. This tracked the consensus of the Scottish -- i.e. the good -- enlightenment as opposed to the French Enligtenment. Whatever the faults and horrors of the French Revolution, the one thing they understood was that most people want their governments to reside within their moral universe rather than without. Even today the French are very comfortable using the State as an instrument of culture and values in ways that still cause hissy fits here in the US.

For good or ill, I've become increasingly convinced that it is impossible in the modern age to keep the state from falling into the hands of those who want to use it toward moral ends (Sorry my anarcho-libertarian friends). People who are driven by moral passions and missions are simply more likely to do the hard work necessary to wrest control of the levers of government. This needn't be scary or bad and it can be great. But it is a fact. Which mean a society -- not just its government -- must be very, very concerned about the sorts of citizens it creates. In Holland, as Wretchard notes, radical Muslims could win the battle if for no other reason they care more about winning than the, until recently, self-indulgent, spoiled and lazy Dutch who've taken the tolerance and decency of their system for granted.

Anyway, read the post. We'll chat about all this more later.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing about Yassir Arafat. NRO’s coverage has been great and I don’t think I have anything particular to add about the evilness of the guy. I don’t like him. You don’t like him. We don’t like him.

But it is worth noting a supreme irony of the international left's love for the Palestinian cause.

Arafat was a nationalist, a bloody, cruel, vicious, jingoistic, deceiftul nationalist in the classic tradition of nationalist tyrants. This is indisputable. But most of the time, pro-Arafat types have tried to shade this fact in nuance. They much prefer calling him a "symbol of Palestinian national aspirations" or the "national ideal." Only this week have I heard him called a "nationalist" with much regularity.

But here's the irony: the left loathes nationalism. It despises it and curses it at every opportunity. It is the source or symptom of everything bad and archaic in American society, according to the Left. George Bush is denounced as a nationalist by the guys at the ironically named magazine, “The Nation." Nationalism was the historic, existential, enemy of Communism (or so we we’re told) and so its place in the pantheon of human evils is irrefutable (or so we’re told). And yet, these same people love Palestinian nationalism and forgive mass murder in its name, even as they -- with a straight face -- denounce Israel’s self-defense as runaway nationalism.

I understand that this is all rationalized in various academic "theoretical" disciplines, like post--colonial studies (AKA how to waste your parents money at college) as well as the usual anti-imperialistic poses. But at the end of the day the left tries to hold two nearly irreconciable convictions simultaneously. On the one hand they say nationalism in the West is an impediment to achieving universal brotherhood and all that jazz. And on the other hand they celebrate Yassir Arafat -- and others of his ilk -- as a hero for galvanizing nationalistic passions against the West.

Of course, one way to reconcile the two positions is to simply assume the Left merely objects to nationalism when it strengthens the West and loves it when its hostile to the West.

Apparently your colleagues did not know that Joan, Arlen's wife, at one time was a leading baker of specialty cakes throughout the general Philly area. A client of mine ( a competitive baker) called her the Queen of Tortes.

After she went into politics she dumped the tortes, but still gives out the occasional recipe. See and look at the bottom for the ascription.

K-Lo - Yeah lots of folks have emailed me about the Six Feet Under thing. I consider HBO to be a bit different than normal TV. Why, just the other night I caught an episode of The Sopranos where Tony counselled a young stripper-prostitute to have an abortion. Of course, she was beaten to death by another mafioso by then end of the show, so his advice was moot.

But your raise the other aspect of all this. On dramas -- as opposed to sitcoms -- when on ocassion someone does have an abortion it's always an agonizing decision. I'm sure this is very close to the reality as I would assume that the vast, vast majority of women who have abortions aren't necessarily chipper about doing it. That said, you'd think feminists would be more furious about it. Because when the writers invest so much drama and morality into the decision and the act they of necessity inflate the controversial status of abortion. Culturally and politically that strengthens the hand of those who think the government at least has the right to regulate the issue, if not necessarily ban the practice. The safe, legal and rare crowd would be far more helped if, on occasion, TV could portray instances when an abortion is a no-brainer decision -- and I mean circumstances other than those when an alien impregnates a woman so as to propagate his species and destroy humanity.

Meghan's piece is really good, but she leaves out a whole other area: TV's treatment of abortion. I always think it's somewhat hilarious on shows like Friends and going back through countless others to Murphy Brown when the single pregnant woman anguishes about whether she's going to keep her baby. I don't mean to say that such pretend anguish doesn't capture a certain reality, and a very sad one. But at the end of the day -- or often at the end of sweeps week -- the woman always says "it's my choice, I'm keeping the baby." Or, they'll have a scene where the woman gets a sonogram and she realizes she loves the baby and again she'll say "it's my choice. I'm having this baby."

And, the moment the women decide to have the baby, the fetus is automatically discussed as if it were a complete person worth talking to, reading to, singing to etc. The implication here, of course, is that if Rachel or whoever had simply chosen not to have the baby, that choice and that choice alone would have been enough of an abracadabra to metaphysically transform the fetus into nothing more than a lump of cells or the inconvenient consequence of a one-night-stand not worth reading to at all.

But -- and here's the funny part -- they never choose the abortion. It's so unbelievably predictable in show after show. Unless there's a miscarriage, the woman always "chooses" to have the baby and that choice makes the fetus into a baby. The ontological status of the baby itself has nothing to do with it. Of course, one reason this is so is that abortions are a major bummer, particularly for a sitcom. And another is that pro-abortion groups are placated by these meager nods to choice, while prolife groups would scream bloody murder if a family hour show treated abortion like an opportunity for whacky hijinx. Still, I'm sure the producers and scriptwriters have struggled with this for a long time and if they could come up with a way to write about getting an abortion as an uplifting experience or even an uncontroversial decision they would have by now. But they can't even on eat-your-spinach liberal shows like "Judging Amy" or "Boston Public." And I think that alone says something.

Given what a towering source of anguish abortion has been for the country, both before and after Roe, it is surprising how seldom Hollywood has taken up the subject. Until this latest litter of flicks, the only prominent one was "The Cider House Rules" (1999), in which Michael Caine played an abortionist-as-hero. (Hollywood loved that one: two Academy Awards!) What is striking, but not surprising, about films that do tackle abortion is how the "products of conception" end up having no claim on the audience's sympathy. They're like so many extraneous scenes left on the cutting-room floor. Perhaps expending screen time on what--or who--might have been would clog the narrative, and anyway, what a drag.

Better to touch on the melancholy and physical suffering of the adults. Better yet to cast any such suffering in solipsistic terms that will be pleasantly painful for the audience while not forcing anyone to think too hard about what, exactly, was aborted. Thus the new Alfie, jogging to keep warm as he waits outside the clinic, muses: "I find myself having regrets. Here's another kid you'll never get to know--your own." I, me, mine, you, and yours but, er, what about the kid?

K-Lo, what was notable about Frist's speech was what he DIDN'T say. He decried the filibuster as a threat to the separation of powers, he did so only in the context of the Senate's constitutional advice and consent role. I realize that some on the right agree that the filibuster is unconstitutional; others do not. But in front of the most favorable audience he could ever find for the topic, Frist never once spoke of the first principles of judicial nominees and the judiciary we are fighting for. For him, the filibuster was just an inside baseball problem, and his entire discussion of separation of powers never touched on the real separation of powers issue - we want judicial nominees who know the limits of the judicial power and the left wants nominees who are willing to usurp legislative and executive functions. He refused to go near it.

Few people care about the Senate's traditions or the inside baseball of the filibuster as Frist wants to talk about it. IMHO, joined by many better writers on the topic, this is why the Senate lost the 108th Congress battle over nominees, and doesn't bode well for either getting a better chairman than Specter or getting a better judiciary. Frist did indicate, without stating explicitly, that the filibusters won't continue. At least at our table, after his speech, we debated whether he meant he had extracted concessions and was putting a good face on them, thereby claiming a win without actually having to put through a rule change, so the Dems could always start up again.

On the inside baseball front, Frist did not say that the filibuster rule would be modified either (1) to force an actual and complete halt to Senate business, like the old days or (2) to have 'sliding' votes to end it - although he described this option in detail as the Frist-Miller resolution of last Congress. Frist discussed the "200 year tradition" of the filibuster without ever mentioning that the modern version is a far cry from what was used in decades past. I think Estrada would be on the DC Circuit right now if the Senate had a real filibuster rule, not the "double tracking" or whatever they call it that is in use now. If, and I think only if, the filibuster actually forced the Senators to sit and listen to the phonebook for hours, then people might care - because no budget would get passed.

But as it stands, and as Frist presented it, the Republican Senate leadership isn't willing to stop navel-gazing and talk about the underlying issue of what judges should and should not be confirmed as so well described by Andy McCarthy and others. God forbid we lose the White house - they will confirm anyone the Democrats ever send over as a matter of Senate principle, instead of rejecting judicial activists as a matter of Constitutional principle.