Who're you calling naive?

The Economist reports on how "The Archbishop of Canterbury takes on Adam Smith."

This week, at a service to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Christian Aid, a charity, Rowan Williams called for a challenge to "naive confidence in free trade". Free trade, he said, "forces choices on vulnerable countries, whose effects may be in the short to medium term very costly indeed to a whole generation of workers, to the environment, to political stability."

The editors think he's out of his area of competence. What strikes me is a bishop saying long-term benefits aren't worth short and medium term costs. I'm assuming that's not Anglican teaching in spiritual matters.

False Security

William Voegeli looks at the economics and politics of Social Security in the Spring 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Do You Blog?

Sarah Kellogg wrote this cover story for the April 2005 Washington Lawyer on the rise of the lawyer-blogger. It ends with links to a selection of prominent blawgs.

Clinton brings 'rock star atmosphere' to Madison

And according to this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report, there were even some Republicans in the mosh pit.

The Muskego follies

This morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorializes on the recent controversy over purchases with "leftover" funds from a bond issue by the Muskego-Norway School District.

Which raises the question of what School Board members were thinking when they approved the projects. Of course school administrators are going to ask for permission to spend surplus money. And they can always point to worthwhile projects. It's the job of School Board members to know when to say no. Board members represent the parents, students and taxpayers of the district. That's who they answer to, and that's whose interests must come first.

"Of course"? Meaning we should assume school administrators are empire builders, and it's the school board, and not school administrators, who might consider the interests of taxpayers, parents, and even students?

Update: For example, when we read Teachers union, MPS superintendent both support Doyle's budget ?

Judges bare their teeth over dog lawsuit

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnists Spivak and Bice comment on a recent Seventh Circuit case, an appeal in a case brought by Sherry Wall of Brookfield.

Last year, Wall filed suit in state and federal court after Brookfield officials impounded her Doberman because they found it running wild in her neighborhood.

The court couldn't see making a federal case out of it.

But [Judge Richard] Posner and his fellow appeals court judges dissented, laughing openly several times during the oral arguments on April 4 in Chicago.

After Posner noted that some people consider Doberman Pinschers frightening animals, Ertl responded with one of the stranger civil-rights arguments ever voiced:

"There may very well be a dog breed . . . prejudice," Ertl earnestly told the chuckling jurists.

Judge Posner might have anticipated the eventual extension of the 14th Amendment to other species and pre-emptively found a rational classification.

"I wouldn't call it prejudice - a Doberman Pinscher is a dangerous animal," Posner said, adding later: "It's not like a hamster."

Who Are the Top 20 Legal Thinkers in America?

Results of a Legal Affairs poll.

(via WisBlawg)

Termination of nurse's aide who threatened to blow things up was reasonable, jury finds

from The Voice, April 27, 2005, Defense Research Institute

State high court weighs award limits

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the Ferdon case, which includes a constitutional challenge to the malpractice damage "cap." The article leaves the nature of the constitutional issues unclear. The court's synopsis of the issues raised says,

... the cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases violated his constitutional rights by denying him the right to a jury trial and to equal protection under the law, and violated the separation of powers doctrine by substituting the judgment of the Legislature for that of the jury.

Sisyphus as Social Democrat

J. Bradford DeLong reviews John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics by Richard Parker in Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005

Galbraith's lack of influence is attributed to his lack of a single simple comprehensive explanation. Seems to me, though, that this summary

The right-wing claim that the most efficient economy is one in which the gales of perfect competition scour the land is, in Galbraith's view, nonsense. Modern industrial and post-industrial production is a large-scale process, large-scale processes require planning, and planning requires stability -- which means that the gales of the market must be calmed.

is as simple as any summary of Friedman.

Harry Johnson, in his superb but not entirely fair critique of Milton Friedman's Monetarists, said that in order to carry out an intellectual revolution in economics, one must propound a doctrine that has three qualities: it can be summarized in a single sentence, it provides the young with an excuse for ignoring the work of their elders, and it tells the young what they can do to further the revolution.

This could be applied to intellectual revolutions outside economics. On the other hand, the defense of Galbraith could summarize his position in a sentence, too: "It's not that simple." To say our elders over-simplified likewise gives reason to ignore their work. The problem is that saying problems are complex makes it hard to outline the future work that needs to be done.

DeLong sees Parker as showing through Galbraith's career the rise and fall of twentieth century liberalism. The political diagnosis and prescription is familiar: liberals (Democrats) are listening too much to consultants and rich contributors and have lost touch with the interests of working people. DeLong disagrees.

It is not that the Democratic establishment has lost its nerve or been seduced by law firms and lobbyists; it is that the old Horatio Alger myth has proved extraordinarily durable.

The American working class sees the advancing of its interests in advancing out of the working class.

Inside Bush's Supreme Team

This Business Week article describes three men it characterizes as the Bush Administation's strategists on judicial confirmations.

Rounding out the triumvirate is an unassuming, bespectacled wonk, Leonard A. Leo, 39, executive vice-president of The Federalist Society. Credited with transforming the Federalists from a sleepy debate club into a conservative powerhouse that challenges liberal orthodoxy in Washington and on law school campuses, Leo has a deep institutional knowledge of the legal community and its top thinkers. He is vetting potential nominees not only for their conservative philosophy but also for their intellectual heft. He can call on two Rolodexes -- one packed with legal contacts, the other with contacts made as Bush's liaison to Catholics during the 2004 Presidential campaign. "He's a guy who can divide the sheep from the goats," says Robert P. George, director of Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions. Leo is overseas and declined to comment for this story.

He might have volunteered a comment when he read "bespectacled wonk."

Supreme Court Revamps Rules Regarding Frivolous Lawsuit

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has granted a petition to repeal the "frivolous claim" statute, Wis. Stat. sec. 814.025 and modify sec. 802.05 to conform to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The court split 4-3. The dissenters considered this to involve changes in substantive law beyond the court's power under sec. 751.12 and Wisconsin Constitution Art. VII.

Because this was a rules petition rather than an appeal, there was an unusual factual record. Justice Roggensack in her dissent noted an objection to the petition from former Assembly member Thomas S. Hanson who authored the bill which became sec. 814.025. His submission included a statement that some of the changes "...are clearly contrary to what I intended when we passed sec. 814.025." (That "I" and "we" sure raise a question of just what constitutes legislative intent.)

For the minds, they are a-changin'

Just received an invitation to a re-election fundraiser for State Representative Gary Sherman (D-Port Wing). The flyer shows Rep. Sherman in the cross-hairs, and the text indicates he's the target of outside money. From the cross-hairs motif, you might have guessed that some of that outside money is from gun rights supporters. But there's a bit more to the story, as this Mike Nichols column from last year explained.

Gary Sherman, the Democratic lawmaker from Port Wing, co-sponsored the concealed carry bill that passed the Assembly last November - then turned around and cast the deciding vote to sustain a veto of his own legislation.

Sherman's "I'm not for sale" fundraiser, featuring Governor Doyle, will be held at the Hilton in Milwaukee.

Text Before Subtext

Maxwell and Elizabeth Goss review Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice, Edited by Kevin A. Ring, in First Things April 2005

Bankruptcy "reform" signed into law ...

This State Bar of Wisconsin article reports on the newly-enacted revisions to bankruptcy law.

Can members who favored these revisions get a rebate of mandatory dues for their share of the cost of putting reform in disdain-quotes?

Brother, Can You Spare $195 Billion?

Review of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. By Jeffrey D. Sachs.

The $195 billion is the additional amount added to foreign aid budgets that Jeffrey Sachs argues could eliminate world poverty by 2025. If properly allocated both by the aid agencies and by the recipient governments. In his review, Daniel Drezner is skeptical, noting, among other things, that

His [Sachs's] unspoken assumption is that governments as corrupt as Nigeria's or Kenya's would allocate health or education investments in a nonpolitical manner.

Sachs also cannot give his goal of eliminating poverty priority over his own domestic political concerns.

He shrewdly observes that in the past, support from America's religious right has been crucial for encouraging foreign aid. At the same time he deplores ''irrational biblical prophecy,'' which, he says, ''is terrifying for those of us who would rather use rationality than scriptural prophecy to determine U.S. foreign policy.'' This is hardly the kind of comment calculated to win Christian conservatives to his side.

President-elect post goes to Levine ...

In this case "stunning result" is not just an election cliche. Unslated candidate Steve Levine, who ran on a platform that included eliminating mandatory membership in the State Bar of Wisconsin as a condition of practicing law here, has been voted President-elect of the State Bar.

"I feel grateful and honored to have been chosen by my fellow lawyers as State Bar President," says Levine. "The election results seem to indicate that Wisconsin lawyers want some important changes in the bar and the legal profession, and over the next three years I'll do my best to help bring about those changes. Meanwhile, I can only sum up my feelings by quoting those immortal words of Wally Cleaver, 'Boy, Beaver. You've really done it this time.''

The three years refers to his rotation through one year terms as President-elect, President, and Past President. We can only hope that the bar establishment does not view Mr. Levine as Ward Cleaver viewed Eddie Haskell.

GOP says Democrats have flip-flopped on filibuster

A number of Democratic Senators who voted for a 1995 proposal by Sen. Harkin of Iowa to end the filibuster are, like Harkin himself, now opposed to restricting it, including

[Russ] Feingold [of Wisconsin], Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Barbara Boxer of California, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland.

Apparently no third parties could bring themselves to attribute the change to these senators having "grown in office," so they had to say so themselves.

Asked by a reporter last week about his 1995 proposal, Harkin said "my thinking has evolved about it," and that "more and more I'm afraid of any majority running roughshod over the minority."

So in 1995 did he favor majorities running roughshod over minorities, or was he just ambivalent about it?

In an interview, Feingold echoed those comments, contending that Republicans in recent years have changed the way the Senate is run, stifled debate and "gutted the ability of the minority (party) to offer amendments."

He might have a point if filibuster actually meant that the minority wants unlimited debate. Current Senate practice does not require opponents to actually undertake the time and effort to present their arguments; they need only indicate a willingness to do so.

Senate Majority Leader Frist responded through spokeswoman Amy Call.

"In 1995, the party that was in power (in Congress) was the Republicans. The Republicans would have benefited immediately from the Harkin-Lieberman proposal. If the Republicans are so abusive of power, why didn't they go for that?" Call said.

Sometimes such arguments are answered by the other side talking of that earlier time of bipartisan cooperation. Watch for some Democratic spokesman to wax nostalgic for the Dole-Gingrich era.

Judges Battle Transcends Numbers

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel runs this article from the Los Angeles Times of April 17, 2005 on the controversy over Senate filibusters of judicial nominations, and proposals to eliminate them. The article might give more insight into this debate than it planned.

As now displayed on the Times web site, it contains this paragraph.

That means the 44 Democrats can block Bush's nominees by refusing to cut off debate. To prevent that, Republicans now threaten to remove the ability to filibuster judicial nominations.

As printed in today's Journal Sentinel, that paragraph says a bit more.

That means the 44 Democrats can block Bush's nominees by refusing to cut off debate. To prevent that, Republicans now threaten to kill the filibuster and revert to majority rule.

Yesterday's papers

Is Rupert Murdoch right to predict the end of newspapers as we now know them?

Mr. Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that the press is too complacent in the face of potential challenges from new technology. The Economist cites examples,

... such as blogs. Short for "web logs", these are online journal entries of thoughts and web links that anybody can post.

Anybody can post, but is anybody reading?

The most popular bloggers now get as much traffic individually as the opinion pages of most newspapers.

Yes, but what credentials do they bring compared to those journalists we used to see on Lou Grant?

Matthew Hindman, a political scientist at Arizona State University, found that the top bloggers are more likely than top newspaper columnists to have gone to a top university, and far more likely to have an advanced degree, such as a doctorate.

Not only top bloggers, but even some bottom bloggers have advanced degrees. At least if you consider a law degree "advanced."

Another dangerous cliche is to consider bloggers intrinsically parasitic on (and thus, ultimately, no threat to) the traditional news business. True, many thrive on debunking, contradicting or analysing stories that originate in the old media. In this sense, the blogosphere is, so far, mostly an expanded op-ed medium. But there is nothing to suggest that bloggers cannot also do original reporting.

And there is the potential for bloggers to report more comprehensively than a newspaper can. For example, one could make it a point to follow the activities of a particular public body, a school board, say, and blog it. Newspapers cannot have reporters at every meeting of every school board, but an interested blogger or two in each school district could.

What's the Matter with Liberals?

Unlike in his book What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank is here being ironic. As you would expect finding this article in the The New York Review of Books, what's "wrong" with liberals is they've just been too darn nice. On the other hand, to Mr. Frank the last few decades have been dominated by conservative cultural backlash. If only, he thinks, liberals would campaign on a more openly left-wing economic platform, they could win.

Readers will find the fun in the footnotes. Frank says Frenchness is used on the right as shorthand to portray liberals as a culturally effete elite.

The NRA came up with an image that brilliantly encapsulated the whole thing: an elaborately clipped French poodle in a pink bow and a Kerry-for-president sweater over the slogan "That dog don't hunt."

As if missing the very point he just made, he footnotes a rebuttal, pointing out that poodles were originally bred as hunting dogs. Immediately after this, he goes on to describe an expedition to Bush Country. In footnote 11, he says,

I toured West Virginia in the company of Serge Halimi, an editor at Le Monde Diplomatique. Read more about what we saw ...

...in M. Halimi's article, unsurprisingly titled What's the matter with West Virginia?

MSOE, Christian group at peace

The conflict between liberty and equality, or at least one version of what constitutes equality, played out locally.

The Milwaukee School of Engineering,s Student Government Association finally granted full recognition to a Christian student group, ReJOYce in Jesus. State law and university policy prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

One portion of ReJOYce in Jesus' constitution came under particular scrutiny, a section that said voting members of the group "shall not commit those acts which are expressly forbidden in Scripture, including idolatry, premarital or extramarital sex, homosexual behavior, drunkenness, coveting, theft, profanity, occult practices and dishonesty."

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) had come to the student group's assistance.

David French, president of FIRE, said that political groups on college campuses are allowed to discriminate; for example, campus Republicans can mandate that no Democrat serve as club president.

"Problem comes," he said, "when you don't give a religious organization the same rights as a political organization, including the right to discriminate in a way that maintains the integrity of their message."

French called conflicts like this one "epidemic" and colleges across the country. Here's FIRE's press release on the MSOE settlement.

Judge allows local minimum wages

Madison's minimum wage, higher than that set by state statute, has been held not in violation of the state constitution.

"A municipality's power to enact ordinances for the welfare of its citizens is broad, even in matters of statewide concern," [Dane County] Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi wrote in her opinion. "Madison's living-wage ordinance is valid."

The statewide concern restriction is in Article XI, Section 3(1) of the Wisconsin Constitution.

Cities and villages organized pursuant to state law may determine their local affairs and government, subject only to this constitution and to such enactments of the legislature of statewide concern as with uniformity shall affect every city or every village. ...

Given that consitutional restriction, I wouldn't expect such ordinances to stand. An appeal looks certain, so we'll see.

Read and weep

Ed Garvey comments on proposed cuts at Racine schools threatening

...forensics, drama, art, debate, football, swimming--all the things that we used to think were essential to a liberal education.

Trivium, quadrivium ... and gymnasium?

Update: Sports columnist Dale Hofmann elaborates.

Naturally, when Racine's voters turned down an April referendum and left a $9.5 million deficit intact, the district reached for the threat of first resort. Unless somebody comes up with the money, it warned that sports and other extracurricular activities could be on their way out. Failing that, families might have to spend $800 a sport to keep their kids on teams.

If kids are entitled to that $800 a year from the taxpayers so they can play on a school team, why not if they play in Little League?

Soros says be patient

He gave this counsel to a group of fellow billionaires and aspiring-billionaire millionaires at a meeting in Scottsdale. Perhaps unfamiliar with flyover state geography, the Scottsdale meeting participants began calling themselves the Phoenix Group.

Rob Stein, a veteran of President Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department and of New York investment banking, convened the meeting of venture capitalists, left-leaning moneymen and a select few D.C. strategists on how to seed pro-Democratic think tanks, media outlets and leadership schools to compete with such entrenched conservative institutions as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Leadership Institute.

The Hill seemed a bit miffed that this closed meeting claimed to advocate "funding transparency."

Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) bibliography

The latest bibliography in the Tap The Power series from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau Theobald Legislative Library.

(via WisBlawg)

Doyle's Medicaid bond plan rejected

Republicans on the Wisconsin legislature's Joint Finance Committee rejected Gov. Doyle's proposal to borrow $130 million toward the cost of Medicaid.

The Republicans said the state should borrow only for long-term costs or to fund building projects. But Rep. Pedro Colon (D-Milwaukee) said bonding for health care costs made more sense than doing so to build stadiums for the Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers.

"I'm not as concerned about bonding for health care as much as bonding for a field in Milwaukee or a field in Green Bay," he said. "Those are games. Health care isn't a game."

A good parallel, if the bonding had been used to buy Brewer tickets or Packer tickets.

Chapter Officers

David W. Simon, President
Gordon P. Giampietro, Vice-president
Daniel W. Gentges, Secretary and Treasurer
Terrence R. Berres, Webmaster

The Political Analogy

Andrew Sullivan stayed up late to try to explain how distraught he feels.

This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?

To me, that doesn't seem much different from F.D.R. followed by Truman.

Update: Could be a meme in the making.

... selecting Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope is a lot like selecting Attorney General John Ashcroft as President.

Chapter Advisory Board

(affiliations listed for identification purposes only)

Hon. Michael B. Brennan
Circuit Court, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin

Hon. John L. Coffey
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Dean Joseph D. Kearney
Marquette University Law School

Hon. Rudolph T. Randa
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin

Thomas L. Shriner, Jr.
Foley & Lardner

Hon. Diane Schwerm Sykes
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Prof. Christopher Wolfe
Marquette University

Tests for an Unbending Pope . . .

That headline writer must think E. J. Dionne was hoping to see "a reed shaken by the wind." In yesterday's column Dionne was quoting Cardinal Ratzinger.

He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human."

Today he's quoting Hans Kung.

"Joseph Ratzinger is afraid," the liberal Catholic theologian Hans Kung declared in 1985. "And just like Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, he fears nothing more than freedom."

Maybe it depends on how one thinks about freedom.

... the model from which creation must be understood is not the craftsman but the creative mind, creative thinking. At the same time it becomes evident that the idea of freedom is the characteristic mark of the Christian belief in God as opposed to any kind of monism. At the beginning of all being it puts not just some kind of consciousness but a creative freedom which creates further freedoms. To this extent one could very well describe Christianity as a philosophy of freedom. For Christianity, the explanation of a reality as a whole is not an all-embracing consciousness or one single materiality; on the contrary, at the summit stands a freedom that thinks and, thinking, creates freedoms, thus making freedom the structural form of all being.

--Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (1968), translated by J. R. Foster (1970), p. 110

Update: Michael Novak regarding, inter alia, Ratzinger on liberty.

Bolton Nomination Meltdown

The Bolton nomination was to be voted out of the Foreign Relations committee yesterday, but hit an unexpected snag.


Conventional wisdom said Chafee and Hagel were wavering, but that they would probably vote Bolton out of committee in the end. Voinovich surprised everyone when he complained he was not prepared to vote on the nomination. His reason? He had only infrequently attended committee hearings, so he had just learned of the allegations leveled against Bolton by the opposition. He wants time to think about these new revelations, which everyone with an internet connection has known about for at least the past week. This may very well sink the nomination.


This is another installment in a disturbing pattern. Senate Republicans appear to lack the discipline necessary to immanentize their majority status. Recently, the Judiciary Committee members elected Arlen Specter to the chair, notwithstanding acknowledgement that Specter has been poison to conservative judicial nominees. They installed him in the chair anyway, because Senate tradition said it was his turn.


Yesterday's episode revealed that not two, but three of the ten Senators on the Foreign Relations committee are unreliable RINOs. Why are these Senators on such an important and sensitive committee? Isn't there some sub-committee studying the control of mosquitoes in backwater swamps they could better serve?


Inflexible commitment to a "Senate tradition" that results in a Specter chairmanship and RINOs on critical committees reveals a Senate majority paying more attention to clubby perquisites than achieving the Party's aims.


A final question. Voinovich could not possibly have been surprised with what he heard when he finally attended Bolton's confirmation hearing. There is something deeper than lack of information afoot here. So what gives?

Chapter Board of Directors

Our chapter's current directors are:
James T. Barry, III, and Donald A. Daugherty, Jr.,
Co-Chairmen;
Larry J. Bonney; Rebecca G. Bradley; Karl R. Dahlen; Kenneth A. Dortzbach; G. Michael Halfenger; Michael E. Hartmann; Thomas R. Hrdlick; Daniel Kelly; Jonathan H. Koenig; Paul D. Langer; Tim Lopez; Christopher C. Mohrman; Stephen D. Rogers; Theodore R. Rolfs; and David J. Tolan

Federalist Society Milwaukee

Here are archives of our chapter's web site since August 2, 2002, from October 22, 1999 to July 25, 2002, and of WisBar Watch.