Question Time

How'd you like that debate between President Obama and House Republicans? Pretty cool, huh? Republicans members of the House of Representatives got to ask any question they wanted, straight to the President of the United States, and the President answered. And the whole thing was televised. That was the unprecedented part. Presidents have gone to meetings of the opposition party and answered questions before, but ususually the Q&A session is secret. This time the whole country got to see a lively debate between the President and opposition party members. Here's some video.

Well, if you liked that, how would you like it if we had a similar session once a week? That's right, how about the President of the United States, appearing before the House of Representatives, or maybe before the Senate, once a week, with opposition members asking him questions. And why limit it to opposition members? Let's allow any member to ask the President a question, with special attention given to opposition leaders, but bringing in rank-and-file members on both sides. And the whole thing on television. The public would get a lively, weekly debate on the issues of the day.

Well, if we lived in Britain, that's exactly what we would have. Every Wednesday at noon, the prime minister appears before the House of Commons and takes whatever questions about public issues that any member of Parliament cares to ask. If the Prime Minister is out of town, the Leader of the House (equivalent to our Majority Leader) answers instead.

The Speaker of the House (who, unlike the Speaker of our House of Representatives, is a neutral, non-partisan official) moderates the debate. The Speaker calls first on a member chosen at random, then, if the first member was from the opposition, on a random member of the majority, and then on the leader of the opposition -- at which point all the opposition members chime in, "Hear, hear." The leader of the opposition gets to ask about five or six questions, then another random majority party member gets a turn, and then the leader of the largest third party (currently the Liberal Democrats) gets a couple of questions, and then it's just random "backbenchers," as rank-and-file members are called in Britain, for the remainder of the time. The Prime Minister has to answer -- well at least he has to say something, he doesn't always answer the question asked. Throughout, members chime in with cheers, hoots, catcalls, and other outbursts, which the Speaker has to repress from time to time, with his signature cry of "Order, order."

To see the weekly show, go to the House's website's video section, choose any Wednesday, and go to about 30 minutes in. You'll see a lively debate, and you'll also see how much better Parliament's website's video is than the C-SPAN archive. C-SPAN's archive is appallingly difficult to watch. With the House of Commons, you have easy access to the whole day's proceedings in one click.

News Flash -- It's Illegal to Kill People

After a mere 37 minutes of deliberation, a jury convicted Scott Roeder first-degree murder for killing George R. Tiller.

The defendant had been permitted to testify that, in his mind, the killing was justified because the victim was a doctor who performed abortions. Ultimately, however, the judge didn't give the jury the option of finding the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

Thank you, jury. Abortion is controversial, but if we allowed people to get out of murder charges on the ground that they really thought it would be a public good to kill the victim, society would completely break down. It can't be a defense to murder that you didn't like the lawful activities the victim was engaged in.

Festina Lente

Who'll be the first to decry jumping to hasty conclusions about the arrest of James O'Keefe, the young videojournalist whose undercover videos posed such problems for ACORN last year, for allegedly plotting to do something (it's not clear exactly what) to the telephones in the office of Senator Mary Landrieu?

How about Scott W. Johnson, a co-founder of the conservative blog, "Power Line"? In response to the arrest, he said, "It sounds like it was another kind of journalism project, maybe a misguided one — I'm open minded — but there's so little information it's impossible to say anything intelligent about it."

An excellent attitude. I'm sure all of O'Keefe's defenders took the same open minded, cautious approach when O'Keefe's ACORN videos first broke. One wouldn't want to jump to any hasty conclusions. Festina lente -- an excellent rule for all pundits on either side of a debate to follow.

Fantasy Prisoners

The Seventh Circuit has upheld a prison's decision to ban the game "Dungeons and Dragons" among inmates. The prison adopted a rule against the game because it "promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling.”

Sheesh. As Ilya Somin points out over at the Volokh Conspiracy, The Count of Monte Cristo could give rise to escape behaviors. Football encourages organized, competitive hostility.

Without necessarily disagreeing with the court's decision that there is no constitutional right to play Dungeons and Dragons in prison, I would have to say that this prison rule seems over the top and also seems to be a continuation of standard, unverified cliches about the dangers of this form of game. I haven't played D&D for decades, but I used to play when I was in high school and certainly my group never had any difficulties confusing the advisability of fantasy violence with that of real violence.

Of all things, the prison said it was concerned about D&D, not just because of the fantasy violence involved, but because the game involves cooperative behavior: the prison was concerned "about cooperative activity among inmates, particularly that carried out in an organized, hierarchical fashion." Such organized, cooperative activity can be the basis of forming a prison gang, the prison officials said.

My goodness, what if one of the prisoners organizes a book group and instructs the members on which book to read for the next meeting? Does the prison forbid that?

Maybe it does, but I doubt it.

I'll Take Half

I guess I feel sorry for Conan O'Brien's losing his job hosting the Tonight Show -- it was a great gig, he really wanted it, and it can't be fun to be fired. I met Conan during college -- he was a year below me -- and he seemed like a great guy and very funny. And he ended his show with a very gracious speech thanking NBC for the opportunities it's given him over his 20 years there. So I have some sympathy for him.

Still, let's not forget that he's getting paid $32 million to do nothing. And he's free to earn whatever he can at any other job starting in September.

I can confidently say that I would do nothing for half that amount. In fact, probably less.

I am reminded of the time, a few years after I started teaching at GW, that our basketball coach left the school in the midst of scandals (it was reported that he had failed to notify the school of criminal charges against one of the players and that the players had made $1400 worth of phone calls using his son's long-distance code). Even though the school appeared to have good cause to fire the coach, GW announced that it would "honor" the remaining three years of his contract, which meant that it would pay him a reported $450,000 a year to do nothing. (And he wasn't barred from working elsewhere either.) I wanted to let the university know that, if they really needed someone to do nothing, I would do it for half.

(And by the way, this happened not long after our university's then-President made a big fuss about how the law school needed to teach students that improper actions have consequences. Yeah, the consequence is that you get paid to do nothing.)

Of course, Conan hasn't done anything bad, except get bad ratings. But the element of getting paid not to work is common to both stories.

So while I do feel bad for Conan, I don't feel all that bad. Getting paid tens of millions to do nothing is nice work, if you can get it.

Emphatic Justice Stevens

I obviously haven't had time to read all 183 pages of today's landmark decision in Citizens United, but here's just a quick take on how important it is: Justice Stevens said, "Although I concur in the Court’s decision to sustain BCRA’s disclosure provisions and join Part IVof its opinion, I emphatically dissent from its principal holding."

I added the italics, but even without them, Justice Stevens's statement is stunning. One thing I noticed long ago about Justice Stevens is that he always, always, always dissents "respectfully." For a long time I wondered whether he was saving himself up for the great case, the ultimate case, in which he would just dissent, and not respectfully dissent.

Then along came Bush v. Gore. Even in that case, where the majority opinion perhaps deserved less respect that in any other, Stevens's dissenting opinion concluded with "I respectfully dissent." So I kind of decided that he wasn't saving himself up for the ultimate case. He would always respectfully dissent.

But not today. Today Justice Stevens emphatically dissents. He thinks this case is worse than Bush v. Gore. Wow. It must be quite a case.

Chill a Little, Dudes

Someone really needs to get the Supreme Court Justices to tone down their rhetoric a little. Snarky sniping has become the norm in politics, but one might hope for judges to be a bit more bland and respectful.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded an Eleventh Circuit decision that, all nine Justices agreed, including a holding that was erroneous in light of a subsequently decided Supreme Court case. But they disagreed (5-4, naturally) as to whether vacatur was necessary, inasmuch as four of them believed that the Eleventh Circuit's opinion contained an alternative holding that would have supported the judgment notwithstanding the erroneous holding. The majority thought that the alternative holding at least might have been infected by the erroneous holding and decided that the better option was to remand to the Eleventh Circuit to make sure.

Oh, and by the way, the Eleventh Circuit's decision affirmed a death sentence.

Look, as faithful readers know, I don't have the strongest feelings either way on the death penalty. But I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to suggest that where a man's life is at stake, the judicial system should act carefully. If there's even some possibility that the ultimate judgment is erroneous, it won't kill anyone (one might say) to take a careful look at the matter before executing the defendant.

So I can't understand why the dissenters feel the need to complain about the Court's "flabby standard," to say that "the Court outdoes itself," and to create snarky and degrading acronyms for the Court's action ("the SRIE, Summary Remand for Inconsequential Error—or, as the Court would have it, the SRTAEH, Summary Remand to Think About an Evidentiary Hearing").

This kind of rhetoric doesn't serve anybody well. If you disagree, go ahead and dissent, but at least do so respectfully. The Court is asking the Eleventh Circuit to take another look at the case before the defendant is executed. Let's not rush him to his death with jeers and bad jokes.