A long way from home

Let me recommend this essay by Marc Herman, who grew up with me in Southern California. The essay is qualified praise for Marc's adopted home of Catalunya, Spain, mostly in contrast to California, which... well, Marc says it best:

This same week, my home state, California, declared it was so bankrupt (literally) that it was considering closing access to state parks, and so bankrupt (metaphorically) that it would deny consenting adults the right to marry whomever they wished.

I've been experiencing some of these same feelings lately when I compare California to my adopted state of Colorado. No, same sex couples can't marry here, either, but things may be moving in that direction. On the budgetary front, Colorado just did something very smart, repealing a measure dating from 1991 that limited the growth of the state government's operating budget. That measure was one of several that had kept the legislature in knots.

Colorado's and California's legislatures face similar constraints, required by various initiatives to spend a certain amount on education and other areas of the budget but limited in how much revenue they can raise. These problems get worse during recessions, when revenues fall off but the mandated spending stays the same. California's problems remain worse thanks to the two-thirds budget passage requirement. Colorado still has its problems, but it's actually moving in the right direction, which is something I haven't seen out of the Golden State in a while.

DC Summer Interns

I interned in the U.S. Capitol during the summer of 1990. I was one of the hundreds (thousands?) of young, wide-eyed, arrogant college students who descend upon the District of Columbia every summer to learn firsthand about government and to brag about our work at Georgetown bars at night in unsuccessful attempts to get laid. Mercifully, I did this intern work before the invention of the blog.

Current interns be warned: DC Summer Interns is watching.

(Thanks to Gordon and Kelsey for the link.)

And when I die...

...I'd like it if my obituary didn't begin like this:

Police: Carradine Found Naked, Hanged in Closet
Actor David Carradine was found dead, hanged in closet of Bangkok hotel room

Imaging the court

Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn have put together an awesome visualization of the shifting ideologies of Supreme Court justices. I'll buy the directional shifts of individual justices, but Gelman is right that the overall chamber scores just don't make much sense. No way is the current court more liberal than the one that ruled on Roe v. Wade.

Correction: The data above come from Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn. The visualization was assembled by Carl Roose and Alex Lundry. Apologies for the error.

Quote of the day

Marilyn Musgrave, explaining her loss to Betsy Markey:

The radical homosexual lobby, abortionists, gun-grabbers and all the rest of the extremists finally spent enough money, spread enough lies and fooled enough voters to defeat me.

Nice words for the mainstream media

This is a blog, so I'm obligated to bag on the MSM once in a while. And I do. But let me just express a bit of kudos for two items.

First, I linked yesterday to a Scotusblog analysis of Sotomayor's rulings on race cases. I thought that was a useful analysis, but figured it would be ignored by much of the media. Wrong! I now learn that Paul Krugman went on "This Week" on Sunday armed with the Scotusblog study, only to find that host George Stephanopoulos already knew about it. So, nice work there.

Also, cheers to Newsweek for this devastating article about Oprah Winfrey and her elevation of the pseudo-scientific claims of her guests. You really should read it. It's infuriating. Did you know, for example, that Oprah privileges such medical experts as Suzanne Somers (who injects hormones into her vagina to keep herself youthful) and Jenny McCarthy (who believes the MMR vaccine gave her son autism), confronting them with nothing more critical than the occasional "You go girl"?

Evidence of "reverse racism"?

Is Sonia Sotomayor a "reverse racist"? A member of the Latino KKK? Does she stand apart from other judges in her efforts to right past injustices? Well, we could look at one speech she gave in Berkeley a few years ago, or we could examine 96 court cases in which she actually ruled on race. Scotusblog chose the latter approach (thanks to Chris Federico for the link):

In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.

Hmm. She sounds pretty mainstream. Or maybe Newt is right that she's this week's Threat to American Civilization (TM).