BYU Law Blog

EQUALITY RIDERS "ARRESTED" AT BYU?

2006-04-11T13:17:00.000-06:00

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This is interesting:

Five people were arrested Monday on the campus of Brigham Young University in connection with a pro-gay event presented by an outreach group that is touring religious and conservative colleges.

Three people from the Equality Ride and two supporters were escorted off campus by BYU police after Equality Ride co-director Jacob Reitan tried to give a speech in a campus courtyard, the Deseret News reported.

The other people arrested were Diane Bedwell and Rebecca Solomon from the Equality Ride, and Reitan's parents, Randi and Phil Reitan, who had tried to give a speech about raising a gay son.

The five were issued citations for trespassing and released.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at one time did not allow African-American members," Jacob Reitan said after his release. "Through the church's belief in 'continuing revelation,' that shameful practice has ended. It is time for the LDS to realize that their policies against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are also part of an unacceptable history of religious discrimination."

A few errors in this story.

First, The LDS Church has never witheld membership from blacks, let alone "African-American[s]." Rather, the LDS Church witheld the priesthood (and, as a corollary, temple admission) from blacks.

Second, the activists were not arrested:

Five members of a gay rights group targeting BYU this week were removed from the campus and issued citations on Monday.

I don't think being "removed from the [BYU] campus" amounts to an arrest. The claim that they were arrested is probably an attempt to boost publicity:

"This is the fourth school where we've had arrests take place," said Richard Lindsay, spokesman for the Equality Ride.

ABORTION: A NEW "MASON-DIXON" LINE?

2006-01-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

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This is interesting:

In the next six weeks, South Dakota lawmakers will decide whether to make abortion a crime.

A bill that would ban abortion in the state will be introduced within the next two days.

The bill will be called the Woman's Health and Life Protection Act. It will ban abortion, but won't prosecute a doctor who performs one to save a woman's life.

And the lawmaker who's introducing the bill says he thinks now is the right time to try and over-turn Roe vs Wade.

Rep. Roger Hunt says, "Abortion should be banned."

Those four words will likely lead to many others in the South Dakota House and Senate as lawmakers will decide whether to criminalize abortion in the state. The bill's supporters are using findings from a controversial abortion task force report recently given to the legislature.

Hunt says, "DNA testing now can establish the unborn child has a separate and distinct personality from the mother. We know a lot more about post-abortion harm to the mother."
...
Sunday, Hunt and other anti-abortion advocates held an event promoting their legislation. They say now is the time to pass it, because other states are considering similar bills and because with new Chief Justice John Roberts, and possibly Samuel Alito, the US Supreme Court is changing.

Hunt says, "Two very solid, we feel, pro-life candidates. Again you never know but based on their testimony to the senate we feel they're good candidates."

This is a longshot, I think, but let's assume that Roe and it's progeny (particularly Planned Parenthood v. Casey) are overturned and the issue of whether to criminalize abortion is left to individual state legislatures. Let's further assume that some states do end up criminalizing abortion (probably elective abortions, as I can't imagine any state legislature would try, let alone succeed, in banning abortions where there is an overriding medical imperative such as the life of the mother). Other states (mostly on the coasts) will likely pass legislation to legalize elective abortion.

So what are we left with? A patchwork of laws that change at the state line. The situation for abortion will be somewhat similar to the Mason-Dixon Line. There are some obvious distinctions, of course. Holding slaves in the antebellum South was ongoing conduct, whereas getting an abortion is a discrete event. Moreover, today women anti-abortion states can easily overcome an anti-abortion statute by simply traveling across a state line.

Which leads my main question: Is there any remedy for this for anti-abortion states? Not that I can see. South Dakota can't punish its citizens for going to another state and engaging in conduct that is legal there (getting an abortion).

JOSEPH SMITH'S ARREST RECORDS FOUND

2005-09-16T22:02:00.000-06:00

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Okay, this may be a long post, so settle in.

On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith, Jr. founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has long been the target of criticism by critics of every stripe (secular and sectarian, Protestant and Catholic, you name it). One particular criticism relates to an arrest and trial of Joseph Smith in South Bainbridge, New York in 1826. At lease three non-identical (and, in some respects, mutually contradictory) versions of the trial exist, but in the early 1970s a Reverend Wesley Walters, an ardent critic of the LDS Church, brought some new information to light, as discussed in a 1972 BYU Studies article written by Marvin S. Hill (footnotes omitted):

Reverend Wesley P. Walters of the United Presbyterian church in Marissa, Illinois, discovered some records in the basement of the sheriff's office in Norwich, New York, which he maintains demonstrate the actuality of the 1826 trial and go far to substantiate that Joseph Smith spent part of his early career in southern New York as a money digger and seer of hidden treasures. A periodical in Salt Lake City which heralded Walters's findings said they "undermine Mormonism" and repeated a statement by Hugh Nibley in The Myth Makers, "if this court record is authentic it is the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith."

Judge Albert Neely's bill of costs

Walters's discovery consisted mainly of two documents. The first was a bill of costs presented to local authorities by Justice Albert Neely in 1826 which identified Joseph Smith as "The Glass Looker" and indicated that he was charged at the trial with a "misdemeanor." Neely's bill reported that his total charges for the case were $2.68, the precise amount shown in Fraser' s Magazine.

Walters's second find was a bill by the local constable, Philip DeZeng, dated 1826, which indicates that not only was a warrant issued for Joseph Smith's arrest but also a mittimus, which Walters believes must have been issued after the trial ordering the sheriff to escort Joseph out of the county. Walters contends that the mittimus thus proves that Joseph Smith was found guilty.

A preliminary investigation by the writer at the sheriff's office in Norwich, New York, confirmed that Walters had searched thoroughly the bills of local officials dated in the 1820s, many of which were similar to the two bills in question. The originals, however, were not at the sheriff's office but in Walters's possession. Presumably they will be available for study at a later date. Until then, the final question of their authenticity must remain open.

Let us now fast-forward a few decades to a news article that just appeared online today (September 16, 2005):

A historian in New York state has rediscovered historical records that detail how Mormon church founder Joseph Smith, a native of Vermont, was arrested on four occasions in the mid-1820s.

Chenango County Historian Dale Storms says she turned over the newly found documents to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Partial records of the arrests had long been in the possession of the county and known to historians, but Storms says the documents fill in some historical holes.

The Mormom church says it's pleased the original papers of Smith's court proceedings in 1826 and 1830 have been returned. But the church says they don't reveal anything new about the Mormons' founder.

The documents include arrest warrants, court transcripts and legal bills from four separate charges. The cases detail Smith's involvement in glass looking, or treasure seeking, and being a disorderly person.

This didn't seem particularly noteworthy until I came across another article that had some interesting additional details (emphasis added):

One of the documents includes a bill from then-South Bainbridge Justice Albert Neely to the county for services rendered. Included in the bill is a $2.68 charge for fees in examining the case of "Joseph Smith, the glass looker."

Smith was born in Sharon, Vt., in 1806.

Storms said the records were turned over to the county recently by Norwich resident Richard Smith (no relation to Joseph Smith), whose mother was the county historian until 1997 and secretly had the records in her possession for the last three decades, Storms said.

The former historian squirreled them away in the early 1970s after they were taken without permission from the basement of the county sheriff's office in 1971 by Wesley P. Walters, a deceased pastor of the Marissa Presbyterian Church in Marissa, Ill. Storms said Walters took the papers because he thought they were unsafe where they were and might be destroyed.

I find it interesting that Rev. Walters absconded with public records (albeit very old ones) out of concern they "might be destroyed." Destroyed by whom? If these records reveal nothing new about Joseph Smith's legal troubles, who would want to get rid of them? (There's also a wee bit of irony in Rev. Walters attacking Joseph Smith's character with evidence he (Walters) took without permission - stole - from the sheriff's office, but I digress...)

And then there's the problem Rev. Walters breaking the "chain of evidence," so to speak. How many documents did Rev. Walters "take without permission" from the county sheriff's office? Did the previous county historian (Mrs. Smith, mentioned above) conspire with Rev. Walters? If so, what was the point and purpose of the conspiracy? Was she hiding the documents (her son seems to think so, as she "secretly had the records in her possession for the last three decades")? If so, why? What legitimate purpose could a public servant have for taking private possession of public records for thirty years?

Did Mrs. Smith and Rev. Walters retain all the records relating to the Joseph Smith trial? Or did Rev. Walters vet them to make sure that only those records lending credence to his antagonistic portrayal of Joseph Smith saw the light of day? Were there any records that contravene Rev. Walters' characterization of the trial? If so, would Rev. Walters have had a motive to destroy them?

We don't know the answers to these questions, and it's very likely we never will know one way or the other. (I wonder if Mrs. Smith is still alive, though. Perhaps she could shed some light on this.) However, the fact is that Rev. Walters broke the chain of custody of evidence. He had a vested interest in making Joseph Smith look as bad as possible. He did, in fact, use some of these records for that purpose. His conduct therefore gives rise to not-untenable suspicions about whether the complete body of evidence made it through his hands.
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UPDATE: I just came across an online discussion of this news item here.

RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY DRESSED UP AS HUMOR

2005-09-15T13:07:00.000-06:00

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I have a fairly low tolerance threshold for naked religious bigotry. I hold this position for some of the same reasons that I find other forms of bigotry (as against race and gender) contemptible. I recognize that religious affiliation differs from these inherited traits in that religion is, in the main, a matter of choice. But in America, some choices are treated as sancrosanct, are they not? We have a right to vote (and, therefore, to choose a candidate), right to travel (choosing to cross state lines), right to assemble, etc. I'm currently working on a civil rights lawsuit wherein the state filed a motion to terminate our client's parental rights and neglected to tell him about it until the matter was almost over. His right to choose to have children, and to choose to raise and associate with them, was violated.

A person's choice of religion, then, should enjoy a presumptive measure of respect. Not necessarily agreement with, or reverence for, or deference to. Just respect. My own religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more familiarly known as Mormonism) frequently faces a not-insignificant amount of disrespect arising out of, well, its existence. That's unfortunate. Take, for example, this advertisement about an upcoming play put on in New York City:

The second developmental production of the season will be Cusi Cram’s ALL THE BAD THINGS, which will play a limited 15-performance engagement, beginning performances in late January, 2006. Fernanda is having a bad day -- a very bad day. She lives with her ailing mother in a tiny apartment in the West Village, her husband has braces and is unemployed, her brother-in-law has suddenly converted to Mormonism, the creditors wont stop calling AND she finds out her rent stabilized apartment is about to be de-stabilized. Where can the fragile, the artistic, the underemployed find refuge in a city that is no longer kind to its eccentrics and Bohemians? Is Manhattan over? Are there sane Mormons? ALL THE BAD THINGS asks these questions and a few others, while searching for hope in unexpected places.

A family member joining the LDS Church is a "bad thing," on par with having an unemployed spouse, being hounded by creditors, and facing a rent increase. Mormons are presumptively insane, and there is some question as to whether there are any sane Mormons at all.

I doubt the secular, artsy-fartsy avant-garde types putting out "All the Bad Things" would insult, say, Islam or Buddhism in this way.

GOOGLE NEWS - IT HAS ITS DRAWBACKS

2005-09-06T14:04:00.000-06:00

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I previously posted about how I enjoy using the Google News feature. It does, however, have shortcomings (see, for example, here, here and here).

To these I add my own recent experience. Earlier today I was googling news items relating to the LDS Church. Check out the first "news" result:

If you can't make out the image, it says "Was President Bush Behind Katrina? Salt Lake City Deluge Coming ..." The link goes to GreaterThings.com, run for an outfit called "Church of the Firstborn," apparently a group claiming some sort of relationship to Mormonism (though clearly not to the LDS Church per se).

Perusing this site and its "sister sites" is not much fun. In any event, be sure that you take search results from Google News with a grain of salt.

I'M BACK

2005-09-05T12:39:00.000-06:00

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I've been gone for a while. A lot has happened over the past several months that have kept me distracted and away from this blog.

Anyway, I'm back. I'm looking forward to posting more regularly.

IRRELEVANCIES AS EDITORIALIZING

2005-02-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

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One of my favorite blogs is Oh, That Liberal Media, which is dedicated to "highlighting liberal bias, agendas, distortions and erroneous reporting in the mainstream media."

One way that a journalist can editorialize in what purports to be a straightforward news story is by injecting irrelevant comments or details that are designed to influence the reader.

I just came across what just might be an example of this (bolded emphasis added):

'Nobody is talking'
The Guardian

The evidence of two new books demonstrates that 9/11 created the will for new, harsher interrogation techniques of foreign suspects by the US and led to the abuses in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. In a special report, James Meek reveals that it is the British who refined these methods, and who have provided the precedent for legalised torture...
...
The most detailed statement about the early thinking on torture in Washington came in August 2002, with a memo to Alberto Gonzales from Jay Bybee, then assistant attorney general. A devout Mormon and a keen kazoo player, Bybee spent seven years in the Reagan and elder Bush administrations, and returned to the capital with the inauguration of Bush Jr. After the Bybee memo was leaked last year, the administration disavowed it with a new, milder legal opinion. Their disavowal might have been more convincing had the departing Bybee not been rewarded with a federal judgeship in Las Vegas.

In the memo, Bybee's concern is not with the wellbeing of suspects, but with the risk that a US government employee might be prosecuted....

What in the world does Bybee's religious affiliation or kazoo-playing have to do with the story?

GLADYS KNIGHT SKIPPED THE GRAMMYS

2005-02-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

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Gladys Knight is so cool:

SALT LAKE CITY - Gladys Knight wasn't sitting in front of a television set watching the Grammy Awards. And she didn't even know she shared a gospel performance Grammy award Sunday with the late Ray Charles for their duet, "Heaven Help Us All," until there was a break in church services.

"My bishop came up to me in between them and said, 'You won! You won!' I was so surprised," she said Monday in Salt Lake City while promoting her new CD, "One Voice," a collection of hymns and gospel classics.

"Any time your peers give you an award, there's a feeling of satisfaction, but this one was awesome for what we did. I know Ray is an icon in many lives, but he's certainly one in mine," she said.

Knight spent Sunday night in Las Vegas, where her fireside church sessions are so popular with fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that they have been divided into two programs.

ABORTION ADVOCATES: IN IT FOR THE MONEY?

2005-01-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

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I subscribe to an email newsletter, "Best of the Web Today," by James Taranto at http://www.opinionjournal.com/. Mr. Taranto has frequently discussed what he dubs "The Roe Effect"

Regular readers of this column know that for some time we have been pushing a pet theory about the political effect of abortion. We refer not to the issue of abortion but to the practice, and our theory is that abortion is making America more conservative than it otherwise would be.

We base this on two assumptions. First, that liberal and Democratic women are more likely to have abortions. Second, that children's political views tend to reflect those of their parents--not exactly, of course, and not in every case, but on average. Thus abortion depletes the next generation of liberals and eventually makes the population more conservative. We call this the Roe effect, after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

Today, Mr. Taranto has a very interesting account of how Planned Parenthood, "'the nation's most frequent provider of abortions, is performing more of the procedures than ever . . . and relying increasingly on the revenue generated from abortions, according to its Fiscal Year 2004 annual report.'"

Taranto cites a story by CNS News, which observes that "a survey of newspaper stories regarding the closing of 11 of the organization's clinics during Fiscal Year 2004 revealed a common cause," which is that demand for abortions in certain areas, Texas, Ohio and Indiana (all of which, Taranto notes, were carried by President Bush) is declining. Here's the money quote from the CNS article (emphasis added):

"While we recognize the need for affordable family planning services in the Copper Country," said Scott Blanchard, executive director of PPNM [Planned Parenthood of Northern Michigan], "our Houghton center simply hasn't served enough clients to justify the monthly costs to keep it going."

Closing the facility was a difficult decision, Blanchard noted in a press release, in part because "those who oppose Planned Parenthood's presence in Houghton will undoubtedly see this as a victory.

"However, this was strictly a business decision," he said.

Dwell on that for a moment. Planned Parenthood has a vested financial interest in performing abortions. I wonder how much Planned Parenthood gets from adoptions.

Taranto concludes: "This suggests that the demand for abortion is becoming more concentrated in areas that vote Democratic. In other words, the Roe effect is accelerating." I hope so.

LDS RELIANCE ON THE BIBLE

2005-01-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

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If you haven't guessed by now, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the "LDS Church" or "Mormon Church"). Over the last few years I have encountered numerous critics of my faith, many of whom profess adherence to some flavor of Christianity (most anti-Mormons, I think, are of the Evangelical and Fundamentalist variety).

One of the chief gripes I hear from these folks is that we Latter-day Saints don't have enough reverence for the Bible. I think this observation derives mostly from a confluence of 1) the rejection by LDS of the concept of "inerrancy" of scripture; and 2) a seven-word caveat in the 8th Article of Faith, which is accepted as scripture by Latter-day Saints (emphasis added):

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

Our critics, I think, are far too eager to find fault on this point, and try their best to make Mormons look their worst for it. However, I just came across a discussion on the Times & Seasons blog that offers some interesting evidence that contravenes this argument:

Thanks to a cool feature on the scriptures.byu.edu website, it’s easy to rank the scriptures by the frequency they’ve been cited in General Conferences since 1942. I guessed number one, but was surprised by several of the top ten. Before checking the answers, make a few guesses: What are the most prominent scriptures in Mormondom?

The Passages of Scripture Most Cited in General Conference, 1942 - 2004:

1 Moses 1:39
2 JS-H 1:15-20
3 Matt. 22:37-40
4 John 17:3
5 Matt. 6:33
6 Moroni 10:4-5
7 D&amp;amp;C 68:25-28
8 2 Nephi 2:25
9 A of F 13
10 Matt. 25:40
11 D&C 84:33-38
12 D&C 89:18-21
13 Abr 3:25-26
14 John 7:17
15 James 1:5
16 Matt. 28:19-20
17 John 14:6
18 Matt 5:48
19 John 3:16
20 Exodus 20:8-15
21 Matt. 16:16
22 Acts 4:12
23 Rom. 1:16
24 Dan. 2:44
25 John 14:27
26 Acts 3:21
27 Rev. 14:6-7
28 Matt. 11:28-30
29 D&C 59:23
30 Mosiah 18:9
31 D&amp;amp;C 121:41-45
32 Matt. 5:16
33 John 11:25
34 D&C 59:9
35 Mal. 3:10
36 John 3:5
37 2 Nephi 31:20
38 D&C 14:7
39 D&C 93:36
40 Mosiah 3:19
41 1 Nephi 3:7
42 Luke 23:34
43 Gen. 1:27-28
44 D&C 76:22-24
45 D&C 20:77
46 1 Cor. 15:22
47 Moro. 7:47
48 Matt. 3:17
49 John 14:15
50 Mark 16:15
51 Josh 24:15
52 Amos 3:7
53 D&amp;C 130:20-21
54 1 Pet. 2:9
55 Matt. 16:17
56 D&C 1:30
57 D&C 18:10, 15-16
58 D&C 19:18
59 D&C 110:15-16
60 Matt. 24:14
61 Eph. 4:12
62 3 Nephi 11:7-10
63 D&C 101:80
64 D&C 58:27
65 Matt. 7:12
66 2 Nephi 2:27
67 3 Nephi 27:27
68 Matt. 6:9
69 Alma 41:10
70 D&C 88:118
71 D&C 89:8
72 D&C 1:38
73 Moroni 10:32
74 D&C 82:10
75 Matt. 24:14
76 A of F 1
77 James 1:27
78 A of F 9
79 John 5:39
80 A of F 3
81 A of F 4
82 D&amp;amp;C 38:30
83 Gen. 3:19
84 Philip. 4:7
85 D&C 13:1
86 D&C 38:27
87 Luke 22:42
88 Acts 3:21
89 BofM Title Page
90 John 14:26
91 Ether 2:12
92 John 16:33
93 Isa. 9:6
94 John 8:12
95 Eph. 2:20
96 Isa. 29:14
97 Matt. 4:4
98 Matt. 25:21
99 1 Tim. 4:12
100 A of F 12

Here's how the Top 100 breaks down by percentage:

Bible Quotes: 53%

Other-than-Bible Quotes: 47%

Put another way:

New Testament: 44%

Doctrine & Covenants: 24%

Book of Mormon: 14%

Old Testament: 9%

Pearl of Great Price: 9%

My gut instinct and personal experience has long been that our critics are wrong on this point. I think these numbers bear out that impression. Of course, inerrantists will never be satisfied by anything but wholesale acceptance of that dogma, so if you are a Mormon, don't expect this gripe to go away any time soon.

CONDI RICE v. HILLARY CLINTON IN '08?

2005-01-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

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Is America going to have a woman president in four years? Possibly:

Dick Morris, the nation's most prominent political consultant, says the 2008 race is shaping up to be showdown between two of America's most popular women: Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton.
...
In a surprising analysis, Morris writes in NewsMax Magazine that Condoleezza Rice is the only Republican on the national scene who can beat Hillary and keep the GOP in the White House.

We'll see, I suppose. There are other names being floated for the Republican ticket. John McCain and Mitt Romney come to mind. John Ellis, George W. Bush's cousin, recently labeled Romney as "The GOP's best hope in 2008."There are even t-shirts, pins, and hot cocoa mugs for sale advertising "Mitt '08."

Two women and a Mormon are beind discussed as presidential contenders. Cool.

ABORTION AS EUGENICS, OUTLAWED IN CHINA

2005-01-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

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A few months ago I blogged about "Abortion as Politically Correct Eugenics." I discussed how prospective parents are aborting fetuses with medical conditions (such as deformed feet, cleft palate, etc.).

In a somewhat related vein, I now raise the issue of abortion as a means of terminating a pregnancy based not on a medical condition, but on gender. I think this is probably a widespread problem only in China, the inevitable result of that country's One Child Policy clashing with cultural expectations of the family name being preserved through a male heir. The ugly result: it is very common in China to abort, kill or abandon baby girls and instead try to have a boy.

With these things in mind, check out this story:

China is to make abortion on the basis of sex a crime in a bid to redress the
imbalance between newborn boys and girls that has arisen as a result of the
their one-child policy.

Government figures show 119 boys are born in the
world's most populous country for every 100 girls and Beijing has now set a goal
of reversing the imbalance by 2010.
...
Sex-selective abortion is
already banned but technologies such as ultrasound have made it easier to know a
baby's gender in advance, increasing the chances for aborting girls.

"As a new measure, the commission will start drafting revisions to the Criminal Law
in order to effectively ban foetus gender detection and selective abortion other
than for legitimate medical purposes."

ATTITUDES ABOUT AIDS

2005-01-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

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Here is an example of an apparent problematic perspective on AIDS:

Wendel Kirkbride, who has been living with HIV for more than 17 years, is frustrated that people don't seem concerned about HIV/AIDS. He attributes a recent rise in cases among males age 20 to 29 to their perception of the success of new treatments, which "makes you so you don't want to use protected sex."

Got that? Mr. Kirkbride blames the recent rise is AIDS cases among young males on . . . new treatments for AIDS. It's not because these young men are choosing to engage in risky sexual behavior, but because advances in medical treatments make them want to engage in it.

Or maybe Mr. Kirkbride is merely providing an explanation, not a justification or ratationalization, for this behavior.

I dunno. The frustrating part of the AIDS epidemic is the fact that so many cases arise out of nothing more than the natural consequences of engaging in high risk sex. People who get AIDS from tainted blood or from their unfaithful spouse or from their mother (i.e. during gestation or via breast milk) are all genuine victims. They have committed no volitional act that placed them at risk of contracting AIDS.

But there are huge numbers of people who do commit volitional acts that place them at a high risk of contracting AIDS. People, particularly high risk groups like gay men, who engage in promiscuous, unprotected sex (the above-linked article states that "the majority of new infections reported between 1998 and 2003 - 53 percent - were among men who have sex with men") are simply playing Russian Roullette. They play the odds and everyone - themselves, their friends and family, and society in general - reap the tragic consequences.

"MORMON STUDIES PROGRAM" AT CLAREMONT

2004-11-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

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This is interesting:

A California school is looking at opening the first chair for Mormon studies outside of Utah for study of the faith's history, people and traditions.

Karen Torjesen, dean of religious studies at Claremont Graduate University's School of Religion, said separate councils studying possible chairs for several religions are due to file their recommendations next year, a Salt Lake newspaper reported Saturday.
...
The Mormon studies program could be among several new chairs in religious studies Claremont is examining for such religions as Islam, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism and Catholicism.
...
Another effort to open a Mormon studies chair at Utah Valley State College has met resistance. Some residents of Orem, Utah, fear it could evolve into a Mormon-bashing program undermining the faith of the school's 24,000 students, most of whom are Mormon.

"There is so much cultural baggage and still a lot of hurdles we have to jump over in order to make the community feel comfortable with academic study of Mormonism," said Brian Birch, director of religious studies at Utah Valley State College, who received his doctorate at Claremont.
...
Mormons in Southern California like the idea, said Amy Hoyt, a doctoral candidate in women's studies at Claremont and a member of the school's Mormon advisory council.

"There's some surprise that it's a secular, non-Utah university" that would take up Mormon studies, she said. "I also get a sense of relief from people, like 'finally someone is going to take us seriously.'"
She said the Mormon church is becoming a topic of increasing interest among religion scholars as it grows beyond the Western Hemisphere into a worldwide faith. Yale University held a scholarly conference on Mormonism two years ago, and Harvard University also is taking an interest.

AFIRMATIVE ACTION HURTS BLACK LAW STUDENTS

2004-11-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

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Eugene Volokh, one of my favorite bloggers, is commenting on a study (link requires registration, so email for a copy of the article if you are interested) reporting that

Affirmative action hurts black law students more than it helps them, by bumping applicants up into law schools where they are more likely to earn poor grades, drop out, and fail their states' bar exams, according to a forthcoming study by a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The author, Richard H. Sander, argues that ending racial preferences in law-school admissions would increase the number of black lawyers because it would help ensure that students attend law schools where they are more likely to succeed.

A report of the study, scheduled to appear in the November issue of the Stanford Law Review, has sparked a contentious debate among supporters and critics of affirmative action. . . .

His report, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," says that:

-After the first year of law school, 51 percent of black students have grade-point averages that place them in the bottom tenth of their classes, compared with 5 percent of white students. "Evidence suggests that when you're doing that badly, you're learning less than if you were in the middle of a class" at a less-prestigious law school, Mr. Sander says.

-Among students who entered law school in 1991, about 80 percent of white students graduated and passed the bar on their first attempt, compared with just 45 percent of black students. In a race-blind admissions system, the number of black graduates passing the bar the first time would jump to 74 percent, he says, based on his statistical analysis of how higher grades in less competitive schools would result in higher bar scores. Black students are nearly six times as likely as whites not to pass state bar exams after multiple attempts.

-Ending affirmative action would increase the number of new black lawyers by 8.8 percent because students would attend law schools where they would struggle less and learn more, and earn higher grades.

-With the exception of the most-elite law schools, good grades matter more to employers than the law school's prestige.

Volokh is impressed with both the author and the findings. So am I.

ABORTION AS POLITICALLY CORRECT EUGENICS

2004-10-15T09:18:00.000-06:00

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I just came across this story from several months ago and thought it worthy of a post:

ABORTION SOARS IN QUEST FOR PERFECT BABIES
Daily Mail
Sun May 6, 2004 23:30:03 ET

Those with conditions that can usually be corrected medically - such as deformed feet and cleft lips and palates - are instead being terminated.

And the number of abortions of Down's syndrome babies now outstrips live births, despite the fact that those with the condition can live a long and fulfilling life. As screening techniques improve, the trend is likely to grow - horrifying pro-life campaigners.

'These figures are symptomatic of a eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity - and at what cost to its own humanity? ' said ethicist Jacqueline Laing, of London Metropolitan University. 'We are obliterating the willingness of people to accept disability. Babies are required to fit a description of normality before they are allowed to be born.'

The figures for 2002 - the latest available - from the Office for National Statistics show more women than ever are choosing to terminate babies with potential handicaps, with such abortions rising 8 per cent in a year.

See also here ("Minority preborn children are being aborted at more than twice the rate of white preborns."), here ("British Abortion Rate Skyrockets as Couples Eliminate 'Defective' Children"), here ("A woman was granted a late-term abortion because the foetus was found to have a cleft lip and palate.") and here ("(Women should not be required to justify their need for abortion. It is sufficient that a woman does not want to continue the pregnancy . . . It is not difficult to understand why women choose to abort abnormal pregnancies. Many women find that they feel differently about their condition when they find their baby would be born disabled. The discovery that the child is 'not normal' may challenge a woman's hopes and expectations about what her future family life will be . . . Abortion on grounds of fetal abnormality is not a matter of eugenics, it is a means to extend women's control over their lives and futures.").

Thoughts?

RISKS IN THE PORN INDUSTRY - PART 2

2004-10-08T13:41:00.000-06:00

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I previously blogged about how the porn industry places porn actors at greater risk for contracting STDs because consumers don't want to see condoms in porn flicks.

Here's an update on this issue:

LOS ANGELES -- Government officials are stepping up their effort to get adult film producers to enforce the use of condoms during sex scenes.

Los Angeles County health officials have sent letters urging producers and directors to use condoms during filming, and vaccinate actors for hepatitis A and B.

A state lawmaker has also issued a letter threatening possible legislation to mandate the use of condoms in porn productions.

The government has been frustrated with the porn industry's failure to take steps to prevent sexually transmitted diseases following an HIV outbreak in April. That's when four actors were identified as having HIV and the industry was temporarily shutdown.

LDS MISSIONARIES IN CANADIAN SCHOOLS

2004-10-08T09:56:00.000-06:00

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I'm not sure this is a good idea:

Two American missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hit a snag when they made a pitch to the Iqaluit District Education Authority on Sept. 27. It was the first big setback for the pair, who have been well-received elsewhere in town.
...
This was the first time that Mormon missionaries have requested classroom time with the students, and board members were less than thrilled with the idea.

"Not my kids," said vice-president Aseena Allurut, who was at the meeting.
...
Board member Katherine Trumper, on behalf of the group, raised a concern that there was no precedent for allowing a specific religious group in the classroom.

Inuksusk High principal Terry Young replied that there have been presentations in the past that "did not result in a good thing." Young also said that the board had denied requests from religious groups for the last five years.

The missionaries informed the board that several schools in Quebec had allowed missionaries into their schools. At Trumper's prompting, they agreed to present letters of references from the principals of those schools.

"Frankly I was somewhat surprised that they didn't have those [references] in hand," says Trumper.

I would be opposed to having missionaries proseletyze a "captive audience" of young kids in school, whether those missionaries be LDS or any other faith.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

2004-09-24T09:38:00.000-06:00

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A few hours ago I came across this picture of John and Teresa Kerry:

Hmm. Doesn't John Kerry remind you of Odo from Deep Space Nine?

UPDATE: What's up with this?

I'm not sure what sort of appeal a pumpkin-hued presidential candidate will have on the masses. We'll wait and see.

JOHN KERRY FLIP FLOP #677

2004-09-20T09:43:00.000-06:00

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John Kerry on September 20, 2004:

Sen. John Kerry said Monday that mistakes by President Bush in invading Iraq could lead to unending war and that no responsible commander in chief would have waged the war knowing Saddam Hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction and wasn't an imminent threat to the United States.

"Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?" Kerry said at New York University.

John Kerry on August 9, 2004:

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."

RISKS IN THE PORN INDUSTRY

2004-09-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

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This is interesting (emphasis added):

State officials have taken unprecedented regulatory action against the porn industry, fining two adult film companies more than $30,000 each for allegedly allowing actors to perform unprotected sex.

The citations against Evasive Angles and TTB Productions, which share the same address in the San Fernando Valley, come after an HIV outbreak earlier this year involving four actors and forcing a temporary shutdown of adult film production in Southern California.
...
The companies received citations for violating the state's blood borne pathogen standard, a regulation that requires employers to protect workers exposed to blood or bodily fluids on the job. The companies have 15 days to appeal the eight citations.
...
The citations also accuse the companies of failing to notify authorities about actors who contracted HIV on the job, as the law requires. The producers also failed to have a written injury prevention program and report a workplace accident to state officials within eight hours, as required by state law, agency officials said.
...
Health officials have been urging adult film producers to require that all actors practice safe sex during filming, including wearing condoms. It is a widely held belief among producers that showing condom use in their films would hurt profits because the customers do not want to see safe sex.

This is yet another reason why porn is bad. There is an apparent financial incentive to have the actors exposed to an increased risk of HIV and other STDs. Pretty appalling.

Some might argue that the larger studios require condom use in all of their productions, or that this risk is somehow overstated. But that seems unlikely (emphasis added):

Few of the companies provide health insurance, and most performers find
they must work without condoms if they want to keep getting jobs. "The
fans don't like to see condoms," said performer Belladonna, reflecting a belief
that is widely held in the industry. Like many other performers, Belladonna
started in the business when she was 18, the legal minimum.

Also consider this (emphases added):

A member of the California Assembly has warned the pornographic-film industry, already buffeted by an H.I.V. outbreak earlier this year, that unless actors wear condoms while they work he will write a law requiring it.

The warning, from Paul Koretz, a Democrat who represents West Hollywood and parts of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, came in a letter last week to 185 producers and publishers of pornographic material, advising sex performers to adopt "harm-reduction procedures" like using condoms or face the chance that the Legislature will "exercise its authority to mandate more stringent actions."

While most people in the sex industry appear to agree in principle with the idea of consistent condom use, it has long been believed here that condoms are not sexy.

"In any sexual interaction where condoms are used, consumers tend to drift from that," said Graham Travis, head of production at Elegant Angel Video, a production company that turns out as many as eight new releases a month. "What the consumers want to see is performers without condoms, something that's as real and intimate as possible."

Forcing condom use, he said, would mean that "a lot of people would go out of business." In any event, Mr. Travis said, "I don't think the will is there from the performers."
...
Sharon Mitchell, a former adult-film actress who earned a Ph.D. in human sexuality before co-founding the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, said on Monday that condom use in the industry had gone up after the H.I.V. outbreak to 23 percent from 17 percent and that it was now back to about 17.5 percent.

"Honey, this is pornography," Dr. Mitchell said. "People don't pay attention to the Legislature. Why should they pay attention to Koretz's letter?"

A week after the outbreak became known, Dr. Mitchell said, she struck a deal with 16 production companies under which they were to insist that performers who choose not to use condoms be tested for sexually transmitted diseases every two weeks. Across-the-board use of condoms, she said, was not on the table.

And this (emphasis added):

Michelle Sinclair, star of such treasures as American Nymphette, claims, "The fans don't like to see condoms."

And this (emphases added):

“The bottom line is, customers don’t like [to see] condoms,” Mark Kulkis, president of Kick Ass Pictures, told The Los Angeles Times. “When you see an action movie and you see the hero jumping out the window, you don’t want to see the wires holding him up. Nobody wants to see condoms. It’s a fantasy.”

And this (emphasis added):

The Primetime producers who had been following her noticed changes. At 18, she had said she would never use drugs, but now Primetime learned that she was sometimes high on marijuana during her scenes. She was working without condoms, though she said the risk of AIDS was never far from her mind — or her prayers. "The fans don't like to see condoms … If I would have said I want to use condoms every time, I really wouldn't get any work," she explained. She contracted chlamydia, which can make you sterile.

And this (emphasis added):

A 20-year-old porn actress who identified herself only as Brooke said the HIV scare prompted her to give up unprotected sex scenes.

"I know that a lot of people don't want to see condoms, but I would like to see tomorrow," she said.

While many in the industry support voluntary condom use, most oppose making it a law on grounds that it would drive the business underground.

Some of the larger production companies, such as Vivid Entertainment and Wicked Pictures, require condom use. The industry also relies on monthly HIV tests administered by the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.

Condoms, of course, are not a foolproof guaranty against contracting an STD:

Believing condoms are sexual salvation is like trying to stop fire from being hot and from burning people who touch or are touched by the flames. In 1997, Father Jacques Suaudeau angered the condom bloc with a study showing that the possibility of contracting HIV using a condom in high-risk sexual relations is about 15 percent. That risk rises 20 percent to 30 percent when the act is homosexual, when sexual promiscuity is high or when another sexually transmitted disease is involved.

But 83% of porn industry isn't even willing to go that far. Pretty appalling.

A huge problem here is the consumers. They are the driving force for porn involving unprotected sex (at least, that's what the producers say). As long as consumers demand such a thing, there will be peple willing to cater to that market. Thus consumers are somewhat culpable for demanding a product that is hazardous to the actors involved in producing it.

UPDATE: I'm currently involved in a discussion about this issue. One participant made this rather acute observation:

I’ve often wondered why it is that prostitution is illegal but making “adult” movies is not. They both involve performing sex acts for money. What’s the difference? Does filming the act some how make it any less an act of prostitution (sex for money)?

Well, apparently in California it does. According to California’s Penal Code, section 653.20:
653.20. For purposes of this chapter, the following definitions
apply:
(a) "Commit prostitution" means to engage in sexual conduct for
money or other consideration, but does not include sexual conduct
engaged in as a part of any stage performance, play, or other
entertainment open to the public.
So, if you do it in private (with or without a condom), you can go to jail, pay a fine, or both. But if you do it in public, it’s perfectly OK, unless you forget to use a condom, in which case you can be fined. Talk about the First Amendment gone wild.

UPDATE ON CBS FORGERY SCANDAL

2004-09-13T06:39:00.000-06:00

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A good roundup of the issues surrounding the scandal involving CBS and forged papers regarding President Bush's National Guard service is here.

THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE MEDIA

2004-09-10T14:15:00.000-06:00

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The Monica Lewinsky scandal led to the impeachment of - and almost brought down - the President of the United States. Trent Lott's laudatory comments about Strom Thurman forced him to step down as Senate Majority Leader. And the current presidential election is currently being dominated by John Kerry's various screw-ups and, now, a forgery scandal involving CBS basing a 60 Minutes report on what now appear to be phony documents that cast George Bush in a negative light (go here and here for roundups of stories on this issue).

What do all of these things have in common? One word: Blogs. The Blogosphere, not mainstream media outlets, is guiding the discourse of this presidential election, so much so that John Kerry has not granted an interview to the press in over a month.

CBS is currently dancing to the tune picked out by bloggers, not by Big Media wonks. Dan Rather is on the hot seat, and I don't think he likes it.

What we are seeing is the "democratization of the media." 100 years ago, people like Pulitzer and Hearst controlled the political discourse of this country. Today, bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh and Matt Drudge have taken their place. And not because Reynolds et. al. are fabulously rich and control a media empire, but because they have been elected, so to speak, by popular vote. Many of the most prominent bloggers have attained that position not because of connections or money, but by merit. People go to these blogs, like what they read, and return again and again. And they tell their family and friends who - in a true grassroots effort - tell their acquaintances.

The media is becoming more of a meritocracy. No longer will we see a handful of professional news guys influencing politics and every other facet of society to comport with their view of the world as seen from their "comfy liberal elite bubble." Nope. The media used to be a watchdog for John Q. Public, asking difficult questions and raising difficult issues. Ideology has warped mainstream media too far to the left. From here on out, the watchdog has its own watchdogs - a whole pack of 'em.

They're called bloggers, and they're here to stay.

BUSH TAKES A DOUBLE-DIGIT LEAD

2004-09-03T14:28:00.000-06:00

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I previously blogged a bit about John Kerry's Dukakis Moment. In retrospect, I think it's perhaps incorrect to pin down exactly when Kerry's presidential bid went south.

--Was it his tall tale, repeated several times, about a "seared, seared" memory of being in Cambodia during Christmas 1968 (a claim that's been pretty much refuted by . . . John Kerry himself.)

--Was it his profoundly offensive 1971 testimony before Congress, in which he accused the tens of thousands of Americans serving honorably in Vietnam of committing systematic war crimes?

--Was it when he expressed how he felt about how we honor our troops by throwing away his award ribbons?

--Was it when he authored his anti-Vietnam, anti-American screed, The New Soldier? (This link takes you to a .pdf copy of the book, and this one is a link to Amazon, where used copies of it are selling for $699.00.)

--Was it his constant waffling on issues ranging from welfare reform to mandatory minimum sentencing to affirmative action to the death penalty to education reform? Or how about his waffling on supporting our troops in Iraq (he voted to send them there, then voted against the funding they'd need to do their job); Yasser Arafat (who Kerry has called both a "statesman" and "an impediment to the peace process"); criticizing the Commander in Chief during wartime; abortion; and on and on and on?

--Was it his constant defensiveness about non-existent questions about his patriotism? (As James Taranto put it: "Democrats themselves raised the issue of patriotism by defensively denying that they lacked it. A cardinal rule of political communication is never to repeat an accusation in the course of denying it ('I am not a crook'). These candidates 'repeated' a charge no one had even made.")

--Was it his manifestly wooden, uninspired convention speech, which even the West Coast Liberal Media Lapdog, the LA Times, characterized as leaving undecided voters "swayed, not smitten?"

I don't know, but whatever Kerry's Dukakis Moment was, whenever he jumped the shark, today we are seeing the result:

For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.

Glenn Reynolds over at InstaPundit has more.

John Zogby predicted on May 9, 2004 that "John Kerry will win the election" and that "this race is John Kerry's to lose."

We'll see, John. We'll see.

THE BENEFITS OF BEING A POTTY MOUTH

2004-09-03T08:08:00.000-06:00

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I served an LDS (Mormon) mission in the Taiwan Taipei Mission. As you may know, LDS missionaries work in "companionships," pairs of two (sometimes three) missionaries who pretty much to everything together.

One of my missionary companions was a native Taiwanese. A few weeks after we began working together I found out the reason he had, um, strong breath in the morning: he drank a cup of his own urine every morning. He said that it was an old Chinese folk remedy (for what? I wondered, keeping girls at bay?).

As my mission president at the time, Harvey Horner, had gone to great lengths to impress upon us American missionaries the importance of not being ethnocentric or looking down on Chinese culture, I said nothing on the matter (but my thoughts, as you can see, were pretty ethnocentric anyway).

Why am I bringing this up? Because it looks like my missionary companion was not alone in thinking that a cup of urine is beneficial:

Cup of urine a day keeps ailments at bay

BANGKOK (AFP) - Drinking urine can eliminate sinus trouble, turn grey hair black and even cure cancer, a Thai academic said, citing a study of local Buddhists who engage in the unorthodox practice.

Ratree Cheepudomwit, of the Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine Development Department, said hundreds of urine drinkers attested that consuming a daily cup worked wonders for their overall health and helped slow the ageing process.

She said that in June she queried 250 members of Santi Asoke, a strict indigenous Buddhist movement believed to have thousands of followers, and 204 respondents said they had learned from ancient Buddhist manucripts that drinking one's urine improved health.

"Of the respondents, 87 percent confirmed that it had head-to-toe benefits for them, including for example reduction of dandruff, grey hair, sinus problems and cancer," Ratree told AFP.

I wonder, is my repugnance at this practice just a manifestation of my cultural arrogance? Or is it natural to feel revulsion at the idea of someone drinking a cup of home-brewed Mello Yello every morning?

TOM GREEN GETS PAROLE

2004-08-27T16:43:00.000-06:00

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A few weeks back I blogged about Tom Green's parole hearing. Whatever he said, it worked

A polygamist serving up to a life term for having sex with his first wife when she was 13 years old will be granted parole from the Utah State Prison.

Tom Green will be freed Aug. 7, 2007, after spending six years behind bars, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole said Thursday.

The jail term will be just shy of the six years and three months suggested by parole guidelines for Green, who was sent to prison for up to life for a child rape conviction for "marrying" and having sex with his first wife, Linda Kunz. Green, now 56, also was sentenced to zero-to-five-year terms on four counts of bigamy for having four other wives.
...
At his parole hearing two weeks ago, Green denounced polygamy and claimed he would never let his own 13-year-old daughter -- one of 32 children -- marry a man 25 years her senior.
...
He will be supervised by parole officers, and any inappropriate contact with underage girls or with women other than Kunz, with whom he plans to live, could revoke his parole.

What does "inappropriate contact with . . . women other than Kunz" mean? Heck if I know.

JOHN KERRY'S "DUKAKIS MOMENT"

2004-08-25T08:45:00.000-06:00

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During the course of some presidential election contests there seems to occur a Moment that, in hindsight, exemplifies why the loser lost. George Romney's presidential aspirations were sunk the Moment he attributed his initial support of the Vietnam War to his being "brainwashed" by the U.S. military. Gary Hart's Moment occurred when the Miami Herald broke the Donna Rice Scandal. Howard Dean's Moment was his post-Iowa Caucus "Yeagh!" scream.

The epitome of this Moment, however, is this picture of Michael Dukakis riding on a tank:

For sheer dorkiness, Dukakis' picture takes the cake, so it seems appropriate to name the moment that defines a presidential candidate's loss as the "Dukakis Moment".

Why am I bringing all of this up? Because I think John Kerry had his Dukakis Moment last night:

After weeks of charge and countercharge in the presidential campaign, comedian Jon Stewart tried Tuesday to get to the bottom of the debate over Democrat John Kerry's military service in Vietnam.

...

As Kerry launched into a monologue about why President Bush avoids talking about issues like the economy, jobs and the environment, the comedian interrupted.

"I'm sorry," Stewart said. "Were you or were you not in Cambodia?"

Stewart and Kerry then leaned in and stared each other down before Stewart asked about other things Kerry's opponents are saying.

John Kerry didn't answer. That was his Dukakis Moment.

UPDATE: Hmm. Looks like I'm not the only one who is comparing Kerry to Dukakis:

There is no President in modern memory who is so universally hated than George W. Bush, and yet, you've never polled outside of the margin of error. Now, the polls are going against you, and by my measurement, its going to get worse, not better from here. Bush is a marathon runner and you are a country club golf cart riding, two caddy golfer. As long as you continue to bring your B game to an A game park, you and your party are going to look fools. At some point, you will begin to see you allies in your party and the press make you the pinata at this party. They will not take the heat for your loss, they will tie a can around your neck and toss you out into the exercise yard for the guards to shoot at. Everyone loves a winner, but no one can stand a loser.

You sir, are a loser. You will go down in history as the man who made Dukakis look good.
...
Prediction: Mcgovern, Mondale, Dukakis and now Kerry will each get an entry in the hall of fame of losers. 40 states will go for Bush. It will not be a close election.

Ouch.

SUPPORTING THE TROOPS VS. OPPOSING THE WAR

2004-08-23T11:47:00.000-06:00

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During my second year in law school I worked in a small personal injury law firm in Salt Lake. One day I got into an extended debate with one of the attorneys and another clerk about whether we should go to war in Iraq (at that point there had been a troop build-up, but Saddam was still in power).

These two people (I'll call them Jane and Adam) were adamantly opposed to any military action in Iraq and said they would continue to oppose any such action once hostilities began. I said that I could respect their opposition to military action, but that once hostilities began they should shut up and support the troops.

Jane and Adam were aghast. How could I say such a thing? Hadn't I heard of the first amendment? Dissent is patriotic! How could I advocate censorship during wartime?

My response was that politics should end at the water's edge, that dissent after hostilities began only emboldened those fighting our troops and put our troops in greater danger, and that it is inconsistent to claim to "support our troops" in one breath and demonize the work they are doing in the next.

Fast forward to today, where I came across an NY Times op-ed written by Major Glen Butler, a major in the U.S. Marine Corps (via Instapundit, which doesn't require a login). Major Butler has a number of good points. First:

When critics of the war say their advocacy is on behalf of those of us risking our lives here, it's a type of false patriotism. I believe that when Americans say they "support our troops," it should include supporting our mission, not just sending us care packages. They don't have to believe in the cause as I do; but they should not denigrate it. That only aids the enemy in defeating us strategically.

Michael Moore recently asked Bill O'Reilly if he would sacrifice his son for Falluja. A clever rhetorical device, but it's the wrong question: this war is about Des Moines, not Falluja. . . .

No, I would not sacrifice myself, my parents would not sacrifice me, and President Bush would not sacrifice a single marine or soldier simply for Falluja. Rather, that symbolic city is but one step toward a free and democratic Iraq, which is one step closer to a more safe and secure America.

Yep. You can't claim to at once support the troops but oppose the work they are doing.

Second, Major Butler states: "We marines are proudly apolitical, yet stereotypically right-wing conservative. I'm both. And I'd be here with my fellow devildogs, fighting just as hard, whether John Kerry or George W. Bush or Ralph Nader were our commander-in-chief, until we're told to go home." Methinks the anti-war folks could honestly make such a claim. I suspect much of the opposition to the war in Iraq is anti-Bush hatred dressed up as excessively self-conscious "patriotic dissent."

Third, Major Butler prognosticates a bit:

Now we are on the verge of victory or defeat in Iraq. Success depends not only on battlefield superiority, but also on the trust and confidence of the American people. I've read some articles recently that call for cutting back our military presence in Iraq and moving our troops to the peripheries of most cities. Such advice is well-intentioned but wrong - it would soon lead to a total withdrawal. Our goal needs to be a safe Iraq, free of militias and terrorists; if we simply pull back and run, then the region will pose an even greater threat than it did before the invasion. I also fear if we do not win this battle here and now, my 7-year-old son might find himself here in 10 or 11 years, fighting the same enemies and their sons.

Amen.

JOHN KERRY IS LOSING IT

2004-08-20T17:04:00.000-06:00

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I'm not too interested in blogging on the presidential race. There are far better resources out there for all of my readers (and thanks to both of you for stopping by my blog this week).

However, I couldn't resist comparing this comment from Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter:

"[White House spokesman Scott McClellan] needs to understand that John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second graders while America is under attack."

That was a reference to Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush remained in an elementary school classroom for several minutes after being informed by an aide that the World Trade Center had been hit.

With this one from John Kerry himself (speaking of what he did when he first heard about the 9/11 attacks):

"I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting - we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation."

How appropriate that Kerry lumps himself in with fellow leftist do-nothing non-thinkers such as Boxer, Daschle and Reid.

Thanks to the several readers today who sent us this fascinating bit from Blog for Bush: "the second plane hit the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., and the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:43 a.m. By Kerry's own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for forty minutes, realizing 'nobody could think.'"

In the immortal words of Glenn Reynolds: Heh.

UPDATE: Okay, one more, um, comment on John Kerry:

Kerry Website Revised

From the Boston Globe:
The Kerry campaign removed a 20-page batch of documents yesterday from its website after The Boston Globe quoted a Navy officer who said the documents wrongly portrayed Kerry’s service. Edward Peck had said he — not Kerry — was the skipper of Navy boat No. 94 at a time when the Kerry campaign website credited the senator with serving on the boat. The website had described Kerry’s boat as being hit by rockets and said a crewmate was injured in an attack. But Peck said those events happened when he was the skipper. The campaign did not respond to a request to explain why the records were removed.

Posted by Alan Brain at August 21, 2004 09:11 AM |

__________________

Comments

Oops!

How do you like people Bringing it On, Senator Windsock?

Posted by: TL at August 21, 2004 10:42 AM

Yeah, it's petty, but the "Senator Windsock" comment made me laught out loud.

SOLDER KILLED IN IRAQ . . . WHILE ON CANDY PATROL

2004-08-20T08:24:00.000-06:00

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An online acquaintance of mine has a brother who was killed in Iraq on August 17. Speaking of the circumstances of his brother's death, he said:

I just got some more (and correct) information. Henry wasn't shot in the chest, he was shot in the neck by a sniper. He was stitting on top of his humvee handing out candy while his buddies were playing with several Iraqi children. He was taken back to the base and then med-evaced out of there. During the med-evac is when he died. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Also, they were unable to find/kill the sniper who shot him.

My condolences to his family.

UPDATE: Here is a news article on Henry's death.

SOME MORMONS GET SCAMMED . . . AGAIN

2004-08-19T09:55:00.000-06:00

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This sort of thing really irritates me:

7 arrested; victims lured by trust fund

Authorities say the story was as compelling as it was bogus: Descendants of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith had created a $1.6 trillion trust fund held overseas, and investors were needed to bring the money back home.

The FBI said yesterday it had broken up a massive fraud ring operating out of an Ocean Beach liquor store and a Mission Valley apartment complex. It said flim-flam artists flew to Utah, Texas, Idaho and other states pitching ways to broker phony deals.

Over 100 victims were bilked out of between $20 million and $50 million . . .
...

"They targeted largely people of means without a lot of sophistication," Lee said.

Investors were sometimes promised annual returns of 100 percent for 99 years.

"There were religious undertones to virtually every part of this," Lee said, noting that investigators observed prayer meetings held with some potential investors.

Those behind the scam claimed a link to descendants of Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but were in no way connected to the church, Lee said.

Now, part of me would like to say that some Mormons are easy prey to flim-flam artists because of their piety and willingness to trust. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the case. It's more a matter of gullibility and greed.

When scammers target Mormons qua Mormons, they use religion as a "foot in the door," so to speak (as was the case in the above story). The remainder of the scam, however, relies on the victims' too-eagerly-given trust coupled with the victims' greedy desire for a quick buck. I love my fellow Latter-day Saints, I really do. But mixing religion and business in this way is just a bad, bad idea.

_______

UPDATE: Yep, I was right. This quote from FBI Special Agent Jan Caldwell makes it pretty clear that the victims were in it for the moolah:

"Among other promises, Harrell [the alleged mastermind of the scheme] guaranteed some investors 100 percent annual return on their money for 99 years," Caldwell said. "Harrell's victims ranged from Florida to Oregon, and the individual investments spread from $2,000 to millions."

BYU PERFORMS WELL ON PRINCETON REVIEW

2004-08-17T07:18:00.000-06:00

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When I travelled to Washington State to meet in-laws for the first time eight years ago, I discovered they harbored a general feeling of apathy, perhaps even antipathy, about BYU, this despite the fact that A) they are all active members of the LDS Church, and B) I had met their daughter (now my wife) at BYU. Part of their jibes about BYU were surely in jest, but it seemed to me at the time that, in truth, they really did dislike the school.

Maybe it was a holdover from some of the tension between "Utah" Mormons and the rest of the LDS community. Having grown up in Utah, and then having lived in several other places (Missouri, California, Arizona, Taiwan and Washington State), I can see some reasonable criticisms of Utah LDS culture. Perhaps it all boils down to the subtle, almost unconscious, notion that Utah is "Zion" - or the nearest thing to it - and that everywhere else is the "mission field." This comparison really rankles my mother-in-law.

I tend to think that the Utah-as-Zion idea (which I reject, by the way, at least as far as Utah being held out as more "Zionish" than anywhere else) has its roots in the mass emigrations to Utah of the late 19th century. References to Utah as being the "center stakes of Zion" were accurate back then, but not now. There have long been more Latter-day Saints outside of Utah than in it, and there are now more members of the Church outside the United States than in it.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I read this morning that BYU performed fairly well on the Princeton Review survey:

Predictably — after all, this is the sixth straight time — the Princeton Review ranked BYU No. 1 on its list of sober colleges and universities. No other school has remained nearly so long atop of any of the 64 lists produced by the annual guide for prospective college students.

The real surprise this year is that BYU finished No. 1 in seven categories, including great library — ahead of Princeton (second) and Harvard (fourth).

Two years ago BYU didn't even make the top 20, then vaulted to third last year.

BYU ranked first in the following categories:

-Great Library

-Stone-cold Sober (least amount of drinking by students)

-Got Milk? (low beer consumption)

-Scotch & Soda, Hold the Scotch (low hard liquor consumption)

-Don't Inhale (low marijuana use)

-Students Pray on a Regular Basis

-Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution

BYU also ranked second for "Town-Gown Relations are Good" (city and campus get along), fifth for "Students Most Nostalgic for Ronald Reagan" (students lean right politically), sixth for "Best Quality of Life," seventh for "Alternative Lifestyle not an Alternative" (low acceptance of the gay community), seventh for "Happiest Students," twelfth for "Everyone Plays Intramural Sports," and nineteenth for "Jock Schools" (intramural and intercollegiate sports are popular).

I think the recognition for the library and the various "quality of life" categories (happiest students, low alcohol and drug use, sports, etc.) make BYU look really good to students and parents of students who are, with good reason, put off by the raucous lifestyle at other schools.

That said, I would like to see BYU recognized for its academic excellence. Perhaps that's not covered much in the Princeton Review, or perhaps it is and BYU just isn't up to snuff in the overall picture yet. The law school is drawing sharper students every year (this table shows that the median GPA and LSAT scores for incoming BYU students is very, very good). BYU's graduate accounting program consistently ranks near the top in the nation (as does the bachelor's program). BYU's MBA program is ranked 39th in the current U.S. News survey. I think the undergraduate programs at BYU could, with some effort, compete with the best across the nation.

As for my in-laws, they've mellowed a bit about BYU. In fact, one of my brothers-in-law will be sending in his application any day now. I wish him the best.

FEDERAL JUDGE BLOWS A GASKET - WITH GOOD REASON

2004-08-16T13:01:00.000-06:00

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As you may know, I currently work as a law clerk in a small firm in Provo, Utah. I spent most of last week writing a fairly extensive memorandum responding to the opposing party's motion for sanctions and attorney's fees. They are accusing us, along with our client, of attempting to frustrate their discovery efforts. Their motion was quite acrimonious and entirely unnecessary, which made it rather annoying to spend a significant amount of time drafting a 37-page memorandum (with exhibits, measured about 2 inches thick). It's a good memo and I'm rather confident we'll prevail on the motion, but the unnecessary effort and expense caused me a wee bit of frustration.

So it was rather refreshing to read this blog post (courtsey of Overlawyered.com) about a federal judge in Texas (where else?) named Sam Sparks who included some rather choice comments about overly-litigious attorneys in his order:

You have a pretty good idea that you're not going to get the relief requested when the judge starts his order with "When the undersigned accepted the appointment from the President of the United States of the position now held, he was ready to face the daily practice of law in federal courts with presumably competent lawyers. No one warned the undersigned that in many instances his responsibility would be the same as a person who supervised kindergarten."

Judge Sam Sparks of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin continues:
Frankly, the undersigned would guess that the lawyers in this case did not attend kindergarten as they never learned how to get along well with others. Notwithstanding the history of filings and antagonistic motions full of personal insults and requiring multiple discovery hearings, earning the disgust of this Court, the lawyers continue ad infinitum.
Of course Judge Sparks was just getting warmed up. Later in the order, he writes:
The Court simply wants to scream, "Get a life" or "Do you have any other cases?" or "When is the last time you registered for anger management classes?"
Just because the lawyers are litigators doesn't make overly litigious behavior acceptable. Petty sniping and inability to agree on matters that won't affect the outcome of the case are traits that will surely get a lawyer on the judge's bad side. And that just might affect the outcome of the case. It's not just bad manners, it's bad lawyering.

Sage bit o' wisdom there.

JOHN THE BAPTIST CAVE . . . FOUND?

2004-08-16T11:45:00.000-06:00

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As a member of the LDS ("Mormon") Church, I try to keep up on current events in biblical archaeology. However, this sort of thing doesn't seem very impressive to me:

AP: Group Discovers John the Baptist Cave
Aug 16, 11:36 AM (ET)

By KARIN LAUB

KIBBUTZ TZUBA, Israel (AP) - Archaeologists said Monday they have found a cave where they believe John the Baptist anointed many of his disciples - a huge cistern with 28 steps leading to an underground pool of water.

During an exclusive tour of the cave by The Associated Press, archaeologists presented wall carvings they said tell the story of the fiery New Testament preacher, as well as a stone they believe was used for ceremonial foot washing.
...

"John the Baptist, who was just a figure from the Gospels, now comes to life," said British archaeologist Shimon Gibson, who supervised the dig outside Jerusalem.

However, others said there was no proof that John the Baptist ever set foot in the cave, about 2 1/2 miles from Ein Kerem, the preacher's hometown and now part of Jerusalem.

"Unfortunately, we didn't find any inscriptions," said James Tabor, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
...

Both Tabor and Gibson said it was very likely that the wall carvings, including one showing a man with a staff and wearing animal skin, told the story of John the Baptist. The carvings stem from the Byzantine period and apparently were made by monks in the fourth or fifth century.

Gibson said he believed the monks commemorated John at a site linked to him by local tradition.

Color me skeptical, but carvings representing a guy wearing animal skins located in a cave venerated by monks who lived 4 or 5 centuries after-the-fact just doesn't strike me as impressive evidence.

I think Christians are sometimes too inclined to rely on archaeological or other forms of secular evidence to validate religious claims. There's even a hokey outfit called Wyatt Archaeological Research (replete with a museum) that claims to have found evidence for everything from Noah's Ark to Sodom and Gomorrah to the Hebrews' crossing of the Red See to the Ark of the Covenant (Indiana Jones is, according to reports, green with envy).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for looking at religious claims in their historical context. But I just don't think the mysteries of the universe will be proved by pottery shards or excavated mummies. Belief in God will always, I think, be fundamentally a matter of faith.

TOM GREEN RENOUNCES POLYGAMY

2004-08-13T08:27:00.000-06:00

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This is interesting:

Tom Green Admits Wrongdoing Before Parole Board

Aug. 13, 2004

DRAPER, Utah (AP) -- Polygamist Tom Green told the parole board he now understands the error of his ways.

One of his wives, Linda Kunz, also claimed she now understands the error of his ways.

Green, 56, was convicted of first-degree felony rape for having married Kunz when she was 13 and was sentenced to five years to life in prison. He also was sentenced to zero-to-five-year terms on four counts of bigamy for having four other wives.
...

Parole board Chairman Michael Sibbett asked during Thursday's hearing at the prison in the Salt Lake City suburb of Draper what Green would tell his own 13- and 14-year-old daughters if one of them wanted to marry a man 25 years her senior.

"I would tell them they were not (to do it), as far as I could prevent it," Green answered. "And the man would have to seek some help (therapy)."

Sibbett asked Green where this change in attitude came from.

"From the great opportunity I've had in the last two years to do a lot of thinking and reflecting," said Green, who wept quietly during the 40-minute hearing. "It has been a very eye-opening experience and a wake-up call."

Green said his family is paying the price for the choices he made.

"We shouldn't delude ourselves with vain crusades or fancy ourselves victims or persecuted minorities to justify the things we've just made up our minds to do," Green said.

I wonder if he's sincere about it. I also wonder what's going to happen to his family. Here's the odd thing: If Tom Green gets out on parole, a condition of his parole will be than he cannot maintain his prior husband-and-wives relationships. However, if he "divorces" his plural wives, then it would seem that he could continue to live with them and not violate the conditions of his parole.

In other words, living with several women simultaneously and having children with any/some/all of them is okay as long as you are only married to one or none of them.

But since his "plural" marriages were never recognized by the state, he can't "divorce" them. So it seems like the only thing Tom Green will have to do is keep his big mouth shut. As long as he does not represent to society that he is married to more than one woman, he's safe.

What a weird situation.

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN RUSSIA

2004-08-09T10:45:00.000-06:00

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This morning I came across an article in the Moscow News about how Russian Orthodox and Muslims are opposing the LDS Church's effort to build a church in Saratov, Russia:

Russian Orthodox, Muslims Battle Mormon Building in South Russia

Orthodox Christians, Russian Muslims and Cossacks have joined forces in the south Russian city of Saratov in battling the efforts of local Mormons to build a temple in the city center, too close for comfort, they say, to an Orthodox church and a mosque.

Cossacks, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians rallied in the city center Saturday, Gazeta.ru reported. Demonstrators called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the name of the Mormon church — a “devilish, socially dangerous sect that spies for the CIA.”

The Mormon Church purchased a building in the city center in 2001 that happened to be close to both a mosque and a central Orthodox church. They plan to renovate the building, and use it for prayers. In a statement to Gazeta.ru, however, they denied that they were going to build a temple or a church.
...

As a result of the protests, however, their building license has been revoked by city authorities. Citing the Russian Constitution, which says that all religions have equal rights before the law, Mormon representatives appealed to city authorities to allow them to proceed.

They have since gotten no response.
...

A regional administration chief told the online newspaper that he has no intention of helping the Mormons get their building license back.

“I have respect for everyone who believes, but the Mormon teaching contradicts Russian traditions,” he said, echoing cries of protest Russians have issued against other religious groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishna.

In court, however, the Mormons have every chance to win, another source in the city administration was quoted as saying, because there protesters have no legal leverage and all the documents the Mormons have for renovating the building are in order.

It seems that the LDS Church is facing animosity on two grounds: religious (being a small, new minority faith) and political (being an "American" faith).

By the way, the article erroneously states that the LDS Church is planning to build a temple in Saratov. LDS Temples are always publicly announced well before they are opened, and no such announcement has been made for a temple in Russia (although there has been one announced for Kiev, Ukraine).

JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS AND PROFILING

2004-08-06T14:48:00.000-06:00

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Back during my first year in law school (and a few months after 9/11) I wrote a law review article entitled Rational Profiling in America's Airports which was published in the Journal of Public Law, a law journal at BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School. My basic thesis is that age, gender and race should be incorporated as profiling factors (among others, such as when the ticked was purchased, how it was purchased, etc.) currently in use at airports.

One point I addressed briefly was the Japanese internment camps during World War II. I admittedly didn't do a huge amount of research on this topic as it was not central to the paper. However, I read enough to make me think that the conventional wisdom that the internment camps were bad, bad, bad and totally without foundation is not necessarily true.

It appears that I am not alone. Michelle Malkin has published a book entitled In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Malkin purports to debunk the common historical view that the internment was largely driven by wartime hysteria and racism. She maintains that historians and federal panels have played down information showing that Japan had established an extensive espionage network on the West Coast."

It's come under some criticism, to which Ms. Malkin has responded. Interesting stuff. I'll try to blog more on this as time permits.

GETTING BACK TO WORK

2004-07-29T08:40:00.000-06:00

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I finished the Utah Bar Exam yesterday. I've never been a good guesstimator of how I do on tests, so I won't hazard a guess now (I sure hope I passed, though).

Anyway, I'll be blogging more regularly from now own.

FREE SPEECH RESTRICTIONS IN A PUBLIC PARK

2004-05-27T06:20:00.000-06:00

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Just in case you haven't had enough of Christian street preachers being prevented from spreading their message, here's another story:

Split verdict reached for street preachers

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

HARRISBURG, Penn. — Three pastors conducting street preaching during a PrideFest event last year earned mixed court verdicts April for trespass and disorderly conduct.
...

The ministers were arrested July 26 while evangelizing outside of a public park where the annual gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender PrideFest event was taking place. The daylong event featured various activities, including the sale of pornographic materials, public nudity, men dressed like women and obscene language over a public address system.

The ministers were not permitted inside the public park, so they remained on public property outside the main entrance. They were arrested while they were preaching in this public area.

The arresting officer, Stephanie Barrelet, who was filmed on video hugging other lesbian women entering the pride event, jailed Grove, Garisto, and Marcavage for several hours until the PrideFest event was over. Lymon, the first to be arrested, was cited and released.

Here's some commentary on this story:

This is an odd news story, and perhaps there is more to it than this source is telling. I can't seem to find any other coverage of what would seem to be a pretty gross violation of freedom of speech. But perhaps it is because of who did the complaining.

And more:

It's hard to tell what exactly the protesters were doing, so perhaps some of their conduct was indeed punishable; the stories unfortunately don't give many details.

But I think that even given the abortion clinic buffer zone cases, there's no justification for imposing such a 100-foot-diameter buffer zone around a political event, with little evidence of past court orders that had been flouted (as in Madsen) or of a serious threat of more than just possible fisticuffs (as was the case in the Second Circuit case a year or two ago that involved an intended protest outside the United Nations).

I'm interested to see what the ACLU does. It sued the LDS Church for restricting speech on its own property. Will it sue the police officer and the city for restricting speech in a public park?

Enquiring minds wanna know!

HEARSAY FLOWCHART

2004-05-24T13:11:00.000-06:00

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I'm looking for feedback on a "hearsay flowchart" I've developed. It's designed so that an attorney would start at the upper left and work his/her way through it by answering "yes" or "no" to the questions (the solid-line arrows represent a "yes" answer and the dotted-line arrows represent a "no"). It's based on, and hence requires familiarity with, the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Comments pointing out any logical flaws, gaps in treatment, etc. would be greately appreciated. Email me at rsm24 at lawgate dot byu dot edu.

Here it is:

DENYING COMMUNION = STOKING ANTI-CATHOLICISM?

2004-05-20T14:41:00.000-06:00

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I've written a bit about how Catholic politicians like John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi risk losing access to Communion because their voting record is at odds with the position of the Roman Catholic Church. This has really given me pause:

48 Catholic congressmen warn bishops on bigotry
By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post | May 20, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Forty-eight Roman Catholic members of Congress have warned in a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., that US bishops will revive anti-Catholic bigotry and severely harm the church if they deny Communion to politicians who support abortion rights.

The letter's signers, all Democrats, include at least three House members with strong antiabortion voting records.

"For many years Catholics were denied public office by voters who feared that they would take direction from the pope," they wrote. "While that type of paranoid anti-Catholicism seems to be a thing of the past, attempts by church leaders today to influence votes by the threat of withholding a sacrament will revive latent anti-Catholic prejudice, which so many of us have worked so hard to overcome."

So how should we view this? Is the Catholic Church trying to "influence votes" or simply regulate the behavior of its members? Or is regulation of this sort tantamount to influencing votes?

UTAH'S NEW ABORTION STATUTE

2004-05-20T10:09:00.000-06:00

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This is troubling:

Because of a new Utah law, Suzie Combe had to go a clinic instead of her hospital to have her fatally deformed fetus aborted.

She and her husband, Glen, had to act quickly after discovering the fetus had organs growing outside its body and could not survive. They had only days to have the procedure performed before a more complicated procedure would have been necessary.

They went to clinic Wednesday and found the service was "kind and caring and professional" beyond what they expected, Glen Combe said. Suzie Combe was recovering at home in Roy Wednesday night.

...

Under a law enacted by the Legislature this year, it is a crime for doctors, clinics or hospitals that receive any state funding - directly or indirectly- to perform abortions except for rape, incest or the likelihood that a woman would suffer "permanent, irreparable and grave damage to a major bodily function" if she delivers.

The legislators voted down an amendment that would have allowed abortions in the case of grave fetal deformities.

...

The Combes, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, say they are not pro-choice. They have two other children.

...

It is estimated that in Utah, 70 women a year terminate their pregnancies due to fatal fetal deformities.

Bramble said last month that trying to define fetal deformities was a "slippery slope."

"What is the definition of what's 'incompatible with life'? How long is it inconsistent with life? A breath? A minute? A month?" he said. "I have an inherent discomfort with trying to decide which child should live and which child it's appropriate to terminate their life.

Legislators and lawmakers have to make principled distinctions all the time. There will always be close calls, but this case certainly wasn't one of them.

PARK CITY IN THE SUMMER

2004-05-19T08:23:00.000-06:00

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Over the weekend I took my family to Park City, Utah. We stayed at the Holiday Inn (a neighbor was selling coupons for two nights there for $25 - pretty good deal). Overall we had a great time. Park City was, as always, beautiful. We did manage to get wrangled into listening to a sales pitch for a timeshare condo in The Canyons (the company, WestGate, apparently has several properties throughout the U.S.).

The sales lady did a pretty poor job, I must say. I think she detected that we were a lost cause from the get-go (people who graduated from law school a month ago aren't likely to have ten grand or more lying around to dump into - as she put it - "vacation insurance"). However, she managed to drone on and on for 45 minutes, and pointed out several reasons why we shouldn't buy anything from her in the process.

What's up with that? I realize that it may be an effective ploy for the salesman to pre-emptively point out the buyer's potential objections with the goal of diffusing them. But this lady started out by saying "We can address pretty much every concern you may have, but if you're simply not interested, if you don't have the desire to do this [buy into a timeshare condo], then there's nothing I can do about that." Take a wild guess what I said at the end of her presentation?

We did get another two-night stay in Park City (at WestGate) for listening to the presentation, but my wife is expecting a baby in a few months, so we'll probably end up giving it away.

MORMON NEWS VIA GOOGLE

2004-05-19T08:12:00.000-06:00

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Here's a good trick for those of you who are LDS and would like to see how the LDS Church figures in current events. Click on this link and then save it in your favorites. The link is a search for "mormon+OR+mormonism+OR+latter+day+saints" using the News feature in Google. It doesn't provide every news article out there that mentions the LDS Church or its members, and it also returns some irrelevant results (e.g., things like "mormon tea," "mormon crickets," "mormon lake," and "mormon bridge" come up). It is nevertheless a convenient and very fast way of gleaning news about the LDS Church.

My thanks to the evangelical outfit ApologeticsIndex for showing me how to do this (scroll down to the "Other Sources" section). This cultist salutes you!

BYU ATTORNEY TAPPED FOR D.C. COURT OF APPEALS

2004-05-12T07:33:00.000-06:00

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Whoa. This is exciting news:

Following months of speculation, the White House has nominated Brigham Young University's top lawyer for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

President Bush selected Thomas B. Griffith, 49, for the opening on the prestigious court, a vacancy created with the retirement of Justice Patricia Wald. Bush originally nominated Miguel Estrada for the position, but Estrada removed himself from consideration last year after months of a Democrat-led filibuster.

I heard rumors about this months ago, but I didn't put much stock in them. More on this in the Deseret News and the Washington Post (the Post article is behind a login).

MORE: I should note that by "BYU Attorney" I meant "General Counsel for BYU." Thomas Griffith received his law degree from the University of Virginia. The first linked article above (from the Salt Lake Tribune) says he was "a 1978 BYU valedictorian." I suppose that's his bachelor's degree.

FEDERAL JUDGE ISSUES RULING ON MAIN STREET PLAZA ISSUE

2004-05-03T20:44:00.000-06:00

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Check this out:

A federal judge late this afternoon ruled in favor of Salt Lake City and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in a land swap involved in the deal.
...
The ACLU -- which argued the plaza deal restricted free speech, and was engineered in favor of the LDS Church --- now says an appeal is likely.

I think the ACLU is going to lose. The land swap cuts constitutional muster.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting the story in two articles (here and here), as has the Salt Lake Tribune (which also has two articles - see here and here) and the Deseret News. The Deseret News piece included this observation:

[U.S. District Judge Dale A.] Kimball stressed words from the 10th Circuit's initial plaza ruling several times in his ruling Monday. Then, the appellate court said the city could either keep the easement and allow free speech on the plaza or "relinquish the easement so the parcel becomes entirely private."

When the Tenth Circuit's decision came out last year, I discussed it with my First Amendment professor. We speculated that it could prove the lynchpin of the Church's case should the ACLU contest it. Looks like we were right.

THE PERNICIOUS FAR LEFT

2004-05-03T16:19:00.000-06:00

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Blogger Lt. Smash quotes some free advice being doled out by the far left:

Write a letter to a soldier to let him/her know what people really think of this war. Send a photo of a dead Iraqi civilian. Send a photo or message about an anti-war protest... Outreach to soldiers is the best way to persuade them to stop killing civilians. Maybe they will even begin fragging (killing their officers) like in Vietnam. It's worth a try...

I'd like to say that this post is (originally entering the Blogosphere via Blackfive) is an isolated rant by some sick wacko. Unfortunately, the subsequent comments show that "Jimmy" (the author) is not alone in his views.

The actual post and comments (warning: there's pretty rough language throughout) are here.

PRO-ABORTION CATHOLICS AND COMMUNION (Part III)

2004-04-30T14:30:00.000-06:00

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Responding to Nancy Pelosi (specifically, her comment that "I believe that my position on choice is one that is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, which said that every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end"), James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com makes a rather incisive obervation:

Pelosi's faith is between her and God, but does she really think that the church's moral teachings amount to nothing more than "every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end"? Even devil worshipers have free will and responsibility and have to account for the way they live. Does that make them Catholics by Pelosi's lights?

Heh.

PRO-ABORTION CATHOLICS AND COMMUNION (Part II)

2004-04-30T09:02:00.000-06:00

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Today I came across a very interesting article by Philip Lawler at OpinionJournal.com (emphases mine):

Forty years after John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected to the White House, another Democratic senator from Massachusetts finds himself caught up in a controversy over his Catholic faith. But there is a revealing difference between the cases. In 1960, the first JFK sought to neutralize the effects of anti-Catholic prejudice. This year, John F. Kerry seems intent upon exploiting anti-Catholic sentiment to his own political advantage.

Despite repeated admonitions from American bishops (first private, then public), Mr. Kerry insists that he will continue to receive communion when he attends Mass. Thus he puts himself in direct conflict with the Catholic hierarchy, which teaches that the senator's outspoken support for legal abortion renders him unfit to receive the Eucharist. Mr. Kerry may gain a few votes by casting himself as a man of conscience, at odds with bishops whose bungling of a sex-abuse scandal has made them unpopular. But a dispassionate observer--even one who rejects Catholic teachings--should recognize Mr. Kerry's posture for what it is: an assault on the faith he claims to revere.
...
The Catholic Church has always taught that abortion is a grave matter, punishable by excommunication. Last year, in an instruction on the duties of Catholic political leaders, the Vatican drew the logical inference, saying that Catholic politicians are morally obligated to oppose legal abortion.
...
In Boston, Mr. Kerry's own spiritual leader, Archbishop Sean O'Malley, has said that the senator--and others who reject church teachings on the dignity of life--should not receive the Eucharist. But he also made it clear that dissident Catholics should not be turned away if they present themselves for communion, as the defiant senator continues to do.
...
That attitude seems to perplex Vatican officials. At a news conference last week, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Vatican's top official for liturgical affairs, was pressed by an American reporter for his opinion on the matter. Without mentioning names, Cardinal Arinze set a clear general rule about Catholics who are not in good standing: "If they should not receive, it should not be given."
...
Mr. Kerry and his supporters would be sure to portray any disciplinary action as an effort to influence the November election. For this reason most bishops, no doubt, would prefer not to address the issue in a campaign year. But the real question is whether a public figure should enjoy all the benefits, spiritual and material, of a faith that he has betrayed.

Lawler is spot-on. Kerry and Pelosi are of course free to adopt whatever stance they like, but then the Catholic Church is likewise entitled to such freedom, including witholding Communion from nominal Catholics who reject the teachings and authority of the Catholic Church.

PRO-ABORTION CATHOLICS AND COMMUNION

2004-04-29T15:39:00.000-06:00

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Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are both Catholics who are also pro-abortion despite their Church's opposition to abortion. Yet both of them have made headlines in regards to taking Communion. Here's a story on Pelosi:

Top House Dem Says She'll Take Communion

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., like John Kerry a Catholic who supports abortion rights, said Thursday she will continue to ask for Holy Communion in spite of Vatican opposition to pro-choice Catholics doing so.

"I fully intend to receive Communion, one way or another. That's very important to me," Pelosi told reporters during her weekly press conference.
...
The head of a task force of U.S. bishops said Tuesday that Catholic politicians who advocate policies contrary to church teaching on abortion and other issues may risk sanctions that fall short of denial of Communion.
...
Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat who was raised in a devout Italian Catholic home, told reporters, "I believe that my position on choice is one that is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, which said that every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end."

And here's a story on Kerry (requires login):

Kerry Ignores Reproaches of Some Bishops
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

BOSTON, April 11 — Rejecting the admonitions of several national Roman Catholic leaders, Senator John Kerry received communion at Easter services today at the Paulist Center here, a kind of New Age church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and that attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice."...

As I understand the Catholic Code of Canon Law (as explained by an online friend, A Random Catholic), Kerry and Pelosi have not only lost access to Communion, but their membership in the Catholic Church is on the line:

--"A person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication." Canon 1398, 1983 Code of Canon Law

--"Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion." Canon 915, 1983 Code of Canon Law

--"Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life." Canon 2272, 1983 Code of Canon Law

Abortion is a complex, emotional and divisive issue. I think President Bush had it right when he said "[G]ood people disagree on [abortion], but surely we can agree on ways to value life by promoting adoption and parental notification." Despite my personal abhorrence for elective abortions (that is, those performed for convenience sake, and not for overriding concerns such as the life of the mother and pregnancies from rape or incest), I'm persuaded that there are many folks who do not find abortion morally objectionable - at least not to the degree I do - but who are otherwise decent, reasonable people.

That said, a day may come when society at large will look back on our day and be repulsed by our views on abortion (not unlike the way we now look at previous generations and shake our heads at the prevalence of racism). Time will tell.

Update: I should point out that Mormon politicians (like Mitt Romney, the govenor of Massachusetts) also wrestle with this issue.

SCOTLAND ALL GIDDY OVER DONNY OSMOND'S SON

2004-04-29T12:47:00.000-06:00

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I can't help but be surprised at how popular the Osmonds are overseas. I knew they were still popular in Asia, but Scotland?

The son of seventies’ pop heart-throb Donny Osmond has left Rutherglen after being mobbed by the media.

Donny’s son, Brandon, had been volunteering in the British Heart Foundation’s Main Street store.

But news of the Mormon missionary’s arrival in the Royal Burgh hit the headlines across Scotland, forcing the 19-year-old to flee the town.

QUICK NOTE

2004-04-29T09:15:00.000-06:00

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I'm sure all the readers of this blog (both of you) are worried about my sparse posting of late. No worries. Last week I was graduating and this week my computer is on the blink (I'm posting this from a friend's computer). I hope to get to the point of posting every day. It's not like there's a dearth of things to talk about . . .

OPPOSITION TO LDS MEETINGHOUSE

2004-04-26T19:16:00.000-06:00

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Yet again we have a neighborhood opposing the construction of an LDS meetinghouse (in Park City, Utah):

Some Snyderville Basin residents are resisting efforts by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build a 16,500-square-foot meetinghouse near their homes, citing increased traffic and degradation of their mountain views.
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The debate has turned nasty lately. A church-sponsored neighborhood informational meeting left both sides bitter.
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Trailside resident Tim Drain fears his three children, who ride bicycles and skateboards in the neighborhood, will be in danger from increased traffic. "With this proposal, I'd have five days a week, 52 weeks a year of (heavy traffic) use in my neighborhood," he said.
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There are legitimate planning issues, Greenhalgh [the head of the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission] said. But he also sees a not-in-my-backyard attitude.

"People are enjoying the quietness and beauty of the mountains. Having an edifice erected in the neighborhood can be offensive to them, Greenhalgh said. "The definition of an environmentalist is the last person to move into the neighborhood."

So Mormons create "heavy traffic" to their buildings five days per week, every week of the year? Gimme a break. Mr. Drain's complaint is absurdly overwrought.

I would honestly like to know if other religions face the same consistent opposition to building houses of worship as do the Mormons.

MANHATTAN TEMPLE

2004-04-26T19:08:00.000-06:00

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USA Today is carrying a very nice article and picture about the new LDS Manhattan Temple.

Update: Two interior pictures of the Manhattan Temple are here.

GRADUATION!

2004-04-25T16:20:00.000-06:00

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I graduated from BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School on Friday (April 23). Law school was a great experience and I am looking forward to taking the Utah Bar Exam in July.

The picture below is for the Commencement Exercises for all of BYU which took place on Thursday, April 22. The law school graduates are the ones closest to the camera. Only about 35-40 of us showed up (out of 160 or so). I suppose many were too busy to attend, but I'm glad I did.

Napoleon Dynamite

2004-04-21T12:18:00.000-06:00

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Jared Hess, a former BYU student, has directed a film entitled Napoleon Dynamite (the trailer is available here). It's received rave reviews ever since it made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

Oh, and another good thing about it: It's not about Mormons. I haven't been particularly thrilled with the glut of Mormon-themed movies that have come out during the last few years. It's good to see a Mormon make a movie about something other than his faith.

Don't get me wrong. I think Hollywood has vastly underestimated the market for movies that explore religion in a reverential, rather than hostile and profane, manner. (I think Mel Gibson's The Passion has sparked a trend towards films which reverence religious belief.) However, I think Mormons have a broad spectrum of skills and interests, in addition to faith, which can be expressed on film. I hope Jared Hess leads the way in getting other Mormon moviemakers to broaden their horizons a bit.

LIST OF "MORMON" BLOGS

2004-04-21T11:31:00.000-06:00

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A good friend of mine emailed me the URL for Jordan Fowles' blog, a BYU grad who is attending law school at the University of Michigan. Jordan's blog also has a good list of other "Mormon Bloggers," so check it out.

Having the Appearance of Cussing, but Lacking the Power Thereof...

2004-04-21T11:08:00.000-06:00

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Here's an interesting article on pseudo cussing. BYU is, not surprisingly, mentioned:

With cable television liberally salting shows with the four-letter word that starts with F and government regulators effectively banning the same word from broadcast airwaves, a new middle ground has opened where euphemistic substitutes for the term flourish. In fact, popular culture in general is taking a shine to the cutesy, sound-alike cousins of the expletive, which are popping up on radio and television, in ads and offices, on playgrounds and at home.
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Even toddlers are picking up the lingo. "A woman told me her 2-year-old told her to 'Shut the frickin' door,'" said Timothy Jay, author of "Cursing in America."
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Euphemisms such as "flipping," he says, are viable alternatives that traditionally protect listeners from the offensive word and protect speakers from breaking a taboo.
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Among Mormon students at Brigham Young University campuses these days, "fetch" is one substitute for the curse word, but not as popular as "flippin', freakin' and freak," says Kay Ushijima, a BYU student preparing a senior thesis on the topic.

Mormons are supposed to avoid even "the very appearance of evil." So what's the alternative? Aren't there some non-profane, non-vulgar, non-obscene exclamations out there? What about quoting Robin's expletives from the old Batman TV series ("Holy diabolical plot, Batman!")?

I served as an LDS missionary in the Taiwan Taipei Mission, where a favorite exclamation was the Chinese phrase "Zao gao!" (literally, "messy cake"). It seemed innocuous enough.

On a final note, the website of the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lubbock, Texas seems to take the (messy) cake when it comes to avoiding cussing. They even find "Holy cow!" out-of-bounds:

Holiness is an attribute, a perfection of God in which we view God separated from all sin (morally and spiritually). A cow has no soul, it is a-moral and is without a I spirit. These kind of words have a way of making light of God's character. There also is nothing Holy about smoke. It too, is a euphemistic way of using a word with a wrong intent to make it seem acceptable, and with lightness (in vain).

(Cows don't have souls? Ah, never mind, that's a discussion for another day.)

FORMER LDS BISHOP CHARGED WITH CHILD MOLESTATION

2004-04-21T10:31:00.000-06:00

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The Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News the Provo Daily Herald and KSL are all reporting the arrest of 57-year old David James Gomez (pictured) based on 125 counts of sexual abuse for allegedly molesting boys while he was a Mormon bishop a decade ago.

This is a breaking story, so additional details will no doubt be forthcoming.

GENERAL CONFERENCE PROTESTERS

2004-04-18T16:08:00.000-06:00

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My family and I were on Temple Square during General Conference (the Saturday afternoon session). On my way to pick up my car I snapped a few pictures of the protestors. Their presence was, shall we say, underwhelming. And the hecklers had them outnumbered, anyway, as you can see here:

OJBECTIONS TO MORMON BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD (PART II)

2004-04-17T13:18:00.000-06:00

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Here's another thought about the baptism for the dead issue. In the news item I mentioned below we find the following (emphasis added):

"We are very hopeful that we will be able to convince the church to stop," Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said Friday. If not, Michel said, his group will consider other options, "possibly legal steps."

What "legal steps" does Mr. Michel have in mind? What cause of action could he cite? How has he (or any other Jew) been damaged?

I suppose they could sue for breach of contract (citing the agreement the Church signed in 1995). I still think it would be difficult to prove damages.

OJBECTIONS TO MORMON BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD

2004-04-16T13:35:00.000-06:00

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A recent news item I've found interesting is the objection from some quarters to the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead (also called "vicarious baptism" or "proxy baptism"):

Researchers say that Mormons have continued to posthumously baptize Jewish Holocaust victims into their faith despite a promise to discontinue the practice.
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in to be baptized in the names of the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for them to reach heaven.
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In 1995, the Mormon church acceded to demands by Jewish leaders that the denomination stop posthumously baptizing Jews. But Helen Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher, said on Friday that the process still hasn't ended.

This rite, apparently wholly unique to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a part of temple worship performed by observant Mormons.

Not everyone is getting worked up about this. Eugene Volokh and Erik Jaffe, both of The Volokh Conspiracy, don't see anything objectionable out it:

Volokh: If you're Mormon, then presumably you'd want your relatives baptized. If you're not Mormon, then presumably you would think that some Mormon in some temple somewhere going through some ritual while mentioning people's names would be spiritually pointless. It would have no effect on the people, on their afterlives (if you think they have afterlives), on God, or on anything else. So what's the problem?
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The Mormons aren't forcing anything on any living person. They're not exhuming anyone's body. They aren't insulting anyone, except insofar as they're suggesting that their religion is the right one, and that people ought to want to convert to it -- and if that itself qualifies as an insult, then it seems to me that people are too easily insulted.

Jaffe: I actually find it somewhat endearing that Mormons are concerned enough about my erstwhile soul to try and protect it in a non-intrusive manner after my death. Other religious groups are not so considerate and instead seek to intimidate the @#%$ out of you or otherwise confront and demean you while you are alive in a supposed effort to save your soul. I have my doubts about the true motives of the hell-and-brimstone types, but the Mormons seem perfectly genuine to me. At worst it is no-harm, no-foul; at best they do me a great service.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is similarly unimpressed:

I could not care less if the Mormons baptize me after I'm dead. It won't affect me. I'll always be a Jew – in this life and the next. If this is part of Mormon practice and belief, and they do it in the privacy of their own ritual, and it doesn't affect me in the slightest, why should I care? People's beliefs are their own business. It's how they treat others that is everyone's business. What I care about is how much the Mormons support Israel today, not what they do with Jewish souls in what they regard as the afterlife.

There's a discussion on this subject at Zion's Lighthouse Message Board that has more links.

More: My comments in the ZLMB discussion are under the online handle "Smac."

LATE TO THE PARTY

2004-04-16T13:09:00.000-06:00

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Well, it looks like I'm not the first Mormon lawyer (or, more specifically, "Mormon soon-to-be lawyer") to get a blog (no surprise there, I guess). Nate Oman, who is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the Harvard Law School, has started Tutissma Cassis. His previous blog A Good Oman is still available.

Nate also has The Kolob Network, a website intended as "a place where scholars and students of Mormon studies can exchange current research." Both sites sound interesting.

Inaugural Post

2004-04-16T12:38:00.000-06:00

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Welcome to the BYU Law Blog! This will (hopefully) blossom into a useful resource for past and present BYU law students, faculty members, friends, etc.

My name is Spencer Macdonald. I am a 2004 graduate of J. Reuben Clark Law School. I work at a small firm in Provo, Utah and work primarily in business litigation. On the home front, I am married and have 3 1/2 children.

This is my first attempt at a blog, so bear with me a bit. The content will be a mix of what I personally find interesting and important: current events, religion, politics, the occasional movie review.

I've been reading blogs for a couple of years now. My favorites include Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, Eugene Volokh and his co-conspirators at The Volokh Conspiracy, James Lileks' The Bleat, Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, Walter Olson's Overlawyered and Stefan Sharkansky's Oh, That Liberal Media.