Volokh is a moral midget

In the City of Hudson in the 19th Century, a young woman was hanged from a tree in front of the jail, before a large crowd, for committing a murder. (Today, the jail is home to the local newspaper, appropriately enough.)

But the day after her hanging, the young woman's boyfriend confessed to the crime. She was innocent.

Innocent.

Now, imagine if she had not just been hanged, but tortured first.

And now, imagine if a 21st Century Constitutional scholar were to propose that the U.S. should copy Iran's practice of torturing criminals before executing them.

That's grotesque and un-American, the Union would say. But that's just what supposed Constitutional scholar and moral midget Eugene Volokh is now proposing.

Volokh is an idiot, a coward, un-American, and no scholar if he fails to grasp this point -- or is unable to master his "emotions."

The Union's hunch is that this is a conservative trial balloon, and part of a general effort to normalize the crimes authorized by Gonzalez and Bush. Either way, it's sick and wrong.

It's funny because it's true

The ever-caustic Steve Gilliard takes the ever-earnest JMM to task for letting his more centrist buddies write his weblog in his absence:

While Josh Marshall is off getting married, to a woman no less (I thought only gays got married these days), he's let his loser friends take over his site for the week. [...] You know, I love my friends, but I wouldn't leave them in my house with a couple of cases of beer to wait for the delivery of a grandfather clock.

The full post is more expletive-strewn; click HERE to read it.

Wolcott's Firing Line

Good news for anyone who can read: Wicked cultural critic, über-prose stylist, and Vanity Fair columnist James (Jim) Wolcott is now blogging. Get yourself in the line of fire here.

Speaking of great critics, Louis Menand's recent New Yorker piece on why people vote contained some statistics that could leave even the most jaded observers agape and aghast:

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Save it for later

A gentle Memo to Josh Marshall.

Every writer has his or her peculiar tics, some more endearing than others. And the 'Union' likes Josh Marshall's tics far better than most. There is, however, one small Talking Points refrain we could do without.

Namely, the More On This Later one.

For example, from the current front page:

And if a special counsel is appointed ... well, you see where this is going. More on this later. (February 19, 2004 -- 11:38 PM EDT)

Once in a while -- okay. But brief search on this exact phrase at TPM turned up at least 33 pages, sometimes with more than one instance in a single article.

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