Al Gore jokes, then quips about the Supreme Court.

On "The Tonight Show":

Former Vice President Al Gore took a swipe at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday, referencing the conservative jurist's recent skepticism in a global warming case and role in the 2000 presidential election.

"In the arguments, Justice Scalia said, 'I'm not a scientist, I don't want to deal with global warming.' I just wish he felt that way about presidential elections," Gore joked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Responding to the audience's cheer, he quipped: "I think 51 percent of the audience clapped for it."

The quip is sort of funny (though a good joke actually makes people laugh, not "cheer" or clap), but the joke is strained. (It doesn't fit together. Getting involved in the presidential election isn't something that you do because you think you have scientific expertise. But, in any case, Scalia's position in Bush v. Gore worked to extract judges from the election, as it pushed back the Florida Supreme Court, which thought it had the expertise to run things.)

"I used to be bi-curious, but now I've just gone all the way to becoming 'bi.'"

Says Glenn Reynolds. I approve! (And despite my long experience, I have no idea what to do about that problem. It never works that way for me.)

Hanging in there... for -- what is it? -- 30 years?

I believe I have discovered the last surviving "Hang in There, Baby!" poster.



Do you remember these things? They used to be all over the place in the 1970s. This one, you can tell by the faded colors, has been hanging in there all these years. I sort of remember what this poster meant when it was so popular, but it has by now acquired many layers of meaning. I can't tell whether it's richly ironic or sadly pathetic or whether it got back to being sweet again or whether it's gone on to being annoying the way it was in the 70s. Is it still up for no other reason than that it hasn't been taken down? It is behind a file cabinet (on what has long been an unused door between two offices). Or is the professor in the office trying to tell us something? And, if he is, what are the chances that it's "Hang in There, Baby!"?

Googling around, I found this old Ask Metafilter thread asking where to get the old poster, and that notes that "RetroCrush celebrates it." Do click on the RetroCrush link. You'll enjoy it. For one reason or another. I'm pretty sure.

(But it makes me think that the poster I've photographed here is an imposter. A second-rate follow on kitty cat, something like Jane Mansfield to Marilyn Monroe!)

People seem to be enjoying the new complexity to this Kramer character.

Sales soar on the new "Seinfeld" DVD. Still, no one could think it was a deliberate publicity stunt. No. No. Life's not that weird.

Survey.

Please take this survey about blogs. I did, and it's a research project that I think is worthy.

Who can sue to force the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases?

Here's the Linda Greenhouse account of yesterday's oral argument in the global warming case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency:

“You have to show the harm is imminent,” Justice Scalia instructed [General James R. Milkey, representing the various states, cities and environmental groups who sued], asking, “I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

Mr. Milkey replied, “It’s not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm,” arguing that Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states faced losing “sovereign territory” to rising sea levels. “So the harm is already occurring,” he said. “It is ongoing, and it will happen well into the future.”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito both suggested that because motor vehicles account for only about 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, even aggressive federal regulation would not be great enough to make a difference, another requirement of the standing doctrine.

When Mr. Milkey replied that over time, “even small reductions can be significant,” Chief Justice Roberts responded: “That assumes everything else is going to remain constant, though, right? It assumes there isn’t going to be a greater contribution of greenhouse gases from economic development in China and other places that’s going to displace whatever marginal benefit you get here.” At another point, the chief justice said the plaintiffs’ evidence “strikes me as sort of spitting out conjecture on conjecture.”

In other words, even if you think the injury is enough for standing, there are problems on the "causation" and "redressability" prongs on the standing doctrine. Don't be distracted by Scalia's wondering about the "cataclysm." You can assume for the sake of argument that the plaintiffs face injury and still find no standing, for the sole reason that the relief they are seeking isn't likely enough to change the situation. But, looking at the transcript, I see they did focus more strongly on the injury question. Back to Greenhouse:

On the other side, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter appeared strongly inclined to find that the plaintiffs had met the standing test.

They generally do apply standing doctrine less strictly... which means that Justice Kennedy is the swing voter.

[Kennedy's] relatively few comments were ambiguous. Early in the argument he challenged the assertion by Mr. Milkey, the states’ lawyer, that the case “turns on ordinary principles of statutory interpretation and administrative law” and that there was no need for the court “to pass judgment on the science of climate change.”

That was “reassuring,” Justice Kennedy said. But, he added, “Don’t we have to do that in order to decide the standing argument, because there’s no injury if there’s not global warming?”

"We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

Said President Bush today, responding to what he called "a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq."

Yeah, don't go believing those reports about a graceful exit. Cue the lampoonery.

The economic analysis of cosmetic medicine.

Here's a big article about how all sorts of doctors are moving into cosmetic medicine -- where the patient forks out the money up front -- and how the plastic surgeons, facial surgeons and dermatologists are miffed about them horning in on their lucrative specialty. Everybody wants to be the one who gets to spend her life giving a zillion little injections into tiny wrinkles.

Bob Dylan meets Ricky Gervais.

And Bob's the interviewer. Perfect.

"Webb... has become a pompous poseur and an abuser of the English language before actually becoming a senator."

Says George Will, who, deploying a triple-D alliteration to express his dismay, opines that "Washington has a way of quickly acculturating people, especially those who are most susceptible to derangement by the derivative dignity of office." He points to the wild, wacky Webb's encounter with the brusque, bullying Bush, who triggered Webb's ire by asking "How's your boy?"

In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.

Webb, Will whispers, said that the rich are "literally living in a different country." The loathsome "literally" lapse!

I haven't read Webb's books, so I'm in no position to say whether they are written in such excellent style, and I don't know whether the language Webb wields in his new senatorial guise is all that different from his novelist's approach. But I suspect that what we're seeing is not a man who has instantly succumbed to Washington's ways but a man with a novelist's mentality in a new setting. One way to explain his awkward behavior with respect to the presidential receiving line is that he thought through that scene like a novelist. If you were writing a novel about a character like him going through a receiving line with a President like Bush, wouldn't that be exactly the sort of scene you'd want to think up?

Ordinarily, in all sorts of social and political situations, people try to figure out how other people usually act and to stick to the convention and proceed smoothly along. This is nice enough, but rather boring. In a novel, a conventional social situation tends to be a set up for our hero to do something that shakes things up. The ordinary characters are aghast. They condemn the bad behavior of the protaganist, and we readers, in our armchairs, know how right he is. Of course, a novelist who concocts scenes like that is himself utterly conventional.

I don't think Webb has quickly picked up the Washington style. I think he's got the novelist's style, and he's his own hero Senator in a novel about Washington. And, what immense fun this is going to be! It looks like a great read:

Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

I can't put it down.

"Only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations."

"More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

It hurts the blind and violates the Rehabilitation Act, a federal judge says.

This is an interesting manifestation of the notion that what other countries do says something about what American law means. (Discussed back here.)

It's an uphill slog.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, as the semester winds to a close:



It looks a little grim and foreboding from here:



But it is kind of nicely warm here today. Did you notice the young woman in that first photo with bare legs and flipflops?

The Bush-Webb encounter.

I wonder who reported this as verbatim dialogue (via Memeorandum):

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

And then there's the part where Webb supposedly could barely control his impulse to punch Bush in the face. Sources say.

ADDED: There's a lot of talk in the comments. I just want to say that I don't believe that Bush responded to Webb quite like that. I don't believe Webb was quite like that either. He sounds mental. I want to know who told the anecdote, because the whole thing is phrased strangely. It compliments neither man.

"It's good to be on top."

The ad agency celebrates itself with an ad that everyone will see and talk about. You got a problem with that?

In a stab at paying tribute to all the winners of the coveted Lion awards at the 2006 Cannes International Advertising Festival -- considered the most prestigious of many annual advertising competitions -- Draft FCB placed a display ad in the November issue of Creativity magazine that is an astoundingly large and graphic image of two real lions in the act of having sex surrounded by a huge amount of white space....

At best the Draft FCB tribute ad -- with its overt visual and verbal sexual bent -- represents an inexplicable lapse in good taste. At worst, it's a downright vulgar and hugely inappropriate means of applauding winners of awards intended to honor the world's most creative advertising....

A Draft FCB spokesman admitted the ad was "a terrible mistake," and further claimed the work was "submitted without proper approval."

Isn't that what you always say about your viral ads?

Are you buying the Borat broke up Pam's marriage story?

I'm not. Too PR-y.

News flash: Sad people look sad.

Experts explain.

Catchphrases, caught and uncaught.

100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catchphrases -- via Throwing Things -- currently arranged in alphabetical order.... Well, so, have your fun: Put them in the right order. I'll just pick a few I like:

Here's Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
How sweet it is! (Jackie Gleason, The Jackie Gleason Show)
I want my MTV! (MTV)
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. (Vicks Formula 44)
Jane, you ignorant slut. (Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night
Live)
The tribe has spoken. (Jeff Probst, Survivor)
Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
You rang? (Lurch, The Addams Family)

Hey, wait a minute! Just a darn minute. Where is "Dobie Gillis"? "You rang" gets a Lurch credit?

"So how about that Kramer?"

"The way he just says stuff."

(Via Throwing Things via Hypertext.)

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

So said Alcee Hastings, responding to the news that he will not chair the House Intelligence Committee.

Do you have "every right" to create a new word and "deploy" it as you see fit?

Neologisms are fine, says Stephen Bainbridge. I agree. I played the neologist -- -ist! -- early on in this post -- twice! -- when I said "intrablogospherical squabblage." Bainbridge reminds us that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony." The problem is not the creation of a new word per se, it's what you do with with that word and what effect you have on other people.

MORE: Classical Values continues the allusions to Alice: "The Red Queen shook her head, `You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'"

Why does Andrew Sullivan keep talking about me without linking to me?

See the update on this post. It's getting ridiculous. I consider it a gross breach of blogging ethics.

UPDATE: And he doesn't tip.

"Christianist."

With all this talk of the word "Christianist," I thought I'd do a Lexis/Nexis search to see how often it appears. In the Law Reviews & Journals database, "Christianist" (or "Christianists") is used only once, in an article by Robert J. Morris called "Intersections: Sexuality, Cultural Tradition, and the Law: Configuring the Bo(u)nds of Marriage: The Implications of Hawaiian Culture & Values for the Debate About Homogamy," 8 Yale J.L. & Human. 105 (1996)("Homogamy"? That's new to me.)

Despite the common law's formal deference to local custom, Anglo-Saxons in Hawai"i in the early 1800's hardly viewed Hawaiian custom as legitimate. Many of the foreigners who came to Hawai"i in the early 1800's called it (and its language) childish, simplistic, deficient, defective, heathen, pagan, native, and feudal. In doing so, they defined themselves in opposition to the Other and simultaneously changed the Other. They necessarily viewed Hawai"i as the despotic, barbaric Other; and a good part of this Otherness was the Hawaiians' sexuality.

Calvinist missionaries dealt with a culture that had aikane by calling christianist and capitalist culture "manly," Hawaiian society "feudal," and feudalism "effeminate." Any language other than the King's English was "emasculated."The discussion was in sexual terms, and the patriarchy-driven mission off-handedly acknowledged that "no nation on earth perhaps allows females a higher proportionate rank [than Hawai"i]." For Hawai"i, this was the "dawn of tyranny" under the new foreignization.

In the Major Newspapers file, there are only 25, with only one before 1990. It's in a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star, published on April 27, 1988:

Tom Harpur's column, New scientific views upsetting for atheists (April 17), may be amusing pap for the Sunday readers, particularly the smug christianists, but it is not an accurate or insightful depiction of the new physics....

PIERRE SAVOIE

Toronto

(Blame Canada!)

The usage is noted in a William Safire "On Language" column on May 15, 2005:

Two weeks after writing about the fervor of the late Terri Schiavo's ''Christianist 'supporters,''' Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker last month described Representative Tom Delay as a ''hard-right Christianist crusader.'' A few months before, soon after President Bush was re-elected, the conservative Weekly Standard reported that an Ohio cartoonist had sent out a communication deploring ''militant Christianist Republicans.''

Obviously there is a difference in meaning between the adjectives Christian and Christianist. Thanks to Jon Goldman, an editor at Webster's New World Dictionaries, I have the modern coinage of the latter with its pejorative connotation. ''I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right,'' wrote the blogging Andrew Sullivan on June 1, 2003, ''who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam.''

Not such a new term. You have to be careful about claiming coinage, as I learned to my rue (my 1970's baby, workfare, turned out to have been coined earlier; same with neuroethics). In 1883, W.H. Wynn wrote a homily that said ''Christianism -- if I may invent that term -- is but making a sun-picture of the love of God.'' He didn't invent the term, either. In the early 1800's, the painter Henry Fuseli wrote scornfully that ''Christianism was inimical to the progress of arts.'' And John Milton used it in 1649.

Adding ist or ism to a word usually colors it negatively, as can be seen in secularist....

As Christianist, with its evocation of Islamist, gains wider usage as an attack word on what used to be called the religious right, another suffix is being used in counterattack to derogate those who denounce church influence in politics. ''The Catholic scholar George Weigel calls this phenomenon 'Christophobia,''' the columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post. She noted that he borrowed the word from the American legal scholar, J.H.H. Weiler. The word was used by Weigel ''after being struck by the European Union's fierce resistance to any mention of the continent's Christian origins in the draft versions of the new, and still unratified, European constitution.''

Just some info.

ADDED: In the comments, amba asks for a definition of "aikne," which is not susceptible to Googling. Actually, it's printed in the article as "aikne." I'm not sure how that is meant to appear. I think it's aikane with a line over the middle "a." I've corrected that in the original text. Anyway, according to the article it refers to partners in a same-sex relationship:

Exact translation is not an easy task. Some concepts of the Hawaiian language were buried with the advent of Christianity and capitalism in Hawai"i. Aikane was among these. Aikane marks persons of any gender in a homogamous relationship. Despite Christianity, this meaning persists well into the twentieth century among those who know Hawaiian....

The traditional meaning of aikane as a same-sex lover is crucial. From the first day of Captain Cook's arrival in Hawai"i through the formative years of the American and other foreign presence in Hawai"i, the aikane of the chiefs (ali"i) of each island facilitated the foreigners' livelihoods, their use of land, their very existence.

Global Post Barometer.

It's the Global Post Barometer, and right now it's showing the U.S. trending negative, and the Islamists trending positive.

ADDED: Cue to Glenn Greenwald: I used the word "Islamists." Spin out your crazy fantasies about what dastardly things are implied by my copying of the word from the Washington Post's chart.

My brain as a hypodermic needle. Your brain as an international airport.

A new book:

[W]omen talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.

Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests....

In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men.

And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high....

But what the male brain may lack in converstation and emotion, they more than make up with in their ability to think about sex.

Dr Brizendine says the brain's "sex processor" - the areas responsible for sexual thoughts - is twice as big as in men than in women, perhaps explaining why men are stereotyped as having sex on the mind.

Or, to put it another way, men have an international airport for dealing with thoughts about sex, "where women have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes".

I love when a book explains supposedly scientific information in language that approximates that Prince song "International Lover."

ADDED: Mark Liberman notes that the book is actually called "The Female Brain" and indicates that the book is more substantial than the linked Daily Mail piece makes it look.

Are tall people better because they are tall...

... or tall because they are better? Let me rephrase that: Is the relative success of taller people the result of the favoritism they receive from people who admire tallness, or is it that the good nutrition that produced tallness also produced smartness?

"Americans know who he is, and have pretty much decided they don't like him."

John Kerry finishes last in a likability poll. Possibly a botched poll.

(Via Memeorandum.)

"Pay is a complicated thing."

Linda Greenhouse elegantly explains a difficult Supreme Court case about the lingering effects of long-ago job discrimination:

Is each new paycheck, reflecting a salary lower than it would have been without the initial discrimination, a recurring violation that sets the [statute of limitations] clock running again? Or does the passage of time, without fresh acts of intentional discrimination, render the initial injury a nonevent in the eyes of the law?...

[T]he E.E.O.C. ... has long applied what is known as the “paycheck accrual rule,” under which each pay period of uncorrected discrimination is seen as a fresh incident of discrimination. So although the 180-day limit applies to discrete actions like a discriminatory refusal to hire or failure to promote, it does not, in the view of the federal agency charged with administering the statute, prevent lawsuits for the continuing effects of past discrimination in pay.

But the Bush administration has disavowed the commission’s position....

When Justice Antonin Scalia asked, “Why should we listen to the solicitor general rather than the E.E.O.C.?”...

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer appeared most sympathetic to Mr. Russell’s argument. Justice Breyer commented at one point that “there will be probably a significant number of circumstances where a woman is being paid less, and all she does is for the last six months get her paychecks and she doesn’t really know it because pay is a complicated thing.” It could take “even a year for her to find out,” he said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared the most skeptical, several times raising the question of how employers could shoulder the burden of defending long-ago pay decisions.

“It could be 40 years, right?” Chief Justice Roberts asked Mr. Russell, adding, “I mean, if it happened once 20 years ago, you have a case that you can bring” under the plaintiff’s analysis.

The case is Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Inc.

150 things to love about Madison.

A nice list. Let me highlight a few things:

UW-Madison students. A continuously cycled transfusion of new blood for the city. Plus, move-in day is good entertainment; move-out day means good junk-picking....

Ice skating on Tenney Park lagoon....

Williamson Street. If it's not the hippie enclave it was in the past, it's still a thriving alternative to chains and the mass-produced, while providing goods and services to the near east side. It's also home to the Willy Street Co-op and the... Willy Street Fair and Parade... and its star attraction the Bubble Car. Not to mention the graffiti wall at Mother Fool's coffeehouse....

The Pro Arte Quartet + Mendelssohn. A match made in heaven....

UW Cinematheque. Vintage, experimental and foreign films at this mecca for movie buffs....

Smart Studios. Nirvana's Nevermind was recorded here. What more do you need to know?

The Innocence Project. The Justice system sometimes screws up, putting innocent people in prison, then mightily resists admitting that it made a mistake. Thankfully, this UW Law School team has helped gather the incontrovertible evidence needed to overturn several wrongful convictions....

UW pianist Christopher Taylor interpreting Olivier Messiaen....

Night swimming. Why does it seem like everyone we know has a story about being spotlighted by cops in the middle of the night at B.B. Clarke Beach in various states of undress?

Lots more. Go to the link.

The end of "Air America" in Madison.

I'd say: if they can't make it here, they can't make it anywhere.

Mike Malloy reading long passages from Orwell's "1984" was not mentioned by anyone as something they'll miss should Air America programming be dropped from WXXM/FM 92.1 "The Mic."

The station is set to switch to sports programming on Jan. 1. We asked readers what they will miss about The Mic if the switch is a done deal, and quite a few responded. Some responses were edited for space and clarity:

• Karl Marx observed, accurately, I believe, that in every age the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling classes. It follows that any other ideas will be dismissed by, for example, the owners of the broadcast media as "unpopular," whether or not they are shared by two persons or by 200 million.

For all its flaws, a progressive radio format such as the one that WXXM/FM will abandon on New Year's Day demonstrates the powerfully subversive fact that ideas about getting out of Iraq now, creating a single-payer health care system, adopting instant runoff voting, etc., are not at all unpopular. I will miss Madison's part in creating that progressive national sensibility and that the soon-to-be absent voices do it so entertainingly. (Alan Bickley, Madison)....

So... sort of like... it's unpopular because it's popular? Or is it the other way around? Maybe if I read more Marx (and less Orwell) that would make more sense to me.

Moving on:

• With the loss of 92.1, the progressive voice in Madison will again be silenced (well, except for WHA, WERN, WORT, WTDY, the Progressive, Isthmus, the editorial page of The Capital Times and most of the editorial page of the Wisconsin State Journal, but you know what I mean).

I listen because nowhere else can you find such raw, spittle-flecked emotionalism combined with such robust disinterest in facts. (Dale Aldridge, Madison)

Okay. I'm going to stop while I'm amused. More opinion from the locals at the link.

"A 'quintessential Madison case' of animal rights vs. the university."

A local contracts case with a nice free speech dimension:

Dane County judge said Monday that the law is on the side of animal-rights activists who want to buy buildings next to the UW-Madison's primate labs and open a museum highlighting the cruelty they say happens at the labs.

Budget Bicycle owner Roger Charly, who owns the property, cannot back out of an agreement he made to sell it to Dr. Richard McLellan, a retired California physician who is bankrolling the $675,000 purchase for the National Primate Research Center Exhibition Hall, Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien ruled.

The buildings are directly between the Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, a location coveted by animal-rights activists for its proximity to the labs.

In July 2005, Charly tried to back out of an agreement he made with McLellan and animal- rights activist Rick Bogle about eight months earlier and instead sell the property to UW-Madison for $1 million. Charly previously turned down offers from UW-Madison as inadequate.

Charly argued -- unsuccessfully -- that it was not a contract because there was no consideration.

...O'Brien pointed out, the university has condemnation powers and could seek to take the property for the public good. Bogle said he is worried about that possibility.

"If they do that now, it will be clear that they are trying to stifle debate," Bogle said.

But primate center director Joe Kemnitz said he is concerned about the effect the museum would have on his staff.

"If, in fact, they were able to do what they plan to do, to open the museum to attract other activists, that could be disruptive to our operation," Kemnitz said. "It would have a negative impact on the well-being of our staff."

Don't you think it would violate Bogle's free speech rights to use eminent domain to take the property now? (There's no sign that the university plans to do this, it should be noted.)

Why not engage with me instead of trying to make me into your enemy?

Despite yesterday's forbearance, I feel I have to respond to this post of Andrew Sullivan's. I didn't say I'd resist forever. I just said I was sensitive about too much in a row of the intrablogospherical squabblage. But now that I've hit a couple other subjects and have a bit of time this morning to stir up a reasonably bloggy mix, I'm going to respond.

Here's his post, in its entirety, under the heading "Quote for the Day":

"What seems to be guiding Althouse and Reynolds' hatred of the term "Christianist" is that it highlights a fact which they both are eager to ignore - namely, that the political party to which they are so devoted is dominated by individuals who believe that their religious/Christian beliefs ought to dictate the American political process, shape secular law, and exploit coercive state power to constrain the choices of their fellow citizens," - Glenn Greenwald, responding to increasingly hysterical attacks on yours truly by some Republican bloggers.

Is this decent, Andrew? Greenwald, an extremely partisan blogger, known for swinging wildly, produced a post that was obviously designed to vilify me. Did you bother to check whether any of his assertions are fair or true, or do you think it's acceptable to just reprint something and let it work its damage because you're irked at me for raising some questions about your hostility to religious people? I see that you seem to be trying to make amends to the religious people you offended by printing some long emails from Mormons, so I have the feeling that my criticism had some effect. So why just reprint a hostile quote?

First, I'm not only not "so devoted to" the Republican Party, I'm not a Republican at all. The main reason I'm not a Republican is that I object to the social conservatism aspect of the party. I'm not a Democrat either, because of the Democratic Party's weakness on national security. I'm on record, time and again on this blog, as disliking both parties. In short, the entire premise of Greenwald's quote -- my supposed party affiliation -- is a lie.

Second, I don't have a "hatred" of your word "Christianist." As I said in the very post of mine that criticized you and that linked to Greenwald's abusive material:

I don't object to the word "Christianists" if it is used fairly to refer to something that is the equivalent of "Islamists." I use the word "religionists" myself. See here, here, here, and here. Words like this mean something and have a place. The key is to use them in the right place. I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here.

Instead of letting Greenwald be your mouthpiece, why not engage with the issue I raised about your use of the word? I share your opposition about the social conservative political agenda, and I'm a strong supporter of the separation of church and state. Why not engage with me instead of trying to make me into your enemy? I have supported gay marriage in numerous posts on this blog for almost three years, and I am a law professor who teaches a course in Religion and the Constitution. Why don't you see me as a valuable ally or, at the least, a person to avoid reprinting lies about?

UPDATE: Sullivan responds to this post without linking to it. Great. I guess you want to make it hard for your readers to see what I actually said. He prefers to link to the Instapundit post that links to this. What's that all about? How many times is he going to print my name over there and talk about me without linking to me? It's really unfair! It flaunts unfairness! Here's what he writes -- note how it just merges me with Glenn Reynolds, knocks me, then proceeds to talk about things Reynolds wrote. Here's the part that is about me:

Today, the Althouse-Reynolds Axis begs for me to engage them on the issues, rather than making them my "enemy." I'm befuddled. I linked to a quote by Glenn Greenwald, which was very long and included many links to Althouse and Reynolds and others over the question of whether "Christianist" is an appropriate term to use to describe the fusion of political ideology and religious faith. Greenwald shows that Reynolds and Althouse simply refuse to allow me to deploy a word in a manner that makes sense to me. Althouse writes:

I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here.

Indeed there are. That's why I call "ordinary religious people" Christians and call those who are "trying to bully their way around the political world" Christianists. Is that so hard for her to understand? I've stated it quite clearly from the beginning, but she refuses to take me at my word.

And you, Andrew Sullivan, refuse to engage with the serious argument I am making here. If you linked to the posts you talk about and cut way down, your readers would have a fair chance to see what I am saying. I have obviously agreed with your basic definition but called you on your overuse of it and the air of hostility toward religious people you're giving off. Why don't you deal with my argument fairly, including links to me, and why don't you treat me as an individual instead of lamely and inaccurately merging me with Glenn Reynolds? Glenn and I have taken different positions on this, and I'm the main blogger writing about the subject, so why are you linking to him linking to me? I would suggest it's sexism -- it certainly gives off a whiff of sexism -- but I think the real reason is that Reynolds's position is easier for you to oppose by trotting out your usual points.