Audible Althouse #67.

Hey, it's a new podcast! It's about: Political blogging, law blogging, and blogging as an art project. Artwork that's either an idea, a mass of decaying flesh, or a good fact pattern for a Civil Procedure exam. Rebel artists and how I squandered my undergraduate education.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the transgressive rebel artists are subscribing on iTunes:

If you're looking for something to read about the return of the Supreme Court...

You'd be hard pressed to find the conventional wisdom summed up more conventionally and more summarily than in this little Time piece.

Maybe once, somewhere, there was a more beautiful place to study.

The Union Terrace, October 1, 2006.









When will Althouse stop with the outrageously blatant University of Wisconsin propaganda?!!!

A mural in Ashland.

Here are some shots from a mural painted on the brick side wall of a movie theater in Ashland, Wisconsin, on the short of Lake Superior. The veterans depicted by the artists Kelly Meredith and Sue Martinsen were all local residents.





I liked the way the mural looked reflected in the windows of the library across the street.

"The Power Within: A Passion for Life."

Why is Bill Clinton appearing at this weird event? Ticket prices are $195 to $995.

One Full Day of Inspiration, Motivation and Entertainment that will ignite your Spirit! For the first time ever under one roof see six of the most prolific communicators of our time. Live and In Person! You will learn from real-world experts who are the best-of-the-best, in an incredibly entertaining environment that empowers you to take action immediately to transform your life forever.

"Prolific communicators"? LOL. Clinton is famous for talking too much, isn't he?

"Ignite your spirit"? The second thing I thought of was that this is sort of the Oprah show for men. (The first thing I thought of was... oddly enough... a cigar!)

ADDED: "One Full Day of Inspiration, Motivation and Entertainment that will ignite your Spirit." First of all, it's going to take me one full day just to get ignited by anyone, but I am especially appalled by the prospect of spending a day listening to famous men -- why are they all men? -- talk, talk, talking as a way of igniting me. Especially if I had to pay hundreds of dollars for the horrendous talkathon. Especially if they were promising to blow Inspiration, Motivation and Entertainment at me the whole time. It's like a big religious revival without the religion, unless it's a religion of worshipping big men. One full day... give me one empty day.

MORE: On further reflection, igniting my capital-S Spirit makes perfect sense if you picture this.

"What the closet does to people - the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds - is brutal."

Andrew Sullivan on Mark Foley:

[T]he news about Mark Foley has a kind of grim inevitability to it. I don't know Foley, although, like any other gay man in D.C., I was told he was gay, closeted, afraid and therefore also screwed up. What the closet does to people - the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds - is brutal. There are many still-closeted gay men in D.C., many of them working for a Republican party that has sadly deeply hostile to gay dignity. How they live with themselves I do not fully understand. But I have learned you cannot judge someone's soul from outside. That I leave to them and their God, and some I count as good friends and good people.

I know this is a religious scruple -- "Judge not, that you be not judged" -- but I hear very harsh judgment in what Sullivan writes about those who choose to keep their sexual orientation private. Sullivan's prose is flowery, but it's not much different from the familiar -- and comical -- way some folks spout criticisms and then tag on the phrase "I'm not judging." And "I leave to them and their God" -- how far is that from saying "Go to hell"?

What I do know is that the closet corrupts. The lies it requires and the compartmentalization it demands can lead people to places they never truly wanted to go, and for which they have to take ultimate responsibility. From what I've read, Foley is another example of this destructive and self-destructive pattern for which the only cure is courage and honesty. While gays were fighting for thir basic equality, Foley voted for the "Defense of Marriage Act". If his resignation means the end of the closet for him, and if there is no more to this than we now know, then it may even be for the good. Better to find integrity and lose a Congressional seat than never live with integrity at all.

But I'm not judging! That's God's job.

Sullivan's hypothesis is: Keeping information about your sexual orientation private will corrupt you. His proof -- can you challenge it? -- is that he knows so many people and has seen so much. He's making a strong political argument: If you are gay, you must be open about it, and once you are open about it, you will be forced to support gay marriage. To make this argument, he's willing to imply that Foley's behavior toward a young subordinate is a manifestation of homosexuality. But many heterosexuals also pursue young subordinates. They are fully open about their sexual orientation, but somehow they do bad things too.

"So we might increase the workweek by 50 percent, say, to three days."

So said Arlen Specter to the National Press Club last Monday. He speech was on C-Span yesterday, and -- I'm such a nerd -- I listened to it -- in its entirety -- on the satellite radio as I was making my way home in the dark toward the end of that ridiculously long drive. Specter spoke for 18 minutes -- he was scheduled to go 20 -- and "yielded back" the rest of his time. Then, there was a great question and answer session. The quote above came after he was asked what Senate rules he would change. At the end, he was asked what he learned from cancer. He said he learned that you can still do almost everything you did before, and he kept playing squash and working long, hard hours. You should just keep working and work really hard and then you won't have time to think about it. That's exactly not what you expect from a question like that. You expect a statement about how family is really the most important thing and how every moment is precious and you need to stop and smell the roses. There's that classic line "No one ever said on his deathbed, I wish I'd spent more time at the office." But the people repeating that cliché are never themselves on their deathbed. They're fully functional and trying, perhaps, to justify a two day workweek.

CORRECTION: Arithmetic corrected. Specter is claiming the senators work two days a week, not one and a half.