The Earth Day march.

I heard the drumbeat of a student protest march, so I grabbed my camera and stood on my office sofa to catch these shots of an Earth Day march:





Note the position of the first bicycle, which appears in both photos, to gauge the size of the march.

The chant was: "Hey hey, ho ho, burning coal has got to go."

The sniffing dog.

I spent the early afternoon in the faculty library, participating in a workshop on a paper on democratic theory, written by one of my colleagues. Midway through the workshop, we were politely interrupted by security people who told us they needed to bring through the sniffing dog. We kept our discussion going while the big, leashed German shepherd loudly huffed around the periphery of the room.

What's the security occasion? Russ Feingold is giving a lecture today at 4. I'll attend and take notes (and maybe photos) and will probably come up with something bloggable.

Not incredibly outrageous.

Justices O'Connor, Scalia, and Breyer took part in another one of those discussions about whether it's okay -- or "incredibly outrageous" -- for judges to refer to foreign law. We've already heard plenty from Scalia and Breyer on the subject, so the article (in the NYT) focuses on O'Connor:

''This is much ado about nothing,'' she said in response to a question by moderator Tim Russert of NBC. ''Our Constitution is one that evolves. What's the best way to know? State legislatures -- but it doesn't hurt to know what other countries are doing."

O'Connor also said she reads 1,500 pages a day. Mostly lawyers' briefs, I presume. The life of a judge! Do you envy it?

Blogs buzzing about religion and Microsoft.

The NYT seems to be going out of its way to frame and feature stories about how the agents of religion are controlling things behind the scenes. This front page story, about how Microsoft withdrew its support for a state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, introduces a rumor this way:

Blogs and online chat rooms were buzzing on Thursday with accusations that the company, which has offered benefits to same-sex partners for years, had given in to the Christian right....

Microsoft officials denied any connection between their decision not to endorse the bill and the church's opposition, although they acknowledged meeting twice with the church minister, Ken Hutcherson.

Dr. Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies opposing same-sex marriage here and in Washington, D.C., said he threatened in those meetings to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.

After that, "they backed off," the pastor said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about," he said.

It's no surprise that Hutcherson would be eager to provide a useful quote. Presumably, he likes to see himself as a power wielder. Microsoft itself has been long been a leader in recognizing gay rights on its own -- as the article notes -- and already offers more than the state law would require.

By the way, the paper copy is worded differently: "Blogs and online chat rooms were aflame on Thursday with accusations that the company, which has offered benefits to same-sex partners for years, had caved to the Christian right." Was some decision made to tone it down? Maybe "aflame" seemed to contain a slur against gays, but that doesn't explain replacing the strong verb "caved" with the weak "given in."

MyPyramid, MyTaxMoney.

Gerry Daly links to a post from yesterday, notes Stephen Bainbridge's Patrick Swayze imitation, and issues a challenge to the blogosphere.

A Polish birthday celebration.

Nina writes that in Poland, when she was growing up, it was the person with the birthday who provided the food to others, who apparently were doing their part just by dropping by with good wishes. So we were happy to play along with that tradition. She set the table with her best hand-painted Russian plates:



Mmmm... the layers there are, from top to bottom: caviar, sour cream, smoked salmon, potato:



This borscht is homemade, as is that puff pastry:



And there's a whole story to why there's already a slice out of that cake -- a story of drunkenness and karaoke:



Nina's got her own account of the party, from which I'm going to snag this picture of me trying to get another photograph:

"This Court is, in fact, a Goldwater and a Reagan Republican Court."

Lawprof Marci Hamilton has a new essay up at Findlaw.com: "Senator Frist and Representative DeLay's Claims of Supreme Court Judicial Activism and Anti-Religion Bias: Why They Aren't Persuasive":

Even if politics must define the Supreme Court -- and the truth is, law defines it far more -- then today's name-calling by both the far left and the far right misses the mark. This Court is, in fact, a Goldwater and a Reagan Republican Court.

The Goldwater Republicans, embodied by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, believed in individual rights, separation of church and state, and federalism. No wonder, then, that they believe that no single religious viewpoint should determine whether a woman could obtain an abortion.

Meanwhile, the Reagan Republicans were united under a single banner of smaller government (which translates into states' rights, or federalism).

These positions have been all but abandoned by the current Administration, but they were and are, above all, moderate ones. ... [F]ederalism is not a partisan stance, but a constitutional basic. And the principle of separation of church and state, too, is no more partisan -- and no less part of our Constitution -- than, say, the fact that we have a bicameral legislature.

There's much more in the essay. You should read it.