I have written on Prof. Jack Balkin's wonderful discussions of Professor Bruce Ackerman's theory of Constitutional Moments and Balkin's onw theory of Constitutional amendment by partisan entrenchment before, but Balkin has added two posts to the materials and they are even better. To reset, Balkin writes:

I will try to show that partisan entrenchment offers a simpler and more compelling explanation. Of course, Ackerman’s system is trying to do much more than Levinson’s and my theory. We are merely trying to show how doctrinal change occurs. He is trying to offer a theory that both describes and legitimates constitutional change as a act of popular sovereignty. In choosing between the two accounts, it is important first to decide what you want your theory of constitutional change to do. Levinson and I offer a much simpler theory-- with fewer moving parts– that assumes that not all great transformations are necessarily faithful to the Constitution, legitimate, wise or just. At best, partisan entrenchment produces results that are roughly but imperfectly democratic, because they tend to keep the courts in sync with the dominant national political coalition of the time. Ackerman’s theory has many more complications and assumptions, but he wants to legitimate constitutional transformations, not simply explain why they occur.

Balkin then discusses Ackerman's response to the criticism that the Civil Rights movement and the changes wrought do not fit into his theory:

The ACLU announced today it is suing Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary for its participation in secret renditions.

The lawsuit, which the ACLU said it would file Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, charges that Jeppesen knowingly provided direct flight services to the CIA that enabled the clandestine transportation of the men to secret overseas locations, where they were tortured and subjected to other "forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" under the agency's "extraordinary rendition" program.

"American corporations should not be profiting from a CIA rendition program that is unlawful and contrary to core American values," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "Corporations that choose to participate in such activity can and should be held legally accountable."

More information about the lawsuit is available at the ACLU website here.

It's been decades since I read Nora Ephron's Heartburn, her novel based on the crumbling of her marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, so I don't have a ready answer as to whether Bernstein is a sexist. But judging from his new book on Hillary Clinton, I wouldn't be surprised.

Check out these passages from the book:

“The prospect that she could not bear a child, which seemed increasingly likely in the first two years of her marriage--and which she probably feared even earlier—could have been as frightening to her as anything she might conjure….Hillary suffered from a condition called endometriosis, which often makes conception difficult, can cause infertility, and frequently results in extreme pain during and after intercourse.’” (P. 149-50)

“‘She’s not a heavy-duty intellectual. He’s much brighter than she is. She’s bright, but she’s not very bright…” (p. 275).

“Her ankles were thick.” (p. 32)

“‘At first, she didn’t wear stockings….Her hair was friend into an Orphan Annie perm….There wasn’t one…feminine thing about her.’” (p. 130)

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In March, Harold Meyerson wrote:

In effect, what the protesters are doing is making the unattainable perfect the enemy of the barely-attainable good. Because Obey is quite right: The votes aren't there to shut down funding for the war. What he and Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership in both houses are about is finding some way to curtail the president's determination to pass the war on to his successor regardless of the continuing cost to U.S. interests and lives.

Did the Iraq Supplemental do that? Of course not. But on to Meyerson's Plan B, from:

It took the Democrats, and their dovish Republican allies, four full years to pass a cutoff of funds for U.S. ground forces in Vietnam. . . . Pelosi is steering the same course, for a war even more reckless and absurd than Vietnam.

What is Meyerson saying? That Congress can not end the war 'cuz they don't have the votes.' Well, why not just say that in the first place? As it happens, most of us always knew that. And many of us advocate an approach that requires strong Democrat support only, not waiting for phantom GOP support. This is what galls. The stupidity of it all.

Apparently, evoking the Gestapo is not an effective interrogation method:

As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

Illegal, immoral, ineffective. Why do it? Revenge? Sadism?

The GOP Presidential candidates on interrogation:

[Brit] Hume [asked] the candidates . . . How aggressively would you interrogate" . . . captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — . . . "I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani.

. . . Mitt Romney . . . "Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

Via Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan, Gestapo Chief Muller's "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

As Sullivan writes:

There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: . . . The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Meet Jennifer in San Francisco. She's a pot dealer.

Jennifer, who is white, and who dresses tidily and arranges flowers for a popular art gallery, talks about the [Latino] dealers with clear discomfort. Not because they're troublesome or violent. It's more that she feels guilty. The police never arrest her.

Jennifer enjoys the flower arranging, but mostly it functions as a legitimate income to show the IRS. Really, she's a marijuana dealer.

As a female, Jennifer says, the police aren't looking for her:

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Meet Osama Eldawoody. He's an informant for the FBI. He goes to mosques and tries to figure out who might view Osama bin Laden favorably and who might, with the right direction, support and supplies, engage in an act of terrorism against the U.S. While working for the FBI, he attended 575 services, sometimes as often as four or five a day. He's now in the witness protection program.

Meet Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, from Pakistan. With Eldawoody's help, the U.S. convicted him of plotting to blow up a New York subway station and he is serving 30 years in prison.

Siraj's family and supporters say he was simply an angry, foolish young man with no connection to actual terrorists or capacity to obtain bombs, playing along -- for a while -- with a man who he believed was his closest friend. They say Eldawoody effectively goaded Siraj into plotting to plant explosives -- to be supplied by Eldawoody -- in the subway station, just below the Macy's store in midtown Manhattan, and then recorded those conversations.

Here's Eldawoody's role in the plot:

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[Cross posted at Firedoglake]

With ten dead in Iraq today and five Britons kidnapped, I was looking for some good news to write about. I didn't find it. And in what seems like a page out of a science-fiction novel, I found this: U.S. Isolates Traveler Infected with Super-TB.

The United States has isolated a man who may have exposed fellow passengers on two transatlantic flights to a strain of tuberculosis that is extremely hard to treat, officials said on Tuesday. It was the first time the federal government has issued such an isolation order since at least 1963, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said authorities were trying to notify passengers who traveled aboard Air France 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 13 and back to the United States from Prague on Czech Air Flight 0104 on May 24.

It caught my attention immediately because while flipping channels this weekend, I happened upon the tv premiere of the movie Pandemic on the Hallmark Channel. It was about the quarantining of passengers arriving at LAX from Australia after a young man died en route. They suspected he had bird flu, but whatever he had, there was no vaccine.

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Watching Al Gore discuss the importance of reasoned discourse in a democracy, it strikes me that our earlier discussion on Hugo Chavez and the closing of a privately owned television station critical of the Chavez government was missing some key understandings.

Gore argues for reasoned discourse, but he implicitly assumes that our current media structure may be capable of delivering the information necessary to forwarding that discourse. Is this true? An open question.

What is not an open question in my view is that a government, any government, Left or Right, can be granted the power to shut down media outlets because it is critical of that government.

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I do not care one way or the other if the Democrats hold a Presidential debate on Fox, but my Gawd, if you are going to criticize folks for not appearing, as Kucinich does here, try to not sound so stupid:

Rep. Kucinich . . . criticized his opponents who were unwilling to show up to the CBC/Fox debate. "Fox broadcasts the World Series, too, but is it any less of a World Series because it's on Fox?

Um, last I looked, Fox did not have Brit Hume calling the World Series, Representative. I have an idea, why not have the Democratic Debate on The Simpsons? I mean if you want to be a figure of ridicule, what better venue Congressman?

It seems absurd to debunk a sexist smear, but nonetheless, in today's political world, it must be done. And Greg Sargent, with an assist from Carl Bernstein, does it:

We've just received our copy of Carl Bernstein's new book on Hillary, and something leaps right out at us. Specifically: Bernstein's reporting directly contradicts one of the more important and more damning allegations about Hillary and Bill that is made by former Timesman Jeff Gerth and current Times reporter Don Van Natta in their big forthcoming Hillary book. . . . The charge in question in the Gerth-Van Natta book -- which is called Her Way -- is that just after Bill's election in 1992, he and Hillary were already plotting two terms for her in the White House. . . . But Bernstein's book contains extensive on the record testimony . . . -- that appears to directly contradict this charge.

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