In a recent TNR article about the Citizens United decision, “Roberts versus Roberts,” I argued that the chief justice has so far failed to achieve his goal of promoting narrow, unanimous decisions rather than ideologically polarizing ones. After the piece came out, Ed Whelan claimed that Roberts had never promised to try to lead the Court in such a fashion.
When Vince Flynn recently finished writing his eleventh novel, Pursuit of Honor, he sent an advance copy to Rush Limbaugh, along with some special reading instructions. Upon arriving at Chapter 50, he told the radio host in a note inscribed on the chapter’s first page, “open one of your bottles of Lafite and grab a cigar and savor these words.” Flynn self-published his first political thriller twelve years ago but, today, has a seven-figure contract with an imprint of Simon & Schuster. He is to the war on terrorism what Tom Clancy was to the cold war, and his books tend to be popular with the type of reader who, like Limbaugh, watches the TV show “24” not just for entertainment value but also for political lessons. Indeed, the protagonist of Flynn’s novels, CIA counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp, exhibits such a talent for maiming, torturing, and killing Muslim bad guys that he makes Jack Bauer look like a simpering ACLU attorney.
No, this post will have nothing to do with Sarah Palin. It concerns the hearing held this morning by the Senate Homeland Security Committee regarding the terrorist attack carried out by Maj. Nidal Hassan against his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, a hearing called by that Committee's chairman, Joe Lieberman.
Ruth Marcus has a column today about Charles Grassley and the prospects for bipartisan health care reform. Marcus treats the prospect that Grassley will support health care reform as an uncertain prospect, albeit one withdim prospects. On the negative side, she reports, Grassley believes that supporting reform could cost him his Senate seat to a GOP challenger and, even if he survives, make Republicans strip him of his seniority on the Judiciary Committee.
For the past few weeks, we've heard a lot of debate about whether constitutional law can possibly survive close contact with the concept of empathy. But after spending the afternoon at the Sotomayor hearings, listening to senators left and right prattle about empathy and its relationship to justice, I have another question: Can the concept of empathy survive close contact with constitutional law?
The Senate Judiciary Committee this week debated a bill that would abolish the exclusionary rule, which bars illegally seized evidence from criminal cases. Instead, the bill would let victims of unreasonable searches sue the government for tort damages. "This hearing is an interesting and worthwhile academic exercise," intoned Senator Joseph Biden, who proceeded to browbeat the Republican's star witness, Akhil Amar of Yale Law School.
