Times Watch for August 19, 2003
Adam Cohens Constitutional Wrongs
Cheering On the March of
Constitutional Progress for as Long as It Lasts, a signed editorial by board
member Adam Cohen, uses a tour of Philadelphias new Constitution museum to
accuse conservative Supreme Court justices of depriving Americans of
constitutional rights.
Mondays editorial by
Cohen warns: If the museum were not scrupulously nonpartisan (its advisory
board includes both Stephen Breyer, the liberal Supreme Court justice, and the
conservative Antonin Scalia) it might have offered an instructive exhibit asking
visitors to match the constitutional rights they have just learned about with
the views of Bush administration judicial nominees.
But Cohens list of
horrors is rather unconvincing: One Bush choice for the courts, Michael
McConnell, now a federal appeals court judge, has argued that the Supreme Court
was wrong to rule that the equal protection clause required legislative
districts with roughly equal numbers of people. Jay Bybee, also now an appeals
court judge, has argued, incredibly, that the 17th Amendment should be repealed,
and United States senators once again selected by state legislators. William
Pryor, a nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit,
urged Congress to repeal an important part of the Voting Rights Act.
(In 1997 Congressional
testimony,
Pryor
termed a Voting Rights Act provision requiring Justice Department
pre-approval for changes in voting procedures or jurisdictions an affront to
federalism and an expensive burden that has far outlived its usefulness.)
Times Watch is
hard-pressed to find the denial of constitutional rights Cohen thinks is so
obvious. The one judge who dislikes a constitutional amendment properly calls
for its repeal (unlike a liberal court, which would simply make up, say, a
constitutional right to abortion that has no purchase in the actual document).
Cohen then attacks two
conservative Supreme Court justices: President Bush has said he wants to
appoint judges like Clarence Thomas and Justice Scalia, both embarked on
campaigns to undo years of constitutional progress. When Cohen praises
constitutional progress, he owns up to belief in the living document
philosophy of constitutional interpretation, wherein the constitution changes
with the times to encompass activist federal government.
Cohen concludes by
warning: But many Bush nominees are not conservatives but radicals. If they
take over the federal courts-and in a second Bush administration they
might-the scope of our constitutional rights could be very different. The
National Constitution Center might be forced to reorganize its main hall in a
U shape, so visitors can turn around and say goodbye to the rights that were
taken away. If these are the most dire threats Cohen can conjure up, America
can rest easy.
Incidentally, the Times
has set up a webpage profiling the 15 members of the editorial board. An
extract from Cohens entry reveals his liberal background: Prior to entering
journalism, [Cohen] was an education-reform lawyer, and a lawyer for the
Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. (The latest SPLC report is on
how ideas that originated on the radical rightare increasingly penetrating
mainstream society.)
Cohens not the only Times
editor with a liberal or
Democratic background. Carolyn Curiel, who joined the editorial board in
2002, served as special assistant to the president and senior presidential
speechwriter in President Clinton's first term, focusing on race relations.
Dorothy Samuels served as executive director of the New York Civil Liberties
Union, the largest affiliate of the national A.C.L.U. There were no
identifiable conservatives among the 15 board members.
For the rest of Adam
Cohens editorial on Bushs anti-Constitutional judges,
click here.
George W. Bush
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Adam Cohen
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Constitution
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Editorial
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Judiciary
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Antonin Scalia
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Clarence Thomas
Christianity
in a Positive Light? Now Thats Offensive
Mondays Arts section contains a
Bruce Weber review of some of the outr offerings of the
New York City Fringe Festival,
and one show offended his sensibilities so much he walked out during Act II.
There are
over a hundred shows in the Festival. Which one offended Weber? Was it Elephant
Titus-General Titus Adronicus returns to Rome with a hideous disfiguring
disease, and hes just nuts about it. Or was it Daddy Kathryn, a comedy
about a gay son's wacky relationship with his newly outed transvestite father.
No, it was
Discordant Duets, the one avowedly pro-Christian work in the festival. For
Weber, a pro-Christian message trumps any number of oddly placed piercings for
shock value: I did get to probably the most anomalous of the festival's
presentations: Discordant Duets, a play with an evangelical Christian bent
about two young couples that begin in the same unholy place and proceed in
different directions. It's a professional production with a cast of obvious
training, directed earnestly by Mark Todd Bruner and written with sincere, or at
least fervent, purpose by Mr. Bruner and his wife, Michelle. It is, however,
quite a terrible play for a very simple reason: it presumes that life's problems
have one unambiguous solution.
Weber then
suggests it might work better with the born-again crowd who might like the
simple-minded drama. He sniffs: This may be the secret of effective preaching
(though I doubt it), and perhaps this kind of storytelling is useful as a
recruitment tool for the born-again crowd. But it makes for simple-minded drama,
and unless you are already converted or wish to be, you might run out of
patience, as I did; I left midway through the second act, after a couple of
suggestions that offended me, namely that if you are not willing to accept Jesus
as your savior, you are bound to become a belligerent drunk. And that the
difference between a Christian counselor and a secular therapist is that the
former is devoted to keeping families together and the latter is more concerned
with making excuses for their coming apart. No matter how didactic the play
might be, it does seem strange for a reviewer to brag about leaving a play
because it offended him. By doing so, Weber seems more akin to a stereotypical
conservative prude than an open-minded theatre critic.
Weber did
like a drama critical of the Catholic Church: A much better, much more
realistic play is Acts of Contrition, a drama by Timothy Nolan that doesn't
flinch as it addresses the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. To
those who object to my favoring the astringent view of the church over the
saccharine, please hold the indignant e-mail messages and letters. I simply
prefer theater that probes the complexities of conflict to theater that pretends
they don't exist.
For the rest of Webers Fringe
review,
click here.
Arts
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Catholicism
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Christianity
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Fringe Festival
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Religion
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Bruce Weber
The
Naked News
After pushing so hard (and
successfully) for U.S. troops, has the Times lost interest in Liberia?
After its work
on both the news
and editorial
pages, the Times oddly buries on page 9 Tim Weiners surprisingly entertaining
story on the Liberia peace deal between the government and rebels. Both the
Washington Post and the maligned McPaper USA Today find the deal
sufficiently newsworthy for its front page.
Instead,
the Times reserves the bottom swath of Tuesdays front page for this bit of
streaking, er, breaking news: Lizette Alvarez story, Clad in Resolve, Nude
Hiker Defies the British Body Image, about the nude hiker making a trek from
the southern tip of Britain to the northern end of Scotland. Perhaps the Times
is still unloading stories from the blackout: This one is datelined August 12, a
full week ago. Note to blackout victims-throw out refrigerated leftovers (or at
least tuck them on an inside page)!
For the rest of Tim Weiners story
from Monrovia,
click here.
Gaffes
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Liberia
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Tim Weiner
Run,
Andrew, Run!
As well as pushing Democratic
efforts in Kentucky
and South Carolina,
the Times is also scouring around for good Democratic Senate candidates in
Georgia. Mondays profile by David Halbfinger of former Atlanta Mayor Andrew
Young boasts of Youngs long resume (the headline even reads Young May Try to
Add Senator to Resume.)
Halbfinger
writes: Thirteen years after he last held elective office, Andrew J. Young
Jr.-the former pastor, civil rights leader, congressman, mayor and ambassador,
to pick a few lines from his rsum-is eyeing a new title: United States
senator. He is 71 now, overweight, and hobbles on two bad knees. But because the
Democratic incumbent, Senator Zell Miller, is stepping down next year and the
Democratic Party can find no one more capable of trying to retain his seat, and
because Mr. Young, ever the internationalist, is increasingly concerned about
America's place in the world and eager to do something about it, he is
considering ending his political retirement.
The Times
barely hidden plea: Run, Andrew, Run!
Halbfinger
warns theres danger ahead for Young; Georgias become only more conservative
in the years hes been off the scene. Like much of the South, Georgia has
become only more conservative: last fall, Gov. Roy Barnes and Senator Max
Cleland, both Democrats, were ousted by lesser-known, conservative Republicans.
And two popular conservative representatives, Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins,
are already running and raising money for the Republican primary for the Senate.
But Mr. Young, and many Democrats both here and in Washington, say that if any
Democrat can win this election, it is he. Andrew Young is not labeled.
For the rest of Halbfingers story
on Andrew Youngs possible Senate candidacy,
click here.