Victory for Walker: the Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstates the collective bargaining law

The New Neo Posted on by

The Wisconsin Supreme Court was eager to let the lower court know it had grossly overstepped in going against the will of the legislature:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all orders and judgments of the Dane County Circuit Court in Case No. 2011CV1244 are vacated and declared to be void ab initio…This court has granted the petition for an original action because one of the courts that we are charged with supervising has usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature…The court does so because whether a court can enjoin a bill is a matter of great public importance and also because it appears necessary to confirm that Goodland remains the law that all courts must follow…Accordingly, because the circuit court did not follow the court’s directive in Goodland, it exceeded its jurisdiction, invaded the legislature’s constitutional powers under Article IV, Section 1 and Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution, and erred in enjoining the publication and further implementation of the Act.

“The Act” was the one that limited the unions’ collective bargaining powers.

Although the Supreme Court decision seems to be a close one with a 4-3 vote, it actually was not:

The majority said there was no constitutional violation, and that the courts had no authority to review whether the legislature had followed its own rules.

The dissents issued no opinion on whether there was a constitutional or statutory violation, or frankly whether at all Sumi [the lower court judge] was correct. They just disagreed with the [Wisconsin Supreme] court rushing through it and not taking it on appeal with a full record instead of as an original action.

Last night’s Republican debate

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone who wants to discuss the debate last night can use this thread.

I tried to watch it, I really did. But fifteen minutes was all I could take. I hate debates, and this one seems highly premature.

[ADDENDUM: Ace has an exceedingly interesting take on Romney’s performance.]

Ferri and Bocca, Fonteyn and Nureyev, in the ballet “Romeo and Juliet”

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a palate refresher for you.

I complain a lot about how much the art of dance has been sacrificed to the extremes of contemporary ballet technique. And all too often that’s the case.

But here’s a couple I encountered on YouTube—although I never actually saw them perform in person, alas—who are an exception: an extraordinarily developed technique in the service of an extraordinarily developed art.

Note the steps known as renversés that Julio Bocca performs towards the beginning of the segment, particularly some very nice ones at around minute 3:04 and continuing for about 10 seconds after. This sweeping movement perfectly expresses the intense emotion of infatuation, swirling Romeo and practically carrying him away. The same for the impetuous energy of his jumps for the rest of his variation, and especially at around minute 3:40.

And see Alessandra Ferri’s astoundingly hyperextended feet and soaring extensions. This is extreme technique, but she keeps it just under control and uses it in the interests of expressiveness rather than distortion.

At about minute 6:00 there’s a moment, lasting approximately 10 seconds, in which Ferri makes you see Juliet the girl as she turns into Juliet the passionate woman, much to her own surprise (I’ve edited all of the following pieces so that they start with several minutes already elapsed). And it only gets better after that:

I was raised on less flashy stuff that seems a bit archaic now. But it still has its place and its pleasures. The following clip was posted by commenter “Beverly” here. It features much the same choreography with a few modifications, danced in 1966 by the legendary Fonteyn and Nureyev.

I saw their version in person many times, and I always had mixed feelings about it. The illusion did not completely work for me, although I admired parts of it. Fonteyn, although extraordinarily beautiful and with an especially lovely (and non-skeletal) figure, did not look like a girl. She is 47 years old in this clip, and her technique—never ever her strong suit—was fading precipitously. She has almost no extension (that refers to the height to which the non-supporting leg is raised), and her feet are stiff, the arches barely curved.

And yet, and still—there is something in her subtle acting that is luminous, restrained, and moving. Note once again that moment of transformation at about minute 6:00 (there’s an earlier on at 5:30, as well), more quiet than Ferri but transcendent nonetheless.

Nureyev is all drama, and his technique was very good for the time. But he always seemed to me to be mostly about Nureyev, and not about the dance or his partner:

Let’s do some editing and compare those dawning-of-passion moments more closely:

[NOTE: This so-called “balcony scene” cannot possibly occur on the balcony, of course, because there wouldn’t be enough room to dance. So Juliet is forced to descend the stairs.]

Why Clinton got a pass and Weiner hasn’t

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Medved points out the inconsistency of those on the left who were vociferous in their defense of Clinton and yet are calling for the resignation of Weiner, who has arguably committed a less serious offense.

I suppose that Medved is technically correct. He ends his piece by saying that the discrepancy in reactions “makes no sense on any logical level.” Nevertheless, it’s completely understandable on an emotional level. As Medved points out, it shouldn’t matter that people liked Clinton and don’t like Weiner. But it does matter; we humans are far more inclined to excuse the transgressions of those we like.

But it even makes some sense on a logical level, as well. Clinton was president and Weiner a mere member of the House. That argument could go either way, of course—and Medved argues that the standard of behavior for a president should not be less than for a representative. However, I think the stronger argument is that the bar should be set especially high for the removal of a president (“high crimes and misdeamors”), and Clinton squeaked underneath. Nor was the possibility of his resignation ever all that realistic.

Medved mentions the “ick” factor, and it’s very important. Even though Clinton’s sexual behavior with Lewinsky wasn’t quite conventional (cigars??), having oral-genital sexual contact in the flesh with a person whom one actually knows is something most people can relate to. Weiner’s sending photos of his genitalia to strangers, not so much—especially for those of us over fifteen.

Plus, even though it was well-known that Clinton had a history of philandering, the Lewinsky interlude involved only one person. In contrast, Weiner was dealing with multiple women, and he had never met any of them.

You might argue that the latter point makes his behavior less serious. It was just online stuff, right? I would argue that it makes it more serious for him as an officeholder because the risks became that much higher that at least one of these people would either go public and embarrass him, or use his photos to blackmail him. Both men’s behavior was reckless and showed abominable judgement, but Weiner’s was worse in that regard. At least Clinton knew Monica well enough to feel he could trust her; what was Weiner’s excuse?

[NOTE: And speaking of trust and online escapades, I don’t quite know what to say about the revelation that two—count ’em, two—well-known lesbian bloggers are actually middle-aged men. But I do know that this is pretty funny (you have to read the article to understand):

In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.]

On coed vs. same-sex dorms

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s WSJ featured an op-ed by the president of The Catholic University of America, John Garvey, who writes that the school is fed up with the problems of coed dorms, and is about to go back to the old tried-and-true same-sex dorms.

I have to say I was a little surprised to hear that a school called “The Catholic University of America” ever had coed dorms in the first place. But that fact speaks to the pervasiveness of the practice—and perhaps the need to compete with all the other colleges that offer them.

I am enough of a dinosaur to remember, and to have personally experienced, a time when same-sex dorms were the only sort of dorms there were. Not only that, but when I went away to college there were still curfews and very strict rules about male visits to the female dorms. We had to sign out, and be in on weekday nights at 11:00 and weekends at 12:30, and even those hours were recent and hard-fought extensions of the even more restrictive hours of just a couple of years back. And men were only allowed to place their persons in the common rooms on the ground floor, and had to be out of there after curfew.

For those precious and highly-policed visits (only allowed during “parietal hours”), there was the phenomenon known as “dating rooms,” four little enclosures that served the entire dorm of hundreds of girls. I say “enclosures,” but they had no doors; they were almost completely open on one side, so that anyone could look in and see what was transpiring.

And what was that? I don’t remember viewing anything X-rated, but certainly some of what I spied in those rooms (one couldn’t help but sneak a quick peek as one walked by) might have earned an “R.” College kids can get pretty desperate if there are no more private alternatives, and in those days most of us had neither cars nor the wherewithal to rent a motel room (not to mention the fact that many such establishments wouldn’t rent to unmarried young people—how archaic was that?)

Note that I’ve referred to “male visits to the female dorms.” That’s because the reverse trip—a female entering the male sanctum—was almost unheard-of, not necessarily because it was forbidden, but because it was so forbidding. There were no dating rooms. I don’t even recall a common room on the ground floor, the one or two times I glanced in. Just a corridor leading to the bedrooms.

That was the situation I encountered when I entered college. But by the time I left it had changed, and the change was enough to give a person whiplash.

One year we had curfew, parietal hours, and dating rooms. The next year curfew was gone, and boys could be in the girls’ rooms with the door open and their feet on the floor (good luck with that). A year or two later? Co-ed dorms.

By that time I lived in an apartment, and we set our own rules (or, given the times, lack thereof). But I remember thinking that co-ed dorms were a bad idea, even then. Who wants to take away all the romance and mystery that early in the game? Who wants the pressure of always looking good, or always buttoning up lest a stray guy see you in your skivvies?

I recall that the co-ed trend started with alternating floors and then segued into co-ed bathrooms, an especially dumb idea (although perhaps it’s good preparation for the “seat-up-seat-down” battles of marriage). Recently, many colleges have experimented with pilot programs that feature co-ed rooms.

Catholic University is about to buck this trend; I wish it luck. Garvey gives as his reasons studies that indicate that same-sex dorms lead to an increase in sex and in drinking. He also shows, I’m sorry to say, a surprising degree of naivete when he writes:

I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up””and young men are encouraging them…

The last forty years of the sexual revolution has proven the truth of those words: the causal arrow does indeed seem to run the other way. Young women will tend to try—sometimes quite desperately, and often at the risk of their own well-being—to keep up with whatever they think it is that young men want.

The $230,000 protection dog

The New Neo Posted on by

Julia the German shepherd is cute, she’s good with children—and she’s fierce when told to be.

She cost her owners $230,000, but they consider her well worth it. She’s a highly-trained and prize-winning protection dog who can do a multitude of things, including the Lassie-like (although she looks more like Rin-Tin-Tin) tracking down of a wandering child, and the removal of a chunk from the extremity of an intruder.

I’m always a bit puzzled by these dogs. I know they would deter an unarmed person, but what about an armed one? Wouldn’t the dog just end up being shot dead? Or is it inherently difficult to hit a small and fast-moving target, until it’s right upon you? Does the timing of the shot have to be just perfect?

But the high price doesn’t surprise me at all. When a person has a gazillion dollars, $230,000 is just chump change.

[Hat tip: Instapundit.]

The Palin emails: the NY Times…

The New Neo Posted on by

…tries to make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse, and fails abysmally.

The Times, the WaPo, and many others opposed to Palin so believed their own fantasies about Palin that they were sure that the emails would validate them. Well, surprise, surprise.

The “revelations” in the Palin emails remind me of that old SNL skit about Reagan—you know, the one where he acts like an amiable dunce in public, but in private he’s really sharp as a tack? One difference is that, in the skit, Reagan is portrayed in the latter mode as an evil genius, and the Palin emails are pretty much devoid of evil; it’s a stretch to find even questionable behavior there. But the skit is still pretty funny:

[NOTE: Here’s an example of a Palin email that is quite impressive. It also might give pause to Trig-truther Andrew Sulllivan—or at least it would, if he retained any capacity for fair and logical thought.]

Weiner’s gone—for now

The New Neo Posted on by

Weiner’s gone, and not a moment too soon. He stayed far too long at this particular fair, until even Nancy Pelosi was forced to publicly call for him to step down and seek treatment.

Sometimes the “seeking treatment” meme is just a ploy and an excuse. But in this case I think it’s real and very needed.

However (and it’s a huge “however”), Weiner’s departure from the political scene might just be temporary. He’s taking a leave of absence rather than resigning.

Must need those health benefits.

So, does everyone lie about sex?

The New Neo Posted on by

In defending Anthony Weiner, actress Janeane Garofalo is quoted as saying, “Everyone lies about sex.”

Leaving aside both Weiner and Garofalo (I trust you’ll thank me for that), is it true—or sorta true, or kinda true—that everyone lies about sex?

I would agree that sex is one of the things that people are most likely to lie about, although of course it’s not true that everyone does. Sex is a powerful and potentially anarchic force, one that societies and organized religions have tried to harness, shape, and control for the sake of marriage and child-rearing, to greater or lesser success. And when it breaks free of those bonds—which it regularly does, and always will—the temptation on the part of the perpetrator to lie can be almost irresistible. Most people lie only to the spouses to whom they’ve been unfaithful; public figures such as Weiner and Clinton lie to the world, as well.

When we think of lies about sex, infidelity naturally comes to mind. One of the most searing experiences a person can undergo is to discover evidence that a previously-trusted spouse has been unfaithful. It shakes the foundations of trust so profoundly that it can easily lead to the sort of cynicism that Garofalo voiced, the idea that everybody is corrupt, everybody lies about this sort of thing (although not necessarily to her corollary notion that therefore it’s okay, no big deal). Sometimes a marriage can be repaired afterward, but very often the damage is fatal to the union, and the fallout is huge. So perpetrators who wish to remain married are strongly motivated to lie as a coverup—although all too often they’re so bad at it that they’re found out anyway.

But there are other ways to lie about sex. Some people lie in the direction of overestimating (or underestimating, I suppose) how much of it they’re getting, a common problem with sex surveys that rely on self-report. People lie in either direction about their sexual histories—whether they are virgins or not, or the depth and breadth of their previous sexual experience (historically speaking, a lie about this sort of thing has sometimes led to grisly consequences for the liar).

Women can lie to the men they sleep with about whether they’re having orgasms—some studies say that as many 60% of women have done this at least once. I wrote that women can lie about orgasms, but it turns out that men can lie too, and they do, although it would seem physiologically impossible—after all, wouldn’t there be evidence?. But apparently, where there’s a will there’s a way.

Now that nothing much has been found so far in the Palin e-mails…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the critique from the anti-Palin faction has shifted. In the comments sections of articles in the MSM and innumerable blogs on the left, the reactions boil down to:

(1) her emails are BORing

(2) her emails are so heavily redacted that all the good stuff that was originally there (meaning: the stupid, racist, corrupt, venal, redneck, and/or creationist remarks) has already been removed before we got to see it

(3) who cares about her anyway, she’s nobody and nothing, a real publicity hound

(4) she’s a total idiot and we don’t have to read her emails to know that, so it doesn’t matter what they say