Some Things of Note ...

by Cliopatria

Reading John Carey's"Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings," The Sunday Times, 10 April, I fell in love, again, with Samuel Johnson, his eccentricity and his penetrating criticism of all around him, including foremostly himself. Thanks to Sharon Howard for the tip.

Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, Eric Muller, and Belle Waring comment on Dana Milbank's"And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty," Washington Post, 9 April. Samuel Johnson would have been appalled at" conservatives" working up a frenzy over anything. It's such an unconservative condition, but these" conservatives" seem bent on it. Fortunately, impeachments are difficult to accomplish and"ultimate solutions" seem, well, so unAmerican.

Frank Rich,"A Culture of Death," New York Times, 10 April, very effectively synthesizes a lot of our recent experience.

On the other hand, this story in the Times about a deadly virus spreading in Angola does one of those dumb undergraduate things, like when a student copies the wrong answers from another student on a standardized test. In this case, the Times article plagiarized two sentences with incorrect information from Wikipedia. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for the tip.
Update: As Caleb McDaniel points out in comments and Glenn Reynolds notes in an update this morning, the plagiarism appears to have occurred in reverse order, that is, someone appears to have copied from the NYT into the Wikipedia article. Still, I believe, the information in the two sentences is misleading.

In case you missed it yesterday at Cliopatria, Dennis W. Johnson, one of Jacques Pluss's graduate students at Fairleigh Dickinson University, had some very interesting comments to make about Professor Pluss, including reference to his graduate work with Julius Kirschner in medieval history at the University of Chicago. In a subsequent comment here, Miriam Burstein, pointed out that Professor Kirschner was, himself, found guilty of plagiarism in 1996. She cites"U. of Chicago Panel Finds History Professor Guilty of Plagiarism," Chronicle of Higher Education, 42 (9 August 1996). I was reminded of the biblical proverb about the fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

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Oscar Chamberlain - 4/12/2005

There was a fair amount of anti-court rhetoric from FDR's administration prior to 1937--though I don't know how coordinated it was. I do wonder if the packing issue failed because the biggest program declared unconstitutional by the Court, the NRA, was so clearly a failure. Also the NRA provisions that had a broader appeal, for example concerning labor relations, were put into law again quickly.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/10/2005

Yeah, I thought of the Court Packing incident, too. I wonder if Republicans remember just how badly that backfired on Roosevelt? If they've thought about it at all, they've learned at least one lesson: prepare the groundwork. There's a powerful echo chamber theme of "judicial activism" and "out of control judges" and "unaccountability" and such trying to problematize that "coequal branches" thing....

Oscar Chamberlain - 4/10/2005

Julie,

A quick comment on separations of powers and checks and balances.

The original constitution was designed to force consensus on controversial acts of importance--that is there needed to be a general agreement by a considerable majority or, at minimum, a majority agreement by people elected and appointed at more than one time.

One institutional (as opposed to ideological) purpose of political parties is to evade the need for consensus and replace it with simple majority rule. Whenever a party has both the executive and the legislative branch, its leaders look to reduce the limitations of check and balance republicanism on the policies they support.

The courts have long been something of a sticking point. Life tenure makes it very hard for a party to control the courts. Even in as case such as today, when the vast majority of federal judges and justices have been appointed by Republicans, the phiolosophical range of decisions by Republican appointed judges is far broader than the Republicanism of Bush and DeLay.

The majority's resentment at not controlling the judiciary has overflowed occasionally. It did in Jefferson's first term, when there were attempts, some successful (the Jeffersonians abolished some newly created federal positions) and some not, to remove federalist jugdes.

Resentment led to FDR's failed attempt at Court packing in 1937, and we may see an attempt by Republicans to do something similar over the next year, again driven by resentment.

Julie A Hofmann - 4/10/2005

Ok ... I know I'm not an Americanist, or a constitutional scholar, but I vaguely remember something about "separation of powers," independent judiciary, checks and balances ...? Maybe? I think I might be right on this, because when I teach Polybios on Roman government, my students seem to think that there are some similarities. I guess I should read the Constitution again, but it seems like it's getting harder to find an unredacted version.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/10/2005

Good catch, Caleb. I see that Glenn Reynolds has updated and corrected his post this morning.

Caleb McDaniel - 4/10/2005

If you look at the history of the Wikipedia entry article, it appears that the offending lines were not added until yesterday. So the evidence suggests that a lazy Wikipedia user copied the NYT, rather than the other way around. Unless I'm reading the history wrong ... Judge for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marburg_virus&;action=history

Jonathan Dresner - 4/10/2005

Eric Muller has pointed out that the Stalin quotation could easily be construed as not just a rhetorical overstep, but a threat on a Federal Judge, which is illegal. As he says, if someone said that about the President, the Secret Service might well have a word or two with them....

It's worth noting that the attack on the judiciary is general, not specific: A US Senator's chief of staff recently suggested "mass impeachments" might be called for: if you add that to the call for an end to filibuster on judicial nominees, and it looks like an attempt to pack the courts wholesale.