Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


"Very fun." -- J. Bottum, Editor, FIRST THINGS

"Too modest" -- Elinor Dashwood

"Perhaps the wisest man on the Web" -- Henry Dieterich

"Hat tip: me (but really Cacciaguida)" -- Diana Feygin, Editor, THE YALE FREE PRESS

"You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am no more I." -- Dante

"Fabulous!"-- Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury

Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


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The New York Times on trial, possibly, we can hope

It was a one-editorial day at The Wall Street Journal, as they tore into the NY Times for revealing the government's anti-terrorist-financing strategies, and also for misleadingly claiming that The Wall Street Journal did the exact same things.

The editorial details the differences in the path that lead each paper to its story, and differences in the story themselves, and adds: "We suspect that the Times has tried to use the Journal as its political heatshield precisely because it knows our editors have more credibility on these matters." It continues:

The obligation of the press is to take the government seriously when it makes a request not to publish. Is the motive mainly political? How important are the national security concerns? And how do those concerns balance against the public's right to know?

The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't.

After detailing editor Bill Keller's high-liberal sententiousness and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s up-against-the-wall-baby speech at a recent college commencement, the Journal concludes that The New York Times "has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it."

The editorial goes on to recall the treasonous reporting of Col. Macormick's Chicago Tribune after the Battle of Midway (treasonous, in a legally precise sense, because it gave vital information to the Japanese). The Journal praises the government's eventual decision not to prosecute Macormick and the Tribune under the Espionage Act of 1917, but warns of the lessons to be learned.

The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, is going for it: Leaks and the Law: the case for prosecuting the New York Times.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:10 PM

 
It's late June, and as usual at this time of year, the Supreme Court is cranking the stuff out, with lots of plummy partial-concurrences-partial-dissents. You'll find comments and links here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:58 PM

 
A death penalty decision, and a Scalia concurrence

I wonder if the fit will hit the shan in the Catholic blogosphere about Justice Scalia's concurrence in today's decision upholding Kansas's death penalty. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion of the Court in this 5-4 decision, but Scalia added a separate concurrence:

There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America’s death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers belong had the death penalty themselves until recently—and indeed, many of them would still have it if the democratic will prevailed.3) It is a certainty that the opinion of a near-majority of the United States Supreme Court to the effect that our system condemns many innocent defendants to death will be trumpeted abroad as vindication of these criticisms. For that reason, I take the trouble to point out that the dissenting opinion has nothing substantial to support it.

It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent makes much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to establish innocence. But in every case of an executed defendant of which I am aware, that technology has confirmed guilt.

He then discusses the Roger Coleman case:

...Coleman’s case became a rallying point for abolitionists, who hoped it would offer what they consider the “Holy Grail: proof from a test tube that an innocent person had been executed.” Frankel, supra, at W24. But earlier this year, a DNA test ordered by a later Governor of Virginia proved that Coleman was guilty, see, e.g., Glod & Shear, DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Man Executed by Va., supra, at A1; Dao, supra, at A14, even though his defense team had “proved” his innocence and had even identified “the real killer” (with whom they eventually settled a defamation suit). Frankel, supra, at W23; Glod & Shear, Warner Orders DNA Testing in Case of Man Executed in ’92, Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2006, pp. A1, A6.

He then attacks in great detail the "abolitionist" scholarship on which Justice Souter's dissent relies, and concludes:

Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revelation. But with regard to the punishment of death in the current American system, that possibility has been reduced to an insignificant minimum. This explains why those ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free. The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment—in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes—outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part of the business of this Court, or of its Justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world, and less still to frustrate it by imposing judicially invented obstacles to its execution.

For the record, statements by recent Popes have made me more restrictive in endorsing the use of the death penalty, and I have not ruled out "abolitionism," as Scalia would put it. Of course, and contrary to reporters' templates for politicizing Churhc issues, the Church does not require "abolitionism" re the death penalty.

But if the morality of capital punishment is hard, its constitutionality is easy: obviously a Constitution that explicitly assumes that the death penalty will be applied, as ours does in the Fifth Amendment, cannot then have gone on to ban it in the simultaneously-enacted Eighth ("cruel and unusual punishment"). And don't give me "evolving standards of decency": those are for the people, through their representatives, to determine, not the courts.

And there's another easy question here: whether the unctuousness of the Eurocracy that Scalia is impliedly referring to makes one want to hurl. Clearly it does.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:18 PM

 
Feast of St. Josemaria Escriva.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:39 PM

 
Because I feel like it. Catholic sites from England and Scotland: The Catholic Truth Society (Publishers to the Holy See), and the Scottish Catholic Archives.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:39 PM

 
Cardinal Bertone! For Secretary of State post, Pope chooses a doctrine guy -- and a former CDF colleague -- rather than a diplomat.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:35 PM

 
Classic tie-knots, courtesy of Brooks Brothers. I must admit there's more here than I knew. I usually use the four-in-hand, but with a thin tie that would otherwise yield too small a knot, I find a half-Windsor does the trick.

Ninety-nine percent of my "tie shirts" are button-down. "American classic" is my story and I'm sticking to it. However, a few weeks ago when I scheduled a visit to the Met with some guys who for all I knew might have been fashion-forward (they weren't, but the point is they might have been), I added to my collection a -- you're sitting down, aren't you? -- a spread-collar! And it's violet!!
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:29 PM

 
Feast of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. I went to Mass this morning (21 hours ago in real time) at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, 211 Old Marylebone Rd., London NW1., the parish closest to Tyburn. The priest gave a good homily about saying no even to kings when fundamentals are at issue. About twenty people attended, and that was only one of three daily Masses at this parish. The Anglican church three doors down the road was dead as a doornail.

And last night I attended an Evening of Recollection at St. Thomas More Church, Maresfield, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 (Borough of Camdentown).

I'm home now.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:15 PM

 
Hello. I'm in England, where the @ sign is over the ', the " is over the 2, and over 3, where Americans are wont to find @, there is £. And the shift button requires extra pressure. And if you drive manual, as most people here do, you shift with your left hand.##

And that reminds me, the# is where the return key should be.

Oh yes, I've had a look at far more things than cars and this keyboard. In fact, I saw both a solemn sung Latin Novus Ordo and a Tridentine at Westminster Cathedral; more on that later. This is the Catholic cathedral for London; not to be confused with Westminster Abbey, which is a nearly worship-free tourist attraction, as are most Anglican churches here, minus the tourists. (Funny, being here while the Anglican Communion implodes. That story has been dominating the print media here.)

It's cool here (I mean temperature) and the air is very fresh. I like taking a deep breath and saying "O2 be in England!"

OK now, here are two ways not obvious to Yanks in which the Harry Potter books are distinctly British:

1. At London busstops, the number of each bus line is announced in its own square. In addition, there may be (depending on the stop) one or two shaded squares that announce buses that run at night. These are labelled -- you saw this coming -- "night buses."

2. Elevators that talk to you in spectral female voices. The lift at the university where I am conferencing says soothingly: "Door closing. Lift going up. First floor [i.e. second floor]. Door opening. Door closing...." And so I realized where the business about the Ministry lift, and also the phone-booth entrance, came from.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:52 AM

 
Lt. Gen. James Conway chosen by the C-in-C to become the Corps's next Commandant. This is an excellent nomination. Conway served closely and ably with Maj.Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis in Iraq, in particular in the Battle of Fallujah (read about it here).
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:53 PM

 


No don't, I say, don't go settin' the world on fire
if'n I don't post much over the next few days, y'hear?
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:35 PM

 
So James Fields of Fire Webb, former Navy Secretary under President Reagan -- and according to this book, the kingmaker of Gen. Al Gray's ascension to Marine Commandant -- has won the Virginia senatorial nomination as a Democrat, opposing incumbent George Allen.

RedState has an excellent analysis here. I would just add a couple of points.

The "Vote for me I'm a war hero" pitch will work better for Webb than it did for Kerry, because Webb actually is a war hero. And no military lightweight, either: Fields of Fire is taught in officer training courses at Quantico. (Source: a recently graduated officer.) For my money, it is, among other things, an interesting exploration of the balance of power between a rookie lieutenant, and two of the different kinds of enlisted men you (the lieutenant) encounter when you get to combat: the sergeant who's thirty years older than you and has been in more wars than you can name and who wants parade-ground standards in the midst of jungle ambushes; and the rookie-but-clever corporal who knows how the bush works and whose advice is always good -- except that he's not the lieutenant, you are....

Yes, James Webb over George Allen for Secretary of Defense any day. But he's not up for DefSec, he's running for Senator: as in, voting for judges (including cloture); organizing the Senate, including (if the Dems take the majority) making Pat frickin' Leahy chairman of the Judiciary Committee; etc. etc.

Allen is a superb election-winner, and few if any Virginia Republicans will have any reason not to vote for him. Meanwhile many Virginia Democrats will have reasons to stay home or vote for a leftist protest candidate. Webb is not a leftist, and he dissed a lot of state Democrats during the primary campaign. That he won the primary means little about his standing among Democrats: Virginia has open primaries, and there was no Republican primary, so there's no telling how many GOP voters strolled in to vote for Webb, for whatever reason (like, he's a good Marine).

One more thing RedState left out: any problem Webb has with black voters will be exacerbated by his most recent book, the title of which was also his campaign slogan. Born Fighting is a defense -- rather eloquent, if I may say so -- of our nation's much-maligned Scots-Irish immigrants and their descendants, a.k.a. rednecks.

Let the games commence.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:42 PM

 
Rated PG for religious elements. More here. The MPAA is explaining that it gives the PG rating when there are themes in a movie that parents might want to discuss with their children.

Not Blowing Things Out of Proportion Dep't: All the Harry Potter movies have also been PG, except for GOF, which was PG-13.

"But Hey Wait One Cottonpickin' Minute" Dep't ("What'n I Say What?" Division): This treatment of Facing the Giants sets a precedent for putting Christianity in the same cultural box as sex and violence -- i.e., the more there is of it, the more we have to keep it away from our kids (who are, after all, our hope for the future). What's next, people are asking. I don't know: Ben Hur with an R? Churches restricted to tightly policed "red bell districts"?
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:59 PM

 
Perils of drive-by journalism in wartime: Some dork at the (generally respectable) Daily Telegraph does a hatchet job on the Marines' Dam Security Unit here; Jonathan Lee responds here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:46 PM

 
So, I get up too late for the 8 a.m. Mass this morning, because I'm lame (both senses: I'm lazy, plus, my ankle was hurting and I had a leg cramp), so I go to the parish that has a 9 a.m. Mass Mon-Thurs. Oh, but not today, see, because we're havin' us a primurry eliction and the church is a polling station.

No siree, can't have Mass when the church is a polling station. Fully 5% of eligible voters are expected to turn up, and daily Mass draws at least fifteen people. Crowd control could become an issue. Plus, if some people are voting in the social hall, and others are having Mass in the church, then what about the wall of separation between church and state, like the Constitution says?

So then this short old redneck opens the door.

HIM: You wanna come in?

ME: Why would I want to do that?

HIM: You looked like you wanted to come in.

ME: I know how to open the door when there's Mass.

Using a Catholic church for Mass? He evidently decided I was one of them nutters (funny, cuz I did'n look like one of them Latinos or nothin') and withdrew into his electoral cave. Europeans and Americans, man, we know what churches are for: in Europe, for concerts and tourism; in America, for polling stations.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:46 AM

 
Conversation chez Cacciagudia: mail call

CACCIAGUIDA (to Jonathan Lee): Letter for you from the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

JONATHAN LEE: I told him I was busy.

--
P.S. Purely routine matter.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:13 PM

 
Hey -- one of the available editions of Cold Comfort Farm has cover illustrations by Roz Chast! What do fans think?
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:31 PM

 


To paraphrase a medieval Spanish chronicle:
2006 -- Mortuus est Zarqawi, et sepultus in inferno.

Andy Cochran of Counterterrorism presents a roundup of that blog's past reporting on Zarqawi, here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:18 PM

 
Harvard launches effort to clone human cells

Two great errors, one about marriage, one about humanity. 19th century manifestation: polygamy, slavery. Today: same-sex marriage, and the moral status of the human unborn.

19th century -- Massachusetts was in the moral foreground. Today, is it devoted to morals -- or just to the foreground?
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:42 PM

 
Since I know this blog is read by few who do not share its views (the major exception being Kate Beckinsale fans, to judge from my search log; I'm not a big KB man myself, but apparently I once posted a picture of her in Much Ado About Nothing, her first and only good movie; well, that and Emma; returning, however, to the matter at hand:) I feel confident in urging readers to click now and vote in this poll. Hat-tip: Zorak the Mantis.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:38 PM

 
Scramble-for-the-House '06 begins with a Republican win.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:10 PM

 
Feast of St. Boniface, apostle of Germany

English Benedictine, sent to Germany, first by his religious superiors in England and then by Pope Gregory II. His mission was to evangelize pagan territory, and to reevangelize areas lost during persecutions by the pagan Prince Radbod (ancestor of the fictional Ortrud in Wagner's LOHENGRIN), and also those lost during periods of unspecified "injudicious zeal" by Christian princes such as Duke Gotzbert (Dilbert's pastor?) and the regrettably named Hethan II. After visiting Pope Gregory:

Boniface returned to Upper Hessia and repaired the losses which occurred during his absence, many having drifted back into paganism; he also administered everywhere the Sacrament of Confirmation. He continued his work in Lower Hessia. To show the heathens how utterly powerless were the gods in whom they placed their confidence, Boniface felled the oak sacred to the thunder-god Thor, at Geismar, near Fritzlar. He had a chapel built out of the wood and dedicated it to the prince of the Apostles. The heathens were astonished that no thunderbolt from the hand of Thor destroyed the offender, and many were converted. The fall of this oak marked the fall of heathenism. Tradition tells us that Boniface now passed on to the River Werra and there erected a Church of St. Vitus, around which sprang up a town which to the present day bears the name of Wannfried. At Eschwege he is said to have destroyed the statue of the idol Stuffo. Thence he went into Thuringia.

I doubt "Stuffo" was a very impressive idol, but that Thor stuff? Very cool. Götterdämmerung, dude.



The Three Norns:
Rope's broken, girls. G'bye!

P.S. I'm taking suggestions for what "Stuffo" may have looked like. I'm thinking maybe a teddy bear with a Valkyrie helmet, wings'n'all; shield, spear. ("Bear in mind," as we say in my family.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:28 PM

 
"Get Do-Right in here!!"
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:23 AM

 
If the New York Times keeps publishing op-eds like Prof. Paul Fortunato's "Opus Dei's Box Office Hit," published today, I may have to admit that my rule against linking to anything in the NYT has been relaxed. Be that as it may, read Fortunato's piece. Appetizer:

For the record, I do wear a spiked metal band on my leg for a couple of hours a day just like the movie's murderous Opus Dei numerary, Silas (that's always the first question). But I do not wear a robe, except at graduation ceremonies. I'm an English professor at a state university and am finishing a book titled "Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde." So much for stereotypes.

I joined Opus Dei as a numerary, a member who has committed to celibacy and lives in an Opus Dei center, when I turned 18. My father is a supernumerary (one of the married members, who account for around 80 percent of us). He never encouraged me to join, though he and my mother taught me to pray and to love the ideas of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the order's founder, on turning work into prayer.

I knew early on that I wanted to pursue a deep communion with God, since that's what allows me to be truly happy. And I wanted to enjoy all the richness of the secular world. (All right, all except sex, which undoubtedly is one of the richest parts of living in the world.) This is where the adventure begins. Can one be totally focused on God, praying meditatively for hours a day, and also be totally focused on the world — making money, competing or collaborating with colleagues, going out with drinking buddies? The answer, for me, is yes.

posted by Cacciaguida at 10:22 PM

 
Schama's Citizens -- II

The American and French Revolutions were profoundly different. The reasons for this would be worth investigating at length (has any historian done this, do you know?); Schama does not do this, but he has interesting observations on the relationship between French participation in the American Revolution -- the work of aristocrats, without exception -- and the rise in France of a "ci-devant" aristocracy (Schama's term: it literally means "in front of that," and could be understood as "avant-garde," a Frenchism that has passed beyond need for translation). The ci-devant artistocrats, in turn, were essential to the progress of the French Revolution, though many ended up being killed by it.

The consequences of French involvement in the revolutionary war were, in fact, profoundly subversive and irreversible. The American historian Forrest McDonald attempted to show a high degree of correspondence between returning French veterans of the war and the outbreak of rural violence in 1789. Recently, this has been shown by more careful research to be suspect, although there remain striking cases of returning soldiers who show up in the chronicles of the Revolution.... But the case for an "American" cause of the French Revolution does not have to rest on this type of geographical literalism. A more qualitative approach can hardly fail to register the extraordinary importance of the flirtation with armed freedom to a section of the artisocracy that was rich, powerful and influential. On their own they could not conceivably have constituted any kind of independent "revolutionary" opposition to the crown. But once the money crisis of the monarchy was transformed into a political argument, the vocabulary of "liberty" was apt to take on a life of its own -- and become available to those who were prepared to play for very high stakes.... (p. 47)

Next: more about the monarchy's money crisis.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:49 PM

 
CONVERSATION CHEZ CACCIAGUIDA: right after watching Lost, Episode 5 ("White Rabbit")

ELINOR: I'm tired of the Koreans -- both of them, for different reasons.

CACCIAGUIDA: I'm tired of the rednecks.

ELINOR: The rednecks?

CACCIAGUIDA: "Sawyer" and Boone.

ELINOR: Boone's not a redneck. He's a Malibu brat.

CACCIAGUIDA: Oh, so he's a California redneck.

ELINOR: No, no. There's a difference. Rednecks actually know some useful things.

JONATHAN LEE: Very useful to have around the house.

CACCIAGUIDA: A solid household appliance, you mean?

ELINOR: Absolutely. ___ doesn't know what she'd do without her rednecks. She just whistles, and a guy with torn jeans, missing teeth, long hair, and a Cat Diesel cap shows up, and she says there are racoons in the attic, and he says, "Right, ma'am, we'll take care o'that...."

CACCIAGUIDA: Whereas a surfer-dude just sleeps on your couch. Like Kato Kaelin.

ELINOR: That's right.

CACCIAGUIDA: I see.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:31 PM