THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy: Lawyer and history buff Adam Freedman takes issue with President Barack Hussein Obama’s description of “free speech, representative government, and respect for property” as “not just American ideas” in his Cairo speech last month. He explains in this New York Times op-ed:
[T]he Declaration co-opted the very language of English law to reject the mother country. …
The English Bill of Rights, like the Declaration, emerged at a moment of crisis. In 1689, the exiled James was raising an army to recapture the throne (he ultimately failed). To keep parliamentary opinion firmly against the old king, the Bill of Rights sets forth a long list of grievances against the crown.
The Declaration follows the same template and, in many cases, recites the same grievances. …
Likewise, the Declaration’s defense of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” conveyed nothing more radical than established British law. …
And yet, the Declaration of Independence makes no explicit claim to British pedigree, but appeals to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and “the supreme judge of the world” to support its argument. That turned what otherwise would have been a mere restatement of English law into an invitation to the world to recognize certain “self-evident” truths about equality and freedom.
† King Of The Heels: After a review of 44 pages of personal and official travel records, credit card statements and other financial documents, the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division concludes that Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) did not improperly use state money to pay for trips to New York and South America to meet his Argentine mistress, reports The Washington Post. The news for former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) is not so good: Former aide Andrew Young appeared before a federal grand jury in Raleigh believed to be looking into whether campaign funds had been improperly used.
† The Grim Reaper’s Favorite Number Is Three: The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger laments:
The Age of Celebrity died with Michael Jackson's heart.
Those of us dedicated to the zoology of celebrity should have known it was over when the death of next-to-nobody Anna Nicole Smith filled the airwaves in 2007 for a week. Celebrity had lost its meaning. We will bury its golden age in Jacko's tomb.
Marketing runs the world now. Because of marketing the world is overflowing with people who are famous, or anyway familiar. These people aren't celebrities. Not real celebrities. …
It has taken some time to see how modern media squashed the life out of genuine celebrity. Web sites, TV and magazines shot Michael Jackson and his white glove into the sky like a Roman candle. But in the nature of fireworks, modern media then fired thousands of other people into the same sky -- singers, actors, athletes, talk-show hosts, psychologists, comedians, models -- and turned them all into … familiar faces. We're awash in the washed up.
After that well ran dry, they created reality TV, which took nobodies and turned them into somebodies. It is no coincidence that the weird final version of Michael Jackson died when cable TV was running "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." The bottom had been reached.
Well, not quite: “Don't look now,” warns Henninger, “but the unlikeliest people are being restocked as celebrity inventory: politicians.”
Looks like the Celebrity Death Rule of Three is one of those immutable laws of physics, like gravity.
† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Is Kozinski The Victim Of A Vendetta?): Assigned by Chief Justice John Roberts to look into judicial misconduct allegations against Ninth Circuit chief judge Alex Kozinski, the 11-member judicial council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has issued its memorandum opinion. The council publicly admonishes Kozinski, but declines to impose further discipline, for what some characterize as “sexually explicit” material on his family Web site. Kozinski had issued an apology ("I have caused embarrassment to the federal judiciary. I put myself in a position where my private conduct became the subject of public controversy. … My unfortunate carelessness with certain files on my computer has embarrassed the federal courts. And for this, I am deeply sorry.") that was included in the opinion.
† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Never Again Or Forgive And Forget?): German prosecutors said that doctors have determined that John Demjanjuk, 89, is fit to stand trial on charges of being accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor Nazi death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II, reports The Associated Press. Prosecutors say they will limit Demjanjuk's court appearances to two 90-minute sessions daily. If convicted, he faces as up to 15 years in a German prison.
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