The Court changes

So, the resignation has come down from on high, from the most powerful Justice of the US Supreme Court. No, not Chief Justice Rehnquist, as many expected, but Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- who has been the linchpin in so many cases over her 24 terms that this may as well have been "the O'Connor Court" (not unlike the way it was functionally "the Brennan Court" for quite some time).

akirlu's first reaction was, "I guess this means they'll nominate Alberto Gonzales." But there has been more resistance than one might think to a Gonzales nomination, from unexpected sources. Take this analysis from Jan Crawford Greenburg of the Chicago Tribune (a writer much respected at SCOTUSBlog):

"Gonzales, 49, would meet fierce opposition from the conservative groups that see him as too moderate to replace the conservative Rehnquist. As a Texas Supreme Court justice, Gonzales voted to strike down some state abortion regulations, and as White House counsel, he opposed taking a hard line against affirmative action.

But Bush has long said he would like to name the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court and likes the idea of the "Gonzales Court," sources close to the White House said. The political calculation for Bush is whether he risks offending his conservative base to make Gonzales chief justice or holds off, gambling that a liberal or more moderate justice, such as John Paul Stevens or Sandra Day O'Connor, would also retire during his presidency."

In that respect, O'Connor's departure makes a Gonzales nomination for Rehnquist's seat, should Rehnquist retire, more likely. It also means that Bush will probably nominate someone more likeable to the hard Right this time, go through the bruising battle, and then have Gonzales ready to go as a comparative "moderate" next time.

Greenburg also has a good article about the vetting process, and whose advice is being sought, including that blast from the Reagan past, Ed Meese.

The real question is, will Bush try to replace O'Connor with another woman? It's hard to imagine Bush wants Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be the only woman on the Court.

Again, a good source to follow all the ins-and-outs over the next few weeks will be the Supreme Court Nomination Blog.

Good news for Stephen Breyer

After 11 years as the least senior Justice, someone else will finally make the coffee in this room:

Bearing Arms

So, what with some of the talk about Kelo, I was at PrawfsBlog the other day. And I spotted a very interesting post about 2nd Amendment issues by Kaimi Wenger. He was responding to a fellow by the name of Dave Kopel who had written a post on The Volokh Conspiracy that maintained much of the violence inflicted on citizens in Zimbabwe was due to active disarmament by Mugabe's administration. Kopel has also written, in National Review, that "the Darfur genocide — like the genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia, and so many other nations in the last century — was made possible only by the prior destruction of [the right to bear arms]."

Wenger's reply used the Mormon experience in the US as an example of how, sometimes, even being armed doesn't necessarily stop violence and/or repression from being visited upon you.

But the real eye-opener, for me, was in the comments. Yuval Rubenstein pointed to this article from March 2003 in the Christian Science Monitor. The article is about Iraq, just on the eve of the US invasion.

Iraqi public well-armed and wary

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – With a gun culture that closely resembles that of the United States, Iraq is one of the most heavily armed societies in the world. Its tradition of self-reliance and hard desert and mountain living puts it on a gun-per-person level rivaling other clan systems in Yemen or Somalia.

As US military strategists look ahead to a possible war in Iraq - and a postwar period of working with the Iraqi people to establish more representative rule - firearms loom large. What Iraqis do with those weapons if the US launches an invasion will determine success or failure for Washington. Most war plans, including a United Nations postwar contingency plan leaked in New York last week, assume a swift fall of the regime, and little Iraqi resistance."

One of the big deal arguments of gun supporters is the contention that an armed citizenry is impossible to tyrannize. That an ad hoc militia (rather than the one regulated by Congress, as in Article I of the Constitution) is the final defense against the US Federal government from overreaching.

But the example of Iraq shows otherwise. 43 busy gun shops in Baghdad, and a repressive Ba'athist regime. Not or.

Which goes a long way to validating one of my standard lines: The dirty little secret of politics is that all regimes -- all regimes -- rule with at least the implicit consent of the governed. That the real tragedy of, say, Tiananmen Square wasn't the protesters who were shot by the Chinese People's Army... But that the majority of Beijing, rather than supporting the protesters and overturning the government as in Eastern Europe, voted with their feet and stayed home.

It also says, in a Dave Neiwert kind of way, much about the potential and possibility of an armed, popularly supported, indigenous form of American fascism.

The Long Tail wags

Dan Bricklin -- who invented the spreadsheet -- has this to say:

Even listening on music players and the Internet is long-tail: In an interview with Larry Magid on ITConversations, RealNetwork's Rob Glaser said [at minute 2:45] that in a given month over 90% of Rhapsody's one million songs are played at least once and the top 100 songs make up only 1% of the listens. I wonder how identical people's music libraries are if you look at their high-capacity music player. Probably many quite different mixes and that personal part is what makes an iPod so popular and better than radio.

Gosh... It almost sounds like, if only RIAA member labels would stop cutting their backlist titles, they'd get more sales overall. (In other words, if you follow that link you'll see how CD sales have fallen in absolute units, yes, but that's because there are fewer titles available. CD sales per title have been climbing, despite [or possibly because of] "piracy". If the Long Tail idea is valid -- and Glaser's comments certainly point that way -- then yes, cutting those "small selling" backlist titles really can completely screw you.)

{by way of David Weinberger}