At the Auditorium Café...

... we'll listen to anything.

El Bulli — reputedly the best restaurant in the world — is closing.

"Dinner consisted of a set menu comprising some 40 small dishes costing about 250 euros (£220)."

I've never been there — or even to Spain — but I love that format for a meal: lots and lots of tiny dishes, predetermined by the chef. It's a paradox of choice and no choice that's quite delightful.

Eugene Volokh finds evidence that Asians are now white.

On the occasion of Gov. Nikki Haley identifying herself as white (when her ancestors come from India), he says:

"I first noticed this effect 10 years ago, at a party where a friend of mine commented that the guests were all white. I responded by mentioning about a dozen Asians; oh, she said, that’s right, but you know what I mean. At a recent UCLA conference I attended, two speakers complained that everyone on the panel was white, without even realizing that one of the speakers was ethnically Chinese, and another was an Asian Indian with skin darker than that of many American blacks."

It's an old question, who's white? Did you know that back in 1879, the Supreme Court seriously considered an argument that a black man was a "white person"? There was a federal statute that granted Indians a remedy against the United States when a "white person" committed a crime in Indian territory.

It is contended... that the term "white person," as here used, means no more then "not an Indian"...

The Court rejected that interpretation, however, because the terminology dated back to slavery times and...

It was, no doubt, thought if the United States made themselves liable only for such depredations as were committed by the whites,... Indians would be less likely to tolerate fugitive blacks in their country. Hence, as a means of preventing the escape of slaves, the change in the law was made.

The case is United States v. Perryman.

"Lessons From Wisconsin: What happens when you take on the public sector unions and win? You get a better state."

An interview with Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who's impressively articulate. I was watching this video with Meade, and he said: "That's the next Governor of Wisconsin."

Why should Obama think in terms of what the Supreme Court might say about his power to single-handedly raise the debt ceiling?

Jeffrey Rosen wonders, noting that the Supreme Court would probably not hear the case.

And even if the justices did agree to hear it, the conservative justices would be torn between their dislike of Obama and their commitment to expanding executive power at all costs. If all the justices are true to their constitutional philosophies, the Court would rule for Obama by a lopsided margin.

In fact, it makes plenty of sense for Obama to refer to what the Court would say even if he doesn't believe the question will end up in court. Why shouldn't he act deferential to judicial interpretation when it's not obstructing anything he presently wants to do? It's exactly the right time to strike that pose if he thinks it's flattering.

Anyway, Obama left himself plenty of room to shake off the deference if and when he wants. All he said was: "I’ve talked to my lawyers... They are not persuaded that that is a winning argument." Not only could the lawyers later become persuaded, Obama could make his own decision disagreeing with his lawyers, and he could decide to rely on a reading of the Constitution that he believes is correct even if he's not persuaded it's a "winning argument."

Now, is it true that the Supreme Court would say the President can, on his own raise the debt ceiling? The constitutional hook for this power is "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned." Rosen says:

All four liberal Justices are committed to a vision of “living constitutionalism” that interprets the historical evidence broadly...

He says a bit more than that, but not much to find 4 votes for presidential power. Only one more needed.

What about the conservative justices? Here the divisions in the conservative ranks might become relevant. There are three distinct strains of legal conservatives on the Court: the tea party conservative, Clarence Thomas, the libertarian conservative, Anthony Kennedy, and the pro-executive power conservatives, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia.

The tea party conservative, eh?

Of these five justices, Thomas is the only one whose judicial philosophy might lead him to side with Congress over Obama. As someone who believes that Congressional power over the purse should be construed strictly, Thomas might conclude that Article I gives Congress, and not the president, the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States”—a power that it has exercised by establishing a debt ceiling. The debt ceiling doesn’t repudiate the debt or question its validity, Thomas might hold; it simply threatens default by prohibiting the president from assuming extra debt beyond what Congress has authorized. According to this argument, Obama’s unilateral decision to take on additional debt to avoid a government default would not represent debt “authorized by law,” as the Fourteenth Amendment requires, and therefore wouldn’t be justified by the Amendment.

Isn't it funny how this "tea party" philosophy just sounds like a fair reading of the text? But only Clarence Thomas is crackpot enough to do that! I added the boldface to highlight what to me seems like the obvious interpretation: No one is talking about questioning the validity of the debt! When you fail to pay debts, you're not claiming they aren't valid. Why wouldn't all the Justices say that? Why would that inapt clause take precedence over the specific and clear clause in Article I, listing among Congress's powers the power "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States"?

Pelosi: Boehner "chose to go to the dark side."

"It’s time for us to end this theater of the absurd... It’s time for us to get real."

That doesn't sound very civil. Or compromise-y.

And what is this "dark side"? Apparently, it's conservatism!

"Walker approached the site in his usual sinister looking Yukon XL SUV with black tinted windows along with a few look-alike vehicles."

"It was surreal: 3 black SUVs speeding by [perhaps 45 mph], tires ka-thumping over railroad tracks one after the other. Protesters begin to yell as they get a glimpse of the vehicles in their peripheral vision, all turning to the road. They run after the vehicles, their signs flailing. Some want to run but decide to stay rooted by the railroad tracks that run behind the building where we’ve been assembling – maybe in hopes he’d double back or in realization that they won’t run fast enough to catch him. The chanting and yelling intensifies to a dull roar around the other side of the building and I listen to the state troopers get questioned by a couple of angry men: 'Do you honestly think that was under the speed limit?'"

Remind me why you think it was the 3 black SUVs that looked "sinister"? The Governor is hounded by people who call themselves "stalkers" ("Walker Stalkers"), and you fault him for taking security measures?

Rush Limbaugh: "The Tea Party is putting country before party."

"They can't be bought off with committee assignments or with campaign re-election funds. They can't be bought, and Washington can't understand this. They admit that it's refreshing but it's not as refreshing as compromise would be, speaking of which: Dingy Harry just came out and said that Boehner 3.0 is worse -- is even more unacceptable -- than the original. How is that for the spirit of compromise? We have the President of the United States, the real loser in all of this, the man who is in real trouble -- and we need to start acting that way, and we need to start believing it."

From the opening monologue of yesterday's show.  He was on fire, providing what felt, to me, like the  counterweight to the mainstream media meme (which is: the Tea Party people in Congress are reckless and insane).

"Whom will the public blame for debtageddon?"

Asks Ezra Klein, with prissily correct grammar and a neologism that reminds us of the recent Armageddon that wasn't: Carmageddon.

I'll tell you who I'll blame. I'll blame everyone who thought about the debt-ceiling crisis in that form, which reveals that it's all been jockeying for position in the next election. Interestingly, asking that question now is part of the jockeying.

Klein, ever biased in favor of Democrats, accordingly says:

In a 2010 paper presented at the American Political Science Association’s annual conference, Asger Lau Andersen, David Dreyer Lassen and Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen tried to take a systematic look at....

Oh! Good Lord! I'm crushed under the weight of the appearance of scholarship. Those names! Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen? A sketch comedy writer could not concoct a better name to exude the aura of pretentious loftiness.

But, hell! It's systematic.  No way it's ammunition for the partisan Klein to use to urge the GOP to... as they say... compromise.

... Voters don’t like budgetary breakdowns. More interesting was how voters apportion blame. “While governors are punished only when part of a unified government, legislatures are (almost) always punished.”
This suggests that when one party controls the government, voters blame them for budgetary breakdowns. But when the two parties split control, the executive is able to float above the squabbling in the legislature, or at least heavily influence the way the public assigns fault. “Governors may be more adept at the blame game that sometimes follows failures to finish a budget on time,” the authors speculate.

Got that?  The executive, Obama, may be able to "float above" the divided legislature, which is "(almost) always punished."

Got that, Republicans? You will be punished if you don't cave compromise.

Why Gov. Scott Walker isn't talking about the Milwaukee streetcar project.

You need to understand the history of Milwaukee urban transit and the role Walker played in it before he became Governor.

That story started 20 years ago, when Congress appropriated $289 million for a Milwaukee-area transit project. It was first slated for a bus-only highway between Milwaukee and Waukesha, but then-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson vetoed that idea in response to neighborhood opposition.

Congress then took away $48 million, and state and local officials started a major study of how to use the remaining $241 million. The study recommended building a light rail system, adding bus-and-car-pool lanes to I-94 and expanding bus service.

Walker, then a state representative from Wauwatosa, was among the suburban Republicans who helped kill that plan, persuading fellow Republican Thompson to rule out using any state or federal money to study light rail.

In frustration, Milwaukee community activists filed two civil rights complaints against the state with the U.S. Department of Transportation in late 1998.

The complaints noted that many of the central city's African-American residents didn't have cars, but nearly all white suburbanites did. Therefore, activists argued, the state was discriminating against minorities by favoring freeways over public transit.

Read the whole thing to see how this played out in Milwaukee politics, with Walker favoring buses over trains and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett favoring rail. Barrett was the Democratic candidate for Governor last fall, and now he's got his rail project approved. He's not seeking state money, and the the settlement in the lawsuit supposedly "prohibits the state from blocking the streetcar project."

IN THE COMMENTS: Readers are pointing out that the proposed route for the streetcar does not extend into Milwaukee's minority neighborhoods.

The real goal of a lawsuit often fails to match up with the legal ground that is used to invoke judicial power. Similarly, political rhetoric often exploits values that don't square with what politicians are really doing. There are many reasons to play the race card, and only one is that you actually intend to serve the individuals you are leveraging your argument on.

Wisconsin recall elections are overwhelmed by so-called "outside" spending.

Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) complained about it:

"For the first time in the history of Wisconsin politics - and you can print this - candidates are now almost irrelevant to campaigns... They have hijacked these elections - both sides. And the candidates have nothing to do with it."

But note that he's complaining about it in the context of the Republican National Committee announcing its support long after all the heavy spending by groups — e.g., unions — supporting the Democratic candidates.

"Maybe the cavalry should have gotten here before they stormed the fort, plundered the arsenal, poisoned the well and put us in the stockade," Ellis said.

"President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day."

Obama spammed us.

"Apple has more cash on hand than the US government."

"The Treasury reported a total operating cash balance of $73.768 billion, while Apple is reported to be holding $75.876 billion according to Apple Insider."

"Cambodians... refused to believe anything bad about the United States."

Writes Terry McCoy, in the new issue of Isthmus...

I vividly recall failing to explain to a young boy that some things aren't wonderful in America. People even suffer from depression.

"No, America is beautiful," he replied.

McCoy was in the Peace Corps, where, he complains, he felt "a deep sense of isolation" and "failed time and again to integrate into a culture different from my own." Eventually, he realized he would always be "an outsider," because "I wasn't Khmer and never would be."

Isthmus exploits this alienated young man's musings for a cover story titled "Not my Madison/Political unrest has changed the city's character." You see, when the alienated young man returned from the place where he felt alienated, he found that he was still alienated, because his city had changed. It used to be so harmonious, but somehow these people who were not the Madisonians he grew up with had taken over political power.

Well, Mr. McCoy, I hate to bring you down, but the city of Madison is the capital of an entire state, and, sometimes, an election gives the majority and the governorship to — gasp! — that other party, the one the people of Madison would like to discipline its citizens never to mention any positive feeling for. That discipline was the harmony of Madison that you remember, pre-Cambodia. When the Republicans from the hinterlands came to town and began to enact their policies, Madisonians had a collective nervous breakdown in public.

Post-protests, McCoy is bummed out to find Madisonians in a bad mood. They failed, despite strenuous efforts, to deny Republicans the power that had been legitimately and democratically won in a thoroughly fair election.  America is beautiful, as the Cambodian boy said. But you like to think of him as a fool.

I would love to link to this article, but — alas! — I cannot, not until — what is it? a week? — Isthmus deems it time to put the text on line. Ironically, despite all the left-wing politics and heavy-handed attacks on corporate greed and pressure on us to subordinate our needs to environmentalism, Isthmus wants the people of Madison to pick up the newsprint paper. There are stacks and stacks of this rag all over town. I can't think of any reason for this other than... corporate greed: they want to maximize ad revenue.

So, I'd love to give my readers more of the context of this article, but you can't read the whole thing unless you can get your hands on the inky, pulpy object that I have right here. There's a limit to how many quotes I'm willing to type out to be fair to this young man, who comes across as a brooding introvert. I wonder what the first draft of this article was. I can't help speculating that he had his introspective Cambodian journals, and then he got the idea — or somebody insisted — that he shoehorn all this Wisconsin protest material into it — quotes from UW sociology professors and whatnot.

"When people have been decisively crushed, they get demoralized." — UW Prof. Pam Oliver

That's one of the pull quotes. The other pull quote is:

There's a new sense that normal citizens can't change anything.

Normal citizens! Because — in the Madison hive mind — the people who vote for Republicans are not normal.

UPDATE: The text is up.

Democrats criticize Gov. Nikki Haley for identifying herself as "white" on her voter application form.

Her choices were: ""white, black/African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American or other."

The [State Election Commission] doesn't attempt to verify a person's race, but that data is used by U.S. Department of Justice to enforce fair voting practices. Collecting the information is a requirement of state law....

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines "Caucasian" as the "characteristic of a race of humankind native to Europe, North Africa, and southwest Asia and classified according to physical features -- used especially in referring to persons of European descent having usually light skin pigmentation."

It's bad enough that people are forced to make this choice. Criticizing them for how they puzzle it out when they are in a difficult category is just disgusting.

At the Tall Corn Café...

... you can aspire to anything.

The chant in Tahrir Square today: "Islamic, Islamic. Neither secular nor liberal."

The NYT reports:

Tens of thousands of Egyptian Islamists poured into Tahrir Square on Friday calling for a state bound by strict religious law and delivering a persuasive show of force in a turbulent country showing deep divisions and growing signs of polarization.

The shape of Egypt five months into its revolution remains distinctly undecided, and Islamists have long been the best organized political force in this religiously conservative country. Some activists speculated that their show of strength would serve as a jolt to the secular forces who helped to start the revolution but who remain divided, largely ineffectual and woefully unprepared for coming elections....

In terms of turnout, one of the largest since the revolution, the demonstration on Friday evoked past scenes in Tahrir Square. But many of the similarities stopped there. Cries for national unity and coexistence between Christians and Muslims made way for familiar religious chants and demands that Egypt adhere to Islamic law, known as Shariah.

“Islamic law is above the Constitution,” one banner read....

“If democracy is the voice of the majority and we as Islamists are the majority, why do they want to impose on us the views of minorities — the liberals and the secularists?” asked Mahmoud Nadi, 26, a student. “That’s all I want to know."

"After all the wind and storm, what’s going on with the high-speed train?"

"It’s crawling slower than a snail. I hope nothing happens to it."

"The house on Friday passed a debt-limit bill after it was recrafted to appease tea party-allied conservatives..."

"... but President Obama said the plan has 'no chance of becoming law' and instead urged Senate Democrats and Republicans to reach a 'bipartisan compromise.'"

Hey! Why won't he compromise?

On the Capital City Trail today...

... I stopped to photograph the Queen Anne's lace and (especially) the gayfeather:



Enlarge to see the gayfeather, the spiky purple wildflower. And here I was, just about exactly a year ago, stopping in the same place, for the same flowers.