Freespace

Some more on the “separate but equal” argument

KipEsq. has a thorough response to my post about whether the California gay marriage decision can be analogized to the repudiation of separate but equal in Brown v. Board.

Pompeii in Houston

While in Houston this week I managed to drop in at the Pompeii exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. I've never seen Pompeii artifacts before, although of course I've heard of them. But they were every bit as beautiful and as horrifying as I'd been led to believe.

This is a photo of some 30 skeletons of victims who were killed together as they tried to escape the ash and smoke. This is the first thing you see upon entering the exhibit. My photo does not do justice to the horror of the real thing.

Me at the Dole Institute

I'll be speaking next Wednesday at the Dole Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, about eminent domain and property rights after Kelo v. New London.

More on the death of free speech in Canada

Mark Steyn: banned in Canada.

In the Lone Star State

I leave Saturday to speak at a couple conferences in Texas, so blogging will be light or nonexistent until I return on Wednesday.

The facts about eminent domain reform

The Victorville Daily Press is carrying my article about California's eminent domain ballot propositions. Excerpt:

Prop. 98 is being attacked by government bureaucrats and their supporters who want to keep abusing eminent domain as they have for decades. These bureaucrats wrote Prop. 99 with the specific intent of deceiving voters in to enacting a meaningless promise that will do nothing to protect property rights. It’s sickening, and voters should not fall for it.

If you think Kelo v. New London went too far, and if you think eminent domain abuse must be eliminated you should vote yes on Proposition 98 and no on Prop. 99.

(Read the rest...)

Doug Kmeic denied communion

Eyebrow-raising news on the Catholic front: law professor and Federalist Society mainstay Doug Kmeic claims he was denied communion by a chaplain who disapproved of Kmeic's (odd) endorsement of Barack Obama. That does seem like a pretty extreme response. Maybe a politician who votes in a way the Church disapproves of deserves such treatment, but a law professor who endorses that politician's candidacy? Isn't that a bit much? What about that law professor's research assistants?

Seems like a doctrinal tempest in the silliest of teapots, but I know (distantly) Doug Kmeic, and there's hardly a nicer, more levelheaded guy around, whatever one thinks of his opinions. This act seems like a disrespectful and extreme reaction to a minor political disagreement. More at SA.

A novel about Locke (the town)

There's a new book out about Locke, California, the fascinating Chinatown I blogged about here. The book is Locke 1928 by Shawna Yang Ryan.

From the Commonplace Book

"A barbarian [to the Greeks] was a man content to believe without reason and to live without liberty."--Will Durant, The Life of Greece 70 (1939)

Are civil unions “separate but equal”?

In my posts on the Marriage Cases, (1, 2) I’ve tended to agree with Justice Corrigan in dissent that so long as California allowed gay couples to form civil unions with the same substantive protections as straight couples, it does not violate the Constitution for the state to denominate the former “civil unions” and the latter “marriages.” That, to emphasize, was what was decided in yesterday’s decision—not whether gay couples can actually form such unions, which was already legal in California.

But what about this argument: for the state to permit gay and straight couples to create substantively identical partnerships, but with a different name, is “separate but equal,” and therefore a violation of the spirit, if not the words, of Brown v. Board of Education?