Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has passed away at the age of 77. He served his country honorably in the Vietnam War and was the first Vietnam Vet to be elected to Congress. May he rest in peace.

UPDATE: More detailed obituary of Rep. Murtha's career and service to his country available here. In commenting, please follow our policy on not speaking ill of the dead.

And the Saints are marching in! Never really believed I would one day be able to talk about the Super Bowl Champions, the New Orleans Saints.

And what a great football game.

You have no idea what this means to the people of that city. This team just may manage to transform how New Orleans thinks of itself.

Since I am on the record as supporting the exclusion of television cameras from all official government proceedings, I obviously can't support this, as I was asked to, but pass it on for those of you who are into such things.

Today's first reading offers us a good example of the value reclaimed by the new translation of the Mass (see my posts here and here for more about this).

The Lord's arrival before Isaiah is heralded by the seraphim in these words: "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the Earth is full of his glory." (Is 6:3.) A little later, we join them in proclaiming the same hymn in the sanctus: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dóminus Deus Sábaoth. ("Sabaoth" is a transliteration of the Hebrew for "hosts"—in the sense of "multitudes"—or armies. The vulgate translates it as "exercituum.")

Yet what Isaiah heard isn't what the sanctus purports to say in the current translation. We instead hear: "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might." That is all true—He is all those things—but it isn't what the prayer says, and even if we set aside the substantive change in its meaning (cf. Sancrosanctum Concilium, no. 50; Comme le Prevoit, no. 6; Paul VI, Changes in Mass for a Greater Apostolate, nos. 7 and 11), the 1973 translation obscures and attenuates its scriptural origin. How many people made that connection today, even when the source text is right there in the reading?

We face a similar problem shortly thereafter with the ecce agnus dei, where we echo the Centurion from Mt 8:8, merely substituting ourselves for his servant: Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. The 1973 translation renders the first clause as "I am not worthy to receive you," which works—so long as it is universally understood (as I suspect that it is not) that "receive" is to be understood idiomatically, as in "to receive guests"—but likewise obscures the scriptural origin of the prayer, a defect remedied in the new translation by correctly translating the passage as "I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof."

As I have said, the new translation is not without its warts, but it is far from lacking in virtues.

Added: it's pointed out to me that Revelation 4:8 also contains the proclamation, in a slightly different form, and might also serve as the scriptural root for the sanctus. Its appearance in both books, I think, bolsters the concept of the sanctus as the unending hymn of praise in heaven; to some extent, it may simply be that Isaiah and Revelation are two windows through which we glimpse the same divine truth. If so, it may be beside the point to ask which is the source of the sanctus, insofar as the answer may then be "both/and" rather than "either/or."

Still, to the extent the question isn't academic, I can't help but think Isaiah's text is a closer fit. It's the word at the end of the prayer which seems to give it away: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus sabaoth.

"Sabaoth" stands out in this latin prayer because, as was said above, it isn't a latin word, but rather a transliteration of a Hebrew word. So where does it come from? Not from Isaiah 6 as the vulgate has it: St. Jerome rendered that passage sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus, Deus exercituum (exercituum=hosts, multitudes, or armies). Nor do we find sabaoth (or exercituum, for that matter) in Revelation 4, where we read: ????? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ? ???????????, ? ?? ??? ? ?? ??? ? ?????????, or as the vulgate has it, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus omnipotens, qui erat, et qui est, et qui venturus est ("Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come").

In the septuagint text of Isaiah 6, however, we do find "sabaoth," rendered in Greek: ????? ????? ????? ?????? ?????? (agios agios agios, kurios sabaoth). If I had to guess, then, in composing the sanctus before the vulgate was written, the Church composed the prayer in latin but chose to follow the septuagint in transliterating rather than translating the word "sabaoth."

The New York Fishwrap's Gail Collins says (my emphases and comments added):

Normally, a senator who’s feeling testy will just put a hold on one presidential nomination as Jim Bunning of Kentucky did last year when he stopped action on the confirmation of a deputy U.S. trade representative because he was upset that the Canadian Parliament was considering a bill to ban the sale of cigarettes with candy flavorings. … [or as did] Christopher Bond of Missouri [in placing] a hold on the nomination of Martha Johnson to be the leader of the General Services Administration since last summer because he was ticked off with the G.S.A. over construction of a new federal building in Kansas City.

. . . .

That was a normal Senate procedure. Now Shelby has upped the ante with a blanket hold on everybody. His incredibly grave reasons were the desire to see that a defense contract for a new tanker is awarded to a bidder who will do the assembly work in Alabama. Also, he feels that a new F.B.I. facility for testing explosive devices should be conveniently located in Huntsville. [The rat wants more pork.]

. . . .

People, can’t we have a citizen revolt over this? [There is already one in progress, but Collins and her colleagues have spent the last year alternately ignoring them and deriding them as "teabaggers." Oh, wait: my mistake. I just assumed that Collins understands what "this" is, but apparently not:] It’s all about the filibuster rule. [No, it is not. It is about abuse of the filibuster. No one would say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre showed that chainsaws should be banned; like a chainsaw, the filibuster is a valuable and important tool which can be abused. Shelby's disgraceful misbehavior shows only the propensity of fallen humanity toward self-serving and rent-seeking behaviors, not any defect in the system itself. To be sure, systems should be designed to harness this propensity, which is the genius of our Constitution: instead of trying to fight human ambition, or worse yet pretending that it doesn't exist, the Consitution pits—as Madison put it—ambition against ambition. Nevertheless, any system created will be abused, and this potential is not an independently sufficient reason to change a system that works.] The Obama administration is hamstrung because the Senate now requires 60 votes to get anything done, from health care reform to the confirmation of the woman who’s going to oversee building maintenance. [Note the clutch of claims here, all wrong: that American government is designed to smoothly convey a President's agenda into law, that succesful Senate resistance to the U.S. and White Houses is therefore pathological, and that the present situation is novel, not only in degree but kind. All of this is done for the purpose of framing the foolish action Collins is about to suggest—using lamppost journalism—as not only a boon, but as necessary to restore of a mythical status quo ante]

. . . .

“It’s beyond the breaking point,” said Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, who plans to introduce a bill to eliminate the filibuster next week. [Told you.] There is a stupendous lack of real enthusiasm in the Senate for doing anything as dramatic as eliminating the senators’ right to stop things. [Another thing we owe to enlightened self-interest.] Some experts think Joe Biden, as presiding officer, could get rid of the filibuster by issuing a ruling when a new Congress assembles next January. [The "nuclear option"? Not this again!] The vice president’s office indicated that Biden would be happy to get going on that project the very second hell freezes over. Which is about the same time the Senate is going to take up Harkin’s bill.

“But I’m hoping we can get enough people interested in this that it becomes an election issue. In Senate races this year, people ought to be asked,” Harkin said. [Which in this context is a constitutive statement. Harkin certainly believes this, but his role in this article—this is lamppost journalism 101, folks—is as Collins' sockpuppet. This quote isn't a report on a Senator's aspirations, it's an attempt to drum up interest and create an election issue.]

Harkin has been introducing the same bill since 1995, through lean years and fat for his own party. [As Emerson put it, in that long-suffering and much-abused quote, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."] When his fellow Democrats were in the minority during the Bush years, they were, of course, a lot fonder of the filibuster than they are now. [Now there's an understatement. As Paul pointed out in the comments of my last Shelby post, some of those who now fret about the filibuster held quite different views once-upon-a-convenience ago.]

Back then, it was Republicans who demanded change. [Those who demanded change were Republicans, but some of us cried foul, as my post linked above (s.v. "the nuclear option? not again!") shows.] “Far too many of the president’s nominees were never afforded an up or down vote because several Democrats chose to block the process for political gain,” complained — um — Richard Shelby. [Ah: so not only is he a corrupt little toe-rag, he's a hypocritical corrupt little toerag.]

Oh, enough of this. Let's have some more Elgar:

Be it ordered, an immediate wedgie and light taunting for Senator Shelby of Alabama. When you read that a Republican Senator has put a blanket hold on Senate action on Presidential nominees over pork spending, the natural instinct is to think, wow, here's a guy who's really standing up for fiscal responsibility. Here's a guy who's really going out on a limb to fight back at the poisonous porcine pestilence.

Nope.

Turns out that his beef is that he isn't getting enough pork. Surprise, Hawk; I'm the bad guy!

Even if we stipulate that, as Cap'n Ed says, "[t]he hold process is perfectly legitimate in stopping a bad candidate from immediate confirmation," but it nevertheless "isn’t at all legitimate to hold up every single appointment," it is always illegitimate to do so for such ignoble purposes. This isn't standing on principle, it's "your money or your nominees"—it's highway robbery in suit and tie.

Added: Slightly less offensive, but no less pretentious and silly, is Prof. Balkin's ludicrous suggestion that this approaches the point of a Constitutional Crisis. Balkin is presumably forced to make such ridiculous claims because the institutional limits on government are presently an impediment to enacting an agenda he favors, which is why (to my recollection) he said nothing at all about Democratic obstructionism over President Bush's judicial appointments. This is a common error on the left of late: they think "the system" is broken because it hinders their agenda. But that is not proof that the system doesn't work; the resistance of the system to a deeply foolish agenda is proof that the system works very well. They just don't see it because they don't see the foolishness of their agenda. Given an agenda that they are less attached to—should the GOP retake the reins in both Congress and the White House two years hence, for instance—expect a change of hymn sheet.

...speaks volumes

In his recent book on the evolution of ecclesiology, Fr. Richard McBrien avers that

there is no evidence that, before his death, Peter actually served the church of Rome as its first Bishop, even though that "fact" is regularly taken for granted....

... By the late second or early third centuries, however, Peter did become identified in tradition as the first Bishop of Rome. But tradition is not a fact factory. It cannot make something into a historical fact when it is not.

The Church 96 (2008). In so framing the issue, with all due respect, I think McBrien misses the point. There is evidence: the tradition. As I've said, tradition can be authority; cf. 1 Blackstone Commentaries 67 (reprint 1979) ("the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind ... whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. This it is that gives it it's weight and authority" (footnote omitted)). McBrien is certainly correct that tradition doesn't create fact, and must retreat in the face of contrary evidence, but it gives witness to facts, establishing a presumption: the existence of so ancient a tradition shifts the burden of proof to those who claim error. Was St. Peter the Bishop of Rome? It is not McBrien's prerogative—in Michael Oakeshott's phrase from Rationalism in Politics—to haul the testimony of eighteen centuries "before the tribunal of his intellect," deny it, and demand it be proven to his satisfaction. It is his burden to show why tradition is wrong. One thinks again of the Shakespere test: it is not the tradition that is on trial here; still less St. Peter. It is Fr. McBrien.

Moreover, one must note that McBrien errs if he means to assert that he has traced the tradition to its source. At most, he has traced the tradition to its earliest documentation; more likely, he has traced it to its earliest surviving documentation. Either way, he establishes merely an upper limit on the tradition's origin.

Lastly, McBrien offers some evidence against what we might call the "strong papacy" concept. None work: Peter was "shown consulting with the other Apostles" (unthinkable!), "even being sent by them [on missions]" (servus servorum dei!), and that Paul criticized Peter (can you conceive of it? Someone criticizing the pope?!).

Just a few thoughts as I read past these pages.

"Don't Ask Don't Tell" (i.e. 10 U.S.C. § 654) returns to the stage in a story that implies the military has changed its mind. See also this. For my part, I have made my Somervellian position on this issue pellucidly clear, most recently in this post last year:

I believe that we should give a great deal of deference to the professionals in a given field—the people who are hands-on, the people on the front lines. ... For a fairly extreme example, an issue on which I find it appropriate that my position is [unqualified] deference to the professionals, my position on "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is essentially "whatever the military wants." If the military want it, § 654 should stay; if they want it gone, it should be repealed. I have no idea if gays serving openly in the military is good, bad, or indifferent to the ability of the military to conduct operations. Congress certainly doesn't. And if you aren't presently serving on active duty in the United States military, neither do you. The best judges of what hurts the operational readiness of the United States military and what helps it—the sole criterion where this issue is concerned—is the United States military themselves. Their word should be decisive.

... [T]hat's an extreme if not unique example [of my willingness to defer]…. I counsel deference[] in the proportion dictated by specific context, not abdication of judgment. The military is an exceptional context, given their mission and the imminent risk to their lives and limbs; it accordingly gets exceptionally high deference.

If the military concludes ("conclude" implying more than a mere whim or fleeting fashion) that it is no longer troubled by gays serving, section 654 should be repealed. Congressional interference (a fortiori when motivated by nothing more than pallid political correctness) is at its least defensible when lives are on the line.

Finally, in regard to the statement that the President "faced the fact that if he did not change the policy, his administration would be forced to defend publicly the constitutionality of a law he had long opposed," as I noted in this post, one must treat with skepticism the claim that the President opposes DADT:

Once we understand that DADT is not merely authorized but enacted by statute, we understand that it can't be "eliminated" without the repeal of § 654. That is ineluctably a job for Congress. And Obama isn't running for Congress - he's running away from it. If given the job he's asking for, he will have less power to repeal § 654 than he does today. As President, he can only "recommend to [Congress'] consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient"; as a member of the Senate he could write and introduce such legislation. That also begs the question: if President Obama would be in favor of eliminating DADT, why hasn't Senator Obama introduced any bills repealing § 654?

(Emphasis and citation deleted.) Indeed, the depth of his commitment is hinted at by the shallowness of his analysis, as reported in the Times' story: "Obama told [the] Defense Secretary … [and] chairman of the joint chiefs of staff[] that the law was 'just wrong.'"

Heckuva job, Barry.

Man. If I could only get that tone from a 335...

Remember this?

Sixty is the magic number. If [Democrats] reach 60 Democrats in the Senate, then the days of Republican obstruction are over. With Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, there's nothing we can't accomplish.

That was Hillary Clinton in October 2008. Well, they got it. I mention it because now they've lost it, and Paul Krugman is worried that Obama may end up without a significant first-term achievement. I was sure that Clinton was right, but in light of recent events, Krugman's worry doesn't seem fanciful.

Added: Why doesn't the Ledbetter Act count (for better or worse)?

We haven't had one for a while, so let's, and let's have some Joe with it:

I agree with this:

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the president’s criticism of the court’s decision, although as Linda Greenhouse points out, he was less than precise in his description of the holding. But there was also absolutely nothing inappropriate about the justice’s reaction to him. Both the president and the justices are political actors, and all are entitled to screw up their faces and grumble in public as they see fit. Anyone who’s watched Alito at oral argument at the high court knows that he screws up his face and mutters to himself all the time.

The suggestion that he was showboating or grandstanding last night is spectacularly unfair. Unlike several of his colleagues, Alito is meticulously polite, balanced, and measured on the bench, and goes out of his way to shun big drama. I’m sure if Alito could take it back this morning he would. I’m equally sure that if he attends the next SOTU at all, he won’t move so much as a muscle.

As I see it, despite it being unorthodox, the President was hardly that out-of-bounds to challenge the Court in such way. That being said, if Obama is going to choose to challenge the justices directly, I think Alito (or any one of them) had the right to respond.

HT: The Daily Dish

TNR's Jonathan Chait takes it further (HT via the Dish again), and as referenced in the above quote, unlike Joe Wilson, Alito was correct.

I said this in the comments a few days ago, but in light of Alan Grayson's latest comments, it seems that we really can't emphasize this enough, folks:

[Citizens United v. FEC] will probably benefit Democrats far more than Republicans. I'm not happy about that. And while apprehensiveness about the practical difficulties created by a new flood of money into the system is warranted, the borderline hysteria of some critics is not. For instance, the President said … that the case "strikes at democracy itself." That's been typical of the sort of silly overreaction we've seen, but it doesn't make a lot of sense: The key truth that no amount of screaming about Citizens United will erase is that elections are decided by votes, we get one each, and how we use it is known only in petto.

To assert that corporations can now buy elections is to assert that voters are so dumb as to vote based on no more than the last commercial they saw. Ironically, we just saw an example of precisely the opposite in Massachusetts. Coakley and her enablers spent a lot of money on commercials, and it made absolutely no difference. The power of corporate paid advertising to define a candidate, moreover, is as obsolete as the power of corporate media to do so. The internet has demolished the gatekeeping role of media corporations in the information business, so why would we expect corporations less institutionally expert in manipulating public perceptions to be any better at it?

As my mom always used to say, it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt. There are plenty of legitimate issues to discuss vis-à-vis this landmark case; perhaps public officials, of all people, could either discuss those issues like adults (instead of resorting to the sort of foamy nonsense that has characterized "progressive" reaction), or keep their mouths shut.

The Saints have done it.

Unfortunately, so did the Colts, but the Jets were outplayed.

I've had my disagreements with David Brooks, but I think he hit the nail squarely on the head yesterday evening, dispelling the bizarre notion that Citizens United will peculiarly help the GOP:

[The decision] will have this effect. What do corporations, when they go to Washington, what do they want? One, they want subsidies from Washington. Two, they want to crush small businesses who are hoping to compete with them by erecting regulatory hurdles.

So, I think they will use that money to try to essentially hurt small business, who don't have lobbyists, don't have money to spend. And I think both of those are very negative effects on the country.

I do not necessarily think it is great for the Republican Party and terrible for the Democratic Party, because when you look at who is willing to subsidize corporations and erect regulatory barriers, both parties actually do that. So, I think will have bad effects, but not necessarily partisan effects.

(And Brooks, keep in mind, thinks that the decision was bad, so he has no dog in defending it.) The only bum note here is the idea that parties are equally likely to serve such desires, but it's very obvious that the (all-but dogmatically deregulatory) GOP is far less likely to do so than the (dogmatically regulation-friendly) Democrats.

The contrary perception seems, to my mind, to be based on two precepts, one obsolete, the other wrong. The former is the idea that the GOP is the party of the rich. Not so. We know from exit polls that the rich are as divided as the rest of the nation, and even Democrats have conceded the point, albeit grudingly and backhandedly (e.g. What's the Matter with Kansas?). The latter is the unexamined assumption that "corporation" means PepsiCo or IBM. You have to understand that when we're talking about "corporations," we mean the corporate organizational form. This ruling applies equally to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, unions, and so forth. As Kennedy's opinion notes:

[The court has struck down many] restrictions [on speech] that have been attempted at different stages of the speech process … [and t]he law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations—including nonprofit advocacy corporations—either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Thus, the following acts would all be felonies under §441b: The Sierra Club runs an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests; the National Rifle Association publishes a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U. S. Senator supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate’s defense of free speech. … §441b would [even] seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds.

(Emphases added.) Think of ACSblog—the blog of the American Constitution Society, a liberal think tank and student group—for an example of the last.

It just isn't accurate to suggest that its partisan valence is one-sided, and to the extent that it is, as Brooks points out, the critics have the polarity backwards.

I have an extremely tentative, "from 35,000 feet" view that has been forming in my mind about Citizens United. Here's my basic theory of the case's underlying paradigm:

The first amendment protects an "open marketplace of ideas" from government interference. You and I can participate in that marketplace to the best of your abilities and such abilities as you can acquire in combination with like-minded citizens. But you have to be on the field to be in the game, hence the validity (to a point) of disclosure and disclaimer requirements.

Now, consider this: if such is the court's paradigm, isn't that a serious obstacle for the petitioners in Doe v. Reed? Doe is a case from Washington where petitioners want to keep the anonymity of voters who sign petitions to place policy measures on ballots. If "on the field to play the game" is the idea, how does that principle play out in Doe? Here's one thought: You can play the game by signing the petition, but to do so, you have to be on the field: you can't sign from the anonymity of the stands.

A comment on my post this morning about Citizens United says something that we're sure to hear a lot in coming days: "money isn't necessarily equivalent to speech." That stands or falls depending on just how much stress on places on "necessarily."

As it happens, in McConnell v. FEC, Justice Scalia wrote an essay on the supposedly regulation-sustaining proposition that "money is not speech." I think it behooves everyone to read it, and since "everyone" includes non-lawyers, I have reproduced it below the fold, shorn of its citations.

A wild proposal:

We propose adding a provision to 28 U.S.C. 1254 providing [sic.] that each term, the number of cases taken by the Supreme Court [on certiorari] may not exceed the number of cases taken pursuant to … court of appeals certifications[]. The Supreme Court’s docket would then be driven partly by the perceived needs of the judicial system, as determined by the lower court judges themselves.

Gee. What could possibly go wrong with that?