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Interesting articles you need to read
It’s Monday morning and you really don’t feel like working yet, right? Well, here are two good things you should read in furtherance of Operation Avoid Doing Real Work On A Monday Morning.
First up is a great article from Slate’s always interesting Dahlia Litwick. In the article, Litwick argues that the relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court has become dysfunctional, insofar as Congress now passes legislation it knows to be unconstitutional (passing them in an attempt to appease voters) with the knowledge that the Supremes will eventually set things right (while, at the same time, hypocritically decrying judicial activism). Referencing the provision of last week’s Military Commissions Act of 2006 which strips the civil courts of the ability to review detainee military commissions, my favorite paragraph of the article reads:
There is some irony in this congressional willingness to see the courts as some kind of constitutional chambermaid—as an entity that exists to clean up after Congress smashes up the room. It is especially ironic when it’s articulated by members of Congress who like to invoke judicial restraint as a constitutional value. But it is beyond ironic, and approaching parody, when Congress asks the court to clean up a bill it knows to be unconstitutional, when the bill itself includes a court-stripping provision.
This morning’s second piece isn’t really law-related, but QuizLaw has certainly been known to dabble in the closely related (and generally intermingled) world of politics. Anyway, Time magazine recently published what it calls “The Secret Letter from Iraq.” Written by a Marine officer who, as my Army friends say, is “down range,” this Marine offers a “wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission [which] contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics.” While it’s worth reading for the many bits told via various category headings such as “Saddest Moment” and “Best Chuck Norris Moment,” it’s especially worth reading if for no other reason than the fact that it references midgets, and midgets are always worth reading about:
Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.
And finally, although I haven’t read it yet, you can never go wrong with an article about Stephen Colbert. Especially a nice long one courtesy of New York Magazine. And if you get through that long sucker and still wanna’ kill some Monday time, they’ve also got a Colbert guide to winning the fall election.
