Antinome

Happy National Geek Day

Time has a great joint interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon:

TIME: That's exactly the simile I was looking for. So you guys both have movies coming out on September 30th.

NG: It will be National Geek Day.

I think it should be made a real holiday.  Make sure you read to the end, the imagery of the last story told by Gaiman is priceless. 

I am curious about Gaiman's movie, as opposed to Serenity, which I have heard alot about (mostly all good) I have heard nothing about Mirrormask.

Gaiman also mentions that there may be a movie based on Death: The High Cost of Living.  Now I am trying to figure out who could play Death, I can't imagine I will be happy with the choice.

Article via Instapundit

So will the Penguins swim in the Lake of Fire

The New York Times reports that conservatives are finding all sorts of political meaning in the movie March of the Penguins, including:

Richard A. Blake, co-director of the film studies program at Boston College and the author of "The Lutheran Milieu of the Films of Ingmar Bergman" said that like many films, "March of the Penguins" was open to a religious interpretation.

"You get a sense of these animals - following their natural instincts - are really exercising virtue that for humans would be quite admirable," he said. "I could see it as a statement on monogamy or condemnation of gay marriage or whatever the current agenda is."

One little problem,

"The world is, indeed, teeming with homosexual, bisexual and transgendered creatures of every stripe and feather," Bagemihl writes in the first page of his book. "From the Southeastern Blueberry Bee of the United States to more than 130 different bird species worldwide, the 'birds and the bees,' literally, are queer."

In New York, it's the penguins.

At the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy, two male Chinstrap penguins, have been in an exclusive relationship for four years. Last mating season, they even fostered an egg together.

"They got all excited when we gave them the egg," said Rob Gramzay, senior keeper for polar birds at the zoo. He took the egg from a young, inexperienced couple that hatched an extra and gave it to Silo and Roy. "And they did a really great job of taking care of the chick and feeding it."

Of the 53 penguins in the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy are not the only ones that are gay. In 1997, the park had four pairs of homosexual penguins. In an effort to increase breeding, zookeepers tried to separate them by force. They failed, said Gramzay.

Only one of the eight bonded with a female. The rest went back to same-sex relationships, not necessarily with the same partner. Silo and Roy, long-time homosexuals, got together (or pair-bonded, in official penguin lingo) after that failed experiment.

At the New York Aquarium, no one suspected Wendell and Cass were gay when they first bonded. Penguins don't have external sex organs, so visually there's no surefire way to tell whether they are male or female. But over time, people began to wonder.

Of course maybe its just because they are in New York.

Via Juan Non Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy

Padilla

Update:  reading over the District Court Opinion, I think the Fourth Court of Appeals vastly overstated the stipulation.  It goes straight to he's guilty so the president has the right to hold him as an enemy combatant.  Completely misss the issue.

Yesterday the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the summary judgment granted to Padilla that had held that he needed to be charged or released.  As I said in a comment on this post at the Volokh Conspiracy, I yield to no one a greater outrage at the fact that President Bush claimed that he had a right to detain and hold deny all basic rights to a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil solely on an affidavit.  When I saw the headline yesterday about the opinion I was angered and began composing in my head a pretty good rant about it. 

That being said, when I read the opinion, I actually found myself maybe okay with the Court's position, (though I am little confused as to Padilla's attorney's strategy).  The key to me is footnote one.  When I first scanned the opinion, I kept wondering why is the Court just accepting that he is an enemy combatant, but then I actually read the footnote and it became clear.  For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Padilla stipulated that the govenrment allegations are true.  To me this seems to be stipulating away the best part of his case.  The Court is left with the question of whether the the president has the authority to detain an undisputed current member of Al Qaeda captured on U.S. soil. 

There is an opinion by Charles Lee, the third attorney General under Washington that frames the issue nicely:

21 Aug. 17981 Ops. Atty. Gen. 84
Having taken into consideration the acts of the French republic relative to the United States, and the laws of Congress passed at the last session, it is my opinion that there exists not only an actual maritime war between France and the United States, but a maritime war authorized by both nations. Consequently, France is our enemy; and to aid, assist, and abet that nation in her maritime warfare, will be treason in a citizen or any other person within the United States not commissioned under France. But in a French subject, commissioned by France, acting openly according to this commission, such assistance will be hostility. The former may be tried and punished according to our laws; the latter must be treated according to the laws of war.

I have thought it my duty to make this communication in consequence of the information you received from Rhode Island, of the intentions of a Frenchman, whose name I do not now call to mind, who is said to be somewhere in this country, on the business of buying ships and supplies of a military kind, for the West Indies. He should be apprehended and tried as a traitor, unless he has a commission, and acts according to it; in which case he should be treated as an enemy, and confined as a prisoner of war.

If Padilla admits the things in the affidavit he should be tried for treason and be found guilty.  Treating him as an enemy combatant with a "commission" (1) is actually doing him a favor. 

The problem, of course, is that Padilla probably does not actually admit the allegations or have a "commission".  Therefore, in my view, he must be charged and tried for treason and given all related process.  The limits on treason are one of the great rights the Founders put in the Constitution itself.  But given the posture of the summary judgment, the Fourth Circuit did not reach that question.   

(1) For the moment I am putting aside the distinction between Al Qaeda and a nation state.