Here's an excerpt from a Institute for Religion & Democracy study of "Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003)":

Research Design

We analyzed human rights criticisms made by four mainline Protestant denominations (the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) and two ecumenical bodies (the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches) over a period of four years (2000-2003) to determine which nations were criticized for human rights violations and why. We used the 2004 human rights assessments published by Freedom House as a benchmark for human rights in nations analyzed. A given church statement or document was considered to have criticized human rights in country X when, in the context of a discussion of human rights in country X, it passed negative judgment on specific current policies or actions of the government of X.

Results

Overall, criticisms of Israel amounted to 37 percent of the 197 human rights criticisms offered by the churches during those years, only slightly higher than the 32 percent of criticisms leveled at the United States. The remaining 31 percent of criticisms were shared by twenty other nations. For every one criticism of any other foreign nation, one criticism was made of the United States and one of Israel. Nearly all churches demonstrated this focus on the United States and Israel in their legislative actions, their statements, their news sources, or all three.

As a result, nearly three out of four human rights criticisms were made of nations designated as free (mostly the United States and Israel) by the Freedom House assessments. Those rated not free totaled 19 percent of criticisms, while partly free nations totalled only 8 percent of criticisms. Of the fifteen worst human rights offenders in the world, only five were criticized by the churches during the four year period studied.

Regions like the Middle East (apart from Israel) and Central Asia (former Soviet republics) were the most notable areas ignored by the churches in their human rights advocacy. Partly free nations, where church influence might be most effective in widening the limited civic space already open to indigenous Christians and other citizens, received the least attention.

Conclusions

The mainline churches are not adequately addressing the wide range of human rights abuses taking place in the world. Denominations are focusing on the United States and Israel as the primary perpetrators of human rights violations. Great attention to the United States may be expected from churches that find their homes there. But the dramatic focus on Israel as opposed to many more repressive regimes, including other U.S. allies known for human rights abuses (such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt), must be challenged.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the churches made the mistake of supporting oppressive Soviet-sponsored liberation movements around the world. They largely ignored human rights abuses in the Soviet Union and its satellite states, instead focusing on U.S. policy as the primary source of abuse. It appears that mainline denominations may be making the same mistake today with the Arab and Muslim worlds, ignoring many of the most serious abuses while apparently laying heavy blame upon the United States and Israel not only for their own lesser abuses, but also for the abuses of others. . . .

I can't speak to the accuracy of the details in the report, and I'm not an expert on the subject. But this seemed worth passing along, because it does strike me (as a layperson) as having a good deal of truth to it.

Thanks to Patrick Oden for the pointer.

I was just thinking back to a particular set of incidents (the details need not detain us), and it struck me how important it is both to think outside the box and to understand why the box is there and why 95% of the answers are within it. So the catchy slogan "think outside the box," important as it is, needs to be complemented with an equally catchy antithesis. Hence, my proposal:

Respect the Box.

I've gotten a bunch of messages from people who say they're surprised that we haven't posted anything about the Laurence Tribe copying controversy (see here and here).

Here's a tip: Never be surprised when people don't invest a good deal of time and effort into stuff that they aren't really required to do. Actually, my tentative sense is that while the 19-word literal copying by Tribe was wrong -- and that he was right to apologize for it as soon as the charge was made -- the paraphrasing of the other material was probably not wrong. (I can't speak, of course, for my cobloggers on this.)

In a book aimed at a mass market audience, which doesn't have footnotes or endnotes (and publishers, I'm told, often dislike having footnotes and endnotes in such books, since they make the book seem more daunting and add pages), it's legitimate to rely on facts reported by others without having to prefix each sentence with "As Professor X said, Y got 100,000 votes more than Z, but lost in the electoral college." Nor is there a need to credit people for short phrases like "vagaries of the electoral college," where the alleged novelty is simply the use of the word "vagaries." In a law review article, you'd drop a footnote, but when you don't have footnotes, you'd often just generally list the book in a bibliography and be done with it. Copying really original ideas from another book is a different story, but I really didn't see much of that in the charges against Tribe.

But I say "tentative," because this is the sort of stuff that requires work to reach an informed opinion about, especially when the charges are allegations of personal misconduct, and allegations in my own professional field, where my judgments are likely to seem like expert judgments and not just a layperson's speculation. I don't want to give an off-the-cuff definite answer. Rather, I'd have to look at the books (I asked the library for them yesterday, but haven't gotten them yet); check to see the quotes in context; look carefully again at all the quotes; think some more about what the norms are or should be in this particular medium (a professor writing a book for a lay audience, without footnoting); and more.

That, as I said, takes work. Work takes time, especially when it's not your day job. At some point, the work becomes more trouble than it's worth, which means that I might conclude that I don't want to publish any definite view on this subject at all. In fact, I wouldn't have even taken the time to write this post if so many people hadn'tt e-mailed me about the subject.

So please, never be surprised that we're not blogging about something, and especially not when blogging about that something actually requires a good deal of time and effort. Sometimes we'll invest that time and effort, if we're interested enough, and if we're inclined to set aside our other business. Sometimes we won't. Nothing at all surprising about it.

Fellow lawprof Joe Olson passes along this quote, from John O'Sullivan:

This high-minded timidity [of treaties and conventions enforced only against those who agree in advance to be bound by them] permeates modern culture at high and low levels. For instance, a recent thriller about hostage-taking, "Man on Fire," directed by Tony Scott and based on a novel by A.J. Quinnell, received harsh critical reviews precisely because it seemed to approve of revenge and vigilantism.

Creasy, played by Denzel Washington, is a burnt-out former mercenary who becomes a bodyguard to a young girl in Mexico City. She gradually draws him back from his suicidal despair by her frank affection. When she is kidnapped and apparently murdered, he methodically sets out to find and kill the men responsible — in very brutal ways. As in the 1970s Charles Bronson movie, "Death Wish," the viewer essentially sympathizes with Creasy. The critics thought this a crudely vicious message on both occasions.

But as Bacon pointed out: "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." It will inevitably — and arguably rightly — become the resort of decent people when law and government fail to deliver justice. Post-modern governments fail in just that way. Humanitarian bodies such as Amnesty International are even worse: They practice a sort of unilateral civil libertarianism that holds governments to account for the smallest infraction of civil liberty but treats terrorism as a natural disaster. Transnational bodies like the U.N. and the EU are worse — they seek to take the weapons of war and capital punishment from us in our struggles against terrorism, slavery, piracy and hostage-taking and to force us to rely instead on their own paper resolutions and elevated principles.

All these responses — from the critical reactions to "Man on Fire" to the E.U.'s prohibition of capital punishment — are overcivilized. That sounds almost like a compliment, as if it meant more civilized. In fact, to be overcivilized is to be less civilized because genuine civilization includes a robust willingness to enforce its order and truths on anarchy, violence, murder and superstition.

As long as we remain overcivilized, anarchy, violence, murder and superstition will continue their sinister recovery — until one day you may think you hear your own mother's voice [pleading for your life] on the network news.

There are obvious reasons not to take this argument to its logical conclusion, which might push us from the overcivilized to the undercivilized; the point it makes is one of those points that is valid, but has to be kept in mind alongside some equally valid points on the other side. But it is indeed a point that needs to be remembered.

One item I forgot to ask -- will Johnnie Cochran decide to argue the case himself? He was represented in the California Court of Appeal by two lawyers from Nemecek & Cole, a fairly small L.A. firm; and he's not primarily an appellate lawyer or a First Amendment lawyer, though he did argue and mostly win the Parks v. LaFrance Records appeal last year. If all he wanted to do was maximize his chances of winning, he'd probably get a top Supreme Court litigator to argue the case for him. (Such litigators cost a lot of money, but Cochran's own time is worth a lot of money, and it takes a lot of time to prepare for an oral argument.)

Still, can Cochran pass up what might be his one chance to argue before the Supreme Court, especially when there's really not that much at stake for him if he loses? I don't know much about the man, but many is the lawyer who'd jump on that opportunity. Hey, if nonpracticing lawyer Michael Newdow and nonlitigator-CPA-Certified Financial Planner Silvia Ibanez can do it, why not Johnnie Cochran?

The one downside is that it would attract still more attention to the case, which after all is about a client's allegations of Cochran's malfeasance. But the allegations have been explicitly found false, and sound not very plausible (they're mutterings about a conspiracy, by the sort of person who follows his sentences with multiple exclamation points). "Johnnie Cochran argues before the U.S. Supreme Court" is the sort of story Cochran might like. Hey, "Eugene Volokh argues before the U.S. Supreme Court" is the sort of story Volokh might like (not that it's ever likely to happen), so why shouldn't Cochran?

The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a First Amendment case involving injunctions against speech. Ulysses Tory, one of Johnnie Cochran's ex-clients, started accusing Cochran (apparently falsely) of all sorts of bad things, and picketing his office to publicize these allegations. Cochran sued, the court found that the statements were libelous (the trial was held before the judge, without a jury), and the court issued a permanent injunction that barred Tory from (among other things) "(i) picketing Cochran [or] Cochran's law firm; (ii) displaying signs, placards or other written or printed material about Cochran [or] Cochran's law firm; (iii) orally uttering statements about Cochran [or] Cochran's law firm."

The California Court of Appeal upheld the injunction; it concluded that the injunction wasn't an unconstitutional prior restraint because "Although a prior restraint can be presumptively unconstitutional, that rule has no application where, as here, an injunction against a private person operates 'to redress alleged private wrongs,' not to suppress a legitimate publication." In context, it seems that the court was trying to distinguish speech on matters of so-called "legitimate public concern," that generally can't be enjoined, from speech on matters of supposedly "private concern," such as a lawyer's supposedly cheating his client.

I predict that the Supreme Court will overturn the lower court decision. I also predict that the vote will be 9-0, though I'm less confident of that. (Warning: My predictions of Supreme Court decisions are notoriously unreliable, and yet I persist in being confident about at least some such predictions. How does that make any sense?)

Here's my thinking: There's some controversy over whether a court may enjoin libelous statements after a finding on the merits that the statements are indeed libelous. The likely answer is that it can, since such libelous statements are unprotected by the Constitution. (See this article for more.)

But here the court enjoined all statements (in certain media) by Tory about Cochran, without any regard for whether they are libelous. The statement "I think Cochran is evil because he represented O.J.," clearly a constitutionally protected statement of opinion, would be enjoined, too, as would true factual allegations about Cochran. That can't be permissible. And even though the Court has said that statements on matters of private concern are more restrictable in some contexts — chiefly when the government is acting as employer, or when the statements are false — it has stressed that they are nonetheless constitutionally protected. They can't be enjoined, when they're constitutionally protected opinion, simply because the speaker has said unprotected things in the past.

I also think this case illustrates the defects of the public concern / private concern line, a matter that I have discussed at length in this article and in the last six pages of this article. Criticisms of prominent lawyers are matters of legitimate concern to the public as well as to the ex-client who feels wrong. If they involve false statements of fact, they may be properly punishable, in some situations even if they're on matters of public concern. But if they involve true statements or statements of opinion, they should remain protected. I doubt, though, that the Court will have to comprehensively reexamine this distinction in this case: It will be enough for the Court to say (as it did in Connick v. Myers) that even statements on matters of private concern are constitutionally protected (at least against injunctions imposed on private citizens, as opposed to firing of government employees), and can't be enjoined if they're opinions or true statements.

I'm delighted to report that Jim Lindgren will be joining us here on this blog. Jim is a law professor at Northwestern University law school, and he's written about demographics, blackmail, bribery, gun ownership history, legal ethics, pornography, scholarship, and much more (see here for his impressively long and varied list of publications). I've long admired his work, and it's a great pleasure to have him coblogging with us.

Paul Berman in Slate rightly condemns the popular cult of Che Guevara.

Last week, I blogged about a Republican political mailing whose "cover shows a Bible with the word 'BANNED' across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word 'ALLOWED.' The mailing tells West Virginians to 'vote Republican to protect our families' and defeat the 'liberal agenda.'" (The quote is from an AP story.)

Some readers complained, quite harshly, that this mailing was "dishonest," because of course liberals aren't trying to ban the Bible. I was skeptical: It seemed to me that in context this would be understood as referring not to outright criminalization of the Bible (precisely because that's so highly implausible), but rather to the exclusion of the Bible and Bible verses (such as the Ten Commandments) from public school curricula and from posting in government buildings and parks.

I've thought a bit more about this over the weekend. In response to my request for the full text of the mailer, readers sent me this page and this one; the covers had already been posted here. Readers also pointed to two other uses of "banned": (1) the American Library Association's use of "banned books" to refer to books that were merely excluded from public school curricula, and (2) the references to a "stem cell research ban" to describe the Bush Administration's decision to substantially limit federal funding for stem cell research. (See, for instance, this Kerry press release, and the Spinsanity criticism of the "stem cell research ban" locution; thanks to Jim Christiansen and John Vecchione for reminding me about the stem cell research point.)

Here's what I've tentatively come to on this. First, I agree the use of "ban" in any of these situations is imprecise and potentially misleading — it may make people assume that someone really is flatly outlawing something, rather than just denying it government funding or a place in government schools or on government property.

But, second, whether the usage is actually misleading depends on how people are likely to perceive it. If the literal meaning is clearly extremely implausible (such as that the liberals would actually criminalize private possession and distribution of Bibles), then people are more likely to recognize the alternative meaning. And this is especially so if the usage is in a medium that's known for hyperbole (such as political mailers), then I suspect that people will discount it in some measure. This is why, having read both the cover separately and the cover and the insides together, it seems to me that the flyer is likely to be understood as making a plausible allegation — that liberals are seeking to ban the Bible from public schools (at least in most contexts) and from government-run displays — rather than a wildly implausible one (that they're seeking a total outlawing of the Bible).

Some of my correspondents suggested that the mailers would reach such a partisan and unreasonable audience that the readers would believe that liberals are really trying to prohibit anyone from owning or distributing Bibles. That just strikes me as implausible — but in any event, presumably anyone who believes this of the liberals is already a very firm conservative, and one who's likely to vote against liberals. The swing voters, or the ones who might not show up, are probably not going to make such an extreme assumption about liberals.

Finally, I think that the talk of the supposedly already implemented "stem cell research ban" is more likely to be misleading, especially if it's in a supposedly neutral press account but also if it's in a political press release. A total ban on stem cell research, federally funded or not, is (unfortunately) not implausible. Many people who haven't been following this debate might reasonably assume that a "stem cell research ban" is referring to a true criminalizing of stem cell research, and might thus come away with a mistaken impression of what the Administration has done. But I don't think that many people would reasonably assume that the "liberal agenda"/Bible/"banned" claim is indeed referring to a true criminalizing of Bible possession and distribution.

(Note that if the claim were simply that the "conservative agenda" would include a total ban on stem cell research, this would not be unreasonable — I'm not sure that a second Bush Administration or a heavily Republican Senate would do this, but it's possible that they might. I object here to claims that the Bush Administration has implemented a stem cell research ban.)

Slate's Explainer points out that more American Indians actually prefer the term "American Indian" to "Native American." Both, I think, are fine, but this further shows that "American Indian" isn't offensive or outdated, as some suggest. (That a group prefers term A over term B isn't a sufficient condition to show that term B is offensive -- but it is generally a necessary condition.)

The column, however, also says, without citing any studies, that

Perhaps the biggest goof is to drop the American from American Indian, as President Bush did at the ceremony while noting that 'like many Indian dwellings, the new museum building faces east toward the rising sun.' Native Americans/American Indians often dislike this simplest of monikers, as it can lead to confusion about whether a person is a tribal member or an émigré from the Indian subcontinent.

Yet a quick google search shows that quite a few Indian tribes seem to use "Indian" rather than "American Indian," at least where there is no likely confusion about which Indian they're talking about (and in Bush's speech there was of course no likely confusion).

Indians thus sometimes speak of the "X Tribe of Indians" (see, e.g., here, here, here, and here), but also even when the term "Indian" is used without the explicit "X Tribe of" qualifier (see, e.g., here, here, and here). I see no reason to think that these Indians or President Bush committed "the biggest goof," or any goof at all.

Unfortunately, though the column recognizes that the statements of particular American Indian activists aren't always accurate evidence of general preferences among rank-and-file Indians, and that surveys may reveal more than the high-profile complaints, it gives no survey evidence that American Indians really perceive this as a "goof." It simply says that they "often dislike this simplest of monikers," with no indication of how "often" this is. Is it that 10% of Indians dislike it? That 30% dislike it and 70% are just fine with it? That 30% dislike it, 20% like it, and the rest have no opinion?

I'll e-mail the Explainer people about this, and let you know if it turns out that indeed there is some serious evidence behind the "goof" claim.

My colleague Stephen Bainbridge, of ProfessorBainbridge.com, has started a new blog devoted just to wine and food, ProfessorBainbridgeOnWine.com. Check it out.

I got two messages agreeing with some music recommendations made here many months ago, so I thought I'd pass them along, in case others can likewise profit from them:

I just wanted to thank you for an old music recommendation you posted a year and a half ago — Lucinda Williams' "World Without Tears".

I've got it on Those Three Days right now, and it truly is a stunning song. . . .

And,

I wanted to thank you to pointing me to Shawn Colvin's "Polaroids". What a wonderful song!

I was so wary then
The ugly American
Thinner than oxygen
Tough as a whore

Fantastic! I'm a longtime fan of Shawn, but I wasn't aware of this older (1992) album. . . .

I've gotten a great deal of pleasure — and even more than pleasure — from my favorite songs, including these two, and I hope that some of you might do the same.

Is it just me, or does this sound (only to lawyers, of course) like something out of an alternate universe legal system? Should it be followed by, say, an Action to Quiet Seismic Title, or an Order to Show Magma?

Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.

I'll be giving a talk on Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope next Tuesday, the 28th, from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm in room 79A at the Stanford law school; Stanford lawprof Robert Weisberg will be commenting. The talk is being put on by the Federalist Society, but I hope that it'll be pretty nonpolitical, and will be of interest to liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and others.

Everyone is welcome, though I can't vouch for the ease of finding parking if you're coming in from outside Stanford.

A bunch of people e-mailed me to ask about this subject, so I blogged about it today at GlennReynolds.com, where I've been guest-blogging this week. An excerpt:

The House of Representatives just passed a bill that says: "No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, the Pledge of Allegiance . . . or its recitation."

The theory, as I understand it, is to keep the federal courts from striking down the words "under God" in the Pledge. The Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals, of course, held in 2002 that the teacher-led recitation of those words in government-run schools violated the Establishment Clause, even when pupils were legally allowed to remain quiet if they preferred. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court set aside that decision, but on procedural grounds, without confronting the legal question.

The trouble is that the proposed law might have the perverse effect of jeopardizing the "under God" rather than preserving it. . . .

See his column here; an excerpt:

Now it is official: The United States of America has a federal bureaucracy in charge of deciding who can say what about politicians during campaign season. We can argue, and people do, about whether this state of affairs is good or bad, better or worse than some alternative. What is inarguable is that America now has what amounts to a federal speech code, enforced with jail terms of up to five years.

An exaggeration? Judge for yourself. Consider the sorts of cases the Federal Election Commission now finds itself deciding:

Item -- In June, the FEC ruled that the Bill of Rights Educational Foundation, an Arizona nonprofit corporation headed by a conservative activist named David Hardy, could not advertise Hardy's pro-gun documentary ("The Rights of the People") on television and radio during the pre-election season. The FEC noted that the film featured federal candidates and thus qualified as "electioneering communication." Hardy, according to news accounts (I could not reach him by phone or e-mail), yanked the film until after the election.

Item -- On September 9, the FEC ruled that a conservative group called Citizens United was not a "media organization" and therefore could not use unrestricted money to broadcast ads marketing a book and film critical of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. "Not everyone can be a media organization," said one FEC commissioner.

Item -- Also on September 9, the FEC ruled that the Ripon Society, a Republican group, could run TV ads touting the anti-terrorism efforts of "Republicans in Congress" because no political candidate was referred to in the ads.

Item -- That day, the FEC also ruled that a Wisconsin car dealership, called the Russ Darrow Group, could continue using its own name in its car ads during the election season. Russ Darrow Jr., the patriarch of the company and father of its current president, was running for Senate in Wisconsin (he lost in the primary). The FEC found that the dealership's ads were not "electioneering" because they did not feature the candidate himself.

Set aside how you or I might have decided any of these cases. Focus on the fact that federal bureaucracies -- the FEC and ultimately the federal courts -- are now in the business of making such decisions. . . .

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has an op-ed on this.

Some readers pointed this out, and Eugene Kontorovich (the author of the op-ed I linked to on the subject) also confirms it: The divestment action was taken, as the op-ed mentioned, by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); but there are other Presbyterian denominations in America that didn't join in that. No word on what the Judean People's Liberation Front has to say about that.

See here for the story. Many thanks to my future sister-in-law, Hanah Metchis.

A reader writes, apropos the Republican mailer whose cover suggested that the "liberal agenda" involved "Banning" the Bible:

I understand the legalistic impulse to look at the fine print but could you explain your readers how fine print regarding the precise intention of the word "banning" would invalidate that the mailer is dishonest? By contrasting the "gay marriage allowed" to the "Bible banned" in such a graphic manner, the mailer unambiguously creates the IMPRESSION (which is what it intends to do) that bibles will not will be allowed in Arkansas if "liberals" would have it their way. No fine print is going to change that. Surely creating such an impression is dishonest.

A reference to "banning" the Bible is ambiguous. It could mean utterly prohibiting it, subject to criminal penalties for private possession and distribution — the literal meaning, but of course not a very plausible one. Or it could also mean, as this post points out (citing the usage by the American Library Association), excluding the Bible from some places, such as public school curricula, monuments in government buildings (e.g., Ten Commandments displays), and so on. It could also mean legally punishing certain uses of the Bible, such as workplace postings of anti-homosexual verses (perhaps under the rubrics of hostile work environment law, hostile educational environment law, or hostile public accommodations environment law).

Consider an analogy: Say that a Democratic flyer complained of a "conservative agenda" that involved "destroying a woman's right to choose." Literally, "right to choose" might be read as meaning the right to, well, choose things — like one's husband, one's religion, whether to own a gun, and so on. But we wouldn't condemn the flyer as dishonest, on the grounds that conservatives have no desire to interfere with many choices on women's part. In context, it's pretty clear that the flyer is referring to a particular thing that's often labeled (though controversially so) as the "right to choose": the right to choose to have an abortion. And many conservatives do indeed want to (whether rightly or wrongly) block women from being able to choose abortions, at least in many circumstances.

Before we condemned the flyer, we'd have to see what it said on the inside: If it elaborated the cover claim as "conservatives want to reduce women to slavery, as property of their husbands," then one would certainly condemn that as dishonest. If it elaborated it as "conservatives want to prevent women from being able to choose abortion," then it would not be dishonest (though it might not be as nuanced as what a more careful academic analysis would provide). If it didn't elaborate at all, then we'd ask how most readers would perceive the statement — especially keeping in mind that readers expect political mailers to involve some degree of hyperbole and oversimplification — and if we concluded that they would perceive it as applying only to abortion, we'd again say that the statement isn't dishonest.

Likewise here. "Right to choose" is somewhat less ambiguous than a reference to a book being "banned" — the purely literal meaning of "right to choose" (right to choose generally, as opposed to abortions in particular) is more rarely used than the purely literal meaning of "banning" books. Still, in context, I suspect that most people seeing a claim that the "liberal agenda" involves "bann[ing]" the Bible would understand it as referring to something less than a criminal prohibition on all possession of the Bible; rather, I suspect that they'd probably see it as something more like the American Library Association's definition, or some other more modest meaning. The insides of the mailer could confirm this suspicion, or rebut it. But without seeing the insides, I don't think that we can condemn the mailer cover as dishonest.

Reader Matt Johnson reminds me that the American Library Association -- hardly known as a bastion of Republicanism -- defines "banning" of books to include "remov[al of] material from the curriculum" of a public school. Under that definition, many liberals do support "banning" the Bible: If a school teaches the Bible as part of its normal curriculum (except in unusual contexts, such as for instance a comparative religion class, likely in the upper grades), then liberals would want it to be "removed . . . from the curriculum."

This is, of course, apropos the Republican mailer that suggests that the "liberal agenda" would lead to the Bible being "banned" and same-sex marriage being "allowed." As I mentioned in my original post, it's hard to tell whether this is "dishonest" (as one correspondent of mine suggested) without seeing the inside of the mailer. If the senders are really claiming that liberals would want to criminalize all distribution and reading of the Bible, even on private property, then that charge is pretty dishonest. But if the inside of the mailer makes clear that they are just claiming that liberals would want to ban the distribution and use of the Bible in public schools (again, except in certain unusual contexts) -- the very meaning that the American Library Association uses -- then there's no dishonesty there.

Incidentally, I would not use the word "ban" myself to refer to removal of a book from a curriculum; government agents must select what's in the government-run schools, and if a lower-level employee (a teacher) selects a book, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in a higher-level official (a principal or a school board) changing that selection. The particular choice may be foolish, but because it's an unwise decision to remove a book from the curriculum, not because all such decisions are wrong. Nor would I call them "bans," since the book is still available elsewhere.

Nonetheless, if this is what the Republican mailer meant by the Bible being "banned," then the American Library Association usage further illustrates that such a meaning isn't inherently dishonest, and -- even if imprecise -- probably within the boundaries of legitimate political hyperbole. But, as I've said before, if anyone can pass along to me the contents of the inside of the mailer, we may get a better idea of what meaning of "banned" was involved.

I wanted to see the ACLU's brief in support of its motion asking a court to order the Omaha World-Herald not to publish the name of an ACLU client-plaintiff. The ACLU was kind enough to pass along the court's order denying the motion, and the text of the motion itself, but it said that it couldn't pass along the brief supporting the motion -- which contains all the argument and citations of authority -- because all other documents are sealed. (The judge had already, I think at the ACLU's request, restricted the parties from revealing the plaintiff's name, and thus presumably ordered some documents to be sealed; the question in the motion was whether he could restrict newspapers who aren't parties to the case from doing the same.)

So I can't really evaluate the merits of the ACLU's arguments as well as I'd like. But just focusing on the existing law, and setting aside any creative arguments that the ACLU might have made and I haven't thought of, it's not surprising that the judge denied the ACLU's request, and it would be surprising if that denial were overturned.

Here's his L.A. Times column; I pass it along (with all the proper permissions) as full text rather than just as a link, so that people don't have to go through the L.A. Times registration scheme. I'm no expert on the subject, but Max is (he's a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power); and while I don't know whether he's right, I certainly hope that he is:

History Can Offer Bush Hope ...

John Kerry is right to accuse President Bush of "colossal failures of judgment" in Iraq. These range from decisions taken in the early days of the occupation, such as the premature disbanding of Iraq's army, to more recent missteps, such as allowing Fallouja to become a terrorist sanctuary.

Reading the depressing headlines, one is tempted to ask: Has any president in U.S. history ever botched a war or its aftermath so badly?

Actually, yes. Most wartime presidents have made catastrophic blunders, from James Madison losing his capital to the British in 1814 to Harry Truman getting embroiled with China in 1950. Errors tend to shrink in retrospect if committed in a winning cause (Korea); they get magnified in a losing one (Vietnam).

Despite all that's gone wrong so far, Iraq could still go either way. (In one recent poll, 51% of Iraqis said their country was headed in "the right direction"; only 31% felt it was going the wrong way.)

Lest we be too hard on Bush, it's useful to recall the travails of the nation's two most successful commanders in chief, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Lincoln is remembered, of course, for winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. We tend to forget that along the way he lost more battles than any other president: First and Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga.... The list of federal defeats was long and dispiriting. So was the list of federal victories (e.g., Antietam, Gettysburg) that could have been exploited to shorten the conflict, but weren't.

As the Union's fortunes fell, opponents tarred Lincoln with invective that might make even Michael Moore blush. Harper's magazine called him a "despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus." As late as the summer of 1864, Lincoln appeared likely to lose his bid for reelection. Only the fall of Atlanta on Sept. 2 saved his presidency.

Most of the Union's failures were because of inept generalship, but it was Lincoln who chose the generals, including many political appointees with scant military experience. He ultimately won the war only by backing Ulysses Grant's brutal attritional tactics that have often been criticized as sheer butchery.

Roosevelt had more than his share of mistakes too, the most notorious being his failure to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor, even though U.S. code breakers had given him better intelligence than Bush had before Sept. 11. FDR also did not do enough to prepare the armed forces for war, and then pushed them into early offensives at Guadalcanal and North Africa that took a heavy toll on inexperienced troops. At Kasserine Pass, Tunisia, in 1943, the U.S. Army was mauled by veteran German units, losing more than 6,000 soldiers.

The Allies went on to win the war but still suffered many snafus, such as Operation Market Garden, a failed airborne assault on Holland in September 1944, and the Battle of the Bulge three months later, when a massive German onslaught in the Ardennes caught U.S. troops napping.

Though FDR bore only indirect responsibility for most of these screw-ups, he was more directly culpable for other bad calls, such as the decision to detain 120,000 Japanese Americans without any proof of their disloyalty. Like Lincoln, who jailed suspected Southern sympathizers without trial, Roosevelt was guilty of civil liberties restrictions that were light-years beyond the Patriot Act. And, like Bush, Roosevelt didn't do enough to prepare for the postwar period. His failure to occupy more of Eastern Europe before the Red Army arrived consigned millions to tyranny; his failure to plan for the future of Korea and Vietnam after the Japanese left helped lead to two wars that killed 100,000 Americans.

None of this is meant in any way to denigrate the inspired leadership of two great presidents. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt were brilliant wartime leaders precisely because they were able to overcome adversity and inspire the country toward ultimate victory with their unflagging will to win. That's what Bush is trying to do today.

And, no, I'm not suggesting Bush is another Lincoln or Roosevelt. But even if Bush hasn't reached their lofty heights, neither has he experienced their depths of despair. We are losing one or two soldiers a day in Iraq. Lincoln lost an average of 250 daily for four years, Roosevelt 300 daily for more than 3 1/2 years. If they could overcome such numbing losses to prevail against far more formidable foes than we face now, it's ludicrous to give in to today's fashionable funk.

"Colossal failures of judgment" are to be expected in wartime; I daresay even John Kerry (whose judgment on Iraq changes every 30 minutes) might commit a few. They do not have to spell defeat now any more than they did in 1865 or 1945.

  According to the Association of American Law Schools Statistical Report on Law School Faculty for 2002-2003, fully tenured female law professors make up 25.2 percent of law faculties nationwide and 34.2 percent of the total law faculty count. That's certainly progress from the 13 percent of female law school professors in 1991. But with that rate of growth — roughly 1 percent a year — it will take another 25 years for women to reach the 50-percent mark.

  . . .
  Studies also show that women are less likely than men to receive the coveted leadership positions. For instance, women hold 16 percent of all dean positions in the country, according to a study by the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession. The dean positions matter, observers say, because deans influence hirings and promotions.

  "It's safe to say that there's been considerable progress, but 20 percent is not 50 percent," says Joan Williams, a law professor and director of the Program on WorkLife Law at American University's Washington College of Law.

  Lisa Lerman, a Catholic University law professor, agrees. "Things have improved in general, but it really depends on the school."

  Why do women continue to lag behind?
  For the most part, the status of women law professors today merely reflects the "glass ceiling" for women in many professions. The reasons for its persistence are less clear: overt discrimination is either nonexistent or hard to prove. Nevertheless, a variety of factors that arise during the hiring or promotion process — including ones based on the personal choices of the applicants themselves — appears to cause a woman's career inertia at all levels of law schools.

A reader points to this story:

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda." . . .

Does anyone have any more details on what the mailer says inside? Does it specifically refer to the "liberal agenda" being banning the Bibles in public schools, banning anti-gay messages from the Bible, banning Bibles generally, or something else?

Certainly if the claim is that the liberal agenda includes actually banning the Bible as such, that seems quite false. (Unfortunately, hostile environment law may sometimes be interpreted as restricting the publication of Bible verses when this may offend people based on religion, sexual orientation, sex, and the like; but though I quite oppose that, it still seems wrong to say that liberals would ban the Bible more generally.) On the other hand, if the mailer makes clear that it's discussing banning Bibles in schools, or something else that's at least plausible, then it's the AP story that's misleading for not mentioning this.

If anyone has a copy of the mailer, please e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu — I'd love to see it. Thanks!

UPDATE: Several people sent me the links to this copy of the cover of a flyer that was apparently sent in Arkansas -- but it seems to be just the cover, not the inside contents. Does anyone have a copy of the material inside as well, so I can see whether the inside elaborates on the claim on the cover?

GMU lawprof Eugene Kontorovich writes about this:

The divestment action manifests a singular animosity towards Israel. The Presbyterians have not divested their funds from any of the cruel regimes of the world: not from China for its ethnic cleansing of Tibetans, and its repression of Muslems and Falun Gong; and not even from Sudan, currently engaged in the extermination of Africans in Darfur. But then again, Syria has not boycotted those states either.

One would expect the Presbyterian Church to use its economic clout with an eye to punishing the many regimes around the world that oppress their fellow Christians, and call attention to their plight. However, the church has not taken action against such nations as Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, or North Korea (whose government has reportedly murdered 300,000 Christians), where anti-Christian persecution has been detailed by Christian human-rights groups. . . .

William Safire writes:

"Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both." [18 U.S.C. sec. 1343.] . . .

At the root of what is today treated as an embarrassing blunder by duped CBS journalists may turn out to be a felony by its faithless sources.

Some person or persons conceived a scheme to create a series of false Texas Air National Guard documents and append a photocopied signature to one of them. The perpetrator then helped cause the fraudulent file to be transmitted by means of television communication to millions of voters for the purpose of influencing a federal election. . . .

I don't think that attempts to dupe voters into believe something qualify as attempts "to defraud." The Supreme Court has held, in McNally v. United States (1987),

[T]he words "to defraud" commonly refer "to wronging one in his property rights by dishonest methods or schemes," and "usually signify the deprivation of something of value by trick, deceit, chicane or overreaching." . . . We believe that Congress' intent in passing the mail fraud statute was to prevent the use of the mails in furtherance of such schemes [i.e., frauds involving money and property]. . . . [W]e read [sec.] 1341 as limited in scope to the protection of property rights. . . .

Congress later provided that sec. 1343 also applied to "scheme[s] or artifice[s] to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services," 18 U.S.C. sec. 1346, which allowed prosecutions of corrupt government officials whose conduct deprived the public of its right to the officials' honest services. But Congress did not extend sec. 1343 to cover all deliberate lies, or even deliberate lies that are aimed at duping voters (or lies that give the liar access to campaign officials, which Safire suggests this lie might have done). So some statutes — see the posts noted below — might indeed punish such forgeries. But they aren't as easy to find as one might like, and sec. 1343 isn't one.

My new guest blog post at GlennReynolds.com is now up; here are the first few paragraphs:

Tongue Tied on FoxNews.com reports -- presumably with disapproval, as an example of politically correct excess -- that

A Pennsylvania man is on a quest to rid a local Catholic high school of the "crusader" nickname because he says it represents an evil, violent chapter in the history of the Christian church, reports the Patriot News.

Perhaps to the surprise of some of my readers, I think the Pennsylvania man is (mostly) right.

A few readers asked, apropos this post: Does the Nebraska ACLU have an ethical obligation to try to protect its client, even if that means asking for a court-imposed restriction on the press, and perhaps undermining its credibiltiy in future free speech cases?

My understanding -- which my colleague Norm Spaulding confirms -- is that (1) the ACLU can probably ask the client to agree up front that there are some things it won't do to represent him, but (2) if there was no such agreement, the ACLU may in fact be obligated to do all it can to protect the client. (I had meant to foreshadow that in the original post, but forgot to.) Public interest organizations often do agree with a client that the organization will do certain things (for instance, litigate the theory that is likely to set the precedent they like) and not do other things even if they're in the client's best interest (for instance, spend many hours getting the client a remedy that sets no helpful precedent). That's part of the deal: If a public interest firm is to invest its time and effort in a case, it can reasonably insist that it will seek those remedies that really serve its goals, and that it won't do other things that undermine its goals.

So I think the Nebraska ACLU should have made clear to the client up front that it wouldn't try to gag the media as part of its attempt to protect the client. But if it failed to do so, then maybe it is indeed stuck.

Here's the ACLU's press release, by the way:

ACLU denied court order protecting client from danger of attacks in Ten Commandments Case

ACLU Nebraska announced today that it sought and was denied a restraining order prohibiting the Omaha World Herald from identifying a plaintiff whose identity is under a court-ordered protective seal. The ACLU appeared before Judge Richard Kopf on Tuesday afternoon and asked the court for a temporary restraining order protecting the identify of John Doe, the plaintiff in the ACLU's suit over a religious monument in a Plattsmouth city park.

"We are concerned that our client's life will be placed at risk if his name is disclosed," said ACLU Executive Director Tim Butz. "We are at a loss to explain how identifying him by name will foster any public debate. All it will do is fuel hatred and perhaps lead to harm to our client and his family. Now that the World Herald has been told it may publish our client's name, we ask in the name of common decency that they not do so.

"The World Herald has already shown its editorial hostility to our Plattsmouth case and will paint our efforts as a violation of the First Amendment. We see it as something we were required to do in order to zealously represent our client's interest. In a perfect world, we would not have had to do seek this order, but then in a perfect world the newspaper would not have threatened to place our client's life at risk.

"It is unusual for the ACLU to be in court taking a position such as this, and we are the first to admit that this was difficult for us to do. The World Herald placed us in a conflict not of our choosing. We had only two choices, and we did not like either of them. We could do something that appears at first blush to be contrary to the First Amendment or we could do nothing and allow our client to be placed in jeopardy.

"Had there been time, we would have preferred to have a non-ACLU attorney represent him in today's hearing, but the World Herald would not give us any assurances that they would not publish his name before this could happen. As his counsel of record, our attorneys had to act and act quickly. The canon of ethics requires that we act in our client's interest and not in our own.

"We will review today's order with our client and allow him to determine what next steps will be taken."

From the San Francisco Chronicle,

Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart apologized Wednesday for saying in a televised worship service that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically. . . .

In the broadcast, Swaggart was discussing his opposition to gay marriage when he said "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry."

"And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart said to laughter and applause from the congregation.

On Wednesday, Swaggart said he has jokingly used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people. He said the expression is figurative and not meant to harm.

"It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God -- it's ridiculous," Swaggart told The Associated Press. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology." . . .

I leave it to readers to decide how much of an apology this really is. Thanks to Renato Mariotti for the pointer.

Joe Carter (Evangelical Outpost) has some interesting comments, as does Rob Vischer (Mirror of Justice).

The Omaha World-Herald reports:

In a stark turnabout from its free-speech advocacy, the ACLU urged a judge Monday to prevent the Omaha World-Herald from publishing the name of the Plattsmouth, Neb., man who sued the city over a Ten Commandments monument.

Amy Miller, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union Nebraska, asked the U.S. District Court for an order prohibiting The World-Herald from disclosing the man's identity, arguing that his safety and well-being would be endangered.

The newspaper vowed to fight the ACLU's request, saying it will continue to report on the court case because it is part of a major public policy issue. . . .

When the ACLU filed a lawsuit on the man's behalf three years ago, attorneys argued that the man should be able to proceed under the name John Doe. The ACLU said the pseudonym was necessary because of threats the man received over his protest of the monument in a city park.

Federal magistrate David L. Piester allowed the man to proceed anonymously, but that order applied only to the attorneys and the parties involved in the case. . . .

Now the ACLU wants the court to issue an order of confidentiality on the plaintiff's identity to apply beyond the courtroom. . . .

I highly doubt that the ACLU will win. (Note, incidentally, that this is yet another example of a Crime-Facilitating Speech controversy, since the ACLU is arguing that the publication of the plaintiff's name would facilitate crimes against him, even though the newspapers might not intend that result.) And I think it's also likely to lose some of its credibility in future cases where it tries to defend potentially harmful speech. True, they might reasonably argue that there's a difference between the speech they're trying to restrict here and the speech they try to protect elsewhere. But many in the public might not buy those arguments, and might see the ACLU as being unprincipled, and as simply trying to restrict speech that hurt its favored causes while protecting speech that helps its favored causes. And the ACLU's reputation for principled defense of free speech, and the grudging admiration that this has at times earned the ACLU even from some of its opponents, is one of its most valuable assets.

As I understand it, ACLU chapters have a lot of autonomy, and this decision by the Nebraska ACLU is likely not endorsed — and might even be much disapproved of, for all I know — by headquarters or by other chapters. People therefore ought not ascribe the decision to the ACLU generally; though in practice, I suspect that people will, given that most aren't aware of how the ACLU hierarchy operates. That's the nature of trademarks: One user of the mark can taint it in a way that affects all the other users as well, rightly or wrongly.

I hope to get a copy of the ACLU's motion in this case soon, and perhaps this might shed more light on the subject; if so, I'll blog more about it.

To its credit, Christianity Today magazine's weblog reports (thanks to Patrick Oden for the pointer):

Speaking of televangelists ...

Crouch [a figure from the preceding story] isn't the only TV preacher who needs help with his theology this week. In his September 12 broadcast, Jimmy Swaggart (remember him?) demonstrated exactly how not to oppose gay marriage. "I'm trying to find the correct name for it . . . this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men," he said. "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."

One might think that someone who has publicly experienced brokenness in his sexuality might be a bit more careful in his words. In this line of thinking, wouldn't the prostitute that Swaggart hired have been justified in killing him?

Homophobia might be a word thrown about too carelessly by the left, but remarks like Swaggart's are why the word exists in the first place. Let's be "blunt and plain": Biblically speaking, for a Christian minister to make such a comment is at least as sinful as it is for people to engage in homosexual activity.

The Canadian Radio Television Commission is investigating whether the broadcast, which aired on a Toronto station as well as several Christian stations in the U.S., constituted a criminal offense. The station that aired it apologized and called it "a serious breach" of Canadian broadcast regulations.

Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has removed the broadcast from its online archives.

One more related point: Leviticus 20:13 unfortunately does say "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." I am very glad that most, likely nearly all, American Christians — and even those who tend to endorse a literal approach to the Bible — do not to my knowledge take this as a literal suggestion to kill homosexuals. I'm sure there are good Biblical arguments for why this passage ought not be taken that way, and I certainly hope that people follow these arguments.

But it seems to me that Christian leaders, especially in those denominations that do often speak about the importance of literal adherence to the Bible — and particularly stress the literal force of the Bible when citing Leviticus 18:22 ("Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination") as their chief support for less militant opposition to homosexuality — be watchful for other Christian leaders who may have been unduly swayed by the isolated Leviticus 20:13 text, or who may in any event be reinforcing the tendency of some parishioners to focus on the isolated text.

Again, I stress that American Christians, including ones who are relatively literal in their Biblical interpretation, generally do not support killing homosexuals. Yet it seems to me that thoughtful Christians should be aware of the potential of Leviticus 20:13 to do harm (especially, as I said, when citing Leviticus 18:22), and should use those opportunities that arise to warn fellow Christians about it. The Swaggart outburst seems to me one such opportunity.

Mickey Kaus quotes a reader who makes an excellent point — last week, "Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said, 'We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents'" (I'm quoting the Sept. 14 New York Times). But "[h]ow could they be confident of the chain of custody if, as appears, they never even spoke" to the National Guardsman from whom Burkett claims he got the documents (he now says he got them from some other source that he won't disclose)?

They might have had good reason to go with documents that they thought were properly authenticated (that's a strange thing to think here, but I still assume they did originally think it), even if the chain of custody — the evidence of how they got from the files to CBS — was bad. (I say "might.") But it seems just wrong, and knowingly wrong, to say that they "are confident about the chain of custody" in a situation like this.

On the other hand, who knows? Maybe the New York Times misquoted Genelius. What can one say after the failings of the media (perhaps the inevitable failings of any human institution) have been proven to one so often, at so many levels?

That's what's so sad: Surely the aggregate of Rathergate, the Jayson Blair scandal, the chronic misreporting about assault weapons, or any other individual incident, and everything else we've seen over the last several years — often thanks to the media criticism of blogging (a medium that thrives on media criticism) — has opened our eyes to just how little one can trust what one sees in the news media.

And yet no matter how skeptical one tries to be, one can't double-check everything. We have to trust outside sources. But the same sources that claim to be so trustworthy are, it turns out, often untrustworthy, sometimes in huge ways (falling for outright frauds) but also often in many small ways (media bias, whether political, social, or personal, that repeatedly leads to erroneous and misleading information).

I suspect this has been true all along — it's just that we can't ignore it any more. We have to learn to live with a world of extraordinarily imperfect information. And that's a lot more work than assuming that the media (or at least certain media) is highly accurate.

I continue to feel strongly about the need for ideological movements (whether Christians, liberals, conservatives, and so on) to police their own, and publicly condemn them when they merit condemnation. Nonetheless, I've gotten two kinds of responses that, if factually well-founded, would undermine this as to Swaggart.

First, a couple of people suggested that "kill them and tell God they died" is a colloquial phrase in Texas and Louisiana that is a facetious way of saying "I'm really annoyed by this person" — often someone close to you — but with no real connotation of killing, or even of murderous anger (see, e.g., this book title). I'd never heard of this usage before some readers told me about it; and the context, "And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died," with accompanying talk of "abomination" and "utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity," surely didn't seem like good-natured joking about being really annoyed about something. Swaggart's manner also didn't seem humorous, and I suspect that at least people in his Canadian audience (the program was broadcast in Canada as well as in Louisiana) didn't see it as a joke. But I do want to flag the possibility that this was pretty misplaced and callous humor rather than serious anger.

Second, some readers suggested that Swaggart is so marginal that he doesn't merit attention, even negative attention. As reader David Allen colorfully put it,

While I agree with you in general (policing your own, etc), at what point of silly "off the deep end" nutcase do we get to ignore people? I mean, I can ignore the guy on the corner who gets arrested regularly for flashing traffic, saying God told him to, right?

In my book (and a lot of others, I think), Swaggart is a pathetic and previously exposed con-man. How long do we need to pay attention to him?

I was struck by Swaggart's statement because Swaggart was very big in the 1980s; he has been described as "the most popular television preacher of his day", and even accounting for some hyperbole, he was surely near the very top. The prostitute scandals, which led to his being disgraced and apparently disciplined by his own denomination, surely brought him down. But my assumption is that, given his continuing ministry and continuing TV presence, coupled with his past fame, he still has some influence — while many Christians rightly ignore him, he has enough sway with some that he does deserve denunciation. My sense is that anyone who is on television (and not just the 3 am local public access cable) has some potential to do harm.

Still, if my impression based on his past fame is mistaken, and Swaggart today really is a laughingstock with next to no influence, even in the evangelical community (the natural place for him to have some lingering appeal), then I agree that this makes condemning him much less important. Still worth doing, I think, but considerably less imperative.

UPDATE: A couple of readers, in making the second point I was responding to above, suggested that Swaggart was to modern American Christians was like Michael Moore to liberals and Democrats or Pat Buchanan to conservatives and Republicans. If that's right, then it supports my point that Christians should disavow appalling things said by Swaggart. Moore and Buchanan may not be middle-of-the-road Democrats or Republicans, but they do have substantial followings, I believe, within those movements. (Moore more so than Buchanan, I suspect, since Buchanan is generally seen as yesterday's news, but even Buchanan does still seem to enjoy, to the best of my knowledge, some respect from one corner of conservatism.) If Moore says outrageous things speaking as a liberal or a Democrat, or if Buchanan says outrageous things speaking as a conservative or a Republican, then mainstream leaders of those movements should indeed denounce them -- both to help stop such outrageous sentiments from spreading, and to protect the good name of the ideological movement generally.

On the other hand, if Swaggart is a much more marginal figure, like Lyndon LaRouche -- an analogy another reader drew -- then denouncing him becomes less important.