The Volokh Conspiracy

An interesting-seeming new scholarly paper.

It turns out that the Duke Law Journal also posts all its articles online, and also has back issues starting with March 1997. Good work for them; I was about to say that they beat the Virginia Law Review, about whose excellent site I blogged yesterday, but really both of them are beating everyone else.

For complex reasons, I had occasion to look up the biography of this fellow, who is generally said to be the first unambiguously Jewish Senator in U.S. history (UPDATE: for the ambiguous one, see here). It turns out that it's even more fascinating than I'd heard:

By 1852, Benjamin's reputation as a eloquent speaker and subtle legal mind was sufficient to win him selection by the [Louisiana] state legislature to the U.S. Senate; he took office on March 4, 1853. During his first year as a Senator, he challenged another young Senator, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, to a duel over a perceived insult on the Senate floor; Davis apologized, and the two began a close friendship.

He quickly gained a reputation as one of the great orators of the Senate, and in 1854 Franklin Pierce offered him nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court, which he declined. He was a noted advocate of the interests of the South, and his most famous exchange on the Senate floor was related to both his religion and the issue of slavery: Benjamin Wade of Ohio accused him of being an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing," and he replied that, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain." [UPDATE: Several people tell me that a similar quote has been credited to Benjamin Disraeli. I take no position on this important dispute.]

He was again selected to serve as Senator for the term beginning in 1859 . . . [and] resigned his seat on February 4, 1861, due to the secession of Louisiana from the Union. . . .

Davis appointed Benjamin to be the first Attorney General of the Confederacy on February 25, 1861, remarking later that he chose him for the position because he "had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor."

In September of the same year, he became the acting Secretary of War, and in November he was confirmed in the post. He became a lightning rod for popular discontent with the Confederacy's military situation, and came to quarrel particularly with the Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Stonewall Jackson. The criticism came to a head over the loss of Roanoke Island to the Union without a fight in February 1862. Rather than publicly reveal the pressing shortage of military manpower that had led to the decision not to defend Roanoke, he accepted Congressional censure for the action without protest and resigned his position. As a reward for his loyalty, Davis appointed him Secretary of State in March 1862. . . .

In the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, an unfounded rumor, tinged with anti-Semitism, that Benjamin had masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln through his intelligence apparatus became popular. Fearing that he could never receive a fair trial in the atmosphere of the time, he burnt his papers and fled to England under a false name.

In June 1866, he was called to the bar in England, the beginning of a successful and lucrative second career as a barrister. In 1868, he published Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, which came to be regarded as one of the classics of its field. . . .

I should say that I've never been big on deriving ethnic pride from the successes of fellow Jews, just as I don't think people should feel responsible for the misconduct of those who have shared their ethnicity. If I had derived such pride, I wouldn't derive it from Benjamin, because of his role in trying to maintain the slave-owning regime. (I don't know enough about the man to know how much moral condemnation he deserves, but I know enough to conclude that he doesn't deserve much praise.) Still, it strikes me as a very interesting story.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman has more on pride in people who share one's ethnicity.

According to Wikipedia, it is "an extreme sport in which people take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing." "EI supposedly combines the excitement of an extreme sport with the satisfaction of freshly ironed clothes." Most importantly for our intelligently skeptical readers, "Though it seems a parody or hoax, many extreme ironers take their sport quite seriously."

Thanks to my friend Claire Hill for the pointer.

UPDATE: Rick Hasen points to the NPR story on the subject.

Seems like they are; their life expectancy at birth is 2.4 years higher for men and 3.6 years higher for women. My intuitive assumption was that it should be a little less than for non-Hispanic whites, since Hispanics tend to be poorer than non-Hispanic whites. Yet obviously my intuitive assumption is wrong.

I'm genuinely curious about this — if anyone has actual demographic or medical knowledge on this subject (as opposed to just seat-of-the-pants speculation), I'd love to hear it.

Thanks to Slate for the pointer.

UPDATE: Could it just be that they smoke less (16.7% vs. 23.6% for non-Hispanic whites)? On the other hand, Mexican-Americans are more likely to be overweight or obese than non-Hispanic whites. I've seen no statistics for non-Mexican-American obesity.

FURTHER UPDATE: Reader Gabriel Rossman tells me there's a name for this — the Hispanic Paradox. Here's a Washington Post article on the subject, with some conjecture; and here's the academic article that the Post seems to be discussing. Here are the conclusions:

1. The Hispanic adult mortality advantage is not "Hispanic." Rather, it is a feature only of foreign-born Other Hispanics and foreign-born Mexicans — not of Puerto Ricans or Cubans, whether born in the United States or abroad.

2. The foreign-born Mexican and Other Hispanic adult mortality advantage is not trivial. It amounts to experiencing mortality rates that are 35% to 47% lower than those experienced by non-Hispanic whites. In turn, these differences translate into approximately five to eight years of additional life expectancy at age 45.

3. The behavior of mortality slopes produces strong signs of return-migration effects [i.e., that when immigrants are seriously ill they go back to their home country] for foreign-born Mexicans but not for Other Hispanics. . . .

4. The observed advantage favoring Other Hispanics persists even after indirect consequences of healthy-migrant effects (duration of stay, state of residence) are accounted for and is resistant to age and slope effects, as well as to unmeasured heterogeneity. This does not mean that healthy-migrant effects [i.e., that healthy people are more likely than sick people to move here] are absent, but that, if they exist, they are not reflected strongly enough in the mechanisms we were able to identify (duration or residence effects).

5. The cultural hypotheses received no support. We uncovered effects suggesting that those who live in ethnically more cohesive communities have lower mortality, as one would expect from the cultural hypotheses. But these conditions do not account for the Hispanic advantage, nor do they alter the effects of membership in a group. It is not because foreign-born Mexicans or Other Hispanics have a higher propensity to live in cohesive communities that they experience lower mortality than do non-Hispanic whites. And it is not because there are extra gains accruing from residence in those communities among some Hispanics that there are mortality advantages.

This has been a partially successful exploration of the problem. We were able to justify a model that accounts for part of the advantage and attribute it to return-migration effects. However, the preferred model that spawned this interpretation neither rests on robust, uncontested grounds nor is complete, since part of the advantage — the part associated with Other Hispanics—remains thoroughly unexplained.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A demographer-lawyer reader writes that "The reasons for mortality differentials by race (and Hispanic ethnicity) are not well-understood, and there is a great deal of debate about it. However, there are reasons to think some of these differentials are due to data problems and differing methodologies." He points to this page for the technical background on the numbers quoted by the Slate article.

It takes two incidents, right? (One anecdote is data, two are a trend, three is proof.) I pointed Monday to Howard Dean's remarks about "brain-dead" Republicans, which either means he's saying the voters are brain-dead, or the people for whom the voters voted are brain-dead (even though they beat Dean's party handily at the federal level). Not the savviest political move, it seems to me.

Now a second politician is doing it: My fair city's own District Attorney Steve Cooley, who is quoted as saying that the jurors in the Robert Blake trial were "incredibly stupid." Yup, that will make voters feel really good about you: When you lose your case, you publicly blame citizens like them. Doesn't show a great ability to understand how your audience is going to react to your words, it seems to me. And, curiously, an ability to speak carefully and in a way that doesn't alienate your audience is a pretty important skill for a lawyer.

UPDATE: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum discusses whether Cooley's comments violated legal ethics rules. I don't think they do, but given the political cost of such statements, I don't think there needs to be (or ought to be) any extra formal sanction for them.

by the German magazine Stern. The magazine ran a photo display s comparing various parts of American life (Democrat vs. Republican, Left vs. Right, Cynical vs. Romantic); for Black vs. White, the white is a Florida retiree and the black is Charles Ezeb, a felon serving a life sentence.

The display, as Medienkritik points out, seems aimed at showing Americans generally, or perhaps American conservatives, in a bad light. (These sorts of quote-picking exercises tell you more about the biases of the authors, and which quotes they wanted to pick, than about what the public actually thinks.) But the black vs. white item is just a shocker quite independently of that.

Oh, and check out Ezeb's quote:

"The USA is a pretty rotten country viewed from in here."
-- Charles Ezeb, serving life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana.

Makes one even more curious why Stern would choose this particular man for their black vs. white comparison, no?

(Incidentally, I did google, newspaper, and caselaw searches to see if I could find more about Ezeb's conviction; I found no information but also no evidence of any controversy about whether Ezeb may have been wrongfully convicted. As best I can tell, he's likely a pretty serious criminal who's rightly been locked up for his crimes.)

The Supreme Court has refused to hear it. But if you want to read the Senators' and Representatives' briefs, you can find them here.

The Democracy Project has read a draft version, and likes them; among other things, it praises this section:

No expenditure results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services that he or she personally owns for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

Now it's hard to tell for sure without reading the full proposal, but doesn't this seem quite narrow? I'm typing this on a UCLA computer right now; I don't personally own it. (I think UCLA doesn't object to academics using their office computers for drafting election-related materials, but let's set that aside for now; I'm sure that many universities permit such activity.) The material is being posted on a PowerBlogs host, which I also don't personally own. If the Conspiracy were organized as a corporation — as are most newspapers and magazines — that owned the computers and let the bloggers use them, then I wouldn't be using a computer that I personally own, either. Likewise if I were to blog from an Internet cafe, or from a friend's house, or from an office at a school at which I'm visiting.

I hope the FEC doesn't really mean to limit the rule to people who do their own hosting, and who compose everything solely on computers that they themselves own. And perhaps in context the final proposed rule will make that clear. But as written, this particular paragraph offers little cause for rejoicing.

UPDATE: The proposed rules can now be read in their entirety; the relevant part reads:

No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services that he or she personally owns for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

(2) No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services available at any public facility for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee. The term “public facility” within the meaning of this section shall include, but is not limited to, public libraries, public schools, community centers, and Internet cafes.

(3) No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services in his or her residential premises for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

Check out Juris Novus, a new aggregator for law blogs.

Their essay is available for download here; here's the abstract (paragraph breaks added):

Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution. This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death.

Capital punishment thus presents a life-life tradeoff, and a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid, that form of punishment. Moral objections to the death penalty frequently depend on a distinction between acts and omissions, but that distinction is misleading in this context, because government is a special kind of moral agent.

The familiar problems with capital punishment -– potential error, irreversibility, arbitrariness, and racial skew -– do not argue in favor of abolition, because the world of homicide suffers from those same problems in even more acute form. The widespread failure to appreciate the life-life tradeoffs involved in capital punishment may depend on cognitive processes that fail to treat “statistical lives” with the seriousness that they deserve.

I've read the paper, and though I don't entirely agree with all the analysis in it, I think it makes some very important points, and will attract a lot of attention. What most intrigued me, incidentally, was its summary of the recent deterrence studies, which I hadn't known about. (I support the death penalty on retributive grounds, but obviously if it's a powerful deterrent, that would reinforce the retributivists' support and may also bring around many nonretributivists.) Here's their summary of the evidence; for footnotes, please see the paper itself:

For many years, the deterrent effect of capital punishment was sharply disputed. But a great deal of recent evidence strengthens the claim that capital punishment has large deterrent effects. The reason for the shift is that a wave of sophisticated econometric studies have exploited a newly-available form of data, so-called “panel data” that uses all information from a set of units (states or counties) and follows that data over an extended period of time. A leading study used county-level panel data from 3,054 U.S. counties between 1977 and 1996. The authors find that the murder rate is significantly reduced by both death sentences and executions. The most striking finding is that on average, each execution results in 18 fewer murders.

Other econometric studies also find a substantial deterrent effect. In two papers, Paul Zimmerman uses state-level panel data from 1978 onwards to measure the deterrent effect of execution rates and execution methods. He estimates that each execution deters an average of fourteen murders. Using state-level data from 1977 to 1997, Mocan and Gittings find that each execution deters five murders on average. They also find that increases in the murder rate come from removing people from death row and also from commutations in death sentences. Yet another study, based on state-level data from 1997-1999, finds that a death sentence deters 4.5 murders and an execution deters three murders. The same study investigates the question whether executions deter crimes of passion and murders by intimates. The answer is clear: these categories of murder are deterred by capital punishment. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is also found to be a function of the length of waits on death row, with a murder deterred for every 2.75 years of reduction in the period before execution.

In the period between 1972 and 1976, the Supreme Court produced an effective moratorium on capital punishment, and an extensive study exploits that fact to estimate the deterrent effect. Using state-level data from 1960-2000, the authors make before-and-after comparisons, focusing on the murder rate in each state before and after the death penalty was suspended and reinstated. The authors find a substantial deterrent effect. After suspending the death penalty, 91% of states faced an increase in homicides – and in 67% of states, the rate was decreased after reinstatement of capital punishment.

A recent study offers more refined findings. Disaggregating the data on a state by state basis, Joanna Shepherd finds that the nation-wide deterrent effect of capital punishment is entirely driven by only six states — and that no deterrent effect can be found in the twenty-one other states that have restored capital punishment. What distinguishes the six from the twenty-one? The answer lies in the fact that states showing a deterrent effect are executing more people than states that do not. In fact the data show a “threshold effect”: deterrence is found in states that had at least nine executions between 1977 and 1996. In states below that threshold, no deterrence can be found. This finding is intuitively plausible. Unless executions reach a certain level, murderers may act as if the death is so improbable as not to be worthy of concern. Her main lesson is that once the level of executions reaches a certain level, the deterrent effect of capital punishment is substantial.

All in all, the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive. But in studies of this kind, it is hard to control for confounding variables, and a degree of doubt inevitably remains. It remains possible that these findings will be exposed as statistical artifacts or will be found to rest on flawed econometric methods. More broadly, skeptics are likely to question the mechanisms by which capital punishment has a deterrent effect. On the skeptical view, many murderers lack a clear sense of the likelihood and perhaps even the existence of executions in their state; further problems for the deterrence claim are introduced by the fact that capital punishment is imposed infrequently and after long delays. In any case many murders are committed in a passionate state that does not lend itself to an all-things-considered analysis on the part of perpetrators.

As mentioned above, and as we discuss in Part IV, these suppositions are in some tension with existing evidence. But let us suppose that these doubts are reasonable. If so, should current findings be deemed irrelevant for purposes of policy and law? That would be an odd conclusion. In regulation as a whole, it is common to embrace some version of the Precautionary Principle -– the idea that steps should be taken to prevent significant harm even if cause-and-effect relationships remain unclear and even if the risk is not likely to come to fruition. Even if we reject strong versions of the Precautionary Principle, it hardly seems sensible that governments should ignore evidence demonstrating a significant possibility that a certain step will save large numbers of innocent lives.

For capital punishment, critics often seem to assume that evidence on deterrent effects should be ignored if reasonable questions can be raised about it. But as a general rule, this is implausible. In most contexts, the existence of reasonable questions is hardly an adequate reason to ignore evidence of severe harm. If it were, many environmental controls would be in serious jeopardy. We do not mean to suggest that government should commit what many people consider to be, prima facie, a serious moral wrong simply on the basis of speculation that this step will do some good. But a degree of reasonable doubt does not seem sufficient to doom capital punishment, if the evidence suggests that significant deterrence occurs.

In any event, as they say, read the whole thing — and, better yet, also read the studies it cites (something I plan to do shortly).

UPDATE: Reader Dan Markel points to other articles on the deterrence question, which appear to take a contrary view: Richard Berk, New Claims about Executions and General Deterrence: Deja Vu All Over Again?, J. Emp. L. Stud. (forthcoming) (March 11, 2005 draft); Ted Goertzel, Capital punishment and homicide: sociological realities and econometric illusions, Skeptical Inquirer (July-August, 2004).

Many law reviews these days are trying to limit the free availability of the articles they publish, since that gets them more money from WESTLAW, LEXIS, and HeinOnline.

The Virginia Law Review is doing better: It's making all its new articles (from 2004 on) available for free (and google-findable) on its Web site. Law reviews are nonprofit institutions, dedicated to the spread of legal knowledge (and in the process helping educate the students, and get them better credentials). Editors should want to get more readers -- and thus make their hard work yield more benefit -- and not more dollars.

Journals need money to operate, but my sense is that they generally get an adequate amount from a combination of law school subsidies and subscription revenues. (Not a princely amount, but they're not supposed to get a princely amount.) If they can afford it, and I think most journals can, they should follow the Virginia's lead.

William Saletan, in Slate, has this set of quotes:

"According to the teaching of Jesus, it is God who has joined man and woman together in the marital bond. Certainly this union takes place with the free consent of both parties, but this human consent concerns a plan that is divine. . . . To treat indissolubility not as a natural juridical norm but as a mere ideal empties of meaning the unequivocal declaration of Jesus Christ, who absolutely refused divorce because "from the beginning it was not so" . . . [P]rofessionals in the field of civil law should avoid being personally involved in anything that might imply a cooperation with divorce." [Emphasis in original.]

-- Address of John Paul II to the prelate auditors, officials and advocates of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, Jan. 28, 2002

"The parents of Terri Schiavo asked a judge to allow the severely brain-damaged woman to divorce her husband—even if she dies—in one of a flurry of 11 new motions filed by the couple. In the divorce motion filed Monday, Bob and Mary Schindler accused Michael Schiavo of adultery and not acting in his wife's best interests."

-- Associated Press, March 1, 2005

"During the hearing in Tampa, the chief lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's parents . . . David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. 'We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul,' Mr. Gibbs said."

-- New York Times, March 22, 2005

Like many of these Slate quote-only items, this one gives no analysis or explanation. Still, my sense is that this is somehow trying to suggest that Ms. Schiavo's lawyer or parents are acting inconsistently, or that good Catholics should oppose their actions. Read it yourself and see whether that's your interpretation.

Yet if that's the claim, isn't there a pretty obvious response? I'm by no stretch of the imagination an expert on Catholicism, but I would think that Catholic teachings recognize that even really important principles (such as "no divorce") may have to yield when they run up against a more important principle (such as "preserve human life"). This doesn't mean that the first principle is wrong or insignificant, only that even important moral rules that are usually stated categorically might have some extraordinary exceptions.

My understanding, for instance, is that most Orthodox Jews believe that the commandment of not working on the Sabbath should be violated when such work is needed to save a life. Likewise, I'd guess that most Catholic scholars would conclude that if a divorce is really necessary to save a life, it would be proper. Divorces are almost never necessary to save a life, so the statements against divorce tend not to include such provisos; but it doesn't follow that it's somehow inconsistent or improper to recognize that such a proviso is implicit.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken as to the Catholic teachings, or if I'm misinterpreting the Slate column. Perhaps the author is simply making the point that I'm making, which is that even categorical rules sometimes have extraordinary exceptions (which are understandably not included when the rule is asserted, precisely because they are so extraordinary), and that sound religious reasoning must thus sometimes involve reconciling two contradictory rules. But if the author is trying to suggest an inconsistency, I think he's mistaken.

(None of this speaks to what should be the right result in the Schiavo case, of course; I'm making only the limited point I outline above.)

UPDATE: The author posted this on Slate's discussion board, "The Fray":

Subject: I changed the title of the item

from "Cafeteria Catholics" to "Religious Liberty."

I posted the quotes without editorial comment precisely because this is a profound and wrenching case. I just wanted to put the three pieces out there so people could seriously discuss the relationships and differences among them.

I ruined the spirit of that editorial silence by tacking on a headline that implied a conclusion and was more clever than wise. I apologize.

I much appreciate the author's apology, but it still seems to me that the mere juxtaposition of the quotes isn't really that helpful. This is a profound and wrenching case, but not, I think, because for Catholics it might require a violation of the rule against a divorce. I'd think that to a Catholic that would be an easy decision, given the countervailing interest — preserving a life. In fact, as various people have pointed out, the very same Papal address from which the Slate piece quotes also says, two paragraphs below the Slate-quoted material:

Lawyers, as independent professionals, should always decline the use of their profession for an end that is contrary to justice, as is divorce. They can only cooperate in this kind of activity when, in the intention of the client, it is not directed to the break-up of the marriage, but to the securing of other legitimate effects that can only be obtained through such a judicial process in the established legal order . . . .

FURTHER UPDATE: Steve Bainbridge has some Catholic philosophy thoughts on the subject.

Just wanted to pitch again our debate on the subject this week in the Legal Affairs Debate Club. There are now three posts from each of us; Geof is a very accomplished, intelligent, and interesting commentator, and it's always a pleasure for me to debate with him -- I hope it will likewise be a pleasure for you folks to read the debate.

For some reason, I was thinking recently about commonly used quotes that, when read in their original context, mean something quite different -- sometimes nearly the opposite -- of what many modern quoters use them to mean. For example, "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" is usually used to suggest that two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable; but the full quote is very different:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.

Similarly, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," from Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 2, is said by a revolutionary who is not portrayed as a particular sensible character; shortly afterwards, Dick (who said the line) and Cade (who agreed with it) move on to condemn anyone who can write.

So my question: What other such quotes can people come up with? Again, I'm looking for quotes that (1) are pretty famous and (2) are often used to mean one thing, but where (3) the original work is saying nearly the exact opposite (either because the original line was facetious, or was followed by something of a "Yes, but," as in the Kipling or in the Smith quotes).

Please post your suggestions in the comments, and please stick within these three rules.

can have very different meanings. The goal of many emerging parliamentary democracies, I think, is for citizens to be able to say "The government has collapsed. Now, which movie do you want to go see tomorrow?," rather than "The government has collapsed; what street are the tanks coming down?" (or even "The government has collapsed; those 100,000 protesters on the main square did a great job").

I much hope that the Estonian government's collapse is of the (say) modern Western European variety. UPDATE: PubliusPundit says it is.

Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.

A blogger writes:

Howard Dean, on why we lose elections to Republicans in spite of our undeniably superior positions:

One major reason his party lost the 2004 race to the "brain-dead" Republicans is that it has a "tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail," [Howard] Dean told the semi-annual meeting of Democrats Abroad, which brought about 150 members from Canada and 30 other countries to the Toronto for two days.

Conservative law supporter (and contributor to the Bush campaigns to the tune of several thousand dollars) Eugene Volokh's response:

Hey, how's this for another possible major reason: Might politicians who assume their adversaries -- and tens of millions of voters -- aren't just mistaken but "brain-dead" not be very effective politicians?

He has a point there. Dean ignores the fact that many of the Republican voters are not stupid, but rather completely corrupt and utterly lacking in common decency. I'm not sure what political strategy I would advocate, if any, to appeal to them, though.

What a helpful perspective -- yes, Governor Dean, that would be a really great way to frame your political plans. Trust me on this one: Just say that, the Republicans are "brain-dead, completely corrupt, and utterly lacking in common decency" -- or if you think that's impolitic, just think it hard; no-one will ever know that this is your view. You'll be sure to win lots of elections against us awful Republicans if you do that. At the very least, if this approach doesn't persuade Republicans to treat them this way, it will surely persuade the center. Centrist voters just love it when one party condemns adherents of the other this way.

No, I'm not joking; its web site is nazi.org. The Minnesota high school murderer was apparently involved with this group; see this statement from the group (though I haven't independently checked its accuracy). "It's hard . . . being a Native American National Socialist," the killer apparently wrote.

Here is where the Green side of the party fits in. I should stress that some of the linked-to sites will likely be utterly horrified by these people, and are in no way responsible for the links. On the other hand, some of the endorsed views' world-war-is-good position seems to resonate well with Nazism.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed researchers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute for the information.

UPDATE: Jesse Walker at Hit & Run has more on this site -- whether it's serious, an esoteric joke, or some mixture of both.