vs. Capt.: By the way, those who are interested in actual Navy practices in abbreviating Captain — not that they're dispositive of standard English practice — might want to do a Google search for site:navy.mil Capt and see what comes up. Even in jargon established by hierarchical organizations, language is partly a grown order, not just a made order.

On the "We Speak English on This Blog" thread, quite a few comments said more or less this:

This is silly.

Use the correct title - it's a matter of courtesy, not clarification. We're not talking about a "select few" here, we're talking about millions of active and former military, many of whom are risking or have risked their lives so you can sit around and whine about differences between the services.

Generally, no one is writing about service members without looking at something else written about them - so there is really no excuse for getting it wrong. There is no need for civvies to actually memorize this stuff.

The trouble is that this argument assumes that what is "correct" in the source language or jargon is also the only correct approach in plain English. My point is that it is no less correct to translate from the source language or jargon to the plain English idiom.

Thus, the correct title for a Russian colonel is "polkovnik" -- correct, that is, in Russian. In common English, "colonel" is a correct translation, and there's nothing discourteous about that.

Likewise, the correct abbreviation in military jargon for a naval captain is apparently "CAPT" -- a departure from normal English abbreviation conventions, but military jargon has its own conventions, to which it is entitled just as normal English is entitled to its own. Yet when one is using normal English rather than military jargon, "Capt." is a perfectly correct normal abbreviation, and there's nothing discourteous about that.

A reader writes,

When abbreviating U.S. Navy ranks, be sure they are in all caps with no period. e.g.: CAPT Mariner.

There is a whole system of "rank grammar" surrounding this. For each service no less! Without saying what the ranks are, U.S. Army and Navy abbreviated ranks are in all capital letters. U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps abbreviated ranks are in mixed case, with a period following if used in correspondence.

I always respect foreign languages, especially when they come with massive amounts of firepower. But wonderful as Militarese may be for its speakers, I don't see why I should abandon standard English abbreviations for Militarese abbreviations, any more than I should abandon standard English spellings of foreign place names and instead use the foreign original. So it's Capt. and (say) Florence for me, not CAPT and Firenze. (I also like the look of mixed-case more than I like the look of all-caps, which helps influence my decision, though standard English idiom is more important to me than aesthetics.)

Apropos a story that David Bernstein first covered in 2006:

The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations will hold a public hearing Friday to address a controversial sign at the popular Geno's Steaks that has gained national attention.

The hearing was scheduled after allegations were made accusing Geno's Steaks of discrimination for posting a sign that reads: "This is America. When ordering speak English." ...

Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations ... alleges Geno's is in violation of the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance - Chapter 9 Section 9-1105(A)(1)(b) of The Philadelphia Code.

The commission believes the sign discourages patronage by non-English speaking customers.

"Individuals who operate in a place of public accommodation cannot post signage or express messages that might have the resulting affect of making any group, any ethnicity, and any national origin person feel unwelcome," said Nick Taliaferro, Human Relations Commission....

Note, incidentally, the breadth of Mr. Taliaferro's assertion — presumably any speech that has the effect of making any group feel unwelcome (e.g., a posting of the Mohammed cartoons, an allegedly racist display, a Confederate flag, a supposedly sexist picture or slogan, and so on) is punishable when posted in a business, whether a pizza shop, a bookstore, a theater, or whatever else.

I should note that statements expressing an intent to engage in unlawful discrimination in a business transaction (for instance, "Blacks Not Served") may indeed be unprotected under the Court's rules related to commercial advertising, on the theory that they are akin to statements proposing an unlawful transaction. (They aren't quite, but that's how a 1973 case involving sex-based job advertisements, Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, has been interpreted in recent decades.) But it sounds like Philadelphia's theory is much broader than that; plus it's far from clear that rejecting orders in other languages — something that people who speak only one language routinely do — would be illegal in any event.

Thanks to Sebastian for the pointer.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, when introducing Kingsley Browne, I'm delighted to say that Captain Rosemary Bryant Mariner (United States Navy, Retired) will be joining us next week to present a view different from Prof. Browne's. Capt. Mariner is a Research Fellow with the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee Knoxville; she teaches U.S. military history in the university's History Department; she is co-editor with G. Kurt Piehler of a forthcoming anthology, The Atomic Bomb and American Society, from the University of Tennessee Press; and she is an oft-quoted expert on gender integration in the armed forces.

Before her retirement 10 years ago, Capt. Mariner was (among many other things) the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Professor of Military Studies at the National War College, where she taught national security strategy and joint warfare. Capt. Mariner is also a member of the first group of women trained as full-fledged military pilots in 1973, and the first American female aviator to qualify in a tactical jet aircraft, the single-seat A-4E/L Skyhawk, in 1975. During the Gulf War, she commanded Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron Thirty Four, becoming the first woman to command an aviation squadron and was selected for major aviation shore command. I much look forward to reading Capt. Mariner's thoughts on this matter.

Check out the lineup in a Tenth Circuit erogenous zoning case, Abilene Retail #30, Inc. v. Bd. of Comm'rs, decided in July by a panel consisting of Judges Lucero, McWilliams, and Ebel: Judge Lucero delivers the majority opinion, which I take it is joined by at least one judge. Then Judge Ebel files a concurrence, which is joined by both of the other judges.

Now it would be odd but understandable if the concurrence concurred in the majority in its entirety. But the concurrence, while it joins in the result, only joins "most of [the majority's] reasoning"; and Judge Ebel states, "Although the majority in this case decides that the County has failed to meet its initial burden under Alameda Books, I disagree." Yet Judge Lucero, who wrote the majority, and Judge McWilliams, who must have joined it in order to make it a majority, join Judge Ebel's opinion disagreeing with the majority. (Note also that Judge Gorsuch's dissent from denial of rehearing en banc says that "All the panel members joined the concurrence," so the list of joining judges doesn't seem to be a simple clerical error.) What's up?

UPDATE: Sorry, should have included this passage from the majority: "We agree the ordinance is facially content neutral, but conclude a genuine dispute of material fact exists as to whether the Board reasonably relied on studies analyzing the secondary effects of adult businesses on surrounding communities in passing the ordinance. If the Board's reasonable reliance were not in dispute, we agree that Abilene has cast sufficient doubt on the Board's rationale to preclude summary judgment. On that basis, we join in the concurrence of Judge Ebel as an alternative ground for our holding."

But my point is that Judge Ebel's concurrence says he disagrees with the majority; in addition to the sentence I quoted, the concurrence also argues that the majority's "rural/urban distinction is [not] sufficient at the initial stage of our analysis" (though the majority thought it was), that "the County has presented sufficient evidence ... to meet its minimal initial burden under Alameda Books" (contrary to what "the majority instead concludes"), and that even if the majority were right on this, "the result would not be to remand this claim for a trial, as the majority does" but instead just invalidate the ordinance. How can the majority join such a concurrence on any basis?

But on reflection perhaps I'm just being too picky: Maybe one should just read the opening line of the concurrence as "Ebel, J., concurring, and joined by McWilliams, J., and Lucero, J., except as to those portions that express disagreement with the majority."

That's Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year. Grant Barrett (The Lexicographer's Rules) has more on the word's history.

I had never once heard or seen the word (with whatever spelling) until I heard about the Merriam-Webster's selection. Thanks to Haym Hirsh for the pointer.

From the American Association of Law Schools program:

In 1934, in the Departmenth of the greatest depression in history ....

By the way, can we really say that the Great Depression was the greatest depression in history?

Lovers of law school exams might enjoy my Fall criminal law exam, which I am just about to start grading:

Oleander O’Leary owns a restaurant, called Oleander’s. The restaurant is losing money, and O’Leary doesn’t know how she can keep it running. So, with deep regret, she decides to burn it down for the insurance money. She pours gasoline all over the property, but just as she is about to light the match to ignite it, she has second thoughts: Maybe she can turn the restaurant around in the next month, she thinks. She puts the matches back in her pocket.

Meantime, Vera Variola, a brilliant but sometimes forgetful biology researcher at the local university, is walking home past Oleander’s. Morgan Dexter and Bar Sinister are standing in a nearby alley, talking. Dexter sees Variola approach, and tells Sinister, “Let’s rob her.” Sinister says “No, it’s too risky.” Dexter says, “You coward, if you don’t help me, I’ll beat you up.” Sinister says, “OK, OK.”

Analyze, both under the common law and the Model Penal Code.

UPDATE: Commenter CDU adds:

Law student Lester Leighton, trying to comprehend the above question, suffers a brain aneurysm. Lyssa Lang, another law student sitting nearby, notices his distress. However, she places a higher priority on getting a good mark on the exam and says nothing. After the exam is over, a janitor, John Jones notices Lester lying on the floor of the classroom and calls 911. Paramedics arrive and find Lester is still alive. On the way to the hospital, a car driven by Dilbert Dinkins, who a breathalizer test later indicates had a blood alcohol level of .24, collides with the ambulance fracturing Lester's skull. At the hospital a medical mistake results in the doctor operating on the wrong side of Lester's head, causing his death. The autopsy reveals that Lester could have survived the aneurysm without significant disability had 911 been called immediately, would have survived with a disability had the accident not occurred, and would have even survived the injuries from the accident had the doctor operated on the correct side of the head.

Discuss Professor Volokh's liability for Lester's death.

In a 1996 questionnaire, he answered "Yes" to the question, "Do you support state legislation to ... ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?" Politico reports on this, and goes on to say:

A week after Politico provided the questionnaire to the Obama campaign for comment, an aide called Monday night to say that Obama had said he did not fill out the form, and provided a contact for his campaign manager at the time, who said she filled it out. It includes first-person comments such as: “I have not previously been a candidate.”

The campaign said his views have been consistent, and points out that his positions have always been more nuanced than can be conveyed in yes-or-no answers.

Obama, who makes an issue of his opponents’ consistency in the presidential race, has tempered many of those 1996 views during his quick rise to the pinnacle of American politics. He now takes less dogmatic positions many of those hot-button issues -- in the view of some Democrats, he abandoned the stands as he rose through the ranks....

On handguns, his campaign said he has consistently been for “common-sense limits, but not banning” throughout his 11-year political career.

The Hillary Clinton campaign responded:

Barack Obama’s campaign is on the defensive about his electability today in the face of a new CBS/New York Times poll showing voters find Hillary Clinton far more electable and a news report showing Sen. Obama previously held positions -- such as banning all handguns -- that he no longer claims to espouse.

Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.

I heard about the initial arrest, but didn't have the time to blog about it -- now it looks like the prosecutor has done the right thing:

On the day after Thanksgiving, [Robert Dean] Roethlisberger [Jr.] drove a truck with [14-feet-long] banners displaying images of aborted fetuses, including a bloody and headless torso. Roethlisberger works for Operation Rescue, a national anti-abortion organization.

Roethlisberger, 44, of Belton, Mo., had been charged under a provision of Georgia law that makes it a crime to use "obscene and vulgar or profane language" in the presence of a person under age 14.

[Gwinnett County Solicitor Rosanna Szabo dropped the charge, and stated,] "I have reviewed the evidence and law in this case, and concluded that the physical display of the images in question -— as shocking and offensive as they are -— does not constitute 'obscene and vulgar or profane language' as specifically prohibited by this statute."

I'm glad Ms. Szabo dismissed the charges, but they should never have been filed in the first instance. It's quite clear that, disturbing as the images might be, they are protected by the First Amendment (and are very, very far from the obscenity exception, even the broader version of the exception that may be present when the material is visible by minors).

In Warman v. Beaumont, Richard Warman -- a frequent filer of complaints calling for punishment of bigoted speech, and a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- filed a complaint about various posts by Jessica Beaumont; the Canadian Human Rights Commission joined in his complaint. Much of the complaint was about expressly racist, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and otherwise bigoted speech; as blog readers know, I believe even such speech should be protected, but there's little new at this point in Canada's restrictions of such speech.

One item, though, is novel -- Warman's and the Commission's complaint about this post:

Message 7 - August 14, 2004

[16] This message was posted on a sub-forum entitled "Let Muslim women keep hijabs on". The discussion related to a news report that then Prime Minister Paul Martin believed that the practice at Montreal's airport of requiring Muslim women to remove headscarves as they pass through security screening should be stopped. Ms. Beaumont posted the following comment in this regard:

That drives me nuts, I take photos for the citizenship, passports, pr (permanent residence), visa cards etc. and as I have been told from human resourses that the ears MUST be visable, which means, if your hair covers your ears, it has to be tucked back.

I don't care if it's a religious thing or not, if you don't want to follow our rules, even if it is taking off your scarf thing for one lousy picture, then stay out of my effing country!

To its credit, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal did not cite this message in holding against Beaumont; perhaps they do not take the view that this speech is now punishable in Canada.

But the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Mr. Warman apparently do take this view. According to them, the statement "I don't care if it's a religious thing or not, if you don't want to follow our rules, even if it is taking off your scarf thing for one lousy picture, then stay out of my effing country!" may be legally suppressed, on the grounds that it's "likely to expose persons to hatred or contempt on the basis of religion." If the Commission had its way, how far further down the slope would Canada slip?

Apropos the story about secret videotaping of the police in Massachusetts, check out this incident:

A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess — at times with vulgar tactics....

Perino, 42, was arraigned Thursday on 12 counts of first-degree perjury ....

Perino had arrested Crespo on New Year's Eve 2005 while investigating the shooting of a man in an elevator. While in an interrogation room at a station house, Crespo, then 17, stealthily pressed the record button on the MP3 player, a Christmas gift, DeMarco said....

[After the disclosure, p]rosecutors then offered Crespo, who had faced as many as 25 years if convicted, seven years if he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He accepted.

Thanks to Wade Glover and Prof. Arnold Lowey for the pointer.

UPDATE: For a transcript of portions of the recording, see this Village Voice piece.

From the federal prosecutor's brief in United States v. Translavina, 2003 WL 22716483 (signed by assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Addington):

In concluding that the movant in Duke had not been diligent in bringing his Rule 41(e) motion, the Court stated that “the victim of an alleged wrong [may not] postpone the running of the statute of limitations by willfully closing his eyes, ostrich-like, to a known probability that he has been injured, even if he is not certain.”

[Footnote:] The analogy to ostrich behaviour reflects a myth which endures in popular culture. The popular conception that an ostrich will bury its head in the sand when confronted with danger or unpleasant stimuli has been thoroughly debunked. Various theories abound about the source of this ornithological myth, including the observation that ostriches will dig holes in the sand to bury their eggs and that they will occasionally place their heads on the ground when resting. The ostrich (Struthio camelus, of the group of flightless birds which includes emus, rheas, and kiwis) has been unfairly maligned as a symbol of cowardice and shirking of responsibilities. Once shorn of this erroneous negative association, the ostrich can take its proper place in the ornithological spectrum.

Curiously, the first use of the phrase “head in the sand” is in a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1844. The text (stripped of its poetic context) is as follows: “this Ostrich age, which exposes its own eggs, and then hides its head in the sand...” Poems, Browning (1844). The myth endures through repetition in popular media as well as in obscure Circuit Court opinions.

All well and good, but what's with all this "behaviour"? Didn't we fight a couple of wars once upon a time about all that? Also, always be careful before saying something is the "first use of [a] phrase," even if you rely on the Oxford English Dictionary (which does give the 1844 reference as the earliest). Google Books -- which was introduced after the brief was filed -- points to several pre-Browning references.

I blogged about this suit in July:

The complaint ... alleges that Deputy PTO Director Margaret Peterlin lacks the statutorily required "professional background and experience in patent or trademark law."

I can't speak to whether the deputy director in fact lacks such background and experience.... I'm more interested in the institutional question here: What should courts do with vague criteria such as "shall ... [have] a professional background and experience in patent or trademark law," criteria that give no instructions about the level of background and experience required? I'm not an administrative law expert, but I'm inclined to say that this is the sort of judgment that is left to the Director (and, indirectly, to the Secretary of Commerce and the President, who can decide to remove the Deputy Director), not to courts. But I'd love to hear what administrative law experts have to say about this, and about other procedural questions that this lawsuit raises.

Last week, a federal district court rejected the lawsuit, reasoning in relevant part:

Two of plaintiffs’ three claims appear to be brought directly under 35 U.S.C. § 3(b), the statute which structures the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and creates the office of the Deputy Director which is held by Ms. Peterlin. Defendant argues that there is no private cause of action under this statute, and plaintiffs have functionally conceded this argument by failing to respond. Nor would a response have made much difference: neither the text nor the legislative history of the statute evinces anything approaching the congressional intent required to establish a private cause of action -– that is, intent to create both a private right and a private remedy.

One of plaintiffs’ three claims invokes Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which ... does provide a cause of action for persons aggrieved by final agency decisions that are arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law. A claim alleging violation of the standard in 35 U.S.C. § 3(b) is unreviewable under the APA, however, because 35 U.S.C. § 3(b) lacks standards that a court could meaningfully use in evaluating this type of high-level personnel decision. Because the only statutory standard is vague and highly subjective, the decision whom to appoint Deputy Director must be considered “committed to agency discretion by law.”

The presumption must be that decisions involving high-level policymaking personnel are left primarily to the executive. In such a situation, one would expect Congress to speak in precise terms if it intended the courts to monitor the minimal qualifications for agency officers. Here, Congress has given only the broadest of instructions -– that the Deputy Director should have “a professional background and experience in patent or trademark law.” The statute is silent as to the content of those terms. Were the decision subjected to APA review, the Court -– not Congress -– would be the ultimate source of the standards by which the qualifications of Ms. Peterlin would be judged: Is a law degree necessary? Is it sufficient? Are law school courses in intellectual property a requirement? Is certification to practice before the USPTO? Is law firm experience? How many years? If Congress had intended the extraordinary situation in which judicial review would reach to the very qualifications of agency officers for their policymaking positions, its statute would not be drawn “in such broad terms that ... there is no law to apply.”

Thanks to reader Michael Hall for the pointer.

InstaPundit links to a story about someone who was "convicted of violating state wiretapping laws" for "conceal[ing] a camera to videotape a Boston University police sergeant ... during a 2006 political protest."

That's pretty outrageous, but it's entirely consistent with a 2001 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in Commonwealth v. Hyde, which is based on Massachusetts' extremely broad privacy law:

This case raises the issue whether a motorist may be prosecuted for violating the Massachusetts electronic surveillance statute ... for secretly tape recording statements made by police officers during a routine traffic stop. A jury in the District Court convicted the defendant on four counts of a complaint charging him with unlawfully intercepting the oral communications of another .... We conclude that [the state interception law] strictly prohibits the secret electronic recording by a private individual of any oral communication, and makes no exception for a motorist who, having been stopped by police officers, surreptitiously tape records the encounter. Accordingly, we affirm the judgments of conviction.

... On October 26, 1998, just after 10:30 P.M., an Abington police officer stopped the defendant's white Porsche, because the automobile had an excessively loud exhaust system and an unlit rear registration plate light. Three other Abington police officers arrived shortly thereafter and the stop quickly became confrontational. During the course of the stop, which lasted approximately fifteen to twenty minutes, the defendant and his passenger, Daniel Hartesty, were ordered out of the automobile, and Hartesty was pat frisked.

One officer reached into the automobile, picked up a plastic shopping bag that lay on the floor by the passenger seat, and looked inside. (The bag contained compact discs.) At one point, the defendant stated that the stop was "a bunch of bullshit," and that he had been stopped because of his long hair. One officer responded, "Don't lay that shit on me." Later, another officer called the defendant "an asshole." The defendant was asked whether he had any "blow" (cocaine) in the car.

At the conclusion of the stop, the defendant and Hartesty were allowed to leave. No traffic citation was issued to the defendant, and the defendant was not charged with any crime. According to the testimony of one police officer, the defendant was "almost out of control" and the stop "had gone so sour," that it was deemed in everyone's interest simply to give the defendant a verbal warning. Unbeknownst to the officers, however, the defendant had activated a hand-held tape recorder at the inception of the stop and had recorded the entire encounter.

Six days later, the defendant went to the Abington police station to file a formal complaint based on his unfair treatment during the stop. To substantiate his allegations, he produced the tape recording he had made. A subsequent internal investigation conducted by the Abington police department, which concluded on February 1, 1999, exonerated the officers of any misconduct.

In the meantime, the Abington police sought a criminal complaint in the Brockton Division of the District Court Department against the defendant for four counts of wiretapping in violation of [the state law].

So there you have the dark side of "privacy" — the law aimed at protecting privacy ends up wrongly restricting people's liberty, and people's ability to protect themselves against police misconduct. Here's part of the court's rationale:

We reject the defendant's argument that the statute is not applicable because the police officers were performing their public duties, and, therefore, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in their words. The statute's preamble expresses the Legislature's general concern that "the uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices pose[d] grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth" and this concern was relied on to justify the ban on the public's clandestine use of such devices.

And this protection of "privacy" extends not just to allegedly misbehaving cops but also to ... kidnappers calling in ransom requests: "In Commonwealth v. Jackson, this court rejected the argument that, because a kidnapper has no legitimate privacy interest in telephone calls made for ransom purposes, the secret electronic recording of that conversation by the victim's brother would not be prohibited ...."

These incidents aren't necessarily an indictment of all such laws. Perhaps such a law could be properly drafted to exclude audiotaping of conversations with the police, or of conversations with people who one reasonably believes are trying to extort something from you or threaten you. But the incidents are a warning that not all laws proposed in the name of "privacy" are good, especially when they try to protect one person's privacy by constraining another's liberty to record conversations to which one is lawfully a party.

UPDATE: Even Prof. Dan Solove (Concurring Opinions), who often disagrees with me on privacy issues, agrees on this one.

Jim writes, on National Review Online's Campaign Spot blog:

[Heading:] Uncharitably Reading An Old Romney Comment Steve Chapman, as well as Eugene Volokh, think Romney is hypocritical on the issue of "religious tests" for office.

At issue:

Like John F. Kennedy, who said in 1960 that the presidency should not be "tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group," Romney said there should be no religious test for this office. "A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith," he said.

Rejected because of his faith, no. But rejected for his lack of faith? That's another question. Romney evinces a powerful aversion to skeptics. "We need to have a person of faith lead the country," he said in February, which sounds like a religious test to me.

I disagree. We should have no Constitutional or legal requirement of religious faith for office. But the voters are certainly entitled to take a candidate's religious views, or lack thereof, into their decision-making process.

In fact, voters have every right to ask Romney a bunch of questions about what he believes about God; reporters have that right as well and have exercised that right to embarrassing lengths this cycle. A candidate has the choice to answer those questions, as well as the right to say, "that's private, and that's none of your business."

When Romney says, "we need to have a person of faith lead the country," I have a hard time reading this as anything other than an expression of personal preference, and/or his assessment of what the country needs in a leader right now. He's not calling for a religious test or legal requirement for the office; the audience that Romney addresses can either say, "yes, we agree," or say, "no, we don't need a person of faith, we need a person of competence/vision/whatever." (Not that faith contradicts any of those other qualities.)

I wonder, though, whether Jim disagrees with Romney more than he does with me. As my post suggested, it's certainly plausible to argue that voters should inquire into a candidate's beliefs about God. But Governor Romney seems to take a different view:

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.

So it sounds to me like Romney is indeed saying that it's wrong (not illegal, but wrong) for voters and journalists to ask a candidate about his religious views, and to hold it against him that he hasn't adequately answered their questions.

Maybe Jim sees this just as Romney's exercising his "right to say, 'that's private, and that's none of your business.'" But then I don't quite see what Jim means by "voters have every right to ask Romney a bunch of questions about what he believes about God," unless he is simply making the (fairly obvious) legal point that voters are legally and constitutionally free to ask Romney anything they please.

That's what Sen. Feinstein reports (linked to and quoted by TPMmuckraker: "We assured the administration that Colonel Davis would not be asked about open and pending cases. But we were told simply that Colonel Davis was active duty military, and because he was active duty military, they could issue an order he had to follow." (Recall that Col. Davis has publicly criticized the operation of the current military tribunal system, and resigned his chief prosecutor post because of his views.)

I'm sure Col. Davis does have to follow his commanding officers' orders; I can't speak to whether the Senate has subpoena powers over such officers, but to my knowledge he hasn't been subpoenaed. But I can say that, based on the facts as reported by Sen. Feinstein, this seems like a very bad move on the Pentagon's part, both politically and from a policy perspective.

The Congressional oversight power, though it can often be abused, is quite necessary in such situations, especially when the judiciary is likely to give considerable deference to the executive (as it in considerable measure does, though some think it should give still more deference). It seems to me that for the executive to block testimony before Congress that might shed light on how the system operates, and whether it has flaws that jeopardize both defendants' rights and the system's accuracy and efficiency as a warfighting tool, both looks bad and is bad.

Thanks to Victor Steinbok for the pointer.

Some commenters asked why I use Hanukkah instead of Chanukah in my recent posts. When there are multiple transliterations, I prefer to use the more common one, and Google searches suggest Hanukkah is about five times more common than its nearest rivals.

I also tend to prefer spellings that are more unambiguously phonetic over those that are less phonetic or more ambiguous. I expect that most people know that the "Ch" in "Chanukah" is not the more common "ch"-as-in-"chair," but I imagine there are some who might not, so if all were equal I'd prefer a "H" in any event. (I know the "Ch" is supposed to represent a sound that differs from a normal English "H," but the difference isn't vast, and in my experience even my Jewish friends tend to use the more familiar English "H" sound when saying the word.) And here, the more common spelling is also the clearer one, so Hanukkah it is for me.

It seems to me Steve Chapman at Reason Online has a good point (as did Atrios and Mark Kleiman) about "Mitt Romney's strange double standards":

Romney said there should be no religious test for this office. "A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith," he said.

Rejected because of his faith, no. But rejected for his lack of faith? That's another question. Romney evinces a powerful aversion to skeptics. "We need to have a person of faith lead the country," he said in February, which sounds like a religious test to me.

Now one can surely argue that a person's beliefs on religious issues are relevant to our evaluation of the person's character — of his commitment to reason, or his likely adherence to a moral code, or whatever else. (Our commenters had some very interesting thoughts on some closely related issues here and here.) Such relevance is in my experience often overestimated, but there's nothing inherently unsound about such arguments. [Sentence initially inadvertently omitted:] Likewise, one can reasonable argue that on balance one's beliefs on theological issues are in practice far enough removed from one's likely behavior on secular matters -- and that their significance is so likely to be erroneously estimated by others who have different theological beliefs -- that it's better to just exclude them from political discussion.

But it seems odd to say that challenging Romney because of his Mormon faith — for instance, "How can you believe such odd-seeming factual assertions about reality and history?," or "Your religion barred blacks from full-fledged membership until 1978, when you were 30; what was your view at the time about the morality of this prohibition?" — is somehow categorically improper, but rejecting atheist or agnostic political leaders because of their lack of religious faith would be permissible.

I realize, by the way, that Romney's "We need to have a person of faith" line was an apparently off-the-cuff response to a hostile questioner. But I haven't heard of Romney expressly or implicitly disavowing it, despite the public attention the line had gotten. Nor have I heard of anything else that suggests that Romney does not in fact take this view.

Many press accounts have referred to her as a security guard, which sounded to me like a professional guard; but the pastor of New Life Church reports that she was a volunteer. Thanks to Call Me Ahab and David Hardy (Of Arms and the Law) for the pointer.

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenters for passing along more information -- the woman's name is Jeanne Assam; she was apparently a Minneapolis police officer for several years in the 1990s.

Struthious, meaning "ostrich-like" or related to ostriches, depending on the circumstances. As usual, I advise against using such words — if you haven't heard of it, or other educated people you know haven't heard of it, chances are your future readers and listeners will not have heard of it — but it's good to know in case you run across it.

I'm pleased to report that my Medical Self-Defense article was covered in this year's New York Times Magazine Year in Review section.

Shapiro has more. Thanks to Hugh Greentree for the pointer.

Have you noticed that the main ingredients of the two characteristic edible products of modern American Hanukkah -- potato latkes and chocolate Hanukkah gelt -- were unknown to Jews for the first 1500+ years of Hanukkah?