On Newsweek, Yale law school, and more.

Reporters Say the Darnedest Things

Welcome, retrospectively, to last Wednesday's "Live Talk" web chat on MSNBC.com. We join the conversation--with Rod Nordland, Baghdad bureau chief of Newsweek--already in progress, just as Mr. Nordland, no doubt without meaning to, is beginning to offer us an extended lesson in the continuing journalistic relevance of people called "editors." None of whom is on hand, alas, to restrain this ostensibly straight and serious war correspondent from stripping off that thin disguise and figuratively flashing himself in front of the entire Internet universe.

Take this Nordland exchange with a chat participant from Rhode Island:

Lincoln, RI: The United States spent billions trying to establish democracy in the foreign culture of South Vietnam. What makes us so optimistic that we can do it in the Middle East where none exist now except Israel? Nordland: Who's optimistic?

For another instance:

Hellowell, ME: Why does Bush care so much about what happens in Iraq when there are so many poor, sick, poverty-stricken people in the U.S.? Nordland: Who said he cares?

Of course, it's the American people who are ultimately to blame:

Carthage, NY: We have misjudged and fumbled almost every major decision point in the last 2 years of Iraq. Why aren't people like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bremmer (the major contributors to these screwed up decisions) being held accountable for their repeated just plain wrong decisions?. . . . Nordland: Hey, we reelected their boss, that's why.

Wait, though--before some right-wing kook gets it in his head to start an anti- Newsweek letter-writing campaign or something, let the word go forth that Rod Nordland ain't no terrorist sympathizer, nosirree.

Klickitat, WA: Rod, do you have an update on the condition and status of the young Saudi terrorist named Ahmed Abdullah al-Shayea who survived the suicide attack that he was duped into making? I watched the video of his interrogation online and I am hoping that when the Iraqis were done that they took him back to a safe hospital environment where he will have a chance to heal up properly. . . . Nordland: I don't know about you, but I find it a little hard to have much sympathy for a suicide bomber no matter how misguided he was and terrible his suffering. . . . To answer your specific question: Apparently he's still alive, in a burn unit, I believe in American custody now--the thing he feared most. One has to think he's getting something of what he deserves.

Besides which, we're pretty sure that Mr. Nordland doesn't care what the rest of us think of him, anyhow.

Hopatcong, NJ: Do you . . . mean "f--ing murderers" when you say "insurgents" and "fighters" in your stupidity? I've grown sick and tired of you "politically incorrect" reporters. Why don't you have the gumption to call a spade a spade? Nordland: OK, you're an idiot. How's that?

Law Professors Say 'Em, Too

Also last week, yet another federal judge--Janet C. Hall of the U.S. District Court for Connecticut--ruled unconstitutional a congressional enactment effectively requiring American colleges and universities to allow on-campus job fair visits by Pentagon recruitment officers. The Scrapbook has previously found occasion to explain why it finds the legal reasoning thus adopted by Judge Hall--in Burt v. Rumsfeld, the latest in a metastasizing line of cases concerning the so-called Solomon Amendment--so totally . . . well, bonkers. And The Scrapbook now finds occasion to thank Yale's William K. Townsend professor of law, Ian Ayres, for so elegantly--if inadvertently--proving our point. Specifically, we congratulate Prof. Ayres for the celebratory posting about Judge Hall's Burt decision that he contributed last week to "Balkinization," the much-read blog founded by his Yale Law faculty colleague Jack Balkin. With friends like this, the anti-Solomon Amendment campaign hardly needs The Scrapbook, we figure.

Yale Law School, Ayres reminds us, has long maintained a faculty-endorsed nondiscrimination policy that withholds school-sponsored recruiting services from noncomplying employers. Because "the military was unable to certify that they do not discriminate against openly gay soldiers," the Pentagon was thus banned from Yale Law's on-campus job programs until 2002. Which was when the Solomon Amendment took effect and forced Yale to suspend this ban or forfeit its federal aid.

In other words, the Solomon Amendment, which requires that Yale let its students hear from people whose ideas Ian Ayres & Co. consider obnoxious, is thereby violating these law professors' First Amendment right not to be contradicted. Or so says Ian Ayres: "The Solomon Amendment is a coercive intrusion into a core pedagogical expression of the faculty," he claims. "If the government can force us to provide access to discriminatory speech, then it might force us to provide access for other views as well (anti-evolution textbooks come to mind)."

Eeek. As we say, that such a sentiment should clothe itself in the First Amendment seems totally bonkers.

Meantime, though, even we must admit being intrigued by one of the "new ideas" Prof. Ayres suggests for post- Burt lifestyle-rights activism. Yale Law School "might want to consider applying the nondiscrimination policy to judges," he writes. "It turns out" that relatively few Yale Law graduates actually wind up working for the Defense Department. But a great many of them do obtain positions as judicial law clerks. And the judges who hire these students aren't necessarily complying with Yale's sexual-orientation policies in the process. So maybe he and his colleagues should "refuse to . . . send recommendations to employers [like these judges] who refuse to take the pledge," Ayres proposes.

And to that we say: Yes, yes, yes, by all means! Yale Law School professors should decline to write letters of recommendation to federal judges on behalf of their students. Judges should instead fill these career-making positions with graduates of every top law school except Yale. And would-be law students should thus be forewarned: Don't go to Yale; the whack-job professors there will deliberately undermine your ambitions.

Yup, excellent idea. We bet the board of trustees and alumni will love it.

Ship of Fools

"The feeling we had in France," Cmdr. Anne Cullerre told the Associated Press on Jan. 29, "was that, as usual, the Americans were rushing in force to Indonesia and boasting about it." Cullerre, spokeswoman for the tastefully understated French naval flotilla now doing tsunami-related relief duty off the coast of Sumatra, was appropriately disdainful of this Yankee vulgarity: "For some people, it seemed outrageous," she noted. "People were saying, 'They are doing it again. They are showing off.'"

Not so the French, bien sûr, as AP's Michael Casey, writing from aboard the heli-carrier Jeanne d'Arc, makes clear:

French sailors aboard the Jeanne d'Arc pick from wine, beer and other alcoholic drinks, and their ready-made meals come with paté. On deck, they sunbathe in the muggy heat in shorts and sandals. However, what really sets the French apart is the paunchy, bearded civilian riding a sloop to the shore. He is artist Michel Bellion, appointed to paint the French military in action in his trademark bold strokes and bright colors. "I'm here to show the drama," said Bellion, pulling out a sketch book as he accompanied a team of doctors vaccinating children.