Vitanuova for 2001 June 27

from the we're-the-Supreme-Court-and-you-aren't-nyah dept.

Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.

Arver v. U.S., The Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918)

(Or, "we don't have to consider your argument when we can laugh at it instead".)

Harry Weinberger, the lawyer for one of the draft opponents in that case, was a famous free speech lawyer and represented such notables as Emma Goldman. He had an extremely distinguished career, defending some very important cases (often unsuccessfully). It would have been a very different U.S. history if he had won this one.

I have pointed out before that, not only did the Supreme Court ridicule the argument above, but it apparently felt so strongly that it sent a man to prison the following year for repeating this argument in public.

Pictures

I guess I could just include pictures here, rather than linking to them. Hmmm. Sorry for using up bandwidth if you wouldn't have loaded these pictures.

"United States Patent 4,405,829 has just expired! Let's party!"

(or)

"I'd like to buy an ideogram, Cindy."

Stephane's caption: "From the left: Mike Fleming, me (stephane), the non-floating head of Seth David Schoen, Rebecca, Simon, Taska, and John Harper, at Phil's Fishmarket, after a very large meal."

Grains

I tried quinoa. Not bad.

Scale Eight

I was back at Scale Eight today and met some interesting people.

I mentioned "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Borges in a discussion of copyright, which might be a novel application of that story. I found a copy of one translation of the story on-line (this copy contains some typographical errors).