Time is running out before the end of International Kissing Day, so I had best get a post up and quick. Unfortunately, I have used up pretty much all of my good kissing thoughts and quotes in the runup last year (see posts here) so I don't have a lot to generate in the way of new content. At least not blog-content.

But, if at all possible, celebrate in the obvious fashion.

My former T.A. Chad Golder along with Yale Law Prof Paul Gewirtz have an op-ed in today's New York Times. They define "judicial activism" as "tendency to strike down a federal law in a case that has been granted certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court" and then give the statistics on which judges would strike down the most such federal laws. (Thomas the most; Breyer the least.)

This is a rather odd way to define "judicial activism" since it bears basically no correlation to the way the word is actually used in popular parlance about the court (and only a rough correlation to the way it is used in academic parlance). For starters, why ignore the invalidation of state laws? As various folks have pointed out, when the Supreme Court strikes down, for example, the Gun Free School Zones Act or the Violence Against Women Act or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as excessive exercises of Congressional power it is not refusing to defer to the democratic branches of government-- it is simply deferring to a different democratic branch of government. Similiarly, if enforcing the enacted-long-ago Free Speech Clause instead of a recently enacted Congressional alleged statute is judicial activism, then why isn't it also activism when the Supreme Court holds that the Judiciary Act or the Rules of Decision act or something else entirely preempts a state statute? And so on.

Furthermore, while Gewirtz and Golder acknowledge that "Activist" isn't an epithet, why use the famously unhelpful term? What they show is that if we define a commonly-used word to mean something it doesn't commonly-mean we can derive the unilluminating conclusion that the "conservative" Supreme Court appointees wanted to strike down a lot of federal laws.

The piece has also come in for a minor drubbing in the academic blogosphere, from Jack Balkin and Ethan Leib. Golder and Gewirtz complain that "the word 'activist' is rarely defined. Often it simply means that the judge makes decisions with which the critic disagrees." But it is unclear what is wrong with this meaning of activist, or at least, why their definition is superior. As it stands, "activist" seems to mean "wrong on the merits" which is intelligible if unilluminating. If Golder and Gewirtz wish to transform this into a more empirical principle about laws "possessing a high degree of democratic legitimacy" then they will probably have to come up with a better variable than "federal statute-- yes or no".

It seems to me Charles Fried's approach is the sounder one.

A reader sent in the following question:

"I'm sure I'm not alone among Crescat readers as a member of the "Giving up the Taco Bell-Sandwich-Cereal and moving on to cooking real food lifestyle" gang. In order to do this, though, I actually need to buy pots and pans and that sort of thing. Perhaps a post on CS about what you consider to be the basic tools for a decent kitchen would be useful, both for me and the other readers."

I think that's a great question, and I'm going to do my best to provide an answer.

1. The worst mistake you could make in assembling a beginning set of tools is to go to crate and barrel and buy a set of the most expensive french copper cookware you can find. Down that road lies only the former golfer with the thousand dollar clubs, now gathering toney cobwebs in the garage.

I'll tell my own story for how I think people should go about collecting cookware and other items. Eight years ago now, I was in my freshman year of college. I didn't know how to cook. In fact, I knew nothing about food except that I liked it very much. Three weeks after I arrived, the weather started turning cold, and I asked the dinner lady what soups were on offer. She said, "Red, green, and clear". I asked whether they had flavours, or just colours. She said "Oh ay. They've got flavours. But those change".

At that moment, I realized that scottish institutional cooking was worse than I imagined. The rest of the year proved the point. I didn't know one could over-boil hard boiled eggs, but the good people at dining services managed, every day. So at the start of my second year, I decided I needed to cook. I went to Woolworth's and bought a cheap pot. It was green. With an exceptionally crappy plastic handle that melted if you weren't careful. I boiled pasta - for too long, as I remember. At which point I realized that I had better buy a colander.

And that's how it worked. I learned a new technique, and realized I needed some tool to make it work. If the tool was too expensive or too specialized, I figured out a way to do whatever I wanted to do without the tool. Otherwise, I bought the thing and added it to my collection. and it seems to me that this is the wisest, if least organized way, to put together a collection of cookware the first time. Buy as you need. Buy as you go.

2. Having said that, I realize that not everyone will want to burn their hands trying to drain pasta without a colander before slumping off to Walmart to buy gauze and something to strain the noodles with. So here are my suggestions for a minimum configuration. I'm sure I'm missing something, so please comment with additions.

Comments

1 very good kitchen knife - I like Global's line of forged knives. Mr. Baude prefers the Santoku Mac. In any case, spend no less than $70 on this item. This is the foundation of your kitchen. It will chop everything. It will grind herbs and spices and garlic with its flat. It will blast through breastbones, and delicately detach legs from birds. Do not skimp.

1 paring knife - there are perfectly good paring knives available for $12.95. They are essentially for peeling vegetables, and other such fiddly tasks.

1 thick bottomed stainless steel Saute Pan- This (and I mean something like this, though I randomly picked the pan in question) is a real necessity. Not only does it handle sautes, of course, but I use it for most smaller quantity soups, risotto, stews, and braises. Spend as much as you can afford on this, but the things to really avoid are thin aluminium bottoms and plastic handles (since you'll often want to go from the fire into the oven). I've heard excellent things about the kind with copper bottoms sandwiched in between stainless steel layers - giving you the ease of use of steel with the conductive properties of copper.

A towel - yes, for hitch-hiking intergalactically, but also for grabbing hot pans out of the oven, or for moving your high quality (but unfortunately often hot) pans around on the flame.

1 small omelet/pancake sized pan, maybe non-stick - I've found things like this (again, chosen at random) exceptionally useful not only for omelets and pancakes, but for the odd steak (saute in the pan, and then finish in oven), chicken breasts, fish, and even some sauces (I even made tomato sauce for pasta in a hurry once). They're cheap and useful, so buy one.

1 roasting tin - heavy as you can afford for ideal crunchiness of potatoes and other accompaniments to your roast.

1 stock pot - for big soups, and, of course, boiling whole chickens for stock or eating.

Tongs - a good pair of tongs can be used, of course, to rearrange and prod meats. But so much more, such as plucking pasta out of boiling water, grabbing robust foods from boiling oil (not french fries at their first fry! The tongs will crush the then soft potato), moving things around in ovens and broiler, pulling pans out of the heat, stirring soups, stews, and risotto in the saute pan, and other things besides. This is probably my most used item.

A colander, strainer, a good whisk, bowls for mixing.

Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 running mate and a real honest-to-God war hero, is dead.

I have no memory of any of the infamous 1992 Bush-Clinton debates; I am sure that my parents must have watched them, and I am sure that I (10 years old) drifted in and out of the room while they did, but I remember nothing-- no flub about grocery store scanners, no unpresidential peek at the wristwatch, nothing.

But I do remember the vice-presidential debate, or at least one very brief moment of it. I vaguely remember that there was a question about abortion, and that Al Gore gave a rather long answer about how he and Clinton were pro-choice, but not pro-abortion, and that we should reduce the number of abortions without restricting the right of a woman to nonetheless choose one. And I remember that Dan Quayle gave a slightly less long answer about how abortions stopped beating hearts, and there were too many abortions, and we should reduce the number of abortions. And what I remember-- crystal-clear-- was Admiral Stockdale finally being given a chance to weigh in: "I believe that a woman owns her body and what she does with it is her own business, period."

[Bruno pushed for a follow-up: "That's it?" But all he could get out of Stockton was: "I don't -- I, too, abhor abortions, but I don't think they should be made illegal, and I don't -- and I don't think it's a political issue. I think it's a privacy issue."]

I remember thinking that that was a rather remarkable way for a political candidate to be talking. I also remember being confused, because Stockdale's comment had gotten by far the biggest round of applause, but I knew that he was the unelectable oddball among the three candidates. It took me a long time to understand how those things could go together.

Now, it is an unequivocally good thing, in my book, that Ross Perot did not win the 1992 (or any other) presidential election. Among other things, the moral imperative for free trade is too strong to have risked it. And a candidate (or party's) actual political positions, allegiances, and interest groups are of course really quite important, and probably more important than whether the candidate is (or appears to be) a straight-talker. But actual issues aside, I have always liked to think that if I were running for elected office, I would be a lot like Admiral Stockdale. Which, I suppose, gives you a good idea why I am unlikely ever to do so.

UPDATE: And via this interview via Orin Kerr I came across a post-debate column by William Safire with a more contemporaneous, more adult, look at the same thing I saw:

He represented everything the two candidates were not: elderly, hard of hearing, unversed in soundbiting, too polite to point for oratorical emphasis, admittedly "out of ammunition" on complex domestic issues, comfortable in his own skin and uncomfortable in the limelight, and above all not afflicted with the need to prove his character.

Unlike his running mate, Ross Perot -- who took a free four-year education at Annapolis and then tried to slip out of his service obligation by professing shock at sailors' profanity -- the decent and brave Stockdale served and suffered, ennobling his captivity.

Because his moment of glory was not his moment of fame, he came across as the antithesis of slickness. As he groped painfully for words, the audience identified with his pain. We were embarrassed with him but proud of him, because he is what he is, and reminded us vividly that political figures are often not what they seem to be.