Andy's Angle

With the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagen to the United States Supreme Court, the nation's top court is once again center stage in news coverage and blog chatter. Here are a few links, both on topic and off:

There is no "Diversity" on the Court: Obama's two picks to the court have been hailed for paying homage to the Gods of "diversity," with Sotomayor getting bonus points for being female AND Puerto Rican, and Kagen getting points for being female AND allegedly a closet Lesbian (heavy emphasis on allegedly).

The problem with claiming diversity on the Court, at least beyond the liberal love for gender and racial "equality," is that there is, in the most important sense - intellectually - little to no diversity. The Weekly Standard shares that:

In terms of undergraduate colleges, five of the nine attended Ivy League institutions (Princeton, Harvard, and Cornell), and two attended Stanford University. The two outliers are Scalia and Thomas who (as Catholics) attended Georgetown University and Holy Cross (respectively).

With respect to law schools, the unrepresentative character of the Court is even more pronounced. Eight of the nine justices (including Kagan) attended either Harvard or Yale Law Schools; the ninth—Ginsburg—attended Columbia. Just three Ivy League law schools have supplied the legal education of the entire Supreme Court.

In terms of regional representation, the current Court (again with Kagan included) is composed of eight members from northeastern states and a single member (Kennedy) from California. Three of the nine members—Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan—were born and raised in New York City, and two (Scalia and Alito) hail from nearby New Jersey. Thomas grew up in Georgia and Roberts in Indiana, but both attended school in the Northeast and embarked on legal careers there as adults. Aside from these childhood attachments, the vast interior of the country is unrepresented on the Court.

Nor is there much religious diversity on the Court as six members are Roman Catholics and three are Jewish...With the retirement of John Paul Stevens, there are no longer any Protestants on the Court, even though 70 percent of Americans are associated with Protestant churches of various kinds.

Read the full article and check out the handy chart. The writer points out that there is no public-school representation on the court whatsoever, especially troubling since over 70 percent of the populace attended a public university or college.

Women Will Rule the Court: Law scholar and blogger supreme Ann Althouse predicts that soon the Supreme Court will shift from a 6-3 male to female ratio to one in which the fairer sex holds a permanent majority on the bench. Fascinating hypothesis, and one that makes complete sense.

Michael Schaivo is an Evil Man: Econ blogger Tom Blumer has the latest on the tragic tale of Terri Schindler Schaivo, and how even after her deadbeat husband succeeded in killing her for his own nefarious ends, the SOB continue to torture and torment her bereaved family. This man deserves everything coming to him in the afterlife. It can't be anything good.

Obama Can't Work an iPod?: Speaking of the BizzyBlog, Blumer also has some comments on President Obama's admission that he is technologically illiterate. Making the point that Obama's admission would have gotten much different press had it come from George W. Bush given the infamous "grocery scanner" canard, Blumer notes the mysterious absence of any critical press on this issue. Personally I think Obama was using this line to get some chuckles from the grads in the audience, because I seem to remember no shortage of stories during the campaign about stuff like "what's on Barack's iPod."

Either way, after watching Rod Blagojevich on The Celebrity Apprentice, I assume politicians in general aren't checking their own emails or jockeying their own Blackberrys. My old friend Scott McKain has some additional commentary on the Obama iPod flap here.

In Wayne's Own Words; Using Puppies to Filch Your Funds: It's well-known that Wayne Pacelle's Activist ATM the Humane Society (in name only) of the United States uses images of neglected dogs and cats to finance a radical vegan agenda driven by an extensive lobbying and political organization. Once again underscoring that understanding is the release this week of H$U$' "Annual Report." Not an official financial statement or disclosure, this colorful piece of puffy propaganda is used by the H$U$' cons to insert their sticky fingers further in the pockets of hapless do-gooders unaware of the organization's true intentions. Note the imaging on Wayne's blog, and on the report itself: almost all dogs and cats...

And yet, when you read Wayne's own words, you see the clear admission of a radical political agenda:

In 2009, as you’ll read in this annual report, our Emergency Services responders undertook a remarkable array of hands-on interventions, rescuing more than 10,000 animals from puppy mills, animal fighting pits, hoarding operations, and natural disasters. Our staff and volunteer veterinarians provided treatments and sterilizations for thousands of dogs and cats—from the most remote Indian reservations in the United States to the streets of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. And with our five direct care centers—operating from Cape Cod to San Diego—we provided treatments, safe haven, adoption, or release back into the wild for nearly 16,000 creatures whose fortunes ultimately led them into our healing and protective arms.

Yet if we only provided direct care and services, we’d fail our animal friends. Countless animals are in crisis, and we could never intervene to help all of them. If we undertook only that work, we’d just be addressing symptoms. It’s our primary goal at The HSUS to diagnose the problems that animals face, and then to achieve reforms so that cruelty is prevented in the first place. In short, we work to strike at root causes to secure lasting change.

For instance, we raided 16 puppy mills in 2009 and saved more than 3,000 dogs in the process. But even if we managed to double or quadruple the number of raids, that would not be enough to solve the broader problem. We estimate there are more than 10,000 mills in the United States, and that’s why it’s critical that we pass laws to crack down on these operations and also raise awareness with consumers so they don’t purchase dogs from the puppy mill supply chain. In 2009, we helped pass 10 new state laws to address the cruelty of puppy mills, and dozens have already been shuttered as a result of our ongoing legislative work. We’ve now taken the steps needed to push ahead an anti-puppy mill ballot initiative for 2010 in Missouri; that state alone is estimated to host perhaps as many as 3,000 breeding operations and to produce nearly 40 percent of all dogs in the pet trade. By working to pass a ballot initiative there, we can achieve with a single policy reform something more significant and enduring than all of our raids combined.

Similarly, billions of animals are at risk on factory farms. Rescuing animals from these situations might help those individual creatures, but it could not possibly begin to turn around this vast and almost overwhelming problem. Instead, we are working for fundamental reforms. In 2009, we passed legislation in California to ban tail docking, and in Michigan, we passed legislation to phase out the worst confinement practices for veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens. We also worked to get major corporations like Wendy’s and Au Bon Pain to institute more humane purchasing practices, shifting the marketplace and compelling factory farmers to change their ways. Our undercover investigations expose awful cruelty at factory farms and slaughterhouses and shut down the worst operators, pulling back the curtain on the endemic cruelty in industrialized agribusiness and setting the stage for broader reform.

To paraphrase: We're all about saving the animals, but our hundreds of millions of dollars are better spent hiring dozens of lawyers, engaging in endless lobbying of state and federal legislators, and focusing on running expensive political campaigns.

In the end, it's not about the animals for H$U$ anymore. It's about wielding unchecked political power.

I spent the week in Washington, DC with the National Association of Farm Broadcasting for our annual Washington Watch event. I love DC, even though I hate what the ruling class in that city does to our nation on a frequent and ongoing basis. Just being in the capital city of our great nation fills my spirit and renews my faith in the basic goodness of what our Founding Fathers laid out and what God blessed.

Here are some links, thoughts, and observations to start the day:

Gibbs is the worst Press Secretary EVER: I guess I haven't really gone back and compared some of the White House press chiefs from a few years back, say before I was born, but after watching this video of Robert Gibbs whining about some comments a guest made on Fox News, you can't help but think this guy is a complete waste of space. Wendell Goler was unfairly embarrassed over comments a guest made to a completely different Fox News host, and Gibbs comes off looking like a total dunderhead. He was the kind of kid you just couldn't help beating on the playground.

More folks back Livestock Care Standards Board: My great friend Troy Hadrick excerpts some comments made by Ohio Representative Gerald Stebelton about the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, once again highlighting why HSUS' radical approach to dictating animal rights in Ohio is the wrong way to go for consumers, for animals, and for Ohio's number one economic sector.

Speaking of H$U$: Less than a year after the Humane Society (in name only) of the United States used the devastation of an earthquake in Haiti to bilk hapless donors out of millions in the name of "saving the animals," Wayne Pacelle's activist ATM is at it again. This time they're using the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to con unsuspecting do-gooders out of donations, claiming they'll use the funds to rescue affected critters. The proximity to New Orleans reminds me of another time they claimed they were saving the animals, but were really lining their own pockets... I wonder how much of this latest campaign will get funneled into Ohio...

Ohio State police force = Keystone Kops: While a lot of us were amused by the footage of Ohio State University police cruisers chasing two escaped cows across the Marching Band's practice field a couple of weeks ago, the truth is that the officers completely botched the situation. Granted, I doubt they're teaching Temple Grandin at the Academy, but the force's handling of the situation was a farce. Sources tell us that they failed to contact anyone in the Department of Animal Sciences, and turned down offers of assistance from the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, instead calling in the Columbus Zoo... I love the Zoo as much as anyone, but I'll call them if my pet polar bear escapes. If it's a cow on the loose at Ohio State, I'm calling someone at the Ag college.

Add to that bungling now the case of a student reporter cuffed and stuffed by the university bobbies. From Mike Harden's commentary in the Dispatch: “Until cooler heads prevailed yesterday, Ohio State had soared to breathtaking heights over a meadow muffin, beginning by handcuffing and detaining a student news photographer who was chronicling the roundup of two escaped cows. Alex Kotran was doing his job as a photographer for The Lantern, OSU’s student-run newspaper, on April 21 when campus Police Officer William Linton ordered him to move along, then handcuffed him. The officer arrested the photographer presumably because Kotran crossed a crime-scene line. In truth, there being no crime-scene tape, any line drawn was not only invisible but arbitrary as well.”

Even better than that was his parting shot: “Shame on Police Chief Paul Denton for not telling Linton, ‘Put your gun away, Barney. This is Mayberry, not Miami Vice.’ . . . Shame on a university whose inaction suggested that it cared so little about the First Amendment that it would not even rise to protect a photographer to whom it paid nothing for the gathering of its news.”

As an aside, little has been said about what the student reporter did to earn the ire of the po-po in the first place, so there is the outside chance he deserved it. On the other hand, after watching three cruisers chase two cows in a clear display of cluelessness, I'm inclined to think they just screwed up.

One of the oldest cons in the book is known as the "bait and switch."

The idea is to present an enticing offer, say for a very high quality product at a very low price, but instead of delivering the high quality product, switching it with an inferior substitute. Various pages of commerce law specifically prohibit these types of deceptive practices in the retail marketing space, but examples of such fraud exist nonetheless. The most ever-present example today is the presence of the Humane Society (in name only) of the United States and its flimsy front group "Ohioans for Humane (Society) Farms."

"Ohioans for Humane (Society) Farms" is a political front group established and controlled by Wayne Pacelle's activist fundraising factory HSUS. Created specifically to push a radical vegan agenda through the Ohio ballot box, the group is circulating petitions to run a ballot initiative in the state this fall mirroring the travesty known as Proposition 2 in California two years ago.

Ostensibly drafted to ban specific food animal production practices from California law, Prop 2 was instead written in such vague fashion that two years later, state authorities have been unable to determine what the Proposition really even means, let alone how best to enable it through the legislative/regulatory process.

This type of chaos is exactly what HSUS and its political allies intended. While California struggles to figure out what exactly HSUS forced it to adopt, neighboring states are luring California's lucrative poultry business into more farm-friendly environs. By exploiting the draconian regulatory measures likely to arise from the Prop 2 rubble, states from Idaho to Nevada are working to pull egg production out of California and into their own tax base.

This will ultimately mean more expense to consumers in California who will have to import their eggs from other parts of the country, as well as additional carbon emissions from the additional trucking of these eggs back to the Golden State.

Wayne Pacelle once again tipped his hand in Ohio this week by suing to declare a specific piece of Ohio election law as unconstitutional. Current election law and policy dictates that persons paid to circulate petitions for ballot referenda in Ohio must be Ohio residents. To those of us who reside in the state, this makes perfect sense: we don't need paid political agents canvassing our streets in the absence of actual residents committed to a given issue. Pacelle, however, is baffled by the Buckeye State. After suffering a surprising (to HSUS' radical activist base and staff of lawyers and lobbyists) defeat in last fall's Issue 2 campaign, Pacelle realizes he needs all his paid political muscle to dupe Ohio's electorate.

According to HSUS' paid campaign staff on the ground, they've collected less than one third of the signatures needed to place their initiative on the ballot with less than a month before the petitions are due. With that in mind, Pacelle and company are sweating bullets: they have so few actual Ohioans interested in running farm families out of the state that in order to avoid a huge embarrassing electoral failure, they need paid petition circulators.

Without the inconvenience of Ohio elections law to stop them, Pacelle can airlift in a SWAT team of political mercenaries to coerce and intimidate folks into signing these petitions.

The United States District Court for Southeastern Ohio will decide if Ohioans can retain their sovereignty by maintaining prudent limits on who can circulate petitions for statewide ballot measures, or if Wayne Pacelle can once again buy his way onto the November ballot.

The interesting thing about this suit and the staff of 30 attorneys employed by HSUS is the frequent and obvious examples of HSUS baiting consumers into donating under the false pretenses of saving the animals, while actually spending the money on their radical vegan political agenda.

Thanks to HotAir for the tip on my favorite YouTube clip of the week:

Some years ago, a combination of food scientists and food marketers developed a soy-based beverage that carried an amount of protein and nutrients similar at least in some recognizable fashion to nature's perfect food: milk. Rather than calling this new food product "soy juice," or "soy-based beverage," or some other clever brand name, the product was known simply as "soy milk." While the term is common enough now to avoid raising even a question, the question could be posed "how do you milk a soybean?"

The answer, according to groups like the National Milk Producers Federation, is simple: you don't.

That simple fact, it turns out, is the main thrust of a renewed effort by NMPF and dairy industry leaders to convince the US Food and Drug Administration that it has a regulatory responsibility to stop the ever-increasing practice of labeling plant-based dairy imitations with names like "milk," "cheese," or "yogurt." FDA failed to do so at the outset of the soy milk era, but with a bloom of products ranging far beyond the now traditional bean-based alternative to lactose, dairy farmers are increasingly concerned about these competitors unfairly benefiting from marketing work done by the dairy industry.

From a fascinating story on the issue from USA Today:

Got milk? The National Milk Producers Federation says you don't, not if what you grab from the dairy case today is soy, rice or almond milk.

For the second time in 10 years, the federation has written to the Food and Drug Administration asking that the term "milk" be reserved for cow's milk, although it's OK with also using the word for goat, sheep or water buffalo milk — any of the various "mammalian lacteal secretions." The federation says the FDA should require that plant-based beverages be labeled something else, noting terms such as "drinks," "beverages" or even "imitation milk."

"The FDA is "letting the bastardization of dairy terms proliferate," says federation spokesman Christopher Galen. The group has even launched a Facebook page: "They Don't Got Milk."

"We had to do something," Galen says.

I spoke about this issues yesterday with one of Ohio's top dairy leaders, Scott Higgins of the American Dairy Association Mideast and Ohio Dairy Producers Association. You can listen to my complete interview with Scott here.