Holy Hullabaloos, The Blog

Amish Hullabaloo, Michigan Style

Over at Lowering the Bar, a terrific legal humor website that you should regularly be checking out, Kevin Underhill is reporting about a clash between Amish farmers in Michigan and the United States Department of Agriculture over whether the Ag Department's purported "requirement" that they (the Amish, that is) use some sort of weird electronic numerical tagging device to keep track of their cattle violates federal law.  The Amish apparently are claiming that the requirement violates their religious beliefs.  The Amish have sued in federal court.  Whether they prevail may very well turn on whether the requirement is being imposed by the federal government or the state of Michigan.  A statute called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act substantially limits the federal government's authority to impose burdens on religious belief and practice through general laws (like "everyone who owns cattle must use this weird electronic numerical tagging device to keep track of them").  The federal government can only impose such burdens if it shows that it has a compelling interest and that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.  The states, on the other hand, are not generally limited in the same way.  In this case, it would seem that the feds are arguing that the requirement that the Amish use this weird electronic numerical tagging device comes from Michigan, not them (the feds, that is).  The Amish disagree.

When I was in Wisconsin researching Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars, available June 1 from Beacon Press, I was talking at one point with an Amish Bishop named Gideon Miller, and I'm pretty sure he was lamenting the same "weird electronic numerical tagging device" thing along with the lady who had introduced me to him, a non-Amish tour guide named Kathy.  If I remember correctly, their complaint was of the general libertarian-get-the-government-off-our-backs variety rather than the they-are-burdening-my-religious-beliefs-by-making-me-put-the-number-of-the-beast-on-my-cattle variety.  If it's true that the requirement does in fact burden the Amish's sincere religious beliefs, though, then I think the Amish should probably win their suit.  I'd explain why, except it would take too long and I have to go to a museum now, but it's all in the book, which, incidentally, you can preorder here.

A Fantasy Law Professor League?

Over at PrawfsBlawg, I've proposed the creation of a law professor fantasy league, much like fantasy baseball or fantasy showering, except not like fantasy showering at all, which is not really a game.  Ideas in the comments section here or there quite welcome.  Coveted even.

Why Don't We Eat Swan, part 1

I've long been interested in the question of why we don't eat swan.  I mean, we eat everything else that sort of looks like a swan--ducks, geese, partridges, chickens, pheasants, etc. etc., but never swans.  Why is this?  Is it because they taste bad?  Because they're mean?  Because in England they are owned by the Queen and thus are illegal to kill?  Because they are endangered?  Because they have religious properties, what? 

So, figuring out why we don't eat swan is a question that will inevitably lead us through questions of culture, history, religion, law, ecology, and the culinary arts.  In future posts we will explore all of these aspects of swanology, particularly if the person we hire to fill Stella's position in the Houston office turns out to be reliable.  I strongly urge any editors out there who would like a book about swans to please contact me.  In any event, this morning I will just point out how the swan problem has also impacted international relations between England and Poland.

An article in the Daily Mail a little over a year ago reported that gangs of "hungry, knife-wielding Eastern Europeans" have been dragging swans out of the Grand Union Canal and eating them, in clear contravention to British law, which punishes swan-killing by six months in jail and a 5,000 pound fine.  In response, someone writing in the journal Polandian argues thatthe "whole thing is so absurd I don't really know what to say about it.  Except to point out that the stretch of the Vistula that flows through Krakow is full of swans but I've never been offered a swan sandwich here."  The writer goes on: "Obviously, witnesses knew [the people taking the swans from the canal] were Poles and Lithuanians because they were probably waving Polish and Lithuanian flags, singing their national anthems, and gulping down pierogi at the same time."

I should add that in my five months living in Krakow last spring, I also was never offered a swan sandwich, though had I been, I would have eaten it, because I really want to know what swan tastes like.  On the other hand, I did see many, many, many groups of loud drunk Brits causing havoc on the Old Town Square during their weekend stag parties. 

Stay tuned for more swan news soon.

Supreme Court Humor Update: Breyer Kicks Ass, Takes Names; Roberts Makes (possibly) Dirty Joke

Well, the December oral arguments are over, and so once again it is time for a Supreme Court humor update (see here for the last update).  The December sitting was notable for Justice Breyer's incredible, Chris Rock-like performance, registering a phenomenal eleven "(laughter)"s in only a handful of arguments.  Scalia, it would seem, took the sitting off, or maybe he had just seen a sad movie or something, because he was only able to eke out a mere four laughs from the audience, pathetic by his standards.  This turn of events gave Breyer new life in the 2008-2009 humor standings, although Justice Scalia still holds a significant lead.  Here are the current standings, with December laughs in parentheses:

Scalia        29 (4)

Breyer        21 (11)

Roberts    19 (4)

Souter        9 (2)

Kennedy      8 (3)

Stevens        5 (2)

Alito             2 (0)

Ginsburg        1 (1)

Thomas        come on, who is he kidding?

One other interesting note from the December arguments.  Did the Chief Justice make a dirty joke in the case of Phillip Morris v. Williams?  After one of the lawyers described the decision of a state court on some state law matter, the colloquy went like this:

Chief Justice Roberts:  But then I think your--

Mr. Peck:  But--

Chief Justice Roberts:  But I think your answer--go ahead with your but.

(Laughter)

 

I don't know.  You be the judge.  What do you think?

Merry Christmas!

 

We plan on posting from time to time over the next week, but if we don't see you for a while, have a lovely holiday season and a super duper New Year.

Ice Hotel Picture

As a follow up to yesterday's post on my trip to the ice hotel in Quebec back in 2003, here's a picture  of my wife and I that night having a drink out of ice glasses. 

Our House Cocktail: Sidecar on the Rocks

Here at Holy Hullabaloos Headquarters, we do a lot of drinking.  Me and my hot wife Karen drink a lot of beer--mostly IPAs from Sierra Nevada, Harpoon, and most recently, Smuttynose--some wine, a fair amount of whiskey (I drink scotch; Karen inexplicably prefers bourbon--in fact our first conversation ever, back in 1992, was on this very subject, but that's a topic for a future Memoir Monday post), and of course some delicious cocktails.  By far our favorite cocktail, though, and the one we refer to as our House Cocktail, is the Sidecar on the Rocks.  Let me tell you a little bit about this delicious drink.

The sidecar was apparently invented after World War I in London.  Basically, it's brandy, orange liqueur, and lemon juice.  I think a lot of people use cognac; we've done that in the past, but usually we use regular VSOP brandy--in fact, we always have a giant bottle of it on the liquor shelf, which we finally moved from floor level when Walter started crawling inexorably toward it a few years ago.  We always use Cointreau instead of Grand Marnier or (gasp) triple sec, even though Cointreau costs like $700 a bottle.  Fresh lemon juice is best, but we usually use the bottled kind anyway.  Recipes vary on the relative amounts of the three ingredients--typically they call for 1 1/2 parts brandy to 1 part lemon juice and 1 part orange liqueur--but I think we use even more brandy than that, and a little less lemon juice. 

The sidecar is almost always served straight up in a martini glass after being shaken, martini style, with ice, but we drink them on the rocks in a rocks glass, and I much prefer them that way.  Just fill the glass with ice, pour a bunch of brandy in, and then top off with a little Cointreau and a little lemon juice.  Stir.  For a variation, sometimes we put in a little orange juice, a marischino cherry, or even a tiny bit of amaretto.  Yum.

Memoir Monday: The Ice Hotel, February 2003

Here's an idea for a new invention: a breathalyzer contraption that you hook up to your computer and that stops you from making a purchase over some amount if your blood alcohol level is too high.  If such a thing had been on my computer in the fall of 2002, it would have prevented me from drunkenly spending some ridiculous amount of money to book one night for two in the Hotel de Glace--i.e., the Ice Hotel--in Quebec for February the following year.  In my defense, I had seen a photo spread of the thing in Conde Nast or something, and it looked great, and I knew it would be a trip of a lifetime.  My wife--bless her--went along without beating the crap out of me first.

Here's what I learned about the Ice Hotel from our night staying in the Ice Hotel: The Ice Hotel is very cold.  The night we were there, some insane record was set--something like negative 47 degrees Farenheit.  We did all the things you're supposed to do if you spend a night in the Ice Hotel: we went dancing to some weird band playing French rock music and Bryan Adams in the hotel's "Club Nice"; drank straight vodka out of glasses made out of ice; took lots of pictures of ourselves in giant coats with expressions on our faces that basically said: "boy are we idiots for spending a night in the ice hotel"; slept on a bed of ice covered with deer pelts in special sleeping bags; dreamt that we were stranded on Pluto; and got up in the middle of the night to use the bathrooms, which meant getting out of the special sleeping bags practically naked (you're not supposed to wear anything in the sleeping bags--somehow this makes you warmer) and getting dressed and leaving the Suite de Boise and going to the thank god heated bathrooms.  You might think that sleeping in the special sleeping bag would keep you pretty warm, but in fact it doesn't.  The sleeping bag keeps you from dying, yes, but let's face it, if you sleep in a hotel made out of ice on a bed made out of ice, you are going to be really, really, really cold no matter what.

The promotional materials promised that we would be given coffee in bed the next morning, but in fact this did not happen.  Instead we were told to get dressed and go up to the non-ice hotel lobby to get it, but when we got there they were already out of coffee.  So, in other words, we got totally screwed on the coffee.  Did I mention we were cold?  While we were sitting around trying to warm up a little, we talked to a couple who had spent not one but two nights in the ice hotel, I guess because they couldn't find anywhere else to stay for the second night.  That sounded worse than death. 

But one night?  Do I recommend it?  I don't know.  How many beers have you had?

I Know Your Kids are Cute, But What Do You Look Like?

Over at Beacon Broadside, which is the great Beacon Press blog run by the terrific Jessie Bennett, I've posted a short rant about how much I hate it when people send holiday cards with pictures of their kids but no pictures of themselves.  What the hell are these people thinking?  Are you one of them?  Maybe make a comment to explain yourself?

Deleted Scene: Tomah, Wisconsin--part II

Part I here.

When Kuderer and I arrived at his front door, I have to say that Bishop Miller did not look happy to see me.  He was polite, and he shook my hand, but he was clearly not psyched about having some stranger show up with a bunch of questions about the Amish educational system.  He was a big guy, kind of Santa-like, with a long white beard, glasses, a blue shirt and suspenders, and no hat.  What’s up with the no hats, I wondered?  Can’t I talk to someone with a hat?  We talked in the foyer of his big white house for close to an hour, and although there were several chairs available, one of which he sat in, we were not invited to sit in them.  The conversation was really odd, because Kuderer asked most of the questions, and even when I interjected one here and there, he would mostly address her and not me.  So most of the time I was basically standing in the corner feeling like a potted plant and wondering if my back was going to crack in half from being on my feet for so long.

 

We started with some small talk about family.  Miller, it turns out, has sixteen kids, 125 grandchildren, and over 100 great-grandchildren, almost all of whom live right near him.  I mentioned that I have one son, and he shot me a look like I was the most pathetic person on the planet.  Kuderer then brought up the Yoder case, and Miller remembered it.  “It was their lemon,” he said of the New Glarus Amish.  He remembered going down to New Glarus to help them build their first Amish schools, and he recalls being interested in how the case was going to turn out, but he didn’t think it had been all that big a deal.  The authorities somehow never bothered them in Cashton, allowing them to have their own schools and not forcing them to send their kids past eighth grade.  He explained some interesting stuff about the Amish schools in Cashton. They teach mostly reading and geography, with very little science.  They teach in English, even though they speak German at home and preach in German as well.  If they have special needs kids, they deal with the kids themselves, without getting any money from the state, which makes them very different from the Jews in Kiryas Joel.

 

Kuderer asked Miller if any kids ever ask to go to high school, and he said no.  She followed up by asking what would happen if someone did want to go to school after eighth grade, and he said that such a thing has never happened.  I brought up the oceanographer thing, and this brought what seemed like a sort of knowing smile to his face.  He didn’t really respond much.  “He was looking at it the way a lot of people would,” he said.  “The way you’re brought up pulls back on you.  You can change, but . . .”  Clearly he was not much interested in defending his community’s educational system to an outsider like me.  Though I was disappointed, I can’t say I was surprised.  I wouldn’t have wanted to justify my educational philosophy to an intruder either. 

 

Kuderer quickly steered us off the uncomfortable topic by bringing up a local zoning controversy that affected both of them, and they commiserated over the government’s attempt to regulate their businesses.  This gave me an opening to ask about the Amish’s involvement with policymaking and law generally, and Bishop Miller said that his community has from time to time become involved in various public issues by speaking at meetings and whatnot.  That was kind of interesting, I thought.  I asked whether he would be willing to fight a burdensome regulation in the judicial system, or whether he would just submit to the regulation or move, and he said that while it’s true that the Amish “don’t like the lawyers,” the public usually takes over to help the community.  He doubted very much, for example, that a policeman would come and take him away for breaking a zoning law.  This was probably true, and it goes to show that things have come a long way from the days when Adin Yutzy had to worry about going to jail for not paying his fines.

 

We ended by visiting Miller’s woodworking shop for a few minutes, where Kuderer picked up some really snazzy bread boards to sell in her gift shop (I bought one).  It was a wild place, with all sorts of crazy looking machines everywhere, all apparently powered by a complicated pulley system driven by oil or gas or something (I couldn’t really follow the explanation).  A license plate on the wall with a picture of a horse and buggy on it read, “My Hobby is Driving Me Buggy.”  A well-worn Bible sat on a workbench next to an ancient Putnam Fadeless Dyes box.  Miller showed us some wooden toys he had made for sale; they were car-carrying trucks, which seemed like a really funny thing for an Amish guy to make.