Less than the Least

Am I imagining it, or is the old cliché “back in the day” enjoying a renaissance?  I seem to see it everywhere, even in “objective” newspaper stories.  When I was a kid (back in the day, in other words), it was one of two phrases people often used to link the past to the present.  To compare the old days to the present, they said “back in the day” (as in: “Back in the day, that pot-bellied man was the fastest sprinter in the state”).  To compare the present to the old days, they said “anymore” (as in: “Anymore, you pump your own gas; they don’t pump it for you”).

The selection by Time magazine of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as its person of the year has been met by a collective yawn. Perhaps this reflects a general disinterest in financial regulators. It also could simply be one more illustration of the diminishing influence of newspapers and weekly magazines.

The flurry of comparisons between President Obama’s Nobel Peace Price speech and Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Realist theology reminded me of a debate over whether Niebuhr is the author of the “Serenity Prayer,” which has long been attributed to him. Last year, Yale law librarian Fred Shapiro produced evidence that the prayer pre-dated 1943, when Niebuhr was said to have composed it. Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported that Duke University librarian Stephen Goranson has uncovered a 1937 Christian student newsletter that attributes the prayer to Niebuhr, thus strengthening the case for Niebuhr’s authorship.

Here is a little review of a pair of very interesting Italian poets that might be of interest to a few folks-- particularly those who are tired of my rambling on about the proposed financial reforms.

This past week, I heard the results of the latest round of films: none of my tumors has grown in the past couple of months, and the one on my liver appears to be slightly smaller than it was. This is very good news, about as good as one can get at my stage of cancer and cancer treatment. For which I’m very thankful. Enough italicized verys.

Apologies for the long silence. Chemo brain has taken hold of me, and writing of all sorts has become a good deal more difficult than it was. I’ve never found writing easy, but I’ve always been able to do it. These days, I sometimes feel as though I’ve forgotten how. (What are all those letter keys on my laptop for?) That makes work on the crime-and-criminal-justice book I’m writing go more slowly than I’d hoped; recently, that has absorbed all my too-limited writing energy. I’ll try to do better in the future.

I may the only person in the country who was reminded by President Obama’s speech last night of President Bush’s announcement of his stem cell policy in August 2001. In both cases, the President was announcing his policy on a controversial issue during the first year of his presidency. And in both cases, the President adopted a policy that seemed to reflect his own preferred position, but also concede a small amount of ground to critics. In Bush’s case, the prohibition on research with new stem cells reflected his opposition to stem cell research, but the policy allowed scientists to continue working with existing lines of stem cells. In Obama’s case, the troop escalation reflects his repeated emphasis on the importance of the war in Afghanistan (as contrasted with Iraq), while his proposal to begin scaling back in 2011 seems a concession to the war’s critics.

A recent report by Neil Barofsky, the special investigator for the $700 billion TARP program, criticizing last year’s AIG bailout has stoked suggestions that perhaps it’s time for Treasury Secretary Geithner to step down. My guess is that Geithner will indeed step down by the end of 2010, but that he will almost certainly step down too late.

For reading the current financial tea leaves, the week’s most important event was Goldman Sachs’ announcement that it will devote $500 million to loans for small businesses and other good works. This noblesse oblige underscores just how much money Goldman has been raking in, in part thanks to the government’s bailouts. 

At a law and religion conference at Seton Hall’s law school yesterday, Rob Vischer, a law professor at St. Thomas, gave a fascinating talk that touched on the debate over religious exemptions—the question whether religiously oriented individuals and businesses should be protected from discrimination claims. This issue arose when a photo shop was sued for refusing to provide photography services at a gay wedding, and in cases challenging pharmacists’ refusal to dispense birth control or abortion pills. Vischer argues that the cases should focus less on the parties’ competing claims of conscience than on whether the declinations genuinely interfere with the plaintiffs’ access to these services (in many of these cases, they don’t). Among other things, such a shift might better protect the ability of businesses and other associations to govern themselves as they see fit.