Now I appreciate Cal State's desire to follow the law; the California Constitution does prescribe the text of the oath, and says "all public ... employees, ... except such inferior officers and employees as may be by law exempted, shall, before they enter upon the duties of their respective offices, take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation." But surely there are times to interpret laws as requiring substantial compliance rather than strict literalism. Even the precedent that Cal State's Human Resources director JoAnne Hill cites as supposedly requiring the exact text of the oath (see the article for more on that) seems to take this view: It rejected the applicant's modified oath only after stressing that the modifications were not "surplusage" or "innocuous or merely expository," but rather "ma[d]e equivocal the essential oath preceding [the applicant's personal statement]." Likewise, the venerable principle that laws should be interpreted in a way that minimizes possible constitutional problems (here chiefly First Amendment problems related to compelled speech) counsels in favor of reading the law to provide some flexibility. In light of this, letting Marianne Kearney-Brown sign the entire oath, simply with the addition of a term, seems sufficiently consistent with the state mandate.

True, the Supreme Court has held that it doesn't violate the First Amendment to require certain narrow loyalty oaths, including support-and-defend oaths, for government employees. But the Court's justification was precisely that these oaths "do[] not require specific action in some hypothetical or actual situation"; they embody "simply a commitment to abide by our constitutional system ... [and] a commitment not to use illegal and constitutionally unprotected force to change the constitutional system."

Hate crimes "are different" from other crimes: That was the argument for hate-crimes laws that Al Gore made during the 2000 campaign, and it is the argument that we are going to hear again this week, as Congress takes up federal legislation on the subject. Crimes motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation are said to be different chiefly because they, supposedly, instill fear in entire communities and generate social division.

Even if this generalization is true -- and it is not obvious that it is -- it should not end our thought about hate. There is no evidence that adding hate-crimes laws on top of regular criminal laws does anything to deter these acts. Nor is there any evidence that federal action is needed. Most states already have hate-crimes laws; the federal government has a hate-crimes law that applies to victims who were engaged in federally protected activities, such as holding rallies.

The proposed legislation would allow the federal government to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, whether or not federally protected activities were involved, and to assist local law enforcement in fighting them. But there is no evidence that local law enforcement has a special need for federal resources to help it combat hate crimes. 

These narrowly-defined excise taxes -- which are always supposed to fund some new government initiative aimed at solving the problems created by the thing being taxed -- aggravate me a great deal because they never work.  Much like "sin" taxes levied on booze and tobacco, rarely do they result in a reduction in the use of the product or service being taxed.  And if they do that usually only prompts government bureaucrats to demand new sources of revenue to continue funding whatever initiative it is they started with the original tax’s revenues. 

Where is the Charles Schenck of the Global War on Terrorism? Schenck was a Socialist Party leader arrested in Philadelphia in 1918 and convicted under the Espionage Act. His crime: distributing anti-draft pamphlets that read like well-reasoned, patriotic tracts compared with some of the obscenity-laden Internet screeds of the anti-war left today.

Yet a judge ordered Schenck to federal prison for 10 years. The Supreme Court, in the decision that informed Americans they have no right to "shout fire in a crowded theater," upheld his conviction. What's more, the provision of the Espionage Act under which Schenck and others were jailed remains enshrined in the federal statute books. But Bush and his Justice Department have yet to use it.