After all, much of the public justification for the Iraq invasion was based on the country being ruled by a tyrannical autocracy that ruthlessly turned on its people. Certainly the same situation is present in Myanmar, and possibly on an even greater scale. The ruling junta's indifference to the health and well-being of its entire population seems to put even Saddam Hussein on his worst day to shame.

Of course, in the case of Iraq it was also argued that America's own interests were at stake. Hussein might have been harboring terrorists, or building a nuclear arsenal. As far as I know, no such similar allegations have been asserted against the Myanmar government. But even if there were it wouldn't affect this analysis, seeing how in the case of Iraq none of those allegations were true. No doubt Saddam Hussein harbored a great deal of antipathy and suspicion towards the United States, but hateful feelings do not an imminent danger make. In terms of posing an *actual threat* to American security he was obviously lacking. On the contrary, his rule in some ways even *assured* the security of the U.S. For example, under his government Al Qaeda, a mutual enemy of both him and the United States, was not free to operate. Whereas after his overthrow Iraq suddenly became the Al Qaeda breeding ground it hadn't been before.

So when we take a look at the arguments underpinning the Iraq invasion and compare them to the ones that would support an invasion of Myanmar, we see there's little difference. In fact we might be left with even *more* justification to invade Myanmar, given the scale of the junta's longstanding track record of humanitarian crimes and scope of imminent harm its current behavior is likely to cause.

Meanwhile, remember also that Myanmar has oil, which has often proven to be an important factor in choosing whom the U.S. should invade. Myanmar's wealth of natural resources has always made it a complicating factor in Southeast Asian geopolitical relations, and it's a wealth it might behoove the U.S. to have some control over. Personally I find this kind of rationale wholly unqualified to justify the violent incursion of a sovereign nation, but the point here is that because the current U.S. government has relied upon such reasons before, it's hard to see why it would not be willing to rely upon them now too.

At the core of the neoconservative thinking behind the Iraq invasion was the idea that pre-emptive self-defense could provide a justification for an otherwise forbidden act, in this case an act of war. Necessity and justification are concepts that do exist in law to exonerate bad acts that are necessary to prevent even worse results that would occur but for the intervention of these other bad acts. It's the idea that shooting a gunman could ever be ok. If it could reasonably be believed that the gunman posed a threat, shooting him first can be justified, whether to protect oneself or to prevent harm to other innocents. Defense of others -- if you reasonably thought the gunman would kill other people -- can provide just as legitimate grounds for shooting him as would have defense of oneself.

But these bad acts must still be reasonably grounded and proportionate to the actual risk threatened, and consequently in the case of Iraq these defenses come up short in justifying the violent action taken by the U.S. However, when we look at Myanmar, where we see that hundreds of thousands are already dead or missing and the survivors are without access to food, shelter, or clean water, and where the ruling junta is going out of its way to prevent them from receiving those necessary items of survival, they may come closer to measuring up. Right now the world can reasonably and unavoidably see the grave and lethal risk to millions the Myanmar government currently poses. If, then, it is ever right to intervene when such a grievous threat is posed by a government to its citizens, surely such a time is now. Especially if it was ever Iraq's time before.

One of the pool's classes will wrap up in about two weeks though (the other's will in June) so hopefully by then I'll have more time for posting, which will be opportune since on May 20th I'll be attending the third Bay Area Blawgers event. This time it'll be held at Berkeley, co-sponsored by the Santa Clara High Tech Law Institute and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Details as posted on organizer Eric Goldman's website:

When: May 20, 6-8 pm
Where: Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley Law School. Directions and parking.
Who: Everyone is welcome, but this event principally will cater to active legal bloggers. Bloggers and friends who have said they plan to attend include: Tsan Abrahamson, Jerry Bame, Robert Barr, Larry Downes, Eli Edwards, Bob Eisenbach, Cathy Gellis, Eric Goldman, Beth Grimm, Greg Haverkamp, Cathy Kirkman, Kimberly A. Kralowec, Ethan Leib, Cathy Moran, Joe Mullin, Deborah Neville, David Newdorf, Dana Nguyen, Aaron Perzanowski, Elizabeth Pianca, Mark Radcliffe, Colin Samuels, Jason Schultz, Tim Stanley, Stacy Stern, John Steele, Kevin Underhill, Fred von Lohmann, J. Craig Williams and Cicely Wilson. (This list will be updated as new blawgers and friends RSVP).

As in the past, the first hour will be a structured round-table discussion and the second will be for shmoozing. I really enjoyed the previous events, and if you are in the Bay Area and either like reading legal blogs (you're reading this one, right?) or writing them you probably will too... RSVP to Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com) if you're interested in attending.

It's also good for an hour of general CLE credit, which I find particularly exciting, seeing how although this will be my third Bay Area Blawgers event, it will be the first where I've been eligible to earn it...

HLN were over there this month, touring with Chicago. They did six dates, including three in the Tokyo/Yokohama area this past weekend, which I just got back from seeing.

Hence the light blogging here, because I was actually doing something resembling blogging over on the HLN fan board, filling other fans in on what it was like to be over there and see the shows. Although it's written largely with that audience in mind, it still reads like my normal travelogues. Have a look (There's about four days' worth of significant posts, so keep scrolling among the comments to see it all).

By the way, I don't mean the Disney "Small World" song -- HLN have an entire album called Small World, which includes this title track. A track, it might interest the jazz fans among you to know, that Stan Getz played on. And if neither HLN nor Stan Getz are your cup of tea, how about the Foo Fighters? Huey recently joined them onstage at their show in Osaka...

Some, like Eugene Volokh see this decision as a fairly minor occasion. Others, like Eric Goldman and Susan Crawford, on the other hand, see it as a significant piece of jurisprudence related not to the Fair Housing Act, per se, but to 47 USC 230, a 1996 statute that provides fairly broad immunity for Internet sites for the content others put on it.

What tends to make so much English television, Kingdom included, better than many American shows is its greater reluctance to rely on clichés, instead providing truer settings and letting the drama and characters develop more naturally. American entertainment is often so contrived -- with artificial conflict, stereotypical personalities, stories that play to every public misconception, etc. -- that it's particularly refreshing to watch something from England that avoids such pitfalls.

But if Kingdom showed any weaknesses last season, it was in its weakening fortitude in resisting these predictable tropes. In some instances they snuck in connected to dramatic elements, like with the gratuitous introduction of boorish American military types in Episode 3 (an episode also plagued with cartoonish renderings of its own usually warm and rounded main characters), or the all-too-convenient plot device of a cataclysmic flood in the season finale.

But where I want to particularly focus is on its occasional, yet increasingly frequent, unfortunate and unnecessary over-simplifications of the law, a tendency which does a deep disservice to its characters, stories, and production generally.

It's a reasonable position: China sees its hosting of the games as an enormous boon, so why positively reward a country that's acting in negative ways?

But I find myself disagreeing with the calls for a boycott. For one thing, it would unfairly punish the athletes more than anyone else. It doesn't seem particularly constructive to use them as political pawns, particularly when it's things such as games that help unite peoples when there is so much else trying to divide them. Availing yourself of opportunities to better understand people you don't agree with doesn't mean you're sanctioning their position. On the contrary, by better understanding the context from which it emerges you can instead end up in a better position to persuade against it.

And in this particular instance I think it is of critical importance that people in the west come to better understand China. Though it's been opening up tremendously within recent years, what's known about it is still based on anecdote and supposition. The more people who can meet it up close and personal to get a more accurate measure, the better. In fact it's particularly important in terms of figuring out how our own interests suggest we should choose to deal with it going forward. Because when it comes down to it, I think on further inspection we may be surprised to discover what we *thought* we wanted from China may not quite turn out to be what we actually should.

In other words, Gmailers can roll back the timestamp so it looks like their email was sent on time. They are, however, only limited to 10 of these a year, lest "people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless."

Of course, this announcement was just an April Fool's joke -- or was it?

I'm writing this post for the benefit of anyone trying to reach me. I'm not sure where the breakdown has been occurring, but lately I've not been getting some of the email sent to me. Or if I do get it, it's three days after it was sent. Even the US Postal Service can beat that kind of speed.

Still, I think it's important to tell his story not only because he deserves whatever positive exposure I can give him, but because his stands as an important example of how an up-and-coming artist can forge a successful career without the aid or interference of a major record label.

To its credit though the school is making a much bigger effort to justly toot its own horn on its own website, including by touting the accomplishments of its alums. Including that of Zaheer Samee, a fellow 2006 grad, who recently won an important housing discrimination case in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

I'm very happy to see someone from among my law school acquaintances go out and accomplish something significant, and all the more so when doing so has also served the public interest.

On this latest trip I thought I might like to see the London performance of Spamalot. I already saw it in Boston once, but I really liked it and it's one of the few soundtracks I ever listen to regularly. But then, as I was standing on line to buy tickets at Leicester Square, I happened to turn over the flier on current London theater productions I picked up at Heathrow (a terrific idea to place them there, local tourist board). Felicity Kendall, whom I recognize from Good Neighbors and Rosemary & Thyme was on the cover, as she is appearing in The Vortex. And Penelope Keith, whom I also recognize from Good Neighbors, as well as To the Manor Born, was playing in the Importance of Being Earnest, a play I sadly seem to like less and less every time I encounter it, which is a pity, as I thought it hysterical the first time I read it.

But then I read on, and saw a listing for a comedy called Legal Fiction, starring Edward Fox. Well now! I've always liked Edward Fox, at least ever since I figured out who he was. He was one of those actors whom once I noticed I then went on a mini-filmfest to see what else he'd done. In fact, even though I own few movie DVDs, my collection happens to includes Day of the Jackal and Force 10 from Navarrone, two films he starred in. I even saw him in a film production of The Importance of Being Earnest and All the Queen's Men, with Eddie Izzard and Matt LeBlanc, which turned out to be one of the best films I've paid money to see in recent years. (If, like the San Jose Mercury News, you expect a camp farce, you will be disappointed. If, however, you just sit back and let it be a sweet, slightly comedic drama, you won't be.)

So it seems clear, on review, that apparently I do like Edward Fox quite a bit (despite never having seen him in Edward and Mrs. Simpson, a role for which he is perhaps most remembered, and hardly having watched any of his movies within the past several years), and so when I saw him listed as being in a production of something whose title included the word, "legal" and whose description included the word, "comedy," well, I thought to myself, what could go wrong?

As per my usual cheapskate custom, I stayed in a hostel, the only nominally affordable lodging solution in London. The enormous downside to this arrangement is that for the second consecutive time, I found myself sharing a room containing someone who snores. All hopes of overcoming jetlag were dashed on the first night, as I didn't just find myself lodged with someone who snores but someone who seemed to snore through every. single. sleep stage.

On the upside, in shared rooms you do get occasion to meet people. Including, on this occasion, a non-snoring French paralegal who's studying to become an attorney.

Nonetheless, it does provide an excuse to have a good time, which leads me to that writing project I'd earlier alluded to being tied up working on. As a fan of Monty Python and Fry and Laurie I realized recently that it was a bit unfortunate that I'd never really ever pursued trying to write sketch comedy. I can't say I never did, as I did dabble a bit with it in high school, even going so far as filming a production of my "Press the Flesh" Sunday talk show parody for the television production class I was taking. But after high school I never really thought about pursuing it again until my third year of law school, when, given the apparent (and surprising) success of my songwriting I thought maybe I should give it another go.

Unfortunately my semester abroad prevented me from being involved with the annual Legal Follies production, an evening of sketch-driven satire of all things legal that many law schools do annually. But then this spring my local synagogue announced that they would be doing a production of Purim Follies to celebrate the holiday and invited people to write Jewish-themed sketches for it. So I gave it a shot.

Fortunately, as I read it out at a writer's meeting it got some laughs. Unfortunately, none were by the guy producing the show, hence its lack of inclusion at last night's Purim Follies production. I can't imagine ever having another excuse to use it, but instead of wasting a perfectly good -- or at least not a completely terrible -- piece of writing, why not, as per usual, post it on my blog?

It's so easy for a mind with momentum to overlook little words. It's why it's so hard to proofread your own work, to notice what you're actually seeing when you have such strong expectation of what will be there. But when these little words can so significantly affect meaning, failing to catch them can cause problems.

I remember back when I was working in France and needed to find an apartment. Vacancy rates in Paris are very low, and no sooner would the local rags with the classified ads hit the streets when it seemed like all the rentals would be snatched up. I got so discouraged always hearing, "L'appartement est déjà loué (the apartment is already rented)," in response to my inquiries that I called up the next place anticipating a negative answer.

"Is the apartment already rented?" I pessimistically posed my inquiry. "Est-ce que l'appartement est déjà loué?"

"Non," was the response. "The apartment is not already rented. Il n'est pas déjà loué."

But all my brain registered at first was the "est" "déjà" "loué " -- and reflexively hung up.

Sometimes the little words really do matter a lot...

UPDATE 3/21: Or can I? See Update 4 below.

Much fuss is being made over whether the unique circumstances of John McCain's birth -- in the Panama Canal Zone to two American citizen parents -- preclude him from fulfilling the "natural born" requirement of the US Constitution's articulated qualifications for the office of the President:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. -- Article II, Section 1.

In elementary school I had always been taught that "natural born" meant that you had to be born on American soil -- the idea being that someone born elsewhere might have split loyalties, with some being devoted to the place of birth instead of the US. That reasoning may still be the logic behind the requirement, but knowledgeable legal scholars are saying that "natural born" really only differentiates between naturalized citizens and those who were citizens by virtue of their birth -- which the citizenship of their parents could establish regardless of where they were born.

In looking over Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, however, much more interesting realizations come to mind.

During the last election I questioned the validity of this excoriation, and I think those comments remain largely pertinent today:

This past spring I watched my friend graduate from San Francisco State. The whole university graduated together, with one large convocation in a stadium. They invited various famous speakers to address the assembled crowd, including the guy who founded eLoan. Somewhere in the middle of his talk he veered off on a tangent. He had been talking about how, even working in business, you could still have a social conscience, and his remarks made reference to the influence of Ralph Nader. But as soon as he mentioned his name, he immediately digressed from his prepared notes. That Nader used to be cool, he said, "but now he's a dick."

It's very sad that Nader's ethos as a crusading cowboy for the common man has become so tarnished to those who would otherwise have welcomed him as an ally. Liberals have been rushing to excoriate him, while Republicans have suddenly signed up to be his best friends, just because of the perceived impact he may have on the ballot this election day.

I tend to think that this criticism is undeserved. Nader has a point: there should be more than two choices for president. Perhaps if there ordinarily were, we wouldn't keep having elections where the choice feels like one between the lesser of two evils. Consolidating political power in two parties is not healthy for governance. Whoever wants to be on the ballot should be able to run, and it's noble for him to want to change the political landscape so that 3rd party and independent candidates will be able to have more viable candidacies.

...

On the other hand, Nader may only have himself to blame for his loss of reputation, even though that loss may be undeserved. He is a man who is both right and wrong at the same time. His insistence on running in this election may have been a bridge too far, one too many battles, which, though worthy on its own, may have undermined the others he also wished to fight. Nader has many people working hard in his non-profits, trying to affect positive policy changes ... These dedicated people keep pressing for important changes that this administration refuses to adopt. They need an alternative one in order to get their job done. Nader knows he isn't going to win this election, but if he even slightly (and however inadvertently) contributes to the re-election of the current administration, it will be extremely counter-productive to his other causes.