I'm a fan of: I laughed my tushy off at this Onion article. On a separate note, if you don't recognize the word “tushy”, do not run a google search for it (Via Feministe via Obsidian Wings).
I'm not a fan of: FoxNews and others smearing Yale Law School Dean (and current Obama nominee) Harold Koh as trying to force Sharia on the United States. As best as I can tell, the report is based on an e-mail from an attendee at a 2007 dinner which reports that Koh said in a speech at the dinner that there are controversies in which the decisions of a U.S. court might be governed by Sharia law. Other dinner attendees and the White House are pushing back against this, but want to point that assuming he said something like what's being reported, it's a perfectly innocent comment, which I'll illustrate by way of a quick and dirty (that is, I'm not going to work through all possible exceptions and complications) example.
Say I go to Brazil on vacation and while there I slip and fall on hotel property. When I return to the United States, I realize I'm more badly injured than I had at first thought, and I sue my Brazillian hotel (which is a multinational corporation or otherwise properly under the jurisidction of a U.S. court, this is one of the complications I said I wouldn't work through). The U.S. court is almost certainly going to apply Brazilian law in determining whether the liability for my slip and fall should properly be assigned to the hotel, whether under a negligence standard or otherwise, and also in determining what kinds and amounts of damages I can get from the hotel if it was responsible.
If those events happened in Iran instead of Brazil, a U.S. court would, under the same circumstances, apply Iranian law. As far as I understand, Iran operates under a Sharia system, so when the court applies Iranian law to my slip and fall case, they'd be applying Sharia. Harold Koh's alleged acknowledgment of this shows that he is a monster.
Thing I hope you're a fan of: posts pairing an item I like with one I dislike, because I have them planned for at least the next few days. I absolutely promise that the items I dislike won't solely consist of the behavior of Republicans, as that would be trite.
# posted by washerdreyer @ 4/02/2009 01:43:00 AM
