"Nurse Kaci Hickox left her Maine home Thursday morning for a bicycle ride with her boyfriend as police could only watch."

"'It's a beautiful day for a bike ride,' the defiant nurse cheered to assembled reporters as she and Theodore Wilbur wheeled off."

"You could hug me. You could shake my hand. I would not give you Ebola... I’m not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it’s not science-based... I’m fighting for something much more than myself. There are so many aid workers coming back and it scares me to think of how they are going to be treated, how they are going to feel."

"Rather than try to train their provosts and professors to act like prosecutors," colleges are outsourcing their investigation of sexual assault to former prosecutors.

NPR reports:

"The phone starts ringing, you know, the first day after Labor Day, and I sort of joke that I'm like legal 911," Perkins says. The schools are "stressed like you cannot believe," [said Djuna Perkins is a former prosecutor who is now an investigator-for-hire]. They would rather have someone else handle the investigations, she adds, "because they, at a certain point, might feel a little bit out of their element."...

Perkins interrogates the students:

That means asking questions like, "Well, when you did this particular thing was she making pleasurable moans? Was she lifting her pelvis to get clothes off? That all sort of goes into the mix," Perkins explains...

Perkins has had several cases that involved S&M that was at least initially consensual; she says it takes a lot of experience and training to remain consistently fair and nonjudgmental.

"'Cause my real reaction when students are talking about stuff like that — I'm like, 'oh my God, these kids, what are they doing?' " Perkins says with a laugh.

Lawyers for Kaci Hickox — released from New Jersey quarantine to quarantine at home in Maine — say she won't do it.

"She doesn’t want to agree to continue to be confined to a residence beyond the two days," said Steven Hyman of the New York law firm McLaughlin & Stern.

Maine health officials have said they expect Hickox to agree to be quarantined at her home until 21 days have passed since her last potential exposure to the virus. Twenty-one days is the maximum incubation period for the Ebola virus....

Another attorney representing Hickox, New York civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, said she would contest any potential court order requiring her quarantine at home. “The conditions that the state of Maine is now requiring Kaci to comply with are unconstitutional and illegal and there is no justification for the state of Maine to infringe on her liberty,” he said.

Hickox is certainly advancing the debate about quarantine. Her essay was extremely effective in making New Jersey look oppressive and abusive putting her into custody. She made a lot of people think differently about what's right and wrong, but now she's resisting the home-based quarantine, which seemed to many of us to be a respectful and safe enough middle ground.

But she's stepping it up and demanding more. This empowers those who like the extreme approach of state custody, because you can't trust these health-care workers to sacrifice their self-interests to the public's demand for protection. Those who empathized upon reading the essay of one woman abused by government are unlikely to have such warm feelings in response to the words of a bunch of lawyers expounding legalistically.

ADDED: As a number of commenters are prompting, this story needs to be connected with the news this morning that "The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said."

Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.

"It is a misunderstanding of freedom... to suppose that choice is not free when the objects between which the chooser must choose are not equally attractive to him."

"It would mean that a person was not exercising his free will when in response to the question whether he preferred vanilla or chocolate ice cream he said vanilla, because it was the only honest answer that he could have given and therefore 'he had no choice.'"

Wrote Judge Posner (in a 2003 case that comes up in my Religion and the Constitution class).

"When he ran for mayor, Bill de Blasio condemned police practices under which young black and Latino men were unfairly... charged with possessing tiny amounts of marijuana..."

"But a new analysis of state data shows that low-level marijuana arrests during the de Blasio administration have continued at roughly the same level as under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg."

(NYT link.)

The Coeur d'Alene Hitching Post controversy comes in for a quick, soft landing.

What had happened was something I'd believed I could assure people was not going to happen, and I'm glad to see the local authorities — on receipt of a little push back from the country at large — gave matters a second thought and reversed their position:

The city of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, says the Hitching Post, a for-profit wedding chapel owned by two ministers, doesn't have to perform same-sex marriages.

The city has been embroiled in controversy ever since the owners of the Hitching Post sued the city. They say a city anti-discrimination law threatened to force them to marry same-sex couples now that gay marriage is legal in Idaho....

Initially, the city said its anti-discrimination law did apply to the Hitching Post, since it is a commercial business. Earlier this week, Coeur d'Alene city attorney Mike Gridley sent a letter to the Knapps’ attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom saying the Hitching Post would have to become a not-for-profit to be exempt. But Gridley said after further review, he determined the ordinance doesn’t specify non-profit or for-profit.

And let that be a lesson to everyone. Remember Coeur d'Alene. Don't redo that controversy. It's been resolved correctly now, and nobody ought to make that mistake again. There now, can we all live in peace and diversity?

I wonder who leaked that Eric Holder is exasperated about leaks?

"Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly not pleased about the recent leaks involving the grand jury testimony of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. According to CBS News, the attorney general has been 'exasperated' over what he calls 'selective leaks' in the case."

Leaking about leaking. Freaky. Meta-leaky.

Rush Limbaugh calls my name... and calls out Obama for woman-kissing and other possible sexism.

Here's the transcript of a segment of today's show, where there was discussion of 2 related incidents: 1. The "don't touch my girlfriend" scene in Chicago where Obama, demonstrating how to vote, ordered a woman to kiss him, and 2. Obama's description of an ebola-related appearance at Emory University hospital: "I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed, not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory because of the valiant work that they did in treating one of the patients."

A woman had called in about that ebola incident, and — as Rush put it:

"[W]hat she thought was that since he made a big deal out of not kissing the doctors, that he wanted to make everybody aware that he wasn't gay. And her point was, what's wrong with being gay? 

My point would be that he used the stereotype that doctors are male and nurses are female. But, yeah, on top of that, what's wrong — within his world view — with men kissing men?

Well, he is married. If he was gay, that would be a problem....

Wait! If he's distinguishing kissing males and females, he's specifying that kissing is sexual, and kissing the women should be a problem for a man married to a woman. If it's not sexual, he should kiss both sexes indiscriminately (which would work to deny the sexuality of kissing unless he's bisexual).

... so he's going out of his way to say he's not gay. That's her interpretation. 

If that's correct, then Obama made a homophobia faux pas.  Rush connects that incident to the "don't touch my girlfriend" scene that I wrote about — here — yesterday. Rush describes what happened and says that some people think the scene was scripted. His theory — which is nothing like mine — is that it was supposed to make Obama seem attractive and supportive to women, to counteract Tina Brown's recent statement: "I don't think [Obama] makes [women] feel safe." Whether the Chicago incident was scripted or not, I didn't read it as a demonstration of making women feel safe. I thought it was an intrusion on the woman. But Rush proceeds to quote me:

Like Ann Althouse on her blog said, "Wait a second, I thought men weren't supposed to --" You know, you have to get consent to do this now on every college campus. You can't just kiss a woman without her permission, and you can't approach her and put your arm around without her permission, without her consent. Obama just forced his way on that woman. And she looked like she wanted it, by the way. She looked like she didn't mind, honored to be given a hug and a smooch by the president, cocksman A. 

In my book, it doesn't matter how she acted. He didn't know in advance how she would feel. Even if she loved it, he assumed he was welcome to impose on her body. And her reaction doesn't convince me that she loved it. She was on camera, overwhelmed by the most powerful man in the world, and forced to think quickly about what might be in her interest. How was rejecting him or acting offended even an option?

Rush continues:

So that happens, and everybody's laughing and Obama walks out around her and he's looking like he's pulled off some major score here. Talks about this guy, why would a brother want to embarrass me like this and so forth. So people are wondering if the whole thing was scripted since it followed, by one day, Tina Brown saying that Obama makes women feel unsafe.

Clearly this woman was not feeling unsafe. She's laughing. She's all excited. 

I don't think that's clear. She was put on the spot... by the President of the United States. She might be laughing out of sheer emotional overload, confusion, and the weirdness of it all. Are you allowed to fight off the advances of The Leader? Droit du seigneur?? Is there some core of personal autonomy and rectitude that I can voice right now? The safe bet is to let it all roll over you. Pretend you're into it. Safe bet. Women want to be safe. Tina says. Safety is one way to play the game of life. But the other players should not assume that your silence means consent. If they do, they don't really care about women. Yes mean yes. Silence does not mean yes. Silence may mean: I am subordinated.

Rush finishing the segment, trying — I think — to pick up on what I'd said:

But it's very clear that she did not sign a consent form before he embraced her. It wasn't an embrace. He put his arm around her shoulder. But there was no consent form. She didn't sign a consent form before he embraced her and kissed her. And that's illegal in many places in America now and on college campi. Just did it.

Pushing back against George Clooney and his new wife — a lawyer who is working for the Greek government, trying to get Britain to return the Elgin marbles.

"[I]t is time to put aside the wilful misinformation and cheap innuendo that masks the genuine debt that everyone — most especially Greece — owes to Lord Elgin," writes Dominic Selwood.

Should all museums give back everything that does not come from a randomly circumscribed geographic radius around each museum? Should the Louvre return the Mona Lisa to Florence, even though it was purchased lawfully by the French royal family? Should the J Paul Getty Museum in New York hand back all its Greek, Roman, medieval, and European art and sculpture, including many of the world’s most famous pieces? What about France returning the Bayeux Tapestry to England? Or Japanese museums sending back American rock memorabilia? Maybe Venice should give back the Horses of St Mark if we are now only allowed to see things where they were made?

These are facile arguments. Looting and criminality should be deplored and punished. But antiquities, like everything else, can be legitimately purchased or gifted, and we should celebrate museums that have quite properly acquired collections that educate and inform the visiting public.

Overarching this whole debate, the romantic notion that the marbles could simply be tacked back onto the Parthenon is deeply misguided....

I thought only "yes" means yes: Did Obama get true, verbalized consent from that woman before he kissed her?

No. He did not. People are focusing on Obama's interplay with a man who said "Don't touch my girlfriend" as Obama was voting in Chicago, demonstrating how to vote.

But let's talk about the woman. Obama orders her to kiss him: "You're gonna kiss me. Give him something to talk about. Now, he's really jealous." As you see in the video, he makes that declarative statement and immediately grabs her and kisses and hugs her.

Why is that acceptable? He's using her in an effort to regain dignity and to humiliate the man who humiliated him. It might all be dismissed as play humiliation and play counter-humiliation. But the woman's body was used as an object of that play, a means of communication between men.

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg owns a surprisingly large number of ‘Notorious RBG’ t-shirts."

And she is aware of people talking about her on the internet and that opera about her and Scalia. And there won't be "enough" women on the Supreme Court until there are 9. (Note to people who have trouble processing language: That doesn't mean we ought to be hoping for or trying to get 9 women on the Supreme Court. That means that there is no point at which anyone ought to say there are now "enough" women on the Supreme Court and another would be too many.)

The Oscars, Pistorius and de la Renta.

1. It was handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance: Oscar Pistorius got a 5-year sentence.

2. Oscar de la Renta, who dressed First Ladies and movie stars, has died at the age of 82: "With French lace and delicate embroidery, he helped women subdue their insecurities. And with his eye for a gentle flounce and a keen understanding of line and silhouette, he helped them build a powerfully stylish wardrobe that never denied their femininity nor apologized for it.... Today, there are designers in New York who are more adept at capturing the sexuality of the modern era.... But de la Renta represented a kind of old-school fashion with its emphasis on propriety, elegance and good taste."

"I love the law, intellectually. I love nutting out these problems, wrestling with these arguments."

"I love teaching. I miss the classroom and engaging with students. But I think being a Justice is a little bit too monastic for me. Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more."

Barack Obama, quoted at the end of Jeffrey Toobin's mostly routine New Yorker piece about Obama's "judicial legacy."

ADDED: What's up with the verbal phrase "to nut out"? The (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary designates the relevant meaning — "to work out through careful thought; to puzzle out" — as "slang" that is "chiefly Austral. and N.Z." Example: " If you have trouble nutting this maths problem out, the Australian Mathematics Competition is not for you." There are no other meanings for "nut out," though "nut" without "out" is a verb that can mean: 1. "To look for or gather nuts" (rare), 2. "To curry favour with" (obsolete), 3. "To fix, fit, or fasten by means of nuts," 4. "To castrate" or "Of a man: to have sexual intercourse with (a woman)" (U.S. slang), 5. "To butt with the head" (British slang), 6. "To kill" (Irish English slang).

"'Dadcore?' 'Momcore?' What the heck are these trendy lingoes?"

Asks someone at Metafilter, linking to a Glamour article titled "Move Over, Normcore — Dadcore Is Here. What It Is, Plus 3 Takeaways to Apply to Your Non-Dad Closet."

Someone pointed out the obvious, that the "-core" suffix comes from "hardcore," but how did "-core" get into "hardcore" in the first place? "Hardcore" does not appear in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, and "hard core" is only a "draft addition":

hard core adj. and n. (usu. as one word) orig. U.S., (a) adj. denoting harsh, aggressive, or extreme versions of various types of popular music (originally punk, now also rap, techno, etc.), typically faster, louder, or more experimental than related forms, and determinedly less mainstream; (b) n. any of various forms of popular music (often a variety of an established genre) regarded as particularly extreme, aggressive, or experimental.

But we use "hardcore" far beyond that music meaning, most notably for porn, but it's widely used, certainly by me. Some examples from the 10 years of this blog:

If you're hardcore enough to burn [artwork worth millions], why are you not hardcore enough to lie to the police?...

Ironically, this professor is teaching that it's all about power and you need to use hardcore tactics to win, and the student seems to have learned this lesson well. The edited video, dumped on the internet is a hardcore tactic, flipping the power on the old white guy....

I'm not purporting to interpret this scripture and won't argue about how it should really be read, but I think there is a scruple about calling attention to charity that some people might be hardcore about. Posting even anonymously on a website that is only about advertising charity could be taken as wrong. I note Jesus sounds rather hardcore about it and puts the stakes very high....

One of the reasons "We Won't Get Fooled Again" is a great song is because of the complicated ambivalence expressed by the character who sings it. A hardcore politico cannot use those words, even though a hardcore politico is likely to hear that song and mistakenly believe it expresses what he believes....

An innovative idea for a new law school would to use an old style hardcore Socratic Method approach. It's actually hard to find Kingsfield-type lawprofs any more; everybody's already competing to be the most nurturing. I'd like to see a school compete for students and faculty by offering a retro hardcore method....

If one of the hardcore righties had won the Republican nomination, I would probably have gone for Obama. But Mitt Romney got the nomination, which is what I had been hoping for (after Mitch Daniels decided not to run)....

What's toxic about debate, disagreement, and hardcore argument? When was feminism ever supposed to be about being nice to anybody?...

Would East and West Pakistan be one country today if the government hadn't been so hardcore about Urdu?...

If you were a fan of "Fraggle Rock," you may remember that the Fraggles called Doc's workroom "outer space," and if you're an incredibly hardcore fan of the Althouse blog, you may remember that that there is a room in my house that we call "outer space." We've been calling it that since the '80s....

Tom Ford is more hardcore about men in shorts than I am....

You may imagine that Madison is a place where government nannies coddle the populace, but when it comes to facing winter, we are hardcore northerners. No whining. Be tough. Deal with it. We don't submit to Nature. We're having a Snow Action Day....

It's all about the clavicle, the clavicle that you've etched out through hardcore exercise and stringent dieting....

I wouldn't want all nine [Supreme Court Justices] to be flexible pragmatists. Having a hardcore originalist or two in the mix is a moderating safeguard. But don't give me five of them!...

I came away surprised that some people, especially the libertarians, were hardcore, true believers, wedded to an abstract version of an idea and unwilling to look at how it played out in the real world.

There's also "softcore," a word I'm using for the first time on this blog right now, oddly enough. "Softcore," a less useful word that "hardcore," is reserved as a contrast to "hardcore." It's a back-formation, like "underwhelm," not a real word in itself. And I say that acknowledging the contestable reality of hardcore as a word in itself.

How Judge Randa got the new anti-John-Doe investigation case.

The Journal Sentinel explains:

Normally, federal judges are randomly assigned to cases. But when [Citizens for Responsible Government Advocates] filed its lawsuit, it said its case was related to two others that Randa already had. Doing that meant the case automatically went to Randa to determine if it should stay with him.

One of the cases that CRG contended was linked to its lawsuit was a challenge to an investigation of Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and groups allied with him. However, CRG filed its suit only after an appeals court had ruled that earlier case be dismissed.

"This was artful to the point of manipulative," said Jeremy Levinson, a Democratic attorney who specializes in campaign finance laws.

CRG attorney Andrew Grossman said in an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the two cases "involve some common legal issues and factual background. We followed the court's rules in disclosing related litigation, and any objection to that is ill-informed grousing."....

A Colorado town has a referendum on whether to end the breed-specific dog ban.

Is this the beginning of the end of anti-pitbullism?

If "yes means yes," the nonhuman animal never says yes.

So don't swim with dolphins and tickle their bellies. And quit petting those beasts you call "pets."

I want to connect the previous post about the dolphins to the post from a few days ago about emotional support animals. The latter post links to a New Yorker article that is very critical of people who weasel — I know, not fair to weasels — around rules against animals in restaurants, shops, museums, and public transport by presenting their pets as "emotional support animals." That's mostly about what an imposition on other human beings this is. But consider the animals themselves.

The author, Patricia Marx, says "No animals were harmed during the writing of this article," but she took a turkey into a crowded NYC deli, where he "lay immobile, on his side with his feet splayed as if he’d conked out on the sofa," and then his "head had turned purple," which signaled to his handlers that he was "too stressed" and needed to leave. And the alpaca in the museum began "intently humming a distress signal" and had to leave.

Nonhuman animals cannot talk. We look into their faces and see enough human likeness to stir up our thoughts of what they might be saying, and we tend to flatter ourselves and serve our own interests by imagining them projecting the thoughts we want them to have. There's a lot of talk these days about establishing a "yes means yes" standard for intelligent, verbal human adults on college campuses. The concern is that free citizens might go along with sexual activities and fail to convey their unwillingness in spoken words. Sexual intercourse, in this view, is so intimately and deeply invasive on the body that a spoken "yes" is a necessary step.

You might agree or disagree about the importance of hearing the affirmative spoken message of permission to become intimate with another human being's body, but I want to talk about what we do to the bodies of our pets who have no capacity to say "yes" or "no" and who are trapped in our space and cannot walk away but must submit to our self-serving petting.

Yes, the animal you're confining at home or controlling outdoors may seem to accept or enjoy your physical intrusions, but think how you would adapt if you were completely controlled and dependent like that. Then complicate that thought with the reality that as a human being, you have no way to know how the nonhuman mind works, what fears and confusion and gnawing needs roil inside that head with the eyes that give you the look that makes you feel you should be kind and give food.

"The Supreme Court in a pre-dawn ruling Saturday said that Texas could proceed with its strict voter ID law in next month’s election..."

"... despite a lower court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional."

The court gave no reasoning for its decision, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

This is the opposite of what the Court did a week and a half ago in the Wisconsin case, where Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas dissented. So the middle 3 Justices — Roberts, Kennedy, and Breyer — see some distinction. In both cases, the district court had issued a permanent injunction after a trial, and the Court of Appeals had stayed the injunction.

Perhaps the difference is that the Wisconsin ID requirement was completely new, but Texas only tightened up an ID requirement it already had. The Ginsburg opinion — PDF — observes that "there is little risk that the District Court’s injunction will in fact disrupt Texas’ electoral processes," because "Texas need only reinstate the voter identification procedures it employed for ten years (from 2003 to 2013) and in five federal general elections."

UPDATE: Ginsburg has corrected an error in her opinion:

The dissent... listed a variety of photo ID forms not accepted for purposes of voting under the Texas law. Among those listed in the Ginsburg dissent as unacceptable was a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs photo ID.

Three days after the opinion was released, professor Richard Hasen of the University of California, Irvine said on his election law blog that the state does in fact accept the Veterans Affairs IDs. Upon confirmation of that fact by the Texas secretary of state's office, Ginsburg amended her opinion.

Another Scott Walker/Mary Burke debate — BUMPED!

Tonight, at 7 Central, streaming here. Get ready. You have 3 hours and 20 minutes to get into the mood for a Wisconsin debate.

ADDED: I've moved this post up to the top of the blog, so you can watch and comment. I'm not going to live-blog, because that would be boring. For me. I'm going to lock in and watch straight through, maybe take some handwritten notes, and say whatever I have to say, about an hour from now.

POST-DEBATE UPDATE: A numbered list of observations, in no significant order:

1. The set is atrocious and endlessly distracting, with curving red-white-and-blue fabric behind them  that Meade said made them look like they were about to take off in hot-air balloons. And what was meant to evoke the American flag — as the minutes wore on — looked to me more like Confederate flags. The lecterns were strangely stumpy, making the candidates look absurdly short.

2. When the debate ended, the candidates walked away, and we could see that Mary Burke was wearing delicate high heels. These had made the candidates appear to be the same height, but poor Mary was stuck standing in those things for an hour, during which we never saw her feet. After the debate, she stalked off quickly, and I guessed it was to get out of those shoes. Scott Walker lingered and hung out with the panelists, remaining on camera, looking personable for a couple minutes while the jaunty dah-dah-DAH debate music played. We were a little giddy here at Meadhouse by then, and Meade was singing along with the pointless music.

3. My strongest overall observation is that Walker painted an optimistic, energetic picture, and Burke harped on negativity and kept telling us that what Walker has done is not good enough and we need to do better. This not-good-enough-need-to-do-better theme was repeated so often that we began to feel like kids getting chewed out by a teacher. Now, clearly, Burke is the one who must say a change is needed, but I don't think she gave change that lilt and lift it needs to not sound like scolding, and that left us primed to hear the good news from Walker. And Burke continually attacked Walker, telling him he hadn't done enough. He didn't return the attacks. He just launched into his version of how well things were going and how we need to keep up the good work.

4. The strongest distinction between the two came on drinking and driving. Wisconsin lets you off with just a ticket the first time you get caught, and Walker — while expressing his concern about drunk driving and his interest in punishing repeat offenders — made it clear that he'd keep all the Wisconsinites who haven't yet been caught in the golden zone of immunity where we only need to fear getting a ticket the first time we are stopped. If you want a misdemeanor charge for those who get stopped the first time, that's Mary Burke's position. I wouldn't vote for governor on this point alone, but Walker sent out the signal of leniency to the many, many Wisconsinites who've been going out drinking and making it home okay without incident.

5. On the question of a casino in Kenosha, the candidates were invited to open up about their moral feelings about gaming. Neither did.

6. There was one "fun" question, asking them what they'd do if they had to go a day without campaigning and would surely take to their preferred 2-wheeler, Burke on a Trek bike and Walker on a Harley. Where, exactly, would they go, and who would they go with? Walker gave the precise route, complete with route numbers and turns, and said he'd go with his usual "buddies" who motorcycle with them. Burke seemed nervous and said "um" a few times as she claimed she'd go back to her hometown and spend time with members of her family. Meade was heckling, saying that everyone knows that Mary Burke isn't much of a cyclist. Ah, but what was she supposed to do? The questioner imposed the assumption that if she had time off, of course, she'd bicycle. It would be awkward to refute that! Just because my family is in the bicycle business doesn't mean that when I get some time, what I want to do is bike. If her family were in the dairy business, would they assume that in her spare time, what she likes to do is drink milk?

7. They never talked about ebola! What the hell?!!

8. Some weird thing happened with the clock when Walker was answering his first question, suddenly lopping off a minute (or something). He had to spend time talking about that clock business. So: clockgate. Think about it.

"Right off the bat, things went sour when they pulled up to the border crossing in Winkler, in the province of Manitoba, about 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon..."

"A guard scolded Patti for taking photos of the crossing with her cellphone, and at Lowell for not taking off his sunglasses...."

Wisconsin couple crossing over into Canada on a whim learns quite a lot about how the Canadians feel about handguns.