Links for 2012-02-04

There is growing sentiment that Cameron has lost some of its craziness, and there is definitive evidence that it has lost some of its Crazies. About 1,200 seats are earmarked for Duke’s undergraduates, but this season students have filled about 700 a game while classes are in session. Over the last three years, the university has filled the gaps by regularly selling hundreds of student-section tickets to nonstudents, giving the famed Section 17 an unusual look.

The Supreme Court has always had its critics. Chief Justice John Marshall had to contend with the temper of President Andrew Jackson (“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”). And Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes went toe-to-toe with FDR, who wouldn’t let up with the court-packing. But in the history of the Supreme Court, nothing has ever prepared the justices for the public opinion wrecking ball that is Stephen Colbert. The comedian/presidential candidate/super PAC founder has probably done more to undermine public confidence in the court’s 2010 Citizens United opinion than anyone, including the dissenters. In this contest, the high court is supremely outmatched.

Bauer claims, “But nowhere in the Bible are we told that government should take one man’s money by force of law and give it to another man.” This is false. Both the Year of Jubilee (when all debts were forgiven, slaves released and land returned to its original owners and related to the “sabbatical” year) and “gleaning” laws (mandate to leave grapes or grain on the vines or in the field for the poor to collect) are forms of government mandated redistribution of wealth. They were laws concerned with justice not encouragements to charity. To read up on gleaning you can flip to Leviticus 19:9; 23:22, Deuteronomy 24:19-21 or the story of Ruth and Boaz in Ruth chapter 2. To read up on Jubilee and “sabbatical” years I recommend Leviticus 25 and then later scriptural references of Isaiah 61 and Luke 4.