How much is it gonna cost you per month to use all those cool features in Apple’s upcoming drool-inducing iPhone? Turns out it’s not too much:

Essentially you are paying an additional $20 over AT&T’s regular plans and getting unlimited data, 200 SMS messages, and the visual voicemail feature. AT&T’s SmartPhone Connect, which includes unlimited data, doesn’t provide you with text messaging and costs the same — tack on an additional $5 for the 200-message package and the iPhone package is a bit cheaper. Assuming you wanted the data plan if you got a smart phone, you’d save $120 by going with the iPhone over the two years of the contract, which oughta make that initial higher cost slightly easier to take.

EDIT–ADDITION BY JAY JOHNSON– I didn’t really think this warranted a new topic, and don’t want to step on David’s toes, but I found something else about the iPhone monthly plan pricing that could be important to possible consumers. If you are already an existing AT&T customer (as I am, and unlike some, I’ve been very pleased with the service), the rates to add an iPhone to your package is even less than the chart posted above. In fact, it’s a LOT less. The three packages, from left to right above are $20, $30, and $40 respectively. There are also discounted rates available for customers with a “family plan” with multiple iPhones. Effectively, if you’re an AT&T customer already, it’s almost a no-brainer, if you can swing the $499-$599 for the unit. With what the machine can do (iPod, mobile internet/email machine, phone, camera), I think the price is not heinous. Especially, if it’s only going to cost me another $30 a month in service.

The Washington Post is in the midst of publishing a four-part series on Dick Cheney — “unfolding like daily Pulitzer bait,” in Jonah Goldberg’s words — that, from what I’ve read, is pretty fascinating (though admittedly, I haven’t read most of it). The Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr calls it a “must-read: highly recommended.” (He also pokes fun at the recent which-branch-of-government-is-Cheney-in kerfuffle with the headline, “WASH POST PROFILES INFLUENTIAL LEGISLATOR.” Heh.)

Goldberg’s column in today’s L.A. Times is good, too. He writes admiringly of Cheney, but ultimately concludes that the veep’s tendency to favor confrontation over compromise “creates a blowback that hobbles your efforts in the long run far more than compromise does.”

Oh, and about that whole branches-of-government thing? Goldberg writes:

[S]eemingly countless sources inside the Bush administration tell the Post that [Cheney] has a contempt for bureaucratic and legislative consensus-building that rivals his contempt for cultivating public support through the media. As a result, he often succeeds in bulldozing policies — on enemy interrogations, etc. — all the way to the president’s desk. But he’s isolated when it comes time to defend these policies in Congress and the public.

Take the current argument over Cheney’s self-exemption from the rules on how classified documents should be handled. Instead of getting a waiver from the president, Cheney argued that he’s immune to executive orders because he’s also the president of the Senate and hence a member of the legislative branch too. Not only is this a goofy argument on its face, it does nothing to restore executive authority. It’s not like the vice presidency was an outpost of the legislative branch before Watergate. Cheney’s argument amounts to a convenient rationalization for his own secretive style.

Such opportunism undermines his more principled arguments and exhausts the goodwill of his defenders, precisely when Cheney needs that goodwill for bigger and better things. And it sends his detractors on the left around the bend, just like President Clinton’s abuses — real and perceived — drove many of us on the right to kick our TV sets. The fact is that Cheney’s cause isn’t helped when millions of Americans think he’s a comic book villain. …

“The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant monarchical claims,” Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, told the Post.

UPDATE: Will Republicans lead a charge to get rid of Cheney… and replace him with Fred Thompson? (Hat tip: Dan Riehl who cites this as one of many reasons he’s “had it with Republicans.”)

Today’s NYTimes Science Section is all about evolution. Which, while interesting in itself, might not have caused me to post anything here. The fact that this article is about my advisor, on the other hand, I think warrants a post.

Ron Paul has been barred from the Iowa debate.

So, when the Democrats let Lieberman speak his mind then decided to vote for the other guy, that was a Stalinist Purge. What’s this, then?

The Senate will vote today on an effort to revive the stalled immigration-reform bill. 60 votes are needed to bring it back to the floor. National Review Online does the math, and concludes that the bill’s supporters have 59 votes — which means they just need to peel away one of seven fence-sitting senators who claim to oppose the bill, but may vote to revive it in today’s crucial procedural vote: Sens. Bond, Brownback, Burr, Cochran, Coleman, Ensign and Webb.

Says NRO: “If any of these senators votes to revive the bill, his professions of opposition to amnesty should no longer be taken seriously. He will have done his crucial bit, when the amnesty bill was most vulnerable, to help shepherd it to passage. We know how senators who claim to oppose amnesty will try to explain away a vote to revive the bill. They will rely on procedural obfuscation: They didn’t want to obstruct the process, they wanted to get a vote on an amendment, etc. But amnesty is staying in the bill — no amendment to strike the bill’s central features has any chance of passage — and it deserves to be obstructed.”

A poster at Red State outlines what he calls the “top 10 defects of the amnesty bill.” On the other side of the ideological spectrum, a poster at Daily Kos makes the “progressive case against the immigration bill.” Who exactly supports this bill, again?

UPDATE: The bill advanced, 64-35. So now they’ll debate the bill and vote on various amendments, followed by “a second, now-crucial, cloture vote to cut off debate later this week,” says Mickey Kaus. “If a net five Senators switch between today and the second vote, the bill is (again) dead. That’s a much more plausible scenario in this case than it usually is.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first ever BrendanLoy.com-inspired artwork, courtesy of my NDLS classmate Emily Chang. She painted this painting…

…based on this photograph, taken by yours truly in Arizona last Thanksgiving:

Cool!

(Posted with permission. Thanks, Emily!)

A near calamity was just averted. Becky noticed that the little water-circulator thingy in Pug the Goldfish’s tank wasn’t running. Turns out, its cord had been yanked out of the electrical socket behind the couch. The space between the couch and the wall is easily large enough to fit a cat, so I suspect feline foul play. This was obviously part of a plot to deprive poor Pug of oxygen, thus making him easier prey. Unsatisfied with tuna scraps, the kitties are plotting to obtain some fresh fish, by any means necessary. Sasha’s futile pawing at the glass door previously seemed cute and harmless, but now I realize she was actually training for an assault on the fishtank. All she has to do is figure out how to scratch through solid glass (or plastic, as the case may be), and Pug is in real trouble…

P.S. Earlier today, Becky noticed Robbie taking a long, hard look at Pug. Hmm. Could this be a multi-species anti-fish terrorist conspiracy? Hey, if Sunnis and Shiites can work together against a common enemy, maybe cats and dogs can, too. Though I’m thinking Robbie is probably a mercenary: I bet the cats have promised him a share of their dry food (he loves cat food) in return for his cooperation. Come to think of it, he ate some of their food while we were at Target this evening!! They meowed plaintively when we got home, whining like he’d stolen it and they were oh-so-hungry, and I foolishly obliged by refilling their bowl… little did I know they were plotting against us the whole time!

;)

The company that owns the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the leading daily newspaper in town, has bought out the local alt-weekly, Metro Pulse. Here’s the Sentinel article about it; here’s the Pulse article. (Hat tip: Jay.) Says Glenn Reynolds: “It’s probably a good business move for them, but it makes Knoxville even more of a one-newspaper town.”

Of course, everyone is solemnly promising to preserve the Pulse’s editorial independence, and most of the people saying that probably even mean it. But regardless, this is a terrible trend in journalism, and it’s happening everywhere. It happened not so long ago in Hartford, when the Hartford Courant bought the Hartford Advocate. Big national developments like Rubert Murdoch’s bid for the WSJ get all the headlines, but it’s the consolidation of ownership and lack of competition in local markets that upsets me most, because local newspapers, TV and radio are the predominant non-Internet news sources for the average person, and the realities of the modern market have robbed them — particularly the newspapers — of the journalistic vitality they once had.

There is just nothing good, from a journalistic perspective, about this sort of consolidation. It sucks, but that’s the direction the industry’s moving in, and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. It’s actually one reason (of many) that I decided not to go into journalism. In so many ways, idealistic journalists in this country — and there’s no good reason to go into journalism if you’re not an idealist about it — are fighting an uphill battle against forces they can’t control: ownership consolidation, lack of local competition, increasingly unreasonable profit-margin demands (which, in concert with the lack of local competition, creates totally perverse incentives and priorities), unfriendly legal developments, sensationalism and bias (and the perception thereof), the general dearth of fellow quality journalists, the overall decline of the industry as the Internet grows, hostility to the profession from all corners, etc. etc. Why work crazy hours for crappy pay in service of an unattainable ideal that nobody really cares if you achieve? Hence my going to law school. At least as a lawyer, you get paid well to work ridiculous hours and have everybody hate you. :)

When Becky and I moved out of the South Bend apartment, we threw out Becky’s old stereo, whose speakers were pretty much shot (and whose tape-deck doors had been half-broken for years). So, we’re in the market for a new stereo. Thing is, I’m having a heck of a time finding one that suits our needs. Here are my requirements:

• Under ~$80, the cheaper the better
• Digital AM/FM radio tuner
• Auxiliary input
• Sounds decent, ideally with a bass boost of some kind
• A reasonably functional remote control

That’s it! That’s all I care about it! Is that so much to ask? These seem to me like pretty basic requirements for a stereo, even an inexpensive one. I’ve been to tons of local stores — Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. — and they’ve got plenty of stereos for under $80. Yet every one I investigate seems to have a fatal flaw, whether it’s a crappy analog tuner or a lack of an auxiliary input. One even lacked a volume control on its remote! WTF? And then when I search on the Interwebs and find a stereo that seems to meet my needs, it invariably isn’t available in stores, which means I would have to buy online and pay for shipping, thus pushing the total cost out of my price range. Harumph.

Anyway, I’m just wondering if anybody has any recommendations. In addition to the requirements listed above, a tape deck would be nice, but is not essential. A halfway-decent equalizer would also be nice, but since the primary use of our stereo will be to stream music from our laptops via AirTunes, we can use the iTunes equalizer if need be. Also, I assume any stereo is going to have a CD player, though I don’t particularly care one way or the other; we have our computers for ripping CDs and playing them via iTunes.

As for the “sounds decent” requirement, I’m not some sort of major audiophile… if I were, I’d be willing to spend more money on a stereo! I just want something that doesn’t sound crappy. One thing to keep in mind is that Becky doesn’t tend to like her music or TV to be too loud, so it isn’t essential that our stereo be capable of booming sound. It just has to sound nice when we’re listening to music at normal volumes.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

P.S. If you think it’s simply impossible to suggest a “decent” stereo for under $80, then give me the least expensive answer you can think of. The budget’s not totally carved in stone, but at the same time, resources are limited (must… save… money… for… diapers), and I don’t want to pay extra for something that’s really more than we need.

The Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr looks at how Justices Roberts and Alito differ from Justices Scalia and Thomas.

Relatedly, Scalia attacks the Roberts majority’s “faux judicial restraint.”

These are the sorts of questions I end up Googling these days. :)

This is of course the Strange Case of the Purportedly Missing Pants. The plaintiff, himself an administrative-law judge, sought 54 million smackers for the alleged deprivation of his trousers. Evidently the Judge judging his Suit wasn’t much impressed by his Briefs. Here’s her 23-page opinion rejecting his threadbare arguments. But the vindicated defendants still face Legal fees size Large.

High above the kitchen is more like it, actually:

That would be one of Butter’s favorite spots in the new apartment: on top of the kitchen cabinets. (She gets there with a three-step jump: up onto the counter, then up onto the top of the fridge, and finally up onto the cabinet-top.) We’ve been trying to keep the cats off the kitchen surfaces, but it’s hard to catch her jumping up there, and nearly impossible to get her down once she succeeds; even I can barely reach that high, and she can easily squirm out of my reach if she wants to (which she generally does, since my reach means I’m trying to get her down from her favorite spot!).

Oh well, if you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em, or in this case, take pictures of ‘em and admire their cuteness. Aww.

P.S. Just now, as I was cutting up a watermelon on the kitchen counter, Butter walked up to me and started meowing loudly and vociferously. Becky walked into the kitchen and carried Butter into the living room, trying to calm her down. But when the thunder from a passing storm rumbled again, Butter bolted back to the kitchen and resumed meowing at me. At that point, Becky realized what was wrong: Butter wanted to jump up to her “safe spot” on top of the kitchen cabinets to hide from the storm, but she couldn’t get there because I was blocking the kitchen counter (her jumping-off point). So I picked her up and plopped her in her spot. She immediately calmed down, and has been hanging out there ever since. Heh.

Okay, can we at least agree that these Newsweek poll results are at least a cause for concern (if not, necessarily, signifying that us Americans are dumb as dirt, per se)? I mean honestly, only 10% know who the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is (note, Newsweek does not know what his title is either)… rather scary.

…if only by a 5-4 margin:

The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.

The court, split 5-4, upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections. The law unreasonably limits speech and violates the group’s First Amendment rights, the court said.

Gee, ya think? In the words of Chief Justice Roberts: “Discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues also may be pertinent in an election. Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.”

Although I’d say the court didn’t go far enough — I’d have voted with the Kennedy-Scalia-Thomas trio, which “would have overruled the court’s 2003 decision upholding the constitutionality” of McCain-Feingold’s issue-ads ban, rather than with Roberts and Alito, who distinguished this case by saying the ads in question “are not the equivalent of explicit campaign ads and are not covered by the court’s 2003 decision.” (Quoting the AP, not the justices directly.)

Meanwhile, in other Supreme Court news, if you’re across the street from a public school, then the First Amendment does not live.

P.S. According to Orin Kerr, two of the five justices in the public-school case “joined the majority opinion on the understanding that the holding was really very very narrow. According to Alito, the case is really just about speech that promotes illegal drug use in schools without a plausible claim to making an argument relating to a social or political issue (whether about the war on drugs or something else).”

On the flip side, Justice Thomas, if left to his own devices, would have held that “public school students don’t have First Amendment rights at school at all.” (Quoting Kerr, not Thomas.) So, I agree with Thomas on one of today’s two big cases, and completely disagree with him on the other.

P.P.S. This analysis suggests the opinion may not be as “narrow” as Roberts and Alito would like.