I hope y’all had a lovely Christmas. I certainly did. Santa was good to all of us this year — especially my soon-to-be brother-in-law, Casey, if this photo is any indication:

Heh.

Becky’s and my gifts for each other were not exactly a surprise, since we bought them while shopping together for other people. Instead of dropping hints, we decided to cut out the middleman, as it were, and basically just say, “I want that.” Hell, we both ended up bringing our own major present (in her case, a chocolate fountain; in my case, a DVD recorder) in from the car. LOL!

But there was one exception: she had no idea, until she opened it, that I had bought her an Alabama t-shirt.

Ever since we watched the ‘Bama basketball team reach the Elite Eight in the Phoenix Regional last year, Becky has had a special place in her heart for the Crimson Tide. She was drawn in, I think, by the cute elephant mascot and the crowd’s chanting of “ROOOLLLLLLLL TIDE!” Her affection spilled over to the ‘Bama football team this season, and she was probably the only person outside SEC country hoping, back when the Tide were still undefeated, for a USC-Alabama Rose Bowl, instead of the various alternative possibilities, generally recognized as more attractive matchups, like USC-Texas, USC-Virginia Tech or USC-Penn State. But hey, I figure everyone is entitled to have one random team that they root for despite the total lack of any logical reason or affiliation with the school. I have Gonzaga; Becky has Alabama. And now she, like me, has the t-shirt to prove it. :)

Here we are in our best Christmas red and green — ‘Bama and ND — watching Becky’s brother Casey, brother-in-law Soren, and uncle Stan golf.

More Christmas Break photos here.

P.S. Oh, and… HAPPY HANUKKAH!

…and to all a good night!

Above: Orion rising over the Superstitions, observed during the annual Zak family tradition of waiting for the sighting of the “first star” before starting Christmas Eve dinner. The sighting is done by the males of the family, and is typically a prolonged event, since in the old days, alcohol was forbidden during advent but allowed on Christmas Eve, so the guys liked to prolong their outdoor, pre-dinner booze session by delaying as long as possible the definitive statement that they’ve seen a star. We adhered to the tradition tonight, declaring several dozen stars to be “stationary planes” until we were damn well ready to admit that they were stars. :)

My ND-Navy photos are now online. There are two pages (1, 2).

A few highlights:

The photo at bottom right is fellow 2L Nick’s plane, flying over the stadium late in the third quarter. See also here (the same plane, 40 seconds earlier). Nick was in New York on Friday visiting law firms, then flew back Saturday morning but got delayed at LaGuardia and thus missed his connecting flight in Cincinnati. He arrived at Notre Dame Stadium with about six minutes left in the game, ran up to his row in the student section and declared, “I don’t miss home games.” Heh.

Full photo gallery here.

Professor Kelley’s role in the selection of Harriet Miers for SCOTUS comes under some criticism from the WSJ’s John Fund:

The New York Times reported that [chief of staff Andy Card] “then directed Ms. Miers’ deputy [William Kelley, deputy White House counsel and Notre Dame law professor] . . . to vet her behind her back.”

For about two weeks, Mr. Kelley conducted a vetting he has described to friends as thorough. It wasn’t. A former Justice Department official calls it “barely adequate for a nominee to a federal appeals court.” One Texas lawyer called by the White House was struck by the fact “that the people who were calling about someone from Texas and serving a Texas president knew so little about Texas.” (Mr. Kelley didn’t return my telephone calls.) …

Regardless of whether or not the vetting process was complete, it presented impossible conflicts of interest. Consider the position that Mr. Bush and Mr. Card put Mr. Kelley in. He would be a leading candidate to become White House counsel if Ms. Miers was promoted. He had an interest in not going against his earlier recommendation of her for the Supreme Court, or in angering President Bush, Ms. Miers’s close friend. As journalist Jonathan Larsen has pointed out he also might not have wanted to “bring to light negative information that could torpedo her nomination, keeping her in the very job where she would be best positioned to punish Kelley were she to discover his role in vetting her.”

Here’s the post by Jonathan Larsen that Fund is quoting.

UPDATE: Fellow NDLS professor (and fellow conservative) Richard Garnett defends Kelley.

You may recall that, about a week ago, a Colorado congressman named Tom Tancredo made the execrable and dangerous comment that, if terrorists nuke America, America should consider responding by bombing Mecca. This vile extremism was promptly and rightly denounced by even the most ardent warbloggers, like Captain Ed:

We don’t bomb civilians in response to terrorist attacks, no matter how seductive such a response might seem. The idea that the US would retaliate in such a manner should be repulsive to any rational person, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. The war on terror targets the terrorists and the governments which fund and/or shelter them, not the civilians who happen to live there.

Besides, who is Tom Tancredo to make these threats anyway? He doesn’t have anything to do with the military chain of command or the national security systems that would make those kinds of recommendations. He certainly doesn’t speak for the President, who has to make the final determination in loosing those weapons on any target. Tancredo does, however, lend a false sense of credibility to such threats in international circles, thanks to his position as an elected Republican official.

The GOP needs to remind Tancredo of the wisdom of silence in some issues.

Now Tancredo has hit back in a feeble attempt to defend himself, and has, in response, been righteously bitch-slapped by another conservative warblogger, Hugh Hewitt, who notes:

No serious politician in the country has come to Tancredo’s defense, and indeed I have not seen any credible authority on war or religion endorse this foolishness. No serious Christian theologian can endorse what is obviously an immoral threat against another faith. Tancredo is drawing encouragement from the small percentage of Americans who have fallen into the erroneous belief that all of Islam is arrayed against the West. … [Tancredo is] sounding exactly like a Christian jihadist would sound, even though it is clearly contrary to Christian teachings to threaten retaliation against non-combatants even in a just war.

In the course of his rant, Tancredo broadly accuses “‘mainstream’ Muslims” of “acquiesc[ing] to [terrorist] actions and even provid[ing] tacit justification for them.” Hewitt calls bulls**t, noting that this is “a libel on every Muslim who has indeed condemned terror and especially on the between 5,000 and 10,000 Muslims serving in the American military.” Indeed. But even those who are less nuts than Tancredo often sound a similar theme: namely, that moderate Muslims need to be more vocal in condemning terror. Well, guess what, just in the last two days, Muslims have rallied against terrorism in California, Egypt, Denmark and Iraq. But where is the media? For the most part, not paying attention. As InstaPundit notes, “You know, if these people had blown something up, they’d be getting more press. Which suggests that if the press wants to help eliminate terrorism, it should adjust its priorities.” Of course, a terrorist attack is objectively more newsworthy than a street protest of any kind — but the point remains valid: it’s not particularly fair, or helpful to the war effort, to demand that Muslims speak out against terrorism, and then ignore them when they do.

Okay, that’s enough SOTU blogging; I have Legal Ethics reading to do, and much-needed sleep to catch up on. I’ll leave you with some more photos of The Hug:

It really was poignant. And to those on the Left (cough cough, Wolf Blitzer) who would imply or insinuate that it was “scripted” or “staged,” I say you’re far too cynical for your own good. Is it really that difficult to believe that a woman whose country was liberated by the U.S. military would genuinely want to hug the mother of a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice in that effort to secure freedom for her people? Even if you opposed the war, surely you can grasp the sincerity of that moment. Must every pro-Bush moment be assumed to be a nefarious Karl Rove plot? Jeez.

Anyway… I’m out. Happy Groundhog Day to all, and to all a good night.