Tonight's episode of The Colbert Report will feature the first installment of "Meet An Ally"--Stephen Colbert will be interviewing Stuart Beck, Palau's Ambassador to the United Nations, and I urge you all to tune in.  As the Ambassador said this morning, "I have no idea what is going to happen, but whatever I say, it won't be as bad as Mel Gibson."

While I'm sure Colbert and the producers will have their fun with the interview, there are very urgent environmental issues that Palau is bringing to the UN that must not be lost when the cameras stop rolling.  More on the flip...

Steve Kurutz of the NYT Sunday City section wrote a nice profile of the relationship between NYU Law School and the Palau Mission to the UN.  I'm an NYU law student (the "Peter" in the article) who's been working on oceans issues at the Palau Mission over the past year.  The President of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, has been perhaps the world's most outspoken leader on environmental and oceans protection issues, which shouldn't be surprising given Palau's reliance on the ocean.  He and Palau deserve a lot of credit for their environmentalism.  I thought Kossacks would be interested.

More on the flip...

Justice Scalia visited NYU Law today (where I'm a 3L).  I disagree with him on most opinions that he's sided with or written, notably Bush v. Gore and his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas.  He's blunt, often rhetorical, and I think his understanding of 'originalism' as a method of constitutional interpretation isn't ultimately defensible even on its own terms.  But those are issues for debate, even passionate debate.  What happened at NYU Law today, however, was a disgrace to free speech and academic debate, this time triggered by those I usually agree with.  I'm writing this diary in the hope that civil, reasoned discourse can be our mantra, rather than lewdness, mean-spiritedness, and censorship.