11月13日隨即的事情：Black-listed, exams, et seq.

＊ (EDIT 1.28 PM): Cure for Aids? Really?

＊ So it looks like we won't be getting that job in the Obama administration after all:

A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.

Righttt. That's one secret I'll never tell. Rule 12 f gets upwards of 10 unique hits a day. That's captive support group we could bring to you for 2012, Obama . . . think about it.

＊ In other news, with the PILA auction behind us it's that time of the semester again. As alluded to in the previous post, the volume of posting might go down a little bit because we're trying to learn 13 credits worth of the law in the next few minutes. We'll probably still be throwing in the occasional study week fodder (favorite places to study, exam advice, gunnerish activities, and so forth) as well as continuing coverage on whatever we normally cover, so stay tuned.

We'd wish everyone good luck, but given that there is a curve, it's a bit paradoxical. Some of you will do spectacularly, some will do abysmally, most will be some where in between. Where you fall on that spectrum is depends somewhat on a variance of chance/luck and hard work, the relative influence of these alternative factors determined by the professor you have, your own personality, your religion, and so forth. That said, you can't afford not to get super-stressed about exams, especially in this economy. Just remeber that you need to ignore all of that feel-good advice from your PAs, et al, that talk about maintaining a balance: while you are sitting here and reading this someone else is studying, and when it comes time for the exam, that person is going to beat you. HTH and good luck.

＊ Related note: Anyone else going to see Quantum of Solace tonight? Will be teh sickness.

Predictions

The first polls close in 5 minutes or so - our predictions:

Obama with 349 EVs, 56% popular vote. 

Democrats with 57 seats in the Senate.  

Periello over Goode in a nail-biter. 

Radiohead's "Electioneering": 

Samuel L. Jackson Really is in *Everything*

Vote No Prop 8:





Being able to amend your states CONSTITUTION by popular referendum - how TTT?

We say very.

Plutocracy Shrugged?, Or, Spreading the Wealth Around

Just a pre-election blur . . .

Remember all that jazz on ATL a few months ago about how, if when Obama is elected President and enacts his tax plan it's going to cost you - a BIGLAW associate - 34k a year in new taxes? First, consider yourself lucky to have such a job ESPECIALLY IN THIS ECONOMY.

Second, well, that wasn't exactly accurate - in fact, if you make the usual 160k/year your taxes won't change much except for a maybe a thousand or so more in additional social security taxes (those ATL figures, in case you were wondering, were for a 5th year associate - and is not entirely accurate anyway . . .), depending on what Obama does with raising the payroll tax cap and some maths.

Third, coming to the main point and dispensing with the akward incipit, what Obama really wants to do is *modestly* raise the highest marginal tax rate - the rate that people pay on each dollar of additional income earned - from the paltry 35% it is now to a few points higher. This, as his campaign has repeated ad nasuem, does not affect you if you make less than $250k/year.

I bring this up beacuse the Nation had some great graphical representations a few months ago of what, exactly, exactly a 35% MTR means:



Our take: We need to spread the wealth around. The simple fact is that the gap between the rich and poor in this country is getting brighter all the time. Simply, tax rates are low right now and raising them could not only be used to directly help those in need but also to rebuild this country's crumbling infrastructure and correct many (well some) of the mistakes of the Bush administration that turned respectable surpluses into massive deficits.

So, yes, Obama will raise taxes. Yes, we really need the money for many things (even though overall federal revenue actually might not change that much; that's a story for another time . . .). And yes, if you make $250k ++ (ed. OK people, 200k+ for individuals, it seems like this is where the 2% income tax surcharge is coming in) you will still be wealthy. Some how we think making 62.5 cents on the excess dollar instead of 65 will still leave people with some motivation to work. As for raising the social security tax; that's pretty much inevitable if you want keep social security, and I don't think anyone believes that getting rid of it is a realistic option . .

There are worse things than paying taxes. Like pointless wars, a sputtering economy, an energy crisis, . . .

Bill Belichick Must be Running Obama's Campaign Now

Obama is now in the midst of an all out ad blitz. McCain is, well, virtually out of money and making feeble attempts to drum up the base and pander to centrists at the same time in unwinnable states like Pennsylvania. Roffles.

But, really, Barack Obama is not Tom Brady. Shouldn't he just run it up the middle three times and then take a knee? And perhaps let Bill Clinton handle the day-to-day campaigning from here on out while Barry and Biden have hot cocoa on the sidelines? Just saying . . . don't forget to vote, gang.

Sorry for the lack of real posts and stuff - we've been out of it, what with being comically behind in our classes and all. Good times.

UVA Law Blog Election Endorsements

None of these should come as surprises - but we thought that - after having followed the election for the past, well, 20 months (too damn long, America. We support some system where we just put the candidates on network TV for a little while until we know enough about them to decide, and be done. Also, a national primary, and no more electoral college either), we feel we'd mark up where we stand. Before the election we'll have a longer post about why Obama > McCain, but well wait until the Law Weekly runs its bit.

For the moment though, here's how we think it should go:

President - Barack Obama (D): We've written about this ad nauseum, so a few things will suffice. Boiling it down to the most important issues . . .

Obama is most notable for espousing the logic of withdrawal and long-standing opposition from the beginning of a disastorous, criminal, and absurdly expensive war in Iraq. The illegal war in Iraq is America's largest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam, and it is important to remember that, from the beginning, John McCain supported it and Barack Obama opposed it. And, not surprisingly, Obama has a well-defined and internationally supported plan to bring the war to an end, while McCain, as the NYT, infra, points out, still clings to a foggy and distant notion of "victory" as a precondition for withdrawal that could cost the US much more in resources and lives.

Obama has a plan to fix the sputtering economy that - yes - involves increasing government revenue (and decreasing defecit) by raising income taxes on wealthy people to help those indeed; McCain, on the otherhand, is beholden to plutocrats and himself has admitted that he doesn't understand the economics behind his proposed policies, adding that, in the mist of a global crisis, he thought the economy was strong.

Obama - himself the former President of a presitigious law review (almost as well regarded as the Virginia Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law) - has the knowledge and intention of appointing to justices to the Supreme Court that will protect civil liberties, including a women's right to abortion; McCain along with Palin - to the questionable extent that they understand the law at all (the subject of an upcoming post) - will apoint judges who will do the opposite.

Additionally, Obama is light years ahead of McCain on alternative energy and the environment; McCain's "drill baby drill" policy will only exacerbate the energy crisis in which the country currently finds itself, the recent dip in gasoline prices notwithstanding (those high prices will be BACK soon enough people).

Finally, Obama's campaign has maintained the high road in this election; McCain's campaign has not - we think this to be an important indicator of how the candidates will behave in once in office.

For all those reasons and more . . .

Senator - Mark Warner (D): Warner did a fantastic job as Governor of Virginia, helping to clean up the fiscal mess created by his predecessor (and now opponent) Jim Gilmore. Warner showed himself to a smart and adroit executive, a fiscal conserative who got the Commonwealth through difficult times while maintaining a lot of things that make Virginia great (such as the higher educaiton system). As governor, Warner showed his bipartisan appeal by not only getting through a budget that took care of Gilmore's $6 billion shortfall, but also starting new economic intitiatives, creating new jobs, and enacting other programs that revitalized struggling parts of the state. Warner has both the business accumen and an appreciation for fairness that will serve the US Senate well in tough economic times. Plus, he's running against Gilmore, who is, frankly, not a good choice for the Senate given the defecit that he racked up as Governor from 1998-2002, along with other problems.

For all those reasons and more . . .

Congressmen - Tom Perriello (D) - Perriello supports a quick end to the war in Iraq; he also supports a universial health care and a more fair taxation scheme, and has a sensible plan to revitalize the fifth district. He has is a strong supporter of alternative energy sources and the environment. While we find his antipathy toward gun control concerning, we think that this is outweighed by his commitment to postive change in Congress in other ways.

For all those reasons and more . . .

See also: FFJ's Endorsements.

In related news, the New York Times endorsed Obama today as well. Along with that endorsement, they have a cool gaget where you can seee whom the newspaper endorsed in all previous Presidential elections. The last time they endorsed a republican? Eisenhower over Stevenson in 1956 . . .

Anyway, the incipit of the NYT piece says it about as well as anyone could ever hope to:

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

Nothing hyperbolic about it - we agree - it really is an easy choice. Vote for Obama.

Calling All Political Gunners, Federalist Society Members, Mike Stark, et seq.

Have we got an opportunity for you:

The Virginia Law Weekly seeks contributors for a special election edition to be released on Friday, October 31. Submissions can cover any topic related to any part of this year's election. Send submissions of between 500 and 700 words to editor [at] lawweekly.org by noon on Sunday, October 26. Any questions can be directed to the same email address.

Of course, we'll have an article, and, of course, it's pretty persuasive . . . anyway, this is your chance to come and pen an editorial for what the ABA has called the best law school newspaper in the country three years in a row.

There Goes My Hero . . .

You know your campaign his having trouble when washed up rock artists - like Heart - don't want you playing their song at your hate-filled rallies.  

Such is the subject of Professor Chris Sprigman and Siva Vaidhyanathan's op-ed piece in today's Washington Post, Cue 'Barracuda':

Artists have frequently spoken out against John McCain's presidential campaign for using their songs without their permission. Last week, the rock band Foo Fighters complained about the campaign playing its 1997 hit "My Hero" at rallies. Van Halen, which complained in 2004 when George W. Bush used its 1991 hit "Right Now," has objected to McCain's use of the same song. John Mellencamp complained about the use of his 1983 song "Pink Houses." Warner Music Group demanded that McCain remove videos from YouTube that mock Barack Obama as a "celebrity" using the classic 1967 Frankie Valli song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." Jackson Browne filed a lawsuit to stop the Ohio Republican Party from using his 1977 hit "Running on Empty" to attack Obama on McCain's behalf.

* * * 

We sympathize -- to a point -- with artists who object to the use of their songs by political candidates. Artists should speak up, loudly, when they feel the use of their songs misrepresents their views, particularly if such use could create the public impression of an endorsement.

But the one thing they should not do -- and should not legally be permitted to do -- is file a copyright lawsuit to prevent the political use of a song.

Oh Noes!  We would go a different route - John McCain *is* a hero after all, so shouldn't he, by common law right, be able to play the song whenever he likes?

Let's Talk About Character

This just in. The GOP has now tacitly acknowledged that it can no longer win this election on policy issues, and, in an insult to intelligence of the average American voter, has declared that it plans to spend the next month on character issues, that is to say, attacking Barack Obama:

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aaggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said. . . . The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls . . .

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Fantastic. The concept of the lowest common denominator may be foreign to John McCain, whose academic record and statements about the economy have already indicated a poor grasp of mathematics, but its familiar territory for the Republicans in elections. They're good at it too, whether its portraying crippled veteran and Georgia Senator Max Cleland as someone who is unpatriotic or casting John Kerry as an anti-American Francophile because he speaks French and opposed the United State's criminal actions in Vietnam.

That's another point - the article above says that the GOP will start playing up Senator McCain's military background and time as a POW more. This raises two questions:

1) Is such a thing even possible?

That McCain was a POW in Vietnam is the one thing that every single American knows at this point. I don't how it could be made more of an issue at this point - everyone already knows about and, having talked to some of the ordinary, non-college educated sort of my generation it may about the only thing that Americans know about American military involvement in Indochina (seriously).

2) How will the GOP make it relevant?

I have to cut in and echo what ten thousand people have already said - who cares? McCain's actions were heroic, even I'll admit that and I think that Vietnam War was a criminal waste of American and Vietnamese lives. But I not only don't see what these heroic actions have to with being President, I haven't seen any attempt by the GOP to even make them relevant. All you get is this flash of photos from McCain in the Vietnam era and then this slogan that he's "ready to lead."

What?

Since McCain opened the character door, I'll ask - what does dropping bombs on NVA and VC and civilians who got in the way, and being tortured in a POW camp and detained for years, have to do with leading America? No allegiance here to Hanoi and VC, but Vietnam was a criminal mistake in my (and many other people's) opinion and it would be sound US policy not to repeat it. One could argue that McCain's experience with the Vietnam War would make him less likely to support such ventures in the future, but, wait, he is one of the brilliant lawmakers who helped get US forces into Iraq, another criminal operation of US foreign policy, and if his experience in Vietnam has made him more likely to vigorously sustain and encourage questionable US military commitments abroad, then I would, respectfully, declare that a negative attribute instead of a positive one.

The same sort of rationale is at play when some of the more articulate supporters of McCain argue that his experience will give him insight to military conflict and conclude that he will "not be afraid" to use the American military, and, concurrently, will have respect for the soldiers that he necessarily puts in harm's way as a result. Putting aside for the moment that it doesn't exactly follow, I'll say this: rubbish. McCain helped tow the Bush line (lie) of WMD and Iraq that help perpetrate 911 and was preparing to attack the United States again, and that US forced would be "greeted as liberators". Like all the lawmakers that supporter the war, he bears some of the responsibility for the thousands of American casualties that have resulted. Some people took the right kind of notice when, in 1964, the Johnson Administration used a murky set of events in the Gulf of Tonkin to escalate the war in Vietnam - the lesson being that military interventions based on less-than-all the facts run into deadly problems. Others, like Bush and the Republican party, came away with the opposite lesson, that the American people could be lied into supporting a war. McCain - in voting and continuing to support the war - has aligned himself with the latter camp.

The thing that is unnerving is that the GOP doesn't really have to articulate a reason why McCain's military/POW is relevant - they can just keep bring it up, and contrast it with Obama's "otherness," and, I suppose, his conspicuous lack of military experience, and leave it at that. I like to hope that wouldn't be enough for most people - especially the "swing voters", lower middle-class, hardworking American types who goto church but are struggling to make ends meet - but this is basically the same constituency that "elected" Bush in 2000 and 2004, so who knows.

We'll see. To end the digression, one thing is very clear. The McCain campaign is turning to character - and, really, more attacking Obama than bolstering McCain - because it has already lost the campaign on the issues. A three-trillion dollar illegal war, obviously disastrous before, is becoming untenable by even the most stalwart supporters as the country careens toward bankruptcy. Lax regulation and tax breaks for large businesses at the expense of ordinary people, obscurable and even supported by many before, is now an unmitigated disaster as the result has been the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And continued reliance on petroleum, cute and even a tempoary (if illusory) boon to America, is now such a joke that nobody with a modicum of knowledge about economics and energy (this, of course, does not include McCain himself) pretends to take seriously the proposal that we should just drill, drill, drill our problems away.

If McCain wins, it won't be because he was right on the issues, or even because Americans agree with him on the issues. And that's pretty scary.

You Know It Could Be a Tie

The election, we mean. Dig this scenario we came up with (link to map). Basically what would happen:

Obama wins all the states he is supposed to, McCain wins all the states he is supposed to, and then, among the tossups:

Obama wins NH (Dems have been polling well here; John Sununu a big target, and very unpopular.
Obama wins NM (Al Gore won this state in 2000, and Democratic efforts + polls there have been favorable. Plus the Richadson boost)
Obama wins NV (A large population increase of Hispanics will help him here).
Obama wins PA (Biden boost + Clinton eventually gets her act together and starts campaigning in this state, strong turnout in Philly plus squatters (have been foreclosed upon) shuffle from the abandoned building the polling place across the street and decide they don't want McCain to have another giant house come January).

McCain wins FL (outpolling Obama there now, has had strong organization on the ground for months).
McCain wins VA (Close one, but despite valiant efforts Dem. organizers are not able to pull out a victory as McCain smeaer adds convince bible-thumping rubes to turn out in force, Repub. establishment successfully turns away enough black voters at the polls as they did in Florida in 2000).
McCain wins OH (Bush won this state by 200k votes in '04, the Palin bounce gets enough disaffected women to vote for Obama and even Clinton's belated appearances can't make up the gap. White folks clinging to guns and religion, et seq, deliver for McCain in another close one).

Then it's 269-269. Obama wins the national popular vote (his victories will be massive, whereas McCain's will be very close, esp. in states like Virginia, and less than expected in places like Colorado and Indiana, where voter registration efforts and Dem. campaigning have caused voter turnout to surge). House of Representatives makes BHO the first black President.

Of course, it's really a sad commentary on the human condition that this election is even close, but what are you going to do - we'll take.

We Think We Just Made a 160k Bad Investment . . .

Now, where's our bailout? Seriously, 85 billion dollars!? Why . . . we could occupy Iraq for a few months for that much scratch . . . . And if we listen to Gregg Easterbrook (yea, brother of that guy on the Seventh Circuit), it's will be we (younger people) who are going to have to suck it up:

In 1976, the entire U.S. national debt was about $800 billion, converted to today's dollars. Last summer, Congress without debate and with barely any notice added $800 billion to the national debt ceiling -- raising that ceiling by an amount equal to the entire debt a generation ago. With no debate! The U.S. national debt was $5 trillion in 1997, and has doubled to almost $10 trillion since. Why aren't the young outraged? The old are acting irresponsibly -- spending like crazy but unwilling to tax themselves, then handing the bill to the young. If the young were spending borrowed money like crazy, the old would be lecturing them. How come in Washington, the old can get away with behavior that would be called reckless for the young?

At any rate, the moment another $800 billion worth of borrowing was authorized, supposedly for "emergency" purposes, lobbyists got to work trying to seize every penny now. The big three automakers are now asking Congress for $50 billion of that $800 billion, supposedly to retool to build the fuel-efficient vehicles they had no way -- just no way on Earth -- of knowing they would ever be required to build. As Paul Ingrassia pointed out in last week's Wall Street Journal, when Congress bailed out Chrysler in 1980, the deal was structured so that if the company recovered, taxpayers got most of their money back. But what's being asked for now is pure subsidy -- money taxpayers will never see again, and that will be used in part to fund the bonuses of overpaid auto executives who got their companies into trouble in the first place. (The Journal opposes the bailout, though the $50 billion would go to Corporate America.) Ingrassia further notes that when Chrysler's Lee Iacocca tried to weasel out of the deal and keep the money that was promised back to taxpayers, Ronald Reagan stood firm and would not budge. Contrast Reagan's sense of civic responsibility to the current president and Congress, both of which just cannot wait to give away other people's money.

That was written a few days ago - before the AIG bailout announcement! Call us crazy, but we're just not getting why we're covering for AIG/Bear Sterns/Fannie Mac/Freddie Mae's (Lehman too? Give it time . . . ) bad investments. We thought the whole point of capitalism was that when you take a risk, you get to reap the reward, but you also have to . . . you know . . . bear the risk? If the government is going to bail out a mega-company everytime it screws up, wouldn't be better to just regulate up front? It would certainly be cheaper, in any event.

This, incidentially, is why Obama needs to lift the payroll tax cap and raise the highest marginal tax rates. It's not that he has has a radical program of new spending (just a shift in priorities from war and corporate welfare to fixing our national infastructure), it's also that he needs to curb the ballooning debt that keeps getting worse under Bush.

Yes, we *know* that some dems are behind the bailout. But the same people who are throwing up their hands and sighing. And not everyone was in favor of the idea:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly criticized the rescue, calling the $85 billion a "staggering sum." Ms. Pelosi said the bailout was "just too enormous for the American people to guarantee." Her comments suggested that the Bush administration and the Fed would face sharp questioning in Congressional hearings. President Bush was briefed earlier in the afternoon.

Hrmmm... Do the feds no longer get to use Bank of America as their preffered lender either?


Related:
Tuesday Morning Quarterback: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Week 2 [ESPN]
Socialism , 21st Century Style [NYT]
U.S. Seizes Control of AIG with $85B Emergency Loan [WaPo]

Beanie Wells to POTUS?

OK, probably not. But it's still worth noting that the election is going to be close in a lot of the "Big-10" states, and that being the case, Obama would do well to remember that in some parts of this country, college football trumps politics: 

[A]s was the case four years ago, it is becoming more likely that this election will be decided in Ohio. So as much as “Change You Can Rely On” or “Country First,” an equally helpful slogan for both campaigns could be “Go Buckeyes.”

Seriously.  All Barack Obama has to do to win is show up at the Colloisium this weekend (when the #5 Ohio State Buckeyes will take on the #1 USC Trojans) with some Red and White on, and it's game over.  Of course, an endorsement of the Buckeyes could mean trouble in Michigan - where the currently unranked Wolverines are Ohio States main rival. 

However, I think that the OSU endorsement would still do more good for Obama than harm.  First, consider that the Michigan-Ohio State game won't take place until some weeks after the election, so any tension arising from an Obama/Biden endorsement of the Buckeyes in Michigan wouldn't come to a complete head until the last week of the Big Ten schedule, by which point it won't matter for political purposes. 

Second, consider that the football allegiances among the Michigan hoi polloi are split between the Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State Spartans. A lot of people from Michigan pull for the Spartans and actually hate the Wolverines. 

Third, an OSU endorsement this weekend is unlikely to have any other negative effects.  California is already solidly in the Obama camp, and, anyway USC doesn't dominate college football allegiances in the state (there are several other reputable teams in California; including the cross-town rival U.C.L.A. Bruins and Cal Golden Bears).  As for other Big Ten states, 

Therefore, Obama and Biden should come out as Buckeye fans.  This is no problem for Obama - under the FFJ rubric of sports allegiances -  because Obama attended college at Occidental/Columbia and law school at Harvard - neither one of which have a division-A football program. Moreover, Obama's hometown of Chicago doesn't have a reputable program either (I'm not counting Northwestern as reputable, sorry), and so he is pretty much a free agent as far as allegiances go.  One could make the argument that he should root for Illinois over Ohio, but this seems like getting bogged down in minutiae because Obama doesn't have any connection with Urbana-Champaign or with the U of I. 

Now, Biden is a more complicated case. Biden went to college at the University of Deleware, whose Blue Hens are a solid FCS squad that did very well last year - however, like the Harvard Crimson and Columbia Lions they are not a division I-A team.  The problem is that Biden - despite almost being kicked out for plagiarizing an LRW assignment - did graduate from Syracuse University Law School.  Syracuse *does* have a Division-I A football team; however, they are almost unwatchably bad at the moment (despite being good in the past and producing such talent as Art Monk).  I think Biden can safely break with his allegiance to 'Cuse and choose one of the *competitive* Division I-A teams to endorse as his preferences would indicated.  For the aforementioned reasons, he should choose the Ohio State Buckeyes.

1LS: Having Trouble With LRW?

Aren't those group assignments annoying? Don't you wish that there were a quicker way?

Actually, there is. And soon-to-be Vice Preisdent Joe Biden found it (link to a 1987 NYT article):

A law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965, . . . concluded that Mr. Biden had ''used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution'' and that he ought to be failed in the legal methods course for which he had submitted the 15-page paper.

The plagiarized article, ''Tortious Acts as a Basis for Jurisdiction in Products Liability Cases,'' was published in the Fordham Law Review of May 1965. Mr. Biden drew large chunks of heavy legal prose directly from it, including such sentences as: ''The trend of judicial opinion in various jurisdictions has been that the breach of an implied warranty of fitness is actionable without privity, because it is a tortious wrong upon which suit may be brought by a non-contracting party.'' Just One Footnote.

Seriously, we're just kidding - while this sort of thing might fly at Syracuse, or even at Harvard, it won't here, and you'll be out of here so fast you won't even have time to collect your softball mitt and popped-collar-polo. But see:

In a letter defending himself, dated Nov. 30, 1965, Mr. Biden pleaded with the faculty not to dismiss him from the school.

Wha? Come on man. Well at least he learned his lesson and never plagarized anything again . .

Who says we ain't fair and balanced? Seriously, who?

Also, on a related note, when this breaks (again) how much will the public "get" it? Not defending Biden, but they might understand just what a pain legal writing is (the same way they don't get that being law review pres is . . . kind of a big deal).

Inflating Tires > Offshore Drilling

At least in terms of the overall effect on gas economy. Strange, but true - from the (relatively conservative) Time Magazine:

But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

This being the case, why is it that John McCain's campaign has started a ridiculous maneuver whereby if you give his campaign $25 dollars or more, they will send you a "free" tire-pressure-gauge. It's the sort of thing that panders to people who 1) have $25 and 2) are dumb:

Americans across the country are feeling the effects of high gasoline prices. John McCain believes that we need offshore oil drilling and we need it now. Senator Obama opposes offshore drilling – calling it a “gimmick.” Literally, Senator Obama’s solution to high gasoline prices is to tell Americans to make sure their tires are inflated.

Well, let’s have some fun and put Senator Obama’s “tire gauge” energy policy to the test. With an immediate donation of $25 or more, the McCain campaign will send you an exclusive “Obama Energy Plan” tire pressure gauge.

Make no mistake, off-shore drilling is a "gimmick" and its effects, if any, will be minimal Put another way, off-shore drilling will not change the situation at the pump. Moreover the whole bit - the idea that all Obama wants to do is have people properly inflate their tires and that is his entire energy proposal - is a sham insofar as it clutters Obama's real position - which includes heavy investment into the research, development, and implementation of alternative energy as well as (in fact!) some limited measure of expanded drilling, in a way that actually makes sense and isn't presented as a solution that is radically disproportionate from what its real effect would be.

Talk about the low road express.

Obama's Energy Plan Factsheet (.pdf)

Previous Coverage
Freidman on Gas
Finding a New Way Home

Re-cess-sion - Presidential Campaign Redux

Okay. Some off-the-cuff thoughts.

So we all know the economy is in the tubes. We covered earlier what that might mean for lawyers, and to see how big-law is being affected, one need look no further than ATL's coverage. And there's been the endless litany of press coverage. But what about the Presidential campaign.

Talking earlier about the implications of the now full-blown recession for the campaign trail - indicating that it *should*, in theory, be both the critical issue and provide a huge boost for Barack Obama, seeing as John McCain's plan for the economy sits somewhere between non-existent and non-nonsensical.

Paul Krugman, in his column today, examined this:

Incidentally, it’s surprising that the lousy economy hasn’t yet had more impact on the campaign. Mr. McCain essentially proposes continuing the policies of a president whose approval rating on economics is only 20 percent. So why isn’t Mr. Obama further ahead in the polls?

One answer may be that Mr. Obama, perhaps inhibited by his desire to transcend partisanship (and avoid praising the last Democratic president?), has been surprisingly diffident about attacking the Bush economic record. An illustration: if you go to the official Obama Web site and click on the economic issues page, what you see first isn’t a call for change — what you see is a long quote from the candidate extolling the wonders of the free market, which could just as easily have come from a speech by President Bush.

The "free market" is nothing more than a massive joke on feeble-minded libertarians and free market ideologues when it comes to the current recession. Consider a brief, simplified version of the mortgage-backed security crisis that partially explains the current fix. Companies took advantage of lax/non-existent regulations in the housing industry to get the sub-prime ball rolling. If the regulations ("restrictions on private ordering" if you will) were stricter, the predatory sub-primers don't get off the ground, period.

Anyway, the companies make this risky investment and enjoy the profits for a while, until the whole thing explodes, and they lose all their money - - - so the system works - - - except that it doesn't, really, because these companies - "quasi public" insitutitions as Krugman puts it - get bailed out by the Federal government, kind of like what happened with the savings and loan industry. Point: In this 21st century situation, there is no option of a "free market" economy (unless your suggesting that Bear Sterns / Freddie Mac/ Fannie Mae shouldn't get the bailout), there's only the option of regulating things beforehand or after they goto shit. All Obama needs to do is point out how the Bush administration - (with whom McCain has virtually identical views on the economy) encourage the lax regulation that helped start this mess in the first place. But, (see above) he doesn't really.

We get the feeling that what's happened is that a lot of this talk is getting obfuscated by McCain's promise to be a true fiscal conservative. Balderdash. A Republican preaching "fiscally conservativism" is like a street whore preaching abstinence (which R's also wrong-headedly advocate). Somehow, everyone has forgotten how this three-trillion-dollar war which Bush and McCain started took the Clinton surplus and turned it into a huge deficit.

Obama needs to dig in on this issue. In addition to higher taxes on the wealthy to fund a rebuilding of our national infrastructure, he needs to make tighter economic regulation of . When the debates come, it's time to ridicule McCain's (lack of) knowledge of economics (and numerous other subjects, such as foreign policy and computers).

Previous coverage:

Oh Noes! A Recession, Or, A Time for Someone Who "Doesn't Understand" Economics?
The Recession and You (Law Weekly)

McCain: Viagra, OK. Birth Control Pills, Not So Much.

So, John McCain is happy to support the inclusion of Viagra in insurance plans, but if you are female and  want to use one of them new-fangled birth control pills to prevent pregnancy, you're S-O-L. Moreover, when he was asked about this opposition by reporters, he merely sputtered, ""I don't know enough about it to give you an informed answer," he manages to splutter, "because I don't recall the vote, I've cast thousands of votes... it's something I've not thought much about."

Oh yea?  We get there's a feeling that there's a lot you haven't thought much about.  Like the economy.  Anyway, Katha Pollit writes: 

So. John McCain is so opposed to contraception he voted against requiring insurance plans to cover it like other drugs, and either so indifferent to women's health and rights or just so out of it he doesn't even remember how he voted. That's the way to show American women you really care. 

Hillary Supporters for McCain?

No NYT Op-Ed Piece for John McCain

Hey, it's not easy getting an op-ed piece in the NYT. 

We haven't gotten ours yet.  Sure, such luminaries as Barack Obama, James Baker & Warren Christopher, and some soldiers themselves have weighed in on the subject of the war. 

But no go for John McCain, the New York Times Politics Blog reports:

On Mr. McCain’s Op-Ed, Matt Drudge posted online what he said was the original submission by Mr. McCain. According to his post, the senator wrote about Mr. Obama: “I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.”

Didn't people say that about Vietnam?  Anyway, McCain's piece offers little in the way of new solutions, or even new information, which was the NYT's stated reason for not wanting to publish it:

[T]he article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.

That aside, there seems to be a bit of double speak: 

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

Oh, then what happened to this?:

[We might be in Iraq] maybe a hundred years . . . Could be 1,000. Could be 1,000 years or a million years . . . A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years.

Hey, don't pout.  We hear USA Today is hiring.

Rubesoisie? Who? What?

The Washington Post had this to say about the New Yorker cover:

The cover, like so many self-deprecating, wryly funny, overly self-referential New Yorker covers before it, is just another prism through which New Yorker readers confirm something that is true and easily caricatured at the same time: They are an elite, a minority, and while they might be more educated or sophisticated or adept at the play of humor, they will always be outvoted by Texas. And Kansas. And the rest of the states beyond reach of the A train. The cover says as much about the political influence of Manhattan as it does about the prejudice of the rubesoisie.

Who or what, pray-tell, are the rubesoisie? According to dictionary.com, it's not a word. We can only guess that it's an amalgamation between "rubes" and "bourgeoisie".

Best of all, google only gives THREE hits for this. Damn, talk about being avant-garde, WaPo.

(EDIT: According to google only one another blogger beat us on this find, props).

EDIT #2: Don't get us wrong, we rather like the new word as we think it points to a large, recognizable subset of Americana. People who live in non-urban areas and who are not urbane/sophisticated/well-educated can usually be pejoratively described as "rubes". (Like rednecks or hicks, no?). Yet, in terms of socio-economics rube/hick/redneck tends to point to the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. What would you - pejoratively - call people who fit the above criteria but are in the middle, upper middle class, upper-class (or, if you like, control the means of production)? Engels, who had a flair for modern, accessible language that Marx did not, might have approved of the neologism . . .

So, we need a word for that, no? Unless anyone has another / can suggest one already in existence?

Terrorist Fist-Jab

At least we know that the New Yorker is staying fair and balanced. (EDIT: In case you're too dumb to realize this is satire, we hate you.).  Our friends at Feministe are outraged, we think it's brilliant.   No one is really dumb enough to take this for serious, right?  Right??

Oh Noes! Recession! Or, A good time for someone who "doesn't understand" economics?

Are we, as Thomas Friedman suggests, a nation in decline? Probably. But we haven't hit the bottom yet.  The (not) good news is that we are now technically in a recession.   That's right kids (for those of you who vote republican and, therefore, don't understand economics, a recession is technically defined as a decline in the GDP for two or more quarters).  This much was announced by our own treasury department, but the Bush administration has yet to announce it officially as of writing this. Of course, it's going to get worse - gas prices are going up, as is inflation, as is unemployment, as are food prices.  Ah, what's another 62,000 jobs?  We're sure that the Bush will figure it out - eventually . . .

SIDENOTE: Personally we're optimistic that higher food prices + higher gas prices might help with the fact that this country is ridiculously overweight, which costs us nearly $100 billion a year in medical bills [data from 2003, probably more now].  But, while that's a good thing, and while there's the possibility that this will all spur one candidate to carry through with his promise to invest in alternative energy sources [though maybe not], AiT's response is otherwise clear; recession = bad for America. 

Americans are starting to get worried.  According to WICB (Ithaca-radio), 3/4 of Americans believe that things are going to get worse before they get better. Along those lines, an NBC poll indicates that over 65% of Americans think they are going to have trouble making ends meet, a number that is probably higher now (poll from May).  

In the meantime, Gallup reports that Bush's approval rating is at 28%. [Well, you people shouldn't have voted for him in the first place.  Sorry, we just had to say it.  If you're upset about spending $100 dollars to fill up your ridiculous made-in-the-U.S.A-SUV, then you 1) shouldn't have voted for the most regressive candidate in the last one-hundred years, and, 2) should walk more, supra.  But we I digress. . . .]. 

So, 4 out of 5 now think that the economy is toast and getting worse.  Moreover, Americans have a reason *not* to be optimistic. The reason is that the factors that are driving this recession - mainly, the high cost of fuel which is being driven not only by speculation but also the complicated phenomenon where worldwide demand outstrips worldwide supply.  The only way to deal with this will be the sort of sweeping national transition that far-sighted individuals like Paul Krugman have called for: not just a new investment in alternative sources of energy on the national level (hint: we're going to have to raise taxes on rich people; start by *removing the payroll cap*), but also completely changing are national infrastructures (move away from sprawling suburbs, better public transportation, overhaul transnational shipping - currently done by gas-guzzling trucks that cost $1400 to fill).

That's what needs to be done.  Government spending coupled with ending the three-trillion dollar war in Iraq.  Rebuilding the national infrastructure from the ground up.  Investments that make our country greener and more efficient.  And closing the gap between the most wealthy few and the masses of people who are struggling to make ends meet. 

Obama understands this, at least, even if many Americans don't yet, but even under the most optimistic projections (and, believe us, he's optimistic - i mean - hope! change!).  McCain, by his own admission, does not. 

This one should be a no-brainer.  But then again . . .