General Assembly Grants Palestine Upgraded Status in U.N. - NYTimes.com

Even under the leadership of a President with a Muslim father, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot.
General Assembly Grants Palestine Upgraded Status in U.N. - NYTimes.com: by Ethan Bronner and Christine Hauser "UNITED NATIONS — More than 130 countries voted on Thursday to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state of the United Nations, a triumph for Palestinian diplomacy and a sharp rebuke to the United States and Israel." 'via Blog this'

Thanks for stopping by, Mitt

It's really nice of you, since you were in the neighborhood.

NRDC: Susan Rice has Financial Stake in Canadian Tar Sands | OnEarth Magazine

UN Ambassador Susan Rice

Here's why Susan Rice might not be someone we want as Secretary of State - a diplomat heavily invested in Canadian tar sands, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.  And sorry for being so rude as to ask, but How did she and her TV news producer husband get to be sooo rich? - GWC
Secretary of State Candidate Has a Major Financial Stake in Canadian Tar Sands | OnEarth Magazine:

Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project.

Rice's financial holdings could raise questions about her status as a neutral decision maker. The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.

Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel -- including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 -- the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history

'via Blog this'

Olmert backs Palestinian UN bid

Olmert and Abbas

As I said yesterday:

“I believe,” [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert wrote me [Bernard Ashivai], intending his statement to be made public “that the Palestinian request from the United Nations is congruent with the basic concept of the two-state solution. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it. Once the United Nations will lay the foundation for this idea, we in Israel will have to engage in a serious process of negotiations, in order to agree on specific borders based on the 1967 lines, and resolve the other issues. It is time to give a hand to, and encourage, the moderate forces amongst the Palestinians. Abu-Mazen and Salam Fayyad need our help. It's time to give it.”

France Says It Will Vote in Favor of Palestinians’ U.N. Bid - NYTimes.com

We say we want a Palestinian state that will respect Israeli sovereignty and abide by the UN's rules - which demand respect for the borders of other member states.  The Palestine National Authority  which is leading the fight for UN recognition is committed to a two-state solution.  They already have an elected! functioning government on a large part of their UN-recognized! territory.  It is a proto-state (funded by the U.S. and the E.U. on the West Bank).  It has legal authority over the Hamas-governed Gaza.   Why can't we move them a step closer to membership in the UN.  It would strengthen their negotiating position with both Israel and Hamas, enhancing the nearly moribund peace prospects.  I don't understand our resistance. - GWC
France Says It Will Vote in Favor of Palestinians’ U.N. Bid - NYTimes.com:
By SCOTT SAYARE and CHRISTINE HAUSER  

"PARIS — France will vote in favor of the Palestinians’ request to heighten their profile at the United Nations, the French foreign minister told Parliament on Tuesday, embracing a move that Israel and the United States oppose. The support of France, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, is the most significant boost to date for the Palestinians’ hopes to be granted nonmember observer status and thus greater international recognition. Russia and China, two other permanent members, have also thrown their support behind the Palestinian bid." 'via Blog this'

Cardinal Dolan, bishops endorse Dorothy Day of Catholic Worker as a "saint for our times" - NY Times

In 1965 the war in Vietnam was escalating sharply.  I hadn't given it much thought. But one day a couple of guys from the Catholic Worker showed up in the mail room in Kimball Hall at Holy Cross where I was a student.  I was drawn into the conversation.  They preached pacifist opposition to the war, the egalitarian social philosophy of their founder Dorothy Day, and gave out copies of the  Catholic Worker newspaper - price 1 Cent.  That was my introduction to the "Catholic left", soon to be followed by my encounters with veterans of the civil rights and civil liberties fights of the 50's and now 60's when I attended Friday evening sessions of the Phoenix Club in a downtown Worcester storefront.  There I met Boston College Law School Dean Robert Drinan, S.J. who would go to Congress as an anti-war candidate, David McReynolds of the War Resisters League, and the not-yet-famous Abbie Hoffman who lived in Worcester and would soon become a celebrity jester of the anti-war movement. - GWC
Champions Sainthood for Dorothy Day, Hero of Catholic Left - NYTimes.com: by Sharon Otterman

"Dorothy Day is a hero of the Catholic left, a fiery 20th-century social activist who protested war, supported labor strikes and lived voluntarily in poverty as she cared for the needy.  

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York is president, voted this month to support Dorothy Day's canonization.But Day has found a seemingly unlikely champion in New York’s conservative archbishop, CardinalTimothy M. Dolan, who has breathed new life into an effort to declare the Brooklyn native a saint.Cardinal Dolan has embraced her cause with striking zeal: speaking on the anniversaries of her birth and death, distributing Dorothy Day prayer cards to parishes and even buying roughly 100 copies of her biography to give out last year as Christmas gifts to civic officials including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.This month, at Cardinal Dolan’s recommendation, theUnited States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted unanimously to move forward with her canonization cause, even though, as some of the bishops noted, she had an abortion as a young woman and at one point flirted with joining the Communist Party.“I am convinced she is a saint for our time,” Cardinal Dolan said at the bishops’ meeting. She exemplifies, he said, “what’s best in Catholic life, that ability we have to be ‘both-and’ not ‘either-or.’ ”

Swarming - the new face of war?

Napoleon's army flees across the Berezina River F. deMyrbach

Killer swarms
by John Arquilla
Foreignpolicy.com

Today marks the bicentennial of the culminating catastrophe that befell the Grande Armée as it retreated from Russia. This past weekend one of the French Emperor's descendants, Charles Napoleon, traveled to Minsk in Belarus to attend ceremonies commemorating the disaster at the nearby Berezina River crossing, where thousands died -- many by drowning -- in a final, panicked rout in freezing weather. Bonaparte had marched deep into Russia with nearly half a million soldiers; he returned with less than 25,000.

Given that Napoleon was the great captain of his time -- perhaps of all time -- and that his armies had conquered and held most of Europe, the tragic events on the Beresina demand explanation. His defeat is something of a puzzle, too, as the Grande Armée won the campaign's pitched battles fought at Smolensk and Borodino. Harsh winter weather, the commonly assumed culprit, cannot explain the result either; the first frost didn't arrive to bedevil the retreat until just a few weeks before the Beresina crossing.

The answer to the puzzle is that Napoleon and his forces were beaten by what a young Russian hussar, Denis Davydov, called his "indestructible swarm" of Cossacks and other raiders who constantly harried the French columns on the march. They also struck relentlessly, repeatedly, and to fatal effect at the Grande Armée's supply lines. As David Chandler, an eminent historian of Napoleon's campaigns, put it: "raids of Cossacks and partisan bands did more harm to the Emperor than all the endeavors of the regular field armies of Holy Russia."Swarms matter, and have done much to shape the world. As my colleague David Ronfeldt and I have noted in our RAND study of swarms, the phenomenon began long ago. The Mongols were particularly adept at this way of war, following a doctrine they actually named "Crow Swarm." Edward Luttwak, in his masterful The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, observed that the success of the Byzantines in protecting the edges of empire for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome had much to do with their employment of defensive swarm tactics. But Davydov, in a brief campaign launched only after he overcame bureaucratic resistance, helped defeat one of history's greatest adventurer-conquerors, giving us perhaps the single most dramatic example of swarming ever seen.

Judges’ Rulings Follow Partisan Lines - NYTimes.com

Prof. Lee Epstein

All of us who struggle to preserve judicial independence (of whom? to what end?) recognize that who the decision-maker is makes a difference.  Oliver Wendell Holmes memorably made the point when he wrote the "the life of the law has not been logic but experience".   And our experience is that in close cases ideology matters - and in today's world the political parties are ideologically aligned.  Liberal Republicans are near extinction, and there are few Democrats who would call themselves conservative.  Professor Lee Epstein and  couple of high powered economics and law co-authors (Wiliam Landes and Richard Posner) look at the data in their new book The Behavior of Federal Judges.  Adam Liptak comments in the Times. - GWC
Judges’ Rulings Follow Partisan Lines - NYTimes.com: by Adam Liptak

A new book to be published in January by the Harvard University Press provides the most comprehensive and detailed empirical analysis yet of the role ideology and political affiliation plays in judicial decision making. It is called “The Behavior of Federal Judges,” and it collects and analyzes a daunting amount of data.Its authors are Lee Epstein, who teaches law and political science at the University of Southern California; William M. Landes, who teaches law and economics at the University of Chicago; and Judge Richard A. Posner of the federal appeals court in Chicago. They conclude that “federal judges are not just politicians in robes, though that is part of what they are.”The book’s broadest findings are unsurprising but worth stating for those in denial about such things.“Justices appointed by Republican presidents vote more conservatively on average than justices appointed by Democratic ones, with the difference being most pronounced in civil rights cases,” the three authors write.

'via Blog this'

Obama Gangnam Style

Obama impersonator Reggie Brown goes Gangnam Style.

Passion for social justice leads Bridget McCormack to Michigan Supreme Court | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com

Clinical Associate Dean Bridget McCormack outside U. Michigan Law School is headed to state Supreme Court

Bridget McCormack was raised in Plainifeld, New Jersey, and heads up the clinical program a the University of Michigan Law School,  Or did.  She'll be donning robes as a newly elected Associate Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court - a position she won in an intensely fought election in which $10 million was spent in the Supreme Court races. - GWC
  Passion for social justice leads Bridget McCormack to Michigan Supreme Court | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com:

Ann Arbor — Bridget McCormack, 46,  was in middle school when she came home to find a stranger in the house. A woman who was beaten and bruised from domestic violence was sleeping on the family couch."My mother had some shelter she was a volunteer in and took her in to live with us for some period of time," McCormack recalled in a recent interview. "Back then, I don't remember the words 'domestic violence' exactly, but we knew this woman wasn't safe to go home, and she was going to live with us."McCormack saidthe experience opened her young eyes to the importance of social justice and fairness."That story had a powerful effect on me, and I (realized) my mother was someone who was committed to … figuring out how to give back and improveyour community."That experience helped shape McCormack, 46, who will be sworn to the Michigan Supreme Court on Jan. 1 after winning in one of the most bitter and costly Supreme Court races in memory. McCormack was nominated for the nonpartisan eight-year position by the state Democratic Party.GOP-backed Justices Stephen Markman and Brian Zahra were re-elected to the court, maintaining the 4-3 conservative majority on the bench.

Abolish Attorney's Retaining Lien: NJ Supreme Court Advisory Committee Urges

The New Jersey Supreme Court, in a Notice to the Bar, has invited public comment on a recommendation of its Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics that the attorney’s “common law retaining lien” be abolished.  Now permitted by Rule, the Advisory Committee finds the lien to be obsolete and destructive of client relations.  Lawyers have adequate other legal remedies to recover costs and unpaid fees.  Holding a client’s file hostage to payment of a fee is meaningful only when the claine has an “acute” need for the file - a situation that carries a risk of prejudice to the client who has the unfettered right to terminate the attorney-client relationship.  Such conflict reduces public confidence in the Bar, the ACPE opines.

As the Committee notes, it solicited the opinion of the State Bar Association which urged that the common law retaining lien.  The Notice, Report of the ACPE, and statement of the State Bar Association  are HERE.  - GWC

Disclosure: I am a member of the ACPE


'via Blog this'

Israel and Palestine » By the numbers

The numbers show the military one-sidedness of the Israel-Gaza/Palestinian conflict.  There is obviously a `we bomb them because they bomb us' element.  The way out?  Israelis - at least a voting majority - are convinced that there is no way out - that `they hate us because we are Jews', etc.  I do not accept the "because" in that view.  I think it begins and continues because `you took our land'.  
Can Palestinians reach the point of "I accept that you took our land.  Now let us make peace - let us keep what you took 50 years ago and you keep what you took 70 years ago".  If Israel really offered that I believe that peace could be enforced and that the unrelenting enemies could be contained.  The principal obstacle to that seems to be that Israelis who think they are entitled to take more Palestinian land control the elected government of Israel. - GWC
dotCommonweal » Blog Archive » By the numbers:

The Israel Defense Forces do not target civilians. Hamas targets Israel. And yet…

Number of Israelis killed by fire from Gaza between January 1st 2012 and November 11, 2012:1
(Source: Wikipedia)

Number of Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israeli fire during the same period: 78(Source: United Nations)

Number of Israelis killed by fire from Gaza, November 13th-19th 2012: 3(Source: press reports)

Number of Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israeli fire, November 13th-19th: 95(Source: IDF) …

Total number of Israelis killed by rocket, mortar or anti-tank fire from Gaza since 2006: 47(Source: Wikipedia. This is disputed; another source says 26)

Number of Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israeli fire from April 1st 2006 to July 21st 2012: 2,879
(Source: United Nations)

The whole tragically long list is at The Economist.

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Strong Recusal Rules Are Crucial to Judicial Integrity | Center for American Progress

A new report from the Center for American Progress.
Strong Recusal Rules Are Crucial to Judicial Integrity | Center for American Progress:

Since the 2000 election season, state supreme court races have seen a surge in campaign cash. State supreme court candidates from 2000 to 2009 raised more than $200 million—two and a half times more than the amount raised in the previous decade. A report from Justice at Stake, an advocate for fair courts, found that judicial elections in 2012 set a spending record, with $27.8 million shelled out for television advertising alone. This flood of campaign cash has flowed from corporations, interest groups, and lawyers seeking to influence the composition of state high courts and the rulings issued by those courts.This abundance of campaign donations has sometimes led to alarming conflicts of interest. Unlike legislators, judges make decisions that impact specific individuals or entities, which means the avoidance of any bias or partiality is critical. Under the ethical rules and guidelines in place in most states, judges must disclose any campaign donations from parties or attorneys before their courts, and they must refrain from hearing a case if it would give rise to “impropriety or the appearance of impropriety.” This standard, however, is vague and leaves much to interpretation.Judges sometimes recuse themselves from cases involving litigants or lawyers who have given money to their campaigns, but all too often judges refuse to abstain in the face of glaring conflicts of interest. This has caused the public to doubt the impartiality of judges. According to several recent polls, more than three quarters of respondents believe that campaign cash influences rulings.

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Warren B. Rudman, New Hampshire Senator, Dies at 82 - NYTimes.com

Senator Warren Rudman (R-N.H.)
with Senator George Mitchell (D-Maine)

Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) was half of Gramm-Rudman - the Reagan budget bill that sharply cut social spending.  He was a founder of the deficit hawk Concord Coalition.  I was strongly opposed to both.  I am Keynesian in economics and social democratic in social policy.  But there is a yin and a yang, and Warren Rudman was definitely a yang. And it gave him the guts to stand up to the right when they were celebrating the rogue White House operative Oliver North, and when he put forward his successor as New Hampshire Attorney General David Souter for the Supreme Court. 
Justice Souter proved to be one of the most supple thinkers to grace the court.  He was a steady voice against the bitter extremism of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - two powerful and wrong-headed intellects given to hyperbole.
Rudman was a New England Republican - a member of the party of Lincoln, the kind of person  we need to restore genuine bi-partisanship - the kind in which people actually debate and find ways to agree without either becoming the other. - GWC
Warren B. Rudman, New Hampshire Senator, Dies at 82 - NYTimes.com:

“The American people have a right to be wrong,” Senator Rudman told Colonel North. “And what Ronald Reagan thinks or what Oliver North thinks or what anybody else thinks matters not a whit. There comes a point when the views of the American people have to be heard.”¶

For all his work on fiscal and national security issues, Mr. Rudman said he regarded his role in the selection of David H. Souter for the Supreme Court as his proudest achievement.

'via Blog this'

The final Presidential election map Red-Blue 2012

Rebel, rural = Republican.  The yin-yang of security vs. liberty means
that there will always be a close divide.  If Republicans want their party
to thrive they should be Canadian Conservatives, not southern cultural conservatives.
Of course the electoral college map gives a misleading impression.  Things look good for Republicans in square miles.  And very good for Democrats in electoral votes.  But the popular vote gives a picture of a relatively close vote.  Cook Political Report has the numbers.  124,888459 votes have been counted so far. Obama leads by 50.73% to Romney's 47.59. That's a 3.2% lead.  We remain at risk in this game of electoral college roulette. - gwc

“Managerial Judging” – Judge Hellerstein defends his role in forcing a settlement in WTC cases | Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach

“Managerial Judging” – Judge Hellerstein defends his role in forcing a settlement in WTC cases | Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach: "Federal District Judge Alvin Hellerstein and his Special Masters Aaron Twerski and James Henderson have mounted a major defense of the court’s role in enhancing the settlement of the World Trade Center cleanup litigation by cutting attorneys fees and forcing defendants to sweeten the pot before he would “approve the settlement” – something the Rules gave him no power to do.  It is a fascinating case study of the pressures on lawyers who undertake complex contingent fee litigation, of the limitations on clients’ ability to meaningfully consent to settlement in aggregate litigation (RPC 1.2), the meaning of a reasonable fee (RPC 1.5), and the power of judges over plaintiffs lawyers working on contingent fee in MDL-type mass tort litigation." - GWC  'via Blog this'

Managerial Judging: The 9/11 Responders' Tort Litigation by Alvin Hellerstein, James Henderson, Aaron Twerski :: SSRN

Judge Alvin Hellerstein undertook the monumental task of handling all the tort litigation arising from the 9/11 catastrophe which was venued in the Southern District of New York - by act of Congress.  He asserted power far beyond that expresssly granted him by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure- rejecting a settlement, cutting attorneys fees, denying plaintiffs lawyers the right to recoup the costs of financing the enormously expensive litigation brought on behalf of the demolition and rescue workers who worked on the smoldering ruins. The Judge and the Special Masters he appointed - Professors Aaron Twerski and James Henderson - make the case that power derives from necessity. - GWC
Managerial Judging: The 9/11 Responders' Tort Litigation by Alvin Hellerstein, James Henderson, Aaron Twerski :: SSRN:
Abstract:      

After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center approximately 60,000 responders came to ground zero to assist in some fashion. Over the years some 10,000 responders brought suit against the City of New York and its contractors under a variety of theories for injuries they suffered from exposure to the toxic environment at the World Trade Center site. This conglomeration of cases brought to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, sitting in the federal Southern District of New York, was the most complex mass tort case in the history of the United States. The responders alleged that they suffered over 300 different diseases arising from exposures at the site ranging from several days to ten months. The Court, with the aid of Special Masters, created a complex database that accounted for a host of variables and that categorized diseases utilizing objective criteria to determine their relative severity so that the Court and the parties could get an overview of the scope of the injuries actually suffered over time. The parties presented the Court with a settlement for all the cases slightly in excess of $600 million dollars. The federal government had set aside a fund of one billion dollars to compensate victims who had legitimate tort claims against the city. Although this case could not be certified as a class action Judge Hellerstein rejected the settlement as unfair. Ultimately the parties agreed to add $125 million in additional monies to the settlement and the Judge found the settlement to be reasonable. This article deals with the creative role of the judge in managing discovery and his authority to reject a settlement in a case that had many attributes of a class action but was not a true class action. The article argues that Judge Hellerstein’s assumption of responsibility for managing discovery and his rejection of the settlement was necessary and proper. It was the only way to bring about a settlement and assure that the plaintiffs would receive fair compensation.

h/t TortsProf Blog


'via Blog this'

Pennsylvania Judges Sue over Mandatory Retirement Provision - Law Blog - WSJ

Pennsylvania Judges Sue over Mandatory Retirement Provision - Law Blog - WSJ:  "By Joe Palazzolo Six Pennsylvania judges are suing to invalidate a state constitutional provision that requires them to retire at age 70. Standing in their way is a 1990 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Gregory v. Ashcroft, that upheld a similar mandatory retirement requirement in Missouri. But the judges and their lawyers are hoping that advances in medicine, new research on aging and evolving law on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause will help them sustain their challenge. The challenge could have national implications. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia enforce age limits for at least some of their judges, according to the National Center for State Courts. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, cites new evidence that the prevalence of  cognitive impairment in older Americans has decreased, even since the early 1990s." 'via Blog this'

Romney Blames Loss on Obama's 'Gifts' to Minorities and Young Voters - NYTimes.com

Mitt Romney demonstrated today that the 47% meme was no fluke.  Favorable tax rates for capital gains - that's not a "gift" but low interest college loans, contraceptive benefits, and health insurance are "targeted gifts" that buy votes in his view.  Looks like representative government to me, but what do I know - I'm in the 47%. I pay a lot higher income tax rate than he does, but I get Social Security and Medicare. - GWC
Romney Blames Loss on Obama's 'Gifts' to Minorities and Young Voters - NYTimes.com: 

"In a conference call on Wednesday afternoon with his national finance committee, Mr. Romney said that the president had followed the “old playbook” of wooing specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people,” Mr. Romney explained — with targeted gifts and initiatives."

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SALT responds to proposed changes in tenure standards

The new SALT statement on tenure declares that the:

artificial distinctions between doctrinal, clinical and legal writing faculty—a two-tiered system of protection that provides “tenure” to some and “reasonably similar” protections to others—undermines the legal education mission. Such artificial distinctions marginalize the faculty, programs and disciplines relegated to the “reasonably similar” status and create unnecessary and harmful hierarchies within the academy that adversely affects the quality of legal education.  As far as possible, all faculty deserve to be treated the same with respect to the standards governing access to tenure rather than being classified separately according to whether they are doctrinal, clinical, or legal writing faculty.

As an Adjunct I don't have a dog in this race, but it is my view that the upstairs-downstairs treatment of clinical faculty is unjustified.  As to tenure as an institution - academic freedom is an important principle as is the ability to terminate employees for cause.  If there is stagnation among faculty it is probably the case that faculty governance rather than tenure is at  the root of the reluctance to terminate tenured faculty.  But just my guess since I have never been on a tenure track nor participated in the administration of a law school. - GWC
SALT:

"SALT Submits Statement of Principles on Proposed Standard 405 At its January 2013 meeting, the ABA’s Standards and Review Committee (SRC) will be considering amendments to Standard 405, the standard that governs tenure and security of position for law school faculty.  As you may be aware, the Committee has suggested changes that would severely undermine the current requirements and understanding of tenure.  SALT submitted a Statement of Principles to the Committee that we believe should guide any discussion and changes to the current standard.  We encourage you to review and share with your faculty SALT’s Statement of Principles, the current Standard 405 and the SRC’s suggested changes. Click HERE for the recently submitted SALT Statement of Principles  Click HERE for the current Standard 405. SALT statements to the SRC of the American Association of Law Schools are available on the American Bar Association Standards Review Comments Page." 'via Blog this'

Charles Lane: The Romney lesson - The Washington Post

Gov. George Romney - 1962

It is important to remember that in 1962 George Romney was Michigan Governor when bipartisanship had meaning.  That was because a large section of the Republican Party was still the party of Lincoln and the Democratic Party was still the party of George McClellan and the southern segregationists.  I sometimes ask myself - if I had been born a southern Republican committed to civil rights, when would I have left the Republican Party?  Probably when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. = GWC
Charles Lane: The Romney lesson - The Washington Post:

"How different history might have been if George Romney had prevailed in the intra-party debates of his day. The 1960s were a time of robust competition for black votes between Republicans and Democrats. Richard Nixon won about a third of African American votes in both 1960 and 1968. This is one reason the period was so fruitful, legislatively, for civil rights. Romney was a leader of the GOP’s then-sizable liberal-to-moderate wing. He was pro-business, chilly toward labor unions — and believed civil rights was both good policy and, for Republicans, good politics. He fiercely resisted Barry Goldwater’s right-wing takeover of the party in 1964 and, after his own 1968 campaign for president fizzled, joined Nixon’s administration as housing secretary. In that role, Romney launched the “Open Communities” initiative, which made federal grants for local infrastructure conditional on fair housing."

'via Blog this'

What Romney Lost by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books

Mitt Romney at Bain Capital 1993

Harsh but I can't say it is unfair. - GWC

What Romney Lost by Garry Wills | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books: 
by Garry Wills

"What vestige of a backbone is Romney left with? Things he was once proud of —health-care guarantees, opposition to noxious emissions, support of gay rights and women’s rights, he had the shamelessness to treat as matters of shame all through his years-long crawl to the Republican nomination.  

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future? It is said that he will write a book. Really? Does he want to relive a five-year-long experience of degradation? What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it? His friends can only hope he is too morally obtuse to realize that crushing truth. Losing elections is one thing. But the greater loss, the real loss, is the loss of honor."

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David Petraeus’s affair with Paula Broadwell: Why did an accomplished and respected military leader risk everything for an extramarital affair? - Slate Magazine

Gen. David Petraeus

David Petraeus’s affair with Paula Broadwell: Why did an accomplished and respected military leader risk everything for an extramarital affair? - Slate Magazine:
by Fred Kaplan

 "Among those who have long known Gen. David Petraeus, those who served under his command in wartime, sat with him in the White House Situation Room, or helped him rewrite Army doctrine at Fort Leavenworth, the most gnawing question about the scandalous affair that led to his resignation and doomed his career on Friday is this: How could he—this acclaimed leader and figure of rectitude—allow such a thing to happen? Seen in context, the mystery, while shocking, is not so unfathomable."

Paula Broadwell - as she appeared on The Daily Show

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Obama thanks his campaign staff

Sincerity

Tobacco Industry Influence on the American Law Institute

Tobacco Industry Influence on the American Law Institute’s Restatements of Torts and Implications for Its Conflict of Interest Policies, 98 Iowa Law Review 1 (2012)
by Elizabeth Laposata,  Richard Barnes  & Stanton Glantz

Center for Tobacco Control Research and 
Education at the University of California, San Francisco


The American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law 2d: Torts gave powerful impetus to the development of the law of product liability.  Its section 402A was widely embraced by courts in the 1960's and 1970's.  It helped to foster successful claims against asbestos companies and manufacturers of dangerous devices - particularly automobiles and unsafe industrial machinery. Issued in 1964 the same year as the Surgeon General's landmark report Smoking and Health, the ALI exempted "good  tobacco" from the categories of products for which strict liability might be imposed - unless it was contaminated with "something like marijuana".  

The ALI functions in parliamentary fashion so lobbying by interested parties is not unexpected.  Members are instructed to "leave their clients at the door", unlikely as that may be to be accomplished.  Lawyers identify with their clients and ideological symbiosis usually follows. But Glantz, et al. demonstrate that there was much more than that going on.  Mining the millions of documents in the Legacy Tobacco Library they learned that tobacco industry lawyers working with their industry clients succeeded in modifying the draft Restatement to protect the tobacco industry from lawsuits.  A prime actor was Covington & Burling partner and tobacco industry defense architect H. Thomas Austern who arranged a December 1961 meeting between tort law giant William L. Prosser and  the Committee on Legal Affairs of the now notorious Tobacco Institute.  The "good tobacco" language soon entered the draft, helping to insulate the industry from tort liability.

When the Product Liability Restatement was undertaken the ALI hired Aaron Twerski and James Henderson  two law professors whose doctrinal approach disparaged "categorical liability" - asserting that courts should not be permitted to weigh the benefits of a category of products against the harm they do.  Such claims, in Twerski's view were "basically illegitimate", and "non-justiciable" - i.e. beyond the competence and proper province of the courts. Like his collaborator Henderson, Twerski had been a paid consultant for tobacco companies but declined such work once the Products Restatement work began.

Of particular note is the role as ALI advisor of one of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries most dedicated lawyers and defenders, Victor Schwartz.  The successor to Prosser on the master's torts casebook after the Dean's death in 1972, Schwartz's name appears 350 times in the tobacco Legacy database.

Glantz, et alii compare the ALI to the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine which also seek to influence government through rigorous and independent reports.  They criticize the ALI and assert its Restatements should be viewed skeptically because unlike NAS and the IOM, the ALI's conflicts policy inspires little confidence that conflicts of interest will be avoided.  The ALI's conflicts procedures, adopted in 1994 and amended in 2010 address only the Director and Reporters.  Institute Advisors (who play a key role in scrutinizing drafts) and Participants in the Members Consultative Groups are governed only by the ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 6.4, which provides:

A lawyer may serve as a director, officer or member of an organization involved in reform of the law or its administration notwithstanding that the reform may affect the interests of a client of the lawyer. When the lawyer knows that the interests of a client may be materially benefitted by a decision in which the lawyer participates, the lawyer shall disclose that fact but need not identify the client.

RPC 6.4 is a thin stricture - far from the rigor of the NAS and IOM whose policies apply to all members of committees or reviewing groups, and require disclosure of conflicts of interest of spouses and close relations. Members of committees must make annual disclosures and declare "the :institution will make best efforts to ensure that no individual appointed to a committee has a conflict of interest".  The NAS is governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act 5 U.S.C. app. 2 § 15 which specifies

(A) no individual appointed to serve on the committee has a conflict of interest that is relevant to the functions to be performed, unless such conflict is promptly and publicly disclosed and the Academy determines that the conflict is unavoidable, (B) the committee membership is fairly balanced as determined by the Academy to be appropriate for the functions to be performed, and (C) the final report of the Academy will be the result of the Academy's independent judgment. The Academy shall require that individuals that the Academy appoints or intends to appoint to serve on the committee inform the Academy of the individual's conflicts of interest that are relevant to the functions to be performed.

The ALI is not a federal advisory organization, and lawyers' roles as confidential advocates  present challenges more complex than those faced by NAS advisory committees, but "disclosure: and "balance" of defense and plaintiff interests seems to me something that could and probably should have been undertaken in the highly contentious process of drafting the products liability restatement.  The Glantz study should prompt open and candid discussion within the Institute of the issue of conflicts of interest.
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The View from the Cocoon of Denial and Epistemic Closure - Spectator Blogs

How does James Carville live with Mary Matalin?  Good sex?  That must be it because this is how she reacted to the election. Maybe the Ragin' Cajun just likes Ragin', no matter what the content?  - GWC
The View from the Cocoon of Denial and Epistemic Closure - Spectator Blogs:

Mary Matalin
What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division.
[…] Unfortunately and unfortuitously, forces of nature bookended the general election: Our convention was compromised by one weather disaster and our momentum stalled by another. Two human hurricanes also radically altered the political atmosphere: Bill Clinton’s unique windbaggery constituted a campaign updraft, while Chris Christie’s deplorable and gratuitous gas-baggery infused the campaign with a toxic political pollution

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President Obama's Victory Speech 2012

The Times  has the video with scrolling text

Robert Lehrmann has commentary on the rhetoric and structure
And this analysis from Andrew Sprung at ex post factoid:
Obama's "not just red states and blue states" mantra puts forward a national image that's highly, shall we say, idealized -- that is, part bullshit. But only partly, because Obama lays the real beside the ideal, embracing disunity within unity -- as in his victory speech last night: 

"Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.

That won’t change after tonight, and it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today."This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.
The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great. " (emphasis added)

Four More Years

Bizarre - the Rove Revolt on Fox News

Karl Rove mutinied on the air on the Tea Party Network after it called Ohio for Obama.  I don't know what this means for him in the future.  But I am sure that it will be a boon to Jon Stewart,  Stephen Colbert, and SNL.
VIDEO HERE

Lessons of the Obama and Democratic Victory for the Republican Party

Mitt Romney's gracious concession speech showed
how strong he would have been if he had not been compelled
to drink Tea Party Kool-Aid to get the GOP nomination

What are the big lessons for the GOP?

1) Senate Republican obstructionism was defeated.  Big loss for Senator Mitch McConnell’s filibuster strategy.

2) The Tea Party is a liability.

3) The Republicans prevailed only in former slave states and states without a major metropolitan area (unless you want to make more of Indianapolis and St. Louis than they deserve).  There aren't enough people there.

4) The Nixonian southern strategy - which powered every Republican presidential victory since 1968! - is in a shambles.

If the Republican party is serious about contending for power it has to beg the RINOS to return - an unlikely proposition now that the Fox News closed information loop is almost hermetically sealed.
- GWC

Obama's final rally

Bruce, Michelle & Barack in Iowa - the last speech of the campaign.  It's in our hands now.




Video streaming by Ustream

Chris Christie, ecstatic, bonds with Bruce

It's official, "we're friends", The Boss told the blissed out Gov., with whom he chatted from Air Force One and at the Friday night benefit concert in the City.

New York News | NYC Breaking News

Four Years in Two Minutes

Progress 1861-2008

Keys factors to calculate the odds your state will vote for  Republican for President in 2012:

1) You did not abolish slavery until the Union Army enforced Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

2) You maintained a system of legal segregated education until 1954

3) You have no big cities

4) Your population is almost entirely white and did not send any troops to the Union Army

5) Your labor unions are very weak

Bloomberg, the Marathon and the Marie Antoinette Moment

Let's not forget this.  Michael Bloomberg, in full CEO monologue mode, insisted until minutes before cancellation that the show must go on.     Despite the fact that thousands were still stranded in the Rockaways and Staten Island four days after the hurricane flooded the low lying neighborhoods of New York.  Citing Rudy Giuliani's support he wanted thousands to race for glory and gratification while other thousands pleaded for food, water, clothing, and light.  He was spared from acting out his Marie Antoinette moment by public outrage and the utter impossibility of diverting hundreds of police officers who were needed for emergency service to the stranded citizens of New York. 

Bloomberg, it must be said, has been a major philanthropist - giving so much to Johns Hopkins that it now boasts the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  But the man who has barred supersize sodas could not see the ghastliness of broadcasting and celebrating the labors of the lithe while the afflicted suffered in obscurity.

Revolt of the Rich | Mike Lofgren - The American Conservative

The apostate former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren struggles to find a principled conservatism.  It's not easy.  But his critique is devastating. - gwc
Revolt of the Rich | The American Conservative: 
by Mike Lofgren
"The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened. But how did this evolve historically, what does it mean for the rest of us, and where is it likely to be going?"

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Capitulate, Chait! Succumb, Drum! Obama's rhetoric is a force for change | xpostfactoid

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion.  the basic rap against Obama on the left is he is too much persuader, too little `tough as nails' negotiator for a man with implacable ideological enemies.  Kevin Drum andJon Chait are very smart guys whose posture is "I never bought the Hope meme", but he's my man and we got what we needed and expected.  Andrew Sprung gives a lesson in the strength of Obama's rhetoric. - GWC

Capitulate, Chait! Succumb, Drum! Obama's rhetoric is a force for change | xpostfactoid:
by Andrew Sprung

[Kevin Drum and Jonathan Chait] (t)wo of the admirers of Obama I'm most attuned to claim a tough-minded immunity to the alleged intoxications of the president's rhetoric. Jonathan Chait, in a truly moving and incisive tribute to Obama's radical pragmatism, protests at the outset, "I never felt his election would change everything about American politics or government...Nothing Obama did or said ever made me well up with tears."

Kevin Drum goes him one better:

I simply never took seriously any of Obama's high-flown rhetoric—Hope and change, Yes we can! You are the solution, etc.—dismissing it as nothing more than typical campaign windiness.

To which I must respond: Gentlemen! Tune in, turn on, don't cop out. Listen to what the man has been saying these five-plus years.

Rhetoric got Obama to the Rose Garden, but he never promised us one. He never suggested that change would be magical or easy or swift.  "We are the ones we've been waiting for" was a call to action; "yes we can" was a girding for long, hard slogging; both express the credo of a community organizer.  Throughout that endless campaign and his heady first few months in office, Obama did not promise utopia. He proposed
a) to turn the battleship of state a few degrees in the right direction;
b) to reset the country on a historical course from which it had strayed, either since Bush or since Reagan: toward a renewed commitment to shared prosperity and investment in the common good; and
c) by means of that reset, to continue the country's never-to-be-finished progress toward a more perfect union; that is, echoing Martin Luther King,
d) toward fulfillment of the promises embedded in its founding documents.

click through HERE to the rest of an excellent analysis of Obama's rhetoric and its persuasive power
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Paul Krugman closes his own private enthusiasm gap | xpostfactoid - Andrew Sprung

Paul Krugman's credibility on the left is high.  He alone had predicted - with astonishing accuracy - the consequences of a stimulus he identified as too small.    He certainly influenced me - and contributed to my own moments of discouragement, as Krugman called Obama to the ISP (Incredible Shrinking President).  The low point was the debt ceiling crisis when for absolutely no good reason the Tea Party brought the country to the brink of an act of unprecedented stupidity and irresponsibility.
At the same time I always felt that Krugman's weakness was his political naivete.  Obama's negotiating position was much more difficult and much more complex than Krugman recognized.  And the deal he struck much better than Krugman thought.   Andrew Sprung reviews the evolution of Krugman's thinking  - showing how his assessment of the President has evolved. - GWC
Paul Krugman closes his own private enthusiasm gap | xpostfactoid: by Andrew Sprung

No one on the more or less mainstream left has been harder on Obama than Paul Krugman, who began tearing out his hair at the proposed size of the stimulus before Obama took office and did not let up for almost three years thereafter. The nadir came as details of the debt ceiling deal emerged last summer: Krugman's July 31, 2011 column was originally titled "Capitulation" and lives on online as The President Surrenders.  His bitterness reached this crescendo:

In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

Yes, the debt ceiling deal was disillusioning, and droves of Democrats followed Krugman into the slough of despond.  Nine days later, the disgust peaked with Drew Westen's What Happened to Obama, a 3000-word screed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review that portrayed Obama as a craven conflict-averse surrender monkey while belittling his legislative accomplishments.  As I pointed out at the time, this rhetorical nuke dropped on ground zero in the liberal heartland relied almost entirely on Krugman's critique of the stimulus for its substantive attack on Obama's record. Yet Krugman has had a change of heart over the past year. His esteem for the president has grown more swiftly than the economy -- to the point where, if Obama's base followed Krugman's lead, there would be no enthusiasm gap. Perhaps it's an accelerating case of 'you don't know what you've got till it's [almost] gone. But I think the change also stems from Obama's swift pivot to confrontation in the wake of the debt ceiling debacle. Krugman concluded his "Capitulation" column with a set of prophecies that proved to be a rare instance of failure in his capacity as Cassandra:.....

Click through HERE for the rest of the analysis.

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Vote No on Judicial Pay Cut Referendum - NJ Law Journal Editorial Board

The New Jersey Law Journal Editorial Board has endorsed the State Bar Association's call to reject ballot Question No. 2.  Supported by the Republican Governor and Democratic Legislature - it would amend the State Constitution and reinstate an increase in sitting judges' contributions to health care and pension benefits. - gwc

Vote NO on No. 2  (c) 2012 ALM

Three months ago, a divided state Supreme Court defied Gov. Chris Christie and affirmed a trial court ruling inDePascale v. State that the New Jersey Constitution's no-diminution clause barred a legislated increase in the pension and health benefit contributions of the state's appointed judiciary. When Christie denounced the lower court judge as a protector and member of a "little cliquey club of 423," the State Bar Association rose to the defense of judicial independence and Assignment Judge Linda Feinberg, the Trenton judge whose court was the mandatory venue for Judge Paul DePascale's challenge.
When the court ruled that take-home pay may not be diminished, the governor and Legislature promptly proposed and placed on the ballot Public Question No. 2 to amend the constitution. A recent Rutgers Eagleton poll reports that an overwhelming 70 percent of voters favor the measure, which asks:
"Do you approve an amendment to the New Jersey Constitution, as agreed to by the Legislature, to allow contributions set by law to be taken from the salaries of Supreme Court Justices and Superior Court Judges for their employee benefits?"
New Jersey judges are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate for a seven-year term. They then must repeat the process to receive tenure until the mandatory retirement age of 70. During Christie's three years as governor, he has been in a standoff with the Legislature, leaving two vacancies on the high court. But with the proposed amendment, the legislative and executive branches are united in budget-cutting zeal.
Though it may well be futile, the State Bar has again responded strongly, seeing the public question as a threat to the independence of judges who already must run the political gauntlet of nomination and confirmation twice. Bar president Kevin McCann stated in a public letter: "While this proposal purports to put judges together with other government employees in connection with deductions from salaries for pensions, health benefits and other similar benefits, it actually represents a stark change in our state government and upends an historical protection that has kept the judicial system of our state free from partisan politics."
We agree and urge all to vote no on Public Question No. 2.