The Ayes Have It

Hertz Changing Loyalty Program

2011-08-25T10:24:00.002-05:00

This is news to me.

Greenfield on Non-lawyers Practicing Law

2011-08-25T09:34:00.001-05:00

Scott Greenfield has a post at his blog, Simple Justice, responding to the idea that some of the simplier areas of law should be opened to non-lawyers:

The simple will, for example, which, assuming it satisfies the needs and desires of the testator, can be prepared from a fill-in-the-blanks form. Whether it's the correct vehicle for a fellow requires a judgment call, of course, but once past that decision, the blanks themselves are fairly self-explanatory. But does the guy who bought the $19.95 will know that he can't cross out his brother's name when he has a falling out and fill in his sister's? Does he realize that his executor may have to locate the witnesses some day to prove the will, when he pulled a couple folks off the street to complete the execution? Of when he rips the will in half to show his kids what could happen if they continue to piss him off, does he realize that he can't tape it back together?

Greenfield suggests that the solution is not to allow non-lawyers to practice law, but to expect more of practicing lawyers:

Maybe the reason the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Brookings and Cato think we don't deserve the exclusive right to practice law is that we have forsaken our intellectual and educational authority to help others. But the solution isn't to place law in the hands of everyman, but to elevate the profession to those worthy to practice it.

Reading Roundup: August 25, 2011

2011-08-25T06:52:00.000-05:00

Who Needs Him? by Farhad Manjoo [Slate]
AFL-CIO's Trumpka Outlines New Strategy by Sam Stein [Huffington Post]
Liberals' Wisconsin Waterloo by George Will [Washington Post]
Psychic Benefits and the NBA Lockout by Malcolm Gladwell [Grantland]

Reading Roundup: August 24, 2011

2011-08-24T09:22:00.000-05:00

Good morning everybody, below is some of what I am reading today. As always, feel free to let me know if there's anything you're reading that I should be reading as well. Have a great day!

Why Another Democrat Wouldn't Do Better Than Obama in 2012 by Nate Silver [Fivethirtyeight]
Rick Perry for President, Y'all [Baseball Crank]
How Hard Is It To Get a Cartoon in The New Yorker by James Sturm [Slate]
An Unholy War on the Tea Party by Michael Gerson [Washington Post]

Reading Roundup: August 23, 2011

2011-08-23T11:35:00.002-05:00

Politico's Alexander Burns has a story today about how trial lawyers are preparing to campaign with their time and money against Rick Perry should Perry win the Republican Presidential nomination.
Partners by Jeffrey Toobin in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker.
Republicans for Tax Hikes by Dave Wiegel [Slate]
Who's Afraid of Digital Natives by Cathy N. Davidson [Slate]
Direct to Kindle Publishing by Don Taylor [The Incidental Economist]

What is Huntsman's Strategy?

2011-08-22T14:00:00.006-05:00

I thought the same thing as Dave Wiegel about Jon Huntsman's telepromter comment on ABC's This Week. Said Huntsman about Obama's approach: "He should have walked away from the teleprompter. The people want you to speak from your heart and soul." Weigel's words are nearly the same as I yelled at the TV (yes, I yell at the TV during Sunday morning political shows the way many yell at the TV during football games):

Huntsman has to know that he's dog-whistling to conservatives who think Obama's use of the teleprompter is proof that he's at best an empty suit, at worst a shadow candidate that a lazy media puffed up and foisted on the electorate.

When Tapper asked about the 10:1 spending cuts/revenue increases question from the Iowa GOP debate, Huntsman completely blew off the question:

Jake, it was a nonsense question. And the fact that you can even ask a question that is that important with such profound implications for the United States, to answer by show of a raised hand, I mean, come on. What have -- you know, what have debates gotten to, in terms of how we discuss the truly important issues of the day? I don't think tax increases are good for this country right now. In fact, I think it'd be the worst thing that we can do.

To his credit Tapper followed up seeking an answer and got the following:

TAPPER: So are you sorry you raised your hand for the, quote, "nonsense question"?

HUNTSMAN: Well, I'm just sorry that the debate resorted to a raising of hand as opposed to some discussion about where this country needs to go in terms of overall tax policy.

I'm just not quite sure what Huntsman's play is here. After spending a week calling for more substantive debate and saying things on Twitter that caused Roger Ebert to suggest: "Huntsman simply says things everybody knows, and he contradicts all the other GOP candidates," Huntsman goes on "This Week"with the opportunity to start building a base of moderate, educated Republicans as well as independent voters and he pivots to the right and starts speaking in talking points. I honestly don't get it.

Audible.com

2011-08-22T10:45:00.003-05:00

Visiting friends this weekend, I was introduced to Audible.com. This morning I signed up for the three month trial period ($7.50/month for the first three months) and downloaded ~~Hemingway's~~ Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I listened to almost two hours of it at the gym and on the way to work. So far pretty impressed - the narration isn't dull or monotone and they even bring in another reader when there is an exchange and it might be unclear which character is speaking.

I would welcome any input from any Audible.com veterans. Do "books on tape" work better for fiction than non-fiction? As many of you know, I travel a good deal for work and am often not able to sit down with a book, but could certainly press play on my iPod. This seems like a great way to take in 10-12 books a year during what otherwise would have been time spent staring at the wall.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

2011-08-22T09:24:00.003-05:00

I finished Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest yesterday morning after beginning the series about two months ago. This particular book was the third and final installment in the "Millennium" series that was published shortly after Larsson's death in 2004. It is not without significant effort that I have searched for enjoyable fiction for the last four or five years. These three books mark a run of fiction I have enjoyed that I have not seen since I stopped reading R.L. Stein's "Fear Street" books back in grade school.

As I have told some, I am no judge of the quality of fiction. I had a brief flirtation with John Grisham books during college but have since stopped reading those. Maybe that is a function of my job more than the quality of the books, I don't know. I do not see these books as being any kind of high minded literature, but an interesting story was told and there seemed to be at least some level of writing ability present.

I'm hesitant to tell too much of the story as it reveals parts of what happened in the previous book. I can say though that the characters are insightful and the build up to the presentation of Salander's legal defense is fascinating. It also provided a fascinating insight into Sweden's litigation procedure and how it differs from the system used here in the United States.

If you are familiar with the series, you know that this book is actually a continuation of a story started in The Girl Who Played with Fire, which I thought dragged a little bit. That said, I can say that if you're looking for a good quick read the first one makes a nice stand alone story that you can read and move onto other stuff if the number of books on your bookshelf waiting to be read is long and growing, you can do a lot worse than The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Mosle on Brill's "Class Warfare"

2011-08-19T10:30:00.004-05:00

Sara Mosle has a review today of Steven Brill's Class Warfare in the New York Times. I generally hold high regard for what reformers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein did/are doing for public education, but Mosle does provide a few points of pushback that are worth considering.

Start with the idea that unions are holding back public schools from engaging in real reform. According to Mosle though, a particularly rigorous 2009 study, which surveyed approximately half of all charters nationwide and was financed by the pro-charter Walton Family and Michael and Susan Dell Foundations, found that more than 80 percent either do no better, or actually perform substantially worse, than traditional public schools. The study [which she does not link] concluded that “tremendous variation in academic quality among charters is the norm, not the exception.”

Moving onto the idea of teacher quality, Mosle suggests that Brill conveniently ignores evidence that most of the variation in student performance is explained by nonschool factors: not just poverty, but also parental literacy (and whether parents read to their children), student health, frequent relocations, crime-related stress and the like. She suggests that movies like "Waiting for Superman" show less the benefits of Charter Schools, but actually the benefits of academically effective parents: "mothers and fathers who, despite difficult circumstances, read with their children, push them to do their homework and actively seek out exceptional charters, which (unlike the mediocre or failing ones) are oversubscribed and thus rely on lotteries with long odds for admission."

Like I said, I'm very sympathetic to the idea that things need to change in public schools. I think President Obama and Secretary Duncan are on the right track with programs like "Race to the Top" and that if we are going to get a lot of public schools to the "excellent" level we're going to have to have more flexibility than a lot of the unions currently allow. I also think the issue is a lot more complex than reformers portray (particularly the idea that three years of excellent teachers will eliminate gaps in achievement among poorly performing students). It seems like schools like KIPP benefit from higher scores as they enjoy a self-selected group of kids who have motivated parents who care about their education. Certainly application of KIPP-like models would seem to raise scores, but it does not seem like that alone is going to solve the problem of poorly performing schools. In short, my instinct tells me this: Parenting. Does. Matter. So do excellent teachers. Both are necessary, neither is sufficient for high levels of student achievement.

As for the point about elimination of unions not solving the problem for charter schools, I can only respond that this doesn't surprise me at all. I am not sure what this is supposed to prove other than the fact that elimination of unions will not alone solve the problem. I have not heard this argument, but I suppose this pierces the heart of it once and for all. That said, schools have to have the ability to move in a way that unions often will not allow.

Gerson on "The Ugly Party"

2010-06-30T10:14:00.004-05:00

Michael Gerson says this morning that he increasingly sees political division not so much on the basis of ideology, but as being between the "ugly party" and the "grown up party." As to why he feels more comfortable in the "grown up party":

I am more comfortable in this party for a few reasons: because it is more responsible, more reliable and less likely to wish its opponents would die.

Me too Mike, me too.

Colman on Paper Shredders

2010-04-01T15:33:00.003-05:00

A few years ago my grandma had only one item on her wish list for Christmas - a paper shredder. We all laughed and happily complied, going to Wal-Mart and picking out the first one that fit into the amount we had planned to spend. To our surprise, the paper shredder was taken back the next day and exchanged for the one that really suited her needs. I'm still not sure what was insufficient about the one we got, but she was apparently ahead of the curve. According to an article by David Colman:

It’s impossible to know exactly how many people are buying heavy-duty shredders to use at home, since companies that make them rely on product registrations to track where they are being used, and many people never register their shredders. But Fellowes, a company that makes an array of consumer shredders in the $50 to $2,000 price range, reports that according to product registrations it received for several models designed for commercial use sold in the last two years, about a quarter of them are being used at home.

It's worth noting that while these people are being mocked as "compulsive" and "paranoid" -- they are taking responsibility for the security of their information. I take care to give my bills a couple rips before disposing, but this probably is probably a good idea.

Pogue Reviews Apple iPad

2010-04-01T15:19:00.004-05:00

Nice review of the Apple iPad in today's New York Times. David Pogue breaks the review into his two sections, one for "techies" and one for "everybody else." According to Pogue:

And the techies are right about another thing: the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience — and a deeply satisfying one.

Don't get too excited though:

There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine — not even a Mac or iPhone.

Update: Slate links a review from The Root as to why the techies are wrong.

On Instant Runoff Voting

2010-03-27T16:48:00.004-05:00

Last week I noted a column by Phillip Kiesling about the prospect of nonpartisan primaries. This morning, the New York Times published some Letters to the Editor about it. Go read the letters, but they reflect two general criticisms: 1) parties will run "fake" candidates in order to split the vote of the other party so their top two candidates can get through to the runoff, and 2) we should take one of Thomas Friedman's ideas to do instant runoff voting where voters would rank the preferences of their candidates. As support for Point #2, a few of the letters cite the voting in this year's Academy Awards and how well the system worked.

First, if one party can run "fake" candidates, so too can the other. I'm fairly unconvinced that because the Republicans might hypothetically put up a bunch of fake (D)'s on the ballot that it's going to do anything that gives them an unfair advantage. Let's keep in mind that these candidates still have campaign and get their message out there. Sure, the more local the elections get, the less we know about the candidates, but the idea that we're not going to have any idea who these candidates are and will just randomly pick somebody from our party....and that the other party wouldn't have thought of the same thing just seems really implausible. And, if you're not careful, one of these "fake" candidates might just beat you.

Secondly, it's interesting to me that the other point expressed against the qualifying/runoff election is that it would be better to just have one election with an instant runoff ranking system. So, if I get this correctly - people aren't capable of knowing who the real candidates are, but they are capable of ranking the order from to top to bottom in which they prefer all of the candidates? Very impressive.

I have to admit that when I heard the idea of instant runoffs as a senior in high school during my AP Government class, I was skeptical. While I still am not sure how it could be made to work logistically in a world where we can't even seem to make clear who our top choice is, I'm really coming around on it as a way to allow people to vote for their top choice without feeling like they're throwing their vote away. Most importantly, it's going to put the people in office who hold the viewpoints that best favor the majority (not the plurality) of the electorate. So, let's get the technology right first, then let's fix the electoral system so those we send to represent us more accurately represent our preferences.

Boehner: No You Can't

2010-03-26T10:59:00.005-05:00

Don posts a video featuring bits of Minority Leader Boehner mixed into Will-I-Am's "Yes We Can" video from the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Take a look:

The interesting thing to me is that I really don't know whether this video came from the right or left. Since both sides seem to genuinely feel like (or at least claim that) it's a winning issue for them in November, I can honestly see receiving a link to this video from both conservative and liberal friends of mine. I have to say that if the Democrats are able to turn this into a winner (it was pretty conventional wisdom in Washington that passing this was going to be political suicide for moderate Democrats), it will be quite an impressive turn of events for them.

Metrics of Healthcare

2010-03-23T17:13:00.005-05:00

High School friend Jeremy Morgan is now blogging and off to a great start. I am uncertain how he can maintain this pace, but so far it's wonky and very well done. Check out his take on Understanding the New Healthcare Bill as well as some graphs he created analyzing the costs of the legislation and how it will be funded.

Watch out Nate Silver.

Kiesling on Nonpartisan Primaries

2010-03-23T14:34:00.005-05:00

Phil Kiesling had a column in yesterday's New York Times advocating the repeal of partisan primaries, instead favoring a qualifying/runoff system. Among his reasons:

...We are left with a system in which almost every state still outsources its elections to what are actually private organizations. With the approval of the Supreme Court, the parties have the authority to exclude independent voters or other non-members who might seriously challenge their partisan shibboleths or taboos.

Some state parties deign to allow non-members to participate in their primaries. But very few independents bother. Most party members don’t, either. In 2006, during the last non-presidential primary cycle, most states had turnouts of only 15 percent to 30 percent of registered voters (New York had less than 5 percent). So far, the 2010 primary cycle has shown a new low of 23 percent in Illinois, and 16.5 percent in Texas, a record high for that state.

Brooks on "Getting Obama Right"

2010-03-12T11:53:00.003-06:00

David Brooks crossed the line today. He went from being "moderate about his conservatism" to "partisan about his moderate-ness."

In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism. In a sensible country, Obama would be able to clearly define this project without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don’t live in that country. We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality, fundamentally misunderstanding the man in the Oval Office.

Roberts on State of the Union "Controversy"

2010-03-10T12:35:00.004-06:00

I have often asked why they wear their robes to the State of the Union Address (or if they wear their robes everywhere), but Chief Justice Roberts asks a more interesting question: why do Supreme Court Justices show up at the State of the Union Address at all?

Speaking to a group of students at the University of Alabama, Roberts opined:

The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.

That doesn't undermine the fact that it was inappropriate for Justice Alito to respond the way he did, but I think Roberts makes a good point here.

Educational Reform in the News

2010-03-05T10:04:00.003-06:00

Educational reform is on my radar today. Yesterday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released the results of a study of 40,000 Teachers on Educational Reform. In his Washington Post column this morning, Michael Gerson's discussed some of the findings as well as elucidated his thoughts on some of President Obama's efforts at reform.

This coming on the heels of a New York Times Magazine piece this week titled Building a Better Teacher.

New York Times Reader

2010-03-04T11:27:00.005-06:00

I've recently taken to waking up at about 3:30 in the morning every night. Sometimes I get up and get a drink of water, sometimes I just check email and read op-ed columns. Last night was an op-ed column reading night. While I was reading Kristof's column, I noticed a link for the Times Reader. For the first time, I'm tempted to pay for a newspaper's online content.

It reads in columns like a newspaper and most importantly, it does not require internet access after it downloads the contents of the day's paper. Go give the demo a look and see what you think. It's about $3.50/week, but they offer the front page and most emailed stories for free. I can't wait until other publications offer this service.

MacFarquhar on Krugman

2010-03-03T12:50:00.003-06:00

I spent much of my lunch hour today reading Larissa MacFarquhar's profile of Paul Krugman in this month's issue of The New Yorker. It's actually a great article, but this paragraph made me laugh, a lot:

Last August, Krugman decided that before he and Wells departed for a bicycle tour of Scotland he would take a couple of days to speak at the sixty-seventh world science-fiction convention, to be held in Montreal. (Krugman has been a science-fiction fan since he was a boy.) At the convention, there was a lot of extremely long hair, a lot of blue hair, and a lot of capes. There was a woman dressed as a cat, there was a woman with a green brain attached to her head with wire, there was a person in a green face mask, there was a young woman spinning wool. There was a Jedi and a Storm Trooper. Those participants who were not dressed as cats were wearing T-shirts with something written on them: “I don’t understand—and I’m a rocket scientist,” “I see dead pixels,” “Math is delicious.” Krugman has always had a nerdy obsession with puns. (He is very proud of a line in one of his textbooks: “Efforts to negotiate a resolution to Europe’s banana split had proved fruitless.”) He also likes costumes. Once, he and Wells gave a Halloween party where the theme was economics topics—two guests came as Asian tigers, several came as hedge funds, one woman came as capital, dressed as a column. Sitting up onstage at the science-fiction convention, Krugman looked happy to be there. It seemed that these were, in some worrying
sense, his people.

Wow, that explains quite a bit.

Peck on The Jobless Era

2010-03-03T09:11:00.002-06:00

I love reading The Atlantic. More particularly, I love reading full length magazine articles and for my money I can't find anybody that does it better than they do. This month Don Peck highlights the gravity of the unemployment rates and examines some long-term cultural ramifications. It's a bleak picture, but a worthwhile read.

Yoo Responds to OPR Report

2010-02-25T07:02:00.003-06:00

Really interesting response by John Yoo to the report issued by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility concerning his (and Jay Bybee's) legal counsel provided to President George W. Bush regarding interrogation methods of enemy combatants.

Rank bias and sheer incompetence infused OPR's investigation. OPR attorneys, for example, omitted a number of precedents that squarely supported the approach in the memoranda and undermined OPR's preferred outcome. They declared that no Americans have a right of self-defense against a criminal prosecution, not even when they or their government agents attempt to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. OPR claimed that Congress enjoyed full authority over wartime strategy and tactics, despite decades of Justice Department opinions and practice defending the president's commander-in-chief power. They accused us of violating ethical standards without ever defining them. They concocted bizarre conspiracy theories about which they never asked us, and for which they had no evidence, even though we both patiently—and with no legal obligation to do so—sat through days of questioning.

Definitely worth a read, though Andrew Sullivan clearly isn't convinced.

Ackerman on Executive Tribunal

2010-02-23T12:53:00.010-06:00

Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman suggests in a Washington Post column yesterday the creation of a tribunal for the oversight of the Executive Branch to "ensure the integrity of the rule of law." His suggestion is a panel of nine members who would serve staggered 12 year terms and they would oversee the Executive Branch's actions in determining whether the law is being faithfully executed.

I understand Ackerman's sentiments as we certainly do not want the President's Office of Legal Counsel being treated as a group of politically-minded attorneys who will put their legal approval on whatever the President decided he was going to do anyway and that faithful execution of the law has to be rooted in genuine legal analysis. That said, this tribunal is not the answer.

My gut reaction to this article is that this proposal suffers from some "Separation of Powers" problems. A commenter to Ackermna's column named DCPost1 nicely makes this argument:

I cannot believe what I'm reading here, professor. A new tribunal that will "lay down the law for the executive branch"? A kind of "fourth" branch that will straddle the existing three branches for the purpose of limiting the power of one of those branches?

Monstrous, and so beyond what the Framers had in mind when they crafted the Constitution that it could only have come from the ruminations of an Ivy League law professor.

The legislative branch writes the laws, the executive branch executes them/puts them into practice, and the judicial branch interprets those laws by applying them to cases and controversies and, in so doing, tells us what the law "is."

The branches pull and push each other and fight for primacy but . . . they . . . can't . . . quite . . . grasp it. Or if any branch does, the system of checks and balances soon operates to re-calibrate the three-sided machine. A beautiful work of genius.

The branches each have their flaws. The modern Congress tends to get its laws enacted by writing them so broadly (or poorly) that they invite multiple interpretations, or by crafting general statutes and leaving the dirty work to unelected bureaucrats who write implementing regulations long after the public debate has ended and attentions have turned to something else.

Executives drift into micromanagement and become ineffective, or try to govern like monarchs without paying too much attention to the wants of the public, or to the roles of the other branches with which they must learn to share power.

The judiciary forgets that it's the judicial branch and not the legislature. And so on.

But these are not flaws in the system that must be remedied by striking at the heart of the Constitutional system. They are flaws inherent in the system not because of its design, but because however brilliant the system may be, it depends on regular human beings to function, and human beings are flawed.

And when a flawed human being (or group of them) threatens the integrity of the system by its actions, whether merely mistaken, or misguided, or actually nefarious, that system--helped along by the American voters--is able to correct itself. It doesn't always happen overnight, but it happens. The president who seems unassailable by his opponents drops in the polls and eventually is either voted out or runs out his term. The congressional majority that loses touch with the voters sees its ranks diminished or is even reduced to minority status. The courts that forget the limits of their role . . . well, that takes longer to work itself out, but eventually it does. With the exception of slavery, the issue that bested even the Framers, the system works.

So don't risk it by forcing the round peg of the judiciary into the square hole of the executive with the hammer of the legislature, professor. Do that, and you'll risk breaking the very thing you're trying to preserve.

The second point I would make is that these attorneys are already subject, as members of their respective bars, to disciplinary commissions. If the abuses are so clear (as I think they need to be if you're going to interfere with the President's Executive Powers), it shouldn't be a problem for a Court or Disciplinary Commission to step in and issue sanctions.

I understand that Mr. Ackerman really wants to make an example out of John Yoo, but that desire can't take priority over allowing a President to receive candid advice and it can't take priority over allowing attorneys to issue their opinion without fear of prosecution. Mr. Ackerman wants to argue a slippery slope as to what could result from this, but seen another way, but what happens when the tribunal comprised of the party opposite the President (politics is cyclical, remember?) decides it's to their advantage to cripple his power as Commander in Chief? Even if you consider that last point far-fetched, and it might be, it is merely put forth to show that you can't out-bureaucratize politics. I just don't think another level of bureaucracy is the answer.

Thoughts on Mirandizing Christmas Day Bomber

2010-02-18T11:10:00.007-06:00

I just want to offer a few late thoughts on the Mirandizing of the Christmas Day bomber that I have not heard expressed up to this point. Just to be clear, I presume the absence of hearing these points to be less profundity on my part and more a combination of insufficiency of sources and/or the fact that I am just missing something in my thoughts on the matter.

The first thing I find interesting about the discussion is that both liberals and conservatives seem to take their position as to whether Constitutional rights extend to non-citizens as an article of faith. Having read a very small amount of information about this question, it seems clear the answer is much more complex than suggested by the right or left (for example, UCLA law professor Stephen Volokh reviews the application of the First Amendment to noncitizens). Interestingly, the argument I have heard from the right on this isn't that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized, but that he was Mirandized at a time too early to properly obtain information from him. I haven't really heard many arguments out there that he should never have been Mirandized. I find this interesting in itself.

The Supreme Court seems to have clearly established a public safety exception to the Miranda warning in their 1984 decision in New York v. Quarles. Writing for the majority, Justice Rehnquist concludes:

...that the need for answers to questions in a situation posing a threat to the public safety outweighs the need for the prophylactic rule protecting the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination [italics added]. We decline to place officers such as Officer Kraft in the untenable position of having to consider, often in a matter of seconds, whether it best serves society for them to ask the necessary questions without the Miranda warnings and render whatever probative [467 U.S. 649, 658] evidence they uncover inadmissible, or for them to give the warnings in order to preserve the admissibility of evidence they might uncover but possibly damage or destroy their ability to obtain that evidence and neutralize the volatile situation confronting them.

So it's fair to say the Miranda right can be abridged in certain situations. This seems to be exactly what was done in this case. We can debate whether we believe enough information was received prior to Abdulmutallab being told of his Miranda rights, but surely these rights have to mean something, right? In Quarles there was a very specific piece of information (the location of a gun) that needed to be obtained and until that very specific piece of information was obtained the Court was not willing to render evidence obtained from the interrogation inadmissible while this information was out there that posed a threat to public safety. If the public safety exception can be invoked for anybody being interrogated under the grounds that they might have some information about Al Qaeda, it basically renders this right meaningless. Surely no conservative (especially textualist) reading of a Constitutional right can allow for a construction that does that as applied.

The final point I want to make is in response to an idea that seems implicit in the unstoppable application of the public safety exception that the ends justify the means. I have talked with a good number of people and I've heard several say that even if the evidence obtained prior to proper Miranda warnings is inadmissible, it's worth it to make the evidence inadmissible if it leads to good intelligence. These responses seem less steeped in an understanding that Miranda warnings must be given unless an exception applies and more just a direct jump to the exception as the rule. Don't hear me minimizing the "public safety exception," but if we reduce it to a simple "ends justify the means" approach we risk serious damage to our Constitutional protections. Surely we do not want to reduce our rights to a calculation by the State as to whether it's worth the penalty to infringe them.

Fineman on Bayh's Retirement

2010-02-17T12:35:00.002-06:00

Howard Fineman, a personal friend of Senator Evan Bayh, offers Six Reasons for the Senator's Retirement.

Park City Trip

2010-02-17T11:00:00.008-06:00

Last night a few of us decided to make a trip over to Park City, Utah for dinner. After making the 35 minute trip that took us by Olympic Park and several of the local ski resorts, we settled on Wasatch Brewery for a quick drink before dinner at Bistro 412.

For those of you who aren't aware, Park City is the home of the Sundance Film Festival and just a neat little mountain town about a half hour away from Salt Lake City. It was a lot of fun to walk up and down the streets, see some of the Sundance venues, and all the people enjoying an evening after a day on the slopes. I do have to wonder though who all these nine year olds were standing in the middle of the sidewalks. Don't they have school? They were everywhere, seriously.

Both Wasatch and Bistro 412 were good. I enjoyed a sampler of the house-brewed selections at Wasatch (tried all but the Raspberry Ale and Amber Ale) while we hung out in the upstairs portion of this brewpub and watched the Olympics and the Kentucky vs. Mississippi State game. After spending about a while at Wasatch we made our way down the hill to Bistro 412 where I had a very good order of Sea Scallops and Prawns. That said, one of those in the group ordered the KC Strip cooked medium and unfortunately found it somewhere between medium well and well done. The service was not very good at either place, but not so bad as to make it a bad experience. We were just all tired and ready to get back to Salt Lake City and none of the waiters/waitresses seemed in much of a hurry to do much of anything.

Red Iguana Revisited, Hypothetically

2010-02-16T17:44:00.003-06:00

Hypothetically, I may have gone back to Red Iguana for lunch today. If I did, I may have ordered the Cochinita Pibil and shared the Killer Nachos with the group. Not saying it happened, but it might have.

Restaurant Review: Red Iguana

2010-02-16T11:36:00.013-06:00

Last night after getting settled into my hotel in Salt Lake City, I ventured out to Red Iguana for what I was told by Yelp and Urban Spoon is excellent Mexican food. I was not disappointed.

As you can tell, this place is nothing fancy, but it is a Salt Lake City institution. Having been recently featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives I was not surprised at all to find a 25 minute wait when I pulled up at 5:30 p.m. for dinner. Sitting out front and talking with a few of the people visiting, I was pleased to hear there were a lot of people actually from Salt Lake City eating there. You know a place is good when they gain quick fame and the locals still brave the crowds to eat there.

After only about 15 minutes, my name was called and I was taken to my seat in the middle of the main dining room. It looked from a quick glance like there are actually three dining rooms in this building, but by the size of the place it would not surprise me if there are other seating areas tucked away somewhere. Festive, but not obnoxious, Red Iguana strikes a balance that far too many Mexican restaurants are not able to achieve.

Almost immediately after being seated, a waitress came by with very fresh and warm tortilla chips along with salsa. The salsa was a dark red sauce that was very spicy. I don't normally like salsa this thin, but it had an interesting enough taste that I didn't mind the consistency at all. I asked for a recommendation and the waitress (true to what Yelp reviews said) seemed almost insistent that I order some form of the mole. Having found out I'd never tried mole, she brought out the mole sampler for me to try all the different flavors they had prior to ordering. This dish alone almost made the trip worth it.

Finally having narrowed down to the Puntas De Filete a la Nortña and the Lomo de Puerco en Mole De Almendras, I went with the Puntas De Filete upon being told the dish had more flavor because of the bacon in it. I'm a sucker for bacon, sold. As you can tell (from the picture and reading the menu), the dish also included sirloin tips, onions, jalepeno strips, and tomatoes. The almond mole sauce was incredible, perfectly sweet with just a hint of spice. Served with refried beans and two tortillas, I was able to get through about half my dish before retiring very satisfied with my choice to eat here.

Bye Bayh, Evan

2010-02-15T18:05:00.004-06:00

Evan Bayh announced this morning that he will not seek a third term in the United States Senate. Color me disappointed. I still remember watching C-SPAN one evening while I was in high school (yes, C-SPAN) and being really impressed with this Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. Sure, he was a Democrat, but he had a certain demeanor and tone that really impressed me. I predicted right then (and my friends will back me up on this) that he would one day be elected President of the United States.

Just last week I had lunch with a friend and we discussed how a Coats vs. Bayh election would turn out in the current political climate. I personally think it would have been very close with Bayh ultimately winning a tight race. As I told my friend though, I want to get more Republicans in the Senate, but I also would like to see more people like Evan Bayh in the Senate. That applies on both sides of the aisle.

In honor of Senator Bayh's announced retirement from the Senate, I'm going to roll back out the McSweeney's Lesser Known Slogans of Political Moderates. Always a favorite here at The Ayes Have It.

New Running Shoes

2010-02-14T21:19:00.005-06:00

Ghisallo had a 20% off sale today so I figured it was as good a time as any to get shoes for after I retire my Nike Vomeros upon completion of the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon in April. After having an eye on the Newton Running shoes for the last few months, I tried them on and didn't like them one bit. It felt like I was stepping on something at every step. I narrowed down to a pair of the Nike Lunar Racers and the Mizuno Wave Ronin. I went with the Mizunos. I hate that they're so ugly/are going to cause people to ask if I went to the University of Michigan (or Marion High School), but they're very lightweight and extremely comfortable. Further, they promote a much better running form than the Vomeros I currently use. Here's a picture of the new shoes:

Now I'm sort of thinking I may want to phase them in for the Go! Half Marathon rather than waiting for Chicago training. Anybody think eight weeks is too short of a time to phase into these for 13.1 miles?

Op-Ed Roundup: February 12, 2010

2010-02-12T08:50:00.002-06:00

Greetings from Danville, Illinois - home of both Hall of Famer Robin Yount and Luther from the television show Coach (and his brother who was on some show on Nick and Nite). This morning brings us a lot of columns I plan to read as I get around to them during the day. Among these columns:

David Brooks [New York Times]: What's Next, Mr. President
Michael Gerson [Washington Post]: Ugly But Necessary
Paul Krugman [New York Times]: Republicans and Medicare
Charles Krauthammer [Washington Post]: Closing the New Frontier
Eugene Robinson [Washington Post]: The Tea Party Queen
William Kristol [Washington Post]: Iran Regime Change
Peggy Noonan [Wall Street Journal]: Off-Center President

Mayer on Fresh Air

2010-02-12T08:38:00.003-06:00

Really interesting interview earlier this week with Jane Mayer on NPR's Fresh Air.

Having made a name for herself with her 2008 book The Dark Side, it comes as no surprise that Mayer is highly critical of the recent Republican response to the Christmas day terrorism attempt as well as the response to holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts rather than military tribunals. She also has an article on the KSM trial in the current issue of The New Yorker.

2010-02-09T17:59:00.000-06:00

Slate's Fred Kaplan asks why haven't responsible Republicans spoken out against Sarah Palin? He doesn't seem to hold back:

Let's be clear on why those words ("Run Sarah Run"/"President Palin") should terrify anyone with a thinking brain. Palin is someone who has clearly never seriously thought through any issue of national importance on her own. She's excellent at reciting a raucous speech, but she can't improvise a coherent sentence, which usually reflects an inability to form a coherent idea. (At Nashville, she even had to scribble her five-word legislative agenda on her palm, and glanced down at it during the Q&A.) She is deluded enough to believe (or at least to say Sunday morning on Fox News) that her brief, aborted stint as Alaska's governor gave her more executive experience than President Obama has even now. She believes that the country should elect leaders, including presumably herself, who seek solutions in "divine intervention."

There's clearly little to gain at this point by criticizing the potential candidate with the strongest base. There is just no reason to fall on the grenade at this point. Also, as hard as some may try, I just don't believe most Americans buy this line of reasoning that somebody failing to denounce something or somebody signals an implicit agreement with their views or actions. So, while I understand the asking of the question, it's really just an iteration of a cheap play to the gallery that I thought we decided during the 2008 primary was a little ridiculous.

Filibustering and Holding Legislation

2010-02-09T11:45:00.003-06:00

Yesterday while reading Paul Krugman's rant against the Senate's (specifically Senate Republicans) abuse of filibustering, it occured to me that we seem to always be in times that are "too important" to follow the established operating procedures. We seem to always be on the brink of history to the effect that what got us here will no longer suffice. Isn't that interesting?

Krugman's suggestion is the elimination of the filibuster by a majority vote of the Senate. Wouldn't this be subject to a filibuster? I don't necessarily have any great affection for the filibuster (though I do think it serves useful purposes in extraordinary times), but it's tough to take calls for reform seriously when they always seem to come from those who have something to gain politically. On the other hand, where was the restraint from Senate Republicans when they couldn't get their judicial nominees through the Senate and threatened the use of the so-called "nuclear option" that would have bypassed the filibuster?

E.J. Dionne suggested yesterday that the Senate should just bypass the filibuster issue and go straight through reconciliation. Simple enough, I suppose. There will again be a Republican majority in the Senate though, and it'll be interesting to see where Dionne and Company stand then. Sadly as a mentor of mine once told me, "Matt, in politics, memories are very short." At least this this guy is consistent in his position.

Op-Ed Roundup: February 9, 2010

2010-02-09T10:35:00.007-06:00

David Brooks [New York Times]: In what largely seems like a throwaway piece, Brooks takes a brief glance at the role Joe Biden is playing in the Obama Administration. Apparently when interviewed for the VP spot, Biden responded that he didn't really want the job, but would do it. Now, heavily involved in Iraq, stimulus spending, and working on a middle-class agenda, Biden seems to have found his groove according to Brooks.

Donald Luskin [Wall Street Journal]: Positing on the cause of the recent decline of the Dow (now below 10,000), Luskin suggests the wave of "lynch Wall Street" populism sweeping the country is causing uneasiness in the markets. He also criticizes the brief campaign against Ben Bernanke's reconfirmation to Chairman of the Federal Reserve as a play to the uneducated. One thing is clear, conservative op-ed columnists don't seem to like populism (though Lou Dobbs -- in what may be my all-time favorite headline, clearly does).

Eugene Robinson [Washington Post]: Robinson takes exception to the actions of the missionaries who attempted last week to take children out of Haiti without proper documentation. Robinson believes that even if there was no ill-intent on the part of the missionaries, "...giving up a son or daughter is one of the most wrenching decisions a parent can face, and it has to be done right, with ample time to think about it. No parent or guardian should ever have to surrender a child under duress."

Katrina vanden Huevel [Washington Post]: vanden Heuvel, writing of Sarah Palin's speech at the Tea Party Convention this past weekend in Nashville, laments the influence of Wall Street and the student loan industry in killing off legislation that President Obama calls a "no brainer." Offering a way forward, she suggesetions: 1) Expose how Wall Street interests and bipartisan lobbyists block reforms. 2) Redouble efforts to pass the Fair Elections Now Act, so small "d" democratic public financing counters special-interest money. 3) Challenge the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling with a constitutional amendment strategy.

Op-Ed Roundup: February 8, 2010

2010-02-08T06:24:00.006-06:00

Ross Douthat [New York Times]: Writing from the German Security Conference, Ross Douthat writes that while President Obama is a pragmatist on most issues, he has shown an idealist streak on the matter of Nuclear Disarmament. He notes the praise other countries have taken for this move, but argues the basic point of the naivety of believing other countries will not develop nuclear weapons if we get rid of ours.

Paul Krugman [New York Times]: Krugman says he misses the days of Newt Gingrich. Expressing sheer frustration with the United States Senate (specifically the Republican Senators Bond and Shelby) for holding up Obama appointees from confirmation. He suggests the Senate should eliminate the use of filibustering or holds at their earliest opportunity by a majority vote.

E.J. Dionne [Washington Post]: Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne suggests that House Democrats' fears of midterm challenges are shortsighted and they need to pass the healthcare bill and make some amendments through the reconciliation process. He tells the story of Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) who has been sharing his story of losing his Congressional seat in 1994 "because they didn't pass meaningful healthcare reform" and suggests Mr. Inslee (who regained his seat in 1998) are in danger of seeing the same result if they allow the same thing this time around.

Presidential Question Time

2010-02-05T09:53:00.005-06:00

Nate Silver at Fivethirtyeight has some interesting thoughts on the idea of having the President go before Congress on occasion to answer questions from Members. Silver is in support of the idea as:

...perhaps I'm an idealist, but I tend to think that the lack of open, unmediated, and honest dialog between members of Congress, between the Congress and the Executive, and between both Congress and the Executive and the public, is the greatest threat to the efficacy of our democracy today. While structural constraints like the filibuster certainly also play a large role, these structures are nothing new -- it's the ways that our political culture have evolved around them that may be more problematic. In particular, it seems to me that there is a need for conversations that are not staged, that are not reduced to 30-second soundbytes, and that are not filtered through the lens of the media. A Question Time period, if reasonably well structured, could be a significant step toward achieving that goal. Politics needn't always be zero-sum, particularly at the time when our country faces a number of threats -- from the economy, to Islamic and other forms of radicalism, to the aggregation of power by elites, to the the changing climate -- in which we will all sink or swim together. That's why you're seeing Democrats and Republicans, technocrats and populists all working together to agitate for Question Time.

The other day I read Peggy Noonan's column about how President Obama has to make clear that he is the President and not an equal of any one member of Congress. As I read Silver's post, I thought, I'll bet Peggy Noonan won't like this idea. Not kidding, today she writes (in a column titled "Question Time is Not the Answer"):

Both our political parties continue, even though they know they shouldn't, even though they're each composed of individuals many of whom actually know what time it is, even though they know we are in an extraordinary if extended moment, an ongoing calamity connected to our economic future, our nation's standing in the world, our strength and our safety—even though they know all this, they continue to go through the daily motions, fund raising, vote counting, making ads with demon sheep, blasting out the latest gaffe of the other team. Our political professionals cheapen everything they touch because they are burying themselves in daily urgencies in order to dodge and avoid the big picture.

In short, she suggests that it would become such a grandstanding moment that it would lose its value almost immediately. That's a good point. While the President needs to be accountable to the public and has a responsibility to respond to their questions and concerns; this may not be the best way to achieve that goal. Back to the drawing board.

Pulitzer Winners

2010-01-28T05:36:00.006-06:00

I have a problem. I can't stop starting books. After last night's State of the Union Address, I made a couple phone calls and then sat down to do some evening reading before retiring for the night. Rather than reach for one of the four books I currently have on my night stand or Kindle, I instead reached for one on my bookshelf I've been looking forward to since I got it (even though I've gotten other books since that time).

Last night's book was Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt which is part of a two part series that also includes Theodore Rex. As I was reading Morris' masterful description of Mr. Roosevelt, it occurred to me how long it had been since I've undertaken a good biography. Looking at my bookshelf, I realized it's been at least since McCullough's Adams and Truman that I've really read a biography that I could not put down. Pulling them both from my bookshelf (one of the many reasons I love owning the books that I truly enjoyed) I noticed they both were Pulitzer Prize winners. It turns out "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" also won the prize for Biography/Autobiography in 1980. Though I haven't finished the book, those who have recommended it to me paired with my reading of the prologue lead me to believe I may be in for one of the best works of nonfiction I've undertaken.

Given this, I can't help but wonder if maybe this isn't a bad place to pull some reading ideas. Undoubtedly there are different committees making the call on the fiction writing (which I'm still struggling to find good reads in that category), but looking down the list, there are certainly a few on the Biography and History lists that I plan on reading.

Brooks on Populism

2010-01-26T07:27:00.007-06:00

I've said it before, but I really think David Brooks may be listening in on my conversations. His column in today's New York Times roughly reflects a conversation I had last night about "cheap populism" and the fact that we should demand leadership that cares more about long term prosperity than short term electoral gain. Notes Brooks about those kinds of leaders [namely Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln]:

In their view, government’s role was not to side with one faction or to wage class war. It was to rouse the energy and industry of people at all levels. It was to enhance competition and make it fair — to make sure that no group, high or low, is able to erect barriers that would deprive Americans of an open field and a fair chance. Theirs was a philosophy that celebrated development, mobility and work, wherever those things might be generated.

He continues:

The populists have an Us versus Them mentality. If they continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital, they will only increase the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job creation and growth. They will end up discrediting good policies (the Obama bank reforms are quite sensible) because they will persuade the country that the government is in the hands of reckless Huey Longs.

It's Satire, Sorry.

2010-01-25T14:52:00.004-06:00

I was sitting in the Detroit airport last week talking with a colleague about some litigation in which a former firm of his was involved. He mentioned his repulsion with the argument put forth that economic damages should be less than alleged because the injury shaved years off the plaintiff's life in which expensive medical care would have been requred.

I asked him if he'd read Christopher Buckley's book, Boomsday, in which a young Senator puts forth legislation that would provide tax incentives in exchange for the elderly agreeing to euthanize themselves under the premise that it would be the only way to save Social Security. As I started to relate the two points, I sensed several glares coming my way. I wasn't quite sure what the problem was until I realized I had failed to mention that this was a satirical work of fiction rather than a serious policy proposal. Whoops.

I eventually quelled the concerns of those sitting around me. Hopefully somebody isn't sitting around right now blogging about the heartless jerk they heard as they walked by in the Detroit airport advocating the elimination of a generation to save the healthcare system. Lesson learned: don't talk in public.

Go! St. Louis Half Marathon Training: Week 1

2010-01-25T08:59:00.003-06:00

As you may or may not know, I'm planning to run the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon on April 11th. Training started this week, and I'm planning to chronicle the training right here at The Ayes Have It. The will be my second half marathon (the first was the San Jose Rock and Roll Half Marathon in October 2009), I finished my first in 1:56:04, so have high hopes of improving upon that this time around.

Tuesday: Ran two miles around my neighborhood in St. Louis. I realized when I got back that I was supposed to run three miles, so unfortunately started behind from the beginning. It was a good run though, plenty of hills. I'm pleased that I'm starting the program very capable of running a couple miles without much trouble at all.

Wednesday: Today was one of those days where everything was going right. I got on the treadmill at my hotel in Southfield, Michigan and started out on what was going to be a three mile run. At three miles I was feeling like I could run for 13.1 miles on the spot, but a) didn't have time since I had to get to a deposition, and b) was concerned about overuse injury. I kept running for another mile and called it quits at four miles hoping that made up for my missed mile from Tuesday.

Saturday: Back home in St. Louis, I set out for a three mile run around the neighborhood. Again, plenty of hills since I'm told the Go! course is much hillier than the course in San Jose. The plan was to run my long run on Sunday, but not knowing how I'd feel on Sunday decided to just get my long run in on this run since I knew I could easily run another two miles while I was already going.

Overall, not the best start to a training plan, but I did run 11 miles and was able to easily run the long run. This week I need to do a much better job of doing my midweek runs and get a little bit of weight training in. I'm hoping to fit in a training session tomorrow, so that should help give me some idea what I'm supposed to be doing.

Puerto Rico Adventure

2010-01-23T07:58:00.006-06:00

Last weekend I went to Puerto Rico to get some sunshine and get away from St. Louis for a few days. I accomplished the latter, but the former was a rarity during the four days I was there.

Friday: I took Friday off work, got up at 4 a.m., and was at the airport in time for my 6 a.m. flight to Charlotte. Immediately after sitting down, I look up and the person in the aisle asks, "are you Matt Schuh?" It turned out to be an acquaintance I grew up with who I honestly didn't recognize at all. He was part of a group going down to Jamaica for a wedding and was also flying through Charlotte. Small world, but we already knew that. I got to Charlotte though and after making a very tight connection was on my way to San Juan. I spent most of Friday being tired from getting up so early. I walk around the hotel pool area, wandered through the expansive lobby, and finally made my way out to the beach for a little bit. Did I mention it was rainy and pretty well had the beach to myself. After a quick bit to eat I found a table underneath one of the many patio areas and read for the rest of the evening before heading to an early sleep in preparation for the next day.

Saturday: Another early morning, but feeling very rested this time. The EcoQuest Van arrived at the hotel just after 8 a.m. and after picking up about eight other people, we were on our way to the village of Cuguas. After equipment was unloaded from the van for the group, we began a hike up a mountain in the middle of the (it turns out, imported) rainforest in central Puerto Rico. After reaching the top, we all sat on a bamboo bench to receive instruction on how to rappel down the 85 foot waterfall in front of us. Because it had been raining all day, the waterfall was particularly rough and we received special instruction to avoid going toward the waterfall while going down as it would crush us against the rock. No pressure. Upon reaching the bottom we were given fresh mangos and bananas packed by the guides with us. I have no idea if they were any good, but after nearly four hours of hiking and rock climbing/rappelling, they tasted awesome. We quickly waded through the river at the bottom of the waterfall before finding three ziplines that took us back home. I can only highly highly highly recommend ziplining to anybody who has never partaken. It's quite a rush. Upon reaching home base we were greeted by a local family who prepared an authentic Puerto Rican meal for us. Chicken, rice, plantains, etc. It was very good and the family was very nice. I got back in about 6:30 and after cleaning up and grabbing a quick dinner, I was pretty well ready for bed. It had been a long day.

Sunday: Beach day. The rain finally stopped and the sun returned. According to the concierge at the hotel, it doesn't normally rain like this. As of the 17th of the month, there had been more rain in January than any January in recorded month. Again, that's as of the 17th. Anyway, I woke up after a great night's sleep feeling very sore. I grabbed some coffee and along with my backpack trekked down to the beach. Along with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, The Atlantic, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs; I laid there happily taking in some sun and great beach reading. About 2 p.m. it started raining again so I went to the hotel bar and had some food and redeemed my two free drinks that came with my stay. It stopped raining again so I went back to beach about 4 p.m. but the rain kept returning so I found my covered patio and did some more reading. Ready for dinner, I went to a BBQ place that was showing the Jets/Chargers game. After being told it would be about an hour wait, I sat down and started feeling kind of lightheaded. For some reason, this made me want to stand up and immediately I knew I was in trouble. I ran over to the bar and sat down at a seat and put my head down. I kind of woke up and the bartender asked me if I'd been drinking. Only then did it occur to me that actually my problem was that I hadn't been drinking hardly anything and had been outside in the sun all day. Apparently you need to drink more than a cup of coffee and two frozen drinks under those conditions. They quickly got me some bottled water and brought me some chips and salsa. About this time, a guy in a Jets jersey comes up screaming at me because I'm in his seat. The bartender explains the situation and the guy ends up (rightfully) feeling like a complete jerk. I end up having a salad instead of the ribs I was anticipating, but it was fun to watch the J-E-T-S fans and their antics the rest of the evening.

Monday: I wish I could tell you that I had a grand whirlwind tour of San Juan on my last day and barely made it to the airport in time for my flight, but it was raining again when I woke up. Again, had some coffee and wandered down to the beach. I wanted to try to find something else to do before leaving and the hammock that I spotted while wandering around hit the spot exactly. I could lay in a hammock for hours, and I did. If you haven't hammocked, you're definitely missing out.

Brooks and Krugman on Congressional Democrats Options

2010-01-22T09:18:00.005-06:00

Brooks and Krugman paint the New York Times opinion page today with ideas on how Congressional Democrats should deal with health care reform moving forward in light of Tuesday's election of Senator-Elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

If you're a Democrat in Congress, what do you do now?

11 Great Foods

2010-01-13T10:49:00.006-06:00

Tara Parker-Pope has a list of the 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating in today's New York Times. I've recently undertaken reading some books on nutrition and food (I've especially developed some interest in agricultural policy after reading Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma"), and have noticed a few of these on almost all of these lists. Among the tastiest is pumpkin seeds. Throw a bunch of them on a pan and give them some time in the oven, delicious.

Anybody have any others on the list they especially like?

Braving the Tiger Woods Storm

2010-01-03T18:01:00.006-06:00

I was talking with a friend today about the recent news that AT&T dropped Tiger Woods as one of their endorsing athletes. We pondered whether there would be any left by the end of the month.

It got me thinking, what if a company like Nike not only kept him, but upped the ante on him by taking over the (horribly run) public relations and was part of his story of redemption? What if Tiger called a press conference and gave an emotion filled plea for forgiveness and commitment to his kids (and his wife if she'll take him back) in the likeness of Tim Tebow's speech last year after Florida's loss to Ole Miss (obviously not equating the two events). Americans have shown remarkable willingness to forgive in the light of sincere apology, is there any reason to think they would not extend the same to Tiger Woods? It's a risky move, but the payoffs seem enormous. Any takers?

Reading Discipline

2010-01-02T12:45:00.002-06:00

If you're like me and excited about reading more in 2010 than you did in 2009, Josh Dix has some great ideas on being disciplined in reading. I particularly like (and often practice) #5:

Take a book with you everywhere–If you are one of those people who thinks it’s impossible to find a quiet place, this one’s for you. Whether you have it on your phone using Amazon’s Kindle app, or you just carry a book with you, have something to read with you. My wife had to spend 2 1/2 hours at City Hall the other day getting records and waivers and new license plates. Most of that was spent standing in line or sitting in a waiting room. That was 2 1/2 hours of reading time. Read in the doctor’s office. At the post office. Read in line at the grocery store. Read while you walk the dog. At a restaurant. In bed. Read during commercials. On your way home from errands, sit in the car and read before you come in. Just read.

Never a Year Like '09

2009-12-31T14:47:00.001-06:00

Gift Card Confusion

2009-12-27T13:58:00.004-06:00

Earlier this week, I received a gift card from Banana Republic from a family member for Christmas. Since there is a Banana Republic outlet near where I'm staying in Austin, I decided to go see how much I could get for my money there. Prior to paying for my items I noticed on the back of the card that the gift card entitles me to an extra 10% discount if it is spent between January 6-31.

There's a lot of interesting writing on the economics of gift cards, but this particular promotion is particularly perplexing. For one thing, it's inviting people to spend their money sooner rather than later. According to a 2007 Reuters survey, 27% of people receiving gift cards during the Holiday season had not used at least one of them one year later. As The Atlantic article (linked above) discusses, the longer somebody goes without spending, the more likely they are not to spend at all.

Perhaps this particular company is banking on the fact that consumers of their brand will overuse the card, causing them to actually purchase more than they normally would have. This theory is rattled though by the strange window between December 26-January 5. What is the company trying to do during this time? Are they trying to bifurcate/extend the post-Holiday rush of returns and cashing-in of gift cards? Are they trying to prevent people from returning clothes, getting a store credit and then repurchasing those items at a 10% discount (under the theory that they won't wait until January 6th to do this)? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Douthat on The Obama Way

2009-12-26T08:39:00.007-06:00

Ross Douthat notes in his New York Times column this morning that even one year into it, nobody can quite manage to put a label on the Obama Presidency: "He’s a bipartisan bridge-builder — unless he’s a polarizing ideologue. He’s a crypto-Marxist radical — except when he’s a pawn of corporate interests. He’s a post-American utopian — or else he’s a willing tool of the national security state."

Douthat calls him an ideologue who prefers to work within existing structures rather than tear those structures down. Not bad, though I do disagree with Douthat's later assessment that "Obama promised exactly the opposite approach while running for the presidency. He campaigned as a postpartisan healer who would change the cynical ways of Washington — as a foe of both back-room deals and ideology-as-usual. But he’s governed as a conventional liberal who believes in the existing system, knows how to work it and accepts the limitations it imposes on him."

It's not that I'm questioning Douthat's observations about what President Obama campaigned on, but that what we're seeing is necessarily the opposite. I'm biased but I really think The Ayes Have It nailed it in their endorsement of President Obama last November:

See, I believe the junior Senator from Illinois sees himself as a transformational figure who will be hailed by history as one of our nation’s great leaders -- one who moved the country past great barriers and differences; one who brought people together; and one who was respected and adored by all Americans. This sort of end cannot be achieved by towing party line orthodoxy. If Mr. Obama wishes to achieve this level of greatness he will have to be pragmatic and enlist the assistance of the best and brightest America has to offer, regardless of their ideological or party bona fides. In short, results matter and Mr. Obama will likely govern with an eye on those results.

To repeat, bipartisanship (or post partisanship, as it may be) does not mean rolling over and agreeing with the other side half the time. It does not mean both sides going to the extremes and then splitting the difference 100% of the time. It means understanding the basic duty our elected officials have to the public and demanding that. We often won't agree with our leaders, but we need to be able to believe that they seek to protect our interests the same way a corporate director is supposed protect his shareholders' interests or lawyer protects his clients' interests. The public may be divided over whether they like President Obama's conclusions, but I (as a conservative) cannot honestly say I believe he has done anything other than put bright people around him, thoroughly examined the issues before him, and sought to diligently protect the interests of Americans. I'd like to have somebody in office who agrees with me more often, but one year out, I still consider what we have better than the alternative that was offered.

Brooks' Favorite Long-Form Magazine Articles for 2009

2009-12-25T21:39:00.005-06:00

As part of a yearly tradition, David Brooks names his favorite long-form magazine articles for 2009. Among his favorites is one from The Atlantic and another from The New Yorker, both of which I found highly interesting and instructive as to the situation. Add another from the National Journal wherein Jonathan Rouch describes what the experience of purchasing an airline ticket would be like if that industry were run the same way as the healthcare industry.

Rouch really understands a lot of the factors driving up the costs - go give it a read.

An Open Letter to Ambulance Service, re: Bill for Service on 5/15/09

2009-12-24T14:36:00.008-06:00

The following is a letter drafted to the ambulance service that sent me a $650 bill for an ambulance ride I took in May after passing out during a doctor's visit. I later found out the ambulance ride was around the parking lot of the building. I consider this to be the type of medical service that, until stopped, will render efforts to reform healthcare very difficult.

December 24, 2009

Dear Ambulance Service,

Attached is my payment for $657 for your ambulance service rendered on May 15, 2009. While I am paying this bill in full, please do not in any way mistake this gesture for an agreement with the charges. It’s particularly interesting to me that during this time of public dialogue over affordable healthcare in this country that you would so eagerly participate in the type of behavior that perpetuates increasingly unaffordable medical services that will eventually lead to major crisis.

Allow me to explain. On the morning of May 15, 2009 I went to the office of a Gastroenterologist who practices in one of the office buildings attached to a hospital in St. Louis County, Missouri. During the course of the visit, I became ill and briefly passed out on the floor of the office. Paramedics were called, but by the time of their arrival I had regained consciousness and was sitting upright in a chair rehydrating. I was completely alert and able to answer all questions about the time/date, my location, and my identity. It was generally decided that it would be best for me to go to the Emergency Room to run some tests and make sure everything was alright. I agreed to this and told them that if they’d let me know where I needed to go I would be happy to drive myself. Taken back they told me there was no way they could let me do that and that they would need to transport me by ambulance to the ER. I insisted once more that such a drastic measure really was not necessary, but they again insisted that I needed to go with them in the ambulance. Finally relenting, I agreed and went with them. After having several tests run at the ER, I asked if somebody would call a cab for me to get back to my car. After telling them where I had come from, they chuckled and noted that the best way to get back to my original location was to walk through the building as I had just come from a different wing of the hospital. Why was it necessary to ride in an ambulance around the building when I could have gone through the building? Why was this 10 minute ride $650 (your $3900 hourly rate is the envy of all in my profession!)? And how in the world do you justify $7 in milage to cruise around the parking lot?

On the very day the United States Senate passed legislation attempting to make healthcare more affordable for Americans, is it not obvious that the type of behavior in which you engaged is much of the problem and if continued will render efforts at reform meaningless? Is it not obvious that you cast an extremely negative light on those in the medical community who work night and day to provide the highest level of care and choose the correct course of care because it’s in the best interests of their patients, not because it is in their financial interests to do so. Can you not see that as long as you continue this behavior the problem cannot be solved and we’re destined for significant crisis?

Of course, I’m part of the problem too. I am, albeit begrudgingly, paying your bill. The truth is that it really does not matter to me, it’s not my money, at least not directly. Sure, I pay into a complex pool of risk, the cost of which being a part of will increase from this, but my efforts to fight back will have virtually no effect on my premiums costs, so I’m going to just pay the bill. You know this will be my response, so you continue to do it. You also know that I’m not going to shop around for a better option, so you continue to do it. Finally, you know that I have an almost completely elastic demand curve for medical services so you can continue to do it. A perfect scenario of incentives has coalesced in your favor, and you’ve cashed in big time. If we were dealing with the sale of iPhones or cookies, I’d tip my hat to you for your ingenuity; you’re dealing with people’s health though, and your behavior is disgusting given the systematic ramifications.

Before you respond with excuses about legal liability, I should let you know that as a civil defense attorney, I’m on your side. That said, I am not willing to buy such a response when in too many instances it is a guise for rendering completely unnecessary care that is creating instability in the system. You artificially raise costs and you make it more difficult for members of the medical community who are doing great work on behalf of their patients to do so. You make me and our country (more) sick.

Merry Christmas!

Matt

What I'm Reading Today: December 11, 2009

2009-12-11T10:11:00.004-06:00

Scientific War on Science by Michael Gerson [Washington Post]

Health Care Help From The Rookies by David Broder [Washington Post]

War and Peace by Eugene Robinson [Washington Post]

Bernanke's Unfinished Business by Paul Krugman

The Hanukkah Story by David Brooks

Obama Moves Toward Center Stage by Peggy Noonan

The New I-64

2009-12-09T12:34:00.004-06:00

On Sunday the St. Louis Track Club hosted a 5k run on the new I-64 (which MoDot seems to be pushing very hard that we call it rather than Highway 40). It was fun to join what seemed to be about 1500 other brave souls willing to run 3 miles early in the morning in 30 degree temperatures. Since that time, I have had the chance to drive on it a couple times and am pleased to report back that MoDot did an excellent job.

The exit ramps and exchanges make much more sense than prior to the construction. For example, Hampton previously had two exits (one north and one south) from both the Eastbound and Westbound lanes. It now features one exit in each direction and does away with the ridiculously sharp turns on the ramps. The 170 interchange also make a lot more sense and should significantly ease congestion in that area of town.

I know I can be fairly critical at times, but everything about the way this highway was designed seems right. The two years without a convenient artery through town was a hassle, but it seems that the wait was worth it (and I got to know some parts of town I would not have otherwise). Aptly named the Jack Buck Highway, I say "That's a Winner!"

What I'm Reading Today: December 4, 2009

2009-12-04T13:26:00.002-06:00

Obama Redeclares War by Peggy Noonan [Wall Street Journal]: Noonan finds interesting both that President Obama, after carefully examining the Afghanistan issue, reached exactly the same conclusion as his predecessor and that he goes to war without a base of support, placing him in a unique position. She analyzes the speech from Tuesday night and gives the President some tips -- mainly to give his speaking an “i-ectomy.”

A Plan in Need of Clarity by Senator Jim Webb [Washington Post]: Senator Webb expresses reservations about the Administration’s plans for Afghanistan and says he plans to push them on declaring their intentions with regard to: (1) the fragility of the Afghan government; (2) whether building a national army of considerable scale is achievable; (3) whether an increased U.S. military presence will ultimately have a positive effect in the country, or whether we will be seen as an occupying force; and (4) the linkage of events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the coming weeks I intend to examine the administration's plan to see how it addresses these criteria and how it will affect our troops.

Obama’s Case to Make by Michael Gerson [Washington Post]: President Obama’s decision on Afghanistan pleased the generals and displeased his political base. Gerson concludes from this that, “There is no credible explanation for these actions except a commitment to the national interest. It is time to rally around the president.” There certain are obstacles, governmental corrpuption being the greatest, but Obama must move forward now and continue to define in detail his plan as this is only the beginning.

Reform or Else by Paul Krugman [New York Times]: Krugman responds to the Senators who assert fiscal responsibility in response to the proposed healthcare bill, saying, “But if they’re really concerned with fiscal responsibility, they shouldn’t be worried about what would happen if health reform passes. They should, instead, be worried about what would happen if it doesn’t pass. For America can’t get control of its budget without controlling health care costs — and this is our last, best chance to deal with these costs in a rational way.”

The Analytic Mode by David Brooks [New York Times]: Brooks makes the case that Obama’s recent detached nature is more in line with his leadership strengths. He further argues that the difference between his Administration and campaign are based on four fictions: (1) government is a contest between truth and error. (2) to support a policy is to make it happen. (3) we can begin the world anew. (4) leaders know the path ahead.

Restaurant Review: NOLA

2009-12-04T10:11:00.003-06:00

In what is sure to become a regular stop during trips to New Orleans, I made my second visit to Emerrill's NOLA Restaurant last night. NOLA is a quick walk from Bourbon Street on Rue St. Louis right in the heart of the French Quarter. The entrance greets you with a bar on the left, featuring an extensive wine list, and the hostess station on the right. Upon arrival I checked in around 8:15 for my 8:30 reservation (I tried to get a 7:30 reservation on this Thursday night but was told my options were 6 or 8:30). Seemingly some kind of old warehouse, NOLA features three floors of seating surrounded by bare brick walls, creating a really impressive casual fine dining atmosphere.

While waiting for the table, I went over to the bar and had a bottle of the Abita Amber Ale. Abita is a local microbrewery in Abita Springs, Louisiana that has seven flagship brews and a variety of other types of beer (including root beer). After about ten minutes, my name was called and I was escorted to my table. As I mentioned earlier, the restaurant features three floors of dining space; taking patrons to the second and third floor is a glass elevator running up through the middle of the restaurant. Upon being seated, white cloth napkins were swapped out in favor of black ones for those wearing dark pants. Before I knew it, jalepeno cornbread and french bread rolls were brought out with butter and the feast was underway.

For an appetizer, the Miss Hay's Stuffed Chicken Wings with Homemade Hoisin Dipping sauce was excellent. As for the entree I asked several of the servers around what they recommended -- the duck seemed to be the overwhelming favorite. Great choice. While not overly greasy, it was both moist and full of the flavor. The hickory smoking seems to be the key to it's flavor, but there's definitely more to it than just the meat itself. Served on a bed of cornbread pudding and fire roasted corn salad this dish is perfectly topped with a whiskey-carmel glaze that should have me in the gym most of this weekend.

While NOLA is a "must go" for the New Orleans visitor, I get the sense from talking to people that there are plenty of local residents eating here as well. At $50 for the entree and appetizer this is a great value if you're looking for a fun evening in New Orleans. I certainly plan to return.

5 Stars.

Restaurant Review: Bourbon House New Orleans

2009-12-03T14:53:00.013-06:00

I went to the Bourbon House New Orleans last night after arriving in New Orleans. I arrived around 8 p.m. and watched the University of Illinois complete a 23 point second half comeback against Clemson. After a wait of about 30 minutes, I was seated in the bar area (though I had requested to be seated in the dining room). Having gone to Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse my last time in New Orleans, I assumed his seafood restaurant would be every bit as good. It was not.

Emboldened by the luck I've had during this swing through Louisiana with asking the waiter/waitress for their recommendation, I decided to do the same here and ordered the Redfish on a half shell (not to be confused with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who were "Turtles in a Halfshell"). Served with red potatoes and caramelized onions, the dish was of a substantial portion that certainly did not leave me hungry. I went ahead and splurged for the crab meat as well. While it was the best part of the dish, the sprinkling of this flavor hardly justified a $10 surcharge. Perhaps it's my own fault, but the half shell feature of the dish was difficult to eat around and really detracted from the experience.

The meal was about $60 for the entree, a spinach salad, and a glass of pinot noir. At this price, I have a tough time recommending this place (especially after being seated in the bar area), though a more careful ordering might increase the value.

3.5/5 Stars

What I'm Reading Today: November 28, 2009

2009-11-28T09:35:00.001-06:00

He Can't Take Another Bow by Peggy Noonan [Wall Street Journal]: The Obama Presidency, says Noonan, is in danger of becoming labeled as amateurish and incompetent. It's time for the President to enlist the help of wise counsel and move beyond the highly personalized, ad hoc, and amateurish approach they've used thus far.

Stacking the Deck Against Kids by Bob Herbert [New York Times]: Herbert expresses concern for the direction of our country and its economic future. He highlights some efforts made by groups to urge the Administration and Congress "to provide substantial additional relief to economically distressed state and local governments, to invest in much more widespread infrastructure improvements, and to engage in some direct government creation of jobs."

The GOP's Suicide Pact by Kathleen Parker [Washington Post]: Parker gives her take on the proposed GOP "Purity Test" and she is not happy: "Whatever the intent of the authors, the message is clear: Thinking people need not apply. The formerly elite party of nuanced conservatism might do well to revisit its nonideological roots."

Get Real on Afghanistan by Colbert King [Washington Post]: King commends the political genius of President Obama's use of West Point as the backdrop for Tuesday's speech on Afghanistan, but expresses discontent over what he predicts will be a lot of unanswered questions: How will we pay for it? What if those we are fighting move to Pakistan, will we move with them? King believes President Obama has slipped into conventional Washington thinking and that unless he reverses course on that, the results could be disastrous abroad.

What I'm Reading Today: November 27, 2009

2009-11-27T08:37:00.006-06:00

Kill the Bills, Do Health Reform Right by Charles Krauthammer [Washington Post]: The Senate Healthcare bill, says Krauthammer, should be defeated and then incinerated and the ashes scattered in the Senate swimming pool. Krauthammer's solution: Less arbitrary bureaucracy and more tort reform, cross-state competition, and taxing employer provided insurance.

Tell It To The Ice Caps by Eugene Robinson [Washington Post]: Robinson addresses the controversy last week involving the hiding of evidence by scientists related to climate change. He expresses concern that information was mishandled, but falls back on the reality that ice caps are melting and he has no other plausible explanation for the phenomenon.

Journalism's Slow, Sad Death by Michael Gerson [Washington Post]: Gerson uses his day-after-Thanksgiving column to mourn the dying profession of journalism. The new media, he laments is based on a system where newsrooms are strangled from performing their traditional function because 80% of users refuse to pay for online content (if this topic interests you, I recommend Ken Auletta's Googled). He also notes that the methods that will attract the necessary capital are completely partisan in nature, again strangling them from performing their traditional function.

Taxing the Speculators by Paul Krugman [New York Times]: Krugman continues his assault on Obama's chumminess with Wall Street and this time argues for a tax on currency exchanges. In Krugman's views, the speculation on currencies in the short run is harmful to the world economy and thus should be assessed a tax to deter the behavior. The Obama Administration and specifically Treasury Secretary Geithner oppose the proposal.

Movie Review: The Blind Side

2009-11-26T20:42:00.003-06:00

Having just finished Michael Lewis' Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game, I was very excited to see the new Sandra Bullock/Tim McGraw big screen adaptation. So, following a longstanding (three years) tradition, I joined the family today for a Thanksgiving day showing. Though I didn't like it as much as the book, I thought John Hancock did a nice job directing this film into the success it is destined to become.

When reading the book, I pictured Kyle Chandler (of Coach Eric Taylor fame from the TV Show "Friday Night Lights") playing Sean Tuohy, but actual "Friday Night Lights" (movie) supporting actor Tim McGraw did a terrific job as Bullock's sidekick. Bullock, for her part, plays one of the best roles of her career. Overall, the movie teeters on cheesiness, but recovers nicely. If you don't like feel good movies, this might not be for you -- keep in mind though, it is based on a book that is based on a true story. As the Washington Post's Ann Hornaday says, "It's a story about the authentic, compassionate response to vulnerability and need. It's a story about family."

What I'm Reading Today: November 26, 2009

2009-11-26T12:31:00.002-06:00

The Religious Wars by Nicholas Kristof [NY Times]: Giving brief synopses of three new books about faith and the divine, Kristof ventures a prediction that perhaps the "religious wars" between the religious and irreligious may be subsiding in favor of a more amicable approach.

The Gift of Not Giving by George Will [Washington Post]: Great column about the economic inefficiency of Christmas gift giving. With an overpouring of Holiday Cheer, Will spouts off some gems like: "Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients' preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on the recipients' own purchases."

Obama's Thankless Thanksgiving by E.J. Dionne [Washington Post]: Dionne laments the constant criticism the President has received lately and suggests that perhaps his best course of action is to accept that criticism is part of the job and fight back like FDR.

Rosin on "The Prosperity Gospel"

2009-11-25T19:59:00.003-06:00

Hannah Rosin takes a fascinating look at the "prosperity gospel" in her December 2009 cover story in The Atlantic in an article titled Did Christianity Cause The Crash? After examining a sliver of Christianity that preaches that God wishes us to be healthy and wealthy and that our lack of health and wealth is a manifestation of our lack of faith and obedience, Rosin explores some interesting implications this may have had on the housing boom and subsequent bust in the regions where this teaching dominates:

More recently, critics have begun to argue that the prosperity gospel, echoed in churches across the country, might have played a part in the economic collapse. In 2008, in the online magazine Religion Dispatches, Jonathan Walton, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside, warned:

Narratives of how “God blessed me with my first house despite my credit” were common … Sermons declaring “It’s your season of overflow” supplanted message of economic sobriety and disinterested sacrifice. Yet as folks were testifying about “what God can do,” little attention was paid to a predatory subprime-mortgage industry, relaxed credit standards, or the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM.

In 2004, Walton was researching a book about black televangelists. “I would hear consistent testimonies about how ‘once I was renting and now God let me own my own home,’ or ‘I was afraid of the loan officer, but God directed him to ignore my bad credit and blessed me with my first home,’” he says. “This trope was so common in these churches that I just became immune to it. Only later did I connect it to this disaster.”

Rick Warren isn't impressed either:

Theologically, the Prosperity Gospel has always infuriated many mainstream evangelical pastors. Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Life outsold Osteen’s, told Time, “This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy? There is a word for that: baloney. It’s creating a false idol. You don’t measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn’t everyone in the church a millionaire”

What I'm Reading Today: November 24, 2009

2009-11-24T16:34:00.001-06:00

The Values Question by David Brooks [New York Times]: The healthcare debate, says Brooks, is about values and our stance on the allocation of resources between vitality and societal decency (without necessarily loading either term too heavily). He seems willing to be willing to err on the side of decency, but is unconvinced that this tradeoff really accomplishes its purpose. Rather, he believes it reduces vitality and pours into a system of inefficiency.

Yes, She Can by Matthew Dowd [Washington Post]: Fact: No President with an approval rating under 47% has ever won reelection and no President with an approval rating over 50% has ever lost reelection. From this, Dowd concludes that the name on the ballot next to the incumbent President only matters when their approval rating falls between these two midpoints. Dowd also takes the "winner take all" system of the GOP primary as evidence that in a crowded GOP field, Palin could legitimately command a small plurality of the votes in some of the early states and gain enough momentum through the primary system. Don't take Dowd as a Palin supporter though, he isn't impressed and offers some tips for her: Quality of Quantity, Hope and Fear, Reagan is the Past, Use Humor, and Think Accountability

What I'm Reading Today: November 23, 2009

2009-11-23T10:22:00.005-06:00

A Plan C for Afghanistan by E.J. Dionne [Washington Post]: President Obama's announcement concerning Afghanistan is expected in a couple weeks and is likely to be limited in time and the troop level commitment below that of General McChrystal's recommendation. Dionne notes that while those whose voices are being heard the loudest are either all-in or all-out on this matter, the smarter move may be a hybrid of the two that takes into account the public's growing weariness of the "permanent war" of the present.

The Phantom Menace by Paul Krugman [New York Times]: Krugman continues to beat the drum that the greatest risk to Obama's economic strategy is doing too little. He expresses his frustration with Obama's prioritizing of deficit reduction over job creation and supposes that the President is taking his cues too much from Wall Street.

They Chose Celebrity by Ross Douthat [New York Times]: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, the only two Republican contenders who seemed to generate any enthusiasm last election season have chosen celebrity over honing their credentials in preparation for the 2012 race and beyond. Considerably political reward, says Douthat, awaits the Republican who is able to show seriousness paired with the charisma of Palin and Huckabee.

Brooks on Geithner's Success

2009-11-20T09:26:00.003-06:00

Interesting column by David Brooks in today's NY Times lauding the success of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's much second-guessed economic recovery plan. Brooks praises Geithner for the "balanced" approach he brought to the table. As an example he offers:

In an interview on Wednesday, for example, I asked Geithner what government could do to help promote innovation. Usually when I ask leaders that, they reel off some cool technologies that government should promote — windmills, anotechnology, etc. Often they sound like children trying to play at being entrepreneurs. Geithner didn’t do that. He said that government’s limited job was to get the underlying incentives right so the market could figure out what innovations work best. That suggests a pretty constrained view of government’s role.

The part that really made me chuckle though was this:

Well, the evidence of the past eight months suggests that Geithner was mostly right and his critics were mostly wrong. The financial sector is in much better shape than it was then. TARP money is being repaid, and the debate now is what to do with the billions that were never needed. It now seems clear that nationalization would have been an unnecessary mistake — potentially expensive and dangerously disruptive.

I wonder if Krugman, whose column today appeared right next to Brooks' took notice?

What I'm Reading Today: November 10, 2009

2009-11-10T07:45:00.002-06:00

David Brooks: The Rush to Therapy [New York Times]: Discussing the Ft. Hood shooter, Brooks notes that almost immediately the nation looked to avoid jumping into anti-Muslim vitriol and instead looked for alternative explanations. He lauds these sentiments, but expresses concern over the fact that in the process we looked to absolve him of personal responsibility for the act, instead casting him as a victim of society.

Roger Cohen: In This Together [New York Times]: Cohen writes that in this world of Blackberries and computer screens, health care reform is a reminder that we are really in this together. Says Cohen, "The Senate should quickly approve the legislation. It won’t “socialize” America but will solidify it by at last framing basic health care as a moral obligation rather than financial opportunity."

Pamela A. Hymel: Why Preventative Care Is Critical [Washington Post]: In light of the CBO's recent assessment that preventative care will actually increase healthcare costs through increased life expectancy, Hymel argues that we need to look at the other side of the equation and note the benefits of a healthier workforce: "The impact on a company's bottom line of absenteeism related to health conditions and health risks is significant. But absenteeism is being compounded by a condition known as presenteeism -- in which employees continue working, but at impaired levels due to these health conditions and risks. Our research shows that presenteeism is a much larger problem than most employers realize and that it is seriously affecting their ability to produce, to innovate and to compete."

William McGurn: The Man Who Made Pelosi Cry Uncle [Wall Street Journal]: Less of an op-ed column, and more an exposition of how Congressman Stupak was able to successfully insert the language barring federal funding of abortion into the healthcare bill passed on Saturday. McGurn briefly examines whether the Republicans should have voted "present" to kill the amendment and thus make the overall bill unacceptable enough to garner a majority of the House, but quickly notes that the GOP did the right thing.

What I'm Reading Today: November 9, 2009

2009-11-09T08:55:00.002-06:00

E.J. Dionne: On Election Day, a Win For Government [Washington Post]: Dionne examines a set of ballot measures to limit taxes in Maine and Washington defeated at the hands of groups who made the case for a more expansive government. Dionne says, "The idea that most voters hate government has an outsize influence on the thinking of both parties. Republicans try to exploit this feeling; Democrats try to get around it." He sees the defeat of tax-limiting measures in these more liberal states as vital to curbing a national trend toward limiting government.

Ross Douthat: Life After The End of History [New York Times]: Douthat gives his tribute to the fall of the Berlin Wall through an unorthodox column devoted to arguing that we fail to appreciate the significance of the liberation brought forth by this event.

Paul Krugman: Paranoia Strikes Deep [New York Times]: Krugman laments the growing influence of the hyperbolic wing of the Republican Party and the effect it may have on the country should voters give over the reigns to them in 2010 out of frustration with the Democrats inability to sufficiently solve the nation's problems.

Peggy Noonan: The Rose Garden Path [Wall Street Journal]: Noonan's column is actually from Saturday, but I'm getting around to reading it today. Noonan gives her take on what happened last Tuesday: "In 2009, the Democrats who run the White House and Congress chose to go down one path at the exact moment voters went down a different one. The voters, frustrated and then alarmed, waited to fire the first available Democrat, and this week they did."

Wesley Clark and Peter Levin: Securing the Information Superhighway [Foreign Affairs]: Clark and Levin discuss the security threats presented to the US via cyberspace. The difficulty in detecting threats paired with their gravity when achieved makes this a very serious matter.

What I'm Reading Today: November 4, 2009

2009-11-04T12:51:00.005-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted around here and I kind of miss it. If you're a longtime reader of The Ayes Have It, you'll remember the op-ed roundup. David Gregory stole it from me while I wasn't looking, so I'm rebranding it a little bit and bringing it back. So, for your reading pleasure, here is what I've been reading today:

Go Forth and Multiply a Lot Less [The Economist]: In their cover story and the weekly "Briefing" section, The Economist takes a look at falling fertility rates in developed nations. The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman is likely to have during her childbearing years, conventionally taken to be 15-49. For the first time, half of the world's population will be at the "replacement level of fertility" -- the magic number that causes a country's population to slow down and eventually stabilize.

The Karzai Calculus by David Ignatius [Washington Post]: Lays out a nice outline of the challenges we face in Afghanistan moving forward with the Karzai Administration.

Unicorns in Kabul by George Will [Washington Post]: Keeping with the Afhanistan theme, George Will suggests that the effort of the Obama Administration to bring legitimacy to Afghanistan officials is a lost hope.

In Afghanistan, Kerry Keeps U.S. Goals Modest by Graham Allison [Boston Globe]: Senator Kerry has suggested an alternative to General McCrystal's recommendation to President Obama. The plan includes a more modest approach and "smart counterinsurgency." Allison lays out the essentials Kerry's proposal and argues the President should give it serious consideration.

What a Difference a Year Makes by John Dickerson [Slate]: A standard "what the off-year election" means piece that plays down the significance of the hit this is to President Obama, but also warns that the President's following is clearly not what it was this time last year. If this continues, says Dickerson, Congressional Democrats are not going to feel the cover to legislate boldly, stifling Obama's promises of hope and change.

Frank on Beck's "Hotline to Nowhere"

2009-11-04T11:47:00.003-06:00

Thomas Frank has a column in today's Wall Street Journal concerning the phone that sits on Glenn Beck's desk on which he invites the Obama Administration to call and respond to his charges against them. Nobody ever calls. The problem -- it turns out don't have the number.

What Mr. Beck's silent phone really symbolizes is a new kind of ignorance, a coming high-tech dark age in which people can choose to blow off professional standards of inquiry; in which they can wall themselves off with cable TV and friendly Web sites, dismiss what displeases as liberal bias, and demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself.

Why not let Mr. Beck and his viewers have their fun? Because ideas have consequences. Maybe, as many believe, Glenn Beck is indeed the future of the conservative movement. From tea parties to town-hall meetings, thousands
are signing up and fitting themselves out with their very own hotline to nowhere.

Restaurant Review: Jackson's Bar and Bistro

2009-09-25T10:42:00.002-05:00

I was in Nashville on business on September 22, 2009 and after having a late lunch at Jack's BBQ earlier in the day, I decided I would opt for dessert in lieu of dinner. Recalling a previous discussion I had with a family friend who lives in Nashville, I suggested Jackson's for dessert.

The recommendation I received read as followed:

"It's a bar and bistro in an area called Hillsboro Village. Hillsboro village reminds me of University City (in St. Louis). The food is great and you are sure to see some real hipsters . . . good people watching :) If you get a dessert you have to try the cookie dough eggrolls."

That's a pretty spot on description of the scene. I had the beer cheese dip as an appetizer. Accompanied by both chips and (the much superior) sourdough bread, this appetizer went very well with the local pale ale I sampled. Truthfully, I prefer Schlafly's version, but it was pretty good.

Dessert was excellent. I'm not really sure what was contained in the eggrolls, but they definitely lived up to their billing. I can't speak to the entrees at Jackson's, but if you're in Nashville looking for a fun place to go out for appetizers or dessert, I highly recommend.

Wilbon/Jordan Interview

2009-09-11T20:46:00.003-05:00

Great interview by Michael Wilbon at ESPN.com with NBA Hall of Famer, Michael Jordan. If you grew up watching "His Airness" or are just fascinated by people who are the best at their craft, check it out.

Coldstone on 9/11

2009-09-11T12:53:00.005-05:00

Like everybody, I find it hard to believe it's been eight years since that tragic day, but it has. It's funny how there are things we remember about important events, and things we do not. For me, the most vivid is sitting on my couch in my apartment in Tempe, Arizona and hearing a knock on my door. I had been glued to CNN and honestly had no intention of going anywhere until I fell asleep. I got up and found my friend Patrick on the other side. I invited him in and we just sat in my living room stunned at the scene we kept watching over and over. We chatted a little about it, but really just kind of took in the significance of what was happening.

After a period of time, Patrick suggested we walk down the street to Coldstone for some ice cream. Everybody likes ice cream afterall, and maybe it would soothe some of the pain of the day. Little did either of us know what we would find there.

Coldstone on Mill Avenue in Tempe was always a pretty big attraction, my understanding is that it's actually the original location. It wasn't uncommon to wait 10-15 minutes in line to get ice cream there (especially on the weekend, though not necessarily on a Tuesday). What we found as we walked up 5th Street though was a gathering that resembled a strange combination of a vigil and a crowded park on a nice day. It seems we weren't the only ones with the idea. I honestly don't know how long we stayed, but we did spend at least a couple of hours laughing with old friends and new who dropped in that evening. It's one of my fondest college memories and it's a memory that for me will be permanently affixed to my generation's defining moment.

Patrick told me a few years ago that he later ran into Coldstone's CEO at a luncheon and shared the story with him. Interestingly, the CEO said that he's had several others approach him with the same story. At some point in the day Coldstone made the decision that they would make the effort to stay open as late as people wanted to hang around and eat ice cream. I believe we left around 11:00 p.m. and it sounds as though the gathering may have continued for another couple hours. I've heard Patrick tell this story as evidence that we all have something to contribute and that it's shocking how even small efforts on our part can sometimes make all the difference to others. I agree with this take, but I think there may be another important application today.

On Tuesday of this week, President Obama spoke to students telling them, in part:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Wednesday night he addressed Congress (which may have been a less mature audience than the one he addressed Tuesday) and told them, in part:

That large-heartedness (speaking of Senator Edward Kennedy) -- that concern and regard for the plight of others -- is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character -- our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

Eight years after September 11, 2001 the concern I have is that it causes controversy when the President of the United States encourages students to stay in school not only for their own sake, but for the sake of others around them. It concerns me that with a certain fringe, the notion of limited Federal government has been eased into a hatred for any form of government and that a notion that it isn't the government's responsibility to provide for others has been eased into a belief that we should all worry solely about ourselves without any regard for the societal impact of our actions and inactions.

Eight years after September 11th, 2001 I fondly recall the comraderie I shared with my fellow classmates and members of the community as we mourned and laughed together. There was no Act of Congress requiring us to be there, the Arizona legislature didn't convene a special session to mandate the eating of ice cream. The point is that people came together with the understanding that we aren't in this alone. We can and should debate the role and extent Government has to play in achieving this objective, but ultimately the President articulates a far more inspiring and historically accurate picture of the American character than the one currently being articulated by the fringe arguing otherwise.

Facebook Healthcare Reform Campaign

2009-09-03T17:09:00.003-05:00

The health care reform debate has taken to the waves of Facebook and today profile posts were filled with this statement:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick and I am willing to pay $X per year to ensure that this never happens to anybody. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

Let's talk.

If the point here is that we want to do our best as a country to ensure that people do not die where the most basic level of health care could have saved their life - I agree, completely. That's not what this says though.

When you say that "no one should die because they cannot afford health care" - this implies (at least when taken to its logical extension) that if any treatment/procedure exists that will save a person's life, no matter for how short a period of time, they should be entitled to that treatment/procedure and the cost will be borne by society. If that's your view, fair enough, but let's be clear what we are saying.

Secondly, the "and I am willing to pay $X per year to ensure that this never happens to anybody" is just nonsense unless we're willing to define X. Surely most of these people posting this message have a line somewhere that this statement doesn't apply. If the statement's validity is contingent upon X, the equation doesn't work.

Morning Joe on Senator Kennedy's Graciousness

2009-09-03T11:32:00.003-05:00

Former Congressman Joe Scarborough ("Morning Joe") has a great tribute to Senator Edward in the Pennsacola News Journal. Scarborough tells the story of receiving a package from Senator Kennedy graciously wishing him the best:

To me, Teddy represented the type of liberal politician that I went to Washington to fight.

His unyielding belief in an expansive welfare state was outdated.

His Senate speech after Robert Bork's nomination was deplorable.

And his opposition to every major Republican initiative seemed unforgivable.

But there I was opening up a package from this man who had been my political foe for years in Washington.

As I pulled out a framed poster and tore away at the bubble wrap, inside I found a portrait of Bobby Kennedy with the inscription: "For Joe. With great respect for your public service and best wishes to your family. Bobby would be proud of you! Your friend, Ted Kennedy, June '01."

The thing is that Scarborough's story is not unique. I went to Washington D.C. the Summer of 2005 to work as a law clerk for a conservative Republican Senator serving on the Judiciary Committee with Senator Kennedy. I sneered when I saw his Senate Staff softball team out on the National Mall with their "Ted Sox" jerseys and felt almost exactly the same way about Senator Kennedy as Rep. Scarborough did. He was the type I was going to D.C. to battle.

Over the course of the summer, the law clerks had the chance to make it to several of the Judiciary Committee hearings and staff/Member meetings that took place on occasion. I recall looking across the room and seeing Senators Durbin, Schumer, and Kennedy and realizing that I was in the presence of those who represented all that I despised politically. As I moved across the room at one point I found myself inadvertently in the path of this legendary white haired figure, Ted Kennedy. Expecting him to barge through completely aloof of the fact that an insignificant Republican staffer was there, I attempted to get out of the way when he stopped and looked at to me and said, "pardon me, my apologies." Stunned, I just stood there. He followed up by asking me where I was from and which Senator I worked for. We probably only talked for about 20-30 seconds, but it shattered the perceptions I had of the man.

Since the Senator's death last week I have heard people all over share stories like mine on a variety of levels. The man had plenty of personal demons, but the way he treated people who had no ability to benefit him speaks volumes to me about him. I will remember him as a worthy adversary, but most I will remember him fondly.

(h/t Don)

O'Reilly Thinks Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional

2009-08-25T20:18:00.006-05:00

I was sitting in the hotel lounge enjoying a cup of coffee and dessert this evening when I overheard this exchange on the TV behind me:

I don't even know where to begin. What does seem clear is that O'Reilly has not done any reading on the Commerce Clause since he admitted he knew nothing about it when he and Senator Schumer sat down in 2005. I'm trying to find the transcript or the rest of this video, it sounded to me like he was doubtful that Congress really even had the power to regulate Interstate Commerce. Maybe I heard incorrectly, anybody have the video or transcript?

Goldhill on Health Care Reform

2009-08-25T19:44:00.004-05:00

I have spent a lot of time over the last couple weeks talking with people about their thoughts on health care reform and I've essentially come to two conclusions: 1) something has to be done, the current system is unsustainable; and 2) fixing the problem in a piecemeal fashion is the equivalent of using buckets to scoop water out of a ship that has a hole in it - it may help in the short term, but it will not ever solve the problem.

I don't find insurance companies or doctors to be evil, but I do think the system currently in place puts the incentives all in the wrong places. I say that to set up my serious appreciation for the work of The Atlantic's David Goldhill in very well articulating what I believe to be the reason the system isn't sustainable. I don't know that I completely buy his solution, but I do agree with him that all the plans currently being seriously considered do not address many of the root causes of the problem. The article is long, but it's probably some of the best writing I've seen on the issue since this debate began a few months ago.

People I'm Told I Look Like: John Dean

2009-08-20T16:21:00.009-05:00

I am a listmaker. One of the lists I keep stored on my Blackberry is titled "People I Have Been Told I Look Like." It's exactly what it sounds like and I add to it immediately when a new one is presented. Last night a new one was added: John Dean.

For those of you who are not familiar, Mr. Dean was White House Counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

Like most of the other names on the list, I honestly don't see it.

Noah on Necessity of Public Option

2009-08-18T12:15:00.000-05:00

Timothy Noah has a column at Slate that nicely brings together President Obama's op-ed column with the discussion we had here (and on my Facebook page) and Paul Krugman's column yesterday:

At the broadest possible level, the public option is necessary simply because it's impossible to identify a successful health system anywhere in the world based on a for-profit insurance model [emphasis added]. If profit-driven health insurance could be made to work, then surely somebody would have figured it out by now. Paul Krugman, in an Aug. 17 New York Times column, likens health reform to the reforms Switzerland instituted in 1994: "[E]veryone is required to buy insurance, insurers can't discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies." But there's a significant difference. In Switzerland, private insurers are required to provide basic health coverage on a nonprofit basis. Under Obamacare, private insurers will continue to seek profits, and it's quite possible that the new regulatory restraints imposed on them (take all comers, don't punish the sick with higher premiums, don't seek out fine-print reasons to cancel policies after policyholders get sick, etc.) will inspire them to find ever-more-ingenious ways to avoid payouts. President Obama often says that a public option will help keep the private insurers honest. What he doesn't say, but surely knows, is that private insurers' duties to their shareholders may be irreconcilable with their duties to their customers. Should that prove true, a public option would provide a necessary refuge.

Marleen and Heather weighed in yesterday (in the comments on my Facebook page) with their experiences of family members being denied coverage. While I do stand by my claim that insurance companies need to be able to "discriminate" (a pretty loaded term that describes the inherent nature of how insuruance companies work), I hope my comments were not taken as unsympathetic to their situations. The reality is that we have a system based on third party payers whose fidicuary duty lies more with their shareholders rather than the insured. Maybe the culprit here isn't the insurance companies for their bad behavior, but the system that enables it. Maybe this means a public option, and maybe it doesn't. The system does need reform though.

To my economicially conservative friends, this is not about moving left - this is about a fundamental market failure that needs to be corrected. How can we claim that the market will correct this problem when the system is rife with hidden or unknown costs? For the market to work, conditions need to be favorable for entry into the marketplace by suppliers and consumers need to know what they're getting and how much they are going to be paying. If we are going to find a market solution to healthcare, at the very least there needs to be more transparency in the pricing system in both the heathcare we receive and the insurers who cover it. We can work from there.

Krugman on Swiss Style Healthcare

2009-08-18T08:15:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman writes in yesterday's New York Times that President Obama's healthcare proposal would not make the United States healthcare system like that of England, but rather like Switzerland's:

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.

Holiday on Pre-existing Conditions

2009-08-17T13:05:00.003-05:00

As a followup to my link* to President Obama's op-ed in yesterday's NY Times, Pete has a post arguing against the notion that it is evil or immoral for insurance companies to "discriminate" against those with preexisting conditions, etc. He writes:

Insurance companies profit (ever a dirty word in the minds of liberals) by spending less money than they bring in. They primarily do this by charging people who they perceive to be low-risk less money and people who they perceive to be high-risk more. This “discrimination” is also seen as “fair” when you’re on the low-risk side of things.

He continues:

[in response to Obama's claim that people with pre-existing conditions are being denied coverage] You don’t say. Someone who is already sick is getting charged more than someone who isn’t? I wonder why that is. Maybe because the former is looking to start drawing on a system they haven’t paid a cent into yet? Maybe because, absent those sort of rules, someone could sign up for health insurance a week before they went in for major surgery and then cancel the policy once they’re done with their physical therapy, leaving everyone else responsible or their bill?

I think Pete's points are well taken and the fact that they have been glossed over in the debate is both interesting and frustrating. That said, is there something different about health insurance that separates it from fire and flood protection or car insurance? I am not as familiar with the insurance industry as Pete, but it seems obvious that the cost of somebody being uninsurable for health purposes is significantly higher both to that person and to society than it is for other types of insurance. Pete rightly points out where health insurers' incentives lie, the question is what, if anything, we should do about it. Is the insurance market permeable enough that those considered a "high risk" to insure can find insurance somewhere at a cost that is not prohibitive? What are the consequences if they are not?

*Just for the record, the fact that I link to an article does not necessarily mean that I endorse the views contained therein. I did think that his op-ed yesterday was the most clearly I have heard the President state his case and felt like it was a significant enough op-ed to link (as I did the Whole Foods op-ed).

Whole Foods Alternative to Health Care Reform

2009-08-16T10:37:00.003-05:00

Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey had an op-ed last week in the Wall Street Journal offering some thoughts in response to the current health care reform proposals.

Obama on Health Care Reform

2009-08-16T10:31:00.005-05:00

President Obama has an op-ed in this morning's New York Times making his case for health care reform.

Morris on Cash for Clunks and High Speed rail

2009-08-13T14:33:00.004-05:00

Eric Morris shares some thoughts at the Freakonomics Blog comparing potential stimulus/environmental benefits of "Cash for Clunkers" vs. High Speed Rail. Perhaps things would be different if these high speed rail plans were "shovel ready," but in the short term, Morris seems heavily swayed in favor of CFC.

I was just having a conversation about this at lunch today, and Morris may have keyed in on why public officials, like Dick Durbin earlier this week, are not willing to make the committment to high speed rail.

Palmer on Continuing Legal Challenges for "Birthers"

2009-08-05T11:54:00.003-05:00

Brian Palmer has an interesting article over at Slate noting the legal challenges that the "birthers" would still face even if they did have evidence that President Obama really was born outside the United States.

[What would happen?] Resignation, impeachment, or nothing. If Obama stood his ground, and Congress stood by him, then the only way to legally remove him from office would be for someone to sue. Problem is, no one would have standing to bring such a lawsuit. To establish standing, a plaintiff must show that he has suffered an injury personal to him, that the defendant caused the injury, and that the court could provide a remedy. That turns out to be an impossible task.

Worth a read, and good to be back.

More Supreme Court Speculation

2009-05-25T10:10:00.007-05:00

The chatterers in Washington seem to believe President Obama will name his nominee to the Supreme Court sometime this week. The Sunday morning shows spent a good deal of time yesterday speculating as to the nominee. This Week spent nearly all of their focus on Kagan, Wood, and Sotomayor, despite the fact that President Obama said last week that he is looking for "...somebody who has the intellectual fire power, but also a little bit of a common touch and has a practical sense of how the world,”

On Meet the Press, David Gregory posed the following question to Senator Durbin:

The, the--I spoke to a White House official this week who said it'll be clear what the president wants to accomplish when you see the nominee. Can you interpret that? What is it that the president wants to accomplish with this first nomination?

Senator Durbin replied:

I think the president's made it clear. Understand, this is a man who, who's spent his life studying the law and the Constitution and teaching it. He understands it. I would, I would hate to go through that interview on constitutional issues with our president, because he knows a lot more about the Constitution than many people who serve as judges today. And I think he's going to look for a person who understands the law, someone of high integrity and, as he said, someone who's in touch with the real world in terms of the real impact of constitutional decisions [emphasis added].

Am I the only who who thinks this sounds like President Obama is looking to nominate a sitting politician to the Court? Currently, all nine members of the Court came through the Appellate Court system prior to their nomination to the Supreme Court. The most likely nominees that fit this criteria are Janet Napolitano or Jennifer Granholm. Both have been Governors and both have seen some very real issues facing America right in their backyard (Napolitano with immigration in Arizona, and Granholm's Michigan is at the epicenter of the economic downturn). If it is going to be "clear what the President is trying to accomplish" and he has laid out what he is hoping to accomplish, all clues seem to be pointing in the direction of Granholm or Napolitano

Joining the Fray

2009-05-20T14:14:00.006-05:00

by Matthew Schuh

“I would say to Chairman Steele, you know, the party of no shouldn’t now become the party of no empathy.”

-DNC Chairman, Governor Tim Kaine on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 17, 2009

(Birmingham, Alabama) Southerners are gritty people; they really can be the nicest folks in the world, but you do not want to cross them at the wrong time. As explained to me yesterday by a lifelong Alabaman, “...we’re nice until we’re not, but don’t mess with us.” Perhaps it was the instinct of a party that has become increasingly concentrated in the southern United States that motivated Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s statement yesterday to State Republican Leaders that “if we have the courage of our conviction, and we do, then we will and we must stand up against disastrous policies, regardless of the president’s popularity.”

Good. I hope so, but it is concerning that as the party seeks to appeal to more voters, more and more Republicans find themselves being questioned as to their conservative bona fides. So, as the party “turns the corner” and seeks to become one of “new ideas”, allow me to join the fray as a Republican suggesting some ideas on which to focus, none of which are new.

Federalism/Separation of Powers
In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, Lord Acton wrote in 1887 that “[p]ower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” With the expansion of Executive powers of the Federal Government under the Bush and Obama Administrations, Republicans should be on the front lines extolling the virtues of the decentralization of power. States, as Justice Louis Brandeis argued, should be “laboratories of democracy” that offer the latitude to exercise the powers reserved to them in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. While this does leave more freedom for people to locate to places most in line with their political sympathies, it also allows the Federal Government to see public policies in place before implementing them on a national scale where Interstate Commerce comes into question. Furthermore, the Republican Party has to insist that Congress reassert its rightful place as a check on the Executive Branch, even when both are controlled by the same party.

Humble Government
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson notes that “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” for the purpose of securing “inalienable Rights.” Republicans should take these words seriously in favoring limited government, but they should also take seriously the words “among these are” that precede “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson came down on that side of the Oxford Comma debate?). Perhaps legitimate government can extend beyond the role of literally protecting life and liberty (and then striking “pursuit of Happiness” on the grounds that it is void for vagueness), and can instead capitalize upon the collective energies of a nation that could not be achieved solely by individuals. The key to this is that this power be exercised with reluctance and with humility.

Thoughtful Approach
For quite some time, American politics has been defined by false dichotomies that forced potential legislators, Governors, and Presidents to choose between options that provided incomplete answers to public policy problems. Candidates were forced to say whether they were “for” or “against” everything from gun control to taxes with the idea being that it was incomprehensible to fall somewhere in between a complete “yes” or “no” answer. Part of what I believe attracted some conservatives to Barack Obama as he sought the Presidency was his willingness to consider all options and then thoughtfully push beyond the traditional yes/no answers. Many who strongly disagreed with his policy views were willing to give him a chance because they believed he would at least consider their ideas and take a thoughtful approach to public policy. Republicans do not need to weaken the prescription to the conservative lenses through which they view the world, they just need to gain some peripheral vision and refine their approach.

So there you have it, three ideas the Republican party can implement on their way to recovery. These are of course bullet points, each meriting a much more significant discussion. Perhaps these make me a moderate or a “Republican In Name Only” (RINO), but the party needs such voters if it is going to survive. In the meantime, I need to eat to survive so I’m going to go have some barbecue and sweet tea. Gotta love Southern Hospitality!

Matthew Schuh is an attorney in St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at mschuh@gmail.com. He writes a weekly op-ed column at The Ayes Have It.

Alabama Trip Next Week

2009-05-16T11:06:00.003-05:00

In my preparation for my trip to Alabama next week, I came across this video. I think it's pretty clear I am going to have to make a visit.

(h/t Justin M.)

Gerson on GOP's Trending Irrelevance

2009-05-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

Michael Gerson gets it: the Republican Party is going to become extinct if it is not willing to be part of the policy discussion surrounding issues they may not be 100% in agreement on with the Democratic majority. That isn't weak, it isn't "moderating", it is just good politics and more importantly -- it leads to better public policy.

A Battle to Confirm

2009-05-13T00:25:00.004-05:00

By Matthew Schuh

The other night I boarded a plane at Chicago’s Midway Airport bound for St. Louis. When I got onto the plane, Game 6 of the Bulls/Celtics series was headed into overtime and all nine Justices on the United States Supreme Court were firmly holding onto their Article III lifetime tenure. When I landed an hour later, I was greeted with news that the Bulls/Celtics game was in triple overtime and Justice Souter had leaked his intention to resign from the Court at the end of the Court’s Term. At least there is stability somewhere. As I deplaned that evening, I walked to my car in excitement over the possibility of the first Supreme Court nomination since 2005. Certainly this was a big deal and worth following.

Isn’t it interesting though how quickly we take our eye off the ball? It seems like just yesterday we were moving in the direction of a public conversation over the proper criteria to use when evaluating a potential Court nominee. I think we’ll get back to it eventually, but there were some pressing concerns to handle first. See, last Saturday the White House Correspondent’s Association hosted their annual Dinner at the Washington Hilton and comedian Wanda Sykes said some mean things about some people. We needed to talk about that for three days. Then, the nation waited with baited breath while Donald Trump decided what to do about a beauty contest competitor who may have broken the rules of a contest that none of us originally even knew had taken place. Those problems are solved now, so I think we are ready to get back to the business of the Court.

In the days following the leak that Justice Souter would retire, President Obama set forth the criteria he was looking for in a potential Justice and the Senate Republicans responded by expressing concern over the President’s use of the word “empathy” as a prerequisite. Democratic pundits immediately railed against Senate Republicans for too quickly laying the groundwork against [nominee] while the Republican pundits fired back at the Democratic pundits for not holding themselves to the same standard as they did during the Roberts and Alito hearings. It was all very fun and interesting and inevitably ended in people yelling indecipherable things about Robert Bork and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at each other.

At the end of the day, the President is going to nominate an individual who falls in line with his judicial philosophy and the Senate should confirm that person absent problems with their temperament, legal ability, or integrity. Certainly the Senate should not be a rubber stamp, but the nomination is the President’s to make and Republicans would be wise to follow the rhetoric they applied during Justice Roberts and Alito’s confirmations. I would go so far as to argue that the Constitution suggests such a model:

According to Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the President “...shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint...judges of the Supreme Court...” The first thing to note about Article II, Section 2 is that it is in Article II -- the one that sets forth the Constitutional framework for the Executive branch of the Federal government. The process for the confirmation of Justices could just as easily have been placed in Article I (the Article devoted to the Legislative branch), but it was not. In fact, you will not find so much as a corresponding Constitutional equivalent in Article I. Certainly, something to the effect that the “Senate shall give advice and consent for the nominees of the President for...Judges of the Supreme Court” could have been thrown in for good measure to complete a symmetry of responsibility between the President and Senate -- but it was not. What else other than a deference on the part of the Senate in giving advice and consent is to be inferred from this wording?

Over the next few months you are going to hear a lot about “empathy”, “temperament”, and “judicial philosophy.” Keep in mind throughout it all that we are talking about a person who will be one of nine individuals charged with interpreting the document that has bound our nation for over two centuries, but also one that governs the framework of our governmental institutions today. It is easy to get caught up in the flurry of interest group press releases and media appearances and forget that we are talking about membership in an institution that has overseen the longest standing written charter of Government in the world. Remember what is at stake here and enjoy the ride.

Matthew Schuh is an attorney in St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at mschuh@gmail.com. He writes a weekly op-ed column at The Ayes Have It.

Frum on GOP Big Enough for Colin Powell, etc.

2009-05-12T11:57:00.002-05:00

David Frum, author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, sat down with CNN reporter Kiran Chetry to discuss his view of Dick Cheney's recent talking points about Colin Powell and President Obama. Text of the interview is available here.

Gift Card Economy

2009-05-08T13:01:00.001-05:00

I read this Viriginia Postrel article in The Atlantic a couple weeks ago, but came across it against again earlier this week. According to the author, people are actually more likely to use gift cards when they have a shorter, rather than longer, window for use. There was also some interesting discussion about giving away gift cards as an incentive to get people to buy a more in a particular store, but I was most intrigued by a suggestion that future stimulus spending conveyed directly to taxpayers be in the form of giftcards rather than checks:

During the stimulus debate, some economists, including Edward Leamer of UCLA, suggested that quickly expiring gift cards might boost the economy more effectively than temporary tax cuts, which people tend to put toward savings. Although you could use a government-issued gift card for groceries you’d buy anyway and bank the savings, people tend to treat gift cards differently. When you get a gift card, Leamer noted, you not only tend to spend it on something you wouldn’t otherwise buy, but often wind up spending a bit extra—the perfect prescription for Keynesian stimulus.

If we have made a decision that we are going to have the government inject money into the economy by giving money directly to taxapayers like you and me (such as 2002 and 2008), why not ensure that the money is going there rather than into savings or paying off previously spent money. Of course taxpayers would rather have the cash, but the point of stimulus spending is not to increase utility, it is to inject money into the economy.

I am curious if it would be possible to impose such a system without it turning into a game of political winners and losers. I am always reluctant to get too much into the micromanagement of this sort of thing. I do believe though that if we are going to spend millions (billions, even?) of taxpayer dollars we have to be smart about it and make sure it is going toward solving the problem presented.

Retirement Boomers Bummer

2009-05-07T12:47:00.001-05:00

David Ignatius laments the looming retirement crisis in his op-ed in this morning's Washington Post.

For a closer look at the retirement squeeze, consider a study released last month by the Congressional Research Service. Patrick Purcell analyzed the most recent data on consumer finances gathered by the Federal Reserve. He found that for the 53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000.

Hold on, you say, that figure includes some younger workers who haven't started saving in earnest yet. Okay, for households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. Purcell noted that for a 65-year-old man retiring last month, that $100,000 would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates.

Back in the days of the 2000 Presidential race George W. Bush campaigned on the idea of privatizing social security and allowing indivuals to own their own accounts. He believed the private markets were capable of yielding greater than a "paltry 2% return":

...I want to get a better rate of return for your own money than the paltry 2% that the current Social Security Trust gets today. Mr. Greenspan I thought missed an opportunity to say there's a third way, and that is to get a better rate of return on the Social Security monies coming into the trust. There is $2.3 trillion of surplus that we can use to make sure that younger workers have a Social Security plan in the future. If we're smart and if we trust workers and if we understand the power of the compounding rate of interest.

The conventional wisdom today is that the economic slowdown of 2008 proved Bush's plan faulty and that we were wise to keep the government program funded in government notes. That may be, but the truth is that the system is unsustainable in its current form and there has to be some leadership on this or what Ignatius projects will come to fruition (it may already, but the opportunity to minimize its effects are quickly passing). From a 2007 MSNBC article citing the Social Security Administration:

In 2017, Social Security will begin paying out more than it takes in. For the first time, it will have to use the interest being paid on the securities it holds in order to meet its obligations.
In 2027, Social Security would have to start redeeming the securities themselves.
By 2041, Social Security would have cashed in the last security, and the system would have enough revenue to pay out only 75% of promised benefits. That percentage would drop over time if Congress failed to act.

So I am willing to stipulate that putting the retirement funds of Americans only in the private markets is a bad idea, but we have to come up with something else. I had this exact conversation earlier this week with a Democratic colleague and we both expressed concern that retirement becomes less and less feasible when the markets aren't bearing typical 8-10% yearly returns (or 20-30% returns of the mid-1990's). So what do we do about it? Maybe it means telling people they should expect to retire at 75 instead of 65 or maybe it means telling people they need to count on saving a greater percentage of their disposable income. Maybe there is something out there devised by people who know far more about this than I do. What we need are people in Washington who are willing to listen to new ideas and courageous enough to be honest with Americans so they can begin to responsibly planning for this reality. We cannot break a promise we made to a generation of older Americans, but we can be straightforward with younger Americans.

Limbaugh to Powell: "Become a Democrat"

2009-05-07T08:14:00.001-05:00

Yawn.

How To Read Op-Ed Columns

2009-05-06T16:15:00.005-05:00

By Matt Schuh
“Party on” the President told those in attendance earlier this week at his “Cinco de Cuatro” party hosted at the White House following a news conference in which he said the United States would stand side-by-side with Mexico as both countries face mounting economic and public health challenges.
It is tough to hear the phrase “party on” without conjuring up memories of the 1992 Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey big screen adaptation of their critically acclaimed Saturday Night Live sketch “Wayne’s World.” Though the film has various layers of complexity, the storyline that plays out most vividly to this mind is the journey Wayne and Garth make to Milwaukee to see a concert by their rock hero, Alice Cooper.

Though Cooper’s performance in the movie featured “Feed My Frankenstein” (a song that, much to the chagrin of his mother immediately became one 10 year old’s favorite for about a week and a half); the more appropriate song for the location would almost certainly have been “School’s Out For Summer.” It was 19 years ago that Milwaukee became the first public school district in the country to adopt a voucher system allowing pupils to receive public funding to attend the school of their choice, igniting a debate that continues today.

Normally the next three to four paragraphs of an op-ed column would be devoted to a very concise case for a position that its writer developed through personal experience, reading books, newspapers, magazines, and even Wikipedia articles (hence, a “Wikipinion” – hat tip to Michael Komenda for coining the term). In this particular instance I would take a particular position formed by my preexisting ideas about how government should function and then find studies and groups that support this viewpoint. If I were arguing that school choice robs public schools of their resources I would go to the NEA’s website and tell you that “[w]hen given the specific choice, 71 percent of the general public would improve and strengthen existing public schools while just 27 percent would opt for vouchers, the alternative most frequently mentioned by public school critics.” Conversely, I could tell you from a quick glance at the website of School Choice Milwaukee that “[f]ar from being harmed by school choice, Harvard University economist Caroline Hoxby has published research showing that MPS elementary schools most susceptible to choice have produced significant gains in standardized test scores.” The problem is that we can find very competent and bright people who are able to support any theory we may hold. So, do we just give up on political discourse?

Exqueeze me? Baking powder?

Of course not. The problem is not that people have philosophies of how government should operate or that they’re exclusively citing sources that support their own theories; it is that people stop reading and listening too quickly. I understand that this sounds like obnoxious pontification telling people they do not know what they’re talking about, but bear with me if you will. The world of political chatter, much like the legal world is one premised on the adversarial system -- that both sides are putting forth their best arguments and that some inherent truth will result out of the collision of the two (or more) sides. This system can only be effective then if those who are participating take the time to read and listen to people across the spectrum. While it may seem more intellectually defensible for conservatives to read David Brooks and George Will than Michael Moore, depth of reading does not compensate for lack of breadth. Ideally they will be reading Brooks and Will in addition to the likes of E.J. Dionne and Paul Krugman and vice versa.

We need to approach each writer (even me, especially me) with a healthy dose of skepticism, allowing us to see that their viewpoints are tinted by the lenses through which they view the world. “Of course he’s going to say that” should be our natural disposition toward many of the words we read by these authors. By gaining the perspective of as many lenses as possible, it becomes more and more possible to understand what we are actually seeing when we take a step back and look at it in its entirety. Hey, we might even end up being able to participate more effectively in our democracy as a result.

But hey, we’ve been serious enough for a while -- it’s nearly summer. So party on Garth, and party on Mr. President.

Matt Schuh is an attorney in St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at mschuh@gmail.com. He writes a weekly op-ed column at The Ayes Have It.

A Tale of Two Exurbs

2009-05-06T11:25:00.003-05:00

Ben Adler's The Tale of Two Exurbs in this month's American Prospect highlights some of the issues that have consumed much of my reading over the last several weeks in books, thinktank papers, and magazines. In this particular piece, Adler contrasts two suburban D.C. communities and how they represent an old and new way of thinking about suburban living:

This non-solution is what people want, at least according to Leesburg's mayor, Kristen C. Umstattd, a red-haired, bespectacled attorney who has been on the Town Council since 1992. "Making Leesburg denser, while it is something that is promoted by a lot of urban planners, is something that citizens of Leesburg have been very much opposed to," she says. "What people like about Leesburg is a small-town feel. They come here because they don't want to live in a highly dense urban area." It is an article of faith among right-wing ideologues that the growth of the exurbs proves that Americans are a lawn-loving people. As David Brooks writes in his 2002 Weekly Standard essay, "Patio Man and the Sprawl People," people move to cities like Leesburg "for the same reasons people came to America or headed out West. They want to leave behind the dirt and toxins of their former existence. … They want to move to some place that seems fresh and new and filled with possibility."

But there is little empirical data to back that up. Demographers and economists will tell you that main drivers of exurban growth are market pressures, such as the high price of living in denser, closer-in suburbs and cities and the increasing presence of jobs in far-flung office parks -- not an aesthetic preference for "fresh" places like modern-day Leesburg. Never mind that the exurb's highways and parking lots look and feel nothing like a bucolic small town.

Personally, I would much rather live in a place like the Kentlands than Leesburg, but I think Mr. Adler probably needs to spend more time with people who are not from urban areas if he genuinely finds it so unfathomable that people would want some of the things David Brooks and Leesburg's mayor claim. Certainly many do move outside cities and inner-ring suburbs because they can get more house for their money, but there are plenty who make that move because they want to have a backyard where their kids can safely play wiffleball.

How I Met Your Mother Thoughts

2009-05-05T07:02:00.003-05:00

Warning: Spoiler Alert

So, we finally met "the mother" in this week's episode, or did we? Before we get to that though, let us pause and celebrate the hilarity of Marshall's excessive graph/chart usage. My favorite was the venn diagram showing the convergence of the two subsets "those who are breaking my heart" and "those who are shaking my confidence, baby" at "Cecelia", but my friends who prefer the "Ranking of Presidents: By How Dirty Their Names Sound" are probably on to something too.

Ok, back to business. The show reveals (or purports to reveal) that sometimes the winds of fate place you in the right place at the right time, and as a result of that Ted was at a particular corner when somebody (who we are led to believe is "the mother") taps him on the shoulder. The twist is that the person tapping him on the shoulder is none other than his ex-fiance (who left him at the alter for her ex-husband) Stella. I'm not buying that it's her. I will follow up with my thoughts on this, but I want to hear yours: did we meet "the Mother" in last night's episode?

Continue to Render Substantial Judicial Service?

2009-05-01T17:01:00.003-05:00

Justice Souter's resignation letter was released early this afternoon -- I hope he didn't get too choked up writing it. His closing sentence does leave for some interesting discussion though:

I mean to continue to render substantial judicial service as an Associate Justice.

There was some confusion about the meaning of this and my first reaction is that he's taking Senior Status, much like Justice O'Connor did after leaving the Court in 2005. Upon review, senior status is governed by 28 U.S.C. Sec. 371 and allows for a Justice, under certain conditions to take "senior status" which entitled them to some staff and compensation and allows them to fill in at the District and Appellate Courts.

Judge Frederic Block actually has a really good 2007 article about Article III Senior Status in Cornell Law Review:

Senior status is not to be confused with full retirement or resignation. Provided they render “substantial service” to the courts, which may be satisfied by simply doing the same work as an active judge for three months per year, senior judges continue to perform the same judicial duties and receive the same salary as active judges. Moreover, like active judges, they continue to serve for life, are barred from the practice of law, and are subject to the same restrictions on earnings from outside sources.

2009 Reading Challenge Update

2009-05-01T14:46:00.004-05:00

It's hard to believe that it is already May and the 2009 Reading Challenge is 1/3 of the way complete. A brief update, I have completed 15 books so far (each averaging 345.73 pages) and am currently reading 8 more books (totaling another 755 pages). If this sounds like bragging, it might be; really I'm just excited that the competition seems to have worked as I am on pace to shatter my previous record of 26 books read in a calendar year (2008). Books read so far in 2009:

The Places in Between by Rory Smith
Caught in the Middle by Richard Longworth
The Dark Side by Jane Mayer
On Paradise Drive by David Brooks
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
Truman by David McCullough
Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks
The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley
Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Slaam
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed

Anybody else playing along with the challenge or want to report how their year in reading has gone so far?

Initial Thoughts on Souter Vacancy

2009-05-01T11:56:00.004-05:00

I still have not had much time to sit and take in the commentary coming out of the impending Souter Supreme Court retirement, but I have responded to a few emails. Here is the gist of what I'm thinking:

This is probably not the time that Obama wanted to get a nomination. First of all, there is a fairly depleted farm system right now given the fact that there has not been a Federal Judge nominated by a Democratic President in 8 years. Secondly, there are a lot of other important problems being solved and the circus that goes along with Supreme Court vacancies will only detracts from those.

Because of the current political climate though, I think there's an increased likelihood of a moderate nominee. When I say moderate, I don't mean that conservatives are going to agree with their positions on the Commerce Clause or abortion, but rather that they are a distinguished nominee who is a jurist rather than an ideologue. I think it's going to be a woman and I think it's probably going to be somebody who has some conservatives who are willing to say some good things about them. My best prediction is that Elena Kagan, the new Solicitor General (and former Dean of Harvard Law School) will be the nominee.

In terms of a controversial pick, I think Obama has the political capital to get through a far reaching nominee, but he 1) doesn't need to, and 2) doesn't want to. If you look at the judges that have been nominated to the Court over the last 25 years, every single Democratic President nominee has been a reliable vote for the ideas that matter most to liberal interest groups. These groups are going to be disappointed with Obama for not nominating a candidate who they would pick if they were running the world, but right now Obama will be able to placate them long enough to get past the gripe from the left.

He does not want to nominate a far-reaching nominee because a confirmation battle is going to cost him political capital and right now that is a finite resource. President Clinton's nominees went through the Senate comfortably (both with over 87 votes) because he followed this model. Granted it was a much different climate, but he got them through because he used the consultation process and he nominated people who Republicans disagreed with, but could really only explain opposing on purely ideological grounds. Clinton realized that Ginsburg and Breyer would please his liberal supporters substantively just as much as ideologues and he had the political saavy to realize there were bigger fish to fry than winning a Supreme Court confirmation battle. It is my hope and belief that Obama will follow Clinton's lead in this regard.

Finally, I do not think Obama wants a controversial name on his legacy. As I stated in my endorsement of Candidate Obama, I think he is in this for the view of history and that outlook is not conducive to appointing a radical to the bench. Look for a solid nominee who is to the left what Chief Justice Roberts was to the right. Right now, the line is sticking that Republicans have become the "party of no" and this is a chance for them to show that isn't the case. I see this as a major opportunity for the Republicans to prove that their talk during the Roberts and Alito nominations was principled, hopefully curtailing some of the contentiousness of the nomination process.

Souter To Retire

2009-05-01T09:07:00.004-05:00

I landed in St. Louis last night with a slew of text messages and emails with the news that Justice Souter is planning to retire at the end of the term. I have not had the chance to review any of the reports or listen to any of the commentary, but at first glance my best prediction is that Elena Kagan (the newly confirmed Solicitor General) will be the nominee put forth in a few months.

Much, much more to come on this soon.