• Law,  Media

    Saturday morning rapid fire

    October 15, 2005 /
    1. A good short history of the Davis Bacon act
    2. A longer piece about Edward R Morrow (real name Egbert Roscoe Murrow I found out) and his dealing with Joe McCarthy. Short version – McCarthy bad, but Communist threat real, and the new Clooney movie inaccurately gives credit to Morrow for a lot of other people’s work. The article is well worth reading in it’s entirety.
    3. A fairly brutal piece on Harriet Miers in National Review Online who correctly see that Supreme Court picks are not a zero sum game.

      So, we have reason to fear, will be the case with Miers. And even if she does not become a Blackmun, her record strongly suggests she will be an O’Connor — a split-the-difference judge. As one of her former colleagues has said of her, Miers’s office was the “place where the action stopped and the hand-wringing began.” If she follows that course, we will be left with a Court that retains immense and inappropriate lawmaking power but refuses to make clear laws. The rule of law is based on the making of arguments and the giving of reasons, not on sentiment or group loyalty — which is the basis on which Miers’s defenders want us to support her.

    4. We live in strange times when Ann Coultier is correct in direction and degree. In her column “Does this Law Degree Make my Resume Look Fat?” she makes a strong case that against Miers.

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  • Islam,  Russia,  Weirdness

    Two things

    October 14, 2005 /
    1. Bali protesters: Kill the bombers – an example of history moving in the right direction abroad. Evidently Bali is one of the few countries where radical Islam exists, but is actively not tolerated
    2. A major clash between the Russians and the fellow travelers of radical Islam, Chechen separatists, is not major news. Chewbacca becoming an American citizen does make it above the fold on CNN.com.
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  • Miers

    The Supremes

    October 14, 2005 /

    It’s hard to tell, but it seems like the Harriet Miers nomination is crumbling. A good thing too.

    This thought just occurred to me. She is slightly less qualified to be on the Supreme Court than Hillary Clinton was in 1997. The two are often described in the same way, hard working, thorough, driven, etc. I imagine they did a lot of the same legal things for their respective presidents. Just imagine the uproar if Bill had tried to nominate her then (assuming there was a vacancy).

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  • Media,  Obama,  Politics

    Similarities

    October 13, 2005 /

    I think I’m the only one to see the similarities between Barack Obama and Paris Hilton, namely they’re famous solely because commentators and not reporters talk about them.

    This is a correlation of no significance mind you, it is odd though. I think I’ll create the term “Media Famous” to describe it.

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  • Economics,  Katrina

    Well put from Landsburg

    October 13, 2005 /

    I finally get around to reading his New Orleans column, and he makes a very good point in favor of cash payouts. Money quote:

    The specific flood-related policy question is this: Given the population of poor people, do we make them, on net, better or worse off when we give them disaster relief (which is good) and simultaneously raise their housing costs (which is bad)? The refusal to engage that question is, it seems to me, nothing short of a declaration of indifference to what actually benefits the poor.

    You might say that what we really owe the poor is disaster assistance and affordable housing. You might as well say that we owe them all magical pink unicorns that produce an unlimited supply of milk. It is quite simply impossible to guarantee assistance to people living on a flood plain without affecting their housing costs. And it is quite simply unserious to declare your commitment to poor people without pausing to ask whether your pet program does poor people more harm than good.

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  • Politics

    Good analysis from Barone

    October 13, 2005 /

    In his latest column in US News, Barone has some interesting thoughts on the current state of the Republican and Democratic parties, to wit, there are more conservatives than liberals, but the Dems have been effectively captured by the left (in primaries) which does not bode well for them, or American really.

    It’s well worth reading.

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  • Miers,  Weirdness

    That odd president of ours

    October 13, 2005 /

    Via the Agitator, this was in the Bush-Myers papers

    Bush responded to her birthday wish in kind, and included a humorous, if baffling, postscript.
    “I appreciate your friendship and candor. Never hold back your sage advice,” he wrote. “P.S. No more public scatology.” Whether Bush was referring to Miers’ rough-and-tumble time as chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission or something else isn’t clear. Scatology refers to “the study of or preoccupation with excrement or obscenity,” according to Webster’s dictionary.
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