And here’s another reason, Professor Banaian

Some months ago, King Banaian dragged his readers through Banaian’s angst about getting a Kindle; apparently in the end he finally did get one. Spot counseled him to stick with a book, because, inter alia, the consequences of dropping a book in the bath tub while reading were not as ruinous. Spot’s not going to find the link for you, boys and girls, but that was the gist of it.

Now, Jack Balkin at Balkinization tells us about another really good reason to stick with the book and avoid the Kindle:

The New York Times reports that Amazon.com found out that the publisher of Kindle versions of George Orwell's books 1984 and Animal Farm decided that it didn't want to give the rights to a Kindle version. So Amazon.com used its wireless connection to each Kindle to delete copies on various owners' Kindles and refunded their money. You see, because of the wireless connection, Amazon.com knows what books are on your Kindle and it can delete them or modify them at will.

Apparently, the irony of deleting a book about Big Brother watching you was lost on both the publisher and Amazon.com.

This story is a perfect example of Jonathan Zittrain's analysis of "tethered appliances," that is, appliances like the Kindle and the iPhone that feature a combination of hardware and software services connected by a network. The manufacturer of the tethered appliance can easily discover what consumers are doing with the product, can restrict what end-users do with the hardware, and can alert the features of the product by remote control. It simultaneously offers the possibility of privacy invasions and retroactive alterations of features. The Kindle story shows that it also offers the possibility of private censorship.

They’re watching you, Professor. Bwahahahahahahah!

Unlike computers, where you have some ability to defend yourself with firewalls, cookie managers, and virus and spyware software; with the Kindle, apparently you’re standing there entirely in the buff.

After having had a little fun at the Professor’s expense, let Spot say this really is disturbing. A similar situation undoubtedly exists with all the iPhones and Blackberries (or should it be Blackberrys?) out there. Spot has also read rumors that Microsoft can and sometimes does modify your computer operating system even when you’ve set the update function NOT to download updates or to at least inform you before it does.

Here’s a bit more from Professor Balkin:

In a sense, this story is too good to be true. It is a vivid demonstration of the possible dangers of new forms of closed or tethered network services, and the way they allow companies to exercise control over end-users at a distance, without the knowledge of end users.

[  ]

For centuries, we have understood, or rather believed, that owning books came with certain rights, including the right to keep what we purchase and to use it, mark it up, and sell it in any way we like. We were free to purchase books and keep them in our homes, without telling anybody what we were reading, or indeed, what page we had last looked at. Amazon's Kindle system upends all of these expectations. Amazon knows what books you have on your Kindle, and, in theory, it can even know the book you are currently reading, and even the last page you've read on each of the books you own. It can delete books, add books, or modify books, all without your permission. It can change features of the Kindle at will. In upending our assumptions about our freedoms to read books in private and use them as we see fit, Amazon threatens many of the basic freedoms to read we have come to expect in a physical world. If we want to preserve these freedoms, we will have to reform copyright law and privacy law to control the new intermediaries who can control us at a distance.

Jack Balkin is a professor of law at Yale.

Update: Forgot the link to the Balkinization post; sorry.

Technorati Tags: King Banaian,Amazon,Kindle,copyright law,George Orwell,Jack Balkin

Frank Ricci gets him some empathy

The case of Ricci v. DeStefano is getting some play today in the hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the Supreme Court. It beggars the imagination to watch the Republican senators, who have been wailing all week about Sotomayor’s empathy and her “wise Latina” remark then complain about the decision in the Ricci case because it discriminated in favor of blacks. But in addition to Frank Ricci, who were the plaintiffs in the case? According to the linked New York Times article:

The New Haven case, in which a group of white and Hispanic firefighters sued the city after the results of a promotional exam were thrown out because black firefighters did not fare well, has emerged as one of the most contentious issues in the hearings.

If she was such a Hispanic homer, wouldn’t she have voted the other way? Let’s see if any of the bright lights on the Democratic side of the committee figure this out.

In the meantime, let Spot quote from Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford in Slate, commenting on the case before the decision was accounted by the current Supreme Court reversing the 2nd Circuit panel that Judge Sotomayor was on:

New Haven's decision may sound like blatant racial favoritism, but in fact the city rejected the firefighter exam because the test violated Title VII, the federal civil rights law that prevents discrimination in employment. Title VII requires employers to consider the racial impact of their hiring and promotion procedures in order to prevent discrimination that's inadvertent as well as intentional. Ricci's claim is that the city's effort to comply with Title VII is itself race discrimination (under the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution and under Title VII itself).

This argument would undermine an important part of modern civil rights law. Some of Sotomayor's critics argue that, in the era of Obama, we no longer need such proactive policies to promote racial equality. But racism isn't a thing of the past yet. In fact, we haven't corrected the lingering effects of racism that is in the past. It's precisely because overt racism is no longer the main impediment to racial equality that the law against inadvertent discrimination is arguably now the most important part of civil rights law.

The professor tells about the two ways to violate Title VII:

There are two ways an employer can discriminate according to Title VII. He can intentionally discriminate by making race a factor in employment decisions—choosing a black candidate over a white candidate because he is black. Frank Ricci claims the city intentionally discriminated when it threw out the exam results because most of the people who scored high were white. An employer can also discriminate by using a selection process that has a disparate impact—in other words, that screens out a particular group for no good reason. New Haven claims that the test it tossed out had a disparate impact. Eight black, 25 white, and eight Hispanic firefighters took New Haven's test for promotion to captain; three black, 16 white, and three Hispanic candidates passed. Nineteen black, 43 white, and 15 Hispanic firefighters took the test to become lieutenant; six black, 25 white, and three Hispanic candidates passed. This result counts as discriminatory under the rules of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. New Haven was right to worry about the possibility of a lawsuit from black firefighters if it accepted the results of the tests.

But not only that:

The city was also in a bind because its agreement with the firefighters union required that the exam count for 60 percent of the decision about whether to promote each candidate and because a city charter rule required that every promotion go to one of the three top-scoring candidates. These rules magnified the disparate racial impact of the exam—no black candidate and only one Hispanic candidate was eligible for promotion, even though several of them passed the test. More reason for the city to worry about a lawsuit by the African-Americans who were to be passed over.

As Spot has written before — but won’t bother to link to, because this is a better explanation — the city of New Haven was damned if it did, and damned if it didn’t. But conservatives want to portray the decision as a hideous mistreatment of white people by Sonia Sotomayor. But come on, people, even the sitting Justices in Ricci were split:

KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C.J., and SCALIA, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined.  SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion.  A LITO, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which SCALIA and THOMAS, JJ., joined.  GINSBURG, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, SOUTER, and BREYER, JJ., joined.

The decision in Ricci does take a big chunk our of disparate impact jurisprudence under Title VII:

But, properly applied, disparate impact law doesn't excuse poor performance, nor does it require quotas. Instead it smokes out hidden bigotry and requires employers to avoid unnecessary segregation of the work force. Suppose an employer wants to keep women out. Knowing that he can't just put a "women need not apply" sign in his window, he might use a proxy, such as a weightlifting test, knowing that women on average have less upper body strength than men. The law against disparate impact discrimination is designed to reveal such hidden bias. Now, suppose an employer has no desire to discriminate against women but uses a weightlifting test simply because he thinks, all other things equal, stronger employees are better than weaker ones. Disparate impact law also prohibits this: It requires the employer to reconsider job qualifications that favor one race or sex, unjustifiably.

Of course, there might be a good reason to prefer people who are physically stronger—or who score higher on a written exam. The law gives employers a chance to prove that the discriminatory criteria are job-related. The idea, then, isn't to make an employer hire less qualified women or minorities over more qualified men or whites. It's to make sure the employer is testing for job qualifications, not unrelated ones.

That’s why the city of New Haven threw out the test; it was not clear that is actually picked the best people for promotion, and it had a disparate effect on minorities. And very importantly, it didn’t mean that Frank Ricci was passed over for promotion; he could still be considered under new, presumably fairer, criteria. What’s so bad about that?

Technorati Tags: Title VII,Frank Ricci,Sonia Sotomayor,Senate Judiciary Coimmittee,New Haven,disparate impact

Sen. Jefferson Beauregard [Jackson Stuart] Sessions

Alexander Tsesis, a professor of constitutional law at Loyola University School of Law, had an excellent guest post on Balkinization last evening. After making the observation that concern over the first “this or that” was hardly new in Supreme Court nomination history — referring to the first Catholic, Jewish, and black nominees — he makes a good observation about what each nominee brings to the Supreme Court:

Is it really true that judges do not bring personal sensitivities to the bench? In a 1927 Harvard Law Review article, the future Justice and then Professor Felix Frankfurter asserted that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses lead to differences of opinion that require some personal interpretation. As he put it, “The words of these provisions are so unrestrained by their intrinsic meaning as well as by their history and traditions, that each Justice is impelled to depend upon his own controlling conceptions, which are in turn bound by his experience and imagination, his hopes and fears, his faith and doubts.” There is little doubt in my mind, for instance, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinion in the Virginia Military Institute gender discrimination case, VMI, or Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s dissent in the Nguyen deportation case demonstrate a personal consciousness of gender discrimination. Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in Virginia v. Black, a case that in part upheld a Virginia cross burning statute, seems to include his personalized understanding of the KKK’s terror, having himself been raised in segregated Georgia.

To pretend that judges are mere vending machines is, of course, ridiculous. Professor Tsesis also quotes Senator Jefferson Beauregard [Jackson Stuart] Sessions (R – AL) from the hearings yesterday:

The accusations made against Sotomayor are not the overt racism of the past. Instead, the charge is that she will not be objective because she is sensitive to Hispanic issues. In the words of Senator Jeff Sessions at the confirmation hearings on July 14, 2009, “Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it’s not law. In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom.”

Here’s a guy who was nixed by the same Judiciary Committee some twenty years ago for his insensitivity to race:

In 1986, Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship by President Ronald Reagan. The nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which refused by a 9-9 vote to let the nomination come to the Senate floor for a vote. Sessions' opponents accused him of "gross insensitivity” on racial issues.  Sessions allegedly made a variety of comments that opponents pointed to, when he jokingly said that the Ku Klux Klan was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana. Sessions also allegedly referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" because they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

Sen. Jefferson Beauregard [Jackson Stuart] Sessions wants the people to get top drawer treatment — so long as they’re white. Here’s the Senator with some of his friends:

Cartoon from the Star Tribune

Sen. Jefferson Beauregard [Jackson Stuart] Sessions also gets tangled up again in the empathy/sympathy business that Spot discussed before. publius at Obsidian Wings, a pretty good legal scholar, had this to say about the “empathy” brouhaha yesterday:

The main point to remember is that Obama's "empathy" is not so much a positive vision of progressivism, but instead a critique of conservative jurisprudence (a topic upon which he has legitimate expertise).  Specifically, I think "empathy" is better understood as two distinct types of attacks on conservative jurisprudence:

The first is a higher-level theoretical attack.  Two of the main conservative schools of thought today -- originialism and textualism -- assume that consequences are generally irrelevant.  Law is the law, and how law affects the outside world is someone else's problem.  This conceit is particularly strong in originalism, which interprets constitutional text as it was understood at the time -- consequences be damned.

[ ]

In short, originalism often masks policy preferences behind a cloak of "this is what the law says."  In this respect, Obama's "empathy" comment simply makes explicit what originalism tries to hide -- that is, we should pay attention to consequences.

And here’s the second type of empathy that publius refers to:

The second sense in which "empathy" is an attack on conservative jurisprudence is less theoretical.  It's an attack on conservative judges' tendency to rule for business and the state, at the expense of employees, the environment, and the criminally accused.  To me, Obama was essentially saying that he wants judges who focus more specifically on how our courts' decisions affect these specific individuals.

Tell Spot, boys and girls, which group Sen. Jefferson Beauregard [Jackson Stuart] Sessions belongs to and wants his judges from:

There are a million different indeterminate areas of the law where multiple plausible outcomes exist.  And so if you've lived in a bubble world where the reality of discrimination, or harsh drug laws, or mountain top mining has never affected you personally, that isolation will necessarily (and even epistemically) influence your decision at these various points of indeterminacy.  If, however, you know these realities more viscerally (i.e., if you have "empathy"), then that too will influence your decision the other way. [and remember the comments about Justices Ginsburg, O’Connor, and Thomas, above]

Although Spot has already copied a lot of it, please go and read publius’ whole post; it and he deserve the traffic. He concludes with this, a sentiment in which Spot concurs:

To me, Obama was simply saying that courts have been coming down too often on the side of businesses and the state in recent years, while ignoring the real-world effects of those decisions on parties with less power and less political influence.

Technorati Tags: Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions,Sonia Sotomayor,Sandra Day O'Connor,Ruth Bader Ginsburg,Clarence Thomas,Felix Frankfurter,empathy

New contest here at the Cucking Stool!

Watch some coverage of the Judiciary Committee hearings on the Sotomayor confirmation: specifically watch Senator Lindsey Graham. Turn the sound down; watch Graham’s mannerisms and facial expressions. Now, tell Spot whose voice is playing in Spot’s head.

Some of you are disqualified from entering; you know who you are.

Technorati Tags: Sen. Lindsey Graham,Judiciary Committee Supreme Court nomination hearings,Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Jeff Fecke collects a Spotty!

Here’s Jeff today:

It’s easy to forget, a year later, just how difficult 2008 was on Democrats. From mid-March to mid-June, the party was fractured almost exactly down the middle between boosters of Hillary Clinton and devotees of Barack Obama. The snarling and back-biting was intense, viscious, mean-spirited, and brutal. Along the way, all sorts of dirt was dug up and flung with real intent to destroy. Anyone looking at the Democrats in late-May saw a party that was coming apart at the seams.

But a funny thing happened on the way to disaster. Both candidates — Clinton and Obama — became better candidates for the experience of the battle. Damaging information about Obama — the Wright kerfuffle chief among it — came up and was disposed of. Obama was forced to defend himself from withering attacks, and so was Clinton. Whichever candidate survived the marathon was in far better shape to take on John McCain, and when the dust settled, Barack Obama handled the Republican easily, cruising to victory in November.

Obama did this not in spite of the bruising primary battle, but because of a bruising primary battle.

Here’s Jeff on Sunday in Inevitable:

In 1990, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party put forth a sacrificial lamb for the United States Senate. The feisty college professor was entertaining, and the base loved him, but he obviously couldn’t beat the firmly entrenched and well-liked Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, I-R-Minn.

Jeff goes on to describe several wrong-headed nuggets of conventional political wisdom since then, including this last one:

In 2009, everyone knows that Matt Entenza will be the nominee for the DFL in 2010. He’s got a lot of money and a strong organization, and he will obviously steamroll anyone in his way. Anyone who says otherwise is dooming the party to defeat.

And this is Jeff last Friday in Anybody But Entenza:

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party is really bad at picking gubernatorial candidates. Not since 1986 — that’s 23 years ago — has a DFL candidate won election in a governor’s race, a five-cycle drought that’s almost impossible in a state as blue as Minnesota. The candidates we’ve put up since — Rudy Perpich in full Governor Goofy mode in 1990, John Marty in weak tea mode in 1994, Skip Humphrey in dynastic right mode in 1998, Roger Moe in Roger Moe mode in 2002, and Mike Hatch in full meltdown mode in 2006 — have been disaster piled upon disaster, a series of men (all men) who each, in his own special way, clearly deserved to lose their election.

It is tempting to write this off as an aberration, but it is not; in the history of Minnesota, there have been a total of five DFL governors. Two of them are Rudy Perpich; the others are Wendy Anderson, Karl Rolvaag, and Orville Freeman. By the time the next governor is sworn into office, Republicans will have held the Governor’s mansion for 42 of the past 72 years. Independents will have held it for four. DFLers have held it for 26 — and again, eleven of those years belong to Rudy Perpich.

This is not an aberration. This is a trend. [Spot might have called it a tradition, but he quibbles.]

Which brings us to Matt Entenza.

Excellent posts, each one of them, and well worth a Spotty (tm) for the series. Congratulations, Jeff.

Remember, boys and girls, a Spotty is awarded to the author of an op-ed piece, a letter to the editor, or a blog post or comment that Spot wishes he had written himself.

And excuse Spot for burying the lede.

Technorati Tags: Spotty (tm) award,Jeff Fecke,Matt Entenza,Minnesota DFL

Drinking Liberally: “One Day in July”

On Thursday night this week, the 16th, Jim McGuire will be our guest at Drinking Liberally. Jim is one of the organizers of One Day in July – A Street Festival for the Working Class. The actual event will take place on Saturday, July 25th, in Minneapolis:

Youthful supporters of the struggles of union labor will gather again at a street festival and concert they are calling a "counter-Aquatennial" in the Minneapolis Warehouse District on Saturday, July 25 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the historic 1934 Teamster strikes.

This is just a block from where some of the greatest violence of the strike took place. You can read more about the event at the link, above.

Here’s the lede from a Minnesota Historical Society web article:

This strike, also known as the Minneapolis Teamsters' Strike and, alternately, sometimes called "a police riot," was one of the most violent in the state's history, and a major battle in Minnesota's "civil war" of the 1930s between business and labor.

We meet six to nine or so at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. We expect Jim around seven. Come and learn some history about the labor movement.

MHS photo

Technorati Tags: 1934 teamsters' strike,Jim McGuire,Drinking Liberally,331 Club

Conventional wisdom

Well one out of two ain’t bad. Both Jeff Fecke and Robin Marty have written recent posts about how, in the context of the Entenza campaign for governor, conventional wisdom is always conventional, but much less often wise.

Jeff provides a litany of many of the nuggets of conventional wisdom gone wrong in state and national politics since 1990:

In 1990, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party put forth a sacrificial lamb for the United States Senate. The feisty college professor was entertaining, and the base loved him, but he obviously couldn’t beat the firmly entrenched and well-liked Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, I-R-Minn.

And the list goes on, and on, and on. Jeff has a great example of the failure of the conventional wisdom in politics for almost every year from then until now. It’s a delicious trip down memory lane. Every supporter of an “inevitable” candidate should print out a copy of this post and tape it to to the refrigerator.

Robin picks a single analogy for comparison: the early Hillary Clinton race for president in the last election cycle.

I'd been working on this post ever since Fecke put up his Entenza piece, because I see a lot of parallels between Matt Entenza and the early Clinton campaign. Both candidates were seen as early on favorites due to finances, name recognition, and, in some ways, by this weird political idea of "it's my turn." Both candidates had extremely high positives, but for those who didn't like them, they REALLY didn't like them. Both have done things in campaigns that weren't necessarily officially unethical, but could be seen by their dissenters and coming dangerously near the line if not crossing it. Both were running early, long campaigns at a time when, let's be honest, a democrat really should have an excellent chance to win.

Couple these facts with the spectacular explosion and flame out of the 2006 Entenza campaign for attorney general, and it would be — in the words of one of Spot’s friends — mass ritual suicide to just annoint Matt Entenza the DFL candidate now.

No way; ain’t gonna happen.

Technorati Tags: Matt Entenza,Robin Marty,Jeff Fecke,Minnesota governor race,conventional wisdom

For the weekend gardeners among us

If you’ve been out mowing the lawn, or picking weeks, or even going to the Al Franken party all weekend, it might have escaped your attention that the Entenza Stampede has run into a bit of a gully. And if you look around the blogosphere and on Twitter, you can find a lot of dead buffalo.

As far as Spot can tell, it started last Thursday with the reporting of a fine by the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board levied against the Entenza campaign for taking an illegal contribution. This prompted Spot’s friend Jeff Fecke to say some things that have obviously been on his mind for a while in a post called Anybody But Entenza. Jeff’s lede describes the quadrennial suicide pact known as the Minnesota DFL:

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party is really bad at picking gubernatorial candidates. Not since 1986 — that’s 23 years ago — has a DFL candidate won election in a governor’s race, a five-cycle drought that’s almost impossible in a state as blue as Minnesota. The candidates we’ve put up since — Rudy Perpich in full Governor Goofy mode in 1990, John Marty in weak tea mode in 1994, Skip Humphrey in dynastic right mode in 1998, Roger Moe in Roger Moe mode in 2002, and Mike Hatch in full meltdown mode in 2006 — have been disaster piled upon disaster, a series of men (all men) who each, in his own special way, clearly deserved to lose his election.

Jeff doesn’t think much of the idea of running with Entelza either:

Today, Matt Entenza is running for governor, pushing hard on the idea that he’s already the de facto nominee. He’s got a lot of money, he’s got a strong organization, and he’s got a tailwind. You can hear the cognoscenti of the DFL nodding approvingly [if they are nodding hard enough to actually hear them, Spot supposes, that would really be something!]. It’s his time. He’s put in his time, paid his dues, that 2006 kerfuffle was almost three years ago, nobody remembers that.

That seems to sum up the current conventional thinking pretty well. Suicide pact: the 2010 edition. But the race hasn’t even begun, much less ended, and given the creeping sense of entitlement of the Entenza campaign, Jeff’s post was a most welcome wake-up call. It has sparked some intense discussion, some hard feelings, and attempts to invoke the code of omerta.

Thinking that Matt Entenza’s campaign finance problems and his weaknesses as a candidate would remain undiscovered by the Republicans is, however, an exercise in magical thinking worthy of J.K. Rowling.

So thanks, Jeff; we needed that.

Technorati Tags: Matt Entenza,Jeff Fecke,J.K. Rowling,Minnesota governor race,Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board

Insurance love

Yesterday, Spot linked to an interview with Howard Dean. Here’s more from that interview; Spot recommends it. It’s a good read:

ESQ: One thing I've never seen before is when you say [in his book], "Much is made of the 47 million without insurance, but nothing of the 25 million who have insurance but don't go and see the doctor." I've got one of those high-deductible catastrophic plans myself, so I don't go to the doctor unless I'm bleeding. Why have I never seen this argument before?

HD: Because 99 percent of the discussions among reporters, policy wonks, and politicians focus on the uninsured — which is, frankly, why nothing is passed. They don't focus on the majority of Americans who have health insurance that doesn't work.

ESQ: Boil it down, if you would. Why isn't it working even if you do have insurance?

HD: Because it's too expensive. The private sector can't manage costs. Health care is one of the few places — defense is another — that the government works more efficiently and more effectively than the private sector. That's just a fact.

ESQ: Why is that?

HD: Because there is no feedback in the private health-care system. When I was practicing medicine, nobody with substernal chest pain ever got off my examining table and said, "The guy down the street does it for $2,000 cheaper, I'll see you later." That's why we've had 40 years of costs that increase between two and three times the rate of inflation every single year. It's breaking our economic system. People are yelling and screaming about jobs going to China, but they're not yelling and screaming about jobs going to Canada. But they are. Because the right-wingers can scream and yell about rationing if they want, but economically their system works much better than ours does.

ESQ: I've seen nothing about that during this debate. But in the book you talk about GM and — or was it Toyota? — moving their new factories just across the bridge to Ontario to take advantage of the Canadian health-care system.

HD: Toyota did also, but GM and Ford were the big ones.

You see, boys and girls, it is often the people most loudly clamoring for “competition” who are trying to protect their place in the sun, or maybe they don’t want the sun to shine in, or, well, whatever. You get the idea. And it’s certainly true of the health insurance industry.

And those who love it or are married to it, if you follow Spot’s meaning.

Technorati Tags: health care,Howard Dean,public health insurance option

“I hope you have healthcare, young lady”

Star Tribune photo

“Because if you don’t, the woman to my left is probably not going to help you out.”

For the time being, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., appears to be undecided on some of the key particulars of health care reform. When asked specifically about the public plans, a single-payer system and financing options, Klobuchar's spokesman said that the senator was not available for comment.

"She is considering health reform options that include Health Benefit Gateways or Health Exchanges, but wants to analyze how the plans in their entirety will impact our state before signing on to a specific proposal," said Klobuchar spokesman Linden Zakula.

This gibberish is just another way of saying more money to the insurance industry.

“Health care reform” without a public option isn’t worth the effort according to Dr. Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic Party.

Technorati Tags: Amy Klobuchar,public health insurance option,R.T. Rybak

More about the 28K smackers!

Returning now to the thrilling days of, well, the day before yesterday:

Spot, you mean that Entenza was fined 28K+ while running to be the most senior law enforcement officer in the state?

Guess so, grasshopper; we’ll have to look into it.

And look into it Spot did. Here’s the decision of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board in 2006. Matt Entenza was self-financed for the Attorney General’s race in 2006. His campaign, Minnesotans for Matt, says it thought that meant at all campaign contribution limits were beneath consideration. Well, it didn’t say that exactly, but that’s in essence what it argued before the Board:

On behalf of the Committee, Mr. Weinblatt argues that the special source contribution limits imposed by Minnesota Statutes, section 10A.27, subdivision 11, do not apply to a candidate who has not agreed to a public subsidy under Minnesota Statutes, section 10A.25.  The Board does not agree, and has consistently found that contribution limits, including special source limits, apply to candidates regardless of their acceptance or refusal of the public subsidy agreement.

Spotty, what are “special source contributions?"

I’ll let the Board tell us grasshopper:

Candidate committees have an aggregate limit on contributions from certain types of contributors (special source limit) as provided in Minnesota Statutes, section 10A.27, subdivision 11.  This statute sets a yearly limit on the total amount of contributions that a candidate’s committee may receive from political committees, political funds, lobbyists, and large contributors.  A “large contributor” is defined by this statute as “…an individual, other than the candidate, who contributes an amount that is more than $100 and more than one-half the amount an individual may contribute”.  In 2005, the contribution limit from an individual to a candidate for the office of Attorney General was $200.  Therefore, a contribution from an individual of over $100 was from a “large contributor” and counted against the special source limit.

The Board describes Minnesotans’ for Matt’s infraction:

In 2005, candidates for the office of Attorney General were limited to $14,588 in aggregate contributions from special sources.

Of the $42,693.33 in special source contributions accepted by the Committee, $3,125 was from registered lobbyists, $3,700 was from political committees or political funds, and $35,868.33 was from individuals who contributed more than $100.  The total amount of these contributions exceeded the special source limit by $28,105.33.

The excess contributions were not returned within 60 days as required in Minnesota Statutes, section 10A.15, subdivision 3.  Therefore, the Committee accepted the excess contributions.

In addition to having to return the excess contributions, the Entenza campaign had to pay a fine equal to the excess contributions.

That had to smart, Spotty!

Yes, grasshopper, it most assuredly did. Spot isn’t sure of the amount of the biggest fine ever levied by the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, but he’s got a box of kibble that says this one is in the top five.

Technorati Tags: Matt Entenza,Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board

Drinking Liberally tonight!

Don’t forget, boys and girls, we have our regular meeting of Drinking Liberally tonight at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. Six to nine or so.

We have a big box of stuff from the mother ship at Living Liberally to start giving away: some books, a DL t-shirt, a Blue State Coffee baseball-style cap, some bumper stickers, etc. I’ll think of some games or riddles to determine the winners. The loot will be doled out over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,331 Club,Blue State Coffee

Another edition of “Matt Entenza knows”

Apparently he knows lobbyists. Campaign finance law? Not so much.

Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosures Board fined Entenza $500 for taking a campaign donation from  General Mills lobbyist Lee Anderson during the last session of the Legislature.

That’s a no-no.

And a pretty simple one for gubernatorial candidates to avoid: Is the Legislature in session? Yes ___  No ___. If the answer is “yes,” DON’T TAKE THE MONEY. You’d think the Man From Cheerios would know better, too.

The linked AP articles goes on to say:

Entenza has faced campaign finance issues before, including a 2006 fine of more than $28,000 accepting donations above state limits while running for attorney general.

Spot, you mean that Entenza was fined 28K+ while running to be the most senior law enforcement officer in the state?

Guess so, grasshopper; we’ll have to look into it.

Technorati Tags: Matt Entenza,General Mills lobbyist Lee Anderson,Cheerios,camaign finance law

Ken Avidor wins the Spotty!

Spot told Ken on Friday that he had won the Spotty (tm) in the Norm Coleman political epitaph contest. The contest was well fought, with several excellent entries. Before we get to the winner, here are a few of them:

Second runner up – submitted by Jeff Fecke

Paul Wellstone is a Democrat
And I am a Democrat
We must work together
To Re-elect
Bill Clinton

First runner up – submitted by Phoenix Woman

Play me off, Keyboard Cat!

Be sure to follow the link to the video.

Winner – Exhibition Category – Spot

The Accidental Senator

Ken’s winning entry is a send up of the famous Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias.

Here’s the winner:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Norm Coleman, (former) Senator of Senators:
Look on my political career, ye mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains (except professional hockey). Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level snows stretch far away.

On learning that he had won, Ken penned an illustration to accompany the epitaph.

Notice the wingtips. And the cross-country skier and the little snowman.

Congratulations all and thanks for your participation.

Technorati Tags: Norm Coleman,political epitaphs,Ken Avidor,Spotty award

The day after the day after

Note to self: Don't ever take on a client who makes you interrupt the holiday with your family to trudge into the office to write threatening letters about the people she thinks are saying nasty things about her.

Update: This is especially to be followed when said client hasn't paid her bills.

A winner has been chosen

A winner has been chosen in the Norm Coleman Political Epitaph Contest. The winner has been notified, and the award will be made public on Monday. Thank you all for your participation.

Technorati Tags: Norm Coleman,epitaphs,Spotty award.

There are still some worms left in that can

Do you remember, boys and girls, in the early days of the Bush Administration the secret energy task force headed by the Vice President? And how we all thought it was just trying to figure out a way around all those bothersome environmental types? But we were thinking way too small:

    It was believed then that Cheney's secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

    But Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

    In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up.

    Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

    The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, February 16, 2004]

That’s from a recent truthout.org article by Jason Leopold.

Now there’s an interesting word: “cooperate.”

Let’ see what that “cooperation” produced:

    It began more than six years ago with a lie, followed by another lie, and another lie, and then two more, ten more, a hundred, a thousand, an avalanche of lies from heads of state and hatchet men and well-fed media types more interested in getting the interview than in getting the facts.

    It began with lies like this:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

    - Dick Cheney, Vice President Speech to VFW National Convention 8/26/2002

    ... and this:

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

    - Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser CNN Late Edition 9/8/2002

    ... and this:

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

    - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 1/9/2003

    ... and this:

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."

    - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Remarks to the UN Security Council 2/5/2003

    ... and this:

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

    - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense ABC Interview 3/30/2003

    It began with George W. Bush standing before both houses of Congress and an international television audience for his January 2003 State of the Union address and stating that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al-Qaeda connections and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program.

Pretty impressive cooperation, wouldn’t you say, boys and girls? That’s William Rivers Pitt, also in truthout.org.

You know how people say You can’t make this up? Apparently you can.

Spot is sorry to drop this one on Dave on the eve of the Fourth of July, when Dave is undoubtedly busy sharpening and polishing his ornamental spear for the parade or some such, but these truthout.org articles came out in the last couple of days, and Spot thought they were interesting, especially taken together.

After he puts the silver polish away, Dave will no doubt deliver an impassioned defense, pointing out that many Democrats voted for the Iraq war and were therefore collaborators. We won’t quibble about the meaning or intent of the resolution that Congress passed, nor whether the Dems who voted in favor were collaborators or dupes, but you have to draw the conclusion that many anti-war types did early on: it was about oil.

Technorati Tags: Iraq war,WMD,war for oil,Bush Administration lies about Iraq,truthout.org

Passing the torch

Several weeks ago, Stewart, an emissary from the Lafayette, Indiana, Drinking Liberally chapter, came to Minneapolis and to our meeting and presented our chapter with a National Review paperweight, given to Dan Quayle and signed by William F. Buckley himself.

Stewart was inspired to bring the paperweight to us symbolize a kind of passing of the loser-Republican torch from Dan Quayle to Norm Coleman. As Stewart says, the paperweight was picked up in a thrift store shortly after Quayle’s mother dropped it off in a box of her son’s memorabilia.

We cemented a sister-chapter relationship with toast and jeers.

Spot has to wonder whether scenes of Laurie Coleman schlepping boxes of Norm memorabilia around to the thrift stores in town will now become a common sight.

I’ll put up a picture of the paperweight, with the Buckley inscription legible, in the sidebar when I get a chance.

Technorati Tags: Norm Coleman,Dan Quayle,William F. Buckley,Drinking Liberally

This one is toast

Here’s the headline on a recent KSTP web article:

Some Retailers Unaware of New Minn. Flag Law

Here’s a little about the law from the article:

American flags made in China? Some say it's unpatriotic, but it's also illegal in Minnesota. It's a new law that even some national retailers are not aware of.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS alerted the manager of the St. Paul Pier 1 store that the tiny, China-made U.S. flags it is selling for 95-cents are not allowed under a 2007 state law. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS checked four Twin Cities Pier 1 Imports and found the flags in all of them.

In a statement to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, Pier 1 said "We are unaware of the Minnesota state law that you brought to our attention. We will investigate this issue and make adjustments in order to comply with any applicable Minnesota state law."

"If anything that should be made in this country, it's the flag," said DFL Rep. Tom Rukavina, who introduced the bill. He hopes other companies will get the message too.

"They should have known the law. The department of commerce or somebody should enforce the law and make sure they get a little slap on the wrist so it doesn't happen at another store," said Rukavina.

Sorry, Tom, and Spot really means sorry, but you can’t restrict interstate commerce that way. There is absolutely no legitimate regulatory purpose. Want flame resistant flags to keep protesters from burning themselves? Then write a law addressed to the flammability of flags. Want the flags to be reflective so that motorists will see late-night Fourth of July revelers along the roads in the dark? Then require them to be reflective. These might still be impermissible burdens on interstate commerce, but you could at least make them with a straight face.

But the state of Minnesota may not have a foreign policy. Foreign and interstate commerce is regulated by the feds. The Interstate Commerce Clause could take care of this law with a small wave of the Mighty Paw. [The Mighty Paw is the Invisible Hand’s opposite number.]

In fact, this would be a good one for Lee McGrath’s Institute for Justice. No actual civil liberties are involved here: just dollars — or maybe yuan — yearning to breathe free. Perfect.

Technorati Tags: Interstate Commerce Clause,foreign-made flags,Institute for Justice

I vas only following ze orders

When it gets later in the evening and Spot wants a post to show some effort for the day, Scott Horton’s No Comment is usually a good place to turn for something to pass along.

There have been several posts over the last few years here at the Cucking Stool about the Nuremberg Defense: I am not guilty of war crimes because I was following the orders of my superiors. Although the Nuremberg Tribunal convened after the Second World War held that it was no defense, it continues to be raised by persons trying to shift the blame for their conduct to others.

Horton tells us about one of the latest examples:

According to a translation by the Associated Press, [former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon] Lady has set up a defense that sounds remarkably familiar: he was just following orders.

”I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors,” Lady was quoted as saying by Il Giornale. “It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair. I find consolation in reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was at war with terrorism, and that I could not discuss the orders I received,” he was quoted as saying. “I have worked in intelligence for 25 years, and almost none of my activities in these 25 years were legal in the country in which I was carrying them out.”

Lady was apparently against the action that was taken — kidnapping an alleged al Qaeda operative off the streets of Milan in one of those special renditions you’ve heard so much about — but Horton reminds us that it really doesn’t make any difference:

From a number of reports, Lady was intensely critical within CIA circles of the proposed effort to snatch Abu Omar. As it turns out, Italian prosecutors were on the verge of arresting and prosecuting Abu Omar before the CIA interceded. Chief Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro stated that the criminal case against Abu Omar was demolished by the CIA action. But Lady opposed the action, noting that it would be understood by the Italians as a crime and would badly damage the relationship with a NATO ally which was supporting the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Lady assessed the situation with perfect accuracy. It’s a shame that his bosses in Langley didn’t listen to him. However, “only following orders” is also known as the Nuremberg defense, and the problem is that it is no defense at all. [Spot’s italics]

Unlike the United States, persons can be tried in Italy in absentia, as Lady and 25 other Americans are over this affair.

Technorati Tags: Abu Omar,al Qaeda,in abstentia,Robert Seldon Lady,Nuremberg Defense,Scott Horton