Free Law

Malamud gets some press.  With the current climate being favorable to free content and having some heavy hitters like Google finally doing some lobbying for looser copyright restrictions, it looks like Malamud's effort to offer free law might be one that finally works.  (Though I don't know if he's helping himself with his seal logo, Legoman dramas, or other Schoolhouse Rock-looking characters.)

 

He definitely cares about this stuff.  He was the only speaker at this year's AALL conference who didn't put me to sleep, and he was even more excited about his project when I asked him about it at a party.

I thought, though, that it was pretty obvious that states lost the ability to claim copyright for their laws years ago.  Isn't this a democracy?

McCain's Creepy Smile

McCain's facial antics during the debate probably hurt him a lot. This has been mentioned, but I don't know if it has been mentioned enough. There seems to be a reluctance on the part of the media to really analyze how visual perceptions affect the campaign, even as they are completely willing to dive headfirst into a stewing vat of racial analysis. It's really probably time that they stop pretending to have qualms about any sort of campaign coverage.

To paraphrase my dad about the faces McCain was making while Obama spoke, "You can't do shit like that in front of a jury and win."

Obama and McCain on Pakistan

I thought that both were good in their remarks on Afgh-Pak in the debate on Friday. Both were also bad. Obama's hard-line approach on Afghanistan is right. His support for building a stronger democratic state in Pakistan, rather than just supporting whoever is in power there, is right. His implication that Musharraf wasn't even trying to help us and his assumption that any Pakistani government is able to be more than 70% allied with us without toppling is wrong. McCain's realistic view that if Pakistan is even trying to help us that is the best they can do is right. His defense of our blind support for Musharraf is wrong as is his declaration that Pakistan was a "failed state" before Musharraf took power. It's not Afghanistan. It's not the Congo. Just because the government was fucked up that does not mean that there were no roads, military, or food. McCain's idea of having a "surge" in Afghanistan is also wrong, as it's estimated that this would require 500,000 troops. It sounds like McCain would be more likely to stop the cross-border raids, but they didn't address the question directly.  However, we should temporarily stop the cross-border raids.

We are ruining our ability to destroy Al Qaeda by continuing these raids right now. Pakistan is pissed at us for it. They think they can handle things there on their own. They say that they can get Bajaur under control in two months. We should say, fine, you have two months. We won't cross the border for two months, and if Bajaur is under control then we'll stay on our side while you continue to fight. But, if it's not under control in two months, then we're really coming in and you're going to like it.

By the way, a system of tunnels? I think I've heard that somewhere before. . .

Also, I think that in light of how embarrassed we were to have Palin meeting world leaders, this Pakistani's embarrassment that their president was hitting on her (less than a year after his wife was gruesomely assassinated no less!) is kind of funny.  But it actually sounds like we should trust Zardari, even with his "colorful" Swiss corruption investigations.  That's because he wants to take on the extremists, and he's fueled by revenge.

Letterman on McCain

Say 'fuck you' to the Times and Post all you want, but don't snub Letterman or Leno (what do they think swing voters do at 11:30 anyway?). (via Ambinder)

Cell Phone Polling

Ambinder picks up on a problem I was angry about a year ago. Polls that don't call cell phones hurt Obama's numbers. But now that Ambinder's said it, it's official.

Banning the UFC?

Unfortunately anyone who would vote for Obama because of this would probably never ever remember to vote.

TalQaeda: Sources of Funding?

The militants are using everything they have to hold their ground, the officials said, adding that they have been surprised by the militants’ resistance and the sophistication of their tactics, weapons and communications systems.

“They have good weaponry and a better communication system” than the Pakistani military, said one senior official.

“Even the sniper rifles they use are better than some of ours,” the official said. “Their tactics are mind-boggling and they have defenses that would take us days to build. It does not look as though we are fighting a ragtag militia. They are fighting like an organized force.”

They can't be talking about weapons and supplies leftover from when we supported the Mujahadeen. So where do they get this stuff? How do they afford it? We may have a lot of limitations on what we can do effectively in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but tracing and stopping this flow of money and supplies strikes me as something that we should be able to do.

Thank You Chris Rock

here


(also screw Gawker commenters)

Awesome Baseball Jerseys

There was a time when it was really great to see Rod Beck come in to close a game for the Giants, because he looked like a total badass and got saves seemingly with his balls alone (he threw about 85 mph). And also because that was around the time the other Beck's Odelay was released, and the TV crew would inevitably show another fat drug addict in the stands wearing a Beck jersey, all of which gave the impression that a lot of great cultural forces were at play in the ninth inning. (Rod Beck tragically died of a cocaine overdose last year at the age of 38.)

In that spirit, the Mets have a minor league pitcher named Tobi Stoner, who they should bring up just to spur jersey sales, and the Cubs have an outfielder named Felix Pie.

Steve Coll on Pakistan

One of the great things about the blogosphere is that, simply by having an email address and becoming obsessed with a particular topic for a couple of days, one can, for free, give writing assignments to a Pulitzer-winning expert on that topic.

Here is Steve Coll's thoughtful post on the current situation in Pakistan (I know that I'm the reader he mentions because he quickly responded to my request by saying that he would work on it, and because who else was sending emails like that last weekend?)

Above all, he reminds that we are not in a struggle against Pakistan. We are in a struggle with many of their democratic forces, and sometimes with their military, against Al Qaeda and the local Taliban.

bombing the election

Al Qaeda may be planning attacks to influence the election, and for once I thank God that we are such an ill-informed, narcissistic nation, because they are said to not be capable of striking in the U.S.

Doesn't bin Laden know that we don't give a shit about what happens elsewhere? On the most recent anniversary of 9/11, we were heard congratulating ourselves that there had not been another terrorist attack. As though London and Madrid do not exist. Our embassy in Yemen was bombed last week. How many Americans are even aware that this happened? Al Qaeda would have to kill tens of thousands in some other country to get us to notice, and I don't think they are capable of that yet.

Giving In?

There seems to be growing support for packing it in in Afghanistan. And this is not coming from peaceniks. It's from military analysts like Bob Baer (who happens to be the inspiration for Clooney's character in Syriana) and T.X. Hammes, in the article I noted last week (he was in the Marines for 30 years). (It is also coming from liberals who know their stuff, like this guy, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, who I heard on the radio last night.)

Basically, the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan, which is a place that has never had a government and has in the past shredded both the Soviet and British militaries. If we leave Afghanistan and the Taliban retakes it, Al Qaeda will probably have a haven there again, however they currently have a haven in Pakistan, which we are not making any headway toward and further attempts at doing so could unleash a hell of war with Pakistan and/or civil war in Pakistan. (Worst case scenario: broad-scale regional war between the U.S./India/Israel and everyone else, where everyone else is secretly funded a little by China, while Russia takes the opportunity to retake its neighbors; i.e. World War.)

So, the thinking goes, with consequences like that, it might not be worth it to go after the leaders of a completely decentralized loose terror network.

On the other hand, people like Hitchens (of course), are saying that this is the fight of our lives and we should kill and breath fire and win this war, consequences be damned.

There are good arguments on both sides, and I'm really conflicted. So it will be interesting to see if Obama stands by his call for continuing unilateral attacks in Pakistan and stepping up our commitment in Afghanistan in the debate on Friday, even after the bombing in Islamabad. He probably will, just as McCain will continue with anti-Iran rhetoric even when that is a conflict we definitely can't afford. But, as Katrina vanden Heuvel said on the radio last night, a commitment to winning in Afghanistan/Pakistan would be such a drain on an Obama presidency that it would probably prevent him from implementing domestic reforms. The question is whether that would be worth it.

Overall, sending Cal Ripkin, Nolan Ryan, and Tony Gwynn to Islamabad to play exhibition cricket looks like a better idea every day.

Palin Voters

These are the up to 60,000 who came to see her today. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Fuck You Bush/Cheney

How many wars do we intend to lose?

Going Public?

Don't know about the Coldplay, but Roger Cohen has a good thought, that the public sphere should take advantage of the fact that all of our country's smartest college grads will suddenly not be going into investment banking.

Obama has already shown an ability to get young people to commit themselves to public service through rhetoric alone. If he were able to actually enhance salaries, recruiting, and resources, he would be in a position to really remake the federal government for the better.

Inside Wasilla

Courtesy of Tom.

Swimming to Nowhere is a viable alternative to a bridge.

And sure, furniture commercials are crazy everywhere in this country (especially Boston), but somehow they're even more insane in Wasilla.

Linda Cohn is More Qualified

Cool Off on Afghanistan?

A really interesting post by an expert, seeming to suggest that beefing up our presence in Afghanistan might not be a great idea, apparently because it's always been a lawless dusty place and will probably remain so regardless of what we do, so with Al Qaeda in Pakistan, why bother with Afghanistan and risk destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan in the process?

But this strikes me as a little too hands off and seems to rely on the assumption that it won't require continued action to prevent the Taliban from retaking Afghanistan.

Pakistan--Reading Tea Leaves

It would appear to be big news that Pakistan now wants it to look like they are safeguarding Al Qaeda and that we may have to go to war with them to get to Monolith Base up in Waziristan. But it's hard to tell what is really going on here. Either the new government has no control over the military, large elements of which may actually want to go to protect Al Qaeda and go to war with us, or the new government is making a show of repelling Americans because they were elected to be a little anti-American, but they will start cooperating with us again in a month or so. After all, Pakistan is a country with a flair for the dramatic. Consider that Musharraf is basically their most successful leader ever because he has not yet been executed or forced to leave the country. So I hope it's just a show.

Qualified to be President . . . of Cabo

A major party vice presidential candidate seriously named her child as a tribute to Van Halen . . . at the age of 44 . . . after she was already a governor?

Trig Paxson Van -- Apparently Trig has two norse meanings – “true” and “brave victory.” “Paxson is the name of an Interior lake popular among snow machiners.” No explanation in the book on the name “Van,” but AP wrote that it was “an homage to the rock band Van Halen,”

If Obama had a child named Sphinx Cleveland Tupac, how do you think that would have gone over so far?

Worse Than Nixon?

After reading Spiro Agnew's Wikipedia page, I've come to the conclusion that comparing Palin to Agnew gives her too much credit. She is not nearly as likable or qualified as Nixon's hatchet man, who worked with the benefit of Safire-penned alliteration and had to resign after pleading no contest to accepting bribes while he was the governor of Maryland. However it is true that, like Palin, Agnew's electoral role was to rile up right wing extremists and bash the media, and he was the last vice president who, like Palin, had not met with a foreign leader before being elected.* (He is probably the only vice president since the invention of air travel not to have met a foreign leader before being elected.)


*No one seems to be certain that this is true about Agnew, but it seems to be a fair assumption.

Obama, Fred Thompson, Anti-Elitism, Anti-Intellectualism, and HLR

In describing and counting his "executive experience," Obama is and has been entirely hamstrung by the ridiculous and embarrassing national trend toward a weird anti-elitism that hates the highly educated but still praises greed and obscene personal wealth. Fred Thompson said recently that Obama is running based only on the experience of running his current campaign. And this is tough, because there is some truth to it--in that, when asked about executive experience, Obama rightly first points to the extraordinary campaign he has managed. Since McCain was tortured in Vietnam, is old, and has been in the Senate for a long time, this is seen to hurt Obama even though McCain has no executive experience whatsoever and is a man to whom you would not readily lend the keys to your boat. If the country weren't so insane right now, Obama would easily be able to point to being the President of Harvard Law Review as also being good executive experience. As the joke about this went when Obama's campaign was only speculation, he's already held the most competitive, politically-charged office in the country.

ManBearSeal

The problem with this blatant hypocrisy and lie is that it's much easier and more humorous to picture a bear fathering and refusing to pay child support for a human child than it is to picture a seal doing so.

Screw It

Obama should run an ad saying that McCain wants to raise your taxes.
(Based on the the truth known by economists, including Larry Summers, who just said this on TV, that a deficit is really a tax increase on future generations.)

And then he should run an ad about how McCain got a $2 billion earmark to give Arizona an all-nude, pederast-staffed waterpark with a signature water slide called The Sodomizer. Because fuck it, you gotta fight fire with fire.

Update:
Others agree with me.

Christianist

Hertzberg uses the phrase. It may be on the list of new dictionary words at year's end.

The Audacity of Absurdity

piggy

Survey: 80% of Mets Fans Condone Domestic Violence

Check out the comments on this article.

Book Banning

I only bring this up because it's all over the law librarian listservs with shit like this:

Why such anger, such hostility, such downright nastiness? The whole thing is a hoax, a lie, put together and propagated by angry folks whose smear tactics appear to be bringing McCain and Palin more and more voters.

Charles Bronson would be proud: it’s a death wish.

and this

No wonder john mccain wont have any pics taken with his mommy (who actually looks more his age than his wife) as most people would think it was his wife....and then he would have to be saying over and over that's not my wife that's my mommy!!!!!!

Sorry for the digression....but do you think his mommy OR his Wife would ban all the books on the list?????

Of course librarians get worked up over potential censorship, as though anyone ever reads books. But there is a broader point to this story, and that's what a Palin vice presidency might look like. She has no regard for the separation of church and state, and worse, seems to favor the type of Bush/Cheney tests of loyalty that result in a dumbass like Alberto Gonzalez becoming AG and 90% of Justice being hired out of a law school run by Pat Robertson which will admit anyone.

When McCain and Obama became their parties' nominees I felt better about the state of our government, because I thought that either would take the separation of powers seriously and do business transparently and in the open, instead of constantly keeping the country on the verge of a constitutional crisis, as Bush has done. This is more than I can say for my feelings about Clinton and Romney. But now Palin is making me question this most basic piece of McCain's integrity. Would he, in fact, keep us in the land of pissing on congressional subpoenas in one giant, continuous stream of putrid executive urine for four or eight years?

Bush's Plan

Is the Republicans' plan to just have Bush enact all of Obama's foreign policy ideas while he's still in office because it will make continuing to criticize him so much kind of awkward and put Obama in what everyone knows is really bad company? ("He's unfit to be president--see, even Bush followed his ideas!")

Democrats: Still Hampered by Reality

Obama says of McPalin's claims, "Words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up."

However, the Republicans know that they can. Because pretending that they only get called on it because the media is out to get them is a good formula.

A lot of this election is going to hinge on whether the American public wants to get real or continue to be full of shit. And that really scares me.

Alaska

It's time to disabuse people of their romantic, "Into the Wild" image of Alaska and let them know that economically, it's closer to Nigeria, Venezuala, and Iran than it is to other U.S. states

Palin linked Alaska's state budget to the idea that oil prices will stay very high. Good idea or no, how do people in the other 49 feel about that?

That said, by other measures, Alaska is harder to govern than a smaller, more settled realm in the Lower 48. With vast distances, large numbers of indigenous peoples and a narrowly based extraction economy — with a handful of giant multinational oil corporations dominating the game — some economists say a country like Nigeria might be an apter comparison.

Mitt

Romney had the best speech last night. This is a pretty fair description.

Mitt Romney seems to use the word "liberal" in a randomly perjorative fashion. I half expect him to say "I was eating breakfast this morning, and my hash browns were all liberal. I sent them back and told the waitress to bring me some good, conservative hash browns.

He also seems to think that giving American citizens habeas corpus rights is some sort of crazy scheme dreamed up by liberal justices intent on destroying America's proud tradition of secret trials and warrantless arrests.

Page 232

Shoots escaped endangered tiger with tranquilizing dart, strokes tiger's cheek, praises U.S.'s well-meaning but futile effort to protect tiger from extinction:

Georgia, Ukraine, and every country whose name ends in "stan" will soon be under Soviet--I mean Russian--control again, and there is little you can do to stop it because I, Vladimir Putin, am a badass.

Nevermind, Palin's Not Helping Him

It contains examples of her sometimes confrontational tenure and colorful details of an ordinary woman who was thrilled to meet Ivana Trump and who began the process of opening a marketing company whose name — Rouge Cou — was supposed to be a French version of “redneck.”

In 1993, Sarah Palin used a drift gillnet to
harvest salmon from the Bristol Bay area without an annual permit. Palin plead guilty to the Criminal
Negligence charge.(pdf)

The Palin Play

which everyone (including me for the most part) is saying has a bit of downs itself may actually be straight-up Rove. Remember when he put anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot for something like 38 state constitutions? That was 2004. Remember how that turned out?

McCain already gets all the warmonger votes on his own. So there was no need for him to add Lieberman or Ridge. Pawlenty was a boring choice. One can now picture McCain sort of doing a masturbating pantomine and smirking as one of his aides tried to convince him to pick Pawlenty. And McCain really hates Romney on a personal level. So he had a choice of picking a moderate and trying to pick up a ton of independent votes that, let's face it, are going to go to Joe Biden, or picking a social conservative and trying to mobilize the religious. Huckabee could have become too powerful and completely alienated business interests. So, how about a governor who, during the campaign, will demonstrably decide that her family will have two babies other people might have aborted?

And now their campaign can sit and wait until someone they can tie to Obama in some way says that Palin should have had the kids aborted. This is a flap that is coming.


But I don't think it will work.

Everyone's Favorite Pundit

who competes in footraces against Dick Bavetta

Finishing My Coffee

I love this headline . . .

I'm in town to play the Dolphins, you dumbass