G.O.P. Candidate Drops Out of NY-23 Congressional Race

Re: Important Races to Watch - NY-23

Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava suspended her campaign in the special election for a congressional seat in upstate NY. As we discussed in class, Scozzafava was facing two other major candidates: Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Owens and Hoffman previously held approval ratings near 35%, but the withdrawal of Scozzafava should theoretically boost Hoffman's support as the RNC now supports the Conservative candidate, and Hoffman's campaign "will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.”

The New York Times reports that some Republicans think that "Ms. Scozzafava’s decision..[is] likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate." Under this view, Scozzafava's withdrawal is "a clear victory for conservatives in the [Republican] party at a time when there has been a pitched battle among party leaders over whether Republicans needed to change their ideological appeal."

The House Health Bill

(Photo by Jesse Blumenthal)

From The Politico:

It runs more pages than War and Peace, has nearly five times as many words as the Torah, and its tables of contents alone run far longer than this story. The House health care bill unveiled Thursday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. With an estimated 10-year cost of $894 billion, that comes out to about $2.24 million per word.

Unfinished Business

From the Census Bureau:

The Census Bureau counts students where they attend college or university through a variety of methods.

• Students residing in group quarters, such as a dormitory, residence hall, sorority or fraternity house, will receive census forms between April 1 and May 21, 2010. Each student should complete and return a form. Residence Life and Housing Staff work with Census Bureau employees to distribute and collect these forms.
• In March 2010, census forms will be delivered or mailed by street name and house or apartment to students living off campus. All students living at a particular off-campus address are considered part of one household, so only one form should be completed. It should include information about all the people living at that address. The form should be returned in the U.S. mail envelope provided.
• Students who commute to school and reside full-time at their parents’ or guardians’ household address should be counted on their parents’ or guardians’ household form.

The Army Chaplaincy has an official journal, which last year addressed a topic that came up in class:

The most publicly unpalatable aspect of chaplain ministry is its fairly recent support of fringe spiritual or religious groups which stand well apart from the mainstream religious life of America. One group is Wicca (i.e. witches). Despite the congressional grand-standing associated with the Army chaplains’ support of Wiccan soldier worship at Fort Hood, Texas in 1999, this author has no reason to believe that the Army Chaplaincy will not have at least one Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, or Satanist in its future ranks. The Constitution’s protection of religious freedom and simultaneous proscription of “an establishment of religion” certainly places a legal and moral obligation upon the Government to provide for the free exercise of all religious beliefs, not just those acceptable to certain elected officials. This is the central rationale for installation chaplains’ accommodation and support of Wiccan and other groups on military bases. In the case of all four groups mentioned above, the traditional monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is absent from their belief systems. They may choose to serve Patria, but certainly not Deo.

Gallup Poll on Race

Those writing an update on the race relations chapter might take a look at a new Gallup survey:

A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that a solution to America's race-relations problem will eventually be worked out -- a figure that is roughly the same as those Gallup found in the years prior to last fall's historic election of Barack Obama as president. Responses to this long-standing trend today are almost exactly where they were in December 1963, when Gallup first asked this question. Fifty-five percent of Americans in 1963 were hopeful that a solution to the race-relations problem would eventually be worked out. Now, some 46 years later, the "hopeful" percentage is an almost identical 56%. In short, despite all that has happened in the intervening decades, there is scarcely more hope now than there was those many years ago that the nation's race-relations situation will be solved.

MORE HERE

Public Policy and Federalism

"Flakes of Danger"

For many big-city mayors, "a paralyzing blizzard or ice storm is the most serious crisis they ever face." This article discusses how various political careers have been destroyed because of bad responses to snow storms. Denver's had a few instances of this, but Mayor Hickenlooper was able to get reelected after a slow response to a storm a few years ago by joking that the storms are "politically motivated."

Read more here: http://www.governing.com/node/998/

Federalism and Public Policy

• Federalist 39
• Federalist 45
• Federalist 46

Federalism and medical marijuana.

Attitudes toward government waste

Teaching in Texas

Re: Class discussion on the existence (or lack thereof) of teachers' unions in Texas

A quick Google search reveals:

1) There are teachers' unions in Texas

2) The unions have much less power than their counterparts in other states -

They lack influence because collective bargaining and striking are illegal for public employees in Texas, as the Texas Government Code Section 617.002 states, “An official of the state or of a political subdivision of the state may not enter into a collective bargaining contract with a labor organization regarding wages, hours, or conditions of employment of public employees.”

Relatedly:

A column by David Brooks in the Thursday New York Times explores some of the recent conflicts between teachers' unions and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. He writes on unions "dogmatically trying to keep bad teachers in the classrooms" but also implies there is evidence of "perestroika...within the education establishment" regarding education reform.

Skippy's List

Re: Organizational Culture of the U.S. Army

A humorous look at some things people in the Army are not allowed to do:

Including:

24. Must not tell any officer that I am smarter than they are, especially if it’s true.

63. Command decisions do *not* need to be ratified by a 2/3 majority.

83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with “I recently had an experience I just had to write you about….”

192. The proper response to a briefing is not “That’s what you think”.

The site = Skippy's List

AL Franken's Amendment

The Daily Show does a segment on Al Franken's amendment requiring the government to terminate contracts with contractors who do not allow employees to sue in the event of a disagreement. This amendment is a response to a case where a 19 year-old employee of KBR was gang raped by coworkers in Iraq and was later told that her contract prevented her from suing KBR for reparations.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Bureaucracy

Public Sector Unions

• Largest is AFSCME
• Largest federal is AFGE
• Others
• Political role

Regulation

• Review administrative rules from 10/12 blog entry
• Instructions for IRS Form 1040 and related forms.
• Federal Regulations (see esp. graph on p. 14).

Organizational Culture and Organizational Complexity

• The special case of the military
• DHS Organization Chart
  
  

The Citizen's Perspective

• A spaghetti chart
• Charts for Parents of ASD kids

RON PAUL 2012

RON!

Courts and the Law

Crime data

Public opinion and the death penalty

Edwards v. Aguillard

The Court

Sotomayor Misses Supreme Court Case After Failing To Get Out Of Jury Duty

For a bit of comedy while finishing up essays, check out The Onion.

The Law

Here is a concise guide to federal statutes.

• Statutes at Large
• US Code

After Congress passes law, the bureaucracy drafts rules:

• Federal Register
• Code of Federal Regulations

Then the courts may act

• The Structure
• Guide to Supreme Court decisions

"The Lecture" from Anatomy of a Murder (start at 20:00). They show this scene in law schools.

Nobel Peace Prize

Privacy on Facebook

In class we briefly mentioned the privacy implications of using facebook. While there are a lot of ways that your information can "leak" to those you never intended to get it, one of the seemingly most innocuous is through facebook quizzes. The ACLU put together a quiz demonstrating the privacy vulnerability involved in quizzes.

As they put it

Even if your Facebook profile is "private," when you take a quiz, an unknown quiz developer could be accessing almost everything in your profile: your religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, pictures, and groups. Facebook quizzes also have access to most of the info on your friends' profiles. This means that if your friend takes a quiz, they could be giving away your personal information too.

If you want to see it for yourself, you can try their quiz

Czar Wars

This past week, we discussed "czars." Almost on cue, a subcommittee of Senate Judiciary took up the issue. According to The New York Times:

Senator Russ Feingold held his promised hearing on the constitutionality of so-called czars in the Obama administration on Tuesday afternoon, winnowing away at a list of criticized appointees in his effort to examine whether the Senate’s advise-and-consent role was being circumvented by the executive branch. Next up is a hearing a week from Wednesday, when the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee takes up the issue, too, zeroing in a little differently on the number of so-called czars and a slightly expanded number of appointments during President Obama’s tenure. When Senator Feingold, who is chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, opened his hearing, he called it “unfortunate” that the White House had refused to send a representative to talk about the issue before the panel. “It’s also a
bit ironic,” Senator Feingold noted, “since one of the concerns that has been raised about these officials is that they will thwart congressional oversight of the Executive Branch."

One of the witnesses was CMC alum Matt Spalding. You may read his testimony here.

Presidential Immunity from Prosecution While in Office

Re: Criminal prosecutions of top executive officials

Recent scandals in Italy bring to the forefront the difference between the American Constitution and those of other countries. Amar says that the "basic structure [of the Constitution...affords] a sitting president temporary immunity from ordinary criminal prosecution during his term of office." The New York Times reports, however, that the Constitutional Court of Italy ruled unconstitutional an Italian law "granting the nation’s four highest office holders immunity from prosecution while in office." The court declared that the law "[violated] the clause in the [Italian] constitution granting citizens equality under the law."

The law in question has been in contention since Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi passed it through Parliment in 2008. The New York Times reports that "lawyers for Mr. Berlusconi argued that the prime minister could not govern if he was constantly fighting his own legal battles," a nod to the fact that the Prime Minister is the defendant in several corruption trials. Amar's statement that an American president receives immunity because he is "expected to preside continuously" complements this argument. Unlike in Italy, however, the American president is "vested with the powers of an entire branch" (emphasis mine). Italy has both a President of the Council of Ministers (i.e. the Prime Minister) and a President of the Republic.

The Presidency

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident:




From the LBJ tapes.

A do-nothing president?

Check out the Saturday Night Live skit of Obama listing all the promises he has supposedly failed to keep while in office:



But most of these accusations were a stretch. Did Obama say he'd get us out of Iraq by October? No. CNN did a story on the skit and found that SNL was only right about Obama not closing Gitmo. Obama ordered it closed by January 2010, although Secretary Gates has said they won't make that deadline.

Here's the CNN clip:

Scots-Irish

Cameron Joseph `08, an alum of this class, has a perceptive analysis of the Scots-Irish vote at The Atlantic:

The populist fury aimed at President Obama and his fellow Democrats may have roots much deeper than health care. In fact, it may be that it can be traced back to the emigration of the Scots-Irish, the first white group to settle interior America.They've been called rednecks, hillbillies and crackers. In the modern parlance of political correctness, they've been referred to as the Bubba vote. They live in Sarah Palin's "real America," and they make up the majority of Reagan Democrats. They count as distant relatives at least twelve U.S. presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton and even to Barack Obama, yet the Scots-Irish remain largely ignored as an ethnic group in America

.

Goodbye, Dalai

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will not meet the Dalai Lama during his five-day trip to the U.S. capital beginning on Monday, the first time in 18 years the exiled Tibetan leader has visited Washington without seeing the president. Obama instead intends to wait until after his November summit with Chinese leader Hu Jintao before meeting the Dalai Lama, possibly sometime in December, officials said.

POTUS should watch Caddyshack:

On Addressing a Former President

Re: Titles used to address a person who was formerly the President of the United States

Judith Martin, AKA Miss Manners, maintains that the title of President cannot be used to address a former occupant of that office.

In an inauguration-day article in the Washington Post, she traces the origin of this idea to George Washington, who believed that "there could only be one president of the United States at a time...so he let it be known that he would revert to his previous title of General Washington."

Additionally,

From Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior:

"Letting Go"

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

I work in an office where we deal with guest lists, name tags, and titles (both elected and appointed officials).

After an official is no longer holding elected or appointed office, what happens to their title? I know in some cases they retain their titles. Do the elected officials retain their titles, but not the appointed officials? Do some of the elected retain their titles and some do not, depending on the level of the office (example: A governor would retain his title but not a school board member)?

GENTLE READER:

Alas, it is not as simple as whether the office holder was elected or appointed: A hodge-podge of historic custom make some title last a lifetime, while others disappear when the job does. Roughly, the job has to be high ranking, such as governor, colonel or judge, and yet not unique, such as President of the United States.

It is even less simple to get the former officials to let go of their titles when the time comes. Miss Manners has noticed that all former presidents now seem to retain the title, although she prefers to believe that they merely refrain politely from correcting people who wrongly address them.

Presidency I

Article II of the Constitution.

An example of the electoral college (Indiana 2008):




Kenyan Birth Certificate Generator. (The real birth certificate.)

LBJ takes the oath: look carefully, as it is a missal instead of a Bible.

The oath (sort of):




Lincoln's letter to Hodges on his oath.

Writing

• Some of you need to go to the CMC Writing Center.
• For endnotes, never use lowercase Romans. Always use Arabic numerals. Click here to learn how to change format.
• In endnotes, the author's first name always goes first.
• Media is the plural of medium.
• Watch out for shifts in tense.
• In American sentences, the period comes before the quotation mark, which comes before the superscript.
• Introduce your quotations.

Assessing the GOP Brand

This is an interesting graphic from an article on recent polling data regarding recent GOP poll numbers. The entire article can be found at http://www.pollster.com/blogs/assessing_the_gop_brand.php

Once Again, Madison Nails It...

In Federalist 62, Madison wrote:

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

In The Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz writes:

Technology moves so quickly we can barely keep up, and our legal system moves so slowly it can't keep up with itself. By design, the law is built up over time by court decisions, statutes and regulations. Sometimes even criminal laws are left vague, to be defined case by case. Technology exacerbates the problem of laws so open and vague that they are hard to abide by, to the point that we have all become potential criminals.

Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls his new book "Three Felonies a Day," referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.