The political agenda of the ABA report is apparent from page one, which quotes from a newspaper report that "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office." Only in a footnote does it acknowledge the article is wrong--Mr. Bush hasn't signed anywhere near 750 laws--and that what's at issue are various provisions of complicated acts of Congress.

• The ABA Commission on Effective Criminal Solutions says that it is "working to develop a broad consensus among prosecutors, defenders, and judges on ways to reduce reliance on incarceration and to reduce recidivism".  The same Commission, however, begins by noting that "the United States is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s prison population, with more than two million people housed in its prisons and jails".  With that introduction, does any seriously doubt what the Commissions conclusion will be?
• The ABA's press materials on Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems, prepared by the ABA's "Death Penalty Moratorium Project" include a piece entitled, "Is the Death Penalty Racist?"  
• On the question of medical malpractice reform, the ABA's press materials claim:
• "Legislative proposals are expected to be considered shortly in the United States Senate that would pre-empt state medical and product liability laws and impose a cap on non-economic awards for those who have been found by a jury to have been severely damaged.
  
  It is critical that we not heap additional burdens on those who have been harmed the most and who are, in many instances, the least able to afford it, by preventing them from being fairly compensated for their injuries. "

That's not to say that these causes are not virtuous.  They may be.  But that is beside the point.  On nearly every issue of public concern relating to the law the ABA goes out of its way to take a position that reflects a liberal viewpoint.

If the ABA wants to represent the interests of lawyers, it cannot do that if it also chooses to adopt the rhetoric and concerns of a laundry list of left-wing causes.  Lawyers span the spectrum in their preferences and causes.  For the past decade or so, the ABA has done little more than represent the left-hand side of that spectrum. 

So when the Wall Street Journal argues that the ABA should be stripped of its special prerogative to comment on the qualifications of judicial appointees, the ABA should not be surprised.  The ABA is not an organization with a monopoly on legal knowledge and understanding.  It is just an advocacy group, among many others, with its own point of view.   It just happens to have a great many members who pay their dues in order to get other benefits, like the AARP members who join for the travel discounts. 

So let the ABA comment on judicial qualifications as much as it wants.  It's views are just as valuable as the thousands of legal bloggers who write about such things, the National Organization of Woman, People for the American Way, and any other organization you'd care to name. 

Now that the votes are in from their first term, we can see plainly the agenda that Roberts and Alito sought to conceal from the committee. Our new justices consistently voted to erode civil liberties, decrease the rights of minorities and limit environmental protections. At the same time, they voted to expand the power of the president, reduce restrictions on abusive police tactics and approve federal intrusion into issues traditionally governed by state law.

Based on the record available, there is clear and convincing evidence that Judge Roberts’ view of the rule of law would narrow the protection of basic voting rights.  The values and perspectives displayed over and over again in his record cast large doubts on his view of the validity of laws that remove barriers to equal opportunity for women, minorities, and the disabled.  His record raises serious questions about the power of Congress to pass laws to protect citizens in matters they care about.

But political success on television is not, unfortunately, limited only to those who deserve it. It is a medium which lends itself to manipulation, exploitation and gimmicks. It can be abused by demagogs, by appeals to emotion and prejudice and ignorance.

 

Political campaigns can be actually taken over by the "public relations" experts, who tell the candidate not only how to use TV but what to say, what to stand for and what "kind of person" to be. Political shows, like quiz shows, can be fixed-and sometimes are.  . . . .

 

It is in your power to perceive deception, to shut off gimmickry, to reward honesty, to demand legislation where needed.

There will be no new Middle East — not as long as the New Middle Easterners, like Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, get gunned down; not as long as Old Middle Easterners, like Nasrallah, use all their wits and resources to start a new Arab-Israeli war rather than build a new Arab university; and not as long as Arab media and intellectuals refuse to speak out clearly against those who encourage their youth to embrace martyrdom with religious zeal rather than meld modernity with Arab culture.

 

Without that, we are wasting our time, and the Arab world is wasting its future.

 

1. On Price Is Right, Bob Barker ends every show with a plug for his personal favorite cause. “Spay or neuter your pet!” or whatever. Something like this would humanize Trebek. I propose a new sign-off, along the lines of, “Can our returning champion do it again on tomorrow’s show? Tune in and find out, everybody. Legalize cannabis. Good night.”

 

2. You know how Trebek likes to read foreign words in these thick, strained accents, thinking he’s being muy auténtico? He should continue to do this, but instead of delivering them himself, he needs to have a little ventriloquist’s dummy with a sombrero to pipe in with those words. (The sombrero can be switched with a beret for French words.)

 

3. Whenever Alex says “Correct!” to a contestant, he should do the two-index-finger point, like Isaac in the Love Boat credits.

I’ve met Michael Starr a couple times, and he always seemed like a nice enough guy. Which leaves me wondering: does he know how asinine this non-story is? Despite working for the Post, I’m sure his reading comprehension is just fine. He knows there’s no way I was genuinely calling for angry bees and ventriloquist’s dummies to be added to the Jeopardy! format. It’s a humor piece, and one which gets its laughs from the outrageous non sequiturs it proposes, not the ripeness of its target for criticism. For the record: I’ve loved Jeopardy! since I was a kid, as anyone who talks to me for about five minutes knows. Making goofy jokes about TV shows isn’t “bashing.” I believe it’s the whole reason Al Gore invented the Internet.

But gambling is now part of the national landscape, and so is the Internet. Individually, we don't fear either one. Why should a combination of the two be so scary?

As many as 3 million Americans are considered "pathological gamblers," and many more are problem gamblers. They are more likely to have been on welfare, been arrested or incarcerated, or to have filed for bankruptcy. Links to substance abuse, depression and other problems are being studied. A center has been established at Harvard to get a better handle on this phenomenon.

 

Research in 1999 prepared for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that availability of a casino within 50 miles results in double the incidence of pathological and problem gamblers.

 

There's ample evidence that gambling disproportionately affects on the poor.

 

For example, the Charlotte Observer recently examined four years of lottery data in South Carolina. People earning less than $30,000 a year spent an estimated $627 per household on lottery tickets, nearly triple the spending of those making more than $50,000.

The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has still not reached its zenith. The Israel Defense Forces' operational plans against the Shi'ite organizations have not yet been carried out. The next two days are the most critical and a lot depends on whether Tehran decides to take a chance and authorize Hezbollah to launch long-range missiles with more powerful warheads. This is a capability Hezbollah still retains, despite the heavy blows it has suffered in the IDF air strikes.

On Sunday, Israel bore witness to the use of more powerful rockets against Haifa, which killed eight people and injured dozens more. The Syrian-made 220 mm rocket has a warhead weighing more than 50 kilograms. Hezbollah was supplied with these rockets as the Syrian armed forces were receiving them off the production lines. The decision to give Hezbollah the rockets was made when it was concluded that the group would be considered part of the Syrian army's overall emergency preparedness.

The risk to Iran is not military, but rather that Hezbollah would suffer such damage that it would no longer be counted as the sole external element of Iran's Islamic Revolution. It is difficult to assess what the Iranian leadership will decide. If it does opt for aggravating the situation, it will certainly encourage the Syrians to become involved in the confrontation, but all indications suggest that Damascus is not eager to get dragged into war.

Statistics from the Baltimore City Law Department show that residents and others filed 330 lawsuits against the city from Jan. 1, 2005, to June 30, for damages totaling $312,095,299.

 

Fortunately for Baltimore, plaintiffs did not do so well. The city won 218 of the 330 cases.

 

And as of June 30, the city paid $415,513 — 0.13 percent of the overall requested compensation in the cases — including the expenses of defending the lawsuits. The city employs 11 full-time attorneys at an average salary of $65,000 and works with eight others in private practice on a part-time basis to manage the caseload.

To curtail frivolous lawsuits, plaintiffs who file them in the city and lose ought to pay the legal fees for the city.

 

That would make potential plaintiffs — and their lawyers — think twice before jumping into court. It would also help to direct city resources where they are most needed, like our schools.

The real news, and where the policy credit belongs, is with the 2003 tax cuts. They've succeeded even beyond Art Laffer's dreams, if that's possible. In the nine quarters preceding that cut on dividend and capital gains rates and in marginal income-tax rates, economic growth averaged an annual 1.1%. In the 12 quarters--three full years--since the tax cut passed, growth has averaged a remarkable 4%. Monetary policy has also fueled this expansion, but the tax cuts were perfectly targeted to improve the incentives to take risks among businesses shell-shocked by the dot-com collapse, 9/11 and Sarbanes-Oxley.

This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted. In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, "That increase represents the second-highest rate of growth for that nine-month period in the past 25 years"--exceeded only by the year before. For all of fiscal 2005, revenues rose by $274 billion, or 15%. We should add that CBO itself failed to anticipate this revenue boom, as the nearby table shows. Maybe its economists should rethink their models.

Democrats and many independent budget analysts note that overall revenues have barely climbed back to the levels reached in 2000, and that the government has spent trillions of dollars from Social Security surpluses just as the first of the nation's baby boomers are nearing retirement.

"The long-term prognosis is still very, very bleak, and the administration doesn't have any kind of long-term plan."

Posner cuts right to the heart of the matter, noting initially that the issue in any employment discrimination case is not whether the employer's decision was correct, but whether its basis was the "true reason" for the employer's decision.  In other words, as long as the employer honestly believes the reason it gives for making the termination decision, it doesn't matter whether the employer was "mistaken, cruel, unethical, out of his head, or downright irrational."  What matters is whether the employer believed the reason it gave for the termination.  . . . .  

 

The point in this decision for employers and their counsel is to once again demonstrate the importance of communicating the real reasons for an employer's actions, from the initial decision point forward.  Some employers do not want to tell an employee that she is being fired for incompetence, or misconduct, or some other unpleasant reason.  But giving an employee a reason for her termination that is not accurate, or even worse, putting an inaccurate justification in a formal position statement to the EEOC or a court document, is an almost guaranteed way to end up in litigation down the road.  An employer that gives inconsistent stories about why it took certain actions is an employer that will be viewed by a court and a jury as having something to hide.  And that something is invariably presumed to be a discriminatory animus once the case gets to trial.

• In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.
• Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates while the deficit is constantly being revised downward.
• While the overall economy has grown by one-fifth since mid-2003, private business investment has expanded by 37 percent.
• The household survey of job creation has been booming at a much faster clip than headline corporate payrolls. This months's household survey shows 387,000 new jobs in June, following 288,000 in May.
• the unemployment rate stands at a historically low 4.6 percent rate. 

Someone needs to alert the media. 

. . . the issue is largely decided, doctrinally, at this initial stage of characterizing the right. The rest of the analysis is usually straightforward, though there have been exceptions (e.g., where a law meets strict scrutiny or fails rational basis review). To its credit, the New York court recognized the tensions in the precedents on this issue, with courts sometimes choosing broad characterizations and sometimes narrow ones. The U.S. Supreme Court has never given us a methodology for choosing the level of generality, which has led to the strong suspicion that the cases in this area are result-driven.

 

Which path to follow in a gay-marriage case, that of Glucksberg and its narrow conception of the claimed right, or that of Lawrence and its broad conception of the claimed right? The question is not a hypothetical one; it will confront every court at the state and federal level that deals with a gay-marriage claim grounded in due process. The New York court offers this methodology for making the choice: "The difference between Lawrence and Glucksberg,” reasoned the court, “is that in Glucksberg the relatively narrow definition of the right at issue was based on rational line-drawing. In Lawrence, by contrast, the court found the distinction between homosexual sodomy and intimate relations generally to be essentially arbitrary.” (p. 12) Thus, the New York court chooses the Glucksberg model and rejects the Lawrence model. (Yet another indication, if we needed more, that Lawrence is not leading courts quickly to gay marriage.)

 

The New York court’s approach is a novel, but I think unsatisfactory, way to resolve the level-of-generality dilemma in due process cases. It resolves the problem only by deciding the result.

"[M]ethodology matters supremely in the law, if it is not to become the kissing cousin of politics. . . . There is a thin line between the unabashedly pragmatic exercise of splitting differences and the practice of politics itself,'' [so] "splitting the difference ought not to be confused with judicial restraint.''