Hogmanay

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally tonight at Triumph Brewery, 117 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.

Tonight's topic: the works of -- Harold Pinter.

Profoundness: on goat cheese

The Chronicle has published a list of the year's 10 best cheeses, but the list inexplicably omits Humbolt Fog by Cypress Grove Chevre, which the best cheese produced in the U.S. today.

Profoundness: on the economics of being single

Frankly, the biggest problem with being single right now -- or at any time, really -- is not having an economic partner to help with bills and housework.

You say "arrest," I say "kidnap," let's settle the whole thing in federal court

Here's another one to file under "You can't pay me enough to live south of the Mason-Dixon line": a 12-year-old African-American girl was arrested by plain-clothes police in Galveston, Texas, in August, 2006. Four officers leapt out of an unmarked van, beat the girl about the head with a flashlight (causing damage to her eardrum and throat), and threatened to shoot her puppy. One of them yelled, "You're a prostitute! You're coming with me!"

The raid's actual target was a white prostitute who lived 2 blocks away.

A few weeks later, police found the girl at school, where she is an honor student, and arrested her in front of her peers and friends for assaulting the officers and resisting arrest.

You better believe a federal suit has followed, if the document I've linked to there via courthousenews.com has actually been filed. I can't check on the website of the District Court in Galveston because I don't have a PACER ID. I also couldn't find a record of the pleadings via Lexis, which means either it's not on Lexis, or I don't have the Lexis skills I thought I did. In any event, § 1983 suits can be hard to win, even when the facts look outrageous like in this case.

Profoundness: on the new frugality

All these "how to save money" and "how to live cheaply" and "how to reduce your debt" blogs would be more useful if I had any actual income.

Christmas greeting

Since I have absolutely no money right now, I'm feeling even more alienated or left out or separated, anyway, from mainstream America than usual this particular Christmas. So many firms, from department stores to car dealerships to jewelers, are desperate to keep from going bankrupt that the Christmas sale ads are harder to ignore this year. Always incessant and ubiquitous, but louder and more glaring.

I haven't been religious most of my life -- that is, since I epiphanied myself in church at age 4 by thinking, "What if the Bible is just a book of made-up stories?" In my 20s, I dabbled with celebrating the winter solstice, not because I was a pagan or Wiccan believer but because it felt neat to participate in a young, suburban white person's backlash against Christmas, to shock or at least surprise the family and neighbors.

A very dear atheist friend of mine hangs a few lights on his balcony and gets a small tabletop Christmas tree every year. It's out of habit, clearly. I don't even do that kind of decorating any more. I have a shoebox of Christmas ornaments that I haven't displayed for years. I should donate them, or maybe give them to my friend.

When people ask (and they generally don't, because it's not a polite question, really), I've learned to say only that I'm not religious. If I say, "I'm not Christian," they look at my hair and understand me to be saying that I'm Jewish. Then they wish me a happy Hanukkah or Passover, and I have to say, "I'm not Jewish, either," which usually makes the other person uncomfortable, and since I know that's the way the conversation always goes, it's not polite for me to let it go that direction. If I say, "I was raised Catholic," an evangelical Protestant will kind of nod, knowingly, though I'm not sure what they know; another ex-Catholic will offer me a drink. So that's often a wise move at parties, but the first answer is still generally, "Oh. I'm not religious."

But I do note the end of the calendar year, with everyone else. The choice of date is arbitrary, not even coinciding with the physical solstice any more; but I think I'm a practical person and it's practical, once a year, to step back, look at one's accomplishments, think about goals, and consider how to implement long-term plans and strategies to accomplish new things. It's useful to use the near-universal down time that society experiences at the end of December to do these things. For the past several years my life has been eventful. It's nice to mentally close the book on one eventful twelvemonth, and then conceive of the next twelvemonth as a blank calendar to fill.

Also, I like to stand on a balcony or in a street intersection and sing "Auld Lang Syne" with other people and pass around a bottle of champagne. I even rehearse it for a few days before New Year's Eve so I have the words right.

For the peoples who created the dead-of-winter seasonal traditions that carry on to this day, this time of year must have been terrible. Cold, dark, full of wolves. Not too hungry; "starving time" was early summer, when last year's food had mostly run out, but this year's food wasn't yet ripe. But I think about short, damp days followed by long nights crowded in smoky, drafty dwellings, and of course there's little to do but to think of rituals and ceremonies to perform in an attempt to convince the powers that be to bring back dry, warm, sunny weather. And then to celebrate your success with the gods, which you didn't know to be inevitable.

Here's to wishing that "peace on earth, good will toward men" weren't merely a platitude for this single day.

It ate by lifting up the top of its head

Oh, if only all of us could have been designed so intelligently: paleontologists have figured out that a weird-ass amphibian fossil they found demonstrates that the creature ate by lifting up the top of its head. This is opposed to how we eat, which is by putting food and drink in the same opening that we breathe through.


The animal, though described by scientists as one of the ugliest ever discovered, bears the scientific name Gerrothorax pulcherrimus, Latin for most beautiful of the wicker-chested amphibians. It lived about 210 million years ago.

Quote of the day: "you will feel the pain of Detroit's death"

An architect turned cross-country tractor-trailer operator explains his concern if the plan to save the American auto industry fails:

No matter where you live, YOU WILL FEEL THE PAIN OF DETROIT'S DEATH. I travel the entire country dealing with the supply tentacles of the auto industry. If the head dies, the arms die too. And you live next to an arm.

Illustrated! And with some myth-debunkin', to boot.

Driberally tonight

At Triumph Brewing Co., 117 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. Be there or be square!

Tonight's topic: Avoiding using the term Third Way on pain of having a drink poured over your head.

Monday art house: solid rocket booster separation video

Note how the 2 boosters rotate in tandem during the fall, until they hit too much atmosphere. And people say we need to adopt the metric system. Bah!

New Orleans is scary and you can't make me go there

I've never been interested in experiencing Mardi Gras in New Orleans (or anywhere else, really, for that matter). To each his own, of course, but drunken street parties aren't my idea of a way to let the good times roll.

A dear friend of mine waxes rhapsodic about New Orleans on a regular basis. He's been there several times, mostly for business, and always adds a day or two of vacation onto the business trip so that he can enjoy the food and music. As a vegetarian I'll pass on the jambalaya and the andouille sausage, but I guess I enjoy a beignet and a cup of hickory-coffee as much as anybody else does.

That said, someone please explain to me why I should ever visit New Orleans, and do your explaining without sounding like an apologist freak. Dig this recent article by A.C. Thompson in The Nation:

Facing an influx of refugees [after Hurricane Katrina], the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

Awesome. What's even more awesome is that nobody's been investigated or prosecuted, and the vigilantes were operating with the blessing of the police. The situation was treated as completely to be expected, and not a damn thing has been done about it since 2005. But wait, there's more:

"I'm not a racist," [one of the murderous white guys] insists. "I'm a classist. I want to live around people who want the same things as me."

Dude said that with a straight face, honestly believing it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say, believe, and kill people about. He doesn't want people who aren't of his class near him. Therefore, it is acceptable to shoot at people who aren't of his class when they appear in his neighborhood, even if they appear in his neighborhood because their homes have been destroyed in a hurricane. He probably calls himself a Christian, too. And another:

"I'm not a prejudiced individual, but you just know the outlaws who are up to no good. You can see it in their eyes."

I'd quote more, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel. You can read "I'm not a racist, but" statements only so many times before you want to take the dead fish from the barrel and start slapping the speakers with the fish. The article continues with white vigilantes acting out a Red Dawn wet dream on two African-Americans who were trying to find an evacuation bus:

After two shots erupted, Collins and Alexander took off running and ducked into a shed behind a house to hide from the gunmen [. . .]. The armed men, he says, discovered them in the shed and jammed pistols in their faces, yelling, "We got you niggers! We got you niggers!" He continues, "They said they was gonna tie us up, put us in the back of the truck and burn us. They was gonna make us suffer [. . .]. I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was gonna leave earth."

Apparently thinking they'd caught some looters, the gunmen interrogated and verbally threatened Collins and Alexander for ten to fifteen minutes, Alexander says, before one of the armed men issued an ultimatum: if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live.

White residents of Algiers Point weren't much more friendly to the African-American neighbors who actually lived there:

Roughly twenty-four hours [after a neighbor threatened him with "you loot, we shoot"], as Bell sat on his front porch grilling food, another batch of armed white men accosted him, intending to drive him from his home at gunpoint, he says. "Whatcha still doing around here?" they asked, according to Bell. "We don't want you around here. You gotta go." [Bell] was gripped by fear, panicked that he was about to experience ethnic cleansing, Louisiana-style. The armed men eventually left, but Bell remained nervous over the coming days. "I believe it was skin color," he says, that prompted the militia to try to force him out.

And where were the police? The ones who didn't skip out ahead of the storm or who weren't doing their own "foraging" are engaging in don't ask, don't tell. For the purposes of this article, The Nation had to sue the coroner to get autopsy records, many of which were missing or incomplete.

Oh, blah, blah, blah, New Orleans government is corrupt, racism is bad, tell us something we don't know, blah. Well, I still won't put it on my list of places I need to see before I die. Bleurgh.

Profoundness: on late Christmas gifts and cards

If Epiphany is the day that the Wise Men arrived to fall down and worship the King of the Jews, then I think we should remember that even the baby Jesus got his own birthday presents 12 days late.

Profoundness: on marriage

As a post-married person, I wonder if a lot of gay couples' desire to be married is a simple -- though understandably strong -- desire to have what they're told they can't have.

Saying "Been there, done that" is more dismissive than I mean to be to people who love each other and want to share their lives together. But honestly. Been there, done that.

Of course, it's perfectly natural to want what you can't get, if only for the sole reason that you can't have it. If my hair didn't have this coarse, Mediterranean texture, I wouldn't have so much grief taking care of it. When we were growing up, my sister wanted my bedroom. Then we switched, and I mentioned how I liked my new room better. Guess what that made her want to do? If my friend L. weren't gay, she could have married the partner with whom she shared both a condo and a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship, and just think how much easier that break-up would have been! In short, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Hell, it's happening to me, too. At school I'm surrounded by people in their mid-20s who are getting married, left and right. I catch myself on a nearly daily basis, especially on the nearly daily basis when I don't have a date that night, selectively forgetting what it was that made me pour a generous shot of whisky for myself one night, set the soon-to-be-ex-husband down, and say to him, "Dude, this just ain't workin'."

Absolutely, gay people should be allowed to get married and have access to the full complement of rights that non-gay people may obtain merely because they may get married. I'm just failing to understand exactly why they want it.

Atheists in foxholes

Confidential to Frank: you have more than one friend who's an atheist.

Also, you're right. There are plenty of atheists in foxholes.

Pastor Rick Warren for invocation in January: hard nut to crack

Like just about every other bleeding-heart, filthy hippie liberal I've talked to or read today, I'm finding it hard to square President-elect Obama's message of tolerance and meaningful, constructive dialogue with his invitation to celebrity pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inauguration invocation. Whereas Obama has been talking about meeting on a common ground on all kinds of issues, Warren is an anti-contraception religious extremist. Whereas Obama has promised to "always be honest with [the nation] about the challenges we face," Warren used inflammatory and misleading words when he supported Prop 8, using "activist judges" language, and still falsely portrays the controversy as "really a free speech issue."

Today, Obama reasserted his stance as "a fierce advocate" for gay rights. But Warren has famously equated any version of marriage outside of the Christian heterosexual norm with incest, forced marriages of children to adults, and polygamy (video: start at 2:00 and continue to Interviewer: "Do you think those are equivalent to -- gays -- getting married?" Warren: "Oh, I do!") Note that that's two different things, though. The other examples were centrism vs. extremism, honesty vs. dishonesty. Advocating for gay rights vs. opposing gay marriage is apples vs. oranges, not apples vs. applesauce.

Of course, the next step in the conversation is to argue that a gay person can't have the full complement of a citizen's rights if she's statutorily barred from getting married. So what's a centrist, pragmatist to do? You work it so that a civilly united person can get the full complement of a married person's rights, and then make it the law that no one can be barred from getting a civil union on the ground that she's gay. Put another way, you get rid of any distinction between a couple united by marriage or united by civil union. Taxes, health insurance, inheritance laws, medical confidentiality rules, whatever -- you make the religious ceremony and church sanction completely irrelevant to whether a couple is legally united.

The only signature on the marriage/union certificate that would matter, then, is that of the state official, whether officiant (e.g., justice of the peace) or functionary (e.g., marriage/union registrar).

It's very French. Or very Soviet. But in any event, I doubt that it's one of the seven signs.

Rationalizing the invitation by offering "worse" choices --"At least he didn't pick Reverend Wright or James Dobson or Joel Osteen" -- is only a race to the bottom. It's like arguing that unionized workers should be happy to accept a cut in benefits or pay because everybody else who isn't in a union gets less.

Noz has posted some thoughtful comments, concluding with the observation that Warren wouldn't have been chosen if his hateful rhetoric had been aimed at other oppressed groups of people.

The pick is a hard nut to crack. I almost wonder if Obama didn't jokingly say, "Hey, well, if I win, you can do the invocation at the inauguration next January, how's that sound!" at the Saddleback Forum. Oops.

A big gripe of mine, personally, is that the fuss is all fine and good but it all begs the question that having a religious invocation before the inauguration is appropriate to begin with.

invitation to a bar mitzvah

I just got an invitation to the bar mitzvah of the son of a good friend of mine. The ceremony is being held in a Christian church.

I think my head just exploded.

I mean, mazel tov and stuff. But, um.

Dr. Boli explains the Canadian government to you

Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The real power rests with the Queen of Canada, who at any moment could squash her government like a bug. We saw this power recently, when the Governor-General, the appointed representative of the Queen, prorogued Parliament, "prorogue" being the parliamentary term for "squash like a bug." The "constitutional" part of "constitutional monarchy" merely means that, for the most part, the Queen chooses not to squash governments.

Dr. Boli continues in more detail, answers more of your questions on a regular basis, and posts other amusing articles and ad-VER-tisements pretty much daily.

Driberally tonight

Driberally tonight at Triumph Brewery, 117 Chestnut Street in the Old City section of Philadelphia. Come join the weekly open gathering of Philadelphia liberals and enjoy drink and food specials! Tonight's topic:

So everybody has their panties in a twist that President Bush plans to move to the Dallas suburbs after he leaves office, and the suburb he's chosen was historically governed by a restrictive covenant (a term that immediately brings the Shelley v. Kraemer case to the mind of all good law students), which banned people of color from buying houses there.

I'll put aside the reasonable conclusion that this move to the 'burbs only goes to further demonstrate that living on a ranch in Crawford, Texas, was mere political show and not indicative of any genuine preference for down-home country ranch livin'. What I'd really like to know is this: how many suburban Dallas neighborhoods were never governed by racially restrictive covenants?

I mean, honestly, people.

Friday jukebox: Chet Atkins

In 6 months I'll have a shiny new J.D., accompanied by a shiny new debt that exceeds the size of my mortgage. The number of jobs eliminated in November, 2008, was the biggest monthly cut since I was a toddler, and it doesn't look to be improving any time soon. The last time that many jobs were cut in a month, unemployment went to 9.0% within about a year. No wonder the earliest memories I have of my dad are of him being a grumpy-ass.

So here's some Chet Atkins:

Driberally tonight

Driberally, the weekly gathering of filthy, America-hating, beer-drankin' liberals, will be held tonite at Triumph Brewery, 117 Chestnut Street in Old City.

Tonight's topic: if the federal government goes through with a plan to deploy a 20,000-strong uniformed military force within the borders of the United States, does that mean that the 3rd Amendment will become relevant again?

Philadelphia thru the BBC lens: "Law and Disorder"

BBC News Magazine recently published a report filed by Louis Theroux, a guy who's been doing video travelogues for several years now. I remember watching Weird Weekends about 10 years ago, I think on the Bravo network when Bravo used to have shows with meaningful content.

Theroux recently spent a few weird weekends in Philadelphia, specifically in Philadelphia police cars, and subsequently filed a report called "Law And Disorder in Philadelphia." The accompanying article includes a 2-minute video excerpt revealing some of the less charming areas of North Philadelphia to the international viewing public.

The journalist outfitted himself in a flak jacket for much of his visit -- unfortunate as far as Philadelphia boosterism goes, but maybe good in that we were apparently in the middle of a cold snap while Theroux was here. (I haven't been able to pin down when the show was filmed.)

It's too bad he wasn't here for the couple of weeks surrounding the World Series and the Presidential election. Everybody was really mellow for a little while. Then the weather got chilly and people started getting grumpy again.

But in any event, both the article and the summary of the episode on the BBC iPlayer page carelessly conflate the rotten neighborhoods that Theroux documented with the entire city of Philadelphia. There are murders in Philadelphia; there's a "no snitchin'" mindset here; and there are problems of drugs, poverty, racism, and generations of joblessness. But there are not "gun carrying drug dealers on every corner, [where] it is now normal for the centre of Philadelphia to stage 30 or 40 homicides a month."

In fact, Center City is safer than some other sections of Philadelphia. Furthermore, the city as a whole is on track to finish up with fewer murders this year (163 as of 30 June 2008) than last year (392 by 31 December 2007).

I mean, not to say, "Whoo-hoo! Three hundred dead people in my town this year!" But still. No need to paint the entire city with the "lawlessness born out of poverty and disaffection" brush.

Standing question

If Article 1, Section 6, of the Constitution disallows Senator Clinton from serving as Secretary of State, then who has standing to sue?

Every girl needs a desk to do her homework on

In a world where gay sex advice columnist Dan Savage can buy Ann Landers's desk at auction and use it for his own work, maybe it was only a matter of time before an African-American girl would put President Lincoln's desk to good use:

When [10-year-old Malia Obama] came back from her White House visit recently, she told her dad that she plans to [do her homework] at the desk in the Lincoln bedroom.

Obama, who is known to be an avid reader of Lincoln history, said his daughter told him "I'm going to sit at that desk, because I'm thinking that will inspire big thoughts."

During the interview, Obama described the desk as being the spot where Lincoln signed the Gettysburg Address. While there is a copy of the address on display in that room, it actually was the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves that Lincoln signed there.

"Major Drumstick" wishes the people a happy Thanksgiving

I was google-image searching for a photo of "Major Drumstick," the mascot of the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day parade, for another forum. Found one just fine; it was a television broadcast screenshot from at least one year ago, when Boscov's was the major sponsor. Boscov's, a local department store chain, has become a victim of the economic collapse. Now IKEA has taken its place in sponsoring the parade. (That is, completely ignoring the continuous Disney presence in the parade, from floats to promos for Disney on Ice shows, to ads for Disney movies during commercial breaks -- the parade being on Philadelphia's ABC affiliate.)

Long story short, when I cropped out the TV station sponsorship logo, this very striking image emerged:

Drinking triumphantly?

Word on the street is that we're at Triumph Brewing in Old City tonight.

Yum.

Business method patents -- bzzzt!

Business methods are no longer patentable.

This should be a longer post, but I'm busy with something else, and I'm late talking about this one, anyway. In short, the Federal Circuit -- whose decisions in patent matters have been regularly smacked down by the Supreme Court for the past several years -- has ruled that business methods are no longer to be considered as "patent-eligible subject matter."

Not sure what this means about State Street Bank. Have a read at the In re Bilski decision for yourself and see how expressly the court tossed out business method patents.

I think this is good, but keep in mind that I also think that software shouldn't be patentable subject matter. (For different reasons -- software, at least, can be protected under copyright.) I don't know if the applicants will file a petition for cert. with the Supreme Court. It's been almost amusing not to guess whether the Supreme Court will overturn the Federal Circuit patent cases lately, but to guess just exactly how they will overturn them.

More later, if I get around to it. I have a pile of non-IP-related classwork to plow through during Thanksgiving break.

Wondering where Driberally will be this week

For what it's worth, I didn't mind Driberally's new location last week.

I'm short, so I didn't mind sitting on the low stools. The fire was nice and warm, too. My companion wouldn't let me pay for my bill, so I can't speak to the prices -- but the beer selection was acceptable for a neighborhood bar. At least in that it wasn't limited to Miller Lite, Budweiser, and lager.

Once the new server arrived, she got our orders right and brought them in a timely manner.

I'm sure I'm in the minority; I know the decision is out of my hands (which I don't mind); and in any event I'm chiming in late.

See y'all tomorrow.

Further ACS observation: Eric Holder as AG

President-elect Obama's choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, is a board member of the American Constitution Society. I was trying to figure out why he looked so familiar, and then I followed some bouncing links and remembered -- I'd seen him speak at the ACS national convention last summer in D.C.

Somebody's serious about putting DoJ back where it constitutionally belongs.

Planting living constitutionalism seeds in the federal judiciary

President-elect Obama has named Lisa Brown has his Staff Secretary. A lawyer who served as counsel to Vice President Gore in the late 1990s, Ms. Brown was most recently the Executive Director of the American Constitution Society.

ACS is a non-partisan educational organization that promotes a progressive view of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses. Although it shouldn't be described in simple terms of "not the Federalist Society," in truth it was formed to produce scholarship opposed to that produced by professors and judges writing from a constitutional originalist perspective. ACS seeks to challenge their conclusions at conferences and in the academy as flawed constitutional arguments. ACS's ultimate goal, as I see it, is two-fold: first, to maintain living constitutionalism scholarship in law school classrooms; and second, to train law students to get to be like-minded judges, and have them appointed as federal judges.

It's not a conspiracy; it's a long-term plan from people who sincerely believe that conservative and libertarian interpretation of the Constitution is deeply flawed from its initial precepts and has no place in our Republic. It's a plan to plant living constitutionalism seeds in the federal judiciary.

In the short term, it means we won't have to hear anyone suggest Robert Bork for the Supreme Court again.

On a related note, dig the Constitutional Accountability Center and its Text & History Blog.

David C. Codell presentation and Q&A on anti-Prop 8 lawsuit

Drexel Law will host a discussion by David C. Codell, Esquire, lead counsel for the legal challenge to Proposition 8, the recently enacted ban on same-sex marriage in California. Codell was also lead counsel in In Re Marriage Cases, the California Supreme Court decision that in May legalized same-sex marriages in California.

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, 3320 Market St, Phila 19104 -- Room 240 of the law building

When: Friday 21 November 2008, noon

Food: Yes, there will be free food

Who: Not limited to the Drexel University community

Don't -- you -- believe it!

Y'all know that Mayor Nutter drew up the budget cutting plan in order to have plausible, convincing paperwork to take to Treasury, don't you?

You don't think he would actually shut down fire houses, libraries, and pools, do you?

He laid out a plan with realistic numbers to portray a serious situation to Treasury in the most dire terms possible. He showed the feds a worst-case scenario and presented it to them as the only-case scenario. He was apparently a leader in that kind of thinking, as it's my understanding that he led a group of other big-city mayors in delivering his letter to Treasury. Under threat of having turned away cities with believable budget shortfalls that could result in people dying in fires, Treasury may be more likely to consider Philadelphia and other major metropolitan areas in future bailout packages.

In other words, threatening Treasury with closing firehouses, libraries, and pools could avoid our Daily News publishing the headline, Obama to Philly: Drop Dead.

Some of my closest friends aren't fans of Mayor Nutter. I guess I like him more than Mayor Street (which isn't saying much), if only because he seems to go to work and, you know, get work done -- an unusual practice among public servants in this town. In any event, when he says he'll close firehouses, libraries, and pools, I don't believe a word of it.

Driberally in a new location

It has been pointed out to me that the weekly liberal drank-fest has been moved to a new location.

I may be late, as I have another commitment tonight that involves free food. If someone would kindly save me a seat, I'd be much obliged.

What if you had a conference about the 14th Amendment but no black people showed up?

What if the American Constitution Society held a conference on the 14th Amendment and Reconstruction, and not 10 people of color attended?

Sakes.

I attended 2 panels Thursday afternoon, "Originalism and the Second Founding" and "Equal Citizenship and Alienage." I counted 5 people of color in an audience of about 40. Of those 5, 2 were ACS employees in town from D.C. At least 2 others appeared to be students at Penn Law, where the conference was held. Of Thursday's 9 panelists, 3 were women (1 of whom blamed the Slaughter-House Cases decision on Susan B. Anthony and the suffragettes).

I didn't attend yesterday evening's event, because I had another commitment. Didn't attend any of the panels today because I had other work to catch up on.

Sakes.

Apropos of what else was going through my mind during the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin dialectic yesterday, you know who President-elect Obama should nominate to the Supreme Court? (I mean, not to hold anyone's funeral or anything.) Prof. Derrick Bell. The confirmation hearings would be a gas.

Earlier and earlier Christmas pageantry

When did Election Day become Thanksgiving, and the day after Election Day become "Black Wednesday"?

There is Christmas music on the radio, there are Christmas revue song-and-dance numbers on TV, and today I saw Al Roker riding the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree onto Manhattan island like Slim Pickens bull-riding the atom bomb in Dr Strangelove.

I'm OK with seeing the obviously Christmas-related TV ads starting up after Labor Day: electric razors, children's toys, jewelry. At least, I've gotten used to it, and anyway it starts small and subtle and only seriously ramps up (e.g., to luxury cars) toward the end of November. I don't remember seeing the pageantry, though, starting this early. I know the economy is bad -- jesus god do I know the economy is bad -- but I usually don't have to turn my TV off until Thanksgiving week.

Who in the early Church wanted Christians to celebrate Christmas one sixth of the year? And of all the nonsense the Puritans could have handed down to 21st-century America, why couldn't the country have held on to Cotton Mather's teachings about Christmas?

Hard times in Manayunk?

Took a mental health day yesterday with a friend and drove up Monument Road and West RiverMartin Luther King Drive in Fairmount Park to look at the autumn leaves. After digging the whispering benches at the Civil War monument, my companion and I drove off, took a wrong turn, and accidentally ended up in Manayunk at lunchtime.

Though it was the middle of the week, and close to 1:00 p.m., there were very few restaurants open on Main Street. Taverns, pubs, bars, sandwich shops, pizza parlors, all closed. A Thai restaurant was open, though empty. (I'll be happy to tuck into a plate of drunken noodles any time, but my companion was looking forward to something more Western.) One pizza shop, a café and a Starbucks were open. There were about a dozen empty store fronts with "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs in them. We stopped in a specialty foods shop to look at imported cheeses and pastas, but the shelves were sparse, the shop's wares purposely spread out -- I've heard, second-hand from someone who was trying to start up an import olive oil business, that the market for upscale imported foods is really tight. The dollar has been way down against the euro, and in any event no one wants to pay $20 for a few ounces of olive oil, even if it's genuinely Lesbian.

My impression has been that Manayunk is kind of a weekend and evening destination. For a few years now, Main Street has been catering to a younger crowd with a lot of disposable income. My guess is that the crowd is being downsized and outsourced, while at the same time a lot of the entrepreneurs had shaky business plans, markets that were too narrowly targeted, and unwise loans.

Final verdict: Main Street was a bust for a spontaneous weekday lunch. We drove a little ways up the hill to a Mexican restaurant I'd been to a few times when a family member of mine was living in the neighborhood, but it was closed, too.

So we headed down Ridge Avenue and landed at Johnny Mañana's, a mini-chain Mexican restaurant in East Falls. Nice enough, though it looked like the kind of place that gets a little frat-boyish toward the evenings and weekends. Portions were good, the food wasn't overly salty the way they do it at some restaurants to make you order more drinx, and the prices weren't bad. We were too early for the margarita happy hour, but they made up for it by having Rogue Dead Guy Ale on tap to offset the lager and Budweiser options.

All in all, not a bad mental health day. I'm sad to see so many places closing on Main Street in Manayunk, but it's not as if I'm in a position to keep anybody in business, myself.

Why the Democratic leadership doesn't need to kick Sen. Lieberman's ass

Mostly it's because he's kicked his own ass without anybody else's help. All the Democrats have to do is sit back and watch him try to get re-elected in 4 years.

Whoever runs against Lieberman in 2012 has months of video and print goodness to use: the ridiculous hints that Senator Obama had secret ties to Hamas; the repeated, purposeful failures to say clearly, once and for all, "Barack Obama is not a Muslim, for chrissakes, are you an asshole or just an idiot for continuing to ask"; his founding and leading Citizens for McCain in an attempt to woo Hillary Clinton supporters and undecided Democrats to the GOP ticket; and, finally, of course, his appearing at the RNC and endorsing the guy who is not the current President-elect. (And all that after Obama had happily campaigned for him in 2006.) In short, Lieberman threw his full support and political capital behind the candidates who lost the election 53% to 46%, in a speech where he told the voters "don't be fooled" and that "being a Democrat or a Republican is important[, b]ut it is not more important than being an American." It's campaign gold for the taking by whoever wants to run against him. And it's fodder for 4 years of quietly but steadily discrediting him during the wait.

A friend of mine said last May, regarding the presidential race:

the democrats could run a salad crouton again mccain and win in november.

Same thing with Lieberman in 2012. Maybe they could even run a Muslim.

President-elect Obama is taking the high road and refusing to ask or advocate that Lieberman be kicked out of the caucus or removed from his committee chair positions. This kind of decision should only have been expected, because it comes from the same temperament and judgment that's informed his actions from the day he decided to run for President. It's a great decision. It looks, and is, classy. It gives Lieberman an incentive not to block any initiatives that Obama wants the Senator's committees to work on. And, in the Machiavellian sense, it gives Obama plausible deniability for any nasty shenanigans that others in the party decide to engage in.

Put another way, what would Obama -- or the party, for that matter -- gain from antagonizing Lieberman? They'd risk losing his votes and cooperation on key issues in the committees he chairs. Maybe he'd even switch his party affiliation, you know, kind of like when a couple who have been living together for a while decide to get married, so that the one can get on the other's health insurance.

I would suggest that Obama get Lieberman out of the Senate completely by putting him in some harmless Cabinet post, like HUD, except that the current governor of Connecticut is a Republican. Lieberman is a religious extremist conservative like the rest of the Republican base, but he obviously shouldn't be replaced with a guaranteed Republican vote.

So 4 years from now, when Lieberman asks for contributions, endorsements, and other help from Senate Democrats and the President? All they have to do is look at their watches, pretend to press a few buttons in their BlackBerrys, and say, "Aw, shucks, Joe, looks like I'm busy. I'll have my secretary get back to your secretary. But, hey, listen, why don't ya go ask a few Republicans for some help until I can get back to you?" And in the meantime, they can cold-shoulder him here, leave him off an invitation list there, be perfectly courteous and respectful to him on the Senate floor -- and find a real Democrat in Connecticut to run against him in 2012.

ACS conference Thursday and Friday

The American Constitution Society is presenting a conference this week at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The conference is free to attend, though you have to register, and includes an event at the National Constitution Center. Events will be taking place this Thursday and Friday, 13 and 14 November 2008.

The Second Founding And The Reconstruction Amendments: Toward A More Perfect Union

n current legal debates, many invoke "the founding" of the Constitution yet focus only on the eighteenth-century framing, and ignore the significant changes to our country and our Constitution wrought by the Civil War. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments profoundly altered, among other things, the rights of individuals, the power of the federal government and the meaning of citizenship. The Second Founding conference will bring together legal scholars, historians, practitioners and others to examine the history and substance of the Reconstruction Amendments, how those Amendments fundamentally changed the meaning of our governing document, and how their promise - largely forgotten even as originalism flourishes - can be fulfilled.

More information, including panel descriptions and directions to the venues. Also:

The Legacy of 1808: Deconstructing Reconstruction

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, popularly known as the "Reconstruction Amendments," profoundly altered–among other things–the rights of individuals, the power of the federal government and the meaning of citizenship. To address the history and substance of the Reconstruction Amendments, and what those changes mean in our democracy today, the National Constitution Center welcomes their 2008 Visiting Scholars Ted Shaw and Martha Jones, as well as special guest Steven Calabresi for a discussion titled "Deconstructing Reconstruction."

More information, including registration instructions (no admission charge to the discussion) and a completely gratuitous 3-D map of Independence Mall.

Thumb injury

I've strained or jammed my left thumb, I think in the movement I've been using for the past couple of months to pick up my messenger bag (usually laden with my laptop computer and at least one casebook) and put it over my shoulder. Not only is it hurting to pick up my bag, but also it's hurting to open my cell phone, pull clothes on, do housework, cook a meal, etc., etc., etc.

It's pretty clear to me where the arthritis is going to start, if it hasn't started already.

I'm too old for this nonsense. Law school's not made for people over 30.

"Philly Fix My Car" update: goal nearly reached; surplus will be donated

Update on a post of mine from last month: Some Phillies "fans" took advantage of the celebrations when the Phils won the World Series a couple of weeks ago, and they started flipping cars on Broad Street. Local filmmaker Ted Passon owns one of the cars that was flipped, so he started up a blog asking for donations toward fixing or replacing his car. After getting some publicity through the area ABC and Fox affiliates, and some serious word-of-mouth around the country, he's almost got what he needs:

[N]ow that he is just $200 away from a good deal on a used Saturn, Passon said he will give any donations that exceed his $4,000 goal to other people whose cars were also flipped that night, including three people who found him through his Web site. He said nine out of ten donations have been for $10 or less but his largest donation was from a man in Texas who "blew me away" with a gift of $500.

If you have some cash to spare, I hope you'll help Ted out.

Driberally

I heard there's a weekly get-together where all the local filthy, heathen hippies get together and complain about Republicans, but I almost forget where & when it happens.

Looks as though I'll be able to make it this week for the first time in a while.

What's up with the unitary executive theory now?

Dear Project for the New American Century and Justice Scalia,

How's that whole "unitary executive" idea working for you now? Did you honestly think that conservatives would hold the presidency forever? How did you have such an incredible blind spot, not to realize that eventually there would be a Democrat or liberal of some kind replacing your chosen candidates?

Very truly yours,

Glomarization

Mini photo-essay: two kids sharing

I've seen this linked to in a couple of other blogs, and I thought I'd pass it along:

Two young communistskids share an Obama-Biden sign at an election night celebration.

Dig the autumn colors this year

This fall has been spectacular. And I don't mean the elections, I mean climate-wise. Have you looked at the trees lately? I mean, in southeastern Pennsylvania? They're brilliant and gorgeous. All neon shades of red, purple, and orange. Waiting for a bus two days ago, I saw a tree that was yellow on the north side and green on the south side. Wild.

We had a mild summer -- seems to me we had only two nasty heat waves, and they were both brief. Then late summer and early fall were dry, so voilà: spectacular colors on the trees. What I remember from last year, the leaves went from green to brown, and a lot of them didn't even fall. The difference this year is just wonderful.

And did you notice that the leaves didn't really start to fall until the latter half of this week? I was walking across Washington Square on Monday morning, and the pavement was clear. But by the end of the week, we were scuffling our feet through a few layers of leaf litter.

It was as if the trees were waiting for the election to be over, too.

"extraordinary step forward"

In recent video from CNN, Secretary of State Rice begins a press briefing before leaving on another pointless trip to the Middle East -- looking as though she voted for President-Elect Obama on Tuesday.

Friday jukebox: The Hooters

When I was in middle school, my best friend was in love with the Hooters' drummer, Dave Uosikkinen:



(I was in love with Tommy Conwell. Ah, the days of teeny-bopper concerts at the St. Mark's High School gym.)

North Carolina called for Obama

NBC has called North Carolina for President-Elect Obama.

You can do the math yourselves and decide whether or not this is a realer mandate (Bob Novak, 2008) than what Bush got the second time around (Novak, 2004).

Mika Brzezinski in mourning

Mika Brzezinski is wearing black this morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Not that she should have to wear party togs if she doesn't feel like it. But you know -- what an asshole.

My legal poll-watchin' day

Philadelphia's election results have been posted, though the site seems to be having (volume-related?) difficulties. (Another site lets you view results by ward and division.) President-elect Obama won 83.0% of the vote here.

The polling place where I was assigned, in Philadelphia's 4th Ward, ran like a well-oiled machine. There was a line of a dozen or so people at 6:30, when I arrived. When we opened at 7:00, the line had grown to 20 or 30 people. Two divisions were voting there. By noon, about half the registered voters had come in and voted.

When people arrived, a pollworker would ask their address and then tell them which division's line they needed to get into. That way, most people got into the correct line right away. Both divisions had split their polling books by last name, so we had four separate lines when volume was highest. Though there was some frustration in the morning, the lines were not contentious, and the longest wait, I think, was about half an hour. The voters and the pollworkers all seemed to have been well warned ahead of time for the logistical challenges, and most everybody seemed willing to put up with the delays with good humor.

Volume was the worst problem at this polling place. We had no broken-down machines, no voter suppression tactics outside, no accessibility problems that we couldn't overcome. Few voters cast provisional ballots (of which, here in Pennsylvania, only about half are counted).

A little after noon, one voter told us she'd gotten the infamous "press the straight Democratic ticket button, then press the Obama button again, or your vote won't be counted" text message. (This message is incorrect; if you do as it instructs on Philadelphia machines, you'll vote the straight Democratic ticket but no vote will be recorded for Obama.) I took her information, filled out an incident report form, and called the campaign. They pretty much told me not to bother them, kid, with such a minor problem, since my divisions were otherwise working out so smoothly. So we educated the voter, as they say, asked her not to forward the message to anyone, and confirmed with the voting machine operators that they were explaining that voters had to make sure that the light was lit next to the name of the candidate they wanted to vote for.

Earlier, I'd gotten a text message warning about the text message going around. When it got to our divisions, I felt like the secretary in Ghostbusters saying "We got one!" -- I don't want to say I was bored all day, because I wasn't, but we just didn't encounter any of the nightmare scenarios that the voter protection training had prepared us for.

We had a few little old ladies and very, very senior men. One woman who looked in her 90s came in with a walker, wearing a cap with gold sequins on it. The crowd parted like the Red Sea and let her go to the front of the line.

Many people brought their kids (we seemed to have twice as many people come through the building as actually voted.) And many people brought their cameras. People posed their kids in front of the voting machines for pictures, then brought the kids with them into the booth to show them what was going on. I will neither confirm nor deny that people were letting their kids press the "VOTE" button. I heard some variation of the phrase "let's make history" several times an hour.

Mid-morning I was asked to go to another polling place where 1 of a division's 2 machines kept breaking down. I called it in and reported it, but then I was asked to return to my initial polling place and stay put. I wasn't going to complain. The second site there had a lot of first-time pollworkers and the lines weren't as well managed. There also appeared to be a community gadfly adding some very localized social dysfunction to the mix. I had a disgruntled voter fill out a disgruntled voter declaration form. He'd been directed to the wrong division line, then the wrong last-name line in the correct division. He kept being sent to the back of the line. He was a bus driver and had to get to work, but he said he'd come back. I never heard if he did.

So, really, I truly got the luck of the draw for the polling place where the campaign sent me! I was on my feet all day and my feet and legs were killing me when I got home, but I really couldn't have asked for a better day. Well, no, I'll take that back. Though I introduced myself as being a poll watcher for the Obama campaign, I think that most of the people there thought I was from the McCain campaign. I don't think I look like a Republican. But they did tell us to wear business casual, so I wore a (thrift store) blazer, black slacks, and loafers. The situation was made clear, however, after some very brief conversation, and after I'd brought out the Tastykakes. In the end, it was more funny than anything else that anyone had tagged me for a Republican.

If I had any other complaints, maybe I would mention that I never actually met the election observer team I was supposed to be supervising. The campaign kinda scattered them all to the winds, and I was working with other people. I wonder how many other teams that happened to. But the observers I did meet and work with, at both polling places, were very earnest, enthusiastic people, mostly from out of town, who were solicitous for the voters' time and comfort (it rained a little, off and on, from early afternoon until the polls closed) and were ready to jump on any problem that looked the slightest bit like voter suppression.

Oh, and the phone numbers they gave out to report voting numbers and call in problems were swamped all day. But what are you gonna do? As I said, it went so smoothly for me that it was problematic only for a few voters when we tried to find out their correct polling places.

By the end of the day, about 65% of the divisions' registered voters had checked in to vote. Obama won literally 99% of the votes. We're not sure why the other 1% went went to Senator McCain (zero votes went to the Independent and Libertarian candidates); we figure they were so deeply, deeply social conservative that they simply couldn't vote Democratic.

Back in my neighborhood, Obama won my ward by the same percentage as he won the city overall. He won my division by a couple more points. At about 10:30 a.m., I was about voter number 400 of about 740.

Delivered

We have delivered Philadelphia, which delivered Pennsylvania, which delivered the nation to Obama.

At the polling place I watched, someone brought leftover Halloween candy. About 5:00 p.m., I unwrapped one and read inside: "Sending hope your way."

After we closed the polls, pulled the tapes, and recorded the numbers, we celebrated with a bottle of France's finest. "That was the campaign," I said. "Now time for the champagne!"

They just called Ohio, and I can hear cheers and shouting all over the neighborhood.

I almost don't feel as if I've been up since 4:45 a.m.

Dinner, returns-watching, and sleep for me.

Election Day reading: Roger Ebert and his rice cooker pot

I'm off helping Senator Obama get elected President. I hope you are, too. But if you're done, why not sit back and reward yourself with a lesson in home cooking, Roger Ebert style?

First, get the Pot. You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook, and Warm. Not expensive. Now you're all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, plus a chopping block. No, I am not putting you on the Rice Diet. Eat what you like. I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room. You, solitary writer, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. You, parents with kids. You, night watchman. You, obsessed computer programmer or weary web-worker. You, lovers who like to cook together but don't want to put anything in the oven. You, in the witness protection program. You, nutritional wingnut. You, in a wheelchair. You, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food. You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog's documentary about life at the South Pole. You, early riser skipping breakfast. You, teenager home alone. You, rabbi, pastor, priest,, nun, waitress, community organizer, monk, nurse, starving actor, taxi driver, long-haul driver. Yes, you, reader of the second-best best-written blog on the internet.

Recipes and philosophy continue: "The pot and how to use it" at Roger Ebert's Journal.

Oh, yeah, ballot questions

There are some ballot initiatives on offer today in Philadelphia County. Here are my recommendations:

State Bond Question: Vote YES on improving wastewater improvement!

Charter Change Question 1: Vote YES on merging the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Parks and Recreation into one entity, the Commission on Parks and Recreation -- thereby bringing Philadelphia's parks and recreation center administrations into the 20th century!

Charter Change Question 2: Vote YES on giving preference in city hiring to people who've lived in Philadelphia longer!

Philadelphia City Bond Question: Vote YES for floating more bonds for transit and other community development, especially if you're a tax-and-spend Democrat like myself!

The Committee of Seventy has provided more balanced descriptions of the ballot questions, as well as policy statements for and against.

Voter protection coordinating

Spending the day coordinating with my voter protection team. One is an attorney coming down from New York late tonight. The others are also attorneys from out of town. Unfortunately for them all, I've been named the team leader, I think because I'm the only one registered to vote in Philadelphia County.

The campaign moved my goalposts, so to speak, and changed my polling place assignment -- but only a couple of blocks. Now I'm at a "supersite," where more than one division's voters are directed to vote (division is Philadelphian for precinct). I've lived in places like that before, and I remember that sometimes the signs were not very clear, or were nonexistent. It can be disheartening to stand in line for half an hour or longer, only to find that you were in the wrong line and have to start all over again. So one of the challenges at this polling place tomorrow will be to make sure that people are in the correct line for their division, or that, if they do get in the wrong line, they don't have to start all over again. Probably a situation where an ounce of prevention will be worth a pound of cure.

I don't know how much I should expect in the way of voter suppression shenanigans. I think the difficulties will more likely be related to newly registered voters, or voters who haven't voted in donkey's years. Issues with dealing with crowds, determining who needs ID and what kind of ID will suffice, and helping people use these new-fangled (to them) voting machines.

Tonight I'll hit the grocery store and pick up some Tastykakes and other goodies for the election officials and other poll watchers. Tomorrow's going to be a long day.

You can still help. Give your friends or neighbors a lift to the polls, or help them find their polling place. It ain't over 'til it's over.

Monday art house: Eunoia

Canadian poet Christian Bök has just published Eunoia, a "univocal lipgram" -- a book in which he limits himself to using a single vowel for all the words in each chapter. The chapters themselves are not numbered, but are lettered: A, E, I, O, and U. (Note that the title of the book uses all five.) The BBC website provides excerpts, a short audio passage read by the author, and reader contributions of single-vowel paragraphs.

Credentialed, certified, trained for poll-watching

After a brief training session over at Penn Law, I picked up my voter protection credentials and badge today.

The Obama campaign office where I had to go is located directly across the street from the Musical Fund Hall, the building where they held the first Republican National Convention to nominate a presidential candidate.

President Sarkozy's favorite movie: Hustler's "Nailin' Paylin"

Governor Palin got a prank call from the Justiciers Masqués ("masked avengers"), two radio hosts at CKOI-FM in Québec, who fooled her into believing that she was talking to Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France. Don't worry, the call was completely in English:



Would the election please, please finish soon so that I quit posting about how ridiculous and terrifyingly unqualified Sarah Palin is to hold a national office?

Senator Obama's vice president pick authored the Violence Against Women Act

Wonder of wonders, a post where I don't complain about Governor Palin and how she (demonstrably) hates women. Instead, I give you just over six minutes of reasons to vote for Senator Joe Biden for Vice-President -- he authored the Violence Against Women Act:



Sure, Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth. But it's a foot in the mouth that we can believe in.

"Philly Fix My Car"

Local filmmaker Ted Passon was as happy as everybody else when the Phils won the World Series this week -- until he found that his car was one of the ones flipped and smashed on South Broad Street late after the game (WPVI-6 article and video).

Ted has set up a blog asking for help to pay for repairs:

Hey Philly,

Remember when we just won the world series for the first time in 28 years? That was great! Then my car got flipped over and that wasn't great.

I couldn't afford a full coverage insurance policy on my car so my insurance company won't cover a vandalism claim. I also had to hire a towtruck to flip it back because Triple A doesn't cover this either. I can't afford to buy a new car or to have this one fixed - if it's even possible. I work as a freelance videographer and a car is crucial for me being able to work and get to my different jobs.

So I was thinking...

There was alot of people on Broad Street last night. If all the people who were hanging out near Broad and Washington (where the car was flipped) gave me ten dollars I could probably buy a new car... or if all the people who actually flipped my car gave me a thousand dollars that could work too.

Either way Philly you broke my car... please help me fix it!

Please read Ted's blog for updates, and PayPal him a few bucks if you can spare 'em. If you are a blogger, please link to Ted's blog as well and get the word out. Thanks!

Friday jukebox: D. Christie

"For the Werewolf Have Sympathy":

"Give Barack a Day"

As part of my continuing effort to embody the extremist Christian right's worst nightmare -- I'm a radical feminist, atheist single mom putting myself through law school -- I'll be doing legal voter protection this Tuesday. I've been assigned to a polling place in West Philadelphia, in a neighborhood where the university students are urged not to try to find an apartment. I had considered bringing a bottle of champagne with me, as Mithras says he'll be taking to his assigned polling place, but my assignment is at a Methodist church.

Darn Methodists. Maybe I'll bring a bottle of that Martinelli's sparkling apple juice instead.

But my point, and I do have one, is that you don't have to be a lawyer, like Mithras (speaking of the extremist Christian right's worst nightmare), or a law student, like myself, to help get Senator Obama elected president. Anyone with a sturdy pair of shoes, a somewhat pleasant phone demeanor, or a sofabed can help. Please give Barack Obama a day of your time before or on Election Day, and let's make history. Obama is leading mightily in Pennsylvania polling right now, but that's an accurate prediction only if we get out the vote and monitor the polling places for shenanigans on Tuesday.

Texas newspaper finds, interviews the state's (probably) oldest active voter

Photo: Larry Kolvoord, Austin (Tex.) American-Statesman

This is Mrs. Amanda Jones of Bastrop County, Texas. She's 109. Her father was born a slave; her mother was born just after the Emancipation Proclamation. The first time she voted in a presidential election, she voted for Franklin Roosevelt -- but only after she'd paid her poll tax. (Voters in Texas were subject to poll taxes for state and local elections until 1966.)

Because she's too frail to travel to her polling place, Mrs. Jones had two of her children help her complete and send off a mail-in ballot this week.

Mrs. Jones didn't vote for Senator McCain and Governor Palin.

Intersection of election and law school

A couple of nights ago I dreamed that I'd forgotten to go vote.

I don't remember if I'd spent all day studying (yeah, right) or dicking around on the Internet (a far more likely scenario). But 8:00 p.m. rolled around, and lo and behold the polls were closed -- and I hadn't voted. I don't think the dream continued with the obvious conclusion that since I personally failed to vote my candidate lost. However, I distinctly remember knowing that I'd lost all my street cred with my wacky liberal friends and with my family. But at least I wasn't naked.

Similarly, some weeks ago I had the familiar "I didn't prepare for this exam" nightmare. Just like in high school, in the dream I hadn't attended the class all term, I hadn't prepared an outline, I hadn't studied, in fact I hadn't done any reading at all, and I think I hadn't even bought the casebook. Because I'm in law school, there were other twists: I hadn't picked up my anonymous student number under which to submit my exam answers. Also, I hadn't done the required "practice exam" with the exam software, because I hadn't installed the newest version of the software in the first place. I was sitting in the exam room with my computer open, about to take an exam in real estate law -- a course I never signed up for -- unprepared in just about any way a law student could possibly be unprepared.

But at least I wasn't naked.

Governor Palin: "go ahead and call Senator Obama the N word; I won't stop you"

Governor Palin at a rally in Iowa yesterday or the day before. She accuses Senator Obama of wanting to collectivize our property. When someone in the crowd helpfully yells, "And he's a n-----!" Palin hears (she loses a beat in her speech and stumbles for a brief moment) but doesn't disagree. She doesn't know how to react or what to say. She had an opportunity here to prove to America that she is not a racist, red-baiting, divisive, unprepared, anti-American religious extremist. Instead, she chose to let the word echo around the venue:



This video includes titles over the outburst. Someone else has posted a version without displaying the offensive word.

"Skylight's last gleaming"?

Did Patti Labelle say "skylight's last gleaming," "through the perilous flight," and "for the ramparts we watched" last night when she sang the national anthem (video)? God bless America. They don't call it Killadelphia for nothing.

And I mean that in a good way. I don't think I've ever heard the national anthem murdered so brilliantly.

Senator Obama in Chester, Penna., on Tuesday

From my inbox this morning:

Change We Need Rally with Barack Obama

Widener University Main Quad
One University Place
Chester PA 19013

Public Entrance off of E 17th St

Tuesday, October 28th
Doors Open: 8:00 a.m.
Program Begins: 10:00 a.m.

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required; however, an RSVP is strongly encouraged.

For security reasons, do not bring bags or umbrellas. Please limit personal belongings. No signs or banners permitted.

"8 Years Later"

This one's been making the blog rounds, and who am I not to jump on the bandwagon?



True.

"Hiding Behind Subordinates"

Mithras has provided a thoughtful and detailed explanation of how the national McCain campaign bears more responsibility than they'll admit for the recent "local young, white, female McCain supporter beat up by scary black Obama supporter" hoax:

To sum up, the McCain campaign and the Republican party in Pennsylvania have implied that a vote for Obama is a vote for Hitler, and that black Obama supporters will beat, sexually assault, and mutilate McCain supporters. They have done it in a way that leaves all the heat on local operatives, and insulates the national campaign.

And wraps up:

The best part: I predict McCain will drop 5 points in the polls here over the weekend.

Governor Palin: abortion clinic bombers are not terrorists

Governor Sarah Palin is an anti-feminist shame to her state and our country. She believes that people who bomb medical clinics in order to kill abortion providers and their patients are not terrorists:

Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist [. . .]?
Palin: [Short, dismissive sigh and eye-roll.] . . . I don't know if you're going to use the word terrorist there.

I would like to see Palin roll her eyes at Emily Lyons and repeat those words to her face. I would like Palin to peruse Eric Rudolph's web page and explain just exactly how he is not a terrorist. (Google it. I won't provide a link. Suffice it to say that the page is hosted on the Army of God's website -- also home to a hagiographic page for Paul Hill, who was executed in 2003 for shooting two abortion providers at close range with a shotgun outside a clinic.)

You don't need to resort to sexist language and imagery to attack Palin's statements and beliefs. You only need to focus on her words and actions. And that's why the vast majority of attacks on Palin aren't sexist. Almost all of the anti-Palin rhetoric you see addresses the merits of what she's said and done. You can be a feminist and attack Palin. What's difficult -- and weird -- is to be a feminist and not attack her, or, even worse, to defend her on any basis.

Tom Ridge: Palin is causing McCain to lose Pennsylvania

If you ask Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania and first head of the Department of Homeland Security, the GOP would be winning the Commonwealth right now if only Senator McCain had picked Ridge as his vice presidential running mate. According to Ridge, McCain "had several good choices" but instead opted for Governor Palin in a "typical[ly] bold McCain-like choice." And the result? Today, Quinnipiac reports Senator Obama ahead 53% to 40%.

Sen. Obama is no longer the candidate of the young, the well-educated and minorities. He is now virtually the candidate of the "all." He is winning among all age groups in all three states. He wins women by more than 20 points in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is competitive among men in all three states. Whether voters went to college or not, they are voting for him.

So much for trying to get Senator Clinton supporters to knee-jerk vote for the female vice presidential candidate. Maybe Ridge will abandon the sinking GOP ship like so many other Republican rats and endorse Senator Obama now.

On dividing and conquering ourselves, and on $150,000 makeovers

Please take five and a half minutes out of your day to watch Senator Obama in Richmond, Virginia, yesterday. In the brief speech, he strongly refutes the divisive language of the other party's candidates, reminding everyone that America works best when we consciously put our differences aside and work together, rather than seek to divide and conquer ourselves in the face of adversity:



Governor Palin speaks of small-town, rural America as the "real America." That would not include me, even though I live six blocks from Independence Hall, in one of the oldest neighborhoods of the United States of America, among houses that were built before the United States of America existed. That said, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that the fact that I walk past Independence Hall on my daily commute makes my neighborhood "more" American than any other place in the country. It simply makes Palin's statements completely absurd and un-American. My neighborhood is as American as any other neighborhood in the country. "There is no caste here." I may live six blocks from Independence Hall, but I also live six blocks from Starbucks; an interstate highway; people who are not native speakers of English; people who trace their ancestry to the Mayflower; thrift stores and high-end fashion boutiques; and churches, schools, and parks.

I joked on a chatroom the other day that I was amused to hear Governor Palin insinuating that people like me are not "real Americans." But in fact, I'm deeply offended. And I reject her lame statement to the press, where she apologized for people misunderstanding her, but where she did not apologize for her hateful words. Palin did not say she was sorry that she used the phrase "pro-America areas of this great nation" to describe only the more rural regions of the country. She did not apologize for denigrating my city, where the document was written that makes it perfectly legal (as opposed to seditiously libelous) for her spew her vile, hateful, divisive speech all over our great nation. Rather, she apologized for my misunderstanding what her plain language said.

Palin's plain language insulted me and my family. She used this McCarthy language, promoting small-town, small-business, small-farm America, condemning urban America, and assuring us she knows how middle-class people live -- while wearing clothes and jewelry that cost as much as what I owe the bank on my home mortgage. And the past two weeks are hardly unusual; she's been a huge fan of perks and emoluments for years. How anyone can continue to drink the McCain-Palin kool-aid any more is beyond my comprehension. McCain and Palin are seeking to further divide the country along class, race, and income lines while we're at war on multiple fronts and while the economy is tanking to depths we haven't seen since my grandmother was a teenager.

At least they appear to have quit defending Palin over on the Feminist Law Profs blog. There hasn't been a "leave Sarah Palin alooooooone!" post since last week, when someone complained about the "sexualizing of Sarah Palin" at a topless Palin look-alike contest in Vegas. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Palin was tapped for VP almost solely because she's a good-looking woman. She campaigns in short skirts, deep-cut blouses, and figure-hugging jackets; and she just spent over $150,000 in clothing, makeup, and accessories. The very basis of her campaign is that she's a sexy, younger woman you should vote for because she's sexy and young. She lies during her speeches that she reined in spending and rejected federal money as mayor and governor. So Palin shouldn't be heard to complain that people are basing satires of her on her appearance and sex and on how much the RNC spent of their donors' money on her clothes. I mean, really, are you kidding me? Sarah Palin sexualizes herself, with or without topless look-alike contests in Las Vegas that would get little publicity unless blogs like the Feminist Law Profs linked to them.

You can be a feminist and reject Palin. You almost have to reject Palin if you're a feminist -- though certainly it's not feminist for me to tell another woman what to do or what to believe. So let the facts, Palin's words, and Palin's actions speak for themselves.

Link of the day: YesWeCarve.com

"Stencils We Can Believe In"

Samples:

Sorry I missed Drinking Liberally

Oh, um. Sorry I missed Drinking Liberally. You are all my dearest friends and I regret leaving you outside on this bitterly cold night.

We went to the Belgian Café up in the Fairmount section for a beer tasting and dinner tonight with the Victory Brewing Co. I came home with supplies for election night: a 40 of Baltic Thunder and a mix 'n' match six-pack of various Victory bottles.

Maybe I won't have to budget for a bottle of champagne after all.

Session laws from the 1780s? Microfiche?

For purposes of a research paper I have to hie myself to the Jenkins Law Library this week and look up a state statute from the 1780s. At least I have the actual year (1784) and the state (South Carolina). I'd been concerned that I would have to look through 13 states' worth of statutes from 1776 to 1789.

I haven't used microfiche in 15 years, probably 20. I thought it was called "microfilm." And last time I did use it, I got motion sickness because the screen occupied my entire field of vision, like IMAX.

The conditions I have to endure in the name of scholarship!

Monday art house: Hammering Man

Learn something new every day. I thought there was only one Hammering Man, but I learned this morning that there are several around the world. The one in Seattle, which is the only one I had been aware of, isn't even the largest.



There are even knockoffs. This one has an anti-Nazi message that the copyists added to it:

Colin Powell's endorsement is worthless

Colin Powell has endorsed Senator Obama for President. Well, whoop-de-do.

Powell spoke to the U.N. Security Council in 2003 and told them that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. We know now -- hell, we knew then -- that Powell was not giving the Security Council the truth.

There are two possibilities here. One, Powell was knowingly lying to the U.N. This conduct makes him a despicable warmonger who is largely responsible for the tens of thousands of civilian and military deaths in Iraq since 2003.

The other is that Powell actually believed he was telling the truth to the Security Council and made his speech in good faith. If that's the case, then he is an idiot who was stupid enough to be fooled by President Bush and who didn't bother checking with the CIA to verify what he was saying in his speech.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

Over 4000 Americans dead and over 30,000 wounded in Iraq because of Powell's lies to the U.N. Whether liar or idiot, either way Powell is our generation's McNamara: Iraq's purported WMDs are our generation's Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Powell's endorsement is worthless, and neither candidate should be happy to get it.