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.