Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

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.... until sometime before Monday.  Keep checking back, you'll know the transition has taken place when you automatically get redirected to http://www.legalinsurrection.com/.

NO COMMENTS will be put through, so DON"T COMMENT anymore on the ".blogspot.com" site because the comments will not be put through and will not be carried over to the new website.

It you want more detail on what is happening, check out the post earlier today.

See you on the other side.  I hope.

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I think it's fitting that the last video (really) ever posted at legalinsurrection.blogspot.com is of another person who could shake up the Republican field (that makes three today) if he chooses to enter the race.

I'm changing sometime after midnight tonight.  I think we all need a change in the field of candidates.  Not that I wouldn't or couldn't support one of the current candidates, I'd just like to look at someone else, too.

(Does he say "Tweeter"?)



(via HotAir)

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At the NetRoots Conference White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer stated that although Barack Obama signed a document in 1996 saying he supported gay marriage, Obama did not fill out the document.

So he signed it but his signature apparently doesn't mean anything because he didn't fill it out.  Is that like not reading the bill before you sign it?

This is pure comedy gold (via Americablog):



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at legalinsurrection.blogspot.com? It's possible, but the day is not over.

The most amazing thing to me is not that Christie tells the voter that it's none of her business where he sends his kids to school, but that he pays $38,000 per year in property taxes.  Ouch.



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Sarah Palin passed on the opportunity to make the kind of insulting comments about Michele Bachmann made by Bachmann's campaign adviser Ed Rollins about Palin.

When asked (@4:35) whether Bachmann was qualified to be President, Palin answered "she is."

She is classy, and understands that the way to defeat Obama -- regardless of who does it -- is not by insulting and demeaning other Republican candidates.

All in all, an excellent interview.



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I've told the story of how Legal Insurrection got started before, but I'll give it a little more flavor.

Prior to starting this blog, I was completely non-political.  I may have donated small amounts of money to a handful of candidates, but I was not politically active.  Like most people, I was more concerned with other aspects of life. 

As 2008 progressed, I became increasingly frustrated with and concerned about the mass delusion of Obamamania sweeping the nation, and the blatant media bias.

Yet I still did not become political until very late in the game, and by happenstance.

In early October 2008 I was at the home of a friend and former client, someone I had represented quite successfully in a case before I left private practice.  Despite having spent hundreds of hours together, we never had discussed politics. 

At the dinner table with our wives, he asked me for whom I was voting.  I mentioned that I was voting for McCain, and we got into a big argument, since he was an ardent Obama supporter and suffered from severe PDS. 

After we argued back and forth for a while, he said that he never had heard anyone make the points as clearly as I had, and suggested that I should start a blog.

That's it.  No grand plan, just an argument and a dare.

I didn't really know what a blog was.  I didn't follow the blogosphere much, if at all.  So I picked Google Blogger because it was free, easy to use, and free.  I was so ignorant of blogging that it never dawned on me to blog under a pseudonym.

My first post, Obama is Door No. 2, still is one of my favorites.  Proudly, I was against Obamamania before it was cool to be against Obamamania.

The subsequent two and one-half years would prove to be a roller coaster of emotions and blogging ups and downs.  But mostly ups. 

And while I often joke about the "obligatory thanks to the wife," she really does deserve a lot of thanks for putting up with this.  It's not easy being a blog widow.

I've met some really great people along the way, and some miserable wretches.  The great people keep me motivated; the miserable wretches keep me agitated.

Two and one-half years later, after almost 8 million visits and 10 million page views, I'm moving away from Blogger.  I made the decision even before the Big Blogger Blackout of 2011, but that event confirmed my view that I no longer was comfortable relying on the goodwill of Google.

It's a somewhat frightening process because for all its faults, Blogger was easy to use and free.  It's also free.

Instead, now I'm dealing with issues such as "load" and bandwidth.  For those who care, I'll be using a Virtual Private Server with Media Temple.  I think we've sized things to maintain very fast page loading, but since I've always been on Google's servers, we really don't know what the "load" will be until we get there.  If you find that the new blog loads slowly, please let me know, I want to hear from you.

I have no illusions that the new website will be problem free, but at least now I'll have someone to call and will have the ability to make changes.

Late tonight I'll stop putting through comments and stop making any new posts here.  After that the final data will be downloaded, and then uploaded to a custom designed blog, including over 3,500 posts and 32,000 comments.  As you can surmise, I'm not doing this myself and had the good sense to hire professional help.

This "blogspot.com" address then will be redirected to the new location (http://www.legalinsurrection.com/); all links should work so that if you click on a prior blog post link, it should direct you to the same post at the new blog.  If you subscribe to the RSS feed or via Google Friend Connect or Facebook, there should be no change; let me know if you encounter any problems.

Phase 1, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday, will result in what hopefully will be an even more user-friendly blog.  Comments will use the Wordpress system; registration will be required but open.  It's not yet clear whether we'll be able to use the Open I.D. usernames.  Comments will continue to be moderated.  I've opted not to use vendors such as Disqus at this time because I'll have enough to do becoming familiar with Wordpress, I don't need any more complications.

Phase 2 will take place sometime over the summer, hopefully sooner rather than later.  Phase 2 will include the creation of a format off the home page for registered users in which we can focus on specific political races, topics, or candidates independent of any particular blog post.  This will be in keeping with my goal of focusing the blog on a relatively small number of races which are flying under the radar in which we may be able to make a difference for conservative candidates, similar to what I tried to accomplish in the 2010 elections.

So there will be a lot taking place here over the next couple of months, and even more so as we gear up for the most important election since the Great Depression.

But first I have to get through the weekend.

Wish me luck.

Updates:  Since I'll likely lose "authority" after the switchover, I'll note for the record that as of today Legal Insurrection is ranked #14 in Politics and #72 Overall by Technorati, and #2 in Law and #44 in Politics by Wikio.

Also, since I'm unable to post comments (yes, really!) I'll respond to reader questions and comments here:

@Shaun - blogroll links will redirect, but next week once the new site is live, please use the new url.

@Aucturian - thanks, but we've now put up a blank page so no more sneak peeks!

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Two protesters in the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol building strapped "U" shaped ultra-secure bicycle locks around her necks and locked themselves to a metal railing.

As reported by JSOnline (h/t reader Leonard):

Authorities removed two protesters who locked themselves to the railing of the Senate gallery Thursday.

The action took place at a little after 12:20 p.m.

Just after 11 a.m., the protesters, one man and one woman, used U-shaped bike locks to lock their necks to the railing as part of a demonstration against Gov. Scott Walker's budget. Along with the two who locked themselves to the railing, a group of a dozen protesters loudly chanted "Kill the bill."

Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) gaveled the the legislative body into recess as a dozen State Patrol officers congregated in the gallery to address the situation.

To cut the locks off the two protesters -- Chris French, 20, and Bridgette O'Brien, 23 -- Capitol Police called on the University of Wisconsin Police Department to bring in a special cutting device.

Locking one's head to a metal railing without a key is a pretty accurate metaphor for what the public employee unions want to do to the taxpayers and union members.

There was an easier solution to the problem: 

 Turn out the lights, lock the doors, and go home.  And leave them there.

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That was my wife's comment.

The Weiner resignation press conference was amazing.  He was barely apologetic, focused on his own "healing" and gave a campaign speech about how he always wanted to serve the people of New York.

There were hecklers there, shouting things like "goodbye pervert" and "are you more than 7 inches?" and other things I could not hear.  I can't wait for the video.

Alan Colmes commentary "let's just pile on the poor guy."

Easiest prediction of the day:  He'll be back.

Update - By the way, he held the press conference as a senior citizens center.  Here's the video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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....

Your thoughts?

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This photo of an Israeli soldier standing on a young Palestinian girl is making the rounds on the internet and evoking enormous anti-Israel vitriol:


As Israel Matzav points out, however, the photo is not what it seems:

There's one small problem - the photo is a fake.

The uniform is not an IDF uniform, the boots aren't IDF boots and the weapon is a Russian issue AK-47 - the IDF uses American-made M-16's.

But why let facts get in the way?

Indeed.  For more on Pallywood, the decades-long Palestinian effort to fake anti-Israeli images and news which then become accepted as fact, see my prior posts:

• Pallywood meets the Gaza blockade
• Abid Katib - Palestinian Shoe Fauxtographer?
• What If Palestinians Were Settlers?

Expect Pallywood to move into high production as we approach the September U.N. General Assembly session.

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Thanks to reader Barbara for sending photos of this SUV spotted in the parents parking lot at the AI DuPont Hospital for Children in Delaware:





Bonus question:  What is the bumper sticker covered over in the bottom image?

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I appeared on Nightside with Dan Rea on WBZ 1030 Boston on June 6.

If you are from elsewhere in the country you may not know that WBZ is a mega news station; it's on my preset dial in Rhode Island and covers all of New England and reaches far into New York State.

The topic of my segment was Sarah Palin's comments about Paul Revere. Listen carefully, and you'll hear why I never could run for President; I messed up the "one if by land, two if by sea" part of the Longfellow poem.

Listen to the whole thing, and you'll find that the next guest, the curator of the Concord (MA) Museum, was not particularly critical of Palin, but was critical of the accuracy of the Longfellow poem.



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Following up on the story earlier about predictions of a looming mini-Ice Age due to changes in solar sun spot activity, reader Billy sent me a link to this Time magazine article from 1974, Another Ice Age?

I'll excerpt the article here, but you really have to read the whole thing.  Substitute "warming" for "cooling" and you pretty much have the current scientific "consensus" as to which no legitimate questions may be raised, lest one be deemed a Global Warming Denier (or is it Climate Change Denier)?

It's spooky to read this, but here goes (emphasis mine):

... As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age....

The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

The article ended with this ominous warning:

University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

Which sounds ominously familiar to the current food warnings (this time, substitute "cooling" for "warming"):

It is now clear that global warming is a major cause of rising food prices that hurt all Americans in their pocketbooks, every day. This will be a very big issue and revive national enthusiasm for action to combat global warming. I am in close touch with one very senior national Democrat who will soon launch a campaign appealing to voters to lower food costs by combating global warming.

Makes one wonder how the scientific consensus could have been so wrong in 1974, and if 35 years from now people will wonder how the scientific consensus could have been so wrong in 2011. 

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(by Matthew Knee)

As the mainstream media strained its resources and even brought on amateurs to power through Sarah Palin's old emails for the scandal that wasn't there, a slow-motion constitutional crisis has been unfolding.

The War Powers Resolution clearly states that president can authorize military action for 60 days without seeking congressional approval. In the absence of congressional approval, the war in question must be wrapped up by the 90 day mark. For the war in Libya, that deadline is Friday.

The Obama administration claims that the war in Libya is too small to count as a war, and that it is not an US action but a NATO action. Congress disagrees. Speaker Boehner informed Obama yesterday of the upcoming deadline, and today 10 congressmen announced their intention to file a lawsuit.

That there is so little coverage of the fact that the president quite likely ignoring both the law and Congress to fight a war of choice is a testament to how far professional journalism has fallen. That the so much of the left is suddenly not that interested in the legality of wars or checking out-of-control presidential power is a testament to the hollowness of their ideals.

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I would gladly suffer through a mini-Ice Age if it proved them all wrong:

What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.

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And they complain that Sarah Palin is "stupid" and unfit to be President? 

Obama recently expressed a view of the economy in which technological innovation is viewed as a threat to jobs:

President Obama explained to NBC News that the reason companies aren't hiring is not because of his policies, it's because the economy is so automated. ... "There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."

This is a perfectly static view, which would have protected jobs in the buggy whip industry by preventing the creation and expansion of the auto industry; would have protected jobs at glass tube manufacturers against the advent of flat screen televisions; would have barred the creation of the cell phone industry because of all the jobs lost in the land line business, and so on and so on.

This is your modern union mentality at work, in which the preservation of the economic status quo takes priority over innovation and creation.  Job losses in old industries make for good 30-second political ads, while the creation of new and more vibrant industries which create more jobs takes too long to explain on television.

He really, truly doesn't understand.  It's frightening. 

The reason employers are not hiring is due in large part to fear of Obama's economic policies which raise the cost of hiring. 

Anyone who ever owned a business (I did both with others and alone for 20 years) understands how government employment mandates make hiring the last choice.  You don't have to pay unemployment insurance and workers comp on a computer, and when you fire the computer you are not going to get sued.

(P.S., someone tell him there were ATMs and kiosks at airports long before he became President, so he can't blame those innovations for the lack of job growth on his watch)



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In my post yesterday about the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturning Judge Sumi, I opined:

This is a sweeping victory for Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker. (And for my prior legal anaylsis, but that's another matter. I'll be spiking the football, for sure.)

....

Okay, analysis done, now I spike the football by referencing my prior posts...

In response, I received this email (emphasis mine):

Dear Professor Jacobson:

Do you hail from Wisconsin (as I do)? I'm perplexed by your interest in Wisconsin constitutional and administrative law. Surely everybody else at Cornell could not care less.

My views upon your espoused opinions aside, your comments about spiking footballs seem distinctly un-professorial, but I suppose matters of style are not for me to judge.

Curiously yours, Professor _______

Adjunct Professor
U.C. Hastings College of the Law

Reaction?

Here's mine:

Ya see, this is what blogging does to the mind. It's not my fault. I'm a victim.

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I saw this interview of Rick Perry yesterday afternoon, and I was impressed. 



I'm not willing to commit yet, because the field is not complete and I don't know enough about him, but I'm intrigued by Rick Perry.  (Thanks for all your prior comments, give me more.)

We cannot rest with those who were on the stage for the New Hampshire debate.

I like Tim Pawlenty the most of those on the stage, but he needs to break out of his shell. I could like Michele Bachmann, but not as long as she has an Andrew Sullivan as her campaign adviser; its a non-starter for me. Mitt Romney is the guy I want to like, a decent chap, but I'm not sure he shares my view that better big government is not the goal, better smaller government is the goal.

Give me more. And as he says, faster please.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has just released a decision (here) overturning Judge Sumi's ruling invalidating the Wisconsin collective bargaining bill.

Some key language from the ruling, which overturned Judge Sumi's rulings both procedurally (for interfering in the legislative process) and substantively (there was no violation of the Open Meetings Law)(emphasis mine):

¶6 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all orders and judgments of the Dane County Circuit Court in Case No. 2011CV1244 are vacated and declared to be void ab initio. State ex rel. Nader v. Circuit Court for Dane Cnty., No. 2004AP2559-W, unpublished order (Wis. S. Ct. Sept. 30, 2004) (wherein this court vacated the prior orders of the circuit court in the same case).

¶7 This court has granted the petition for an original action because one of the courts that we are charged with supervising has usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature....

¶9 Although all orders that preceded the circuit court’s judgment in Case No. 2011CV1244 may be characterized as moot in some respects, the court addresses whether a court can enjoin publication of a bill. The court does so because whether a court can enjoin a bill is a matter of great public importance and also because it appears necessary to confirm that Goodland remains the law that all courts must follow. State v. Cramer, 98 Wis. 2d 416, 420, 296 N.W.2d 921 (1980) (noting that we consider questions that have become moot “where the question is one of great public importance . . . or of public interest,” or “where the problem is likely to recur and is of sufficient importance to warrant a holding which will guide trial courts in similar circumstances”). Accordingly, because the circuit court did not follow the court’s directive in Goodland, it exceeded its jurisdiction, invaded the legislature’s constitutional powers under Article IV, Section 1 and Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution, and erred in enjoining the publication and further implementation of the Act.

¶10 Article IV, Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution vests the legislature with the constitutional power to “provide by law” for publication. The legislature has set the requirements for publication. However, the Secretary of State has not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act in the official state newspaper, pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 14.38(10)(c). Due to the vacation of the circuit court’s orders, there remain no impediments to the Secretary of State fulfilling his obligations under § 14.38(10)(c).

¶11 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that we have concluded that in enacting the Act, the legislature did not employ a process that violated Article IV, Section 10 of the Wisconsin Constitution, which provides in relevant part: “The doors of each house shall be kept open except when the public welfare shall require secrecy.” The doors of the senate and assembly were kept open to the press and members of the public during the enactment of the Act. The doors of the senate parlor, where the joint committee on conference met, were open to the press and members of the public. WisconsinEye broadcast the proceedings live. Access was not denied.[1] There is no constitutional requirement that the legislature provide access to as many members of the public as wish to attend meetings of the legislature or meetings of legislative committees.

The Court adopted the argument I had made here many times, that the Courts had no business questioning the legislature's interpretation of its own rules:

¶13  It also is argued that the Act is invalid because the legislature did not follow certain notice provisions of the Open Meetings Law for the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference.  It is argued that Wis. Stat. § 19.84(3) required 24 hours notice of that meeting and such notice was not given.  It is undisputed that the legislature posted notices of the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference on three bulletin boards, approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes before the start of the meeting.  In the posting of notice that was done, the legislature relied on its interpretation of its own rules of proceeding.  The court declines to review the validity of the procedure used to give notice of the joint committee on conference.... 

This is a sweeping victory for Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker.  (And for my prior legal anaylsis, but that's another matter.  I'll be spiking the football, for sure.)

This also is a vindication for the legal strategy of not backing down to the unjust, unwise, uncalled-for, unlawful rulings of Judge Sumi, who engaged in clearly unsound legal reasoning which -- whether intended or not -- took on the appearance of political posturing.

Okay, analysis done, now I spike the football by referencing my prior posts:

• Judge Sumi's Mess ("Judge Maryann Sumi preemptively issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) which she thought ... would stop the publication of the budget repair bill, and therefore prevent the bill from becoming law.  This was an unprecedented move, and none of the legal arguments which attacked the validity of the law necessitated such interference in the legislative process.")
• Judge Sumi Throws Out Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law ("It is one thing for a court to rule on the validity of a law, but quite another thing for a court to stop the legislature from making law. Judge Sumi gives short shrift (at pp. 13-14) to the key Wisconsin case which says courts must await a law coming into effect before ruling on the law, Goodland v. Zimmerman. Judge Sumi summarily dismisses the import of Goodland by stating that it was a pre-Open Meetings law ruling. Well, chronologically yes, but the principle is the same; courts rule on legislation, courts do not stop legislation from being made.")

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Glad I didn't have to watch the whole thing last night.  The Democratic National Committee's Rapid Response Team has produced this 42-second version to save me time:



Not having watched the whole thing, I can't say myself that is was misleading.

So I'll rely on this report by Jake Tapper, one of the few mainstream media reporters on whom I'm willing to rely, Obama Campaign Sends Around Misleading DNC Video on GOP Debate:

... the video, which Messina calls a “highlight reel” and the DNC titled “What in the world are they talking about?” selectively uses clips from the 2-hour forum suggesting that the candidates were focused on idiotic issues, or battles from the past, when all of the topics the video hammers the Republicans for talking about were ones they were asked about at the forum.

So maybe the new Democratic Party talking point should be, Why does CNN want to go back to the failed policies of the past? (And by failed policies, they mean only Republican failed policies, not the failed Democratic policies which led to the housing bubble and crash.)

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A week ago The Guardian reported that Margaret Thatcher was refusing to meet with Sarah Palin, attributing a quote to an "ally" of Thatcher as follows:

Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.

The blogosphere, including some conservative and libertarian haters of Palin, erupted in joy, with loads of snark and derision directed at Palin.

It turns out that the Guardian story was a hoax, as reported by Nile Gardiner

I have spoken to Lady Thatcher’s Private Office regarding the story, and they confirm that the attack on Sarah Palin definitely did not come from her office, and in no way reflects her views. As a former aide to Margaret Thatcher myself, I can attest that this kind of thinking is entirely alien to her, and that such remarks would never be made by her office. She has always warmly welcomed like-minded figures in the United States, and has in the past met with numerous US presidential candidates and political dignitaries when they have visited London. But at the age of 85 she is now able to receive very few visitors at all.

There was never any snub of Sarah Palin by Lady Thatcher’s office. However, there has been a great deal of mischief-making and unpleasantness from sections of the liberal press in a vain and futile attempt to use Margaret Thatcher’s name to smear a major US politician

So now all these people who used a fictitious account of Margaret Thatcher refusing to meet with Palin to belittle Palin now will apologize to Palin, right?

And then to Lady Thatcher, right?

(h/t to reader Charles and Nice Deb)

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John Hinderaker of Power Line Blog has done an excellent job tracking down and debunking the serial lies of Think Progress regarding the Koch brothers.  I've chimed in too from time to time, but John really has led the charge.

In a post today, John demonstrates yet another Think Progress lie supposedly connecting the departure of David Koch from a Board position at the National Institutes for Health with the reclassification of a chemical used by Koch subsidiary Georgia Pacific as a carcinogen.  There is no truth to it.

John sums Think Progress up as follows (emphasis mine):

Everyone makes mistakes, but ThinkProgress is unique. It doesn't just get things wrong; it consistently fabricates lies out of whole cloth. Anyone who relies on ThinkProgress for information is asking to be deceived.

I think that is a fair assessment, except I'd go one step further.  Many of the people who rely on Think Progress for information, which they then republish, do so with full knowledge of the lack of truthfulness and thereby are complicit.

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Michele Bachmann should not be enjoying all the praise the Palin haters are throwing her way, for they don't really mean it, except as a tool to "shut the door" on Palin.  Example:

Doug Mataconis about last night's debate:

Bachmann is a much better public speaker [than Palin] and, say whatever one might about her ideas, she is able to present them in a much more polished manner than Palin has ever been able to.

Doug Mataconis previously:

Not From The Onion: Michelle Bachmann Mulling Presidential Bid

ABC News is reporting that one of the more bizarre members of the Republican House caucus is thinking about running for President .... Of course, “mulling” a Presidential bid is different from actually running, and even if she actually ran Bachmann would be, at best, a gadfly who got press attention for her outrageous statements. Good for entertainment value, not a serious candidate.

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A useful tool is still a tool.

In the aftermath of the Palin email media frenzy debacle, various media outlets who were publicly humiliated are spinning the crowdsourcing as a new investigative reporting technique.

The analysis of Sarah Palin's emails over the past few days may end up teaching us more about the future of journalism than about the former Alaska governor's past.

Drawing on methods used by both Wikileaks and social networks, traditional news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post used the Palin email dump as an experiment in new media techniques. They sought collaboration from readers and posted massive volumes of documents online before reporters even had a chance to read most of the papers.

That sort of public coordination — often called "crowdsourcing" — has drawn increasing interest from many journalists. David Lauter, chief of Tribune Co.'s Washington bureau, said he and his colleagues have wondered whether it would be a more productive way of analyzing data.

"It's a concept that we'd been looking at," Lauter said. "This seemed like a great opportunity to test to see how it might work."

Of course, we all call BS to that explanation, because the crowdsourcing was used on Palin only because Palin was Palin, and the mainstream media organizations did not have enough manpower to do the hit job themselves.

A reader wrote to me and wondered whether the crowdsourcing potentially created union contract problems for the newspapers, since they were outsourcing what normally was an in-house reporting function for which the people performing the work were paid.

I don't know enough about newspaper union contracts, and whether reporters even are covered, to opine on the union contract aspect.

But it does strike me that WaPo, The NY Times and others have adopted the HuffPo model of bringing together ideologically sypmathetic people to work for free for the profit of the media corporation. 

In the case of HuffPo, it was a community of bloggers who worked mostly for free to build a liberal online community from which the corporation and Arianna Huffington profited, and in the case of WaPo, The NY Times and others, it was to outsource a reporting function for which the media organizations used to have to pay.

Crowdsourcing at major media organizations has a bright future, because people love getting free stuff, particularly the people who run WaPo and The NY Times.

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Seems like an appropriate blog post title.

The bloggers were neither Syrian nor lesbian nor female, and according to my readers, the Republican Debate was not a debate.

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I will continue to highlight blog rankings which show me in a good light.  I will vigorously expose as complete frauds any blog rankings which do not meet that objective standard.

So I am pleased to present the latest rankings of law professor blogs via TaxProf for the trailing 12 months ending March 31, 2011 (drop everyone by one spot since Instapundit no longer is on the list because it stopped showing its Sitemeter):


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I did not see the New Hampshire debate last night because I was traveling, but the various news reports, including from mainstream conservative blogs, seem to indicate that Romney appeared presidential and in command, Bachmann got attention and likely name recognition, Pawlenty missed an opportunity, and the others on stage were sideshows.

The narrative implicitly is that the race pretty much is over before it started, Romney is the nominee.  As much as you may not like the narrative, is it valid?

Is there anyone who was not on stage who could change that narrative?

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Spotted by a reader from the "wilds" of New Jersey.  Apparently it drives itself.


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Despite the hype, I suspect many people will be thinking about some current and former Governors who will not be there, and who have not yet declared, or who may never declare.

I'll be traveling tonight so I will not get to watch it.  Please post comments (if you are able to -- more on that in about a week), so I know what I've missed.  Or if I've missed anything.

Comments will be put through, although there may be a delay.

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On Friday the media was in a complete frenzy to get Sarah Palin, enlisting a cast of thousands to scour the 24,000 pages of e-mails released by the State of Alaska.

As just about everyone now acknowledges, the major networks and print newspapers never devoted a fraction of the effort towards important stories like the unemployment rate and the reality that millions of people are so dejected that they have left the labor force.

Given that the Palin email story was a bust and does not help Democrats, it is not surprising to see that the media participation rate in the story has fallen dramatically, as evidenced by this graph reflecting the Palin Email Frenzy Media Participation Rate:


It's a shame that the media is losing interest in such an important story, but it's not surprising.  Everyone seems to be losing hope these days.

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Republicans in Wisconsin are planning to put the collective bargaining provision into the state's budget legislation, if the Wisconsin does not act soon to revoke Judge Sumi's ill-advised injunction against the law, as reported by JSOnline:

The Legislature will put Gov. Scott Walker’s limits on collective bargaining into the state budget Tuesday if the state Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the matter by then, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) said Monday.

“If need be, we are going to have to pass collective bargaining again,” Fitzgerald said at a Capitol news conference. “My caucus is more solid on that collective bargaining vote than they ever have been.”

Republicans have no choice at this point.  Judge Sumi ran out the clock on them.

I guess there will be no post-Kloppenburg lull in Wisconsin.

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I doubt Pink Floyd would have given permission to use the Another Brick in the Wall soundtrack, but that is what came to my mind when I saw this advertisement being run by Mitt Romney.

What do you think?  Is Romney capable of making the transition from "nice guy" to the type of fighter we need to defeat Obama?



I like the ad, and it proves a point I've made here before. Republican candidates can stand out and build support without pulling an Ed Rollins and dumping all over perceived rivals.

The ad fits into Romney's narrative that he is best equipped to handle the jobs situation, but also goes after Obama not other Republicans.

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(by Matthew Knee)

I recently managed to get a few parking tickets dismissed. My parking permit fell off my mirror, resulting in about 4 tickets overnight. The parking office told me there was no rule against duplicate citations, and so did whomever processed my written appeal, which was rejected. When I went to me in-person appeal, however, I was told that there are in fact rules against repeated tickets within an 8 hour period for the same violation in the same place.

What relevance does this story have (Other than emphasizing that one should be persistent in appealing parking tickets)? It says a lot about bureaucracy and policy implementation. Bureaucrats are people doing jobs. They have a role to play and people to answer to, and like most office workers are generally concerned with clearing their in-boxes or to-do lists and avoiding the wrath of an angry boss, usually by complying with organizational goals or pressures and trying the succeed at whatever part of their job is being measured. In my case, the people who work in the parking office are there to collect payments and keep complainers from complicating things. The people who process written appeals are tasked with clearing huge numbers of mostly-frivolous parking appeals. The people who conduct in-person appeals are in the business of talking one-on-one with individuals who on average have better cases (because they haven't given up yet), and occasionally granting mercy. All behaved as expected.

Bureaucratic behavior has implications for a variety of policies. The two I will discuss today are affirmative action in state university admissions, and K-12 teaching.

Several states have passed bans on affirmative action, but many public universities theoretically banned from using racial preferences continue to do so by other means, particularly by considering variables known to correlate with race, systems that combine racial signals with subjectivity, or using other methods to facilitate a desired racial balance. This can be explained in part by the behavior of bureaucrats. There do not exist compliance officers whose role it is to ensure that these laws are followed, but there do exist federal affirmative action compliance officers who focus on non-preference federal policies beyond state control, and run offices of affirmative action with varying powers, scopes, and budgets. These are people that must be answered to.

Similarly, academic senates, admissions officers, and administrators have liberal pressure groups, each other, sometimes government officials, and their own often-liberal ideology telling them that they need to achieve some desired racial balance. Many don't want to comply with racial preference bans anyway, and even if they were not so inclined, doing so could complicate their jobs significantly.

There are rarely internal controls to counter these forces. At UCLA in 2008, a professor on the academic senate committee charged with admissions oversight asked to conduct a study to determine whether their new admissions policy was being used for racial discrimination. He was unceremoniously denied the right to do so and run off the committee, despite support from the committee's undergraduate representatives.

All opponents of racial preferences have is the slow and unwieldy legal system - and generally the laws aren't properly worded to rule out current tactics anyway.

K-12 education faces similar, more straightforward, problems. Teachers in a union-based seniority system are simply incentivized to stick around, not do anything utterly egregious, and demand their contractual rights. This has the dangerous side-effect of making teachers dependent on the union for their livelihood rather than their skill at their work. Solidarity and union rights are the way to success, not performance and internal competition. Some have varying incentives to raise very specific test scores (which can lead to its own problematic "teaching to the test" incentives), but in stronger union areas merit pay is far from the norm.

What are we to learn from this? When seeking the correct policies, conventional wisdom emphasizes the importance of examining at how the public will respond to changes in incentives. However, it is also important to examine how government officials will respond to a change in incentives. Good government policy requires building functioning systems that resist being undermined or swept aside by circumstance or bureaucratic resistance. Good laws and policies must go beyond mere declarations.


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