Centerfield

And to kick it off, here's a prime example of how even local media can make a big national stir-the-pot deal out of Not Much, and really annoy the hell out of ordinary people. One where I actually know all the players. Musta been a slow news day.

(Hat tip to Nothstine at Preemptive Karma, who caught a local story I'd missed that later went to the AP wire, while the followup story has not.)

Posted by: Tully at April 20, 2006 10:12 AM

Curse you, Tully! I was just about to start an open thread too. After seeing the German Chancellor's bare bum, I am incapable of any serious thought for the rest of the day...

Posted by: PatHMV at April 20, 2006 10:17 AM

And I don't know how I've missed the eclectic and brilliant Steven D. Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner having their own blog, aptly titled after their excellent book, Freakonomics. Enjoy.

Posted by: Tully at April 20, 2006 10:19 AM

"Unflattering?" I bet they just lifted her poll numbers five points! :-D

Posted by: Tully at April 20, 2006 10:22 AM

I'm confused about Justice O'Connor. Senior status - as distinct from retirement - assumes an ongoing involvement by a Judge on senior status with the operation of the court; that is, that senior status is not retirement in the sense of leaving the court, but rather, remaining on the court with a diminshed workload. O'Connor took the former; her resignation letter neither stated nor even hinted at an intention of going into senior status, nor has she (to my knowledge) sought to meet any of the statutory criteria (see 28 U.S.C. §371(e)(1)) for senior status.

Yet the FJC lists her as being on senior status. Is this just an anomaly caused by her retirement in the middle of the term?

More musings on this topic here.

Posted by: Simon at April 20, 2006 12:12 PM

Not being an expert on court transition, could it be that she is still working on the cases the court heard prior to Alito's confirmaton and won't be officially retired until those opinions are published? I did not think that was the way the court worked. I do not really know, though.

Posted by: Jim M at April 20, 2006 12:43 PM

Simon, maybe she's sitting ad hoc on courts of appeal? There's no way she could participate in Supreme Court decisions. Do some research on past practices with retired justices. Maybe it's just a way to let them keep an office and a few aides to help with memoirs and such.

Posted by: PatHMV at April 20, 2006 01:25 PM

Jim-
When a Justice retires, their vote is nullified in any cases that have been argued but not yet handed down. So, for example, I think every opinion handed down since February is listed as having been decided by an eight-person court, and those cases where O'Connor's vote would have been decisive will likely be beld over for reargument, as for example has been Kansas v. Marsh.

Pat-
I remember reading something which suggested that she wanted to perhaps sit for some cases as a trial judge, so maybe that's what they're doing and they're just going to bend §371(e)(1) for her? §294(a) also provides for a retired Justice to be "assigned by the Chief Justice of the United States to perform such judicial duties in any circuit, including those of a circuit justice, as [s]he is willing to undertake", and unlike the provision of §294(b), that seems to apply to justices who took either retirement (§371(a)) or senior status (§371(b)). All very confusing.

Posted by: Simon at April 20, 2006 01:54 PM

Hey Tully, I bought a bottle of Eagle Rare on your advice last night and I have to say I'm impressed. It's definitely a good sipping whisky, a step above Buffalo Trace. Of course, the price reflects that but when you want to have a good one filling a decanter for guests, Eagle Rare is a good choice.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at April 21, 2006 10:11 AM

Hey Tully, I bought a bottle of Eagle Rare on your advice last night and I have to say I'm impressed. It's definitely a good sipping whisky, a step above Buffalo Trace. Of course, the price reflects that but when you want to have a good one filling a decanter for guests, Eagle Rare is a good choice.

I feel obliged to plug Makers' Mark, which is an excellent small batch bourbon. Posted by: Simon at April 21, 2006 03:16 PM

I thought I'd put this in the pot rather as a separate post. One of those weird coincidences.

Had a laugh at this Saturday's Bizarro. Shows a teacher in front of a class. Behind her, the blackboard reads "History 101". The teacher is telling the class, "Bottom line: pay attention in this class and you won't be as easily fooled as your parents are."

That afternoon, at my girlfriend's apartment overlooking the beautiful Lake Merritt, I spot Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country" on her table and start reading it. Whereupon I come across this quote that Vonnegut pulled from history. A speech by Lincoln denouncing Polk's going to war against Mexico.

"Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory-that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy-he plunged into war."

My Twilight Zone monment of the week-end.

Posted by: Marcus at April 24, 2006 12:00 AM

Vonnegut didn't date it, did he? Lincoln made that speech on January 12, 1848, as a freshman Congressman. He failed of re-election that fall. And there's a lot more to that speech than the one sound bite.

Gotta love the context. Mexico had ceded the Rio Grande as the border to Texas, which was annexed (by Texas' request) into the US. Then Mexico claimed they really wanted the Nueces as the border, a good bit to the north. By that time Texas had actively held the Rio Grande/Nueces strip (and, less actively, a HUGE amount of other territory, extending clear into modern-day Wyoming) as an independent nation for a decade. Two thousand Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande and attacked a party of 60-some US troops.

Lincoln was a staunch anti-slavery Whig, Polk a pro-slavery Democrat. The Whigs vehemently opposed the annexation of Texas because it was to be admitted as a slave state--as it was, in 1845. The original Texas revolution was based somewhat on the slavery issue--Mexico abolished it, Texas didn't want to. The original Rio Grande border was established by the Treaties of Velasco that ended the revolution and established Texas independence. Neither side lived up to all the treaty provisions, and Mexico refused to ratify it. Thus the dispute.

Posted by: Tully at April 24, 2006 10:48 AM