My first academic HATE MAIL!!

Yay me!  How cool is that?!?!  Here is the text:

Laura Beth Nielsen:

You are quoted in “Researching Law” as stating:  “Rather than promoting social chance, too often the legal system discourages people from using the law to remedy workplace injustices.” 

That is not the role of courts.  That is the role of legislatures and social scientists.

I feel your research is lousy.  It starts from false premises.

Cordially, NAME

Discuss.  Please note this is co-authored research with a powerful man, the director of the foundation but did he get hate mail?  nooooo.  If the discussion is robust I will share bits of my response which was fun to do but took the whole morning. 

Hate mail may be too strong and I have received my share of reviews taking me to task on my read of the First Amendment jurisprudence, but those are usually blind peer reviews.

The Resurgence of Sovereignty

Another day, another NYT op-ed, this one with some actual law-related content. Madeleine Albright on how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to a resurgence of the principle of national sovereignty, and has made potentially beneficial international interventions in places like Burma and Darfur less likely.

Krugman’s Boomer Cri de Coeur

Demography may indeed be destiny. I am one year older than Barack Obama. I’m in his post-boomer, cusp cohort, baby! I point this out because it informs the rest of this post.

So I’m sitting on the train yesterday morning, Handel on the i-pod (sonata for violin and harpsichord in D, really sublime stuff), reading the NYT. The life of a civilized commuter. I get to the back page, and after reading the op-ed by the guy who runs his car on leftover french fry oil, I read Krugman, and if not for the wonderful music, I might have begun to get annoyed. Do we really need another self-congratulatory column about how Obama’s nomination shows how much the country has changed for the better over the last twenty years? That’s a rhetorical question. But I kept my civilized equilibrium until I came to this passage:

By the way, it was during the heyday of the baby boom generation that crude racism became unacceptable. Mr. Obama, who has been dismissive of the boomers’ “psychodrama,” might want to give the generation that brought about this change, fought for civil rights and protested the Vietnam War a bit more credit.

Ah. At that moment, I could only wish that Mr. Krugman were sitting next to me. In a friendly manner, I would have placed a hand on his shoulder, and would have said, “Paul, do you know why Mr. Obama and others of our generation, the younger brothers and sisters of the boomers, don’t give them a bit more credit? First, we’re not all convinced that you deserve it. And second, ” — here I would have gripped both shoulders, and started to shake him violently — “BECAUSE YOU WON’T SHUT UP ABOUT IT! Really, Paul, there is nothing more annoying than a generation that won’t stop talking about what some of its members may or may not have done forty years ago, while whining about the ingratitude of us callow younguns. Come back after you storm Utah Beach or something, OK?”

And this is it. The Clintons’ disbelieving reaction to Hillary’s defeat, and Krugman’s petulance, are a preview of the inevitable decline of their generation. They will leave the stage, reluctantly, often gracelessly, wondering why the rest of us did not fully appreciate all they had to offer, and why we were so anxious to see them depart. The only antidote to self pity is self-knowledge, and the educated, middle class boomers were never really required to develop very much of it. It’s like that TV ad for Fidelity Investments, the one that features old guys surfing, says — “The generation that said it would never grow up, didn’t.” They say it like that’s a good thing.

Texas Polygamy Kids and Canadian Kids with Swastikas!

What in the kitty cat is the world coming to?  (My family is adopting kitty cat as the new good for all occasions swear word).

So the Texas kids were returned to their families and now this story about a kid coming to school with a swastika painted on her face.  Grounds for removal? 

When I read the headline I thought it was a tattoo (in which case I would argue yes even if the tattoo were of something less offensive — isn’t almost everything less offensive? — if it were on her face.  Make up makes it harder.  More investigation needed.  Perhaps I should head on up to Canada and find out more.  I only need a few minutes alone with the parents.

Stephen Colbert at Princeton Class Day Exercises

The man’s a genius, no doubt about it.  If you saw last night’s show, you heard some of his speech, but here’s a nice write-up.  I particularly like his spin on tradition and not changing the world . . .

What do Kathleen Sebelius and Douglas Kmiec Have In Common?

Quite a bit, actually.  Although she’s a liberal Democrat, and he’s a conservative Republican, they’re both Catholic, and they both support Barack Obama  for President.  And they’ve both been denied Communion.

This from Ambinder, today:

Sebelius has governed from the center, but she is not a conservative Democrat: she opposes the death penalty, opposed a same-sex marriage-banning constitutional amendment, opposes concealed carry laws, and is pro-choice.

That latter position is causing her some trouble. The archbishop of Kansas City forbid [sic] priests from offering her communion.

This from E. J. Dionne, in Tuesday’s Washington Post:

Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied Communion.

His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec’s support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.

Kmiec was denied Communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later addressed at dinner. The episode has not received wide attention outside the Catholic world, but it is the opening shot in an argument that could have a large impact on this year’s presidential campaign: Is it legitimate for bishops and priests to deny Communion to those supporting candidates who favor abortion rights?

A version of this argument roiled the 2004 campaign when some, though not most, Catholic bishops suggested that John Kerry and other pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied Communion because of their views on abortion.

The Kmiec incident poses the question in an extreme form: He is not a public official but a voter expressing a preference. Moreover, Kmiec — a law professor at Pepperdine University and once dean of Catholic University’s law school — is a long-standing critic of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

Hey, it’s not my church, although since I’m a taxpayer, I subsidize it, just like you subsidize my synagogue.  But if a church denies full participation in its rights and sacraments to people based on their stated support for certain political candidates, how come it gets to retain its tax-exempt status?  I’m sure the Kmiec incident was isolated, and parishioners who have said nice things in public about Obama or other pro-choice politicians aren’t routinely denied Communion (right?), but why isn’t this political activity that is improper for a tax-exempt organization?

Name Change

As an official gesture of good will and all that crap, I am officially changing my name today by dropping the “nobama” expression.  I still believe HC would have been the best candidate for me.  She impressed me too with her ability to take it in the chin and come back fighting.  Until a person has been under that kind of microscope, it is difficult to criticize another for the way they respond. 

All that said, I feel energized about the coming months.  While I will not be here to witness it personally, I will be around a large group of people that do vote.  The fact that most of them tend to vote opposite of me means that I will have the opportunity to enlighten some young minds and make a difference.  GOBAMA!

Holy crap?!?!?!

mccain is talking about how cool Clinton is — what if he picks Clinton as veep?

Oh hold it.  I am the one who just said we should be in the moment for at least a minute and revel in the Obama nomination. 

I didn’t think it was possible even though I did. . .

As the Obama nomination nears, I realize that (at some level) I really did not think an African-American person could be nominated by a major party to run for president in my lifetime.  I figured this out when I turned on CNN just now and Obama is 4 short and I realized in a new way — a concrete way — that it will be Obama (which I have been saying for weeks when I am not panicked).  Anyway, this led me to burst into tears.  The kids were like, “what???”  and I am just speechless.  Wowee.  

I am just so fricking proud of people in the US and Democrats in particular.  This is a huge step and while the pundits will want us to move straight ahead to the general election, we should spend a minute basking in the glow of this amazing achievement for all of us — deomcrats, republicans, whatever.  This is history; right vick?

Obama got Carter!

The only living former democratic president that could make an unbiased decision.  Yay

In the category of:  Why won’t Nick blog?  He told me today that he thinks this is a push for Hil to become the Senate Majority Leader and that is why she is not giving up.  Interesting theory.