Should He Stay or Go Now?

I can’t remember who sang that song about staying or going, but it came to me as I began this post.  What do you think?  Should Blagojevich stay or go?

FINALLY, THE LEDBETTER BILL IS SIGNED!

Yea!!!  President Obama signed this overdue bill.

Did Obama need to re-take the oath?

In an effort to reinvigorate the law and society-ness of the blog, I ask, Did President Obama need to have Justice Roberts return to the White House to readminister the bungled oath?

To recap – Justice Roberts bungled the words and President Obama ended up not saying the words that are constituionally required (Article II Sec. 1). Of course, any Law and Society scholar worth his or her salt will say, “of course not. this is a formality. the election and the whole thing about becoming the President at noon makes the oath unnecessary.” Does anyone care that this is the only part of the constitution that appears in quotes? Am I the only person who thinks it was a good idea to take it again? Perhaps not necessary, but I’m going to say prudent.

A letter to the world, Jan. 20, 2009

Dear world, 

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for the prolonged interruption in service that began in January 2001 and lasted until approximately three days ago. 

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced on November 4, 2008.  Due to the inbred nature of the flawed software, it took approximately ten weeks to reboot.

 

Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we are pleased to confirm that full functionality was regained on January 20, 2009.

 

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. 

We look forward to resuming full service immediately and hope to improve on our past record in the years to come.

We thank you for your patience and understanding, 

  

Sincerely, 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Inaugural commentary–because no one else has

I keep telling y’all how easy it is to make the local media here in West Lafayette.  Check it out:

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” id=”video” width=”320″ height=”280″ data=”http://www.wlfi.com/video/videoplayer.swf”><param value=”http://www.wlfi.com/video/videoplayer.swf” name=”movie”/><param value=”&skin=MP1ExternalAll-MFL.swf&embed=true&flv=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewlfi%2Ecom%2Ffeeds%2FoutboundFeed%3FobfType%3DVIDEO%5FPLAYER%5FSMIL%5FFEED%26componentId%3D19711636&img=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia2%2Ewlfi%2Ecom%2F%2Fphoto%2F2009%2F01%2F20%2Fdems%5Finaug0afe788a%2D9053%2D4c90%2D92eb%2D19fa8f5d8db10000%5F20090120190024%5F640%5F480%2EJPG&story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewlfi%2Ecom%2Fdpp%2Fnews%2Flocal%5Fwlfi%5Flocaldemocratinaugrationparty%5Flafayette%5F2009120%5Frev1″ name=”FlashVars”/><param value=”all” name=”allowNetworking”/><param value=”always” name=”allowScriptAccess”/></object>

Now, I don’t know if this is going to work, so here’s the ordinary url:

http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/news/local_wlfi_localdemocratinaugrationparty_lafayette_2009120_rev1

And here’s a picture that appeared on p. 7 of this morning’s Journal and Courier:

Yes, I did my best LB imitation and pulled my 3 oldest out of school for the viewing party hosted by our county Democratic Party.  They had a blast and were back at school by 1:30.

Oh, and the Inauguration:  totally historical, memorable, and inspiring.  But the most fun part was waving “buh-bye” at Bush’s helicopter as it took off from the East side of the Capitol.  Obama’s speech was not meant to transport us to never-experienced heights of oratorical orgasm.  It was meant to sober us up and make us think.  And that is not a bad thing after being talked down to for 8 long miserable years.

Actually, it wasn’t a mistake. He shot him on purpose.

Just another suburban cop shoots unarmed young black man in his own driveway story.

More bragging about where *I* live

Forbes magazine this week (not yet online) listed West Lafayette, Indiana, as the sixth smartest small town in the United States. Here’s a look at the top 20.

1. Bethesda, Md.
2. Wellesley, Mass.
3. Palo Alto, Calif.
4. McLean, Va.
5. Los Altos, Calif.
6. West Lafayette
7. Potomac, Md.
8. Lexington, Mass.
9. Mountain Brook, Ala.
10. University Park, Texas
11. Brookline, Mass.
12. Chapel Hill, N.C.
13. Wilmette, Ill.
14. Blacksburg, Va.
15. State College, Pa.
16. Saratoga, Calif.
17. Needham, Mass.
18. Cupertino, Calif.
19. North Potomac, Md.
20. Mercer Island, Wash.

How they were ranked

The list was compiled from the U.S. Census 2005-2007 American Community Survey.   Communities with populations of 20,000 to 65,000 were ranked based on the number of post-secondary degrees divided by the population of the community over the age of 25. Results were then weighted to give a final average.

**Obligatory law and society comment:  I have to wonder what the racial composition of these communities is.  I know WL got some racial diversity, but there are not that many African-American kids in the schools, not even after the diaspora of families from northwest Indiana taking advantage of Section 8 housing in the town.  And we KNOW Palo Alto is lily white . . .

WHEN WILL THIS INJUSTICE END?

Time Magazine compares Bagram prison in Afganistan to Gitmo & asks the question, “What will Obama do about it?”  Good question.

standing at the senate door?

Here is Gov. Wallace blocking the entrace to the schoolhouse – well, the University of Alabama — to African-Americans. Will we have a scene like this tomorrow in the U.S. Senate? Predictions and analysis please.

I know someone will tell me why I am wrong, but I think Burris was nominated in accordance with the law — indeed the constitutional requirement is that the governor “shall appoint” a Senator. As far as I can tell, he is qualified and there is no evidence that it was a quid pro quo. I wish the IL legislature had acted faster to change the rules or to impeach Blago, but as it stands, he is merely charged with wrongdoing and still has the job. I think IL has an obligation (to its citizenry) to appoint someone. The U.S. Senate may not be obliged to seat him before fully investigating whether there was illegal behavior associated with this appointment, but doesn’t Jessie White need to sign the certificate? And doesn’t the Senate have to have some evidence before half-disenfranchising our state?

EDITED TO ADD: sadly, here is the pix

Law or Politics? Now we know . . .Yoo

John Yoo has an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times today which you can read here. The cool thing about it is that (IMHO), it reveals that his whole unitary theory of the executive (or rather Cheney et al’s that he wrote bunches of legal memos to support) had NOTHING TO DO WITH LAW. It was all politics.

Simmer down colleagues, I know that law and politics are inseperable and to claim one is not the other typically is ridiculous (I did not miss that day in graduate school). Bear with me.

This essay op-ed is about how Obama should go back to requiring a 2/3rds Senate ratification of treaties he signs because otherwise he would have too much power to do things like **gasp** abide by the Kyoto Climate Accords!! YIKES!

His whole idea is (was?) that the executive is horribly and UNCONSTUTIONALLY restrained by existing law (like, oh, getting a warrant for wire tapping or abiding by the Geneva Conventions) and here he is arguing that Obama would have too much power if he followed the custom of Presidents including the current one of trying to deal openly and honestly on the world stage.

As a constitutional law scholar, he might have an interesting argument about the constitutional process and how we actually deal with treaties (long been a problem for us), but somehow coming from John Yoo, the idea that a President (1) openly signining a document that (2) the rest of the civilized world has agreed to, (3) following the custom of many Presidents before him is somehow overstepping his executive authority is just laughable. Or nauseating. Almost makes me want to rethink the entire institution of tenure.

PS — I know the election is over, but we can reinvigorate our little blog with law again! Lots of good IL law right now.