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.