If you can't recruit, you can't cull...

It has been fairly widespread news of late that the military's recruiting has been down for several months. Tuesday's NYTimes had an article about Army recruiting (After Lowering Goal, Army Falls Short on May Recruits)...and it's not a pretty picture.

On Friday, the Army is expected to announce that it met only 75 percent of its recruiting goal for May, the fourth consecutive monthly shortfall in the number of new recruits sent to basic training. Just over 5,000 new recruits entered boot camp in May.
But the news could have appeared worse. Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month.

A look at this graph shows the shortfalls over time.

The Army's recruiting goal for 2005 is 80,000 new soldiers, as of May, they are 8,300 behind in their monthly goals - but summer is usually the bigger months. But here is what one Army recruiter in New York said:

One of the recruiters said he doubted that the summer would yield more recruits than the spring. "The summer is supposed to be big, but I don't think it's going to happen," he said. "I don't see much interest among the high school seniors."

So maybe not...but there are other options:

To help offset the recruiting shortfalls, the Army is also trying to keep more soldiers. A memorandum from the Army's top personnel officer last month outlined a plan to reduce attrition among first-term enlistees by 1 percent, and retain 3,000 soldiers.
The memorandum, first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal, requires the approval of more senior-level brigade commanders, instead of battalion commanders, to discharge soldiers for pregnancy, drug or alcohol abuse, or poor fitness.

So, due to the recruiting problems, the Army may have to start keeping soldiers that it ordinarily would discharge - simply to maintain numbers. That does not sound like a successful long-term plan. Here is the Wall St. Journal article entitled To Fill Ranks, Army Acts To Retain Even Problem Enlistees. It seems that not everyone is thrilled about the new plan.

Still, some Army battalion commanders are less than pleased with the Army's decision to try to keep more problem soldiers in the service. "It is the guys on weight control ... school no-shows, drug users, et cetera, who eat up my time and cause my hair to gray prematurely," says one Army battalion commander. "Often they have more than one of these issues simultaneously."

So because of the problems in recruiting, individuals who would have been dismissed in the pass may be retained - to fill out the numbers. And, if the recruiting is down, what about the quality of the new recruits that are coming in?

One commander says the growing attrition problem can be traced to a slip in the quality of new soldiers as recruiters have increasingly struggled to hit their monthly quotas. "There are guys showing up at units with physical problems or other issues who you would not have seen a couple of years ago," says the commander.
In March, 17.4% of all new Army recruits failed to make it through training. Another 7.3% didn't finish their first three years with their unit. The Army's goal is to keep training losses below 12% and first-term enlistee losses below 5%.

You can see more about the attrition problems in this graph.

No questions there are a lot of variables that go into those numbers, but it would be difficult to argue that the recruiting problems play no part.

Slate has a good column, Dismissed!, about why this is poor long-term strategy...

By retaining these soldiers, the Army lowers the quality of its force and places a heavy burden on commanders who have to take the poor performers into harm's way. This is a quick fix that may create more problems than it solves.

and what are some viable solutions...

If retention is the goal, the military pay and promotion system needs a complete overhaul. First, retention bonuses should more closely mirror recruiting costs. Today they lag by more than 50 percent...
Second, the lock-step, caste-based pay system needs to be scrapped. In its place, a risk-adjusted bonus system needs to be built to target the growing majority of soldiers who cite "hardship" as their reason for leaving the service...
The Pentagon must stop the proliferation of its private army. Today there are as many as 30,000 private military contractors serving in traditional military billets. They are paid up to five times as much as soldiers performing the same duties. Encouraging the privatization of soldiers when there is a severe shortage of riflemen is circular reasoning...
Finally, a new reserve component is needed. The active reserve's one weekend per month and two weeks per year requirement no longer meshes with the modern workforce...

The problems are troublesome. In the context of an operation in Afghanistan, the saber-rattling of Iran and N. Korea, and a long-term, infantry intensive occupation of Iraq, these problem beg grave questions. Not the least of which is at what point does conscription become inevitable...

Toyota chief fears GM, Ford demise...

From CNN

Toyota chief fears GM, Ford demise

I thought these comments from the Chairman of the Board at Toyota were interesting.

"Many people say the car industry wouldn't revisit the kind of trade friction we saw in the past because Japanese auto makers are increasing local production in the United States, but I don't think it's that simple," Hiroshi Okuda told a news conference.
"General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are symbols of U.S. industry, and if they were to crumble it could fan nationalistic sentiment. I always have a fear that that in turn could manifest itself in policy decisions[.]"

Okuda, who as chairman is removed from the automaker's day-to-day operations, raised eyebrows and invited criticism on both sides of the Pacific when he said two months ago that Toyota should think about ways in which it could aid U.S. auto makers -- such as by raising product prices -- as they reel under massive health-care costs and sliding sales.

As has been big news recently, GM is in its worst financial position in some time: it's debt was downgraded junk last month, and yesterday the CEO announced plans to close plants and layoff 25,000 manufacturing employees by 2008.

Another interesting twist on this story is the long-term affects the termination of the pension plans at United Air Lines will have on the auto-industry. The UAL plans will now be backed by Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency, but that agency cannot fund the entire pension liability, therefore retirees will be taking the hit do their benefits. Other airlines are already looking at similar options to get out from under their big-time pension plans...

So how long does it take for the US auto industry to start doing something similar? GM is already readying for a fight with its union over benfits and pensions - and it seems like too much of a coincidence that this massive layoff announcement comes less than a month after UAL gets clear of it's penions liabilities.

Update: from the Chronicle - Underfunding draws heat

More on Raich...

Excellent (and very in depth) analysis from Prof. Lawrence Solum at Legal Theory Blog.

The analysis link takes you to the header post, which links to the detailed sections. Lots of information in there.

In addition, I'd like to comment on Prof. David Bernstein's post here on Volokh...this is part of what Bernstein had to say: "The five-member majority of the Court simply does not take federalism seriously." He goes on to say, "It seems we do to some extent live under a system where the personal preferences of the Justices, having nothing to do with the history, text, or logic of the Constitution, dictate when the Supreme Court will or will not intervene to overturn particular regulations."

This is a typical conservative ideology - if you don't agree with a decision, BLAME ACTIVIST JUDGES!!! It is also lazy. It is readily apparent that those advocating that the federal governement has no say in national drug enforcement policy do not seem to take the Commerce Clause seriously. The Court established long ago in Wickard that this type of legislation, which controls activity that has a substantial economic effect on commerce, falls within the Commerce Clause, and that the federal government has the right (if not the obligation) to appropriately legislate those areas. The Constitution embraces federal government control over key national issues...this is the very purpose of the Commerce Clause.

Prof. Bernstein is of the extreme conservative/libertarian mold - he has argued in the past that the Court's rejection of the freedom of contract, and repudiation of Lochner, was actually a set back for minorities and women - because it allowed 'special preference' laws - for example, minimum wages, a maximum hour work week, and notably minimum wages for women during WWII. In fact, Bernstein is among the forefront of advocating the currently popular re-introduction of Lochner into Constitutional law. What Bernstein, and other libertarians of similar distinguished credentials, fail to appreciate, is that these 'special preference' laws are designed for the benefit and protection of these classes - be it blue collar working classes, or minorities and women. The federal government has a role in ensuring the due process and equal rights of its citizenry - a return to Lochner is an abdication of that Constitutional responsibility.

Whatever your opinions about the use of medical marijuana specifically, or legalization of drugs generally, this is a federalism question - and anyone making the argument that the federal government does not have a role in drug enforcement generally is simply catering to their own personal preferences. Not necessarily the preference to legalize drugs, but their preference of a dead Constitution...or crusading to return the Constitution-in-Exile...

Dumb Money...

Following up on my post here, Slate has another interesting article on the economics of Hollywood.

The point of the article, once again, is the disconnect between where the Hollywood studios are spending their money, and where their revenue streams are (increasingly) coming from. The digital era has completely altered where movies actually make their money, and what demographic it is that is really the driving force these days. But...the studio's seem stuck in pretty much the same 'let's-over-advertise-to-teenagers' rut its been in for decades now...even as it becomes clearer that the advertising carries less of a return, and the demographics of the revenues have changed from teens marching to the theatres, to adults expanding a DVD library.

I thought this was especially intersting:

Does Hollywood need to remain so out of synch with reality? At present, the studio marketing arms have become exceedingly efficient at stampeding weekly herds of teens to multiplexes and producing impressive numbers. But if that amazing trick turns out to be not worth its average $34.8 million price tag, studios will have to consider different strategies. The most obvious one would be to eliminate the long interval between a film's opening and its release on DVD. Also, if the studios aimed at the much larger and more profitable DVD audience, they would not need to spend so much on the teen herd.

Raich handed down...

On a day like today, I long to be a Constitutional Law professor. If I taught ConLaw for a living today, it would actually be my job to spend time reading and analyzing today's Supreme Court decision in Gonzales (Ashcroft) v. Raich. Unfortunately, I'm not - I'm a lot of other things which prevent me from having the time to read all I want about Raich. So, it's going to be a late night...

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Stevens, held that the federal government does have the power to prosecute cases of growth and possession of medical marijuana, even if the state involved has legalized the use of medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. The majority (including J. Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, and Scalia in a concurrance [arguing the necessary and proper clause governed) held that the criminalization of medical marijuana by the federal government is okayed by the Commerce Clause power as interpreted in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) - which held that the federal government had the power to regulated activities which are local and not generally "commerce" if, "it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been described as 'direct' or 'indirect.'" Wickard gave the federal government the power to reach out to "local" activity, if that activity in any way would exert a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Obviously, this is a very broad reading of the Commerce Clause. Raich upheld that reading as the proper Constitutional interpretation.

The dissent (written by J. O'Connor, joined by C.J. Rehnquist and J. Thomas, with a separate dissent by J. Thomas) essentially held that states should be allowed to govern this area themselves because the activity in question (growth and possession of marijuana for state-authorized medical use) was not included in the interstate Commerce Clause.

As I previously noted in this post, due to this federalism question v. the authorization of the use of illegal drugs. In fact, J. O'Connor noted in her dissent that as a voter or legislator she would not support such authorization of the use of medical marijuana...but that regardless, States should be allowed to experiment in such areas free of federal control. As I noted in that post, this case held a particularly difficult choice for the Court: generally a conservative would oppose the legalization of marijuana, but would also oppose the federal government's extension of power over the State governments. Generally a liberal would be more accomodating to the legalization of drugs, but would support the federal government's extension of the Commerce Clause.

As it turned out, as expected, the federalism issue carried the day. The only justice that seemed to be swayed by the facts was potentially J. Scalia - the necessary and proper argument seemed a potential stretch.

Needless to say these are long opinions and there is a lot of analysis out there already...little of which I've been able to read at this point...but I'll be getting to it. For now, here is a starter list of initial readings...
First off, SCOTUSblog is doing a MASSIVE group meta-blog on Raich. Frankly, there is so much there - after only 12 hours - that it would not be adviseable to link to each post - so here is the current latest, and you can use this to get to the others - Raich and Liberty.

Similarly, the Volokh Consipiracy has a LOT, but it's all linked pretty well, so here is The Rehnquist Court and the Mathematics of Federalism.

Prof. Balkin has Court decides Gonzales v. Raich.

CNN story here.
AP report here.

That's a start...lots of reading!

The Andersen Decision...

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Arthur Andersen v. United States, with Chief Justice Rehnquist writing for a unanimous Court overtuning the conviction of the former auditing giant.

The Court held that the jury instructions failed to properly describe the elements of a "corrupt persuasion" charge. The court held that the jury instruction extended the criminal statute beyond its intention, allowing non-culpable (non-knowing) individuals to be guilty of crime; the instruction did not convey the required awareness of wrong-doing.

This result was expected, the State's case hinged on being able to convict with no proof of awareness of specific criminal activity. The Court noted, "it is striking how little culpability the instructions required."

See Kevin Russell's (at SCOTUSblog) recap here where he states that, "Accepting the Government’s position, the district court instructed the jury that Arthur Anderson could be convicted under this provision even it “honestly and sincerely believed that its conduct was lawful” and without proof of any nexus between the document destruction and any particular official proceeding."

For more comment and analysis of the decision see the following:
Tom Kirkendall's comments at Houston's Clear Thinkers - here and here.
NY Times - Reversal of Andersen Conviction Not a Declaration of Innocence
Wa Post - Justices Overturn Andersen Conviction
TalkLeft's comments - here
Wall St. Journal - Arthur Andersen's 'Victory'

So, how much of a win is this, how much exoneration? I guess it depends on who you talk to. The Chicago Tribune (AA was headquartered in Chicago) has this piece entitled Andersen alumni see ruling as vindication. The Houston Chronicle has a piece this morning about how former Andersen employees feel about the decision entitled Ruling stirs emotions. From the Chronicle:

Not every former Andersen employee, however, sees the Supreme Court decision as vindication. "I think management had the intent to obstruct justice, to hide things," said David Germain, a former Andersen consultant in Houston. "The employees suffered for the outcome, however. I don't see this as a victory."
And not everyone is sure the ruling means those working with Enron are exonerated of all wrongdoing. "I'm not saying they were squeaky clean," Brentlinger said. "But the government shouldn't have brought down the whole firm for the mistakes of a few, which now it's not even clear truly were mistakes."

US v. England

Tomorrow I'm heading to Chicago to see the US Men's National Soccer team face off against England for the first time in eleven years.

I have been to Chicago once before on business, but I contracted food poisoning while there, and did not get to experience much of the city. This time, I'm only there for 30 hours, so I won' t have a lot of "tourist" opportunities.

I'm heading to the soccer match on Saturday, then I'm going to catch a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley on Sunday, then I fly back directly. (With some help) I found a couple of really websites for planning your trip on the Chicago Regional Transit Authority, and Chicago Transit Authority rail map. So now, I've got all the buses and tains I need planned out for getting to and from Soldier Field, Wrigley, and O'Hare.

This will be my third time at a US soccer match...I was on hand here in Houston for the 0-0 match v. Mexico on May 8, 2003. And I was in Dallas last year for the thrilling 1-0 victory over Mexico on April 28, 2004.

England comes in without several of their biggest stars: Frank Lampard, John Terry, David Beckam, Michael Owen, and Wayne Rooney will all be missing. In addition, promising winger Stuart Downing came down with an injury on the first day of training in Chicago and was flown back to England. The US, too, is without several of its regular starters, although none with the world-wide notariety of the English stars mentioned above. DaMarcus Beasley, Eddie Johnson, Pablo Mastroeni, Eddie Lewis, and Claudio Reyna are all out for the USNats.

Obviously, I'm hoping for an exciting match and the US to prevail and continue its drive to establish itself as one of the premier soccer sides in the world.

Read more about the match-up:
US Roster
England Roster
England missing several big names - Marc Connolly at ESPN Soccernet
Wasted in the USA - Dominic Raynor for ESPN Soccernet
English giving US a different look - AP

And here they are...

And an added bonus - they're annotated!!! I haven't found a Scalia annotated picture yet, but I did find a full action version...









Click here (Eclectica) to see the rest in full bobbling action - also, this includes the Chief Justice Rehnquist bobblehead annotated, which I could not find a way to post.

Click here for an NPR article.

Supreme Court Bobbleheads...

This is classic - the Justice Antonin Scalia bobblehead.

The Green Bag is in the process of creating a bobblehead of each of the Supreme Court justices for their subscribers.

Click here for an article at Law.com:

Instead, Scalia is shown with a wolf, recalling Scalia's memorable line in his dissent in Morrison v. Olson, the 1988 decision that upheld the Independent Counsel law. In sapping the powers of the executive branch, Scalia wrote, the law was unlike a wolf in sheep's clothing. "This wolf comes as a wolf," Scalia wrote. Scalia is shown standing atop the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, which he cites in his opinions, even though it was succeeded by a third edition in 1961. He is also accompanied by a skewered lemon, symbolizing Scalia's disdain for the so-called Lemon test for assessing establishment clause violations.

And a bit about the previous bobbleheads:

Since 2003, the law review has been turning out the bobbleheads, one justice at a time -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist first, then down the line of seniority to John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, and now Scalia. Portrayed in ceramic serenity with spring-loaded heads, the dolls are replete with iconography specific to each justice. Resting at O'Connor's feet, for example, is a Hereford cow with the brand and earmark of the Lazy B Ranch, where she grew up.

I'm going to have to find pictures of the others...

Speaking of Lochner...

Isn't it amazing the way that works...no sooner do I mention Lochner in my post below, and almost the next thing I'm reading, I stumble upon this from Legal Theory Blog.

Balkin on Lochner

Jack Balkin has posted Wrong the Day it Was Decided: Lochner and Constitutional Historicism (Boston University Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Until quite recently Lochner v. New York and Plessy v. Ferguson were canonical examples of how courts should not decide constitutional questions -- both were generally considered not only wrong, but wrong the day they were decided. Although Plessy remains anti-canonical in this sense, for an increasing number of legal thinkers, Lochner no longer does. This essay, written for the 100th anniversary of Lochner v. New York, explains why Lochner's canonical status has altered, and how changing views of Lochner are connected to (or driven by) contemporary theories of legitimate constitutional change. It also explores the connections between contemporary attitudes about Lochner and constitutional ethos-the stories that Americans tell each other about who we are, where we have come from, and what we stand for. In analyzing these questions, the essay employs an approach called constitutional historicism, which holds that the conventions determining what is a good or bad legal argument about the Constitution, what is a plausible legal claim and what is off-the-wall, change over time in response to changing social, political, and historical conditions. The essay concludes by considering to what extent constitutional historicism might help constitutional theory.

Everything by Balkin is worth a read!

Quite the fortunate coincidence. I've downloaded Prof. Balkin's paper and can't wait to read it...

On the Merits

From today's Washington Post:

Democrats have attacked Justice Owen as a radical conservative eager to substitute her views for those of elected officials. She is part of the conservative flank of a conservative court. Some of her opinions, particularly concerning abortion, seem fairly aggressive. But the cases that have made her controversial -- even the now-famous abortion case in which her then-colleague on the court, Alberto R. Gonzales, seemed to accuse her of judicial activism -- presented difficult questions about which reasonable minds can disagree. Justice Owen would not have been our choice for the job. But she is undoubtedly well-qualified, and the case against her is not strong enough to justify denying the president his choice. Mr. Bush did win the election.

This very well sums up my opinions on Justice Owen. While I would not have nominated her, she is a well-qualified and capable jurist. The American people elected Bush and a Republican Senate, just because I disagree with some of her rulings does not mean she is unfit for the position.

The editorial then goes on to question the validity of the nominations of Pryor and Brown, saying this of Brown:

In speeches she has openly yearned for the "Lochner era," a period in the early decades of the 20th century during which the Supreme Court invalidated various regulatory actions in the name of a supposed right of free contract. This is one of the most discredited periods of the court's history, a time when the courts wrote libertarian economic theory into the Constitution. And her speeches are not merely playful musings, for Justice Brown's work on the court in California reflects the same nostalgia. For years, Republicans have railed against "judicial activism." If that term has any meaning, it certainly describes Justice Brown's adventurous approach to economic liberties.

In recent months, I've seen quite a bit of scholarly re-acquaintance to Lochner - primarily from conservative legal thinkers. I admit I am no scholar, but this resurfacing of Lochner-type law seems utterly incomprehensible to me.

Does law need to be intellectually pure - yes, to a point. But there are also the lives of real individuals, real people that have to enter into the equasion. Justice demands it. Substantive due process may ask serious questions of consistency ... but to me, those questions can be answered with that one word: Justice.

A side point - in my very first subject in law school, I entered into the fray, discussing WW Volkswagen with my Civ Pro professor. I was attempting to make a point about the need to provide restitution to the party who was so horribly injured by the clear cause of the defendant party. My professor kept pressing me on why - and I finally said, "our law has to be able to provide justice." He looked at me and smirked and said, "Do you think Law has anything to do with Justice?" I meekly replied, "yes, I would hope so." He smiled and said, "Law has nothing to do with justice - and if anyone else here has such thoughts, we will beat them out of you before you leave law school." He said that and laughed, and the class laughed, and I laughed. He was joking after all...sort of.

A return to Lochner is yanking the justice out of law. I, for one, will fight that...but I am still a 1L - so maybe it will be beaten out of me soon enough...

Stevens Speaks on the Role of Int'l Law

A couple of articles this week discussed Justice J.P. Stevens' recent speech to the 7th Circuit Bar Association and Judicial Conference of the 7th Circuit.

In that speech Stevens noted that the Supreme Court considering the views of international courts is a responsible practice.

Here is the article from FindLaw.
Here is the article from The Indianapolis Star.

The FindLaw article specifically notes Justice Scalia's recent speeches opposing the influence of international law on American Courts...in part stemming from this quote from Justice Kennedy's opinion in Roper v. Simmons: "The United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty." That quote in large part sparked the dissents of Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas - in the case which eliminated capital punishment for minors. Stevens seems to make a fair point - one that is ignored by Scalia in his 'outrage' over the influence of international law:

There is a vast difference between U.S. justices considering meaningful views of scholars and judges before reaching a conclusion and allowing international opinion to control the interpretation of U.S. laws, Stevens said ..."We should not be impeached for the former," he said. "And we are not guilty of the latter."

For more on the Supreme Court's take on international law, please see my October 28, 2004 post entitled: O'Connor extols role of international law.

(Credit to ACSBlog for coverage of Stevens speech.)

An economics detective story.

Absolutely fascinating and compellingly intertwined piece from Slate. (Credit to Volokh, where I first saw this here.)

The Search for 100 Million Missing Women

This article is interesting enough on its face - the story of how an economist is using data to "find" about 50MM of Amartya Sen's 100MM 'missing women' in southeast Asia. But, it takes an almost surreal twist at the end when the demographic study intertwines with an earlier phsycological study of toddlers - it gets wild.

This is great stuff - intersting and informative, and a story that is almost too good to believe. Read this, and tell me you don't double take at the last paragraph...

Is there any hidden meaning here?

Owen uproar may not extend to her appeals court decisions

"She's my friend but more importantly she's a great judge," Bush said. "It's a great day for our friend, to see our friend finally get a just due, after a long, long wait."

Is it just me - or is that a really weird, almost haunting quote. Can't you just see Bush, Cheney, Hutchinson, Cornyn, Frist, Gonzales, and Owen in a back room somewhere with sinister lighting talking about how they can get "friends" in other positions of power? Shudddddddder... I mean, I know there's not really any hidden meaning here, but it's still kind of ... creepy.

In addition,

On the 5th U.S. Circuit, Owen is likely to continue her track record for conservative opinions in civil cases, said David Dow, a University of Houston law center professor. But it is far from certain how she will decide on criminal cases given that her experience comes on the Texas Supreme Court, which did not handle criminal matters.
"Any attempt to predict how she will rule on matters like the death penalty and other criminal issues would not be based on her record as a judge, because she doesn't have a record," Dow said. Texas and Oklahoma are the only states with separate high courts for criminal and civil trials.
For all the upset over Owen's nomination, she is not likely to change the flow of decisions out of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans, experts said.

Professor Dow was my Contracts professor last semester.

Lots of news this morning...

Chief justice visits Capitol Medical Department

The Supreme Court has two nurses on its staff but no physician. In the past, some justices have used the Capitol Medical Department, which is one long block away from the court.

I continue to hope the best for Mr. Chief Justice Rehnquist, and hope the summer will see him in full recovery.

Senators compromise on filibusters

Under the agreement, three of President Bush's nominees for appellate courts stalled by Democratic filibusters will go forward and two others will remain subject to filibuster.

Under the deal, the senators will allow three of Bush's controversial nominees to come to a vote: Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor.
The group made no commitment to vote for or against a filibuster on two nominees, William Myers and Henry Saad.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid later welcomed the deal and indicated Democrats would continue to filibuster Myers and Saad, likely dooming their nominations.

This seems like a lot for the Democrats to have given up...especially when it seemed they had the public support on this issue. All and all, this is an example of why the Senate has always been a more deliberative, less partisan body - they find away to work together.

A filibuster perspective from a Texas attorney...

From TPM:

A reader from Texas checks in ...

I have been licensed to practice law in Texas since 1961. During that period we have seen the complete deterioration of the 5th Circuit in New Orleans from a beacon of reason during the civil rights battles (of course it then included more States including Alabama) to the a rubber stamp right-wing caricature of its former stature.

Here is my compromise, as much as it pains me: Let Owens go through. It will not make the 5th appreciably worse; the only more retrograde Circuit is the 4th. I know it will further imbalance the 5th and violate the dictum laid down by Sen. Schumer. The way I see it is that the 5th is a lost cause or sacrifice area already and for the foreseeable future. But, the DC Circuit to which Judge Brown has been nominated is both more important and more closely divided. Brown is so far out of the mainstream she almost makes Owens look moderate. Brown must be stopped.

I would tend to agree. Although I may not agree with much of Justice Owen's jurisprudence - I think that she is a qualified jurist, and will not dramatically change the makeup of the far-right 5th Cir. Brown, however, is a different story - my impression is that she is far more radical, far less qualified, and the DC Cir. is much more balanced.

Click here for the perspective of a Houston attorney from Houston's Clear Thinkers.

This is why the DNC needed a new chair...

Dean says DeLay likely will go to jail

For years, the Democratic party has been unwilling to stand up to Republican strong-arm tactics - that seems to have all changed with Howard Dean in charge.

Dean offered a blistering review of the Republican Party — "I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do," he said — and used DeLay, R-Sugar Land, as an example of the "abuse of power" that he said now permeates Washington.
"This gentleman is not an ethical person, and he ought not to be leading Congress, period," Dean said on NBC's Meet the Press. "And it is endemic of what happens in Congress when one party controls everything."

I've got to completely agree with Dean - I hate what the current administration is doing to our country. I really do. America was meant for better.

Okay, I changed my mind - Water for everyone!!!

Can you believe this - one day and the EPA changes its policy:

EPA Does About-Face, Won't Allow Partial Treatment at Sewage Plants in Storms

The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will not allow sewage treatment plants to skip a process for killing some disease-causing micro-organisms after heavy rains or snow melts.

If the EPA had adopted the policy, U.S. sewage plants might have avoided an estimated $90 billion or more in facility upgrades to allow for oxidation of pollutants in wastes after heavy rains.

The agency had proposed letting [untreated sewage dumping] become the official policy for handling the huge volume of waste water that storms bring, but changed its mind after reviewing 98,000 public comments and the testimony at some congressional hearings.

Info here from the League of Conservation Voters.

It's good to know the the public can still make a difference.

Don't get caught in the white noise...

Two good articles in Slate about recent foreign policy issues.

First - Behind Bush's latest assault on the Press

Let's see. A mistake … lives lost … America's image abroad damaged. Does any of that sound vaguely familiar? A few instances do spring to mind. Newsweek didn't have anything to do with them. McClellan's boss did.

And - Kaboom! How to Enrage Iraqi Sunnis

Rather than respond in a coordinated fashion, U.S. forces blazed in with armored vehicles and helicopter gun ships and simply pummeled the place. Fasal al-Goud, a former governor of Anbar province and one of the sheiks who had asked for assistance, told the Inquirer, "The Americans were bombing whole villages, and saying they were only after the foreigners."

Don't Drink the Water...

Just found this post at Uncommon Sense at TomPaine.com. It is amazing what kind of political choices are made while most of us are unaware.

The EPA has proposed legislation to allow sewage companies to dump sewage which has not completed treatment into our water supplies.

No, unfortunately I'm not kidding. The EPA - purportedly the government's agency to protect our environment - is proposing this. That fact just boggles my mind. The issue is that in times of heavy storms and flooding, much of America's water systems - pipes/drains/etc. - can't handle the excess water. This cause of this problem is the age and decline of this water infrastructure. But instead of a long-term plan to overhaul and invest in this vital infrastructure, the EPA (and the Bush administration) is proposing a "quick-fix" - a short term solution that is no solution at all. They propose to allow sewage companies to release sewage which has not been fully treated to remove biological contaminants into our waters in order to free up space needed to funnel the excess water during storms and flooding.

We, as the public that will be most impacted by this legislation, should stand in opposition.

Click here to read about the problem that is our aging water infrastructure system.
Click here to read what the League of Conservation Voters says about this sewage legislation.
Click here to take action and send an e-mail to your Congressperson urging them to oppose the EPA legislation and vote for the Save Our Waters from Sewage Act, proposed by a large group in Congress.
Click here to read the Save Our Waters from Sewage Act and see who all introduced the bill.
Click here to send an e-mail to others to encourage them to take action to keep our waters clean.