Before
A chronicle of an American life
22 January 2011 at 10.03 pm · Filed under Culture, Law school, Random, The law
I’m watching The Pelican Brief (and I’m only 20 minutes in). Two things stand out. First of all, Cynthia Nixon played one of Julia Roberts’ law student friends, which is kind of hot. I guess she got her Sex and The City J.D. by having a part in this film.
Second, I loved — as I always do — the library scene where Julia Roberts rifles through countless dusty old law books, trying to figure out who might have killed the Supreme Court justices. You can feel the drama. Then I thought about it: in the digital age, there is no dramatic dusty old book scene. There’s just Julia Roberts, staring slackjawed at shitty old Westlaw. Hollywood is never going to put together any frantic iPad research sequence. (“Turn it to portrait orientation! Hurry!”) I hate the iPad and all it is doing to the death of print.
20 March 2008 at 5.36 pm · Filed under Culture, Political
I’ve been really sick the last four days, and probably spending more time on the Internet than usual. Nothing is more discouraging than a few minutes at the China Daily website, the English-language “news” site which has become increasingly more professional over the years, and thusly, more dangerous.
The lead story on the BBC News webpage is about severe protests and demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet. There, you can read that activists have released graphic photos of dead bodies showing bullet wounds, and that the police have finally admitted to firing shots at some protesters. You’ll also read that riot police raided a monastery, causing 300 monks to run for their lives as police committed acts of “gratuitous violence” and kicked monks in the stomach while they lay on the ground. The phone service had mysteriously been cut. And the BBC’s own reporters noted that there had been severe limitations on their travel and ability to report.
Cruise over to China Daily. The lead story is on the Olympic flame. Click on “China” to get national news stories. The lead story there is “China’s new cabinet maps out working rules.” You have to dig for a story about the crisis, and I found one. 105 Lhasa rioters surrender to police. There, you’ll read that “rioters” killed innocent civilians. There’s no mention of China’s military actions. But, there is a link to a story couple of days old titled, We fired no gunshots — Tibetan government chairman. I wasn’t able to find any article admitting that the government in fact had shot anyone. Rather, I found a humorous and pathetic grab-all story recounting that local religious authorities were decrying the Dalai Lama (who’s won the Nobel Peace Prize), that Tibet’s 1957 military invasion was “peaceful,” and for good measure, that “mobs” stoned a Han Chinese girl’s head without provocation. (The Han are eastern China’s ethnic majority.)
Although China Daily never likes airing China’s own dirty laundry, it always enjoys having a good laugh at the United States — a country where protests against the government usually do not result in death. Some people actually take pride in the fact that this is a country where protesting is legal: a point that seems lost on the site’s editors. Thus, photos of Iraq war protesters are often prominently displayed on the front page, including today. This is pretty typical for the website, but what I found truly bizarre is that the CD has created a special slideshow about Eliot Spitzer. For fans of the absurd, this is not to be missed. What sounds like plaintive Chinese pop music starts up soon into the slides. As the captions peter out, it appears that the editors are simply running out the clock so that they can finish the song. I have asked for a translation.
Also good for a laugh is the commentary, Property boom is here to stay. After the ritualistic paean to Beijing’s “beaming vitality” and the amusingly gushing reference to “millions of skyscrapers being erected” (do the math — even in China, it can’t be millions), the author gets down to business. “Are these sprouting buildings constructed on speculated ground, as property prices have been surging at a pace faster than the average growth in incomes?” The answer is, of course not. Do I even need to spell out the irony here? And tragically, the author has failed to learn his microecon 101, confusingly calling the government to impose “price controls to make housing affordable for everyone” (but China must not “resort to administrative means to rein in housing prices”) while at the same time “subsidizing buyers with cash reimbursement” and cutting deals with developers to cap initial sale prices. Huh? Even Paul Krugman could not get behind this weird a plan, but “the authorities seem to have acknowledged this approach.” And despite the opening reference to China’s glittering array of wealth, the column contains the rare admission that it is “a society where the majority of people cannot afford housing.”
As the Olympics near, we are going to hear more and more about how China is doing for itself. The record continues to be one of shame. And I remind people that it was just 2001 that China’s military captured and interrogated several U.S. airmen after one of their inept pilots caused a mid-air collision. They are not our friends. In the 1980′s, America was obsessed with the prospect of having to surrender our economy to the Japanese, and that was a country we actually got along with. It is a long road from the China of 2008 to the Japan of 1980.
28 December 2007 at 9.44 pm · Filed under Culture, Random
I rarely do this, but I’m simply going to link to a New York Times weblog posting from a commercial pilot. While he doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of positive suggestions for security, he does kick the legs out from under several of the ridiculous security measures currently in place in the US. I was surprised to learn that while pilots and flight attendants must go through the metal detectors, ramp workers and others who have direct access to the planes undergo only sporadic security checks. It’s long, but it’s a good screed and a good read.
Oh God, I’m propagating the blogosphere echo chamber.
12 November 2007 at 5.10 pm · Filed under Culture
I ran across a very surprising article from the Daily Telegraph that the Labour Government in the UK has decided to allow rising ocean levels to consume British villages and farmland in several vulnerable areas. Under a points-based formula, only certain regions will be “defended” against incursions by the sea. The article leaks some of the details from the official analysis.
Not surprisingly, some people are very cross about this, and some Conservative members accuse the government of sacrificing Conservative districts (literally) while shoring up marginal Labour constituencies that were affected by this year’s massive river floods. Whatever; I can’t pass judgment on that.
It is interesting, though, that Britain has the stomach (or lack of backbone, depending on how you feel) to decide what to save and what to let go. In America, we haven’t made many honest decisions about this, except for a few million-dollar cliffs in Massachusetts. We certainly haven’t faced up to certain geological and physical realities in many places where a decision will be inevitable. I’m thinking of New Orleans, of course, but also North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the Florida Keys, and a scattering of Appalachian hollows and river towns. Our course is always to shore up and rebuild on shaky ground, burying our heads in the sand as it washes away around us.
9 November 2007 at 4.24 pm · Filed under Culture, Solely personal
Lately I’ve found the time to read a ton of books in the sort of earthy/environmental vein. That and the impending Florida move have made me just feel a lot “greener.” Let me explain.
When I was growing up, we had all kinds of things in the backyard: apple trees, a cherry tree, a peach tree, grapevines, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries (disgusting), asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, carrots, beans, sunflowers, corn, and God knows what else. We had a shed, which my dad built from the ground up to hold all the tools, and a compost pile (a mysterious shaggy creature). We also had some kind of mini-greenhouse on legs, which I think was used to grow herbs. In the front yard we had a huge lilac bush and a ton of flowers.
It’s kind like I’m going through repressed memory therapy here, but I’m just realizing that damn, I grew up with a ton of gardening going on. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I’m sure I assumed everybody kept a grape arbor in the backyard, if I had even decided to think about it, which I’m sure I hadn’t.
Now I’m thinking that reviving this life would be a great thing to do on my own, but living downtown in a condo isn’t exactly conducive to having a garden and a compost pile. The next best thing is to read about it, so I did.
I went down to the library and picked up Compost, a deceptively small book about composting. The British author says you should actually compost food waste and paper waste in equal quantities — great, because I generate huge amounts of paper waste. I also read The Square-Foot Garden, a classic that eschews the traditional row method of planting in favor of little squares that you never walk on, so as not to compact the soil. (I now am realizing our garden looked like that — another thing I just assumed everybody else did.) For a human perspective, I tried to sift through The 3,000 Mile Garden, a book of sort of gardeny love letters between an Englishman and a Maine cat lady, but it got too creepy. (I tried!) Because it was there (in the gardening section! what a scam the Dewey decimal system was!), I also picked up and devoured Silent Spring, the 1962 classic that helped launch the environmental revolution and crusaded against broad-spectrum synthetic pesticides like heptachlor, dieldrin, and DDT, all of which are now off the market. I read all this stuff in the span of about three days last week, when I should have been studying, then I slept on it. I heartily recommend all these books except the one.
After all this ecological ferment, I’ve decided: I can’t wait to move to Florida so I can grow a garden. Apparently the soil is crummy (either sandy or clayey, and full of nematodes), but you can fix that, and you can grow up to five crops a year because of the wonderful sun, temperatures, and humidity. I also decided I would like to try to never throw anything away, again, ever. According to Compost, you can even compost things like old clothes (they’re cotton, a natural fiber) and cardboard. I already recycle all kinds of stuff, including my cans, paper, electronics, and so on. The only things you really can’t recycle are certain plastics — what else is there to throw out? So, once the move comes, everything’s going on the compost pile or in the recycling. I even researched how to compost meat, which everybody says is a bad idea (rats and flies), and I came across “bokashi,” a Japanese invention involving a sealed bucket, wheat bran, and bacteria, which is a process that anaerobically “pickles” your meat, permitting it to then be composted. Sounds gross, though, to leave a bucket of rotting meat outside, but if it works, why not.
Amusingly, these decisions have led me to realize I’m going to have to live on a lot with some sun and some amount of land, i.e., I might actually have to move to the suburbs or the country (!). Cityboy might go on hiatus for a while. But I think it will be enjoyable to come home, change from the suit into the play clothes, go muck about in the garden for an hour or so, then get a shower and have a refreshing drink while admiring the garden, and have a dinner including vegetables I grew myself. That kind of life should give plenty of time for contemplation. Shouldn’t life be relaxing and innately rewarding?
27 October 2007 at 8.27 pm · Filed under City life, Funny stories, Technology
So I’m sitting at the Caribou Coffee, here to do some writing and thinking. There’s an incredibly bad guitar singer here with an amp — which never happens. I’m trying to work, but the old man is cranking out bad renditions of the Beatles and the Monkees. (Come on man, pick one and get good at it!)
I am grateful, then, that I at least have my laptop with me so I can listen to my own music. But there’s some terrible problem, and I can’t get the music working! Windows Media Player says it can’t access all of my files, which is bizarre. So I download WinAmp, copy the music to other locations, try Yahoo Radio, reboot multiple times — anything to drown this guy out, but nothing works. It’s a travesty and I can’t think!
Finally, after half an hour of screwing around and NOT writing, I figure out the driver problem, and I crank up the first song that plays: Sedated, by the Ramones. Ahh, sweet blessed peace. I start jamming along, banging my head and really being happy.
And that’s when I notice them. A group of four ‘tweenies, sitting in front of me, giggling. And one of them has a camera phone and is trying to casually hold it over the shoulder so he can video my inspired Ramones performance. The others are dying laughing and trying to discreetly help him point it the right way.
Not wanting to wind up on YouTube, I stop chair-dancing and just stare at the phone intensely. They quit taping me and act like it never happened.
That’s when I turn on the flashlight on my phone, lean over, and take this picture of the little bastards:
(Perpetrator in blue hoodie.) They immediately melt in mortified embarrassment. Giggling stops, whispering starts. Nobody can stand to look at me after that.
Suck on it, punks. I’m not thirty yet.
23 October 2007 at 1.12 pm · Filed under Technology, The law
Microsoft announced it would not appeal its adverse antitrust judgment in the Court of First Instance to the European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court. I will leave it to those who actually know European law to comment on the merits of any possible appeal, but focus on the technology and on the press coverage of this significant ”event.”
In exchange for not fighting the case further, Microsoft agreed to open up certain software protocols at a lower cost than previously, and to license some patents at a lower cost.
The media went nuts with the coverage. Yesterday’s Marketplace radio show ruled: “It’s official — Microsoft is a monopolist.” (That was official long ago, and being a monopolist isn’t illegal.) The Times today allows that the effects remain uncertain but trumpets others’ pronouncements that the deal is “a huge breakthrough” and one that will have a “profound[ e]ffect” that will continue for years to come. Over at CNET, it’s an “important milestone” and “a large win” for everyone but Microsoft.
Amusingly, the most likely effect of this “deal” is to further tighten Microsoft’s grip over those areas where it is already strong: workgroup servers like file and print servers, and of course, the desktop environment — Windows Vista and Office.
It’s all about interoperability. But interoperability already exists. For example, you are probably reading this on a Windows PC or a Mac, or maybe a cell phone. But it is being served to you by a computer running Linux. You don’t know, and you don’t care, thanks to common Internet protocols not controlled by Microsoft. These protocols are free for anyone to use, so there’s no way to make money off monopolizing them. (Of course, people have complained for years that Microsoft has tried to add proprietary extensions to some of them as a way of coopting them. But this hasn’t worked.)
As part of this deal, Microsoft may publish additional undisclosed protocols, but I haven’t seen that in any press coverage yet. Right now, what they offer is mostly junk. The protocols Microsoft is currently licensing are available from other sources (UPnP), tragically outdated (IPX, Gopher), or worthless (the Echo protocol literally just echoes back whatever is sent). You can also license CIFS, which, as the Times article noted, is perhaps the most important one for interoperability in Microsoft’s core file server market. It was completely reverse-engineered by the open-source Samba team; no need to pay for it.
CIFS is an example of why Microsoft’s licensing deal is not the world-changer some might say it is. That protocol allows people using Windows PCs to store files on other computers’ hard drives — the common “file share” or “network drive.” In practical terms, what the Samba program does is let you get rid of a Windows server and replace it with a Linux server that has the same functionality. Samba makes it “look like” a Windows share drive to users. So users don’t notice that their files live on another type of computer, and just like you reading this web page right now, they don’t care. Nobody ever cares what protocol is used to store their files on another computer.
The core of my argument is: if Microsoft opens its protocol library a little more, and makes it cheaper to use those protocols, they are actually strengthening the importance of Windows. It becomes easier for people to build solutions around the Windows PC, and that only increases the value of being a Windows PC owner. A good analogy is the iPod world. There are thousands of products that fit the iPod, whether it’s special headphones, TV adapters, Bluetooth connectors, or whatever. My friend Tom Parker even has a whole bookbag with rubberized iPod controls on the strap and a headphone jack on the outside. All these “interoperable” accessories just make being an iPod owner more compelling — but they don’t really make it easier to, one day, finally get rid of that damn monopoly product, the iPod. By the way, I can’t resist pointing out that Apple has never published or been forced to publish the protocol for the iPod connector, and it changes all the time – much to the annoyance of Tom, whose $75 bag is now “broken” because it’s incompatible with the current iPod. If Microsoft did this — and when IBM did it in the 1960′s — competitors would cry foul and complain of the abuse of monopoly power.
Making new rules for Microsoft’s licensing agreements isn’t going to do anything for competition except increase the dominance of Windows and the other juggernaut, Office. It’s hard to see why Europe would accept this, but Europe has a history of securing worthless promises. The last one was “Windows N,” a version of Windows that didn’t include the Media Player application (and which Microsoft originally called “Windows Reduced Media Edition”). Making Windows N available was supposed to open the market for competing players like RealPlayer, even though you could already run RealPlayer on Windows. What happened? Europe’s regulators made no requirement to sell Windows N at a discount to regular Windows, so Microsoft sells it at the same price, and no rational user would purchase something if he can get more for the same money. Nobody buys Windows N, but Microsoft has to support it anyway. Meanwhile, RealPlayer still sucks.
6 August 2007 at 12.00 pm · Filed under Culture
Greetings from Denver. I have little time to write, so I’ll keep it brief. Kansas is mostly empty. Eastern Colorado is totally empty. The good news is both states let you drive reallllly fast. I have been taking a lot of good pictures, which I’ll try to post today or tomorrow, and it’s been a good visit so far.
That wasn’t really worth reading, was it? What compels me to write today, however, is the news that the New York Times becomes an inch and a half narrower today. (Even here in the American West, my ears are finely tuned to the machinations of the newspapers.) How could they shrink the Times? The whole fun of the Times is that it was essentially a giant tablecloth. Even someone as large as me would have to strain and stretch to read stories in the farthest corners of its pages. Moreover, while other papers got narrower, I always thought I could count on the Times for broad, expansive coverage. The paper is now smaller in size and stature.
3 August 2007 at 2.38 am · Filed under Solely personal
Gentle reader, my summer of relaxation has come to an end. From August ’04 to May ’07, I was in school and working full time continually. Over this summer, I’ve been lucky enough to just have to work, and that felt like a vacation. But all things come to an end, and school starts up again this month.
I’m taking one last trip before the final push. I’ve decided to drive out to Denver to visit my friend Amy, then come back via Chicago visiting my friend Dave. Along the way I’ll get to add a few new states to my list and see just how big this big country really is.
God willing, you’ll hear from me a little bit each day, as I post my adventures here. People tell me the drive across Kansas is a killer, and I guess we’ll find out. Since I’ve gotta stay overnight there and in Nebraska, there should be plenty of time to read and write. I’m looking forward to it.
12 June 2007 at 6.58 pm · Filed under Technology
Hello for the month of June 2007. To those who complain about the paucity of material: I remind you, this is a free service! Send me on assignment to another country, I’ll post once a day.
There was a good article in the paper today about CAPTCHAs. These are the dumb little visual puzzles you have to solve when you want to do something online to prove you’re not a spam robot. (I sometimes have one on my site, but all you have to do there is check that box. Big woop.) Usually the puzzles are some screwed-up word with lines going through it or funky colors. The paper was pointing at that the spammers are catching on and getting smarter all the time, so these puzzles are now to the point where it might be too hard to solve them.
So the first interesting link is to a site where spammers brag about beating the puzzles. It includes visual examples and humorously bad commentary about how weak the puzzles are. Example: “Work for one hour if work not too fast.”
The other interesting idea was, why not put people to work and have them solve these puzzles as a way to help deal with the problems of digitizing books? (We all know how everyone feels about stealing books.) Since scanning technology can’t read everything perfectly, and people solve these millions of times a day, the idea is a good use of otherwise wasted labor.
26 April 2007 at 2.27 pm · Filed under Random, The law
This one is for Mr. McNeely.
Rick, did you know that our Sixth Circuit adjoins the Eighth, Seventh, Fifth, Eleventh, Fourth, and Third Circuits? That’s more neighbors than any other circuit! We really are the heart of it all.
21 April 2007 at 9.19 pm · Filed under City life, Political
Dear Mayor Coleman:
This week, while driving to work, I caught a few minutes of a story on public radio about some new “Young Professionals” initiative. Since I’m 29 and professional-esque, my eyes pricked up. They aired several sound bites from an incredibly excitable consultant about what we could try to improve life here. It sounds like you are trying to attract and keep more young, hip professional citizens in Columbus, which is a good idea and an uphill slog. I’m sure you noticed that the Census recently reported Ohio is now one of the top exporters of talented college graduates.
But what I heard on the radio didn’t do it for me, and since I’m actually in the target demo, I thought I’d let you know. First off, tell your advisors we young professionals never want to be referred to as “YP’s” again. Just go ahead and call us yuppies, but not YP’s. Yucky Poo.
The person on the radio was concerned that we don’t have enough information about what’s going on here. She suggested that we what we want is an online calendar telling us what the local events are. Further, apparently you need to re-invent Mapquest, because “people don’t even know where in their neighborhood the grocery stores are!” She told us that we want more bikeways, and that it (apparently) will be a big draw if Columbus would be the location of the first statewide “young professionals’ conference.” Also, she pointed out that Milwaukee has three and a half people working full time on attracting young professionals, and “even Cincinnati has someone.” Shouldn’t you consider hiring her as a full time YP-attractor, too?
Well, no. You’re the mayor of a big city, and you have services to provide to the general population. Just focus on the basics, and the city will take care of itself.
Take transportation: why was I driving one mile to work, anyway, except for the fact that such a trip on the bus costs $1.50 and takes almost 20 minutes? Connecting the city’s bike routes and parks would be a good idea, but the city’s pace of construction is glacial, downtown still isn’t linked with most of the regional bike assets, and there isn’t a single, real, marked bike lane anywhere in town. It would be nice if we could get more non-stop flights out of CMH, too (but I refuse to ride in the Nationwide-logo Skybus “demonstration plane”).
Fire response time could improve. It took the fire department about fifteen minutes to get here the last time I called, even though the station is only seven blocks away. What were they doing?
Why is garbage collection still free while recycling costs good money? We’re always running out of landfill space. If you really want to attract hip young things, make Columbus a truly green city. I can’t name any environmental initiative you’ve sponsored at all. (Hell, even inept COTA runs bio-diesel buses.)
Finally, I can’t resist pointing out that I was with you when you stared at the first arch over High Street back in 2002, and the dang things still don’t work. Turn the lights on!
I’m not complaining too much; things work reasonably well here (we’re not Cincinnati), but don’t let yourself get distracted with these consultants. No one ever moved to Austin or Seattle or New York because the city government set up a web site. You can’t change the weather or give us an ocean, but you can fix the nuts and bolts. The jobs and residents will follow.
Sincerely,
Bill Cash
10 April 2007 at 12.19 pm · Filed under Political, The law
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed riling up my friends on the left, Marcus Banks and Venezuelan Army Maj. Marty Stroodler, over the issue of D.C. voting rights. To Justme, I would retort that holding a sign reading “Will Make Political Commentary for Money,” and actually eating because of it, is a wonderful dream.
Washington, D.C., which the Supreme Court relegated to mere and literal footnote status last week, is clearly a banana republic that should be squelched until it learns its lesson.
Well, I’m kidding somewhat. In all this debate, I have been disappointed that no one took up for Washington as a normal American city. When I criticized the city for having no industry to speak of, I was sure I would hear “XM Radio!” (In truth, I just tried to think of another employer to include here that wasn’t 1) out on I-66 or I-270, 2) government, 3) quasi-government, 4) education, or 5) food, and I couldn’t do it. Sorry, Lady Columbia.) The city does have parks, rivers, boats, schools, etc. It deserves dignity as a regular place to grow up in, that just happens to have the capital. Tragically, its transient residential status caused the thousands of readers and commenters of our web logs collectively to bypass this aspect of Washington life.
“Retrocession,” or as I call it, “digestion by Maryland,” would degrade this unique character. I oppose it. Those who say it would free Washington of certain burdens, such as having to run a DMV, miss the point. This would strip Washington of its dignity as a special city. Further, it is impossible. The point of creating a “non-residential ‘federal quarter’” is to solve the voting problem by putting its population into a jurisdiction that has Congressional votes (Maryland) while leaving the part of the city that belongs to all America under federal control. The problem is that such a zone, at the minimum, would have to be a triangle containing the Jefferson Memorial, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and there are a lot of people living within that triangle. Either there would have to be forced evacuations for the purpose of creating a sterile zone, or those people would have to be left out of the plan to give voting rights to all citizens. Moreover, a sterile non-residential zone goes against principles of good city planning (Jacobs) and further debauches a grand old lady.
It seems unlikely that Washington will ever have the population to support two representatives. The city is atrophying and has lost about 40% of its population in the last fifty years; at the same time, the number of people supporting a single House seat grows ever higher. In 2010, the number of people needed for a State to claim two seats will exceed one million — five hundred thousand more than Washington has. Washington’s House delegation, if awarded proportionally to the other States, would never exceed one.
Senate representation is a great question. Logically, if the basis for granting a House seat is that people deserve an equal voice in Congress, then there is no reason not to grant a “full” two seats’ Senate representation. Otherwise, we’ll still have the “second-class status” argument hanging out there. (It was amusing to see Stroodler willing to bargain down to a single seat. Washington been down so long, it don’t know what up is.) But while the great constitutional compromise between the large and small States was to create two bodies, the House for the people and the Senate for the States, it does not justify granting Washington two Senate seats for the simple reason that Washington is not a State. (And we all agreed to leave at least part of Washington a “local government” rather than a State.)
I also find it interesting that in all this, nobody advanced the legal argument that the “District Clause” of the Constitution, art. I, cl. 17 (go here and search for “District”; also read interesting annotations), which provides that the Congress has broad powers to control affairs relating to the District, gives Congress the power to add a seat without a constitutional amendment. But I think this is a bad argument; it’s clear that the clause provides the power to control land use, building restrictions, police authority, and those kinds of things; it doesn’t let Congress restructure the Congress by changing its membership. I think it’s sad that some, including the Utahns colluding with the Democrats to add the seat, want to justify the change on this weak ground, rather than embarking on the lengthy moral crusade of amendment. By granting D.C. electoral votes, the American people have already demonstrated that if the cause is just, they will amend the Constitution even at the expense of their own interests. That is the surest route to solving this problem, whatever the solution may be.
29 March 2007 at 12.53 am · Filed under Political, Random
The organization DC Vote has put up a documentary movie on its web site called “Un-Natural State.” It’s worth the eight minutes. (You can also get a teacher’s worksheet because the video apparently complies with Washington ninth grade history and government class standards.)
If you watch this video, you’re going to learn two shocking things.
First, that DC Vote thinks we should rewrite our Constitution so our government can be more like Venezuela’s.
Secondly, that there is a guy who is the United States Senator for the District. I think it is so cute that Washington has a Senator! And, he’s a white former New Yorker!
If you do watch it, let me know what you think. The best part is when 35 seconds in, the narrator asks, “Are things really as they seem?” It’s quite ominous; the shot of birds flying over the head is pure Hitchcock.
22 March 2007 at 11.49 pm · Filed under Political
I’ve been watching the battle over giving Washington, D.C. representation in the United States House of Representatives with some amusement. If you don’t know about this, and you like political arcana, catch up.
As you might know, D.C. license plates proclaim it’s the land of “Taxation Without Representation.” (That’s a great automotive statement easily surpassing New York City’s “Don’t Even Think of Parking Here” signs.) People in Washington think they’re being cheated out of having a Congressman and two Senators, even though they’re free to move to a real State at any time. They do have a non-voting representative, whose sole job seems to be House jester.
People in Utah also feel cheated out of a House seat, too, and they’ve been feeling that way ever since the 2000 census. Why? Because Utah, which has only three representatives, missed the cutoff for a fourth seat by about eight hundred people. They claimed that the Census failed to count Mormon missionaries who were out of the country at the time; they also took issue with a statistical method the Census uses. This bothered them enough to take their case to the Supreme Court, where they lost. (North Carolina has the seat Utah wanted.) This part of the story seems to be missing from the current coverage, and it explains why the Beehive State’s so into this idea.
Fast forward to today. Somebody in Washington (or maybe it was Utah — I’m not sure) got the admittedly savvy idea that if we added one seat for D.C., which would probably go Democrat, we could add one seat for Utah, which would probably go Republican, and keep the balance we have. Everybody wins — Utah’s pacified and Washington’s seat is still as worthless as it is today since it’ll always get canceled out! What a great compromise. (Never mind that it is unconstitutional to add a seats for D.C. — more on that later.)
I read in the Post, however, that yesterday House Republicans attached an amendment to this bill. Now, if the bill passes, the amendment repeals D.C.’s very strict gun laws. This is an even more savvy political move than the original idea, in my view. If liberal Democrats vote for it, hoping to give D.C. its representation, they repeal its gun control laws. Some liberals will now vote against the bill because they’d rather keep the gun control. Realizing this, the Democratic leadership stalled the bill. Now Republicans can say they refused to support the constitutional right to arms.
All this manuevering puts me in the mind of my law review article (which I certainly hope can be described as “forthcoming” someday). I wrote on legislative silliness, and one case in point was LBJ’s 1956 manuevering to get senators from the Pacific Northwest to support an amendment that weakened the civil rights bill so that the South would accept the bill. In exchange for that support, he promised the Northwest his support for a series of federal dams — which actually passed the Senate. The cunning part of this plan was, Johnson’s dam support was worthless because the House never passed the dam bill. The President would probably have vetoed it anyway. It cost nothing to keep his end of the deal, and in exchange, the Northwest gave LBJ his greatest legislative victory.
Republicans have the opportunity to pull the same trick here. Suppose the combined D.C. voting and gun-rights actually passes. It will immediately be challenged by some Republican somewhere, and one of two things will happen. One possibility is the courts will strike down the part of the bill giving D.C. the vote, because D.C.’s not a State and the Constitution gives representation only to States; Utah, however, will probably keep its representative because Congress can change the number of seats at any time. The other possibility is the whole voting part of the bill will go out the window, leaving the gun control repeal on the books. Either way, Republicans win.
I can’t believe Democrats are falling into this trap, except that they are giddy with the intoxication of their big November wins.
The most interesting part of this is why it’s such a big deal for Utah right now. There is another census coming up in three years. At that point, the whole Congressional deck is reshuffled. It would be impossible to predict at this time which State will be in Utah’s position — being the very next in line for a seat, if only the House had room for one more. The thing is, though, there will always be that one State that just didn’t make it. And because of the way the math works, it’s essentially random (but it is always most likely to be California). All this work now, just to get a short-term gain that Utah, with its high growth rate, will almost certainly have outright after 2010 anyway, seems a little late. Where was this idea in 2000?
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