The Ultimate Elena Kagan Resource Site

I've been trying to compile links to the best sites for Kaganalia. Happily the folks at the Library of Congress have done (most of) the work for me: http://www.loc.gov/law/find/kagan.php (Hattip: Akron Law Cafe.) You'll find there a complete bibliography, links to important papers that are online and a collection of blog and news links.

The one addition I would make is the Jurisprudence department on Slate.com. Slate has some of the best Supreme Court reporters going, especially Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon. The whole staff has been posting insightful analyses from a variety of angles.

Also, if you are unfamiliar with the blawg (that's blogs about the law) world, note that the two academic blogs most closely covering the nomination are Balkinization, which is generally center/left and Volokh Conspiracy which is generally libertarian/right. Each is a group blog and on each a number of posters have contributed strong articles, mostly about her academic work.

Ohio 16th Check-In

This week Republican Congressional nominee Jim Renacci's most credible primary opponent endorsed him. Which is sufficient excuse to check in on the race.

Renacci is running in the Sixteenth District against freshman incumbent (and something of a blogosphere darling) John Boccieri.

Here's hoping they make as a campaign issue the proper pronunciation of double c's in Italian.

With his erstwhile challenger Matt Miller formally endorsing him, Renacci is consolidating his party support in the district. While ongoing strife with Miller was unlikely, a cleavage between the southern part of the district and the Stark County center of gravity.

In addition to the Miller, the same article notes that he is lining up the traditional Stark County Republican brokers, notably the Timkens and Representative emeritus Ralph Regula.

Renacci has been running hard since the start of the year. He's been tapped by the national party as one of its top tier Congressional candidates, and has been raising money by the barrowful.

He's also been spending it by the barrowful. He has been running ads on WKNR since January. First, a life story, then ads telling Boccieri not to vote for health care reform, then ads slamming him for his vote in favor. All this happened before the primary. Advertising on KNR is a profligate use of campaign money as coverage is spotty in Stark and Wayne. Currently the campaign continues the onslaught with ads decrying government spending.

Renacci has an interesting resume -- entrepreneur and small town mayor. Sadly, he's not running a very interesting campaign. Instead of proposing innovative center/right solutions, he's reading straight from the RNC playbook, claiming Boccieri is a Nancy Pelosi lackey and pretending that Pelosi and Obama are entirely responsible for the economic mess. On health care for instance, he advances only the two Republican non-solutions -- interstate competition and tort reform.

Yawn.

While it makes for a predictable campaign, it isn't a stupid strategy. The election will be more than anything else a reflection of the public mood on the economy. Republicans are rooting for the numbers to remain bad and hitching their wagons to grim economic forecasts. And history says

It's tired to say Stark County is a bellwether, but once again it is. This will be a knock down drag out race spending armored car loads of campaign cash. In the end it will come down to how voters in the Sixteenth feel about the economy.

Early Thoughts on Elena Kagan

A couple of friends asked me what I think of Obama's pick for Supreme Court. I've been reading this and that, but by no means have I made a comprehensive review of all things Kagan. In no particular order, here's my initial set of reactions.

• On Average, She's About on Par with Stevens. Justice Stevens is being touted as a great progressive hero. In fact he is a pragmatist and a moderate who looks liberal only due to what passes for the center on the current court. He is responsible for some strong liberal decisions -- his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick became the law when the Court struck down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. On the other hand, he also took some less-than-progressive positions, such as his dissent in the Texas flag-burning case. Kagan looks about the same, though probably with a different issue mix.
• In any Event, She's Certainly Left of Kennedy. This is all matters a whole lot less, given that Justice Kennedy is the swing vote. It's unlikely a liberal position will get Kennedy's vote, but not Kagan's.
• She Was Nominated for Her Intangibles. Intangibles were the "it" topic during this year's NFL draft -- that bundles of leadership qualities that don't fit on a stat sheet. By all reports, Ms. Kagan's big strength is her intangibles. She's the Tim Tebow of high-flying legal talent. Justice Stevens was known as the last great compromiser on the Court, able to occasionally bring a conservative or two over to an otherwise liberal side. My guess is that Obama wanted someone to fill that role on the Court and Kagan had the best mix of professional qualifications, youth and consensus building chops.
• At Some Point, the President's Selection Should Be Respected. The grumbling on the Left is that Obama should have picked a through-and-through orthodox liberal. I've never been terribly comfortable with trying to defeat a nominee simply on the basis of ideology -- I'm more interested in legal method. In any event, mobilizing against a nominee because she may be liberal but not liberal enough embraces a rigid orthodoxy that we should let the Right keep to themselves.
• The Experience Thing. She's not the next Harriet Myers as Mitch McConnell's office is apparently hinting. Her experience is more analogous to -- though more extensive than -- that of William Rehnquist. And setting ideology aside, Rehnquist was a good Justice and a great Chief Justice at a time the Court needed strong leadership to recover from the damage Warren Burger wreaked.
• Enemy of My Enemy. Anyone attacked by Jeff Sessions is worth a serious look.

As time goes on and more information sees daylight, I may get more specific. For now, you know where I'm coming from

Closing Tabs

Not much success in Day 2 of the Comeback. Too much end of semester grading. Too much writing work. Meantime, here's what I read on breaks but never had time to write up.

• The NRA Says Terrorists Have 2nd Amendment Rights Too. The kings of Gunnitistan are opposing attempts to flag people on the terrorism watch list to keep them from buying guns. The NRAites have always been the ultimate absolutists, but this is a lot even for them.
• Marc Dann, Convict. Former Attorney General Marc Dann plead guilty today to ethics violations, a sad coda to his hubris-riddled career. He's been fined and sentenced to community service. Which will be something new for him.
• Palin Flogging the Christian Nation Trope. The demi-Governor says the plan at the founding of the nation was to "create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandents, it’s quite simple." Yes, simple is one word for it.
• NYT on Charters Schools. The paper of record runs an extensive look at the latest studies -- including one from privatization-happy Hoover Institution -- showing that most charters do no better than the schools they replace, some do work, etc. Worse for charter honks, the ones that succeed are the ones that have lots of philanthropic support. Hmm. Education costs money. Whoda thunk? H/t Scene Mag.
• Some Big Words that mean Conservatives Are Close-Minded. I'm fascinated by the chatter about epistemic closure on the right. These tabs may stay open a bit longer; I may need to blog this yet.

Still lots of grading to do tomorrow, but things will clear up soon.

Buckeye State Tubes RNSC

Buckeye State Blog proprietor David Potts successfully petitioned YouTube to pull the Republican Senate Campaign Committee's ad against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. The ad lifted footage from a video interview BSB posted at the start or primary season, pulling a couple of quotes about Fisher's job at the Department of Development. Congrats to David for getting the attention of Politico and for the general awesomeness of the play.

This story is fun -- because damn -- but it's also important. Interviews like that at BSB and the interviews Jeff Coryell used to do at Ohio Daily offer an important service. A candidate relating to a nonprofessional citizen journalist tends to be different -- more relaxed, informal, unscripted. We will get less of that if candidates fear it will be plundered for an unflattering moment taken out of context. Way back when Meet the Bloggers was happening, this was an ongoing concern. We had Emily's List (well, their consultants, anyway) lift some photos of Capri Cafaro for attack mailers and Zack Space's opponent using quotes from his MTB interview in radio ads.

How far citizen journalists can push this remains to be seen. The decision to pull the ad based on the intellectual property objection is YouTube's. The ad remains (as of tonight) in the NRSC front page and is probably on their anti-Fisher attack site which I have no desire to visit. If challenged in court, they can claim fair use which works some time, but would take serious lawyering to beat. Some newspapers assert their copyright over editorial endorsements such that you have to run the entire piece, but newspapers have phalanxes of lawyers to assert those rights.

The great hope is that the embarrassment of being publicly outed for copyright infringement and especially getting dinked by YouTube will deter this kind of nonsense to some degree.

Finally, an irony worth noting. This is the interview that essentially tore Buckeye State apart when it happened. Tonight it has gotten the blog national notice.

Back Again

So the previously announced Spring cleaning took longer than planned and I wondered if blogging could ever fit into my schedule again. I still wonder, but people keep asking after the Pages. A couple of highlights: I got name checked by Ed Esposito at a Press Club event earlier this year, and the college friend who first glossed me "Pho" dropped the url in our alumni mag this month. So here's to one last push to get this thing going again.

There should be no shortage of material. Not only will races for statewides and Senate be tight, but locally the Ohio 16th (Boccieri vs. Renacci) will be a battle royal. And in the 13th Betty Sutton has an interesting challenger in Tom Ganley, though it remains to be seen whether he will actually do any campaigning.

And of course there are the usual topics around here: what the Supreme Court is doing to our Constitution, whether public education in Ohio can be saved, the latest net neutrality debate and various and sundry policy issues and occasional nods to culture and food.

Should be fun.

The first new substantive post appears immediately below.

Primarily a Bad Sign

We can start with yesterday's AP piece trying to divine broader meaning from voter participation in Tuesday's primary. Here's the nub:

Final, unofficial totals show more votes were cast for Republicans in every statewide race except U.S. Senate, the Democrats' most high-profile primary.

Experts say the participation rates show Republicans are energized — perhaps to beat Democrats, but perhaps to either support or defy the nascent tea party movement. Lessons for fall are still being determined.

I'll mostly go along with that, especially since the participation rate parallels the polling data showing that Dems are demoralized and Repubs are energized. But it's worth noting a few factors that may exaggerate Tuesday's numbers:

• The Roll-off Difference. Studies show that Democratic voters are more likely to roll-off, that is vote only the top of the ticket as opposed to filling out the entire ballot. This is, for example, why Republicans continued to win judicial races even in the big Dem cycles. Setting aside arguments about what this says about the respective parties, its certainly possible that Dems are less likely than Republicans to vote in all the uncontested races.
• New Ballots. The new optical scan ballots make it more of a pain in the butt to vote. Filling in an oval is that much more tedious and annoying than punching a button or tapping a screen. Not that anyone would not vote in a real race, but when there is a real (if minimal) cost to doing something that matters not at all, fewer people will do it. This may have heightened the roll-off effect.
• The Tea Party. While the Senate campaign was big for the true political junkies on the left, the Republicans had a near civil war over the Auditor's race in which the Tea Partiers had there guy against the establishment Party pick. This arguably injected an energy into turnout on the Republican side of the ballot.
• Things Change. This an events-driven election cycle. The prime mover in this election is not big ideas about the role and size of government, it's that people want something/anything to happen so they start hurting. It's unlikely the economy -- and in particular the employment numbers -- will pick up appreciably, but if they do, the picture changes.

Make no mistake, things are not good for Democrats this cycle. But it is still good to see the entire picture.

UPDATE: Apparently the GOP's "voter enthusiasm" advantage is dampening. h/t Progress Ohio's Twitter feed.