Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

‘Skins versus Giants

At the 8:38 minute of the first quarter, I have to say that either the NY Giants are a lot better than I thought or the Washington Redskins are a lot worse than I hoped. The Giants opened up with a very efficient 84 yard drive in which Eli Manning looked like the Eli of the Super Bowl rather than the Eli of old. The Redskins opened with a 3 and out that included a sack and a penalty. It’s an inauspicious start.

Update: Given how bad things looked at the start of the game, 16-7 isn’t a bad finish. There’s clearly a lot of room for improvement though. And, on a personal note, throw the damn ball to Chris Cooley. He’s my starting fantasy tight end.

Sarah Palin in the Eye of the Beholder

On the one hand, there’s Rod Dreher:

A real Sam’s Club Republican—a dynamic and articulate young woman—is in position to take over the GOP when McCain passes from the scene. As Ross has put it somewhere, Sarah Palin is the kind of Republican young conservatives should want to rise in the party.

On the other, there’s Joe Lauria:

Sarah Palin is the enemy of small town America and average citizens, dressed up as their princess warrior. ...

If Sarah Palin can help deliver the White House to John McCain, and there is every indication now that she can, she will be part of a leadership at war with the interests of America’s heartland and very likely at war with Iran and maybe with nuclear-armed Russia.

Lauria’s case rests on some pretty dubious assertions (sports complex versus sewer system?). It also assumes that the heartland is unable to assess authenticity.

I think Dreher’s right. More important, I think Dreher’s view is likely to prevail among the voters whom Palin was chosen to attract. 

The Playing Field isn’t Level

A lot of Republicans believe that we have to fight a two front war against both the Democrats and the media. This week has reinforced that belief, for precisely the reasons Michael Graham points out:

When the story first broke that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had cheated on his cancer-stricken wife and sired a baby with a bimbo on his campaign payroll, The New York Times [NYT] refused to run it.

But when the news hit that not the president, not the vice president but the daughter of the vice-presidential nominee is pregnant, the Times ran five - count ’em, five - stories about it. In one day.

Edwards dragged his sick wife through the Iowa boonies and paid his girlfriend off in campaign dollars, and the Times decides it’s not worth writing about.

Meanwhile Bristol Palin is too young to even vote for Edwards, and she makes the front page of nearly every major daily that for weeks refused to report on the Edwards Love Child story.

But remember: There is no liberal media bias. Don’t believe me? Just ask Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

When the daughter of a vice-presidential candidate turns out to be 17, unmarried and pregnant, of course that’s news. But it doesn’t come close to legitimizing the all-out media assault (there is no other word for it) the press has unleashed on the Palins.

So-called “reporters” on CNN and MSNBC have speculated on Gov. Palin’s fitness as a mother. Sally Quinn from The Washington Post says that Palin should “rethink her priorities” and turn down the VP job. US Weekly - owned by the same people who put fawning faux-Jesus photos of Barack Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone - calls the Palin story “Sex, Lies and Scandal.”…

And The Atlantic, once a respected, thoughtful voice of the American left, has actually promoted the lunatic - and utterly disproven - theory that Gov. Palin wasn’t pregnant with Trig at all. Trig is really Bristol’s son, and the governor of Alaska took time out of her schedule fighting against hack GOP congressmen and oil company insiders to fake a pregnancy on her daughter’s behalf.

According to Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign, mainstream media organizations are demanding to see medical reports on Gov. Palin’s amniotic fluid and a DNA test on little Trig.

These aren’t the actions of bad journalists. These are the actions of bad people. From the set of MSNBC to the pages of The Boston Globe-Democrat, there are people willing to do anything to elect Barack Obama, up to and including the trashing of a 17-year-old girl.

But remember: Barack Obama is, as one San Francisco columnist put it, the “light bringer” who will heal our partisan divide.

Fearless Football Forecast Part 1: NFC

NFC East: Dallas Cowboys

NFC North: Minnesota Vikings

NFC South: New Orleans Saints

NFC West: Seattle Seahawks

NFC Wildcard: Philadelphia Eagles

NFC Wildcard: NY Giants

The Party of More Oil

Under Bush, the GOP all too often was the party of big oil. Under McCain/Palin, it’s now presenting itself as the party of more oil:

Palin emphasized energy policy, one of her areas of expertise as governor of a state that derives 85 percent of its general revenue comes from oil production

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems - as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all,” she said.

Palin has been an aggressive advocate for drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while McCain opposes drilling there. That difference was not touched on in the excerpts.

Palin said that in a McCain-Palin administration “we’re going to lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal, and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers.

I think a policy of drill here, drill now, plus developing sustainables has the potential to be a winning argument.

Jackie Still ♥ Fred Thompson

I still wish it was Fred too:

The War is Over

Law Blog reports on an interesting case:

The U.S. is not currently at war, at least according to Richard Stearns, a federal judge in Boston.

The determination wasn’t just so much dicta. Judge Stearns actually had to decide whether the U.S. is at war in order to decide whether the statute of limitations had run on certain criminal charges in a case involving the Big Dig, the massive construction project that’s been going on for years in Beantown. ...

The background: In May of 2006, former employees of a concrete supplier were indicted on a handful of charges alleging, among other things, that they’d submitted fraudulent reports to the government. The defendants argued that because the alleged activity took place in early 2001 and before, the charges were time-barred by the five-year statute of limitations.

The government, however, argued that something called the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act, as the name implies, suspended the statue of limitations. ...

Therefore, strange as it seems, Judge Stearns had to decide whether the U.S. is war to rule on a motion involving contractors in a highway project.

The opinion, while detailed, is a pretty fascinating read. The bottom line, according to Judge Stearns: the U.S. ended the war in Afghanistan on December 22, 2001 and ended the war in Iraq on May 1, 2003. In other words, the statute of limitations on the criminal charges hadn’t yet expired by the time the government filed its superseding indictment in June.

Working Mom Palin

Tom Smith ably dissects the left’s odd argument that Sarah Palin will either be a bad VP or a bad mom, including this lovely zinger:

I am tempted to point out that Bill Clinton managed to carry on his hobbies, which also involved young people, though in a different way, quite actively in the White House.  Given that the VP chair is less demanding, however, it seems likely a VP Palin would be able to do so as well.  You just have to be well organized.  Or perhaps the difference is that Clinton was in no danger of procreating.