It is over

I have been beating the drum of inevitability for Mitt's nomination as the Republican Party Presidential Candidate.  New polls indicate he may even now be up in Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania.  However, that is not why I am now officially calling the race.  I am calling it because Santorum just suspended his campaign.

I will soon be beating the drum of inevitability that Mitt will be the next President.

The last "gentlemen's" club?

And no not THAT kind of gentleman's club!  It was a term often used for the Senate.  The thought was that the six year elected terms forced the members into a more civil way of dealing with each other because they had to keep facing each other for a long period of time.  It seems as though partisanship has sent that concept packing even in the august halls of the Senate.  So what am I referring to?  The United States Supreme Court.  Though often divided, the members know they are part of a long living entity that must reflect idiological differences, but cannot accept partisan ones.  How do I know that the Supremes are still holding civil discourse?  Simple.  Justice Kagan, perhaps the most liberal member of the Court, has learned to hunt from and now often goes on hunting trips with Justice Scalia, perhaps the most conservative member of the Court.

Gee, there's a shock

It turns out we aren't buying electric and hybrid cars because it does not make economic sense.  You need to own and drive most of them for more than ten years in order to break even.  And the average length of time a person owns a car in America is 10 years.  So guess what?  We aren't buying into a losing proposition.

Sometimes your clients say very inconvenient things

I know this and, as an attorney, have experienced it too often.  That is why I feel sorry for Dana Lydia Kaersvang.  She works for the Department of Justice.  Yesterday she was all set to argue an appeal before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The court was hearing a separate appeal by a group of physician owned hospitals on the Constitutionality of the Obamacare law.  Only poor Ms. Kaersvang never got a chance to argue her case.  Her client, Barack Obama, had just the day before very publicly and very loudly questioned whether there was precedent for a federal court to strike down a law that the court found to be unconstitutional which had been passed by the popularly elected Congress.  So just as my sister at the bar had begun to speak, Judge Jerry Smith interrupted her and asked whether it was her client's, and thus the Attorney General's and her, position that the court had no power to hear the appeal and, if the court felt the challenge had merit, to strike down a law that they determined was not allowed by the Constitution.  She did better than I probably would have.  She cited Marbury v. Madison for the long settled principle and precedent that the courts unquestionably had that power.  Nonetheless, Judge Smith suspended the argument and directed her to file in writing either an admission by the Attorney General and his client, the President, that the court has the power to review a Constitutional challenge to the Federal statute or to explain their rationale for why it did not.  Much backtracking has ensued.

I thought that Obama was a Constitutional law professor in between his stints as a community organizer and a Senator

Chief Justice John Marshall

But apparently he hasn't read much Constitutional Law.  Perhaps the most important case ever decided since the adoption of the Constitution was Marbury v. Madison.  John Adams, an ardent Federalist, lost the election in 1800 to Thomas Jefferson.  Since Jefferson was not to take office until March of 1801, Adams and the lame duck Federalist controlled Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which tremendously expanded the number of members of the judiciary.  Adams quickly appointed 16 new Federal Circuit Court judges and 42 new Justices of the Peace--Federalists, one and all.  The Adams appointees were approved en masse by the Senate the next day.  However, in order to become effective, the appointments had to delivered to the various appointees.  Most were in fact placed in the hand of the newly named officials.  A few, however, did not get there before Jefferson took office.  And the new (most definitely NON-federalist) Secretary of State, James Madison refused to finish those deliveries.  Squire William Marbury, a Maryland Federalist financier had been appointed as a justice of the peace, but without his appointment in hand, he could not sit.  So he sued Secretary Madison, asking the Supreme Court to order him to carry out his duty.  Perhaps the greatest Chief Justice to ever don a robe, John Marshall wrote the opinion of the Court.  He held that Marbury had a claim and that it was remediable.  However, he stopped short of ordering Madison to give over the appointment (which Madison could have ignored since he and Jefferson had the army, and Marshall had naught but a pen).  Instead, Marshall found that the Judiciary Act of 1789, wherein Congress gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction to hear petitions of that nature, was unconstitutional because Congress had therein purported to convey to the Court powers that were beyond Article III of the Constitution.  Article III governs the judicial branch of government.  One has to wonder at what point in time during their celebrations did Messrs Jefferson and Madison realize they had been had.  Marshall seemingly sided with them and kept a Federalist off the bench.  However, the Court had firmly set the precedent that it was the final arbiter in the review of all executive and congressional acts to see whether they were allowed by the Constitution.  Thus was born the concept of judicial review.  So Mr. President, when you state that it would be unprecedented for this Court to strike down Obamacare as an unconstitutional exercise of power under the Commerce Clause, perhaps you should go back and dust off those law books.  The precedent was set over two centuries ago.

100 years ago

A tradition was born.  Just below the (recently totally dismantled) hydro electric damn on the Penobscot River in Bangor, Maine is a wide stretch where the water slows a bit and curls towards the bank.  As a kid growing up not too far from there, we all knew that the first salmon caught at the 'salmon pool' went to the Whitehouse for the President to enjoy.  Above is a picture of Herbert Hoover holding the first salmon from the Penobscot in 1931.  I never really thought about the origins of the tradition when I was young.  It turns out that the tradition actually started as a bit of an homage to William Howard Taft in 1912.  The fish was sent by one Karl Anderson.  Mr. Anderson, a house painter, was a member of the Penobscot Salmon Club.  He left his house before dawn on April 1, 1912 so he could be on the water at first light.  The angler rowed a pea pod boat that he had made himself from wood and canvas just like the boats he remembered a child in Norway out from the banks where other anglers were already casting into the flowing spring melt waters that still had ice chunks drifting by.  On that first day of the season in 1912, Karl Anderson was the only successful salmon fisherman--and he got two.  One beauty, a sixteen pounder, he fought for an hour before he landed it with his bamboo rod.  He sold that one to Campbell Clark, President of the Clark Thread Company in Newark, New  Jersey, who routinely paid the top dollar for the first salmon of the season landed in Bangor.  The other fish was an 11 pounder.  All of the Bangor delegates to the Republican State Convention had just cast their votes in favor of reelecting President Taft.  So Mr. Anderson thought it would be a great way to "show the city's honor and respect for the President" to send along the fish to the Whitehouse.  He took it to Oskar Fickett's fish market, packed it in straw and ice, and sent it off at Union Station to Washington, D.C.  And thus was born the tradition that I suspect was more about providing a testament to Bangor as a premier destination for salmon fisherman than it really was about paying respect to the highest office in the land.

What are Obama's friends up to?

Well, his good buddy Bill Ayer's, who hosted one of Obama's first fundraisers when he ran for Senate, is rolling out of bed trying to think of a way to end capitalism that day.  And one of Obama's top donors and biggest bundler is busy committing fraud and impersonating a bank official.  Other than that they just hang out and be smarter than you and me.