Terry McAuliffe won the Democratic Party's nomination for Governor earlier this month, setting up an autumnal show-down with Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin. There was no suspense in the Dem primary, McAuliffe won with 62% of the vote, and the second-place finisher got only 19% . Nobody was biting nails. McAuliffe is an old-school political hack, who guaranteed the loan that the Clinton's used to buy their nice new house in Westchester County (pictured above) when they were ready to move out of their leased Pennsylvania Avenue place in DC. He almost immediately thereafter became the head of the DNC and is credited with valuable modernization of the fund-raising machinery there. He also had a big part in running HRC's campaign in 2012. His opponent, Youngkin, is a former CEO of The Carlyle Group, one of the biggest private-equity management firms in the world. He played a big part in Carlyle's transformation from a partnership into a publicly traded ...
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On April 2, I very briefly discussed the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Vacco v. Quill (1997). I promised more. So here, at least, is a bit more. To resume where I left off: the court's opinion, by Chief Justice Rehnquist, said this: "[W]e disagree with respondents' claim that the distinction between refusing lifesaving medical treatment and assisted suicide is 'arbitrary' and 'irrational.' ... Granted, in some cases, the line between the two may not be clear, but certainty is not required, even were it possible. Logic and contemporary practice support New York's judgment that the two acts are different, and New York may therefore, consistent with the Constitution, treat them differently." It had by then become customary for some patients to carry the "do not resuscitate" tag with them. The decision to so label a patient was NOT treated as murder. Providing the patient (a mature, rational patient in a lot of pain) with a pill tha...
Was Penn Station really worth saving? I mean of course the old Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, created in 1910 and destroyed in 1963. Its destruction caused an outcry (and if I remember correctly was referenced in a couple of MAD MEN episodes) and eventually inspired the Landmarks Preservation Act of 1970. Was it worth saving? Here's an iconoclastic discussion of the point. Click here.
Susan B. Anthony List is an organization opposed both to abortion and to the Obamacare Act. During the congressional campaigns on 2010, the SBA List bought a billboard ad in the 1st Congressional District of Ohio (which includes most of the city of Cincinnati, and which was represented at the time in the US Congress by Steven Driehaus). The ad would have consisted of a photo of Driehaus and the words, "Shame on Steven Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion!" I say it "would have" consisted of this, because the billboard was never actually erected. Driehaus' campaign, with the help of the Ohio Elections Commission, was able to persuade the billboard company to refrain from running it on the ground that it stated a plain falsehood. The question of the accuracy of that ad seemed a fairly straightforward one. Driehaus had voted for Obamacare. SBA doesn't seem to have had any other vote that he might have cast in mind, other than that ...
Argentina isn't having any luck at all in the U.S. courts of late. On June 17th, the Supreme Court upheld a discovery order, that will make life easier for holdout bondholder NML as it searches the world for attachable Argentine assets. The money quote is as follows: “The prospect that NML’s general request for information about Argentina’s worldwide assets may turn up information about property that Argentina regards as immune does not mean that NML cannot pursue discovery of it.” Meanwhile, the court denied review of two other cases that went to the issue of interpreting the language of the issuing documents, the pari passu clause. Here is coverage from the fine folks at SCOTUSblog . The gist of it is that the New York district court, which has been working very hard to make it impossible for Argentina to distribute money with any assistance from US based financial institutions unless the holdout creditors share in those disbursements, has gotten its way. ...
Some of you may remember that in 2011, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg's corporate alter ego, Starr International., filed a lawsuit against the United states for $25 billion. Greenberg's mug you see above. His lawsuit objected to the US seizure of 80% of the equity of AIG by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in September 2008, a condition of the bail-out of AIG. Greenberg objects that this is an unconstitutional taking of property without due process of law: by way of the dilution of the stakes of everyone who had held equity before that. There is a lot that might be said about that lawsuit. I won't say any of it now except for covering the one point that justifies the above headline. Greenberg's lawyers have satisfied the trial judge that the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, is an important witness in the case and that a deposition of Bernanke is integral to the "discovery" phase of the proceedings. A deposition of Bernanke abo...
The first jazz concert ever performed at Carnegie Hall in New York took place 75 years ago today. Jazz had become sufficiently mainstream -- at least in its big band form -- by January 17, 1938 to make this possible. A moment of silence, then, for Benny Goodman and his orchestra. As for the best way to get to Carnegie Hall, it is what it has always been. Practice, practice, practice.
This will be my last use this year of jokes from the Johnny Carson joke-a-day calender. On February 8, 1977, Johnny was doing some riffs on the silver anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II. "As a matter of fact, I wired the Queen of England a congratulatory wire and said I thought it was very nice of her, showing up every day for twenty-five years without using a guest Queen." On November 12, 1980, he said: "It is so dry out there today, I saw a robin rubbing Vasoline Intensive Care on his chapped worm." Okay, that doesn't make a lot of sense. But I'm sure it was preceded by Ed McMahon asking him dramatically "how dry IS it?" Finally ... On March 15, 1990, Johny said: "Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together wothout arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place." (And happy birthday to my kid brother Mark, a youthful 53 on Nov. 10, 2012).
Meanwhile, in the baseball world, the Orioles/Yankees played a truly epic five-game series to determine which of them would get into the League Championship. [Can include usual grousing here about how the seasons have gotten too long, going into November is ridiculous, remember tjhe lyrics from a certain Broadway show, etc.] Game three of the series went 12 innings, and ended in a Yankee victory, putting them up two ganes to one. Raul Ibanez was the hero. Game four was another marathon. This one went 13 innings, and this time the Birds eeked it out, on a RBI double from the bat of J.J. Hardy, to make the final score 2 to 1, and to tie the series at 2 games each. It is fair to surmise that after those two back-to-back marathons, both bullpens were exhausted. Something had to give. Unfortunately (for my personal biases) it was Baltimore that "gave." I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan, so my natural reaction in such situations is that the team to root for is the team tha...