Hell talk.

McCain at the debate Thursday night (re Bin Laden): "I will follow him to the gates of hell.”

Giuliani, the very next day: "You sure wouldn't want to be where Saddam Hussein is, where we helped put him."

Pockets are a feminist issue.

That's what I say in this Bloggingheads segment. Really, why don't women's clothes have pockets? A Dress a Day offers some history and opinion:

It was amazing how freeing it was, to not have a bag to deal with, to shift, to move around to the front of your body and then to the back, to switch from arm to arm. Your arms swing unencumbered; you walk differently, faster. You can shove both hands in your pockets; you can put your hands on your hips while waiting impatiently for a light to change. I also noticed that some people gave me funny looks; whether it was "There's a woman without a bag!" or "Why the hell is she wearing a circle skirt in a grass-green camouflage print?" I couldn't tell.

Ha! A Dress a Day is a good blog. I'm adding it to the blogroll. And here's a pretty cool old post about prettiness:

But what does you-don't-have-to-be-pretty mean in practical, everyday terms? It means that you don't have to apologize for wearing things that are held to be "unflattering" or "unfashionable" -- especially if, in fact, they make you happy on some level deeper than just being pretty does. So what if your favorite color isn't a "good" color on you? So what if you are "too fat" (by some arbitrary measure) for a sleeveless top? If you are clean, are covered enough to avoid a citation for public indecency, and have bandaged any open wounds, you can wear any color or style you please, if it makes you happy.

Yeah, it is wrong to let your open wounds show, isn't it?

Wireless epithets.

I'm in a café, using the café's WiFi, but I can see a list of all the signals within range, many of which are private and password protected. You can name your wireless network whatever you want. A lot of people put no effort into the name. They leave it "linksys" or they just put their first name. Some people do something more expressive, maybe promoting an artist or a cause they care about. But the list I'm seeing on my computer right now includes an offensive epithet! Somebody is imposing his ugliness on my space -- a new variation on graffiti.

Was that equal justice for Paris Hilton?

She was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving (more than once) on a license that was suspended because she was caught driving with a blood alcohol level of .08%, the point where violation of the law begins. (If only she'd been a tiny bit less skinny, would she have had a few drops more blood and scored a .o79?)

She will not be allowed any work release, furloughs, use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled after a hearing....

She was then ordered to report to a women's jail in suburban Lynwood by the set date or face 90 days behind bars. The judge's ruling excluded her from paying to serve time in a jail of her choice, as some violators are allowed to do....

"I can't believe that either attorney did not tell her that the suspension had been upheld," the judge said. "She wanted to disregard everything that was said and continue to drive no matter what."

It seems obvious to me that she's being treated worse because of her celebrity, though I can see how you could say that she acted different -- flouting the law -- because of her celebrity. Even so, she didn't deserve that much. Start here if you want to read what other bloggers are saying. I think Jeralynn Merritt gets it right. There's something surpassingly creepy about the lefty bloggers like TRex who burst with pleasure when the overbearing power of the state comes down on someone they happen not to like. (And take a look at the comments on that TRex post if you want to get an idea of what kind of nitwits make up the big traffic at FireDogLake.)

ADDED: I wish people wouldn't take one phrase from this post out of context as if I'd made a flat assertion that she was treated worse. I'm basically asking the question and saying that I support equal treatment. I don't want her treated worse or better. I'm also saying that it makes me sick when people gloat when someone is sent to jail. I think it's wrong to enjoy seeing someone suffer, even if that person is terrible. (I've said it before.)

Should conservatives embrace Darwin?

This article was worth reading if only to get the answer to the question I had watching the Republican debate the other day: Who were the three candidates who raised their hands to indicate their disbelief in evolution? The answer is Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo. (I found the minor candidates very hard to tell apart, even in the closeups.)

But this is a nice article going into the question of whether Darwinian theory offers good support for various conservative positions, "that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances."

The question whether to use Darwinism in political argument is, of course, different from the biological question whether the human animal resulted from evolution (which is what Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo look foolish rejecting).

“The current debate is not primarily about religious fundamentalism,”[John G.] West, the author of “Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest” (2006), said at Thursday’s conference. “Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing of certain esoteric points of biology and philosophy. Darwinian reductionism has become culturally pervasive and inextricably intertwined with contemporary conflicts over traditional morality, personal responsibility, sex and family, and bioethics.”

The technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from “ordinary citizens and their elected representatives” so that they alone could make decisions over “controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming.”...

Mr. Arnhart, in his 2005 book, “Darwinian Conservatism,” tackled the issue of conservatism’s compatibility with evolutionary theory head on, saying Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.

The institutions that successfully evolved to deal with this natural order were conservative ones, founded in sentiment, tradition and judgment, like limited government and a system of balances to curb unchecked power, he explains. Unlike leftists, who assume “a utopian vision of human nature” liberated from the constraints of biology, [political scientist Larry] Arnhart says, conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms.

While Darwinism does not resolve specific policy debates, Mr. Arnhart said in an interview on Thursday, it can provide overarching guidelines. Policies that are in tune with human nature, for example, like a male military or traditional social and sex roles, he said, are more likely to succeed. He added that “moral sympathy for the suffering of fellow human beings” allows for aid to the poor, weak and ill.

So Darwinism only provides a form for political argument, not the actual answers. As the article notes, lefties and righties have found ways to say what they want to say in Darwinian style. It's interesting to think about who benefits most from the acceptance of arguments in this mode. It seems to work awfully well for justifying the subordination of women. Why should we want to promote modes of argument that work too well to support things you diapprove of? I haven't read Arnhart's book, but he seems to think he can whip out "moral sympathy" to get him out of whatever jam his Darwinism gets him into. But if we actually believe in this political Darwinism, won't it affect how sympathetic we are and what we are sympathetic about?

Kinko's "thin veneer of professional folks riding herd on a vast platoon of semitrained people" is "just not the FedEx way."

James E. Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, explains why the two companies did not merge well.

Profit margins at Kinko’s have fallen, revenue has barely grown and employee turnover, which was 42 percent in 2005, was still a daunting 27 percent last year. Paul Orfalea, who was nicknamed Kinko for the full head of curly black hair he sported in 1970 when he founded the company — originally to serve students at the University of California, Santa Barbara — says he will not step inside the stores now.

“It gives me a stomachache to see what’s happened to the place,” Mr. Orfalea, now balding, said.

I adore Orfalea, who wrote a memoir called "Copy This! How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinko's." He got me through the loneliest segment of that 1235 mile drive from Austin to Madison last month as I clicked the satellite radio over to C-Span and heard him giving a talk based on that memoir. What a wonderful, inspiring guy! Did you know Kinko's is called Kinko's because Ofalea was called Kinko because of his kinky hair? By chance, C-Span TV happens to be replaying that show at 12:10 Eastern Time today. [ADDED: Or watch it right here. AND: No, it's gone now.] I'm going to set my TiVo right now. He's incredibly interesting.

“Kinko’s was a way station where you stayed a few years, but you build a career at FedEx,” [said Kenneth A. May, the chief executive of FedEx Kinko’s.] “The Kinko’s people are hip, they’re fun, but they needed oversight.”

Kinko’s workers, many of whom still tell tales of the annual picnics Mr. Orfalea gave for co-workers (he hated the word “employee”), describe an entirely different situation.

Kinko’s coddled its workers, they say, who in turn coddled customers. “I had cornrows and green hair, and no one seemed to mind,” recalled Sharon A. Robinson, once a worker at a Kinko’s in Laramie, Wyo., and now a product specialist....

“It was the People’s Republic of Kinko’s, a place where store managers thumbed their noses at corporate and ran the stores as they saw fit,” said Gary M. Kusin, a retailer who was recruited by Clayton to run Kinko’s in August 2001. [Orfaleo sold his company to Clayton and Clayton sold to FeEx.] ...

Clayton formed a central organization, and proceeded to do what buyout firms do best — cut costs, streamline operations, and groom Kinko’s to go public.

But it went too far, in Mr. Orfalea’s view. “I told them that our biggest asset was the sparkle in our peoples’ eyes,” he said. “But they threw away senior people like garbage.”

Sad!

ABC fakes us out about naming names.

Were you, like me duped into watching "20/20" last night to hear what names they'd name based on the big list forked over to them by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who's accused of running a prostitution ring in Washington?

“Our decision at the end was not to name any names,” said Brian Ross, the news correspondent who presented the segment. Mr. Ross said that the network went with a “conservative approach,” and that “based on our reporting it turned out not to be as newsworthy as we thought in terms of the names.”

At least they're being honest -- it seems -- in not pretending they'd belatedly discovered some ethical compunction about it.

ABC had reported on its Web site on Monday that the list included a Bush administration economist along with senior military officials and lobbyists, among others.

The administration economist turned out to be a mid-level employee at the Office of Thrift Supervision who was not worth naming, ABC officials said. But the man’s case, network officials said, demonstrated that men sometimes exaggerate their importance to the women they pay for company.

And networks sometimes exaggerate the importance of their upcoming news shows to the viewers they sell to advertisers.

Drink and the bare-chested cheeseburger....

Manolo sees the artist and his demons. I see what looks like another example of taking the post-marriage struggle to YouTube.

ADDED: If you click through to the video on YouTube, read the comments. They're impressively sympathetic to the man. Posting this video was a vicious effort to humiliate him, and I'm touched at how few viewers go there.

Blog reader survey.

Please take this survey!

ADDED: Some people are balking at answering all the questions, but doing so will produce some nice graphs, which you'll be able to see next week, showing things about the readers who do the survey starting from here. And it will help sell more ads which will create income flow to bloggers. I think that's a good thing. It's free to read, and I love having readers, but ads should support bloggers. Obviously, I have a good income as a law professor, and I'm happy for that, but writing should produce income. Not all of us writers have a separate income stream, and who knows? Maybe some lawprofs would thrive as full-time writers if you gave us the chance.

It's the new Bloggingheads!

It's me and Annie Gottlieb of Ambivablog.

Episode title: "Sex with Older Women." Topics:

Are you a first-wave baby-boomer (like Hillary) or a second-wave boomer?

Marriage and children as seen on TV

The sex+diet pill

The deep meaning of bras, purses, and pockets

Ann and Annie critique "sex-positive feminism"

Prostitutes, hypocrites, and Justice Scalia

On that first topic, there was a path we should have gone down -- and meant to -- but didn't quite find. Annie expands on that here.

Did McCain win the debate?

Andrew Sullivan says so:

McCain's strong criticism of a "badly mismanaged" war gave him the edge in my book. McCain was easily the strongest on spending.... He also forthrightly supported evolution which puts him in the ranks of sane Republicans.... I have to say I found Romney smarmy beyond even my expectations. The man will obviously say and do anything to get power or please a crowd.... Giuliani is simply not a very impressive speaker or debater...

Power Line:

Frankly, I think John McCain had the best night. He seemed a bit nervous at first, but soon found his stride. He managed more ably than his chief rivals, McCain [sic] and Romney, to give answers that will appeal to a reasonably full spectrum of Republican voters without seeming to pander to anyone.

Redstate:

John McCain won. Let's not dance around this. Mitt Romney shined, he stood out, he did well. Rudy Giuliani imploded. Rudy totally and utterly self-destructed tonight. He had many chances to get in good with the core base of Republican voters and ignored every moment.

But McCain cuisine reigned supreme. He served up a dish of anger, a willingness to criticize, and a desire to fight — hard.

What's really going on here? Looks like people really want to destroy Giuliani. Power Line even blots out his name.

I thought McCain was fine. You could see he was trying very hard and seemed to have a lot of memorized lines. He had a forced tough-guy style of speaking. But I thought it was clear that Romney was the one who excelled. Was I a sucker for "smarmy"? Or did Andrew Sullivan just already hate Romney?

ADDED: Jonah Goldberg:

McCain sent the signal he's all nerve, raw, exposed, slightly crazy nerve. The "gates of Hell" line, for example, was brilliant, if not brilliantly delivered. He's going to be a mad dog — for you.

Meanwhile, Giuliani seems to have forgotten why he's the front runner. Optimism is nice, hooray for cheeriness. But what the base wants to here is proof that he's going to be the "tough S.O.B. — for us." He didn't even come close to doing that. Meanwhile, McCain went almost too far in that direction last night. But too far in this situation is a lot better than not far enough.

Okaaay.

MORE: I should say that Power Line quote above is from Paul Mirengoff and that Power Line's John Hinderaker adds (to the same post):

... I thought Romney did best by a pretty wide margin. Giuliani did OK question by question, I thought, but didn't present as coherent a whole. McCain seemed surprisingly ill at ease, especially early on, and while I liked most of what he had to say, I don't think he was as effective as usual.

Schools give students laptops and internet access and are surprised that they don't just do what they're told.

And now the report is that students aren't progressing. I don't know if laptops make students dumber, but they obviously make adminstrators dumber.

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

Speaking of distractions, it sounds like you're trying to distract us from the fact that you gave them internet access but kept it inadequate, that you hate the idea that they're taking control of what they want to find out about (especially sex), and that you've been failing all along to educate students and you were foolishly hoping giving them laptops would magically fix that.

"CBS wanted him to do it... CBS wanted to encourage him and wanted him to feel totally protected."

So said Imus's monumental lawyer Martin Garbus.

Agents and media lawyers say one clause in Imus's contract, highlighted by Garbus, is highly unusual. It says his services "are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial and personal character" and that programs containing these elements "are desired" by CBS and "are consistent with company rules and policies."

But other contract language, obtained by The Washington Post, will be used by CBS lawyers to argue that the company had "just cause" to dump Imus. These clauses cover "any distasteful or offensive words or phrases" that CBS believes "would not be in the public interest" or could jeopardize its broadcast license, as well as language that brings the company or its advertisers "into public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule, or which provokes, insults or offends the community or any group or class thereof."

A CBS spokesman declined to comment, but two people familiar with the company's strategy, who asked not to be identified discussing possible litigation, said the Rutgers comments were so outrageous as to trigger several clauses that they maintain did not require a warning to Imus.

Garbus dismissed that argument, saying: "CBS's interpretation of the contract, stringing together words from here and there, would render the clause meaningless. Contracts are not interpreted that way."

It sounds like a great contracts case. High stakes too. The contract was worth $40 million, and he's going to claim other damages, covering "reduced income for Imus's private businesses and charities, as well as his future earnings in broadcasting."

It's smart to make the charities relevant like that, not only as a way to extract more money from CBS, but also to expose the jury to information that makes Imus very sympathetic.

This will be very interesting. Think Imus should win?

That time the health food guru went on the TV talk show and died.

Dick Cavett tells the story. It happened on his show. (TimesSelect link.)

[Jerome I. Rodale] was extremely funny for half an hour, talking about health foods, and as a friendly gesture he offered me some of his special asparagus, boiled in urine. I think I said, “Anybody’s we know?” while making a mental note to have him back.

I brought out the next guest, Pete Hamill, whose column ran in The New York Post. Rodale moved “down one” to the couch. As Pete and I began to chat, Mr. Rodale suddenly made a snoring sound, which got a laugh.

Comics would sometimes do that for a laugh while another comic was talking, pretending boredom. His head tilted to the side as Pete, in close-up as it happened, whispered audibly, “This looks bad.”

The audience laughed at that. I didn’t, because I knew Rodale was dead.

To this day, I don’t know how I knew. I thought, “Good God, I’m in charge here. What do I do?” Next thing I knew I was holding his wrist, thinking, I don’t know anything about what a wrist is supposed to feel like.

Next, in what felt like a quick film cut, I was standing at the edge of the stage, saying, “Is there a doctor in the … (pause) … audience?”

He had the wits to know to figure out how not to say "Is there a doctor in the house?" which would have made people laugh.

The show was never aired, but Cavett did watch the tape a view weeks later:

[W]e noticed three things that, incredibly, no one had recalled Rodale’s saying: “I’m in such good health [he was 72] that I fell down a long flight of stairs yesterday and I laughed all the way.” “I’ve decided to live to be a hundred.” And the inevitable “I never felt better in my life!” (The gods and their sense of humor.)

That happened back in 1971. I remember something else like that from back in the 1970s. The actor Peter Finch was on the show and, if I am remembering this correctly, he -- or someone else on the couch with him that night -- talked about death and said by the time he would be on the show the next time some of the people listening to him saying this would be dead. Finch himself died a week day later.

"No one expects a woman accused of a crime -- particularly of being a madam -- to arrive for court dressed in a tight dress and a feather boa."

There's such a thing as dressing for court, and we have to talk about what Deborah Jeane Palfrey wore. If you're looking for signs that she is what she's accused of, what should you look for? Running a sex ring is a business, but does that mean you'd wear a business suit? People who run businesses can wear all sorts of things, but do they wear what their employees wear? It's more predictable that they would dress in the way that would inspire trust in their clients:

If it turns out that Washington men have their own madam -- with a stable of college-educated call girls -- then it makes sense that she would look like the many anonymous staffers who are paid to keep these men's schedules and -- for a time -- their secrets.

And that's what Palfrey did.

By the way, do you have a problem with the word "madam" to refer to what Palfrey is accused of? Dictionary definition:

abbr. Mdm. 1. Inflected forms: pl. Mes·dames (m-dm, -däm) Used formerly as a courtesy title before a woman's given name but now used only before a surname or title indicating rank or office: Madam Ambassador. 2. Used as a salutation in a letter: Dear Madam or Sir. 3. madam Used as a form of polite address for a woman: Right this way, madam. 4. madam The mistress of a household. 5. madam A woman who manages a brothel.

My problem isn't that a word that is supposed to embody respect for women has gotten associated with something degrading. That is the ordininary way language develops. I'm trying to think of other examples of the way a lofty word must be brought down. Help me out here. I'm thinking of naming the dog "King," saying "You're a prince" to a jerk, and calling a young woman with a ridiculous sense of entitlement a "princess."

My problem with the use of the word is that a madam is supposed to "manage a brothel," to have a household relationship with the workers. Connecting people up by telephone and email isn't the same.

Simulblogging the Republican Debate.

1. Yes, I'll do it. And I'll do it without TiVo assistance. Going TiVo-less is not just to make me completely spontaneous. I don't want to get bogged down in it. Once I start pausing, I start feeling responsible for everything. But there will be a transcript later for that. And, dammit, I want the TiVo for "Survivor"!

2. I didn't realize there was a debate today until someone asked me this morning if I was going to watch it. Oh, no. I guess I am. But how many candidates? 8 for the Democrats was pretty annoying, though the 8th guy -- Gravel -- did provide some comic relief. I have to listen to 10 Republicans? 10! Who the hell are they? 10? Let's see there's Giuliani and McCain... uh.... and Tommy Thompson but not Fred Thompson... conversation about whether Tommy gets any boost in popularity by having the same name as the strangely longed-for non-candidate Fred... so, come on, you only got 3. There's 10! Where's my coffee? I can't believe you don't even remember Romney. Oh, yeah, Romney. How could I forget? Who else? A Senator from Kansas? A Senator from Kansas, really? Not Dole... Brownback! Oh, he's from Kansas. How perfectly boring. Huckabee. Oh, yeah, Huckabee. He used to be fat. Yikes, that's still only 6! Who are the other 4? And I'm committing to listening to them? Ron Paul. He might be amusing. Who else? I look it up: Jim Gilmore, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo. Oh, the pain.

3. The Reagan Library set is glossy, what with the reflection on the underside of Air Force One, suspended over the heads of the audience. So are you pouring a big glass of wine and planning to take a sip whenever anyone says "Reagan" and drain the glass if anyone says "I knew Ronald Reagan, and you're no blah blah blah"? Nancy Reagan is there, sitting with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The voiceover guys are gushing about how "regal" the setting is. Chris Matthews gives a snazzy introduction, brimming with enthusiasm for Reagan. Reagan Reagan Reagan. Agghh. Where's my wine glass?

4. Ooh, it's closed book. No notes allowed. The first question is about optimism (like Reagan's) and pessimism (shown in the current polls). Giuliani has one minute, and he leverages in statements about immigration, health care, and the war on terror. McCain is next. He stammers a bit but sounds very strong -- and angry at the congressional Democrats for cheering surrender in Iraq. Tommy Thompson looks awful, but he lays out a point-by-point political solution for Iraq. Mitt Romney looks great.

5. They're all asked if they'd amend the Constitution to let Arnold Schwarzenegger run for President. Nearly all of them say no. Right to his face. Take that. Now, we're getting some questions submitted and voted on through Politico.com. That's a nice touch. What does Romney dislike most about America? He just acts like the question is: What do you love about America?

6. Values! In other words: abortion. Okay to "repeal" Roe v. Wade? All must answer. All say yes, with different levels of passion. Giuliani says it's okay to "repeal" it, but it would also be okay for a "strict constructionist" judge to uphold it based on stare decisis. Romney is confronted about his change of mind on abortion rights, and he clearly says he changed his mind. Wasn't that purely political? He denies it and ties his change of mind to thinking about cloning. I don't believe that.

7. McCain: "I know there's good and evil in the world. I've seen it."

8. Can a business fire an employee because he's gay? Tommy: yes.

9. Romney is asked about religion, and he is speaking very well about it. Matthews keeps asking the question about whether religious faith has any relevance to the presidential race. The right answer here is rather obvious, and I think everyone on the stage knows what it is. A person's religious faith gives rise to values that matter in public life, but which religion it is doesn't matter and we shouldn't argue about that. It's really just a matter of saying that in a clear and inspiring way: America is great because of our religious tolerance, etc.

10. Halfway into this, I'd say the person making the most headway is Romney.

11. Romney takes a shot at the McCain-Feingold Act in the middle of an answer about abortion. He's referring to the effect of the Act on issues ads close to the election (something that is before the Court in the Wisconsin Right to Life case argued last week).

12. Stem cells. Tommy Thompson talks about the research going on at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. That appealed to me.

13. Wow! Romney on health care! I have no idea if his policy is good. I'll have to read about it. But his form of expression was great here.

14. Tax. It's very hard to compare tax policies on the fly. Thompson struck me with his idea of dealing with the AMT by giving people the option of a flat tax: you get whichever is lower. He brags about all the vetoing he did as governor of Wisconsin and acts like he could bring that vetoing style to the White House. But Wisconsin has an extremely strong veto power. You can't do that in the White House.

15. A yes-or-no question: Do you believe in evolution? It looks like 3 of them raised their hands on no, but I didn't quite catch who.

16. Gilmore is asked a question and I realize he's made no impression on me so far.

17. Brownback is too conservative for me, but I give him credit for speaking well. He's a good voice for his position, not that I want it to succeed. "This is a set of quality candidates" he says, when asked what he doesn't like about Giuliani. I like that he doesn't take a shot at Rudy. Clearly, the two men have very different positions. People can see that, and it's cool of Brownback to be magnanimous about it.

18. Giuliani seems natural and good-humored. I think he's showing what he is in an attractive way. A moment ago he was asked the sort of pop-quiz question that isn't at all about trying to find out what his policies are: explain the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. He does it exactly right. Later, Thompson gets a question like that: How many Americans have died in the Iraq war? I don't like this sort of smart-ass question, especially when only some of them get hit with one. The idea is to see if they'll screw up. There's nothing to be learned in a positive way. Let's just see if this guy is clueless.

19. Guy! They're all guys! It just hit me. They're all white too. Should be a question on that.

20. National ID card. McCain's all for it. Ron Paul lights on fire: ID cards are eeevvviiilllll.

21. Romney lights into Patrick Fitzgerald and the way he went after Scooter Libby. I like the way Romney is cool and controlled but gets passionate -- in a controlled way -- when it goes with his issue. Or do you think he's too slick? I think he's doing well. He's seems ready to play the role of candidate. Republicans ought to want to take advantage of that.

22. I confess to being moved to tears by Brownback talking about the sacredness of Terri Schiavo's life (even though I disagreed with what the Congress did). I'm impressed by the way this man believes what he believes and expresses this. But, of course, it would be a terrible mistake to make him the candidate.

23. Hey, Chris Matthews is doing a great job. He's keeping it lively, without seeming like he's lording his power over them. He's making it seem like fun, when it can't be fun. Nice going.

24. Closing statements. Jabbery details. Moving too fast. Okay. Time up. Stop already.

25. Giuliani uses his time to compliment the President, giving him credit for the lack of additional terrorist attacks after 9/11. He distinguishes himself in the group by going positive here.

26. In the after show hubbub, we see Romney getting into a photogenic encounter with Nancy Reagan.

27. The commentators. They're going to go on for another 90 minutes. Wow. Who will listen?

28. Glenn Reynolds has a good collection of links to other "live-blogging." I can't bring myself to use that term when I'm not there in the room. He includes a link to me, which is nice, and characterizes me as blogging "from her very own perspective." Well, yeah. What are other people doing?

What exactly are the law firm's values?

Remember the AutoAdmit controversy? Today, the WSJ Law Blog reports:

The Law Blog has learned that law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its job offer to Anthony Ciolli, the 3L at Penn Law who resigned as “Chief Education Director” of AutoAdmit last month. He resigned in the wake of a WaPo exposé on how the site in part served as a platform for attacks and defamatory remarks about female law students, among others (see our earlier post here)....

On April 11, just over a month after the WaPo story ran, DeWitt sent a letter to Ciolli stating that the firm had recently learned of the controversy involving AutoAdmit, in particular its “off-topic” message board, and that “the information we now have raises serious concerns about your joining our firm.”

[Boston managing partner Charles] DeWitt wrote that the content of the messages on the board are “antithetical” to the values of the firm and the “principles of collegiality and respect that members of the legal profession should observe in their dealings with other lawyers.” DeWitt pointed out that in an online letter to another blogger, Ciolli and his partner Jarret Cohen identified themselves as AutoAdmit’s administrators and defended its “free, uninhibited exchange of ideas.”

DeWitt continued: “We expect any lawyer affiliated with our firm, when presented with the kind of language exhibited on the message board, to reject it and to disavow any affiliation with it. You, instead, facilitated the expression and publication of such language. . . . ” He wrote, his resignation from the site was “too late to ameliorate our concerns.”...

Cohen, a 23-year-old insurance broker in Allentown, Pa., who says he founded AutoAdmit and currently runs the site, told the Law Blog: “It was me. I created the message board. I exercised ultimate authority. Anthony didn’t endorse any of this stuff. He doesn’t deserve this. This is guilt by association.”

So what are the law firm's values? Not free speech. Not fairness. "Respect" for "other lawyers" -- I'll give them that. The central value is probably just a deep-seated fear of any association with controversy.

(For more discussion on other blogs, start here.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Revenant says:

The Three Laws of Lawbotics:

(1): You must cover your own ass.

(2): You must cover the asses of the partners at your law firm, unless doing so would violate the first law.

(3): You must cover the collective ass of the legal profession, unless doing so would violate the first or second laws.

29-year-old man dies of thirst in a $3,175 survival course, next to his guide, who has a secret store of water.

Is the guide guilty of criminal negligence? The man signed up for the course and the guide didn't want him to fail.

"He said he could not go on," staff member Shawn O'Neal wrote two days later in a statement ordered by the Garfield County Sheriff's Office. "I felt that he could make it this short distance and told him he could do it as I have seen many students sore, dehydrated and saying 'can't' do something only to find that they have strength beyond their conceived limits."

O'Neal didn't inform Buschow about his emergency water.

"I wanted him to accomplish getting to the water and the cave for rest," he wrote. "He asked me to go get the water for him. I said I was not going to leave him. ... Shortly thereafter I had a bad feeling and turned to Dave and found no sign of breathing."...

[One of the campers said:] "One thing that [Boulder Outdoor Survival School] offers you is an opportunity to push yourself physically into the red zone. ... He was 200 feet from the water. Is that the point where you give it to him? Or 500 feet?"

The guides were not charged with a crime, and of course, BOSS required the campers to waive any tort liability.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Obama gets MySpace to give him control of a fan's webpage.

AP reports:

For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama's name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.

In this new frontier of online campaigning, it's hard to determine the value of 160,000 MySpace friends—about four times what any other official campaign MySpace page has amassed. But the Obama campaign decided they wouldn't pay $39,000, which is what Anthony said he proposed for his extensive work on the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000.

MySpace reluctantly stepped in to settle the dispute and decided that Obama should have the rights to control http://www.myspace.com/barackobama as of Monday night, while Anthony had the right to take the contact information for all the friends who signed up while he was in control. That includes the right to tell them exactly how he feels about the Obama campaign.

There is a bundle of questions here. Is it acceptable for a someone to use someone else's name for their URL? Should MySpace have done Obama's bidding or protected the individual user? Should someone who claims to be a candidate's supporter try to extract money from the campaign? If the effort to extract the money fails, should the erstwhile supporter denounce the candidate on line? What will happen in the next instance, as candidates and individual users see how this little drama plays out?

Here's Anthony's blog, where he tells the world how he feels:

I did want to be paid, if we were to continue working together . This was not an attempt to use this profile for commercial purposes. This was an attempt to keep working my ass off on this profile, for Barack Obama, and for the enormous community of supporters on Myspace....

The campaign got involved in February and although at first it was very exciting, it quickly became clear that they just had no interest in me or my involvement. They only wanted to take control of the profile and get on with it. I bit the bullet for a while and kept working for the good of the campaign, but they quickly went from passive aggressive, to aggressive, and then eventually just rotten and dishonest....

Apparently the message here is, as an individual, if you have too big of an impact, you're just a liability.

This is how Obama lost my vote, and one of his strongest supporters....

... I'm passionate about this right now. All this work, all this progress is down the drain, and I'm absolutely heart-broken.

Read the whole thing for Anthony's details of how the campaign treated him. It's notable that Anthony had worked on the profile since 2004. There are tons of comments to his blog post, presumably many of them from the people Anthony had previously inspired to support Obama. Sample comments:

HAHA this is funny stuff. This is the first thing I know of that obama has accomplished....

This is so not cool... I've disassociated myself with the Obama campaign and will seriously question if I'll do anything to help him get elected. He seemed better than this, but it is all about his 'managers' and from what I can see, they bite. Honestly, is Bush the problem, or is it his managers? This smacks of the kind of thing Karl Rove would embrace... not good Mr Obama, not good at all....

I was considering to vote for obama, but not anymore. If this is how his lackeys act in the shadows it may be the way that he would run the government.

But the comments over here take a different tack. Sample:

the fact that there was an unofficial fan page out there with an official-sounding URL and 160,000 friends that could potentially misrepresent Obama....

Cry me a river you leach. You don't volunteer to help a candidate then turn around and demand $39,000 for something thats not even yours to begin with(according to Myspace EULA)....

Guys ... if this guy was doing all this web-work out of the goodness of his heart, and truly unconditionally supported Barak, why didnt he just offer up the page for free?...

This guy was asking for way to much for a page that wasn't rightfully his to begin with, and I sure wouldn't want my donation to Obama's campaign to go to paying off some guy on Myspace....

And now the bloggers will talk about this. And the blogger's commenters. What do you think? What do I think? It's really bad to destroy someone else's work, and really stupid when that person was your supporter -- your influential supporter. What could they have thought made it worth making this ugly, conspicuous power play? The fear of losing control of your message? But expressing that fear also makes you look bad! You don't like people independently expressing political messages, and you want to control things? That's bad enough, but you didn't succeed in controlling him -- he seems to have a bigger audience right now -- and you've converted his message from a positive one to a negative one.

UPDATE: Here's the response from the Obama campaign. It contains too many excuses about how hard it is to run a political campaign and relies too heavily on their sense of entitlement to Anthony's website. There are vague references to their "arrangement" with Anthony, but it looks as though they never came to terms about it. Why did they wait so long to put something in writing? Were they naive and incompetent or did they mean to get their foot in the door by being low key and, over time, to make Anthony feel that he owed them the site?

At the end of the day, this is all new for everyone -- this Joe, that Joe, and everyone participating or commenting on it. We're flying by the seat of our pants, and establishing new ways of doing things every day. We're going to try new things, and sometimes it's going to work, and sometimes it's not going to work. That's the cost and that's the risk of experimenting.

You might want to try to project an image of competence if you want to be President.

"American Idol" -- results. Nicely done!

With 6 left and 2 going down, 100 million votes are cast, and 2 white males go down. Time to be proud of America as the 3 black women survive and 2 white guys have to leave. One of them, Phil, did a great job last night. I thought he'd make it, and he deserved to make it. Chris, I knew he'd reached the end. But I thought Phil would survive and Jordin, LaKisha, or Melinda would go, but all 3 of them made it. I feel a little bad about Phil, but more than that, I feel good that with 3 black women in the final 6 and 2 going down tonight that all 3 black women made it. Nice showing, America! And who's that other person? It's Blake. A white guy. My personal favorite, but nevertheless, I want the record to show that America voted and kept 3 black women in the final 4. That means something.

ADDED: To understand my point, remember in the third season, when it was down to the final 7, the 3 black women -- who, I think, were the 3 best singers on the show -- got voted into the bottom 3. This was the episode when "America" voted off Jennifer Hudson, the young woman who went on to win the Oscar for her performance in "Dreamgirls." There was a lot of talk at the time that Americans were not voting fairly. Now, the voting system is complex, and people cast more votes when they think their favorite is in danger, so even then, some of the charges of racism went too far. But, traditionally, over all the seasons, we've seen white male singers stay on the show when superior black female singers have been voted off. That did not happen last night.