Publishing the Laws is Against the Law

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

David Post , commenting on the State of Oregon’s rather perverse filing of copyright infringement notices on several websites that published the Oregon Revised Statutes,

What burns me up is that the State of Oregon would choose to assert its rather fanciful copyright claim for the purpose of making public access to the authoritative version of its laws more, rather than less, difficult. It is completely outrageous that in 2008 we do not have a complete and authoritative compendium of all of the laws of the 50 States, and the federal government, available at no cost on the net.

He incidentally doesn’t think Oregon has a very strong copyright claim, either.

There’s an old dictum that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” It would seem that there’s a strong incentive at work to keep people ignorant.

UPDATE (Alex Knapp): I can’t comment on the merits of Oregon’s position, as I haven’t had a chance to read the full facts of the case. However, I can definitively say that this statement is crap:

It is completely outrageous that in 2008 we do not have a complete and authoritative compendium of all of the laws of the 50 States, and the federal government, available at no cost on the net.

You can find this in several places, one of which is here. It’s also worth noting that all 50 states publish their codes on the web for free, as do most municipalities.

Tags | Alex Knapp, James Joyner, Law and the Courts

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The Next Right

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini, and Soren Dayton are launching a new initiative they’ve dubbed “The New Right.” It’s apparently yet another attempt to create a right-of-center counterpart of the Netroots. Not yet launched, it purports to be “an online community for change-minded activists and hardcore political junkies in the conservative movement.”

All three of the founders agree that a lot has changed since 1980 and that the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan but rather, as Soren puts it, “at a transitional point.” Jon laments that the Iron Law of Oligarchy has set in and that, “Much of the DC-based infrastructure on the Right - Republican politicians, the advocacy organizations and non-profits, the massive, campaign-oriented fundraising machines that spring up in each cycle - has become the entrenched bureaucracy seeking its own promulgation.”

They also agree that the Republicans have fallen way behind the Democrats in reaching out via the Internet. As Patrick writes, “Netroots activists on the left have built critical mass around an idea that regular people on the Internet can get their hands dirty and remix Democratic politics. They not only raise money. They recruit candidates. They fund full-time investigative journalism to ambush Republicans.”

Beyond that, the three admit they have little agreement. That’s not surprising, really. Jon’s a neo-libertarian who has worked for George Allen and Fred Thompson. Pat’s a longtime Republican activist who has worked for George W. Bush and Rudy Guiliani. Soren briefly worked for John McCain.

And therein, methinks, lies the problem. While most Republican-leaning intellectuals think the party needs to change after seven years of Bush and after a GOP-majority Congress became the kings of pork and fiscal irresponsibility, there’s not a whole lot of consensus on the nature of that change.

Sure, we want leaders with a gift for communication and inspiration, as we had with Reagan. We’re tired of earmarks and “politics as usual” and all the standard complaints. But there’s not a whole lot of agreement beyond that.

• Should we continue a foreign policy of “American greatness” and trying to democratize the heathens through military power? Or should we retrench to a more traditional Realist posture?

• Should we get more serious about the social issues and improving public morality? Or should we become more libertarian, get government out of the bedroom, and focus instead on economic policy?

• What do we do about immigration? Social Security? Health care? Sustainable energy? Terrorism?

Our choices on those issues will determine the future of the party and radically impact its demographics.

The Netroots have been united by opposition to Bush, the neocons, and the war. It’s not at all apparent to me what it is that will unite the “Rightroots” (or whatever term we coin).

To the extent that The Next Right is a platform for having this discussion, it’ll be interesting. My guess, though, is that we’ll continue talking past one another, though.

Tags | James Joyner, Blogosphere, Politics 101

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Top Expert on Al Qaeda Victim of Budget Cuts

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

Marc Lynch extols the work of Radio Free Europe analyst Daniel Kimmage “on al-Qaeda’s internet operations, including his definitive study of Iraqi insurgent media (with Kathleen Ridolfo) and his more recent report on al-Qaeda’s internet media production network. There are very few people inside or outside the government who have worked harder or thought more deeply about how jihadists use online media, drawing on the original Arabic sources rather than from second and third-hand conjecture.”

Naturally, then, he’s moving onward an upward? Alas, no, he’s been sacked, along with his whole team.

[Today], the regional specialists at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty will put out the last issue of Newsline, the daily publication that over the last 11 years helped shape the broadcasts of that station and more importantly both informed analysts in the West and served as a check on the actions of governments in the post-Soviet world.

Yesterday, the president of RFE/RL informed the analysts there that because of budgetary shortfalls, he had no choice but to fire them and thus end what has been the journal of record for developments in a part of the world that remains vitally important however much some may believe we can safely ignore it.

Lynch responds,

That’s right: the US government is cutting loose one of its best analysts of al-Qaeda’s use of the internet in order to save money which doesn’t even amount to a rounding error in the Pentagons budget. Whether it’s because of the fall of the dollar or because of the costs of Iraq, or more narrowly because of the Broadcasting Board of Governors need to pay the bills of the al-Hurra TV white elephant, this speaks volumes about both our real resource constraints and our real priorities.

Actually, my strong guess is this is just bureaucratic stupidity. Kimmage was a generalist doing big picture work on al Qaeda out of an office aimed at the Soviet successor states in Central Asia. Had he been in a counter-terror bureau or the Iran desk, he’d have been promoted. Because of where he fit on the budget line, though, he was deemed expendable.

One would presume that he’d be able to find work immediately in a different shop. After all, in addition to his regional expertise, he’s an “English-Russian bilingual” and “fluent in Arabic and reads Farsi, French, German, and Uzbek.” Then again, the interagency hiring bureaucracy isn’t all that efficient, either, set up to promote from within if they have someone even remotely competent-on-paper available, turning to outside experts only as a last resort.

Tags | Bureaucracy, al Qaeda, James Joyner

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Still The Least Dangerous Branch

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

Anna Quindlen argues that Supreme Court appointments are the most important choices presidents make.

Congress chips away at legislation, then sends some lowest-common-denominator version to the White House, to be signed or vetoed or later redesigned by the next president to take up temporary residence in Washington. But the work of the high court has had vast systemic influence over the lives of all Americans, an effect that lasts through generations. In the tripartite tussle, it’s no contest: SCOTUS rules.

The display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The scope of eminent domain. The reading of rights to defendants. The ability of taxpayers to litigate against faith-based government-funded programs. School prayer. Medical marijuana. Campaign ads. And that’s before you get to desegregation, abortion, affirmative action and capital punishment. If you try to register to vote in Indiana and are turned away because you don’t have a government-issued photo ID, that’s because the Supremes just ruled, 6-3, that that’s OK.

This is sheer and utter nonsense. In each and every one of these examples, the Supreme Court was merely reacting to public policy decisions made by executives and legislators.

Public officials decided to put up the 10 Commandments where, in some cases, they remained up for decades. Only when someone took a case to court did SCOTUS rule this was impermissible. Public officials decided to push the envelope on eminent domain and SCOTUS ruled that, indeed, they could.

Who put in those faith-based programs? Keeps pushing for novel ways to have public prayer? Test the limits of previous abortion rulings? Passes laws on marijuana? In all cases, it’s decision makers. The courts come in after the fact — and only after someone brings suit — to weigh in on the rules. That’s a tertiary role, not a leading one.

The Indiana voter ID law is a perfect example of how journalists continually misrepresent the court’s role. Hoosiers don’t have to show ID “because the Supremes just ruled, 6-3, that that’s OK.” They have to do it because the state legislature mandated that they do so and the governor signed off on it.

There’s no denying that the Supreme Court plays a major role in shaping public policy. They’ve weighed in on some of the most divisive issues in our history and have changed the culture in a handful of instances by striking down age-old practices. But, frankly, nobody’s disputing that.

While the Court, thanks to a shrewdly executed power grab by John Marshall in 1803, is more powerful than Alexander Hamilton intended when he described the judiciary as “the least dangerous branch,” so, too are the other branches. And the state and local governments. And the never-envisioned bureaucracy. The courts are so powerful precisely because we have so much government.

Still, the Supreme Court can’t send our troops off to war. They can’t raise your taxes. They can’t even pass laws. In the tripartite tussle, then, it’s no contest: SCOTUS is dead last.

Tags | James Joyner, Law and the Courts

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Former Gitmo Commander Denied Pakistan Post

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

MG Jay Hood’s appointment as the top U.S. military officer in Pakistan has been pulled owing to Pakistani complaints about a previous stop in his career as commander at Guantánamo.

When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantánamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.

The decision to withdraw General Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over American foreign policy. While the United States considers Pakistan a close ally in its counterterrorism efforts, the accounts by Pakistanis who have returned to Pakistan after being held at Guantánamo Bay have added to anti-American sentiment in the country.

Several leading Pakistani military and foreign affairs commentators denounced General Hood’s selection in recent weeks, calling on their new government to block his appointment. In interviews this week, American military officials said they had reluctantly concluded that General Hood’s effectiveness could be seriously hindered, and that his personal safety might even be at risk if he were to take up the post.

Ironically, in addition to the “Koran flushing” incident having been debunked, Hood actually tried to clean up Gitmo.

General Hood, who took command of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay in March 2004, shortly before the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq broke, sought to put a more human face on it. He was credited by lawyers for the prisoners and human rights groups with having improved the treatment of detainees, and it was soon after he took over that some of the most severe interrogation methods were curtailed.

But he also had to deal with the fallout of a report in Newsweek asserting that a military inquiry was expected to find that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet at the detention center. The magazine later retracted the article, but the military inquiry concluded that a soldier had inadvertently splashed urine on a Koran. The magazine’s original assertion led to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that left at least 17 people dead.

Hood will get a plum assignment on the CENTCOM staff instead.

Tags | Pakistan, James Joyner, Military Affairs

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Hillary Clinton Losing Millions

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

Hillary Clinton may take a hit to her personal finances in excess of $11 million, Bret Schulte reports for U.S. News.

With rounds to fight running out, the self-described Rocky Balboa of politics will soon be forced to assess the damage sustained by the most expensive primary bout in history. Sen. Hillary Clinton doled out $6.4 million of her own money to her campaign since April, her campaign told reporters this week. That brings her total cash outlay to more than $11 million since January. And she’s not ruling out spending more as she plans to compete in the six remaining contests. If she plans to knock out heavyweight fundraising champ, Sen. Barack Obama, she may have no other choice.

[…]

Thanks to a little-known provision in 2002’s McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, a campaign must repay the loan to a candidate before Election Day. In this case, that’s the nominating convention. After the election has passed, a bankrupt campaign is limited to gathering just $250,000 from contributors, which means that modest sum is all it can give back to a candidate. In short, Clinton stands to lose $11,150,000. “If she wants to be repaid, she’d have to move on that between now and the national convention,” says former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner. “Otherwise, it just becomes another contribution.” The campaign, meanwhile, has other debts to consider as well. According to her latest FEC filing, the Hillary Clinton for President campaign committee owes millions to vendors, including more than $4.5 million to Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, the consulting firm of her former chief strategist Mark Penn.

That adds another wrinkle to her decision to stay in the race. Time is running out to pay off friends, allies, and vendors. Plus, by all accounts, Clinton’s most ardent supporters are tapped out, either unwilling or unable by law to donate any more. If she’s going to continue competing, she has to ask herself how many more millions she’s willing to spend in a quest many describe as increasingly quixotic. In short, how much does she care about the money? Politics guru Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia figures not much; after all, the Clintons earned $109 million since leaving the White House. “It’s like Michael Bloomberg spending a billion. Would he miss it? Is she going to miss $10 million? There’s only so much you can spend yourself anyway.”

Quite right. And, really, it’s hard to feel too awfully sorry for the Clintons here. After all, the reason they’re rich to begin with is that they’ve cashed in quite nicely on Bill’s presidency. A few million was a small risk, indeed, for a chance to double down.

Further, the $11 million or so Hillary stands to lose if she can’t recoup her campaign debt in time could pale in comparison to the lost future earnings that they will incur if they have permanently hurt themselves with their fan base through a scorched earth, race-baiting campaign.

Tags | Hillary Clinton, James Joyner, Campaign 2008

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Rumsfeld Blames Generals for Troop Strength

James Joyner | Friday, May 9, 2008

Some recently released Pentagon documents include an “hour-long talk [then-Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had with military officers in late 2006.” The Swamp’s Aamer Madhani highlights this bizarre exchange:

Q: Hey, also your favorite subject: looking back. What’s become conventional wisdom, simply Shinseki was right. If we simply had 400,000 troops or 200 or 300? What’s your thought as you looked at it?

PACE: I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t take the (unintelligible). I apologize.

RUMSFELD: First of all, I don’t think Shinseki ever said that. I think he was pressed in a congressional hearing hard and hard and hard and over again, well, how many? And his answer was roughly the same as it would take to do the job–to defeat the regime. It would be about the right amount for post-major combat operation stabilization. And they said, “Well, how much is that?” And I think he may have said then, “Well maybe 200,000 or 300,000.”

PACE: I think he said several.

Q: Several, yes, several hundred thousand.

RUMSFELD: Now it turned out he was right. The commanders–you guys ended up wanting roughly the same as you had for the major combat operation, and that’s what we have. There is no damned guidebook that says what the number ought to be. We were queued up to go up to what, 400-plus thousand.

Q: Yes, they were already in queue.

RUMSFELD: They were in the queue. We would have gone right on if they’d wanted them, but they didn’t, so life goes on.

Satyam Khanna is naturally upset by this.

In reality, Rumsfeld fought back when generals like Shinseki requested more troops. He said in 2003 that Shinseki was “far from the mark.” As McClatchy reported in 2004, “Central Command originally proposed a force of 380,000 to attack and occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld’s opening bid was about 40,000. … By September 2003, Rumsfeld and his aides thought, there would be very few American troops left in Iraq.”

The conventional wisdom is that Rumsfeld came to office with a plan to transform the military into a light, high-tech force and wanted to use the Iraq War to showcase that vision. To a large extent, I think, that’s right.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that this was a private conversation Rumsfeld and Pace were having with military officers. And there’s certainly room for argument on some of this.

For one thing, Rumsfeld’s right that Shinseki gave the answer, “I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers, are probably, you know, a figure that would be required” in response to Congressional questioning. We don’t have much evidence as to what he argued in the Pentagon. Indeed, Shinseki likely wasn’t all that involved in the planning; he was a Service chief, not an operational commander. The guy who filled that role, Tommy Franks, apparently did not argue for a much larger troop footprint and, indeed, apparently shared the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith-Tenet view that the postwar “Phase IV” would be a relatively minor, brief affair.

Shinseki was dead on in that regard. His next sentence: “We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.”

Regardless, however, it’s the job of generals to make recommendations and execute their orders. It’s the job of the political leadership — the president and the SECDEF — to make the tough strategic calls. It really doesn’t matter who recommended what in the end; they’re the ones who are responsible. While we go different places with the idea, I’m largely in agreement with Kyle Moore in this regard.

I’ve counseled for months against Petraeus fetishism. The idea that policymakers should hold up a single career soldier and simply defer to him, deflecting all personal responsibility, is dangerous. We don’t elect generals to make policy but to carry it out.

Tags | James Joyner, Iraq Conflict

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AQI Leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri Arrested UPDATE: Mistaken Identity

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

The Iraqi government claims to have arrested Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was arrested in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday. Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was confirmed to him by the Iraqi commander of the province. There was no immediate confirmation or comment from U.S. forces.

I doubt this will make any terrific difference. We’ve captured or “otherwise dealt with” more number twos and number threes than you can shake a stick at over the years and buried this guy’s predecessor under a ton of rubble. Still, if true, it at least means the Iraqi security forces are getting better.

Then again, al Maliki will likely let him go soon in some deal that makes no sense to anyone outside the country.

UPDATE: AP: “The U.S. military on Friday denied Iraqi government claims that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was captured and said a man with a similar name had been arrested in the northern city of Mosul.”

Tags | al Qaeda, James Joyner, Iraq Conflict

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Heath Shuler Endorses Clinton

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

Always the master of timing, Democratic superdelegate Heath Shuler announced that he would support Hillary Clinton the morning after her poor showing in North Carolina convinced just about everyone that she was toast. This is especially interesting given that the first-term congressman represents North Carolina.

Don Frederick describes the play thusly:

A cynic might note that in announcing his support for Clinton, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina was aping his ill-fated pro football career — joining the roster of a losing team.

But after washing out as a QB from the mid-to-late ’90s with the Washington Redskins, the New Orleans Saints and the Oakland Raiders, Shuler succeeded as a politician by making clear to the constituents of the western tip of the Tar Heel state that although he was a Democrat, he shared their moderate-to-conservative opinions on most issues. That enabled him, in the 2006, to knock off an eight-term Republican incumbent.

In endorsing Clinton, Shuler was hewing to the views of those who sent him to Washington. Although Clinton lost North Carolina to Obama by 14 percentage point, the results in Shuler’s district were almost exactly the reverse: She won it by 13 points.

Actually, this is a perfectly sensible move on his part under those circumstances. It’s still funny, though.

Howard Mortman, who agonized through Shuler’s Redskins days, isn’t the least bit surprised.

Tags | Hillary Clinton, James Joyner, Campaign 2008

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Dan Drezner Makes Professor

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

It seems like only yesterday that Dan Drezner was denied tenure at Chicago for publishing too many articles that people would actually read. Today, he’s made Full Professor at Tufts.

Congrats, Dan.

Personally, I still think an article in Foreign Affairs is more valuable that one in an obscure journal that will only be read by the nine other people in your subdiscipline — and then only for the purposes of citing in their lit reviews or using as the basis for their critique of that article so they can publish their own in response. Then again, I’m the guy who, in a grad school political behavior class, responded to the prof’s critique of something as “mere journalism” with the retort, “Well, at least people read journalism.”

Tags | James Joyner, Blogosphere, Education

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McCain Reaches Out to Latino Small Business Owners

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

John McCain goes Español in his latest ad campaign.

Matt Yglesias calls the ad “shrewd,” noting that Latinos tend to vote based on their interests rather than as a bloc, that McCain needs to distance himself from the “I hate immigrants” wing of the party, and that “given the tendency of small business owners everywhere to love the GOP a specific focus on small business seems smart.”

True on all counts, I think, even if the ad itself is rather dull. I’m not sure I’d have devoted the most prominent visual to a guy standing by a tree, though.

Tags | John McCain, Borders and Immigration, James Joyner, Campaign 2008

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Georgia on Brink of War?

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

Russia’s “new” government is just like the old one, it seems, and it is ramping up tensions in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that it could further increase its peacekeeping forces in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, where the threat of renewed fighting increased international alarm. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, meanwhile, said the threat of war with Russia remained high, and the possibility of open conflict was very real just a few days ago.

Western-leaning Georgia and breakaway Abkhazia are at the center of struggle between Moscow and the West for influence in the strategically located South Caucasus. And as Georgia pushes aggressively for NATO membership and tries to draw closer to the United States, tensions have grown dramatically in recent months.

Russian peacekeepers, which have served in Abkhazia since the region broke away from Georgian control in the 1990s, are an irritant in relations between Moscow and Georgia. A recent increase in Russian forces has drawn criticism from the United States and European Union.

This is a rather odd summary of events. It reads as if Russia simply showed up, rather than being an active player in establishing a breakaway republic, and is just trying to keep peace.

While denying Georgia a membership action plan (MAP) in the recent Bucharest summit, as the United States had strongly urged, NATO nonetheless declared that Georgia would be a member in the future. The only reason MAP was denied was to appease Russia. One wonders what the play will be now that appeasement has failed.

Tags | NATO, Russia, James Joyner

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Obama to Declare Victory on May 20th?

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

Barack Obama plans to simply declare victory once he’s passed the 2,025 delegate threshold, David Paul Kuhn asserts in an article that does not cite any sources.

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race.

The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates—a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination—a tally that includes Florida and Michigan. “We don’t accept 2,025. It is not the real number because that does not include Florida and Michigan,” said Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton’s two chief strategists. “It’s a phony number.”

The media outlets, including CNN, have long bought the 2,025 figure so it will likely stick.

Clinton supporter Armando, though, is incensed by the very suggestion.

So let me get this straight — the first act of the self declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama will be to state that Michigan and Florida will not count? This is insane. Two key states in November will be dissed in the first act of the newly crowned Democratic nominee.

Although I’d argue that they’ve already been “dissed” by the party by having their delegates stripped for holding early elections in violation of the long-established rules. Why non-existent delegates would be counted in determining who has a majority is, to say the least, unclear. Indeed, one could argue that not declaring victory after passing the 2,025 threshold would be a tacit admission that Clinton is right.

Tags | James Joyner

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Hillary’s Math Problems

James Joyner | Thursday, May 8, 2008

George Will notes, as I have many times, that Hillary Clinton, rather than being almost a sure loser, would have had this thing wrapped up a long time ago had the Democrats operated on rules similar to those the Republicans use.

[S]he was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party’s mania for “fairness,” as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama’s early lead in delegates. If Democrats, who genuflect at the altar of “diversity,” allowed more of it in their delegate selection process, things might look very different. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January.

But, alas, those ain’t the rules:

Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of “fairness,” because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball’s rules — pesky nuisances, rules — say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

Indeed, she actually lost Texas, despite winning its primary, because of the bizarre and complicated way it allocates its delegates. And winning California and New York only netted her an additional 39 and 47 delegates, respectively, over and above what Obama earned.

Tags | Hillary Clinton, James Joyner, Campaign 2008

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