SEN. RICK SANTORUM V. SEN. BOB CASEY JR. – NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON WOMEN’S ISSUES AT ALL

Rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks on Sen. Santorum’s religion or on the Catholic Church, it behooves all of us to instead analyze the politics and electorate of Pennsylvania.  Ad hominem attacks are an abusive form of argument; proper arguments should address the merits of an opponent’s position, and refute the merits thereof, rather than attacking either the person, or a straw man, e.g. a caricature of the person.  Abusive argumentation has long been recognized, since the time of Aristotle, as a form of FALLACY, not entitled to serious logical consideration by rational minds.  Consequently, let us engage in some rational discourse on the merits of the question at hand and cease from ABUSIVE and FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTATION techniques such as ad hominem attacks and attacking a straw man.

Sen. Arlen Specter of PA

Let us turn, then, to the Politics of Pennsylvania (“PA”), and why it produces such conservative politics and politicians, especially conservative male politicians, and particularly conservative male catholic politicians recently.  It was for many years a bastion of moderate Republicanism, and indeed, until the 1930s, Philadelphia and the Union League were synonymous with the post-Civil War consensus that the Republican Party was the proper party for all educated persons to vote for in the Northeast.  Indeed, the city was so identified with core national Republican values that the Athletics even adopted an elephant as their team logo in the early 1900s, a symbol retained to this day by the Oakland Athletics, though it is dubious they know what Connie Mack was thinking when he adopted the symbol 111 years ago.

This consensus began to break down after the Great Depression and FDR, though it lingered on for many years as the so-called “Rockefeller-Eisenhower-Nixon” wing of the party, which was Northeast and moderate, and bipartisan with the Democrats on foreign policy, social security, fiscal & monetary policy and many other fundamental issues.  This consensus of course began to break down with the emergence of the Goldwater faction in 1964, which was opposed by the Scranton faction in 1964 (again led from PA), leading to Nixon re-assuming the reigns in 1968 and 1972.  With Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Ford took over and Rockefeller became VP, leading to a bitter fight between the Reagan and Ford wings of the party in 1976, and another bitter fight between the Bush and Reagan wings in 1980, finally emerging in victory both in nomination and election for the conservative wing of the Republican Party in 1980 for Reagan and the conservatives.  A new day had dawned in America.  But to some degree, the bipartisan consensus which had existed since FDR between the Democrats and the moderate Republicans was now endangered.

Nowhere was this tension more dramatically played out the past forty years than in PA.  PA was represented until 1991 by two stalwart moderate Republicans–Sen. Arlen Specter, a bipartisan member of the Warren Commission, and Sen. John Heinz, a moderate Republican loyal to the elderly and to Social Security.  These two Senators were cornerstones of what was, up to that point, a still very strong Northeastern moderate wing of the Republican party.  Both were solidly dedicated to bipartisanship, courtesy, gentlemanly behavior and getting things done on the Senate floor notwithstanding partisan differences.

This began to unravel slowly with the sudden airplane death in 1991 of Sen. John Heinz.

The Late Sen. John Heinz of PA

A sudden election was called in 1991 and an unknown political consultant was brought in from the South named James Carville to manage the campaign of an enormous

PA Sen. Harris Wofford with President John F. Kennedy in early 1960s

underdog, former University President and JFK kitchen cabinet member Harris Wofford, who was to stand election against former Governor Richard “Dick” Thornburgh.  At

Gov. Dick Thornburgh visits Centralia PA to inspect its ongoing Mine Fires in the 1980s

the time, Thornburgh had something like a fifty point lead in the polls, and tons of money.

James Carville - Wofford's 1991 PA Political Consultant

Sen. Heinz’ widow Teresa Heinz, now heiress in part to the Heinz catsup fortune, would then go on to marry Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in effect making him an instant near-billionaire and projecting him to the front rank of presidential contenders for 2004.  This nearly changed U.S. history, but Kerry’s bid failed.  Looking back, it is all too likely that a John Heinz bid for President would ultimately have succeeded in the long run just where Kerry failed–he had the looks, the charm and the moderate views to win.

Sen & Mrs. John & Teresa Heinz prior to his untimely death in 1991

This might have changed the entire course of the Republican Party and US History.

Sen & Mrs. John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry; Her Money Inherited from John Heinz's Death in 1991 Nearly Made Kerry President in 2004

Returning to the 1991 election, Carville made universal health care an issue, and Wofford shocked the nation by defeating Thornburgh, becoming the first Democratic Senator from PA in decades.  At the same time, Carville’s work came to the attention of a bright young Governor from Arkansas with Presidential aspirations–one William Jefferson Clinton.  Carville’s conjunction with Clinton, and with George Stephanopoulos, on the 1992 campaign, documented in THE WAR ROOM documentary film, is now legendary, but all of this began in PA with Carville and Wofford.

It was during the Wofford campaign in 1991 that Carville legendarily quipped that “between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was Alabama in between,” referring to the fact that Pennsylvanians in all portions of the state except for Philadelphia & Allegheny county regions were pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, exceptionally elderly (the oldest voting population in the USA outside of Florida) and very church-going, as well as being one of the most demographically Catholic and ethnic voting populations.  In addition, PA has the lowest % of college educated persons of any state in the Northeast corridor–it is the prototypical location of high school educated union card carrying labor, and many of those voters were either Nixon Republicans or Reagan Democrats, but definitely not liberal Democrats.  Except of course for the two large cities, and even there, most of the male voters care more about football than about politics.

In 2008 Hilary Clinton carried nearly every county of PA v. Obama and won the PA Primary by running to the right of Obama

Fast forward to 1994.  The Clinton Administration has badly failed on its health care initiative, and Sen. Wofford has to stand re-election in his own right.  This time, he is the heavy favorite to win, but Carville is not working on the campaign.  Wofford is facing an unknown challenger–Congressman Rick Santorum.  No one, absolutely no one, is giving Santorum a chance of winning.  In fact, Santorum is given less chance of winning than Wofford was given in 1991.

What happens next shocks not only the nation, but PA as a whole.  Not only does the Republican Party and the Contract with America sweep the midterm elections in 1994, but Santorum runs unexpectedly strongly and defeats Wofford narrowly to win election to the United States Senate.

Part of the problem with Sen. Wofford is that he is intellectual, aloof and takes re-election for granted, whereas Santorum is hard-working, engaged, personable and likeable.  The rest of the problem is that Santorum is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and a church-going fellow, whereas Sen. Wofford is a Northeast liberal who is none of these things–consequently it is Santorum who fits the mold of what PA voters want in their candidate (except for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia).  However, since Santorum is FROM PITTSBURGH, the Western Part of the State votes for Santorum, especially as Wofford is from the Eastern Part of the State, thus negating any liberal sentiment emanating from Allegheny County.

Sen. Santorum wins re-election in 2000, and actually runs better in PA than does Pres. Bush, who loses the national popular vote as well as the popular vote and electoral vote in PA, while Santorum wins his election in PA, in effect demonstrating that Santorum as of 2000 is more popular than President Bush.

Now we fast forward to 2006, and to the election Santorum lost for Senate by a considerable margin, to Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.

Let’s examine why he lost this election.

First, Bob Casey, Jr. was and is the son of a popular, two term Governor of PA who was known throughout the state.  Second, Bob Casey, Jr. was from a prominent Irish-Catholic political family as well-known in PA as the Kennedys’ are known in Massachusetts and nationally.  According to wikipedia:

“Casey was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of eight children of Ellen (née Harding) and Bob Casey, the 42nd governor of Pennsylvania. He is of Irish descent on both his mother’s^{[citation needed]}and father’s side.  Casey played basketball and graduated from Scranton Preparatory School in 1978. Following in his father’s footsteps, he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1982, and received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in 1988. Between both college and law school, Casey served as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and spent a year teaching 5th grade and coaching basketball at the Gesu School in inner city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Casey practiced law in Scranton from 1991 until 1996.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Casey,_Jr.

This is the most perfect Jesuit, Irish-Catholic resume you could possibly have for running for office in PA–Scranton Prep, Holy Cross, Catholic University, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and a year teaching at an inner city catholic mission school in Philadelphia.  Sen. Casey is just the most perfect catholic prepster ever.

Next, Casey is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and as we see above, a church-going catholic just like Santorum–in fact, he’s Irish-Catholic, as opposed to Italian-Catholic, which in PA, is a real advantage politically, just as it is in Massachusetts and nationally.

Consequently, the same wedge issues that HELPED Santorum win in 1994 and 2000–the issues that appealed to the “Alabama” parts of PA that are pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and church-going and conservative on social issues–were of no use running against Bob Casey, Jr. because Casey, if anything, ran to the right of Santorum on all those issues.  As noted by Casey’s wiki bio:

“In the Democratic primary, Casey faced two Democrats with more liberal viewpoints: college professor Chuck Pennacchio and pension lawyer Alan Sandals. Both argued that Casey’s views on abortion and other social issues were too conservative for most Pennsylvania Democrats. However, Casey easily defeated both challengers in the May 16 primary, receiving 85% of the vote….Abortion….Casey, like his father did, identifies as pro-life. He has publicly stated his support for overturning Roe v. Wade.^[29] From Casey’s election until Specter’s party switch in April 2009, Pennsylvania had the distinction of being represented in the Senate by a self-identified pro-life Democrat and a pro-choice Republican (Arlen Specter).  He supports the Pregnant Women Support Act,^[30] legislation that grew out of Democrats for Life of America‘s 95-10 Initiative. The Initiative and the Pregnant Women Support Act seek to reduce the abortion rate by providing support to women in unplanned pregnancies. He expressed support for the confirmation of both John Roberts^[31] and Samuel Alito^[32] for seats on the Supreme Court of the United States; these judges are believed to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. Casey also opposes the funding of embryonic stem-cell research.^[33]   However, Casey voted against barring HHS grants to organizations that provide abortion services, though such services may often not be central to the organization’s chief purpose.^[34] Casey also supports over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception,^[35] and has voted to overturn the Mexico City policy, which bars the issuance of federal funds to overseas organizations that perform or refer for abortions.^[36] The authenticity of Casey’s pro-life commitment has been questioned by some prolife sources.^[36][37]  In January 2010, a writer for CBN wrote, “I wouldn’t want to be Senator Bob Casey right about now. He is coming under enormous pressure from pro-life groups because they say the ‘Pro-life’ Democratic Senator has not stood strong on the abortion issue during the current healthcare debate.” Casey, according to the CBN writer, had recently gotten “an earful and then some from pro-lifers during a press conference held at the Pennsylvania Capitol.”^{[38]  ….”}  

Id.  Clearly, Casey ran to the RIGHT of both of his Democratic primary opponents, and then ran to the RIGHT of Santorum in the general election on the social issues, not to the LEFT as his past opponents had done.  Casey was like the Democratic Santorum–only smarter, more conservative, more polished, and a better version, and even more socially conservative and catholic than Santorum was.  Casey ran to the RIGHT of Santorum on the social issues, but to the LEFT of Santorum on the bread and butter, economic and labor issues.

This makes Casey’s election to the US Senate in 2006 very unique among all of the elections in 2006, even though it is clear that 2006 generally trended Democratic and it is pretty likely that Santorum faced an uphill battle in any event even if Casey had run as a traditional liberal.  But Casey was no traditional liberal.  No one on the editorial staff of the Huffington Post or the New York Times would endorse him for national office if they truly understood either his positions, or the positions of the PA electorate.  In truth, the PA electorate holds positions at variance with the Northeast liberal elite and the West Coast elite, excepting Philadelphia, State College and Pittsburgh.

The results of Casey’s strategies were very clear; he ran well to the right of Santorum on social issues, but ran as a Democrat on union and bread and butter economic issues, while still remaining pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-church, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and pro-adoption.

In short, there isn’t a bucket’s worth of warm spit’s difference between these two candidates on women’s issues at all.  In fact, PA has NEVER elected a women to the United States Senate.  Ever.  Not even close to ever.

Only two women have even been nominated to run for US Senate in PA History and both have lost, one back in 1964, and more recently Lynn Yeakel, who lost a relatively close race to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter following the Anita Hill hearings in the 1990s, but still she lost and then rapidly faded from sight and power.

PA is clearly not a state conducive either to women’s issues or to women running for office.  PA has never had a female governor, a female senator and only rarely has it had female congresspersons.   According to the Huffington Post, as of 2009, there were only two women in its entire Congressional Delegation.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/senate-guru/pa-sen-the-potential-demo_b_187357.html.   It is astonishing how limited women are in political power in PA.

PA is well to the right of NJ, NY, DE and all the other northeastern states with regards to women’s issues and specifically women’s reproductive health issues.  The state legislature is overwhelmingly dominated by men, especially religious and catholic men, and the men who serve there are openly sexist and demeaning towards women who serve in the legislature and create what is in effect a hostile work environment for women who are elected and choose to serve their constituents there.  Recently, one of the houses of the PA Legislature voted 2012 “The Year of the Bible” by nearly unanimous resolution, while also simultaneously voting to cut student financial aid and aid to all state universities by more than one-third in the very same session that they also authorized tens of millions of dollars to hire replacement football coaches to take over for Joe Paterno at Penn State.  Apparently male legislators have their priorities in PA.  And first rate Division I football in Happy Valley is really far higher of a priority than education for the poor or the middle class, apparently.

Sad to say, often the same holds true in many of the rural county courtrooms as well as many of the appellate courts, although there at least in the past few years, some progress has been made.  However, in the major law firms of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, men hold by far the reins of power and women simply do not have any share of either the partner proceeds or the political shares of power that lead to business and partner revenues.

In short, it is a boy’s club, and often, a man’s only club in PA, notwithstanding the lip service paid to equality and opportunity.  Things in PA are NOTHING like NYC or Boston or DC.  They are backwards by at least twenty to forty years.  Many of the female partners who do make it in Philly prefer working over in New Jersey or up in NYC whenever possible–they find PA courts and clients to be very stifling and sexist in the extreme, and in any case most of the business is elsewhere.

Perhaps the reader imagines this is exaggeration, or opinion?  Let us introduce some evidence!

This is an actual example of tactices used against a female candidate for office in Allentown PA reported in the Huffington Post which occurred in 2006 and again in 2008:

“When she ran for mayor of Allentown, PA in 2001, Siobhan “Sam” Bennett was already well-known in her hometown. A former PTA president, she was a pillar of the community, having founded, led, or served on the boards of various civic organizations. So she was completely taken aback by what happened during her first stump speech as a mayoral candidate. Standing before a room full of men, she began to deliver her remarks when the chair of the meeting interrupted her with a totally bizarre and inappropriate request: “Sam, I want to ask a question all the men in this room have been dying to ask you: Just what are your measurements?”

As Bennett wrote in the Huffington Post:

I was in disbelief. And if this wasn’t bad enough, a reporter who witnessed this unabashed display of sexism wrote an article about that stump speech–and didn’t even mention the incident.Unfortunately, that experience was only a hint of what would come my way….

The Opposition’s Vehemence

What came her way when she ran for Congress in 2008 was far worse. Bennett was facing a possible challenger in Pennsylvania State Senator Lisa Boscola, and Boscola’s chief of staff, Bernie Kieklak, was well known in political circles for posting no-holds-barred commentary in local blogs. The remarks he let fly about Bennett at one online site are indicative of the level of sexism and misogyny many women candidates face.

To convey the intensity of Kieklak’s over-the-top sexism regarding Bennett and his extreme vulgarity, his comments are reproduced in their entirety below with minimal censorship: Sammy Bennett is a phony political w_____e who gives good h_____d and makes cheap, blatant political opportunists look like Mother F***ing Teresa. Even her p___y is made of plastic.” [sic] [offensive language edited].”

http://womensissues.about.com/od/thepoliticalarena/a/Women-In-Politics-Sexist-Media-Sexist-Attacks-Hurt-Women-In-Politics.htm

Truly shocking, abusive behavior towards a female politician.  But run of the mill for PA, sad to say.  Welcome to the training grounds of Sens. Santorum, Casey et al.

In short, to be successful in politics as a female in PA, you have to be not twice as good, not three times as good, but about ten times as good as a man, and have a hide made of armor plated kevlar.   Morever, many notable male politicians (including a prominent past governor) are well-known for their womanizing and aggrandizing tactics towards females, which can most generously be characterized as “Clintonesque”.  Even though these matters have been reported, still they go on.

This is the environment from which both Sens. Santorum and Casey have emerged and from which they ran for office.

Here was the result of Sen. Casey’s running to the right of Sen. Santorum on Social Issues according to Sen. Casey’s wiki bio:

“On election night, Casey won the race with 59% of the vote, compared to 41% for incumbent Senator Rick Santorum. Casey’s margin of victory was the highest ever for a Democrat running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania.^[11]Casey’s 17.4-point victory margin was the largest victory margin for a challenger to an incumbent Senator since James Abdnor unseated George McGovern by 18.8 points in 1980.”

Id.  However, the bio goes on to note that as Casey’s re-election approaches this year, he is beginning to distance himself openly from President Obama again in order to appeal to the conservative PA electorate, particularly with his blue-collar base in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton (Luzerne & Lackawanna Counties) who are very upset with the President’s performance on economic issues:

“Casey is up for re-election in 2012, and has stated that he intends to seek a second term in the Senate.^[12][13] His re-election prospects are uncertain. Observers have noted that as the election approaches, Casey, an early supporter of Obama, has “started to oppose the president outright or developed more nuanced responses to events that differentiate him from Mr. Obama. Analysts say Mr. Casey wants to put some distance between himself and a president whose job approval ratings in Pennsylvania are poor.”^[14] In October 2011, the National Journal noted that “the Scranton area is hugely important for 2012” for both Obama and Casey, but “the city has among the worst unemployment in the state, and it’s filled with the blue-collar Dems who weren’t very enthusiastic about Obama when he first ran for president. How Casey navigates his relationship with the president will speak volumes about his re-election prospects.”^[15]“

One cannot get away from one’s positions–a candidate is what a candidate espouses.  Sen. Santorum, like Sen. Casey, is a warm, charming and personable fellow.  Both are married with a number of kids–Casey has four kids, and Santorum has even more, and both their wives are full time stay at home moms.  Because that’s what they believe in, for the most part.  That moms and wives should stay at home and take care of the kids, that is.  And both of them are pro-gun, pro-second amendment, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-catholic, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, pro-adoption, and so on.  Indeed, it is very difficult to measure their differences on women’s issues or women’s health issues at all.

This addresses the issues, as opposed to attacking ad hominem or creating a straw man.  These candidates have espoused their positions and come to be what they are in large part, it is theorized and shown here, because of the electorate they spent a good deal of time cultivating–the uniquely conservative PA electorate.  Whether appealing to that electorate will work nationally in either Republican primaries or a National Presidential Election remains to be seen.  There has not been a President elected from PA since James Buchanan in 1856 (though Eisenhower famously took up residence near Gettysburg after he retired, and was considered an honorary PA resident, and his family still live in PA).  Perhaps with good reason.

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SEN TED KENNEDY 1932-2009 RIP

According to recent news reports, the Federal Oncology Commission, headed by the Earle Warren Orchestra and Dr. Earle Warren on saxophone, will issue a report this morning that the immediate cause of Sen. Kennedy’s death was a lone cancer cell, acting alone, without the assistance of other cancer cells, and that any hint that the cancer cell acted in conspiracy or with the assistance of other cancer cells is silly and ridiculous.

Also, there were no cancer cells in the grassy knoll.

In heaping praise on the late Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, let us not fall into the logical fallacy of overly admiring the ante-decedent Kennedies, and seeing the current Kennedy in their light, which would be an post-decedent ergo propter antedecedent hoc fallacy, or roughtly, the fallacy of denying the antedecedent.

Sen. Kennedy’s three older brothers were great men–joe jr. gave his life for his country in wwII, JFK was a great president, a princeton man who transferred to Harvard and graduated from there, and was known to have romanced the actresses gene tierney, marilyn monroe as well as his gorgeous wife jackie o, all in one spectacular lifetime, not to mention saying “ich bin ein Berliner.”

plus we all know that don draper wants to be JFK.

Bobby Kennedy had one best friend in the world other than jack, and that was Rosie Grier, a huge lineman who had gone to penn state with lennie moore and played on the fearsome foursome for the rams. rosie was not happy when bobby was gunned down in the ambassador hotel the night bobby won the california primary on national television.

so jack and bobby were martyrs, and teddy gave a beautiful eulogy, and about a month later mayor daley and lbj all but offered him the nomination, and he turned it down.

humphrey lost.

Kennedy set his sights on 1972, and nixon set his sights on ruining kennedy. nixon had the fbi watch him every minute.

meanwhile, ted kennedy got annoyed that jackie married ari onassis because he could only think how that would affect his own political prospects.

jackie told him where he could go with that one.

other errors of ted kennedy:

1) he destroyed the democratic party in 1979-1980 by running against pres. carter. this split opened the way for the reagan revolution, which in my view was a good thing, but it ended the 1932-1980 era of democratic party rule and began the 1980-2008 era of republican rule. it was a colossal error and misjudgment and an act of egotism on kennedy’s part.

2) he was negligent in the death of mary jo kopechne in 1969 at chappaquiddick. Mary Jo Kopechne was a girl from northeast pennsylvania, buried in forty fort, and no one in wilkes-barre scranton area ever forgave ted kennedy. america didnt forget.

3) he had a freshman take his spanish final for him at harvard. harvard instead of expelling him let him do two years in the army and reinstated him. he was later allowed to get his law degree at uva.

4) He was an alcoholic, and enabled his wife to become one too. as his ex-wife, joan has serious alcohol problems which have prevented her from being a proper mother to their kids.

5) he was a skirt-chasing adulterer. his circle of drunken skirt-chasers usually included sen moynihan, according to rumors.

6) he separated from joan in 1978, then reunited crassly in 1980 for his presidential run, fooling no one.

7) kennedy may have obstructed justice in the investigation of a rape case involving his nephew in florida in the early 1990s.

now there are many good things i can say about ted kennedy, but likewise, there are just as many bad.

he was a lot like nolan ryan, about half wins, half losses, and his fastball was great, but his wild pitches and walks would cost you ballgames, because the man was wild and had no self-control at all.

everything wrong with the democratic party was symbolized by ted kennedy–a liberal drunken divorcee, addicted to young women and booze, a drunk driver, reckless, not loyal to his own president, and egotistical.

also, he had no foreign policy views, which was really his achilles heel.

Unlike jfk, his older brother, who was an ardent anti-communist, ted kennedy was pretty much a blank on foreign policy issues. where jfk had concrete notions on handling russia and stopping communism and leading the military, ted kennedy’s only answer was to cut military spending and vote against every war every chance he got.

Kennedy also made sure the party nominated a string of northeast and massachussetts liberals-that had no chance of winning–because they were proxies for ted kennedy–when only a southerner could win such as al gore or bill clinton.

kennedy fomented a north-south, liberal-conservative split in his own party that kept it from winning the presidency for 8 out of 11 presidential elections, starting with 1980, but really going back to 1972, when kennedy backed mcgovern and 1976, when he was lukewarm over carter.

in short, he was not realistic, not a party man, and was 100% devoted to a liberal agenda that had passed the country by with the passing of the 1960s.

Ted Kennedy misapprehended the legacy of his own brother who was an ardent anti-communist, was pro-cia, pro-interventionist, anti-abortion, and even anti-birth control. even on civil rights, JFK and RFK were not as liberal as people think, at least back in 1962-63.

that’s why reagan was able to say, “i didn’t leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me”, a quip referring to the kennedy, liberal wing which had shifted to an anti-war, anti-american bias.

this created the reagan democrats, ethnic, blue collar, catholic and formerly jfk men and women, who now starting voting republican after 1980 and continuing thru to the obama election of 2008.

ted kennedy’s blind spot on his own brother’s views and legacy was a lasting weakness that marred his legacy.

regardless of how many laws he passed, he was never truly carrying the torch of the jfk legacy. that torch passed to LBJ and then onto Reagan a long, long time ago. bobby kennedy briefly had it but his flame was snuffed out in california that awful night in 1968 while rosie grier was standing next to poor bobby. bobby martin & john.

Abraham Martin & John by DION

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.

Has anybody here seen my old friend John,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.

Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.

Didn’t you love the things they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free,
Someday soon it’s gonna be one day.

Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John

NEW LAST VERSE FOR TEDDY:

Has anybody here seen my old friend Teddy,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, Bobby & John….
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good they die young
But I just looked around and he was gone.

http://www.uulyrics.com/music/dion/song-abraham-martin-john/

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

MAN GAVE NAME TO ALL THE ANIMALS IN THE BEGINNING; AN EDITORIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL DISQUISITION ON MICHAEL VICK AND THE METAPHYSICAL ONTOLOGICAL RELIGIOUS AND LEGAL BASIS OF ANIMAL RIGHTS; IS THERE ANY BASIS FOR ANIMALS TO HAVE RIGHTS COMPARED TO HUMANS?

The Philadelphia Eagles this past week signed former Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Vick, which instantly generated a lot of media controversy.

Because here at the Sophist we like to examine both points of view, lets’s parse for a moment some of the assumptions underlying whether Michael Vick has actually done anything controversial.

I. You aint nothing but a Hound Dog

In the beginning, people think it was Elvis who sang “you aint nothin but a hound dog”, but that isn’t right at all. It was african american blues woman BIG MAMA THORNTON who first sang “you aint nothing but a hound dog” and what she meant by that was something far different than what elvis meant, and it had a lot to do with accusing her man of infidelity.

frankly, that is probably a more serious matter than what michael vick was actually charged with.

Big Mama Thornton later re-recorded “hound dog” on a record she cut live in prison (michael vick not in attendance) and let me say, every track on there is hot, hot, hot.

here’s a live version on youtube with the legendary bluesman buddy guy;

hot hot hot! the guitar licks by buddy guy, the drumming by his band, and the singing by big mama thornton are totally awesome. what a clip! 11 out of 10! this is a legendary blues clip. wow!

now that’s the blues!!!!

they should have the big mama thornton/buddy guy version of this tune play on the jumbotron video at the linc every time michael vick takes the field. eventually it would be his signature song!

big mama thornton was a big influence on Janis Joplin and a great many other singers, especially as Big Mama Thornton was the first to sing “Summertime” and “Ball and Chain” pretty frequently, songs that later became associated with Janis.

In fact, if you really look at Big Mama Thornton, the fact is that white artists stole or misappropriated all of her fine work–Elvis took Hound Dog, the Stones and other bands took Little Red Rooster, Janis took Ball and Chain and Summertime, and so on, and rarely did the white artists mention Big Mama Thornton or pay her the correct royalties or give her the proper dues.

and yet, if you compare Big Mama Thornton to the white artists, it’s clear as a bell who’s better. janis joplin is good, but Big Mama Thornton is amazing. Elvis is good, but Big Mama Thornton is better. and so forth.

here’s Big Mama Thornton doing “Ball and Chain” with Lighting Hopkins, just an amazing version of this tune, a real blues classic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSNavkeDg54

If you’ve never heard of Big Mama Thornton, go and download her songs right now on youtube and music sites.

here’s her doing “Little Red Rooster” live at Newport with BB King and Muddy Waters. Pretty awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ycw4uaXPRU&feature=related

here’s wikipedia account of big mama thornton’s version of hounddog, but you really have to listen to the song to get it:

at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hound_Dog_%28song%29

Big Mama Thornton version

The blues singer Big Mama Thornton’s biggest hit was Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Hound Dog,” which she recorded in 1952. Thornton’s “Hound Dog” was the first record Leiber and Stoller produced themselves. They took over the session because their work had sometimes been misrepresented, and on this one they knew how they wanted the drums to sound; Johnny Otis was supposed to produce it, but they wanted him on drums. [5] Otis received a writing credit on all 6 of the 1953 pressings. This 1953 Peacock Records release (#1612) was number one on the Billboard rhythm and blues charts for seven weeks. [6]

Thornton gave this account of how the original was created to Ralph Gleason. “They were just a couple of kids, and they had this song written on the back of a paper bag.” She added a few interjections of her own, played around with the rhythm (some of the choruses have thirteen rather than twelve bars), and had the band bark and howl like hound dogs at the end of the song. In fact, she interacts constantly in a call and response fashion during a one minute long guitar “solo” by Pete Lewis . Her vocals include lines such as: “Aw, listen to that ole hound dog howl.. OOOOoooow”, “Now wag your tail”, Aw, get it, get it, get it”.

Thornton’s delivery has flexible phrasing making use of micro-inflections and syncopations. Over a steady backbeat, she starts out singing each line as one long upbeat. When the words change from “You ain’t nothin’ but a HOUND Dog”, she begins to shift the downbeat around: You TOLD me you was high-class / but I can SEE through that, You ain’t NOTHIN’ but a hound dog. Each has a focal accent which is never repeated..[7]

The other musicians on this recording are Devonia Williams (piano), Albert Winston (bass), and Leard Bell (drums), and are listed as “Kansas City Bill & Orchestra”.[8] Habanera and Habanera-mambo variations can be found in this recording.[9]

II. I Wanna Be Your Dog

in 1969, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., aka Iggy Pop, and the Stooges recorded one of the all time classic rock tunes with “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. It’s been on so many commercials and movie tracks that it would be redundant to re-spell it out here, but suffice it to say that most critics believe this song to be the first genuine song of the punk/new wave movement.

here’s a youtube live performance of iggy pop doing the tune from 1979, and it’s pretty good;

for a really hot 2006 version of the tune on you tube see this link;

this performance is from brussels, 2006 and the band is hot, the audience is so into it, they’re singing every line along with iggy pop. this song is really great. if you can get it on rockband, or learn it on your electric guitar, it’s a winner winner chicken dinner, three chord wonder variety. it’s so elemental that it actually generates energy.

once you watch it, you really get the idea. this song, as well, has little or nothing to do with dogs, but rather about something else far more dark and mysterious.

if you’re still not sure, read wonderland avenue by the late danny sugarman about iggy pop and you’ll get the fuller picture. iggy and the stooges, and iggy solo, one of the greatest rock acts of our time. also, from the great state of michigan, which has brought us Grand Funk, Bob Seger, Kid Rock, the MC5 and other awesome rock acts.

one more version, live in serbia 2004, also good, but not as good as the other two;

enjoy.

the original track from 1969 without video is here;

stripped down like this, it doesn’t sound the same–but as a live track it has had a lot of power over the years. but it still packs power as a studo track. this stooges album is considered a classic.
i find it interesting that europe and especially eastern europe still listen to rock and roll, while american kids waste away on rap, pop and lord knows what. it sort of suggests that their youth are a bit more in tune with normality than ours…and europeans also like classical music as well much more than our people do. they’re far more likely to do a rock/classical/jazz split than americans, who will much more likely do a country/rap/pop split. I’m far more in the jazz/classical/rock camp, so i suppose i’m with the europeans.

III. BLACK DOG BY LED ZEPPELIN

“hey hey mama said the way you move….
GONNA MAKE YOU SWEAT
GONNA MAKE YOU GROOVE….”

“didn’t take too long, till i found out, what people mean, by down and out”

an immortal rock tune, “black dog” by led zeppelin is on their immortal led zeppelin IV, the one with “stairway to heaven,” in fact, on the LP version, it opened the side which famously ended with “stairway to heaven”. this was the subject of a famous discussion in the movie “FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH” (1982), what the perfect record to seduce a woman to is, and the answer of course is, LED ZEPPELIN IV, SIDE ONE, beginning with BLACK DOG and ending with STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN.

For obvious reasons, BLACK DOG would make a great tune to play when michael vick is on the field. especially with a rocking led zepp video. even if it’s true that jimmy page sold his soul to the devil….

VIDEO ONE

plays the song with all the lyrics, pretty cool.

live 1973:

this is what 70s arena rock was all about. just about every guy back in the 1970s tried to have the robert plant look for a while. inevitably, it still comes around. chicks dig long hair.

i can’t get over Jimmy Page’s outfit in this clip.

john bonham in this clip is the actual model for the four guys in This is Spinal Tap (1984). Eleven, one louder.

this is one of the classic songs of the 1970s. it’s really a blues tune speeded up to arena rock sound, but it’s still blues rock, and played very well. it’s a great tune. well worth reviving as an eagles fight song for michael vick.

IV. BLACK EYED DOG – NICK DRAKE

this is an obscure one–not even well known by nick drake standards, and not one of nick drake’s best tunes, but still out there.

here’s a link to it;

it’s really more of an outtake than a finished tune, it doesn’t have any of the joe boyd orchestration that characterizes the best tracks off Bryter Later, nor is it as melodic as the best stuff off of Five Leaves Left or Pink Moon, which are the three official and only Nick Drake releases to come out while he was recording. It is in fact, an outtake included in “Time of No Reply,” which is an album of outtakes and alternate takes released posthumously, and which was included in the Fruit Tree compilation.

While this is an interesting “dog” track, i don’t think it’s a good song for a football crowd. I do recommend it to everyone though as a good example of a demo of a song by a brilliant songwriter; and being that it’s an obscure Nick Drake song, an excellent choice for a cover by your band seeking a record deal.

Speaking of Nick Drake, his producer JOE BOYD is one of the most intriguing figures in music history. A harvard grad and producer of most of the top bands of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and up to the present day, JOE BOYD is one of the key figures of music history, as well as the custodian of the NICK DRAKE legacy.

here’s his wikipedia bio, which only scratches the surface of this remarkable man’s career;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Boyd

makes for interesting reading, with great linkouts.

V. WALKING THE DOG BY RUFUS THOMAS 1965

this is an alltime classic, and you can dance to it.

This video linkout is vintage 60s live video feed, A++. with the stax/volt band behind him.

the blues brothers live with rufus thomas walking the dog:

this is from 1988, but amazingly, it’s the same band as from 1965! check it out…you’ll see what i mean….First Blues Brothers Band reunion tour Live in Pistoia (Italy) 1988 Steve Cropper-Guitar Donald Dunn-Bass Matt Murphy-Guitar Booker T Jones-Keyboards Anton Fig-Drums Lou Marini-Sax Alan Rubin-Trump. same guys playing on the 1965 vid for the most part.

VI HONORABLE MENTION

ME AND YOU AND A DOG NAMED BOO – Lobo
BULLDOG – Ventures
HOUND DOG MAN – Fabian
SNOOPY AND THE RED BARON – Royal Guardsmen
ANYTHING BY SNOOP DOOG
DIAMOND DOGS david bowie

Black Dog lyrics:

Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thing
Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting.
Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that way
Watch your honey drip, cant keep away.

*ah yeah, ah yeah, ah, ah, ah., ah yeah, ah yeah, ah, ah, ah.

I gotta roll, cant stand still,
Got a flame in my heart, cant get my fill,
Eyes that shine burning red,
Dreams of you all thru my head.
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.

Hey, baby, oh, baby, pretty baby,
Tell me what you do me now.
(repeat)

Didnt take too long fore I found out
What people mean my down and out.
Spent my money, took my car,
Started tellin her friends she wants to be a star.
I dont know but I been told
A big legged woman aint got no soul.

* chorus

All I ask for when I pray,
Steady rollin woman gonna come my way.
Need a woman gonna hold my hand
And tell me no lies, make me a happy man.

VII. Editorial and disquisition on Michael Vick

First of all, according to the Bible and the major religions, God gave Man dominion over the earth and all its living creatures. That pretty much means that man has substantial rights to do what he will with bears, dogs and cats, especially dogs that have been bred for, and exist because of, dogfighting. In short, the metaphysical existence of dogfighting breeds, and hence any of their metaphysical and ethical rights, are dependent upon, and exist by virtue of, their participation in and breeding for, dogfighting.

within of course, the law.

The same arguments of course apply to poodles, thoroughbred horses, cattle and many other animals which man has bred for man’s own needs and enjoyment. 99% of the rats which exist in laboratories today were bred and brought into metaphysical existence, in a word, instantiated, for the simple purpose of being experimented upon in a laboratory. Their rights and ethical/juridical existences are sub-dependent upon their instantive and metaphysical existence as being created to be lab rats.

In short, about 90% of all dogs, cats, cattle and other animals bred and brought into existence by man exist in a sort of BRAVE NEW WORLD existence, where they are actually genetically bred to serve a purpose, like the alphas, betas, and so forth of Aldous Huxley’s famous work.

As such, I can’t get morally excited or revolted about the fact that Michael Vick or his friends engaged in dogfighting with dogs bred to do dogfighting. After all, it’s what the dogs were bred to do, and in China, people eat dogs.

still, there are technical legal violations, but morally, i can equate it to ray lewis killing a man, or michael tyson raping a girl, or kobe bryant raping a girl, or oj simpson killing two people at once. or even to dante stallworth killing someone while driving drunk.

the life and dignity of a person has to be more valuable than the life and dignity of an animal. if that’s not true, our ethical and legal and moral systems are skewed.

In America, we have something like 100 million dogs and cats, and by all reasonably rational accounts, they are better fed and better cared for in terms of food, medical care and housing, than the bottom 100 million of our own population.

Animals have a powerful lobby; the poor do not. Mistreatment of animals usually draws a powerful response and a jail sentence; mistreatment of the poor usually draws a yawn. If a single dog or cat is hurt, the police cannot wait to find the rascal; but five hundred to a thousand poor African American victims of homicide die in our cities each year without any of those cases being solved.

There are no dogs or cats, to my knowledge, that have to sell their bodies for sexual pleasure in order to eat or obtain drugs or housing; yet we have tens if not hundreds of thousands of young women of all colors, races and cultures prostituting themselves on the streets of our cities in order to feed their drug habits, keep themselves fed, clothed and sheltered. The police and authorities don’t care about these women, but the animal lobbies care plenty about those dogs and cats.

Every year in the NFL, NBA and other leagues, you hear of players having illegitimate children, beating their wives, girlfriends, abusing their spouses, girlfriends, and in many cases, being accused of rape, most notably in the case of Kobe Bryant.

Let’s compare Kobe Bryant for a moment to Michael Vick. Kobe Bryant raped a woman (allegedly) in a Colorado hotel room. Michael Vick’s friends ran a dog fighting ring.

Yet, who went to jail and was prosecuted? Michael Vick or Kobe Bryant. I don’t have to tell you the answer. It was Michael Vick.

And you know the reason—because dogs are treated better in this country than women, and especially women who are the victims of abuse, rape and violence against women.

Dogs have a lobby, dogs provoke popular outrage, and dogs get police protection.

But abused women get nothing, except perhaps “she lied” or “her testimony is questionable” or “she’s of questionable moral character”.

In philosophical academic and legal circles today, there is a growing and popular movement centering on “animal rights”—the notion that animals are sentient beings entitled to the full panoply of civil and social rights that humans enjoy. There’s really well-read people at Ivy League universities making those arguments, which probably proves that they’re bs deconstruction communist arguments intended to undermine capitalism (e.g. if we give all animals rights, the capitalist superstructure will collapse of its own weight).

in fact, i even hear rumors from dc that a major figure appointed to the obama administration faces problems being confirmed–because he once wrote an article critical of animal rights.

the republican party is attempting to stop his nomination by claiming the man in question is a dog hater.

never mind that the guy is on his third wife and never sees his kids–those aren’t issues at all. what’s important is how he treats his dogs, not how he treats his wives.

are you kidding me? how have we gone in this country to judging a man by how he treats his pets, rather than by whether he can stay in a marriage or not?

Notwithstanding the commonsense fact that these are collectively the most ridiculous theories ever conceived by professors in the history of academia, this animal rights movement is actually gaining a lot of steam, which goes to show that any stupid gropundless theory can gain traction, as was the case for year with marxism.

Then again, a great many European lawyers in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries made a terrific living specializing in criminal defense of women accused of witchcraft. Pretty much everyone in Europe in that time was unanimous in the believe that around 25% of all women were witches or possessed by demons. That belief even crawled over, famously, to Salem Massachusetts for a while in the 1690s (see “The Crucible”).

Meanwhile, the womans’ rights movement to pass an Equal Rights Amendment and to obtain relief from violence against women continues to go nowhere. Maybe people still think many women are witches still, while cats and dogs can’t be possessed by evil spirits. (in fact, the New Testament flatly states that Jesus cast out an evil spirit from a human into an animal, more than once, I believe, so this is not true).

In fact, soon gay lesbian transgendered persons, along with cats and dogs, may all soon enjoy more constitutional and legal protections than women. Ted Olson, Esq., a prominent conservative republican attorney, is working with others to overturn the defense of marriage act signed into law by president bill clinton in 1996. they want federal courts to overturn the prop 8 process and issue a federal constitutional ruling.

so much for democracy, i suppose.

I’m not opposed to these other groups enjoying protections, but shouldn’t we fully address the equality of women before the law before we tackle the issues of other groups? Isn’t this fair and just? Obama has been strangely silent on women’s rights after being nominated over Hilary despite having fewer votes and fewer large states won than Hilary (he won due to technicalities in the apportionment formulas in the Democratic party which favored the small states; under the 1988 and prior rules, Hilary would have been the clear winner of the nomination).

though he did say he wanted to overturn the defense of marriage act. he didn’t say anything about enacting the ERA or helping battered women, though. i supposed by the end of the day, african americans, gays, transgendered and lesbians will have more rights than women, along with dogs and cats.

Women are the mother of us all (and I only mention this because August 15th is the saint day of the Holy Virgin Mary in the Greek Orthodox Church) and therefore deserve our saintly attentions as well as our full legal constitutional and law enforcement protections, before we bestow a drop of attention on dogs or cats, or other allegedly disadvantaged groups, especially groups that don’t have to raise kids or shop for groceries or both work and change diapers and also take care of a husband and a kid or three.

Animals were used by the pagan Roman Empire to eat the Christians in the arenas during the many persecutions of Christians before St. Constantine made Christianity the state religion @ 330 A.D. and moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople (where it remains to the present day). maybe its just for us to get back a little at animals for eating us.

Hercules had to slay a lion to prove he was a god. Samson had to kill a lion to prove he was the strongest of men. Killing animals in both greek myth and the bible was tantamount to sainthood and deification. In ancient times, you killed animals and sacrificed them to the gods, if you were an ancient greek, or to GOD, if you were in ancient Israel. How many sheep, goats, rams, etc. were sacrificed in the Old Testament to God? About a zillion, by my count.

Animals, in GOD’s view, were pretty much expendable. They didn’t have rights. Not only didn’t they have rights, but they were the COMMUNION of the ancient service. In the ancient service, there wasn’t just wine and a wafer (or wine and bread as we do it in the eastern Byzantine rite); no, what you got was a dead animal, which you put on the altar, and you BURNED IT FOR GOD along with prayers and incantations.

Imagine trying to do that today in modern America. They’d try and put you in jail for five years. Just for obeying the will of God.

I would argue that the juridical, moral and ethical status of animals has not changed in 12,000 years. We’ve killed more HUMANS in the 20th century than in all prior centuries; and there are more humans and animals alive in the 20th and 21st century than ever before; consequently, it stands to reason that while we might aspire to more ethical protections for humans, animals do not deserve any additional or heightened ethical protections.

Even assuming the status quo, animals, specifically dogs, are routinely mistreated everywhere in the United States. Not twenty minutes from Harvard University, my alma mater, there was a stop on the boston t called “Wonderland”, where they ran dog races back in the 1970s, and where I believe they continue to do so. Not horses, although horse racing is just as barbaric (how many horses have we seen break a leg and then be “sacrificed”), greyhound dogs are bred to run, chasing a mechanical rabbit along the inside of the track to exhaustion. These dogs, once they are done racing, do not make for good pets, and must often be put to sleep once they are done, unless they can be put to stud. Their lives are pretty awful; kept in bad kennels, fed poorly and kept poorly.

The conditions at Wonderland over the last thirty years, and Wonderland is a Massachussets sanctioned facility, would make the treatment of animals at the Michael Vick home seem wonderful.

I won’t even get into all the nutty dog and cat owners who have twenty or thirty cats or dogs. Or celebrity or politician dog or pet owners, who have four or five “rescue animals”, but don’t have the time to take care of them and hand them off to the maid or butler. I’m sure those dogs and cats are having a wonderful time full of love and attention.

In California, a lot of people don’t have kids but keep dogs and cats. In this wacky state, people are a little pathological about their pets, because they do the Freudian slip thing and sublimate, switching their displaced normal maternal/paternal instincts to the dog/cat pet from the child they were intended by biology and nature to have, so they actually commit the (1) sin and (2) error, of giving a humanity to their dog/cat pet(s).

It’s important to note that in God’s eyes, your dog or cat is NOT the same as your son or daughter. The bible commands you to GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY. It doesn’t say anything about being a shepherd and tending flock, except to describe lots of shepherds tending flocks. A person with pets is just a shepherd tending their flock.

Unless of course your pet happens to be the LAMB OF GOD, agnus dei.

But that’s a story for another day.

bottom line, i can’t get too worked up over michael vicks alleged acts of animal cruelty. while a little weird, they’re not exactly directed at people, and that’s the bottom line.

ART KYRIAZIS philly south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
posted august 22 2009

Sen. Arlen Specter Makes a Huge Mistake, Switches Parties, Joins the Democrats

Somewhere, Oliver Stone, the director of JFK, which mentions Sen. Specter by name as the originator of the “single bullet theory” as a junior member of the Warren Commission in 1964, is laughing over lunch in Hollywood.

And so is Prof. Anita Hill, a law professor at some estimable liberal law school these days.

I’ve had the privilege to be both a constituent and an acquaintance of Sen. Arlen Specter for many years, including being an acquaintance of his son (who is one of the finest trial lawyers in Pennsylvania) and his wife, who was for many years a member of the City Council in Philadelphia.

Sen. Specter is and was always a very nice fellow, approachable, charming, kind, gentle and very nice. He used to have lunch at mid-town Bookbinder’s when it was open back in the old days, and when it was campaign season, he’d make not one, not two, but usually three or four stops to our little local Greek-American fraternal organization meetings, which usually were held in out of the way motels in places like Shillington, PA, or Intercourse, PA, or Wilkes-Barre, PA, which Sen. Specter would find us at, come in, have some greek food, dance some Greek dances, and speak to us all about the Cyprus issue and anything else that was important to us. He literally would shake everyone’s hand in the place, and even speak some Greek, and he never was too busy to stop to pose for pictures with all of my aunts and uncles and anyone else who was there.

Sen. Specter really liked to campaign, and he genuinely liked people. He was and is a people person.

Needless to say, the other guy (or gal), the Democrat, never seemed to find us, though they were always chatty with the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board or with their very important liberal donors or with the various advocacy groups like people united to give animals the vote or people united to allow wild dogs to run free in the other fellow’s backyard but not in mine.

The reason I mention this is I’ve met a lot of Presidential candidates (and Presidents) and other wannabe powerful senators, and none of them are or were as nice and as personable as Arlen Specter. Gary Hart was kind of scary. I did like John Glenn, he looked like a real hero, and although he was pretty boring, he was sort of a people person. I will say, Sen. Glenn actually looked like a President. Knowing JFK liked him was a real plus.

Sen. Santorum, I will say, he was very personable and friendly, even if his views weren’t. But Harris Wofford, who is supposed to be very famous and all, I went to an event to help promote him, but in person, he’s very formal and academic—not at all personable and at ease like Sen. Specter. I understand why Wofford lost his second election race in 1994–he’s a bit ill at ease around people.

Bill Bradley is another guy, very formal and ill at ease around regular folks. I understand why Bradley didn’t win a single primary when he ran for President. He doesn’t connect with people. I know he didn’t connect with me, and I only asked him a hoops question on the elevator one time, and the guy looked at me like I was from Mars, as if I was wasting his time or something.

I mean, the guy played with Willis Reed, Walt Frazier and Dave DeBusschere on two of the greatest Knicks teams in history, and HE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK HOOPS???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? What, senator fancy schmancy suddenly isn’t an ex-ballplayer anymore? You can see why he didn’t win in 20 straight presidential primaries. A real stiff, Bradley. You never saw Bradley shooting hoops at the gym; Obama, by contrast, you always saw shooting hoops at the gym, and Obama was PROUD of being an ex-jock. I don’t have to tell you how that played out; people love ex-jocks, because America is built on two things, love of country, and love of sports. Well, also french fries, but that’s a topic for another time.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, a very nice guy. Rides the Amtrak all the time. Paul Tsongas was terrific. Very nice, very personable. Still, to this day, the late Paul Tsongas is the only guy to beat Bill Clinton in a national Presidential election (the 1992 New Hampshire Primary). There’s a legacy for you.

This is NOT a name-dropping exercise (I’ll same the Anna Nicole Smith story for another blog) (not as pretty as you would have thought, and way too much perfume).

Rather, the point is, if you want to be in politics, as a good friend of mine once pointed out, you have to “dance the polka.” That means you have to campaign, and you have to get along with people. Sen. Specter has stayed on since his first election to Senator since 1980 because he is a dedicated, famously dedicated, campaigner, who visits every county, goes to every event, campaigns from dawn to dusk and then deep into the night, and makes sure to visit every ethnic group’s event, whether you’re polish, Lithuanian, italian, greek, german, Iberian, spanish, Puerto Rican, Mexican, south American, etc.

He loves us all, no matter where we’re from, no matter what our party or ethnic group, he’s for us if we’re for him. I don’t know how to explain it, but Arlen is about you, so long as you are personally loyal to him. He’s not about party labels or ideology; he’s a people person to the max. And if you need something from his office, he’ll take care of it for you.

Also, Sen. Specter is FUNNY. We once had Judge Katz to speak at our urban debate tournament here in Philly in the early 1990s, and Judge Katz told a funny story about being debate partners with Sen. Specter at Penn. Later on, we had Sen. Specter at a similar event, and he told a funny story about being debate partners with Judge Katz at Penn. It was FUNNY.

It all kind of made you think, hey, here’s these two guys, smart debaters from penn, and here they are forty years later, cracking jokes and they’ve kind of made it by working hard and showing up on time. Truth be told, the two of them were NDT champions in 1951—but they downplayed that.

Arlen’s son is brilliant. He won a Harry Truman scholarship and attended prestigious college and law school, and is the foremost wrongful death attorney in Pennsylvania, and probably (other than his partner Tom Kline) the foremost specialist in wrongful death litigation in PA and maybe in the United States. Clearly Sen. Specter found time to be a good father. I like that about him.

And Sen. Specter’s close with his wife—anytime I saw him having lunch, he was with his wife. Again, I like that about him.

Guys like Gary Hart or Sen. Edwards are always campaigning alone, or worse, pretending to be happily married. But I guess we knew that about Sen. Hart and Sen. Edwards, but those stupid Democrats went and voted for them anyway.

I won’t even bring up Bill and Hillary and Monicagate. That only wasted four years of the country’s time and sent Al Gore down the tubes (or shall I say chads?) in Floridagate from easy election to electoral college defeat in a disputed election in 2000. If Bill had just been happily married, the democrats would have stayed in power for sixteen years in a row, in all likelihood.

Sen. Specter is happily married, has at least one great kid, and is a good family man.

Oliver Stone and Anita Hill may not like him, but you’ll never find Sen. Specter on a boat named “monkey business” or with an office intern parked on his lap. He’s about family, and about doing his job, 24/7. It’s one of the things you love about him.

Sen. Specter loves Pennsylvania. He can rattle off encyclopaedically the name of every county in the state; the names of every elected official in every county; and has amazing photographic memory of nearly everyone he meets.

For example, I’m friends with Jeffrey _______, who used to work for Sen. Specter back in the stone ages and whose family continue to contribute, and every time I see Sen. Specter, he asks me to say hello to Jeffrey. Now how does he do that, remember every time he sees me that I’m Jeffrey’s good friend? I find that amazing.

Anyhow, so I’m a big fan of Sen. Specter. I’ve made full confession. So let’s analyze his switch to the Democratic Party, which I believe to be a colossal mistake.

1) The biggest issue will be that the Democrats are closing in on sixty votes in the Senate, obviously. I’m not sure what’s going on in Minnesota and the Al Franken-Norm Coleman mess, but if the Democrats get another Senator before the end of the term, they would get a sixtieth vote. Currently, the Democrats now have 57 votes; they had 56, Sen. Specter was the 57th, and they have two independents, Joe Lieberman and one other, who caucus with the Democrats. That makes 59.

2) One highly overlooked impact of Sen. Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party will be on Judicial Nominees. Sen. Specter has sat on the Judiciary Committee for a long time, and has seniority; now that he’s sitting with the majority, that seniority together with his being the senior senator from Pennsylvania will give him key input into judicial nominees to the Federal Bench from Pennsylvania, as well as potential input on who becomes the next Prosecutor for the Eastern District of PA to succeed Patrick Meehan, a post coveted by many.

Sen. Specter’s newfound alliance with Gov. Ed Rendell and Vice President Joe Biden is highly suggestive, because sitting on the Third Circuit is Appellate Judge Midge Rendell—long suggested to be a candidate for the United States Supreme Court, and there are currently potential vacancies brewing on the Supreme Court with Justice Ginsburg’s recent illness and the indications from certain more senior Justices such as Souter et al. that they might consider retirement at this stage. President Obama may get to pick as many as three Justices this term alone, and the circumstances of Sen. Specter’s switch are highly suggestive of his proposing Third Circuit Justice Midge Rendell for a vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Now this would be a perfect selection but for one fact—Justice Rendell was, originally, a catholic (she may have converted or is a practicing Jew now) but the fact remains that her elevation to Justice Ginsburg’s spot would create a supermajority of six catholics on the Supreme Court. Others may think this is a non-issue, but I happen to think this might be a deal-breaker. I think one of the existing Catholic Justices has to step down before Rendell can step up. Or, alternatively, she has to affirmatively testify that she has converted to another religion altogether (such as Judaism) and is no longer a practicing Roman Catholic. If she says she has converted to Judaism, I think it’s a deal maker.

On more than one level, it’s a deal maker. And then, everyone wins—Gov. Rendell goes to Washington, when he can spend the rest of his days going to DC parties and being an influential Democratic Party lobbyist, Sen. Specter wins because he exerts his powerful influence, and Philadelphia and PA wins because they get yet a second Supreme Court Justice (they already have Justice Alito).

And, I think, Sen. Specter wins in another way—Justice Rendell is pretty moderate in her views—she’s not a ridiculous flaming liberal like some of the names being tossed around. She’s tough on crime, she supports homeland security, she’s pro-corporate, her background is as a corporate/bankruptcy attorney representing corporations at a large law firm, and I think her sensibilities will steer her to a good middle of the road direction on the court. She’s very likely to be a person that can unify disparate wings of the court and build consensus. Also, she’s a big patron of the arts here in Philadelphia—her work with mega-rich Gerry Lenfest is legendary—and I see her making a big splash in DC. It’s not an accident that Justice Souter retired the very next day after Specter’s announcement.

3) In addition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sen. Specter will make a lot of appointments to the 3d Circuit and Eastern District Court of PA. There he’ll be working a lot with Gov. Rendell, and again, left wing liberals need not apply—Sen. Specter was a District Attorney, as was Gov. Rendell, and therefore, they’ll be looking for folks who are tough on crime. Supreme Court Justice Jane Cutler Greenspan of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would be an excellent choice for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and eventually possibly the Supreme Court. She’s very tough on crime and an excellent jurist. I think also here that outgoing DA Lynne Abraham will have some input as well; the Judges she’s liked over the years will have a leg up in the nomination process, while Judges who have favored defendants or who have been soft on criminals will not get any nods. This may have a perverse effect of creating a more liberal state judiciary for a while, but Sen. Specter probably wants moderate not liberal judges. In this he shares with Sen. Casey the same feelings—Sen. Casey is hardly a liberal democrat either. Again, once someone fills Souter’s spot, everyone moves up a notch, and more spaces get filled.

4) With Sen. Specter and Sen. Casey, Pennsylvania now easily has the two most conservative democratic senators in the entire us senate. Sen. Casey is anti-abortion, while Sen. Specter was a republican his whole life, is anti-crime, anti-labor and had a 55% ACU rating as recently as last term. They are very middle of road guys, hardly liberals in any sense of the word. They’re actually more conservative than a lot of southern senators. On the other hand, Pennsylvania had the oldest electorate this side of Florida, and Pennsylvanians like their Senators to be conservative, but not wacky conservative, so this is good.

5) The first reason I believe Sen. Specter has made a huge mistake is that right after he switched parties, the Republicans and Democrats made a mutual deal to strip him of his seniority. This is ridiculous and shows that the DEMOCRATS are not a real party with party loyalty, like the Republicans. The Republicans would never have stripped Sen. Specter of his seniority, no matter how many times he failed to vote with them, because they are all about loyalty and party. The Democrats, on the other hand, are more concerned with being liberal than with being party loyal, and a lot of them still are angry with Specter over Anita Hill. So they waited for him to change parties, and then punished him by stripping him of his rightful 29 years of seniority on the Judiciary Committee as a majority party member, which he now has a Democrat.

6) Reason #2 this is a mistake, is that the DEMOCRATS will not lay off of Sen. Specter in the primary or in the general election, no matter what President Obama says. Already, the DELAWARE COUNTY DAILY TIMES is rife with speculation that Congressman JOE SESTAK, 7th District PA (the same district represented by Ben Affleck in “STATE OF PLAY”) and coincidentally, my own congressional district, intends to run for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, in 2010, as a Democrat. Obviously, he would have to run against Incumbent Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter, also a Democrat. This seems to mean nothing to Congressman Sestak, who is a noted friend of Bill & Hilary, and who raised more than a million dollars in 2006 to buy this particular congressional seat (he lives in Maryland), as I said at the time, in order to eventually run for Senator from Pennsylvania, and, eventually, for President of the United States.

Sestak’s ambitions are boundless. I guess this is a good time to note that Congressman Sestak has done nothing at all for the seventh district in his four years to date, and on the only issue that’s come up, which is the proposed expansion of the Philadelphia Airport, while he tells his constituents he’s doing something, he secretly is for the expansion, siding with Philadelphia Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell, both fellow Democrats, that the expansion will assist the city and state, and bring jobs to the city and state. Sestak doesn’t care that the expansion and planes flying over Delaware County will tear the heart out of property values in the region for more than half of the residents of this densely populated area.

Why should he care? He’ll be Senator by then and long gone, in his game plan. His predecessor, Curt Weldon, a ten term congressman, was far more devoted to the interests of Delaware County. Sestak is a carpetbagger, a visitor, a temp by any political measure. He’s never lived in Delaware County except for a brief stay as a kid, and his ambitions to run for senate jive with the fact that he considers our little county nothing more than a way station on his path to bigger things.

7) Reason #3 this is a mistake. By leaving the Republican Party, Specter left a huge hole for someone else to run—namely Tom Ridge. Because Pat Toomey is unelectable in the general election, the mainstream Republican Party wants Ridge to run against Toomey in the Primary and beat him, and then run in the general election, because Ridge can beat either Specter or anyone else in the general election. Why not? Ridge is a Harvard grad, served in the military in Vietnam, is a son of Erie, PA, served ten years in Congress, and also served as Homeland Security Secretary. And he campaigns hard, and served two terms as a very popular Governor of Pennsylvania. Ridge is not the opponent Specter counted on by turning Democrat. This was a horrible miscalculation on Specter’s part.

The better move by Specter would have been to do what Lieberman did in Connecticut—if he couldn’t survive the Republican Primary—file and run as an independent in the fall against both the Democratic candidate and against Toomey, the looney right wing Republican. In this three way race, Specter would easily win, since the Democrat could only win left wing votes, Toomey would only win right wing votes, and Specter would capture the middle, which is where the general election is won. He would also be correctly identified by most Republicans and crossover democrats, correctly, as the incumbent in this scenario, and not as a traitor to his party. It worked for Lieberman and it would have worked for Specter.

8) The next reason Specter made a mistake, is because once Joe Sestak enters the Democratic Primary, there will be two Democrats from Philadelphia in the Democratic Primary. It will not take a genius like my old debate partner and classmate and political consultant Kenny Smukler to figure out that Sestak and Specter might split the Philadelphia vote, and thus a powerful figure from Allegheny County, or from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton/Luzerne County area, could run in the primary as well and hope to capture the remaining counties of the Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre areas and win in a three-way race.

In fact, once Sestak enters the primary, it may draw out two or more candidates into the primary for this very reason. Consequently, Specter will find himself in an imbroglio in the Democratic Primary in 2010 far worse than that he found himself facing in the Republican Primary—instead of facing just one opponent, to the right, Specter may be facing as many as three to four opponents, from different regions of the state with different ideologies, with a volatile and unpredictable and unstable Democratic primary electorate in midterm that he cannot predict readily as to voter turnout or as to loyalty to Arlen Specter, newly minted Democrat.

And then, if he survives that inferno, he will be facing Tom Ridge in the general election.

In my view, Sen. Specter has made an error and jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

Democrats aren’t like Republicans—they lack any kind of party loyalty and they will not be loyal to Sen. Specter or respect his many years of service.

Indeed, many Democrats will mock his age and fail to vote for him, because many Democrats are inherently disrespectful of age, authority and experience—this is precisely why they register as Democrats—they are anti-authoritarian and hate their elders.

While PA has an elderly electorate, and these elderly voters will respect Sen. Specter, the newer Obama voters, the younger ones, will not respect or defer to his competence or experience or age.

9) The next reason this is a big mistake and why I feel that Sen. Specter has changed parties, is that I fear this is the end of the road for the moderate Republican Party.

In 1964, Gov. William Scranton of Pennsylvania took up the cudgel against Sen. Barry Goldwater for the nomination of the Republican Party, and Goldwater’s conservative faction captured the Republican Party, which was the first indication that the sunbelt/conservative wing of the party would soon eclipse the moderate Northeast Rockefeller/Eisenhower/Nixon wing of the party.

Scranton was bitter about that loss, and spoke openly about the wrong direction that the party was headed in. Then Gov. Reagan emerged as a conservative contender, only to be headed off by the “new Nixon” in 1968, who attempted to straddle both the conservative and Rockefeller wings of the party by adding Spiro Agnew to his ticket.

However, Nixon governed from the middle to the left of the political spectrum, a fact that hurt him when he needed conservative support after Watergate.

President Ford was more conservative, but failed to head off a Reagan challenge from the right in 1976, and only barely got by Reagan’s conservative minions in the 1976 primary, and badly hurt by that split, lost in the general election to an unknown from Georgia, Jimmy Carter.

The next four years of Carter’s incompetence almost destroyed the country, and very nearly, the world with it.

Reagan came back in 1980, and this time, the conservative triumph was complete. They ejected the ERA from the platform of the Republican Party, went hard anti-abortion, and started courting evangelicals. Taxes were slashed fifty per cent and a new day was announced for the free market in america.

However, they maintained that there was a “big tent” and room for the 20 or so moderate senators (and many more Congressmen) in the northeast who helped vote all of Reagan’s laws in. The Republican Party as late as ten years ago still had a lot of Republican Senators and Congressmen in the Northeast and Midwest.

However, the Bush II Presidency seemingly changed all that, along with demographic shifts. The GOP party seemed to grow more conservative as its President grew less popular, and Karl Rove’s strategy of clinging to the base seemed to shrink the party nationally while winning re-election narrowly once and winning a mere electoral plurality in 2000 while losing the popular vote decisively in a disputed election that was far from Ronald Reagan or even Bush I’s mandate.

This last round of elections, in 2006 and 2008, represented the fulfillment of the Bill Scranton/Nelson Rockefeller prophecy of what would happen if the GOP became a regional conservative party and ignored the historical basis of the party as the party of the moderate, Northeastern industrialists and Midwestern businessmen, conservative on economics but liberal on social issues.

Perhaps some of the learned Senators have forgotten that the Union League is not a dining club, but was a League formed to assist African Americans with their political rights during Reconstruction from 1865-1876, and that many Philadelphian Republicans were proud to serve in same? That Lincoln freed the slaves? That Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington over to lunch? That George Bush I signed the ADA and the Civil Rights Reform Act? That Nixon proclaimed Earth Day, and formed the EPA and signed into law the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act? These were the actions of MODERATE NORTHEASTERN REPUBLICANS (ok, Nixon was from Whittier CA, but he was born a Quaker).

The party of William Seward, Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, has always been expansive and revolutionary—never static and doctrinaire. The big tent must be re-established. It’s a sad day, and a sad comment on the current state of affairs in the GOP, when a great man like Sen. Specter, has to leave the party, because the party, he says, redolent of Reagan’s comment on leaving the Democratic Party in the early sixties, left me.

My assessment is that the damage is permanent, and will require drastic treatment. Unless the GOP moves back to the center, a third party that is centrist and is based in the Northeast and Midwest, willing to oppose Democratic spending and yet support corporate interests but is socially liberal and responsible and supports the environment, will emerge as a factor in American politics. This is inevitable. Already two independents sit in the U.S. Senate, and Sen. Specter is practically a third. That’s 3% right there of the national power.

What I’m describing, Joe Lieberman and Ross Perot have already done, and with considerable success I might add. The GOP may go the way of the Liberal Party in England and be supplanted by the other two parties if they are not careful, and be reduced to a kind of extinction.

10) Finally, with regards to Oliver Stone sitting in Hollywood, there is no prospect of Sen. Specter revealing who was on the grassy knoll, or who was telling the truth in the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas imbroglio.

It is worth noting, for the record, that in 1964, when he sat on the Warren Commission, Specter was still a DEMOCRAT, and that he switched to being a REPUBLICAN to run for Mayor of Philadelphia during the late 1960s and again in the 1970s. Next time he mentioned Sen. Specter in a movie, Oliver Stone should fact-check. The Senator he mocked in his movie “JFK”, was a card-carrying, LBJ-JFK supporting Democrat in 1964 working as part of the Philadelphia Democratic City Machine.

Moreover, I once met the late Gov. John Connolly, and he stated to the audience I was in, that he testified to the Warren Commission that he heard shots from the grassy knoll and believed there were more than three shots fired; the entire commission, not merely Sen. Specter, disbelieved Gov. Connolly’s testimony and concurred on the single bullet theory. Stone just has it wrong here. On this point, JFK is still a rocking good movie, though it’s clearly a work of fiction as to many key details, including Gov. Connally and Sen. Specter. On these points many other authorities concur, incidentally.

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion Philadelphia phillies

REPLY TO BLOG BY PROF. KARLAN ON BRIAN LEITER’S BLOG

I read with interest the following post by Prof. Pamela Karlan to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports Blog at

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2006/04/high_gpas_at_to.html:

April 19, 2006
High Undergraduate GPAs at Top Law Schools: What Do They Mean and What Are Their Consequences for Legal Education?

Pamela Karlan, a distinguished expert on voting rights and civil procedure at Stanford Law School, writes:

I read, with both interest and a fair amount of distress, the 75th percentile LSAT rankings. The distress came from seeing the staggering 75th percentile GPAs.

These could reflect at least three states of the world, two of them unfortunate. First, and most optimistically, the 40 schools on your list could all be admitting kids with amazing undergraduate academic achievements. (A 3.96 means, for example a student with 34A’s and 2 B+’s as an undergraduate; a 3.85 could mean half A’s and half A-’s.)

Second, the GPA’s could reflect rampant grade inflation at undergraduate institutions. Leave aside the abstract debate over whether the current generation of students is so much abler than its predecessors that good students should never see a grade below A- or B+. Most law schools have mandatory means or curves, and I’m aware of none where that mean is over around 3.4. (Even at the schools that don’t have official means, I would guess the actual mean is no higher than that.) Thus, virtually all law students will have lower, substantially lower, GPA’s in law school than they had in college. (E.g., at my own institution, 25% of the students had GPAs equivalent to what the number 1 student in the normal graduating class is likely to have.) This drop has a number of unfortunate consequences. Many of us are familiar with a huge demoralization effect the day first-semester grades come out and people who’ve been told all their lives that they are “A’s” at everything that’s measured hear for the first time that they’re “B’s.” They give up, and simply float through the remaining five semesters. Many have a self-protective defensive reaction: if the law doesn’t love them, then they distance themselves from it. In addition, at law schools where there are course-selection strategies that allow students to manipulate their GPA’s, students are then drawn not to taking what’s good or useful for them, but rather what’s most likely to boost their GPAs back toward the range they’ve internalized as normal. The high UGPAs mean that many of our students have never really learned to bounce back from academic disappointment (the “C” I got my first semester of college is one of the best things that ever happened to me) and like learning to ride a bicycle, it’s harder to learn that the older you get.

Third, to get those astronomical UGPA’s, students necessarily had to be either (a) extraordinary across the board for their entire undergraduate career (the student who bombs the first year of college because she wasn’t yet ready for the work or who was planning to be a physicist before he realized he didn’t have the mathematical ability can’t get one of these sky-high GPAs) or (b) strategic and risk-averse, taking only the kinds of courses in which they’d get A’s, from the time they were 17 or 18 years old. I’d bet it’s more the latter than the former. One of the things I always though the U.S. had over many other advanced countries was that we didn’t expect students to specialize in only what they were good at when they were still teenagers. But in order to get a 3.9 UGPA, students really can’t take things well outside their comparative advantages. Many of us see the consequences of this in what our students do: they’re passive and non-entrepreneurial in their job choices, going to large firms not because that practice particularly attracts them, but because it seems less “risky” right out of law school than going to smaller firms or government jobs. Many of them haven’t exercised their intellectual imaginations in years. Many are in fact not particularly well educated, since the science majors took few writing courses, the humanities people took perhaps one semester of economics and flee any quantitative subject, and the social and hard scientists know no American (let alone world) history at all.

Now, of course, we’re talking here only about the 75th percentile. Perhaps we could find the students who are comfortable with risk, entrepreneurial, academically and intellectually adventurous, and resilient among the other three-quarters of the class. But even the 25th percentile at top 20 schools have staggering UGPAs. And that sets the tone for the student body.

I’m not sure, as long as US News drives so much of the world, that there’s anything to be done. But it’s frustrating if what we’re trying to do is to train imaginative, entrepreneurial, courageous, resilient lawyers with broad perspectives that one of the central criteria for admitting students undermines our chances of doing that.

(end of Prof. Karlan’s comments).

Now I actually knew Pam growing up–she was one of a circle of debaters I knew who grew up debating in connecticut (she went to Hopkins Grammar School and then to Yale) and she’s enjoyed a great deal of success as a law school academic, although she’s way too liberal for my tastes (what law school academic isn’t liberal?).

On the plus side, I don’t think she’s a communist, but if she is, i’m not down with that at all.

My father fought those jerks in the greek civil war, and they were rat bastards, the communists. I can’t believe the democrats are actually meeting with castro in cuba right now.

Anyway, here were my comments in reply to her post:

An addendum to the comment above on grade inflation and test scores.

1) it is well-known that the ETS re-normed the SATS, LSATs, GREs and MCATs at least one standard deviation approximately sixteen years ago. Consequently, our generation of the 1970s and 1980s had a mean on the SAT and other standardized tests that was one standardized deviation higher than the current generation of students–our IQ in short, averaged around 100, while theirs literally averages 85. If you pin the bell curve tail on the donkey, that makes the top 1/2 % of the current generation dumber than the top five % of the previous generation.

So the students aren’t getting smarter, they’re getting dumber. That’s what renorming the test means.

I worked teaching all of the standardized tests for more than twenty years and wrote the pilot materials for the LSAT for Princeton Review in the early 1990s.

2) Grade inflation ain’t so except in the courses where professors are giving easy grades. At colleges that are conservative like Drexel, William and Mary, Hamilton, and so forth, grades are given out fairly and with rigor. It’s at some of the humanities departments that standards have fallen, and as certain classics and history professors have noted, along with scholarship–you can hardly find an actual greek, latin or byzantine professor today in a major ivy league university. When I visited Harvard, Prof. Finley was lecturing on Ancient Athens. Today, you’re more likely to hear some humanities teacher deconstructing gender based issues in some unknown text from last week, or worse still, deconstructing something from the internet.

3) TV, the internet, cellphones and laptops have definitively made current law students stupider. They don’t know how to write, they don’t know how to read books, and their research skills are shallow and poor. Most important, they lack the skill of memorization. I used to know where every single book was in certain law libraries, just as I knew where they were in huge undergrad libraries for years. That was a lot more useful skill than Boolean searches, which are not a thorough method of seeking out facts unless you already know the subject matter at hand.

4) Westlaw and Lexis led us to the horror that is Google.

5) Google is driving the book and newspaper out of existence, leading us to a famous Asimov short story of science fiction in which (in the near future) everyone forgets how to read and do math because computers do it for us–until a nuclear war destroys the machines and we become helpless, until one day a boy re-discovers how to do math by hand, and is proclaimed a genius.

This is the orwellian place we are all headed.

In addition to the foregoing comments, I would have also pointed out that Prof. Karlan’s basic point is wrong.

She assumes that students get high grades in college, and then come to Stanford Law and get lower grades because the competition is tougher.

This is actually ass backwards. I know Pam from when she was 18 and kicking back beers at college debate tournaments, so I know she likes to pontificate without factual basis from time to time, so here are some facts;

1) except for the top ten law schools, most law school applicants don’t have a 3.90 GPA or a very high LSAT. The vast majority of law students and lawyers are trained at 2d, 3d and 4th quartile schools as rated by US News and World Report rankings, or at local state law schools. Those students make up the vast majority of the bar.

2) students who go to Stanford, Yale, Harvard law schools only rarely practice law in the “real”world. They usually become law professors, judges, politicians etc. or work for rarified law firms. It’s unusual to see these folks work with actual clients or appear in actual courtrooms. Pam is a perfect example of this. She’s spent her life in the classroom, not in the real world.

3) Pam admits to getting a C or two at Yale, and I admit to that with Harvard. Because those schools were hard, back in the day. They were not easy, there was no grade inflation and the competition was brutal in most of the classes. Plus I was a premed on the side. So my GPA in college was nothing pretty, although it was definitely higher than a B average and i was recommended for honors, had a cum laude on my thesis and a summa on my general exam.

4) When I went to law school, after working a while, I thought it was MUCH EASIER than college. To be honest, I barely cracked a book open, worked forty hours a week at law firms collecting cold hard cash, and found the work at law school to be trivial. It was in law school that i got racks of As and only a couple of Bs. It was funny how many As I got. I won Am Jur Awards and Best Paper Awards (best grade in my class) every single semester I was in law school. It became like a joke how smart I was in law school, and yet, I really wasn’t working 1/8th as hard as I did in college.

Consequently, I don’t really know what Pam is talking about, not at all. My grades were disappointing to me in college but I worked my ass off to get them; but my grades in law school were terrific, and I hardly broke a sweat.

Next, as far as training law students to be imaginative, entrepreneurial or creative, I think that’s a deeply flawed and dangerous thing to do.

The last thing I as a businessman want my lawyer to be is creative, imaginative or entrepreneurial. I want my lawyer to be a lawyer, that is, an unimaginative little nebbish who grinds out papers and hands them to my enemy at 5pm on friday afternoon, or gets deals done by smiling and being at peace and harmony with everyone in the bar.

Creativity, imagination and entrepreneurship, I’m afraid, is reserved for the Schumpeterians of the world, that is to say, the guys at Business School, and that’s why Wharton has a Center for Entrepreneurship, and why I and my colleagues at various Business Schools teach Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity at Business Schools around the North east directly, rather than teaching the stultifying subject of law. Law by its nature cannot be innovative, because it is precedential and must be followed to the letter of the law; whereas an inventor or entrepreneur is not bound by precedent and can be innovative.

I actually find Pam’s notion of what a good lawyer is to be incomprehensible. A good lawyer should be boring, ethical and should be able to repeat a statute from front to back thirty times in a row. Not creative, not innovative, not entrepreneurial, but efficient like a swiss army knife or a swiss watch. Efficiency and practice make for good lawyering. Also long hours spent learning how to write briefs exactly like everyone else writes them. The last thing you want to do in a brief is to introduce anything new, creative or innovative. Judges hate that. They just want you to follow the 8,000 appellate rules they’ve set forth for how to write the brief.

Good lawyers, then, are basically automatons. Clever and hard working automatons, but robots, essentially. In another century, they will in fact be replaced by AI possessing machines for many of their tasks, I predict. They’re already being outsourced to India for much of their robotic work such as document discovery, which was once thought to require intelligence and training. See my point?

Whereas good businessmen are creative, innovative and entrepreneurial.

5) A logic, rhetoric, oratory, philosophy background gets you through law school very easily; math and science make it trivial. All law problems are basically logic puzzles, and all law essays are basically debate/oratory speeches made in a philsophy manner of analyzing each question from both sides. This was perfectly normal to me. Undergrad teachers kept trying to make a marxist out of me, so they didn’t like my impartiality. Law professors loved it.

6) Law exams are graded without your name on the paper. No favoritism can creep into the grading. Undergrad is rife with favoritism and bias towards certain undergrads that the professors play favorites towards.

7) My friend NS who went to school with Pam at Yale thought Stanford Law was a joke after Yale undergrad; he thought it was a vacation. We used to get together frequently in Cali and hang out. He never seemed to work too hard.

8) My friend DB who went to harvard with me and then to Stanford Med thought Stanford Law was a joke after harvard undergrad and stanford med. He worked 40 hours at a top patent firm and saved all his money. Again, he had plenty of free time, he hardly worked at law school.

9) Law Schools should require all incoming students to study the following;

semester of logic, semster of intro to western philosophy
semester of oratory/rhetoric/speech
do two semesters of competitive speech/rhetoric/debate/parli
do two semesters of mock trial
spend a summer working at a law firm
spend a summer working at legal aid
spend a summer working for a judge
spend two years minimum working in business or somewhere between college and law school. The armed forces would be the best of all.
give preferential admission to army veterans, ROTC and reservists and end their anti-military culture.
sharply curtail the number of attorneys taking the bar nationally. End all state bars and apply one national bar, and only pass around 5,000 persons into it annually, and make them travel to one of three reginal centers nationally to take the exam, such as SF, CA, Chicago and New York, and only give the exam once a year.
Require proficiency in Spanish for ALL attorneys, since Spanish is required to speak to most clients on both coasts.

10) Science and business grad school were much more challenging and interesting than law school or undergrad. I would NEVER recommend to my own children to attend law school, maybe take a law class in business school, but not attend law school. The best combination out there today is the MD-MBA combined program, which I think is ideal in today’s economy.

These are some of the practical changes I would make to the legal eduction process.

I would probably close all but a handful of the existing law schools in the united states. Or, perhaps, people could obtain law degrees for reasons other than being a lawyer–for academic or scholarly purposes, as in europe, but not to be a lawyer or to make money. I’d convert a lot of the programs to MBA programs, actually.

we have way too many lawyers in this country and we need to reform the legal profession, reform tort law, and sharply regulate the profession before it drives all of the doctors, drug makers and other competent businessmen out of this country for good.

One final note, and this is about Pam’s constitutional law book, which she authored with Cass Sunstein, Mark & Rebecca Tushnet, Louis Seidman & Geoffrey Stone. This casebook has been ranked one out of five stars by nearly everyone who ranked it on Amazon dot com. I happen to be a fan of Pam, of Cass Sunstein (except for his dumping Martha Nussbaum, who I’m a bigger fan of, for that stupid Irish younger woman professor at Harvard who’s the big Obama fan) and I really am a big fan of Mark and Rebecca Tushnet–Rebecca was one of Harvard’s best debaters ever in the 1990s–and Mark is a very smart guy–but apparently brains doesn’t mean you can write a casebook as good as Larry Tribe’s.

Here’s a sample comment from Amazon dot com;

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Casebook, December 13, 2008
By kiki (Baltimore, MD) – See all my reviews
It’s a casebook, so it’s not supposed to be great reading, but this one is by far the worst casebook I’ve ever had. The only thing a casebook needs to do to achieve mediocrity is contain cases. This doesn’t, not really. It gives you the cliff’s notes of important cases. One sentence blurbs about others. And pages and pages of rambling, aimless, academic debate. It may be a good book for Con Law professors and others who have already read all of the cases discussed. For someone trying to learn con law, it is useless. It is also organized very poorly. Any class organized around this book is doomed from the start. If your professor uses this book, take another class. If you can’t take another class, buy the Chemerinsky treatise and rely on that instead. Professors: DO NOT USE THIS BOOK.

Constitutional Law (Casebook)

the website address is above, if you want to check out the remarks and the book yourself. Perhaps there will be a revised edition. I realize that Pam writes and talks a lot. As I said, part of her strength, and her weakness, is that she talks and writes too much, and perhaps she spreads herself a little thin.

When I was a litigator, I litigated civil rights matters in the trenches, and won them. It’s not as hard as it seems. You need to have a firm grasp of the history of the United States from 1776 through about 1900 to understand the reconstruction and civil war era, in order to make some sense of what the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments mean.

I actually think Justice Scalia had some pertinent remarks on US v. Cruikshank in the recent gun rights case. He noted that the US Supreme Court in that 1874 case took the right of bearing arms away from african american militia men under the second amendment, because of white supremacist views which were going on at the time. the dispute was that armed militias of african americans and republicans were fighting ku klux klansmen in Mississippi and elsewhere in the south, and the african american plaintiffs claimed a second amendment right to bear arms as a militia.

The US Supreme Court said no, that’s only a federal right against the federal government, not against the states, ignoring incorporation under the 14th amendment.

Scalia basically says now that Cruikshank was wrong, and that african americans had the right to arm themselves as a militia in 1874 and defend themselves against the Klan in the 1870s.

I think that’s an interesting point of view. Of course, an armchair liberal like Karlan would never consider that Scalia would have anything interesting to say.

But here at the Sophist, we think there are two sides to every question.

–art kyriazis
philly/nj home of the world champion phillies

–art kyriazis

SALARY LIMITS FOR BANKERS AND WALL STREET EXECS

In the recent legislation from DC, salary limits have been enacted limiting executive salaries for bankers and executives of companies taking federal aid from TARP and the other programs which will be propping up the banking, investment banking, business and auto communities.

Some commentators are already criticizing these limits, including noted professors, including this story in the Chicago Tribune dated February 17, 2009 by noted famous economics professor Steven Kaplan:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0217payfeb17,0,3623866.story

On limits, I would argue twofold. First, wage and price controls were used successfully during the great depression, during World War II, and also during the Nixon era, all periods when we were having economic distress of the magnitude we are experiencing now.

This is not the time to argue for deregulation and laissez-faire. To the contrary, deregulation and laissez-faire are what got us into this quagmire. What is needed at this point is MORE regulation and plenty of it.

Second, Kaplan’s own studies on executive compensation, particularly a study he did on investment banking compensation, demonstrate that investment bankers have been pulling down way too much money compared to the rest of the working force in the United States. This is the paper he did with Rauh, “Wall Street and Main Street: What Contributes to the Rise in the Highest Incomes?” (july 2007) (cite below).

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=931280

This was an NBER paper and highly quantified, and if anything, is an elegant argument for limiting the compensation of well-paid investment bankers.

I’d probably go farther and say it’s an argument for enacting some kind of tax measure that would retroactively confiscate some of their ill-gotten gains from the last thirty years through some kind of tax on wealth or assessment taxation on all luxury goods, and accumulated wealth. That, along with a highly focused program of IRS audits targeted at persons who have filed returns of $1 million income and higher the last ten years or so, and re-assessing their tax due to much higher levels, should bring in a lot of extra revenue the government needs, which can then be redistributed to the consumer classes which need the money to spend on consumer goods in a keynesian sense.

Finally, I will say right now, if any executive is unwilling, unable or simply refuses to accept a limit on their salary, I am prepared to take over their position, effective immediately.

While not a WASP, I am a golf-playing prep school grad, a harvard and wharton product, and am willing to work mere bankers hours.

I promise to be aloof, boring and devoted to the interests of our depositors.

In addition, I promise to wear only blue, grey and dark suits, and white shirts. I only shop at brooks brothers and polo as it is, but with the recession, I’m willing to start going to Todays Man as necessary.

I drive an old car, I have a paid up house, and I lead a boring but highly satisfying family life with kids.

In short, i believe I’d make the ideal banker.

Moreover, whatever you’re paying the other guy, I’ll take 20% less.

And donate it to charities for the poor. Publicly and loudly. Think of the PR for your bank.

I want no raises and I don’t want any big offices. I’ll bring my beat-up harvard chair with me.

Everything I do will be for the bank.

Also, since I was a lawyer for fifteeen years (did I mention that?) doing corporate, banking and bankruptcy work, I will be able to be in full compliance with any and all Sarbanes-Oxley, Garn-St. Germain and consumer and general banking regulatory legislation that applies without skipping an eyelash–and also I am friends with a couple of super-lawyers who are experts at that stuff who will I’m sure cut their fees to meet new federal regs.

So you can fire your regulatory team as well, since I can cover that as well as do the banking job. Looks like some efficiency savings there.

Also, for what it’s worth, I actually know and have met Professors Elizabeth Warren and Lawrence Summers who are running TARP and the other bailout programs, so if there is a problem affecting your bank, my calls will get returned. We’re all harvard alums, part of the big club, dontcha’ know.

This is about getting your bank back on track. Not about me not about you and not about that greedy guy who won’t accept pay cuts.

Did I mention my house is paid for?

This offer is good for any and all banks needed top level or mid-level management in the united states that would be capped as to salary and have to face a lot of TARP and other regulation.

very truly yours,

Dr. Arthur Kyriazis, M.Sc.E. Penn Engineering (submatriculation Wharton)
philadelphia/south jersey
home of the world champion philadelphia phillies

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kyriazis

TIME’S “ITS NOW OR NEVER FOR LARRY SUMMERS”

In the Feb 9 2009 issue of Time Magazine, at pp. 29-32, there is a long article on Chief Economic Advisor Prof. Lawrence Summers, claiming that due to the poor state of the economy, “it’s now or never for Larry Summers.”

Let’s examine that statement for a moment. Let’s assume you, the reader have studied first and second year economics. This subject is commonly subdivided into two sections, microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Parenthetically, I would point out that much of this confusion raised by the Time Magazine article was well-answered by President Obama in his press conference last night regarding the economic stimulus package and the TARP I and TARP II packages.

Basically, this is where we are at economically: We are at a point in our economy where all of the major macroeconomic indicators suggest that we are going through a period of downward economic velocity equivalent to the downward spiral the United States experienced from 1929-1940, known as the Great Depression.

The policy responses should be the same as before. TARP is equivalent to the NRA of the 1930s; the NRA bailed out many banks and businesses and kept them from failing, TARP I and II will do the same. FDR used a package of programs to deficit spend and enhance a stimulus package guided by what were then novel Keynesian notions from his “brain trust”; we need to do the same now. Spending was down then; spending is down now. We need to increase the marginal propensity to consume. Banking and investment speculation became rampant and unregulated in the 1920s leading up to the crash of 1929; the same occurred leading up to 2009 due to interstate banking, poor SEC regulation and loose real estate lending (all similar to the 1920s, incidentally); the response of FDR were the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934 and the Glass-Stegall Act. Similar legislation needs to be passed now reforming securities regulation and also reforming bank regulation. I personally would like to see us go back to banning interstate banking.

The President last nite was very clear that a great deal of legislation is still on the way, and that we are mired deep in a very bad economic crisis. the macroeconomic indicators suggest he is correct, and he cited Summers and Treasury Secretary Geithner by name during the press conference.

We will now discuss macroeconomics.

Consequently, as part of macroeconomics, we will now review and discuss the subject of fiscal and monetary policy LAG. As we all know, there is a LAG or DELAY between the time that fiscal and monetary policies are IMPLEMENTED and the time that the effects of such policies are actually SEEN or FELT in the economy at large, in terms of macroeconomic signs or indicators such as GDP, jobs, corporate earnings, and the like.

Generally speaking, the lag time for fiscal and monetary policy can be as long as eighteen months, or as short as six months. It takes a while for investment money to work its way into the economy in the case of monetary policy, and it takes even longer for the multiplier effect to work its way into the economy in the case of fiscal policy. Also, people’s marginal propensity to consume declines sharply during pronounced recession, so the fiscal stimulus must be greater than normal to get people to increase their marginal propensity to consume.

Now this brings us back to “now or never.” Assuming that President Obama and Chief Economic Adviser Summers and Treasury Secretary Geithner get EVERYTHING they want from the Congress in the way of a fiscal stimulus package, and also in the way of TARP II, III IV etc, and anything else they want, by June of 2009, it will still take up to eighteen months to see some viable difference, due to LAG effects of fiscal and economic policy implementation.

Therefore, the earliest we will see any results from the current round of government policies will be the summer of 2010 from the monetary policies of Bernanke, and the winter of 2010-2011 from the fiscal policies of Obama-Summers-Geithner.

This is, incidentally, completely consistent with the length of time it took the Regan administration under Paul Volcker to get results from their tax cuts and tight money policies; their fiscal and monetary policy implementations of early 1981 did not have real results until about eighteen (18) months later, in 1983, when the economy began to heat up in a hurry, and took off on the longest economic expansion in post-wwII history.

Again, the lesson is clear—fiscal and monetary policy have a pronounced lag period.

Now or never makes for good journalism, but lousy economics. Give Prof. Summers a couple of summers, and then we’ll give him his final grade.

I was not very enthusiastic about Obama during the campaign, but his transition team management and his actions since taking office, along with his masterful press conference last night, have really brought me around to seeing that Presidence Obama, as opposed to candidate Obama, is a force to be reckoned with. President Obama is knowledgeable and articulate, and is not interested in poll numbers, but in doing the right things to dig the country out of crisis.

Also, it is plainly evident that he listens to his economic and foreign policy advisers closely, and can repeat what they say verbatim. President Obama functions at a high intellectual level.

We are fortunate to have a leader that can lead in times of crisis. I say this as a non-partisan statement. For now, so long as the country is in crisis, I believe we should lay all partisanship aside and support the President in his efforts to bring the economy around. the us and world banking systems are on the brink of collapse unless we respond appropriately.

There is an old saying that “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” However, in the modern world, that has become, “those who can, do, and those who can’t, write bitter journalistic screeds about the smart guys that can tearing them to shreds (mainly because of jealousy over their ability to work hard and get results).”

What we have with the endless article about Professor and Chief Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers and the endless stream of articles about him, is just that–a stream of articles from journalists who are fascinated and somewhat jealous of the fact that Prof. Summers has a great deal of ability, and has worked hard all his life to capitalize on his ability.

With his service to President Obama, Prof. Summers has now served Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Obama–three different administrations from both parties–has served as president of the World Bank and president of Harvard University–as well as advanced economics professor at MIT and Harvard. Prof. Summers has also served as an economics advisers to several Presidential candidates as well. He seems unafraid of the press, unintimidated by the competition and jockeying of campaigns and administrations, and doesn’t mind taking paycuts to be in public service.

It’s time we thanked people like Prof. Summers who are willing to serve the public instead of putting them under the journalistic microscope.

I could name you ten economics professors that are at least as skilled and able as Prof. Summers, who have never ventured forth to serve their President or their country or their university in any capacity. Summers has given willingly of himself and his time to serve his nation over and over again when he has been called upon. Prof. Summers is morally suprerior to his colleagues in that he is willing to serve his country over and over and over again.

President Harry Truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Prof. Summers has been in the kitchen so long, he doesn’t know what the temperature is.

I say, god bless Larry Summers, and god bless the President, for being willing to tackle the difficult issues of the day. I’m certain they’re much too difficult for me, and I’m a fairly skilled individual who works hard, but I wouldn’t measure up to Prof. Summers or President Obama. I feel certain of that, and because of that, I feel that the country is in good hands.

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

The Irrepressible Conflict – Remembering Dred Scott – A Note from 1997

This is a letter to the editor I wrote back in 1997 debunking an article someone had written praising attorney general Jeremiah Sullivan Black, who notoriously served under President James Buchanan.

The author had said the Black was a nice fellow from Pennsylvania who had brought credit to his state.

I pointed out that Black was notorious in the history books for conspiring with Buchanan and Chief Justice Roger Taney to bring about the awful ruling in Dred Scott, which helped bring about the Civil War and the secession of the Southern States.

It’s important to note that as late as 1857, prior to Dred Scott, the Civil War might still have been avoided.

But Buchanan, Black and Taney, with the awful Dred Scott decision, pretty much made sure that the US was plunged into what one Republican of the day called “the irrepressible conflict.”

So here’s what I wrote back in 1997 on the subject. It’s of interest today, of course, since we now have our first African-American President, to consider Dred Scott in retrospect, since everyone agrees it was the single worst decision of the United States Supreme Court.

April 6, 1997

To the Editor:

Regretfully I must take issue with my colleague ____________________ article praising James Buchanan’s Attorney General/Secretary of State and former Pennsylvania Chief Justice Jeremiah Sullivan Black for his role in “saving” the United States during the secession crisis of November 1860-March 1861.

To preface, why must we care about this critical aspect of United States history? The answer is simple. Racism is, was and continues to be the predominant issue of our society. To paraphrase W.E.B. DuBois, the color line has been the dividing line of the 20th century.

One of the most shocking aspects of this society is the extent to which racism still permeates and soaks our society in its noxious fumes. Without an understanding of the historical context of the civil war, the end of slavery and of the events immediately preceding the civil war, we fall victim to fooling ourselves into thinking that lawyerly compromisers like Jeremiah Sullivan Black, who were prepared to accept slavery, accept Dred Scott, and accept the extension of slavery all the way to California south of Missouri as called for in the Crittenden compromise, were the moral or ethical equivalent of real heroes like Garrison, Sumner, Seward and Lincoln. The fact is that all the historical revisionism in the world cannot make a Sumner or a Lincoln of a man as limited and narrow in his views as was Jeremiah Sullivan Black.

It was Dante who said that the lowest places in hell are reserved for those who fail to take an ethical stand in times of crisis.

The truth is that the real heroes of those times were Garrison, Sumner, Seward and the so-called “radicals” who understood that law books and laws meant nothing when dealing with the moral wrongness of slavery and men in chains, sold as chattels. And yet, those individuals were vilified in their day, seen as extremists, radicals, far-left wingers–simply because they advocated the political and legal freedom and equality of African-Americans with all other Americans guaranteed to them in the Declaration of Independence, a position most eloquently argued by Lincoln in his debates with Douglas in 1858 and one which is clearly accepted today by the vast majority of law-abiding and freedom-loving Americans.

But what were those men but heroes taking an ethical and moral stand in a time of crisis? Isn’t this why we celebrate Lincoln, while James Buchanan is all but forgotten?

Unfortunately, there must be a historical litmus test applied to persons alive and practicing law and holding high office in the years when slavery was the law of this land. Simply because Black corresponded to the so-called safe middle and the racist, legalistic tenor of his times, exemplified in Dred Scott and in the subsequent 1858-59 prosecution of John Brown, Attorneys General like Jeremiah Sullivan Black can never be praiseworthy or praised historically, legally or ethically in retrospect. His actions were by and large wrong, they contributed to the death and suffering of millions of African-Americans, and they helped bring on the Dred Scott decision, the Harpers Ferry incident, the secession crisis and the Civil War, which in turn lead to the enormous bloodshed of the American Civil War.

Jeremiah Sullivan Black was hardly a Charles Sumner or William Seward to begin with. He was appointed Attorney General almost simultaneously with the announcement on March 6, 1857 of the Dred Scott decision, a decision which many historians agree was the product in part of direct and improper solicitations by Buchanan of individual justices constituting the Southern majority on the court, in order to persuade them to come up with a broader decision expanding slavery beyond its current territorial bounds. In those days, the Presidential inauguration was held on March 4, and therefore Dred Scott was announced just two days after Buchanan took office on March 4, 1857.

Was this timing mere coincidence? The best research suggests that it was not so.

Buchanan’s role, and by implication Black’s role, in doing nothing to criticize Dred Scott, and doing everything to bring about Dred Scott and to broaden its applicability, are reprehensible in historical hindsight. Moreover, the best evidence suggests that President-Elect Buchanan solicited the Southern Judges on the Supreme Court in early 1857 to deliver the broad Dred Scott decision in a deliberate effort to broaden the reach of slavery to a constitutionally protected level beyond the power of the legislative enactments such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska of 1854.

Historian Allan Nevins in his landmark work The Emergence of Lincoln 1950) advances strong proof of evidence of impropriety in communications between Buchanan and members of the Supreme Court in the days before the decision was announced; and the decision was announced on March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan was inaugurated.

The evidence as marshalled by Nevins and many other prominent historians suggests that Buchanan asked the Southern majority on the Court to decide Dred Scott broadly. The Oxford Guide to the Supreme Court specifically notes that Buchanan used an intermediary associate justice of the Supreme Court to convey his wishes to Chief Justice Taney that the Court rule broadly in Dred Scott, and that if they did so, the Buchanan Administration was prepared to enforce the decision legally and if necessary, by force.

As the attorney general appointed directly in the wake of Dred Scott, it was Black’s role specifically to defend and uphold Dred Scott, particularly in jurisdictions which up to that point had been considered “free” under the Missouri compromise and other laws separating free from slave.

As a defender of Dred Scott, and indeed, as Attorney General during the implementation of Dred Scott, Black’s historical role is nothing less than despicable. No just-thinking person in today’s world should have anything good to say about a man like Black given his actions from 1857 on in defending the Dred Scott decision. Black did everything in his power as Attorney General to defend Dred Scott, broaden the reach of slavery and thereby delay the emancipation of African-Americans in the United States.

It was this interference of Buchanan directly with the Supreme Court’s Southern wing which wrote the Dred Scott ruling which triggered William Seward’s famous speech “The Irrepressible Conflict,” delivered October 25, 1858 in Rochester, New York. Incidentally, ____________________ incorrectly cites the speech to 1850 at p. 66 of his article, a gross historical inaccuracy since the speech clearly post-dates and is in response to the Dred Scott decision.

In this brilliant speech, William Seward, a great man of history, sets out to demonstrate that “[t]he history of the Democratic party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination.” William Henry Seward, “The Irrepressible Conflict”, The World’s Great Speeches (Dover 1973) at 295-96. After a historical exegesis, Seward continues;

“The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a supreme judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree that slavery exists by force of the constitution in every territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority, either within the territory or residing in Congress. Such is the Democratic party….It is positive and uncompromising in the interest of slavery….” David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (U. of Chicago 1960) at 180-81.

The direct solicitation of Dred Scott by Buchanan was a charge made and repeated often in the days following Dred Scott, and in reading the primary sources today buttressed by historical research done more recently, there is no reason to doubt the contemporary conclusions that Buchanan wanted Dred Scott and sought it out. The charge was made at the time, the charge is made today, and frankly, the charges are true. If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, chances are, it’s a duck.

Seward’s speech should be read and re-read 100 times by all american citizens.

Black was no more and no less than a legalistic defender of slavery in his time. Given the chance to do something historically important, he chose to do nothing at all good and lots of things bad. Nothing he did or said can ever render him a hero.

Black was the kind of gutless wonder that belongs in those lower pits of Dante’s Inferno.

Nor can we allow to pass ____________________’s incomprehensible conclusion that “Buchanan and Black were right–abolitionist pressure did bring on the Civil War.” Buchanan was the key instigator of the secession crisis because Buchanan solicited the Dred Scott decision and then went out of his way (together with Black) to defend it and urge it on all Americans. Moreover, in historical hindsight, everything which the abolitionists did and said was completely and 100% correct and morally and legally justified.

The arguments and moral force of Sumner and Garrison and Seward are the only words from that period which ring true today. In dealing with slavery and comparable morally compelling situations (the German Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s comes to mind) there is no room for compromise or for hugging the middle.

What was needed was Lincoln’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s man of action. Instead, what we got in Buchanan and Black were a pair of Pennsylvania apologists for the Southern slavery regime.

Worse, Buchanan appears to have secretly intrigued to bring about Dred Scott and to secretly help his Southern Democratic slaveholding backers. By attacking the abolitionists, Buchanan and Black revealed themselves only to be apologists for a system of slavery which was inhuman, immoral and unconscionable.

Compared to the noble and dignified campaign of men like Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who struggled from day one against all odds to do the right thing and campaign for the freedom, dignity and human rights of African-Americans in this country, Black was a moral midget.

Senator Sumner in 1849 attacked the legality of segregated schools in Boston and coined the phrase “equality before the law.” Although Sumner lost the Roberts case, six years later the Massachusetts legislature outlawed racial segregation in all schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Senator Sumner’s statue dominates the entrance to Harvard University at Johnston Gate even today, across from Mt. Auburn cemetary. It should. Senator Sumner is and was a great man.

For those who believe that a man like Black can be excused by the times and by the thoughts of his fellow man for being unenlightened, a short time reading Sumner’s works and speeches should disabuse anyone of such apologias. Unrestrained by the times or by the thoughts of his fellow men, Sumner, a practicing attorney and Harvard law school graduate, saw the truth for what it was and spoke directly and clearly about what he saw as the moral and ethical quicksand of any legal regime supporting slavery. To his eternal credit, Sumner opposed not only slavery but also segregation. Consequently, if Sumner could come to those views in the midst of his century, then a man like Black cannot be excused for failing to do so.

Indeed, Buchanan’s (and Black’s) celebration of Dred Scott, and their defense of it on the grounds that it was the “law” was what drove Lincoln in the Lincoln-Douglas debates to derive that there was a natural law, a law from a higher source, that in times like these had to substitute for the corrupt and improper judgment of a few men on an individual Supreme Court acting in concert with what they perceived to be a corrupt President (and Attorney General) openly siding with the forces of slavery.

This appeal to natural law, too, is the central argument of John Brown in his final speech before the Court before receiving sentence–”This Court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right.” See John Brown, “On Being Sentenced to Death,” The World’s Great Speeches. (Dover 1973) at pp. 298-99.

We all know what John Brown was talking about. We know why he went to Harper’s Ferry on a virtual suicide mission, to liberate the slaves of the United States by force. John Brown’s death was a stirring call to action to many who had previously resisted force, and it scared the South deeply.

Jeremiah Sullivan Black as Attorney General also presided over the John Brown/Harpers Ferry incident of October-November 1859 and he did nothing during his Attorney Generalship to suggest that he possessed anything like the principled opposition to slavery which characterized Sumner, Garrison, Whittier, Garrett and other activists of the day. Nor did he ever evidence any understanding of the existence of a moral or natural law superior to the man-made law of his day.

Moreover, turning to the secession crisis period of December 1860-March 1861 which is the subject of _______________________’s piece, Black’s role during the secession crisis is not particularly worthy of praise.

In the first instance, Black’s views during these matters is a matter of public knowledge, since he carried on a virtually daily communication with the incoming Secretary of State William Seward, from December of 1860 to March of 1861. Seward visited Black freely during this time.

President Buchanan actually refused to meet with Seward, who was in charge of transition for Lincoln, and therefore Black played a go-between role between the incoming and outgoing administrations. The evidence suggests that Black’s main concern, far from saving the Union, was to avoid being prosecuted for treason by the incoming administration for the crime of cooperating too closely with the Southern states and particularly of conspiring with South Carolina to surrender Federal property in furtherance of a treasonous conspiracy.

Had Buchanan actually surrendered the forts and not followed Black’s advice, there is little doubt but that such a prosecution would have occurred upon Lincoln’s accession to power.

Compare this with modern Presidential transitions, and you readily see what the problem is.

Moreover, Black’s ideas on averting the secession crisis as expressed directly to Seward were less than praiseworthy. He spent one of their meetings asking Seward to compromise by having Seward accept, as a basis of settlement, simply the Constitution and laws as interpreted by the judiciary, a position which meant acceptance of Dred Scott.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Seward’s and Lincoln’s views on the subject could not possibly have expected them to agree to such a “cave-in” of principle. It shows that Black assumed implicitly that no politician (even Seward or Lincoln) could possibly elevate moral principle over political expedience and thus highlights his true indifference to the moral enormity of his (and the South’s) crimes in carrying on and defending the institution of slavery.

In other words, even after the Southern states had announced secession, Black was still attempting to evangelize Republicans committed to the end of slavery on behalf of upholding Dred Scott.

Black also supported the Crittenden Compromise, which would have extended slavery to the area below the latitude of 36o30′ permanently in exchange for the Southern states returning to the Union fold, a policy which would have permanently institutionalized slavery in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California well into the 20th century.

The real hero in the Buchanan cabinet was not Jeremiah Black, a Dred Scott apologist and party hack who does not even merit a mention in the notes to David Donald’s landmark study of Sumner. David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (U. of Chicago 1960).

Rather, the real hero was Edwin Stanton, who after becoming Attorney General and succeeding the inactive and pro-Southern Black, started meeting with Seward and advising him almost daily of the “treasons” being perpetrated in the Buchanan cabinet meetings.

It was Stanton who “leaked” to Seward the intent of Buchanan to essentially surrender the Southern forts (and specifically Ft. Sumter) over to the seceding South Carolinians, and by advising Lincoln through Seward, made it virtually impossible for Buchanan (and Black) to do anything other than the right thing and stand up for the Union. Henry Wilson, “Jeremiah S. Black and Edwin M. Stanton,” Atlantic Monthly (1870) at pp. 464-65.

Stanton, through his friend Peter H. Watson, kept Seward apprised daily of events in the Buchanan cabinet meetings. Stanton also met with Sen. Sumner and kept other apprised secretly as well.

Incidently, Black after the Civil War attempted to prove that Stanton had never discussed Cabinet meetings with Seward, but was later forced to admit that it was so. See David M. Potter, Lincoln and his Party in the Secession Crisis (Yale University Press, 1942) (5th printing 1967) at 252 et seq.

As a consequence, Seward was able to ask several congressmen to convene a Congressional select committee to look into the allegations of whether anyone in the Buchanan administration had improper connections with the South Carolina secessionists.

There is little question but that one of the implicit threats of convening the committee was to look into evidence for a possible criminal prosecution of Black, Buchanan and other pro-Southern members of the Cabinet in the event that Sumter and other forts were surrendered or less than vigorously defended. As such, Black in urging Buchanan to defend the forts from South Carolina acted not out of principle or out of devotion to the Union, but rather, out of calculated self-interest.

In short, Black wanted to save his own skin realizing that a new President and new Administration were coming into power and that wartime justice would soon be a reality. Trial and hanging for treason cannot have been far from Black’s mind in taking whatever actions he did to preserve the status quo of the South Carolina forts pending Lincoln’s accession to power.

Through this select committee and through the press Seward was able to circumscribe the Buchanan cabinet with a limited range of policy options so as to maintain the status quo until Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861.

It was this committee, together with the other actions of Seward and Stanton and others, which probably had the greatest influence on Black to persuade Buchanan to take actions to preserve the status quo. Buchanan’s (and Black’s) natural inclinations, as indeed he was accused of by the Republicans at the time, was to side with the South.

By contrast, in 1832, when faced with the nullification/secession crisis, also involving South Carolina, Andrew Jackson acted swiftly and decisively to muzzle and neuter the rebellion. Historians generally agree that there were many Southerners who did not wish to secede. The border states were still undecided on what to do and North Carolina and Virginia were not particularly willing to secede from the Union.

Strong action by Buchanan in December of 1860 and January of 1861 could have rallied the anti-secessionist forces in the Confederate states and stilled or stopped the secession crisis in its tracks. However, Buchanan did nothing of the kind, and but for the actions of Seward, Stanton and others which essentially orchestrated Black’s counsel, Buchanan would gladly have handed over all federal property to the South willingly.

Black did not like Seward and did not agree with any of the programs or plans of the Republicans. He saw nothing immoral or wrong about slavery. He also referred to Seward as the “Wolsey of the new administration” (a sarcastic referral to the Cardinal Wolsey of historical England) and later penned a famous work in part critical of Seward. See “The Character of Mr. Seward. Reply to C.F.Adams, Sr.” C.F. Black, Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black (New York, 1886).

Obviously the fact that Black continued to engage in debates with the New England liberals for years after the war demonstrates that Black was a man of limited moral and ethical sense who never understood the basic issue at hand, namely the moral and ethical wrongness of slavery.

Seward concluded his famous speech “The Irrepressible Conflict”, delivered October 25, 1858, as follows;

“I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in Congress today sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free state [New York], dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the constitution and freedom forever.”

See William Henry Seward, “The Irrepressible Conflict”, The World’s Great Speeches (Dover 1973), at pp.297-98.

One can not imagine Attorney General Black or Secretary of State Black uttering those words of Seward, and indeed, Seward himself viewed Black together with Buchanan as “betrayers of the constitution and freedom”.

Nor can we forget Charles Sumner’s vigorous reply to Buchanan’s request that Massachusetts adopt the so-called Crittenden compromise;

“Massachusetts has not yet spoken directly on these propositions; but…such are the unalterable convictions of her people, they would see their state sink below the sea and become a sandbank before they would adopt those propositions acknowledging property in man.”

See Donald, cited supra, at p. 371.

Obviously, by contrast, Mr. Black celebrated Dred Scott, defended the Crittenden compromise, and as Attorney General and as ultimate prosecutor of John Brown, saw no problem morally, ethically or legally with the enforcement of laws and institutions designed solely to enslave others and keep them in a condition of slavery. That he counselled Buchanan to keep the South Carolina forts in American hands at the same time that he knew that William Seward (and Edwin Stanton), a Congressional select committee and others were looking directly over their shoulders and threatening to prosecute them after March of 1861 for treason, explains to a greater and more precise degree Black’s actions than any feelings of Black that the Union should be preserved.

Jeremiah Sullivan Black was presented a rare gift in life, the opportunity to be act rightly, to act moral, to be William Seward or Charles Sumner or Abraham Lincoln.

Given this opportunity, he chose to simply be Jeremiah Sullivan Black, just another Pennsylvania lawyer content to muddle through the middle rather than take a principled stand against what anyone could plainly see was wrong.

In his time, and in his day, Black was seen as a “betrayer” of freedom and of the constitution, and nothing advanced in ____________________’s article should lead us astray from Mr. William Seward’s well-developed and fully articulated conclusions of 1858 in that regard.

In his day, Black was derided and despised for his warm embrace of Dred Scott and Crittenden’s compromise, and it would be a waste of authorial energies to attempt to exhume his well-deserved historical internment.

In searching for Pennsylvanians to emulate, it would be wiser and better to dwell on the flower of Pennsylvania, our abolitionists and leaders of freedom like Garrett and Longwood and others who worked tirelessly for the end of slavery and for the equality before the law of African-Americans.

We have a proud and noble history of abolitionism and of many historical figures who risked their lives working on the underground railroad in the Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey regions.

Those are the local men and women whose works should be praised and discussed today. We cannot remind ourselves too many times of those great men and women who came before us. They were our Sumners and our Garrisons, our Lincolns and our Sewards. And that Martin Luther King studied seminary right here outside Philadelphia in the early 1950s.

If you have any questions, please kindly contact the undersigned.

Very truly yours,

By:
Arthur J. Kyriazis

AJK/vm
Enc.

Art Kyriazis
Philly/South Jersey
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