Same ole stuff I have been hearing for months. Still sounds stupid, scripted and like a politician. No change there.

I await Harriet Christian's review.

What exactly is "misleading" or "lying" about pointing out the fact that McCain quite unambiguously stated that he would be comfortable maintaining a U.S. presence in Iraq for a hundred years? Yes, he added the (completely unrealistic) stipulation that this would be "[a]s long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed," but even in McCain's fantasy land in which all of the violence in Iraq ends tomorrow, many Americans, myself included, would oppose a long-term U.S. occupation of the country. Even if you disagree about the wisdom of that policy, how is Obama being disingenuous in pointing out that that is exactly what McCain has claimed to support?

This kind of behavior is, sadly, the norm for politics, but that is not a defense. I'm voting for him, and doing it gladly, but I'm still a bit sad that his claim to be offering us a new kind of politics is b.s.

Elliot,

I appreciate your candor. two questions:

1. if your candidate is a dishonest conviving politican now, who will say anything and do anything to get elected, do you expect he'll reform after his election has demonstrated that the method woeks?

2. can you cite one or more examples of similar dishonesty by McCain to mislead the public on an important issue?

BTW: I agree. another Obama opus in prevarication. Like the historical Philly Post-racism speech was operable for 90 days. I thought this speech was pretty good, given the fact that it was an attempt cover a sh_tty policy in perfumed Christmas wrapping.

Yes, he added the (completely unrealistic) stipulation that this would be "[a]s long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed," but even in McCain's fantasy land in which all of the violence in Iraq ends tomorrow, many Americans, myself included, would oppose a long-term U.S. occupation of the country.

Of course, Guest 101, after all our brave soldiers have sacrificed, now that we are winning, we'd much rather leave and have another Lebanon in Iraq.

jBy the way, when are we getting out of Kosovo, Germany, Japan, South Korea and so on?

Of course, Guest 101, after all our brave soldiers have sacrificed, now that we are winning, we'd much rather leave and have another Lebanon in Iraq.

The fairy-tale condition that McCain immediately tacked on after his initial "hundred years" comment is a pretty transparent attempt to blunt the force of his words. Let me ask you this-- how long will McCain persist in pursuing this elusive "victory" in Iraq before withdrawing, if the violence never ends, which seesm a lot more plausible? Do we spend fifty years pouring more American blood into Iraqi soil, at which point we can then begin our hundred-year reign of peace?

jBy the way, when are we getting out of Kosovo, Germany, Japan, South Korea and so on?

How about answering the question I posed: whether you agree or disagree with Obama about the wisdom of withdrawing from Iraq, how is it misleading in the slightest for him to accurately point out that McCain favors a continued U.S. presence there for the rest of our collective lifetimes?

can you cite one or more examples of similar dishonesty by McCain to mislead the public on an important issue?

Just off the top of my head...

On the same day Barack Obama suggested that John McCain talked about Iraq at the expense of domestic issues, the Republican reiterated his support for a summer suspension of the federal gas tax while blasting "elites" and his likely Democratic rival for opposing the measure.

Right at the top of his remarks before taking questions from the Nashville crowd -- where regular unleaded goes for about $3.85 -- McCain said he wanted to discuss "what's on everybody's mind, the price of oil."

McCain said he was struck by the loud opposition by "the elites in this country."

"The hysterical reaction was a little bit funny," he said.

In Washington, McCain noted, "the wealthiest people live in Georgetown" and can walk downtown to work. By contrast, he said, the lowest-income workers live the furthest away.

McCain explained that Barack Obama had called the plan "a gimmick"

"Well, I’d like to have some more quote gimmicks to give-low income Americans some relief," he jabbed back.

When if Obama releases his high school transcripts, and his SAT scores, then each of us can decide for ourselves if he got into Harvard based on merit, or if he will be our first Affirmative Action president.

Fair enough? Or is that out of bounds?

It's not out of bounds so much as stupid. Obama graduated in the top 10% of his Harvard Law School class, based mostly on blind grading. There's absolutely no basis -- other than racism -- for claiming that he wasn't qualified to be there.

"When if Obama releases his high school transcripts, and his SAT scores, then each of us can decide for ourselves if he got into Harvard based on merit,..."


How about he release his LSAT score too?

How about answering the question I posed: whether you agree or disagree with Obama about the wisdom of withdrawing from Iraq, how is it misleading in the slightest for him to accurately point out that McCain favors a continued U.S. presence there for the rest of our collective lifetimes?

Because that is misleading. The proviso that you so blithely skip over is the key - McCain would be fine with us there for that long IF the level of danger to our troops were at a comparable level to that faced in Germany and Japan today (and he believes that it will be).

Indeed, if the level of casualties were to decrease to that level, then why not stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future? After all, it is far better situated strategically than Germany, the UK, Italy, etc. (all where we have troops) these days.

That said, it is unlikely that we will be able to procure semi-permanent basing rights in Iraq. The Iraqis repeatedly disabuse us of any such idea any time that it percolates up, most recently last week.

I love the Volokh Conspiracy!

Folks lets go back 400 years of American history. Let us go back through slavery in the Colonial Period. Let us go through the Constitutional convention dealing with slavery. Let us go through the Civil War in which so many thousands died over slavery. Let us go back through Reconstruction. Let us go back through lynching. Let us go back through segregation. Let us go back through the Civil Rights movement. Let us go back to the 1963 I have a dream speech. Let us go back to the assassination of MLK. Let us go back through the past 40 odd years of battles about race. Let us go back through Shirley Chisholm's candidacy, Jesse Jackson's candidacy, Al Sharpton's candidacy, and Carol Moseley Braun's candidacy.

Keep in mind the 43 Presidents and the elections back to the beginning of this country in which all of the Presidential candidates were white males.

I am taking you through this so you have a sense of just how huge domestically Obama's presumptive nomination as the candidate of a major party is in the long view of U.S. history.

You may not feel the tremor yet, but I suspect you will over time. We are going into a very different space here - just like the Democrats went through a very different space with an African-American and a White Woman as the two candidates last standing.

And - in the West - to have a person of color as the nominee of a major party for its Presidency is simply something that may be too difficult for Americans who do not go abroad to comprehend.

And - in the rest of the world - looking at the United States, imagine the idea that one of the American candidates is a person of color named Barack Obama.

I encourage you to take a moment to think about this remarkable moment - whatever your party and whether you like or despise any of the candidates.

THAT, I would submit is the level that the discussion should begin to get too - rather than just subaltern comments.

Come on - did any of you really imagine this in your life time? This to me is like the fall of the Berlin Wall - I never expected the Soviet Union to disappear in my lifetime.

Best,
Ben

Benjamin Davis,

Don't you mean that his name is...

Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

HUSSEIN.

Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

Didn't we invade Iraq to get rid of his kind once and for all??

(Sorry, I figured I'd throw this one out there with the appropriate level of disdain for its stupidity, before someone could seriously do it.)

"Out of bounds. Your implied assertion that all black admits are presumptively unqualified and under an obligation to prove otherwise is, frankly, racist."

Not out of bounds. While all black admits are not presumptively unqualified, there is little doubt that most fall short of the qualifications required of whites. We know top law schools have lower requirements for black admits. For example the Georgetown admit data released by Timothy Maguire in 1991 clearly shows the disparity in qualifications.

Let's do some numbers. The median LSAT score for Harvard is 173. How many blacks score that high? Answer almost none. In 1992 1,100 whites registered in law school scored 170 or better, while only 3 blacks did. That's for the whole country! Source: Barnes and Carr 1993. National Decision Profiles. Newton Pa: Law School Admission Services. Therefore it's safe to assume that almost all the black admits at Harvard Law scored below the median.

Since BHO is selling himself for president on the basis of his judgment and ability, it's fair to inquire as to what evidence exists that points to superior ability. If he had a substantial record of accomplishment, his scores would be less important. But he doesn't, so how are we supposed to judge him?

A. Zarkov said:

While all black admits are not presumptively unqualified, there is little doubt that most fall short of the qualifications required of whites.

Let me be the first to say:

Wow.

Just, wow.

Hi -

"can you cite one or more examples of similar dishonesty by McCain to mislead the public on an important issue? "

The easiest example is on immigration - I'm at work so I don't have time to link or cut and paste everything, but go to www.slate.com, scroll through kausfiles for a while, and you'll certainly have "one or more" examples of McCain attempting to mislead the public on an issue that at least some think is important...

There are hints here that Obama is starting to become more responsible on Iraq ["We must be as careful getting out of Iraq . . . ."].

Actually, this is just evidence that you have been tricked by Republican rhetoric and propaganda.

There is nothing new with this sort of rhetoric. An extremely superficial Google search reveals the following statements by Barrack Obama:

April 26, 2007

And it says there's no military solution to this. We've got to have a political solution, begin a phased withdrawal, and make certain that we've got benchmarks in place so that the Iraqi people can make a determination about how they want to move forward.

September 12, 2007

Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now. We should enter into talks with the Iraqi government to discuss the process of our drawdown. We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later. But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year

January 21, 2008

"I want to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, but I want to make sure that we get all of our combat troops out as quickly as we can safely."

March 17, 2008

What I do believe is we've got to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. And that means, I believe, a phased redeployment, with a timetable, with a pace of about one to two brigades per month, pulling our combat troops out, but also redoubling our diplomatic strategy inside Iraq, as well as with the regional players, including Iran and Syria.

So, it turns out that Obama was being just as responsible all along.

That you thought otherwise attests to the power and ugliness of the Republican propaganda machine. Your false assumption was that Obama was interested in some sort of reckless withdrawal. Even though that is patently and obviously false, you believed it anyway.

Welcome to the power of Republican lies and propaganda. Even the educated and politically aware like Jim Lindgren can fall victim if they are not careful.

Reference to FDR as an example of how to deal with dictators is the height of stupidity on Barack Hussein Mohamad Obama's part. FDR sold out the Poles, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Germans, and the Romanians to 45 years of tyranny and slavery under the Soviet Empire.

Who imagined a year ago that Iraq would be a political advantage for the GOP candidate?

I do not think that 4,000+ deaths and 29,000+ wounded in the military to fight a war undertaken based on false pretenses will turn out to be a political asset. Even Scott McClellan admits that that the administration should have been more honest going in.

The bottom-line is that the administration wasn't honest, with its spin and propaganda. It is thus responsible for dividing the country on an issue as fundamental as war and its flawed approach has lead to unnecessary death.

The War in Iraq has now gone on longer than World War II.

Libs are so predictable. For simply asking a straightforward question to which they have absolutely no reasonable answer, they promptly label someone a "racist."

Do you folks even understand how lame that makes you look? {I'll give a generous pass to those who missed my previous posts stating that I would gladly vote for Walter E. Williams, Bobby Jindal, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell or Bill Cosby if they were running, over any of the current jamokes].

If "racist" is all you can come up with, you're lame, every one of you.

Wasn't it Louis Farrakhan who said he'd insist on being operated on by a Jewish doctor over any black doctor? So I ask again:

Why won't Odumbo disclose his SAT [and LSAT] scores, or his high school transcripts? Hell, he won't even release his medical records, or allow his doctor to be interviewed! And citing is Harvard grades is just circular logic, since Harvard gives most students A's -- and black students no doubt get special petting.

So, how do you stand, name-callers? Should he release his grades & scores? Or must we assume that the geography-challenged Saint Obama is your Affirmative Action Racism HE-RO, based on your religious faith?

Put up or shut up.

LHD:

"Let me be the first to say:

Wow.

Just, wow."

I guess you don't believe it. So tell your evidence to the contrary.

Cutting and running because we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place is just plain dumb.

and

The Hundred Years is obviously misleading...

I love this blog. where else do you see someone completely misstate obama's statement and then complain about obama misstating mccain only a few sentences later? it's absolutely hilarious.

I do not think that 4,000+ deaths and 29,000+ wounded in the military to fight a war undertaken based on false pretenses will turn out to be a political asset.

Don't forget the 27,000,000 people who were freed from a brutal dictatorship and now have a chance to be free. That was one of the stated reasons for the war from the beginning.

Mac's question ("By the way, when are we getting out of Kosovo, Germany, Japan, South Korea and so on?") IS the answer to your question. It cuts to the core of the deception Obama seeks to perpetuate.

No, armchairpunter, it's not. You omit my second response to Mac, which is, given the fact that we're nowhere near McCain's fantasy world in which Americans are no longer being killed in Iraq, how long are we supposed to stay there, sinking money and lives into a quagmire we never should have entered in the first place, in the vain pursuit of the nirvana that McCain so casually stipulates? McCain's answer implies that we have to stay in Iraq until that peace is achieved, and then stick around for a hundred years afterward to maintain it. Obama is being neither deceptive nor, in my view, imprudent to reject that approach.

You also omit to note the fact that I already quoted the relevant portion of McCain's statement; I rather resent the implication that I was hiding the context of his words.

You guys just can not handle the significance of the moment. Amazing!

My colleagues in academia are so tediously predictable. Only if one is caught up in the nonsense of identity politics would one compare the significance of "a person of color" being a major party presidential nominee to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"I got a 180 on my LSAT and my law school grades are crap."

A high LSAT is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for getting good grades in a competitive environment. As a super bright guy you should know that.

If HLS really had anonymous grading when BHO attended and his standing was achieved with a fair and honest then he certainly deserves credit. The problem is BHO has walled off a lot of details about this life. We have very little information about him. Holding back data doesn't help build confidence.

The essential point is: WHAT WERE HIS SAT, LSAT, AND HIGH SCHOOL GRADES??

Maybe in calmer and less insulting language you could explain to us, why his SAT, LSAT, and High School grades provide anything that his law school grades don't. What is so "essential" about them? And also, what those numbers would show you that his law school grades don't? For that matter, what do they say about anyone? If, hypothetically, he had a 4.0 or a 2.0 would that change your opinion of him? Would you change your current support (presumably for McCain) if you found out that 60 years ago, he was a below average high school student?

I really just don't understand.

Smokey,

I don't follow. Doesn't the fact that he finished higher than 90% of his class show that he belonged at HLS, regardless how he got there? Actually, come to think of it, isn't this an argument in favor of Affirmative Action?

"You guys just can not handle the significance of the moment. Amazing!" B. Davis

The very opposite, Ben; it's you who cannot handle the significance.

Btw, it'll be a long time before we see a black man leading a major ticket in any European country, but the fact it's occurring in the U.S., only fifty-some years after MLK began organizing - in the early-to-mid 50's - surprises no one terribly much, which lack of surprise is integral to that significance.

Smokey:

Libs are so predictable. For simply asking a straightforward question to which they have absolutely no reasonable answer, they promptly label someone a "racist."

Do you folks even understand how lame that makes you look?

Which folks, Smokey?

Why won't Odumbo disclose his SAT [and LSAT] scores, or his high school transcripts?

I don't know, and I don't care. I've done a lot of interviewing and hiring, and I've never known anyone to ask the LSAT score of someone who excelled at a top law school. I've seen candidates put their LSAT score on a resume in an attempt to buttress an argument that their law school performance was less than their full potential, but if you've done well enough at a good enough law school, nobody cares one iota how you did on your LSAT's.

It does not matter what BHO's grades were at Harvard. The essential point is: WHAT WERE HIS SAT, LSAT, AND HIGH SCHOOL GRADES??

Smokey, it's one thing for you not to know how HLS grading actually works (you obviously don't), but to continually make these blatant logical leaps surprises me. Bored HLS 3L has explained why his grades are relevant. What you haven't explained is why these other tests, whose only purpose is to predict the performance we have an actual record of matters at all? "Essential?" To whom, other than you and A. Zarkov? And if you think you're going to impress anyone whose mind isn't already set against Obama that these things matter, I invite you enthusiastically to devote yourself to that end.

Don't forget the 27,000,000 people who were freed from a brutal dictatorship and now have a chance to be free. That was one of the stated reasons for the war from the beginning

What dishonesty. That line only started to be used after the WMD pretext was proven to be false, and the implied Saddam Hussein connection to 9/11 was proven to be false. No way would military action against Iraq have been approved just to overthrow a dictator. What a crock. The United States loves dictators when they are useful to the ruling class.

Let me talk about the 500,000 Iraqis killed, the billions in property damage, the unleasing of a civil war and the $3 trillion dollar cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Let me talk about the fact that even life in a country run by a not very nice secular dictator did not generally involve being without electricity, being blown up at the market, or having your family massacred. Let me talk about the fact that the United Stes has turned an entire country into a hellhole. Being freed from a dictator sure means a hell of a lot to the Iraqis right now, I'm quite sure.

You war supporters are immoral, dishonest and have no shame.

At this point, the "responsible" thing is to pull all troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible.

Hoosier:

Zarkov's point was factually correct.

Part of his point is factually correct, and I don't think that's the part in dispute. The argument is about Obama's case, not the general one.

Hoosier,

Your joke would be better were it not for Bob Dole.

"What about snuffing al-Qaeda pretty much for good, permanently discrediting "jihad" as a successful foreign policy...

Right, "Mission Accomplished".

Of course we could have done all this several years ago, without wasting 4,000 American lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and untold thousands of innocent civilians if we hadn't invaded Iraq in the first place.

defeating (by proxy) Iran...

???

If this is the case, why does McCain keep blathering on incoherently about the end-all-and-be-all importance of Iran?

LM--I was referring to this:

"LHD:
A. Zarkov said:

While all black admits are not presumptively unqualified, there is little doubt that most fall short of the qualifications required of whites.

Let me be the first to say:

Wow.

Just, wow."

I work at a USNWR "Top Twenty" national university. I DON'T work at the law school. But I see a couple hundred files from admitted students every summer. There is absolutely no question that "persons of color" (What a horrible and intellectually vacuous construct) are admitted with significantly lower numbers than would be required of a white applicant. Even of a white applicant from a very strained financial and family background.

Legacies get some added help in gaining admission. But even they have far better numbers than, say, the average African American admit.

Again, I *support* my university's AA policy. In addition, the AA-admits almost always graduate (though with a rather lower than average gpa, according to the Office of Institutional Research). So there is no real question of them being UN-qualified. Just LESS qualified.

I assume our law school does the same thing.

As for McCain, one second of research on google reveals that he's accused Obama and Clinton of wanting us to "move closer to a nationalized health care system". I suppose the Democrats' health care plans are marginally more like nationalization than the status quo, but as neither plan resembles nationalization in any way, it can only be described as deliberately misleading.

Um no actually that’s pretty much an accurate statement. Both Clinton and Obama have proposed to federalize the regulation of health insurance (which is currently mostly regulated at the State level) including by mandating that all private health insurance plans offer the same benefits (or greater) than their new health care entitlement. In other words, we will have private insurance in name only as no one will be allowed to buy a policy that covers just major medical expenses or that has a higher deductible (and hence lower premium) if that’s what they prefer.

Hoosier,

That's the difference between you and me. I'm just out of control politically incorrect. Stop me before I offend again!

LM--Well of course. I mean, to suggest that I cannot follow "what the debate has been about" just because I am a person of disability?

SHAME ON YOU!

I may have to file a grievance against you. With the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.

Because I think they now claim universal jurisdiction--even over the web.

Well, clearly some think Obama being assasinated would not be a bad thing - at least one seems to think he should be arrested, tried, and presumably executed as a traitor.

I think Jim is (surprisingly to me) quite premature in his judgment that Obama was wrong on the central issue of his Senate tenure; I think the jury is still out. Of course things have gotten better in Iraq during the surge - that's not the point. Most people have thought for a long time that more troops were needed, and that conditions would improve when more troops were sent. The question will be how things look when troop levels return to their pre-surge numbers.

If I recall correctly, the last of the surge brigades are scheduled to be pulled out in July - not because things are going swimmingly, but because their tours are up, the Army refuses to extend their tours, and there are no troops available to replace them. It is not until the last of those surge troops go home and the remaining US and Iraqui troops are put to the test over a period of weeks and months that we will see if conditions have improved, and thus if the surge was successful. The whole point of the surge was to bring enough stability that the Iraquis could control things with American assistance _after_ the surge brigades were gone. Obama may well have been wrong (although I doubt it) but it is way too soon to judge one way or the other.

"Basically, no matter what he accomplishes, it's only because it was black, and any evidence to the contrary is immaterial."

So, Elliot--When it comes to his career in national government--as opposed to *politics*--just what HAS he accomplished?

I can easily agree with you that focusing on test scores and grades is silly. But NOT racist. (See: "Qualye, J. Danforth--DePauw University." Cf. also, "Bush, George Walker--Yale University".) It doesn't get to be 'racist' now. Too late for that. Just silly.

Splunge, care to put a date on this resounding success or are we doomed to be forever waiting for the next 6 months?

I really say this in all sincerity -- I want very much for us to succeed in Iraq but I also identify, fundamentally, that our attitude has become very similar to an addict: we are always promising ourselves that we are "about to turn the corner" and that "this time things will be different".

Oren--Nonsense! We could quit any time we want.

"Don't forget the 27,000,000 people who were freed from a brutal dictatorship and now have a chance to be free. That was one of the stated reasons for the war from the beginning."

"What dishonesty. That line only started to be used after the WMD pretext was proven to be false, and the implied Saddam Hussein connection to 9/11 was proven to be false. No way would military action against Iraq have been approved just to overthrow a dictator. What a crock. The United States loves dictators when they are useful to the ruling class." Mark F.

That's profoundly mendacious on several levels.

Firstly, that "line" was not primary, but it was used from the very beginning. Iraqi author Kanan Makiya's "Republic of Fear" and "Cruelty and Silence" are touchstones here, in terms of documenting that "line". Likewise, while the domestic terror unleashed by Saddam & Sons was not the primary reason advanced for overthrowing that regime, various people within and outside of the administration advanced that argument as a secondary and supportive rationale. Eason Jordan, representative of the media's status quo, would apparently have left the status quo of Saddam & Sons in place. Further, no one has suggested it was the only rationale, only that it was a supportive rationale.

Secondly, in terms of the WMD "pretext," various commenters have provided the litany of Democratic legislators who advanced that very concern, as early as 1998 and later in 2002/2003 as well, and supported that concern with votes in the Senate and the House. Likewise, the putative "pretext" line avoids other salient facts relative to Saddam & Sons' use of WMD - e.g., against their own Kurdish population.

As far as 9/11 and WTC '93 are concerned, we positively know one of the WTC '93 perps fled to Iraq and was given refuge by Saddam & Sons. We also know of formal of less formal associations with jihadist entities. Etc.

As far as the U.S. "loving dictatorships," that's neo-Marxian and derivative Marxian boilerplate that elides all manner of realpolitik and other factors, for example realities prevalent during the Cold War - a war we eventually won, btw.

A good deal more could be said in terms of expanding upon the points made and adding to those points, but that's sufficient to reveal the delusional "line" you're advancing.

(Kanan Makiya was a pseudonym for Samir al-Khalil, who prior to the overthrow was forced to use a pseudonym due precisely to the reign of Saddam & Sons.)

"Of course things have gotten better in Iraq during the surge - that's not the point." Wolfefan

It most certainly and emphatically was the point in the run-up to the surge, when Obama and many, many, many others were pooh-poohing the very idea of a surge working.

How quickly, and conveniently, we forget. It's reminiscent of the Left's "support" of the campaign in Afghanistan, only moreso.

Mahan Atma,

I'm not certain what you think I should comment on in the paragraph you quoted. Is it the incompetence of government, as someone above thought you meant. Or is it the addition of the word "hot" to his prepared remarks about supplying babies with hot water? Is this probable error at all amusing or potentially revealing?

When our daughter was a young baby, we heated up her water before giving it to her to drink, but maybe we were just too diligent in following the suggestions of experts.

I'm not quite sure what you think I should say: It's a good idea for parents to give very young children warmed liquids, but it's probably not something a government should be required to do. But that would depend on how hard it was to provide the water and the heat and how cold the water would be without warming.

Mahan Atma,

What's to "take on"? Everybody here knows that the New Orleans and Louisiana governments were hopelessly incompetent (and corrupt, if that's of any relevance.) So you want us to argue with McCain why???

"So you want us to argue with McCain why???"

Perhaps because you're voting for him?

I'm pretty sure that when he said "government at every level" he was including the federal government. And after all, he's not running for mayor, is he.

By the way, in case some of you missed it, here's McCain's speech again:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7RuX4pQPLY

It was made in New Orleans.

And apparently, a major focus of the speech was the proper temperature of water given to dehydrated babies...

Mahan Atma,

BHO's "talents" with language is very much an issue of note. It provides some notable discomfort to think of all the leaders during the 20th century alone who possessed such talent. Too often such a talent was the primary talent - if not quite the sole talent - of those leaders. It's a real pity that his talent with language was the only thing or at least the primary thing that came to mind in support of his candidacy at such a time in history.

Beyond that talent, what else commends his candidacy? (And please, don't invoke his rhetoric concerning Katrina or some other issue, I'm inquiring about something beyond rhetoric used to obfuscate and deny used to trade on au currant sensibilities. Rhetoric and oratory can certainly be helpful, but they need to serve a supportive, not a primary, role.)

As to why you continue to obfuscate the local and state governments' failures in N.O., that's plain enough. McCain, emphatically, sited govt. "at all levels," yet your focus is singular, even myopic.

Finally, thanks for the on-going links to McCain's speech tonight, it was a superb speech, one which demonstrates the need for the secondary and supportive role of rhetoric, rather than a primary role for that "talent". Too, there were some very astute comments in McCain's speech, not least of which concerns the use of repetition as used by BHO, in lieu of more substantial and insightful forms of communication by politicos.

Another point McCain brings home in his speech is that BHO has indicated he's "willing to talk in person and without conditions with tyrants in Havana to Pyongyang - but hasn't traveled to Iraq to meet with Gen. Petraeus ..."

Again, a superb speech that properly hits some critical points and that thoughtfully distinguishes McCain from the Left/Dems and Obama more specifically, so thanks for those continuing links. Related commentary, covering issues from failing schools to govt. spending, amuses as well.

Given that Obama was wrong on the main foreign policy issue of his brief time in the Senate (whether the surge would improve the conditions in Iraq)

I do not necessarily agree that conditions in Iraq have improved. If conditions in Iraq have improved, I do not necessarily agree that they improved because of the surge. If conditions in Iraq have improved because of the surge, I do not necessarily agree that it was worth the cost in lives and injuries to American soldiers, and the money, and the opportunity cost of not focusing attention on other matters.

"Zarkov, do you support George Bush? And is he qualified to be President? And you think he got in solely on merit(as a white guy, with his powerful family)? And what were his grades again?"

No,no and I don't know. George Bush's grades were low, but actually higher than Kerry's. Bush released his grades and other information during the campaign, but Kerry refused to. Later after the election Kerry finally did so. It was obvious that he was embarrassed.

"If it turns out that Obama's scores were above average even for an HLS admit, will you then change your mind about his qualifications to be President?"

Absolutely not. As I said, I agree that he performed well at HLS regardless of his LSAT score. It's his policies, lack of experience and lack of transparency that I object to. I object to his wanting to push even more AA down our throats.

Michael B says:

"Of course things have gotten better in Iraq during the surge - that's not the point." Wolfefan

It most certainly and emphatically was the point in the run-up to the surge, when Obama and many, many, many others were pooh-poohing the very idea of a surge working.

How quickly, and conveniently, we forget.

How quickly and conveniently we forget indeed. Here's Obama's floor statement on the surge vote:

The fact is that we have tried this road before. In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war. As the President's own military commanders have said, escalation only prevents the Iraqis from taking more responsibility for their own future. It is even eroding our efforts in the wider war on terror as some of the extra soldiers will come directly from Afghanistan, where the Taliban has become resurgent.

The President has offered no evidence that more U.S. troops will be able to pressure Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds toward the necessary political settlement, and he has attached no consequences to his plan should the Iraqis fail to make progress.

Tell me again, where in his floor speech did Obama deny that the surge would reduce the level of violence? If you think the surge has been a success, and McCain has been vindicated, just because it has reduced the level of violence, then you're truly detached from reality. Remember all that talk about creating breathing room for a political settlement? Well, where's the political settlement?

TLV?

Via youTube and starring, in their own words, Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod vs. BHO himself. Quoting the latter, emphasis added:

"we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don't know any expert on the region [...] that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."

And that's only the beginning of where this discussion can lead.

As to the political settlement, one step at a time. "Mommy are we there yet" isn't a formidable defense in an overall campaign that almost certainly will be inter-generational in nature, as I recently noted here, for example.

Btw, in listening to Obama in the youTube link, note the avuncular and absolutist self-assurance in his rhetoric, he delivers (again, rhetorically) as if he's offering some type of guarantee concerning the future.

Carteresque confidence, through and through. Yet people, many of them still on a BDS based high, drinking it up as if it's Moses come down from Sinai. Quite remarkable what a certain rhetorical effulgence, no matter the realities, can do to entire populations.

wolfefan,

Hello, I agree in substantial part with your latter comment, I disagree with the gist of your earlier commentary. Still, what we know is that the surge has worked to this point. First and foremost we're facing an ideological war, with military subtexts that at times are absolutely critical. Hence strategies and tactics will always need to be adapted to that broader framework within hard-nosed, realist assessments over some considerable span of time, almost certainly an inter-generational span of time. (Even now, for some historical perspective, prominent vestiges of the Cold War - variously, in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, China, Venezuela, etc. - remain with us and need to be factored into contemporary foreign policy and global considerations.)

I thought the point of the surge was to reach meaningful political reconciliation. I have not seen any hint of that. On Iraq Senator McCain lies through his teeth daily. It would be one thing if he admitted this, but he is stubborn and refuses to do so.

Senator McCain's obscure and absurd comparisons are...well, just that. Who cares (apart from committed lefties) if the US is in Iraq for a thousand years if that involves a mere base presence? That was not the rhetoric he was using and we all know it.

Now that he's a winner, I just posted a Barack t-shirt on my online store@ http://www.zazzle.com/llnmrcs

Authentic artwork.

Uh, tonight I learned from the yahoos on the V.C. that a black man is presumed not qualified to gain admission to Harvard Law School under normal standards unless he produces proof to the contrary and that it's no big deal that a black man has become a major political party's nominee for the Presidency for the first time unless one is obsessed by race

I do not know why you are surprised. There are a lot of stupid people who vote Republican.

Ben: I understand your point and appreciate the historical significance of Obama's nomination. I also would suggest that when the day comes that the color or gender of the nominee is not even worth mentioning, only then will we have genuinely met Dr. King's criterion of truly color blind society. And in my opinion, we are not there yet. Just my .02.

TLV sez:
If you think the surge has been a success, and McCain has been vindicated, just because it has reduced the level of violence, then you're truly detached from reality. Remember all that talk about creating breathing room for a political settlement? Well, where's the political settlement?

“just because it has reduced the level of violence”? The level is down dramatically. Only 19 American servicemen died in Iraq last month (May) — versus 126 the same month the year before — and that's with Coalition forces heavily invested in vigorous operations, not huddled on bases, as they largely were pre-surge.

For all you skeptics of the surge, darkly (perhaps gleefully) predicting doom once the extra surge troops return home, you should start seriously considering that that's likely not in the cards.

Folks may recall that the Washington Post has been quite anti the war basically throughour this entire half-decade-long operation. Here is an excerpt from what they wrote in an editorial just this last Sunday:

“THERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."

“Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

“Gen. David H. Petraeus signaled one adjustment in recent testimony to Congress, saying that he would probably recommend troop reductions in the fall going beyond the ongoing pullback of the five "surge" brigades deployed last year. Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once -- something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has "unparalleled" public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.”

I thought the point of the surge was to reach meaningful political reconciliation. I have not seen any hint of that.

I thought surge was an attempt through to reduce violence. A reduction in violence is almost certain to be a pre-requisite to a peaceful political reconciliation. The surge has achieved its aim, whether we achieves the second goal remains to be seen.

I would point out that the opponents of the surge did not even think that it would reduce violence. Now, they move the goal posts.

You're not paying attention. Reconciliation is happening. As a result of the Iraqi government taking on and subduing the Shiite militias, thus reducing the effectiveness of propaganda that the elected government exclusively backed Shia interests, Iraqi Sunnis are now more actively cooperating with the government in parliament and elsewhere.

Feel free to continue your skepticism; I'm sure you will, and skepticism is very often a good thing. Just be aware it's not at all unlikely that your skepticism in this case is not going to prove out. The war at this point is largely won, or near the tipping point to being so.

Feel free to continue your skepticism; I'm sure you will, and skepticism is very often a good thing. Just be aware it's not at all unlikely that your skepticism in this case is not going to prove out. The war at this point is largely won, or near the tipping point to being so.

If that's true, then that's all the more reason to bring the majority of the troops home.

As a big booster for AA, he might not want to publicize the fact that HLS had a seriously low admission standard for him.


If anything, you'd think a "big booster for AA" would absolutely want to publicize that being a slave to traditional admissions standards could eliminate potentially great candidates, capable of finishing in the top 10% of one of the most prestigious law schools in the country.

(I had a very high LSAT and crappy law school grades, for the record. In my experience, academic success in graduate education correlates most strongly with effort, and has practically nothing to do with standardized test scores. A hard lesson for someone like me, who was highly successful in high school despite practically no effort because I am an exceptional tester.)

his obvious intelligence

Whatever - talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Gaius Marius:

Ben, as a person of color, I frankly think Barack Hussein Mohamad Obama's skin color is irrelevant.

Gaius, one more time.... You know that's not his name. You know he's not a Muslim. Jim Lindgren removed your comment just last night for doing this. Are you really so disrespectful of him, the other bloggers on the site (Jim's not the only one who has deleted your comments) and the site itself, that you just press ahead with your trolling, undeterred? You occasionally seem interested in participating in the discussion, so why would you work so hard to undermine the civility the discussion depends on? Your repeated refusal to answer these questions doesn't speak well for your intentions.

I'm delighted that the Democrats have finally nominated a realist who understands the fraud that is the GWOT (or whatever its called these days), the Iraq War (or whatever its called) and the Surge of Frederick Kagan.

"Attorney General Edwards" has a nice ring to it.

For the persons who drink their Affirmative Action soup from the cup of Clarence Thomas this just came in to my mailbox that I found pretty interesting.


Did Affirmative Action Really Hinder Clarence Thomas?
Tamara Loomis
June 02, 2008

Why couldn't Clarence Thomas get a job with a big-city law firm when he graduated from Yale in 1974? It's not an idle question. That "time of dashed hopes and expectations," as Thomas once described it in a speech, still leaves him bitter. His frustration resonates in the autobiography that he published last fall, "My Grandfather's Son."

Thomas blames Yale Law School -- specifically, its affirmative action program, which sought to give up to 10 percent of first-year spots to minorities -- for his difficulties securing a job as a first-year associate. Thomas has not disclosed the firms to which he applied, or how many, but he says that after applying for jobs at firms in four different cities, he was rejected everywhere.

"I'd learned the hard way that a law degree from Yale meant one thing for white graduates and another for blacks, no matter how much anyone denied it," Thomas writes in his memoir. "I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools, but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value." To this day, he has kept a "15 cents" sticker from a cigar package stuck to his diploma, "to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale."

Shortly after he arrived at the law school, Thomas writes, he realized that "blacks who benefited from [affirmative action admissions] were being judged by a double standard." As a result, Thomas writes, his law degree was basically worthless, since it "bore the taint of racial preference."

But interviews with a dozen black lawyers who attended Yale in the same years paint a strikingly different picture. "I don't want to discredit Clarence's viewpoint. But his focus on Yale is somewhat disingenuous," says classmate David Jones (Yale Law School 1974), voicing a common theme among those interviewed. "And to make [affirmative action] out to be some kind of liberal conspiracy is certainly disingenuous."

Jones says that Yale "could have done better" administering its affirmative action program in those early years, but any suggestion that black students were treated differently is "crap." In fact, those interviewed describe the environment at Yale in largely positive -- even glowing -- terms. "It was a terrific education," says Wendy Samuel (YLS 1974). "There wasn't the heavy competition you'd expect from a school of its caliber. People were very supportive."

As for Thomas' argument that Yale's affirmative action program made his law degree worthless? "Bullshit," says Daniel Johnson, Jr., a partner at the San Francisco office of Morgan, Lewis &Bockius and a 1973 graduate of the school. "I know [African-American law students at Yale] who got job offers all over the country."

Among those interviewed for this story, some got their top pick, and others didn't, but all of them got a job in the sector -- public, private or public interest -- of their choice. His classmates suggest that a variety of factors might have played into Thomas' search process, including grades, expectations, background and experience, as well as racism. Only Thomas has blamed affirmative action.

Pointing to the "extraordinary success" of the black lawyers who attended Yale in the early 1970s, Johnson says, "We should be celebrating affirmative action at Yale Law School. Affirmative action at Yale really worked." The most telling piece of evidence: one U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Yale Law School launched its affirmative action program in 1969. Yale University declined to provide details about how the program worked, but its goal was reportedly a minority student population of 10 percent. (Today, minorities constitute about one-third of the student body.) The school used minimum standards to ensure that it offered places to only minority students with a "strong chance of succeeding," according to a 1991 New York Times interview with the late Abraham Goldstein, who served as dean from 1970 to 1975.

The program got results: The number of black students grew quickly from "two or three per class" to "enough to be considered a group," says William Coleman III (YLS 1973). The 1973 class was 13 percent African-American -- 21 of approximately 160 students. To be sure, Yale's initial efforts to diversify its community were far from perfect. Thomas' class -- 1974 -- had just 12 black students, and Yale struggled to bring the percentage back up to its 1973 numbers for several decades thereafter.

The early 1970s was also a tumultuous time for black students at the law school. The events leading up to the 1970 arrest and trial in New Haven of Black Panther founder Bobby Seale for the murder of Alex Rackley set off campuswide demonstrations and sit-ins and even a moratorium on classes. (The trial ended in a hung jury, and all charges against Seale were dropped.) Campus police regularly stopped black students, mistakenly targeting them as outsiders looking for trouble.

Former students recall that blacks in the 1972 law school class were particularly outspoken. According to History of the Yale Law School, by former dean Anthony Kronman, a 1975 graduate of the law school, the black students demonstrated in classrooms, conducted walk-outs, and shouted down the dean when he tried to quell a demonstration.

In 1969 Eric Clay, an African-American in the 1972 class and now a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was "tried" in a highly publicized proceeding before a school disciplinary committee for telling visiting professor George Lefcoe, as Clay himself testified, that if Lefcoe "didn't stop messing over black people in his classes, he might get his ass kicked." (Lefcoe testified that Clay had threatened to "beat the shit out of" him.) Clay got off relatively lightly -- the dean put him on probation and let him stay in school -- which angered many of the faculty. (Clay's defense "lawyer," a third-year law student named Melvin Watt, is now a U.S. congressman, D-N.C.)

Neither was the faculty uniformly progressive, says David Jones. He recalls that professor Ralph Winter in particular was "very hostile to a large number of black students coming in." (Winter is now a senior judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He declined to comment for this article.)

Lani Guinier (YLS 1974), the first tenured black woman at Harvard Law School, says that she was disappointed that the school lacked civil rights courses and professors who were "deeply interested" in the issue. She was also not aware of any affirmative action toward women at Yale at the time. Guinier likens the school's early efforts to "almost an awakening -- a delayed realization that the law schools were marching out of step with the rest of the country, not just in terms of race but in terms of gender."

Growing pains notwithstanding, Yale did attract an extraordinary group of black students in those early years of affirmative action. "Yale was considered the law school where policy-wonk activists went," says Jones, who has served as president of the Community Service Society of New York for the last two decades. According to a survey of incoming students, he says, "87 percent of us were planning to do public service law. ... It was a high-water mark." In addition to Thomas -- only the second African-American to sit on the Supreme Court -- Yale's black student population in the early 1970s has produced at least four federal judges (Eric Clay, Henry Wingate, R. Guy Cole, Jr., and Myron Thompson), two law professors (Guinier and Harlan Dalton, who teaches at Yale), and a college president (Theodore Landsmark). It also produced several partners in Am Law 100 firms, such as Rufus Cormier, Jr., the first black partner at Houston's Baker Botts, and Johnson, the first black partner at Cooley Godward Castro Huddleston &Tatum in Palo Alto (now Cooley Godward Kronish).

Their accomplishments are a testament to the abilities and ambitions of Yale's black student population, but also to the doors the school opened for them more than 30 years ago. The dean of admissions at the time, James Thomas, an African-American and 1964 graduate of the law school, pushed hard for diversity. The 1973 class also included Bill Clinton, who appointed several of his black classmates to the federal bench and high-ranking positions in his administration.

Yale doesn't publish lists of jobs that its new graduates accept. But interviews with Thomas' contemporaries show that black students were offered jobs at elite law firms including Cravath, Swaine &Moore, Debevoise &Plimpton, Lord, Day &Lord in New York and Hill &Barlow in Boston.

So why did Thomas have such a rocky start? For his part, he seems convinced that Yale's affirmative action program was the culprit. (Thomas did not respond to requests for an interview.) According to Thomas, he applied for first-year associate positions with firms in Atlanta, and after failing to get an offer there, in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles.

In his memoir, Thomas writes that, in his interviews with law firms, "one high-priced lawyer after another treated me dismissively, making it clear that they had no interest in me despite my Ivy League pedigree. Many asked pointed questions unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated." Thomas' law school grades aren't public. In his biography of Thomas, conservative author Andrew Peyton Thomas (no relation) quotes Thomas as saying, "I was never the extraordinary student. I was kind of the guy who worked hard and did well, and sometimes very well."

Thomas' black classmates, however, dismiss the idea that affirmative action caused his job hunt troubles. Instead, they say, other factors could have played into Thomas' difficulties.

One possibility, Johnson says, is less-than-stellar grades. Yale had four grades: fail, low pass, pass and honors. "The fact is, the better grades you had, the more job offers you got," says Johnson. Yale's grading system may have inadvertently made job hunting more difficult for some students, he says, since a "pass" could mean anything from a B+ to a C-.

Johnson says that his own average grades -- he had "all passes" his first year at the law school -- made it harder to land a law firm job upon graduation. Johnson ended up at the California state attorney general's office, where he worked for three years. He then went to Cooley Godward Castro Huddleston &Tatum, where he flourished, becoming the firm's first black partner in 1981.

Other classmates suggest that another factor was at play. As a self-described "poor black kid from Georgia," Thomas didn't fit the corporate law firm mold, and he did little to try to conform to it in law school. Thomas and his two siblings were raised by a single mother on the $10 a week she earned as a maid. At age 7, Thomas moved in with his grandfather, where life was materially more comfortable but not easy. His grandfather ran a strict household, where everyone, kids included, adhered to a strict work ethic.

Thomas went on to attend College of the Holy Cross, a middle-class school full of strivers -- "people like me," he writes in his memoir. At Yale, Thomas didn't try to adopt the corporate style. It was the early seventies and he favored bib overalls and combat boots. William Coleman III (YLS 1973) describes Thomas at Yale as "a diamond in the rough." His sister, Lovida Coleman, Jr. (YLS 1975) agrees that Thomas lacked the benefit of a more privileged upbringing. "I'm used to making white people comfortable [socially]," says Coleman, whose father is a prominent lawyer. "Clarence didn't have that advantage."

Thomas says that at Yale he "felt out of place" among the "elite." He doesn't say exactly who he is talking about, but it's true that a good portion of his black classmates hailed from educated families and Ivy League colleges. Lovida and William Coleman, for instance, are the children of William Coleman, Jr., who served as secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford and is now senior counsel at O'Melveny &Myers in Washington, D.C. Lani Guinier grew up in New York, the daughter of a lawyer and a teacher, and went to Radcliffe College. The father of Lila Coleburn (YLS 1973) was a scientist for NASA; the father of Wendy Samuel was a college professor. Edgar "Tap" Taplin, Jr. (YLS 1973) went to Yale College; he grew up in New Orleans, where his mother, Lois Taplin Bronz, was a math professor and director of admissions at Xavier University of Louisiana. David Jones, whose father was a judge and assemblyman in Brooklyn, interned f! or Senator Robert Kennedy before he went to Yale.

Still, many black law students grew up in more modest circumstances. Two examples: Ted Landsmark, who graduated from the architecture and law schools in 1973, was raised by a single mother in the projects in East Harlem, and Thomas' classmate Harry Singleton was the son of a janitor and a maid. (Singleton now has his own firm in Washington, D.C.)

The law school then, as now, was home to the academic elite. It also was a venue where students could build connections that would help those who wanted to be among the political and economic elites. "The networking, should you take the opportunity, could hardly have been better," says Landsmark. He says a number of the professors "kept their doors open" to students, both black and white. Nonetheless, a student had to be savvy to how things worked, and not everyone was. "It was more like trade school than a real academic setting," says Jones. "It would be dangerous to put things on a racial divide. There were plenty of white students who didn't have a clue how to get ahead." But Jones admits that networking was even more of a challenge for black students at the time, since they were virtually all pioneers.

As for socializing among students, Tap Taplin voices a commonly shared memory that it was "both integrated and segregated." The black students were a tightly knit group, forming their own table at lunch. White students ate together also, but that was seldom commented upon. (Taplin recalls an incident at the class's thirtieth reunion: When he sat down with a couple of black friends, Alan Mintz, a white friend of his, walked up and jokingly said, "What is this? Hasn't anything changed?") Many black students had white friends. For instance, William Coleman lived in a house with three white students, including Bill Clinton, who later appointed Coleman general counsel of the U.S. Army. And Lila Coleburn dated white fellow student John Weidman, whom she later married. (Both now have careers outside law. Weidman, an Emmy Award-winning writer for Sesame Street, is president of the Dramatists Guild of America; Coleburn is a psychologist.)

Civil rights issues were also a hot-button item in the largely liberal Yale community -- Bobby Seale's trial radicalized the campus -- and students forged bonds across racial lines through their shared work in civil rights.

By his own admission, Thomas kept a relatively low profile among his peers. His classmates remember him as "a very pleasant guy to be around" with "a big hearty laugh and big smile," and he was a regular at an informal "breakfast club," a group of early risers who ate together every morning at 6. "Clarence would already have studied for an hour," says Lovida Coleman, who was also a regular at the breakfast club. "There was no one who was a harder-working student." (She also remembers enjoying his "hilarious" descriptions of the pornographic movies that he'd seen the night before.) Generally, though, Thomas' social life was relatively limited. When he wasn't studying, he was spending time with his two best friends, Harry Singleton and Frank Washington, or his wife and infant son.

And other than taking traditional classes like corporate law, bankruptcy, tax and commercial transactions, Thomas didn't pursue a corporate law career. As he writes in his autobiography, instead of spending his second summer at a corporate firm in New York or Washington like many of his Yale classmates, he went to Hill, Jones &Farrington, a black law firm in his hometown of Savannah, Ga., that handled civil rights cases. (He received an offer to join the firm but declined because his wife didn't want to stay in Savannah.) Since he'd worked at New Haven Legal Assistance during his first summer, Thomas had no corporate experience when he interviewed for a permanent position.

Taplin says that lack of experience and contacts could have hurt Thomas' search. Firms look for applicants who have explored their professed interest in corporate law, through summer jobs or networking, Taplin says. For his part, Taplin, who got his undergraduate degree at Yale, says he "wasn't shy about fashioning [his] own career," taking advantage of connections he'd made with corporate lawyers while at school and elsewhere, and spending half of his second summer at Lord, Day &Lord, which he joined after graduating. (Taplin went on to become a global manager in the supply and trading group of Exxon Mobil before retiring in 2003.)

To be fair, in the early 1970s few black students at Yale had their eye on the corporate prize. "There were people who knew they were going into corporate practice, but they didn't make a big deal of it," says Landsmark. Like a lot of students (including Thomas), Landsmark, who went to Yale as an undergraduate, says he was focused on public policy. Like Thomas, Landsmark says he hadn't worked at a law firm prior to interviewing in his third year: "I'd worked at legal services." But Landsmark easily landed an offer from Hill &Barlow, an old-line Boston firm whose lawyers included Michael Dukakis and William Weld, both of whom later became governors of Massachusetts. It also happened to have a sizable architect client base. Given his dual degrees in architecture and law, "it was a perfect fit," says Landsmark, who now heads Boston Architectural College. Albert Moncure, Jr. (YLS 1973), who worked with migrant farm workers his second summer,! went to Cravath, Swaine &Moore after graduating -- the only firm Moncure says he interviewed with.

Coleman, who was a year ahead of Thomas at Yale and also worked with him during the latter's second-year summer, says Thomas' demeanor could have worked against him when he was interviewing. As Coleman, who specializes in employment discrimination at the plaintiffs firm Berger &Montague in Philadelphia, explains: "Law firms are not places for Mao. Once a little bit of that comes out and you're black, they will notice. And they don't want to take any chances."

Thomas himself writes that he was an "angry young man," resentful of what he viewed as liberal white hypocrisy, condescension toward and underestimation of blacks. It was at Yale, he writes, that he first realized blacks "were being judged by a double standard." The campus scuttlebutt, for instance, was that tax professor Boris Bittker "flunks black students." To prove his abilities, Thomas writes, he went out of his way to take a course with Bittker, who (paradoxically) gave Thomas his first honors grade at Yale. The honors grade, however, failed to cause Thomas to rethink his growing conviction that many whites considered black students somehow inferior. "It was futile for me to suppose that I could escape the stigmatizing effects of racial preference," Thomas writes.

Racism could have played a part in Thomas' fruitless job hunt. Frank Washington, one of Thomas' closest friends at Yale, thinks it did. Washington says he interviewed at 40 firms in various cities before he finally got an offer at Arnold &Porter in Washington, D.C. "It was a pretty daunting process," says Washington. He lasted three years before taking a job as legal counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. While he was at Arnold &Porter, Washington recalls, The Washington Post ran a story about diversity problems at the firm's D.C. office. In the article, Washington recounted an incident in which he was mistaken for a black summer associate and said the white lawyers "couldn't tell us apart." Washington, who is now the owner of a string of broadcast television and radio stations, said he had no idea that his statement wouldn't sit well with the powers that be, but in his exit interview, he was told, "A lot of people di! dn't care for what you did."

Other black Yale graduates tell of encountering various forms of racism in the job market. Wendy Samuel, who is a light-skinned black woman, remembers being told by a partner at a big D.C. firm that she wasn't getting an offer out of law school "because I was too light and they wouldn't get any credit." William Coleman recalls an incident when he served as general counsel of the Army under President Clinton in the mid-nineties. He was attending a conference where he was the keynote speaker. "Someone gave me his jacket to hang up," says Coleman, "so when I went up to the podium, I said, 'I have this person's jacket. I don't know what to do with it.'"

But unlike Thomas, those interviewed say they believe that affirmative action at institutions like Yale are part of the solution, not the problem. "How is it Yale's fault that society is not accepting of black people?" says Dan Johnson.

In fact, Yale connections helped Thomas land the job he finally took after law school -- with John Danforth, a white Yale Law alumnus and, at the time, the Republican attorney general of Missouri, who traveled to the school to recruit black lawyers to work for him. Yale also figured in Thomas' Supreme Court appointment: George H.W. Bush, who nominated him, is an alumnus of the college.

But those law firm rejections still stick in Thomas' craw. In a 2003 speech to graduates of the University of Georgia School of Law, Thomas says he saves the "barren husk of rejection letters" to this day. In his book, he blames the "stigmatizing effects of racial preference" for those rejections, and his Supreme Court opinions clearly demonstrate his animus toward affirmative action. That's his personal narrative, to use the phrase of the moment, and he's entitled to it.

His classmates, though, see those times differently. Thomas' "belated attempt at creating a fantasy world is not the story. The story is how extraordinarily successful the blacks from that class have been," Johnson says. "How could that be the case if our law school degree was worth 15 cents?"


link

PLR: tell her it's called a “typo” and it happens to people who type.

Ben, the original post concerns foreign policy. It's that simple.

And Scalia would have been "flippant" concerning the issue of slavery only if slavery were still an issue today in the U.S. Why are people, including those among the black community, flippant concerning slavery in places like Sudan, where in addition to slavery a genocide of some note is occurring? Is it due to the Islamicist or Islamic regime in Khartoum, a factor certain politically interested groups would rather forget and/or marginalize? Which additionally invokes the subject of black-on-black slavery in Africa during the time of the slave trade. Which in turn again emphasizes your selectivity.

I cant believe people are challenging Obama's intelligence when he graduated magna cum laude from HLS and John McCain graduated 894 out of 899 at the Naval Academy. I wonder if his admiral dad had anything to do with him even graduating?

Why are people, including those among the black community, flippant concerning slavery in places like Sudan, where in addition to slavery a genocide of some note is occurring?

What leads you to believe they are?

Which additionally invokes the subject of black-on-black slavery in Africa during the time of the slave trade.

I see this tossed out often these days in arguments about slavery and racism in America. Is it supposed to mean something? Are we saying that African-American blacks have no business complaining about slavery because other Africans participated in and profited from the nightmare? Are we suggesting that the slaves who were captured and sold were complicit in their awful fate? Is America somehow absolved because "everybody did it"? I don't get it.

The racism of the focus on Obama's bonafides in some of this discussion simply shocks me.

Keep your X*n*x handy because we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Given that Obama was wrong on the main foreign policy issue of his brief time in the Senate (whether the surge would improve the conditions in Iraq), I keep hoping that his obvious intelligence will lead him to recognize what is going on in Iraq and adjust his policies accordingly.

Why?

"The racism is questioning Obama but not McCain when the evidence on pure academic weight is that Obama is much smarter."

The thread here is about BHO, not McCain. As such we get to focus on his qualifications and experience. A focus on McCain will come later, and I suspect he won't come out looking very good. BHO's academic credentials are very good, but unfortunately he has to overcome the suspicion that he gained admittance primarily through AA. Perhaps he didn't, but that's all the more reason he should publish his transcripts. We can also have an endless go-around on class standing versus LSAT, so why not have both pieces of information? BHO wants to be president, and as such he needs maximum transparency, especially with his lack of record. So far he hasn't done this. For example BHO refuses to provide details about what he did and who he associated with after his graduation from Columbia. The spotty details he provided in his books about his first job in New York City don't exactly mesh with the people who remember him from his first job. Perhaps BHO intends to come clean really late in the campaign in an attempt to have his cake and eat it too. But that won't wash with many people.

It's amazing the sheer hatred the left has for the concept of "winning the war." I don't think the left has met a war since WWII they wanted the US to win. In fact, I state quite clearly that Democrats want the US to lose wars.

Evidence: Vietnam, where leftists tied our hands so we couldn't fight then once Nixon ignored them and won the war so we could leave, they sold our allies down the river and let millions be killed. Gulf War I, where they wanted us to lose. The Cold war, where they fought tooth and nail against any military strategy to fight communism (remember the howlings about nuclear missiles and Star Wars?). The war on terror, which most Dems actively deny exists and then their desperate attempt to lose in Iraq.

Any leftist here I ask you this: Do you want to win our war? Or do you want us to lose?

Democrats have become traitors, really. Pelosi, Reid, etc. actively provide aid and comfort to the enemy. But that's not new--their party did the exact same in the Civil War! Read the platform of the Democratic party in the 1864 elections and tell me Obama isn't preaching the exact same cut and run strategy.

"Given that Obama was wrong on the main foreign policy issue of his brief time in the Senate (whether the surge would improve the conditions in Iraq), I keep hoping that his obvious intelligence will lead him to recognize what is going on in Iraq and adjust his policies accordingly."

How was he wrong on this? You seem to make two pretty major misstatements. One, that the surge had any effect on the conditions in Iraq. Instead, the entirety of the reduction in violence can be traced to the imposition of the Sadr truce, as numerous statistical studies have shown. Two, that Obama said that the surge would not improve (general) conditions in Iraq. What he said was that it would not substantially improve POLITICAL conditions in Iraq, and so far, it appears he was entirely correct.

McCain by his own admission finished fifth from the bottom of his Naval Academy class. His father and grandfather were both admirals and I leave it to Zarkov to investigate the effect this had on his getting into the Academy.

By the way, our troops in Iraq do not have the same purpose or mission as our troops in Germany. By 1949, West Germany was de facto running itself and our troops served as guarantors against the external threat of the Warsaw Pact. Our troops in Iraq have a function more like the Soviet troops in East Germany: guaranteeing a pliant local government, pursuing domestic opponents, and large permanent bases to intimidate neighboring countries. How did that work out again?

Vanceone,

You call us traitors and expect us to politely explain ourselves to you? No thanks.

Thales:

The link you provide gives no data, and advances a basically lame argument. It says:

"psychometrics [test design], it is widely acknowledged that test-taking speed and reasoning ability are separate abilities with little or no correlation to each other." That is, a person's abilities, respectively, to reason well and to reason quickly aren't very related."

The phrase "it is widely acknowledged" without a reference should be a tip off that this essay is more a polemic than an informed argument. According to Arthur Jensen's The g Factor, reaction time on simple tasks provides a measure of g. The LSAT is a heavily g-loaded test, so speed is a factor in measurement of general intelligence.

Now I don't know how well grades and LSAT scores correlate specifically at HLS. The data we have comes from a cross-section of law schools, and the correlation is some kind of aggregate. So what you really have is a set of correlations, which could vary widely depending on the grading policies of the individual schools. That's one reason it would be helpful to know BHO's actual score. But as I said before, his score itself is less of a concern than his reluctance to publish the details of his academic record.

"The defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq."

That assumes that 1) Al Queda has been defeated in Iraq, and 2) that Al Queda was responsible for most/all of the Iraqi violence. The first proposition is complete conjecture, the second is obviously false.

eyesay,

I do not necessarily agree that you're a mindless partisan (though that's surely the way to bet, given the way you present yourself.) So please tell me: just what would count as convincing evidence in your world?

Andrew Janssen,

You do know that's on the schedule, right?

That assumes that 1) Al Queda has been defeated in Iraq, and 2) that Al Queda was responsible for most/all of the Iraqi violence. The first proposition is complete conjecture, the second is obviously false.

There is a lot of reason to believe that al Qaeda is MOSTLY defeated in Iraq, after sustaining horrific losses to its foot soldiers, and more importantly, to its leadership over the last year. Their internal communications, when captured or intercepted, have indicated this with increasing desperation for almost a year now (really starting around August or September of last year). And, the number of incidents of violence that they either take responsibility for or are believed by our military to be responsible for are down by 90% or so from a year ago.

So, on to your second point. At one point, maybe a year and a half ago, much of the Sunni violence was either under the al Qaeda umbrella or closely aligned. The Sunni terrorists had consolidated by then and al Qaeda was able to claim at least token control over most of them. Of course, a couple of years ago, the bulk likely had been former Baathists and from some of the more tribal areas. But they were now (a year and a half ago) actively working with al Qaeda and following its lead.

A lot of things have happened though since that al Qaeda high point. They were the primary focus of the early part of the Surge. The Awakenings, starting in Anbar, were primarily a result of al Qaeda brutality against Sunni Arab Iraqis. So, a lot of those who had been fighting along side (and under the umbrella) of al Qaeda switched sides, and started working with us, with great success.

It was interesting reading of American troops working with and talking to these former al Qaeda allies. There was a kind of live and let live, let bygones be bygones, type of relationship. They would be living together, when a year and a half before, they would have been shooting at each other. But both sides appeared to be handling the reconciliation well with surprisingly few bad feelings.

And it was this switching of sides by so many of al Qaedas former allies, combined with the clear and hold strategy, along with having previously emplaced many of the Surge forces as blocking forces to funnel the cleared terrorists, that seems to be spelling the end of al Qaeda in Iraq.

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