US politics - Mr Obama goes to Israel

[Jon Sprunk]

But most importantly, in 1991, she represented a woman named Anita Hill. That is what sweet, sweet justice looks like.

HAHAH!

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Sebelius' Catholicism despite repeated condemnation by some of the Church's highest officials would likely resonate with a lot of liberal female Catholics.

Does Clinton really need to worry about losing the liberal female Catholic vote? I'm pretty sure Rush Limbaugh could be her VP pick and she'd still have that demographic sewn up.

[Fez]

I think if I were Hillary, I'd go with Sebelius. Own health care. Sebelius' Catholicism despite repeated condemnation by some of the Church's highest officials would likely resonate with a lot of liberal female Catholics. Her family political connections are extensive, her father-in-law was a Republican Representative, and TWO former state Chair of the Republican party switched parties and served as her Lt. Governor in 2002 and 2006. She eliminated a $1.1 billion debt. At her nomination for HHS Secretary, she was accompanied by two Republicans - Bob Dole and Pat Roberts. And she was a top VP contender in 2008.

I'm a big fan of the job Sebelius has been doing at HHS, and there's a reason she's one of the few major cabinet heads to stay for the second term, but I don't see her as getting the VP slot. The ACA remains too divisive an issue and she's more closely associated with it than just about anyone at this point.* It'd be easy to create campaign ads attacking her for anything unpopular that HHS did over the course of 8 years.

ETA:*Besides Obama himself of course.

[Guest RK Unsmoteable]

Good decision too.

Why do you think so?

I can't argue with the result as a matter of policy, but I think it's dangerous to give the Court the leeway to try to "save" Congress from its own mistakes by interpreting away the clear language of the statute whenever the area of law involved is really (1) boring and (2) complicated.

[Fez]

Why do you think so?

I can't argue with the result as a matter of policy, but I think it's dangerous to give the Court the leeway to try to "save" Congress from its own mistakes by interpreting away the clear language of the statute whenever the area of law involved is really (1) boring and (2) complicated.

As always, since I'm not a legal expert in any sense, I don't much care about the legal reasoning or precedent of SC decisions (and considering how precedent can apparently turn on a dime in this day and age, I'm not sure its worth much consideration anymore). I'm just interested in what the policy result will be, and here I think this decision was by far the better policy result. Had the result gone the other way, it would've been a nightmare for secondhand stores. It also would've been yet another infringement of individual rights; the first sale doctrine is an incredibly important protection for people to dispose of their property as they like.

[Guest RK Unsmoteable]

The ACA remains too divisive an issue and she's more closely associated with it than just about anyone at this point.* It'd be easy to create campaign ads attacking her for anything unpopular that HHS did over the course of 8 years.

ETA:*Besides Obama himself of course.

Or, if you think of it as health care generally, there's you know...Hillary.

That's why I say own it. Make a central campaign issue. My bet is that's a winning strategy a few years down the road when people have actually seen the effects of the ACA. Every single time I fill my birth control prescription, I still stand there until the clerk says "Ma'am, there's no charge." Oh right! Fucking sweet. Thank you ACA!

The Democrats are pregnant with the ACA no matter what they do. Might as well deal with it by acquiring a VP candidate who can knock that issue out of the park by making the other VA candidate look like they have no idea what they're talking about at the VP debate and can helpfully field questions on what people should do to improve their health care options when stumping around the country.

[Fez]

Or, if you think of it as health care generally, there's you know...Hillary.

That's why I say own it. Make a central campaign issue. My bet is that's a winning strategy a few years down the road when people have actually seen the effects of the ACA. Every single time I fill my birth control prescription, I still stand there until the clerk says "Ma'am, there's no charge." Oh right! Fucking sweet. Thank you ACA!

The Democrats are pregnant with the ACA no matter what they do. Might as well deal with it by acquiring a VP candidate who can knock that issue out of the park by making the other VA candidate look like they have no idea what they're talking about at the VP debate and can helpfully field questions on what people should do to improve their health care options when stumping around the country.

As others have said though, Obamacare takes the wind right out of Hillarycare. And since Clinton has stayed out of domestic politics since 2008 (except for coming out in favor of marriage equality this week, which, btw, I think is a sign she'll run), it's harder to stick her with anything that people have been angry about for the past several years.

I agree that Democrats still need to do a better job of defending and explaining the ACA (I can only show my presentation to so many clients), but I'd rather keep it to the side of a presidential election; particularly one where the candidate is starting from such an advantageous position.

[Guest RK Unsmoteable]

Had the result gone the other way, it would've been a nightmare for secondhand stores. It also would've been yet another infringement of individual rights; the first sale doctrine is an incredibly important protection for people to dispose of their property as they like.

Perhaps I am not aware of all of the relevant policy concerns. Are there a lot of second-hand stores in the United States that sell goods manufactured and sold by American companies in foreign countries?

ETA: On the ACA, tell me this: does it seem like a better and better piece of legislation to you the more familiar you get with it, or not?

[Fez]

Perhaps I am not aware of all of the relevant policy concerns. Are there a lot of second-hand stores in the United States that sell goods manufactured and sold by American companies in foreign countries?

Ebay, for one. And the topic of the case itself, textbooks, is a huge market.

Personally I bought almost all my college and grad. school textbooks there. They were the international editions, which were the same text but about a quarter of the price.

[Guest RK Unsmoteable]

Okay, background on Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, for those who are interested.

Copyright law contains an importation ban:

Importation into the United States, without theauthority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies orphonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501.

But, as the right to control importation is a matter of distribution, this is subject to the "first sale doctrine." Once a "work" "lawfully made under this title" has been sold once, the copyright holder has no further rights or interests.

The Court has already held that things manufactured in the United States, but shipped abroad for sale, purchased abroad, and then resold in the United States are subject to the first sale doctrine under 17 USC sec. 109(a):

...the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord...

The issue here is whether things manufactured abroad, purchased abroad, and then resold in the United States are subject to the first sale doctrine. The prerequisite for the application of the first sale doctrine is whether the works at issue were made pursuant to United States copyright law. Inarguably, books published by the Asian subsidiary of a United States publisher were not made under Title 17 or any other United States law, but the law of the country they were published in, possibly subject to international commercial agreements.

The reason the case didn't go that way is that it would create a huge incentive for American companies to manufacture more goods overseas. Because the copyright law Congress passed is flawed.

Whether or not you care if that's a legislative or judicial concern is a matter of opinion, but I am of the opinion that there's still something to be gained from taking the Separation of Powers seriously.

But more importantly, it's also probably not wise to hold that all things manufactured everywhere by any American company were "lawfully made" under Title 17 for the general reason that it's just generally not a good idea to make stupid shit that is obviously not true an incontrovertible fact as a matter of law.

[TerraPrime]

That decision should send the pharmaceutical lawyers back to their case laws, imo.

[Kouran]

The SCotUS made a good call on this one. Hopefully it helps out students. I couldnt stand paying $150 for a text book that was useless to anyone else the next semester and worthless at the end of term. The whole textbook market is a racket and they should be charged like any other organized crime.

[DanteGabriel]

The textbook business was a scam on college students anyway. "We'll sell you this book for $150, buy it back from you in eight months for $5, and then next year we can sell it again to some other poor asshole who's forced to buy the book, for $100. Rinse, repeat."

[Galactus]

Yes, progressive poster child Warren is calling out the Republican candidate for favoring cannabis legalization (and doing it through deliberate misrepresentation of his position to boot).

Is drugs really a left/right thing in the US? Over here it tends to be more of a centre-vs-extremes thing.

[DanteGabriel]

Is drugs really a left/right thing in the US? Over here it tends to be more of a centre-vs-extremes thing.

I think it is a center-v-fringe issue here, but in the meantime this sort of contradiction (oh noes, a politician who believes in government intervention is still against pot!) serves as a convenient back-patting excuse for the "the two parties are the same" crowd.

[Guest RK Unsmoteable]

That decision should send the pharmaceutical lawyers back to their case laws, imo.

Oh hell no. They've had their very own law since 1988 - the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987. It would be dangerous to allow even reimportation of American-produced drugs that have been shipped overseas, because, you know, we just don't know how they've been handled over there.

[TerraPrime]

The SCotUS made a good call on this one. Hopefully it helps out students. I couldnt stand paying $150 for a text book that was useless to anyone else the next semester and worthless at the end of term. The whole textbook market is a racket and they should be charged like any other organized crime.

Of all my major courses, I have all the textbooks still from undergraduate. I still use my Biochem, Genetics, and Statistics textbooks regularly. The Cell and Molecular Biology textbook I like it so much it is now the textbook I choose for my course. Only science text book I didn't keep was Organic Chem.

But yes, the text books were very expensive at the time of purchase. I wouldn't call it a racket pers se, since I do use them after the end of the courses.

[Shryke]

The Supreme Court had a rather strange 6-3 split today, with the dissenters being Ginsberg, Kennedy, and Scalia. I can't even remember the last time Thomas and Scalia were on opposite sides (except for those 8-1 decisions that show just how insane Thomas is on some issues).

Good decision too.

Is it?

Cause it mostly seems to fuck the ability of content owners to enforce regional contracts.

[Shryke]

The SCotUS made a good call on this one. Hopefully it helps out students. I couldnt stand paying $150 for a text book that was useless to anyone else the next semester and worthless at the end of term. The whole textbook market is a racket and they should be charged like any other organized crime.

Except the likely outcome is India paying more for textbooks, not the other way around.

The ability to separate the Indian textbook market from the American one is the only reason those textbooks are so cheap. It gives the producer the ability to use price discrimination to set the optimal price for differing individuals/markets.

If they cna no longer keep those markets separate either prices will rise to make importation nonviable, they will drop out of Indian textbook market in some fashion or they will find some other way to separate the two markets.

[lokisnow]

{Clinton's VP possibilities}

I don't think Clinton will pick another woman, particularly not another woman from the northeast or west coast. I think you were on to something with the comment earlier about finding someone from the south.

On the other hand, the wonks in Clinton's advisory group may strongly advocate/tell her that contra conventional wisdom, where a Veep is from doesn't matter a whit--it may not, statistically, but the noisemedia will be unable to talk about anything else for months, the campaign will lose control of the campaign narrative. So hopefully, since the media is such an echo chamber of morons, the conventional wisdom won't be bucked too much, or the entire campaign will be branded as unrepresentative of the country.

I think she'll be looking for a youngish 40-something rising democrat star like Castro in Texas--Texas is the ideal state, because it's a potential democrat pickup in 2016 with the right conditions, but I don't think the democrat party in texas has a deep enough bench to really have any candidate ready for the national stage at this point. Since Clinton won't be challenged in the primary by anyone other than Biden (and I think he'll go SecState) I think Clinton will focus on democrat governor's and choose from that slate, her second choice would probably be to look at senators, then maybe the slate you suggested

{Obama CV}

You know they're allowed to have more than one black guy up there at a time, right?

Sure, but Obama's been setting up his supreme court nomination since Souter announced his retirement, he's been mentioning since he began his first SC search that he was looking broadly because the SC historically had professors, judges, Governors and expresidents (meaning it was more diverse). Well he's appointed two out of four, and his next choice is probably going to be Napolitano, which segues nicely into your next comment.

Oh, and there will be a lot of agitation to make sure that the bench doesn't lack for a black justice, so if Thomas' seat is vacated and there is not another black justice already on the bench, this means that that whoever is appointing the justice will be expected to find a black replacement. This is absurd, but GHWB has mentioned that he felt enormous pressure to replace Thurgood Marshall with another black justice, which is why Thomas was raised. I for one would be a fan of this sort of precedent having its back broken, but I think the politics will be mostly unchanged, it's symbolic. On the other hand, maybe this precedent has already been broken after Bush's disasterous nomination of Harriet Myers, since he felt the same pressure in replacing o'Connor?

If we can set aside our Obamasession for a moment, Napolitano actually had the requisite federal clerkship right after law school and then worked in private practice for almost 20 years before becoming a United States Attorney and Arizona's Attorney General.

But most importantly, in 1991, she represented a woman named Anita Hill. That is what sweet, sweet justice looks like.

As I said, I think Napolitano is going to wind up replacing Ginsberg, Obama wants a former governor on there, so the path is cleared for the next democrat president to put him on the court.

But damn it would be poetic if Thomas were replaced by Napolitano. She is certainly more qualified for the position than Obama is.

(an aside: the downside of the advances of modern medicine is we'll probably have the same chief justice in fifty years that we have today. That's the real legacy of GWB, appointing the longest lived Chief Justice in history. ;))