Miscellaneous

The Slate Roundup

I found so many interesting links at Slate yesterday, that instead of just tossing them in the Daily Memo, they're getting their own entry (how you like me now, Slate?!).

First up, Jack Shafer contemplates Barack Obama, the Plagiarist, looking at the media's quick defense of Obama and then concluding that he is not, in fact, a thieving thief. Shafer even makes a comment similar to what Dustin said yesterday, noting that Harvard would've smacked the shit out of him had he included his words in a student paper (and he also mentions Biden's 1988 presidential run). Look at you Dustin, offering critique like the big boys!

Then there's the lovely Dahlia Lithwick, who gives us the latest in her Supreme Court Dispatches, this time telling us that "the Supreme Court squints at America's elderly federal employees." Yesterday morning, the Supremes heard oral argument in a case that looks at whether federal age-discrimination laws should be extended to protect federal works from retaliation for being whistle-blowers. And her conclusion pretty much tells us how this decision is going to play out:

That sound you're hearing today isn't just the courthouse door closing on thousands more Americans and their lawsuits. It's also the sound of a very energized conservative bloc on the high court that seems to grow younger every day.

Two more quick links. First, in discussing the DVD release of Michael Clayton, we learn about the film's "devastating critique of the legal profession." And lastly, Jeff Greenfield offers some guidance for how the Democrat superdelegates can figure out who to vote for at the Democratic National Convention.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).