Legal Commentary

Who Wants to be President? Who CAN be President? Jack Balkin Makes a Brilliant Case that No Current Candidate is Constitutionally Eligible

Posted on March 07, 2008
So you think you know the U.S. Constitution?There is little doubt any more that if Hillary Clinton were to be foolishly granted the Democratic Party nomination by her party members, she will surely pull Trick 17 out of her hat by having John McCain declared ineligible for the Presidency because of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone, little knowing that she too, is ineligible for the Presidency herself, by virtue of the U...

Play By the Rules : Howard Dean Sticks to the Correct Principle

Posted on March 07, 2008
Although we are political centrists and support Barack Obama in this election, we are not great friends of either the Democratic Party or Republican Party, since we see little evidence in either party of model excellence or model ethics. It is a dirty business, often fought by dirty players...

The Democratic Dogfight : Professor Larry J. Sabato at BBC News

Posted on March 07, 2008
Professor Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and the author of A More Perfect Constitution, in Dogfight drags Democrats down comments at BBC News on the current state of things in the Presidential Election campaigns of Obama and Clinton...

WikiPatents : Community Patent Review : DataBase of 4 Million Patents

Posted on March 07, 2008
For those who do not know it, take a look at WikiPatents, Community Patent Review:"The WikiPatents Community contributes to the US patent system by reviewing issued patents and pending patent applications. WikiPatents features a wiki-like interface to review, rate, and discuss patents -- plus free patent PDF downloads, file histories, and advanced patent searching...

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The Patentability of Business Methods and the Upcoming Federal Circuit Hearing en banc in Ex parte Bilski

Posted on March 07, 2008
Erika Harmon Arner of Finnegan Henderson has a nice summary, including the precise issues involved, of what is involved in the upcoming Federal Circuit hearing en banc in Ex parte Bilski and the patentability of business methods.For background, seePatently-OPATENTly - unOBVIOUSPatent ProspectorPeter Zura's 271 Patent BlogAnticipate This!

Military Blog Blocking and Government Leaks : American Troops vs. Hillary Clinton

Posted on March 07, 2008
This posting relates to the previous blog posting.On a related issue, see the Wired article by Noah Schachtmann at Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs. Since the blog blocking done there is often done first, with questions asked later, is this not a prima facie case of prior restraint? We can understand why the military would have such a policy, but, on the other hand, it does seem to run counter to our ideas of democracy...

Google and Blogger Down for More than 24 Hours in Germany March 6 - March 7 2008 : Was the Pentagon the Cause?

Posted on March 07, 2008
Google.com (USA), which we use, and Blogger were not accessbile to us here in Germany for more than 24 hours starting yesterday afternoon - and as far as we could tell by asking around, also not to others. On the other hand, sites like google.co.uk and google...

Obama Delegate Projections After Yesterday's Elections

Posted on March 05, 2008
This is an email to me from the Barack Obama campaign via BarackObama.com:Andis -- Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183. That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted...

Obama vs. McCain : The Coming Presidential Election Match : A Letter from the Barack Obama Campaign After Vermont, Texas, Rhode Island and Ohio

Posted on March 05, 2008
This is an email to me from the Barack Obama campaign via blue state digital:Andis -- We may not know the final outcome of today's voting until morning, but the results so far make one thing clear. When the dust settles from today's contests, we will maintain our substantial lead in delegates...

The Divisive Hillary Clinton Miasma Campaign Against Barack Obama as Alinsky Radicalism, described in Hillary Clinton's Senior Thesis About Alinsky

Posted on March 05, 2008
Did you know that the polarizing divisiveness that Hillary Clinton engenders is intentional by design as a potent political offensive weapon, and predicted by her senior thesis at Wellesley College? That thesis as a searchable PDF is found at GOPublius and we comment on it extensively below...

Obama Unifies, Clinton Polarizes : The Unity of the Human World

Posted on March 04, 2008
One of the things that we like about Barack Obama is that the entire approach of his campaign is oriented toward unifying people, rather than polarizing competing factions, as Hillary Clinton has been doing, whereby she has lost our support, support which she had at the beginning of the primary campaign season...

Ballot Shortages in Ohio

Posted on March 04, 2008
Ballot Shortages Plague Ohio Primary Amid Unusually Heavy Voter TurnoutYou wonder how the rest of the world views that kind of U.S. planning competence.

The Mean and the Evil Vie for Power or for Inheritance: The Hillary Clinton Campaign

Posted on March 04, 2008
One of the disturbing things in life is to discover how mean and evil some people can get when they are vying for power or for inheritance, in this case, political inheritance. When the chips are down, one sees the true character of a person, and in the case of Hillary Clinton, it isn't good...

Special Interest Groups Keeping Clinton Alive in the Election Race

Posted on March 03, 2008
Daily Kos in the March 2, 2008 article EMILY's List, AFSCME and Federation of Teachers Have Kept the Clinton Campaign Alive by DHinMI shows us how special interest groups and their monies greatly affect American political elections far out of proportion to their actual voting numbers...

Young Voters are the Key to the Texas and Ohio Democractic Primary Elections for the 2008 Presidential Nominee

Posted on March 03, 2008
The future of America - as in any country - is dependent on its young people.As noted at the Cincinnati Enquirer by Gregory Korte in Young voters getting noticed, the new young voter does not view the world so much in terms of political partisanship - thank goodness for that - but more readily reacts directly to a candidate's interactivity with the voter:"If anything turns off young voters, it's the sense that the result of the election is predetermined before they go to the polls, said Abby Kiesa, youth coordinator for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland...

Limbaugh Urging Republicans to Vote for Clinton in Ohio and Texas : The Reason is Clear : McCain Would Easily Beat Clinton But Might Lose to Obama

Posted on March 03, 2008
At Fox News, the O'Reilly Factor, there is a March 3, 2008 article titled Rush Limbaugh Explains Why He's Urging Republicans in Texas and Ohio to Vote for Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday 2.Obviously, none of the reasons given there are the ones that really count...

The True Path to Freedom, One Step at a Time : Calculate Your Own Ecological Footprint on Our Planet Earth and Reduce the Size of that Footprint

Posted on March 03, 2008
The "True Path to Freedom" may be a somewhat different one than the politicians envision.Is it really the "other" guy who always holds the key to the true path to freedom on this planet, or do you also hold that key?At the Path to Freedom website you can calculate your own personal ecological footprint on our planet Earth, as there are links there to various ecological footprint calculators, including theEarth Day Footprint Quiz...

Need a Break? Clever Magazine is the Place to Find Intellectual Balance

Posted on March 03, 2008
Life, said Aristotle (very nearly), is balance.If you need a break, take a look at Clever Magazine, "The ezine for the neglected demographic!"In the hectic of modern-day life, just think about what Melissa Westemeier writes there in Every Day is Earth Day:"Everything we?re doing takes years, seven years for a prairie to mature, twenty years for an oak tree to produce its first acorn...

Useful Arts : A Blog About Law Technology Internet Privacy Copyrights Trademarks Free Speech Online Marketing Personal Expression E-Commerce

Posted on March 03, 2008
We ran across the Useful Arts blog today, which has the slogan "Online Law Blog: How trademark, copyright, privacy and politics shape the Web." You might consider adding Useful Arts to your blogrolls. Here is what we read there:"Hi, I?m Dave Wieneke, the host of UsefulArts...

America.gov Covers U.S. Foreign Policy, American Life and World Affairs plus 2008 Presidential Election Coverage

Posted on March 03, 2008
America.gov,"Telling America's Story", if you are not already familiar with this informative website, is described there as follows:"State Department?s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) engages international audiences on issues of foreign policy, society and values to help create an environment receptive to U...

Nubrella - A New Umbrella Idea

Posted on March 03, 2008
Nubrella is a new umbrella idea that reminds us of some ideas that we ourselves have had in designing an on-demand collapsible golf umbrella that would be hands-free, to be worn like a hat but not resting on the head and free-standing, attached firmly to the ears, almost like a kite...

Russia Votes in 2008 Presidential Election

Posted on March 02, 2008
The Presidential Election today in Russia (more correctly Russian Federation, ??????????? ??????????, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) covers 11 time zones (including Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg) and some of the polls have already closed at the time that we are writing this posting:Map of 11 Russian time zones linked from TheWorld...

Medvedev Elected President of the Russian Federation : Hillary Clinton's Comments About the Election Show She is Unfit for the Presidency

Posted on March 02, 2008
Dmitry Medvedev has won the election as President of the Russian Federation, holding about 69.4% of the vote with 75% of the votes counted.That was expected.What was not expected was Hillary Clinton's absolutely sophomoric media release at her website containing her "Statement of Hillary Clinton on Russia"...

Russian Election News : Keep Up to Date at Russia Today

Posted on March 01, 2008
Keep up to date on the March 2 elections in Russia at Russia Today, where they write that today, the day before elections, is a day of silence with all electioneering prohibited:"RT presents: Russia's ChoiceWith fewer than 24 hours left before the polling stations open, a so-called Day of Silence is in place across Russia with any further electioneering prohibited by law...

Raising the Bar : New Law Series Coming to TNT TV in 2008 : Created by Steven Bocho and Blawger and Author (Indefensible) David Feige

Posted on March 01, 2008
Indefensible is not only the blawg of David Feige but also the name of his book which we reviewed here on LawPundit, and where we prophetically wrote almost two years ago:"This book has all the potential of being the prospective beginning of a new successful TV series on the American criminal justice system...

Obama, the Jewish Vote and Campaign Misinformation by Others : Hillary Alienating Voters

Posted on March 01, 2008
In Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters, Neela Banerjee of the New York Times in that March 1, 2008 article goes through all of the misinformation that is being directed at Barack Obama by factions who do not want to see him elected as President...

U.S. President Bush Comments on the Upcoming Russian Presidential Election

Posted on March 01, 2008
In the February 28, 2008 Press Conference of the President of the United States, U.S. President George W. Bush had the following to say about the Russian Presidential Election which takes place tomorrow, March 2, 2008:"Q Sir, I'd like to ask you about Russia...

Medvedev Projected Winner of March 2, 2008 Presidential Election in Russia

Posted on March 01, 2008
So, you have an opinion on Russia? How about United Russia?United Russia is Russia's leading political party and it supports Dmitry Medvedev in tomorrow's Russian Presidential election.News reports about that election can be found at Russian Elections News...

Federal Circuit to Review Business Method Patents for Future Viability : There is a Great Likelihood of a New Upcoming Legal Standard

Posted on February 29, 2008
Will State Street Bank be overruled or substantially limited in scope? Let's all hope so.We have been criticizing business method patents for years... always one step ahead of developments.From Ropes & Gray Alerts & Legal Updates:"Full Federal Circuit to review business method patents Patents for intangible mental processes to be evaluated...

EU Translation Scope Defended by Language Director : But There is a Trend Toward English as the Lingua Franca

Posted on February 28, 2008
The great amount of language translation that is required in the European Union because of the many languages of the Member States is a cause of concern to some, but no one has come up with a better solution, and there is little likelihood that anything will change soon...

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