After he dismissed charges yesterday that John McCain has a temper, Chris Matthews today had no problems with Pat Buchanan implying that Obama was an elitist.

Pat Buchanan says that Barack Obama's problem is that HE IS University of Chicago and that in fact he is "Faculty Lounge". Chris Matthews just laughs and says he thinks "that is the problem". So apparently it's OK to consistently imply character flaws with Democrats but its not OK to suggest that someone who got in an actual fight has a temper?

Maybe I'm overreacting. But if I didn't know any better it seems like the candidate getting the free pass isn't Obama, it's McCain.

Missing the larger point?

This statement is from Hillary Clinton's campaign website, part of a charming list titled "Just Embellished Words: Senator Obama’s Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements," released a mere three days ago, on March 25:

Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor. The Sun-Times reported that, "Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school. In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles. Details matter." In academia, there's a significant difference: professors have tenure while lecturers do not. [Hotline Blog, 4/9/07; Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/04]

Though the allegation was relaunched a few days back, it's been part of the Clinton campaign's bill of anti-Obama particulars for a while.

Well, guess what?  It's nonsense.    (more below:)

[Note: This diary was written in the immediate aftermath of Obama's Philadelphia speech on race, "A More Perfect Union."]

In the fall of 2000, as a second-year student at the University of Chicago Law School, I was one of about twenty students in a seminar called "Current Issues in Racism and the Law," taught by Professor (and then-state senator) Barack Obama.

It was my favorite class, and Obama my favorite professor, in my three years in Chicago. Obviously it's been exciting tracking the ol' prof since then (I can proudly say that I attended the now-famous "I'm against dumb wars" speech in person in 2002, and I was not one of the many Democrats "caught by surprise" by the power of the 2004 convention keynote address). The Speech today, though, has sent me back to my notes from my class in 2000.

Of course I was aware--more from the 2002 experience than the seminar, really--that Obama has an enormous talent for inspiring people; that's hardly news. But what was so exciting to me this morning was that the Obama of today's speech was the one who taught that seminar at the end of 2000.

The other day I heard from my friend Chris.  We've known each other since high school and over the years, have been in and out of touch.  By coincidence, he e-mailed me several days before Super Tuesday and I was sure it had to do with the election.  It didn't.  He wrote regarding the new Herbie Hancock CD, River: The Joni Letters.  We both love jazz and he wanted to share this new CD, one of his top three of all time which is saying a lot.  Also, by coincidence, I had just seen Herbie Hancock in the Yes We Can video and passed along the link.

The point to all this is that I had been thinking of Chris lately because years before, when Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago, Chris played basketball with him at a regular weekly game.  I thought, how cool is that...my friend played basketball with the next President of the United States.  

Chris wrote back, talking about those days on the court with Barack Obama before he ran for anything.  I thought it gave great insight into the man's character, in an era of spin and news cycles. This metaphor matters, which is why I'm sharing Chris' e-mail below.

"I don’t play that, and I don’t know you like that" were the first words that came to mind as I watched former President Bill Clinton’s vile attempt to make renowned civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson the 2008 version of Willie Horton for the remaining Democratic Party presidential primaries.

In a blatant attempt to dismiss Senator Barack Obama’s decisive win of the South Carolina Democratic Party primary by the biggest margin of victory of any primary contest held thus far in a state with the largest number of delegates to date, Bill Clinton used racially-coded language to imply that Sen. Obama’s victory was not as important because it was the result of overwhelming support of African-American voters and that even the Rev. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina during the 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential caucuses.

Bill Clinton, in a desperate aeffort to galvanize additional support for his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton’s bid to win the Democratic Party nomination, sought to marginalize Sen. Barack Obama as a "black candidate" ...

cross posted from RFK Action Front

For a while now, I've been interested in the role of the those who rationalize empire.  While soldiers are often sent in to seize the land -- I'm fascinated by the role of the white collar professionals who follow: the priests (who say it is God's will), the lawyers (who say the soldiers' actions were justified and set up rules to exploit the conquered people), and the economists (who say the exploited people are really better off now anyway).  While the soldiers' actions are often the focus on the peace movement -- in many ways, I think the actions of the bureaucrats are often more insidious.  The soldiers can kill you, but the bureaucrats are the ones who erase a people's history, colonize one's mind, and perpetuate injustice long after the soldiers have gone.

I figure that Mark Buehrle's no-hitter is cause enough to begin my diary entering on DailyKos...

Anyhow, Mark Buehrle just tossed a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers.  It may just be a cold Wednesday night in Chicago, but we're celebrating here on the South Side.  As a lifelong Sox fan, I'm a little mad that I wasn't even watching this particular game on TV, but it would sure as hell have been better to even be there.  You can check out ESPN's coverage here.  I guess I picked the wrong cold game at The Cell when I went last week.

Ed Leefeldt at the Washingtonpost and Clay Risen of TNR both separately wrote very interesting investigative reports that many or you may have missed. First Mr. Risen writes:

On March 7, 2007, a "media and research" company called eSapience filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against C.V. Starr & Co., the California investment firm helmed by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

What makes this suit so interesting is not C.V. Starr's alleged actions, but the services eSapience was hired to perform. That's because, far from being a typical p.r. firm, eSapience, run by a clique of conservative, free-market academics, is in the business of buying and manipulating influence at the very highest levels of academic and intellectual circles--a cynical strategy laid out in deep detail by the lawsuit. The suit, in fact, is a Rosetta Stone into the extremes to which a group of right-wingers have taken the phrase "marketplace of ideas"--and it has exposed the lengths to which some people will go to buy intellectual influence.

Clay Risen of TNR wrote a very interesting investigative report that many or you may have missed.

On March 7, 2007, a "media and research" company called eSapience filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against C.V. Starr & Co., the California investment firm helmed by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

What makes this suit so interesting is not C.V. Starr's alleged actions, but the services eSapience was hired to perform. That's because, far from being a typical p.r. firm, eSapience, run by a clique of conservative, free-market academics, is in the business of buying and manipulating influence at the very highest levels of academic and intellectual circles--a cynical strategy laid out in deep detail by the lawsuit. The suit, in fact, is a Rosetta Stone into the extremes to which a group of right-wingers have taken the phrase "marketplace of ideas"--and it has exposed the lengths to which some people will go to buy intellectual influence.

I've sometimes wondered about the history of the relationship between the GOP and the so-called religious right (RR). Much of this has been talked about here and elsewhere. But in my ignorance I don't recall a discussion on DKos concerning the neoconservatives (neocons), who as a group seem to me indifferent to religion, and their relationship with the RR. In looking into this possible relationship, I realized that I had assumed that the RR's connection with the neocons was largely coincidental, to the degree that I had probably bought into some natural affinity between the RR and the forces of conservatism such as the GOP has come to represent, specially since Nixon. This timeline by itself should have alerted me, since we are becoming more familiar now with the roles of neocon liaisons, Rumsfeld and Cheney, in the Ford administration.

More after the fold.

Cross-posted from The Tortellini:

If you listen to tort reform debates long enough, you'll hear a common refrain about the tort system's "unpredictability" and "irrational jurors" who can't be trusted to put a dollar figure on corporate or medical wrongdoing. Sober legal minds like the University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein and patrician Common Good founder Philip Howard argue that decisions about the size of punitive or noneconomic damages ought to be made by experts, not average Americans on juries, maybe even using some sort of fixed schedule, to bring more order and predictability to the system.

This all sounds so reasonable and rational, until you read stories like those published in the Charleston Gazette last month about coal mine safety.

I was actually thinking about Milton Friedman the day before he died, the latest in about two dozen attempts to compose in my head this piece. What prompted me Wednesday night was watching the segment of the PBS New York City history that included the Triangle Fire.

Milton Friedman, the champion of free markets, died.  Friedman spent his career teaching in a private college that was supported by government grants to students.

A proud member of the University of Chicago, I plan to attend these protests.  Please join me and others, including the great Slovenian politician and psychoanalytic theorist, Slavoj Zizek, who is one of my personal favorites, at the Reynolds Club at 57th and University Streets.  I wonder if other politicians affiliated with this campus plan on attending.

I post an email I received below.

Yesterday, Tuesday February 21, four University of Chicago students were arrested for protesting Marine Recruiters who were on campus.  The four students are Jeremy Cohan, Ben Fink, Tom Discepola, and Brian Stapleton.  They have been charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.  You can read about what transpired and see some cell phone pics of the events at the website of undergraduate student Jarrett Belle-Isle ( http://www.jbelleisle.com/ ), from which I quote the story below the jump.

This is cross-posted from ToRule.Us, my primary blog, where I've received a few off-blog requests for information about Leo Strauss and his merry band of neo-conservatives.  Having composed a fairly long essay on the subject in response, it occurred to me I should probably make it available through the blog, as well.  So here it is.  It's a dark tale full of evil, wrongdoing, and college professors.  Doesn't get much better than that, que no?

To read the essay in full, take a short trip to Read Moreland....