Happy Halloween!

Hey Mario! (I'm on the left.)

The might of the right

I'm reading this CNN article about how the religious right believes they own the SCOTUS nomination process -- they're threatening to "swing into action again" if Bush doesn't pick a conservative judge to their liking.

Although I understand why they feel so powerful -- it certainly can be argued that Bush bowed to them this time -- I don't think that was the case. Senators make the decisions, not interest groups. The problem with Miers wasn't that she wasn't conservative enough; the problem was she wasn't qualified enough. If she had been more articulate, if she had had any experience with constitutional law, if she had ever argued before the Supreme Court before... no amount of righty squawking would have prevented the nomination. She would have been confirmed.

I guess the question now is what Bush thinks about all this. I don't think he wants people to believe he's actually the puppet of the far right -- and I'm sure he's pissed at the right because Miers didn't pass. So I think there's a chance he again picks someone he likes, regardless of what the right thinks. This time, the nominee has to be smarter, though.

So... my prediction... I'll go with Samuel Alito. I think Michael Luttig would be too tough of a battle, but Alito would be a little easier. Or he could surprise us again and pick his barber. You never know.

Lost Doonesbury

Trudeau had a week of Miers-related strips ready to go... before she pulled out. Check 'em out.

Need a jinx?

cgnost: touchdown cardinal!
dave mcgee 22: touchdown
cgnost: holy shit, they're going to win
dave mcgee 22: shhhhh
cgnost: dude - how badly will i be beaten for jinxing this if they now lose?
dave mcgee 22: you'll just have to write my half of the brief
cgnost: ugh
cgnost: can't you just hit me with a sack of doorknobs?

* * *

dave mcgee 22: touchdown UCLA. i'm collecting doorknobs
cgnost: oh shit
dave mcgee 22: 3 and out... where is that sack...
cgnost: have faith
dave mcgee 22: touchdown UCLA
cgnost: oh shit
dave mcgee 22: thanks, dude
cgnost: have faith

* * *

cgnost: i'm sorry
cgnost: i ruined it
dave mcgee 22: yes you did
dave mcgee 22: touchdown
cgnost: dammit

* * *

dave mcgee 22: TIE GAME
dave mcgee 22: after a 21 point lead
cgnost: i still have faith
dave mcgee 22: jeez

* * *

cgnost: ot
dave mcgee 22: FG stanford
dave mcgee 22: uh oh
cgnost: uh oh

* * *

dave mcgee 22: you jinxed everything
dave mcgee 22: game over
cgnost: no!
dave mcgee 22: touchdown ucla
cgnost: NO!
dave mcgee 22: wow.
cgnost: wow indeed
cgnost: that's so amazing that it couldn't have been my fault
cgnost: right?
dave mcgee 22: i'm not sure. last week you said scooter libby was going to be fine
cgnost: that's not true
cgnost: come on
cgnost: i did say harriet miers would be confirmed, though

New M's coaches

The Mariners hired new pitching and hitting coaches today. I've never heard of them before, but I was surprised that the new hitting coach was most recently the hitting coach for the bruising Kansas City Royals. Oh, and the Royals fired him. Jeez. I have high hopes.

I'm perfect

I can't prove it, because I didn't discuss it with anybody or write it down anywhere, but I correctly predicted every series of the Major League Baseball postseason. You may not believe me, and I would have no way of convincing you otherwise except for promising that this is truth. At the close of the regular season, I thought to myself:

Angels over Yankees
White Sox over Red Sox
Cardinals over Padres
Astros over Braves
White Sox over Angels
Astros over Cardinals
White Sox over Astros

What can I say? I am a golden god.

Big ad

This might be the best commercial I've ever seen. Certainly in the top 10.

A "good series," part two

Several months ago I posed the question about what makes a good championship series. I said the key factor was the length of the series -- i.e., if it goes seven, it will be better than any series than only goes four. Others disagreed, saying the key factor was how close each individual game was. So now here we are, with the White Sox poised for a sweep after three close games. If they end up winning in four, will this series be better than the Detroit-San Antonio series, which went seven but featured only one close game?

I stick to my guns, saying the length of the series is the key factor. A four-game sweep, no matter how close and dramatic the games are, just doesn't match up with a seven-game series, even if the games were blowouts.

Never watch the 6pm SportsCenter

Or 3pm, for you west coasters.

I don't want to turn into FireJoeMorgan.com, but what a waste of time. Today's show will be 90 minutes long. No games have been played today -- there is absolutely nothing substantive to report about. So they fill it with Michael Irvin's review of the best and worst of yesterday's endzone dances, and the top 10 World Series walkoff homers. Wow.

Today's show started like this: "Today, HUGE news from college football, as Texas takes over the lead in the BCS standings." What crap. Anyone who knows a thing about college football, or how these rankings are compiled, will tell you how this is no news at all. It's a complete non-story. First of all, it doesn't matter at all, and won't matter until after the regular season. Second, there is no reason for outrage -- much to ESPN's disappointment. You have two undefeated teams, and one has played a tougher schedule so far. Ergo, one team is ahead of the other. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.

As a side note, I don't understand the incessant outrage over the BCS. The computer factors were added when people realized that voters are not objective judges -- they're influenced by regional biases and the (relatively) arbitrary pre-season rankings. Computers measure the team's season performance more objectively, but of course they're not capable of measuring everything. So it make sense to have a balance between human and computer rankings. But whenever the human rankings are usurped by the computer's -- which is exactly what they are supposed to do in certain situations -- we hear that the sky is falling. The BCS is fine, people. Leave it alone.

Well played

I recognize that I risk jinxing everything, but I have to pause and reflect on a quality sports weekend. It's rare when all the good guys win, so I must salute it.

Michigan pulled out an overtime win on Saturday -- the fifth consecutive game that has been won on the last play of the game. What a crazy season we're having here in Ann Arbor... people look disheveled, their hair all messed up and bags under their eyes. Every game (except the creampuff games against EMU and Northern Illinois) has been tight. Michigan may yet make some noise in the Big-10 race.

I remain dumbfounded by the Stanford turnaround. After the UC-Davis loss, I thought we'd just pack it in. But three wins later (after Saturday's win over Arizona State), Stanford is in fourth place in the Pac-10, behind only USC, UCLA, and Oregon, who have a combined record of 21-1. The bad news is that we still have games against USC, UCLA, Cal, and Notre Dame (plus Oregon State). So getting the two wins necessary for bowl eligibility may be tough. It might come down to the Big Game, which I think is on the same day as Michigan-Ohio State. I might not survive that day.

Then, most delightfully, the Seahawks won a game they always seem to lose. They scored 10 points in the last minute of the game to beat Dallas... this is exactly what they usually do to lose games. I think the Seahawks are trying to seduce me into thinking that the bad mojo is over, and this could be the year. Noooooo, stay away devil! I will not let these flashy wins corrupt my good judgment. I will not. I still expect the Seahawks to blow this season somehow, somewhere, in a way that would make a lesser man (read: me, last year) cry. I will stay strong in my pessimism.

And yet... Go Seahawks!

As a post-script, if anyone cares (um, yeah, no one does), my bowling scores from Thursday: 133, 128, 157. Better...

My friends are smarter than Harriet Miers

I'm sure she's a lovely woman. I'm sure she's a great coworker. I'm sure she's a blast at the holiday party. But a Supreme Court justice? We'd be better off with some Michigan Law School 3Ls than Harriet Miers.

She turned in her questionnaire to the Senate. Holy crap. We all work harder on our taxes than she did on this thing. I work harder when I take an Internet IQ quiz. Is she kidding?

True, it's 57 pages long. Maybe she thought nobody would read the whole thing. But damn. This thing is ugly. The Senate wants a do-over. Has that ever happened before?

And it's not like she was incomplete with some of her answers -- she was plainly and completely wrong with some of her answers. How does that happen?

1. She talks about a "proportional representation requirement" of the Equal Protection Clause. Uhhh... what? Let's just say it: "'There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause,' says Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago." Yep, that's about it. It doesn't exist. In fact, you could even make the case that she's saying that affirmative action is required by the constitution. Surely she doesn't mean that... especially when George Bush "knows her heart." There ain't no affirmative action in her heart, is there?

2. In her response to a question asking about "judicial activism," something I also have wondered about, she stumbles again. When she clerked for Federal District Judge Joe Estes, his "first task—and therefore mine in assisting him—in every case before him was to examine whether the case was properly in court," Miers wrote. "Was there a party with standing? Did subject matter jurisdiction exist? Was venue proper?" If the answer to any of these questions was no, she continued, "the case was dismissed promptly."
And that's, again, just wrong. Anyone who has taken a class in Jurisdiction can tell you that a mistake in venue does not necessarily doom the case, and does not call for an immediate dismissal. It's not a fatal flaw. Usually, if venue is incorrect, the judge will just transfer the case to the right venue. Most often, as the comments over at Volokh point out, the defendant actually has to make a motion to change venue. In any event, an error in venue does NOT call for dismissal. This may seem like a minor mistake, but there is a big difference between a transfer and a dismissal. It's not a mistake anybody would make if they wanted to get an A in Jurisdiction, and I'd like to think my Supreme Court justices would get an A in Jurisdiction since they, like, make the rules and stuff.

Needless to say, I'm not impressed. And there's no wondering why Senators called her answers "insufficient" and "insulting." If nothing else, however, the confirmation hearings should be awesome. In the meantime, my girl Dahlia Lithwick has a questionnaire that Harriet might be able to handle. Examples: "True or False: Barbara and Jenna totally don't appreciate how cool their mom and dad are." "If Jesus and President Bush got into a fight, who would win?"

After all this, I'm confident in saying that there are a lot of people walking the halls with me who seem to have a better grasp on constitutional law than Harriet does. I'm not saying I do -- because, hell, I can't even get a clerkship for next year -- but there are a bunch of people here who do. If only they were friends with George Bush!

Indictment bingo

Is anyone interested in playing Indictment Bingo (a.k.a. "Fitzmas Bingo") with me?

Nice

Just when the Seahawks seem to be running on all cylinders, Ken Hamlin has to go get his brain bruised. And his skull fractured. Good work.

Wow.

I never thought I'd see the day when beer pong is covered in the New York Times. This article makes it out as if beer pong were a bad thing, but whatever.

Dammit.

October 15, 2005: this is the date on which I first noticed that I have gray hairs. I generally don't study my head very often, so I've probably had them for a while, but this is the first time I've ever noticed them.

And that Nioxin stuff, which was supposed to awaken my slumbering hair follicles? It's crap.

We're number one!

Well, actually, we're not. We suck. But that doesn't stop us from celebrating a pretty awesome win over previously undefeated Penn State. One second left in the game... down by four... at the PSU ten yard line... TOUCHDOWN. Bedlam.

Almost more shocking is that Stanford won again. Buddy never would have let this happen. I also note that Stanford is now 2-1 in the Pac-10, and the poor Golden Bears are 2-2. Hmm.

The Miers nomination

I've said it before -- I don't really care that much about a judge's personal views on issues x, y, and z. All I care about is whether the judge can make sound judgments and then express them in a coherent opinion. I have no reason to believe, at this point, that Harriet Miers is capable of this.

I don't mind that she's never been a judge -- I think that's good, actually. But she has never held a position where she needs to think and reason independently; she has always represented one side of the issue. I think this is a major fault. I wonder if she'll be able to sit in a conference room with certified legal geniuses like Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia and hold her own. I fear that she'll be easily pushed around by whichever argument is most persuasive -- regardless of whether it's right -- and she won't have the skill or confidence to disagree.

The fact that the White House's biggest selling point is her "loyalty" to the President is... um... not good. Although I still have my reservations about John Roberts, he appeared to at least understand the importance of an independent judiciary. Roberts is happy to give the Executive as much power as the Constitution allows, but he still knows there is a limit. We have nothing that suggests Miers would ever stand up to the President if she had to. He's the "most brilliant man he's ever met" (shudder), and she'd do anything for him. At least, that's what the White House tells us.

The other selling point is that she "won't change" over the next 20 years. And this is a good thing? I suppose it is for conservatives, who have Souter-phobia. But it sounds horrible to me.

The confirmation hearings should be interesting. Whereas Roberts didn't have to say anything in order to be confirmed (and so he said nothing), Miers will have to talk to convince people she's qualified. I'd be willing to bet she is studying pretty hard right now -- she has a nationally televised bar exam in a couple months.

The dean of the law school said this week that he'd "bet the house" that she gets confirmed. I didn't think it would be such a sure thing, but he knows what he's talking about.

Lastly, if you haven't seen it, check out Harriet Miers' blog. Pretty funny.

Wheels have come off

Last night I bowled an 88, 96, and 130. I am officially a bad bowler. This is a distressing development.

Still busy...

... but here's the coolest video I've seen in a while. (Quicktime required.)

Busy times

I would love to be blogging right now about baseball and football and Harriet Miers and Gonzales v. Oregon... but I'm busy as hell. Hopefully tomorrow...

Holy crap

Stanford won a football game. I'm stunned.

Turning a corner?

Last night's bowling scores: 159, 143, 128. It's not good that I got worse with every game, but at least I didn't totally suck. Maybe I'm heading back to respectability.

Seahawks... I'm healed

It took me four days to recover from last week's debacle in DC so that I'm again looking forward to this weekend's game against St. Louis. I am a masochist. This is the only explanation. And just so I don't appear that I'm in my own world of self-pity, here is an outsider's opinion on the Seahawks:

On the phone this week, ESPN.com editor and (long-suffering Seattle fan) Kevin Jackson and I tried to remember all the painful Seahawks losses from the past two calendar years, eventually coming up with six beauties: Last week's crushing missed FG against the Skins; Engram's drop in the 2004 playoff game; Hasselbeck's INT TD in Lambeau; Anthony Wright's unfathomable comeback against them in Baltimore (2003); Vinny's even more unfathomable comeback on Monday night last year; and the crushing collapse against the 2004 Rams that started last year's mini-slide. Six of the most memorably devastating NFL losses in the last 24 months happened to the same team! How does this happen?

Exactly. As anyone who has watched a Seahawk game with me recently can tell you, I now expect them to lose in the most painful way possible. And then they do.

Anyway, the game this week should be good. Rams-Hawks games are always wacky, with lots of offense and one or two big defensive plays. The Seahawks D has been okay this year, but they haven't forced hardly any turnovers. 2 turns in 4 games, I think. That's got to improve. You can't make the offense go 70-80 yards for every touchdown. The offense is good -- 2nd in the league in yards right now. If they could just work with better field position, they could really put some points on the board. So the key to the game this weekend will be turnovers. If the D can force 2 or more, Hawks win. If not, I cry myself to sleep... again.

And as a post script to my last post about how sad my sports life is... my dad points out that I have been to a Rose Bowl and a Final Four -- two things he has never done. Fair point. However, I'd also like to point out that Stanford lost both times. My complaint with my teams is not that they don't have good regular seasons. How could I -- the Mariners won 116 games one year! But they lost in the ALCS in depressing fashion. My complaint is that my teams never win championships. And among major sports cities, only Cleveland can compare with Seattle in championship futility. Cleveland.

That's all.

Fall is here

Today is the last day of warm around here. The weatherman made this announcement tonight: "The warm is gone." Today, the high was 83. Tomorrow, the high is 56. Just like that.

The leaves had already started changing colors, so it has been a good time around here. But now the spectre of winter is upon us. It won't snow for another couple months, but it's coming.

I'm going to try to take more pictures of Ann Arbor and the law school this year. I might post the better ones here.

Mmmm, gator

This is the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. It's also exactly how I felt after the infamous Annihilator Challenge.

Leland gone

Ted Leland is stepping down as Stanford's AD. This is sad in that the university's sports program is the best in the country, and has been since he got there. This is not sad in that we no longer will have to deal with his nepotism when it comes time to choosing football coaches.

Overall, he's been good. He has helped renovate Maples Pavilion and Stanford Stadium, we have seen a Final Four and a Rose Bowl, and we have a streak of 11 straight Director's Cups. But right now, we have a really bad football team.

And, what the hell, he wanted to go back to Stockton?! Okay dude.

New term

The Supreme Court is back is session, which is fun. CNN has a nice list of some of the more high-profile cases coming up.

Seahawks

This blog's masthead mentions that I am a "tortured Seattle sports fan." The great thing is that no one has ever disputed this claim. If I meet someone here and mention that I follow Seattle sports, I generally get a pat on the shoulder and a, "I'm sure you'll win something someday" look. How pitiful I am to them.

I've got to figure out how to make the torture less painful. Yesterday, I was in a complete funk all day after the Seahawks blew the game to Washington. Friends went out to a bar, but I stayed in and tried to work. I didn't want to see anyone; I couldn't feign the social happiness necessary to avoid being the grouchy guy nobody wants to talk to. All because the goddamned kicker missed a field goal.

Every time they lose, I tell myself not to care as much. I decide this is the last time the team will jerk me around. And then the next game starts, and I sit on pins and needles waiting for the next 3rd down conversion. And it starts all over again.

I don't know why I do it -- I've come to the conclusion that none of it matters because the teams I root for will never, ever, win a championship. So the little games should just be a charming diversion. But they're not. They are the difference between a good day and a bad day.

Maybe it's because I've already suffered too much to give up now. If they ever do win a championship (see, it's a sickness -- I know they never will), it will all be sweeter because of all the torment. Right? Oh hell. I need serious help.