Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Welcome to ‘Bricks on the Brain’

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Welcome to Bricks on the Brain, a new blog by a UM law student. S/he doesn't provide any biographical information, but I'm guessing that s/he is not a first year student, and has

  • Keen powers of observation. (“Without a doubt the majority of UM Law professors are left-leaning. But usually politics are kept out of the classrooms, and policy issues within the law receive balanced coverage. … Students at UM are very respectful of each other's political and religious views. With one exception, I have never seen any flyers I felt were objectionable, inflammatory, or in bad taste. For political discussions on the Bricks, civility is the norm.”)
  • A taste for interesting questions (“Do private outline banks violate the UM Law Honor Code?”)
  • And last, but not least, a good grasp of the obvious (“Professor Froomkin['s] … blog focuses on politics. He clearly does not like president Bush.”)

One to watch.

Incidentally, on the question about outline banks, I'd be surprised, unless there is a rule against unintentionally passing on mistaken information….

Posted in U.Miami | 2 Comments

Free Country Datum VI: Secret Service v. First Amendment

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

When the Praetorians start preventing the press from doing its job, that's serious: Bush uses Secret Service to keep reporters from protestors.

But of course the Secret Service are not tasked with protecting citizens from being attacked for exercising their rights, so they cannot be blamed for inaction when people are kicked or otherwise attacked by other citizens.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 1 Comment

Are CBS’s Documents Real?

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Questions, credible ones, swirl about the authenticity and provenance of the Lt. Col. Jerry Killian documents revealed by CBS.

There are very odd things about these papers. Yet, the case for forgery is lessened, I think, by the White House's failure to claim the documents are not real. That said, I have no faith at all in arguments that claim 'if this were a forgery they surely would have done a better job'—carelessness is rampant in the world.

Document authentication not being my forte, I'm just going to link here to anything interesting I read on the subject. I'll update this post in the next day or two if I find more interesting stuff.

  • Powerline jumps all over them
  • CBS stands by its documents, and a former colleague of Col. Killian's thinks they are real. Col. Killian's son, however, doubts they are real.
  • Warblogging.com looks at the technical issues, the possible motivations for forgery
  • The Washington Post interviews experts dubious about the documents
  • At “The Blogging of the President: 2004”, Stirling Newberry summarizes the ways in which the documents look too modern and then offers and evaluates various hypotheses as to how they came to be that way. Most plausible:

    Any expert worth his salt would look at the signatures we see, and the difficulties in producing the documents contemporaneously, and scratch his head. However, if there are hard originals – that is typed or hand written originals – and these are the readable typed or “fair” copies, then the problem vanishes. CBS saw the real things, can't release them (off the record), but can release documents which, while not originals, are copies which have the same content in them, prepared by Killian (his signature on them). They are on solid ground, with provenence, and the holders of the originals – whoever they are – are not bothered by nagging questions of how they got those originals. CBS protects confidentiality, and if need be, can prove that yes, these things are legitimate.

Update1: The Spectator claims that 'a retired military officer' has been peddling these documents for weeks and that the Kerry campaign may have passed them on to CBS.

Update2: First Draft, Now I'm a 'Document Expert', Too finds superscripts in old National Guard documents

Also CBS News has reiterated its full confidence in the authenticity of the documents. Dan Rather said, “The story is true” and “no retraction has been discussed, nor should it be.”

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 29 Comments

Angry Bear is Very Angry

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

[UPDATE: Angry Bear has nothing on Mad Magazine (via Atrios)]

Angry Bear — one of my favorite online economists — sets out his vision of what the Democratic ad campaign would be like if it fought fire with fire:

“what would total political war against Bush look like?
Here's a start:”

  • A commercial juxtaposing the President reading from My Pet Goat with the towers burning. Voiceover: “While America was under attack, here's what your president was doing.” End with headlines describing the President spending 9/11 hiding out in air bases and locations other than DC. For good measure, add that “Osama bin Laden remains at large.”
  • A commercial about Bush's failure to serve. Start with this quote from The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990:

    “I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”

    Then cut to Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett alleging that he witnessed Bush's National Guard records being scrubbed, and point out that Bush has never accounted for his whereabouts during 1972 and 1973, nor why he stopped flying. Then end with Linda Allison:

    Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?

    “The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing,” Allison's widow, Linda, told me. “And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal.”

    … Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: “Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way.”

  • And as long as unfounded and unsupported attacks are fair game, don't forget the Bush Abortion story. There's no evidence, but hey, the Swift Boat Veterans not only lack evidence, their story contradicts all available documentary evidence! And don't forget Clinton's love-child!

  • And don't forget that Bush won't say when he stopped using cocaine. Sure, this is nearly on the level of “When did you stop beating your wife?”, but that's where this campaign is heading. Perhaps more accurately, that's where the Bush side of this campaign already is. This would surely be less egregious than Falwell and Robertson pushing the Clinton Chronicles video, complete with tales of Clinton running a drug ring out of the Mena, Arkansas airport.
  • I'm not sure whether it would resonate, but there's also fodder in the fairly well-documented story of Bush's string of business failures, complete with bailouts by friends of his father, throughout the 1980s.
  • Bring back Henry and Louise to talk about eating dog food after their Medicare premiums increase 17%. (Since this is true, documented, and contemporary, it may not even count as negative.)
Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | Comments Off on Angry Bear is Very Angry

#2 Again

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Hispanic Business Magazine's annual ranking of the Top Ten Law Schools for Hispanics rates UM #2—again.

Continue reading →

Posted in U.Miami | Comments Off on #2 Again

Three Days as a ‘Political Prisoner’ in NYC

Posted on September 10, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

James Gaites has an excellent first-person account of his recent experience of very civil disobedience during the Republican Convention. Death and Life in New York: Three Days in the City for an RNC Protester.

There is surely grist for the mill here for everyone. The police arrested many people whithout cause, including bystanders. They also penned up protestors and then arrested them for failing to disperse, having made it impossible.

Once arrested, it's obvious that at the very least NYC did not make much effort to process protestors either as quickly as the law required or as quickly as they could have, indeed managed (intentionally?) to put them on ice for the entire convention. And the outdoor pen in which people were held may have had biohazards that people were forced to sleep on. Sanitation was rough.

On the other hand, there were no systematic beatings, some food was provided eventually, and even people who were clearly guilty of parading without a permit were released without fines. No one disappeared, and now they are free to write about it and to litigate.

How do we score this? To call it a 'win' for civil liberties is to set the bar far too low. Yet, is the term 'political prisoner' really apt? If so, it's the mildest confinement regime for a 'political' I ever read about.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 3 Comments