Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

South Florida Democrats Field Strong Congressional Candidates

The Miami Herald's Metro section today has a big article on Annette Taddeo's plan to challenge Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for the Florida's 18th congressional district. (Official Annette Taddeo for Congress web site.) Goodness knows that the incumbent has been a terrible representative for us: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen relentlessly for the war and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen routinely puts ideology above South Florida's economic interests.

[Other relevant past posts: Who Will Run Against Ros-Lehtinen? (All Politics Is Local) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Admits She Lied, But Doesn’t Apologize.]

There is something strange, even unique, about the Herald's article, however: it is not available on line. I have never before encountered a Metro section piece that I wanted to link to that wasn't available online for at least a week. No idea if it's human error, some new policy, or something special.

Meanwhile, some of the details are at Eye on Ileana: Annette Taddeo's bid for District 18 is now open.

Needless to say, I'm delighted that IR-L has drawn a serious challenger, although anyone would have to admit that it will be an uphill struggle.

Meanwhile, good things are happening in neighboring districts: local political operative and popular long-time Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez is challenging Lincoln Diaz-Balart in the 21st.

Even better, local Democratic star Joe Garcia announced he's running in District 25 against Mario Diaz-Balart. (Official Joe Garcia for Congress web site.) Here's a piece of the TV coverage:

We're in for interesting times, a taste of which can be found in TheHill.com's Sensing Cuba shift, Democrats target trio of House Republicans in Florida.

Posted in Politics: FL-18 | Comments Off on South Florida Democrats Field Strong Congressional Candidates

InfraGard: Below the Radar

Best-quality tin-foil I've seen in weeks: it's a substantially (but not utterly) unsourced report originating from The Progressive, which is more respectable than you often get for stuff of this kind. And, unlike most stuff of this kind, I can't automatically debunk it, although I can certainly construct scenarios in which relatively innocent comments might be misunderstood (“Will you get in trouble for stopping people storming your power plant? No”).

But it can't really be the case that the FBI and Homeland Security are going around recruiting businesses to be capos if we ever need martial law, can it?

So, readers, reassuring pointers would be most welcome.

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | 7 Comments

A Tale From the Forked Tongue Express

Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director, takes a ride on the Forked Tongue Express, and writes that John McCain Should Be Ashamed. Here's the start:

I have just listened to carefully coached staff members for Senator John McCain lie repeatedly about the Senator's failure to show up and vote on the first Senate economic-stimulus package, which included tax incentives for clean energy. I am in a state of shock not because of the Senator's vote, although that disappointed me, nor over his desire to avoid public accountability for that vote — that's politics. But to carefully coach your Senate staff (I assume the Chief of Staff, not the Senator, was the author of this shameful performance) in how to mislead callers in such depth is appalling, and surprising, because it was almost certain to be found out.

He's got details.

Posted in Politics: McCain | 1 Comment

Latest Firefox Version Has a Little Problem

Slashdot | Serious Vulnerability In Firefox 2.0.0.12

“Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12, mere hours old, is vulnerable by default to a directory traversal trick, via the view-source mechanism. Although mitigated by the NoScript plug-in, this is quite a serious bug — the default installation is vulnerable from the get-go.”

Posted in Software | 3 Comments

How to Enable Denial of Service Attacks on Courts

Following Vernon Valentine Palmer's evidence that judges were more likely to rule for parties that had contributed to their election, X-Judge H. Lee Sarokin endorses a mandatory recusal policy for elected judges: “Judges should recuse themselves in cases in which either a lawyer or litigant has contributed to their election.”

Sounds great, right? So if I'm a corporate lawyer (or union lawyer) and think Judge Y leans too far towards unions (or against, as the case may be), all I have to do is make a token contribution to that judge and voila! I've stacked the bench.

The disease is likely real, but this cure is worse than the disease.

Posted in Law: Ethics | 2 Comments

Dark Doings at the Pentagon

Scott Horton, Jim Haynes’s Long Twilight Struggle.

I wish we had more journalism like this.

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | Comments Off on Dark Doings at the Pentagon