Conn. Senate Race Still Likely to Have a Democratic Winner:
CQPolitics.com has analyzed Tuesday’s stunning primary upset of Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman by political newcomer Ned Lamont, and has determined that the seat is highly likely to be held by a Democrat when the 110th Congress convenes in January.
52-48 in favor of Lamont with about 98% of the votes counted.
I just saw the Lieberman concession speech — and all I can say is “Sore Loserman” indeed. Didn’t even sleep on announcing as a third party candidate.
And his concession speech was sanctimonious and hypocritical: accusing Lamont of “insults instead of ideas” — not to mention the Rovian claim that Lamont (!) is part of the “old politics” that has made Washington what it was.
So here’s my question: When a candidate loses a party primary then announces that he will run against the party’s nominee, will the Senate Democrats let him keep their seats on committees, or will they replace him with a real Democrat?
Keep in mind that losing the primary will not help Lieberman’s poll numbers. And that a lot of independents haven’t gotten to know Lamont yet. He’ll do well with moderates — for healthcare and against the war.
And if it turns out that Lieberman’s claim that his web site was hacked turns out to be incompetence instead — that will really help label him as a man of the past.
As the world is abuz with discussion of AOL’s boneheaded release of identifiable customer searches (see here for an example of what can be found) here’s an only tangentially relevant animated cartoon about government eavesdropping. Whether you should be more worried about public or private snooping is a very tough question. And ultimately maybe not a meaningful one, as the government can buy or demand private records…
I was interviewed my NPR’s Marketplace about the AOL fiasco this morning, so you may find me on your radio somewhere. [Update: they used a small soundbite.]
The Washington Monthly Magazine has produced an idiosyncratic list of rankings of undergraduate colleges. I haven’t looked at the methodology, but the rankings for Florida are quite suspect from the point of view of a person trying to decide where to send their kids. That has nothing to do with law schools, but bear with me.
The University of Florida is ranked 37th. The Florida Institute of Technology is ranked 121st. FSU is 132nd. Nova is 157th. The University of South Florida is 158th. FIU is 169th. And UM is 170th.
I’m not offended by the idea that the undergraduate college at UF might beat UM on a value-for-money scale: especially if one is weighing the cost of in-state tuition, UF might well be a better deal for your educational dollar despite the gigantic class size and the location in Gainesville. And I’m sure that every college in the state has departments that shine. But overall I simply find it inconceivable that the college at UM, which has made such enormous strides in the past 10-20 years and which today boasts by far the strongest faculty in its history, could possibly be ranked so much lower than UF, not to mention behind those other schools.
OK, UM isn’t quite at the rear of the state sweepstakes, as UCF got ranked at 193, and FAU at 240, but still.
Some people are really going to love this one: academicsecret blog (spotted via Feminist Law Profs — who incidentally, have a male guest blogger at present…)
The home network’s access to the outside world croaked this week.
Monday saw intermittent failures … resulting in hours of fruitless debugging on my part … followed eventually by total DSL or router collapse on Thursday (it’s not the switches — the computers see each other just fine). After plugging a laptop right into the modem failed to get a signal, even though all the right lights on the modem were green, Bellsouth decided that the problem was my aged Alcatel 1000 modem, and offered to send me a replacement Westell if I’d just agree to keep paying them for another year. Yeah, like any addict makes plans to cut off his supply…
The “new” modem came late Friday. It’s a tiny slip of a thing compared the Alcatel behemoth. Only it wasn’t a new modem, it’s refurbished. And there’s still no signal — only this time the DSL light blinks instead of giving the steady green one requires. Another call to BellSouth revealed that they failed to ship me a line filter which it seems that a Westell requires to operate (but the Alcatel 1000 does not). So, more promises to send what’s needed — although not until late Tuesday.
As a result, posting may be light for the next couple of days as the kids are home and I’m not going into the office much.
So, if you are trying to reach me by email, please be patient. Or just pick up the phone?
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