Today's "unintentional irony" award goes to the Supremes. Compare Vieth (2004) (PDF, 1.75mb) (partisan gerrymandering is not justiciable) with Bush, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) (partisan-like, outcome-determinative decision on counting votes). At least they're consistent. Consistently off the wall, but consistent nonetheless.

Just a few random observations—

• Apparently, President Clinton doesn't need an editor, or perhaps even a proofreader. A little examination of the calendar demonstrates this. For simplicity's sake, let's say that My Life released eight weeks from today. Four weeks of that is in production—for 1.5 million copies casebound, plus shipping to stores, one just can't do better (or at least not much better) than that. That leaves four weeks for editorial suggestions, the author's response, review of the author's response, layout, proofreading the layout, integrating the author's own proofread, etc. Perhaps this can all be done if the book is done in "parts" (and the material that has already been turned in has already gone all the way through). It won't be a very good quality job, though, as a good edit does not even begin until one has read the manuscript all the way through at least once. I'd start a contest for "most hilarious error not ascribable to spin," but that would be shooting big fish in a little barrel.
• European competition law often presents an interesting contrast to American competition law, especially when competition and intellectual property overlap. The Advocate General's office offers advisory opinions to its members' national courts on "difficult" questions. West Publishing should be glad that the opinion in IMS Health v. NDC Health doesn't represent the law over here, or its monopolistic position and practices on case law and statutory compilations in this country would disappear. <SARCASM> What a shame that would be. </SARCASM>
• As an interesting contrast to yesterday's Supreme Court hearing on international application of US antitrust laws, consider a not-quite-published-yet WTO ruling on cotton subsidies. What I find most interesting is that traditional jurisprudence for personal jurisdiction over a tortfeasor—the stuff one actually learns in conflicts of law, as opposed to the whitewash in 1L civil procedure—makes the WTO's opinion obvious. Thus, we have yet another variety of "tort reform" at issue…

To Market, To Market

Professor Ribstein noted yesterday that the Wall Street Journal is somewhat selective in its approval of market forces.

All of this points to a more general problem with the right. Government is bad and markets good when government wants economic regulation the right doesn't want. But government is more likely to be good and markets bad when the subject is regulating values. (There's analogous problems with arguments about state law — apparently good for everything but marriage.)

"Decency and Markets." Professor Ribstein expressed disdain for recent WSJ editorials on "decency" in broadcasting. I can think of little that is more indecent than leading the news hour during before-and-after-school drive time with the latest bloody murder of someone by a non-white, but I apparently don't get a vote on defining "decency." Then, too, reading the lips of most of the players during major parts of the Super Bowl—or, indeed, virtually any other televised sporting event—is usually far less "decent" than was the flash of Janet Jackson's mammary while the kids were probably getting snacks anyway (Janet Jackson's prime audience is not the teenybopper set, and her "co-star" is a "has been").

There is another, more subtle, aspect of this neoconservative/social conservative/call it what you will selectivity of acceptable market regulation. If one takes a look in the broader sense at regulation, one can see the real difference between the postmodern right and the semimodern left: The only regulations that the right will consider as appropriate are those that have no influence on wealth distribution, or at worst have only a neutral effect. However, the postmodern right is actually pretty pro-regulation for those kinds of regulations that meet this criterion. Frequently, these are socially conservative issues, like "broadcast decency"; sometimes, they are downright loony and offensive, like the "alternatives to evolution in basic science education" advocacy. On the other hand, the regulations that the semimodern left has and continues to propose usually neglect to consider wealth distribution. This causes the left a great deal of difficulty when it must confront arguments that are orthogonal to its intent; and it creates more than a little confusion regardless.

One classic example of this failure to communicate—although it arises from an earlier era—is the Lochner regulations. The regulations were adopted to protect the health and welfare of employees in the baked-goods industry by limiting hours, both per day and per week. As laudable as this goal is, and as actually good for the manufacturers as this is in the long run (because it limits the higher retraining costs of replacing workers who are "worn out" earlier than they might otherwise have been), this kind of regulation has a pretty clear potential for influencing wealth distribution. Thus the firestorm against such regulation that culminated in Lochner itself.

The marketplace of ideas envisioned by the First Amendment has a simple nonregulatory correction for "bad speech": more speech. Drown out the "bad" speech with "good speech," and recognize that some "consumers" of "speech" will not be "rational actors" as the majority understands that term. One can construct a compelling argument from the premises behind the Intellectual Property Clause and the First Amendment that the Constitution does not condone regulation of speech and "expressive acts"; that any such regulation must come instead from the Necessary and Proper Clause; and, in turn, that the Necessary and Proper Clause must reflexively be read in the context of the Intellectual Property Clause and First Amendment. The Cromwellian subtext is that the majority, in this case the "pro-decency" faction, must recognize in its bowels that it might be wrong, and that its arguments (and speech preferences) must convince of their own merit—not by suppression of differing views. Then, too, there's the not-so-subtle political context of the Comstock Act and its modern descendants, largely designed to maintain political and economic power in the hands of constipated old white men of good families. But that is for another time.

A Circuit Out of Touch

One of the Federal Courts of Appeals is clearly out of touch with the others, primarily because it has adopted an extremist view of the Constitution and statutory and constitutional interpretation. I refer, of course, to the Fourth Circuit.

"The Fourth Circuit? Don't you mean the Ninth?"

Wrongo, Miranda-breath. Few cases indicate how out of touch the Fourth Circuit is better than its most recent decision in the Moussaoui carnival. Admittedly, some of the details do favor Moussaoui, such as requiring that the government grant at least some access to potential defense witnesses being held overseas. At its core, though, the opinion represents both blind deferral to insupportable government assertions, see id. at 17–19—such as the outcome-determinative bare possibility that Moussaoui's closely supervised questioning of detainees held overseas might "interrupt" interrogation two-and-a-half years after the incident in question—and refusal to defer on factual and discretionary findings to the one individual who is both tasked to and in a position to evaluate the credibility of the parties and testimony presented: Judge Brinkema, who is valiantly attempting to run her courtroom fairly despite the efforts of everyone involved.

To say the least, this is inconsistent with Padilla. The only reference to its sister circuit, in fact, is this:

We lack the record evidence of Secretary Rumsfeld's personal involvement that the Padilla court found persuasive. Nevertheless, the Government argues that the witnesses are of vital import to the war effort and to national security. Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to believe that Secretary Rumsfeld is closely involved in their detention * * * *.

Id. at 12 (ellipses in original; emphasis added). Note that this does not even go to the actual holding in Padilla. Nowhere in this decision can one find acknowledgement that the holding in Padilla would require vastly different reasoning, and perhaps even a different result, than the Fourth Circuit reached. What is most disturbing, though, is that "reasonable to believe" is even being mentioned in a death penalty case, even on the relatively trivial issue of whom to serve with process.

Perhaps we should just be relieved that Judge Williams's partial dissent was not the majority opinion:

[M]y colleagues' approach impermissibly jeopardizes the security of our Nation and its allies by intruding on the Executive's ability to perform its war-making, military, and foreign relations duties. Holding that defendants have a right to compulsory process of any alien held abroad in United States custody and control disrupts the proper balance between the coordinate branches. If access is granted, it is undisputed that the Executive's interest is irreparably lost, with the attendant consequences to the multinational efforts to combat terrorism on a global scale.

Id. at 40 (Williams, J., dissenting in part). Of course it is undisputed! The point of Moussaoui's motions and position is that he can only speculate on the testimony of these witnesses, only speculate on how obtaining that information might (or might not) impinge upon "continuing interrogations," without the opportunity to examine them. This is startlingly poor logic: it assumes its conclusion as a necessary premise. Even Chevron does not go this far!

None of this is to say that I am convinced that Moussaoui himself is an angel, that his defense has been wisely or even properly conducted, or that some persons peripherally connected to the actual interrogations might harbor fears as to "interference" with allegedly ongoing interrogations. To be just, though, we must not only provide a just result: we must provide a just process that presents the real appearance of justice. Judge Brinkema's implicit compromise—no direct testimony by potential defense witnesses means that the level of certainty required to impose the death penalty cannot be attained—received little attention, let alone cogent analysis. Perhaps she should have been more explicit that this "compromise" is the basis for her ruling—for then it clearly would be a discretionary ruling. Instead, she refused to conduct a trial in anticipation of a first-class hanging; and, under the Constitution, that is her job. The key belief is not, or at least should not, be that of a "reasonable person" (or appellate judge) reviewing the paper record; it is, or at least should be, that of the jurist charged with implementing the decision and conducting the matter in the first instance. If Judge Brinkema can "reasonably believe" that the government's negotiating posture and tactics have made impossible a compromise on witness access and statements that adequately protects the defendant's rights, that should be all that matters. Judge Gregory's closing paragraph is persuasive:

Here, the reliability of a death sentence would be significantly impaired by the limitations on the evidence available for Moussaoui's use in proving mitigating factors (if he is found guilty). Although it has been repeated often enough to have the ring of cliche, death is different. It is the ultimate penalty, and once carried out, it is irrevocable. A sentence of death cannot be imposed unless the defendant has been accorded the opportunity to defend himself fully; it cannot be imposed without the utmost certainty, the fundamental belief in the fairness of the result. Because Moussaoui will not have access to the witnesses who could answer the question of his involvement, he should not face the ultimate penalty of death. Accordingly, I would uphold the district court's sanction to the extent that it struck the Government's death notice. On this basis, I must dissent.

Id. at 63 (Gregory, J., dissenting in part; italics in original). Note that this goes only to the particular penalty that may be imposed, not to the government's ability to prosecute.

The Writer's Couch

Just to show that Hollywood and entertainment-industry insurance companies are at most peripherally related to the human race, consider this possibility. A woman is fired from the production staff of a really awful, really popular, really long-running TV sitcom involving young adults in purportedly realistic situations that invariably boil down to sex. This being America, she sues for sexual harassment. The producer, head writer, and production company (or, in reality, the lawyers for their insurer(s)) offer the defense that certain kinds of sexual harassment are a necessary part of the creative process, claiming further that this is a complete affirmative defense. What result?

How about a split baby? Obviously, the courts in question needed to consider a more-effective method of contraception.

The trial court bought the argument in toto, granting summary judgment against the plaintiff. The California Court of Appeals reversed on its face, but allowed the defense to be presented at trial. In other words, the defense is not ridiculous—there just wasn't enough evidence for it to justify summary judgment.

Millions for defense, but not a dime for tribute. Besides, "we're special." <a snd="raspberry.wav">Snort</a>

Left Behind

The "No Child Left Behind" program reflects considerable economic ignorance to go along with its substantial political cynicism. On the one hand, it ignores the concept of the diminishing incremental return. As the focus changes from "as many as superhumanly possible" to "absolutely everyone," the additional human and financial costs per student of helping those least able to meet arbitrary standards (usually set by people who have no idea of what they're doing, either in what or how they are measuring) will vastly exceed the costs per student of meeting other children's needs to fulfill their potential. As usual, so-called "talented and gifted" programs will be the first to go—not the football team. (Aside: at the local Division I university, the head coach makes more money than the three highest-paid professors. Combined. And he was 1-10 last year.)

On the other hand, one of the assumptions behind NCLB is that resources available to public education will not grow relatively, thus requiring triage for the conditions specified in NCLB. This seems remarkably short-sighted. What NCLB essentially does is say that "you don't have enough resources to do your mandated tasks, so we're going to tell you what your priorities must be instead of considering allocating more resources." In the meantime, we're busy giving dubious tax breaks to secondary commodities trading activity when the representative volume of that activity exceeds the value of the underlying commodities, and various other questionable priorities based on special interests.

Perhaps this is unavoidable. American public education is extremely hostile to high achievement; one need only realize that all of the teachers are college graduates, many with graduate degrees, but virtually none of the teachers still in the classroom ten years after beginning were themselves true "high achievers" before college. Just how many National Merit Scholars, to use one imprecise measure, end up as career classroom teachers? Without that perspective, the soldiers in the trenches simply don't know what it takes to "educate" the "talented and gifted". Or even accurately identify them.

The sum of this idiocy and disdain will be a completely disaffected generation of artists and writers in fifteen years. In their late twenties and early thirties, they'll still remember middle school and high school—without much fondness. Assuming, that is, that they were ever able to develop their skills to a level adequate to compete with those from elite schools that did provide some support. The disdain expressed for their needs will, in many (and perhaps even most) instances, result in art and literature that reflects disdain for others.

Wait a minute; we've already got that. Those in the public education system between the late 1960s and early 1980s are reflecting exactly that result.

It's Still Not Painless

Something that a great many attorneys (let alone journalists) forget is that many, and perhaps even most, of the major "liberal" decisions from the Supreme Court in the last half century have only enabled litigants to have a losing day in court. As a recent example, consider Jenkins v. Heintz, a major consumer protection case from the 1990s that held that an attorney could indeed be treated as a "bill collector" under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act; the attorney's status as an attorney did not create immunity. If one looks at the post-Supreme Court history, one will find that the consumer eventually lost the claim, and indeed the entire case. Consider that issue in the Gitmo context for a moment.

Regarding Gitmo, the Perfesser opines that:

My bet, by the way, is that the Court will rule that US courts have jurisdiction. And then we'll get some left-liberal judge (probably on the 9th Circuit) deciding to let the terrorists go.

As I've remarked before, the "suicide pact" aphorism doesn't mean what many commentators would have it mean.

[Kennedy v.] Mendoza-Martinez[, 372 U.S. 144, 160 (1963)] is a draft-dodging case—at least, on its face. The defendant was a naturalized US citizen who evaded the draft in 1942 by going to Mexico until 1946 (according to the colloquy in his guilty plea). After his conviction, the government stripped him of his citizenship and deported him. The case is really about the concept of estoppel—that is, one cannot argue against the result in a prior case that went against one, so long as the issue was (or could have been) fully and fairly tried in the prior case. Yes, that's a mouthful. Consider it in the context of a teenager trying to borrow the car. If the teenager asks Mom to borrow the car, and she says "No," the principle of estoppel would prevent said teenager from walking into the next room and asking Dad to borrow the car. He would be estopped from arguing against the result when he asked his mother (assuming, of course, that Mom and Dad have equal authority over the car). But what if he wanted to use the car to go take a college admissions test, and his mother just said "no" without listening to the substance of the request? Wouldn't that justify asking Dad to consider it anew? Probably not, because he could have at least gotten his reasons before Mom for her to reconsider her decision. Mendoza-Martinez is not really about civil liberties, but about civil procedure. Citing this language in support of deprivation of civil liberties is at a minimum removing it from context. (And the context in which Justice Jackson was using it—another case turning on civil procedure, not civil liberties.)

Post of 18 December 2003.

I find the assumptions underlying the Perfesser's concluding paragraph rather more disturbing. Leaving aside the merits of the "suicide pact" argument for the moment, what does that paragraph imply? First, that the individuals in detention are all terrorists, which seems to me disproven by the release of several UK citizens in the last few weeks. Second, that if the cases are heard in front of US courts, they cannot be proven at the preponderence-of-the-evidence level. Remember, these are the equivalent of habeas corpus petitions: All that the government need do is show probable cause for detention. We can worry later about meeting the reasonable-doubt standard required during an actual trial; presumably, a fair number of cases will be plea-bargained away in return for cooperation or dropped entirely, so we don't even know whom to try yet (assuming a positive answer to the first concern). Third, and perhaps most disturbingly, the Perfesser implies that left-liberal judges will allow their doctrinal preferences to overcome the evidence presented. I could make the same presumption about right-conservative judges and consumer-protection or civil rights lawsuits… except that I've never seen that in practice (not for lack of opportunity). There are enough levels of judicial review that the chance of getting a "liberal" district judge, probably after a hearing in front of a "liberal" magistrate judge, reviewed by a "liberal" Court of Appeals panel, followed by either a denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court or "liberal-dominated" decision there, is vanishingly small—and the chance of all of them allowing doctrine to overrule evidence is even smaller. Anyone who wants to pretend that one "political predisposition" is less or more likely than any other to impose its doctrinal preferences on cases before it has the burden of coming up with some evidence to that effect.

Evidence. The presentation thereof. I thought that's what this whole process is supposed to lead to, for everyone involved. My bet is that the Supreme Court will, by a plurality, find that there is indeed jurisdiction in Padilla and Hamdi, but that the government will either decline to press matters and release them pending trial (citing "national security concerns" that "prevent" it from presenting evidence—some of which may be valid, but some of which will not) or win at the hearing by proving probable cause.

On the Meaning of Treason

(I offer no apologies to Dame Rebecca West, although the context should give one pause.) In the last year or so, a trip to a chain bookstore—especially in a mall, and even including Zondervan (the "Christian" chain controlled by HarperCollins)—has resulted in an assault on the eyes with badly designed book covers trumpeting the personal opinions, and indeed hegemony, of some really disturbing right-wing ideologues. Perhaps foremost among them in intellectual dishonesty—and that's some pretty stiff competition—has been Ann C0u1t3r. The title of one of her books accuses all liberals of being traitors.

Leaving aside the hyperbole inherent in setting a book's title—over 80% of the trade books published each year are not published under the author's title at the time of submission—what does this really mean? My immediate reaction is to recall Richard Nixon ("…opposition in this country is the single greatest barrier" to "winning" in Vietnam) and McCarthyism in general. Without denying the validity of that impression, though, there are three much deeper issues.

1. Opposition does not equal treason. The strict definition of treason is far more complex than mere opposition, or even political and other efforts that happen to support violent opposition to a nation. Instead, a traitor is someone who not only intends a specific regime change through non-legitimate means, but acts upon it to the detriment of both particular policies and the integrity of the system. That does not necessarily mean success; but it extends far beyond public discourse and civil disobedience. Without dissent, there is no room for art. Professor Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago) discussed the necessity of defense last year in the Oliver Wendell Holmes lectures at Harvard Law School, which were recently published as Why Societies Need Dissent. Orwell conceptualized this a half century ago, even if the vocabulary of "thoughtcrime" and "doublespeak" has been so thoroughly corrupted by those seeking rhetorical advantage that he wouldn't recognize it.

   At a more fundamental level, isn't some level of opposition inherent in a democratic society? How, then, does one determine that opposition has "gone too far" when it has not seized power? As Oliver Cromwell once asked the Prebyterian leadership of Scotland, have they considered the possibility that they might be wrong? It should surprise no one that none of these books appear to have considered what "treason" means; the rhetorical advantage of painting one's opposition as disloyal was too tempting.

2. The most obvious corollary of the opposition to dissent inherent in these views—even dissent from what appears to be a minority viewpoint, regardless of claims to be the "Moral Majority"—is bivalued logic. "If you're not with me, you're against me." That these disputes over proper values and policies can exist at all tends to prove that there are, in fact, shades of grey inherent in the argument itself. This is the same approach used by proponents of "creationism"/Inscrutable Design to attack evolution: If evolutionary theory, which on its own terms admits that it is incomplete both in method and in evidence, cannot perfectly explain every aspect of life on Earth, it must therefore be discarded in its entirety, and may be replaced only by a theory of divine creation of life (in varying levels of rhetorical shrillness and deception). Yeah, right.
3. The form of argument is itself a slippery bit of hypocrisy. Consider, for example, their usual target: The so-called "liberal media." Leaving aside whether such a thing exists—it doesn't, except in the fevered imaginations of ideologues; see, e.g., Fox News—apply the logical methods used by C0u1t3er et al. to their own writings and context. If they are so much in the right (pun intended), then why do they need to write these books? A self-evidently true dogma would need no such exegesis, even in the face of deception from opponents. Such deception can't be maintained for the century or more that forms the necessary predicate for such an argument—particularly not in a society with even lip service toward "freedom of the press." The dogma is therefore something less than self-evidently true (note that I did not say "false"). If it is less than self-evidently true, it must be tested by comparison to other dogmas and theories. That comparison, though, must be based upon evidence, and not upon supposition—or we end up again with Copernicus v. Galileo. Eventually, somebody will realize that "it does move;" the question is how many must be sacrificed to maintain orthodoxy.

The subtitle (although not, surprisingly, the content) of Nat Henthoff's book Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee hints at the real objective: How the American Left & Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other. The objective is more to drown out opposition than vanquish it. The irony that the "target" of this criticism both provides the platform for their own rhetoric and simultaneously makes that rhetoric inadequate to the task seems to have escaped this set of ideologues—as it has escaped every other advocate of totalitarianism in history. This implies a great deal about the problems with consolidation in the media and publishing industries; but then, Malthus has never been taught to MBAs.

As a sideline to the kind of things covered in this blawg, I also try to keep track of developments in expert-opinion evidence. This is not, of course, limited to "traditional science"—valuation experts are critical to many kinds of cases, and seldom does one find a music copyright infringement case in which similarity is at issue that does not include several experts. Increasingly, too, experts are becoming necessary in the non-IP ancillary areas of publishing, such as determining the reasonable value of profits lost to a breach of a publishing contract. Conversely, there are a lot of experts out there whose opinions have been "valued" that should not be, particularly on generalized economic issues. (Sorry, guys, but economics does not have sufficient indications of widespread standardization for most of the "calculations" made in its name.)

In any event, rather than keeping all of that to myself, I'm going to contribute summaries of Illinois state-court decisions on expert opinion evidence (commonly called "expert witnesses"—but the witness is only half the battle) to Blog 702, the blawg part of Daubert on the Web, the small-firm litigator's best chance to avoid malpractice (not to mention serve his or her clients better). Many large-firm litigators and transactional lawyers should refer to it, too, if only to see what they're up against.

Double-Edged, Super Blue

(Two meaningless points to the person who can name the novel and movie, and cite the context, from which I drew that line.) In an astounding display of partisan and historical ignorance masked by lip service to the past, Stuart Taylor has again gotten things wrong concerning the "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement (N.B. This link will expire after today, thus the following quotations.) On the one hand, he says

The wall was one of many pre-PATRIOT Act surveillance rules adopted during the post-Nixon, post-J. Edgar Hoover era, back when many of us feared government spying more than we did terrorist massacres. These rules were not responsible for all, or even most, of the government failures that left us exposed to 9/11. But they do help explain some of those failures.

(emphasis in original) He then concludes that

Such are the alarums of those who have not learned from the past. Let's hope they are not condemned to repeat it.

I am not exactly ancient, but I do remember the era of J. Edgar "Pink Tutu" Hoover. And Watergate. I've studied the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the My Lai incident, and the Pentagon Papers matter in detail, including reference to source documents (not just after-the-fact secondary sources) for the first two. Mr. Taylor's article reflects itself failure to learn from the past—and from the present. As I've both implied and remarked before, the problem is not with "the wall," but with the nature of the agencies in question. The FBI is a post hoc agency—its people, information sources, main mission, and organizational culture are built around solving a crime after the fact. To say that this is ill-suited for preventing potential, but far from certain, crimes in the future without turning political opponents like MLK Jr. into "enemies of the state" (that is, commies) is understating the obvious. There is a similar problem with the NSA, CIA, and other intelligence agencies: their people, information sources, missions, and organizational cultures focus on obtaining information outside the US for use in future decisionmaking.

Just about anyone should be able to spot the problem—one that, in a structural sense, the UK solved a long time ago, if not perfectly (just ask the Birmingham Seven): counterterrorism requires both domestic and foreign gathing of information for immediate use and immediate use in preventing atrocities. Bluntly, giving counterterrorism (and, in a broader sense, counterintelligence) to the FBI, CAI, NSA, et al. is like asking an orthopedic surgeon to deal with a suspected brain hemorrhage. However competent an orthopedic surgeon he is, and however much he remembers from medical school, his experience in real operations just doesn't translate. This is particularly true when the surgeon is asked not just to operate on a known condition, but to diagnose the condition in the first place.

Mr. Taylor's critical error was in himself not learning from the past. The history of law enforcement everywhere, including this country, is littered with misuse of law enforcement powers—sometimes purposefully, sometimes with all the "good faith" one could expect—for the purpose of suppressing dissent and opposition. The history of the labor movement in this country alone should be fairly conclusive. It's not all just something from the past, either; the impulse to suppress labor movements should have been obvious at that time to anyone who had even read the Alien and Sedition Act. Succumbing to tyranny only proves that those who accuse the US of being an imperialstic monolith are right (or at least increases their justification). The problem is not with the walls themselves; it is that there is nothing on the other side of them.

We now return to our irregularly scheduled programming…

The publishing industry has been unusually quiet of late; almost everything that is "news" has revolved around warmed-over feuds between authors and such. Instead, everything has been about "who knew what when and how" over Iraq, al Q'aida, Afghantistan, etc. That is not to say that the latter is an unimportant inquiry, even though there is so much spin from everyone that discerning the "truth" is well-nigh impossible. It is only to say that April and May tend to have a lot of announcements (relatively, that is) of moves concerning high-profile editors from one publisher to another, and high-profile authors from one agent or publisher to another. Now that I've said this, no doubt there will be five or six this coming week!

A couple of interesting items in the news today (I am not commenting at all on the "press conference" last night, as I'm too disgusted with just about everybody involved).

• A sad and yet fascinating—if you're as morbid as a lawyer or an author—review of a recent book on "authors' worst moments." The kinds of books I've done don't result in readings or invitations to publishers' cocktail parties, so I have little first-hand experience…
• As further proof that Gordon Gecko is alive and well in the telecommunications industry, big DSL providers are busily jacking up their rates by attempting to recover the "Universal Service Fee" from DSL customers—all the while forgetting that, since DSL comes over telephone lines, the customer already pays the fee on another bill. The USF does not subsidize DSL in rural communities, but only basic telephone service. Thus, if I ever go to DSL from SBC, I'll be paying three USFs—one on the telephone service, one on the long-distance service, and one on the DSL service. Am I ever happy about that.

OK, one comment on the "press conference" last night. I think that everybody came off looking bad. George II looked unprepared and unwilling to admit to ever having made a substantial error. The press came off looking as if they want him to tell them when he stopped beating his wife, instead of trying to determine if his wife had been beaten in the first place, and if so who had done it. The broadcasters came off as morons for running it opposite today's staff summary report from the 9/11 Commission on C-SPAN; one or the other should also have offered a later, perhaps 9pm EDT or so, rerun. But nooooooooooo…