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Supreme Court Justice and Louisville native Louis Brandeis reputation as a studious and knowledgeable lawyer and justice is established, so it seems like there may not be much left to write about him. But a new biography by Melvin Urofsky digs into some of Brandeis’s methods of study. As The Nation points out in a review:
Like Dickens’s Gradgrind, Brandeis wanted facts. He had a bathtub filled with clippings and articles—a reservoir of data waiting to be tapped. During his thirty-nine years as an attorney in private practice in Boston, he devised an arduous habit: upon taking on a new client, he holed up and learned everything he could about its business, and more important, its opponent’s. A masterful cross-examiner, Brandeis was able on more than one occasion to trip up a hostile witness, wielding a better understanding of the opposing firm’s affairs than its own president did.
The review also highlights what an extensive reader and researcher Brandeis was:
He was officially the first justice to cite a law review article in an opinion, and unofficially the first to cite Bakers Weekly (in a case involving a law that standardized weights for loaves of bread). He once even cited The Nation in a dissent, if only for its convenient reproduction of one of Thomas Jefferson’s speeches. One Thanksgiving his law clerk (and a future secretary of state) Dean Acheson was over for dinner, and Brandeis sounded off about the French, who were trying to renegotiate loans entered into during World War I. Acheson considered arguing a little with his boss by pointing out France’s contributions to Western civilization but later admitted, “I knew he would floor me by quoting their export statistics for the same years, so I gave it up.”
Data from the accurately-named broadband speed testing site speedtest.net has been released. Ookla is the company behind the site, and they discuss the data on their website. While no Kentucky cities made the top ten list for speed, the commonwealth’s average broadband speed is a bit higher than other parts of the south, and much of the mountain west.
This data may skew toward urban speeds, as broadband access is still low in many rural areas in Kentucky. GigaOM has a breakdown:
Mike Apgar, co-founder and managing partner of three-year-old Ookla, said the indexes will measure broadband speeds, ping times and jitter. His goal is to move the testing beyond the tech-savvy market (we use it!), so as to get a better sense of how broadband speeds really play out across the world. The FCC is encouraging consumers to use the sites (Ookla also runs a site that tests jitter and packet loss at pingtest.net) as part of its nationwide testing goals, and many of Ookla’s ISP customers also offer the test to their customers and host Ookla’s servers.
Providing tests for ISPs is actually most of Ookla’s business. The next plank of the business strategy is the index data: Ookla hopes to provide the information for free to academic researchers, but it also plans to charge ISPs, analysts and governments for it. Ookla has no debt or venture capital, and is profitable.
The latest Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll puts Republican Rand Paul 6 points ahead (51 to 45) of Democrat Jack Conway in the U.S. Senate race.
The paper also reports…
That conclusion comes after Paul’s recent statements that he opposes (or would not have supported, had he been in the Senate) portions of the Civil Rights Act and Americans With Disabilities Act.
UPDATE: The session continues Saturday.
Here is the budget story from Kentucky Public Radio’s Tony McVeigh:
It was touch and go most of Friday, but in the end, the Kentucky General Assembly approved a new state budget.
The logjam broke Friday afternoon, after a meeting between House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Senate President David Williams in Williams’ office. As he emerged from the meeting, Speaker Stumbo announced the good news to a swarm of reporters.
“We’re all trying to accomplish the same things,” he says. “We were saying the same things. We just happened to be saying it in little bit different ways.”
At issue were dilapidated schools across the commonwealth, and the new budget addresses the problem.
“To make sure that the districts are given an opportunity – all of them – to build these Category Five schools, in a fair and equitable manner,” said Stumbo.
The compromise budget later passed the House 86-7, the Senate 35-0, clearing the way for adjournment of the special session on day five, as scheduled.
And here is an update on the bourbon tasting bill from Kentucky Public Radio’s Stu Johnson:
Legislation to allow free liquor samples at certain events including the World Equestrian games this fall failed to make it through the general assembly. A bill calling for permanent approval of such an expansion of the sampling law went down to defeat in the house. Lexington representative Ruth Ann Palumbo was disappointed the concerns couldn’t be worked out.
“It was a perfect opportunity or will be at the games to showcase our signature product in Kentucky because people in Europe aren’t familiar with the bourbon industry,” she said.
Louisville representative Tom Riner expressed concern about free sampling sending a pro-alcohol message to young children. He admits he was surprised the measure didn’t pass the house. Riner says he thought the distilled spirits industry had secured enough votes to pass it.
Massey Energy employees are reportedly not showing up for their scheduled closed-door interviews with MSHA to discuss the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. The meetings are voluntary, but the Charleston Gazette reports that about half of the Massey employees slated to meet with inspectors haven’t.
MSHA has the ability to subpoena workers for some meetings, but officials say they want to use subpoenas as a last resort.
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Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul shares a lot with his father Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul–political beliefs, supporters, campaign strategy, a last name–but Time has a piece on how the father and son team’s combined influence could be influencing electoral politics. You can read the story here (excerpted below) and decide whether its prognostications clash with the pro-centrist predictions being made elsewhere.
Rand’s quick retreat from the topic of government-mandated integration shows that he understands that politics sometimes trumps principle. But he, like his father, also knows well that a genuine libertarian impulse is astir in America. It may not be as dogmatic as the strain studied at the von Mises Institute; we’re not ready to legalize heroin just yet. But polls show an uptick in both social permissiveness and skepticism of government intervention.
The Pauls also understand that libertarianism is merging with populism to explosive effect. Past populist movements summoned government action against the excesses of big business. Today, many Tea Partyers view government and business as working in collusion to rob the average guy — as demonstrated by the huge bank bailout that restored Wall Street bonuses but brought little relief to Main Street. With that comes a sense of outsiderness — an intense distrust of all authority, from Congress to the media to financial institutions, even the medical establishment. This too favors the Pauls, two men with open disdain for the inner sanctums of power and money. “Ideas are the only things that count, and politicians are, for the most part, pretty much irrelevant,” Ron Paul told the London Independent in December.
All that, and the rise of the son, makes a repeat White House run by the father more likely, no matter his age. Ron Paul has already scored a big win in the first straw poll of the 2012 season, beating the likes of Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin at a gathering of conservatives in February. “It’s way too early” to decide, Paul says. “I have no plans, but I have not ruled it out.” And why would he? He has already waited a long time — and it appears the country is moving his way.
Ripon Forum editor Lou Zickar says despite the Tea Party hype, moderation is the key to the Republican Party’s success.
The Ripon Society is a historically centrist Republican organization, and Zickar argues on their behalf in a Politico opinion piece:
By the end of this year, for example, the three biggest 2010 races for the GOP may be won by centrist Republicans.
One victory has already occurred — in Massachusetts, where centrist Scott Brown defeated liberal Martha Coakley to win the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy since 1962.
The other two races are for the Senate seats up for grabs in Illinois and Delaware. Republicans are calling these “trophy” races. It is easy to understand why — the seats were once held by Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In both these races, the Republican candidates are centrists.
Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois is a leader of the moderate Tuesday Group in the House. Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware, a former governor, is a leading centrist and a member of The Ripon Society’s Honorary Congressional Advisory Board.
If both Kirk and Castle win — as they are now favored to — it can be viewed as a big win for the GOP. It can also be viewed as a victory for centrist Republicans.
But it may not be the only centrist win. From Meg Whitman in California to Jane Norton in Colorado to Linda McMahon in Connecticut, centrist Republicans stand poised not only to win on election night but also to pick up Senate seats held by Democrats.
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Does this mean the country is entering a new age of Rockefeller Republicanism? Of course not.
But the country may be entering a period in which — even amid all the anger and rage — the importance of centrist, solution-oriented Republicans is again recognized.
Pair that with this post from Public Policy Polling, and it seems that the best hope for either party in November could be with centrists and moderates.
It’s just another data point showing that Democratic troubles this year are not the result of them losing the center, but of conservative voters being more motivated to turn out. In places like Kentucky and Missouri, where the GOP will be slightly favored to win this fall, Robin Carnahan and Jack Conway lead their respective Republican opponents by 40 points with moderates. Democratic candidates also have 20+ point leads with moderates in places like North Carolina, Colorado, and Ohio.
The Pennsylvania man who allegedly threatened Senator Jim Bunning via e-mail is expected to plead not guilty today, says Bluegrass Politics:
Bruce Shore, an unemployed sales representative, said he sent an angry e-mail to Bunning’s office in February after Bunning single-handedly blocked a vote to extend unemployment benefits for several days.
In the e-mail, which Shore provided to the Herald-Leader, he asked if Bunning was “insane” and told him that “no checks equal no food for me.”
“If this political grandstanding does not end today — we will come to your offices and make our point. You are playing a life and death game here. Do you get it.” he wrote in all capital letters. He signed the letter Brad Shore.
The full article has Shore’s response and points out that Bunning’s offices were inundated at the time with complaints.
Bluegrass Politics links to this chart of polls from before and after (mostly before) the primary pitting Rand Paul against Jack Conway. The average puts Paul ahead of Conway by 4.8 points.
If you only look at the polls conducted after the primary, the results are quite different. In one survey Paul leads by 25 points and in another from a different outlet, he leads by 3.
The latest poll from Research 2000 and the Daily Kos shows Republican Rand Paul with a 3 percent lead over Democrat Jack Conway in the U.S. Senate race. That’s a much different result than a Rasmussen poll released last week. The Rasmussen survey gave Paul a 25 point lead. The Research 2000 poll was conducted this week.
Politics Daily has more on the poll:
Paul gets 86 percent support from fellow Republicans while Conway gets 75 percent for Democrats. Paul leads among independents by a 42 percent to 31 percent margin with 27 percent undecided.
Both candidates are viewed favorably by voters, though Paul somewhat more so. Fifty-three percent have a positive view of Paul while 33 percent do not, with 14 percent undecided. Conway is seen favorably by 48 percent and unfavorably by 43 percent with 9 percent undecided.
