Ted Cruz's office says "in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of 'critical legal studies'..."

"... a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism – and they far outnumbered Republicans."

That's in response to a New Yorker article quoting something Cruz said in a speech 3 years ago. (What Cruz said back then, at an Americans for Prosperity conference, was that when he was at Harvard Law School "There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.")

The Cruz spokesperson called it "curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a three-year-old speech and call it 'news.'"

Curious... there's a noncommittal word. I don't see anything wrong with digging stuff out of old Cruz speeches. He's a new character on the national stage, so it's not like old territory is being reworked. It was an inflammatory statement, and he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.
The New Yorker writer, Jane Mayer, was following up after Barbara Boxer had compared Cruz to Joseph McCarthy. That was pretty inflammatory too (as I said at the time). What Boxer said made it a valid line of inquiry for Mayer and not odd at all. What you say to your base will be heard by the outsiders too, and any politician needs to be prepared for that. Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group. This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Mayer talked to Charles Fried, the Harvard lawprof who was probably the one Republican referred to by Cruz. Fried says:

"I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government".... Fried acknowledged that "there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.” He pointed out that by the nineteen-nineties, Communist states were widely regarded as tyrannical. From Fried’s perspective, the radicals on the faculty were "a pain in the neck." But he says that Cruz’s assertion that they were Communists “misunderstands what they were about."

Clearly, it was rhetoric to call the Critical Legal Studies professors "Marxists" who believed in "Communist" revolution, and Cruz chose to do that at a particular place and time. Cruz is accountable for that. It's a shibboleth of the right to rely on the words "Marxist" and "Communist." It wasn't the way the lefty lawprofs of the time talked about themselves. I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none." I got the message: You sound right wing. It was understood that to sound right wing was to become toxic.

Here's a useful passage from the classic 1983 CLS book by Harvard lawprof Duncan Kennedy, "Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System":

Left-liberal rights analysis submerges the student in legal rhetoric, but, because of its inherent vacuousness, can provide no more than an emotional stance against the legal order. The instrumental Marxist approach is highly critical of law, but also dismissive. It is no help in coming to grips with the particularity of rules and rhetoric, because it treats them, a priori, as mere window dressing. In each case, left theory fails left students because it offers no base for the mastery of ambivalence. What is needed is to think about law in a way that will allow one to enter into it, to criticize without utterly rejecting it, and to manipulate it without self-abandonment to their system of thinking and doing.

Pre-assembling the excuses for Obama's defeat tomorrow.

At Politico (with an "if"):

Obama threw it away in Denver...

The Bush economy killed him...

It was the second-term vision thing...

Citizens United, the super PACs and the Koch Brothers did it...

He lost for a noble cause: national health care...

It all comes back to race...

There's grousing and blaming in the offing if this iffing is happening.

What they'll never say: Mitt Romney was a fine candidate.

He was a fine candidate — and so was Ryan — even with the media spinning everything they could against him. And if R&R win, their victory will be spun as negatively as possible. Politico is giving you a peek of what they will be doing if you people don't get a clue and vote they way you're supposed to. We're going to pummel you with stories of your racism and Obama's martyrdom until you expiate your sins by voting for whomever the Democrats present for your obeisance in 2016. Look out... or rebel.

"I would take a Johnsonville brat from the hand of a Koch brother if it were offered with the proper condiments and a good beer."

Citizen Dave explains Wisconsin values.

IN THE COMMENTS: The Farmer said: "Bravo, ex-Mayor Dave! And MadisonMan said: "Yes, Bravo -- except for the no ketchup part, you heathen!!!!" Original Mike said: "Ketchup on a brat??? MM, you're kidding, right?" Mr. D said: "Mayor Dave is right. No ketchup on a brat." And David-2 said:

MM - meet DH!

Anti-Walkerites on the eve of the recall performed an "Om the Dome" ritual at the Wisconsin Capitol.

"Oma Vic McMurray, who runs a home childcare center and has been active in the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, instructed the crowd on breathing techniques and led a practice group 'Om.'"

McMurray says the community chant was meant to be a time to "consciously connect on a spiritual level so that we could raise the energy and have faith that this will be a good week for Wisconsin."

Connie Nadler says she felt the symbolism of the moment. "It was quite touching. I was at the connecting point where we were stretching to reach and connect to the other end of the line. The Capitol police were there and were real encouraging. People rushed from the street to help" complete the circle.

Reminds me of Allen Ginsberg at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago 1968:



And, especially since a building was involved, it takes me all the way back to 1967 and "Levitate the Pentagon"....

[A] group of hippies was trying to exorcize the Pentagon. The brainchild of Abbie Hoffman, the plan was for people to sing and chant until it levitated and turned orange, driving out the evil spirits and ending the war in Viet Nam. The Pentagon didn't move.

Related: "What do you think Abbie Hoffman would do to stop the Koch brothers?"

A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: a camel was tormented by "The Daily Show" and Gov. Walker was pranked with a phone call.

Here's my post about the "Daily Show"'s nauseating exploitation of a camel here in Wisconsin. (But look here to see some good "Daily Show" coverage of the protests from 2/22/11.)

Here's what I had to say about the phone call, in which someone pretended to be David Koch:

Walker opponents would love to make something of this phone call, but all they have are a few over-the-line things the Koch impersonator said like "You gotta crush that union." Walker just ignores that stuff and goes on with his standard points, which is probably the standard strategy that most politicians use when people interact with them....

Doesn't this prank call prove that Scott Walker is not close to Koch? He doesn't recognize his voice! He doesn't drift into a more personal style of speech. He treats him like a generic political supporter.

There was a big "teach-in" at the UW Law School.

"Obama Fights Back Against Koch Brothers in New Ad."

NYT headline for an article that includes this embedded ad (which refers to "secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama"):



And here's the ad — linked in the article — that the Obama as is fighting back against:



What do you think? Did Obama "punch back twice as hard"?

"Mic Check! Im Drew from internet. We would like to propose tonight the purchase of occupywallstreet.net for the use of all of us."

"It is time sensitive because the person who owns it desperately wants to sell it and will sell it to anybody but we have put a stop on that for the day. I realize that this is a weird situation, but we would rather that you own it than say the Koch brotherss. The amount is $8,000. Just so everyone knows, we are about to take a temp check..."

Occupy Wall Street hands over $8,000 to Mark R. Ellis, 53, of Sarasota, Florida, who registered occupywallstreet.net on September 23.

Ellis described himself as sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street, calling capitalism “extinction-causing software,” but said he has no plans to join the protests. Regarding the sale of occupywallstreet.net, he said, “It’s not about the money for me.” Asked why he didn’t hand over the domain name for free, Ellis said, “Because I’m a businessman.”

"Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience..."

"... But Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity."

Cain's campaign manager and a number of aides have worked for Americans for Prosperity, or AFP, the advocacy group founded with support from billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lobbies for lower taxes and less government regulation and spending. Cain credits a businessman who served on an AFP advisory board with helping devise his "9-9-9" plan to rewrite the nation's tax code. And his years of speaking at AFP events have given the businessman and radio host a network of loyal grassroots fans.

"So, is Bloomberg’s story titled 'The Secret Sins of General Electric'?"

"Or, in the online version, 'General Electric Flouts Law With Secret Iran Sales?' Of course not. G.E. is generally identified with the Democratic Party. Does anyone seriously doubt that Bloomberg wanted to do a hit piece on Koch Industries solely because that company’s owners are prominent conservatives? Of course not."

Next to the meat, concern for the fish... and for fraud... chanting "shame"... yelling "Koch suckers!" at a 14-year-old girl... laughing at Andrew Breitbart's "Go to Hell!"

Yesterday, at the Capitol Square, there was a big Tea Party rally, starring Sarah Palin, but it was opening day for the Dane County Farmers' Market. We pass a farmer's meat stand, and then we get to the signs. (Oh, it was a hard day yesterday, as I just indicated to myself by typoing, for "signs": "sighs.") There's a woman with a fish sign, blaming Walker for some piscine woes. There are a couple of anti-Prosser/pro-Kloppenburg signs alarming us about the possibility of election fraud. As Abe Lincoln strides across the green, the rally comes into view. I gotta feeling... despair is not an option.



At 0:40, we arrive at some "shame... shame... shame..." chanters. These are anti-Tea Party people, and maybe they're ashamed of themselves for not making it clear what the shame is. What's shameful about a Tea Party gathering? Be clear, folks! This chanting is inarticulate, unless your purpose is that we should all just feel terrible about ourselves. Is self-esteem passé? "Despair is not an option" but shame is the only option. I know you want to manipulate our feelings, but I can't even understand how you want me to feel... except very, very tired of you.

At 1:04, a woman's "Recall Walker" chant is hilariously half-hearted. Maybe we could just recall him a little. Let's not recall him. Let's reminisce about him.

At 1:07, we jump to the middle of that 14-year-old girl, speaking from the podium over clamorous chanting and heckling. Last night, I put up an edit of the video Meade shot during her speech. This is my video, from a different place in the crowd. There's an older woman in purple who yells "Corporate thief!" after the girl says "the debt... in my future is overwhelming." There are periodic outbursts from this woman, including "Koch suckers!" Imagine yelling "Koch suckers" at a 14-year-old girl.

At 1:46, I talk to the guy with the sign that purports to be "hand printed in union blood." (He should meet this artist who works in used Band-Aids.) (I guess the AIDS scare is over.)

2:15: "That girl was 14-years-old and she made more sense than Barack Obama," says the announcer.

2:25: The voice is Vicki McKenna, the local talk radio personality, who has no trouble powering over the "You lie!" characters in the union T-shirts.

2:53: A rag-tag band that had been at the corner gets the idea to march straight into the back of the Tea Party crowd, apparently with no idea of the danger of pushing into the back of a crowd. If people in the front were getting crushed against a barrier, these self-involved musicians would not realize what they were causing . To them, it's just brash, youthful misbehavior, fun-loving japery — shutting up the people who need to be shut up.

3:36: The voice is Andrew Breitbart, who gets to the point where he tells the counter-Tea Party protesters to "go to hell." As you can see, they laugh at him.

Gov. Walker's testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Here's his opening statement:


As for the questioning:

In addition to questions about the state’s budget, Mr. Walker faced questions on his ties to the Koch brothers, his staffing decisions and whether his policies were designed to sabotage President Barack Obama‘s re-election efforts.

In one heated exchange, Rep. Bruce Braley (D., Iowa), pressed Mr. Walker to denounce undisclosed outside money and asked the Oversight Committee look into “cronyism” and whether it influences state finances.

Mr. Walker said he attended the hearing to discuss state debt, adding “You want to do a political stunt, go ahead.”

Walker did a good job of standing his ground as Democratic committee members recited protester talking points. More than once he cited the fact that federal government employees don't have collective bargaining rights and quipped that he wondered why the protesters weren't there in the nation's capitol.

Wisconsin street theater: "Come along, Scottie."

The Koch Brothers and their puppet, Scott Walker. (Video recorded by Meade yesterday.)

Why didn't Scott Walker realize he was talking to a prankster who was only pretending to be David Koch?

Because Walker had never spoken to David Koch in his life.

That fact begins a Weekly Standard article called "The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics." Toward the end:

As the assaults piled up Charles [Koch] couldn’t help thinking of Schopenhauer’s “Art of Controversy.” The German philosopher had noted that people who can’t win an argument through reason attack their opponent’s motivation. “I thought I was cynical enough,” Charles said. “But that was pretty shocking, to see what we’re up against, or what the country’s up against: to have an element like this.”...

To Charles, the call for bigger government was egalitarianism run amok. Liberals, he thought, fetishized equality of condition at the expense of personal liberty. “They cannot stand that some people are better off than others,” Charles said. “I think part of it fits Mencken’s definition of a Puritan: someone that’s miserable because he knows that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself. He cannot stand that. And I think they all slept through Economics 101.”

Celebrities and rallies that we ignored here in Madison over the weekend.

The Daily Cardinal reports on weekend protest events that Meade The Press missed:

Thousands of unions' rights supporters gathered at the King Street entrance to Capitol Saturday to listen to director Michael Moore speak, who accused corporate interests of manipulating the public.

"[The Republicans] have expertly convinced many Americans to buy their version of the American dream," Moore said. "They have created a poison pill [of] mutually assured destruction."

I wonder if the teachers and other Wisconsin union members who got the protest started 3 weeks ago appreciate having Michael Moore absorb their issue — maintaining the quality of professional public employment in Wisconsin — into his larger anti-capitalist agenda for America.

This is a problem with extending the protests. The crowd changes, new infusions of energy come from outsiders who see a ready-made platform to climb up on. These old-school, left-wing attacks on corporations have little to do with the distinct problems of jobs in the public sector — where, management is the government of the state and its citzens.

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and other local political figures spoke at the rally to usher in the fourth week of protests.

Baldwin's done the protests before, promenading around the Capitol with Jesse Jackson a couple weeks ago. She represents the Madison part of the state. But the protests are about Wisconsin politics. And they need to influence people around the entire state. Why are we getting Baldwin again — and not any of the other Wisconsin politicians? Can't we even get Feingold?

And that phrase "rally to usher in the fourth week" feels like an affront to the protesters who have kept up the energy continuously for 3 weeks. You've got something grassroots — or seemingly grassroots — happening, and then politico-celebs drop in to act as though they are the leadership. 

As the protesters filled the Capitol Square through the weekend, Tea Party supporters had their own rally Sunday at the Alliant Energy Center. Several hundred Walker supporters attended while many anti-Walker critics demonstrated outside.

The rally, which was one of many organized by Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party group largely funded by the Koch brothers, hosted Joe the Plumber and other popular conservative figures.

I didn't even know about that event. And I'm paying way more attention than the average person.  I guess we're paying attention in a different way — going to the Capitol and seeing what the people who go there are doing, rather than checking for celebrity appearances and events. If we'd have noticed, we'd have felt some pressure to show up. Fortunately, it escaped us and we didn't get sucked into the dreary convention hall.

100 lawprofs ask Congress to impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court.

Oddly, the name Koch appears 10 times in this Washington Post article. It appears that some lawprof brains are aboil with worries about the nefarious Koch brothers. Kochophobia rages on, and these furious minds seem to imagine themselves overcoming the evil that is Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — as if their "ethics" plan — assuming it could be put in place — couldn't possibly backfire and oust their favorite liberal/swing justice.

The professors said in their letter to the committees that their goal is not to second-guess the activities of any individual judge but to create "mandatory and enforceable rules to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court." An influential British judge declared in the 17th century that "no man may be a judge in his own case," the letter said, but "inexplicably we still allow Supreme Court justices to be the sole judge of themselves on recusal issues."

And what man will be the judge of whether these law professors are truthfully reporting their motives?

Under the ethics code that the lawyers consider their model, approved and regularly updated by the nation's chief appellate judges under the chairmanship of the chief justice, lesser judges are prohibited from accepting travel reimbursements from outside groups if they "give the appearance of influencing the judge" or "otherwise give the appearance of impropriety."

Nan Aron, director of the liberal group Alliance for Justice, said that if these rules were extended to the Supreme Court, none of the justices could attend "overtly political meetings or events" like those sponsored by the Kochs.

And who will be the judge of which meetings and events are overtly political? If they're sponsored by the Kochs, they're political. So far, we know that. Thanks a lot. I love the irony. It's obvious that this proposal is overtly political!

At present, said Ellen Yaroshefsky, director of the Jacob Burns Ethics Center at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, "we have standard-less standards" at the court that she struggles to explain to students.

She said it would be straightforward for the court to appoint an independent body of retired justices or other experts to adjudicate recusal and ethics controversies.

Oh, wonderful! An independent body of retired justices or other experts. Yes, wouldn't it be great to have an independent body of retired justices or other experts decide which Supreme Court Justices got to participate in particular cases?

So... retired Justices Souter, Stevens, and O'Connor might step up to decide who to disqualify in — let's say — the case about the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Maybe you think that skews a tad liberal, a tad too anti-Scalia-and-Thomas. Well, first, that's not a bug, it's a feature. And, second, whoever is setting up the "independent body" could always balance it with those  "other experts." You know where to get them, don't you? Elite law schools! Begin with the names of those 100 professors who signed that letter to Congress.

It's all so delightfully inbred — isn't it? — in the feverish fantasy life of the Scalia- and Thomas-haters of legal academia.

Governor Walker accepts a phone call from a prankster pretending to be David Koch.

Walker's office admits that it's him:

The Governor takes many calls everyday. Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the Governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

Walker opponents would love to make something of this phone call, but all they have are a few over-the-line things the Koch impersonator said like "You gotta crush that union." Walker just ignores that stuff and goes on with his standard points, which is probably the standard strategy that most politicians use when people interact with them.

You could say that it's bad that the prankster got through, but that shows that he's willing to talk to a lot of people and also that David Koch isn't a frequent caller who gets special treatment and is recognized by his caller ID and his voice and manner of speaking.

Doesn't this prank call prove that Scott Walker is not close to Koch? He doesn't recognize his voice! He doesn't drift into a more personal style of speech. He treats him like a generic political supporter.

(Here's Monday's NYT article floating the theory that Walker is too close to the Koch brothers. In my frequent forays to the protest at the Capitol, I've seen many signs depicting Walker as a creation or puppet of the Koch brothers.)