President Obama has nominated Solicitor General and former dean of the Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, to replace Justice Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. At this level, however, the name of the nominee seems almost incidental. The opposing party will try to drag out the process as long as possible, citing a grave need to gather information and deliberate – this is a lifetime appointment, after all! Nevermind that, when a President from their own party makes a nomination, they need all of about 20 seconds to make their decision.

Eventually, two or three sound bites will rise to the fore, largely taken out of context, and we will hear dire warnings of extremism from the minority opposing party. The majority nominating party will describe the nominee as a flowering of legal thought in our time.

Eventually, the President’s party will tell us about the sanctity of the “up or down vote,” forgetting about filibusters when they were in the minority. And, the reverse is true of the minority opposing party, filibustering while forgetting their red-faced demands for an “up or down vote” when they were in the majority. favor of the nomination. More often than not, there will be a vote, and the President’s nominee will be confirmed.

Secretary of Health & Human Services suggests that state departments of insurance may be able to protect citizens by checking insurance company Wellpoint’s math when it asks for rate increases. The reason is that, in California, the insurance giant asked for a 39% premium increase in California which was turned down when it’s submission attempting to justify the rate increase was found to have substantial errors.

“In light of this recent finding, I urge that, to the extent you have authority to do so, you re-examine any WellPoint rate increases in your state to determine whether any mistaken assumptions similar to those made in California were made in your state,” Sebelius wrote to the governors. “Even small errors can mean unaffordable premiums for policyholders.”

Here in Indiana, the Daniels administration seems to be taking the somewhat childish stance that it is not inclined to do so because the request is coming from the Obama administration, with whom Gov. Daniels has a political disagreement about health care:

Gov. Daniels does not plan on responding to the letter, according to Jane Jankowski, a spokeswoman.

“When we feel the need for advice about health-care costs, we won’t start with the people who just passed this disastrously expensive and backward federal legislation,” Daniels said in a statement e-mailed by Jankowski.

BrianK at Blue Indiana points out that this response is coming from the person whose math on the cost of the Iraq War, as President Bush’s director of the Office of Management & Budget, was so staggeringly wrong. (Not even mentioning the consistently wrong budget projections here locally.)

It’s a bad idea to let politics trump math. Eventually the math is always going to win.

Checking in to see how I did on my prognostications:

Senate – Dan Coats.
Coats won handily, getting 45,000 more votes than his next closest rival, Marlin Stutzman. (Coats had about 185k versus Stuzman’s 140k.)

IN-01: Mark Leyva (no idea, but that was the one name I recognized)
This one is a tentative Leyva win. The Secretary of State count is reflecting a 27 vote margin above Peter Lindemulder. A news article I read said something about a 600 vote margin.

IN-02: Jackie Walorski (though Tony “Illinois Nazi birthday party” Zirkle would be fun)
Jackie Walorski won handily, pretty much doubling the count of her next closest opponent, Jack Jordan.

IN-03: Mark Souder (could be close though, he is not well liked and has some legitimate competition.)

Not really all that close. Souder had 35,750 votes to his next closest challenger, Bob Thomas, with 25,000.

IN-04: Toss-up, but I’ll guess Rokita – just from the name recognition he garnered by plastering his name on heavy Secretary of State advertising.

Not a toss-up. Rokita won by an enormous margin, more than doubling Brandt Hersman’s total.

IN-05: Dan Burton because all of the anti-Burton votes will cancel out.

Burton won with about 30,000; about 10,000 votes to spare above John McGoff’s 20,000.

IN-07: No idea, I’ll say Carlos May.

Wrong. Marvin Scott.

IN-08: No idea, I’ll pick Larry Bucshon out of a hat.

Looks like Bucshon narrowly beat Kristi Risk.

IN-09: Mike Sodrel for the re-re-re (I lost count) match against Baron Hill.
Wrong. Todd Young won this one. But, the Indiana Secretary of State’s office currently lists Travis Hankins as leading the vote count. But all of the newspapers list Young as the winner, so that pretty much calls into question all of the vote totals I’ve mentioned above. But, I think I’ve at least gotten the victors correct.

I don’t have an opinion as to the legal question here, but I agree that it can’t be comforting when your opponent gets to administer the election. According to a story by Carrie Ritchey for the Indy Star, Democratic challenger to Rep. Kathy Richardson is challenging her role as Hamilton County elections administrator.

[Joe] Weingarten doesn’t like that his opponent counts the ballots, and he’s concerned about the public’s perception of her dual role.
. . .
Weingarten is asking a special prosecutor to intervene because County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp contributed to Richardson’s re-election campaign.

The Once & Future Senator, Dan Coats, filed his long awaited financial disclosures today. Actually, I shouldn’t bash him specifically – 80% of the primary field decided that federal election laws are more of what you might call “guidelines.” These disclosures were supposed to have been filed by April 4.

Former Sen. Dan Coats was paid $821,887 from January of 2009 through the first few months of this year for lobbying and other jobs, according to his financial disclosure statement filed today.

Dollar Dan is apparently worth about $2.5 million – which, as Senators go, is pretty run of the mill, I think.

The Arizona anti-immigrant law (pdf) has a provision that ought to be making lawyers’ mouths water:

G. A PERSON MAY BRING AN ACTION IN SUPERIOR COURT TO CHALLENGE ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT ADOPTS OR IMPLEMENTS A POLICY THAT LIMITS OR RESTRICTS THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW. IF THERE IS A JUDICIAL FINDING THAT AN ENTITY HAS VIOLATED THIS SECTION, THE COURT SHALL ORDER ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. THAT THE PERSON WHO BROUGHT THE ACTION RECOVER COURT COSTS AND ATTORNEY FEES.

2. THAT THE ENTITY PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NOT LESS THAN ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND NOT MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH DAY THAT THE POLICY HAS REMAINED IN EFFECT AFTER THE FILING OF AN ACTION PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION.

If I’m reading that correctly, a unit of Arizona government that gives the benefit of the doubt to a citizen who the unit of government could plausibly suspect as illegal is subjecting itself to significant legal exposure. That’s an attorney’s full employment act right there: $5,000 per day, the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees, and the government’s attorney’s fees. I’m sure that money couldn’t be better spent elsewhere.

That title goes far beyond anything I’m prepared to deliver for this blog post. But, the Indy Star has an article entitled GOP blocks debate on financial reform. That’s a tough vote for a party vying to capture populist anger about the economy. And this isn’t even just a vote against regulation – this was a vote against debating financial reform.

Senate Republicans united Monday to block debate on legislation that would make the most far-reaching changes in financial industry regulation since the Great Depression — slowing but probably not stopping a bill that has been propelled by angry voters who want to crack down on Wall Street.

The 57-41 vote marked the first Senate showdown over the issue. No Republicans voted for the motion to begin debate on the bill; 60 votes were needed to end GOP delaying tactics and move the issue to the Senate floor. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a Democrat, joined in the opposition.

True or not, Republicans are battling against a reputation of doing the bidding of the wealthy in America — kind of like the whole Democratic “weak on defense thing”. Anything that plays into that narrative will get amplified. Anything that goes against that narrative tends to get ignored. This won’t help in a tough economic climate featuring a Wall Street casino, bail out of too big to financial institutions, and huge compensation packages for those in the financial industry who rolled the dice even though they lost.

In a nice Orwellian turn of phrase, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this party-line vote to filibuster even debating the bill was a “vote for bipartisanship.”

The push for overhauling the financial regulatory system — like the health-care battle before it — represents a landmark domestic policy initiative by the president and his Democratic allies in Congress. And it may be their last chance for a major victory before this fall’s contentious midterm elections. In taking on Wall Street, Democrats are emboldened by polls showing that two-thirds of Americans favor their legislation.

The official line is that they are filibustering to prevent debate on the financial reform bill in order to improve it. (Which, itself, has kind of a “burning down the village to save it” feel). But that’s a tough sell following the health care debate where these filibusters were being used to try to “kill the bill.”

Update Matt Taibbi elaborates on this theme in the context of the Goldman Sachs Senate hearings.

I’m a sucker for a good history project. And the oddity of seeing history on The History Channel stopped me in my tracks – much like the odd music video on MTV. It is apparently a 6 episode mini-series. After episode 1 of America: the Story of Us, the jury is still out for me. Maybe it’s inevitable for a broad survey of history for the last 224 years, but there were a lot of trite cliches in there. Seems like there were two or three moments in the first episode “that would change the course of history forever.” And there were vast amounts of stuff they glossed over or skipped entirely.

But, again, I like history. Near as I can figure from episode 1 of the mini-series, a bunch of incompetent boobs landed in Jamestown and would have died off completely but for the self-reliant determination of John Rolfe and his tobacco seeds. Meanwhile, up north, a band of religious activists came in on the Mayflower and were starving and would have died off completely if the local, smallpox decimated natives hadn’t shown them how to bury fish in the sand to grow crops. Then nothing happened for the next 150 years. Then the British seized some of John Hancock’s smuggled contraband. That made the folks in Boston restless, so the British shot a couple, including Crispus Attucks. Paul Revere sketched the scene and the rest of the colonies rose up in rebellion despite the fact that the British repealed most of the taxes except the one on tea.

The British came in to put down the rebellion and captured New York in the biggest attack on New York “until 9/11” (wtf? 9/11 was awful, but it was a pinprick compared to armed invasion by a British armada). George Washington and his ragtag band of scrappy soldiers equipped with little more than frontier rifles, a “can do” attitude, and a belly full of freedom put down the world’s greatest military power. (Now what will really interest me is to see how they treat Shay’s Rebellion or the Whiskey Rebellion and explain why their love of freedom and hatred of taxes weren’t enough to withstand Washington and his troops after they had become The Establishment.)

After assassinating a few British officers, withstanding the privations of Valley Forge, and training under a gay Prussian military officer, the Americans took the last two redoubts at Yorktown and the British surrendered. Oh yeah, and the French helped some too.

At the end of the day, I guess my mixed feelings have to do with my ambivalence about American history generally. On the one hand, I value the American mythology – where our Founders were nothing but good and noble and the righteous Americans were fighting the evil British. Myths bind us together as a nation and help us see ourselves as Americans. I think this sense of being part of a common group is essential to a peaceful society. Members of a common group tend to work out their differences without violence.

On the other hand, I appreciate that history is messy and full of details that generally prevent sweeping generalizations about good and evil. At best, if you’re lucky, you can often come up with reasonably coherent narratives about “us” and “them.” And with the American Revolution, the “us” and “them,” is a whole lot messier than the mini-series lets on. Prior to the Revolution, after all, the colonists were British. Many were reluctant to take up arms against what they regarded as countrymen and remained loyal to the British crown.

Regardless, however, if this mini-series gives more people a nodding acquaintance with the basic facts of American history, I suppose I should put it in the “win” column.

Apparently one of the issues in the Union County commissioner’s race is whether to construct a new jail and, if so, what kind. Jails, like so many other things in local government, are one of those things you’ll end up paying for one way or another. For local government, there are just too many other units of government that can issue mandates on your dime.

The legislature passes laws requiring incarceration of more people. Federal and state courts interpret state and local constitutions to require certain minimum conditions of confinement. If it gets too bad, a court can mandate the construction of additional jail space. Inmates can file lawsuits (and sometimes even win!) and be awarded damages by juries or judges if the conditions are inadequate. So, whether or not to spend money is definitely not entirely within local government control. Your pocket can get picked in a variety of ways, and the worse your jail is, the more likely that is going to be a significant involuntary expense.