ANOTHER CHINESE MERCHANDISE PROBLEM? Chemical burns from Wal-Mart Chinese flip-flops.
UPDATE: More here. This was the lead story on my local news last night — doesn’t mean it’s not bogus, of course, but look at the photos. Not at lunch, though.
Archive for 2007
September 13, 2007
On the day he disappeared, Norman Hsu, the disgraced fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, sent letters to friends that recipients viewed as a suicide note, people familiar with the letter have said.
In his letter, Hsu apologized for any embarrassment he had caused recipients of his largesse. In the last four years, he has generated donations of more than $1 million for Democratic politicians across the country. . . . Until recent weeks, Hsu was a darling of Democratic politicians, donating at least $600,000 himself during the last four years and raising far more than that from associates.
Among the candidates to whom he donated was Obama — a total of $7,000 in 2004 and 2005. Obama recently gave that same amount to charity. Hsu’s associates have given Obama at least $12,600 more.
The biggest recipient of his largesse was Clinton. Aides to the New York senator estimate that Hsu raised $850,000 for her presidential campaign. The Clinton campaign announced earlier this week it would return the $850,000 to 260 donors.
Read the whole thing, which advances the story a bit — though still no word on how he “fell ill.”
UPDATE: A Google oddity. Probably just coincidence . . . .
ARREST: COMFORTING. Events underlying the arrest not so comforting:
A 26-year-old Dearborn resident, Houssein Zorkot, was arraigned in 19th District Court Tuesday on several felony charges, including carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent.
Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park.
Early reports are often inaccurate, but I don’t like this. Glad they nabbed him early.
UGH: I was supposed to drive to Nashville for another meeting of my state constitutional revision commission, but I’ve come down with the stomach bug that’s going around my daughter’s school. I wonder if I’d ever be sick if it weren’t for the school system . . . .
UPDATE: They’re going to let me participate by speakerphone. That’s nice of them.
JULES CRITTENDEN: “Are there finally signs that Iran and Syria, two of the world’s leading supporters of terrorism are getting squeezed?”
CONTRASTING REPORTORIAL STYLES: “Craig Sees Fear Realized in Trouble With Adjoining Stall.” Heh.
OUCH: “As you have found, our hearings are more about listening to ourselves than listening to our witnesses.”
As I have said, the best Bush strategy is to put Congress on TV as often as possible.
UPDATE: Changing the subject.
BLOGGING FROM IRAQ, Bill Roggio reports on counterinsurgency success in Haswa.
September 12, 2007
PROBLEMS AT THE Ave Maria Law School.
HOT AIR INVESTIGATES the Vietnam Memorial desecration.
U.S. SOLDIERS IN IRAQ on the Petraeus testimony.
STOP THE PRESSES! Conservative (& libertarian) Bloggers defend Liberal Law Professor. Is that really such a surprise?
UPDATE: I guess it is — it’s made the Los Angeles Times.
ANOTHER UPDATE: “Incompetence, cowardice, or wilful self-destruction?” The U.C. regents should be unhappy that these are the plausible explanations.
MORE: A huge Chemerinsky roundup here.
And still more at Inside Higher Ed. And here.
And Hugh Hewitt wonders if this will complicate UCI’s accreditation process.
STILL MORE: Steve Hayward emails:
As a native Californian and long-time watcher of Orange County politics, I am very skeptical that Donald Bren had anything to do with the Chemerinsky debacle. Although Bren is a major Republican donor, he is no conservative ideologue. In fact, in intra-party fights in Orange County and in California generally, movement conservatives have always counted on Bren to be on the other side.
The Irvine Foundation, which is mostly his baby, gives overwhelmingly to mainstream to liberal causes. Bren is the ultimate Establishment guy, and would, I think, be delighted to have someone of Chemerinsky’s national stature as the founding dean. This angle doesn’t ring true.
My suspicion is that if the Regents were behind this, it was not pressure from Bren, but because some faction on the Regents has their own stealth candidate for the job (or maybe even the governor), and is using the “conservative objections” angle as a smokescreen. In any event, count me among conservatives who are appalled. We don’t want to “get” Chemerinky; we want to argue with him, frequently and publicly. To his credit, he is happy to engage us, which is why the likes of Hugh Hewitt and John Eastman (my graduate school roommate at Claremont) support his appointment.
Interesting. Maybe someone should call Bren and ask him.
BUSH GAINS IN THE POLLS: “Public discontent with the Iraq war has slightly eased, increasing President Bush’s political maneuvering room at a critical point in debates over war costs and troop levels. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows an uptick in support for the president’s handling of the war. As Mr. Bush prepares to follow Congressional testimony by top Iraq Gen. David Petraeus with a speech to the nation tonight, the proportion of Americans who believe the troop surge is helping and that victory remains possible has edged up.”
UPDATE: But Bill Quick thinks Bush is missing the real opportunity: “I still believe there is one way Bush can save his presidency as well as guarantee a GOP sweep in 2008, and that is to strike hard at the Iranian regime, and keep striking it until it falls. If he does so, the world will suddenly become a far safer place, and even I will revise my opinion of his watch drastically upward.” I’ll be surprised if that happens.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Some people are reading the Quick link as an endorsement of an attack on my part. No, I’ve been against that for quite a while — I’d like to see the mullahs brought down, but I don’t think invasion is the way to do it. I’m lukewarm on air attacks — post-invasion evidence suggests that the 1998 Operation Desert Fox bombing did more harm to Saddam’s weapons program than we thought, but the Iranians have probably learned a lot from that too.
HILLARY AND SANDY BERGER: Some interesting observations from Beldar.
A GOOD REVIEW for The Off-Season. The Insta-daughter liked it.
J.D. JOHANNES says that Congress is proving Alexander Hamilton right.
MORE TERROR ARRESTS IN EUROPE: Austria Arrests Three in Latest Islamist Terror Plot in Europe.
ED MORRISSEY PUTS ALL THE HSU STORIES TOGETHER and calls it HsuStock!
BLUE SUEDE HSUS: Things aren’t lookiing good. Hillary worried about these kinds of problems, but failed to prevent them:
Of all the possible vulnerabilities facing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton has long believed that the one of the biggest was money, friends and advisers say. Some sort of fund-raising scandal that would echo the Clinton-era controversies of the 1990s and make her appear greedy or ethically challenged.
As a result, Mrs. Clinton told aides this year to vet major donors carefully and help her avoid situations in which she might appear to be trading access for big money, advisers said. Also to be avoided, the senator said, were fund-raising tactics that might conjure up the Clinton White House coffees and the ties to relatively unknown donors offering large sums, like the Asian businessmen who sent checks to the Democratic National Committee.
Yet nine months into her campaign, Mrs. Clinton is grappling with exactly the situation she feared — giving up nearly $900,000 that had been donated or raised by Norman Hsu, a one-time fugitive and one of her top fund-raisers, whose actions raise serious questions about how well the campaign vetted its donors. As a result, Mrs. Clinton now finds herself linked to a convicted criminal who brought in tens of thousands of dollars from potentially tainted sources.
So they’re returning the money. But then they’re asking for it back:
The campaign will try to get most of the donors to give the money back right after the refunds, said a senior Democratic strategist who advises Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. “That’s the plan,†the strategist said.
But it doesn’t seem like a very good plan, since there are worries about the donors, whose names the campaign still refuses to release:
Mrs. Clinton and her advisers are concerned that rival campaigns or the news media will dig into the background of each donor, and they want to be prepared if some of the donors end up having money funneled to them from Mr. Hsu or have shady backgrounds.
If the money was funneled from Mr. Hsu, it may have to be returned a second time, since the WSJ reports that it might be stolen:
Where did Norman Hsu get his money?
That has been one of the big questions hanging over the prominent Democratic fund-raiser, as reports have surfaced about hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in political donations, plus lavish parties, fancy apartments and a $2 million bond he posted to get out of jail earlier this month.
New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.
Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal, according to a business plan obtained by the Journal. Now the investment fund, Source Financing Investors, says Mr. Hsu’s company owes it the $40 million, which represents 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu’s company. When Source Financing recently attempted to cash checks from the company, Components Ltd., the investors say they were told the account held insufficient funds.
Hey, his campaign-donation checks never bounced. But let’s look at this: Hilary knew she had a problem, and her people had past experience. Nonetheless, they wound up taking lots of money from a fugitive felon who may have embezzled it from business partners, then routed it through straw donors to avoid federal election law. And yet they’re hoping to get the money in the end anyway? Doesn’t sound smart to me.
Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty notes conveniently shifting standards of responsibility:
So let me get this straight… to Hillary, Norman Hsu gets the benefit of the doubt, but not General David Petraeus?
I guess Petraeus neglected to donate.
ONE THING YOU’VE GOT TO SAY FOR JOHN MCCAIN — his outreach to the “new media” crowd has been excellent. (Our podcast interview with McCain is here.) He’s been holding regular conference calls with bloggers, and today’s got written about in several places: Jennifer Rubin reports here; EyeOn08 reports here; Jim Geraghty reports here; and here’s a report from Matt Lewis.
COLLEGES, STUDENTS, AND PARTIES: I guess treating students like adults is so 1979.
THE WSJ LAW BLOG has more on the Chemerinsky story, including a confirmation from Chemerinsky.
And John Leo has some thoughts:
If the blog report is accurate, the treatment of Chemerinsky is a test case for conservatives who support free speech and argue vehemently against political tests for faculty and administration appointments. Do these principles apply only to conservatives, or do they protect liberals as well?
Chemerinsky is indeed very liberal and very outspoken. He particularly irritated many religious conservatives by lumping Christian fundamentalists with Islamic fundamentalists as threats to democratic principles. So argue with him, but don’t try to get him fired.
For one thing, the chancellor had plenty of time to think about the impact of hiring Chermerinsky, and to reject him if he chose. But it’s disgraceful to hire the man, fire him immediately and then explain that you are doing so to cave into political pressure. The chancellor, the school and Chemerinsky all suffer from this sort of amateurish behavior. And if the chancellor does not reverse course and accept Chemerinsky, he puts the next choice for dean in an untenable position – he will inevitably be seen as a safe nominee, so harmless that no political pressure group will try to oust him. The reputation of the law school would decline two years before opening.
Yes, it’s a terrible move for U.C. Irvine. And Leo’s right about the rest, too. I would certainly hope that left-leaning academics would support someone on the right who was treated similarly.
UPDATE: A good point from Eugene Volokh, who observes that we shouldn’t treat administrative appointments as raising the kind of free-speech concerns that scholarly appointments do. Fair enough. But nonetheless, while U.C. Irvine might have been fine to decide that they wanted a conservative dean to enhance the intellectual diversity of California’s public law schools, that’s the sort of decision that should have been made before the offer was made to Chemerinsky. And this is only one reason why the U.C. Irvine administrators look dumb. As Ilya Somin comments:
The Irvine decisionmakers were simply foolish to believe that Chemerinsky’s hiring would produce a major backlash from conservatives that could harm the school. Many prominent law schools have deans significantly more left-wing than Chemerinsky. None of them has attracted a significant conservative backlash for their dean hiring decision, and certainly none has suffered any real harm from such conservative criticism as did occur. Chemerinsky is unquestionably a liberal, but his views on legal issues are actually quite typical of the overwhelmingly left of center legal academy. I can easily name plenty of prominent constitutional law scholars significantly further to the left than Chemerinsky is. . . .
My own view is that political ideology should not influence the hiring of scholars, except in extraordinarily unusual instances. Administrators are a more complicated case, because they are responsible for overseeing policies with ideological implications and objectives, and because they are supposed to project a positive public image for the school. It may be reasonable to avoid hiring administrators whose ideological views are radically at odds with the policies they are expected to enforce or will seriously damage the school’s image. Be that as it may, there is no reason to believe that Chemerinsky’s political ideology would prevent him from discharging his duties as dean, or somehow damage Irvine’s image. Indeed, UC Irvine’s decision to rescind the offer is likely to do far more harm to the school’s reputation than hiring him ever could have.
That seems right to me.
Meanwhile, many readers think my statement above — “I would certainly hope that left-leaning academics would support someone on the right who was treated similarly” — is hopelessly naive. I would say, rather, hopefully naive. . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: More, including a poll, here.
MORE: Hugh Hewitt weighs in.
THOUGHTS ON INTERFAITH DIALOGUE, from Dave Kopel.