Taking it Outside

There is an article on SI.com that discusses a federal case recently brought against 10 individuals, including a couple college basketball players and an assistant coach, for allegedly fixing college basketball games. The article focuses on problems with the case, primarily with the informant.

I bring this up not because I want to discuss this particular case, but because of a broader issue that has always puzzled me: why is point shaving in college sports (which usually occurs in basketball) illegal at all, especially at the federal level? Betting on college sports is illegal in the U.S. everywhere except for Nevada, so I can see how Nevada might look askance at point shaving, though they wouldn't have much authority/jurisdiction to go after someone who shaved points in, say, Florida. But federally?

I guess one might argue that point shaving is an interstate conspiracy to defraud Nevada casinos, and thus there is a federal interest here. But, what duty does a college basketball player owe to those casinos? If he (or she, though I've not heard of that) wants to accept cash and play at less than his best, what's wrong with that? How is that any different than someone paying, say, a New England Patriot employee to disclose before last year's NFL playoff game that Tom Brady will be playing with an ankle injury, which the Patriots subsequently lost (though maybe that would be illegal too)?

A weaker justification for this illegality may be that the ticket holders were defrauded as they were misled into purchasing the tickets to a sporting event that didn't turn out to be so. But that's not the rationale I think for the federal law. Instead, it seems to be designed to protect the interests of gamblers, even though no one can legally place such bets unless they're in Nevada. Indeed, this takes place against the backdrop of the DOJ shutting down internet gambling sites, including sports gambling sites, for violations of U.S. gambling laws.

It really is just bizarre. Am I missing something obvious here as to the rationale/justification behind such laws?

While I think that Romney will ultimately win the GOP nomination for President this year, that Newt won so convincingly in SC yesterday casts a fair bit of doubt on that conclusion. Since the possibility of a Gingrich GOP win is now greater, and thus the possibility of President Gingrich is also much greater, I've started to wonder what a Gingrich Administration would look like.

This seems an impossible task. It's like wondering what a Palin Administration would look like. Who would be Gingrich's Defense Secretary? State? Treasury? How would he otherwise staff the Executive Branch? And foreign policy? Do we bomb Iran in January 2013? I just have no idea. Maybe it would just be the usual GOP suspects, such as those that would populate the branch if Mitt won, but I really have no idea.

Further, what would it mean if we had a President that has shown his utter and publicly displayed contempt for his political/ideological opponents, whomever they might be at the time, to have all that narcissism validated by being elected as "Leader of the Free World?" I mean, as bad as George W. Bush was as president, I never got the feeling that he was someone who thought of himself as smarter than everybody else and entitled to be POTUS and whose general mode of thinking was "why can't you stupid fncking people recognize my fncking genius you morons." This seems to be Newt's m.o.

I wrote this Kos* diary more than five years ago as a joke that folks should vote for the GOP in 2006 because the alternative would be too boring. A Gingrich Presidency represents the best kind of such faux-excitement. Just how horrible would it be? I don't know, but morbid curiosity makes me (almost) want to find out.

*I also wrote this Diary which I entitled "Negotiating a Stimulus Package with the GOP's Cheese Shop", that I was quite proud of at the time and it seems it holds up, as long as I'm talking about narcissism.

Let's see...

Roman Legions videoed urinating on the bodies of enemy dead.

Roman client state (AKA the cossacks) engaging in terrorist assassinations of civilians of a perceived enemy.

Transcripts emerge of fiddling while Rome burns.

Leader of Loyal Roman Opposition is officially insane.

Roman paper of record asks if reporting on the accuracy of public figures' statements should be included in its reporters' job descriptions.

Roman gulag celebrates its 10th Birthday.

Roman High Court validates convictions obtained with unreliable evidence.

Evidence of continued Carthaginian sympathies grows.

Update: Former high Roman officials sought for criminal prosecution for acts of torture.

This past week President Obama made several "recess" appointments to staff various executive branch agencies, including Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Obama made these so-called recess appointments despite that the Senate (AFAICT) considers itself to be "in session" and not "recess." If true, there would be no basis upon which Obama could recess appoint someone under the Constitution, it seems to me.

I'm sure I'm missing some of the history here but these "pro forma" sessions of the Senate appear to have originated (at least in their modern form) under the Democrats during the GWB administration to prevent him from recess appointing persons to his administration that the Democrats didn't like (legitimately or not). These sessions continue today despite the current Democratic control of the Senate, presumably because the Constitution requires the consent of one house to allow the other to go into recess for more than three days, and the GOP controlled House won't consent.

Constitutional arguments against this pro-forma tactic ring hollow to me, as the Constitutional allows each House to set the rules of its own proceedings (which is why we have the filibuster). One argument is that respecting these pro forma sessions - where no business is conducted - effectively nullifies the President's recess appointment power, and interpreting one part of the Constitution to nullify another is somehow improper. But, the Senate could unambiguously never go into recess if it wanted to, so I'm not sure this "nullification" argument holds much water, other than as a means of extracting some cost from the Senate. Further, I don't think it would be too hard for a court to come to the conclusion that "whether or not the Senate is in session is wholly up to the Senate and its rules," and not dismiss a case under, e.g., the political question doctrine.

More broadly, I like these pro forma sessions for the same reason I liked them during the GWB administration - they represent a rare instance of Congress telling the Executive to eff off. It would be nice if we saw this more often, especially in the area of military policy and national security. Yes, it can be taken too far, such as the serial blocking of Obama administration appointees to non-cabinet head positions as currently conducted by the GOP via the filibuster, but we've had too much of the imperial presidency for my taste.

Finally, can we get rid of the filibuster now, at least for appointments by POTUS to the Executive Branch? They really do wreak a lot of unnecessary havoc (for example, we haven't had a Senate-confirmed top tax policy person at the Treasury Department for the whole of Obama's Presidency, nearly 3 years).

Joan Walsh Anglund wrote many children's books, including one called "The Brave Cowboy." First published in 1959 (I believe) I received a copy of this book in 1976 from my then "best friend" (I was 3). The book got passed around my family until I finally received it back a couple years ago to read to my first son, who is almost three himself now.

Needless to say, the book is in serious disrepair, having been a family favorite to read to little boys for over 35 years. So for Christmas my wife bought a new copy of the book, figuring that our almost three year old wouldn't notice if we switched from the old, ratty version with the disintegrating binding to a new version, so long as the story and pictures were the same.

But they were not. Most of the book is the same, but there is one major difference (and a few other minor ones). In the original, or at least, in my original copy, the Brave Cowboy is not afraid of "Indians" it says, on the second page of the story. And later, when the book tells tales of the cowboy's adventures, it says that "maybe he would hunt wild Indians that might be in the territory...."

In the recently acquired version, "Indians" has been replaced with "mountain lions" and the Brave Cowboy now hunts bank robbers. In addition, the illustrations have been replaced, such that there are no Indians in the "new" version.

When I first read the original book to my son (not remembering it being read to me) I was put off by the references to the Cowboy's "hunt[ing] wild Indians," for all the reasons I'm sure readers of this blog are familiar with. But I was also put off by the changes in the new version and, in particular, that there was no acknowledgement in the new version that the original story had been altered in any way, a peculiar form of self-censorship, it seems to me.

This was disturbing as it seems to be a sort of whitewashing of history, in the hopes that no one will notice and thus not somehow be critical of the author and/or publisher (and reminds me of the revisions to Disney's Fantasia ). Problematic because, well, it makes it appear as if everyone was always perfect and held the mores of today. It seems to me the "right" thing to do would be to change the book, while acknowledging the changes, but I would be interested in others' thoughts.

Comments anyone? My opinion: er, yuck.

I like the whole Constitution thing, but that it's driven us toward a solely 2-party system, includes the U.S. Senate, and the POTUS thing, it's edges are fraying. Like the Bill of Rights and much other things though!

So I really have had enough of the whole Tim Tebow thing. This item at Slate pretty much sums up my view of how Mr. Tebow should be seen as an NFL QB (I particularly liked the opening line "For the fifth time in eight weeks, Tim Tebow and his Broncos teammates heroically overcame Tim Tebow to win a game by four points or less." as well as "And then Marion Barber began playing the worst 10 minutes of football since Tim Tebow's second quarter."). I mean, has there been a more horribly over-hyped pro-athlete in the past 20 years?

In the latest game, the man completed zero passes in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. That's right, no complete passes for half the fricking game. This is someone who is purportedly a starting QB in the NFL, the prime job description of which is "able to consistently throw football to people wearing identical clothes as self," where "consistently" means, at a minimum, once every 15 minutes of playing time, I would think. And yet here he is being talked about like some kind of huge story and the second coming of Christmas Baby Jesus with eye-black-bible-verse-thingys.

Feh, I say, feh. I expect this little "miracle" to come to an end this week vs. New England, and then we'll see if The Tebows can win against Kansas City and Buffalo over the last two weeks of the season. My prediction is that they go 1-2 at best, but more likely 0-3, and people can stop talking about what can only be described as a terrible NFL QB.

As for the NBA, is David Stern trying to piss away whatever credibility the league had left by vetoing the Chris Paul trade to the Lakers? I mean, dude, everyone already thinks you rig the officiating in favor of the big market teams, and now you're dictating which players can go where (yes I know the NBA owns the Hornets, but still)? And sticking to your guns despite universal condemnation (I have yet to see anyone say Stern did the right thing outside of the NBA ownership clique)? Michael Jordan doesn't play anymore, in case you haven't noticed David.

If you (and the NBA players association) were really serious about restoring the league's popularity you would (i) contract by about 6 teams (perhaps Memphis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Charlotte, Minnesota, and Toronto); (ii) drop the regular season to 55-60 games; (iii) reduce the # of playoff teams to 6 from each conference, giving the top two teams first round byes; (iv) move the first round back to best of 5 from best of 7 (TNT actually has a playoff slogan of "40 Games in 40 Nights", and that's before the Finals start); (v) reduce the draft to a single round; and (vi) require people to be two years from HS graduation before being eligible for the draft rather than one. But all of that would mean less $$ for everyone so it's a complete non-starter, and thus I will introduce the NBA to its future: the NHL.

I noted in a comment to a previous post this item from Foxnews.com (russell took the discussion in a different direction than I'm heading here, but you should read his comment in that thread).

It's headlined (right now, at least) "Amnesty International Under Fire for Demanding Bush's Arrest During Trip to Africa," but note that the link seems to indicate a title of "amnesty-international-calls-for-bushs-arrest-during-trip-to-africa" (and my recollection that the original title for the article was something like the more neutral "Former Bush Administration Officials Assail Amnesty International's Call for Bush's Arrest). Okay, Amnesty called for Bush's arrest, and they are "under fire" for it. Who is placing Amnesty under fire? Well, "Former members of the George W. Bush administration!" Shocking I know.

Who are these former Bush administration members? Well, there's "former Justice Department attorney John Yoo," and "Brad Blakeman, a former Bush adviser" (who laugably states "could be taken as a call for violence against the president") and "Charles "Cully" Stimson, a former Defense Department official for detainee affairs" (who left DoD (or maybe was fired) after suggesting that clients drop major law firms who were representing Gittmo detainees). Also quoted is Rep. Peter King who accuses Amnesty of lacking intellectual honesty and instead they should "give President Bush a medal to honor him for liberating so many oppressed Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan..." Yes, that's what he said.

Further, in what is purportedly a news article, we have this fun little bit of editorializing "Amnesty International's U.S. chapter is backed in part by Bush-basher George Soros' Open Society Foundations." And then unsourced speculation that "Amnesty's focus on arresting the former president might raise questions about its tax-exempt status in the U.S." Indeed.

So there you have Foxnews in a nutshell: perceived liberal group says bad things about President Bush, who should we ask about this? How about former members of the Bush Administration and a GOP congressman, who...uniformly criticize the group, which is described as "Under Fire" in the headline, as if they'd done something wrong in the eyes of a neutral observer.

I'm sure there are worse examples of this on Foxnews, but this seemed to capture it quite nicely. And while I'm sure someone can find a similar thing in the pages of the NYTimes in a news article, it seems that this is a routine part of Foxnews's "news" stories that it produces in house.

Andrew Sullivan has a short item quoting Glenn Greenwald and Conor Fridersdorf here, noting that, essentially, "we're killing a bunch of children" is rarely cited as a reason to end/forego wars waged by the United States. This got me thinking, what weight do "we" (being people in the US) really put on the deaths of innocent civilians in this regard?

Not much, it seems to me. I think we usually assuage any such concerns by (a) saying we didn't really mean to kill them, and (b) laying blame on the people we actually were trying to kill. This is rather simplistic, and glosses over various laws of war on things like proportionality (IIRC), and nevertheless the innocent are just as dead. But it allows us not to think about it as we pursue our various wars/bombing strikes in, what, at least 6 Muslim countries as of late?

In that regard, would a fair question to someone who supports these various campaigns be "we can kill Osama bin Laden but we're going to have to shoot three 8 year olds in the head to do it, okay by you?" Is that too fantastical? Too personal? Are we excused by (a) and (b) above?

Partially relevant here, ISTM, is the way the American press shields the public from the horrors of war, and so questions like the above are rarely confronted.

MckinneyTexas asked at the Mothership whether there would be a Penn State post but there were no takers, so I thought I'd throw one up here. But, what to say? I'd like to say that this illustrates "everything that's wrong with big time college athletics," but I don't think that would be true.

I actually typed the last sentence above a few days ago* before today's story in the WSJ, which seems to indicate that JoePa's Penn State football program did not in fact live up to the "squeaky clean" image it maintained. While true that PSU was not sanctioned by the NCAA during JoePa's tenure, it appears from the article that there were many many cases, dating back to who knows when, where football players were given more leniency by the PSU administrators when it came to things like, e.g., breaking into an apartment en masse and beating people, than would have been given to "ordinary" students. Shocking, I know. Further, they went so far as to basically strip the student conduct administrators of their ability to discipline football players with respect to football related activities, "After Dr. Triponey's departure, the university hired Bob Secor, a former vice provost at the school, to head a committee to examine the judicial-review process. Mr. Secor says that Mr. Paterno told him that he didn't think other people should be able to decide whether a football player should be able to play or not. 'And we agreed with that,' he says."

So, assuming more and more stories like this will come out, it actually does seem to me that the PSU "scandal" can be held up to illustrate most, if not all, of what's wrong with big time college athletics. If I were sending a kid to college right now with a big time NCAA athletic program, one piece of advice I would give would be to stay away from those athletes (be they football, basketball, and/or some other sports stars on campus). They are unaccountable and the temptation to act accordingly is strong.

*along with a few other things that don't seem relevant anymore