Beware the Middle Tranche of March (and mortgage backed securities)

William Safire in a piece called Animal Spirits in the New York Times Magazine, this day, pointed out that the Ides in the Ides of March is one of three tranches the Romans used to divide a month...

And so it can only be fitting then to consider the irony of a firm warning attached to a tranche, something known to the ancients, and lost on US only until recently...

Tune in next week when we revive our animal spirits with a fix of Himbeergeist

Does the Wall Street Bail Out Contain a Bill of Attainder?

The text of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9; Clause 3 is:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Does the proposed bailout require the ex post facto disgorgement of profits or pay to "the fat cat CEOs"? If so, you can bet they and their lawyers will argue the Congress's actions are unlawful.

Stay tuned for more....

White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life

"The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology...."

This did not come as a surprise to Brian De Palma

Cloverfield and the Red Badge of Courage

I loved the movie Cloverfield. In fact I had my Slusho T-Shirt on when I went. If you don't know what slusho is, than you are not as lame as our programmer Jimmy. You probably get dates.

That said, many people are hailing the first person narrative, as being on the ground, in the heart of battle, lacking details and a precise understanding of the events by the narrator and viewer. It is heralded as innovative, fresh, new, and story telling for the modern ages / U-tube generation.

Couldn't help but think that is what they said about Stephen Crane's protagonist in The Red Badge of Courage. There we follow Henry Fleming, a lowly private as he traverses the battlefield, without ever knowing the true bigger picture. His travels and what the reader knows from the narrators perspective are equally opaque.

Of course that book was written in 1895. What is old is new again. That's why I have bell bottoms.

Pruneyard Revisited - Free Speech trumps common decency. - Law Students Shrug

The California Supremes said:

We granted the request of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to decide whether, under California law, a shopping mall may enforce a rule prohibiting persons from urging customers to boycott a store in the mall. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the right to free speech granted by article I, section 2 of the California Constitution includes the right to urge customers in a shopping mall to boycott one of the stores in the mall.

FASHION VALLEY MALL, LLC, v. NATION LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
D.C. Cir.Ct.App. No. 04-1411

Now the blogs are a buzz that this was surprising. See for example: LAW BLOG WSJ

But if you read Pruneyard in property class, you know this isn't a shocking extension of California Free Speech Jurisprudence. - primer on Pruneyard

Of course it is shocking is that by choosing to locate in a mall, you can't exclude naysayers from the front door of your store. It is just not new or surprising.

Missing CIA tapes...

I still can't believe my government has resorted to waterboarding. Is this the "freedom" we fight for? Is this what we stand for? I say not.

According to the NY Times:

It has been widely reported that Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves near-suffocation. But C.I.A. officers judged that the release of photos or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.

“People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power,” the official said.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.

Mr. Holt said he had been told many times that the C.I.A. does not record the interrogation of detainees. “When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said ‘What tapes?’,” he said.

FULL STORY

NIMBY

My friend who wants to sell or lease his land for a windmill (a really big windmill), said "Some people say not in my backyard, well I say, then build it in my front yard."

If you have a large wind energy farm in mind, let me know, and I'll give you his name.