This "Ted Franklin" fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who spoke to the Birmingham News about the recent Judge Acker decision and FACTA amendments sounds like an interesting fellow who has thought about some of the same issues I have, even if he holds opinions diametrically opposed to mine about the need to cap damages in FACTA class actions.

Bloomberg, at least, quoted me accurately:

Acker also ruled that the law's requirement that juries
award ``not less than $100 and not more than $1,000'' for each
willful violation gives jurors no rational basis for setting
damages. That argument is weaker than the one against
disproportionate penalties, said Ted Frank, director of the
American Enterprise Institute's Legal Center for the Public
Interest in Washington.

``To date, nobody's ever said that that makes a statute void
for vagueness,'' Frank said. ...

``Congress didn't correct the underlying problem in the
statute, which is that there's no cap on the damages for a class-
action suit,'' Frank said. ``If those circuits disagree, the
Supreme Court will have to step in and shake this out.''

That story is behind a subscription wall. When I looked for it, I did find my October 2007 television appearance on their network, which apparently has been publicly available for a while.

Talking about Barack Obama.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a multi-hundred-million-dollar blockbuster, so Michael Hollick (film credits: four episodes of various Law & Order franchises in eight years), the unknown actor who did the line readings for the lead character thinks that he should get royalties, rather than the per-diem (which added up to over $100k). Frankly, even $100k sounds remarkably generous, given that no one buys Grand Theft Auto IV to hear Hollick's voice, and there were dozens of other unemployed actors (including Deputy Sacks from Veronica Mars Season 1 (via ALOTT5MA)) looking for work.

Because none of them would buy this magnificent (NSFW) profile of Jose Canseco by Pat Jordan.

Of course, I heard it first with the Camper van Beethoven cover, so to me it seems to work better with the violin.

"Cadaver Program Head Indicted in Body Parts Case" (currently on Fox News website front page)

...is the name of the new animated Fox series by Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, featuring voice-work by many AD cast members and recent Saturday Night Live members. Unfortunately, it looks painfully unfunny, though one hopes that is the work of Fox executives dumbing it down for the up-fronts. The dense and brilliant comedy fugue that was Arrested Development couldn't be adequately summed up in 90 seconds, either. On the other hand, a random 75-second clip remains hilarious.

Separately, Fox seems to have hired a batch of manatees for The Cleveland Show, the Family Guy spin-off advertised by a bunch of Family Guy clips.

So what would happen if someone other than Barack Obama called a reporter "sweetie" when condescendingly ignoring her question?

This is in the New York Times, quoting no one but Obama supporters, so no one can say it's "mud slinging by desperate Republicans."

For years, the Obamas had been regular dinner guests at the Hyde Park home of Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East scholar at the University of Chicago and an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1990s peace talks. Mr. Khalidi said the talk would often turn to the Middle East, and he talked with Mr. Obama about issues like living conditions in the occupied territories. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama during his Congressional campaign. Both Mr. Khalidi and Mr. Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, said Mr. Obama had spoken at the fund-raiser and had called for the United States to adopt a more “evenhanded approach” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

Still, Mr. Khalidi said ascertaining Mr. Obama’s precise position was often difficult. “You may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” he said. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.” ...

Several days before the primary in 2004, some of his Jewish supporters took offense that Mr. Obama had not taken the opportunity on a campaign questionnaire to denounce Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or to strongly support Israel’s building of a security fence.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that “none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.” Mr. Abunimah has written of running into the candidate around that time and has said that Mr. Obama told him: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping that when things calm down I can be more upfront.”

The Obama camp has denied Mr. Abunimah’s account. Mr. Khalidi, who is now the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, said, “I’m unhappy about the positions he’s taken, but I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed.”

Obama is a master of taking advantage of the tabula rasa effect; his speeches and public statements deftly ratify sympathetic voters' confirmation bias and permit them to think that he agrees with them. We see this now as Jewish supporters insist that Obama is pro-Israel by virtue of recent statements he has made—which he might be, but the evidence is far from unambiguous, and it's telling that Israel's worst enemies in America and abroad also think Obama supports them. We even see it in far less obvious cases, as when dozens of ATL readers insisted that Obama isn't actually going to raise taxes on law firm associates, though he has essentially promised to. This is a recipe for general election success, but a bad omen when half of your supporters are upset in mid-2009 that they've been sold a bill of goods and discover they've elected James George Michael Dukakis McGovern Carter. One hopes the Republicans have a free-market candidate in 2012 that will be able to point out the connection between the decline in the economy and the disastrous Democratic agenda for the 111th Congress.

An avalanche wiped out Juneau's supply of cheap power for a few months; rates will rise from 11 cents/kwh to 53 cents/kwh while the city uses more expensive diesel power.

What the NY Times story doesn't mention: as Juneau residents suffer greatly and make many sacrifices to cut their electric bills, they have shown that their short-term elasticity for a 382% price increase in power costs, dropped their usage by less than 40%.

Even if this could be duplicated across the nation—and it couldn't, not least because I suspect Juneau doesn't have much in the way of electricity-intensive manufacturing—it would do nothing to prevent or forestall global warming, while imposing thousands of dollars in direct costs and even more in indirect costs to every American family. If something were done to minimize the impact on the poor, we'd lose even more conservation efforts.

136. The Blues Brothers set future Chicagoans up for a major disappointment: since moving here, I have never once seen enormous groups of strangers moved, as if part of a flash mob, to spontaneously burst into elaborately choreographed song-and-dance numbers in iconic locations. Fix that. (via Bonin, who has much more detail)

David Frum dissects: Obama and Israel

It made no economic sense to have a Chevrolet dealer on the corner of Glebe and Wilson in the 21st century, which is why Bob Peck Chevrolet sold the space for $20-$26 million (depending on the press account), but one will miss the Googie architecture, seen here, here (#4), and at 0:04 in this impressively lame 2005 tv ad. The Staples next door, with the world's worst parking lot, appears to be headed a few blocks closer to us on Wilson Boulevard, where the pet store that was never open used to be.

Of such things, favorable press coverage is made. Of course, a Republican who said "Abercrombie and Fitch" in response to the clue "Where gay people buy clothes" would be eviscerated.

Brawndo!, now being advertised. And it's greener than Green River, which was pretty darn green when my Easterbrook co-clerk and I tracked down a couple of bottles at the old Heaven on Seven in Chicago.

(Have I mentioned how awesome Idiocracy is?)

What Kids Are Reading, covered in a WaPo front-pager, would be better titled "What Renaissance Learning Quizzes Kids Are Taking," but I still found it interesting that, in the breakdown of the 592 kids in the top 10% of high-schoolers (who read over 25 books each a year, more than four times the average), Elie Wiesel's Night was #2 and Chaim Potok's The Chosen was #14, suggesting something about the demographics of the top 10%.

The headline emphasis is that the Harry Potter books are not the most read, but I question that conclusion: J.K. Rowling appears in the top ten for each grade between fourth and twelfth, and is five of the top nine books for eighth graders. And the study seems to be time-bound to cut off those who read the seventh book, perhaps because a quiz wasn't readily available after the book was released in the summer of 2007. Further, the study is biased towards books assigned in class: if some teachers are using the testing software for just in-class assignments, out-of-class reading and summer reading will not be fully captured. Since few teachers dare assign J.K. Rowling in a public school lest parents complain about the wizardry theme, Rowling's performance is all the more spectacular.

There's an over-the-top character in one of the fictional television shows in GTA IV (NSFW) named Bas Rutten. Imagine my surprise to learn that it isn't exaggerated satire. (Via Chris Baker.)

1) Tina Fey, as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, wolfs down an entire Italian sandwich (clearly laden down with fatty meats and cheese and sauce) at a metal detector when the TSA won't let her take it through the airport rather than abandon it, chipmunking the entire last quarter of the sandwich.

2) Generic red-headed leggy model in a Wendy's ad, demonstrating its Chicken Go Wrap sandwich, can barely make herself nibble at the lettuce at the edge of the (250-calorie) sandwich in each of the two or three scenes where she's supposed to be demonstrating the ease of taking a bite while multi-tasking. Where have the Method actors gone?

I have an op-ed in today's New York Sun about the civil trial over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

I'm quoted in City Journal on FDA litigation, and in the AARP Bulletin on Senate legislation to expand litigation over wage claims, though the latter's cribbed from my NPR blog post on the subject.