SNOW DAY

It's just not the same when you don't have to go to work anyway...
still beautiful though. Stared the day with S and went to Terrace Cafe, got the normal bagel, but sat down and read the NYTimes and watched folks walk by - awesome! I spent the rest of the day preparing for an INTERVIEW!!! Then took a walk to buy some groceries to entertain tomorrow with S at her place. All pretty boring, I get it, but the perfect way to spend a day. Reading a book that has been on my reading list for quite sometime now, Liberty and Sexuality. I stumbled upon this book while reading Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey. I recommend Becoming Justice Blackmun, and as soon as I read more of Liberty and Sexuality. Until then...read on.

181 days. complete.

181 days.
181 posts.
done.

Progress

Today I submitted my first Resume and Cover Letter. I've reached out to many people in my personal and professional networks and as it turns out there are not many vacancies out there. The position I applied for sounds phenomenal. I am keeping my fingers crossed for an interview! Until that call it's time to prep!!!

Pittsburgh State of Mind

i love this for soooo many reasons!!!

AFC Champions!

Going to the SUPERBOWL! WooHoo! So excited! I'm a relatively recent Steelers fan, est. in 1999 when I moved to Pittsburgh for undergrad, but I stand firmly behind Black and Gold!!!

Sarah Palin

Ok, so most people know of my interesting obsession with Sarah Palin. To be clear, I don't agree with the vast majority of her political platform, but I have been taken storm by the swell of media attention she has been able to harness since she became the conservative party sweetheart back in September of 2008 with her RNC Convention acceptance speech.

So here we are, January 2011, Sarah Palin's Alaska, the reality television show on TLC has come and gone, daughter Bristol lost Dancing with the Stars and yet we continue to be inundated with her commentary on everything from the Tuscan Massacre to any number of social issues our country is working it's way through. I don't think it takes a genius or even a particularly astute political mind to deduce that America's conservative sweetheart is positioning herself for a Presidential run in 2012, but can't the media let the Mama Grizzly hibernate until then? Give us a little breathing room, some space, to grow, to figure out what we each want, to determine if this relationship is best for all of us?

I stumbled upon this earlier today. And what did I do, I posted it on my Facebook page, then I told a bunch of people about it - I continued to talk about Sarah Palin, even when trying to promote a Sarah Palin silence. I'm well aware that even in my disagreement I give Palin more "earned press." So then I stumble upon this little Facebook Event: Ignore Sarah Palin Week.

Somewhat of a sidenote: I will tell you this, she sure does have a way with social media, her Twitter account, SarahPalinUSA has only 380k followers, but she is picked up in media outlets across the country. One of the biggest flares, the debate about the Islamic Cultural Center in Lower Manhattan aka the Ground Zero Mosque - remember? she "created" the word refudiate (which eventually she admitted to being a typo though she still was awarded a word of the year honor by the New Oxford American Dictonary.) I suppose it's a chicken or egg type of question with Twitter and her media coverage - was the coverage already there or is Twitter driving this? Regardless, she's got serious "facetime."

And you know what she does with that "facetime?" She ego-surfs! Check out my friend's blog: YesIGoogleMyself. Here is the Sarah Palin entry.

So here is to a week, or even a month of IGNORING PALIN.

coffee and hot chocolate in a Brooklyn Diner

I mean there could be worse things in the world of unemployment. Now don't get me wrong, this is day 5 (5 days of work actually be conducted in my office that I am not a part of). I'm not going to lie, I'm bored! I spend most of my time fine tuning a pretty finely tuned resume, writing cover letters, swimming, sending emails, updating my job hunt contact spreadsheet and swimming. Oh yeah, don't forget the COFFEE, lots of coffee because it seems that everyone I am meeting with I suggest coffee. Today was freezing, I couldn't decide between hot chocolate and coffee, sooo I splurged. I'll tell you what, I love coffee served in those off-white ceramic mugs. Maybe, just maybe I daydream of being a waitress at some mom and pop diner, but it would have to be in a very specific location, like Maine for example. When S and I went to Maine last year we stopped at this amazing diner, you know, the kind where the fisherman would go to at 4am before heading out to sea. We of course went at about 4am, to get the real experience. Anyway, that's the kind of diner I'd work at. I'm sure I'd get on well with the fisherman.

Cream Rinse

So going the the gym in the middle of the day lends itself to some interesting overheard conversations. Today I was at the YMCA in Park Slope, my first time at this branch. I did my thing swimming and then was in the locker room changing when I overheard two older ladies talking about, yup, Cream Rinse. I mean who calls it that but a septuagenarian? Anyway, cream rinse, I had nothing to offer, sooo I went home and continued reading Going Rogue. Today was day 4, I'm bored out of my mind!

Love Black and Gold!






Other images found here.

Day 1

Yesterday was a holiday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day so it was a work holiday. That makes today, day 1 of unemployment. I've never done well with idol time, luckily I know this so I've always ended up structuring my days, today is no different. I headed to my apartment to make some calls, work on my resume and send some emails...

UPDATE @ 4PM:

I.
AM.
BORED.

So far I:

-called the student loan folks, gonna hold out on making a decision there, though I do qualify for a deferment due to being laid-off.

-took a hour long bath

-read my book

-worked on my resume and a cover letter

-went to the gym and swam a mile

-went to the bank to discuss my credit card payments

-made a yummy lunch - veggie burger on rye bread with mustard and lettuce (what I had in the fridge)

-vacuumed and dusted the apartment

UPDATE @ 6PM:

-made dinner - rice with tomatoes, jalepenos and tuna (what I had at home)

-read some more

this is going to get old quick.

a good day off

that's funny, tomorrow is a day off too - and the next day and the next day. i've got a 7 day weekend. today's accomplishments included taking the laundry to get done, taking in 3 pairs of pants to be hemmed, reheating chili for lunch and then making burritos for dinner and buying cat food. i sent some more emails to people about job opportunities and took about 2 naps. tomorrow will be a boring, boring day - i will be calling the student loan people and my credit cards to get those items in order. i will also be scheduling some doctors appointments while i still have health insurance. COBRA costs more than $500 a month and considering unemployment checks max out at $405 a week, I think i might need to pass on COBRA. Hopefully tomorrow I can create a list of things that I can do with all my free time, you know, besides finding a job!

Return to...Woodbury Commons

Ok, I am not this much of a shopper, but S needed to return some things she got yesterday. Sooooo, it's back to Woodbury Commons we go. Today I didn't particularly need anything, especially given my new employment status, but I did find 2 pairs of jeans that I needed - a little splurge but well worth it! They look good. Then I found a great deal on sweaters that I can wear for work, it was a much shorter day than yesterday, different company too - this time we had B with us, and S was left to more boy shopping than girl shopping. THe best part about today is that it is ending with S's chili and pickle backs with B!!! Woo Hoo!

Woodbury Commons

In an attempt to get my mind off sh*tty news this week, I was invited with the girls for a day of shopping at the outlets. Now, I like to shop, don't get me wrong and I love a good bargain, but sometimes shopping can be overwhelming, especially in a group - not this time. I needed to pick up a few things, lay off or not - I had planned on placing an order for some work shirts, so I picked some up today as well. I also had the chance to use some gift certificates that I had from Christmas. Here is to a good day with the lady and her friend.

Ugh.

Yesterday afternoon I received terrible news. Due to budget cuts at my job, I was laid off. I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me. I did not see this coming at all and am fully aware of what a terrible time this is to be looking for work. Since Thursday I've sent upwards of 30 emails to various people to inquire about job leads. I hope that through my professional and personal networks I can find something quick. The prospect of going on unemployment and receiving up to $405 a week as income is frightening! I am revamping my resume and doing everything I can to find a job.

I would like to find something that will provide me the opportunity to use my various skills: policy analysis, government relations, management, and interpersonal skills. Additionally, I am hoping to find something that will give me the opportunity to grow within the office or organization. Last but not least, I am hoping to find something that does not require me to take a pay cut and possibly make more than what I currently make (take a much deserved step up) so I can do the all important things like purchase an apartment and start a family in the coming years.

What I've realized is that I have many skills that uniquely position me for many positions, I have the experience of a manager of both large and small teams and have worked for some of the most difficult constituencies. I am casting a wide net including consideration of government offices (agencies), elected officials, non-profits, public and government affairs firms, and where applicable based on my skill set, the private sector.

If you know of job opportunities out there, please let me know. If you don't send me good energy and pray that I am re-employed soon!

Love you all.

David Brooks The Politicized Mind, provides a thoughtful analysis of the Tuscon Massacre and the discourse that should be taking place.

Haiti: 1 year post earthquake

When I heard the news of last year's earthquake, my heart broke. To know that the rebuild has been so slow is terrible but what remains is the strong spirit of a people that no earthquake, slow rebuild, or cholera outbreak can break. To all my Haitian friends and colleagues who continue to work on all of this, keep your head up!

Check out the NYTimes story here.

oh no, snow

after the post Christmas blizzard where we got hit with roughly 16 inches of snow and the city's response was disastrous, the fact that weather-folk are calling for a foot of snow overnight, the city is in hysterics. City transit announcements, canceled City Council hearings about a proposed Wal-Mart, I am certain lines for milk and bread...meanwhile, I will stick to the words of my fifth grade social studies teacher - one of the only jobs you get paid to do wrong is being a weather forecaster. :-) Seriously though, I'll wear my pjs inside out if it means working from home tomorrow!!! Here's to snow.

The Godfather

An artcile about my former boss, love it!

The Godfather
With the UWS-WFP-NYT axis dominating local politics, this is Jerry Nadler’s New York
By Edward-Isaac Dovere

It was, as Eric Schneiderman said in his victory speech at the Sheraton on election night, an improbable journey. A year ago, after all, he had wavered about and then aborted a long-expected run for Manhattan DA. When he finally pulled the trigger on his attorney general run, Schneiderman stayed further to the left than anyone would have thought possible to win statewide in New York.

But really, November was not all that improbable for Schneiderman as Tom DiNapoli's election made abundantly clear, even a Democrat with pretty much the entire universe aligned against him will win in New York by being a Democrat and having the labor machine's nomination, along with the surplus of Democraticinclined voters committed to not filling in a GOP bubble.

And the primary win was not so improbable either Schneiderman is the latest candidate propelled by the new coalition that has taken control of New York politics. The axis spins through the progressive heartlands of the Upper West Side and brownstone Brooklyn on campaigns that now regularly connect the New York Times editorial board to the Working Families Party, and all the constituent parts of each. In recent years, to have the support of one of these is nearly always to have the support of them all. To have the support of most, if not all, is usually to win.

At the center is Jerry Nadler, the man Schneiderman identified in that victory speech as his mentor. Nadler was there for Schneiderman at the beginning, at the official kickoff of the attorney general campaign on the steps of City Hall in April. He was there a year earlier on a colder, wetter day for Bill de Blasio, preemptively sealing up the public advocate race. David Yassky tried desperately to get him there in last year's comptroller's race, calling him nonstop and even cornering him for some frantic arm waving after most of the others had left Charlie Rangel's last birthday party at Tavern on the Green in August, but to no avail.

Schneiderman won. De Blasio won. Yassky, left to campaign outside of Fairway by himself, never really had a chance.

So looking back on 2010, the improbable part was not that Schneiderman won.

The improbable part was that despite Andrew Cuomo's concerted effort to box him out, Schneiderman stayed in the race at all. No one needed a poll to know that Cuomo could have effectively ended things by coming out publicly for Kathleen Rice, or even, at the end of the campaign, for Sean Coffey. Schneiderman's supporters held him off, and then, once the nomination was secured, helped force that awkward endorsement in Columbus Circle almost two weeks after the primary.

That had a lot to do with Nadler, too. The Harlem machine is waning. Unions are strong but not what they used to be. The Working Families Party, though now rebuilding, was clipped by the investigations and legal troubles of the last year. Vito Lopez is still strong in Brooklyn but threatened, and Joe Crowley's grip is only a little looser locally in Queens, but no longer has the same sway over larger politics that Tom Manton's did.

With his money and his popularity, Mike Bloomberg wins elections in New York. But as Dan Donovan and Harry Wilson showed again this year, Bloomberg's power does not transfer. Nadler's does.

He is the heir to the progressive mantle at a time when the New York electorate, especially in local primaries, has keeled to the left. He is a hero on the West Side, where there are more votes to be had in primary and general elections than in any other part of the city or state, and his sway stretches out to parts of Brooklyn he has never represented, but is full of his former constituents.

The Jews in the tip of his district, which goes into Boro Park, love him, and so do the Jews far beyond. Union leaders connect with him. The New York Times editorial board always takes his calls. He may not be Boss Tweed, or really any kind of stereotypical boss, but right now, Jerry Nadler rules local politics.

Nadler professes not to notice the organization he has built up under himself or the sway he has acquired. He seems surprised by the suggestion. The furthest he will go is, "I think of myself as trying to advance certain things, progressive public policies, and people who will be effective in promoting those."

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Helping Chuck Schumer (the only person left who calls him "Jerrold") win the 1998 Senate primary was the first big move, and being there for Scott Stringer's borough president run in 2005 brought the West Side apparatus to the next level of power. But the first real test was the 2005 Council speaker race. Nadler's backing was a signal to other powerbrokers for Christine Quinn and, crucially, a progressive stamp of approval.

"It would be a very hard race if I wasn't able to make that point, and there's no better way to make that point than with Jerry Nadler's support," Quinn said. "Before Jerry made the decision, I certainly heard, 'Where is Jerry?' So to be able to report back, 'Well, Jerry's with me,' that made people say, 'Oh wow. Okay.'" Next up was Cuomo, running for resurrection in the 2006 attorney general's race.

Nadler came on early, bringing with him much of the progressive credibility that was Mark Green's base. Green's candidacy floundered while Nadler smiled through all those "big shoes to fill" Cuomo ads, foot measure proudly in hand.

Nadler's support for de Blasio in 2009 showed again how much he could do by speaking up. His refusal to back Yassky showed how much of an impact he could have by staying silent.

Cuomo seems to have been paying attention. The governor-in-waiting never forced Nadler's hand, never truly tested that progressive constituency. For Nadler and the people around him, this is gratifying: a recognition both of the role they played in past elections and the role they could play in standing by Cuomo as he gears up for fights with key elements of the traditional Democratic coalition and the inevitable wars with the Legislature to come.

The weekend before Election Day, Cuomo held a rally at the plaza in front of the 72nd Street and Broadway subway stop. Nadler joined Schneiderman and Schumer for a brief photo-op at Fairway before walking down to the Cuomo campaign truck and exhorting the crowd to send a West Side reformer to Albany. Along the way, they picked up Linda

Rosenthal, then Stringer. One by one, they made their speeches to the crowd.

Just over 48 hours later, Schneiderman was the attorney general-elect.

"It's not just about Fairway anymore, though Fairway will always loom large in all our lives," Stringer said a few days later. "It's gone beyond that."

Walking around the West Side, Nadler relates a story about a poorly located fundraiser for him featuring Carl McCall, Charlie Rangel and men in towels in the background at the gay bathhouse in the Ansonia that predated Plato's Retreat.

Almost before he is finished, he starts running through the same game plan for a special small business tax cut he just gave Chuck Schumer for undercutting the Republicans on the expiring Bush tax cuts. Both, like just about everything else he says, pour out of him in a slightly amused, can-you-believeit/of-course-you've-got-to-believe-it tone.

There is just enough distraction in his voice to make it clear he is thinking about the next three things and at least one topic from a conversation with someone else, while still engaging with the person in front of him.

Nadler is not the most introspective person, at least on display. Two years ago, while waiting for the inevitable hammer to drop on his doomedfrom-the-start dream of getting the Senate appointment (despite the work he had done to get David Paterson to the State Senate back in 1985), he almost never let the pain show beyond a winced smile. Only occasionally, maybe in the back of a cab in an off-hand conversation with a political friend, will he let slip how much he might actually want to be mayor himself.

Likewise, when he accuses Barack Obama of political negligenceas he did publicly two days after the midterms while the rest of the Democrats were trying to hold their heads defiantly highit was not to jockey for position in the House or bully the president into signing one of his bills. The stimulus should have been bigger, both for the sake of economic policy, and for politicsNadler determined this back before the bill was passed, and started saying it. You can debate about it, and he is ready to go point for point, but really, he will just be waiting for you to catch up.

{::PAGEBREAK::}

Nadler approaches politics the same way. When Kirsten Gillibrand called once, twice, three times a day asking for his endorsement, he held off for nearly a year, and when he did, he approved the press release knowing that he was effectively ending the possibility of a primary challenge from Gillibrand's left. But by then, all the prospective alternatives he might have supported had already dropped out and Gillibrand had rocketed leftward on several key positions. His endorsement probably brought more with it than any other piece beyond Schumer's.

HE MAY NOT BE BOSS TWEED, OR REALLY ANY KIND OF STEREOTYPICAL BOSS, BUT RIGHT NOW, JERRY NADLER RULES LOCAL POLITICS.

This year, faced with Stringer's mix of competing political needs, competitiveness, jealousy and paranoid anxiety about his own future that kept the borough president from endorsing Schneiderman until after the Times endorsement had effectively narrowed the field, Nadler did not force Stringer on board. He just helped bring Stringer to the inevitable conclusion, that moment when he put his hand on Stringer's arm and said, essentially, "Look, Scott, in the end, you're going to have to support Eric."

"I think one of the points is: We are close, but you can't always agree. And if you try to enforce discipline in some waywe're not talking about political bosses here, you can't enforce discipline," Nadler said, explaining how he makes his case "by talking, by logical reasoning, by explaining the reason why I think this is it. Sometimes that's persuasive. I tend to think that I'm a fairly persuasive person."

Nadler likes the term "close associates," to describe his political allies. He also sometimes jokes about a farm team. Others see a dynamic more like a family,

with all of its function and dysfunction. Nadler is the head, not paternalistically but in the sense that he was in office long before any of them, and they all look up to him. Even when fighting with each other, they all still like him. Roughly, then, Stringer and Linda Rosenthal are the immediate family, with Schneiderman something like a stepbrother. Tom Duane, Quinn and the LGBT political activists function as one set of cousins, and de Blasio, Brad Lander, Daniel Squadron and the other Brooklyn progressives as another set.

Harlem, especially with some of the old powerbrokers on the wane and now Adriano Espaillat headed to Schneiderman's Senate seat with some key West Side support, is an increasingly close family friend.

Nadler has known them for decades.

Stringer, then Rosenthal, joined him as aides back when Reagan was president. Schneiderman first caught his attention for having a fundraising committee committed to putting Democrats in the majority in the State Senate back when he was a young staffer to then-Assembly Speaker Mel Miller in the mid-'80s. (Also, Nadler said, because Schneiderman is "one of the few people I know who really thinks about progressive economics.") Quinn managed Duane's primary run against him in 1994, the last time Nadler got a serious challenge. De Blasio has been in the orbit since roughly the same time, when he was chief of staff to a Brooklyn Council member dispatched to a diner for a one-on-one, hour-long dissertation on the cross-harbor rail freight tunnel.

All of them built deeper relationships from there. Nadler helped all of them get into office, but populating the government with protgs was not what he set out to do.

"I never thought in those terms," Nadler said. "You do what you can when you see a race, and I think a lot of people are always looking to government to nurture political talent. It should be."

Rosenthal, who worked for Nadler for almost two decades before she took over the Assembly seat in which Nadler had spent 16 years and Stringer had spent 13, remembers her old boss once mapping out for her how, in hindsight, he had determined that he would have ended up in the congressional seat, one way or another. Nadler himself does not recall doing this.

On the contrary, he says, there would have been no way to predict what had happened, especially given his history going into the 1992 race. In 1985, he lost 65-35 to David Dinkins in the Manhattan borough president primary, and in 1989, he pulled out of the city comptroller race two weeks before the polls opened because he ran out of cash. Nor did his stamp of approval work so well back then: In the race for the West Side's open City Council seat, Stringer got less than half as many votes as Ronnie Eldridge, kicked to the curb just like Nadler.

Those were dark days. Rosenthal talks about feeling smothered, a sinking feeling that they had been outdone. Nadler does not like to think of it much, and so he does not. All he will say before moving on is, "That was not pleasant."

Unexpected opportunity took three years. Ted Weiss, who had held the seat since Bella Abzug gave it up to run for Senate in 1976, died the day before the primary. He still won, leaving it up to the county committee to fill the nomination. Abzug, along with Weiss's widow, State Sen. Franz Leichter and Assembly Member Dick Gottfried all got into the race, but in that marathon weekend of backroom campaigning in the classrooms of a local school, Nadler left them all in the dust.

"It's symbolic of Jerry Nadler's precise, pragmatic approach that he was already reaching out to district leaders while others were sending 'Get Well' cards," said

Ralph Andrew, Weiss's former chief of staff. "By the time Weiss died, Jerry was well on his way to having a large quantity of votes of county committee members, and a commitment of a large number of votes for subsequent ballots."

Gottfried agrees. The race was over before it even started, just like the races he watched Nadler dominate when they were in high school together in Stuyvesant.

"He was just a terrific vote-getter," Gottfried said. "It helped that we were in a high school where you didn't have to be a student athlete to be popular, since our little band of friends were all a bunch of nerds."

Nadler's time in Stuyvesant student government, along with Gottfried and a then much less conservative Dick Morris, led to canvassing for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. They were the West Side Kids, a cadre of political prodigies whose '60s activism took the form of tenant organizing, canvassing and dominating district leader races.

That mix of magnetism and nerdiness still defines Nadler. Told that he has been called the "Bono of Fairway," to describe

his popularity at home, Nadler says quickly that he had Bono on his committee in Washington. This is a joke. Nadler means Sonny Bono, but by the time he has explained it, his mind is on to something else.

Gottfried remembers sitting next to him in a particularly boring meeting in Albany one day while they were both in the Assembly together. Some people were sleeping. Other people were doodling. Nadler drew a chart and filled it in from memory with the turnout numbers from every election district covered by his Assembly seat.

{::PAGEBREAK::}

Nadler still works out charts of numbers based on history and voting patterns in his ballpoint pen, though on election night, he graduated to a staffer's iPad and sat in a corner of the Schneiderman suite constantly refreshing and reassuring the nervous room that the numbers coming in early spelled victory.

He can also draw a perfect outline of the continental United States, freehand.

Nadler also works out some more straightforward political calculations. When Rosenthal started telling people at Stringer's borough president victory party that she was thinking about getting into the race for his Assembly seat, Nadler and Stringer soon swung into action to deliver her the county committee vote. Among the people shoved aside was Marc Landis, a district leader and former Stringer campaign treasurer who had been waiting patiently for the seat to open. But Nadler and Stringer worked the phones and the county committee meeting itself to make sure the deal was done, and then several months after, backed a supporter for an almost unheard of primary for a state committee spot occupied by a woman who had refused to budge on her support for another one of the candidates.

Nadler becomes the boss when he needs to be. Or when he wants to be. A couple of calls to judicial convention delegates have sparked scattered complaints about his heavy hand. More than one black robe over the years has gone to a Nadler friendall of them qualified, respected and supported more widely, certainly. But the congressman's preference has not gone unnoticed.

The day after the county committee selected Nadler for Congress in 1992, it gave Stringer the Assembly nomination, beginning what has been an extremely orderly succession of power on the West Side, and generally resulting in the election of Nadler allies. If not for the term limits extension, Micah Lashernow the mayor's state legislative affairs director but then a Nadler staffer who had joined the office with his eyes on 2009would have been the next priority for Gale Brewer's Council seat.

When Nadler endorses, he starts by interrogating candidates, gauging their support, testing their relationships and viability. Then there are discussions with staff and with the larger family. They pro

ceed strategically, guided by operatives like Amy Rutkin and Rob Gottheim, two aides who combined have spent almost 30 years working for Nadler.

None of it happens in a vacuum. Last year, for example, he capped a list of nearly every elected official in Manhattan backing Richard Aborn for district attorney. Rosenthal and Schneiderman did too, but Stringer sat on the sidelines until the New York Times endorsement went to Cy Vance and he was shown an internal poll that suggested Vance was going to win. Two weeks before the primary, Stringer endorsed Vance. The West Side got a piece of the win.

In the city comptroller race, Nadler was stuck: The Working Families Party had engineered a deal backing Liu so that he would quit the public advocate race and clear the way for de Blasio. Nadler has been one of the party's top advocateson a flyer that was distributed around Brooklyn this year, he is quoted saying that no one works harder than the WFP, and urging people to vote on that line.

Looking back at 2009, Nadler insists that he could not see the separations that nearly every voter in town saw, and were more pronounced on substantive policy than in some of the other races in which he has spoken up over the years.

"I like David, a like David a lot. I like John Liu. There was not that much difference that I could really tell people, 'You've got to vote for this one, you've got to vote for that one,'" Nadler said.

As close as he is and was with the WFP, he could not go against Yassky. So he stayed silent, while Stringer, Schneiderman and Rosenthal all backed Liu.

The West Side got a piece of the win.

The players insist that they are all just coming from a common philosophy, and what appears to be arrangements is really happenstance.

"No one goes in there and says, 'Well, what are you going to do? Because I'll do what you do,'" Rosenthal said.

Occasionally, Nadler maneuvers directly against the public positions of the family. This year, for example, Schneiderman, Stringer and Rosenthal all came out early behind Adriano Espaillat in his run for Schneiderman's State Senate seat. Nadler made no endorsement, but he quietly urged the Times editorial board to look at Mark Levine, Espaillat's main primary opponent.

The resonance he has with the decision-makers at the Times is one of the greatest assets Nadler brings to a campaign. As with the rest of his political power, Nadler downplays the significance of his influence.

"They ask my opinion, I give my opinion. Sometimes I call up and give my opinion when they don't ask," he said.

On Aborn, the Times went a different way, and for Schneiderman's State Senate seat, the paper of record went with Espaillat. But most of the time, and for the races where the Times nod means the most, if Nadler supports a candidate, that candidate is in good shape to get the endorsement.

"The Times endorsement matters a lot in this district, and I don't think it's any secret that the Times was going to look at what Jerry said," said Council Member Brad Lander, an ally whom Nadler endorsed early last year and coached on his interview. "His weighing in, I know, made a big difference."

Nadler acknowledged that there was not much coincidence to the fact that he and the decision makers usually agree.

But "not on everything by the way," he added quickly. "They've been much more hawkish on Afghanistan than I am."

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Last year, the night of the runoff, de Blasio and his supporters gathered at the conveniently named Union Bar, just north of Union Square. Mark Green's last fans were across the street, in a small office on the 19th floor of one of his brother's buildings. The drinks were flowing at de Blasio's party, but at Green's, no one was even touching the Styrofoam bowls of pretzels and Hershey's miniatures on one of the desks.

They turned the volume up on the small TV playing NY1 just in time to hear Stringer, down at the de Blasio bar, talking about what a great night he expected it to be.

Lew Fidler, Council member and de Blasio detractor, snorted.

"You're going to regret the day you brought him onto the West Side, Scott," he said, half to the TV, half to Jerry Goldfeder, the election lawyer who ran against Stringer both for Council and Assembly. Goldfeder smiled.

Schneiderman's win, like de Blasio's, was possible because the coalition agreed. There was no contest for the progressives, there was no division between what the Upper West Side wanted and what the Working Families Partyled Brooklyn progressives wanted. The gay political leaders, for the most part, backed them both.

Schneiderman's election might represent the cementing of a new reality.

"It's not just about Fairway anymore, though Fairway will always loom large in all our lives," said Scott Stringer. "It's gone beyond that."

It might also represent those moments when everything comes together perfectly one last time before crumbling completely.

Fast forward to the 2013 mayor's race.

Stringer is putting together cash to run.

The City Charter almost requires de Blasio to run as part of his job description.

And Quinn already pushed back her own ambitions once with the term limits extension.

According to the progressive family tree, this would mean a mayor's race pitting Nadler's son versus his nephew versus his niece. Nor would he be the only one torn: Up against each other, Stringer, de Blasio and Quinn crisscross bases in so many different ways that a race with all of them would probably mean a race with none of them as serious contenders.

Another problem: De Blasio and Schneiderman both got to be the blacksupported candidates in all-white fields, which helps explain why Sharpton endorsed them, enhancing their credibility with another key chunk of primary voters. Hard to see how that would happen if there is a black candidate in the race, either through Bill Thompson or, if he skips the race, through an already impatient Eric Adams. If Liu gets into the race, that would scramble things even more, exposing more fault lines among progressives, minorities and unions.

And none of this even begins to account for Anthony Weiner, who would no doubt draw support from both the Upper West Side and his old Park Slope neighborhood if he is in the race.

At this point, most of the candidates and the people around them can explain why each prospective opponent is not going to run. What the members of the Nadler family can agree on, though, is that they would not want to be in the race without the congressman at their side.

Imagining Stringer in the mayor's race without Nadler's support is like imagining Mike Bloomberg without his Massachu setts accentfeasible, but Twilight Zone odd. If Stringer runs, it will be with that endorsement. If he runs. But Stringer is planning to run, and he wants to drive the point home: Together handing out Schneiderman flyers early in the morning of Election Day, Stringer paused just long enough to put his hands possessively on Nadler's shoulders and said, "He's mine."

De Blasio had Nadler deliver his oath of office in January.

Though the public advocate, like all the rest, will not talk much about 2013, he will talk about the key supporter he would want for whatever race comes next.

"I can't think of a person who anyone would rather have on their side more than Jerry Nadler," de Blasio said. "In between the respect that people have for him, and what he means substantively and what he's achieved and the way people listen to him, of course, Jerry's one of the most respected political figures in the city."

Quinn too, in another made-forpaean impromptu statement.

"Jerry Nadler is a force in every local, borough, city and statewide race in New York, and anyone who runs for any office wants Jerry Nadler. Doesn't matter what it is, where it is," Quinn said.

The family is hoping to work out an arrangement: Stringer runs for mayor, de Blasio takes advantage of his three terms to stay public advocate until 2021, Quinn goes for Manhattan borough president. Or de Blasio runs for mayor, Stringer runs for public advocate and Quinn runs for borough president. Or de Blasio and Liu against each other for mayor, Quinn for public advocate and Stringer for comptroller. Or Quinn runs for mayor as Bloomberg's preferred choice, and de Blasio or Stringer go up against her as the progressive pick.

Any of these would avoid the showdown, if someone could only seal the deal. Nadler acknowledges that if anyone could, he would be the person who could make it happen.

"Yeah, but I'm not the king of politics in New York," Nadler said. "I can't do that. It would obviously be much more comfortable if people you liked always only ran against people you despised. The world doesn't work that way."

Between now and 2013, Nadler has a national election to worry about and what he fears is going to be an onslaught of Republican policies that he will have to try blocking as a ranking member on the House Constitution Subcommittee. For now, Nadler and the political axis he controls are the determining force in New York politics. He will get to how that will probably all fall apart if the family goes to war with itself.

"We'll jump off that bridge," Nadler said, "when we come to it."

Nadler On DC: Misery And Losses In The Short-Term, Judiciary Gavel Not Far Behind

Of the 18 years that Jerry Nadler has been in Washington, 12 of them have been in the minority. So he has an idea of what to expect when he returns to the Capitol in January following November's heavy swing of the House to Republican control.

Nadler will likely return to his role as ranking member on the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, a position he held from 2000-2006. (He was chairman of the committee for the last four years.) He expects to play a similar role as he did the last time Republicans controlled the House.

"I was the first line of defense for all kinds of crazy initiatives on anti-choice initiatives and anti-civil liberties initiatives, and anti-gay rights," Nadler said. "That will be a large part of my time and effort, just fending off idiotic, terrible thingsprobably not being able to stop them, but laying the groundwork to try to stop them in the Senate."

Nadler does not expect the Republicans to try a full repeat of the last time they were in the majority with a Democrat in the White House. "They can do havoc enough without impeaching the president," he said, but he is girding himself for two years of fights over economic policies he believes are the wrong way out of the continuing recession.

And while committed to winning back the House, he is far from optimistic. Nadler has called the president politically negligent for not pushing for a bigger stimulus package or managing a better public relations effort about its benefits. And going into 2012, Nadler says he wishes the president had not originally relied on the rosy projections that said unemployment would hover at 8 percent.

Without any sign of improvements as Barack Obama gears up for reelection, along with 23 Democrats in the Senate and a battered House conference trying to get back the power they so briefly held, Nadler believes there is reason to worry.

"If the economy continues limping along and doesn't get better, the odds are that we lose the next election," he said.

But things might be looking up for Nadler if the Democrats take back the House.

John Conyers, the Judiciary Committee chairman, is 81 years old and unlikely to serve many more yearsespecially in the minority. Rick Boucher, a Virginia congressman who was the third most senior Democrat on the committee, was a victim of this year's Republican wave. That leaves only Howard Berman of California ahead of Nadler for seniority, and he is likely to return to his post as Foreign Affairs chairman if given the chance, clearing the way for Nadler to take the gavel of one of Congress's most important committees.

But first, he will have to survive the next few years of Republican control of the committee.

"It's going to be unpleasant," Nadler said.

--
Disclosure: 14 years ago, the author spent several weeks as an unpaid high school intern for Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

boozy brunch and a relaxing day - i do not want to go to work tomorrow and that is final. i think all weekends should be 3 day weekends!

If Scalia Had His Way

a good article about a favorite topic - The United States Supreme Court

If Scalia Had His Way
By JEFFREY ROSEN

Constitutional originalism is all the rage these days. In Congress, the new Republican House majority opened the session with a reading of the Constitution and a requirement that every proposed bill cite the specific constitutional authority on which it relies.

And the Supreme Court begins its new session this week with renewed energy on the originalist wing. Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s leading originalist, has agreed to address the House Tea Party caucus on the separation of powers. He has also delivered speeches recently outlining his original understanding of the Constitution in areas like sex equality and the death penalty.

How would America change if the Scalia originalist vision — embraced by many Tea Party members — were enacted by the Supreme Court? Justice Scalia believes that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the original understanding of its 18th- and 19th-century framers and ratifiers. That, he has stressed in recent speeches, would change our constitutional universe dramatically.

But he is not proposing a return to segregation and powdered wigs. In a 1989 article called “Originalism: the Lesser Evil,” he called himself a “faint-hearted originalist,” adding that he could not imagine “upholding a statute that imposes the punishment of flogging,” which the constitutional framers approved.

No to flogging, but what next? What would the country look like in an originalist universe? Liberal bloggers often like to set off alarm bells, and in certain cases, the law would become more conservative. But consensus among originalists is rare on any issue, and conservative justices often disagree among themselves about what the founders intended. And in many cases, liberal justices and advocates can argue plausibly that the constitutional text and history point to progressive rather than conservative outcomes.

Conservatives embrace originalism for many reasons, not least because it is supposed to help judges separate their legal conclusions from their personal views. But in practice, the version of originalism embraced by conservative justices often points in a conservative direction.

For starters, Justice Scalia said a return to the founders’ vision means states could impose the death penalty on anyone — including juveniles or the mentally retarded, for example — and there would be no abortion rights or rights of assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

“We don’t have the answer to everything, but by God we have an answer to a lot of stuff,” Justice Scalia said in an interview on originalism in September at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law.

Justice Scalia also insisted that the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment wasn’t intended to apply to discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation, and that the Supreme Court has erred by regulating both. “Nobody ever thought” that the Constitution banned sex discrimination, he said.

Sometimes, originalists agree about the founders’ intentions but disagree about overturning deeply rooted precedents that may clash with those intentions. Since the 1960s, for example, the Supreme Court has banned school prayer.

Drawing on the work of liberal and conservative scholars, Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that those decisions are inconsistent with the intention of the framers of the First Amendment, who wanted to prevent the federal government from interfering with established state churches, rather than requiring a wall of strict separation between church and state.

Justice Scalia doesn’t dispute these historical conclusions, but he said that unlike Justice Thomas, he wasn’t ready to reverse the decisions applying the First Amendment’s restrictions on religion to the states. “I’m not going to rip all that up; it’s water under the dam,” he said in a 1997 speech. “In other words, I am an originalist. I am a textualist. I am not a nut.”

Today, the most heated controversy over originalism centers on health care reform. The justice most likely to strike down the new law is Justice Thomas, who has argued that the framers intended for Congress to have far narrower authority to regulate interstate commerce than the modern court has allowed.

His vision might call into question much of the post-New Deal regulatory state, and for pragmatic reasons, Justice Scalia and other conservatives have so far refused to embrace it. “Part of the problem is that we’ve already come so far from the original understanding that I don’t think we’re going to go back very far on this,” said Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, a leading conservative constitutional historian.

In addition to disagreeing about the value of previous precedents, the conservative justices disagree among themselves about what the founders would have thought about technologies and institutions that didn’t exist when the Constitution was written.

In a November oral argument about a California law restricting minors from buying violent video games, Justices Scalia and Samuel A. Alito debated whether the ratifiers of the First Amendment would have thought that it protected portrayals of violence.

“What Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games,” and if “he enjoyed them,” Justice Alito said sarcastically. Justice Scalia shot back, “No, I want to know what James Madison thought about violence.” The dispute will be resolved in the opinion, to be issued later this year.

Even when there’s broad scholarly agreement about original understanding, the conservative justices sometimes ignore it.

In a decision last year holding that the states are bound by the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, the five-member conservative majority — Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Anthony M. Kennedy as well as Chief Justice John Roberts — ignored the consensus among liberal and conservative scholars that framers of the 14th Amendment intended to apply the Second Amendment to the states not through the “due process” clause but instead through the “privileges or immunities” clause, which the court has long overlooked.

Resurrecting this forgotten clause might lead to greater protection for a range of individual rights. “Recently, originalism has taken some serious hits on the court not because of its opponents,” said Professor McConnell, “but because of its proponents, who manifested a distinct lack of interest in following the original understanding when it became inconvenient.”

For this reason, many liberal scholars have concluded that originalism is more of a rhetorical argument than a consistent, principled approach to constitutional interpretation.

“If you took the originalists at their word,” said David Strauss, a liberal University of Chicago law professor, “you could punish people for criticizing the government, the federal government could discriminate against anyone it wanted to, and there’s a real argument that the interstate highway system is unconstitutional. The federal prison system and criminal law would be in serious question, and forget the Federal Reserve. It would be gone.”

In the end, however, many liberal scholars believe that if the court took seriously the text and history of the entire Constitution — including the 16th Amendment, authorizing the income tax, and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote — then originalism should just as often lead to liberal as conservative results.

On issues like campaign finance, health care, financial reform and gender discrimination, these scholars say, taking the 20th-century amendments as seriously as those passed in the 18th and 19th centuries would guarantee a constitutional originalism that upheld modern visions of liberty and equality.

“I hope Scalia and Thomas succeed in making their colleagues care more about text and history,” said Douglas Kendall, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, which argues that originalism can favor progressive causes. “But if they’re honest in reading and considering these sources, it won’t always yield the results the Tea Party wants.”

Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic.

It's True

Ok, so over the years I have purchased or been gifted books that may or may not be outside of what I would typically read. Example: Ann Coulter's How to Talk to a Liberal.

Last night I picked up a book that has been on my shelf for some time now, Going Rouge. Yum, Sarah Palin's book. I've wanted to read it for some time, but just haven't gotten around to it because there were books higher on my interest list, but last night I picked it up...this isnt to say that all the other books aren't interesting, it was more about "let's get this out of the way." :-)

I have to admit, so far, and by so far, I mean 35 pages, it's not terrible. I will say she got the, "I don't do politics as usual" bit down - she's probably said it at least a half dozen times already.

Anyway, I promise to keep you posted.

swimming

today i rejoined the Y and was in the pool again! god i love swimming the silence swimming laps and counting, ocd dream. here's to getting in shape :-)

Monkey Fist

a weight.

an ornamental knot.

a knot i like but do (k)not know how to tie - though honestly, i've never t(r)ied.

another 2011 resolution: tie monkey knots and lots of them.

I don't care, it makes me smile...

The first day back to work after a long weekend stinks! Especially when the internets are not working - but we. are. back. Absolutely incredible how reliant we are on this technology. I got a lot and a little accomplished today. All the things I've been putting off - I got 'em done because there was no way to research new things :) That said, I need the internet, so no more breaking in 2011, okay?

The worst part of a weekend away is it coming to an end. The worst part about this particular trip was that S's dog wasn't feeling well :-( The good thing is we can get home and take her to the vet. I think Zoe was just missing Stuart (my cat!). We'll see.


UPDATE: Zoe is just fine. (I think it was missing Stuart).

1.1.11

a new year.
resolutions.
lists and lists and lists.