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From The New York Times:

Some call it leadership by consensus; others, co-opting. In any case, [Mayor Daley] has traded endorsements this year even with Helen Schiller, previously his most vocal critic on the City Council. With the results hardly in doubt, Tuesday is more a coronation than an election.

"This is a dictatorship, it's not a democracy," said Robert T. Starks, a political scientist at Northeastern Illinois University.

The Marriage Talk:

I just got back from hearing Professor Case and a Methodist minister who's name I didn't hear talking about same-sex marriage. The substance of their talk was interesting but not particularly worth detailing-- separate the legal from the religious, and remember that legal marriages bear little resemblance to any traditional marriage, so why not scrap tradition altogether? (Sidenote, if I end up back here, I'm definitely taking a class with Ms. Case).

The more interesting bit was when the audience (mostly law students) got to ask questions. They made fools of themselves, really. (Full disclosure: I make a fool of myself regularly). I think there must be a law student instinct to immediately raise a counterargument to the professor, even if it is a dumb counter argument, and to continue trying to defend it even once the professor has pointed out why it was dumb. This must be what motivated the gentleman in the audience to advocate that marriages ought to be based on reproduction (why is why there should be no same-sex marriage) with exceptions for those who are too old, too impotent, or too sterilized to have children. To say that one has this conception about marriage and is therefore against gay marriage is, as Professor Case said, "to repeat oneself".

The second bad law school instinct is to answer one's own questions. Now I know that the students are doing this to try to appear smart, but frankly, I don't care. Given a one-time gathering of limited time, hearing mini-orations from the students is rarely useful. This isn't even a complaint against the time-honored tradition of academic presentation-- the counterargument phrased as a question-- this is sheer preenery. The former, the good kind, might be along the lines of "But Professor So-and-So, what do you think of the fact that The Supreme Court ruled that you were wrong in 1979?" or "Haven't you failed to consider the principle of blahblahblah?" No. This was a student who said something along the lines of, "what do you think of blah? I read your website, and it said you think blahblah. Do you?" (Note, blahblah wasn't contradictory to anything that the speaker had said). Now there may be a place for this, but to simply ask a speaker to repeat whether or not he believes what he's already said . . . seems a waste of time.

So to rising law students, including myself: Please, don't argue with the point unless you think it's arguable. And please, if you're going to ask a question, ask a question. My understanding is that there are no shortage of other opportunities in law school to make oneself look smart.

Sikh and you shall . . .:
We are now one of the top ten google hits for sikh blog. Go on. Try it.

Marriage:

For those in Chicago, there will be an ACLU/Law School talk this afternoon in the Law School, Room I at 12:15. The ACLU is providing free Indian food, and Professor Mary Anne Case, who I know somewhat, and somebody else, who I've forgotten, will be speaking about same-sex marriages. It should be a nice lunch.