I'm not sure where I stand on Attorney General Pryor's nomination, but on this matter, at least, Feddie says it all.

A few pieces of advice for those who give presentations:

1: Wear dress shoes. Do not wear flip-flops. We will notice, and we will laugh at you, immature as that is.

2: Keep your tie on. Taking it off and unbuttoning the top three(!) buttons of your shirt makes you look as if you are about to down a tumbler of gin, start a brawl, or both.

3: When Paul Niehaus asks you a question, answer it. Odds are very good that he is smarter than you, and dodging it only makes you look cowardly.

4: What goes around comes around. If you have annoyed other people during their presentations, they will clamor for blood. They will probably get it, too.

5: It's really not okay to get up in the middle of a question-and-answer session, walk through the crowd, and abandon one's group to the wolves, unless-- perhaps-- you have a plane to catch. If you aren't in for the fight, don't enlist.

6: As my drama teacher Jessica Thebus taught me, we notice everything on stage. If you tend to wiggle your ears or pick your nose on stage while other people in your group are speaking, we will notice. We will also notice if you are talking amongst yourselves. See especially number 1.

7: Do not address your colleagues in a condescending manner.

8: Even if you do, do not address the D.C. Policy Expert in a condescending manner. He is even less likely to be impressed.

9: When you have been asked to speak for 60 minutes, it is better to speak for 40 than it is to speak for 90. We will forgive you numbers 1-8 if you are temporally merciful. If we are hungry, we will forgive nothing.

Thanks to Another Rice Grad for sending in a link to Clarence Thomas's hearing's roll-call vote. There have been some interesting posts there lately.

For example RG complains about the "dead wood" on The Volokh Conspiracy (bloggers Davidp, Michelle, Russell, Stuart, and Erik). It's a fair observation-- the last post by any of the lot was this Erik Jaffe post on July 8. But I think that so-called "dead wood" adds quite a bit to the rhythm of group-blogs. One of the major advantages, in fact, of group-blogs is that it can aggregate a bunch of infrequent posters together with one or two daily posters. An example-- I started reading blogs originally because of Jacob Levy. But now Professor Levy doesn't post very often, yet when he does post, it's brilliant. If he had remained on his own blog, the frequent hiatuses might cause me to forget to keep checking it for new content, which means that when he said something brilliant again, I might miss it, at least for a while. So because Levy is now part of the conspiracy, and because Volokh keeps pulling in the daily readers, we can be assured we won't miss Levy when he does surface. Adding a whole lot of daily posters to a single blog isn't terrible, but it isn't what makes group-blogs great. What makes them great is that they make it much much easier to gather occasionally brilliances from those members of the blogosphere who still have lives. Note, for example, that some of my cohrots here at Crescat Sententia post less often than others do (often because they run their own blogs at the same time), but I think it's useful to have a bigger and different microphone to use when one feels like it, and it's useful to the readers to have these occasional musings aggregated too. [incidentally, note that Professor Volokh has now posted the URL needed to exclude any blogger one does not like, for those of you who wish to read the Volokh Conspiracy minus one partner-in-crime. You know who you are.

RG also takes Bob Graham to task for claiming to have been "Governor of the 4th-largest State" when the state did not become the 4th-largest until after Graham left office. He suggests that this is factually inaccurate and therefore somebody as nit-picky as Graham should not make the claim. But in it's own nit-picking-slightly-unusual-theory-of-identity-way, the claim could be defended (though I wouldn't want to be Bob Graham defending it to Larry King). The argument goes like this: "I was Governor of Florida. Florida is the 4th largest state. Therefore, I was president of the 4th largest state." Yes, it would be clearer to say "I was president of what is now the 4th largest state," but clarity and nit-picking accuracy don't necessitate one another. It all depends on one's philosophical theory of reference/identity.

Finally for now, note that the Rice Grad concurs with my judgment that Clint Bolick and the Institute for Justice are really cool.

I'm still eagerly awaiting the promised post on Poker, which will hopefully be forthcoming soon. ESPN's non-stop rerunning of the World Series of Poker has filled me with quite a hankering for Texas Hold'em.

Just in case you weren't already voting for Arnold, please note that he's now taking brilliant billionaire Warren Buffett into his operation.

[Query the oddity of this: Buffett is with Arnold. Buffett also has appeared in support of Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is appearing in support of Gray Davis.]

The whole list of options is available here. who are these people?

So Robert Nardo and I spent a lot of time and breath this afternoon arguing about a sort of strange question-- to what extent does a contractual agreement between two parties create a moral obligation on a third party to respect that agreement? The legal rule is clear. Accessory crimes and tortious interference hold people accountable for taking even an indirect part in a rights-violation. But does that principle carry "moral" weight or is it just a utilitarian rule?

One classic example is receiving stolen property. Person A takes something from Person B. Person C buys it from person A. Has Person C done something morally wrong? "Not if he didn't know," comes the usual response. Well, okay. But what if he did? Our instinct is often to say "yes, he shouldn't do that," but I'm not at all sure why this should necessarily be so. After all, if Person B wants to get his property back, why not send him to recover from A the price of the property rather than send him to C? I sat in on a class on this once by the great Richard Epstein, and he discussed it but now I've forgotten what he said. Give me a couple of years and I'll get back to you on this one.

So what about information? Suppose a member of the CIA signs a non-disclosure agreement (as all agents are required to, I believe), but then breaks it, and tells a reporter all about what the CIA is like. Then the reporter writes a book. Assuming, arguendo, that the agent was wrong to break his promise, is the reporter wrong to report the information? If I read the book and then talk about the contents, amd I committing a wrong?

My answer: no, not really. Bob's answer: yes.