Clinton and Obama wore (nearly) matching outfits at their Unity event this afternoon: her pantsuit and his tie were both, according to Politico’s color-spectrum analysis, powder blue.

Powder blue, of course, used to be a UCLA school color, back when I was at USC. But the Bruins switched in 2003 to a different shade of blue, so I guess I can forgive the Dems for their use of what I’ve always considered a rather distasteful shade of an otherwise fine color. Still… for future reference, I’d recommend either Notre Dame blue or Newington blue. :)

Anyway, here are some more photos from the Obama-Clinton rally in Unity.

I realize I’m incredibly slow in blogging about this story, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard, Kevin White is no longer Notre Dame’s athletic director.

Kevin White was hired as Duke’s athletic director Saturday, leaving Notre Dame for a school with an elite basketball team and a football team that has had 13 straight losing seasons and has not been to a bowl since 1994.

Notre Dame appointed Missy Conboy as its interim athletic director. The school said there is no timetable for a permanent replacement.

White will replace Joe Alleva, who was hired as LSU’s athletic director in April after a decade of leading the Blue Devils’ 26 sports programs.

“Kevin White is in the first rank of athletics directors nationally and will make a perfect fit at Duke,” university president Richard Brodhead said.

White had been at Notre Dame since 2000. He hired football coaches Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis, and hired former Duke assistant Mike Brey as the men’s basketball coach. …

White helped Notre Dame plan a $26 million renovation of the basketball arena and expand the school’s nonrevenue sports. He and his wife were made honorary alumni three days before switching jobs.

But White was widely criticized by Irish fans because the football team hasn’t won a national championship since 1988 — the longest stretch in school history — and some fans place much of the blame on White.

He gave Bob Davie a contract extension in 2000, then fired him after the next season. White replaced Davie with George O’Leary, who resigned after less than a week on the job after he admitted he had lied about his academic and athletic past. White’s next hire was Willingham, who lasted just three years.

In all, the Irish football team had four winning seasons, three losing campaigns and one .500 finish during White’s tenure.

Her Loyal Sons and Rakes of Mallow have complete coverage of White’s departure and the search for a possible replacement.

I apologize for not blogging this sooner. My parents were in town this past weekend, visiting us and the baby, so my free time for blogging was limited. Even so, as I mentioned in comments on another post, I actually drafted a whole post about this on Saturday, only to have my computer crash before I’d saved it. I then intended to post something Monday or Tuesday, but got totally consumed with blogging about the rapidly changing Hillary Clinton-related developments, and never got around to it.

Anyway. Yeah. Kevin White, gone. I can’t say I’m shedding any tears over it. What do y’all think?

P.S. Duke sucks.

There have been a lot of articles published in recent days with man-on-the-street quotes from West Virginia along the lines of, "I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist."

Now, I’m not denying that this sort of sentiment is a problem for Obama, nor am I necessarily denying that it’s a particularly severe problem in West Virginia. But can we please take this reporting with a little grain of salt, at least? I’m not sure whether these sorts of quotes tell us all that much about the electoral dynamic in West Virginia, as opposed to the psyche of the reporters writing the stories.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, if you’re a reporter, and you conduct enough man-on-the-street interviews, you can find some idiot to say "Obama’s a Muslim" — or even "Obama’s a n***er" — anywhere. You can find racists and xenophobes and conspiratorial crazies in California, New York, Texas, Illinois; you can find ‘em all over the damn country.

Can you find them more easily in West Virginia? Perhaps. But you’re also much more likely to publish their quotes in a story about West Virginia, because it fits the storyline perfectly. Indeed, such a quote is precisely what these reporters are looking for when they start conducting the interviews in West Virginia. Whereas in California or New York, they’d probably ignore the random racist quote, in West Virginia they go out, they turn on the yokel-detecting radar, they hold up a microphone to the redneckiest-lookin’ redneck they can find, and — voila! — journalistic magic happens.

Again: I’m not denying the real, genuine significance of racism as a factor in Obama’s problems, nor am I suggesting that Appalachia is devoid of racists. But please, let’s not jump to the conclusion that, when Hillary wins tomorrow’s primary by a margin of 70% to 30%, it means that 70 percent of West Virginia Democrats are racists, just because we read a handful of cherrypicked quotes that seem to validate that preconceived notion.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters prefer her to Obama for a whole bunch of reasons, some of them cultural, some of them political, some of them overtly racial, some of them subconsciously racial, and some of them falling into various other categories. While I disagree with their choice (and I strongly disagree with Hillary’s conscious or reckless exploitation of the prejudices that do exist), it’s an insult to those voters to paint them all with a broad brush and assume the only reason they’ve voting for Hillary is because they hate black people, or people with the middle name "Hussein," or whatever.

It’s possible to condemn prejudice without engaging in it, and that’s what’s called for here. Some people in West Virginia (and elsewhere) are voting on the basis of racism, and that sucks. Most others aren’t, and we shouldn’t assume that they are. And that’s all I have to say about that.

UPDATE: Poblano writes:

I do want to write a little bit more about the
notion that West Virginians are racist. … [T]he short version is: yes,
there are racist voters in West Virginia, but there are racist voters
in every state. The primary determinant of the extent to which racism
tends to be more manifest is education levels, and so the effects may
be more noticeable in West Virgnia, a state with poor academic
achievement. But there is no reason to believe that West Virgnians are
particularly racist, relative to their education levels.

That seems right to me.

Remember Dan McGrath, the Notre Dame law student who finished 33rd in the New York City marathon during his 1L year? Well, now he’s a 2L, and on Sunday he won the Long Island Marathon, then flew back to South Bend in time for a Monday-morning Jurisprudence final. As a result of his exploits, he’s featured on the sports mega-blog Deadspin, under the headline “Annoying Superhuman Lawyer-To-Be Makes Life More Difficult For The Rest Of Us.” Heh. Congrats, Dan!

More good news from Notre Dame Law School:

Robert F. Biolchini, a member of the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees
and partner in the Tulsa, Okla., law firm Stuart, Biolchini & Turner, and
his wife, Frances, have made a $15 million gift to the University to help
underwrite the renovation of the current Notre Dame Law School building. …

After a comprehensive renovation of the existing law school building, which
will be renamed Biolchini Hall, it will house an expanded Kresge Law Library.
The renovation in Biolchini Hall also will include two 50-seat classrooms, new
space for Notre Dame Law Review, and new offices and work space for admissions
and career services. The exterior of the building, including masonry, windows
and roofing, will be restored where necessary.

A covered archway will link Biolchini Hall to the adjacent Eck Hall of Law, a
three-story, 85,000-square-foot building that is under construction on the site
of the former campus post office. Eck Hall will be composed primarily of a new
moot courtroom, classrooms and faculty offices. When it is completed in January
2009, law school operations will be moved out of the existing building and
renovation work will begin.

“The combination of Biolchini and Eck Halls will give Notre Dame one of the
outstanding law school facilities in the country,” said Patricia A. O’Hara,
Joseph A. Matson Dean of Notre Dame Law School. “On behalf of all law school
faculty, students and alumni, I want to offer my deepest thanks to Bob, Fran and
their family.”

Hmm… Biolchini Hall and Eck Hall, connected by a covered archway. Hey, how much does it cost to build a covered archway? We should put together a blog fundraising campaign, and get it named the "Irish Trojan Archway." ;)

Fellow "Irish Trojan" Katherine Kirkpatrick, who, like me, attended USC for undergrad (she’s even a Daily Trojan alum), and who is now a rising 3L at Notre Dame, was elected NDLS’s new SBA president in a runoff election last week. She will be inaugurated on Sunday.

A Trojan at the helm of the Notre Dame Law School student body: I love it!! Finally, Operation: Trojan Horse can proceed as planned! ;) Just kidding. Seriously, congratulations, Katherine!

In addition, an anonymous tipster informed me that A.J. Bellia and Lloyd Mayer — the latter being my former Election Law professor and adviser for my Electoral College paper, the former being one half of the school’s recent professorial retention coup — finished tied in the initial balloting for NDLS Professor of the Year. That led to a run-off, which Professor Bellia narrowly won. Congrats to him, and to Professor Mayer for his close second-place finish; they’re both great professors, and well deserving of the recognition.

John McCain did “Hardball” at Villanova today, and a student — in reference to the recent photos of Hillary Clinton doing (or possibly sipping) a whiskey shot at Bronko’s restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana — asked him, “I was wondering if you think that she’s finally resorted to hitting the sauce just because of some unfavorable polling. And I was also wondering if you would care to join me for a shot after this?”

Heh.

That reminds me: I have a proposal for Hillary Clinton. As you all know, I’ve soured on her rather severely in recent months, and at this point, I’d be pretty hard-pressed to vote for her under any circumstances. However, there is one thing that might make me change my tune. Hilldog, if you’ll go to The Backer, order one of their terrible yet potent Long Islands, and get yourself photographed and videotaped singing the “God Bless the USA” followed by the Notre Dame Victory March (yes, this would mean staying until — ahem — 3:00 AM), I might consider switching my allegiance. :)

P.S. Possible campaign ad: “It’s 3:00 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But Hillary Clinton is wide awake, if slightly tipsy, singing patriotic music while swaying back and forth in a circle of townies* in South Bend, Indiana. Suddenly, a cell phone rings — the cab is here. Who do you want answering that phone? The elitist snob Barack Obama, who will jump in the cab at the earliest opportunity to get away from the ‘bitter’ townsfolk, and miss the Victory March? Or Hillary Clinton, the woman who respects your traditions, who’ll tell the cabbie to wait ten minutes so she can stay right through to the end of ‘Oh What A Night’? Make the right choice: Vote for Hillary Clinton on May 6. [slurred Hillary voiceover: ‘I’m Hilllary Clinton and I (hiccup) approve this message.’]”

*Why townies, you ask? Because the Domers are too “elitist,” of course! ;)

Big, and good, news for Notre Dame Law School: Professors A.J. and Patricia Bellia have turned down tenured offers from the University of Virginia Law School, which is ranked in the U.S. News Top 10, and will stay at NDLS. Brian Leiter calls this a "major retention coup for Notre Dame."

My impression is that it’s almost an article of faith among some NDLS critics, skeptics and detractors that the school’s young superstar professors, such as the Bellias, will inevitably be "poached" by other, higher-ranking law schools in due course. This development appears to contradict that belief, which is a very good thing.

As Leiter says, "Notre Dame has long had a strong reputation among practitioners … but the school
has also noticeably strengthened its faculty from a scholarly point of
view in the last decade." Indeed, during last year’s unfortunate "Paulinogate" incident, one thing that became crystal clear was that pretty much everyone, even those who strongly criticize the law school for various things, totally disagreed with Jimmy’s criticisms of the faculty: there was almost universal agreement among Irish Trojan commenters that the NDLS faculty rocks. And the Bellias are a big part of that, so it’s great that they’re staying put. Indeed, I daresay this is a much bigger deal than last week’s news that NDLS had climbed back to #22 in those flawed U.S. News rankings. Those numbers may vary from year to year, but if profs like the Bellias are staying put, the law school will be just fine.

Above The Law has confirmed the legitimacy of the leaked U.S. News law-school rankings, which I blogged last night. As I mentioned in that post, they show Notre Dame Law School erasing last year’s decline and returning to #22.

Meanwhile, there is breaking news at NDLS. Less than an hour ago, Dean Patty O’Hara wrote an e-mail to the student body, announcing that she is stepping down at the end of next year. The e-mail was forwarded to me, and it’s printed in full after the jump.

(more…)

U.S. News and World Report’s 2009 law-school rankings aren’t due to be officially released until Friday, but there are scattered reports of leaks. (Hat tip: yea.) Specifically, law blog The Shark has published a PDF scan of an apparently Xeroxed copy of the alleged list (purportedly found at an unspecified “newsstand”); Xoxohth poster “Gerbil21″ claims he saw the magazine on display early at a local Barnes & Noble and wrote the rankings down by hand; and poster “m1″ on Law School Discussion took a digital picture of the alleged new rankings page.

If the leaked list is accurate — a big “if” — it would mean Notre Dame Law School has recovered from last year’s drop from #22 to #28, climbing back into a tie for #22. However, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these purported leaks in any way, shape or form. I’m just passing on the links. You can consider them sort of like the early unweighted exit polls on election nights: lend them whatever credence you feel is appropriate, with “none” being a perfectly valid answer. We report, you decide.

Oh, and insert your own rankings-don’t-matter disclaimer here. :)

P.S. For example.

Knoxville's Krutch Park in bloom. … Meanwhile, I just got a text message from Kristin in South Bend -- where I'm guessing it's decidedly less springlike -- reporting that Notre Dame Law School has been evacuated due to a fire alarm. Hmm.

UPDATE: Our intrepid NDLS correspondent reports: “All ok, incident involved a microwave, a sandwich wrapped in tin foil, & a styrofoam plate.” Heh.

Back in January, when I wrote about how the major candidates for president were campaigning "in or near practically every single place I used to live…as well as a place I may someday live…but NOT the place I currently live" — a phenomenon which I referred to as "a vast left/right-wing conspiracy to piss me off" — I noted that the only former Brendan Loy domicile they hadn’t visited was South Bend. Then, as an afterthought, I added:

And come to think of it, if the Dem race really does drag on, there’s an
excellent chance they’ll eventually hit South Bend! Between
Pennsylvania (April 22) and West Virginia (May 13), the only primaries
are in Indiana and North Carolina, both on May 6. So there’s a two-week
window for campaigning in just those two states. If Hillary and Barack
are still going at it by then (probably unlikely, I admit, but
certainly not impossible), they’ll have more than enough time to travel
up and down the entirety of the great state of Indiana trolling for
votes, stopping in every major and minor city along the way. So they’d
certainly make it to South Bend, which is [one of the] biggest cit[ies] in northern
Indiana. Heck, forget South Bend, I bet they’d end up coming to Notre Dame itself,
perhaps for a rally (or rallies) at the Joyce Center (as President Bush
did on his Social Security Unplugged tour back in 2005).

Again I say, harumph.

Well, here we are, just over five weeks later, and that "unlikely…but
certainly not impossible" scenario looks, well, likely. Unless Hillary loses Pennsylvania, you have to think the campaign will continue into May. And you also have to think Hillary, fresh off victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, will focus heavily on the next logical target in her tour of economically depressed "rust belt" areas: northern Indiana. Forget visiting South Bend, she might practically move in. :) Obama, for his part, will presumably spend most of his time in large population centers with reasonably large black populations — which would put South Bend high on his list, as well.

So basically, it looks like every single place I’ve ever lived except East Tennessee (Greater Hartford, NYC, Phoenix, L.A., South Bend), plus my possible future home (Denver), will have played host to one or more major candidate visit by the time this campaign is over. Jealousy, thy name is Brendan Loy.

P.S. With my luck, we’ll probably end up moving from Tennessee to Colorado sometime in between the Democratic National Convention in Denver (August 25-28) and the presidential debate in Nashville (October 7), thus missing both events. ;)

Bill Kelley, former deputy counsel to President Bush and current Notre Dame Law School professor, got a taste of life at a slightly more liberal university when protesters disrupted an event he was participating in last week at UC-Berkeley. There’s a photo:

He looks somewhat perturbed. The Daily Californian article doesn’t say, however, whether Professor Kelley was branded a "war criminal" by the protesters. (The event’s moderator, Professor John Yoo, was.)

As usual with such protesters, they were very interested in free speech, so long as they were the ones speaking. "As the panelist discussion progressed, protestors continuously shouted at Yoo," according the Daily Cal.

And their shouts weren’t even relevant to the topic at hand — while the protesters were rambling about torture and executive power, the panelists (who included USC professor Susan Estrich, another noted war criminal*) tried to have a discussion about why voters should carefully consider potential Supreme Court nominations in making election decisions this fall, something you’d think the protesters would agree with. But, you know, heaven forbid scholars get together to talk about such things. They must be shouted down! They’re war criminals! They’re evil fascists!! Bush=Hitler!!! *sigh*

Said Ethan Rarick, director of the Center on Politics at the Institute of Governmental Studies: "We’re fine with people coming to express their opinions, even on the panelists and participants, but it should not disrupt the event."

*…and by "war criminal," I mean "antiwar liberal feminist."

Here is the obituary of Notre Dame 2L Timothy Aher, who died in London over the weekend. News articles about his sad and untimely passing have also been published in the Notre Dame newspaper and in the local Connecticut newspaper of the area where he grew up. A memorial mass was held at the Basilica on Tuesday (video here) for Tim and Connor McGrath, the Notre Dame sophomore who also died over the weekend.

There’s much more, including a photo from the CT paper, in the Tim Aher & Connor McGrath memorial post, which I’ve updated several times. (There’s a fair amount of search-engine traffic coming to that page, so I’m trying to keep everything related to the tragedies consolidated there.) You can also find more photos of Tim at this Photobucket page. According to Chicago radio station WHPK, "friends from law school have started [it] to compile a photo album to give to Tim’s family."

Also, from the obituary: "In lieu of flowers, the family asks
that contributions be made to Connecticut Legal Services, Inc., 62
Washington St., Middletown, CT 06457, in Tim’s name."

The university has released the name of the Notre Dame student who died in London over the weekend. As I feared, it was a law student: 2L Timothy Aher.

In addition to being a Domer, Tim was also a Nutmegger, a resident of Brookfield, Connecticut. He was 25. The university says he "died tragically and unexpectedly Sunday (Feb. 17) in Ilford, England, a suburb of London."

He’s the second Notre Dame Law School student to die in just over 10 months. On April 7 of last year, 3L Ryan Rudd died of cancer, less than a month-and-a-half before he would have graduated. He was awarded his J.D. posthumously; his mother received it in a very emotional moment at commencement.

I imagine the Class of 2009 will be torn up about Tim’s death in much the same way that ours was about Ryan’s. What a tragedy.

Anyway, in the same press release, the university also released more details about the unrelated death of Notre Dame sophomore Connor McGrath, a 20-year-old who intended to major in business:

A resident of Siegfried Hall, he had spent the night in the room of a friend in Dillon Hall, where he previously had resided. His body was discovered by friends at approximately 1:40 p.m. … Investigators from the unit and the county’s deputy coroner made a preliminary evaluation, pending an autopsy today, that the death appeared to be from natural causes, possibly related to McGrath’s history of diabetes.

A memorial Mass for both students will be held Tuesday at 10 p.m. at the Basilica.

May they both rest in peace. And I know we’ll all be keeping their family and friends in our thoughts and prayers. I think particularly of the parents, as I sit here with Loyette sleeping peacefully in my lap; I can’t imagine the wrenching pain of losing a child just as they’re becoming an adult. May they find some source of comfort in the terribly sad days, indeed years, ahead.

UPDATE, 2/19: Here’s a Tim Aher remembrance, with a photo, from blogger Mark Solotroff. Solotroff is in a band, and last November, he and his bandmates were hosted by Tim while in London on tour. A couple of earlier blog posts about their adventures can be found here and here.

Also, another blogger remembers Connor, with several photos. And a Facebook group has been created in his honor.

The Notre Dame Observer has separate articles today about Tim’s death and about Connor’s death. An excerpt from the article about Tim:

Aher, 25, was a music lover with eccentric interests and a warm personality, his friends said.

"He was a beautiful and rare and amazing person," [Adam] Zayed said.

A memorial Mass was celebrated Monday afternoon in the Alumni Hall chapel. Father John Coughlin, a law professor, presided. Approximately 100 people, mostly students and faculty from the Law School, attended the Mass.

"People from all walks and cliques in the Law School were there today," [Artie] Merschat said. "He brought the Law School together."

Read the whole thing, including an amusing anecdote about Tim’s "hipster subjugation of death metal culture."

UPDATE, 2/20: Here’s an article about Tim’s death from the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut. It includes a photo, of which I’ve added a scaled-down version to the top of this post (along with a photo of Connor from his Facebook group).

UPDATE, 2/21: Here’s Tim’s obituary.

In addition, via Chicago radio station WHPK — where I guess Tim used to work — I learn that "friends from law school have started to compile a photo album to give to Tim’s family." It has 45 photos and counting. And there’s also a Tim Aher blog.

The memorial mass for Tim and Connor was held at the Basilica on Tuesday. Here’s the Observer article about it, and here’s a WNDU article, with video.

Also from the Observer: a letter to the editor praising the campus for coming together in unity at the memorial mass, and an op-ed by Father Lou DelFra titled, "Tragedy: a time of God’s absence or presence?"

Funeral arrangements in Connecticut are as follows: "The family will receive friends at the Valley Presbyterian Church, 21
West Whisconier Rd., Brookfield, CT between the hours of 3:00pm and
5:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 23, 2008. A memorial service will be
held at the church at 5:30 p.m."

Also: "In lieu of flowers, the family asks
that contributions be made to Connecticut Legal Services, Inc., 62
Washington St., Middletown, CT 06457, in Tim’s name."

P.S. Out of respect for the families, please let’s not speculate on anything that hasn’t been made public, and/or widely reported by a reputable source, with regard to the individual circumstances of either student’s death. Thanks.

P.P.S. Also, please let’s keep any arguments about side-issues from the previous post confined there, rather than allowing them to spill over to this thread, which should really be for memorialization and mourning.