This morning three different law professors sent me this video of U.S. Senate Candidate and Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren claiming to be the first nursing mother to ever take the bar exam. One of the professors, who is a liberal academic, noted that she knows that claim to be untrue from personal experience. However, as noted by Winnie Comfort of the New Jersey Judiciary (which administers state’s bar exam), the bar does not track nursing habits and women have been taking the New Jersey bar exam since 1895. This was not a claim to be a nursing Cherokee mother, but the question remains why Warren is making such controversial boasts when she has a great financial expertise record to run on. Worse still, Warren today admitted that she did in fact claim minority status at Penn and Harvard — after insisting that she was unaware of the claims.
Obviously, the running of a law professor has made the Warren race a focus of law professors around the country. With these issues becoming part of the campaign, that fascination has grown to unprecedented levels. Warren has enjoyed overwhelming support in the academy from what I have seen. That support remains strong, though law professors are still chattering about these controversies.
These distractions however cannot be simply blamed on conservative publications, which are running the stories. Warren does not need such claims to distinguish herself. It could not come at a worse time when she has been unable to support her claim to be Cherokee In one of the most bizarre twists on the story, there are now accounts that great-great-great grandfather may have been a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees and pushed them into the horrific Trail of Tears. Of course, even if true, that would not alter the fact that his wife was a Cherokee. However, the Boston Globe has confirmed that there is no documentation to support the claim.
With today’s admission that she did in fact repeatedly claim minority status at both law schools, I am again left perplexed why she would take so long to admit her claim. As I noted earlier, I could not imagine any way that such a claim, let alone repeated claims, unless it was made by the law professor.
On the merits, there is significant doubt about the claim. Warren’s bio lists her as becoming pregnant in 1976 before graduating from law school. By that point, the chances that she was the first woman to be a nursing mother during the bar seems doubtful, but more importantly it is not clear how she would know.
Once again, this is not an issue of importance, but it is one that Warren raised. While the claim of being a minority does have significant aspects for law schools and academics, nursing is not a matter that seems particularly relevant. However, what is fascinating is that I would have been impressed with Warren noting that she nursed during the bar exam – reflecting the challenges of female lawyers. No need to be first. I was trying not to hyperventilate at the time. I would be impressed even if she was the latest in a long line of nursing mothers during bar exams.
Nevertheless, she still looks good in comparison to 13 Senatorial candidates who are now accused of having backgrounds that include criminal convictions or tax violations.
I wonder if any of our attorneys have accounts to share of challenges that they faced during the bar examination. I know of one professor who was caught in a broken elevator in a hotel during his break from the bar. I know of another lawyer who was under cancer treatment and had to leave to throw up from the medication (he passed).
If the government starts taking citizenship away from people who were born here, that’s when the sky falls.
Matt:
When do you predict the sky will fall?
The Enemy Expatriation Act: Learn How Your Government Could Strip You of Your Citizenship If This Legislation Becomes Law
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/29/the-enemy-expatriation-act-learn-how-your-government-could-strip-you-of-your-citizenship-if-this-legislation-becomes-law/
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Do you know what’s going to happen if that happens? There won’t be any law.
Washington Post:
Who had the worst week in Washington? Elizabeth Warren. Again.
Swarthmore mom
1, May 31, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Brown to co-sponsor terrorism bill
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON – Senator Scott Brown tomorrow is signing on to legislation that would strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship if they are found to have aided a foreign terrorist organization.
*****
I wrote a post on the subject earlier this year:
The Enemy Expatriation Act: Learn How Your Government Could Strip You of Your Citizenship If This Legislation Becomes Law
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/29/the-enemy-expatriation-act-learn-how-your-government-could-strip-you-of-your-citizenship-if-this-legislation-becomes-law/
Excerpt;
Even people who believe that NDAA does not allow for the indefinite detention of citizens should be concerned about a proposed amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act that would give our government “the authority to strip a person of their American citizenship if that person is accused or suspected of supporting ‘hostilities’ against the U.S. The amendment, known as the Enemy Expatriation Act (EEA), was introduced, in October, by Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pa., and Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Scott Brown, R-Mass.
According to ‘Enemy Expatriation Act’ Could Compound NDAA Threat to Citizen Rights, an article written by Ashley Portero that was published in the International Business Times, EEA “would allow the government to revoke Americans of their U.S. citizenship if they are accused or suspected of ‘engaging in, or purposefully or materially supporting, hostilities.’ The sparse amendment, which defines ‘hostilities’ as ‘any conflict subject to the laws of war,’ does not say which government body — say a military tribunal or a congressional panel — has the power to brand suspected persons as hostiles.” If EEA becomes law, our government “could potentially revoke the citizenship of anyone deemed to be supporting hostilities against the U.S., thereby subjecting him or her to the indefinite military detention provision of the NDAA.”
Okay, why is it disabled by request. I’m not going to watch it on YouTube.
puzzling,
I am aware he has a primary to win first, but I think Warren will,pull out the victory.
Great link and article.
rafflaw,
Brwon also supported the Blunt Amendment too–and helped water down the financial reform bill…before he voted for it.
Sen. Scott Brown Touts Vote For Wall Street Reform In Ad, Neglects To Mention How He Watered It Down
By Pat Garofalo on May 29, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/tag/scott-brown/
Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R), in the face of a challenge from Wall Street reformer Elizabeth Warren, has been going out of his way to claim that he has been tough on the nation’s banks. Case in point, a recent ad released by his campaign prominently claims that he was “the tie-breaking vote on Wall Street reform“:
The problem with Washington is that people down there are always battling. That’s not how I operate. We’re Americans first, and I’ll work with anyone to get things done. I was the tie-breaking vote on Wall Street reform.
Brown did cross the aisle to vote with Democrats to approve the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. However, what the ad neglects to mention is the role Brown played in significantly watering the down the law, which has landed him heaps of Wall Street cash.
Brown was instrumental in weakening the Volcker Rule, which was meant to rein in risky trading with federally backed dollars by the nation’s biggest banks. He also forced Democrats to strip from the law a $19 billion bank tax. Without that provision, the Congressional Budget Office is now bizarrely claiming that the law has a “cost” of about $20 billion, a score which Republicans have seized upon as justification for their efforts to repeal the law entirely.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, employees from the securities and investment industries have given more money to Brown than those of any other industry. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which just lost billions of dollars on the sort of trading that the Volcker Rule was originally meant to curtail, are amongst his top ten donors.
Rafflaw – Warren hasn’t won her party’s nomination just yet. She needs to beat a strong immigration attorney who is pro-single-payer first. Despite the party establishment attempting to silence her, I believe rival Marisa DeFranco has a real chance in MA as Warren continues to stumble:
Elaine,
This is just a note. If you want big water melons, go to Arkansas.
Elaine,
I forgot about Brown’s vote on the student Loan interest. Warren should hammer him on that issue.
Insignifica lies.
Tell it as it is grrrl.
Patric,
Is Warren “reveling” in insignifica? It seems to me that the people who don’t want to see her elected to the US Senate and the press/media are the ones reveling in insignifica.
Do you know that potatoes provide all the calories and nutritional elements needed to survive? Maybe Congressman Joe can find some turnips.
Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on Etsy
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on’t—Insignifica, thy name is woman!—
Elizabeth Warren Avoids American Indian Media
It is a further reflection on Warren that she refuses to meet with Native American media.
I keep trying to like Ms. Warren and she keeps pushing me away.
Why does a woman this accomplished feel the need to revel in insignifica?
Scott Brown Will Now Gouge Your Kids’ Tuition
By Charles P. Pierce
5/9/12
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/scott-brown-student-loans-8694981
Oh, McDreamy, you stepped in it this time.
Things were going pretty well. The locals were keeping that nothingburger about Elizabeth Warren’s professed Cherokee ancestry — something she shares with approximately 192.7 percent of everyone born in Oklahoma after about 1881 — heating up. The Warren campaign seemed unclear how to respond to aggressively promoted nonsense, a real rookie mistake in American politics in 2012. But then you had to go back to Washington and be a senator again, and things went badly wrong.
You see, Senator Brown, in Massachusetts, especially here in Boston, college is sort of like what cars used to be in Detroit and country music in Nashville. It’s kind of what we do. College students — those double-parking, jaywalking, projectile-vomiting little parcels of disposable income — are our most important product, to borrow the old GE slogan. At last count, there were something just short of 350,000 of them living in the greater Boston area alone. And, yesterday, you voted to make sure the interest rates on all their student loans will double in July. The Republican party, because it is insane at its base and its congressional caucus is made up of nihilists and vandals, filibustered to death a Democratic attempt to keep the increase from happening. And you voted against a cloture motion that would have opened the floor to a vote in the bill, which would have passed with relative ease. So, come July, most of those 350,000-odd at-the-very-least partial constituents, many of whom already look at your opponent like she’s the headliner at a Fillmore East show in 1969, will be paying almost seven percent on their loans. Their parents, many of whom live in Massachusetts, are unlikely to be pleased, either. The colleges aren’t going to be too wild about this, either. And, as I said, those colleges produce our main product, who, in turn, keep the local coffee joints and laptop repair shops in business.
And the explanation is not going to fly, either, not with anyone who’s been paying attention, and that would certainly include your opponent, those 350,000 wandering scholars, their families, and the president of the United States.
“The job market is dismal and the cost of getting a college education is out of control,” Brown said. “We should be working together on a solution that prevents these rates from skyrocketing.”
Nope. Sorry. I realize this is one of only two or three actual policy answers that you have on file, but what you voted for was a Republican strategy not to work with anyone. That leaves you, this morning, no different from Jim DeMint, and Ron Johnson, and the rest of the Tea Party hardbars. I don’t think Elizabeth Warren’s strange collision with diversity politics is going to keep a lot of other people from, well, going on the warpath here. Barn coat alert, I’m thinking.
I watched that. Too bad Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews tell the truth, among a few others.
BTW – Tell Congressman Joe to piss off. Boise State Rules. What does he think he’s talking about, anyway? Tell the asshole to eat some potatoes.
For Brown, a perplexing connection
In light of his sexual abuse revelation, why did he back Jeff Perry?
2/20/11
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/02/20/for_brown_a_perplexing_connection/
Excerpt:
SENATOR SCOTT Brown’s revelations about a childhood that included sexual assault by a summer camp counselor are genuinely sympathy-inducing.
But, they also make you wonder: in light of this searing experience when he was 10, how could Brown endorse Jeff Perry, the Republican congressional candidate, who, in 1991, allegedly stood by as a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a fellow police officer?
The victim, Lisa Allen, came forward during the race that Perry ultimately lost and said that Perry “had to hear my screaming and crying. Instead of helping me, Jeff Perry denied anything happened.’’
It’s an eerie echo of the personal trauma Brown reveals in his book, “Against All Odds.’’ As he tells “60 Minutes’’ correspondent Lesley Stahl, he never went to police or any authority — and told no one, not even his mother — because his abuser told him: “If you tell anybody, you know, I’ll kill you. I will make sure that no one believes you.’’
Adds Brown in the interview that will be aired tonight: “When people find people like me at that young vulnerable age, who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is, they make you believe that no one will believe you.’’
Despite his own horrific experience, Brown still chose to believe Perry over Allen; or, if he didn’t believe him, he still backed him for an important political position. Given that Brown is the father of two daughters, his loyalty to Perry was always curious. The revelations in his book make it even odder. In response, Brown said there is “no correlation’’ between his story and Allen’s and it is “really inappropriate’’ to link them.