The Supreme Court will be obeyed when it gives the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, as now seems almost inevitable, but an irreplaceable institution will be severely damaged. Partisanship is as much as part of the high court’s process, I fear, as law.
Newspapers routinely show politicians’ political affiliations when we write about them. I suppose we’ll have to do the same in the future for court justices. I can see it now:
Chief Justice William Rehnquist (R-Arizona), writing in the majority opinion, said the court finds a federal issue in this case even though there isn’t one. Associate Justice Stephen Breyer (D-Mass.), in a dissent, said the decision would damage states’ rights…
(If you’re interested in how the justices and lawyers for both sides debated this case at Monday’s oral arguments, check out the streaming coverage provided by Northwestern University’s Oyez Project. You can read the transcript as you listen to the arguments. A great service.)
Back from the Road
Another productive trip Asia. The teaching gig at the University of Hong Kong is a great deal of fun and hard work. The students were challenging and, in the end, excellent. Their final papers have arrived, and I will be spending time on them this weekend.
Spent the weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, with my brother and his family. The occasion was my niece’s 7th birthday.
Happy Birthday, Naomi!
Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai
I visited Singapore and Shanghai in addition to Hong Kong this trip, and started wondering which one of these places might emerge as the principal city of east Asia in the new century. Perhaps there’s room for more than one.
Whichever, you can see my speculation in my Sunday column.
Intel and Reality
Less than 48 hours after the CEO of Intel, Craig Barrett, assured me that all was just peachy with his company, Intel warned that revenues were hurting (Mercury News) because of the worldwide PC sales problem.
Barrett had even taken pains during our interview to say that he was baffled why the market responded to the troubles at Gateway, a big PC company, by pounding Intel’s stock. After all, he said, home PC sales were a “de minimus” part of Intel’s market. Here’s Intel’s press release on the same topic.
I still think Intel is a great company. I still agree with Barrett that the long run for technology is positive indeed.
Did Barrett deliberately mislead me? Intel says no.
But I come away from the experience with the distinct impression that I was misled. And I fear my column, while giving an accurate picture of Barrett’s outlook on global matters, didn’t reflect reality.
UPDATE:
From an Intel spokesman: “What we announced last Thursday could not have been disclosed or hinted at ahead of time due to securities regulations. To tell you in advance what would be announced later would constitute selective disclosure. In any case, we were still in the process of assimilating data to see whether we would still meet revenue expectations. When it became clear we would not, we announced it. As I read Craig’s remarks, at least those that appeared in your column, they referred not so much to the PC market as the long-term future of the overall buildout of Internet infrastructure.
Fox, the GOP Network
AP: Fox executive spoke five times with cousin Bush on Election Night. In their final conversation on election night, Bush told Ellis that Al Gore had taken back his concession of the race. “I hope you’re taking all this down, Ellis,” Bush reportedly said. “This is good stuff for a book.
What this says about George W. Bush is almost as interesting as the utter lack of journalistic ethics it reveals about the Fox Network, which has been a Republican shill since it was formed, and John Ellis, the Bush cousin.