Further Replies, Responses, and Comments

Wes Brown, over at the Journal of the American Bull Moose wrote a good reply to my response to his article, which in turn was, one could say, an unintentional response to my first post here.  I responded to him via email, which the editors of JABM included with Wes's article.

The exchange can be found here:  http://americanbullmoose.com/content/?p=389

To recap:

1. I posted an article on this blog, stating a case for President Obama deserving the Nobel Peace Prize.
2. Wes Brown wrote his own article, on the JABM (unaware of my article, but stating many of the things I was trying to argue against), stating a case for President Obama not deserving the Nobel Prize.
3. I replied here.
4. Mr. Brown responded to the arguments in my follow-up post, with a second article on JABM.  JABM included my counterargument, in its posting of Wes's article.  That two-part exchange can be read here.

Peace Prize Follow-Up

Wes Brown, over at the Journal of the American Bull Moose, wrote a good article about why President Obama does not deserve the Peace Prize. (Article found here.)  I stand by the conclusions of my previous post, but wanted to clarify a few things in light of Wes's article, and partially to respond.

President Obama Does, In Fact, Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize

On Friday I was going to write a blog post about President Obama’s Nobel Prize.  In the time since then, I have completely reversed my opinion.  Initially I was surprised and frustrated by the award; despite the fact that I tend to agree with and support Obama,[1] like many others I felt that he had achieved nothing to deserve the Prize, and that the award rendered the Prize less meaningful.  But I have been slowly coming around to the idea that the Prize is sometimes simply awarded for efforts, not concrete achievement.  So I planned to write a Monday post about that.  Sadly for me, others – more articulate others – beat me to the punch.

Judicial Credibility: Caperton v. Massey and Constitutional Recusal Requirements

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a modestly groundbreaking ruling on constitutionally required judicial recusal.[1] The case, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.,[2]> garnered significant public attention before it ever reached SCOTUS.  In fact, the underlying story proved so dramatic that John Grisham used it for the basis of his most recent novel, The Appeal.[3]  Caperton represents the Court’s first major case regarding disqualification of judges since the 1970s.  The Court, by a 5-4 majority, held that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment requires a judge to recuse himself to avoid the probability of bias, and that within the framework of judicial election campaign contributions, a multi-factor test may objectively determine such a probability.