Convincing me a little that Obama wouldn’t be a bad choice. I’m not supporting him because of what happened in South Carolina. That was the exact sort of “tiny speak” Lessig attributed to Hillary.

That being said, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is tiny speak embodied. I agree with that. I’ll still be voting Dodd, but I’m just a little less concerned about Obama.

Another random point: Lots of people claim that Bush stole the 2000 elections, and the number of voting irregularities have always stood out from that election. Still, though, most people I know consider it bordering on a conspiracy theory. I have always hemmed and hawed about that (my own “tiny speak”?), but after seeing a quip like this from a legal mind like Lessig:

I don’t get this in Democrats generally. I never have, but I especially don’t get it after two defeats to the likes of George Bush (ok, one defeat, but let’s put that aside for the moment).

it makes me wonder how solid the Supreme Court was on this issue. I know politics infects everything, but I have always held out hope that certain institutions took their responsibilities seriously.

Connected semi-random thought: I’ve been rereading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series in the evenings and I’m struck by a couple of things. When government jobs are filled by people interested more in the titles and less in the power and responsibility, government starts to fail. While we should fear those who desire power itself, the idea that we’d have people running FEMA or the Pentagon or the Justice Department or the Supreme Court who want the title more than the responsibility is much worse.

That doesn’t even say anything about loyalty, honor, and fidelity to the oaths that all of these people take coming into their offices. Not to the political masters that nominated them to their positions, but to the Constitution and to the American people. Idealistic? Sure, but until this administration, I didn’t believe that these leaders were incompetent. They’re uninterested in the levers of power, let alone the responsible application of it. Doan, Michael Brown, Chertoff, Adm. Johnson, Alberto Gonzales, Krongard, the list just goes on and on and on.

It’s like we elected a bunch of W’s slacker college buddies who expected “someone else” to run the government.