Josh Marshall has a post that everyone should read.

"It's like Michael Jordan leaving basketball at the top of his game," says Ross Davies of George Mason University School of Law.

"This is like George Lucas announcing that he would not finishEpisode III," adds Florida International University law professorThomas Baker.

More esoterically, Yale Law School professor Jack Balkincompares Tribe's announcement to Harvard professor Henry Hart sittingdown and refusing to deliver his third Holmes Lecture at Harvard LawSchool in 1963. "I can't think of a scholarly decision of similarsymbolic importance," Balkin wrote on his Balkinization blog.

Tribe's explanation:

Tribe said he had made his decision because, as hetold [Supreme Court Justice Steven] Breyer, "conflict over basic constitutional premises is today at afever pitch," moving rapidly in unpredictable directions. "No treatise,in my sense of that term, can be true to this moment in ourconstitutional history—to its conflicts, innovations and complexities."

Makes me wonder how these conflicts, innovations and complexities are addressed at Minnesota.

UPDATE: Since I understand it to be a rare thing indeed when another blog links to me, I thought perhaps I could expand my thoughts on this subject. My initial reaction to the news, specifically to Tribe's explanation, was that a historical moment like the one he describes sounds like the perfect opportunity for a new treatise on constitutional law. I spoke with Ilya Somin at the Volokh Happy Hour, and he shared this view.

TheSecurities and Exchange Commissionplansto bring more actions against hedge fund advisers in connection withwhat the SEC deems "sham transactions." On May 19, the SEC announcedactions against three hedge fund advisers for violations of Rule 105 ofRegulation M. The rule prohibits the covering of a short sale withsecurities obtained in a follow-on offering if the short sale occurredwithin five days before the pricing of securities in the offering. TheSEC alleged that two of the advisers,Galleon ManagementandOaktree Capital Management, engaged in sham transactions through which Rule 105 violations were concealed.

John Reed Stark,counselor to the director in the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said itis the first time the SEC made the allegation of sham transactionssince providing interpretative guidance last year. "It represents wherewe are going; we're really focusing on the secondary market," Starksaid The SEC will also bring more cases forward in connection with itscontinuing probes into private investment, public offering (PIPE)transactions, insider trading and general manipulation, Stark said.

Is more secondary-market regulation a good thing? Probably. There were rumors flying around about some hedge funds who supposedly took a bath when GM & Ford's bonds were downgraded and if my fraud class taught me anything, it's that when things start to go bad human beings have a tendency to get...lets call it "creative".

The hedge fund craze is a byproduct of the speculation-fueling low interest rates that have prevailed for the past 5 years or so. As interest rates rise, it might be a good idea to have some oversight in place, just in case anyone decides to get "creative".

If you have a strong desire to scare the shit out of yourself, read today's Krugman column.

Pepe Escobar breaks down the French debate over the EU constitution. His conclusion: the French need to pull their tetes out of their derrieres and vote "oui". Definitely worth a read.

Why is Bush protecting Hillary? One could argue (if one were so inclined) that it's for the same reason that Newt is teaming up with her to work on healthcare legislation: they want her to run for president. They're so sure that any Republican nominee will beat Hillary that they are literally helping her lock up the primary (albeit 3 or 4 years early). This is a risky but not entirely stupid tactic.

The other argument is that Bush has been hiding the Clinton administration's dirty laundry to protect the power of the presidency. If a president's good faith decisions (and only those made in good faith) turn out, 10 years later, to be the wrong ones, should he be judged for that? I would say that no, he should not. It impedes the ability of the current president to make decisions if he has to be fearful of being wrong and denounced for it later on.

I think the first argument is the best explanation for what's going on.

A Matt Taibbi diatribe on journalistic ethics, unnamed sources, and Newsweek.

In 2001 and 2002, the five-member [audit] committee, which includedsuch figures as former U.S. trade representative Carla A. Hills and, in2002, former National Association of Securities Dealers chairman andchief executive Frank G. Zarb, reported in an annual corporate filingthat the committee's oversight did "not provide an independent basis todetermine that management has maintained appropriate accounting andfinancial reporting principles."

Further, the committee said, it couldn't assure that the audit had beencarried out according to normal standards or even that PWC was in fact"independent."

Mistakes are okay. Sometimes they're inevitable. But this looks like more than a mistake, it looks like criminal negligence. It'll be interesting to see if/how SOX 2002 will be applied here.

One can only marvel at the job Eliot Spitzer has been doing. The guy is a fraud wrecking ball, and seems to be able to the SEC's job better than they can. I wouldn't be surprised to find this guy in the oval office one day.

Slate's "Bushism of the Day":

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."— G.W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

My Google Homepage "Quote of the Day":

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
  - Lenin

Coincidence?

I'm on the QandO comment board defending Dale Franks.