User profile: NewDemocrat

Joined: Jan. 13, 2008

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Posted on: Obama blasts Strip caucus controversy

OldTimeDemocrat:
Took almost a minute to the find an article describing Barack Obama's first job after law school on the Boston Globe web site.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl...

1. Obama was recruited for the job straight out of law school.
"Attorney Judson Miner called Harvard to offer a job to a graduating student named Barack Obama and didn't expect to be showered with gratitude. Still, he wasn't expecting the reception he got.

You can leave your name and take a number," the woman who answered the phone at the Harvard Law Review said breezily. "You're No. 647."

2. Details on the firm that hired him: Miner Barnhill & Galland.
The firm of Miner Barnhill & Galland, many of whose members have Harvard and Yale law degrees, has a reputation that fits nicely into the resume of a future presidential candidate.

"It's a real do-good firm," says Fay Clayton, lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence. "Barack and that firm were a perfect fit. He wasn't going to make as much money there as he would at a LaSalle Street firm or in New York, but money was never Barack's first priority anyway."

Miner was Chicago's corporation counsel under Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor, in the 1980s when Washington was battling for control of the City Council against remnants of the once-mighty Machine."

Per the Globe article, Obama worked at the firm while teaching at Chicago and, for a portion of that time, serving in the IL State Senate.

3. Obama teaches constitutional law at Chicago.
http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_ba...
After Harvard Law, Obama "returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law." (per Obama campaign web site) His campaign site does not claim Obama was a law school professor. Since Obama, unlike Hillary, managed to pass the bar exam on his first try and taught law (along with editing Harvard's law review), we can only infer that he was a very good student.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

4. "Lawyers have an old expression. Those who can't do it, teach it. Those who can't teach it go into politics." I'm glad lawyers also use a version of the familiar phrase "Those that can, do, those that can't teach." That seems a good fit with this story about a teachers' union suddenly finding Nevada's caucus rules objectionable when they've known about the rules for months before the caucus date. I guess they certainly can't do, e.g. object when the caucus rules were drafted, but they can teach us all what voter suppression looks like.

(Suggest removal) 1/13/08 at 9:55 p.m.

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