VP Ledbetter

I'm sick of election blogs, too, but check this out. Obama's main goal right now is not fucking things up. He's ahead in the battleground states and he's way ahead in the national polls. There's no need for him to even go negative because McCain is tanking himself. Obama's even smoothings this out with Hillary by helping her with her campaign debt (a deal that was probably brokered weeks ago but kept under wraps until the attention died down).

Obama's VP choice, therefore, shouldn't rock the boat. Rather than being exciting or ground-breaking, Obama should pick a nice, boring VP candidate who won't mess up what's been a great campaign, so far. To me, Biden is looking better and better. He's been around a long time, so he's not a new face to get in the way, while at the same time letting Obama tout his experience and foreign policy experience. I was thinking he'd be Secretary of State, but with the current situation, he's a safe pick for VP, plagiarism and all.

On a whole other topic, I've only glanced at today's Supreme Court decision holding, for the first time, that the 2nd Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, but I'm going into it with an open mind. The Court took a lot of heat for holding earlier this year, in a case called Ledbetter, that a woman who was discriminatorily paid less then her male counterparts for 20 years could not sue, based on the statute of limitations.

The Court held that since the discriminatory decision was made 20 years ago, and that since she conceded that the decisions since then were not discriminatory, she could not sue based on discrimination from two decades ago. The Court specifically distinguished its prior decision in Bazemore, where the Court held that decisions made with discriminatory intent that continued into the statutory period were actionable. As bad as the result was, a woman paid less then men for her whole career could not sue, it was based on valid reasoning.