On the Record

Michelle Obama – Barney’s lawyer?

Turns out the potential First Lady served as a clearinghouse for the big purple dinosaur’s television show and merchandise in the late 1980s. Obama also reviewed Coors beer ads as part of her work at the Chicago-based international firm now known as Sidley Austin LLP, according to a story about Obama’s time as a corporate lawyer in Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine.

No matter your political views, the story is an interesting look at a young lawyer fresh out of Harvard Law School. Michelle Robinson, as she was then known, worked at the school’s legal aid bureau and considered public service work but ultimately decided to go corporate in part to pay off her student loans.

The future Mrs. Obama was recruited by Sidley’s intellectual property group. Colleagues and bosses had nothing but good things to say about her, but the ambitious young lawyer at one point complained to the firm’s human resources department that the work she was getting was unsatisfactory. She left Sidley in 1991 to work for the mayor’s office in Chicago.

On the campaign trail, Michelle Obama has urged others not to follow her footsteps into corporate America, encouraging young people to become teachers and social workers instead. Then again, if she weren’t at Sidley in 1989, she might not have met a certain summer associate named Barack.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

The New York Times has a story today about what Obama was like during his time teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. On the one hand, he was apparently an engaging professor, if a touch overly pleased with himself:

As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)

On the other hand, he sometimes got so wrapped up in the intellectual arguments surrounding an issue that he didn’t do anything about it:

While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.

What, if anything, do you think this all says about what kind of president Obama would be? A broader question: do academic types make good political leaders? Are there similarities between the skill set required to be a law professor and the one needed to be president? Or are we talking about two very different personality types here?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Via the ABA Journal blog, a law professor says he was denied communion because he backs Barack Obama, an abortion-rights supporter. The prof, Pepperdine University’s Douglas Kmiec, writes a column for the Catholic News Service and used to be dean at Catholic University.

A spokesman for Cardinal Roger Mahoney has confirmed the event occurred in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and called the priest’s action “absolutely indefensible.”

What do you think about this?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

A legal newspaper out in Los Angeles, the Daily Journal, has a piece today about law firms’ political donations. (Hat tip to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and a bow to former Daily Record-ite Lawrence Hurley, who wrote the DJ piece. Longtime readers will remember him as the one with the great British accent.)

According to the Law Blog, Hurley writes that lawyers are the biggest contributors to the campaigns of both Democratic presidential candidates and the second-biggest to Republican John McCain.

The post also mentions that lawyers at Baltimore’s own home-grown megafirm, DLA Piper, have given Clinton nearly half a million. Wow.

I wonder how other firms around here stack up, donation-wise. I sense a story one of these days…

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Legal scholar Ted Frank, a regular contributor to Overlawyered.com and Above the Law, says “BigLaw lawyers love Obama.”

They might not love him - or Frank - quite as much after reading Frank’s Tuesday post, where he lays out what Obama’s proposed tax policies (including ending the Bush tax cuts and the social security tax cap) will do to BigLaw wallets.

To illustrate his point, Frank calculates the effect of the tax changes on a mid-level BigLaw associate who is paid market value at a New York City firm. After he lists out his assumptions (she is single, maxes out her 401k, gives $10K/year to charity), he reveals the verdict:

The answer is that Obama’s tax increases have a bigger effect on your income than a law firm cutting New York salaries by $34,000.

Frank acknowledges, “Now, money isn’t everything. A BigLaw associate, who is already handsomely paid, might find it worthwhile to take the equivalent of a $34,000/year paycut to have Barack Obama as president instead of John McCain.”

But he also points out, “If you’re willing to reject a law firm over a few thousand dollars, how much money would sway your presidential vote and campaign contributions?”

Click here to download Frank’s excel spreadsheet, which you can edit with your own information. (Note: it will only work for taxable income above $78,850).

What do you think?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

Apparently the phrase “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” doesn’t apply to the U.S. Olympic Committee. According to an article on ESPN.com, the more than 1,000-member delegation of athletes, coaches, trainers and other personnel will be bringing their own food supply to China this August for the 2008 Olympics.

Really.

It’s got the Beijing officials understandably disappointed, although the article also points out that food safety in China has become a major issue for the Olympics. Tainted products and reported use of drugs and insecticides in food production could trigger a positive drug test, ruin an athlete’s career and be a public relations disaster for China, the article said.

While the U.S.’s 600-plus athletes will still be dining in the Olympic Village, the rest of the delegation (which isn’t eligible for meals at the village) will fill up at a training camp at Beijing Normal University, where the committee plans to ship “tons of meat and other foods.”

OK, I understand the drug-testing thing. But if the athletes are eating at the Olympic Village anyway and the U.S. food will be consumed primarily by non-competitors, why the concern?

I’ve never been to China, but I lived in rural Mexico and not once did I get sick off the food. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the water there should not touch your lips or your dishes unless it comes from a bottle.

So what gives? Does anyone think this undermines the spirit of the games and the privilege of being the host country? Or in this day and age is it better to play it safe?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

Soon after I bounced out of bed this morning, fueled by the adrenaline of the Potomac Primary and the greatest exercise in democracy — known as voting — I realized there was no polling place for my kind: an Independent.

I consider myself just as informed, if not more, than most Democrats and Republicans I make the unfortunate mistake of discussing politics with. Plus, I’m not blinded by my party allegiance to the point where I can’t hear out opposing viewpoints.

However, the message I get from not being able to participate in this glorious American democracy is that since I’m not eternally registered with one party, I must be ill-informed and out of the loop.

For a country with a political system that is supposed to be an example for all, there are still a lot of wrinkles that leave me scratching my head.

After the Bush-Gore debacle, there was talk of taking a serious look at the Electoral College vs. popular vote question. Still waiting on that one.

And then there are the Democratic superdelegates the media have recently discovered. Now, that doesn’t seem like too much of a political insider thing, does it? Whatever happened to “of the people, by the people, for the people?”

With the possibility of a Clinton-Bush rotating monarchy still lingering in the political shadows, maybe I should be glad to be out of the loop.

FRANCIS SMITH, Special Publications Assistant Editor

If you’re still getting used to the idea that your primary vote carries significant weight this time around, you’re not alone. I felt like I couldn’t escape the campaign ads all weekend.

Though predictions have been swirling about the impending “sweep” by Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, some voters are still undecided. Here’s your guide to the metropolitan-area movements of the presidential candidates today, in case you’d like to take one in:

BARACK OBAMA

• Rally at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Doors open at 10:30 a.m.; Free, public

• Rally at the 1st Mariner Area, Baltimore. Doors open at 2:45 p.m.; Free, public; RSVP encouraged

HILLARY CLINTON

After speaking yesterday in Bowie, the District and Manassas, Va., here’s the Clintons’ schedule for today:

Hillary: Will tour the GM Allison Transmission Plant in White Marsh, Md. and will speak at UVA in Charlottesville, Va. She’ll also take part in a Politico/ABC7 forum this evening.

Bill: Will speak in Fredericksburg, Roanoke and Fairfax, Va.

JOHN MCCAIN

• Rally in Richmond, Va. at Richmond International Airport. Begins at 5:30 p.m.; 5701 Hunstman Road

Have you already visited a local rally or speech? What were your impressions?

Above: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton shakes hands with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley during a town hall meeting at Bowie State University in on Sunday, Feb. 10. (AP Photo/Baltimore Sun, Kenneth K. Lam)

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

As political junkies recover from the Super Tuesday bonanza, they’ll have even more motivation to head to the polls for Maryland’s primary on Feb. 12: free tacos!!

California Tortilla, which was founded in Bethesda and has its global headquarters in Rockville (makes me wonder where the “California” came from) will be offering a free taco to any customers who are sporting an “I voted” sticker. And there’s one right down on W. Pratt Street!

So when you’re thinking about that whole “lesser of two evils” voting booth dilemma, just think about the sacrifices our Founding Fathers made for this great country, where the words “chimichanga” and “Constitution” are tied together in a delicious duo of civic duty.

Note: Tacos pictured above may not resemble those doled out on Feb. 12.

Francis Smith, Special Publications Assistant Editor

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is expected to dine in The Free State on Thursday. He’ll be hosted by the Baltimore County Republican Party at their annual Lincoln/Reagan dinner in Halethorpe.

The chairman of the county Republican party, Chris Cavey, told the AP: “We are thrilled that Governor Romney’s campaign has agreed to make its only pre-primary stop our annual dinner.”

(Although, after the results of today’s primaries are in, who knows what the state of Romney’s 2008 campaign will be…).

Speaking of presidential candidates on this Super Tuesday, GMU law prof David Bernstein posted at The Volokh Conspiracy blog on Barack Obama’s tenure as editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He writes specifically about the choice of Robin West, a graduate of U-Md. Law and then-professor at U-Md., to write the Supreme Court term Foreword in 1990 (“in theory completely irrelevant to her credentials to write the Foreword, but if I know my elite law review editors, something that gave many of them significant pause”).

“West … was an inspired choice from outside the usual group of elite law school professors the HLR would consider. Call this the Obama effect, perhaps, though I’d be interested in hearing from readers who were editors that year about his effect on HLR culture.“

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor