Thanks for arranging this…..am highly anticipating the chat. My daughter is blessed to be enrolled in EC’s Con Law class this semester.

She says he’s as fine a man as he is an attorney and scholar.

UC-Irvine is really fortunate to have him as their new law dean.

It should be mentioned that Chemerinsky will be the founding dean of the new law school at the University of California, Irvine. I believe that happens in 2009.

And wasn’t there a big kerfuffle about that?

McCain’s economic views are a work in progress, but as he does on the war in Iraq, McCain identifies with President Bush’s market-oriented views on the economy. He still supports the personal retirement accounts that Bush proposed to change the Social Security system. And he supports Bush’s efforts to have lenders voluntarily rework distressed mortgages that are facing foreclosure, rather than have the government guarantee home loans that have been modified, as Democrats propose.

In the past, McCain opposed President Bush’s tax cuts, which expire in 2010, but he now vows to preserve them. In February, he made a no-new-taxes pledge, but has since softened it. He unsuccessfully pushed to overhaul immigration law last year, a move popular with U.S. businesses in need of workers, but now he emphasizes border security and downplays other aspects.

McCain’s campaign Web site boasts 37 economic advisers, representing a wide spectrum of viewpoints.

[snip]

McCain also takes counsel from a wide range of thinkers and former Republican power players. He’s very close to former Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, an economist by training who engineered budget revisions for fiscal discipline in the mid-1980s.

Gramm and McCain have been critical of how Republicans sharply boosted federal spending from 2001 through 2006, which voters punished by giving Democrats control of Congress in 2006. Gramm is frequently mentioned as a likely treasury secretary should McCain win the White House.

That whole “work in progress” thing is cute. If I didn’t know better, that refrain of “In the past . . . but now . . . He once . . . but now . . . He used to think . . . but now . . .” would make me think McCain is flip-flopping or being indecisive.

Glad that’s been cleared up.

But Phil Gramm for SecTreas? That ought to make Wall St nervous.

They did a powerful tribute re Martin Luther King this morning, using the audio of RFK’s announcing to the crowd of his assassination. Tomorrow, the 40th anniversary of that day, they’re doing extended interviews. I know the history of Imus, but I gotta say, he’s more than living up to his pledge of change these days.

Now quit poking your sister.

“Well, ___(some pundit)__, only nine out of ten economists believe we’re in recession now, so the jury’s still out.”