Two suits, one in Minnesota (good NFL case law there) and one in California:

The initial lawsuit was filed in Minneapolis. Minnesota’s Anthony Tolliver, Detroit’s Ben Gordon, free agent Caron Butler and Derrick Williams, who was chosen by the Timberwolves with the second overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, were named as plaintiffs.

A second suit was filed in California. Plaintiffs include New York’s Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups, Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant, free agent Leon Powe and Kawhi Leonard, a rookie who was acquired by San Antonio during the 2011 draft.

I liked what David Boies, attorney for the players, said:

"If you’re in a poker game, and you run a bluff, and the bluff works, you’re a hero. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. I think the owners overplayed their hand," Boies said. "They did a terrific job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession after concession, but greed is not only a terrible thing — it’s a dangerous thing."

This situation interests me, so expect a lot of coverage.

Over the past year, Republicans have learned something important about negotiating budget deals with Democrats: If you don’t like their offer, just wait a couple of months.

See also The Madman Theory of Political Bargaining.

Open Thread.

There were at least 14 DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington state today. More than a dozen people were arrested.

Tonight, DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew Barnes issued this statement:

"The DEA will exercise its investigative authority to pursue criminal actions for any violation of federal law, when warranted. This includes investigating organizations or individuals that grow, manufacture or distribute any illegal drug to include marijuana, and those who rent or maintain a property to facilitate drug trafficking."

There's plenty of criticism over the strategy of allowing Jerry Sandusky to be interviewed by Bob Costas last night. Legal observers almost universally have declared it a flop. Apparently, the interview was scheduled just with Sandusky's attorney, but his attorney decided 15 minutes before it began to make his client available.

Today, Sandusky's lawyer was on the Today show. He put forth this reasoning: [More..]

A second e-mail sent by coach Mike McQueary has surfaced in the Allentown Morning Call. In this Nov. 8 e-mail, McQueary says he did stop the alleged attack on a young boy by Jerry Sandusky, and that he discussed the matter with police.

"I did stop it, not physically, but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room."

....[I] did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police.

Neither the Penn State police nor the Pennsylvania State Police have responded to requests for information from the paper about the e-mail.

I wonder how many careers will be ruined before this case is over.

Here's the ruling of Judge Michael Stallman finding the Occupy Wall Street protesters have no First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park and denying their request for a restraining order against law enforcement.

The case is Matter of Waller v City of New York, Index No. 11295712011. While the court said it assumes that the First Amendment applies to the owners of Zuccotti Park, the owner has the right to adopt reasonable rules to maintain a safe and clean publicly available space. It said the movant (protesters) had not demonstrated "the rules adopted by the owners of the property, concededly after the demonstrations began, are not reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions permitted under the First Amendment." [More...]

Bloomberg flattens OWS Zucotti Park site. Reports available all over.

Discussions of Penn State all over.

Other stuff. Reports all over.

Open Thread.

So says Sheldon Whitehouse:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former state attorney general who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said that the individual mandate might very well fall, but that the law’s defenders have gotten “overexcited” about it. The rest of the law will most likely survive, he said, preserving popular provisions that should help Democrats in the 2012 elections.

“So the mandate falls? Big deal,” Whitehouse said. “I think a family able to keep their sick kids on insurance even though they have pre-existing conditions, kids out of college able to stay on their parents’ policies while they look for that first job with healthcare — things like that are what will stick. Irrespective of what the Supreme Court says, that’s the things people really care about and are counting on.”

I think Whitehouse knows better than that. If the conservatives on the Supreme Court are willing to strike down the mandate, they'll take the rest of ACA with it. Other than Medicaid expansion, I'm not as enamored of ACA as others, to say the least. But Whitehouse seems to be readying a political argument against the conservatives on the Supreme Court and off of it.

My prediction remains a 2012 punt by the SCOTUS conservatives, dismissing the case on standing issues (the Anti-Injunction Act argument will be the vehicle I bet.)

Speaking for me only

A lot of scenarios have been conjured up for how Mitt Romney loses the GOP nomination. Too many of them have been based on swings in national polls of GOP voters. If we have learned nothing, I hope we have learned that national polls are virtually meaningless in presidential primaries and results in Iowa and New Hampshire, because they are first in the nation, have outsized importance (corn ethanol in your gasoline did not happen by accident.)

With these central political horserace handicapping tenets in mind, whenever I see a writeup about swings in the GOP presidential race, my first question is always "what does it mean in Iowa?" My second question is "What does it mean in New Hampshire?" So now the news is Newt Gingrich is "surging" and my questions remain the same. Bloomberg has an Ann Selzer poll answering the question for Iowa:

Secure Communities is not just about Homeland Security, ICE and immgrants. It's also about the FBI and you.

The latest information revealed in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Benjamin Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic: The FBI “views massive biometric information collection as a goal in itself” as a part of the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system."

The NGI system aims to collect fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, identifying marks, scars, tattoos, facial characteristics and voice recognition. These are not necessarily collected from arrested suspects but also from mobile biometric scanning devices and fingerprints left anywhere and everywhere.

[More...]

Jerry Sandusky was interviewed on the telephone by Bob Costas of NBC News. He says he's not a pedophile and he's innocent of criminal conduct. Asked if there is anything he did wrong, he said:

"I shouldn't have showered with those kids."

Did Costas catch him off-guard or was it a planned interview? The interview will air tonight on NBC's Rock Center, at 10 pm ET. This is the same show the Chelsea Clinton has been hired on. It's a new show hosted by Brian Williams that began airing around two weeks ago.

Four great job opportunities at The Innocence Project in New York: Two for lawyers, one for an online communications director and one for a field organizer.

Did anyone catch Jeopardy last week when this question was asked?