The Interstate Recgnition of Notarizations Act would require state and federal courts to:

Each court that operates under the jurisdiction of a State shall recognize any lawful notarization made by a notary public licensed or commissioned under the laws of a State other than the State where the court is located[.]

What does "recognize" mean in this legislation? In terms of admissibility, most trial lawyers are familiar with the concept of the exception to the hearsay rule for public records and the concept of judicial notice. Is this what the term is intended to mean? Are notarized documents now to be viewed as "public records?" Because they aren't. Notary publics are not public officials and the documents they notarize are not public records. The problems that recent events have demonstrated are that, in fact, notarized documents in foreclosure proceedings are very unreliable. Recent events actually point to a policy that should exclude notarized documents from eligibility for such a presumption. More . .

Here is the text of the law I discuss below passed under extraordinary circumstances by the Congress that will make foreclosures easier:

The Beltway Bloggers can add this to the list of achievements by this Congress, via Eschaton, fast track foreclosures:

A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama's signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week. The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.

[. . .] The legislation could protect bank and mortgage processors from liability for false or improperly prepared documents. The White House said it is reviewing the legislation.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is a disgraceful outrage and I would like to hear from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid how in the f*ck this happened. And I want to hear from President Barack Obama what exactly he needs to consider about this bill. It should be vetoed immediately.

The Banks own this Congress.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This affects cases I am involved in. Speaking for me only

I was worried that when the Dems got around to making this a campaign issue, they would portray Ken Buck as "soft on crime" or too cozy with defense lawyers, neither of which is remotely true. Happily, the ad primarily focuses on the ethical implications of Buck's actions. I wrote up the whole story here. [More..]

The oldsters continue to lose at Survivor. I hope they send Jimmy T. home, he's such a loser. Looks like it might be Danny instead.

Also on: America's Next Top Model and the Defenders.

In other news, the iPhone is coming to Verizon next year.

Big companies are getting waivers from the new health care law.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Twenty new grand jury subpoenas have been issued in the federal investigation into whether John Edwards violated campaign financing rules with respect to money the campaign provided Rielle Hunter.

The subpoenas were ordered at the behest of Main Justice:

According to our source, when that process wrapped-up, prosecutors in Raleigh sent the case to the Department of Justice in Washington for a review. The Justice Department then told prosecutors in Raleigh to interview more people and get more information about the people who donated money to help Edwards' former aide Andrew Young, his wife and Rielle Hunter live a life on the run.

It sounds like the investigation has moved from whether the payments to Rielle were legitimate to whether there was hush money paid afterwards. The relocation expenses were purportedly paid by now-deceased attorney Fred Baron, who was Edwards' campaign manager in 2004 and 2008. He told the Dallas Morning News: [More...]

Not that it needed saying but, the Secretary of State said:

"I don't believe what I read," Clinton said laughing during an appearance at the 12th Annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, adding: "I have absolutely no interest and no reason for doing anything other than just dismissing these stories and moving on."

Someone explain to me how this helps Woodward sell books exactly? I'm not following the theory. Sure Woodward is briefly mentioned in the story but then he's not and it's over. I don't get it. Any PR wizards out there to explain this one to me? I understood the Casey "I believed" nonsense back in the day (who else remembers that?) and other gossipy stuff from Woodward's book, but obviously this is not about Woodward's book. IS my writing this post also helping Woodward sell his book (FTR - I have no clue what Woodward's book says - something about Afghanistan I know, but other than that . . .)

Speaking for me only

Mainstream media suffered another loss yesterday with the announcement Howard Kurtz would be leaving the Washington Post and joining the Daily Beast.

A few weeks ago, Huffington Post announced the hiring of Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

Every week it seems the list of prominent MSM writers defecting to online media (now called digital media) grows while layoffs become more prevalent at newspapers and magazines like Newsweek.

Digital media is clearly winning. Here's an interview today with Daily Beast editor and founder Tina Brown. And yes, the Daily Beast is in "discussions" with Newsweek. Sounds like a merger of some sort may be in the works.

In another media shift, a number of former well-known newspaper reporters have joined the National Journal.

How will the newspapers cope? My guess is they will probably stop offering their content for free. But will there be anything left worth paying for to read?

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over the case of former Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, ruled today that Hussein Abebe, a key government witness, may not take the stand because he was identified as a result of statements Ghailani made during secret CIA interrogation using harsh interrogation techniques, alleged to be torture. The Government, to avoid litigating the legality of the CIA's action, previously assured the judge information obtained during the interrogation would not be used at trial. Jury selection has been postoned until next week to give the Government time to regroup or appeal.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

Ghailani is charged in federal court with the 1998 Africa embassy bombings. He was captured in 2004, transferred to a CIA secret prison overseas, where he allegedly was tortured. He was then transferred to Guantanamo, where he stayed for almost three years. In 2009, he was charged in federal court in New York and transferred.

NYTimes:

Don’t look to Jan Hatzius, the highly respected chief economist at Goldman Sachs, for a pep talk on the near-term state of the economy. As he writes in a client note today:

We see two main scenarios for the economy over the next 6-9 months — a fairly bad one in which the economy grows at a 1½%-2 percent rate through the middle of next year and the unemployment rate rises moderately to 10 percent, and a very bad one in which the economy returns to an outright recession. There is not much probability of a significantly better outcome. The reason is that “short-cycle” factors such as the inventory cycle and the impulse from fiscal policy are likely to continue deteriorating through early 2011, keeping G.D.P. growth very sluggish.

(Emphasis supplied.) Welcome to your new reality.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

You can like the 111th Congress or you can dislike it, but there’s just no way to deny that it did a lot more stuff than the four or five congresses before it.

I dunno, just off the top of my head, I remember that those Congresses blew a trillion dollar hole in the budget with tax cuts for the rich, authorized two wars, one the most insane one in recent history, passed the most vicious assault on civil liberties in a generation with the Patriot Act and the rewriting of FISA, enacted a budget busting prescription drug benefit, and passed the atrocious No Child Left Behind Act.

That seems like a lot of "stuff" to me. But of course, the REAL objection is not about the measure of the amount of "stuff" that was done - it is that people don't agree with the Beltway Bloggers about how AWESOME the "stuff" passed by this Congress was. Yep, it's "nuts" to disagree with the Beltway Bloggers. Also read Susie Madrak.

Speaking for me only

After going all wonky depressing on you this morning, I was looking for something fun. Nothing caught my eye. This post from Balloon Juice did however. Setting aside the upside down premise that it is Latino voters who should be concerned about voting Dem, as opposed to Dems being concerned about getting Latinos to vote for them, this part bothered me:

[N]o political party is going to take a minority with a one-election attention span seriously. [. . .] It’s hard work and it’s going to take more than an election or two. [. . .] I have no doubt that we’ll find a home in the Democratic party, but Latinos need to make a home there on their terms, so their influence will go beyond a one-election marriage of convenience.

And here I thought Latinos were a solid part of the Dem base. One election? In case anyone is wondering, Latinos voted for Clinton by 61-24 in 92, by 72-21 in 96, and for Gore by 62-38. John Kerry, terrible candidate, even won Latinos by 53-44 (oh BTW, W and Rove really did a lot of Latino outreach in case anyone noticed.) One election? Really? Maybe we need pols who at least pretend to care about Latinos. See Clinton, Bill.

Open Thread.