User talk:DLJessup

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Archived discussions

Contents

[edit] Archives of Electoral College

A year or so ago, you made archives of whatever Talk:United States Electoral College was then called. The page has since been moved, but the links to the archives weren't updated. I tried to find them but couldn't. Do you remember where you put them? If so, maybe you could fix the links. —wwoods 19:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please check your WP:NA entry

Greetings, editor! Your name appears on Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts. If you have not done so lately, please take a look at that page and check your listing to be sure that following the particulars are correct:

  1. If you are an admin, please remove your name from the list.
  2. If you are currently interested in being considered for adminship, please be sure your name is in bold; if you are opposed to being considered for adminship, please cross out your name (but do not delete it, as it will automatically be re-added in the next page update).
  3. Please check to see if you are in the right category for classification by number of edits.

Thank you, and have a wiki wiki day! BD2412 T 04:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. Presidential term of office

DLJ, I notice that you have amended the final day of the term of office of a number of U.S. Presidents and added the note:

<-- Prior to the passage of the 20th Amendment, presidential terms ended at 11:59:59 on March 3. --

I question the veracity of this assertion. The period of office of any one President ends at the moment that his successor takes the Oath of Office, an event which even before the hour was fixed by the 20th Amendment has always taken place in the middle of the day rather than on the stroke of midnight. (Or are you perhaps saying that someone other than the outgoing office holder is President between midnight and noon?)

Taken from The U.S. Constitution Online, which includes further discussion regarding the timing of the changeover:

Presidential Terms

The Constitution [Article II, Section 1] is clear enough on this one point: the President was not able to perform his duties until the Oath of Office was administered. Should there ever be a question, the exact time of the term's beginning would have to be the time the oath was given, at least until there was a law stating something different.

And, given that the practice, even before the 20th Amendment, was to administer the Oath at or around noon (certainly, always well after midnight), the exact time of a term's ending would have to be on the same day as the oath-taking which inaugurated the next. -- Picapica 11:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

————

Wow, that's just … wrong. All that the Constitution says is that (a) the President's term is four years and (b) that the President can't exercise his authority until he takes the oath. If the time of oathtaking was controlling, does that mean that Zachary Taylor's term ended on March 5? (Contrariwise, did Taylor somehow extend Polk's term to four years and one day by delaying his oath of office?) Why did Washington's take his second oath on March 4, when he took his first oath on April 30? The presidential term starts prior to the oathtaking, but that's all that the oathtaking tells us.

(As an aside, your source states, “[The President's term] is set to four years and has never changed.” This is actually false. President Roosevelt's first term was somewhat less than four years, thanks to the 20th Amendment. The reason why an amendment was required to change the start of the President's term was because such a change violated the constitutional stricture that terms be four years and only an amendment could, even temporarily, have changed that condition.)

I'll point you to Talk:Grover Cleveland#Presidential term for a previous post I made on this topic (although I didn't see the response until just now; I've never had Cleveland watchlisted).

— DLJessup (talk) 15:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

————

OK, if I concede that it is not, legally, the act of oath-taking that marks the end of a predecessor's incumbency (and there are sources which agree with you on this: for exmple this one on the Taylor / Polk changeover that you mention above), that does not settle the question of whether or not the moment of transfer of power should be regarded as noon on the first day of a presidential term. If, as you maintain, a President's term of office expired prior to the enactment of the 20th Amendment at "11:59:59" [I take it that by this you mean 23:59:59, and not one second before noon] on March 3, then the question remains: who exercised the presidential powers between 0:00 and 12:00 on March 4? The outgoing President could not, if his term had expired, and the incoming President could not, if he had not yet taken the Oath. That a person should be President from noon on March 4 until noon on March 4 four years later does not infringe the consttutional stipulation of a four-year term. i would suggest that the 20th Amendment mentioned noon only as a legal tidying up of what had become long established by custom and practice: that presidential terms expired at noon. -- Picapica 19:13, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

————

“Who exercised the presidential powers between 0:00 and 12:00 on March 4?” Nobody. The President-elect became President at 00:00, but could not exercise his powers until he took the oath of office, which happened to be at 12:00. In theory he could have taken the oath of office at any point after midnight. (In fact, he could have taken the oath of office prior to midnight: President Rutherford Hayes took the oath of office privately on March 3, 1877 because March 4 was a Sunday, before retaking the oath publicly on March 5.)

One of the reasons that the framers of the 20th Amendment were careful to give the time of day of the start of presidential and congressional terms was precisely because they realized that, in the absence of any definition of time of day by the framers, the legal default for the switchover was midnight, just as, if your lease expires on March 4, in the absence of language to the contrary, you retain possession of the apartment until 23:59:59.999… on March 3.

Look, there's a reason the Midnight Judges weren't called the “Noon Judges”; the rumor was that Adams was signing judicial commissions until midnight, when his term expired.

— DLJessup (talk) 03:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] hndis sort by last name

Greetings. I was fixing up disambig pages when I saw one or two that had hndis templates with Name=Foomacher, Dave and so I "fixed" them, since 99.9% were sorted by article name (first name first). Then I saw you had done a lot more, so I stopped fixing them. Are you going change them all to sort by surname? There has been a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Cleanup existing lists that makes it look like hndis will be going away, and you should be aware of that before spending a lot of time on the sort. If there is something I should do to help, let me know. Chris the speller 01:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I will postpone acting on further sorting until that issue is resolved.
— DLJessup (talk) 03:26, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Please take a look at George Brown, in particular the template and category at the bottom. This is what has been proposed at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Changing disambig tag, and you might want to raise any concerns there. They don't want any templates but disambig on dab pages. Thanks for being patient. Chris the speller 00:22, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Congrats on your improvement to hndis: hope it's OK piling in on this old thread, but I just wanted to thank you for modifying the {{hndis}} template to accept positional parameters. When I started using that template a few months back, I added it to a lot of pages without checking whether it required named parametrrs, and I'm afraid that I didn't get to correct all of them. I'm sure I am not the only editor to have made this mistake, so it's great to know that there is no need to haul out AWB to hunt for them! --BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) 14:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
    Thank you. — DLJessup (talk) 22:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faithless electors in 1884?

I'd posted this on the Faithless electors talk page, but in case you didn't see it: I came across a claim that Belva Ann Lockwood "petitioned Congress to count the vote of Indiana for Belva Lockwood on the grounds that the electoral college of that state had switched its vote from Cleveland to her, 'as it had an undisputed legal right to do.'" http://www.stanford.edu/group/WLHP/papers/lockwood.htm I don't know how much credibility the claim has. Schizombie 02:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

As I wrote on Talk:Faithless elector, I'm loath to make any changes based on this reference alone. There's not enough context so that we can write about what happened, even if the claim is true—all we know is that Lockwood disputed the electoral vote in Indiana, but we don't know what the facts were.
— DLJessup (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. There's a BAL Collection near me which I can look into, although I don't know if it might contain information beyond her claim - like what those electors did, or what congress did with her petition if she really made one. An anonymous user added the claim to Lockwood's page - I added a "citation needed" and posted on the IP's talk page. The Oxford Companion to American Law by James W. Ely cites Babcock (author of the article at the link above) in their entry on Lockwood, but doesn't mention the electoral college. The claim of her winning those electoral votes also is printed in A Place at the Table: Struggles for Equality in America (2002) on page 77, which I found from an Amazon Search Inside This Book search. No citation provided on that page for the info. Schizombie 03:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I haven't been able to get to the library yet, although the anonymous user I mentioned above added the source - one of Uncle John's Bathroom Readers! I posted again on the talk page to see what source the BR was citing, if any. I cleaned up the citation the editor added, but I wonder if I shouldn't sub it out for or add one of the ones I found above? Also, is it rare for a candidate who received no electoral votes to dispute their own count? Schizombie 02:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I found out some more about this, but there's still more to do. Шизомби 23:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia question

DLJ - This will probably be a dumb question. Has Wikipedia thought of only allowing registered users to edit articles? That would make it easier to control vandalism. Just wondering.

I believe that the question has been raised (and shot down) multiple times. For example, see Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement.
— DLJessup (talk) 00:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

-- Okay, thank you. Chronicler3 02:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jargon of The Rush Limbaugh Show

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jargon of The Rush Limbaugh Show What's really motivating the AfD? patsw 03:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

You'd need to do a mind meld on Arundhati bakshi to get an answer to that question. In all honesty, the article is borderline according to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary; this is why I am listed as “Abstain” instead of “Keep”.
— DLJessup (talk) 04:54, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] en-dash in article names

I noticed you have moved a couple of names i.e. (moved John Dickinson (1732-1808) to John Dickinson (1732–1808): en-dash). Without suggesting any objection, I am curious why this is needed, and exactly how the names now read. There seem to be a number of redirects (maybe some double redirects), which I am happy to clean up if needed, and if I understand what the target really is. Thanks. stilltim 02:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

In the example you have given, I moved “John Dickinson (1732<hyphen>1808)” to “John Dickinson (1732<en-dash>1808)”. Ranges are supposed to be given by en-dashes, not hyphens; however, until recently, the underlying MediaWiki software couldn't handle non-ASCII characters like en-dashes in article titles, so hyphens were used as a substitute. Now that MediaWiki can handle full Unicode characters such as the en-dash, there's no reason not to use the proper punctuation.
I believe that I cleaned up all of the double redirects in the main article for any articles which I have so moved; however, it has since come to my attention that there may be double redirects to the talk page for such an article.
— DLJessup (talk) 14:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
P.S. The en-dash is available on the edit page in the “Insert” box immediately below the “Save page”, “Show preview”, and “Show changes” buttons. It is between the schwa (ə) and the em-dash (—).
— DLJessup (talk) 14:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I just keep learning this stuff. stilltim 19:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi! Rather than start a new section, I thought I'd just pile on!

I stumbled across your decision to convert long form "–" n-dashes in 1632 series, Here, so was wondering why? I gather that answer is some of the archania in the WP:MOS, which having never heard of 'm or n' dashes B4 Wiki, I guess I didn't absorb. On my browser, they look much the same (IE6); I'm getting ready to switch over to Firefox, which I believe I saw above (sect. edit) is yours. But the real issue at hand is the effort to make the switch. Was that just because you were working that article otherwise, or is this a systematic effort that I would have thought someone would create a 'bot' to perform. (I'm also impressed and somewhat relieved that someone knows what some of those funny fonty-things (technical term, my own! <G>) below are actually called! I've used them where necessary (China articles), but taking my hands off the keyboard to grab a mouse, etc. seems a bit slowing. And I'm not what I'd call a fast typist!

Thanks FrankB 07:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Admin

I would be honored to nominate you for admin at any time, it is clearly overdue IMO. Just say the word :-). NoSeptember talk 16:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Thank you. You completely floored me.
I may take you up on your offer, but I'll need to think about it.
Once again, thank you.
— DLJessup (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I hope you are still thinking :). While many are anxious to join the admin ranks, you have always struck me as focused on the encyclopedic content side here, not overly concerned about adminship. Yet that is just what we need that in our admins, the good planners and those with a content focus. We already have so many of the gung-ho vandal fighters, not that we don't also need those. This is first and foremost about improving Wikipedia. In addition to me nominating you, you can ask someone else or do a self-nom, whatever you think is best. Don't be reluctant to ask someone. Consider looking into the RfA process and adminship at your leisure, I have put together a list of user subpages users have written on the topic that may be of interest to you (here). Becoming an admin does not mean you have to abandon your current areas of focus in the project. It can be very useful to be able to view deleted content, and do the deletions and protections yourself. It is not just about vandal fighting - I actually do very little of that since there are others who clearly have more interest in doing it. There aren't many users with more accumulated work than you who are not admins already (and those who do tend to be the ones who get involved in major disputes frequently), you are clearly well deserving of it. Well, I just wanted to keep you on the track of thinking about it. The timing is all up to you. Cheers, NoSeptember talk 14:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

NoSeptember:
This'll be my third attempt at a reply to your post. I started replies twice yesterday, and each time was pulled away from my computer by Real LifeTM events. (Each time, when I came back, I found it easier to start fresh than to use my saved draft.)
When you made the offer back in March, I was a little hesitant. Partially this was because I was worried about my Real LifeTM/Wikipedia balance, and I was trying to cut back, not add more responsibility. Moreover, when I looked at some of the RfA nominations and asked myself how I would answer some of the questions that were posed to other candidates, I didn't have good answers to some of the questions posed. Nonetheless, I didn't want to close the door my giving an unequivocal “No”. And I'm glad I didn't.
When I reviewed some RfA nominations yesterday, I found that many of the questions that were causing me problems earlier I now have answers for. And I think I've got a better handle on keeping myself balanced. So I'd like to go for an adminship. If you're still willing to sponsor me, I'd appreciate it.
The question now is timing. Right now there's a lot going on in my personal life (moving, major project at work, etc.), and I don't have a lot of energy for substantive Wikipedia work. (You'll note that a lot of my recent changes are trivial sorting of a disambiguation category.) I think that all this will blow over by mid-May, say, May 15. If you are willing, I'd like to have my name put in for adminship then.
Thank you very much, DLJessup (talk) 14:26, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Your plan sounds good. I don't regard that date as set in stone though, things could change. I asked for a month's delay at first too, but then was ready to start just 11 days later. Being up for adminship is not that much work, you just have to be around to answer the few additional questions you will get, otherwise it's mostly just waiting for the week to end. Feel free to work on the standard RfA questions ahead of time (and the common add-on questions, which can be found in some of the current RfAs), it can leave a good first impression to have solid answers (I worked on mine for several days ahead of time and got a lot of positive feedback on them, and more importantly disuaded any potential opposition ;-) ). So, whenever you are ready let me know, I'll create this page and add my nomination statement and then you will add the rest. NoSeptember talk 16:26, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that May turned into June ;-)... see my talk page. NoSeptember 15:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FEC/House of Representatives vote count discrepancies

The vote totals on these two sites are different, close—but still different. E.g. Nader's votes are higher on the FEC site, Clinton's and Dole's are higher on the House site. Why would this be, and what then is the most authoritative source?

FEC
Clinton: 47,401,185
Dole: 39,197,469
Nader: 684,871
House of Representatives
Clinton: 47,401,898
Dole: 39,198,482
Nader: 526,794
Also, the House totals for Reagan, Mondale, and Berglund for 1984 are all lower than Leip's. Thanks, Schizombie 08:57, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe (and I have nothing to back this up at the moment, so take it with a grain of salt) that the House Clerk's figures are simply a recapitulation of the results returned by the state Secretaries of State at the mid-December due date, while the FEC's figures are more recent, taking into account fixes that were made after the due date for vote certification. (The FEC page you linked to gives the date of its figures as January 16, 1997.) Leip's Atlas is similarly able to take advantage of late error catches.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I just double-checked myself and lo and behold, the Clerk of the House has this note on the title:

(Corrected to July 23, 1997)

So I'm going to have to reverse my position and state that, as the House Clerk figures are more recent, they should control. My other comment, that Leip was able to take advantage of late error catches for the 1984 election, still holds, because he did his work in the mid-1990s while the House Clerk's figures are dated at May 1985.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Uff, what a mess. Why do you suppose Nader's totals are so much lower according to the House? Do you think maybe votes he got on other lines than Green wound up in a different column? It's weird how they don't have the candidates' names in those docs. Schizombie 14:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The lack of candidate names is because voters are voting for the party's slate of electors, not for the actual candidate. This can be a good thing. For example, in 1912, the Republican vice presidential candidate died a week before the election; the party apparatus was able to smoothly substitute a replacement.

As for why Nader's totals are so much lower: I don't know. However, if you consider the Volusia error in 2000 or the Lowndes County error in 2004, it could easily be an error in copying or in addition during the tabulation; it seems that such glitches are not uncommon.

— DLJessup (talk) 18:08, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it makes it difficult to be encyclopedic. One can put certain vote counts on pages, and cite them truthfully, but they're not the whole truth. I feel like the discrepancies should be noted in some way, if only in a footnote...? Even though I already had very little confidence in US elections, I still find it dismaying to learn of things like this. And yet I continue to vote anyway. Schizombie 18:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John WI Brown

It could be speedy deleted, but it does no harm being in AfD either, and since another editor there has opposed speedying, I'll leave it. A few more speedy votes and it may end up deleted soon anyway. In any case, it's not a big deal whether its deletion gets slowed down a bit. NoSeptember talk 19:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Upon further review, it seems this should be an AfD since being a host on a nationally syndicated show could be notable. Which means you made a good catch :-). NoSeptember talk 19:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Please delete. I apologize for the error. My computer is public and it looks as if it was posted by mistake.

[edit] re: 1632 (novel), You may be shocked

Hi again. I see you should probably take a look into my mutating mutation of 1632 (novel) and Talk. Esp. the latter, as things will be exported, folded spindled and mutilated. Most of the material is what I call a first draft. I'll be looking forward to your input! FrankB 07:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Succession Box WikiProject

DLJessup – I have created a new WikiProject for succession boxes located at Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization. Now we can discuss what needs to be fixed in a forum and make it into a larger project among Wikipedians. Not that I want too much infighting, but we all have had some disagreements and never know where to discuss them, so now we have a place. Come and join. Don't forget to sign the participant list if you want in.
–Whaleyland 22:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] crummy flag images

I see you recently replaced all my beautiful high-resolution png US historical flags with wrong, ugly svg versions. See this post of mine at the talk page. I won't revert your numerous recent edits, as there are probably valid changes there, and I don't have the time to sort out exactly what would need reverting.

Anyway, I made a nice layered svg file with all the historical flags: Image:US Flag All Historical.svg, but I don't have time to export the image several times with different layers showing, upload all the images to commons, and then systematically replace all the uses of these flags throughout wikipedia. If you like though, that would be good, as the current svg flags are really quite crappy. I'd be sad if they continued to mar the once-beautiful flag page into perpetuity. ;)

Also, in the future, if you're going to make big changes like this, users who created the original content would likely appreciate a heads up. Thanks!

--jacobolus (t) 09:08, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to repost this on your talk page momentarily, to make sure that you see it. First, a diff of the flag page history. Note that many PNGs are being changed to SVGs. Note that the person responsible for this change is MiLo28. Please be so kind as to direct your ire toward somebody who actually did what you accused them of doing. Thank you.
— DLJessup (talk) 12:26, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Oy! Terribly sorry! I had apparently been looking at the 51st-100th edits, the first many of which were yours, and clicked the "diff with curr" button, and saw that the change had been made since then. Please accept my apologies. Nasty mixup. --jacobolus (t) 17:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Apology accepted.
— DLJessup (talk) 11:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander Ramsay

Thanks for bringing the copy & paste move of Alexander Ramsay to attention at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. I have now sorted it out! └UkPaolo/talk┐ 11:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing it. — DLJessup (talk) 16:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Michael Jeffrey

I've wikified this and added some categories. Any idea of his dates, and is he still alive? Runcorn 12:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I did a little bit of research, and I found his date of birth, as well as the dates of his career in professional football. I have no idea whether he is still alive: as far as I can tell, he played his last professional game in 2002, although it seems likely that he simply retired.
— DLJessup (talk) 06:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of "Democratic-Republican Party" to describe Jefferson's Party

Hello. I noticed in the Discussion Page at United States presidential election, 1812, you wrote, "My gut feel is that “Republican” is a better term than “Democratic Republican” (and either is better than “Democratic-Republican”)."

As one who occasionally edits history textbooks, I'm surprised by the use of "Republican Party" to describe Jefferson's party, as the vast majority of textbooks use "Democratic-Republican Party." I did a study of 25 American history books to see which term is used most often. You can find the results of my study at the Democratic-Republican Party (United States) Talk page. I hope you will have a look at this. My study confirmed what I thought -- that the vast majority of historians use "Democratic-Republican Party." I think we should stick to this term in the Wikipedia. Griot 03:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Democratic-Republican_Party_%28United_States%29#Party.27s_name_as_it_is_used_in_American_history_books

I have responded at Talk:Democratic-Republican Party (United States)#Party's name as it is used in American history books.
— DLJessup (talk) 13:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfA

Ok, if you are ready, just add your acceptance sentence/signature to the subpage, correct the time on the Discuss here line to the timestamp you will add it to WP:RFA and then add it to the top of the list of nominations. Oh, you should enable your email (you can create a free Yahoo acct. if you need to), some insist on admin accessibility by email. Good luck. NoSeptember 15:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

The next step, that only you can do, is to accept the nomination (sign right above where it says Support). I can do the rest if you'd like me to. NoSeptember 20:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I sent you a telepathic message that I was planning to get the clock rolling late in the day when I was more free to respond to the initial questions, but clearly you didn't receive it.  :-P I've accepted and posted the RfA. Thank you for all of your help so far. — DLJessup (talk) 21:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
My fault for being impatient ;-). Yes you will get a lot of attention in the first few hours, especially since this will be prime time in much of the English speaking world. I'll wait a bit to give others a chance to "beat the nominator" in support. NoSeptember 21:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long talk page

Greetings! Your talk page is getting a bit long in the tooth - please consider archiving your talk page (or ask me and I'll archive it for you). Cheers! BD2412 T 23:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. I've gone ahead and archived the beginning of this talk page as three separate pages, each under 32KB. (I use 32KB as a convenient rule of thumb, even though the technical limitations that were originally behind that number have disappeared.) Good? — DLJessup (talk) 04:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Perfect. Cheers! BD2412 T 03:50, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Out of curiousity

Did you get your name from the book It Can't Happen Here? SushiGeek 00:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I got my name from my parents. (Yes, I was so gauche as to use my real name. :-) ) — DLJessup (talk) 04:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, OK. :P SushiGeek 21:05, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfA

I was most dissapointed to have to not promote your nomination. Good news was no one brought up any points to show you were anything less than a great contributor, so keep that up. Bad news was people opposed without any evidence you would abuse the admin tools, which I feel is the most important criteria. But I've been entrusted with determining consensus, not the power to disregard people's positions I disagree with, so I could not promote. Looks like you'd be a shoe in with more participation in admin related areas if you'd like to try in the future. Let me know if there's anything I can do. - Taxman Talk 00:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Definitely a shoe-in in the future! I'd like to nominate or co-nominate you in a few months; let me know if that sounds good. Although I do think you would "learn on the job", it would probably be a good idea to participate some more in XfDs and/or a project, just to show that you know what you're doing. Best of luck, Λυδαcιτγ 00:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Not as much work as it seems - I was looking through your Wikipedia-space edits, since the small number thereof was a concern for some people, and the Village Pump comments were some of your most recent edits in this space (not including your RfA). After reading through the comments I was satisfied that you would make a good admin.
Anyway, you're very welcome. As I said, I'd love to renominate you; just send me a note. Λυδαcιτγ 16:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, you know I'm disappointed, but you handled yourself well and have undoubtedly picked up quite a few admirers of your talents. I certainly hope you don't regret the attempt, so many solid users easily perceived what a value you are to the project and that is always nice to know. Keep up the good work, I wish I had your work habits. (helpful link ;) NoSeptember 00:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, all three of you. I will be replying to each of you individually shortly. — DLJessup (talk) 05:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Looks like criticisms are easy to fix. Stephen B Streater 08:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I certainly hope so. (And, per your edit summary, I hope you can be involved in any future RfA I might have as well.)
Rather ironic that I should take an exorbitant period to respond to your message thanking me for the celerity with which I posted my vote to your RfA.  :) In any event, I certainly echo the comments of most above, believing there to be no reason to think that you'd (a) willfully misuse the admin tools, to the detriment of the project, or (b) avolitionally or ignorantly misuse the admin tools, either because you were insufficiently familiar with a given area in which you acted or because you acted on cursorily-made conclusions, and thus that, irrespective of all the good you'd surely do as an admin, you should be supported. I'm altogether sorry that things turned out as they did, but surely they will go better in the future. My apologies, once more, for having failed to reply sooner. Joe 22:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Right now, I am the last person who can complain about slow responses: I've still got a number of thank you notes to write, and it took me three days to respond to Mr. Streater (due mostly to another involuntary wikibreak—isn't summer supposed to be a period of more spare time, not less?)
Anyway, thanks for your note, and, once again, no apology necessary. — DLJessup (talk) 23:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
DL: I came across your work on List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States and came here to thank you for having anticipated a year ago some work that otherwise I would be doing myself. Right now I'm in the process of creating articles for various former federal judges and congressmen who have been involved in some issues I'm working on. You and I have some overlapping interests in congressional history and procedure as well, and I am in the process of getting more wiki-involved, so I suspect we will run across each other again from time to time. I'm sorry, though, that I became active about a month after your RfA. Please let me know if and when you are thinking of trying again. Best regards, Newyorkbrad 21:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US Presidential Election

Thanks for your notes, DL. I apologise for the error; people using AWB won't see edit summaries. I think this tagging solution works well, and have used it before. Thanks for letting me know of the mistake; I try to be careful, but these tags make it really obvious. Let me know if this ever happens again... it shouldn't. Happy editing! :) --Firsfron of Ronchester 18:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expiration of Presidential and Congressional Terms

I have some additional information on the March 3rd vs. March 4th discussion above, but hesitate to wade in belatedly if the issue has been resolved. If further evidence that the President and Congress remained in office through noon on March 4 would be helpful, let me know and I can supply some. Regards, Newyorkbrad 18:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought it had been resolved in favor of the President and Congress remaining in office until midnight between March 3 and March 4. If you have evidence that contradicts this, I would be most interested in seeing it.
— DLJessup (talk) 13:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to disagree with you on this issue, but the evidence is pretty clear that until the Twentieth Amendment was passed, presidential and congressional terms expired at noon on March 4th. Nor was this just a theoretical issue; the outgoing Congress and President routinely exercised their powers on the morning of March 4th in odd-numbered years.

The lame-duck congressional session that began in December of each even-numbered year frequently went down to the wire and saw Congress meeting on the morning of March 4. I have before me the Congressional Record that includes March 4, 1917 (I am doing an article on some legislation that passed in the 64th Congress, 2d session and found an ex-library set of the Record for that session cheap on Amazon). The Senate was in session on the morning of March 4, 1917 -- even though it was a Sunday -- continuing in session from the previous day (there was a filibuster in progress concerning arming of U.S. merchant ships traveling to Europe). The Senate continued in session right until 12:00 noon, when the proceedings read:

"The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will please suspend. The hour of 12 o'clock noon having arrived, under the Constitution of the United States I now declare the Senate of the United States adjourned sine die." (54 Cong. Rec. 5020)

The House was also in session on March 4, 1917, until 12 noon, when the proceedings read:

"The SPEAKER. The hour of 12 o'clock having arrived, under the Constitution I declare the House in the Sixty-fourth Congress adjourned sine die. God bless you all. [Applause.]" (54 Cong. Rec. 5033)

Meanwhile, the President was signing bills into law, also on the morning of March 4 (see 54 Cong. Rec. 5032). This is not unique to 1917; a Google search for "Act of March 4" (use the quotes) will turn up numerous statutes that became law on March 4 of a given odd-numbered year (e.g., Act of March 4, 1923), and certainly were signed on the last day of the outgoing congress rather than the first day of the incoming one.

In fact, there is a room in the Capitol building off the Senate chamber called the President's Room, which was formerly used for presidential bill signings, particularly in the last days of the session through the morning of March 4. See for example here. This custom continued right through the 1930's as is reflected in this interesting article from Time from 1933.

I hope this is of interest. If more information is required I will take a look the next time I'm in a major library. I haven't thought through yet at whether any of this has any impact on article content. Best regards, Newyorkbrad 23:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Thank you. I'm not happy to be proven wrong on this issue, but I'm glad to have such a definitive answer to the question.
I just did a quick survey of the Library of Congress' online version of the Senate Journal. As best I can determine, the first time that the Senate met on the morning of March 4 (of an odd-numbered year) is in 1851. On that occasion, one of the Senators raised the question of whether he could take the oath of office at 1 a.m. on March 4, and the Senate voted that the term did not end until noon on March 4.[1]
I'll take a gander and see if there's anything that needs fixing based on this revelation.
— DLJessup (talk) 00:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Let me clarify one statement in my previous posting. Its possible that the Senate had a session that extended past midnight in a previous Congress, but 1851 was the first case that I could find in which the Senate recessed and then came back on the morning of March 4.
— DLJessup (talk) 00:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
You're welcome. It would be interesting to see the Congressional Globe debate corresponding to the Journal entry your eagle eye found. I'd be glad to collaborate with you (and with any prior users who might be interested in the additional info we've both come up with) on any article touching up that might be required -- just let me know. Now if only I could figure out a way to use this obscure type of knowledge in my day job. :) Regards, Newyorkbrad 01:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Electoral vote changes between presidential elections

I started this article on a whim, but it seems to be missing something. I invite any suggestions you may have. NoSeptember 11:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I looked at it, and I don't have any suggestions yet. Remind me about this in a couple of days; maybe something will have floated to the front of my brain by that point.
— DLJessup (talk) 14:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh, here's a thought: for election pairs in which apportionment changes, you could display “Results of earlier_election under later_election apportionment” and vice versa. That could be a separate section. Let me know if that seems lame.
— DLJessup (talk) 14:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I like that idea, and it also seemed to suggest that the older election should be on the left to show the progression in a more understandable way. I changed 2004 to reflect this. NoSeptember 15:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, that wasn't what I meant, but your idea was better than what I meant, so I'm happy. Here's a question, though: when you work this back to the transition from 1960 to 1964, how are you going to handle the addition of the District of Columbia? It's a little like reapportionment, except that there's no “before” picture for you to project what its result would be. Also, your table treats states as unified entities: how are you going to handle faithless electors and split states?
— DLJessup (talk) 13:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
From a numbers standpoint, if the winning party picked it up, it would be a gain (as in 1964). Should we add a new column for Gains from newly created states? Or we should footnote it? (there will be a lot of new states in the 19th century, not all of them won by the winning party). I suppose we also need to add the EV grand total (because it changes so often in the 19th century) and the loser's total as well, if there is a good way to do that without complicating it too much. NoSeptember 16:32, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:List of United States presidential elections by Electoral College closeness

I have a question for you there, since you're most recently active there and did a substantial rewrite of the informal explanation. I was going to ask you on your talk page, but figured this would fall under "the relevant article talk page, so that everyone can share in the discussion", if anyone else is looking now or in the future. TransUtopian 12:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I've responded there.
— DLJessup (talk) 14:39, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Courts of Appeals

Names of proper (specific) persons, places or things get capitalized. Long-time English rule. These articles and categories are not not about 'courts of appeals' in general (not specific) which would be lowercase, but about the United States Courts of Appeals (specific/proper name). Therefore, they should all be capitalized, notwithstanding your recent and incorrect changes to various articles involved and your attempt to change these category names. Thanks Hmains 17:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I have already responded to this at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 13, but there are at least two misconceptions here, so I need to rebut them here as well. First, I understand the long-time English rule; however, I can refer to a United States court of appeals, so United States court of appeals is not specific and hence a common noun. However, there is only one United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; thus, it is a proper noun and is therefore capitalized. Second, this is not a new change. The name of the article United States court of appeals was set over a year ago. That the category was miscapitalized is simple oversight which I am now trying to correct. — DLJessup (talk) 19:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't have a strong view on the rename, although I will comment soon on the proposal, but please let me know when the debate is resolved. I have finished creating an article or at least a stub for each judge of the First Circuit and within the week hope to have done so for the Second Circuit as well, and was then going to make sure all the articles were properly tagged, but I will wait to do so until it's clear what to tag them with. Regards, Newyorkbrad 20:49, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
Roger wilco. — DLJessup (talk) 01:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd welcome your thoughts on my comment at the category rename discussion. Newyorkbrad 01:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies

Sorry, I messed that up with the templates at Category talk:United States Courts of Appeals judges, when I got to the category page I forgot it had been listed once already, my bad. Steve block Talk 15:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Democratic-Republican

Your insights on the matter of the naming of the Democratic-Republican Party would be helpful now, as the denial of an early Jeffersonian Republican party is spreading to Madison's article and others. Skyemoor 12:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Federal Judge articles

When you have a moment, please take a look at here and let me know what you think. Thanks, Newyorkbrad 21:59, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Electoral Maps

We have a user who has been identifying errors on the presidential election maps. Comments here, here and here. There may be other errors or comments I missed. Unfortunately the user's IP address changes every day, so it is hard to keep up with him. I imagine that you know who can best do the appropriate modifications of these images. Cheers, NoSeptember 11:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Come back

3 weeks without DLJessup! I hope you are only on a long wikibreak. After two years of solid editing, you are certainly entitled to a vacation. NoSeptember 15:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

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