"Joe Biden is planning a regular shadow briefing... to show how he would handle the crisis and address what he calls the lies and failures of President Trump."

"Biden gave a preview of what’s to come in a conference call with reporters Friday, where he listed a litany of false and misleading statements from Trump.... 'President Trump stop saying false things, will ya?' Biden said. 'People are worried they are really frightened, when these things don't come through. He just exacerbates their concern. Stop saying false things you think make you sound like a hero and start putting the full weight of the federal government behind finding fast, safe and effective treatments.'... [H]e said, his house is being outfitted with equipment that would enable him to livestream events, have interactive tele-press conferences and broadcast interviews with network television. 'I would like to get in the position and we're trying to work out so that the headquarters ... to be able to accommodate my directly answering questions in front of a press that's assigned to me,' he said. 'We've hired a professional team to do that now. And excuse the expression that's a little above my pay grade to know how to do that.'"

Politico reports.

It is a real challenge for Biden and his people to figure out how to campaign from a distance. Sitting on the sidelines and taking potshots at the man who is working nonstop to manage the crisis — this might not feel right to some of us. Biden has to stay in the game somehow, but maybe less is more. Don't make the President's job any more difficult than it is. And don't turn on the cameras just to agitate us with non-insights like "People are worried... they are really frightened." Every guy in America knows how to watch TV and then turn on the videocam and live-stream about how the President bothers him.

Or... I guess Biden wouldn't know how to make such a video. He has "a professional team" to push the little buttons for him, and he's not embarrassed to call the work "above my pay grade."

If you're trying to remember when Obama used that expression, it was in answer to the question when does the unborn have human rights: "… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade." I believe Obama was trying to say he is not God, so he cannot be the one to say where that subtle line is.

In the case of Biden, he was just trying to say, he doesn't do electronic gadgets. He didn't really mean that the work he can't do is above him. More like below him. Or part of a world that he hasn't engaged with and never will.

IN THE COMMENT: rehajm said:

So he's going to pretend he has a job where he has press conferences and updates people on the functioning of government even though he doesn't work for the government. Then he's going to do mystery science theater on Trump press conferences and also 'fact check' Trump and government agencies.

How faux Presidential. That's not helping...

Chris N said:

When I was young it was all sidewalks and bikes and maybe a few hot rods out there. Guys n gals at Community pools. You wanted mashed potatoes you got mashed potatoes but some people need help with the butter.

Folks, this isn’t that hard. We’re a global village now with global challenges and 18 gigs of RAM!

"A comprehensive new study from two law students at Yale shows that routinely granting argument time to the solicitor general is a recent and curious phenomenon."

"The study asks the provocative question of whether giving the solicitor general this preferred position makes any sense. 'What we’re asking for is really for the court just to apply the same standard to all amici, whether they’re from the solicitor general’s office or not,' said Darcy Covert, who conducted the study with A.J. Wang. 'In cases where the connection to the federal government is particularly tenuous and the motivation for the solicitor general entering the case may be ideological, in those cases he certainly shouldn’t be getting oral arguments.'... Starting in 1988, though, the office’s success rate started to rise, reaching almost 100 percent. From the beginning of the term that started in 2010 through the end of the one that began in 2017, the court granted just eight of 26 motions for argument time from amici other than the solicitor general, the study found. During that same time, the court granted 252 of 253 such motions from the solicitor general."

From "The Supreme Court Has a Special ‘Friend’: The Justice Department/A new study questions the court’s practice of automatically granting argument time to the solicitor general as a 'friend of the court'" by Adam Liptak (NYT).

ADDED: The occasion for paying attention to this topic seems to be the Solicitor General's argument in an abortion case last week. The NYT article begins with a statement about that case — there were 70 amici who submitted briefs in that case but only the Solicitor General got to make an oral argument to the Justices (who may delegate reading these non-party briefs to their law clerks). Later, the article notes that the federal interest in this case about the constitutionality of a state law is "not obvious." The SG only offered to provide "the federal perspective":

The motion noted that the solicitor general’s office had taken part in arguments at the last big abortion case, during the Obama administration in 2016, but it neglected to say that it had supported abortion rights in that case. In last week’s argument, Jeffrey B. Wall, a deputy solicitor general, argued in favor of a state law restricting abortions. If he was offering “the federal perspective,” that perspective had shifted with a change in administrations.

And, I suspect, the NYT perspective on routinely granting the SG oral argument time has also shifted.

It seems to me that it's much better to routinely grant the SG's request than to base the decision on which side the SG supports.