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Rawk!
A few weeks ago I predicted that "Float On" by Modest Mouse will be "the definitive 'indie' rock anthem of Summer 2004." While I may have overstated my case, if NPR has anything to do with it (and it probably doesn't) the song is on its way:
Music commentator Alexandra Patsavas is a music supervisor in Los Angeles, and we let her listen to all the new albums so we don't have to. Today, she's got five song suggestions that you should consider including in your summer music rotation: "Float On" by Modest Mouse; "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers; "Spitting Games" by Snow Patrol; "Saturday Night" by Ozomatli; and "One Horse Town" by The Thrills.
So what about the rest there? Anyone have any thoughts on The Killers, Snow Patrol, Ozomatli, or The Thrills? And who are these "Shins" I've been hearing a bit about? Bekah, Steve, Justin, (and anyone else, of course) hear my pleas for enlightenment!
Note: Looks like Steve's got some summer recommendations here.
Posted 06:30 AM | Comments (8) | life generally
Nice Tiger
Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) is almost over. Steve Jobs gave the keynote yesterday and introduced the new version of OS X, which they're calling "Tiger." Scripting News has a bunch of good links about the announcements from the last two days. The good news is that Apple keeps adding neat features to the OS. The bad news is some of the most prominenent features appear to be blatant ripoffs of software created by small developers. For example, Apple is adding a cool RSS aggregator feature to Safari, which looks very neat, but it also might really hurt sales of NetNewsWire, the leading Mac RSS reader. (A few comments here from NetNewsWire's developer.) Another new feature called Dashboard will put lots of little widgets on your desktop to allow you to more easily check the weather, stocks, your datebook, etc. Of course, Konfabulator already allows you to do this.
It's a little ironic that the purpose of WWDC is to encourage developers to make Mac software, when Apple's showing up to the conference with software of its own that might put popular Mac software developers out of business.
One feature that I don't think will be putting anyone out of business but which could be pretty cool is Automator, which will allow users to automate repetitive tasks among different applications. Geeks who don't know how to use Applescript (me) should have fun with this.
Hey, and don't get too excited: None of these new features will be available until "the first half" of 2005. Until then, keep your eye out for the QT Bug, a high-tech Beetle that will be touring the country to capture video and audio footage and show off QuickTime-related technologies. Oh, and the car will have an Apple X-Serve built right in:
Gee, I was thinking I'd sure like a new car....
UPDATE: See also:
- Dashboard vs. Confabulator
- discussion on kottke.org
- Matt Haughey's thoughts on Safari's RSS reader
The American President
I can't believe I just watched this movie. It must've been Annette Benning that kept me watching, because it certainly wasn't Michael Douglas. Way back in the early 1990s — the summer of "Shining Through" and "Basic Instinct," I think — I got fed up with Michael Douglas because he always plays the same character and it's generally a character I don't like. But maybe it wasn't Benning. Maybe it was Aaron Sorkin's writing. He can be trite and cloyingly romantic, but he's certainly hit on a winning formula with the idea of a U.S. President who learns that the way to be President is to stand up for what he really believes and to fight the fights that need to be fought, rather than only the fights he can win. People eat that up. You'd think a real life candidate would get the hint.
Watching this movie, as well as old "West Wing" reruns (for which Sorkin is also responsible) makes me wish people in the first few months of 2004 would have confused the fantasy world of movies and television with the reality of a real presidential campaign just a little more. Maybe then we'd have a real candidate to vote for instead of Kerry. Maybe then people wouldn't have been so afraid to vote for someone who stood up for what he believed in. I submit that Howard Dean was a candidate that would fight the fights that needed to be fought, but I'm afraid Kerry's only going to fight the fights he thinks he can win. I still hope I'm wrong about Kerry, but if I'm not, there's still going to be a huge market for Sorkin's fantasy presidents.
Posted 09:42 PM | Comments (9) | ai movies
WIR#5 & 6: Awe, Anger & Radical Lawyers
The past two weeks have been packed with information and learning experiences—so much so that I haven't been able to keep up with them here very well. Here's the short story: In week 5 I started to feel like maybe going to law school wasn't a mistake after all. I started to feel more attached to the work and began seeing myself, potentially, as a public defender some day. That week, I really started to feel like it was a job I could both do well, and enjoy doing. In week 6, those positive feelings were still there, but they were tempered by the doubts I've had since week 1—worries that I'm not really very good at this, and so would not like to make this my career. I'm chalking this roller-coaster impression up to the old cliche that "the more you know the more you realize how little you know." That can be humbling, but it least it means you're still learning. And boy, am I learning.
For example, I'm learning just how much an experienced defense attorney can know, and it's awe-inspiring. Two weeks ago I accompanied the attorney I work with to the jail to interview a new client. In the space of five minutes my attorney expertly fielded her client's complex questions about how the involvement of federal agencies in his case might affect his chances to plea, whether a drug store would really be able to produce the video they say they have, how other charges in other jurisdictions might interact with the charges we were dealing with, and more. This was a potentially complex case, and this client's questions kind of made my head spin, but my attorney handled them w/out the confidence that only comes from experience. I sat in awe, hoping someday I would have that kind of experience under my belt so I could be as effortlessly helpful as she is.
Another lesson that I'm learning again and again and again is how little police actually know, and the levels to which they will stoop to get even the most meaningless of convictions. The show how little they know when they appear in court and have nothing to say except what they wrote in their reports, which are themselves often full of gaping holes that they then fill with speculations masquerading as "fact" when they're on the witness stand. Half the time it seems police witnesses show up to testify at trial and can't even remember the case. They're coached by the prosecutors, and look to them for advice and help answering questions. They apparently think they're on the same "team" with the prosecution. So much for presumed innocent, etc.
The levels to which police stoop are just chilling. I probably shouldn't say much more on this right now since much of my horror stems from cases still in litigation, but I will say that after six weeks in a public defender's office I'm convinced that the legal fiction of "custodial" interrogations (meaning you're in custody, not free to leave) v. "non-custodial" interrogations (meaning theoretically you can leave at any time) makes a mockery of justice. Do you have any clue what I'm talking about? If not, you prove my point. If so, pat yourself on the back. Now see if you're able to keep your wits about you enough the next time the police interrogate you to remember to rely on your rights to their full extent—especially when the police start lying to you.
I've also learned that the police and prosecutors team up to harrass certain people for very stupid crimes. At the top of that list are the crimes of stealing two flowers from a flower pot, and the crime of impermissible horn honking. Yeah, that's right; in our jurisdiction there's a statute that says you can only honk your car horn in order to give a "reasonable warning." Guess who decides what a reasonable warning is. Hint: If you're black and in a neighborhood known for drug sales/use, your definition of reasonable probably won't count for much.
I've learned how trivial much of legal practice (and especially law school) can seem to a criminal lawyer. This hit home last week when I sat in on a civil appeal that just seemed incredibly pointless. Who cares who gets the house (in a divorce) when someone down the hall may be going to jail for life thanks to police misconduct? (And yes, I realize police aren't always acting improperly, but I'll bet you'd be shocked to learn how often and to what degree they really are.) Off the top of my head, it seems much of torts, contracts, property law, and civil procedure focused on trivialities, while crimlaw and conlaw (and legal writing, of course) were what was important. I know those other classes were valuable and I'm glad I've been through them, but it's a perspective thing. If you're a defense attorney, your clients won't generally care much about torts law—they just want to stay out of jail.
So far, the summer internship is great for big picture perspective like this. Both from my attorney and my co-interns (some of whom are part of "Section Three" at Georgetown, which sounds like the critically contextualized law curriculum I dreamed of but have not found at all at GW), I'm also learning a little bit about being a "radical lawyer." I hope to learn more about what this means to them, but reading just about anything by Duncan Kennedy looks like a good place to start.
Finally, I and my fellow interns have begun weekly "Mock Trial" exercises led by the attorneys in the office. So far we've covered interviewing a client, voire dire, and making opening statements. It's incredibly helpful to hear advice on these things from attorneys who do them every day.
Posted 06:31 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
Huge Day at the SCOTUS
The opinions from the High Court are coming fast and furious, with some good, some bad, and probably some ugly. I can't keep up, but if I'd could, I'd start with this overview of the decisions in the Hamdi and Padilla cases. Then I'd probably be pretty interested in these Miranda cases, too. Then I'd read about there being no presidential monopoly on war powers.
Nevermind. What I'm saying is, if I had time I'd just read everything on SCOTUSBlog. And there's more to come tomorrow.
It's kind of mind-boggling to realize how much American law can change in a few days thanks to a flurry of Supreme Court decisions. And these people are appointed for life. A little scary sometimes...
Posted 09:53 PM | law general
Book Research?
NaNoWriMo 2004 is still four months away, but it's not too early to start thinking about what you're going to write. The rules say you can't write anything before midnight, November 1, but that doesn't mean you can't think about it. Last year I spewed out some 28,000 words and none of them were very good except possibly some bits about a character I was calling a "professional finder." The idea, roughly, was that in the future, some people might make a profession out of finding things from the past, then selling those things to collectors. Of course, people do this already, but think "Nth" degree. This week's City Paper features a new non-fiction work about "finders" who seem to find to live or live to find. It's called Mongo: Adventures In Trash, by Ted Botha. It could be good research for a "professional finder" character, or it might just be a good read. (Thanks to L for pointing this out.)
Introducing: Ambivalent Images
Welcome, everyone, to ambivalent images. This is a little project I started back in March, because, well, once the EJF Auction was over and all I had to do was catch up on my reading, outline, and study for finals, I really had way too much time on my hands.
As I explain here, the idea was to take a picture every day and post a picture everyday. So far, I've been able to keep up with the posting, but actually taking a picture every day is the hard part. What you'll see is that I almost never post a picture the same day I take it. Generally, the time lag is a week or two (or more). So it's not exactly what I intended at the beginning, but it's been great fun, nonetheless. Perhaps with practice I'll get better at the daily photo and be able to cut the time between taking and posting. We'll see. The bonus to the delay between taking and posting the photos is that every time I post a photo I'm reminded of what I was doing a week or two ago. I'm pretty forgetful, so it's been an interesting perspective-adjuster.
Anyway, beginning today, a portion of the daily photo will appear here on ai as a new feature in the right column. Click the photo excerpt to go to the full version, which includes explanation and commentary from your humble blogger, as well as comment links so you can tell me if you ever see or read anything that grabs you. Enjoy.
Tech note: ambivalent images is just a simple MT blog. The MTOtherBlog plugin allows the daily image to appear here. If you'd like to start your own "photoblog" based on MT, you might want to take a look at the MTPhotoGallery plugin and the MTEmbedImage plugin. I may play with these at a later date.
Posted 06:44 AM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging
Whew: MT 3.0
Allrighty then, ai is now running on MT 3.0. Thanks again to Falconred for helping make this upgrade possible. Advice to anyone planning to upgrade: If you're already running MT, be sure you download and install the upgrade version of MT 3.0 rather than the full version. I didn't pay enough attention and copied the full version right over the old version, meaning I erased my config files and basically broke my MT installation. After a little hair-pulling and searching through the documentation, I think everything should be in working order now.
Matt asked what's new, but I'm afraid I don't have much to offer there. So far the big new thing is the stuff having to do with TypeKey. Other than that, the interface is shiny and new looking, but functionally unchanged (at least as far as I can tell). Others have reviewed MT 3.0 at some length, and you can see from the guide to new features that there really aren't many. So I paid and upgraded why? I guess because I could. As L always teases me, I always have to be "in the new" when it comes to things like this.
UPDATE: It looks like the upgrade broke something in the comments system. Right now, if you type a comment and click "post," your comment really will be posted, but it won't show up on the page. It will be emailed to me, and it will be added to the system, it just won't publish for some reason. I'll have to look into this another time—tomorrow evening, perhaps. For the time being, if you'd like to comment you can do so knowing that I'll see your comment via email but it won't actually show up on the page until I get this fixed.
Posted 06:50 PM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
Movable Type Licenses Right
After all the kvetching a few weeks ago when Six Apart announced a new licensing scheme for Movable Type, it looks like all the wrinkles have been ironed out (at least so far as I'm concerned). They've fixed the licenses so that you can run as many blogs with as many authors as you like, just like you could before (so long as you don't make any money from the proposition). I'm thinking it's time to upgrade.
Posted 09:22 AM | Comments (2) | meta-blogging
F#@& Yourself
So you heard that Dick Cheney told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to F#@& himself the other day, right? Yeah, that's right:
On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
Hm. Interesting. Even better, Cheney said yesterday he has no regrets:
So just so I can get this straight: Janet Jackson's boob on tv is cause for huge concern, but the Vice President of the United States stands on the Senate Floor and tells a United States Senator to f#@& himself, and it's "not an issue"? Nice. (Note: I just saw Musclehead pointed this out first. I'm always late to the party.)
Apparently, Leahy had touched one of the Veep's nerves—he doesn't like people pointing out his cozy connections to the administration's number one defense contractor pal:
"I didn't like the fact that after he had done so, then he wanted to act like, you know, everything's peaches and cream," Cheney said. "And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And as I say, I felt better afterwards."
The Washington Post calls this "conduct unbecoming" to a Vice President, but really, I appreciate Cheney's candor. Perhaps this is part of a new strategy of honesty. For example, the Bush/Cheney campaign is also using images of Adolf Hitler in its official campaign videos. Perhaps we're finally getting to see Bush/Cheney in all their crass, hateful, and antisocial glory. It's really very refreshing. After all, we've all known that "f#@& yourself" has been the basic attitude of the Bush administration since day one. A few of the most obvious examples of this:
Bush/Cheney to America's public schoolkids, their parents, and local school boards: F#@& yourself. Of course, Bush/Cheney didn't say that exactly; instead, they said something about "No Child Left Behind."
Bush/Cheney to the environment, environmental activists, the Kyoto Protocol, and experts in global warming: F#@& yourself. But again, Bush/Cheney didn't say that exactly; instead, they said something about "Clean Skies and Healthy Forests" and voluntary pollution-reduction programs, etc.
Bush/Cheney to dozens of world governments and the people (if not always the leaders) of Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain and others: F#@& yourself. Of course, Bush/Cheney said something about "weapons of mass destruction" and "terrorism" and "liberating Iraq."
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. See, isn't candor great? I can just see the t-shirts and bumper stickers now:
"Vote Bush/Cheney '04. And F#@& Yourself."
Posted 08:13 PM | Comments (7) | election 2004
We Sure Do Need Some Water*
We saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" last night and it was ... a great film! (I know you're all shocked that I liked it. You can pick your jaws up off the floor now.) In many ways, typical Moore. In at least one way, not quite so typical—he wasn't in it that much (except as narrator and commentator throughout, of course). After seeing it, one thing seems certain: The barrage of pundits speaking out against the film (and Moore personally) in the last 1-2 weeks were designed to do one thing: Make people decide in advance they don't want to see the film. I say that because I think almost anyone who sees this movie—all but the most Republican partisans—will have to think very very seriously about voting for Bush this November. You may find much to quibble with in the film, but its most damning underlying argument is pretty unassailable. Therefore, the Republicans' best hope to reduce the damage the film might do to Bush's chances is just to go all out to try to keep people from seeing it at all. And I'm not talking censorship. The strategy is to make those who haven't seen the film think Moore is a crazed lunatic and perhaps a traitor, and to make the film seem like one big fat lie.
There's just one problem with that, Moore's not crazy, and, while the film's analysis of recent history might be hyperbolic or facile at times, in its biggest theme, it does not lie. Despite that, the "don't see it!" strategy may be working. One of my co-workers yesterday declared she has no desire to see the film because Moore's a crazy liar, and at least one other person I know (who is a dedicated Fox "news" watcher) has decided he won't be seeing it either, for the same reason.
<snark> It's a good thing people make up their own minds in this country, don't you think? </snark>
I don't want to spoil the film for those who haven't seen it yet, although I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to; if you've been following any coverage of it, you know what it's about already. It seemed to have a prologue and two parts. The prologue how Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court after thousands of voters were disenfranchised in Florida. Part one is about September 11, 2001 and the immediate response to it—the fact that leading up to it the Bush administration seemed not very interested in Bin Laden or Al Quaeda or terrorism, the fact that Bush just sat in a schoolroom in in Florida for seven minutes after he was told that America was "under attack" (Moore's critics seem to really dislike what he does with this), the fact that the Bush administration helped 142 Saudi Arabian nationals—including many members of the Bin Laden family—leave the country on charter flights w/out being asked any questions, etc. (Moore's also been challenged on this, since the 9/11 Commission said that, in hindsight, it looks like none of the Saudis who were allowed to leave were likely terrorists or anything. This misses the point, which is simply: Why were these people, of all people, given special treatment? No one is saying they were terrorists, only that it was improper to give them any advantages over anyone else at that time.)
There's a lot packed into the first half of the movie, including interesting little details about the deep connections between the Bush family and Saudi Arabian oil bigshots and royalty. I'm sure Moore's critics are busily explaining away all those little details in their arguments that they all add up to nothing. The big point here was not incredibly clear to me. It's definitely not that Saudi Arabians are secretly running U.S. foreign and domestic policy or anything like that. Part one simply points out that there's deep ties between the Bush family (and others in the Bush administration), and Saudi interests, and that there's big money involved, and that that Saudi interests have received very good treatment from the U.S. for some time.
Part two was, for me, more effective. Part two is more about the buildup to Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, all the lies that went into getting Americans and the world to buy that debacle, who is getting rich off the war (e.g., the Carlyle Group and Halliburton) and who is paying the price for Bush's lies. I'm sure many people are trying, but just can't imagine how anyone could argue that Moore is wrong here. The companies and people profiting from the war can't deny that they're doing so. They can argue that "somebody's gotta do it," but that's no excuse; no one would have had to do it if Bush hadn't invaded in the first place. Also, how can Bush and Co. defend the fact that ten times more taxpayer dollars go to a private Halliburton-employed truck driver than to a member of the U.S. armed forces who's basically doing the same job? I don't see the defense, the logic, the argument. The war was unnecessary, and now it's created countless opportunities for corporations to steal from American taxpayers with the blessing and active assistance of the U.S. government. Hooray.
And that's Moore's biggest and strongest argument, as I see it: The big losers in the America created by the Bush administration are those with the least to begin with—the poor and marginalized Americans who are losing social services because so much of the federal budget has to go to Iraq, and who are losing their lives because they are the people who make up the vast majority of the U.S. armed forces. It's not a fun message. In fact, it's very very sad. But it's true.
And in this respect, I 'd argue that "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a great film. I disagree with Moore's critics, those who try to dismiss him as a lunatic who "rewrites history" or reduces it to simple a black/white binaries. In "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine," Moore attempts to connect current American problems of poverty, racism, and other social inequalities with American history in an attempt to understand -- and to help viewers understand -- how we might have come to where we find ourselves today. No, he can't resist the facile jab here and there that tends to reduce his larger analysis to a simple theory of cause and effect. For example, in "BFC" he says that the NRA was founded the same day the KKK was officially disbanded. This implies that the NRA is just a front for the KKK -- he never says that in "BFC," but he juxtaposes those two facts in a way that makes suggests the connection and encourages viewers to make it for themselves. Is something like this mere coincidence? Perhaps. And if so, if there's nothing to it, then Moore comes off looking like he's reducing a complex history to a bunch of simple comparisons, connecting things that just aren't connected. But his larger points don't depend on such coincidences; instead, they're based on a reading of the factual record that is not usually flattering to the wealthy and powerful in the U.S., but which is, nevertheless, true.
That's my take, anyway. As always, I look forward to hearing what others think.
See also:
- Buzz Around Moore's Movie May Shake Election
- By Way of Deception
- Will Michael Moore's Facts Check Out?
- FAQ about the Facts in "Fahrenheit 9/11"
- A Fahrenheit 9/11 Library from Michael Moore
- Unfondly Fahrenheit at Crooked Timber
- Kevin Drum's reaction (with over 500 comments)
- Reaction from Monica
- Michael Moore's showing in Show Me State
- Fifty-Nine Deciets in Fahrenheit 911: The Right did the same thing w/BFC, so it was only a matter of time. Check Moore's site for responses.
* The title of this post responds to one of the song's on the soundtrack to "Fahrenheit 9/11." The soundtrack is great, by the way—a brilliant use of popular music as social satire.
Posted 07:46 PM | Comments (11) | ai movies election 2004
Five Things
Following up on the [non]Billable Hour's Five by Five, second edition, Scheherazade asks: What are the five things you would change about the practice of law?
1. Close down Lexis and Westlaw and bring an immediate and permanent end to for-profit legal research. The law belongs to the people, not Westlaw. The services now provided by these companies should be done by public employees paid by tax dollars, then the cost of legal research and representation would drop for everyone. See also Carolyn Elefant's suggestion #1. Same idea, mine just goes further; instead of having one free Lexis/Westlaw account per library or school, every computer w/internet access should have free, unlimited access to the publicly-funded, non-profit replacement of Lexis and Westlaw. This new database should also be searchable by Google and any other search engine.
2. Dissolve the ABA's cartel-like stranglehold on law schools and legal education. This would involve eliminating current requirements in most states that you have three years of law school before you can even take the Bar. Perhaps we should eliminate the Bar exam, as well. See Scheherazade's suggestion #1 . But even if some sort of qualifying credential is required to practice law, it should not require any sort of formal training. If there's a Bar exam or something like it, and you can pass it without a day of formal education, you should be able to practice law.
3. Reduce firm salaries and billable hours requirements by half, across the board, while at the same time doubling salaries for public defenders, legal aid attorneys, non-profit attorneys and all other "public interest" practitioners. That wouldn't even the playing field, but it would go a long way. See also Scheherazade's suggestion #4.
4. Make lawyers accountable for the work they do. I really don't know how to do this, but perhaps a google-able database of lawyers and the cases they've worked on would go some way to making attorneys accountable for the work they've done to protect big tobacco, to help Enron rip off its shareholders and the American public, and convince the Bush administration that it doesn't have to follow the Geneva Convention.
5. Require law schools do more than pay lip service to public interest law. Again, I'm not sure how to do this, but law schools need not be factories for producing BigLaw drones. For a start, professors who make jokes to their classes about how rich attorneys can get by screwing their clients should be fired. Becoming a lawyer should not be about making money.
Combined, my suggestions should go a long way to taking the money incentive out of the practice of law. Making the best available legal research free to all will reduce the overall demand for attorneys—more people will be able to do their own research and represent themselves. Freeing law schools from the dictates of the ABA will allow new schools to spring up, and eliminating the law school requirement altogether will allow the number of lawyers to skyrocket. All that great competition (lawyers love competition, right?) will mean no one will get much money. And, since legal research will be free, lawyers will be able to charge much less there, as well. Reduced firm salaries will become a necessity; therefore, law students will be much less motivated to go to BigLaw anyway. Plus, since they won't be paying such high tuition (because there are more law schools and because some people won't go to school at all to become lawyers), students will graduate with much less (or no) debt, removing another reason many people now go to BigLaw. Finally, if lawyers are forced to make a public accounting of the work they do, we'll have fewer people writing terror memos and defending companies that destroy the environment and public health and all those other bad things. The world will be a better place, and all because of these five things.
What was it Aerosmith said? Was it, "dream on"?
Aside: The Five by Five idea is brilliant. A very valuable and innovative use of the blog form, IMHO. Thanks to the [non] Billable Hour for bringing it to us. One way I think the feature could be even better is if its main archive page featured a table of contents in outline form that listed the edition number and question, followed by a bulleted list of links directly to the responses of each of the five contributors to that edition. Just an idea.
Posted 05:37 AM | Comments (7) | law general
Attack Mode: Engaged
It looks like Christopher Hitchens is trying to lead the charge against "Fahrenheit 9/11", another movie with its own (unofficial) blog. Hitchens brazenly displays one of the fundamental disagreements between the left and the right in America today. The left says the world is complicated, and there's no simple "good v. evil" or any other binary, but complex spectra of interleaved causes and effects. The right says no, it's good or evil, black or white, either or:
Oops! Excuse me, Mr. Hitchens, but I'm afraid that last binary got a little mangled—you've suggested there are more than two options and that just cannot be!
To be fair, it's possible to argue that Moore's worldview is no more complex or nuanced than the one Hitchens describes (also: I think Hitchens is just playing the role of sensational provocateur here, a role with which he's apparently familiar). According to the Washington Post:
That may not be wholly inaccurate as far as what Moore thinks. It also wouldn't be wholly untrue. But whatever.
Apparently the movie had its U.S. premier last night at the Uptown, here in D.C. L. and I have tickets to a Friday showing, so I'll have a better idea of what to make of it after that.
See also:
- Discussion on Metafilter
- Conservative group asks FEC about 'Fahrenheit' Ads
- Critics turning up heat on Michael Moore
- Michael Moore terrorizes the Bushies!
- Salon Reviews: Yea! by Andrew O'Hehir, and Nay! by Stephanie Zacharek
Posted 05:20 AM | Comments (5) | ai movies election 2004
Rule Of Law?
This is just wrong:
UPDATE: I haven't really been following the whole terror memo debacle, but this just seems to illustrate why it's so important we have regime change in the U.S. this November. It's not just Bush, it's not just Cheney or Rummy or Ashcroft, it's all of them, and all the people they've hired and listen to. This administration as a whole has demonstrated such a disdain for law and justice at every level that even staunch Republicans need to step back and really think about whether these are the kind of people—reactionary loose cannons with no respect for the law or anything other than their agenda—they want running the country.
See also: U.S. Struggled Over How Far to Push Tactics
Posted 08:20 PM | general politics
Remembering Hope
One year ago today, Howard Dean announced he was running for President of the United States. He called his announcement speech "The Great American Restoration" ; it was a great speech. After outlining the many problems he saw with politics as usual in the U.S., Dean declared the mission of his campaign:
The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.
And so, while the President raises $4 million more tonight to maintain his agenda, we will not be silent.
He calls his biggest fundraisers Rangers and Pioneers.
But today, we stand together with thousands in Burlington, Vermont and tens of thousands more, standing with us right now in every state in this nation. And we call ourselves, simply, Americans.
And we stand today in common purpose to take our country back.
I stood in a brewpub in Shirlington with around 100 others watching the speech on video, and after hearing that speech, I made my first-ever contribution to a political candidate. Dean wasn't my dream candidate, and in many places I disagreed with his agenda; to me, Dean was too centrist. But that didn't matter, because finally here was a politician who was describing the world I lived in, rather than some fantasy world I'd never seen or visited. Finally, here was a politician who gave me hope that maybe my vote would matter, maybe my voice and my actions could matter, and maybe we, as Americans, could turn this country around.
One year ago today, I started hoping again. For the next six months, Howard Dean offered honest, frank, specific, pointed, fact-based critiques of the current administration, Congress, corporate America, and politics as usual in the U.S. He had everyone running for cover, and by January 2004 he had everyone believing that he would at least get the Democratic nomination, if not the presidency. It was a beautiful thing to watch, and a beautiful thing to be a part of. I gave money, I set up and staffed information tables at street fairs, I attended rallies, I held a house party, I collected names to add to the email list. I had hope, and it felt great to back that hope with action (even when I could and should have done much more).
And then something happened. What was it? I still can't say, but I do know it had a lot to do with a politics of fear, the fires of which were stoked by all of Dean's many opponents, both Republicans and Democrats alike. Dean offered hope, his opponents offered fear, and fear won. Too simplistic? Sure. But that's what it looks like from here, one year later. I look forward to seeing how history describes the rise and fall of the Dean campaign. Perhaps history will prove me wrong.
Today, a year after "The Great American Resotoration," I still hope that Bush will not be reelected, but that's about it. And if that happens, the presidential administration will change, and yes, many things will get incrementally better under Kerry, but politics will continue as usual. It's sad, thinking of what might have been. And yes, we can still hope that a Kerry presidency will be better than anything so far would give us reason to think it will be, and we can hope that beyond Kerry, beyond the presidency, there are still ways to change America for the better. After all, hope dies last, right?
Posted 05:59 AM | election 2004
Control Room
L and I saw "Control Room" the other night at E Street Cinema. If you haven't heard of it, the Washington Post review should cover the basics.
I can't decide what was best about the film, but among my favorite segments were:
- Bush demanding that any American POWs must be treated with the same respect and dignity with which the U.S. is treating the Iraqi prisoners. Um, yeah.
- Rumsfeld talking about how truth has a way of getting out, regardless of the lies leaders might tell. Say it again, Rummy!
- When CentCom told the room of reporters that American troops had been giving decks of cards showing the pictures and names of the 55 "most wanted" Iraqis. The press didn't have anything to say except, "Do you have any decks for us?" They cried like babies because the U.S. military wasn't giving them decks of Iraqi "most wanted" cards, and mostly it was just because they all knew their stories would sell so much better if they had those images. Were the reporters clamoring for a better story so that they could better serve the propaganda interests of the U.S., or were they simply trying to get better ratings with more sensational images? Hard to tell.
The film's most serious suggestion is that, 1) the U.S. intentionally bombed Al Jazeera's office in Baghdad, killing one of its reporters; and 2) that bombing was orchestrated to prevent/discourage Al Jazeera from being on the scene for the big spectacle of the statue of Saddam being pulled down. Al Jazeera's offices were bombed a day before the statute was pulled down, which meant that Al Jazeera didn't have any crews on the ground to cover it; therefore, it was easier for the U.S. to manipulate the images of that spectacle to ensure that it came across the "right" way on tv. There's little doubt in my mind about #1 (the U.S. intentionally bombed Al Jazeera), and #2 seems very probable.
Other upcoming documentaries to look forward to:
Fahrenheit 9/11 (6/25)
The Hunting of the President (6/25)
The Corporation (not sure when it's coming, but soon; interesting review here)
See also: Morgan Spurlock Supersized Me
Posted 06:47 AM | Comments (1) | ai movies
An Ambivalent First
Inexplicably, Macsurfer currently features a link to this post here at ai. I don't understand why my little jibe at Safari attracted anyone's attention (perhaps for no better reason than that I linked to Apple's Safari page?), but I won't complain. Macsurfer was one of the sites I read daily for years—before I realized I'd better cut my consumption of mac-related obsessiveness if I was going to get other things done in my life. It remains a pre-eminent source for news of all things Macintosh, and I'm flattered for the mention.
Posted 05:00 AM | mac geek meta-blogging
The Rule of Law: Breyer's ACS Keynote
The highlight of this year's ACS Convention was Justice Breyer's keynote, which he framed as a message to today's law students. What follows is a summary of his speech which attempts to faithfully convey what he said. My own editorial comments are clearly marked as such.
Breyer asked future lawyers to remember that what's important in life is family, work, and community, and that "women are a force for good." He joked that he's "the oldest youngest" Justice, and despite having been on the Court for a decade, he still sometimes has to hold the door open if someone knocks during a judicial meeting. He told a short anecdote about recently bringing Scalia his coffee. "I've been doing this for 10 years," Breyer told Scalia. "I think I've gotten pretty good."
"No, you haven't," Scalia replied.
Breyer then magically summarized the Constitution in one minute, but I unfortunately couldn't write that fast. He praised "the rule of law" in the U.S., and said he strives to remember that "there's no view so crazy that someone in the U.S. doesn't hold it," adn that all those people show up in the Supreme Court to iron out their views.
He cited three cases that demonstrate what he means by "the rule of law" in the U.S. The first was Worcester vs. Georgia, the 1832 case in which the Cherokee tribe sued the state of Georgia after Georgia tried to steal the gold the Cherokee had found on Cherokee land. The Court found for the Cherokee, but President Andrew Jackson said something along the lines of: Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. Then Jackson sent federal troops to Georgia, not to enforce the Court's decision, but to evict the Cherokee, hence the Trail of Tears.
The second case Breyer cited to illustrate "the rule of law" was the "second" Cooper v. Aaron, a desegregation case in which the Court told the Governor of Arkansas he had to desegregate the schools. (I'm not familiar with this case and I couldn't find it anywhere, so I must not have heard the name correctly. Anyone know which case this is?) The Governor refused, so President Eisenhower sent federal troops in to enforce the requirements of Brown v. Board of Education. "I like that case," Breyer said.
Finally, the last case Breyer suggested that illustrates "the rule of law" is any case you can think of. "Take your pick," Breyer said, and proceeded to list controversial cases such as "Bush v. Gore, school prayer, the abortion cases," and others. Take the most controversial case you want, Breyer suggested. "People feel strongly about these cases," he said. But, using Bush v. Gore as his example, Breyer said "what's remarkable is that, regardless of the decision, people follow it as a matter of course." In fact, that Americans will follow the decisions of the Supreme Court is "so obviously true, we don't even think it's interesting," Breyer said.
Mini editorial: It ma just be me, but it sounds like Breyer was saying that the great thing about the rule of law is that "we," meaning the Supreme Court, can do whatever the hell we want, and people will obey like sheep. Yeah, I guess there's some beauty about that. It's great to be king, isn't it? /Mini editorial.
Breyer went on to say that the most important part of the Constitution is what that document is basically about: democracy. He said the Constitution is great because it's a document that doesn't make decisions, but one that creates a structure that lets people make decisions for themselves.
To the common complaint that the democratic process isn't working, Breyer recommended we pull our noses out of the daily news (which he admitted is rather discouraging) and look at the big picture. For example, he asked: How will we reconcile the rights of privacy and free speech in a world where cameras and recording devices are everywhere capturing everything we do and say? He doesn't have an answer, but he's encouraged that "we're trying to find the answer with conversation" in law review articles, discussions, and through ABA committees. ("I love the ABA, with its 4,000 members and 8,000 committees," Breyer said. Everyone laughed.)
Breyer thinks that when tough issues like this arise, the Supreme Court generally waits until others have made up their minds about them, then the Court merely checks to see if those decisions are ok. He described this as "a process where law bubbles up from the bottom, it's not imposed from the top."
Editorial: What a quaint and happy little fantasy! /Editorial.
Breyer recommended we think about this process and we won't be as discouraged as he gets when he just reads the newspaper everyday.
Breyer also discussed what he considers the most important case he's sat on since he's been on the Court: Grutter v. Bollinger, the affirmative action case from the summer of 2003. He said that case involves an interpretation of the equal protection clause. According to Breyer, there are two ways to interpret that clause. One, you can interpret it strictly, or purposively, as a clause designed to prevent invidious discrimination only. Or two, you can take the "color-blind" approach that says that race is out, it shouldn't be considered either positively or negatively, and that any other view is too dangerous. Breyer suggested there are three bases for choosing between these two views of equal protection: There's a lot of discrimination to make up for, and we should do that. This affirmative action program (at the University of Michigan in the Gruder case) involves universities, and they have a 1st amendment right to choose who to admit to their school. The court's approach: Let us have affirmative action. Breyer said the Court was told by people everywhere—in business, the military, education, etc.—that America needs affirmative action, and that it needs to be managed carefully, "but if you tell us to be color blind, we will not be able to function." Breyer said the Court heard from people everywhere that "the race-blind approach is divisive, and the other approach is inclusive."
Is that a legal or a moral or a practical argument, Breyer asked. Breyer argued that it's a legal argument, because it's an argument that further's the Constitution's purpose, whihc is to create a workable democracy. Democracy won't work if large groups of people think democracy is theirs, while others think they're excluded. Breyer suggested that if we could ask the people who wrote the Constitution if they'd like a Constitution that works, or one that doesn't, their answer would be unequivocal: "Work! Work!" Breyer said the Gruder decision ensures that people can work together.
In conclusion, Breyer said, "Out of 10 years, the one clear conviction I have is that the Constitution is a document that must work, and it can't work unless people participate." The Constitution allows us to make our own decisions, but it still won't work unless we (as attorneys, presumably) get out of our law firms from time-to-time and participate. ("And thank you law firm people for being here," Breyer joked.)
Breyer's last statement was a call to action: He called on attorneys to participate in their local school board, or even a bowling league—there are millions of ways to participate; just do something. "That's what this document tells me."
Posted 09:14 PM | Comments (1) | law general
ACS Conventionism
The weekend's encounter with the ACS Convention was pleasant and enlightening. Highlights included the keynote speech by Justice Breyer, 2nd Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi's comments comparing George W. Bush to Hitler and Mussolini, and the free meals and drinks just about made the convention worth the price of admission. I admit to being a bad convention attendee. I don't like dressing up and making small talk with people I don't know, and that seems to be a big part of a convention like this. Anyway, that's why you might take what I say with a grain of salt.
The first session I attended Friday was entitled "Globalization: The Next Frontier for Labor Rights and Democracy." I had hoped it would talk about organizing workers around the world to demand that human rights (and environmental protections) take their proper place at the forefront of so-called "trade negotiations." Instead, the speakers talked about how non-democratic the WTO and similar bodies are, how trade policy protects business interests, etc. It was all high level; workers were hardly mentioned. Sure, "the people" were the focus, but the panelists are all focused on the top, rather than the bottom. Perhaps they'll accomplish something great from that end, but I'm skeptical. The panel standout was Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel for the AFLCIO, who focused on trade provisions similar to those in NAFTA Chapter 11 that almost guarantee that My impression of this panel is somewhat limited, however, because I had to curl myself into the smallest possible package just to sit in the room.
Note to convention organizers: Do not pack chairs into rooms so tightly that people cannot even sit in them! The room for this session had us packed in like sardines!
My second session was entitled, "Reframing Democracy: Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania and the Redistricting Battles." This was much better and more lively, with Paul Smith arguing on the left that the gerrymandering of congressional voting districts is anti-democratic, and Michael Carvin arguing on the right that the Democrats are just being whiny babies. Carvin was really a sight to see, admitting that he'd go anywhere and argue anything the Republican party asked him to argue, before taking up the unbelievable and indefensible proposition that computer generated and manipulated voting districts are virtually problem-free in terms of democracy and constitutionality. He might be right on the strict constitutional argument, but that's the refuge of cowards in this fight, if you ask me (which you didn't, I know).
Not surprisingly, the best part of the convention was Justice Breyer's keynote. Detailed notes on that will follow in the next post.
Another highlight was Saturday morning's double-session on the 14th Amendment, followed by a lively lunch discussion on what's at stake in this fall's presidential election. Among the notable points were C. Boyden Gray arguments that turning public schools over to private enterprise will cure all of society's ills. Sure is working for health care, don't you think? (Don't even get me started on how cynical and plain anti-democratic Gray's arguments are—it won't be pretty.) Also, it was during this lunch session that Judge Calabresi noted that Bush "came to power" in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini. Calabresi stated that he wanted to make clear that he wasn't trying to equate Bush with Hitler, he was just trying to make the point that it's unusual for leaders to come to power in the way that Bush and these other figures did, and in light of that, Calabresi thinks Bush should check his use of presidential power, rather than attempting to expand it beyond all reasonable proportions. (See, for example, the torture memos.)
So in all, the sparks were flying, the food was ok, and a good time was had by all.
Briefly, I thought the conference needed a blog, and it needed to have wireless access in the conference rooms. I won't go into why, but I do think the ACS would be more successful in reaching a wider audience if it would get bloggy. Apparently there is an ACS Blog, but it appears unofficial and therefore not exactly what I had in mind.
Meanwhile, Professor Bainbridge says the ACS is "the least necessary organization in legal education," and leaves it to Professor Gordon Smith to explain why. Three Years of Hell and his readers offer some commentary.
UPDATE: See also:
Discussion and comments with links to news and blog coverage of Judge Calabresi's remarks about Bush from Matt and Scott at L-Cubed (here and here), from Professor Yin, and from Professor Althouse.
Now also, see Calabresi's apology.
Posted 08:57 PM | law general
A-Pull
If you were ever a reader of Cooped Up, a blog by IU-Indianapolis Law Professor Jeff Cooper, you'll be glad to know his hiatus from blogging has been broken with a couple of posts describing a breakthrough in his son's development. For those who aren't familiar with the story, Professor Cooper was a prolific blogger who suddenly stopped posting last October when he learned that his son, Noah, had a developmental delays and possible hearing disabilities. Seven months later, it sounds like Noah is beginning to do much better. Hooray!
On a light note, Professor Cooper's story should settle the Apple v. Dell debate once and for all — in favor of the magical Macintosh, of course. ;-)
Posted 02:14 PM | life generally
Unexpectedly What?
As part of my research for this article I had a couple dozen windows/tabs open in Safari when it decided to "unexpectedly quit." Nice. Stuff like that almost never happens w/Apple software, but I've found if it's going to happen, Safari is going to be the culprit. Oh well.
On the positive, thanks again to everyone who responded to my questions about law school and blogs, and to those who commented here. The deadline for the article is basically here, so if anyone wants to get in any last minute thoughts, now's your chance. Best/worst experiences, anecdotes (i.e. the first time you saw a stranger reading your blog, the first time you learned a prof was reading your blog, etc.), what you've gained from blogging — it's all fair game and most welcome.
Finally, I have lots of notes from the ACS Convention, and other topics that I'll share just as soon as this article is put to bed. For now I'll only tease you a little by saying that Judge Guido Calabresi did not say G. W. Bush was either Hitler or Mussonlini, he merely said that Bush "came to power" in the same way as those two historical figures. Nor did Justice Breyer say that the best thing about the "rule of law" is that the Supreme Court can do anything it wants and everyone will swallow it like good subjects should. At least not in so many words. I'll explain soon. Meanwhile, if anyone finds reports about the convention in the news or on blogs somewhere, I'd love to know about them so I can see what others thought.
Back to work...
Posted 09:20 AM | mac geek meta-blogging
ACS Convention
The American Constitution Society begins its 2004 Convention today. I'll be taking the day off to attend a few of the sessions. It's funny: I was excited enough about this to pay the exorbitant registration fee six weeks or more ago (during finals, I think it was, or right after), but now that it's here, excitement is hard to come by. It's not exactly that I'm not interested in the topics on offer — I am; it's more that, after working for a while in the public defender's office I'm not crazy about sitting and listening to a bunch of lawyers talk about theoretical practice. On top of that, I'm kind of suspicious of the ACS. Is it the "new Democrats" of the legal field? Is it all about half measures and tiny tweaks to broken systems? Is its main selling point, "hey, at least we're not as bad as the Federalist Society"? (Much like Kerry's best selling point is "hey, at least I'm not as bad as Bush!") I don't know. That's what it seemed like from the limited contact I had with the GW chapter last year. Perhaps I'll get a better idea from this convention. Better run...
Posted 07:54 AM | Comments (2) | law general
Happy Bloomsday
Today is the day:
If you'd like to be an "enthusiast," you can celebrate with a glass of burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich for lunch! (Yuck!)
I've never made it through Ulysses, although I've never tried. I guess I'm not an enthusiast. Perhaps someday when I have a lot more time.
Posted 05:15 AM | Comments (3) | ai books
Newdow Disinformation
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided Newdow —the case where Michael Newdow, a parent, attempted to challenge whether is constitutional for a school district to include the words "under God" in a daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Newdow's challenge was unacceptable—the court jumped on a technicality and decided not to decide the case. So why have I seen so many headlines that say things like, "Supreme Court Preserves 'God' in Pledge"? Technically, this is true; the Court did not say it was unconstitutional to keep the "under God" in the pledge. However—and this is what the headline elides—the court also did not say that the "under God" was constitutional. The court simply decided not to decide the case. And as the SCOTUSBlog points out, their inaction only begs the question:
As the Court stands now, Scalia, Rhenquist, O'Connor, and Thomas have clearly stated they think "that it is constitutional for a school district to include the words "under God" in a daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance." Are there any court-watchers out there who know where the other Justices might stand? I added a request to the analysis over at L-Cubed for some feedback from those who know much more than me, but other thoughts are welcome.
An aside: How awesome is the SCOTUSBlog, anyway? Wouldn't it be great if Lexis, Westlaw, Findlaw, and other legal research tools started providing easy links to this sort of concise analysis of every Court decision?
See also: Yahoo full coverage of the decision.
Posted 05:35 AM | Comments (3) | law general
WIR #4: Back to Reality
The "retreat" was a crazy and refreshing time. I learned that "Jesus is the ultimate public defender" (um...!?!) and that practicing law does not prevent a person from also singing karaoke to Bon Jovi or doing "interpretive dances" to Journey. In all, a very enlightening and exhausting weekend. I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.
This Week In Review was supposed to feature some thoughts on the interaction between prosecutors and defenders, the joys of 5th Amendment research (big lessons: police lie and the law rewards them for it; this Supreme Court thinks people are born knowing what it means to have the right to remain silent—see e.g. its decision in Alvarado), and perhaps something about the process of criminal appeals. However, that will have to wait for another day. How can Monday morning come so quickly?
Posted 05:49 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
Retreat
Thanks to everyone for all the comments (and emails) recently; collectively, you're helping to write an article whose goal is to help explain to the uninitiated why law students blog and what good might come of it for both writers and readers. This post explains more; all thoughts still very welcome and appreciated. If you email, please let me know if you'd prefer your thoughts not be quoted in the article. If you post a comment, it's already public, so I'll assume you don't mind if it's published elsewhere. If this assumption is incorrect, please let me know that, as well.
Meanwhile, ai will be quiet (from my end, anyway) for a couple of days while I "retreat" to the Maryland woods with my fellow summer interns and the attorneys we're working with. Much reading (for me, probably Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, upon L's strong recommendation) card-playing, and swimming is promised.
Have a great weekend!
Posted 08:47 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging
Bel Canto: Opera Will Save Us
In the ongoing project to catch up on long-overdue reading, last weekend I finished Bel Canto after two weeks of trying. My progress through the book was slowed in the second week by the fact that I began commuting to work by bike rather than by train, removing 1-2 hours of reading time from my workdays. However, I found the book to be very slow and not very compelling until about page 275 (of approx. 325 pages). That's my quick review: Very slow and overwrought for the first 3/4 or more, followed by 30-50 pages of rising action, all of which comes to a chain-yanking conclusion in the final 5 pages. In other words, after reading this book, I felt a little used. I read 275 pages of overwrought description only to be kicked in the stomach and patted on the head in the end?
(If you haven't read the book but would like to, don't read on—spoilers ahead.)
Plot summary: Group of international business and governmental elites gathers at the home of the Vice President of an unnamed "developing" nation to celebrate the birthday of the CEO of a multinational Japanese electronics corporation by listening to a private performance of Roxanne Coss, one of the world's most famous and accomplished opera sopranos. At the end of the performance, the house is invaded by approximately 20 "terrorists" who have come to kidnap the president of this developing nation, only to find the president couldn't make it to the party because he didn't want to miss his favorite television soap opera. (Apparently, the president has never heard of a VCR.) Instead of kidnapping the president, the "terrorists" decide to hold the whole room hostage; they soon relent and set free all the women, sick and old men, and house workers (the "terrorists" claim their goal is to liberate "the workers"; the 3rd-person narrator wonders what they mean by "liberate" and "workers," but never returns to these questions—this is one of the book's great flaws).
Skip ahead two weeks and the "terrorists" and hostages have settled into routines and begun to make friends with each other. They sit around, waiting for something to happen, and have lots of time to think about whatever the author, Ann Patchett, wants to put into their heads. This could be interesting, but mostly isn't since the thoughts Patchett chooses to catalog are mostly trivialities along the lines of, "gee, I really do care about my wife" (from an elite european hostage). Some of the thoughts are slightly more interesting. For example, the Vice President of the developing nation is a hostage and we learn that he grew up in something like poverty and never dreamt he'd ever live in a house that had a machine in the kitchen dedicated solely to making ice. He also becomes obsessed with maintaining this house and begins taking over the cooking and cleaning and gardening that he'd previously paid servants to do for him. The Vice President's discovery of all the work his servants had done for him—all the labor he'd taken for granted that had made his life so nice—is a highlight of the book. If more characters had had epiphanies like this, the book would have been much more impressive. But even the Vice President doesn't do much with his newfound knowledge; he doesn't even express thanks (that I recall) for the labor his servants have always done, but instead becomes obsessed with doing it himself in order to maintain his material possessions in the best possible manner. So instead of readers getting a character who develops some consciousness of the economic inequalities of his world, we get a character who obsessed and controlled by his material possessions. Yawn.
After 4.5 months (and a couple hundred pages) of this, a few characters have fallen in love and everyone is captivated by the singing of the famous Soprano. This singing—opera, of all things—is what seems to bring everyone together; it's what set the scene in motion (the reason everyone was in this house in the first place), and what makes everyone look forward to their next day as a hostage or "terrorist" in this little drama. In this way the book is highly romantic, preaching an ideal of Western European culture as a sort of universal language that can soften even the hardened hearts of "terrorists." This music makes language irrelevant—the fact that the songs the soprano sings are in languages neither she nor her listeners understand does not matter because the music touches them all and never fails to put them into a dreamy state of bliss. The book verges on magical realism in this regard, but it doesn't quite go that far. Perhaps it should have.
The relationships between the hostages and the "terrorists" seem to raise some sort of argument about how we're all just people and no matter how deep our political differences, we can all get along quite well if we try (and, um, if we can just unite around the universal language of Western European music!). This could also be a redeeming theme of the book, but its execution here comes off as too simplistic to be more than a superficial gesture, a la Rodney King's plea, "Can't we all just get along?"
In the end... Well, I won't tell you the end because that's really the only reason to read the book, but for me it ended up not seeming like a very good reason. In fact, at the end of the book, I felt a little used, like I'd been tricked. I read all of this, for that? But rather than ruining it completely for those who've not yet read the novel, suffice to say the ending returns to the book's central theme that Western European culture, and specifically opera, is the only thing that can make this crazy world tolerable for civilized people. One of the main characters summarizes that theme in his final lines (speaking of Roxanne, the Soprano):
Oh yes, opera makes life worth living. If the book were written differently, it might be possible to read this as a larger argument that, rather than building armies and trying to resolve conflicts with bullets, we'd be better off trying to encourage art and artistic expression around the world. That argument might have potential, but it's not really in this book. The novel sets up a situation—a sort of microcosm of "globalization"—where the characters could gain some real insight into their own lives and the larger world they live in; it does an excellent job of setting a scene where these potentially fascinating characters could experience real growth. But instead of allowing them to grow or learn at all, the novel spends far too much time talking about the magical powers of opera, making its characters little more than a passive audience for the beautiful music.
Why do the "terrorists" want to kidnap a president? As mentioned above, we don't know, and the book belittles the "terrorists" by making them seem like they don't really know, either. Would a small group of "terrorists" attempt a kidnapping like this without good and deeply-believed reasons? No. But the book never explores any of that, nor does it explore the possible participation of its hostages—these global business and governmental elites—in whatever events or injustices the "terrorists" might be be trying to address. Instead, the novel seems to assume its readers won't care about these things, because the music is what's important. Who cares what motivates "terrorists"? Play that beautiful opera, please!
Bel Canto won the "Orange Prize"* and the Pen Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The only explanation I can see for so much critical adulation is that the critical establishment is a sucker for romantic peans to European culture. Perhaps after Sept. 11, 2001 (the book was published in 2001, so I assume many critics were reading it in the context of that day's aftermath), many critics also enjoyed a novel that didn't ask them to think too deeply, if at all, about what might motivate a "terrorist," or about their own relationship to those motivations. There will always be an audience for escapist fantasy, I suppose, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. I only found the book disappointing because its characters and setting suggest it's going to be much more than the "fantasia of guns and Puccini and Red Cross negotiations" promised by the book jacket blurb (from The New Yorker). But no, a fantasia is exactly what it is.
* Side note: congratulations to Andrea Levy, the winner of the Orange Prize for 2004 for her novel, Small Island.
Posted 08:30 AM | Comments (2) | ai books
Blog Conversations
Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for anecdotes, opinions, and comments about law students and blogs. So far the best response has been from Pre-1Ls and new bloggers. Anyone else out there care to comment? If so, please email or comment on this post or the earlier one.
My question and its response raises more questions. First, why do people prefer to email rather than comment on the blog? Second, why do you think a post about ironing elicits so many comments, while posts about more "serious" things (i.e. blogs and law school or myriad posts here and elsewhere on subjects of politics, current events, history, social justice, etc.) elicit none? This may relate to my thinking out loud about the effect of blogs on the public/private sphere: Do blogs encourage talk about personal/non-public issues at the expense of discussion about public or social issues? Are law school blogs as popular as they are primarily because they give us an outlet for narcissism, a chance to revel in the daily travails of wrinkled shirts and annoying classmates who talk too much and professors who teach badly? And if so, is that really valuable? Or are law school blogs doing something more?
Again, I'm just thinking out loud. All/any comments/thoughts definitely welcome.
Posted 06:42 AM | Comments (12) | law school meta-blogging
Non-Firm Summer Lunch
While Jeremy humorously recounts the way summer associates scramble to get free lunches from their firm, my non-firm summer job has bought me (and the other summer interns) lunch only one time in three weeks. Pizza. Good pizza. We loved it.
Meanwhile, Sam says lunches with firm partners can be awkward. Not a problem in our public defender's office; even the head attorney—the Public Defender—is cool and easy to talk to. The general lunch deal is most of the interns bring a bag lunch, while the attorneys go get something from a local "budget" establishment (top contenders: Chipotle, Subway, Popeye's, local non-chain sandwich shops). Then everyone takes their food to the conference room and we all eat together. It's really the best part of the day, and so far there hasn't been a single awkward moment.
So although some people may be making thousands of dollars this summer working at firms, see what they have to put up with? Stressful email competitions to get a place at the table, and awkward silences with partners. You're not likely to have these problems at your public interest summer internship. In fact, if you're like me, you won't even have a computer or an email address/program with which to compete in an email competition. (I can't believe how little our office uses email, but then, most accused criminals who qualify for a public defender aren't going to have email, are they?)
Yep. The public interest summer legal job. That's where the fun is!
Posted 06:40 AM | Comments (2) | 1L summer
Ironing Is Wrong
I've often been told I'm a master of the obvious, and in that role I'm here to tell you that the act of ironing clothing has got to be among the most pointless and just plain wrong activities available to modern humans. There is something very sick and wrong with a culture that requires clothes to be free of wrinkles, and places such a premium on this that it requires hours and hours of horrifyingly tedious work in order to ensure that no wrinkle sees the inside of any workplace with a "business casual" or "business" dress-code. What, praytell, is so awful about a few wrinkles? Ironing is so pointless it makes me want to scream!
Perhaps I will develop a very short but scathing explanation for why I think anyone who notices or cares about wrinkles is an asinine moron. Then, I will wear very wrinkled clothes—I will never lift an iron again. When anyone comments on how wrinkled or rumpled I look, I will lay into them with my short but scathing explanation of why I think they are an asinine moron. Don't you think this would be a great way to win friends and influence people?
Posted 05:16 AM | Comments (10) | 1L summer life generally
Airport Express and the Apple PDA that never will be
Apple released Airport Express yesterday, a little device that lets you: 1) broadcast a wireless internet connection to up to 10 users (just like a regular Airport base station or other wireless access point), 2) stream your iTunes library to your stereo, and 3) extend the range of an existing wireless network (it acts as a bridge). All for $129. Very cool.
Of course, this would be an even better addition to the "digital hub" if Airport Express also had a data-out line to allow you to plug into a television, VCR or other video input so you could stream your photos and iMovies to your tv. With this capability, Airport Express could give the TiVo Home Media Option a real run for its money.
Apparently Steve Jobs also announced that Apple created a new PDA sometime recently, but it will never see the light of day. This I do not understand. I mean, even if it wasn't a market leader, if it's made by Apple, you can bet they'd sell a few million—at least enough to pay back some of the R&D that went into creating the thing. Was it just not insanely great, or ... what?
I bought an eMate in 1999 for about $300—this was the "laptop" version of Apple's Newton. Compared to what's available now, the thing was big and heavy, but it was definitely very cool and way ahead of its time. It could surf the web, send and receive email, accept input via stylus and handwriting recognition or keyboard, play mp3s, etc. And best of all, it was bulletproof. Like a PDA, it used flash ram for memory (no hard drive), so there were no moving parts to worry about if it got banged around. It was made of superhard and thick plastic and the screen—the only sort of sensitive part—was shock-mounted to withstand hard hits. Instant on/off, 20-hour battery life (or more) using the equivalent of four AA batteries, etc. In some ways a dream machine, and definitely the ultimate reporter's or student's note-taking/story-writing companion. But all we got was the first version before it was discontinued. And even w/out support from Apple, these things are still going strong. Imagine what the descendant of a machine like that could be today!
I guess we'll never know...
See also:
- More on Airport Express from Jim Heid's Macintosh Digital Hub Site.
- More from Ars Technica.
- TidBITS review: "If you were to try to assemble the same set of features using the best, cheapest products from other makers, you'd easily spend $300 to $500."
Posted 05:39 AM | Comments (1) | mac geek
Blogs and Law School
Perspectives Wanted: I'm working on a short article about law students and blogs. If you are a law student (or soon-to-be or recently-graduated law student) or a law professor and you have any thoughts about the relationship between blogs and law school that you'd like to share, please comment or drop me an email. I'm specifically looking for thoughts and/or anecdotes in the realm of the following:
- Why do law students blog?
- What can law students gain from blogging? (Does reading and/or writing blogs help you get better grades? Does it make school more fun or interesting? Does it make you feel less lonely/scared/anxious/etc? Does it add something to your law school experience?)
- What do you find most enjoyable or valuable about reading or writing a blog? (If you're a reader, what are the best posts or blogs to read and why? If you're a blog author, what have been your best experiences with blogging?)
- Have you made any contacts via blogging that have led to professional advancement of some kind? For example, has anyone gotten job leads via a blog that actually turned into a job? Or have you learned about any other opportunities via blogging that have somehow been good for your legal career?
- Does your school have a "blog community"? By that I mean, do you know and/or interact with other bloggers at your school?
- Do you have any thoughts about law professors who blog? Do you find law prof blogs interesting or helpful in any way? Would you like to see more of them? Or do you find law profs who blog generally talk about things that don't interest you?
- If you're a law professor with a blog, why do you do it? What have you gained? Do you read student blogs? Do you think blogging is a valuable activity for law students? If so, why? If not, why?
Meanwhile, this project has provided a good excuse to do a little research into the nascent field of blog history. A few interesting tidbits: According to Matthew Haughey and Peter Merholz, the word "blog" was coined by Merholz in about May of 1999. Blogger was born in August, 1999. This FAQ by Jorn Barger on RobotWisdom also offers an interesting snapshot of where blogs were in September 1999. It suggests the What's New page at Mosaic may have been the first blog, way back in 1993. Dave Winer says the first blog was the first web site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. According to Rebecca Blood's history of weblogs, Barger was also the first to apply the term "weblog" to what we know today as blogs. The BlockStar Timeline puts all these pieces together.
According to this article, blogs are booming today:
The Pew Research Center estimates that between 2 and 7 percent of adult Internet users write a blog, and 11 percent visit blogs.
As for how many of those blogs are "blawgs" (or law-related blogs), the Legally-Inclined Webring currently has 449 members. If there's a better way to gauge the size of the legal blogging community, I'm not sure what it is. For comparison purposes, Denise Howell's blogroll at Bag and Baggage is quite extensive and clocks in at approximately 138 law student blogs (those "Learning the Craft"), around 52 "Academic" blogs (most of which are presumably written by law professors), and about 215 blogs in the "Practicing" category. So, according to these sources, the legal blogging community currently numbers
Posted 05:47 AM | law school meta-blogging
WIR #3: When clients are crazy
Week three of the public defender summer internship was short but eventful. I feel I'm settling in a little, getting more comfortable with feeling lost, perhaps. After three weeks, I'm impressed and surprised with the human pace of the work. The attorneys in the office stay quite busy and there seems to be plenty of work to keep a posse of interns busy, as well, yet only a handful of the attorneys seem to stay late or come in too early, and the atmosphere of the office is serious but not oppressive or too fast-paced. I'm sure not all public defenders enjoy this kind of pace, and I'm sure it feels different as an attorney than it does as an intern, but so far it seems that the promise is true that this sort of law practice is less all-consuming of time and energy than BigLaw.
Highlights of this week included some fireworks in court, a crash course in criminal procedure, and a visit to jail.
The fireworks in court were shocking, really, from the perspective of someone learning about and considering becoming a public defender. First, I watched as one of our attorneys (a public defender) entered the lockup adjacent to the courtroom to confer with a client prior to that client's appearance in court. Through the closed door, we could hear the client yelling at the attorney, and several minutes later she emerged looking stunned and on the verge of tears. She immediately left the courtroom, and I soon learned that outside in the hall she had passed the verge and was crying, after her client verbally attacked her competence and intelligence. Apparently she didn't feel physically threatened because the client was restrained in his cell, but she was still seriously shaken by his yelling. Later, after the attorney had recovered, her client emerged and asked to represent himself. I'm told that usually this judge would be loathe to grant such a request, and would usually order the public defender to act as assistant counsel to the pro se defendant. Not this time. The judge lectured the client on how stupid he was for giving up such good representation, and then granted his request. The public defender didn't mind.
The same day, one of "my" attorney's clients (by "my" attorney, I mean the attorney I'm working for this summer) showed up for trial in an apparently "altered" state of mind. Long story short, he tried to dismiss his own charges by signing a dismissal order as if he were the judge. "But that has no authority," my attorney told him.
"No authority?" he asked. "I put my copyright on there, it's authority."
"But the judge will know he didn't sign it."
"I am the judge!"
Ok. So my attorney told the client she was going to have to raise the question of his competence before the judge, the client got angry and said he was going to ask for different counsel, my attorney said fine. Then, while waiting for the case to be called, the client decided to leave the courthouse. He just took off. Not a good day.
I rushed through that story, but trust me, it was a pretty crazy experience. How can you help people as an attorney if they try so hard to make it impossible for you to help them?
The crash course in crim pro was just that, about four hours covering the basics of how to run a case from the time an attorney meets a client to trial. I was shocked by the degree to which state legislatures are free to depart from federal rules and procedures, and the degree to which states are free to stack the deck against defendants when it comes to rules of evidence and discovery. Although prosecutors have an ethical duty to provide all exculpatory evidence to the defense, they don't always do so. What's worse, according to our attorney-teacher, they're probably less likely to do so in bigger cases.
This is consistent with small and large reminders I've picked up in the past few weeks that people working in law enforcement and criminal prosecution don't always care too much about the truth. In just three weeks, I've seen police lie on the witness stand, and I've heard prosecutors bully defense attorneys over very minor issues. Such things certainly diminish whatever respect I had for the criminal justice system, but they also increase the incentive to go into criminal defense—the need for good defenders is real.
Finally, the jail. Unfortunately, the jail will have to wait because I have to run to work. I'm sure I'll be visiting the jail again before the summer's over so I'll say more about it after I've been more than once.
I also wanted to send good wishes to my fellow 1Ls and beyond who are doing fascinating legal jobs elsewhere, but I've run out of time to track down the links so instead I'll just say: Have a good week, everyone!
Blogging in public and private spheres
This is going to seem random, but that's the way my mind works. What follows is just some thinking aloud about how blogs might affect the public and private spheres. My thoughts are related to the idea of the public sphere as described by Jurgen Habermas, but I'm thinking in more simple terms of a sort of basic line between what people feel should be/is public (acceptable for public discussion, public knowledge, related to other people), and what people feel should be/is private.
Question: What happens to the division between public and private spheres when people begin putting their daily diaries online? Does this already fungible division, A) disappear altogether, B) become somehow more entrenched, or C) something else or in between?
A) The division between public and private disappears altogether. If people put their most intimate thoughts online (in a blog, for example), nothing is left for the private sphere. Everything that's published goes into the public sphere, and the private basically shrivels up and dies. There are ways in which this could be a wonderful thing.
Example: Let's say that previously my decision about what kind of car to buy was a private decision, one I felt I could and should make on my own, possibly with only a little input from people very close to me. If this is a private decision, part of the private sphere of my life, I might feel free to buy the biggest, most gas-guzzling SUV I could afford. After all, this is part of my private life and affects only me (and perhaps a few people very close to me). Sure, people will see me driving my car, but by then it's too late. I've made the decision, and it's my decision to make, so who cares what they think. On the other hand, if this is now a public decision, one I make in a public way, with public input (i.e., via my blog), I may have many second thoughts about buying that big pollution machine that may cause more people to die so that don't have to pay too much for all the gas it requires. Instead of thinking that my decision affects only me, I will be reminded that it has far-reaching affects on all of my readers, as well as people I've never heard from or met. Net result: Fewer people buy SUVs. With a smaller or less clearly-bordered private sphere, I will be less able to delude myself into thinking my actions do not affect other people, and I will be more likely to make choices that are good myself and others, instead of those that only seem (superficially) good for me.
Of course, a disappearing private sphere could also be a bad thing. Is my decision to have an abortion a public decision, or a private one? What about my decision to have gay sex in my bedroom? The Supreme Court said last year that this was part of the private sphere, and therefore not subject to legislation. This is a positive step. However, I wonder if the same goals could be achieved by making this less private and more public. Instead of closing gay sex off in the privacy of personal bedrooms (a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" model), what if we all talked about it openly, with at least the same honesty and frankness with which we talk about heterosexual sex? Would prejudices against gay sex then disappear?
Bottom line: It seems impossible that the private sphere will ever completely disappear. Certainly blogging won't erase it....
B) The division between public and private becomes more entrenched. People do not put their most private and intimate thoughts online. Blogs encourage people to put more information online, so that at first glance it appears the sphere of privacy is disappearing—what was once reserved for the privacy of a personal diary or the intimate conversation of a trusted friend, is now published online for all the world to see. In some cases, this does appear to be happening. Especially on certain LiveJournal sites, for example, blog authors appear to be publishing very intimate details of their lives, pushing those previously private details into the public sphere. However, those intimate detail-blogs are by far the minority. While many blogs reach a surprisingly personal level, most still withhold a great deal of information about their authors' lives and thoughts. What is withheld is often guarded zealously, with blog authors taking great pains to keep even the slightest whiff of those subjects out of the public eye. So while the private sphere may be shrinking, it is far from disappearing. Instead, it's becoming more entrenched, more vehemently protected, more private and more precious. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Hard to tell.
C) The division between public and private neither disappears nor becomes further entrenched. Perhaps it doesn't change at all? Do you think your ideas of what's public and private have changed at all since you began blogging or reading blogs? Have the lines dividing what you feel you can and should discuss with other people moved at all? Has your idea of your relationship to other people/the world changed in any way?
Posted 08:21 AM | Comments (2) | meta-blogging
RIP Reagan
Former President Ronald Reagan died today at age 93. As you're bombarded with media "packages" that the networks have had canned for the past 5 years in preparation for this day, remember that he was not the saint current Republicans would like to make him out to be. And this is so true:
I'm not yet sure how they'll do it, but you can bet Rove is cooking up ways to imprint the Reagan-Bush II connection on the minds of every U.S. voter. I bet Bush will give at least one more heavily televised pseudo-eulogy linking the "great accomplishments" of Reagan with his own "war on terror."
UPDATE: More perspective from someone who recognizes that Reagan was not the saint some people would have us believe.
See also:
- the Rotten Reagan Biography,
- Whiskey Bar's take and the many thoughtful comments that follow; it's an excellent thumbnail sketch of the parts of the Reagan years you're not likely to see much of on tv today or in the coming days [link via Notes from the (Legal) Underground]
- Europe Recalls Reagan Fondly, Arabs Don't:
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he was sorry that Reagan died without standing trial for 1986 air strikes he ordered that killed Gadhafi's adopted daughter and 36 other people.
Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air raid in response to a disco bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Gadhafi that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 people.
"I express my deep regret because Reagan died before facing justice for his ugly crime that he committed in 1986 against the Libyan children," Libya's official JANA news agency quoted Gadhafi as saying Sunday.
- Reflections from Glorfindel of Gondolin, Musclehead, and Half-Cocked.
- Steve Gilliard's take, including a huge comment thread.
- USA Today: Upbeat Reagan reminded USA to believe in itself. And we all want to feel good, right? Even and especially when we don't deserve to.
- Salon: The Regan legacy by Rick Perlstein
- The Gipper's Dark Side by Charles Taylor
- The rich got richer by James K. Galbraith (on Reagan's "voodoo economics")
- Reagan without sentimentality by Joe Conason: "He told us government was the problem -- and his corruption-plagued administration made sure of it."
- Reagan backers want hero on U.S. currency.
- Still the Teflon President?
- Reagan's funeral guided by the past: a meagre attempt to put all the pomp and circumstance into some kind of context.
- State funeral will feature rare pageantry:
Rich with military symbolism, state funerals in Europe date back centuries for royalty or such figures as Lord Nelson, the British admiral slain at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
The founding fathers of the United States didn't have state funerals. Plans to bury George Washington in the U.S. Capitol were set aside, in part because such an interment struck some patriots as too reminiscent of British royal burials in Westminster Abbey.
- Tips on visiting Washington to pay respects to Reagan
- Once a scarlet woman, Nancy is turned into a role model.
- The other side of Reagan: Perspectives from the international press.
- Reagan's Shameful Legacy: Mourn for us, Not the Proto Bush" by Ted Rall
- Let's bury Reaganomics with its founder.
Posted 09:25 PM | Comments (3) | general politics
CrimPro Crash Course
Today promises to be the most important day of the summer internship thus far: The lead attorney in our office (the public defender) will be giving us a 4-hour crash course in criminal procedure. More than half of my fellow interns are rising 3Ls who have had CrimPro already, so they're not looking forward to this. The rest of us, the so-called "rising 2Ls," are waiting with baited breath for all of the stuff we've been observing/working on to start to make more sense. How does the puzzle fit together? I hope to know a lot more about that by this afternoon.
Meanwhile, two more quick lessons from court: First, don't smoke PCP before showing up for your trial. Second, don't spend the 10 minutes in lockup before your hearing verbally abusing the attorney who is about to be an advocate on your behalf. After that kind of behavior (which could be heard throughout the courtroom even through the heavy lockup door), the judge is not likely to find you very credible when you then ask to be released because you're not a threatening person.
Fahrenheit 9/11 coming June 25th
Mark your calendars for June 25th, the opening night for "Fahrenheit 9/11." See the trailer now. (Thanks to Screaming Bean for the heads up.)
It's just coincidence that George Tenent resigned on the same day that this film's trailer went online, right? And those two events couldn't possibly relate in any way to the fact that G.W. Bush has begun consulting attorneys about the unmasking of Valerie Plame, right?
Somewhat related anecdote: While L. and I were biking down around the Mall last Saturday (the day of the big WWII Memorial dedication), we saw a younger guy (late 20s, maybe?) wearing a t-shirt with a big photo of George Bush on the front and big letters reading "Terrorist in Chief." The guy was being heckled by some older men (in their 50s-60s, I'd guess) who were yelling at him saying the shirt was disrespectful. The hecklers were right in one sense — the t-shirt does not show respect for Bush. But the hecklers may be wrong in another since because by showing disrespect for Bush the t-shirt arguably shows respect for the U.S. Constitution and general American ideals of democracy and justice. As energy spatula helpfully explained in these comments, for many veterans (and others, I'm sure), support for the president comes down to a matter of faith:
I understand that and share the sentiment to some extent — in many ways lots of things in life come down to matters of faith. However, it seems there's a point at which faith becomes blind, and beyond that point I fear it often does more harm than good. I doubt a film like "Fahrenheit 9/11" will convert blind faith into more critical faith for many viewers; the blindly faithful likely won't want to see it, or if they do they'll just be looking for ways to discredit or dismiss the film. And there's sure to be plenty of material in the film to criticize. The point is not that Moore is telling us the unvarnished truth while Bush and Co. are telling nothing but lies. The point is that we owe it to ourselves, our country, the world, to be critical of the stories we're being told, and not to accept those stories blindly. I'm looking forward to "Fahrenheit 9/11" for what it will add to the pool of stories from which Americans decide where to place their faith.
Lessons from court
One of the great benefits of my summer position is the time I get to spend in court. So far, it seems I spend 1-4 hours in court, 2-3 days each week, depending on what my attorney has going on and how many times I'm doing advisements. In just the first couple of weeks I've learned a huge amount about procedure, what the different people in court do, how prosecutors and defense attorneys interact, the powerful role of the sheriff's deputies, and how to advise a pro se (representing him/herself) misdemeanor defendant to ask for 90 days to pay court costs. I'm sure just sitting in court is increasing my comfort level being there, and that can only be a good thing for when I have to go before a judge as an attorney. And even if that day never comes, I'm sure the experience is also paving the way for a much easier time next year in Criminal Procedure class. I knew it would be, but after a couple of weeks, I can say for sure that spending time in court is a great thing for a law student.
Read on for a few other little anecdotal lessons I've learned from being in court...
1) Do not procrastinate: In the process of moving from one apartment to another, the defendant or a friend who was helping placed three dresser drawers in the back (hatchback) of his car. Three-four weeks later, the defendant was pulled over for driving with a cracked windshield. He readily consented to a police search of his car, and police quickly found two crack pipes and a couple of syringes among the random items in one of the drawers. The defendant was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. He claimed the drawers were "junk" drawers filled with items he never used, which is why he left them in his car so long—it was all stuff he didn't really need. He also claimed he had no clue where the pipes came from, but suspected a former girlfriend had hidden them there and forgotten about them. Perhaps the defendant was lying, but he's also been working at a good job for 40-50 hours/week for the last five years and has otherwise stayed out of trouble, so he doesn't seem like a big crackhead. Bottom line: If the defendant had simply cleaned out his car when he moved, he never would have been charged with anything more than driving with a cracked windshield. Next time you're moving, finish the job or you may end up in court!
2) Do not bring crack or crack-smoking paraphernalia with you to court: I mentioned this one the other day, but it's a valuable lesson worth repeating. The defendant was appearing in court for trial on a traffic violation. She was sentenced to 10 days in jail when and deputies took her into custody and inventoried her possessions they found crack and drug paraphernalia. Now she faces possession charges. And this sounds insane, but it's not the first time it's happened in this court. People, come one! When you go to court, leave your crack at home!
3) Don't be completely insane in court: If a defendant wants to speak in court, a defense attorney has to let him or her do so. Here, a defendant spontaneously asked a police witness, "Does your self remember when my self told you that I'm the light of the world and I control the planets telepathically?" Needless to say, this wasn't really a positive move for the defense.
4) When your objection is overruled, you've challenged that ruling, and the judge has stood firm, don't raise the same objection again five seconds later—even when you're right. This happened to a prosecutor and the judge exploded from the bench. Swinging around in his chair to glare bullets at the prosecutor, his face red as a beet, the judge shouted, "I guess what you'd like is that everything against the defendant comes in, but nothing in his favor should ever enter this room. Is that right? The prosecutor was basically speechless, and the rest of the court was frozen in shock. After a moment, the prosecutor tried to begin an explanation, but the judge cut her off. "Your objection has been overruled. Do you have any power to overrule that ?" The prosecutor sat down, and the judge swung back to listen to the defense attorney, who did a great job continuing as if nothing had happened. Perhaps you had to be there, but trust me, it was an electric moment. A judge shouting down a prosecutor in a courtroom on behalf of the defendant!? Of course, the judge ruled for the prosecution, but still, it was a priceless thing to see.
5) If you steal someone's purse and cell phone, don't immediately use the phone to call 911 to brag about it to the police. This isn't from court, exactly, just a story my attorney told me. A defendant actually did this. The 911 call is hilarious.
Posted 05:22 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer
Mount Vernon Trail
Last Sunday, in my first bike ride of the summer, I took a little spin on the Mount Vernon Trail (see map). I didn't want to be too ambitious, so I just went as far as Old Town, Alexandria, which I believe is just a little more than halfway to Mount Vernon. As many others can attest, this is a popular ride/run/walk, and for good reason. The trail is generally smooth and the scenery is varied and sometimes quite beautiful. Between my apartment and Alexandria, I saw downtown D.C. (not bad, scenery-wise, as far as cities go—there's a monuments everywhere you look), the Potomac (which I crossed), grassy fields, dense deciduous forests with a few conifers thrown in here and there, and a short stretch of swampland just north of Alexandria which I imagine might resemble the Florida Everglades in miniature. In all, a very nice ride. The path also crosses right under one of the landing paths for Reagan National Airport, so if you're into that sort of thing you can take a break and lay in the grass watching the planes glide over your head so close it almost feels like you could reach up and touch them.
One note about this ride: As a bonus to the nice scenery the path is well-signed so once you're on it you'll have no trouble knowing where to go. The problem is in accessing the path in the first place. I searched high and low for directions from downtown D.C. to the entrance to the bike path on the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac. I knew there was a bike path there, but I also guessed getting on that path might be a trick. I couldn't find any web directions, so I had to go down there and poke around. What I learned was that you actually need to access the bike path from a point just behind the Jefferson Memorial. If you're in downtown D.C., the best way to get to that point might be to head to the Mall, cross over, and follow Independence along the tidal basin until you find yourself behind the Jefferson Memorial. More directly, you can take 15th street past the White House and the Washington Monument, and just stay on it across Independence Ave. until, again, you're behind the Jefferson Memorial. You'll see the asphalt bike path to your left. (This map might help a little.) D.C. desperately needs more bike routes and dedicated bike paths, but even more crucial and easily-accomplished would be better signage for the bike routes that already exist.
I realize I am biased, but really, there's something about seeing the world from a bike that makes the world more beautiful. I'm ashamed and a bit sad to admit this was my first little ride of the summer. I envy Scoplaw, who seems to be spending the summer biking a lot and reading and writing (and writing about) poetry. I'm quite sure more biking and poetry (or perhaps really compelling novels) would make my summer infinitely better. To that end, I may begin commuting to work by bike. I wonder how well this garment bag pannier works...
Posted 05:07 AM | Comments (2) | life generally
WIR #2: Advisements, Orientation, Investigations
Last week was only the second week of my summer public defender internship. It feels like I started about a month ago, but last week was only week two. At this rate, it's going to be a long summer—not because I'm not liking the job, but simply because the 11-hour days make such a demanding schedule that my mind and body is rebelling against. That aside, last week was highlighted by two days of advisements, an orientation session for interns, an office barbecue, and my first "in the field" experience trying to find and interview witnesses for a case.
Advisements are interesting, but I feel pretty useless doing them. As interns, we basically go to court to sit through arraignments and make sure defendants who want and qualify for a public defender get our contact and information and we get theirs. It seems some people are surprised to learn that public defenders aren't free, and that not everyone can get a public defender—the service is only available to people below a certain income threshold. If you make too much money, you can still get a court-appointed attorney, but you'll get a private attorney who has agreed to be called upon by the court for those purposes. Also, even if you get a public defender, you may still have to pay a nominal fee for your attorney—but only if you lose. In advisements, the judge advises the accused of their charges and asks for their plea. If they plead not guilty, the judge asks if they have an attorney or if they'd like the court to appoint one for them. If they ask for court-appointed counsel, the judge asks them some income questions and they fill out some paperwork. Once all that's complete and they qualify, interns like me will get more contact information from them, and make sure they understand they need to call our office soon so the public defenders can help them with their case. Then they ask us questions about their chances and the charges against them and what kind of jail time they might be facing. This is the frustrating part because my only answer is: Call this number and your attorney can answer all your questions. It's so nice to be helpful.
The orientation session was another exercise in how much I don't know, with the lead attorney giving us a fact pattern and asking us to think of all the factual and legal questions we'd want to ask if faced with this case. I spotted a good, oh, 5% of the issues. Why was I chosen for this job? The fact that many of my fellow interns claimed to be just about as clueless as I was only made it slightly better. The good news: The attorneys know we know nothing, so, as I was advised before beginning, they're unlikely to give us enough rope to hang ourselves. Little lessons learned: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a telephone number so a search of your phone records is generally ok. Search warrants generally require probable cause, but if a tenant has abandoned an apt., a search may be ok w/out probable cause because the tenant has relinquished his/her 14th Amendment right to privacy. It's very hard to win an argument that police used impermissibly suggestive ID procedures to identify witnesses. You can't ever suppress an arrest; you can only suppress illegal fruits (evidence) of an arrest. (I don't think I ever thought of trying to suppress an arrest, but apparently many people think of it, and it's not an option.)
The bottom line lesson of the orientation: We don't judge, we defend. We don't put people in jail, we try to keep them out—no matter what.
Quickly, the investigation assignment was also frustrating. I guess when you walk around a neighborhood asking random people if they have any information about a recent crime, the odds are rather low you're going to find someone who A) knows something worth listening to, and B) wants to tell you about it. So we spent about three hours and got about nothing for our time. Still, it was interesting, and I got the feeling that with more practice I might be able to learn to approach people in ways that might lead to better results. I'm sure I'll get more chances to try. That said, I don't think I have a bright future as a private investigator.
Today begins week #3, and although it will be a short week, it will be busy, including more advisements, filing a notice of appeal, and possibly beginning work on the appeal. I'm sure I'll also spend more time in court, about which more soon, including the invaluable lesson learned last week: Do not, under any circumstances, take your crack cocaine with you when you go to court. (IANAL (I am not a lawyer) and YMMV, but trust me, taking crack to court is just not a good idea.)
Posted 06:09 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer
