PSAs

Two quick public service announcements:

1. Have you registered to vote yet? Please do so now! If you've already registered, you might consider donating to Just Vote or some similar organization to help finance their final push to get out the vote this November. Jason Kottke's Voters Information Guide offers more information and links to other organizations that are helping register people to vote and get them to the polls.
2. Have you backed up your data recently? Everyone should back up freqeuntly, of course, but if you're a law student who is now several weeks into the fall semester and you haven't backed up your notes recently, all I can say is: Are you insane?

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming (trying to manage the chaos around here).

Posted 08:21 AM | Comments (3) | life generally

Network Down Again

Ok. Our wireless network is down again. I think it's time to stop whining and just pony up the monthly fees. Goodbye cell phone, hello land line and DSL!

Posted 08:42 PM | Comments (4) | life generally

Congratulations, Transmogriflaw!

Hey everyone! The future just got a little brighter -- Transmogriflaw now has a healthy, happy baby boy!

Posted 06:56 AM | life generally

Must read email

My inbox is full. This morning there were over 800 messages in it. Most of them I've read, but not all of them. And if you've ever sent me email, you may know that my responses are sporadic; sometimes right away, sometimes not for weeks. It's a bad thing. I need to work on this. But in the last week, with network problems at home and many other things going on, I fell behind even more than usual. And this morning I was trying to sort through the backlog and found this:

The Equal Justice Works (EJW) Public Interest Career Fair will be held at the Washington Hilton on Thurs. Oct. 28 and Fri. Oct. 29. This Fair, the largest of its kind in the country, likely will feature 200+ employers (primarily non-profits and gov't agencies) and 1,200+ law students from around the country. GW upper class students and alumni can apply to individual employers and receive interviews directly from those employers at the fair. All students (incl. 1L's) can meet employers through informal “Table Talk” sessions that are held during the Fair. Finally, students can attend panels relating to public service careers. For more information about the Fair, including the names of participating employers and an overview of the daily schedule, see here. Employer listings will be continuously updated on the EJW website. ... The CDO will collect application packets(consult each job posting in the EJW's employer database to find out which materials the employers request) from interested upper class students and submit them to employers. The deadline for submissions to the CDO is Tuesday, Sept. 28 at 5:00 pm. However many employers review on a rolling basis, students might want to send directly to those employers before Sept 28.

Um, yeah. The 28th is tomorrow. crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap . . .

Posted 10:38 AM | 2L

Listing

One: The internet is down in our apartment. Again. Two: The job interview last week obviously didn't go as badly as I'd thought (or perhaps the competition wasn't very stiff) because I got the job. This is good, I think. Three: I frequently wish I lived in the mountains. Four: I watched “Chernobyl Heart” the other day on HBO and nearly cried. It's about a condition that's affecting kids in the “contaminated region” of Russia where they are born with holes in their hearts. The patch required to fix the holes costs $300 and most of them can't afford it so most of them die. Also, I learned that the “sarcophagus” built around the Chernobyl reactor to contain the radiation is leaking and in danger of collapsing, which might cause an even bigger disaster than the one in 1986. If the U.S. has billions of dollars to spend around the world, why not put some toward saving these children and securing that nuclear reactor? Talk about making the world a better (and safer) place... Five: I should probably start acting like a student or else I'm going to be in trouble. Six: Girlfriends who buy you cool jeans that make you look like not so much of a slob are cool. Seven: I don't have a seven, it's just lucky. It's never lucky for me, but I heard a rumor. Eight: Blawg Wisdom has been serving up tasty morsels recently. You should check it out. Or, do not pass go and proceed directly to the Legal Theory Lexicon. It kicks geek bootay. Nine: I do not believe I just wrote “bootay.” The accent is on the last syllable, you know. Ten: You know you're a geek when you want this for Christmas.

Posted 03:52 PM | Comments (6) | 2L

Damn Neighbors!

On the subject of arresting protesters or otherwise limiting their freedom of expression, GW (the law school I attend) is right next door to the IMF and World Bank (or is it the WTO? I always confuse the two...) buildings in downtown D.C., which means once or twice a year we get an email like this from the Dean of Students:

The Monetary Fund (IMF) has meetings scheduled for Oct 2 and 3 and according to local authorities, relatively small demonstrations/protests are planned in connection with these meetings. Because of the Limited Orange Alert in this area, security concerns have substantially increased. In preparation for both the meetings and protests we can expect that the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will - as they have in the past - institute street closures in the the area of the Law School -- especially on 20th Street -- and you can and should expect delays and detours in the entire Foggy Bottom Campus area over this weekend.

What's great about this is how matter-of-fact and ho-hum the dean is about the massive police presence involved with these military-style operations. Police in full riot gear surround the buildings near GW, and they put up 6-8 foot high barricades in the area streets. The barricades tend to control an area much larger than the two blocks occupied by the IMF/World Bank, ensuring that any protesters who do show up are not likely to be seen or heard by anyone involved with the meetings they're protesting. So we live in a free country and you have a right to express yourself, but legal professionals -- like the faculty and administration at a major U.S. law school -- are happy to accommodate massive police actions that threaten those freedoms and rights. And this accommodation takes place without a single word of critique. Great. Whatever you think of the police “response” to protests (which I would argue is less a response than an advance attack—the “Bush Doctrine” of military preemption applied against U.S. civil rights), these emails from the dean are also irritating because they make absolutely no attempt to interest GW law students in why this is happening, or to educate them in any way on the serious legal and social issues involved. Why are there protests? What are the protesters protesting? Why are the police responding in this way? What is the history of this kind of police action? Are current and former GW students currently involved in litigation against the city for serious police misconduct in previous protests? (Yes.) Aren't these serious and relevant legal issues? And aren't we at a law school, fergoodnessake!? Isn't an educational institution supposed to educate and encourage critical thinking? Or did I miss the memo that said law schools were supposed to teach law students to be obedient consumers whose only concern with protests is the inconvenience they might cause? It's things like this that make it abundantly clear why so many people think lawyers are a form of pond scum. Are legal issues like this not on the radar because there's so little money to be gained by paying attention to them?

Posted 01:35 PM | Comments (3) | 2L

Arresting Protesters: Neiderer

Since they don't allow comments at the Volokh Conspiracy (a mistake, IMO), I'm commenting here on this brief post from Orin Kerr about recent arrests of Bush protesters. It's a followup to a longer piece that criticizes a Maureen Dowd editorial about the arrest of Sue Neiderer because Dowd failed to mention that the charges against Neiderer were dropped and she was released. The suggestion is that Dowd somehow failed by not mentioning this. Perhaps. But isn't the issue here that the damage was already done at the point of arrest? I mean, it's great the charges were dropped, but the fact that Neiderer was arrested in the first place is what's offensive, isn't it? It's much like police rounding up protesters at mass demonstrations for little to no reason, holding them until the protest is over, then releasing them w/no charge. “Oops! Sorry! We don't want to prosecute because we already accomplished our goal, which was to violate your right to express yourself when and where it might have made a difference.” So while Professor Kerr says Neiderer's case “looks kind of bogus,” I beg to differ. The police (or secret service) should not have such unfettered freedom to arrest people who say “disagreeable” or “controversial” things in public places. The fact that those people are later released w/out being charged does not in any way reduce the fact that the police violated their rights to express themselves. I haven't studied First Amendment law yet. From the little I understand at this point, the state has the right to regulate the “time, place, and manner” of expression. Does this kind of police conduct fall within that sort of regulation? And if so, am I the only one who thinks it should not?

Posted 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | election 2004 general politics

A Horse Is A Vehicle Of Course

You've probably seen this story about Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin's rhyming dissent in a recent case deciding whether the state's drunk driving law could be applied to a man on a horse. The majority said a horse was not a vehicle, but Justice Eakin disagreed to the tune of the theme song of “Mr. Ed”:

“A horse is a horse, of course, of course, but the Vehicle Code does not divorce its application from, perforce, a steed as my colleagues said. ”'It's not vague,' I'll say until I'm hoarse, and whether a car, a truck or horse this law applies with equal force, and I'd reverse instead.“

We need more judges like Justice Eakin. Then again, maybe one is enough.

Posted 09:02 AM | Comments (2) | law general

Criminal Duct Tape

“Every criminal uses duct tape for something. Matter of fact, that's the sine qua non of being a criminal. Every time I pick up some duct tape I start to worry.” —Professor Evidence, speaking of U.S. v. Trenkler, 61 F.3d 45 (1st Cir. 1995) (where the court found that the fact that two bombs were both constructed with duct tape was evidence suggesting that they were made by the same person). Other comments of note from recent classes:

• Random hypo comment from Prof. Evidence: “I met him at Denny's. Good place for a drug deal.”
• “There's kind of a King Learish quality to this case” — Prof. Corporations speaking of Francis v. United Jersey Bank, 432 A.2d 814 (1981) (in which two scumbag sons are also officers and directors of the family corporation from which they're stealing millions; mom was a drunk, daddy's dead).
• “You don't send a man to jail just because he's done some bad acts in the past. Gosh, if that was true, we'd all be in jail—especially the prosecutor.” —Prof. Evidence when discussing the O.J. Simpson case and FRE 413-415, but he's not necessarily referring to this case or the prosecutor in this case.

Posted 08:02 AM | Comments (2) | 2L law school

Behind the Curtain in Bush v. Gore

The ACSBlog links to an article at the SCOTUS Blog about:

the lengthy October 2004 Vanity Fair article by David Margolick et al. on the 2000 election litigation, with a focus on never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court. The piece has received a great deal of attention inside the Court because, as the article details, “[a] surprising number of [law] clerks [from that term] talked to Vanity Fair.”

Vanity Fair generously allowed SCOTUS Blog to post a PDF version of the article online. Get it while you can.

Posted 07:45 PM | election 2004 general politics law general

Corporate Welfare

Shocking and offensive information from my Corporations textbook (Corporations: A Contemporary Approach by Lawrence E. Mitchell and Michael Diamond):

For example, in the 1996 report, [Stephen] Moore and [Dean] Stansel reported that $75 billion of taxpayer dollars were going to pay direct business subsidies in over 125 congressionally-sanctioned programs. Combined with tax breaks, the amount exceeded $150 billion (and we think it‘s worth noting that at the time, this exceeded the core welfare bill — that is, excluding social security and medical care — by at least $5 billion). Among the most flagrant abuses noted by Moore and Stansel were direct federal payments to Martin Marietta, a major defense contractor, of $263,000 for a Smokey Robinson concert for its workers, $20,000 for golf balls, and $7,500 for an office Christmas party. Perhaps more legitimate were federal contributions of $2.9 million to promote Pillsbury’s efforts to sell its baked goods, $10 million to help sell Sunkist oranges, $465,000 to McDonald‘s to advertise Chicken McNuggets, and $2.5 million to Dole to help it advertise pineapples, nuts and prunes. (45-6)

Are you shocked and offended yet? Reading stuff like this makes me so mad I could spit. Ptewie! (See, I spit!) Excuse me, but what, praytell, is the least bit “legitimate” about 465,000 taxpayer dollars paid to McDonald’s to help sell McNuggets!? Or any of that other crap? Why are taxpayers subsidizing ads that sell them crap they do not need and which is potentially lethal!? The answer is: Taxpayers aren‘t subsidizing crap like this, at least not consciously. Instead, their “elected officials” are subsidizing this crap, and those officials obviously don’t give a damn what taxpayer-voters think (at least once the election‘s over). Disgust reigns.

Posted to the tune of: Everything’s Not Lost from the album “Parachutes” by Coldplay

Posted 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | 2L general politics

Hooray for the Good Americans!

----- Amazing Race Spoiler Alert !!! ----- Congratulations to possibly the nicest and most deserving team ever to win The Amazing Race! It was a great finale that restored my faith in humanity. (Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was great to see a deserving couple win.) I'm guessing some will complain that Chip and Kim played dirty w/the yield and by deliberately misleading the "dating Christians" about which flag was correct. That's true, but what separates Chip and Kim from some of the other teams is that they never seemed to do anything just to be mean or for personal reasons. As a commenter on The Yin Blog said, they never did anything out of malice. They also showed the most enjoyment and real enthusiasm about the places they got to visit, and I think they showed the most respect for the people in those places. Whereas many of the other teams made derogatory comments about the local people or culture in different places, Chip and Kim just drank it all in with smiles and appreciation. In all, I felt like they played a positive game, a fair game. They helped other teams when they could afford to, and they didn't when they couldn't. In my book, they won fair and square. Congratulations, Chip and Kim! Kudos also to the show's writers/producers or whoever designed the final challenges and everything. The boats and flags and climbing wall and kayaking in the Phillipines was brilliant because it was all done in close quarters where teams could see each other most of the time and know when they were behind, which made for high drama and spirited competition. It makes me wonder if the game should try some new things next time around. For example, airports always cause everyone to catch up with each other; why not do less with airports and more on one island or in one city or country, leaving teams on their own to decide how to get around? Of course, Survivor is just one island, and is it just me, or is that show losing its luster—especially compared to the Amazing Race? What to say about the other teams? Apparently Colin proposed to Christie on tv this morning, and she accepted because he's supposedly really not the guy he appears to be on the show:

Guinn told co-anchor Harry Smith, "Christy and I, we have a rotten edit: I'm a raging lunatic psycho and Christy just puts up with it - which couldn't be farther from the truth. We actually have a wonderful relationship and I'd like to just state for the record that I am the luckiest man alive being with Christy."

Hey, whatever works. They did make it through seemingly happy with each other, so perhaps they're the perfect couple. And there's no doubt editing can really skew how an audience perceives someone on a show like this, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. See also: Coverage from RealityTVWorld.

Posted 12:38 PM | tv land

Yin-Yang Flowerpot

Not all Mondays are the same. On some Mondays, it seems like nothing happens—just another tiring start to the week. But not on all Mondays. Mine yesterday: 8:50 a.m.: Prof. Labor starts off class with this: “Mr. Ambimb, if you're an average worker starting a new job and your contract says you have to become a 'union member in good standing' within 30 days, what do you think that means?” I know Prof. Labor wants me to say that this language will confuse me and mislead me into thinking I actually have to join the union, when in fact the law says that the only thing a union can require in a contract is that new employees become “financial core members” (that they pay initiation fees and dues). Prof. Labor thinks the courts have erred in ruling that the “member in good standing” language is ok. I disagree, so I tell him, “If I was an average employee, I'd wonder what it meant to be a 'member in good standing,' so I'd ask about that, and my employer and the union would be legally obligated to explain that it meant I didn't have to join the union, but just pay initiation fees and dues.” Prof. Labor didn't like that, so he moved on and I didn't have to answer any more questions. I wasn't trying to be difficult; I just think that the deck is stacked against both unions and workers (and Prof. Labor started out the semester saying the same thing), so even if the “member in good standing” language might be misleading, that's a tiny little advantage the union and the worker deserve. Also, we typically apply the principle of caveat emptor to most contracts, why not here? The employee should read his/her employment contract, and if he/she has questions, he/she should ask for clarification, right? (For more on this, see the NLRA § 7 (I think—I forget where it addresses union security clauses) and Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, 119 S. Ct. 292 (1998)). But the best part of it was, this was the first question of the morning, so it was just reviewing material we'd covered yesterday—the fact that I'm behind in the reading didn't show! 11:00 a.m.: Interview w/“K Street Non-Profit.” This was my first (possibly only) interview this fall, but it was for a job to start immediately, not next summer. It sounds like a great position, and the people who interviewed me were very nice, but I completely dropped the ball from the get-go. They started like this: “We were intrigued by your cover letter. You said you'd written something about modifying John Rawls' 'original position' as a basis for a more equal distribution of social goods. Can you tell us more about that?” My answer was basically: Uh, no, not really. Of course I didn't say that, but I'm sure that's how it sounded. See, I wrote that paper about four years ago, and what I write in my cover letter about it is really about all I remember about it, except that Rawls was fairly tangential to the paper, and I'm not an authority on him by any means, and I wasn't outlining any modifications to the OP or the “veil of ignorance” so much as arguing that some version of these ideas would be a better basis for equality in law, and since that's saying nothing new (it's just restating what Rawls said), I obviously shouldn't have mentioned it in my cover letter at all. There's a little more to it; if I reread the paper I could talk about it more intelligently, but that's the point, isn't it? That's what I should have done before going to the interview! So there's definitely a lesson here: Don't talk about anything in your resume or cover letter that you're not prepared to talk intelligently about in an interview (or later if you get hired). Who knew someone who read my cover letter would be a fan of John Rawls!? It might not happen often, but if you're going to talk it, you better be able to walk it. This is like job-hunting 101 advice, which makes me feel all the more foolish for overlooking it. Yeah, interviewing is fun! But it was, and, like I said, they were very nice about it. They also asked about my union organizing experience and asked me to pretend I was a university administrator explaining why grad students should not be allowed to unionize. I mention it because it was another unexpected question, a smart question on their part which I assume was intended to determine whether I understood more than “my” side of an issue that was important to me. I think I did fine there. The work this non-profit does is pretty cool, but, although I felt good about the interview, something in their closing handshakes tells me I'm not going to get the job. Still, it was good interviewing practice, and obviously I needed that. 1:40 p.m.: Try to stay awake through Evidence. Should the fact that a married person is having an affair be considered evidence of “character.” What kind of “character” has an affair? What does that tell us about the person? More Harrison Ford courtroom video clips from a movie I don't recognize but assume is fairly popular (Ford is the defendant in a murder case). Also a clip of Joan Cusack racing through an office with a videotape, also from a movie I don't recognize. I do wish Prof. Evidence would at least identify the movies he's showing clips from. It would make them more interesting and allow me to add them to my list of movies I need to see. 3:50 p.m.: Prof. Corporations starts the discussion part of class with: “Mr. Ambimb, say you're an investor and the directors of the company you've invested in decide to do something that will cause the company to lose $26 million, even though they could do something a little differently and only lose $18 million. How would you feel? Mr. Ambimb, Kamin v. American Express.” That's how Prof. Corps starts a class. He doesn't ask you to tell him about a case, he just names the case and you have to start talking about what you think is important about it. If you start off with “this case stands for the proposition that...” or some similar attempt to reduce the case to a rule, Prof. Corps will cut you off and demand to hear something interesting about the case. I had little of interest to say about Kamin, so I threw out a few tidbits about why it was just another in the endless line of cases that reaffirm's the law's insistence that the purpose of the state is to promote the unchecked and uninhibited accumulation of private profit. We quickly reached the limit of my technical knowledge of buying and selling stocks and fiduciary duties and duties of care, etc., all of which were somewhat important to what Prof. Corps wanted to talk about in relation to this case, so Prof. Corps moved on. I was only in the hotseat for about 15 minutes! Now, I'm virtually guaranteed to be left alone in that class for the rest of the semester, which as Half-Cocked points out, is going to make it rather hard to focus on the reading. In fact, at this moment, I'm writing this horrendously long post when I should be reading for corporations, but I no longer need to be concerned about such things. Isn't life grand?!? So, like I said, not all Mondays are the same. On some, little happens besides you being exhausted and behind from being lazy all weekend (if you're me). On others, you learn:

1. If you disagree w/some professors they'll just move on and leave you alone. (Don't get me wrong; I really like Prof. Labor, we just disagreed here a little and that didn't fit well into what he was doing yesterday).
2. If you mention something on your resume or cover letter, you better be prepared to talk about it intelligently later in an interview.
3. If you can demonstrate that you've read the material but that your knowledge of the context of the material is seriously limited, some professors will move on and leave you alone.

All very valuable lessons. YMMV.

Posted 12:32 PM | Comments (7) | 2L law school

Chilled

It was actually almost cold riding to school this morning in tevas, light shirt and shorts. Is it really going to decide to be fall? Please!? The home internet is down again, so who knows what that means.

Posted 08:49 AM | law school

On Being Behind

It strikes me that in my second year of law school I should know some things I didn't know in the first year, and I'm sure I do, but that's not stopping me from making the same mistake I made last fall, which was to fall behind right from day one. Stupid stupid stupid stupid! This semester I'm taking classes on topics I like and am interested in from the outset, and classes I'm sort of predisposed to dislike. The “good” courses are labor law and evidence, but also ConLaw2. The “bad” class is Corporations, which I'm only taking under the “know your enemy” theory. Also, the only Prof. that uses a strict random socratic method is Prof. Corps, who calls on people randomly and grills them for an hour (really) in a very exacting way. My other profs either don't call on students at all (or almost), or demand very little when they do call, so you can fake it or simply beg off if you have to. So far, none of the reading for any class has been bad, as in really dry and hard to follow. Still, I always want to do the labor reading, and there are parts of ConLaw and Evidence I want to read, while I'm always procrastinating doing the Corps reading. But since the Corps reading must get done (b/c I never know when I'll be in the scorching hot seat in there) I have to do it first all the time. And since it's the reading I want to do the least, I put it off as much as possible. And perversely, that means that I also put off doing the reading I actually want to do. So basically, since I don't want to read for Corporations, I'm not reading at all, and that's killing me. Our compressed 13-week semester is already almost a quarter over—we only have 10 weeks left and I feel like I've barely started! Do not be stupid like me. Do your reading so you won't have to hate Mondays! This message has been a public service from your friends at ai.

Posted 07:11 AM | Comments (4) | 2L law school

Kakistocracy

FYI: The Next Big Thing is a cool radio show. I especially like the “Use It Or Lose It” feature, wherein “activist lexicographer” Erin McKean gives a writer a handful of words to use in his/her next novel or magazine or newspaper article. This week's words were lovertine (someone addicted to lovemaking), esprise (obsolete verb meaning “to inflame with love,” usually used in the passive, as in, “she was esprised and taken with his love”), and kakistocracy (a government run by its worst citizens). Hey, we're living in a kakistocracy! See why this show is great? McKean has also co-edited 1001 Legal Words You Need to Know. Do you know them all?

Posted 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Silver City

Saw Silver City Friday night. Salon‘s comments were pretty dead on:

Sayles has basically been making the same picture for, like, umpty-five years now. I’ve gotten used to it; I even kind of like it. It‘s a picture in which some fine and well-intentioned actors stand in front of a scenic background, knees locked, and deliver a monologue about America. Sometimes it’s a pretty good monologue about America. And once you get used to the movie‘s creaking plot, its aw-shucks ragtag heroes and sniggering, black-hatted villains, and once the general boringness of the filmmaking stops bothering you, the Sayles film can crank itself up to a certain power.

I, of course, liked it, because I’m admittedly part of the choir. The scenic backgrounds of Colorado were nice, and some of the actors did a great job. Tim Roth‘s character also delivers a nice little monologue about how the mainstream media interacts with independent media and bloggers. Basically, he says, the independents uncover a big story and write something about it, but the mainstream won’t touch it until there‘s a mountain of supporting evidence so that the story just can’t be ignored anymore, and then they‘ll publish a one-paragraph teaser on page 6 about “rumors and allegations,” and then the politicians or corporations or whoever is involved will have to deny the rumors and allegations, and that’s when the story finally hits the front pages of the mainstream media: “X denies rumors!” Is that what happened with the “CBS memos”? Is that how CBS got burned? Maybe it didn‘t float the one-paragraph teaser before it went public, and then it got creamed by the righteous indignation of the right. But watching “Silver City” and seeing what’s happening w/the whole CBS memos thing—it‘s all so ridiculous. If CBS got these documents and shared them with the public, why should we crucify CBS if they turn out to be fakes? If they’re fakes, the next question is: Do they reflect reality, despite being fake? And another question: Who faked them, and why? (That‘s being asked now.) The point is, we shouldn’t punish the media for reporting information they find. Yes, we should ask them to verify as best they can the information they find, but shouldn‘t we encourage sharing more information, not less? If we set up a standard where the only thing the media can “report” is what’s already well-proven to be “true,” then we‘ll get what we have today, which is a media that does little beyond reading press releases. Not good.

Posted 09:39 AM | ai movies

Speed Networking Bootcamp

Hey, you know, I didn‘t get the memo, so can you tell me something? Are we supposed to be finding jobs right now? I mean, a lot of people seem kind of interested in this topic, but, well, I’m not so much. Ok, a little. A job for next summer would be good. One that pays money would be nice. My credit card balances are really pretty persuasive arguments that I need to find a job that comes with a paycheck. Howrey Bootcamp But rather than really apply for jobs, I‘m better at just surfing around the edge of that pool. I got an email from our career office about something called Howrey Bootcamp, which is supposed to teach litigation skills. So, rather than apply, I went to the website and took the quiz, “Are You A Natural Born Litigator?” I scored an “11,” which is supposed to mean this:

If you scored 11 or above: Ever had that dream where you’re giving your closing argument, you glance up and see a stormy sky where the ceiling ought to be, and every point you make is punctuated by a flash of lightening? Yeah. We thought so. Congratulations. You‘re a natural born litigator. You live and breathe (and dream) the law.  Howrey Bootcamp® is perfect for you. This is your day in the sun.

Of course, I have never had that dream, nor have I had anything like it at all. Sure, I’ve dreamed of being an advocate in court, but there was no lighting involved and the ceiling of the courtroom always seemed to be a light sky blue. (I wonder if that‘s a color choice intended to help people stay calm.) The Bootcamp application requires a 100-word “personal statement.” I tried writing one:

Your “Boot Camp Quiz” suggests that I am a “natural born litigator.” That may be, but I confess I have never had a dream of stormy skies and lightning bolts gracing my courtroom performances. No, my litigation dreams are not stormy; instead, they are calm, collected, and when I finish speaking, a tumultuous storm is the furthest thing from my listeners’ minds. Instead, my listeners will be at peace because they will know that what they just heard was right, and that they are right to agree with it, and to find in favor of my client. And the sun will shine and everyone will rejoice, such is the clarity and power of my persuasive speech. Now, isn‘t that a better dream for a natural born litigator?

I’m sure that would get Howrey‘s attention. If that was the goal, I bet I could do even better:

Dude! I don’t need no stinking “100 words.” What I‘m all about only takes ten: I rock the hardest, and it’s all about the rockage.

Maybe I‘ll apply and see how far that statement gets me. Speed Networking In addition to looking at websites and taking quizes, my job search thus far has also included a public interest “Speed Networking” event last week at GW. Basically, it’s like speed dating, but instead of looking for a date, you‘re looking for a job. Ok, I admit it sounds a bit hokey, and I was concerned beforehand that it would be weird and awkward and a big fat waste of time. I’m happy to report I was completely wrong; the event was fun, interesting, and I learned a lot. The event was open to ten students from each of the area law schools (including, I believe, GW, Georgetown, American, Howard, UDC, Catholic, and Baltimore), all of whom are interested in working in a public interest legal job. On the other side were representatives from about 18-20 different public interest legal employers. The employers sat at tables, and the students chose to sit at those tables that most interested them. The event was divided into five, ten-minute sessions. So the moderator rang a bell to tell us our ten minutes had started, and we began talking to the employer, asking questions, answering questions, etc. Ten minutes later, the bell rang again, we shook hands, and went to another table. The bell rang again, and we speedily networked for 10 more minutes. Sound weird? It was. But like I said, it was actually fun and I think worthwhile. I had memorable conversations with terrific people from the SEIU, HALT, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and the D.C. Public Defender Service, aka, the best criminal defense firm in the country. (Doesn‘t the PDS have the most kickass graphic on its business card?) The man from SEIU said his job was next to impossible to get because it’s such a great job that everyone wants it. Yeah, that would be me. The woman from TLPJ said about the same thing. Both offer 1-2 year fellowships for recent law school grads, so that‘s both a good way to get a foot in the door and get some great experience, too. HALT, “an organization of Americans for Legal Reform,” appears to do very cool policy work toward the goal of increasing access and accountability in the civil justice system. They didn’t say it was impossible to get a job there, but there was a funny minute during that 10-minute session when the woman from HALT asked, “So, are any of you interested in policy?” She got blank stares. I had already spoken a bit with her in the session, and if there‘s one thing you have to be careful of in a 10-minute group informational interview, it’s monopolizing the conversation. You don‘t want to be that guy who just wouldn’t shut up and let anyone else get a word in. So I held my tongue, but hell yes! I‘m interested in policy! Definitely something to keep in mind. Finally, the women from PDS were very cool and reminded me immediately of one of the huge upsides to being a PD—being professional means being human, accessible, and outgoing. I’ve talked to some law students who have summered at PDS and they haven‘t raved about it, primarily because it seemed so big that they didn’t get to know any of the attorneys or even many of the other interns very well, and they spent too much time researching and writing, and not enough time in court. I‘m sure experiences may vary, but that makes me glad once again that I worked elsewhere last summer. But, and so, these attorneys from PDS seemed to really love their jobs. They reassured me that, even though the PDS is a huge “firm,” work is spread around evenly and reasonably—one of them said she was only working on seven cases at the moment, which is manageable, and that she almost never feels like she doesn’t have enough time to really do the work necessary to present a quality defense. She said she always has access to several interns, and they save her bacon on a regular basis on the research, writing, and investigation fronts. At any rate, I‘m certain the PDS would also be a very cool place to work next summer or beyond. But I started talking about speed networking, and I’ll end there, by saying again that this was a great idea, I‘m glad I did it, and I recommend it if your school decides to do something like this. I’m not sure if the representatives from the public interest organizations found it as useful as I did, but they should know that, from a student‘s perspective (at least mine), events like this are good for them because they help students target their job searches to jobs they really want and for which they’re actually qualified. This helps employers by reducing the number of applications they have to sift through. At least, it seems like it would. FYI: Today is the deadline to apply to be an intern next summer at the Dept. of Justice. If the election goes well, that could be a very interesting job. I‘m sure it would be an interesting job regardless of which way the election goes, but I’m pretty sure I‘d enjoy it a lot more if the Attorney General is ABA (Anyone But Ashcroft). FTR (For The Record): There’s a fan in my window blowing cool air on me, but currently it is almost certainly also blowing the distinct scent of marijuana smoke into my little office space. Yes, one of my neighbors is smoking dope. Yet, it‘s raining outside. Could I be mistaken?

Posted 09:58 AM | Comments (2) | 2L

City Bikes Rocks

So after whining about how vulnerable my new Kryptoloc was to a Bic trick, I took it back to City Bikes where I bought it the other day. “Have you heard of the Bic trick?” I asked, putting my lock on the counter. The response was immediate. “Yeah. You want to exchange it for an On Guard lock?” So I did. It cost about $15 more and it‘s a lot heavier, but the flat key is supposed to make the thing a little safer. You can’t pick the lock with a Bic pen, anyway. So thank you, City Bikes! Now I see why you have a reputation as the best bike shop in D.C.! BTW, NPR is reporting on this as I type, it‘s been reported in the NY Times, and City Bikes has added a special page devoted to the issue. Oh yeah, this is going to be great for On Guard, and not so great for Kryptonite. It’s hard to have much sympathy for Kryptonite, though; it had the last 12 years to figure out how to avoid this problem...

Posted 05:06 PM | life generally

Separate But Not At Peace

According to the Writer‘s Almanac:

[Today is] the birthday of American novelist John Knowles, born in Fairmont, West Virginia (1926). He is best known for his novel A Separate Peace (1959), based in part on Knowles’ experiences at Phillips Exeter Academy. It the story of two friends, Gene and Phineas, one an intellectual and the other an athlete, and their summer together at an expensive American prep school during the early years of World War II. A Separate Peace is one of the most widely read postwar American novels. It is frequently compared critically to J. D. Salinger‘s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). It was in its sixty-fourth Bantam paperback run in March 1986, with more than seven million copies in print. In 1960, Knowles won the first William Faulkner Foundation Award for this notable first novel.

Great. I read A Separate Peace in junior high school. I bet you did, too. And now I want to know why. Why did we read that? What was the point? What makes this a good little novel? I haven’t the foggiest idea. In fact, I‘d completely forgotten about until I saw a snippet of the movie version the other night on tv. What I saw was pretty bad. And it didn’t really bring back the novel. My memory is so terrible. So do you remember the novel? And do you have any idea why every American schoolkid (or lots of them, anyway) has to read it? Do kids still read this today? p.s.: If things seem random around ai recently, that may be because they are. I don‘t know which way is up these days, but it seems some part of me is fighting doggedly not to allow the rest of me to happily fall back into student mode. Please bear with me while my multiple personalities engage in mortal combat. To the victor will go the spoils. p.p.s.: The Writer’s Almanac online version is like a blog, but it‘s not a blog. The index page shows you the current day, and entries are archived by week, but there’s no way to link to just one day‘s entry. It should just be a blog. An audioblog, even. Yeah, it should. You can sign up to get it in your inbox every morning, and that’s nice, but, well, why not do it via RSS?

Posted 03:49 PM | Comments (6) | ai books

Bikers: Beware the Bic

A few days ago when I was leaving school I started unlocking my bike and found, to my great surprise, that it it was already unlocked. Apparently, that morning, since I was late to class I had rushed in locking the u-lock and I hadn‘t properly seated the u-bolt w/in the lock before I turned the key. So all day my bike sat outside the school in downtown D.C. unlocked. It looked locked, but if anyone had grabbed the u-locked and pulled, the lock would have come right open. Luckily, no one tried it. Also, I use a cable lock in addition to the u-lock, so a bike thief would have had to get through that, as well, before taking my bike. I don’t trust cables completely because I think they‘re too easy to cut. I’ve had three nice bikes stolen in my life (two came back to me—I‘m a very lucky guy!), so I try to be serious about locking my bike. After I discovered that my lock hadn’t really locked, I also discovered that it seemed to be locked open; I could no longer get the key in to open the lock and insert the u-bolt. I guess when I turned the key w/out the u-bolt being fully seated, I basically broke the lock. So the next day I went to the bike shop and bought a new lock. I didn‘t want to spend an arm and a leg, but I wanted a good lock, so I got the cheaper Kryptonite they had, a $35 standard Kryptolock u-lock. I was bummed about having to spend $35, but glad to know I had a quality lock. And then I saw this: Your Brand New U-Lock Is Not Safe!

As you guys might remember, I recently had the nicest set of wheels I’ve ever had stolen from me. Today I was hanging out with a friend and we got to talking about that - he said his friend showed him just recently how to open a U-Lock with a ball point pen. Of course I didn‘t believe it. That is until just thirty seconds ago when I opened my own Kryptonite Evolution 2000 with a bic ball point pen! This has to be the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen. Try it. Take the end off the pen, jam it in the lock, wiggle around and twist.

Is this for real!? It kind of looks like it. The above site links to videos of people actually opening Kryptonite locks with Bic pens, and Kryptonite responded and did not deny that this was possible. The owner of City Bikes (where I got my lock) even chimed in yesterday saying he‘d found the Bic trick quite easy to replicate. Some lock owners are talking class action. And I just bought a new Kryptonite lock. Crap.

Posted 11:07 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Amazing Race Luck

Did you see The Amazing Race last night? Did you see Colin and Christie, possibly the most dominant team ever, almost get booted because of smart play on the part of the other teams? It was a beautiful thing, but alas, the C&C team is still in the race b/c it was a “non-elimination leg.” The finale is next week. On My Own Personal Scorecard^{(r)}^, Chip and Kim are the only team remaining that deserves to win (although the “bowling moms” have done pretty well, too). If C&C win, I will lose all faith in humanity and I will be moving to Canada because it will be a sign that the end of the world is near, Bush is going to be reelected, and a long period of war and misery will soon descend upon the globe.* Mark my words. Oh, and as usual, the Yin Blog has already commented on this episode. Don‘t miss Yin’s Reality TV category for comments on the whole season. * I‘m kidding, of course. It’s a tv show, ferpetesake!

Posted 08:21 AM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging tv land

Welcome GW Bloggers!

Say hello to Idle Grasshopper (don‘t miss his great post on Schadenfreude) and Neil Chilson, two new 1L bloggers (or blawgers) at GW law school! That brings GW’s blawger total (or rather, the total number of GW blawgs I know about, since I‘m guessing there are others) to a humble 5. They include ai; Life, Law, Libido, which I’m still counting even though Scott and Matt graduated; and Veritable Cornucopia, which I‘m also still counting, even though it hasn’t updated since May. (Maybe if I keep linking to it, it will wake up?) That still seems very sad. Georgetown, Michigan, Indianapolis (see the special sections in the blogrolls of these sites for links to school-specific blawgs), and probably others are putting us to shame. (Does anyone know of other schools that have a large concentration of blogging students?) I wonder if the day will come when schools actually encourage students to blog as a recruitment tool. I mean, will blogs/blawgs become a factor in people‘s admissions choices? Have they already? Did anyone out there use information gleaned from blawgs in making your choices about where to apply?

Posted 07:14 AM | Comments (2) | law school meta-blogging

Blawg Wisdom Requests

Blawg Wisdom announces: The Wisdom Request Form! This new feature allows readers to request wisdom on specific topics. However, it won‘t work without you, the wise and generous readers of ai and other blawgs. Please visit Blawg Wisdom occasionally to see if there are any new requests (they’ll be collected in the Requests Category), then respond to those about which you have something to say. Also, please spread the word about this new feature and encourage others to share the love. Our first request has already arrived! If you have any thoughts about buying a laptop for law school (or would like to suggest other resources to investigate), please share! Remember, you don‘t have to provide definitive answers; thoughts and opinions are welcome. As always, if you write or run across law-school-related advice, please submit it to Blawg Wisdom! And as the Bartles and Jaymes gents used to say: Thank you for your support.

Posted 11:53 AM | law school meta-blogging

The Fargo Case

Class QOTD: “”This is something you have to put in a casebook.“ — Prof Evidence, referring to Wood v. Morbark Industries, 70 F.3d 1201 (11th Cit. 1995), in which a man named Mr. Wood was killed by a wood chipper made by Morbark Industries. Really.

Posted 11:44 AM | 2L

Reality is good

L. and I had the pleasure of meeting The Scoplaw and In Limine for coffee yesterday, and it was terrific to finally meet two bloggers I‘ve been reading for some time. We met at Tryst, but not surprisingly it was packed so we crossed the street to The Left Bank, which turned out to be a calm, airy place to chat. The Scoplaw and In Limine are both 1Ls at GULC, but they both seem to be taking the first year in stride—busy, taking things seriously, but keeping it all in perspective. The Scoplaw is enrolled in the infamous “Section 3,” which I guess is officially called “Curriculum B”:

Curriculum “B” was developed in 1991 by a faculty committee charged by the Dean to comprehensively rethink the first year of law school and offers an innovative and integrated approach to the study of law. ... The “B” curriculum, available to one section of full time students, requires seven courses different in emphasis from those in the “A” curriculum: Bargain, Exchange, and Liability; Democracy and Coercion; Government Processes; Legal Justice Seminar; Legal Practice: Writing and Analysis; Process; and Property in Time. The “B” section emphasizes the sources of law in history, philosophy, political theory, and economics. It also seeks to reflect the increasingly public nature of contemporary law.

In other words, the “B” curriculum (which all the GULC students I’ve met just call “section 3”) sounds like a dream curriculum to me, and the more I learn about it the more jealous I become of the lucky students who get to take it. Which would you rather take, Contracts and Torts (boring blackletter bullshit), or Bargain, Exchange, and Liability? And any class named “Democracy and Coercion” has got to be terrific. *sigh* If only my LSAT had been a few points higher...

But, and so, I look forward to hanging out with The Scoplaw and In Limine again sometime so we can continue plotting our route to complete world domination.

But in addition to making me pine for an alternative law school curriculum, coffee yesterday also made me wonder: Where are the GW blogs? If you check out The Scoplaw‘s blogroll, you’ll see nearly a dozen blogs by GULC students. If you check out my blogroll, on the other hand, you‘ll see one blog by a former GW student: Life, Law, Libido. There’s also one blog by a current GW student, Veritable Cornucopia, but it hasn‘t been updated since May. So I’m wondering, are there others I don‘t know about? Unfortunately, if I search for “gw blogs” I get lots of stuff about GW Bush, and that’s really not what I‘m looking for.
Is there something about GW students that makes them less likely to blog? Or, is there something about GULC students that makes them more likely to blog?

I do not know. It would be interesting to try to create a school-by-school blawg directory—has someone already done that? According to the blogroll at Cooped Up, IU Indianapolis also has a large number of blogs. So why do some schools have lots of blogs, and others so few?

Anyway, if you’re a GW law student w/a blog, hello! How ya doin‘? Please say hi sometime!

Posted 10:20 AM | Comments (5) | law school meta-blogging

Juristudents for Mac: Notetaking Tools Review

After using the law school note-taking/outlining software Juristudents for a few days, I'd say I'm going to stick to my tried and true OmniOutliner.

Note: Dave has already reviewed this product and I largely agree with everything he says.

More about Juristudents and some notes on other outliner options...

Positive:
Juristudents provides a great structure to help you record important information in an organized way so it will be meaningful to you later. The multi-pane working environment works well. When you open a class, you have a side pane called the "Course Outline" that includes "topics," cases, rules, and statutes, and a main pane for notes. Click on any topic or case or statute, you'll get the text you entered for that item. Creating a case brief is easy, and you can customize the blank brief template to eliminate repetitive typing. The default template prompts you for case name, citation, page in book, facts, issue, rules, rationale, and holding. I learned on my own to create these kinds of sections for a case brief, but it would have been a lot easier in my first year of school if I'd had something like this to remind of what to look for and to cut down on my work in taking it down.

Weaknesses:
The "Course Outline" pane is seriously lacking. Currently, the program does not allow you to move the notes and topics around in your "Course Outline." Or rather, the only way to do it is to copy the contents of an item, e.g., a case brief, then create a new item where you want to move the case, paste in the contents of the first item, then delete the original. This is cumbersome at best, a deal-breaker at worst. How many of us create outlines with such precision that we don't need to move things around? Not me. I move sections of notes all over the place all the time. Also, as I've been getting used to the software, I've ended up creating subtopics and case briefs under the wrong main topics simply because I didn't understand how the software worked—when you create a new item, it doesn't always show up where you want it or expect it. Now I need to go back and correct those errors, and that should be an easy process. Instead, it's quite time consuming.

I often find that I'm taking notes on topics and realize later that many of those topics fall under a larger umbrella topic. Without being able to move topics around easily in the "Course Outline," it's nearly impossible (a potentially massive amount of cutting, pasting, and renaming of topics is involved) to change the "level" of an item in an outline and add an umbrella topic.

What if you want to insert a subtopic between two other subtopics? You can't do it w/out, again, a ton of cutting, pasting, and renaming.

Bottom line: Moving items around in an outline should be fast, simple, and follow standard outliner conventions. Without that ability, the software is simply crippled. The model should be something like the mailboxes window in Mail, but even better would be to make the "Course Outline" behave more like a real outline (a la OmniOutliner), including "indent" and "outdent" commands. Also, the "Course Outline" feature should give you options on how to "auto-number" items in your outline, just as OmniOutliner does. OmniOutliner calls this "styles" and allows you to choose whether a topic heading begins with an A, a, 1, i, I, etc. You can specify these preferences by "level" in the outline, so that all top-level headings are A, B, C, second level are 1, 2, 3, etc. You an also speciify whether they're bold, italic, etc. Juristudents should give users this kind of flexibilty with its "Course Outline"—that's what an outline is all about, right?

One other deal-breaker for me: although it lets you export your outline, the exported file has zero indentation. All levels of your so-called "outline" are flush left. The exported file indicates different level headings via bolding and changing the size of the font, but the levels of the "outline" aren't indented as a regular outline would be. In other words, the software doesn't produce a real outline, even though it says it will. The ultimate for me would be if Juristudents could create an OPML file that I could then open in OmniOutliner or any other program that supports the format. The beauty of such a file is that you can expand and collapse levels with ease, allowing you to see as much or as little of your data as you wish. This is how I create outlines, and this is what I'd like a law school notetaking tool to help me do. The ability to see your entire 40-50 page outline collapsed to 1-2 pages of main headings or expanded to whatever level you'd like to see is great for studying around finals time. I've learned to take notes in such a way that what seems to be the most important information is in the top headings, with miscellaneous class discussion below in subheadings that I can just collapse (and largely ignore) when it comes to studying for an exam. Very handy.

Miscelleneous other drawbacks:

• Command-H should hide Juristudents; this is a standard command across all Mac apps. Instead, Command-H brings up a find/replace dialogue. Why?
• Command-C doesn't seem to work for "copy" in some of the fields, even though the Edit menu indicates it should.
• Case brief and statute titles should accept punctuation such as colons and commas. I like to put the entire case title and citation in the "title" of the case brief so that all that info will show up in the outline. You can do that with Juristudents, but not if you want to include a comma or colon.
• Typing in a large text field slows down the more text you type. It gets worse with different fonts, so that you may type a whole line of text and you'll only actually see what you've typed after a few seconds of lag. I've seen this a lot in newer, unpolished applications. I have no idea what causes it.

Final Suggestion:
A product like this is a great idea, but Juristudents still needs some work. I don't think most students create what I call "real" outlines; for most people who just use Word to create "outlines," this software may simplify the process and produce a product like that you're used to. It could definitely help first year students because it creates little informational spaces for you to fill, reminding you of the things you need to look for and helping to make sure you don't miss important bits. However, like a lot of new software, I'd say Juristudents needs to work out a few bugs before it'll be really worth the $50 its maker is asking.

Other Options:
There are several other good outliner/notetaking options for Mac users, including my favorite, OmniOutliner (with a complete version of the U.S. Constitution in outline form! see the "Sample Documents" download on this page). More feature-rich (but therefore more complicated) options include the closely-related Circus Ponies Notebook and Aqua Minds' NoteTaker. These programs apparently started from the same code base, so they are similar in lots of ways. I've spent more time with NoteBook and I really do like it; it's elegant and feature rich, but I've had difficult adapting to its outliner conventions—I just can't type notes as fast w/it as I can w/OmniOutliner. One cool thing NoteBook does that I'd like to see more programs do is it creates an automatic index for all the words you've entered anywhere in your notebook. This has potential to be a valuable study tool. For example, if you wanted to find every instance of "perpetuities," you can flip to the index and see each instance in context so you can quickly find the one you're looking for. Unfortunately, since the program indexes every single word, the index quickly gets large and rather unwieldy; it would be nice to be able to index only certain key words, but I don't think this is possible yet.

Finally, another info manager that many people rave about is DevonThink. I used this a great deal my first year in law school; it has a clipping service that makes it easy to copy text from the web into your DevonThink database, so I clipped all the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that I was going to be tested on into a database and had them at my fingertips in class and during finals. (NoteBook also has a similar clipping feature.)

As Dave mentioned in the comments to this post, Windows users might want to try Storelaw (he didn't like it) or Notemap.

See also: Outliners.com, "archives from the golden age of outliners."

Posted 01:01 PM | Comments (7) | law school mac geek

Quicksilver Saves Time

Thanks to 43 Folders, I just discovered Quicksilver, "An evolving framework for accessing and manipulating many forms of personal data." It's basically an OS X launcher app, but for me it appears to have advantages over others (like the ubiquitous Launchbar) in that it's free (I think) and it makes sense to me w/out a lot of configuration or setup. If you use a Mac, you might want to check it out.

Posted 11:41 AM | mac geek

Definition of Cute?

Ok, everybody go ooohhhaaaawwwww! (Note to those on dialup, this collection of images may take a while to load. For a quicker sample, see here, or here, or here, here, here, here, or here.)

Posted 04:28 PM | life generally

More Coolness This Weekend

In D.C. this weekend? Check out the D.C. Labor Film Festival at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. I'm thinking "Take Out" (tomorrow at 3:15) looks pretty good, as do some of the others, but they're all $8.50/each, so I'm thinking I won't be seeing more than one or two.

Posted 10:54 AM | ai movies life generally

Mathematics, a veritable sorcerer

Class QOTD: "I know you're sophisticated law students, but you can still laugh like hell. He made up the statistics!" —Prof. Evidence Prof. Evidence was referring to People v. Collins, 550 F.2d 1036 (1968), known as "the probability case" because it discusses what's required to to establish that evidence of probability has been properly introduced and used by the prosecution in a criminal case. The court wrote:

"As we explain in detail infra, the testimony as to mathematical probability infected the case with fatal error and distorted the jury's traditional role of determining guilt or innocence according to long-standing rules. Mathematics, a veritable sorcerer in our computerized society, while assisting the trier of fact in the search for truth, must not cast a spell over him. We conclude that on the record before us defendant should not have had his guilt determined by the odds that he is entitled to a new trial."

Take that all you statisticians and numbers wonks! Your sorcery is not welcome here!

Posted 10:28 AM | Comments (1) | 2L law school

Coolness Coming Up

Lots of cool things (mostly bands) are coming to D.C. Like, for example, Snow Patrol will be here Friday for $15. It appears that tickets are still available. No one really raved about them when I was looking for summer Rawk!, but they keep coming up in places I hear about good music. So, would you go? Next, the Green Festival will be in D.C. next weekend (Sept. 18-19) at the D.C. Convention Center. It costs $10 for lots of cool speakers (Amy Goodman! Jim Hightower! Greg Palast! Barbara Ehrenreich! Naomi Klein! William Greider! And more!). Or, they're still looking for volunteers to help out, and if you give them four hours of help, you get a free all-access pass for the weekend (plus a t-shirt!). Back to the music, The Killers, who nearly topped my summer Rawk! list, will play the 9:30 Club Sunday, October 3rd, for only $12. I'd love to see that, but Sunday!? And then, crazy joy of joys, who knew Camper van Beethoven was back? Apparently, they are, and their new album, "New Roman Times," will be out Oct. 12, which is also the night they're playing, you guessed it, the 9:30 Club. For $20, it's a pricey show, but how worth it! And how is it possible not to love this—according to lead singer David Lowery, the new album is a rock opera!

"We didn't want to make it an overt comment on the current political climate, so we made up a fictional North America in which there's many different countries that fight each other every once in a while, and Texas has gone neo-fascist and California has had a civil war. The main character is a soldier from the Fundamentalist Christian Republic of Texas, and the songs follow this solider and other people through the story. But it's not really that serious—there's space aliens, and we blow up the disco at the end."

I'm so there! If you can't wait for the album, the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) has an exclusive 3-song EP (that link will open in iTunes), which Lowery describes (iTunes link) as:

our very Camper-esque way of talking about the deep gulf between one America best represented by the right wing fundamentalist Christians of the south and interior, and the more urbane elements of the coasts ... we hope this record is an amusing distraction in the coming political season.

Gotta love it. (Note: No purchase necessary, void where prohibited, please see your local dealer for complete details. All plans, either express or implied, mentioned herein are subject to change w/out notice, depending on the exigencies of law school. Bleh.)

Posted 06:54 AM | Comments (3) | ai music life generally

OB-GYNs Practice Love?

Hey look, tort reform with a bizarre new twist:

U.S. President George W. Bush offered an unexpected reason on Monday for cracking down on frivolous medical lawsuits: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

But that's not all. Check out the video clip of the statement. Is it just me, or are Bush's hand gestures even more inappropriate than his choice of words?

Posted 06:40 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Juristudents

A good friend just sent me a link to Juristudents, a new cross-platform law school note-taking and outlining software package. Looks interesting. It competes with a similar package I've seen before from West or LSAC; I can't remember now what it was called and I can't seem to find any links to it anywhere. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? And does anyone use anything like this?

Posted 07:36 AM | Comments (6) | law school

Quotable Professors

Three great quotes from yesterday's classes: 1) "There are some places in our country where, if a police officer comes to your door and you don't run, you're a damn fool." —Prof. Evidence (talking about whether evidence that a defendant fled the police is relevant or probative of anything). 2) "This opinion is vapid, it will melt your brain." —Prof. Corps (in response to Simons v. Cogan, 549 A.2d 300 (Del. 1988); the good Prof. was making the point that the opinion's reasoning was circular. The opinion basically says that corps. owe a fiduciary duty to stockholders, but not to bondholders, but its answer for why was because "that's the way it is." Prof. Corps argued that the more logical reason for this difference is that the debt can "self-protect" by negotiating the terms of its loan via the terms of the bond. The stockholders don't have that option to negotiate a contract—their contract is the corp's charter, and it's non-negotiable—so stockholders get a fiduciary duty and voting rights.) 3) Bodies lying all over the place used to cause stock prices to plummet, but "you're inured to that now because you get to see Iraq on tv every day." Prof. Corps (Talking about Jedwab v. MGM Grand Hotels, Inc., 509 A.2d 584 (Del. Ch. 1986), which followed a big fire at an MGM hotel ("the worst disaster in Las Vegas history") that killed 84 people and caused MGM stock to tank. By this reasoning (that Americans today are inured to dead bodies and carnage from tragedies and war), a side benefit of the Iraq war to Bush's corporate friends is that they can now create lots more carnage (literally and figuratively) in their pursuit of profit w/out those activities damage their stock price too seriously. Great.)

Posted 07:16 AM | 2L

Welcome Labor!

Speaking of labor (and since yesterday was Labor Day, after all), a hearty welcome to the Labor Blog which its authors say is necessary because:

because we think what people do 8+ hours per day, 5+ days a week is where the fate of the nation and the world rests. When workers have power in the workplace, they end up with power in the political world, just as employers use power in the private economy to leverage privileges from the public sector.

I'll bet Justice Thomas is really going to enjoy reading this new blog! ;-) [link via the ACSblog]

Posted 11:53 AM | 2L

Reason to disagree w/Justice Thomas #32

Lechmere, Inc. v. NLRB, 502 U.S. 527 (1992): Justice Thomas goes to great lengths to repeat at least a dozen times the rule established (or rather, according to him, affirmed by this case). That rule is simply that "an employer cannot be compelled to allow distribution of union literature by nonemployee organizers on his property" except where "the location of a plant and the living quarters of the employees place the employees beyond the reach of reasonable union efforts to communicate with them." NLRB v. Babocock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. 105, 113 (1956). It's really a simple rule. A very bad rule (as the dissent by Justices White and Blackmun makes very clear), but it's simple, and could have been expressed once, with perhaps a few examples of the exception. Thomas provides the examples (which are as narrow as he can manage, including logging camps, mining camps, and mountain resort hotels), but he does so in a ponderous and pedantic way, apparently so he can repeat again and again that he's giving the finger to the union with this opinion. Respectfully, Justice Thomas, we get your point. Thanks.

Posted 09:44 AM | Comments (1) | 2L

Free Problems

I have just learned that stealing sharing a wireless internet connection with your neighbors (who either generously or naively leave their network visible and unprotected by any sort of encryption scheme) is all fun and games until something goes wrong and you can no longer connect to the internet, at which point the fun and games turn pretty unequivocally into the seventh level of hell. I have no idea what's gone wrong, but as of about 11 a.m. when I installed the latest and greatest Apple software update (the Airport Card Upgrade 3.4.3, I believe), I can't connect to the internet from home at all. My computer will connect to a network, but then it tells me that it has a "self-assigned IP address and can't connect to the internet." Great. Thanks. And worse, the computer doesn't even see the third network that was previously most reliable. Perhaps it's time to break down and pay for DSL... Oh, and since this issue really does appear to have been caused by, or is at least related to, an Apple software upgrade, all of you who have just been waiting to mock my Mac self-righteousness should feel free to do so now. ;-)

Posted 03:28 PM | Comments (14) | mac geek

Just a little cannibalism

Talking with my dad yesterday on the phone about law, law school, and humorous cases (he went to law school, too), he reminded me of the fascinating case of Alfred (or Alferd) Packer, the Colorado (or San Juan) Cannibal. That link will give you the short story, including the legend of the judge's sentencing:

The verdict was guilty, with death by hanging. The legend was that Judge Melville B. Gerry, on pronouncing sentencing said..."...There was siven Dimmycrats in Hinsdale County! But you, yah voracious, main-eatin son of a bitch, yah et five of them, therefor I sentence ye T' be hanged by the neck until y're dead, dead, dead!". This was probably not the exact statement made by the judge as he was a well educated man, but makes for good story-telling. Later the sentence was reduced to manslaughter and he was given 40 years to be served at the prison in Canon City.

A more detailed account of the case can be found here, and the Alfred Packer Collection of the Colorado State Archives offers great documentation of the case (including what appears to be the more official transcript of the judge's sentencing order). For a more entertaining account of this and other "wild west" 19th century true tales that are stranger than fiction, head for your local library to check out a copy of Timberline by Eugene Fowler, a pseudo-historical novel that the City of Denver website describes as:

A gossipy, not always true, account of the adolescence of The Denver Post, written with as much zest and a shade more accuracy than the former con-man Bonfils and former bartender Tammen ever mustered for their outrageously sensational (and profitable) newspaper.

The book is kind of hard to find these days, but it's worth the effort—an excellent read. In its wild stories of the way Bonfils and Tammens swindled everyone they knew (always w/the best of humor), I suppose the book also proves the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same... Ok, back to obscure issues of intellectual property...

Posted 10:10 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Feeling Fall

Labor Day Weekend. Fall about to begin. This is the best time of the year, my favorite. I love the changing of the weather (that hasn't really begun too much here yet)—when the nights get cool and the days warm and crisp and sparkling sunny, with leaves turning and falling to the ground and the air smelling so fresh and clean w/out the smog (and humidity) of summer. It's wonderful. But it is also hard, because it means returning to school, to class, to reading, to taking notes, to juggling schedules in very different ways from the juggling that goes on for most working people. It's not worse or harder, it's just different, and the adjustment takes time. I have not yet adjusted. I've read about 30 pages of the roughly 200 or more I've been assigned so far, I have a "pre-emption check" due for the journal on Monday, I have a half dozen things to do for different student groups (the Equal Justice Foundation (EJF), the National Lawyer's Guild (NLG), and GW Law Democrats), and something really must be done about getting a budget around here before I wind up in the poorhouse. (Does anyone have any good recommendations for a simple but efficient Mac money manager?) So much to do, and all I want to do is go hiking. (Click "more" for a blow-by-blow of the weekend's festivities and some notes on nostalgia.) I have very little to complain about, though, having spent all day yesterday sightseeing and hanging out with some of my best and oldest friends who have been in town this weekend for a wedding. We enjoyed tapas on Friday night at Jaleo in Bethesda, followed by drinks at the Barking Dog (which I don't recommend—loud, young, and they served raw chicken tenders, which is always a bad thing and tends to outweigh other factors in determining the quality of a place). Yesterday included a nonconventional trip right past the mall—we almost religiously avoided monuments and "must-see" sights—to the peddle boats in the Tidal Basin. L. and I pedaled our little four-person craft and quickly became exhausted and soaked in sweat. The weather was warm, partly cloudy, and deathly calm, so out on the water we just sort of baked in the heat. Needless to say, our paddle was short, but we did get some nice views of the Jefferson Memorial. I recommend the paddle boats in later September or early October when the weather is much, much cooler. The paddle boat excursion was followed up by a drink at someplace on F street called "The American Grill" or something similarly uninspired (I don't recognize it on this list of DC cigar bars). It was decorated in a mountain cabin motif and it turns out it was a cigar bar, complete with banks of personal humidors where the regulars kept their private collections of stogies. When we asked for a table for four we were asked, "Are you aware that this is an all smoking establishment?" We weren't, but we didn't care all that much at that point? "Does that mean we're required to smoke?" I asked. The answer was no, and thankfully the place was pretty empty and no one else was smoking, so it was a nice place for a beer and a few minutes watching Michigan trounce Miami Ohio. After a terrific bottle of wine back at our humble abode, we dined at Meskerem, a great Ethiopian place on 18th Street where I learned that Ethiopian custom is for everyone to eat from the same plate because those who do so will never go to war against one another. It may not be true, but in case it is, I think we should definitely change the customs at all meetings of international bodies and political leaders. We migrated from there to the Brickskeller (because, since I first visited a couple of months ago no one will now be allowed to visit me in D.C. w/out having at least one drink at the Brickskeller!) where we were joined by another great old friend. That triggered a mini-high school reunion with all the rummaging around in the cupboards of the past that such things can involve. We moved the reunion on the Childe Harold in Dupont Circle, and finally to the Big Hunt (what a bad bad name for a bar!) for a shot of Goldschlager (don't ask, except that, ok, they were right, I was wrong, it is real gold!). Nothing like topping off the night with something both viscous and sparkly! But, and so, the work awaits. And I don't want to do it, though I know I must. While fall is a beautiful time to be alive, all the beauty (and probably also seeing old friends) reminds me of all that I'm missing in this world and in this life as I work my way toward a J.D. I'll spare you the ruminations, but suffice to say that two more years like the last year sound very very unappealing right now. It was beyond words wonderful seeing old friends and seeing them seem so happy with their lives and what they've done and become in the many years since I saw them last. But the experience also brought on a bit of nostalgia about the past and also raises all the old questions of What am I doing in law school? And why am I doing it? And is this really the life I want to be living? I don't have answers to those questions and I feel pretty well past the point where I can entertain them seriously, anyway. But spending the weekend w/non-law friends also gave me an idea of why there's a stereotype that lawyers are boring and that is that they typically work too hard on things that they can't really talk about because of confidentiality reasons, meaning that since they can't talk about their work, and their work is really all they do, lawyers seem very boring to people who aren't lawyers. It's just a theory. YMMV.

Posted 08:10 PM | Comments (3) | life generally

Wasting Time In Class (In Law School)

Energy Spatula's Friday Funnies on Blawg Wisdom today includes a link to Justin R. Adin's guest-post at Notes from the (Legal) Underground with the scoop on How to Read Weblogs During Class. I wouldn't recommend actually reading blogs in class very often, but it's good to be prepared for those days when you'd rather shove needles through your eyeballs than listen to one more rule of civil procedure. Matt Schuh has another idea for passing time in class via computer—playing with shortcut keys and colored text. More proof that a good part of making it through law school is simply being able to find ways to make it through class w/sanity intact. If I were going to be serious about this, I might suggest that all these strategies for passing time in class are proof that the dominant teaching model in law school is ineffective at best, sadistic at worst. There's no reason time in class should be so mind-numbing the people would rather play with shortcut keys than than pay attention and participate. Oh, but you can't really participate in a classroom of 100 students, can you? Oh, and professors often limit participation within iron bounds of their choosing, don't they? Oh, yeah, these are good ways for people to learn. I forgot. But since I'm not being serious, instead I'll just mention, in response to Matt's comments on function keys, that option-6 is the Mac keyboard shortcut for the section symbol (§), and option-7 will give you a paragraph symbol (¶). This is true across Mac software, not just in Microsoft Word. Oh, and hats off to Energy Spatula, Queen of the Funny Wisdom. She's doing a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious job!

Posted 04:53 PM | Comments (2) | law school mac geek

RNC Convention Wrapper

The Republican Convention is over. Bush has given his speech, a speech which glossed over important facts and trotted out the compassionate conservatism in time to court women voters just before the election.Yay. Now perhaps the campaigns will get serious? I hope so. The first of four scheduled debates is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 30. By the way, whatever became of Kerry's challenge to Bush to debate weekly from here on in? Did the Bush campaign just ignore it? Earlier this week, William Saletan wrote a devastating indictment of the Bush Administration the other day for Slate, using VP Cheney's own words against the administration to great effect:

"A senator can be wrong for 20 years without consequence to the nation," said Cheney. "But a president always casts the deciding vote." What America needs in this time of peril, he argued, is "a president we can count on to get it right." You can't make the case against Bush more plainly than that.

He also claims "the case against President Bush is simple":

He sold us his tax cuts as a boon for the economy, but more than three years later, he has driven the economy into the ground. He sold us a war in Iraq as a necessity to protect the United States against weapons of mass destruction, but after spending $200 billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, and after searching the country for more than a year, we've found no such weapons.

Saletan's essay was a response to Zell Miller's vicious speech (and, of course, the subsequent interview w/Chris Matthews in which Zeller effectively challenged Matthews to a duel), which Saletan says was full of charges against Kerry that a are "demonstrably false," and which pointed out that Zeller was saying in no uncertain terms that if you don't agree w/the President on everything you are weakening the country and effectively aiding our enemies. Again, one more simple reason it should be impossible to vote for Bush: His "team" has said again and again and again that dissent is unpatriotic, when dissent is what this country was built upon. (Scott Rosenberg points out much the same thing.) I just heard a Republican spinster on NPR say that if the Democrats can have six months of Howard Dean, the Republicans deserve at least one night of Zell Miller. Whatever. The difference is that Dean was speaking truth to power, while Miller was speaking lies to the powerless, which is probably why the Republicans are now running away from Miller. But while the case against Bush sounds exceedingly simple to me, how it is that half the country is still planning to vote for him? Oh, no need to explain, just watch The Daily Show, which had a terrific piece Wednesday night about how Bush "has used the power of words to overcome insurmountable facts."

Don't listen to the filter or the facts, listen to the Words. George W. Bush: Because he says so.

In other "highlights" related to the RNC "Con": Michael Moore praised the Bush daughters as an example of how children can please parents, then he says don't send more kids to die. Other people aren't so happy with the Bush twins. Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals. Salon says the Republicans never "let the facts get in the way of their partisan ferocity." A Columbus, Montana swift boat veteran is angry that the Swift Boat Veterans for Rewriting History (er, I mean, "Truth") used his name w/out his permission:

"I'm pretty nonpolitical," the 56-year-old [Bob] Anderson said Tuesday. So, when he found out last week that his name was one of about 300 signed on a letter questioning Kerry's service, he was "flabbergasted." "It's kind of like stealing my identity," said Anderson, who spent a year on a swift boat as an engine man and gunner.

And so the circus continues... UPDATE: No wrap-up of the RNC convention would be complete w/out at least some mention of the huge protests that marked the week, as well as the violations of civil liberties that caused a judge to order "the release of hundreds of Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours":

Hours before President Bush made his speech to the Republican National Convention, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John Cataldo held city officials in contempt of court for failing to release more than 500 detained demonstrators by 5 p.m. The judge said that the detentions violated state law, and he threatened to impose a fine of $1,000 per day for each person kept in custody longer than 24 hours without being arraigned.

The irony here is that any money the city pays in fines comes from where? The taxpayers who were jailed and whose rights were violated. I've got a better idea: Instead of handing out fines, how about we throw the police in jail and hold them under the same conditions the protesters were held under, and for the same length of time, plus a little for good measure. The NY Chief of Police should join them. That would give these fine officers a chance to really think about civil liberties and why they should take them more seriously. Also: Why Democrats shouldn't be scared, by Michael Moore

Posted 04:48 PM | election 2004

Flip-Flopper-In-Chief

Whoop! There it is:

A day after telling NBC's Matt Lauer that "I don't think you can win'' the war on terror, he told a veterans' group in Tennessee that "we are winning, and we will win.''

So which is it, Mr. Bush? Maybe you should stick to your cue cards next time, huh? As the news drones on about the Republican Convention I'm reminded again of how the Republicans have operated for the last four years, which is basically to say one thing and do another. Go back to the 2000 campaign and look at the promises of "no nation building" and "compassionate conservatism" and moderation and whatever. What's happened? Lots of nation building and zero compassion and zero conservatism—how can it be "conservative" to run up huge debts and destroy the environment, jobs, social security, etc? But the Bush Administration takes flip-flopping to a more sinister level. Rather than taking "Position 1" for some good reason, then later switching to "Position 2" in light of new evidence or developments, the Bush Administration starts from "Position 2," all the while maintaining it supports "Position 1." Then when it's shown that "Position 2" has actually been achieved, Bush says "no, that's not Position 2—that's Position 1." Example: The Clear Skies Initiative. Bush says he wants to improve the environment (Position 1). His policies create more environmental deterioration, showing deference to the profit-motivated desires of big business (Position 2). We know he wanted to help big business all along (Position 2), and when you point out that the environment has gotten worse, not better, Bush just repeats like a machine his desire to improve the environment (Position 1). In another example, Bush says he wants to help senior citizens get cheaper prescription drugs, then he passes medicare "reform" that makes it illegal for Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices and effectively (though not technically) prohibit individuals and states from getting cheaper drugs from Canada. Of course, Bush continues to claim he really cares about senior citizens and reducing the cost of prescription drugs. Doublespeak, much? Even more ingenious is the way the Republicans attack their opponents for the Bush's own weaknesses. Bush has a horrible record of military service (read: virtually none), so what do the Republicans do? Attack John Kerry's military service. Bush campaigned in 2000 as a moderate but his administration has been the exact opposite—extremely right wing. He's saying one thing and doing another (see above), so what do the Republicans do? They attack John Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Bush did nothing worthwhile with his life before becoming President, so what do the Republicans do? Attack John Kerry's lifetime of public service and claim he's done nothing in his decades as an elected representative. It's sick. It's scary. And it's incredibly effective. Bush is now leading in predicted electoral college votes for the first time in a while. Great.

Posted 07:44 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Green Means Go

After two days as a 2L, I've learned an important lesson: Yes, I can make it to class in 11 minutes or less, but only if I hit every light just right and if I don't mind getting to class puffing like a steam locomotive and drenched in sweat. Twenty minutes or more travel time is much more sane. The good news about travel time from the new apartment is that it seems much easier to hit all the lights for some reason. On my old commute, I used to have to stop at 4-6 red lights nearly every day, simply because of the way they were all timed. Now, there are several more lights between home and school, but for whatever reason, after waiting at the first one, if I just keep a good pace the rest of the way I don't seem to have to stop at any more—they're all green. I hope that's some kind of positive sign, but whatever, it's a kicky ride to get to school every morning since it's basically all downhill and with every light green I can just fly. Riding home (up up up!) is a different matter, but it's good to get the heart pumping at least once a day, or so I've heard.

Posted 11:53 AM | Comments (3) | 2L