Death in Connecticut

The ongoing saga of convicted serial killer Michael Ross may end tonight with Ross's execution, even as the Connecticut legislature begins discussions of a bill to ban the death penalty. However, another report says Ross is going to delay the execution to prove his competence. The executions has already been delayed once after a U.S. District Attorney accused Ross's lawyer of failing to fully investigate evidence that Ross was incompetent. The Ross case is a complicated one b/c, as I understand it, Ross claims he wants to die, but his defense attorneys have been arguing against those wishes, saying his expressed desire to die is a clear sign of incompetence. It would also be the first execution in Connecticut in 44 years. Will Ross's execution basically become a state-assisted suicide? And if so, will that become another argument against the death penalty? Ross says one of the reasons he wants to die is that he can't stand the thought of spending the rest of his life in prison; therefore, the death penalty is actually a lesser punishment for Ross than life in prison would be. This gives the lie to death penalty proponents who claim it is the “ultimate” punishment (as in the most punishment society can give), and thus becomes potentially another argument against the death penalty. What would become of the death penalty if large numbers of death row inmates voluntarily gave up all appeals and asked to die swiftly? Would death penalty proponents give up their support for this barbarous practice? More specifically, what the heck should a defense attorney do when his/her client gets the death penalty and says “I want to die”? Attorneys don't really take a Hipporatic Oath to do no harm; should they? See also this fascinating story about David Kaczynski (brother of Ted, convicted Unabomber). David basically turned his brother in, then fought hard to make sure he didn't get the death penalty, and now has become an anti-death advocate.

Posted 07:23 AM | Comments (3) | law general

Law Review and Marriage?

Meandering Law Student (MLS) of the new-to-me blawg The Road Less Traveled, recently compared law review to marriage in a way that is just too good not to note. MLS says that law review is like marriage because both are promised to be necessary and good, when really they are the exact opposite. Read the complete post for the setup for the marriage analogy, then this :

When you are a 1L, everyone convinces you that you need to make Law Review. Law Review will be the magic bullet on your resume opening the door to a big salary and at a good firm. But there is something they don't tell you: Working on Law Review is like being drafted to work in a foreign bureaucracy. The lack of organization and forethought will drive you crazy and you'll be hounded by some minor official drunk on power.

The obvious conclusion is that marriage is therefore also like being drafted to work in a foreign bureaucracy. Not being married, I wouldn't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if the comparison is not far from the truth for at least some people.

Posted 07:04 AM | 2L

Patriarchy: The Big Lie

From reading for Feminist Legal Theory:

Patriarchy is grounded in a Great Lie that the answer to life's needs is disconnection and control rather than connection, sharing, and cooperation. The Great Lie separates men from what they need most by encouraging them to be autonomous and disconnected when in fact human existence is fundamentally relational. . . . Who are we if not our ties to other people—“I am . . . a father, a husband, a worker, a friend, a son, a brother”? But patriarchal magic turns the truth inside out, and “self-made man” goes from oxymoron to cultural ideal. And somewhere between the need for human connection and the imperative to control, the two merge, and a sense of control becomes the closest many men ever come to feeling connected with anything, including themselves. (134)

Allan Johnson, In the Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, 26, 31-41 (Temple University Press 1997) (quoted in Becker, Bowman, & Torrey, Feminist Jurisprudence, 2nd ed. 2001. I believe almost nothing could be more true. I would add that the “big lie” also includes the urge you probably have to dismiss or scorn anyone who uses the word “patriarchy” and or any writing that discusses it. Patriarchy is an ideology, and ideology (“our imaginary relationship to our real conditions of existence”) works constantly to make itself invisible so that if someone tries to point it out to you, your first reaction likely to be something like “whatevah, freak.” I suppose Johnson's description of patriarchy could be another way of saying that the Enlightenment was largely a fancy gloss on patriarchy, but that brings in a lot of baggage that may not be necessary to get the point that our so called “independent” lives (“our” meaning men, primarily, but women, too, to a lesser extent) are really a great big fantasy. I'm thinking this has everything to do with a world of gears and girders (see Cecilia Tichi, e.g. here), and long before that Kant (see also here). Today we see it writ large in cuts to welfare, attempts to dismantle social security, and Wal-Mart as the largest private employer on the planet (or at least in the U.S.). Control. Fear. Autonomous. Disconnected. Keywords of oppression. Things like Energy Spatula's recent post about self-image and relationships with men and social expectations may also fit into this matrix, both as examples of the way men attempt to control women (and their world generally) because of their own fear, but also as an example of how the Enlightenment ideas of independence and autonomy encourage people to feel alone in their lives and the problems they face, when really the source of those problems is social and we all experience them to one degree or another. If this sounds like babbling, it's not. I promise. I may make a paper out of it somehow in the next ten weeks. Or maybe I'll write about contingent foundations and related things such as those I mentioned here last fall.

Posted 07:03 AM | Comments (4) |

Ambivalent Index

With thanks to the Harper's Index, here's my semester, by the numbers:

• Average number of pages of a casebook I read per hour: 10
• Average number of pages of reading assigned per hour of class: 30
• Number of class hours I'm taking this semester: 13
• Average number of pages I should read per week: 390
• Number of hours per week I should therefore devote to reading: 39
• Total number of hours already dedicated to work, clinic, and journal: 20
• Number of hours available to blog, work on my “note,” or cover any extra assignments that might pop up: 0
• One adjective to describe me this semester: Screwed.

Posted 10:25 PM | Comments (6) | 2L

Bloglines As Copyright Infringement

Monica at Buzzwords recently pointed me to an interesting article entitled Bloglines and the Perils of Syndication about the author of The Trademark Blog who asked Bloglines to remove his blog feed from its service because he didn't want Bloglines making money off of his content. I noted this briefly before, but as the Trademark Blog explained:

Right now, among the million bloggers, there are bird watching blogs, and anti-Michael Moore blogs, and Linux blogs. Those bloggers do or do not view their blogs as part of a commercial pursuit, and do or do not wish to run advertising, and do or do not wish make use of information about their readership. As far as I can tell, based on its stated intentions, the leading web-based aggregator is reserving the right to, for example, place Windows-based software ads on Linux blogs, and Anne Coulter ads on pro-Michael Moore sites, and to sell everybody's subscription list to anyone. All without notification or authorization by the blogger.

(Note that this critic is more worried that his blog content will be surrounded by ads for legal services than he is about his content being surrounded by porn or online gambling. Interesting hierarchy of evils.) I generally don't like the idea that Bloglines (or other services) could soon do what the Trademark Blog describes, which is essentially making money from content you and I generate, without our permission and w/out giving us anything in return. I suppose if you use Bloglines, you might feel this is ok—you enjoy the service, so you get “paid” via the convenience it provides you. I'll be curious to see whether Bloglines runs into any significant resistance if it does start selling ads and making money in this way.

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

Blawg Roundup #3

This week's spin around a few blawgs is full of great critiques of law, law school, and law professors, plus a note about two upcoming public interest conferences. Blawg reading time is very limited these days, but this is the best of the little bit I've been able to read in the past week. First up, Buffalo Wings & Vodka's attempt to find a sponsor for his blog via eBay has ended. Since the reserve for the auction was not met, you can still sponsor BW&V through private negotiation. Next, Bad Glacier is dishing out the good stuff early over at his new home, so get on over and check out the strippergrams he got from the University of Michigan Law School admissions office (sorry, no pictures, just a mention). A little more seriously, he has an interesting little taxonomy of how different top-tier schools approach the admissions process, from Michigan's “we love you!” to Yale's “screw you” (I'm paraphrasing), it's a bit of insight into the workings of the upper echelon for those of us lower down the food chain. Dave! of Preaching to the Perverted, guest--posts on Notes from the (Legal) Underground, offering 6 tips for law professors. It's a great post, as are Dave!'s responses in the comments. Sticking with the critical theme, Musclehead emerges from hibernation with two excellent critiques of law school and the legal profession. In What's Wrong With Law School, Musclehead writes:

in general, law school does a very good job at putting blinders on its students, getting them to focus on micro issues of black letter law to the detriment of dialogue about whether a particular law is just or efficient or equitable.

And in What's Wrong With the Law?, Musclehead's thesis is that the legal profession has gone too far in placing the wishes of its clients above all other values:

I would argue that our problem is with our priorities. We place far too much emphasis on the primacy of clients to the detriment of our obligation to our profession, our society and ourselves. No other profession requires such allegiance to a client- doctors can refuse to perform a procedure they feel unnecessary to the patient, accountants can end their work for a client they believe is bending the rules of GAAP, teachers can teach evolution even if a parent demands creationism, etc.

Good stuff, Musclehead! Finally, two public interest law conferences for law students are coming up very soon: Reblaw 11, February 18-20 at Yale, and the Robert M. Cover Retreat, March 4-6 on Long Island. The Reblaw registration fee is a slim $30, and the conference will feature GW's very own Paul Butler as keynote speaker. The Cover Retreat I know less about, mostly because it costs $125 and what public interest law student has that kind of freaking money?

Posted 08:37 AM | Comments (2) | law school

Kill the Billable Hour

Apropos of this post the other day about taking the money out of law, Bruce at Adam Smith, Esq. offers some great comments from an economist's perspective on why the billable hour has stuck around, and why it should go away. Bruce's comments are a response to a recent cover story in The Washington Lawyer on The Tyranny of the Billable Hour. That article basically concludes that there's little we can do about the problems of the billable hour, but Bruce protests:

As they say, I respectfully dissent:  The answer—fixed fees, or value billing—is staring us in the face.  We in the profession are too smart not to do better.  As the article drolly notes, even “plumbers and accountants” quote fixed fees.  (And may I point out that firms that have the traction to pursue value billing, a la Wachtell, are not exactly hurting.)  Are we that insecure not to attempt the same? But, you object, the value of legal counsel is ineffable:  Who can put a firm price on it in advance?  The short answer is that, everywhere else in our roiling economy, reasonable people readily agree on “price” vs. “value.”  And I'm not just talking about haircuts and taxi rides:  Is deciding what's a fair price for a home (or, in my case a co-op apartment) simple?  Rationally, there are almost too many factors to consider:  Location, layout, neighborhood, condition, size, design, school district, property tax rates, outdoor space, geographical orientation, “amenities,” etc.  But we quickly arrive at a gut feel, and the home market is highly liquid. The market for legal services does not exist in its own sui generis bubble exempt from all the familiar economic considerations that govern other markets.  It is not a counsel of exceptionalism to think it does, it is a counsel of despair.

Listen to Bruce, brothers and sisters. The truth will set you free UPDATE: More on the billable hour from Yale Law School. [Link via The Prejudicial Effect via Notes from the (Legal) Underground]

Posted 08:07 AM | Comments (1) | 2L law general

MT 3.15 upgrade

If you run a Movable Type installation, be sure to upgrade to version 3.15 or at least install the patch it includes (which is what I did). Otherwise, it appears spammers could be using your MT software to spam people. Or something. I don't understand the details, but the patch took all of 30 seconds to apply, so it can't hurt.

Posted 06:40 AM | meta-blogging

The New Fourth Amendment

The SCOTUS decision in Illinois v. Caballes has sparked some sharp criticism. For example, here's what it basically does to the Fourth Amendment, according to Grits for Breakfast:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized if an officer is looking for illegal contraband.

Many more links and great criticism where that came from. I don't have time to read around for more impressions; I have to hurry up and read about Fourth Amendment law in a CrimPro textbook that doesn't know Caballes exists. Oh, but you don't need Cabelles for Fourth Amendment law to seem pretty sad. First, Katz said the test for a “search” is whether you had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the thing or place or whatever that was searched, and whether society recognizes that as a legitimate expectation. So:

As Professor Amsterdam has put it, under the Katz expectation test, the government could control the extent of privacy interests simply by announcing “that we were all forthwith beng placed under comprehensive electronic surveillance.” (43)

Amsterdam, “Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment,” 58 Minn. L. Rev. 349, 384 (1974), quoted in Saltzburg and Capra, American Criminal Procedure. Can you say “TIPS Program”? The line of cases following Katz have constricted the scope of the Fourth Amendment in a predictable manner—the court has basically unlimited discretion to determine what counts as a “reasonable” and/or “legitimate” expectation of privacy. Oh, and according to Saltzburg and Capra, the “warrant clause” of the Fourth Amendment (the second part about warrants) has basically already been rewritten to say:

A search and seizure in some circumstances is presumed to be unconstitutional if no prior warrant is obtained, but in other circumstances the prior warrant is unnecessary to justify a search and seizure. (86)

So, hey, it looks likeGrits for Breakfast is right on the money w/that revised Fourth Amendment (above). My CrimPro textbook says so!

Posted 06:55 AM | Comments (5) | 2L meta-blogging

BlawgCoop News: Welcome Bad Glacier!

Blawgcoop, the co-op for law-related blogs, continues to grow be eeps and zounds. Please take a minute to stop by and say hello to the 'coop's newest member, Bad Glacier. BG took advantage of the divine angst-inspired “get your own domain but host with blawgcoop” plan, and is also the first user to choose WordPress as blog tool of choice. This has given me reason to play around a little w/WP, and I'm liking it more and more. In other blawgcoop news, half-cocked has a spiffy new design for our viewing pleasure—“now with extra monochrome!” It apparently isn't quite finished yet, but it's pretty spiffy, nonetheless. Elsewhere, Legal Fictions seems to have hit something of a blogging wall—the last post was in December about finals frustration. Perhaps LF could use the advice from Professor Yin, which is the subject of the latest update at Blawg Wisdom.

Posted 07:20 AM | meta-blogging

Percentage Contingency Fees

From Professional Responsibility reading:

Even though the same amount of work is involved, the whiplash verdict might be $4,500, for a fee of $50 per hour, while the amputation verdict might be $200,000, providing a fee of more than $6,000 per hour. ... [The author notes that fees can be even more disproportionate to work done by the lawyer in cases that settle before trial, which is the vast majority.] Surely there is much to be said for providing a means to permit indigent persons to engage counsel to press meritorious suits. ... [But t]he problem, it seems to me, is that we have regarded the “one third contingent fee” arrangement as applicable to all cases invovling personal injuries, without paying enough attention to the facts of the particular case and the needs of the particular client.

Thomas D. Morgan & Ronald D. Rotunda, Professional Responsibility, 5th ed. 105, quoting John F. Grady, “Some Ethical Questions About Percentage Fees,” 2 Litigation 20 (Summer, 1976.). No wonder there are so many personal injury lawyers advertising on tv! Questions prompted by these readings:

• What would our society be like if lawyers made little to no money, or if a career as a lawyer only made average money, instead of above average (on average)?
• How could we make this happen? How could we take the money out of the practice of law?
• In a “free market” for legal services, would there be an excess of lawyers and a shortage of work?
• In what ways is the current market for legal services not “free”?
• Would fixed fees for routine (or even non-routine) services make the legal market more competitive (and drive down prices for consumers)?

See also: Writings by Lisa G. Lerman on unethical billing practices by lawyers (focused primarily on the billable hour). Patrick J. Schiltz, “On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession,” 52 Vand. L. Rev. 871 (1999).

Posted 07:04 AM | Comments (5) | 2L

Law Classes Pass/Fail

Dear law professors, hiring attorneys, fellow law students, and other knowledgeable types, I have a very busy semester, and I'm considering taking Fed Courts pass/fail. Do you have any thoughts on the pros or cons of such a plan? FYI: The class is small, and the professor has high expectations for our level of participation, so I will have to read and be prepared regardless of whether I'm concerned about my grade. This may mean that I will not really get much benefit from taking the class pass/fail, but it would also ensure that I will learn the material, despite decreased grade pressures. If I were going to, say, be a public defender, would taking fed courts pass/fail somehow be a red flag against me when potential employers looked at my transcript? How about if I wanted a judicial clerkship (federal or otherwise)—would this pass/fail thing be a red flag in that context? Can you think of any other contexts where taking Fed Courts pass/fail might be viewed negatively by people whose opinions I should credit? Any thoughts would certainly be appreciated. Sincerely, -ambimb

Posted 07:32 AM | Comments (3) | 2L advice

$ Blow $

From CrimPro reading:

There are trace amounts of cocaine on almost all of the money supply in America (62).

Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure: Cases and Commentary, 7th ed. So everyone who says they don't care about declines in civil liberties, because they've got nothing to hide, well, you can just put that in your pipes and smoke it. (Sorry I couldn't resist.) Of course, this doesn't seem to matter to the SCOTUS, which yesterday said in Illinois v. Caballes (PDF) that during a lawful traffic stop the police can have a dog sniff search your car (on the outside, anyway) because the only thing the dog could find would be something no one has a right to possess. Sniff. Sniff. I wonder if the ruling would change if the police held you for half an hour while they waited for the dog to arrive...

Posted 06:24 AM | Comments (3) | 2L

ACS Blog Bye

The ACS Blog Writing Contest ends January 31st, which means you still have a week to write 250-750 words on “ a legal issue of national significance or interest.” Winners of the contest will be offered a position as “Editor-At-Large” for the blog, which means you'll get to write an article/column every two weeks on a topic of your choice. I did it last semester and enjoyed it except for the small problem that it often required serious work to find good sources and present my topics in the appropriate 501(c)(3) manner. Now, due to being seriously overcommitted, I have given up my position with the blog. But hey, that only means there's more opportunity for you!

I don't think I ever really linked to any of the posts I wrote for the ACS, but I will do so now before they are lost in the mists of time. They were:

• Trial Lawyers and Tort Reform: McJustice v. Public Protection—A sort of overview of different perspectives on what the Bush administration, HMOs, and much of corporate America would like to call “tort reform”; might make a good intro to the topic if you don't already understand it very well (this was republished by a Texas Bar Association, I believe).
• The Battle Over Prescription Drug Importation—Surveyed the states that were already importing drugs from Canada and discussed the reasons the federal government has not officially endorsed the practice.
• Health Care Costs and Drug Companies: Who Profits?—This was a followup to the above piece; was sparked by a great book on the subject.
• Job Security v Homeland Security?—Discussed some ways the Homeland Security Administration has used fear of terrorism to bust federal unions.
• Death and Justice for All?—A look at the incredible rate of state executions in Texas, focused on evidence that the law enforcement agencies in the county that sends the most people to death row are incompetent and untrustworthy.
• In Clarence Thomas' America, Many More People Are Executed—A rather lengthy mini-history of recent death penalty jurisprudence in order to explain why Justice Thomas thinks the court should overrule Penry v. Lynaugh (part of the Clarence Thomas' America series).
• The Peterson Case: Did Juror Removal Manipulate the Verdict?—A look at the rules governing judicial discretion in the removal of jurors after the controversial removals in the Scott Peterson trial.
• A Time To Be Thankful—Three legal things I'm thankful for (obviously I only wrote my small contribution, which mostly quotes other sources of inspiration).
• In re Disney: A not so Magical Spectacle—An overview of the derivative (shareholder) suit against Disney's Board of Directors after the multi-million dollar debacle that was the brief Michael Ovitz tenure as president of the company.

I still think the ACS Blog is a great idea, and that more organizations should do something similar. The ACS Blog went from nothing to a pretty considerable readership in just a few months, which suggests that there's an interest in a form of legal analysis that's somewhere between that found on personal blawgs and what you'll find in journals or books. Writing ACS posts I often felt I was basically just collecting resources on a topic so that people who wanted to know more about that topic would have those resources at their disposal. It was often an attempt at producing a sort of synthesis of topics that had fallen by the wayside or received only scattered attention in other, larger media. Blogs are a great mechanism for shining light in dark places, and the ACS blog does that with many legal issues. However, it ignores or gives scant attention to many others (for various reasons, including its 501(c)(3) status, its ideological preferences, a simple limit on the amount of time and resources it has available, etc.), leaving room for peers to help fill in the gaps.

At any rate, I'm glad I did it, I wish I could continue to do it, but I can't. In addition to cutting this extracurricular, I've also cut my part-time job from 20 hours/week to about 11, so now it should just be class and clinic (oh, and finding a job!) for the next few months. Mountains of reading beckon....

Posted 07:17 AM | 2L

Mo' Grade Blues Defending Criminals in Fed Courts

Speaking of grades (which I was a bit yesterday), Energy Spatula basically summed up how a lot of us feel about them right now. The huge comment thread on that post is like a communal outlet for grade angst. I especially love this comment:

Law school is a sad, sad, pathetic excuse for an educational program. In no other form of graduate education in the US does *anyone* think that the appropriate means for teaching sophisticated reasoning is the large lecture class based on idiotically-edited primary materials, or that the appropriate means for measuring mastery is a single time-limited evaluation. It's a factory mass-production system designed solely to sort the students with the minimal degree of credibility required to satisfy the firms through the exertion of the most limited amount of effort by the professors.

Absolutely true, at least as far as I know (I don't have exhaustive knowledge of every other form of graduate education in the U.S., but I can't think of another that uses the law school large-lecture model so extensively). From this perspective, the “legal profession” looks more like a house of cards than some distinguished and rigorous life calling, but everyone tiptoes around this fact just so the whole thing won't come tumbling down. I'm sure many law professors would disagree, as would many hiring partners at firms, as would the ABA, etc. They're all invested in the illusion of meaning that grades represent, hence the tip-toeing that they do, inculcating law law students with the finer points of the tip-toe until we all internalize the illusion and begin the “grades are meaningful” dance ourselves. (At the risk of overloading my own metaphor, the legal profession house of cards rests on more than the illusion of grades as meaningful measures, but I'll save those other illusions for another day.) Anyway, if your grades did not rock your world (and I've already noted that mine did not—and the worst is probably yet to come), you should go read Favorable Dicta. To quote The Oracle: “I promise, by the time you're done eating it, you'll feel right as rain.” Although I read Favorable Dicta as often as I can (E. Spatula is a superhero!) I actual came across the above post thanks to Res Ipsa Loquitur, a new-to-me blawg. (Not to be confused with other iterations of Res Ipsa Loquitur. Seems to be a popular little blog name.) This Res Ipsa Loquitur also has a recent interesting post about the importance of criminal defense attorneys to the justice system that includes a great, heartwrenching criminal defense scenario from tv. As I contemplate a possible/likely career in criminal defense myself, hypothetical situations like this—where a defense attorney basically has to defend a monster who is clearly guilty—are troublesome, certainly. Unfortunately, I continue to learn of so many real situations in which law enforcement agents (by which I mean cops, federal agents, prosecutors, and sometimes judges) violate the rights of both the innocent and the probably-guilty so egregiously that they prove the old maxim true over and over again: It's better that ten guilty people go free than that one innocent person suffers. (But why “ten”? For more on that, see Alexander Volokh, “n Guilty Men” (1997).) For the record, Res Ipsa's post is a response to one by Deviant Lawyer (another new-to-me-blawg) in which he laments having to defend a crooked cop. (This is for a law school assignment, not for real.) And since I'm just jumping from topic to topic here, for some reason, Favorable Dicta lead me Legal Quandary who noted that Fed Courts isn't as bad as she'd thought, as classes go. As you may recall, I was unsure whether to stick with Fed Courts myself, but I've had the same impression as Legal Quandary: Very interesting material, but totally unreasonable amounts of reading in a frustratingly large and obscure book. Professor Althouse has some thoughts on the Hart and Wechsler's, noting that the book seems to beg professors to assign way more reading than is necessary, even though much of its content is arcane details that are not very important to the major goals of a course in federal courts. My own Prof Fed Courts said that this book was the “bible” of Fed Courts, which is too bad because that probably contributes to the subject continuing to seem much more complicated than it needs to be (at least for the neophyte). Or maybe not. So far I've appreciated the book's organization, but what's maddening is the authors' habit of posing everything possible as a series of questions rather than trying to clearly explain different schools of thought on controversial issues. I mean, I realize that much of the subject matter is open to debate (i.e., Can Congress completely eliminate federal appellate jurisdiction over any one type of case or controversy?), but as far as I'm concerned, presenting such issues as a series of questions is just not the most helpful way to help people understand them. Oh, and in addition to being arcane, bloated, and unnecessarily obtuse, the book and supplement together cost me $107.75, and that's just freaking ridiculous! Finally, JCA of Sua Sponte turned 30 last week. I don't get over to visit Sua Sponte much, but it was one of the first blawgs I ever read, so I owe JCA a debt of gratitude for being part of the inspiration for ai. (ai also continues to receive a substantial number of referrals from Sua Sponte, which surprises me since it seems to me the tone and substance of our posts is rather different. Maybe it isn't, or maybe that would be why people read both?) But, and so, happy (late) birthday, JCA! May year 30 bring you health, wealth, and a continued accumulation of wisdom and good fortune!

Posted 11:21 AM | Comments (4) | 2L meta-blogging

Courtroom Voyeuring

If you are fascinated by real life courtroom drama and don't get enough already from Court TV, Judge James Kembler of the Medina, Ohio, County Court of Common Pleas wants you to know what's going on in his courtroom. In fact, you can watch recent cases tried in Judge Kembler's court online! You can also subscribe to receive email updates from Judge Kembler. Before you do, you might want to see what you'd be getting, but unfortunately the archive of messages for that list doesn't seem to be working at the moment. I like the idea of making the machinery of justice more accessible to the public, but are there any potential drawbacks to making video of cases accessible worldwide? [Note: I first heard about this story on NPR sometime last week.]

Posted 10:02 AM | law general

Blawg Roundup #2

Following up on last week's tremendously successful (or at least efficient) Blawg Roundup, ai hereby presents a rather random list-like string of links (w/comments, of course!) to a few of the many happenings in the blawgs I read this week. To kick things off, Jeremy Richey writes a letter to Justice Breyer explaining why the honorable Justice should give him a job. If Breyer happens to see the message, I predict the dancing bananas will be simply too much for him to resist and he'll be offering Jeremy a job in no time. In attempt to scare the pans off of us (get it? pans? ha!), E. McPan announced a hiatus from blogging. The world was sad, but then the hiatus ended, but then it started again—sort of. Now she has gone argyle! Personally, I'm just happy to see her still posting. I are amused by E. McPan. On the commercialization of blawgs front, Buffalo Wings & Vodka is selling itself to the highest bidder. Check out the eBay auction and get your bid in right away! The auction ends January 26th. (Ok, you won't actually own BW&V if you win, you'll only be the “sponsor” and get your name on the blog.) I noticed that Mr. Buffalo does not say anything about how long he agrees to continue publishing. Does this mean I could bid $10k to be the blog's sponsor, only to have it close down next week? Hmmm. This reminds me of the corporate-sponsored undergrads. Eek. Denise at Life, Law, Gender has started her second third semester of law school and has realized she is overcommitted. Boy, do I know the feeling. There really are so many opportunities available during law school, it's hard to pick and choose where to spend your time. For those with a taste for discussion of politics (beyond the inauguration), Three Years of Hell has endorsed Howard Dean for Chair of the DNC with tongue planted deeply in cheek. Earnest interlocutor “Mike” and less patient interlocutor “Martin” test the irony in the comments. But the inauguration was the big political deal this week, and for that Law-Rah at WonL offers a heartfelt paean to her president and fellow Texans. Totally unrelated: Law-Rah has also earned a dubious distinction. [insert smiley] Back to the law school, Kelly, at Just Playing, learned some of her grades yesterday and she wasn't thrilled, but it sounds like she has things in perspective. I guess now is as good a time as any to confess that my grades from last semester (I know three out of four so far) show that it was my worst semester evah! at least as far as grades go. There are reasons for that, but to Kelly and anyone else who has recently learned they had lower grades than they'd hoped for, take heart! We will find jobs, and we will do good work for people who need our help. The gunners will have all the money, but as the countless ranks of bitter (rich) BigLaw lifers attests, he or she who has the most toys only “wins” in the short run. And in the new-to-me blawgs category, JD2B notes the introduction of two new blawgs written by 0Ls (people who have applied to law school but have not yet begun): Aspiring to Become A Lawyer (who applied to an astounding 31 schools!) and Narkoleptomania. JD2B also mentions Divine Angst, who has begun posting reviews of her visits to law schools she might attend. So far she's reviewed Georgetown and George Washington in D.C. She really liked GULC, and she liked the GW campus, although she found the law school buildings themselves a little difficult to navigate. I know the feeling; it took me a full year before I felt I could navigate pretty much anywhere w/out too much trouble. DA also found a photo tour of GW, which is interesting. The place looks surprisingly good in pictures. Note that the “computing resources” page features a picture of someone using a Powerbook to access the wireless network; nowhere does it mention that GW actively discourages students from using Macs. I wonder if this was intentional. Finally, Blawg Wisdom has been updated for the first time in a while. I just haven't found much to add recently, and the submissions have dried up, of late. Here's an idea to grow Blawg Wisdom and make it more useful to people: Would anyone like to be a contributor of wisdom? Your job would be to post links to good advice for law students and law school whenever you find it, or to write original “advice posts” when the mood strikes. It seems it would be good to have a couple of contributors at every level (0L-3L and recent grad), so if you're interested (or if you have thoughts on this idea), please let me know.

Posted 12:03 PM | Comments (4) | 2L meta-blogging

Post-Inaugural Friday

Some Friday fun for you:

• JibJab's latest animation gets some good licks in against Bush and Co, but manages to give the impression of being critical and funny in a non-partisan way.
• A great clip from Fox News where the interviewer was surprised when her interviewee wanted to talk seriously about the election.
• The jury pool from hell included a morphine addict, a former mental patient, and other interesting characters.
• 49% of Americans polled say Bush is a “uniter” (another 49% say he's a “divider”). What did Bush unite? Oh yeah, global opposition to his policies!

Posted 07:47 AM | Comments (4) | general politics

Shut Out

Whoa. I just got out of jail! Not. Had you going there for a second, though, didn't I? Ok, maybe not. Anyway, as expected, I didn't get arrested or have any cop trouble. I walked. A lot. And carried a sign all over. Someone gave me a sign from Not In Our Name that said “Not Our President!” so I carried it around all day. That was find during the anti-war march, but once I got down around Pennsylvania Avenue and the big parade route, the fur coats and cowboy hats started telling me I was wrong, he just got sworn in, and if he wasn't my president I should leave the country, yadda yadda yadda. Really only about a half dozen people actually said anything; many more just gave me dirty looks. But they were right. He is my president. The part of the sign I liked was the middle (“NO”) and bottom, which said “Not In Our Name.” That seemed like a good message for today: I don't want these things (war, privatization of social security, torture, flouting the Geneva Conventions, destroying the environment, doing nothing to fight poverty and everything possible to make the rich richer, etc—I don't want these things to be done in my name. I know that they are being done, so the only thing I felt able to do today was express my disagreement with them, and I think my sign did that. Anyway, I marched and chanted and it was good. The parade route was as I figured—locked down. They broke Penn Ave. into “zones” so if you entered at one checkpoint you couldn't move down the street more than a block or two. This meant that if you wanted to enter the “protest zone” (at 4th and Penn next to the Canadian Embassy in John Marshall Park), you had to enter.... where? I couldn't figure it out. You certainly couldn't get there from the 14th street checkpoint, and the 7th street checkpoint was shut down when I was there (police going nuts, pepper spray, full riot gear with sticks drawn, etc.), and I couldn't get there from the 3rd or 2nd street checkpoint (near the D.C. courthouse), either. So as far as I was concerned, the parade was a shut out. I could have hung out behind the bleachers somewhere to watch it go by, but I wasn't really interested in seeing the parade, I was interested in being part of protest that the parade would see. Anyway, after walking around for four hours, I was hungry and tired and decided I'd just head home. I didn't want to spend one damn dime today, so rather than buy a hot dog and keep trying, I just headed home. Oh, I did have one fun exchange with some men in suits and trench coats. After I got through the security checkpoint at 14th street, I had my camera in my hand and I turned to take a picture of the security screeners. As I did so, a hand grabbed me and turned me around, telling me I couldn't take pictures of the security. So I said, “why not?” Suit: It's the rules. Me: What rules? Suit: The rules. Me: Who made those rules? Suit: (confused pause) The secret service. Me: Are you secret service? Suit: (more confused pause, looking at suit partner who is no help) I, uh, I'm working for the secret service, yeah. I really didn't want any trouble, but the guy just seemed so clueless and shocked to even be asked any questions I could hardly resist. Still, I was about to go on my way when a riot-gear wearing law enforcer stepped right up to me with German Shepard lunging at me on the end of its leash. “There's no reason for you to be taking any pictures of security,” the guy shouts in my face. My first thought was, 'well, actually, there's a good reason for me to take pictures of this and that is to document any potential violation of my rights.' But hey, I wasn't going to argue with the riot gear and the big doggie, so I just said “ok” and walked off. Not that exciting, really. It gave me the distinct feeling that it would be pretty easy to get arrested around there, but like I said, that wasn't really why I was there. So that's it. G.W. Bush has been inaugurated for a second time after being actually elected for the first time. Hoo-freakin-ray. Pictures here. UPDATE: I finally got through to the DC Indymedia site, where you can read a blow-by-blow of their view of the day, a sort of editorializing summary of things, and more details about the pepper spray party the police hosted downtown. Apparently a group of “anarchists” got a little rowdy around Adams Morgan early this morning, as well. NPR is reporting about 16 arrests, windows broken in businesses and a bank, etc. UPDATE II: A “mainstream media” article about counter-inaugural activities around the country.

Posted 10:56 PM | Comments (2) | election 2004

It's On

So this is the inauguration day that I still can't believe is happening. Check out these 34 scandals from the first four years of Bush II (and another take on that theme), then explain to me why this man is being inaugurated today. There are many reasons, I know; unfortunately, none of them give me much hope for the future of the U.S. or the world. But hey, I'm used to being wrong, so here's hoping that I'm “the opposite of correct” (as Prof. CrimPro is fond of saying) about how much damage the Bush administration will do in the next four years. That said, this isn't a fun time to be in D.C., what with all the men in cowboy boots and tuxedos topped with cowboy hats and the women running around in their full length furs—on the metro, no less! Last night I had to stand still for the whole ride up the escalator from the metro b/c I was surrounded by these people who didn't understand or give a damn about escalator etiquette. I wanted to shout “stand right! walk left!” until they got out of the way, but instead I just stood there and listened to them talk about how great this whole inauguration party is turning out. Yay yay. So I can see why some people are going to Vegas for the weekend. There's so many stimuli there to overwhelm your senses maybe you could just forget about what's happening here. But I won't be in Vegas. Instead, I'm heading downtown to see what new and dubiously constitutional ways the D.C. Metro Police, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Capitol Police, etc. have dreamed up to make sure protesters stay invisible. GW is closed today (as is most of downtown D.C.) so instead of doing homework, I'll be observing what passes for representative democracy in action. I took some photos of the pre-inaugural set up in the last few days, and I'll be taking some more photos of the actual event (at least what I can see of it) today. If I don't post later today, please come bail me out of jail.* If you haven't already, you might want to check out the Counter-Inaugural 2005 site to see what's going on along those lines. * I'm kidding. I have no plans to be involved with the police except through the lens of a camera.

Posted 08:54 AM | Comments (3) | election 2004

News Archives?

Does anyone know a good resource for archived news stories? I'm looking for something like the Common Dreams News Center where archives are categorized by date and you can scan all the headlines from a given month or date range. In fact, the Common Dreams site is exactly what I'm looking for, but the selection of stories is too limited. Lexis offers archives of wire service stories and major newspapers, but the only way I know to reach them is through a targeted search and since I only vaguely know what I'm looking for during a certain time period I just want to browse headlines in that period. Many newspapers offer archives of their news stories, but they want you to pay for access and, again, the only way to reach the archives is through keyword searches rather than by date ranges. So, if you know of a resource where AP or Reuters or Knight-Ridder wire stories are archived by date range (like a blog would do it), please send me a link. Please? Pretty please? You'll be doing me a big favor! p.s.: This makes me think it would really be worthwhile for someone to start a blog where they just copied all the headlines from a major newspaper (or maybe BBC news—someplace where the archives are freely accessible) into a day's post w/links to the articles. Then, when people have research needs like mine, they could go to that blog, find the appropriate date(s), then scan the headlines for that date and access the articles they wanted. I bet this is out there, somewhere, I just don't know where...

Posted 04:06 PM | Comments (5) | life generally

Comment Spam Killer?

Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, are supporting a new collaborative effort to get rid of comment spam using a “nofollow” attribute. More here and here. Download the plugin here. I've already installed it. The directions are a little vague on which directories the files are supposed to go into, but it seems to be working. If you view the source on a comments window, you'll see any links in the comments are followed by the “rel=nofollow” tag. Cool. At this point, I'll happily try just about anything (short of eliminating comments altogether) to reduce the amount of spam I get. Since I upgraded MT-blacklist and installed the MT-DSBL plugin, the spam seems to have decreased dramatically, but some still gets through occasionally. Unfortunately, the side effect has been that at least one person who wanted to comment wasn't able to because the comment was blocked by Blacklist or the DSBL filter. It would be great if comment spammers lost their incentive to spam so I could remove those filters and thereby avoid that problem. Is this “nofollow” thing the silver bullet we've all been hoping for? Maybe I won't have to implement s-code after all. UPDATE: For the record, I just checked yesterday's logs and on the last day before I implemented the “nofollow” plugin, this MT install received 3,827 hits to its comment script. I assume that number will drop if the “nofollow” thing actually discourages comment spammers. We'll see.

Posted 06:34 AM | meta-blogging

99 Problems But CrimPro Ain't One

This is how Prof CrimPro started class last week: He kicked off the semester by saying that many people are highly critical of our criminal justice system, then he said we were going to watch a short powerpoint presentation and listen to what some of those critics have to say about the system. The next thing we knew, NWA “F#@$ tha Police” (I'm trying to be family-friendly here; lyrics) was thumping through the classroom of over 100 students, while the lyrics scrolled in foot-tall letters on the projection screen at the front of the room. This was followed by:

• KRS-1: Sound of da Police (iTMS link;lyrics),
• Prince Paul: The Men in Blue (“NY's largest crew”) (not in iTMS; lyrics),
• and, that's right: Jay-Z: 99 Problems (iTMS link; lyrics).

So now you see why I got 99 problems but CrimPro ain't one. I'm gonna love that class. I'm going to have trouble keeping on top of the reading, but I'm still gonna love that class. I actually have some great classes this semester . . . . At least it seems that way after the first week. I'm knocking on digital wood, but in this moment I'm feeling like I might actually enjoy this semester if I can just learn to be fully functional on 5 hours of sleep each night instead of 7 or 8. Oh, and if I could stop reading blogs. Is there a 12-step program for that?* All right. I better read me some CrimPro now or one of my 99 problems is going to be you know what. *It was actually blawg that reminded me to post this story. I've been meaning to post it since it happened last Tuesday, but I've been swamped and crazy and putting it off for some reason, but Blonde Justice just posted the track list of a mix CD she just made and it included a track that triggered this memory and I figured there was no time like the present.

Posted 06:38 AM | Comments (6) | 2L

Don't Send Word

I just got an email with a Word document attached. The document contained the only information that made the email worth opening, so I obviously had to open the attachment. It took maybe a full minute for Word to start up and show me the stupid document, I looked at it for all of 10 seconds just to make sure it said what I thought it said, and then I quit Word because it's such an awfully-written piece of bloatware that it slows my machine down if I leave it running in the background. For these reasons and others (e.g., many people don't have Word and it's a proprietary format, Word docs are larger than many other formats and therefore take longer to send and receive, etc.), Word attachments are a cruel and unnecessary form of communication. Instead of sending Word docs, please consider the following alternatives*:

• If you want to send information in email, send it in the body of the email whenever possible.
• If you created the information in Word, you can just copy and paste into your email.
• If you simply must send and attachment, Word also offers a nice feature called “Save As” that allows you to convert your document to plain text or rich text, either of which are preferable attachment formats (because they can be opened by just about any word processor).
• If your document contains tables or the formatting is important to its meaning somehow, the Mac OS allows you to save any document as a PDF, so if you're using a Mac, it's easy to attach a PDF instead of a Word doc, and the PDF will allow your recipient to see the document exactly as you created it.**
• If you're using Windows and don't have a simple means to create PDFs, use Word's handy “Save As” feature to create an HTML version of the document, then attach that. The HTML version can be opened in any browser (and probably by most email clients), so, again, it's a much more considerate and convenient form of communication.

*Possibly the only worse form of document attachment is the WordPerfect document; generally, the above tips apply to this format, as well. ** Of course, PDFs aren't a much better format than Word docs for many Windows users. Every time I use a Windows machine and need to view a PDF I'm dismayed anew at how poorly the system handles them. Even on a fast machine it takes forever to load the Adobe viewer so you can see the PDF. The Mac OS has a handy built-in PDF viewer called Preview that opens PDFs as fast as you can open a plain text document.

Posted 06:28 AM | Comments (1) | mac geek

Library Love

I'm just heading off to school in the freezing cold weather (D.C. went from a high of 70 last Wednesday or Thursday to a high of about 25 today) and I wanted to mention that I'm in love—with the library. I spent Saturday in the library at school making copies of cases from real books and I just loved it. It was fun. There was something almost thrilling about looking at a case citation, browsing to a row of shelves, running my gaze along the line of spines counting up or down to the correct volume I was seeking, then pulling it out and flipping through the pages to find a direct, simple, and logical correlation between the case citation and the book I held in my hands. There's a satisfaction to physically finding, holding, and flipping through the book of cases that just isn't possible with online research, regardless of how great Lexis and Westlaw might be. That said, I wouldn't want to have to do too much serious case research with books only; online services offer much better and broader searching capabilities, and I wouldn't want to give those up. But for small projects, or when you know the exact case you're looking for, going to the books is a nice breath of fresh (old?) air. BTW, the reason for my little library excursion was a source collection assignment for the journal I'm on. This was the first time I had to do this, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was nowhere near as difficult as I'd feared. My task was made easier by the fact that our editor kindly did the source compilation part of the assignment for us (thank you!) and then divided up the article so that I had only 9 actual sources to locate and copy. Yeah, I had to copy multiple versions for several of the sources, and Shepardize and Keycite them, as well, but that's not so bad. I ended up with 8 cases and one journal article to locate, which is nothing compared to the obscure sources other people have had to track down. But as easy as it was, the exercise suggested to me a better way for law journals to operate. Rather than having law students trudge around killing thousands of trees by making multiple copies of all the sources an author cites in an article, why not make the author submit the sources with the article? Here's how it could work: An author submits an article as usual. The editors or readers assess it; if they decide they want to publish it, they email the author asking for copies of all of his/her sources, which he/she can then send electronically if the files are available, or in hard copy if not. This makes the author more accountable for his/her work, and saves the journal time and effort. Wouldn't it be much more efficient? Of course, it's possible that the primary value to a law student of participating in a journal is the source collection, which gives students practice in getting around a library. This would be lost under the above plan, but the experience may not be that valuable, anyway, since students doing source compilations just find predetermined sources; the hard part of legal research is tracking down the citations in the first place. Whatever. I better shut up and get to school to get my reading done. I hope everyone is enjoying their MLK Jr. Day...

Posted 02:44 PM | Comments (4) | 2L

Blawg Roundup

Ok. I've been resisting for a long time, but I can't help myself. Evan's idea for a weekly summary of notable posts and links on law student blogs is just too good to not blatantly copy. Plus, now he's doing his via podcast, so my all-text version may fill a bit of a void. Or not. But in the spirit of imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, I give you my own Blawg Roundup, which will purport to be a quick list of links I've seen in the last week that were notably notable—comment-worthy, even—in some way. First, sadness: Mixtape Marathon is talking about going gently into that good night, as in, ceasing to blog. Her posts have been rather sporadic recently, but still always smart and witty and fun and enjoyable. The Marathon will be missed, but her readers can take heart that she's considering starting up something else, somewhere else. I hope so. In lighter news, who would have thought someone could make a trip to the automatic car wash sound so funny? I certainly didn't, but second person singular's recent experience at the robo-wash (complete with hilarious tangent about the childhood trauma attendant to coin-operated rocking horses at the supermarket) had me rolling on the floor. I'm telling you, this guy can write. Elsewhere: Nudum Pactum, a 1L at the U of Chicago, notes that fornication is now legal in Virginia. Such a progressive state, Virginia. Those folks better be careful or they're going to find the foundations of their civilization crumbling thanks to “liberal” reforms like this. The First Annual Section 14 Mustache Contest finished this week with participants categories entered in categories such as Most Redneck and Most Pornstar. Pictures are available for the 'stache fetish in you. Monica is going to spend her spring quarter in Alaska working for the Anchorage Public Defender. This is old news, but I just found it and it makes me insanely jealous. I want to go to Alaska. I want to be in a school were a full year of actual legal work is required to earn my degree. I still can't believe, in all my attempts to find a good school for public interest law, no one ever mentioned Northeastern to me. I still may have been stupid and ended up at GW, but least I would have done so knowing I had options. JD2B (possibly the most-linked blawg) was full of tasty links this week, including the fact that the Sentencing Law and Policy blawg was cited by Justice Breyer in his Booker dissent. Is this the first time a blawg has been cited in a Supreme Court decision? JD2B also notes that it's possible to get a J.D. in two years in the U.S., thanks to a recent ABA rule change. It's a little late for me now, but good to know, nonetheless. The blawg formerly known as Sapere Aude, which “intends to be a source of information by and for the students of Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis,” has changed its name to IndyLaw Net. For now you can access the site both at its old blogspot location and its new URL. Also, if you haven't seen it, IndyLaw Net points to the story about the two men in NY who got arrested for telling lawyer jokes in a courthouse. They're charged with disorderly conduct, and have already received an offer for free legal assistance from, um, a lawyer. According to Overlawyerd, the offer was one of many. Finally, Whatever Remains offers a possible solution to some of the most active MT spammers—some MT Blacklist expressions to block the spam. I'll give it a try. Speaking of which, if you have trouble posting comments for some reason (your comments are being filtered out), please let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.)

Posted 12:30 PM | Comments (1) | law school meta-blogging

Bush Gives World Finger, Again

Last Wednesday the U.S. officially gave up the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. After at least one and a half years of searching, the search teams found nothing. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said:

“After a war that has consumed nearly two years and millions of dollars, and a war that has cost thousands of lives, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, nor has any evidence been uncovered that such weapons were moved to another country,” Pelosi said in a written statement. “Not only was there not an imminent threat to the United States, the threat described in such alarmist tones by President Bush and the most senior members of his administration did not exist at all.”

That's all true; it's just a restatement of what the Bush administration has already admitted. Pelosi called on President Bush “ to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war.” Here's a better idea: Instead of demanding an explanation (which has been a fruitless demand for nearly two years now), why not demand impeachment? Presidents have obviously faced impeached proceedings for far, far, far, far, far less. Oh, but no need, because the president “knows” he did the right thing:

“Nothing's changed in terms of his views when it comes to Iraq, what he has previously stated and what you have previously heard,” McClellan said. “The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous region we are making the world a safer place.”

Awesome. I'm so glad the president “knows” this, despite all evidence to the contrary (even assuming, for the sake of argument, that “advancing freedom in a dangerous region” is what the U.S. is doing). His administration's own statements tell the story of how much reality matters to them. But accountability? Fuggedaboudit. Anyway, it's already taken care of. The president says so:

“We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.”

An “accountability moment.” Beautiful. I mean, as infuriating as this statement sounds, I hope Bush is right. Unfortunately, I fear there are going to be many more “accountability moments” in the years to come (some of them may also be called “blowback” or “unintended consequences of absolutely criminal foreign policy decisions”), but for the world's sake, I hope I'm wrong.

Posted 09:20 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004 general politics

Air America Coming to D.C. & Podcasting

This is probably old news, but I just learned that Air America Radio will start broadcasting in D.C. tomorrow morning. Say hello Progressive Radio AM 1260. it sounds great, except that I already have access to too many good radio programs I don't have the time to listen to, so this will only add to that problem. I guess that's a pretty good problem to have, though—better than having nothing you ever want to hear. If Air America and NPR would embrace podcasting (and at least one NPR program already has) , I could probably listen to excellent radio every waking hour of my days. That probably wouldn't help me do all of the work I actually need to do these days, but it would be pretty cool, nonetheless. Speaking of podcasting: I read blogs that seem to be talking about nothing else these days. Do any readers of this blog create podcasts or actually use a podcast feed aggregator and listen to podcasts? And speaking of aggregators, is Bloglines a copyright infringer?

Posted 08:58 AM | Comments (3) | general politics meta-blogging

Congratulations D.C. Hotel Workers!

At the risk of turning ai into an “all congratulations, all the time” blog (see the past two posts and this one), congratulations to D.C. hotel workers who just won what sounds like a great contract offer from their employers! The D.C. members of UNITE HERE, “the merged union of hospitality, gaming, apparel, textile and laundry workers” which represents nearly half a million workers in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, were ready to strike, which would have seriously messed with the plans of the nation's elite who are descending on D.C. next week for the 2005 inaugural. I guess now all the rich and famous Bush supporters will get to be pampered in peace and the management of D.C.'s finest hotels will be able to rake in the cash hand over fist w/out having to worry about any of those pesky “labor issues.” As the union reported:

The tentative agreement ensures that there will be no work interruptions and the hotels will be able to proceed with all guest services for inauguration week as planned. The contract language includes new protections from workload increases, harassment at the workplace and other problems workers sought to improve. The economic package improves wages, pension contributions and maintains a strong health care package. Details will be released after members have read and voted on the contract.

Sounds great to me!

Posted 08:56 PM | Comments (1) | general politics

BlawgCoop Welcomes Divine Angst!

After a bit of template magic to make her new home her own, stellar 0L Divine Angst has migrated her blog to her own domain! Check it out at divineangst.com. Congrtulations, DA! (And everyone else, don't forget to update your links!) For now, when you go to divineangst.com you'll find that you actually end up at a blawgcoop url. Why? Because DA had the ingenious idea of getting her own domain, but hosting her files w/blawgcoop! Barring unforeseen difficulties, DA can eventually hide the redirect so that users who go to divineangst.com will never know they're actually being served files from the blawgcoop server. This is such a neat little innovation that I'd like to invite anyone interested in moving or starting a legally-related blog to do the same thing. The “get your own domain but host with blawgcoop” plan offers the following advantages:

1. You secure your own domain name so if you ever decide to host your blawg yourself, you've got the domain you want.
2. Readers will be able to find your blawg easily—you can make the URL match the name of the blawg.
3. You don't have to pay the $5-$10/month it would cost to host the domain somewhere. If you register somewhere like GoDaddy.com you'll get free forwarding (and “masking” so that users won't see the foward) with your domain registration for only $8/yr.*
4. You don't have to hassle with setting up and maintaining your own MT or WordPress installation, but you get all the benefits of MT or WordPress.
5. You can import your entries from an existing blawg to your new blawgcoop-hosted blawg so you'll have everything in one place. If you ever decide to fully host your own blawg yourself, MT makes such a move relatively easy. (I'm not sure about the migration features of WordPress but I'm sure we could figure it out.)
6. Bottom line: Your total annual bill for your own MT or WordPress blawg at your own, custom URL will be $13. Per year. ($8 for your domain registration, $5 to host at blawgcoop.)

That's a pretty good deal if you've been wanting to move away from blogspot or some other free service.** (For the sake of comparison, it's hard to find web hosting anywhere for less than $5/month.) Something to keep in mind, anyway. So thanks to DA for coming up with this slick idea, and congratulations on your new home! * If anyone knows of a quality domain registrar that would be better than GoDaddy for these purposes, please share. My own host, Dreamhost, will do it, but they charge more. ** It's possible there are drawbacks to this plan that neither DA nor I recognized. If you see any, please share them with us so any potential future users will understand the pros and cons.

Posted 07:44 AM | Comments (3) | life generally

Happy (late) B-Day, E. Spatch!

In the “better late than never” vein, here's wishing a happy birthday to Energy Spatula at Will Work for Favorable Dicta. Judging by the gazillion birthday wishes she received here and the cake her friend Legal Quandary made her, E. Spatch did not miss my good wishes, but I thought I'd send them anyway. Plus, it allows me to link to her post-birthday post, which is truly funny.

Posted 07:02 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Counter-Inaugural

FYI, if you'll be in Washington, D.C. for the Counter-Inaugural Protests on January 20:

The J20 Legal Support Team is pleased to announce the launch of your support website www.J20LEGAL.org. This website includes our legal manual in both .pdf format for easy download and reading as well as .html format in case you need to read the manual at a computer in which you cannot download or print the manual. We also have Affinity Group Support Forms, Police Misconduct Forms, and will soon have a Know Your Rights handbill. The front page of the website will be updated as we add more information to the website and when news related to the protests is reported. Do not forget to check the website later in the day of January 20 to find out about jail and court support if people are arrested. And after the protests, check back for updates regarding court dates for arrestees and how arrestees can join a list serve and communicate with each other.

When I mention stuff like this, people generally ask: What's to protest? Short of convincing evidence that the election was stolen, some people think protesting an inauguration is pointless, or sour grapes, or even somehow disrespectful of our democracy and electoral system. Maybe. There's also the argument that protest is patriotic and a vital part of our democratic system, that the electoral process is broken (see, e.g., gerrymandering), and that the 49% of voters who did not support Bush/Cheney last November have a right (perhaps even an obligation) to voice their continuing opposition to this administration's policies and ideology. Whatever your thoughts, here are a few more counter-inaugural resources:

• Turn Your Back On Bush, a group that plans to do just that.
• Counter Inaugural, an effort supported by Billionaires for Bush, CODE Pink, and many others. Includes information on events both in D.C. and elsewhere.
• A.N.S.W.E.R., the anti-war juggernaut. The theme of their activities is “End the Occupation of iraq, Bring the Troops Home Now!”
• Not In Our Name, another war protest, which also lists other actions nationwide.
• The DC Anti-War Network, with “Rise Against Bush, Shine for A Peaceful Tomorrow

If you still aren't sure what to protest, how about the fact that the cheapest tickets to the parade are now going for $150!? Is that for real? It looks like yes; if you're connected or acted early you could get free tickets from your federal representative, but at this point, it's pay or... What? I don't see any information for those of us who aren't going to have tickets? I won't be surprised if many of the 23 state (as in sponsored by gov't in some way and as opposed to private) police agencies in D.C. will have plenty of chain link pens at the ready for our inaugural pleasure. All the security and hoo-ha for the inauguration is costing D.C. nearly $12 million; it sounds like that's on top of millions being spent by the federal gov't. More information (not about costs, obviously) is available from the Joint Congressional Committee On Inaugural Ceremonies.

Posted 12:09 PM | election 2004 general politics

Big Announcement Day

Big big news today! First, Apple announced the Mac mini, the iPod shuffle, and iWork (including the new “Pages” word processor and graphic design app). Oh, and all the updates to the iLife apps. This greatly increases the odds I'll be getting a new computer this summer when the next update to OS X (“Tiger”) comes out. It just doesn't make sense to pay close to $200 for the os upgrade, plus the iLife upgrade, and the new iWork bits, only to run them on a 600 mhz G3 machine. Since all that new software will come on any new machine I buy, I'll practically be saving $200! (Er, or something like that.) The other big news: Howard Dean announced he's officially running for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I don't know what to think about that. It could be great. Or really not great. I'm pretty pessimistic about the chances for it being great, though. Too much money would really hate to see Dean in any position of “official” influence that it's unlikely he'll get the job, and even if he does, all that money will still be working very hard to make him “behave” and serve its interests. If he refuses, the money will make the position of DNC Chairman irrelevant. (And obviously its not just big money doing the talking, but also lots of people with positions of various amounts of power who would be threatened by Dean as an official party leader.) In short, the status quo does not like to be messed with, hence my pessimism. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I think.

Posted 04:02 PM | Comments (3) | general politics mac geek

School Started, Life Over

School has begun again for me and that means my life is pretty clearly over. Nearly every second of every day appears to be booked with obligations. The trouble is, with journal, a 20 hour/week job, writing for ACS blog, a clinic that requires 10+ hours/week, and 14 hours of class, far too many of the seconds in my days appear to be double-booked. I mean, that's 44 hours booked already, without even figuring the time necessary for journal work, ACS blogging, or reading. Clearly I can't do all of these things, but I don't know what to give up. Crap. Question for anyone with knowledge/an opinion: What is the use of taking Federal Courts? I was advised to take it if I want a clerkship, which I'm pretty sure I do, but it looks like it's basically going to be something like “advanced CivPro with a special focus on Erie doctrine.” That's fine, but is it really worth the time and effort? Any thoughts on the long-term value of any of the above activities relative to the others would also be welcome.

Posted 08:11 AM | Comments (9) | 2L

Political Geek “Star” Sighting

I just saw Jim Strock, who was a “candidate” on Showtime's “American Candidate” series last summer. He was on foot at the corner of 20th and J Street downtown, crossing 20th against the light. He looked right at me and I said hello because I thought I knew him, then as soon as I was past I remembered why I recognized his face. Burning dilemma: Should I have gone back to say hello? I've only had a couple of “star” sightings in my life, but I've always thought it was poor taste to say anything to people you don't really know, but just recognize from tv or movies. A I wrong? Should I have seized the moment? If it had been Keith or Lisa or Bruce or Malia, I might not have been able to stop myself because I would have had to complement them on their roles in the show and their positions on the issues. But Jim? The only thing I could have said was “Hi. You seemed nice, but I never would have voted for you.” Somehow, that really didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, I wonder what he was doing in D.C...

Posted 08:33 PM | tv land

Clearly Erroneous

Welcome to Clearly Erroneous, a new group blog featuring some of the most fiendishly funny law students in the blawgosphere. My failure to mention it in my bits of blawg news was clear error on my part. (Ha! Now you see why I'm not part of a humorous group blog! I'm just too punny.)

Posted 09:06 AM | meta-blogging

Norrell & Strange, Unfortunate Events Into the Forest of Middlesex

Since school starts again today (oh yay), I figure this is my last chance to recount the wonders of my vacation reading, after I got so much good input on it before break began. Click below for more on Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, some Lemony Snicket books, Into the Forest,and Middlesex. (There's a spoiler, but it comes with a warning so you should be able to avoid it if you want.) My vacation reading started with a bang, but technically it wasn't reading at all. First, I was just about ready to start Middlesex as we were leaving, but L's sister and her SO kindly gave me a wonderful gift with orders to open it just before we left. It turned out to be Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—on cd! So we started listening to that almost as soon as we hit the road and the magical intrigues of Susanna Clarke's excellent first novel kept us pretty well riveted all the way to Michigan. The book is not small, so the cd version occupies a full 26 discs. Counting both directions of our drive, we got nearly halfway—to the middle of disc 11. It took nearly that long for the two magicians to meet, so now I'm dying to learn what becomes of them in the rest of the book. I'm still trying to figure out how (and when) to listen to the rest of it, but what I've heard so far is plenty to allow me to recommend it. (Thanks, M & P!) The book struck both me and L. as very much trying to evoke the style of a 19th century British novel (i.e. Jane Eyre), but its narrator has a much more contemporary sensibility, and its supernatural subject matter creates an interesting contrast with the 19th century style. The characters are painstakingly drawn (almost too painstakingly, at times), and the matter-of-fact treatment of magic keeps things interesting. The book's vision of magic (along with its liberal use of footnotes which enhance the impression that every bit of it is serious and true) is both dark and whimsical, and therefore believable. This is serious stuff these characters are playing with, and that seriousness adds a nice edge that makes you always want to know what happens next. Also, even halfway through the book I can't really figure out who I'm supposed to be rooting for, or who I'm even supposed to like. It takes skill to do that, and Clarke has done it well here. Once we were out of the car, I turned to books I'd read instead of listen to. My sister has been enjoying the Lemony Snicket books, so she kindly brought the first five or so and allowed me to read the first three in about as many days. I was pleasantly surprised to find them to be very fun mind-candy. Because they're kid's books they read quickly, and it's fun to imagine what it must be like to read them as a younger person. The Unfortunate Events books actually contain some great insights, I found. For example, the first book, The Bad Beginning, takes some nice digs at the law. This excerpt displays one of them, but it also shows Snicket's distinctive tone:

There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many, types of people, and everybody wants to read something different. For instance, people who hate stories in which terrible things happen to small children should put this book down immediately. But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive—the word “incentive” here means “an offered reward to persuade you to do something you don't want to do”—to read long, dull, and difficult books. (83-4)

How true! The tone and the little stylistic traits of a) warning the reader repeatedly that this is a horrible story in which terrible things happen to small children, and b) defining a word Snicket thinks his young readers may not recognize, are endearing trademarks of the whole series. But while I found most of the three books I read to be very well-written, I had to quibble with the the resolution of the first one. --- Caution: Spoiler ahead! --- If you haven't read this book and would like to, please skip the next three paragraphs! Also, if you haven't seen the movie and plan to, I'm guessing the following might give something away about that, too. The resolution of The Bad Beginning's central dilemma turns on what Klaus learns from reading these awful law books because it allows him and the other Baudelaire children to convince Justice Strauss to annul Violet's wedding to Count Olaf. By the judge's reasoning, the law requires a party to a wedding to sign a wedding document “in her own hand,” but since Violet is right-handed and she signed the document with her left, then she didn't sign in “her own hand,” and therefore the wedding is invalid. Obviously, this is a fairly weak and unsatisfying resolution to the problem, and Snicket seemed to feel that way, too, because he tries to explain it away:

Unless you are a lawyer, it will probably strike you as odd that Count Olaf's plan was defeated by Violet signing with her left hand instead of her right. But the law is an odd thing. For instance, one country in Europe has a law that requires all its bakers to sell bread at the exact same price. A certain island has a law that forbids anyone from removing its fruit. And a town not too far from where you live has a law that bars me from coming within five miles of its borders. Had Violet signed the marriage contract with her right hand, the law would have made her a miserable contessa, but because she signed it with her left, she remained, to her relief, a miserable orphan.

Um, really? I mean, sure, many things in the law turn on technicalities, but would the law really say that a person's “own hand” is only the dominant hand with which he/she generally signs his/her name? Maybe, but it still seemed weak to me. Maybe I've just spent too long in law school, or maybe not long enough. --- End Spoiler --- But even if the Lemony Snicket books may only get law mostly right (and who am I to say?), they still might teach young readers a good deal, especially in the way they attempt to expand their readers' vocabulary by defining words like “incentive” and putting them into context. One word I learned from the second book is “brummagem,” which “is such a rare word for 'fake' that even Klaus didn't know what it meant” (91). Did you? After three volumes of the Unfortunate Events in a row, I decided to take a little breather from the series. After all, the movie is only supposed to cover the first three books, so now if I end up seeing it, the books won't be spoiled for me. L. kindly gave me Into the Forest for Christmas, so I read that next, and as promised, it was a quick read with a somewhat Atwoodian feel. It's like The Handmaid's Tale in that it envisions a near-future where human folly has nearly made life as we know it impossible, but it's unlike that book in its lack of real concern for or attention to the larger causes of the future changes it predicts. Hegland's book feels less political, and more personal. But, like Handmaid it's centrally concerned with the relationships of women with women, women with men, and how culture can damage those relationships. I'd say it takes an idea of female solidarity and independence perhaps a little farther than Atwood does in Handmaid, and for that reason it's perhaps even darker than Handmaid, at least in a way. I'll say no more, but if you liked The Handmaid's Tale, I do think you'd like Into the Forest, plus it's a much faster read. Finally, I ended the break where I intended to begin—with Middlesex. There's enough to say about this book that I'm not sure where to begin, but first, thank you to everyone who recommended it so highly—it really was all that and a bag of chips. I mean, this is one great novel. It's a historical novel, it's a political novel, it's a domestic novel, it's a gender and sexuality novel. It's a little-bit-of-everything novel and that's why it's so good. I particularly liked the playful narrator, a sort of omniscient first person voice who explains his omniscience through the clever device of genetics and the idea that we're all omniscient before we're born. I liked the historical details about Smyrna and the Turks and the Greeks and Detroit and Henry Ford and the riots in the 60s and the sad decay of the “motor city.” I liked the careful and well-developed characters and the way they spanned generations, retaining a delightful family consistency and plausibility over the years. And, of course, I loved the way the gender and sexuality issues are woven throughout, and finally more or less resolved. In fact, maybe the only thing I didn't like so much was that I got the feeling at times that the author, Eugenides, knew exactly how good his book was, and was sort of showing off a little. I felt this most when our gene-crossed narrator admits that he once aspired to be a great novelist, but had resigned himself only to telling his story as plainly and completely as possible once he'd realized he simply had no talent for writing. Yeah, right, buddy. And yeah, I know the narrator is not the author, but still, to have your narrator say such a thing in the middle of a novel that's clearly going to be a big literary statement, it just seemed a teensy bit over the top. But only a teensy bit, because if there's any gloat in that moment on Eugenides' part, it's well-deserved, as far as I'm concerned. In short, this is just a great book. Again, I don't want to say anything that might reduce your pleasure in reading it by spoiling anything (although, while this book is about a big secret, it's an open secret from about page one, so I'm not sure what I could spoil), but suffice to say I'd recommend moving it to the top of your list.

Posted 07:39 AM | Comments (5) | ai books

Peggy Browning Fund Deadline

FYI: If you're interested in labor law and would like to make at least $4000 this summer practicing a bit of it, the deadline for the Peggy Browning Fund Fellowship is this Thursday, January 14th. Applications are here.

Posted 08:30 PM | law school

Bits of Blawg News

After one semester, Ex Mea Sententia is leaving law school for full-time work and an unidentified graduate program. He's also leaving his blawg behind. You gotta love it when a law student can say this:

I'm not even sure if I'm going to check my grades since I'll have no use for them.

Stop it, will you? I'm jealous enough already! Best of luck, Ex Mea! Who knows, maybe when I read this book I'll be following you out the door... E. McP of The Neutral Zone Trap now has an RSS feed, thanks at least in part to my incessant demands. Thank you! (If anyone else wants to subscribe, just add this link to your aggregator.) Transmogriflaw has moved to a new home on TypePad and things look great! She's also decided to spend another semester with her new favorite person (her son, who is fast becoming master of his thumbs), rather than returning to law school this semester. Sounds like a great decision to me. I also think that blawg is going to become a priceless record of little Nathaniel's life, and that's very cool. But speaking of moving to TypePad, as Jeremy Richey kindly noted recently, blawgcoop might be a good solution for anyone who wants to start a blawg or migrate one to MT or WordPress. One advantage of a blawgcoop blawg over TypePad is that, while TypePad charges a minimum of $5/month, blawgcoop charges a maximum of $5/year. Since it's a co-op, Blawgcoop is also completely non-profit. An advantage of blawgcoop over blogspot (and this is important for the burgeoning ranks of aggregator geeks, like me): every blawgcoop blawg comes standard with an RSS feed! ;-) Last but not least, say hello to three more GW blawgs!

1. WonL is written by Law-Rah, who has been posting pretty regularly since starting school last August. Oh, and she got an iPod maxifor Christmas—possibly the first and only of its kind.
2. Neil Chilson is another 1L who appears to have been blogging for nearly a year and a half now. Since his last post was late last November, perhaps he's giving his blawg second thoughts, or perhaps he just hasn't returned from his winter break.
3. Section14 looks like it was an attempt to get a section of 1Ls to create a group blawg. It's a great idea, but somehow I'm not surprised it hasn't taken off. I bet, however, that if its proprietors help it limp along through this year, it might be more successful next year because then it would provide a good way for former section-mates to keep in touch. Maybe.

These new finds suggest that there's a lot more blogging activity at GW than I'm aware of, which is good to know.

Posted 08:23 PM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging

Comments Temporarily Disabled

FYI: I'm installing a CAPTCHA thingy to combat comment spam, and in the process, comments are currently not working. If there's anything here on which you'd like to comment, please return in a couple of hours. I hope everything will be working correctly by then. UPDATE: Well, that wasn't as hard as it seemed. Comments seem to be working now. Please let me know if you experience any problems. UPDATED UPDATE: Ok, the CAPTCHA was working fine here, but I had to remove it because it required edits to core MT files, which meant that it screwed up every blog on this MT install. Rather than making time-consuming tweaks to 4-5 templates in every one of the 23 blogs on this server, I decided to skip the CAPTCHA test. If anyone knows of anything similar to sCode that doesn't require hacking core MT files, please share.

Posted 10:23 AM | Comments (9) | meta-blogging

Welcome Luminous Void

Hey, stop the presses! There's finally another GW blog (or blawg) to add to the scant three that I know of already.* Welcome to Luminous Void, a GW 2L who has so far written almost exclusively about RFID law and technology. He/she has a good little RFID primer for us mere mortals who only know enough about the technology to think it can't be good. If you're interested in IP law, Luminous Void promises to be an interesting place to visit. *The other GW blawgs I know of (besides this one) are:

• Actus Reus, the 2L writer of which I recently learned is a friend of mine. “Hey, do you write a blog?” is just not a question that comes up often in law school so, although he may have known my “real” identity for some time, I had not a clue of his. The gulf between the digital and the physical world can be wide, it seems.
• Idle Grasshopper, a 1L I haven't met and who hasn't posted in recent weeks, but he's made many interesting observations about law school from the perspective of an evening student balancing both coursework and a full-time job.
• Veritable Cornucopia, which started as a group blog, but which was maintained primarily by Sam, a GW 3L (who was a 2L when the blog started). Unfortunately, it largely seems he's given up on the project.
• Life, Law, Libido (aka “L-Cubed”) is written by two GW grads (Matt graduated from GW, too, didn't he?), but since they've graduated, it's a bit of a stretch to continue calling it a GW blog.

Is that it? Am I missing any? If not, again I ask: Why don't more GW students blog? Or perhaps they do, and I just don't know about it? If you're a GW blogger, Hi! Please say hello sometime. I won't bite, I promise.

Posted 09:25 AM | Comments (6) | law school meta-blogging

MT 3.14 & Blacklist 2.04b

If everything went as it should, ai should now be running on MT 3.14, with the latest version of Blacklist. Please let me know if you encounter any unexpected problems. Thanks! UPDATE: I've also now installed MT-DSBL, which is supposed to work in conjunction with Blacklist to block comments from open proxies and IPs on the dsbl.org blacklist. Right now the plugin will force moderation of all comments it catches. If it seems to be working well, I'll change it to block those comments w/out any moderation hassles. If you have any experience with this plugin, it would be great to hear whether it has worked for you. Btw, the above changes were inspired by Six Apart's Guide to Combatting Comment Spam. If you run an MT installation, you might want to check it out.

Posted 08:46 PM | meta-blogging

Formatting Experiments

Are you tired of your ambivalent imbroglio? Is it wearing out, grating on your nerves, or making your eyes cry out with boredom or clutter? Is your imbroglio just too darned tired? Well never fear! Experiments are here! In the next few weeks I'm going to be hella busy, so there's no better time to embark on a redesign of ai. At least, there's no better time to plan for such a thing and talk about it and wish I could do it, even if I don't actually get around to it. First up, I'd like to change the posting pattern around here. For some time I've admired the rather unique way Dave Winer posts on Scripting News. The format seems to be that anything post that's more than a short paragraph gets its own title, while anything that's just an observation or pointer to somewhere else just gets a line or two. The key is that all of these posts—both the longer, titled ones, and the untitled snippets—get permalinks. The colored permalink symbols (#) at the end of the snippets mark the transition from one snippet to the other. The only slightly incongruous element of this method is that the titled posts get a permalink at the top (after the title) instead of at the end, like the snippets. Winer does not allow comments on any of his posts. Anyway, I've been thinking of a convenient way to do something similar to Scripting News here at ai, because it would allow me to eliminate the ambivalent bits sidebar and just incorporate those kinds of links into the main body of the blog each day. That would simplify the design of the page, and would also make archives more meaningful because everything posted on a given day would end up in the same place. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to accomplish this? One idea is simply to create one post per day. Within the post, each “item” would get an anchor on the end. Longer posts would also be components of the single daily post, but they'd have titles, and again, an anchor at the end. I can't decide whether to allow comments on everything, or just on the longer bits. What do you think? Or does it even matter? Perhaps I'll just try it and see. As food for thought, Andrew Raff (who was actually the original inspiration for ambits) has developed something like this on his blog. However, his short items don't have permalinks or comment/trackback links. The cool bit is that they are clearly distinct content because they appear w/a light grey background. Perhaps I'll try out something like this, as well. When any of this will happen, I can't say. For now, these are just ideas I hope to play with. The larger redesign will probably eliminate the ability to “transmogrify ai” (change color schemes), simply because I don't think that adds much value for anyone. I wanted to see if I could make it work, and now that I have, well, it's not as fun anymore. I'm also considering:

• Upgrading to MT 3.14. This I will definitely do, possibly today. I'd really kind of like to move to an open source platform (i.e. WordPress), but that will require far more time than I have in the foreseeable future.
• Adding a CAPTCHA comment requirement, although Preaching to the Perverted says his didn't work as well as hoped.
• Creating a changeable photo-header, again, much like Scripting News (the Scripting News header photo changes at Winer's whim, usually every couple of months or so, I'd say).
• Editing the blogroll to a more manageable number of links and putting the rest elsewhere. I've been playing with del.icio.us and it looks like it might make a great link manager. This looks like a fairly easy way to include your list of links on a page via the del.icio.us RSS feed, so maybe I'll play with that.
• General simplification to make the page read more easily and load faster.

If you have suggestions, comments, or requests for an ai redesign, please let me know.

Posted 08:05 PM | Comments (8) | meta-blogging

Tacky, Morally Superior, and Snide

It seems my admittedly flip rant about magnetic ribbons has boiled Anthony Rickey's blood. I mocked the ribbons as a superficial expression of an ambiguous message. My little critique was not very original—see the comments at second person singular, which sparked my post; AntiMagnet; and Ernie Pook's Comeek. Anthony responded with a touching story of a scene he witnessed in which the magnetic ribbons were useful in bringing together two people who have loved ones in Iraq, allowing them to share their experiences and express support for the hardships involved with being in that very difficult situation. All of that is very fine. I thank him for that story, because it shows the ribbons playing a useful role for their displayers and helps answer my original question, which was: What do the ribbon displayers think they are saying with these magnets? Some of them clearly are saying something to the effect of: “I have a loved one in Iraq and I hope he or she comes home safe and sound.” That's great. I, too, hope all the troops come home safe and sound. In fact, my support for the troops in Iraq has never wavered on that count. From the first suggestion that the U.S. was going to invade Iraq, I objected strenuously. I marched and wrote letters and participated in teach-ins and pickets, all so that no American soldiers would be sent to Iraq in the first place. Now that they're there, I certainly hope they all come home ASAP and safe and sound. I hope I've never suggested otherwise, and I apologize if anyone has interpreted anything I've said any other way. But Anthony's post points out the crucial difficulty faced by those who have always opposed this war and occupation. First, from day one, it has been nearly impossible to have any sort of rational exchange of opinions on the subject. The pacifist (or the person not wholly opposed to war, but just opposed to this war) said, “Iraq is not a threat to the U.S. or its allies, it had nothing to do with 9/11, and the inspections and sanctions are working to keep Saddam in line.” The pro-war person replied, “Oh, you went to college and think you know more than our president? Bush says Iraq's a threat. Do you want the proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud!?” And so we went to war and American soldiers began dying and getting maimed and wounded. Today, I suggest that magnetic ribbons are not a very effective form of support for troops in Iraq, but rather than explain to me why he thinks I'm wrong, Anthony writes an anti-intellectual screed that suggests that a college education has made me snide, morally superior, and tacky. But more important, he suggests that by criticizing ribbons, I'm not only not supporting the troops, but I'm somehow hurting them or their loved ones. There's a leap there that's not helpful for the troops or anyone else. So long as Americans are unable to have thoughtful exchanges about the war without one side constantly trying to trump the other by baiting them with emotion or fear, American soldiers will probably continue to die in unjust and unnecessary military misadventures. As for the substance to Anthony's post, he makes an important connection between the domestic response to what's happening in Iraq today and that response to what happened in Vietnam more than three decades ago. How much have the damaged pride and unhealed wounds of that national humiliation fed support for the current conflict? I really don't know, but the 2004 election showed that the unresolved feelings, unhealed wounds, and unforeseen consequences of Vietnam continue to shape and influence Americans and American foreign policy today; Anthony's connection between that war and this one simply reiterates that fact. Unfortunately, the mistakes we've made and continue to make in Iraq are also likely to negatively influence Americans and American foreign policy in similar ways for generations to come. Anthony concludes that because some percentage of magnet-displayers feel their magnets express something genuine and meaningful, all criticism of the magnets is meaningless. I obviously disagree. Dangerous jingoism generally thrives upon a foundation of true and justified sentiment, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous. That said, I don't think the magnets are all that dangerous and their objectionable potential probably wasn't worth the time it took to write my original post about them. I do wish they were being made by an American manufacturer (so as not to add needlessly to our already gargantuan trade deficit) who was giving 50% or more of the proceeds to efforts to educate Americans about the dangers of unilateral military adventurism and the self-perpetuating follies of war generally. To me, that would be a great way to support American soldiers, both those serving today and those who will serve in future generations, because it would decrease the likelihood that U.S. citizens would allow their leaders to put our soldiers in mortal peril for anything but a genuine last resort. On a final and more personal note, I hope Anthony (and others who feel as he does) will take this post as it's intended—as a measured attempt to explain my opinion of the subjects it covers. I've already admitted that my first post on the ribbons was a snide rant, and that is obviously not a good way to open or contribute to discussion of a serious issue. One of the double-edged swords of blogs is that they often encourage sarcasm and flippancy. This can be a refreshing way to cut through the spin we often hear from politicians and others, but it can also be a poor way to discuss controversial issues with people who see things differently than you do.

Posted 11:40 AM | Comments (10) | general politics

Caffeine Experiment

The holiday allowed me to do something I've been wanted to do for some time now: cut down on my daily caffeine intake. I went from drinking a pot or more of coffee and numerous diet cokes every day to drinking 1-2 cups of coffee in the morning and then nothing else with caffeine. The great surprise? It wasn't very hard to do this. I had no headaches or other noticeable withdrawal symptoms. Even better, I've recently felt much less tired in the late afternoon and evening, which used to be the time of day I would crash. Is it possible that drinking so much caffeine actually made me more tired, rather than less? I'm sure. Of course, it's also possible I've simply been getting plenty of sleep on vacation, leaving me no reason to be tired. At any rate, I hope to continue limiting myself to 1-2 relatively small cups of coffee (or less) per day and I'm sure I'll learn in the coming weeks whether that seems to have any effect on energy levels. Maybe I'll send all the money I save on coffee and cokes to the guy in the U.S. selling bumper stickers that complain about the guy in China selling idiotic magnets. (Thanks to Dave! for the link.)

Posted 08:32 AM | Comments (2) | life generally

Ribbons

Back to work today means vacation is over. I will miss these long vacations that law school provides, but I almost think this one has been too long—my brain doesn't want to return to this reality. So instead I've been reading other blogs, including second person, singular (sps), which recently featured a great little discussion of the magnetic “support our troops” ribbons I saw far too many of while driving along the highways and byways of this land. Damn those damned magnet ribbons! What do they mean? They command us to “Support our troops.” Ok. But how? By voting for and supporting an administration that lied to us and the world so it could send more than 1,000 of our troops to their deaths? Is that support? I don't get it, and I don't think the magnet-displayers do either. What do they think they're saying? If you have one of these magnets on your car, what do you think you're saying? As sps notes, the magnet lets people proudly order everyone else on the road to “support our troops” even as they make zero commitment to that message themselves:

it really makes me proud to live in america, where the demands of the marketplace and innovation go hand in hand leading us to a brighter future.... because these ribbons that you see on the back of all those cars are magnets. yes, magnets that will peel off and not leave a trace, not leave a scratch on the paint, not leave a trace of that hideous adhesive. it is such a perfect solution, because in america, ideas matter, our principles matter, and we want our neighbors to know we have the courage of our convictions as long as they don't diminish the value of our possessions.

Brilliant, don't you think? Support our troops by driving around with a magnet that orders everyone else to support our troops, and if you decide you no longer feel like supporting our troops (whatever that means), just remove the magnet! Support support support! And the real genius of the whole thing is that the damned things are made in Taiwan (at least the ones I saw in stores) and every penny of profit on them is going to a handful of private individuals who don't give a damn about any troops except insofar as the idea of those troops can be exploited for private gain. Support our troops! Support our troops! Support our troops! Damned ribbons.

Posted 09:45 PM | Comments (16) | life generally

Chopper City

Washington, D.C., is a city of helicopters. After just over two weeks relaxing in the relative wilds of Montana and Michigan, we've returned to the city built (at least partially) atop a swamp. The temperature here is a balmy 45 degrees and the air is thick with humidity. Everywhere we go it seems we are serenaded by the staccato thump of helicopters and the shrill notes of emergency vehicle sirens. It is an unnatural music for a completely unnatural place. This is where we live. This is where we will spend 2005. 2004 was nothing like I expected; in fact, it was an incredible disappointment, thanks primarily to the outcome of our gerrymandered electoral process and the politics of fear. I'm not sorry to see 2004 go. Now, what will 2005 bring? I have little clue. The adjustment back into my so-called “life” will take some time. After spending the last two weeks almost completely disconnected from the internet, I'm surprised to say I kind of liked it. Kind of. It's good to really get away. Of course, now there's lots of catching up to do, both online and off. Meanwhile, did you see Jason Kottke's Best Links of 2004?

Posted 03:39 PM | Comments (2) | life generally meta-blogging