Amazing Congratulations

Congratulations to Reichen and Chip, winners of the latest circuit of The Amazing Race on CBS. The couple claimed victory for gay people everywhere, and they earned it—especially against the subtle homophobia of second-place-finishers, John and Kelly. Of course, some people won't be too happy for Chip and Reichen, but the rest of us can be thrilled about the serendipitous synchronicity that put a married gay couple on national TV for 8-10 weeks just as the Supreme Court was striking down U.S. anti-sodomy laws. Not only that, but as Heather Havrilesky noted last week on Salon, they seemed to be the most compatible, well-adjusted, and likable couple on the show.

Rereading that article also reminds me of the irony in the fact that the team that made each other the most miserable on this season of the Amazing Race may have been the self-proclaimed virgins who have dated for 12 years, Millie and Chuck. They crashed and burned a few weeks ago and seem destined for eternal unhappiness if they insist on staying together. Meanwhile, Chip and Reichen will have $1 million with which to show each other the depth of their love. Perhaps there is justice in this world, after all.

Posted 07:14 AM | Comments (5) | general politics life generally

Oriented

The final day of orientation was the day the faculty and upper level students tried to get real about what law school was about. We learned we should be working 60 hours/week as law students (including class and study time), and that this was considered a normal work week for most people and should leave us plenty of time to have happy and full lives. Um, excuse me!? Have you ever heard of the 40-hour work week? Guess not.

The day began with a student organizations "breakfast" where I was glad to see there's a good mix of options for those inclined toward public interest and social justice. The Equal Justice Foundation, the American Constitution Society, and the National Lawyers Guild were all represented, plus there's an Environmental Law Association and a group called "Street Law" that sends law students into DC public schools to teach kids about the law. It's not AU's Marshall-Brennan Fellowship Program, but it's a start.

The rest of the day consisted of advice from upper-level students (most of which I've heard and discussed here before), and advice from select faculty, much of it along the lines of the Dean's welcome: We have an obligation to use wisely the power we are going to gain in law school. A highlight was superstar Jonathon Turley's entertaining performance in which he argued that the difference between good lawyers and crap lawyers is that the good lawyers like what they're doing. According to Turley, the secret to being successful in the practice of law is taking time early in law school to explore your options and find the area of law that excites you the most, rather than following the hordes into the area of law that pays the most. Amen to that.

The day was capped with a "Dean's Reception" featuring free finger food, punch, beer, wine, and all the awkward conversation you could stomach. It didn't take long for me to get my fill of that, so while I suspect the hordes spent their last evening before the start of classes conducting various bonding and mating rituals (lubricated, I'm guessing, with generous amounts of cold beverages), I spent mine at Politics and Prose listening to Jim Hightower explain why he's optimistic about the potential of the grassroots to reverse the avalanche of bad policies being created by the Bush administration and a spineless Democratic party (also known in Hightower-speak as "wobblycrats"). It was a good talk, made better because the crowd was huge and lively. I found myself thinking how refreshing it seemed to be out of the law school and in the "real" world. Then I realized: School hasn't even started yet and I'm already glad when I can get away! Should this tell me something?

But I'm not going to dwell on that. The transition from a life of leisure to a life of work and responsibility is always hard, regardless of what comprises that work and responsibility. Class starts today—in a couple of hours, actually—and I'm ready to go. One of the first cases we had to read for Civil Procedure was US ex rel. Gerald May v. Satan and His Staff, in which the plantiff

alleges that Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of the plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in plaintiffs path and has caused plaintiff's downfall.

Plaintiff alleges that by reason of these acts Satan has deprived him of his constitutional rights.

I'm not kidding. I can't wait to hear what the professor has to say about this. To quote the exuberant opening line from "No One's Leaving" by Jane's Addiction ("Ritual de lo Habitual"): "Here we go!"

Posted 07:27 AM | Comments (2) | law school

Orientation

After two fairly full days of welcome speeches, tours, and standing in line to fork over money for books and to get pictures taken for multiple IDs, I'm beginning to feel fairly well oriented. A quick rundown of the highlights includes:

The Dean's Welcome Speech: Yeah, it was the usual hot air about how great we all were and how great GW is and how happy GW is to have us and how happy we should be that GW let us in, yadda yadda yadda. Interesting facts: GW turned down more students than applied to any other law school except one; 26 people applied for each available seat. CNN's "Crossfire" (which CNN films at GW) wouldn't give the law school all the tickets it wanted to the show because Crossfire claims GW students only clap for guests on the left. My class includes a professional quarterback from the Canadian Football League and someone who formerly worked as an executive secretary to Donald Rumsfeld and as a social secretary to George Bush.

But while those are interesting facts, the best part of the Dean's welcome was what he said about the opportunities and responsibilities of a law degree, which might be best summarized by this statement:

There's nothing ignoble about serving business interests, but I want you to think of serving the public interest as one of your central obligations.

The Dean concluded with a surprising, two-part "homework" assignment. First, we should visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum—start at the beginning and read only the legal edicst posted on the wall. "You'll see, brick by brick, how lawyers and judges participated in the creation of that system." The lesson is that lawyers are capable of doing extraordinary evil.

The second part of the Dean's assignment is to read or see the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird. He explained that there were two scenes in particular toward the end of the book that he hoped would serve as "guiding beacons" for our careers in law. The first is when a character is found stabbed to death, and while others try to claim it was an accidental death, Atticus Finch explains he won't accept that because he wants to be able to look his kids in the eye. The second is at the end of the book's major trial; although Atticus loses, he's given everything he could to save the life of a black man wrongly accused of rape, and as he leaves the courtroom the community stands in respect of what he's done. The Dean's takeaway lessons from these two scenes were:

You need to be able to look in people's eyes, and people will stand when you do the right thing.

Ok, maybe they're a little sentimental (aka: cheesy), but those sound like pretty good guiding beacons to me.

Another Dean (there are many) followed the Dean, and gave us many additional pieces of wisdom from "great thinkers," the best of which were:

Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards. — Soren Kierkegaard

and

To be uncertain is uncomfortable; to be certain is ridiculous. —Chinese proverb

Mandatory Financial Aid Session: This was great fun—two hours of really bad powerpoint slides. The gist of it was you should have no more than three credit cards, check your credit record and make sure it's clean, and everything you spend now is borrowed against future income. "That $3 latte you buy today really costs $100." That's putting things in perspective.

Locker rentals: We get to share! How fun! Yes, this is very high school, but it's not even that because the lockers aren't big enough for one person's books and coat and computer and whatnot, let alone the stuff of two people. What are they thinking?

Library tour: Twenty minutes of talk about which computers to use for what, where and how to print and copy things, how to get our laptops connected to the internet, etc. Oh, and there's some books over there.

Lessons in Case Briefing: Helpful, thanks. It doesn't seem to be a big mystery, but we'll see.

Academic Integrity talk: Fifteen minutes of "don't lie, cheat, or steal, because, well, it's bad." And if you lied on your application materials, you better fess up now 'cause it'll only be worse for you later if you don't. Check.

Faculty panel discussion on International Human Rights Issues: This was terrific. Professor Steinhardt opened with this message: Myths that human rights law is unenforceable or "not real" are "based on a pathological misunderstanding of the world." What followed was a crash course in the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which gave federal district courts jurisdiction over civil actions by aliens for torts committed "in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Steinhardt explained that since the Filartiga case, much has changed in the way the Alien Tort Claims Act has been used to enforce human rights. Plaintiffs are naming additional defendants, including sitting and former heads of state, those in positions of command and responsibility, multinational corporations when they're enmeshed with governments in ways that require human rights violations for profit (Unical, Talisman), and U.S. state and municipal officials. Plaintiffs are also alleging new types of torts (transboundary abductions, war crimes, genocide, slavery and slave-like practices, terrorism, prolonged arbitrary detention and disappearance), and the types of plaintiffs have changed—there have even been successful human rights class actions. Unfortunately, both Professor Steinhardt and his colleaque, Professor Murphy, seemed to agree that the real difficulty in improving human rights around the world is the almost "visceral resistance to international law." Gee, I wonder where that comes from....

Crossfire: Although the law school wasn't able to get as many tickets as it wanted, it did get some and I was able to be in the audience for yesterday's show. I'd never seen Crossfire before and after only a minute or two I understood why: It's a complete waste. For those of you who haven't seen it, let me explain: The show pits partisans on the right and left against each other to "debate" important issues; however, since the show only lasts 15-20 minutes (lots of commercial breaks), these partisans only have enough time to lob soundbite bombs at each other. There's no real debate, and important issues—like what the U.S. should do about the mess it's made in Iraq—get reduced to simplistic yes/no, black/white binaries like, this:

Tell us, was it worth going to war in Iraq in the first place? Press one if you believe it was worth it; the benefits of getting rid of Saddam outweigh the costs. Press two for, no, the United States should not have gone to war there.

It sure would be neat if we could reduce this to a yes/no equation, but we can't. Crossfire seems to do this with every question (the guests repeatedly attempted to pin each other down with simplistic questions like this), which makes it utterly useless, as far as I'm concerned. Why do people watch this show?

Computing: Trying to use a Mac at PC-only GW remains the biggest hurdle to a smooth transition into this student's life in the law. As detailed elsewhere, GW is trying to standardize on Cisco's LEAP encryption system for its wireless network, which I thought would be fine because Apple's Airport supports LEAP. But GW also uses the WatchGuard Authentication system and I think that might be preventing me from connecting. My computer gets on the network ok, but I can't seem to access the Internet. And even if I can get online, there's still the question of printing. GW uses the Pharos print management system, It looks Mac-friendly, but GW may not have set it up to be. I haven't checked with GW's support folks about any of this, but after the response I got when I asked about using a Mac before, I'm not optimistic.

Note: If you're a GW law student who has used or is using a Mac at GW.... help!

That's it. Orientation ends today with breakfast with student groups, a student-led "survival skills" seminar, and a similar faculty-led "survival" session that I think is going to be more comic relief than substantive advice. If I hear any good jokes, I'll let you know.

Finally, let me come out of my self-absorbed shell for a second to say: Best of luck to everyone else starting law school in the coming weeks!

Posted 07:27 AM | Comments (3) | law school

Amused and Rested

We survived Six Flags without incident. The Batwing was a little disappointing, really, but still plenty thrilling. Ranked in order of ability to make you feel queasy were:

1. Two Face: The Flipside
2. Joker's Jinx
3. Batwing

But really probably the best rides for just great fun (w/out threatening to make you sick) were the old wooden coasters, The Wild One and Roar, and the new smooth, high-speed equivalent, Superman. The water park was also fun, but that's where the lines were, so we didn't spend a lot of time there.

Notes for if you want to go: If you want to order tickets online you'll save $10/person, but you have to do it far enough ahead so that the tickets can be mailed to you. Parking is $9, and that's pretty unavoidable. If you plan to dip in the water park, inner-tube rentals are $6/ea. You don't have to rent a tube to ride the slides, but you'll wait much longer if you don't. Total cost for the day for two people, including two meals at Subway (the healthiest option in the park, it seemed): approx. $110.

And with that, it seems my life of leisure has come to an end. I'm off to law school orientation, trying not to think too hard about what a lack of respect GW has shown by refusing to tell us what time orientation will end today. I do have a dog to walk, people! Oh well. As Beanie said when I complained about this before, I better get used to it. All my time are belong to them.

Posted 07:09 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Get Your War On, DC Punk

In the ongoing saga of the country bumpkin (me) trying to take advantage of all that DC has to offer, I forgot to mention the joy that was ours the other night when David Rees, the satiric mastermind behind Get Your War On, spoke at Politics and Prose. He shared the bill with Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkens, authors of Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital (reviewed here). At first the pairing seemed a bit odd, but it turned out to be a nice combination since punk is all about alternatives to mainstream culture and GYWO is certainly that. But mainly L. and I were there for Rees, who impressed us as an amazingly deadpan comic; if you think his comics are funny when you read them on the screen, imagine having them read aloud to you in a crowded room. It was almost like a form of therapy.

Since I knew that proceeds of his book go to landmine relief efforts in Afghanistan, I've wondered how Rees makes a living. Someone asked that very question and the answer is he's now creating GYWO for Rolling Stone magazine, so he's finally making some bank for his brilliance. You can also give cash to him directly through the paypal link at the bottom of his comics page. Read the comics, throw the man a few bones for those laughs. Buy the book and help make Afghanistan safer. Everybody wins!

In a related vein, we also went to see "The Weather Underground" at Visions Cinema:

Thirty years ago, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. In THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, former Underground members, including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, David Gilbert and Brian Flanagan, speak publicly about the idealistic passion that drove them to bring the war home and the trajectory that placed them on the FBI's most wanted list.

It's an incredible film about an incredible time and phenomenon in U.S. history, and provides invaluable lessons about the best (and worst) ways to bring about political change in a "modern" (really postmodern or postpostmodern or whatever) society. Short lesson: Violence against the state only gives the state license to use increased violence in response. See also Sept. 11, 2001.

Toward the end of the film, Naomi Jaffe, a former member of the Weather Underground, says something like, "even though we didn't achieve our goals, I think what we did was worthwhile because it shows future activists what's possible; it provides a history of resistance and activism that future revolutionaries can build on." And the thing is, she'd be right except for 98% of the planet, the Weather Underground never existed. History belongs to those who write the history books, and if history books ever mention the Weather Underground, you can bet they do so as minimally as possible and in the context of words like treason, radical, insane, tiny fringe, etc. Have you ever heard of the Weather Underground?

Finally, to come full circle, in addition to being one of the authors of Dance of Days (mentioned above), Mark Andersen is also the founder of Positive Force, a DC activist group. Andersen will join Sam Green, director of "The Weather Underground" (the movie) for a Q&A about the movie and about activism on Aug. 23 at visions. You know, if you want to boost your countercultural cred. a teensy bit, it could be cool.

Now, for something completely different, L. and I are headed off to Six Flags (MD) for a day of mass consumer debauchery of the junkfood and thrillride variety. It's my last day of "freedom" before law school starts, so I figured I'd go out with a bang, of sorts. Batwing, here we come!

Posted 08:15 AM | general politics life generally

Fair and Balanced Friday:

Whoops! Friday was Fair and Balanced day in response to response to Fox v. Franken. See also "Freedom of Expression."

Posted 07:42 AM | general politics law general life generally