Kahki Study Break

If you were in my position (having wasted way too much study time to really prepare adequately for finals) you might be thinking things couldn't really get much worse in your little world.* But no; it gets worse when you take a silly internet quiz to give your brain a rest, only to find out you're color is Khaki:

You are khaki [#F0E68C]:

Your dominant hues are red and green, so you're definately not afraid to get in and stir things up. You have no time for most people's concerns, you'd rather analyze with your head than be held back by some random "gut feeling".

Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan.

Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

But why is that khaki? I mean, the description seems fine (and fairly accurate, I think), but what's khaki about it? The trouble w/khaki is it's so boring slash military. And speaking of boring, what's the difference between beige and khaki, because to me they look a lot the same, and I just don't want to be beige. Oh, what have I done wrong!? ;-)

So what color are you, then? (You know you want to find out, it only takes 2 seconds.) If that study break won't do for you, type "miserable failure" into Google and spin the "I feel lucky" button. Of course, this google bombing thing can be used for good or ill, but it's fun for the moment, isn't it? And one more study break: StrongBad's Trogdor Email—a friend pointed me to this months ago, but it's even funnier now if you think of one word: The Governator (#81 on the list of 2003's Most Annoying Conservatives). Watch the animation and you'll see what I mean.

* All students and former students: Have you noticed how small your world can get around exam/finals time? Your physical world becomes limited to books, notes, computer, desk, maybe library, maybe coffee shop, but it's your mind that gets really confined, forced to range over a very small and bounded set of material. This is the only situation in which I might wish my mental universe was even smaller, because that would mean less to study! But this is also probalby why I prefer papers to exams as evaluative/pedagogical tools; paper-writing asks you to focus but allows more freedom (generally) in the terrain you travel. . . . I'm glad vacation's coming; I think these travel metaphors suggest I need to get out of this place.

Posted 01:52 PM | Comments (7) |

Winter Finally

For the last two or three days the local media have been giddy with predicitons of winter stormy doom.

Finally, something like said stormy doom has arrived here in DC, although as you can see, it doesn't seem all that doomy.

Still studying. The doom is this: I'm going to spend way too much energy on torts, then fail crim. The solution? I'll just make mediocre effort for them all! [Insert mad scientist evil laugh here. Yes, it's like that.]

Posted 06:57 AM | life generally

Wal-Martization

If you live in DC, try to avoid shopping at Safeway for a while.

Why? Something like six weeks ago, grocery workers walked out of Vons stores in California after Vons offered them a contract that would effectively eliminate health care benefits for workers over time. Then Kroger and Ralphs stores locked out their employees to show their support of Vons. Isn't it nice to see corporations showing such solidarity? Apparently no grocery corporation in California wants to provide its workers with health care benefits, even though they've all been doing so for decades. The CA Attorney General thinks the grocers are perhaps a bit too solid—he's investigating them for anti-trust violations.

Safeway owns Vons. Safeway has stores all over D.C. Now, the UFCW (Union of Food and Commercial Workers) has expanded its picket lines to D.C. Safeway stores. The union hasn't asked D.C. Safeway employees to walk out—yet. At this point, the union just wants to keep shoppers out of Safeway so that Safeway will understand that it's going to lose more money by fighting the than by simply agreeing to a reasonable contract.

So why are Safeway and its fellow grocery chains fighting so hard to reduce worker benefits? According to the corporations, the reason is . . . Wal-Mart. Safeway argues that because Wal-Mart is a non-union employer (Wal-Mart has a very aggressive union-busting organization that successfully fights every effort of its workers to organize), Wal-Mart can pay workers less (and not provide health care), therefore it can charge less for goods, and therefore it can drive the grocery chains out of business. Welcome to "everyday low prices."

And welcome to The Wal-Martization of America.

Did you hear the one about FAO Schwartz? It declared bankruptcy yesterday:

FAO has been losing money for nine years, battered by the deep-discounting tactics of top toy sellers Wal-Mart and Target.

Hey, look—it's Wal-Mart again! In the 1990s, Wal-Mart, the ultimate "category killer," put thousands of mom and pop stores of all kinds out of business on main streets throughout the U.S. Now Wal-Mart is taking over groceries and toys, even in big markets. What's next?

Posted 05:37 AM | Comments (4) | general politics life generally

Huh?

Two to four inches of snow expected by morning!? Whaaa? Why start now?

Disturbing evening headlines:

1) Justice to review request for medicare vote probe: Did someone attempt to bribe retiring Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan to get him to vote for the medicare bill?

2) Missing prosecutor found shot, stabbed:

Luna was trying the case of Baltimore rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, 32, and his one-time associate Walter Oriley Poindexter, 28. The two men were accused of heroin distribution and running a violent drug ring in part from their Stash House Records studio.

Luna and the defense attorneys negotiated through the afternoon Wednesday and reached a plea deal about 5 p.m., Quarles said. The men entered their guilty pleas about 11:30 a.m. Thursday, and they remained in custody.

Smith agreed to plead guilty to one count of distribution of heroin and to possession of a weapon for the purposes of drug trafficking. Poindexter agreed to plead guilty to three counts of distribution of heroin to a government witness.

The parties were expected to appear Thursday morning to enter the agreement, but Luna was not present, the judge said.

Crazy. Who knew being a prosecutor could be so dangerous?

Posted 04:39 PM | Comments (1) | life generally

Common Sense

In today's news, the Dean campaign is going old school. Following the lead of Thomas Paine who helped inspire the American Revolution with his pamphlet, "Common Sense," the Dean Campaign has produced "Common Sense for A New Century." It's online at that link, but it's more fun if you print it (sheet 1 and sheet 2), read it, then pass it around, to other people. The pdfs were designed for print, using a classic, heavy serif typeface and traditional typographic tricks, like woodcut-esque initial caps and dingbats for organization. See? Old school. Cool.

But "Common Sense for A New Century" is not just cool because someone took the time to design it well. For the past three years I taught Paine's version of "Common Sense" to several intro to American literature classes, and each time it seemed more relevant than the time before. I loved teaching it, because it gave my classes the opportunity to talk about the ideals of justice and equality on which the U.S. was ostensibly founded. Students generally found it easy to see how far we've strayed from those ideals, but just as important, they quickly saw the gap between the kind of activist citizen who would write and distribute a pamphlet like "Common Sense" (and thereby help effect a revolution), and the kind of passive citizens most of us are today (who wouldn't know a revolution if it hit us over the head). The first few sentences alone are brilliant:

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

What could be more true of our current situation? "Our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." In much of its approach, but especially in its release of this newly updated "Common Sense," the Dean campaign seems to understand both what Paine was saying and how it applies today. They understand at least well enough to make it a selling point of the campaign. Are they cynically manipulating the activist passion that motivated Paine and which today motivates many Americans? Perhaps, but if they are, I hope they're ready for what could come of that. The Dean campaign seems to be waking people up from an extended slumber of ambivalence and inaction; what will they do once they've had their morning coffee?

There's some irony in the fact that this new "Common Sense" comes at the same time as this headline in today's Washington Post: Dean Now Courting Party Insiders. If Dean's the "revolutionary" candidate who wants to get back to America's core values, what's he doing cozying up to the establishment? The Post sums it up like this:

Dean derives most of his support, energy and money from grass-roots activists, many of whom are new to politics. His cutting-edge Internet campaign is shattering expectations and revolutionizing presidential politics.

But Dean, a savvy strategist and tactician, knows that the road to the nomination and the presidency is much more treacherous if he continues to alienate lawmakers and party insiders the way he did early on, several supporters said. A few veteran Democrats have pulled him aside in recent months to deliver that message.

The trick for Dean is to rail against Washington in public and rally insiders behind the scenes, party strategists say.

"There's a danger some will call it hypocritical . . . or some of his original Internet warriors won't understand he needs to consort with those they feel are the enemy," said Democratic strategist Jenny Backus.

The strategists are right—Dean is going to have to walk a thin line here. Still, it's true that Dean is going to need as many friends as he can get if he's going to win, and even if he is courting the insiders, he's doing too many new and different things to be considered just like every other politician. For example, his campaign seems to be expanding to help elect a Democratic congress, as well. As the Post says, "A non-incumbent presidential candidate raising money for members of Congress this early is unprecedented." Many things about the Dean campaign are unprecedented; let's hope one of them is this: Dean will keep his campaign promises to (borrowing from Paine) take the necessary evil of government out of the control of special interests and give its power to punish back to the society it was designed to serve.

Sidenote: Is the Gephardt campaign playing dirty by trying to create bad blood between unions?

Posted 08:04 AM | election 2004 general politics

Foot in Mouth

Yeah, it's yesterday's news, but what isn't? So: U.S. Defense Secretary Ronald Dumsfeld has won the "Foot in Mouth Award" from Britain's Plain English Campaign for the following statements:

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.”

You know it.

Don't miss the runners-up, including The Governator with:

"I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.”

The previous winners are also quite amusing.

Strangely, Dummy has also been named "non-EU citizen of the year" by a European Union affairs newspaper for his statements about old and new Europe. Europeans sure know how to make lemonade out of lemons, don't they?

Posted 07:07 AM | general politics

Dean's Records

Taking a break from studying contracts (where's the consideration!?), I scanned this transcript of Howard Dean's appearance on Hardball (last Monday night, I believe). Here's how Dean explained the sealed records I mentioned yesterday:

Every governor in Vermont and most governors around the country, maybe every governor for all I know, has a process by which certain records are sealed and certain records are left open. The vast majority of my records are open. You are welcome to go, as ever opposing campaign has done, and rummage through them for the next six months. There are some that are left private, and I don’t exactly know all the things that are in those because those are attorney to secretary of state negotiated. But some of the kinds of things might be a letter from a constituent saying, dear governor, I am an HIV, AIDS victim, can you please help me?        Now, those kinds of letters do not belong in the public, and they’re not. That’s why some records are sealed, and governor’s offices throughout the country.

Of course some records will be sealed, and there's no way for the average media consumer to know whether Dean really sealed more records than "normal" or whether opposition campaigns are simply trying to blow this up into an issue. After reading the rest of the Hardball interview, I'm still ready to give Dean the benefit of the doubt. Most of the time, he doesn't talk like a "normal" politician, and that's a good thing. Check this out:

We have got to stop having the campaigns run in this country based on abortion, guns, God and gays, and start talking about education, jobs and health care.

It's true, isn't it? But would you ever hear this from Bush or Lieberman of Kerry or Gephardt?

William Greider also has a nice piece in the most recent issue of The Nation: Why I'm for Dean.

Ok. Back to contracts: A contract is a promise or set of promises that the law will enforce. No promise is enforceable unless there is a basis for enforcement. The three modern bases for enforcement are consideration, reliance, and, in a few special cases, "moral obligation." Consideration is a promise or performance bargained for (sought and given) in exchange. To enforce a promise based on reliance, the plaintiff must show not only reliance, but also that (1) the defendant made a promise; (2) the defendant could reasonably expect the plaintiff to take an action; (3) the plaintiff took an action; (4) the action was induced by (i.e., taken in reliance on) the promise; and (5) enforcement of the promise is necessary to prevent injustice. Enforcement on the basis of moral obligation is rare, but a court will enforce a new promise by the defendant to reaffirm an old obligation that was (1) discharged by a statute of limitations; or (2) discharged by bankruptcy proceedings; or (3) voidable because of infancy. Restitution can sometimes be a substitute for enforcement: When the plaintiff cannot prove that the defendant made an enforceable promise, the plaintiff may seek "restitution" from the defendant if the defendant has been unjustly enriched at the plaintiff's expense.

Doesn't that sound like great fun!?

Posted 11:22 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

December Already

December already. Hard to believe, isn't it? Where did November go? For L, it went into writing a novel—congratulations, L!

Fifty thousand words (approx. 200 pages) might not sound like much, but try pulling 50,000 words out of your head in 30 days or less and you may find it's not as easy as it sounds. I stalled out at almost 28,000 words, but I did find some interesting characters and an interesting story I might come back to someday. Perhaps I'll return to it in March for NaNoEdMo.

The campaigns for president are heating up. Bush is raising money like crazy and his campaign claims it wants to build the biggest grassroots organization the U.S. has ever seen. That's a scary thought. Dean and Gephardt are locked in a tight race for Iowa. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org continues to grow and gain attention—both positive and negative. This weekend, MoveOn is sponsoring nationwide screenings of the new film, "Uncovered: The whole truth about the Iraq war."

The Dean campaign continues to grow; however, the dirty laundry is beginning to come out. Apparently, Dean sealed his records last year to diminsh the amount of ammunition his opponents will have against him. One source of ammunition may be statements he made about judicial appointments. Hmmm.... This appears to be politics as usual, which is what makes it so disturbing. The big advantages Dean has as far as I'm concerned is that he seems to be doing something unusual with his campaign—he appears much less compromised by special interest money than the other candidates, and he appears willing to stand behind his ideas and actions. So why seal his records? I understand his fear that his opponents won't play fair with whatever they might learn about his past, but the idealist in me would have more respect for him if he'd simply say, "Hey, I've done things that people are going to say were wrong and bad. I'm human, and I learn from my mistakes, just like everybody else." The idealist in me says Dean should believe in voters enough to trust that we'll be able to tell when his opponents are unfairly smearing him, and when a past mistake really does matter. But, of course, we don't live in my ideal world, do we?

Another election development I just learned about: America Coming Together plans to campaign to defeat Bush in 17 swing states. Great idea, no? One problem: their website only offers one way I can help—they, like everyone else, want me to give money. I don't have money. I don't even have time. But I coulde "make" time, and I do have skills and energy they might use if they'd provide a way for me to do so. This really is one thing that has made the Dean campaign very different—it says "help us," then it provides the tools for you to help in whatever way you can. Just about every other political group that would like to change U.S. policy on some issue would do much better if they'd stop simply asking people for money and start giving them ways to take action for their cause.

Oh, and Dennis Kucinich hasn't found love yet, but it sounds like he's having fun looking.

I'm supposed to be thinking of nothing but finals, but I'm having trouble focusing. Stay of Execution has some good, practical, and calming study tips for 1Ls, although it feels a little late for making posters. Still, posters would be better than outlines; Mixtape Marathon has restored my faith in the humanity of law students (a faith I think I pretty well lost somewhere in November, but that's another story) by noting that law school outlines are evil. Some of my professors have sometimes sounded as evil as the outlines we're supposed to create for their classes, so I fear section IV of Bekah's wonderful outline could begin: "Many law practitioners transfer the soullessness of their outlines and exams straight into practice." I guess we'll see.

Posted 07:31 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004 law school life generally