Grrr..

One year ago today the U.S. launched a unilateral war of aggression. That action alone should be enough to hand this fall's Presidential election to the Democrats on a silver platter. But guess what? The Democrats are continuing to squander prime opportunities to make their case against Bush. Making that point, Salon's "War Room" writes:

Particularly on national security, Bush was vulnerable this week, with stepped up bloodshed in Baghdad, the aftermath of a terror attack in a Western capital, a European ally thrown out of office, and a poll showing we're alienating the world. A unified, on-message Democratic Party would have seized the opportunity to show America how they'd lead differently. But just in time for the anniversary of the Iraq invasion -- a critical moment for Americans to hear from their leaders -- and as his conservative critics go to town, Kerry is having downtime on the slopes in Idaho. Everyone needs a break, and no one knows that better than our vacationer-in-chief George W. Bush, but maybe this isn't the time. (Is this really the kind of photo Kerry wants publicized right now? The world remembers the Iraq invasion and ponders the state of international security, and Kerry jumps on a snowboard ... )

That's right. A year ago today Bush started a war that has become a quagmire, at best, and instead of making sure voters understand why the war was such a mistake, Bush's opponent in the campaign for the White House is snowboarding. Sure, it's cool to think our next President can snowboard. Neat. But right now?!?

It's times like this I think Democrats deserve to be the minority rather than the majority party. Sheesh.

Posted 10:54 AM | election 2004

One Year Later

One year ago today we mourned a war that still had not "officially" begun. At that time, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world were deeply divided over whether a war on Iraq was necessary or wise. One year later, there's not much more consensus about that, but there have been lots of consequences — none of them very great. On the global balance sheet, the war has given us a massive loss of lives (American, Iraqi, and others), ongoing violence in Iraq, an influx of foreign terrorists into Iraq, a bitterly divided world, the U.N. marginalized, and perhaps worst of all, a precedent that massive military action is an appropriate response to vague and unsubstantiated "threats." All of those things affect U.S. citizens, as does the huge budget deficit we're now facing, which is being used as a pretext for cutting social services both at the federal and state/local levels.

So did the war produce anything positive? Are the Iraqi people better off living in a war zone where every day they could be killed by random violence? Is the world now a safer place? The Bush administration would like us to think so (Powell chimes in, as does Cheney) I just don't see it. And tell me again, why should we listen to one more thing these people say?

Is it cynical of me to think this big showdown with Al Queda leaders has been staged and orchestrated to reach some kind of spectacular climax around, oh, today, one year after Bush launched his pet war on Iraq? You bet it is.

What a sad, sad year.

Posted 06:10 AM | general politics

Democracy for America

Yesterday Howard Dean announced what he plans to do to continue moving his campaign agenda forward. It's A New Day, with some great pictures reminiscent of the good old days (not so long ago) when Dean was still actively running for the Democratic nomination. Oh yes, those were the days.

Also of interest for a sort of big-picture look at why it's important this new venture succeed: Onward Deaniacs. (FWIW: I never liked that "Deaniac" term too much myself — I prefer Dean Democrat, or just plain old "progressive.")

Posted 05:29 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004 general politics

Political Madness

Today the Dean campaign will announce what comes next, and it looks like it will be called Democracy for America. And not a moment too soon, either.

We need all the tools we can get to get the word out about why the world can't afford to have another term of Bush. Along with the new Dean effort, the Committee on Government Reform has created Iraq on the Record, a searchable database of infamy:

This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials [Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rummy] in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.

Oh, and MoveOn has a great clip of Rummy playing what has become the Bush administration's near-constant liar's game. So when do impeachment proceedings begin? Do we really have to wait for November?

Coming from somewhere deep in right field, Hot Ambercrombie Chick (HAC) has begun a write-in candidacy for President, complete with a serious defense of t-shirts saying "Voting is for Old People." The fact that so many people can reach age 19 and be so ready to throw their votes away is Exhibit A for why improving public education is so vital in a democracy. Someone should tell HAC that the store selling her beloved t-shirts -- Urban Outfitters -- is owned by a right-winger:

While the typical Urban Outfitters shopper is likely to be liberal-minded--as is the province and privilege of youth--the fiftysomething Hayne is mom-and-apple-pie conservative. He and his wife Margaret have contributed $13,150 to the campaign coffers of Paleolithic right-wing Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and his Political Action Committee over the years.

Oh, and someone should also tell HAC this: Not voting is just as much a statement as voting, and the negative act does nothing to reduce your responsibility for policies you don't like, but in fact may increase your responsibility.

In the land of people who are more likely to be taken seriously, DG points out that the Bush campaign is distributing desktop pics that feature a quote from Bush about creating jobs. The funny thing is, the quote appears beneath a photo of workers holding pink slips. Yet another great reason to Pink Slip Bush!

But here's where the serious craziness is: The House debate over whether to officially declare that removing Saddam Hussein from power made the U.S. and world a safer place. Oooh. I feel so much safer! (The resolution apparently passed.) But this is related to the right's apoplexy over the defeat of their conservative friend, Aznar, in Spain. As Scott Rosenberg notes, those darned Spaniards are just refusing to follow the Bush party line! It seems pretty clear that Spanish voters were declaring their dissatisfaction with Aznar's alignment with Bush and support of the Iraq war, so why do people get all uptight when Howard Dean says just that? Zapatero, Spain's new Socialist leader is calling it like he sees it, calling the Iraq occupation a "fiasco":

The International Herald Tribune recently quoted Zapatero as saying, "We're aligning ourselves with Kerry. Our allegiance will be for peace, against war, no more deaths for oil, and for a dialogue between the government of Spain and the new Kerry administration."

Yes! A breath of sanity in a world of political craziness! But U.S. Republicans aren't listening. Instead, U.S. Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, has to go and say that in voting for Zapatero, Spaniards voted to appease terrorists:

"Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country and they chose to change their government and to in a sense appease terrorists," Hastert said.

Hey Dennis? Have another plate of "freedom fries," will you? In fact, have a few dozen plates. And remember, it's not polite to talk with your mouth full.

Posted 06:42 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004 general politics

GW Email Bonks

As longtime readers know, I've been supremely unimpressed with GW's computing regime since the day I was admitted, but today tops everything. This is the message you get if you've tried to access your GW webmail any time since 4:45 p.m. today:

3/17/2004 4:45PM System diagnostics have indicated an imminent hardware failure with the E-Mail system. System administrators are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Nice. But what makes it better is that GW allows no alternative to webmail. You can't use a mail client with GW's system because they've got everything locked down so tightly. Ok, you might be able to set it up to work with IMAP, but I haven't played with that in so long I can't remember how it would work. Bottom line: Since 4:45 this afternoon, GW students were w/out email. I won't pretend I hate saying "I told you so." I love saying "I told you so!" That's what happens when you rely on Micro$oft!

Posted 09:02 PM | Comments (3) | law school

Bloggies and Pics Galore

For those about to rock, I salute you.*

I mean, congratulations to all the winners of the 2004 Bloggies . The list of winners and nominees includes so many great links it would take a week to look through them all. (Maybe I should take another spring break.)

A few quick favorites:

1. Blogumentary: A Documentary about Blogs. Hmmm....

2. Weblog Wannabe: Check out the "Distractions" in the right column. I really can't believe the Firdamatic. Incredible. Very distracting.

3. Photoblogs.org: Just the other day I confessed my fascination with Ten Years of My Life. Little did I know (although I suspected) there were so many more variants on the theme. This amount of awesome imagery is truly humbling. But perhaps it's not so humbling that you won't want to make your own .

* Sorry. I had iTunes on random and it played one of the Dean Scream Remixes, so now I have AC/DC stuck in my head. But still, if you're about to rock, I do salute you, really.

Posted 06:21 AM | Comments (2) | life generally meta-blogging

Fireworks

Follow the action: Heidi of Letters of Marque is pissed off because of some of the comments people have made about this post in which Heidi pointed to Professor Brian Leiter's scathing review of a student note in the Harvard Law Review about so-called "intelligent design" theory.

As you can see from the links in the Heidi's comments the conversation on Letters of Marque is just a small taste of what Leiter's review has stirred up. Leiter has an update here, including a link to a National Review Online story in defense of the student (or his note, I'm not sure which), and many links to sources that support Leiter's view that intelligent design is a bunch of hooey. I don't have time to actually read all the back and forth, but it's certainly fascinating.

Oh, and another bit of potentially great reading comes in the form of De Novo, a new group blog by most of the former contributers to the now-defunct En Banc.

Posted 06:13 AM | law general law school

Snapshot

Oh no! It's back to school! Runaway!

Here's a cool photo for your Monday. Now it's back to the books for me...

Posted 06:18 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Nose Down, Keep Going

Ugh. This is the last day of spring break and honestly, I just don't want to go back to school. Can I quit now?

Ok, so I'm not quitting, and I'm sure it won't be as bad as it seems. But I do need to get my mind focused on school again for this final two-month push to the end of 1L. Partly as a way of doing that I just re-read Shelley's law school advice, part 1 over at The Menagerie. (She's also posted a few more tips here.) I've been meaning to point to this advice for some time; 1Ls-to-be might find it especially helpful to bookmark and return to in August or something. Reading her tips again was helpful at the moment though because they reminded me that everyone has doubts, law school isn't fun for most people, and that's just the way it is. Her last tip is especially helpful at the moment:

As intimidating as it can be at time, this law stuff really isn't that difficult. There's just a lot of it to learn and not much time to learn it. It's a lot of work, but just put your nose down and keep going. The first semester is the worst, and you'll get it -- things will start to click. Just relax (as much as you can -- yoga breathing) and believe in yourself. You'll be fine.

This will be my mantra beginning tomorrow: It's a lot of work, but just put your nose down and keep going. Nose down, keep going. Nose down, keep going.

This plow through to the end will be capped, of course, by exams. Make joyful noises everyone. If you're starting to get just a little worried about those exams (even if you've done them before), Scheherazade says it's normal to be like this:

You are moderately anxious and set yourself an arbitrary goal: "I'm going to study for six hours on Saturday for Class X". And then it's 2 PM on Saturday and you're lounging over brunch reading the paper in complete denial, and then you feel like a miserable undisciplined louse, but you still don't want to study. And then you finally sit down to study at 4:30 and you go "HOLY MOLY I DON'T KNOW EVEN A FRACTION OF THIS AND I DIDN'T LEAVE MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO LEARN IT AND ALL THE SUCCESSES I'VE HAD BEFORE ARE GOING TO BE PROVEN AS THE LUCKY ACCIDENTS THEY REALLY ARE BECAUSE THIS TIME I REALLY AM A COMPLETE UNPREPARED IDIOT!" And then in this panicked hateful mode you study for about forty-five minutes or an hour and then notice that you've wandered off somewhere else in your head and are making a list of the sailing gear you really ought to buy for next summer and you think, maybe I need a break, or maybe I'm cracking up here, and you take a break and next thing you know it's 10 PM before you're sitting back down to study and the crazy panic sets in again.

This is totally normal, or at least it was for me....

That's it, she nailed it! That's exactly what studying for exams is like for me, too; in fact, any studying is like that for me, recently. So I guess it feels good knowing I'm not alone.

Nose down, keep going.

Rounding out this little tour of topics that may be causing anxiety and some level of depression or dispiritedness in the hearts and minds of courageous 1Ls everywhere: How's that career plan looking? The one thing everyone asks when you tell them you're in law school is: What are you going to do with that? And as Transmogriflaw points out, a lot of us don't have a much more precise answer than, "I don't know." That's why it's so important to hear from the "pros" —so we can figure out what our options are before we make these decisions. In response to Transmogriflaw's post, Scheherazade at Stay of Execution talks about what transactional lawyers do and why she's not interested in litigation, with some good discussion in the comments. This kind of "insider" perspective is invaluable to 1Ls because it's so hard to figure out what different kinds of law practice might actually be like. I wonder how much this dearth of useful information contributes to the fact that more law school grads are leaving the law. Since we don't know what we're getting into when we start or even when we're part of the way through, we're sadly disappointed when we find out what practicing law is really like? Let's hope not.

(Tangent: See, here's another chapter for the blawg book—how blogs are helping law students network and filling in the gaps in their education through the mentoring that practitioner and professor bloggers provide. Oh wait, no time for such tangents now. Nose down, keep going...)

Posted 02:10 PM | Comments (2) | law school