April 29, 2006
Preaching to the Perverted
http://www.gulbransen.net/preaching/2006/04/breaking_news_d.html I love being gobsmacked, don't you? It's just such a great word that the feeling must necessarily also be great. Gobsmacked. I just like saying it. But about these gas prices and our addiction to oil, etc: Aren't we all pretty hypocritical about this? That said, it seems like every day now Mr. Resident Bush is in some new part of the country or world and every time I hear he's flying here or there (meaning, every day), I wonder: How much freaking fuel does it take to move that dumbass all over the damn world? I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket, so to speak, but hey, he said the other day when he said he'd make no more deposits to the oil reserve that “every little bit helps.” Gobsmacked. (Sorry, I had to say it again. What an awesome name that would be for a blog, but apparently it's kind of taken.)Posted by mowabb at 08:04 AM
April 28, 2006
Arbitrary and Capricious: Frankly, yes
http://skellywright.blogspot.com/2006/04/frankly-yes.html That's a great piece. It reminds me of something one of my fellow interns said the first summer I interned at a public defender's office. She was a devout Christian and someone asked her about her faith and the work she was doing. Her response: “Jesus was the first public defender!” So there you go.Posted by mowabb at 12:10 AM
April 22, 2006
Arbitrary and Capricious: ID: 7-year-old in detention
http://skellywright.blogspot.com/2006/04/id-7-year-old-in-detention.html That's incredible. I thought the criminalization of childhood was confined to big city schools where cops roam the halls and file police reports for schoolyard fights and temper tantrums; those reports then lead to criminal charges. Apparently this isn't just a big city phenomenon. I can't believe parents will stand for this kind of thing. Is this magistrate an elected official?Posted by mowabb at 01:25 PM
April 19, 2006
Arbitrary and Capricious: The kids = all right
http://skellywright.blogspot.com/2006/04/kids-all-right.html I've really loved working the juvenile cases I've handled (only 3). The kids can be a challenge if they don't trust you and it's heartbreaking sometimes to see the way they can be treated. I heard a prosecutor call one of my clients “a punk-ass bitch” as he tried to convince another prosecutor to make sure my client got sent to juve (jail). My client walked out that night with his mom and that was an awesome thing for all of us -- me, the client, and his mother. Rehabilitation was the key to that one -- the judge agreed that going to juve was not going to be helpful to my client. A couple months later and teachers, social workers, and everyone else are praising my client up and down for his great improvement in attitude, work, etc. So stories like that are super-rewarding. The upside in working w/juveniles can be huge. FYI: You may know about this already, but the National Juvenile Defender Center has some good listserves where you can discuss juvenile defense issues. They also offer some good resources for juvenile defenders, including the Juvenile Defender Resource Guide.Posted by mowabb at 11:01 AM
April 17, 2006
Concurring Opinions: Teaching Today's Students
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/04/teaching_todays_1.html Just one little note about today's law students compared to those from the past: They are paying much more for every minute of class time. If they they think of themselves more as consumers and seem to be more demanding, the fact that they're mortgaging their futures to be there might have something to do with that. While I admire your attempt to think about how to become a better teacher of law, I'm skeptical of your ability to do so in the current system. Today's model of huge classes will never satisfy students or even challenge most of them. How can one teacher, no matter how dynamic or learned or enthusiastic, possibly engage 100 students at a time w/all their different levels of preparation, different interests, and different questions? It's an impossible situation for you as a professor, and a nearly-criminal ripoff for the student.Posted by mowabb at 11:04 AM
April 15, 2006
divine angst: S-A! T-U-R! D-A-Y! Write!
http://divineangst.blawgcoop.com/archives/2006/04/sa_tur_day_writ.html Dude! Don't do it! If you've gone 40 days w/out caffiene, don't ever go back! Enjoy your new sense of balance, your natural energy cycles, your lack of dependency on some foreign substance, plus all the money and time you'll save not bothering to buy or make coffee all the time. Really -- why go back? (I'm posting this out of envy. If I could go 40 days w/out coffee I'd be jumping for joy and looking forward to the next 400 days w/out my bad bad habit.)Posted by mowabb at 06:00 PM
April 12, 2006
Jeremy Richey’s Blawg » Useful Book for New Attorneys
http://www.jeremyrichey.com/2006/04/11/useful-book-for-new-attorneys/ To be more precise, it sounds like a good read for lawyers in firms that require billing hours and which provide them an “assistant” and who need to be concerned about building a law practice. Law students who aspire to any of those things might like it fine, too, it sounds like. While this describes a large swath of law students and lawyers, many of us couldn't care less about billing hours, are unlikely to ever have an assistant, and may never really need to build a law practice, per se. In fact, some of us might be sick of hearing about those things, especially when they're discussed as if they were the elemental to the practice of law when they simply are not.Posted by mowabb at 10:58 PM
April 03, 2006
Will Work for Favorable Dicta: Are you peeing?
http://favorabledicta.blogspot.com/2006/04/are-you-peeing.html I think you should be very proud of the fact that you “exist in an extreme degree.” I don't know why, but it makes me think of Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Unlike “most men,” you're trying to get all you can out of life -- you're singing your song, dammit! There are many guys out there who will love you for precisely that, I'm certain of it!Posted by mowabb at 07:49 AM