The Aging Law Student

The Donut Burger

2006-03-10T10:17:00.000-06:00

Utter and complete genius. It's sad to think that we may, in fact, have reached the limits of human progress. Where do we go from here?

Is There a Dewey Decimal System for This?

2006-03-09T23:02:00.000-06:00

One of my assumptions when I started this blog was that I would write a lot about politics, so I've been thinking this week about why I haven't. It occurred to me that the problem is that I find myself paralyzed by the sheer volume of grotesquery. Even ignoring the vast sea of congressional malfeasance, where do you start?

What we need is a system. Some kind of organizing principle in order to keep track of everything. But that raises other questions. Do we break it down by subject area, like so:

Foreign Policy: Iraq, Secret CIA prisons around the world, torture, etc.
Economy: Tax cuts for the rich, hand-outs to big oil and big pharma, etc.
Civil Liberties: Secret wire tapping, restricting dissent, etc.

And so on. Or, do we break it down by the nature of the sin:

Lying: Selling the war, paying for Op-Ed pieces, ignoring congression info requests, Abu Gonzales' confirmation hearings, etc.
Avarice: The tax cuts, no-bid contracts, dismantling environmental regulation, the prescription drug plan, the bankruptcy bill, etc.
Incompetence: Katrina, Mission Accomplished, missing billions in Iraq, etc.
Hubris: "Candy & Flowers," secret wire tapping, etc.

We need to get some charts and graphs going, generate some reports, develop a bureacracy just to deal with it all.

Good news of the week: Congress caves on the NSA wiretapping, Patriot Act gets re-upped, and torture can continue unabated in Guantanamo.

Bonds, Kirby, and Baseball

2006-03-07T22:11:00.000-06:00

On the same day an excerpt from a new book is published in Sports Illustratedcollating the evidence of Barry Bonds' performance enhancing drug use;

and the Twins legend Kirby Puckett, heroic, tarnished, inevitably understood by most of us only in the most superficial ways, died from a stroke at an age not much different than my own;

The current player whose image and stature most resemble Kirby's of 15 years ago, David Ortiz, also a former Twin, hit two home runs to lead the Dominican Republic past Venezuela before an enthusiastic crowd in the World Baseball Classic.

This seems the time to ruminate about my love of baseball, but it will have to wait. It feels rather complicated to me now, which in turn seems an absurd reaction to what is, in the end, an entertainment.

It's My Birthday

2006-03-05T19:01:00.000-06:00

Yay!

On another note, I went to a new place in Madison on Friday, Coco Lequot (sp?). It's a pretty stylish place, with lots of wine by the glass, a chocolate menu, and a variety of tapas style offerings. Very cool interior; clearly trying to cater to the "beautiful" crowd.

Here's the problem, though: Madison has a rather tough time generating a beautiful people crowd. It's just so damn crunchy here. A place like that in New York would be filled with lots of very thin people dressed in black, and I couldn't even get a table, whereas on a Friday night in Madison, I wasn't even remotely out of place. Say what you will about that, and god knows that it irritated me when I was tangentially involved in the New York art world, but it retrospect it has its appeal.

It's a larger issue than just this restaurant, though. I was discussing this with a friend earlier this week; there is absolutely no good shopping in Madison. No high end stores at all, really. You basically have to go to Chicago for style. Now, I can't afford anything high end at this point anyway, but the dearth still depresses me. You can't even dream here.

Today's News

2006-03-03T10:21:00.000-06:00

The headlines today bring us the news that the Administration is flouting the McCain "Anti-Torture" amendment to the recently passed and signed Defense Appropriations Act. You could see this thing coming a mile away, especially given the "signing statement" that Bush issued when signing the bill.

Now they have decided that the law doesn't apply to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and they are free to abuse at will.

Now, Congress also recently passed the Graham-Levin Amendment stating that detainees in Guantanamo are not within the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and thus have no standing to bring suit in those courts. My question is a) is this constitutional? Can Congress simply carve into federal jurisdiction? b) If so, does this mean that violations of the "Anti-torture" legislation will be neither litigated nor enforced? c) has congress essentially suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the Guantanamo Bay detainees? It would appear to me that the Graham-Levin amendment essentially eliminates all oversight functions of the congressional and judicial branches appertaining to the operations at Guantanamo Bay.

Department of Motor Vehicles

2006-03-03T10:17:00.000-06:00

Madison might be the only decent sized city in the U.S. where going to the DMV makes me happy. There is rarely a long wait, the people are pleasant (though I seem to be getting conflicting opinions on that as I type), and the building is clean.

Renewing my driver's license took all of 15 minutes this morning. At my previous residence, which required me to go to the DMV in Newark, NJ, it would have been an all day and grimly depressing affair. The only downside is that there's now no reason to skip class today.

A Little of This...

2006-03-01T20:41:00.000-06:00

Our state legislature here in Wisconsin just passed a grotesque constitutional amendment--banning gay marriage among other things--by an embarrassingly wide margin. Now it will appear on the November ballot, where I'm confident it will pass. So fucking mean spirited.

Con Law was fairly lively today, as we were actually discussing a contemporary case--Hamdi v. Rumsfeld--for the first time this semester. My professor needs to slow down both verbally and physically, though. She runs around the room like a Tasmanian devil and talks so fast I fear she'll forget to breathe.

TOE UPDATE: Pedro threw off a mound yesterday. After which he said that his toe still hurts some, he is woefully out of shape, and his arm isn't anywhere near where it needs to be. Yay.

Martinez Toe = Achilles Heel?

2006-02-27T20:42:00.000-06:00

It's Hubris.

The Mets traded two starting pitchers this off-season. Two pretty good pitchers. Kris Benson and Jae Seo would have been a decent bet to combine for 350+ innings of league average pitching.

That's valuable, and they traded these guys away for a pair of essentially fungible right handed relievers who are likely to pitch about 1/3rd the number of innings. In the process they threw away one of their strengths--depth in the rotation.

The Benson trade was understandable if not ideal: he makes a lot of money, and getting him off the payroll has a benefit even for the large market Mets. In addition, there simply weren't going to be a lot of teams willing to take him on, and the Mets were clearly annoyed with his lack of stamina (on the mound), not to mention his wife. The Seo trade, on the other hand, is inexplicable.

After being exiled to AAA Norfolk to start the season, apparently because Rick Peterson didn't like the cut of his jib, he was recalled in midseason, and proceeded to make 14 starts and post a 2.59 era, showing excellent command and finishing the season 8-2. Instead of being the turning point in his somewhat erratic Mets career, this earned him a trade to the Dodgers for an unremarkable reliever named Duaner Sanchez.

Admittedly, Seo isn't as good as his results last year. Still, he was a good starter in 2003, and not unbearable in a poor 2004. There is no reason to view him as any worse than league average.

And now, as a result, the Mets are forced to keep a painful-to-watch Victor Zambrano in the rotation, while also relying on a guy--Steve Trachsel, who missed virtually all of 2005, as well as Aaron Heilman, who has yet to be a member of a major league rotation for even half a season.

And then there is the Toe. Pedro Martinez has not been able to pitch off a mound so far this year because of persistent pain in the big toe on his left foot. This injury shut him down last September, and it isn't clear that its gotten any better since. The lesson here is pretty clear: when you trade away useful starting pitching for very little, it will come back to bite you in the ass.

Nobody wants to think about the alternatives for when the inevitable injuries come--largely because there aren't any good ones. But it's going to matter, and the Mets will be wishing they had Jae Seo around to soak up those starts and innings.

The Gods will punish.

If it's in the Newspaper...

2006-02-24T09:54:00.000-06:00

A careful reading of the New York Times usually produces something with comic value to comment on.

Check out this picture. I think that's going to be my new motto:

"Un Bon Poulet est un Poulet Libre."

FREE FOWL NOW! FREE FOWL NOW!
POULTRY POWER!
CHICKENS UNITE! OR AT LEAST FIND A POT!

On the national scene, it appears possible that this might devolve into violence.

Alabama's legislature is on the verge of naming the peach the Official State Tree Fruit, angering their neighbors in Georgia. Understand, Alabama already has an Official State Fruit--the blackberry. Being a northerner, I'm not sure I understand the complex issues here, but wouldn't you think one Official State Fruit would be enough?

This story also raises issues discussed in the Parradine v. Jane case I blogged about yesterday. Will Alabamans be forced to pay rent after the hordes from Georgia spill over the border to lay waste to their fruit trees?

Anyone with a legal opinion on that? Can I get a memo?

Parradine v. Jane

2006-02-22T19:29:00.000-06:00

Totally awesome case in property today.

Scene: 1647, during the English Civil War
Jane is a tenant farming land owned by Parradine. A quiet man, minding his own business, when suddenly, from over the hill, come the invading hordes led by the ruthless Prince Rupert of Germany.

Ousted from the land for three years, Jane survives hand to mouth. Finally, with the defeat of Prince Rupert and his minions, he is able to return.

But alas! Parradine sues him for back rent! What's going on here? Surely Jane can't be expected to pay rent for land from which he was forcibly ousted.

The court, however, doesn't see it this way, and rules that the rent must be paid. Apparently on the grounds that Jane failed to assert the nationality of all the invaders (which makes sense--its no excuse if you let yourself be overrun by a bunch of frippy Frenchmen).

What a lot of fun!

My Heart Bleeds

2006-02-21T13:53:00.000-06:00

This article made me laugh this morning.

Front page of the Times--at least it's below the fold--basically an extended opportunity for college professors to complain about student e-mail behavior.

The objectional e-mail seems to come in different categories:

1. e-mail asking for inappropriate help: "I missed class, can I have your teaching notes?"
2. Excessive e-mail: multiple e-mails per week, some of it coming--gasp--at all hours.
3. E-mail that fails to demonstrate proper comportment and/or deference.

Somehow, all of this is causing significant job stress among certain professors. I mean, we can't permit arm's length, marginally intrusive communication between students and teachers, can we? Oscar Madison's e-mail went down some time ago due to exceeding capacity--must have been all those pesky students.

Here's my response:

1. Stop whining. Seriously, every job has its problems, but my father is a college professor and I grew up with this life; it isn't exactly a nose-to-the-grindstone type of gig.

2. Make yourself more accessible. I don't know what's standard, but my professors seem to have 1-2 office hours a week. Find a way to make yourself available more, and make it clear that you prefer that to e-mail, and will only respond to email if there's good reason.

3. Acknowledge how much email has benefitted you, reducing the need for meetings, permitting you to communicate with your collegues and students quickly, etc. Taking the bad with the good is called, you know, life. Some professors use email to contact their students as much as the other way around.

4. Don't blame the students, blame the system; kids are marketed to by colleges just like they are marketed to by profit making entities. They are recruted and wooed in a desperate attempt to seperate their parents from their money. No wonder they see a college education as just another commodity--that's how its presented to them.

5. Finally, NYT: find some more pressing news for the front page.

My Weekend

2006-02-20T20:26:00.000-06:00

Well, its been a few days, largely because I had guests over the weekend. My parents and sister were in town to visit my son. It was so freaking cold here that we couldn't really do anything but play in the house. Of course I didn't get my reading done for this week, and I feel utterly discombobulated.

On the other hand, my mother brought a pot roast that was pretty damn good.

Also, my mother and sister spent a relatively drunken Saturday night trying to convince me to register on jdate. This, as you might imagine, is a dating site for Jews. They're probably right; it's probably a good idea. But it just seems to me that using one of these sites is a concession to a kind of inadequacy. What, I'm not good enough to meet women in person? I need a computer?

Sadly, it seems like I do.

PS--the heat at the law school is malfunctioning--had to be close to 90 degrees in the classrooms today. Brutal.

Skipping Class

2006-02-15T16:40:00.000-06:00

Well, I've made the decision to skip my classes tomorrow. This scares me because I find it very easy to fall into the habits of laziness, and I fear that if I open this door, I'll find it progressively harder to keep it closed. I was very strict with myself first semester.

But the issue is that my parents, or more accurately my son's grandparents, are coming to visit this weekend, and I HAVE TO clean my apartment. My mother might actually faint if she saw it in its current state.

Here's the thing: once you have a kid, you are going to see a lot more of your family, but on the other hand, you are going to feel a lot less important. After you do your job and procreate, you generally aren't regarded as very important anymore; the kid is everything. My folks frequently say, "we want to come visit J." Um...don't I live here too?

Of course, this is exacerbated by the fact that I'm divorced and unlikely under the present circumstances to generate another grandchild.

It's fun being superfluous.

Random Thoughts

2006-02-13T16:24:00.000-06:00

Well, Dick Cheney shot a guy. Too bad it wasn't in Weehawken.

I'm a huge Minnesota Timberwolves fan, and it's absolutely criminal that the franchise has had the services of one of the all-time greats in the game for a decade and have abjectly failed to surround him with teammates that could support serious championship ambitions.

Lots of Victoria Secret commercials on in advance of Valentine's Day. I'm not complaining.

The Man in the Big Yellow Hat

2006-02-11T18:20:00.000-06:00

Just went to see Curious George with my son (and ex-wife); it was quite good. Very sweet story, eschewed the crass and stupid jokes that most kids movies try to score with these days.

Recommended.

Greatest. Lawsuit. Ever.

2006-02-09T16:39:00.000-06:00

This story is tremendous.

Woman is suing the restaurant chain Benihana for the death of her husband in (insert Spinal Tappian British accent here) a bizarre shrimp incident.

This case raises some Jumbo questions. In the sea of precedent concerning proximate cause, I don't know that we've seen anything so delicious. Can the chef claim that the Diablo made him do it? Is there contributory negligence because of the consumption of any Cocktails? Will the widow be able to Curry favor with the jury? Whose going to sell Popcorn at the trial? Will the presiding judge turn out to be Sweet or Sour toward this claim?

Will Benihana wind up Deep Fried, or will they float away like a Butterfly?

I Love Skool

2006-02-07T19:03:00.000-06:00

My day:

1. Federal Law controls when there is conflicting state law on an issue subject to federal power. See Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824).

2. Annoyingly, you must cite to 3 different reporters when citing a case decided in Wisconsin since 2000.

3. In Wisconsin, in certain situations it is possible to get punitive damages even in the absence of actual damages. Jacque v. Steenberg Homes, 209 Wis. 2d 605 (1997).

Where is Torino?

2006-02-06T17:20:00.000-06:00

I love the Winter Olympics, coming Friday to a television near you.

Let me clarify that I've never participated in winter sports in my life. My nature is that of a spectator as opposed to a participant anyway, and the idea of strapping sticks to my feet and hurtling down a mountain, or skating around chasing a puck and getting body checked makes me shudder, but still, I LOVE the Winter Olympics.

First of all, its smaller than the bloated summer games. Its more manageable, it can be held in smaller cities--Albertville, Torino, Lake Freakin' Placid, and the sports are just tremendous.

I'll never ski down a mountain at 90 mph, but I love watching other guys do it. Biathalon. Skiing and shooting--its WWI! How cool is that? Bobsled! Luge! Ski Jumping!

I love the obscurity of the sports, but more than anything, I love the elemental and essentially random nature of the competition. Snow starts coming down, the courses get chewed up by other racers, the wind blows, whatever, and yet they still measure times to the hundreth of a second. I appreciate the sports where luck, or fate, or random chance, play a major role.

Among other things, that requires a certain amount of acceptance of fate by the athletes; a somewhat unusual mix of the usual arrogance of the high level athlete with a willingness to recognize that, in large measure, the results are out of their hands.

No Escape from K Street

2006-02-05T22:30:00.000-06:00

With the need to choose a new majority leader due to the indictment of the last guy on charges related to campaign finance shenanigans, with the stench of lobbyist and bribe machine Jack Abramoff hovering over any number of GOP congressional offices like rotting traif (Yiddish alert!), and with ethical, ah, shortcomings sure to be a major campaign theme during the upcoming midterms, you would think that the republicans in the house would be eager to choose someone as ethically unchallenged as possible. And I'm sure they wanted to; these people aren't polically inept.

Which makes the fact that they couldn't find that guy all the more damning--the sad fact is there isn't a squeaky clean guy. John Boehner (R-OH)? Nope. Sorry. In addition to accepting a bunch of money, Boehner was also involved in the whole Marianas Islands sweat shop aspect of Abramoff's viral money slurping enterprise, and his former chief of staff is now a top aide for the Ur political hack of our generation, Karl Rove.

The truth is, this is the best they could do. Any GOP rep whose been around long enough to be a viable candidate for a leadership post is tainted by this pall of corruption. Really, and not to put too fine a point on it, when you think for a minute about how Congress works, it makes you want to puke. Incumbents are protected by rampant gerrymandering and endless tainted cash, leading to a mockery of the idea of representative democracy and a mass of individual fiefdoms awash in money.

I'm in a great mood.

Is There a Dewey Decimal System for This?

2006-02-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

One of my assumptions when I started this blog was that I would write a lot about politics, so I've been thinking this week about why I haven't. It occurred to me that the problem is that I find myself paralyzed by the sheer volume of grotesquery. Even ignoring the vast sea of congressional malfeasance, where do you start?

What we need is a system. Some kind of organizing principle in order to keep track of everything. But that raises other questions. Do we break it down by subject area, like so:

Foreign Policy: Iraq, Secret CIA prisons around the world, torture, etc.
Economy: Tax cuts for the rich, hand-outs to big oil and big pharma, etc.
Civil Liberties: Secret wire tapping, restricting dissent, etc.

And so on. Or, do we break it down by the nature of the sin:

Lying: Selling the war, paying for Op-Ed pieces, ignoring congression info requests, Abu Gonzales' confirmation hearings, etc.
Avarice: The tax cuts, no-bid contracts, dismantling environmental regulation, the prescription drug plan, the bankruptcy bill, etc.
Incompetence: Katrina, Mission Accomplished, missing billions in Iraq, etc.
Hubris: "Candy & Flowers," secret wire tapping, etc.

We need to get some charts and graphs going, generate some reports, develop a bureacracy just to deal with the quantity of disaster.

Good news of the week: Congress caves on the NSA wiretapping, Patriot Act gets re-upped, and torture can continue unabated in Guantanamo.

They Watch Television

2006-02-04T16:54:00.000-06:00

I have a 5 year old son who splits his time between my place and his mom's. He's bright, curious and active. If I do say so myself. Oscar (not his real name, but the name he calls himself) never watched TV when he was an infant. We tried to do everything we could to discourage him from getting in the habit.

And now he's an addict. A stone cold, shakes and shivers, arm-itching, addict. First thing he does when he wakes up or gets to my house is say "PBS Kids." And you think, PBS is OK. But really, its not much better than any other lousy kids programming.

Anyway, you give in and put on the television, and he's gone. You could yell right in his ear and you wouldn't get his attention. Its like he's shot up some H or something.

What he really loves, though, is Scooby Doo. Someone gave him a dvd of the first 5 episodes ever made, and he'll watch them as many times as I let him. Its kind of a bizarre retro experience for me since Scooby was huge when I was a kid. What's interesting is seeing the early 70s vibe, though: you expect pot smoke to come pouring out of the Mystery Machine at any moment.

I love being a dad.

I'm Not That Old

2006-02-04T10:22:00.000-06:00

Really, I'm not. I have chosen to call myself The Aging Law Student, but really there's some hyperbole in that. I'm older than most of my classmates, certainly, but I'm Aging, not Aged.

Here's the thing, though: I'm the same age as my Constitutional Law professor, and she has about five times as much energy as me. She runs around the room for 90 minutes, in heels, like she's getting in an aerobic workout while discussing the import of Marbury v. Madison. Because of this, I assumed at first that she was younger than she actually is until someone googled her.

None of this would bother me except that it drives home an essential truism: I'll never be a law professor. I'm too old. By the time I finish school and practice long enough to make me viable as a teacher, I'll be old enough that law schools won't be interested.

This is too bad. I really ought to be a professor--scholarship is what I'm good at. My contracts professor from first semester is my hero--he's half retired at this point, has been teaching for 30 years, and is an incredibly nice man who has a gift for making contracts interesting and the learning process satisfying for his students. I want to be him, and the sad part is that had I gone to law school ten years ago, I could have been. I even look the part.

Oh well.

Second Semester

2006-02-04T09:41:00.000-06:00

As a first year student at a Fairly Large Law School in the Upper Midwest, I have come to the following unoriginal conclusion: there are way too many of us. And by us, I mean law students. And lawyers. I have absolutely no idea how all of us are ever going to be of use in the law. It seems that instead of finishing college and: a) traveling around the world (if you're rich), or b) spending a couple of years bartending or something (if you aren't) before you get it together, kids are just going to law school as a way to kill time.

My property professor pointed out the other day that the legal system in this country as well as the legislatures are run by lawyers, which has the happy effect of perpetuating a system in which any number of lawyers (editorial: including the thoroughly mediocre) can make a good living.

Speaking of property class, by happy accident I sit in a large lecture hall behind a row of cheerful and attractive young women who look to me young enough to be a high school cheerleading squad. One of them obviously has a digital camera and documents their various (presumably) drunken adventures around town, and they view these photos on their laptops right in front of me. The happy accident is that, with some frequency, these photos have a mild, soft-core lesbian theme to them. It's a not unpleasant distraction from the question of whether a Trust was actually formed, or a Gift was actually Delivered.