Free at Last

For the first time in three weeks, my life is good!

Motivational Thought

There's a light at the end of the tunnel,
Lord I hope it ain't no train.

-Lewis Grizzard

Effective Immediately

Dear Registrar, Law Review, and Moot Court,

In an act of sacrifice and remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert, Noah spent on the ark, Moses spent on Mt. Sinai, Elijah spent walking to Mount Horeb, I will be abstaining from Moot Court and Law Review until the Easter feast. This is all because these things take up most of my time and it is less time to reflect upon religious matters (you know, the whole reasoning behind Lent). You may point out that I am not giving up school. Well, this is much like the practice that meat, eggs and dairy products are generally proscribed, but fish isn't. Aquinas reasoned that they afford greater pleasure as food [than fish], and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. (Summa Q147). Law Review and Moot Court afford greater pleasure and greater nourishment to my resume, therefore an incentive to lust.

I understand this may put you in a bind. Too bad. You are a state law school and cannot impose on my religious views. Please do not take any discriminatory or retaliatory action against me. See Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001).

Fingers of Fire

A local restaurant serves what they call "fingers of fire," which are basically chicken fingers with some (extremely mild) hot sauce poured over them.

Tonight, my fingers are ON fire, which is probably the result of cutting up three fresh jalapeno peppers about half an hour ago. I've washed my hands at least four times, but nothing helps. I'm just glad I haven't taken a piss.

I Gave My Verbal To Harvard

This is too good to be true, this kid is my hero. From ESPN

It looked like an American dream come true, but now somebody's going to experience a nightmare.

Students, television and newsprint reporters packed the gym at Fernley (Nev.) High School to hear offensive lineman Kevin Hart give a verbal commitment to play football at the University of California. He chose Cal over Oregon.

"They really sold me," Hart said, according to USA Today. "Coach [Jeff] Tedford and I talked a lot, and the fact that the head coach did most of the recruiting of me kind of gave me the real personal experience."

The only problem … neither Cal nor Oregon recruited Hart.

Now, it's a "law enforcement investigation," said Fernley football coach Mark Hodges, according to the newspaper.

"This is involving law enforcement and may involve other departments, other than the NCAA, that are bigger than local," Hodges told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I would love to tell you everything I know, but I can't at this time and I'm not even sure what I know."

It was unclear whether Hart was duped by persons impersonating recruiters or if he was staging a hoax himself.

In a blog for the Reno newspaper, reporter Chris Gabel wrote: "But, I am told, the ending is not going to be pretty. Not for the kid, coach, school or town."

In a press release from the Lyon County (Nev.) school district, superintendent Nat Lommori and associate superintendent Teri White said that the incident is under investigation.

"Although only in a preliminary stage, the district's investigation to date has been unable to verify that Kevin Hart was ever offered an athletic scholarship or letter of intent to play football by the University of California, University of Oregon, University of Nevada, Washington University or Oklahoma State University. … The district will continue it's investigation into these serious allegations and will provide additional details, to the extent it is permitted to do so by law, in the future."

Evaluating the semester

Grade Distributions came out recently (the registrar prints out a sheet of how many people go what grade in each class). While my overall GPA and class rank for the fall semester was exceptional, my performances in my classes was pretty poor. Honestly, I got one of the lowest grades in one class. While I would like to attribute my performance to a number of distractions (interviews, law review, football, etc.), truth is that the buck stops here so to speak. Somehow, I was at the top of the middle of the curve in every class (with one or two exceptions). Again, I would like to attribute this to many factors: taking classes I wasn't interested in because they have a high grade distribution, taking 16 hours, having classes where everyone was in the top 10% of their class, the professor's vision problems while grading my paper, etc. I don't think I can do that. Truth is, I dropped the ball. Fact is, despite my overall poor performance (in my Type A opinion), I somehow managed to be at the very top of the class right at the benchmark number. What does this say? Frankly, it says that there is a good deal of gamesmanship in being at the top of your class. I think, after all, taking classes that did not interest me because they had a high grade distribution paid off. Even though it may have lowered my performance (maybe), that lowered performance was still better than most of the law school. I wonder why everyone hasn't caught on to this? I've heard a lot of "this is a BAR class." To me, that translates to "this is a low curve class." Then again, I think I have the determination and independence to learn BAR material in a bar prep course (as most professors have told me to do- that is, instead of taking BAR classes for the sake of taking BAR classes).

I'm a bit down, but I really shouldn't be. I expect better of myself and seeing how I did in each class really made me contrite. Last thing I need is a downer right now. There's law review, moot court is kicking my ass and writing my name on the board, I'm a research assistant for a prof. who is "loan sharking" me for more research, and I took an outside commitment to research and edit a Thompson West Treatise, oh yeah- there is still the law review comment which is too promising to give up on. I will finish all of this by March 14. But, that will have me ripe for studying for finals and right now my class preparation is Zero. I'm screwed.

Motivational Thought

Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

- Tom Lehrer

Law Review

I am doing a statute analysis project for law review. Going to the state law school, I relied on the law review once or twice as a clerk last summer. I thought the statute review had some authority to it as a secondary source.

Now I know it was done by some poor sucker who would rather be watching the Super Bowl.

Between moot court and law review doubling up on me, I am starting to forget what my wife and my real textbooks look like...

Great Moments in Judicial Opinions

I want to start a new regular section on funny comments in actual cases by the judge. Maybe someone can suggest a great title.

I got the idea when I was reading through a case for my moot court brief, as a general rule, it is never a good thing when the judge says this about your argument,

We were not impressed

(citation withheld until after the moot court competition)

Here is the inaugural quote:

The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch 'hoe.' A 'hoe,' of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. ... We have taken the liberty of changing 'hoe' to 'ho,' a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps, 'You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies.

United States v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857, 859 n.1 (7th Cir. 2005).

All Politics is Local

If there is one thing law school has done, it has given me a distaste for politics. For example, Huckabee and Obama both made a recent campaign stop in my state. A student looking to carpool to the event sent out an email and a quick description of Huckabee as "former Arkansas governor and all-around good ol' boy." (Please note that this email came from our resident foreign named yankee who wears red cowboy boots who wouldn't know Jim Crow if he were having grits with him at a cafe counter- this is neither a criticism or defense of that person, rather it is context) Immediately, as if HuckabeeSupporter had dropped the "You People"-Bomb, another student of African American sent out an email saying "Please explain what good ol boy means." Oh snap!

All of this is to demonstrate the point that politics comes down to voting to the person most like you: look at the polls Women for Clinton, Blacks for Obama, and Good Ole Boys for Huck.

A buddy of mine and I were mourning the departure of our two individual candidates from the Presidential race earlier this week when out of nowhere a fellow student took offense when she overheard that I strongly supported Edwards. This student, who I did not know, approached me and shouted "Vote Obama or Die, Don't be racist vote for Obama!"

I intervene the story for more context: I've got a very multi-cultural friend base. If you were to look at the picture of my group of friends (when we are all together and home for the summer) we are stereotypically diverse enough to be in a high school text book- except we are still trying to recruit the Hispanic in a wheelchair. The point is, despite all presumptions about me due to my Southern Heritage, race is not a major issue to me in politics; especially when I am left without a candidate to support and would likely swing to anyone who took on some major issue which I feel strongly about.

I asked the rude student why that student supported Obama. The student replied with the television buzz word "Change." Upon further prodding, I could not get a substantiated reason as to why that student supported Obama- yet, I was the one presumed to base my electoral decision on race. My retort was, "When is Obama going to acknowledge the Sudanese crisis?" I then asked the student if that student or anyone the student knew had made any affirmative statement/action on Darfur (petition, WWJD-esque bracelet, t-shirt, rally, attend a lecture, anything). The student replied, "What's Darfur?"

It was exactly then that I realized every Darfur activist I know is white. Where is the NAACP or Al Sharpton on the Save Darfur Board of Directors? When will Black America step up in the activist efforts to save Darfur?

The Disclaimer Required since I am an Anglo American Protestant Male: I am in no way making a derogatory statement toward any group. I am, merely, engaging in an intellectual, thoughtful, open-minded, and embracing discussion in an effort to help a people to which I have no connection other than compassion.

And if you are curious, my other issue: Stem cell research. What happened to it? Why is it no longer at the forefront of the presidential debates?