Doing Justice

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-23T15:23:00.001-08:00

LOOK, WE CAN EITHER STUDY FOR OUR LAW SCHOOL FINALS,

2011-12-16T11:57:00.001-08:00

LOOK, WE CAN EITHER STUDY FOR OUR LAW SCHOOL FINALS, OR WE CAN BRING ABOUT THE VIOLENT DISSOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM.

By Eric Hague at Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Sure we can study. We can go over our notes and take a couple practice tests and pray we get good enough grades to land a sweet summer firm job. But let’s be realistic. How hard is it going to be to understand the complex web of choice-of-law analysis implicated by Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins? Now how hard is it going to be to instigate a bloody nihilistic revolution the primary result of which will be the complete collapse of the federal and state judiciaries and the instantaneous and complete invalidation of four centuries of American law and jurisprudence?

Still Occupied

2011-11-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

12:01 a.m. Monday came and went and the OWS encampment at Los Angeles City Hall remains, at least for now. DH and I were there from 10 p.m. until about 3 a.m. when our aging feet carried us back to the car despite our best efforts to turn them around. At that point a loose police line (loose in that between every two officers there was room for at least two more--not a police wall as I've seen many times in the past) surrounded the park on the far sides of Spring and First where we were standing, equal numbers of protesters hoping to be arrested and people with cameras/phones hoping to record that happening stood, sat and lay in the intersection, and police had given no order to the crowd to disperse. As far as I can tell, the point of announcing the 12:01 deadline was to provoke the most exciting and impressive showing of solidarity with the protesters to date, insure media attention and, maybe, to cause the protesters to expel a tremendous amount of energy to soften them/us up for eviction at some unannounced time in the near future.

Occupy LA protesters still encamped at City Hall.

Photo LA Times, maybe Rick Loomis?

Villaraigosa Orders Occupy Protesters To Leave City Hall By Monday « CBS Los Angeles

2011-11-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

The City says a "long term" encampment is "not sustainable" and therefore Occupy LA must move. Incentives to relocate were offered, but all addressed the comfort of the protesters, not the consideration of our demands. The 99% want changes in the system, not a better place to camp. The Mayor and Police Chief need to recognize that they, too, are among the 99% who work for the benefit of the other 1%.

It is ironic that the public needs to be evicted from the park to restore "public access" to the park.

Villaraigosa Orders Occupy Protesters To Leave City Hall By Monday « CBS Los Angeles

Occupy LA General Assembly's Response to the Eviction Order.

New York Times Financial Advice: Be an Unpaid Intern Through Your 20s (Then Work till You’re 100)

2011-11-26T12:16:00.000-08:00

Excellent analysis of recent anti-law school coverage; dead on.

New York Times Financial Advice: Be an Unpaid Intern Through Your 20s (Then Work till You're 100)

My Hero and Friend Jim Lafferty Arrested @ Occupy Wall Street Protest

2011-11-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

Cookie Monster on Occupy Movement

2011-11-18T11:13:00.001-08:00

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worked make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system - your friends on Wall Street - and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy - knowing full well that what could and would happen - putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

Originally posted as comment here.

Live stream from Zucotti Park

2011-11-17T11:00:00.001-08:00

Here.

Also, News from Occupy LA

Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS | Common Dreams

2011-11-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS | Common Dreams

I hope not, but ...

2011-10-28T18:01:00.001-07:00

ht Frog Blog

Jay Smooth on Occupy Wall Street: Outing the Ringers.

2011-10-20T10:41:00.001-07:00

Amen alleluia.

More Jay Smooth here.

"Release the Magic"

2011-10-16T13:23:00.001-07:00

By pressing the button, I assume.
Probably I'm the only one who finds this funny.

The Legitimate Gripes of the Other 99%

2011-10-13T11:03:00.001-07:00

The Legitimate Gripes of the Other 99%: Amid the Cacophony of Protest Emerges a Coherent Set of Valid Complaints. By Gadi Dechter.
SOURCE: AP/Jason DeCrow

This by Henry Blodget from the Business Insider is also good: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About... And by good I mean devastatingly awful.

Source: Asad Khan by way of my cousin MGM.

What They Want.

2011-10-09T14:12:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street's First Statement, read by Keith Olberman.

Occupy Wall Street Activist Jesse LaGreca Schools Fox News

2011-10-03T10:53:00.001-07:00

New York Observer exclusive here.

Sad.

2011-09-19T19:32:00.001-07:00

My four brothers and myself in, I think, 1962.

Chuck, the second from the right, died of brain cancer at the age of 24 in 1982. Now Rick, the second from the left, is also dead a week short of his 58th birthday. He was found dead in his apartment where he lived for over 30 years, since moving in as a student at Kent State U. in 1978. Cause of death is still pending; my guess is carbon monoxide poisoning from charcoal grilling inside the house.

Rick was different. He had cut himself off from his family. He hadn't had a telephone for years. I went to visit him a few years ago and he was cordial but wouldn't let me in. He didn't empty his mailbox for weeks at a time, so mail to him--from our mother, for example--was returned to the sender. He disconnected the electricity from his apartment and took out the meter. He had a job and was never late with the rent. His old beater of a car was registered and insured. His living room looked like this.

Yes, that is a shopping cart overflowing with books. Not scavenged books. Very carefully chosen books of philosophy and literature and Celtic mythology.

He loved the out of doors.

Now his remains are buried here in a beautiful nature preserve cemetary destined to become a hardwood forest.

To let the light in I guess you have to let some of the darkness out.

Mourning Has Broken

2011-05-02T16:28:00.001-07:00

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr

ht Rosemary Wessel

Egypt, Land of the Slow Burning Fuse

2011-01-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

Insight into Egypt from NPR by Jennifer Wiens:

Egypt, Land of the Slow Burning Fuse

Anger Has Its Place

2009-08-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

Bob Herbert, New York Times Op-Ed, August 1, 2009:

New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.

Michael Jackson Dead at 50

2009-06-26T11:20:00.001-07:00

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

2009-05-29T14:12:00.001-07:00

Sherrilyn Ifill: Judge Sotomayor is not a racist.
Sotomayor's Great Legal Mind Long Ago Defeated Race, Gender Nonsense.
Media adopt gender, racial stereotypes in characterizing Sotomayor's temperament, intellect

Tour de Cure Ship to Shore 2009!

2009-02-22T12:15:00.001-08:00

I've signed up to raise money and ride in the American Diabetes Association's Ship to Shore Tour de Cure, May 31, 2009, beginning and ending in Long Beach.

Beginning at Long Beach’s famous Queen Mary, The Ship to Shore Ride offers five different route options - all fully supported with rest stops and water breaks along the way--and a once in a lifetime opportunity to cycle across the Vincent Thomas Bridge and the Gerald Desmond Bridge. The routes vary from 5 miles to 100 km (as far as I've ever ridden).
I'm very stoked about this--maybe too stoked. Not only have I signed up, but I'm also trying to put together a Southwestern Law School Team to ride in the event (probably distributed among the different routes)! Anyone who wants to join the team is more than welcome and can do so by clicking that link. If you want to sponsor me (you know you do!) you can do so here. It's a great cause and looks like a great ride!

Protect Same Sex Marriage

2009-02-13T11:09:00.001-08:00

Protect Same Sex Marriage

A Brief Tribute to The Shoes

2009-01-31T15:16:00.001-08:00

President Barack Hussein Obama

2009-01-20T14:33:00.001-08:00

Believe it. This is A Very Good Thing.

As a nonbeliever, I loved the shout out in the inaugural address.
I do wish he had started the address more inclusively than "fellow citizens". Maybe add "and friends"? Lots and lots of (documented) Americans aren't citizens, then there's the rest of the country and the rest of the world.
And I did not love his celebration of the worker who takes a cut in hours so his co-worker can keep his job. The cause and solution of our economic disasters will not be found in the need for workers to tighten their belts!

But there's hope.

Grading.

2009-01-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

No final examination answer should weigh more than 3 pounds.

Gaza

2008-12-29T17:31:00.001-08:00

We have no words left.

hat tip Mrs. B

Stop the H8!

2008-11-14T19:18:00.001-08:00

Protest 8 in LA November 15th

I Do Love the Onion.

2008-11-06T11:45:00.001-08:00

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

In case anyone wants to know,

2008-11-02T18:20:00.001-08:00

I will, of course, vote for Obama for President, and I will probably shed a tear or two of joy when I do so. I am very happy to have lived to see a Black man as not only the nominee of a major party but, very likely, the President of the United States. I am happy for myself. I am happy for all my Black friends and colleagues. I am happy that, at least for a while, I will be less embarrassed to be an American in this world.

However,

I would rather it had been Hillary.

"Mismatch" Theory of Affirmative Action Debunked

2008-09-10T11:02:00.001-07:00

In a working paper entitled "Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions: What Do Racial Preferences Do?" the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrates that the elimination of affirmative action would result in an appalling 63% decline in the number of African American law students. Read about the study here. This finding disproves the foundational assumption of Professor Richard Sanders's "Mismatch" theory. As explained by the Society of American Law Teachers,

Key to Sander’s argument is an assumption that affirmative action only influences which schools African American students attend, not whether they will attend law school. The “mismatch” occurs when seemingly less qualified African Americans, based on GPA and LSAT scores, are enrolled in elite law schools, the result of race-conscious admissions programs. According to Sander’s theory, these affirmative action admittees do not have the skills needed to fully succeed in these rarified scholastic environments. In essence, Sander claims that affirmative action actually harms black law school students, because if race-based preferences were eliminated, their success rates—measured by law school grades, graduation rates, bar passage, and post-graduation employment—would increase substantially. These African American applicants would attend less prestigious law schools that are more compatible with their academic development.

Now, as a professor at a "less prestigious law school" I would welcome any and all African American applicants turned away at the top of the food chain, but the assumption that a law school's ranking measures its academic rigor or excellence is as insulting as the assumption that an applicant's LSAT score measures his or her promise as a lawyer.

Focus, people

2008-09-01T11:11:00.001-07:00

Gustav's not the story. Bristol's not the story. The story is the lawless, absurd suppression by state and federal forces--we used to call it "prior restraint"--of speech around and about the pathetic RNC this week in Minneapolis.

See here: Glenn Greenwald (Salon), "Federal government involved in raids on protesters"

"Police raids enrage activists, alarm others" (Minneapolis StarTribune)

Emergency Press statement by Eileen of I-Witness Video, issued while surrounded by armed police.

Police raid headquarters of RNC protesters

Minnesota police raid ‘criminal’ RNC protesters

War Protesters [?] to Proceed With March on GOP Convention (Wall Street Journal)

And this, which fascinates me but I'm too much of a Luddite to really understand: For raid coverage, Twitter was the place to be

On a day when police raids rolled like thunder across Minneapolis and St. Paul, the best place to watch it all was Twitter.

Digby's List of Links

Damping Down Minneapolis

2008-08-31T12:39:00.001-07:00

I am simultaneously offended and enchanted by the McCain campaign's belief that nominating Diana Prince as the Vice Presidential candidate will win over disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters.

And I'm both concerned about the disaster once again looming over the Gulf Coast and chagrined that Gustav seems to be relieving the RNC of Bush and Cheney's embarrassing presence.

But I'm purely outraged by the heavy-handed police efforts in the Twin Cities to shut down protesters before they have a chance to speak; From the LA Times:

On Friday night and Saturday morning, authorities raided a building in St. Paul and three homes in Minneapolis, seizing materials that could be used to barricade roads and disable buses, according to police officials.

The raids targeted the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist group, which Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said in a statement was "intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention."

At least four people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a riot and other charges, and booked into Hennepin County Jail. Dozens were detained or questioned.

Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, criticized the police action, saying officers also took boxes of pamphlets on free-speech laws in Minnesota and booklets on how to legally protest.

"It's the same charge used against the Chicago Eight in 1968, and that was purely a politically motivated prosecution," Nestor said, referring to the tumultuous Democratic National Convention that year. "This isn't about protecting delegates. This is about a preemptive strike."

Apparently the raid was justified, in part, by this ~~threatening~~ very funny video:

Biting the Hand . . .

2008-07-04T23:24:00.001-07:00

I got an email the other day informing me that this blog had been included in a list of The Top 100 Law and Lawyer Blogs compiled by and posted at Criminal Justice Degrees Guide. This site has already posted its top 100 Civil Liberties Advocacy Blogs and its top 100 Criminal Justice Blogs, but it is still an honor to be in such select company.
Other "articles" at the site include "12 Online Tools to Discover Where Sexual Predators and Criminals Live in Your Neighborhood":

Parents, teachers and other guardians who are concerned about the safety of their children can often reduce the risks their children face by educating themselves as to where sexual predators and criminals reside in their neighborhoods.

Also "20 Civil Liberties Laws Every American Should Know". Except for American "sexual predators and criminals" I guess.
The site seems otherwise unobjectionable, promising and, as far as I know, delivering "one of the most comprehensive listings of campus based and online criminal justice degree programs." The site offers descriptions of "Criminal Justice Careers," ranging from Corrections Officer and Bailiff through Lawyer/Attorney and Crime Scene Investigator to Forensic Psychologist and Homeland Security. Appropriately, if you click on Homeland Security for more information you don't get any. My experience in law school admissions counsels against criminal justice as a good pre-law major; whether it is a good preparation for CIA Agent or Private Investigator I can't say.

Random Thoughts

2008-07-04T22:24:00.001-07:00

Last year I flew to London on the evening of Independence Day. July 4 is an excellent day to fly in the US--people stay home in fear of terrorists and you can see fireworks all across the country (it would have been even cooler if I had been flying east to west!). However, as I stood in line at Heathrow the next morning I wondered whether busting out of the UK was really worth the trouble.

Dogs hate July 4 even more than they hate New Year's Eve.

Nothing I buy at the grocery store can be bad for me if I rode my bicycle there and back.

A new program on DIY Network combines my two obsessions: Deconstruction.

This summer, in preparation for September's Critical Legal Conference in Glasgow, I'm going to make myself understand the Problem of the Subject or die trying.

When I look at the rear wheel hub of other people's bicycles to see whether they have derailleurs or are single-speed or fixed-gear, I feel like a dog sniffing other dogs' private parts. A little. Not really.

Party Unity My Ass

2008-06-14T13:50:00.001-07:00

For reasons that are mirky to me and of no interest to anyone else, I have been unable to pay any significant attention to the US presidential primaries without becoming so morbidly depressed and angy I can't function. Somehow I've taken very personally the vile, sexist trashing Hillary Clinton has received in this campaign, not only from the usual quarters but from people who were supposed to be her friends and mine. Hence the lack of posting here. I've kept my head firmly in the sand, only occasionally pulling it out to look around and see if things are really as bad as I feared. They were and they are. I confess that (so far, at least) I've reacted to manifest injustice by giving up instead of fighting.

I do take credit for the rough accuracy of at least the first half of my prediction in February on how the Obama-Clinton campaign would turn out:

Why are the MSM greasing the skids for Obama? Because, in a year when it looked like the presidency was a lost cause for the Republicans, the Money thinks maybe Obama can be beaten. Even by John McCain, not so long ago the most loathsome man in America. Once Obama has the nomination, the corporate media (who served him up) will eat him alive. He is not, of course, the chosen candidate of the corporate Money--he is the candidate that Money thinks it can beat. Lulled into a false sense that the media love him, he has no idea how to handle the evil slagging press that has been a part of Hillary Clinton's daily life for decades. I'm afraid he will disappear beneath waves of ridicule and scandal in a landslide (underlain by the oozing mud of vile racism at the local level) that will make McGovern and Mondale look like winners.
I hope I'm wrong.

What I didn't predict was how gleefully and mindlessly Obama's supporters would lap up and regurgitate all the poisonous nectar they were fed about Hillary Clinton by not only the MSM but also the major "liberal" and "progressive" blogs. Increasingly I feel myself to be one of the ants in T.H. White's The Once and Future King. Mammy-mammy-mammy-mammy.
Thankfully there are actual vertebrates thinking and writing about the election. My favorite (Tennessee Guerilla Women is a close second) is the late Dr. Violet Socks, whose latest manifesto Archimedes Lever is a must read. According to Dr. Socks:

Leverage is here.
It’s here because of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the shameful way she was treated — by the media, by the Obama camp, and, most damning of all, by the Democratic National Party. Even women who didn’t personally support the Clinton candidacy were nonetheless appalled by the Trashing of Hillary. It’s not that she lost; after all, losing is part of the game. It’s that she wasn’t beaten in a fair fight. She was treated like garbage, and she’s still being treated like garbage. (As of this writing, Howard Dean is refusing to let Hillary’s name be on the ballot for the first vote at the convention, a startling departure from the norm. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this campaign and she earned more primary votes for President than any Democratic candidate in the history of this country. And the DNC won’t even let her name be on the ballot.) The huge swell of anger in the land is the righteous rage of millions of women — women who are armed and more than ready to punish the DNC. Over and over the message is being beamed straight to the powers-that-be on a laser light of pure anger: You don’t get to take our votes for granted anymore. No more.

Yes, I'm aware that cheering on the forces of PUMA may be as good a way as any of bringing about the landslide I've already predicted, and yes, the appointment of W and its aftermath have taught me that it is important to keep the greater of two evils out of the White House. But who cares what I think?

BBC Uncovers lost Iraq billions

2008-06-10T14:00:00.001-07:00

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

I'm shocked, shocked!

Dealing with Dung

2008-05-19T10:19:00.001-07:00

Send in the Latrines.

Cognitive Dissonance, or Slicing and Dicing the Baloney

2008-04-04T20:06:00.001-07:00

I turned on the television just now (having shut it off in disgust at the end of the Red Sox v. Blue Jays game) to catch Jeremy Paxman slicing and dicing the hapless Educational Kinesiologist Dr. Paul Dennison, developer of the BRAIN GYM, on BBC's Newsnight. Paxman was plainly skeptical of the possibility that pressing "brain buttons" in the neck could promote communication between the left and right brain, for example. The program, presented on BBC America, then cut directly to a commercial for Kinoki Detox Foot Pads, which "use all-natural tree extracts and powerful negative ions to rid your body of harmful toxins." Yeah, ok.

This Makes Me Feel Very Old and Tired

2008-03-03T10:40:00.001-08:00

Is Race Out of the Race? wonder Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom of the conservative Manhattan Institute in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. Their analysis of voting patterns in the Democratic primaries:

After nearly two dozen primaries, we now know beyond dispute that the pessimists were wrong. Obama won the majority of white votes in Virginia, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois and Utah, and he received extremely high vote totals among whites in the other states he's run in as well.

Forget, for a moment, about white women, [oh, yes, let's do that!] many of whom have been drawn to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton through a strong sense of sisterhood. Look instead at white men. In a remarkable number of states, according to exit polls, Obama won more than 40% of the white male vote. Those states included Clinton's home state of New York (where Obama got 43%), Arizona (45%) and, most remarkably, the Deep South state of Georgia (46%). Indeed, in Connecticut, New Mexico, Illinois, California, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, his support from white men was in the quite amazing range of 56% to 64%.

What's more, Obama would probably have won similar levels of support from white female voters -- if he hadn't ended up in a race against a woman. After all, there's no evidence to suggest that white women are less likely to vote for an African American candidate than white men are. If Clinton weren't running (and pulling away votes based on her gender), there's no reason why Obama's numbers among white women wouldn't be as high as his numbers among white men.

So, white women voting for Hillary Clinton are basing their vote on gender, but white men voting for Barack Obama are not. Just shoot me now.

Fossil Fools Day, April 1, 2008!

2008-02-26T11:43:00.001-08:00

Here is a really good idea.

Holding Barack Obama Accountable

2008-02-15T10:52:00.001-08:00

Read this important article by Bruce Dixon, Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report, on the importance of "calling out" Barack Obama to commit to specific progressive positions on important issues despite the fact that

corporate media have made him a rock star, Joshua, a prince on his way to a coronation. Those who raise questions about Obama's commitment to a progressive agenda will have to struggle to be heard. That's just the way it is. They may even have to be impolite at times. That's just the way it is too. Rock stars, royalty and the uncritical adulation they require make little room for polite criticism or democratic discussion.

Dixon recalls earlier success in 2003 in slowing Obama's drift to the right during his campaign for the Senate, and warns that the time to hold Obama's feet to the progressive fire is now.

It gives me only a tiny pulse of grim pleasure to say I saw this coming.

February 14 Is not Valentines Day at My House . . .

2008-02-13T21:16:00.001-08:00

It's the day Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to spring training!
W00T!

Stanley Fish on Hillary Haters

2008-02-04T11:23:00.001-08:00

I like Hillary Clinton and I want her to be President of the United States of America.
I continue to be very disturbed by the tone of both the coverage of the Democratic campaign generally and remarks I myself have heard. Here's why.
Stanley Fish - Think Again: All You Need Is Hate
ht Feminist Philosophers

Oh Dear Oh Dear Obama

2008-02-01T23:35:00.001-08:00

MoveOn members, by a 70-30% margin, have endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, as has the Los Angeles Times. Says the LA Times:

The U.S. senator from Illinois distinguishes himself as an inspiring leader who cuts through typical internecine campaign bickering and appeals to Americans long weary of divisive and destructive politics.

But wait. How does endorsing Obama over Clinton provide relief from divisive politics? It doesn't. Please look here, and here, and here, and here.

The LA Times' endorsement of Obama seems to rest entirely on two bases: Clinton's benighted, regrettable, but not entirely unforgiveable vote to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Obama's unfamiliarity. The endorsement concludes:

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

Those are pretty shallow and disturbing reasons to endorse a candidate. Does the LA Times really think that what we need to "defuse anti-American passion around the world" is a good PR campaign? And how can Obama's interesting but highly unusual biography either substitute for depth of experience or put him in touch with "the American character," whatever that is, if it exists, of which I am highly dubious. It is at best irresponsible of the LA Times to urge us to choose a candidate based on how "exciting" it will be to vote for him. (I can't help thinking this "excitement" also led to the overwhelming MoveOn vote.) I will support Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination, but the careless assumption that he differs from Hillary Clinton only in style obscures real differences in their positions--Obama opposes universal health care, for example.

The LA Times endorsement is just a small part of the very worrisome media handling of the 2008 campaigns. The mainstream media are treating Obama very gently these days, usually at the expense of Hillary (and, lately, Bill) Clinton. The depiction of Obama as exciting while Clinton is dull is not a perception of reality, it's media spin calculated to get Obama the democratic nomination.

Why are the MSM greasing the skids for Obama? Because, in a year when it looked like the presidency was a lost cause for the Republicans, the Money thinks maybe Obama can be beaten. Even by John McCain, not so long ago the most loathsome man in America. Once Obama has the nomination, the corporate media (who served him up) will eat him alive. He is not, of course, the chosen candidate of the corporate Money--he is the candidate that Money thinks it can beat. Lulled into a false sense that the media love him, he has no idea how to handle the evil slagging press that has been a part of Hillary Clinton's daily life for decades. I'm afraid he will disappear beneath waves of ridicule and scandal in a landslide (underlain by the oozing mud of vile racism at the local level) that will make McGovern and Mondale look like winners.
I hope I'm wrong.

I Am Hip

2008-01-31T01:39:00.001-08:00

I know what Twitter is. Sort of. When I mentioned it at dinner tonight, my 22-year-old daughter had never heard of it. That's how I know for sure I am way hip.
I read about Twitter on Academhack, who has blogged about the value of Twitter in making connections among students in a class and between class content and the world at large (or, at least, the world in micro-bytes). So I set up a Twitter account, then immediately canceled it when I found out that Twittering occurs primarily by way of text messaging (although there are several other ways to Twitter). I text messaged once and I'm sure I could do it again any time if I really wanted to, but I don't seem to have the right calling plan on my mobile phone for texting. I base this provisional conclusion on the fact that my son engaged in some intensive texting over three days a couple of weeks ago and ran up a $150 bill in the process. Now, I have had some success in learning to use blogging software, and I know how to load up my iPod Nano with music to ride the subway by, but I am entirely helpless when it comes to mobile telephone calling plans, which I leave in the hands of my husband who gave me the mobile phone in the first place so he could triangulate my location at all times.
I sometimes wonder what I could be using my dwindling supply of brain cells on if I didn't have to burn through them learning this week's technology.

Would You Eat Your Buddies in a Blizzard?

2008-01-27T14:51:00.001-08:00

20%

Just call me dinner.

One Day of the Iraq War

2008-01-23T10:52:00.001-08:00

From the American Friends Service Committee:

MLK, LBJ, HRC, BHO and Bill Moyers

2008-01-21T13:32:00.001-08:00

HT Tennessee Guerilla Woman via Reclusive Leftist.

Also, here's another link to Obama's Reagan remarks (I'm told the one I posted before has been taken down), and here's a link to his speech at King's church yesterday.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2008-01-21T00:31:00.001-08:00

"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

"In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investment accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.. . .

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

"A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Beyond Vietnam
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967. New York, N.Y.

Obama on Reagan, and why it matters to me.

2008-01-20T20:09:00.001-08:00

I haven't heard a reasonable response from Obama explaining his invocation of Reagan. I understand, as his people said in response to Edwards, that Obama was "acknowledging Reagan’s ability to change the political landscape." But that's not good enough; in fact, that completely misses the point. According to Obama, Reagan "tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, ‘We want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing,’" Rick Perlstein has eloquently explained how wrong and dangerous that view is.

I was 28 in 1980. The nation may have been in a bad place then, but not in any of the ways advertised by the Reagan campaign. The big event of 1980, according to Reagan and the MSM, was not a 1980 event at all--it was the dragging on and on of the hostage situation in the American Embassy in Iran begun in 1979. Seems pretty trivial in these post-9/11 days, but back then everyone knew how many days it had been since the takeover. It was all a product of our long-term, oil-driven meddling in the Mid-East which, of course, was not about to improve with Reagan.

The other big event was inflation caused by OPEC raising oil prices and restricting supply. People suffered from inflation, sure, but Reagan et al. made it much, much worse by telling people they shouldn't have to put up with less heat in the winter, AC in the summer or gas in the car. And, of course, Reagan and his cronies had absolutely no intention of addressing our dependence on oil.

Elsewhere in the US, needy families got more help from food stamps and AFDC than they've ever gotten since: that was advertised as a crisis of waste, fraud and abuse and bloated government.
The US was devoting serious attention and energy to human rights around the world: that was advertised as Jimmy Carter making a fool of himself in the eyes of the world.

Meanwhile, Reagan's supporters and beneficiaries were cashing in on high energy prices, busting unions, closing plants, slashing jobs and blaming government both for supposedly being forced to do these things and for being prevented from doing them more ruthlessly--they were desperate to get their man in office so they could get their hands on all those excessive (that is, living) wages being paid to workers, and all that pension and social security money.

Maybe I'm wrong about some of the details--I wasn't particularly political in 1980--and if you weren't there maybe it is hard to imagine how Reaganism sucked the hope out of all progressive movement in the US, demonstrating that no appeal to generosity or human decency had a chance against public encouragement of ignorance, selfishness and greed. But to hear Obama speak of Reagan's change of direction as anything but an embarrassing, demoralizing, loathesome dive into the toilet is appalling. Just appalling.

I think I might have made up my mind.

2008-01-19T12:05:00.001-08:00

I know it's just a sound bite, but it seems to be a pretty carefully thought out, contextualized, but utterly benighted sound bite. Can he be that clueless? Very distressing

Update: What he said.

Shut Down Guantanamo, Now.

2008-01-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

The first prisoners were brought to our illegal, immoral and shameful torture facility at Guantanamo 6 years ago Friday, January 11. It is long past time to shut it down.

Information here and here.

A Tardy Happy New Year!

2008-01-06T00:06:00.001-08:00

My excuse is I've been grading. Well, I've been putting off grading to get some writing finished first. So I've been not writing, writing a little, writing stuff I really hate, wondering what ever made me think this paper ever would or could or should be written when it is dull, dull, dull and, once in a while, writing a pretty good paragraph or two. But it's not done yet and I really do have to get these festering exams out of here by the end of the week. Meanwhile the Christmas decorations are still up, neither of the toilets is working right and the drainage from the washing machine backs up into the shower. Happy 2008!

What makes Baby Jesus Cry?

2007-12-26T12:43:00.001-08:00

An online friend remarked that Baby Jesus wants us all to eat turkey on Christmas, only he spelled it "turkie" which, I'm sure, makes Baby Jesus cry. But I wondered whether people outside my little digi-group used that expression and--having confirmed with my daughter whose digital and analog paths seldom cross mine outside our home that they do--why it has become popular. So I googled "makes baby jesus cry" and got this result:

No comment on the sponsored link. The first entry to actually consider the origin of the expression (and the only on on the first page of results) comes from an online gaming wiki which, after research typical of the gaming community, declares the source to be "Nobody." But the really confusing entry is the sixth (counting the Mormon Church): Google makes baby Jesus cry. This one turns out to be a link to a Google search of "makes baby Jesus cry", which produces the same result I started with.

I guess I'll have some turkie and go lie down.

DNA pioneer James Watson is blacker than he thought.

2007-12-14T15:52:00.001-08:00

From the December 9, 2007 Sunday Times:

The genome of James Watson

And from the October, 2007 interview in The Sunday Times:

He [James Watson] says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

snert.

Why does it make me happy

2007-12-08T12:16:00.001-08:00

to look at my menu bar and see this

or this

or this?

I love my Fuzzy Clock

Victories, Nightmares and Kool-Aid

2007-11-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

I paced my Remedies class exactly right this semester, covering all the course materials without rushing and with one day left over for review!

I had a dream last night that my dean saw me working in the library and wondered what I might be doing there.

After a close call a year ago, my iBook G4 12" called it quits last week. It had had almost every part but the serial number replaced last year when it was still under AppleCare, but last week the video quit. I could have had whatever was wrong fixed for $300, but instead I got a new 13" MacBook. It is still possible to run the old one in target mode, so I transferred all the data to the new machine. "I transferred" misrepresents the process as involving some substantial participation on my part--the MacBook told me what button to push and arranged things for me. I didn't even need to restore anything from backup. Even my regular printers are already installed, and the recovered versions of the documents I was working on when the old machine froze popped right up on the new one.

Yes, I have drunk the Apple Kool-Aid.

My Cat is Very Clean

2007-11-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

Is Cute Cat blogging the beginning of the end?

Free Rice

2007-11-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

Free Rice
Who knew good works could be so addictive?
HT to a somewhat skeptical Michael Froomkin

Time marches on

2007-11-11T14:54:00.001-08:00

I'm grading practice exams today and I have the football games on TV for ambient noise. One car ad that has run several times features a child who wants her father to drop her off around the corner from school because the cool kids' families drive hybrids. Dad points out that the SUV they are sitting in is a hybrid. The voice-over then tells us that the model advertised has the best fuel economy of any SUV--34 miles per gallon.
Now, I know for a fact there were cars on the roads in the 1970s that got 40+ mpg running on gasoline alone. Granted, they weren't as big as this SUV, but back then no one would have believed that giant petroleum-powered cars would ever make a comeback unless someone figured out how to manufacture more petroleum. We figured it was just a matter of time, and not much time, before 50+ mpg was the norm, and only a little more time before petroleum-based fuel was replaced by something renewable and cleaner.
Yeah.

Facebook . . .

2007-11-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

. . . and MySpace remind me of Chuck-E-Cheese.--noise, lights, distractions with no focus to be distracted from. I signed up for Facebook a few weeks ago because an online friend switched to Facebook for her online presence (from an invision board) and I didn't want to lose touch. But I feel like I have pursued my friend into a house of mirrors! And MySpace--I forget why I joined MySpace--is even worse. Well, "worse" from my point of view--more interesting? Do my students communicate with each other (and the world?) on Facebook and MySpace? Are they comfortable there? When I address them from the front of the class room (the 20th Century Sage on the State) am I just one of dozens of stimuli (the least shiny) flickering across their mental screens?
Here's what Facebook thinks of me, by the way:

For my Mother . . .

2007-10-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!

RED SOX WIN 2007 WORLD SERIES!!!!

2007-10-28T21:06:00.001-07:00

HOORAY!!!!

and no, it's not like rooting for the Yankees.

Not yet. There's still this:

Red Sox Win American League Pennant!

2007-10-21T21:50:00.001-07:00

WooHoo!!!

However, . . .

I'm Very Worried About My Country

2007-10-19T12:32:00.001-07:00

Like many people, I have a Backwards Bush countdown clock keychain.

Don't panic--the one pictured is not counting down!
The thing is, neither did my keychain. I've actually had 2. The first one stopped entirely about a year ago. I thought that was a very bad sign, but I instructed myself not to be superstitious, threw the bad omen away, and thought no more about it. It had bothered me a little to carry the countdown clock around anyway, as there were so many, many days left in W's term that the little reminder was more depressing than encouraging. Add to that my uncertainty that the end of W's term would inaugurate a substantially different and better era, and I didn't really miss my little toy.
But everyone who has one of these Backwards Bush totems is dying to give one to every friend, so I was soon the beneficiary of another countdown clock. This one ticked along for a while, as I watched it warily, but soon it too misbehaved. One day I glanced at it and was shocked (to put it mildly) to see that W's term had been extended by an additional 500 days! Now, just think, if you can bear it, what damage W and his handlers were able to accomplish in their first 500 days. Well, this was a portent I could not ignore, so I did a little investigating and learned how to reset the damn clock.
Today it stopped again.

Now what do I do?

Field Negro a Star

2007-10-18T11:42:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite blogs, The Field Negro, got a big Column One write-up by Richard Fausset in today's LA Times: "Blogger Goes Into 'The Fields'". Interesting reading, but not, of course, as interesting as the blog itself.
I worry a little that I find Field Negro's blog so accessible and informative--I'm awfully white, so I expect a blog telling me truth about race to make me more uncomfortable than the Field's generally does. So I read other black bloggers as well--AfroSpear makes them easy to find--and laugh and cry with the Field.
One of the things I found particularly interesting about The Field Negro is his permanent call to "Bring Back the Draft", on the grounds that "No one should be immune to sacrifice."

I have always supported the draft, as universal and exception-free as possible, although I oppose the existence of a standing army, because if we are going to have a permanent military all citizens need to pay more attention to how it operates. Over the years since the abolition of the draft, the transformation of the entire economy into meat grinder forcing poor people to a choice between prison and the "all-volunteer" army, and the use being made of this institution by the people who shaped it, have added considerable moral urgency to the problem. I haven't been vocal on this issue because I don't always want to get into fights with the few people who agree with me on other issues, but I'm glad to see it among The Field Negro's causes.

Jena Judge Jails Mychal Bell Again

2007-10-12T22:25:00.001-07:00

In a surprise ruling after a 6-hour closed hearing, the same judge who erroneously tried Mychal Bell as an adult has ordered him jailed again, this time for violating probation imposed for a prior juvenile conviction unrelated to the nooses in the Jena High School White Tree, except insofar as Mychal Bell was already a black kid in LaSalle Parish, Louisiana at the time. As reported in the Chicago Tribune:

Mauffray's ruling Thursday night came just two weeks after he was forced to release Bell on $45,000 bond after the teenager had been jailed for more than nine months on the Dec. 4 charges. A Louisiana appellate court overturned Bell's aggravated battery conviction in that case on the grounds that Mauffray had improperly allowed the youth to be tried as an adult. The appellate court ordered the case back to juvenile court.
"This is judicial revenge," said Al Sharpton, one of the civil rights leaders who have taken up the Jena 6 case. "The judge was already defeated once by the appellate court, and now he's taking his frustrations out on Mychal Bell.
It was unclear why Mauffray decided to send Bell to jail on the prior charges. The judge has ordered all the proceedings in Bell's case to be closed and directed all the lawyers in the case not speak about it publicly.

LAPD Reports to Police Commission on May Day Melee

2007-10-09T21:51:00.001-07:00

The LAPD released its report on what went wrong at the May 1 2007 "May Day Melee" this morning. The Los Angeles Times story is here. The report itself can be downloaded here from this link.
After a self-serving executive summary in which the LAPD congratulates itself for having "managed" the May Day 2006 rallies and "and enabled participants to express their First Amendment rights," and describes "The images of helmeted officers, using batons to push and strike members of the public and
the media and firing less-lethal impact munitions at people in the park" as "disconcerting," the report thoroughly and grimly describes how "planning was inadequate, tactics were flawed, command had broken down, situational awareness was poor, proper training was lacking," and individual officers and supervisors displayed poor judgment and a lack of common sense in their use of force and in their failure to intervene in the unjustified conduct of others.

Although I have only skimmed the report, the big picture appears to be that the Board of Police Commissioners refused to issue a permit for a march to the MacArthur Park rally planned by MIWON (Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network) for the afternoon of May Day 2007, even after MIWON obtained a permit from the Parks Department for the rally itself. With no permit to designate a route and close the streets, thousands of protesters had to march on the sidewalks from their multiple gathering areas to the park. Eventually, the marchers overflowed onto Alvarado and 7th on the southeast side of the park and Park View and Wilshire on the northwest.

With no effective plan for dealing with marchers in place, unstructured confrontations between police and demonstrators occurred at both locations as the police took it upon themselves to "move" the crowd in one direction or another: motorcycle police rode into a group at the north end in an effort to get them into the park, while "rocks and bottles" were thrown by troublemakers at the south end. (The report explains that "rocks and bottles" is a term of art for any projectiles launched at police officers; it is possible that the "rocks and bottles" were plastic bottles and included no rocks.) What was essentially a rumor that the entire park had been declared an unlawful assembly spread among the police on the south side of the park and they began to "clear the park." In case anyone has forgotten what happened next, here is a full report on the melee, with plenty of film, from Democracy Now.

The report sheds plenty of light on the LAPD's mistakes in responding to what began as a minor disturbance at the fringe of the rally, but it misses the most important point: there would have been no disturbance at all if the police had not been there. The only misconduct described in the report, other than that committed by police, was directed at police and inspired by their presence. The idea that the crowds at marches and rallies must be controlled and policed permeates the report, while the notion that police presence incites trouble is not even considered. Yet the largest immigration rally Los Angeles has ever seen was the March 26, 2006 pro-immigrant demonstration. There was no violence, no trouble, not even any littering at that wonderful event and, while we could have used a few traffic cops, the LAPD did not show up. Maybe in addition to all the enhanced training in "command and control", "use of force policy" and "arrest posture", the LAPD might consider learning a little wu wei.

The Worst in the World

2007-10-09T13:23:00.001-07:00

While I sit here on my bed thinking and reading about law, justice, ethics, responsibility, millions are dying and hundreds of thousands of women, children and babies are being brutally, horribly raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Read Amy Goodman's interview with Congolese human rights activist Christine Schuler Deschryver here. Send money here or here or here or here.
The perpetrators of this violence, like the perpetrators of the Shoah, are not members of an alien species: they are us. We are--I am--under the right (wrong) circumstances capable of what I would prefer to think of as unimaginable evil. Emmanuel Levinas was a victim of the Holocaust and, to quote Desmond Manderson's "Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law" which I am currently reading, Levinas's "books are haunted by the ashen memory of holocaust." Levinas must have seen some hope for an ethics of infinite responsibility to the other despite what he knew about the world, but I'm not sure I can see it.

Two things I read this morning.

2007-10-07T13:29:00.001-07:00

Both by way of Feminist Philosophers: first, this extract in the Guardian from Deborah Cameron's new book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, carefully debunking popular and scientific myths about differences between men and women in communication.

In relation to men and women, our most basic stereotypical expectation is simply that they will be different rather than the same. We actively look for differences, and seek out sources that discuss them. Most research studies investigating the behaviour of men and women are designed around the question: is there a difference? And the presumption is usually that there will be. If a study finds a significant difference between male and female subjects, that is considered to be a "positive" finding, and has a good chance of being published. A study that finds no significant differences is less likely to be published.

And second, this grim account from the New York Times of epidemic rape in Congo, reminding us that some differences between men and women are real.

Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.
Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

I don't know what to say.

Sixteen Tons, Monogrammed

2007-10-02T15:47:00.001-07:00

I got a catalog today from The Company Store.

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

(Sorry, couldn't find a complete Ernie Ford version.)

National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

2007-10-02T13:13:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me that, in commenting on Orlando Patterson's call for moral reform in the black community, I might have seemed to give too little weight to his words about the abuse of black women by black men, which I did not mean to do. October is "National Domestic Violence Awareness Month", a bland title that obscures both the fact that "Domestic Violence" is almost entirely abuse of women by men, and that black women are far more likely to be abused than white women. I agree with Patterson that verbal and physical violence against black women is, to say the least, a serious problem, but I disagree that it is a problem that can be effectively addressed separate from poverty and racism (as well as the relentless contempt for women displayed by popular culture generally). This idea is beautifully expressed in a poem by Essex Hemphill posted today by Anxious Black Woman. The poem, oiginally entitled "To Some Supposed Black Brothers," concludes:

But we so called men,
we so called brothers
wonder why it's so hard
to love our women
when we're about loving them
the way america
loves us.

Update I deleted a (nonresponsive) comment from the Los Angeles chapter of the National Coalition of Free Men. If you want a lot of information about women's violence against men, I'm sure you know where to go.

The Sixth Carnival of Radical Feminists

2007-10-01T16:48:00.001-07:00

The Sixth Carnival of Radical Feminists went up today at the very excellent Laurelin in the Rain. Take a look.

Not about Jena.

2007-09-30T20:22:00.001-07:00

Orlando Patterson has an op-ed in today's New York Times entitled "Jena, O.J. and the Jailing of Black America." Asking why the incarceration rate for blacks is eight times the rate for whites, Patterson acknowledges that

Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.

But, he says,

there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.

And the reason for this? Referring to recent events involving Juanita Bynum and Bishop Thomas Weeks, O.J. Simpson, and Anucha Browne Sanders and Isiah Thomas, Patterson points to the effects of widespread mysogyny among black people:

Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.

Patterson concludes:

Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist.

Two thoughts: first, while I'm very much against mysogyny and in favor of higher moral standards (provided I get to define what that means), I would hate to see any public resources diverted from efforts to eliminate "judicial bias, racism and economic hardship" to programs of moral or social reform. Frankly, I doubt that mysogyny can be surgically removed from an economic, social, intellectual and cultural world like ours that relentlessly reinforces it.
Second, immediately after finishing Patterson's op-ed I happened to pick up my University of Chicago alumni magazine and read a piece by Michael Knezovich, "Father Figures", describing the work of SSA researcher Waldo Johnson. Johnson finds that many single black fathers are involved with their children even if they don't live with them and cannot afford to pay child support.

Some unwed fathers express a desire to remain part of their children’s lives but face hurdles—disapproval from the mother’s family or pressure from their own. . . . [Other barriers include] the child-welfare system. Social workers from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, for instance, sometimes omit fathers from their case management. He spoke with case workers in Chicago and downstate, finding that when they hear the word “parent,” many think “mother.” Moreover, fathers who don’t live in the household are often excluded from the early case-management process.

So, the causal link between paternal absence and crime having been assumed rather than made, it looks to me like both the extent of paternal absence in the poor black community and its causes in poor black families are also subject to some doubt. Meanwhile, the damage done by "judicial bias, racism and economic hardship" continues unabated. That, and not the poor black community's need for moral reform, should be the lesson of Jena.

Red Sox A.L. East Division Champs!

2007-09-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

WOOT!

Get your Jena news . . .

2007-09-27T23:35:00.001-07:00

here.

Jena update

2007-09-19T13:07:00.001-07:00

Despite having his (absurd) conviction overturned by a Louisiana appeals court, Mychal Bell is still in jail and the protest march scheduled for tomorrow is still on.

Update: I'm heartened to see the great turnout for the march on Jena and the welcome (if belated and overly cautious) coverage of the case in the MSM. The National Lawyers Guild and Black Law Students Association at my law school ran an information table and handed out flyers, displaying a level of student interest I haven't seen in a while. I'm concerned, however, that the case of the "Jena 6" will come to be seen as the extent of the problem, an aberration on which attention should focus instead of a sample of a much wider problem of racialized hostility and prosecutorial bias to be addressed everywhere. The Electronic Village has gathered a few reports of other nooses in other trees, and I'm reminded that we need to keep fighting for justice and not just for Jena.

Intellectual Freedom in the OC

2007-09-17T00:29:00.001-07:00

As everyone knows by now, Erwin Chemerinsky was hired to be the dean of the soon-to-start-up Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California Irvine, and then promptly fired for reasons that seem apparent to all observers but are described differently every day by the participants. As explained in an article by Garrett Therolf and Maura Dolan in Saturday's Los Angeles Times:

[UCI Chancellor Michael V.] Drake has insisted that Chemerinsky didn't lose the dean's position because of his politics, saying that it was only because he expressed himself in a polarizing way (emphasis added).

Oh, good, I'm glad we cleared that up.
Saturday's LA Times lists three examples of Chemerinsky's flaming liberalism:

He worked against California's three strikes law, argued in support of judicial review for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and represented Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent whose cover was blown by members of the Bush administration.

Now, Chemerinsky is certainly an outspoken liberal and advocate and has been for decades--how this could come as a surprise to Chancellor Drake is beyond me--but the three positions listed in the LA Times are not exactly very far out there (out here?). Moreover, it would be very hard to find a prominent constitutional lawyer who has not advocated for one or the other pole of the issues in question--our adversary system of adjudication depends, for good or ill, on lawyers championing opposed positions.
Always a paragon of moderate expression himself, long-time Republican member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Michael Antonovich commented that appointing Chemerinsky head of a law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security."
Yeah, just like that.
Update: Here's an open letter and petition to Drake from professors and students at Irvine.
And here is Chancellor Drake's version.
Professor Chemerinsky's statement is here.

Another update: In again, out again, in again. Legal education is funnier than you think!
Official UCI statement here.

Check out I cite: Consumerism as politics

2007-09-10T11:22:00.001-07:00

I teach all of this week's classes today and should be preparing for them right now instead of lingering over my brainfood brunch, but you know how it is. I can't even begin to do justice to Jodi Dean's post at I cite:

Consumerism as politics. Among other things, it is a thought-provoking analysis of our current condition in which challenges to capitalism take the form of alternative shopping choices.

Among the reasons why the politics of consumerism is reassuring, she says, are that it:

5 iterates a politics of the few and privileged who have consumer choices, providing them with a sense of meaning and purpose even as it continues to depoliticize those with no choices (we might call this the Wal Mart dilemma insofar as Wal Mart produces the conditions that require and demand it, that make it the only choice and no choice at all in the rural, post urban abandoned strip malled reaches of the rust belt; eco-tourism is another version of the same phenomenon);

6. fails to establish a political space or locus outside the logic of capitalism.

As one commenter points out, you could write a whole blog commenting on this one post. Go read it.

What Book I'm Not

2007-09-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

...but a friend got this result and I think it is very funny.

What? It's a holiday weekend!

You're A Theory of Justice!

by John Rawls

In the beginning, you lived in a town. The town had many problems! Rather than moving, you decided to come up with the idea for the best town ever. Going all the way back to the original position, you created the idea for the best town ever! Lo and behold, the best town ever looked almost identical to the town you lived in. You decided to stay in the town. Now you resent people mistaking your refined thought experiments for "the wall of stupidity" in high school debate
rounds.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Woo-hoo!

2007-09-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

Red Sox Rookie Pitches No-Hitter!

Gonzales Resigns

2007-08-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

Too little, too late.

Email from a student.

2007-08-24T00:00:00.001-07:00

Hi Professor. I just wanted to give you the heads up that unfortunately I won't be able to make it to class on Thursday because [. . .]. Is there anything going to be discussed on that day that I should know about?

No, of course not. Is there ever?

Technorati Tags:
Teaching

In a Spin

2007-08-16T11:37:00.001-07:00

At the end of last April (2007) I bought a Whirlpool Duet Sport washer and dryer. They were delivered (by my request) in mid-May and went into service at the end of May when my modest kitchen remodel was finished. On August 9 the washer refused to spin, leaving the half-done laundry a sodden mass. I called Whirlpool and, after spending some time in voice jail, was given a list of factory authorized service providers to call for in-warranty repair. The list had one name on it, A&E Factory Service of Santa Ana. I called A&E and was told that a technician would be out on August 14 (5 days) between 1 and 5 p.m. The technician turned up at 9 a.m. and extricated this (just the black spaghetti, not the white cat) from the back of the washer (no mean feat--it is stacked under the dryer in a laundry closet):

A new belt was ordered on an "emergency" basis (why, when A&E had the model and serial numbers of the washer and the information that it would not spin, and 5 days to prepare, the technician did not come equipped with the proper belt I don't know) and I was set up with another appointment (August 24--13 days without a washer). As he packed up to leave, the technician held up the shredded belt as if it were a rotting dead thing and announced: "This would never happen to a Maytag."
Well, I'm afraid it already has. Whirlpool bought Maytag (and closed all the original Maytag plants in Iowa) in 2006 after the Justice Department agreed that the merger, which resulted in one company making 70% of the washers and dryers in the US, "would not reduce competition substantially." Whirlpool appliance brands now include Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Inglis, Estate, Roper, Magic Chef and Gladiator, making Whirlpool, its webpage announces "a compelling company," with "a spirit of winning that is unmatched in the industry." Or what's left of it. I don't really care whether my washer wins--I just want it to spin.

Edit: Oh, dear. A little googling of A&E (owned, it turns out, by Sears) tells me I am in the hands of scoundrels. See this, and this, and this, and this and this . . .

Update and Word to the Wise:It turns out there are other companies Whirlpool will pay to do warranty work. Here's what happens: you call Whirlpool's "Customer eXperience" number--I can see why they can't call it customer service or customer assistance. After pushing some buttons, you get a recording telling you here is a list of service providers in your area. The list begins with A&E. Then there's a long pause. Then the recording asks, "do you want me to connect you with A&E?" Well, I guess so. But if you've already been burned and stay on the line, there is another long pause, and they start rattling off other repair places in alphabetical order (in which A&E would not be first). The first one I was able to make out was Appliance Doctor, about 2 miles away, and they are scheduled to come tomorrow morning. Appliance Doc and I commiserated a bit about how Whirlpool sticks it to both customers and independent repair operations.

Final Update: It's 9:24 am August 17 (7 days before my next A&E appointment; 1 day after I called Appliance Doctor) and the washer is fixed. Live and learn and do laundry.

Technorati Tags:
Corporations, Navel Gazing, Whirlpool, Maytag, A&E Factory Service

Jim Crow Justice, Jena-style

2007-08-14T12:22:00.001-07:00

It began--well, it began over 250 years ago, but most recently it began when a black high-school student asked for permission to sit under the "Whites Only" shade tree at the high school in Jena, Louisiana. The next morning saw nooses hanging from the tree (in the school colors). If you don't know what happened after that, you should.

You can find a summary here where Xicanopwr provides lots of useful links, with regular updates here.

Another good summary with updates here.

Technorati Tags:
Justice, Law, Race

The Meaning of Life

2007-08-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

Truth from Brownfemipower

2007-08-07T13:50:00.001-07:00

Brownfemipower at Women of Color Blog has written some powerful and complex truth regarding poverty, hatred, ignorance, humanity and capitalism in response to the suggestion that the best way to deal with horrible crime in a low income housing project is to raze the project. I can't do justice to Brownfemipower's wisdom and eloquence. Please read it.

Get to the Point

2007-08-07T11:53:00.001-07:00

The University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business has decided to require prospective students to submit PowerPoint slides with their applications for admission this year. As a reader of thousands of professional school applications I understand and sympathize with the admissions readers' struggle to stave off boredom. And the effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations in conveying complex ideas and inspiring engaged participation has long been known. See, for example, this breathtaking classic. Or this heartbreaking one. I can think of no better way to capture the essence of the ideal Chicago MBA than 4 PowerPoint slides.

Everything I Need to Know About Legal Writing . . .

2007-08-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

. . . I learned--or could have learned--from "Effective Lawyering," a handbook by my colleagues at Southwestern Law School Austen L. Parrish and Dennis T. Yokoyama newly published by Carolina Academic Press. In barely 120 pages, the book provides pithy advice and checklists for composing all kinds of legal argumentation, from legal memoranda and oral arguments to client correspondence and email. Despite its brevity, the book captures subtle but important distinctions in content and tone between trial and appellate briefs, and offers valuable insights into how to write for courts, clients, supervising attorneys and scholarly legal publications.

But the real meat of the book is the first chapter, blandly entitled "Techniques for Effective Legal Writing", that (which?) neatly catalogs all the tics and dithers that make so much legal writing unbearable and explains how to avoid them. For example, the authors caution against using abbreviations and initials to refer to parties or processes in a brief: "Refer to Mercedes-Benz Club of America as Mercedes or the Club, not as MBCA." When I am reading an argument, I always find myself mentally trying to pronounce any acronym I encounter, and I quickly become cranky when it can't be done, as in cases concerning the ACGIH, FMVSS, or even SMTP. On the other hand, sometimes ill-considered (or strategically inspired) acronyms can enliven a dull argument: I sometimes teach a case involving a land-use dispute between Save Our Bay, invariably referred to by its opponent as "SOB", and a Unified Power District of San Diego, which the SOB rather rudely denominated "SDUPD". And an otherwise dry, but important, California personal jurisdiction case involving tainted hamburger meat is made much more entertaining when one of the parties, Washington Restaurant Management, Inc., is routinely referred to as WRMI.

But I digress. "Effective Lawyering" is not a text from which legal writing can be taught, but with its handy checklists and breezy authority it is an excellent refresher for any law student or young (or not so young) attorney taking on a new writing project.

Technorati Tags:
Law

Eight Random Facts Meme

2007-08-01T18:17:00.001-07:00

I've been tagged by Ann Bartow, so here are 8 random facts about me:

1. I've just spent way too much time wondering if any 8 things I might think up to say about myself can actually be "random."
2. My cat is deaf.
3. I was born during the Truman Administration, and was old enough to celebrate Nixon's resignation at a bar.
4. I never ride my bicycle without wearing my helmet.
5. When I had my first interview at a law firm (circa 1984) the first lawyer on my schedule took the cup of coffee I walked into his office with and drank it. I wish I could say that I thanked him, said I now knew all I needed to know about his firm, and left, but I didn't. The interview went downhill from there.
6. My law firm was still using (some) carbon paper when I left practice.
7. I'm not as mean as I look.
8. The internet changed my life.

I tag the first 8 people to see this on my blog.

Technorati Tags:
Blogging, Navel Gazing

Après moi le déluge

2007-08-01T12:52:00.001-07:00

I left Gloucester, UK, after a conference at the University of Gloucestershire Oxstalls Campus Sunday morning July 22. The Gloucester train station being closed due to flooding, I managed to snare a seat on a sold-out bus to Heathrow only after a lovely and persuasive Italian woman had charmed her way onto the bus and then revealed that she needed two seats, not one. "Anyone traveling alone?" "Alone" is my middle name, and I made my escape.
At the time I knew that much of Gloucestershire had been flooded, including the beautiful new auditorium at the Oxstalls campus, but I thought the waters were receding, the sun was coming out, and the worst of the flooding was over. Not so. Gloucester's water treatment plant had been flooded, but treated water was still running on Sunday morning. The water ran out on Monday (apparently, heroic efforts saved the local power plant) and is only now being restored! Relief funds are being collected in a special campaign by the Mayors of Gloucester and Tewkesbury and by the British Red Cross.

Technorati Tags:
Navel Gazing, Travel, Gloucestershire, Disaster

Dentata Floss

2007-07-20T08:12:00.001-07:00

I made my presentation on Gonzales v. Carhart today. In an effort to look more prepared than maybe I was, I made a PowerPoint presentation consisting of pictures I thought were suggested by the Court's prose, beginning with a clinical diagram of the female nether regions, followed by an alternative view of the same thing--a particularly lurid vagina dentata. The PowerPoint continues with a variety of figures of Liberty and ends with the Kilpeck Church Sheela na gig. Or, that's what was supposed to happen. In fact, I got confused by the technology (I was viewing the presentation on my laptop but displaying it on the classroom desktop. I inadvertently stopped advancing the slides while the vagina dentata was on the screen, and that image accompanied the rest of my talk. Oddly enough, there were no questions or comments.

Technorati Tags:
Feminism, Navel Gazing, Abortion, Alberto Gonzales

When in Rome . . .

2007-07-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

have a sandwich.

The Full Salad

2007-07-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Cardiff in my £14/night dorm room which, considering I booked it sight unseen for 10 nights despite its being £10 less per night than any other option has turned out to be a miraculously lovely place to stay. One conference down, one to go. In the meantime, I'm taking in the cultural highlights of Cardiff:
and working on the presentation for the second conference. This I do mostly on the train. My modus operandi so far has been to make elaborate plans for the day involving rising at dawn, then to oversleep, necessitating a revision in The Plan, then to miss the relevant train and, BritRail pass in hand, take whatever train is next to leave from Cardiff Central. Today I wound up in Portsmouth.
It took me a while to figure out where and what to eat on my first day here. I wound up ducking into a coffee shop in Royal Arcade where I asked for a piece of the quiche behind the glass. "Do you want the full salad with that?" "Sure." I figured, it's salad, how bad can it be?

This bad:

Technorati Tags:
Navel Gazing, Food, Travel

Pretty, Fizzy Paradise: All Women are Me, Damnit

2007-07-04T13:37:00.001-07:00

I'm off to England and Wales for a couple of conferences and a vacation today, so if I had any time to blog I would have to spend it thinking about my presentations or looking for my passport. But here's a wonderful post on the "unspoken" rules governing women (as opposed to people) in our daily lives and in comic books:

Pretty, Fizzy Paradise: All Women are Me, Damnit

Definitely check it out.

(Via sandicomm)

Technorati Tags:
Feminism, Comics

Another Reason I Love the Internet

2007-06-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned before, I am working on a paper examining the imagery in Gonzales v. Carhart, the US Supreme Court's recent opinion upholding a federal statute banning so-called "partial birth abortion." In particular, I am thinking about the almost complete disappearance of "the woman" whose physical and emotional well-being, present and future, depends on the Court's decision. Almost complete, because she leaves her vagina behind and subject to intense scrutiny as she otherwise vanishes from the Court's view, like a bizarre Cheshire Cat. Now, I have a friend who I know from an internet forum who includes a picture of this carving as part of her signature:

Parochial mid-American bumpkin that I am, I had no idea what this was until she told me it is a sheela na gig, one of hundreds found in nooks and crannies of old Norman churches all over Ireland, England and Wales. Whatever its origin, which is lost in the mists of time, the sheela na gig is a wonderful image to compare to the Court's crotch shot for many reasons I haven't even had time to explore yet, among them the fact that the sheela's alert and cheerful face is as prominent as her pudendum, over which she is clearly exercising control.

Technorati Tags:
Feminism, Abortion, Law, Mothers, Internet

Just Talk Among Yourselves

2007-06-21T00:10:00.001-07:00

In the past 10 days I have finished grading my exams, wrapped up a student disciplinary matter, caught up with the laundry, moved everything back into my newly remodeled kitchen, moved everything out of the rest of the living/dining room and hallway to get the wood floors sanded, ridden along while my son learns to drive, and bought a hiking pole, hat and boots for my upcoming trip hiking in the rain in Wales and England (as well as some theoretically wrinkle-proof, more-or-less presentable clothing to wear at the two conferences paying for the trip). All I need to do in the next two weeks is write up two papers, one of which has been festering in my mind for so long that actually expelling it will be an event on the order of Zeus giving birth to Athena. That should be worth a few SSRN downloads.

Technorati Tags:
Navel Gazing

Her Eyes Follow You Around the Museum

2007-06-10T14:19:00.001-07:00

Another theft from Natalie at Philobiblon: But What Does It Mean?

Technorati Tags:
Feminism, Art

Cradle or Grave

2007-06-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

Cradle or Grave is a review by Michele Pridmore-Brown of three books on childbirth in the May 30, 2007 Times Literary Supplement. Looking at birthing through history and internationally, these books show "the extent to which birth is in fact not just some timeless event, but culture- and class-mediated," subject to religious manipulation, scientific vigilantism and expensive and often harmful fads. The review also focuses on the appallingly high rate of infant and maternal mortality in the US:

Proof that things are amiss in the US: it has the second worst newborn mortality figures in the industrialized world, despite having the most expensive maternity system. Women are 70 per cent more likely to die in childbirth in the US than in Europe.

In his book "Born in the USA" Marsden Wagner wonders how Americans continue to be duped by the obstetrical industry:

Obstreticians are still too much “like priests in white robes”, writes Wagner, practising in insular “cathedrals”; continuing the metaphor, pregnant women are then faithful parishioners when they should be sceptics. Wagner enjoins pregnant women to shun any birth book that advises “trusting your doctor” or “listening to your doctor”. Such phrases are red flags. Instead, they should trust the scientific evidence and “trust their bodies”. I am not sure what trusting one’s body means, given that interpreting bodily signs is itself a culturally mediated, indeed often faddish, affair – as Cassidy’s book makes abundantly clear. But, certainly, basing decisions on scientific evidence is sound advice – that is, assuming the evidence is robust. And Wagner does marshal plenty of evidence that midwives are the safest attendants for low-risk births – because they are trained to wait patiently for and facilitate birth, rather than to intervene in and/or hasten it. Evidence also suggests that when the C-section rate goes over 15 per cent, the maternal mortality rate increases. And evidence also shows that planned home births for low-risk patients are as safe as hospital births. But Wagner’s trump card when it comes to policy is probably the bottom line: acting on this evidence in the US would not only lower death rates but save vast sums of money.

Read the whole review, and support your local midwife.
HT Natalie at Philobiblon

Technorati Tags:
Feminism, Mothers