update

In case the fact that this hasn't been updated since early 2006 hasn't clued you in, the blog is dead. Go away.

Though, for the curious, here is the epilogue:

2006: moot court, got job, unfortunate disagreement with the roommate, emo; overall a pretty shitty year (quite a bit worse than being sprayed in the face with the insecticide).
2007: more emo, law review drama, didn't study for Bar, bought a car; overall only slightly less shitty.
2008 (thusfar): still emo, moved, insomnia, work; shaping up to be better than 2007, but still in the shitty range.

Lessons learned: life as a student is underrated, mathematical calculations on expected utility in a relationship can bite you in the ass, and the cake is a lie.

Top posts on this fair blog:

3) lyrics to the Scorpion's Send me an Angel;
2) people upset about me not liking the fact that the hacks at Simmons & Fletcher use God to help them shill their legal services for filthy lucre;
1) ASCII camel. Popular in France and the mideast. This is the second hit on google and the first on google image search for an ASCII camel. I guess if the law thing doesn't work out I can always fall back on that.

gl hf dd, now gtfo and eabod

HOLY CRAP! People are Getting Wounded in Iraq!

As I’m sure all you know, the number one story in the US right now (it is the top story on the webpages of ABC, CBS, CNN and the #2 stories on FOXNews, MSNC and the New York Times) is that two men are in serious but stable condition following a roadside-bomb attack in Iraq. While such events kill American and Iraqi soldiers every daily with little media fanfare, today’s attack injured a reporter and his cameraman. This is hardly new, as the death/injury/kidnapping of a reporter generates several times as much press as when a soldier or other civilian is similarly harmed. You’d think the media was over there to liberate Iraq and the soldiers who get killed far more often are simply embedded troops in the news crews.

I’m glad that our media knows which group is more important: those doing the thankless and far more dangerous job of trying to win the war or those who voluntarily watch the war to bring themselves fame and give the world such pretty pictures. While I pray for the newsmen who were injured, I certainly have no more concern for them than the American and Iraqi soldiers and civilians who have been (or will be) killed or injured.

fourth-semester fun

After taking a week off to celebrate the brief being finished (51 pages of Voting Rights Act fun!), I can finally get back to what’s important: school and video games. The best part of being the brief writer is that, though my Christmas break was a living hell, I get to collect a free credit hour this semester despite being finished on the first day of class.

The second week of school hasn’t started, and I’ve already made three trips to the happiest place in Houston — the registrar’s office — to make schedule changes. First I dropped Oil & Gas in favor of environmental law, then switched Secured Transactions for First Amendment (I couldn’t take another Mussleman course after my tax debacle) and finally dropped Texas Pretrial Procedure for Agency & Partnership. This gives me 5 cumulative hours of bar-related electives (which Pearce and the Gaytor seem to find insufficient).

With any luck, I’ll get my student loan disbursement soon and will be able to stop being forced to put everything I buy on a credit card.

Here I am, in the land of the morning star

I think I’ve finally cracked. I’m working on the brief on my third consecutive all-nighter, and I just added “Send me an Angel” by the Scorpions to my Yahoo! playlist.

An 1856 case even I won't cite.

I’m trying to find a good quote about limited government for the brief, so I do a quick terms and connectors search on Lexis looking for some specific words in a sentence. Only one case comes back, and the quote was exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, that case was none other than Dred Scott v. Sanford, 90 U.S. 393, 509 (1856). Though I rarely pass up the chance to cite—let alone quote—a nineteenth century case, I don’t think that I’ll cite it in a Voting Rights Case. It just doesn’t look good to argue about racial equality while citing the case that discusses the public opinion of “the civilized and enlightened portions of the world” regarding “that unfortunate race.” Id. at 407.

Another interesting thing about that case: it is 240 pages long. At least we didn’t have to this case in con law.

Gas and Mass in Pearland: A Report

I dropped the wife off at work in Pearland, and I decided to get some gas before I left for home (the fact that the gas light had been on for about three miles helped this decision considerably). When I get to the pump, the LCD screen says something to the effect of “would you like some [fuel additive] friend?” Call me old fashioned, but I don’t often consider myself friends with things that (1) I’ve only known for 30 seconds and (2) are gas pumps. If it were my friend, shouldn’t it at least give me the gas at cost or with a discount? Gas pumps, like Taco Bell, serve only one purpose: giving gas to the American public.

Once my new friend is filling up the car, the pump’s LCD screen shows an ad for a cigarette brand called something like “Libson” or “Libberato.” The cigarette’s slogan: “get Libby with it.” I cringed.

After giving up on watching the screen, I started looking at my friend’s house. On one of the pillars next to pump had the following graffiti: “D & D 4 EVAR.” Given my record of abysmal spelling, I’ll let the “evar” go. Looking at the initials, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was written by some guy named Dave about how much he loved Donna, or if it was some pasty nerd who really liked his level 15 Elf Mage.*


Later, the wife and I go for the first time to some Catholic Church in Pearland. While the services were more or less the same as usual (“We believe in the teachings of Cathol . . .**), the music was, to say the least, odd. Our last two churches had fairly traditional music. The first had a small choir and a piano. The Pasadena church had a choir, a rather large pipe organ and the occasional bell just for good measure. The new church, on the other hand, had a choir and piano as well as a cheesey synthesizer, electronic drum kit and a bunch of high school students with horns. It was like the church choir was a mix of Chicago and Tears for Fears.


* I’m pretty sure that making a Dungeons & Dragons joke is grounds for an annulment, so hopefully the wife won’t read down this far.

** I’ll give one shiny quarter to the first person who can correctly identify this quote

Interesting Night

The wife and I are at Chili’s last night when I scurry off to the privy. I walk up to the urinal and, as I’m stopping, my right foot hits a wet spot and loses contact with the ground. Thankfully, I managed to plant the other foot and catch myself against the wall. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been to fall: you can normally assume that wet spots in restaurants are caused by spilled drinks, but a puddle directly underneath a urinal is, to say the least, not something I’d like to land in.

When the wife and I leave, we see the most interesting car I’ve seen in a while. It is a mid 1970’s model Cadillac with shiny metallic gold paint and spinner rims around ridiculously small tires. As much as I would love to roll with some wheels like those my car, I live about a mile from the place on I 45 where some guy was shot twice in the head for his rims.

Once we got home, I finally crawled out from under the rock and downloaded Firefox. About the only thing I like about Firefox more than Explorer is that Firefox lets me save my log in info for the grade checker website (Explorer would let me save the username and password, but I had to type in my SSN and PIN). This isn't particularly useful, however, as I normally open up the window as soon as I get out of bed and just continually refresh it. Regardless of the relative merits of the browers (before you castigate me p-man, I know it has security features blah blah blah), but I now get to join the pretentious ranks of Firefox users who mock IE people constantly.

shoot me

Great, it’s 3:30am the (early) morning after Christmas, and I just took my last two caffeine pills and am working on a paper. I honestly think my life will get easier once class starts and I’m done with this infernal brief.

epilogue: “Caffeine” has a funny spelling.

addendum: I really like the word “infernal.” That could be sign that I have too many brain cells devoted to Diablo II.

pocket part: If one were suffering from nighttime demonic possession (very similar to adverse possession), could they say that they have a nocturnal infernal internal problem?

cumulative supplement: I really need more sleep if I’m trying to make jokes like these; I don’t even want to think about how unreadable this brief is turning out.

More fun in downtown Houston

The wife and I are at the school working on the Law Review assignment from Hell when we decide to take a break and go have dinner. Planning on a bountiful feast at the lovely McDonald’s, we start walking to the car. When we were a half-block away from the corner of San Jacinto and Bell, we saw a group of yoots (about four guys in their late teens/early twenties) vandalizing the bus stop; they were knocking over the newspaper holders and throwing the papers around. I'm not sure how one would classify doing this as entertainment, but to each his own.

Not yet having a concealed weapon permit, we turned and walked back to the school. Being civic minded individuals, we called 911 to report the crime in progress. This part is fun. After twelve rings, a person picks up. She asked, in a very slurred and garbled voice, what city I’m in. I reply and, while I’m attempting to explain the situation, she abruptly transfers me. Once I start talking to the next person (who is equally difficult to understand), I explain the situation. She asks if I need fire, EMS or police. I was tempted to request a fire truck just to see the firefighters break out the axes, but I asked for the police. She then―again without warning―transfers me to some other person. This woman again asks if I need the police and then asks me what is going on. I explain the situation and she tells me that I need the Metro Police.

She then transfers me to the even more difficult to hear Metro Police, and I start to tell what happened. About three seconds into the narrative, she cuts me off. I had a full signal, the phone didn’t make the dropped call sound and have never dropped a call at that location (despite talking on my phone at that point twice a day for three semesters). I guess the Metro Police is too busy doing God-knows-what to try to stop a pillaging band of vagabonds who are blocking me from my car and thus my Extra Value Meal.

Stupid Canadians

Two interesting articles about Canada:

Canadian snipers lauded as experts in Afghan action


It appears some Canuck has broken the longstanding record for the longest sniper kill. A Canadian sniper (with US observer) dinged an Afghan at 2,430 meters. Though I’ve said some disparaging things about the Canadian military from time to time, you’ve got to respect them for dropping a guy at 1.5 miles. This beat the 35 year record of 2,250 meters set by American Carlos Hathcock.


Authority to 'chastise' Jews claimed


The point of this story is that a man on trial for his anti-Semitic blog is claiming the defense that he, by virtue of some ancient documents in his possession, has the scriptural authority to “chastise” Jews. Sadly, the crazy racist’s defense against criminal charges doesn’t include a freedom of speech argument (which would presumptively lose in Canada). That’s right, Canada — our ostensibly freedom-loving neighbor to the north — can and will bring criminal charges against you for pure speech on the internet. Not only that, but the Canadian news source reporting on it doesn’t even find the ‘prosecution for speech’ aspect notable enough to deserve comment. It’s times like this where I thank God that we have the ACLU.

Pork Chop Sandwiches

I spent a good hour at this website the day of the tax final (it really helped explain the interplay between §§195 and 212).

Back in the day, a staple of Saturday morning cartoon watching was the GI Joe show (go Joe!). At the end of each episode, they would give a stupid “knowing is half the battle” public service announcement. This wonderful website has taken these POS PSAs and replaced all of the dialog. They made the words match the mouth movements, so some of the statements make little to no sense.

Most of them are stupid, but these are some of the better ones:

when not to use a fire alarm

safety on and around frozen ponds *

fire safety while cooking *

not drinking your parents’ liqueur

skateboarding

dealing with stray dogs

bicycle safety


* Be ye’ warned, these have naughty language.

I think I had a minor heart attack

I logged onto the student inquiry system to check my exam number, and I decided I’d check my schedule to see what next semester’s finals schedule will be. It showed me this semester’s schedule, and something didn’t look right. I’m only taking four finals (evidence, property II, admin and tax), and it had a lot more entries. One was law review, so that’s ok. Another was Appellate Advocacy, so I wouldn’t need to take a final for it either. Also on the list was the wonderful 2 hour class Jurisprudence. I thought I’d dropped the class the second day of the semester. I hadn’t been to the class all semester and the final exam was last week. At this point I’m beginning to panic.

Suddenly, the wife calls to talk about one of our many cats. I know she’ll freak out if she finds out that I may have failed a course, so I can’t tell her until after I know for sure. After several awkward minutes, I get off the phone and run to the registrar. After typing furiously on her computer, the woman told me that the course is still on my schedule, but it is listed (on her computer) as being dropped. That was a truly terrifying ten minutes; it was about as bad as the time in undergrad I skipped a final exam.

the judge is a psycho hose-beast

The other day I made a totally amazing, excellent discovery by finding the case of Noble v. Bradford Marine, 789 F. Supp. 395 (S.D. Fla. 1992). It’s a standard procedure case about subject matter jurisdiction in a removal case. I will offer a brief synopsis of the facts with actual quotations from the court’s opinion. A boat owned by the defendant caught fire and began "hurling chunks" of flaming debris into the air; this ignited the plaintiff’s vessel. The case was filed in state court, removed to federal court and remanded back, as all the defendants failed to join the removal. When all hopes of removal seemed gone, "like a winged monkey flying out of the ashes," the defendants came together to file a supplemental notice of removal. Though this removal came after the 30 deadline to remove, it was tolled because of the previous attempt to remove. "Not!" The defendants argument concerning an alternate source of admiralty jurisdiction was just "a schwing and a miss." The attempt at removal was "not worthy" and the parties were forced to "party on in state court".

It must be fun to be that judge’s clerk.

On a related note, I had an 11th grade English assignment of writing a poem. I couldn’t think of a topic, so I decided to go with a theme: I would write the poem with the sole intent of working in as many Metallica song titles as possible. I have a copy of it somewhere at home, but it ended up with about 30 songs in a single page, and wasn’t too bad. While the whole thing was a well received discussion of the perils and pitfalls of choosing a major, it came off as distinctly suicidal. My friends told me it appeared I was considering killing myself by self-immolation. I would never do such a thing because everyone knows that only anti-war hippies light themselves on fire. Losers.

I realize that was a boring story, but I needed a break from studying.

UPDATE! One of our loyal readers (codename: Smoke-Smoke) has forwarded the follow reference that she herself penned. In the case of Longoria v. Kelly Services*, 2005 WL 1866145 (S.D. Tex. 2005), one Mary Moreno Longoria filed a sexual harassment suit. She argued, inter alia, that she was offended by the use of the term “mojo”; the plaintiff believed the term to be a synonym for the main reproductive organ. Foot note 16 of the opinion, however, defines the meaning of the term and offers the following note: “‘[m]ojo was widely popularized by the movie character . . . Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (New Line Productions 1999).

I would like to applaud this footnote for two reasons. First, and certainly most noticeable, is the use of the full word “Productions” instead of the abbreviation “Prods.” To a casual observer, this is failure to properly abbreviate as per Table 6 of the Bluebook. Your humble blogger is not, however a casual bluebooker. “Prods.” is reserved exclusively as the abbreviation for “products,” and thus would be an improper abbreviation for “productions.”

Also laudable is the title given Mr. Powers. He is not simply “Austin Powers,” but “Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery,” much as my sister is Rachel Lastname, M.D. or I am Sam Jur, B.A.

law school comes full circle

I’m working on my property II outline when I get to recording statutes. I’m trying to come up with a concise explanation for the effect of notice under a race-notice statute. Without even thinking about it, I wrote “lack of notice is not enough, it only gets your nose in the tent.”

Professor Moore would be proud.


UPDATE: upon request from Darcy (Striker!), here is my lovely ASCII camel from the outline.



UPDATE II (to the wife): challenge accepted:

The ASCITTY

not another quote

I took a break from studying to watch Office Space, and heard this line that I can’t believe I didn’t remember.

Peter: [discussing a hypnotherapist] "I think that the guy might actually be able to help. I mean, he did help Anne lose weight."

Samir: "Peter, she's anorexic."

Peter: "Yeah, I know. The guy's really good."


I know it’s another short quote-post, but I’m busy.

a quote from Stephen Hawking

"I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot."

the week of non-studying

Monday: Studied at the library until 2:00am. Very productive.

Tuesday: Visited the wife’s relatives. Managed to sequester myself in a quiet room and work all day on the tax outline. Somewhat productive.

Wednesday: Migraine. No studying.

Thursday: Thanksgiving with the parents, migraine and a little vomiting just for good measure. Virtually no studying (though I did manage to get through 12 whole evidence flashcards).

Friday: More migraine, plus the UT / A&M game. Will actually make it to school today. (hopefully) Somewhat productive.


At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I even finish my outlines, let alone take care of all of my reading.

slow clap for Fleming & Associates

At the risk of turning this into a random shout-out page, I want to say a few things about the 2005 class of summer clerks at Fleming & Associates.

In the mock trial and moot court classes, all four South Texas clerks received brief awards (granted, Andrew’s team did better than the Gaytor/Panda duo). Three received speaker awards: Pearce was 1st in moot court, Gardale was 2nd in mock trial and I don’t remember what place Amanda received in moot court. None of them seemed too outwardly excited about their awards, though I’m pretty sure Gardale was so excited that he went home a cried like a girl (after all, his nickname is Cries at Night).

I’m not sure what Fleming is going to do now that we are all gone. They’ll be lucky to pick up six Corey Cougars next summer.

I would like to point out that your humble 12(e) correspondent not only failed to secure a speaker award, but was likely one of the bottom speakers in the entire Leerooooooooooooy Jeffers Moot Court Tournament. In a nutshell, to determine which teams advance to the next round, the judges add the team’s brief’s score to the combined points awarded to the speakers. Our team had the best speaker and the second best brief, and yet we did not make the playoffs. Who, I ask you, is the weak link? I couldn’t advocate my way out of a paper bag. The upside is that Dean (I refuse to call him “Coach”) Treece has no present intention of making me speak, and is content to leave me as a brief writer.

I guess I don’t hate all people

Before I get too deeply involved in cramming for finals (by cramming, I mean finally reading the assignments for the days I skipped), I’d like to give a sincere 12(e) thank you and slow-clap to § b’s Michael LaMendola and Sara Sundrla. These fine individuals gave me their copious notes for all my classes to make up for my equally copious number of absences. There are no finer people at the venerable Stickle than these two. Huzzah!

Just like last year, feel free to ask me any questions about our classes. Unlike last year, I won’t actually know the answer, but you’ll at least get to make fun of how upset I get when I can’t figure it out.

South Texas Web Portal

We have a winner in the “Name the Portal” contest: S.T.A.N.L.E.Y. -or- “South Texas Access Network Linking Everything to You.” I don’t think they could have picked a more inane, childish entry. Were they so desparate for an acronym that this is what they picked? If they really wanted a South Park character, why not the “Campus Access, Registration and Technology Mainframe And Network.”

On a scale of 120-180, I give it a 139.

terrorism

Two brief observations from the recent hotel bombings in Jordan.

The bombers attacked three hotels that are popular with westerners; this is most likely to allow them the opportunity to kill Americans without actually going to America. The result? Of 56 fatalities, 53 are from Muslim countries: 33 Jordanians, 6 Iraqis, 2 Bahrainis, an Indonesian and a Saudi. Additionally, they killed two Chinese and a staggering one American. Though we at The Great Satan occasionally hit our own troops (or the Canadians, journalists, etc.) we at least kill more Iraqis than allies.

Second, I really enjoyed what the Jordanian crowd chanted at a rally the next day: “Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!” I cannot think of a better use for that phrase, but I can’t image a crowd chanting something like that in unison. I guess Jordanian protesters are more skilled than their American counterparts. At UT, they rarely strayed beyond “What do we want? No war! When do we want it? Now!” and “Dick Chen-ey has got to go, hey hey, ho ho” and finally “no _(justice)_(recount)_(jobs for slacker anthropology majors)_, no peace!”

election day

Though the wife is voting against Prop 2 (I can’t vote, but I’m forcing my non-voting sister to go in my stead) tomorrow, I’m still expecting it will pass. Though I haven’t seen any polls, I think it will probably go through 65–35%.

Between prop 2 and the state education “reform,” I decided to be a solid Democrat for Texas state elections. Unfortunately, I just remembered the whole I’d-rather-leave-the-state-than-let-the-majority-out-vote-me incident of a few years ago. I guess I’ll be voting Libertarian.

stupid French

Three quick observations about this article covering the French riots. The article notes that ten cops were injured by gunfire, but gives no indication of rioter injuries; the police didn’t even seem to return fire. Good job protecting the public.

Next, “France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree. It forbade all those ‘who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others.’” This is nice. They didn’t say “don’t riot,” just “make sure who owns the property before you light it on fire.” It would be like an American evangelical stating “don’t discriminate against those you think are gay; make sure they’re gay before you harass them.”

Finally, I thought this item was humorous: the French Interior Minister said the rioters were “scum.” To prove him wrong, a 17 year old drove a car into a housing project and then burned both the car and the project down. He then demanded that the minister step down. Yes, only a fool would refer to one who would burn down a poor person’s house as ‘scum.’

The French don’t seem to have any plan on stopping the rioting. I suppose the French know that the rioters don’t have any WMDs, and, as we all know, if someone has no WMDs, there cannot ever be any good reason for using force, no matter what. Never.
All that is left is for Jacques Chirac to publicly announce “I, for one, welcome our rioting, disaffected Muslim youth overlords.”

hallofreakingween

I'm walking into my apartment at about 8:00 pm; I'm in my suit and I'm tired from the stupid moot court round. As I'm walking in, some "trick-or-treater" (I'm sorry, a windbreaker is not a costume) sees my suit and asks "what are you supposed to be, a lawyer?" "I am a lawyer" I responded, walke d around him, went inside. I then had the pleasure of sitting inside and ignoring the little bastard banging on the door. I'm sorry, but I don't see how some quasi-pagan ritual gives you an entitlement to (and me a duty to provide) candy. I should have given him a Q-Tip (or whatever the Wal-Mart brand call it, (S-Tips?)) and told him not to stick it in his ear.

I hate kids.

UPDATE: 37 % of Americans are Idiots

WARNING: elitist mocking of other people’s worldview’s to follow.

According to this FoxNews poll, almost two fifths of Americans are tragically stupid. Granted, the 2004 election showed that slightly below half of Americans aren’t particularly bright, but one could blame that on misguided enthusiasm. This poll asked Americans whether they believe in: God (91%), heaven (87%), hell (74%), etc. While I do believe in the those three, I would say “no” to such things as ghosts (34%) and reincarnation (27%). I can’t really mock those who disagree with me on those points because such questions aren’t really provable one way or the other.

I do take issue, however, with the whopping 47% who believe in astrology. Unlike the existence of the devil (67%) or miracles (84%), astrology is falsifiable. Moving beyond this, astrology seeks to make predictions of future events; unlike a metaphysical topic like angels (79%), one can observe whether astrology is accurate. On a general level, it seems rather absurd that, of 6 billion people, there are only 12 ways a person’s week can turn out. More specifically, I doubt that anyone (by anyone, I mean both people who read this blog) can honestly claim that their astrological predictions work so much as a third of time.
What is truly frightening is that I doubt there is much overlap between the 37% who believe in astrologists and the 23% who think God sent Katrina to punish New Orleans. Assuming at least 10% overlap (sadly, I know quite a few who would say ‘yes’ to both), a good half of Americans aren’t particularly bright.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband

Today I happened upon the bio of Martin Ginsburg (husband of Supreme Court justice and wicked witch of the east Ruth Bader Ginsburg) on his firm’s website. The man seems pretty funny; a few excerpts:


Professor Ginsburg attended Cornell University, stood very low in his class and played on the golf team. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School which, in those years, did not field a golf team.

Professor Ginsburg entered private practice in New York City in 1958. He withdrew from full-time practice when appointed the Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and moved to Georgetown University in 1980 when his wife obtained a good job in Washington.

In the interim, Professor Ginsburg served as Chairman of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association, . . . from 1984 to 1987 he was a member of the ABA Tax Section Council, where he performed no useful service at all.

In 1986, someone who probably prefers never to be identified endowed a Chair in Taxation in his name at Georgetown; no one appears willing to occupy the Ginsburg Chair, and it remains vacant. In 1993, the National Women's Political Caucus gave Professor Ginsburg its "Good Guy" award; history reveals no prior instance of a tax lawyer held to be a "Good Guy," or even a "Decent Sort."

Professor Ginsburg is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, a frequent speaker at tax seminars, mainly in warm climates, and the author of one exciting treatise (with J.S. Levin of Chicago) and a ghastly number of articles on corporate and partnership taxation, business acquisitions and other stimulating things. Professor Ginsburg's spouse was a lawyer before she found better work. Their older child was a lawyer before she became a schoolteacher. The younger child, when he feels grumpy, threatens to become a lawyer.

How can you hate a Justice with such a funny spouse? I'm not sure, but I still do.

Fun new law school rankings

I happened upon a new set of law school rankings that I found interesting. Just so you don’t get your hopes up, it only showed the top 50, and our beloved South Texas didn’t make the cut (though I have it on good authority that we are 51st). It starts off normally enough with Harvard in 1st; granted Yale is normally first, but you can’t go wrong with HLS. Our buddies in Austin managed number 5, while Yale only made it to 6. Things get progressively worse when the University of Chicago (39) only beats U of H by one place.

Though I enjoy any ranking that says I was accepted to a better school than Stanford or Duke, this ranking is pure idiocy. I know what you’re thinking: either “such an apocalyptically bad ranking must be made by idiots” or “Sam is a beautiful, beautiful man.”* You’re right on both accounts. This list was put out by the only school that is arguably worse than TSU: the good people at Thomas Cooley Law School. Apropos, it should be noted that Cooley was objectively ranked at number 18. No wonder the ABA is attempting to revoke the school accreditation.

*Whily you were no doubt thinking “Sam deserves a Pulitzer for this marvelous Civ Pro themed blog, I must humbly concede that P-Man’s blog is a better choice. It has its own mugs; that’s just cool.

Do fictional characters have standing?

Researching the brief, I came across the case of Metro. Stevedore Co. v. John Rambo, 521 U.S. 121 (1997). In the case, Rambo, back from shooting up Brian Dennehy and kicking some commie butt in ‘Nam, returns to civilian life as a longshoreman to battle the Federal Government all the way to the Supreme Court. Seriously, how cool would be to actually have the name John Rambo? Of course the government denied him worker’s comp, they assumed the application used a pseudonym.

On a related note, I’ve managed to work in citations to Marbury v. Madison and Erie R.R. v. Tompkins. I feel sorry for Dean Treece when he has to read it. Now all I need to do is cite the Magna Carta and Code of Justinian and I’ll have the most obscure

stupide survey result

While trying to avoid working on my brief, I stumbled across this little gem of a statistic: “9 in 10 kids 8-16 yrs. have viewed porn online, mostly accidentally while doing homework.” Since only the kids only “mostly” gave the ridiculous homework excuse, at least some gave the honest answer.
On a related note, I actually have stumbled across a porn site while doing homework. While in the library computer at my high school, I attempted to see if there is a “freenchrevolution.com” since I was researching the French Revolution. It instantly redirected me to a porn site, causing me to warm-boot the computer when the librarian walked by before I could close the barrage of pop-ups.

My only Supreme Court post

Without addressing any of the intellectual merits or faults of Chief Justice Roberts, I am going to have to offer this criticism:

Why did he ditch Bill Rehnquist's spunky gold stripes?



I know that few did, but I liked the stripes. Granted they looked like something from Mr. Justice T (I pity the fool who fails to have standing!), but they at least broke the monotony (who likes going to places where everyone is wearing black?).