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?).

Poll: One in Five Americans say God Uses the Gulf Coast as a Bowling Alley

I promise, this was intended to be a very short post, but it sort of took on a life of its own.

According to an ABC News poll, 23% of respondents say that Hurricans Katrina and Rita are “deliberate acts of God.”

I have two problems with this position.* The first, are all hurricanes “deliberate acts of God” or only the ones that are memorable. If the former, why does God like to throw us the occasional large to catastrophic storm? Does he get bored by mainly hitting the US with category two storms and having the bulk of all tropical cyclones hit absolutely nothing and dissipate at sea? Either God must seriously dislike places that are disproportionately hit (e.g., Jamaica, Florida and Haiti), or He likes to randomly shoot them in all directions (if this is case, how can randomness be a “deliberate” act of an omnipotent power?).

If only certain hurricanes are the will of God, more problems arise. As a threshold matter, how can we divine the divine and tell the natural cyclones from the supernatural? Statistically, New Orleans is likely to get dinged a time or two. If a hurricane hits an uninhabited place (or fails to make landfall), it is just an ordinary hurricane; if a major city is hit, however, it must be because God was aiming for it. This position would make a large coastal city remarkably safe from hurricanes as they would be protected from all normal hurricanes (presumably the majority of all hurricanes) and only be at risk whenever God is in a smiting mood (this is because a storm hitting, for example, New Orleans or Houston is inevitably attributed to some divine plan and never to standard weather patterns).

Assuming that The Big Guy is taking pot shots at the US (and Gulf Coast in particular), why does He seem to particularly dislike (or at least enjoying hurricaning) certain groups. Honduras, Haiti and Florida are routinely hit, and New Orleans and Beaumont are believed by 23% of Americans to be targets of the Almighty. These areas have diverse religious practices (pagan, Protestant, Jewish and God’s One True Church: Catholic). All have varying degrees of political tumult and all have varying levels of poverty (from the crushing poverty of Haiti to the endless trailer parks of East Texas and Florida). The good folks at the Volokh Conspiracy noted that, if God is sending these hurricanes, He must really hate poor people; this is drawn from the fact that, overall, the incredible majority of hurricane victims are extremely poor (trust me, Haiti makes the worst parts of New Orleans look like the Hamptons).

To use New Orleans as an example, God had plenty of potentially ripe targets. New Orleans has the remarkably hedonistic and pagan Mardi Gras festivities , the gay-pride Southern Decadence celebration and a fair number of water-borne casinos. I am in no way stating that these groups should be killed or injuried by God, this is simply a list of what various people have claimed to be potential Katrina targets.

If He were indeed aiming for these potential targets, let’s check His accuracy (bearing in mind that, being all powerful, he should probably be pretty friggin’ accurate). Katrina hit well before Mardi Gras and more or less missed the French Quarter; Mardi Gras will likely go forward in 2006 without much slowing down. Not only was Mardi Gras as an instution stopped, but the offending celebrants were missed altogether (remember, Mardi Gras is purported to be a religious celebration that is screwed up by the bead-toting tourists). With the exception of Tulane and various small colleges, virtually no drunken frat guys were adversely affected by the storm. Not only will the partying continue, but the people debauching the occasion will return.

As for the Southern Decadence extravaganza, Katrina hit a week or two before everything kicked off. Granted the parade was very subdued this year, but it will continue next year and all of the homosexuals (the elusive and contemptable group of taxpayers) weren’t in the city to face The Almighty’s Wrath. I think Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked not to inconvenience the sinners, but because destroying the city was an effective way to kill the people in it.** Furthermore, I would think that there are more accurate tools for eliminating a certain group; lightning is a much more efficient means for dispatching a discrete group than a 250 mile wide storm. I think it’s fair to say that gays weren’t a target of Katrina given the storm’s abysmal job of doing anything to harm them.

Finally, the casinos were effectivally destroyed; I don’t think very many coastal casinos survived the storm. Unfortunately for the divine plan, all of these casinos are insured and their management will not lose much money as a result of Katrina. The only up side is that the people of Louisiana will not be able to gamble for several months. Furthermore, I’m going to have to raise the overkill problem again: floating buildings may be destroyed by much simpler means than a giant, city destroying hurricane. I don’t see the benefit of killing 1,000 people to get rid of a few casinos the hard way.

If there was aiming involved, it could only be directed at one group: poor people. Mardi Gras revelers are typically wealthy college students, gays are disproportionately rich and your average food stamp user doesn’t spend much time at expensive casinos (local illegal bookies, maybe). Whereas the casinos, bars and hotels are all insured, poor people typically have no such safety net; if your apartment or government supplied housing is flooded, you lose everything you own. Also, at least 100,000 people were left in the city when the storm hit. Most of the Mardi Grasers and gay pride marchers live all across the country, so they were safe. The people who were left were too poor to own a car for the evacuation. Thus, the great majority of the 1,000 or so people who died were poor and did not fit into any other targeted group (though the looters didn’t help the aggregate innocence of those who stayed behind, it is worth noting (1) that the huge majority of the group didn’t commit any crime and (2) the looters, by definition, survived the storm and thus is another example of God missing a smitable target). This fails the rule God set before dealing with those punks in Gomorrah when he noted that he would spare the city (and the sinners) if 10% of the population is righteous; since I think its fair assumption that at least 100 of those killed were innocent, the Lot test is satisfied.

* Though I am attempting a logical argument, I am presupposing the existence of an all powerful God as defined by the Holy Catholic Chruch.
** As a papist, I don’t take a literal reading of the Jehovah v. Sodam, et al.; it is, however, a useful tool for (1) showing God’s power and (2) showing that he isn’t into indiscriminate killing.