Random Song Reference

Ohio - by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

Wednesday is Haiku Day!

Pinkeye is gone now
but little boy has hollow
cough - hurts just to hear.

Advocacy

I was lawyer again today. I played the prosecution while Red Hot Mamma played defense. The witness was hers, and I got the cross. I had a pretty small role today; raise objections - which I missed a couple leadings and a hearsay, as well as a reading...

While I was doing my cross, my wife called and told me I needed to get the daughter. It turned out that she was able to pick up the girl, but since the daughter was not feeling well, I left early (with permission) and got the girl from daycare so she could lay down at home and get some rest - we had a little fever run through us last week, and I think she's still feeling a bit of that.

Anyway, it's giving me a chance to finish up reading on NAFTA, where I still have about 20 pages to read.

I like NAFTA, it's interesting, and the setup is not that bad.

You see, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade carved out concepts for trade agreements - Trade Unions (such as the EU) and Free Trade Agreements (e.g. NAFTA). There are plusses to both, but frankly, it sounds like Free Trade agreements might actually be a little better... First off, you can leave a FTA, you can't leave the EU.

The United States, as a general rule, likes Free Trade Agreements - each of the last three Presidents (both Bushes and Clinton) supported Free Trade Agreements. It's going to be interesting to go through this.

Back to work.

The Symbol of Our Country

Apparently, the Luddite movement is catching on with our Nation's fowl. A suicide attack by a bald eagle carrying a deer head left some 10,000 Juneauans without power. The kamikaze run was less successful than the subverter would otherwise have hoped, though - the city didn't even lose power for 45 minutes.

Atlatl starfruit

I can't remember the name of the game, but I think I first saw it on Particleman's blog a couple years ago (maybe Google Smack, or something?). Anyway, the point of the game is to take two random words, run a google (or Yahoo) search, and try to find a combination that has only one site come up on search result.

The above combination was the one I used, which probably won't work anymore, since the combination is now on my blog, but if you find yourself in need of something to occupy your time and you can't leave your desk...

Interesting

You Are Sunset

Even though you still may be young, you already feel like you've accomplished a lot in life. And you feel free to pave your own path now, and you're not even sure where it will take you. Maybe you'll pursue higher education in a subject you enjoy - or travel the world for a few years. Either way, you approach life with a relaxed, open attitude. And that will take you far!

What Time Of Day Are You?

And the Protests come

The right of the people to gather and petition the government for a redress of their grievances is one of the rights endowed in the First Amendment.

But that does not mean that you have to listen to Hanoi Jane - who probably is more harmful to the anti-war crowd than she is helpful.

Grandpa's Little Helper

Bad news for all those devotees of Bob Dole and Mike Ditka: Medicare will no longer cover prescriptions for Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra, except as treatment for Pulmonary Hypertension (a lung ailment) or other such ailments.

The move is calculated to help save money for Medicare.

It also is calculated to ensure elderly men don't fall on hard times.

The Surge

I disagree with the surge.

As I've mentioned before, I don't think it's going to be effective - that the president insists that it will work with an extra 21,500 when that's just about how many we could afford to increase the troop load by seems a bit too coincidental.

But, I believe that the President has this authority under his duties as Commander-in-Chief. I think Congress is wrong to try to strip funding for a part of the war - trying to use the pursestrings to execute Commander-in-Chief duties. I see this as an unconstitutional act on the part of Congress, and one that does not jive with Congress' joint resolution authorizing the invasion (I mean "liberation"). I think that Congress has the authority, after the two year period for which they've authorized funds to raise an army have expired, they have the option of no longer funding the war, period, or they can renew funding. I see the threat of not funding one portion of the president's strategy to be an unconstitutional foray into executive powers.

I'm not alone in this thinking - in this op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, a writer has said somewhat better what I tried to say above. Though I do not agree with everything in the article, I think he is right on point with this premise.

The law in this area is unclear, which is why there is debate as to whether or not Congress can do this, but I think a challenge that went to the Court would rule against Congress' actions, and in the interim, many of our soldiers would be in greater harm than they already are by the President's string of bad decisions.

The Bar Exam Cometh

I graduate in May, which means I will be able to sit for the July Bar Exam.

Before I started law school, I applied to many, many jobs with my Excelsior College degree. It didn't work out well. My degree, essentially, is in Contemporary Korean Culture, which means that I got a bachelor's degree that qualified me to work at McDonald's in Seoul (rimshot). The degree essentially was the bachelor's equivalent of a transfer degree - it was good enough to get me into law school, but not really good enough to equate to many job opportunities. The degree is probably more helpful to those who already have a job and need a degree to get a raise or a promotion than it is for job hunters (from my experience).

One of the jobs I did get invited to was a job as a life insurance salesman, one where they wanted you to pay them several hundred dollars and then they'd train you to work for them on commission. I declined the job, because I am hesitant to pay someone for the pleasure of working for them.

Now, I'm in the process of applying for the Texas State Bar. The application is $300. I have to pass the Bar in order to practice law in Texas. The application is $300, and then I get the pleasure of working as a lawyer in Texas...

It dawned on me today.

Eye-yi-yi

The little boy has pinkeye. This is the second time he's gotten pinkeye since I've been in law school. Today was a fortunate day, because I have no classes until 7:45, which means I could stay home with him while his mom is at work.

It's just pinkeye, so it should clear up pretty quickly. And who knows? Perhaps this is a good omen for the semester... last time the kids brought us pinkeye, I had my best semester in school, so maybe I can repeat my past success...

Excerpt of my conversation with my wife this morning

"I am a man, but I can read instructions."

One Small Step for the Binjo Ditch Dweller

I had Criminal Trial Advocacy today. We had four problems in class, which dealt with examining witnesses and entering in evidence.

I have no prior experience with this whatsoever. So naturally, I got to go first.

Couple things I learned today that I would have liked to have known before I did this:
In Texas, you remain seated when questioning a witness.
You want to ask open-ended questions on Direct Examination and Leading questions on Cross.
You stand when you address the Court.
You ask permission to do everything when you are a baby lawyer, because the court will like you better.
When you are done with your questions, in Texas, you "Pass the witness for cross examination/redirect" or you "have no further questions AT THIS TIME"
You make sure you ask for the evidence you wish to present to the witness to be entered as evidence, and you make sure you bring a copy for the opposing counsel and the Court to view (they're going to want to see it and it's their right to do so, so you're just saving time).
After something is marked as evidence, you refer to it as "the item identified as state/defense exhibit Number __."
and mainly - I had no idea what I was going to say, and I had my questions in front of me.
But I got through it, and I feel better now than I did this morning - especially about what I'm going to have to do to get ready for class in the future.

NAFTA is next. I like this one.

Quotes that matter

"That's George Washington. The interesting thing about him is that I read three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting?"

George W. Bush, to a German reporter looking at a picture of our first president.

The Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans, January 2007

To compare to the "uninhabitability" of the Lafitte projects in the previous post.






UPDATE:

According to this Yahoo! article, Mardi Gras this year is "Close to Normal." Fortunately, the parade routes do not cover this area of New Orleans, so revelers get to enjoy New Orleans resurrection absent the very real fact that the city is still very much hurt.

Lafitte Housing Projects, New Orleans

"The city's public housing agency plans to ask a judge to bar anyone from entering projects without permission and will file claims against some who are trying to averts the buildings' demolition." Full article here. I recommend reading it all, and then taking what the housing authority of New Orleans (HANO) says and comparing it to what you see. For additional information, you can click on this link, and view the documentary we all watched at orientation.
You see, these projects buildings are condemned due to flood damage from Hurricane Katrina, despite the fact that the received little water and felt little real damage.

The pictures below were taken by myself when I was in New Orleans a couple weeks ago.


You can see the water line for the high water mark on the projects right at the top step.

The "heavily damaged" projects, you can see the metal boarding the windows.


Boarded-up doors. So much damage.


Thanks to my wife for showing me how to do these picture things. Technology ain't my friend.

Preteen reading

When I was 8, I joined the cub scouts, and received a subscription to Boys' Life magazine. In the magazine were various comics. The one that caught my eye was The City of Gold and Lead, which happened to be a comic version of a book written by John Christopher.

The Boy got the City of Gold and Lead (the middle book) and the other two books of the trilogy (The White Mountains and The Pool of Fire) for Christmas this year. He's 8 now, and the same age I was when I started reading. The books are probably a little too difficult for him to understand yet, and he's not really shown an interest in reading them yet. I, on the other hand, read the White Mountains in a day a couple weeks ago, and have my eye set on re-reading the City of Gold and Lead here shortly (when I'm not reading for class).

These are rather good books written in the 1960s. Science Fiction in a manner that is very approachable for children. I highly recommend these books for anyone who has pre-teens or teenagers who have an interest in Science Fiction - good stories.

Most Children Left Behind

Texas Governor Rick Perry supports education. We know this because he is an advocate for vouchers. Recently he was quoted as saying, "I still think it's a sad day in Texas when you tell a kid who lives in an urban, inner city district because his parents are poor and don't have an alternative he's got to go to a mediocre school at best..."

I agree with him, I think it's a sad day as well. But that's where the agreement ends. You see, Gov. Perry made this statement in support of vouchers. I don't support vouchers. I think that government funds could be better spent than on a voucher program that only supports a small fraction of all those in the environment. Governor Perry apparently expects us to believe that all these students in the "mediocre school[s]" will be able to get the vouchers and thus qualify to go to the superior private schools. This of course, is fallacy. Private schools still have the choice of who to accept into their program, which means that they can deny access to those students who Rick Perry thinks it's a sad day to deny an alternative to. Additionally, the program only has so many vouchers. If there are 5000 students in a high school that is "mediocre at best," how many of them would get a voucher to go get a better education? Then do we tell the other students that they have to get their mediocre education because they were too slow off the blocks?

Additionally, what message does Governor Perry's statement send to the schools? He has now said that he has little to no faith in their ability to provide a quality education, which is going to work wonders on the teachers' motivation, I'm sure. While someone will invariably argue that the teachers are professionals and they need to act as though they had not been slighted, we know that criticism acts to harm production. Perhaps instead of pushing vouchers for a few students to help them achieve more, Perry should be pushing increased funding for better educational materials for the schools that already show a need for assistance.

Does moving schools equal receiving a higher education? What about the home environment, or the neighborhood? Don't those play a part in the education a child receives? Perhaps a solution would be neighborhood vouchers, or parenting vouchers - how would the community have reacted had Perry said "I think it's a sad day in Texas when you tell a kid who lives in an urban, inner city district that because his parents are poor and irresponsible you have to suffer a less effective education?" Perhaps there is a stronger argument for taking these children from their less effective households and putting them in middle class, mother stays at home, kid doesn't have to worry about watching siblings or ducking gangs en route to school and home and seeing the positive effect that plays on the child's education. Very few people would support that, and rightfully so. The better solution, it seems, would be to try to help the family cope better. And that should transfer over to the schools - help those that need the help by increased funding, not cutting funding and expecting more.

Random Trivia

The central Character in Cheers was Norm.

Second day of classes

I LOVE NATIONAL SECURITY LAW

This is the class I've been looking for all throughout law school.

Which means you get to be pestered by me displaying what we cover in class. Congratulations.