Brand New Start

Just finished my first week at the small civil litigation firm that hired me recently, and so far so good. The managing attorney is a bit too free in dropping the f-bomb and other choice four letter words, but he's a pretty nice guy, as is the rest of the office staff. In terms of the work itself, I'm getting thrown into the deep end of the pool a little sooner than I like -- next week alone, I'm going to have to argue an ex-parte motion and might have to go to "trial" on a single issue in a workers comp case -- but the expectations on me aren't all that high, and it's a great learning opportunity.

Wussies

Word in the blogosphere is that the Fox network has caved in to CAIR's complaints about the portrayal of Muslims as terrorists in the show "24".(link via Michelle Malkin)

Thanks for Filing and Wasting Our Tax Dollars

For striking out on his latest stupid crusade against religion, Michael Newdow should be required to have a big "L" tattooed on his forehead.

Another Reason to Homeschool

Based on the reported conversation that occurred in the classroom, I'm wondering if there might not be some criminal charges involved.

According to Fried and students who attended the talk, Fried told one group of about 16 students that strippers can earn as much as $250,000 a year and that a larger bust -- whether natural or augmented -- has a direct relationship to a dancer's salary.

He told the students, "For every two inches up there, it's another $50,000," according to Jason Garcia, 14.

Representative Democracy is So Yesterday

Check out this recent quote from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer:

"U.S. law is not handed down from on high even at the U.S. Supreme Court," he said. "The law emerges from a conversation with judges, lawyers, professors and law students. ... It's what I call opening your eyes as to what's going on elsewhere."

And you thought having a constitution and voting for a so-called lawmaker actually meant something. (See more at Powerline).

Update: American University law professor Kenneth Anderson says the Breyer quote above was misreported by AP. It appears Breyer was speaking within the narrow context of interpreting legal texts that have already been established and informed by various democratically elected institutions. Nevertheless, the level of deference that Justice Breyer gives to international law in the interpretation of U.S. law -- as reflected in the last quoted sentence -- is something that Anderson has a bone of contention with.

Diplomatic Bunglehead

Other than out of anti-American sentiments, I just don't see why Cardinal Pio Laghi felt the need to publicly complain that President Bush broke some vague "promise" to him about fighting the Iraq war "quickly" and "favorably." Indeed, my suspician about Cardinal Laghi's actions being driven by sheer hostility toward the U.S. seems to be supported by comments he made back in March 2003 where, after meeting with the President, he stated that "military force [in Iraq] can only be taken within the framework of the United Nations." (news link via Drudge).

Good Call by the SCOTUS

In what could be interpreted as an affirming nod to federalism (i.e., states' rights), the Supreme Court declined to review a challenge to a Florida law that prohibits self-identified homosexuals from adopting children. Now if the Court would just extend the principles of federalism to things like sodomy and abortion.

The People Have Spoken

Caught the tail end of The People's Choice Awards last night -- I was watching the season premiere of 24, which IMHO, is the best show on television right now -- and was very happy to see that The Passion of the Christ won the award for best movie drama. It looks as though The Passion is going to be snubbed from Oscar consideration, but in view of the fact that the Hollywood elite is falling all over films about abortionists, Che Guevara and deranged sex researchers, this probably isn't a bad thing.

Eighth Grade Name Calling

Asked to point out an example in support of his charge that Justice Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment because he writes poorly written opinions, Democrat U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid brought up the case of Hillside Diary, Inc. v. Lyons. In Reid's view, Justice Thomas' opinion in this case resembles an "8th grade dissertaion compared to somebody who just graduated from Harvard."

After reading Thomas' part concurrance and dissent in Hillsdale Diary (which is little more than a paragraph), I share in the perplexity expressed by others over the charges levelled by Reid. In an age when Supreme Court decisions can be readily accessed by anybody at anytime, and the MSM no longer has a monopoly on reporting news, I'm amazed that someone like Harry Reid still seems to assume that nobody is going to check out the validity of what he is saying and expose any flaws. (Hat tip to PSB).

Update: In addition to refuting Reid, former clerk to Justice Thomas, John Yoo, writes an interesting piece here where he essentially argues that Thomas would lose influence on the Court if he were ever to be named Chief Justice.

Sadly Not Surprising

After three years of a legally recognized marriage, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his soon to be ex-wife are getting a divorce. The reason? The "demands" of being a bicoastal couple. With such a compelling reason for ending a marriage, I can now really see why Newsom thought it would be a good idea to give marriage licenses to homosexual couples.

Hitpiece

I noticed this article about Clarence Thomas in the L.A. Times yesterday, and just by reading the headline I knew it was a biased slamjob. Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute elaborates on just how much of a ridiculous hitpiece this is.

Happy New Year!

Or as we Chinese sometimes say, "Xin Nian Hao!"

Movin' On Down

As the new year approaches, I will be moving back down to So. Cal. where I've accepted a job with a relatively new and small law firm in Orange County. Hopefully, this job will work out a lot better than the last associate attorney position I held, and civil litigation won't be something that I hate so much.

Although I am sad to be leaving No. Cal., I do plan to make my way back up here in the next 2-3 years.

Just Watch. He'll Be Called an "Uncle Tom" Liberal

Set for publication this week in the Stanford Law Review is a controversial article written by UCLA law professor Richard Sander. In this article, Sander essentially concludes that affirmative action admission policies in our nation's law schools hurts minorities (e.g., blacks) more than it helps them.

As summarized by Terry Eastland at the Weekly Standard(article link via Powerline):

In the picture Sander draws, the admissions preferences for blacks are very large. This is the case with respect to almost all law schools. Which is to say, contrary to conventional wisdom, preferences aren't confined to the elite schools. Indeed, "affirmative action has a cascading effect through American legal education." The top-tier law schools enroll not only the small number of blacks who don't need preferences to get in but also less-qualified black applicants whose credentials would have sufficed to gain them admission under a race-blind standard to a second-tier school. Second-tier schools are then forced to choose between having few if any black students (under a race-blind standard) or using preferences to reach their racial goals. The second-tier schools make the latter choice, and so the effects cascade to the third-tier schools and on down the law-school ladder. There is thus a "system" in place whose net effect is "to move nearly all blacks up a tier (or two) in the law school hierarchy." Only at the bottom--in the lowest-tier schools--do you find black students who are probably unqualified for any law school.

The cascading effect leaves most black students "mismatched" with peers whose academic credentials (in terms of LSAT scores and UGPA) are superior. Which means, as Sander puts it, that "nearly all blacks [are placed] at an enormous academic disadvantage in the schools they attend." And so there are "mismatch effects." In their first year, about 50 percent of black law students end up in the bottom tenth of their class, and roughly two-thirds in the bottom fifth, with only 8 percent placing in the top half. The grades of black law school students go down a bit from the first to the third year. Black students have a much higher attrition rate than white students (19 percent compared with 8 percent). Sander finds that fact unsurprising, since students (of whatever race) with the very worst grades are those who are expelled or drop out. Finally, black law school graduates fail the bar exam at four times the rate of white graduates. Sander concludes that more than 40 percent of black students starting out to become lawyers never reach that goal.

Still Pining for a Gore Presidency

No doubt largely inspired by Barbara Boxer's most recent foray into the ridiculous, California's other left-wing U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, wants to "fix" the national electoral system by proposing a constitutional amendment that would abolish the electoral college. (news link via Hugh Hewitt).

Hi-ho Silver, Eh?

The Supreme Court of Canada has been asked to determine whether the word "kemosabe" (most famously used in The Lone Ranger TV show) is racist. I imagine the Vancouver Canucks hockey team will be looking on with much interest.

Yet One More Reason to Homeschool

How incredibly perceptive of the Plano Independent School District to figure out that when people wear red and green colors around the Christmas holiday, they are trying to proslytyze their Christian faith.

Judge Wears Ten Commandments on Robe

A nice idea, although I personally find it a bit aesthetically awkward (I would have put a discrete, but noticeable, "PX" symbol).

Another Example of How Barbara Boxer is a Freakin' Nut

Images of a raging magalomaniac arise, as the left wing senator from California not so subtly threatens to put the Federal government hammer on college football if the private consortium that oversees the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) doesn't adopt some kind of a playoff system (as it currently stands, the top Division I-A football teams are more or less determined by some mysterious mathmatical formula that, of course, takes into account wins and losses). And oh yeah, Boxer's son is a graduate of Cal, whose football team this year got numerically squeezed out of a BCS bowl game that would have netted the school several million dollars. Quite a coincidence, eh?

Doing God's Work

A woman who has dedicated her life to saving babies from infanticide wins $27 million in the California lottery.

All too often, the ring of Debi Faris-Cifelli's cell phone means there is another abandoned newborn at the morgue, another forsaken child for her to name and bury in a shoebox-size coffin under a white cross in the California desert.

"Maybe it's the children saying, 'Thank you' for taking care of them when nobody else would," Faris-Cifelli said, bubbling with laughter. "It's a gift and one for which we feel an awesome responsibility."

It's what they did next that sets the Cifellis apart.

"That's a lot of money to be responsible for. We want to be really good stewards of that money. We feel like it's a gift," said Debi.

"And the first thing we thought of was a scholarship fund," said Steve.