Today's random thought

It is almost always a mistake to presume that Congress will display either consistency or common sense when drafting legislation.

Color me clueless

As a law student, one of the first things you get used to is having random people, most often family ask you questions about the law, the justice system, and really anything that they think lawyers would know about. For the most part, the questions revolve around issues of family law, trust law, or property law, with a smattering of procedural and court etiquette questions thrown in for spice. I don't mind the questions. I'm not equipped to answer any of them, since I'm not a member of the Bar yet, and in any case, most deal with issues of state law which I haven't made a specific study of. Still, it's sweet to be asked, since it indicates that the person at least thinks you're somewhat knowledgeable. Every so often, however, someone will toss something your way that just makes you shake your head in bewilderment. Today, for example, a friend asked me what was going on in the this picture of Justice Alito and Justice Ginsberg. I had to admit that I didn't have the foggiest, but now my curiosity is piqued.

Every so often, someone says something really telling . . .

Demographic data generally demonstrates that the more education a person has, the more likely that person is to be politically liberal.

Common wisdom generally holds that liberals are latté-drinking snobs who haven't a clue how the average man or woman lives.

One of the interesting things about law school is the manner in which it can sometimes demonstrate all too well the potential validity of the common wisdom.

Now, law schools are, admittedly, less liberal than most graduate programs (with the clear exception of Business schools), but there is still a strong stripe of liberalism present in the majority, and even in a relatively conservative school like my own, the liberalism runs deeper than it does in the general population.

In any case, a law school definitely holds more than its share of the latté-drinking elite (whether they be liberal or conservative), so it provides a good laboratory in which to make observations of what the upper class perceives where working class folks are concerned. Most amusingly, for me, many of these observations spring out of comments that demonstrate completely unconscious classism, bias that would be vehemently denied if it were pointed out to the person, but which reveals its presence in some of the most off-hand comments.

This morning, in Land Use Control, for example, we were discussing a case involving a village ordinance had disallowing the erection of mobile homes on individual parcels and limiting them to mobile home parks. The issue in the case dealt with nonconforming uses under that ordinance and amortization periods, but before getting to the issue, the professor opened the discussion to the question of why a village would enact such an ordinance.

One of my classmates piped up with what I thought was a very telling comment, given the general demographic trends embodied by mobile home residents. He said the reason was "to put all of the nuisances in one place."

Ironically enough, I'm pretty sure the gentleman was a conservative, which goes to show that conservatives are just as capable of elitist snobbery as liberals.

Nonetheless, I thought it was an intriguing and illustrative indicator of what the upper classes think of the lower.

G.O.P. = God's Own Party?

At least, that seems to be the message of late.

In the last twenty years, I've watched the Grand Old Party transform itself from a group of fiscal conservatives with strong positions on national defense to a group of radical, evangelical, free-market nuts (for lack of a better term).

To be honest, I'm not particularly comfortable with either the transformation or the necessity of distancing myself from all things Republican. Granted, I am a Democrat, a lifelong yellow dawg with a broad, deep stripe of social liberalism. I am also something of a fiscal conservative.

I like programs that give people tools instead of simple handouts. I appreciate and support programs that use the taxpayer funds they are granted with efficiency and responsibility.

I hate deficits . . . gods, do I hate deficits.

I despise pork with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.

On more than one occasion over the last twenty years, moderate Republicans have tried to talk me into switching party allegiance. At times, it's been tempting. But not in recent years.

This sort of nonsense is why. As a feminist, as a supporter of gay rights, and as a member of a minority religion, I cannot support a party that hangs its hat on this sort of framework.

To be perfectly honest, this sort of ideological fervor does far more than repel me. It does more than guarantee that I will not support Republican candidates for the foreseeable future.

Frankly, seeing this kind of evangelism in political life, seeing this sort of blurring between the private and the public, seeing religion so infusing partisan politics, well, it scares the crap out of me and makes me fear for the future of this republic I hold so dear.

Yeah, but what's the law?

Law professors, as a rule, are enamored of theory. In this much, the description of a first year Torts class contained in One-L is right on the money. Rather than looking at what the law is, professors frequently spend time in discussions of first principles, tossing out endless hypotheticals as they try to figure out what the law ought to be.

This is how you end up with a discussion of Pareto optimality in a Takings Clause class.

Such an approach is, in its way, understandable. After all, law professors are generally the scholars of the legal community. Trying to suss out what the law should be and trying to come up with some sort of philosophical and logical framework into which the law can effectively be placed is part of their job.

Also, discussions of this sort are the natural upshot of law schools' original reliance on the Socratic method in their educational efforts. And having theoretical discussions in classes isn't entirely without value. These talks do, in some cases, help people to learn to think about the law and how to analyze the law.

That being given, there are moments when you can't help thinking "just give me the black letter, damnit."

Imbolc and Law School: the Realities of Time and Hoping the Gods Will Understand

Today is Imbolc, the celebration of lambing time, when ewes come into their milk and the young are born. The first real breath of spring for a land locked in cold and rain. It is also the feast day of Brigid: daughter of the Dagda and the three-form goddess of smithcraft, poetry and healing.

So, what is this Celtic Pagan doing to celebrate the day?

Lighting a candle and saying a brief prayer before going back to her homework. I should be engaged in a full ritual and day of feasting (to repeat a maxim: "We're Celts, we feast."), but there is simply no way to do that and still fulfill my obligations as a mother and a law student. Accepting this is particularly difficult for me as Celtic Paganism is a faith not of orthodoxy (right belief), but of orthopraxy (right action). The failure to properly honor the gods weight heavily on my mind, especially in this case as Brigid is and always has been my patroness.

I can only hope that, since I am doing the work she called me to, that she will understand and accept my devotion to the work as a form of worship.

Is it too much to ask that the media do their damn jobs?

Fair warning, I am in a bit of a snit, so this isn't going to be the most eloquently phrased post ever, but here goes.

I have to wonder sometimes if I'm just asking too much, wanting too much, expecting too much when I think the media needs to actually engage in investigative and analytical journalism.

The State of the Union has been "must watch" fare for me since I was a kid. In part, this stems from the fact that I grew up with Ronnie Ray-Guy who, for all his faults, was a spectacularly good public speaker. Primarily, however, I would sit down and watch to figure out where the President of the day wanted the country to go and to get an idea of what the impact of his proposed policies would be.

You see, when I was a kid (and my Mom can back me up on this, so it isn't me just being nostalgic for my youth), major policy pronouncements were generally followed by some sort of analytical reportage. Journalists, often having been given an advance peek of what would be in the pronouncement, would take the time to look into the programs being proposed, and they would at least try to figure out if they had a snowball's chance of working. If they didn't have enough information to draw any sort of conclusion from, they would at least take the time to ask hard questions, to point out where the proposal was long on rhetoric and short on functional detail, and to try to frame the issues in a fashion calculated to make them readily digestible (i.e., translating bureaucratese and purple prose into every day English).

It's been a long time since anything like that happened.

Last night, I made a deliberate choice not to watch the State of the Union, largely because it's become less about announcing substantive policy and more about the continuous campaign season that our political system seems to have devolved into. I did, however, turn the television as the speech wound down, largely so I could see the Democratic response; it was being given by Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia, and (as a Virginia resident and voter) I was curious about what he would say.

So, I caught the end of the speech, and ended up having to watch the post-speech instapunditry, much to my chagrin. All of the commentary was focused on how this would play with the electorate, on whether it would redeem the President's image in the eyes of the people, on how it would "play in Peoria." Was it a good speech? That was the question. No one bothered asking whether any of the policy proposals were worth a damn. Nobody even talked about the substance.

In other words, none of the reporters were doing their fucking job.

Which made me want to grab Bob Schiefer by the shoulders and shake him until he remembered the the privileged position of the press isn't there because they're oh so cool. It's there so they can carry out their responsibilities in our constitutional order. Someone needs to remind them of that.