random

I came across these two separate articles that seem to be related. Both speak about space junk falling from the sky, but neither of them mentions the other. The link? Fark.com



Space junk falls on airliner

Space junk falls in Somalia



The Gods and the internet must be crazy!

Is School Over Yet?

It is getting harder and harder to stay motivated for school.  I can only imagine how ready I will be for law school to be over next year.  A colleague of mine just came by and said he felt like he was living Groundhog day and my girlfriend woke up this morning and said in half-consciousness but full earnestness: "isn't it Sunday?"



For those of you who read this and who go to school with me, stop by the Men's Law Caucus table and buy some baked goods for our bake sale.  We are also selling those cancer bracelet things to support research for testicular and prostate cancer.  One student already came up and said she has a friend who had testicular cancer and how goes by the nickname "one-nut." 



In other news, the prosecutor  scandal keeps going on.  I  had the opportunity to go have some beers with McKay last week under the auspice of discussing paper topics for his class.   We did not talk about the scandal at all and it  seems like he is ready for this whole thing to blow over; although people at the bar were buying us beers, so I didn't really complain.  We mostly talked about terrorism and whether or not it is a serious problem.  I did not think there was much debate about that and most of the public debate was on how to deal with terrorism, but it seems some people do not think terrorism is that big of an issue.  At a different event this weekend, I was accused of being Dick Cheney, because I said the issues of terrorism and the law will be important and changing for most of my legal career.  It has taken over four years for some of the prisoners at Guantanamo to get charged and sit before a commission.  Considering that fact, I do not know how anyone thinks these issues will go away anytime soon.  This is an important and changing area of law exactly because terrorism exists now as a particular form of violence against civilians which has grown in our fast moving media environment.  Never before could a band of armed rebels bomb a nation's soldiers thousands of miles away from home and have the news reach millions of citizens within hours.  Terrorism, as we know it, is only possible because the means of communication allow terror to spread. 

Spring Break

This has been the least spring break of spring breaks. I worked for four days last week and spent the fifth working on my appellate brief for legal writing. I did get away to the beach last weekend with my girlfriend. It rained most of the time, but we did get to walk on the beach and had a jacuzzi in our room. It is always nice to get away for a few days and give your life some perspective.



Since my last post, the prosecutor scandal has only grown. Professor McKay has promised to spend some time this week in class answering our questions, so I look forward to having the same opportunity as the senate had without needing subpoena power. Professor McKay seems to have changed his stance a bit since the first time he talked with us at the begining of the semester. At that time, he claimed that he wished to simply step down quietly and was not going to make a big stink. I heard him on the radio a few days ago talking about how he believes the wrongdoing necessitates an investigation from congress or an appointed federal prosecutor. I want to ask him if this change of tone came about because of what he has learned in the last months or because of the media attention he has received. Even though he held a relatively important position as a federal prosecutor, being in every newspaper in the country brings a whole other level of fame. Did the fame change his mind about the scale of wrongdoing?



The political atmosphere right now is highly charged and it seems like we are surrounded by scandals. Politics has always been contentious, but with modern communication, we now know about every power struggle that takes place in Washington. The Valerie Plame/ Scooter Libby/ Dick Cheney drama just keeps going on, and this federal prosecutor "scandal" seems to be gathering steam for no other reason than that there is a general sense that there must be something more to this.



I have said this before, but part of a legal education is an education about politics. In my own experience with small scale politics at school when we established the Men's Law Caucus, I have learned that it is possible to make something feel scandalous simply because you believe there must be something more to it. What is it that excites us about a scandal such that we almost want the scandal to explode, expand, and become even more controversial. Does it make us feel more important? Where we once might have brushed a conflict with another off, when put inside a political pressure cooker and when we get some attention for what we are doing, the conflict is all of a sudden escalated to a scandal. Then we are involved in something that feels all absorbing and and essential to our identity. I am not sure this is always a good thing. It is easy to loose track of reason when we are too tied up in a scandal. Is it really the case that a scandal reveals some hidden truth? Or is a scandal just the magnification of a human conflict because of focused attention by a lot of people who previously did not care one wit? In the law, the court tries to even the playing field of opponents such that even controversial cases are subject to the same legal principles. A scandal seems to me to be a controversy where the public no longer evaluates with reasoned principles.

Prosecutor to Professor

In our Constitutional Law and Terrorism professor's own words, he was subject today to the "seemingly unbridled powers of the legislative branch." As pictured above, our professor, otherwise known as former U.S. Federal Prosecutor for the Western District of Washington, John McKay was called to Washington today to appear before a Senate Judiciary sub-committee. The most interesting part of his testimony that I watched this morning on C-SPAN was his comment that he and his fellow prosecutors would have stepped down quietly if it had not been for the Senate making a big stink. He also stated that he did not think there was a Federal Prosecutor, currently serving or in the past who would give in to pressure of the executive or a Senator and sacrifice their prosecutor's independence. While I am not sure I can fully believe that statement, human nature what it is, but I certainly know it is true for him. We have had guest speaker after guest speaker in his class that have all described Mr. McKay as one of the most brilliant, innovative, and ethical U.S. Attorney's to ever serve. These compliments were not simply bestowed by other government employees but by the lead federal defense attorney for Washington who stood repeatedly on the opposite side of the courtroom from Mr. McKay. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to be one of his students and Seattle University is very lucky to have snatched him up for a professorship. I do not know what kind of deal they have, but the school should seriously consider making his position permanent.

Most Senate hearings are the same. Each Senator is given ten minutes. The first eight minutes they usually use to fill with their own thoughts in the form of a long winded question. Then the answer comes and in most cases, I am sure the answers have been mulled over long before the hearing. Remember that in situations such as the hearing today, you are looking at possibly four of the countries greatest criminal prosecutors. They are unlikely to fumble an answer. It is the same way with nominations to the federal bench or when Condoleeza Rice testifies.

One thing I have had further reinforced from following this story is that you should never get your information for the media. From what I have learned from McKay and from the assistant U.S. attorney that taught our class today is that McKay was fired for a political reason when he had a disagreement with a higher up in the department of justice. This in itself might be unfair and a loss for their office, but it is hardly unusual. He has a political appointment and people get fired all the time because they prove incompatible with a person higher up in the chain of authority. Now, on the other side of this issue is the change to the PATRIOT Act that allows the Executive to appoint temporary Federal Prosecutors indefinably, thus circumventing the Senate confirmation process. For this we really have the Congress to blame because they let this slip into the Act and are all upset now that the Executive is exercises the power that Congress gave it when the PATRIOT Act was amended. Yes, it sucks that the DOJ feels it necessary to get rid of their political enemies, but it is Congress that let them.

(I am going to be a little selfish here and say that this whole thing has worked out really well for me because McKay is now teaching. I also get the feeling that McKay is pretty happy with the teaching gig).

Read more about today's hearing.

Feeling Better

I am feeling much better today. I spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday in bed again and by mid day Friday my fever had broken. I don't have my full energy back, but I no longer feel sick. All this means that I have to face law school again. I was able to get some work done while horizontal, but I am not sure how much actually stuck.



Mostly I read the trial transcript for the appellate brief I have to write in Legal Writing, which was pretty entertaining. It seems like criminal defense attorneys are the only attorneys who are pretty much allowed to blatantly lie in the court. The defendants were charged with methamphetamine manufacturing. Neither took the stand, but during his closing argument, the attorney for one of the defendant's kept going on that there were many other plausible arguments for the chemicals that were found in his small trailer. For example, he was a pack-rat on a mission to clean up the world, which explains why he had a mason jar full of coffee filters testing positive for psudophedrine residue. Also, it is equally as believable that the chemicals found that are normally used in meth production could have been used for cleaning rocks-a legitimate purpose; and my client could be a rock collector! Did the attorney really think the jury was going to buy that argument. I am sure the defendant was sitting in the courtroom and I doubt he looked like your rock collecting type. (come to think of it, isn't rock collecting a thing pot smoking hippies do? That association wouldn't help him though) Those two "other possible stories," which were supposed to raise a reasonable doubt in the jury came along in a string of possible stories, which would only lead me to think as a juror: "this guy is just making this stuff up."



Can you tell I am writing from the State's perspective? The interesting thing about the case, the real case, is that I am pretty sure the guy was cooking meth, but after being convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the appeals court because of bad cops (improper search). This raises a question that we, as a nation and as lawyers, have been struggling with for a long time: why should we allow a criminal to get free just because the cops showed up at his place and entered inappropriately? On the other-hand, I like the idea of cops not being allowed to come into my apartment for no apparent reason. I guess in our constitutional balance we allow some guilty men walk so we don't innocent men are not charged and we can all be more secure in our person and possession.



Well, I better go start doing my research for this rather than just keep blabbing on. Happy weekend y'all.

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working sick or sick of work?

I am working from bed today. After two days of sleep, I tried going to class yesterday, and it took almost everything out of me. I haven't been sick like this in years. My girlfriend keeps telling me I just have to stay in bed if I want to have any chance of getting better soon, but I don't like just lying here watching advertisements for Binder and Binder, Social Security Disability Advocates. I did that kind of work last summer, and I know that the $600 a month one can get from Social Security Disability would not be enough to live on. Still, it is hard to get focused on school again. I just picked up the trial record for the appellate brief I have to write in legal writing and wonder if I am ever going to be able to do this work day in and day out.



I am at a difficult point in my studies. Thus far I have been carried along on the spirit of naive curiosity. I knew so little about the law when I first started. I don't think I knew the difference between a law and an ordinance, let alone what a summary judgment was. The whole thing was such a mystery to me that it was exciting. I felt like I was learning a whole new way to see the world that I had not previously explored. Let's just say, the honeymoon is over.



It is not that I now find the law boring. Rather, I find it overwhelmingly complex and difficult. There is so much detail that I have to learn that I feel I have lost touch with my initial excitement. I must be experiencing what those students who always wanted to be lawyers experienced during the first year of law school: this stuff is technical, often very dry, and requires an immense amount of work to be successful. It is no longer enough to just be curious. If I am going to learn this stuff, I am going to have to want to learn it. Unfortunately, I am not blessed with one of those brains that can simply learn information for the sake of accomplishing the task at hand. I am the type of person who has to feel that what I am doing has meaning.



Lying in bed with aches and a stuffy head really gets you thinking about why it is you are doing what you are doing. Would I rather be doing something else? No. I have tried other "careers," and I can tell you that you run up against the same wall. I am up against the wall that separates armatures from professionals, getting by from solid accomplishments. This is not just a legal challenge but a challenge in myself to commit to something and do it the best I can. Maybe getting sick will help me get over this hump. As Nietzsche said:

“Enduring habits I
hate... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my
misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect,
because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through
which I can escape from enduring habits.”

I feel like I have been going non-stop since this semester started. In fact, I feel like I have been going non-stop since law school started. So much so that I was not so much learning this semester but getting through. I feel like being out of the look sets me at a new starting point and maybe I will escape through the back door and begin to feel less overwhelmed by the mass of information I need to absorb.

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