untitled

a guy on the city bus today explained to me that it was unconstitutional that only verizon phones work in the metro. this is because, according to him, it violates his first amendment rights. he told me how the bombings in london illustrated his point: those people had a constitutional right to call their families in the emergency. he talked very loudly so the whole bus could hear, then told me how he is an intern at a conservative think tank.

i am not making this up. he did stop talking, however, when the person we both know (one of the students H supervises, who he was sitting with) told him i was in law school. i did not say a word, although i thought many words.

oh, he was wearing a bow tie too.

cornhole

the best game in the entire world is cornhole. you have not lived (or tailgated at a football game) until you have played it. once i live in an apt bigger than this one, i am going to order a special set with the IU logo on it, like my friend tim.

here is a reference for those whose lives have yet to be touched by the joys of this game: cornhole .

a list

here are some things that i do not like:

1. the gilmore girls. the dialogue is just too much.

2. kittens (or should i say, a kitten) with PTSD. long story short, there was smoke in the building and everyone had to evacuate and some kittens are more cooperative than others. little miss uncooperative had to be carried out by hand on a harness and leash and escaped from my grasp, ran into a boiler room, and basically freaked out from fear of the fire alarm. but the building did not burn down (overheated elevators caused smoke) and everything is fine. but someone is still jumpy. (that would be the uncooperative kitten, not me.)

3. another thing i do not like: milk. it is gross to me. the last time i drank milk, i was less than ten. this probably means i will probably get a hunchback when i am 60. but i do like cheese and ice cream.

4. mustard in its traditional condiment form. i do like it in its dried form on pretzels.

5. conflicts questionnaires. who knew i had done so much legal work?

6. that donatoes and penn station (east coast subs) aren't franchised in this area.

7. my sleeping schedule as of late: i stay up until between 2 and 3AM, then sleep until 11-12PM: staying up too late and sleeping in too late, a vicious cycle. it is going to suck in nine days when i have to get up at 4AM for my flight to miami.

besides those things, life is good.

ouch part two

atrios reported yesterday that there may have been alcohol involved in the dick cheney hunting accident situation.

negligence lawsuit, what? EDIT: this was posted the exact same minute i made this post.

also, i saw on some other blog that the white house said he was hit with "between six and 200" pellets. way to estimate, WH! i am somehow guessing it was a little more than six.

in other news, girlyman concert tonight! i am so excited.

ouch!

i want a t-shirt that says "dick cheney shot me on a hunting trip."

this is hilarious to me.

hungry!

here are my five favorite restaurants in the dc area:
1. the melting pot
2. kinkead's
3. oceanaire seafood room
4. vidalia
5. indebleu

honorable mention goes to todai in fairfax, because all you can eat sushi plus crepes and a huge dessert bar makes for an amazing dinner too. it is a chain, but it is a chain of deliciousness.

i think one of the most difficult parts of law school is often having to read cases where horrible, tragic things happen. the situation is made worse by the fact that no one talks about the necessary coping mechanisms-- i don't believe you'll find it on a PR syllabus (although correct me if i am wrong). in evidence, we talk about child molesters. in crim law, it was rape and abuse. now both con law II and family law discuss these two particularly horrible cases: one where social services failed to respond to repeated complaints until finally, a father beat his four year old son so badly that it caused brain damage. in the case i just read, a mother's three daughters disappeared while they were playing outside and she immediately called the police, suspecting it was her ex husband (whom she had a protective order against). they said they couldn't do anything until several hours passed. she kept calling and they kept pushing back the time. the husband called her and said where he had taken the daughters. the police still did nothing. finally, ten hours after she first called (and now 3AM), the husband showed up at the police station and opened fire. in the car, they found all three daughters, who had been murdered.

so unbelievably sad. and what makes it hard is that as a law student, you have to read these fact patterns and just keep going, searching for the holding and the legal analysis and all that must be anticipated for the socratic method which will occur in class. but for me, a part of me can't keep reading-- i can't focus on whether the 14th Amendment and her protective order gave the police the affirmative duty to respond, i want to grieve for this woman. i can't cut out the humanity. i wonder about my classmates: do most of them pause? or do they just keep speed reading? what is a good future lawyer supposed to do?

i think another part of this that bothers me is that often, these grieving parents don't get relief. normally i see the big picture of the just legal system and i am able to forgive the rough edges of the law. for example, i agree with the concept of a statute of limitations, even if that means that sometimes individual crimes aren't prosecuted even though they finally find the criminal. but i guess in my head i want to make an exception when children are victims, even though i know that is unreasonable and irrational. and at least that is what juries do-- smooth the rough edges of the law.

sometimes i even wish casebook editors could pick different cases-- my evidence textbook is full of child abuse cases, and i just don't see the point when so many less emotional cases could describe the same application of the Federal Rules of Evidence.

this was just something i didn't anticipate about law school-- leaving the building with a heavy heart after reading about something so sad. and most the time the cases barely feel real, but some cases are more detailed about the facts than others.

unusual

yesterday i stood by this guy in the metro whose head reached the silver bars that line the top of the train. VERY tall. in fact, he was ginormous. he had to duck to exit the train. the rest of us mere mortals looked like midgits in comparison.