Good Intentions

Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, should watch this video on the Crisis of Credit. Part 1 and then Part 2 below it.

Irresponsible lending and business schools everywhere brought this country to its knees, financially. We reap what we sow.

EDIT: I now realize Jansen over at no. 634 had this up way before I did, so props to him.

It looks like Net Neutrality is under attack again, this time by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

For those of you who do not know, Net Neutrality is a concept among Internet aficionados describing the fact that the Internet essentially belongs to all of us, and should remain that way. The fear among supporters of Net Neutrality is that ISPs could, conceivably, throttle off bandwidth to certain websites and only allow traffic on that ISP’s connections to other ones.

Let’s say Amazon and Comcast sign an exclusivity agreement. So, that would mean that the packets traveling from your computer to Amazon would be at a priority. Doesn’t sound too bad. But let’s say you want to go find a book at Barnes and Noble instead. So you try to load the page and…nothing. Comcast has locked off websites competing with Amazon because of that agreement. Or, perhaps you try to get onto the Barnes and Noble site, and suddenly you see a page saying you have been charged X dollars for accessing Barnes and Noble.

These are the fears of Net Neutrality supporters, and rightly so. ISPs could also implement tiered plans, where for a basic fee you get basic access to some sites, with more sites opening up based upon the more you pay the ISP.

The Internet needs to remain free and open for all. It has really replaced the landed media as the Fourth Estate; it keeps politicians, businesses, even religions accountable. I expect China to do the censorship song and dance game, not our own politicians here in the good old US of A, protected by that First Amendment thingie.

Net Neutrality should be a huge interest to lawyers though, because the Internet is the Old West for the law right now. It’s only been recently that statutes have even mentioned the Internet, and it’s really my generation and younger who are most used to it; in fact, I believe my generation was the first to actually grow up using the Internet. We saw it formed from BBS systems and newsgroups to Google Groups, Facebook, and WordPress.

My fellow law students, we should become the staunchest of Net Neutrality defenders. The Internet is inexorably tied up in our futures, and I for one will not tolerate restrictions or censorship (outside of things that are criminal, of course), especially by entities which are solely driven by power and money in the guise of morality (politicians and ISPs).

So, there was some kind of election yesterday, and I guess some guy won. I mean, that’s cool and all.

Oh wait, it was historic, because he was black? Wow, go America!

I’ve been reading a lot of Republicans and conservatives bleat and moan about how this will be the end of America because of TEH SOCIALISMS. Irony is a foreigh concept to them, considering we just nationalized our investment banking industry. Hm.

Anyway, law school is hitting that evil yet sweet stretch where everything is starting to crash down on top of me. Let’s see if he can remain sane, shall we?

I surely hope so.

EDIT: Perhaps I should clarify my position in case any of the two people who read this blog wander by. In principle, I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Government should basically leave me alone, and take what it absolutely NEEDS and no more in taxes to fund things: roads, police, some government programs, etc. My main problem with Republicans is that they want to more or less tell me how to live: who I can marry, what to do with my body, etc. I’m not fine with that. They also like to erode civil liberties in the name of SECURITY and PATRIOTISM, and there are strange intolerant undertones that run through certain sections (read: Religious Right).

Democrats annoy me less, because they are less about telling me what to do. They want to take more of my money, and I can actually accept that, because at heart I am a Hamiltonian Federalist and I believe in a strong federal government. Sorry. The states have shown they like to screw things up (see: Civil War, desegregation). But other than the tax issues, Democrats aren’t going to tell me what to do with my life. They’re going to leave me alone, and help out minorities and the poor. That’s neat. Go for it.

What I’d REALLY love is for this election to break apart the Republican party into: Social Conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives. And then the FCs can join the Libertarian party and make it legitimate and a true third party, and I will vote Libertarian in a heartbeat. Right now, though, the Libertarian party is run by crazy people who do not believe in government AT ALL, and those people need to be shouted down by a rational majority.

As far as this election goes: I liked John McCain circa 2000. He was a true maverick (sorry) back then, as his policies really broke with the mainstream Republicans, and he was a huge proponent of honest and transparent government. 2008 McCain went 180 degrees in the other direction to pander to the fringe right, who have fucked up the country anyway for the past 8 years. Bush, by the way, was an abject failure, both at home and abroad. It’s hard to see that any other way; I’d love to hear real, rational, fact-checked arguments to the contrary. Obama, while I am not happy with all of his policies, and also realizing that everything he promised will basically never happen, appealed to me more than McCain, including his tax plan, his Constitutional Law professor background, his rhetorical skills, and the fact that the Democrats annoy me much less than the Republicans. That’s it. Obama is not my Messiah, he’s not Jesus, he’s not my savior, he is just a different direction for the country.

And seriously. We will all be fine in four years, for good or ill. If Obama manages to fuck up the country MORE than Bush, I will eat my hat.*

*Exaggeration

That was Ben Franklin, some 300 years ago, give or take some change. Still pretty apt today. The man was wise, verily.

I’m putting a moratorium on any political posts on my blog at least until after Election Day, possibly until after Inauguration Day. I seriously can’t handle the misinformation, the misrepresentation, the whining, the shit-talking, the lies, damn lies, and statistics, and just the general idiocy and inanity of both sides.

I think law school has made me more prone to considering both sides of something, and I can see the merit in the general arguments from both sides. You can only get to that nougaty center when you drill down past all the bullshit rhetoric and generalized asshattery/dicketry of the supporters. And I’m seriously tired of it. Stop putting up tweets about it, stop putting up facebook statuses about it, just stop! Please. We don’t care for whom you’re voting, or why. We just don’t. Just go vote and shut up.

Everything about this election has been divisive and severing. There needs to be bipartisan commitment to fixing things, not petty squabbling among factions. This annoys me to no end.

Phew. I feel better now, in some small way.

That’s what Prof. CivPro said after he ominously intoned my name during class today. And I was kinda shocked, because he did, indeed, pronounce that correctly.

Anyway, it wasn’t too too bad. He switched midstream from interrogating someone else, so that threw me off some. And, of course, I answered “I don’t know” a good number of times, but I feel it was justified, because I legitimately didn’t know. I mixed it up a few times with an “I’m not sure,” which is also legitimate, because I was not.

What irked me a little is when I tried to quote the Supreme Court from the decision, and he cut me off, saying he did not want me to quote the court, he wanted “an argument.” Well, sir, my argument is what the Supreme Court argued, so I would be remiss if I didn’t quote them.

And then, of course, not 5 minutes later, someone said EXACTLY what the court said–and by extension what I was trying to say–and he told that person they were right. Bah.

I understand why professors feel the need to cut us lowly students off: power, ego, trying to control the conversation, sake of brevity. But at the same time, AT LEAST let me get my answer to your question out before you interrupt or shoot me down! I’m not as dumb as I look–and that’s pretty dumb, sure. But I’m really not! I had an answer, you just cut me off too soon. Sigh.

Torts is canceled today, hence why I’m blogging and not in class. Waiting for LRW. Want to go home. So tired.

Final debate is tonight. Let’s see whose minds are changed after it.

My prediction? Nobody’s.

The debate was pretty boring. All the polls seem to indicate that Obama was the more successful of the two candidates, and I’m somewhat inclined to agree. He certainly annoyed me less.

“My friends…”

Shut up! I’m not your friend, pal!

Anyway, Harvard and Stanford are considering going to a modified pass/fail for their law schools, which means essentially a doing-away with grades.

Above the Law provides me with this video, though.

That was crazy. I hope all law schools switch, and we can all do stuff like that.

Tom Brokaw is THE MAN. He just pimpslapped both McCain and Obama for going over the minute time limit for the “Discussion” part of the debate.

Tom Brokaw is the f-ing man.

The second debate is tonight. I’m watching as we speak, actually. Maybe if I’m not too tired I’ll post my thoughts when it’s done.

In the meanwhile, I’ve noticed that my blog sucks much more than the links off to your right. I’m trying my best here, really, but I’m an exhausted old man.*

*Matter of opinion.

Tonight’s the Veep debate. Biden v. Palin, what a treat. This will, needless to say, be interesting. I’ll conjure up some thoughts after the debate, or you can catch me on Twitter (sarcascio).

Earlier this afternoon I went to a Federalist Society meeting. Now, for those of you who don’t know, FedSoc is the conservative/libertarian group who believe in a strict construction of the Constitution–meaning that what’s there is there and nothing should be read into it–and believe judges shouldn’t “legislate from the bench.”

That latter phrase is especially meaningless, because that’s essentially what the common law is. Court gets a case, there’s no statute controlling the issue, the judges make shit up based on vague legal authority and even more vague legal scholarship. Boom. Common law, until it gets overruled or reversed. Judges read into legislation all the live long day to find out what intent a given legislature has imbued into it. In fact, there’s a whole section of my Torts class where we talked about how judges were reading into criminal statutes what intent the legislatures had to see if they (the judges) could import that criminal statute into tort law.

Right from out of their asses, it came.

So anyway, I think “judicial activism” is a silly phrase, when basically the judiciary is always activist in some form or another to some group or another.

Anyway, the speaker was this fellow, Roger Pilon, who was an interesting speaker, to say the least. He definitely butted heads with some of the folks in the room, including this guy, Professor Sasha Volokh, who, along with his brother, run The Volokh Conspiracy. Needless to say, all of these people are really big deals in the legal world: Pilon is with the Cato Institute and has an impressive CV, and the Volokhs are equally impressive.

Pilon mainly talked about the 14th Amendment and how it essentially ruined America for all the libertarians out there. He wants to return to a very strict interpretation of the Constitution, one exactly and totally in line with how the Founders wrote it. He fully believes this is a tenable position to hold. I am not so sure.

I did agree with some of what he was saying: the government should only step in when the rights of a person or group are being trampled on by some other person or group. That is perfectly fine. However, Pilon paints the government as a villain in all that it does, not a necessary evil but an unnecessary evil. He also made some incediary remarks about how we are not all equal and that there is no equality of opportunity, only “equality under the law.” This is, of course, open for debate.

Anyway, this gentleman, Professor Peter Linzer, gave a rebuttal to what Pilon was saying and agreed with him on many things but also disagreed with him. He mainly diverged from Pilon regarding government intervention into the markets, citing the current crisis as evidence that a lack of government intervention is what caused this in the first place. Pilon countered with a vaguely “But Clinton!” statement, claiming that the Clinton administration wanted to broaden Fannie and Freddie’s ability to give subprime loans to people who apparently could not pay them back. Now, your humble author doesn’t know all the nuances of the crisis, so I will hold my judgment on this.

All in all, it was a very good lecture. Most people left around 1pm because they had class, but I stayed for about 45 more minutes to hear students (and Professor Volokh) try to argue against Pilon, who had a coherent response for every question.

I think this is why I came to law school, this fascinating exchange of ideas. It’s too bad you don’t really get that during class…

I found this pic on Fark.com, specifically here.

How nerdy. Also, clown car!