Sleeping comfortably on the souls of exploited children

So the family has gathered at my brother's place in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. It's a lovely condo in scenic (smack between the Interstate and the airport) Greensboro. I'm also told there is a Navy test field somewhere nearby.

So as I was settling in to sleep last night on the futon in my brother's room (mom and dad having already occupied the spare room and the couch being ever so slightly too short), I comment on how very very comfortable the pillows were, and asked him where he got them. By way of reply, he simply told me that his company (for those of you who are unaware, my brother works here) gave him a $25 gift card for thanksgiving.

I was suddenly overcome with a horrible suspicion, and demanded to know where the pillows had come from.

"Wal-Mart" he said mischievously, knowing my aversion to that particular den of evil.

I would have thought the screams of countless exploited children would have kept me up, but turns out they are remarkably soothing.

New favorite word

dil·a·to·ry  (ˈdi-lə-ˌtȯr-ē)

adj.

1. Intended to delay.

2. Tending to postpone or delay: dilatory in his work habits.

This is why I love being a lawyer, we have a word for everything.  

Oh right

Yeah, and I totally kicked the crap out of the Maryland Bar exam.

You may now refer to me as Erik Snyder, Esq.

Fear me.

Things you never want the Court to say to opposing counsel

So as some of you no doubt know, I'm working on this case against a certain reporter who printed some totally untrue things about our client that subsequently ruined his career.  The reporter most likely did so (knowingly or not) at the behest of one or more highly-placed government agent(s) who, lacking any legal means of retaliating against our client, decided to smear him in the press and then escape liability by hiding behind their "confidential source" status.

Anyway, we've been litigating this for a while and, after more than a year's worth of delaying tactics, the now very annoyed judge made the following comment in an order denying the reporter's most recent attempt to avoid giving up his source:

"The court is aware of other factors which might later be considered if the court were presented with a motion for sanctions or contempt. Specifically... [list of things the reporter did wrong].  If these apparent circumstances were to be later borne out as fact, and perhaps joined by others of a similar vein in a battle over fees and costs, they could be interpreted as a strategy of dissembling and “sandbagging” which, as such, would not bode well for Respondent and/or his attorney."

Word to the wise.  When you've annoyed a judge so much that he actually invites the opposing party to file a motion for contempt and sanctions, and then actually lists specific things that he "might consider" in such a motion... yeah, you've screwed up big time.

YES WE DID!

I'm still exhausted from yesterday.  The day started at 1:00am with a trip down to southeastern VA to do poll watching, then standing in the rain for 13 hours watching said poll, then driving back TO THE BIGGEST SPONTANEOUS PARTY I'VE EVER SEEN.  There were gobs of people all over town singing and cheering and dancing and celebrating in the streets.  Completely amazing.  I'll post more later, but for now I'll leave you with this:

I need help

So I was in a fender-bender on the way to work this morning. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the lady in the Beamer who turned left into my lane and t-boned my driver's side door had the fender-bender... I had a driver's side door bender.

So anyway, as I'm walking over to exchange insurance information with her, I notice that she's got a Virginia license plate. So what do I do? Do I get all angry and yell at her for running into me?

Nope.

I introduced myself as an Obama organizer, asked her if she's registered to vote and if she's had a chance to get out to the polls to vote early for Obama.

She promised she would.

What do you call 200 washington lawyers sitting in a room?

I call it approximately 1/20th of the poll monitors that Obama will have working for him in Virginia on election day.

That's right, we've signed up 4000 lawyers to make sure there are no shenanigans on election day in Virginia.  That's enough to put two attorneys at just about every single polling location in the entire state.  In fact, we've signed up enough local lawyers to actually have one inside each polling station to make sure everything runs smoothly.  And that's not even counting the other Obama volunteers who will be helping out by shuttling people to and from the polls, reminding people to bring ID (though one of my jobs is assisting people who forget by explaining they can vote without it), giving people estimated wait times, and anything else to make sure things go as efficiently as possible.  Heck, we've even got people tasked with bringing extra sweatshirts and jackets so that people who show up wearing campaign paraphernelia (from either campaign) can vote without stripping (VA law says no campaign stuff in the polls).  We are leaving nothing to chance.  

And again, this is happening everywhere.  The scale of what he's put together is nothing short of astounding.  It gives me chills just thinking about it.  Every single voter in every single polling location in every single swing state in the whole freakin country is going to cast their ballot under the watchful eyes of Obama volunteers.  

The Republicans are NOT going to steal this one.

IT'S ALIVE!

Bless me father for I have sinned.  It has been over two years since my last post.  I have neglected my readers for far too long, but I am repentant and I shall mend my slothful ways and provide cheap entertainment to the masses once again. 

Yes, that's right, I am a fiery Phoenix rising from the ashes, breathing new life into my blog and...  

OH GOD I'M ON FIRE!  PUT ME OUT!  PUT ME OUT!  I SWEAR I'LL NEVER USE A TRITE PHOENIX METAPHOR AGAIN!

AAAAAA!

...

Right, so now that I've got that out of my system, down to business.  I've been encouraged to start posting on this blog thing again and, now that I'm officially graduated and no longer spending all of my free time studying and working and stuff, I suppose I actually sort of have time to do this.

That, and now that several of my friends have moved away, I have fewer people to bitch at, so feel the need to spread the love.  :-)

Anyway, to briefly summarize my life since my last post:

1.  I graduated law school, with honors even.
2.  I now work for that really cool firm where I interned during my first summer.
3.  I've taken the Maryland bar, but do not yet have my results.
4.  I'm a volunteer coordinator for Obama's campaign in Manassas, VA.

So there are probably a million and a half things for me to talk about (this is me after all), but what occupies most of my attention these days is the election.  It's 8 days away AND WE ARE GOING TO CRUSH MCCAIN!

No really, we're talking landslide, uncontestable mandate, broad-spectrum discrediting of republican ideology, and the initiation of a new order that shall forever change the face of America!  GOBAMA!  *commence speaking in tongues*

But seriously.  I've been volunteering for about two months now and Obama's ground campaign is nothing short of incredible.  In Manassas alone, we're getting more than 200 volunteers and having face-to-face contact with over 3000 registered voters per weekend.  There's only about 40,000 people in Manassas, and maybe 22,000 registered voters.  Figure that 60% of them are either ours or undecided and we're talking about reaching close to 25% of our potential voters each weekend.  

Think about it, just one field office can attract and coordinate 200+ volunteers and reach out to 3000 voters, and Obama has 50 field offices in Virginia alone, and many are getting more volunteers than us.  Conservatively, we figure we're reaching over 200,000 voters every weekend, and even more during the week. And the same thing is happening EVERYWHERE.  In every population center, in every swing state in the whole damn country.  That's tens, if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers, friends and neighbors reaching out to their communities and convincing those around them to get to the polls and vote for Obama.  This is the great unsung story of this campaign, and this is why McCain never stood a chance.

Because he's got nothing.  I don't know what happened to the field organization that propelled Bush to a second term, but McCain's ground campaign is virtually nonexistent.  I make a point of driving past the McCain office every weekend, usually more than once, and I have yet to see more than three people in it.  The good people over at www.fivethirtyeight.com have been going from city to city for weeks and report that the same is true wherever they go.  Obama offices overflowing with volunteers and McCain offices empty or closed. 

Ok, you get the idea.  I'm excited and am convinced that we're going to win and we're going to win big.

Yes we can.  

Yes we will.

And so it ends

Yeah yeah, like with most projects, this blog thing has fallen by the wayside. Rather than string the 5 or 6 of you who actually read this blog along any more, I think I will just end the suspense and declare this little endeavor officially closed. Maybe I'll start it up again later, but probably not for a long while. For now, you will have to content yourselves with contacting me via AIM, googletalk, email, and those other, more personal, conversation methods.

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read.

~Erik

The FBI is creepy

Yeah, so for everyone's reference, whenever I promise to fill you in on something later, you can almost certainly rest assured that I will do no such thing.

So this week I've been working on a case against the FBI. I just spent most of the week reading several hundred pages of sword testimony (ok, I meant to type "sworn testimony", but I tried to correct it twice and somehow the typo remains, so I guess I'll leave it and assume my subconscious is trying to tell me something...) by high-ranking FBI Special Agents, Supervising Special Agents, Supervising Agents in Charge, and other overly-acronymed people and have come to some rather troubling conclusions.

The evidence seems to show that the FBI is an almost completely unified group who zealously retaliate against anyone or anything that threatens to expose or even acknowledge that the slightest wrongdoing has occurred. Everyone even remotely associated with the FBI seems to unconditionally support whatever "official" position on any matter that the FBI puts forth, including covering up gross misconduct or negligence, in order to preserve the FBI's all-importat "image."

I have come up with a few possible explanations for this phenomenon (any of which might wind up getting argued in Court).

The first is that the FBI is almost entirely composed of very excitable people who rigidly adhere to a set of unwritten rules that can basically be boiled down to "don't do anything that might make the FBI look bad" and "if you or someone you know does do something that could make us look bad, for pity's sake don't tell anyone."

Another possiblity is that each Agent is fitted with a mind-control device, though this scenario would not be objectively distinguishable from the first one.

Finally, (and perhaps most likely) is that the FBI induces atmosphere of absolute obedience because it either replaces all of its human staff with android-duplicates and is run by a cadre of shape-shifting aliens bent on inefficiently fighting crime.

Wee.

Congress is insufficiently air conditioned

So I spent most of yesterday sitting in the Rayburn Congressional office building listening to the partner that I'm working for this summer lecture the 10 members of the House Committee on Government Reform who showed up to hear him talk. It was a pretty impressive display, one that left the poor sap from the Cato Institute (who had the misfortune to be on the same panel as my boss) looking pretty stupid.

The topic was the recent Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which frankly was poorly thought out and generally foolish, which is not something that one can often get away with saying about the Supreme Court. It is not uncommon to disagree with the Supreme Court, since that is mostly a question of one well-reasoned interpretation of the law beating out another well-reasoned interpretation. It is something entirely different to accuse the Court of not thinking things through and basing their opinion on flawed legal reasoning.

Hrm, I will explain this in some depth a little later. For now, just smile and nod and be happy that I am enjoying my job. :-)

Something new

Ok, so very quickly:
I'm working here this summer and it is a fantastic job. I'm doing real lawyer work and working on the side of truth, justice, and stickin it to the man... which at present means writing vaugely threatening letters to very powerful people and then (because they don't take the hint) writing motions for the Court to show them just how much these very powerful people and their minions are in fact subject to the same rules as everyone else.

Oh, and the senior partner that I am working for thinks my writing is "excellent." Screw you Legal Rhetoric! (that's our research and writing class).

Other than that, I'm taking a class in criminal procedure (if a cop ever asks to search you or your home, remember that you can always say NO... though it's not always the best idea to piss off a cop; oh and never throw away evidence of a crime and then leave the garbage bag on the curb, the police can search that without a warrant) and doing my best to relax.

Yes, I have gotten my grades. No, we are not going to talk about them.

----

Ye gods, I've completely lost track of where I am on my journey to Rivendell. Last thing I knew I was 255 miles along and somewhere in the thickets on the south side of the Great East Road. Where am I now? Who knows? There's nothing but wilderness for 100 miles!

Hrm, well I can say with certainty that I've walked at least a mile every day since starting work, and I went and did some actual hiking through the wilderness (complete with 30+ pound pack, walking stick, and sprained ankle) two weekends back that was about 6 miles (maybe I should count that double since my roleplaying was so good... wait, nevermind, forget I said anything) so we're gonna call it 25 miles, curse a few times, and start trudging again. Yay, 280 miles.

I outline, therefore I am

Ok, so classes are over, all my papers are turned in (you'll note that I said "turned in" as opposed to "finished" which is not to say that I turned in papers that were incomplete, but let's just say the editing process was not as thorough as I would have liked), but I feel like I've forgotten something...

Oh right, EXAMS.

That's right folks, we're in the home stretch here. My first year of law school is almost over; all that stands between me and a glorious summer of indentured servitude (err, I mean a glorious summer of unpaid interning) are the rest of my exams. This whole exam extravaganza actually started yesterday when I took the first and shortest of my five exams, which involved two hours and fifteen minutes of... well, writing madly about Civil Procedure. The four I have remaining are Property Law (4 hour test), Criminal Law (3 hour test), Constitutional Law (somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of tests), and Drink Until I Forget Everything I've Learned About Law (stamina test)... none of which should be quite as bad as the first.

Anyway, like so many of my previous posts, this one is being written as yet another way to avoid doing what I SHOULD be doing, which at the moment is studying for my property exam (which begins in just under 32 hours). Right, so I thought I would take a moment to comment on the most common way that we law students prepare for our exams: we OUTLINE *evocative onomatopoeia*. We take an entire semester's worth of cases and notes (which for property is about 80 single-spaced pages, but I'm kind of a light note-taker) and condense them down into something more useful and accessible... or at least shorter. The theory here is that the process of going over each subject and case, figuring out which bits are most important, coherantly condensing those bits, and retyping it into a new document will refamiliarize you with the information. Funny thing is that it actually works.

Of course, there is a great deal of variety in how people outline *evocative onomatopoeia*. There are those who write them throughout the semester, setting aside time each week and slowly building a beautiful and elegant summary of each subject while it is still fresh in their minds and then further condensing and refining their understanding until what remains is no longer a mere summary but rather a synergistic work of art between creator and creation; a harmonious blend of mnemonic cues and graceful, color-coded and earmarked organization. Then there are those who spend the whole semester cradled in sloth's gentle embrace; skimming through the material, writing half-assed briefs and taking half-assed notes that are just detailed enough to allow them to give a moderately intelligent answer if called upon by the professor, who then frantically piece together chickenscratched margin notes with the half-finished sentences in their class notes in a vain attempt to figure out exactly what the hell they were supposed to have learned over the past four months. For 50 points, who can guess which category I fall into? [*Answer below]

Anyway, I should probably get back to it. There should be more posts once I get out of school. Really.

But before I do, there is one other thing that I should probably mention. Some of you already know this, but for those of you who don't: I officially have a girlfriend. We've only been seeing each other for about a month, so a truely objective long-term projection is not yet possible (why yes, I have spent the whole day reading legalese, why do you ask?), but it has been an extremely nice month and I think I can reasonably say that the signs are very good. I'm not going to say too much in this oh so public forum (not that there are more than 20 of you out there who read this thing), but let's just say that she at least seems completely sane (dating me notwithstanding), that we have a terrifying amount in common, spend a lot of time laughing, and really get on quite well together. I always look forward to spending time with her and the whole thing just feels... well... comfortable. And I mean the "mmm, this feels nice and I'm completely at ease being myself" sort of comfortable as opposed to the boring "maintain the status quo" variety.

Oh, and last but not least, here's the latest installment of "how far behind is Erik now?" Well, I've managed to flee from a bunch of really pissy Nazgul, have crossed the Great East Road, and am wandering through the thickets on the south side. I've come 255 miles since I started keeping track back in January, which means that I just might make it to Rivendell before the end of the summer.

[*Answer from above: actually I fall somewhere in between. I read pretty thoroughly and take pretty good notes, but I don't so much as think about outlining before the second to last week of class.]

Four out of five ain't bad

So I got all the classes that I wanted, but did not get the professor I wanted for criminal procedure. So I suppose it is more like 4.5/5. So next year I'll be taking:

- Adv. Constitutional Law Teaching Fellowship (3 credits) - (see the Marshall-Brennan program described below)
- National Security Law in the Age of Terrorism (3 credits) - Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, enemy combatants, etc.
- Criminal Procedure (3 credits)
- Lobbying/Legislative Process (2 credits)
- Legal History (3 credits)
= 14 credits

The "standard load" here is 14 credits. We are required to take at least 12, but cannot take more than 16 without special permission. I was actually really torn between IP law (the substantive class that will make me $$, but is offered every semester) and National Security Law in the Age of Terrorism (which may never be offered again, but has little practical value).

Yeah, no contest. ;-)

Oh, and I'm now almost to Weathertop. I've come 232 miles since I started keeping track back in January, averaging about 2.4 miles/day. Not what I had planned, but not bad. All I have to do is walk about 9 miles/day every day for the rest of the semester and I'll make it to Rivendell before the semester is over.

Right, and I'm going to update my blog consistently and frequently.

Oh the drama!

Ok, so I'm not actually dead, just have been insanely busy of late ("of late" being the last six weeks or so). The trials and tribulations that I have endured since spring break are more or less summarized below. And yes, there are pictures.

As for right now, I'm sitting in the library (yeah, I know, big surprise), waiting to register for classes, and obsessive-compulsively updating the current-enrollment figures for the classes that I want to take. In particular, I'm fretting about Criminal Procedure, which is the one class that I am required to take next semester. Legend has it that Professor Davis is far and away the best criminal procedure teacher in the school, and consequently, enrollment in the five sections (with a max of 95/section) is currently: 93, 11, 8, 15, 8. Guess which section Davis teaches... yeah, two spots left.

Not getting into Davis' class would be inconvenient, but not devastating. My second-choice is one of the 8s, so I suspect there will be adequate room for me when my turn rolls around.

Oh wait, I haven't explained how the registration process here works have I? Well, each graduating class is divided up into 10 groups by the last digit of their student ID numbers and then put into a lottery for time slots. My slot starts at 5:00 this afternoon and so at 5:00.01, the 45 or so students whose ID numbers end in 7 will frantically vie for position in the registration queue. The issue is probably moot for the other four classes I want to take, but it would sure be nice to have one of those two magic spots in Davis' crim pro class. We shall see.

**Update: The last two spots in Davis' class are gone. So much for the drama.

Ok, milage. Bloody hell. It's been three weeks and I've walked to school damn near every day except *furrows brow, counts on fingers* four... but I've also walked to the store three times and taken the long road to the Metro at least four times... hmm... ok, we're going to err on the side of caution and call it 57 miles. Yikes. Nearly to the foot of the Weather Hills. Hey! I'm almost half way to Rivendell! Total distance: 227 miles.

The Giant Post of Doom!

Ok, this is going to take a while to write, so please be patient. As a demonstration of just how far I have fallen and been consumed by law school, I present you with an outline of this post (hey, at least it's not highlighted):

I. The T-Shirt
II. The Oral Argument *maniacal laughter*
III. The Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*
IV. The Event
V. The Marshall-Brennan Program
VI. More on the campaign trail
VII. A promising development

Yeah, ok, I don't have the inclination or the energy to write proper posts, so you'll have to make do with these massively summarized accounts.

I. The T-Shirt

So all of us first-year students get organized into sections according to our position in the alphabet. Section 4, my section, consists of letters R-Z, with one "L" thrown in for flavor. Anyway, we decided that since we spend pretty much all of our time with one another, we should make a section shirt. This is my submission:

RES IPSA LOQUITUR

Yeah, it's an inside joke, but I'm really proud of how their expressions turned out so I thought I would share. Yeah, I drew those myself, and yeah, photoshop helped cover up the eraser marks and clean up the smudges. ;-)


II. The Oral Argument *maniacal laughter*
Yeah, so in addition to submitting our Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*, we also have to argue the case in front of a panel of "judges" (two prof's and a TA). Not surprisingly, this went a good deal better than the brief itself, as I am rather more articulate with verbal communication than I am with written.

III. The Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*
Yeah, I really got nothin t' say about this. It was a beast, it consumed a few weeks of my life, it is done.

IV. The Event
So I got to meet Jim Hightower at a fundraiser. I also got to serve lemonade.



V. The Marshall-Brennan Program
I'm gonna teach constitutional law to a class of high school students next year. I'll be teaching with Julie and it will be OUR class, meaning we're not filling in for some teacher or giving guest presentations, we're teaching a proper class to a room full of highschoolers.

Should be a breeze.

VI. More on the campaign trail
I honestly don't remember what I was going to write here, so in lieu of a post, here's a disturbingly accurate commentary on the nature of law, by one of my favorite philosophers.


And here's a really funny, and yet disturbingly insightful, picture of Bush:



VII. An interesting development
Oh, and as a side note, I'm kinda dating some girl. More on this as it develops. :-)

Spring Break and Pictures!

LOOK AT THE SHINY PICTURES! SEE THEM! AREN'T THEY SHINY?


New Orleans is still in rough shape. See that dark line running through the center of the doors? That's the high water mark and you can still see it on buildings all over town.


Here's a fun picture. Can you tell where the high water line was?
Sheesh, and I thought the water in Africa was bad.


This is the neighborhood where we stayed in New Orleans. The piles of rubble represent houses where people have returned and are rebuilding. However, I'd guess that less than 20% of the houses in the 5 or 6 block neighborhood around where we stayed had even started rebuilding, most people still had not returned.