Cutting law school faculty

The following article the-unseen-costs-of-cutting-law-school-faculty describes the tragedy of cutting law school faculty because their students cannot find jobs as lawyers.

It does not seem to be concerned about the students themselves.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is still widely revered even though his Elizabethan English is difficult for the modern ear to follow.  When I watch a Shakespeare play it usually takes me about 20 minutes before I begin to follow the language - and that is not counting the arcane references that are no longer current.

Another book that is in Elizabethan English is the even more widely read King James Bible.  I wonder if Shakespeare would have had this longevity if it hadn't been for the King James Bible which kept that "dialect" familiar in the English speaking world.

Perhaps more to the point, now that we have a more modern (and less read) Bible and King James is gone with the wind, will Bill be far behind?

Weiner and Secrets on Sunday

Former Congressman Anthony Weiner's attempt to reenter politics included an apology that contained certain "inaccuracies" which lead George Stephanopoulos to say:

"You can't lie in your apology."

WRT Snowden David Brooks said:

" I believe that the government should have secrets for the same reason that I believe that middle aged people should wear clothes.  There are are some things that people ought not have to see."

A One Party System vs. Democracy

The link below is to a TED talk by a fellow by the name of Eric Li.  He argues that China's current version of a one-party system is better suited to future success than the countries that are run by democratically elected leaders.  He makes some good points. 

The thing that I find most striking is that his description of how China's political system works sounds a great deal like a corporate structure. 

I have argued in the past that government is not a business, does not have the objectives of a business, and should not be run like a business, but the corporate structure of promotion based on performance and merit has its definite advantages over electing leaders because we think we would like to have a beer with them.  I don't know how many times (a lot) I have heard people say they were going to vote for a particular candidate either because "I don't know, I just like him/her" or because they don't "like" the opponent.  And even if they have actual political reasons, often times those reasons are simply not even true and are based on something they saw on a TV ad.

The biggest problem, Li admits, is corruption.  Luckily, we don't have that with democratically elected leaders.;-)

I would be interested in any reactions others may have to this.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ebXA1lRqDfM?rel=0

Food Assistance

According to the USDA 101 million Americans receive food assistance from the 15 USDA food supplement programs – That’s 1 in 3

According to the CDC 69.2% of adults are overweight or obese.

 
Given the two statistics above it is difficult to believe that lack of food is a problem in the US.  Indeed the statistic would indicate that affordable food is too plentiful.  Are we (the government) contributing to the obesity problem with our food assistance programs?

Attorney General Holder and self defense

In talking about Florida’s stand your ground law in a speech to the NAACP, AG Holder said:

“They (Florida and other states) try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — no safe retreat is available,” Holder stated.

“We must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety. The list of resulting tragedies is long and — unfortunately — has victimized too many who are innocent.”

Some facts first.  I would go way out of my way not to shoot anyone.  But the question is not about me.  It is what is Holder saying about the fundamental right of self defense by anyone who is in danger.

Several questions come to mind:
1.         Can anyone trace for me this “age-old … duty to retreat” to its alleged ancient roots?
2.         Why is the SD (self defender) required to calculate whether “a safe retreat” is possible?
3.         What is “a safe retreat”? 
           a) If the SD can escape by leaving his money, is that a safe retreat? 
           b) If the AG(agressor) has a knife and SD thinks that he has a 30% chance of outrunning the AG, is that a safe retreat?
           c)  What if SD thinks he only have a 7% chance of outrunning ?
4.         If the opponent and SD have guns and SD is confident that he can outrun AG or kill him, but has good reason to believe that (if he runs) this will not be AG's last attempt to kill SD.  Is running a safe retreat?

Eric Holder's shallow fury

 The article below appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and relates to two points I will make later.

Life in Barack Obama's post-racial America certainly isn't turning out as advertised.
And since the president has only a few years left to straighten it (us) all out, he probably should get his chief racism scold, Attorney General Eric "Americans Simply Do Not Talk Enough With Each Other About Race" Holder, back on topic.
On Monday, Holder decried "the tragic, unnecessary shooting death" of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
"Tragic" is certainly correct. As for "unnecessary," a jury of Zimmerman's peers wasn't convinced.
Also on Monday -- and quite a bit less publicly -- Holder's Justice Department began recruiting a national posse of the professionally aggrieved to help come up with some accusation plausible enough to justify a second prosecutorial swipe at the newly acquitted George Zimmerman.
Barbara Arnwine, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the pressure groups that wants Zimmerman charged with, um, whatever, said she participated in a conference call organized by the Justice Department.
Other participants included Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, several federal prosecutors, FBI representatives, as well as people from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union.
"They were calling on us to actively refer anyone who had any information" that might make a civil rights or hate-crime case against Zimmerman, Arnwine told the Orlando Sentinel. "They said they would very aggressively investigate this case."
This wild goose chase is by no means exclusive. Anybody can play. If you've got some dirt on Zimmerman, real or imagined, just email it to sanford.florida@usdoj.gov and they'll get right on it.
Holder was in full cry on Tuesday, too.
In a speech to the NAACP's annual convention, he let fly this nugget of fool's gold: "Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation's attention, it's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods."
The senseless law Holder had in mind is Florida's Stand Your Ground statute, which holds that a law-abiding person who believes himself to be threatened with death or great bodily harm need not retreat from the perceived danger before acting to defend himself with deadly force.
That law had no bearing whatsoever on Zimmerman's trial, but that's OK. In his haste to change the subject from the call for another doomed prosecution of Zimmerman to something that might make the Obama administration look busy enough to pacify the NAACP, Holder is unwittingly providing a teachable moment for a country that talks way too much about race and not nearly enough about law.
First of all, self-defense doesn't sow conflict in neighborhoods. It's conflict, or the expectation of it, that creates the necessity of self-defense. And Florida's clarification of what constitutes self-defense is hardly senseless.
In fact, Florida's law is more sensible than Ohio's.
In Ohio, a person facing an imminent threat is obligated to attempt to escape from a mortal threat before using deadly force. If an Ohioan uses deadly force to defend himself or another innocent and pleads self-defense, he'll have to show that he discharged his "duty to retreat" before discharging his weapon.
The only circumstances in which the duty to retreat does not apply are in the case of an invasion of his home while he is inside or his vehicle while he is occupying it.
In Florida, a person who believes he faces a threat of imminent death or great bodily harm may use deadly force to defend himself no matter where he is. All that means is that if and when a jury gets the case, it will not have to go through the exercise of second-guessing whether escape might have been possible or preferable. It will need to assess only the question of whether, faced with the same circumstances, any reasonable person would have acted to avert death or serious harm.
Unless, of course, it's a case the media and, to its shame, the Justice Department choose to politicize and racialize. Then, a very different set of rules apply, as George Zimmerman, fired Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee and fired prosecution whistleblower Ben Kruidbos can all attest. 

Climate Change

When I first considered the question of climate change I went online to the website of the National Academy of Sciences to see the minority opinion on the subject.  I found that there was no minority opinion.

So, since I believe in science (see Belief in Science and Religion ) I tentatively believe in Global Warming.

However, when it comes to the world human population I find two things that are strange:

1.       None of the proposed solutions that I have heard from the mainstream warmers include a major effort to reduce future human population which would reduce future problems by a corresponding amount.

 2.      Writers on the subject almost invariably assume that the population is going to a substantially higher level and they do so without commentary.

PC gone wild

This article, Britain's rape Jihad crises, should be read by those who are plagued by a fear of being accused of racism.
 

The name game - 2

This is a repeat with one additional example below the starred line.  This is not to take a position on any of these issues,  just to point out the cleverness in the use of the language.

Choosing the appropriate title for your organization or group is very important if you are involved in something controversial. [Perhaps even if it is not controversial.  For example, people who play golf are called golfers which flows much better than say chess players.  But we chess players would probably not respond to chessers.]

 This post contains a few items like this and solicits additions to the list.

I think groups should be able to choose their own name. Up to a point.  The point is when they start to usurp other people's legitimate titles and roles.  Undocumented workers does that on two counts.  They are not all workers and "undocumented" is an attempt to make it sound like they are the same as a legal resident except for a little detail about papers.
Perhaps you have seen on TV a discussion in which one of the advocates says "undocumented workers" and the other says "illegal aliens" when they are both talking about the same group of people.  People also appear to refuse to use the word illegal and attempt to conflate the two categories (legal and illegal immigrants) which allows them to claim that if you are opposed to illegal immigration then you are opposed to legal immigration as well. 

You once had pro abortion rights and anti abortion groups.  Both sides got smart and went for pro choice and pro life.  Both of those seem legitimate and positive.

Any one born in this country is a native american so I don't like using that title Native Americans for the indigenous population of the Americas.  In Canada they use the title First Nations which seems quite appropriate.

Sometime in the last forty years the term sexual preference (which indicates choice) gave way to sexual orientation (which does not).

The gay rights movement's marriage equality was a stroke of genius.  Technically a gay man, G, and a straight man, S, both had exactly the same marriage rights before the current changes in some laws.  That is, each of them could marry a person of the opposite sex.  Of course, since G was gay, those were not the marriage rights that he wanted.  Marriage equality now means that each has a right to marriage with their preferred partner type.  [I wonder if the advocates of legalized marijuana could make a similar case for intoxicant equality.  That is, I should have the same right to my preferred intoxicant as you have to yours.]

******************

Another beautiful example is that global warming has become climate change.  Global warming is a checkable thesis.  If the temperature levels off then you have some explaining to do.  See Climate change scientists puzzled over lack of global warming during past decade.  However, climate change is happening all the time.   It always has been and it always will be.  Your thesis cannot be disproved.  Finally any one who disagrees with your conclusions is no longer called a doubter - which is a respectable position.  They are now labeled as deniers - which calls up images of the holocaust.

I would not argue that people shouldn't engage in these kinds of maneuvers. On the other hand, folks should be aware of the games that are being played.

Stockman speaks

For an "alarmist" view of the Feds money printing read Stockman's article.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act decision

The Supreme Court has introduced a bit of rationality into one part of of legal system that is being widely distorted. The following is from an article in the NY Times by Adam Liptak.

The short version goes like this:  The 1965 voting rights act required certain states with a history of discrimination in voting to obtain the permission of the Attorney General of the US before making any changes in their voting laws.  Although this was a significant extension of the Federal power into State jurisdiction, it was clearly justified by the previous actions of those states and areas.  For example, at the time  black voter registration in Mississippi was at 6.4 percent.

The law was redone several times, notably in 1982 for 25 years with the determination of which areas were to be covered based on data from 1975.  In 2006 the law was redone again, for 25 years again, and with the determination of which areas were to be covered based on data from 1975 again.  The court majority decided (5-4) that you could not make so momentous a decision based on 40 year old data.

It should be noted that Chief Justice Roberts paid homage to the original law, those who had fought the civil rights battles of the sixties, and he wrote of the changes that had come about.  For example, in 2004 black voter registration in Mississippi was at 76 percent.

He pointed out that the court was not saying that Congress cannot do what they wanted to do, only that they must use more current data to do it.

If you believed some of the commentary you would conclude that the court had restored Jim Crow.

In the article Who is Racist? Thomas Sowell wrote the following:
"The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country."

State of the Art

Here is an article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2358697/The-revolutionary-blood-test-predict-long-youll-live-ailments-youll--fast-youll-age.html ) that reinforces the assertion that science will, very soon, be able to predict the health future of individuals from birth.   Not with individual certainty, but certainly with statistically significant accuracy.

My prediction is that this capability (to forecast health) will cause individuals and groups to twist themselves into pretzels in an attempt to defend various positions.  For the moment assume we now have the aforementioned capability to forecast health issues from birth.  Here are a few troubling (?) questions.

 

       1.  Would the parents want to know?

      2.   Why would they not want to know?

3. Would they be derelict, morally or legally, in their responsibility to the child if they declined to run the test (and know)?

4.  If the news is bad should they tell the child when they are old enough to understand?

5.  Who should have access to this information other than the parents and the individual involved?

6.  Should the state require the test?

7.  Would this have to be disclosed when applying for insurance?

8.  Would a statistical probability of developing a medical condition be considered the same as a preexisting condition for insurance purposes?

10. If, as seems probable, we progress to government sponsored health insurance would the health projections for an individual (not metadata) be considered information the government should have?

      11. Should this information about a future spouse be made available before marriage? How about an
              existing spouse, children, parents, or legal guardians. Should disclosure be voluntary or mandatory?
        12. Can an employer insist on access to this information?

Bush and Obama in Africa

 On his meeting with Obama:
KARL:  What did you talk about when the cameras weren't rolling?
BUSH: What a big pain the press is.
(CROSSTALK)
KARL: You probably agreed entirely on that.
(LAUGHTER)
BUSH: We just chatted about his trip. He's at the end of the trip. I remember how tired I used to get. I said, you got to be kind of worn out, he said, I had a great trip, looking forward to getting back home. And I asked him about his girls, were they having a good time? He said, you bet, because I remember bringing our daughters on some of these trips and how meaningful it was to be with them. And we didn't sit around hashing out policy.
KARL: Did you talk to him? Not much at all?
BUSH: No, not really. He's busy. And I'm retired.

On his own work in Africa:
BUSH: We (Obama and I) both represent a great country. People admire America. And Africans are thrilled with the idea that American taxpayers funded programs that save lives.
KARL (voice-over): One of those programs, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, which President Bush signed into law 10 years ago is now celebrating a remarkable milestone. One million African babies born HIV-free, thanks to programs preventing mother-to-child transmission. Another 7 million with HIV are getting the drugs they need to survive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I think this is one of his crowning commitments. Because of the commitment of the Bush administration and the American people, millions of people's lives have been saved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: President Obama said this is one of your crowning achievements. Do you agree with that?
BUSH: That's nice of him. I view it as an achievement of American generosity. And it has been an extraordinarily successful program. And I was honored to be a part of it.
One reason we're in Africa is because we have found out and discovered that women are dying of cervical cancer. They have been saved from HIV through antiretroviral drugs, yet they're dying of cervical cancer. We think it's needless, and we're trying to do something about it.
...
KARL: Why Africa? I mean was there a moment where this clicked for you? You visited earlier.
BUSH: There was a moment because I was the president of the most powerful, rich nation and a pandemic was destroying an entire generation. And I thought it would be morally shameful not to act.
KARL: How important is Africa to your husband's legacy?
LAURA BUSH: I think it's very important. I think it's really important for people to know that the generosity of the American taxpayer has saved lives here. And that now seven million people are on anti-retroviral drugs and are living full, productive lives. They can contribute to their economy. They are not leaving orphans like what happened earlier in the big pandemic. I think it's, I think Americans should feel great about it.

On Obama's lack of concern for Africa:
KARL: President Obama has been criticized by those who say he hasn't done as much for Africa as you did. That he's neglected Africa. Is that a bad rap?
BUSH: President Obama cares deeply about ... people on the continent of Africa. All I can tell you is that the State Department under his leadership and under Secretary Clinton has been incredibly helpful in our efforts to deal with cervical cancer. It doesn't surprise me that presidents get criticized.
...

On Gay Marriage:
KARL: I saw a journalist in Zambia asked you about gay marriage and whether it is compatible with Christian values. And you had an interesting response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: I shouldn't be taking a speck out of somebody else's eye when I have a log in my own.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: I meant that I'm not going to answer the question then and I'm not going to answer it now in terms of the political question about whether or not, I just don't want to weigh back in the debate. I'm out of politics.
But I meant it's very important for people not to be overly critical of someone else until you've examined your own heart.
 

The name game

Choosing the appropriate title for your organization or group is very important if you are involved in something controversial. [Perhaps even if it is not controversial.  For example, people who play golf are called golfers which flows much better than say chess players.  But we chess players would probably not respond to chessers.]

 This post contains a few items like this and solicits additions to the list.

I think groups should be able to choose their own name. Up to a point.  The point is when they start to usurp other people's legitimate titles and roles.  Undocumented workers does that on two counts.  They are not all workers and "undocumented" is an attempt to make it sound like they are the same as a legal resident except for a little detail about papers.
Perhaps you have seen on TV a discussion in which one of the advocates says "undocumented workers" and the other says "illegal aliens" when they are both talking about the same group of people.  People also appear to refuse to use the word illegal and attempt to conflate the two categories (legal and illegal immigrants) which allows them to claim that if you are opposed to illegal immigration then you are opposed to legal immigration as well. 

You once had pro abortion rights and anti abortion groups.  Both sides got smart and went for pro choice and pro life.  Both of those seem legitimate and positive.

Any one born in this country is a native american so I don't like using that title Native Americans for the indigenous population of the Americas.  In Canada they use the title First Nations which seems quite appropriate.

Sometime in the last forty years the term sexual preference (which indicates choice) gave way to sexual orientation (which does not).

The gay rights movement's marriage equality was a stroke of genius.  Technically a gay man, G, and a straight man, S, both had exactly the same marriage rights before the current changes in some laws.  That is, each of them could marry a person of the opposite sex.  Of course, since G was gay, those were not the marriage rights that he wanted.  Marriage equality now means that each has a right to marriage with their preferred partner type.  [I wonder if the advocates of legalized marijuana could make a similar case for intoxicant equality.  That is, I should have the same right to my preferred intoxicant as you have to yours.]

Whistleblower

Merriam Webster defines civil disobedience as:  Refusal to obey government demands or commands and nonresistance to consequent arrest and punishment.

They define whistle-blower as: one who reveals something covert or who informs against another.

When the government is the entity that is being exposed, should the title of whistleblower, also require "and nonresistance to consequent arrest and punishment."?

Pelosi advises the Republicans

Just for the record I support the Immigration bill, but does anyone else find the headlines like the following a bit odd?

Pelosi says Republicans need immigration reform to win presidency again

Does Pelosi really want to help the Republicans?