Bull Moose Strikes Back

Watch for me finishing the North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon tomorrow at the streaming video of the finish line.
I hope to finish at about 11:20 AM Pac-10 time.

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I think you’ll all be happy to know that my probing was apparently acceptable to the life insurance company.  My life is now insured for a fair amount of money.

Now, to avoid using it…

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I wasn’t going to say anything about Obama’s shot at the SCOTUS, because, who cares? SCOTUS had the binding word.

But it has slowly been dawning on me how politically stupid it was: Almost all politically hot decisions are going to be 5-4 votes one way or another for the foreseeable future. So what does Obama do? He scolds the swing vote to his face in the State of the Union for the most recent majority opinion he authored.

Good luck to the next attorney trying to move Kennedy over to the administration’s point of view next term.

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I’ve used this before, but I’ve watched so much Sesame Street in the last few months, I thought it was appropriate again:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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President Obama’s greater success with international relations has meant more terrorists put out of commission.

Oh?

The former Marine General didn’t provide any specific numbers to back up his claim, but he said “there is an increasing trend and I think we seen that in different parts of the world over the last few months for sure.”

Oh.

That’s what’s called a conclusory statement (at least in the law business).

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As everyone knows, Edward Kennedy died yesterday. (Why is Ted short for Edward?) As you obviously know, I did not have much respect for the man’s politics, and I think his longevity in the Senate was a perversion of the representative government intended by the framers. However, I’m sure that he was doing what he felt was right, the Chappaquiddick Incident aside.

So, here’s a Ted Kennedy story you won’t see anywhere else, that I think is funny:

My wife was part of an envoy that went to Washington, D.C., around 2003 or so to meet with Navy officials and US Representatives and Senators on behalf of the Puget Sound Naval Bases Association. One of the Senators they met with was Senator Kennedy. She has a picture of the meeting around here somewhere, I should have her dig it out.

They met with Senator Kennedy in his office (or somewhere in any case) and he had his two Portuguese Water Dogs with him (including the inappropriately named Splash). The Senator bragged to the group about how the dogs were allowed everywhere the Senator was except on the actual floor of the Senate. “This one,” he said, pointing at one of the dogs, “always sits in Hilary Clinton’s chair when she is absent from [whatever] committee meetings.”

Now that’s funny, I don’t care what your politics are.

UPDATE: Apparently I got the organization wrong. Whatever. She was there for some reason.

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Hey, Steven Crowder is stealing my material:

(Because that idea was so original no one could have possibly come up with it on their own.)

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By the way, if any of you are lucky enough to get a personal e-mail from me, please be advised that I am blind carbon copying all of my e-mail correspondence to flag@whitehouse.gov. That way you don’t have to do it. And that way some poor White House staffer can read all about my son’s urinary tract infection, what I’m having for dinner tonight, reminiscence about that one time at Miller Park… whatever.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if in 2002 the Bush administration had a webpage that said “If anyone tells you something about the Patriot Act that doesn’t sound right, please forward the e-mail to flag@whitehouse.gov.” The hippies would have had to make their paper mache puppets two or three feet taller.

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Obviously, since it was Year 6 B.B.M., I don’t have any recollection of the Apollo 11 landing. My dad talks about it a lot, though. He was on leave from ROTC Basic training, at my mother’s family’s home – it was a few weeks before they got married. Sounds like it must have been a pretty fun time.But I don’t know… seems like it was kind of an expensive way to get an MTV promo shot.

Is anyone else surprised that Google doesn’t have a special logo today?

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Never forget.

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I’m on the Great Plains of South Dakota right now. My brother is graduating from South Dakota State University, so I brought the kids out and left the wife at home to get some rest.

Posts will be spartan over the next few days, likely.

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While I was participating in the Special Olympics over at Facebook earlier today on a friend’s thread. (Facebook is a terrible place to discuss politics, by the way. The format is not conducive to it.)
I came across this quote that the more I thought about, the more I realized illustrates the chasm between me and a good deal of those who voted for Obama.

I feel safer and more proud to be an american [sic] under Obama then I ever did with Bush. So to answer your question, this is the change and hope I wanted.

What kind of puzzled me was the statement that she was more proud to be an American. (OK, the “safer” thing puzzled me too, but I only have a couple gigs of server space.) The reason I didn’t get it is that I’m not any more or less proud to be an American now than I would be if McCain had won in ‘08 or Kerry in ‘04, or whatever.

Then it hit me: I don’t consider Americans a function of the government, whereas I think this Obamanite does. And I think a lot of Obamanites do. It fits into the soft stateism (soft fascism is what I’d say if fascism wasn’t such a loaded word).
In fact, other than a few things like World War II and the Apollo program, most of what should be a source of pride in the country doesn’t have much to do with the government. (And even in World War II it was the citizen soldiers and American industry that allowed the government to be victorious.)

We have a great governing document (especially when it is paid attention to) that was meant to keep the government off the back of the citizens and allowed them the opportunity to be great. That’s what should be a source of pride to Americans, not the identiy of whatever boob is sitting in the White House right now. Danielle Boone, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Steven Speilberg, Mark Twain, dare I say Oprah Winfrey, and so forth: Their accomplishments and the accomplishments of millions of people who work hard to make something for themselves are what make America great.

I’ll grant the fact that Obama rose from a rough childhood to go to Columbia and Harvard Law to become president is something to be proud of as an American, but I don’t think that’s what she was talking about. (Besides, it’s been done. Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, etc.)

This head-of-state-based pride will contribute to what is shaping up to be the tragdey of the Obama years as the government creeps ever further into our lives and suffocates our innovation and productivity, the things of which we should be proud.

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Before:

After:

MoveOn had a good point in the first video, RedState has a better point in the second video. But It’s funny I haven’t heard MoveOn.com, their true believers and associated ilk complaining about the deficit lately even though Obama plans on making it much worse.

I do remember, however, being the target of some anger when I said that I thought it was cute when Obama supporters pretended to care about Bush’s deficit spending in order to use it as a criticism of the policies the money was being spent on. (On the other hand, I criticized Bush for his expansion of entitlements and failure to use the Republican majority to trim the size of the federal government, and I’ll criticize Obama for bloating it beyond recognition.)

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Charles Krauthammer had a good article published yesterday regarding the second most irksome truism about the Bush administration, that they were perpetrating a “war on science” and that the Obama administration will be guided only by a clinical application of science.

[T]he ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making” would have made me walk out. Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics. What an outrage. George Bush’s nationally televised stem-cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Krauthammer, like me, agrees with Obama that the limitations on funding that Bush imposed on stem cell research was too tight. However, I also respected the amount of thought and evaluation that Bush put into his decision. To hear some on the left talk, you’d think Bush flipped open a Bible and declared it off limits. (And if I hear one more person say Bush “banned stem cell research” I’m going to retch. The difference between Bush’s rules and an outright ban ain’t that subtle.)

The problem with all of the declarations about the “war on science” is that most people don’t have a good grasp of what “science” actually is. Science is not the inverse of religion. Science by itself is an amoral thing. No doubt Hitler and Mao used the application of science in their justification for killing millions. Science needs to be applied by society in a responsible manner with moral limitations. What the left has really complained of for the last eight years is that science has not been applied in the manner in which they would like it to be on certain issues.

I don’t hear much from Bush’s science critics on how well the NIH has been run after the Bush administration’s reform. Or how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases  put in motion an unprecedented war on HIV in Africa – using drugs and such, not prayer or witchdoctory.

Perhaps I should be the first to call to rally against Obama’s war on science. Right out of the box he wants to apply a political “solution” which will spread misery in order to combat climate change following a couple of years that points out how little science actually knows what is going on…

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Ugh.

There is still almost two months left before bar results are mailed. I’m already sick of waking up every morning thinking about the exam.

Like the exams I took in law school it is hard to judge how I really did for two reasons: First, in an issue spotter, if you don’t spot the issues in the exam, you won’t know you missed it after the exam. Second, due to human nature, I tend to focus on where I was weak rather than where I was strong. I pulled out the list of questions last weekend just to reassure myself that there were in fact questions I’m pretty sure I did well on.

I’m back at work. I’d say that helps pass the time, but working on legal matters only makes me think of the bar and all the reasons it will be good once I have my bar card.

I liked the patent bar better where they told you seconds after the exam was over whether you passed of failed.

This situation is so foreigh for me. For the past four years there hasn’t been enough time. Now I don’t know what to do with myself for the next two months. I suppose making as much money as possible in case I have to take another 3 weeks off in July to re-prepare for the summer bar is probably the best idea.

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• I finally saw one of the nominated pictures on Friday night: Slumdog Millionaire. I really liked it and am pulling for it.
• I like Hugh Jackman, I don’t care what Dr. Cox says.
• The opening number was good. Poking fun at the normally overblown opening number is a good sign…
• … which quickly fades as they unveil this awful format of having five former winners introducing the five nominees. I thought the object was to speed things up.
• Milk gets it’s political speech in. Better do it now, Milk won’t likely win another big category. Did the screenwriter say “God?”
• Jack Black was pretty funny. Taking his Dreamworks Animation movie money and betting it on Pixar. Zing.  I’ve grown weary of Jack Black lately, but by avoiding him when I do see him he’s funny again.
• Ben Stiller is always a highlight when they allow him to come on.
• Another good comedy bit with Seth Rogan and James Franco. Laughing at The Reader was good. The Reader is getting picked on a lot tonight. (With good reason.)
• As I expected when I saw The Dark Knight Heath Ledger wins. He would have won if he hadn’t died. I still say The Dark Knight got hosed out of a Best Pic nod. I wish they’d stop calling Ledger’s overdose accidental. It wasn’t on purpose, but it wasn’t actually accidental. Semi-accidental is more like it.
• Who likes Bill Maher? Much like Keith Olbermann, I didn’t like Maher before I knew his politics. He knocks the “petty gods”  that at least two of the winners thanked and that the Milk screenwriter said created gays equally. (For the record, I think Maher was unfairly pilloried after his comments about the 9-11 hijackers. Brave and evil/crazy aren’t mutually exclusive.)
• These Oscars are death. This new format is horrible.
• I’m guessing Paul Newman edges out Heath Ledger is the Death Montage Applause Competition. Or, they don’t even include Ledger. I forgot that Charlton Heston died. Heston got a shamefully small amount of applause.
• I forgot Stan Winston died, but some say CGI killed him long ago.
• Now that Danny Boyle has won an Oscar, I have to reignitethe greatest argument ever had in my college apartment: Shallow Grave sucked.
• I’m hoping there will be a tie between Kate Winslet and Anne Hathaway and they’ll have to settle it by hot oil wrestling.
• My daughter got a Kate Winslet (in Titanic) Barbie doll for her birthday. None of the of the other nominees have one of those. Or is there a Barbie Out of Africa doll.
• I hope Mickey Rourke wins. I want to hear that f-ed up speech.
• Bah. I’ve had enough of Sean Penn. Yeah, yeah, shut up Penn. You get off on thinking we all think that you are “homo-loving communists,” more than any of us actually care. I am self-congratulatory-phobic, though.
• Who is this Spielberg guy? An up ‘n’ comer?
• Huzzah to Slumdog. In what seems like a mediocre batch of Best Pic nods, it seems like the best. I have a hard time believing any of the other tedious nominated movies would be better.
• The show was death this year. The comedy bits were good, every thing else was horrid. The new format is a failed experiment. Not showing clips of the nominated performances but having other actors talk about the performances instead is  inexcusably stupid.

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What is up with this hotel? They don’t have WiFi in the rooms, only in the lobby. The rooms have an Ethernet cord laying on the floor that you have to plug into the back of your computer. And it is really slow. Like Sub- first generation DSL speed slow.

Anyway:
The substantive portion is done! Now I just have the professional responsibility portion to go tomorrow.

I’m not making any prediction as to whether I passed. I never come out of law exams feeling like I kicked ass, even when I did. The problem is you get docked for not identifying issues, and obviously if you didn’t identify them you don’t know you missed them. It seemed like every group of three questions had one question that I felt I did really well on, one that I felt I did OK – probably passing – on, and one that I’m not so sure about. Hopefully the ass-kicked questions will make up for the not so good questions.
A couple of my friends complained about the last question of yesterday, as well. Which would make me feel better if the test was curved, but it’s not, so it just made me feel bad for them…
One thing I forgot to complain about: They don’t allow Examsoft to run spell check. What is the point of that? They just want to find out which of us can’t spell “judgment” properly without a spell check when typing 100 words a minute (That’d be me.)

This turned out to be an atypical bar exam for Washington.
Today’s question line-up:

Morning: 1. Criminal Law; 2. Property Law (Zoning/Nuisance/Easements) 3. Limited Partnership.
I checked my work book – I have “RARELY TESTED” written above the half page on Limited Partnership in the 600 page book. Thankfully it’s a lot like partnership and the difference is easy to remember, so I did all right. Apparently it was tested in July, so I think they need to revise their “rarely tested” decree. (The Dean of my school taught review on that particular subject.)

Mid-Morning: 1. Criminal Procedure; 2. Civil Procedure, 3. Secured Transactions.
Secured Transactions is an easy, common sense subject, so that was no problem. The Civ Pro question was asked kind of strangely, so I never did get it organized right. For the second test in a row, they have two Crim Pro questions, up from a consistent ½ to 1 question for years and years before.

Afternoon: 1.UCC Article 2 Sales, 2. Torts (Intentional Torts), 3. Evidence.
UCC Sales is easy like secured transactions, so that was no problem. My rules were pretty bare-boned for the intentional torts, and evidence was a good point gainer for me – I just took Evidence in law school my last semester and got an A.

So, those of you paying attention may notice no Commercial Paper. That stinks because I spent two precious days in the last two weeks to work the rules out so I could spit them out for a big gain. If you have been around me in the last few weeks, which almost no one has, you’ve probably heard me mumbling the rules for negotiability over and over to myself. And then they don’t put it on the damn test.

Also: No Indian Law. Another thing I spent a day on in the last two weeks figuring out.
And this must be the first bar exam in decades to not have a Landlord-Tenant question on it. I’m kind of OK on that, because I always mess up when written notice needs to be given to a landlord and for what, but I think I could have gotten a solid 7.

Oh well, it’s over. Now I wait until May to see if I passed.

Now I’m going to review PR for a few hours. I don’t want to do what so many do and pass the substantive part and then have to come back in 6 months to retake PR because they didn’t take it seriously enough.

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I never understood Groundhog Day (the day, not the Bill Murray movie). So if the groundhog sees his shadow there are six more weeks of winter. But six weeks from when? Today? And if he doesn’t see his shadow winter ends when? Today?

Maybe it’s because I was always confused because I’m from Wisconsin where there was no way in hell that winter was going to end on February 2 or even six weeks from February 2 in mid-March. It was more like if the groundhog didn’t see his shadow on February 2, maybe it wouldn’t snow on the day of the Brewers’ home opener.

I’m going to start a Bull Moose Day. If, on January 29, the Bull Moose can haul his ass out of bed, winter will end on March 21 (some years on March 20), but the weather might be crappy for the early part of spring.

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To celebrate, I’m taking an hour off of studying today at lunch to watch Law and Order rerun on TNT.
That Jack McCoy is so inspirational.

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