Bull Moose Strikes Back

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I get asked that question a lot by some of the younger students. How am I going to work full time, go to school every night, tend to my duties as a husband and a father while squeezing in two 1 hour ferry rides a day?
I just tell them, “It’s been done.” In fact it’s been done by a woman who works with my wife who was raising a small child without the benefit of a father around (he R-U-N-N-O-F-T).
I wonder how some of these people plan on practicing law.
One guy, a nice guy, but straight from college, was amazed that I would take courses in the fall, spring AND summer with only a few weeks break between each. I thought about mentioning I have been working for 8 years with only 3 weeks off per year, but I didn’t want to be held in even more misplaced awe.

I think a great advantage for me will be when I’m done with school my workload will go down as I start a legal career where as most of theirs will be going up. Work 60 hours a week? Sounds good to me, I’m coming from 40 hrs of work plus 40 hrs of school work a week. That’s a net gain of 20 hours with more money to boot.

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Well, one week of law school down, 128 to go.

We ended the week talking about the recent conviction and sentencing of poor bastard Gerado Flores.
It’s amazing how self-righteous people can get on the subject of abortion to the point where they are throwing a 19 year old kid in jail for two life sentences for helping his girlfriend do something she carries no criminal liability for or a supposedly intelligent woman can actually say she has no problem with the manner of abortion chosen as long as the women consents to it.
Well that’s great! When her dad needs a coronary bypass, I’ll see if I can get him to let me do it because I’ve always wanted to take a stab at it.
I think the Governor of Texas needs to commute this kid’s sentence to 2-4 years or something. That would be fair yet send a message that this action is not acceptable. No matter what you think of the death of the twin fetuses, babies, whatever, the fact is that a miscarriage can endanger the life of the mother and shouldn’t be brought on outside a medical setting.
And for those of you that know me or have read this for long know if I am suggesting a lesser prison sentence, you know I think something is FUBAR.

I think I’m starting to get a handle on how tired I’m going to be.
Starting Monday: Get up at 6. Work until 4:30. Grab a bite. Be in class for 2-3 hours. Catch the 9:05 or 10:30 home. Hold the baby up to my face so she remembers who I am. Pet the dog and promise to go to the woods on Saturday. Repeat through Thursday.
Needless to say, I have an appointment with the inside of my eyelids until late Saturday morning.

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OK, maybe not the whole fifth amendment, but apparently the private property clause was essentially thrown out today by the SCOTUS.

So the government can now come, take your property, and give it to some one to develop? I think eminent domain is overused but not without it’s merits. This is ridiculous. I have a prediction: Seattle is going to go ape with this new power. I think I can hear Paul Allen licking his chops right now.

Sigh. Yet another reason I think it’ll be very interesting to be a constructionalist lawyer over the next decade. Hopefully Bush can replace one conservative and one lefty justice with two conservative justices and we can kill the “living document” and get back to, you know, what is fucking written on it instead of just making shit up.

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As promised, the Seattle Weekly’s letters regarding last week’s Blue City Republicans are quite a fantastic demonstration of “liberal” values.

While there are a few nicely thought out letters in there – I liked the one written by a lefty that calls Seattle the counterequivalent to Topeka – most of them fell into a couple of categories:
First is the “if you don’t like it get out.” If a knee jerk patriot would say that to any of the writers of those letters about the USA I’m sure the patriot would get a long, indignant reply that it’s his country too and he has every right to be there and protest. And rightfully so. I’m sure that point of hypocrisy was missed by those writers.
A common theme in those letters is that Republicans are here for a reason, it must be because being leftist makes the Seattle great. I’d maintain Seattle is a nice place to live in spite of its left leaning ways, not because of them. I enjoy Seattle’s geography, it’s proximity to recreation, and the fact that it has things a population center has to offer – pro sports, concerts, high tech jobs, etc. What I don’t enjoy about Seattle is what the blue values cause – aggressive bums everywhere the police are powerless to stop because their hands are tied by the city, snotty attitudes, high taxes, and crumbling infrastructure that is met only with hand wringing. Plus, Seattle seems to be the exception. I’d rather give up my left nut than live in or near most big blue cities like LA, New York, Chicago, or Philly. And while Seattle seems to be the nicer of the blue cities, I like having the moat between some of the freaky crap that goes on here and my home.

Another category is the “it’s what they deserve.” I guess that forgiving, open-mindedness that is the hallmark of “secular humanists” is only reserved for criminals, perverts, and brutal dictators.

The rest seem to be the same old Kool-Aid drinking variety bullshit we’ve been hearing for the last two years. Iraq had no WMDs and no ties to al Queda and was a war for oil. Tax cuts only benefit the rich. Blah, blah, blah. Which brings me back to Seattle being the counterequivalent of Topeka.
Take this statement: Despite the evidence, the Christian right that control Topeka insist that evolution is a fantasy.
Now change “Christian right” to “‘progressive’ left,” change “Topeka” to “Seattle,” and change “evolution” to “scores of legitimate reasons to attack Iraq.”
Just as you can’t show evidence of evolution to a Christian zealot in Topeka without provoking an unwarranted emotional response and having “liar” shouted in your face, you can’t present the left in Seattle with evidence of WMD that has actually been found, violation of cease fire agreements, al Queda ties, expelled and harassed weapons inspectors, the fact that Saddam was writing checks to terrorists with ill gotten oil money, etc, without provoking an unwarranted emotional response and having “liar” shouted in your face. Lefties of Seattle should watch who calls who a religious zealot.

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I’ve added a blog to my required reading list: A Nation of Riflemen. Kim du Toit is the only other person I’ve found who uses the word “pussification” and that’s the kind of guy to which I want to link. He’s maybe a little to right on a few things, but how many people the left would qualify as a right wing nut have been to jail in South Africa for standing up against apartheid?

In celebration of the new link, I will compare my life so far against Kim’s list of 20 Things a Man Should Do.

1. Shoot a gun larger than a .22.

Check

2. Teach a kid to shoot.

This will have to wait. I’m sure when I have a son I’ll do it, if his grandpa doesn’t get to him first. Of course, I can teach my daughter. Is 4 months too early for a 20 gauge?

3. Cook a meal out in the open (and I don’t mean a backyard BBQ).

Yep.

4. Kill an animal which can kill you.

Technically wasps could kill you, but I don’t think that’s what he means. It’s on my “to do” list.

5. Taste a good brandy (no French cognacs need apply) and a fine single malt Scotch.

I think I’ve done this, but I may have been too drunk to enjoy it.

6. Visit at least eight countries outside your own continent, none of which speak your home language.

Seven to go.

7. Read any six Shakespeare plays.
8. Win a solo sporting competition—anything that involves physical exercise.
9. Be part of a winning sports team.
10. Make love with a woman in a forbidden place.
11. Have a strange woman invite you home with her; and refuse her, because you’re married.

Check, check, check, check, check.
I can even one-up that last one. I had two women invite me for a three-way. Where were you women seven years ago!!!

12. Build something tangible—out of wood, steel, brick, whatever.

It sucked, but who said it had to be good? Check.

13. Sit up all night comforting a sick child.

I’ll be there, I’m sure.

14. Tell the truth, where a lie would both be undiscoverable, and keep you out of trouble.

Can’t think of anything specific. I’ll have to go do something immoral that I can later not lie about.

15. Watch at least one real virtuoso play a musical instrument—in any kind of music. (I’ve seen Eric Clapton, Itzhak Perlman, and Stephane Grappelli perform, and watched both Solti and Barenboim conduct the Chicago Symphony. Pretty humbling.)

Eric Clapton counts? Check. Hell, I can even up that to Jimmy Page.

16. Perform on stage (music, theater, whatever), to a large (500+) audience.
17. Play at least one musical instrument competently.

Uhh… I may never get to these two.

18. Make love to a woman at least ten years older than you are.

Not unless my wife comes to her senses and leaves. Then I’ll be out crusing the desperate 60 year olds. It says “at least.”

19. Tell a government bureaucrat to #### off.

I think I have some extra credit for this one I’d like to apply to 16, 17, and 18.

20. And finally: tell a true story to your grandchildren.

I have at least 25 years before I’m there.

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A classmate of mine learned an important lesson last night: Just because you and all of your hippie buddies dislike Justice Scalia, not everyone does and assuming so in a supposedly open minded environment like law school makes you an ass.
Some of us are more upset by Justice Kennedy, O’Conner, and others cherry picking foreign precedent, like those set in the European Court of Human Rights, than we are by Scalia refusing to find stuff in the constitution that isn’t there.

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A very rare Seattle anti-communist protest took place yesterday when the prime minister of Vietnam came to town.
If you’ll notice most people who have actually lived in a communist country aren’t very down with communism. That should be a clue as to what the communist paradise is actually like.

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I had my “closed mind” over on the Daily Kos to see what the other side was saying today and was surprised to see Senator Feingold mentioned for the presidential nomination in 2008.

As someone who had ol’ Russ as one of his senators for a number of years before trading him in for the Sisters Grim, all I have to say is AAAAAAHHHHHH!!

When I said I wanted a president from Wisconsin, I was thinking more along the lines of Tommy Thompson.
What Feingold does have going for him is that he’s never resorted to demagougery, name calling and the like. In fact he is to Wisconsin as Dick Durbin is to Illinois in that respect. Cubs fans spend a lot of time talking and not making much sense, Packers fans can just point to accomplishments.
Feingold is also a clever campaigner. He convinced Wisconsin voters that he was serious by painting campaign pledges on his garage door. In 1998 he pledged to keep his campaign budget to $1 a voter. Both of those ploys resonated well with voters in suburban Wisconsin, who Democrats need to win. After all, if you’re willing to deface your garage door you’re not messing around.

What Feingold doesn’t have going for him is his politics. He’s way left. Way. Left. He snuck in in 1992 by beating Kasten who was saddled with the fact he was caught driving drunk. If the Republicans would have ran someone decent in 1998 Feingold would have been defeated. Instead they ran Mark Neumann, whose religious right politics were slightly more off target for Wisconsin than Feingold’s left wing politics.

Also hurting Feingold’s chance to be President is that his methods won’t scale up. No one wants to see a Senator painting treatises on his house and the 2008 Democrat bill for campaigning for president is going to be more than one or even two dollars a voter.

When analyzing any chance a Democrat has of winning in 2008, one has to ask which 2004 red state is that candidate going to win? I guess Feingold’s best shot would be Ohio or Iowa, red states that most resemble Wisconsin that Bush won by less than 3%. Iowa alone does him no good.
Can he win Ohio? I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially if times are tough by then or Iraq is a disaster, but if the Republicans have a strong candidate and troops are coming home from Iraq, like I think they will be, I think the best Feingold could due is lose Ohio by 2% rather than the 3% by which Kerry lost.

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My uncle who did law school about 30 years ago told me about his criminal law prof: An ex-Attorney General of Wisconsin who was about as left as can be for a functional member of society.

So, I’ve been bracing myself all summer for an assault on my ideas of what should be done with criminals and even who is a criminal. So imagine my delight when the prof turns out to be a self-proclaimed libertarian and “a person of faith” who openly says that the laws of society are based on the Ten Commandments (many lefties like to equate that statement of historical fact with pushing a “Christian agenda”.)
Now libertarians don’t match up perfectly with my ideals. I find their isolationism annoying for example, though at least that’s consistent unlike some people I can think of that make a big stink when a president with an R after his name goes into the middle east and never open their mouths when a president with a D after their name goes into Kosovo and Bosnia for reasons much more tenuously connected with our security. That said, I’ll take a prof that was a scholar at the Liberty Fund than one who sat around pontificating at the ACLU before teaching.

That leaves my fellow students. All I can say about them right now is I hope their enthusiasm is tempered a little as the class goes on. I guess I can’t blame them for being excited on the first day but discussion jumped all over the map. Hopefully the prof will get the discussions a little more guided than yesterday. He suffers from what I assume is MS and is a little diminutive, so I wonder how that will go.
Some of the worst offenders are my fellow “older” students – and some are a good 20 years older than I am. I think they let the complement made by the dean and the prof of how much we “bring to the table” go to their head. They were, after all, talking about us collectively. Some of them have to realize they are back in school and when the prof talks to make a point, instead of continuing to talk over him it is now time to shut up and listen. In any case I have all of my classes through next August with these same students, so I’m trying not to piss any of them off just yet.

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Well, here goes nothing. I’m heading to my first ever class of law school, last week’s “Legal Learning” seminar not withstanding.

I’ll be suing cities that erect nativity scenes at Christmas before you know it.

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I officially start law school on Monday evening. The past three nights from 6-9 PM I attended a seminar offered by the school on legal learning. The method for writing briefs, outlining, stuff like that. They even reviewed the branches of government, state vs. federal, and the levels of courts. I’m not sure how you are even interested in going to law school, much less get in, if you don’t know stuff like that.

Pretty straight forwatd stuff, right? But it quickly turned into a microcosm of what I expect the experience to be. It’s amazing how in such a short time the professor leading the course managed to make her views on things like abortion, gay marriage, the 2000 election and the like known, but she did. I guess she’s worried that the criminal law profs might not indoctranate us enough before she can get her hands on us in the fall.

Also appearing:

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Non Sequitur used to be one of my favorite comic strips. Wiley Miller seems to have a rye sense of humor and used it to point out silliness in our society. The cynical, scheming, little girl in the strip is a favorite of mine.

Sadly, BDS is getting to Miller. He can’t quite keep his editorial cartoons and his comic page cartoons seperate anymore and it’s hurting the strip.
For instance:

Why is the Downing Street Memo on the comics page?
(Well, the fact that anyone wants us to take third hand hearsay memo of a foreign official as “proof” of forging evidence of WMD while referring in the same memo to his own belief of presence of WMD is kind of comical.)

Wiley needs to either keep stuf like that in his editorial cartoons or at least make it funny like in the Huey cartoon.

UPDATE:
How convenient . Right after I posted this John Hawkins at RWN explores the the Downing Street Memo for those of you that haven’t been following along.

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A couple PETA employees got arrested for animal cruelty in North Carolina.

It couldn’t be that PETA is just filled with anti-establishment-at-any-cost hypocrites, could it? No….

I always have and always will have disdain for the idiots at PETA. Anyone who puts animal life on equal or greater footing with human life – and that’s what they support their shadow groups like ALF when they trash medical research facilities, terrorize executives of Huntington, etc. – should be treated with nothing but the utmost contempt.

Maybe I should give these particular PETAns credit. At least they’ve come in contact with the animals they were “helping” unlike the one I ran into at the National Mall.

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Remember the guy, Phil Hansen, I talked about in this post who made his a collage out of the names of war dead to make a picture of Bush? (Shrill lefty hag columnist Susan Paynter moons over him here. I’ve never got why her opinion column is in the Lifestyle section.)

Anyway, Hawkins over at RWN quotes a soldier on how he would feel to have his sacrifice used in a hit piece on the President:

God forbid, if something happens to me over here, I do not want to be used by the likes of Phil Hansen in Seattle, … to make political points against the war, the President, and finally the country, all the while saying “they support the troops”.
-Capt. William Guenther in Baghdad

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I temporarily ended my ban on Seattle socialist weekly tabloids when I saw this article on Seattle Republicans on the cover of the Seattle Weekly.

Not only does it paint a good picture of the kind of shit I put up with on a daily basis, but it paints a pretty hopeful picture that maybe, just maybe, Seattle has reached the apex of it’s counterculture bullshit and will begin to grow up a little and quit acting like children that think we could acheive eutopia if it wasn’t for Bush and the corporations.

At any rate, next week’s issues should draw some hilarious mail from the Seattle division of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade. I’m sure there’ll be many, many, open-minded responses to the article.

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I’ve been thinking about what I want this blog to be. There are hundreds of blogs that do politics and commentary. I just don’t have the time or energy to be a Right Wing News wannabe.

What I do have time to do is live my everyday life and try to get some of the more interesting things down. Right now that includes being a conservative part-time law student, working and commuting in an environment I consider hostile to people with my views, commuting and absorbing the local culture, and absorbing my share of pop culture movies and sports.
That is where I will focus my attention for blogging. I have a feeling law school is going to provide plenty of material as it is. Look for more “Life in the Enlightened…” as well as continued movie and sports commentary. The Randy will also return in it’s sight in the fall.

I’ve had increasing readership. I don’t know who you are, but you keep coming back. I hope you enjoy my new focus. I think it will probably be more interesting than just another guy bitching about politics.

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Reason #932 for anyone under fifty to worry about their own retirement and not count on a giant pyramid scheme for retirement:
Senators want to make the social security retirement age 69.

Yeah. 69. Before I started the whole law school thing, I was thinking 56 or 58 would be a good retirement age. Since I’m doing three years of school I may have to push that back a little to 60 or so, but there is no way in hell I will be working when I’m 69 (if I live that long), unless I have a job like Supreme Court Justice or Governor of Washington. Which I won’t…

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I’m freeeeee!!!
Well, unless I failed. In which case I’m free only until I find out and begin studying to take it again.
At least I know my three “problem areas” for next time – Reexamination, Reissue, and Appeal. I think I kicked ass on the other sections, but did I kick enough ass? There were 10 questions I more or less narrowed it down to 3 answers and guessed. So if I pick up 2 of them, that leaves me with a margin of error of 22 questions. (70/100 is passing.)

As I was finishing the test the computer crashed. I was on question 99 and about 5 and a half hours into the test. I admire that their system allowed for them to make a call while I used the head and have it ready to go after a reboot right where I left off. I had a nightmare scenario in my head when it crashed.

Well, now back to that precious freedom. Until tonight when the first of three seminars on how to be a good law student starts at the school from 6-9 tonight. And until next week when Criminal Law starts M-Th 6-8 PM.
Yes. Wonderful freedom…

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I’m taking the USPTO exam Monday, then I’ll get back to more blogging.

I’m going to kind of refocus the blog on my experiences as a conservative working law student in contrast to my classmates, etc. But I’ll be sure to chime in on other issues as they irritate me.

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