Friday

Beat me with the Irony Stick, why don't you?

The venerable 2d Circuit recently handed down a ruling invalidating a change in the FCC policy regarding "fleeting expletives". [Fox Television Stations, et. al. v. FCC] For the better part of 30 years, the FCC has said that they would not seek sanctions against networks that air such expletives, rather they would save their ire for those broadcasts that constituted "verbal shock treatment". Then came the Golden Globes, wherein Bono said that receiving his award was "really, really f-ing brilliant".

Apparently, this statement offended the delicate sensibilities of the Parents Television Council, who began pestering the FCC to take action against the network. In a startling reversal of decades of policy, the FCC abandoned their precedent and declared that fleeting and isolated use of expletives would no longer be tolerated. The networks, of course, were not too thrilled.

The ironical part is, the loudest howling is coming from Fox. I have always thought it a little odd that Fox, the network that brought us such quality programming as Temptation Island, and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, is also the network that provides a safe haven for the caterwauling champions of the religious right *cough*billoreilly*cough*. What do you want to bet that the Parents Television Council is composed largely of bible-beaters that Tivo O'Reilly on a regular basis?

Seems like this is a classic case of the right hand pretending not to know what the left hand is doing.

*I counted that the 2d Circuit included the word "fuck" in some form approximately 27 times in their opinion. Purely for illustrative purposes, of course. It is expected that the Supreme Court will grant cert on this issue. I REALLY hope they let me write for the majority. =)

Thursday

Naughty Clarence...

So, the truth comes out. Our very own Clarence T. says that the whole Anita Hill thing was really about... wait for it... abortion.

"That was the elephant in the room... That was the issue. That is the issue that people are apparently so upset about..."

About Hill herself, CT asserts, in a really creepy [kinky] way:

"She was not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed. That's not the person I knew," Thomas says. "She could defend herself, let's just put it that way...

Keep an eye on the Drudge report for updates.

What a Stoner!


As I'm sure most of you who care have heard (except aken, who never knows what he wants. The JP's here for you! Join my team! We'll win 5-4!), Michael Vick tested positive for the wacky tobaccy in violation of his, well, chillaxin' time before he gets thrown in the clink. After the airplane water bottle incident, you can't color many of us surprised. He probably needed some herbal refreshment to combat the going-to-jail jitters. Hey, he's human (we're still presuming).

At lunch today, Cranny made a great Vick-annals-of-stupidity point to Dr. Nugz and I: When he tried to bring the water bottle loaded with pot onto the plane, it must have been under the two-wrongs-made-a-right theory, as neither water bottles nor pot were allowed on the plane at the time. The craziest part about that story was when authories came out and said it wasn't pot in the water bottle. Was Vick hiding his oregano stash in his water bottle for the plane ride?

Wednesday

Breaking Law School News: St Johns LS Under Attack?

From Above the Law: Check it out here.

"They caught one person on the way to the school president's office wearing a black mask and carrying a rifle in a duffel bag, and are still looking for a second gunman. No shots were fired and no one was hurt from what I have heard. The whole campus has been on lockdown for the last few hours, but I think they are evacuating the campus as we speak."

Ruh roh.

Bondi Beach Bikini Babes

I bet that my brothers on the Court would have liked to have been invited to this record setting event.

On a pretty irrelevant sidenote, I will always remember that the first video I ever saw on an episode of Beavis & Butthead was called "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns".

Call the whambulance?

I honestly can't decide how I feel about this.

On the one side, I have heard that it is pretty painful for a lactating woman to go too long without being able to express her milk.

On the other side, as a proponent of family planning, I argue that she should have thought about this before going and having another baby right away. She knew perfectly well this exam was coming up, and it was going to be grueling. I'm certainly not saying she should have aborted her baby to accommodate the exam, but it was her choice to get pregnant and if that is making it hard for her to get things done, that's her own damn fault. There will be another exam. She could put it off until she's finished breast-feeding.

I guess I take issue with her position that lactating is some kind of disability that should be given special accommodation. Pregnancy is a (largely) voluntary condition, and it seems like this baby was planned. Don't get me wrong, I'm not lashing out against all breeders. I understand why there need to be provisions made in the workplace for nursing mothers, they are just trying to keep doing their job and going on with their day to day lives. I see this as an entirely different situation. This exam is an isolated event and it can be postponed.

Furthermore, this woman is already getting special considerations for learning disabilities and being allowed to take the test over two days instead of one. Call me crazy, but I feel a little uneasy about granting medical licenses to people that can't pass the exam under the same rigorous circumstances applied to everyone else.

OK, I guess now I do know how I feel about this.

Frank Lasee Hates Me

He must've read my previous post about how hard it is to criticize him when he goes hardcore spreadfire dbag on us, because he came up with another doozy today. He went out and listed all of the taxes that weren't there 100 years ago:

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world.


Dr. Nugz and I, in response, decided to brainstorm a list of other things that weren't there 100 years ago that we think are more responsible for our downfall from prosperity that Franky is lamenting:

(1) There were no internets, so our politicians were forced to spend their time making legislative decisions and designing policy instead of posting chain letters on their blog.

(2) Our country was hella racist, and, unlike the goddamn lawyers that protect civil rights, simply not hiring black people is quite efficient.

(3) We were still riding the wave of maintaining slavery for about 100 years longer than comparable nations.

(4) We had no telephones to tax, and therefore the people were richer than God. By the way Frank, I assume you haven't read Harry Potter because it's a book, but do you think phones work by magic?

(5) We weren't bombing numerous countries, nor providing for the mass transfer of funds from legitimate organizations to companies run by the Vice-President.

(6) Women were property, which would have mitigated the court-time necessary for Lasee's bitter divorce. The courts were therefore less clogged and we didn't need bullshit legislators calling the whambulance on the state bar.

(7) The government wasn't concerned with product safety: Allowing the market to determine the demand for lead paint and Chinese dog food, rather than supplanting our decision-making processes for theirs, at great regulatory financial expense. Also, we locked blue-collar workers in big buildings and forced them to work insane hours in shitty conditions. The economy was flowing like wine.

(8) The US used to be a production-based economy, and we've gone service-style over the last century. This transition occurred, obviously, because of dickhole legislators like Lasee that refused to look out for the interests of the middle-class laborers.

(9) Frank Lasee was not in office.

So Frank, I think reasonable people could certainly differ over whether your reasons or our reasons are responsible for our economy's decline. Well, unless we had only left it at 8: It seems to me like the fact you weren't in office 100 years ago (when things were good) but are now (when, according to you, things are bad) is pretty cut-and-dried proof that you, not taxes, are the primary cause.

Isn't the ability to take correlation and assert causation awesome?!

Who says judges don't have a sense of humor?


Every now and then, as I am poring over scholarly tomes of legalness, I come across something that makes me laugh out loud. I'm sure it is quite disconcerting to the other people here in the library of JPSLS, but I just can't help it.

I've just finished reading the very important case of Mattel v. MCA Records, 296 F.3d 894 (9th Cir. 2002). I'm sure all you pop culture aficionados out there remember a totally awesome song that came out circa 1997, a song called "Barbie Girl". It contained such classic lines as, "I'm a blond bimbo girl in a fantasy world", and "You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere". Super-smart social commentary, dontcha think?

Anyway, Mattel, makers of the iconic Barbie doll and owners of the trademark rights in same, in a fit of righteous indignation, decided to sue the record label that marketed "Barbie Girl" in the US. Rather than suing them for total suckitude (a cause of action I would have solidly supported), they sued them for trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition, yaddayaddayadda. Long story short, Mattel lost.

The fun part is, Judge Kozinski, that paragon of sober judiciousness, issued the opinion. He helpfully framed the issue at the very beginning of the case.

"If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong"

At the end of the case, he addresses MCA's cross-claim against Mattel for defamation.

"MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on [a] Mattel representative's use of the words "bank robber," "heist," "crime," and "theft". But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely "piracy". No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eye-patches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable "rhetorical hyperbole". The parties are advised to chill."

Heh.

Frank Lasee's Tax Poem

Frank Lasee posted a retarded poem about taxes on Monday, and it's really been bothering me. Normally, there's an obvious tack to insult Frank's idiocy that I can spin into a cohesive commentary on why he's such a delta bravo. Go ahead and just glance at the poem. ... Where do I start?

Dr. Nugz thinks the rant should be about how he's spending his time reading and posting chain emails instead of doing anything legislatively productive. My first inclination was to comment on how Frank managed to exhaust his entire vocabulary in one short moronic ditty. There's also the fact that he opened it with "This poem is floating around the internet. At first I thought this was funny...then I realized the awful truth of it." I think that's a bald-faced lie: Frank thought it was funny because of what he sees as the awful truth of it. To venture into the short-bus actual content: "Put these words upon his tomb, 'Taxes drove me to my doom...'" But Frank, aren't the people who might actually die as a result of not having enough money the people that the tax dollars are helping?

What an incoherent ramble I just had to write, Frank, and I blame it on you: If you're going to be a douchebag in like a thousand different ways in one post, I'm not going to be able to spin it in a way that coherently demonstrates the crux of the douchebaggery. Hating on Frank Lasee, paradoxically, gets harder as he gets stupider.

1L SBA Elections!


It's that time of the year again, when the cool 1Ls want to demonstrate how with-it they are by becoming the leaders of their peers on the SBA board. It's a great trick on the part of the SBA to run these elections so early. Sometimes you hear 1Ls griping about how they don't even know anyone yet, so how could you cast an informed ballot? The JP has three very important reasons.

First, nobody gives two shits about whether you cast an informed ballot.

Second, the 2Ls and 3Ls on SBA are by now getting sick and tired of having to do the bitch work that should be doled out to the greenest board members.

Third, and this plays off point two, the 1Ls haven't realized that joining SBA is a kiss of death. Your primary responsibilities are doing lots of organizing and bitch work. By bitch work I don't even mean doc reviews or anything: I'm talking about carrying heavy objects to events, cleaning the lounge, and carrying Neil home when he gets too shitcanned.

Basically, the SBA elections are like oppositeland: If you win you lose, and if you lose you win. Tell that to the guy who posted his picture all around the law school in a BoSox cap trying to drum up the sympathy vote by running on the 'I have diabetes' platform. I have to admit, I don't know the kid at all, so it could be tongue in cheek, but, uh... someone should tell him that he seriously doesn't want to be on SBA. I have it from reputable sources.

Tuesday

Guest Bloggin': Banana Bread

Thanks to Mr. Keelover for this one:

Subject: How the fuck did they get 23 grams of fat into my banana bread?

We have one of those rotating refrigerated vending machines at work. I patronized it this morning, hoping to find an healthier alternative to potato chips and candy bars. How about banana bread?, I thought. Better than Snickers - after all, it has fruit in it. I put in my dollar, and opened the door to retrieve my breakfast - a 113-gram loaf of Nemo's (Fine Bakery Products) Banana Bread. Out of curiosity, I checked out the nutritional info.

23 grams of fat?! It takes a lot of balls to advertise "0 g Trans Fat" on the front of your wrapper when the back reveals that it's little more than a leavened lump of lipids. I found this mind-boggling - 23 grams of fat is about what you'd find in a lunch from McDonald's, or a double-portion of baby back ribs, not BREAD! I read further:

Ingredients: Enriched Bleach Flour - okay, probably not nature's best, but I don't think it has any fat.

Sugar - again, no fat.

Eggs - yeah, they have fat, but what did they do, use half a dozen?

Soybean Oil - AHA!

That explains why the top of my banana bread glistens like the clean-shaven pectorals of an MTV Spring Breaker. I'm pretty sure you can make banana bread without using any oil (especially when, as in this case, you also use buttermilk). Why on Earth should you make oil the fourth ingredient? It's listed before bananas, for chrissakes!

Most importantly, it tastes terrible.

How do you pronounce 'Bush'?

JP's editor at the undergraduate newspaper now works for a Japanese newspaper in New York, got ahold of an unedited version of the speech Bush gave yesterday concerning Iran and sent it along to the JP.

After being President for seven years now, apparently Bush is still a little befuddled by pronouncing words referring to something foreign:

The behavior of the Mugabe [moo-GAHbee] regime is an assault on its people – and an affront to the principles of the Universal Declaration. The United Nations must insist on change In Harare [hah-RAR-ray] – and freedom for the people of Zimbabwe.

I look forward to attending a Security Council meeting that will focus on Darfur, chaired by French President Sarkozy [sar-KOzee].

Note: Bush and Sarkozy have met in person several times.

The United States salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty – including Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan [KEYRgeez-stan], Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a], Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Morocco.

For the seventh grade student giving a presentation on these issues, this would be totally appropriate and even commendable. If you're the President of this country, you should be able to show enough respect for the rest of the world to pronounce their country names.

UPDATE: From the source: "They had posted it on the UN's website by mistake. They took it down almost immediately, but not before we had ahold of it.

Heeheehee, I love how he had to have help with Sarkozy. That's just embarrassing."

Monday

Someone's giving it to Erin Andrews


And it's neither JP nor Cap'nStatute :(. Deadspin says it's Pat White. Did anyone tell Ms. Andrews that people who choose to live in West Virginia are very likely to have more than 20 digits?

Also, as a gossipy side note, JP's politically-inclined little brother (who gave him this tip) learned (from an apparently-reputable source) that Erin Andrews also went on a date with Bret Bieliema a few years ago in Madison. From the Badgers to the Mountaineers? Watch out for those coal slides!

Conservapedia Conserva-spotlight: Blocking my fucking IP

Well, I think those knobs over at Conservapedia have finally hired a non-Originalist (the computer doesn't work how it worked in 1793) to monitor the IP addresses of people trying to create accounts. Subsequently, I think Dr. Nugz and I have been banned on just about all of the JPSLS IP addresses. We're to the point where, even when I can create an account, I get banned for being a "sock puppet" (a word Conservapedians have just learned in the last month or so for people who just create new accounts when one account gets banned) of Dr. Nugz' original account that took them forever to ban.

If you're a JPSLS student and you're reading this in class, go to Conservapedia and try to create an account. If you can, please leave a comment telling myself and Dr. Nugz what room you did it from. Maybe we've just exhausted our classrooms (if I can't get an account, how I can take the Supreme Court class?) Conservapedia is unwittingly missing our contributions, like this entry on Cheesy Potatoes that they, for some reason, have not taken down yet. Education at its finest.

UPDATE: "Account creation from this IP address (XX.YY.ZZZ.$$$) has been blocked. This is probably due to persistent vandalism from your school or Internet service provider." If cheesy potatoes are vandalism, we're all fucked.

This is not an 'any pub is good pub' spot


Joe Mathlete is pissed off, and when Joe Mathlete feels pain, JP feels pain. Apparently some hackjob at the "Blog of Hilarity" (which I'm not linking to because I don't want to encourage anyone to make this dumbass feel better about himself by getting more web hits) has been explaining Marmaduke too, and it's ruffled Mr. Mathlete's duck feathers. Also, the Blog of Hilarity set itself a high bar for success, and, contrary to my strong parenthetical a few lines ago, you have to see how bad this shit is. This dickfor is a no-talent ass clown that needs to leave explaining Marmaduke to a professional like Joe Mathlete.

HONESTY DISCLAIMER: JP, enjoying his Marmaduke Explained quite a bit, has tried to think of ways to play off of that idea (I really wanted to do Peter Carstensen Explained, but I never have any clue what he's saying) and OSlice even tormented an asshole on our nerdy undergraduate message board with "*dbag's name* Explained" until dbag sent Slice an email begging him to stop. True story. However, explaining Marmaduke is for Joe Mathlete and Joe Mathlete alone. Is nothing sacred?

Sunday

Captain Statute Salutes McBalls

So you want to be a lawyer?

The first step is to go to law school. Introducing John Paul Steven’s Law School Dean of Admissions, McBalls. McBalls went to law school but is not a lawyer (he shares much in common with the future Cap’n Statute.). McBalls is from Montana. He came to John Paul Stevens in 2002, and was very popular. He was involved in student government, athletics, and other activities. The most powerful thing about McBalls is that he has access to every applicant’s ‘character and fitness,’ report. If you ever did anything wrong in your life, McBalls knows about it. He does not care, but he knows.

McBalls decides who comes to Law School and who does not. Nobody knows how he makes these decisions. McBalls applies a heightened level of scrutiny to all John Paul Stevens applicants. Among the many factors he considers are grades, your Undergraduate Institution, legacy, affirmative action, the weather, magic 8 ball, your cover letter, and LSAT scores. Many of these criteria are arbitrary and nonsensical, like the 8-ball, which is slightly more predictive of your future performance as a law student than the LSAT. McBalls values diversity, but all new applicants have one thing in common: they are all ridiculously good looking.

Yes, it’s true. The new 1st year class has arrived, and whether it is warm weather, the aphrodisiacal effects of studying tort law, the fact that that they have not been around long enough for us to think of them as anything but sex objects, or the fact that they have not known us long enough to realize what herbs we are, every boy and girl in the 1st year class is on the auction block for upperclassmen. Get ‘em while they’re hot! The Cap’n has seen several of his classmates out on dates with the neophytes, or drunkenly chatting them up at the bars. I remember this happened to me in my first year as well. More upperclass law school girls hit on me in my first week of law school, than there are girls who have hit on me, my entire life. True story. Then somewhere along the line I lost my novelty. No one wants me anymore, so I turn to the 1st years.

So much of what they say about the Cycle of Law School is true. McBalls chose the class carefully, making sure they were all good looking and would inject the school with some life. But it’ll be drained out of them soon, too. Then we won’t be attracted to them anymore. In a year, they’ll be just like us, a year older, and desperately hitting on that younger class of people who still haven’t had their life-forces sucked out by law school, and can still hold interesting conversations that have NOTHING to do with law. All good things come to an end. In the meantime, it’s time to kick back and enjoy them like the last warm days in Autumn. Thank you, McBalls! Cap’n Statute salutes you!