December 2008

Today We Got Proposed To...

...by Barack Obama.

"If you put your trust in me — if you give me 'your hand and your heart' — then that's exactly what I intend to do as your next President."

Columbia: Famously Hot

Columbia's new marketing campaign.

History 101

For those that don't know about history, here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1. Liberals, and 2. Conservatives. Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history. It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above history lesson. A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that they will immediately inform other true believers and more liberals just to tick them off.

And there you have it.

Let your next action reveal your true self...

The Messiah

He ventured forth to bring light to the world: The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers.

Read more about it here.

Our new hobby

Family Ties

A Meeting of Two Great Minds

How many headlines?

We don't care much for the NBA, but for some reason we enjoyed jumping on the Celtics bandwagon this playoff season. The thought occurred to us today at work - how may headlines looked something like this after Boston won the Finals earlier this week?


Laker's can't handle The Truth








Turns out we're not that original. There are 252 hits on Google for that very phrase.

Boumediene v. Bush

Holding: "[A]liens designated as enemy combatants and detained at the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba . . . do have the habeas corpus privilege." Boumediene v. Bush, 2008 U.S. LEXIS 4887

Translation: "Alien enemy prisoners, waging a jihad against the American people and captured by our military in a war authorized by Congress, have a right — under our Constitution — to petition our courts for their release." National Review Online

Precedent: Never before in history has there been

an instance where a court, in this or any other country where the writ is known, has issued [habeus corpus] on behalf of an alien enemy who, at no relevant time and in no stage of his captivity, has been within its territorial jurisdiction. Nothing in the text of the Constitution extends such a right, nor does anything in our statutes.

Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the Supreme Court majority in Johnson v. Eisentrager ("case involving German operatives captured in China and held in zone of postwar Germany fully controled by occupying American forces.")

So much for precedent.


My Hero: "Eisentrager thus held — held beyond any doubt — that the Constitution does not ensure habeas for aliens held by the United States in areas over which our Government is not sovereign…. [The majority opinion] is a sheer rewriting of the case.… By blatantly distorting Eisentrager, the Court avoids the difficulty of explaining why it should be overruled."
Justice Scalia, dissenting in Boumediene v. Bush.

What this case is really about: "The United States Supreme Court now routinely invents constitutional rights to support whatever social, political, and legal goals it deems desirable. It is so much easier to legislate from the bench than it is through the branches of government that were created by our Founders to do just that." Peter Wehner, Supreme Disgrace, National Review Online

What it means: "[F]oreign al-Qaeda killers detained in Cuba can march right into the federal district courts and demand what, suddenly, are their constitutional rights. In those courts, judges — without guidance and emboldened by the high court’s usurpation of war powers — will be encouraged to make it up as they go along: More access to classified information? Subpoenas commanding the testimony (and cross-examination) of our soldiers regarding the circumstances of capture? Miranda warnings? Prompt access to counsel, which is certain to halt any questioning — and thus any revelation of lifesaving intelligence — before it can even start? Full-blown trials in the criminal-justice system with the same presumptions of innocence, privacy, and other privileges vested in American citizens?" Editors, National Review Online.

More Scalia:

The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today… It sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

"What drives today's decision is neither the meaning of the Suspension Clause, nor the principles of our precedents, but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy."

"The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

More commentary on this ruling by "the al-Quaeda wing of the U.S. Supreme Court":
Supreme Cowardice, American Spectator
Lord Kennedy, American Spectator



Remember what the Obamessiah said about the type of judges he'd nominate to the Supreme Court?


We're convinced: A vote for Obama is a vote for al-Quaeda.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin D. Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry S. Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John F. Kennedy

Oh yeah, and this:

• "What they'll say is, "Well it costs too much money," but you know what? It would cost, about--It-- It--it would cost about the same as what we would spend--It--Over the course of 10 years it would cost what it would cost us (nervous laugh). All right. Okay. We're going to--It--It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about - hold on one second. I can't hear myself. But I'm glad you're fired up, though. I'm glad. Everybody know that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven't had much sleep in the last 48 hours."-- Barack Hussein Obama

Amen to that

Seen on the marquee near the interstate exit where our office is located:

Free Local Calls.
New Renovation.
God Bless America.

That's the beauty of our great nation - there are few countries in the world where the hotel you've chosen to stay in will have new renovations and can still offer you free local calls. Forget the HBO in France, baby - in these United States, you can call the pizza store down the street...for FREE!

If only the Rev. Wright had stayed at the EconoLodge in Irmo. Maybe then he'd be singing a different tune (or screaming a different nonsensical rant - we get the two confused).

God bless American, indeed.

Global Warming...

...from a meteorologist's perspective.

In his must-read eco-thriller, State of Fear, Michael Crichton creates a brilliant visual to assist us in wrapping our minds around the components of Earth's atmosphere. On page 387, he likens the atmosphere to a football field. The goal line to the 78 yard-line contains nothing but nitrogen. Oxygen fills the next 21 yards to the 99 yard-line. The final yard, except for four inches, is argon, a wonderfully mysterious inert gas useful for putting out electronic fires. Three of the remaining four inches is crammed with a variety of minor, but essential, gases like neon, helium, hydrogen and methane. And the last inch? Carbon dioxide. One inch out of a hundred-yard field! At this point I like to add, if you were in the stands looking down on the action, you would need binoculars to see the width of that line. And the most important point-how much of that last inch is contributed by man-made activities? Envision a line about as thin as a dime standing on edge.

Are you still worried about the dangers of CO₂?

Me, neither.

Obama, Political Viagra

A good reality check from Mark Steyn at National Review Online:

"If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six months, see your doctor."

Maybe

At least the great orator is original.

The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Black bean or pinto?

You know you're a regular, "always order the same meal," creature-of-habit patron when your Quicken 2004 recognizes the repetitive price receipts for Moe's Southwest Grill and asks you if you would like to "schedule this transaction as a recurring bill?"

Spellign

Where do you get your news?

We like ESPN.

At least, we like them when they do what they're good at.

Sports.

For the most part, ESPN provides us with good coverage of all the breaking news in the world of sports, and ESPN.com is our number source for all things sports. When it comes to sports, ESPN are experts.

So stick to what you know. Please. Keep up with your 24-7 over-the-top sports commentary and analysis, but leave the political punditry to the folks who have actually studied things other than a play book and sports almanac.

More and more, we seem to find ESPN writers commenting on things other than sports, or worse, using a sports related story to advance a political perspective.

Consider this story from ESPN.com, where Pat Forde uses a story about Rick Majerus as a back-door promotion of stem-cell research, abortion, and (maybe?) even Hillary Clinton. Think its just a coincidence that Majerus' pro-choice views were highlighted during the week of the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade? We doubt it.

That's not all:

• There was the article (and Sportscenter segment) on the firing of the Univ. of Missouri lacrosse coach, which was unapologetically pro-gay in its emotive reporting.
• Speaking of lacrosse, how can we forget their coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal? ESPN often seemed less concerned with the lacrosse team and more interested in exploiting the racial tension in Durham and pointing a finger at the white, middle class lacrosse players at an expensive private university
  
• Or this story about a kid athlete from Atlanta, in jail for having oral sex with a 10th grader. A moving story, no doubt. Nevermind that he broke the law -- ESPN finds it necessary to write this story using the oft-used political template of a "backwards South" with "archaic laws" that just can seem to catch up with the modern progressive society that ESPN lives in.
  

We thought ESPN had decided that sports and politics just don't mix. Isn't that why they fired Rush Limbaugh from Sunday NFL Countdown?

Yet it doesn't get much more political than this. When ESPN commentator Ivan Maisel reported on the alleged sexual improprieties recently surrounding (now former) Arkansas football coach, he wrote this:

A self-described supporter of Arkansas athletics acquired Nutt's cell phone records through a Freedom of Information Act request. Media members across the nation, including this one, received pdf files detailing Nutt's communications.

The innuendo came at no extra charge. Nutt's detractors have put him in the impossible position of proving a negative--he must have cheated on his wife because there is no proof that he did not.

It is a maneuver borrowed from national politics, Rovian in style and execution. Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to President George W. Bush, made his career on attacking an opponent's strength. In the 2004 presidential election, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth eviscerated Sen. John Kerry's stature as a war hero. Kerry's candidacy never recovered.

Rove had no visible affiliation with the Swift Boat Veterans, except that a tactic he made famous benefited his candidate.

Three years later, the tactic has been imported to Arkansas and used against Nutt.

Really, Ivan? We thought the openly biased anti-Bush reporting was something only the New York Times did.

Guess we were wrong.

Guess ESPN is no longer just an Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Judges, our jurisprudential nannies

Who said this, and what was he/she talking about?

“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old . . ."

That would be Obama. And he wasn't talking about the head of a non-profit organization, or the Pope, or even a charismatic presidential candidate. We'll let Obama tell you what he was talking about:

— and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”

So much for the rule of law.

As Jonah Goldberg put it, "Supreme Court justices are supposed to decide what the written law requires, not pick winners and losers based upon some sense of noblesse oblige. That’s why all of those statues of Lady Justice show her standing blindfolded, not bent over kissing the boo-boos of the unfortunate and the downtrodden."

Feel Good Story of the Spring

We got tears just reading it.

I guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time, I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was obviously in agony. -- Mallory Holtman

Mind Boggling

In the 2006 Fiscal Year, the United States Government was paying approximately $46,347,031 per hour on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt.

Sowell on Obama

Once again, Thomas Sowell shows why he is one of our favorite modern thinkers/writers.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.

What's so questionable about Obama? Is he the candidate of change--which is something we all would like to see?

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s . . ..We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed . . . [while the 1930's foreign policy] approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

We are Deipnosophist

We can't tell if we're supposed to be electing the person who is best qualified and most capable of leading the greatest nation on earth, or casting our votes for the next big celebrity or pop entertainment icon.

Judging by the way they portray themselves, it appears to be the latter.


I am:


I am:


My name is:


My name is:

Dr. Nancy Pelosi, Prof. of Old Testament Bull S--

The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature.

- Nancy Pelosi, Earth Day 2008 Press Release

Evidently it's not the first time she's done this.

The Tabletalk is now offering a reward to anyone who can find this "quoted" passage in the Old Testament. Or the entire Bible, for that matter. Don't bother - it's not in there.

This passage, on the other hand, is:

"A false witness will not go unpunished, and [she] who pours out lies will not go free." Proverbs 19:5

Oh yeah, and it warns about this too:

[T]hey exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the [creation] rather than the Creator . . .

Keep up the good work, Professor P. With this kind of track record, we certainly trust you with our Congress.

“Global warming” is not a global crisis

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

“Global warming” is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently-observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity have in the past, are now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend –

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008.

A Glimpse Into Yesteryear

A Modest Plea to P.B.T*

Ruth!
I feel it time we both came clean in one mighty exfoliation of the soul, unmask our heart’s visage, and let our true Passions for each other collide into a fiery Apocalypse of love!

TO wit:
It is imperative that you attend the magnificent ritual known as P.B.T: the Coupling, so that I may reify my perfervid Passion through the rhythmic gyrations and systolic palpitations known as: the Dance.

I must exonerate myself of any slight I may have caused by the seductively silky, yet entirely masculine, parameters of my caress. Let me lull all your cares and worries and extrapolate all your torrid ambitions!

No! No! We must set aside our differences and injurious behaviors (born no doubt of our mutual suppressed Passion which stings us so) and parley our sexual duel through the wondrous raptures and endless pleasures of the Dance!

Come! We must ply our savage game of tease and taunt no more. Let us be taken up together into the heady rushing wind of revelry, and in that place, disgorge our flaming hearts—consumed with the same-sick desire!

Come sweet Tricky, concupiscence is no crime with us!

Please arrive promptly at nine, tonight, on the Balcony of Dreams, in whatever attire you deem necessary. Eighties power ballads, boogie, ghetto love, and Passion to ensue.

Your Guillermo,**


P.S. Reow!


*Personal Boogie Time
** Macey, The Progenitor

Copyright 2008, The Progenitor

Political Life Imitates Saturday Night Live

"Lay off me, I'm starving!"
- Chris Farley, Gap Girls, Saturday Night Live



"Why can't I just eat my waffle?"
- Barack Obama, Election 2008

Did you know . . .

. . . that the first black man to graduate from Harvard University received his law degree from the University of South Carolina?

Equal Opportunity Blogger

For those of you who think we've given too much attention to ol' Barack (after all, we did give him his own Blog label - "Obamania"), we give you this exciting bit of Youtubery.



Here's how Hillaryous defended her words at this week's Debate:

Well, Tom, I can tell you that I may be a lot of things, but I'm not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004. I laid it all out there. And you're right. On a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And, you know, I'm embarrassed by it. I have apologized for it. I've said it was a mistake. And it is, I hope, something that you can look over, because clearly I am proud that I went to Bosnia. It was a war zone . . . So I know that it is something that some people have said, "Wait a minute. What happened here?" But I have talked about this and written about it. And then, unfortunately, on a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past....

...So I will either try to get more sleep, Tom, or, you know, have somebody who, you know, is there as a reminder to me. You know, you can go back for the past 15 months. We both have said things that, you know, turned out not to be accurate. You know, that happens when you're talking as much as we have talked.

But you know, I'm very sorry that I said it. And I have said that, you know, it just didn't jibe with what I had written about and knew to be the truth.

Really? Is outright lying just an embarrassing thing for her, sort of like accidentally admitting that she still wets the bed? And is a complete fabrication such as this really just the result of sleep deprivation?

Let no one accuse us of being unfair and unbalanced. Even if she is.

The Three "R"'s

Gold Digger Alert

This just in: young, beautiful barista still single.

If you remember this encounter from last year, and the story that came of it, then you've surely been wondering for the past 12 months - whatever happened to Sara Schenck?

She's available. We just saw her the other morning, whipping up some latte something at the Starbucks on Gervais St.

Don't all go at once.
Actually, do, because that'd be a lot more entertaining.

Baseball - the Conservative sport

From National Review Online:

Baseball is meritocratic. Only about 25 percent of the teams qualify for the playoffs, as opposed to more than 50 percent in most major-league sports. If you can consistently make the playoffs by finishing at .500, as is true in the NBA and NHL, there’s no real incentive to improve. But in baseball, if you want to play in the postseason, you have to find a way to make your team better.

Baseball is federalist; its central government is the weakest of any major professional sport. The NBA’s commissioner, David Stern, controls discipline, marketing, franchise shifts, and union negotiations with an iron hand. But Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, is a nonentity beholden to the club owners (of which he was one himself until recently). In 14 years as commissioner, his greatest accomplishments have been giving World Series home-field advantage to the league that wins the All-Star Game, and retiring Jackie Robinson’s #42 on behalf of all major league teams.

Baseball is sartorially libertarian. The NFL has extensive rules governing even the tiniest details of players’ uniforms; socks, for example, must be only white from the shoe to calf and only team colors from the calf to knee. In baseball, you can show just a sliver of sock at your ankles or wear them to the middle of your calf, like Alex Rodriguez and Orlando Hernandez, and no one will stop you.

Baseball handles immigration the right way, with foreigners recruited for specific skills and all legal requirements taken care of. The next time you hear that a player’s arrival at spring training has been delayed by visa trouble, think how much better America would be if every industry were so scrupulous with its workers.

Baseball is the closest thing in professional sports to a free market. Most sports are socialistic, with a salary cap that prevents competition based on spending. Like the tax code, these caps are fiendishly complicated and riddled with exceptions that create market-distorting behavior. In baseball there’s no salary cap. (True, there’s a “luxury tax” on payrolls that exceeds a certain amount, but at least it’s a flat tax.) To be sure, along with this simplicity and freedom to innovate go huge imbalances in payrolls between teams, yet baseball still manages to have at least as much parity as other sports.

Baseball has no affirmative action. Lefthanders are virtually disqualified from half of the fielding spots. You don’t like it? Tough noogies. If diversicrats ran baseball, they’d make half the games go around the diamond clockwise.

Baseball maintains a lean bureaucracy for its on-field decisions. Umpires make calls on their own, with no replay rule adding an extra level of officials whose only job is to supervise other officials. Contrast this with the NFL and NHL, where on-field and on-ice calls are subject to booth review during the game, and by bureaucrats in the league office. The result: Instead of arguing over whether a call was correct, fans and broadcasters wait several minutes and then argue over whether the video-review call was correct. Baseball gives you the human error in real time.

Rick Roll

As many of you already know, we're not the biggest fans of the New York Times. In fact, when it comes to good journalism, they rank fairly low on our list of sources to consult.

Which is why we like it whenever they make a mistake. It's juvenile, to be sure, but we can't help but laugh when they screw up.


With that in mind, you can imagine our glee at discovering the Times' latest goof. Evidently, the Times' ever cautious, ever careful, ever checking all the facts before reporting writers got punked by a couple of undergrads, when the NY Times reported on a current internet phenomenon called rickrolling. Turns out, it was the Times who got rickrolled.

You can watch an explanation of the phenomenon here.

The End of an Era

The man who is perhaps our favorite professor thus far in our legal education retired this past month. We were thankful to have studied under him twice, once for Business Corporations and then this semester for Business Crimes (White Collar Practice).

He has dedicated his life to two things: bringing down corrupt people and developing a lengthy list of hilarious one-liners used to pepper his class lectures.

This semester, we made it a point to write down as many of these sayings as we could. So now, as we study for our final examination next week, we give you those sayings that made it into our notes:

"You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas."

On why conspiracies are a unique threat to public safety:
“We’ve got people out there blowing themselves up left and right. Do you think the decision to blow yourself up is for or against your own self-interest, self-preservation? Huh? Ok, in a multiple choice question, check the “against” box.”

On the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals:
Ha. You'll get to Richmond and wish you were in Pakistan or somewhere like that.

On the Federal mail fraud statute:
“All we’ve got to prove now is whether there was a scheme to defraud. Think that’s hard? Guess what – You’ve got a lot of people with their pants down around their ankles, who you de-pants-ed, who are really hurting right now. It's not hard. Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.”

There are certain people out there who would rather trace laundered money than eat. They are hardwired, by God, to straighten stuff like this out. Find them.

Nobody ever takes a bribe. They just borrow money, or take loans…that are never paid back.

You want it? You got it. Toyota.

Comma, however, comma . . .

Do you know what the definition of a strip mall is? Grocery store and one end, drug store at the other end, and 11 Chinese restaurants in between.

You know the saying about trying to teach a pig to dance? It doesn’t work, and it annoys the pig.

Just before abruptly ending class 25 minutes early:
Any questions on this, I’ll be happy to take any questions? [whining] “Weee wannnaaa go, John.” Ok. Go.

Commenting on a case where the Criminal drove a Volvo:
Just goes to show you, bad people can buy Volvo’s. It’s not just soccer moms.

“Martha Stewart thought she could charm the dog off of the meat wagon.”

Chiarella was going to be hung up on the cross to pay for the sins of Wall Street.

After calling on a third year student who knew the answer to his question:
God bless you. Somebody read the case here. What’s this case about? Food. Is food important to sustain life? Yes, John. What do you do with food? You eat it, John. You put it in your body and it sustains you, John.

Anyone ever been at a place when the FBI raided it? Guess what -- it's a big deal. In other words, get the H out of here. This is not kids stuff…this is not “ohh, the FBI was here today, it was fun, we had a cup of coffee and a donut and then they went home.” Uh-uh. This is for real.

Freud gets to heaven, St. Peter welcomes him. Says, “We’re so glad to see you here, you’ve come at just the right time. God is having delusions of grandeur.” Freud answered, “Why is that, what do you mean?”
St. Peter replied, “God thinks he’s a federal district court judge.”

If you’re an expert, don’t look like a whore. “Yeah, I’ll testify on whatever they want me to for some money.”

An interesting short read about our new least favorite politician by our new favorite writer/commentator, Thomas Sowell.

“In Shelby Steele's brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama -- "A Bound Man" -- it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were -- and, like many converts, he went overboard.”

Overheard: Our Third Installment

Huck is at it again tonight.

We sure wish we had picked up on this conversation earlier:

Huck: I mean she’s a tiny girl with D cups – that’s a gift from heaven above
Huck: She has a tiny little dog like nose.
Huck: I don’t know, the nose is weird. Her nose and her boobs distract me.
Huck: Okay, I love you too.

Yet again, if we could only have heard the other end of the conversation...

You might be a redneck golfer if . . .

. . . you kill a bird by hitting it with a golf ball.

And you're a damned fool with too much time on your hands if you want to prosecute the golfer for doing it.

Why Most Voters Shouldn't Vote

"Often the most fanciful ideas become the least questioned assumptions. In this election season a few have made themselves apparent, such as the notion that "change" is good by definition and "experience" is definitely good. Yet an even better example is the oft-repeated platitude that greater voter participation yields a healthier republic."

So says Selwyn Duke of the American Thinker. We think you should read the entire essay.

Election 2008 . . .

. . . it could be worse. Consider these great orators of the Democratic Party*:

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin D. Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry S. Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John F. Kennedy
  
  
• "They gave me a hat. I have the hat to this day. I have the hat."--John Kerry

At least we're not dealing with that last guy as a potential candidate anymore.


*Borrowed from the Wall Street Journal

Overheard, again.

Our friendly carrel neighbor was at it again this week.

On one occasion, it sounded as though he was having a fight, not with someone on the other end of the telephone, but with his textbooks. Despite being two rows over and several carrels down from us, we could hear (what sounded like) him picking up several textbooks, dropping them loudly on one side of his desk, and then letting out a sigh that was longer and louder than most air leaks in a tire. He would then repeat the process, presumably moving the stack of books to the other side of his desk, followed by yet another sigh. Keep in mind that these desks are no bigger than 3.5 feet x 2.5 feet. This behavior carried on for several minutes.

We feel bad for his desk.

But what really got our attention was another cell phone conversation. We assume that it was his (faithful?) mother on the other end. We'd love to get your thoughts as to what was being said by his mother...

[Elevator doors open and out comes our hero]

Huckleberry Hound Dog: No, it’s a PT Cruiser.

Huck: Same thing though, its designed by the same person.

Huck: Well I hope it’s nicer.

Huck: Is it supposed to be nicer?

Huck: 'Cause I’m saying, I can’t pay off loans 'til I get out of school.

Huck: Hello?

Huck: I didn’t ask you to buy me a new car!!

Huck: Ok, I love you.

[Elevator doors open again, and away goes Huck. Apparently the Fourth Floor of the library is just one big telephone booth for him -- enter to make a call, leave when you're done.]

A new car, eh? Perhaps this is the reward for a Property Exam grade that turned out better than we could have expected.

Covenant College

We recently discovered that our alma mater had been selected as one of MSNBC's "Pretty College Campuses."

For once, MSNBC was right.

Law Review

One of our readers forwarded us a noteworthy tid-bit about one of Manville's very own. You can read the entire February 11, 2008 E-brief here.

Student Bar Association eBrief

NEW LAW REVIEW EDITOR On February 7, 2008 the membership of the South Carolina Law Review elected [Sleuth] as the Editor in Chief of Volume 60. [Sleuth] has a BA in History from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and expects to receive his JD from USC in 2009. Before law school, [Sleuth] helped found a construction business that rebuilt homes in hurricane damaged south Florida. He has also worked as a paralegal and project assistant in law firms in South Carolina and Tennessee. [Sleuth's] note, A Tale of Two Cities: Is Lozano v. City of Hazelton the Judicial Epilogue to the Story of Local Immigration Regulation in Beaufort County, South Carolina?, will be published in the Law Review's Survey of South Carolina Law in April 2008.

If you're unsure what a Law Review is, Wikipedia has a fairly good explanation here, and South Carolina's is located here.

Perhaps this is a fitting time for a hearty ol' "Go Cocks."

Obama = Messiah?

Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of "coming to Obama" in the same way born-again Christians talk about "coming to Jesus."

But he's not Jesus! He's not going to magically enable us to transcend the bitter partisanship that is tearing this country apart. And even if he is elected, in no way will that show that somehow we have "gotten beyond" race.

Kathleen Geier of the liberal TPMCafe (and an Edwards supporter) commenting on this article.

“I’ve been following politics since I was about 5." “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”

Chris Matthews in the New York Observer

Perhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. . . . I don't look to politics for transcendence and self-certification.

James Wolcott, a left leaning contributor to Vanity Fair.

See for yourself.

Superbowl Parable

We overheard this story on the radio last week:

Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, and Tom Brady went to see God, and God asked Peyton Manning, "What do you believe?"
Peyton said, "I believe in family, winning, and going after everything you can when you got the opportunity."
God said, "I like that belief, take a seat on my left side."

God turned to Brett Favre and asked, "What do you believe?" Favre said, "I believe in winning, going after everything, taking care of family."
"Man, I really like that belief, sit on my right side," God replied.

Finally, God asked Tom Brady, "What do you believe?"

Tom Brady replied, "I believe you're in my seat."


We're taking last night's game as an indication that God didn't exactly agree.

Foreclosing on the NYT

Query whether Hillary, if elected president, will bail out the increasingly struggling New York Times much like she intends to bail out thousands of Americans who borrowed more money than they could afford when they purchased their last home.

It seems consistent, and would only be fair. Consistent, because both plans mean propping up a business that "the market" has determined is not profitable/successful. Fair, because, well, she owes them.

Palmetto Politics

Our Boring Governor

Laughing with the next (?) POTUS

Who has the funnier family, the Obamas, or the Romneys?
We laugh, you decide.

Beer Politics

Which of the presidential candidates would you rather have a beer with in 2008? That's the question that the National Beer Wholesaler's Association is asking. An interesting question, though we fail to see how that "quality" bears any relation to the requisite merits for elected office. If anything, it's probably a disqualification - most of our more entertaining drinking buddies would make terrible presidents, and fun for pints does not = good for president.

And yet, the poll is revealing. After all, our generation epitomizes the coffee shop and pub culture - we're generally not going to march, or riot, or get too dirty in one cause or another, but by golly if we won't sit around and talk about it over a cup of coffee or a couple of beers. For Gen X, perhaps the most important characteristic we look for in relationship, and in trusting someone, is authenticity. Who are more authentic than then the folks you regularly imbibe with, or the seemingly intelligent philosophe who's always at the coffee shop?

A few other comments:
The leader in the poll is Obama. This underscores our general perception of his campaign as one of identity politics and/or populism. "You drink with me and I'll drink with you...and we will drink together, and we will vote together..."

Ron Paul and John McCain are second and third. This probably because we can count on them having some pretty sweet war stories that will come out after pint 5 or 6.

One wonders why Huckabee and Romney are even on the poll. Mormon's don't generally drink, and the once Baptist preacher probably wouldn't even step in the bar with you to begin with. Maybe it's some sort of twisted desire to be the one who gives them their first drink.

Hilary is right in the middle. This is baffling. We're not sure who would vote to have her along on the pub crawl, especially since the thought of her laugh combined with alcohol reminds us too much of Jessica Walters as the ever-tipsy Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development.

Perhaps most surprising is how low John Edwards ranks. Surely, after the bookoodles of money he's made as a noble plaintiff's attorney, we could bank on ol' John picking up the tab for the night. Which is why we'd vote him number one.

Supreme Court YouTube

If Supreme Court justices were ever to enter the world of YouTube, it would probably resemble something like this footnote from a recent opinion by Justice Scalia in Scott v. Harris:

JUSTICE STEVENS suggests that our reaction to the videotape is somehow idiosyncratic, and seems to believe we are misrepresenting its contents. See post, at 4 (dissenting opinion) ("In sum, the factual statements by the Court of Appeals quoted by the Court . . . were entirely accurate"). We are happy to allow the videotape to speak for itself. See Record 36, Exh. A, available at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/video/scott_v_harris.rmvb and in Clerk of Court's case file.
The video is there for the watching. Enjoy, Justice Stevens.

Overheard

The law school has a limited number of "deluxe" study carrels available for student use. We use "deluxe" to distinguish these carrels, which are given only to winners of a school-wide lottery OR distinguished members of the SC Law Review, from the regular carrels available on a first come first serve basis. Also, the deluxe carrels have a door w/lock, window, filing cabinet, and built-in shelves.

What they do not have is soundproofing.

The carrels stand approximately 8 feet high, but the walls do not extend to the ceiling. There are about 20 of them side by side and several rows wide. Though most people are respectful of the fact that the carrels are located in a library, and house people who are intent on studying, there are a handful of people who fail to maintain the desired level of quiet.

Those people also seem to forget that everything they say can be heard by anyone within earshot, regardless of whether their door, or their neighbor's door, is closed.

There is one particular person who especially annoys us in this regard. It doesn't help that he is a rather large chap, or that his voice is unusually high and breathy for a man of his size. He speaks with a distinct Southern accent, sort of like Huckleberry Hounddog.

All semester, this particular gentleman would have telephone conversations in his carrel. Generally, he sounded exasperated, perturbed, and upset with the person on the other end. Without fail, however, he would end his conversation with a rather forced "I love you too."

We speculated that he was a newlywed, who's long hours in the library were taking a toll on his relationship with his new bride.

And then we heard this conversation during the final week of Final Exams last December. It was all we could do to keep from laughing out loud as we imagined what was being said on the other end of the phone while we typed out word-for-word what was being said. Like usual, our friend was speaking in his wit's end, frustrated voice:

Huckleberry Houndog: "Yeah, I just finished."

[Our imagination about the what the other conversationalist must have said to warrant that response]: Are you done with your exam?

Huck: "It was about property and stuff."

Imagination: She probably just asked, "What was the exam on?" [funny, you'd think his wife would be on top of this. Also, it doesn't bode well for your grade when your description is "property and stuff"]

Huck: "I don’t really have any clue."

Imagination: She must have asked "How do you think you did?"

Huck: "I can tell you this, every single one of my classmates is going out to have a beer right now."

Imagination: She said, "It was pretty difficult, huh?"

Huck: "Here’s a toned down version: imagine Andre the Giant giving a proctology exam."

Imagination: She must have asked "Well how hard was it?" But ew, please don't make us imagine that.

Huck: "I’m still pulling his foot out of my rectal cavity, it’s pretty far up there right now."

Imagination: If this guy's wife is as smart as he is, she probably had just asked "What's a proctology exam?"

Huck: "No Ma’am, I’m gonna go home and watch a Western, watch John Wayne kill a few people and call it a night."

Imagination: The wife probably just made sure that he wasn't going out drinking with his classmates. She must really have him on a chain...who says ma'am to their wife??

Huck: Let me tell you something, Mother. On the morning of December 12th I don’t want you calling the house early, because I’m gonna be asleep in my bed.

Imagination: MOTHER?!?! NO. WAY. It's his mom he's been talking to all of these weeks? WOW, this totally changes everything!! Quick, find someone to come listen to this...

Huck: "Mom, I’m hanging up the phone. I don’t want to listen to another one of your lectures."

Imagination: This is unbelievable.

Quote of the Week

District Court Judge Rakoff:

''To Federal prosecutors of white-collar crime, the mail fraud statute is our Stradivarius, our Colt .45, our Louisville Slugger, our Cuisinart - and our true love. We may flirt with RICO, show off with 10b-5, and call the conspiracy law ‘darling,’ but we always come home to the virtues of 18 U.S.C. §1341, with its simplicity, adaptability, and comfortable familiarity. It understands us and, like many a foolish spouse, we like to think we understand it.”

See for yourself: 18 U.S.C. 1341 - Fraud and Swindles.