Playoff Predictions Come False

Okay, so I predicted that Seattle would defeat Chicago to go on to the XL-Bowl. I also predicted that Indianapolis would defeat Cincinnati to take the AFC crown. Those things are, um... not going to happen. So I'll predict instead that Seattle will defeat Carolina, and that Denver will squeak by Pittsburgh. Next Sunday's going to have two really good games that I hope I get to watch

Revealing Testimony To Come

Many years ago, Arthur Schlesinger wrote a book called The Imperial Presidency. His basic thesis was that the modern bureaucratic state and the nation's mission during the Cold War created system too complex and demands too rapidly-changing to be governed primarily through legislation, and that Congress had responded by essentially abdicating power to the executive branch. Thus, over time, most laws and rules would become written by the agencies that would go out and enforce them, and with the proliferation of administrative law would come administrative courts, again within the executive branch. Thus, the executive would over time assume the functions of all three branches of government -- and the President would sit atop a quasi-autocratic institution that wrote the rules, enforced the rules, decided who broke the rules, and what would happen to the rulebreakers.

A scary concept, for those of us who believe that a divided government forces deliberation and therefore respect for our common beliefs and ideals, like civil liberties. But it is important to note that Schlesinger presidence the abdication of Congressional, and by fiat, judicial power to the ever-growing power of the Preisdency.

Hearings will be called shortly after Judge Alito is confirmed into his new role as Justice Alito, to investigate "the Program" which spied on American citizens for over five years without warrants, despite the easy availability of those warrants from the FISA Court. Today we learn that Attorney General Gonzalez will soon testify before the Senate concerning the Administration's argument that the inherent powers of the Presidency, coupled with Congress' authorization of the use of force against al Qaeda, provides legal authority to the White House to begin "the Program."

The primary defense of this "Program" that I have heard is, "If I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to fear." That is incorrect. You have autocracy to fear. I've never doubted the ability of the government to gather intelligence -- whether domestically or abroad -- to root out and destroy terrorists. But getting a warrant three days after starting that kind of intelligence-gathering when a subject of the intelligence is a U.S. citizen is not a heavy burden for the government to bear.

So if Gonzalez is right and Congress' law authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda (and the implied necessity of gathering of intelligence to direct that use of force), then the line that Professor Schlesinger contemplated, the point beyond which Congress would have surrendered its Constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government and protector of the rights of American citizens, will have been crossed and the President will have become effectively an elected autocrat with few meaningful checks on his power, much like a medieval king. If, however, Gonzalez is wrong, then the White House will be exposed as having usurped power in the name of responding to a national security crisis, reserving to itself by its own authority the power to decide how far a citizen's rights extend against the government. Unlike a medieval king, the President will have behaved like the leader of a military dictorship -- and we should remember that although many military dictators seize power to the cheers of the observing masses, the story almost always ends badly. That is what you have to fear -- even if you have not been doing anything wrong.

New Coach

It did not take Green Bay's executives long to name a new coach. Pittsburgh native Mike McCarthy will be the fourteenth head coach of the Green Bay Packers, following in the storied footsteps of such legendary names as Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, and Mike Holmgren. Granted, the list of Green Bay's coaches also includes lesser lights like Bart Starr, Forrest Gregg, Lindy Infante and Ray Rhodes. But although both Starr and Gregg had less-than winning records as coaches, their names are still spoken with great reverence along the banks of the Fox River.

Most recently he has been the offensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. But interestingly, McCarthy was Favre's quarterbacks coach in 1999. This raises an interesting question about whether Favre will retire or not; it's just possible he will be interested in working with a familiar face.

I'm not sure what to think of the choice. San Francisco's offense was anemic in the 2005 season, although it's unclear to me whether McCarthy is to blame for that or whether it's the result of not enough good personnel on the field (the GM's fault), or whether there were difficulties at a level other than McCarthy's (for instance, the offensive line rather than the offense as a whole). But on the other hand, he seems to inspire a lot of respect amongst the players and it is probably important for the team's future to have Favre (all hail) mentor Aaron Rodgers into the role of an NFL quarterback. But if our eyes are on the future we need to face the unpleasant prospect of a future without #4. One bad season is no reason for him to retire, to be sure, but there's more going on here than the fact that many critical players were too injured to play for most of the year. McCarthy's success or failure as a coach will be determined by factors other than his ability to keep Brett Favre playing for one more year.

It Tastes A Lot Like Dr. Pepper

...in case you were wondering.

Jedis Eating Pudding

Let me tell you, you never know what you're going to find when you do a Google search.

So for those of you who ever wondered what would have happened had Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker vented all that tension between them, enjoy the trailer. Yes, I know it's IFILM so you'll have to watch a commercial first.

A Wasteland

January is the heart of winter, when the vegetation has died back during the cold and the frost takes over car windshields every morning.

January is supposed to be when law firms identify their hiring needs. Based on the reports I've seen -- including the online service I subscribe to and the leads I've been pursuing -- everyone is doing pretty good for now. What I'm going to do for income after the end of the month is an excellent question, which frustrates and upsets me greatly. An attorney of my experience has a lot to offer any firm (or company) and I can't understand why there isn't anything happening on that front. My anxiety level is rising as I contemplate the issue and everything that's at stake with how that issue is resolved. Right now I have two options -- pursue my appellate boutique idea or sell La Casita Knoxvilla and move my family back to California.

Tonight, I learned that a friend finds himself in a similar circumstance. He has a significant step he needs to take for his career, an up-or-out kind of decision is being made and it looks like a key person in that decision has decided to get in the way, for a reason that seems very arbitrary to my friend. I have a very good understanding of how he feels; I'm in a similar situation as he. If either of us can't fix the situation, that will leave a spotty resume and make finding future work quite difficult. Like me, my friend is quite upset about his situation; he's contemplating consulting an attorney. I hope his employment situation clears up, too; he's a little older than I and therefore has a shorter time track to make things right.

He and a lawyer friend and some others in his circle are going to see Brokeback Mountain on Saturday; that would be a good networking opportunity for me (and I'm very interested to see the movie besides) but I've already committed to going out to dinner with my mother that evening to celebrate her birthday. So that's what I'm going to do, even as the world turns to a wasteland around me.

Squandered Opportunity

I'm kind of sorry that I don't have the free time to listen to the Alito confirmation hearings. But I'm kind of not, too. One of the more amusing analyses I have read about the hearings is this article from Slate:

Sam Alito has chosen to simply bore his way through [his confirmation hearing], and as a consequence, two days into the hearings, the Democrats on the judiciary committee have hardly laid a glove on him. ... His way is to drill down and answer in lengthy doctrinal detail; to justify his past decisions with technical legal analysis; to expound upon three-part tests and legal factors to be balanced. He never tells you the answer to the question, but he's always expansive on how he might get there. [By doing so,] Alito has thus far generated not one flash of heat. There has been no clash, no argument, no losing of his temper. He is like a very, very smart rock. And this stoniness is slowly wearing down his opposition. ... Alito is crushing the Democrats with unrelenting tedium and a demonstrable love for material they don't really understand. ... It seems that committee Democrats are being harmed by their new emphasis on executive overreaching—it means they have lost whatever focus they once had on the issues of privacy and abortion—but they haven't got real traction on the executive-authority questions either. The public doesn't seem to care, and the senators don't fully understand the concepts—like that of the "unitary executive"—they are attempting to explore.

Constitutional law, like most of the law, can be tedioius but it can also be a great joy. In essence, it is the law that applies to the relationship between the people and their government. More so than any other branch of the law, Constitutional law is about fundamental freedoms, about what it is to be an American. At its worst, it is about transparent manipulation of cherished freedoms for the short-term advantage of the political sponsors of a group of judges. But at its best, Constitutional law is about what is inherently good and noble in America.

The Senate confirmation process, being conducted by a political branch of government and being the result of twenty years of both parties' using the judiciary as a political football, is well capable of ferreting out whether Judge Alito, if he becomes Justice Alito, will practice Constitutional law at its worst. But by trying to get a partisan judge who will vote in their favor,* the political parties (both of them) have forsaken the possibility that

Alito is doing what he should by explaining the hows and whys of his judicial decision-making process. This is the information the Senate needs to decide if Judge Alito should sit on the highest court of the land. And it is disgraceful that the Senators who are questioning him -- almost all of whom are lawyers themselves -- are unconcerned with learning how the man thinks or why he reaches the conclusions he does. They only care about whether Alito will reach the result they want. By using an outcome-determinative political lens to examine the nominee, they ignore too much and demonstrate disregard for the potential to identify a jurist who can mold the law to its rich potential. It sounds like he's really smart and understands the Constitution well. It also seems that he is capable of seeing nuances and modifying his opinions to account for them. But the Senate confirmation process is not well-suited for demonstrating that to the public. So we can only hope that Justice Alito will be able to rise above the partisan muck that he must wade through to get on the Court.

* "Vote on what?" you might ask. I refer to the perennial abortion cases, of course. All other legal or political issues pale in comparison.

I Really Must Be Tired

I just read over last night's post. I haven't produced a blog entry that incoherent in a while. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. But the concern about not having brought a tie to a deposition is very real.

Live, From The Greatest Econo Lodge In West Tennessee, It's... TL Without A Tie!

I write on a guest connection from an Econo Lodge in Paris, Tennessee. Technically, this is West Tennessee because I am to the west of the north-flowing Tennessee River. I drove out here today with the Great Man -- finagling doing most of the driving myself -- while he edited his book-in-progress, "Aging Is A Choice." We're getting along quite well and had a long discussion about the "free-radical" theory of aging.

My skeptic friends back in California would be disgusted with this, but hey, we're talking survival here and I never said I agreed with any of the alternative medicine crap. The Great Man wants to write a good book, and I'm giving him my honest feedback about it. Honest feedback makes better writing. I also got a call from TFDFA, who has some suggestions about my idea of forming an appellate-law boutique.

I'm tired and I miss The Wife. I would dearly love to be back with her now instead of here. I miss the critters. I miss La Casita Knoxvilla. But tomorrow is a series of important depositions and I need to be alert. I have to attend to my classes now, after preparing the client for his deposition, and hopefully get to sleep.

More about my sleep issues to come in a later post. For now, I get to fret about forgetting to pack a tie to wear with my suit tomorrow. A quick run to Wal-Mart sounds like it's in the works.

Moving In

Yesterday we spent most of the day getting moved in to La Casa. The Wife and her mother did a great job finishing off the painting and we were very pleased with Two Men and A Truck's service. By about 1:00, all the big furniture was here and we spent the rest of the day running back and forth between The Estate at Louisville and La Casa -- which seems like La Casita compared to The Estate -- with more stuff. Most of our clothes and toiletries are here; the only big things left to move are food, pots and pans and other kitchen stuff, and artwork.

Finding places for critter stuff -- litter boxes, food storage, feeding bowls and the like -- has been a challenge. Moving the critters themselves was easier for me than The Wife; I got to take the dogs, who are good travellers, while she got the cats. Ginger is a little prima donna and gets scared at nearly everything. The poor cat is terrified of her cat carrier and soiled herself while driving over here. But they all seem to have calmed down and are adapting quickly to their new home.

One bad note is that this morning I haven't been able to stop sneezing or have my nose stop running. I should be nearly done with my allergy shots, but maybe it's just as well that tomorrow I'm going to see my doctor about that. Maybe it's not an allergy -- there is still the smell of fresh paint around; or it could be a cold or it could be two months of solid stress finally catching up with me. Either way, I wish it would end.

Sudoku

It's a nine-square by nine-square grid. The grid is subdivided into nine three-by-three grids. Each column has the numbers 1-9, with no repeats (only one "2", only one "4", and so on). Each row has the numbers 1-9. Each three-by-three grid has the numbers 1-9. You do not need to guess what number goes where; logic and the process of elimination are sufficient to figure it out. But it's maddeningly challenging and addictive. I like the website above (and I've added the link to the sidebar) because you can check as you go to see if you've made a mistake. Enjoy!

Oh, Come On, Now

I know making fun of Pat Robertson seems like it's a cheap shot, beneath my efforts, and that it's probably better to ignore him. But here's why I do think it's necessary to point out the utter idiocy (never mind the abyssmally poor taste) coming out of The 700 Club daily on your cable television. According to the CNN article linked in the title, over a million people a day tune in to listen to this lunatic spout off about assassinations and divine death threats.

Those people vote.

Fun in Class

Tonight, I led a review session for The Wife's paralegal class. I had a lot of fun with it. It's an enjoyable experience to be in front of people, interacting with them, talking about interesting stuff. It was a lot like most classes, I suppose; some students were active and engaged, some were distracted and uninterested; some were sharp and others were not so willing to participate unless directly challenged. But after a little bit of getting the class energized, most of the students felt comfortable sharing and participating, and things went pretty well.

Since it was a review session, I made up a hypo to use for issue-spotting and element-recital. I think I did pretty well jamming in a lot of torts into the hypo -- assault, battery, false imprisonment, negligence, professional negligence, products liability, conversion, defamation, malicious prosecution, abuse of process. Students also found nuisance and false light privacy invasion, which I did not really intend but kind of fit. It was a lot like writing the torts tests that I took and practiced on in law school.

It seems that the students liked it, and I hope that they learned from it, too. I sure did. I wish teaching paid better than it does; I get a charge out of seeing the lights turn on in students' faces when they "get it." Someone told The Wife that they were going to recommend that I teach the class in the future. I'd do it; it's a fun gig.

Scary Stuff

Maybe I should not wear my lack of faith on my sleeve so much as I do. On the other hand, I think I've picked better friends than the ones described in Eugene's post. At least, I hope so.

Recent Injury Or Sign Of Age?

Traditionally, men cross their legs differently than women. Women rest one knee atop the other, or one ankle atop the other with their thighs held parallel to the ground and near one another, thus requiring that the woman's knees be bent about ninety degrees, like the women at right. Men cross one knee atop the other much less often than women do and when they do so, they traditionally hold their knee with a hand; more often they place one ankle atop the opposite knee. Men do use the ankle-on-ankle technique (or a variant, foot-on-foot), but usually this is when they are more reclined or at least their knees are held straighter.

I'll leave the sexual innuendo behind such postural communication to those who concern themselves with such things, because that's not my point. The point is that when trying to engage in this activity (crossing my legs) I've encountered some degree of pain -- and I'd not have discovered this pain were the social convention of how men are supposed to cross their legs other than it is.

I've noticed that for the past few days, I can't lift my right leg all the way up to the point where I can rest the ankle on my left knee. I can do it if I grab my leg with my arms and pull, but even then there is discomfort in the joint between the pelvis and the thigh, the area around what Gray's Anatomy calls the gracilis and adductor muscles. Oddly, I do not have any pain, discomfort, or decreased range of motion with my left leg and it will lift under its own power.

I don't know if I tweaked my leg while painting, lifting something, or what. Or maybe it's a sign of the reduced flexibility that I can expect as I approach middle age. But I think I'm kind of young for that sort of thing, and I've only noticed this over the past couple of days, so it must be an injury of some kind rather than a degenerative condition.

Working personal injury cases for so long has taught me all these marvelous words. But it's still strange to use them to describe myself.

Old Encyclopedia

I found this on BoingBoing. It's quite amusing.

Assorted Speculations And Unwarranted Generalizations About Some Guy Who Listens To Hotel California And Makes The Rest Of Us Listen To It, Too

Every day, I hear cars driving down Gay Street. Buses and trucks are very loud, and have at times been so loud as to interfere with my ability to hear people talking on the phone. Every few days I get treated to some serious Black Rage when rap fans stop at the red light on Gay and Union, and the sound reverberates up and down the street, rattling the poorly-mounted windows on the front of my office while testing the limits of their subwoofers. This is all part of life in an urban environment, and even though Knoxville is not the biggest city I’ve ever been in you do get some urban phenomena in the square mile or so that we call “downtown Knox,” particularly on Gay Street where the taller buildings are lined up in a scaled-down version of the concrete canyons found in larger cities.

Now, for the past two months or so, every afternoon, some time between two-thirty and five o’clock, someone drives down Gay Street, playing the Eagles’ “Hotel California” (the 1976 studio version) at top volume. Now, I kind of like the song, I think the performers demonstrated virtuoso skill in recording it, and as a teenager it was one of my favorite songs of all. I particularly enjoyed playing it, back when I still played the guitar.

But even then, I realized that one needs a little bit of variety in one’s musical diet. A steady diet of nothing but “Hotel California” is a bit monotonous. He drove by again about ten minutes later today, playing “New Kid In Town,” so I guess that’s kind of like switching from a steady diet of ribeye steaks to a T-bone every once in a while. Maybe the guy is on the musical equivalent of the Atkins Diet.

I wonder about the person who does this. I’m going to make three gross, completely speculative generalizations here, and concede that there may be some room for error in these generalizations. First, people tend to lose their appetite for ear-splitting volume as they age; so this is likely to be someone who was not born when the song was first released. Second, people who listen to music that loud tend to be male rather than female. And third, people who like the Eagles tend to be white rather than black. While I realize these thoughts are not founded on any particular data, I still feel safe in assuming that the driver of the vehicle that plays “Hotel California” at top volume every day is under the age of thirty, white, and male.

Having fun with my unfounded generalizations yet? Good. Now, take it a step further – what kind of under-thirty white guy listens obsessively to the Eagles? There’s two good choices there: a guitar nerd or a frequent taster of the sacrament with a “420” bumper sticker somewhere on the car. The lyrics include a reference, after all – “the warm smell of colitas,* rising up through the air.” Now, I tried to be a guitar nerd when I was younger, but just wasn’t fast enough at my scales or strong enough to hold barre chords to be much good. But being a guitar nerd and a habitual dope-smoker are hardly incompatible. Another half-decent guess is that this guy believes the song is about Satanism and is trying to be antisocial – although if so, he is looking for something that just isn’t there and is likely oblivious to the real meaning of the song.

What have we learned from this? That there’s some deluded dude sparking up and driving down the busiest street in Knoxville every afternoon, distracted while thinking about something other than the traffic in front of him. Maybe this place isn’t so different than Los Angeles after all.

* Successful Google Image Searches used for this entry included "Hotel California Album Cover" and "Distracted Driver." An unsuccessful GIS was for "colitas." First of all, Microsoft Word automatically corrects the spelling of the word “colitas” to the word “colitis.” A GIS for “colitas” produces some photographs of girls of various ages, as well as some cigars. I strongly advise Loyal Readers to avoid doing a Google Image Search for “colitis.”

Paint My House

A three-day weekend later, and all that's left to paint in the new house is the spare bedroom and the upper half of the master bathroom. The Wife, the Mother-in-Law, and I all worked hard over the New Year's holiday to get this much done. The result is that I'm tired, sore, and forcing myself to go through the regular morning routine to get back to the office.

If money weren't an issue, would I rather remodel houses for a living than practice law? Well, on the one hand, the results are immediate and tangible, so it's a high-feedback sort of job. But on the other hand, getting behind an installed toilet with a 1" brush is a pretty dicey and uncomfortable proposition. I suppose my body could get used to the stretching and contortions and with time, I wouldn't cut myself on things so much. Law is higher-stress but more intellectually rewarding. So yes, I'd be a lawyer even if money weren't an issue.

Rumors from Wisconsin

Rumor has it (according to my mother-in-law's brother) that Green Bay's upper management will fire Coach Sherman today. This will induce Brett Favre to retire. Welcome to the Aaron Rogers era, folks.

Hate To Say I Told You So

As I told you all would happen, Green Bay beat the NFC-leading Seattle Seahawks in the last game of the season and what may be the last game of Brett Favre's (all hail) career. My upset special comes through. And, as I also told you all would happen way back in September, the Packers wound up having a 4-12 season.

Oh, the playoffs, you say? I like Seattle and Indianapolis to win their respective conferences. Easy to pick because they're both the #1 seeds with home-field advantage, but Seattle will have to get past a surprisingly tough Bears defense (31-10), and Indianapolis will have to beat the Bengals, which will be a shootout for the ages (48-44). I'm not ready to call the Extra-Large Bowl yet but hopefully once the move is complete I'll be able to actually watch some football on the weekends again.