Dial M for Moderate

A bit of inspiration, an excerpt from the humor blog "Clients From Hell" - entitled The Forbidden Fruit.

Client: Hey, just one final question before I send the deposit. Do you use a PC or a MAC?

Me: I use a MAC.

Client: That is a problem. Do you have access to a PC? I am not a supporter of Apple products.

Me: No, I don’t have access to a PC, but this will have little to no effect on the work itself.

Client: I am a Christian and Apple products are sinful, I do not want our website to be created by a product made by this corrupt group. You need only look at their logo, an apple with a bite taken from it. Do you not know the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? If I allowed you to create my website on a MAC I would be just like Adam, taking a bite of the forbidden fruit.

[Silence]

“Take my advise, destroy your mac and repent for when judgement day comes. It shall be you who is cast to hell for your sins.”

Me: [Block Contact]

I was having a conversation recently about a similar issue, and when I read this article I felt that I had to share it.  This is a great example of my biggest problem with modern American politics - generally speaking if you know a person's person's view on one issue (like abortion), you know with relative certainty their view on any number of other unrelated issues (like hybrid cars).  For a good list of these issues, see Geoff Nunberg's book "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."  (See also the actual campaign ad on which the title was based - http://nyti.ms/aRLW8K).  Apparently you can add "Apple Computer Products-Using" to that list.  I swear I didn't know this when I bought my Mac, I guess I should destroy it and repent . . .

. . . Moving on, let's be honest. These issues have nothing to do with each other.  A rational mind can be pro-choice and for SUVs, or for both nuclear power and gay marriage, or for both guns and Apple products, or love sushi and detest Hollywood.  But these days, people on either side buy into the propaganda that if you're a good conservative/liberal republican/democrat (delete as appropriate) you need to hold all of these beliefs, otherwise you're a "Republican in Name Only"/"Blue dog Democrat" and therefore worthy of scorn.  Democrats scorn Joe Lieberman (in 2006) and Barack Obama (present), because they don't match up with their beliefs enough; and the same can be said for Republicans and John McCain (2008), Arlen Specter (2009), and Charlie Crist (present).

I've said in the past that we need more moderates in Washington, more RINOs and Blue Dogs... and I admit my old point is oversimplification.  In truth, it's not just our representatives that need to change, it's ourselves.  We are the ones doing the scorning.  We are the ones demanding ideological rigidity. People from both parties complain that Congress doesn't work; that's why in recent years it has such low poll numbers in comparison with the executive - both under the Bush and Obama presidencies, and with both Republican and Democratic majorities in Congress.   But so few recognize, or are willing to admit, it's as much our fault as it is theirs.  We are the ones electing members of Congress who are unwilling to work with each other.

And this brings me back to the Apple Computer hating client from the humor website.  I know what you thought when you first read it - she's crazy, ignorant, and offensive.  Whether we like to admit it or not, many of us are more like her than we would like to admit.  It's natural, everyone has strong beliefs on political topics like nuclear-power, wind power, health care, hybrid cars, off shore oil drilling, taxes and abortion.  And that's fine; frankly I don't care what you believe. I just want you to be able to respectfully articulate their thoughts using reason and facts, and be willing to listen to alternative perspectives, and be able to look at things from another's point of view.

That's what it means to be a moderate.  I take pride in the fact that my close friends are moderates - I hope you are one too.

Legal Citations Become [Slightly] Easier

If you are a law student or a lawyer, it is very likely you find legal citation as annoying as I do. Ever since I laid eyes on the Bluebook - the 300+ page legal citation nightmare - I've wanted a more friendly accessible and searchable version. Today I found a way; it's free and perfectly legal to boot.

The Columbia Law Review Association, the organization who publishes the Bluebook, put old versions online for free as PDFs, from version 1 (1926) to version 15 (1991).  To get a searchable version, all you have to do is download version 15, go to a public computer with a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional (or buy a copy), open the file, document -> ocr text recognition -> recognize text using ocr -> all pages, (wait 20 minutes),  and you're done.

Extra steps you might want to consider include:

• Document -> Reduce File Size (my final version was 7mb)
• Make your PDF into a true "blue" book by adding this PDF custom cover as the first page.  http://bit.ly/cdW5iG.  (Document -> Insert pages)
• Adding bookmarks (click the bookmark icon on each page you want, and type a name)
• Extract the commonly used tables into their own PDFs.  (Document -> Extract Pages)

I know what you're thinking, and you're right.  It's not the most recent version.  But the only significant thing that should have changed in the last 19 years is how to cite online materials, and from what I've heard lawyers don't go out and buy a new Bluebook ones each time they come out with a new one.

Here's the link to Bluebook version 15 (first published in 1991):
www.legalbluebook.com/img/PastVersions/USC15.pdf

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Post Script:
If you're interested in seeing the other versions, just change the two numbers in the link above. (e.g. USC01).  Not counting the cover, the first version was only 26 pages long!  Oh, how things have changed. 

Google Scholar - Law: One small step that changed the world

With little fanfare, Google today took a big swing at the legal establishment, by giving the world free access to its own database of case law.  This is very big news.  In fact, it is so massively big I'm not sure we can quite appreciate it just yet, but I will certainly try. 

Yesterday, there were three major methods of reading a case.  You could look at a printed court reporter at a law library, or search through the online database of rivals Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis.  As you might imagine, using the online databases is significantly easier, but they came with a price.  As a current law student, I am paying for unlimited access to Westlaw and Lexis as a part of my tuition, but it is very expensive for lawyers or the common citizen (Lexis rates; Westlaw's lack of advertised rates).  This means that even if a common citizen had the knowledge to interpret the law, he could not afford timely access to it.  These factors together made it unlikely that a common citizen could represent himself pro ce in court in any reasonable manner.  That changed today.  The current stories are focusing on this, as it was the general gist of Google's press release.

But this change is just as significant, if not more significant, for lawyers and their clients.  Because together Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis have a monopoly, they could charge lawyers exorbitant amounts to access these databases.  These charges were passed onto the clients, increasing the cost of legal counsel.  This also means that pro-bono (public interest; no charge to client) legal work suffered.  The only way for a lawyer or a law firm to conduct pro-bono work was to pay Westlaw or Lexis out of pocket, or to go to the library and use books - an unappetizing prospect for any busy lawyer.  Because of these two reasons, pro-bono work has been limited in the past.  That changed today as well.

But without comparative analysis, this is all just speculation.  As an example, I was recently assigned to research a false imprisonment case in New York.  (example used with permission).  The case hinged upon whether the detention was done in a "reasonable manner" or a "reasonable time." If you do a search in New York jurisdiction for - "false imprisonment" "reasonable manner" and "reasonable time" - you get 15 results, all cases that I had previously read in Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw as a part of my research.  However, at present there are at least three ways in which Google Scholar - Law is currently inferior to Westlaw and Lexis.  It does not currently contain state or federal statutes, it does not contain summaries of the cases, and it does not say if the case has been overruled (although it does give links to all the cases that cited it so that you could do the work yourself).  I imagine that these oversights will be amended by the time that it is removed from "beta" status, hopefully by the time I join the job market as a lawyer. 

Today Google changed the way that Americans will practice law.  Even if Google Scholar - Law is currently somewhat inferior to its rivals, its low price will mean that it will be swiftly adopted, which will likely force Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis to push down their own prices, or become obsolete.  Today is a good day for the public, for lawyers and for our democracy.  And on a more personal note, I am very happy to say that my summer pro-bono work just got much easier.

What an honest American really thinks

I recently received a chain letter from a close family member, with the subject line "What an honest American really thinks" purporting to be by Andy Rooney.  It is hard to resist that title, isn't it?  Full disclosure, I am Hispanic and this particular family member is white.  I decided that rather than having a long discussion again, which I know would make the family member feel singled out, it makes more sense to make it a post, hopefully making it into one of those "teachable moments."  Anyway, the email itself is too long to do a full point by point debate, and it's laced with truisms such as "Guns don't make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer," which few would disagree with.  Still, there are three important points that I would like to make.

First, a simple google search will show that this is a seven year old chain letter which Andy Rooney has disavowed. So at the very least, the author is not an "honest american;" he's not even honest about his identity. In fact, Andy Rooney want's to sue him for defamation. 

Second - one that hits a little closer to home - I disagree with the racial views especially as implicitly targeted at Hispanics with the language issue.  In an ideal world, would everyone speak the same language? Of course, mistranslation can be a big problem in international politics as well as daily life. However the phrase "[i]f you want to be an American citizen you should have to speak English" takes it a few steps further - it is pretty direct anti-immigrant rabble rousing. It is the logical equivilent to say if you don't speak English (implicitly if you speak Spanish), you're not worthy of citizenship. This rabble rousing has a negative effect on everyone who is Hispanic, be it for speaking Spanish, having a Spanish accent, looking Hispanic, or having a Hispanic name. I fit this category, and heck even my ethnically white spouse fits into this category too. The more anti-Hispanic sentiment increases, the harder it is for us to find jobs... there's no way to hide the second word in our resumes has to be a Hispanic surname.  In fact, I've even been in a job interview where the interviewer said "you don't sound Hispanic." This proves to me that in the new environment where job applications are just online, a Hispanic surname is an obvious obstacle.  But my spouse and I have discussed it, and we refuse to bow to external pressure and change our name.  Linking this back to my preferred field of international politics, changing our surname would be little different than a country conceding to a terrorist's demands - in a word, unthinkable.

Finally, everyone has the right to say and believe whatever they want. The author is correct that he "[has] the right NOT to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird or tick him off" ... although the author does not have the right to defame Andy Rooney. Regardless, it is important to note that many - if not most - members of a racial group don't seek out to be lumped into a race. Instead, we have race thrust upon us by bigots such as this author - be it by skin color, accent or name. While it is obvious that the author "really thinks" these things, every time I receive an email like this I am disappointed to see that some members of my family believe in them enough to forward them to their friends and family.

It would be nice if everyone in the world was tolerant of each other, but being a student of realism, I doubt it will ever happen.  At the very least, these family members should realize that this rabble rousing has an effect on members of their own family, often even the ones that they are emailing. Maybe that realization will help grow a little more tolerance.

For my part, I hereby pledge not to let casual bigotry from my family pass without a confrontation, and I welcome others in my family to do the same. 

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Non Sequitur Post Script:  Seriously, and this goes to everyone out there - fact check your stories.  You can read wikipedia, and blogs and chain emails, but if it doesn't sound real then it probably isn't.  I personally limit my reading to articles have links to news sources - CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, BBC, Times Online - you know the news sources you've heard of before.  For the newer political claims, try the non-partizan Factcheck.org, they write articles exclusively on this sort of thing, and - like me - they vigorously cite all of their sources.  As their articles prove, they aren't a pawn of the Democrats or the Republicans.

Primetime Torture

I recently attended a human rights luncheon about the efficacy of torture. Among the many issues that were discussed, I still find myself thinking about one in particular, the role of torture in the media. For the past several years, the prevalence of torture in the media has been nagging at me. I was working at the FSU movie theater when the movie Saw came out, and I could barely stand to be in the same room as the preview. But Saw became a franchise, and spawned knockoffs such as the Hostel series. Critical movie critics soon dubbed it a new genre, a bit beyond your classic horror movie. For my part, I complained to anyone who would listen thesemovies had no reason being just Rated R, and certainly had no business being advertised on television.

But let's be honest, it wasn't just movies that were embracing torture as a new genre. Television jumped on the torture bandwagon as well. With Primetime Torture by HumanRightsFirst.org, I am happy to say that I now have a source which confirms my suspicions, that the amount of torture in the media greatly increased after 9/11. In addition, they make a very good point:

It used to be that only villains on television tortured. Today, “good guy” and heroic American characters torture — and this torture is depicted as necessary, effective and even patriotic.  Primetime Torture.

It doesn't matter if this increase in torture in the media was a cause or an effect of a shift in public opinion toward the use of torture, it legitimizes and furthers the acceptance of torture. I won't go so far as to say that this is a deliberate propaganda technique, but you've got to admit that it is subtly reminiscent of the "Two Minutes Hate" in George Orwell's 1984.

Wake up America, we're better than that.

An end to the Eastern Europe Missile Shield

I've discussed the Eastern Europe Missile shield once or twice in the past, and I'm happy to see it go as a part of our continued relationship building with Russia.

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White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield - NYTimes.com: "President Obama on Thursday announced a reconfigured system that won’t be based in Poland or the Czech Republic, and will be aimed at intercepting Iranian missiles."

A New Era - A New IRWatch

Well a lot has happened since my last post.  To make a long story short, I'm now a law student at one of America's top law schools for international law The American University - Washington College of Law in Washington, DC.  Because of this, I'm going to open IRWatch to issues of domestic law and politics.  I'm even considering slightly modifying the title - though I want to keep the abbreviation IRWatch and the irwatch.blogspot domain because I like brevity.  Any ideas?