Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka

It's strange- since I've finished finals, I've had endless time on my hands, but I can't seem to get myself to blog. Even commenting is tough. Is it because I derive my super-powers from law school?

Anyways, I'm headed up to Vermont tomorrow for a couple of days of skiing. I hope to get some nice pictures with my new 7.1 megapixel Cannon PowerShot A620. Here are couple of pictures from from previous ski trips to Vermont.

The shidduch crisis is really getting out of hand. I know there's a gender ratio imbalance, but this is ridiculous.

Hat tip: BOTW

“…if there is another attack on the scale of 9/11, complacency about terrorism would be wholly untenable. The public would demand much tougher measures. By fretting about imagined threats to civil liberties today, the Democratic left may be helping to endanger real civil liberties tomorrow”.

James Taranto

So I finally got to seeing King Kong last night.

Wow.

That was an incredible movie.

Go see it.

As soon as possible.

That's all I have to say.

Left Wing Modern Orthodox: 30%
Right Wing Modern Orthodox: 67%
Left Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 67%
Right Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 31%

This is why all "tests" are stupid.

Four finals up, four finals down. Three and a half weeks of vacation. Nice.

You can't walk and talk at the same time.

-Governor George Pataki

Or as what I screamed at a bunch of picketers- "Get back you work, you bums!"

My friend suggested a brilliant way to ensure that there will never be another transit strike, or any strike by any New York State employee union.

Simply add these 4 words to the Taylor Law:

Private Right of Action.

[UPDATE]

From today's comments-

CWY's Friend said...

CWY - To elaborate for your vast readership:

The Taylor law should be amended to allow for a private right of action to sue the union and any strking members for damages suffered as the result of an illegal strike. Damages for individual union members would be capped at some reasonable but substantial amount - say 15-25K, but Union execs would be subject to unlimited liability.

The point is that the union could not go on strike and bet that the Taylor Law penalties - particularly against the individual members, would be waived by the City upon settlement of the strike. The city would have no right to waive private tort actions by aggrieved employers. Therefore, the Union would never vote to strike - as it would bankrupt the Union, personally bankrupt the execs personally, and hurt the individual strikers quite substantially.

I'd like to see him tossed in a jail cell with a very amorous roommate.

The media has a left-wing bias. Who woulda thunk?

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with an op-ed written in Ha'aretz, but this is really interesting. Bush has admitted that the intelligence about Iraqi WMD's were wrong, but that's not what the Israelis are saying.

I've been quoted in the Gotham Gazette's The Wonkster blog. Pretty cool.

Looks like the government didn't do such a good job when they bombed the levees to kill all the black people of New Orleans.

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.

...the state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities. According to the 2000 census, whites make up 28 percent of the city's population, but the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates that whites constitute 36.6 percent of the storm's fatalities in the city.

African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent of the storm's fatalities.

Some people see racism everywhere. Frankly, I thing they're just projecting.

Required readings for today-

Larry Elder:

Consider the following hypothetical. David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, murders, in cold blood, four innocent blacks. But, wait. Duke later renounces the Klan and pens children's books urging white kids to reject racism. But he refuses to accept responsibility for the murder of the four innocent blacks, claiming that a racist jury convicted him for his reputation, not for the murders. Imagine Snoop Dogg, Jamie Foxx, Ed Asner or the NAACP organizing a campaign to spare the "redeemed" Duke's life.

George Will:

But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.

For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

With all this talk about a potential strike on Friday, a friend of mine raised a good point. Why should city and state employees be allowed to unionize? The point of a union is gain leverage against the employer, to ensure equitable distributions of profits and to protect the employees.

But public employees don't have that - cities and states don't run "profits", every dollar they earn comes from you, me, and every other taxpayer.

There's a reason why the Taylor Law was passed. When a private company's employees strike, the only ones harmed are the company and its shareholders. If K-Mart workers strike, you can go shop somewhere else.

But when public employees strike, everyone is harmed- There are no other real options to take when the buses and subways stop running .

If there is a strike, I hope that the fines are enforced, the leaders thrown in jail, and the transit union is crippled.

...that the MSM won't report on. But I'll do by own small part in spreading the news.

Remember how Michael Brown got raked across the coals when emails were released telling him to have his sleeves rolled up when he was on TV? How he was concerned about his clothing? He was humiliated for that, and rightfully so.

So it turns out Governor Blanco is just as is just as concerned as Brown about how she appears on television. E-mails were released, showing that Blanco is, well, just another politician. Here’s the money quote:

“"Gov. Blanco might dress down a bit and look like she has rolled up her sleeves," press consultant Kim Fuller of Witt Associates wrote in a Sept. 4 e-mail to aides including Bottcher, Mann and Kopplin. "I have some great Liz Claiborne sports clothes that look kind of Eddie Bauer, but with class, but would bring her down to level of getting to work."

Even in times of crisis, people will fret about how they look. This reminds of me of an old Simssons episode where a special news bulletin comes on TV, and you see Kent Brockman getting his hair done and he says "forget the hair, just give me the blush!", before realzing the camera is on.

Maybe this will be lesson to everyone- don't fret about how you look when there's a diaster going on around you. And if you are going to fret, don't leave any evidence of it, like, for example, an e-mail.

"Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

I've been tagged by Nephtuli. I've got a final tomorrow, but what the heck- here's ten random things about myself.

1. I can read a sign on the highway 2 to 5 seconds before anyone else in the car.
2. I'm allergic to peanuts.
   
3. Sometimes I dream about dropping out of law school and becoming a subway operator or conductor.
4. If I could be locked overnight in any retail store, it would be Circuit City.
5. I'm quickly running out of ideas for this list.
6. I was an unabashed liberal when I started college.
7. I have no zits fleisch.
8. I won my fantasy baseball league this year and spent my winnings on a new digital camera.
   
9. I think that female J-blogs are popular because they are written by females.
10. After finals I plan on going skiing, but's it's gets more and more difficult each year to find people who both ski and are single.
    

In honor of finals season, I'm not going to tag anyone with this silly meme.

I've got finals during the next 2 weeks, so my apologizes in advance for neglecting my blog.

Man I'd hate to be that guy!

Corporations today ended with the professor thanking us for participating so much in class which made the class so enjoyable for him. Then he asked that we keep in touch, stop by his office to schmooze, and stuff like that.

(And yes, everyone applauded)

Copyright ended off today with the professor repeating the same quote he tells every class on the last day of the semester.  He said that we should keep in mind when we study for the final, take the final, and when we go off and practice law.  He wrote on the blackboard…

Dwell in possibilities.

Emily Dickenson

(And yes, everyone applauded)

Today was the last day of Federal Income Tax.  And as tradition dictates, we all applauded when class ended.  I wonder why people do this in law school.  I don’t recall ever doing this in college.  Last year we applauded in only a couple of classes, in classes where the vast majority of students actually liked the professor.  

Last year it actually got emotional in Civil Procedure.  The professor, who almost everyone loved, was leaving the school and was becoming the dean in a liberal arts college.  Towards the end of class on the last day of the semester, he said he just realized that this was the last time he would be teaching a class.  We gave him a standing ovation when class ended, and he ran out, looking like he was about to start crying.  

I’ve still got 3 more “last classes” today and tomorrow.  I’ll report back if anyone claps.

This has been floating around for a little bit, and while no one tagged me, I'm doing it anyway.


The Rules

1. Turn on your mp3 player.
2. Hit shuffle.
3. Put the first 15 songs that come up in a post. No matter how embarassing. No cheating!
   

Here goes!

1. D'veykus- K'ayol from D'veykus 1
2. Bob Dylan - All Along the Watchtower from The Best of Bob Dylan
3. Avraham Rosenblum & Diaspora Yeshiva Band- Mi K'amcha from Jerusalem is Calling
4. Andrea Bocelli -Tremo e T'Amo from Sogno
5. Billy Joel -The River of Dreams from Greatest Hits, Vol. 3
6. The Wallflowers -Heroes from Godzilla- The Album
7. Roy Orbison- The Crowd from 16 Biggest Hits
8. The Beatles- Yesterday from Help!
9. Queen- Don't Stop Me Now from Greatest Hits
10. C Landzbom- Crown from Beyond This World
11. The Beatles- Golden Slumbers from Abbey Road
12. Yosef Karduner- Da from Road Marks
13. Areosmith- Amazing from A Little South of Sanity
14. Soulfarm- Oova' nay from Live in Berlin 2
15. Simon and Garfunkel- Bookends Theme from Bookends

I tag: Eli7 and her shiny new iPod Nano

...Doesn't exist. It's not really war, it's just political correctness run amok. And nothing makes me laugh harder then attempts at political correctness that don't conform to reality.

You want to say Happy Holidays? That's fine with me, as there are different holidays that fall out in December.

But for crying out loud, it's a Christmas tree! Not a Holiday tree! Jews don't have them on Channuka, Africans don't have one on Kwanza, and Muslims don't have them on Ramadan. Christians have them on Christmas. So call it a Christmas tree will ya?

But this is even funnier than a Holiday tree. This is from the Houston Symphony's website:

Handel's Messiah
By Conductor Christopher Seaman

Both an awe-inspiring holiday tradition and a memorable religious experience, Handel's Messiah returns this holiday season. Guest conductor Christopher Seaman leads Houston's premier performance of Handel's choral masterwork, which includes the timeless Hallelujah Chorus.

James Taranto writes, "If they really want to be sensitive to those who can't stomach "Christmas," shouldn't they change the name of the work to, say, Handel's "Dude"?"

Well, it will be my profession in about a year and a half.

Well actually I don't really hate my profession, I hate a lot of people who practice my profession.

I've already discussed this once, but I've been inspired to rant again by the news that someone just filed a lawsuit against Microsoft because his Xbox 360 is defective.

Why not just return the damn thing?

Why does everything have to be resolved in court?

And what kind of low-life lawyer actually takes up a case like this?

I've got a great idea- anyone who files such a lawsuit, should he lose should be horsewhipped on the steps of the Supreme Court. And his attorney should be disbarred.

There's a great article in this week's Time magazine about Mormons marrying late. Mormons are as focused on marriage as OJ's are; the average age of marriage for women is 21.9 and for men it's 23.9. The problem is that those numbers have been rising lately. The article deals with the how the LDS is dealing with all these singles, and how to include them in a society that is so family oriented.

Sounds familiar, huh?

We've got the same problem in the Orthodox Jewish world. A greater % of the OJ population is single than in any other time in history. But Orthodox Judaism, like the LDS, is extremely marriage and family oriented. Your not a complete person until your married.

The problem is that your often treated as an incomplete person by everyone else. In my Shul, it's rare for a single to get an aliyah or to daven for the amud. I'm a Kohein, and I've been called up about half a dozen times since my Bar Mitzvah. (I'm not including aliyahs that were purchased on Yom Tov)

In another shul that I daven in, for years the Rabbi wouldn't let a single daven for amud on Shabbos except for Mincha.

I know the fear is that if we accommodate singles more, they'll lose their interest in getting married, that by treating them as children, incapable of making decisions for themselves, we encourage them to stop wasting time and get hitched.

While I have no interest in getting into the reasons for the singles crisis, I'm sure no one is going push marriage off further just because everyone else starts treating him like an equal.

This story is all over the news lately. Will Gov. Ahnold grant clemency to Tookie or not?

The way I see it, clemency should be granted for only 2 reasons.

1. If Governor has any doubt about his innocence.
2. If the convict has truly reformed.

The problem here is that Tookie's lawyers and the all of his supporters are claiming that he has reformed- he's written children's' books, denounced gang membership, and has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. So his supporters focus on that he has repented and changed his ways.

But Tookie still denies that he killed the four people he was convicted of murdering. The first step in becoming a "changed man" is to admit to your crimes. He hasn't.

So Ahnold should only grant clemency if he believes that there are doubts about Tookie's innocence. As his innocence is not in doubt, he should be executed for his crimes.

It's only December 4th and there 2 inches of snow on the ground in New York City. Looks like it's going to be a good ski season.

Here's a photo of the first snowball of the season. It's not a great snowball; the snow was too wet, but it's still the first. I've placed it in my freezer for posterity.

I’m all in favor of the death penalty.  Bu even I’ll agree that this is ridiculous.  Smuggle in heroin and your punishment is getting hung?  Wow, that’s pretty strict.  Though I wonder what the crime rate is in Singapore.